#you exist as a viewer of eternity but you are still bound by mortality

[nyxi-pixie]

NURSEE shes out thinking about the tragedy of seers again!!!!!

[magaprima]

Part 2 Episode 7 Analysis (Part 1/?)

Okay, the fact that the first scene of Lilith in this episode is actually a shot of the fetish doll Adam gave her is, for one, an extremely painful reminder of what happened in the last episode, but it’s also telling us that everything Lilith is going to be doing in this episode is driven by her grief for losing Adam. She has placed the doll in his chair, like it’s placed there the way a widow might place her deceased husband’s suit in his favourite chair, to pretend for a little while that he’s still alive. And she talks to the doll as if she is talking to Adam. The doll is the only connection to him that she has left, and she has set it up on the chair to talk to, to allow her to talk to Adam. 

She’s also not dressed; another sign  of grief. She’s in her night gown and we know she’s taken the day off work. She called in sick, she isn’t seeing anyone. The woman is in the throes of grief, and she’s dealing with that grief with an emotion that’s much more familiar to her; anger. 

We start the scene with her accusing Adam. “You did this to me”. I presume she has been talking for longer, and we’re just joining her at her concluding point (as she is sat in the chair, quite slouched down, and she has a drink on the table, hinting that she’s been ‘talking with Adam’ for a while now), because the ‘this’ is never specified for the viewer. But I’m going to presume because of the other episodes and because of my own personal view/headcanons, that she was talking to ‘Adam’ about the feelings she developed, the hopes she’d had and the plans she’d made, talking about the feeling and experience of falling in love with him and all that that did to her, both the good and the bad. 

“You made me weak, Adam” Lilith, due to her experiences, had previously perceived emotions and love as a vulnerability, but then when she gives into it and allows herself to grow attached, grow fond, fall in love....it’s ripped out from under her in a horrendous way, proving her point, she believes; that to love is to be made weak. And she’s blaming Adam, because that’s easier than blaming Lucifer (who she can’t do anything about) or Stolas (who she has already dealt with) or herself (because that’s too painful). 

“A grieving widow” She actually calls herself this. She likens herself to a grieving widow. She could have said anything else; grief-stricken, grieving demoness, a grieving witch, grieving woman, the list goes on. But she specifically refers to herself in a term that implies she saw herself and Adam as essentially married. Lilith is known as the one who initiated the first divorce, so she’s technically the first divorcee as well as the first wife, so marriage is an identifying factor for her since she’s been created, and it’s only natural for her to see their relationship through the same lens. But the fact she actively calls herself a grieving widow reveals not only how she viewed their dynamic/relationship, but also how she felt about Adam. Lucifer killing him has left her not just bereft, not just grieving, but widowed. She wouldn’t assign that word to herself if she didn’t feel like one; i.e she did fall in love with Adam and now she’s grieving like one in love. 

But the way Lilith is sat in that chair, the way the drink is, the way she’s dressed, the way the fire is burning in a way that suggests it’s the one from the previous night...how long has Lilith been sat there talking to the doll (i.e Adam)? After she cleaned herself up in the bathroom, what did she do? Is this how she’s processing her grief? Which brings us onto the next point

“But I owe you my gratitude. I was getting very comfortable in this woman’s flesh suit”

Oh, here comes the distancing language. She’s indulged her grief, she’s fully embraced her grieving widow status, but now her old, faithful defence mechanisms are returning. If loving Adam made her weak, then grieving him makes her even weaker. She’s distancing herself here, she’s not even calling her form a body right now (as she did when speaking to Hawthorne) or even referring to it as skin (as she does with Sabrina in Part 3), she’s referring to it as a ‘flesh suit’. She’s not just trying to distance herself from her feelings from Adam and her grief, she’s trying to distance herself from humanity entirely. It suits her now to fully identify as her demoness status, because as demoness none of these feelings can happen and so none of this vulnerability can exist and so none of this pain can be felt. 

The irony is that her choice of words reveals her true feelings. ��I was getting very comfortable’. Lilith is enjoying being Mary, she has started enjoying this life in Greendale. Think how we’ve seen her working at Baxter High, even taking her work home to complete, think how reluctant she was to take a day off (and how now that she is taking time off she did actually call Mrs Meeks to let her know, rather than just not turning up), and think of the time she was spending with Adam, the implied time she has spent chatting with Mrs Meeks if the woman’s confidence and closeness around Lilith is any indicator. The Dark Lord had even said that she was taking too long to complete her tasks. Lilith was indeed getting very comfortable living as Mary: she’s surprised herself to find she can actually enjoy this existence, living as a witch in Greendale just as the Spellmans do. 

When she picks up the doll, she strokes the hair, she holds it so affectionately and you can just see the emotion she has attached to it. The doll was not only a gift she loved and it wasn’t only a gift from Adam, but it signified that first moment when she didn’t want to kill him, when she was actually considering him and found he’d managed to surprise her. Which, for a mortal man, is a big deal.

 “I needed to be reminded of who and what I truly am” She says this to the doll, and it’s taken as a declaration of cutting herself off from the mortal-esuqe life she’d become accustomed to, but the way she says it doesn’t sound bold and defiant, it doesn’t even sound like someone trying to find a way to heal. The entire way it’s said, her expression on her face, all speaks of pain...because what she’s saying right now is exactly what Lucifer has kept telling her. You belong to me. You forget our bond is eternal. You belong to me and only me. That’s what she is, that’s who and what she is. She’s the Mother of Demons, she’s eternally bound to Lucifer and that’s the life she’s now resolving to live in, because there’s no other option. There’s never going to be another Adam, another Tibet, so, in true Lilith style, she will adapt and survive, but more than that, she plans to thrive. If this is the only option she has, then she’s going to make sure she rules over it. 

And so she throws the doll on the fire defiantly, suddenly, she does it abruptly so there’s no turning back, and in the same moment we see her telekinetically move the cross back to it’s upturned position; not only showing she’s choosing to full throw herself back into her Queen of Hell ambitions (since these are all that’s left to her), but undoing the cross is removing the other relic of Adam, another reminder of him. She is doing her best to erase all vestiges of him, because, as she said herself ‘he made her weak’, and to thrive in this new situation, to really throw herself into her plans to be Queen, to live her life by Lucifer’s side (as she thinks, at the time), then she can’t have anything that might make her doubt or hesitate, she can’t have anything that would drag her back to being ‘comfortable’ again. There can be nothing left.

Which takes us to her watching the doll burn away, as she declares “time to birth a monster”, and we see the flames dancing in her eyes, which immediately calls up imagery of Hell and her intention to be Queen. Burning the doll away is burning away her time with Adam, which is burning her tie to the mortal realm and officially declaring her new Hell-orientated intent and ambitions. 

The use of flames, the burning away of the doll, the use of the word ‘monster’ rather than demon or creature etc, all signifies burning away one life in order to start another. Lilith intends to burn something away in order to rise from the ashes anew; there is no doubt, as she stares into those flames, that Lilith has major plans for coming out of all this horror stronger, better and, preferably, with a crown. It’s a phoenix moment, but instead of rising from ashes, she’s rising from hell fire. 

[fuckrealityfictionisbetter]

Hmm… elaborate on the charnel house and ppls views on true crime YTers/consumers pls. Especially since I don’t think BFU is viewed too negatively, unless I missed something.

Ok so unfortunately this is something I’m into rn so this might be long.

Death has always been a part of humanity, but it used to be a huge and respected part of humanity, not even as a separate thing to life but another progression to life to quote Raoul Vaneigem “we do not die because we must, we die because it is a habit to which one day, not very long ago, our thoughts become bound”. As a way for the dead to still be involved in society there were huge monuments to death including those in the form of charnel houses (churches decorated with bone).

In the charnel house of St. Michael’s chapel in Hallstatt there are around 600 skulls with the names, dates and information about the past ‘owner’ painted on them, many with painted flowers and other decorations. Families and friends of the deceased would come to the house to show their children their ancestors to connect with family history.

But then the time of enlightenment came, holding on to bones was seen as dangerous medically and barbaric mortally. There is many ways the enlightenment age damaged the perspective of death (we used to look after our own dead till mass funeral homes for one) but I’d suggest watching Ask a mortician on YouTube find out about all that.

So why does it matter that we don’t interact with the dead, that to quote baudrillard “little by little, the dead cease to exist”? Well in Antiquarian researches: Mr Bloxam on charnel vaults it was posed ‘that people who do not have contact with morality tend to feel “depressed, diminished, and less alive”’ though a quote from over 200 years ago could very much be argued it can’t be argued that death was a large part of society for thousands of years and people were drawn to it, in large churches of bones or keeping skulls to commune with (won’t get into that other bit rn) and that mostly stopped during the enlightenment. Display’s of death other then solemn statues or for punishment was shunned as grotesque.

So what does this have to do with true crime? True crime is very much a representation of the dead, its not family friendly or cheery tales of good times it’s morbid retelling’s of grizzly death. Death. It’s one of the sole places to hear about dead people and how they died as death has been (due to modem medicine, changes in funeral care and more) removed from our society for the first time in human history. I’ve seen ‘true crime’ where no crimes were committed at all but a tragic accident told out in great detail. It’s at its core a way to connect with death and yes face the darkest of humanity.

So about the negativity, I’m glad you haven’t seen the negativity around true crime, there are many individuals disgusted with Bailey Sarian and others like her for talking about the victims of these crimes. That it somehow reduces them to nothing but entertainment, that it makes light of their murders, if one is to talk about crime it should be in some sad dramatic documentary where the viewer is made to feel bad about these poor people and so glad the police are there to help! That casual conversation on the topic is u slightly! This mindset makes sense when you look at how death (from the enlightenment time onwards) was told it should be behind closed doors, grandma should be pumped full of chemicals so she can look perfect for eternity after death. And death as a spectacle should be reserved for the guilty.

In Paul Koudounaris’s book The Empire of Death he notes an occasion when a tourist of a charnel house asked “These are all monks?… What did they do to be punished like this?” And really I could of just replied with that quote, that though once being regarded and remembered in death was an honour it is now only for the criminal (Public executions and such), and so talking about the crimes seems a punishment to the victims. Sorry if non of this made sense.

[itsfinancethings]

January 31, 2020 at 12:50AM

This review contains spoilers for the series finale of The Good Place.

The Good Place rebooted itself so many times over the course of four seasons that we should’ve known it was never going to settle for just one ending. Finality started setting in at least two episodes before Thursday’s extra-long finale, when the four deeply flawed human souls we’d followed for, well, more Jeremy Bearemies than I can wrap my tiny mortal brain around boarded a balloon bound for the real Good Place, with their supernatural accomplices Janet and Michael in tow.

Last week, they got their first taste of heaven—a place where even the brilliant Hypatia of Alexandria (Lisa Kudrow, in a truly divine guest appearance) was reduced to pounding endless stardust milkshakes and staring off into space, in a state of eternal ennui. Of course, Eleanor, Michael and the gang soon figured out how to build a better Good Place: just let people leave when they’ve exhausted their enthusiasm for the universe. (Kind of like, you know, when the folks who make TV shows have the good sense to cancel them once the fresh storylines run out, and before they congeal into repetitive, plotless sludge doomed to eternal life in syndication.) It would have been resolution enough to leave Chidi and Eleanor snuggling up together in the home Michael created for them, with Chidi realizing that the Good Place is “just having enough time with the people you love.”

But when the end finally came, it was more emotional than theoretical. We got to say—by which I mean, sob—good-bye to each of the characters in turn: Jason was the first to approach the door to the great unknown, but then he wandered the forest for another eon or so, waiting to give Janet back the necklace he made for her and accidentally becoming the silent monk he used to impersonate. Tahani learned a long list of life skills and waited around to spend time with her new and improved family; once a kind of useless braggart, she eventually put her afterlife to good use as the first-ever human Good Place architect.

It was tough to watch Chidi evolve past his relationship with Eleanor, but also fitting. It gave her the chance to prove she’d truly set aside the selfishness that defined her in life, and to save one last soul: Mindy St. Claire of the Medium Place, whom Eleanor realizes is “a version of me if I’d never met my friends.” On a cosmic level, the show turned toward Buddhist metaphysics once its characters’ moral journeys wrapped up—and those guys are big on the imperative to detach from one’s desires. I’m certain I had heard some version of Chidi’s analogy about the individual human soul as a wave being absorbed back into the ocean that is the universe, one that resonates more as an image to meditate on than as a theory to test out. But then, the magic of The Good Place is in its unique ability to make you feel the weight of abstract ideas in your bones.

In the end—the real end—there was only Michael, who began the series by opening one door as a fire squid in silver fox’s clothing and ended it by closing another door as a real human boy. (I can’t help but wonder who will be sitting in an office just past the Pearly Gates once he earns his way back to heaven, waiting to assure him that “everything is fine.”) It was neither an overly predictable conclusion nor a shocking one; after dreaming up so many brainteasers and thought experiments, creator Mike Schur left his characters and audience alike spiritually exhausted but at peace. Though I worried, last week, that heaven was going to be one big anticlimax—and I still have to feel a bit disappointed with the extent to which The Good Place glossed over the intersections between moral philosophy and class, race and gender throughout its run—this coda left me satisfied.

Frankly, I expected to have a lot more to say about the final episode of a show that never stopped giving its viewers new ideas to parse. As it turns out, however, further interpretation just doesn’t seem necessary. So I’ll end by paraphrasing the great 21st-century philosopher Eleanor of the Cheesecake Factory Bar, as quoted by the most advanced life form in the universe: I hated to see The Good Place walk through the final door at the edge of existence, but I loved to watch it leave.