#and i know that would ideally be the case for all takes

[swamp-world]

Ooh genuinely the best and most stressful part of going out of town is trying to make everything line up for this to all happen SO. my checklist of things to always do before you go:

Full disclosure: if possible I tend to take early-morning or late-night trips, so I often don't sleep before flying or travelling (anxiety about being late), so I tend to do all of this the night before travelling. I can't really advise on the best way to fit this into daytime leaving-times but you are clever people.

Stinky things. The obvious ones but it's easy to forget one or two. Clean the bathrooms, empty ALL the garbage and compost and recycling, flush the toilets and scrub them. It is tempting not to scrub your toilets before you go away because you are going away and will not be using them. This is the devil talking. Scrub your toilet. Also wash the sinks themselves. I don't care if you normally do or not, do it before you go away for three weeks. Put fresh garbage bags in. I know you are not going to be using the garbage for three weeks but you-in-three-weeks is going to be pissed at you-right-now when you get home and just want to toss out your garbage and fall asleep. (yes it is a small thing. yes it is worth it.)

Bath/shower. Make sure your shower curtain is spread out! Save yourself the mildew! If you like baths, make sure your tub is clean so that if you want to come home and soak you can! Either way, have things ready to have a shower when you get back.

Laundry: sheets, towels, clothes. This one is the most pain in the ass because it involves timing your laundry for a few days before, if you're like me, but there is nothing better than coming home to fresh sheets on a newly made bed, clean towels laid out, and pyjamas all ready (or a set of clothes that you don't have to think about, if you have to go to work/school/other things as soon as you get back in).

Laundry - sheets. The night before I travel I'll change out my sheets and ideally since I'm up all night wash the dirty sheets and put them away so I don't have to worry about them upon return. If you can't do fully fresh sheets, wash them the day before, and take a few minutes to make sure your bed is made nicely. That way when you get in you can either fall asleep right away, or start unpacking and sort things on your bed without having to strip or remake it.

Laundry - towels. I do my sheets and towels all together, so the same rules apply. Leave a full towel set ready for yourself (and however many other people in the house are travelling). If you have roommates who aren't travelling, this isn't as much a problem, but still make sure you have towels set aside for yourself for when you return, in case your roommate used them all and forgot to do laundry.

Laundry - clothes. I don't like leaving laundry sitting before going away in case it stinks or starts to take up smells, so same as the sheets, I'll do all the dirty laundry before going away, so that hopefully the only dirty laundry I have is what I'm wearing when I leave the house. If I have to, I'll do laundry the day before I travel, and whatever clothes I'll be wearing for that day, I make sure I would want to take them with me, so that I toss them in my bag and clean them while travelling. Same with pyjamas.

Speaking of pyjamas! Make sure you leave a clean set ready. Put them under your pillow or lay them out on your bed. Same goes for clothing--before you leave, it's never a bad idea to lay out some outfits for when you return. If you can, have a nice outfit and a casual outfit, even if you're planning on getting home in the evening and not having to do anything. There's always a chance your flight gets delayed or rescheduled, and this way if the worst-case scenario hits and you need to get home and run out the door to work, you're set and have saved yourself a few minutes of stress; and best case scenario, you can just come home and change out of your gross travel clothes and into comfy clothes.

And about your clean clothes: fold them and put them away. Half of this is all less about having to do the work itself when you return and more about the relief of not having the visual clutter, mess, or reminder of further chores to be done. Coming home to empty laundry baskets just feels good.

Dishes. Self explanatory. Don't leave any. Wash the sink itself. Leave them to dry themselves, no worries. But DO NOT leave the dishwasher full; in my experience unless you clean your dishwasher regularly the dishes in there are just likely to get gross all over again.

Fridge. Go through it a few days before you go. Make sure you're using what can't be frozen. Don't wait until the day before to start sorting and packing things up to freeze. And more things can be frozen than you think! Look it up if you're not sure! Last time I left I was up late prepping a huge block of paneer for freezing because it took prep work, so make sure you're prepared to take a bit of time for that instead of getting blindsided.

Floors. Sweep them, mop if you get a chance. Dust is going to settle while you're gone and you are going to have to sweep when you get back anyways, but better to minimize that so you aren't super grumpy when you take your socks off. Same goes for vacuuming carpets.

The rest is mostly just tidying up clutter and making things look organized. You're doing this for no one but yourself, so don't be too harsh about it, but think about what you-in-three-weeks will want to return to. It doesn't have to be "everything in its right place" but certainly enough that you're not having to clean off counter space or sort through piles, or looking at a pile and sighing because you will have to sort through it.

If you have the ability to plan food for yourself for when you get in, do that. See if you've got something shelf-stable or in the freezer that you can have for breakfast the day after you get in so you aren't panicking about buying groceries immediately. Try to have a prepped meal in the freezer that you can microwave or something of the sort if you don't want to have to buy a meal.

This is about giving yourself some room to decompress after travelling! While it's a break from work or school or whatever, it's often also stressful, and if the travelling aspect itself isn't stressing you out, there's likely a bit of dread about returning to work, or having to cook, or just...daily life. Make it so that when you get home, you're able to relax for a little bit longer. That the chores you have to do are related to unpacking, not cleaning up your messes from three weeks ago.

Don't be afraid to ask people for help with all of this. If you live with roommates and can't wash your sheets before you go, ask if they can wash them for you. If a friend is watering your plants and collecting your mail for you, leave $50 and a grocery list and ask if they can grab some essentials for when you get back. If someone is housesitting for you, make sure they know your expectations for how clean the place should be when you return. Maybe ask if they can sweep a few days before you get back. Get them to take the leftovers out of the freezer so that they're thawed by the time you get in.

I am not very serious about planning for travelling. What I am serious about is planning for returning. That last point is probably the most crucial: if you have friends or family or loved ones who will be able to help when you get back, ask if they can. And do the same for them! When someone is going away for a long time, ask if there's anything you can do to help. If they've got a ride to or from the airport, if you could bring them a meal when they get back. It's nice for if they're returning from a vacation, it's better if they're returning from travelling for more serious reasons, and it means you get to see them to say hello, if only for a few exhausted minutes.

Trust OP when they say that returning to a clean house is better than sex. (And perhaps if you aren't too tired after travelling you can in fact have great sex in your clean house!)

edit lmao i just actually went through the rest of the notes on this post to find someone else saying "DO NOT STAY AWAKE ALL NIGHT THE NIGHT BEFORE TRAVELLING TO GET THIS ALL DONE IN A PANIC, MAKE A CLEANING PLAN OR SCHEDULE FOR THE DAY BEFORE TRAVELLING" and you should probably listen to them, unless you're like me and going to be awake anyways, in which case just make sure you don't start at midnight and need to be ready to leave at 5am.

adding something to my "adult advice that i had to discover for myself either because no one told me or when i saw adults do it as a kid i couldn't possibly understand," featuring such hits as "grill sandwiches with mayo" and "almost no quality matters more than flexibility," and it is:

clean your house before a vacation because returning to an already clean house is waaay better than sex

[rootspiral]

Agatha All Along deep dive: episode 4 part 6

(Wandavision entries: [1][2][3])

(AAA entries: ep1 [1][2][3][4] ep2 [1][2][3][4] ep3 [1][2][3] ep4 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7])

(I can't believe I squeezed six entries out of this dang episode!!!)

agatha sees billy waking up and takes her usual moment to wipe all genuine emotion from her face and put on her mask. it's getting increasingly clear that this wretch of a woman is always wearing a mask and playing the larger-than-life uncaring witch she wishes she could be

not that she cares about you or anything.

billy does that thing children do. he doesn't say thank you or ask why she's crying, he asks about himself, his current troubles and fears, looking for guidance. that's the wonderful thing about a parent, they give a child a safe environment to grow and make mistakes and explore. A parent is, or should be, selfless. That billy feels safe doing this with agatha tells you he instinctively trusts her much more than he realizes.

agatha never lies to billy

and the way she's always drawn to teaching and explaining and guiding despite herself. deep, deep down agatha is a nurturing person who only ever got to nurture for a short time

I just realize agatha cannot actually say the name billy, can she? because of the sigil. so this is her going, I know it's still you kiddo, behind all that. I see some people arguing that agatha might actually think he's Nicky at first and personally I don't believe that's the case, the dialogue is muddy only to mislead the viewers before the big Wiccan reveal.

Two reasons agatha knew this was billy all along: she's had three centuries to sit with nicky's loss now. nicky is gone for good, no matter all her tricks and her pleading and her endless pit of sorrow, that is the one irrevocable fact that she will never be able to change. that is the cornerstone, the whole core of who agatha is today. she has lost nicky, she has committed unspeakable horrors to cope with that loss. she is afraid to die because nicky is on the other side and she cannot face him.

The second reason is that agatha loves billy for being billy, not just as a nicky stand-in. she was uniquely equipped to understand and empathize with wanda, and that's even more true for billy because he's a little boy and agatha's whole heart is wired and predisposed to reach out to him. she saw the miracle that was his birth, she saw first hand what chaos magic can do. this is a child flung out in the world carrying an immense power and no instructions on how to use it. he's capable of terrible things that could easily turn him into a monster and a pariah, and agatha is, besides wanda, the only person in the world who truly understands what that means. do you remember what happened to agatha at around the age billy is now? everything in her is demanding to guide and help. selfishly, because all that power would be hers to control. selfishly because he reminds her of herself and she wants to undo what her mother did to her. and selfishly because helping billy would in a way redeem what she did to nicky.

and also, selflessly. because she wants to help him grow and be successful and be happy.

billy created the Road to find tommy, sure. but what he's been doing on the Road is finding community. or rather, getting close to witchfolk to find out who he is in relationship to them, exploring the identity he was born with that he cannot express with his adoptive parents. he started with a lot of silly ideas on what witches should and shouldn't be and created trials that are, let's face it, rather stereotyped and demeaning. next trial is agatha and he is puzzling her out now, willing her to become the ideal witch and mentor he's looking for. he's doing it with the grace of an elephant in a china store, but that's just what being a kid is.

aaand the wall is all the way up and she runs away. but we made some progress there, didn't we?

oh to be a vampire and getting to bite patti lupone's neck

rio looks so engrossed and fascinated listening to lilia! rio just loves people, you know? she loves life in all its multifaceted forms, and that's not at odds with her job description at all. she is The Green Witch, she has embraced nature, which is to say life, so completely that all of it is important and precious to her. my headcanon is that as the original green witch she started ferrying souls because she deeply understood and accepted death as natural and organic and sought to help it along. it's funny, lilia is terrified of her but if asked, rio would have such a long list of things that make lilia special.

and that such a being would fell in love with agatha of all people?? god that is amazing. that is how you write a beautifully doomed epic love story. billions and billions of humans throughout history, and agatha is who caught her eye. and not because agatha is a serial killer mind you, that's just foreplay. it's because she is the most intense, the most interesting human Death ever came across. while others saw a damaged girl, rio saw poetry in her extraordinary complexity

and then, through agatha and nicky, rio experienced grief from a new point of view. Death, no longer impartial.

a wiser future Lilia pays another brief visit

and she's gone. her puzzled little face!

from being awkward and fearing her oddities to laughing with her about it. another step toward a deeper understanding, and acceptance, and love.

look at agatha's body language when she approaches. uncertain, arms crossed. these people have seen her without her mask now, openly weeping about billy

and then she puts her hands in her pockets and postures, ready to underplay things. pppft, crying? moi? you guys must have dreamed it.

alice with her big compassionate heart will never be able to think of agatha as cruel and distant again

agatha picks up rio's flower

rio looks at her

pretends she wasn't looking when agatha looks back

you could cut the damn tension with a knife

jen trying to include agatha??? man they did really see her cying fr

look how interested lilia is! I wish shows could just be 15 hours of women hanging out and chatting, no plot, just vibes

agatha glances at rio as if saying, you know exactly which scar this is. and rio chuckles because she remembers the story. THE INTIMACY BETWEEN THESE TWO. I'm going feral again.

what is this, camaraderie? community? perhaps even, dare I say it, friendship???

agatha doesn't know what to do with herself!

behold the textbook definition of 'awkward turtle'

oh rio's DETERMINED

'no you don't' 'yes I do' STOP IT YOU STUPID GAYS

agatha all casual like honey I've seen every inch of that body

just... the way they fell into a rhythm. the doMESTICITY.

lol jen's and alice's gaydars pinging at the same time. like somETHING FRUITY IS AFOOT. AND WE WOULD KNOW.

and fuck fuck fuck fuck I cannot believe I've run out of space again and I need to do a part 7

LOOK WHAT THESE LESBIANS ARE DOING TO ME (it'll be up in like an hour guys don't worry)

go to episode 4 part 7

[honey-tongued-devil]

The Color Red in Arcane

an arcane analysis

[This post contains spoilers for Season 2]

We've seen that nothing in Arcane is random, such as the presence of symmetry and gold in the characters from Piltover, and asymmetry and silver when depicting those from Zaun. As the episodes progress, certain details become both metaphorical and a direct signal to the viewer that something has changed within a character. One of these symbols is the presence of the color red.

In the first season of Arcane, we see Viktor and Jayce wearing neckerchiefs. At that time, Viktor is Heimerdinger’s assistant, studying at the academy with a clear purpose (which is to study a way to make Zaun more livable and improve the quality of life for its people), but in a somewhat vague manner. He knows what he wants to achieve, but he doesn’t yet know how to accomplish it. His research is still broad and general. His neckerchief is, for that reason, white.

Jayce instead has already broken rules—he’s ventured into the underground city, conducted unauthorized experiments, and spent his life, from the moment he was able, pursuing a precise dream with the ideal of progress. The way this is directly reflected in his character is through his red necktie.

From Season 1, we can already see that a character who doesn’t yet have a clear ideal—something not necessarily righteous but blinding, to which they dedicate themselves almost religiously—wears neutral colors or ones that match the rest of the palette or outfit. On the other hand, those with strong, solid beliefs, something they think is worth fighting or sacrificing for, are adorned in red.

This is seen again with Caitlyn. 

Caitlyn, like Viktor, had a goal (defending Piltover), but it was vague—it didn’t involve a plan that would keep her awake at night or consume her to the core. 

Before the second episode of Season 2, her choker was blue, matching her palette. But at the exact moment her mother dies and she comes into possession of the Kiramman key, gaining knowledge of the air ducts and becoming blinded by the need for revenge, we witness a sudden change in both her outfit and her demeanor, marked by the sudden appearance of the red choker.

The moment she finds (or believes she has found) a way, red appears on her.

This isn’t about understanding one’s purpose in life but about the moment when something greater enters their lives, and they become “blinded” by an ideal, whether good or bad.

And here we come to Silco, who almost undergoes the opposite process.

Silco is introduced wearing a red shirt, much like Jayce, as he already believes in something from the very start—in his case, a free and better Zaun. 

Once again, this is about a higher cause. All the characters in this category are willing to sacrifice something else. Silco doesn’t care how many lives it will take to make Zaun independent, as long as no one dies in vain. He has a purpose he pursues without hesitation, which is why, from the very first episode, we see him wearing a red shirt. And in Episode 9 of the first season, he dies unwavering in his ideal.

But then, why am I talking about him?

Because he is the one we see change the most dramatically. As a young man (Episode 5, Season 2), he is already wearing a red shirt—his purpose of making Zaun better, no matter the cost, is already firmly in place. But when Felicia, Vi and Jinx's mother, dies, and Vander lures him to the bridge to try to kill him, he is wearing a white shirt. He has lost something he loved, he hesitates, the sacrifice is immense, and he is no longer sure of what to do.

Later, when he returns to Vander in the flashback, with his white, scarred eye, he is once again wearing the red shirt he will never take off again: he lost Felicia, and the next day he lost his best friend. Many people died on that bridge, and in a way, so did he. His hesitation vanished. He has nothing left to lose, so he repeats to his companion the promise of stopping at nothing to achieve his goal, “blisters and bedrocks”.

But it doesn’t end there. In Episode 7, when Ekko finds himself in the alternate reality where Zaun is better, Silco appears wearing a white shirt, because his goal has been fulfilled, and he has lost the anger and blindness that once came with it.

[the-owl-tree]

Spottedleaf as an idealized romantic figure but also her parallel with Leafpool, and how she's painted by the narrative as being more 'noble' because she didn't act on her attraction, showcasing the themes of purity culture in the series.....

I don't know if purity culture is the best term to utilize for this discussion, as Spottedleaf's case is more akin to her being a nun and taking a vow of chastity rather than it being a cultural issue of ascribing purity to all women and shaming them from premarital sex, shameful behaviors such as not dressing modestly, and so on. That's really not the case with what's going on with these cats.

I also think Spottedleaf's Heart kind of sheds light on how the authors, or at least Holmes in particular, see and write Spottedleaf: she loves foolishly. Her love for Firestar is considered foolish and she doesn't exactly hide that she's pining for him in later books. She's the tragic "what could have been" love interest, Firestar's connection to the afterlife and a tragedy for him alone.

I don't really buy that purity culture is actually that big of a theme in these books. You could maybe argue that Leafpool's story contains like, idk, traces of it ideologically, but I think as trend in the series, you would need to sell me more on it.

[plantcrazy]

Secrets That Shouldn't Be Found - Hōkū, 1997

Wilford IV, the Toppat Clan leader, took a drag of his cigar, puffing out smoke with a sigh.

Hōkū did his best to not shift his weight, or fidget. As unpleasant as holding his nerves in felt, nothing would compare to the disappointment he'd feel letting his mentor or clan's leader see it.

They'd been stood out here in the freezing November air nearly 5 minutes. They'd been back from their mission and disastrous discovery less than 15 minutes, all the while nether elite had said a word to him beyond;

"Balcony, 10 minutes. And Morrningstar?" Wilford's eyes darkened, "I don't care if you've got some 'rare 1 in a whatever ability' the Clan needs. Breathe a word of the mission to anyone, and it'll be your last breath. Clear?"

Wilford glanced to his Right Hand, Harry Copperbottom.

"In an ideal world, had we known what they were carrying, we wouldn't have brought you along," Wilford explained, "But this isn't an ideal world. You're not an elite, nor do you have the clearance for the shit we just found, so consider this your chance to prove yourself trustworthy."

"We have a rough idea of the cover story we'll be using, so once we have it solidified in the morning, we expect you to stick to it." Harry added, his eyes... distant. He looked past Hōkū to the horizon, where the sun had since just set.

"Questions?"

Hōkū snapped his attention back to his leader.

He had plenty of questions, but right now, only one mattered.

"What are you going to do about their project?" He asked. "Taking their 'weapon' isn't going to stop them. All this will do is delay their progress, that's providing their aren't more of them!"

"They're the Chaos Containment Centre, Morningstar. There isn't anything we can do about 'em." Wilford said.

Hōkū screwed his face up. He can't be serious! He's the leader of the Toppat Clan! He can do ANYTHING!

Wilford picked up on his frustration, but in return only let his weariness show. "I know what you're thinking, but this is the reality of being an elite: We don't have the power to fix every problem we find. We just do what we can to limit its impact on our Clan. Our job is to ensure its survival and keep people happy.

We ain't vigilantes, Morningstar: we're criminals. Remeber that."

"Speaking of survival..." Harry announced, "From here on forth you'll be doubling your training session, both with & without your abilities. We won't know for a while if their CCTV was transmitting a live feed beyond the container ship, but if that turns out to be the case, all 3 of us will have a rather large target on our backs."

Wilford nodded, "No doubt they'll want them back, if they realised it didn't go down with the ship."

Hōkū nodded, "Okay, but what about-"

"I'll be taking care of it personally, do not worry." Harry reassured. "Now, go get some rest. I'll meet you in my office in the morning to discus the details of our story further."

[SPEEDPAINT ⬇️]

[withinkandquill]

Cardan’s lips curve into a wide grin at the sight of her growing excitement. It amused him to see it, but it also came as a relief. With his luck in life, he would not have been surprised to find himself wed to a woman tied to mortal ideals of propriety. Boring. Let them dance from nightfall to sunrise, and drink themselves silly, and perhaps even fall happily into their bed as he had with so many other women. He harbored little hope that they would come to love each other but perhaps they could enjoy each other after all.

“I can teach you,” he says, with a glance back at their shared chambers. “We can move the furniture. And if you desire to match, perhaps you might trust me to commission our clothes together? I will take your, mm…” his eyes move up and down her modest attire, “…preferences into consideration.”

Already he examines her coloring, the curves of her slender figure, her unfortunate height. Her red hair might clash with his preferred gold but she would look stunning in silver. Perhaps he will dress her like the night itself in swathes of the blackest black, silver stars hanging from her braids and the lobes of her ears. A shimmer of silver on the fabric, on her cheeks and eyelids and the curves of her collar bones. Stardust on her milky skin. He’ll adjust his own accents accordingly, adorning the silver band she had given him. Or perhaps he will echo her in that gold - the sun and the stars it dies every night to allow to live.

“I imagine you won’t,” he adds. “I will warn, however, that a revelry can be dangerous for folk who are not of our kind. Should you dance to our music, you may not be able to stop yourself. You can trust me to stop for you but if you dance with anyone else, they may be reluctant or even apathetic towards your plight. Mortals often stand on the sidelines.”

By mortals, he can only mean Jude and Taryn Duarte.

“But if you desire to try it, I won’t stray far. I’ll pull you out before harm can come to you. I am sure you have noticed the salt in your food as well. That is not a choice made based on taste but on caution. You may want to see what effect our food has on you here in the safety of our chambers before you venture out to feasts or revelries. Just in case.”

It must be hard to put one’s entire trust in a stranger, no matter the marital ties that join them, but the more they know of her tolerance to faerie spells and enchantments, the more prepared they can be. Word had spread through all the faerie courts and there were no doubt plots in the making as a result. Everyone wanted influence, after all, and they cared little for outsiders obtaining it before themselves. Especially when it came to the unseelie courts and their fruitless lusts for power. Like Cardan himself, Hel would be in danger of it all her life. Only their ties to the throne and the oaths each faerie must swear to protect them now, but there are always loopholes and arrangements. It was not much of a shield.

She watches him. Wonders what he must think of such a question. He knows so little of her life before. She had all but come in rags. Does he think her a bumpkin? A fair presumption.

Never mind that she used to dance in halls of pure gold and light.

Her eyes, like the gold in his own, grow hopeful. Excited, almost. "I.." Goosebumps rise on her skin as she draws even closer, "I get to participate?"

And then, sadly and all too quickly that new hope gave way to ever present anxiety. "I..I don't know any of your dances."

She giggles softly, wondering what food will be brought. What friends she might make! Friends, she had been told, would be vital. It mattered little if she could not love her husband, or even leave his home. If she could make friends.. many things would be open to her.

"Well then.." She says finally, "What style should I request of the seamstress so that you and I might match?" Her pale lips curl into a determined smile. "If this is to be our first appearance as Prince and Princess, I will figure out the rest and bluff what I am able."

She lays her small and cold hand over his, staring directly into his raw gold ore eyes. "I promise, Cardan. I won't embarrass you."

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

…What’s this?? WWX not being a self-sacrificial idiot??

It’s almost like… that isn’t a personality trait…

[undead-moth]

I know I've been on about this for a while now and I'm being a hater but you're telling me SydCarmy was "always meant to be platonic" even though there are two seasons of writing making use of tried-and-true explicitly romantic tropes, themes and writing signals, and SydLuca is going to be romantic because...he was nice to her on screen for a few minutes?

I don't even care if people ship SydLuca, or if they just prefer it, but you can't honestly tell me that you believe Carmy was always meant to be a friend but Luca is an obvious love interest.

Just because Syd and Carmy haven't kissed or confessed their love to each other doesn't mean that isn't very obviously the direction this show is going. The Bear has already shown you who is endgame. It has shown you every episode of the show so far.

Honestly I really don't think The Bear fanbase understands this show or cares about these characters or the story being told here, which is unfortunate because this show is shockingly well-written in comparison to most shows right now, and we should be so grateful for it but all we're doing is complaining that the writers led us on by not making a ship canon fast enough. It's just. Sad.

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

having twin peaks thoughts & theories bc i just started watching the return (i know spoilers ofc) and i have literally nowhere else to put my thoughts so i'm just gonna dump them here.

obviously i don't every single thing about twin peaks was meant to just be like... One Thing and that's it. i think there's room for interpretation for a reason butttt the one thing i just keep going back to about the show is just that. like. it's about the corruption of innocence and the perversion of family. of cycles of violence and abuse. children being sexually taken advantage of by "trusted" adults. teenage prostitution rings. barely a single relationship in the town wherein people aren't cheating on someone/cheated in the past. bob being "the evil that men do" (tbf this is technically just albert's theory but i choose to believe it) and now this weird thing with judy/the experiment (are they the same thing? idk yet) being the thing that CREATED bob? there's this weird thing i get with the black lodge/waiting room like... good people can't survive there without disappearing completely (nonexistence) or being permanently changed (in the case of annie, ig)

and then ofc you have the tormented souls being trapped there (laura, maddy, caroline(tbh idk what was going on w her doppelganger being there?), leland(he was originally a victim too, i'm getting there)) because of the things that were done TO them. i was thinking like. in regards to the frogmoth that crawled into sarah's mouth (when she was a child) and everything that's going on w/ her in the return (watching insanely violent things on tv, "eating" men, etc.) ... compounded with leland's story about bob "I was just a boy. I saw him in my dreams. He said he - he wanted to play. He opened me and I invited him and he came inside me." ... mr. c's introduction song being a twisted version of "american woman" (i've heard this is also related to diane's doppelganger, as well. makes sense) w/ the stand-out lyrics (aka the backwards ones) being "all my headstrong women... don't let em put you in a corner. make em salute you like a flag on the fourth of july." and sarah palmer having a shortened and remixed version of "good man" blaring in her house that just repeats the lyrics "i'm a good man. i'm having fun." like. there's smth to this i'm not insane...

anyways to go even FURTHER... there being specific emphasis on being in the right time and the right place. opposites (giant and dwarf, young and old, black and white, etc.) and the planets jupiter and saturn.

the experiment violently killing that couple that was watching the glass box bc they were having sex? or because they were(n't) watching? or both? the experiment very obviously being the thing inside of sarah but it pulling off it's own face within sarah and revealing a smile that looks eerily similar to laura's (even if not exact... ppl are such pedants about things being exact in this show where literally everything is drenched in like 8 metaphors at any given time) AND the laura in the black lodge/waiting room removing her own face in the exact same way. it's weird that in this instance, laura's dialectical opposite or opposing force is her own mother who she claims she has so much in common with. but this goes even a step further because when the experiment spawned in the glass box, it has a gold orb (or smth like it) like the one laura's like... spirit? was born from? AND APPARENTLY there's a little clip of what sounds like sheryl lee's voice saying "gone" or "the one" or something like that while the experiment is flying towards them (not unlike an owl) to kill them... hm. not to mention the experiment has a proboscis-like knife that comes out of its mouth that it uses to kill the guy sexually harrassing sarah at the bar... and carrie page has a dead guy in her motel room that has a hole in his head... could obviously def just be a bullet-wound LMAO but idk let's have fun w it!

i do think there's a crazy connection between sarah, laura, and the experiment/judy/whatever. "the room seems different... and men are coming. something happened to me. i don't feel good..." obviously, i will be able to make more connections and add to this theory as i watch more but from what i've seen i think there's a huge connection to children and how easily it is for them to be taken advantage of (literally every member of the palmer family was taken advantage of as a child when an evil entity entered them. i mean. how more on the nose can you be!!) or for their innocence to get stolen (prostitution, drugs, murder, becoming child brides to abusive older men... the list goes on). and there's obvious themes of intense sexual violence and dreams and blahhhh. it's like 5:30am and i'm theorizing about a show that will never have an actual answer LMAO... to be fair though it's not ABOUT actually "solving" it for me. i think most media works well when you get what you want or need from it and just kind of make that The Point and, for me, twin peaks will always be about the tragedy of laura palmer before it's about anything else!

i really do like that theory that dale cooper is just like. an entity that laura dreamed up to save her originally but in the end, after she had finally escaped being laura palmer and that life and that house and her trauma, he ended up bringing her right back to it. it's like. how does that not make people insane?

[mellotronmkll]

i love apollo 18 but i have a few problems with it and one of the biggest ones is that i can never just listen to the fucking album because its impossible for me to hear this song without repeating it at least like 4 or 5 times

[raskies456]

GRE today…..

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

.

[jankillbride]

wip - got that 1939 groove

[designernishiki]

I will maybe make a bigger post at some point about other characters’ dnd classes but. thought about it. kiryu would be a battlemaster fighter multiclassed into oath of vengeance paladin. end of statement

[koipalm]

theoretically i wld want people to ask me about my tma x 1899 crossover.. but that would mean that i would have to TELL people the things that happen... without being able to SHOW them.... in real time....