Aug 19, 2022
There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension and “There’s a Platypus Controlling Me” are examples of media that cater to the male fantasy of being forced by a mystic entity to freestyle rap while all in attendance bounce along to the beat
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There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension and “There’s a Platypus Controlling Me” are examples of media that cater to the male fantasy of being forced by a mystic entity to freestyle rap while all in attendance bounce along to the beat
7.04 | Dear Dictator by Saint Motel
Bonus:
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.” ― Bram Stoker, Dracula
“Love is not consolation. It is light.” ― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
“My darling, my dying, my light [...]” ― Velimir Khlebnikov, Selected Poems
“You’re standing alone at the entrance to the tunnel because you know something I can’t even put a name on, something deeper and more ruthless than I can ever understand. I realize that I can never get closer to that world. I can only long for it, because it is hidden by a light and warmth that I cannot bear. [...] If I were to lose you, it would be the unforgivable end of me. Because I know nothing about that unnameable world. Since you are part of it, you mean the world to me. That can never change.” ― Béla Tarr, Kárhozat
-Anne Carson, The beauty of the Husband
I’ve been thinking a lot about outlander and t100 which has led me to this; I see so many similarities between j/c and b/c. Yes, Clarke and Bellamy can “live” without the other, it’s like Jamie and Claire said to each other, it’s like living without a heart, or with half a heart. Claire had to raise Brianna so she did and she had a life and a job, Clarke raised Maddie and created a home. Jamie had a job and married someone, Bellamy became the leader of spacekru and got with echo. But then they
Pt.2 to an outlander/t100 ask; they found each other again and Claire and Jamie dropped everything to be together. And so did Bellamy for Clarke kinda. Dropped his people and echo and sanctum and ran off to save Clarke no matter what. So even though C/J are definitely more soul matey-dependent on each other, both couples have loved each other through space and time. For years, and have found their way back to each other every time. Love that for my two fav ships ❤️❤️❤️❤️
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I just caught up (almost) on this season Outlander (i still have to watch last night’s show because i couldn’t wait to get ALL the season on dvr,) so i dug this question out of my inbox. Sorry to keep you waiting so long.
Bellarke and J/C are, I think, the same romantic trope in many ways. That love beyond death, time and space epic love thing.
In fact, is this a spoiler? I think this is a spoiler. So I’ll try to be a little vague.
The last episode I watched had Jamie near death, and the only thing that brought him back was Claire’s love/touch. Love’s true kiss/kiss of life sorta.
And when they had their intimate discussion the next day when they woke up, (bellarke had one too,) Jamie told her that he came back because she needed him. (Bellamy told Clarke he needed her too.) Claire asked “not because you love me?” (which would never happen with bellarke, no saying the L word.) And Jamie said he loved her when they’re together and when they’re apart and even in death he’ll love her. Which, fine, that didn’t happen on The 100, or rather, they never SAID that on the 100 because Bellarke don’t TALK about things like that... BUT Clarke lived for 6 years talking to him every day because he kept her going. And Bellamy lived with a bit of Clarke’s heart inside his heart and tried to live for her. So their love, too, unstated as it may be, also follows Jamie’s statement.
It’s the same archetypal story. Fated lovers, soulmates, separated by cruel fate/gods/apocalypse, but a love that is true and real and continues past death, time and space.
Clarke was assumed to have died in praifaya/Jamie was assumed to have died in Culloden. Bellamy went to space/Claire went to America. Clarke lived for Madi/Claire lived for Brianna. Bellarke had 6 years apart/Claire and Jamie had 20? years apart. Bellamy discovered Clarke was alive through distant messages/Claire discovered Jamie was alive through distant messages. The lovers were reunited, in jeopardy. Oh and they had to deal with relationships over the time jump. Bellamy w E/Jamie with Laoighre (did I spell it right?Laoghaire) Hah then they had fights with the powers that be. Then they went on a journey. (Bellarke to sanctum/Jamie and Claire to America.)
Well then our two stories are separated, because while they both have the same archetypal love story, they are told in different GENRES. Outlanders is a time travelers and warriors history in a romance genre. The 100 is an epic love story in a post apocalyptic action tragedy science fiction genre.
The romance genre has, as it’s core plot, “how do these epic lovers find each other/save each other/find a HEA.” Jamie and Claire are an established relationship, married (arranged marriage trope actually, they married before they fell in love,) with children (brianna, roger, fergus, ian, marsali,) and GRANDCHILDREN (Jemmie and all Fergus and Marsali’s kids.) Traditional romance should have a Happy Ever After ending or a Happy For Now ending. But this whole epic thing puts a doubt on how everything will work out. Their struggles never end. Is the book series even done yet? I don’t know. (there are ten books planned she’s only published 8)
The post apocalyptic science fiction show OFTEN has a romance at it’s center, but not always, and being post apocalyptic genre, does NOT have a required Happy Ever After ending, so the romance could end tragically or disappointingly. You never know if the post apocalyptic stories are going to end with hope or end with no hope. And that puts the romance at the center of its story at risk. Take, for instance, Maggie and Glenn on The Walking Dead. ): Great love story shown on screen. beautiful. D: ): Not so much a happy ever after show. More like a life sucks and then you die and then you come back as a zombie show. HOWEVER, I do think that JR is tending towards the happy ever after bittersweet post apocalyptic genre, as evidenced by Marper’s ending. They broke the cycle and lived a life on their terms. HOWEVER again, it’s not certain, as evidenced by KABBY’s ending, where they DIDN’t break the cycle... or Kane broke the cycle that Abby was continuing. So though their love was lost, it was sacrificed to a better world. Anyway. It’s dangerous to ship on a non romance show. imo.
But for Bellarke, the central relationship of The 100, with a love story archetype that matches the swoonworthy Outlander story, we have “how do these epic lovers find each other/save each other/find a HEA” with the CORE plot, and then the umbrella plot, the “plot” plot, of “How do Clarke and her soulmate Bellamy save and redeem humanity and become the good guys?” So we’re watching the umbrella plot while the core plot is going on.
BOTH stories have the main characters suffering ENDLESSLY, with themes of love, love lost, betrayal, family, found family, war, the end of the world (literally for The 100 and for certain people [the highland scots, and i think the native americans] in Outlander, generations, warriors heroes, DOCTOR heroines, trying to become a hero/find your place, death and a heroine who stops death, saving your people, trauma, ptsd, tyranny, criminals, heroes who are called criminals.
Clarke and Bellamy are a good deal younger than Claire and Jamie, and in a time when people don’t start their families so young, and also where women aren’t subordinate. But also, The 100 has a hope of breaking the cycle of violence because it’s about the future, while Outlander, about the past, cannot break the cycle of violence. We KNOW Britain defeats the clans. We KNOW that slavery will last for generations and the natives will be driven out and massacred.
So what Claire and Jamie are looking for is a way to ESCAPE the fated horrors that they can’t stop. While Clarke and Bellamy are looking for a way to STOP the impending horrors and make up for the past.
These two stories definitely have a conversation going. Did JR read Outlander before starting The 100? Quite possible. In fact maybe THAT’S why he says it’s not a time travel story even when we know something wonky is going on with time. Because OUTLANDER is a time travel story and this isn’t like that at all.
“I am nowhere gathered together;” ― Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse
“Depersonalization like the deposing of useless individuality— the loss of everything that can be lost, while still being. To take away from yourself little by little, with an effort so attentive that no pain is felt, to take away from yourself like one who gets free of her own skim, her own characteristics. Everything that characterizes me is just the way I am most easily viewed by others and end up being superficially recognizable to myself.” ― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
“But I will stretch my toes so that they touch the rail at the end of the bed; I will assure myself, touching the rail, of something hard. Now I cannot sink; cannot altogether fall through the thin sheet now. Now I spread my body on this frail mattress and hang suspended. I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. All is soft, and bending. Walls and cupboards whiten and bend their yellow squares on top of which a pale glass gleams. Out of me now my mind can pour.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
“A good book is an event in my life.” ― Stendhal, The Red and the Black
“[...] real poetry must hurt, as if you'd forgotten you wrapped a razor blade in your handkerchief and you blow your nose, no book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out, [...]” ― Bohumil Hrabal, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? (...) We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” ― Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors
“There are moments, such as the one that oppresses me now, when I feel my own self far more than I feel external things, and everything transforms into a night of rain and mud where, lost in the solitude of an out-of-the-way station, I wait interminably for the next third-class train.” ―Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future are growing less. . . . . Supernumerous existence wells up in my heart.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies (The Ninth Elegy)
“I am, I am, I am.” ―Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.” ―Stephen Crane, War Is Kind and Other Poems