Reblog If You Love Bowuigi

So there’s a trend that I absolutely hate in online discussions of (non-satirical) genre, particularly genre that’s influenced by the gothic. This trend makes my eyes roll back in my head until I can see through my own skull. It makes me want to bite a car in half. It makes me want to step into the jellyfish tank at the New York Aquarium and beg for the sweet sweet annihilation of a thousand stings. 

I call this trend: Oh Just Be Sensible, and it goes like this:

“Why do vampires always end up covered in blood when they feed, I don’t spill soup all down the front of my shirt when I eat dinner. Real toddler energy.”

“Why do people always cut their hands to swear oaths, everyone knows it would hurt way less on the [insert body part with fewer nerve endings]”

“Vampires shouldn’t be feeding from people’s wrists, it damages the tendons, if doctors don’t take your blood from your wrist, vampires shouldn’t either! No one will be able to flex their fingers the next day.”

(This comes up a lot with vampires, I mention, as I stride purposefully into the glistening mass of jellyfish.)

There are direct answers for some of these when it comes to the practical visual language of a particular medium (for example, you cut your hand on stage / on set because you can hold a blood pack in there, and even if you don’t have an effect, the gesture and its purpose can be discerned from the nosebleeds) but what really gets me is how thematically boneheaded this sort of observation is. 

Like, let’s go down the list here. 

Why do vampires end up covered in their victims’ blood? Well Scoob, do you think it could maybe have something to do with their bestial, inhuman nature? Or with the erotic and sensual abandon with which they can approach violence, now that they’re untethered from human morals? 

Why do people cut their hands to swear oaths? Aside from what I mentioned above, do you think maybe it’s because it adds a layer of gravity to see two people swearing an oath to one another with blood dripping from their clasped hands? Do you think it’s maybe to evoke a unity of body, something greater and more primal than a unity of word? Or maybe to remind us of the dire consequences of breaking a blood oath?

Why are authors having vampires feed from people’s wrists if it damages their tendons? Damn, maybe that’s because it’s where the pulse is. You know, the pulse? The heartblood, the thing that races when you’re scared or turned on or both? The thing that stutters when you’re close to death and could, should the author choose, ring in the vampire’s ears like a chime or a great pounding thunderclap. Maybe in a story about undead beings who drink blood, we can sacrifice a bit of sensible reality in order to enforce the emotion and thematic heft of a scene? 

Images like these communicate what is happening between two characters, not just the events that are transpiring! No one making stories forgot to consider ~sensible~ little observations, because it would be absolutely inane to consider an observation with the creative value of a wet paper towel. This stuff is part of our visual language for a reason! Themes also need to be communicated! 

God, like, okay, I’m exhausted and the aquarium staff keeps yelling at me when they find me here, but let me just wrap up by saying that relationships, character and meaning are expressed in so many ways beyond dialogue or internal monologue, and those expressions are so rarely sensible. 

(Also all this shit looks cool as hell, do you really want your protagonists swearing to die for one another by dabbing their slightly bleeding elbows together, grow up.)

You think Lip sometimes looks at Ian and Mickey and just smiles a little to himself because who would’ve seen that coming?

Like, Lip’s always been good with odds and numbers and back in the day, back when they started out a fucking lifetime ago, absolutely nobody would have bet on those two making it in the end.

He had been around back then, on the side lines catching glimpses from time to time. From ‘Mickey’s gay and we’re doing it’ and 'i know what he felt with me’ to 'you think i should’ve?’ and 'because i love him’.

And Lip hesitates in the doorway when he enters the living room for a moment and watches them lie on the couch in front of the TV, wrapped up in each other’s arms, sleepy and content, for once neither bickering nor on the verge of fucking and he thinks that he’s never seen Ian so happy and being himself this much at the same time before.

And maybe he shakes his head when he looks at the man in his brother’s arms because holy fucking shit that’s Mickey Milkovich right there.

That’s 'someone’s gotta get a beat down’, it’s 'oh shit is right’, it’s anger issues and russian prostitutes and attempted murder and escaping prison to fucking mexico.

But it’s also the guy who pours Ian his coffee in the morning and makes sure he doesn’t drink it before he’s had something to eat, who used to count his fucking pills, who once bought a bag full of B vitamins as if they could fix it all somehow.

It’s who Ian lost sleep over, it’s who he made his best bad decisions for.

It’s Franny’s Uncle Mickey, it’s Mandy’s older brother and holy shit, it’s Ian’s fucking husband.

And isn’t that so beautifully Ian, that he saw something in that dirty faced thug from ten years ago that no one else ever bothered to look for? that he found a love that proved itself to be stronger than whatever life or fate or Terry fucking Milkovich threw at them, that pulled them back to each other every time they fell apart?

Mickey has been a constant presence in Ian’s life in a way that nothing else but Lip himself ever had. Has been a witness, a catalyst, a victim of Ian’s epic highs and lows, has done insane things to and for and because of him. As fucked up as they always were, they seem to hold the balance, they somehow make it work.

Lip loves his brother with all his heart, has done so his entire life, he knows all the best and a lot of the worst of Ian and he knows that Mickey knows it too. Loves him, too. Signed up for it all, the whole package, good times and bad, sickness and health, Monica and Gay Jesus, mania and depression. Had probably signed up for it long before they stood in front of witnesses at the Polish Doll.

So Lip smiles sometimes when they bicker over breakfast cereal or when Ian can’t keep his hands to himself even when the rest of them is right there or when Mickey talks shit like he’s still big bad Milkovich, south side thug extraordinaire and not the boy who has been in love with Lip’s little brother for the last decade.

Because it’s nice to see they made it. Because if anyone deserves a happy ending and a gentle future, it’s them.

What we know about Goncharov so far:

PRODUCED by Scorsese, but DIRECTED by Matteo JWHJ 0715, get it right.

Robert De Niro, Al Pacino star, along with Cybill Shepherd. Released in 1973.

About Soviets in Naples dealing with the mob. Greatest mafia movie ever made, natch.

Ice Pick Joe is under rated.

Homoeroticism between Goncharov and Andrey is extremely popular in the modern day, bordering on explicit text and desire even through their rivalry and sublimated competing for Katya.

Katya is underused in the movie, and is a complicated character who is both the femme fatale, the center of a love triangle between Goncharov and Andrey, Goncharov’s wife, and also manipulating everyone.

There’s also a scene where Katya kisses Sofia? Tumblr lesbians go crazy.

Had political undertones and commentary, possibly about the failures of the Soviet Union, or leftist ideology vs. realpolitik.

Is over three hours long and kinda slow at times. Violent. Not as easy to watch as the memes and shipping would have you believe.

However conversely film bros who reduce to a badass gangster movie are missing so so much.

Has clock symbolism. Themes of how the characters are trapped in cycles of violence, revenge, hubris, tragedy. Lots of Catholic imagery.

Snubbed at awards, lack of official releases has turned it into a bit of lost media, despite how influential it was.

There have been talks of sequels/remakes through the years but nothing has ever come of it.

i googled if bowser’s shell can come off and this is the first thing i see

Here's the thing. No, Will didn't want to be treated with kid gloves. He didn't want to be babied or treated differently.

What he did want — what he needed — was understanding. Which is something Mike did not afford him in season three.

He didn't want them to treat him like a baby or hover. He did want them to understand why he was clinging to the childhood they all seemed to have left behind. The childhood that was stolen from him.

He didn't want to be shamed for trying to go back to a time before. Before the Upside Down. Before those seven terrifying days. Before he died. Before he was possessed. Before he endured physical and mental pain the rest of them couldn't even begin to imagine. Before there was a monster in his mind, one who still won't leave.

there is something so darkly comical about tumblr potentially outliving twitter

tumblr, which is held together with duct tape and madness, run by three raccoons in blood stained Yahoo! hats and a handful of crabs, its only discernible source of income the sale of shoelaces from an inside joke so inside no one knows the original source anymore and fake blue checkmarks... that website still lives on

truly the cockroach of social media and I love it for that

Happy new year to all queers, weirdos, people with 20939384737 pronouns, people with no pronouns, multigender people, aspec people, xenogender users, neopronouns users, he/him lesbians and she/her gays, people who mold gender to their liking, people with extremely niche microlabels, lesboys, turigirls, mspec lesbians, mspec gays, mspec straights, straightbians, gaybians, straight gays/straightcians, queerhets, transhets, intersex people, dykes, butches, femmes, bears, twinks, and everyone under the lgbtq+ umbrella. Let’s make 2023 the most radical queer year of all. Never stop being you

cop shows are like "dammit! we would have caught babyeater mike by now if people didn't have rights,"

I think it needs to become common knowledge that "inability to read social cues" can show up as overcompensating.

You don't know how much misbehaviour is allowed, so you become the perfect child who never tests rules.

You don't know if someone is irritated with you, so you'll be extra generous and self-effacing.

You don't know how much is expected of you at work so you'll kill yourself in a minimum-wage job and not notice that nobody else is working like this.

"Hardworking and quiet" should be as much of an autism red flag as "ignores rules and doesn't know when to stop talking". Or why don't we just start using words to communicate so i can stop tracking everybody's eyebrow twitches, that would be great.

A gift from me to u