Theories after the Pretty Little Liars Summer finale

Spoilers for The Ladykiller, obviously.

• "Oh what a surprise, it was Nate," SAID ABSOLUTELY NO ONE (I realize some people still did suspect Paige, but still...) The episode actually had me wondering if making the red herring that obvious (The music? The brilliant suspicous camera work? The fact that Paige's finger just happened to cover up the most important part of that message she received?) was intentional, because the effect it had on me was almost screaming at the screen in frustration when Emily told everyone she was going to a cabin in the woods with Nate. This is also one of the few complaints that I have, because I thought the previous episode made it fairly obvious that both Emily and Hanna realized that something was off with him and even without suspecting foul play, there's just no way that Emily would hang out with Nate in a freaking cabin after what happened between the two. I get that this was necessary for the plot but... they could have just not made his creepiness that obvious in the previous episode which perhaps would have retained some doubt as to who actually stalked and killed Maya before the finale. Hanna, friends don't let friends go away into the woods with creepy stalkers alone! 
• One of the reasons why I was so sure it couldn't be Paige is the sheer amount of effort the writers have put into creating this massive redemption arc for her character. I don't think she was meant to play such an important part in later seasons originally, so they had to come up with a compelling backstory and a solid explanation for her anger management issues - and they did. Paige works much better as a sort of mirror image of Mona (if there's a spectrum of possible reactions to being bullied by  Alison DiLaurentis), someone for whom it would have made a lot of sense to join the A team but who didn't. But I'm not going to lie - I'm pretty sure Lindsey Shaw could play a spectacular villain, but she'll also make a brilliant addition to the Liars, now that Paige knows as much as Caleb does. 
• And before I get back to Paige, because obviously that's unavoidable, isn't it interesting that between the love interests, Ezra is the one who knows the least, which coincides with the fact that Aria has been established as the one among them who is really good at lying to the people she loves? It's almost suspicous how little Ezra Fitz knows. 
• So... Paige. Both Nate and Paige happened to promise that they were probably willing to kill, and Paige said "there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep you safe" here - and Emily's original reaction to both of them was... a mixture of "you don't know how serious it can actually get" and "Violence is A's forte, and I'd rather not get you mixed up in any of that". Considering that Paige's backstory is about how she reacted to being bullied with physical violence (and maybe harmed herself, even though there was only a hint of that in the previous episode), the way this played out here was beautiful. Paige's contribution to Emily's safety is... subtly nodding when Emily is about to run away from Nate, telling her it's okay, even though it might mean being alone with him and getting killed, and then running interference with the police so that Emily can go off and comfort Hanna, because she understands how important Emily's friends are to her. And even then, even after all the cruel things Spencer has said to her, she is still trying to make a point to gain their trust (and I need more scenes between Lindsey Shaw and Troian Bellisario because the amount of emotion and meaning both of them can convey with only a look is ridiculous). But on to the other grand reveal...
• Is Toby one of the monsters Alison created? There are two options here. Either Toby has been part of the A team from the beginning, which still wouldn't mean necessarily that he doesn't care about Spencer (as I said before, we know very little about the motivations of the A team as a whole and Mona hinted that each of the members has their very own personal reason for being there). He could have been recruited right after Alison's body was found (at least it would have made sense for A to approach him then, considering how involved Spencer was in the whole thing). OR, and that's the more likely option in my opinion, Toby's gone undercover to destroy A from the inside. This sounds like something Toby would do, doesn't it (just like it was very Caleb to bring Chekhov's freaking gun to a showdown and get himself shot)? 
• The Caleb-gun thing was also a really interesting reminder of the fact that there are some unspoken rules in the "game" that he doesn't know but the Liars instinctually do? I don't know, something about this was really peculiar. It's the same thing with how the Liars are dealing with Jenna, they know that they are on opposite sides of something, even though they're not entirely sure what, and still, they go to school together and occasionally talk to her and Aria presumably recently played a concert with her. For some reason, despite everything, A isn't the kind of villain you aim a gun at (and maybe that was one of the points the show made with Nate, because that was a completely different story). 
• There are a few things that I'm fairly certain of: Toby won't be on the same team as Jenna unless it's for undercover spying reasons, and Toby wasn't the one who MADE THE NECKLACE OUT OF ALISON'S TEETH AND SENT IT TO EMILY. I think Toby built the new lair (because why recruit a teenage carpenter if you're not gonna use him?). There are a couple of open questions about how many members of the A team we've seen (in full A costume) - has Mona broken out of Radley before, or was it just for the special occasion of framing Paige for the murder? If the episode was vaguely chronological, then someone was following Paige, realized she wouldn't make it to the cemetery because Nate kidnapped her, and called Mona to find out what the new plan was (The original plan was to send Paige to the cemetery, have the Liars meet her there and then call Maya's phone) - except Toby was with Spencer throughout the day. There must have been at least one more person. 
• A wanted Emily out of harm's way because the Liars need to be alive for the game to play out. It's chilling to believe that Toby would have just walked away and left Paige there to die though. 
• Mona just walking out of Radley was awesome. She got all the best music this episode, too, especially The Hawk in Paris' Freaks was perfect. "Boys and the girls and the freaks in the middle". I hope we get a lot more Mona in the second half of the season.
• JENNA. I've always interpreted The First Secret, the title, referring not just to the original secret that Alison had (the story she tells in the beginning of the episode, of the two sisters), but also the first secret shared between the original members of the A team. I might be very wrong about this, but to me, the episode depicts the moment when A is conceived. Mona decides to fight back. Jenna comes to town and instead of accepting Alison DiLaurentis' proposal, she decides to choose her own friends. Lucas was part of it too, somehow. But we don't really know Jenna's role yet. She somehow bridges the distance between the NAT club and the A team (also it would make a lot of sense if Mona had to leave Radley because they were one person short, considering Jenna left Rosewood in the last episode to run away from Nate). 
• "WITH A PINK FURRY LAMP, HANNA?"
• It constantly surprises me how fond I am of Caleb. I hope he's okay (of course he is but still)
• It seemed like Spencer was a bit outside the group in the final scene, the fall-out of all of this will be interesting. 
• Sometimes the show reminds us of how terrible her family is; because even though Aria's dad is the absolute worst, Ella makes up for most of his awfulness, but the Hastings are just really, really painfully miserable all around. "After almost being murdered in the woods, perhaps it will make all of you feel better to know that I've freed Garrett Reynolds, so he can go back to the people who've been torturing you for months. Yay, lawyers!!"
• Poor Maya though. It's so sad that we only found out more about her after her death. 
• Werewolf Toby, scurrying off into the night... 

#PLL

SPOILER #NOONEISEVERSAVE 

JOKE'S ON YOU, SPENCER.

...

My neighbour is terrorizing me with computer game heartrate monitor noise and "OIDA" at all times of the day and night, I retaliate with Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy to educate him about the history of Sleater-Kinney. It's mutually assured destruction. 

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics: 

Jadaliyya interviews Nigel Gibson about Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth) and the Arab Uprisings. 

The National Interest discusses the "elusive Obama Doctrine" and outlines the features of the Obama's administration foreign policy and argues that "he has given Democrats their first real shot at being America’s leading party on foreign policy since Franklin Roosevelt and the earliest days of Harry Truman".

Paul Ryan didn't boost Mitt Romney's numbers. Mitt Romney reaches a stunning 0 per cent support from African American voters in a recent NBC/WSJ poll. Paul Ryan Gosling is an awesome twitter account. Todd Akin, a Republican Senate nominee from Missouri, coins the most disgusting phrase of the year and thinks women are mystical creatures with superpowers, but not in a good way. 

Pop Culture: 

Interview with Joe Dempsie about Gendry and his new role in BBC's Murder, a two-part drama that starts this Sunday and was created by Birger Larsen (Forbrydelsen). 

Kate Hart discovered an unfinished manuscript of a very personal novel by Patricia Highsmith in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern. 

There's an excellent and long essay about Christopher Nolan's innovativeness at Observation on film art.

Sleater-Kinney's One Beat turns ten this year. 

Sleater-Kinney was one of the great American rock trios, so god knows I don’t want to underplay Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss. They’re all over the album. Brownstein has those cuttingly coy vocal interjections and those fuzzed-out guitar-hero leads. Weiss remains one of the most instinctive rock drummers ever, her controlled boom keeping time but also filling all the spaces that need filling. Anyone who’s heard the Wild Flag album knows what they can do, even without Tucker. And the complicated, intuitive guitar interplay between Tucker and Brownstein — those riffs coiling and winding and answering each other like old friends in conversation — was always an absolute wonder to behold. But more than any other Sleater-Kinney album, One Beat belongs to Corin Tucker. This is the album where she really unleashed that feral, passionate howl, where it found the deepest extremes of gut-scrape. And her lyrics are just shattering things, all love and fear and anger and sadness and hope. 

Stereogum: One Beat Turns 10, August 20, 2012

Sun, Chan Marshall's first record containing original material since The Greatest, is coming out in a few weeks, and a Guardian interviewer hangs out with her in her Miami residence. 

XLR8R gives an interesting tour of contemporary Russian electronic music.  

Theories for the Pretty Little Liars Summer finale

Mostly speculation, maybe spoilers (from the Canadian promo)...

• I don't think that Maya's death had anything to do with A. She was killed by her stalker. My money is on Nate - he certainly isn't Maya's cousin (the creepy way he said she was "fluid" to Emily sealed the deal). He's aggressive, possessive, and the way he approached Hanna after Emily told him they should just be friends definitely set off my stalker alert. The maybe-not: A's threat that someone would die if the Liars didn't comply in the second season finale and the fact that Mona's timer apparently went off right when Maya's body was found (but maybe A just made sure that the police would find her, she'd been dead for a while at that point).
• It's pretty clear that Jenna is referring to Nate, not Paige, when she comes by Emily's. She warns her of a "friend". Jenna wouldn't have hesitated to call Paige Emily's girlfriend, and she's seen them together multiple times. Twice, Emily was present when Nate tried to intimitate her. My theory is that Jenna saw something happen and only put the pieces together when Nate threatened her ("I know you saw me").  
• In the promo, A calls Emily and tells her to run away. If I'm right about Nate, then he is somehow putting Emily in danger and A is looking out for her. 
• A is a team. That's not a theory, Mona confirmed as much with Spencer in the car (so the A-tag in yesterday's episode shouldn't have been a surprise for anyone). I think what's also important and hasn't really been adressed is that Mona sort of gave Spencer the opportunity to join the team, so the question is: who else they approached about this, and who might have said yes?
• Who is the A team - not just "who is part of it" but "why and when"? Alison was a confirmed victim (this also makes me wonder how much of her cruelty was actually her doing and if some of her actions were the result of A blackmailing her - there's a hint of the latter when she walks away from Paige after picking up her love letter to Emily, but that might have been something else). 
• A isn't actually about destroying people; he's about control and power. It feels significant that a group of Rosewood teens is regularly assembling in the Kahn cabin to play games - that are all about control and power / truth and lies. I wonder what part Alison played, considering she was friends with someone who was practically raised in that environment (CeCe). On the other hand, the kind of skills that are honed there seem to be specifically designed to help whoever takes part battle someone like Alison DiLaurentis (or become her). Maybe Jenna's "mutually assured destruction" comment quite literally comes from a long history of cold war between two parties (and how does the even creepier NAT club fit into all of this?). 
• Lucas is part of it. He would have had plenty of reasons to join AFTER HANNA WHACKED HIM OVER THE HEAD AND LEFT HIM TO DROWN (which nobody seems to remember and yet "drowning" is usually the first thing that comes up when a different character is discussed...), or maybe he's being blackmailed. 
• Spencer's slowly going crazy and I kind of want someone to notice. 
• I thought it was interesting that Spencer was the one who jumped so quickly at CeCe's story about Paige: not just because Spencer always needs someone to focus on and she's just lost Garrett, but also because she seems to be the one who has spent the least time dealing with what kind of person Alison was (Hanna has befriended Lucas and Mona and learned what it meant to be the victim of the kind of cruelty Alison reserved for people she didn't care about, Emily's struggle with Alison was more severe than anyone else's because it's so tangled up in her identity, and Aria... well, I guess Aria has impersonated her when she assumed one of her secret identities?). 
• Aria's comment that CeCe never left high school also seems important - it's not clear if CeCe was a kind of mentor to Alison, but she defnitely knows how to play power games, and what is she doing hanging out with a bunch of high school students? 
• It's interesting to see how Pretty Little Liars, a show on ABC family, addresses serious issues without explicitly naming them. Alison's comment about the bumps on Paige's thigh only make sense after Paige explaining that she used to harm herself; and did Ashley actually tell Hanna that Officer Wilden raped her when she was drunk? (She clearly stated that she was too drunk to give consent, and the show has dealt with the finer points of enthusiastic informed consent before.)
• Paige McCullers though. The way the episode dealt with the fall-out of the kiss between Emily and Nate was beautiful. Paige waited (sort of passive-aggressively, but still) for Emily to tell her, then provided a theory that proved she'd been thinking about the issue for a while, and at some point managed to put her feelings jealousy and being hurt aside. They talked about it and it didn't become a major conflict, and this played especially well because I think everyone was expecting a major fight, because of Paige's history and EVERY OTHER TELEVISION SHOW ABOUT TEENAGERS IN RELATIONSHIPS EVER. Emily (probably frustrated that she can't share the other overbearing fact about her life) can't help but be completely honest about this. Paige has grown so much that's she's managed to do something most people don't ever learn: how to be understanding and supportive even after being angry enough to throw away perfectly good Chinese food.
• “Why are your friends talking about me instead of to me?” 
• Nate, regardless of whether he did kill Maya or not, is a creep (and has been from the beginning) and Hanna calling him out on it was validating. 
• Book spoiler: We don't really know much about Alison's motives, and I think that a lot of it is related to something that the show hasn't revealed yet. If Alison really does have a twin, and one of the two is dead, then A might be connected to whatever struggle took place between the two. /
• Is this the first time ever that the Liars are genuinely pitted against each other since the show began (with the exception of Hanna almost revealing Aria's relationship to Ella, but that didn't feel as serious as Spencer's "A may also go by the name Paige" does)- did CeCe manage to do something that A has been failing at for more than a year? 
• Where's Jason DiLaurentis?

Spin fail

Das von Stefan Kappacher geführte Mittagsjournal-Interview mit H.C. Strache letzten Samstag waren so ziemlich die unterhaltsamsten Minuten, die ich die letzten Wochen erlebt habe, und vielleicht die ersten merklichen Brüche innerhalb der standfesten Fassade der FPÖ Richtung Wahlerfolg 2013.

Erstens: missglückter (zumindest meiner Meinung nach) Versuch, die wiederholten Vereitelungen eines Neuwahlantrags im Kärntner Landtags durch Verlassen des Sitzungssaales der FPK mit der angekündigten Verfassungsklage gegen den ESM-Vertrag in Verbindung zu bringen. 

"Die Freiheitlichen sind der einzige Österreichschutzmechanismus wenns darum geht, gegen die Rot-Schwarz-Grüne Allianz, die Österreich verraten hat, bei einem ESM-Diktat zur Verantwortung zu ziehen, mit einer ESM-Verfassungsgerichtshofsklage."

Die erste Hälfte des Interviews war essentiell ein "wie oft bringe ich ESM in einem Satz unter, wenn ich trotzdem noch Verben und Adjektive verwenden muss" (eine Lösung wäre vielleicht, zu ESMen und ESMisch zu sein). 

Zweitens, die Fortsetzung des 2005 begonnenen Orwell'schen Projekts, jegliche Kontinuitäten zwischen FPÖ/FPK und BZÖ zu leugnen, obwohl sich das FPK erst 2009 vom Kärntner BZÖ abspaltete. Interessante Wendung im Interview: zwei Wochen zuvor hatte Strache noch davon gesprochen, dass sich Jörg Haider "korrumpieren" ließ, jetzt wurde er "eingefangen von dem System". Was es politisch mit einer Verteidigung Haiders ("zieht den toten Haider mit hinein, der isch nicht wehren kann") noch zu gewinnen gibt, weiß ich nicht, aber Martin Graf darf als Burschenschafter auch weiterhin wie ein Cartoonamboss über der Partei hängen, obwohl nichts schwieriger zu spinnen ist, als eine alte Frau, die sich beraubt fühlt. 

Drittens, wortwörtlich: Strache (gefragt ob seine Forderung nach politischen Folgen bereits nach einer erstinstanzlichen Verurteilung) spricht von einem "Meinungsurteil" gegen Susanne Winter, der Interviewer entgegnet "der Paragraph heißt Verhetzung", Strache nennt Winter daraufhin "eine gerichtlich anerkannte Islamismuskritikerin". Letzte Woche wurde eine Freundin von mir von einem noch nicht gerichtlich anerkannten Besitzumverteiler besucht, der Fernseher ist trotzdem weg.

Viertens, Frank Stronachs neugegründete Partei (Programm bisher: zurück zum Schilling, Fla[a]t Ta[a]x), von Strache als "Wunsch des Rot-Schwarzen Systems, die Parteienlandschaft zu zersplittern, aus Angst vor der FPÖ" interpretiert (eine spannende Aussage, wenn man bedenkt, wer das Parteisystem zuletzt "zersplittert" hat, siehe Punkt 2). Nachdem man aber besser nicht zum Schmiedl geht, sieht Strache den "Steuerflüchtling, alten Mann ohne Zukunftsperspektiven" nicht als Bedrohung, auch wenn er nach den gleichen Wählern fischt (wobei er mit seiner Reform des Steuersystems wahrscheinlich genau so mit bisherigen ÖVP-Wählern rechnet, die sich bis jetzt von dem wackeligen aber immer noch existierenden FPÖ-Stigma abschrecken haben lassen und jetzt erleichtert ihrer Schillings-Nostalgie/ihrem EU-Feindbild frönen können).

Bonusrunde Stichwortbingo: 

"Österreichischer Rotfunk"

"Zwangsgebührenzahler"

"Man geht zum Schmied"

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Aimee Mann - Charmer



When you’re a charmer
People respond
They can’t see the hidden agenda
You got them along

...

About to listen to Sun and feeling like I'm not really prepared for it. What a weird fucking day.

Dissent as a personality disorder

Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, the state-controlled corporations, or his menacing police system, or his obedient judicial system. It may be that the harsh, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; that otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more persuasive, transcendent guarantees of his long tenure at the pinnacle of power. It was then that it became necessary to make use of the aesthetic of the Orthodox religion, which is historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself. 

Closing statement by Yekaterina Samutsevich, n+1, August 13, 2012 

In the closing section of the verdict, Judge Marina Syrova read “psychiatric-psychological examinations” of Nadia, Masha, and Katya, as the women are known. All three were found to suffer from a “mixed-personality disorder,” a condition that included different combinations of a “proactive approach to life,” “a drive for self-fulfillment,” “stubbornly defending their opinion,” “inflated self-esteem,” “inclination to opposition behavior,” and “propensity for protest reactions.” 

The New Yorker: The Pussy Riot Verdict, August 17, 2012

Fun fact about Vienna

Wenn man auf das Palais Niederösterreich zugeht, steht die längst Zeit über "DIE STAENDE NIEDER", 

das "-ÖSTERREICHS" klingt dann eigentlich nur noch wie die punchline. 

Popular - Behind this smile is this desperate person who doesn’t think she deserves any happiness.

Popular: 2x08 Misery Loathes Company.

Ai Weiwei on Beijing

It's a home not occupied by the people. That's the problem. A home can be poor, and we'll still love it because it belongs to us. It can show our feeling, our attachment, our memory, and our hope for the future. But in Beijing, people disappear for political reasons or other reasons, yet we have no open trials, no media discussion. My name cannot appear on the Internet. What is the future? 

Foreign Policy: 'Twitter Is My City': An Exclusive Interview with Ai Weiwei

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Santigold - Disparate Youth

Don't look ahead there's stormy weather
Another road block in our way
But if we go, we go together
Our hands are tied here if we stay
Oh, we said our dreams will carry us
And if they don't fly we will run
Now we push right past to find out
How to win what they all lost
Oh-ah, Oh-ah
We know now we want more
Oh-ah, Oh-ah
A life worth fighting for

Favourite Paul Ryan facts after the announcement

• Paul Ryan, like Sarah Palin, has no foreign policy experience. 
• Paul Ryan, unlike Sarah Palin, is not female (courtesy of the ORF news team, well-researched!)
• He's younger than Joe Biden. 
• He approved SOPA etc.
• He's a Catholic (and so is Joe Biden).
• And / but "virtually unknown in the Latino community"
• Romney's choice is a "game change" in a seemingly faltering campaign (and a risky/bold choice - but my favourite quote from this article is "Mr. Romney, who is not known for routinely exhibiting physical warmth, patted Mr. Ryan on the back 10 times after his running mate bounded onto the stage." Or, as SNL put it: "I AM A HUMAN MAN!")
• "He also professed an admiration for the ideas of anti-government libertarian guru Ayn Rand."
• Politico examines his plans for Medicare.
• And here's the speech he delivered in Norfolk, Virginia today (and the video)

Democrats had already planned to spend much of the fall campaign telling voters about the horrors of Ryan's budget plan -- in one unforgettable ad from the 2010 campaign, a senior citizen in a wheelchair is actually pushed off a cliff -- and making the case that Romney would implement it. Now, that argument becomes much easier to make. 

The Atlantic: Paul Ryan's Message: 'Courage', August 11, 2012

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Micachu & The Shapes - Never

Pretty Little Liars

Emotional rambling and possible spoilers up to 3x08, so proceed with caution. 

A couple of days ago I was trying to compile a lists of things I genuinely look forward to, pop culturally wise, in a week, and it just so happened that Pretty Little Liars somehow made it to the top of that list. Not that Breaking  Bad isn't enjoyable, as the point in time when Skyler White kills Walter (that's how it ends, right? It must!) draws nearer. Not that Leverage isn't one of the most loveable shows lightning up horribly hot and lamentably humid summers. Not that Warehouse 13's return didn't excite me because that's one show always ending its season in a surprisingly shocking and emotionally devastating fashion, pointing towards its potential. But it's August now, and the one thing I most look forward to is getting up on a Wednesday morning to watch a new episode of Pretty Little Liars, and one of the things that I dread most is the unavoidable moment at the end of August when the shows goes on hiatus until next year, even though I recognize that two hiatuses are better than one horribly long one. 

So what happened? What happened between the first time I saw the pilot and decided that a show about the death of a cruel high school queen bee and her best friends, who only came together because of Alison and are now drawn back together because of her loss, wasn't for me, and the moment that I realized it absolutely was for me?

I just want to mention right now that something about the show made me read all of the books, so I'm eternally grateful to the show runner (for several reasons, but also for this one) that the show is "based on" the books, but doesn't strictly follow them. There's probably one major spoiler in the books that I assume will eventually be realized on screen, and people who are aware of the original story will be waiting for it to happen, while people who aren't have been given enough hints to guess it, I think. I'd argue that Pretty Little Liars' strength does not lie in the major of its mystery, even though the whodunit may draw in viewers - it's the why that's much more interesting than the who, which is the reason why PLL can get away with explaining the impossibility of an all-knowing, all-seeing antagonist with a "perpetual state of hyperreality". It doesn't really matter how Mona knew what she knew and was able to do what she did; it's much more interesting to consider her reasons, her motivation, for haunting the Liars, and it's even more interesting to consider what A's endgame is, because sometimes his agenda seems to be more about forcing the Liars to realize their own power and potential than to destroy them (which is of course also what Alison did to them, and the precise reason why they all, despite all the flashback about how horrible Alison was as a friend and as a human being, they all insist that she was their best friend - and, in the case of Emily, the person they loved). 

This is one of the reasons why I find this show so compelling; apart from the fact that it portrays a group of friends that is so tightly knit that they can't even stay mad at each other for more than one and a half episodes, that they prioritize each other's well being over everything else, the way the show handles the relationship between the Liars and their eternal antagonist, A, is incredibly fascinating. Each of the four Liars grows because of A, because of the specific way A challenges them. Emily is forced to come out (and falls on her face, sure), but it's almost like A reveals their individual weaknesses and then helps them to overcome them,  and they all grow stronger in the process. Aria realizes all the things she wouldn't have about the way her father tries to control her sexuality. Spencer deals with her incredibly fucked up family instead of becoming like them. Hanna - probably my favourite amongst them, and who would have seen that one coming, goes from being incredibly conscious of her social station and willing to do anything to defend it to being the most compassionate characters of the show, the one amongst them who always knows when making amends is in order, when saying "I am sorry" is the right thing to do. It's magical, because the most interesting question the show poses isn't "who is A" (or, maybe more accurately, "who are A"), but "who will the Liars become in the course of this conflict". 

I appreciate that A could be every- and anyone. At this point, I wouldn't even put it beyond the show to make one of the Liars part of the A team (if one of them is revealed to be playing the long game at the end of six seasons and a movie, all the more power to them, to be honest). What brings me back with bated breath every week are the meaningful relationships, the character development, the incredible love these these characters have for each other. The biggest lie ever told about high school is that the only thing that can come out of the horrible and quite inescapable insecurities is competition, that people are doomed to tear each other apart in order to showcase what makes them special. A unites the Liars, and they are all the stronger for it. 

Random notes: 

•  Mona! I'm intrigued by all the complex relationships the show has, especially Alison/Everyone (why Spencer still refers to Alison as "her best friend" and brings up the fact that Emily was in love with Alison in a conversation), but Mona and Hanna have a special place in my heart. 
• Paige McCullers and how she falls over her own feet trying to run away from the one thing she desperately needs + Lindsey Shaw has a face, help. 
• The weird way in which the show manages to weed out all the character I don't find so compelling (mostly by killing them off) and ends up with an adorable group of supporting hobbits + helpful computer website page hackers. 
• The moms. 
• The moms. 
• NO REALLY, THE MOMS ARE SO GREAT. 
• Lolita and "the only reason Ezra/Aria doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth is because Ian Harding is so adorable", let's just replay that "slowly running towards each other in the rain" sequence a million times and write about it in our diary. 
• (but just the literary references in general, and the feedback the show seems to get from interacting with fans and prominent reviewers, see "Radley Sanatorium".) 
• It's almost like people who were involved in Popular split up 50/50 between Glee and PLL and one of the two got the better deal in the bargain. 
• tbc

Reading List: Juli

Fiction:

Sharon Kay Penman: The Sunne in Splendour.
William Shakespeare: Richard II.
William Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part 1 and 2.
William Shakespeare: Henry V.
Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Venice.
Tom Stoppard: Arcadia.
Greg Rucka: Batwoman - Elegy.

Films: 

Russian Revolution in Color (2007).
Attack the Block (2011, Joe Cornish).
Shame (2011, Steve McQueen).
Prometheus (2012, Ridley Scott).
In the Valley of Elah (2007, Paul Haggis).
Les combats de femme: Un amour de femme (2001, Sylvie Verheyde).
La turbulence des fluides (2002, Manon Briand).
Was am Ende zählt (2007, Julia von Heinz).
The Girlfriend Experience (2009, Steven Soderbergh).
Higher Ground (2011, Vera Farmiga).
The Lion in Winter (1968, Anthony Harvey).
Primal Fear (1996, Greory Hoblit).
Der Name der Rose (1986, Jean-Jacques Annaud).
Tell-Tale (2009, Michael Cuesta).
Nathalie... (2003, Anne Fontaine).


Shows: 


Dexter, Season Six.
Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Sasameki Koto.
Maria sama ga Miteru.
The Hollow Crown.
She-Wolves: England Early Queens.


Others: 


BBC Radio Four: Plantagenet. 
The Teaching Company: The American Civil War.