Do you have any medical ailments you'd like to see Dr. Zandik for? Drop them in the comments or send an anonymous ask and you might find them answered in the next part!
Do you have any medical ailments you'd like to see Dr. Zandik for? Drop them in the comments or send an anonymous ask and you might find them answered in the next part!
being dottore's 8 year old segment has to be one of the most fucked up things in the world i'm serious. like walk with me here. you are fresh out of whatever messed up childhood you had, probably fresh out of whatever horrible thing made you lose your compassion. next thing you know you are in a foreign land away from everything you know, surrounded by future versions of yourself, expected to help with their scientific endeavors and crimes against humanity. you can't ever go home again, and you don't have a name anymore, just a number. now you know all your worst fears were right, you were eventually chased out of your hometown and even your nation, and in your future you are more powerful than you could have imagined but no more accepted by those around you. your other selves throw away your things and laugh at you for being childish and you have to wonder why you exist at all. you have all the time in the world to study and an intellect above that of most adults, and eventually you are the most knowledgeable immortal child ever except for that green one who is a god, but you cannot emotionally develop. you are frozen at the maturity of a child and yet looked down on by your other selves if you act like the child you are, and you were always a very, very strange child but you were still a child. now you are not allowed to be that, but you will never be an adult either, you will never become 18 or 25 or 35 or any of those people you were supposed to be, all you will ever be is a reflection of one of the most hated men in the world, and you always suspected you didn't know how to be human right, and now you know you never learned.
An interesting observation on The Coffin of Andy and Leyley:
Ashley is a Tar Soul and Andrew is a Grime Soul, right. And the demon tells you at one point, upon seeing a police officer's soul and wondering why it's not all evil too, that souls are defined primarily how the person sees themself, not how others see them. Thus, because the officer saw himself as a good person and believed his actions were justified, his soul is still pure.
And it's a pretty clear gesture toward the fact that Ashley, more than just being a bad person, fully believes herself to be a bad person. She is tar, her very essence is something dark and sticky that corrupts all it touches--and she fully accepts and agrees with that. For all of her bluster and ravado, her grandiose presentation of her self-esteem, she really has an incredibly low opinion of herself, at least in a moral sense. She's a lost cause; she believes that she's a lost cause. She acts like it doesn't bother her, because it's the only thing she thinks she can do anymore. She is trapped by the unhealthy coping mechanisms she developed to deal with an exceptionally unhealthy, abusive, and neglectful childhood.
And the demon likes that. The demon can take advantage of that, because that's the kind of person that will collect souls for it without blinking an eye. None of this namby-pamby ethical dilemma bullshit. It doesn't care. It wants souls. It needs a human that doesn't care, either.
But what are we meant to think of Andrew as grime, then? Grime is different from tar. Grime is the stuff that makes other things dirty, tarnishes what was once clean. I think Andrew, at his core, doesn't actually believe himself to be a bad person. He thinks of himself as a good person made bad by outside circumstances. By their parents, by their grandparents, by poverty, by isolation, by bullying, by the shit-fucked society we live in--and most of all, by Leyley. He has done awful, heinous things, and unlike Ashley, who simply brushes these things off, he will go to the ends of the earth to justify them. He's not a bad person. It's not actually his fault. It's never his fault, really. It's all the bullshit that made him this way.
These are both incredibly common worldviews for people caught up in cycles of generational abuse. "There's something fundamentally Wrong with me, so I will become the monster I was always meant to be" vs "none of it's my fault, my abuse made me this way, so all of my actions must be justified as a reaction to that abuse".
if cities are vampires then small towns are ghosts i think. cities constantly hunger for fresh blood, but the blood that sustains a small town is an old and dried stain that you can never entirely scrub out. a city will feed on you, but if you truly want to leave, it can't keep you. a small town will follow you anywhere. it lingers like a chill at every threshold. once it has you, it has no intention of ever letting you go.
I know this is very quick, but! Maybe some quick thoughts (cough analysis cough) about the parents and how the sisters cope by not going outside, especially how it seems they arenāt given time at all to process Ceciliaās death.
A theory I really like is that Ceciliaās second (successful) attempt could have been an accident, or even a murder. So I would like to hear your thoughts on that, too. >:3
putting this under the cut because it's kinda long lmao. i love tvs soooo sososo much
hcs in pink, analysis in regular font
my key thoughts about the period of time in between cecilia's death and the death of her sisters, especially the months the sisters spend locked inside their own home, can probably best be summarised as ideas of stagnation, escapism, and a slow rot.
there's a lot of emphasis put on the lisbon house itself throughout the book, whether it's portrayed as a prison or some sort of exclusive location only the lucky can enter. i think the house itself is sort of metonymic for the sisters themselves: the boys/narrators can see the polished outside, but not what is truly occuring within. in the end, we as readers and the narrators themselves get very few glimpses into the house, just as we get very few direct glimpses into the inner lives of the lisbon sisters. thus i think the imagery of progressive decay attacking the house is sort of symbolic of the decay of the lisbon sisters themselves as they are kept in a house that is rotting from the inside out.
the house is the sisters and the sisters are the house, if that makes sense. my thoughts about it are very visual and i always have this imagery of flesh literally merging with floorboards, mycelium networks reaching through walls and wriggling under dirty fingernails.
i think cecilia's room would probably be taken by the rot first. the window is constantly open thanks to her candle altar so i imagine bugs and rain would get swept in really easily, causing mold, infestations, etc.
as for the lisbons themselves, i think there would be a variety of different reactions.
i always imagine mrs. lisbon as somewhat stepford wife-ish and really trying to embody the ideal 1950s nuclear family. i feel like any reactions she had to cecilia's death would be sort of muted, pre-emptively shoved down and repressed. despite cecilia being her daughter, i do think that in the end, she values projecting a certain image to her community above all. that said, i do think she would experience maybe even greater levels of distress as she feels the cognitive dissonance between "oh my god my daughter just died" and "my daughter being a suicide is shameful and the tragedy of her death does not line up with my perception of how life should be." i do think she really feels torn, but in the end winds up trying to fix her image in the community as a form of coping, just trying to be normal. (idk if any of that made sense lol) based on that, i think during the confinement she imposes on her family she really tries to make everything appear normal but her mind is still in this sort of shock that she can't really act normal. she probably makes appointments to neighbours' tupperware parties and barbequeue cookouts but she doesn't ever show up. she announces that she's cooking roast chicken and lets it burn then lets the carcass rot in the oven. the neighbours themselves are too caught up themselves in helping her project that image of normalcy, so desperate to pretend that what's happening in the lisbon house isn't actually happening/as bad as it is that they probably just go along with it.
in particular i think this mental and emotional split is indicated in the book when two of the neighbourhood women go to visit mrs lisbon shortly after cecilia's first attempt. when the boys/narrators interview them about the visit years later, they give conflicting narratives: one that mrs lisbon was unwelcoming, hiding away the girls, and one that she seemed ānormal.ā in my opinion this really hints at how she reacts to the girlsā successive suicides: split between wanting to act like everything is normal, and trying to āprotectā her family by isolating. i think it's easy to villainise her as this authoritative, controlling and repressive figure, which she is, but you have to take in the added nuance that she is legitimately doing it because she thinks it's what will help her children.
mr lisbon i think tries similarly to act as normal as possible but is additionally stuck on loop. i feel like he would shut himself in a room everyday from 9 AM to 9 PM claiming he's correcting papers. obviously though he's lying. sometimes he just locks himself in the garage for hours claiming he needs to fix the boiler or the car or whatever he can invent. but he probably just sits there numb. lux sometimes comes down to the garage as well but she can't stand it for long and usually leaves after 30 minutes. (also i think listening to her dad absentmindedly talk about his car and his tools probably gave her the idea to kill herself through carbon monoxide poisoning but that's too angsty so i won't go there) both of the parents i think would try and project this image of normalcy which probably only aggravates the situation further. i don't think the daughters and the parents really talked about cecilia's death because they don't have that relationship of emotional trust built up that would enable them to discuss it in a healthy manner.
as for the lisbon sisters themselves, i think they all have vastly different methods of coping over their six-ish months of 'virtual house arrest.'
lux obviously exhibits hypersexual tendencies, self-destructively having sex with strangers on the roof of the house. i think initially her sisters were unaware of what was happening, until she fakes appendicitis to see if she's pregnant and that whole debacle. at that point they begin to realise how self-destructive she's gotten and have an intervention with her. only then does she begin to realise that she was groomed by trip and actually starts processing the trauma of cecilia's death + her grooming. what really convinces me of this is the note she sends via the neighbourhood boys, "Dear whoever, Tell Trip Iām over him. Heās a creep." to me this shows her romanticised view of trip is gone and she's realised that he is, indeed, a creep.
i think bonnie gets really quiet. she's always been more interested in stories than reality and i think given the incredibly isolated environment she's forced into she would probably wind up maladaptively daydreaming a lot of the time. she's probably the one who started ordering travel catalogues to the house to fuel her daydreams. her sisters are probably concerned about how quiet she gets but at the same time i think as time goes on they begin to indulge in similar patterns of maladaptive daydreaming. it's crucial to remember that by the time that they die, the sisters have lost all hope; i think avoiding reality through daydreaming really embodies their desire to escape that house, while the sisters' suicides embodies their lack of hope of escaping the house through alternate methods. over the course of the six-ish months the sisters are locked up, i think they would all progress from escapism (in various forms) to depression as they realised their unhealthy coping mechanisms couldn't save them, and finally suicide. while i think this was a broader phenomenon affecting all the sisters, i think bonnie would probably be the most affected. i honestly would not be surprised at all if she began developing psychosis-like symptoms or delusions related to her daydreams. personality wise i imagine her being somewhat similar to cecilia... maybe when she hung herself she didn't think she would actually die. "when she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly" <- do you see my vision
mary is pretty explicitly stated in the book to spend most of her confinement getting really into makeup and fashion, and i figure the confinement period would probably just be her preexisting interest in fashion/beauty accentuated to the maximum. however i think this would also lead to her becoming even more dysmorphic. in the book bonnie and lux are both described as becoming very thin, and i wouldn't be surprised if mary encouraged self-destructive eating disorders to her sisters as a way to meet the beauty standards she imposed on herself. i could equally see her sisters just copying her behaviour without her input. basically i think her confinement and grieving would, similarly to bonnie, lead her to turn inwards, but then like lux, externalise her pain in self-destructive ways (if that makes sense).
therese i think is probably the only one of the sisters that stayed somewhat 'normal.' we can see her making an effort to reach out for help over her ham radio, attempting to discuss her experience with others who have lost others to suicide. (you can tell i'm really normal about this because my url is from one of her intercepted ham radio conversations lol) i think out of all of the sisters, i think she's probably the one most likely to realise that there's something seriously wrong with their situation and try to get help. that said, i don't think she necessarily recognises it as abuse. i think her understanding is probably limited to 'someone in my family died, this is bad' while not necessarily having the ability to be actually angry at the adults around her because she's been raised to see adults as trustworthy. i think that, in her mind, the title of 'parent' absolves mrs lisbon of her behaviour and justifies it. even when lux is abused and grounded by trip (although i doubt she realises what's happening) she sees lux being grounded as the rational thing to do, fair punishment for her actions. what she doesn't expect is the rest of the sisters being punished as well. i think her faith in her parents, the adults around her and by extension society as a whole, gradually crumbles as their isolation continues. her suicide is the sign of her having finally given up on being saved, her illusion of 'trusted adults' vanishing as her parents continue to abuse her as no one cares. i think the boys' rare messages might even reinforce this for her, making her realise that even if she could get out of the house, the only world waiting for her is one that objectifies her and isn't willing to be anything more than superficial, seeing her as a prized possession rather than a traumatised young woman or even just a person.
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now onto the next section of this ask: the circumstances of cecilia's death.
i'm prefacing all of this with the fact i haven't seen the film yet. i can't fully buy into the cecilia's suicide was murder theory because in the book everyone is explicitly stated to be in the basement when she jumps. that said, i could potentially see her suicide being an accident.
i actually think there's a fair amount of evidence supporting this in the book. in particular, there is a repetition of the number thirteen: cecilia is thirteen when she dies, mary dies thirteen months after her, etc. the number thirteen is also repeated at other seemingly unrelated points as well but i'm not going to list all of those. thirteen is a classic symbol of bad luck: is it possible that cecilia's death was simply a stroke of bad luck, falling out of a window?
while i could buy that cecilia's final death was an accident, i could certainly see her initial attempt being attempted murder. rather than the more obvious tool of the kitchen knife, why did she choose to use her father's razor? however i do think it's a bit flimsy. if someone else cut her arteries, why would she then climb into the bath with the laminated photo of the virgin mary? besides, her father's razor could have simply been the most accessible tool. mrs lisbon would surely notice a missing knife, and as seen from mary's secret hair wax stash, the girls weren't allowed to shave themselves. since she was known for taking long baths, it's reasonable that cecilia just grabbed what was right in front of her, mr lisbon's razor. that said, i do think murder/accident theories for her death are really interesting and it's possible that this is implied more firmly in the film.
cecilia's death to me is really interesting to me from a storytelling perspective as well. as mentioned by @cassiusbunny in this post (hope you don't mind the tag!), cecilia's alternate suicide attempts mimic ancient greco-roman methods of suicide. her interest in ancient greece and particularly rome is possibly what her friends interpreted as a crush on dominic palazzolo, an italian immigrant.
following her death, her sisters adopt similar behaviour that mimics ancient greco-roman tradition. bonnie could be argued to be taking the role of a vestal virgin, ensuring the sacrificial flames of ceel's candle altar stay lit; the girls altogether appear to form this unified being that is transcends to the heavens in their ritualised collective suicide. the way the sisters are locked up with little food could even be argued to mimic the death of famous mythological figures like antigone.
as a sidenote: i hc cecilia as transmasc in some direction and i find it interesting how her first attempt is more 'feminine,' while her second attempt is more 'masculine,' as mentioned by cassiusbunny.
My sycamore tree began life in the gravel at the edge of a parking lot. If trees can feel pain, that is a painful, unlucky death. I carefully dug it up and put it in a pot I made out of a disposable cup.
Hello small one. This world may be cruel, but I will not be.
I decided to take care of it, not expecting it to survive, and when my sycamore tree unfurled one tiny leaf and then another, it chiseled a tiny foothold in my terrified brain, the kind of brain that doesn't remember a world before the atomic bomb and before 9/11.
I googled the lifespans of trees. My neurons had to stretch and expand to accommodate what I learned: My sycamore tree may live five hundred years. It's hard to think something so big. In twenty years, my baby sycamore tree will be three stories tall, and the home of many creatures. In five years, my sycamore tree will be taller than I am. In one year, it will be summer.
There's this concept called sense of foreshortened future where people who have lived through trauma can't conceptualize a future for themselves because deep down they don't expect to survive, When I look forward, all I see is fire and death, melting ice and burning sky. We were raised Evangelical. All we see is Judgment Day, except there is no heaven.
But now there is a tiny gap in the wall, a crack in the door of my cell
and on the other side, I see a tree
There is, in the future, a great old sycamore tree, full of clean winds and the stir of a thousand wings. A hundred years from now. Fifty years from now. There will be forests in that world. There will be a world.
It takes courage, but we have to imagine it.
Most tree species can live in excess of three or four hundred years. I think I'm learning something. I think there are ancient voices saying hello small one, touch the dirt and the leaves, for now you are part of something that cannot die
in 2030 I will be thirty years old and the world will not have ended and there will still be hummingbirds, and we will have photos of the stars more beautiful than we can now imagine.
I planted an Eastern Redcedar; they may live nine hundred years. There will be nine hundred years. The people in that time will remember us. Maybe we will meet the aliens (hi aliens!).
I will blow out the candles on many birthday cakes in a world where there are wolves in dark forests far from home. I am learning to imagine the future. I learned recently that elk were reintroduced to the Appalachian Mountains after over a hundred years of extirpation, and that they are expanding their range.
That tiny crack I can see through now opens a tiny bit more:
Maybe elk will pass through my hometown, maybe there will be a forest where the pasture is on the high hill that I can see from my home
say it, say it, say it: ten years, thirty years, a hundred years from now
I am learning to imagine the future. There is a crack in the wall of this prison, of this machine, of this darkness, and through it, I see a tree.
This is not about politics. If armed settlers threaten U.S. citizens and soldiers help detain them, wouldn't that merit an investigation?
If we believe that every civilian deserves equal protection under the law, then the same standards must apply everywhere, including in Gaza. Accountability should not be based on nationality, politics, or where victims live.
I'm sorry I know Gaza has become irrelevant to many people but when your father is in hospital and his condition is difficult you should do Anything to save him! And this is my family's condition. We are very sad and unable to do anything Please donate to me and my family. Please don't ignore me if you have read You've saved our lives many times. I hope you do that now.. Again, please donate
Hi My name is Ibrahim, a young man from the Gaza Strip. I'm liā¦ Ibrahim Family needs your support for Donate to help ibrahim and his family
"average person in teyvat smokes 3 cigarettes a day" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person in teyvat smokes 0 cigarettes a day. Feofan Sergeyevich Veksel, who lives in Snezhnaya & smokes over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
He had hyperdontia when he was alive. Aside from his wisdom teeth popping out, he had a bunch of other extra teeth that made his shiny tv-ready smile look crowded.
It's something he felt very insecure about when he was younger (combined with his heterochromia and the white streak in his hair), but he eventually grew to embrace it. Becoming a household name allowed him to convince his audience that heterochromia and hyperdontia are sexy masculine traits B)
Que Alastor quietly seething with envy because he wants extra teeth too! >:( Sure, he has unnaturally sharp canines but more teeth means less trouble chewing human meat
started thinking about a genshin x breaking bad au because scara's VA pat pedraza posted a pic of him with giancarlo (gus' actor), and then i drew a normal amount of it
When I was 14 I finished my confirmation classes and went through the confirmation ceremony. At that point I became a voting āadultā member of my church. Technically I couldāve run for church council.
Was I an adult though? Lol no I wasnāt about to run for council at 14 are you kidding me whoās practically gonna let a 14 year old in on a budget meeting
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