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me: ok i only have money for 1 book

me: *grabs 6 books*

me: i'll just not eat or something

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House Stark // Favorite Quotes

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Paddington’s face when he opens the pop-up book is the reason I will never ever get tired of this movie. He is the sweetest, most lovable character I’ve ever seen. Go see it!

PADDINGTON 2 - Official Trailer (International)

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Just another necessary post reminder that Natalie Dormer is, in fact, my spirit animal. 

I am a simple person that likes to operate on a low level. I am quite introverted. People always assume with my relationship with Anthony that naturally I must be the extrovert and he the introvert, but it is actually the other way round, because he is a director who feeds off people, he likes socialising, being around people, whereas I am very happy being with the dog on my own, reading a book, or going three days without seeing someone. I like my own company. I need quiet, because when I am on set or rehearsal, I do have high energy, so I need calm and quiet and to be a human being that is removed from my job.

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Alias Grace Reaction: Episode 1

“The difference between ignorant and stupid is that Ignorant can learn.”

I fell in love with Alias Grace, the novel, earlier this year, inspired my love for the Handmaid’s Tale.

The novel is so beautifully written, and as such, despite the fact that it is not a long novel,  it took me nearly a month to finish just because I was hanging on every word, often rereading it to soak it in.

And then, of course, I had to watch the adaptation. So, I thought I’d do another round of life reactions to the show, similar to those I did for Handmaid’s. I’ve already seen AG once, so I already know its fantastic. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Spoiler alert - Sarah Gadon is amazing. I don’t even have words for the things that woman can convey with the muscles on her face. 

Shall we begin? Cue music…

“And I wonder, how can I be all these different things at once?”

Is it possible that this sentence sums up the series in the first five minutes? So many characters who interface with Grace in this story struggle to put Grace into a neat category. Especially Dr. Jordan. And I have to admit, there were times, especially at the end where I found myself doing so myself. Not as much with Grace, who is far too complex for a category. But with other characters. More on that in future posts.

“I’d rather be a murderess, than a murderer, if those are my only choices.”

I’m struck by two things: One, the continuation of forced choice. Grace has no real choices in this series, only what she is allowed by those who control her. There is one exception, however. Her internal choices she makes remain outside of anyone’s control. And she is quite good at utilizing her intelligence to claim as much control as she can get.

Two, the early introduction to violence with the intercut flashbacks to Nancy’s murder. If we are to believe these are Grace’s own flashbacks prompted by various questions or thoughts  I feel it starts us off believing that she is guilty, for the cuts are crude and lacking in any empathy. But then, that would be putting Grace in a box again. 

Graces experiences in the asylum tear me up.  It was a time when psychology and psychiatry were not about helping patients, but rather learning and investigating, a fascination with the mind. With little respect for those who suffer.

“I’m not a dog, sir.”

And we begin the start of Grace owning Dr. Jordan. He comes in with this mindset of friendly, yet detached investigation. So much of his thinking in the novel is a struggle between all of the feelings he develops hearing about Grace’s life clashing with his belief that he needs to remain detached, unbiased, in order to do his work.

So he comes in with his apple, and his questions, and Grace sees right through it.

“Perhaps I’ll tell you lies.”

Grace’s transparency is at times is unsettling. It also lends to her credibility, despite the fact that she is from her own admission, an unreliable narrator.

“I thought, he wishes to go home and say to himself, I stuck in my thumb and pulled out a plumb, oh what a good boy am I.”

But I will not  be anybody’s plumb.”

I will say it now, and I will continue to say so probably five times each episode, Grace Marks is one of the most intelligent characters I’ve ever read. Also, we are only at the ten-minute mark and there’s already been so much to say.

“There are many dangerous things that take place in a bed.”

At its heart, Alias is a feminist work. Throughout the story, Grace does an excellent job of pointing out many of the differences between men and women. Many things, most men have no concept of, unless they’ve chosen to seek out female perspectives.

Am I a horrible person for being totally into the tension between Grace and Simon? I love so much her unwillingness to play along, to call him out on stupid questions. And his desire to be liked by her. That little segment beginning with ‘more than one way to skin a cat.” Grace is just having none of it. And I want to applaud. Sarah Gadon and Edward Holcroft do a beautiful job developing the tension between them, and the pacing of the dialogue, the quick, sharp tone in which Grace responds to his questions, trying to get under his line of inquiry. As a therapist, I appreciate clients who are as responsive as this. Grace is standing up for herself to say I am not just a subject for your amusement.  I am a person and this is my actual real life you are discussing.

Again, Grace with her transparent thoughts about thinking about pushing one or two of her siblings over the side. It paves the way to acknowledge she may have a violent streak. Or is she merely just being honest about her thoughts. And a realist about her circumstances.

Her poor mother. A woman who never had any agency. In the book, her mother got pregnant young and had no choice but to marry, despite her sister’s advice. And from that point, Grace never knew a time when her mother wasn’t pregnant.

LOL at Grace’s “I did not mean to offend your sensibilities.” Grace is steel. Simon, not so much. 

Yet still, I’m very attracted to him.

Perhaps the loss of her mother, watching her suffer, waking up with her dead beside her on the bed was Grace’s first trauma. Though who knows how many came before that. For a girl who was so young, those are images she’d never forget. Also having to toss her mother off the side of a ship, rather than having a burial. We come to realize Grace’s life is about survival.

That music though. String instruments always get to me.

I wanted to smack Simon when he ignored her comments about queer ideas, showed no empathy after her loss and just asked her to continue. A reminder that at least at this point, Simon is there for scientific purposes, to investigate, not to help. Simon would probably say something very different about himself. But he strikes me as a man on a mission, who fails to notice potential harms he’s causing along the way.

Her father, first of the many trashy men in her life. This leads to the first question, of all the men in this show, who has the most integrity. None of them are perfect (not that anyone is). I’m sure hoping no one votes for her father though because he’s the worst.

Mary Whitney!! “We will be revenged.” Hmmmmmm

“The difference between ignorant and stupid is that Ignorant can learn.”

It is possible that Mary Whitney may be the only true ally Grace will have in her entire life. I love their friendship so much. And seeing the absolute glee Grace feels being around her is such a nice break from all the pain she’s experienced in the past.

“When you write, I feel as if you were drawing on me. Drawing on my skin with the feather-end of an old-fashioned goose pen. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face and are softly opening and closing their wings.”

Whew, we’ve got some tension there.

“A feeling of being torn open. Not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach. And not even being torn open, but too ripe and splitting of its own accord. And inside of the peach is a stone.

My take on this quote is the final summation of Grace’s feelings towards her current status with Dr. Jordan. Fascination, heightened sense of awareness, and fear that this dynamic may lead her to open up in ways which reveal things she may not want to reveal about herself. Grace can say what she wants about not caring about what other people think, but Simon laid his cards in the open. As long as she talks (and as long as he remains interested), she is safe from going to the Asylum. So she must talk, but at what cost?

Whew, we reached the end. What a powerful first episode. Margaret Atwood strikes again. It is clear that everyone involved in making this series has done so with such care. I can’t wait for episode two.

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The difference between ignorant and stupid is that ignorant can learn.

Mary Whitney, “Alias Grace” Part I  (written by Sarah Polley)

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This is freaking amazing. So glad someone else wrote about Viserys. He breaks my heart.

“your grace, your son is dead.”

another one?

“the king…” alyssa turned her eyes sharply to the man-at-arms who backtracked.  “maegor–he left the prince’s body in the courtyard of the red keep for you to claim.”

cool crawled across alyssa’s skin.  her boy, her smiling boy, who had always wanted to be a knight, who had never liked to eat his peas, who had liked reading to his brother and sister before bed–dead.  dead and mutilated if she had to guess, for maegor was cruel.  how much had he rotted in the time it had taken to get word to her?  had his cheeks caved in? were there flies buzzing buzzing buzzing over his putrefying corpse? she hoped–prayed–at least his eyes were closed.  he had such lovely eyes, sharp and clear the way, they said, queen rhaenys’ had been.  or perhaps the crows would have plucked those sweet organs out already, to leave the sockets vacant.  his heart had stopped.  there would be no blood.

“your grace–”

“leave,” she said in a voice not her own and the man withdrew at once, closing the door behind him.  she stared at the door for a moment.

the good thing about the driftmark was that she had no memories of viserys here.  he had spent no time in these halls, running about on small feet, trying to catch aegon in a game of tag.  she couldn’t hear him humming tunelessly to himself, feel the tug of him on her skirts when he was tired and wished to be held.  in her mind, he was so frequently the little boy he had been, not the man he nearly…had nearly become.  

she turned and went to the cushioned bench that jaehaerys and alysanne were standing on.  there were tears in jaehaerys’ eyes and alysanne was rubbing her nose, her lip trembling.

“he will pay for this,” she promised them.  “he will pay, and we shall give viserys the burial he deserves.”

“are you going?” jaehaerys asked, frightened.  

alyssa shook her head.  “no,” she said.  “no, if i go we are lost.  you are lost.”  she stroked his cheek.  he looks like both of my dead boys.  

i must not weep in front of them.

“you must never be lost,” she whispered, then took a deep breath and took the golden circlet that aenys had placed on her head when they’d wed off her brow.  “the king is dead.”  she pressed it onto jaehaerys’ head.  “long live the king.”

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A word after a word after a word is power.

Margaret Atwood

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Now I’m awake to the world. I was asleep before. That’s how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress, we didn’t wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Consitution, we didn’t wake up then, either. Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.

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I was watching The Handmaid's Tale recently and it had a very relevant quote: "We don't have to discredit what she is saying. We just have to discredit her." This is exactly what Fox News are doing with Mueller right now.

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Does it scare you that I can be something different than you? Would it make you feel more comfortable if I wasn't? You can't control me, You can't take away from me who I am.

Quasimodo by Jason Wade (Lifehouse)

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It’s only funny if you know Latin. Actually, it’s probably only funny if you’re a twelve year old boy studying Latin. Doesn’t really translate. It’s… something like don’t let the bastards grind you down.

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Anytime the writers chose to use direct quotes from Margaret Atwood's work of art I stood up to applaud. Bruce Miller and Co found a way to adapt this show faithfully in a way that others have struggled to do. It expands the universe, yes, but they look to incorporate Atwood's prose as often as possible and I love them for it.

The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-Present)

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If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending… But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else. Even when there is no one.”  ― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

(via books-are-my-life20)

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Please don't be sorry. Please do something.

I lied to you.

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Now I am awake to the world, before I was asleep, that is how we let it happen

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“I was a huge proponent of Alexis from the beginning. She was the first person I thought of for that role, and I loved her for it. It was once again because you want that role to go to someone who really has the America’s sweetheart feeling about them, because then it’s even more kind of gut-wrenching, not that I need to make it more gut-wrenching.” (x)

“It’s not the surgery on Ofglen when she’s asleep that matters, it’s what happens after she wakes up,” he continued. Very aware of the fact that The Handmaid’s Tale is, essentially, a story about how violence is enacted on women, Miller wanted to highlight the emotional and psychological torture rather than the physical. (x)

Practices of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) vary around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 200 million women have undergone FGM procedures, most frequently at the age of 10 or younger. Miller said both he and the team at Hulu were nervous about portraying FGM in a TV show. “But it happens all over the world every day. It just doesn’t happen to white girls who look like Rory Gilmore.“  (x)