meemawsbigtiddies

[meemawsbigtiddies]

“but what if-“ no, because there is no way to know and you can’t go back. it is what it is. c’est la vie. “what if” is for future stuff, now. it’s getting a rebranding.

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i always wondered what would be the most satisfactory way to wrap YOU up and lowkey assumed that the finale would not be some sort of perfect culmination to the whole story.

and boy, was i wrong...

the finale of YOU s5 was perfect. it surpassed my expectations for a great ending bc it went beyond the show's assumed formula and became a self-aware, raw and surprisingly feminist meta commentary on the show itself, joe goldberg, his victims and the real world realities of the victim/predator dynamics.

throughout the season, i wondered what was the point of introducing a character like louise. was it to show once again that joe will always find a flaw in his "soulmate" and continue the pattern of his predatory behavior?

yes, but more importantly, it all clicked and made sense when the finale revealed the point of louise to be about HER, not joe.

louise is not a random chick whose life and story is split in "before joe and after joe". she is an echo of beck. through louise we see that beck was not just a tragic heroine in joe's story, she was someone who left an impact on people in her life such as louise.

she is not the perfect victim or heroine. she has some moments of internalized misogyny, thinking that she is smarter than those women who fall for toxic men. she believes that she can fix joe. she fantasizes about being saved and dominated by him, giving him control to build her up bc she does not know who she is and has self-esteem issues, struggling to love herself without a lover's validation.

in some sense, she represents joe's perfect victim; in some sense, she represents the audiences who romanticize him. and she is the one who snaps out and sees herself clearly, thus seeing joe as he truly is and becoming his ultimate reckoning.

and with her, we see joe as he is as well. a pathetic misogynist with mommy issues who does not accept anything he deems selfish in women he preys upon. a predator who kills his prey once she does not reflect the image of himself to him he wants to see. someone who does not take accountability for harming others, always making excuses for himself. his mask is finally off, he is naked.

once louise confronts him and takes her voice back, demanding joe to admit the truth, the story takes off the romantic lenses that reminded more or less intact throughout the show and turns into a pure horror of brutality and violence.

but joe can not kill louise. metaphorically, it's bc he does not have power over her anymore, she found her own power in herself. power that is found through self-acceptance and love for all the victims who were silenced by joe. she declares that she is not bronte built in his fantasy, she is louise.

i actually teared up when louise had a vision of beck autographing her books and then it cut to an older lady, showing the lifetime that was taken away from her.

in the end, we recognize what joe refuses to recognize - that he is responsible for his loneliness. yet, he is not wrong when he breaks the forth wall and confronts the audiences for participating the culture that blames the victims and gives power to the abusers.

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WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU TANGERINES (2025) dir. KIM WON-SEOK If she can't even ride a tricycle, she'll just live in the kitchen the rest of her days. I want Geum-myeong to have everything.

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i love that when life gives you tangerines emphasizes that what you show and give to a child shapes their principles, which could guide them for the rest of their life.

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people b saying things so definitively. like man i think it depends

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So Ellen can fuck her evil decaying corpse vampire but when I, Friedrich Harding....

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There's a fascinating aspect of Ellen's character that I've seen some people touch on before, but now that it got into my head I need to go through to it too-- her nature not being of human kind. It's actually one of the very first things Orlok himself says: that Ellen is not human, and he reasserts it later. But then what is she?

"Almost a sylph," Knock says of Ellen. "His little changeling girl," Ellen says her father had described her as, when she wandered off into the forest as a child. "You mustn't be caught up in her fairy ways," Harding admonishes Anna. Hell, in the 2016 script, when the Hardings accompany Ellen on her walk along the sea shore, she and the children dance in a circle while Ellen cries out "round and round the fairy ring". Furthermore, there's more than one explicit reference to Ellen loving the sea in the scripts. Prior to the sea shore walk, Ellen fervently asks Anna to go there, because "it calms her". Later on, Anna herself says that "she loves the sea so". While this didn't make it to the movie in such direct terms, we still see Ellen looking out windows and yearning, again and again... visiting the sea twice, having a seizure in the water itself. "Look at the sky! Look at the sea! Does it never call to you? Urge you?" she cries to Anna.

It's clearly an intentional implication on Eggers' part: that Ellen is some kind of fairy-like nature elemental. The term sylph originates from the works of Paracelsus, and described as a female air spirit, though over time water has been conflated with it too. Changeling also refers to a child kidnapped by supernatural beings (interestingly birthed by the Devil or a water spirit among others, in German mythology) and replaced with... something else. And we could leave it at that-- Ellen is not entirely human. She was born with witchy and fae-like characteristics, an attraction to the wind and the sea.

When she called out in the dark, it's possible Orlok answered also because he recognized this within her. But. There is a type of female nature spirit in Romanian folklore (which ultimately pervades the mythology of Nosferatu) that has specific parallels and a particular relationship to the Solomonar, the kind of sorcerer/supernatural creature Orlok was in life. It feeds into the overarching theme of destiny and fate so beautifully. I find it all very interesting, but I got pretty long already, so I'll put the rest under the cut.

Female nature spirits can be found all over the place in European folklore, and Romania is no different. They can have many names, though the most popular one is probably iele, a name that is literally derived from the female plural "ele". Iele are fae-like feminine spirits associated with the winds and the sky, often seducing and luring men away. What attracted my attention though, is the variation/subtype of vântoase (root word vânt = wind) or the associated vâlvă. In some accounts [1], this supernatural creature is a marked human who was born with the capacity for their spirit to leave their body at night and then go towards the sky, where they wrestle with other vâlve or balauri (which are a Romanian mythical equivalent of dragons, alongside zmei). Their fights are said to be what cause storms, and rains, and other catastrophe-related weather events. When put in contrast with Ellen, the similarities are obvious... especially when it comes to her affinity for nature and her spirit "wandering off". It also must be emphasized that these spirits are not inherently evil: they can do both good and bad, bring luck or misfortune, aligning with Ellen saying that "her spirit cannot be as evil as his [Orlok's]" and that all her life she has "simply heeded her own nature".

But the thing is... a marked human born with powers is also what a Solomonar is: children able to control the weather, ride balauri or zmei, control and turn into different animals-- who are then recruited by the Devil into the school of Șolomanță/Scholomance. Although despite this demonic current association, initially Solomonari were also more of a neutral figure in Romanian folklore. They are theorized, among other hypotheses, to be a later version of Geto-Dacian ktistai, who were selected from priests or kings (Orlok is a count, a prince or voivode) and might've worshipped Zamolxe, a Geto-Dacian God associated with the sky as well as immortality (Ancient Dacian is what Orlok speaks; Zamolxe is written within Orlok's heptagram sigil; on his coat of arms, sigil and coffin there's Dacian wolves as well as balauri-- a serpent-like creature with the head of a wolf which is on the Dacian flag). Some Solomonari were believed to be protecting villages from calamity, and influenced the weather in order to grow crops more easily. But of course, when Christianity spread in the region, things from Pagan times began to be associated with the Devil, hence why the Christian Orthodox Abbess we see in the Nosferatu movie calls Orlok a "black enchanter". More importantly for us though, the Solomonar was also said to leave their body at night in a trance, riding up into the sky to fight the weather spirits. Orlok's Shadow, that we hear so much about, is an integral part of a Solomonar's powers: the ability to project one's spirit away from their body. Them riding balauri is a metaphor for them taming winds, summoning vântoase.

So. Vâlvă, vântoasă, ială and Solomonar share quite a lot of characteristics, don't they? A source I found made the comparison directly, which is what set me on this path [1]. Humans born with powers-- one typically male, one female. But the male one is schooled and part of a cult or hierarchy, taking control of the nature element, while the vâlvă/vântoasă/ială is the nature element.

Yet the expected dynamic between summoner and summoned is so deliciously subverted with Ellen and Orlok! Orlok definitely recognized someone of his own nature in Ellen. Someone born with magic, essentially. Someone not of human kind. But Ellen's power is something Orlok's kind traditionally controls. A Solomonar tames and summons the winds (vântoasele)... and don't we see Orlok's spirit call to Ellen more than once? Orlok asserts his influence through the lilac-scented lock of hair, latching onto Ellen through it. He trespasses in Ellen's dreams, brings her spirit to him in the Castle when he feeds on Thomas, and we see her naked and on top of Thomas too, eerie and with blood spilling out of her mouth (very female-spirit-who-preys-upon-men coded, which is even more directly spelled out later in the scene where Ellen provokes Thomas into having sex with her). All along, we see Ellen overcome by seizures and trances, writhing under Orlok's Shadow. This is the power he has over her.

Hah. But Orlok is not just a Solomonar, Ellen is not just a spirit of the wind, and here's where I think another fascinating layer comes in. In the movie, ultimately, Orlok is a strigoi. The strigoi is a Romanian folk creature that can be vampiric, though that's not always what it does. It's a troubled spirit that rises from the grave to prey upon the living (especially their loved ones, to whom they return to first), by eating/killing their animals, poisoning their crops, drinking their blood and creating all manner of disaster. One can become a strigoi in many ways, including a life of sin, suicide, being cursed by a witch, etc. But importantly, there's also two types of strigoi-- the alive strigoi, and the dead strigoi [2]. The alive type is a sorcerer who in life already slips into these evil behaviors with intent, while the dead type rises from the grave and mindlessly feeds upon their loved ones and their village (the revenant we see killed by the Romani vampire hunter in the film). Orlok is a mix of things that make him unique, much like how Dracula was described as atypical multiple times in Bram Stoker's novel. He was a sorcerer and a Solomonar in life (an alive strigoi, something a source from the 19th century asserted-- that Solomonari were strigoi), who was then risen from the grave by a witch (becoming a dead strigoi). As a result, he has retained all his mental faculties and his magical powers.

But the enchantress who calls upon Orlok as a strigoi is partly an air elemental. She caused him to rise from the grave, and that is how she asserts her power over him. Yet she's of the air, of the wind, of the sea... all the things a Solomonar is a master of! So I think this is a contributing factor to the Covenant Orlok makes with Ellen. When they first meet there is not only recognition of someone similar to himself ("You... You..."), but also of a specific connection between what the two of them are. He immediately seeks a Covenant with Ellen, and then when she breaks it, comes after her in person. When they first talk and Ellen rejects him, he says "You will submit."

As Eggers pointed out too, there is a huge need for possession on Orlok's side. It's left ambiguous if he wants to own her or destroy her or if he loves her... To me, this added aspect illuminates a big part of why Orlok also resents Ellen ("You are my affliction"). It isn't just that a woman has him in her thrall, a man and a Lord who wielded great power in life-- but also that she is air, a vântoasă, the element of his dominion. It's so delicious how there's a bidirectional supernatural element between them... Orlok may feel he is owed possession of Ellen, with the deeper layer of the male sorcerer taming the unknowable chaotic female elemental. But Orlok is a strigoi risen from the grave by Ellen as an enchantress, hence she is owed possession of him as her summoned Creature. So there's two tethers between them, each connected to a different aspect of their natures; Orlok is holding one end, Ellen is holding the other. (To be honest, my headcanon is that when we see Ellen levitate, that's not Orlok, it's her air-related power. She levitates upwards in the very first scene of the film right as Orlok says she isn't human, as if it's a manifestation of that. When Orlok feeds on Thomas and she is there in spirit, we see them levitate; except it's Ellen we see fall down to the ground, while Orlok and Thomas are shown to have always been on the ground. And in every scene with Orlok in person, it could be that she gets on her tiptoes progressively to get closer and closer to his face; but it also looks as if she's floating upwards.)

This ended up a way too long honest-to-God essay, but I just adore all the complexities of this movie. You can tell how much Eggers researched, how many details and references he wove into the story, all meant to connect but kept ambigous enough that multiple theories are possible. While the association between Solomonar and strigoi and vampire was something Stoker did too, that Murnau did too, none of them thought to take it as far as creating a connection to Ellen steeped also in folklore. The vampire has a supernatural hold over his bride, but now so does she. The Enchantress summons the undead Strigoi, the Solomonar summons the Vântoasă. How much more fated can you get?

I'm supplying two more in-depth sources I used below as downloadable pdfs, but fair warning, they're in Romanian:

[1] Mituri pluviale românești în context universal, Silvia Ciubotaru

[2] Șapte Eseuri Despre Strigoi, Marineasa, 1998

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Spoilers: Eggers' Nosferatu

There's a lot of debate right now on if Count Orlok represents Ellen's shame/trauma/abuse, or if he represents her repressed erotic desires, and in turn there's debate on whether or not viewers who find the Ellen/Orlok dynamic alluring are "missing the point." Eggers and Lily-Rose Depp have both said in interviews that there's a mutual pull between Ellen and Orlok, and even that there's a love triangle element, but obviously the experience is terrifying for Ellen. How can we reconcile the sexual tension and the horror?

I think the broader theme is that Orlok represents everything in a woman's inner world that men refuse to acknowledge and accept - fear and shame and trauma, yes, but also our appetites . After the prologue, the story starts with Ellen begging Thomas to stay in bed with her; she says "the honeymoon was yet too short" and tries to pull him in and kiss him (obviously trying to start some nuptial bliss). But Thomas is anxious to meet with his boss and get his promotion, because he has a narrative he's going to fulfill: he's going to pay Friedrich back, buy a house, and then start having kids (he and Friedrich touch on this a bit later. Notably, Friedrich discloses Anna's pregnancy to Thomas before Anna has made it public.)

It's the start of Ellen and Thomas' married life and she just wants him to prioritize her sexual desire, but he chooses to focus on his ideal of success, which sets him on this path to confronting Orlok. We know Ellen doesn't care about having a house or fine things and she begs him not to go, but Thomas listens to Herr Knock and Friedrich, who tell him that as a husband he has to provide materially. He ignores Ellen's stated desires, and so fails to provide sexually and emotionally. When Thomas gaslights her about her nightmares and calls them childish fancies, he shuts down her vulnerability, which kills the intimacy she was enjoying in the literal honeymoon phase.

On a related note, there's a defence in here for Aaron Taylor Johnson's performance, which I've seen a few male critics call "over acting." In this story Friedrich represents the masculine ideal of the time, he's a rich business owner with a beautiful wife and kids. Thomas clearly looks up to him and wants to emulate him - he wants to give Ellen the life "she deserves." But Friedrich's elevated masculine status is why he refuses to listen to Ellen's "hysterical, sentimental" worries, he's too rational for all that of course. And his stubborn "rationality" leads to the death of his entire family. Friedrich IS the patriarchal ideal that crumbles when confronted with nuance and uncertainty. Some people see Friedrich and assume that a character like him is meant to come across as dignified, and that Aaron Taylor Johnson is messing up by making him look annoying, but really he is giving a great portrayal of a really common, annoying kind of guy. The kind of guy who melts down and has childish tantrums whenever they lose control of a situation, or their manly skills and values are shown to be irrelevant.

The men in the movie (excluding Professor von Franz) frame Ellen as childish for speaking about her dreams candidly, but their own childishness is revealed when her dreams manifest in the form of Orlok and become unavoidable. Ellen (partially? possessed in the moment by Orlok) tells Thomas how "foolish and like a child" he was in Orlok's castle. In the literal context that's cruel, and obviously that shit was scary as hell, but it hits on Thomas' failure in the metaphorical reading. He was a child playing house: 'I'll be the husband and make money, you be the wife and make babies.' When it came time to confront his wife's inner world and all the scary, traumatized, lustful complexity of it, he was completely inept. The message isn't that Orlok is what Ellen really needs, or that Thomas is a wimp, but he's not a perfect husband either. I think "the point" is that a real healthy marriage with sexual, emotional, and spiritual mutuality is impossible in that society with Thomas/Friedrich's ideals. In that kind of society, a spiritually and sexually potent woman like Ellen ("in heathen times you might have been a Priestess of Isis") will always be caught in a "love triangle" with her husband and her own inner world.

[meemawsbigtiddies]

what's a tumblr influencer? what am i influencing? my mental illness? 😭

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Men who talk about wanting a “Morticia Addams” fail to realize what even made Morticia love Gomez in the first place. Gomez is catastrophically in love with Morticia and is extremely devoted to her. He genuinely worships Morticia like a goddess. She is his entire religion. Morticia did not choose Gomez for his cool indifference.

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Not to toot my own horn but my boyfriend is literally everything here and I'm such a blessed woman <3333 finally found my own Gomez Addams, manifesting is real y'all 💖💖✨✨🙏🏻

Men who talk about wanting a “Morticia Addams” fail to realize what even made Morticia love Gomez in the first place. Gomez is catastrophically in love with Morticia and is extremely devoted to her. He genuinely worships Morticia like a goddess. She is his entire religion. Morticia did not choose Gomez for his cool indifference.

[meemawsbigtiddies]

It actually meant so much to me to see the original Mina/Jonathan dynamic honoured in Nosferatu (2024). The way they loved each other so much, did everything for the other, clung to each other in the face of the Count's individual assaults upon them...I'm so used to seeing adaptations take this actually really great couple and tossing them into a blender for the sake of propping up the Count's character and his *not book accurate* relationship with Mina. I was so worried going into this movie I'd been hyping up since the beginning that it would fall into the same trap, and it soothed my fears immediately. The only straight couple ever in my eyes <3

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me and my boyfriend <3

I think one of the things I appreciated most in Nosferatu was the framing of Ellen and Thomas’s marriage. Despite the fact that he doesn’t quite understand Ellen’s otherness he still loves and accepts her completely. Their deep love for one another is still so palpable even in the thick of Orlok’s manipulations. I just think it would’ve been so easy to make Thomas a witless and uncaring husband and Ellen an unsatisfied wife. But no. Despite everything, they love each other completely. And that only makes it all the more painful.

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yes yes orlok as the grotesque manifestation of ellen’s hideous lust, monsterfucking blah blah blah. Hot.

But thomas… the lover that witnesses.. accepts… soothes… He saw her at her most depraved and still held her… you guys. He was the only other person who had *seen* what she saw in her dreams. He was there in that castle… was inflicted by orlok’s perversions. In the flesh. Still he made it home. Then he watched her, frothing at the mouth and shaking in demonic fury, to then crawling and begging at his waist for mercy, then a moment laters she’s looking up at him with the very devil in her eyes and tongue… and still, he held her! As she truly sobbed. He told her it was okay, that he had seen it too. Continued to love her as his woman, descend to hell and destroy the demon for her. And Ellen loved him too! She says she felt he was sent to her, made her feel normal and okay. Her salvation. A love that feels like depollution… to be so inspired by your love for somebody that for them you go, willing, to the altar as a sacrificial lamb. Her love for him gave her purpose! I love them… not orlok nor any contract could ever dissolve the bond between them.

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In Nosferatu (2024), Willem Dafoe plays the eccentric professor Von Franz, who has embraced discredited superstitious practices like listening to women

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the thing that makes thomas so compelling in nosferatu 2024 is that he’s downright pathetic but he cares so much about his wife that he turns his patheticness into brave devotion. idk if that makes sense. like he’s SO pathetic but then he puts on his big boy pants and does his best because he’s so devoted to his wife that it doesn’t even matter. “excuse me but she asked for no pickles” ahh marriage. i love him so bad.

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in dracula there is a cowboy and the female lead lives. in nosferatu there is no cowboy and the female lead dies. ergo, the existence of a cowboy is highly important for the survival of the female lead in a gothic vampire story.