#i have not seen midsommar

[how-good-day]

midsommar! Truman

[burning-sol]

me typing a post abt gaslighting and then deleting it because i think "surely no one wants to hear this" but also of course no one wants to hear it, nobody REALISES they need to hear it. here's a quick and informal PSA.

I'm telling you, if your perception of gaslighting is that of exaggerated arguments where one person is clearly wrong and where all context has been stripped away, that is not what it's like from my experience. We really need to talk about gaslighting as more than just a joke, because once I saw what was most likely a REAL case of gaslighting being downplayed by people who didn't realise they were using the EXACT language that's symptomatic of a real story and also that PERPETUATES the abuse.

The biggest thing people tend to leave out is context. Gaslighting happens between the victim and a person who they hold in regard, someone they've known for a while and love. By the time gaslighting starts to occur or is noticed, you're likely in a position where you're trying to take the other in good faith and characterise their behaviour as honest mistakes. Victims don't necessarily BELIEVE the lies are reality, in fact, it's more likely you tend to just shrug it off and drop it because you value the person above disagreements.

And next is the scaling. By the time you get to any disagreements where someone is outright saying that you're crazy or denying that abusive events happen, you are deep in the process of being gaslit. But how it starts out is that you'll have disagreements recalling smaller things whether it be what your favourite flavour of icecream is, whether they had already told you something you're sure you've heard before, slightly altering history in ways that aren't that far off but still feel wrong, explaining your feelings of uncertainty back to you in ways that COULD be plausible... When you try to explain these disagreements, it can feel humiliating or like the longer you talk about it the more wrong you start to feel and that you're sure that you're just being overly critical...

This ties back into what I said about the language that is symptomatic of real gaslighting stories. The story I read had people say the person wasn't being gaslit because, "it was just over video games?" "your friend sounds like they're just misremembering" "you seem kind of petty"... While yes, it is normal for disagreements and mistakes to happen, they shouldn't be happening to the extent that you're noticing a pattern. If it's a persistent issue in which you're starting to feel insecure and like an unreliable narrator, that is a BAD sign. It also shouldn't be entirely one sided - if you find you're the one consistently having to compromise their reality to satisfy the other, that is ALSO a bad sign.

And it's really important that, again, this is how it may just start. All these smaller things wear you down until you either start to believe the other or you're too demoralised to argue anymore, and the other may continue to escalate UNTIL the arguments become more stereotypical portrayals of gaslighting - and the person may even start to introduce other forms of abuse into the relationship. The period of "trivial" disagreements isolate the victim, especially when they go to their friends for support and their friends downplay the emotions they're feeling, resulting in the victim pulling away when they start to think their issues aren't worth bringing up.

You really just have to experience it for yourself to have tried to communicate you were being gaslit and had your issues shrugged off, to know how awful it feels when you finally get out of that abusive relationship and the people around you will say they, "didn't even know that was happening".

Like, I admit, I do find gaslighting jokes funny. They make me go heehee. But it is very very bad that we aren't actually teaching people what gaslighting realistically looks like, because you're usually only seeing the later stages of gaslighting and not all the smaller things that built up to that! You're not actually catching the signs when it's most critical to be getting out of the relationship.

But yeah. There's my rant.

[scorndotexe]

"i'm so glad ari aster didn't go to therapy and wrote midsommar instead." "emerald fennell is a sick woman i dont know what's in her mind but i never want to go there. watching saltburn is enough." not one of these kinds of people would survive five minutes with me

[la-granoteta]

Sometimes I don't understand how Midsommar is a comfort movie for me... But it is.

[novelist-becca]

Films I will 100% avoid (and recommend others do as well) thanks to the stupid dark web rabbit hole

Slaughter vomit dolls (as well as other films in that stupid fucking trilogy)

The bunny game

Serbian film

Where the dead go to die

Tumbling flesh doll

Girl hell 1999

Human centipede

[quaalussy]

finally got over my aversion to horror and ive been DEVOURING years n years worth of movies i missed out on give me recs pls :3

[libraryleopard]

i went to a book club on bloom by delilah s. dawson over the weekend and it did kinda turn into a lengthy discussion about whether the story was an accurate representation of sapphic dating (by which i mean people started detailing their past relationships in comparison lol) which means i didn't get to share my personal vision of florence pugh as ash but anyone i'm correct in this fancast so i'm sharing it here

[insideyourimagination]

you know what it is…it’s the fact that will has been open about having OCD, anxiety, depression, dyspraxia and having su*c*d*l thoughts that i admire so much. being diagnosed with a learning disability (dyscalculia) and having depression & anxiety and dealing with su*c*d*l thoughts myself, it just makes me feel so seen.

[abigail]

ari aster make a movie that doesn’t give me a panic/anxiety attack challenge

[apyschopathicfangirl]

uh babe wake up new fear just dropped thanks to the curse finale

[spurgie-cousin]

bathtub

[punkrockisafulltimejob]

Also, I made a realization today. Today was the first time EVER where I have officially been too stoned to watch a horror film

[cxldblxxded]

GET TO KNOW ME: TOP 10 MOVIES.

━━━ list your top 10 favorite movies and tag friends to do the same

the thing (dir. john carpenter, 1982): "i dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is."

aliens (dir. james cameron, 1986): "get away from her, you bitch!"

the lost boys (dir. joel schumacher, 1987): "my own brother, a goddamn, shit-sucking vampire! oh, you wait 'til mom finds out, buddy!"

terminator 2: judgement day (dir. james cameron, 1991): "watching john with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. the terminator would never stop. it would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. it would always be there. and it would die to protect him. of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. in an insane world, it was the sanest choice."

28 days later (dir. danny boyle, 2003): "that was longer than a heartbeat."

shaun of the dead (dir. edgar wright, 2004): "don't groan at me, you thick fuck!"

bee movie (dir. simon j. smith & steve hickner, 2007): "are you her little... bed bug...?"

jennifer's body (dir. karyn kusama, 2009): "you're killing people!" "no, i'm killing boys."

megamind (dir. tom mcgrath, 2010): "oh, you're a villain alright, just not a super one." "yeah? what's the difference?" "presentation!"

midsommar (dir. ari aster, 2019): "dani, do you feel held by him? does he feel like home to you?"

tagged by: @fangmother

tagging: @mystiika and YOU

[who-gives-af]

thought: a horror movie set in the victorian era where they have to survive through something like in the ritual or the blair witch project. may write something and see if it even seems good but like. idk the thought of a bunch of victorian women slugging their way through the wilderness and getting caught in some sort of supernatural thing they cannot and will not understand is truly doing it for me. also would def include wlw rep bc i said so

[ooglywooglies]

have been meaning to make my husband watch ari aster movies bc i like them and he likes to have interesting movies to talk about but hes scared of scary uncomfortable movies and hes like "i know i can suck it up when its actually on" and like, ive always thought id show him hereditary and midsommar but not beau is afraid as much as i enjoyed the experience of watching it mostly because, while its not as disturbing as the other ones its very long

and like, i downloaded them all bc we had a conversation about it and it hyped me up so, i was reminded beau is afraid is not long because its 2 hours long, its not long because its 2 and a half hours long, its long because its THREE hours long...

[bloodmoths-archive]

me after watching meeptop's I Was Wrong About Midsommar