what's so cool about "kevin can fuck himself" is the way it forces you to reframe what are otherwise painted as harmless sitcom antics. it makes you really think about it.
for example, the sarcastic asides typical of a sitcom are actually cruel and abusive when rooted in reality. while you're watching the scene, set up in saturated colors and a laugh track, you have to force yourself not to slip into the banter.
it's a depiction of how abusers manipulate perceptions and get everyone else to go along with it. how it's normalized as "harmless" and laughed away.
the scenes of rhaenyra and alicent going to each other this season, desperately trying to halt fate even though they have always known deep down they are stuck with seeing this to the end. the future visions of the game of thrones universe and how everyone is stuck in their own destined deaths for a story hundreds of years beyond their own lives. alicent and rhaenyra being just two girls wearing blue who might have been soulmates in another life but are now too clouded by their own paths to save each other anymore
Romance was never top of mind for Anna Sawai's Lady Mariko in 'Shōgun'... until it was.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CRIMSON SKY
When Blackthorne stepped up to be her second as she was about to commit seppuku (suicide) in Shōgun‘s pivotal Episode 9, that was the “moment she realizes that what they share is much deeper than what she had anticipated,” Sawai tells TV Insider. “That’s the gesture that changes everything.”
Seconding her seppuku means striking the fatal blow. Mariko would first stab herself in the gut, and then Blackthorne would decapitate her as the tradition mandates. That he was ready to do this for Mariko was the ultimate symbol of Blackthorne’s evolution from the beginning of the series to now. It’s the highest sign of respect that he can give, as it prioritizes her cultural customs and loyalty over his own desires for her to keep living. And he begged her to keep living.
“He’s taking her over his own religion and beliefs,” Sawai explains of the powerful moment. “A couple scenes before that he’s asking her to keep living for him. And so I think that it just shows that he really, really cares, and that is the most romantic thing that you could ever do for someone that you love.”
They slept together once more after the thwarted seppuku. The energy between them in that moment was a defiant refusal to deny their feelings any longer, initiated by a yearning Blackthorne. But even if Buntaro had died, Sawai doesn’t see a world where Mariko and Blackthorne would have ended up together forever. “I don’t think it was realistic for that to happen,” she admits.
Mariko was never in denial about her love for Blackthorne, even if she hid it deep within herself. “Circumstances are not going to let her be with him, and so you can’t keep chasing something that you’re not going to be,” Sawai says. “It’s not healthy to keep wanting to chase it, but it’s undeniable what they share. That connection is truly just their own thing. It’s very, very intimate.”
Mariko never believed they would end up together, but Sawai reveals that her translator definitely “holds onto” their connection as a comfort in tough times. She doesn’t let her guard down again, however, until circumstances push her to let go of all restraint.
Mariko’s seppuku was stopped at the last moment by Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira), but he sent a group of assassins to kill her later that night. When she, Blackthorne, Lord Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), and other women were cornered and outnumbered, Blackthorne desperately tried to protect them from canon fire in a shed, whereas Mariko accepted death. “Anjin-sama, let it come,” she told her lover with tears in her eyes. You could see every ounce of love Mariko had for Blackthorne in this brief, tender moment before the blast killed her. Sawai played that scene as Mariko’s one chance to let all of her love for Blackthorne pour out.
“I remember just looking at Cosmo/Blackthorne and feeling like this is her goodbye. She’s not going to be able to come up to him and hold his hand and say this stuff,” Sawai shares. “It was wishful also to just accept your fate because that’s something that Blackthorne couldn’t do. He’s trying to control everything, and she’s just someone who’s like, we live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. She’s just looking at him like, I’m going to go, but thank you. And I hope you understand.”
Served cunt, caused problems, took names, healed generational trauma, made bank, gave face, rode dick, a whole MOTHER (metaphorically and literally) at the age of 20.
Penelope Bridgerton; they can never make me hate you.
I can do it with a broken heart resonates with me so much!!
Like she obv wrote it about the eras tour during a breakup, but to me it perfectly incapsulates what it’s like to live your day to day live with a mental illness. All the things you have to accomplish and pretend are fine when you are really struggling internally. The duality and the loneliness of that. It’s great to have a song to externalize that feeling.
I think that’s what she meant when she said the songs are ours now, that we can make them about whatever it is that’s breaking our hearts, romantic or otherwise.
you paint dreamscapes on the wall… your impressionist paintings of heaven turned out to be fakes… I talk shit with my friends… you shit talked me under the table… give you my wild, give you a child… talking rings and talking cradles…
