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So I'm slightly obsessed with Severance (2022) and I may have spent like a week straight cutting together an Innie Cut and an Outie cut and holy shit guys it's such an experience. I watched them both straight through like long movies and

The Outie Cut is like an obscure offbeat indie dark comedy where none of your questions get answered and there's zero resolution at the end.

You really get to focus on oMark's perspective, which is interesting because in the show it feels like iMark is the main focus. We get to focus on how oMark's depression has impacted his life, and his journey through the confusion of what's happening with Lumon and Severance. The story feels slower and more grounded. It works better than I anticipated.

The Innie Cut is like a slow and unexpected descent into madness. Honestly, I thought the Outie Cut would be spookier, but no. The Innie Cut is very unsettling.

At first, it kind of just feels like a regular kind of office life show, where it's not at all unusual that we never see the characters at home. We only see them in the office because the show is about the office.

But then there are. Things. Very strange unsettling things. Just out of nowhere. With no context from the outside world. No relief from the blinding bright white landscape of Lumon Industries. The hallways that never stop, the walls closing in on you, the fact that you can't ever leave.

And oh my god when they wake up in the outside world in the final episode it is. SO. JARRING. It's been like three plus hours of bright white office at this point. And then suddenly, disconcertingly, you're thrown into this world that is dark and warm but unfamiliar and treacherous and you have to navigate it perfectly and fast or suffer the consequences.

And iMark, at the party. When you watch Severance for the first time, the party scene is a meeting of two worlds that are familiar to you, the viewer. When you watch the Innie Cut, you're just as off balance as iMark. You don't know these people. You don't know who you can trust. You don't know the right thing or the wrong thing to do here.

Anyways I'd love to share these cuts with people but I have no idea how to go about doing that

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Hello! Sometimes I see people saying Darcy "raised a child (and on his own, is the unsaid implication)" via his care-taking of Georgiana, and I'm a little confused by that. Are we given a year when Darcy's father died? I thought it must have been just a few years ago, so Georgiana was already 12+ and might have been away at school or something - so it's not really Darcy changing his sister's diapers, is it? Plus I thought most of the actual day-to-day care-taking would've been done by Mrs. Reynolds and the other servants, while Darcy was mostly preoccupied with the estate and things, so does that really count as "raising" her? And he shares the guardianship with Col. Fitzwilliam anyway, who must've helped quite a bit, surely... by that definition, did Mr. Knightley "raise" his nephews/nieces every time he babysat for his brother? Did Captain Wentworth "raise" the likely prepubescent midshipmen aboard the Laconia or "raise" Dick Musgrove by making him write letters to his family?

Would appreciate your thoughts on this!

"My excellent father died about five years ago"

-Pride & Prejudice, Ch 35

Georgiana is sixteen during the action of the novel and fifteen at the failed elopement. Their father died when Darcy was around twenty-three and Georgiana was eleven. I personally, having experienced both parenthood and foster care (my parents fostered), would say that taking custody of a recently orphaned tween is harder than caring for a baby. I think that Darcy would be doing whatever a single father in the gentry class would generally do for their daughter or female ward.

As for raising/custody, I think that while Col. Fitzwilliam is a co-guardian, he's possibly just advising on legal matters and protecting the trust with Georgiana's dowry. Darcy probably has what we could call today primary physical custody. How much child raising he's actually doing is debatable, Georgiana is certainly in boarding school at some points and would have had a nursemaid/governess, but I would give him credit for being his sister's guardian and I would bet they had a hard year together after their father died (we don't know when the mom died, though it was likely prior to the father).

As to raising her, one of the things I've always found a little strange about the relationship between Mr. Darcy and his sister is that he's praised so much for being a considerate brother but he doesn't seem to actually be living with her. She has been taken out of school and lives with a female companion. Pemberley is not her permanent residence until the epilogue, so I assume she's living at the Darcy house in London. Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park gets a lot of censure for not living with his adult sister at his estate, but Darcy is fine even though whenever we see him, he's travelling without her. Now I don't know if the big difference here is that Mary is "out" while Georgiana is transitioning to "out," but I'd love to hear an expert opinion on this one.

As for your examples, I think Captain Wentworth and considerate captains like him were likely father figures for their midshipmen (remember these kids went in at 11/12 years old!) and I would count that as "raising" in some sense. Babysitting Knightley nephews, not the same. Darcy did, at 24, have primary custody of an eleven year old girl and I think he deserves some credit for raising her. I certainly would say that Sir Thomas raised Fanny Price and she was about eleven as well, though he did a terrible job of it.

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Re: the first name discussion

You mentioned that Mrs. Bennet called Mr. Bennet that even in family circles - so I was wondering how exactly did the rules work and how flexible were they? Was it okay to call your husband by his first name in front of family but not in front of people who were not family? I also notice (although this is my own observation) that men are way more likely to call their wives by their first names in public, than the women are. In Emma for example Knightly calls her Emma all the time (though that is understandable since he knew her as a kid), and Mr. Elton also calls Mrs. Elton Augusta in front of everyone. Also I understood that there was a sort of heirarchy to who could call whom by their first name: like Mrs. Elton could call Jane by her first name but Jane could not do the same. Frank says something in his letter like it frustrated him to see her name "bandiyed between them with imagined superiority" (I'm quoting from memory sorry if I get it a little wrong) Do you think there was some sort of gender heirarchy in play as well as men can take their wives first names easily but vice versa not so much ?

Okay, so the Reading Jane Austen podcast has discussed this and I've noticed myself while reading, but it seems like the rules probably changed over the course of Jane Austen's writing career and there seems to be generational differences as well. This is acknowledged in the preface of Northanger Abbey:

But with this, neither the author nor the public have any other concern than as some observation is necessary upon those parts of the work which thirteen years have made comparatively obsolete. The public are entreated to bear in mind that thirteen years have passed since it was finished, many more since it was begun, and that during that period, places, manners, books, and opinions have undergone considerable changes.

For example, we never hear Mr. or Mrs. Bennet's first names because they never use them. Mr. Bennet uses "dear" or "Mrs. Bennet" even when only his children are present, Mrs. Bennet calls him "Mr. Bennet." However, the younger Mary Musgrove in Persuasion calls her husband "Charles" all the time and he calls her "Mary". I think this may be generational, and I once stopped reading a JAFF because Mr. Bennet and Mr. Gardiner were referring to each other by last name only (which isn't confirmed or denied I think in Austen, I don't know a scene where two old men of equal status talk to each other, but it felt wrong to me).

Up until Pride & Prejudice, women refer to men by only their last name after knowing them, "Willoughby" "Wickham" "Bingley," but that stops by Mansfield Park. Emma is appalled that Mrs. Elton calls Mr. Knightley by only his last name, but this may be about familiarity and rank (little and lower). Emma calls Harriet "Harriet" while she always says "Miss Woodhouse," which is clearly about rank. Mrs. Elton does a similar dynamic with Jane Fairfax which is less justified (Mrs. Elton is from trade, Jane is gentry, and their disparity isn't as wide as Emma/Harriet).

Family can use first names (Marianne Dashwood calls Edward Ferrars "Edward" because they are in-laws) and Edmund calls Fanny "Fanny" (she avoids calling him "Edmund" probably because she loves him and wants to create distance, usually calls him "cousin") Female friends use first names, male friends last names.

But yeah, I think that even over the course of Jane Austen's publishing, the rules changed and they aren't super clear, so I can't fully answer your question.

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Mysterious Coin-Covered Wishing Trees

The strange phenomenon of gnarled old trees with coins embedded all over their bark has been spotted from the Peak District to the Scottish Highlands in the United Kingdom. One of the larger collections can be seen in the picturesque village of Portmeirion in Wales where there are seven felled tree trunks with coins pushed into them.

The coins are usually knocked into the tree trunks using stones by passers-by, who hope it will bring them good fortune. These fascinating spectacles often have coins from centuries ago buried deep in their bark, warped from the passage of time.

The tradition of making offerings to deities at wishing trees dates back hundreds of years and is similar to the concept of a “wishing well”, where one tosses a coin in for good luck. The “wishing trees” date back to the early 1700s in Scotland where ill people stuck florins into trees with the idea that the trees would take any any illness. However if someone were to take away any of the coins, legend states that they will become ill instead.

sources 1, 2, 3

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Underage Ronan Lynch Stole Declan’s ID To Get His Massive Back Tattoo And I Can (Circumstantially) Prove It.

one question i’ve been dying to know the answer to is how in the hell ronan, while still underage, got an actual artist to give him a massive, extremely intricate full back tattoo.

we know the following:

he didn’t dream the tattoo on to himself, because a) he couldn’t control his dreaming at the time when he got it, b) it’s mentioned in TDT that part of ronan’s motivation for getting it was to see if the pain was actually as bad as people said, and c) it’s mentioned in greywaren that the sensation of hennessy tattooing his arm is familiar, like when he got his back done.

so obviously it was done with a real needle, by a (presumably human) artist. but ronan was underage when he got the tattoo. occam’s razor says the simplest solution is most often the correct one, and in this case, it’s that ronan used a fake/stolen ID.

he couldn’t have forged one himself because as we mentioned, he couldn’t control his dreaming at this point. he could’ve bought one from someone else. but again, the simplest solution is most often the correct one. why would ronan have bothered tracking down someone to make him a fake and then paid them money for it if his older brother’s real ID was sitting right there?

therefore, the simplest explanation is: ronan stole declan’s ID to get the tattoo.

it’s stated that ronan was also motivated to get the tattoo by the knowledge that declan wouldn’t like it. it stands to reason that he’d go an extra step to spite him by stealing his ID to do it. it would’ve worked too, because declan and ronan are described as looking so similar.

hold on june, you say, how do we know declan was 18 when ronan got the tattoo?

i’m so glad you asked! based on the following analysis of the TRC timeline, declan had to have been 18 when ronan got the tattoo.

it’s stated in TDT that niall died a few weeks after ronan and gansey started at aglionby. in TDT (summer 2012, right after they finished junior year), it’s noted that gansey had been in henrietta nearly two years, implying start of his senior year marks two years which means he started there as a sophomore in fall of 2010. that means niall died a few weeks later, like october 2010 at the latest. which means that ronan was a sophomore who likely hadn’t yet turned 16, considering his birthday is november 1st. declan was referred to as underage in niall’s will; this makes sense as it would’ve been the fall of his junior year, so he would’ve been at most 17 when niall died.

it’s stated in TDT (again, summer 2012) that ronan got the tattoo “a few months” before, so december 2011 at the absolute earliest, i’d think, probably more like february-march 2012. this would’ve about 1.25 years after niall’s death. therefore, if declan was 17 when niall died, he would’ve been 18 when ronan got the tattoo.

even if declan was 16 when niall died in october 2010, this naturally means he was 17 in october of 2011. in order for him to be 18 by graduation in may of 2012, he would’ve had to turn 18 at the very latest in the spring of 2012, in other words, exactly when ronan got his tattoo.

*takes a bow*

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who up shedding and molting

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A good thing you can do with an ulcer or other painful sore inside your mouth is to keep pressing your tongue against it to make it hurt more, or even bother it with your teeth for some reason. You can do a similar thing with bad memories!

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Both of the boys were unsettling […] They continued standing there, looking like a pair of horror movie twins, one dark, one light. 

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saw nosferatu and had to hit the gangsey (ft declan) w the victorian beam

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my hyperfixation on this girl is back

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Sketchdump of Majka, my rusalka from Huno and Bogna's story -> [X]

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Owls create snow angel imprints while hunting in winter when they swoop down to catch mice or squirrels.

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went insane and wrote a noah czerny poem :/

thought too hard about ghosts as a metaphor for trauma. thought about noah czerny until i threw up. the result

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Kim Addonizio, from Lucifer at the Starlite: Poems; “You with the crack running through you”

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ok well this blew my mind

This is also true with filmmakers. Western filmmakers pan their cameras mostly left to right and Iranian filmmakers do right to left.