#flicker's meta

[a-flickering-soul]

Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth / Ada Limon, "Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds" / Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House and Other Plays / Tamsyn Muir, "The Unwanted Guest"

[transcription under cut]

Image 1: --whole body surging in spasm. Gideon's heart started up again. Before she could move, Palamedes was there, and with terrible tenderness-- though they were alone in the room and the world alike-- he kissed the back of Dulcinea's hand.

Image 2: There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her-- immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife's hands were chapped and red when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.

When I met Ana, I knew: I loved her to the point of invention.”

Image 3: "The Warden,” she said, “has been exchanging letters with Dulcinea Septimus for twelve years. He’s been—a weenie—over her. One of the reasons he became the heir of the House was to meet her on even footing. His pursuit of medical science was entirely for her benefit."

Image 4:

Palamedes: (Pause) Look-- I doubt I'll get another chance to say this, so...

Voice: Don't. You don't have to.

Palamedes: I loved you. I love you still. I would have worked out how to love you better over time.

[a-flickering-soul]

Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir / "Tam Lin", trad. collected by Francis James Child

In the "Tam Lin" ballad, Janet's love is taken by the Queen of Fairies and in order to get him back, she must hold onto him as he is turned into a variety of wild animals, a red-hot brand of iron, and a burning coal. It is only through her determination and her love of him, though he fights and hurts her at every transformation, that he is made human again.

ALT

[a-flickering-soul]

one of the things I loved about Shang Chi that I also picked up from Crazy Rich Asians was the nods to casual Asian culture, like?? There were certain moments that were For The Culture and it made me really :) Off the top of my head I can name

of COURSE the ABC joke in the fighting ring that was SOOOO FUNNY

Katy's mom saying "I did not immigrate from Hunan for you to drive cars for a living" I SWEAR my mom has told me that exact thing

Parents saying "x concept is American, that's not how we do it"

An elder speaking in one language and younger generations answering in English and everyone understanding each other

The way you bring your friends over and your parents will just automatically feed them of COURSE!!!

The scene where Wenwu started telling a story that EVERYONE had heard already and you just have to shut up and drink your tea and listen to that same damn story again

The overlying theme that you stand in front of the history of your ancestors and "you are a product of every person that has come before you" and you don't run away from that but let it hold you up

add on the ones i missed!!! this movie was so good it made me feel so seen

[a-flickering-soul]

It's been a week and I'm still thinking about Andor and the jailbreak episode and the recurring theme of the battle between the Empire and the Rebellion, and how nature itself is on the side of the rebels. We see this over and over again not just in Andor but in the trilogies too, but in Andor specifically it's so incredibly prominent. For example, we can just look at Kenari and its overgrown mines, Ferrix's people and their earth tone clothing, the rounded edges and soft curves. . . the list goes on.

All this is in stark contrast with the manufactured Brutalism of the Empire's architecture, their sterile whites and greys and blacks, their sharp edges without a scrap of greenery in sight.

"No Way Out", however, has one of my favorite examples of this motif. The first thing I noticed when I saw the prison complex on Narkina 5 was the contrast of the Brutalist sharp-edged prison with the constant motion and fluidity of the ocean around it-- and how the water was explicitly shown being pumped out of the complex, sucked down, and used to power its facilities. The ocean's nature was denied to make way for the Imperialist technology-supremacist agenda.

In contrast, there's the method in which the prison break began. A pipe is broken, letting the water rush in to flood the electrified floor and short it out.

The water leaks through the floors, gently raining down on the faces of the prisoners as the guards, reliant on their technology and brute terror and the panopticon, panic. In letting the water in, Cassian allows the ocean to reclaim its displacement and in turn, the prisoners escape into the ocean itself. The Imperial prison guards are helpless against this tidal wave of humanity. Nature, and this small Rebellion, wins.

[a-flickering-soul]

what's interesting also about the fionna and cake finale is that it almost seems like a rebuttal to a lot of the previous Big Adventure Time Themes-- that love and creation and community and joy conquers all, even against forces we can barely comprehend. i actually think this was alluded to in the finale itself, when gary threw his pastries at scarab and marshall lee tried to play at him, all to no avail. sometimes, love isn't enough. in every universe, finn and jake and bonnie and marcy find each other, because they love each other and they make each other better. sometimes, you can love someone and need to let them go. sometimes, love isn't enough, and that's also okay.

[a-flickering-soul]

what's devastating about simon and betty's relationship is that there never, ever was a chance for them to end up together. simon loved her to destruction. betty loved him to the point of losing herself. in every universe we see finn and jake, marcy and bonnie together. in every universe we see simon alone and betty the catalyst of every terrible, self-erasing, destructive choice he's ever made. they love each other more than can be described but they can never be together in a reality that is good for both of them. he was a wonderful experience. she was everything. you can love someone and need to let them go, for the good of yourself and for them. you can make bad decisions and not regret them. you are just a human and your human love is not meant to hold a cosmic horror. this is not a love story. it is a story about two separate people.

[a-flickering-soul]

i think this every time i reread the first 3 books of the graceling series, but i will never be not stunned at how talented kristen cashore was in detailing the elaborate web and trips and falls one single man created to cause the ruin of so many peoples' lives. it is incredibly well-written and it's also why bitterblue became one of my favorite books out of the three, with graceling and fire tied. graceling is an incredibly straightforward read, but fire and bitterblue grow increasingly complex in both a satisfying and horrifying way as leck's poisons keep cropping up over and over again in newer ways. im about halfway through winterkeep and although leck's influence is markedly less, you still see him in the way the lingian convoy responds and acts. i really admire this author's ability to create these ripple effects throughout decades and books.

[a-flickering-soul]

I really like hearing what you have to say about spg bc I like their music but I'm very much a Causal Enjoyer so it's cool to hear some Lore. Any other spg related things you've been wanting to talk about?

Ohhhhh anon this is the best and worst ask you could have possibly sent me because there are So Many Things that are insane to me about SPG lore that I would love to talk about but literally each of them requires like two paragraphs MINIMUM of explanation and context beforehand. But I WILL tell you what's on my mind right now and that's the fact that the Spine canonically has a credit card. This is hilarious to me for many reasons, those being that he has obtained a credit card either through:

A) having a Social Security Number

B) having an Individual Taxpayer Identity Number

or C) Peter Walter VI going with him to their local bank branch and sitting there with him as the poor financial advisor has to come very quickly to terms with the fact that this tall silver man and this other man with a keyhole for a face want to open a new credit card under the name of this silver man who is not technically a human being.

All of these answers are very compelling to me for different reasons, but through process of elimination, we can get rid of B, since that's exclusively for US nonresidents and the Spine was built in the US. I'm personally eliminating C because I don't think it's the funniest option. So conclusively: yes, I think the Spine has an SSN, and furthermore, I think he pays taxes.

We know canonically already that not only does the Spine know how to do taxes, but he loves doing them and he's very good at them (he will, in fact, quadruple your return).

I posit now that the Spine pays taxes because he wants to do them for two main reasons: that he feels deeply and strongly this proves to the US government that he's a living being with feelings and rights just like any other taxpaying American, and that he is an old, old man who loves looking at things and asking if his taxpayer dollars really went towards this.

I do not, however, think Rabbit, Zer0, Hatchworth, or any other robots care this much over human financial systems because they are very old and dumb and they are also wise and blasé enough over how they're viewed by US legislation to understand that the less of their limited income they have to fork over to Uncle Sam, the better.