bishakespeares

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.🌬️.

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Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would delete hinge and start hanging out on the docks.

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my sister works in a nursery (in scotland for context) and today a kid came up to her and said "can you put on 'release my wee da'? I want to dance" and my sister was like ?? what the fuck is 'release my wee da', so the kid sang a line of it. turns out, feliz navidad

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RENT (2005)

dir. Chris Columbus

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don bluth films occupy a weird space because he's both inarguably an auteur who directs very strange, earnest, often "ugly" films but also a guy who near exclusively made movies for 8 year olds in the home video era. so basically everything he's ever done is a grimy, dreamy rumination on death and spirituality and has a direct to video sequel called something like secret of nimh 2: mrs. brisby's holiday adventure

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Did I Solicit Thee from Darkness to Promote Me?

So it occurred to me that, in two of my favorite stories of all time, there is an unloved child, abandoned to the cold, snowy woods, who teaches himself language to try to convince people to love him, and it fails. So he is left with an amazing gift for oratory that has no real, practical purpose, and in order to make his way in the world he has no real choice except to become violent and destroy families and make sea-captains into wrecks of their former selves.

Namely, the Creature from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Mate, the main character of the musical Swept Away.

So I combined the two.

And a meta-textual bonus parallel between Mate and Victor:

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What are you afraid of, Theo? - Of knowing what I really want.

Julie Harris & Claire Bloom as Eleanor Lance and Theodora in THE HAUNTING (1963) dir. Robert Wise

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WIBTA for taking advantage of my boss’ possible manic episode?

I know this already sounds bad but hear me out.

So I (30M) am the sole employee of this guy (62M) who’s honestly just a miserable boss and an even more miserable person. It sucks so bad working for him—the pay is horrendous, he’s verbally abusive, and the working conditions are awful (in the winter I literally have to stay bundled up the whole work day because he refuses to put the heat on in the office). He wouldn’t even give me holidays off if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s basically nothing to do those days because everywhere else is closed. I’m almost positive he unironically thinks poor people should die if they can’t work. His nephew (aka his only living relative and just the nicest guy) came by yesterday to invite him to Christmas dinner and he told him he’d see him in hell.

I cannot stress this enough—it’s BAD. I’d quit, but it’s been hard finding a better job and I’ve got four kids at home, including one with special needs.

Anyway, so here’s where I’m wondering if I’d be the asshole. Today was Christmas Day and he showed up at my house out of nowhere (huge red flag, I know). At first I thought he’d forgotten I had the day off and he was here to chew me out, which was worrying enough, but then his whole demeanor changed and he was super happy and excited and talking about how he was going to raise my salary. He even mentioned possibly making me a partner in the firm.

Now if that was it, I’d feel a little weird about the suddenness of it but it’d be fine. I’m not going to complain about having more money to feed my family. But then he started talking about how he wanted to pay our mortgage off. He talked about wanting to pay for our son to get the very expensive medical care that’s probably going to save his life. He mentioned at one point that he was going to be donating a huge amount of money to charity too—I knew he was rich but it staggered me. All this from a guy who doesn’t (didn’t?) even want to turn on the heat or the lights because it costs too much money.

It was such a sudden and drastic change that happened very literally overnight and now I’m kind of concerned he’s having a manic episode or something. I really, really want to accept his sudden generosity (I probably will; my wife is all for it and thinks he owes it to us), and I would love to believe that he’s truly had a sudden change of heart (an actual Christmas miracle lol) but I’m just worried about the possible consequences of accepting huge financial gifts like this from someone who I believe might be experiencing some kind of break from reality. Even if there’s nothing legally wrong with it, I’m worried about the ethics of it.

TLDR, my asshole boss might be in the middle of a mental breakdown. WIBTA if I accepted his offer to pay off my mortgage and my son’s medical expenses?

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i know i'm who i am today because i knew you 20 YEARS OF WICKED: FOR GOOD idina menzel & kristin chenoweth • ana gasteyer & kate reinders • alyssa fox & mckenzie kurtz • christine dwyer & jenni barber • idina menzel & kristin chenoweth • stephanie j block & kendra kassebaum • alyssa fox & mckenzie kurtz • lindsay heather pearce & brittney johnson • idina menzel & kristin chenoweth • idina menzel, kristin chenoweth, & various elphabas and glindas of broadway

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happy saturday chillin (swept away edition) to those who celebrate

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ill spend my twenties investigating the healing properties of salt i dont know about you guys

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Details from Arctic Expedition, in search of Sir John Franklin, 1848-49 published 31 Jan 1850, lithograph after W.H. Browne.

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Kit Boyd - Cast Adrift (2020)

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Cannibalism as a metaphor for I Was Hungry