#as a card carrying member of the dead dad club i loved this scene a lot

[mythtakens]

THE BEAR 3.05 → Children

[lightyaoigami]

welcome to my long promised grief media master post! my credentials: card carrying member of the dead dads club. i chose the books, tv, and movies based on vibes alone and i was guided by divine vision. possible spoilers below the cut.

Books

Catcher in the Rye

I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don’t blame them. I really don’t. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it and you didn’t know Allie.

The Goldfinch

And what would I do? Part of me was immobile, stunned with despair, like those rats that lose hope in laboratory experiments and lie down in the maze to starve. I tried to pull my thoughts together. For a while, it had almost seemed that if I sat still enough, and waited, things might straighten themselves out somehow. Objects in the apartment wobbled with my fatigue: halos shimmered around the table lamp; the stripe of the wallpaper seemed to vibrate.

Hard Boiled and Hard Luck

Sometimes you go back again to the place you’ve just come from, stop and close your eyes, and realize that not a second has passed, and time just leaves you there, stranded, in the darkness.

The Fellowship of the Ring

I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

The Stranger

 At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it. 

Life of Pi

I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.

TV Shows

Severance

the grief and loss show of all time. 10/10. don't look it up just watch.

Euphoria

i like this show because it depicts someone whose life just sucks after their dad dies. like she just becomes a worse person with a more unhappy life. real!

Never Have I Ever

people hate this show because the main character is a nasty little pill but i hate to tell you that that is literally what happens when you lose a loved one unexpectedly and traumatically. sorry.

Movies

Eternal Sunshine

captures the surreal nature of forgetting someone you love(d) and knowing exactly what's happening despite being powerless to stop it.

Menashe

truly beautiful and moving film about the utter listlessness of life after loss. if you have ever felt unmoored, this movie is for you. one of the most beautiful soundtracks ever, too.

The Farewell

people were weird about this movie but the final scene where billie is being driven away from her nainai's house is one of the realest things i can remember seeing in a recent movie.

Games

Disco Elysium

just play it. don't look anything up about it just play it immediately.

Life is Strange

people found the dialogue in this stilted but this scene (spoilers) is so true to life especially for the early 2010s.

Comics

for unknown reasons this panel of calvin mourning a raccoon that he found is the ultimate expression of grief - the horror and resignation and dissonance are captured so well in his sunken eyes. i think about this all the time.

[kationella]

Things you won't get unless you're a hardcore Batman fan:

- Do the butts match?

- Whelmed

- Nightwing's Butt

- Black hair? Blue eyes? Adopted.

- WHERE IS TIM?!

- Batman's dick. You know which comic I'm talking about

- Fuck Metropolis

- Eating burger with knife and fork

- "Man, Dick is good!"

- BATMAN DOES NOT EAT NACHOS

- (Points at Bruce and Clark) "And there was only one bed" "Oh my god, there was only one bed"

- "I am the GODDAMN Batman"

- They kept their masks on because its "better" that way

- Batman and Superman crying while watching aliens have sex

- That comic about the Joker's boners

- We live in a society

- Holy Musical Batman

- Bamboozled

- The mullet

- Actually, Dick's whole outfit. What the fuck was he thinking?

- Bruce Wayne lives in Batman's attic

- The demon child

- Starfish Robin

- Batman singing

- The Red Hood mask with a nose and mouth

- The Justice League? More like Batman and his bitches

- Bruce Wayne is a boomer. But like, in a cool way

- Adam West having a conversation with himself

- The rainbow suit

- The Snyder Cut

- Nightwing having his ass beat in every movie

- "Hello? Police? My son stole the Batmobile"

- Did Batman kill Joker in the Killing Joke?: The Debate

- BATMAN 👏🏻 DOES 👏🏻 NOT 👏🏻 KILL 👏🏻

- Except for those guys he hanged from the Batplane

- And KGBeast

- And Darkseid

- BUT THAT'S IT

- The myth of the Joker role turning you crazy

- Heath Ledger's scaring Maggie Gyllenhaal for real

- Is Batman a furry?: The Debate

- Every lesbian needs her cousin

- Who is Bruce's favorite Robin?: The Debate

- "The circus. He said it was the circus"

- Bruce being both the best and worst dad

- The fans killing Robin

- Plus the rigged telephone that actually did it

- Damian and his pets

- Duke being the only sane person around

- WHERE IS CARRIE KELLY?!

- The failed wedding

- Trying to guess what Thomas' letter from Flashpoint said

- Does Alfred get paid?: The Debate

- Ok, but Alfred and the rifle

- Bat-Mite

- Damian x Mar'i

- Damian x Raven

- Damian x Maps

- Dick's redhead fetish

- The Annie episode with Tim

- Every batfam member having a Super

- That Birds of Prey song... you know... the one

- Bat Credit Card

- Heart of Ice

- Bat Nipples

- Tim's caffeine addiction

- Tim adding fucking pants to the Robin suit

- "I don't want to be the Batman... anymore"

- Dead Robins Club

- Alfred having his own fanbase

- Only Jason and Alfred know how to cook

- Jason loves bread

- Dick loves cereal

- WHO THE FUCK IS IAN WAYNE?!

- Representation for Damian plz

- We all know Bruce's lovers come down to Selina, Diana or Talia (And Clark)

- The truth behind the Dark Knight hospital scene

- Apparently no Batfam member has finished school

- Tim vs Luthor

- Knowing the origins of every item in the Batcave

- WHERE IS TERRY MCGINNIS?!

- Gotham City Sirens

- "I am a model of mental health!"

- The Bruce Wayne x Batman fanfiction

- Contingency plans for everything

- Your relationships are shorter than Stephanie's career as Robin

- Batman comforting Ace

- And finally, having read the comic where this is from:

Feel free to add more.

[starring-movies]

Killing Eve: Episode Analysis

*SPOILERS*

Season 3, Episode 5 - Are You from Pinner? [Part 1]

This episode, like S3E4, follows a comletely different format to all the other episodes, as it focuses solely on Villanelle’s time with her family in Grizmet and doesn’t include any other storylines from any of the other characters in the series.

We begin with Villanelle’s arrival at Grizmet, where we get a scene of a huge logging truck beeping it’s horn at a completely oblivious Villanelle, as she’s walking along listening to music. This lack of awareness in her surroundings is highly unusual for Villanelle, who’s success in her profession hinges on her being constantly alert and highly astute. Previously the only other instance where we have seen Villanelle not being on top form; is in S2E4, when she takes drugs and almost kills a girl for no reason, after she thought Eve had lost interest in her. Making the point of showing us how she’s not as alert as usual, displays how Villanelle is distracted and not able to focus at the thought (and pressure) of being reunited with her family.

Villanelle also has her hair out, illustrating how she’s willing to open, and immerse herself, into her family that she’s going to be reunited with.

On arriving at the family home, Villanelle enters the house and examines the kitchen. She looks at all the little mundane objects like the sugar bowl, the food cooking on the stove and some knitting supplies. As Villanelle’s looking at these things, we can see that she’s considering what her life could have looked like, and how different it would have looked, if she hadn’t been left at the orphanage.

After Villanelle has met most of the members of her family (she’s yet to meet her mother, Tatiana), we see her sitting in Bor’ka’s bedroom as she talks to him about the best foods to eat in the various countries that Elton John has visited. When asked about Vienna, Villanelle tells Bor’ka that there is “great ice cream in Vienna”, which is a nice little reference to the very first scene of the whole series, when we first meet Villanelle eating ice cream in Vienna after a kill.

During her conversation with Bor’ka, Villanelle puts on some red heart glasses with pink-ish coloured lenses in them, an accessory that Elton John is famous for wearing. We get a shot of her looking at her family with the glasses on, as well as a shot of her view of her family through the pink lenses of the glasses. In the first shot of Villanelle as she looks at her family with the glasses on; through the imagery of this shot we are shown how Villanelle is watching her family with literal ‘heart eyes’ - just like the apron she wears at the end of the episode, she is putting her whole heart out and offering it to her family to try and find the place of belonging she has been looking for.

Similarly in the shot of Villanelle’s point of view through the tinted lenses, we are shown how Villanelle is watching her family through literal ‘rose-coloured glasses’, the definition of this idiom is “a happy or positive attitude that fails to notice negative things”). In this way, through the chosen imagery in both of these shots, we are being shown how Villanelle is letting herself be carried away by her heart, now she thinks she’s found her family and finally found a place where she feels that she belongs - she is looking at her family unrealistically and putting an impossible optimism them for what she hopes to gain from her visit home.

As soon as Villanelle finds out that her mother, Tatiana, has arrived home, we see one of the only times Villanelle has been in pure terror and distress. Villanelle fully panics when she finds out Tatiana is back and she frantically runs around the living room, trying to find a way out. The only other time we have seen Villanelle display this level of anxiety was in S1E2 when she being held prisoner by Julian and was incredibly weak after being stabbed by Eve.

As Villanelle is running around trying to escape, ‘Bumble Bee’ by LaVern Baker is played over the scene. The lyrics that can be heard are:

“I'm gonna have to put you down,

You been treating me like a clown,

You know you've hurt me once before,

You'll never hurt me anymore,

Shoo-ee, you hurt me like a bee,

A bumble bee, a evil bumble bee”

Although we haven’t been told yet what happened between Villanelle and her mother, the lyrics of the song accurately reflect what is soon revealed to us. The lyrics of the song, together with the information that we are later given - that Tatiana was a terrible mother to Villanelle, who she thought had “a darkness” - is the reason for the frantic panic that Villanelle reacts with, when she realises that she has to confront her mother again after all this time. When Bor’ka says that “mum” is home, Villanelle suddenly remembers how her mother “hurt [her] once before”, and most likely how she doesn’t want her to “hurt [her] anymore”.

When Tatiana enters the house she drops her shopping bags, she walks over to Villanelle to hug her and then starts crying, calling Villanelle “my Oksana”. It’s left fairly ambiguously as to whether this emotional reaction from Tatiana was genuine. However, the three separate close-up shots that follow the hug, suggest that Tatiana was not being genuine.

We are shown two shots of Knick-Knacks on bookcases and one shot of some family pictures on the wall. Interestingly, within these three shots, there are a total of four framed photos of Tatiana on her own, with no-one else in the pictures with her. The choice to show shots of the Knick-Knacks suggest that Tatiana is not being sincere, as we are being shown how she attempts to hide her “darkness” by putting on this facade of being a good wife and mother, which we (and Villanelle) later see starts to slip.

The individual photos of Tatiana also suggest that she is not reacting genuinely to seeing Villanelle, as we can see that she’s clearly a narcissist and so makes as effort to put out a particular image of herself - in this case she’s putting on a show for the other members of her family, so that she can maintain the image that she’s spent so long building up: the loving mother who was forced to give up her child and is finally being reunited with her, after thinking she was dead for all thee years.

It’s further shown how Tatiana tried to bury her old life and start a fresh one (she started again by getting a new husband, a new house and new children), when Pyotr brings the photo album with the childhood pictures of Villanelle. He brings out the album and says that he found it “in back of loft”. Tatiana has plenty of family photos in the house, and a great number of them are of herself; so to not have any pictures up of Villanelle, and the fact that the album was found pushed away in the back of the loft, shows how she tried to hide away any remnants of Villanelle after she left her at the orphanage.

Even more notable is that there is no pictures of Tatiana’s husband, Villanelle’s father, anywhere. As Villanelle is looking through the photo album she says “where is Dad? There has to be one of him before he died”. Again it’s been heavily emphasised that there’s a lot of photos in the house, and there’s even quite a few pictures of Villanelle even though they were hidden away. So for there so be absolutely no pictures at all of the father, it’s insinuated that Tatiana and the father’s relationship wasn’t good before he died, or it wouldn’t be out of the realms of possibility to assume she’s lying and the father left her - or perhaps even, given that Tatiana has a darkness akin to Villanelle’s own darkness, that she killed her husband.

Following Tatiana’s arrival back home and her reunion with Villanelle, she says to Villanelle, “I used to like dressing up and you always wanted my clothes, so I would make costume from old curtains for you”. By Tatiana saying this, it is implying that this is where Villanelle began her love of clothes and dressing up in different disguises.

The next scene we get, is of the whole family playing a card came, called Mafia/Werewolf, together. Fyodor accuses Villanelle of being Bor’ka’s ‘killer’ in the game, but he gets it wrong and Tatiana reveals that she was in fact the ‘killer’. Villanelle is the literal ‘killer’, however in the game it’s Tatiana, which signifies how Tatiana actually has more darkness than Villanelle, but she tries to conceal it.

The card Tatiana holds up is also the Queen of clubs, which further emphasises how she is the queen/matriarch of the household.

In this scene, we also get our first glimpse at Tatiana’s cruelty. Bor’ka says “mum you murdered me”, and Tatiana replied that “I had no choice Bor’ka” and he says that “you could have murdered the others”. He’s right, why would she choose to ‘murder’ Bor’ka when he’s the youngest one playing and is still only a child; she picks on him unnecessarily, just like how she picks on him at the Harvest Festival by telling him that he was “stupid and embarrassed her”.

We are also shown the complete control and power that Tatiana, being a narcissist and as the matriarch, has over the family - she only needs to say “eh” and tap on the table while Pyotr and Fyodor are arguing, to get them to stop.

Tatiana’s narcissism is additionally shown, when she makes her speech to the rest of the family. She says “I like to make speech. This night is very, very special for me. My girl, my little girl”. Tatiana’s repeated use of the personal pronouns “I” and “me”, demonstrate how her focus is all on herself, not on Villanelle or the rest of the family, but on how important and special this is for herself.

The scene continues to give us another instance of dancing, which Villanelle is uncomfortable with, just like in S3E1 with Maria. However unlike with Maria, where Villanelle just sort of stands and looks at Maria, while she’s trying to dance with her, Villanelle actually makes an attempt to partake in the dancing with her family.

She gets up with them and bobs up and down a bit, and we even see her start to sing the chorus of ‘Crocodile Rock’ by Elton John, with them before the scene cuts. Although she’s clearly uncomfortable, the fact that Villanelle makes a conscious effort to dance with her family, shows us how much effort and how desperately she wants to belong in the family. However, the fact that she’s still uncomfortable and it’s still not coming naturally foretells how although she is trying, this still isn’t the right fit for her or what she’s looking for.

Going onto the next scene, we see Pyotr taking his anger out on an old sofa and Villanelle comes to visit him. She’s wearing a mostly black outfit and has her hair up now, unlike the day before when she arrived; her appearance is reflecting how she’s closed herself off more now, and to show that she’s focused (like when she’s on a job). Villanelle is focused because she uses the day to speak to each of the members of the family, to find more information about what happened in the time while she wasn’t there and also to find out more information about her mother.

While Villanelle is speaking to Pyotr she says “you always wanted to be a firefighter, right?” and Pyotr says to her “you remember”. As Tatiana said earlier, that “the orphanage phone me and say you burn place down”, it’s most likely that Villanelle burned down the orphanage in the hope that her brother (who she knew wanted to be a firefighter) would come with the fire brigade to the orphanage to put out the fire; and in turn, come and find her there as well and rescue her.

The description that Villanelle’s gives to Pyotr of her father, that he was “funny, strong, taught me how to fight”; just like Tatiana and the clothes, we can see that Villanelle has taken these characteristics from her father: Villanelle tells Gabriel in S2E1 “yes, I am funny”, later on in this episode Yula’s friend says “she’s funny” and it’s clear that she’s strong and can fight.

Pyotr goes on to ask Villanelle “how they say we die”, and she replies only by saying “car crash” - another foreshadowing for the end of the episode. Villanelle’s family may not have died from an actual “car crash” when the orphanage told her they did, but they do end up dying at the end of the episode because her visit to her family was a metaphorical “car crash”.

In the next scene, when Pyotr and Villanelle are eating golubtsy, Pyotr says that “she’s [Tatiana] not a bad woman, people here say she is saint” and Villanelle says that “people here don’t know her”. This confirms what had up until this point just been alluded to, that Tatiana got a new husband, a new family and a new house (presumably in a different town) to try and hide her previous life and create a new image for herself.

*TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2 OF ‘ARE YOU FROM PINNER? Episode Analysis’*

You can read my previous Killing Eve posts here:-

First Introduction to Villanelle

First Introduction to Eve

S1, E1 - Nice Face

S1, E2 - I’ll Deal With Him Later

S1, E3 - Don’t I Know You?

S1, E4 - Sorry Baby

S1, E5 - I Have a Thing about Bathrooms

S1, E6 - Take Me to the Hole!

S1, E7 - I Don’t Want to Be Free

S1, E8 - God, I’m Tired

S2, E1 - Do You Know How to Dispose of a Body?

S2, E2 - Nice and Neat

S2, E3 - The Hungry Caterpillar

S2, E4 - Desperate Times

S2, E5 - Smell Ya Later

S2, E6 - I Hope You Like Missionary!

S2, E7 - Wide Awake

S2, E8 - You’re Mine

S3, E1 - Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey

S3, E2 - Management Sucks

S3, E3 - Meetings Have Biscuits

S3, E4 - Still Got It

S3, E5 - Are You From Pinner? [Part 2]

S3, E6 - End of Game

S3, E7 - Beautiful Monster

S3, E8 - Are You Leading or Am I? [Part 1]

——————————————————————————

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How a Haunted Mansion addict fell in love with the greatest ride on Earth #5yrsago

I fell in love with the Haunted Mansion in 1977. I was six years old, and we'd gone to Fort Lauderdale to visit my grandparents. They lived in a seniors' condo complex called Century Village -- my dad called it Cemetery Village -- and it wasn't a great place to be a six-year-old. My parents loaded me into a rental car and we drove down to Orlando, pulling in at truck stops to buy Vac-U-Formed souvenir plastic oranges and to collect mountains of colorful brochures for Busch Gardens, Alligatorland, and Parrot Jungle.

Back then, Walt Disney World used the A-B-C-D-E ticketbook schemes, where A tickets got you on the least exciting rides ("horse-drawn carriage down Main Street!") and E tickets were the most coveted, providing admission to the likes of Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion.

Two (amazing) days later, we had seen and done (nearly) everything. I had my mouse-ears, had enjoyed a pineapple Dole-Whip, and was generally as overstimulated and amazed as a six-year-old can be without exploding. The park was about to close, and we had a final E-ticket left in our ticket books. My dad squinted at the guide-book (a proper booklet in those days, not a mere brochure), and enumerated the E-ticket options remaining to us. When he came to the Haunted Mansion, my Mom broke in:

"I think Cory might be a little young for that."

Which was all the excuse I needed to demand, furiously, that I be allowed to ride the Haunted Mansion.

To my parents' everlasting credit (and, possibly, their regret), they acquiesced. The sun had gone down, and the Mansion was magnificently spooky in the moonlight. The only other people in the line was a small group of teenagers whom I immediately associated with the Scooby Doo gang -- I watched the show religiously -- an impression that was heightened when they joined in with the recorded wolf-calls, giving me a delicious, scary thrill.

And then the doors opened. The woman cast-member we had that night was the greatest Mansion Butler of all time. Small, with black eyeliner and a perfect, gothy demeanor. She stared at us coldly, then intoned, "Master Gracey requests more bodies," and turned on her heel and stalked into the Mansion's depths, leaving us to follow or not.

If you know the Mansion, you know what happened next -- the stretch gallery, the Doom Buggies, the hall of portraits, the watching busts, the phantom pianist, Madame Leota, the stupendous ballroom scene, the attic, the graveyard (oh, the graveyard!), the hitchhiking ghosts, Little Leota, departure. By the time we debarked, I was half-scared, half-delighted, and entirely hooked. I'd always been a monster kid -- loved my monster coloring books, adored Hallowe'en, built monster models. But this was, well, it was a revelation.

1977 was a vintage year for Haunted Mansion merchandise. At the little gift-shop, I mortgaged my allowance for the next five years on rubber fright masks, glow-in-the-dark headstone plaques that came with rub-on letraset letters for adding your own name, a "magic" flying ghost, a gaggle of glow-in-the-dark plaster skulls in a variety of sizes, glow-in-the-dark plastic fangs, and best of all, a set of cards with humorous portraits of uptight-looking adults that transformed into hideous monsters when you looked at them in the dark, revealing the transparent glow-in-the-dark paint overlaid on the pictures.

I fell asleep sometime after the ferry ride to the parking lot. I remember that ride vividly, crouching by the railing with my glow-in-the-dark fangs in my mouth, watching the lights of Disney World recede. I probably dropped off the instant they put me in the car. I was a champion sleeper-in-cars. Once I was out, nothing could wake me.

Indeed, nothing did wake me, not even when our car broke down halfway to Fort Lauderdale and we had to wait by the road for hours for someone from the auto club to come out and pronounce the rental to be terminal. Not when the rental agency delivered a new car for us to drive the rest of the way. Not when my dad picked me up and transferred me to the new car -- forgetting the trove of Haunted Mansion souvenirs, leaving them behind in the dead rental.

I didn't wake when we returned to Cemetery Village, nor when I was carried inside and put to bed on the sofa in my grandparents' living room. But at six a.m., I was up and out of bed like a canonshot, waking up my folks and demanding to know where my stuff was. "Mrph. In the car. Wait until we get up."

The rest of the morning was one of those tragedies of the depth and drama that only six-year-olds can experience. The impatient waiting for the lazy grownups to rise. The shocked realization that my stuff wasn't in the car. The phone call to the auto-club and rental agency. The dawning certainty that my stuff would never, ever be coming back.

I've spent the past 35 years trying to regather those souvenirs. I have most of them -- even the glow-in-the-dark fangs. But I never did find the cards that transformed into monsters. I have all kinds of Mansion oddments in my office, even pieces of 8mm film used in the original singing busts and Madame Leota/Little Leota heads. I've got replicas of the Mansion signage, limited edition watches and lanterns, plates and mugs. I even own a Haunted Mansion Butler's coat, and my wedding suit was a replica of the Haunted Mansion butler's uniform, cloned for me by a tailor in Mumbai while I was there researching my novel For the Win.

But I've never found those cards.

https://boingboing.net/2012/10/22/how-a-haunted-mansion-addict-f.html