Pride’s over everyone! It’s now illegal to be gay again.
I finally got to watch I saw the tv glow - I knew I had wanted to watch it and every trans person with good taste in movies (including here) said to watch it. I did like it, but I wish I had been warned that
spoiler for the tone of the movie and heavy stuff (I'll say tone was not happy cause I wished someone had told me)
It’s a downer and Isabel/Owen doesn’t figure out that her life is a lie, even though this life that was supposedly rooted in logic includes Owen being able to support himself from… restocking balls in a ball pit??? Or that his manager never aged a day in 30 years??
I was able to trans my gender in our irl Midnight Realm so for me, I couldn’t really relate as much to the inability to take that leap - it was just when I had cracked my egg, I only had one direction - no choice to go back to boy mode; because it was transition or suicide, for me. I mean, I’m certainly sympathetic. I can understand it as a survival method. I just can’t relate on a personal level, that’s all I’m saying.
In a TV show like The Pink Opaque, Isabel would have escaped on her own right at the last minute in a double episode length season premiere. So I imagine the reason it ended on that cliffhanger is that we didn’t get to see her finally claw her wat out.
spoiler
I believe the ending is left vague because it’s intended to be a work of interactive fiction and we’re supposed to write the movie’s ending ourselves. It’s our own version of The Pink Opaque.
I officially made the decision to transition like a week before watching it and that was the conclusion I came to. My own experiences were pretty dead on in many ways to Isabel’s, even right down to the age/time period, so when I watched that ending I felt relieved because I knew that I had already escaped. I feel like I had essentially written the real ending before even seeing the film.
I made the choice not to watch it cuz I don’t need anymore psychic damage
Yeah I’m kind of over trans tragedy. Give me trans wrath like in Monkey Man or trans joy, trans liberation
Real as fuck, ngl I was sort of disappointed when I heard TV Glow was a closeted suffering fest. Feels quaint, Idk. I still wobble back and forth on whether or not to watch it.
Also I just looked up Monkey Man and ayo?
spoiler
I may be weird but personally I saw the ending as sorta optimistic even before I heard about the theory that the pink opaque is just starting a new season (S06E01 or w/e).
The weight of suffocation by inaction is weighing down on Isabel/Owen enough that she finally externalizes it again for the first time since being told by Tera/Maddy about the Midnight Realm, screaming for help and yelling that she’s dying but nobody can hear her/relate. While it’s an incredibly isolating event it leads to her realizing that nobody else is going to help her so she has to help herself, she has to do something, she can’t just stagnate like she’s done for 40 years. I saw the scene in the bathroom as her finally confronting what Tera/Maddy said and seeing that, yeah, she was right. Owen’s body isn’t her body. What she felt before about her insides being ripped out and replaced was right.
I feel that the very last scene was written to be as open to interpretation as possible with the knowledge of what had just unfolded but I saw it as the start of Isabel’s new beginning/escape.
Personally I didn’t get the same emotional reaction to the movie that a lot of other people seemed to get, but that may be because of how I see myself and where I am in my own transition. However, I think that if this movie had come out before I started to transition I’d have a stronger reaction.
