i don't know why i'm thinking about crimson peak again, but i am, so here you go. some semi-coherent musings:
i've seen a lot of people react negatively to thomas and edith's confrontation in the climax (you tried to kill me / i did / you said you loved me / i do) because they see it as an attempt to "redeem" thomas, and they don't think it succeeds at that. but honestly i've never interpreted it that way?
what i've always taken away from it is more like... thomas just doesn't see the love and the violence as inherently contradictory. like, i'm not saying he currently wants to kill her, but he doesn't seem to see the gravity of the fact that he did. he was raised on violence. all his major interactions with the world have involved someone hurting him (parents; almost certainly boarding school), or him hurting someone else (wives). the only loving relationship he ever had before edith was with lucille, and that's deeply unhealthy on both sides... to the point that when he has this exchange, he's minutes away from being murdered by lucille.
lucille has her own speech about violence and love which frames the two as fundamentally intertwined, and her violence as coming from love, which is both tragic and horrifying in its own way. but i feel like thomas' thing isn't even... that. it's just like... stark coexistence. as an onlooker you naturally want to reconcile these two parts of him somehow, to fold the love into the violence or the violence into the love, but you can't. they're just both true at once. i can't quite put into words why, but i want to call it eerie.
(and i think this is part of the point of thomas disparaging edith's writing, too: he calls it sentimental and simplistic because it's not how he works. he's not just a villain, and he's not just a tragedy. he's both, and he remains both throughout the story. there isn't any comfortable conclusion to him. maybe he wasn't unsaveable, but he also wasn't saved.)
so. as i see it, it's not "he tried to kill her, but he loves her." it's: "he tried to kill her, and he loves her."
like, yes, of course, you're right, thomas' love of edith doesn't make the violence less real. but. it is also true that thomas' violence towards edith doesn't make the love less real. does that unsettle you? good.
183 notes
·
View notes
i think that while micro labels can seem useful and affirming ultimately they're isolating and kind of an obstacle to your understanding of self. that's because you can never find a word specific enough. there will never be a label or two labels or even ten, twenty of them to perfectly capture and describe all of your thoughts, feelings, experiences, preferences, needs, interests, identities, etc. because you learn more and more about yourself every day and then you change and your wants and needs change with you. having to hop between labels, fearing that you don't 'fit' into a label anymore (both in your own and others eyes), worrying how soon your current label will wear out, questioning if you'll ever fully fit a single one. all that causes a lot of uncertainty and anxiety which could be avoided by just picking a more general thing and molding it according to what it means to YOU. because words will always mean different things to different people, you will never be understood immediately and maybe never completely by anyone but yourself and that's fine
129 notes
·
View notes
I can’t articulate it, but it gets to me that, outside of Spock and I think Tuvok, being logical and regulating emotions isn’t something that Vulcans are shown to just endure, the same way they endure lower temperatures for other species, or higher oxygen for other species, or anything else that has to be incredibly uncomfortable at best to painful at worst that they just endure
The vibe I get from it is that a majority of Vulcans enjoy it, they like being logical, maybe they didn’t get a choice in being logical as kids, but unlike the select few like Sybok, they don’t seem to be resentful that they were raised like that at all
This isn’t just something they’re all forced to do now to prevent their emotions from causing their species’ end, dedicating themselves to logic brought them inner peace
77 notes
·
View notes
There is something incredibly charming about the bitchy-older-man-who-hates-kids-develops-a-meaningful-healthy-relationship-with-a-parentless-child trope. Especially in a world where nearly every movie/novel/whatever has to have a romantic plot/subplot when there are a plethora of other options. It’s a trope that carries great weights of love, caring, and understanding without being romantic; it expresses a different kind of love that is equally important in this world. To open your heart to a child and become the friend or parental figure they not only need but deserve is such a beautiful thing, and to watch a child help an adult learn something new about the world and the way they see it is a constant reminder that people will always have room to grow and change. To see an adult learn as much from a child as the child learns from them, sometimes even more so, is the reminder that so many people need that wisdom often comes in the form of a fresh perspective.
12 notes
·
View notes
I don't talk about this stuff on here pretty much at all, but a past relationship really broke a ton of bits and pieces of my brain and heart in weird ways (I'm finally thinking about him almost never but the shit he pulled was abusive as hell and still affects me sometimes). Being in love with my current girlfriends for a while felt almost. Painful? Almost like I should be ashamed I can fall so deeply in love with people, and especially how quickly that can happen sometimes too. Thats how it kind of felt. I tend to get overwhelmed with emotions if I'm feeling them very strongly, and that has been extremely embarrassing and also felt almost like I was being a burden to those I love (which love is the main emotion that can 'get dialed up to 11' for me). It IS debilitating in some ways!!! It hasn't gotten bad enough I've been nonverbal in a really really long time but that happened this past week and it was wild to me.
Things are getting better now though! Therapy in the past has helped, and honestly having such patient and understanding partners has made a world of difference ;w;. my wife is someone who was one of my best friends and I had a huge crush on and now I can ask for cuddles and we can nap together and I've fallen so much in love. Her and her presence are literally heaven for me, I don't know if anything has ever made me happier than just laying next to her and feeling her warmth.
Worries of course flare up and I feel like I need to lean on her a lot during those moments, but I don't feel like too much of a burden to her. I love seeing the posts that say stuff like 'Its okay to be a burden' or 'its okay to be annoying' because really truly I think I need to be those things to survive sometimes. I can be 'a lot' and I can be a little bit obsessive and those things aren't inherently bad or evil of me. I just make sure I'm feeling okay during and after and make sure I'm checking in on myself often. I'm a bit of a broken girl, but that doesn't mean I'm not extremely happy and living a life I love. I've written poems and everything about how it feels like it must hurt to love me and my broken jagged edges, but hey, even if it does a little bit, it doesn't mean someone like my girlfriend/wife won't go through a little bit of burden to love me, and I'm more than happy to return all of this and more for her as well if she's ever in need or feels broken ;^;
10 notes
·
View notes