machetesquirrel

[machetesquirrel]

favourite number?

33! It’s the number that was on my jersey when I played roller derby!

[machetesquirrel]

the episode of being human where george tranqs and cages the wolf is just too much. obviously Tourette’s is a big part of the episode which I don’t suffer from so can’t speak on but it also feels like a metaphor for masking, skill regression and post-masking rage and exhaustion. painful.

[machetesquirrel]

The Russell Household: the Russell marriage is crumbling, Larry’s trying to help his brokenhearted sister, Gladys’ mental health is spiraling

The Van Rhijn Household:

[machetesquirrel]

please stop treating the word neurodivergent like it means the overlap between autism and adhd

[machetesquirrel]

i initially thought that hal being so embarrassed at the idea of him and tom being boyfriends in 4x04 that he could barely even say the words "i'm his... boyfriend" was him being homophobic only to realize that he's clearly super bisexual and it's just the idea of being tom's boyfriend that he finds repulsive because tom is not his type at all.

[machetesquirrel]

This took me an ungodly amount of time.

(granted most of that was actually FINDING CLIPS)

(I know it's slightly off time and not great but 🙏🙏)

[machetesquirrel]

My mom ordered me marigolds FROM ENGLAND just so I could pretend I was Hal Yorke while doing the dishes.

[machetesquirrel]

3.07 is also the first time we've seen Oscar resentful of the necessity of hiding his relationship with John: he's previously framed remaining outside of societal norms as a negative, not the way a reasonable, mature person would behave (1.03 "What's the alternative? To live in the shadows? No thank you," 1.07 "Don't talk that way, I hate to be defined," 1.08 "John, be reasonable. What did you think was going to happen?" and indeed the whole rest of that scene, 2.01 "I wonder if it isn't time I began to live a more grown-up life"). (The one slight exception to this I think is 2.03 "I rather envy you," after John says that he's happy with himself.)

His "I'm sure you don't want to hear that I miss him" is a shock in part because he's so angry about it--we've seen him cavalier (1.03, 1.07), we've seen him afraid (1.08), we've seen him desperate (2.01 with Gladys) when it comes to achieving societal acceptance, but we've never seen him, conversely, angry at his exclusion. Being gay, and everything that brings with it, is a club he doesn't want to belong to ("I hate to be defined"); when he has seen himself as even tenuously belonging to any kind of group, it is one of men who might enjoy being with other men but who nonetheless did what they had to (1.03 "John, there are plenty of men who have had to make exactly the same decision. They can't all be wretched," 2.01 "No more than thousands of other men have asked before me"). He hasn't in the past seen himself as the kind of man who is Like That or indeed Like anything; to him his relationship with John is so far outside the bounds of respectability and marriage that marriage indeed is no threat to it, because it has no bearing on it.

But once again in the 3.07 breakdown scene we see that shift: here he explicitly likens his relationship with John to marriage ("I sat in the back of his funeral like a stranger who walked in to get out of the rain, when I should've taken my rightful--") after having just received a legacy from John that would've normally been given only to a spouse or other close relative (as Agnes points out: "You're not family"). I might also argue that "I agree it seems odd that he gave more to me dead than when he was alive" is related to this as well (though to me it's a somewhat opaque line, and this certainly isn't the only possible reading): that in death John is able to give him the kind of stability and position that, because they could never marry, he could never give Oscar in life.

Oscar's plotline has always been about marriage: his desire to be married, the strictures of marriage, the advantages it grants and the freedoms it takes away. His plotline more than any other has I think uncovered the ambiguities of marriage in this era and within this social sphere, but also it's never been just about marriage in and of itself, but the tension between living within and outside of society's dictates and the process by which a person might try to reconcile a life that straddles these boundaries.

Oscar's journey from seeing his relationship with John as completely outside the framework of marriage (1.03 "Why should it make any difference?") to a substitute or symbolic marriage ("I should've taken my rightful--") isn't just about a personal change of heart but seems to be connected to both the experience of exclusion at John's funeral and inclusion in his will (by proxy)--it's about the social and material aspects of marriage, which Oscar has always been attuned to. His own involvement, or lack thereof, in the social machinery surrounding John's death is what allows Oscar to reconceptualize their relationship as existing within the same context as a marriage.

[machetesquirrel]

I really truly like and admire Julian Fellowes, not just as a writer and director, but also as a person. however. he is testing my limits when he says “here’s my gilded age OC he’s John Adams’ great-great-grandson and he’s super gay”

[machetesquirrel]

Remember Hind. Remember Reem. Remember all the little boys and girls who are more than mere numbers. They are dreams, humanity's innocence, and most importantly they are not to be forgotten.

[machetesquirrel]

Daphne and Silas are the ultimate t4t romance: She send him quotes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and he stabs her dad 🥰

[machetesquirrel]

[machetesquirrel]

My mom says that if I’m not killed by pigeons first I’m gonna choke on a jolly rancher laughing at a meme about Burn Gorman.

[machetesquirrel]

I play a fun game called “Tumblr Roulette” where I scroll my tumblr dash while sitting next to my mom and pray to god that she doesn’t look over my shoulder when there’s gay porn.

[machetesquirrel]

DOCTOR WHO — The Pilot (S10E01) directed by Lawrence Gough | written by Steven Moffat ››› Peter Capaldi as The Doctor ››› Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts

[machetesquirrel]

I'm so sorry. I should be cancelled for this.

[machetesquirrel]

How I feel when talking to people about brutalist architecture