Jennifer's Body (2009) Dir. Karyn Kusama

another gravity falls animation! :3 hope yall enjoy!

harrow as a contestant in a cooking show

The pool scene is awesome. But it’s also extremely painful.

Because on the one hand you have Gideon, who is very repressed, something we’re probably not expecting as an audience, because she is a brash, agressive, openly queer woman. There’s a weird expectation that girls are somehow more in touch with their feelings (this is dumb). But also we live in a heteronormative society, and it’s unusual for us to see out queer folks who haven’t had to actually think critically about their emotions and come to terms with with them. Which, Gideon has not done.

So she’s in this position where she does not think that Harrowhark is capable of feeling affection or love, and that the strongest emotion Harrow is capable of is hate. Gideon knows 100% for a fact that Harrow hates her, so that means she is important to Harrow.

Except that Harrow *is* apparently capable of love and affection. Which means that when she says that she doesn’t think about Gideon that often because there are things she cares about more, she’s not just saying it to get under Gideon’s skin. Which means that Gideon isn’t as important to Harrow as she thought she was. And this upsets her deeply for reasons she can’t fully explain or understand.

On the other hand you have Harrow, she just told her greatest secret, and received forgiveness, understanding, and genuine human comfort in return. So she looks at the world as though it is filled with egg-eating snakes and she is protecting an egg. So she makes Gideon promise to go home and do the thing her family has been tasked with for generations. We, as the audience, have only gotten like five scenes with Harrowhark fully aware of everything post pool-scene, and in two of them she is destroying herself so that Gideon can have even the smallest chance of life.

Because Gideon just had her heart broken into a thousand tiny shards and can’t even express why, meanwhile Harrow thinks they’re married now.

If they had just a few more hours to talk to each other afterwards I fully believe that they would have worked a lot of this shit out. I guess that’s the tragedy. Even in their moment of seeing each other clearly for the first time, they still don’t understand each other.

ah, childhood.

i'm so used to there just being random unidentified bones laying around everywhere in these damn books that it finally occurred to me, just now, to wonder where the bones on new rho came from. y'know, the bones palamedes always tried to teach nona necromancy on.

they're his.

palamedes, who always loved teaching, living on borrowed time in a body that's not his own. palamedes, mentoring, teaching- parenting, by sixth standards, mind you. and that boy is sixth, through and through.

and the entire point of teaching nona necromancy in the first place was to try and determine if nona is, well, nonagesimus, right? so it has to be bones, it can't not be bones. bones are, like, her whole thing.

but they're not in the nine houses, anymore. things are different, on new rho.

they burn bones here. dig up the cemeteries. a society terrified of zombies will evolve to dispose of its dead differently.

the only bones he has access to now are his own. (camilla wouldn't let anyone take them- skull or hand, doesn't matter. they're still him, and she doesn't let go, remember? it's her one thing.)

palamedes woke up every morning wearing someone else's body to then gently place the shrapnel of his own in the cupped palms of a girl who's the closest thing he'll ever have to a daughter and try to teach her- how did the angel put it, again? normal school, as much as possible, for as long as possible.

(but hey, in a roundabout way, at least it's a chance for him to touch camilla again, right? nevermind that she's not there to feel any of it because he's in the driver's seat, that he can only stay for fifteen minutes at a time. it's atoms that belong to camilla touching atoms that used to belong to him, and that's close enough. he'll take what he can get, these days- if she can be their flesh, he can be the end. so what if holding his own bones is a mindfuck? so what if looking at them makes him nauseous? surely he can suck it up and deal with it for fifteen minutes. it's the least he can do— his poor camilla was the one who had to scrape the bloody pulp of them off the floors of canaan house.)

(speaking of, here's a fun fact: we actually only see nona practicing with the bones one time, on-page. camilla's final line in that scene, before palamedes takes over, is none other than: 'keep going. there are some bones left.' ow!)

remember, too, that the only part of dulcinea, the real dulcinea, that palamedes ever physically touched, was her tooth- the one that ianthe gave him, pulled from the ashes cytherea burnt her down to. he only ever touched dulcie once, and it wasn't until after she was already gone, but that doesn't matter- it still happened, and you can't take loved away.

in this same roundabout, bittersweet, by-proxy sort of way, palamedes has been physically touched by nona, too: the atoms she currently occupies, touching atoms that he used to occupy, and never will again.

the main interaction we've seen between palamedes and his mother took place back on the sixth, with her acting as mentor and him as pupil: the two of them studying a set of hand bones, juno encouraging him every step of the way.

we know that harrowhark's "most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding harrow's over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of harrow's wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique."

they're still small for a nineteen year old, but the wrists are bigger, in this new set of memories nona's making. and it's not an inexpertly rendered portion of skull anymore- it's a hand, now, albeit one crafted from [a piece of skull reassembled (painstakingly—passionately—laboriously reassembled) from fragments, manually, and not by a bone magician, from the skull of someone who, soon after death or symptomatically during, had exploded.] and the identity and origin of these bones is no mystery at all. they belong to palamedes, and he's consented to their use for this purpose, and that matters.

but the details are just set dressing, really. the foundation of the memory is the same.

palamedes and his mother, juno and her son.

harrow and her mother; pelleamena and her daughter.

nona and her father-mother-teacher; palamedes and his daughter.

top five most important things you can give a character. 1. bisexuality. 2. autism. 3. so much negative rizz it loops around into irresistibility. 4. so many bad events. 5. a coping mechanism that’s cute and silly provided you don’t think about it too hard

my favorite louis trait is his eye for the future.

I can't get enough of how visionary he is.

this is a man who can look at his surroundings, no matter how dodgy or hopless they may look like, and see opportunity. See the upcoming change. See the potential. And he BELIEVES in that potential, fully, betting on it, believing in it, investing in it. And he's always RIGHT.

"My business could be bigger and just as successful if my girls co-optly own the whorehouse". And it works.

"Yesterday I saw a girl in an old, five year old dress, putting on a new lipstick". And he decides to believe in Paris.

"I'm not an artist, but I know what's good. I'm going to invest in little-known art and real estate, then re-sell it". And he becomes a millionaire doing that.

"This little nervous dude who's interviewing me is kind of an idiot, but I can see that he has potential. I'm going to give him a lifeline and the sheer will to keep working". And he changes Daniel's life.

He's such a hopeful person with an unwavering, profoundly generous kind of intuition. He doesnt HAVE to give back to his employees. He doesnt HAVE TO save Daniel. He sees things nobody else sees. He loves to see things grow.

To call him the first vampire capitalist is fair, but he's so much more than that...to me he's the first vampire since Lestat in the 1700s to be like: this life could be more than we're allowing it to be.

And people call him arrogant and too much because he's black, obviously, but he's SUCH an unflinching innovator and he sees SO MUCH. What arrogance? He's always looking at something beyond himself! Always looking forward! It's an instinct he had while alive, and now he has the time, the respect and the means to MAKE IT REAL.

I really love Louis so much. The first hopeful vampire.

I had to find a picture of this 2017 article again because it's just so iconic.

maybe i'm missing something, but why wouldn't you listen to a doctor's opinion of whether you're in pain or fatigue?

Okay, I’ve thought about this question for most of a day, because the obvious answer is “….why would I?”, but it’s clearly not obvious to you.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. They’re a doctor. They’re a professional you’ve gone to for help. And pain and fatigue are, like, medical things, right? Going to a doctor about medical stuff and then saying “LOL NOPE” to what the doctor says is like hiring a plumber and then arguing about how to fix your sink, right? If you’re so smart, why’d you call the plumber over?

Okay.

But now imagine your basement is flooding and you call the plumber. While on the phone, the plumber asks you what the problem is and you say that there’s a pipe in your basement that’s burst and it’s now flooded.

And the plumber—still on the phone—says “LOL NOPE.”

And you say, “Excuse me?”

The plumber says, “Look, a flooded basement is a really severe problem, okay? Usually, these calls, they’re a clogged toilet or a leaky u-bend under the sink. Trust me, this is better. Those are a lot cheaper to fix.”

And you say, “I’m sure they are, but I’m telling you, my basement is flooded. I’m looking down the stairs and I can see the water.”

“I’m just saying, there are other things it could be. It won’t hurt anything to eliminate them first,” the plumber says.

And you say, “But I need my basement fixed! Look, I can’t go down in my basement and do laundry right now, and I have important keepsakes down there in boxes… some of them are already ruined, but maybe I can salvage some if we can just fix the problem.”

“Well, then it will be in your interest for me to check your toilets and your u-bends,” the plumber says.

“The problem is not in my toilets or my sinks,” you say. “I am looking at the problem. I called you because my basement is flooded, and I need you to help me fix that.”

And then… now, I’m not assuming you’re female, but I just want to emphasize that this is a starkly though not exclusively gendered phenomenon, so if you’re not female then imagine you are.

“MA’AM,” the plumber says, in a way you recognize. It’s the voice of putting you in your place, the voice of unearned authority, and with this voice, this word, ma’am, is not a title of respect, it’s a reminder and a command. “MA’AM, if you’ll just calm down. I’m sure what you’re experiencing seems terrible to you, but the truth is, it’s probably not as bad as it looks from where you’re standing. And that’s a good thing! Trust me, have been a plumber for 27 years. Now, when can I come over to check your u-bends?”

“It’s not my u-bends!” you say.

“Ma’am, if you don’t want to be helped, I’ll start to think you’re calling for attention.”

You see?

(Now for bonus points, imagine the plumber refuses to help you until you lose a statistically improbable amount of weight just to rule out that this might be flooding your basement, or is acting on the subconscious but deeply entrenched idea that people with your skin color are less susceptible to flooding and in less need of help, or believes that as a feeeemale you’re more likely to be suffering from emotional distress than a physical problem and suggests the preferable course of action would be for you to take a nap every time the supposed flooding in your basement bothers you.)

As I said in that post, pain and fatigue — like dysphoria — are qualitative experiences. This means they happen in your head and they cannot be directly observed or measured by anyone else (which would make them quantitative phenomena). 

The doctor talking to you about dysphoria —or pain or fatigue — is not a plumber in your house, they are a plumber on the phone. The only input they receive about the problem is your account of it. 

And if they’re not willing to listen to what you say and aren’t willing to take you at your word, then all the expertise and experience in the world doesn’t matter. You can have the most powerful calculator in the world but if you type the wrong numbers into it it will still give the wrong answers. Someone can be the best doctor in the world but if they’re ignoring the information they’re not going to give you the right answer.

2x01 is an objectively hilarious episode when you think about it cause buck hated eddie for what? maybe 12 hours maybe even less? all it took was one “good boy” from eddie and buck was down bad twirling his hair and kicking his feet and he’s been obsessed with eddie ever since!! eddie diaz brat tamer of all time