musingsofadeadgirl - Tumblr blog

[musingsofadeadgirl]

"First the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the man." Sculpture created based off an old Irish saying

[musingsofadeadgirl]

people online are going to war over which duo between art/tashi/patrick are the best relationship and which one of them is getting left behind. like did y'all even watch the movie... the three of them are a package deal, do NOT separate. everyone wants a sexy toxic throuple until they're handed one on a silver platter and then everyone's advocating for conventional relationships and monogomy

[musingsofadeadgirl]

All I ask for in my lifetime is all the pretty dresses a girl could dream of and to go to a Lana del Rey concert

[musingsofadeadgirl]

Tashi drives a wedge between Patrick and Art and then Art drives wedge between Tashi and Patrick and then Patrick drives a wedge between Tashi and Art...

[musingsofadeadgirl]

i think we are all forgetting something when we talk about how toxic patrick, tashi, and art are — or when we decide one is “worse” than the other. they all have moments of seeing right through it, seeing each other’s toxic behavior for what it is, and STILL want and need each other in this possessive, envious, visceral way.

1. in the way beginning, tashi is clearly flirting more with art than patrick, and patrick is visibly annoyed. art sees right through it and even challenges him like “okay, let’s leave”, and has this little smirk on his face because he knows patrick won’t give up on tashi.

2. tashi immediately sees the visible tension and love between art and patrick, and literally orchestrates their first kiss. she sees right through their repression, and even calls herself a “home-wrecker” but still entangles herself with them, especially patrick because he’s clearly the better tennis player at that point and that is tash’s ONLY true love. tennis. that’s what she desires most in him, and patrick knows that. he even calls her out on it in the dorm room scene. but they have this mirroring fire in each other that neither of them can give up, not until patrick breaks the balance and bails — tashi’s injury is literally a metaphor for the balance shattering between all three of them when patrick leaves her.

3. before this, patrick sees right through art trying to break them up, and even admires that quality — maybe even feels smug and flattered because art is jealous and feels left out from both tashi and patrick. patrick has known this all along, we saw it in the “tick-serve” scene, where he even swears to tashi he won’t tell anyone but he still tells art, who is desperate to feel a part of them and patrick wants that, too — even keeps that close intimacy with art that we see in the churro scene (swoon swoon swoon).

4. haven’t you noticed that arts desire to be great is only ever tied up in patrick and tashi? how he needs to beat patrick to win tashis affection, how he needs to win in tennis so that tashi can live through him, how he lives up to his potential in the ending only because tashi and patrick push him to it, in their little fucked up ways? he knows this — he even admits that he’s playing for tashi, that he knows she’s living through him. he even admits he’s playing a fucked up little game with patrick when they’re in the sauna. yet he still does it. again, he knows what’s happening, sees right through them — still does it, still loves them.

5. when tashi calls patrick to come pick her up he knows it’s not just to tell him to throw the match — and despite how she battles him about it, they still have sex in the car, because he already knows. he’s so fully aware of her and her game and he’s so willing to be caught up in it, the same as art.

just some examples of how they all have moments of clarity and agency and yet they still choose to be entangled in one another because they’re all fucked up in their own, individual ways, and they’re all living through each other for their own specific needs. arts is to be seen as worthy, as great, but only through their gaze. tashis is to have the career that was stolen from her. patricks is truly to be in love and in lust with both of them, because we even see that from the beginning that tashis love alone will never satiate him; it has to be arts love, too. that scene in the sauna when he thinks he’s lost it from art is the most sad and fucked up we ever even see patrick. on top of tashi asking him to throw the game — he’s so defensive of arts feelings.

in short this is an actual love triangle (and i would go as far as to see it as a polyship). you can’t erase one without the whole thing unraveling, and you can’t say one character was the “worst” without picking apart the motivations and pointing to the fact that their bad behavior was never a secret or left unchecked.

even at the end, patrick signals to art that he slept with tashi — art knows and they still have that intimate completion at the end, all three of them. art living up to his potential and embracing patrick fully (id argue this could even be a metaphor for embracing his bisexuality), patrick having both tashi and arts affection again, and tashi playing a phenomenal tennis match through her little white boys — in such a visceral, emotional way that she cries out like she did in the beginning and the last frame is her smiling.

in a fucked up way, they all get what they wanted out of each other.

[musingsofadeadgirl]

challengers is so real because if i was tashi, i, too, would take good care of my little white boys. if i was patrick, i, too, would spend years living in jealously if tashi and art got married and left me out. if i was art, i, too, would be pathetic and on my hands and knees for tashi and in love with patrick!

[musingsofadeadgirl]

[musingsofadeadgirl]

on the romance of cannibalism by silas denver melvin (@sweatermuppet)

click for better quality + do not remove caption

[musingsofadeadgirl]

All that rot had to be removed somehow

[musingsofadeadgirl]

Les encastrés, by Agnès Geoffray, 2005

[musingsofadeadgirl]

bro. bro you are romantisizing the secret history. bro you are enamored with the greek class just like richard. bro you are ignoring the bad things and creating aesthetics based on a book telling a murder of a young man. brother.

[musingsofadeadgirl]

[musingsofadeadgirl]

You know what's hilarious? When you're being all dark and moody and want to isolate and disappear... and then you get distracted from isolating bc you see a funny thing or a pretty thing and want to share it with a loved one

[musingsofadeadgirl]

oh to be immortalised

[musingsofadeadgirl]

eddie making buck chris’ legal guardian if he dies is still so funny to me years later because like. bro if this was for normal reasons you would have picked someone with less than a 70% chance of being taken the fuck out right there with you

[musingsofadeadgirl]

anyone else have any other thought since thursday? no? cool me neither