milly macaulay

Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.

[ethe1c4in-deactivated20240724]

“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”

- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

[puppy13849]

[50stradwife]

oh, how I love being a woman 💕🧺

[appalachiaisforlovers]

i’m dreaming..

[americozy]

A life of love.

[lostmymarblesagainblog]

god the thought of henry fucking you senseless because he got too jealous and you kept teasing him for it is the highlight of my fantasies (i’m so mentally ill)

[bbtris]

Emma (2020)

[rubenniall]

paul and alia atreides + dune messiah, frank herbert

[deadpoetssblood]

Sometimes you're just an introverted loser who sits alone in your room with a cup of tea and a book,

has fantasies about fictional characters, is severely touch starved with a completely messed up sleep schedule and a slowly declining mental health.

[rockrosethistle]

I think one of the slept on things that makes The Secret History feel like a real world is Donna Tartt's willingness to introduce a character that is just never brought up again (or brought up once or twice again.)

Because i'm real life, not every person you meet is going to have significance in your life. Not everyone is going to change that plot. Think about the teacher that takes over when Julian leaves. Or the farmer who claims to have seen Bunny. Or Richard's one night stand. Even the man stalking Henry and Bunny in Italy doesn't show up later.

And not only does this fill the gaps in the world, it absolutely helps build suspense. You never know if a character might have significance later, because there's simply no pattern to follow. It keeps you guessing.

Did I mention I started rereading The Secret History

[thedeadpoetsraven]

“And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.”

— Mahmood Darwish

[shakespearesdaughters]

[justprettywordsmydear]

achilles wanting to die young for eternal fame and legacy and then his ghost being so unhappy in the underworld is the same vibe as henry winter shooting himself and henry’s ghost in richard’s dream still being unhappy in death. finding no peace is such a glorious, devastating tragedy. eternally restless.

[rylandgracie]

the fact that paul was supposed to be a girl from the beginning and betrothed to feyd-rautha and their child was supposed to be the “true” kwisatz haderach (paul was born a generation early) is just too insane

the fact that feyd’s obvious sexual attraction to paul in dune part 2 is an echo of what could have been, which makes the whole lisan al gaib orchestrated situation even more grotesque and bizarre is even more insane

[rylandgracie]

also on the subject of gender in dune, i love how paul’s gender is this thing in part two, where they say more than once that a man would never be able to handle the worm’s poison (the water of life) and would certainly perish and yet paul does handle it and survive. not because he is the kwisatz haderach but because he was almost born a girl, supposed to be born a girl. paul is more stereotypically feminine than chani, paul is delicate and soft spoken, his outer appearance is pretty

he is almost a mistake, almost too designed by jessica in the womb, almost almost almost what if

[rylandgracie]

oh 100% @hauntedmoors and paul stabs him back because he’s a boy and it’s all wrong, nothing is as it should be and everything is an echo of what could have been but never will be and everything is happening all at once in his head

[allthatlovesabout]

the scene where jessica uses the voice to force chani to use her tears to resurrect paul is SO fucking crazy to me. true love's kiss only it doesn't save the day, it destroys everything. the fact that she literally has to cry to bring him back, the way his eyes immediately snap open, her horror and devastation when she realizes he came back changed. it's a fairy tale and it's a fucking nightmare.

[weltenwellen]

Sarah Fathima Mohammed, from "nocturnes in the rain"

[adorkableshephard]

Okay also, Dune isn’t just about Paul being The Villain. Like, as far as Frank Herbert wrote, there was a legitimate point to Paul’s action in unleashing the jihad and becoming a messiah. The answer at the end of the series is that Paul’s Jihaad and the God Emperor’s terrible reign were the Only way for humanity to evolve far enough and grow strong enough as a species to defeat the AI machines that enslaved their ancestors.

The world of the Dune books does technically-as far as Paul and Leto II can be trusted- need a messiah to push and squeeze and prune humanity into a mass that can survive forever.

And what we learn is that to do that, to follow Any messiah figure, The Worst of Atrocities must be committed at unimaginable scale. Billions dead, suffering, relocated, imprisoned, whole peoples slaughtered, and then the whole empire forced into isolated planetoid islands. Thats the cost of a messiah. Is it worth it? Paul started the path and decided it wasn’t. Leto stuck with it and everyone was saved, but he sacrificed everything he had to fulfill the role.

If humanity’s only hope is a messiah, we’re fucked, the cost in human blood will be unimaginable. Any so called messiah would be a devil for leading people through that path. So, it’d be a lot better if everyone figured out how to get by without one instead, because looking for a messiah will lead to ruin.

There’s a separate discussion to be had about Paul and Leto being false messiahs since they lie, or allow their priesthoods to lie, about what the point of all this is. The point is to get on the golden path of species survival, but both allow or encourage the belief in spiritual, ecological, or economic salvation.