#because i strongly agree with it

[riordanverse-craziness]

Greek Deities’ Fancast in Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Sadie Sink as Artemis

[sadclowncentral]

I haven't heared the door knobs and fascism thing before, can you elaborate?

gladly! i was referencing one of the aphorisms by Theodor W. Adorno, Do Not Knock, one of my favourite philosophical texts, certainly top 5.

I would summarise it for you, but it's quite a short text and i am not embarrassing myself by trying to summarise Adorno, so I have transcribed it for you under the cut:

60. Do Not Knock

Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men. It expels from movements all hesitation, deliberation, civility. It subjects them to the implacable, as it were ahistorical demands of objects, Thus the ability is lost, for example, to close a door quietly and discreetly, yet firmly. Those of cars and refrigerators have to be slammed, others have the tendency to snap shut by themselves, imposing on those entering the bad manners of not looking behind them, not shielding the interior of the house which receives them. The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what the is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations.

What does it mean for the subject that there are no more casements windows to open, but only sliding frames to shove, not gentle latches but turnable handles, no forecourt, no doorstep before the street, no wall around the garden? And which diver is not tempted, merely but the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street pedestrians, children and cyclists? The movements machines demand of their users already have the violent, hard-hitting, unresting jerkiness of Fascist maltreatment.

Not least to blame for the withering of experience is the fact that things, under the law of pure functionality, assume a form that limits contact with them to mere operation, and tolerates no surplus, either in freedom of conduct or in autonomy of things, which would survive as the core of experience, because it is not consumed by the moment of action.

[creekfiend]

pip do u ever wish u had a caring and dedicated handler like those dogs who their people refer to as Big Feelings Dogs. or that people interacted w u using non aversive methods. the more i look into dog training the more i wish for this. life is ruff

bro, yeah.

I think even if you can't get treated that way by Most people you are interacting with and you CERTAINLY can't get treated that way my institutions, the people who you come home to should at least be gentle with you and take you in good faith and proactively consider your wants and needs. like. your loved ones at least should do this. it can be hard to find people who are in the habit of it. but it's pretty great if you can. and then it's like you can do it for EACH OTHER which is even better bc you're on a beautiful journey of Be Nice To Each Other (And Yourself) together

[lover-of-mine]

Fought 'til you tethered me, swept under surfaces, never enough of it...

[sparring-spirals]

i already wrote a post like this at some point (edit: found it!) but i wanna say it again that like. its so interesting watching Ashton speak about things they care about. because when they make up their mind on something it solidifies for him, it turns from a passing wave into an immovable rockface. its how confidently they proclaim things to be bullshit, how they decide to do things and talk about them like foregone conclusions, even if they can't be guaranteed, even as he states opinions warpes by his experiences like worldly facts.

It makes them so nice to listen to, when you are shaking, when the world is shifting and you look for solid things to hold onto. Something so reassuring about having everything burning and an assured "None of that shit matters, here is what matters." "Well, everything is awful, but we can do this." "We can't fucking do anything about all of that, so lets do this. This is what matters".

It is so integral to how Ashton lives, to how he survives, to how they took a million hard hits in their life and still kept going, finding new things to hold onto. Ashton has a way of saying things like they're facts, and even when they aren't, when they can't be, sometimes you really want to believe it, need to have something to believe- to lean up against steady stone, have something to fall back on.

[batsplat]

hi batsplat! i would like to say that you are an absolute pillar of the motogp community on here, like you are truly so so appreciated. both for your knowledge and also for the way you write about things (i think you could write 3000 words on a grocery store trip valentino took in 2003 and still make it super interesting reading)

i was reading your post about your favourite rivalries that didnt include one of the aliens, who would you personally include as part of that list? (versus who is really good but not quite alien status) id also really like to know if (and who) youd count as aliens from the pre-motogp era, and if theres been a difference over time about how often we are seeing aliens or if theyre easier/harder to spot as technical developments have sped up

hope you have a great day!

that's so sweet... thank you that's such an incredible compliment dsdkhfkhfd

about the aliens, the way I use the term is entirely as a historical descriptor, not as a qualitative assessment of any riders. it's a useful shorthand for a specific riders in a specific era, but to me it has limited relevance outside of that era. so to be clear we're talking valentino, casey, dani, jorge and marc - and according to common wisdom this usage originated from colin edwards' 2009 comment:

“But as I’ve said before, I’ve got to be pleased to be finishing next best behind those four guys, or should I say aliens. “They are riding out of this world and to be right behind them means I’m doing the best job I can and that’s about as good as I can hope for at the moment.”

(jorge discusses valentino as an alien in 2007, see here. which might be complete coincidence, but has always made me kind of curious whether the word was floating around in the paddock in some capacity before edwards 'coined' the term)

the thing is, right, it made sense to treat those four (and later -casey +marc) as distinct from the field, because they were winning almost everything. one reason for this was that they were very good, very skilled riders. another was that from 2007-15, only four to six bikes were capable of regularly challenging for wins at any one time. it was a massive field disparity that quite frankly was partly enforced through machinery. that's why it makes sense to include marc in that term: it's not just the fact that he was very good, it's the fact that he was riding a repsol honda that was the best or second best bike by a long way for his first three years in the premier class. in 2016, motogp returned to michelins and introduced new technical regulations - and for all intents and purposes, the alien era ended. it ended when eight different riders won in eight races that season. yes, marc, valentino and jorge were still the top three in the championship... but it's the difference of whether you go into a weekend convinced you know the winner will come from a list of four riders, or if you very much do not know that. between 2008 to 2015, apart from the aliens, a grand total of two riders claimed wins - dovi on a repsol honda in 2009 and ben spies on a factory yamaha in 2011. both of those were wet races (which of course are generally more open than dry ones). so just to reiterate: a greater number of riders won in 2016 alone (9) than in 2008-15 combined (7). (in 2007, a further two different riders won races - capirossi on the championship-winning factory ducati and vermeulen on the suzuki.) yes, obviously the aliens were very good riders, nobody is going to argue with you over that... but those numbers? they're only possible in a specific version of motogp - one that only existed for a few years

honestly, I don't even really use the term 'alien' to describe valentino pre-2006 or marc post-2016. it's just not that useful to me... aliens to me is a 'pack hunter' thing, where even if some of them are injured or are having a bad day or whatever, at least one of them will basically always be there to pick up the pieces. marc and valentino might have dominated the sport as a whole - but not all of their championship seasons were completely dominant, and there's only so much any one athlete can dominate in the sport... you're not going into every single weekend thinking 'oh yeah they're definitely going to win' (yes, yes, there were two times per year where you did very much do that with marc). which is different when you compare it to the aliens as a pack, where you could be confident that ONE of them would end the weekend on the top step of the podium

which is why I just don't apply the alien term to anyone pre-valentino - it's not because I think they were less good or less talented or less anything, it's because for me it's a term that's more about an era than it is about individual riders. you have to treat each era on its own, and I'm not really a big fan of inter-era comparisons. it's just kind of impossible to say whether a rider in the 1970s is more talented than one in the 2020s, whether ago's numbers are more or less impressive than marc's and so on... the sport has just changed in so many ways over the years. of course, in sports you do generally have this upward momentum where each generation is 'better' than the last. sports has gotten more professionalised, there's been massive advances in terms of pedagogy and sports medicine and exercise science and all of those things - all of which already affects how athletes train from childhood onwards. the young aren't more 'talented' in the sense that they were born with an innate superior ability to compete at the sport, but they are more 'talented' in that their ultimate ceiling will be higher as a result of all these gradual changes over time. these things can change quite quickly even (and if other sports is anything to go by, I wouldn't be surprised if the nineties/early noughties brought some big changes in that regard) - so already between, for instance, valentino and marc there'd probably been a real shift in how young talent is being nurtured

(the most blunt illustration of this is that young valentino's lifestyle was completely different from that of young riders today, in terms of how much time he spent training in the gym, sleeping habits, nutrition etc etc. athletes now can't get away with that much deviation any more, and indeed valentino had to massively change his approach in the 2010s to remain competitive - but of course it's different if you haven't been doing this stuff since you were a kid. I think we can safely assume valentino's 2003 supermarket trips looked rather different from marc's 2017 ones)

being good in pro sports may in some ways be harder now than it was in, say, the eighties, and the level of competition you're facing might be higher now - but of course, it would also by extension be unfair to judge those athletes by the standards of today. also, different eras are going to lend themselves to different profiles of rider depending on competitive trends, type of machinery and so on - even very basic stuff like how tall you are might have helped you in a certain era and hindered you in another... so what does that mean for talent? if we're discussing 'talent' at all, how can we possibly treat it as anything other than relative to the era we're discussing? to me, it just makes these comparisons between different generations pretty pointless... or well, I like talking about some of this stuff in a more holistic 'isn't this interesting' kind of way, not a 'this is why xyz is better than xyz' approach... this kind of thing is also why I finds goat debate such a uniquely boring way to spend your time, incidentally

this is a very long way of saying, I don't have a metric by which I judge athletes pre-2000 as 'alien' or 'not alien'! I think you have similarly dominant athletes, though again it is so tough to decide how much of that is down to talent and how much of it is down to bike advantage. if you take doohan's title winning seasons for instance:

yeah, look, sure, you can call him an alien as far as I'm concerned - if I'm watching these races live I will be expecting doohan to win in any given weekend. I'm still kind of missing the pack hunter feel in some of these seasons, so I won't know for certain the winner is going to come from a very short list. like take 1998:

not really one group vs the field, is it? and yeah, even if I consider doohan an 'alien' in some of those seasons, I'm still not going to call him that - because the term was essentially coined in 2009 for a specific group of guys that one other guy was later added onto. the competitive landscape and demands of doohan's era were so different that it feels off to try and go back and label him or any other past riders aliens... they were phenomenally talented, yes, they were great champions, yes, they can be called as good as the aliens, sure - but why wrench the term out of its historical context? is it still an analytically useful concept if you do so, except as a way to generically refer to a rider as 'very talented'?

which is also why I personally don't describe anyone since then as an alien. this doesn't mean I don't think fabio or now pedro aren't as good as those guys were, I just don't think they've been given the opportunity to have that kind of hold over the sport. fabio won five out of eighteen races in 2021 - and he did so on a yamaha that basically only he was able to consistently get a high level of performance out of. which is deeply impressive - but unlike say casey in 2007, he didn't have those other riders to dominate all the other races. eight riders won a race that season! it's just a fundamentally different competitive landscape. personally, I'd be perfectly content if we don't get another alien era. of course 2007-15 isn't all bad, but for good reason most fans' most fondly remembered eras are either 2001-06 or 2017-19... yes, at times one rider was too dominant, but it still felt like more riders had a shot at victory - and most importantly the quality of the racing was generally very high. this kind of domination by a few mega talents on the best machinery can get drab pretty quickly (though of course a lot of the blame for decreased race quality needs to be assigned to the 800cc era 2007-11, not to any of the aliens themselves)

I'd be quite happy to retire the term alien going forwards... except as a useful shorthand for a specific group of guys who have mostly retired. it shouldn't be used as a way to bash the young stars, as if they just can't measure up to the legends of the past. which would be dumb! again, plenty of ways in which motogp is harder now than it ever has been, though the most important thing is that it's just... different. not better, not worse, just different. sure, maybe we'll get another equivalent to the alien era, even though I personally think it's quite unlikely. if it happens, yeah, let's discuss cranking the term out again (and, yes, if you look at the current season and ignore sprints... if this current trend continues then we can have the debate at the end of the season. pecco and jorge despite all their apparent inconsistencies are currently building a pretty solid case for themselves) (now I've said that they're both gonna crash out of assen huh)

that being said! I don't exactly neatly follow this principle myself, because sometimes I do use something like the term 'alien-like talent' to refer to fabio or pedro... obviously, you can argue this is basically the same as calling them aliens in everything but semantics. so what's the criteria there? when do I use this term? I think to me it's just... instant, 'in your face' talent. they arrive to the premier class and they shine basically immediately. valentino got a relatively sedate start to the premier class by alien standards - which is fitting, because he's not really about that blistering raw pace. still, he wasn't far from being a rookie champion, got ten podiums, two wins... not too bad. casey was on a satellite team, but he got pole in his second ever race and came painfully close to winning his third. dani got a podium on debut and fought for the championship for almost the entire season. jorge got pole in his first three races and won his third. marc won the second time out and of course secured the title in his rookie season. compare that to fabio - pole in his fourth ever race on satellite machinery, fighting for wins in his first season. pedro got a podium in his second ever race and is handily outperforming everyone else on that bike

so it's about how quickly these guys pick this stuff up, how quickly they make that step from one level to another - though again, it's important to stress you can't just neatly compare these achievements! valentino's first two seasons were on 500cc bikes, which were notorious for being kind of evil. some of these riders started on satellite bikes (we're not counting valentino here), and there's also plenty of talk about how the bikes have become more complicated to ride now, making pedro's rapid adjustment even more impressive. but in every case, there is just this ability to 'be fast immediately', whatever the circumstances... and it's worth pointing out that even though pecco had a mediocre rookie season, he was incredibly quick in 2019 pre-season testing. jorge martin secured his first pole position and podium at his second race in motogp

speaking of, those two were already a touch older when they joined the premier class. there does generally seem to be something to the idea that in motorcycle racing, if you are not already very fast at a certain age, you will have a quite definitive ceiling... and from valentino onwards, the age by which you need to already have reached that standard of 'very good' seems to have gone down. when we're talking about talent and throwing around the term alien, this feels like another important change to mention - doohan was not winning his titles as a 22 year old! neither was rainey! or schwantz! or lawson! or... actually spencer was very young, yeah. but I think you get the point. I cannot tell you definitively why this changed, but it clearly has changed. in the 21st century, only two riders have won titles when they were older than 26: valentino (29-30) and jorge (28). valentino and marc were both 27 when their dominance over the sport ended (even if valentino secured titles after that point and marc will very probably do so as well). casey was 27 when he retired. (fun fact: pecco bagnaia is currently 27 years old.) so overall it's pretty rare in grand prix motorcycle racing to operate at the top of the premier class for more than a certain number of years - but the precise age window in which you are likely to be at your best does seem to have shifted pretty radically this century. which should demonstrate how hard these things are to compare... like I said, talent is often assessed by how quickly you are good at something - but if we called mick doohan a late bloomer, it would be wildly ahistorical

and yeah, look, this idea of 'you have to be good young or you will have a certain ceiling' is hardly unique to motogp, lots of sports are like that... another measure of this precocity that's perhaps more useful than just 'age' is looking how long it took them to win a title from when they joined the premier class (if they did so at all, of course). it's generally very fast! marc year one, valentino, casey and joan year two, jorge and fabio year three... and, well, pecco and hayden year four. of course, there's exceptions to this 'be fast immediately' rule - athletes who ended up being very good and title contenders who had slightly different paths getting there. the sete's and dovi's of this world - and to a lesser extent hayden too, who unlike those two was only even really a title contender in a single season... but generally speaking, those riders seem more heavily reliant on circumstances playing out just right to have a shot at a title

or perhaps! perhaps it's going to change! especially if you look at repeat champions, pecco does become a bit of an outlier in how he got there this century, doesn't he? compare the numbers he was posting in his rookie season vs valentino, casey, jorge and marc. and in some ways, you can extend this even further and say he's a massive historical outlier in terms of any premier class champions. there was an article about this in late 2022:

and some more about how historically unusual he is:

isn't that great? you don't become premier class champion with that kind of a rookie season, but pecco did! hey, aleix was a serious title threat in that season, which is a far more remarkable story still! and the thing is, right, if you're studying the current era and are labelling some riders aliens but leaving out pecco... then no offence but what's the point? look, who knows, maybe marc and pedro and david alonso are going to dominate the next twenty titles and pecco will have been a weird blip. but isn't there something fun about believing that a bunch of different riders could eventually develop into title threats? wouldn't it be kind of cool if you don't have to just write someone off age 22 any more? I don't know, I think it's a neat development! I hope it sticks around! there'll be plenty of alien-level talents in the future, but personally I wouldn't mind at all if there were no more aliens

[reblog-house]

If someone were to ask me how I think ITP fits into the games or books, I'd say:

The games are canon to ITP. The books are canon to ITP. ITP is canon to neither.

Or well, more like all the major events of the books AND the games happen in Into The Pit, but the details (anything that's not the main events) is where it changes (evidence: if ITP game is canon to the books, then the ITP story cannot be, since they're pretty fucking different, and that wouldn't make sense).

This means to me that this game takes from both sources of INSPIRATION, but cannot be used to reshape our understanding of either, just using the others to shape our understanding of this stand-alone-ish game.

And if anything, the game should be far more self-contained than any of the other installations in the franchise. Anything that can be explained using ONLY the information from this one game is always going to be more compelling to me than anything that comes from other places in the franchise.

Unless very direct information comes out and explicitly "proves" it's fully 100% canon to the mainline FNAF games, I will consider it as canon to them as Freddy in Space. All while accepting that both the games and books can be semi-canon to it.

[tennessoui]

T&t Anakin being a little bitch right now lol. He is throwing such a tantrum. Fuck ahsoka! Fuck his troops! Fuck the ppl that rely on him! ONE person made him upset so he's gonna fuck off forever. You've really mastered his personality. He certainly would blow everything up over one person (rots cough cough)

(2/2) I don't know why but I genuinely thought before this chapter that Anakin was actually going to think about his actions and what he was doing. From your tidbits I knew he decided to leave and I've no idea why I was under the impression it was a decision that Anakin had poured over and given the correct amount of contemplation. Like maybe he thinks he's not fit to be a Jedi because he'd chosen the path of revenge? Nope! He just wants to hurt Obi-Wan in the meanest way possible! Man-child Anakin activated!

oo ho ho this is such an interesting ask/reaction!! one of the reasons i really liked writing this last chapter is because anakin is just absolutely spiraling apart and as much as he can admit to himself that he feels betrayed and lost and empty and burning with rage, he also doesn't take the next step to admit that maybe any decisions he makes right now aren't going to be of sound mind and any new information he learns is going to be processed through that lens of anger and betrayal

i think him leaving the order can be put down to him having lost trust in obi-wan - and obi-wan is the order for him, obi-wan represents the entire order. there's no way he feels like he can stay because obi-wan deceived him and obi-wan chose to put the order above anakin ("when did anakin become less than his utmost important thing?") - and he is angry and he wants to hurt obi-wan ("i want to see his eyes when i tell him it's because of him") but he's also at least a little bit afraid of what he's capable of doing right now - more than representing the order, obi-wan was like the center of his entire world ("what do planets orbit when their sun implodes? nothing. they burn too.") and now he has no center at all because he's that mad at obi-wan. not even just for lying, but i think because the lie proves to him that he's never been loved by the person he has loved the most.

i really like examining the way anakin loves through fics like these and this one in particular because i think it's so....honestly, like. wild crazy. he's so consumed by rage that he was lied to and hurt by his one true love, obi-wan, that he can't see the bigger picture when master windu and master yoda immediately can put aside their emotions and think of what it means for the chancellor that obi-wan will not be undercover as hardeen to protect him ("we are at war, Anakin! This is bigger than your individual feelings of the matter.") and thats true!! they are not in any way wrong but anakin doesnt have the capability of ever seeing the situation like this because he loved obi-wan too much, was too attached, can't let go of what he feels for him--be it anger or love--for even a moment to consider the bigger picture

which he's never been able to do in this fic. i mean i think this is almost the natural conclusion to the tantrum anakin had at the very beginning of the fic where he went back to the past in the first place, though i wouldn't necessarily call that a tantrum.

except then he worked through his grief and pain and anger in the past, with the help of young obi-wan, and came back....but now he is filled with grief and pain and anger and he has to go away again to deal with it because the support system he learned to lean on when obi-wan died (the order and obi-wan) can no longer be trusted because obi-wan can no longer be trusted and the entire order is now to be held in suspicion

tldr the premise of the fic is really that he threw a tantrum and ran away from all his responsibilities like ahsoka and his men and the war; he's just doing it again but the target of his grief and rage have changed slightly and his methods of running away are different but this is all very influenced by my understanding of anakin's character and his capacity to accidentally and purposefully hurt those he loves

[unopenablebox]

ugh i'm trying not to be a dick to my mom, who suffers enough. but i cannot believe she's decided to go in on "desecrating flags is a bad look for anyone" re: the student protests like a) that's obviously not the principle you're actually using to decide who and what to criticize here b) it's not desecrating a flag to take it down and replace it with another flag c) every time my parents say shit like this it makes me feel like maybe i alone retain memories of my family's beliefs and experiences during the bush administration, which is bad because i was like six at the time

[gingerbreadmonsters]

organ music + writing about vampires is a classic for a reason

[icterid-rubus]

I agreed to meet up with someone for dinner and I just found out the whole polycule is coming.

[wall-maria-around-ba-sing-se]

every time a thread in the avatar sub devolves into a circular discussion about how the next avatar MUST spend their journey backtracking over the past lives connection just because they don’t like change the next avatar’s release date gets pushed back by 1 day

[coquelicoq]

i just saw someone say that "the vast majority of the userbase is complaining" about tumblr's recent layout change. i see this a lot after a change: people complaining about it (sometimes without saying what about it is bad, making it sound like either it's self-evident (it usually is not) or just that it's bad because it's change and change is always bad) and saying that everyone else is complaining about it too. i don't know how to tell you this but a) you don't follow every user on tumblr so how can you possibly know what "everyone" or "the majority of users" thinks about anything and b) ONLY THE PEOPLE WHO FEEL VERY STRONGLY ARE TALKING ABOUT IT!! people who are not bothered are not spending time posting about how unbothered they are! please look up "selection bias" and stop making me read this nonsense with my own eyeballs.

[fellhellion]

Ngl, I’m not entirely sure where the “Miguel and Hobie hate each other” reading comes from, when from their like. One interaction i don’t personally get the impression they think much about each other at all shdhdjfjf

Miguel seems kind of exasperated with Hobie sure, but the tone of that interaction is relatively lighthearted. It’s more of a joke that by virtue of Miguel being a stringent rule follower, Hobie not caring overly much about those rules exasperates him. And Hobie knows it annoys Miguel and thinks that’s funny, thus prodding him again with the “I’m not even here/nah still here” routine. But there doesn’t seem to be like, genuine personal anger on either side. Just an ideological divide that actualises even further when Miles’ very existence provides another answer to the overhanging stakes.

[thegirlisuedtobe]

Hi there! First thank you always for translating the Rebecca interviews they are really fun and interesting to read. Seeing some of your comments you made about the Korean Dannys views on romance/homosexuality I was curious. When I first read the novel which was a long time ago, my interpretation of Danny and Rebecca’s relationship was 50/50 maybe really lovers but could also just be some type of non-romantic attachment. After watching the Korean production I feel that there’s a stronger implication of them being lovers. Some Rebecca fandom friends that I know are on the skeptical side I guess about them being real lovers so this is a topic that interests me. I was curious do you think you would’ve still thought of Danny and Rebecca as lovers if it wasn’t for the Korean production/Ock Joohyun? Really wanted to know your thoughts about that! Actlly I want to think of them as lovers but like if asked to defend why I think they’re lovers I’m not sure I’d personally be able support my view properly with evidence or anything since I’m not the good at analysis type etc haha. I hope this makes sense? Thx

Tbh it's kind of hard to say I feel that way 100% with no bias but,,,

(lol under the read more bc i ended up rambling)

Actually, the way I got into Rebecca was I discovered joo hyuns performance > i read the wiki > i watched a subtitled version of the german performance > I watched the Korean production > then I read the book > then I translated the Korean script further and read interviews.

Joo Hyun's performance was only just her singing the Rebecca long reprise at the top of act two, it wasn't really a song that incredibly showcased her interpretation or feelings towards the dynamic between rebecca and danny. when I read the wiki I was already thinking danny and rebecca sounded gay as hell and even watching the albeit reserved german production i felt like the specific situation that danny was found it alluded to that lover dynamic. like im a lesbian LOL so I kind of immediately went hey theres another lesbian right there. When it came to how maxim talked about rebecca it only further cemented in my mind that rebecca was also a lesbian. so like even from the german production, i felt that rebecca and danny were lesbians and had something together. now whether that something was balanced is another story, but i deff in my heart knew that they were some kind of secret lovers.

i don;t think in my mind that i ever had any doubt that rebecca and danny had some kind of more than mistress and servant relationship, and i dont think that i ever doubted that it was ever one sided. idk i just felt it in my gut. But i also moved on from the german production quite quickly when i got a copy of the rebecca production. that initial feeling of theyre lesbians really bloomed into oh they really loved each other when i got to the korean production and joo hyunie was pulling out all the stops. like the way she was acting,,, there was this palpable sense of love, the kind of love that felt equal. i've also talked about this before in one of my review essays (on my writing blog) but i think the contrast of her age against the older german dannys did a lot of work to bring that love closer to "lovers" and a more balanced dynamic imo.

i remember talking to a german rebecca fan and they talked a lot about doing a lot of contextualising and rationalising, trying to bend the script into a way that danny and rebecca were something in a mutual sense. i remember being really confused about that. like they had to put a lot of mental energy into rationalising that they were "mutual lovers" whereas it felt innate to me that they were.

Re: the age contrast. When I finally got to reading the book as well, in my mind i thought danny and rebecca grew up together as children (the line where danny has been with rebecca since she was young). also please note that i'm asian so like cultural aspects of rebecca flew over my head at times, but when i read it thats what i thought that line meant. but i talked to a european rebecca friend of mine and they said danny is referred to as governess and usually theyd be at least like 20 so when danny says she was with rebecca since childhood she meant in an overseeing kind of way; child and carer relationship. me not knowing that cultural thing impacted the balance i saw in their relationship which is why its also interesting that a lot of the korean dannys felt the same way i felt.

i haven't read the korean translation of rebecca so i dont know how they translate that cultural aspect/line but joo hyun, shin young sook, jang eun ah and kim sun young as i have just discovered all thought that danny grew up with rebecca. that her mother was rebecca's nanny and because of their close proximity grew up together. even before reading the interviews where these dannys said that, i also thought that was the case. so maybe its a culture thing?

but because of that, the relationship felt balanced enough that i felt like it was mutual. compounded by the more emotive ways that joo hyunie was expressing just how much she loved rebecca, it felt like a no brainer to me that they loved each other exclusively. sure rebecca was out and about having sex, but it wasnt sex out of love, it felt like sex out of fun or a habitual need, it felt like it meant entirely nothing to her. ergo her "love" (the kind beyond just physical sex) was only for danny. ive always felt very certain of that.

i think your feeling of not being able to defend danny and rebecca mutual relationship is understandable. there's so much ambiguity in the original text that its difficult to say that this thing points directly to this, or lots of lines could mean different things to different people. i'm always the opinion of rebecca is a mirror and depending on what themes or ideas or messages that u pick up, it's really just a reflection of what u want to see most. now whether i agree with another person's image of rebecca through that mirror is an entirely differnt matter, but i can't help but feel that way with danny and rebecca. its like,,, all i can say is, have you looked at them?? dont they seem that way to you??

lol im sure if i put my head into it i could make an essay to "prove" that theyre in a mutual relationship, and i know theres plently of evidence that i could pick out, but the gut feeling has been there from the start!

[teaandinanity]

Man sometimes you see something on your dash and you're like 'ah okay there will be a response somewhere' but no. No they actually think this is a good take and now you have to unfollow about it.