In rewatching the season, I'm noticing how clever Aabria and Brennan were in crafting Tula's story. How well thought out everything was.
Specifically, the bear. It's been mentioned so many times before, but with the context of the completed season, I cannot help but be in awe at the skilful storytelling at display here. The way in which the Blue is described to appear wrong only in reference to Tula and her heart, the way in which Tula talks about curiosity and and having experienced knowing someone who died because of it. Of how Aabria describes to Izzy how Tula looks when she heals the bear, of how Aabria specifically points out that Tula recognises the commonalities between herself and the bear. These breadcrumbs that mean little in the beginning, that tell everything at the end. It's amazing, stunning, masterful storytelling. I am in awe.
Last Words of a Shooting Star, Mitski // Burrow's End // Sylvia Plath // Burrow's End // The War of Vaslav Nijinsky, Frank Bidart // mine // No Surprises, Radiohead // Removal Act, Erin Marie Lynch // Cairn in the Snow, Casper David Friedrich // Burrow's End // Faces in the Crowd, Valeria Luiselli // Burrow's End // Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente // Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
(as a note, this is incredibly long so i've put the vast majority of it under a read more. please open it all the way if you want to see the whole thing)
@/atticfish // The Oresteia, Aeschylus // C.S. Lewis // Clearest Blue, CHVRCHES // Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) // I See Boats Moving, Fernando Pessoa // Deep End, Holly Humberstone // The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke // Tired, beabadoobee // Sarah Kay // Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, Frank Bidart // (could not find) // Zinaida Gippius // Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides, Anne Carson // Don’t Swallow the Cap, The National // When Did It Happen?, Mary Oliver // Holy Wild, Gwen Benaway // Manhattan is a Lenape Word, Natalie Diaz // Dead Stars, Ada Limón // The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell (1988) // How to Cure a Ghost, Fariha Róisín // @/CrowsFault (twitter) // Spring, Mary Oliver // @/jb-blunk // (could not find) // @/roach-works // Tales From Earthsea: Dragonfly, Ursula Le Guin // Some are Always Hungry, Jihyun Yun // All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks // Notebooks 1951-1959, Albert Camus // @/podencos // The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath // Waiting, Marya Hornbacher // The Summer Day, Mary Oliver // Burrow’s End (2023)
I can’t fucking believe Aabria looked Brennan Lee Mulligan in the eyes while they made Tula a revenant knowing full well she was gonna have Phoebe force her to attack her own family in the finale
“I think before a certain point, I don’t remember us having names like you all have these days, but there was always mother, brother, sister, neighbor. So even if we didn’t have some hoity-toity moniker, we knew who we were to one another, and that was the important part.”