whenever i'm trying to talk myself out of buying something i don't need i always hear my old russian professor's voice echoing in my head: "WHAT??? WILL YOU DIE THE RICHEST MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD?" and then i make an unwise financial decision
February 28, 2024 - American military veterans burn their uniforms calling for a free Palestine, at a vigil for Aaron Bushnell in Portland, Oregon. [source]
In case you lost it - a link to the eSIM donation guide. Even if you feel sick and powerless, you can at least do this. And even if you really, really can't donate, you can always at least share this and remind others.
[spoilers] yes lisa frankenstein is a wonderful, campy, cute good-fo-her adaptation for all the austen/shelley/bronte-loving weird girlies but what I keep thinking about is how it's also a meditation on how society doesn't want/ doesn't want to deal with female trauma (and weird girls). the way lisa's (enfuriatingly) deabeat dad barely looks at lisa but embraces taffy (who is 'successfully' a girl: happy, pretty, and not posing problems for anyone), the way those neighbours literally ignore lisa as she is chased by an intruder (who is literally a parallel to the axe murderer that killed her mom) - lisa's trauma is seen as some kind of wilful refusal to fit into the status quo and even makes her the target of further (gleeful) abuse by her stepmom (who threatens to literally lock her away for being 'weird'). and it's not just a lisa thing; the scene that struck me was taffy, covered in blood, crying, traumatised, and that stranger who looks and then ignores her. taffy as a popular girl and cheerleader and daddy's darling is always looked at favourably, alsways an object of positive attention-- right up until she has a problem. anyway and then something something about lisa finding companionship in another other and her choosing (un)death as a radical escape from and rejection of this status quo that cannot/ doesn't want to accomodate her and many more thoughts but that's all for now thank you
one detail that i love is that lisa is less doctor frankenstein but more mary shelley despite the movie's title. lisa's introduction is her stone rubbing the creature's headstone while mary learned to write using her mother's gravestone. lisa isn't a scientist she's a seamstress which is closer to mary's profession as a writer. they're women who lost their mothers at a young age and were outcasts in their respective societies. both having an odd relationship with death, finding love and comfort in it. mary connects with her mother through her grave like how lisa does with the creature's. at it's core it's a movie about grief and the non-finality of death.
it's also a campy movie about a devoted zombie romantic who would chop dicks off for their goth wife which i think stays true to the spirit of mary shelley.
The thing about Lisa Frankenstein is that it’s about girlhood. And something that really stood out to me is that Lisa isn’t a scientist. She isn’t some med student, or anything. There’s nothing scientific about her, and I really like it. Because, instead, she’s a seamstress. She sews!!! A labour that is normally ignored and deemed as unimportant BECAUSE of its association with femininity. They could have made her an aspiring doctor, or something, but instead she sews!!! And it’s just- there’s something THERE for me. About girlhood. About invisible labour. About how woman’s contributions are overlooked. About how jobs like midwives and traditional folk medicine are painted over and ignored in history and were replaced by the modern western biomedical complex. About the fact that hand sewing has been fading out of modern use and yet the creatures mother probably sewed every day. About making the creature be healed wasnt a science, for Lisa, it was an art form. About how modern biomedicine focuses on a separation of patient and person, while Lisa sewing the creature is so PERSONAL and- just. The sewing stood out to me in such a way.
i think if lisa asked the creature if he’d still love her if she was a worm he’d do that cat hacking up a hairball move again and give her an actual worm and she’d think it was the most romantic thing ever