incoherent rambling about tammy usher

for a start her self worth issues which are pointed out to her by verna just before she fucking dies. but then this bitch also has like 5 million mirrors. probably because she likes to torture herself as she stares at all her self perceived flaws.

I think she has a very high opinion/standard of what beauty is and this is likely party tied into her mother and how Annabel died young. This most likely gave her a complex with ageing and also her mortality. The mirrors also clearly play into whatever kink she has going on for watching her husband and another woman. This woman who is clearly her little dress up doll, who she is moulding to be either a budget version of herself or the version of herself she wishes she could be (I can't quite tell which.)

This combined with the mirror on her ceiling, an odd choice, is also probably linked to her control issues, she needs to know what is going on, everywhere, at all times. She likes to be in the know, all seeing, as it helps her to feel grounded and in control of the situation.

Personally I read this as i's likely tied to her having suffered some kind of assault/abuse, most likely after she met her husband because she states during their fight that they used to be sexually involved.

Which leads to the fact she has deep rooted intimacy and vulnerability issues anyway. She will not let herself be in any sort of position of vulnerability, she shies away from physical touch (the flinch when bill touches her arms in e1 and pulling away from juno when she tries to hug her in e6.) She has a hard time expressing her emotions, which she seems to be trying to do in episode 6 in her own weird way. The scenes with Bill and with Juno where she has just the faintest hint of tears in her eyes during both before she bottles up her feelings again. I think her admission that she misses her husband was genuine but Madeline shuts that shit down extremely quickly because she clearly doesn't believe that women should have to rely on a man for anything. And Tammy wants so desperately to be able to live up to her father's name that she's willing to sacrifice almost anything to get there. But that moment where she is yearning for her husband to be by her side and for them to do the right thing (save the company) together is the one moment I think she's most like her mother and we see that tiny bit of her shining through. But as always Maddy is not here for the soft housewife approach, she wants results that she thinks only women can produce.

“Homura callously destroys everything and everyone else because she's selfish and she only loves madoka” right that's why, when she rewrote the entire universe, she not only made it to where Madoka would be surrounded by her friends and her family, but she also gave Sayaka a second chance with not only Kyoko, but with Hitomi and Kyoske as well. That's why she gave Nagisa and Mami a life together. Because she's callous and selfish and she doesn't care about anyone but Madoka. That's why she took on the brunt of immortality for Madoka to be human again, even if it's temporary, choosing to suffer alone whilst everyone else has a second chance at a life. Go fuck yourself. I'm so tired of seeing ppl minimize Homura's love for Madoka and her friends by writing off her actions as “oh she's just a selfish evil edgelord who destroys everything and everyone who isn't madoka bc she doesn't care about anything else bc selfishness vs selflessness themes!!” like you do know that you can point out Homura's selfishness and Madoka's selflessness without blatantly lying and trying to rewrite canon to fit your narrative, right?

atm i'm sick over charlie hauling al into a hug after he's helped her figure out the answer to something monumental, and luci can see the easy implicit trusting way she leans into him

I got very strong night fury vibes from the cat🥰😩🥰🥰

me too! i think toothless is a slightly inauspicious name for a cat since she cannot retract hers at will, but she does hiccup after i give her milk… 🤔

so far we were thinking Frodo (on account of the literal sopping wet kitten vibes) or Apollo (because we watched a moon landing documentary tonight) or Artemis (because we watched a moon landing documentary tonight and this makes one think of the mars missions). i did my due diligence and suggested we call her Sushi but i was shot down fall of icarus style 😔

haven’t touched Genshin in a while, but here, have some OC doodles anyway

Three little dark brown spots set in a splash of milky light brown On the palm of my left hand, I showed to my mother, curious. She took one look and said: "Dirt."

I felt my heart crushed to powder.

My sister, filled with self-loathing About her appearance, envious Of how I never seemed to hate mine. "I love my big, poofy, wavy hair!" "You love frizz for some reason." She lamented her dark eyes, Told her I always liked mine, They reminded me of black tea— A deep, reddish-brown; tea-coloured. She looked closely at my eyes; "Dirt."

I felt my heart crushed to powder.

I never stopped loving my hair or my eyes! I just loved them less: sad, hateful things.

Returning after prayer in medical school, Lashes still too wet for my glasses, I stepped into my sunny lecture room, My late friend (one of only two) cried: "You have light brown eyes! Your glasses Hide them–destroy them." Like a poem!

Once, I sat on my bed, in the sunlight. Mama insisted on open windows, I like morning light, but not mid-day heat. So I always closed them at noon— I sat in the sun, mama stood in the door She hurriedly called my dad over to see. "Look, in the sun, her hair looks golden!"

in my brief absence from here i’ve managed to fall in love with a man 11 years older than me

thinking about miles murphy and niles sparks celebrating new years together.

niles riding his bike to miles’ house that evening, judy murphy insisting he have dinner with them. she makes one of niles’ favorite meals because she knows he’d be coming over and she goddamn loves this boy, and niles damn near cries over it. this is the first new years niles can remember that he’s spent doing anything other than sitting by himself in his room with his nose in a book, avoiding the annual new years party his parents always have going downstairs. (it was never as if he was banished to his room or anything, of course. niles has always been free to join everyone downstairs if he pleases. it’s just that it’s always loud and there’s always too many people and he barely knows any of them and no one there is anywhere near his age and there’s a certain awkwardness to being the only kid at a party for adults, and. just less overwhelming to keep to himself.)

judy has to leave because she works odd hours as a nurse, and as disappointed as she is that she couldn’t get the rest of the night off to spend with her son, she’s equally glad that miles won’t be spending the night by himself. miles has niles. she leaves them with matching hair ruffles and a pack of sparklers and a “be careful, i mean it, call me right away if anything happens, love you”.

miles and niles leave with an hour ‘til midnight, ride their bikes side-by-side through the dark, reach the top of the hill that holds their carefully selected firework watching spot (they’d spent the previous couple of days scouting out potential spots and choosing between those for the best possible view) with twenty minutes to spare. niles slings off his backpack and pulls out a bottle of faux-alcoholic sparkling apple juice. miles has never had sparkling apple juice before. they drink it from paper cups. miles decides he does not like sparkling apple juice. niles likes it even though it tastes like shit.

they pull out their sparklers, prepare to light them up as soon as the clock hits midnight. this is a tradition miles has held with his mom for many years. he’s glad to have a second person to share this with. he’s glad that that person is niles. niles starts whispering the countdown in time with his watch, and miles’ practiced hands light his own sparkler with ease as they shout the final seconds. niles fumbles with the lighter, can’t get the stupid stick to work right, so miles puts his hand over his friend’s to guide the lighter. niles finds himself getting distracted by the way the sparks look reflected in miles’ eyes, almost loses count. his own sparkler catches right as they yell ZERO!! and, oh, they both feel so alive. fireworks go off all around them in brilliant bursts of color and sound, and they’re waving their sparklers high in mimicry, and their breath clouds in the cold air, and this is the best new years eve that niles sparks has ever had. this is the best year he’s ever had. and that’s all because of miles.

they—niles and miles, both—look forward to annual repeats of old traditions, to starting new ones. to more years together, and more ends of years together, and more togetherness in general. it’s the best new years eve either of them have ever had.

women 👍

hmm. had an actual conversation with nightmare coworker today that seemed mutually productive. she apologized for saying some bullshit that hurt my feelings and i clarified that my intentions are to help not to undermine her, and we both agreed that there's no competition against each other and that it's the lack of growth in our role that's the problem. it was...productive.

and further cementing for me that it is time to begin making my Exit. i will be sending out my resume to a few places this weekend.

i'm still processing the conversation, and am struggling to place myself in where i am responsible to better my behavior. because i genuinely don't want to be an ass, even though i really don't like this lady and will jump for joy the day i never have to see her again. she stated that she knows my intentions aren't to hurt her, and that she thinks i'm very kind. i apologized for if my behavior came off as undermining her, and said that my intentions are only to better my own growth—and that i know she's trying to succeed too. i validated her feelings, and complemented the effort she is putting in.

where i'm struggling with is: am i in the wrong/causing harm and needing to change if the issue is that her feelings are incongruent with what she knows of my intentions? her feelings are her responsibility (WOW i almost typed "her feelings are my responsibility". i feel like that's a freudian slip) and she states that she knows i don't mean to hurt her. i'm going to try to be more clear in wording my intentions with her (she feels like me trying to take work off her plate is to undermine her. when really, i'm caught up and see her getting overwhelmed, and i want to help and also have something to do since i'm bored).

but i'm really struggling to look at my role in this and pass judgement on myself. i can and want to do better, and i don't think i did anything wrong, but i'm always so hesitant to say it's not my fault or i didn't do something bad. like i can't trust my judgement on that. my intentions were good, her bad feelings are ones caused by her insecurities, which she more or less has expressed to be aware that they are not true—the hurtful thing she said to me, she acknowledged was said out of hurt and not what she actually thinks. so, is it fair to say i'm not the bad guy? i'm not in the wrong? i know good intentions that still result in harm don't absolve anyone, but when the things that are clashing are insufficient communication and reactive insecurities... i'm not a monster, am i?

the desperation to survive is such an interesting part of kingdom and I especially like how it’s reflected in Yeong Shin, Lee Chang, and the Queen. The parallel between Yeong Shin and Lee Chang is lower hanging fruit, but the added factor of the Queen gives it more depth. These are the three characters where it is explicitly stated and shown that they will do anything to survive and I think they can be broken into three categories: selflessness, selfishness, and the intermediate.

Yeong Shin’s desperation to survive is selfless. Though it is one of the factors that ultimately causes the plague, the origin of it comes from a want for not only his survival, but the survival of the people in the village. Despite making the soup, he does not turn because he wanted to feed the people in Jiyulheon first. There’s the juxtaposition of the immorality of eating a human body and the moral good of feeding the villagers. His approach to most things seems to be whether or not the pros outweigh the cons with the information he has and he’s no stranger to going to great lengths in order to survive (such as cannibalism). That being said, to him, his survival also inherently means the survival of those around him. If he was bothered about just surviving himself, he would have destroyed the bodies in Jiyulheon, would not have gone back to the wagon when it was stuck, would not have defended the villagers when the Palace Guards attacked, etc. So yes, Mu Yeong was right to say that the chakho will do anything to survive, but that survival, in the case of Yeong Shin, is selfless.

On the flip side, the Queen’s desperation to survive is selfish. It is the kind of survival where there are no moral codes that bound her and the one where she will do anything in order to keep herself afloat. It is also what makes the switch from Lord Cho to her as the main antagonist so impactful, one because of the parting words she gives him after poisoning his tea, and two because Lord Cho, while cunning, never had the same level of ruthlessness as his daughter did; his existence was not constantly being tested and he did not know survival like she did. Like Yeong Shin, her desire to survive also played a part in the outbreak, but the circumstances are different. Her survival inherently requires the deaths of those around her. The lengths that she goes to in order to ensure her survival are extreme and they are a death sentence for anyone who threatens her. She survives through cruelty because cruelty is all she knows and this survival will always be selfish because it will only be her own.

And finally, we have Lee Chang whose desire to survive is the intermediate: it is the moral grey between two opposing sides, and it’s also interesting to note that it is also the only survival that does not play a factor in the outbreak. Throughout the show, he has moments of selfishness and selflessness, and he goes to similar lengths as the other two with the same sort of desperation that they all know. I don’t think he’s perfectly in the middle because it would be wrong to say he’s halfway similar to the Queen, but it’s also important to note that the survival they both know is one of the same because they are both disadvantaged in Joseon’s politics. When comparing him to Yeong Shin, he too includes others in his survival, but it takes him longer to get there. The best example of this is when they return to Jiyulheon and the palace guards attack; his hesitation ensures his own survival at the village but it comes at the cost of others. What’s interesting is that just before that, he risked his life to free the wagon as they escaped from the undead. His quest to survive is contradictory as much as it desperate. Part of his development is figuring out which way he will ultimately fall.

(There might be something to be said about how the consequences of Queen and Yeong Shin’s desperation to survive are immediate whereas Lee Chang’s are stretched throughout the show, but I think that would have to be another post).

if you "feel terrible asking" then how about you just don't ask

"I want you to be better, but I can't make you that person."

Doctor Aphra (2020) #31

no one understands overhated female characters the way i do 💔💔💔

feelings are so complex