#merricat.txt

[fancyhalloran]

Love this season’s trend of having supernatural stuff occasionally happen just out of sight of the characters

Yes the supernatural is real but no it’s still ambiguous

It reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Sundial where supernatural events remain ambiguous even as they seem more and more real because there’s a way in which the group dynamics allow them to exit reality as we understand it and enter a kind of new group reality

Specifically there’s a moment in The Sundial where a member of the household tries to leave and when she reaches this mountain pass the fog becomes so thick she can’t see anything and there’s the sense that there is no longer anything beyond their valley. The supernatural is a reflection/acceleration of group dynamics.

Also reminds me of what jane schoenbrun said about david lynch and film. Like his films are both real and unreal so questions like “what is real and what is unreal in this scene?” become important. Like everything is layers of reality and artifice but also reality itself is full of artifice.

To conclude my ramble I feel like the question of whether or not the supernatural occurrences are real or are happening in their minds is too simplistic. It’s not real but it’s also definitely happening. Crashing in the forest is a process of exiting reality and the new reality that they create sticks with them even after they are rescued and forced to enter adulthood. So then like what is the show exploring through these realities and unrealities?

#merricat.txt #yellowjackets #to be clear that is not a rhetorical question lol

[fancyhalloran]

wait was “run from me” in ofmd s2? the entire timber timbre tag is ofmd posting.

i don’t watch ofmd but if you need more timber timbre songs to feel Bad about a ship with i recommend “stops” from their new album and “like a mountain” from medicinals.

#merricat.txt #timber timbre #ofmd #our flag means death

[fancyhalloran]

bottoms really captures the specific feeling of being a lesbian in high school and discovering that there is no pleasure like being pinned by a woman you are into

not to get all personal but one of my formative lesbian experiences was taking grappling classes at a krav maga studio in high school and befriending this kind of macho woman in her 20s who was way more experienced than me and then like partnering with her in every class. and like i don’t think it could ever have been anything more than that but it was such a deeply erotic experience (and very clearly not just for me!)

#merricat.txt #bottoms 2023

[fancyhalloran]

having maybe a bit of a crisis over whether i can even consider myself a lesbian given that i haven’t dated anyone since i was like 15 (over a decade ago) and seem unlikely to in the future given the only people who have ever mentioned thinking i was attractive are friends who were probably just being nice

#merricat.txt #like is it real if it’s purely internal and has no bearing on the outside world basically

[fancyhalloran]

thinking about how by refusing to accept gideon’s choices/autonomy, harrow is also rejecting the worldview that sees gideon as expendable and worth less than her. like that’s part of the tragedy of it. there’s no good choice, no way of walking back the ways she’s hurt her, no escape from the social structures john has created

#merricat.txt #the locked tomb #apologies if this doesn’t make sense these are not peak writing hours for me

[fancyhalloran]

air freshener scent concept: weed and tomato leaves

#merricat.txt #things i came up with because I’m from California

[fancyhalloran]

wait maybe the reason I feel sad and alone is that I always feel sad and alone after I spend some nice time with friends

#merricat.txt

[fancyhalloran]

Ok this one is purely for my fellow Shirley Jackson enjoyers

I’m asking because it’s one of the ones that like most sticks in my mind and it’s also the only short story of hers i remember that directly addresses racism

#merricat.txt #shirley jackson

[fancyhalloran]

why does my post about trying a spruce bark cheese have the “community label: mature” sticker on it

#merricat.txt

[fancyhalloran]

Just finished reading the carrier bag theory. Thanks for linking it to me!

Le Guin seems to be a very interesting writer, though I couldn't get into The Left Hand of Darkness.

Do you have any recs for people who want to get into her stuff?

I honestly have yet to read her fiction outside of reading her short story “the ones who walk away from omelas” in school. I have read a couple of other good essays by her, but sadly I can not remember their titles (I read them a while ago and school is currently destroying my brain).

#merricat.txt

[fancyhalloran]

really annoying when scorcese fans* are upset at people for questioning whether a white director should have been the one to make a film about the osage murders when scorcese himself is clearly asking the same question in the final scene. he shows up on screen and positions himself as part of a tonally-jarring fbi-sponsored true crime radio show with an all-white cast and audience. it’s textual idk what to tell you

*i say this as a scorcese fan

#merricat.txt #killers of the flower moon #this is my movie of the year to be clear #regardless of your answer it’s a fair question to ask #and one the film itself encourages

[fancyhalloran]

my French professor is from the south of France and has offered us extra credit if we refer to the little chocolate croissants as chocolatines rather than pain au chocolat because apparently that’s what they call them where she’s from and pain au chocolat is what they call it in Paris (she said this very dismissively)

#merricat.txt #french

[fancyhalloran]

i always feel very basic citing le guin’s carrier bag theory but it is genuinely one of the most impactful things i’ve ever read both on my own writing and on how i think about other people’s writing

#merricat.txt

[fancyhalloran]

I love that misty envisions her parrot as a gay guy who does musical theater.

#merricat.txt #yellowjackets #she’s my precious little fag hag

[fancyhalloran]

love the “it was just us” “is there a difference?” exchange because I feel like that’s really one of the the core questions of the show. Is there a difference between the supernatural being “real” and the supernatural just being the group dynamics? Their actions are the same either way.

is there a difference between the spirit of the wilderness causing the snow to fall on Jackie’s pyre and blind luck causing it if the result is the same?

#merricat.txt #yellowjackets

[fancyhalloran]

thinking about how shirley jackson writes about herself and her daughters in raising demons and life among the savages and how it is similar to how she writes about relationships between women in the sundial, we have always lived in the castle, and the haunting of hill house. the specificity of how she renders dynamics. the way she sometimes plays along with their strange behaviors (and they sometimes build off her anxieties and quirks in their sort of imaginative space). merricat specifically feels very much like how she portrays her daughters (the magical thinking, the peculiar connections she makes) as does fancy halloran in the sundial (especially her innocent callousness in the end).

#merricat.txt #shirley jackson #on a personal level i think the way shirley jackson writes about women and girls #was really important for me because i discovered her right before i started transitioning #so she helped define how I conceptualized of myself and my own relationships to other women