these violent delights have violent ends

23 || queer || cat & dog mom || she/her || theatre kid || writer-ish || on ao3 @thewickedverkaiking

[thewickedverkaiking]

i imagine death so much, it feels more like a memory

before there was the iron maiden, before ohio, before the red guardian and natasha and yelena, melina vostokova was a little girl, a long long time ago.

***

she is in class 7A. she sleeps in bed #2. she has dark hair and brown eyes. she was top of her class in academics last year. she knows ten different ways to kill a man with a knife. she will fire a gun for the first time when summer comes. her birthday is in november.

her name is melina.

she is seven years old.

[maines]

[somanywords]

wow rogue one is really a love letter to the unnamed fighter. no act of help is too small, every deed causes a ripple. luke showed up to blow the death star, and there was the plan to do it–countless of people died to get him that, and luke knows none of them. how many rebel planes get shot down every battle? how many civilians die in explosions? how many died to get the plans to luke? rogue one says you. and you and you and you. every one of you. what will come of it? who knows. something.

[penandinkprincess]

the real challenge of adulthood that no one tells you about in advance is how many goddamn pieces of paper you have to keep up with that are never important until they are suddenly VERY important

[gilliandersons]

But every mile I go, with every bend, beyond the end, your mother loves you so.

[daniellecamp]

HALSEY SHE MD Podcast, 2024

[coveredwithsnow]

insp.

[fadeintoyou1993]

WICKED (2024) dir. John M. Chu Deleted Scene — "Elphaba's Promise"

[holygraund]

🤍💋

[jen-derless]

Saying "But they're both pining for a man" against the theory that Glinda and Elphaba are lesbians for each other seems plausible for now but will turn out to be a Straw Man argument.

[felicitypdf]

"In the ‘60s one either believed that America was being greened or that America was being morally defoliated. You either believed that this was the dawning of the age of Aquarius or you believed that we were on the eve of destruction. I sometimes think that the most malignant aspect of the period was the extent to which everyone dealt exclusively in symbols. Certain artifacts were understood to denote something other than themselves, something supposedly abstract; some positive or negative moral value. And whether the artifact was positively or negatively charged depended not on any objective reality at all but on where you stood, where the polarization had thrown you. Marijuana was a symbol. Long hair was of course a symbol, and so was short hair. Natural foods were a symbol – rice, seaweed, raw milk, the whole litany. I found myself in situations during the late ‘60s where my refusal to give my baby unpasteurized milk was construed as evidence that I must be “on the other side.” Probably an undercover. In fact, it meant nothing except that I had grown up around farms and I had known children who got tuberculosis and brucellosis from drinking raw milk. But this was a period in which everything was understood to have some moral freight, some meaning beyond itself. And in fact, nothing did; that was the peculiarity of the decade. In a way it was very touching, this whole society so starved for meaning that it made totems out of meaningless artifacts. The whole country was like a cargo cult. But it was also very destructive. Because nothing meant what it was supposed to mean."

Joan Didion's 1975 Commencement Address at UC Riverside

[maines]

— Kathryn Hahn, The Tonight Show, september 12

[isagrimorie]

Watching YouTube reactions to the last Agatha All Along episode I'm struck by how many people seem to disregard Agatha's actual grief and regret over, IMO, accidentally draining Alice to death. (Question mark?)

The Nerdy Nightly channel's review on the episode had a more nuanced take recognizing not only Agatha's complexity but also the metaphor of addiction that applies not just to Agatha, but to almost everyone in the coven.

I'm glad more people are discussing this metaphor for Agatha. It makes Agatha so interesting.

Also, in light of this, I think we can't push past that Evanora's ghost meant for Agatha to drain someone in the coven so they would all turn against her.

It's almost like pushing an addict off the wagon, except pushing Agatha off the sobriety train means people die.

Jac Schaeffer was never interested in simplistic morality plays. She is committed to exploring characters in all their complexities, allowing them to be their fullest, often flawed, selves.

Schaeffer explained her character writing approach while writing WandaVision:

“It was important to us that it be all Wanda and that it would be her responsibility because we didn’t want—we weren’t doing Mephisto, Nightmare, the Grim Reaper, or any other people or entities,” Scheffer explained. “If we’re not going to take the cheap way out that there’s this other force, right, if we’re going to give the gift of storytelling to Wanda, I give the whole power, she also then has the culpability and has the accountability.”

(source: Gizmondo) (hat tip to: @ennn)

(Emphasis mine.)

And it seems Schaeffer's views on writing have changed with Agatha All Along. She doesn't want an easy answer for Agatha's character, and that's genuinely refreshing. For a Disney+ character to be allowed to have her flawed and authentic self?

It feels right. It feels real.

Schaeffer mentions this in a recent interview with Script Mag:

I think the fun of Tony Stark is that he wants to be bad, but he's a hero despite himself. But Agatha is not that. Agatha is not a hero, despite herself. Agatha is entirely selfish and self-serving. I don't know, I feel like it should have been harder. It should have been more like, 'Oh, gosh, how are we going to make this villain sympathetic?' But it wasn't that challenging because she's not. It's never her aim to hurt someone. She doesn't hurt anyone just for the fun of it. She's interested in two things: She’s interested in what serves her and she's interested in witchcraft, specifically, enormously powerful witchcraft.

Schaeffer goes on to say that all main characters in Agatha All Along function as anti-heroes. And the writers go on lengthy debates about the story beats and character choices.

Later on in the same interview with Script Mag, Schaeffer discusses Agatha's hidden motivations.

The way I defined Agatha—prior to the room, prior to anything—is that she's a liar, that it's just masks. This show is about pulling that mask all the way off. And what do we see? What is under the mask? It's hard to talk about at this point because there's so many spoilers inherent in that. 

But I think what you can get from the earliest episodes is that, yes, she wants power, right? That's her superficial goal. That's her super objective. But that can't be it, right? That's boring. What's underneath it? And it's fairly clear from the beginning that she reluctantly wants community, that this is a covenless witch who, deep down, wants a coven. And that's fascinating to me. What did Wanda want? She wanted to be safe and cozy with her family. That was a that was a very clear, true north. But there, the friction was the sort of logistical trappings were untenable. For Agatha, she's in the way of her own thing. And it's much more of a subtext and a fabric that we then exploit and explore deeper into the show.

I love that we haven't been reading Agatha wrong -- Agatha does want, deep down, to have a community but she's been wearing her mask for too long that Agatha's also her own worst enemy. Her reputation and defensive persona push people away.

When backed into a corner, Agatha slips on the mask of a villain because if she hurts them first, then no one can hurt her.

It's so fun and interesting to have a character like Agatha again! Especially within Disney+ Marvel's ecosystem of shows.

Netflix Marvel used to feature similarly complex characters but Disney+ Marvel shows have struggled to find that line.

[warmday]

somebody has to save our skins.

[valerie-an]

do you ever want to gently float up to someone and whisper “this isn’t a debate; i am actually educated on the subject and i’m telling you you’re wrong”

Yes and I would also like to gently float in general.

[valerie-an]

this is the most positive addition that has ever been made on my post

[stillgotscars]

in honor of the 10-year anniversary of 1989, put your top three tracks in the tags

[lonelyzarquon]

# matching each other’s freak