#anthony clarke

[taylorshope]

Random Supermassive memes

[delurkr]

"Excuse me."

The Clarke family bands together in a crisis 😌

Background is this pic. The customer counter is clearly to their backs but ssshh no it isn't, options were limited ok 😅

And here it is without the background for funsies:

No restaurant workers were harmed in the making of this scene lol

[108garys]

The Clarkes haunting the narrative is THE point

The following was a response to the idea that the prologue and end hold little hope back that ended up being way longer than intended, no shade on the person who said that I just realised that I didn't want to drop a whole essay on them, so without any more preamble:

Truthfully I am completely disinterested in making Little Hope more palatable to people who require the story's soul to be torn out to enjoy it because that's what the beginning and ending is. The broken heart of little hope.

That said I very much love the middle too but the Clarke family's story is the heart and soul of little hope and the whole point, otherwise why does anything in the town matter? Vince? Just some dude, the subplot of the town falling apart, being in the literal wreckage of 1970s era Little Hope? Random set dressing because a straight up three century old ruin of a town would just lack the infrastructure required to have the facade of searching for help in town… So many of the secrets are about them, you straight up spend a good chunk of the runtime passively learning about the individual family members both in private and public and even though I think some people choose the shallowest reading out of spite it is very deliberately stated that there is an element of choice in interpretation, the curator says so at the start. The more praised facets would be greatly diminished without the Clarkes, the subtextual nature of overcoming your demons gives meaning to the outright textual fighting of demonic monsters and the parallels would not be as strong between the 2020 and 1692 eras alone.

It is a common mistake that there are better or worse versions of the characters but it's simply not true as they are all different aspects and much like a triangle needs three points the cast of little hope needs all three points of reference to fully appreciate their stories. My earliest read of Little Hope centred on Anthony recontextualising his family in two divergent ways, 1692 where they are presented as victims of circumstance and 2020 where they are more deliberately flawed people who must overcome their demons because the truth is that both things are true of the Clarkes and so they are separated out into their different aspects and analysed accordingly.

Angela's characterisation doesn't work exclusively compared to Amy, her story of fighting for her agency doesn't land the same without Anne, Amy on paper is a woman who did everything right bar being too harsh to a child and was killed for it, Angela is a woman burnt by her past yet soldering on and still retains the same flaw of blaming the child, where as Anne being a snowed under house wife who struggles with keeping her family together and feels like she has zero agency in her situation and all the while fails to understand the perspectives of the very people she feels responsible for is the context between Amy the beloved wife who is wrongfully accused and uses her one bit of agency to place mistaken blame on Mary and Angela who refuses to rely on or believe in anyone or anything, the fact that she's divorced and starting over in her late forties does not work when only compared to the wholesome yet tragic Lamberts who's marriage is never depicted in the negative to justify Angela's divorce. She'd appear as a nearly fully different person for no reason without Anne to bridge the gap and make their depictions consistent, without the 1970s it just looks like she's angry at her husband for failing to save her despite his best efforts and that severely damages her character and arc.

Connected to that, J places his trust in the wrong places, delegates, blame shifts and runs from facing the bigger problem, the alcoholism is emblematic of this but the refusal to see the truth about M's innocence and place responsibility at the feet of the proper authority because he'd have to confront his misplaced faith requires all three, Joseph failing to his dying breath to understand Mary's innocence and James getting blackout drunk over the stress of problems he finds insurmountable are necessary context to John's sobriety and further arc and John being a recovering alcoholic would just be flavour text without the harsh sting of how addiction colours James.

Daylor wouldn't lose its questionable reading if they were only siblings in 50% of other eras instead of two thirds but Dennis expressing his frustration at Tanya pulling away contextualises their codependency and mutual need to be needed in a way that is incomplete, you see a couple in the early stages of dating and siblings who got killed three hundred years prior, the 70s contextualise T's need for stability and dependability and her survival instincts pushing her to flee and D's arrested development in the way he struggles to function when they aren't a unit, beyond that David and Tabitha care for Mary together in Amy's trial scene and after her death he doesn't even fight his own execution, not even to continue the task of raising his only remaining orphand sister alone, this isn't to say David doesn't love Mary as he blatantly shows care for her in not wanting her to be traumatised by his death but he simply falls apart without Tabitha and Dennis being the way he is when Tanya is pulling away from the family shows a lower stakes, longer depiction of that breaking down but she's still physically there so it isn't collapsing in grief, it's the simmering resentment of feeling like a person you care for isn't prioritising you reciprocally, these feelings aren't wrong in of themselves but they aren't pretty and Daniel's outbursts and more negative dialogue choices and David's quiet grief don't capture the way that feeling of being stabbed a million times over everything time you aren't the first choice but the other person didn't wrong you by choosing differently so there is no proper way to get that out feels. D is often mistaken as a shallow generically decent guy with a random angry iteration that doesn't fit into a boring whole but it's simply not the case, him proving he can be reliable in 2020, his fight against his various insecurities is something he needs to do for himself as much as T, the others aren't better adjusted or better people compared to Dennis, their circumstances just present entirely differently.

Furthermore Taylor feeling like an outsider doesn't work alone with Tabitha being part of a family unit, I've seen it misinterpreted as Taylor being less proactive than her counterparts but the truth is that T's behaviour is characterised by survival instinct and a need for stability, Tabitha realises something is wrong after the first death and attempts to protect Mary but counsels keeping their heads down, Taylor being vocally in favour of staying put and Tanya's quiet desperation to get away from everything are not opposite but different flavors of the same base needs, Tanya legitimately being a practising witch adds a layer between the other two versions, Tanya appears very conventional despite her secret unconventional beliefs and Taylor is the inverse being visually the most nonconforming member of the cast while her desire for a knight in shining armour is very traditional in its own way, pair this with the straight forward trial of Tabitha and you get an exploration of not going with the first assumptions that blankets the rest of the narrative.

Carver is a great antagonist all his own but without 1972 there is no broader context, and even if you still have that era but not the Clarkes it would just be "this guy's bloodline remained assholes for centuries" and not the direct parallel to Carson, there is no canonical 2020 equivalent to his character yet he haunts the narrative beyond himself, judge wyman intentionally mirrors the passing neighbour who immediately demanded to know what Anthony had done when the matchbox is revealed, the accusatory paranoid hysteria of puritan little hope and Anthony's poor treatment after the death of his family are directly connected and that's the point, Melissa is there to bring the conversation about the little girl's guilt or innocence to the forefront in a way that makes it a present plotline that goes beyond Mary and brings in the nature that the past is reflected in other eras and without Megan you lose a lot, Melissa requires her context in a way that Mary alone doesn't achieve and Abraham and Andrew's decision on the matter is in fact a question over Anthony's guilt and his internal struggle between blaming himself and blaming Megan and the further grief around this unresolved guilt to the point where he was psychologically unable to process the death of his family for nearly fifty years is the point, the whole point, of the 1692 reframing.

the Clarke family haunts every aspect of Little Hope and without the ending it would be pointless, the way their deaths hang over everything to the point where the puritan versions are doomed to die in the same way they were already depicted as dying and the way an engaged person would quickly catch on that 1972 death=1692 death and therefore 2020 character faces the same fate, it would be meaningless without the Clarke tragedy, it would simply be shock value that builds towards nothing without the ending and the ending doesn't make the game any less about the other eras because they are one and the same in every way that matters.

[kindheartedgummybears]

"Anthony canon soul survivor" this, "What if Megan was soul survivor" that.

Okay but just imagine, James and Anne survivors. Just imagine.

[ronantwins]

House of the Dragon / Almost A Classic - Analysing Little Hope/ The Sun And Her Flowers / Little Hope / Holding To A Wall, Treading Saltwater / Yellowjackets / Headfirst / Tell Me Why

On being a child, motherhood and guilt.

[splattercamp]

"NOOOOO YOU CAN'T HEADCANON THESE CHARACTERS AS HAVING THOSE ILLNESSES!!! THEY SHOW NO SYMPTOMS!!"

okay sounds tough!!

unfortunately eric king has ocpd, andrew/anthony/abraham has asd and dpdr, angela has ptsd, kate has gad, and charlie has npd.... sorry to break it to you... 😒

[blubary]

Clarke sibling doodles... but there's four of them, so if not all of them then Anthony? 😊

They’re taking a family photo with just the kids, hehe! (At least, they’re trying…)

[tatjana-fantasy]

It just occured to me that Anthony was born in the year Hackett's Quarry was established (1953) and I don't know what to do with that information

[erika111111]

[galaxyzone]

I love Andrew from Little Hope so much it’s like-

Yass you go, sweetie, give us nothing!🥰

[taylorshope]

[unhingedlesbear]

Idk bro. SMG characters as out of context messages between myself and @bluedivvy

[delurkr]

The lonely little pilgrim dude on Anthony's desk is really funny, like there's just the one but he was 100% part of a set of Thanksgiving table decorations where there was at least a pilgrim woman to go with him and maybe a turkey or something.

I think there would be more little figurines if Anthony was a collector unless he just started collecting like a week ago, so I think Dennis bought that thing at a five and dime store for Anthony's birthday last November (Thanksgiving season) and he thought that was a solid choice, a brilliant one in fact, because Dennis is just not good at selecting gifts. (He threw out the turkey but he's saving the woman for next year)

[108garys]

"I won't let them hurt you"

For their birthday I have given a bittersweet look at Anthony being comforted by his younger self, being protected in the safety that other self and their yet to be determined future can offer and the rest due after his long trials

For this I add the song 'Panoramic view' by Awolnation as I feel it encapsulates the near intergenerational view of them and like?? It's just lyrically perfect for it lol

@kassiekole22 @delurkr @ctrvpani @tinynightmarewoman

@eframschweigersskincells @qusok @kindheartedgummybears @conra

[psyhicn]

I love Andrew. I love Angela. These two stole my heart.

I really like how they take care of each other.

♡

[tlj1988]