usuallyimnobody

[usuallyimnobody]

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Ovid's stories of mothers who engage in son-slaughter are graphic fulfilments of the patriarchal fantasy which asserts women's causal contribution to man's death as well as his birth. Their inner psychic turmoil, leading to a renunciation of a maternal 'love' in the service of paternal power, is yoked symbolically by Ovid to the unconcealing of all that was supposed to remain inside, repressed, hidden from view (...) it is as if the body's inner uterine spaces, the viscern, are turned outwards to engulf and reconsume the men who emerged from them. The monstrous wombs of Ovid's murderous mothers seem to epitomize (by representing in reverse) the abjection of the maternal body as irredeemably, terrifyingly "other". The abject, for Kristeva, is an inassimilable or excessive component of the superego that is radically excluded and draws me to a place where meaning collapses', where insides and outsides are terrifyingly conflated. The original object of abjection is the maternal body, on whom we existed in a necessary, but potentially overwhelming dependence (...) In Kristeva's account, the abjection of the maternal body is a process that is necessary for the formation of human subjectivity in Western culture.

And yet I want, perhaps improbably, to resist such a determined conclusion, even though Ovid's text clearly flirts with and is seduced by the fantasy of demonic, dismembering mothers, and the supposed necessity of their abjection. Alongside their viscerality and bodily interiors, I've drawn attention to these women's internal dilemmas, articulated through rhetorical debates with themselves, debates which are contrary to the model of maddened maternal speech usually perceived by critics in Roman epic-rational, eloquent, thetorically coherent in their own way. They may be frenzied, but these women do not at least at this point 'wail'. Their debates are particularly Ovidian reflections on agency and the limits of language: "I want to act and I cannot," as Althaea says, "now pietas and the name of mother break my resolve". The primary metamorphosis in the cases of Procne and Althaea is thus not of shape but of psyche: they experience a radical switch from joy to grief to rage, but express this painful metamorphic process in terms of a certain loss of self and the struggling emergence of another. Split between words and action, conjugal and natal identities, Procne and Althaea engage in projects of self-fashioning, exploring a notion of the self in progress or flux. Which should come first, sisterly or motherly love? Passion or reason? Living kin or the dead? Like Medea, Ovid's mothers who kill their kin are radically unsettling because they do not so much reject their motherhood outright as choose, according to social and rhetorical context, to generate another identity out of what they perceive as their degraded maternal bond. The causal relationship of maternity and death is presented here not as inevitable and 'natural', but as the anguished offspring of masculinist violence, patriarchy's guilt coming back to haunt it.

'Matermorphoses: Motherhood and the Ovidian Epic Subject' from Reproducing Rome: Motherhood in Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, and Statius by Mairéad McAuley

[usuallyimnobody]

The cast of Private Nightmares are stronger than me fr because I would fold immediately if Alex Ward got up in my face Like That (as he does in every episode) (it's such a cool show everyone please check it out)

on reflection as I'm writing this I also wouldn't fare very well with any of the cast either, beautiful people with beautiful storytelling

[usuallyimnobody]

"just write a little every day" ok but what if i write nothing for 3 weeks and then suddenly type like i’m being hunted by god

[usuallyimnobody]

“…the shoreline of the UK mainland alone is more than five times as long as that of France, and once you add Ireland and all the islands of both countries, you have a lot more edge than middle. Legends flourish in these borders between land and sea. All things supernatural favour the territory linking one state with another - twilight between day and dark, doorways and gates beween in and out, bridges, dreams between sleeping and waking. The shore is another liminal area, joining earth to water, known to unknown, and this is the setting for some of the most beautiful, terrible, and memorable tales of folklore.”

— Introduction to The Fabled Coast: Legends & Traditions From Around The Shores of Britain & Ireland (Stephen Kingshill & Jennifer Westwood)

[usuallyimnobody]

sebastian to the servants every day:

[usuallyimnobody]

is he talking about his kids or the justice league? probably both

og text post

[usuallyimnobody]

gods said let’s not give these bitches a break

[usuallyimnobody]

[usuallyimnobody]

video game scenery ≡ rapture credit: other places

[usuallyimnobody]

Don't think I'm saying anything that hasn't already been said but I'm fully bawling at the end of EXU Divergence. What a perfect love letter to the creator of a world & of stories. Of course, of course he doesn't recognise he built the world and created space for people to become heroes until the final moments.

This is the man (and character!) who taught others how to build a bridge so they would have the tools to do it themselves. The one who didn't notice himself leaving a trail of Hallow spells behind him everywhere he created. What a story. And hope just growing throughout the four episodes and greenary literally coming up through the cracks? Obsessed, I love it and my heart is full.

[usuallyimnobody]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SANJI!!

I know it’s fanon at this point but I still think a lot about little Sanji getting used to his birthday being celebrated and being about him

BONUS:

[usuallyimnobody]

the more i try to explain gender to cis people the more i understand plato's allegory of a cave

[usuallyimnobody]

Me *leaves a pile of assorted jorts in the woods*: for the werewolves

[usuallyimnobody]

tumblr users love reading. you literally stopped for this post just because it has words in it

[usuallyimnobody]

[usuallyimnobody]

Halfway through the finale but holy fuck? Deanna's goodbye to the Dawnfather and his response to her made me weep like nobody's business. Her instinct to give him a hug and affirm that everyone deserves to be saved? Ouch but in a good way.

Then the follow-up line of Matt saying everyone seems to have had their goodbyes to their god/goddess? Alright, I'll just cry I guess.

[usuallyimnobody]

The Lovers

Kaja Horvat, 2024