Photo by Dan Bell

No way to exit here

when ritsu gets more control over his powers his free time hobby would change from bending spoons to destroying abandoned buildings in the middle of nowhere forests

oh 100%. I stand by my assertion that he needs to do something stupid and destructive with his powers on a somewhat regular basis or else he'll get understimulated and start doing something actually stupid and destructive. this is why his friendship with shou and teru is so good, they're both people he can call up and go "do you want to blow abandoned cars up with our brains" and they'll drop everything to blow shit up with him

hey kels what have you been doing this week? me checking my notes: painstakingly making leland in f76 and making him both a house and a vault room

x

okay nm i took half an adderall, put on my fluffy black bathrobe, switched the music to goth and new wave bops and now the world is full of beautiful possibility again

Screens occur in the strangest places 

The literary streets of Rome: Via F. T. Marinetti. Lomo LC-A on Kosmo Agent Shadow film.

Abandoned LA by Elise Mesner

last night I had a strangely erotic dream about being at the dentist. something about the gloves and having all those instruments in your mouth I guess

"i feel like people really desperately want to put female characters into boxes and get frustrated when it can't be done" it's been years but you're reigniting my fixation so please talk about this wrt norma bates

norma is everything a Strong Female Character™ is not supposed to be. she's emotional to the point of hysteria, she's irrational and reckless, she's beautiful and her beauty is commented upon and coveted and admired in unhealthy, obsessive (even territorial) ways, she is a survivor of extreme abuse and sexual assault and she does not respond the way "good" survivors are supposed to respond - it doesn't make her kinder or stronger, she's kind and strong on her own, but it has nothing to do with the horrors she's suffered, which have made her traumatized, reactive, and fearful, and also have taught her she can use her body and her powers of emotional persuasion to manipulate men when she has to, even though she hates herself for it and is disgusted by it. men crowd around her and grasp at her and are continually connected to her. norman, dylan, alex, caleb...and those are only the ones we spend the most time with...she can't get away from what they want from her, how they perceive her, the pedestal they put her on that she didn't ask for, the desire they have for her to be their ever-present angel and caregiver and lover and forgiver and martyr, shifting depending on the situation.

(i reblogged a post a while back about how the narrative never really moralizes about how "bad" the actions of the characters are, and that's vital in understanding it too.)

she is defined by her role as a mother. it's unavoidable. she knows she whittles herself down in this ("parents do not have needs. you ever read the book The Giving Tree? it's about a tree, and this kid keeps coming and taking stuff from it his whole life, until there's nothing left but a stump. and then the kid sits on the stump. that's being a parent" norma, baby. no. you're still allowed to need things!). she struggles with some real internalized misogyny and messed up jealousy issues and a controlling streak. she breaks down in front of people ("welcome to the world ladies! there are axe murderers and whores stuffed under every rug, so your kids better read up on it and get educated, because that's what life is. it's a cesspool you claw and scratch and fight to swim out of, but you never get to the top!"), she does her very best to be hopeful, sometimes to the point of living in denial ("it's all gonna be good"/"I had this dream when I was little, of a home where the door was open and friends could come and go, and stay for dinner and talk, and everything would be lovely"), and at the same time gets disoriented by despair ("no one's gonna help us, norman, no one's ever helped us"/"maybe fate wins here..."). she unfairly shuts out her older son, and he doesn't understand why or what his presence constantly reminds her of until he's grown, and though they love one another, they can never quite mend. she coddles and overly shields and protects and ferociously loves her younger son, to the point where they are unfathomably codependent, and he feels that she's the only person who could matter to him in the world, but also resents her hold on him and is stifled by it. she judges his friendships/connections and he begrudges her interference, but he doesn't want her involved with anyone else either and views outsiders with suspicion and possessiveness. he also, you know, disassociates and becomes a dangerous (and promiscuous, femme fatale-like) image of her. she is never safe and she lives in continual terror - even of her precious son, because she knows somewhere in him is a simmering hazard, though she tries her very best to deny and suppress and even reshape it. she is overly intimate with him emotionally (and physically on occasion, i wouldn't classify it in an abusive way, just too close of one, though that stems from her own history of abuse), trying to make him into the one man she can trust, rely on, the one who will always stay and will protect her, while also keeping him as her innocent, her baby. she's not neglectful (she's overly attentive, if anything), but her inability to face how severe his illness is and assess the care he needs because she is frightened of losing him is ruinous. she tries with everything she has, to the bone, to be a good mother for him, and coming from her background, with nothing to model that on, it's courageous of her. their extremely abnormal relationship is the beating heart of the story in beautiful and terrible ways.

she brutally kills a man (he deserves it, but still), and is complicit in covering up other murders, and when she realizes her son is capable of doing harm, she does not initially do the right thing and get him help or turn him in, she hides it. when she does eventually get him help, it's too late, and she concedes to letting him out early, and it quite literally gets her killed. (she gets alex to marry her for his insurance and then they wrap themselves up in their bubble of tremulous comfort and let their guards down and find a very real, if ephemeral, love, but it's still not enough to overcome.) she is, in short, a mess. she does not have it together. she does not make the right or reasonable choices. she does not balance her emotions or control her anger or hide her desires.

she is also warm, and compassionate, and funny, and brave, and talented, and a freakin' warrior. she is caring and luminous and immeasurable in her capacity for love. she makes every space brighter, she brings home along with her. everyone who meets her is infatuated and admiring of her because she has a uniquely special spark in her soul, and it can't be resisted. she says once in dejection, "i'm not educated, or polished, or nice, i'm nothin'," but that couldn't be further from the truth. she is a light in the dark and affecting to all around her. she's graceful and sweet. in a softer world, one where she hadn't been so hurt and hindered, she would be nothing but wonder and sunshine and resilience. in a softer world, her son wouldn't ever have deteriorated or split like he did, or harmed anyone, especially not her.

she cooks, she sews, she nurtures, she weeps. she dresses herself up. she is every feminine thing we're not supposed to be, if classifications are divided into "strong" and "not strong," she is every emotion we're not supposed to display, every flaw we're supposed to hide, all the things that make a woman "too much" - too broken, too angry, too ashamed, too giving, too tender, too loving. too alive. she is so, so vibrantly alive. she is complicated and awful and wonderful and real. she feels real because they never dull her emotions or shave down her edges. she is everything she is, to her last breath. it's no wonder she has a gravitational pull. it's no wonder romero, despite his resistance, falls so persistently, poignantly in love with her. it's no wonder norman cannot exist without her, has to conjure a version of her that will never match the real thing, never be the real thing, because she is half his soul, and he is in an abyss without her. she is the cord bound to his heart. losing her is akin to losing the sun.

she is not a heroine, strictly speaking, and yet she somehow is (she's nowhere close to a villain). she's just...this astonishingly whole person. astoundingly damaged, but perseverant. it's...norman's eulogy. as shattered as he is himself, as incapable as he is of grasping reality in the moment, what he says is true to him and thus the story. the most wonderful person who ever lived. she was just beautiful beyond words...radiant...half queen, half little girl. she had an innocence to her that illuminated everything that she did, everything that she touched, every word that she said. she was like a miracle. what chick says is true. she was a lovely woman. too lovely for this world. it'll be a darker place without her. it's shelby (evil bastard that he is), when he says, you're so beautiful, it just makes my heart hurt. it's caleb (all his unforgivable sins notwithstanding), saying, to my sister, who has always been like the sun in a cold universe. it's romero, who wants so badly to be her savior even though he has blood on his own hands and cannot possibly achieve such a thing, saying, i love you, i'll always love you, whether you're here or not, okay?

her death is treated with such care that it transcends its own horror in an unsettling way, and (like i said the other day) the image of that, of norman walking calmly through the house, sealing out the air, is seared into my memory. before the narrative even begins, we know she's going to end up a preserved body in a basement, her beauty frozen, her inner flame blown out, her physical self eerie and slowly withering away. her true soul gone, a dark mirror of her existing only in projection, in the schism of her son. we know this, and we still fall in love with her, and understand her, and sympathize with her, and, maybe most surprisingly, root for her. we desperately want her to live. she's dead from the beginning and there's still this irresistible urge to wish that she lives. but because we know she can't, she haunts everything. her heels clicking down the stairs, her music in the parlor, when she laughs and when she screams, her presence permeates each frame of story like lingering perfume. she is aching and adoring and doomed forever. a dream and a death. she is the ultimate ghost. you can't help but love her. no one can.

I need a real beanbag chair for my little incel nook

me making my mansion wriothsley friendly by building all the tea related furniture in genshin like 'm ready for you baby.

its just hilarious to me that the only reason adonis can afford his apartment AT ALL is because 1) its shitty and 2) he's the landlord's dealer