Random

Sophie’s dash

[wolfythewitch]

furthest we've ever been

[sunsets-on-water]

One thing i love about the Raven Cycle that i feel is not spoken much about is its take on grief. I know this comes up a lot more in the dreamers trilogy but it’s done so intentionally in TRC.

We know both Ronan and Noah were different before but we never really see it. The Death has already happened before we (Blue) arrive at the scene. Niall Lynch is gone and Ronan is forever changed. We can hear about the before, his hair, tennis, his relationship with Declan, even see glimpses of it, the Barnes, Sunday’s a church, but Ronan will never be the person he was before and we as an audience will never meet him.

For Noah it’s even clearer. We never know Czerny outside of brief recounts years after the fact from a man justifying his murder. His family don’t get the chance to speak to us and the Noah we know is in his own words lesser than the Noah Czerny that was lost. Noah Czerny is split, one half the lesser ghost of Noah and another the distorted memory of Czerny.

Both of these introductions of loss are so interesting, especially Noah’s, because they force the audience to equally lose access to parts of the character. We are immersed in the story, in Ronan’s case in the manner of Blue who meets him at the same instance we do. Noah’s loss is more interesting because the main group don’t experience his loss, they forget him and move on. His family grieve him outside of the narrative scope and Whelk doesn’t seem to grieve him at all. Instead the audience attempts to mourn him, putting the pieces together. I think the absence of everything we never got to know about Noah is such a perfect representation of death and how it can make our loved ones seem strangers to us. We didn’t know all of Noah Czerny, but we know there was a boy who died when he didn’t deserve to and isn’t that enough for us to grieve?

[sunsets-on-water]

Very quick post about Claudia’s reflection in the recording booth glass in iwtv season 3.

Do we think that’s why Lestat became a musician? He’s been an actor before, and was very successful at it, but music was something he pursued in New Orleans. He taught Claudia how to play the piano. How could he return to acting when the stage killed his daughter? How can he move on from music when he shared it with her?

I think Lestat and Claudia’s relationship is one of the most complex and interesting relationships in the show. They’re the most alike of our original trio and their animosity is built on a strong understanding of each other. Claudia and Lestat see each other the most clearly, especially compared to Louis rose coloured glasses approach. Lestat grieving Claudia is often overlooked next to Louis grief as shallower but arguably it’s a deeper loss. Louis loved Claudia but didn’t see her totally, Lestat had a more complicated but aware understanding of her.

At the end of the day Lestat is a liar. As much as he claimed he didn’t care for her or called her Louis’ pet, she was his daughter too. They raised her together. She was his prodigious killer and his chess rival. She was too much like him and doomed from the beginning. He couldn’t save her and we don’t know if he tried to but she’s haunting him either way.

[sunsets-on-water]

My name is Abed.

I’m a survivor from Gaza, holding on to hope in a world that has fallen apart around me. 💔

The life I once knew — my home, my family, my sense of safety — has been shattered by war. Today, I live among the ruins, trying to find a path forward through the rubble and heartbreak. 🏚

Every moment is a battle against fear and uncertainty. What was once ordinary — a safe place to sleep, a future to dream of — now feels like a distant memory. 🕊️

I share my story not to seek pity, but to keep hope alive — to believe that even in the darkest places, kindness can still find a way. 🤍

If my story touches your heart, please consider sharing it or offering support. Every voice, every act of care, brings me one step closer to safety. ✨

Thank you for taking the time to listen. 🙏

Post Link

[oraclewings]

thinking about how messed up the family life of the batgirls were and how little people talk about their trauma in depth

babs lost two mothers (barbara and sarah), grew up with a creepy violent brother who tried to harm her and almost killed her, had to grow up fast because she had to take care of herself since her dad had to work all the time. babs grew up obsessed with having control because she knew she couldn't count on anyone to be there to protect her. apart from what he did to her, babs had her stepmother killed by the joker, her father tortured by the joker and her brother taken by the joker. babs' family will forever be haunted and targeted by that clown.

cass was raised as a weapon, was denied love and education and individuality and privacy and care. cass had to learn how to hurt others and has to forever live with the guilt even though she literally was taught nothing else. cass had to live on the streets for years without any ways of communicating directly with others while she was still a child. cass had to fight her biological parents and fight what she was raised to be.

stephanie had to grow up in an abusive household and carry the shame of her father's sins while trying to escape them. steph had to deal with her problems by herself as a child to not burden her mother. steph had a baby as a teenager. steph had to protect herself against her predator uncle and put him behind bars. steph had to fight her own father and survive him. steph had to die and even then, she was barely remembered.

[mismedleym]

recollections

[mrporg]

[grimbeak]

9th doctor era was simply The Best One im sorry. shaved head leather jacket doc martins telling people to kill themselves. sweetie pea retail worker universal union organizer who became god for him. their stray cat horny little boytoy bottom who becomes an unkillable eldritch horror because of their love. did i mention the first guys a dilf and the other two have daddy issues.

[automatonwithautonomy]

the thing about ronan lynch is that he's so lonely. the only dreamer he knows, the only gay kid. when given the chance he dreams brothers and birds and brydes and little orphan girls. friends. companions. things made for loving no matter how difficult they can be. you are made of dreams and this world is not for you. he's not alone. not anymore. there's always going to be a part of him that's lonely. but he's so surrounded by love now.

[wanderintofics]

personally i think the reason Batman is really good with kids is because he more or less hitchhiked his way across europe and asia fully intending to wilderness man his through it during his training years but local families kept taking one look at him and thinking 'that skrunkly young man needs help' and would take him in for a night or more and task him with watching the toddler and up kids cause it was the one thing they were sure he couldn't fuck up

[wanderintofics]

#i love the idea that the time he spends traveling isnt just him training; but also the beginning of him learning#to let go of his anger and finding forgiveness and love and community#the same things that will come to define his role as batman and mr wayne and as a parent by @tangerinetrees

it's so important to me that his traveling isn't just him learning to fight and be a detective, cause it would have been so easy for him to have never let go of the anger that way, he is a very rich very privileged man who's parents were killed in a robbery, it would have been SO easy for him to decide all poor people were the problem, to latch on to some kind of hatred and grief fueled prejudice to ease the pain and be just another rich asshole who thinks harder laws would fix the problem or to just import world class trainers

choosing to turn away from that was the first step in being a hero instead, but i think the next several were in traveling the world, in seeing places outside of Gotham and america, not even in a "wow now that i'm talking to them maybe poor people are people" but in a "oh shit i'm being helped by so many different kinds of people and i'm falling in love with all of them" kind of way, in a "i expected to be alone and miserable while i turn myself into a machine but people keep touching me gently" kind of way

he first steps out of Gotham and he's so cold and angry and hard and bitter when he leaves but everywhere he goes there is kindness and laughter and a space freely offered to rest his head and food snuck into his pockets and Bruce holds it all in his hands and weeps because how can he not love them all? how can he not think there is goodness in them all? how can this not irrevocably change him as a person for the better?

[trekkele]

Hi sorry i just gotta

HE changed for the better and he’s a terrible person so clearly anyone can change

From your tags because Bruce recognizing his own growth and and it translating into the basis for his overwhelming and unabiding belief in everyone’s ability to change and everyone’s right to a second (and third and fourth and fifth and -) chance has me chewing on my walls excuse me

[bethanydelleman]

To get Caroline Bingley's character right, you have to understand that she is a foil for both the Bennet sisters and Mr. Darcy.

She is the more rational choice for Darcy vs. the Bennets. She has education, manners, a fortune, and clearly, relatives that he likes. So many fan fiction authors make her vulgar and/or unfashionable, but she isn't! That is why Darcy enjoys hanging out with her in the beginning; he would not have her at his house if she was embarrassing. Even when angry with Elizabeth, Caroline does not dare go further in attacking Elizabeth at Pemberley. She has self control. She understands boundaries, which Jane and Elizabeth mostly do, but the rest of the Bennet family struggles with. This is why she's a foil for them.

As for Darcy, at the beginning, Caroline is a nearly perfect mirror of his opinions and snobby attitude. She is doing this on purpose as a way of flirting, but it's probably pretty close to her real personality anyway. She's right that Darcy looks down on Elizabeth's uncle being a lower class lawyer. She's right that he finds the Bennet family intolerable to marry into. However, as Darcy falls in love with Elizabeth and then reforms, Caroline's mirror distorts. That shows his growth in the novel. She, like Elizabeth, fails to update her priors, though to be fair to Caroline, she didn't build her knowledge of Mr. Darcy on first impressions. It's harder to change her mind because she did once know him very well.

Side note: this is also why people woobyfying Darcy hurts Caroline as a rational character. They start in a very similar place and love mean girl gossiping together, then he changes. When Darcy's flaws are erased, it makes Caroline look super irrational and much crueller.

Lastly, Caroline is above all else, pragmatic and strategic. She does not hold grudges once it becomes more advantageous to drop them. She would never, ever, now that she is connected by marriage to the Bennets, mock them in public. Because that reflects on her! Caroline would be in London talking up that the Bennets are a very old gentry family with an ancient estate or something. She's going to be giving them a PR makeover to all her fancy friends because they are HERS now, for better or for worse and whether she likes any of them or not. Yes, in private she might be mean, as she is in the novel, but again, she's not vulgar and she has nothing to gain in public. She has manners, she has self-control; being a mean girl doesn't override that.

[rhaellatully]

I really hate how the show refused to acknowlegde the harm Penelope has caused. We've talked about her blaming Cressida for almost ruining the bridgerton when she did that.

Yes, one single woman comes up to her to call her out but none of the main characters ever do!

But also nothing wrong she's ever done can be mentioned! Benedict is having a love story with a working class woman and he has no conversation with Eloise, the sibbling with whom he's has the closest relationship, who herself had the start of a romance with a working class man. But they can't have that conversation, because having that conversation means mentioning the fact that Penelope broke them up, and we can't talk about Penelope doing something wrong.

And now they are going to have Marina die so that Eloise can be forced into a romance with her husband, and they are somehow going to never mention what Penelope did to her. I bet they'll even try to blame Marina for everything.

[mariapaulatb]

I love the narrative that Ilya was getting white girl wasted at clubs in 2016. Probably having tears running down his face while his teammates watch is concern and bafflement. I also feel like we need to talk about how ICONIC his playlists must have been at this time. I bet NO ONE wanted to ride in a car with this man.

[eloiscbridgerton]

BRIDGERTON (2020–)

Why must our only options be to squawk and settle or to never leave the nest? What if I want to fly?

[mingus-archives]

It is wild that in a season so explicitly and deeply exploring the consequences of romance and marriage in a patriarchal, sexist society (e.g. Sophie being left with nothing after her father's passing (even if that wasn't actually true), Francesca having to undergo traumatic medical examinations solely to legally prove she had an heir, Francesca losing her title because she did not bear an heir, Cressida nearly being forced to marry a man three times her age, Virginia being tossed aside once outed as Mr Hiscox's mistress, hell even Araminta becoming jaded after having to find a second husband when her first died just to take care of her daughters) Eloise and her previous attitudes were framed as love-hating or women-hating.

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

the thing that you HAVE to understand about much ado about nothing is that beatrice and benedick are NOT COOL. they are HUGE DORKS and also major softies. they make everything loud and obnoxious and about themselves because they are SO hurt about what happened in the past between them and SO sensitive about it. Beatrice says this more explicitly but it’s also true about benedick. he gets legitimately so upset and angry when he thinks beatrice doesn’t know who he is at the party and she calls him a dumbass. he storms off stage when he sees her next. because he’s hurt!!! because it really really matters to him what she thinks!!!! and right after that Beatrice literally talks about how Benedick “lent [her his heart] awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice” HE BETRAYED HER and she’s STILL UPSET. “thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt” she is not railing against marriage because she’s principled against it or because she’s Strong Female Character (tm). she’s sunburnt!!! she loved benedick more than he loved her and she’s still torn up about it!!!! she would rather never deal with that again!!! which is what you have to understand here. they are putting up fronts that they don’t care all the time. they are putting of fronts of Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl and Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude but this is not who they are in ANY way and they are both so sensitive and get hurt so easily!!!!!! and this is why they almost don’t get together this is why they almost take it all back in the last scene!!! they can’t be vulnerable! they can’t risk it! it’s easier to be Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl than just Beatrice who got her heart broken and now can’t trust anymore. it’s easier to be Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude when you blew it with the girl you’re obsessed with and you survived war just to go back to her after you broke her heart and she calls you a dumbass to your face. the vulnerability necessary to their relationship only happens through their friends but otherwise they are actually hopeless. it is so so important to me that these two are both incredibly sappy losers

[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.

[lipstickhamlet]

something about the way shakespeare's plays are positioned to just barely cover the untold tragedies lurking underneath. lady macbeth knows how tender the babe is that milks her yet the macbeths have no child to pass the crown to. iago mentions that othello saw his own brother shot to pieces by cannons. olivia was planning to grieve her brother for 7 years until she met viola. beatrice knew benedick of old. lady capulet was only fourteen when she gave birth to juliet. it drives me crazy to see all the untold stories peeking out between the lines of the main plot.