ghostoflyra

[ghostoflyra]

Hi! This got 3000 notes, so I will reward you all with two additional goat pics:

Shoutout to my favorite behind the scenes pic

[ghostoflyra]

(continuing my thoughts on apples release of The You You Are, heres my first post with more context)

The You You Are is hilarious but its also so so heartbreaking.

We get confirmation that Ricken and Gemma in were really close, and that she was the only one who took Rickens writing seriously. She didn’t make fun of him like Mark did, and her support wasn’t limited to the sort of “thats nice honey” placations that Devon gives. Definitely explains a lot about Ricken’s current behavior-he basically lost his only real friend. One of the biggest and earnest supporters of his art is dead. So of course he tries to fill that gaping loss with the empty words of his mindless followers. Who doesn’t do weird or stupid shit in the absence of true validation?

I'm not trying to say Devon is a bad wife—it's clear she's incredibly patient with Ricken and his stupid sycophant friends. But I can't help but wonder if she sees his writing as just an elaborate hobby and a source of income rather than what it truly is: his life's purpose.

(and I’ve only sort of started talking about Rickens super complex relationship with art in general- he was literally conceived FOR an art project! and his another one of his parents art projects landed him an extended stay in foster care!)

Ricken is so much more of a complicated character then people give him credit for. He’s a self centered goof for sure, but I hope as time goes on the fandom takes him more seriously.

[ghostoflyra]

put his ass in the contraption

[ghostoflyra]

Other amazing aspects about The You You Are:

• Mark and Gemma apparently requested not to have their real names printed in the book, so Ricken gives them the pseudonyms Flip and Nan

• Ricken thinking that ASL was invented by Koko the gorilla in 1972

• Ricken thinking the concept of charity was invented by Florence Nightingale in 1854

• Ricken talking about one of their family hikes and referring to Mark as a "land bound sturgeon" when he got tired on the hike

• On this hike Ricken apparently thought a beehive was an elderly woman's wig and Devon had to prevent him from grabbing it

• Ricken musing on the difference between farm made beehives and natural beehives, and referring to wild bees as "hick" bees

• Ricken going on about bees as a metaphor for society for two pages

• Ricken casually dropping the fact that hes had sex 786 times

• Ricken recounting the time as a teenager that he realized he found his social worker sexually attractive, and wrote her an apology letter

Apple TV released the first 8 chapters of The You You Are, and it is sending me over the fucking moon, i love it so much. Mostly because we get some absolutely incredible Ricken lore:

“Readers of my previous books know that both my conception and birth took place in a small theatre behind a defunct perfumery in Western Oregon, as part of a nine-month performance art piece originated by my parents titled “Smells Like Afterbirth, F**ker.” It was noteworthy in that I was the first child sired exclusively for theatrical purposes, and critics at the time hailed it as “a baroque deconstruction of the increasingly perverse human urge to procreate.” My birth was witnessed by such cultural leaders as Jason Robards, Lina Wertmüller, Walt Frazier, and Oregon Governor Robert W. Straub, who called it ‘American theater at its most sublimely obscene.’

….Yet, as I aged, irrational questions began to creep in. Was the piece truly as revelatory as the critics claimed? Was it not simply a retread of the Reeperbahn shows of Hamburg? Did my parents actually want a child? The latter question especially took root as they moved on to new pieces, including 1992’s critically lauded “Cheers, F**kers,” in which they held a Boston bar at actual gunpoint for 36 hours, leading to a quasi-substantive prison term. This and other endeavors led to long stretches where I was alone, and it was in these silent periods that a grim and intrusive resentment — of my parents, my lineage, and even myself — began to take hold.”

If you want to read more of the next great American novel, heres the link (its free): https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-you-you-are/id6738364141

[ghostoflyra]

Apple TV released the first 8 chapters of The You You Are, and it is sending me over the fucking moon, i love it so much. Mostly because we get some absolutely incredible Ricken lore:

“Readers of my previous books know that both my conception and birth took place in a small theatre behind a defunct perfumery in Western Oregon, as part of a nine-month performance art piece originated by my parents titled “Smells Like Afterbirth, F**ker.” It was noteworthy in that I was the first child sired exclusively for theatrical purposes, and critics at the time hailed it as “a baroque deconstruction of the increasingly perverse human urge to procreate.” My birth was witnessed by such cultural leaders as Jason Robards, Lina Wertmüller, Walt Frazier, and Oregon Governor Robert W. Straub, who called it ‘American theater at its most sublimely obscene.’

….Yet, as I aged, irrational questions began to creep in. Was the piece truly as revelatory as the critics claimed? Was it not simply a retread of the Reeperbahn shows of Hamburg? Did my parents actually want a child? The latter question especially took root as they moved on to new pieces, including 1992’s critically lauded “Cheers, F**kers,” in which they held a Boston bar at actual gunpoint for 36 hours, leading to a quasi-substantive prison term. This and other endeavors led to long stretches where I was alone, and it was in these silent periods that a grim and intrusive resentment — of my parents, my lineage, and even myself — began to take hold.”

If you want to read more of the next great American novel, heres the link (its free): https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-you-you-are/id6738364141

[ghostoflyra]

Mark and Devons siblinghood is so realistic actually. Because I bet you two minutes after that conversation in Pips, in which Mark said things he can never take back and things that Devon might not forgive, he called her and was like “hey soooo do you want to hear this really cool idea i have”

[ghostoflyra]

The way i’d be so pissed if i was one of the goat peoples outies, going home every day from my nice office job and wondering why i smell like a fucking barn

[ghostoflyra]

Shoutout to my favorite behind the scenes pic

[ghostoflyra]

the ship tease between innie!Dylan and outie!Dylans wife is crazy. imagine your wife cheats on you with YOU

[ghostoflyra]

my favorite thing about reghabi is how every time she shows up she does something insane and then disappears again. good for her.

[ghostoflyra]

“I’m better at it now” girl how many people have you been practicing on

[ghostoflyra]

Fuck it, i’m gonna make this a Severance blog. It already is one anyway, i just want to make a separate blog to post off topic stuff.

[ghostoflyra]

Theres a Severance discussion thread in my main Discord server, and when I said Severance has been helping my mental health during this rough month someone had the AUDACITY to edit this

[ghostoflyra]

I desperately want to make a Mark/Gemma edit to “Naked as We Came” by Iron & Wine but the problem is that 1. I’ve never made an edit and 2. I have no time. But godddd “One of us will die inside these arms/one will spread our ashes around the yard” and “if i leave before you darling don’t you waste me in the ground” perfectly describes Mark and Gemmas relationship!!

[ghostoflyra]

“I still wake up with things to tell you. One day, I won’t. I will learn placid acceptance. I will stop panicking when I can’t perfectly remember the pitch of your voice or the curve of your jawline. The smell of cinnamon won’t make me sad anymore. At this point it’s not about finding someone to replace you. I have spread my love all over the place. It’s about trying to sleep knowing I live in a world that has your hands in it.”

—

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

this is from my book Honeybee!

[ghostoflyra]

No, actually I'm not done with talking about Outie Mark and how well they've portrayed his grief on Severance, because the writers have done such a good job of showing that grief can be ugly and aggravating and painful and difficult to watch. Because Outie Mark isn't actually that fun to watch, a lot of the time! He's not soulful and romantic and dealing with his grief in a palatable manner: he's all hard edges and very dark humour! He cries loud and ugly! He picks fights! He's rude to his (admittedly aggravating) brother-in-law; he's a bit of a shit date to Alexa! He's very apathetic about what's going on at work, when quite frankly if he picked up the pace a little, we as the audience could find out more about what's going on! He has genuine substance abuse issues going on and spends a lot of his screentime just lying in a stupor in front of the TV! He's a compelling character but he's not fun to watch!

And I love how they've done this deliberately - I think the fact that at times the writers have been deliberately making Outie Mark deliberately hard to watch, at times because of his awkward humour and at times because he just is trying to avoid doing anything, and that's a deliberate choice because of his grief! The reason he takes so long to get shit done is because this man is literally paralysed by the grief he feels for his dead wife! He is so emotionally disconnected from the world that he spliced his brain clean in two to get away from the pain! He's choking on her ghost! Of course he's not eager to give himself the hope of believing she's alive only to go through that pain all over again!

(Also why the fuck did he of all people have to tell Gemma's students about her dying? Where the hell is that college's HR department.)

And it's not that Outie Mark is an unlikeable character, I'm really enjoying his arc at the moment, but I think they've made some really deliberate tweaks to show just what grief can do to someone and I am loving that they've deliberately made it ugly and painful to see.

[ghostoflyra]

Incredibly funny that Helena and Helly have both fallen for this depressed alcoholic disaster man, and go about it in two very different ways. Helena is watching him forlornly from her tower like a corporate Rapunzel, and Helly attempts to flirt by telling the depressed alcoholic disaster man that shes going to cut off his face and wear it