#because i can't divorce it from the rawness of the very very beginning of a redemption(?) arc

[loveofdetail]

@sigilmint oh friend this comment made me so 😍

Short version: As far as in-game actions, really all you need to do is initiate his romance, betray the grove, roll to convince him to stay in the party, then continue his romance, roleplaying the situation however you want from there.

Long Version beneath the cut—this has a lot more to do with how my own out-of-game decisionmaking got me here, and how I interpret the macro-arc of my party/character.

My first bg3 campaign is a co-op game where we are mostly trying to do Good Route Things. Gale has been stuck in camp permanently because I was dead set on playing a wizard myself.

So I started my solo campaign with the vague notion of doing a Full On Evil Run. My character, Vuei, is a disillusioned and broken oathbreaker paladin. I was planning to romance Minthara because if she's only available in the evil route, might as well go all the way.

But I recruited Gale and immediately had a category 5 "Ohhh I can't not fuck him" moment.

Now, at the time I thought that betraying the grove would straight-up lock you out of his romance. Tbh I'm not sure why I thought this? But somehow that was the impression I'd gotten, so, I promptly jettisoned all my Evil Plans in favor under Get Under Gale's Robe ASAP.

I got all the way into Act 2 like this. Defeated and looted the whole goblin camp, made it to Last Light, all that.

Then one night I wanted to play but I was feeling too mentally wiped to make real progress and real decisions, so instead I loaded a save from right before saving the grove. I figured I would see what it was like, get to hear some Minthara dialogue, that would be that.

Instead I got one of the most immersive emotional rollercoasters a video game has ever given me.

I failed some rolls to deceive Minthara and started spinning a narrative where Vuei, who has recently lost everything and everyone they thought they valued, just... panics. Doesn't see a way out other than bending to Minthara's demands. Goes reflexively numb and nihilistic because apparently this is just the way the world works.

From there, the entire sequence from the combat itself, to Karlach (who was in my party) leaving me, to the reactions of various people at the party... it was just Moment after Heartwrenching Moment. I'm leaving some details out here because they really deserve to be experienced first-hand but at the end I was like. Staring at my ceiling processing all the implications for the characters.

Gale specifically delivers one of the Verbal Smackdowns of All Time to you afterward. You have to persuade him to stay.

But he does stay.

This was the point when I started getting the feeling that maybe his romance flag was still active? And the implications of THAT... my mind just ran wild with them. Who was this guy who would bitterly, righteously tell you that you're making him worse, then give you a second chance, secretly thinking maybe he's Not Actually So Different, then fall in love—ACTUAL love, not just 'I don't deserve better' resignation—with you despite it all?

I never reloaded my original save.

The game doesn't actually let you have any additional decompress-and-discuss dialogue after persuading him to stay, but in my imagination what I filled in was: a really painful heart to heart where Gale and Vuei agree Never Again. Where they are both at a loss as to how they can even go on from this. But they have to. So they will. At least they know the other feels just as guilty and ashamed as themself, and that counts for something.

It also made me think, why the pure black and white Evil Run/Good Run dichotomy? I really, REALLY latched on to the story structure of a party that makes One Huge Ruinous Fuckup at the very beginning that colors all their further attempts to Do Better, and that's how I RP'd going into act 2.

For instance: we couldn't rescue the tieflings but maybe we can extend the same grace to Minthara that we hope might be extended to ourselves.

In terms of game mechanics I actually took quite a hit here. Karlach took a bunch of great gear with her when she left (this may not happen in the current patch? unsure) and I decided my characters would not have it in them to go back to the goblin camp just to completionistly gobble up loot.

It felt like penance. The very beginning of the tangible consequences of the thing my character will regret most, for the rest of her life.

I felt closer to my remaining companions. Bound by atrocity. The last ones standing. By the gods it shouldn't have happened this way but after that we will NEVER doubt that we have each other's backs. I put Astarion in my party for the first time ever and this is when I began warming up to him as a character. Eventually when Shadowheart killed the Nightsong, it was like Vuei (and Gale) deeply disapproved but couldn't bear to cast judgement. The only thing to do is be there for her and hope she does better next time. We are all just hoping we'll do better next time.

The morning after our lowest point, we trudged resignedly to Rosymorn monastery. The stark, sublime grandeur of the landscape was a slap in the face. It was wrong that such beauty could still exist as though the world was indifferent to what we'd just done. It was wrong that we could literally climb above the ruins we made and in the distance they're just... another part of a breathtaking view. But here we are, standing on this cliff, somehow still able to feel wonder.

The new dawn imagery was both a lash and balm.

We carry on. We find a way.

OH ALSO I gave Gale Volo's eye and continued making Alterations to him as things progressed. Being vague because that's quite a bit further in but yeah, Gale Undergoing Changes is another big part of my vision here. It's All Connected.

[inkbeanjo]

Sorry for being annoying but i have more questions about your OCs. So i am still kinda rotating my overly cybered up shadowrun oc idea in my head and i am wondering, How would Moni, Retro and the others react to someone who is seemingly an outsider but has abilities similar to a technomancer? My diea for my oc was that due to all her cybernetics it has kinda fused her soul with tech and gives her the ability to do stuff like remotely control technology, access the net without a deck, that kind of s tuff, but its also in a very uncontrolled way so she has to deal with like the equvlent of being bombarded with info and ads 24/7 which does not do her mental health any favors and has to rely on software to try and filter all of that out. So how would they react if say during one of their private chat room sessions, my oc unconciously just popped in unannounced, and there is a outsider who by appearance shouldnt be able to do what she is doing, doing what appears to be technomancy, to talk to them?

This splits two ways tbh- like between what shadowrun's setting sets up, and between how neo-a's setting divorces from that if that tracks In shadowrun, while the resonance is something more or less exclusive to technomancers to wield, it's not a space void of non-technomancer influence; the big ten more or less built the matrix on the backs of technos, to the point that host foundations are believed to dip into the resonance's upper layers- moreover a lot of normal people get swept up in resonance/techno bullshit pretty frequently, whether through errant sprites or clinging dissonance/having a slight spark of resonance by being tangled in it so much, or the weirder circumstances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time for a resonance well to form in digital space, sucking you off to god knows where. For the normal person separate from all this, with a wireless-enabled datajack/smartlink/synthetic eyes/really any number of augmentations, one can experience the wonders and hells of controlling the matrix and always-online connections whether they want to or not- so in your character's case and in the shadowrun setting by raw, any of these might be the case. A normal person seeing/interacting with resonance shit is usually the sign of a burgeoning technomancer to-be, but that's just my two cents it's less straightforward in the comic setting Neo-a's based on the games I got to play and co-write with a handful of close friends, but I've put a lot of work into beginning to divorce it from shadowrun- mostly in settling on to-be revealed isms and logical consistencies for how, thematically, a dystopia and universe operate when there's reality-altering magic and weirdass computer-magic that extends beyond the screen (also to be revealed, this's directly after chapter 4 in some ways) The center pillar of neo-a as a setting is that it's Weird- that the universe does not operate in logical or sensical ways, and is quite frankly glaringly flawed to the point that it stutters, breaks, or bleeds out in dysfunctional overlap. It's a reality of unreality layered in intersectional/existential bullshit (we'll get there), and where one or several (or many) people might be convinced that things operate with rhyme and reason in predictable fashion the truth is that those are snippets of understanding at best. There are exceptions across the board and oddities all around that don't fit into the norm of how things should be; "why can this person see/interact with the reverb without being a techno" is a question born out of surprise as likely to get answered as "why does this number keep showing up everywhere in my life"- or on the same train of thought, "why doesn't this person notice that number constantly showing up?" I can't really play my hand too much because I do very much want to show rather than tell in the comic's case (and I will), but the gist is "they're surprised and very cagey" in response to both xwxb

[candyskiez]

3, 4, 5, and 13 for the toh ask game!

3: Oh this is HARD. I'm currently beginning a rewatch so this might change? Y'know y'know. But I think it's Eclipse Lake. It's just so....man. The nuance. The depth. Genuinely such an accurate portrayal of abuse. I've said it before but just. It's so realistic. I like that they don't make Hunter a perfect victim. He's rude, he's bratty, he's manipulative as FUCK in this episode. We see how he got so far as the Golden Guard. He's cunning. He's smart. He's just also insanely reckless with his life because he was taught it's irrelevant. He uses the same tactics on Amity that Belos used on Lilith. It's also a very raw depiction of an abused teenager that just. Doesn't pull any punches. I love that Amitys trauma doesn't go away and that it shows that trauma influences all kinds of relationships you find yourself in. I don't know what I can say about it that I haven't already said. It's just. An excellent episode about abuse that handles the subject matter properly. It's just fucking GOOD man

4. Hmmm. That's a good question. Honestly? Aladarius. They're interesting! I know it's. Nonsensical given we know scraps. But. Listen. Listen. They're FUN. They have it all. Weird sexual tension filled angsty rivalry, childhood best friends turnt awkward tension, comedic gold, divorced energy, absolutely loving and tender after canon, what more can I ask for? I just ..I love thinking about them. I love thinking about the possibility of what their dynamic with Odalia was like when the three of them were best friends. I like thinking about them both having so many regrets with how their relationship ended, but they can't say it. They can't get it out. Darius can't risk ever being hurt like that again, the idea of getting his heart broken again is too much, and the idea of having to be NEAR Odalia or having to think about the thousands of hurts near that is enough to make him sick, and hes trying to tell himself hes over it. Alador is just...resigned. He can't fix it. He feels like he can't. They both fucked up so bad and were...not very good people at some point but try SO hard to be better and they make me so emotional. God. With that being said they do not touch dating until their kids are grown up. Ty and gn. Also I love thinking about them having a conversation about Odalia and going "What happened to the friend we knew? Did she ever exist?" "I don't know." "...Would that be worse?" "I don't know." And. Eats a leg.

5. Oh man this is a HARD one. There's so many good ones! Genuinely just ...so many. So fucking many. One that has absolutely no canon backing in any way whatsoever is Darius and His mentor but. That probably doesn't count for many obvious reasons. So I'll take actual canon. Eda and Luz. I fucking love them. They love each other SO MUCH. Eda calling Luz her kid makes me want to scream and just. God. They're what the other needed. Eda needed someone who gave her a reason to get up and keep going. Someone to make her see the outside world. If King and Luz hadn't shown up, she would've rotted away in that tower forever. She needed a purpose, needed someone who made her stop and see that there were some people worth protecting. Luz made Eda see the outside world and. God. Goddd. And Eda being the accepting mentor she needed, offering her companionship when she needed it the most. Scared and sad and lonely, she needed someone to tell her nothing was wrong with her. She needed someone who could help her figure her weirdness out in a safe environment. And Eda was that. Eda helped her so much. And the owl family gets separated over an dover and over again and then Luz breaks that cylce of pain by COMING BACK and going, no, you know what? This doesn't get to end in tragedy. I love Eda. I love King. I love Hooty and Lilith and Camilia ad Hunter and Willow and Gus and Amity. You don't get to take this from me. I'm going to live on the isles and be happy. I'm going to live. I love my family. And just. Man. Man. Considering Eda and Luz both go through depressive periods in the show it's so. Man. MAN.

13. Season two! Simply because it has the most amount of favorite episodes. It's just a really good season man idk what to tell you.

It's. Late at night for me so sorry for incoherency wah

[heylookgiraffes]

minglan and gu tingye's argument in episode 55

it's me - ya giorl, back on thier bullshirt!!! i have a 5000 word grant proposal due tomorrow so obviously instead of that im going to write about how fucking fascinating that scene is to me!!!

(their stupid flirting!)

the rest is going under the cut because this may or may not get out of hand

ok so this scene is fascinating to me because on paper, it's like a very serious and emotionally raw argument between the main couple stemming from personal traumas and miscommunication BUT it's also so funny.

Like normally, when you have a scene like this you expect it to be super tense, emotionally stressful, sad music everywhere, but it's not - they even switch to like, their comedy/daily life shenanigans music for gods sake.

(When I was watching it for the first time I had to take a literal moment to be like "wait. did they just do that. but aren't they fighting???")

anyway, so they go from sad melancholic ruminating on life to arguing when gu tingye asks minglan what she would do if he were to die. After being like "we'll get to it if we get to it," Minglan is like: "either way, I won't choose to die"

(side note: east asia has this whole thing involving widows and remarriage, and like how its so admirable to follow your husband into death to serve him in the afterlife, etc. etc. that you shouldn't quote me on)

Gu Tingye: really?

Minglan:

she looks so offended (as she should)

gu tingye: bro!

(what he means is: "you could at least pretend you'd be sad if i died tragically")

(what he really means is: i can't tell if you love me or not)

Minglan:

*starts speed walking away*

And then we're off!

I can't even begin to talk about how absolutely marvelous the writing/acting/choreography is but this is the basic blow by blow:

Minglan: I have to rely on you for the rest of our days. If you change your mind (about me) what am I supposed to do? Hold you hostage so that you can never leave me? (the exact words involves holding a cleaver to both their throats and spending the rest of their days like that which is honestly very fishwife-y in image and the exact kind of thing that gu tingye would be delighted by)

gu tingye turning on a dime and suddenly being like "if you were able to choose again, would you still choose to marry me?"

minglan, outraged: what

gu tingye: if you were allowed to choose again, would you be marrying Yuanruo?

(ah the conflict between what an argument is about and what an argument is really about)

Something I really love here is that Minglan, ever practical and concerned about reputation, glances around a lot at all these people watching a their very public, very embarrassing fight, while Gu Tingye is only focused on them

Minglan: Qi-xiao-gongye (yuanruo) and I have never exceed the boundaries of propriety! You know everything that's happened between us! If you can't get over it, then why did you choose me?

Then why did you choose me? I feel like out of everything so far this is the most raw Minglan has been. If you go back to when Gu Tingye had just proposed, Minglan brings up a very real fear about Gu Tingye holding her past with other men over her. Her past, which in any other husband, could get her divorced with her reputation and family ruined

If Gu Tingye is insecure about Minglan being forced to marry him, Minglan is insecure about Gu Tingye deciding that he doesn't want her anymore. So when he brings this up, he's unknowingly touching a very raw nerve

And then he brings up Minglan intervening with Qi Heng (Yuanruo) harassing him in court every day (because gu tingye stole his gurl) and says:

(lmao her face)

the gist of what Gu Tingye says is "You gave him, an outsider, advice for speaking in court, but why didn't you tell me, your husband?"

Minglan: that advice (which was shutting the fuck up) would have been useless for you! I was making your life easier!

There's an exchange in this part where Gu Tingye tries to describe Minglan's advice to Qi Heng using a phrase (?idiom? it sounds vaguely literary to my uncultured ears) but he's too worked up to say it properly, so Minglan interrupts to correct him, but then later she also gets too worked up to say it properly, which is 1) hilarious and 2) really funny because you have these two very eloquent, very composed people (especially Minglan, who never loses her cool except with Gu Tingye) utterly frazzled, shouting at each other like an old married couple, which they are

this is also where the daily life shenanigans theme starts playing lmao

and then:

How I would translate it is:

"Do you especially hate me." And then he says, "Do you especially hate me for drawing such a huge circle just to marry you into my home?"

things to note: "drawing such a huge circle just to marry me" is the exact phrase that Minglan yells at him when she realizes how much he schemed to make it possible for her to marry him. This isn't the first or last time he uses this phrase, which just goes to show how deep that particular barb landed

Gu Tingye: I especially want you to hate me. But I'm so afraid that you will.

In other words: I want you to feel safe enough to be honest with me, but I'm terrified that then you won't want me anymore

Minglan, hopeless confused TM, accuses him of being drunk and starts walking back towards the carriage

Gu Tingye: I'm not drunk!

Gu Tingye: Fine, I am! I've been drunk! I feel like I've been drunk since I saved you from the water.

Gu Tingye: I know your matter with the Qi family. I know your matter with the He family. All these-

Minglan hits him on the shoulder/upper arm

Gu Tingye: - stop that!

Minglan hits him again just because

Gu Tingye: All these things I know!

Minglan, shouting: What do you really know! (except in Chinese what she says isn't this short or concise, what she says is actually pretty long winded and repetitive for her but i have no idea how to translate)

This is where it gets interesting on a me, personally, level because Gu Tingye basically grabs her and cry/pleads "I just want you to care about me! Why aren't you giving me any importance? You just don't give me any importance! I just - I just wanted to marry you!"

(side note: 😭😭😭)

Now, I don't know about other people, but normally when someone grabs someone in an argument, especially if it's a dude, my immediate reaction is like a knee jerk, hackles up, "girl its time to go," sort of deal, but it just doesn't happen here and I'm desperately curious why

So here are my thoughts:

Even though it's gotten better in recent years, Asian dramas tend to favor what could be taken as physical abuse as a sign of love/passion: wrist grabbing, arm grabbing, jerking her around, cornering against walls, forced intimacy. I feel like part of the reason why I wasn't immediately defensive was because that wasn't what was being signaled here.

For one, Gu Tingye isn't holding her in a way that could actually hurt her - his hands move from a glancing clasp on the shoulders, to her upper back, to around her waist

For reference:

The second thing is that the drama isn't portraying this as something romantic. Don't forget, we still have the comedy theme playing. Plus like, this is less a grand gesture and more gu tingye begging his wife to understand him. His wife, who was once like "yeah sure spend the night with your horrible manipulative ex to get info out of her" and then doesn't understand why he's so upset.

I use beg/plead specifically because normally somewhere else this would be like "omg he's so strong and has control over her, he can't restrain himself because of passionTM, wow so hot" (this can be fun in some places but less so when its like "if your boyfriend is hurting you non-consensually it's because he loves you too much")

Does that man look like he's in control of anything right now

There's only one other place in the series where a love interest grabs Minglan, and that's when Qi Heng accuses her of not loving Gu Tingye the way Qi Heng loves her. It's shown as being an unequivocally dick move, and Minglan throws him off immediately and walks away

The other thing is that Gu Tingye is one of the most consistently mindful characters in the series when it comes to power and privilege, and there isn't even a hint of fear of harm from Minglan.

It's just very cool that the show can have romantic conflict without being really stressful. Like, yeah, they're fighting, but you're not scared that they're actually going to separate, or that someone is going to cross the line by doing something irredeemably awful, or that this will damage their partnership enough to leave them vulnerable to other schemes

Anyway so everyone else comes rushing to pull them apart, there's a lot of shouting and it's very chaotic, with Minglan shouting at everyone else to drag him away and clambering into the carriage.

Gu Tingye: >:( i'm not getting on the carriage with her

shitou, humoring him: ok, ok, we're not getting on the carriage

Minglan, from the carriage: Back to the manor!

Gu Tingye, angr: Back to the manor!

anyway i love this show

also this is the link to the clip, the scene starts around 3 minutes

[watching-pictures-move]

Viddying the Nasties #37 | Possession (Zulawski, 1981)

This review contains spoilers.

Andrzej Zulawski's Possession is a movie I'd somewhat been dreading revisiting. When I'd seen it all those years back (on YouTube, split into two parts if I recall correctly, as the DVD had been hard to come by in those days), despite being greatly moved by the experience, I'd also found it an extremely exhausting film to sit through. It's a tortured divorce melodrama (among other things) that starts at 11 and only goes up from there. Lots of shouting and screaming, physical abuse, kicking around chairs and tables. The movie is not what I'd call an overtly pleasant experience. Watching it now (on a Blu-ray from Mondo Vision, a substantial upgrade from my original format), while I won't characterize my previous impressions as inaccurate, I was able to better appreciate how the movie modulates this tone, acclimatizing us to its fraught emotional space. The movie starts off in the realm of a normal, bitter breakup, with the husband having returned from a work trip only to learn that his wife is leaving him and struggling to make sense of it, his frustration and anger stemming as much from the fact of her dissolving their relationship as his inability to comprehend her motivations. It isn't really until the half hour mark that it asks us to dive off the deep end with it. The husband hits his wife in the middle of a fight, follows her onto the street as she tries to halfheartedly throw herself onto the path of a truck, which then drops its baggage in an almost comical bit of stuntwork, their squabble ended when the husband becomes surrounded by children playing soccer and joins in. Any one of these by itself is nothing out of the ordinary, but Zulawski assembles them into an off-kilter crescendo, and does away with any sense of normalcy for the rest of the runtime.

That this approach works as well as it does is largely thanks to Isabelle Adjani as Anna, the wife, who spends the aforementioned scene looking like a vampire in cat eye sunglasses and blood streaming down her grimacing mouth. She delivers perhaps the most bracingly physical performance I've seen in a movie, but again this is something I'd maybe underappreciated initially in terms of how finely tuned her choices are. An early scene where she fights with her husband has her manically cutting raw meat and shoving it into a grinder, as if to channel her frustrations into acceptable form of violence for women. When she takes an electric knife to her throat, she begins to spasm about like a farm animal during a botched slaughter, providing a further comment on her domestic situation. The film's most famous scene has her freak out in a subway tunnel, thrashing her limbs about chaotically but almost rhythmically, maybe like the contractions when goes into labour. Her character later describes this as a miscarriage, ejecting the side of her which is neat and orderly and "good". Adjani plays this other half as well, with a much more old fashioned hairdo (braided conservatively like a stereotypical schoolmarm), one which provides a much more tender maternal figure to the couple's son. Adjani is also well cast because of her emotive, saucer-like eyes, which she isn't afraid to point at the camera repeatedly, providing a genuine emotional grounding during both the quieter and more hysterical sections of the movie.

Her husband, Mark, is played by Sam Neill, who had been cast after the filmmakers had seen him in Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career. To understand why Neill works so well, it helps to know that Sam Waterston had previously expressed interest in the role. Waterston, while a good actor, would have come off too fogeyish as the husband. Neill brings the appropriate edge and even sex appeal necessary for the material. And like in Jurassic Park, his best known role, he brings an inquisitive quality that keeps him close enough to our vantage point to give the narrative arc some grounding. The other major human character here is Heinz Bennent as Heinrich, a new age guru who happens to be having an affair with the wife. One on hand, this character represents the counterculture from Zulawski's homeland, which he had left after trouble from the authorities when making his last movie. On the other hand, Zulawski was drawing heavily from the bitter divorce he had just gone through, and directs a sizable fraction of the movie's contempt at this character, leading me to believe that his wife in fact left him for some new age buffoon. In one of the movie's funnier scenes, he has Heinrich confront Mark over Anna's disappearance and then go into a dumbassed trance while spouting new age nonsense and basically calling Mark a Nazi. This is the guy his wife left him for? This jackass? Mark sets him up by sending him to Anna, knowing full well he could be killed, but the potency of Mark's rage (and Zulawski's, by extension), as well as the ludicrousness of the Heinrich character, keep us from sympathizing with the latter too much. Zulawski has Heinrich die with his head in a toilet, a final flush by Mark serving as one last hilariously mean-spirited gesture of contempt.

Zulawski originally conceived the movie as having another major character, Anna's ex-husband, to be played by veteran actor and director Bernard Wicki, but after the first day of shooting with Wicki, he decided to drop the character entirely. (I suppose it depends on the personalities, but I wonder how actors react to being let go early from a project. Is it worse if it's on the first day? How about if you lead the filmmakers to realize they should do away with the character altogether? I only hope Wicki got paid.) It's not hard to see what purpose this character would have served, particularly in the way that Anna "upgrades" her lovers, having traded a much older man for the younger, sexier Mark, and then trying to replace him with an evolving monstrous fuck-squid (more on this later) that she was trying to nurture and reshape into the ideal partner. The only remnants of this character in the finished film is his young wife, who appears in the climax and his goaded by the "new" Mark (the final form of the fuck-squid) to shoot into the corpses of the real Mark and Anna. The character's proposed thematic purpose might have spelled out this moment's significance more clearly, but I'm not always convinced thematic clarity is preferable to how things move and feel, and the end product does not feel incomplete or incoherent, or at least not detrimentally so. The emotions make sense, even if the events onscreen are outside the norm. (My condolences to those of you who've been dumped for a monstrous fuck-squid.)

Having been conceived after his last project was quashed by authorities in Poland, there's undeniably a political element here, enhanced by the noticeable presence of the Berlin Wall, near which much of the film is situated. (At one point the camera looks out the window and sees the police from East Berlin staring back.) The realities of the Cold War figure heavily in the characters' lives, as it's suggested that Helen (the other Adjani) is from behind the Iron Curtain (she speak of readily identifiable evil, which could be interpreted as the visible presence of an authoritarian regime) and that Mark's work is in the field of intelligence, maybe even espionage. But the movie is less interested in pointing out political specifics than in the accompanying sense of repression and division, which plays heavily into the visual style. The movie often divides its frames to separate the characters, but rarely with any sense of symmetry, suggesting a sense of emotional chaos enhanced by the bruising mixture of wide angle lenses and handheld camerawork. When we're with Mark, the movie looks overcast, bluish grey, appropriately repressed at first, although Anna's presence throws his neat, fluorescently-lit apartment into disarray. Anna's love nest, situated in the Turkish district right beside the Wall is dilapidated and unkempt, which may have reflected the squalid realities of a hastily rented apartment in what I assume is a poorer part of town, but after having excised the orderly part of herself, it seems like an accurately messy reflection of her headspace.

Now back to the fuck-squid. It's hard to go into Possession this day and age completely blind, and even back when I first saw it, it came on my radar as the movie where "Isabelle Adjani fucks a squid". I have a lot of respect for Zulawski for delivering the goods on this front and for Adjani for throwing herself into this material, not because I'm some kind of sexual deviant who gets off on this stuff (although if you are, I'm not here to judge, it's a free country, just clear your browsing history after), but because modern arthouse cinema often defaults to a mode of cold, downplayed and too afraid to raise the audience's pulse (because apparently it's undignified to force a reaction out of the audience) and it's nice to see a movie serve what it says on the tin (this is one I'd have loved to see with an unsuspecting audience back in the day). Producer Marie Laure-Reyre notes that Zulawski was very hands on with the conception of the monster, drawing inspiration from gargoyles in Polish architecture, as if to further imbue political context into the proceedings. When seeing the end product, I can only assume Zulawski broke up with his wife at a seafood restaurant (I would hope he didn't react like Mark and throw around all the tables and chairs). Of course, the design of the monster means that the movie leans heavily into body horror, and its inclusion on the Video Nasty list in the UK and its release in the US in a heavily-trimmed 81-minute version emphasizing these elements likely contributed to its psychotronic reputation early on. (I am still interested in seeking out this cut, as I can't imagine the loss of 40 whole minutes wouldn't substantially alter the film's character.) It flirts with other genres as well. Certain scenes have a clear slapstick quality. Some of these involve Heinrich, the ever-reliable target of the film's ridicule, but there is also Margit Cartensen, playing Anna's friend and Mark-hater Marge, falling on her ass like a Three Stooges bit. And there's the climax, parodying action movies with its woozy cocktail of car chase, shootout and explosions, which leads a headlong rush into the film's apocalyptic final moments.

[thekillingjoke-haha]

All I Could Do

Based of the song All I Could Do Was Cry sung by Beyoncé. I suggest y'all listen to it before or during(rush to the bottom to listen then come back idk) to feel the raw emotion in her voice. [Ik I did]

Notes: L/f/c=least favorite color, Bold=singing Slant=Memory

Three men sat at a small table chatting at their friends bar the band playing soft music. The short haired dirty blonde twirled his wetting band between his fingers while a female ring dangled from his neck as he sighed. Tonight he wanted to forget about the girl he was going to spend his life with and try to remember the girl that had his heart from the start. "Come on Dean. We came out so you can forget about the divorce not remince." His younger brother said. No hunt was coming up,no doomsday 2.0 just time off from it all.

"Back in town form a trip please Welcome back to the stage New Orleans own pretty little song bird,Miss [L/n]!" Benny spoke his accent coming out strong.The audience broke into a large uproar. Sam and Cas clapped along,but stopped when they saw who walked on stage. The eldest Winchester didn't notice till her angelic voice spoke. "No need for formality,suga. Known eachother the longest time." His head snapped up and he froze. There she stood in a [f/c] dress the just barely brushed the floor her make up seemed to make her glow under the spotlight. "You got it shar." The vampire kissed her hand before stepping off to the side.

Her [f/c] painted lips pulled back into a smile. "This song like all the others come from the heart and that's how I like to start off my shows. Starting with blues before we get to that upbeat music I love." A few people clapped and cheered agreeing. The music started of soft before picking up. Dean looked at her and his heart pulsed as she sung stealing his heart after he thought he gave it away so long ago.

"I heard church bells ring.I heard a choir singin'~" Her voice drifted her into a vividly painted memory she wished didn't hurt each time it resurfaced. The invitation burned in her hand as she stood outside the church house they were all adults she can walk in there to support her ex on his wedding,but it just hurt as she grew closer. "Y/n" Two voices pulled at her attention turning to them she smiled. "Mr., Mrs.Winchester!" She stated hugging them both. "Dear please no need for formalities you're still family." Mary said bushing the loose hair out off her face. "I'll have to. You guys won't be the only Mr and Mrs Winchester's?" Y/n spoke the words stabbing as she tried not to flinch. It was so painful,but he moved on so she had to let go if not for her for him. "It should be you up there sweetheart." John said truthfully.

"I saw my love walk down the aisle on her finger he placed a ring!~" Y/n sat in a far off row not wanting to be seen as she watched Dean walk down the aisle and stand their his brothers and best friends behind him as he waited for his bride. She came down minutes after him her dress flowing behind her with a bouquet of [L/f] flowers. Y/n tried not to glare,but she knew that wasn't the women for him that she should be in her place. If only she told him sooner,but forcing a smile she had to be strong for a while longer as she watched. "Ooh! I saw them holdin' hands! She was standing there with my Man!~"

Dean looked at the blonde who held hishand her fingers enterlocked with his own infront of him he smiled at her even if his eye wondered to the crowed. He caught her in the corner of his eye sitting down smiling for him tears slipping down her cheek as she tried to be discreta,but even in a crowed of a hundred he can always find her. Dean tried not to let the thought linger as he look back to his bride to be. "I heard them promise til death do us part. Each word was a pain in my heart~"

Y/n breath hicked alittle as she sung. Tears pooled in her eyes as she belted out the chorus. "All I could do! All I could do was cry~" The salted liquid left her tear ducts. "All I could do was cry!~" The two other women on stage Dean didn't even notice sung the back gowns in matching looking like brides maids. "I was losing the man that I love and all I could do was cry~" His heart skipped a beat when he hear love instead of loved. She still loved him. Y/n looked up at the crowd many of them held back the waterworks themselves it's when he [e/c] met those apple green beauty's she fell for since she was a teen.

"And now the wedding is over~" The [h/c] young women watched as the couple ran out of the church covering their heads as the guest cheered. "The rice,RICE has been thrown over their heads~" the uncooked rice layed on the ground as they waved goodbye and got in the limo the decorated string making noise the whole way. Y/n turned away from everyone and went to to her 1970 Chevrolet and drove back to the next town over to her motel. "For them life has just begun,but mine is endin'~" That's when she broke down in the room letting her happy facade break as she crumbled to the ground. All she wanted was to have her hunting life back she didn't know she'd lose the one person that made it worthwhile.

At the same time they thought back to the day it happened. "Ooh! All I could do. All I could do was cry!~" She came back bruised and beaten from a supposed business trip she walked into the quite apartment just to be greeted by harsh light. Dean sat there waiting thing she was cheating,but after one look he found out that wasn't the case. "Where the hell were you!?" He shouted off the bat his anger having festered long enough. "Huntin'." She saw no point in lying. "You promised me that after God and Amara that that was it for us!" Dean's face grew red in his outburst. "De you can take me out of the huntin' life doesn't mean I'll always be able to stay away. I was born into it this apple pie life just isn't for me." Y/n she couldn't look at him as she spoke.

"Then leave." His voice rung in the silence that followed. "But I'm staying here. So you walk out that door you can go back to hunting. You just can't come back to me." The blonde Winchester tried to keep his voice strong. He wanted to tell her he was speaking out of his ass. Y/n's breath hicked in her throat swallowing the lump she nodded her head "I'm sorry,Dean,but I'll always love you hun." She went to their once shared room and got her stuff and just like that she left into the dark. Alone in her car and alone in his apartment they cried. "All I could do was cry. I was losing the man that I love and all I could do was cry~" The music began to fade as she stepped back from the microphone wiping her eyes as she smiled at the crowd bowing before the act that played during her breaks started lifting the mood slightly since she was coming back strong. She walked away along the the back up singers to the dressing room.

Dean stood up immediately and rushed back their freezing in front of the door as the three women in normal clothing opened it walking past him as he slipped in the room. "Hey,Dean." Her voice sounded soft as he went to sit next to her. "Every day since that night I wanted to come back and I stopped myself each time. You started datin' and I was moppin' while hunting." Y/n licked her lips as she looked at him in the mirror her eyes slightly red. "They day of your weddin' was probably the worst day of my life. I knew that day I really lost you and every since then...well All I could do was cry."

Tears came to his green eyes as he looked back at the rings in his hand. One that was his and one that his ex never because it wasn't meant for her. "Y/n/n that night I was thinking about proposing to you I was to nervous to wait for our anniversary,but then you know what happened." She giggled slightly as she leaned her head on his shoulder. "After me and Emily got married I realized I couldn't love her no matter how hard I tried to it could never compare to how I love you." His hand came up to her shoulder pulling her close. "That apple pie life seemed so wrong that I got back into hunting myself and before you say it. Yes I'm a fucking hypocrite I know." Y/n's laughter was infectious as he began to laugh too. "Almost three year later look at me now. Divorced still crying about how I lost the women I loved for someone else."

Y/n turned to him grabbing his cheeks with both hands bringing his face closer to hers as she whispered. "I think we had done just about enough crying,hun." She said crashing their lips together for the first time in years it felt so good it was like everything was coming back together. Who needs a white picket fence when you got concrete walls of the bunker.

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A/n: Done dropping the mic bitches woah!!!

Anyways I left what happened to break them up very vague hunter life or normal life,but do you guys want a part two going in more depth from beginning to the obvious end result.

Song ⬇️⬇️⬇️

[secretlifeoflittlegirllost]

I know no one will ever read this and that's OK. Because if I don't at least get it out it's going to kill me and where better to shout into than the bottomless void of the internet, right?

Read on if you want to, idc. This is as raw as it gets but I've got to get it out somehow and I have nowhere else to do it.

My husband doesn't love me anymore. He doesn't find me physically attractive. He says it's like the switch just flipped off - one day he loved me and my face and body and the next he didn't. He has no explanation for why, and no idea how to turn the switch back on. He says he views me just like his male friends, someone he enjoys spending time with, hanging out with, talking to, but isn't interested in kissing.

I am..... lost. Because while, yeah, I don't feel the same butterflies I did at the beginning for him, I still love him very much. I still find him attractive objectively, I guess (I'm dealing with some kind of abnormal sex repulsion where NO ONE is attractive to me. Not even like celebrities I used to find sexy and fantasized about. And that's a totally me issue separate from this that I'm working on).

We talked about getting a divorce, because obviously that's the logical conclusion when you no longer are in love with your romantic partner. But we have kids together. One from a previous relationship of mine who he's raised since the kid was 4, and one born of our marriage. Which complicates everything because for both kids, he's the only Dad they've ever had. And I know that parents get divorced every single day and the kids survive mostly intact but I just....... usually when parents divorce they're unhappy and they've been unhappy for ages and they've been fighting and they hate each other - so the divorce is hard but it's best for everyone to not be in a toxic household anymore.

But that's not us. We don't fight - if anything we communicate beautifully. We're not "unhappy" per se, we get along great, and we've got a pretty good routine set up for the kids. Even today, a week after he dropped the bomb on me, we spent the whole day together laughing and joking around like best friends. We have little issues I suppose, every couple has pet peeves about one another. And there's definitely some inequality when it comes to the share of housework and time out with friends. No, there's more than inequality. I do 95% of the housework and he goes out regularly (1-3 times a week) with his friends while I stay home with the kids. I've been feeling for awhile like I'm his live in housekeeper and nanny, but I'm not one to open confrontations due to my own issues that are mine alone. I don't get to go out almost at all (1-2 times a YEAR) 1. because almost all of my friends also have young kids and can't/don't want to go "out" at night, let alone to drink and 2. the one friend who does want to go grab a drink lives an hour away and I don't feel comfortable driving that distance after drinking. And I do the housework because I've realized over our 7 year relationship that he just doesn't care about doing it and will used weaponized incompetence to get out of it - either by "forgetting" to do something I've asked him to do multiple times until I eventually just do it myself or doing a terrible, half assed, half finished job of it himself so I end up having to do it anyway. It was at the suggestion of my THERAPIST that I just stop asking him to do things because it was causing me so much additional stress in my life when I was always the one who ended up doing it in the end anyway. Cut out the middle man and the expectation of him doing it. But it still just grates on me that he is apparently BLIND to the house maintenance that needs to be done regularly.

Maybe I do resent him a little bit. Anyway. Back to the main issue at hand.

We came to the mutual decision that we would try to work it out for the kids. Which is a misnomer because honestly the issues we're having are 100% him and he owns up to that. But in order for life to carry on as usual for the kids, we are just.... carrying on as usual. Like I said, he and I spent the whole day together and had a great time. But every so often, the memory of his lack of feelings and attraction to me just SMACKS me upside the head and I get that terrible feeling of LOSS and utter heartbreak all over again. And what's worse is I get so caught up in the day to day that I honestly do forget for stretches of time, because everything is just carrying on as normal but THIS IS NOT NORMAL. My God, what the hell are we doing, playing pretend like it's OK and everything is fine because my whole world got flipped sideways and I. Am. Not. Ok.

I am not OK. I am grieving the loss of a relationship I thought would be the rest of my life and losing the love of the man I love. And I'm just supposed to go on like my world wasn't SHATTERED?!?! I'm supposed to keep sleeping next to him and talking to him about the kids school and what we're having for dinner like the whole ass sun didn't fall out of the sky for me 7 fucking days ago?!?! I'm somehow meant to just continue life as usual and HOPE that maybe SoMeDay he falls back in love with me?!?! How?!?! Do I do that?!?! Without breaking into pieces?!?! HoW?!?!?!?!?!

And how long am I going to have to do this for? How long am I going to be in the purgatory of "I could maybe someday love you again"? Like?!?!?!?! This is torture. Plain and simple torture. Relationships end all the time, and you grieve the loss but you know it's gone. It's not quick, maybe, but it's definitive and concise. It's over and now it's time to deal with it being over, however long that takes. But it's not over for me?!?! Because there's a chance, maybe, possible, someday, could be, that he'll love me again. Hypothetically. So I can't grieve the loss, because I haven't truly lost it yet. The wound can't heal so it just keeps on hemorrhaging over and over, everyday until when? He doesn't know and you can't put a timeline on love obviously. So I'm just in limbo, possibly for a week, possibly for 10 years, and I have to keep up the facade and the smiling face because of the kids - no need to tell them we're separating and put them through that pain and trauma if we're actually not, ya know?

I am in hell. I am drowning in heartbreak and misery and pain and destruction and questioning EVERYTHING from the past 7 YEARS of my life because how, how, how did it end up like this? And I'm not supposed to take personally the guilt and the blame of not being attractive TO MY HUSBAND? THE ONE WHO SAID HE WOULD LOVE ME FOREVER DOESNT LIKE THE LOOK OF ME AND I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO TAKE THAT PERSONALLY?!?!?!?!?!? He doesn't love me anymore BUT NOTHING PERSONAL?!?!?!? Just keep on living your life and moving forward and smiling and laughing and acting like everything is fine for the kids. Don't let them see the cracks in your psyche or the fucking grand canyon sized fracture in your heart. Wash his clothes, clean his house, sleep next to him and laugh at his jokes so maybe he'll fall back in love with you someday and all those years and effort won't have been in vain.................

Dying wouldn't be this painful. This is torture and I really don't know how long I can hold on to the small itty-bitty-microscopic thread of sanity I'm dangling from.