#theory of the young girl

[frankensteinsfairy]

“However vast her narcissism, the Young-Girl doesn't love herself, what she loves is "her" image, that is, something that is not only foreign and exterior to her, but that possesses her, in the full sense of the word. The Young-Girl lives under the tyranny of this ungrateful master.” (Theory of the Young-Girl, Tiqqun)

[let-me-return-to-dirt]

[l1hym3neal]

[downtownaristocracy]

Theory of the Young-Girl poasting

Chapter One: The Young-Girl as Phenomenon

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

M'lady, doth this harlot bother thee?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[conflictofthemind]

holly wheeler - who/what are you? an informal post about all of the holly oddities I've discovered so far.

where do I even begin with this one? I'm just going to jump into it and show you all the weird connections I've found that mostly relate to holly-el/jane, holly-alice and holly-sarah. I have no real conclusions so far so I invite everyone to take a look and share their thoughts.

oddity one: the hair

All four are blonde girls, and three have pigtails or twin braids, reminiscent of rabbit ears.

oddity two: the rabbits

terry ives' home, inside what should have been jane ives' room:

holly wheeler and her rabbit lite-brite:

alice creel and the dead rabbit:

And why the rabbits? Well, they're all a reference to Alice in Wonderland. The first rabbit in the painting in Jane's room is just literally the rabbit from AIW, fitted with a pocketwatch.

Alice in Wonderland:

Just check out #whiterabbitgate for more on the two above, the song 'White Rabbit' is also connected to El and just general HNL activities.

The Rainbows:

(above is the Terry Ives flashback from season two)

Holly's outfit in Season 5 is incredibly colourful and there are at least 3 different rainbow items inside her room.

The Flowers:

^ Holly even has yellow red and blue flowers on her bicycle basket.

My questions have already been: why is Vecna/Henry seemingly interested in her enough to not only lure her but continue 'playing' with her for multiple scenes? Why is Holly suddenly relevant?

I'm also a BTVS fan, and the idea of a younger sister suddenly introduced had me thinking of Dawn. Dawn was Buffy's younger sister introduced suddenly in Season 5 (literally out of nowhere) - until it turned out that she wasn't a fully real person, but a powerful energy turned into a human that was sent to the Summers' house where they would protect her. She never existed until she was fourteen, but they all believed she had with false memories. Furthermore, she becomes the target of that season's villain which Buffy has to protect.

So then we get to Holly's room:

Most notably for this post are ALF and the 'A Royal Pain' book. Let me just show you the plot summaries for both, starting with ALF:

I initially thought the ALF reference was just a reference to El (and it very much could be a dual thing). But considering the strangeness.... and the parallels that are coming to light between them.

A Royal Pain:

There has already been baby-switch precedent in the show. In fact it's a major theory about Jane Ives and El - that they aren't the same child. But when it's been specifically brought up, it's been in relation to the Wheelers. Karen, was your other daughter swapped in the hospital? Or something even crazier?

I'll get to more when my ideas are less of a mess. But there's also something interesting @bylerposting has brought up - the way that Mike has this whole interesting out of place dialogue with El.

But what if it wasn't about El - what if it was also subtext for Holly? She came into the family even though she wasn't a biological daughter. The Wheelers were like her new parents, and Nancy was like her new sister.

And there's so much more I'm thinking of but can't get to right now, like Holly with the lights and her perception of the supernatural before others sense it. I just want to get this ball rolling for real.

[frobby]

the most unbelievable thing about blue exorcist to me is that rin didnt know about shiemi's existence at all. Like not at all?? I get yukio being able to lie and lead a double life but he never mentioned his childhood friend that he tutors like once a week? He was never in a situation where he was like 'oh i heard this from shiemi' not even a slip up??? Not even once??????? I feel like when rin met shiemi he shoulda known OF her at least.

[swan2swan]

Soyona Santos: "I am cold, calculated, and aloof. I don't care what common people think of me, only that my clients know I can be trusted to handle matters efficiently, and that my enemies and employees know I am not a woman to be crossed."

Also Soyona Santos: "DID YOU KNOW MY MOTHER WAS ON THE EXPEDITION THAT FOUND THE FIGHTING DINOSAUR FOSSILS IN MONGOLIA?!?!"

[greenfiend]

What others want: El to be happy and accepting of Byler immediately.

What I want: DRAMA, ARGUMENTS, ACCUSATIONS, then acceptance.

[rwby-confess]

Confession #166

[kings-paintbrush]

Sustained investigation for class.

Work in progress

alternate colors under the cut, i dont like them as much

My art tag is #king's paintbrush

My art tag is #king's paintbrush

-I’m a queer, 16 yo, black artist!

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

I am very curious was it ever stated in the show that Karen was a victim of sexual abuse? Or is it just your theory? Or are you referring to that one time Jody went down on her while she was in a coma, because that was messed up

she says in season 3 when talking to lip outside that she was almost sex trafficked, and as you said, jody raped her while she was comatose and he also did it again in a deleted scene (that time she wasn’t comatose but she was still very brain damaged and a teenager). the entire relationship with jody was that because he was in his thirties and she was only sixteen, so it was statutory. and i don’t really count it but it’s worth mentioning frank told her that he liked it when she had sex with him… and that was fucking odd

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

On this episode of the podcast, Ariel chats with Dr Tanis MacDonald about her upcoming course in winter 2025 on hopepunk. What exactly is so punk about this kind of hope? Can hopepunk even be said to be a genre in its own right, or is it an aesthetic or lens that we can use to think through just why the characters are deciding to have hope in bleak situations?

Tune in for recommendations of hopepunk novels (and poetry!), ruminations on political hope, the centrality of relationships and radical empathy to these stories, and more. Plus some academic theories informing the formulations of hope, of course.

Links:

Tanis MacDonald | Author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female

Watershed Writers with Tanis MacDonald | Podcast on Spotify

Hopepunk, explained: the storytelling trend that weaponizes optimism | Vox

Companion Species Manifesto

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

S2.9 Reframing Narratives With Ecocriticism, With Dr Jenny Kerber

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

This is not prepared at all, so it's likely going to be messier than usual, but I was in the shower earlier thinking about the Golden Girls (as one does) and I drew a couple of conclusions on the topic of how many children does Blanche actually have? that I wanted to share with you all.

So, first of all, let me sum up the controversy. The issue lies with one of Blanche's statements in S3E3 Bringing Up Baby, when she's trying to convince Dorothy to keep the Mercedes she bought with the money they'll supposedly get after Baby's death:

"I want that car, Dorothy. I will give you anything. [...] I'll give you one of my sons. I have given this a lot of thought. I have had four kids, I have never had a Mercedes."

Ok, everything tracks so far. Blanche has had four kids, some of which are sons. We meet her two daughters, Janet and Rebecca, a few times during the series, so the natural conclusion is that Blanche has four kids, two sons and two daughters.

Which is great, except... her next line in S3E3 is this:

"What do you say? Which one do you want? Biff, Doug, Skippy? No, don't take Skippy, he's got asthma."

She names a Biff, a Doug, and a Skippy, so... three sons. Which, in addition to the two daughters we see in the show, makes for a grand total of five kids. Huh.

Alright, we know that Blanche wasn't the best mother ever, but I find it hard to believe that she forgot how many children she has, so: what's going on here? The obvious explanation is, as always, that this is a continuity error (although it's a really egregious one!), but you folks know I prefer to find a Watsonian explanation wherever I can, so let's see if we can figure out anything interesting.

One thing that struck me when I first realized this discrepancy is her use of the words 'I have had four kids'. Not I have, I have had. Why does she use the past tense here? The sentence flows better with it, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in-universe -- unless you think that she's using 'to have a child' to mean 'to bear a child'. If that's the case, then what she's saying translates to 'I have physically given birth to four kids, I have never had a Mercedes.'

I'm sure I don't have to point out the implications of this, do I? If the number of kids Blanche has given birth to is four, but her total number of kids is five, then that means that one of her kids is not hers in the strictly physical sense, i.e. one of Blanche's kids is adopted. This would solve the discrepancy without breaking the canon elsewhere (as far as I can tell, at least).

For a while, this idea remained in the back of my head to examine at a later date, because it still has a number of issues to work through. For one, why would Blanche (and supposedly George) adopt a child? They had kids of their own apparently without any issues -- why adopt another child, instead of, well... making another child, if they wanted one more? I guess it's possible that fertility issues might have arisen at some point, but that seems unlikely for a number of reasons; that kind of problem is generally genetic in nature, and it tends to be diagnosed upon first try, not after four successful pregnancies. So, then... why?

I was stuck on this point for a long while, until I suddenly remembered this conversation between Blanche and Virginia, her younger sister, during S5E11 Ebb Tide:

"I remember when you were 16 and didn't come home for Father's Day." "I was away at school!" "Oh, yes. The Good Samaritan Academy for the Knocked-Up. Two, four, six, eight, all us girls are three months late."

It seems Virginia got into a spot of trouble when she was 16, and was away 'at school' for a while to take care of it. While this might imply that she was sent away to have an abortion, there's also space to hypothesize that she was sent away to carry her pregnancy to term and actually have a baby to then give out to adoption. If this is the case... I wonder if this baby is the one that Blanche and George adopted?

While an adoption seems a bit out of character for young!Blanche (to me, at least: she wasn't interested in her kids, why would she agree to adopt another one?), I think there's some space to consider it. For one, George might have convinced her! We don't know enough about the man to draw clear conclusions, but he did send money to the one child he had out of matrimony (see S5E18 An Illegitimate Concern), so maybe he feels more responsible towards kids near him than Blanche did -- and, well, if he'd asked, Blanche would have agreed immediately, of course. I feel like Big Daddy might have also played a part in this scenario: he could have wanted to keep the child in the family (a Hollingsworth is still a Hollingsworth!), and asked the youngest married couple among his children to take on the responsibility, to shield Virginia from the shame.

Note that this theory has a few issues anyway. For one, while Virginia is Blanche's junior, according to Wikipedia she's only one year her junior, which would put Blanche at 17 when all this happened -- and we know she met and married George much later, when she was already a university student (see S6E9 Mrs George Devereaux). However, I can't find any confirmation for this difference in age in the show itself, so I feel like the hypothesis still deserves some consideration.

As for which of Blanche's children is adopted, well... we can for sure rule out the boys, since she mentions them all by name in S3E3. This leaves her two daughters, Janet and Rebecca. All throughout the series Blanche has a rocky and painful relationship with Janet, even more than she has with the rest of her children:

I would love to have a chance to raise David. I might make up for the mess I made with Janet. [S1E6 On Golden Girls]

Well, honey, I really do want to see you. I think we have a lot to talk about, Janet. I've been thinking a lot about you, lately. [S2E16 And Then There Was One]

"I just talked to my daughter, Janet, and she and my granddaughter, Sarah, are coming to visit in a couple of days. Oh, I've never been so happy!" "Janet? Isn't she the daughter who hates you?" "[...] She doesn't really hate me, Sophia. We just don't see eye to eye." [S7E23 Home Again, Rose: Part 1]

As for Rebecca, while we know they stopped talking for a few years due to a disagreement, she seems remarkably closer to her:

We were always so much alike, and so close, just like Siamese twins. [...] I have missed her. She's always been my favourite. [S3E14 Blanche's Little Girl]

Although Rebecca herself seems to have a different perception on their relationship:

You're not happy, Mama. You're doing it again, you're telling me how to live! [...] Nothing's ever enough for you. I had to be the prettiest, I had to be the most popular, I had to be the brightest... [S3E14 Blanche's Little Girl]

I think there's two possible theories here, neither of which paints Blanche in a good light (but hey, we love these characters because of their qualities as well as their faults, don't we?). If Janet is the child she adopted, I think it's possible she might have been especially neglectful towards her (especially in her first few years); she might have taken her frustration with being convinced to adopt her out on her, as a lack of affection when compared to her other kids. This would explain why the relationship between them is so fraught (certain wounds last a lifetime, I'm afraid).

If Rebecca is the child she adopted, on the other hand, she might have wanted to overcompensate for her abandonment and sort of one-up Virginia ('see, how well I can take care of your daughter? aren't I the better mom?'). She might have showered her with affection (and with expectations, judging from what Rebecca says!) to the detriment of her other kids, which would explain the issues in her relationship with Janet as well.

I don't know. It's obviously very clear that, for all her faults, Blanche adores her children and is deeply pained by her mistakes as a mother; she often expresses regret for her actions and wishes she'd been a better mother:

I realized, too late, that I'd put myself ahead of my children. I've never made up all the time I didn't spend with them. [...] deep down, I wish you were really mine. So I could try again with what I now know. [S2E16 And Then There Was One]

For all that might have happened in the past, it's evident that Blanche loves all her children equally and considers all of them her own, so she's clearly gotten over any issues she might have had -- but that doesn't excuse her past actions, of course.

There's a whole lot that could be said about Blanche's approach to motherhood, how it connects to the way her parents treated her as a child and to her own internal issues, but as for the question of how many children she has, I feel like this is a satisfying possible answer. It's not airtight by any means, and I'm sure there's other ways to explain the discrepancy (they might have adopted a child from George's side of the family, for one, which would change a lot of dynamics); this is just the one that occurred to me. As always, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts, so do let me know your ideas about all this!

[shannonallaround]

After pondering on it for several days, I have officially decided I did not like the direction of KFP4 and have banished it from my brain. It is no longer canon. KFP4? What's that? Don't know what you're talking about.