#evth

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going crazy over Troy, Illiad, The Song of Achilles, and Achilles Come Down with my best friend at 3 am when none of us have ever completely watched or read any of the mentioned. I have to say it feels absolutely MARVELOUS.

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what is the best song in the history of music and why is it Achilles Come Down?

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Mark Blackthorn thought no one would ever look at him. Funny how both the people he fell in love with and who loved him back were royalty in their own way.

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all i do day and night is consume and produce fic but also i've studied neuroscience and psych for 13 years so i'm gonna tell u what ur pers

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This NEVER fails to cheer me up. Gigantic Gwyn ap Nudd, stuff of the legends and fairytales, leader of the wild hunt, IS ASKING A WOMAN OUT ON A DATE AND HE'S NERVOUS ABOUT IT.

Let's not forget that Gwyn is the leader of the Wild Hunt, and Diana is named after the Goddes of the Hunt 💅😊

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"The things I want are wrong and broken things to want."

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me, rereading lord of shadows, cristina and mark's first kiss, knowing what's going to happen, knowing they're going to be fine despite that: i am Anxious. Noooooooo don't say that, mark noooo cristinaaaaaa

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I had music on shuffle and I got to Out There, soundtrack form The Hunchback of Notre Dame (one of my childhood favorite Disney movies alongside Anastasia and Alice in Wonderland and Little Mermaid and Snow White and - ALL OF THEM OK?) so here's what I think:

"It's I alone whom you can trust in this whole city

I am your only friend

I who keep you, teach you, feed you, dress you

I who look upon you without fear

How can I protect you, boy, unless you

Always stay in here

Away in here"

Frollo says these to Quasimodo, singing with fake sympathy in his voice and fake kindness with thinly veiled power in his eyes and the abuse dynamics between them are just classic.

Frollo was a classist, racist asshole with power who hunted down and killed gypsies migrating to France (he likened them to ants you can crush beneath your feet before they build themselves a colony and take your city out from under you).

He killed Quasimodo's mother on the doorsteps of Notre Dame and would've killed Quasimodo had the bishop not stopped him. To shut the bishop up, he took baby Quasimodo in and decided he might be useful in the future.

He shut Quasimodo away in the bell towers, not letting him show his face to anyone because according to Frollo, "You are deformed (says Frollo)

I am deformed (Quasi)

And you are ugly

And I am ugly

And these are crimes

For which the world

Shows little pity"

Frollo is cutting him off of any and all human contact that could tell him otherwise - yes all of France was classist, ableist and white-ruled, but then there were people like Esmeralda (poc/gypsy) and Phoebus (privileged white army general) who were his friends.

Quasimodo could've found friends, had a support network that weren't talking gargoyle statues or church bells. He could've been told it's ok to be born this way, that there was nothing wrong with him, but he was stuck with Frollo who constantly reminded him of how deformed and ugly and useless and powerless he is and how the world would reject him and hate him the second he went into it, even if he'd done nothing wrong.

"You do not comprehend (Frollo)

(You are my one defender)(quasi)

Out there they'll revile you

As a monster

(I am a monster)

Out there they will hate

And scorn and jeer

(Only a monster)"

He keeps reminding Quasimodo that he understand nothing of the real world and even the things he's been taught by Frollo won't be enough for him to be out there. Frollo won't teach him enough about it so that Quasi has to rely on him at every turn. That's how the catastrophe happens when Quasimodo goes out for the festival and his identity is revealed. He's afraid, he's panicking, he's being attacked, and I can only think how the only thing that could've been running through his mind at that moment was "Frollo was right he was always right I should've listened to him they hate me I should've stayed inside." Which just furthers cements in his mind that he can't do a thing and that he needs Frollo to survive and that no one wants him.

"Why invite their calumny

And consternation

Stay in here

Be faithful to me

(I'm faithful)

Grateful to me

(I'm grateful)

Do as I say

Obey

And stay

In here

(Sotto Voce:) you're good to me, master. I'm sorry.

Frollo: You are forgiven. But remember, Quasimodo, this is your sanctuary.

And he has guilt tripped Quasimodo into thinking he's wrong to ever think he could go out there and have a nice time, wrong to think he'd even be accepted, wrong to think he'd ever manage for even a second on his own. He's always heavily emphasizing on how Quasi should rely on him.

Before I go on to Quasi's part of the song, I'd like to state how similar their dynamic is to Rapunzel/Mother Gothel. Making them believe they're incapable of surviving on their own because they're so weak and unwanted and the world is such a cruel monstrosity.

Frollo also reminds me of SS Colonel Hans Landa in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. I Wonder Why. Of course, Landa was a different type of motherfucker but they both had a thing against marginalized people.

"Safe behind these windows and these parapets of stone

Gazing at the people down below me

All my life I watch them as I hide up here alone

Hungry for the histories they show me

All my life I memorize their faces

Knowing them as they will never know me"

Now Quasi is playing with his wooden Paris model, singing this and the sheer amount of yearning for freedom in this verse always gives me goosebumps.

"Out there among the millers and the weavers and their wives

Through the roofs and gables I can see them

Ev'ry day they shout and scold and go about their lives

Heedless of the gift it is to be them.

If I was in their skin

I'd treasure ev'ry instant"

Now something here always, always hits me hard.

"Heedless of the gift it is to be them."

Quasi is describing the nuances and details of normal, everyday Parisian life going on below him

But just as no one knows, what Quasimodo is going through, he doesn't know what they're going through. He just sees the surface, and as much as he might or might not know that it's just a beautiful surface covering a decaying, rotten interior, he still wants to be part of it because it's the only different thing from the abuse he's known all his life (which he doesn't know is counted as abuse because HE DOES NOT KNOW ANY DIFFERENT. Frollo and his ways are literally all he's ever known.)

I'd like to point out how well this beautiful surface/rotten interior thing they depicted here goes along well with the French royalty before the French revolution. The animation is set in 1482, 3 centuries before the revolution, so the opulence and the class difference is a lot worse. Nicely done, Disney.

Back to the lyric that hit me hard;

Other than the other connotation that I noted, this sentence also implies to me how individuality is never an option in the bigger scheme of society. You're just another person to be viewed from above.

Also:

In another person's eyes, we are always elevated because everyone have their own problems (which CANNOT be compared with another person's in magnitude or ANYTHING because even though individuality means nothing in socialism, in interpersonal relationships it is heavily important. Please do not compare your pain with others'.) and to others, a smooth exterior is enough to deem us lucky to live and be.

In the end? If that's what it takes to "have a gift to be us" then why not think of ourselves the same way? Why should we only think of others like that? We are our own biggest helpers. Sole biggest helpers.

(that's controversial and might not apply to everyone but here we go)

"Just one day and then

I swear I'll be content

With my share

Won't resent

Won't despair

Old and bent

I won't care

I'll have spent

One day

Out there"

I'll just leave the last verse here. Too painful.

I'll be back with more on this when I've rewatched this baby.

(I am loving critical opinionated consumption)