don't break me down, i've been travelin' too long

camille preaker & rust cohle + ride by lana

amma crellin & merricat blackwood + home fires, ada limón

Rust Cohle, Camille Preaker and the Roy siblings.

That’s it that all I have to say.

mildew and rot

rustin cohle x camille preaker

"You are at war with yourself. Caught between what you truly are and what you're supposed to be." - Rej Jaen

just finished reading "sharp objects" and the final section brought tears to my eyes. camille FINALLY getting the parents she deserved, 30 years too late, but at the same time, maybe it's not too late - for her or amma, however distant that hope may be.

"Camille and Amy are further unsettling because they invert--indeed, weaponize--the violence aimed at them and gain power through the language they have been historically denied. "

"...her motivation in solving the Wind Gap murders is unconsciously linked to this sorrow. Camille's inability to find a home stems from her newfound position as an objective stranger, someone who is not passive and detached, but simultaneously distant and near, indifferent and involved. Despite having belonged to the Wind Gap "group" in her adolescence and her childhood, Camille's external development as an antiheroine now renders her strange...she imports qualities into [the group], which do not and cannot stem from the group itself"

"Camille's acts of self-harm place her in the liminal space between life and death and serve as a physical reminder of her existential uneasiness... Camille's cutting is a safety net...the words cut into Camille's flesh symbolize her fraught relationship with femininity"

"The perpetual links here between self-mutilation, sexual desire, and maternal control speak to anxieties surrounding female otherness, suggesting that the antiheroine-stranger is inextricably and disturbingly tied up with such notions. In crossing these patriarchal boundaries and defying traditional notions of femininity, the antiheroine-stranger remains familiar, rejected, and desired in her transcendence."

"Camille is a variation of Camilla and the Latin name, camillus, meaning noble youth attending at sacrifices, or acolyte. The connections here between the violent sacrificial deaths (of humans and animals) and smothering motherhood further enunciate Camille's outside status, for her very name positions her as involved but detached, distant but near--an attendee or observer, a stranger."

"Amma's fascination with the objectified animals [pigs] hints at her own internalization of patriarchal methods of violence control, which she then internalizes through the act of murder, whereas Camille redirects the violence onto herself. Both methods expose the cyclic nature of patriarchal violence, suggesting that the antiheroine-stranger must either redirect such violence towards others or decide to harm herself, both of which operate as a coping mechanism and method of cathartic expression"

"Amma's violent transition into adulthood holds a mirror to Camille's own traumatic past, but Camille's social exclusion and strangeness are also exacerbated by her significant lack of a physical and symbolic place to call home...[Camille] hated being in Wind Gap, but home held no comfort either, with its "cheap transitory, and mostly uninspired" aesthetic only reinforcing her wandering and nomadic status. Conversely, the family home in Wind Gap is stagnant in its isolation and memories of Marian's death."

"The name of the town itself suggests a transitory place, a space defined by invisible forces, absence, and now, inexplicable crime. Camille's own childhood abuse at the hands of her mother is suggested from the moment she reinhabits her childhood hom, for her dreams begin to confuse memory, fear, and unreality...It is the reconnection of the self with the familiar, transitory space that allows Camille to confront the horror and realities of her past. Further grounding of this dream as symbolic of her own past is Camille's discovery shortly afterwards of Natalie Keene's corpse, found in a physically liminal location...Natalie's body, simultaneously innocent and defiled, speaks to the sexual anxieties surrounding female deviancy, sexual expression, and violence, confronting Camille with her uneasy relationship with her (strange) self and others. The positioning of Natalie's body is also fittingly gendered given that she refutes traditional binary gender performances in her own propensity for violence and her tomboy personality. Viscerally disturbed by the sight of Natalie's body--which is representative of the "utmost abjection--Camille also unknowingly faces the realities of her childhood and witnesses her potential future as a fatal victim of Adora's 'love'".

"Camille's position as a stranger...clouds her ability to find the truth efficiently, yet it also empowers her to find answers eventually."

"Camille unrelentingly confronts the boundary of life and death, actively skirting the borderline to gain a sense of control over her own body and identity...It is only because of her position as a recognizable stranger that Camille is able to confront the truth of her past and expose both Amma's and Adora's crimes."

"...Camille engages with the borderline between life and death as a way of reconciling her inner turmoil...."

-From, "To Start: I Should Never Should Have Been Born": The Antiheroine as Stranger in Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Gone Girl by Eleanore Gardner

Sharp Objects // I Love Me After You by Mitski

— ZEINA HASHEM BECK

Sucks so bad that Camille Preaker, a woman who is so deeply traumatized by her hometown and mother, who is so bad at taking care of herself and is so tired and scared of life, who self mutilates physically and emotionally, gets stuck having to be responsible for her sick literal murderer half sister who continues to commit brutal murders for petty reasons in her care

this is also kind of personal (yeah, i know, somehow too personal for this blog. kinda shit you tell one person and MAYBE a therapist.) but arthur has been the first person capable of breaking me out of some real nasty habits. it's not perfect, but it's the first time i've ever made headway in addressing the issue and it makes me really really emotional. i love him so much

as a missourian, how the FUCK was camille galvanting around town in long sleeves and skinny jeans in this humidity

So I just prayed and I keep praying and praying and praying.

why is sharp objects my comfort show? i just Love Camille so much. and the writing is so good. the story is so good. you can just sink it and let everything fade to the background. it’s sumptuous, it’s plum velvet, it holds me in both of its hands