Mannn. Honestly all of owen's new life videos have been pretty good. I do however dislike the direction that Sparrow's character went in as i do not think that Sparrow was originally meant to be a tragic character? Sparrow was all about discovery and invention and that felt very lost towards the end of the series.

I wanted sparrow to learn how he was 'wrong about his perceptions of hybrids (although not even im fully sure what exactly that means) and his worries didnt feel conclusive (being afraid of not being "hybrid" enough? He had never mentioned that worry before) and although he does loose touch on himself i feel that him sealing himself away in his tomb wasn't really what i was expecting? Like i thought overall the tone would be a little bit happier and more about discovery and uniqueness like at the start of the series but that just completely dropped off.

Honestly i think instead of the ending being "sparrow murders his friends and rebents by locking himself in a place where he is not happy, is at risk and is not his true self even though its for a noble cause" i think it would have been really cool to see Sparrow choose to be human again as a nice way to tie it all back to the start of the series and feel satisfying.

Honestly i would have liked him use the machine MORE and to still choose to be himself rather than the skulk spreading storyline but idk. Id also would have liked there to be more connection to the theme of friends

Because ALL throughout new life Sparrow focuses on making friends. Heck even in the ending animatic it shows his friends so that link is definetly still there, but it feels odd that it ends in Sparrow murdering two of his friends (sausage, who he got closer to although maybe not friends as such and Scott, who was his best friend).

Also wait how come he wrote in a book at the end instead of recording it with the camera? Wouldnt it have made more sense to record it into the thing that has been showing the whole adventure rather than a book that has no relation to the story ? Lol. The animatic was awesome however

I walk towards death with open arms, embrace me.

//if i had a sp multi, it would consist entirely of characters nobody gives a shit about, like ned, thomas (le petit tourette), and GOD HIMSELF.

As for sacrificing myself, that's done. I'm a man utterly ruined and would cut my throat to-morrow for the sake of my relations, if I cared enough about them. I know my own condition pretty well. I have made a shipwreck of everything, and have now only got to go down among the breakers.

Anthony Trollope, from Can You Forgive Her?

.

Dewey: At my funeral there is going to be a closed casket.

Dewey: Then, it’ll be opened to reveal that I am not inside.

Dewey: Instead, they’ll turn on the ceiling fan and my lifeless body will swing around the room while the Space Jam theme plays in the background.

[a little later]

Dewey: Nevermind, my family says I can’t do that.

I’m with Charlie on this. Wodehouse’s books are great, especially the Jeeves ones! I know I’ve seen him mention Graham Greene too, who I also love. As with everything else, Charlie had good taste in books! (To be fair I don’t really think it’s possible to have bad taste in books. Just read what you like.)

Charlie definitely had interesting taste in literature. Wodehouse (I knew I misspelled that when I was transcribing and I was too lazy to check) and Graham Greene, like you mention, but he was also really into poetry. Off the top of my head I can recall him mentioning Dylan Thomas and Auden, I know there were some others as well. He was hugely fond of mid-century/old school noir detective thrillers, too.

The most surprising one is definitely still this (from the same interview/article):

“He is an expert on Georgian silver, the American Civil War, Nelson memorabilia, rare books, antique firearms, 18th-century erotic literature and jazz photographs.”

I mean, I know Keith loves 18th century and Napoleonic era naval literature (bless a man who doesn’t fall asleep at the endless descriptions of ship rigging in a Patrick O’Brian novel), but that one is leagues more out of left field. Especially because the first thing that comes to mind in that genre is the Marquis de Sade.

im doing one for shinon too bc he deserves it

shinon radiant dawn vc: my mom never hugged me

shinon path of radiance and radiant dawn vc: -treats greil like a respectable father and never mentions his own father literally ever-

shinon radiant dawn death quote: (smiling portrait) “Ugh... This is...such a crock... What a... boring way to die... Co... Commander... Greil... I... I... I'm...” (is he implying “I’m coming to see you again”, based on the quote and smiling portrait?)

No one understands.. and no one will ever understand... so pick yourself up & love yourself first. You only have yourself in the end. 👌💯

ive been through so much i really don't have no reason to be here on this earth

people are being weird on my posts about se-yin again

No one's gonna love you when you're old

That's what they told

You better stay young, baby

No one's gonna care when you are gone

So if you're done

You better die young, baby

|| A Sutton Sibling || Benjamin and Henry Moodboard with a Book Thief Quote (mostly cause Ben liked reading so there we go)

We’re so used to the sexual reading of the entire book of Dracula, which takes the sensuality of the early chapters and jams everything that follows it into the same metaphor no matter how poorly it fits, but I feel the segment we’re approaching works much better with a lens of chronic illness and disease.

Vampire legends are inextricably intertwined with disease. Many of them are said to have been birthed by burying victims of disease too soon, who later seem to rise from the dead. But what’s more is that Stoker and his family have deep-seated trauma over disease: his mother had to flee her hometown at the age of 14 because of a horrific cholera epidemic, and Stoker himself was bedridden as a child from an illness that no one could identify.

Found this quote from Irish Historian Mary McGarry:

Bram as an adult asked his mother to write down her memories of the epidemic for him, and he supplemented this using his own historic research of Sligo’s epidemic. Scratching beneath the surface (of this essay), I found parallels with Dracula. [For instance,] Charlotte says cholera enters port towns having traveled by ship, and can travel overland as a mist—just like Dracula, who infects people with his unknown contagion.

I bring this up because a lot of academic analysis insists that Lucy sleepwalking is proof of her being the Slutty Woman archetype that needs to be punished. This suggested symbolism is hilarious when put next to the text saying she inherited it from her father, but I’d like to suggest a different angle from the lens of disease suggested earlier:

Lucy’s sleepwalking is a condition that predates Dracula but makes her an easy target for him to prey on. Through the lens of disease symbolism, she now is someone with chronic illness or disability who is especially vulnerable to infectious disease. This becomes a cross-section of Stoker’s trauma regarding disease: his own mystery illness and his mother fleeing a plague.

To wind down my rambles with a bit of a soapbox, I feel this adds a very poignant layer to the struggle to keep Lucy alive. The COVID pandemic showed a horrifying level of casual ableism vs disabled and immunodeficient individuals, shrugging off their vulnerability and even their deaths with “well COVID only kills them.” There’s something deeply gratifying at seeing the way everyone around Lucy fights to the bitter end to protect her and refuses to just give her up to Dracula, whether it’s Mina physically chasing him away or the suitor squad pouring their blood into her veins or Van Helsing desperately searching for cures. The vulnerable deserve no less than this. They’re not acceptable casualties.

We can bear death: it is not the worst parting that the earth knows. He will be quit of this cruel world; sheltered in heaven. I wish we were all there!

Ellen Wood, from East Lynne

Sleeping With Sirens | Better Off Dead