wallacepolsom

oozey mess
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
No title available
AnasAbdin
will byers stan first human second

pixel skylines

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Acquired Stardust
noise dept.

izzy's playlists!
Monterey Bay Aquarium
sheepfilms

JVL
we're not kids anymore.
$LAYYYTER
hello vonnie
cherry valley forever

ellievsbear

JBB: An Artblog!

seen from Türkiye
seen from Estonia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Hong Kong SAR China

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Malaysia

seen from Türkiye
seen from Bulgaria

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from China
seen from Germany

seen from Malaysia

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom

seen from United States
@arreish
Happy Pride
Stop posting AI-generated animal videos without disclaimer to Tumblr or I'm crashing the ship into a cliffside
i'm going back to sleep
Komaeda, thank god it's you, I had a horrible nightmare that there was a guy
Hold on Komaeda, I'm sensing a presence
when people defend the “Cis white guy is default” thing like “He’s meant to be an everyman we can all relate to and project on!” kindly remind them the largest ethnic group in the WORLD is Han Chinese and the highest gender percentage fluctuates so if you want an ACTUAL “default” you want a 40 year old chinese person whose gender changes from year to year.
#give us the middle-aged gender fluid Chinese protagonist that we can all relate to and project on (via @mr-and-mr-pavus)
I'd love to defend Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life for a minute (I don't usually make long posts and may delete this later for that reason) because I feel like writing something inconsequential.
Other people get lots of comfort watching the original show (especially in the fall). I feel cozier watching AYITL. The characters are much older; the dizzy, flighty, still-growing-up feelings for Lorelai and Rory have faded, and it's full of moments that make it clear that certain things in their lives are definitely always going to be there. Constants. Luke, Stars Hollow, family, Kirk, Taylor, the changing of the seasons. Now - for my defense. (I'm rambling.)
Okay, many, many people don't like the revival. I understand. It's different in a lot of ways from the original show, and lots of expectations were not met. When I first saw it, it threw me too. But I didn't dislike it. In fact, the more I rewatched it, the more I thought it was almost better than the first show. The leading ladies are not flashy young stars anymore - Rory is Lorelai's age when the OG show first began, and Lorelai is gracefully and fabulously careening toward grandma times with all her wit and charm, all her most comfy habits, and it makes me want to hang out with her more than Season 1 of the show ever did. And I think the fact that ASP came back to write for these characters again and end it on her terms, at last, was an absolute win, and I love how she did it because it fixed so many things I thought were wrong in the show.
Lorelai is self-centered, terrified of commitment, and has no idea how to put others before herself and not run away during the hard times - unless something involves Rory.
Rory is self-centered, thinks she is special, and has no idea how to deal with not getting what she wants. The consequences of her actions almost never directly affect her, and when they do, said consequences are quickly stamped on and snuffed out by her mother/friends/family.
Emily is self-centered, desperate to be in control, and finds her worth in what other people think, in how things look, and that includes what Richard thinks.
In the show, Lorelai has moments where she learns to stay and learns to put other people who are not Rory before herself. Those moments don't last. She definitely has good intentions, but they're all conditional. She only has good intentions up to a point - and that point is usually when someone or something threatens her happiness and feeling of safety, or Rory's happiness and feelings of safety (understandable; that's her child).
In the show, Rory is told she is the sweetest kid in the whole world. Rory is told she'd never do anything to hurt anybody. Rory is told she's special, she's smarter than her peers, she's not like other girls. Rory 100% believes that. She also probably has a bit of a problem with living up to that image - she wants to be all of those things, and thinks she is, and can't handle it when it seems like people think she's not. (That may or may not have something to do with Christopher, who always had somewhere more important to be, or with Lorelai, who was so cool and strong and sure of Rory.)
And the show has moments, too, where Lorelai has to face the music and see that she's screwed up or is hurting someone with her behavior (Max, Chris, Luke, Jason, Emily, Richard, Sookie), but very very often, Lorelai breezes her way through that music and keeps moving, and flits to the next thing or person that will make her happy, because she does not know how to stay and stand and fix what she's broken. Because it only matters if she is happy and if Rory is happy. (The same thing goes for Rory in the show - consequences come, but Rory rarely has to properly deal with them herself. She is coddled and propped up the whole way.)
Now, to my point!
I watched AYITL and noticed something was different right away. Lorelai is with Luke (she should be), who is the opposite of her - constant, loyal, selfless, determined to stay no matter how hard things get. But they're not married. Lorelai is scared to really commit, and marriage is one of the hardest things you can commit to - ever. And Lorelai is not happy. Rory, for her part, is not perfectly settled as a reporter or a journalist or any of the things she was always told she could be. And she's not happy. And Emily, bless her, has lost her husband and her false sense of control is spinning away, and of course, she is not happy.
And A Year In The Life takes the show's clumsy half-arc of these three Gilmore women and perfectly completes it.
Lorelai's fear of commitment and habit of bolting when things get hard drives her to push every new chef out of the Dragonfly, refuse to expand the inn to better accommodate Michel's needs, shun Rory's tell-all of her past mistakes, shame Richard at his funeral and break Emily's heart, and worst of all, nearly wreck the closest thing to a proper relationship she's ever had: the one she has with Luke. She can't face that she misses her father, loved her father, and that maybe her mother is right about her relationship status. She can't face that people might read Rory's writing and see all her flaws and all her mistakes growing up in printed ink, and she can't run from that. And when Rory insists, Lorelai cuts ties. Lorelai has spent years avoiding marriage with Luke. She has spent years hurting her mother in an effort to defend herself at all costs. And she has spent years ensuring the Dragonfly Inn is exactly what she wants it to be; because changing it would be uncomfortable, and as a result, she won't commit to a new chef, she won't expand, and she's about to lose Michel the way she lost Sookie.
Rory's bubble of self-centeredness and assurance that she's special is popped with the needle of reality at last: she is not special. She's a young woman who has to actually work hard to find a job and make some money, like everyone her age. She is talented and she is smart, but she's not God's gift to journalism, and people keep saying no, and people keep asking her to prove her skills and her merit, and she doesn't know how to deal with that because everyone has always told her she can do anything she wants and she's the best. She wants a distinguished career and can't find anyone who will take her on; she tries to write for a raging batty feminist (hello Alex Kingston I love your work) and that goes sideways; she wants Logan Huntzberger but she turned down his proposal and now he's engaged and it has to be a secret; she wants somewhere to live - just not Stars Hollow because she's better than the thirty-somethings stuck back home. She wants Lorelai to approve of her book and insists her mother give her this, as if Lorelai hasn't always given her whatever she could. And when Lorelai says no, Rory does what she wants anyway and almost fractures their relationship over it.
Emily's control is completely gone - she can't control her emotions, she can't control her tongue, she can't control her maid or her maid's handy family, she can't even control a stupid painting of her late husband. She's on a downward spiral and her anchor is dead. She tries to regain a sense of worth, because surely that will bring happiness back. She tries to gain it from how many possessions she has, that doesn't work. She tries to gain it from Jack, who is not well-suited to her but he makes a matching accessory to the life other people will see. That doesn’t work. She tries to gain it from therapy with Lorelai, control her daughter at last, that doesn't work. She tries to control Richard's headstone, that doesn't work. She even tries to find solace with her beloved D.A.R, and she finds that emptiest of all.
A Year In The Life has these women finally face their flaws head-on and grow. The way characters should.
Rory: Rory is confronted with the fact that she is not special and has to move home like everyone else her age and get a job she does not want, because that's life, and that's what everyone else has to do in the real world. And when she's at her lowest, pouting, she gets advice from someone who has faced his own flaws long ago and has grown and who knows her at her best, and encourages her to get up and work hard (Jess Mariano, ladies and gentlemen). And she does. Rory hits bottom and takes Jess's advice and works at understanding her mother, who is not perfect, and even goes to interview her father, who is also not perfect. She fights with Lorelai over the book and insists on her own way, and when Lorelai refuses, Rory can only blame herself. She has a rabble-rousing night with her LaDB boys and winds up sleeping with Logan in one more bubble of fantasy, one more umbrella-jump of escapism, like the old days, because Logan is her weakness. And when she wakes up the next morning, Rory turns and walks away from Logan and the affair and her insistence on having what she wants regardless of who she hurts (hello, Dean Forrester and her affinity for taking spoken-for men) for the final time. And the consequences of her desires? She’s pregnant. (Come on, we all know the baby is Logan’s; Rory’s life rhymes with Lorelai’s.) She goes to Christopher to interview him for the book and is subtly asking her father why he wasn’t in her life, because she needs to know what to do with her baby and her lover. She didn’t go to Lorelai to figure that out. She went to her dad, because the truth is, Rory didn’t have her father, and part of dealing with the consequences of her actions is to work out how to take care of this baby and whether or not that means involving the father. She’s owning up. She goes to Lorelai and offers to give up this book; she doesn’t make excuses or whine, she wrote the book anyway because she believes in it, but when she’s gotten three chapters in, she respectfully goes to her mother and asks her to read it and then, for the sake of Lorelai, not herself, Rory promises to quit and throw the book out if Lorelai does not approve. Because Lorelai is more important to her than herself. Rory has worked hard and made mistakes and gotten pregnant and she has stared the world in the eyes and seen she’s not special. And she has to deal with that. And she does, finally, deal with it. And she’s happy.
Emily: Emily is confronted with the fact that nothing is inside her control—except what she does. Worth does not come from what she owns or who she’s with or what she’s wearing, and it didn’t come from her marriage, either. That wasn’t why she married Richard anyway. She is miserable and alone, and part of that is her fault. She married Richard because she loved him, and she keeps coming back to Lorelai because she loves her, and she opens up her house to Rory when Rory needs a place to write because she loves her. Emily looks around at what she has and recognizes what has worth and what doesn’t, maybe for the first time, with clear vision. She recognizes that she can’t control everything. At first, that fact keeps her down. She forgets what day it is, the curtains are closed, and she doesn’t get up in the morning. No Richard, no Lorelai, no reason to move. And then Lorelai calls her, and tells her about who Richard was and what Richard did and how it mattered, and that inspires Emily. She can get up. She buys a place on Cape Cod, totally opposite of the sort of life everyone admires and expects to have worth, and she does what she’s really always been best at—she loves. She takes care. She took care of Richard, she took care of Lorelai and Rory when they needed it, and she takes care of Berta and her wonderful family, instead of having a maid take care of her needs. She packs up and moves out, she sends Jack away, she reveals the D.A.R. for what it is and quits them forever, and she takes a job at a whaling museum because she just likes it. It’s nothing fancy, and neither is her oceanic house or the music she plays in it or the clothing she wears, because none of that is worth anything anyway. Her family is. Her friends are. She gets the painting of Richard done right and brings it with her, and she gives up attempting control of everything and only takes control of how she behaves. She gives Lorelai what Lorelai needs for the Dragonfly, and her only stipulation is that she gets to spend more time with her daughter and Luke. She loves, she takes care of others, she helps. And she’s happy. And now, the best for last. The star.
Lorelai: Lorelai sits in that stupid Stars Hollow Musical and hears a song that perfectly describes her problem—it’s never or now. Make a commitment. Do something hard. Make your life about something other than your momentary present happiness and comfort, the way you do with just Rory, sometimes, but make it a permanent change. Make change permanent! Don’t run away! …And then she runs away. She’s been miserable, she’s hit bottom, like her mother before her and her daughter after her. She’s losing friends, she’s losing Luke, she’s losing Emily, she’s losing Rory over the manuscript, and it’s all her fault. Lorelai tries to breeze past it. She does Wild. She does what she’s never done before, she does something hard and uncomfortable, but she does it for herself, and therefore it doesn’t quite work. She tries to hike, Dipper Pines won’t let her hike, she meets other women her age who think this hike is gonna fix things, it doesn’t, and she gives up and goes to get coffee because that’s her go-to. (Coffee is speedy, bad for you, and only a temporary rush—kind of everything Lorelai clings to, actually.) But the coffee shop is closed, and when Lorelai is denied that allegorical Band Aid, she goes around back and sees a great view and finally finds clarity. She didn’t need the hike—she needed to think. She needed a moment of silence and introspection to gain the insane courage to finally stop moving, stick around, and face her fears. To put her eyes on herself and then take her eyes off herself and onto other people—namely the people she loves. Lorelai calls Emily and cries, because it’s hard to do this, it hurts, but with one story, she proves she loved her father, and she knows her father loved her, and the fact that she’s calling shows that she knows Emily loves her too, and she loves Emily, and has loved them both all along. It gives Emily the strength she needs to get out of bed. That was hard, but Lorelai did it. And now she’s going to do more hard things—she’s going to commit. It’s never or now, and Lorelai chooses now. She goes home and the first thing she does is propose to Luke and become Lorelai Danes overnight. Hard. Scary. Just right. She patches things up with her daughter, and chooses Rory over herself—for the hundredth time, yes, but when it’s at its hardest for her to do. “I’ll read it when it’s done.” Lorelai expands the Dragonfly. She goes to Emily for help, which is also super hard, but this time it’s not for Rory – it’s for her, and it’s for Michel, and it’s for the Dragonfly. And she accepts Emily’s affectionate terms. Lorelai chooses Rory, Luke, Emily, and Michel over herself, and commits, and she doesn’t run away. And she’s happy.
And all of it is earned. Finally earned.
I could talk more about the incredible writing, about ASP at her best, about the perfect themes and scenery and the very intentional end to Paris, Lane, Kirk, Taylor, Dean, Jess, Logan, Chris, and the general cast’s stories, but I’ve already rambled for too long.
Suffice it to say: A Year in the Life is my Gilmore Girls. It’s best version of the story. I think it was expertly done. Not perfect, but an ending that was earned.
Lorelei Gilmore has no right treating early season Jess like that. I know this is a hot take but bear with me. Lorelai treats him as if he is an adult fully responsible for the situation he is in, while in truth, he is not! He is a 16 year old kid for heaven’s sake, a troubled kid. His mother has abandoned him, his dad’s a mess, and he’s just been shipped off to a town he doesn’t know, amongst people he doesn’t know nor like. How does Lorelai possibly expect him to be a well-behaved star child? Of course he’s gonna ditch school and get in fights and all kinds of trouble. Lorelai’s lack of empathy towards a CHILD who has lost everything is seriously concerning and gross. Jess needs help. And lorelai needs to realize she is an adult not a sixteen year old. It is completely inappropriate of her to have beef with a 16-year-old kid!!!
the way she acts around dean during this period suggests she's hardcore projecting on rory's relationships that makes clear she desperately needed the therapy she got in ayitl
i find it kind of strange that people get so mad that liz danes is written like a quirky gilmore girls character and not like, idk, a demon from hell, like this isn't the same show whose basic premise relies upon the audience empathizing with emily and richard gilmore. that's just what this show is. it refuses to give you simple villains, even when the character in question is an abusive or neglectful parent. hence emily, richard, christopher, mrs. kim, and yes, liz. and yet liz is the only one i've seen people get upset about, because jess's trauma is apparently far more serious than anyone else's and should therefore be treated more seriously, whereas every other character is whining about nothing ig.
i know the canned response to this re: lorelai and rory is "but they're privileged!!!!" and i'm not going to deny that lorelai and rory have a great deal of financial privilege but a) having privilege doesn't protect lorelai from her emotionally abusive parents, nor does it shield rory from having a worthless deadbeat for a father and b) i think it's kind of weird that people are fine with the terrible classist racist rich people being written and performed as complex characters, but draw the line at the working class teen mom with addiction issues.
to be clear, this is not a defense of liz danes, she is a bad parent. but fundamentally, the television program gilmore girls is about having complex relationships with your bad parents who do have the capacity to be likable and sweet and affectionate and worthy of empathy and that doesn't change the fact that they deeply traumatized you in ways you'll never recover from. i don't understand why jess's relationship with liz would be written any differently in that respect.
yeah it's like the steven universe problem.
this story sets out its these relentlessly and consistently, and then people get mad when it won't break those themes for something they deem as "irredeemable" or whatever
this one's from last year but I just started my rotk reread and this scene makes me giggle every time
the absolutely brutal backlash against BLM including all the backstabbing and scapegoating in the liberal media really did set political action and organizing in the usa so far back its so bleak
it was so infuriating to see the media in lockstep proclaim “the protestors are antifa terrorists” and the liberal politicians in lockstep proclaim “we’re increasing police funding. eat tear gas, fuckface.”
constantly thinking about how "abolish the police" was too radical and "defund the police" was still too radical and now we have massive urban warfare training facilities all over the country and flock cameras watching our every move. it's all so fucked
DELETE THIS POST
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
*clicks play in morbid curiosity*
*hammers reblog button*
I think I find this post every April Fools Day and I am so happy that I do
i met a man named porridge pete who said hed sweep me off my feet
i met a man named gregor gruel who told me that the world was cruel
i met a man named
gregor gruel who told me
that the world was cruel
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
“There aren’t enough hours in a day.” There are actually. The problem is that we think 40 hour work weeks are an unavoidable fact of life.
The problem is that everyone has to work 8 hours, pretty much no exceptions, and with getting ready time + (unpaid) lunch + commute, “8 hours” is actually anywhere between 9 and 12, every single day, with more work to do when you get home because our society and culture was built around having one member of the household home full time and nothing has changed now that almost everyone works.
No wonder Americans are reliant on DoorDash and fast food, there’s no time or energy to cook. No one wonder mental and physical health are in shambles, many just spent all day sitting in fluorescent lights with little to no stimulation. “Just wake up earlier” “Just meal prep”… these are ok short-term, individual solutions, but the broader, systemic issue is obvious. We aren’t built for this. There’s no work-life balance. Genuinely, I think if our culture could normalize a shorter work week, many individuals’ biggest problems would simply evaporate.