#Mother Courage

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Elizabeth Taylor became the highest paid actor, male or female, when she demanded and received one million dollars plus 10% of the box office gross for CLEOPATRA (1963), helping to usher in an era of star power where the star called the shots, not the studio. Now forever free from the shackles of the studio system, Elizabeth, a working actor from the age of nine and working mother at 20, could ensure a paycheck commensurate with her value as an actress and celebrity. Her prowess as a businesswoman reached even greater heights with the launch Elizabeth Taylor's Passion in 1987, the first of 14 fragrances that would include White Diamonds, the top-selling celebrity fragrance of all time.

Perhaps no other photograph of Elizabeth Taylor captures the spirit of #InternationalWomensDay quite like this one. Shorn of her legendary locks and defiantly posing in profile to best display a scar running along the side of her head, it was taken by the great Herb Ritts after the successful removal of a benign brain tumor in 1997 at the age of 65. It was another of life's battles that Elizabeth faced with unshakable courage, fortitude and a sense of humour. "Damn right I survived," she once said. "I'm Mother Courage. I'll be dragging my sable coat behind me into old age."

[Elizabeth Taylor Archives]

[ancestorsalive]

Those whom we love and lose are

no longer where they were before.

They are now wherever we are.

~ St. John Chrysostom

Mother Courage, 1986 etching by Betty LaDuke

[leonardcohenofficial]

highlights of getting lunch with malcolm mcdowell and spending much of the afternoon with him today (still a surreal thing to type out):

unsurprisingly he is incredibly nice and quite funny in conversation

he seemed surprised that i asked him about the raging moon (one of my favorite performances of his) and said it was probably the most naturalistic performance he ever did

spoke highly of wendy carlos; he said he got to visit her studio and that it was very impressive

so many great kubrick anecdotes with one of my faves being being that mcdowell used to absolutely slaughter him at ping-pong, which he said was one of the best ways he was able to get back at him throughout the filming process

the other way he got back at kubrick was by performing very enthusiastically with the brunette actress during the william tell sped-up threesome sex scene because kubrick had a crush on her and mcdowell wanted to fuck with him (to the point that they were apparently getting quite into it and kubrick ended up yelling off-camera “THAT’S ENOUGH”)

he expected a totally different take on the cat lady when reading the script but was impressed with miriam karlin, who “looked like she could beat the shit out of [him]”; also was a big fan of her line “cut the SHIT, sonny” (which is admittedly one of the funniest deliveries of the whole film)

during the filming of the scene in alex’s bedroom at the beginning of the film with the snake (named basil), when they went to begin the take the snake was not in the drawer it was supposed to be, which freaked mcdowell out and they had to search to find the snake, which had cozied itself up inside the mattress

later in the same scene where there’s the tight shot of alex listening to beethoven where it looks like he’s masturbating, apparently mcdowell is just taking his boots off (i myself have written about how in both the novel and the screenplay he’s just listening to the music, it absolutely looks like he’s jerking off LOL)

i did the intro the the screening of clockwork that he was in town for and said it was a very well-done and smart introduction which made me feel good (:

[ask-lu-wild]

Dang. Twilight’s just takin’ stuff without permission. Tsk tsk

[sitrusnetwork]

Ness in different artstyles (pt. 1)

[mercyisms]

what characters do you feel like are as well written as mercymore? It's so hard finding female characters who are assertive, confident, bitchy and morally dubious - let alone ones as well written as Mercymore (and Ianthe for that matter) is.

Deeply enjoying this Freudian slip of wanting Mercymore. Off the top of my head, you may enjoy:

Books: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and okay, honestly, kind of left field and it's been a decade or so since I've read it & it's certainly of its era but maybe The Joy Luck Club, lol.

Plays: Mother Courage and her Children, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Lion in Winter.

TV: Channel 4's Utopia (not the Amazon remake!! a Show of All Time and me flexing a deep cut), AMC's Interview with a Vampire (many a beloved bitchy man, but Claudia, beloved; I think she and Mercy would vibe tbqh), HBO's Succession (Shiv Roy and Gerri Kellman, you will always be famous, etc). Idk, Fleabag? (Look, take it as you will, but I actually really enjoy reading the Fleabag scripts.)

Video Games: I think some of the games Tamsyn has either cited as inspiration, eg. Umineko When They Cry, or confirmed to play, eg. Disco Elysium (like Mercymorn, the female characters are secondary ones, but everyone's very voicey and fun) are probably vibe.

Comics: Queer terrors abound in What Happens Next (webcomic), idk anything Emily Carroll is probably a vibe, although certainly more condensed.

[chubphoe-linkclick]

I asked a while ago if anyone knew whether CXS, LG, and QL representing The Star Warriors of hope, courage, and wisdom respectively meant anything, and I got a phenomenal reply from shimmeringweeds. CXS and QL's themes just sorta fit the vibes of their characters for me. The only issue was that I didn't really understand why Lu Guang was the Star of Courage of all things especially if he wasn't the star of wisdom.

It was bothering me a lot because I just could not see it at first, and now I realise why.

The fandom often talks about Lu Guang time travelling back to save Cheng Xiaoshi to be an act of love and desperation and gayness, that he just couldn't go on without him and was willing to risk throwing the into disarray just to say his name once more (sobbing). But this only really looks at the angsty parts of what Lu Guang must have been going through and thinking about when he made his decision to dive.

This is because travelling back in time to save Cheng Xiaoshi also means carrying the risk of failing to save Cheng Xiaoshi, a very realistic and almost certain outcome that he will be there again holding his best friend as he dies in his arms, Lu Guang as helpless to save him as he was the first time (and every other time). There's no way he hasn't thought about that, watching the life sink out of Cheng Xiaoshi but forcing himself to sit through it so his best friend's final moments will be with someone who loves him, so he won't be doomed to be abandoned even in his final moments. Even if he's going to go back and change the timeline, erasing this death, Lu Guang doesn't ever want to leave him alone. For Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang never wants to run away.

And so Lu Guang keeps going back, despite this certainty of failure and the soul-scarring consequences of it. It might not be an understatement to say that Cheng Xiaoshi's death was the worst thing that ever happened to Lu Guang, and that's a testament to the guts he has for facing that reality again and again for the sake of one he loves.

[mumusmarket]

Video Game Dogs 2!  These ones were picked from twitter & ig suggestions! - Chain Chomp, Mario - Isabelle and KK, Animal Crossing - Your Dog, Story of Seasons - Polterpup, Luigi's Mansion - Missile, Ghost Trick - Courage the Cowardly Dog - Boney, Mother 3 - uh...Nina & Alexander, Full Metal Alchemist (thanks milo ; w ;)

Posted using PostyBirb

[glux2]

Musing: Emotional connection

Recently a very close person to me suggested i binge watch "Angel Hare", before that day my only exposure to that project was a fan game that had a very funny punchline in lampooning the "cursed videogame" genre.

So i watched the whole thing and it was great.

This scene right here made me feel more feelings than most of the media i have watched/played/read in like the last 5 years or so.

So it made my mind wonder, like, "hold on, when was the last time i felt this strongly about a piece of entertainment?"

Sure, if you know me, i felt strongly about the ongoing plotline for Noelle on Deltarune, so one would think "2021 when chapter two came out", right? but no, i got very invested but it wasn't it.

The last time i felt so strongly about a piece of media was actually Deltarune's predecesor, Undertale in 2015.

I finished Undertale in tears, i got in a very bad funk when i found out about the genocide ending, it truly made me feel emotions.

So i began to ponder, just what really moves me?

Full disclosure: I don't cry at movies. This is not a "look at me i am a badass who is not beheld by feelings" statement, no, i kinda just dont connect emotionally with movies as easily as other people.

I have talked about this, many times actually, Toy Story 3 did not make me cry, it always bothers me how people at the time were like "if TS3 didn't make you cry, you have no soul" and shit like that, so let me repeat something i have said many times before:

Toy Story 3 was a movie i went to see the day doctors had informed me my mother had entered terminal phase of cancer.

My friends took me to see TS3 when i felt the greatest sadness i have ever felt in my entire life. And im glad TS3 was a pretty funny movie that managed to distract me from what i was going through. TS3 uplifted me when i had a very real reason to cry.

So what im getting at is, i rarely connect emotionally with what conventionally makes people emotionally connected, not that i havent felt strong emotions from movies, but as we'll get to later, it's just not the stuff you would expect, when we get back to movies you'll be thinking, "what the fuck, Toy story 3 did not make you emotional but THIS THING DID?!"

So, if traditional "emotional things" rarely have moved me i began to think to myself, "what are things that have made me feel this strongly?"

I realized it's the damn weirdest things.

I'll try to list things that i can remember making me feel this emotional.

Now i'll be upfront, im not a very cultured person, so you'll notice most of this is...not very high brow.

Also, obviously spoilers for all this stuff im about to talk about.

Before we begin: Honorable mention goes to me finding out i had repressed memories of being traumatized as a kid by being show an animated adaptation of "Pilgrim's progress" by an aunt, which disturbed me greatly towards the end as the main character dies and before it the souls of two people he met are condemned to eternal damnation from making MISTAKES, not sins, not evil, but THE FUCKING MISTAKE of exploring alternate routes before them.

-Yoshi's Island, 1994 When i was a wee one Yoshi was one of my fave videogame characters, so of course i was beyond hype when a game where you play as yoshi came out, the ending is one of the greatest moments in videogame history, the beautiful music, the journey of the stork, and finally the classic Mario fan fare playing as baby mario and baby luigi being held by their parents with the words "Heroes are born", it's such a powerful moment. To this day i still cannot listen to that credits music without tearing up.

Sequel? Retcon?! I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT, SHUT UP, THIS IS THE PERFECT ENDING AND NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED AFTER IT!

-The bicentennial man, 1999 The bicentennial man is one of the biggest examples of a movie being fucking mischaracterized in the marketing, this movie is based on Isaac Asimov's short story and later novel, it stars Robin Williams, so all marketing was presenting the movie as Robin Williams comedy movie, IT. IS. NOT. The bicentennial man is a scifi drama about the existential search for meaning and the nature of what truly is to be alive. You get invested on the quest of this robot trying to find humanity for 200 years, and the punchline to this movie is, in his quest for humanity he forgoes the immortality being a machine provides him as he had developed the way to turn himself biological, still artificial but biological, and he dies peacefully on his sleep before he can be told that humanity had declared him, legally, a human being. To me it was such a powerful moment, he found true meaning to his life, became human, yet died before knowing so.

-Courage the cowardly dog, "The Mask", 2002 This is a legendary episode of an already great show that has a lot of very good emotional moments, some may cite episodes like "the giving tree" or "the last star maker", but for me it's this one. For those who have never experienced this episode, it revolves around a cat girl named Kitty who one day shows up at Courage's farm and she's wearing an upsetting mask, she abuses courage because she believes all dogs are bad. The mask serves 2 purposes, one is metaphorical, "her inability to face reality", the second is to hide her identity as she believes she is in danger. The thing is, she is on the run because her lover best friend Bunny is trapped in an abusive relationship with a gangster dog who threatened to kill her if she was seen near Bunny ever again, the episode coats the whole situation with a ton of goofiness, but it's actually very fucking dark: A young lesbian is trapped against her will on an abusive relationship with a toxic, violent man who threatened to kill her girlfriend if she refused to date him. Courage, being a good little dog ventures to save Bunny and have her reunite with Kitty because, despite how bad Kitty was to him, he recognizes that Kitty is a victim and she and Bunny deserve better, leading to Courage letting them escape away together, to live happy and free. I don't think it's just me, but the final image of Kitty and Bunny hugging as the train takes them to freedom felt so powerful to me.

-Twisted Metal Head-on, 2002 This is one of the weirdest things i have ever gotten emotionally invested, but honestly? i love when some shitposting franchise suddenly manages to pull this off, specially given the set up for this whole thing im going to describe starts in an early game as a fucking joke. So to contextualize this, the first two Twisted metal games were helmed by the og creators of the franchise, TM 3, 4 and small brawl were made by different developers when the creators lost the rights, but during the PS2 era when the og developers came back and created TM: Black, and TM: Head-on, Black was a reboot, Head-on was a retcon sequel to TM 2 that eliminated TM3 from the timeline, but not TM 4. Still with me? Okay so TM2 had this character, Krista Sparks, who was the revealed to be the daughter of the main antagonist of the game, Calypso, but hold on? wasn't Calypso's backstory that his family died in a tragic accident which lead him to become evil? So turns out, the FBI retrieved his daughter's corpse, turned it into a robot with a bomb with the intend to make her get close to Calypso and blow him up. The ending ends comically with a message reading "The FBI wishes to thank you for putting an end to Twisted metal". Stil Still with me?!?!?! ok! so Head on! In this game Krista is back, as a ghost, her ending consists on her confronting her dad, who has now brought up so much pain, misery and death to the world, Calypso tries to explain that the nature of his powers mean he has to do this otherwise he cannot use his powers, and his plan was for Krista to win so he could bring her back and her mom to life, but Krista is so horrified with what has happened that she refuses and blurts "I wish the accident that killed me and mom never happened" the intention being impeding Calypso from becoming this evil super natural villian, but as per all endings, it's always a monkey paw affair and Calypso knows it, looking saddened he grants the wish because he has no option, his powers force him to. Briefly Krista has a vision of her childhood with her dad before he became evil as they share a sweet moment playing on a swing set. HARD CUT TO A HOSPITAL, Krista is on a bed in coma, Calypso is there and whispers to her something along the lines of "Sleep tight my dear, may you finally find peace", as Calypso is leaving the hospital you can hear 2 doctors talking, mentioning that Krista had been in coma for more than a decade and apparently Calypso just had found out. Excuse me Twisted Metal, but WHAT THE FUCK? You are a dumb fucking edgy car combat game, how dare you make me feel these things?

-Mother 3, 2006 (translation on 2008) Mother 3 hopefully needs no introduction, or maybe it does, because many people have reduced it to a joke due to how nintendo stubbornly refuses to give us an official release, but also many of you must know this franchise is the spark that ignited the flame of the absolute Juggernaut Undertale would become, as well as many other games influenced by it. The Mother/Earthbound games were known for being quirky and deviating from the standard conventions of the game, notably for the modern day setting and unorthodox choices of how you deal with the villians, they were always billed as emotional, but i feel they did not live up to that...until 3. The general narrative to Mother 3 is about how greed is destroying the world, the main villian corrupting what we see of the world (a paradise little town where everybody is nice) by introducing luxury, money and status....and also stomping everything with his fascist army and cyborg mutants. Mother 3 is a game about how the worst traits of humanity are destroying the world and upsetting nature. Mother 3 is also the story of 2 twin brothers who suffer tragedy after tragedy after tragedy that ultimately pits them one against the other with the fate of the world at stake. Mother 3 punches you almost immediately by killing the mother character (which i might mention you're encouraged to name after your own mother) at the end of the first chapter and how this affects her surviving family. one of the Twins, Claus, is so disturbed that he decides to on on his own to try to kill the monster that took his mom, while the other, Lucas, was too afraid and weak to stop his brother, resulting on Claus dying as well...but the badguys take his corpse and reanimate it into a cold, emotionless cyborg who follow's the big bad's order and is using him to try to cause the end of the world. In the climax of the story Lucas is force to confront Claus, clause is a brain washed cyborg, his master is out of the picture and all he can do is fight, you can't reason with him...and then.... Lucas and Claus begin to hear a voice, a familiar voice, it's their mother, reaching for them from beyond the grave, pleading for them to stop fighting, suddenly Lucas and Claus both have a flash back to when they were babies, overhearing their parents talk about the hopes they have for them, the many things they will be able to achieve together, this makes Clause snap out of his brain washing, removing the helmet that had been hiding his face since he was resurrected, Lucas and him have a moment as they are finally reunited, Claus realizes all the bad things he has done while under control of the bad guy and realizes he must atone for his crimes, he prepares a lightning attack he knows cannot hurt Lucas and cause HIM to die. "Im sorry for all the problems i caused" he says as he is dying on his dad's arm, "I must go to where mom is now", as he passes away he can hear his mother calling for him, "You just be so tired" she says. Now i know it will sound insane for people to hear a videogame of all things can make one so emotional, but damn, just recollecting these scenes for this dumb post has made me start to cry, the emotional punch of this scene is very strong, it demolished me when i played the game back in the day, but now? After my own mother passed away? I have been scared of playing this game again. I mot sure if im emotionally prepare to go though that again, even 10+ years later. That's how powerful this scene was to me.

-Elite Beat Agents, 2007 If you have played this game, you know were im going, for those who dont, EBA is a silly rhythm game about secret agent cheer leaders that are dispatched around the world to help people in need by raising their spirit and allow them to overcome adversity, the game is insanely wacky and have scenarios like helping a ninja car salesman prevent a company from stealing his company's secrets, helping a washed up baseball star fight a lava spitting golem rampaging on an amusement park and traveling back in time to help davinci paint the mona lisa. EBA is also the second game in the Ouendan series, and there is something you need to know about this series: They all include tearjerker levels to contrast with all the goofiness. "A christmas Wish" is a christmas themed level set to Chicago's "You are the inspiration" and the story to this level is positively DEVASTATING: A few months before christmas a business man tells his daughter and wife he has to go on a business trip but he promises he'll be back just in time for christmas, the girl asks him to bring back a "girlfriend" for her teddy bear. The father dies on a plane crash. When the mother breaks the news to the little girl she gets angry, crying to the skies that her dad promised he would be back for christmas. The backdrop of the stage is set the girl and the mom doing things to remember the dad, like looking through a photo album and baking a cake for his birthday, it's very sweet, but...this is EBA, if you're doing poorly you see the "bad" versions of these scenes, and in this one, one is very devastating, the little girl is having a dream where she's chasing the spirit of her dad, if you're doing well she calls for him and for a brief moment the dad stops and starts turning towards her, if you're doing bad the spirit fades away and the girl wakes up in tears. Dear goodness. But of course, if you beat the level you get this sequence of the ghost of the dad showing up on chrismas morning to fullfil his promise, giving the little girl the teddy bear he promised and having the chance to say good bye to his family.

This punches you really fucking hard in the gut. I am incapable of doing this level without ending in tears. For a time i could not even listen to this song without tearing up until, i shit you now, the deadpool movie used it on a comedy scene.

-Punch out!!, 2009 This one is one i know got me because of personal nostalgia, when i was a wee one the og NES punch out was a big part of my childhood, Punch Out!! on the wii was a masterfully crafted tribute to the franchise. To not dwell too much time on this, this game has an interesting quirk, the ending is a downer ending and it's the only ending you can get. After you beat the last opponent there is a sequence where Mac and Doc seemingly are having a disagreement, where Mac seemingly has decided that if he loses 3 times, he'll retire from boxing completely. After this you face randomly opponents from the game, the first time you lose in this mode you lose your champion title, after three loses, it's game over and the story mode becomes locked for that save file. The final cutscene is Doc walking through what seems to be a gallery with boxing memorabilia, and untold number of years later, he is alone, he spots his old bike on this gallery and rings the bell, he looks up and speak to an absent Mac, "Good job son, good job", as he leaves the camera pans to reveal he was looking at a framed photo of him and Mac on one of their training sessions. The music on this sequence is so perfect, and it was aimed at people like me, people who grew up with the franchise, the idea was making it feel like Doc was reminiscing of YOUR time with punch out when you were a kid, and to make you think about how far YOU have come since the first time you played the games in an arcade, or your nes, or snes. It's actually pretty effective and it got me.

-Regular Show, "Trucker Hall of Fame", 2012 What makes this one different from others instances of me making me emotional, it's, much like the "Angel Hare" example at the top, this one is all about WARM HAPPY FEELINGS, so for those who did not watch this episode, let me summarize it for you: One day Muscleman gets word that his dad, who was his personal hero, has passed away, and he's tasked with carrying his final wish, spread his [hat's] ashes in a place called "Trucker hall of fame", you see, Muscleman was lead to believe his dad was a legendary trucker and that earned him his admiration, but during the episode Muscleman finds out he was lied to, his dad was a forklift driver that the truckers belittled, altho feeling cheated for having been lied to he carries on with his father's wishes. Now because this is regular show, when they arrive at the trucker's hall of fame they are immediately attacked by ghost trucker for "desecrating the hall of fame" as they spread the ashes something happens: The ghost of Muscleman's dad manifests himself and saves his son, taking the chance to apologize to his son and having the chance to say his final good bye personally. Despite the inherent silliness of the show's premise, i think this episode really did a good job on expressing that sense of catharsis of making peace with the passing of a love one.

-The Final Girls, 2015 A friend suggested we watched this movie, and much like Twisted metal up there, i absolutely did not expect for this incredibly stupid comedy horror movie to hit me with any sort of emotional connection, and yet... The Final Girls opens with the main character in a car with her mom, who is an struggling C-tier actress whose biggest achievement ever was appearing on a Friday the 13th knock off movie, during this sequence they get in an accident where the mom dies and even after it's been some time since the accident the main character has not properly moved on from the passing of her mom. Her friends and some people at the college she attends are preparing this horror movie festival where the main event is they are going to play the movies from the franchise her mom was on, and they suggest she should come. Then some bullshit happens and they all end up somehow trapped in the world of the movie. A quick rundown of the rules of horror movies is explained to them, the monster cannot be defeated by fighting it, it's only the final girl who can defeat the killer, and unfortunately for them they accidentally killed the character that, in the canon of the movie, is the final girl, so they believe one of them has to become the final girl and end the movie to hopefully get out of it. The problem is, the main character is experimenting shock from interacting with her mom's character, she is not taking well to seeing her mom on the flesh and she dedicates the entire movie to "save her mom", in the climax of the movie the mom character begins to understand that she is a fictional character and the nature of her attachment to the main character, understanding that they cannot be both the final girl and if then main character wants to make it back to the real world she has to learn "To let go", choosing to sacrifice herself so there is only one final girl. It's kinda weird, that of all possible premises, this managed to make a "You need to move on" message that somehow managed to resonate with me, you might have figured out by now a running theme here, but, i was really hard for me to deal with my mother's passing even if it's been years since it happened, so it's kinda funny for me to think these are the places i have found comfort from.

-Undertale, 2015 Okay this is tumblr, i already talked about Undertale on the prologue to, whatever the fuck im doing here, you know what undertale is, you know how effective it is, Undertale is really well designed for you to grow emotionally attached to these characters, so being able to see all these characters you know have grown attached to have their happy ending on the pacifist ending does fill one with a very satisfactory warm happy feeling that can move you to tears. ...Or you can be bummed out by being a little greedy gaming bitch and taking a look at the bad ending. Because you just couldn't help yourself, could you?

-Onward, 2020 This movie did not hit me as hard as the most emotional entries on this, but it still got me, because in the end of the day the main motivation of the characters on this movie is experiencing closure, catharsis over the death of their father, for Ian it's the fact that he died before he was born so he never met him and is driven by this desire to finally see the father who he shares such a connection with on the stories everybody who knew him in life have told him, and then there is Barley, the elder brother, who did know his dad in life, but is tortured by how, as a kid, he did not properly say good bye to him because he was terrified of death and avoided being there for him in his final days. The ending for this movie is very powerful, Ian choosing to sacrifice being able to meet his dad in the flesh, even for a few minutes, in order to give Barley the chance to being able to properly make peace with his dad and properly say good bye to him. Ian doesn't even get to SEE this, he does not get to see his dad even tho it was what he wanted most of all, but he understood bringing closure to Barley was more important than his selfish desire to see his dad, someone he never knew in life.

So what have i learned from whatever the hell this trainwreck of a post is...i guess that what really gets to me, what really moves me, is when a character, maybe not even someone i can realistically relate to, gets to experience closure, catharsis and be in peace with the people who are missing on their life. The majority of these things in here, even the Angel Hare example, relate to a character being able to experience catharsis by being able to properly make pace or otherwise contact someone they lost, or their ability to move on from this world, so to speak, knowing that their affairs and in order and that their loved ones will be okay.

Things can always look dark, the world may be trying to keep you down, maybe losing someone has been specially hard for you, but it's not the end of the world, you are loved and things can get better, it always hurts and we'll never stop missing what we have lost, but the memories of happier times are there to remind us, we can be happy again, and we can move on, use those memories as your motivation, you can lead yourself to a future filled with light.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

“Sometimes I see myself driving through hell with this wagon and selling brimstone. And sometimes I’m driving through heaven handing our provisions to wandering souls! If only we could find a place where there’s no shooting, me and my children—what’s left of ‘em—we might rest a while.” ― Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children

Mother Courage and Her Children

(German: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder) is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. After four very important theatrical productions in Switzerland and Germany from 1941 to 1952—the last three supervised and/or directed by Brecht—the play was filmed several years after Brecht’s death in 1959/1960 with Brecht’s widow and leading actress, Helene Weigel.

Mother Courage is considered by some to be the greatest play of the 20th century, and perhaps also the greatest anti-war play of all time.

[ancestorsalive]

Those whom we love and lose are

no longer where they were before.

They are now wherever we are.

~ St. John Chrysostom

Mother Courage, 1986 etching by Betty LaDuke

[skala]

and the universe said I love you

and the universe said you have played the game well

my son, I am so very proud.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

I liked your pov Jay so much. Can you write Jay's pov during the experiments and arrival in the metropolis?

ooooh now THERE'S something to think about . . . it would def be way too long to fit in a tumblr post BUT i can def do some outlines for a potential fic right here and now ;))

(also please keep in mind my knowledge in gamorra itself is lacking so i'll have to do some reading on that first to properly come up with something, so these are just more general thoughts!!)

okay first things first we need to establish a timeline

i don't think we got a proper one???? i could be wrong and if i am feel free to point me in the right direction, but the only thing i can remember is that jay was experimented on for six months

jay is seventeen (THAT'S CRAZY WHAT) when we meet him, so let's rewind and say . . . he's twelve when bendix gets "voted in" and separates him from his mom

(i say "voted in" because i fully do not buy that he actually got elected. so he had money and promises and whatfuckingever. what could he do that sara couldn't??? what made him so much better??? how could sara nakamura be doing that much less of a job where people would vote for a foreigner who knew nothing about them??? what the fuck is up with that genuinely)

they probably don't waste any time running experiments on him. it was definitely painful and scary and let's not forget that bendix was forcing the gamorrans to work for him, too, so we have a couple of options for this: - gamorran scientists experimented on and hurt jay. people that jay had known and grown up with, maybe, running around their labs as sara discussed with them ways they could help better the people's lives. and you could say that bendix might not want the people he turned into prisoners working on something as important as his post-humans project, but we have seen that gamorran scientists were working in his labs when jay and jon went to free them, and that's the whole reason jay could pass through in the first place. because they were gamorran and proud. because they knew jay and believed in him. - the other option is that gamorrans had no fucking clue what happened to their former president and her son. jay talks a lot about not knowing whether his mom was dead or alive but the same applies to him, too!! he was a public figure just as much as she was!!! jay is someone who loves his home, his country, and his people!!! gamorrans probably knew him as the president's kid who helped where he could and was always on the frontlines with his mom!! and then he was gone!!! they never heard about him again!!! rumors abound that bendix murdered a child and they will NEVER forgive him for it, because jay was THEIRS

anyways

i will say that the way jay describes him escaping experimentation is fishy to me . . . bendix still had sara imprisoned. he should have had maximum security on jay. jay would have been leverage for him to use against her to do whatever he wants. but he escaped so easily???? just because he could phase???

i'm thinking maybe jay didn't have full control of his phasing back then because why would he??? he was an untrained twelve-year-old and was physically and emotionally weak. he didn't know what was going on. when he phased he probably thought that was IT for him. he was probably intangible for so long that everyone thought he genuinely couldn't be worked with anymore

can you imagine how scary that was?? how terrified jay must have been?? how he thought he wouldn't be able to touch another person, feel their warmth and solidness and the breath in their bodies??? how he had nothing to ground him???

jay nakamura woke up a living ghost and probably thought he would have been better off dead

he was so so relieved when he learned how to get it under control and become solid again

ANYWAYS. so. jay gets taken at twelve. experiments for six months. he fades away. they consider him useless and leave him alone. he breaks out. the revolutionaries find his boat, and he ends up in metropolis

okay i have some THOUGHTS about this

i already covered the fake-birthday thing in my other post but something i HAVE been thinking about is whether jay tells other people he's gamorran

he's trying to keep his identity hidden. he can't risk being caught. and if people DO know he's gamorran, what then??? he can't tell them about bendix publicly because who the fuck would even believe him. who would believe that gamorra has refugees.

thus i imagine for the most part jay lets people assume that he's japanese because it's easier that way. anything he really wants to say, he saves for the truth

anyways!! metropolis!!!

i'm assuming the revolutionaries have, like, less-than-legal contacts for helping people get settled and safe because, unlike jon, they are definitely not on friendly terms with both local and federal law enforcement

they get jay and the others all the papers and certificates and whatnot

so according to my timeline i would say jay would probably be thirteen by now (assuming his bday passed within those six months of experimentation) or at least close to being thirteen

i'm not entirely sure where he stays during this time? i can't imagine he'd get an apartment to himself starting now because there are a whole bunch of loopholes he'd have to jump through and he's probably lacking the money considering he just ran away with nothing from a dictatorship

maybe a safehouse that the aerie and wink have in metropolis, or maybe he gets placed with a foster family during this time? in any case he gets his living arrangements done and enrolls in high school

also i imagine he's pretty hyper-independent/self-sufficient (because he literally has nobody else to rely on) and thus holds any friends he makes at arm's length. he's guarded. he throws walls up. pretty ironic for someone who can pass through anything, no?

the thing about jay is that he's a former president's son through and through, so he's still perfectly charming and amicable to said friends who don't even realize that they don't know him all that well. jay is just THAT good

his first two years of high school are all about recovery and adjustment. and maybe he won't ever fully recover--a part of him will always ache for all that was ripped away from him, and a part of him will always be afraid of rumbling storms and boats and anything that sounds just as sharp as gunfire--but it's enough for him to maybe consider metropolis a place he could be happy in

i want to say something happens in junior or senior year of high school that makes jay realize that, no matter how little of it he has, he does have the power to do what he can, and that's how the truth begins

i guarantee you 100% jay started out with a basic face mask and shaky low-quality phone camera footage and zero editing. he had to build the truth from the ground up with what he had access to in metropolis, and i imagine that wasn't a whole lot

i'd probably end with his high school graduation and summer break and his acceptance into metropolis u?? oh and moving into his new apartment!!! a new beginning. one that jay is in more control of. one where he isn't afraid.

one where he wasn't expecting to fall in love and yet . . .

[ask-lu-wild]

Malon is stunning my goodness

[foxyk7]

Glass Closet with Heart and Mind in the Wrong Body.

[docholligay]

It is so hard for me to just let go of tasks I've delegated and I am being so so brave right now.