Christina. 33, returning after a long hiatus because I need something to mindlessly scroll without wanting to kill myself. fuck fascists, and fuck Musky especially.
In the Year of the Horse, let us all truly appreciate what this mythical creature has done for surrealist memes. I donāt think there is another animal that has inspired such unhinged internet images. We should all be both eternally grateful and forever afraid.
Basic Psychological Needs Theory Applied to Commander Shepardās Backgrounds
I have a doctorate in social psychology and like video games a little too much. I think thereās a lot of interesting things to be said about the background choices that really never get explored in the game. I think these backgrounds also inform a lot of our understanding/characterization of Shepard. The TLDR of this is basically psychologyās favorite joke - it depends, how Shepard is characterized depends largely on the influences that shaped her life. If I had to rank Shepard background combos from most to least well-adjusted it would have to be Spacer War Hero to Colonist Sole Survivor.
Iāll preface this with 1) Iām going to call Shep she because thatās how I play her and 2) Iāve only ever played Sole Survivor or War Hero, Iāve never played the Ruthless background and honestly that might be more of a discussion of the dark triad than needs theory, 3) Iāve played all 3 Pre-Service Histories but Iām most familiar with Spacer and Colonist.
Please feel free to add your own thoughts/opinions on this, particularly if youāve played some of the backgrounds more often than I have!
In psychology there is a mini-theory within the Self-Determination Theory called the Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT). Briefly, the BPNT posits that we are predominately driven by 3 core needs - Belonging, Autonomy, and Competence. Belonging refers to a desire to be accepted and wanted by other people, to be a part of a group. Autonomy refers to a desire to make our own decisions, to be our own unique person. Competence refers to a desire to be capable and effective, to be a skilled at what we do. Although it is a theory on self-esteem attainment, it is also fundamentally a theory of intrinsic motivation. So it works well as a character analysis framework to ask the question: What motivates this character?
Iām going to walk through each need (in reverse order) and how I think it relates to the backgrounds and offer some ideas about how it might affect adult Shepard.
Added a cut because it didnāt and this is long as fuck.
Need for Competency
We fulfill our need for competency by learning skills and becoming good at (typically) things that interest us. We often measure our competency against some form of mile-marker, such as getting a certain number of kudos on a fic. When need for competency is not met, our self-efficacy suffers and we may engage in maladaptive coping strategies such as self-sabotage to compensate. For instance, you might purposefully post a drawing during a time when you know it wonāt get picked up by the algorithm and therefore wonāt get any notes. We may also overcompensate for our weakness by leaning too hard into an activity, such as if you think you are a bad runner you might run until collapse every day.
I think fundamentally no matter the background, Shepard is competent. Sheās a decorated military officer, very clearly respected by everyone she knows. She is also (outwardly) confident. I think this is the most true for the War Hero background.
I think however you can maybe make an interesting argument for imposter syndrome, particularly with the Sole Survivor background. You have a character who is competent but she lost her entire team. She might experience survivors guilt over this, she might question if she really deserves the accolades that she has. She might push herself harder and farther than she should because she is trying to fulfill this need.
As for her childhood, I think there could be an interesting dynamic depending on how you characterize Shepardās mother in the Spacer background. If sheās nurturing and kind, then maybe Shepard, regardless of background, feels more competent because we know from developmental psychology children of nurturing parents tend to have more stable and higher senses of self-esteem. If sheās hard and distant, then maybe Shepard has a hard time seeing her own self-worth because she never received the scaffolding in childhood to view herself as good and competent. With the other two childhoods, I think for Colonist it still matters how her parents were characterized but it also then matters who she had as a parental figure after their death. Then for Earthborn, well I donāt think Shepard was being told very often that she was good and loved by the gang. I imagine she still might struggle with self-esteem.Ā
Need for Autonomy
We fulfill our need for autonomy by making choices for ourselves and developing unique personalities. Need for autonomy hinges on control over oneās life. If this need is not met we often feel as though our life is being lived for us. We see the war for this need fulfillment in adolescence as they break away from their parents and strike out on their own to become competent, fully rounded adults. We may overcompensate for this need by engaging in risky behaviors that allow us to exert some form of control over our lives. Or by distancing ourselves from family and peers and overall ārebellingā. Burnout, disengagement, turnover are all really common side effects of poor autonomy in oneās job.
Inherently, the Military is going to put constraints on need for autonomy but I think Shepardās Spectre status alleviates some of these issues and allows the player themselves to not feel as though their autonomy is being massively constrained.Ā
I think specifically the Spacer background offers a potentially unique experience. Shepardās mother is canonically a Captain (and later a Rear Admiral). We first have to ask whether Shepardās decision to join the Alliance was truly her own or if she felt pressured to do so by her mother. I think a pressured Shepard chafes against the decision far more than one who entered the Alliance willingly and maybe even because she actually wants to follow her mother. Maybe her career history is dotted with more issues than other versions would be. Maybe this Shepard leans into the Spectre status more fully or sees it as a means of escape. I think then regardless of Shepardās own motivations to join the Alliance, you have this additional issue of how does she set herself apart from her motherās legacy. Is Shepard burdened by this desire to be more than Hannah Shepardās Daughter? Is she resentful of the comparisons or proud?
Maybe thereās something interesting about rebelling against the gang for our Earthborn Shepard, about wanting to be her whole authentic self that was impossible under the gang. Feel free for those with more thoughts on that background to weigh in.
War Hero Shepard probably has decent need for autonomy, sheās not high on my list of worries.
I think then, the Sole Survivor Shepard and the Colonist Shepard may have some difficulty with viewing her life as something she has control over. I think itās very hard to believe you have control when your life has violently been torn apart. So maybe she does a lot of things, including her job, somewhat mechanically. Sheās a good soldier because she follows every order and maybe thereās a slight detachment from reality there. And Colonist Sole Survivor Shepard? RIP.
Need for Belonging
We fulfill our need for belonging through our meaningful relationships with other people. We are social creatures and we like to be liked. (I could go on a tangent on Mark Learyās Sociometer Theory as it pertains to the Need to Belong but I wonāt drag a very nice man into my nonsense just yet). When this need is not met we take the biggest hit to our self-esteem, we often feel extremely worthless and as though we are unloved. Need for belonging has a funny war with need for autonomy because in order to get people to like us, we imitate them, but imitation is against the need for autonomy. We often find belonging more from our peers than our family though, who donāt have control over our actions, as a means of compensating for this war. When need for belonging is lacking we may act out in ways that increase the attention placed on us, maybe we align ourselves with people we shouldnāt, maybe we lose ourselves to imitating others so that they like us.Ā
Fundamentally, I think the need to belong is where you end up with the most discrepancies in various Shepard's behaviors. Thereās a very real undercurrent of potential for found family, a trope I know not everyone is a fan of (which is valid even if I personally love it). I think a lot about the role Anderson specifically plays in helping with Shepard's need for belonging fulfillment. He is clearly a mentor, if not even a father figure, to her. Thereās a suggestion that heās known her for a while, maybe even since she joined the Alliance. The extent of that role is probably dependent on what other sources are influencing her life but he helps fulfill that need regardless.
I think thereās a really interesting play that can be made with Earthborn Shepard and the way leaving the gang was probably difficult in light of their fulfillment of this need to belong. And that even if the gang was a bad place, Shepard may always be searching for the sense of belonging again throughout her life. Maybe she makes some poor decisions about romantic partners or friends in her early years with the Alliance because sheās trying to find that feeling of being a part of something again. Maybe thatās why she bonds so quickly with her crew members on the Normandy, they offer a (healthier) version of a group. But then again, maybe itās why sheās standoffish, the last group of people she worked with closely hurt her.
Colonist Shepard is just entering into the peak time for belonging to be prominently driven by the friends that we have, so it depends on the type of home or place she went after her parents died that will dictate whether or not she finds that connection she had and lost. But also maybe it makes her weary of allowing that connection in the first place. Maybe sheās standoffish on the SR1, afraid to get attached to people who might die and leave her.
I think Sole Survivor Shepard has a very similar issue. She lost her entire team and the guilt of being the only one left standing likely holds her like a vice. Survivorās guilt is an extremely pervasive problem, and is fraught with cognitive distortions that would likely make it extremely difficult to form meaningful and healthy attachments to others.
And Colonist Sole Survivor Shepard? I used a line akin to āevery family Shepard had ever had has been torn from her in acts of violenceā in a fic right before she goes on a full spiral and I really mean it. One terrible thing is enough but two terrible things? Now you have a person who maybe finally found a good group of people after having her family taken away from her and they also immediately die a gruesome death. Both of these happen during that emerging adulthood period that is so vulnerable to maladaption. I really believe this would fundamentally cause someone some serious issues. To me Colonist Sole Survivor Shepard is the least confident Shepard, sheās the one most riddled with doubts and fears. She puts on a brave face, she doesnāt let the fear stop her, but in the quiet after missions? I think she spends a lot of time alone in her room, away from everyone else.
Then thereās War Hero Shepard who probably has a different issue. Itās probably difficult for her to establish close bonds with people because to basically everyone she works with sheās Commander Shepard - Hero of the Skyllian Blitz and itās hard to move past the hero worship to find meaningful relationships. I think maybe War Hero Shepard is lonely atop her pedestal and maybe she appreciates the alien crew on the SR1 a little bit more because they have no idea who she is or why she gets asked for autographs when they go places. And perhaps if the fighting was particularly brutal, she also lost people she cared about. That might bring in some of the issues I brought up above.
Spacer Shepard has a family and you get to decide how dysfunctional it is. Does she have a good relationship with her parents? Do they fulfill any portion of the need to belong? If they are rock solid then maybe Shepard is less inclined to get to know her team intimately, she has a family to turn to when she needs them. If they are severely dysfunctional then you run into the problem a lot of us have, you seek comfort elsewhere while maintaining some contact with your dysfunctional family. And sometimes that some contact hurts more than no contact and it necessitates fulfilling the need to belong elsewhere.Ā
Conclusion
All of these basic needs interact together to form a complex web of motivations for Commander Shepard and might explain what things are more or less important to her. For instance, a Shepard who has achieved high need for belonging and high need for autonomy might instead strive for high need for competence by throwing themselves headlong into missions without regard to potential bodily harm.Ā
All of this becomes infinitely more complex if we consider the role culture has on these needs. For instance, need for autonomy is overplayed in Western Cultures and downplayed in Eastern Cultures.Ā
As I said at the top, feel free to add your own interpretations or ideas. Or to share your own perspective. This is a very brief psychology lesson and a brief over look of how character traits might be related to this framework.Ā
I finished skyward sword!!! I had a blast with this game and iām so attached to it now ššš
I kinda promised a full rendered fanart without taking into account I havenāt fully rendered something in YEARS, this is what i have for now but i may do some corrections in the future.
Fav boss: KOLOKTOS 110%
Least fav boss: The imprisoned aka avocado demise and Scaldera
Final boss thoughts: i really REALLY wanted the demise fight to have a phase in the sky with the skyloft, it was impossible tho as the fight is set in the past. I liked it but i expected a lil more ig.
ANYWAY I WAS NEVER HERE FOR THE GAMEPLAY I WAS HERE FOR THE LORE, AND BOY I ENJOYED IT
Speed paint and alt version under the cut!! Had to sped it up even more bc it was
I have some good news, which is that, after seven months, I've finally recovered from Long Covid. This is not something I particularly want to talk about in depth but it was the worst thing that ever happened to me! Anyway, sorry for the long period without posting that much, but I hope this amazing house (both laudatory/derogatory, that's dialectics, baby) will make up for the three months I went AWOL.
BEHOLD:
Not to be over-exuberant, but I genuinely think this is the best McMansion exterior of all time. That includes all the messed up castles, the Mediterranean-style cult complexes, the Staten Island weirdness. Nothing, to me, epitomizes just how uniquely wacky these houses can be. The oversized broken pediment with the fat fake corinthian columns, the lawyer foyer transom window, the ultra-nub, the 45-degree angle, it is all there and it is all hellish, and none of it will ever happen ever again. Anyway this house is $2.5 million dollars and 10,000 square feet. Someone should buy it and give house tours to young people for whom this way of live will soon be unimaginable.
There is nothing so bold to me as the idea of a canted lawyer foyer flanked by two equally huge windows. The fact that the house is more populated by vases than people...something something a vessel for wealth, ah!
Someone on TikTok is going to find this house and set all the pictures to that terrible vaporwave nostalgia song. "tuscan kitchen [black heart emoji]" (as is their right, just like blogging is my right)
If you were a rich person muralist, please get in touch with me ([email protected]) I want to hear YOUR stories!!!!
I mean, if I had a giant mysterious wardrobe I, too, would be fernmaxxing (I am 32 years old and will not be talking like this. I am getting generationmogged and have to draw the line somewhere.)
If someone says to you "we should go to Venice in May" ABORT ABORT ABORT. you WILL pay 15 euros for gin and tonic. you WILL get pickpocketed or puked on by British people. you WILL be eaten by mosquitoes. Go in November when no one's around and you can have a good cry about how everything dies, sinks into the ocean, one might say, and how futile it is to try keeping it alive on horrible wooden stilts. The gondolier will tell you wistfully about how the dolphins returned to the lagoons during the pandemic lockdown. Then he will look at you because their leaving again is your fault.
I hate putting the word "cuck" in this blog. Ten years ago, that would warrant an angry parent email. Now children say cuck to each other in elementary school because they learned it from a Charlie Kirk assassination fancam.
This is kind of like one of those 19th century galleries but for 400,000aires who mostly think of art as a piece of furniture.
I used to not believe in the mobbed up pizza place (no one likes an ethnic stereotype) but there was one I went to in Coastal New Jersey that was unmistakably mobbed up. Guys coming in and out of the back in suits, cash only, no GrubHub, no delivery. It wasn't called Vito's though. That would be stupid of me to disclose.
It's so funny that for a month we collectively pretended that every man alive cared about the roman empire. Just the kind of cute thing we used to do online before cultural microphenomena became primarily driven by incel forums.
That's right, folks, McMansion Hell is TEN YEARS OLD this year, and there WILL be a party in Chicago in July. (More details later.) Anyway, heinous back facade. What were they thinking.
If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams.Ā (Donāt worry! This doesnāt adjust for inflation! Nowās the perfect time to join!) By the way: new subscribers can buy a year of McMansion Hell for just $12!
Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar!Ā (I would seriously appreciate any and all tips because I am now, like, $3000 in medical debt from having Long Covid, a disease doctors and insurance companies famously believe in and cover. If you are the woman who hacked up a lung next to me on my flight to New Mexico, not even an N95 could beat your germs and I feel entitled to financial compensation.)
With three movies to compare between, I really appreciate how each Knives Out movie explores justice from a different thematic angle, not based on the murder that was committed but based on the cruelty that led to that murder.
In Knives Out, a compassionate, ethical young woman treats everyone around her with generosity, and the people around her repeatedly try to take advantage of her kindness to force her into losing the fortune that was gifted to her by a dear friend. There, justice means that she keeps the fortune and decides that actually, she doesn't have to be kind and giving to people who've proven themselves assholes.
In Glass Onion, a woman loses her sister to a gang of wealthy, successful people who've sacrificed their principles for the sake of ambition and ego. There, justice means that everyone involved will be made notorious: whatever their other accomplishments, they will forever be known for being complicit in the burning of the most famous painting in history.
In Wake Up Dead Man, the church takes advantage of a young girl's loyalty and faith to place her under a lifelong burden and fill her with guilt, shame, and hatred. Justice means helping her understand what was done to her and the women around her, and giving her compassion so she can find peace.
This is cool because it means the movies contradict each other! The compassionate justice of Wake Up Dead Man would be totally misplaced in Knives Out, and so would the toppling-monuments justice of Glass Onion. And because each movie has something different to say, they all stand on their own and feel fresh.
This is also why Benoit Blanc is the uniting figure but never the protagonist of these movies. He's an agent of legal justice in that he's the detective and it's his job to figure out whodunnit, but the protagonist -- Marta, Helen, and now Jud -- is always the character who delivers thematic justice.
this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.
good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.
sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.
so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.
one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.
Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks Iāve known whoāre against single-payer, itās not even funnyā¦
This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.
Because theyāve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.
This explains a lot. Ā And itās a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism ā always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce. Ā Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often thatās the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that youāre not even aware of. Ā
And never think youāre too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesnāt work like that. Ā Similarly, donāt think people who are fooled by something are stupid. Ā Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information theyāre given. Ā It doesnāt take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.
I currently live in a country without free medical care and still, itās enormously cheap compared to the USA. An American expat wrote a piece for our English language paper about how she paid more for parking at the hospital than giving birth to her baby thatās pretty interesting:
Yesterday I had to go to the hospital cause I injured my eye, Iām frankly dreading what the bill is going to be, but what made me balk was being told in the pharmacy that my insurance was denied for the antibiotic eye drops and itād be over $100 out of pocket. So I didnāt get my eyedrops.
Iāve had these same drops before living in the UK. They cost me seven GBP.
Itās the exact same drug, same steroid, same strain of antibiotic. But somehow the US gets away with charging $100 for a generic non brand version of a drug which is easy to create and widely used. Itās downright robbery, but also a form of eugenics through poverty and class warfare. You keep the poor poor by making sure basic necessities remain unattainable and then you make it seem like the norm so no one fights it.
When I was travelling in Germany once, I seriously hurt my ankle. In a few hours, it had swollen to twice its size, and I went to a little ER in a tiny town. I spoke no German and only one nurse spoke English. They ran an X-ray and an MRI to determine what had happened (turned out I had bruised my peroneus brevis muscle and pulled the tendon), gave me a ton of very regulated meds for the pain and swelling, including some supports so I could walkā¦and my poor little 22-year-old ass was sat there, knowing all of this would cost thousands, if not tens of thousands, back in the US. I was shaking.
Iām in the exam room, post diagnosis and with pill bottles in hand, and in walks the one nurse Iāve been able to speak to the entire time. She pats my hand and tells me (and this is verbatimāI will never forget this conversation as long as I live), āIām so sorry. We had to run those tests, and they are expensive. You donāt have insurance so you will have to cover the full cost.ā
I start crying.
She continues, softly, as if telling me someone has died, āItās going to be three hundred.ā
I start sobbing, certain Iāve misheard, certain that I would be absolutely fucked, broke and going into debt in a foreign country. āThousand?ā I clarify.
Her entire demeanor changed, and she looked at me as if I had sprouted four extra heads. āNo,ā she says, āeuros.ā
My family got charged several thousand dollars for a late-night trip to the ER when I was a kid after an oops at home resulted in a large cut that needed almost 40 sutures. We lived in the US at the time.
Now we live in Canada. Last year my leg got rolled over by one of the front tires on a pickup truck. I spent 3 weeks in hospital, had 3 surgeries, one of which included skin grafting to cover the half of my leg that was degloved in my accident. I had IV antibiotics 4 times a day, I had physiotherapy daily, I was on a lot of meds for pain and having complex wound dressings changed every day. After all that, I had a home care nurse visit me every 1-2 days for 6 weeks to help with my wound care. The greatest expense to us as a family for the amazing care I received was my parents and husband using the parkade next to the hospital, which was like $13 a day. If weād lived in the US, that injury absolutely could have bankrupted us.
I went to the UK for graduate school, and being there for that long meant I had to buy insurance for the duration. 18 months was something like Ā£800 (this was in the early 2010ās). I, being American, figured āoh ok, thatās the premium and if I need serious medical care, Iāll get charged deductibles and all other kinds of fees at the time of care), because thatās how it works here.
Some time in the early part of that winter, I got incredibly sick. Iām immunocompromised, so sometimes that happens. But being a broke ass grad student in a foreign country, and dealing with unrelated financial abuse from family members, I figured I couldnāt afford going to the hospital. I figured Iād go to their version of Walgreenās (Superdrug, and yes that is really that storeās name, load up on cough drops, some OTC meds, and try to ride it out as best I could.
One of my friends in my program came over to check on me and offer help. When she got to my room and saw how sick I was, she asked why I hadnāt gone to hospital. I was near tears and said I couldnāt afford it.
This is when I suspect my friend knew she was dealing with an American who was ignorant of how socialized healthcare actually worked, and realized that I couldnāt really be reasoned with. So she said, āIāll pay for it- letās go.ā
Off we went to hospital, my friend did the talking bc my voice was so shot. The receptionist said, āas you donāt have an appointment, you may need to wait quite a bit.ā I heard that and figured 5+ hours was at least what I was in for.
23 minutes later, my name was called.
My friend went back with me, bc I was pretty out of it. The nurse leading us back apologized for the āhuge waitā because having a sick patient wait ānearly half an hour just for medical careā was unacceptable. I was stunned.
The nurse and doc asked some questions, looked at the medical records I had on my phone (bc I was a foreigner with very little medical history in the country), did a few rapid tests. The whole time, Iām seeing an old-timey calculator ringing up charges and freaking outā¦ even though my friend said sheād pay, I was so conditioned to believe this would cost a fortune.
About 30 mins later, the rapid tests confirm I have both bronchitis and pneumonia. Doc writes me a prescription for some serious heavy-duty meds. My American ass is thinking, āok, so now I go home, wait for 4 days for the pharmacy to fill it, then go get it.ā The doc tells me that thereās a pharmacy counter on the way out, and I can stop there to collect the meds before heading home.
Iām skeptical but thank him. My friend gets me to the pharmacy counter. I give my name and hand over the paper, fully expecting to be told that itāll take days to fill. The pharmacist turns around, pulls a bag off the shelf, hands it to me. Because my meds were already filled and waiting.
Me: you had them already?
Pharmacist: of course- thereād be no point in sending you home without medication, thatās why you came here. To get medical help.
Me: thatās so fast? (I am very confused)
Pharmacist: well, we expect people to have these illnesses at a higher rate this time of year, so we do our best to stock up on our end.
Me: thatās so nice? Also, what do I owe you?
Pharm: sorry, love?
Me: what do I owe you? For the medication? And the visit. All of it, how much do I need to pay?
Chat, her whole fact changed. She realized I didnāt just sound funny because I was in respiratory distress. I had an American accent. She reached over and patted my hand.
āLove, thatās what the health insurance is meant to be for. Youāve already paid for this. Weāre not taking extra money off you, we donāt do that here.ā
The entire visit was less than 2 hours, absolutely free, and everyone worked to be as efficient as possible in the goal of providing comprehensive healthcare for me, the patient.
Once I got home with the meds, I did actually recover pretty well (and relatively quickly, as far as Iām concerned). I talked to the friend after, and she admitted that she knew it was going to be free, but that I wouldnāt or couldnāt understand that in the brain fog of serious illness, so she said what she had to in order to get my stubborn (and terrified of bankruptcy) ass to the doctor.
Thatās what healthcare should be. A goal of providing comprehensive and compassionate care to your patients, being well-staffed enough that no one waits for hours, anticipating medication needs, ensuring that patients leave with the medical care they sought- and that theyāre not afraid to seek it, because they know medical care wonāt make them homeless.
frankenstein (2025) is a movie about the cycle of violence and the inevitability of violence and about the miracle of being kind. it is a beautiful and touching adaptation that takes a unique view of some of the storyās focal points while staying true to the novelās themes. it is also a movie that aims to remind us that the original creature textually had long flowing locks, for which I think we should all be thanking del toro specifically
"At her very point of origin, Shelley traded her life with that of her own mother. For less than two weeks she rested in the maternal arms before losing her mother to the grave.
Her only visitations were to her grave, and her joy was forever tainted by her pain and that most essential severance. Her origin was death and life her curse. Like her creature, she experienced the pain and steeled herself and found, in the learning of words, the only way to sing about her loneliness.
Much tragedy was to befall her, more than most contemporary minds could bear. It is entirely understandable that she might have believed herself accursed. Most everyone she loved, she lost, and posterity has never offered consolation to the artist. She has always impressed me in a way similar to how the BrontĆ« sisters impress me: Most people would like to travel in time to meet great statesmen or explorers. I would love to travel back to contemplate life with these remarkable womenāto hear them speak, to walk by their side on cold beaches or moors and under impossibly steely skies. For I was born in a sunny place in the middle of a sunny country, but within me I had a kinship to the same spirit that animated their melancholy and art.
I had seen Whaleās film, and I saw Shelleyās novel in the form of a Spanish paperback from Bruguera (my go-to dark fiction publisher in the late sixties, early seventies). Being an import, the book was not cheap. I saved my Sunday allowance for a couple of weeks and bought it. I read it in one sitting, and by the end of it, I was weeping. It was my Road to Damascus. It illuminated the reason I loved monsters, my kinship with them, and showed me how deep, how life-changing, a monster parable could beāhow it could function as art and how it could reach across distance and time and become a palliative to solitude and pain.
And here we are, two centuries later, faithfully depositing flowers to this most exquisite storyteller, this extraordinary Galatea who refused to be shaped by her circumstance
and gave us all life. And we try, in return, to help her creature stay alive. We strive to turn a curse into a blessing.
We hope that in some way, somehow, our gratitude, our love, can reach him like a whispered prayer, like a distant song. And we dream that perhaps he can stopāamid the
frozen tundra and the screaming windāand can turn his head and look back. At us.
And we hope that then he might recognize in our eyes his own yearning. And that perchance we can walk toward each other and find meager warmth in our embrace.
And then, if only for a moment, we will not feel alone in the world."
-- Guillermo del Toro, in his introduction to The New Annotated Frankenstein
odysseus absolutely does present a threat to penelope if he perceives her as at all unfaithful, and i feel the unfairness of this, and i think people tend to undersell how much tension at least potentially exists between odysseus and penelope. but i'm also like. his reaction, all speculation aside, his actual reaction in the odyssey to her flirting with the suitors is delight, because he immediately ascertains that she is running a con. sorry that they're so in-sync in spite of the forces that try to drive a wedge between them, including their own misgiving hearts. sorry that they invented homophrosyne ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
germansingergirl
2087
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
vaporwave
