#like i am not an expert on the matter but

[eventhoughthestarisgone]

every time someone assumes that sonic and shadow hate each other a faerie dies

[youreanerdharvey]

Get regretted, elevator

[01tsubomi]

cultural perspective being indispensible in media consumption but looking back i find it so funny that for years and years before teaching in japan i thought it was another suspension-of-disbelief surrealist kagepro thing that haruka and takane spent all their time in a homeroom class for just the two of them and now the maximum number of kids we've ever had in my special needs class is 3

[m00n-pr1sm]

Amy Dunne Character Analysis

Disclaimer

This analysis will be of Amy’s character from both the book and the movie, although the 2014 movie adaption takes greater precedence with only some additional details and quotes included from the book as it does delve deeper into Amy’s psyche and add further characterization. Thus some traits may be accentuated further than they are in the movie, not being completely faithful to either story. It’s an analysis of Amy in her totality across mediums, of course being entirely my opinion. There are of course adaptational differences but I will not include the major ones from the books (ex. her relationship with Hillary Hand). This is an analysis focusing primarily on Amy’s neuroses she demonstrates and the childhood links to them, it doesn’t cover in-depth the events nor themes of Gone Girl.

Amy Elliott Dunne, the ever enigmatic dual protagonist- antagonist of Gone Girl is one of the most iconic female villains in modern memory, and one of the paragons of the “good for her” trope in media, is, frankly, one of my favorite characters of all time. As such I have been dying to write a full analysis examining her neuroses and characterization. Beneath the cultural perception of just another “crazy psycho” for girls to claim “she did no wrong” or “she just like me fr!”, lies a fascinating character who is masterfully written and developed by Gillian Flynn, as well as perfectly portrayed by Rosamund Pike. Amy Dunne is a character with a deep, complex psychology that I will do my best to thoroughly explore in this analysis.

From Amy’s childhood we first see the emergence of a literal high ego ideal, Amazing Amy. Of course this is the children’s book series created by her parents with a fictionalized version of Amy being the eponymous protagonist. This was a version of herself that rectified her own personal failures. Amazing Amy became a prodigy at cello, when Amy quit at 10, Amazing Amy made varsity volleyball, Amy got cut freshman year. Even in the (at time) final book in the series, Amazing Amy got married, a task Amy had not yet done. The entire book series revolved around Amy always making the most virtuous, the most selfless, the most perfect decisions.

>”With me, regular, flawed, real Amy, jealous, as always, of the golden child.”

An interesting detail in the book that is omitted from the movie is Marybeth’s numerous miscarriages and stillbirths (which totaled 7). All of these girls were named Hope, until Amy was born. Amy expresses her jealousy towards them, as they were always seen as perfect without ever living; meanwhile Amy herself has to live life everyday knowing that she will never truly live up to the Hopes. That she has to try everyday to be the best she can be. Her very birth was mired in the expectation of a perfect child; given that she was practically a gift from the heavens to her parents.

This sets up Amy’s perfectionism, as the childhood experience of never living up to a projected ideal led her to want to be perfect (and as we’ll later see, the expectation that everyone else is too), to live life always through the gaze of another. Evidently this leads to a loss of one’s inner essence, one’s individuality and sense of self.

>“-I’d never really felt like a person, because I was always a product” (Book Quote)

Amy’s obsession with personas can be seen as emerging from this, as she adapts a personality depending on who she’s interacting with, as to always be the most appealing she can, she is Amazing Amy after all.

>”I’m not sure, exactly, how to be Dead Amy. I’m trying to figure out what that means for me, what I become for the next few months. Anyone, I suppose, except people I’ve already been: Amazing Amy. Preppy ’80s Girl. Ultimate-Frisbee Granola and Blushing Ingenue and Witty Hepburnian Sophisticate. Brainy Ironic Girl and Boho Babe (the latest version of Frisbee Granola). Cool Girl and Loved Wife and Unloved Wife and Vengeful Scorned Wife. Diary Amy.” (Book Quote)

This general attitude leads to people trying to impress her as she places herself as someone special and especially someone to keep around. She entices both the characters and viewers of the film through her manufactured charisma and enchantment. However, we’ll see this dramatically backfire in her relationship with Nick, just you wait!

For now we can focus on the beginning of their relationship as well as what I believe to be Amy’s view on romance.

I believe that Amy has an impossibly high standard of love, one that stems from her perfectionism and general inability to let down her guise of being amazing. Not to mention how her parents were a perfect match, Amy even referring to them as soul-mates.

>”They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish—expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces liquidly. Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing.” (Book Quote)

In her childhood it’s implied that she was into romance novels, specifically Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which obviously contributes to the idealization of romance, of a literal scripted love.

>”You were an alienated teen and only Elizabeth Bennet understood you”

I think this little quote is incredibly indicative; it establishes a sense of alienation, of Amy never quite fitting in and blending with others.

>”So many lessons and opportunities and advantages, and they never taught me how to be happy. I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that too, but I wouldn’t understand why. I would sit there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun.” (Book Quote)

Back to the topic of romance, through these stories it allowed her to imagine her perfect romance: if Amy could find that one person that truly understood her, beyond the illusion, that then would constitute a perfect union of love. She does deep down (whether consciously or not) want to be loved for who she is; not the idealized, palatable, literal marketed version of herself. Thus she holds trust as a premium, expecting that if she does the Herculean task of unspooling and revealing herself to another, that the other person would love her no matter what.

>”Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?” (Book Quote)

However all of this culminates in an impossibly high standard of a lover, of a practically divine mythical love; where one loves totally and absolutely. Of course where this neurosis is most demonstrated is in Nick and Amy’s relationship.

Amy comments that after meeting Nick she finally felt like a person as he brought out a side of herself that hadn’t been seen, in her own words “a lightness and an ease”, something that Amy enjoyed. In her eyes they had the perfect relationship in the beginning, Nick was her compliment with the witty banter, with their inside jokes, and charm.

However this doesn’t just vanquish her childhood neuroses, through her desire to be seen as perfect, she modifies herself to be a “cool girl” for Nick, complying endlessly to standards to maintain this perception.

>” When I met Nick Dunne, I knew he wanted a cool girl and for him, I’ll admit, I was willing to try.”

Amy essentially became Nick’s image of a perfect girl, witty, fun, and most of all easy-going and forgiving.

Yet one cannot live forever in images and ideas; and as such, the real, true Amy emerged. The Amy that cares too much, that’s hard to get along with, that is a controlling perfectionist. She also tests Nick through the treasure hunts, weaving in little details about their relationship as to challenge Nick and hope that he remembers the things they do together as deeply as she does. Combined with the 2008 recession and declining health of Nick’s mother (the consequences of which will be explored later). As well as Nick’s growing dissatisfaction in the relationship (evidenced by his worsening performances in the treasure hunts, the cheating, using her for sex and ignoring her otherwise, etc). The illusion both Nick and Amy were living in crumbled; they couldn’t possibly sustain their relationship as they were both striving to fulfill reciprocating images for the other.

One of the biggest parts of her character is Amy’s elitism and entitlement, in which she thinks of herself as someone superior, someone that deserves to be loved absolutely for who she is, although only to people she considers worthy.

>”She’s easy to like. I’ve never understood why that’s considered a compliment—that just anyone could like you.” (Book Quote)

Once again this stems from her childhood, in a seemingly contradictory way, she also sees herself as special for being the one that survived from her mother’s attempts, as well as the fact that her birth was so tumultuous that she would be an only child. From this also stems her entitlement for love.

Amy actively looks down upon women she considers “average”, whom she sees as coming from mediocrity and continuously perpetuating that in their lives. She scoffs at them with her wealthy parents and NYC background until her marriage with Nick crumbles. Only then does she realize that she’s become the very woman she would previously disdain. A woman with a failing marriage, the loss of her previous wealth following the recession, and moving to a failed development in Missouri (What the hell’s in Missouri?) for Nick’s mother.

I truly believe this, combined with Nick’s infidelity, and most importantly the loss of her idyllic love culminated in the iconic Gone Girl plan.

>”Nick took and took from me until I no longer existed, that’s murder. Let the punishment fit the crime”.

Nick took Amy’s identity, her sense of self that she so generously revealed to him and rejected her. Implying that she would only be loved if played the role of the “cool girl”; stripping her of who she really was, losing herself in yet another persona. Although Amy admits she doesn’t really have a personality and lives through personas, she still has a semblance of self that she holds dear.

>”-made me realize that there was a Real Amy in there, and she was so much better, more interesting and complicated and challenging, than Cool Amy”. (Book Quote)

Worse yet, Nick had cheated on her with a “newer, younger, bouncer Cool Girl”, leaving Amy in the dust, surely damaging her pride.

But Amy truly fell in love with her idealized version of Nick, believing that she was responsible for shaping that version of Nick. That she deserved that man in his entirety, of course what gets Amy to come back to Nick is the Sharon Scheiber interview, in which he promises to make up with Amy in just the way that makes her think that Nick is the one person who gets her. He makes the little references to their inside jokes (2 fingers on the chin when they’re not bullshitting the other) and a reference to the end of the treasure hunt (always a contentious issue in their relationship). She’s reminded of who he was, that he was once perfect for her, who else could know how to appeal to her heart in just the right way? With the same passion and conviction she reverses the judgment on Nick, clawing her way back to him. She does so in an especially brutal manner, slashing Desi’s throat with a boxcutter right after he climaxes. Putting aside my enormous personal bias against Desi, he was technically an innocent man, taking a great risk in sheltering Amy. However it’s clear that Amy sees him as merely an asset and something to be disposed of once he serves his value, as another prop in her ever evolving masterplan; she did string him along for years through their letter correspondences. He was just another casualty in Amy’s search for idyllic love. She comes back dramatically, literally falling into Nick’s arms while still covered in Desi’s blood like a dress; fabricating an elaborate story about a love obsessed former boyfriend kidnapping and violating her. Despite the glaring holes in her whole story (If Amy’s marriage was as bad as she made it out to be, why did she go back to Nick so easily? How did she get access to a knife and kill him so seamlessly? Why didn’t Amy do anything when she discovered the stuff in Margo’s shed? etc), law enforcement, media, and the public all fully believe it, infatuated with the persona and narrative that Amy’s created for herself. In the end she traps Nick into the marriage and eventually, the family. The last shot of the film is a haunting recall to the beginning shot of the film, as Amy has both revealed and secured herself to be the master of the narrative, finally obtaining her perfect love, no matter what the cost may have been.

Conclusion

Through a constant demand in Amy’s childhood emerges a need for perfection, simultaneously bringing about a sense of superiority and entitlement. The use of personas and façades facilitate this, painting Amy as the most amazing cool girl for whomever she’s performing for, to feed her need to be seen as perfect and desirable. Yet there emerges a psychological detachment from others; as the need to perform inevitably leads to an internal hollowness. However underneath all these layers there also lies the true Amy who has the deep unconscious desire of wanting to be loved absolutely, to have a perfect union of love where she can reveal herself fully and be loved for who she is truly.

>disclaimer for tumblr lol, this is not me trying to claim Amy was innocent I am fully aware that she’s a terribly entitled and narcissistic person but she can still be complex and have relatable desires & be a person even if she’s massively fucked up!!

[hylianengineer]

I continue to be in awe by the power granted to me by having learned to read scientific papers.

[dracimexidae]

Jasmine in the draw with Aryna, Elena and Qinwen 💀

[picnokinesis]

hello taka,

I respect you very highly as a cherished mutual of mine. I’m on anon because I can’t trust people not to misconstrue me and paint me as something I’m not. I just want to express concern over your reblog of South Africa—people conflate the situation with them and with Israel in dangerous ways. the key difference is that the Hamas-run government’s mission is to kill all Jews and Israelis. This includes the Muslims and Christians living in Israel. They are not synonymous situations, because there has never been a precedent for what’s happening now. it is naive to think that there would be no risk to the Israeli citizens, because there is a genuine threat to all of their lives. I just wanted to share this with you because it is very painful to see misinformation like this being spread, and how it misrepresents the situation. You don’t have to respond to this; I am sympathetic to why you shared it. I am only sending this ask because I see that you care and I don’t want you to be misled.

Hi there!!

I actually really appreciate this ask, because it made me go and have a conversation with a good friend of mine who studies international conflict and relations, and has a much greater understanding of this sort of thing than I do. Which is gonna be the basis of my response here, but I just wanna clarify that I'm by no means an expert on any of this, or how this sort of situation can be resolved.

I think I get where you're coming from here! And actually, I fundamentally agree with you on a lot of things - you're right, there is a tendency right now for people to draw parallels between these other historical/current situations, which can lead to over-generalisation which isn't really helpful, as some things are a lot more complicated and less clear cut than others. And, also, every situation is unique. You're right - the solution to apartheid in South Africa, and the situation in Boliva are not the same as what's happening with Israel and Palestine. So saying these situations are exactly the same isn't helpful.

However - I do think you missed the point of that post. Or, at least, the point how I interpreted it. For example, I don't think that post was at all calling for a Hamas-led government - in fact, I don't think it mentioned Hamas at all? My initial reaction to your ask, I'll admit, was frustration, because it seems that every time people try and talk about what's happening in Gaza, people bring up Hamas, and whilst I know why, it comes back to the whole thing of like, if you're spending so much time explaining that, no, you don't agree with Hamas and you think the Oct 7th attack was wrong, then you are not talking about the bigger problem, which is that nothing that Hamas did could ever justify what the Israeli government is doing right now, or has been doing since 1948. I know that's not at all what you were saying, but it is really frustrating. I think you're right, I don't think there should be a Hamas-led government (thought, to be frank, it's not really my place to say who should or shouldn't be in charge). I don't know what the government of a free Palestine (presumably combined with Israel) would look like - and I know that building a democracy is very difficult and also dangerous. But we have to hope that it's possible to achieve something that would actually work, right? We have to believe that there can be a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live together, equally, and without fear, and without prejudice, for either side (and I personally think the risk is much greater for Palestinians not being treated equally, but at the same time I recognise what you are saying too). The fact is that historically, a multicultural Israel/Palestine has existed (albeit, Israel as the country state that we know it today didn't necessarily, but you get what I mean) - and so I think that post is a lot less about 'these situations are all the same and should be treated the exact same way, with the same solutions'. If it is about that, then I don't think it's correct. I think it's a lot more about solidarity, and the idea there have been all sorts of awful situations before, and that afterwards, when varying solutions were achieved, people were able to live side by side with each other. That it is possible.

That said though, I definitely didn't have all these thoughts in mind when reblogging that post - I just thought yeah I really agree with this! and reblogged it. So, I'll be honest, I didn't know or understand all of what you said here - so I'm really glad that it prompted me to go and talk to my friend and start looking more into things and learning more, which is never a bad thing. Because you're right, this is complicated. And it isn't black and white.

There isn't an easy solution to what's going on. And I'm not here to provide that solution anyway. But - I guess I come at this from a Disaster Management perspective, which makes sense since I studied that. And in Disaster Management, there's a thing very imaginatively named 'the Disaster Management Cycle', and basically it goes from prevention, preparation and mitigation > DISASTER > response, recovery, development, building back to a new normal where things are better, and cycle back into that initial prevention for future disasters. And so, when I'm thinking of response, I'm also thinking of what needs to come next - what comes after the ceasefire? What comes after the aid, the immediate relief? We've got to think about recovery and development, and what that new normal would look like. And I think, whilst I now see that making comparison the way that post did can cause harm in it's own way, I think that the core of it was that we want to work for a future in Palestine and Israel where there is no displacement of anyone, where people can return and have freedom of movement, where people are equal. And, sure, that isn't going to happen tomorrow, and it's not going to happen next week - because it takes time and it's extremely difficult. And I probably am naive - but we have to have hope, right? We've got to have something to aim for. We (or, rather, someone) has got to be able to sit down and say this is what we want a free Palestine to actually look like, and there will be things that are practical and things that will be idealistic, and things that will be a bit of both, but regardless...we gotta start somewhere.

And, of course, the worst part of this whole situation is that we're not there yet. We're not even in response. We're still in the disaster stage. And I think that is what we've got to be talking about the most at the moment because the situation is getting worse and worse, and I can go on about long term solutions all I like, but there are things that need to be done right now. And, unfortunately, neither you nor I have the power to snap our fingers and do that - but we do have the power to be as annoying as possible to the people who do. So, my friend - I have no idea which country you're in, but if you're in the UK or the USA or any country that's failed to back a ceasefire or has cut funding to UNRWA, and you haven't been annoying to your local official/rep/mp about it yet - give them hell. And then, when we're in the recovery stage, we can start talking about who should be in charge and making sure no one else ever gets killed or loses everything over all of this.

[deus-ex-mona]

[fromgwithablomg]

Interested in how (probably white american christian) society views Disney music as a paragon of purity to the point where it's the first and only mass media a child might consume for their first years of life, even if in practice it's much muddier than that

Which I bring up specifically bc I just shuffled a disney playlist my nibling likes to have on repeat and in the first ten minutes I heard both the creepy boa song from The Jungle Book and one from Brave where the clans are planning how to violently kill the bear Mor'du.

And obviously Disney movies (at least the old/renaissance films) are driven mostly by song and there will be scary/bad/villain songs, but no one bats an eye about letting their infant listen to dismemberment music because it features in a movie geared toward them. But all pop music is off the table. Idk.

[quatregats]

Honestly I think everything would be much better if I could think about everything much more and also much less

[rimouskis]

ayudame, I was mansplained to yet again today at work

[theladysherlock]

It's generally a pretty harmless thing, formed if your ear cartilage doesn't 100% connect to your head when you're developing in the womb. The only real danger it can cause is it can get infected if you don't clean it out every once in a while, but that's not super common. I have one in my right ear but my mom has it in both.

It's one of those weird little genetics things like hitchhiker's thumb, but people don't typically talk about this one! Just curious to see how common/uncommon it is

[faaun]

WARNING: The penalty for trespassing on the railway is £1000.

[backslashdelta]

I would like to stop finding Tumblr bugs PLEASE the software developer in me always feels a desire to report them but the last few times it's taken so damn long to hear back and the response is always so dumb initially that I don't even want to take the time to properly describe it AGAIN and wait AGAIN for them to answer

[thefourpointedstar]

hell yeah.

Reblog to give a trans woman a delicious Cuban sandwich

[bones-n-bookles]

I'm not the most educated/well spoken on this topic, but I grew up in California, where suppressing and not control burning fires has had some awful results. Climate change has also impacted the absolutely ridiculous wildfires. The land there evolved *with* humans and human set fires and many plant species REQUIRE fire to exist, and fire helps keep invasive plants at bay. There are pine cones who only open under heat from fires and meadows vanishing because there's no fire or other tending done to them. The land needs us, and we are not separate or alien to it.

This isn't an exclusively Californian thing either, that's just where my knowledge base is the strongest, growing up always barefoot on the trails and learning everything I could, and where my mother has spent my entire life working in forestry and fire ecology.