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ABBA - Gimme Gimme Gimme

8-bit version (square waves)

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even planning out a project can take a long time before the yarn even touches the warping board

Penelope: Yeah, this shroud is taking me 20 years.

Suitors:

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A Timeline of Women’s Fashion from 1784-1970 (source: http://kottke.org/17/07/a-timeline-of-womens-fashion-from-1784-1970)

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I’ve seen the “get thee to a nunnery” scene done where hamlet has no idea he’s being spied on and just goes off on ophelia because he’s hangry. I’ve seen the “get thee to a nunnery” scene done where hamlet knows he’s being watched from the start and the whole thing’s an act. I’ve seen the “get thee to a nunnery” scene done where hamlet figures out he’s being watched half way through and gets super mad at ophelia for betraying him. now I want to see the “get thee to a nunnery” scene done where ophelia covertly nods at where polonius and claudius are hiding, hamlet gets the idea, and they’re both in on the performance the whole time. I want classically trained shakespearean actors to give us their best best show of bad acting. I want ophelia to mouth some of the most cutting lines to hamlet before he says them. I want hamlet to frown exaggeratedly at her and for her to take this as a cue to start crying. I want hamlet to go grab her by the wrist, her to wince, and him to automatically loosen his grip. I want them to stage hamlet dragging her around by the ear using classic stage-fight techniques. I want them to be aggressively in cahoots with one another because they know each of their bastard father-figures are watching. 

I want this for the lols of seeing them trying to fake-fight on the spot, to give ophelia more to do than just be the victim, and so it never crosses ophelia’s mind that hamlet’s actually losing it a little bit.

that is, until she hears how her father died.

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Incomplete/imperfect knowledge in Dungeon Meshi is so good isn't it?

The exposition I usually see in made up worlds tend to the side of being perfect explanations (or at least they eventually get explained to the audience) but in dungeon meshi we get a lot of speculation from in world imperfect understanding of the people living in it, it's so good.

The bad understanding that gets corrected later on it's like "Oh I see why they thought that" but some isn't even given a good answer at all.

Some examples is of course the living armors people assumed were moved by magic but were a monster. But there's also less obvious things, like the understanding about ancient magic, dungeons, the basilisk "which one is the main body", differences between humans and demi-humans etc

Even characters that know more than other characters still have blank spaces in their understanding they fill with misconceptions. Like the canaries not fully understanding the demon even tho they think they do.

This is one of the great parts about the ending 10/10

so what happens now that the world was changed? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Cats logic 🤷🐱🐈

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Sir Christopher Lee met Rasputin's assassins, saw the last guillotine execution, hunted Nazis, recorded a heavy metal album, spoke 9 languages, was Ian Fleming's cousin (James Bond) & was the only actor in “The Lord of the Rings” to have met J.R.R. Tolkien

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Okay I want to talk about this moment between Morrible and Glinda for a sec because it adds such a wonderfully sinister layer to a scene that is otherwise a triumphant defining moment for Elphaba, and it sets up the dynamics for Part 2 so perfectly.

At this point, we are in the thick of “Defying Gravity.” Everyone’s attention is on Elphaba - and rightfully so, she’s up there declaring war on the Wizard, displaying incredible feats of magic, of course everyone’s attention is on her.

…Everyone, except Morrible.

Morrible has realized that Plan A was a bust, but rather than panicking, she’s already worked over Plans B through Z in her head and has realized that Glinda, not Elphaba, is actually the key figure here. Glinda is actually the best thing that could have happened to them.

Mind you, Morrible hates Glinda. She thinks Glinda is vapid and attention-seeking and completely without talent. It would be extremely easy for her to brand Glinda as an accomplice to Elphaba, have the guards drag her off, imprison her, never have to deal with her again, nice and neat.

Instead, while everyone else is focused on Elphaba, Morrible only has eyes for Glinda. She zeroes in on her, releases her, and comforts her, because she understands what no one else understands, which is that yes, that’s great that the Wizard now has an enemy to unify his people against, but they also need a symbol of hope, something that is the exact antithesis to Elphaba, something to keep everyone at extremes. 

The Wizard himself can’t really be a symbol of hope, because the key to his success is that he remains shrouded in mystery, and yes people think he’s wonderful, but there’s a level of uncertainty and intimidation to him. He is Oz the Great and Terrible, and everyone’s preeeeeetty sure he’s a good guy, but if you have someone like Elphaba out there - who Morrible knows from experience is very smart, very articulate, and has her own sort of magnetism - there’s a potential that she could turn at least enough people against the Wizard to make things very inconvenient.

So what they need, now that they have an enemy, is to have an equally magnetic figurehead representing the Wizard who embodies all these one-dimensional ideas of goodness, someone for the public to adore and fawn over so the association between Wizard and Goodness is crystal clear.

And by bringing Glinda along, Elphaba has unknowingly served that figurehead up on a platter.

Glinda is everything Elphaba isn’t, from personality, to appearance - Morrible has already set Elphaba up by calling her green skin an “outward manifestorium of her twisted nature,” which paves the way for Glinda, who is the perfect conventional beauty, to be an “outward manifestorium�� of pure goodness. 

Morrible realizes they need these two lightning rods of Absolute Evil and Absolute Good in order to manipulate people - fear alone isn’t enough; the only way to effectively radicalize the populace is to make sure there is no gray area whatsoever, no room for question: you're either good, or you’re evil. And the Wizard alone isn’t a strong enough representation of “goodness” when by virtue of existing, he has to remain in the shadows. Glinda on the other hand? With her looks and her charm and her openness and her ability to expertly win over a crowd? Perfect for the role.

Now the tricky part for Morrible is taking into consideration that Glinda and Elphaba love each other. But we also know from earlier scenes that Morrible is a master at manipulating emotions. Right from the start when Elphaba is having trouble with her magic, Morrible casually brings up the “Animals should be seen and not heard” disturbance from class, spoon-feeding her just enough to get Elphaba upset, triggering her magic, after which Morrible makes sure to give her assurance and praise to keep Elphaba optimistic about her power.

She’s also aware that Glinda does have quite a bit of influence over Elphaba, because when Elphaba flees, Morrible immediately tasks her with winning her over, rather than simply relying on the guards or even going after Elphaba herself. She knows if anyone has a chance at roping Elphaba back in, it's Glinda.

Obviously, Glinda isn’t successful in getting her back, but while this puts a dent in Morrible’s plans to get control of Elphaba, it does give her an extra weak spot to exploit in Glinda.

So now, at the height of “Defying Gravity” when Elphaba has officially taken her stand against them, Morrible sees Glinda, and Glinda is at her most vulnerable, her most emotionally fragile. Not only is she heartbroken and in shock, she’s also just witnessed in real time exactly how easy it is to turn an entire nation against someone. She’s scared, she’s powerless. She’s just lost the love of her life her only friend, she has no one to turn to - Morrible has definitely picked up on the fact that even though Glinda has countless people who fawn over her, none of them can be considered a true friend except for Elphaba, which means Glinda is completely isolated. Glinda also has a very limited understanding of the bigger picture of what the Wizard is trying to accomplish, and because she’s never been a victim of the system the way Elphaba has, she is still desperately clinging to the idea that everything will be okay as long as she plays by the rules of the people in power.

She has been perfectly primed for Morrible to begin manipulating, not through violence or intimidation, but by offering her comfort when no one else would - when not even Glinda’s only friend would - when no one else is even paying attention to Glinda, because they have the very real and present threat of Elphaba quite literally hanging over them. In this moment, Morrible chooses Glinda, which Glinda has been striving for since the beginning. Elphaba has chosen her principles, the Wizard has chosen his enemy, but Morrible has chosen Glinda, and in this moment of being so alone and so afraid and so betrayed, that makes all the difference.

We also get kind of a parallel shot too - Elphaba really sealed her fate the second her hand closed around the broom. But here, Glinda seals her fate when she gives in and reciprocates Morrible’s hold on her.

THIS is the moment that sets us up for Part 2, with Elphaba and Glinda as our lightning rods for Absolute Evil and Absolute Good, but more to the point, it makes it clear that they’ve BOTH been used, they’ve BOTH played right into these respective roles Morrible and the Wizard need in order to be successful - even if it wasn’t how Morrible originally planned for things to go.

I just love it, because “Defying Gravity” is Elphaba’s song - it’s triumphant, and it’s heartbreaking, and it’s everything a defining moment should be for a character. But by injecting this little moment between Morrible and Glinda into the scene, we also get an underlying current of dread because we know we’re about to see the consequences of Elphaba’s defiance versus Glinda’s compliance and how both serve to benefit the Wizard/Morrible’s propaganda.

TL;DR - when I said "I want to talk about this scene between Morrible and Glinda for a sec" I clearly meant "I'm gonna write a whole essay. Like a nerd."

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Does the gender of your Tumblr profile pic/pvp/avatar match your irl gender? Yes, No, Nuance.

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"lon chaney jr.'s dead" by goth rock band VkhUTEMAS

“boris karloff’s dead” by goth rock band art deco

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Toaster from the 1920s...

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The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

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you ever see someone so coked-up on adulthood that they've replaced every shred of interiority with a regurgitation of normative power structures

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some carrie fisher tweets to brighten your day

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I think that if Carrot and Laios ever met, the fact that they are very similar would be very apparent to literally everyone except them. Like Carrot would file Laios away in the same category as one of various museum curators ("a real expert on the study of eating monsters!"), while Laios would think of Carrot as someone similar to Kabru. Meanwhile Angua just saw two people have an in-depth twenty-minute conversation about dwarven battle bread and is just like "oh god, there's two of them."