do you ever think about how bella spends all of new moon struggling to keep up with her own personal sun, but as soon as edward comes home she feels safe and comforted by the dark again 🥺

I love you, Erin Greene. I’ve loved you my whole life. One way or another. I love you, too. I did my best. I did my best.

MIDNIGHT MASS (2021) | Book V: Gospel

i've come to realize there are only two kinds of tragedies: preventable and inevitable. preventable tragedies are the kind where everything could have maybe worked out if only. if only romeo had gotten the second letter. if only juliet had woken up earlier. if only creon had changed his mind about antigone sooner. if only orpheus hadn't turned around.

inevitable tragedies are the kind where everything was always going to end terribly. of course macbeth gets deposed, he murdered his way to the throne. of course oedipus goes mad, he married his own mother. of course achilles dies in the war, he had to fulfill the prophecy in order to avenge his lover.

both kinds have their merits. the first is more emotionally impactful, letting the audience cling to hope until the very end, when it's snatched away all at once leaving nothing but a void. the second is more thematically resonant, tracking an inherent fatal flaw in its hero to a natural and understandable conclusion, making it abundantly clear why everything has to happen the way it does.

Hello people in the USA!

I wasn't going to post about this here but someone who is an admin/boss at work implied they still don't think this is a good idea. And now I want to prove them wrong!

My school is participating in a fundraiser today Friday, May 3rd, through Panda Express. All you have to do is-

Order online at any panda express location in the US

Put code 923249 in the fundraiser code box when you check out!

That's it! and they will give the student council group I'm in charge of up to 28% of sales which we will use to plan fun events for the whole school like a Prom.

Here is the flyer (with school name cropped out ofc)

Y’all remember that weird couple from high school, right?

Instead of apologizing for liking "trashy" media, consider: what is it doing well? If you like it, if it's making you feel pleasure and interest, then it must be succeeding at something. Is it shaping a set of emotional beats that you find satisfying to watch play out? Did it craft a character you find really compelling? Is something in the styling and aesthetics speaking to you? Did it unexpectedly resonate with a mood or experience you needed to see reflected right then?

However shallow or flawed a piece of media is, if you like it, it's because of something it did well - at least well enough to affect you, on the day that you encountered it.

There are a lot of good reasons to acknowledge this. One is about gratitude and manners: someone worked hard on that thing, and if they provided something that gave you happiness and pleasure, it's nice to honor that. Another is about breaking down the insidious habit of sorting everything into simple good/bad boxes. A piece of media, like a person, can do a lot of things wrong and a lot of things right, and the things on one side do not magically erase the other.

But the most important reason, I believe, is to get in the habit of celebrating what brings you pleasure and happiness. All your life there have been and there will be people telling you that you find joy in the wrong things, that if a particular thing makes you feel good it shows that there's something wrong with you. I reject that utterly. If a particular thing makes you feel good then there's something right, about you and about that thing. I'm not saying that pleasure is the only important thing or that every pleasure should be indulged indiscriminately. All I'm saying is that pleasure is in and of itself a good thing, and deserves notice.

Sorry, I can't go to work. I'm overwhelmed with bloodlust.

"If Carlisle was the soul of our family, then Esme was the heart. He gave us a leader who deserved following; she made that following into an act of love."

Me sexting: what would you do if you found me with my hands tied ;) My feminist bf: I Would Free You

the choice between Edward & Jacob is not a question of which relationship is healthier or which partner is best suitable for Bella. neither is correct. neither is best. neither produces a happy ending for Bella. at the end of the day this is still a vampire novel. any choice Bella could make would yield, at best, a bittersweet happily ever after.

if she chooses Edward, she gets the terrifying Breaking Dawn ending: a girl who rejected her call to grow up has hung her love & her eternity on an emotionally stunted partner who hates himself marginally less than he loves her. she's a teen mom with a kid she never wanted who perpetuates the generational trauma passed down from her parents. by keeping this child, the Cullens have set the stage for an uprising/cold war against the Volturi who are likely to take revenge in order to maintain power. Bella is living in a tenuous "dream come true" wrapped in a nightmare & doesn't realize it.

choosing Jacob is the true coming-of-age ending that rips the stitches out of a wound that never fully healed. even if we ignore the fact that she ends up with a man who sexually assaulted her (we must bear in mind Jacob's character is influenced by smeyer's racism, but it did happen), they can't have a secure romantic relationship. based on the high imprinting rate of the pack, Jacob will likely find his imprint in his lifetime & will lose himself to the imprintee. he will no longer be her Jacob. he will inevitably abandon her (whether he wants to or not), & she must reconcile with the reality that she will always be inadequate to Jacob's imprint. & say he never manages to escape the vampires? he will presumably not age for a long time, meaning the relationship Bella always feared with Edward (her being an old grandmother while he stays forever young) remains a possibility. this is the story of a girl who slaps a Band Aid on an open wound & calls herself healed while flinching every time she sees the shadow of the knife that cut her.

if she chooses neither (team therapy), her healing requires her to lose or be at least partially disconnected from everyone she cares about. Bella must spend the rest of her life shut out from one world while never fully existing in her human world ever again. she must always keep secrets. she can never go back home. even in the unlikely event that she manages to escape the Volturi, the threat of being hunted by vampires will never leave her. in addition, she must face her worst fears (aging, losing Edward) while always keeping in mind the immortal life that could have been hers, if only.

even the "healthiest" option produces scars that will never quite heal.

Twilight is a horror. Twilight is a vampire novel. Twilight is gothic. Twilight is fiction. neither Edward nor Jacob is a "bad" choice because neither will give Bella her happily ever after. the choice between Edward & Jacob is simply a matter of which horror story you prefer to read.

WAIT you reminded me of something

confirmation that edward takes bella’s hydration VERY seriously

Did Bella drink water once or was it all coke, milk, and blood?

Did Bella drink water once or was it all coke, milk, and blood?

edward

Forever and always a defender of fictional men who suck a little but 90% of people are wrong about why they suck.

TWILIGHT (2008) | deleted scenes

I literally can't stop saying <3 it's my favorite punctuation mark