Happiness is not a potato

Molly. I like horses and guys who ride them in period clothing.

[balfeys]

They're currently not on speaking terms. When I thought Jamie was dead, I married him. I was about to be arrested as a spy for the Continental Army, and John thought the only way to stop that from happening was if I married to a British officer.

[greenishness]

i'm thinking about charlotte brontë spending her last years editing and publishing her sisters' writings and about christopher tolkien dedicating his life to the protection and meticulous reconstruction his father's life's work and about johanna van gogh publishing the letters between vincent and theo that would propel vincent van gogh into fame because she knew how much her husband had loved his brother, and about how so often art isn't just a reflection of the artist's mind and skills but a testament to the fact that they were loved

[greenishness]

My sister just quoted this post at me over dinner bc it was discussed in her philosophy class & I can't even smugly inform her of its authorship. Due to the mindhunter yaoi state of my most recent blog history.

[jessaerys]

scream

[olemisekunst]

Tom Hiddleston at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards on November 18, 2025

[glorianas]

JODIE COMER as ELIZABETH OF YORK

THE WHITE PRINCESS

(2017)

[lightgaswaterelectricityrent]

[valyrianpoem]

Jodie Comer as ELIZABETH OF YORK [1/?] The White Princess (2017)

[fictionadventurer]

Pop culture reduces It’s a Wonderful Life to that last half hour, and thinks the whole thing is about this guy traveling to an alternate universe where he doesn’t exist and a little girl saying, “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” A hokey, sugary fantasy. A light and fluffy story fit for Hallmark movies.

But this reading completely glosses over the fact that George Bailey is actively suicidal. He’s not just standing there moping about, “My friends don’t like me,” like some characters do in shows that try to adapt this conceit to other settings. George’s life has been destroyed. He’s bankrupt and facing prison. The lifetime of struggle we’ve been watching for the last two hours has accomplished nothing but this crushing defeat, and he honestly believes that the best thing he can do is kill himself because he’s worth more dead than alive. He would have thrown himself from a bridge had an actual angel from heaven not intervened at the last possible moment.

That’s dark. The banker villain that pop culture reduces to a cartoon purposely drove a man to the brink of suicide, which only a miracle pulled him back from. And then George Bailey goes even deeper into despair. He not only believes that his future’s not worth living, but that his past wasn’t worth living. He thinks that every suffering he endured, every piece of good that he tried to do was not only pointless, but actively harmful, and he and the world would be better off if he had never existed at all.

This is the context that leads to the famed alternate universe of a million pastiches, and it’s absolutely vital to understanding the world that George finds. It’s there to specifically show him that his despondent views about his effect on the universe are wrong. His bum ear kept him from serving his country in the war–but the act that gave him that injury was what allowed his brother to grow up to become a war hero. His fight against Potter’s domination of the town felt like useless tiny battles in a war that could never be won–but it turns out that even the act of fighting was enough to save the town from falling into hopeless slavery. He thought that if it weren’t for him, his wife would have married Sam Wainwright and had a life of ease and luxury as a millionaire’s wife, instead of suffering a painful life of penny-pinching with him. Finding out that she’d have been a spinster isn’t, “Ha ha, she’d have been pathetic without you.” It’s showing him that she never loved Wainwright enough to marry him, and that George’s existence didn’t stop her from having a happier life, but saved her from having a sadder one. Everywhere he turns, he finds out that his existence wasn’t a mistake, that his struggles and sufferings did accomplish something, that his painful existence wasn’t a tragedy but a gift to the people around him.

Only when he realizes this does he get to come back home in wild joy over the gift of his existence. The scenes of hope and joy and love only exist because of the two hours of struggle and despair that came before. Even Zuzu’s saccharine line about bells and angel wings exists, not as a sugary proverb, but as a climax to Clarence’s story–showing that even George’s despair had good effect, and that his newfound thankfulness for life causes not only earthly, but heavenly joy.

If this movie has light and hope, it’s not because it exists in some fantasy world where everything is sunshine and rainbows, but because it fights tooth and nail to scrape every bit of hope it can from our all too dark and painful world. The light here exists, not because it ignores the dark, but because the dark makes light more precious and meaningful. The light exists in defiance of the dark, the hope in defiance of despair, and there is nothing saccharine about that. It’s just about as realistic as it gets.

[perfectlysensiblenonsense]

I adore this film and I think one of the powerful things about it is that you feel, so deeply, the weight of every disappointment in George’s life leading up to that pivotal moment on the bridge. The grief of his dad dying, the disappointment of not getting to go to college or on his honeymoon. Watching his youthful dreams of travel and adventure snatched away at every turn. It shows that sometimes kindness and decency require sacrifice, and that sacrifice will not be easy and you may carry the disappointment of it with you for a long time, but it may also enrich your life more than you realize at first. George never did travel the world, but look at the joy and love he shares with his community! You may not end up with the life you envisioned for yourself when you were young but that doesn’t mean you won’t find happiness on a different path. And sometimes you may not even see the blessings in your life until you look at them from a different perspective, which is what Clarence allows George to do. It doesn’t at all downplay the darkness in George’s life, but neither does it allow that darkness to snuff out the light.

…I’m starting to wonder if this film has perhaps influenced my worldview in ways I didn’t previously realize 😅

[andnowtheweather2012]

my favorite movie genre? frank capra movies where he makes jimmy stewart look like he’s three seconds away from dying

[jackietaylorsghost]

FLEABAG (2016) Created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge

[tomundsen-deactivated20250731]

Emma Extras - Costumes (2009) with Jonny Lee Miller

Costume Designer Ros Ebbutt

[omnidudes-deactivated20240202]

what was your early 10s show that you fixated on to the detriment of your mental wellbeing

Glee

Teen Wolf

Pretty Little Liars

The Vampire Diaries

90210

Victorious

Supernatural

True Blood

Awkward.

Shadowhunters

Friday Night Lights

BBC Sherlock

Voting ended onAug 18, 2023

[dogzcats]

EMMA. (2020): from book to screen

[sillysymphony]

Scarlett is living under my roof, so they all think I’m responsible for her. And, for a widow to appear in public at a social gathering–every time I think of it, I feel faint.  –But, Aunt Pitty, you know Scarlett only came here to help raise money for the cause. It was splendid of her to make the sacrifice. Anyone would think, to hear you talk, that she came here to dance instead of to sell things.

Gone with the Wind (1939)

[eireneofathens]

Romola Garai as MARY I BECOMING ELIZABETH (1x03)

[janeaustentextposts]

[crimsonclad]

The thing about Persuasion that just kills me is that the central premise— “I hope the person who broke my heart has a miserable life and I get to watch them be humiliated while I get everything I ever wanted” is so universal.

But Wentworth is only able to fully enjoy it for like A DAY before he starts realizing how terrible it is. He watches Anne suffer in silence and he hates it. He watches her being treated like an inconvenience and a joke and a piece of furniture and he hates it. He hears sneering comments at her expense and he hates it. He spends evening after evening in her company, where he is celebrated as a handsome, dashing hero while she is shoved to the side and ignored and he hates it.

He probably spent a lot of heartbroken hours out on the sea wishing revenge on her (like ten years’ worth), but then he gets to see it happening and revenge turns out not to be that sweet after all. He probably thought “I hope she never gets married to anyone else and she has to spend the rest of her miserable life with her miserable family, listening to them talk about nothing and regretting ever letting me go.” But then he has to watch her live through it, and it is just excruciating. Watching her bite her tongue. Watching her keep her eyes down on her clasped hands. Watching her silently accept everything as if she deserves it.

He’s like, “YES, it’s all HAPPENING! She’s all ALONE and PALE and OLD and…sad. And her family treats her terribly, and she’s— no one is talking to her. No one even knows that she’s funny and smart, they just— they just make her sit in the corner. She’s hardly eating anything. And she really isn’t that old, but they are acting like she’s dead? Her family is even worse than they used to be, how is that even possible? Why isn’t anyone helping her? Why is she the only person taking care of anyone? Why isn’t anyone taking care of her?”

And his nasty “she’s so altered I should not have known her again” comment that he KNOWS got back to her starts ringing in his ears. And his cocky “yeah I’m just here to find a YOUNG, HOT girl to marry now that I’m SUCH A CATCH, whatevs” approach starts to make him feel queasy, because she’s HELPING, she’s trying to stay out of his way and help him pick a young wife, and she hardly ever smiles anymore, not really. He watches her slip out of rooms when he enters them and he hears her laughing with her nephew sometimes but then go quiet when anyone else approaches, and he doesn’t know what to do. Anyway, every fandom has a bunch of Pride and Prejudice AUs, but I WANT PERSUASION AUS. I NEED THEM. I NEED THEM. 

[grapefruiters]

things could be worse. you could have school tomorrow.