#whee notes | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

randomprose · 2 years ago

Text

a series of texts/letters/notes that mo guan shan has written for he tian but will never send

note: he tian left after high school

—

xx/xx/xx to: chicken dick [unsent]

are you at wherever the fuck you should be at now? hope your flight was as shitty as your goodbye was

—

xx/xx/xx

Decided to give the old college experience a try after all. The high school teachers did say my grades were good enough to apply to some. Thanks for that I guess by the way. Studying wasn’t so bad when you have help.

Tuition costs are gonna be a bitch though so I’ll have to look for scholarship and shit.

I’m keeping my promise and trying my best to be better.

—

xx-xx 01:09 PM to: chicken dick [unsent]

[photo attached: a black puppy]

ma got a new dog. the mutt followed her from the market after she shooed some bigger dogs picking on it.

xx-xx 01:10 PM to: chicken dick [unsent]

now it switched to following me around it’s fucking annoying. i have to look where i walk or i’ll step on it and then it’ll cry non-stop. stupid mutt.

xx-xx 01:10 PM to: chicken dick [unsent]

told ma not to name it or it’ll get attached.

—

xx-xx 10:34 AM to: chicken dick [unsent]

[photo attached: a black puppy with an orange collar]

named him tian-tian

—

xx/xx/xx

Got accepted to a university in Shanghai. Food science and tech. It feels so fucking surreal.

Ma cried when we got the acceptance letter. I legit thought it was another rejection but the envelope was different. She opened the letter because my hands were shaking. It came with a fucking scholarship. She’s on the phone now telling all our relatives about it. We’re gonna see Pa tomorrow to tell him.

I wish you were here to open the letter with me too, chicken dick.

—

xx-xx 02:38 AM to: chicken dick [unsent]

ma said there’s a chance pa could get out on parole. they’re hopeful but i don’t wanna get my hopes up.

xx-xx 02:40 AM to: chicken dick [unsent]

sorry. idk who else to tell this to.

—

xx/xx/xx

I applied for an athletic scholarship too. Track and field. The one the school gave was just for basic tuition. This one will cover the rest. It helped that I won a couple of track meets in high school. Guess all that running from gang’s in middle school paid off, huh?

Did you ever imagine I’ll be in college with not one but two scholarship? ‘Cause I sure as hell fuckin’ didn’t. Holy fucking shit.

Still gotta work part time though. Living expenses in Shanghai is no joke. Fuck. Do you know how much cong you bing costs here? Don’t even get me started on how much a bowl of noodle is here. Unbefuckinglievable.

It wasn’t even as good as the one we used to eat at after school. I miss eating xiaomian with you.

—

xx-xx 11:21 AM to: chicken dick [unsent]

shanghai is fucking big and confusing. and busy.

xx-xx 11:30 AM to: chicken dick [unsent]

i missed a station and messed up my train switch.

xx-xx 01:19 PM to: chicken dick [unsent]

it’s fine. i still made it to the campus. lots of rich boys here like you btw. you would’ve fit right in.

—

xx/xx/xx

First years have to live on campus and the dorming system fucking sucks ass. And my roommate was an even bigger dick than you but at least he wasn’t a slob. No one will top you in that department I guess.

Rented a cheaper apartment off campus this year. It’s a shitty studio type, a bit cramped, but I like the privacy. It’s also closer to my part-time job and there’s this elderly couple who lives below me. I help them around sometimes and they give me food. The old landlady is a bit of a hardass though but…I think you would’ve charmed and won her over too, you smarmy ass shithead.

Rent isn’t cheap but it’s not too expensive either. If you were here, we could’ve shared an apartment. A regular one, not the high-end one you used to live in. Better for costs and splitting chores—not that you were any good at them, but you would’ve gotten better if you stayed. I wasn’t gonna tolerate your rich boy ass in college.

I know you had to leave but I wish you stayed instead. Would’ve been less lonely here.

—

xx/xx/xx

Finals exams are coming up and it’s kicking my fucking ass. Between classes and my part-time job I hardly have time to study. It’s a good thing sports training and extra-curricular activities are on pause now. But holy fucking shit why is it so hard to study?? It’s like I’m back in middle school and nothing is going in my head. How did I make it through high school?!

Yeah, yeah. I know. You were there. You tutored me and shit. Whatever, you dick. I don’t know why but it was just easier to focus with you around…but also not. It’s…you’re a distraction, but also you help me focus. Does that makes sense?

I guess what I’m trying to say is…you being around made me want to do better.

It’s selfish but I wish it was just Jian Yi. I wish I got to keep you here with me.

—

xx/xx/xx

Exams are finally fucking done ended. I think I passed all of them. I have to pass all of them. I wanna graduate next year already. I can't be delayed. I’m so exhausted I feel like my brain is running on fumes. Bet you’ll be all smug and shit because you know you aced all your exams, you fucking smart ass. If you were here I mean. Fuck. I’m hungry but I’m too tired to get up. I want those sandwiches you used to make. If you were here would you make them for me? Would you pat my head and tell me I did a good job? When are you coming back? I miss your stupid smugass face. I miss y—

—

xx/xx/xx

I smoked a cigarette tonight. Just one. I was at a party and someone somehow had real cigarettes instead of a vape or those fancy e-cigarette shit. Does your rich boy ass use those? Or do you still prefer real nicotine? Bet you still smoke sticks you fucking edgelord.

I smoked in the balcony while my friends talked shit. Yeah, I have friends, dick head. You pick a few of those up when you do the college experience apparently. The owner of the house and the host is also my friend. Never imagined my punk ass self to hang out with college kids and get invited to honest to god normal college parties, but, fuck it. Here I am.

Zhengxi was there too. We go to the same university. Don’t think I ever mentioned that before, have I? I’m not sure what he’s taking. I think it was business? Something with a lot of math. I don’t fucking know. He’s…he’s been better. He was a fucking hot mess after Jian Yi left but now he’s…still a mess. Sometimes. I am too. After you left. But he’s trying. I am too. And some days are harder than others.

I don’t really smoke. Just felt like it tonight. Maybe it’s the alcohol (no, I’m not drunk, I barely drank) or the company. Maybe I just missed you and thought this is what you’ll do if you were here.

It was menthol. The cig I smoked. It fell cool in my lungs, calming almost, and I kind of understand why you're addicted to this shit I guess. If I didn’t hate the taste of smoke and the aftertaste maybe I’ll be too.

I didn’t hate it when you were blowing it in my mouth though.

The air in the balcony was cold. The smoke from the cig reminded me how you’d sometimes forget you still have a lighted stick between your fingers and just watch the smoke float up. I finished the stick and stubbed it twice on the ash tray before twisting it. Just like how you put it out.

—

xx/xx/xx

‘will he be sad if i leave?’ you wrote that down in your notebook. Before. In middle school. It was scratched over by ballpoint but the ink was blue and the words were written in black. It’s like you didn’t want to erase it after all. Did you want me to read it, you fuck?

Will I be sad if you leave? Guess what, dick head? I’m fucking devastated. Not really. 🖕

#19 days #tianshan #he tian #mo guan shan #listen i MIGHT continue this #until that christmas special whee he tian returned #keyword: MIGHT #but it largely depends on if i have any more ideas #but just know for now this is gonna end happily #and he tian may or may not read the text/letters/notes #eventually #who knows! certainly not me!#writing

158 notes · View notes

see-arcane · 6 months ago

Text

You know the one good thing about being a pessimist?

It feels great to be proven wrong.

Bravo, Bobby Egg.

I was so happily surprised by this. This film went through a fantastic puberty between the leaked script and the screen. The main points to note:

-No, Ellen is not hot for Count Orlok. She and Thomas are 110% in love. There are even certain Harker-flavored quotes thrown in to prove as much. (Details under the cut.)

-Count Orlok is a terrifying bastard and a half. Significantly more imposing than classic Orlok’s spindly rigor mortis-stiff figure and only wearing a sliver of Dracula’s performative charm. He is a Devil-Death archetype playing a monster who operates in deceit and contracts to wring out what he wants. That and a lot of corpses.

-This film is so beautiful. No gothic touch is skipped.

In sum, I more than like this film. I love it. It isn’t perfect, because no film can be, but damn. I am so proud of this nightmare you made, Bobby Egg.

SPOILERS FOR Nosferatu (2024) BELOW

-Getting some cons out of the way. There are points where a few of the actors lean maybe a bit too heavy on the ham-and-cheese in their deliveries (I’ll not blame the kids, they’re very young, but yeesh. That’s some cartoon acting.)

Yes, the g-slur is still used; though while I wish it hadn’t appeared in Eggers’ script at all, it does make sense within the context of the setting, i.e. Thomas and the Innkeeper probably only having the one word they know, same as in Dracula. And yes, naked teenage girl-on-a-horse does happen for the vampire hunt scene. Whee.

-Now, an early pro: Eggers nixed the ‘hot teen girl tries to pickpocket Thomas’ bit, and the ‘land of phantoms and thieves’ line never happens. All that happens after Thomas wakes in the inn—post witnessing the vampire slaying in the local graveyard, mud on his shoes to prove it was real—is he discovers himself utterly alone. No people, no horse. Cue the long walk.

-Ellen doing the ‘Come to me,’ bit early on is her in adolescence. It’s revealed that her Weird Girl elements have been turned up to 11, tragic lonely past included (replete with dad threatening to send her to a madhouse), and her prayer was just for company. The psychic ping was picked up by Orlok, who took advantage, turning an isolated and desperate barely-more-than-a-kid’s wish into a ‘covenant.’

-Thomas was met not long after this, cue them being genuinely in love <3

-Knock Does Not Jerk Off On Screen. If he does, his back is to us, and Little Knock is covered with some occult tablet or suchlike while he’s doing his ritual business. Also he kills a guy in his cell. Using his teeth.

-Castle time! Thomas is greeted by a driverless carriage at a crossroads and seems to be hypnotized into stepping in. A lot of things Thomas does once in Orlok’s territory seem to very clearly have psychic puppet strings attached. That and some increasing terror on Thomas’ part. There is no warm Dracula-style welcome from Orlok when he arrives, but a terse and strange leading to the dinner table where paperwork is demanded.

- We get a glimpse of this version of the Count’s ego. Thomas calls him sir. Orlok demands Thomas address him as my lord. And then we get the bread cutting scene. Thomas’ thumb bleeds. Orlok get far too interested. His voice, a very guttural and rasping bass, turns into something closer to an animal trilling and growling. Thomas is paralyzed beside the fire; cut away as Orlok closes in.

-Ellen and Anna Harding have a bit of a Mina and Lucy deal going on at the beach. It’s sweet <3 (Prepare for pain </3)

- Orlok starts getting tricky. He 1) borrows (steals) Ellen’s locket from Thomas and 2) Tricks Thomas into signing a contract to ‘sell’ Ellen/break their marriage via a strange contract in a language Thomas can’t read, with Orlok using the prop of some gold to imply that this is merely a document in ~his native language~ to complete the property sale. Thomas signs, less for the gold than to be gone from the castle and back to Ellen…only for Orlok to insist Thomas is not well. He must stay the night.

- No mind games here. Just Thomas pleading to leave and Orlok’s parting word being that he will stay, and that he will obey his orders.

-Orlok has already chomped Thomas on the tiddy as of last night. Next night, after Thomas almost lands a blow on him in the coffin—Orlok sleeps with his Orcock out in the box, by the way, alongside several rats—Orlok wills Thomas to unlock the door he shut between them. Cue Thomas being tranced onto the bed, pounced on, and basically dry-humped by Orlok as he drinks Thomas all but dry. Thomas is left that way, only to be woken by Orlok’s wolves—he has those too!—and go clambering out the window, dropping to the river below.

-Orlok makes Ellen’s life hell. Holy fuck. The 1838 quality ‘medicine’ definitely doesn’t help—corsets for correcting posture, draining blood because there’s too much in there, binding to the bedposts to stop sleepwalking, general drugging etc etc—but FUCK. Lily-Rose Depp did a great and terrible job of reproducing shaking fits and some of the faces and sounds she made had me thinking I might choke on my own tongue. And for all the sexually provocative poses/noises that happen, every time she comes out of it it’s clear that she hates this. It’s on par with psychic rape.

-The only times we see Ellen respond positively~ to Orlok’s dream-advances is when she’s telling Thomas about the ‘marrying Death’ dream where everyone died and she was deliriously happy and then the infamous trailer line about Thomas not being able to satisfy her as Orlok can~~~

Well guess what.

Guess fucking what.

That was Orlok leaning on her brain. The same way he did to Thomas when, eventually, after the nuns rescue him and pray the plague/vampirism out and he makes it home while half-dead, he lays in bed with Ellen and gets a panic attack combined with Orlok’s image being grafted over Ellen’s face…

…a reverse of the illusion Orlok gave him in the castle, with Thomas imagining it was Ellen on top of him instead. The effect terrifies Thomas all over again and he unwittingly tosses Ellen away, I can't breathe, get off of me, get off!

-Orlok does his murder snacking. Knock, who escaped, offers to find and kill Thomas to please the Count, literally on his hands and knees. Orlok calls him a dog and backhands him, insisting Ellen must be given, not stolen.

-Orlok has already visited Ellen by this time. He presses her to keep her deal with him. She tells him, flat out, I abhor you. In response, Orlok grabs her and chucks her like a ragdoll in a rage. He fumes, telling her he will give her three nights to pledge herself to him, and in the meantime he will start killing. (RIP to Anna and her little girls, the latter of whom ORLOK KILLS IN FRONT OF HER, EATING THEIR THROATS OUT AS SHE ENTERS THEIR ROOM.)

-Before all that, he spins bullshit about Thomas ~selling her to him for mere gold~. A technical truth that Ellen, mid-Orlok spell, spits back at Thomas amid a rage, along with details that are likewise based in only a granule of reality; but which Orlok did not mention in their scene together. Things like Thomas being weak and childish, that he ‘fell into Orlok’s arms like a fainting woman.’ Interesting choice of spin there, Orlok. But whatever.

This all culminates in what is either reality or a dream or a blend of both as Thomas makes sudden desperate love to her, Ellen weirdly heady about it, telling him yes yes yes they will show Orlok their love. Cue her snapping back to full cognizance (awake? dreaming?) as her eyes and mouth spurt blood in a vision. She collapses in fear and tears as Thomas holds her. AND THEN:

-Ellen. Drops. The I am unclean line. She wants Thomas away from her, she is not worthy, she puts him in danger.

-Thomas goes full Jonathan and clings to her. Nonsense. I love you. I love you. I love you.

-V i n d i c a t i o n

-Anyway.

-Dafoe-Von Franz-Van Helsing is a kooky science occultist. Finds a book that Knock had which fills the role of highlighting Orlok as Solomonari (hey, Scholomance shout out!) and Knock as a would-be beneficiary. Also includes the ‘maiden offers her body and blood to the monster to kill it via sunrise’ bit.

-While he reads this, he does NOT actually spell any of these details out to Ellen when they have their secret mini talk about tricking Thomas into hunting for the coffin with him and Sievers. He gives her a big ~you're the only one who can save us magic maiden martyr~ pep talk, but that's it. Meanwhile, Ellen was already preparing to offer herself to save Thomas and whoever’s left in Wisborg. Not the same kind of agency as the original, but still better than I was expecting.

-Harding, Thomas’ rich friend whose wife and children got drinked to death, dies of plague in the family tomb. They burn the bodies.

-In the ruin Orlok bought, cue the iron stake slamming down as they open the coffin..! But whoops. Knock’s in the box, not Orlok. Von Franz says Ellen offering herself is the only way~ Thomas doesn’t waste time throttling him, just makes a run for their home.

-Too late, of course. Orlok is there (with a very cool homage to the original stalking shadow silhouette routine) and Ellen welcomes him. While they are both naked in bed and it’s implied that they are/or intend to have sex, the bulk of the scene centers on Orlok taking Ellen’s blood from her breast. No clear shot of the Orcock on screen for that bit—Bobby Egg saved that pleasure for the Count flashing Thomas at the castle.

-Orlok’s death throes. Are so. Fucking. Cool. Definitely up there with one of the best vampiric demises I’ve ever seen on film. No spoilers there. You’ve got to see it.

-Heartbreak o’ Clock as Thomas bursts in just as Orlok has died and as Ellen is dying under him. There’s time for them to hold hands. And then she’s gone.

-We close on Von Franz popping up with some poetic soliloquy shit and a bunch of lilacs. The final beat is an overhead shot of Ellen, the Maiden, laying under the now-skeletal Orlok, as Death. Looks almost like a painting. Unlike the implication in the leaked script, she does not look happy/at peace. Simply asleep. The End.

-Other important notes:

1) Orlok has a little combover’s worth of hair on top and mighty and powerful ‘stache. Not Dracula-white, but it is there. Finally.

2) The guy who plays Dr. Sievers has Alan Rickman’s voice. If he isn’t in opera, he should be.

3) I was too late to get a popcorn coffin box. I shall be in mourning until the New Year.

4) Bobby Egg if you can give me one more gift, let it be a deleted scene of Thomas beating Von Franz over the head with the iron stake, please and thank you <3

#Merry Christmas to meeeee #nosferatu #nosferatu 2024 #nosferatu spoilers #spoilers #robert eggers #my writing

744 notes · View notes