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“‘He had the most distinctive voice, those funny little vowels. I always have that disconnect where I’m listening as a music lover and then I suddenly go, “Oh, oh, it’s you.”’
Her deep brown eyes — so similar to his — drift to the middle distance and there’s a beat of silence. That recognition is ‘not painful.’ Occasionally she finds herself listening to a song and it does not conjure him up just as he played it to her. “When that happens it doesn’t make me happy,” she laughs. She wants their connection to live whenever she hears his music. ‘Oh, wait, don’t ever let that become just objective, something that you don’t connect to.’
[…] The Scorsese documentary, instigated by Olivia, opens with Dhani being asked what he would say to his father if he appeared now. Dhani says he saw his father in a dream and asked him ‘Where’ve you been?’ and his father replied, ‘Here the whole time.’
‘What Dhani said was really very lovely. He had a lot of numinous dreams.’ She smiles and repeats, ‘Here the whole time.’ I ask Olivia what she would say to George now. She pauses.
‘I hope I told you everything. I hope I told you how wonderful you are.’” - article/interview by Helen Rumbelow, The Sunday Times, September 24, 2014 (x)
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do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up
i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.
she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.
never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-
i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:
okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.
the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page
she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later
so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions
"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"
"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"
Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.
I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.
On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.
Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.
And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.
Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.
Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it
and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks
And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.
(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)
The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.
And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)
I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.
and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured
In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.
(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)
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Hey you. Every time you think a nasty thought at yourself for normal human things like enjoying food and sex and money and comfort the Christians win, you know that right? Feeling guilty for *checks notes* not being miserable is how they want you to feel. Not that you need permission but you're allowed to like feeling good and wanting stuff. Diet culture, purity culture, emotional repression, minimalism, it's all part of the same multi-headed beast that's the puritan-ass concept that you can somehow depress and deprive yourself into virtue. You can't. If you were """supposed""" to lead a spiritual existence only and ignore your body then like. You probably wouldn't be born with a body to begin with dude.
Tldr: Anyways. Stop depriving yourself. Stop doing the oppressors work for them.
Tldrtldr: embrace hedonism to piss on an ascetic monk. Every time you stop counting calories a catholic guilt dies. Enjoy life to spite god
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“George was the first Beatle who started taking photos, and he was still doing it when he died. I know I turned him on to photography, and he did some lovely work. Plus he had a huge collection of photographic books.” - Astrid Kirchherr, The Beatles: Classic, Rare & Unseen
“George really was interested in visual — and he used a camera, video camera too, from early days. Also, his father was a merchant seaman, and there’s lots of photographs of Australia, around the world […]. And maybe he picked that up from his father.” - Olivia Harrison, WNYC, November 4, 2011
You can find some of George’s photographs in The Beatles Anthology and Living In The Material World. (x)
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George Harrison: Isn’t It a Pity.
Alan Freeman: How we break each other’s hearts.
George: That’s about me. I’m breaking everybody’s heart.
Freeman: In what way, George?
George: [laughs] I don’t know. Any way you care to mention.
"My album coming up is like Mrs. Dale’s Diary, and it’s like me kneeling in front of the priest and saying, 'OK, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I did this and I done that and I done that and I done that,' But I’ll do that. I don’t need Woman’s Own magazine or Rolling Stone or any of those other journalists who think they’ve caught me doing this or doing that or gettin’ a divorce or being a loony or whatever. No – they can’t catch me ‘cause I caught myself before they ever knew it. I know. I know what I’m doing. And I know when I’m mad. And I know when I’m havin’ a divorce. And I know when I’m breakin’ up my marriage. And I know when I’m not. And I know when I’m happy. And even if I am breakin’ up my marriage, I know all the good points to it, and all the bad points to it, and it’s none of their business anyway, and even if it is wait ‘til my record ‘cause I’ll tell ya from my point of view – I don’t need your twisted point of view to tell me." - George Harrison, Rock Around the World with Alan Freeman (18 Oct. 1974) [x]
"When I first met him he said, 'I don't want you to think you've discovered something about me I don't know. I'm not claiming to be this or that or anything. People think they've found you out when I'm not hiding anything.'" - Olivia Harrison, Living in the Material World (2011)
"[George] was a witness to his actions. He always said, ‘People think they’ve found me or found something out about me. It’s like that I don’t know. I know when I’m bad. I know.’ Nobody suffers more than yourself, right? Than one’s self when you know you’re not being true, and he TORMENTED himself, you know, I think, a lot. But he was a curious guy, and he just wanted to have all the experiences and hope he could get back in time for the big exit."
- Olivia Harrison, BBC Radio 4 (21 Nov. 2020)
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