The thing about Cottagecore is that is a fetishized aesthetic of country life, divorced from labor and idealized by a primarily urban audience with a backward looking ethos of tradition. They are not prepared for the stresses of a rural life: farming; harvesting; tapping pumpkins to ensure none of them have been replaced with flesh; losing out on income by having to use one of your pigs in a blood sacrifice to paint protective sigils over your doors and windows; checking cracks and chimneys for the flesh-vines of the Pumpkin Lord; having to decide, before the Growth is complete, whether that's really your tradwife or an amassment of vines, leaves, and blood in the shape of your tradwife; ignoring their desperate pleas that "I'm me! No! No!" as you burn them alive, realizing too late you picked wrong; and the exploitative corporate nature of commercial farming in 2024. All seen through a deeply colonial lens, of course
Harrow: my deepest darkest trauma is that my parents killed a bunch of children in order to make me into a powerful necromancer. they died for me. their blood is on my hands.
Gideon: that sucks dude. anyways I'm going to sacrifice myself to save your life. you'll be an even more powerful necromancer. pretty sick, huh?
Gideon: my deepest darkest trauma is that nobody ever cared if I lived or died, except for you. the thought of being forgotten entirely by everyone is so terrifying to me that I have never cared if you loved me or hated me, as long as you were as obsessed with me as I was with you.
Harrow: that sucks dude. anyways I'm going give myself a lobotomy so I forget about you entirely. this will preserve your soul so you can maybe hypothetically come back someday.
u know that thing where an animals grow in a far off place and some idiot introduces him to a new habitat and it turns out its characteristics that help them in their own sometimes are too helpful in the new one and they become like an invasive species yeah thats the word i was missing anyway back to my point i think i saw a human version of that just now i was driving in tonights snow storm and i saw a man wearing a big ass cowboy hat to keep the snow off him and a bandit red bandana to keep it off his face and a big ass pancho to keep him warm and nice ass cowboy boots to keep his calves dry and he was prancing along while everyone on the road looked miserable and frozen solid and idk i guess the point im trying to make here is i feel like cowboys would have taken over russia if given the chance or something
Excerpts from love letters that are close to my heart
1. Letters to Vera by Vladimir Nobokov//2 and 3. Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka//4. Emily Dickinson's letters to Susan Gilbert//5. John Keat's love letter to Fanny Brawne//6. Vita Sackville-West letters to Virginia Woolf
something about vita sackville-west writing "how pleased i shall be to sit on your floor again" to virginia woolf is the most simple yet devastating line about intimacy and longing i have ever read
I like her and I like being with her, and the splendour — she shines in the grocer's shop in Sevenoaks with a candle-lit radiance, stalking on legs like beech trees, pink glowing, grape clustered, pearl hung.
Virginia Woolf's diary, December 21, 1925, describing Vita Sackville-West
Revue Starlight, Revue of Annihilation // Richard Siken, Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out // Killing Eve, The Hungry Catepillar (S2, E3) // Revue Starlight, Revue of Annihilation // Hannibal, Dolce (S3, E6) // Richard Siken, Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors // Revue Starlight, Revue of Hunting
Revue Starlight, Revue of Annihilation // Richard Siken, Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out // Killing Eve, The Hungry Catepillar (S2, E3) // Revue Starlight, Revue of Annihilation // Hannibal, Dolce (S3, E6) // Richard Siken, Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors // Revue Starlight, Revue of Hunting
Here's some trivia I've compiled on her. I can provide sources for almost all of these, if someone were to want them. Warning for passing mention of self-harm tendencies.
- Junna has different glasses for a wide range of situations, including but not limited to: school glasses, reading glasses, bath glasses, going out glasses, relaxing glasses, focus glasses, sports glasses, and who knows how many more.
- Junna has poor vision and can't see.
- she loves baths and hot springs. She prefers taking a bath over a shower, no matter what.
- Junna has an acute sense of smell. She can know who was just in the bathroom by the lingering shampoo scent.
- she cannot swim and has a fear of even putting her head into the water, though this was conquered in Synchro Girls, she admits still having a little trouble even afterwards.
- Junna dislikes ball sports.
- Junna's favorite food is nikujaga, just like her mom would make it.
- she has had glasses since she was a child.
- Junna is implied to have an eating disorder.
- her favorite snack is suzu castella, though she also likes kinako sticks.
- Junna never had many opportunities to engage in "normal child activites" such as playing video games or going to the pool with friends.
- Junna's parents aren't the only ones that opposed Junna pursuing theater.
- her hairstyle is the most relaxing way for her to have it, but she can and does allow it down for some roles.
- she dislikes contacts.
- Junna likes studying and gets the best scores in her grade.
- she was intended to wear contracts from episode 3 onwards, which was hinted at in the anime trailer, but the staff were too attached to her look from The Live #1, so it remained unchanged.
- Junna is implied to run cold. She normally wears long pants and long sleeves, even for her pajamas.
- she has a thick comforter on her bed.
- Junna has two computers: one laptop and one desk computer. Why. The cords are all nearly organized, at least.
- Junna stores her glasses collection behind the curtain above her bed.
- Junna and Nana share desk drawers. Junna's referencial sticker is an arrow striking a bullseye.
- she has a level 2 score in Kanji and abacus. She also has a level 1 score in unicycle riding.
- she had modeling experience back in her hometown of Nagasaki.
- Rapunzel is the princess that moved Junna's heart the most; she drew marks on the picture book in order to give the princess glasses like her.
- celery is her most hated food, though she frequently tries – and fails – to overcome this hatred.
- if she were to be able to go back to the Sengoku point in history, she would want to be a tactician who would lead tens of thousands of troops.
- there are many churches near her parents' house, and she feels quite familiar with them.
Aijo Karen will see an abyssal pit where hopes and dreams and promises go to die and stage girls are beguiled into an endless cycle of torment and say ‘is anyone going to jump into that with little understanding of the situation but an earnest heart that acts in the name of love nonetheless?’ and not wait for a response
I believe OP is correct here. Its assessment including tension and intimacy is very astute. Tension is inherently intimate, in fact. Taking the time and the risk to poison a meal means you are close enough to the person you're poisoning to not only be able to tamper with their meals, but also to have the motivation to do so in the first place. This connection could not have been made without some level of love, even if that love is now sour, by way of poisoned meal.
