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something I really loved about everything everywhere all at once is that often when we talk about the idea of multiverses a big question is "am I in the best one?" or "am I in the worst one?" and the fact that evelyn was in her worst multiverse and still not only found happiness and love but after seeing everything she could have been she still chose her life it really speaks to the fact that thinking about all of the different versions of you that you will never be is meaningless because you are who you are and you can find happiness in it because this is the life you have built for yourself

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love how eeaao climaxed with Evelyn's whole hearted acceptance and open support of Joy being gay. starting at that put upon tolerance at the beginning and then the "you!! youre the reason my daughter is gay!" when she first meets Jobu Tupaki. obviously her marriage and her business and her father's rejection of her are also crucial to the film but when Joy and Evelyn are fighting, "stop calling me evelyn, i am your mother!"- thats not an assertion of her authority- thats saying "whoever wherever whatever you are i will love you because i choose to be your mother. of a thousand possible realities for the both of us i'm choosing you". their relationship is deeply flawed at the beginning of the film. Joy spends half of her act one scenes near tears, in turn harped on for her life choices and dismissed entirely. to go from that to being unequivocally accepted and protected- of course she runs! what do you even do with that!!! and then not dragged back or left to drift away- but followed to the point of no return and asked to stay. not just Straight Joy. not just Successful Joy. not Joy-Who-Listens-To-Her-Mom, not even Mediocre, Just-Okay Joy. any of these Joys Evelyn couldve had, any of these changes were entirely within her reach. but its tattooed college drop-out lesbian Joy who is told she's the only version of herself that her mother needs to be proud of.

Evelyn's father disowned her for marrying a man who he disapproved of. she doesnt want to risk that relationship again, between her father and her daughter, for Joy yes as well as for herself. one of the first jumps Evelyn makes is one where she stayed at home, listened to her father, and the world is her goddamn oyster. "i saw my life without you. it was beautiful, i wish you could have seen it." but we also see a world where she is blinded as a child and her father supports her and her opera career for the rest of her life. she's worn down over the years, yes but her first biggest bad-turn trauma is Gong Gong telling her "i am not your father". and she stares down the possibility of that again and proceeds to step up to bat and step up as Joy's mom. how different is "it's protocol" to "it's tradition"? kill your daughter shes a monster kill your daughter its for the good of us all- evelyn doesnt kill joy but she still wants to change her. the movie doesnt end until she chooses that for all her flaws none of them matter. all that matters is joy.

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i’m not sure if anyone has pointed this out before, but the laundry and taxes line in eeaao actually translates more accurately to “if there is a next life, i would still choose to do taxes and open a laundromat with you” (instead of just “i would’ve really liked”), and the distinction is so important because it emphasises the gravity of the each minuscule choice we make, and how it is the significance of these choices that makes our seemingly insignificant lives have meaning. choosing to do laundry and taxes with her conveys a sense of certainty and assuredness that he would still actively make that decision in another life, as opposed to “i would’ve liked” which implies that he is merely a product of his circumstances with no agency over them instead of a result of his individual autonomy. it also reinforces waymond’s own philosophies about optimism as a choice we must constantly make and hold steadfast to despite despite despite. the act of choosing begets sacrifice, but choosing love, choosing kindness, choosing to believe that the darkness is transient and surmountable is the most important thing we could do in a world where succumbing to despair and hopelessness is so easy, and i think the way this film navigates this subject of choice is so beautiful

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everyday i become obsessed with little stories about how life is terrible but it will always be worth living because, even in spite of our darkest moments, there will be love around the corner. let life start and end with tragedy. let us be torn apart. let everything have no meaning because the meaning is ours to create. we don’t need perfection. we don’t need a happy ending because we have each other. we are the meaning of life. each moment of laughter, every time you feel that warm feeling in your stomach, that makes life worth living. why are we here? what’s the point. maybe there isn’t one. but we still have to live in this world we created, as awful as it is. so why not love each other. why not just live and laugh and cry and be. because we can

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keep thinking this thought over and over: rich Waymond and actress Evelyn were at the height of their potential but they had no joy in their life. double entendre intended. they had no Joy.

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It’s about Evelyn saying “sometimes I wonder how he would have survived without me“, then we realised Alpha Waymond proceeded to live without his Evelyn and continued to find other Evelyns, and would still look at them lovingly, because he knows them, and maybe even hold their faces while talking to them. And then we were hit with CEO Waymond who was even successful, without Evelyn, but at the end CEO Waymond still said, “in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”

So yes Evelyn, he could survive without you. He just prefers surviving with you.

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like its just that yknow its deeply rooted in asian culture to live w ur family even when you're older and not move out. the whole concept of independence is seen as an act of betrayal (at least for our elders) and for the youngsters, living with your parents is seen as a way for them to control us even in our adulthood. but!!! but ultimately it was proposed as an antithesis in Everything Everywhere because evelyn didnt want her dad to let her go so easily despite wanting to make her own decisions and live her own life because she wanted to see that she was worth loving and not letting go of and that there was still so much to cherish in the face of their differences!!! how instinctively, immediately she was okay with letting joy move out so as to not hold her back from her choices but realized that she was repeating her father's mistake and that it's more complex!!! and because joy set out to find her mother in every universe as, essentially, a plea.... because she didnt want to have 2 move out and let go out of compulsion........ its not my life vs your life!!!! she wants joy in her life in all her tattooed, stubborn, reckless gay glory..... her joy.....

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i love redemption arcs and moments of rage and realistic ups and downs but y’all characters that choose love from the beginning and never stop just over and over choose to be kind and patient and willing every single time even when it’s justified even when they have every reason in the world and the universe is practically begging them to turn and become mean and wretched and angry and still at every turn refuse hate and stick to their compass. yeah.

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me thinking about Everything Everywhere All At Once and how it says suffering is temporary and fixable while joy and love is always possible no matter how absurd it seems

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But for real, if ever there was a time to be told “there are infinite possibilities, infinite wells of potential, living inside of you, you are a multiverse in and of yourself—but if you wind up living a mundane existence with love, with kindness, just doing the very best you can…that, too, is worthy of joy”. Right now. I needed that right now.

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Everything Everywhere All At Once is impossible to condense but. your mom loves you. your mom would do anything for you. she is incapable of expressing these things to you in a way that you can truly understand. she doesn’t understand you because she can’t. you can’t understand her either. you know that she would die for you but she can never give you a goddamn compliment or an apology or acknowledgement that maybe you were right all along. you know that she loves you but you don’t trust her not to hurt you if you share all the things you are and want to be and could be. she has always taught you that family is the most important thing, that when everything and everyone else fades, family is all you will have left. nothing feels safer than garlic and choi sum and tomatoes and eggs. you still haven’t told her your new name. the first coming out was awful, you never want to do that again. she drove for five hours to drop off groceries because she knows you have papers due and might not have time to shop. she is finally proud of you after all the stupid shit you did and said when you didn’t think you would live till 20. you know that she blames herself. you don’t think she could’ve done any better but fuck how is anyone is supposed to parent when she did most everything right and still you came oh so close to never seeing a brighter future. she drives you home and as you chat you realize that a few years ago you two could never have had a civil conversation that didn’t devolve into shouting. you realize that there are some things that you will never talk about with her because you don’t want to risk that again. 

you know that she loves you. god, if only she would understand. 

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so. i rewatched everything everywhere all at once a few nights ago. and upon my rewatch i was struck by the scene where evelyn embraces nihilism across the multiverse—signing the divorce papers, revealing racaccoonie, turning away deirdre, breaking the window in the laundromat, though im not sure it was in that order—and how it shows that choosing to believe that nothing truly matters actively ruins your life and the lives around you. like, okay, whatever, nothing has any meaning and in the grand scheme of the universe, the consequences of your actions are never going to ripple out and affect the cosmos in a way that truly matters. but your choices don't have to have that kind of massive effect for them to matter at all. does the universe care that evelyn did all those things? not particularly. but look at waymond's face when she signs those papers. the way chad cried when she separated him from racaccoonie. deirde's reaction to the rejection of such a sincere display of affection. that's what matters. it's only when evelyn decides to go back and show that she cares about other people, by helping them or just being kind to them, that anyone's lives can be improved.

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i know everyones already talked abt this movie but god the way they show human connection. how love exists in every possible universe, and even in a world where you have hot dog fingers and youre married to someone you hate, even when no sentient life had developed, there is still love. there is love everywhere, in everyone if you choose to see it. you are capable of loving every person you ever meet. you are capable of so much fucking love if you choose it. there is always something to love. no one is unlovable.

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This is GOLD

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UR FUCKING MAKING ME CRY 

so I was inspired by this post by @twilightofficial​ and I loved it so much that I immediately had to make it and post it. turning page is infinitely more romantic than a thousand years and it relates to edbella’s story so much better. sorry that their voices are a little quiet towards the end but the notes from a thousand years were so loud :( it’s not perfect but i was too excited to not post it asap. yes i did cry the first time i watched it

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there is something so genuinely heartbreaking about the very last line of midnight sun... the total opposite of twilight...

'And he leaned down to press his cold lips once more to my throat.' / 'As the night finally overcame the end of the day, I leaned forward again and kissed the warm skin of her throat.'

there's... hope in twilight. hope during the last chapters, hope in the very last scene. to me, this very last sentence was always a door, the door to something more -- or less: had twilight been a single book rather than a series, this sentence (ignoring all the other things happening in the scene, the loose ends that would have not been tied had edward turned bella right there and then) was the perfect way to end it; hinting at more, but leaving it up to the reader to Assume. even now, as i reread twilight, and i reach this very moment, and i close my book, i'm always left with a feeling of hope. i know three books come after, but this sentence carries so much hope. so much things we could just imagine and be left forever unanswered. does edward turn her? he must, and they live happily ever-after -- they find a compromise, surely, and they get a fairytale ending that allows readers to sleep soundly, that heals the heart that broke as james and his two partners ruined everything. edward presses his lips on bella's neck, and life -- death -- happens.

but on edward's side, it's so... heart-crushing. the chapters that precede it, filled with self-hatred, lies, broken promises. the realisation that the point of view bella has at the end of twilight, at the beginning of new moon, is nothing but a lie, and what she thought was lasting, was only fleeting.

bella says 'press' -- leaves it up to the reader to imagine what comes next. edward says 'kiss' -- does not imply anything and hands us his thought, his act -- his decision -- on a silver platter. he goes one step further than bella, one second later than her ending. he ties it up, neatly, and at the same time, if i may, crushes it. there it is, bella tells us, figure it out on your own. there it is, edward whispers as we close her side of the story, i've taken my decision and it's only a matter of time.

and it's not a fairytale ending, it's not the happiness we wish for them throughout the entire book. it's the breach of a promise, a crack on something that seemed perfect for a long time. it's, funnily enough, not at all like hades and persephone, but more like orpheus and euridyce, if in a twisted way, life was death and vice versa. an orpheus who's been dead for years, and is midway through accepting eurydice as a partner -- who realises, as they head to the underworld, and penniless souls reach for his soulmate, that he cannot do this, and willingly turn around -- curses eurydice into a life (life itself,) something she does not yearn for.

for a man who talks so much about pomegranate seeds and how he's cursing bella to hell -- edward sounds a lot more like the half of a soul that cannot live on his own -- one who cannot stop from turning around. he sure sounds like the king of the underworld, too, sensible and devoted to his other half, crying as he hears about a touching love story -- but he is also the one who tells the story, and who begs for another chance. he's the man who dies without his other half, and yet curses himself to his fate.

mourning forever, enchanting others with his voice. this orpheus cherished life dearly, and lost his lover to it. a self-fulfilling prophecy, cutting threads of hope on his own. a tragedy.

a midnight sun, peeking at exactly twelve, like the day would -- and then heading back to the shadows.

back to purgatory.

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What if we are the masochistic lions for falling in love with twilight and consequently, midnight sun