My name is Mohammad, and I’m reaching out in a moment of desperate need. I’m a father of three young children living in Gaza, and we are caught in the midst of a catastrophic war. Our home is no longer a safe haven, and the future here seems increasingly uncertain. 💔
I’ve launched a fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $40,000 to relocate my family to a safer place where my children can grow up in peace and have a chance at a brighter future. 🕊️🇵🇸
Unfortunately, my previous fundraising efforts were abruptly halted when my account was terminated without explanation. However, I remain determined to keep fighting for my family’s safety and well-being. 🫶
If you could take a moment to read our story, consider donating, or simply share our campaign with others, it would make an incredible difference. Every act of kindness, no matter how small, brings us one step closer to safety and a new beginning. 🙏
Thank you for your time, compassion, and support. ❤
kate is one of the most interesting characters in tb8, and i wish more people talked about her! there’s a lot to talk about, especially considering how often she appears.
kate is the second most mentioned character, just behind natasha. their names are mentioned 334 and 357 times respectively. that’s not so big a gap! adam, the third most mentioned character, has 278 mentions, over fifty fewer than kate, and the rest of the basic eight have at least a hundred fewer. while everyone in the basic eight has meaningful arcs, kate is the only one other than natasha who is prevalent from start to finish, and her arc has a ton of similarities with flan’s.
one of the most interesting things about kate and flan’s dynamic imo is how they project onto each other. in the second half of the book, flan uses kate as a scapegoat, especially re: her body and her relationship with adam. since adam reflects the societal norms that flan (and everyone) is trying to conform to, kate is an easier target to blame.
flan resents kate for stealing adam away from her, even if kate never actually did. kate only started flirting with adam after flan was dating gabriel, and kate even asked flan if it was alright.
we don’t know how long kate liked adam, but we do know that she knew him better than flan did, and she she got together with him very quickly after flan and gabriel started dating. still, she repressed her feelings and encouraged flan to go after him for the entire first half of the book.
but it’s likely that kate asked flan to absolve herself of guilt rather than make sure things were okay with flan. flan obviously still had a crush on adam, and kate knew that! if kate really wanted to make sure things were okay with flan, she could have openly asked about it instead of dancing around her point. i think she wants to be seen as a good friend, more than actually considering how flan feels. kate still knows that flan loves adam, and she even asks again. flan responds by saying yes and immediately bursting into tears. kate is insightful enough to know that she’s not okay with it. that’s in line with how we’ve seen kate before--she deliberately creates an image and tries to play it off as effortless.
not that flan was in the right in this situation either, though. flan deflects her own guilt onto kate, especially when it comes to leading gabriel on. if flan villainizes kate, she can see her own actions as better than they are. flan makes herself believe that kate has it all, since she has adam/society’s love, even if it’s just tolerance and adam isn’t that into her. if flan is also being strung along here, she believes it’s not so bad if she does the same to gabriel. kate is an easier person to blame than adam, so kate gets the vitriol.
the resentment isn’t one-sided. kate talks about how the girl who wrote adam love letters all summer is tactless and undeserving of adam. toward the end, kate even says “somebody beat us both to him,” which reads to me like kate is more okay with adam dating flan than she would be with him dating a random girl.
kate doesn’t believe (or tries not to believe) that flan wrote the letters, even though it’s pretty obvious from the way flan changes the subject every time kate brings it up, and rachel explicitly told her. kate refuses to think badly of flan, because flan is her friend and kate wants to be loyal.
in the same scene, flan says we are better off without adam, including both of them. once they stop idolizing adam, they stop blaming each other. flan and kate relate to each other, and they both resent and understand each other for it.
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another similarity between flan and kate is how violent they can be, though in different ways. flan is the one directly poisoning carr and killing adam, but kate is thrilled to cover it up.
also, when jenn fights nancy and cheryl, kate is overjoyed.
no other character has such a consistent, positive reaction to violence. and in kate’s case, she’s never the one committing these acts, but supporting her friends. and she believes everyone is like her, in that way. like when she believes that ron piper will support them.
later she says, “we aren’t just doing this for flan anymore,” which i think kate actually believes. she wouldn’t do all this for flan, but she’d do this for the group. kate has such a strong us vs them mentality that it overrides everything else, and yet, she’s not exactly selfless.
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dinner party #1 is one of the most iconic scenes in tb8. it’s the first time we see the main cast in their element. the toasts, especially, are each character introducing themselves; douglas is cautious, flora completely misses the point, jenn is helpful, etc. (rip v___ who didn’t get to say anything) but kate’s toast is definitely the most memorable.
what’s interesting to me is the way she says it--it’s snappy and memorable, but also contrived. and that’s the basic eight’s whole deal, especially kate’s. i wonder if there are any comparisons to the school’s motto, which has a similar phrasing--just listing good traits instead of anything tangible, especially since the scene where the phrase was first introduced is a kate scene. one of the major themes is that the friend group isn’t different from the school/societal structures it tries to go against. as effortless as kate wants to appear, she’s always trying to fit in.
like the play they’re in, they’re all playing roles, to a certain extent, and kate is such a clear picture of that.
top five questions you would ask daniel handler if you ever got to meet him!
heyy always great to hear from you!! love the question and id probably die of sheer awe upon meeting him lol but here’s what i’d ask when i composed myself:
1. did you have homosexuality in mind while writing flannery culp or was that really just a fandom mass hallucination?
2. how did you capture a teenage girl’s mind so well in “the basic eight”? seriously, how did you know all that?????
3. what was your thought process while coming up with “all the wrong questions” after “a series of unfortunate events”?— what themes did you want to embody to tie in with ASOUE and how did the plot grow around that?
4. how do you think your previous works have influenced your most recent ones, specifically the similarities and differences between “the basic eight” and “we are pirates”?
5. based on our brief interactions, do you think i’m cool?
then i’d ask for an autograph probably! and id love to hear what questions you’d ask him!! :)
Ok new game. What's the thing you're a fan of that you're the most pretentious about. NOT the most pretentious thing you're a fan of, I mean the thing that makes *you* act like one of those "oh yeah? Name five of their albums" people. There is a difference
Bad news: everyone who has said some variation of "umm actually I don't do that 🙏 I'm a good person" is more annoying than the rest of us confessing to our nerd crimes. Yes you do. I guarantee it you do. You're saying Um, Actually right now
theon helping jeyne is so special to me. like. that’s just jeyne and he knows it!!! a gazillion northmen are rallying and revolting against her marriage to ramsay because they think she’s arya, ned’s daughter, a stark girl; but theon is the only one who knows that she’s just jeyne, a steward’s daughter, and still he fights for her with all the strength he has left when a few books earlier he never would’ve dreamed of doing such a thing, especially to someone of lower birth. asoiaf is a story where nobles are seen as the only people worth saving and caring for while low-borns are seen as acceptable collateral damage to the game of thrones, but theon saves jeyne anyway!! aaaa grrm’s pen was on fire writing that.
Saw this going around twitter, looked like fun. What? I'm not procrastinating (I am, I really am)
Make this picrew of yourself
Take this uquiz
Post the results side-by-side. No pressure tags: @alypink, @revnah1406, @madefordvarka, @deadbranch, @welldonekhushi, @kaitaiga, @applbottmjeens, @froglights-and-pearls
what do you think flan's letters to adam represent in a metaphorical sense?
personally, i think if her crush on adam stems from a desire to fit into the mold, the letters are proof that she can't. she doesn't even tell natasha about the letters (literally lying to herself) and yet she isn't very good at hiding their existence. the earlier letters show flan's image that she's trying to craft to impress adam/society, though it falters with every message. and adam never contacts flan back because he has nothing to prove, no standard he wants to conform to.
and later adam mentioning that he received the postcard and laughing at it. i'm thinking that could allude to how flan was dismissed over and over. people pretended not to see that she needed help when it was very clear she did, like adam pretending that he didn't see her postcard and thus having more leeway to avoid being clear with her.
flan cares a lot about her image so the narrative changing from her maybe having a chance with him (achieving "normalcy") to her being the butt of his joke all along (she never could and never was) was probably a shock.
not sure about this, so i would love to hear your take on the letters!
thank you so much for the ask juliet!!!! i LOVE your take on the letters and hadn’t given it much thought but this is what i think:
i think the letters symbolize leverage, and it’s as much literal as it is metaphorical; one of the most well-depicted things in the basic eight and one of its most constant themes is the power imbalance between girls and boys/men, because girls are conditioned to believe they need men and are insufficient by themselves. this need girls have for boys is, in tb8 (especially in the halloween scene), always portrayed as something that boys hold over girls’ heads in order to assert dominance over them, and i think the letters are a great portrayal of it! flannery wrote each letter because she was conditioned to believe she needed to be with adam (or all that adam symbolized— Some Dude), making desperate attempts to cling to a connection that wasn’t there because she NEEDED for it to work with him; she NEEDED a guy. adam didn’t respond to them because society places no such expectations on boys, doesn’t make them feel like they’re lacking something without the opposite gender; they thrive off of being needed and wanted despite everything they may do (which is why adam was such an asshole to flan; he liked proving to himself and to her that no matter how cruel he was, she would still come back to him and forgive him because she ‘needed him’ so much), as shown by adam’s awful attitude after receiving the letters, telling everyone Some Girl was obsessed with him. he humiliated flan by spreading rumors about her display of vulnerability because he knew it wouldn’t matter; this is what i mean by it being LITERAL leverage too. adam held the letters over flan’s head just like he held her feelings over her head. it was always about him having more social power than her, and knowing she would eat out of his hand no matter what he did. but it sure didn’t turn out well for him now did it!
"viserys says he could sweep the seven kingdoms with 10,000 dothraki screamers." "viserys couldn't sweep a stable with 10,000 brooms." might be the funniest asoiaf insult ever. i will forever hate jorah but he ate that one little thing, i’ll admit.
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