walking home a crooked mile

emily. fandom Old (tm tm tm). aka feelalittlelove, chosenmortal, betweenthebliss, and other aliases. this is a multifandom blog: the locked tomb, x-men, MCU, hannibal, star trek, dimension 20, a dash of the mcelroys for seasoning, and a layer of book geek icing on top.

[kej-art]

one flesh, one end

[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.

[marsipanart]

Trying to fix my values and threw a few Zukka in there 🫢

[ecstaticadventures]

‘bread is bad for you’ ‘rice is bad for you’ sorry im not subscribing to the idea that staple grains that have been integral to cultures for centuries are evil. i love you carbs

[opentheyear]

carbs are bad for being thin, which is a tool of white supremacy and misogyny.

[foolhearteyes]

need someone who cares about hockey more than i do to write a fic where shane is forced to retire before he feels ready and svetlana has gotten frustrated with her MHL job because team management never listens to her (due to the misogyny) so she quits and talks shane into starting a hockey analysis podcast together and it's called something like "hockey with hot people" or "puckbunnies" or "soft hands" (shane does not like this but svetlana understands the importance of branding) and it's 98% Serious Hockey Talk BUT they do have a dedicated segment called "why does ilya rozanov owe me money" wherein guests tell their worst ilya stories and after hearing them out shane and svetlana decide how much money ilya owes the guest. ilya is never invited onto the podcast.

[orpheuslament]

bro im not driving pass me the victor hugo there are men who seemingly are born to be the verso quote

[orpheuslament]

the way it all boils down to this......

[darlingofdots]

People are being so mean about TLG!Shane and I just cannot understand that at all. I think the most important thing about their relationship is that The Long Game is ultimately about the external barriers that are keeping both Shane and Ilya in the closet, but even though they're technically both in a similar position (captain of a team, high profile players), their experience is so vastly different.

Like, yeah, Ilya gave up his spot on a successful team and his chances of winning any trophies and his city to be closer to Shane, but he also gets to be part of Shane's family the way he dreamed of when they first come clean with Yuna and David, his new coach prioritises good relationships over discipline, and the Centaurs may suck at hockey but they're also genuinely friendly and they treat Harris as one of them despite his visible queerness. Over the course of that season, it becomes increasingly clear to Ilya that not only is hiding his bisexuality and his relationship with Shane not sustainable, it's not necessary. Two years ago, they couldn't imagine a reality in which making their relationship public wouldn't be catastrophic, but for Ilya, that has changed. He is surrounded by people who love him and who would have his back, and he's watching other people (especially Troy and Harris) have what he wants so desperately, and the idea of waiting for retirement becomes more and more of a prison to him.

Shane, meanwhile, spends the entire book slowly breaking under the pressure he's facing from all sides. Once the season starts, the first thing we learn about Shane's team is that they won the Cup last season, and that their coach casually slings homophobic language around in the locker room, and that Shane realises he barely even registers the background homophobia anymore because he's so used to it. Shane has led the Voyageurs to 3 Cup wins and they keep pushing him harder. He has friends on the team, sure, but he already didn't fit in because he's quiet, boring, doesn't really drink, and being out just added another layer to that. The Voyageurs only value him as one of the best players in the league and it's fine that he's gay only as long as he keeps scoring. He's rapidly developing an eating disorder because he is terrified of not performing at peak capacity, because he is trying to exert control over everything he possibly can to protect himself and his partner. He can't imagine a life where he isn't playing hockey, and he can't imagine a life where he gets to be in a public relationship with Ilya Rozanov and also gets to play hockey. In his mind, this is the best they can have until at the very least Ilya's citizenship is secure and that is the status quo he trying to protect, because in his eyes, the status quo is constantly under threat. From his perspective, the question isn't this or more, it's this or less.

That's why he's so against telling more people and why he can barely handle being in public with Ilya. He's convinced that a single toe out of line is going to be punished, because in many aspects of his life (as a gay man, as a non-white superstar in a very white sport, as a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical environment) that is exactly what happens. His realisation that hiding has negative consequences he can't live with is the push he needs to start being an active participant in his life rather than a good, obedient cog in a machine designed to hold him down.

[insomniac-arrest]

The road OUT of hell is also paved with good intentions. That’s just kind of the main road we’ve got

[insomniac-arrest]

Yeah, eventually, you do reach Rome

[sparrowlucero]

more little tea kettle dragons

available on my kofi as adoptables

[asthedeathoflight]

Resisting the urge to Um Actually this dragon novel because it has the dragon eggs be like three or four feet wide but there is simply a limit to how large hard-shelled terrestrial eggs can be. No matter how large the animal is, the embryo needs oxygen, and oxygen needs surface area. The larger an object is, the lower its surface area relative to volume, and the less oxygen the embryo can receive. We think of large animals as having porportionately large young because mammalian pregnancy has the unique benefit of allowing for the size of the young to scale with the adult because their oxygen is provided directly through the placenta, and almost all the megafauna remaining on Earth are mammals. But this is not the case for species which lay eggs! For fuck's sake even the sauropods hatched out of eggs barely larger than basketballs! Your hatchling dragon would be impressively enormous if it were the size of a house cat. Stop trying to make me believe that this (ROUND!) dragon egg somehow supplied enough oxygen to develop an infant the size of a large dog or even bigger. If it were possible the dinosaurs woulda been doing it!!!!

[achillbeing]

I love you /lh. Experts going off on their particular fascinating cool topics and adding unexpected context to things we take for granted is like my favorite thing this was delightful. Talk to me more about eggs and geometry and biology all you want :D

[achillbeing]

Amazing concept

[shilyas]

02.13.2001 🎉 Happy Birthday, Hudson Williams!

[plumebeat]

The swords kissed and sprang apart and kissed again [...] steel rang, steel sang, steel screamed and sparked and scraped [...] A red flower blossomed [...] "Come on, come on, my sweetling, the music’s still playing. Might I have this dance, my lady?”

Jaime III, A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin

[not100bees]

People on Tumblr love sharing information about themselves no matter how asinine it is. And I'm the same way. Everybody tell me what the last thing you drank was.

[mithrandirl]

'I had to study you first, and make sure of you. The Enemy has set traps for me before now. As soon as I had made up my mind, I was ready to tell you whatever you asked. But I must admit,' he added with a queer laugh, 'that I hoped you would take to me for my own sake. A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship. But there, I believe my looks are against me.'

[rozrozhollander]

But you know me. I'm lazy, so... I don't know that side of you at all.

[jakeperalta]

- Melissa Cox

[umbralupusv]

homo superior reign supreme