#and WOW this post got away from me

[al-luviec]

juvie buddies

[lights-at-night]

hello everyone today i am pondering long hair faulkner. his brothers dont know how to hair and his dad just isnt there, so he's always kept it down. sometime during the season 1 roadtrip carpenter and paige teach him how to braid. at some point in season 2 he and carpenter do each other's hair. faulkner tries to keep carpenter's braids but the parish either put his hair in elaborate traditional hairstyles or cut it off completely. carpenter keeps it in as long as she can and once she's on the run she doesn't have time to undo it, and doesn't really want to. she keeps the braids in her hair even if they're uneven and messy and she needs to wash her hair. when they meet in the finale faulkner is almost unrecognizable to her and she looks exactly like the last time he saw her.

[strawberryblackcrown]

thinking about Stinky Lakeside on the tristamp map and what the dark areas are.

like sure it's the Great Sand Ocean but. it's all sand on that planet? are the borders just land that's been claimed vs free-for-all areas? but what separates the stretch in between cities and towns that makes it so different? Is it that those routes are well travelled and teeming with bandits, who dare not venture further lest they run out of supplies too far away from an area where they can restock?

Thoughts are being Thunk, but if there's an actual, confirmed reason on the difference between Colonized Sand and Scavenger's Sand, i'd be interested in knowing

[russell-crowe]

i tried to make a more sentimental post but as someone with the weather (and by extension space weather) as my special interest i am so so so so happy seeing all the posts from people who got to experience this rare solar storm <3 it makes me so happy when people get to witness how beautiful (space) weather can be!!!

[conquerthenight]

I’ve been thinking nonstop about the time someone on ao3 mentioned that Maxim took on some of Rebecca’s worst traits as a way to cope with (or that some of his own worst traits were exacerbated by) the abuse he endured by Rebecca’s hand. And that honestly makes so much sense.

None of this an excuse for how he behaves, but I think it could be an explanation.

I mean, think about it. We know he has quite the horrible temper. In the musical Beatrice states that he was “the same way as a child” meaning that his anger issues have always existed in some way. Of course that is most likely true, but take that and add in years of emotional abuse and it’s certainly a recipe for disaster. What used to be an ordinary bad temper became something border lining on volatile over the years. We see that in those moments Maxim snaps at his second wife. In the musical, during the first boathouse scene, Maxim rushes after his wife who had run offstage in terror, as if he was about to hit her before ultimately realizing what he was about to do and stopping himself in his tracks.

We know that Maxim can be quite cold and distant when he wants to be. At times he is also super patronizing and mocking. In the musical it’s a bit less so (but even that has the “you react like a child” line) but in the book he’s constantly talking down to his wife. Perhaps he does so because Rebecca did the same to him? Of course, Rebecca definitely didn’t compare him to a child as Maxim did to his second wife, but she could have mocked him with his insecurities (his obsession with holding up his family’s reputation, his intense desire to be seen as a strong figure and the toxic level of pressure he puts on himself as a result).

And of course, we can’t talk about Maxim or Rebecca’s worst traits without mentioning manipulation and the abuse of power dynamics. And what’s more is that both of them are fully aware that they are manipulating the situation. Rebecca sought to control Maxim by holding her affairs, Manderley’s standing, etc. over his head knowing full well he either wouldn’t or couldn’t (or a combination of the two) divorce her. See the lyric in “Kein Lächeln war je so Kalt”: “Divorce was taboo for the de Winter family. The family honor was worth more to me than my pride, and she relished in her triumph”.

Likewise, Maxim knows full well that his second wife came from basically nothing. He knows she’s financially dependent on him and that should their marriage fail in some way, she would have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. He even outright admits to her that he “did a selfish thing” marrying his second wife and that he “should have waited and let [his wife] marry a boy of [her] own age”. He knows that he has (and arguably still is) manipulating the dynamics in his own favor until the very moment he confesses to Rebecca’s murder and the power shifts from Maxim to his young wife.

Both Maxim and Rebecca know that they are absolute monsters. But it’s important to also note where they differ. While Rebecca revels in her absolute assholery and abusiveness, Maxim’s situation is the opposite. He hates himself for his own assholery and has basically condemned himself to a suffering of his own making.

Ironically, Mrs. Danvers said it best: “He’s made his own hell, and he has no one but himself to thank for it”. Was Mrs. Danvers just trying to get under the new Mrs. de Winter’s skin and hit her where it would hurt most? Yes. Was it said out of bitterness over Rebecca being replaced? Yes. But was she correct in her assumption? Also yes.

And of course, the key difference between Rebecca and Maxim is that all important shift in power. Rebecca held the power for almost the entirety of their relationship, and Maxim sought to take that power back through any means necessary resulting in Rebecca’s murder. When Maxim eventually confesses to said murder, it serves as an act of giving up that power he had claimed by killing Rebecca. He can no longer hold the weight of it because he knows he is damned and thus power transferred itself to his second wife. Where he was previously codependent on Rebecca, his second wife became codependent on him upon their marriage, and ultimately he became codependent on his wife upon his confession.

This is where the adaptation of Rebecca’s traits begins to fade. Maxim becomes basically a shell of himself, barely keeping it together through the rest of the story if not for the influence of his wife. He becomes as reliant on her as she had previously been reliant on him. This toxic cycle is only truly broken with the burning of Manderley. Only then are they equals. Only then do they begin to truly grow.

Rebecca, on the other hand, never got that chance. It was taken from her by the very man she had ill used. She knew that her “pregnancy” was a lie. She knew that her cancer diagnoses would damn her to a slow and painful death. Did that stop her from perpetuating the cycle of abuse? No. Instead she continued with it until her last breath, passing the torch to Maxim in the process.

Maxim certainly was no innocent. He perpetuated this toxic cycle as well. The only difference was that the person he passed it onto ended up not only breaking the cycle, but also gave him the opportunity to heal from it. He knows he isn’t worthy of it. We as the reader/viewer somewhat know that too. And yet the second Mrs. de Winter unknowingly grants him this post Manderley fire. Maxim has the opportunity to redeem himself where Rebecca did not.

Whether he takes the opportunity or ultimately succumbs to his inner demons (figuratively or literally) is completely up to the one consuming the story.

Personally my opinion is ever changing. While the optimistic part of me believes that he does work to better himself and ultimately succeeds in doing so, the realistic part of me wonders whether that’s the case. Of course, when I am of the realistic opinion I don’t think he reverts back to the traits he took on from Rebecca and those that were made worse during his relationship with Rebecca, but rather he wallows in a state of being that is just numb to it all. He is stagnant in his recovery because he believes, he knows, that he is beyond help. Things don’t get worse, but they certainly don’t get better either.

Ultimately Maxim de Winter is a character that foretells the tragedy of abuse and how the cycle of abuse can continue in ways that those trapped within it don’t comprehend until it’s too late. He is and isn’t a victim. He is and isn’t a perpetrator. We root for his relationship with his second wife on our most hopeful days and yet we don’t on our most cynical. He is an asshole. He is a dick. He isn’t exactly the best of men. And yet he is also broken. He is lonely. He is lost.

He finds what he is looking for in the end to an extent. A love that, while not exactly the healthiest, sets him on a path to becoming a better person. The relationship between Maxim and his second wife is in a way just like the drive leading to Manderley itself. Constant twisting and turning, plenty of bumps in the road, obstacles that temporarily prevent them from moving forward. And the beauty of it is that they do, in their own twisted way. They move on from the cycle of abuse they started in, however irreparably damaged and emotionally numb Maxim may be by the end.

“Love that liberates”. I’ve seen plenty of debate over whether that signature line from the musical is applicable to the story of Rebecca and the journey the de Winters take. My two cents is that it is, although the love itself isn’t what liberates the de Winters, Maxim in particular. Maxim may delude himself into believe that the love his second wife shows him despite his crimes is what liberates him, but while it certainly sets the foundation for their liberation from the cycle, in the end it is he who must crawl out of the hell he created for himself. No one can pull him out of it but himself.

[sqlmn]

Local man who survives by identifying smells dragged into a candle store and promptly suffers. (I got so lazy in the end on the last part sorry it's very not accurate heights and stuff)

[juniperhillpatient]

as someone who very much believes in the supernatural & believes I’ve had countless experiences with it I have a love hate relationship with those experiences that are like. either I’m actually losing it like actually hallucinating/delusional or that just happened because it’s like. i find it interesting & exciting but also if I ever want to talk about it people either think I’m crazy or lying & it’s like. well . I literally might be crazy? I don’t know what to tell you I’ve been having these experiences semi frequently since I was a kid either I’m legitimately mentally ill in some undiagnosed way (which feels unlikely to me if I’m being honest given my many years in & out of therapy & the fact that these encounters have never impacted my life in a negative way) or I’m very sensitive to spiritual encounters & at a certain point those are literally the only two options in my mind

[possamble]

woke up and got absolutely obliterated by a farcille fancomic on twitter how are you guys doing

[gregmarriage]

i don’t understand ppl who leave their packing, until the last minute. i am already packing and i don’t go anywhere for over a week, imao

[seventh-district]

several days and 15 thousand words later, i am relieved to report that the suffocating urge to Write Something has been sated and no longer has me in a chokehold

[viksalos]

reading up on autism to figure out what the fuck is going on with me and making a list of personal pros and cons to figure out whether i should feel good or bad about it. as one does

pros: hyperlexia, deeply compassionate, talent for mathematics and the sciences/can do calculations of reasonable complexity in my head, visual hypersensitivity/decent artistic ability when replicating from still life/good at distinguishing subtle colors, acute hearing/good at identifying distinct sounds and sonic textures/deeply moved by music, can rotate some shapes in my head really fast i guess

cons: people can tell something is "off" about me in a fraction of a second and will be anywhere from begrudgingly polite to overtly hostile about it, terminal "not like other girls" disease/feeling of disconnect with existing in a feminine body, can pace for hours on end until my legs hurt, frequent crying & shutdowns, talk about myself and my interests extensively and can't seem to find a way to stop or better relate to others outside of mirroring them, productive work that actually *utilizes* my talents seems to only happen in increasingly infrequent bursts of hyperfocus, recurring identity issues stemming from a fundamental feeling of being born wrong and belonging nowhere, visceral hypersensitivity means i'm in pain from the normal functioning of my own organs for most of the day, people have compared me to sheldon cooper and elon musk, i am constantly begging for the sweet release of death,

[cocopurplepompom]

OMG

a loz/lu fan who also likes LN??

op ur amazing holy moly 🫵🥺

Thank you so much this is so sweet!!!! <333

It's not often I meet people in both of these fandoms, they don't seem to crossover much, or even at all, do they? Tbh I think it's a shame, the puzzle-solving-based gameplay of the LN games would be perfect for Loz fans!

What attracted you to Little Nightmares, may I ask, apart from the puzzles it doesn't have much of a connection on the fandom pipeline, so I'm curious?

I'm more familiar with the LN games than the Loz ones, but since I joined Tumblr for Lu, most of my mutuals and the blogs I follow are Loz oriented and I've been doing my best to educate myself as I go.

All that said, here's a rant about how much I love LN under the cut, since I don't usually talk about it on here, you have been warned XD

I don't mention it much but LN is genuinely one of my fave game franchises of all time. I'm in love with every aspect from the graphics to the lore to the puzzles, and needless to say I am very hyped for LN3.

This is also the series that brought me and my bestie together, so the new multiplayer feature is gonna be absolutely amazing.

I'm fascinated (and concerned) by the seemingly cyclical nature of the stories we experience within the LN universe. The idea of the children growing up to become the monsters that have hunted them, over and over again with no way to stop it, is something that I think is really well explored in a videogame. We can replay them as much as we want - there's no changing the outcome.

Anyways, how are we feeling about the adorably close bond of friendship between Low and Alone? (no doomed-by-the-narrative foreshadowing there no siree) 😭

[painsandconfusion]

What's your dni list? I can't seem to find one.

I don't really have one. The only thing that really squicks me out is MAP people who defend it. If you know you have issues and you're working on yourself? Different story. But anyone who defends pedophilia in any capacity isn't welcome here.

[volfoss]

honestly the more grant morrison comics i read/more i learn about them, the more i want them to blow up violently

[hands0mejack]

.

i used to collect keys and fancy glass bottles until my mom threw away everything i owned that one time and i lost most of my stuff + broke the most expensive hannibal funko pop that my friend bought me

[feeshies]

My guy. My main dude. My Gucci guy. It's fine. Drawing art of pre trans characters is fine. Art is an exploration of whatever the fuck you want it to be. Nobody gets to tell you what you can and can't do, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Myself included. And I should know about art: I've drawn jack shit and am currently tipsy as hell. Besides, what are they gonna do? Be upset as to how YOU treat YOUR OCs? Cringe. Fuck 'em. Draw whatever you want my guy.

Thank you, this (and everyone else's responses) actually helps a lot.

I'm just hesitant because a very vivid memory of mine was seeing a trans man saying "genderbending is inherently transphobic. trans people have been telling you to stop for years but no one listens", and that struck me because...I actually really liked genderbending? I grew up with a lot of genderbend anime and manga so maybe I was more comfortable with it than others, but I also liked it as a thought experiment or character design challenge.

But when I saw that post (and several other trans people agreeing), what went through my head was "oh, this is something that bothers trans people. but i'm not bothered. i guess i'm not actually trans and these gender feelings/questions i'm experiencing are the result of something else." No joke, it helped to set back my transition by a lot lol.

Idk why I went on that massive unrelated tangent. I guess my point is that I still feel like I need to be mindful when writing/drawing trans people -- even as a trans person myself bc we're not exempt (we all remember that infamous captain america art lol). I think it goes double when I'm drawing characters who are trans women, bc trans women and trans femmes have a very different experiences in regards to being trans that I won't be able to personally relate to.

This got away from me lol. Anyway, thank you to listening to my ramble and for encouraging me :)