#but i could never speak my mind

[thecoleopterawithana]

Even though John is under-powered in this period we still see what made him so magnetic to Paul and to others around him. There is a scene early in Part Two that I find riveting. It takes place a couple of days after George has left. The status of everything - the project, the band - remains uncertain, but they are ploughing on for now. John, Yoko, Ringo, Paul and some of the crew are sitting in a semi-circle. Paul looks pensive. Ringo looks tired. John is speaking only in deadpan comic riffs, to which Paul responds now and again. Peter Sellers comes in and sits down, looks ill-at-ease, and leaves having barely said a word, unable to penetrate the Beatle bubble. At some point they’re joined by Lindsay-Hogg, and the conversation dribbles on. John mentions that he had to leave an interview that morning in order to throw up (he and Yoko had taken heroin the night before). Paul, looking into space rather than addressing anyone in particular, attempts to turn the conversation towards what they’re meant to be doing:

Paul: See, what we need is a serious program of work. Not an endless rambling among the canyons of your mind.

John: Take me on that trip upon that golden ship of shores… We’re all together, boy.

Paul: To wander aimlessly is very unswinging. Unhip.

John: And when I touch you, I feel happy inside. I can’t hide, I can’t hide. [pause] Ask me why, I’ll say I love you.

Paul: What we need is a schedule.

John: A garden schedule.

I mean first of all, who is writing this incredible dialogue? Samuel Beckett?

Let’s break it down a little. The first thing to note is that John and Paul are talking to each other without talking to each other. This is partly because they’re aware of the cameras and also because they’re just not sure how to communicate with each other at the moment. John’s contributions are oblique, gnomic, riddling, comprised only of songs and jokes, like the Fool in King Lear. Take me on that trip upon that golden ship of shores sounds like a Lennonised version of a line from Dylan’s Tambourine Man (“take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship”). “We’re altogether, boy”? I have no idea. Does Paul? I think John expects Paul to understand him because he has such faith in what they used to call their “heightened awareness”, a dreamlike, automatic connection to each other’s minds. But right now, Paul is not much in the mood for it. His speech is more direct, though he too adopts a quasi-poetic mode (“canyons of your mind” is borrowed from a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) and he can’t bring himself to make eye contact. “To wander aimlessly is very unswinging,” he says (another great line, I will pin it above my writing desk). Then John does something amazing: he starts talking in Beatle, dropping in lyrics from the early years of the band, I Want To Hold Your Hand and Ask Me Why. (To appreciate John’s response to Paul’s mention of a schedule, American readers may need reminding that English people pronounce it “shed - dule”.)

What’s going on throughout this exchange? Maybe Lennon is just filling dead air, or playing to the gallery, but I think he is (also) attempting to communicate to Paul in their shared code - something like he loves him, he loves The Beatles, they’re still in this together. Of course, we can’t know. I can’t hide, John says, hiding behind his wordplay.

— Ian Leslie, "The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back" (January 26, 2022).

[I was curious to read more of Ian Leslie's approach to the Beatles in general and Lennon-McCartney in particular, since he's currently writing a book about John and Paul's relationship: “John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs". He's also the author of that New York Times opinion piece that came out today.]

[starflungwaddledee]

some rather strong first impressions were made.

required reading for the magical "voice" headcanon and another for starstruck's signature in particular. asked by @trainerbob23 !

[aardvaark]

im so glad that we never get a clear picture of sophie’s background in leverage & i hope we never do. however i also really like making up various, often conflicting backstories for her in my head. perhaps they’re all backstories for an alias of hers, ones she laid to rest back in season two.

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[sibylsleaves]

nevermind i changed my mind im a fan because i just thought about what will happen when eddie brings Fake Shannon to his house and it's filled with pictures of his dead wife who looks exactly like her. like girl WHAT do you do in that situation. id bail WITH A QUICKNESS

[sciderman]

You said that if you dated Peter or Wade it would make you miserable. Which– Okay fair, Wade does have a history of purposely hurting the people he loves.

But what about Peter? Why do you think dating him would make you miserable?

because I’ll always know I had the option to climb a 6’8 cyborg and I passed that up for a sweaty little twunk that I perpetually have to remind to bathe (sorry peter)

[captain-hen]

.

[the-woman-upstairs]

It’s just…so painful to watch Armand readily submit in order to obtain the love he so desperately craves. And while it’s most assuredly a manipulative tactic, it’s still one borne out of fear and desperation. He cannot lose this person he’s come to love and so will become whatever they want, do whatever they want just so they’ll stay with him. But it won’t be enough. No matter how much he acquiesces or seeks to control (himself, others, the environment), he won’t be able to make Louis stay with him in the perfect life, perfect self he built in the hopes of finally being loved. It will all crumble with Armand left alone in the rubble of what he created, the author of his own abandonment.

[deadsince1973]

Poll Below

So, I saw someone say yesterday that "most people skim watch Chinese dramas", and that honestly blew my mind. If it has subtitles, I have to watch it and focus on it.

But then several thoughts occurred to me. You see, right now, my friend and I are watching The Longest Promise and The Screen Foxes. To us, The Longest Promise is painfully slow. We thought it was a little slower than most Chinese dramas, but most Chinese dramas are a little bit slow, and The Longest Promise actually feels much slower to us because we hate the main character and, like, half the story decisions so much, we thought. (Sorry, no offense to Longest Promise fans.) We thought that if we actually liked the main character and were invested in her story, the way the show dilly-dallied on every one of her scenes - having her say the same things over and over again, showing a dozen different angles on some magical moment in her life, having her express feelings about something that happened in a previous episode that she had made very clear at the time - would be enjoyable. Meanwhile, before we started The Screen Foxes, I read three different reviews that said the plot moved lightning-fast, bounced all over the place, and didn't make any sense. And ... none of that is true (so far). The plot moves at a normal pace. A thing happens, and then, something else happens as a consequence. There ARE several different interconnected story threads, and we do bounce back and forth between them, but it all makes sense. And last night, it hit me that maybe The Longest Promise is so slow because you're supposed to "skim watch" it. Certainly, if you dip in and out, you can follow the plot very easily. Scenes are long enough that it's hard to miss a whole one if you're checking back in frequently, repetitive enough that you can understand the point of the scene even if you miss three-quarters of it, and the same points are repeated in multiple scenes, so there are very few details you can miss even if you don't watch it too closely. (Plus, the plot is predictable enough that it's easy to follow.) Meanwhile, because The Screen Foxes doesn't dawdle on any points, if you're not actually sitting down and watching, it must seem chaotic and nonsensical. Why are they fighting this green monster now? Wasn't the show about painting a minute ago? The green monster is being used by a Taoist to body-guard a rich family. The Taoist is actually the one who made the family rich. Why? That's the mystery we need to find out. In the meantime, this family used its wealth to cheat in the painting contest from the last episode, so fighting their body guard is advancing that painting plotline too. But if you looked away from the screen during the two minutes where they were explaining all that, then yeah, it would be super confusing why this show just went from a painting contest to a demon fight.

If Chinese dramas are MEANT to be watched in the background, and that's the reason so many of them are so long and slow, then, honestly, my whole worldview has been changed.

So, TLDR: I have to know now: DO most people actually "skim watch" Chinese dramas????

[thegraininessofitall]

“Eve works for the council, Sergeant. Quite the lady in the know.”

“Oh, I am not.”

“Nonsense. I’m sure if we bashed your head in, all sorts of secrets would come tumbling out.”

Timothy Dalton as Simon Skinner

in Hot Fuzz (2007), dir. Edgar Wright

[girldewar]

thinkin about the deweys . as always

[thecoleopterawithana]

The nucleus of the Beatle atom was comprised of John and Paul, who shared a mental channel along which music, emotion, ideas and jokes travelled at the speed of light. As the dream faded, so did the efficiency of the connection (or vice versa). By 1969, Lennon and McCartney can’t hear each other as well as they used to. They are like kids who have been listening avidly to Radio Luxembourg all night and now find the signal drowning amidst waves of static. The place they can still commune with each other is in the studio, which is why the Get Back sessions, and the songs, centre on their relationship. We get to see what George can see: that for all their difficulties these two are still locked into each other, emotionally and musically. At Twickenham, they sit face-to-face and harmonise on a song called Two of Us, while George glowers at them. At one point, McCartney stops and notes that his songs are telling a bigger story. I’ve Got a Feeling, Two of Us, Get Back… John says it out loud: “It’s like me and you are lovers”. McCartney, suddenly inarticulate, grunts assent, and they both flick their hair.

— Ian Leslie, "The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back" (January 26, 2022).

[I was curious to read more of Ian Leslie's approach to the Beatles in general and Lennon-McCartney in particular, since he's currently writing a book about John and Paul's relationship: “John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs". He's also the author of that New York Times opinion piece that came out today.]

[lucy-ghoul]

why are you, as an adult in 2024, still hung up on reylo. why are you still mocking the shippers. why do you believe yourself to be superior only because you dislike a stupid ship from a fucking space fairytale. girl (gnc) get a grip

[andr0nap-wf]

entertaining the idea of loid accompanying albrecht to 1999 a few times before shit goes down

al introduces him to the staff of his little fake hospital there as loid entrati, his husband

for convenience

its not convenient at all, obviously. in what world would this be convenient? in fact it probably makes things more complicated but he does so anyway with every introduction

all while loid is playing along and trying to refrain from shaking like a neurotic greyhound going through 10 different mental breakdowns at once

it has to suck to see your dream turn into something akin of a nightmare: you get to call the love of your life your husband but you know youre playing pretend. the universe is taunting you with something you can never truly have

[abandoned-quiche]

hi, chara!

do the golden flowers have any other significance to you? if not, then what else does?

* The golden flowers from my village.

* I always liked those flowers. They never hurt me.

* I related to them more than humans. I wished I could be like them. But I would always be human.

* Flowers are good listeners. When life felt too hard, like I just couldn't keep going, I would confide in them. They were there for me. They would always listen to me.

* The flowers were like my best friend.

* No matter where I went, I would always eventually come back to the flowers.

* Even in death.

* ...

* I missed them when I was in the underground.

* After I died, when I carried my body to the surface, I finally got to see them again for the first time in years.

* It was like seeing an old friend again.

* I would have loved to take a moment to catch them up on my life so far...

* ...Before carrying out our grim mission.

* But that's stupid.

* Plants can't talk.

- - - - -

* When I laid my body in the flowers, the seeds stuck to me.

* And when Asriel brought me back home, they spread across the garden, along with our dust.

* The next day, a single flower bloomed.

* After Toriel left, Asgore poured all of his love and care into those seeds, and soon, a beautiful garden was blossoming from our dust.

* ...What the hell compelled Asgore to make tea out of that?

- - - - -

* When Toriel took me to give me a proper burial, some of the seeds must have still been stuck to me, because flowers soon grew where I was buried.

* That, or Toriel decided to honor my last wish by bringing some seeds with her when she left for the Ruins...

* ...Laying me to rest among the flowers I so loved.

* Whatever the case may be, from that point onward, the flowers would always be there to ease the pain of any who fell,

* Just as they were always there to ease mine.

[hecatesbroom]

Blanche's grandma's place is the only place she felt consistently loved in... no I'm fine. I'm fine