| 1 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/unnamed_906.jpg]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:300:''"Thanks, I hate it!"'']] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | Lindsay Ellis (born November 24, 1984) is a producer of {{web original}} content on [=YouTube=] who specializes in making [[{{Review}} video essays]] surrounding film theory and academia. |
| 5 | |
| 6 | Initially gaining popularity as WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick on Website/ChannelAwesome in 2008, she departed the company in 2015, discontinuing the title, but continued to produce content on Website/YouTube under her own name. She initially started with a SpiritualSuccessor series titled ''Loose Canon'', though she later moved onto producing miscellaneous video essays. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | Lindsay's video essays are often very analytical, owing to her experience and Master's degree in film criticism. Her videos tackle various topics including film technique, feminist theory and production history, observing popular works including that of the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon and Creator/MichaelBay's ''[[Film/TransformersFilmSeries Transformers]]'' series. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | In addition to her assorted essays, she has run a few series, mini-series, and written some books: |
| 11 | * ''Loose Canon'', in which she analyzes and compares various fictional characters' different adaptation incarnations throughout time and media, started as the last episode of ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick'' in late 2014. The series has been put on hold since 2017 as Lindsay began focusing more on assorted video essays, and is presumably defunct. |
| 12 | * ''The Whole Plate'', a series exploring film studies and various fields of academia through the lens of the Creator/MichaelBay-directed ''Film/TransformersFilmSeries''. Started in spring 2017. Has been on an indefinite hiatus since 2018. |
| 13 | * A three-part duology[[note]]Was facetiously billed as a two-parter, but at the end of the second episode, Lindsay revealed there was going to be a third episode, referred to as episode "3 out of 2"[[/note]] revolving around ''Film/TheHobbit'' film trilogy. Completed in April 2018. Nominated for a 2019 Hugo Award for Best Related Work. |
| 14 | * ''[[https://www.pbs.org/show/its-lit/ It's Lit!]]'', a series made in partnership with [[{{Creator/PBS}} PBS Digital Studios]] (presently on their [[https://www.youtube.com/pbsstoried/ "Storied" channel]]) with Lindsay as a regular writer and host, discussing various topics and tropes surrounding {{Literature}}. Currently on indefinite hiatus. |
| 15 | * The ''Literature/ViridianSaga'', a parody of ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' about [[DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu romancing Cthulhu]]. So far, only the first book ''Awoken'' has been released, [[PenName ostensibly written by]] JustForFun/SerraElinsen[[note]]Whose name is a portmanteau of the names of Lindsay and co-authors Antonella Inserra and [[WebVideo/VampireReviews Elisa Hansen]][[/note]]. |
| 16 | * ''Literature/AxiomsEnd'', a novel about FirstContact set in [[TurnOfTheMillennium 2007]], described by Lindsay as being "Creator/MichaelBay's ''{{Film/Arrival}}''", and book 1 of ''The Noumena Series''. Released in 2020, with the sequel, ''Truth of the Divine'', released in 2021, and a second sequel planned for mid-to-late 2023. |
| 17 | * ''[[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/musicalsplaining/id1497762464 MusicalSplaining]]'', a podcast where she explains musicals to her friend Kaveh Taherian[[note]]Also the male voice on the audiobook version of Lindsey's novel[[/note]] who dislikes musicals, inspired by their reaction to 2019's ''Film/{{Cats}}'' movie adaptation. Now co-hosted by her co-writer and editor, Angelina Meehan. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Her blog is [[http://namebrandlindsay.com here]], her official {{Website/Facebook}} account is [[http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Nostalgia-Chick/167999883240474 here]], her {{Website/Tumblr}} is [[http://lindsayetumbls.tumblr.com/ here]], and her {{Website/Twitter}} account (run by an assistant) is [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis here]][[note]]The account was formerly deleted in the wake of her departure and retirement from content creation; an archive is available [[https://web.archive.org/web/20210507233538/http://twitter.com/thelindsayellis here]][[/note]]. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | On December 27, 2021, Ellis announced her departure and retirement from [=YouTube=] and content creation as a whole on [[https://archive.ph/S71c7 her Patreon]], though she maintained that she was keeping the door open for a potential comeback in the future. In 2022, that comeback came to fruition, this time on a creator streaming service called Nebula. Her first episode, "How They Adapted Lord of the Rings (The Good One)", can be viewed [[https://nebula.tv/videos/lindsayellis-how-they-adapted-lord-of-the-rings here]]. Her entire back catalogue and other lost episodes, such as an episode on ''Film/TropicThunder'' and another one on ''Film/BlazingSaddles'', can also be viewed via her [[https://nebula.tv/lindsayellis profile]]. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | ---- |
| 24 | !!Lindsay Ellis' videos provide and discuss examples of: |
| 25 | |
| 26 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 27 | |
| 28 | [[folder:A-H]] |
| 29 | * AccentuateTheNegative: |
| 30 | ** {{Subverted|Trope}}; even with films she pans or outright thrashes, Lindsay tends to point out some positives within them, even if basically to say "[[DamnedByFaintPraise there are elements to this movie that aren't the worst thing ever]]." With her video on ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'', [[DoubleSubverted the fact that she's really struggling to find anything positive to say about it]] [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness is an immediate sign]] as to how much she ''really'' doesn't like the movie. |
| 31 | ** She outright defies this trope in the video on ''Titanic'', declaring that she'll start making more "thing good" videos in future - and admitting that negative videos do tend to do better with [=YouTube=]'s algorithms. She also takes the time to examine why people are so quick to bash something - highlighting that there is a vulnerability in admitting what you like as opposed to what you don't. |
| 32 | ** Averted for Lindsay's "Into the Omegaverse" video, where she described the two lawsuits filed against Addison Cain for alleged abusive [=DMCA=] takedown notices against other Omegaverse authors, but tried to be fair and frame the lawsuits as generally entertaining while making minimum judgements about any parties involved (particularly Addison Cain) as a person. However, when Addison Cain started hurling bad faith [=DMCA=] takedown notices at Lindsay personally, Lindsay felt no such obligation to be as charitable for her follow-up video. |
| 33 | ** In "Mask Off," Lindsay discusses the tendency in social media (particularly Website/{{Twitter}}) for bad faith actors to take something someone says out of context, interpret it in the ''worst'' possible way, and then publicly shame the person and tout said out-of-context tweet or post as "proof" that that person was secretly an awful person all along and they ''deserve'' the public shaming and bullying they receive. |
| 34 | ** She really has nothing to positive to add about ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'' and barely dedicated three minutes to talk about the show. She even argues that there is nothing for the people to compare between the show and the cinematic trilogies in terms of quality and fidelity. |
| 35 | * AcceptableBreaksFromReality: The concept of scènes à faire is brought up in the video on the Omegaverse lawsuit: namely, the idea that a writer cannot be sued for simple plot points or genre elements because often, those plot points are ''expected'' in the genre. Just as a sci-fi writer can't copyright the existence of faster-than-light travel or laser weapons, an Omegaverse writer can't copyright the idea of a strong alpha-male love interest who woos the female lead with his forceful demeanor, because those are what people expect when they read trashy heterosexual romance, much less Omegaverse romance. |
| 36 | * AccompliceByInaction: |
| 37 | ** In "Why ''Film/{{Borat}}'' Works Better in 2020," Lindsay theorizes that most Trump supporters (for all their bigotry) don't want actual bloodshed, but they're kinda fine if ''someone else'' suggests or acts on it. And she finds this dangerous, since it emboldens the openly hateful fringe to commit hate crimes thinking they have society's support, and many Trump supporters implicitly give that support by showing they're okay with random acts of violence against minorities and political enemies as long as it's no one they know and it doesn't happen in front of them. |
| 38 | * ActuallyPrettyFunny: In "Mask Off", Lindsay finds Creator/MaraWilson's "gaykeeper" pun directed at her genuinely humorous. |
| 39 | * AdaptationDecay: In "Why is ''Cats"'', she explains that this and many other musical movies suffer from not accounting for the the different levels of suspension of disbelief between theatre and film. Movie adaptations of stage shows that try to be realistic often end up highlighting the ''un''realistic aspects. They can be consistently realistic, like ''Film/{{Cabaret}}'' and ''Film/{{Chicago}}'', or abandon any pretense of realism like ''Film/MoulinRouge'', but ''Cats'' has attempts at realism like cat-like behaviour and real-looking, in-proportion sets, which makes the audience think about how little sense the set-up of cats singing songs and competing for cat heaven makes. |
| 40 | * AdaptationExpansion: |
| 41 | ** Discussed as [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools a bad thing]] regarding ''Film/TheHobbit'' trilogy. While she believes making [[Literature/TheHobbit the original book]] into a single film would've made it feel too rushed, the last-minute decision to make it a trilogy instead of a duology caused a lot of problems, including a lot of needless padding. This includes the decision to introduce characters and lore from ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' in an effort to market ''The Hobbit'' as a prequel trilogy, despite it having very little consequence and involvement to the main narrative of Bilbo and the dwarves. |
| 42 | ** Also discussed in ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'', where in order to reach its increased length, "it pads itself out with a bunch of crap that goes nowhere," introducing elements to an otherwise tight story and making certain aspects unnecessarily messy. |
| 43 | ** She notes that this was probably necessary in the case of ''Film/{{Cats}}'', since the original musical's plot was pretty deliberately flimsy, but notes that the final result didn't really fix the problem but just added ''more'' flimsy plot. |
| 44 | ** Created two video essays venting about how this caused the downfall of the ''Series/GameOfThrones'' series. She posits the first four seasons were great because they adapted the first four books, then season five dropped in quality as they struggled to find fringe material to work with, then seasons six through eight nose-dived and ended in a train wreck since they had to make up new plots wholesale. |
| 45 | * AdaptationInducedPlotHole: She theorizes that many of the more nonsensical plot points in the ending of ''Game of Thrones'' resulted from the fake Aegon Targaryen being AdaptedOut. A legitimate challenger and pretender to Dany's claim with Varys backing him from the beginning would make her anger far more reasonable, and she even claims that when she first read about "Faegon", her first thought was "well, this is gonna make Dany do something stupid." But with no Faegon, the only pretender is Jon Snow [[note]]who in the show is also named Aegon, but is a different Aegon from the Aegon Faegon claims to be. The writers could stand to learn more Targaryen names.[[/note]], who doesn't want the throne and is all for Dany, but Varys is still backing him for spurious reasons and Dany still goes crazy. |
| 46 | * AdolfHitlarious: Her video on Creator/MelBrooks and ''Film/TheProducers'' examines their influential takes on this, as well as the general ethics and pitfalls surrounding satirizing Nazis and other taboo subject material in general. While she acknowledges the arguments as to how comedy can downplay the real horrors and threats the Nazis were, she notes that, unlike serious anti-Nazi works, ''The Producers'' has not presented an appeal to be co-opted by Neo-Nazi groups. |
| 47 | * AesopCollateralDamage: In her video on ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'', Lindsay deconstructs the film's attempt to address this trope in [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast the original]] that only makes things worse. She's already uncomfortable from the film justifying the servants being cursed by openly framing them as regretful but accountable [[AccompliceByInaction Accomplices by Inaction]] (which doesn't even make sense since what were servants exactly to do to stop a ''monarch''?), but she's even more horrified by the fact the increased stakes of them turning fully inanimate when the last petal falls doesn't jive at all with Beast's decision to let Belle go, which the film never fully addresses as meaning he ''basically condemned them all to die''. |
| 48 | -->'''Lindsay:''' It turns the Beast's decision from a moment of personal growth into a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem trolley problem]]: whose life matters more? Maurice, or ''every living being in the goddamn castle?'' |
| 49 | * AlienInvasion: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KioF1sTQFtE Independence Day vs. War of the Worlds]]" goes into the origins and development of the genre, as well as exploring the various ways in which they can be depicted, specifically pulling ''Film/IndependenceDay'' and ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005'' as examples. |
| 50 | * AllStarCast[[invoked]]: Discussed in "Why is Film/{{Cats}}" as [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools how this concept can go horribly awry.]] Not only was this symptomatic of a misguided push to make ''Cats'' into OscarBait, but the high demand of each cast member worked against the collective, revue-like nature of the story -- instead of songs being groups of characters singing about each other, characters sing solos dedicated to themselves (often rearranging the music in the process), and the story had to contrive reasons for actors to minimize their time on set as to not eat into their busy schedules. In fact, she points out that one of the things that made the original ''Cats'' a success was that it didn't have any big stars, nor did it need them (why bother, when they'll be covered by thick makeup and lycra anyway?), which ended up giving it a long shelf life since performers could be swapped out at will. |
| 51 | * AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:[[invoked]] ''Loose Canon'' focuses on [[DependingOnTheWriter more canonical reinterpretations of characters]], though Lindsay likes to add her own interpretations from time to time for humor. In her episode on SantaClaus, she interprets [[WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas Jack Skellington]] as a cultural imperialist, being "a well-meaning idiot who uses his position of authority to impose his midlife crisis, willing or no, both onto his polity and of a sovereign foreign nation." |
| 52 | * AmbiguousSyntax: |
| 53 | ** In her ''Loose Canon'' on "Death", she briefly stumbles with this while introducing the character by the late Creator/TerryPratchett: |
| 54 | --->'''Lindsay:''' I saved the best for last because is I think few would argue that [[ThatCameOutWrong Terry Pratchett's deat]]--erm... the death of Terry Prat--oh my god, there's no good way to phrase that... ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''! |
| 55 | ** "The enjoyment of experiencing a story should not be ruined by knowing how it ends." Is she talking about the ''Series/GameOfThrones'' showrunners' complete obsession with "subverting expectations" because they believed that if anyone ''could'' successfully guess how the show would end then it would automatically ruin the story for viewers, and thus prove it's not a very good story to begin with if the only thing it has to offer is a twist ending? Or their making an ending that [[AssPull no one could see coming]] was so notoriously awful that [[AudienceAlienatingEnding it ruined many viewers' enjoyment of re-watching the series]] now that they knew how badly it would end? Either way, it fits.[[invoked]] |
| 56 | * AngstWhatAngst[[invoked]]: What she believes to be one of the main flaws of Jon Snow's character development. Despite the twist of his parentage effectively overturning his entire life--Ned wasn't his real father, but he was loved his entire life, the family drama that estranged Ned and Catelyn was steeped in a lie, and of course, the fact that he is a Targaryen--the only real thing to come out of it is that this means Jon is now in line to be king. Even his true family seem to care more about the question of whether Jon should be king, and as Jon immediately rejects the idea, it results in him feeling very static and having nothing to do. |
| 57 | * {{Applicability}}[[invoked]]: |
| 58 | ** This is the basis behind ''The Whole Plate'', using the ''Film/TransformersFilmSeries'' as a vessel or launching point to discuss various subdisciplines of film theory, from auteur to feminist film theory. |
| 59 | ** Discussed in "My Monster Boyfriend," pointing out how not only depictions of the archetypal "monster" shift over time to reflect anxieties of the worlds that created them, but that said depictions can be just as open to different interpretations as social climates and attitudes inevitably evolve. |
| 60 | ** Discussed at length in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLOxQxMnEz8 the video]] about ''Film/{{Bright}}'', where she dedicates a whole section to exploring Tolkien's famous quote on the subject, and how it applies to modern fantasy and sci-fi as a whole. That is, she argues that all fantasy and sci-fi stories will inevitably have ''some'' degree of FantasyCounterpartCulture to real societies whether the author intends it or not, because authors have to [[WriteWhatYouKnow write what they know]] and audiences will see some of themselves in the fictional worlds. But on the other side of that coin, just because audiences ''can'' read some real-world applicability in fiction doesn't mean it was intentional on the author's part, nor that it's a one-to-one correlation. |
| 61 | ** [[AuthorsSavingThrow Clarifies some misunderstandings fans have had regarding her use of this trope]] in her "Film/IndependenceDay vs Film/{{War of the Worlds|2005}}" review. When she says "an alien is never just an alien," that does not mean the alien is a direct one-to-one correlation either. Stories where the alien functions as an amorphous symbol for general cultural anxieties, attitudes, phenomena, etc can resonate long after the work is released because the meaning audiences draw from the aliens can change with the times. Meanwhile, creators that go out of their way to make an alien into a direct one-to-one correlation not only limit the storytelling, but can make the work an UnintentionalPeriodPiece - like how Creator/StevenSpielberg went out of his way to depict the aliens as an {{allegory}} for terrorists, and his movie quickly became a dated Post911TerrorismMovie.[[invoked]] |
| 62 | --->'''Dakota Fanning:''' Is it the terrorists?\ |
| 63 | '''Lindsay Ellis:''' ''[winces]'' |
| 64 | * AppropriatedAppellation: After Addison Cain failed to get Lindsay Ellis' "Into the Omegaverse" video taken down by claiming to Youtube and Patreon that "Lindsay Ellis is a menace," Lindsay spends the majority of her next video "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me" wearing a "Lindsay Ellis is a menace" t-shirt, and even offers similar pins in her giftshop! |
| 65 | ** Less amused, Lindsay notes the {{irony}} that when two male pod-casters described Addison Cain as "drinking from the blood of her enemies," Cain was flattered and commissioned a work of art showing her doing just that... yet Cain has a well-known track record of [[FemaleMisogynist taking legal action against other women]] for saying ''far'' less unflattering things about her. |
| 66 | * ArmorPiercingQuestion: In her episode on Marxism on ''The Whole Plate'', Lindsay ends with her rejecting the idea that the pro-capitalist culture industry is only capable of producing complacent trash, which she can't get behind since she ''does'' believe it can produce true art. [[WebVideo/ContraPoints Tabby]] attempts a rebuttal, but then... |
| 67 | -->'''Tabby:''' No! The products of the culture industry are hollow and meaningless! Smash!\ |
| 68 | '''Lindsay:''' Hey Tabby! ''[[WesternAnimation/BeeMovie Ya like jazz]]''?\ |
| 69 | [=*=]''beat, where [[NotSoAboveItAll Tabby awkwardly notices a]] Music/MilesDavis [[NotSoAboveItAll CD and pushes it under a pillow]]''*\ |
| 70 | '''Lindsay:''' Yeah, that's what I thought. |
| 71 | * TheArtifact: |
| 72 | ** She argues that one of the major reasons that Disney films of TheNewTens tend to lack a traditional villain is that the old-school Disney villain became this in the Disney Renaissance -- flamboyantly evil villains worked well in films like ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' because they were simplistic struggles of good versus evil, and when Renaissance films went a more character-driven route, it made those villains increasingly unneeded. Specifically cited are [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} Hades]] and [[WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog Doctor Facilier]], who are entertaining villains in their own right, but add very little to the main conflict and themes of their films. |
| 73 | ** She also cites the auction scene that leads to the raising of the chandelier at the beginning of ''Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera2004'' as a case of this. In the original stage version, it doesn't really serve a narrative purpose (it doesn't tell the audience anything new or inform the story meaningfully), but that's because it's not meant to; it's a theatrical production and the play has a really lavish opening, and therefore the framing device is just a preamble meant to make sure that latecomers have time to get into their seats without missing anything, but early birds still have something to look at. The film maintains the framing device, but this preamble isn't nearly as needed in a movie, as its role is already filled by previews or opening titles. Consequently, the scene, and the various attempts to incorporate it further into the story, are just pointless filler. |
| 74 | * AssPull: Feels the later ''Series/GameOfThrones'' seasons [[InvokedTrope relied too heavily on these]] for the sake of "subverting expectations" and outsmarting viewers, but she feels what really takes the cake is Daenerys just snapping one day, burning a city of civilians alive, and becoming a fascist dictator after she'd been so consistently compassionate and pro-freedom. |
| 75 | * AtLeastIAdmitIt: In "Mask Off," Lindsay talks in great length about the harassment campaigns and bad faith criticisms that she and her colleagues have received over the years, from people of all political and ideological spectrums. In the early 2010's, it was mostly alt-right and "Diet Nazi" groups, while in 2021 it was more left-leaning spheres.[[note]]She later admitted four months after the video came out that she is no longer attacked by "lefty Twitter" anymore.[[/note]] Late in "Mask Off," Lindsay confesses that in some ways she misses the alt-right harassment campaigns because at least they ''knew'' they were bullies, and she can respect that kind of honesty. |
| 76 | * AudienceAlienatingEnding[[invoked]]: Discussed as Lindsay's final point of critique in "The Last of the Series/GameOfThrones Hot Takes", arguing that due to the show's infamously botched ending, it retroactively sinks the rest of the show before it, as it became a journey constantly building up to a payoff that was ultimately unsatisfying. |
| 77 | -->'''Lindsay:''' Making a case not just for this tragedy, but the endurance of [[{{Tragedy}} tragic stories]] in general: ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'', [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Orpheus and Eurydice]], we tell and retell these despite [[ItWasHisSled knowing how they're going to end]]. I bring this up because knowing how [[Series/GameOfThrones the show]] ends... are you going to begin to watch it again? What is the legacy of ''Game of Thrones'' going to be?\ |
| 78 | [...]\ |
| 79 | I think after the dust settles and all the hot takes are taken -- [[SelfDeprecation and I recognize I'm probably at the end of this train]] -- the answer is going to be "no". It's not going to be remembered for the journey we all undertook -- it's gonna be remembered as a thing that was ruined by its ending, one of the greatest examples of that. Maybe ''ever.'' |
| 80 | * AuthorAppeal: |
| 81 | ** The MediaNotes/DisneyRenaissance. Lindsay discusses this ''a lot'' in her videos, especially [[MediaNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation the years leading up to it]], its rise in popularity, its decline (which she attributes to ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}''), and [[GenreKiller its downfall]]. She consistently posits that it started out strong but, due to being StrictlyFormula, audiences quickly got tired of seeing the same movie over and over in favor of the more unique Creator/{{Pixar}} stories and subversive Creator/DreamWorksAnimation. |
| 82 | ** Lindsay is a massive unapologetic fan of ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' and ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', and will incorporate one (or both) into a video essay if given half a chance. She's been known to lampshade how frequently she brings both of them up. |
| 83 | * AuthorAvatar: She has a good time in her "Loose Canon" video on ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' with pointing out that Creator/AndrewLloydWebber, a deeply talented but homely man working as a theater composer and, at the time, courting [[Music/SarahBrightman an ingenue with a beautiful voice who eventually left him]], decided to adapt a story about a deeply talented but homely man working as a theater composer and courting an ingenue with a beautiful voice who eventually leaves him. She half-jokingly suggests that this is probably why the theatrical adaptation ends up playing up the romance a lot. |
| 84 | * AuthorsSavingThrow[[invoked]]: {{Discussed|Trope}} and {{deconstruct|ion}}ed in "[[Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017 That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast]]", which she asserts as creatively differing from [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast the original]] "only [[PanderingToTheBase to appease]] the pedantic [[SoundEffectBleep f###s]] of Youtube with their decades of bad-faith criticism." She argues how in turn, most of the attempts to "correct" the "flaws" of the original only brought on by pedantic nitpicking actively [[AdaptationDecay made the story worse, occasionally offensively so]]. |
| 85 | * BaitAndSwitch: |
| 86 | ** In her Loose Canon TwoPartEpisode on ''The Phantom of the Opera'', Lindsay opens the second part by talking about a composer who becomes enamored of a soprano diva and writes a show for her to star in -- specifically, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sarah Brightman. |
| 87 | ** In her video essay on ''The Phantom of the Opera'', she talks about how the film world has trended in a realistic direction ever since one Michael Crawford starring musical. It seems apparent that she's referring to the titular musical, since Michael Crawford originated the role of the Phantom in the stage production. However, she is actually talking about the film version of the musical ''Film/HelloDolly'' which Michael Crawford also happened to star in as the clerk Cornelius Hackl. |
| 88 | ** "The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical" opens with her talking about a big event movie in the summer of 2018 that everyone had been waiting for. It is accompanied by epic music and hints that she is going to talk about ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'' - but then she turns out to be talking about ''Film/MammaMiaHereWeGoAgain''. |
| 89 | ** In her ''Loose Canon'' video on Hades, she builds up to talking about the Disney version of the character, leading us to believe she means ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' - and then shows ''WesternAnimation/TheGoddessOfSpring''. |
| 90 | * BasedOnAGreatBigLie: In her video on "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia", she notes that the archetype of the CreepyCrossdresser was most likely codified by real-life serial killer Ed Gein... except that Gein himself, by the accounts of everyone who actually sat down and psychoanalyzed him, was a heterosexual cisgender man who showed no signs of having ever crossdressed. Early press statements, particularly those released in ''Life'' Magazine, had made up the idea basically wholecloth, from talking to investigators throwing out wild guesses at the crime scene. By extension, this means that characters like [[Film/{{Psycho}} Norman Bates]] and [[Film/SilenceOfTheLambs Buffalo Bill]], who claimed to be drawing from real life, were actually basically fabrications. |
| 91 | * BeautyIsBad: Already didn't like how ''Series/GameOfThrones'' treated Daenerys in later seasons, but learning that the [[WordOfGod showrunners]] [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer literally put in the script]] that audiences should dislike and distrust her (along with the other characters, particularly [[GreenEyedMonster Sansa]]) because she was ''pretty'' just drove her over the edge. |
| 92 | * BecomingTheMask: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJEtCvb2Kw YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)]]" has a long portion discussing the need to put on an affect of an accessible, engaging, and typically [[CharacterExaggeration self-exaggerated]] personality in order to make a living as an online creator. While this is mentioned as being potentially [[StepfordSmiler damaging]], Creator/HankGreen shares his thoughts on it as a creator during his interview with Lindsay: |
| 93 | -->'''Hank:''' I'm trying to come to terms with the version of myself that I am on the internet. Ultimately I think that it's really hard to have that version of myself not also in fact be the real me, and so in this weird way where I've been held accountable to being a better person on the internet, I also just find that it's more comfortable for me to be a better person in real life, and to be really thoughtful and careful and aware of the impacts I'm having on other people. But there is no doubt that I am a different person on the internet than I am in real life and that I am very careful, and I don't think that there's anything inauthentic about that. |
| 94 | * BerserkButton: |
| 95 | ** ''Theatre/{{Rent}}'', which she's discussed both as The Nostalgia Chick and herself, comparing it to ''Film/RealityBites'' and an unironic version of "[[Music/TheLonelyIsland Threw It on the Ground]]". The angriest she sounds on her videos comes from a long rant at the end of her video on it, speaking about RENT's naive, pointless and self-centered brand of "sticking to the man". |
| 96 | ** In her ''Loose Canon'' video on 9/11, Lindsay takes several jabs at 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and looks like [[TranquilFury she's struggling to contain her anger]] when she first mentions the subject. |
| 97 | --->'''Lindsay:''' I don't know what your reaction is when the topic or image of 9/11 is mentioned. It could be grief, it could be indifference, it could be a... conviction that jet fuel can't melt steel beams, and if you're... anything like me, blinding, white-hot rage that that phrase is even still a thing that people... take seriously... |
| 98 | * BestKnownForTheFanservice[[invoked]]: {{Discussed|Trope}} and {{deconstruct|ion}}ed with Mikaela Banes from ''{{Film/Transformers|2007}}'', pointing out how [[MaleGaze because the camera is so focused]] [[MsFanservice on Megan Fox's body]], viewers completely forgot her genuine but relatively out-of-focus character arc and [[WrenchWench personality]] and assumed that she was a purely mindless piece of eye candy. Lindsay even points out the scene where Mikaela snarks to Sam about not being taken seriously because she's a girl and recognizing something's unusual with his car... [[{{Irony}} which is frequently remembered as just "Megan Fox bending sexily over a car."]] |
| 99 | -->'''Lindsay:''' Mikaela Banes is the embodiment of what remains with the audience through cinematic language: Framing and aesthetics supersede the rest of the text. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Always, always.]] ''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis Always.]]'' |
| 100 | * BetterThanABareBulb: [[invoked]]Lindsay discusses this in "That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast", mainly how post-Iger Disney loves to not only repackage and recapitalize on their identifiable brand, but also make metatextual commentary on it, i.e. [[SelfDeprecation self-deprecatingly]] {{Lampshad|eHanging}}ing and {{deconstruct|ion}}ing the hell out of themselves. Lindsay is audibly annoyed by its prominent use in ''Film/{{Enchanted}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'', and she's ''especially'' annoyed by its presence in ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'', which she sees as only existing to satisfy overly-nitpicky pedants, consequently sucking out all of the imagination and magic of the source material and resulting in attempts to address perceived {{Plot Hole}}s and FridgeLogic that only create actual, even bigger {{Plot Hole}}s and FridgeLogic. |
| 101 | -->'''Belle:''' [[LampshadeHanging I'm talking]] [[DeadpanSnarker to a candle]]...\ |
| 102 | '''Lumière:''' Cande-la''bra'', please!\ |
| 103 | '''Lindsay:''' Yep, that's weird! [[SarcasmMode Glad you pointed out how unlikely that is so I can take off the million layers of logic armor in which I have adorned myself so I can]] [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief suspend my disbelief]]. [[SarcasmMode We can't leave things to peoples' imaginations, they they might go make an internet about it.]] |
| 104 | * BitchInSheepsClothing: Lindsay and her crew have a lot of fun showcasing Addison Cain's well-known tendency to publicly portray herself as a NiceGirl who ''totally'' didn't know about her publishers going after other Omegaverse writers for Copyright Infringement, but in private it turns out she did just that. |
| 105 | * BitingTheHandHumor: "[=YouTube=]: Manufacturing Authenticity (for Fun and Profit)" is a video entirely about discussing the creation of parasocial creator/audience relations intended to market products, and the fact Lindsay says this while being sponsored by Squarespace is not lost on her, [[SelfDemonstratingArticle semi-jokingly interjecting her video with]] {{Enforced Plug}}s. It helps that she never tries to frame it necessarily as "thing bad," just "thing ''exists'', and thing is part of a system that you may not even be conscious of." |
| 106 | * BookEnds: Lindsay's first full-length original video essay following her split with Website/ChannelAwesome was her video criticizing Creator/JoelSchumacher's [[Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera2004 film adaptation]] of ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', which is widely considered to be the start of her modern career as a [=YouTuber=]. When she ultimately elected to stop posting to Website/YouTube for various reasons, her last video before leaving the site was ([[AuthorAppeal what else?]]) a video about ''Franchise/PhantomOfTheOpera''--this time, one on ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies''. |
| 107 | * BrainyBrunette: Lindsay has black hair, and her videos are considered very intellectual and intelligent by Website/YouTube standards. |
| 108 | * BrokenAesop: Lindsay tends to frown on films that posit a socially progressive message while undermining it with their own script and/or cinematography. |
| 109 | ** She's rather discouraged that ''Film/Transformers2007'' is feminist-friendly ''on paper'', with Mikaela struggling to be taken seriously by male characters who look down on her because of her looks and gender, despite her knowing more about cars than all of them in a film ''about cars'', [[MaleGaze only for the film's cinematography to undermine her struggle by framing her as]] [[MsFanservice the very disposable sex object men see her as]], causing audiences to dismiss her as a disposable sex object too. |
| 110 | ** She comes down hard on ''Film/{{Bright}}'' for paying lip service to "racism is bad" by using FantasyCounterpartCulture FantasticRacism against orcs... only to put in lots of in-universe justifications for racism against orcs and real minorities alike. Like revealing that orcs sided with [[EvilOverlord The Dark Lord]] centuries ago (just as, [[CluelessAesop apparently, racism against Mexicans stems from]] [[RememberTheAlamo The Alamo]]?), and all orc characters apart from Jakoby being portrayed as ghetto trash or gang-banging criminals who shoot the heroes whether they help them or not, framing racism as a reasonable, logical, ''rational'' reaction to [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming minority behavior]]. |
| 111 | ** ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005'': Ray's culminating character moment is presented to be when he learns to let his son go to fight the aliens, but Lindsay argues this moment "came out of nowhere" since Ray is established to be an inadequate, neglectful father, and his son consistently shown to be a wrong-headed TooDumbToLive {{Jerkass}} who needed [[ComingOfAgeStory proper guidance on how to be a proper man]]. So when the alien invasion hits, the film seems to be leading the audience to believe Ray will step up and "be a goddamn dad for once," and the son will learn not to be so blindly vengeful toward the aliens. Instead, the dad learns to "let his kid go" and his kid promptly (seemingly) dies seconds after. She compares it to ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo'', where Marlin ''is'' overbearing and overprotective, so learning to let go makes sense -- whereas with ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005'', it contradicts all prior character set-up, and has an emotionally unsatisfying pay-off. |
| 112 | ** Much of her disgust with the final seasons of ''Game of Thrones'' comes down to this, with her pointing out the show's abandonment of its prior messages. The greater threat of the White Walkers that overrides petty politicking is resolved by knife-wielding Arya just stabbing the Night King, the struggles of the smallfolk get sidelined in favor of EasyLogistics and the aristocrats doing everything, and the toxic patriarchy of Westeros is reinforced by having every female leader who isn't an emotionally dead abuse victim be driven mad or killed off. |
| 113 | * BullyingADragon: How Lindsay frames Addison Cain trying to have her "Into the Omegaverse" video deplatformed in her follow-up video, "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there." Addison Cain may be a "very successful author" in the fanfiction and niche dubcon hetero Omegaverse erotica community, but Lindsay Ellis is a ''New York Times best-selling author,'' a twelve years successful Youtuber, and one of Patreon's biggest breadwinners. Lindsay notes how in the past Cain could easily drum up fans and lawyers to steamroll smaller authors (particularly self-published erotica authors whose careers live or die by reputation), but Lindsay has plenty of fans and resources and will not be bullied into taking down an opinion video that is protected by Fair Use. |
| 114 | * ButNotTooGay: Not a fan of this trope. |
| 115 | ** She's livid how ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'' portrayed [=LeFou=], the first "out" gay Disney character. That is, the only gay thing about him that isn't strictly subtext is one blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene at the end where he briefly dances with another man in the closing ballroom dance number. |
| 116 | ** She notes in her ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' review that Creator/ChrisColumbus clearly wasn't "comfortable" with the [[BetaCouple beta gay couple]] he was adapting from theatre, so he employed {{Flawless Token}}ism to make them more bland and down-to-earth than their straight co-cast, and their interactions in the movie as more friendly than outright romantic. |
| 117 | ** Criticizes ''{{Film/Cats}}'' for taking Mr. Mistoffelees and the Rum Tum Tugger, two characters implied to have a thing for each other in various productions of the musical, and making them both crush on Victoria. |
| 118 | --->'''Lindsay:''' For all the other terrible cat puns and figures of speech that they added in the movie, I'm surprised they didn't add something about how, like, Rum Tum Tugger [[DoubleEntendre loves da pussy]]. |
| 119 | * CasualKink: |
| 120 | ** In her video covering Joel Schumacher's [[Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera2004 film adaptation]] of "the Phantom of the Opera", Ellis criticizes the Phantom's confusing rope work on Raoul by stating, "I have been deliberately tied up in more compromising positions than this." |
| 121 | * CallBack: |
| 122 | ** In the ''Loose Canon'' episode on Death, she briefly mentions some of the translation issues discussed in a previous episode on Hades. She even lampshades it with "Continuity!" |
| 123 | ** In her video on ''Film/{{Bright}}'', she snarks at the film's use of "[[TotallyRadical urban gangsta flava]]," a term she popularized years earlier during her review of ''Film/SisterAct'' as The Nostalgia Chick. |
| 124 | * CapitalismIsBad: |
| 125 | ** Holds this view in terms of the process, especially in the third part of her ''[[Film/TheHobbit Hobbit]]'' trilogy, where she all but states that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. [[DownplayedTrope That said]], as pointed out in several videos, she doesn't believe that no good can come out of what capitalism produces, including its art and media. With regards to ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'': |
| 126 | --->'''Lindsay:''' There is a big problem in nerd communities with coming to terms with the fact that a product they kind of love is only exists for [[MerchandiseDriven gross, hyper-capitalistic Reagan-y reasons]]. Personally, [[TakeAThirdOption I do not care]]. I buy my Starscreams, I read my comics, and I can still talk about the fact that the series only exists due to deregulation designed to target children and benefit big businesses. |
| 127 | ** An odd example is brought up in ''The Whole Plate'''s episode on Marxism. She points out that the ''Film/TransformersFilmSeries'', while not directly critiquing capitalism, [[TheManIsStickingItToTheMan do have a surprising amount of anti-capitalist themes]], which is surprisingly common in many Hollywood films (hence the popularity of CorruptCorporateExecutive villains) [[{{Hypocrite}} despite Hollywood itself being a massively pro-capitalist machine]]. This paradox is at its peak in ''Film/TransformersAgeOfExtinction'', which has both the most explicit ProductPlacement in the series, and also the most definite themes of class struggle between the heroic, down-on-his-luck entrepreneur against the villainous, exploitative CaptainErsatz of UsefulNotes/SteveJobs ([[AntiVillain who is still framed as forgivable]] due to him only being so from a [[GovernmentConspiracy government agent]] [[TheManBehindTheMan influencing him]], and [[HeelFaceTurn is even redeemed in the end]]). |
| 128 | * CelebrityVoiceActor[[invoked]]: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyiBdccfNkg How Aladdin Changed Animation (by Screwing Over Robin Williams)]]" is a close examination of the casting Creator/RobinWilliams as the Genie in ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', what Lindsay argues is the TropeMaker (though not necessarily the most egregious or even [[TropeCodifier codifying]] instance) of [[StuntCasting this publicity-driving trend]] in animated films which continues to this day. |
| 129 | * CensoredForComedy: "Into the Omegaverse" starts with a DramaticReading of some extremely graphic Omegaverse fiction, with the worst bits comically bleeped out. |
| 130 | * CharacterDerailment: Created a two-part video essay (with part two being her longest film to date) [[InvokedTrope lamenting this trope]] for the last few seasons of ''Series/GameOfThrones.'' That is, in the later seasons most characters clutch the IdiotBall and/or JerkassBall harder and harder until they shattered the whole series. |
| 131 | * ChekhovsGun: She has a video explaining the concept as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLLGN7zv-3k "Planting and Payoff"]], pulling examples from ''Film/MadMaxFuryRoad''. |
| 132 | * CluelessAesop: |
| 133 | ** Another reason Lindsay detests ''Film/{{Bright}}'' trying to tackle racism with its FantasticRacism against orcs as a FantasyCounterpartCulture allegory to real racism. It's a mindless action movie about two cops trying to keep a [[MacGuffin magic wand]] away from an ApocalypseCult, so it ''can't'' give the topic the complex, nuanced discussion it deserves. Not only that, but the racism subplot is completely inconsequential to the main plot, themes, characters, and world-building (such as there are), so why bother having it to begin with?[[note]]Which as Lindsay points out, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen it originally didn't in the initial screenplay]], with the racism themes being late Creator/DavidAyer additions.[[/note]] |
| 134 | --->'''Lindsay:''' Racism is bad. Orcs are oppressed. Now here's a movie about some cops playing keep-away with a [[MacGuffin magic wand]] for 90 minutes. |
| 135 | ** While she still generally likes the film, Lindsay also finds this a significant problem with ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005''. She finds that it begins strong as an examination of how in light of an apocalypse HumansAreBastards, but didn't have a satisfying resolution in mind, suddenly going into a "TheApocalypseBringsOutTheBestInPeople" scenario apropos of nothing by the ending. |
| 136 | ** [[invoked]]In "The Last of the Series/GameOfThrones Hot Takes", Lindsay takes down the moral lesson at the end of Daenerys' final character arc, and by extension the conclusion of the show. Her inexplicable JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope is used to 1) make a statement about how [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity power corrupts]], which doesn't make sense since she's been in power for quite a long time before it, and 2) retroactively reframe her originally noble morals [[AmbitionIsEvil as always being a logical predecessor to her self-absorbed despotism]], implying that regardless of actual morality, [[SlipperySlopeFallacy the mere act of]] ''[[SlipperySlopeFallacy committing]]'' [[SlipperySlopeFallacy to morals is enough to mark a turn to villainy as inevitable]] -- punctuated [[EsotericHappyEnding by framing the apolitical, emotionless, and ideology-devoid Bran becoming the new king as hopeful and righteous]]. |
| 137 | --->'''Lindsay:''' "Believing in a righteous cause turns dangerous if you believe in it too hard." And really, in the year of our lord 2019, does that add ''anything'' of value? |
| 138 | ** She argues that part of the reason the film adaptation of ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' didn't really work was the choice of Chris Columbus as a director, a guy who took some already milquetoast revolutionary ideals and clearly had no idea what to do with them, resulting in a confused final product. She particularly cites the fact that the instigating plot is a ''black'' landlord trying to kick out ''white'' tenants in New York, when anyone familiar with New York at the time will tell you that the exact opposite was true. |
| 139 | ** In "Loki, the MCU, and Narcissism", Lindsay assesses that ''Series/Loki2021'' fell into this by way of being a direct examination of Loki's [[{{Narcissist}} narcissism]] and how it motivates his actions, but given that the series [[InformedFlaw ironically depicts him as the least narcissistic he's ever been in the MCU]], he isn't really given a lot in the way of showing him growing past the issues he's insisted to have (in turn implying that by the end of the story, [[EpiphanyTherapy he simply "got over" a personality disorder]]). However, Lindsay does acquiesce that [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality this was at least partly necessary for the series to preserve its actual superhero plot]], and that it overall does a decent job at least confronting the audience on how they perceive narcissism as a real disorder, even if it lacks a good answer. |
| 140 | * ClusterBleepBomb: Her video on the Omegaverse lawsuit featured some excerpts from various works in the genre, which were mostly comprised of these. |
| 141 | * ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch: Back when Lindsay was still ''The Nostalgia Chick'' she would often be asked to review more "girly" properties. This led to her review of ''[[{{WesternAnimation/Jem}} Jem and the Holograms]]'', admitting afterwards it was not a show she watched when she was a child. In fact, Lindsay admits most entertainment marketed for girls didn't really appeal to her (like her long standing explanation of why she will never talk about ''Anime/SailorMoon''), and may have been part of the creative differences she had with Channel Awesome. |
| 142 | * ConvictedByPublicOpinion: In "Mask Off," Lindsay discusses in length how this is all too common in [[SocialMediaIsBad social media spheres]] since it's too easy misinterpret or take someone's post out-of-context, and through GossipEvolution the poster gets built up as a terrible person who deserves to be villainized and harrassed. |
| 143 | * {{Corpsing}}: A common trait in her videos. A few examples: |
| 144 | ** At the end of "The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical", she breaks into laughter after inserting ''[[Film/Venom2018 Venom]]'' dialogue into the "tears in the rain" monologue from ''Film/BladeRunner.'' |
| 145 | ** From the beginning of "Into The Omegaverse", we have this: |
| 146 | --->'''Lindsay:''' Hey everyone! Get set to get wet becau- ''[breaks down laughing]'' |
| 147 | ** "Love Never Dies: A Magnificent Musical Trashfire Sequel to Phantom of the Opera" is almost entirely corpsing as she struggles to deal with how ridiculously awful it is. |
| 148 | * CreatorBacklash: ''Loose Canon'' has become this for her after having to deal with [[WhyTheFandomCantHaveNiceThings annoying fans asking her why she didn't cover specific incarnations of whatever character is the subject of the episode]] (''Loose Canon'' is a broad overview of each character and only covers notable or important versions of them). The series has since been put on hold, [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/960925434237026305 though she reportedly still has future plans for it]]. |
| 149 | * CreatorCameo: Co-writer and editor Angelina M. occasionally makes appearances in videos. |
| 150 | ** In "The Problem of Lady Robots" of ''The Whole Plate'', she is shown as a newcomer to the ''Transformers'' franchise unaware of the raging debate over female Transformers and becoming more horrified by just how many results on this topic turn up on Google. |
| 151 | ** In "The Hobbit: Battle of Five Studios", she delivers the "studio" edict that they are now making three videos instead of two. |
| 152 | * CreepyCrossdresser: Discussed in "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia". Lindsay points out that if a thriller's big twist is the SerialKiller being a crossdresser (as in ''Film/{{Psycho}}'' and ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs''), that’s probably the only thing about the work that most people will remember (if they watched it) or hear about (if they didn’t). Even if the writer(s) try to avoid sending a transphobic message by having a character [[AuthorFilibuster directly state]] that the killer is ''not'' trans and that actual trans people aren’t dangerous killers, this clumsy disclaimer will not stick with the viewers; all that they’ll take away from the story is that anyone who doesn’t conform to society’s gender roles is creepy and potentially dangerous. |
| 153 | * CriticalBacklash[[invoked]]: Her video titled "Is Film/{{Titanic|1997}} Good, Actually?" answers its own question right from the thumbnail: [[BluntYes Yes]], with the rest of the video essay itself exploring the HypeBacklash against the movie to argue that it was indeed worthy of the acclaim it received. |
| 154 | * {{Crossover}}: Subverted for laughs in "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia". Lindsay says it was going to be a crossover with Natalie Wynn of WebVideo/ContraPoints, but that Natalie stole all of her talking points for her "J.K. Rowling" video. We see a brief phone call between Lindsay and Natalie, where Natalie sweetly and forcefully declares she's going to take the topic of ''{{Film/Psycho}}'' for her video, and so Lindsay declares a public [=YouTube=] feud with Natalie instead, with merchandise pins for either side to boot for a charity contest (Natalie ended up winning). Later, she riffs on jokes from Natalie's videos, calling it retaliation. |
| 155 | * DarkerAndEdgier: |
| 156 | ** Is skeptical that the "Golden Age of Television" (2000's to present day) is really due to prime time television shows like ''Series/TheSopranos'', ''Series/BreakingBad'', ''Series/{{Dexter}}'', and ''Series/GameOfThrones'' really being better-written than popular shows in decades past, and suspects it's more because they're more gritty, violent, and [[RapeAsDrama sexually charged]] than their predecessors, and the perception that TrueArtIsAngsty[[invoked]]. |
| 157 | ** Likewise, the common perception that ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' is a DeconstructorFleet to more [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids idealistic]] HighFantasy tropes only really holds water if [[SmallReferencePools the only modern fantasy story you really know]] is ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''. That said, ''Series/ASongOfIceAndFire'' is indeed DarkerAndEdgier than ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings''. |
| 158 | * DeathOfTheAuthor:[[invoked]] She discusses this theory at great length in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A a video of the same name]], touching on its history and the various shortcomings of actually practicing it. |
| 159 | * DeliberatelyMonochrome: |
| 160 | ** The section on the rise of the television in "The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical" is in black and white as she explains the mindset of a housewife in the Fifties. |
| 161 | ** A few portions of "[=YouTube=]: Manufacturing Authenticity (for Fun and Profit)" repeat this for dramatic effect. |
| 162 | * DependingOnTheWriter: The focus of ''Loose Canon'', taking well-known characters throughout media and exploring the various ways they've been interpreted by various creators. |
| 163 | * DepravedBisexual: She dislikes Maureen from ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' as an emotional abuser who gaslights all her partners and will sleep with anyone, "because bi." |
| 164 | * DesignatedHero[=/=]DesignatedVillain: |
| 165 | ** [[invoked]] Absolutely rips into the later ''Series/GameOfThrones'' seasons for framing the Starks as heroic even though they become just as ruthless and "Fuck anyone who's not us" as the Lannisters, due to CharacterDerailment. Also, for vilifying Dany for being [[WellIntentionedExtremist "too extreme"]] in her quest to free slaves and the oppressed people of Westeros, when ([[VillainBall until she snaps and commits war crimes for no reason]]) Dany employed the same amount of GoodIsNotSoft and PayEvilUntoEvil as the Starks. |
| 166 | ** ''Film/{{Rent}}'' gets a lot of criticism about this. She points out that the main characters decide not to pay rent for no reason other than they feel like they shouldn't have to, and their conflict between choosing to "sell out" and stay true to their art not only makes them seem unrealistically naive in the real world, but also pretty petty and self-involved, as the movie had the plots about the AIDS crisis and homelessness, both of which they don't seem to care for enough. |
| 167 | ** She finds Erik in ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'' a weird mix of both. She points out that his actual bad behavior--murdering multiple people, kidnapping Gustave and threatening to murder him too--ends up glossed over to frame him as a romantic hero and Christine's true love, but the show attempts to frame Meg's descent into violence and instability as partly his fault (so that losing Christine is tragically a result of his desire to have her in the first place). Except Meg and the Phantom don't interact before the end, and he repaid her and Madame Giry for the rescue by making them part of his very popular and profitable business, so textually, he hasn't ''done'' anything to Meg besides not fall in love with her. (While there is a verse in Meg's mental breakdown/villain song that strongly implies she had to turn to sex work to get enough money to open his show and it was horrible, it's presented as totally new information--it's not as though the Phantom asked this traumatic thing of her and then cast her aside, he didn't even know about it until this song.) |
| 168 | * DevelopmentHell: After consistently making episodes of ''The Whole Plate'' from April-September 2017, Lindsay put the series on hiatus [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/960918888060997635 due to "technical reasons"]], starting back up again at the end of June 2018. It promptly went back into this again after two more episodes, [[https://youtu.be/azw-FP9Gb-U?t=267 the reason being that the later episodes are into more controversial territory]], planned to be held off for release until sometime later. |
| 169 | * DisproportionateRetribution: In "Mask Off," Lindsay discusses how [[InherentInTheSystem easy this is to do on social media]]; to take a carelessly worded tweet out of context and present it as "proof" of the poster's inherent bad moral character, and thus any dogpiling, villainizing, and harrassing that follows as deserved because it's "holding them accountable for their actions." |
| 170 | -->"So the problem with making a big thing out of this tweet, which at worst could be considered an unintentional microaggression, made the outraged reaction to it kind of hard to justify. Which is why we need to establish a history of my offenses to bolster their case. And this is where the list of sins comes in. I'm trending on twitter for two days, there's all this discourse, so of course people are going to have second thoughts, like, 'Why are so many people talking about this? Maybe this is has gotten out of hand? Maybe the backlash wasn't worth the original sin?' And here comes Dragon Celeste and hundreds like her like, 'Ah, no! Don't worry. This is accountability... So you don't need to feel bad about hounding her because ''she deserved it''." |
| 171 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: |
| 172 | ** She points out that the denouement of ''Film/XMenTheLastStand'' and ''Series/GameOfThrones'' [[spoiler:where a noble pouting hero has to murder an emotionally unstable fallen heroine in narrative terms is not far from the logic of domestic abusers since the narrative is focused on the manpain of heroes who are reluctant but have no choice but to brutally murder women for the greater good. "[[WhyDidYouMakeMeHitYou Don't you see I had to do it? Why did you make me do it?]]"]]. |
| 173 | ** In "Mask Off," Lindsay discusses how some Website/{{Twitter}} circles regularly dogpile and harass content creators in the name of "holding people accountable for their actions," but really come across as bullies invoking WhyDidYouMakeMeHitYou |
| 174 | -->"If you just say the right thing, we'll leave you alone. If you just ''behave'' in the way we're asking, we'll make it go away. If you'd just ''apologize'', we'd just stop!" |
| 175 | * DoNotDoThisCoolThing: [[invoked]] The example of ''Film/AmericanHistoryX'' gets invoked in her discussion of satire, pointing out that while the film does portray neo-Nazis as bad people, it does so using a lot of the same visual language as Nazi propaganda, which has the side-effect of making them look... well, kinda badass. On the other hand, one of the places where she undeniably praises the satire in ''Film/TheProducers'' is that it's impossible to look at the Nazi character and imagery in that film and find them worthy of emulation -- the Nazi is a pathetic, delusional buffoon, and the imagery is campy farce and tacky costumes with a drugged beatnik playing Hitler. Lindsay also notes that unlike ''{{Theatre/Cabaret}}'''s chilling "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", the goofy "Springtime for Hitler" has not been co-opted into a Neo-Nazi anthem. |
| 176 | * DontFearTheReaper: |
| 177 | ** Her ''Loose Canon'' episode on Death [[AnthropomorphicPersonification as a character]] runs into this quite a bit, with various Deaths being sympathetic and caring like in ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'' or in ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 The Twilight Zone]]'s'' "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S3E16NothingInTheDark Nothing In The Dark]]", having a comical side like in ''Film/TheSeventhSeal'' or ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', having a character arc like in ''Film/BillAndTedsBogusJourney'' or ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', or some combination of the three. |
| 178 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vQjHILQ0OQ The topic is revisited in an episode of]] ''It's Lit'', more directly exploring the reasoning behind [[AnthropomorphicPersonification the anthropomorphization of such an abstract concept]] in the first place. |
| 179 | * DramaticallyMissingThePoint: |
| 180 | ** One of the core reasons she ''loathes'' ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'' is that by making so many pointless and sloppy changes to pad the run time and appease pedantic nit-pickers is that by doing so it ''completely'' misses the point of the original story. She feels it takes what should be a simple story about love, forgiveness, redemption, and discovering your best self, and then turns out a sloppy mess that is ''so'' concerned with bowing to every scrap of criticism (no matter how nit-picky) that it completely loses sight of what the original story was even ''about''. |
| 181 | --->'''Lindsay:''' So on the one hand, there's this bid to make Gaston kind of more sympathetic by implying he has [=PTSD=][...] Look, Gaston doesn't need damage. He's the [[JerkJock high school jock]] [[VillainWithGoodPublicity everybody admires]]. He's a hunter. He doesn't need to be more than that. He just needs to be a big handsome dummy everybody admires because he's arrogant and good-looking, [[TruthInTelevision because that tends to be how it happens in the real world]] ''[[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast and that's kind of the point of the movie]]'' [...] [In this version] [[AdaptationalHeroism The town is more skeptical towards him]][...] ''WHYYY'' add this? Why can't Gaston be genuinely admired by a small town who was taken in by a good looking guy who was secretly internally monstrous? Why do we need to make the town both more bigoted AND more sympathetic? ''They're a poor provincial town! They're basic!'' They take everything at face value, including Gaston, Belle, and the Beast, [[SuddenlyShouting THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!]] [[RunningGag I hate it.]] |
| 182 | ** Argues that the show creators of ''Series/GameOfThrones'' similarly completely missed what makes ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' compelling for readers. Yes, it's a DarkerAndEdgier DeconstructorFleet to Creator/JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' with tons of FamilyUnfriendlyViolence and BlackAndGreyMorality, ''but'' she argues that underneath all the gritty realism are glimmers of hope and humanity as SympatheticPOV characters try to navigate through a CrapsackWorld and hopefully eventually [[EarnYourHappyEnding Earn Their Happy Endings]]. However, the show creator's only takeaway seemed to be "cruelty, darkness, and violence = good. Kindness, hope, and optimism = bad," and not only did the show embellish the violence, rape, and mean-spirited cynicism in the books, but framed the Stark family's overall kindness as weaknesses that they needed to overcome, made the Starks no better morally than the Lannisters, turned Dany's noble goal to free the oppressed people of Westeros as an inevitable prelude to evil, and created [[invoked]]TooBleakStoppedCaring. She also argues that the showrunners' only lesson from early seasons was "subverting expectations = good," even though in early seasons there was plenty of {{foreshadowing}} for the ''viewers'' that things might not go well for the characters. The surprise came from the characters ''themselves'' being WrongGenreSavvy only for SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome to bite them in the ass, yet the showrunners went out of their way in later reasons to increasingly rely on {{Ass Pull}}s to "subvert expectations" for short-term shock value without understanding what made them emotionally satisfying for audiences in early seasons. |
| 183 | ** In the Omegaverse Lawsuit video, Lindsay ends with the point that the coverage of the lawsuit ended up focusing on the weird and kinky aspects of the genre itself, and ended up not sufficiently covering the fact that the whole process was a blatant example of the flaws of copyright law, and how it's weaponized by certain authors and companies against smaller creators. |
| 184 | * {{Edutainment}}: Lindsay aims to have her video essays be presented with a perfect balance of information and levity, so as to make them informative, as well as entertaining in their own right. |
| 185 | * EffeminateMisogynisticGuy: Discussed in "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia." Lindsay discusses how the archetype of the CreepyCrossdresser Serial Killer (like [[Film/{{Psycho}} Norman Bates]] and [[Film/SilenceOfTheLambs Buffalo Bill]]) largely sprang from sensationalist journalists blaming Ed Gein's real-life serial killings on supposed "unnatural" feminine leanings like [[IJustWantToBeYou wishing he was a woman]] and killing those women because [[GreenEyedMonster he resented them being what he wasn't]]. Even though this was ''[[BasedOnAGreatBigLie thoroughly]]'' debunked, it set the stage for mainstream media journalists and fiction-writers to blame violent misogyny of women ''on'' women and femininity. To imply that men (and/or trans women) who hate cis women do so because they're excessively feminine themselves, and/or want to [[GreenEyedMonster compete with]] or [[IJustWantToBeYou replace women]], not because [[SocietyIsToBlame society teaches]] cisgender heterosexual men [[FemaleMisogynist and women]] to [[HeManWomanHater revere "strength" and cruelty as masculinity and to DESPISE women and femininity]]. |
| 186 | * EndOfAnEra: Being a film school graduate and avid cinema history buff, Lindsay likes to discuss these a lot. |
| 187 | ** In "The Death of the Hollywood Musical," Lindsay discusses the history of the big, lavish, lighthearted Hollywood movie musical popular from TheRoaringTwenties to TheFifties. As American society became more jaded (thanks in part to the aftermath of [=WWII=], the Civil Rights Movement, and the Cold War with Russia, as discussed in "Mel Brooks, The Producers and the Ethics of Satire about N@zis") people felt less invested in big, lavish, extravagant musicals catering to an emotional innocence no one felt anymore, and favored more [[DarkerAndEdgier edgy]], revolutionary, counterculture films and anti-musicals (like ''Film/{{Cabaret}}''). The {{Box Office Bomb}}s of ''Film/{{Camelot}}'', ''Film/DoctorDolittle'', and ''Film/HelloDolly'' were the end of the Big Hollywood Musical Era. |
| 188 | ** In "Are Disney Villains Going Extinct?", Lindsay discusses the history of how big, iconic Disney villains lost relevance. In classic films from when Creator/WaltDisney was alive, most movies were simple [[BlackAndWhiteMorality good versus evil]] stories where the villains acted as the evil for the heroes to defeat. In the early [[MediaNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation Disney Renaissance]], villains manipulating teenage protagonists searching for a [[ComingOfAgeStory coming-of-age sense of identity]] for their own ends also worked, but by the late Renaissance and early Revival, Disney villains had become TheArtifact. By the early Disney Revival, [[WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog Dr. Facilier]] and [[WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}} Mother Gothel]] were [[TheLastOfHisKind the last of their kind]]. |
| 189 | ** In a number of videos, Lindsay also discusses the end of [[MediaNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation Disney Renaissance]], how audiences got tired of seeing the same [[BlackAndWhiteMorality good vs evil]] [[ComingOfAgeStory teenage coming-of-age musical]] over and over, paving the way for the more unique and subversive Creator/{{Pixar}} and Creator/DreamWorksAnimation stories during the TurnOfTheMillennium. |
| 190 | ** Mentions at the end of her "Why Is Cats?" video that a lot of musical theatre fans are afraid that ''Film/{{Cats}}'' being a BoxOfficeBomb will mean the end of big-budget film adaptations of Broadway musicals, and counters with a point of her own: "'''GOOD.'''" She feels that Broadway musicals are doing just fine on their own and they don't need the "prestige" of Hollywood mucking them up by imposing gritty, realistic live action as AwardBait. Musical theatre is a completely different medium from film, and headed by people that clearly don't respect or understand what makes stage musicals amazing to begin with. Lindsay actually hopes this is the end of big-budget, AwardBait musicals like ''Film/LesMiserables2012'' and ''Film/{{Cats}}'', both of which are directed by Creator/TomHooper. |
| 191 | ** "Is Titanic Good, Actually?" discusses a couple ends to a few different longstanding trends: |
| 192 | *** Regarding the actual UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic sinking, Lindsay argues that "a simpler world went down with the boat," as not only did the high profile of the disaster [[AristocratsAreEvil forever tarnish the perceived glamor of the rich]] (in turn marking a symbolic end to TheEdwardianEra), it was also the last big disaster before [[FromBadToWorse the world started getting worse]] with UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, and GlobalWarming. |
| 193 | *** Regarding the movie ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'', Lindsay argues that its monolithic success -- or rather, [[HypeBacklash the enormous backlash towards its success]][[invoked]] -- marked the end of the perception that widely popular films and "TrueArt" [[ItsPopularNowItSucks could cross over]], citing how [[MediaNotes/AcademyAward The Academy]] has since been extremely hesitant to even nominate mainstream films in a ghetto they arbitrarily created. |
| 194 | * EngineeredHashtag:[[invoked]] Lindsay in her video on ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'' jokingly comes up with [=#BeastForShe=] (referencing the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeForShe HeForShe movement]]), applying it to the film's shallow attempts at being progressive. |
| 195 | * EntitledBastard: How she sees the entire cast of ''Film/RealityBites'' and ''Theatre/{{RENT}}''. |
| 196 | * EntitledToHaveYou: This concept is discussed a few times, mostly around films [[AvertedTrope averting]] it: |
| 197 | ** "The Complex Feels of ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2''" has a chapter addressing Peter and Gamora [[DidNotGetTheGirl not getting together after two films]], much to the confusion of some fans. Lindsay finds that the prevalence of "immature {{Manchild}} always getting the girl in the end" is because said {{Manchild}} is usually meant to be an AudienceSurrogate whose immaturity isn't a character flaw that needs to be overcome, but [[IdiotHero an endearing trait]] that the filmmakers believe [[ThisLoserIsYou relates to and represents their audience]]. While the ''Guardians'' films have some trouble deciding whether Peter's immaturity is the former or the latter, both he and Gamora are ultimately portrayed as "radioactive spike-balls of defense mechanisms" who still have to come to terms with a lot of personal trauma before they can have a mutually healthy relationship. |
| 198 | ** Also discussed in her video of ''WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}'', addressing the common complaint that Quasimodo DidNotGetTheGirl, especially since the film also values disabled people as being equal to everyone else. Lindsay argues that A) Esmeralda is not a "sexy lamp" that only exists to be a reward, and B) Quasi valuing her friendship but also [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy respecting her autonomy enough to let her go]] is the difference between him and [[BigBad Frollo]], [[IfICantHaveYou who would rather die and burn down all of Paris]]. |
| 199 | ** A huge part of why she loves the original ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' is how it averts this trope. She posits that the story is about two men (Gaston and the Beast) who both want to possess and control one woman (Belle). One learns his lesson, recognizes her humanity, puts her needs before his own and ultimately lets her go. The other... ''[[MurderTheHypotenuse doesn't]]'', and gets killed for it. This is another reason she ''hates'' the [[Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017 2017 remake]], which she argues ''completely'' misses the point of the first movie by having the Beast continue to act like an entitled prick, yet still get rewarded for it when Belle decides to settle and become his life coach. |
| 200 | * EvenBetterSequel[[invoked]]: As discussed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VulkN5OLEM her video directly about it]] and in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Tg-OmOztM Loki, the MCU, and Narcissism]]", Lindsay considers ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2'' superior to [[Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy2014 its predecessor]] and a personal favorite within [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse the MCU]]. Not only does she prefer ''Vol. 2'''s deeper themes of [[ParentsAsPeople parenthood]], [[AbusiveParents abuse]], and [[FireForgedFriends evolving together from it]], she also argues in the latter video that it directly improves its predecessor by retroactively placing character subtext and more emotional complexity in what was otherwise a largely irreverent and goofy action-comedy superhero flick. |
| 201 | * EveryoneHasStandards: Apparently even Youtube's notoriously strict copyright regulations agreed that Lindsay's video on the Omegaverse Lawsuit was Fair Use, and denied a takedown request. |
| 202 | * [[invoked]]ExecutiveMeddling: She talks extensively about some infamous cases, be they Disney productions or others like ''Film/TheHobbit''. One of the most prominent is "How Aladdin Changed Animation (by Screwing Over Creator/RobinWilliams)", a video essay about ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Lindsay goes into detail about how Williams was the first really big celebrity voice to be used in animated movies when he was cast as the Genie in ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}''. Williams had Disney promise to not extensively promote him as part of his agreement to work on the film. When Disney extensively promoted him anyways, Williams parted on bad terms with Disney. However, in doing so, Disney inadvertently began a trend in animated movies. A lot of other animation studios started to FollowTheLeader and cast A-list names for their own movies instead of experienced voice actors or character actors. The difference is that, rather than write the part around the character (as the Genie was for Williams), the studios just cast big-name actors and hoped it would bring in ticket sales, which it almost never does. Even ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}'', which had a number of {{Take That}}s against Disney, used big-name celebrities for its cast. Lindsay thus argues that studios ended up [[DramaticallyMissingThePoint learning the wrong lesson]] from ''Aladdin''. |
| 203 | * {{Fanservice}}: Lindsay wears a very low-cut dress in some sections of "Is Titanic Good, Actually?" |
| 204 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Argues in her ''Film/{{Bright}}'' and PBS Fantasy video that this is present to some extent in ''all'' fantasy and sci-fi stories, whether the author intends it or not. Even if the world and races are all fictional, they're all made by an author who lives in our world and thus [[WriteWhatYouKnow has to draw at least some inspiration from our world and how they see it]]. She again argues that this is not necessarily a ''[[Administrivia/TropesAreTools bad thing]]'', but just something that happens and something that creators and consumers alike should try to be aware of. |
| 205 | * FelonyMisdemeanor: In "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there" Lindsay describes a list of female writers and lawyers whom Addison Cain has actively tried to ruin the careers of for such outrageous offenses as... Zoey Ellis daring to also publish heterosexual Omegaverse commercial fiction using similar ''Scènes à faire'' tropes, Nora Ash for being an early champion of Zoey Ellis and for daring to repeatedly contradict Addison Cain's claim that she was the first commercially published Het Omegaverse erotica author (when Nora Ash was), Lee Savino for apparently being affiliated with the above, and Courtney Milan (a romance author with a law degree) for opining on twitter about Cain's [=DMCA=] takedown notices against Zoey Ellis in a way that wasn't in Cain's favor. Addison Cain even tried to report Milan to the [=RWA=] for ethics violations for giving her opinion of the case on twitter, when Cain was the one who asked for her opinion in the first place, because Milan gave an opinion that Cain didn't like. |
| 206 | * FemaleGaze: |
| 207 | ** She has no qualms praising the perfect casting of Creator/ChrisEvans as [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger Captain America]]. |
| 208 | --->'''Peggy Carter:''' Well, nobody's perfect.\ |
| 209 | '''Lindsay:''' [[MrFanservice I beg to differ]]. |
| 210 | ** This term is briefly mentioned in ''The Whole Plate'' while talking about MaleGaze. In the academic Mulveyan sense, "FemaleGaze" as a term isn't really a thing, as even if one's to invert the normal trend and fetishize male bodies, as with the case of ''[[Film/MagicMike Magic Mike XXL]]'', it's still using the same film language and techniques male filmmakers used to film female bodies, just substituting male bodies for female bodies, meaning it technically still counts as male gaze. |
| 211 | * FemaleMisogynist: {{Invoked}}, and discussed quite a bit in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O06tMbIKh0 "Dear Stephenie Meyer"]] video where she points out that a large portion of ''Film/{{Twilight}}'''s detractors were other young women and how society and culture (and the GirlShowGhetto) play into it, and moreover, a "strong female character" that's written to be as "un-girly" as possible can be just as sexist as a DamselInDistress. |
| 212 | --> [As a] culture, we kinda hate teenage girls. We hate their music [=*=]''shows a Music/OneDirection music video''[=*=], we hate their insipid backstabbing, we hate their vanity, we hate their selfie sticks, we hate their make-up, we hate their stupid books and the stupid sexy actors they made famous and their stupid sparkly vampires, and then we wonder why so many girls are eager to distance themselves from being objects of societal contempt. |
| 213 | ** Discussed in "Into the Omegaverse" and especially her follow-up video "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me," where Lindsay discusses how A/B/O erotica author Addison Cain never sent [=DMCA=] Takedown Notices against men (particularly male podcasters who outright called her things like "profiteering shithead"), but she has repeatedly taken legal action against several different women (including Lindsay) for far lesser offenses, like stating an opinion she didn't like on twitter. |
| 214 | -->'''Lindsay:''' Maybe I should have called her hot. But I don't think even that would have saved me. It has not escaped my notice that every single people Cain has ''"allegedly"'' targeted is a woman. Poetic that the charity she wants me to donate to anti girl-on-girl bullying. |
| 215 | * FeministFantasy: Discussed and deconstructed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O06tMbIKh0 "Dear Stephenie Meyer"]], where she makes it a point to illustrate that many so-called "strong female role models" can have many elements of [[InternalizedCategorism internalized misogyny]] in them as well. |
| 216 | * FemmeFatale: During her ''Loose Canon'' episode on ComicBook/{{Mystique}}, Lindsay takes the opportunity of examining a character heavily ingrained in traditionally feminine-associated evils to point out how there's an increased demand to see complexity in the archetype, demonstrated by [[WildCard the various ways]] [[AdaptationalHeroism Mystique manages to diverge]] [[HiddenDepths from said archetype]] while still being recognizably her. |
| 217 | * FlatWhat: Her response to the ConvectionSchmonvection displayed in ''The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug'' as she's baffled at the narrative decisions of somehow melting a gold statue and then Thorin riding metal on it. |
| 218 | * FoodPorn: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qoJgTwDCQM Food & Fiction: Memorable Meals in Literature]]" from ''It's Lit'' details the various ways food can be a powerful symbol and tool in fiction, pulling several examples from literature to describe how it can be used to symbolize narrative, explore culture, or process abstract and complex concepts. |
| 219 | * FollowTheLeader: |
| 220 | ** Discussed in "Dead Genres Tell No Tales" and how it leads to said dead genres. Hollywood assumes that movies live and die by their genre. When a successful movie comes a long, studios will pour huge amounts of money into other movies of the same genre, often without regards to quality, thinking that the genre will carry them. When this inevitably results in huge {{Box Office Bomb}}s, the studios, applying the same reasoning as before, will assume that the genre was responsible for the films' failures, i.e. "dead", and stop making them. |
| 221 | ** In "Why is Film/{{Cats}}?", Lindsay speculates this as being why the movie was finally made after languishing in DevelopmentHell[[invoked]] for decades, with the financial success of ''Film/TheGreatestShowman'' and perceived critical prestige of ''Film/LesMiserables2012'' inspiring Creator/{{Universal}} to adapt a well-beloved musical in hopes that it could bring both. Unfortunately, they completely misunderstood why they were successes or what circumstances they brought onto themselves (including the hiring of Creator/TomHooper solely for his credentials in ''Les Mis'' despite of his shortcomings in directing musicals), and this single-minded pursuit for box office income and awards resulted in [[BoxOfficeBomb the polar opposites]]. |
| 222 | ** In her video on ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'', Lindsay gives context for what makes the film work against one of its infamously failed derivatives, ''Film/PearlHarbor''. She spends a bit of time explaining how it tried to copy the superficial aspects (namely the love story framed against a famed historical disaster), but failed because it lacked anything that would make either the romance or the actual disaster emotionally compelling, something ''Titanic'' worked far harder to accomplish. |
| 223 | * ForeignCultureFetish: {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in "The Most Whitewashed Character In Literary History", which discusses Europe's history of conflicting fascination with eastern foreigners, treating elements of their cultures as exotic ForbiddenFruit [[{{Orientalism}} and reducing them to reductive stereotypes]]. One of the consequences of this is illustrated with the namesake character: The Persian from ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', a popular, plot-critical character who Lindsay argues [[invoked]][[ValuesResonance is ahead of his time in terms of western depictions of ethnic characters]], yet is almost universally AdaptedOut and replaced, or -- as is the case of ''{{Literature/Phantom}}'' -- actively playing into those negative ethnic stereotypes [[ValuesDissonance to positive reception]], representing how even in the present day, people still find appeal in [[{{Orientalism}} that reductive angle]]. |
| 224 | * FranchiseOriginalSin: {{Invoked}}: |
| 225 | ** She argues this in her discussion of ''Film/{{Cats}}'', claiming that a lot of issues with the final product were present in director Creator/TomHooper's much more successful adaptation of ''Film/LesMiserables2012'', but weren't as evident to the general public at the time: |
| 226 | *** The big thing that killed it, she argues, was Hooper's insistence on "realism." ''Les Mis'' also had a heavy focus on realism--it's just that it was a fairly grounded concept that could at least look passable through a realistic framing, while ''Cats'' was already one of the most infamously gaudy, fantastical, and bizarre productions in all of musical theatre, and the UnintentionalUncannyValley naturally followed. [[invoked]] |
| 227 | *** She also points out that Hooper tried to make the cast as comfortable as possible during filming, including recording their performances during their scenes rather than the traditional method of recording the songs separately. While, again, she found it resulted in some flawed performances, it was an interesting experiment that won the Academy's attention. But his attempt to repeat that feat in ''Cats'' failed miserably, because while they could have used mocap suits and had computers put the fur on, Hooper decided to have the actors wear simpler jumpsuits--meaning now, the fur had to be added manually by the VFX team, ballooning the budget out of control. Additionally, it led to some positively ''disastrous'' improv bits to break up the songs. |
| 228 | *** The difficulties of wrangling an AllStarCast, used to draw the attention of the Academy, weighed down heavily on ''Cats'', but ''Les Mis'' had one, too. The difference was that ''Les Mis'' was an epic narrative that rotated characters and cast constantly, and most of the songs are sung by characters about themselves--most of the actors didn't need to be on set for very long, so that made scheduling a lot easier, and they generally got their spotlight moment. On the other hand, ''Cats'' is a much smaller, more communal, and more insular story where the characters regularly participate in each other's songs and are often outright singing about each other. This caused the story and songs to be heavily rewritten to [[PutOnABus get characters out of the picture]] to avoid keeping expensive actors on-set for too long, and serve as bigger showcases of the stars (several of whom just could not sing), which hurt the final product. |
| 229 | ** In "Woke Disney" she argues that Disney has been putting [[BetterThanABareBulb "self aware"]] meta commentary into their movies since at least ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', but while it started out as just the occasional throwaway gag in the MediaNotes/DisneyRenaissance (such as Zazu briefly singing "It's a Small World After All," much to [[BigNo Scar's disgust]]), by ''Film/{{Enchanted}}'' it featured more heavily in their stories, and by TheNewTens it's grown into the entire basis for why their movies are made, and to justify each film's existence. From main entry movies like ''WesternAnimation/{{Moana}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/RalphBreaksTheInternet'' ''constantly'' lampshading and lambasting their own tropes to preemptively appease every possible criticism instead of just telling a compelling story, to Disney's live-action remakes obviously having no point to their existence other than to make money, so the filmmakers throw in lot of faux "self-aware critical analysis" as a flimsy pretext to make the cash-grabbing live-action remakes. |
| 230 | ** "The Last of the Series/GameOfThrones Hot Takes": |
| 231 | *** She explains how a lot of the problems with later seasons were present from the beginning: the showrunners embellished the rape and violence from the books, questionable handling of race and gender representation, dialogue not directly lifted from the books being pretty awkward, the showrunners not fully understanding the stories they were adapting, and so on. The difference was the early seasons were adapting Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's beloved books and had strong characters and stories to make up for it. However, by Season 5 they started to run out of book material, and from Season 6 onward the subtle problems that plagued early seasons became all that was left. |
| 232 | *** She also cites how the showrunners would keep the ending to character arcs despite [[AdaptationalNiceGuy changing their personalities]] leading up to it. She cites Tyrion and Shae's relationship in particular: The showrunners made Shae and Tyrion {{Adaptational Nice Guy}}s with a genuinely loving relationship, yet still had Shae betray Tyrion to Tywin, and Tyrion still strangled Shae in a jealous rage, even though it no longer fit their characters. But while this could be overlooked in earlier seasons since the overall characters and stories were still compelling, after seasons of SeasonalRot and CharacterDerailment, the GrandFinale keeping Martin's planned ending for the characters despite the showrunners changing the characters so much felt contrived at best, and a strong case of AudienceAlienatingEnding[[invoked]] at worst. |
| 233 | * FreezeFrameBonus: |
| 234 | ** She often sneaks in several interesting Google Searches in other tabs whenever she displays a website in a video. |
| 235 | *** For her first ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' video, when she first scrolls through the Website/{{Cracked}} article to illustrate her point on how pretty much everyone has said that Belle has Stockholm Syndrome, to the tab's left is "lumiere x cogsworth". |
| 236 | *** In ''The Whole Plate'' episode 1, as she demonstrates how ''Franchise/StarWars'' has a large amount of academic papers devoted to it unlike Michael Bay's ''Transformers'', the Google search on this window is "am i a jedi or a sith". |
| 237 | *** For her videos on ''The Hobbit'', the first one has "am i sexually aroused" and "cosplay armor" accompanying her search results for Sauron/Melkior and the second one has "how strong is Thorin Oakenshield" and "i want thorin to hold me" with her displaying the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn page for Thorin/Bilbo. |
| 238 | ** In her video on ''{{Film/Bright}}'', she mentions the idea that commercial audiences generally liked the film but reviewers hated it, before claiming that this doesn't mean critics are paid off to give scathing critiques of mainstream films and television shows geared towards the general populace in exchange for prestige and the advancement of more complex media. In the next shot, she is seen hiding a check paid to her in the order of $50,000 to "Destroy ''Bright''". |
| 239 | * FunWithAcronyms: The '''B.B.N. [[EvenTheSubtitlerIsStumped (???)]] F.''' Genre, short for the "Big Budget Nostalgia based action Fantasy" genre which she states Bay's ''Transformers'' films and ''Film/TheMummy2017'' fall into. After coining this, she shrugs and directly dares the audience to come up with something better. |
| 240 | * GenreKiller: [[invoked]] |
| 241 | ** Her full video essay on ''The Phantom of the Opera'' touches on how the failure of ''Film/HelloDolly'' was the marked ending of lavish, big-budget live-action Hollywood musicals. "The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical" greatly expands on the surrounding context and major missteps that made it less of a single major fault and more of a final nail in the coffin. Near the end of the video, she also points out how the root cause -- Hollywood's mentality of throwing money at dying trends in an attempt to save them [[CondemnedByHistory before they inevitably die without any chance of a revival]] -- is still a pervasive modern attitude. |
| 242 | ** "Dead Genres Tell No Tales" points out some of the problems with this trope as well. Lindsay notes that it's less that the genre is dead and more that the studio would rather blame an ailing movie on its genre than on its genuine issues. This also gets a reference in the former video, where she notes that a lot of the movies blamed as killers of the big Hollywood musical had massive problems that had nothing to do with being musicals (like ''Doctor Dolittle'''s TroubledProduction). |
| 243 | ** Her video on ''Film/{{Cats}}'' concludes by discussing the likelihood that the film's utter bombing could damage the idea of musicals, which she mostly rebukes, noting that the past few years have seen tons of successful and acclaimed musicals in both theatre and film. If anything, she argues that ''Cats'' might kill off the "serious OscarBait musical" subgenre... but much of the focus of the video is on the fact that she believes the subgenre was kind of plumbing a dry well to begin with, and musicals don't need the validation of the Oscars and can only harm themselves by trying to pander to them. |
| 244 | * GenreRelaunch: The topic of "''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'': Dead Genres Tell No Tales", which discusses [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanTheCurseOfTheBlackPearl the first film]] in regards to resurrecting the pirate movie, considered to be a "dead" genre, as well as the context and production issues that created it. |
| 245 | * GirlbossFeminist: Ellis discusses this in her video essay "Woke Disney". Ellis maintains that most of Disney's attempted "updates" of its [[Franchise/DisneyPrincess princess characters]] feel like empty pandering to some extent, because while the heroines have a more active role than before they don't address the underlying social issues in their respective movies. As she puts it regarding ''Film/Aladdin2019'': "The monarchy isn't bad, it just needs a female CEO". |
| 246 | * GirlShowGhetto: {{Invoked}}: |
| 247 | ** Brought up in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O06tMbIKh0 Dear Stephenie Meyer]]", a look at ''Literature/TgeTwilightSaga'' with the benefit of hindsight, noting that a lot of the bashing directed at the books and movies is based in this line of thinking. |
| 248 | ** Also {{invoked}} and discussed in her PBS episode "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0l5yEY_IlY An Ode to the Romance Novel]]", where she discusses how romance is the only genre relentlessly shamed and mocked for not being "high literature". This is despite many other types of genre fiction not being "high literature" either (mystery, sci fi, fantasy, etc). Lindsay theorizes this is because romance the only genre predominantly made for, by, and about women. (Though she points out the CriticalDissonance that, even though the romance genre is the most sneered at, it's also ''by far'' the highest grossing.) |
| 249 | * GoldenMeanFallacy[[invoked]]: Rips into later ''Series/GameOfThrones'' seasons for basically pushing this as its core ideology. [[CreatorsPet Tyrion]] is depicted as an OnlySaneMan for taking a middle stance in every conflict, even though it leads to bad advice when you think about it for longer than two seconds. Tyrion also often condemns Daenerys for being [[WellIntentionedExtremist "too extreme"]] in her stance on ending slavery, even though a) her means are no more brutal than her enemies or the {{Designated Hero}}es, b) most of the time she's only as brutal as she needs to get results (since being too nice often blows up in her face), c) how can you be "too extreme" in ending slavery? [[LogicalFallacies Does that mean "a little slavery is okay"?]] The show often seems to praise Tyrion and the Starks for their neutrality, even though they're [[AccomplicebyInaction Accomplices by Inaction]] for refusing to act on tyranny within Westeros, like refusing to do anything about [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Cersei]] or the [[ApocalypseHow White Walkers]]. It also presents opinionless, spineless, apolitical yes-men like Jon Snow and ''especially'' Bran as perfect candidates for the throne ''because'' they have no opinions or political stances, even though previous seasons have showed that rulers like this are ineffective at best, ample {{puppet king}}s to their more ambitious advisers at worst. |
| 250 | * GrayAndGreyMorality: Discussed at length in ''"The Revisionist World of Disney: Mary Poppins, Walt Disney and Saving Mr. Banks,"'' particularly how Creator/WaltDisney strong-armed P.L. Travers into letting him adapt her beloved books and then made changes she hated, and how the film ''Film/SavingMrBanks'' glossed over that unsavory history by implying she came to love them (she didn't). |
| 251 | -->"It is kind of poetic that the linchpin of [''Film/SavingMrBanks''], its emotional thesis, is the least historically accurate thing in the movie. And also a big reason why people are kind of iffy about it because it reads as propaganda for pro-corporate apologia for giving up one's intellectual property for the greater good of commodification and mass consumption. Which, you know... [[BrutalHonesty it is]]. [[BlackAndWhiteMorality And I feel like there is this sort of expectation where if you so much as admit that, you are therefore required to wholeheartedly condemn it]], and, well... I can't. Because I think you ''[[TakeAThirdOption can]]'' have that discussion about who owns ideas once they are out in the public consciousness, while still admitting that ''Film/MaryPoppins'' the movie--even if it doesn't adhere to the books as strongly as Travers wanted... it's a net positive for the world. And I'm glad it exists. It's a great movie!" |
| 252 | * GuiltyPleasures:[[invoked]] Actually discusses and deconstructs this in a number of episodes. On the whole, Lindsay firmly believes that liking something or not is purely an emotional reaction, not necessarily a reflection of the quality or "logic" of a work. Some people can articulate why they like something better than others, some works of fiction are more structurally sound than others, but at the end of the day all fiction is meant to scratch an emotional itch. Even the best quality works can fail to elicit a strong reaction in some people, and even the worst-made media will have people who love it. (And she'll admit when she's being [[HypocrisyNod biased]] about something too.) She also argues in a number of videos (especially her ''Film/TransformersFilmSeries/' miniseries and the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O06tMbIKh0 "Dear Stephenie Meyer"]] video) that, more often than not, media that people are made to feel "guilty" for liking are genres made [[GirlShowGhetto for, by, and about women]] (or [[MinorityShowGhetto minorities]], or [[AnimationAgeGhetto "children"]], the {{lowest common denominator}}), whereas equally flawed media geared towards men or teenage boys get much less flak. |
| 253 | ** In an AsHerself video during the Nostalgia Chick era, she listed ten of these: ''Film/BattlefieldEarth'', ''Film/{{Showgirls}}'', ''Film/IndependenceDay'', every Meg Ryan movie from 1988 to 2002 (except ''Film/YouveGotMail''), ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'', ''Film/OmShantiOm'', ''Film/AVPAlienVsPredator'', ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'', ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformersTheMovie'' and ''Film/HowTheGrinchStoleChristmas''. She's constantly apologizing for the last two. |
| 254 | ** [[invoked]]''{{Franchise/Transformers}}'' and Creator/MichaelBay. She's got a love/hate relationship with him that goes between this, actual affection and BileFascination. |
| 255 | ** Lindsay's also repeatedly mentioned ''Manga/TheAncientMagusBride'' as a guilty pleasure. While comparing it to ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O06tMbIKh0 "Dear Stephenie Meyer"]], she captions: |
| 256 | --->''Disclaimer: Yes, this anime is my trash, even though it has Issues™, but again: [[Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera Phantom of the Opera]] hurt/comfort fanfic. Stones. Glass houses.'' |
| 257 | ** She also seems to treat the Film/DarkUniverse as this. It's very easy for her to snark over, and yet her demand to see a Dark Universe adaptation of ''Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'' starring Creator/AnselElgort has become something of a RunningGag between her and her fellow creators. |
| 258 | ** She admits that the ''{{Film/Maleficent}}'' film is this to her, in spite of how bad she knows it is. In the "Woke Disney" video, she mentions that she likes to call it "My Trash". |
| 259 | --->I mean yeah, it was hot garbage, but it was ''my'' hot garbage. |
| 260 | ** She also really enjoyed ''{{Film/Cats}}'' in a "SoBadItsGood"[[invoked]] sort of way. In December 2019, she repeatedly changed her Twitter name to some kind of reference to the film, and admitted to seeing it in theatres twice. |
| 261 | * HashtagForLaughs: |
| 262 | ** [[invoked]]In her episode of ''The Whole Plate'' discussing female robots, Lindsay briefly plugs [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter #justiceforarcee]] at the [[DemotedToExtra blink-and-you'll-miss-it presence]] [[DroppedABridgeOnHim and death of Arcee]] in ''Film/TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen''. |
| 263 | ** In a later episode on Marxism, she briefly refers to Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno as "the daddies of critical theory," along with a caption reading "Take me away, [=#CriticalDaddy=]". |
| 264 | ** In "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there," Lindsay has a lot of fun using [=#StandUpToBullying=] whenever she describes Addison Cain's bullying behavior. |
| 265 | * HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday: |
| 266 | ** [[invoked]]She theorized that the shoehorning in of Gandalf/Galadriel and Kili/Tauriel in ''Film/TheHobbit'' might have been essentially a meta version of this. After ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' became famed for HoYay, the filmmakers created a pair of heterosexual romances from whole cloth in the hopes that they might overshadow Bilbo and Thorin, whose relationship is similarly central and HoYay-laden (and, for that matter, a lot more compelling and better-written). Indeed, Tauriel's grieving over the death of Kili is placed right after Bilbo grieving over the death of Thorin, as if to overwrite the latter in the audience's minds. |
| 267 | ** Another meta, slightly ironic example is presented in "Queering Michael Bay" of ''The Whole Plate''. Lindsay posits that most action cinema, including Creator/MichaelBay films, exist to [[RatedMForManly affirm dominant views of masculine values]], hence the prominence of the archetypal heterosexual WhiteMaleLead. Due to the fact HomoeroticSubtext [[HoYay can still be easy to read]], [[QueerPeopleAreFunny queerness is invoked almost exclusively to be used as a punchline]], as a way of going "no homo" and to reaffirm the "absurdity" of a queer action hero. [[Film/BadBoysII This is]] [[Film/TheRock present]] [[Film/PainAndGain in many]] Creator/MichaelBay films, though the ''Transformers'' films avoid needing this due to the fact [[WorldOfSnark everybody is characterized by their]] [[WorldOfJerkass distaste for one another]], making such subtext almost nonexistent. |
| 268 | ** And again in ''{{Film/Cats}}'', where she points out that the musical has lots of homoerotic subtext (and substantially a large queer fan base as a result) between Mr. Mistoffelees and Rum Tum Tugger (which some performances even play up). The film, on the other hand, adds in a romance between Rum Tum Tugger and Victoria, and some ShipTease between Mistoffelees and Victoria, which seems to be going out of its way to insist that the former two are JustFriends. She remarks a bit on the baffling futility of trying to pull the "not gay" card with ''Cats'', a Broadway musical with a disco-inspired soundtrack about flamboyant dancers in animal-themed jumpsuits that occasionally often featured actual rainbow effects or glitter in its performance. |
| 269 | * HistoryRepeats: Being a film studies graduate and cinema history buff, Lindsay likes to discuss these. |
| 270 | ** In "The Death of the Hollywood Musical," where she posits that TheNewTens Hollywood's current trend of trying to incentivize people to [[TechnologyMarchesOn stop streaming]] and go see movies in theaters is no different from TheFifties Hollywood trying to incentivize audiences to [[TechnologyMarchesOn stop watching television]] to go see roadshow musicals. |
| 271 | ** She also draws parallels to TheFifties Hollywood trying to incentivize increasingly disinterested audiences to go see Big Hollywood Musicals by throwing bigger budgets and marketing gimmicks at fewer projects, much like how TheNewTens Hollywood is currently throwing bigger budgets and kitschier marketing gimmicks at fewer new superhero movies (especially DarkerAndEdgier films trying to mimic Creator/ChristopherNolan's ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', like ''Film/{{Venom|2018}}'' and the Creator/DCUniverse, despite audiences having tired of that trend a decade ago) and live-action remakes of [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon popular animated Disney films]]; both trying to keep old tends popular so they'll remain easy to predict and "safe" to invest in. Time will tell if one of these [[BoxOfficeBomb big event movies' budgets exceed their box office returns]] and [[GenreKiller take the whole genre with them]], much like ''Film/{{Camelot}},'' ''Film/DoctorDolittle'', and ''Film/HelloDolly'' did to the Big Hollywood Musical. |
| 272 | ** In "Are Disney Villains Going Extinct?", Lindsay argues the [[MediaNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation Renaissance Era of Disney]] petered out because [[StrictlyFormula audiences got tired of seeing the same]] [[ComingOfAgeStory teenage coming-of-age musicals]] again and again. She argues TheNewTens Disney is also StrictlyFormula: [[BuddyPicture buddy comedy]] [[RoadTripPlot road trip plots]] with a male and female lead ([[OfficialCouple romantic]] [[TheNotLoveInterest or not]]) [[WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog who have to]] [[WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph learn to]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}} get along]] [[WesternAnimation/Frozen2013 and fix]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}} each other's flaws]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Moana}} and their own]] to undergo CharacterDevelopment, all while [[BetterThanABareBulb constantly lampshading, lampooning, and subverting classic Disney tropes]]. Lindsay speculates that it's only a matter of time before TheNewTens audiences get tired of seeing the same movie over and over again as they did in TheNineties. |
| 273 | ** In "''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' - Look Pretty and Do As Little As Possible", she notes that every decade seems to have it's big "We Have Been Left Behind By The System: The Musical" production focusing on dispossessed young people expressing RuleAbidingRebel rhetoric (usually centred primarily around vague sentiments involving artistic expression and personal liberty rather than concrete revolutionary ideals of a let's-actually-overthrow-the-system nature) that enables producers [[TheManIsStickingItToTheMan to make money from a middle-class audience while still seeming rebellious]]. |
| 274 | * HopeSpot: [[invoked]]In "The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical", the rapid-succession financial and critical success of ''Film/MyFairLady'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', and ''Film/TheSoundOfMusic'' are framed as this for the Hollywood musical during a time when it seemed like they were on their death knell [[TechnologyMarchesOn thanks to television and the end of the]] {{epic|Movie}} {{roadshow|TheatricalRelease}}. Unfortunately, this only incentivized studios to stick to "safer" projects, [[HoistByHisOwnPetard resulting in several]] [[BoxOfficeBomb financial disasters]] that -- when combined with concurrent revolutions in other Hollywood genres -- [[CondemnedByHistory made any remaining mainstream hope for the genre dead by the 70's]]. |
| 275 | * HopeSpringsEternal: [[{{Deconstruction}} Deconstructed]] at the end of "Protest Music of the Bush Era", in which she observes the pushback against traditional {{Protest Song}}s [[AllForNothing for their supposed futility]], resulting in art instead skewing to reassure the audience that [[AWorldHalfFull in spite of everything bad in the world, they will make it through it all.]] Lindsay argues that the reasons why this specific trend is fading out (more in favor of a more personality-based return to political music) are because they encourage passivity in [[EarnYourHappyEnding a world where change must be fought for]], and that despite all gestures, more people are realizing that not everyone ''will'' make it. |
| 276 | * HotterAndSexier: Doesn't dispute the writing merits of ''Series/GameOfThrones'' (or at least the early seasons), but argues that the main reason Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's adapted ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' cracked the mainstream the way most other fantasy stories didn't is because, [[LimitedReferencePools compared to]] ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'', it's DarkerAndEdgier, and [[RunningGag "Hot Fantasy, That Fuuuucks!"]] |
| 277 | * HulkSpeak: The [=YouTube=] thumbnail for "[[https://youtu.be/BGr0NRx3TKU The Last of the Game of Thrones Hot Takes]]" bears the message DRAGON LADY BAD. |
| 278 | * {{Hypocrite}}: In "Into the Omegaverse," Lindsay has a lot of fun noting how Addison Cain files many DMCA claims on other writers for ''Scènes à faire'' tropes found in her own books, while Cain's own main series, ''Born to be Bound'', was [[AscendedFanfic originally a fanfic]] based on ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'', with the only significant changes being the Omegaverse framework (itself a fanfiction community genre), [[OriginalCharacter the female lead who romances Bane]], and [[SerialNumbersFiledOff the names being swapped out]][[invoked]]. Whenever Cain mentions her integrity as an author and how other writers are stealing her ideas in the video, a picture of Bane pops up. Lindsay also loves to spot the irony of Addison Cain wanting to prevent ''other'' authors from making money off the same Omegaverse ''community'' genre that she hit paydirt with. Then in "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me," Lindsay is [[ThisMeansWar less good-humored]] in pointing out that for how often Addison Cain crows about preventing bullying, she exhibits some serious bullying behavior herself. Also how Addison Cain [[FemaleMisogynist tends to go after any woman]] she feels has personally wronged her, but never targets any men for even less respectful behavior toward herself. |
| 279 | * HypocrisyNod: In "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there" Lindsay has a lot of fun showcasing what she considers to be Addison Cain's unprofessional behavior, but in response to Cain's lawyer Tynia Watson claiming that Cain is "a very successful author," Lindsay can't resist including a '''"Petty Bitch in 3... 2... 1..."''' countdown until she counters with, "Well, as a ''New York Times best-selling author''..." |
| 280 | * HypotheticalCasting: Lindsay has [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1294423767368601601?s=21 suggested]] that an ''Axiom's End'' movie would feature Creator/PedroPascal as Nils. She also [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1294427607224573957?s=21 agreed]] with suggestions for Creator/RosaSalazar to play Cora, at least until she realized Salazar's age surpasses that of Cora. |
| 281 | [[/folder]] |
| 282 | |
| 283 | [[folder:I-P]] |
| 284 | * IKnewIt: The first video of Lindsay's miniseries about ''Film/TheHobbit'' was advertised as part 1 of 2, but many fans were savvy to the idea that it would be suddenly extended to having a part 3, much like the films themselves. [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/978878436063285250 Lindsay would initially]] [[LyingCreator deny the idea]], but those fans would be proven right, with part 2 ending on a sudden cliffhanger. |
| 285 | * INeedAFreakingDrink: A RunningGag has Lindsay reaching for a shot of liquor whenever she sees something particularly annoying. Sometimes entire videos are built around this, such as her reviews of ''Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera2004'' and ''Theatre/{{Rent}},'' as well as portions of "Mask Off" [[note]](which has her downing ''[[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1384207072481267719?s=21 real]]'' tequila at one point, whereas the other instances were not actual alcohol)[[/note]]. |
| 286 | ** Her response to the Addison Cain lawsuit in particular culminates in a sight gag of her downing multiple containers of alcohol. All while a dramatic reading of an actual response from Addison Cain's lawyer alleging a mass conspiracy between her and numerous third parties based almost entirely on InsaneTrollLogic plays in the background. |
| 287 | * IndecisiveParody: She identifies this trope, or something quite like it, as being a central reason for why Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' falls a bit flat. The story doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a parody of Franchise/{{Superman}}, a parody of Franchise/{{Rocky}}, or play either of them straight, and so tries to do all of them. The problem, however, is that the stories are complete opposites and are thus mutually exclusive: Superman is about a man who learns what it takes to become a selfless hero who puts others before himself, and so requires the protagonist to have a compelling desire that he must eventually learn to be willing to sacrifice for the greater good in order to succeed; whereas Rocky is about a man who learns what it takes to succeed at what he most dreams of and must emerge triumphant from a conflict in order to do so, meaning he must learn to focus on acquiring the object of his desire above anything else in order to succeed. Trying to do both at once results in the parodies of both falling flat and the film's central protagonist ending up a muddled mess who can't go on Superman's journey because he's ''already'' selfless and sacrificing and so doesn't need to learn how to be, but who also can't go on Rocky's journey because he doesn't really have a compelling goal that he needs to focus on achieving above all else. |
| 288 | * InformedAbility: One of her most common critique points of later ''Game of Thrones'' is that characters like Sansa, Varys, and Tyrion, who are meant to be brilliant manipulators and strategists, end up being written like self-satisfied idiots. This causes their CharacterShilling to fall on deaf ears, and makes their contribution to the Daenerys subplot all the more problematic--the viewer is meant to take their distrust of Daenerys and her growing distance from them as ill signs, but it instead seems like they're being dumbasses as usual and Daenerys is being unusually patient with characters who are functionally TheMillstone. |
| 289 | * InherentInTheSystem: |
| 290 | ** In "Mask Off," Lindsay discusses in great length what a complex and pervasive issue systemic racism is, and how it can't be reduced to just individual internal character flaws. That it can't be reduced to just, "There are the racists, the non-racists, and if we just publicly shame and cast out the racists, we will have a more just society." |
| 291 | ** She also discusses how social media websites (particularly Website/{{Twitter}}) thrives off continuous engagement from viewers, and one of the easiest ways to drive up engagement is promoting tweets or posts that invoke a sense of outrage in viewers. That people are more likely to like, share, and comment on tweets that evoke a sense of outrage in order to dunk on them. And it's much harder to engage in complex social issues and hate mob mentality when social media is structurally designed to perpetuate and reward simplistic "good people vs bad people" public outrage. |
| 292 | * InnocenceLost: A focal point of Lindsay's ''Film/TheHobbit'' trilogy is of people losing their sense of innocence through disillusionment in media resulting from real-life consequences, citing ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'' and {{Music/Kesha}} as other examples. This is paralleled through Lindsay's trip to New Zealand: she leaves hoping to reclaim part of her childhood innocence formed by ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'', but after realizing [[TroubledProduction the sheer scope of damage]] ''Film/TheHobbit'' resulted from as well as resulted in, [[DownerEnding she returns even more jaded than before]]. |
| 293 | * InSpiteOfANail: She comes down hard on ''Film/{{Bright}}'' for this, where despite its self-proclaimed importance of AlternateHistory regarding the Dark Lord and the war of nine races 2,000 years ago, the present-day world looks almost exactly like it does in real life, with Los Angeles, the Crips, the Alamo, and ''Franchise/{{Shrek}}'' existing, even though they don't make any sense within the film's timeline. She argues that difficulties surrounding this trope is why AlternateHistory fiction is so rare, and why works like ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite'' and ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle'' diverge much closer to their present (only in the last few decades or so). |
| 294 | -->'''Lindsay''': You cannot include elements from our real world without importing the history that comes with them. ''({{beat}})'' Well, I mean you can, it's just, y'know, it's lazy and it sucks. |
| 295 | * ItsPersonal: Like most of her videos, Lindsay intended for her "Into the Omegaverse" video to be one-and-done. And then Addison Cain sicced her lawyer on Lindsay, tried to harrass and deplatform everyone even remotely connected to Lindsay (real or imagined), and Lindsay decided ThisMeansWar |
| 296 | * ItsNotSupposedToWinOscars: [[invoked]] |
| 297 | ** In her episode on genre in ''The Whole Plate'', she brings up this argument while discussing how directors can be considered a genre, as creators like Creator/MichaelBay have often been defended with "It's Michael Bay, it's not supposed to be good!" |
| 298 | --> '''Lindsay''': Would you say that about food? Like "Some food's not supposed to taste good, okay? Just... eat it!" |
| 299 | ** Brought up in a fairly literal context in her analysis of ''Cats'', where she argues that, in fact, musicals ''shouldn't'' try to win Oscars. By her account, the Academy tends to overwhelmingly favor a gritty and realistic style unless it deals with very specific topics Hollywood likes, and said style is anathema to what musicals need; trying to build musicals along the OscarBait model can only create problems, and the genre is better off doing what it does best without having to seek validation from people operating in a completely different medium. |
| 300 | ** Done more loosely in "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me." Lindsay admits that in her first video, "Into the Omegaverse," she had been pretty flippant in mocking omegaverse wolf porn, but concedes in the follow-up video that erotica is a legitimate genre and people shouldn't feel shamed for enjoying it. |
| 301 | * ItsTheJourneyThatCounts: Her thesis of "The Last of the Series/GameOfThrones Hot Takes." She posits that humans love retelling popular stories [[invoked]][[ItWasHisSled even knowing how they end]] (like ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet''), because humans love experiencing the emotional journey of a story more than being surprised by the ending. She argues that the showrunners being obsessed with creating twists and a ( notoriously awful) ending that ''no one'' could have seen coming ruined most people's enjoyment of re-watching the series and re-experiencing the journey with the characters. |
| 302 | -->"The enjoyment of experiencing a story should not be ruined by knowing how it ends." |
| 303 | * LadyDrunk: Lindsay retains this trait from her days as WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick. Empty bottles of various alcohols tend to accumulate behind her in videos where she discusses particularly awful films. |
| 304 | * LostAesop: |
| 305 | ** She isn't a fan of ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'' due to this, finding that it sets up a very topical examination of government transparency and loyalty to a constantly-changing nation in the face of terrorism, only to drop any pretense of realism with TheReveal that [[GovernmentConspiracy nearly all the bad things that happened in the modern world was because Hydra infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.]] |
| 306 | --->'''Lindsay''': [[SarcasmMode Kind of nice]] to be able to stop blaming all of our problems on misfortune, bad people, and short-sighted international policy made in America's own self interest [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory when we can just say it's all Hydra's fault!]] ''({{beat}}, then gestures)'' [[StrangeSalute Hang]] [[ThoseWackyNazis glider]]! |
| 307 | ** She also cites this as a problem with ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}''. While its moral that "being a true hero is about self-sacrifice" is all well and good, she argues that it's a misplaced moral when dealing with the film's take on Hercules. Hercules isn't actually trying to find the true meaning of heroism, nor does he have the wrong idea about what it is; [[DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife he's trying to find his place in the world]], and being a hero was just a means to an end. Moreover, Hercules is pretty selfless to begin with, so you don't really get the sense he ''wouldn't'' sacrifice himself when given the chance (hell, he throws himself into death and danger multiple times over the course of the film). She contrasts this to ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' and [[WesternAnimation/TheEmperorsNewGroove Kuzco]], which use "BeYourself" and "be selfless" as their morals, respectively, but it works better in those films because Aladdin's lack of confidence and Kuzco's selfishness ''are'' their defining flaws. |
| 308 | ** She points out in ''Film/{{Transformers|2007}}'' that the film's ArcWords are the Witwicky motto ("no sacrifice, no victory"), but this doesn't make a lot of sense when the main character of the story is Sam, who... doesn't really sacrifice anything. This is part of the reason she prefers to interpret Mikaela as the real protagonist, because she actually has sacrificed things in her life. |
| 309 | * LostInImitation: [[invoked]]A good portion of "The Case for Disney's WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}" addresses [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks the dominating criticism of the film changing significantly from]] [[Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Victor Hugo's original novel]], pointing out how [[OlderThanTheyThink it's not the first successful adaptation that changed or straight-up invented story elements and themes not present in the novel]], with Disney's version owing more to [[Film/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame1939 the 1939 film]] than the original book. She also argues that [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this isn't a bad thing]], as not only [[PragmaticAdaptation can it correct or expand on newer concepts]], it's pretty much necessary [[TechnologyMarchesOn if the story is to remain relevant over time]], and what's more, Victor Hugo would probably have been okay with it (having [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Esmeralda_(opera) participated in adapting and altering his very work himself]]). |
| 310 | * LowestCommonDenominator[[invoked]]: Discussed and [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructed]] [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools in a surprisingly positive way]] during "Is Film/{{Titanic|1997}} Good, Actually?". Lindsay argues that criticisms against the movie based on this notion -- namely the claim that it's too "basic" -- fall flat considering that not only is that the intention ([[{{Troperiffic}} and in fact, a lot of the appeal]]), it's also genuinely difficult to do it and actually be ''successful'', with the acclaim that ''Titanic'' received showing for itself. |
| 311 | * MaleGaze: She discusses the academic definition (that media is made in mind with a prominently male audience, or at least a certain view of one) as they apply to the Film/TransformersFilmSeries, in three different varieties: |
| 312 | ** Despite their increasing presence in other recent ''Transformers'' media, including comics and animated series, female Transformers rarely feature in the film series, and when they are, they're either [[DroppedABridgeOnHim expendable]] or [[TheVamp duplicitous and overtly villainous]]. This seems to be built off an assumption that MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial, with [[WhatCouldHaveBeen Arcee being vetoed out of the first film]] by co-writer Bob Orci because "the idea of a female Transformer warrants its own explanation," suggesting that according to the filmmakers, coded-female robots are less plausible and breaking of WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief than coded-male robots: |
| 313 | --->'''Lindsay:''' Megatron accidentally etching coordinates to the {{MacGuffin}} inside ''another'' {{MacGuffin}} I'll buy, a magical glowcube that's the progenitor for all the alien robots that turn into Camaroes I'll buy, [[ArbitrarySkepticism but that one of them displays]] female secondary sex characteristics and is pink? [[SarcasmMode Hmmm... I dunnoooooo, man... I'm going to have to absorb more of]] Optimus' robo-pecs and enjoy his deep, manly voice [[SarcasmMode while I smoke on this for a little while]]. |
| 314 | ** Lindsay also discusses how this use of male gaze applies to men themselves. Characters like Sam Witwicky and Cade Yaeger are framed as something of {{Audience Surrogate}}s the teenage boys that are the film's demographic are meant to relate to, which he does by making them [[LoserProtagonist incompetent]] and/or HotBlooded {{Jerkass}}es, negatively-framed character traits that go unaddressed even after they save the day and [[StandardHeroReward get the girl]] [[EntitledToHaveYou in the end]]. Lindsay views this as Creator/MichaelBay [[ThisLoserIsYou being openly contemptuous]] [[ViewersAreMorons of his own audience]]. |
| 315 | ** As for female human characters, Lindsay points out that while later films reduce them to walking punchlines, dry authoritarian figures that need to be challenged, or {{Fanservice}}y [[FlatCharacter "sexy lamps"]] [[LivingProp that exist just for]] [[DamselInDistress other peoples' conflict]], [[Film/Transformers2007 the first film]] directly commentates on issues of gender inequality in male-dominated tech fields and is surprisingly sympathetic to its female characters... on paper. She argues that [[Creator/MeganFox Mikaela Banes]] is the most well-developed, well-rounded, and thematically whole character in the series, but is frequently remembered as a mindless MsFanservice [[DistractedByTheSexy due to the camera visually objectifying and framing her as one]]. |
| 316 | --->'''Lindsay:''' [[invoked]]The first film brings up issues of gender inequity and how men don't take women seriously because they are objects to them, [[{{Irony}} but then at the same time objectifies Mikaela to the point where for most viewers, she's impossible to take seriously]] [[BestKnownForTheFanservice because she's so impossibly beautiful, so impossibly dressed, so objectifyingly framed]]. Her impossibility is not in the text, but in the frame. |
| 317 | * MaliciousMisnaming: Lindsay does this to the titular lawyer repeatedly in "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there". |
| 318 | * TheManIsStickingItToTheMan: Discussed in "''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' - Look Pretty and Do As Little As Possible". One of her main critiques of the musical in question is that it is one of what she calls "We Have Been Left Behind By The System: The Musical"; a production that, like ''Theatre/LesMiserables'', ''Theatre/JesusChristSuperstar'' and ''Theatre/{{Hamilton}}'', presents itself as vaguely rebellious but ultimately upholds the social values of the society that produced it. This enables its producers to position themselves as cool and rebellious while not actually scaring away the predominantly middle-class theatregoers that the producers rely on to buy tickets. However, she notes that this isn't in and of itself automatically a bad thing -- but the key difference with the others she cites is that, unlike ''RENT'', they do not actually try to or claim to be directly challenging the contemporary system that they are produced in. ''RENT'', however, does try to claim this without actually doing so -- and what makes it even worse is that ''RENT'' only pretends to challenge a system that genuinely was oppressive, harmful and worthy of challenge. |
| 319 | ** She makes a similar case in "Woke Disney", essentially accusing recent Disney films of promoting shallow social commentary on subjects like racism, feminism, and capitalism, while ignoring the complexities of these issues so as not to make Disney themselves look bad. |
| 320 | * MasterOfNone: One of her chief arguments in her ''Phantom of the Opera'' video (which recurs in ''Cats'') is that the most successful modern musicals can fit into two categories: deeply realistic ones that avoid the classic approach through non-diegetic framing or the presence of actual stage performances (i.e. ''Film/{{Chicago}}'' or ''Film/{{Cabaret}}''), and unrealistic ones with an offbeat and romanticized tone where the audience can just go along with the ride (''Film/MoulinRouge'', ''Film/MammaMia'', most Disney animated films). She argues that the reason films like ''Phantom'', ''Cats'', and Hooper's ''Film/LesMiserables2012'' don't work is that they end up in the middle: they're too realistic for the audience to accept that the characters act this way, but they don't go far enough in the realism and maintain the classical musical framing, creating an experience where the framing screams "grim and gritty", but the characters still break out into song for no reason. She compared it to "trying to combine a glitter-sprinkled cupcake with filet mignon." |
| 321 | * MathematiciansAnswer: In "How To Get A Book Deal in Ten Years or Less," as she discusses the vagaries of publishing: |
| 322 | -->"Was the novel I sold the first novel I wrote? [[SelfDeprecation No]]! I'd argue that it wasn't even the second. But it was also kind of the first. I, cuz it was the first in, well, [[ShaggyDogStory anyway]]." |
| 323 | ** (On Twitter, she [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1203405656482435072 elaborated]] that, according to a website that compares manuscripts to find plagiarism, her novel fails the TheseusShipParadox: between the first draft and the final draft, she had rewritten no less than 100% of the novel.) |
| 324 | * MedalOfDishonor: Addison Cain's proud claim to have invented the concept of heterosexual Omegaverse fiction, along with its general tropes and ideas, get this reaction from Lindsay. Aside from the dubiousness of the claim, she points out that it's not exactly innovative to take previously gay-oriented tropes and make them about straight people, and furthermore, most of the tropes Cain "coined" seemed to be the general use of RomanticizedAbuse and DoubleStandardRapeSciFi, which aren't anything to brag about, either. |
| 325 | * MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial: Lindsay's pretty annoyed by this, and has discussed it a few times: |
| 326 | ** In part 5 of ''The Whole Plate'', she discusses how female Transformers are almost completely ignored in the Film/TransformersFilmSeries, mainly due to the writers thinking female-coded Transformers "require an explanation," [[DoubleStandard whereas male-coded robots don't]]. As a counterpoint, she occasionally [[ShoutOut Shouts Out]] the ongoing {{Creator/IDW|Publishing}} comics and their lack of a need to "explain" gender, and how much better and more interesting they are for it. |
| 327 | ** Also discussed in "The Hobbit: Battle of Five Studios" regarding Tauriel. Lindsay argues that Hollywood often feels the need to justify women in films simply for ''being'' women, "[[SarcasmMode or they might as well be men, am I right?]]", hence Tauriel being put in an inconsequential LoveTriangle. |
| 328 | * MissingEpisode: In addition to several episodes of ''Nostalgia Chick'' that Lindsay has declined to restore, the video essay "Dead Genres Tell No Tales" was quietly pulled from Website/{{YouTube}} in mid-2020. |
| 329 | * MondegreenGag: In "Loose Canons: Captain America", when she discusses ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', when we see Hydra agents shouting "Hail Hydra!" she would join in with a goofy Hydra salute, chanting, "Hang glider!" |
| 330 | * MoodWhiplash: She cites this as an issue with the film adaptations of ''Film/TheHobbit'', noting that the movies don't seem to be sure if they want to be like the book (charming and lighthearted stories you could read to your kid) or the prior Peter Jackson films (epic, battle-focused, and laden with grit), which leads to some really weird tonal problems. For instance, ''Desolation of Smaug'' has the dwarves engage in a slapsticky barrel-riding sequence where they bounce against rocks and rapids like beach balls and take down orcs in all kinds of silly ways... and then a few moments later, Kili gets shot in the leg with an arrow, and this is treated as a mortal wound that he could die from and his survival is played as very dramatic. |
| 331 | * MoralLuck: Discusses the poor use of this trope in ''Series/GameOfThrones'', especially the last season. |
| 332 | ** For Dany: She points out how Sansa treating Daenerys with suspicion and hostility, and Varys and Tyrion randomly deciding to betray her to support Jon Snow for the Iron Throne instead, rested on the fact that the ''writers'' knew that Dany would eventually snap and become "Super Hitler" around the last episode, so their use of this trope to "justify" the JerkAss behavior toward her doesn't work since based on her actions in the story the other characters had ''no reason'' not to like or trust her, or think she would make a bad queen. |
| 333 | ** For Jon: Likewise, it doesn't make sense for Varys to think Jon Snow would be a good candidate for the Iron Throne. Yes, ''we the audience'' know how much Jon has accomplished and grown as a leader in the Night's Watch since [[SympatheticPOV we've followed his journey for several seasons]], but from an in-universe character's perspective, Jon's track record doesn't look that good. He's only led the Night's Watch for a short time, and had to deal with mutiny and disaster that left half the Night Watch dead. She argues that from Varys's perspective he shouldn't think Jon Snow would make a good king, thus it's only dumb luck that he's proven right. |
| 334 | * MoralMyopia: Her view on the claims that Dany's prior actions were "foreshadowing" her incoming lunacy, as she believes that the show up to that point had treated GoodIsNotSoft or PayEvilUntoEvil as normal or even laudable in the CrapsackWorld of the series, but was now treating it as the oncoming signs of a murderous psychopath. |
| 335 | * TheMoralSubstitute: Discussed in "The Life and Death of Family-Friendly Las Vegas". She argues that Ride/{{Disneyland}} and especially Ride/WaltDisneyWorld exhibited many of the features of UsefulNotes/LasVegas casino resorts in a more family-friendly context, an influence that she believes came full circle in The90s when Vegas pivoted to a more family-friendly image and started taking influence from Disney in the construction of new family resorts. |
| 336 | * MovingTheGoalposts: In "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me," Lindsay notes that Cain originally reached out to Courtney Milan (a romance author with a law degree) on Twitter and asked her opinion of the case against Zoey Ellis. When Milan gave an opinion Cain didn't like, Cain suddenly decided Milan isn't a ''barred'' lawyer, and so doesn't know enough about the law to give an opinion... even though Cain was the one who asked her opinion to begin with. |
| 337 | -->'''Lindsay:''' And this is kind of a running theme with Cain's aspersions against people. Like, Milan isn't barred, therefore she cannot opine on the whole case unless it's in favor of Cain. And Margarita Coale doesn't know what she's doing because she WAS a bankruptcy lawyer at some point in history, even though she's not anymore. |
| 338 | * MST3KMantra[[invoked]]: While Lindsay often directly addresses major {{Plot Hole}}s and poor storytelling, "That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast" makes it clear she ultimately ascribes to this, and is [[BerserkButton very clearly annoyed]] by overly-pedantic internet critics that shoot right past BellisariosMaxim and nitpick everything, [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast including a self-described]] FairyTale, to a point where works have to [[PanderingToTheBase pander to them]] and suffer for it. |
| 339 | -->'''Lindsay''': See, over-explaining everything in this case not only [[ViewersAreMorons insults the intelligence of the audience]] -- [[TakeThat which is perhaps deserved because there is a certain sect of film commentators who have built careers off of complaining that their hands are not being held through the entire narrative]] -- it also diminishes what should be a fairly simple but powerful story about love, forgiveness, redemption, and discovering your best self. |
| 340 | * MundaneHorror: In "Why Film/{{Borat}} Works Better in 2020," she notes how the first ''Film/{{Borat}}'' was uncomfortably funny in 2006 because it revealed a bigoted underbelly that most Americans believed [[LastOfTheirKind was super fringe and dying out]]. But she finds ''Film/BoratSubsequentMoviefilm'' scary in 2020 because, while exposing the bigotry and ignorance in Trump's America is not surprising, the film exposes just how many seemingly nice and normal people are just fine with terrible things happening (like a disguised Cohen asking to buy gas to kill "gypsies," a gun to shoot Jews, plastic surgery to turn his "teenage daughter" into a child bride, and so on) as long as it's no one they know and it doesn't happen in front of them. She particularly notes a random Trump supporter whom Cohen convinced he was an Israeli operative infiltrating an Antifa rally, placed chips on the backs of random protesters, and convinced the guy that if he pressed a button, it would kill those three random people they just passed... and the guy does it! |
| 341 | -->'''Rando:''' I've never, uh, participated in someone's death.\ |
| 342 | '''Lindsay:''' And he's fine with it, because [[WhatMeasureIsAMook it happened off-screen]] and [[AccompliceByInaction someone else arranged it]]. |
| 343 | * MusicalWorldHypothesis: Often brought up in her videos on musicals, with notes on some of the prominent modern examples. She believes that musicals going for a realistic setting should definitively mark down their status as Diegetic or All In Their Heads, while musicals with a more outlandish or flamboyant tone can get away with Adaptation or Alternate Universe. |
| 344 | * MyFriendsAndZoidberg: In "Everyone Loves Guy Fieri (Now)", Lindsay decides to do some field work and visits Guy Fieri's restaurant in Las Vegas. But since the vast majority of the dishes served at the place are with meat, and Lindsay herself is a vegetarian, she decides that bringing along some volunteers to try out the meals would aid in getting a more complete impression. Said volunteers are her assissant Elisa (who is also known as the host of ''WebVideo/VampireReviews'' on [=YouTube=]), her (former) business manager David (who hosts a AnalysisChannel on the works of Creator/StephenKing on [=YouTube=]), and finally "this guy we found on the street" (actually Todd of ''WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows'', in a rare unmasked appearence) who is introduced with the caption text "probably also a Youtuber idk". |
| 345 | * NeverMyFault: |
| 346 | ** [[invoked]]In "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Genres Tell No Tales," she posits that a number of "{{Dead Horse Genre}}s" are really the result of studios throwing a lot of money at bad films, then blame the genre when it fails instead of the quality of the film itself. |
| 347 | ** That said, she acknowledges in her videos on ''Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera2004'' and "Death of the Big Hollywood Movie Musical" that some movie trends are more lucrative than others, and if you're trying to release a film when its genre isn't popular (like a musical in a post-''Film/HelloDolly'' world), you will have to work harder to make a better quality film and carefully stylize and market it so it appeals to a skeptical audiences. |
| 348 | ** Notes how Addison Cain has a well-known track record of starting petty fandom drama and pursuing legal action against anyone she doesn't like ([[FemaleMisogynist other women]]), and then frames herself as the persecuted victim if the people she allegedly targeted push back in any way. |
| 349 | ** In "Mask Off," Lindsay notes how it is very common in [[SocialMediaIsBad social media spheres]] for bad faith actors to take a tweet or post out of context, interpret it in the worst possible way, and then publicly shame the poster for it. And even if the poster apologizes or is found to be not guilty of the thing they were shamed for, the people who originally shamed or harassed them rarely if ever acknowledge participating in declaring someone ConvictedByPublicOpinion. |
| 350 | * NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3v5wFMQRqs&feature=emb_title As she notes in her followup to "Into The Omegaverse,"]] Lindsay tried to be fair to Addison Cain and refrained from bringing up things like her alleged history of slinging mud at other Romance writers that she thinks is encroaching on her territory, sometimes damaging their careers in the process. Needless to say, when Addison and her lawyer responded to the video by issuing a DMCA notice and sending veiled threats over email, Lindsay felt no such restraint the second-time around. |
| 351 | --> ''"I definitely withheld a lot of criticism and comments about Addison Cain because I was concerned that they might be a little unnecessarily mean. [[TheGlovesComeOff But trust me, I feel no such obligation this time.]]"'' |
| 352 | * NonIndicativeName: She notes in her {{Omegaverse}} video that much of the confusion surrounding it was that the lawyers, unfamiliar with the term, seemed to think the "verse" part of the name meant that it was an actual fictional universe, making "Omegaverse" stories fanfiction by nature. In reality, A/B/O is just a set of worldbuilding rules that can be applied to any setting (well, if you ignore the InSpiteOfANail issues, anyway), including fully original fiction, making it more comparable to a subgenre than a copyrighted fictional universe. |
| 353 | * NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe: The subject of "The Upside-Down of Nostalgia", that looks at the popularity of ''Series/StrangerThings'' and ''Film/It2017'', both of which take place in TheEighties. Restorative Nostalgia and Reflective Nostalgia are examined, and she adds her own: Deconstructive Nostalgia, which is more this trope. |
| 354 | * {{Omegaverse}}: Ellis did [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhWWcWtAUoY&pp=ygUSb21lZ2F2ZXJzZSBsYXdzdWl0 a video on the history of the Omegaverse as a genre]], up to and including Addison Cain's infamous FrivolousLawsuit in which she basically tried to [[DisneyOwnsThisTrope claim the entire genre as her own intellectual property]]. |
| 355 | * OneForTheMoneyOneForTheArt[[invoked]]: "Hercules, Disney's Beautiful Hot Mess: a Video Essay" frames the creation of [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} the film]] as this for co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker. Following their success in co-directing ''WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective'', Disney pushed them around for 16 years to direct ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', and finally ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' before they could work on their dream project, effectively "[[WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet Treasure Island]] [[RecycledInSpace in Spaaaaaace]]". |
| 356 | * OldShame: She [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/983040626265477120 has no good memories]] of WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick or her time associated with Website/ChannelAwesome. She pretty much says that no one should watch any of her work from before 2015 - although she says she still likes the ''Film/FreddyGotFingered'' review. |
| 357 | --> [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1024491015598628864 If I could scorch it from the digital face of history, salt the earth with lime, burn everything to ash, I would.]] |
| 358 | * OscarBait: She has a Mini-Canon video detailing the history behind it, as well as the consequences it resulted in. Her breakdown of ''Film/{{Bright}}'' also has a great deal of discussion on Oscar-bait, largely to put the film's own race-discussion into context. She also discusses how Oscar Bait applies to movie musicals in the video on ''{{Film/Cats}}'' - with adaptations going for "hyper realism" (despite that being quite difficult when adapting a ''musical'') to garner favor with the Academy. |
| 359 | * OvershadowedByControversy: [[invoked]] Dedicates quite a few reviews to discussing this trope. |
| 360 | ** "Is WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast about StockholmSyndrome?" says it all, really. Downplayed as ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' ''is'' a beloved movie, though Lindsay posits that not only does Belle ''not'' have StockholmSyndrome (she shows none of the symptoms), but focusing on whether or not she does causes most people to miss out on the film's other great themes and messages. Like how decent people are often Othered by a shallow society that doesn't reward and often doesn't see the goodness in them, how bullies are often rewarded because they possess a set of traits that society does find value (usually [[MenAreTough masculinity]], [[ItsAllAboutMe arrogance]], and [[BeautyEqualsGoodness good looks]]), how Beast and Gaston serve as great {{foil}}s who start out both wanting to possess and control Belle, but [[LoveRedeems one learns his lesson and is redeemed]] and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard the other doesn't and dies]]. And all of this gets ignored in favor of, "Does Belle have StockholmSyndrome?" She also argues that the "Stockholm Syndrome" debate overshadows the actually-valid feminist critiques of the film, such as Belle's passivity in the plot and lack of significant development in favor of centering the narrative on the Beast's growth. |
| 361 | ** [[invoked]]In "The Case For Creator/{{Disney}}'s WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}," Lindsay discusses how society's prevalent TheyChangedItSoItSucks attitude regarding the {{Disneyfication}} of Creator/VictorHugo's DownerEnding book causes people to miss all the great themes and messages the film has going for it. Especially the ValuesResonance in its discussion of race, sexism, justice for the oppressed, persecution of and mercy for the outcasts, pride and humility before God, [[HeManWomanHater men who really loathe]] ([[EntitledToHaveYou and feel entitled to own]]) [[IfICantHaveYou the objects of their desire]], Quasimodo and Frollo as {{foil}}s, it being the first adaptation to explore the abusive nature of Quasimodo's relationship with Frollo, [[CallingTheOldManOut and having him overcome it]] - and it all gets buried under the criticism [[TrueArtIsAngsty "they softened the ending, and thereby weakened it."]] |
| 362 | ** In "The Revisionist World of Creator/{{Disney}}: Film/MaryPoppins, Creator/WaltDisney and Film/SavingMrBanks," Lindsay posits that ''Film/SavingMrBanks'' is an artistically good movie in its own right that discusses a lot of interesting themes, like: Who owns ideas once they're out in the public consciousness? Is it ethical to pressure the owner of an intellectual property to sell you the rights to their creation and then make changes they don't like? Is it better to hold firm to your artistic integrity or "SellOut" for the greater good of mass consumption and commodification? It's also one of the few movies that explores a troubled relationship between a father and daughter, where the daughter's moment of self-actualization ''isn't'' through marriage. But unfortunately, the only thing most people really remember about this movie that it's pro-Creator/{{Disney}} propaganda that "selling out is good!" and sanitizes its own history of how Walt ground Travers down into letting him change her beloved work by implying she grew to love it, when she didn't. |
| 363 | * PanderingToTheBase: [[invoked]]Credits many issues in later ''Series/GameOfThrones'' to this, such as Tyrion being turned from morally grey to an attempted voice of reason because his actor was too popular to be made unsympathetic. She also discusses "Cleganebowl", a fan-theorized confrontation between the Hound and the Mountain, which became an AscendedMeme in the series, even though by the time it happened, it was a guy with no desire for revenge fighting a mindless zombie for absolutely no reason. |
| 364 | * ParentsAsPeople: She considers this a major theme of ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2'', as well as the sub-theme of {{abusive|Parents}} [[ToughLove parenthood]]. |
| 365 | * PeripheryHatedom[[invoked]]: Loosely acknowledged in "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there." Lindsay acknowledges that in her previous "Into the Omegaverse" video she had been pretty dismissive of "wolf porn" erotica, before conceding that [[HypocrisyNod she is also a fan of niche obscure fetishy erotica]] (mostly sci fi aliens and monsters), and just because Omegaverse/werewolfy smut isn't for her doesn't mean it isn't for anyone. |
| 366 | * PlayingTheVictimCard: In "Into The Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court", Lindsay gets a lot of mileage making fun of how Addison Cain -- an author who pursued filing fraudulent and bad-faith DMCA takedowns against a competing work -- persistently kept trying to frame herself as a victim [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome once she ended up faced with litigation]], trying to twist the narrative to "prove" that she was in the right all along while ignoring the perjury she was revealed to be guilty of. |
| 367 | * PleaseSubscribeToOurChannel: The nature of this as well as other "calls to action" is discussed to great length in "[=YouTube=]: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)". Lindsay brings up the channel "How To Cake It" as a mostly-positive example where despite its intrusive ''11 calls to action'' per episode, she's able to forgive them because the show's business model makes sense and its content is engaging. |
| 368 | * PlotHole: She's not a fan of this term due to its excessive misuse on the internet, preferring to describe lazy writing hiccups as "contrivances," acknowledging that the story needs to get from point A to point B, but phoned the path in. She considers the two terms less as distinct, black and white flaws, and more of a gradient with lots of overlap. |
| 369 | * PoesLaw: |
| 370 | ** [[invoked]]Discussed in "Mel Brooks, The Producers and the Ethics of Satire about N@zis" as "the satire paradox," pointing out how there isn't a definable line between {{Satire}} being a transgressive art that challenges harmful societal constructs to being too subtle and in danger of people missing the point, possibly even being interpreted as an ''[[DoNotDoThisCoolThing endorsement]]'' [[MisaimedFandom of the societal constructs they critique]]. |
| 371 | ** [[invoked]]Ellis did a [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1093688825434361857?lang=en lengthy Twitter essay]] about ''Film/BlazingSaddles'' and [[PoliticalOvercorrectness why so many critics of political correctness feel the need to protect the film from the "woke police."]] She comes to the conclusion that a lot of people missed the point about what Mel Brooks was saying about the stupidity of racism and came out of the film saying "Why does Mel Brooks get to say the n-word and I can't?" |
| 372 | * PoliticallyCorrectHistory: Lindsay tends not to be the biggest fan of movies that gloss over the horrors of past discrimination just to make modern white gentile audiences feel more comfortable. She doesn't dig ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' pinning centuries of colonialism and genocide on one BigBad, ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' glossing over 1920's Jim Crow Deep South, nor Captain America's [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Hydra]] and Red Skull existing to make ThoseWackyNazis seem more palatable to kids, and easy to sidestep the horrors of the Holocaust. |
| 373 | -->'''Lindsay:''' ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' [goes] so far out of its way to portray the wealthy white family as so ''nice'' and ''well-meaning'' and "What systemic oppression? What Jim Crow? I'm just a nice wealthy white patrician here for some beignets from mah favorite black-owned establishment on the other side of the tracks." |
| 374 | * Post911TerrorismMovie: |
| 375 | ** She goes into great detail of the subject in her ''Loose Canon'' two-parter of 9/11, describing how media ([[MediaNotes/{{Bollywood}} and not simply Hollywood]]) reacted to the disaster and the various stages of interpretation as the years go on. |
| 376 | ** Also discussed again in her video on ''Film/IndependenceDay'' and ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005'' (the latter of which she had described in her ''Loose Canon'' video "the most successful 9/11 movie"), finding the event to have singlehandedly changed how AlienInvasion fiction is made. Gone are the days of invasion narratives being campy spectacles [[EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion with happy endings]] whose [[MonumentalDamage only casualties are monumental]], as thanks to an ''actual'' invasion that claimed the lives of thousands, audiences have a much harder time accepting such stories anymore. |
| 377 | --->'''Lindsay''': [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore It will never be 1996 again. You cannot go back to]] ''Film/IndependenceDay''. |
| 378 | * PragmaticAdaptation: In "The Revisionist World Of Disney", she mentions that most of the changes made when adapting ''Film/MaryPoppins'' to film were necessary to make it work as a full-length film (such as giving Mr. Banks a character arc with the bank run) or made due to societal changes (such as making Mrs. Banks a suffragette to explain why a stay-at-home mum would want or need a nanny). |
| 379 | ** In her video on the film adaptation of ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', she contends that due to the inherent unrealism of musicals and stage productions, film adaptations need to be heavily changed or stylised to work. |
| 380 | * PretenderDiss: Lindsey's extensive knowledge of film theory and literary criticism leave her with ''zero'' patience for [[MaliciousMisnaming Vanessa]]'s amateur dismissal that the CreepyCrossdresser in ''Literature/TroubledBlood'' isn't transphobic solely on the grounds that "[[ImplausibleDeniability he's not really trans]]". [[note]] As Lindsey goes on to demonstrate, Dennis Creed's motives and methods perfectly align with Rowling's concerns in real life that male sexual predators will exploit more trusting and open-minded women. Furthermore, Blaire's [[FailedASpotCheck ill-informed statements about the text]], [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial repeated insistence that she read the book]] and [[SpottingTheThread conflicting claims of having bought a hard copy and an e-book]] [[NotHelpingYourCase don't help her case either]].[[/note]] |
| 381 | -->'''Blaire White''': Now people are calling the book transphobic because [...] it has a character who is a [[AirQuotes "cis man"]] who [[DisguisedInDrag dresses as a woman when killing his victim]]." |
| 382 | -->'''Lindsay:''' Eh, nah, [[TermsOfEndangerment honey]], [[RealitySubtext that's not how it works]]. |
| 383 | * ProductPlacement: "Product Placement and Fair Use", [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin appropriately enough]], has Lindsay go over the modern motivations behind this, as well as the distinction between it and non-endorsed MediaNotes/FairUse. |
| 384 | * ProtestSong: "Protest Music of the Bush Era" is an extensive dive into the various ways this concept has manifested over the years, primarily basing itself on the deluge of these made throughout UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's presidency. |
| 385 | * PublicMediumIgnorance: Spends a good chunk of her first ''Series/GameOfThrones'' retrospective explaining how this trope helped launch the show's popularity. Most [[invoked]][[LowestCommonDenominator average, mainstream viewers]] don't know much about HighFantasy beyond ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'', so Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' being a DeconstructorFleet to [[Creator/JRRTolkien Tolkien-esque]] HighFantasy (not to mention DarkerAndEdgier and HotterAndSexier) helped launch the show straight into mainstream popularity. |
| 386 | * PuttingOnTheReich: |
| 387 | ** "The Ideology of the First Order" discusses this trope's use in ''Franchise/StarWars'', exploring the ideological similarities (or lack thereof) between [[Film/TheForceAwakens the First]] [[Film/TheLastJedi Order]] and real-world fascist movements, its increased narrative importance in comparison to that of The Galactic Empire of the original trilogy, as well as how ''Creator/{{Disney}}'' even gets away with [[CashCowFranchise marketing it to the extent it does]]. |
| 388 | ** In the same video, she discusses how ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'' and its sequels make Red Skull and HYDRA [[EvilerThanThou more evil than]] the real Nazis InUniverse while still using variations of Nazi rituals, salutes and imagery in a way that ignores actual fascist ideology in favor of a more [[LighterAndSofter generic]] and [[TheThemeParkVersion commercially-friendly]] evil. |
| 389 | ** She also largely lambasts the use of this trope with Daenerys, believing that the creators chose to invoke Nazi imagery and anti-Nazi rhetoric as an easy shorthand for evil and extremism without thinking about whether it made any sense. |
| 390 | [[/folder]] |
| 391 | |
| 392 | [[folder:Q-Z]] |
| 393 | * RealitySubtext: |
| 394 | ** Discussed in her re-examination of ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}''. When co-directors John Musker and Ron Clements were tasked with making ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' a financial success if they wanted to make their dream project (essentially "[[WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet Treasure]] [[Literature/TreasureIsland Island]] [[RecycledInSpace In SPAAAAACE!]]"), one can easily see that frustration worked into the script: Hercules is told he must become a "true hero" to get what he wants (a place to belong), then being frustrated when the fame and fortune his heroic deeds earn still aren't enough to get him into Olympus, just as Musker and Clements were told they must make ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' to get what they want (to make ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet''), and all the money and success they earned with ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' didn't seem to be getting them any closer to their dream project. |
| 395 | ** [[invoked]]This concept is discussed in "Death of the Author" as one of the pitfalls of [[DeathOfTheAuthor the theory]], with how the author does [[ReclusiveArtist or doesn't]] present themselves being an omnipresent element of ParaText, one becoming increasingly more relevant in a modern world where "personal brand" is king. |
| 396 | ** In the beginning of "Protest Music of the Bush Era", Lindsay explicitly comments how she bumped the video ahead of intended schedule mainly because how its subject matter -- examining the relationship between [[ProtestSong politically-charged art calling for change]] and the actual push for change -- got incredibly topical due to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests.]] |
| 397 | * RealWomenNeverWearDresses: Not a fan of how ''Series/GameOfThrones'' handled this trope in later seasons. Female characters who shed their femininity and show disdain for traditionally feminine traits (like Sansa and Arya) are depicted as "empowered," but female characters who retain their femininity and [[AmbitionIsEvil ambition]] (like Daenerys and Cersei) are at best depicted as GodSaveUsFromTheQueen. |
| 398 | * {{Reconstruction}}: Lindsay has said that she was uncomfortable with her original reviews being "Like Doug Walker but a girl", and she has re-examined some of the films she did as Nostalgia Chick under her current review style - ''{{WesternAnimation/Pocahontas}}'' and ''{{WesternAnimation/Hercules}}'' for instance. |
| 399 | * {{Retraux}}: Several segments of "[=YouTube=]: Manufacturing Authenticity (for Fun and Profit!)" and "Death of the Author", in which Lindsay presents critical theory imperative for the topic at hand, are made to look like an educational video from a 90's VHS tape recording. |
| 400 | * RightForTheWrongReasons: |
| 401 | ** In "Is WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast About StockholmSyndrome?", Lindsay concedes that ''Beauty and the Beast'' does have some troubling less-than-feminist undertones with its portrayal of Belle, but argues that it's ''not'' "whether or not she has Stockholm Syndrome" like the common talking point claims, but rather "Why does she have little agency or character development beyond learning to like and ending up with a guy?", while the Beast gets a much meatier and more thematically appropriate character arc that ties into the movie's message and themes. |
| 402 | --->'''Lindsay:''' This is a trend we see in a LOT of [[MediaNotes/DisneyRenaissance Renaissance]] movies: The heroine states a want--be it, you know, [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 legs]], or [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast "adventure in the great wide somewhere"]], or [[WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} love-marriage]], or [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} not being in service to]] [[EverybodyHatesHades Satan]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} anymore]]--but the solution at the end always seems to wind up being... ''guys'' [...] And personally, I find that little trend of "Woman's self-actualization being defined by [[NeverASelfMadeWoman what guy she ends up with]]" ''WAAAY'' more insidious than "Whether or not this movie is about StockholmSyndrome." |
| 403 | ** Lindsay isn't against Daenerys becoming a brutal tyrant that the heroes have to kill in principle, but hates the way the showrunners handled it. She argues that in [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire the books]] it's clear that [[EntitledBastard Daenerys feels entitled]] to take Westeros [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen "through fire and blood,"]] but she ''also'' views herself as a [[WhiteSavior "liberator"]] who expects people to trip over themselves worshipping her after she [[DestructiveSavior "saves"]] them, and harshly retaliates against people she feels aren't sufficiently grateful (like Miri Maz Dur). This would make it plausible to happen on a larger scale when book Dany reaches Westeros. However, [[Series/GameOfThrones the show]] made Dany [[AdaptationalNiceGuy consistently caring, humble, and patient with Westeros' mistrust of her]] until the day she randomly snaps and burns an entire city of ''surrendering'' civilians alive for no in-universe reason other than her crazy Targaryan genes kicking in, and the showrunners' asinine CentralTheme that [[GoldenMeanFallacy "believing in a noble cause too much]] [[SlipperySlopeFallacy will inevitably make you turn evil over it."]] |
| 404 | * RoadshowTheatricalRelease: Her video on "The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical" greatly discusses this, how it was the standard for big releases -- including epic Hollywood musicals -- until the threat of home TV came alone, [[TechnologyMarchesOn pretty rapidly making them obsolete and tiring]]. |
| 405 | * RuleAbidingRebel: |
| 406 | ** Her video on ''Theatre/{{Rent}}'' sees her discussing the phenomenon of "bourgeois theatre", specifically the youth-oriented "we have been left behind by the system" musicals that have proliferated on Broadway since TheSixties. In her argument, while they purport to be countercultural and revolutionary, their values in practice tend towards validating the middle-class status quo and the views of their mostly BourgeoisBohemian audiences rather than challenging them. She segues from there into Augusto Boal's Marxist concept of the "theater of the oppressed", which argues that, barring a genuine revolution to break the dominance of the ruling class over access to media, the Rule-Abiding Rebels are the only members of the counterculture who can possibly get their works disseminated to a mainstream audience. In addition to ''RENT'', she also cites ''Theatre/LesMiserables'' and ''Theatre/{{Hamilton}}'' as examples, though she comes down substantially harder on ''RENT'' because while the other two were set in and critiqued different times and cultures, thus allowed to be more honest of what they were, ''RENT'' explicitly positions itself in direct opposition to the values of the culture it was produced in but [[{{Hypocrite}} fails to walk the walk]]. |
| 407 | ** This is also her opinion in "Woke Disney", where she discusses many Disney films of the late 2000s and 2010s in relation to this. Most of them do express liberal ideas, but also consistently show the problems in society to be unnatural outliers rather than inherent to the system, introduce sympathetic characters on the other side in an effort to show that BothSidesHaveAPoint (which undermines the resulting message), avoid bringing up things that could frame Disney or corporations in general in a negative light, and mainly poke at things that [[invoked]][[CaptainObviousAesop pretty much everyone has long since agreed are bad]] (i.e. animal abuse). She describes the resulting message as "we need more female [=CEOs.=]" |
| 408 | * RunningGag: |
| 409 | ** Within ''Loose Canon'', her ability to work Creator/TomHardy into anything. |
| 410 | ** In general, if a piece of media she's discussing has a particularly funny and/or stupid line, Lindsay will be sure to use it repeatedly in the video. Examples include: |
| 411 | *** "[[WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}} See how I glitter!]]" |
| 412 | *** "[[Film/Transformers2007 I ate da whole plate.]]" |
| 413 | *** "[[WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDameDisney I'm losing to a bird!]]" |
| 414 | *** "[[Film/{{Bright}} Fairy lives don't matter today.]]" |
| 415 | *** "[[Film/TheHobbitTheBattleOfTheFiveArmies Why does it hurt so much?]]" "Because it was real." |
| 416 | *** "[[Film/Venom2018 Like a turd. In the wind.]]" |
| 417 | *** "[[Theatre/{{Cats}} Hal, it's about cats.]]" |
| 418 | *** "[[Music/TobyKeith We'll put a boot in your ass / it's the American way!]]" |
| 419 | *** "[[Theatre/LoveNeverDies Give me the gun, MeEeEeEgG...]]" |
| 420 | ** "[[OverlyLongGag It's fine. It's fine! This is fine. It's fine. She's fine. This is fine]]." |
| 421 | ** Playing "[[Music/LilJon Turn Down for What]]" and applying a copious amount of Blingee effects when discussing problematic figures, scenes, or elements. Except for Leni Riefenstahl. [[TakeThat She gets]] "[[Music/{{Nickelback}} Photograph]]". |
| 422 | ** She's fond of filling {{Beat}}s of "deep, beleaguered sighs". |
| 423 | ** Throughout "That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast", Lindsay repeatedly interjects her critique with a [[TranquilFury pleasant yet furious "Thanks, I hate it!"]] |
| 424 | ** In her "How WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} Changed Animation (by Screwing Over Creator/RobinWilliams" video, every mention of Jeffrey Katzenberg and the films he oversaw includes "[[EvilIsPetty Petty Asshole]]" in pink shiny letters. |
| 425 | ** In her "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there," video, Lindsay calls Cain's lawyer a [[MaliciousMisnaming different name every time]]. |
| 426 | * SandInMyEyes: During "The Revisionist History of Saving Mister Banks," in her defense of how wonderful the effect ''Film/MaryPoppins'' has had on the world, she shows a little girl during her Make-A-Wish trip to Disneyland meeting Mary Poppins, while the father speaks of her watching the movie over and over again during her stints in the hospital. Lindsay gets audibly choked up before stating "I'm sorry there's something in my eye." |
| 427 | * SantaClaus: An episode of ''Loose Canon'' explores this character. Lindsay notes a duality in modern depictions, portraying Santa [[BadSanta with]] or [[CrappyHolidays surrounding]] [[SavingChristmas transgressive]] [[TwistedChristmas elements]] as a way of challenging the traditional innocent status quo, [[StatusQuoIsGod yet also]] [[SantasExistenceClause preserving said status quo]] by the end. |
| 428 | * TheScapegoat: In "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia," Lindsay discusses how the media archetype of the CreepyCrossdresser Serial Killer (most notably [[Film/{{Psycho}} Norman Bates]] and [[Film/SilenceOfTheLambs Buffalo Bill]]) sprang from newspapers blaming Ed Gein's real-life serial killing of women on "unnatural" feminine inclinations like [[GreenEyedMonster wishing to be a woman]], even though Ed Gein was a heterosexual cisgender man who showed ''no'' signs of having ''ever'' crossdressed. (Although his FemaleMisogynist mother didn't help.) Lindsay discusses how most real-life serial killers [[HeManWomanHater "resent women"]] ([[{{Understatement}} at best]]), yet acknowledging violent misogyny as a byproduct of Western society teaching people to [[MenAreTough revere "strength" and cruelty as masculinity]] and to [[HeManWomanHater despise women and femininity]] would [[SocietyIsToBlame force society to question its values and how it teaches men to view women]]... So it's just easier to blame women and femininity for their own violent misogyny by implying that only [[EffeminateMisogynisticGuy men with "unnatural" feminity]] (whether trans women or just men InTouchWithHisFeminineSide) are violent toward women due to [[GreenEyedMonster envying]] or [[IJustWantToBeYou wanting to replace them]]. |
| 429 | * SciFiGhetto[[invoked]]: In the "Genre" episode of ''The Whole Plate'', she makes her annoyance of this trope brief, but clear, accompanied with images of ''Film/{{Arrival}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/WallE''. |
| 430 | * SelfDemonstratingArticle: [[invoked]]In part 3 of ''The Whole Plate'', Lindsay explains the difficulties caused by having more than one focal point the audience will have to pay attention to at the same time. Demonstrating this, she gives her explanation on the bottom half of the screen, while the top of the screen features a scrolling [[HoYay Starscream/Megatron]] HighSchoolAU smutfic. |
| 431 | * SelfServingMemory: Lindsay has a lot of fun riffing on Addison Cain for this in "Into The Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court" video. After Cain was publicly revealed to perjur herself for one case, then another case against her was dropped for unrelated reasons, only for Cain to publicly change her stance to try to frame herself as right all along and the case against her being dropped because the judge actively took her side, rather than the judge [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere dismissing the case for lack of prosecution]]. |
| 432 | * {{Sequelitis}} [[invoked]]: In "Love Never Dies: A Magnificent Musical Trashfire Sequel to Phantom of the Opera", discussing (obviously) the many problems with ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'', but also how sequels can fail more broadly. She says that what makes many sequels bad is trying to repeat the beats and character dynamics of the first installment exactly, even if that installment wrapped up in such a way that those beats no longer make sense. For instance, she takes issue with how ''Film/MenInBlackII'' pushes J back into the role of rookie, essentially undoing his character arc from the first movie, which was about growing out of that role. Or, in ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'', the Phantom once again being obsessed with and trying to gain possession of Christine, thus invalidating his choice to let her go in the original. |
| 433 | * SerialNumbersFiledOff[[invoked]]: Referenced verbatim in "Into The Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court," where Lindsay explains how some fanfic authors pull their fics, change key names and details to avoid Copyright Infringement, then re-publish it as their own original fiction to make money. The pitfalls of this trope, of course, is that the copyright holders might notice the PaperThinDisguise and take legal action. |
| 434 | * ShoutOut: Due to the nature of her videos, she makes a ton of references to titles across different media, but she also makes references to other fellow creators and video essayists: |
| 435 | ** [[invoked]]Lindsay admits to stealing several jokes from WebVideo/ContraPoints, including her "It's fine. This is fine. It's fine" RunningGag and her use of "daddy." "Independence Day vs. War of the Worlds" even sneaks in a very brief reference in how "The 90's had a very different, shall we say, [[MemeticMutation mouthfeel]]." "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia" jokingly frames the video as an aborted-crossover-turned-feud with Natalie over her previous video infringing on Lindsay's, and so Lindsay more overtly copies jokes of Natalie's in spite. |
| 436 | ** In her ''Loose Canon'' of UsefulNotes/ElizabethI, she plugs WebVideo/BrowsHeldHigh [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uYipLshD4 for a more in-depth analysis]] of [[ConspiracyTheorist the sheer insanity of]] ''Film/Anonymous2011''. |
| 437 | ** She occasionally references and quotes Mikey Neumann of ''WebVideo/MoviesWithMikey'', and in her ''Film/{{Bright}}'' video, she's amused the [[SpecialPersonNormalName orc also named Mikey]]. |
| 438 | ** Lindsay admits her ''Film/{{Bright}}'' video was structurally based on frequent co-contributor [[WebVideo/FoldingIdeas Dan Olson's]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMb7-6eg4Zo video essay on]] ''Film/TheBookOfHenry'', right down to starting by "simply, factually recount[ing] the events of the film without commentary, questions, or asides. Alright? Alright." After doing so, she also describes ''Bright'' as "''not'' being a Book of Henry situation." |
| 439 | ** Her intro to "Protest Music of the Bush Era", where she gives a brief overview of America's invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the controversy that followed, has its script copied almost entirely from that of WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows' ''Trainwreckords'' video on Music/{{Madonna}}'s ''American Life''. [[LampshadeHanging Todd appears to call her out on it]], but decides to give it his blessing after Lindsay points out that his video's intro was itself [[SelfPlagiarism a reference to her own video on]] ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' ([[LampshadeHanging and as also pointed out]], Todd is credited with helping write this video's script anyway). |
| 440 | ** "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there" makes some references to ''Film/MeanGirls''. She puts on the video thumbnail the caption "Mean Girls, but stupid", and one section of the video is called "Everyone personally victimized by Regina George", a popular line of the movie. |
| 441 | * SignatureStyle: In Part 2 of ''The Whole Plate'', she says that it's a good point of MediaNotes/TheAuteurTheory, that directors having certain key themes that show up throughout their bodies of work. |
| 442 | * SissyVillain: [[invoked]]Briefly discussed in "Queering Michael Bay" of ''The Whole Plate'', going over the popularity of depicting effete villains via [[QueerPeopleAreFunny effeminate]] [[AmbiguouslyGay queer-coding]], from [[Film/TheMalteseFalcon1941 Joel Cairo]] to various animated Disney villains including [[WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994 Scar]], [[WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}} Governor Ratcliffe]], and [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Ursula]] (a [[GenderInvertedTrope gender-inverted]] example explicitly designed after a drag queen). [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools Lindsay also makes a point that queer-coded villains aren't always a negative thing]], as some have acquired an LGBTFanbase that [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales views them as a reclamation of power]]. |
| 443 | * SitcomArchNemesis: With ''WebVideo/ContraPoints'' in "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia", played for laughs. Lindsay claims this is a feud video and occasionally calls her a whore and even steals a joke from her. She also reveals merch for the feud, with the team to get most pins (Team Natalie and Team Lindsay), deciding to which charity the profits of the sales go. Natalie won. |
| 444 | * SlidingScaleOfAnthropomorphism: "Designing the Other: Aliens on Film" discusses alien designs through multiple films that go all over the scale, exploring what information each individual design is imparting to the audience and what function they serve in the narrative. |
| 445 | * SoBadItsGood[[invoked]]: She herself has this reaction to a few works covered, especially in ''Loose Canon'': |
| 446 | ** Regarding the 70's ''Film/{{King Kong|1976}}'' remake, Lindsay has a hard time deciding whether or not she hates the movie because it sucks, or loves it because it's such a "frankly wonder-terrible, awesome-nine addition to the entire Kong legacy." |
| 447 | ** In part 2 of the episode on ''The Phantom of the Opera'', she gives a shout-out to ''Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge'' not to really discuss the differences of its Phantom, but to share its sheer [[TheEighties 80's-ness]] and hilariously ridiculous plot. |
| 448 | ** [[invoked]] [[https://youtu.be/waL2lJVbAf4?t=371 Her reaction to the]] [[SpecialEffectsFailure horribly fake-looking]] and [[RefugeInAudacity over-the-top depiction]] [[CrossesTheLineTwice of the 9/11 attacks]] in the Bollywood film ''Madhoshi'' says it all. |
| 449 | --->'''Lindsay''': ''What the fuck, India!?'' |
| 450 | ** Lindsay firmly considers ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'' the worst musical she's ever seen, yet finds it hugely entertaining because of just how absurd and nonsensical it gets, with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfz-_WxGu3Y a video entirely about]] diving into (and laughing at) just how misguided, ill-conceived, yet [[BileFascination weirdly fascinating]][[invoked]] the whole show is. |
| 451 | * SoOkayItsAverage[[invoked]]: Her general opinion of the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse, finding it exhausting, but not evoking any particularly strong feelings for most of the individual films. Her opinions on the movies tend to range from "Eh, it's fine" to "Eyeh, it's pretty good!" |
| 452 | * SocialMediaIsBad: "Mask Off" discusses the ways social media (particularly Website/{{Twitter}}) is used to incentivize bad faith attacks, misinterpretations of people's intent, and public shaming. |
| 453 | * SpaceJews: The phenomenon is analyzed in her video on ''Film/{{Bright}}''. |
| 454 | * SpiritualAntithesis: Discussed in "Independence Day vs. War of the Worlds", especially given where they fall on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism and the SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness. |
| 455 | * SpiritualAdaptation[[invoked]]: She considers ''WesternAnimation/{{Moana}}'' to be an extended "stealth remake" of ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'', albeit a superior one due to it addressing several issues its predecessor had. "Pocahontas Was a Mistake, and Here's Why!" begins with an extended synopsis of effectively both movies, with their footage put side-by-side to show the similarities. |
| 456 | * StepfordSmiler: "[=YouTube=]: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)" dives a great deal into "emotional labor," the need to maintain the potentially-exhausting affect of a certain job, specifically the need to be "authentic" in entertaining and engaging with an audience. |
| 457 | * StockholmSyndrome: She has a video going through the common accusation of ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' being about this. It's a thorough debunking, with Belle failing to properly meet any of the symptoms, never putting up with any of the Beast's shit, and only returning affection after he acts to improve himself of his own volition. Lindsay also makes a point that Stockholm Syndrome isn't even considered a diagnosable mental illness, with its status as an actual thing being contested among psychiatric and law enforcement communities, making the accusations even more sensationalist. |
| 458 | * StrawFan: [[invoked]]Occasionally featured in some videos is the Twitter account [[https://twitter.com/what_is_nuance @what_is_nuance]], [[AlterEgoActing run by Angelina M.]] as a parody of FanDumb audiences. |
| 459 | * StreisandEffect: Lindsay feels that Addison Cain's attempts to take down Ellis' "Omegaverse" video constitutes this. |
| 460 | * StringTheory: She makes one for her third ''Hobbit'' video to explain the long-lasting consequences of ''The Hobbit'' on New Zealand and the various parties involved. |
| 461 | * StudentDebtPlot: Ellis has spoken about her problems while studying at, and after graduating from, USC, where student debt caused a rift in her working relationship with Website/ChannelAwesome. |
| 462 | -->Thing is, around this time, I made another huge mistake (haha joke [haha... sort of a joke]) when I got accepted to USC. I say "huge mistake" because being young and dumb, I didn't realize that 7% interest rate on student loans was... a lot. And a MFA at the world's top film school (since usurped but it was rated #1 at the time!) takes super huge priority over internet videos, even if they paid okay. |
| 463 | * SugaryMalice: Addison Cain likes to portray herself as a sickeningly sweet NiceGirl in public, but ruthlessly bully, silence, and ruin the livelihood of [[FemaleMisogynist any woman]] she feels has wronged her in any way ([[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder and there are many]]) in private. |
| 464 | * SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Argues that the showrunners abandoning this trope is another reason that later ''Series/GameOfThrones'' seasons plummeted in quality. Being a DeconstructorFleet to HighFantasy, part of what made earlier seasons so compelling was WrongGenreSavvy characters making choices expecting things to go their way, only for reality to bite them in the ass, with following episodes or seasons to explore the consequences of their actions. A prime example is Joffrey executing a powerful and beloved noble ForTheEvulz, which sparked a huge civil war that lasted for several seasons. However, later seasons tried to up the ante by having characters commit even more reckless or brutal actions for shock value, only to not want to follow through with exploring how these actions would affect the world around them. A key example is Cersei wiping out the entire powerful and beloved House Tyrell and blowing up the Sept of Baelor, both far more extreme acts of brutality and political suicide than Joffrey beheading Ned (and would have fueled several seasons of story in its own right), yet her actions are quickly ignored and forgotten. |
| 465 | * TakeAThirdOption: Lindsay often tackles controversial topics surrounding media (especially nostalgic or nerd media), where a number of people will condemn something wholesale because of something Problematic about it, while another portion will deny there is anything Problematic about it defend why they still like it. Lindsay consistently falls somewhere in the middle, admitting that something about it is flawed or unethical while still unashamedly loving it, and often posits that you ''can'' acknowledge something is flawed without having to condemn it. |
| 466 | ** She points out in several videos that she doesn't believe that no good can come from capitalist-driven art and media, nor that people can't enjoy media despite acknowledging its MerchandiseDriven roots. With regards to Transformers: |
| 467 | --->'''Lindsay:''' There is a big problem in nerd communities with coming to terms with the fact that a product they kind of love is only exists for [[MerchandiseDriven gross, hyper-capitalistic Reagan-y reasons]]. Personally, [[TakeAThirdOption I do not care]]. I buy my Starscreams, I read my comics, and I can still talk about the fact that the series only exists due to deregulation designed to target children and benefit big businesses. |
| 468 | ** Discussed quite heavily in her ''Film/SavingMrBanks'' video. Lindsay admits Creator/WaltDisney was unethical in how he strong-armed Travers into give up creative control over her own intellectual property, and it was unethical of the Creator/{{Disney}} Company to sanitize that history with ''Film/SavingMrBanks'', but she argues that ''Film/MaryPoppins'' and ''Film/SavingMrBanks'' are still artistically great movies in their own right, and one can acknowledge their unsavory histories without being required to condemn them wholesale. |
| 469 | * TakeThat: |
| 470 | ** Her video on "The Time They Remake Beauty and the Beast" takes potshots of [=YouTube=] videos that exist to offer half-baked hot takes tearing down works, most explicitly calling out ''WebVideo/CinemaSins''. |
| 471 | ** "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia" has one to Blaire White, regarding her now infamous affirmation that there's only one reference to the villain being transgender in Rowling's ''Troubled Blood'', despite Lindsay being able to point out multiple of them. Lindsay jokingly refers to her as "reader of books" to mock White's dubious timeline and inconsistency on whether she got it physically or digitally making it unclear if she actually read the whole book, and puts multiple of the quotes she found on the book over a clip of White saying there was only one phrase. |
| 472 | ** In "Loose Canon: ComicBook/CaptainAmerica", she refers to Creator/MarkMillar as "the patron saint of angry thirteen-year-olds" and "odious f*ckboy". |
| 473 | --->''"People from all political walks of life can aspire to be compassionate, intuitive, trustworthy, adaptable, and just. And that is just the character that Captain America has evolved into. As long as Mark Millar isn't writing him."'' |
| 474 | * TakeThatAudience: An implicit, but firm one in "[=YouTube=]: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)". While discussing how on [=YouTube=], the need to maintain a parasocial illusion of authenticity and availability for fans can be dangerous since if either falters, fans are often quick to perceive it as a breach of trust and revolt, Lindsay follows it up with this, said with a KubrickStare and ominous silence: |
| 475 | -->'''Lindsay''': ...but lucky for me, I don't have to worry about you guys. You're the ''good'' ones. |
| 476 | * TheThemeParkVersion: Lindsay has repeatedly critiqued works that do this while directly trying to comment on political themes or conflicts, which she believes is mostly done to not scare away potential audience members, end ends up oversimplifying them to the point of insult. |
| 477 | ** This is among her biggest complaints about ''Theatre/{{Rent}}'', a work explicitly taking place during the AIDS crisis which encourages a [[SmallNameBigEgo self-righteous]] and [[CluelessAesop nebulous mentality]] of rejecting "the system." Lindsay argues that this completely misses the point since that wasn't what actually solved the crisis -- namely, the aggressively direct, active protesting to pressure the government into doing its job and save its people. |
| 478 | --->'''Lindsay''': ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' takes an inherently political issue and depoliticizes it to create something comforting and consumable. ''[[{{Irony}} RENT]]'' [[{{Irony}} looks pretty,]] [[TitleDrop and does as little as possible.]] |
| 479 | ** [[invoked]]She comes down on ''Film/{{Bright}}'' for its discussion on racism, not just for its [[TrappedByMountainLions nominal relation to the central plot]] and sloppy execution, but for the fact that while the film is trying to be topical and seek truths, it only explores exaggerated "cartoon racism" that is so unrealistic that no audience member could possibly see it in themselves, [[CluelessAesop cheapening their own discussion]]. |
| 480 | * TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: [[invoked]] |
| 481 | ** She feels this way about Mikaela in the Film/TransformersFilmSeries. She argues that Mikaela was the best-written character in [[Film/Transformers2007 the first movie]] and would've made a far better protagonist than Sam Witwicky, given that not only is her character the one in the whole film who displays an interest in cars (in a film that's very much about cars, albeit ones that are actually robots in disguise), but her arc lines up with the film's themes of self-sacrifice. Unfortunately, her framing in the films used her mainly as MsFanservice, to the point where audiences [[DistractedByTheSexy largely forgot she even had a character]]. |
| 482 | ** She also takes this view of many latter-day ''Series/GameOfThrones'' characters, especially Cersei, whom she noted had nothing to do after her destruction of the Sept. In a sane world, an already unpopular and dubiously legitimate ruler blowing up the equivalent of the Vatican should have had massive consequences for her, and had the people of King's Landing rallying en masse around any alternative. Cersei being forced to deal with the fallout of her actions could prove fascinating, give lots of material for one of the show's strongest performers, and fall perfectly in line with the series's themes. But since the logical consequences of her actions would have been the people siding with Dany and made her fall from grace even more nonsensical, Cersei avoids dealing with anything and is actually played as remorseful and sympathetic at the massacre. |
| 483 | * ThisIsGonnaSuck: |
| 484 | ** In “Wicked Witch Of The West” ''Loose Canon'', when it comes to ''Series/TinMan'', she just leans back in her chair and groans. And then when it comes to ''Film/TheMuppetsWizardOfOz'', she immediately facepalms. |
| 485 | ** In "''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' Was a Mistake, and Here's Why!", she prefaces her discussion on cultural appropriation with an awkward, faltering smile and "RIP comments section." |
| 486 | * ThisLoserIsYou: Analyzes it a bit in ''The Whole Plate'', comparing ''Film/{{Guardians of the Galaxy|2014}}'' to ''Film/{{Transformers|2007}}'': both have a crude, jerkish, perverted, entitled manchild as their lead character and the presumed audience-identification character. However, what makes Peter Quill work where Sam Witwicky doesn't is that ''Guardians'' makes an effort to treat Quill's character flaws as, well, flaws, and has him genuinely go through hell or develop because of them. Meanwhile, Sam's flaws are treated as just wacky comedic stuff that's meant to make him relatable, and he's never really challenged or forced to change by this (if anything, he gets worse). Notably, she points out that Peter Quill DidNotGetTheGirl, while Sam gets multiple girls. This makes Quill actually have a character arc and impresses a genuine moral upon the audience, whereas Sam impresses upon the audience that being an asshole is perfectly fine and comes across as static and unlikable. |
| 487 | * ThisMeansWar: Pretty much Lindsay's reaction to Addison Cain attempting to deplatform her for her "Into the Megaverse" video. |
| 488 | -->'''Lindsay:''' I don't want to say "This is war," [[CouldSayItBut but]]... |
| 489 | * ThreeActStructure: First discussed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KznZcK7ksf4 in her video]] on ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' to lay out the film's rigid adherence to the formula. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0QO7YuKKdI She did an additional, more thorough dive into the subject]] later on, also discussing its place in film theory and as [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools a tool.]] |
| 490 | * ThrowItIn[[invoked]]: Discussed in "[=YouTube=]: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)", where silly mistakes or [[BreakingTheFourthWall fourth-wall breaks]] that break down the idea of professional production lend themselves to a more casual and "authentic" feel, which sometimes increases their appeal and success. However, some shows try and [[ExploitedTrope exploit]] this idea, resulting in a manufactured facade of this sort of natural improvised authenticity, more prone to showing cracks (as is the case with "Man About Cake"). |
| 491 | * TooBleakStoppedCaring: [[invoked]] Her personal reaction to ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'', which she finds detestable in part due to finding the characters and overall tone too cynical and mean-spirited. |
| 492 | * TookTheBadFilmSeriously[[invoked]]: Lindsay cites this as a factor for why she considers ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'' to be SoBadItsGood. While she'd normally assess its very existence as [[SamePlotSequel a retread sequel]] as being a lazy, cynical cashgrab, she instead finds that there's a weird level of sincerity that was put into it, where everyone -- from Creator/AndrewLloydWebber, to the cast, to the set designers -- genuinely believed in it and wanted it to work. Lindsay still deems it to be laughably awful from a critical standpoint, but found the attempt to still be immensely watchable and entertaining. |
| 493 | * TrappedByMountainLions:[[invoked]] One of her biggest critiques of ''Film/TheHobbit'' trilogy is this. The movie, in the name of AdaptationExpansion, adds on a number of new scenes and plotlines, but they don't really go anywhere or inform the actual main story because they were haphazardly bolted onto a narrative that wasn't really meant to accommodate them. The result is "plot cul-de-sacs" that end up feeling like wastes of time and pull focus away from the actually important stuff. |
| 494 | ** This is also mentioned in her video on ''Film/{{Bright}}''. The protagonist's bigotry towards orcs has no major impact on the plot, Jakoby isn't meaningfully affected by it, none of the villains are perpetrators or meaningfully affected by it and the BigBad is an outlier to the corrupt system. She contrasts this with ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'' and ''Film/District9'', where the central plots of both (Toontown being bulldozed and the prawns being relocated) ''do'' tie into their main theme of a FantasticUnderclass. |
| 495 | * TrashOfTheTitans: Used as a FunnyBackgroundEvent in her Titanic video, where her desk is covered in ''stacks'' of empty Mountain Dew cans. |
| 496 | * TrollingCreator: Lindsay got married in June 2018 and invited lots of her [=YouTuber=] friends, fueling some confusion and speculation that her new spouse was one of them. While the actual truth is that her husband is simply a private person with no online presence, Lindsay fueled the rumors anyway by [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1027794145090256896 posting]] [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1027799549769707520 suggestive]] [[https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1027804072869388288 photos]] from the wedding reception, all with the garbled caption "MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE". |
| 497 | * Administrivia/TropesAreTools: A recurring theme of her videos is that many tropes and conventions are not inherently positive or negative, even if they are perceived as such. For example, she refers to cultural appropriation as, strictly speaking, being a neutral tool, not inherently good or bad. It can be used harmfully, but it isn't necessarily the case. |
| 498 | * TroubledProduction[[invoked]]: Repeatedly mentioned in her miniseries on ''Film/TheHobbit'', most prominently discussed in its second part: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPJr_tKkO4 The Hobbit: Battle of Five Studios]]". It even features an interview with John Callen (who played Óin in all three films) providing a firsthand account of the increasing troubles it all went through. |
| 499 | * TrueArtIsIncomprehensible:[[invoked]] Not a fan of this mentality, and one she tears to shreds for ''Film/RealityBites'' and ''Theatre/{{RENT}}''. |
| 500 | -->'''Lindsay:''' Their approach to documentaries is... shoot whatever and call it art because "it exists, and I made it."\ |
| 501 | '''Mark:''' From here on in, I shoot without a script.\ |
| 502 | '''Lindsay:''' To quote Creator/NathanRabin: "Last time I checked, those are called home-f[[SoundEffectBleep *]]cking-movies and nobody thinks that's High Art." |
| 503 | * UnintentionalUncannyValley[[invoked]]: She discusses the infamous case of this in ''Film/{{Cats}}'' in her video on it, which by her observation was merely ''one'' result of a misguided attempt to make ''Theatre/{{Cats}}'' seem "realistic" [[OscarBait in an attempt to gain critical respect.]] |
| 504 | * UngratefulBitch: Discussed in "Into the Omegaverse," when Lindsay notes how quickly Addison Cain turned on her publishers when she couldn't hide behind them anymore, even though they'd agreed to throw themselves in front of the bus in order to protect her reputation. In "Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me," Lindsay further elaborates that Blushing Books alleges that Cain was the one who reported them to the [=RWA=] and is the reason they are on advocacy alert, and openly hates them and badmouths them to anyone who will listen. |
| 505 | * UnfortunateImplications: [[invoked]] Points out several from across the series in her ''Game of Thrones'' videos: |
| 506 | ** Season 4's plot point of [[spoiler: Tyrion murdering Shae]] still happening the same way as in the books despite the massive changes to both their characters, and altering the direction Tyrion's arc went in afterwards results in a scene where [[spoiler: a man smothering his girlfriend in revenge is still meant to be sympathetic]]. She also cited in part 2 the denouement at the end of the final season [[spoiler:with Jon Snow and Tyrion framed as morally correct for killing Daenerys as mirroring the narrative of domestic abusers, "You made me do it...don't you see I had to do it", especially since Daenerys' own narrative is about a girl in an abusive relationship overcoming that and gaining agency for herself]]. |
| 507 | ** The finale has the unfortunate side effect that the only living non-white characters are [[spoiler: all for Daenerys's plan to unleash a reign of terror on the world. So the white characters have to stop an army of barbarian non-white characters from making the world even worse]]. Her second video noted that [[spoiler:Tyrion's speech about Jon Snow which was intended to invoke YouMonster on the audience for cheering Daenerys' PayEvilUntoEvil, while also being a paraphrase of Martin Niemoller's famous poem about gentile indifference to Nazi anti-semitism, morally equates Daenerys' slaveowner victims with the victims of the Holocaust, which she notes is even more tone-deaf as a comparison]]. |
| 508 | ** A point Ellis brings up in her second video is that the later seasons seem to imply that Sansa's earlier compassion and empathy for others is a sign of weakness and childishness, and that acting like a stone cold ManipulativeBitch, who is frequently openly hostile to anyone who isn't her immediate family is a sign that she has become mature and empowered. Ellis argues that Sansa’s true flaw that she must overcome isn't that she's 'too kind', but that she's too ''naive'' and needs to learn who is genuinely worthy of her compassion and who is just trying to manipulate her. |
| 509 | ** Discussed more broadly in "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia". She points out that even if a property may be aware of potential anti-trans messaging and explicitly makes the point that its deranged, murderous [[CreepyCrossdresser cross-dressing male villain]] ''is'' in fact a man and not a trans woman (as ''Film/SilenceOfTheLambs'' and ''Literature/TroubledBlood'' both do), it still correlates "person perceived as male dressing in a traditionally feminine way" with deception, psychopathy, and violence, particularly violence against women, which feeds into transphobic stereotypes. (Especially as the real trans people these villains are compared to almost never actually get to be in the story; they're just mentioned, while the Buffalo Bill types take up all the narrative space.) |
| 510 | * UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: [[invoked]]She rips into ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'' mostly for this, pointing out that while the Phantom in the original play was certainly a violent, self-centered jerk, [[JerkassWoobie he was sympathetic because his life emphatically sucked]], and therefore it made sense that he was a jerk. However, the Phantom in ''Love Never Dies'' has tons of friends, wealth, and success, and the musical tries to frame him as a good guy and Christine's ''real'' true love... and yet he still comes across as a violent, self-centered jerk. |
| 511 | * UnwantedAssistance: Part of the reason for her disgust towards Addison Cain in the Omegaverse lawsuit is that Cain claims to be acting in defense of writers, by locking down people for stealing her material. However, Lindsay argues the opposite: that Cain's tactics of abusing the DMCA will set a terrible precedent, as it means that anyone not willing or able to battle it out in court can have their work taken down, placing independent writers at the mercy of the whims of large corporations. |
| 512 | * UnreliableNarrator: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM7pALSwH_I An episode of]] ''It's Lit'' is dedicated to this, detailing the various reasons and means of execution for this to occur in fiction. |
| 513 | * ValuesDissonance:[[invoked]] A recurring trend of works that came out in UsefulNotes/TheNineties, most notably ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' and ''Film/RealityBites'', is that she believes the characters in those works tend to look very unsympathetic to audiences since then. In her view, their focus on Clinton-era middle-class ennui merely makes the characters seem whiny when people in the modern day would kill for the "dead-end jobs" and "art for profit" that those characters disdain. |
| 514 | * ValuesResonance:[[invoked]] |
| 515 | ** Discussed in "The Case For Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}''," where Lindsay notes the film was not very well-received in TheNineties due to its dark tone, but speculates that it's gaining more appreciation in TheNewTens because its themes and issues resonate more with what's going on in the changing sociopolitical climate. |
| 516 | --->'''Lindsay Ellis:''' I think [Hunchback] would be more appreciated if it came out today, because we need stories like this today. [[Sandbox/{{Fascism}} Fasci-y]] abusive Frollo, justice for the oppressed, the focus on how [[HeManWomanHater some men]] [[IfICantHaveYou really]] ''[[IfICantHaveYou loathe]]'' [[EntitledToHaveYou the objects of their desire]], the wholesale {{demonization}} of [[TheScapegoat ethnic groups]]... Maybe this movie wasn't appreciated in its time because it didn't resonate as much in 1996, but it does resonate now in 2017. |
| 517 | ** Also discussed in "The Most Whitewashed Character In Literary History", a video surrounding the chronic [[AdaptedOut adaptational removal]] of The Persian from ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', making a case for better treatment not just because he was important to the plot, but because his positive depiction as an ethnic character was greatly ahead of his (and Lindsay might argue, ''our'') time. At the end of the essay, Lindsay notes having delayed its release due to [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents real-world tensions between America and Iran]], but suggests that during such times of stress where people are more drawn to looking back at familiar, but potentially regressive and hostile narratives, it should be worth challenging them and looking more critically at what can really be done. |
| 518 | ** Discussed in "Why ''Film/{{Borat}}'' Works Better in 2020". While edgy racial and sexual humor had fallen severely out of favor since 2006, and ''Borat''[='=]s use of such earned it accusations of promoting stereotypes against marginalized people under the guise of humor, what helped ''Borat'' hold up far better than other 2000s raunch and prank comedies was that it made such retrograde views the butt of the joke, with Creator/SachaBaronCohen as Borat getting people to reveal on camera that they [[NotSoAboveItAll weren't nearly as enlightened as they thought they were]] and that the violent, raging bigotry that Americans thought they'd buried long ago still lurked under the surface. She said that Borat in 2020 was "the hero we need right now, but he is certainly not the hero we should want." |
| 519 | * VerbalTic: Much like WebVideo/JennyNicholson, she has a habit of beginning a topic with "So..."; unlike Nicholson, she usually does this when moving to a new topic mid-video, rather than at the start. |
| 520 | * VillainWithGoodPublicity: She's really baffled by the attempts in ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'' to "justify" this in [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast Gaston]], with the film feeling the need to make him more sympathetic by giving him backstory as a war hero suffering from PTSD, made even more confusing and questionable by the film also [[AdaptationalVillainy doubling down on his more]] [[BloodKnight violent aspects]] that [[AdaptationalIntelligence the more skeptical townsfolk]] are shown to need ''bribes'' to look past. |
| 521 | * VisualInnuendo: Her video on the Omegaverse lawsuit has her playing with silly string at one point, and whenever she mentions "knotting", she demonstrates by inflating a balloon. |
| 522 | * VoiceClipSong: The episode intro theme to ''The Whole Plate'', using the namesake line from ''Film/{{Transformers|2007}}''. |
| 523 | * VoodooShark: [[invoked]] She regarded the entirety of ''Film/BeautyAndTheBeast2017'' as this trope in a nutshell, feeling that the film was just Disney attempting to respond to every criticism of [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast the original film]] no matter how much of a nitpick it felt like, in the process creating something that utterly lacked the soul of its inspiration while raising all manner of ''new'' questions. For instance, the film tries to explain the servants being cursed by having them claim responsibility for not raising him better... but what, does that mean the child son of a tea brewer was somehow responsible for the decisions of a literal monarch? |
| 524 | * WartsAndAll: Discussed in "Woke Disney", wherein Lindsay notes that, while there ''is'' discourse over how exactly things like the Crows from ''Dumbo'' should be handled with regards to the rather...uncomfortable racial symbolism they employ, completely removing them as the remake did is ''not'' the answer, as they are as much ingrained into both the movie and Disney's history as the Pink Elephants and "Baby Mine" are. |
| 525 | -->'''Lindsay:''' The original ''Dumbo'' is kind of beautiful in how flawed it was, including the elements that are abrasive to modern audiences. ''Which HAPPENED'', and are a part of Disney history and we're not doing ourselves any favors by pretending that they're not.[...]And I know there is discourse on how to handle history like this, but pretending that it just didn't exist? Just ignoring it altogether and pretending it didn't happen? How is that helping to make the world better or educate people? |
| 526 | * WhamEpisode: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7aWz8q_IM4 Mask Off]] is quite different from Lindsay's other fare. She addresses point-by-point the critique of her many "sins" and she admits that a good portion of those are legitimate. [[spoiler:Lindsay also gets ForcedOutOfTheCloset by admitting that she's bisexual and thus has mixed feelings about being accused of biphobia, was assaulted in college as was her roommate, and the resulting "Rape Rap" was never supposed to be published because she knew that it was in bad taste and should remain a coping mechanism and in-joke between friends]]. Only then does she go into a deeper analysis of the tweet that started this whole controversy. |
| 527 | * WhamLine: Two from the end of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPJr_tKkO4 The Hobbit: Battle of Five Studios]]": |
| 528 | -->'''Tom Augustine''': Just so you know, what the Hobbit actually did for New Zealand was... well it kinda fucked us.\ |
| 529 | '''Lindsay''': We've just been informed by the studio that this actually going to be three videos now. |
| 530 | * WhatCouldHaveBeen: |
| 531 | ** Her Patreon patron-exclusive notes for "Loose Canon: Death" show that she originally considered including Creator/MarvelComics' Death, [[Anime/DeathNote Shinigami]], and other personifications of death from global religions. |
| 532 | ** In a response to one comment, she said that she was considering doing a ''Loose Canon'' episode about UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}, but found it impossible to condense the sheer glut of information about and interpretations of him into a twenty minute video, saying that it could have been a web series unto itself. |
| 533 | ** She was going to do a video discussing gender in ''Series/GameOfThrones'' but got fed up halfway through and cancelled it. Some of her points, however, got woven into her two "postmortem" videos on the series. |
| 534 | ** Has said she would love to do a video explaining why she doesn't like ''{{WesternAnimation/Shrek}}'' - something she did touch on in her 'Dreamworks vs Disney' two-parter. But knowing how beloved it is by early 2000s kids, she compared the idea to "A Gen-Xer telling 90s kids why ''{{WesternAnimation/Aladdin}}'' sucks..." |
| 535 | ** She considered doing an essay on ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt'' - as she does not like the film or the idea of adapting organised religion for pop culture. But again she does not want to deal with the inevitable backlash it would get. |
| 536 | ** Lindsay considered doing a follow-up video on the internecine "Disney wars" that she touched upon in her video about ''Aladdin'' starting the CelebrityVoiceActor trend, but shelved it when she saw people in the comments of that video using thinly-veiled anti-Semitic language when talking about one of the key players in that situation, Jeffrey Katzenberg. |
| 537 | ** At the end of her video on ''Film/Titanic1997'', Lindsay explains that the video was supposed to be based on a different topic -- presumably about pandemics, given that she plays clips of ''Film/{{Outbreak}}'' -- but [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents it was shelved]] for being ''too'' [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic topical and heavy]]. |
| 538 | ** Lindsay hinted that she was planning a video about ''Theatre/{{Hamilton}}'' in a few interviews and social media comments, and did talk about it in passing in some of her other videos. She's since said that the amount of discourse surrounding ''Hamilton'''s release on Disney Plus in July 2020 ultimately discouraged her from tackling it. |
| 539 | * WhatDoYouMeanItsNotDidactic: {{Invoked|Trope}}, {{Deconstructed|Trope}}, and partially played for [[SelfDeprecation self-deprecating laughs]] regarding ''The Whole Plate'', where she uses the ''Film/TransformersFilmSeries'' [[{{Applicability}} as a vessel for various political readings]], from MediaNotes/TheAuteurTheory to feminist and Marxist theory. As she points out several times in the series, the point of critical media studies is less to pin down a deliberate, intended political message in the work, but rather to raise questions about how audiences consume media and what it says about the culture that created and surrounds it, even if [[ItsNotSupposedToWinOscars the subject she chose is considered "lowbrow."]] This is supported by the fact as pointed out in her episode on auteur theory, Creator/MichaelBay considers himself a deeply political person whose worldview seeps into his work, even if he doesn't like actively discussing what that means. |
| 540 | * WhatMeasureIsAMook: Discusses RealLife examples in "Why Film/{{Borat}} Works Better in 2020." Lindsay theorizes that most Trump supporters don't want actual bloodshed, since Creator/SachaBaronCohen exposes many of them to be kind people to those they encounter--even people from groups they dislike in theory. (Like two Trump supporters helping what they think is a FunnyForeigner.) ''But'' Cohen exposes how many Americans are just fine with people from groups they don't like (political enemies, minorities, women, etc) being hurt in the abstract, as long as it's no one they know and they aren't there to see it. |
| 541 | -->'''Rando:''' I've never, uh, participated in someone's death.\ |
| 542 | '''Lindsay:''' And he's fine with it, because it happened off-screen and [[AccompliceByInaction someone else arranged it]]. |
| 543 | * WhoWritesThisCrap: Lindsay recruited WebVideo/HBomberguy to read excerpts of ''Literature/TroubledBlood'' aloud for her "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia" video, and he keeps having this reaction. |
| 544 | -->'''Harris, reading from a passage castigating the murder victim for possibly getting an abortion:''' "Imagine aborting your husband's--" What the ''fuck''? When you asked me to read these, I didn't think it would be this bad. |
| 545 | * WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief: Discussed in her videos on ''Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera2004'' and ''Film/{{Cats}}'' as specifically pertains to stage musicals and film, and how both mediums have different thresholds. With both cases, Lindsay points out how generally speaking, unreality on a live stage is inherently much easier for audiences to accept than on a live-action screen aided by all kinds of technology, but that good movie musicals can get around it through broader stylism. Where the film versions of ''Phantom'' and ''Cats'' fail is in part due to their insistence on playing into the inherent realism of film, creating drastic tonal dissonance with their decidedly unrealistic source material that breaks disbelief ([[ShaggyDogStory while still failing to capitalize on their new format]]). |
| 546 | * WomanScorned: She has a lot of issues with ''Film/OzTheGreatAndPowerful'', but finding out that this is why the Wicked Witch is wicked really drove her up the wall. She also complained about how ''Film/XMenTheLastStand'' reduced Mystique's motivations to this trope. |
| 547 | * JustForFun/XMeetsY: Invoked in her discussion of ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'', which she considers to be more "''Film/{{Rocky}}'' meets ''Film/SupermanTheMovie''" than anything to do with the actual Greek myth. She argues it's a misplaced effort, as not only are the references a little too obvious to work, but the themes don't mix well when you try to combine a sports film about a rough-and-tumble underdog with a superhero film about a MessianicArchetype. (The phrase "Go the distance!", for instance, makes very little sense in a movie that lacks the SecondPlaceIsForWinners element in ''Rocky''.) |
| 548 | * YouKeepUsingThatWord: After Addison Cain attempted to deplatform Lindsay for her "Into the Omegaverse" video, Lindsay spends a great deal of time explaining in her follow-up video, "Addison Cain's lawyer emailed me" how Cain does not have a legal leg to stand on since most of the terms they accuse Lindsay of (slander, defamation, copyright infringement, verbal harrassment, etc) are terms she isn't even using in the right colloquial context, never mind legal application. |
| 549 | -->'''Lindsay:''' It does not work like that. "You hurt my feelings, ipso facto copyright infringement." That's not how copyright works. |
| 550 | ** Earlier Addison Cain was boasting how the case that started this whole thing was dismissed WITH PREJUDICE like it's a rare, end all be all result. Like it was a victory for her and for authors in general. In reality, "with prejudice" is generally implied when a case is dismissed. It would have been stranger if the case was dismissed ''without'' prejudice. And this is ignoring that the case was dismissed because of a [[SelfServingMemory failure to prosecute]]. Therefore, nothing was actually accomplished. |
| 551 | * YouSexyBeast: "My Monster Boyfriend" circles around the modern popularity of [[InterspeciesRomance romances between]] [[BeastAndBeauty women and monsters]] [[FantasticRomance in media]], explaining the long history of social evolution that eventually led into it, culminating in the mainstream and critical success of ''Film/TheShapeOfWater''. |
| 552 | [[/folder]] |
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