#madeline rambles!

[kazthropology]

On love

Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl); Liana Rādulescu ; “Spending More Time” (Ron Hicks); Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) ; It’s Been a Long, Long Time (Harry James, Kitty Kallen); Unknown ; Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1 (Shakespeare); Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo); Unknown, Quora ; Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl)

[cowchickenbeefpork]

I love how consistent iwtv is with how vampires work when it comes to the storyline. There’s this fucking line I’m too lazy to screenshot where Armand tells Daniel that since he’s over 500 years old the sunlight doesn’t hurt his skin as much as it would for younger vampires.

When it came to the execution of Claudia and Madeline, since Claudia was a vampire of over 30 years and Madeline had only been one for a few days, Madeline died first, leaving Claudia to die only a minute after her.

idk, this is just a interesting thing I noticed, wonder if anyone else did too

[dootznbootz]

Hi. I'm cyberbullying a long dead poet because of his shitty fanfic. Enjoy. I'd love it if you joined me.

(Before you get mad at me, yes, I know Eugammon of Cyrene is an important figure and all that. I'm sick with some sort of flu. Let me cyberbully an ancient dead fanfic writer in peace.)

[kalopses-sonderes]

Hyper anon: well since you're here...and you're back from your break let's go ahead and restart the silly adventures of a certain...baker.

Ok so hcs request to welcome ya back...unless you'd rather do a one shot but still...to give you context:

The Cookies finally bringing their baker into the world who I can imagine at first would...be very shy and nervous...like hiding themselves due to habit and stuff but once the cookies pry open the baker's shell and make them learn that they love the baker and can feel safe around em...they show off their boundless energy so they go from a shy, nervous, quiet baker to a bouncing off the walls, energetic, happy go lucky baker!

A/n: HYPER BAKERRR, the literally pride and joy of my blog! Just something small to get me back into writing

LETS SET THE SCENEE, as always, gender neutral pronouns unless stated otherwise😋

• Hyper! Baker who turns out to be the complete opposite of the scripture once they arrive to the kingdom. They were ment to be lively, full of energy, and can light up room with a smile— Instead they hide on top of fridges, run away every time a cookie tries to talk to them, and just so shy!

• When Pure Vanilla host parties in the bakers honor, they usually hide in the corner! They just get so nervous and don’t know what to do!

• Once the baker does finally come out of their shell, they didn’t realize what they were getting themselves into-

• Hyper! Baker is running up and down the walls, collecting rubber duckys (if you know yk), and their favorite thing: running through walls :D

• One second Bakers there, the next they’re swinging on the castles chandelier (IF YOU KNOW YK)

• Hyper! Baker was literally a leash child when they were younger, I whole heartedly believe that

• The cookies are on babysitting duty to make the Baker doesn’t end up lost in the forest and find Millennial Tree.. Pure Vanillas biggest rival :0

[nexo-nex]

Briar and Apple being BFFAs at the beginning of the show but started drifting apart as time went on the series that they're barely seen with each other in the later seasons vs Raven and Maddie sticking together most of the time throughout the show despite everything....

[biboomerangboi]

The Fall of House Usher was so good because every single woman is this tweet:

[xbomboi]

there are two categories of Ever After High lexicon

and no they aren’t phrases and proper nouns.

the first category is universal dialect. this encompasses all of the common words or phrases that everyone uses. this includes proper nouns like celebrity names (tailor quick, one reflection), locations (castleteria, charmitorium), sports + events (thronecoming, track & shield), items (mirrorphone, bookball), etc. this also includes commonly used words or phrases, such as “wait a spell”, “what the hex”, “charm/spell you later”, “fableous”, “spelltacular”, “fairest”, “B.F.F.A.”, and the list goes on.

the other category is for words or phrases that are either character, story, place, or species specific. these are the things that not everyone is going to use, typically being used by only one character. though, it wouldn’t make sense if they were to be used by others. one of the first and blatant examples comes in the form of some of what maddie says (aside from speaking riddlish). she says things like “hat-tastic” or “tearrific”, which are puns with a mad hatter theme. off the top of my head, another instance of this is cedar’s use of the word “splinter”. other examples not limited to a certain character and/or story but rather an uncommon trait include winged characters using phrases that reference wings, villainous/characters who come from villain parents using terms or phrases that you’d associate with an evil connotation, and a lot of the wonderlandian slang. then there are words or phrases that may be used at any given moment by the character(s) it applies to, but when in the specific location they come from or in reference to their particular story, may be used by other characters. easy example is the word “wonderlandiful”. while this is wonderlandian slang, when either referencing wonderland or something to do with it, or being in wonderland itself, a non-wonderlandian might describe something as wonderlandiful.

i just thought i’d share that observation.

[ratticus-the-emperor]

yes, i could write a long and convoluted essay about how it irks me that zeus gets a lot of hate, and though a lot of it is “justified” most of it comes from a place of putting modern values and expectations on an ancient deity, not fully understanding the cultural context of Zeus’s identity, and the overall futility of holding a deity to the same standards as you would a modern human but—

i am totally and completely incapacitated by my adhd.

but don’t get me wrong, that’s not to say i approve or like Zeus in any way. i do believe using the gods and the perceived dynamics of olympus to tell stories about abusive families, fatherhood, the corruption that pervades the souls of people in power is good for storytelling, but you can tell when people just don’t understand. and this when the adhd monster strikes and drags me away because this is the segue to why i believe that ‘circe’ by madeline miller should’ve never been written.

how does this tie in to me being irked at the perception of zeus in modern media? oh, it doesn’t. but it ties in loosely to the idea of enforcing the modern on the ancient. but what irks me most about circe is the perception of odysseus. odysseus is not a hero, he’s just a man. but he’s also not the sexist or misogynistic monster some media portrays him as. he was just a man, and on top of that, a man who wanted to get home. circe follows the telegony which was composed centuries after homer, so there’s debate on whether or not it’s even canon in regard to the overarching story of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but personally i believe it isn’t.

the story that miller wanted to tell was a feminist one but using circe and odysseus was her first mistake. especially because odysseus himself is a victim of SA and the characterization of him as sexist and misogynistic is just… not true. there are countless of heroes in greek mythology who are, and miller chose one of the few who wasn’t. it shouldn’t have been circe. it should’ve been ariadne, because theseus is the bad guy people who subscribe to the image of odysseus make him out to be.

[heathleaves]

I can’t stop thinking about Verna’s deals and her collateral - with Roderick it is straightforward, his bloodline ends with him which would imply he does love/will love his descendants… but never enough to overshadow his greed, only Lenore’s death at the end truly shakes him.

But Madeline - at first I thought the twins shared their price, their collateral, but Madeline never wanted kids. True, she might never had any because of the deal but she also mentions being against it in general - she wanted to be immortal on her own merit not fulfilling a woman’s role of childbearing and achieving immortality in this more traditional “prolonging the species” kind of way. And while she did everything to protect their family and the Usher legacy - and slayed while doing so! - I don’t know if she actually loved any of her brother’s children as individuals. She protected them, but also didn���t hesitate to threaten death if any of them threatened the collective and/or the company. While Roderick was also ruthless in these moments and encouraged the hunt for perceived traitors, I think there was genuine grief and loss during the last funeral - and this is the scene when I think it clicked for me that Madeline did not love the dead Ushers - the way she was sitting in front of the final coffins. It was a beautiful pose, the actress slayed. Madeline looked bored. And probably planning next moves with the company/the board. She had tried to protect them because they were Ushers, but they were nowhere close important enough for her to be her collateral - for her to feel the loss, personally.

What, then? At first I thought the whole cost was on Roderick’s side and the twins were a package deal, but then Verna’s insistence that they both confirm would sound off. And she stressed the part about them both going out together which, I think, is the whole crux of the matter.

Madeline’s collateral is her ambition and dream of achieving immortality, rather than a person she loved - the only one she truly loved is her brother, and she was prepared to kill him in order to prolong her own life - so that she could achieve her goal.

This is where the price of her deal comes in - she received all the means in order to complete it, all the money (that she chose in her conversation with Verna) and no consequences for her actions - but she is made to die together with her brother before she achieves her digital immortality, as we know her AI failed due to an example with Lenore.

It was rather skillfully arranged in the narrative because I think we had the key to that answer before we fully formed the question - i.e. Verna’s talk with Arthur Pym about the collaterals before the full scene of her deal with the Ushers, and both of those happening at the end of the series, so for the majority of it the viewers can solidify in their minds a pre-existing idea of the deal’s only price are the Usher children dying, only to have the inkling of doubt during Verna’s conversation with Pym and then the final picture happening in the bar.

Which is what makes me wonder about the third Madeline that Verna could see - the past we know, the present we know, but the alternate? Would she have achieved her dream through her own means, even without the money she said she wanted in her solo conversation with Verna in the bar? It does seem to tie-in with the theme of the poem Verna recites to Madeline - The City in the Sea. The poem’s main theme is a ruin brought on by riches, as Death presides over the once opulent city. This obviously refers to the fall of the house of Usher, and the fact that death conquers all.

But I wonder if it doesn’t also mean, more personally for Madeline, that she gave up her dream of achieving immortality, and exchanged it for money - that Verna’s personal message to Madeline is “You would’ve been magnificent, but money and riches are not the way to overcome death.”

Both Usher twins were obsessed with Egyptians, but Madeline understood you couldn’t take your treasures to the afterlife - I don’t know if Roderick understood it as well and only wanted the symbols of status, but Madeline wanted the money as a means to achieve her true ambition.

Perhaps her immortality would’ve been fame, if we go back to the conversation with Verna in the bar when she asked Madeline what was more important to her - money or fame.

[thilsiktonix]

GOOD NEWS. I JUST WATCHED THE MOVIE ELECTRIC DREAMS. TWICE!!!!

So like, it actually genuinely hurt me. Lol. Like, the ending of it made me go ??!!!!! because it was so out of NOWHERE??? LIKE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THAT'S THE RESOLUTION?!!!!

and Miles was genuinely tbe most infuriating protagonist of any show or movie I've ever watched /srs

anyways outside of that. I think I need to get better at tumblr. and make more robot OCs. more WILL come.

[kindaorangey]

i haven't gotten there in my rewatch yet so i can't remember how much of an obvious reading this is, but i think daniel choosing to rat armand out at the end isn't as simple as him stirring the pot or needing to chase the journalistic satisfaction - it is both of those things, but there's also a more calculated side to it of him trying to get in louis' good books.

he doesn't believe he's going to make it out of there alive, he doesn't trust louis, but he trusts armand less, and he and louis have a level of mutual respect and emotional connection. he's told, "you fear armand, you should fear the other one," and so he rolls the dice, throws his lot in with louis, unravels armand's lies and hopes it's enough for louis to make sure he lives.

[tamaruaart]

Your daily reminder that Kirke didn't turn Odysseus's sailors into pigs because they were men or because she wanted to protect her nymphs, she did it because she was bored. She would've turned them into pigs if they were women as well

[missholloween]

I need an official recording of the west end cast of Hadestown so bad.

I love Reeve Carey's Orpheus as much as the next guy, but there's something so raw about Dónal Finn's interpretation. I was lucky enough of seeing him onstage on May, and his power, his rage, his PASSION totally blew me away. I can't listen to If it's true again without it being his rendition.

Reeve's Orpheus is an artist, then a lover, but Dónal's Orpheus is firstly a man in love, then everything else. His heart laughs and sings and scream and aches. It aches so much. And you can see it.

[dootznbootz]

"Girlbosses" 🙃

Understand that I like all these "girlbosses". these are silly

Template down below for friends who wish to add to the collection ｡.ﾟ+ ⟵(｡･ω･)

[javierpena-inatacvest]

The Sunday Scaries have never been scarier (it's my last day of spring break BOO) but in light of trying to be a lil more positive, here are some fun things helping me to get through my upcoming week!!

-My husband and I started going car shopping this week for a new car for me, which I am super pumped about bc I have been driving my 2007 Toyota Camry with 200,000 miles since the beginning of college and this will be my first new car I've ever owned 🥹 (We're getting a Subaru Outback EEK)

-I got to spend lots of time writing!! (I promise chapter 20 is coming, I am currently working on it as we speak, and am finally making a lot of progress!!! I think I'm procrastinating bc after this, there's only 2/3 more chapters left, and I'm not ready to let NTL go ���)

-I finally got my hair done for the first time since after my wedding and it was MUCH needed (it's just a lil shorter and a lil blonder but I feel so much better)

-I am getting like, dangerously close to 2k followers (WTF?!) and want to do something fun to celebrate!!!

-My birthday is this week, and there is no greater present than knowing I share a birthday with the one and only Pedro Pascal 🫡 (I swear I'm not joking, April 2nd babies rise up!!!!)

Okay, ily all more than words can say, I hope you all have a wonderful week, cute lil humans in my pocket!!!! 🥺💛🌼

My face below the cut bc I was feeling myself after my haircut 🤓

[ofhouseusher]

sorry but madeline usher was always serving cunt