#tboc*

[youmakethelight]

also perfect example of how carol would never do what isabelle did trying to force him to stay in france with her. Carol wants things, but she always asks and respects what daryl wants first.

[emeryhiro]

Carol x Daryl: The look of love ♡

[llynwen]

i feel like I owe norman reedus a fucking six pack of beer because I truly honestly believe that man Gets It. like genuinely everything I've seen floating around and also the interviews I've seen make it obvious that bro is on the exact same wavelength as me when it comes to daryl. like bro is Cooking. he Has been Cooking. for over a decade. y'all moan and complain because he's not going around praising y'all's ships and agendas but if he didn't Get It the character would not be the way he is. like who do you think created this freak to be his perfect delicious self? whose acting choices made him this beloved little wet guy that Everybody likes? like he clearly cares about daryl, about carol, about his Real Life Friend melissa (who, I think y'all are forgetting, is like. a person) and I think he's doing what he thinks is best for the character and show overall. and he's Right. y'all are just too blinded by your own agendas to see it

[haircoveredwriter]

“Bound by one soul” and “struggling with staying in France for Laurent”

Yeah … they’re totally not gonna care when they reunite. 😉🥰

[whiteprissybitch]

goddamn daryl is beat UP please let this man REST!!!!

it’s that smile when he realizes he’s not alone, Carol did not leave, she couldn’t so she stayed, and together they’ve given a kid a chance at a relatively normal life.

[hisdahlia]

reminder,

“she gets hurt, she dies, she catches a fever, she gets taken out by a walker, she gets hit by lighting, anything happens to her, i’ll kill you.”

this was NOT delivered in season two of d.d. remember what we lost.

[bambidixon]

𖤣𖥧𓋼You'll see my face in every place, but you can't catch me now 𖤣𖥧𓋼

[youmakethelight]

Thank you Melissa McBride for giving us the most empowering female character on television, and for doing it in a genre as difficult for women as horror.

You deserve more than TWDU gives you, but the way you show up for us regardless means everything.

[youmakethelight]

Having fully formed people is what allows you to look at characters as humans and not just this construct of what you want them to be. I do think that there’s this kind of toxic perfectionism that can come with female characters. I don’t want to lean into that, and it’s not always popular when we have the women on our show make mistakes. But I would tell that kind of story for a male protagonist. That’s how they get to have a better story. They’ve got to struggle.

- Angela Kang

The flawed perfection of Carol Peletier

 "I'll show you what a woman can do." - Artemisia Gentileschi

The Mona Lisa is one of the most well-known paintings of all time. Da Vinci poured his expertise into it, and every brush stroke whispers "perfection". The painting is a masterpiece; people want to witness her, feel the enigma behind her smile, and taste that mystery. The bare bones of the story? It's a painting of a woman named Lisa Gherardini, commissioned by her husband, a wealthy merchant. In my opinion, the painting is rendered for a male gaze, which follows the conventional standards of female beauty at the time. Da Vinci used the sfumato technique — making the shading soft, elegant, dainty, and patient. It's a demure depiction of femininity where you can stand and admire the subject and the art techniques. It doesn't make you feel anything; it encourages you to look for the "secret hidden behind her smile."

I was frustrated but not surprised when this painting was used to subtly suggest that Carol is similar to the Mona Lisa because the entire show is written for the male gaze. One of the most compelling female characters on TV — who broke gender norms and societal constructs — is compared to the most well-known painting in the world, which also happens to be a painting of someone's wife.

Carol is not a muse of a man. She isn't a masterpiece that people are still trying to understand. Carol is a force of nature; you know exactly who she is because she isn't afraid to show you. She doesn't represent a subject to be contemplated or held under scrutiny by the male gaze. She embodies the flawed perfection of a woman revered by the female gaze.

Which brings me to this masterpiece.

Judith Beheading Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi, 1620 Judith was a widow who entered the enemy camp pretending to be a traitor who wanted to share information about her town. Assyrian general Holofernes was enamoured by her beauty and invited her to his tent, so she charmed him and waited for him to drop his guard. When he drank himself into a stupor, she sawed his head off with a sword to free her people. She and her maidservant returned to her town with Holofernes' severed head.

Artemisia Gentileschi is a celebrated female painter from the 17th century. Although this story has been immortalized in art many times — including Caravaggio's painting, which inspired this one — almost all depictions of this biblical story show Judith as dainty, demure, and passive. But Artemisia's work is imbued with her life experiences.

(trigger warning: mentions of SA, depictions of gore)

Artemisia lost her mother when she was twelve. She was raped by the painter Agostino Tassi when she was a teenager and then tortured at her trial, where she was asked to give evidence of the assault. He was found guilty and banished, but his punishment was never carried out because he had received protection from the Pope. She was the first woman to join Florence’s Academy of Design. She lost four of her five children. She married a Florentine artist and owned a successful workshop in Naples without the help of a wealthy husband or a patron (which was almost impossible at the time). She used her influence as an artist to highlight female agency, and elevated women to be bold and assertive in her paintings. (source)

Now, look at the painting again and tell me what you see.

Judith is identical to Artemisia herself, and Holofernes resembles her abuser, who was never punished. Judith is muscular with a softness to her skin; her sleeves and bracelet are rolled up, and her maidservant helps her but never clouds the composition. The chiaroscuro technique carves the subjects in sharp shadows and light. Judith's and her maidservant's faces are determined and calculated, and the most emotion you see is the horror in Holofernes' eyes as the blood sprays from his neck and pools around his body. Once you notice the blood, it permeates the painting — even the velvet blanket that covers him becomes an extension of it.

A wise woman once said, "Give him the greatest night of his life. Get him to drop his guard, and then when he's sleeping, you can end this."

Judith is ordinary, flawed, and resourceful because she has to be. Her goal is to protect her people, and she will do what is necessary to save them. She gives into the male gaze to achieve that goal, but ultimately, even though she's in a camp full of armed men and is at "the mercy" of a powerful man who underestimates her — she holds all the power.

The woman in this painting is feminine, violent, beautiful, terrifying, determined, and unafraid.

Remind you of anyone?

Women written by the male gaze for the male gaze often fall into two-dimensional categories: they're either violent or scared, sexy or demure, good or evil, selfish or self-deprecating, perpetrator or victim, etc. The writing is often surface level, doesn't capture the depth of the woman's personality and keeps morphing to suit a male character's story. More often than not, the person most affected by their personality is a man who either saves them or shuns them. Or worse, he kills them or watches them die — sometimes both. In these scenarios, the woman becomes the narrative device that furthers the man's story. Her story is stripped down to build the man's tragic hero arc — he lives, but she dies for it.

Carol Peletier is the antidote to this structure because she broke the stereotype. Carol is perfectly flawed because she makes mistakes and choices women aren't "supposed to make," yet her beauty, strength, motivation, and honour remain unchanged. Her losses are the scars that mark her journey, and she commands her story completely. She is capable of extraordinary things, and I have never once doubted her integrity.

Carol deserves a story that sees and honours the beautiful and terrifying force of nature that she is. A showrunner who follows gimmicks to portray strong women, makes men punish them for their choices and then compares his female lead to the Mona Lisa because "there is a secret hidden behind her smile" hasn't even begun to fathom who Carol is and what she's capable of. She deserves leadership that recognizes and respects the flawed perfection of an ordinary woman who will beguile a powerful enemy and behead them to save her loved ones. She deserves leadership who knows she isn't here to pick up the pieces of a man's story — she is the story.

That is what a woman is capable of. That is what a woman can do.

The current leadership of The Book of Carol is trying their best to box Carol into a misogynist trope that will never hold her, even if it tries to. Melissa McBride is the only person who tends to Carol's integrity and keeps it strong for us through all of this. She holds this show together even when she doesn't have compelling writing, equal billing or an inclusive title.

Carol Peletier deserves a showrunner who not only sees her flawed perfection but reveres it, cherishes it, immortalizes it, and sears it into the story so fiercely that you can see it from the heavens long after the flame has gone out.

[darylscigarettesmoke]

people, “fans”, attacking an actor on twitter because his views of a character and wishes for him don’t align with theirs, calling him names, mocking him for his hairstyle, starting tag-wars and begging for a ship to become canon and I’m honestly speechless.

criticizing creative decisions for a character, wonky storylines, questionably written female characters and plotholes is good and fair - but only if it happens on a factual and grounded basis which is absolutely not the case here.

we, as fans, should never feel entitled to how a story’s gonna play out - never, ever, ever. we can voice our sadness, share our stories and opinions, but we are not entitled to see the story play out exactly how we want it to. Never ever ever.

I don’t know if y’all remember the marketing of The Last of Us Part II, the switched out trailer, indicating Joel is alive when in fact he dies about half an hour into the game - now THAT was hard as fuck as well, but nobody screamed or lost their minds about “false marketing.” Because guess what marketing is?

A story is a story, and once you stop enjoying it, it’s absolutely your right to tune out of it and to look for your enjoyment elsewhere and pour your passion into anything else - but it’s never your right to harass people and to ruin the experience for everybody else.

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

I'll stop talking eventually but I think one major thing that's missing from Daryl in this spinoff is that he's Odd. Yes we get it he's tough and stoic, but he's also a weird little freak. He's gross and awkward. This is very important.

[shana-silver-fox]

In your dreams, Carol! 😘

I bet he’s making truffle eggs. 😋

[youmakethelight]

I felt every word of this in my soul. Shalaka always has the best and most thoughtful takes.

I really want to talk about the ash and carol scene where ash shouts at her. And I really want to thank Shalaka for speaking about this bc it helped me understand why I felt so uneasy about it and why I've been dreading rewatching it.

(To clarify, I have absolutely no complaints about Manish Dayal or Melissa McBride. I think they are both incredible actors, and I think they absolutely smashed their performances. My issue here is with the showrunner and the writing.)

Before I watched it myself, all I heard people say about this scene was how nice it is that Carol told the truth to Ash, and how nice it is that Daryl told her to tell him..

Well, when I watched it myself, when Ash started shouting - I wasn't okay. Carol's reaction made me feel uncomfortable in ways I really didn't understand. To be honest, I sort of zoned out while it was happening because it felt so unsettling to me. I guess my fight or flight reaction was freeze.

And I realise now that it felt so unsettling because I've spent years with Carol, knowing that she has a history of abuse, but being able to feel how far she's come. It felt like armour to know that in spite of having that history inside of her, she's built layers that feel powerful and strong in the best way.

This scene felt like it stripped and peeled all of that back, and she was raw. It hurt. But the thing is, it hurt because it felt like the men creating the show were making this happen to her. And for what payoff? For that reason, it felt humiliating actually. It felt like disrespect. And actually, it felt like men behind the camera getting to feel gratified at seeing a woman "brought down a peg or two". These are the feelings I felt, even though I couldn't articulate why it felt that way. But it did feel that way.

As for Ash shouting as he did, this shocked me. Although this is a zombie horror show, it genuinely felt more scary to me that such a kind man, who I'd spent all this time beginning to trust, reacted in such a volatile way. It reminded me of how someone you trust to never hurt you just might.

Although his words were hurtful, I could barely hear them, because I was too preoccupied by how much the shouting put me in my fight or flight (or freeze) mode. For me, without doubt, the words would have had more emotional impact without the shouting. And honestly, it just seemed out of nowhere. It seemed out of character for Ash, excessive, and there was nothing in the script that helped me understand a reason for why he reacted quite so violently. And then we just move on as if it was okay.

What did the re-creation of carol's domestic abuse even achieve? Was the showrunner just saying "see, look, I did watch parts of your stupid show, I know about the abuse, I can show you I know". It felt gratuitous because it didn't seem to achieve anything.

In "Look at the Flowers" in season 10, when carol hallucinated alpha and she hurled verbal insults at carol, we saw a glimpse of how carol's history of abuse affects her. I found that to be much more of a sensitive exploration of this topic. Within that scene, carol was given space to respond in a way that didn't regress her. It felt more like getting to learn a bit more about her and how it feels to be inside her head.

My takeaway is that men like david zabel should not be allowed to write stories about women who have been abused.

Nine Lives Two Mics (Caryl Podcast) | New Episode

🎙️Deep Dive into 204 & 205 of #TheBookofCarol🎙️

A comprehensive review of Daryl & Carol’s arc in episodes 4 & 5 of The Book of Carol.

Spotify | Youtube

This podcast was recorded before the new teaser was released, and David Zabel decided to share his "vision" again. The next podcast episode will cover all of the above and a breakdown of some of the most talked-about scenes from the TBOC finale. Keep an eye out for updates.

[giulzart]

*throws a Mordred sketch at you and runs away*

[arabian-bloodstream]

Call me a bad or crazy Caryl fan, but nothing I saw in s1 of DD, nothing I've read, heard, or seen about DD:TBOC has me feeling ANYTHING but positive.

I 100% believe that because of the fact that Caryl were dragged out for soooooooooo long on the OG TWD, the only way to believably get a romance on with them for Carlyers and non-Carylers alike (not talking about ABCers, forget them) is, well, what it looks like they're doing. Heal them both, first separately, and then together.

Show them both as sexual, romantic creatures, and see each other as such, but I believe, we will see that the two--and others--realize before not too long that Daryl and Carol burn only for one another. However, in order to get to that point, we need to see the dearth of flames with others.

They are two broken individuals who still have much healing to do. Sure, it would have been nicer had this started sooner. But, hey, we're getting it now. I do NOT want it rushed. I want it good.

Just my take.

[emeryhiro]

New clips of our Queen herself from today's TBOC teaser ♡

Her using Daryl's crossbow and riding his bike😫she just looks so natural, like they belong to her just as much as him ♡♡♡