I have 99 problems and dramatically running through a discarded castle ruin with a violin playing in the background will not solve any of them but it will help me forget about this meager world
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if i look back, i am lost
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@tahansstuff
I have 99 problems and dramatically running through a discarded castle ruin with a violin playing in the background will not solve any of them but it will help me forget about this meager world
painting this on the ceiling above my bed so it's the first thing i see upon waking in the morning and the last thing i see before falling asleep at night
Coin being frustrated that she didn't get her wanted prize at the claw machine, as if the plushie with the bread wouldn't successfully gaslight her entire district on day one just to rescue his pregnant wife
thg characters + textposts: 3/?
let’s talk about the bread scene again, shall we?
first, we may note that Katniss does not start going to the Hob until after she figures out how to provide for her family; I have previously wondered why Haymitch didn’t notice how much in a bad way the Everdeens were if Katniss was coming to The Hob: here’s your explanation
second, the icy weather will be personified in a few paragraphs as running its fingers down little Katniss’s back, a very invasive image; mark it, because it’s going to be juxtaposed against another “intimate” image
third, Katniss drops the baby clothes and is unable to pick them up for fear she won’t be able to go on; I see this as a two-fold metaphor; she can never pick up her childhood again, and she must leave any notions of a future with children of her own behind if she is to survive, physically and emotionally; she must leave past and future in the mud of now
there may be a tragic third image here, one that points us ahead to the final book: an image of Katniss ultimately losing her baby, Prim
here, we get our first really meaningful mention of fire (outside of the mention in the “here’s how Panem became a dystopia” exposition dump from the mayor) in the series, and there’s a strong correlation between fire and hope, and, therefore, lack of fire and lack of hope; fire means many things in this world, but it’s significant to me that this is the first major association we get
the next image that stands out to me is the image of the garden beds not yet planted for spring; again, I think ahead to the third book, where Greasy Sae heralds Peeta’s return by mentioning that spring is in the air; it’s not yet spring, but it’s coming
then, of course, we get this flood of sensory imagery about the golden glow of the bakery; here again is another image of fire, and this time, in addition to hope, it represents warmth and sustenance, food
I do not think the use of “golden” is accidental here, as we have gold and yellow imagery used often for Peeta
Katniss is made almost dizzy by the rush of scent and light, but then that icy personification of reality (of despair? of death?) runs its fingers down her back and she begins desperately digging in the trash
it’s pretty telling that the bins are described as “heartlessly” bare and then we immediately meet the heartless witch herself
Mrs. Mellark is quick to dehumanize both Katniss and Peeta, treating Katniss like an animal “pawing” in her trash, beating Peeta (seemingly with an object, not her hand) and calling him a stupid creature; what is particularly cruel is that she knows Katniss is out there, or was a moment ago, starving, and yet she tells her son to feed not the little girl, but the pig
but Peeta, kind Peeta, brings the bread to Katniss; and remember, we are told of his small (not so small) sacrifice as Katniss is standing on the reaping stage, having sacrificed herself for her sister; we know these two characters are sacrificial and compassionate from the jump
of course, with the information we are given in the second book, we can see this moment as a symbolic sort of toasting; a wedding, not by party or paper, but by pity and provision
and here’s that beautiful, intimate image that stands in opposition to the icy fingers of death; the heat of the bread, of life; it burns itself into Katniss’s skin, as a brand of hope and of connection to the boy with the bread, and she welcomes it, clutches it closer; Gale may have fire, yes, but Katniss held Peeta’s fire to her heart first
(as an aside, of course Peeta makes an incubator for Haymitch’s gosling eggs: he is the one who brings warmth and life)
speaking of Gale: I will forever give him credit for helping Katniss feed her family … but, again, Peeta did it first
notice that Katniss falls into a dreamless sleep; he isn’t even sharing her bed yet, and Peeta is already helping her have “no nightmares”
and now, at last, spring is here; spring comes to Katniss with Peeta; he is springtime, with all its color and brightness
Katniss notices the dandelion that reminds her of her father (by the way, unless I’m much mistaken, burdock is in the same family as dandelion, and what’s even crazier is that the flower family they both belong to is the Asteraceae family—yes, this is where Asterid comes from—which is the daisy family) (“here it’s safe, here it’s warm / here the daisies guard you” indeed) reminds her she is not doomed; we learn later that Burdock told Katniss as long as she could find herself (her name plant), she wouldn’t starve; Katniss does manage to find herself, in more ways that one, but she has to find the dandelion (Peeta) first
lastly, Katniss says she feels she owes Peeta, and she does, though he’ll deny it: she owes him her life, and what’s beautiful about comparing this moment with the end of the series is that she makes good on this sense of owing him; she owes it to him to stay alive, to live, just as he comes to owe it to her to live too; and they do
back to this app only because of everlark
Chidi vs. Tahani: Intentions or Consequences?
Cool thing I’ve noticed on what is probably my 50th rewatch of The Good Place:
(I love ethics and I’m fascinated by The Good Place so this is gonna be a long one!)
One of the big questions ethicists and moral philosophers ask is intentions vs. consequences. Does the morality of an action depend on the consequences from it, the intentions behind it, or some combination of the two? Different schools of thought give different answers. So for example consequentialist theories, like utilitarianism, hold that the only thing that matters is the consequences of an action, how much good vs. bad they do in the world. Your intentions don’t matter, and could be selfish or corrupt so long as the action is a net good. For virtue ethics, intentions matter more because what makes an action ethical is how it develops your character and makes you a better person. So an action with negative consequences but good intentions is not necessarily unethical, but doing good with selfish motives is unethical.
The interesting thing I’ve noticed in The Good Place is how that question of intentions vs. actions is reflected in the characters, specifically Chidi vs. Tahani.
In season 1, we’re meant to think we really are in the Good Place, and that Chidi and Tahani are among the best people who ever lived. But early on we’re introduced to a tension in the logic of The Good Place: It doesn’t give a consistent answer to the question of intentions vs. consequences.
Tahani is “British and condescending” but made it to the good place because she did a stunning amount of philanthropy. Meanwhile Chidi is a moral philosopher who spent his life trying to act ethically, but he’s a miserable mess as a result, he can’t do anything. Basically, Tahani is all actions with no good intentions, and Chidi is all good intentions and no action. And yet by the rules of the “Good Place” they both supposedly qualify. If Tahani qualifies on her actions alone, then how can Chidi qualify when he’s never done anything in his life? And if Chidi qualifies based on his good intentions, how can Tahani qualify when she never cared about the people she helped? It’s one of the many clever details that the show includes to hint from the very beginning that something isn’t right here.
Eventually we learn that the point system takes both intentions and consequences into account, and so in theory, the amount of good caused by someone’s actions could outweigh their negative intentions, and vice versa, and earn them enough points. That’s how we get Mindy St. Clair. And the conclusion the show comes to is one that many of us instinctively have, I think: both intentions and consequences matter, and the degree to which they matter is context-specific. Good intentions don’t erase the harm your actions cause, but intentionally causing harm is worse. And doing good in the world and materially helping people is important, but having selfish motives for doing so detracts from that. To be ethical, your actions must have good intentions behind them and good consequences from them. That’s a lesson our characters learn many times in many different ways.
Chidi and Tahani start the show off as polar opposites, pure intention vs. pure action. And as the show progresses they each develop the other side. For Chidi, becoming a better person means becoming more decisive and active, rather than being paralyzed by indecision. He actually does things to try and make the world around him better. By the midpoint of Season 1 he’s already storming into Michael’s office, demanding Eleanor not be sent away. At the end of his journey, he readily walks through the Door, without needing to know what’s on the other side. For Tahani, becoming a better person means shedding her need for attention and validation, and actually caring about the people around her and the world she lives in. Her actions become less and less about herself and more and more about helping other people. And at the end of her journey, she decides to spend eternity doing just that, designing afterlife tests to help more people get into the Good Place.
Also Eleanor and Jason kind of parallel that, where Eleanor is pure negative intention and Jason is pure negative action. Eleanor is just a kind of shitty, selfish person for most of her life, but she doesn’t do much, her actions aren’t great but they aren’t terrible. As she puts it, she was “a medium person.” Jason is a sweet little dum-dum bird, he has a good heart, but he just… he does so many bad things lol. Either just for fun or because he needs money or because he and his friends are being dumbasses.
They both start off with “low-grade crappiness” in different ways. Throughout the show, Eleanor becomes a less selfish person, and actively tries to do good instead of just retreating into her selfishness, to the point where she can’t move on from the afterlife until she knows all her friends are taken care of. Jason curbs his impulses and learns to slow down and actually think before acting, to the point where he can wander the eternal woods for a thousand Bearimys until Janet comes back (just like a monk!).
And these parallels are reflected in their relationships with each other too! Chidi teaches Eleanor to do the right thing instinctively, rather than the selfish thing. Eleanor teaches Chidi not to think so much, to let his feelings and intuition guide him, and to actually act. Jason gets Tahani out of her own head, teaches her not to think about herself and her image as much. Tahani teaches Jason to think about the impact of his actions on the other people in his life before just impulsively acting. Eleanor and Tahani help each other become less self-centered, with Eleanor teaching Tahani useful life skills and Tahani helping Eleanor connect with other people. Jason helps Chidi become less inhibited and Chidi teaches Jason some restraint and patience. They’re all “perfectly suited to make each other miserable” but it turns out they’re also perfectly suited to help each other become the best versions of themselves.
Anyway, The Good Place is such a well-crafted, clever show, and I love rewatching it and noticing all these details!
I think what gets me about Eleanor Shellstrop is that she goes from being tormented by being the only person who doesn't belong in 'The Good Place'- surrounded by people who draw out her insecurities and self hatred just by being better people then her- to being the only human who deserves The Good Place for the remainder of the series, and yet refuses to go since it means abandoning those same 'better people'- all because they have become her friends.
Cause the thing is, Eleanor passes her test in "The Burrito". She proves that she has overcome her selfish 'get mine and screw everyone else' attitude that brought both her and those around her so much misery on earth. Given a literal ticket to paradise and the guy she's in love with to share it with for all of time- she turns it all down because that means abandoning Tahani and Jason. And then when she realizes she's the only one who passed the test- she claims she also failed her test, proving that the sentiment she told Chidi was genuine. She was never going to go off to the Good Place if it meant leaving her friends to suffer.
For the remainder of the series, only the audience (and Eleanor herself when she gets her memories back), understands intrinsically that she is the best person in their group. That she earned a spot in the Good Place already- and that understanding underpins the rest of Eleanor's character arc: from falling back into her old patterns on earth as a response to the pressures of modern life, to getting on a plane to Australia, to learning that she is doomed to go to the Bad Place, to walking into Chidi's classroom while he's drowning in despair and chili and telling him not to give up. Eleanor is a flawed human being: full of anger and hurt and sharp edges, but she is also a fundamentally good person, as determined by the All Mighty Judge herself- and yet she is still going to be damned for eternity for no better reason then that she refused to abandon her friends. That as much as anything with the points, or accounting, or the outcome of any experiment- that proves the system is broken and unjust.
prbly been done before but
The Good Place + text posts
sick of dating apps i wanna meet someone the old fashioned way (a bartender gives me cryptic advice and i look up what he said and find a 3 hour lecture and the speaker sparks an interest in philosophy and ethics in me (and wow he's kinda cute) so i get on a 20 hour flight and barge into his office and he offers to teach me ethics in his down time because a librarian gave him cryptic advice)
so the good place is widely lauded on this site for its takes on morality and capitalism, which i totally agree with
but i think it should get more recognition for the line "all humans are aware of death. so we're all a little bit sad all the time. that's just the deal. we don't get offered any better ones. and if you try and ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. i've been there, and everybody's been there. so don't fight it. in the words of a very wise bed bath and beyond employee i once knew - go ahead and cry all you want. but you're gonna have to pay for that toilet plunger."
The Good Place season one: Haha, what if someone was sent to heaven by accident and had to pretend to be a good person!
The Good Place by the end: Morality cannot be measured in a vacuum. While people should be held accountable for their actions, people are a product of their environment and the results of our actions are often beyond our control. Bad people can improve when they loved and supported. Also, the reality of death is essential to the enjoyment of life.
i was having a normal day and then i remembered chidi spent his entire life desperately finding for meaning in everything he could, ruining his life and relationships to find an answer, then spent 800 years being tortured over and over simply by being offered anything he wanted and still not finding the answer he had craved for his entire life, teaching the others things he had spent years pondering on and still not finding an answer after centuries, then living his life again, searching for the same answer in a different place again and again before being told it was all for nothing and he would be tortured forever anyway, before trying his best to save the entire human race from eternal torture, watching his friends help their own loved ones get better the way he helped them, and finally being given an opportunity to do the right thing by erasing his memory, even if it meant hurting Eleanor, and that the last thing he did, after all those years
was write down a piece of paper the way his lover did hundreds of years ago
with two sentences written on it
"there is no "answer"
but Eleanor is the answer"
I wish we had more female characters like Eleanor Shellstrop. One of the most unlikable people you've ever met. Read a Buzzfeed article on most rude things you can do on a daily basis and decided to use that as a list of goals. Makes everyone's day worse just by being there. Dropped a margarita mix on the ground and tried to pick it up, only to get hit by a row of shopping carts which pushed her into the road where she was hit by a boner pill delivery truck, killing her instantly. Cannot keep a romantic partner despite being bisexual. Had a terrible childhood but will die before she gets therapy. Best employee at a scam company. Just the worst but also can't help but root for her to improve.
Absolute loser. Girl-failure. Bad at almost everything. Literally perfect female character.
“help” is my favorite way to say that something is funny. like hey i laughed at this post can you save me