#(especially safety last!!!!)

[chokulit]

ive never seen anyone talk about this before so i will: i think the second opening of dungeon meshi symbolizes what would have happened if the winged lion won.

[pynkhues]

Hey, really love your succession meta, I hope this is welcome in your ask box. Idk if this is something you talked about already, but there is this persuasive assumption in the general fandom space that roman was the only kid who suffered physical abuse ever that in my opinion isnt really supported in the text/subtext. The way the past abuse of all the roys is talked about, to me, always implied a wealth of countless, other traumatic experiences that are simply not talked about and may very well be physical abuse. To me it feels like it was set up this way to fire up the viewers imagination and illustrate the sheer, unspeakable magnitude of the abuse. I just cant see Logan never losing his temper and getting physical with the other sibs but I struggle to put into words why. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Rome was the only kid facing physical abuse? Youre always so eloquent in your analysis and demonstrate a complex understanding of dv dynamics. I appreciate your work :)

Hey! Thank you for your kind words, anon, and it’s definitely welcome in my inbox!

Yeah, I’ve noticed that assumption about Roman a lot too, and it’s not one I personally agree with, although I do understand why people make it. Roman is, after all, the only one of the four children that the show explicitly depicts receiving physical abuse, and he’s the only one who really has his abuse talked about by the other children (interestingly, on both occasions Roman’s abuse is actually weaponised against other characters, not against Roman. Kendall uses it as a way to try and hurt their father in 4.02, and Shiv uses it as a way to say that Kendall deserves greater punishment from their father than he’s receiving in 2.01).

I actually would say that we’ve had pretty explicit evidence that Kendall received physical abuse too, namely in the way that Logan came at him at Connor’s ranch after Kendall’s relapse in 1.07 (especially because I’d argue Kendall was doing in that scene what Roman has done a few times now by seeking out the hit, and the reason Logan held off was less about not wanting to, and more that he punishes his children by not giving them what they want), and in Logan hitting Iverson with the tin of cranberries in 1.05. I talked about the latter in this post, but I’ve always read the blocking of Kendall behind Iverson as a way of having a flashback without having a flashback, and the way that the episode ties Kendall and Iverson’s experiences as the same I think underscores that.

(It’s hard to comment on this particular point without seeing the scripts, but Arian Moayed has said in an interview too that the script for 4.04 had Stewy say that he’d seen Logan through a shoe at Kendall which I do think is likely meant to echo what Shiv says about Logan beating Roman with a shoe in 2.01 too, but given the scene was condensed, I’ll leave it out as canonical evidence at this point).

As for Shiv and Connor, yeah, I do think there was physical abuse for both of them as well, and I think it was probably fairly common for Connor when he was very young, and probably infrequent enough for Shiv for her to push it down (honestly though, given her character, I wouldn’t even be surprised if a part of her re-wrote it in her head as a positive after the fact. Getting hit means, after all, that she’s one of the boys).

So it does beg the question of why Roman’s abuse is easier for them all to acknowledge. I have a few theories about that, but ultimately, I think it comes down to an adolescent othering of Roman by Shiv and Kendall, and all four of their relative proximity to each other in their formative years.

Alan Ruck has said that Connor’s about fifteen years older than Kendall which puts him in a unique situation growing up where I imagine there’s a lot about his childhood through to his young adulthood that the Golden Trio simply don’t know due to the age gap. They obviously know bits and pieces – what happened to Connor’s mother for instance, Logan’s temporary abandonment, and the situation with the cake – but I’d generally say that those are life events that scaffold a childhood, they don’t provide the detail of it.

The child desertion that came with Logan’s temporary abandonment too would also have been extremely formative to Connor as a character. We don’t know when this was (although I do have my own theories on that too), but it would’ve fundamentally changed any existing dynamic between Connor and Logan, and I think we see that quite clearly in the man Connor is. His people pleasing, his co-dependency, his need to control the terms of his relationships (notable in the entire context of his relationship with Willa), his fear of rejection, and his fawn response to certain situations are all symptomatic of childhood abandonment. I imagine a lot of that started after Logan’s desertion, but then likely were compounded with Logan’s re-entry into his life, and I think that grew into his sort of subservience and performed affability which was likely inherently tied to the fear of being abandoned again.

In that sense, I think there was probably less physical abuse with Connor as he got older because he learnt how to navigate their father’s temper and stopped testing it / always acquiesced out of a fear of being deserted again. If most of his physical abuse was when he was a child or a teenager, well, Kendall, Roman and Shiv hadn’t even been born, there’s already a remove for them in terms of their relation to it.

With Kendall, Roman and Shiv, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Roman being sent away to school in Delaware while Kendall and Shiv were both living with their father still and going to school in Manhattan. There’s a childhood separation there when it comes to Roman, yes, which breeds its own sort of ‘othering’, which I’ll come back to, but I do think there’s a lot of evidence in the show that depicts Kendall and Shiv as forming something between a ‘half and half’ and a ‘trauma-shield’ sibling relationship.

I’m getting a bit scientific here, so I hope you don’t mind, but a half and half sibling relationship is described as consisting of ‘the reenactment of traumatic events with their sibling due to the flawed attachments the sibling has to their caregiver. This sibling relationship is often the most violent, and is seen as a love-hate relationship with each other. This often plays out as the siblings’ relationship becomes too important as a substitute source of nurturing and threatening as a potential cause for abandonment. The siblings are confused about their psychological connection to a caregiver, and act out a push/pull relationship with each other to achieve maximum comfort from that caregiver.’

On the other hand, the trauma shield sibling relationship is when siblings ‘use each other as a shield from the abuse and interrupt the development process. They become fixated at the same developmental level and exhibit similar interpretations of their struggles despite the chronological age difference.’

The show regularly depicts Kendall and Shiv as being mirrors to one another – they are the winning dog, the rightful heir, the only real competition to one another, and now the only two to be parents and continue the lines of succession – and I think we’ve seen the effect that’s had on both their lives. They have moments of genuine intimacy and trust, they defend each other, they reach for each other when things are blowing up and become active participants in each other’s attacks on others, just as they also are the most ruthless with one another, the most violent, they weaponise each other’s weaknesses (both real and perceived) and have tried to ‘kill’ each other more than any other iteration of the siblings.

I also think that they both are in extreme denial about the abuse they received, and I think that they enable that in each other and shield each other from the realities of it which is easier to do when Connor and Roman weren’t there for it, and easier to do when they have each other to reiterate the artifice of their lives. God, one of the things that’s so great about the karaoke confrontation in 4.02 is that it kind of lays that out. Kendall and Shiv work together in that scene in a way that shuts Roman and Connor out at best and at worst uses their abuse and neglect to make a point while never saying anything about what Logan’s done to them. Shiv might bring up Logan advising Tom on the lawyers, but even that is a way around the things we’ve seen Logan do to her, and Kendall’s literally behind her the whole time. They’re in-step in their refusal to acknowledge what their father’s done to them, just as they’re in-step in forcing their brothers’ abuse out into the open to make a point.

I think this dynamic likely established itself around the time Roman was sent away to school, because I think Roman being sent away fed into Kendall and Shiv’s shared narrative that they were the prized children. It likely did have this degree of othering for Roman which emphasised his perceived weakness in the eyes of all three of the Golden Trio, and I think he likely had readjustment periods when coming home for the holidays that did see him hit more. I think those periods likely let Kendall and Shiv off the proverbial hook until he inevitably went back to school, where they could control their own abuse narratives again through their shared understanding of what the ‘story’ was.

This has gotten very long, haha, so look! This is a roundabout way of saying that I think Logan’s parenting style has been divide and conquer for as long as he’s been a parent, and that that has coloured all four of their understandings of their own abuse. The difference is that Connor and Roman were cast out, and the fact of being cast out at all means that abuse and neglect has a light shone upon it. It gets some oxygen, it gets to breathe, which makes it real. Kendall and Shiv weren’t cast out, they were kept together in their father’s house in Manhattan, and I think getting to stay behind closed doors in the dark let them hide even from Connor and Roman. It didn’t see the light, it didn’t get any air, so it was never real. I think it allowed them the ability to hide, deny or re-write their abuse, and I think they used (and still use) each other to do it.

[pendraegon]

everything feels like a slurry in my brain. simultaneously like i've been swept up into a hurling vortex that lurches around on unsteady legs and also like i'm the only stagnant thing and everything else is a loud cacophony of color that's almost startling. my eyes are hot and they feel wet. my head hurts. my chest feels empty. i blink and hours pass. everything feels like it's a stone's throw from reality or maybe i'm just on the opposite side of the glass entirely. i feel hollow and i feel brittle like the tiniest bit of pressure will make me shatter.

[mihai-florescu]

People who talk about "dream cars" and what status they will project are so far removed from my life i struggle imagining we're even the same species

[surrender-souls]

these batman villains are always using these various chemicals, toxins, drugs, what have you. but what are their lab safety procedures while making these concoctions? do they have goggles, no loose flammable strands? do they have fume hoods? id think they’d need fume hoods there’s fumes!

[stolen-stardust]

‘izzy why are u on tumblr at 3am’ well i Was asleep but a guy tried to get into the fucking flat and my flatmates called security on him but the dude left before security arrived and we’re pretty certain it was the friend of a problematic flatmate but said flatmate is either fast asleep or not here. so what the fuck was maybe-his-friend doing banging on our flat door at 3am. also the flat hallway stinks like weed again. now i am awake

[todayisafridaynight]

(gaiden and iw spoilers) hiii i finished infinite wealth and I'm kinda insane about it hope you don't mind

i can't stop thinking about how disappointed i am in iws story :( especially with how the jimas they just get thrown under the bus all the time

what bothers me the most is that i was so hopeful after that scene where the four all fought together at the end of gaiden(when daigo says the No Balls line)

after he says that and kiryu has given him a little speech about how he's proud of him, majima and saejima nod at each other, and JUST THAT tells you so much about how he's talked to them about how insecure he feels about dissolving the clan, going into hiding and all that stuff, it made me so hopeful for a proper talk between daigo and kiryu, for kiryu to finally change his ways and actually try to help him out instead of asking for shit without giving anything back all the goddamn time

it's really fucked up how we got that subtle story telling and then just. oh they're fishermen. oh kiryu's asking them to do stuff for him again. oh he got pissed and beat them up and then left without doing ANYTHING again after not seeing them for three years. oh they don't get to come with when kiryu's dying in a fucking helicopter

being a 3jimas fan is suffering we could have had so much man. how did they even get to that village. why is it abandoned. why didn't we get to do anything with them we just left

i'm so tired oh my god

i've ranted Extensively with My Cabinet about how much i'm annoyed and disappointed by IW's story and handling of characters, and how the 3jimas were handled is one of them- tbh mostly daigo since he had more of a presence in the plot but perhaps because of that its awkward to see how the game handled majima and saejima as well

to just focus on daigo, it genuinely was really annoying how we were given SOME semblance of finally getting a scene where daigo breaks it all down for kiryu about how much the past twosome decades have sucked and that kiryu was abysmal for just dumping (AND CONTINUING TO TRY TO DO SO) problems onto daigo and others and maybe JUST MAYBE kiryu gives a right proper apology or realizes he's being selfish (again). like the build up was great, but it just falls flat when kiryu just. LEAVES after the fight after making them all feel like piss about themselves so the jimas pull through at the tower anyway

[theodoradove]

SF Silent Film Festival winter program!

Saturday, December 2, Castro Theatre

More information, tickets and passes at silentfilm.org

10:00 AM

OF MICE AND MEN (AND CATS AND CLOWNS)

A collection of animated shorts, 1908–1928

Some of the most creative films from the silent era came out of an inkwell! Our collection includes animated shorts from 1908–1928, films that outshine much of what followed. For sheer audacity and pure joy, these films by cartoon masters Including the Fleischer brothers, Pat Sullivan, and Walt Disney, can’t be beat!

Fantasmagorie (1908, d. Émile Cohl)

How a Mosquito Operates (1912, d. Winsor McKay)

Adam Raises Cain (1922, d. Tony Sarg)

Amateur Night on the Ark (1923, d. Paul Terry)

Bed Time (1923, d. Dave and Max Fleischer)

Felix Grabs His Grub (1923, d. Pat Sullivan)

A Trip to Mars (1924, d. Dave and Max Fleischer)

Vacation (1924, d. Dave and Max Fleisher)

Alice’s Balloon Race (1926, d. Walt Disney)

Felix the Cat in Sure Locked Homes (1928, d. Pat Sullivan)

Live music by WAYNE BARKER and NICHOLAS WHITE

12:00 NOON

THE WILDCAT (Die Bergkatze)

1921, d. Ernst Lubitsch

Pola Negri, Victor Janson, Paul Heidemann

Before director Ernst Lubitsch left Germany to ply his famous ‘Touch’ in Hollywood, he made a series of comedies that gave hints at what was to come. The Wildcat is his last German comedy and his most riotously zany. Subtitled ‘A Grotesque in Four Acts,’ Wildcat makes use of extravagant set design and eccentric frame shapes that lend a surrealistic edge to its antic energy. Pola Negri’s Rischka leads a gang of mountain bandits who ambush Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann) on his way to the local fortress, leaving him pant-less (and smitten) on the ice. Film writer John Gillett called the film “both an anti-militarist satire and a wonderful fairy tale.”

Live music by MONT ALTO MOTION PICTURE ORCHESTRA

2:15 PM

THE EAGLE

1925, d. Clarence Brown

Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Louise Dresser

Clarence Brown's rousing film displays a perfect blend of elements—romance, swashbuckling, a modicum of humor, and the great Rudolph Valentino! Not to mention the splendid production design by William Cameron Menzies and gorgeous camerawork by George Barnes. After Valentino's Russian lieutenant rejects the amorous attentions of Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser), she orders him arrested. Instead, he flees and becomes a masked avenger intent on righting the wrongs visited upon his father and his countrymen by loutish nobleman Kryilla Trouekouroff (James A. Marcus). But the nobleman has a beautiful daughter (Vilma Banky)...

Live music by WAYNE BARKER

4:15 PM

PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY (Großstadtshmetterling)

Germany/Great Britain, 1928/1929, d. Richard Eichberg

Gaston Jacquet, Anna May Wong

Luminous Anna May Wong goes from a fan-dancing carnival act to an artist garret and finally to the French Riviera where she accompanies a wealthy art patron around Monte Carlo, draped in haute couture. Wong left Hollywood in search of roles more fitting her talents than the racially-circumscribed ones at home. This Weimar title showcases her magnetism—when Wong is onscreen, you can't look away.

Live music by the SASCHA JACOBSEN ENSEMBLE

7:00 PM

SAFETY LAST!

1923, d. Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis

Harold Lloyd's bumpkin salesclerk comes up with a publicity stunt that will bring attention to his department store and earn him the money to marry his sweetheart—scale the 12-story building like a human fly! Shot in downtown Los Angeles, the stunt has given us one of the most iconic images of the silent era—Lloyd precariously hanging over the city street, dangling from a broken clock. James Agee wrote: "Each new floor is like a new stanza in a poem; and the higher and more horrifying it gets, the funnier it gets."

Live music by MONT ALTO MOTION PICTURE ORCHESTRA

9:00 PM

FORGOTTEN FACES

1928, d. Victor Schwertzinger

Clive Brook, William Powell, Olga Baclanova

Heliotrope Harry (Clive Brook) and Froggy (William Powell) are partners in crime—genteel armed robbery—at least until the cuckolded Harry commits an even bigger offense. Before Harry goes to prison, he leaves his baby girl on the doorstep of a wealthy couple to keep her out of the clutches of his no-good wife Lilly (Olga Baclanova) and tasks Froggy with keeping close tabs. But Froggy is no match for Lilly...

Live music by the SASCHA JACOBSEN ENSEMBLE

[her0garden]

instead of spiralling hardcore i can draw quartz . how about that

[tariah23]

I really do wonder just how many more years tumblr has in it

[godzexperiment]

*posts that brain rot only to post more xD* -nix encountering gabriel is quite literally an inner dialogue like "ah yes I can work with fellow victim of Cosmic Horrors, if I am tolerated and just maybe ignore my own issues." (could be bloody, having just done some fatal stabbings *highly moody* and nix is just like unphased by it) -ironically, in contrast encountering michael for nix would be far more terrifying for nix (his internal everything would be like 'neat- this is cool and he seems pretty adjusted... so how about you feel like you're in extreme danger despite that' and nix is just forced to be cagey as shit more than normal by forces out of his control)

[pynkhues]

I'm so glad your friends are both okay. That's so horrible.

Thanks, anon. It was about a decade ago (although the incidents happened in different years), so time's marched on. They're both doing well now.

[onewomancitadel]

Not that I really care about The Last of Us, but my current mental chewing gum whilst I sit here waiting for a rental inspection is wondering how they're going to adapt the second game for television. The first game lends itself to adaptation because it doesn't really hinge on the medium.

The second, to give the series credit where I normally don't, really, really hinges on it (to the point that I think playing on Grounded actually makes the gameplay and story really mesh - obviously an accessibility issue, sure). I'm mostly interested to see how they decide to do it than having any actual emotional investment in it. I don't really like the ethos of the universe or the fundamental narrative logic or depiction of social collapse but I can get behind humanising the enemy, so I think they did some interesting things there, I just don't think they did it for necessarily the same reasons I personally would and I think their moral philosophy or lack thereof is not interesting.

The way they'll have to do it for television (especially with a proposed season split) might by necessity end up being less interesting to me. That the one [redacted event] is actually the inciting event of the story and not being a series finale is kind of what carries it, because they already drew their ace card (most fans speculated about this anyway... no idea why it was a surprise, it was just the way they did it that was different... and that's worth talking about because they like their shock value). A lot of 'rewrites' for TLOU2 I've read have moved around [redacted event] to the ending for more emotional catharsis, and whilst I normally appreciate narrative structure and conventions I don't think it would have nearly the same effect or same thematic intentions/motivations.

That's a point I revisit with fan rewrites (and generally fan criticism), you have to look at what those motivating themes are before you move stuff around or replace it. A lot of the time it just becomes something else. 'I don't like it' is not the same as 'this doesn't make sense', and that goes for me too lol.

[spark1edog]

my mom came in to talk about some travel stuff and she was like DO NOT. take marijuana on the plane. and my partner eas like yeah i was gonna say- and i was just like geez i literally know and wasn’t fucking planning on it chill 😭

[morningmask27]

if I'm chattering about my friends/crush here all the time anyway, I have to admit that I have a severe aversion to philosophy after whatever the fuck happened the last year of secondary school (so the year right before university) and I have personal beef with Plato, but my crush is actually interested in that and tbh... I will not go out of my way to study it, but I would probably hang onto every word my crush would say about it and I should maybe tame my first reaction of distaste (though, the intro to philosophy class I had last year wasn't That Great either, so I don't have a lot of good experiences academically with that subject)

[steviescrystals]

cigarettes after sex is coming to my city next week and i’ve been wanting to see them live for so long but i haven’t been to a concert alone in almost 2 years and i’m nervous i can’t decide if it’s worth it to get a ticket