escailyyy - Tumblr blog

[escailyyy]

Skywalker Family I don't know what AU this is but its got some kind of story with a haPPY ENDING!

[escailyyy]

Mr Lee was so there for the long run with Ms Yang. Wish they had shown Ms Yang and Mr Lee in the epilogue going the route of the webtooon where Jeon Yi is a teenager who babysits Jiwon's kids, and when asked about how her mom is doing she says she's annoyed that her mom won't marry Mr Lee already and make things official, basically implying that she's accepted Mr Lee as her dad since ages ago. It was a nice touch.

"I'll buy you a meal"

all I can think of is "would you like to stay for dinner?"

"would you like to stay forever???"

[escailyyy]

Do it Ms Yang! Take him up on it!!

[escailyyy]

Omg another Mrs Yang stan!! Right now I'm living for the Mrs Yang and Mr Lee's storyline. She already stood up for herself against the manager who made her life hell, now she needs to stand up for herself and her little girl against the cheating husband!!

Also it's so fun that Mr Lee has such an obvious crush on her but is too repressed to make a move. Like we all know guy will be first in line for a date when she finally divorces the deadbeat 🌹🌹

BUT MS YANG OOOOH MS YANG.

The cheating deadbeat husband (hr man clocking him and not saying anything???!) AND stomach cancer

please please please someone help mrs yang PLEASE IM BEGGING

divorce your husband and get with hr guy. i like the lik enemies-to-lovers thing they got goin on 🤭

but also i know when jiwon finds out shes gonna be devastated shes going to feel so fucking guilty but i know shell be there first mrs yang and helo her in anyway

[escailyyy]

So is Mrs Yan (even if she won't admit it)

I’m strangely attracted to him

[escailyyy]

Nat sees right through Loki.😎

[escailyyy]

I love your take, because essentially Newland's hypocrisy is reflected in May, who knows he would never stand up for those lofty ideals he so admires in Ellen, exactly because he's a hypocrite and benefits from their high society life, just as much as he does. Newland wants to break free, but he does not want to be disdained or shunned by doing so. May uses the threat of society's bad opinion on Newland so many times whenever she wants to keep him in line. Basically Newland has no spine and May knows this, I want to say that this is what makes May so much more compelling than Ellen.

The fabricated innocent, with her hands perfectly clean, who knows her husband is an idealistic hypocrite who could ruin her life (run away with his lover, leave her humiliated and penniless), should his idealism with Ellen be allowed to continue. So she does what she has to do to protect herself and manipulates Newland into a situation where society's good opinion will murder him if he leaves his wife. And then hammers it home by confiding in Ellen that she's pregnant.

And it's also interesting to note that May wouldn't have been able to keep Newland in his place of conformity in New York, if Newland didn't let her. But Newland allowed her to easily dictate his schedule and eventually his life, while thinking himself oh so intellectually superior to her. Which is where he becomes blind to her true nature. Newland never sees any need to stand up to May, the woman he believes to be a naive, empty vase, crafted by society to be at his arm, charm his family and laugh at his jokes. He thinks that everything she wants him to be doing is a result of him having to conform to society, when really it's just May at home telling him what is and isn't acceptable for a man like him.

Newland thinks that May is shallow and transparent ignoring the fact that to her, so is he. He hides his supposed depth from her, ignoring that she herself isn't allowing him to see anything beyond her facade of the perfect debutante. The tone in which we get to the end of the age of innocence, is that Newland never really knew who May was, but that for all intents and purposes, she always knew him.

Can you do more takes about May Welland?

I would love to! Though I should warn you I don't have my copy of the Age of Innocence on me right now, so I'll probably missing one or two things I thought of while reading it.

I guess the first take is that I think Newland is an incredibly unreliable narrator. I realize that Wharton was certainly criticizing the life of American high society, and that May Welland is not meant to be a perfect character. I daresay she's not supposed to be that particularly likeable either (though she is my favorite character amongst the lot of them). But I think Wharton also turns her critique against Newland, and the way that May is treated is a pretty good indicator of it.

Newland thinks that May is innocent, so much so that he becomes annoyed with her by the end of it. He constantly uses May's conventionality as a way of justifying his infatuation with Ellen. But he never actually tries to make May smarter, though he claims to want to improve her at the beginning of the book. He never communicates his wants to her, never really asks what she might want out of the marriage. He blames her for things that he saw in her when they were courting and still dragged her to the aisle.

I believe May's character indicates that she would not be unhappy in a different marriage. She is after all a product of New York Society. She fights for Newland after it the question of their courtship has been cemented, and then of course after their married. But by then any breaking would be incredibly scandalous - something May realizes while Newland does not, cause he's an idiot. I don't think May needs Newland, regardless of the way Newland may think himself so superior to her. And I think in this Newland's egotism and weakness is revealed. He pretends to be above New York Society, when he is as much a part of it as May, even if he's playing a different part. Something that he realizes at the very end. So yeah, May is critical to understanding that Newland Archer is not your friend, and is not in fact as smart as he think she is.

I also think that May is smarter than Ellen, and I think in some ways she's more interesting, more compelling. Not that Ellen doesn't have her dramatic plots points, her husband, her affair, her strangeness. Ellen is beyond the pale, and that makes her interesting. But is May Welland not interesting in her own right?

Moreever, is she not much more complicated, more morally grey even. May Welland is unafraid to manipulate the situation when it benefits her. We see this plainly when she tells Ellen she's pregnant before she's really sure. And like, I love that for her but that's also a little evil. It's easy to see May in her sereneness as a victim of the situation and an angel. But she is an active player in this drama, albeit more behind the scenes. She knows Society and its norms are on her side. She exploits that. Ellen pretends, to me, to be really upset about May. Ellen may indeed feel guilty over the whole thing. But her motives are painfully obvious. And she follows through on her desires in a very open, straightforward way. It is because of this that she, for all purposes, loses. And May wins. And May does not win through goodness. May wins through an act of extreme cynicism. And is there no better reflection of New York high society than this?

I'm sure there's more but this post is already so long. I always love talking about May Welland, and I hope you enjoyed my thoughts!!

[escailyyy]

Haelena Targaryen and Alicent Hightower

I HAVE MY MOTHER'S FACE AND HER GRIEF

Janet Fitch // Lady Bird (2017) dir. Greta Gerwig // Chen Chen // Youadan Teddy // Ocean Vuong Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong // Mitski Class of 2013 // 誰も知らない Nobody Knows (2004) dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda // Fatima Aamer Bilal days where my whole world is my bed. // death-born-aphrodite (tumblr) // Ocean Vuong On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous // Hieu Minh Nguyen Buffet Etiquette

[escailyyy]

Donna Tartt

[escailyyy]

So I've been reading Snowjanus time travel fanfics where Sejanus and Livia for some reason or another end up being friends (and Livia is of course, against all things Coriolanus), and I am obsessed with this Livia Sejanus friendship! Because these two are perfect as besties in those fics. So I made a bunch of moodboards. There two are the unlikely duo I didn't know I needed to read about in my life.

I've only had the Livijanus friendship for a day and a half, but if anything happened to them, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.

shout out to

the following Snowjanus time travel fics! Where Sejanus is friends with Livia. And Coriolanus is someone Livia seriously doesn't like. Go read them they are so good

These are shameless recs for all of you because I am currently obsessed with these fics

[escailyyy]

Just saw the interview in which Donald Sutherland was talking about how president Snow was looking for a successor when he found Katniss. And he had this thought process that if he could defeat her he could win and winning would just be turning Katniss into a new Snow. Which is kind of terrifying when you think about the amount of things young Coryo and Katniss had in common.

It's interesting to think about that Snow saw Katniss not only as a worthy opponent but as a worthy successor to the presidency of Panem.

I think deep down Snow was looking forward to twisting Katniss mind the way Dr Gaul twisted his and ultimately almost succeeded (when Prim died), had it not been for Peeta helping her heal

[escailyyy]

😭

Klaroline

My absolute favorite couple that never ended up Together

Should of ended up together

Forever will be mad how they ended the show

Don’t know shy they had another spin off show the legacies

When they could of just ended the originals the right way

[escailyyy]

This poll is because of all the Isekai I keep seeing of ' I woke up as the wife of a villain ' and they all gloss over the fact that the ML could have been a yandere like Derrick. who is so hated because of how universally jerky he's been to Penelope. And I genuinely want to know what you guys would do, So Isekai fandom. Tell me what your choice is

[escailyyy]

Elijah you show up again!!

Chelsea Hobbs and Daniel Gillies in Snow Queen (2002)

[escailyyy]

fired: the heroine finding out some horrible morally ambiguous to villainous shit the hero did and going "yeah with your personality that doesn't surprise me in the least"

tired = the heroine finding out some horrible morally ambiguous to villainous shit the hero did and going "it's like I never KNEW YOU"

wired = the heroine finding out some horrible morally ambiguous to villainous shit the hero did and twisting her hair around her finger while popping her gum

[escailyyy]

— Trista Mateer ,“I Still Forget We’re Not Even Friends”

[escailyyy]

Not me drawing a parallel between Alicent's tourney dress and the design of the Kingsguard armor thinking it means something deep