thewrittenupdate - Tumblr blog

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May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude [ID in alt text]

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why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

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i dont “have ptsd” that’s all just the wizard’s curse

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dogcoded characters where they're loyal because everything else has been taken from them and they're desperately clinging onto any sense of purpose or meaning they can grasp. dogcoded because they're willingly made into a pet doing tricks for the ones that own them and they're aware of it all and embrace it. dogcoded where they could be sent to the shelter at any time but feels like they never will, because they're a big strong dog who attacks just right, hurts the right people, and doesn't recoil when they're pet or punished. dogcoded where they obey because if they don't the world is dark and cold and empty. dogcoded where they're trained to move on command, to sniff out downfalls and cracks in strength and manipulate them with their nails, all for the ones they heel to. when will i stop talking

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Antigonick by Anne Carson / I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson / Electra by Sophokles / Erica E. Goode

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Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless/Disco Elysium/— s.r.m. @/belovedbi/succession 03x07

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Jon Ware, I Am In Eskew

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PRAYER FOR WEREWOLVES from We are Mermaids by Stephanie Burt

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When the unerringly loyal right-hand men are referred to as dogs in the canon text

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there is such a trauma to daughterhood. it comes from the lack of agency - not only from being born as a woman but existing in the world as a child. an oppression on top of an oppression. people make jokes about girls with daddy issues but nothing compares to the kind of trauma you recieve from having a complicated relationship with your mother. people talk about it so often. and it's one thing to have a mother who hates you which is always awful, but often it feels worse to have a mother who doesn't. to have a mother who is simply exhausted by the fact you were born. a mother who doesn't hate you, but loves her men more. a mother who maybe wanted to be a mom, once, and then came to realize what a thankless job it was. and she didn't want to hate you, but it was hard to love you and even harder to like you. a mother who doesn't hate you exactly, but never outgrows her desire to be attractive and beautiful and makes you her enemy in that way. or a mother who has nothing more to her than being a mother and clings to coddling you in a way thats suffocating. so many daughters develop deep empathy for the mothers because they were women, daughters, girls once. everyone deals with it differently. but at the end of it, you still need a mother and that is the most horrible and wretched part of all. the trauma of being alive, of being a woman, and of having a mother but still needing one. such a uniquely miserable feeling

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i can't lie to you i loveee bad endings sometimes. what if nothing worked out. what if the characters gave into their worst instincts. what if they became worse. what if there's truly no hope left. what will they do out of desperation? who will they become as their worst selves?

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idk if this is a trope or whatever but i love it so much when fictional characters massively downplay the severity of their injuries but in more of a comedic way than a tragic one. like some guy gets impaled and they just glance down at the shard of metal sticking out of them and say some dumb bullshit like "oh man. that's gonna need some ice." and then pass out while all their friends yell at them for being an unfunny idiot with terrible priorities.

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I WILL BE GOOD AS LONG AS YOU WANT ME, 1/28/24

image from wikimedia commons

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Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

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fatima aamer bilal, from i mother it the absence of her, iii. i am not a person that can be loved for a very long time excerpt from moony moonless sky.

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John Yuyi by Zhong Lin for Vogue Singapore (2023) Photography: Zhang Ahuei 

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