dweebcore.

i don't really do a lot on here but thank you for visiting.

[jaysleatherpants]

His smile dropping is actually so fucking funny.

[madagascar2]

Jay McCarrol, Guitar Hero Champion (2007)

[monroe-marilyn]

TANYA’S 2k FOLLOWERS AND 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION! ↳🎥 (Favorite Film of the Year) + 1947 for @thyla

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

[useyourtelescope]

HOW TO STEAL A MILLION (1966)

dir. William Wyler

[pigeoncowboys]

the truth is, if you got a best friend....

[itsmozzazzella]

[aayla-securas]

Ninotchka (1939), dir. Ernst Lubitsch Greta Garbo as Ninotchka and Melvyn Douglas as Leon

[ultimate88]

"You know, I got to admit, sometimes I know what I'm doing in this life."

"A hundred and twenty pounds of pure gold, that's me."

"You look, you meet, you try, you see. Sometimes it fits, sometimes it don't."

― Amy Irving & Peter Riegert and Reizl Bozyk as Isabelle Grossmank & Sam Posner and Bubba (Ida) Kantor Crossing Delancey (1988) || dir. Joan Micklin Silver

[bethanydelleman]

I don't think that women are too dumb to separate fiction and real life, as the moral panics around romance novels would have you believe, but I do think... it's complicated. I think sometimes small, insidious things can embed themselves in your consciousness and your idea of what a "normal" or healthy relationship looks like. I think it can happen to men too, the regular trope where the action hero is basically handed a girl at the end of the movie, almost like a reward for his achievement. We all know it's a silly trope, and yet don't we see that idea in our culture? That if a man is worthy enough and has achieved enough, he deserves a human female as a reward. Some people certainly seem to think so.

Take the idea that healthy couples must sleep in the same bed, which I hope can be less controversial than some other examples I might use. There are many medical or personal reasons to sleep in different beds or even different rooms. There are many healthy marriages that don't involve cuddling all night. Many people cannot sleep while touching another person! And yet this idea of a couple sleeping in each other's arms as the height of Romance Achievement is very widespread. It's in romcoms and sitcoms and real life. It becomes an ideal. And perhaps it makes a real couple feel that they are wrong in some way for needing to go against the imagined norm. We just don't see how that many married couples sleep in real life, fiction is our primary source of data and it's very skewed.

People can separate fiction from real life, but we also can't. We build our idea of what the world is like from both what we witness in real life and what we read and watch, because we simply cannot witness everything ourselves. We use stories to teach morals and incite rebellion, that wouldn't work if our minds did not let the fictional and real touch. We build incorrect ideas about the past, about war, about love and relationships, about everything, and we also must learn to question those ideas and assumptions.

The solution, of course, is to learn critical thinking. The solution is to examine assumptions, not to ban some type of fiction in a moral panic. The key, I think, is to see that any story can create false expectations, not just romance novels on poor impressionable females, but any genre and to any gender. Fiction can be propaganda. It can create false beliefs. We create false beliefs all the time. That's what it's like to be human.

[bethanydelleman]

To add some thoughts: If, for example, you've only watched British shows but never met a British person in real life, you will make assumptions about the British even though you know it's fiction. And then if you visit the UK, you will consciously feel those assumptions being met or destroyed. If fiction is all you have, your brain will use it. Because our brains hate not knowing stuff.

We explicitly use fiction to teach about real life. We read The Boy Who Cried Wolf to teach children about the consequences of lying. They definitely overlap, sometimes on purpose. In war times, governments commission fiction that glorifies war so that people will sign up to fight. There is a blurry line, sometimes on purpose.

[micamicster]

Your boss is quite the card player. How does he do it? He cheats.

The Sting (1973) dir. George Roy Hill

[lackadaisycal-art]

Second Heyer commission for @alanoriela, this time Frederica! (Well, Alverstoke, Jessamy and Felix technically)

[bicreature]

A Thousand and One (2023) dir. A.V. Rockwell

"You're not a boat or a plane or a snort. You're my mother. You're a bird and you're my mother. And you're my mother. And you're my mother. And you're…"

[unhinged-soapbox]

So I just saw the most incredible production of Macbeth that wove parental grief into the whole regicide plot in such a fascinating way.

So at the very beginning of the play there was a scene where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are at a funeral as the primary mourners. A stretcher is carried on with a covered body. The body was notably very small. They laid flowers on it and Macbeth immediately left for battle.

Now *I* studied Shakespeare in college so I immediately knew there is one single line that implies that the Macbeths lost a child at some point. Most of the time this isn't utilized in productions; it's just a throwaway line, intended to paint just how determined Lady M is for this regicide thing to work and how furious she is that her husband has cold feet. In this production she delivers "I have given suck, and know how tender tis to love the babe that milks me" nearly in tears. She takes a moment to steel herself before saying, "I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains pit, had I so sworn" and she very nearly SCREAMED this in Macbeth's face.

Also noted was how the Macbeths looked at Macduff's children. Lady M was clutching her heart, nearly breaking watching them embrace their parents. Macbeth could not even look at them.

At the end of Lady Macbeth's plot, when she is sleepwalking and sleeptalking, she is typically portrayed as speaking to no one or to her husband. However, at a certain point of her monologue she got on her knees, raised her voice to a comforting octave, and began miming tear wiping, hand holding, hair and face stroking, around a child-sized figure. "Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave." Then she stands and appears to take the child's hand. "Go to bed, go to bed. I can hear knocking at the gate-" then she looks down and realizes that no one is there, followed be the most heartbreaking shriek I've ever heard followed by a full minute of her just weeping while curled up on the floor before she stood up, finished her monologue and left the stage.

Most of the time when the loss of a child is utilized in a performance or adaptation, it is assumed that the child was an infant and lost some time ago. To imply that the child died IMMEDIATELY prior to the events of the play and had been cared for and loved by their parents for a few years adds such a fascinating layer to the desperation to ascend to the throne, Lady M's madness, and Macbeth's initial hesitation into "in for a penny, in for a pound" attitude, Macbeth's fury that Banquo's, not his, children will take the throne, and even Macbeth's eventual demise following a frenzied final battle.

How far will grief push you to fill a hole? How far will grief push you to desperation? And what happens when none of your new pursuits are filling the void left by the one you lost? And what happens when you realize you have nothing left to lose?

It was a PHENOMENAL production.

[bethanydelleman]

Someone tagged my post (the one about the importance of female work) with "OP's favourite Jane Austen novel is Mansfield Park and I think that explains some of this post" (paraphrase) and you know what? Good on you, because it totally does.

Fanny Price is weak, sickly, shy, nervous, and everything that modern readers and media creators seem to hate. She never stands up to her abusers. She is staunchly moral. She is not sassy. She cannot defeat anyone in hand-to-hand combat, but I still think she is a heroine worthy of being represented accurately in film. I still think her book is worth reading, even if it loses in popularity on every single poll. Because Fanny is freaking strong. She has incredibly limited choices, means, and energy but she still stands her ground and refuses to marry Henry Crawford. And I would bet she's a heck of a lot more relatable to the real general population than a lot of heroines seen in film or books today; not every heroine needs to be inspirational (I mean, I do think she is inspirational too, but I think a lot of people would disagree).

When Hollywood makes Fanny Price sassy to make the film "better" or they hand Cinderella/Snow White a sword to make them "interesting", it says to me that they think women with their personality/situation don't deserve to be portrayed as heroines. No one wants to see that; it won't make money. People want Strong Female Characters! And then they did it again with Anne Elliot. She can't be prudent, self-sacrificing, and know when to hold her tongue! Make her sarcastic, messy, and drunk. And then you have people getting annoyed any time a woman cries because now she's "weak." Humans cry! But no, women have to be some insane level of "strong," so they cannot cry.

I want love for the weak women, the oppressed women who cannot defeat their oppressors, the quiet women, women who are chronically ignored or forgotten, women with disabilities, but women who still fight in their own way for their happiness and place in the world. Because not all of us are the "right" kind of strong.

If viewers/readers and producers/writers think there is no place for women like Fanny Price, then I think we have a problem.

[mobius-m-mobius]

You were joking. People joke about the horrible things that they don't do, they don't do them. It's absurd.

GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997) | dir. George Armitage

[bodybebangin]

The Last Picture Show (1971)

[sonseulsoleil]

I've said it before, but I reread Emma, so I'm saying it again.

George Knightley is THE Austen Hero. He is kind, compassionate, never condescends. He is so nice that not once, but TWICE, he is mistaken for being in love when he's not. He may be strict and rational, but he isn't cold. He plays with his nieces and nephews and helps keep the peace between family members. He calls Emma out, but only because he wants to help her be the best possible version of herself. He moves into Hartfield at the end, something completely unheard of in those days, because he knows Emma would never leave her father and he would never ask her to.

He is just. The Peak.

[sonseulsoleil]

I don't want to put this person on blast, but this isn't the first person who has brought up the age gap between Emma and Knightley on this post, and it is really starting to piss me off.

Going beyond the fact that you're projecting a modern understanding of relationships and age onto a two hundred year old novel, you're just kind of missing the point of the book. One of the biggest, most obvious, in your face themes of Emma is the idea of marriage as a sacrifice.

Specifically, marriage as a sacrifice on the part of women. We see it time and again in the book, right from the start. The very first thing that happens is the Westons' wedding. Emma and Mr. Woodhouse bemoan that Miss Taylor has had to leave to them and move into her husband's home--just like all women did back then. Same for Isabella moving to London with John. These women have to sacrifice their independence, their names, their homes, to get married. And if they don't get married? They become like Miss Bates.

Miss Bates is an unmarried older woman, and she is mocked by Emma and others for being an "old maid." But it goes be on that. The Bates' are poor, by Austen standards. When it looks like Frank and Jane won't be able to get married, Jane has to get a job as a governess to make money and support her family.

And then there's Harriet. Harriet constantly worries about her fate if she doesn't get married. Emma uses that to manipulate her into falling for Elton, a man who is above her station. Harriet needs to marry well or risk becoming like Miss Bates. Marriage is simultaneously a necessary way out of potential poverty and a form of controlling these women.

Except for Emma. The reason Emma tends to be disliked by readers is because unlike most other Austen heroines, she's really, really rich. Which makes her less relatable and more annoying sometimes. It also means marriage isn't a concern for her. She is wealthy enough that she doesn't need to do it. She has all the possible freedoms she wants. She is mistress of her father's estate. For most of the novel, Emma has no interest in getting married because for her there would be no benefit.

Unless she were in love.

Which brings us to the end of the novel. Emma and Knightley are clearly in love for the entire story, but neither of them realize it until near the end. And even once they have confessed their mutual feelings for each other, Emma won't marry him. And she is fully able to say no, because she doesn't need to get married. Unlike most women, she is not being societally coerced into getting married.

And then Knightley agrees to move into her estate. Which is completely unheard of, and for the rest of the novel people make comments about the sacrifice he is making, forgoing his independence and freedom. This is, of course, another moment where Austen illustrates the inequality between men and women because obviously women were just expected to make that sacrifice for marriage.

But it also shows us that that inequality does not exist in Emma and Knightley's relationship.

For most of the novel, they are on equal footing, even if he is older. They're both equally rich, they're both equally intelligent, as we see in their arguments. Knightley may disagree with her, but he still outright says that she's smart ("it is better to be without sense than to misuse it as you do"). But this moment at the end pushes it to the next level. He is willing to make those sacrifices for her that most men wouldn't. He is willing to do what is expected of a woman in society. He does not see her as property to own. Instead, he sees her as an equal. He's always seen her as a friend, now he sees her as a partner.

The problem with big age gaps in adult relationships doesn't actually come from the age gap itself. It comes from the likelihood of an uneven power dynamic. Someone who is older is likely to have more money, be farther along in their career, etc. But none of that applies to Emma and Knightley because they are equals.

That's the entire point of the book: that marriage should be equal.

[bethanydelleman]

And also, that line about baby holding was invented by an adaptation, there is exactly zero indication that Mr. Knightley held baby Emma. In fact, the book notes their relationship starting when Emma took over management of Hartfield and entered the adult social sphere. She did this at 12, as her mother was deceased and her sister married, which is early but still, that is when they saw each other.