you can call me Bee! she-her/ ela-a-dela 🇧🇷 i mostly post about Journey To The West related media and i make and draw stuff :P (feel free to ask about my JTTW version!)
Exist For Love by Aurora actually makes me cry and everyone should go listen to it right now
rambles under cut
The gentle love displayed in Journey to the West actually hits different and I can't explain it without sounding like a crazy person I fear
as someone who was surrounded by toxic masculinity and punished for crying as a child, and in turn had severe fears of vulnerability and displays of emotion, it's genuinely so special to me to find this story about a group of men who cry and express their love for each other so often
to have the Monkey King, a super powerful, respected masculine figure, be motivated by his love for his friends, to cry out of concern for them when they're apart, to so often express his love for them in small and considerate ways, to be happy to hold hands and be affectionate with other men, he's more devoted to his best friend than anything else in the whole world, and he's seen as a safe figure for children and women and generally oppressed peoples??? what the heck /pos
they cry so often, and it's kind of weird and silly to say that affected me, but to have the two main characters (Tripitaka and Wukong,) who are both grown men, cry so often and often over each other, just feels like such a warm hug
And Tripitaka cries all the time, it is because he's The Whump of all time, he's very much supposed to be helpless and a bit pathetic, but also. It means a lot to me. Idk. I like that he cries over literally every little thing, the smallest inconvenience brings him to tears just as much as the life-threatening peril does and I think that's so wonderful
I genuinely did not expect this series to be as much of a comfort as it is but here we are. I'd like to write a more in depth and proper ramble about this and actually sight specific scenes I really enjoyed and everything, but there is quite a lot lmao. one day when I have time to sit down with my metaphorical ink and quill and flip through all the chapters again, I'll draft more synchronized thoughts, because I have THOUGHTS (that no one asked for)
They're so dear to me and become closer friends every volume and that's so special. If you read all this thanks ig lol 🥹
“When the monkeys heard this, they all clapped their hands and shouted happily, ‘If the great king is Elder Sun, then we are all Junior Suns, Suns the Thrid, small Suns, tiny Suns—the Sun Family, the Sun Nation, and the Sun Cave!’” ~JttW ch 2
“Displaying his martial skill, he made extensive visits to various heroes and warriors; performing his magic, he made many good friends. At this time, moreover, he entered into fraternal alliance with six other monarchs…Day after day they discussed civil and military arts, exchanged wine cups and goblets, sang and danced…there was not a single pleasure that they overlooked.” ~JttW ch 3
“He was free and content to tour the mansions and meet friends, to make new acquaintances and form new alliances at his leisure. The numerous gods…he called them all brother and treated them in a fraternal manner.” ~JttW ch 5
And then, after five centuries beneath a mountain:
“You are the Great Compassionate Bodhisattva Guanyin…Thank you, thank you for coming to see me! At this place every day is like a year, for not a single acquaintance has ever come to visit me.” ~JttW ch 8
English is not my first language, and i didn't watch the movie, so i JUST realised that Project Hail Mary is from the prayer Hail Mary... Hail Mary is the Ave Maria prayer🤦
Retsuko had the right idea. Singing loud as fuck when angry is INCREDIBLY therapeutic, it feels AMAZING (still gotta learn how to do the metal voice though.. one day i'll get it right!) 😊🌸
wukong finds out from the three stars of penglai that zhen yuan, patriarch of all the earth's immortals(!), is a much bigger deal than he originally thought. so he rushes back to his first-ever master's immortality school, only to find it in ruins and abandoned for who knows how long. it's been over 800 years, after all. and he's just running around crying out for subodhi >_<
This cannot possibly be a ‘hot take’ as it is 208 years late but
I am floored by the claim that anyone other than Mary Shelley could have written Frankenstein
BECAUSE
Even in the modern day, I do not think that I can recall a book that was so very clearly influenced by the author’s real lived experience. Not just her romantic relationship, but also her lived experience as a mother.
Like the character of Victor Frankenstein? That was so crystal clearly her clowning on her man. If you know anything about Percy “ohhhhhh another fainting spell has overcome me and I shall be bedridden for 2 fortnights at least” Bysshe Shelley - that IS Victor Frankenstein. She IS making fun of him only in the way that a long-annoyed person can make fun of her fuckass man!
Yes, men *can* write about themselves self-deprecatingly - but not like this. I would not put it past Percy to have read this work and have helped edit it, sure. But the work itself was all Mary and she is really, really good at it. I read Frankenstein and I was like, “god, she is so funny. She is so fucking funny. She is smart as hell but all that intelligence didn’t prevent her from ending up (and getting stuck with) a weird artsy dude who is poetic and whimsical and philosophical but who is also annoying and needy and flirts with her friends (and more) and just is not very stable or reliable.”
When reading Frankenstein I felt like I was having a delicious conversation with my bestie about her ain’t-shit man. She would have been one hell of a conversationalist. She had to hang out with Percy’s fuckass friends too, so I’ll bet Lord Byron and his asshole behavior was an influence.
And.
Mary was deeply traumatized by the experience of losing her children. Three of her four children died. Her babies died. And there was nothing she did wrong, nothing that could have been done to prevent this except not having had birthed them, and this is heavy, constant burden on her heart.
This loss and this horror is stitched in every chapter of Frankenstein. Her grief and disgust and guilt are ever present both in the dialogue of Victor Frankenstein and the monster himself. Through Victor she expresses the horror of the idea of creation. Had it not been for the act of creating life (in her case, intercourse), the children would never have come to be. Mothers, when their children suffer, automatically blame themselves. How could I have prevented this? What did I do wrong? Why did my child have to suffer? And when the child dies, a mom can only think, why where they ever born? Why did I do this? I want to take it all back. *I* caused this to happen. The guilt the guilt the guilt the regret, the shame, the horror and the pain that can never, ever leave because you allowed the life to exist. The book was the result of a challenge to write a ghost story, and Mary is absolutely haunted by the deaths of her children.
And through the monster himself, she expresses rage. Her babies died and are no longer with her physically, but their brief lives are specters of pain for her. Their lives left her with grief she cannot ever escape and she is MAD about that. The character of the monster is one of deep hatred. To Victor Frankenstein the monster says, “You cause me to live. Now you suffer the consequences of my twisted unlife. You are to blame. I will never stop trying to hurt you because you did not love me enough, and because you made me happen.” The monster chases Victor Frankenstein, causing grief and destruction again and again and again because this is a pain Mary cannot escape. You cannot ever get over the death of a child. And it happened three times for her. Again and again in the book horrible things happen for no reason and no one is to blame, they just happen because that is the closest thing (emotionally) to what she has experienced. The death of a child has no explanation. It should not happen, but sometimes it just does.
The monster tells Victor Frankenstein that he will never stop coming after him, never stop destroying everything he loves. Because to bring him to life but to never love him in return and help him and nurture him is and act that deserves ceaseless punishment. That is what Mary believes. The monster and Frankenstein are locked in a cycle of pain and disgust and rage and putting this in the context of someone who lost a child (not once, but three times) hugely influences just why these characters are fated live in this endless cycle.
So how could anyone BUT Mary Shelley have written Frankenstein.
While i was talking with a friend, i asked them if Jax suffered less, and transitioned in better circumstances, would she bê a better person, or would be like an Emo Regina George?
We both answered Regina George
And it inspired me to draw this
REGINA JAX!!!
And i might make an AU about it, just like, silly redraws and designs of the Circus cast If they were in Mean Girls.
