what if tv tropes gave me gender dysphoria

when this isn't just ennui simulator and is showing off the pink opaque itself or letting loose with the special effects/editing/brakhage pastiche i honestly enjoy some of what this is. obviously it's not a realistic depiction of a show of the era, it's unmoored from time and the texture of the era, it picks the wrong things to be what it needs to be tbh? but at least it's fun, like mr melancholy looks really cool. i like the feel of the episode fragments and forgive the amount asked of us to buy them as tv in the 90s but sometimes the presumed impact we're meant to read from owen/maddy doesn't totally function to me. i wish we saw more of it. i wish it had a different name. maddy's performance is almost enough at times. it's a thin character, or perhaps not thin so much as ideological, structural, functional. justice's performance has this built in defense mechanism--THATS THE POINT!!--but it's kinda DOA and for me doesn't convey anything effectively. the direct address is so difficult to cope with lol. staring into the camera -- THE PINK OPAQUE HAD BEEN CANCELLED. this lacks an anna cobb to me; something real and electric at the center. same with the place, Suburbia, USA. this denies texture for generality except in the depiction of the show--is that also the point? same with depicting "femininity" in any real way. i don't mean that owen needs to present or behave or express a desire to transition in any one way, that it has to signify femininity in specific ways, but that this like doesn't address it at all. it's an inevitability without texture or personal stakes bc of the functions of the plot and metaphor. he should* be isabel bc that's his role. because he looks sad at the camera repeatedly and tells us how (miserably) happy he is to put this all behind him. all of it is very diffuse to me, and yet didactic at the same time. there's no way someone could miss the metaphor, the meaning of the symbols, maybe because they don't have any weight or feeling beyond their intended reading. i suppose mission accomplished but it displays a lack of trust and confidence in the audience imo. 

also decrepit justice smith after the third time skip is so ... what. it's so mean 😭 i like when he screams i wish he was given the capacity to be in that range earlier. to imbue his character with life and meaning. conner o'malley jump scare is really funny. it is kinda crazy that this never says anything about fandom. i think i fundamentally do not relate to the importance given to """MEDIA""" here in self actualization/self recognition (both positive and negative importance, in fairness to the movie). i don't relate to its thesis about dysphoria and transness and lack thereof (this is much more about repression than transition, right, but it puts such a literal timer on owen). and i feel like it's hard to define the takeaway if you don't respond to that, esp without the finer, weirder details this mostly neglects.