#macaulay terror twins

[teo-s-art-corner]

Summer Time Terror Twins 🌞

Today was a Macaulay day, it looks like. 😂 We had a sunny weekend over here, after a few days of rain, which kinda inspired me to draw my beloved twins with this vibe in mind: casually enjoying a nice Summer's day.

First, we have Blair, who is hanging out with some of her friends from Edinburgh (who are off-screen for the time being, because I couldn't be bothered to draw multiple people this time 🤣). They're about to hit a pub and have lunch and a few drinks, while also catching up with each other's latest life updates. ✨

Next we have Donnie, who’s in the middle of enjoying his day off. He is on his way home after doing the groceries, when he receives a message from Aggie, the lass he's having a little “friends with benefits” thing with (please ignore how ugly that chat box is, btw, I promise I’ll make it prettier in the finished version 🤣). She invites him to come over to her place, and Donnie is just about to accept her invitation. Looks like a fun evening is on the horizon. 👀

Neither of these are finished yet, but until I get to do that, I figured I could post them in their current state. I really wanna get more comfortable with posting my sketches. And I kinda like them, so... I dunno. 😅

In any case, hope you’ll enjoy this session of Terror Twins In Pretty Clothes — Summer Edition. 🌞😂

(© Donnie and Blair Macaulay are my OCs and they are part of a personal storytelling project, aka The World of D&B.)

[suekre]

A quick doodle of Blair (aka 1/2 of the Macaulay Terror Twins), who belongs to my friend Teo aka @teodoraioana221 💖😃

[julianslibrary]

The Secret History - Donna Tartt Review

Quotes: - It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. [. . .] If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible truth right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn. - She was a living reverie for me: the mere sight of her sparked an almost infinite range of fantasy, from Greek to Gothic, from vulgar to divine. - One likes to think there’s something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I’ve learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool. - ‘But how,’ said Charles, who was close to tears, ‘how can you possibly justfy cold-blooded murder?’ Henry lit a cigarette. ‘I prefer to think of it [. . .] as a redistribution of matter.’ - It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing.

Review: Donna Tartt is a master of subtext. Through the lens of unreliable narrator Richard Papen, Professor Julian Morrow and his group of Classics students are perfect - if a bit odd. Henry Winter is a young genius. Francis Abernathy is an attractive and masterful charmer, evident in his ‘Cubitum eamus?’ Twins Camilla and Charles Macaulay are curiously - almost morbidly - beautiful. Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran is the perfect American son, everything Richard wishes he was. Julian Morrow is their wise and philosophical mentor. However, all of them, under the surface, have issues, and Julian took advantage of these. He was the puppeteer behind Henry’s horrific acts - the murder of the farmer and, eventually, of Bunny. The Classical allusions serve to further Tartt’s point: Morrow is Aristotle, attempting to make Alexanders out of Henrys and Camillas. Tartt also deals with subjects such as poverty and homophobia in an important way - and Bunny clearly had it coming. My only complaint is with the gratuitous anachronisms. Despite being set in the 1980s, some of the characters still write with an ink and quill and speak as though they just arrived from the Victorian Era. Further, the female characters in this novel were severely underdeveloped when compared to their male counterparts, and are only considered anything more than objects for Richard’s amusement when he becomes closer to him. Perhaps this can be attributed to the male protagonist, but I believe it is indicative of some shortcomings in Tartt’s writing.  I give this work 5 out of 5 stars. It was not perfect - but what book is? This was about as close to it as you can get. 

[cat-brodsky]

The Secret History: Abridged (part 1)

Fair use disclaimer: The following text is intended as a parody and literary commentary of the published book “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt. Some direct quotations from the book, constituting a very low percentage of the original, have been integrated in the parodic text where appropriate. The author of this text neither profits nor intends to profit from it.

Dramatis personae

Richard Papen, the narrator, a perpetually starry-eyed youth with all the agency of the proverbial sexy lamp

Julian Morrow (played by King Julian of Madagaskar), a Greek professor who doesn’t actually teach

         The Toffs, as viewed through Richard’s rose-tinted glasses:

Henry Winter, a young genius, deeply devoted to Julian

Bunny Corcoran, an uncouth older student with a heart of gold deep inside

Francis Abernathy, a refined yet sensitive youth

Charles Macaulay, a young man who sometimes has a bit too much to drink

Camilla Macaulay, an exquisite beauty, the only girl in the clique

Judy Poovey, the only character in the book with both brains and heart

Georges “I told you so” Laforgue

the greek chorus (played by a person in a floral bedsheet toga with two sockpuppets)

The Fans, seated in the front row of the audience

The farmer, brutally murdered by four rich kids on a drug trip

     Chapter 1, in which Richard joins a cult (and the greek chorus monologues)

Richard: My name is Richard Pipen and I like pretty things. Maybe that’s cause my childhood was real poor and real awful.

Richard: I even picked Hampden College cause it looked pretty in the recruitment brochure. I have no friends, I failed pre-med, and the only thing I’m okay at is Greek language. …Guess I’ll take Greek.

Georges (the French teacher): Monsieur, I’m afraid zat will be a problem. You see, ze Greek teacher is incredibly… selective about his students. And by selective, I mean on a personal level.

Richard: oh, so he’s gay.

Georges: Non! He isolates his students, he grooms them to have ze same views as himself, and ze only reason ze school puts up with him is because he refuses his salary!

Richard: I dunno, my dad beat me before and after dinner, so this sounds perfectly healthy to me. Guess I’ll go knock on his door.

    Richard: knocks on Julian’s door …Please let me study Greek.

Julian: Why, that’s rather quaint of you, young man, but I’m afraid my class is filled to the brim. Only got space for five people, you see. Very rigorous, that. Anyway, excuse me, I have a princess to tutor. Istrami royalty, though I don’t assume you would know. pauper

Richard: But-

door slam

    Henry and the Four Toffs: stroll the campus, looking pretty

Richard: drools

But I watched them with interest whenever I happened to see them: Francis, stooping to talk to a cat on a doorstep; Henry dashing past at the wheel of a little white car, with Julian in the passenger’s seat; Bunny leaning out of an upstairs window to yell something at the twins on the lawn below. Slowly, more information came my way. Francis Abernathy was from Boston and, from most accounts, quite wealthy. Henry, too, was said to be wealthy; what’s more, he was a linguistic genius. He spoke a number of languages, ancient and modern, and had published a translation of Anacreon, with commentary, when he was only eighteen. The twins had an apartment off campus, and were from somewhere down south. And Bunny Corcoran had a habit of playing John Philip Sousa march tunes in his room, at full volume, late at night.

Not to imply that I was overly preoccupied with any of this.

the greek chorus: yeah riiight

Richard: totally not eavesdropping on The Four Toffs studying Greek

Bunny: Ablative!

Charles: That’s Latin, you dumb-

Richard: Excuse me? I’m sorry, but would the locative case do?

Bunny: Thanks, man, you helped a lot. Wish you were in our class.

awkward silence

Henry, appearing out of nowhere: Ah, yes, the archaic locative. Are you a Homeric scholar?

Richard: …I like Homer.

Henry: Oh, you “like” Homer? Name all the 1,186 ships in the Catalogue.

Henry: fake fans smh

    Richard: All my life, I’ve dealt with poor jerks, so dealing with rich jerks sounded way more appealing. I figured I’d do what worked with my old man - lie my ass off. Excuse me, Dr. Roland, I need uh two hundred dollars from my financial aid? It’s for my uh car, it’s the uh transmission.

the greek chorus: that’s 548 dollars in 2020 money. also, is everyone in this book named after a historical figure?

Richard: knocks on Julian’s door again, having bought one hundred [274] dollars’ worth of expensive clothes

Julian: Oh my, and to think I mistook you for a peasant the first time. Come in, young man - any relation to French kings? Are you from California? What do you do in California?

Richard: Oh, you know… money, orange groves, money, ennui and more money - wow, he’s actually buying it.

Julian: Even Plato knew that class and conditioning and so forth have an inalterable effect on the individual. cough that’s why I only tutor rich and classy students. cough I’m afraid my students are never very interesting to me because I always know exactly what they’re going to do.

the greek chorus: fly, you fool

Richard: listens with stars in his eyes

Julian: Young man, I will take you on as a student, but you must take me on as your academic counselor, drop all your classes and pick up the ones I tell you to. Most of them are going to be with me - you know, a great diversity of teachers is harmful for the young mind.

Richard: Oh wow, that sounds elite and exclusive and totally not like a weird cult.

    Georges “The Voice of Reason” Laforgue: Mon Dieu, are you serious? Do you understand how isolated you’ll be from ze rest of ze college? What if you have a disagreement? What if he is unfair to you? And this man is so elitist - why, that’s ze first time he’s accepted a student on financial aid! …Does he know you’re on financial aid?

Richard: I’m not gonna tell him.

the greek chorus: annnd he switches majors

    Francis: Cubitum eamus?

Richard: what? who?

the greek chorus: did he just say “Wanna fu-”

The Fans: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohh!

Bunny: Get a load of this guy. Henry actually bought himself a Montblanc pen just cause Julian loves them. And he used to say they were ugly. What was it, three hundred [822] bucks?

Henry: You “studied” Greek? Recite every single Greek poem.

Henry: fake fans smh. Now I’ll speak Latin and flex on you some more.

Bunny: Don’t be a prick, Henry.

Julian, coming in fashionably late:

He was a marvelous talker, a magical talker, and I wish I were able to give a better idea what he said, but it is impossible for a mediocre intellect to render the speech of a superior one – especially after so many years – without losing a good deal in the translation.

the greek chorus: do you know what it means when someone talks big and beautiful and yet you can’t remember the talking points? means they’re talking nonsense

Julian: Though after all your Xenophon and Thucydides I dare say there are not many young people better versed in military tactics. Because, as you know, ancient Greek battle tactics are still valid in our modern age! Do you feel sufficiently special and superior, my lab m- lovely students?

Henry: The six of us could conquer Hampden town!

the greek chorus: this is new england, you’d get shot like deer

Richard, stars in his eyes: Awwwww he said six of us!

Camilla: recites from Aganemnnon

How quiet he sinks now - his soul starts from his mouth:

with one jerked gulp he brings up his own blood,

spatters me dark with the scarlet dew in his breath.

And that dew falls on me as the gods’ spring rains

fall and bless harvest back to the long-parched earth.

Julian: Now, why is this so beautiful?

the greek chorus: cause there’s no mention of the dying king voiding his bowels

Francis: It’s the meter - iambic pentameter.

The Greek Chorus: In a way, the discussion that follows is some pretty hefty foreshadowing. The subject is horrible - a dying man gurgling, choking on blood, spits it out all over his killer - but the way it’s described is poetic and makes the reader enamored with the act of murder.

This is exactly what Tartt does later on.

Five rich, entitled young people have a drug-fueled orgy, trespass, and beat an innocent farmer to death. But call an orgy a bacchanal, and it’s suddenly classy and beautiful.

Henry: Death is the mother of beauty.

The Fans: oooooooooooohhh!

Julian: And what is beauty?

Henry: Terror.

The Fans: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH!

the greek chorus: this toxic belief is so not gonna backfire

“Are we, in this room, really very different from the Greeks or the Romans? Obsessed with duty, piety, loyalty, sacrifice? All those things which are to modern tastes so chilling?”

I looked around the table at the six faces. To modern tastes they were somewhat chilling. I imagine any other teacher would’ve been on the phone to Psychological Counseling in about five minutes had he heard what Henry said about arming the Greek class and marching into Hampden town.

the greek chorus: richard, you idiot sandwich

Julian: The Romans’ genius and fatal flaw was their obsession with order! The Greeks knew not to deny the irrational! This is why Romans, usually so tolerant of foreign religions, persecuted the Christians mercilessly – how absurd to think a common criminal had risen from the dead, how appalling that his followers celebrated him by drinking his blood. The illogic of it frightened them-

The Greek Chorus: The Romans valued loyalty to the state, which meant practicing the state religion. Local beliefs were okay as long as they didn’t contradict that.

Christians placed their god, monotheistic God, above the emperor. The First Commandment forbids the worship of other gods, and this includes refusing to take part in feasts, to offer incense to the emperor - this was disloyalty to the Empire. Judaism, it seems, got a pass on the same because of the ancient origin of the religion.

Furthermore, the persecution of Christianity was sporadic until Decius’ decree mandating participation in public sacrifices, and even then this edict was not universally obeyed - the Empire was far too large and too diverse. Not to mention, a lot of the accounts of persecution and martyrdom were invented by Christian historians.

Julian is full of it, and a five minute Google search can tell you as much.

Richard: wow, #deep

Julian: …And that’s why Bacchanals are good fun for the whole family!

    Chapter 2, in which Bunny invites Richard to dinner (and then nothing happens)

Judy: So you’re hanging out with those posh guys now?

Richard: What if I am

Judy: I don’t know, they’re bad news. Like, I was at a party, everyone was slam dancing, and this girl was walking across the dance floor for some reason and got mad when I slammed into her. And like I threw a beer at her, it was that kind of night, and this Henry guy and her brother Charles came to yell at me? And my friend Spike saw that and came to defend me, and then Henry and Charles beat Spike to a pulp. Those people are crazy.

Richard, stars in his eyes: Gee whiz, Henry is badass.

Judy: Aren’t you hot in this tweed jacket? Like, here, you can have another one for free if you like it.

    Bunny: Nice jacket, dude

Richard: Thanks, it’s a family relic

Bunny: Anyway, why are there so many [slur omitted] working in restaurants? Oh man, I remember when we pulled a dine and dash here, all in good fun, and then Dad took us here for drinks and it’s a good thing he was so soused he didn’t notice the waiter putting it all on his bill.

the greek chorus: boy, it sure is a good thing the cops don’t get called on rich people

Bunny: And Henry’s so damn smart, you know? He was in a bad car accident, had to stay in bed reading all those old books, and now he’s really into it and he speaks seven to eight languages, even reads them hieroglyphics.

Richard: well, Bunny’s kind of an ass but he’s not an ass to me, sounds good

Bunny: Whoops, forgot my wallet.

Richard: …never mind

the greek chorus: the bill is, quote, two hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-nine cents [786 dollars]. without the tip. twenty percent more is about tree fiddy [950 dollars]

Bunny: …I’ll call Henry. He’ll be chuffed to bail us out.

Henry: is not chuffed Bunny freeloads off people all the time.

Richard: wow that’s… imagine doing that haha

    Richard: totally not eavesdropping again

Henry: Should I do what is necessary?

Julian: You should only, ever, do what is necessary.

the greek chorus: this will definitely not be taken at face value

    if richard had a tweeter

“Reading The Great Gatsby. #relatable #billionaire-life”

“Attended a party, mingled with the hoi polloi. Plebs. How I long to be elsewhere.”

    Camilla: Come to the country house with us

Richard: totally not freeloading

    if the secret history was a movie

Happy times montage. Classical music plays over the country house; it is revealed that Charles, quite drunk but still composed, is playing the piano. Henry and Camilla are in a rowboat together, with Henry monologuing, unheard to the viewers, as she listens with rapt wonder. Bunny is pouring champaigne from a teapot. Occasional moments of foreshadowing in between the happy times - a pot of laurel leaves boiling on the stove, Richard wandering the house in the middle of the night and finding that everyone is gone - and back to happy times, playing cricket, fancy dinners with Julian. Everything looks pretty, classy, and expensive.

    Chapter 3, in which Richard is more an idiot than usual

The Five Toffs: leave for the winter holidays

Richard: I need a place to stay. Henry’s place is empty, I could ask my other friends to sublet to me, or split the bills with somebody… Nah, there’s this hippie who lets you live for free in his warehouse. I’m in.

The warehouse: literally has a hole in the roof

The Hippie: It’s all a metaphor, man. The situation is obviously dysfunctional, but Richie boy just assumes that it’s normal and he’s gonna be fine. Deep, man.

Richard: I’m sure I’ll be fine. gets pneumonia

Henry: Good thing I came back early, or you’d be dead.

Richard: Y-you saved my life, man. …Can you please bring me a mag to read?

Henry: …You must be raving. Here, I brought you a Pharmacology Update from the lounge.

    Bunny: comes back

Henry: is avoiding him

the greek chorus: that’s all, really

    Chapter 4, in which something finally happens

Bunny: Richard, man, Henry is not who he pretends to be. Be careful.

Richard: You mean, he’s gay? That can’t be right. My gaydar says it’s Francis; Henry’s straight. And I’m not gay, but if I was, Bunny wouldn’t be attractive. I mean, he’s handsome, but he’s rough trade, you know what I mean. Not my type.

    Richard: Oh no, I left my book in Henry��s apartment. I’ll have to find it there. …Weird, why does he have a flight to Argentina reserved? And why were the four of them, minus Bunny, absent from classes?

cheesecake in the fridge: please don’t steal me, I’m on financial aid

Bunny: Mm, too lemony but tastes better flavored with tears.

Richard: Haha, screw the poor

Bunny: Man, Henry’s a bit of a Jew. I like him tho.

    Bunny: keeps making weird crime-and-punishment jokes before class

Richard: Good old Bunny, such a jester.

The Toffs: tell a weirdly rehearsed story about their absence

Julian: notices absolutely nothing

    Henry: Don’t you want to know about our trip to Argentina? By which I mean, I know you snooped.

Richard: Man, why the secrecy? It’s not like you murdered someone.

Henry: Yeah, about that...

flashback time

Henry: The four of us must flee to Argentina. But there’s no way I can get my hands on more than thirty thousand [80,418 dollars]. Francis, you have a trust, right?

Francis: Yeah, I can withdraw one hundred and fifty thousand [402,090] a year. ...Bad news, my mum cleared it out.

The Toffs, in unison: What? Do you mean we’d have to live like the poor? Or worse, resort to menial labor? That is inconceivable.

the greek chorus: and they didn’t go to argentina.

Henry: We had but a meager five thousand [13,403 dollars] between us. Anyway, why did you cover up for us?

Richard:

Henry: So yeah we decided to take drugs, party, and fornicate, like everybody else in this college does. Except we’re rich and smart and we’re calling it a bacchanal, because it’s classier that way.

Henry: Julian knew and approved, by the way, but you’re not gonna learn this until chapter five.

Henry: And Bunny just wasn’t taking our posh rave seriously. I caught him eating when he was supposed to be fasting. Barbarian.

Henry: Anyway, when we all came down from our trip, we were drenched in blood and there was a corpse of a middle-aged middle-class man with his neck broken and his brains splattered and a huge gash in his stomach. And worse, he was wearing an ugly plaid shirt.

Henry: I haven’t been so upset since I hit a deer with my car. Oh, hi, Francis.

    Chapter 5, in which we forget about the farmer

Francis: oh no did you just tell him

Henry: Oh yes I did.

Richard, still starry-eyed: Why didn’t you call the police?

Henry: Yeah, right. We’re too rich to be judged by poor people.

Francis: It was just an accident, a little harmless fun.

Henry: Imagine being tried for my life by a Vermont circuit-court judge and a jury box full of telephone operators.

Francis: They’d just say that we are a bunch of rich entitled kids who got high and trespassed on private land and tore an innocent man to pieces.

the greek chorus: THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID

Henry: If Bunny snitches, we’re dragging him in too. He has no alibi. Can’t prove he wasn’t with us. He saw us dressed in bedsheets and covered in gore and got upset for no reason at all. Dropped a pint of ice-cream on my antique rug. Honestly, that was the last straw.

Henry: I paid for our trip together in Italy to shut him up, but then he found my diary - in which I happened to write a poem about our Bacchanal in iambic pentameter. I didn’t think the rube could even read. I slapped him rather hard, and he took offense to that. And now we have no choice but keep letting him mooch off us!

Francis: It's a terrible thing, what we did. I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It's a shame. I feel bad about it.

Henry: But not bad enough to want to go to jail for it.

Francis: snorts No, not that bad.

Henry: So... wanna play cards?

    the greek chorus: here comes a turning point in the story. will richard do the moral thing, will he turn his friends in?

the greek chorus: yeah, right

    The Toffs: Time for a road trip!

Richard: It’s odd how little power the dead farmer exercised over an imagination as morbid and hysterical as my own. Oh well, nobody cares about poor people.

Julian: In America, the rich man tries to pretend that the poor man is his equal in every respect but money, which is simply not true. A poor man who wishes to rise above his station is only making himself needlessly miserable. And the wise poor have always known this, the same as do the wise rich.

Bunny: You don't care about a goddamn thing, do you? Not a thing but your own self, you and all the rest of them!

the greek chorus: edmund corcoran, the bigot, the idiot of the group - the only one who cares about the murder

  Richard: And now Bunny’s acting like a huge ass to me and to my friends. Gee, that’s no fun at all.

Richard: He’s nagging Charles about him being a drunk, Francis about him being gay, and me about being poor! And Camilla about being a girl, but women are inherently inferior in Greek language, nothing personal. And he’s implying the twins sleep together!

the greek chorus: all of these are true

    Henry: I know! I shall poison my traitorous friend with death cap mushrooms mixed in with fun trip mushrooms. The ancient Arabic treatises on poisons must still be relevant.

the greek chorus: textbook high Intelligence low Wisdom

Henry: Richard, my friend, weren’t you in pre-med?

Richard: Uhh I guess, let me just... add the number of mushrooms, carry the one - jeez, that’s some advanced calculus...You know, the concentrations in chemistry are measured in moles, so we have catch a mole first...

Henry: I tested it on two dogs. Sadly, one lived.

Richard: Oh, Henry, you’re such a rascal. First a farmer, now a dog? Anyway,   those mushrooms are just too funny-shaped. It’s just too hard.

Henry: Why don’t you weigh - you know what, nevermind, I can see I’m dealing with a genius.

    Julian: I’m so concerned for young Edmund! He’s such a lovely and smart boy...

Richard: yeah, right - I mean, bright. Very bright.

Julian: I fear he may be about to convert to Christianity! Not even Catholicism, but something plebian. He keeps asking me about sin and forgiveness - how very... not Greek of him.

    Bunny, piss drunk in the middle of the night: Richard, man, I can’t take it, I just have to confess - they killed a man! Tore him to pieces!

Richard: Guys, this is bad, Bunny just told me.

Henry: Welp, got no choice but to kill him. He’s acting so irrational.

Richard: Yeah, and he’s been real racist and bigoted lately -

Charles: I know, right? Why can’t he be more like us and hate on poor, classless people instead?

Henry: re-rolls wisdom We’ll push him into the ravine in the forest he conveniently loves hiking in. Piece of cake.

     Judy: Rich, there’s gonna be a big party, come have fun!

Henry: Who’d have known there would be a party? Aside from, I mean, everyone who doesn’t live in their own Greek bubble. Oh well, guess I’ll dig for ferns instead.

Bunny: Hey, guys, whatcha doing?

Henry: Oh, you know... killing time. Now, who wants to see a flying rabbit?

[mhevarujta]

Camilla Macaulay is such a fascinating female character

Some readers have claimed that she is a badly written female character; one-dimensional, weak, barely there and overshadowed by the male characters even though she could have been developed more as the only girl in the group.

Others see her as a wicked, deceptive woman who uses her sexuality to pull strings and to manipulate the male characters.

The unreliable manner in which the book is narrated and Richard’s obsessive and biased view of Camilla that is rooted in denial even when he glimpses the darkest parts of her does not allow the reader to have a full picture of the character.

This elusiveness makes this young woman a fictional character that cannot be ignored. Who is Camilla Macaulay? My answer always changed. I have theories that contradict each other and that constantly reshape. Each time I think I’ve settled a conclusive interpretation seems to slip away from me. So in this post I wanted to focus on how I think of Camilla today.

Camilla was raised by women with horsed and rivers; an image really reminiscent to the Amazons who were placed on the Thermodon river, riding horses and hunting. Hunting connects them to Artemis/Diana, the worship of whom the Amazons were connected. Apollo, Diana’s twin brother was named Amazonius and Charles, the only man around, is described in several occasions in a way that brings in mind the depictions of Apollo. Moreover, Bunny parallels Camilla to Diana. Artemis/Diana was the product of rape and as a newborn she helped her mother give birth to her brother. She is the goddess of hunting among other things and one of her requests from Zeus was her eternal innocence and the maintenance of her virginal status. And she is an unforgiving goddess. In fact, Tartt’s idea for Camilla’s name came from Virgil’s Aeneid. Camilla was the daughter of King Metabus who promised his daughter to Diana –to be a virgin warrior in service of the goddess- in order to save her.

Tartt’s Camilla lost her virginal status. She lost her innocence. In fact she was manipulated and abused by the only male she grew up with. What I find interesting is the way she is introduced in Julian’s lecture, by reciting a passage that is memorable to her (at which point Henry winks at her):

Thus he died, and all the life struggled out of him;

and as he died he spattered me with the dark red

and violent-driven rain of bitter-savored blood

to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers

of God in glory at the birthtime of the buds.

 Camilla is undeniably tied to the image of Klytemnestra murdering Agamemnon. Another thing I’ve noticed is her deepest desire:

“And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?”

“To live,” said Camilla.

Unlike Bunny ‘s ‘to live forever’ Camilla’s answer can be interpreted as living in the sense of experiencing life freely and it makes sense in a way. She is a female character who has been trapped between all these male characters. She is formidable as any of them but she is being suffocated by Charles who is free to do as he pleases but does not allow her to have the life she chooses without getting out of control; who is passive-aggressive when he feels their ‘arrangement’ is threatened in any way. It is interesting how Bunny compares potentially being with Camilla to marrying Charles/a female version of him. It is a testament to how much his presence is affecting the façade that Camilla wears for the rest of the world. It’s also interesting that despite both of them growing up with women SHE is the one who’s dressed in a way that men do not relate to women.

The first lesson is also the first time that Richard glimpses the mind behind the lovely face:

I looked at Camilla, her face bright in the sun, and thought of that line from the Iliad I love so much, about Pallas Athene and the terrible eyes shining.

 And these glimpses of a sharp and darker mind allow us to make more sense of her more intimate connection to Henry. After the aforementioned wink, a really significant moment is when Henry helps her after she has cut her artery. Henry is the one who takes action to help and Camilla is concerned that she’ll bleed all over him and that she’s too heavy for him. He doesn’t mind. When Charles appears he is the one who’s asked to take the glass out, to release her from the pain, but he just can’t do it. It’s Henry who takes action yet again and he recognized her bravery. To me, the entire situation foreshadows Camilla moving on from Charles to Henry and it established the reason she got attached to him –his ability to accept her for who she is with no judgment, to carry her, to let her bleed on him and to remove what hurts her even if that hurts her in some ways- which is something that Tartt never shows us directly.

Do I believe that Camilla and Henry conspired to kill Charles? I think I do. I think Charles’ death might have even been planned for the Bacchanalia and gone wrong or that at the very least that that was when the idea of his murder really took root. Let’s see some facts: All the participants are high. Henry is the one who murdered the farmer in the frenzy of that night and yet Camilla had SO much blood on her:

“I suppose we’ll never know what really happened,” he said. “We didn’t find her until a good bit later. She was sitting quietly on the bank of a stream with her feet in the water, her robe perfectly white, and no blood anywhere except for her hair. It was dark and clotted, completely soaked. As if she’d tried to dye it red.”

This image gives me the impression of Camilla trying to reclaim her lost innocence by going back to the river, to the sight where she grew up as a child, but her head, her mind, is still tainted and cannot be cleansed.

The way Charles appears is as fascinating:

Charles had a bloody bite-mark on his arm that he had no idea how he’d got, but it wasn’t a human bite. Too big. And strange puncture marks instead of teeth. Camilla said that during part of it, she’d believed she was a deer; and that was odd, too, because the rest of us remember chasing a deer through the woods, for miles it seemed.

[…]

Really, I do not know how that happened. There was a dreadful mess. I was drenched in blood and there was even blood on my glasses. Charles tells a different story. He remembers seeing me by the body. But he says he also has a memory of struggling with something, pulling as hard as he could, and all of a sudden becoming aware that what he was pulling at was a man’s arm, with his foot braced in the armpit. Francis—well, I can’t say. Every time you talk to him, he remembers something different.”

[…]

“And that bite.”

“You’ve never seen anything like it,” said Francis. “Four inches around and the teeth marks just gouged in. Remember what Bunny said?”

Henry laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Tell him.”

“Well, there we all were, and Charles was turning to get the soap— I didn’t even know Bunny was there, I suppose he was looking in the door—when all of a sudden I heard him say, in this weird businesslike way, ‘Looks like that deer took a plug out of your arm, Charles.’ ”

It seems that Camilla tried to get her innocence back, what was stolen from her, by hurting Charles. This also throws us back to the passage of Clytemnestra killing Agamemnon to avenge what was manipulatively stolen from her (her daughter). I also love how the boys see themselves as wolves but Camilla, who was ahead of them, saw them as ‘a pack of dogs’. The way they are painted differently depending on the perspective is genius.

There is also a connection between the deer, the Meanads and the kind of living –the freedom- which Camilla seeks that has been textually established:

And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?

Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.’ To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst.

 This is even more essential if one considers that the Maenads are tied to mythological events in which they tend to kill or tear apart men and animals in a state of frenzy. Moreover, some of the epithets that were traditionally attributed to them are connected to wool-spinning; the kind of imagery that can easily be connected to the Fate Clotho who span the thread of life and who decided in some occasions when mortals or gods should be saved or should die. If this theory is correct this is quite fitting for Camilla.

 Then there is Richard’s comparison of Henry and Camilla to Pluto and Persephone:

It was shocking to hear him speak of her with such intimacy. Pluto and Persephone. I looked at his back, prim as a parson’s, tried to imagine the two of them together. 

 This is a significant choice on Tartt’s part. In the different sources Pluto and Hades are both names used for the ruler of the underworld but Hades is portrayed as violent and his abduction of Persephone is usually equated to rape, while Pluto in the Eleusinian Mysteries is seen as a loving husband to her.

 Here’s my interpretation of Henry and Camilla possibly going after Charles. I see them as two people who have accepted each other but who can’t accept their own situation. Henry feels too detached from people and from the world. Out of the characters he only loves Julian all-consumingly and Camilla in a tamer way. When it comes to Richard, I think that his interest primarily lies with the fact that he sees him as someone who could finally be experiencing the same detachment. Henry is brought into the situation because his lack of empathy would make killing Charles easier in case Camilla had cold feet. The death of the farmer is an accident during the confusion that the drugs were causing. 

But that night changed a lot. I think that after that night Camilla started regretting her decision, which eventually led her to staying with Henry in her attempt to break out of her situation in a way that wouldn’t involve getting her brother out of the way.

On the other hand Henry does not see beauty in living; this is something that he only glimpses during that night of ecstasy and which he tried to find again ever since. Henry, pristine and controlled, saw in that moment of total freedom that came with killing as the consequence of being in a state that did not allow him to be burdened by consciousness and by thinking a possible meaning in life. And this fact along with his preexisting lack of empathy made murder all the more easy for him.

Camilla’s unwillingness to go through with killing Charles –like Persephone she’s not always tied to the darkness of the underworld and of death- certainly changed her and Henry’s relationship but they still danced around it. The point of not going back was when Camilla showed that she herself was afraid of Henry. Killing had become part of Henry’s definition of living and Camilla showed that despite herself she saw that as a threat; as something to be weary and fearful of.

 Henry bit his lip. He went to the window and looked out the corner of the shade. Then he turned around. He still had the pistol. 

“Come here,” he said to Camilla.

She looked at him in horror. So did Francis and I. He beckoned to her with his gun arm. “Come here,” he said. “Quick.”

[…]

Camilla took a step away from him. Her gaze was terrified. “No, Henry,” she said, “don’t …”

To my surprise, he smiled at her. “You think I’d hurt you?” he said. “Come here.”

She went to him. He kissed her between the eyes, then whispered something—what, I’ve always wondered—in her ear.

“I’ve got a key,” the innkeeper yelled, pounding away at the door. “I’ll use it.”

The room was swimming. Idiot, I thought wildly, just try the knob. Henry kissed Camilla again. “I love you,” he said. Then he said, out loud: “Come in.”

 I think that Camilla’s reaction sealed Henry’s fate. He had lost Julian, whom he loved more than anyone else, Richard did not understand him as he had hoped and Camilla, the one person who had at least fully accepted him showed that there was a part of her that could not fully embrace who he was. Henry ‘s predicament here comes down to this: Aristotle wrote that an individual who is naturally unsocial is either a beast or a god. Henry is conflicted between wanting to be accepted by few other human beings while being in this unsocial situation that tiptoes between the beastly and divine, unchallenged, power. Camilla was the last person left who might have accepted him as such and when he realizes that these are unrecognizable he ends his life, which ends up being a catalyst for Camilla’s character who has shattered her bond with Charles, whom she cares for despite herself, by investing in the understanding they had.

At the end of the book Camilla is partly hanging on the kind of living she could have had with Henry and partly mourning everything she’s lost.

“You should see the way I live now, Richard,” she said. “My Nana’s in bad shape. It’s all I can do to take care of her, and that big house, too. I don’t have a single friend my own age. I can’t even remember the last time I read a book.”

 Camilla is back at her grandmother’s, back at the service of Diana, at a place that will always keep reminding her her irrevocably lost innocence. It’s not the situation itself that is dreadful. What makes it so is that it is a distorted version of Camilla’s childhood; one that comes with responsibility, with loss and with sacrificing ‘living’ and by extent beauty in service of others.

Finally, the tell-tale hint that Camilla’s dismay with her life is genuine and not a lie she employs to keep Richard at bay is her confession about being unable to read anymore. Being unable to be free and to live even on a spiritual level is part of her punishment.

[ammapreker]

beauty is terror

trigger warning for suicide, murder, drowning, and blackmail

once, there were eight.

latin leaped from their lips and sonnets gathered in their minds with every breath, pooling the intellect of the party and summoning talent with every gathering. out, out, brief candle! they might proclaim in practice, dashing out the flames springing from the hot wax as wine lathered their tongues and made them bold, fearless. the fortuna counted twenty among their number, but the elite, the premiere actors held court amongst them, untouchable and unperturbed by whatever glances they attracted. whatever rumors the rest summoned to entertain themselves about the set of them, their dedication couldn’t be denied.

on her last night on stage, gracie zhao scourged her hands in an attempt to cleanse lady macbeth of her guilt. when the police found her the next day, the flesh of her palms had been rubbed raw, a souvenir of a character who met an identical end. suicide, they claimed, but only later — once the autopsy had been performed, the witnesses spoken to, the glimmer of guilt hovering over the guild dwindling to a mere spark. tears — acted or authentic, who could tell? — rolled down every cheek as the most charismatic amongst them were set forth to impress innocence upon those who would deem them responsible for such a tragedy.

responsible, though, they were.

hours before gracie had been found drowned in an ice bath, the others had been gathered around her. sloth held his camera at the ready as she lowered herself down into the icy depths, his hands steady through the entirety of the affair. envy delivered careful instructions to the rapt audience, summoning obedience with every flick of his tongue. wrath and greed each grasped a bare shoulder, mirror images of one another, each a harbinger of doom. hold, envy told them — so they did. even when gracie attempted to rise. even when she ceased movement entirely.

death marks you, lust had said the night before when they’d conjured the idea of the exercise and she’d been right — it swept across every facet of being until the person became entirely undone. to taste death and then return, triumphant, back to the land of the living prickled at them all as the best fantasies do, nuzzling into their minds without a leap to action until gracie spoke the three words that changed everything.

i’ll go first.

it had been minutes before they realized she’d gone. lust ran towards her until envy stopped her in her tracks. too late, he’d said as wrath and greed scrambled backwards, knocking gluttony to his knees in supplication. too late, pride repeated as sloth held the camera firmly in his grasp, unable to look beyond the pixelated view to look up what they’d done.

they left her there, rushing for lust’s home through dark alleys where no cameras could catch them. instead of being allowed to catch their breaths, envy sat them down, turning back every clock in sight as they played poker for hours, attempting to create an alibi for themselves that couldn’t be broken. they spent the night drinking to stomach the anxieties tearing them to bits and falling into each other’s beds for a few seconds of solace. during curtain call the next day as the rest of the cast tugged on their costumes, they desperately awaited an investigation into gracie’s whereabouts, forcing greed to seek her out alongside an unlucky assistant and “discover” the body should the police find any trace of fingerprints left by the tub.

while kind explanations went to the zhao family about the possibility of gracie having fallen asleep, whispers of suicide traveled almost as quickly as murder. pride, gracie’s understudy, had filled the role of lady macbeth upon her death, finishing off the macbeth set of the shakespeare festival with reviews she’d never have seen had death not darkened gracie’s doorstep. envy had involved himself in a love affair with gracie before she’d left him for another, allowing him to catch her in the act. wrath and lust, meanwhile, had struck up an affair of their own and kept it secret until gracie’s discovery of them. only greed, wrath’s twin sister, knew the price that gracie had attempted to extract for her silence. gluttony had been gracie’s sole confidant and made no secret of wanting to extract a pretty penny from the lovers as well.

inquisitive glances linger upon them. pride disregards them, speaking out without a care on the dislike for gracie that still lingers in her bones. sloth keeps the video close at hand despite assuring envy he’d deleted it, distrust festering as he keeps a careful eye, fearful he might be next. wrath loses herself to alcohol to soak up the guilt, wrecking destruction upon the carefully built lies they’ve gift wrapped to the police. lust becomes consumed with questions, losing her mind to the possibilities behind wrath’s utter destruction—did she do it on purpose? kill her to keep their secret? gluttony laps up the attention, awaiting his turn at extracting a payment for keeping his secrets with a proclamation of guilt—wrath’s hands, gracie’s death, a secret believed to be kept safe—twirling in his mind, awaiting its day to be voiced. already, envy and greed keep watch upon them all, unsure of what they’ll do if one of their own steps out of line—only that they’ll do what they must. meanwhile, doubt festers. did wrath and greed hold her down too hard? did envy intend for her to be kept within the pool longer than necessary? trust dissipates between their fingers until all they share might be the blood they’ve all but shed. 

now, there are seven. who will be the next to fall?

tldr; dark academia meets an acting guild participating in a shakespearean festival in this the secret history and if we were villains inspired request. the main participants are all listed below and must all be theater actors participating in the shakespeare festival. they previously performed macbeth and are now beginning rehearsals for a midsummer night’s dream. to open up the request a bit more, gracie zhao’s boyfriend and younger sister are also open to be played for additional drama! while the major themes and some of the relationships and characters are inspired by the secret history, it’s by no means required to have read the text or use these characters for inspo! for those who might want to, currently clara and celia st. clement are inspired by camilla and charles macaulay and the rest are open for anyone who’d like!

the players

envy (m) / first last / 19 - 23 / face claim / reserved for perks

gluttony (m) / first last / 19 - 23 / face claim / played by open

greed (f) / clara st. clement / 19 / elle fanning 2 / reserved for adele

lust (f) / briony howard / 19 - 23 / kathryn newton / reserved for nick

pride (f) / shiloh spencer / 21 / kristine froseth / reserved for sunny

sloth (m) / first last / 19 - 23 / face claim / played by open

wrath (f) / celia st. clement / 19 / elle fanning 1 / played by megan

the supporting cast

the boyfriend / first last / 19 - 25 / face claim / played by open

the sister / fleur zhao / age / natasha liu bordizzo / reserved for ana

[kashilascorner]

THE SECRET HISTORY - a fanmix (listen)

INTRO: BEAUTY IS TERROR. Arsonist’s Lullaby - Hozier "don't you ever tame your demons but always keep 'em on a leash ” //  Dorian - Agnes Obel “will you ever let us carry on?”

PART I: RICHARD PAPEN.  When the lights go out - The Black Keys “You know what the sun’s all about when the lights go out” // Wires - The Neighbourhood “you knew the game and played it it kills to know that you have been defeated” // Homade Dynamite - Lorde “your rules, our dreams, we're blind blowing shit up with homemade dynamite“ // Female Robbery - The Neighbourhood “praying to whatever is in heaven please send me a felon and don't let the police know anything” // Wicked Game - Hula HiFi “it's strange what desire will make foolish people do“

INTERLUDE: BACCHAE. Sirens of the Caspian - Sevdaliza “I said "hey, hey, we're born to recreate" Sinful creature then away, away” // Up in the air - Thirty Seconds to Mars “I've been up in the air out of my head stuck in a moment of emotion I've destroyed”

PART II: HENRY WINTER. Glory and gore - Lorde “but in all chaos there’s calculation” // Feral Love - Chelsea Wolfe “crossing the water, lead them to die” // Pyre - Son Lux “find resurection in the flames, and in the fury of alarm bells we shalt begin” // If I had a heart - Fever Ray “this will never end 'cause I want more” // The lost art of keeping a secret - Queens of the Stone Age “whatever you do, don’t tell anyone”

INTERLUDE: BUNNY. Bones - MSMR “dark twisted fantasy turned to reality” // We must be killers - Mikky Ekko “we all know how to fake it baby, we all know what we’ve done”

PART III: FRANCIS ABERNATHY. Lurk - The Neighbourhood “you think I'm a fake and I know you're a fraud” // Dark Side - Bishop Briggs “I can be your heartache, you can be my shame when you're feeling reckless, when you're feeling chained” // Young god - Halsey “don't get cut on my edges, I'm the king of everything and oh, my tongue is a weapon” // Begging for thread - Banks “so I got edges that scratch and sometimes I don't got a filter but I'm so tired of eating all of my misspoken words” // Glory - Wye Oak “I read his lips and I see glory but what I hear is be afraid”

INTERLUDE: THE TWINS. Spread your love - Black rebel motorcycle club “she gave me love like a sister she's bad, but not enough” // Gods and monsters - Lana del Rey “what I truly want, it's innocence lost”

PART IV: CHARLES MACAULAY. Sober - Lorde “when you dream with the fever bet you wish you could touch our rush, but what will we do when we're sober?” // My sister lover - Oasis “faith in the lord is something I can never have, faith in my sister is gonna set me free” // City Morgue - Kelli Schaeffer “I know what its like to bury my heart in a dying idea” // House of the rising sun - Lauren O’Connell // Reptilia - The Strokes “you're no longer laughing, I'm not drowning fast enough”

PART V: CAMILA MACAULAY. Evening on the ground (Lilith’s song) - Iron & Wine “we were born to fuck each other one way or another” // Goddess - Banks “you should have crowned her, cause she's a goddess you never got this” // Guilty - Marina and the Diamonds “I'm a guilty one and know what I have done, I'm a troubled one and I won't be forgiven” // Seven devils - Florence and the Machine “can I be undone? In the evil heart in the evil soul” // Sweet dreams - Emily Browning “some of them want to use you, some of them want to get used by you”

OUTRO: EPILOGUE. The angry river - The Hat “the darkest need the slowest speed, the debt unreconciled” // Thanatos - Soap&Skin “ages of delirium, curse of my oblivion”

[alexanderwrites]

Thoughts Roundup - Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 15

“There’s Some Fear in Letting Go”

Nuance is key to the success of the great drama shows. There has to be nuance in the drama, and there has to be nuance in the way the characters feel and interact. The dramas that don’t reach the heights of Mad Men or The Wire are the shows that forget to give variations on their themes, or are too glib to remember that there should be more to drama than darkness. It can’t be all horrible, all the time. It can’t be darkness for the sake of darkness. There has to be something more, and the great shows remember that. Mad Men was a psychologically probing satire, but it was also one of the funniest and most quotable shows on TV. And like Mad Men, Twin Peaks has the capacity to be very funny, and often, profoundly beautiful. Lynch and Frost are intelligent enough writers to understand that beauty is no less profound that terror, and that joy no less powerful than fear. Instead of alternating between the two wildly, Twin Peaks - particularly in Part 15 - posits these two as a sort of yin and yang; two themes that cannot exist without each other. The happiest moments in the show were always shot through with yearning and melancholy - think of Cooper and Annie’s date in the canoe back in Season 2 and the aching sadness the scene is built upon - and Part 15 remembers this. But, the episode also starts with the most unashamedly hopeful, beautiful and happy moment to ever unfold on the show...

. Seeing Nadine walk up towards Big Ed with a shovel is a worrying site. Nadine is a kind and gentle soul, but the overwhelming air of unpredictable violence throughout this season did put me on edge through their scene. In ‘letting him go’, she’s not really going to smash him round that Big Ed Head, is she? No, of course not. This is Nadine, lovely Nadine, looking happy, healthy, and actually managing to find sage advice in Dr Jacobi’s rhetoric. The skies are blue above Ed, who is still a building of a bloke, a kind and gentle giant, to whom Nadine’s happiness is essential. It’s maybe basic of me to say, but I love lovely characters. Sure, an anti-hero can be great fun. But I love a sweetheart. What sets Twin Peaks apart is that, though evil has the capacity to live in the friends and neighbours of the town, there are people who are just good. Nadine and Big Ed are two of those people, and the scene is cathartic. I hope that Nadine really is as happy as she seems, and I hope that she isn’t hurt by all that has happened. She’s never been disingenuous, so lets hope her happiness is true. What comes next is the beautiful, perfect moment I alluded to earlier.

Big Ed and Norma had to end up together. That’s what you’d think with a more straight forward series, but with Twin Peaks nothing that feels like it has to be ever really is. But, with Otis Redding singing I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, you can sense this scene will give us what we want. And sure enough, Norma says no to her boring suit boyfriend, and walks over to Big Ed, who’s sitting alone, dejected at the counter after Norma has told him she has to talk to her boring suit boyfriend. I love so much that the second Big Ed walks in and tells her he’s free, she’s made the decision. She wants her Big Ed, and their embrace, in the Double R diner, with Shelly watching tearfully, punctuated by Big Ed’s “Marry Me?”, is spectacular. The moment lingers with shots of the forests looking gorgeous and green, and the skies looking blue and open, as Otis sings on. It is the most gorgeous and wonderful moment in any episode of Twin Peaks. And still, there is an air of wistfulness. They are older now, and he has been loving her for too long. Years have been missed out on, and Nadine doesn’t get to find what Ed has found. And yet there is beauty in her strength and her humanity. It is years of pain coming to a close, so it cannot be a clean, clear celebration - but it is still a celebration of sorts. Suddenly, you feel the town, and everything that makes it beautiful. The woods don’t seem terrifying, and there is no dark sky hanging overhead. It is just nature, and music, and love, and it’s such a pure distillation of goodness that you begin to think that any evil in the show really can be overcome. Lynch and Frost aren’t pessimists, they’re humanists. They understand the flaws and the badness, and yet they also revel in the goodness. They stop to appreciate the magic of trees, waterfalls, cups of coffee and old friends. It is one of my favourite moments not just in Twin Peaks, but in television in general. 

. Just as the shots of the sky fade out, a new image fades in, and it’s of a dark road at night, with headlights trying to illuminate it. It feels almost like a direct attack on the previous images, if anything could ever harm them. Doppelcoop is back in the driver’s seat, and he’s on the road to Phillip Jeffries. I’m uncertain if the “Convenience Store” sign was visible when we last saw the building in Part 8, but this is where Doppelcoop turns up in Part 15, and the “Convenience Store” sign on it is clear now for what I believe is the first time. As well as meeting long-theorised characters this season, we are now meeting long-theorised buildings - and I don’t think i’ve ever been so excited to see a convenience store before. Doppelcoop stops in to pick up a kit kat meet Philip Jeffries, and the upstairs of the convenience store is just as terrifying as it was in Fire Walk With Me. The set design is impeccable, and there is a feeling of raw, wild electricity surging through this place. It quite simply doesn’t feel like it’s in our world (kind of like ASDA). Here we see the jumping masked man again, as well as two woodsmen who take Doppelcoop up some more stairs and out through a door which brings him to a motel - which looks uncannily like the motel in which Leland killed Theresa Banks. There, he is led by an old backwards-speaking woman (who immediately made me think of Mrs Tremond), led to Jeffries room where we finally meet him....in a....giant teapot? It looks quite similar to the big metal ship that Cooper stand on in Part 3, but this one holds Jeffries, who believes Doppelcoop is the real Coop and gives information on who Judy is. We find out that Doppelcoop (or Cooper, if Jeffries believes that’s who he’s talking to) has met Judy before, but that doesn’t narrow it down much. 

By this stage, Doppelcoop is showing more desperation than he ever has before, and we are right there with him: WHO THE FUCK IS JUDY?? Jeffries, when appearing in the FBI HQ in FWWM claimed “we’re not going to talk about Judy at all”, and that was after he’d supposedly been on a walkabout through the lodges. Is Judy from a lodge? Is she the eyeless, chirping woman in the jail cell? I read that the noises she’s making are more akin to monkey sounds, which on repeat viewing is a lot more accurate - and lets not forget the monkey who said “Judy” in FWWM. Are we going round in circles now? Perhaps, but it’s a pretty fun and enticing circle. And as I said last week, the chase is the purpose. Doppelcoop gets one step closer to Judy with some co-ordinates, before being zapped outside of the store through a phone, The Matrix style. Can’t wait to see if he can do any bendy, bullet-time acrobatics in the next couple of episodes. And outside is none other than Richard Horne, who we categorically learn IS Audrey’s son, and has followed Doppelcoop because he thinks he’s an FBI agent, having recognised him from a picture that Audrey keeps. He gets a satisfying amount of shit kicked out of him by Doppelcoop before they head off together, heading towards wherever the hell Judy is. And, Doppelcoop’s “Las Vegas?” text to Diane places these events before some of the FBI’s scenes. As they drive off, the Convenience Store flickers in and out of reality like a lamp with a dying lightbulb, and suddenly it is gone. It’s a powerfully threatening image, and seeing the empty space where it stood makes it feel even more hellish.

. Pairs of people seem to be popping up everywhere in this episode - Ed & Norma, Doppelcoop & Richard, and Gary & Chantal. They’re a sort of Bonnie & Clyde who take delight in their killings, and they proclaim that America was built on killing, so why not embrace it? Their twisted logic - “things are already fucked, so might as well keep fucking ‘em” - has brought them on this journey, and they rationalise it with scary indifference, whilst still taking time out for the little things, like a pretty sky at night, or a tasty dessert. They are the flipside of Gordon and Albert, or Harry and Dale. Tonight Chantal snuffs out Duncan Todd’s flame. That sadly means no more of the great Patrick Fischler looking anxiously at his phone. I enjoyed him for the enigmatic mystery he was, and his inability to wipe Dougie out means that Chantal is stepping in to the arena. “One down, one to go”....

. Another pair, equally as fucked up as Gary and Chantal, are Gersten and Steven, whose scene is long and physically uncomfortable. I found it extremely hard to make out what he was saying, but that weird, Dark-Macaulay Culkin looking motherfucker seems to have done something bad enough for him to supposedly shoot himself after Gersten hides around the other side of the tree from him. She looks out into the trees and the sky, and this time it is unforgiving and scarily empty. There is nothing there for these two, and I wonder if that’s the last we’ll see of Gersten, the seldom seen sister of Donna. Just another glimpse into another life gone wrong in Twin Peaks.

. People whose most oft-repeated phrase this year is “This’ll be the thing that wakes him up” will surely have SCREAMED it in Part 15 - hell, even I whispered it to myself. It’s not just the Cooper jams a fork into an electrical socket (clearly a sign that he’s back to his old self. Which FBI agent doesn’t do that on the reg?), it’s that before this, he takes initiative in his actions: he turns on the TV, reacts dramatically to the film, then scrambles to turn it up or pause it. I was at a loss for why of all things that scene from Sunset Boulevard spoke to him, until I watched it a second time: the actor says the name “Gordon Cole”. That’s what Cooper is reacting to. He is right on the very edge of returning, and yes, maybe the fork in the socket really is the thing that’ll do it. He came out of the electrical socket, so who knows, maybe jabbing it with a fork will wake him up....somehow. Or kill him. Imagine that! 

. Okay, what the hell is going on with Audrey. I don’t mean that in a negative way, I mean it in an exasperated and confused way. There is something so uncannily strange and stilted about her interactions with her husband, and while other storylines have developed and evolved, her three scenes have all taken place over the course of a half hour, and in pretty much just one room. They are still arguing about whether or not to go to the roadhouse. They are right on the edge of leaving, with their coats on, and their argument fires up once more and back into the house they go. It is a domestic nightmare, a claustrophobic, surreal play that they are trapped in, and I don’t know that we’ll ever get an explanation for it. Do we need one? Isn’t the feeling that the scenes elicit in us enough? Doesn’t the fact that we feel: frightened, confused, sick and trapped, tell us exactly what their marriage is, and how it feels?

. James haters rejoice: he gets the shit beaten out of him! Poor, sweet James. So naive, so sweet, so stupid. It was a bit of an overreaction of his ex’s new boyfriend to punch him square in his forehead just for saying hello, but it seems to be a general rule that if you’re going to hang out at the Roadhouse, you have to have unfathomable anger issues. Unless you’re James or the MC, who excitedly introduces not a band, but just the song Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top, which everyone proceeds to go nuts to. Fair enough! Cockney FistMan saves James from the attack, nearly kills one of them, and the two are sent to a jail cell, where Eyeless MaybeJudy is still making monkey sounds and BloodDripping MaybeBilly is still repeating everything. What a fun place to be! I’m wondering if Cockney FistMan will end up protecting MonkeyNoise MaybeJudy, and that the person that Andy is protecting her from is indeed Doppelcoop. It just fits quite neatly for me, but then, when is the show ever neat? Maybe the coordinates that Doppelcoop got for Judy will bring him to Twin Peaks, just as Diane’s might. Something huge is coming one of those nights, and the nights feel a lot darker now...

. Goodnight, Margaret. Goodbye, Margaret. What a haunting, chilling moment. I’ve never seen a goodbye to a character feel so sincere. The Log Lady was the soul of the show - it can, of course, exist without her - but she was like the moon that hangs above the swaying traffic lights, always watching, always there, whether or not you could see her. This was her story, really. This was her seeing everything - all the good, and the bad - and coming to terms with it. Letting go of it. There is some fear in letting go, but this isn’t the end she tells us. I can think of no television character more comforting to the soul than The Log Lady. She told us that one day the sadness will end, and asked whether love is the blood of the universe. She spoke of the nature of the world, and of humankind’s nature, and whether what she said was funny, sad or mysterious, it was always sincere. Watching her say the words “I’m dying”, with tears in her eyes, is simply unforgettable. She is simply unforgettable. I know so many fans of the show will want to thank her, and by her, I really do mean Catherine Coulson - because she gave us something even more than what the Log Lady was. She gave us something so genuine, and so human, that every moment with her is a treasure that we shouldn’t ignore. 

And so, Hawk stands in the darkness of the meeting room and announces that she’s died. Lucy cries. Frank takes off his hat. The episode gives us time to breathe, to take it in, to cry if we need to. We see glimpses of the moon in the sky, and of her cabin in the woods, with the light inside being turned off. And soon after this, we follow Charlyne Yi on her hands and knees after two large men force her out of her seat. She is crawling through a sea of happy, dancing people - screaming and screaming at the sea of legs surrounding her. Lost, hurt, confused, angry. She is all of us, and nobody is listening to her. She lets out a guttural, primal scream that is a release of everything that has built up. Norma and Ed can take comfort in each other, but the Log Lady is dead and a storm is coming. Can Norma, Nadine, Ed, Shelly and the goodness of the world co-exist with the dark night owls that haunt the roadhouse? Moreover, can they exist without each other, or will they always be intertwined? I could not be more excited for the final 3 Parts, and after the last run of episodes, and their nuanced blending of so many satisfying elements, I think this really might be the best TV i’ve ever seen. 

“You know about death. That it’s just a change, not the end.”

[jalmostauthorblog]

The Beautiful and the Terrible: Summary and Analysis of Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’

Good books, the kind that you enjoy, that you carry with you so as to pass time on the bus or train; that keep your mind occupied, but don’t do anything to change your perceptions of what literature can be, are common. Great books, the kind that you set aside time to read, that fill you with joy, and you recommend to your friends at every opportunity to do so, are rare … And then there are the scarce gems, the works of art that consume you, draw you in, keep you up at night, and leave an imprint in your mind that lasts years after you have finished them. “The Secret History,” by Donna Tartt, is such a book. It is a book both intimate and epic, and concerned with the beautiful and the terrible; a book that examines man’s relationship with the divine, as-well-as man’s relationship with one-another. It is on one level, a taught, brisk thriller, and on another, a meditation on the inherent fragility of youth and friendship.

The narrator is Richard Papen, who, at the age of twenty-eight looks back on a year he spent at Hampden College, a prestigious (and fictitious) liberal arts college in rural Vermont. The story begins in Richard’s hometown of Plano California. Of his upbringing, Richard says: “When I think about my real childhood I am unable to recall much about it at all except a sad jumble of objects: the sneakers I wore year-round; coloring books and comics from the supermarket: little of interest, less of beauty … my father was mean, our house ugly, and my mother didn’t pay much attention to me … and since all this had been true for as long as I could remember, I felt things would doubtless continue in this depressing vein as far as I could foresee. In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”

Richard’s mediocre existence is quietly interrupted one Christmas, when, while digging through his closet, he finds a brochure for Hampden. After several weeks of traveling back-and-forth for admissions interviews, and sneaking behind his parents’ backs, Richard successfully transfers to Hampden. During his first few days on campus, Richard has run-ins with an attractive and close-knit group of students: Henry Winter, a trust funder from the midwest and the group’s unofficial leader, Francis Abernathy, a closeted homosexual who dresses mostly in black, orphan Charles Macaulay and his beautiful twin sister Camilla, and Bunny Corcoran, socially repugnant scion of a Kennedyesque New England family, desperately trying to maintain a facade of wealth and privilege. Drawn in by the group’s mystique, Richard wiles his way into their elite Ancient Greek class, taught by the charismatic Julian Morrow.

For the Fall semester, Richard enjoys an idyllic academic life, filled with lively discussions about art, literature, and ancient philosophy, as-well-as cocktail parties, and croquet matches at Francis’s country house. Everything changes after the group return from winter break. After learning that Henry, Francis, Charles, and Camilla have purchased one-way tickets to South America, Richard confronts his friends and discovers that they have become murderers. During the fall, the group enacted a ritual to honor the god Dionysus, in-which they consumed hallucinogens and accidentally killed a local farmer. The group manages to cover up the murder until Bunny discovers their secret and begins extorting money from them. In a drunken state one evening, Bunny tells Richard about the murder (not realizing he already knows). Richard tells Henry, and the group decides their only option is to kill Bunny.

The group follows Bunny on his Sunday walk in the woods, where they push him into a ravine. That night, an unseasonable snowstorm hits the college hiding Bunny’s body for ten days. A manhunt is launched, drawing in the FBI. The group manages (with great difficulty) to dodge accusations made against them until Bunny’s death is ruled an accident. After attending Bunny’s funeral, the group returns to Hampden, where tensions between them fester. Richard learns that Camilla is in love with Henry.  After Richard tells him about this, Charles, who has had an intimate, incestuous relationship with his twin, becomes violently jealous and goes on a drinking binge that sends him to the hospital. Richard and Francis take him to the country house to recover. Shortly after that, Julian discovers a letter from Bunny about the farmer’s murder and  flees Hampden in horror. Charles escapes from the country house and returns to Hampden with a gun. After shooting Richard in the stomach, Charles has the gun taken from him by Henry, who shoots himself in the head.

After the incident, the group scatters, with all the surviving members dropping out of school except for Richard, who goes on to graduate school. Francis’s grandfather forces him to marry a woman he doesn’t like; Julian is out of the country, Charles moves to California with an older woman, and Camilla finds herself stuck caring for her ailing grandmother.

From the very beginning, “The Secret History” makes a concerted effort to blend classical mythology and philosophy with contemporary fiction. Richard’s first line of narration after the prolog “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside literature?” pays tribute to the majesty of the ancient world and elegantly sets the tone for the novel. The ‘fatal flaw’ dates to the work of Aristotle and refers to an imperfection in a protagonist’s personality that causes them to commit some error in the arc of their story. In classical literature, these errors are often made in complete ignorance of the consequences that will inevitably follow them. It is here, in this lack of regard for any moral retribution, that Richard can find a kind of forgiveness for his crimes and those of his friends. Richard never expresses any guilt about the things he has done, not because he believes they were morally justified, but because they were meant to happen. Richard talks about himself and his friends as characters in a work of fiction, with the events surrounding them being part of an already written plot, and themselves powerless to change them. He recounts these events with a casual lucidity, and describes the “fatal flaw” of his story, which is, in his words, “A morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”  

“‘We don’t like to admit it,’ said Julian ‘but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than anything. All truly civilized people - the ancients no less than us - have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old animal self … And it’s a temptation for any intelligent person, and especially for perfectionists such as the ancients and ourselves to try to murder the primitive, emotive, appetitive self. But this is a mistake … The more cultivated a person is … then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he’s worked so hard to subdue … It’s a very Greek idea … Beauty is terror … and what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks and to our own, than to lose control completely.’”

Not only do Richard’s friends share his longing for the picturesque, but they find it augmented by the speech from their professor. And if this desire is intrinsic to the characters’ true natures, as Julian suggests, then it was inevitable that they would abandon the trappings of civilization and immerse themselves in the sublime beauty of their own raw, animalistic nature. What’s more, any damage to outside parties - such as the murdered farmer - is negligible, as it is merely the residue of contriving to achieve a higher level of being. And just so we are sure that the characters’ immorality is not just a mere lapse in judgment, Tartt shows us the group’s decadent behavior transcend their academic and spiritual pursuits, and bleed into their personal lives. Tartt maintains the integrity of this depraved atmosphere by never judging any of her characters. While we read about the group drinking excessively, snorting cocaine, engaging in incest, and plotting the murder of one of their friends, the novel never takes the time to remind the audience that what the protagonists are doing is wrong. Rather, it assumes we already know we are watching people do things they shouldn’t be. Instead of forcing us to learn a lesson about restraint and prudence, the book asks us to simply observe.   This lack of condescension in storytelling is one of the qualities which I feel marks Donna Tartt as a great writer, with another being her ability to compress grandiose moral and philosophical themes into such a small setting.

All the major scenes in “The Secret History” take place indoors, and rarely involve anyone outside the six main characters. In the first half of the novel - before Bunny is murdered - this creates an atmosphere of intimacy. The characters’ discussions have all the weight of history behind them: Homer, Aristotle, Virgil, and Dante guide them on epic journeys through life, death, and human nature, without ever leaving the comfort of their tobacco smoke-filled dorm rooms. With the murders and their subsequent investigations, this intimacy turns to claustrophobia, and the cozy confines of Hampden and Francis’s country house become less of a comfort and more of a trap. As rumors of the group’s bizarre behavior around Bunny’s murder begin to surface, and they become a target of the investigation, we feel every bit of pressure they are under. And even after they are ruled out as suspects, things only become worse, as their close-knit relationships turn from a blanket of protection into a crucible of frustration and anger, causing them to turn on one another, and ending in the self-imposed exile of their mentor and the suicide of another one of their own. This landslide of tragedies proves just how fragile the bubble Richard and his friends had built around themselves was. Hampden and Julian’s class was the substantiating force in their lives, and with the former ruined and the latter taken away from them, the members of the group become lost in the world. This exchange between Richard and Charles exemplifies this:    

         “‘I wish we didn’t have to go back to Hampden tomorrow,’ (Charles) said.”

“‘I wish we never had to go back,’ I said. ‘I wish we lived here.’”

“‘Well, maybe we can.’”

“‘What’”

“‘I don’t mean now. But maybe we could. After school.’”

“‘How’s that?’”

“He shrugged. ‘Well, Francis’s aunt won’t sell the house because she wants to keep it in the family. Francis could get it from her for next to nothing … I mean, all Henry wants to do when he finishes school, if he finishes school, is to find some place where he can write his books and study the twelve great cultures.’”

“‘What do you mean, if he finishes.’”

“‘I mean, he may not want to … There’s no reason he’s got to be here, and he’s surely never going to have a job.’”

“‘You think not?’ I said, curious; I had always pictured Henry teaching Greek, in some forlorn but excellent college out in the Midwest.”

“Charles snorted. ‘Certainly not. Why should he? He doesn’t need the money, and he’d make a terrible teacher. And Francis has never worked in his life … He’d like it better here. Julian wouldn’t be far away either.”’

We see that the members of the group can picture no way of living differently from the one in which they are currently engaged. This is an attitude shared by most people in college. The first four or five years of one’s adulthood have a lasting transformative effect on the rest of their life. It is for this reason that college can be both a blessing and a curse, as it provides a safe environment for us to experiment with different ways of looking at the world, and cultivate new tastes and attitudes about how we wish to conduct ourselves in the future. The flip-side of this is that the environment can be too safe, a bubble of semi-adulthood in which we get only a taste of the real world, with few chances to experience the full range of consequences that come with our mistakes. A person can become so used to this, that when the time comes to enter into real adulthood, they feel overwhelmed. Tartt’s novel not only captures this feeling but magnifies it to mythic proportions. From the very beginning, Richard makes clear his dissatisfaction with his upbringing and desire to live a greater life - a life defined by beauty.  He believes Campden will be the gateway to such a life, and devotes so much energy to cultivating an image of the college as a perfect haven of beauty and intellectualism, that even long after the image has shattered and he has left Campden, it remains an integral part of his life, saying: “I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”

“The Secret History” may not be to everyone’s taste, but those who are susceptible to its charms will find themselves fully enraptured in a novel unlike any other, one that blends style with substance, and makes you believe that true beauty comes with pain.

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Cooking Up Hopes N’ Dreams 🍳🥗

One terror twin. The D half of D&B. Donnie Macaulay is here!

And he’s cooking Hopes N’ Dreams! …okay, let me explain. It’s now a canon event that Donnie refers to his random, self-made recipes as ‘Hopes N’ Dreams’. Probably a friend said that his cooking tastes like hopes and dreams at some point, and it stuck. What can I say, this guy might have his ups and downs and he might occasionally possess the thinking ability of a unicellular organism, but he knows he’s a damn good cook and he’s proud and confident about it. 👏🏻😂 Now, what Donnie would consider true hopes and dreams might include things like, I dunno, marrying a gorgeous metal-head lady, sailing into the sunset, and vibing on a 90% Mötley Crüe soundtrack. If you think this is weirdly specific, it’s because it is, and perhaps someone might remember the convo I’m referring to here. 👀🤣✨️

Also, I added some info about Donnie in the following slides. I could’ve done something fancier in terms of layout, but I didn’t have the inspiration nor the energy, so that will do. At least the lore dump is here for those who wanna know a thing or two about this boy, sooo, mission accomplished, I hope. Any post is a lore dump opportunity, after all. ☕️🫖😂

(© Donnie Macaulay is my OC and he is part of a personal storytelling project.)

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Woods and Witches

A bit of writing I did this past weekend, featuring Malcolm and a 6yo Blair (and Donnie! he's there as well, but Blair is the main star this time 😂✨).

The scene takes place a few weeks after Blair secretly watched The Blair Witch Project (1999), all by herself, and falsely believed the thing was real. Which kind of sort of scared her. Now her dad is about to find out about his daughter’s little escapade… at the most inopportune time. 😂

(© The Macaulays are my OCs and they are part of a personal storytelling project, aka The World of D&B.)

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Birthday Visit 🎂✨

In today’s “Messy Sketches That Still Kinda Look Decent”, we have the Macaulay twins, celebrating their dad’s birthday, which was yesterday, July 18th 2024. Malcolm is 63 years old now! And his two children decided to pay him a surprise visit for the occasion. 🥹

Of course, the cake was made by Donnie. Being a great cook/baker comes at a price — you're gonna be the designated chef for certain life events, such as your dad’s 63rd birthday. 😂 Donnie didn't mind tho, he loves his craft quite a lot, especially when he’s doing it for folks he loves. I also have this feeling that he wrote something goofy on the cake, like “Older, but never wiser”, or something to that effect, to which Malcolm responded with a fit of laughter and an “Oi, I picked one or two things over the years though?! I had to raise you two after all, that must’ve fuckin’ meant something!” 🤣

You can imagine how happy and touched Malcolm was by this little surprise the twins pulled on him. He kinda sensed that something might be brewing (D&B had to pry a little bit into what his plans were for the day), but he didn't necessarily expect his kids to actually come and spend the day with him, you know. So, when they did show up, with a cake and everything, he was both surprised and immensely happy, and even a bit emotional. 🥹 I don't think this is the first time when D&B pull something like this on their dad, but still, that doesn't make him any less happy when it happens!

Later, as the sun began to set, they all hopped into a cab and went to a pub. It had been a while since they did something like that. Just the three of them, out for a drink. They found themselves a table and just like that, they were settled for a fun evening. A couple of drinks and a few hours later, three tipsy Macaulays stumbled out of the pub, as one of them (probably Blair) was clumsily trying to call for a taxi. Don’t worry, they all got home safe and sound in the end. 🤣

***

(© The Macaulays are my OCs and they are part of a personal storytelling project, aka The World of D&B.)

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Birthday Visit 🎂✨

This one started off good, continued with a major existential crisis in the middle, and ended up good again. Maybe not as good as I would have wanted it to be, but hey, at least I finally finished something, AND I managed to not give up on it, so. It’s a victory. 😂

I already talked a lil’ bit about this when I posted the sketch, but I’ll summarize the previous summary: the twins came to visit their dad for his 63rd birthday, which was on July 18th, 2024. And, they decided to do it without telling him, just to surprise him. It worked, and Malcolm was more than happy to have his kids around for the occasion. 💖 They’re singing him “Happy Birthday” here, btw. And, of course, in usual Macaulay fashion (and after devouring that cake made by Donnie), the day ended with the three of them in a pub, getting appropriately drunk. Or semi-drunk, but anyway. Don’t worry, they got back home safe, they took a taxi. 🤣

Extra insight: Blair was able to spend a few more days at her dad’s house after that. Donnie, on the other hand, had to return to work the following day, but he made sure to be around when he could. There was place for a few more D&B home-visit-shenanigans. 👀

In any case, I hope you’ll enjoy this “Another Day With The Macaulays” session, because these three are my heart and they’re helping me stay afloat these days. 🥹

(© The Macaulays are my OCs and they are part of a personal storytelling project, aka The World of D&B.)

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Night Dress 🌙✨️

I give you a Blair in a pretty dress. 👀💖

I don’t exactly know where she could be going dressed like that, the urge to draw her in that dress was stronger than the urge to come up with proper context for it. 🙂😂 So I’ll leave it up to interpretation, you be the judge of where she’s going, and of what – or who – she’s looking at. 👀✨️

Edit: I give you two possibilities that have emerged in the meantime. She’s either going out with her fashion twin (*cough* Sanne *cough*) to have a bunch of beers and a good time, OR she’s going out to some place where she knows a certain priest is going to be (a storyline from Blair’s past is in the making 👀), while wearing this totally-not-strategically-chosen-outfit (*cough* an image Sanne might be responsible for implementing in my head *cough*). Which one do you prefer? ‘Cause I’m a fan of both. 👀😂💖✨

Also, now I wanna do a similar thing for Donnie, not gonna lie. Terror Twins in shiny clothes sounds like a good idea to me. 👌🏻🤣💘

**The little tattoo on Blair’s hand represents the stick figure totem from The Blair Witch Project (1999).

(© Blair Macaulay is my OC and she is part of a personal storytelling project, aka The World of D&B.)

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Expecting The Unexpected 💥

Prepare for trouble, make it double, the terror twins are coming!… eventually. In the meantime, let's see how their parents are handling the news of having to prepare for TWO kids.

These are Malcolm James Macaulay and Brandy Macaulay, two Scots who have no idea what they’re doing, but they’re doing it anyway. They're part of a brand new story/universe/thing I'm working on. ✨️

It’s 1994 and they’ve just found out their wish to have kids manifested too hard or something, because SOMEHOW they’re expecting twins. No one told them they could come in pairs, what?? I mean, sure, they knew twins and triplets are a thing, but you know that saying, “nah, it can’t happen to me”? That’s what they thought. Obviously, they thought incorrectly. 💀🤣 By the very end of 1994 (on December 29, to be specific), Donnie and Blair would make their way into the world, kicking and screaming (quite literally)!

(© Malcolm and Brandy Macaulay are my OCs and they are part of a personal project.)

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Smiles and Giggles 🌹✨

The other terror twin. The B half of D&B. Blair Macaulay has arrived in town! She invited you to hang out with her and now she’s smiling at you like this. What do you do, eh? 👀

Sooo, Blair is here, which means the Macaulay terror twins AND their parents are officially introduced! I hope you’re ready for them, because they are definitely ready for you! (you can interpret this however you see fit 🌝🤣)

I have so many ideas for all of ‘em already (and my mind is also starting to branch towards imagining the people around them etc), and I’d start working on eeeverything if I could… except I can’t, ‘cause the lack of time, energy, will to live etc, etc is going strong these days. 🫠😂 I’m still trying tho, finishing this piece counts as a victory in my book. ✨😂

I put some info about Blair in the following slides, so if you wanna know a few things about her, you can check those out! 💕

(© Blair Macaulay is my OC and she is part of a personal storytelling project, aka The World of D&B.)