urban mermaid @hrtbrkanthem - Tumblr Blog

"An organizational psychologist, Adam Grant, sent me a message saying, “It’s a masterful portrayal of superficiality masking depth.” Out of all the things I’ve heard, that is the thing I’m going to get printed on a T-shirt."

- Jonathan Bailey for W Magazine interviewed by Max Gao

#wicked

tallahasseemp3

As far as strong first seasons go, 2022 was kind of a banner year — there was the above, obviously, but shows like Yellowjackets and Severance also took the internet by storm. And whether it was in the wilderness or in a sterile office building, both of them had the creeping sense of horror brought by an environment that hates you. The wilderness is alive and it doesn’t want you to leave. The office building is set up so that when you try to walk out you come right back in. And even Interview with the Vampire plays into this, both with Lestat’s townhouse that becomes a repository of hatred and Louis’ present-day penthouse that he explicitly refers to as his coffin.

All of this, to me, feels like a reaction to the pandemic — while only one of those shows mentions it in passing, all of them were produced at the height of it. For a lot of people, 2020 was the first time in their lives that they’d had to stay at home so long. It’s only natural, then, that resentment would start to build towards your home, and unsurprising that it then seeped into the creative work produced during that time. Even past just the staying at home, the pandemic created a sense of hypervigilance towards our surroundings; remember the early days, when we knew very little about the virus and every trip outside felt like it might kill us? Therein lies the environment that hates you. [...]

I guess I was thinking about how many of these stories I’ve seen this year, and it really clicked — even outside of TV, my personal media diet saw a resurgence in haunted house stories. This is something I’m always interested in anyway, but I really think being inside for so long made people reflect on their environments in a way they hadn’t before. It’s easy not to notice your house is haunted when you don’t spend that much time there. But when there’s nowhere to go, and when the outside is also trying to kill you, the ghosts become unavoidable.

every word handwritten on substack

#yellowjackets

anxietyproblem

zero-two-ten

this site has one setting

jenroses

I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record. And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.” So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)

It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful. It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons.

kittydorkling

There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:

The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.

You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!

But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.

bogleech

You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking

johannas-motivational-insults

Second to last post is very right, this is actual neuroscience and brain plasticity… your habits actually get wired into your brain is the form of neural connections (“pathways”), and the more often a pathway is used the stronger that connection grows. This doesn’t just work for behavioral habits, but also mental habits.

mercutiotakethewheel

It's about the Vindication and the Power Fantasy

shittinggold

Jackie/Shauna not being explicitly specified to be in love with each other despite it being overwhelmingly obvious that that is the case is an homage to the late-90s Hays-code-aftermath era of obviously gay love stories that could not be acknowledged, and can never be acknowledged since their relationship is permanently stuck in that era and cannot progress past it. They will always been in 1996, they will always be in the woods. In this essay I will

acnhkiosk

elysiumbydesign

I completed a dirt path which can be used either as an overlay for the official paths or just as patterns to lay down on the ground. You can download the patterns by looking up my Creator ID (MA-7376-5758-0005) or by downloading them individually from this album. Additionally, I’m including some notes below for what I’d recommend based on what you’re planning to do.

Keep reading

reapersun

My entry for 13crown’s Ghostbook!

This was an amazing project, and I got to do something really different. I hope you enjoy it :))

miss-mercurial

This is incredible. Absolutely fucking loved this.

Oddly enough, I identified with it.

gentlelilac

portrait of a lady on fire, dir. céline sciamma // doubt comes in, hadestown // eurydice, sarah ruhl // metamorphoses: book x, ovid trans. anthony kline // “eurydice”, ocean vuong // talk, hozier

portraitofadumbassonfire

Movie recs

alovefromlongago

the thing i really love about hadestown is anais mitchell took this myth that has (at least as it’s been told to me) been framed as “sometimes you get really close and you still fail, because humans are flawed and it just sucks” and she said “no you guys, what orpheus was trying to do should have been impossible and he almost made it anyway. the only reason he failed is because he stopped believing he could succeed”

not-all-the-prayers

The Doctor + pantone palettes

#doctor who

playbill

Getting Into Character With Hadestown’s Amber Gray

#Hadestown

kcrabb88

I’ve had the Hadestown performance of Wait For Me (Reprise) on in the background for a while today, thinking about what Rachel Chavkin said at the Tony Awards about how society/capitalism can really make you feel so alone even if your partner/the people you love are right behind you. And it got me thinking SO MUCH about how in the first Wait For Me, Orpheus goes down to Hadestown, believing in himself against all odds. Despite the fact that the fates are asking him who he thinks he is, despite the fact that literally no one has walked to Hadestown before. There is absolutely every chance he’ll fail, the circumstances are Bad, but he can still hear the stones echoing his music because his mind is in a better place, he believes he isn’t alone. Eurydice, meanwhile, feels alone, because of the circumstances up top, even if she isn’t.

And what’s SO HEARTBREAKING is that in the reprise, Eurydice finally sees that SHE isn’t alone. She’s the one hearing the stones echoing their song. And despite all the chances that they’ll WIN, despite the fact that he has literally done the impossible (walked to Hadestown, rallied the workers back to life, healed the seasons, gotten Hades to agree to at least let him try to take Eurydice back), Orpheus’ experiences in Hadestown make him feel alone, when he isn’t, and that’s where he falls. So the switch here, both in their headspaces and the circumstances is JUST SO MUCH.

This is such a smart show, I just cannot deal with it.

#Hadestown