joons

[joons]

logged online and took such great psychic damage from three separate sites in a five-minute window. demons thrive.

[joons]

girlblogging coquette tumblr, i hate you for every tag you shit up

[joons]

New unseen video of Elvis and Lisa at Graceland in 1971 during Christmas

[joons]

FAM WE ARE HAVING A DAY!

[joons]

would i still see see see FUCK YOU rider

would i still see sus—GODDAMN IT ... son of a bitch

would i still see—GODDAMN IT, mAN

would i still yeah yeah right right

would i still SSSEEEE SSSSUSpicion in YOUR eyesssss

[joons]

[joons]

✼　 ҉ 　✼ the psychology of Elvis, pt. 1 ✼　 ҉ 　✼

i’ve been thinking a lot about the psychology of Elvis since watching the new documentary and i desperately need to scream my little brain worms into the void. i'm not really adding anything to the conversation that @joons didn't already say (much more concisely and eloquently than i'm about to lol) but alas, a yapper never ceases.

obviously i’m not a doctor or an expert by any means, so there’s a good chance i’m just talking out of my ass. always interested to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions but if you’re thinking about engaging with this post in bad faith, don’t!

of course Elvis lived a very complicated and unusual life, and we can never truly know why a person does what they do, but there's a series of major events that i can think of that very obviously impacted him and probably lead to a lot of the patterns of behavior we saw in his adult years.

for a start, he grew up very poor. we know poverty leaves deep and lasting trauma - experiencing resource scarcity, especially during your formative years, has a huge impact on developmental psychology. not only that, but his dad was in prison for 8 months when Elvis was only 3-4 years old. that's old enough to remember the emotions associated, but not old enough that he could have really understood what was happening at the time. AND by all accounts, it seemed he also had a hard time fitting in at school, which i'm sure wasn't helped when the family moved two hours away from his home town.

overall, his childhood was really characterized by scarcity - lack of money, lack of resources, lack of stability, lack of friends. but then he makes it through high school and he hits it big! seemingly overnight and out of no where. and now, there's money coming in! he can afford to buy his family a nice home! he's adored by crowds and he's found friends! and all of this is incredible and he attributes it all to none other than colonel tom parker.

and so now we have this deep-seeded fear of scarcity and this belief that all of the abundance he's finally experiencing should be attributed to the colonel. and the only way to make sure that the colonel stays is to keep him happy.

and then the two worst things that could have possibly happened happen at the same time - he gets sent to Germany, in turn being forced to abandon his career and his life as he knows it, and his mother and very best friend dies tragically.

and suddenly he realizes that the money and the fame and the resources aren't enough to keep bad things from happening, and the worst thing that can happen is losing the people you love - and maybe more importantly, losing the people who love you.

so now we have a man who was, by all accounts, already gentle and kind and loving by nature, whose brain has been conditioned to prioritize having people in his corner above all else. which, to a degree, is just human nature! we intrinsically know that we need a tribe to thrive in the wild. but when you experience the trauma that he went through at such formative times in his life, that becomes your singular goal. to survive, you cannot be alone.

and how do you avoid being alone? you give people a reason to want to be around you. and that reason could be a lot of different things - love, money, sex, entertainment. and he was pretty damn good at providing all of the above. so of course he builds a loyal group to surround him at all times. not only is he kind and fun and beautiful, but he's essentially bankrolling their whole lives. he buys them houses and cars and puts them on his payroll.

and now we have a huge problem, because we're well into the 1960's and Elvis has been raking in cash hand over foot, but he's miserable. he doesn't have a live audience to feed him anymore. the work is meaningless and embarrassing, and his health is on the rocks. but the colonel is constantly reminding him that he's only one step away from desolation, and now Elvis is really scared, because he's essentially the sole provider for a family of 15 at this point and he has to keep the cash flowing. so he stays miserable and does the bad movies and continues to do exactly what the colonel says. and god forbid any of the leeches around him (not you jerry or charlie!!) say anything, because they're not about to lose their paycheck!

but thankfully we make it through the majority of the 60's, and everything changes with the help of steve binder and the '68 special. and that's where i'm going to hop off my soap box for today, but trust me i have MUCH more to say about the 70's and the eventual decline of an empire and how this ties in to the lore of Elvis Presley™ as we know it today.

if any of you actually made it this far, i apologize for the 10 minutes you will never get back. may god bless you angels. maybe go outside or something now tho. okay love you xoxo

[joons]

wade buddy wtf is that pose

[joons]

child of the necropolis and whatever that does to development or smth

[joons]

DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD (2024)

[joons]

Emziess Birthday Celebration: torisprlng requested: make me choose - heartstopper or lockwood & co ((Template//Transition))

[joons]

Such a great point, that we are all dynamic and change constantly. And honestly? A lot of people around him were dedicated to the idea of Elvis remaining the same and staying as their immature chum that could make everything fun. So many instances of him saying, "I don't want any more parties. I want to talk about serious things. I want to prepare to start a family," and everyone was all mad about this and dragging their feet and getting jealous about his time. I do think he sort of is someone his buddies use to explain themselves at times, because he reaffirmed their views once and they treated it like gospel instead of an off-hand comment because he was talking to them on their level. If he stayed the same, they wouldn't feel like they had to mature either.

okay no wait, I'm so curious your thoughts on the elvis mythology! I'm trying to think of an example haha. anyway, thank you for that food for thought. your takes on elvis are so interesting and kind of a different perspective than I normally see

Thank you! That means a lot because I do love going into his psychology and thinking about how he thought about things. And I love being able to engage with Elvis stuff from all different angles!

I can think of a few - like there will be people who were close to him who make such absolute statements about him: he refused to wear blue jeans, he hated eating fish, he loved eating peanut butter/banana/bacon sandwiches, he was afraid of germs, he wouldn't sleep with women who were mothers. But not all of those are true for him 100% of the time, or they seem to be big outliers where no one else has reported anything like that. And as you read more, you can see moments where he behaves differently than these big eccentricities that people pin on him, and you have to think about why that might be. You pick up little clues that you can put together to figure out what he meant. Did he have an almost pathological dislike of blue jeans because they reminded him of his childhood poverty, or did he just tell one of his band members that because he had made a brusque joke about the guy wearing blue jeans in front of a bunch of people and wanted to find a way to apologize without apologizing? Was he covering up behavior he was ashamed of, or was he revealing the real shame that drove him to look his best and make sure his entourage looked their best too? Did he actually have an aversion to women after they had given birth (unlikely, since he had relationships with several mothers), or did he want to give Priscilla a reason for avoiding her that she couldn't work around, knowing that she always went overboard trying to change herself to get his attention and getting rid of things she thought were coming between them (his spiritual books/Larry Geller/etc.)? Was this just one of a long line of excuses he made for not truly being in love with her and not wanting to try anymore? Did he actually eat the same sandwich every day, or did he just make a big deal about it one time because it was Lisa's birthday and he wanted to fly her somewhere special? And the other stuff he did eat every day, did he do it because it was one of the few things in his life he had control over, and could extract comfort from, or did he do it because, as he told Larry, he wanted to make himself sick of it so that it would no longer be a temptation? And how much of these conversations are either hearsay or someone putting words in his mouth to absolve themselves of something that bothered them?

The long and short of it is that people have sometimes reported things he said or did without any surrounding context, or it gets stripped away when it's reported elsewhere, and we are left with these moments that don't make sense or tell us anything about him unless we see how he dealt with them throughout his life, around different people, and see him as a whole person and not the Elvis Image that he tended to embrace when it suited him and resent when it hurt him. A really great moment that I think shows how Elvis tended to approach things is reported by Steve Binder, where he said Parker was telling Elvis absolutely not to do something, and Steve felt like Elvis just kind of shut down and mumbled "yes" until Parker left, and then Elvis' eyes flashed and he turned to Steve and said, "Fuck him," and did what he wanted to do. He was a people pleaser! A huge one! He valued loyalty above honesty. He was willing to lie to people he cared about if he felt that it would avoid a confrontation, and sometimes that tipped into a selfish "I want to do things my way," and sometimes that tipped into a selfless "I want them to have everything I can give them." And he waffled between those extremes because of his own low self-esteem and loneliness. I'm! Screaming! About this! At all times! He is an unreliable narrator, he's such a bubble of emotions that pops with the slightly scratch, he's so complex that you are not sure if he wants the bubble to be an opaque shield or a transparent boundary that you can slip through. He was testing people all the time to know if he could trust them with his heart without expecting him to be the Elvis Image, telling them things that were an invitation and a challenge and an insult and a declaration of love all at once, and so much of the problem we deal with now is that people are still completely uninterested in these depths. I???? Love him??? And the things he can help us learn about ourselves??? Just by trying to see him as he really was????

I don't know, I just get very overwhelmed!!!!

[joons]

remember to hug your skeleson

[joons]

November 16, 1970:

Elvis performed at the State Fair Grounds Arena in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at 8:30 pm. He wore the Lace suit with the White Macrame belt.

[joons]

i need to make a post of my favorite quotes from the new elvis doc because some of the talking heads were spitting absolute fire

[joons]

Visions of summer…every day

The ep has me feral, I can’t wait for more new music