ok sure i'll talk about farleigh start. i'll talk about his tragedy of never being enough as it were and then having to deal with fucking oliver. sure. disclaimer: it's about class (and race) and the horrible reality of the rich. the horrible reality of living as farleigh.
another disclaimer: i'm white! and poc definitely pick up on everything i'm talking about here as it is, and better. i was and am specifically interested in farleigh vs. oliver but it's impossible to examine without considering race. definitely let me know if anything abt this sucks!
farleigh and oliver are similar. it's annoying because every intruder that is not himself is annoying, partly because felix's attention swaying from farleigh is dangerous; there is always a threat of being discarded, even if no precedent existed. the potential is terrifying.
but you'd think he's seen this before, every summer (if venetia is telling the truth) or at least often enough to learn to recognize it fast, so he should know this will pass. part of it is i think still the deep anxiety, and i think he hated every boy that was there before, and it is sort of routine.
but definitely a huge factor in farleigh's annoyance is the fact that he's a biracial (black for cattons, that's all they see) man in a white rich household. he's alert and exhausted all the time. of course he's angry at oliver, regardless of whether he's the first to crash at saltburn for the summer or the fifty-first.
but the important thing is this.
farleigh is very jealous of and angry and pissed at oliver because farleigh sees all the similarities between them. outsider, in financial trouble, whatever it is, in need of cattons; and yet oliver is preferred. and farleigh seems to be the only one to really consider it. felix does not pick up on the hint when farleigh brings up the birthday party vs. his mother. felix's clumsy "different or... anything like that" is as much about race as it is about class, of course. the "we've done all that we can" bit is felix absolving himself of guilt because surely they had, surely the mysterious collective cattons that he's not really part of had tried all they could do. to him, farleigh is different from oliver, because farleigh has been helped. felix is rich and white and twofold uncomfortable with farleigh, even if he's nice about it, even if he genuinely enjoys his company; he doesn't look too close at farleigh because he feels too guilty to come too close. and farleigh can't do anything about it. he can't nice himself into it. the fucking tragedy of him is that he's never enough in the world of the ultra-rich white, even if (especially because!) he's born into it.
farleigh is very pissed at oliver because farleigh also sees all the differences between them. you know who can be nice poor white enough to fit in? fucking oliver. felix says "just be yourself, they'll love you" when oliver first moves in. farleigh was also probably told the same thing, and felix also probably believed that farleigh could just be himself, but even if the cattons were magically not racist at all (impossible), it wouldn't make a difference to farleigh. he would still self-censor, keep in check, be in dangerous waters (because racism is not just about the individual, but about the system). we see that he'd won himself leeway by years of trial and error by the way he speaks to the family, but it's still within the boundaries of acceptable, built by the cattons. he's part of them because they allow it, and farleigh is very, very aware.
the annoying thing is oliver can be himself. like, truly, genuinely, he can just be. and farleigh can't help but envy that.
as a side note, oliver is obviously jealous of farleigh in the beginning as well, because regardless of the reality of farleigh's situation, he was born into it, and hence, at least in oliver's mind, has his position solidified. oliver's whole thing is unquenchable thirst and hunger for whatever and everything the cattons have (including themselves!). he wishes to have been a catton from birth. to oliver, at first, there's nothing farleigh can really do to lose it. and until he figures out the cattons completely, he can't help but envy that.
but i think farleigh senses something different about oliver early on. at least on the level of the text, we have "you're almost passing [for] a real, human boy", which is so important because farleigh is the first to point out oliver's weirdness. the next to do so is venetia in the bath scene calling him a freak, but it's too late. farleigh is too early.
and i like to think he clocks oliver too early because he sees the jagged edges that he recognizes in himself. i think that one other thing that farleigh envies is oliver's freedom to let go. freedom to let go is very similar to freedom to be, but not quite the same.
to be is about perception: farleigh knows he cannot fall out of line, but would like to, and oliver does not have to worry about it at all (i mean, he does, because oliver also performs for felix, but farleigh doesn't know that).
to let go is about the self: farleigh is too scared to even want what oliver eventually does, to even consider the possibility. oliver can let himself want. oliver can let himself act. oliver just can do things and want things. i'm not sure farleigh can.
and so in this scene, when oliver's wants and actions have landed him nowhere with farleigh, felix, venetia, the cattons, of course farleigh gloats. he can let himself do that, because if the cattons are slowly discarding him, farleigh can allow himself this one small victory. he's relieved because despite the dangerous similarities, oliver is, thankfully, not really the same as farleigh, right?
but like. this movie is a love letter to all things gothic. oliver is a white man. he prevails. the brief performance that oliver put on did eventually end up more effective than farleigh's lifetime of constraint. my heart fucking breaks for him to be honest.
the issue that remains is the fact of farleigh's survival. i like to think that oliver came to respect him. oliver is smart, but farleigh is clever. he picks up on everything oliver does (to refer back to the karaoke scene, farleigh immediately retaliates in the cleverest way, in the moment), and he's the only one to do so consistently (venetia, again, for example, comes close, but too late; oliver doesn't like that, there's nothing to work with). hence, stay with me for a little longer, the paradox: farleigh survives because he was never enough for the cattons, but he is very worthy of oliver's attention. in his own freaky way, oliver wants him. look at that.
so. farleigh. farleigh might come back. he always comes back. and i think oliver wants to try harder next time.
174 notes
·
View notes
A while back I finally figured out how to use UBlock's element blocker and promptly went mad with power. Just now I turned off all my extensions to debug something and realized how much more useable it made everything. As soon as I see something annoying I open the Ublock popup, select the element picker, click the annoying thing, and (most of the time) the annoying thing is gone forever and I never have to think about it. So here's my shameless ad pitch for things you can do with it, other than the default "block ads":
Remove all of the UI buttons that are definitely useful for someone but that you're never going to use in your life
Remove UI buttons you use only once, like "register"
Hide the "Posts +" button in tumblr
Clear all of the information your credit card website tries to show you that you don't care about so that you can focus on the couple numbers that you do
Send those pop-up "do you want to chat!" notifications to hell, where they belong
Remove various website overlays
Remove specifically the calorie numbers on food delivery websites
Hide the comments and recommended videos sidebar on youtube
Hide promotions that an adblocker doesn't pick up on because they're native
Hide your facebook newsfeed (if you just use it for chat/events/groups)
Hide discord's sidebar when you just need one channel open and don't want to be distracted, and then unhide it when you want it back
Get rid of distracting moving elements on pages
Hide almost all of the elements on twitter except the actual tweet, if you only interact with twitter via other people's links and don't want to be sucked down the rabbit hole
Generally hide "Related!" or "See also" or "You might like!" type distractions on sites where you only want to see what you came there for, not browse
Remove all of the news from weather websites so that they can actually do their job and show you just the weather
Remove the footer text on websites no one ever reads
3K notes
·
View notes
i also don’t want to portray myself as faultless. my work isn’t ai and it isn’t copied. but nk will say i Had old pieces that were copied and referenced ai. Yet it isn’t good faith when i apologize, state how i took accountability, and explain thats definitely not the case today because i learned my lessons- to respond with well you made these mistakes in the past so how can i believe you, you are lying, and have not changed.
so i quit. how can i prove myself then besides what i mentioned in the last post. my question is will you even ALLOW me to prove myself. each time i must explain, i place a spotlight on something that was resolved agreeably with the artists, resolved by removing the works, and resolved within myself by learning from it. but by not saying something i also allow You to concoct narratives and have to watch people spread them around and come to me demanding apologies. it is a very uncomfortable very distressing process that has worn me down completely.
never mind that other artists who have copied have not nearly been requested to apologize as much as i have been. never mind that they were forgiven when they removed the works or even when they just say sorry and don’t remove the work at all. But you still choose to hound me afterwards for doing just that?
nk has stated that i have not fixed this. and that i must address it. how many times though? for how long also? who on this planet starts the conversation by recounting all their mistakes, especially when they know they are resolved.
i have had to learn my lessons through cruelty like yours. trust me its a trauma i have to bear and they are not lessons you then forget.
my anger and my feelings of defeat come from the fact that even after nk was still talking like i had not even attempted to make progress. just look at your tone here.
88 notes
·
View notes
(disclaimer: I am not saying this from a place of hostility to geese)
how did 3-year old you survive feeding geese :( when I was 4 I was feeding ducks and geese (which I was about the same height as at the time) at a local pond and they chased me and tried to bite me until my parents picked me up and ran. I didn't try to scare them and I was a generally quiet child, do I just have Bad Vibes to them or something? or is it something to do with their past experiences/socialization as Pond Ducks/Geese? nowadays whenever a goose or swan so much as starts staring at me I'm like "ok time to go :)"
Without knowing more about the situation, I can't say what particular thing you did, but I can say that geese don't chase people for no reason at all. It's possible you got too close rather than letting them come to you, it's possible you were just plain too close to their nesting site, it's possible you performed a movement that (in goose) suggested your desire to start a dispute. It's possible you were feeding them from your hands and they associated your hands with food, and were simply looking for more food, or attempting to chase you away from the food.
And to be clear, I'm definitely not advocating for people letting small children feed geese, honestly no one should be feeding wild animals, mostly because it familiarizes wildlife with humans and that can be bad, but also because it opens too many opportunities for humans to do the wrong things and end up hurt or scared. As a 4yo, it wasn't your responsibility to know how to interact with geese- it was your parents' job to monitor your actions, the actions and reactions of the geese, and remove you from the situation before it became a problem (or not put you in that position in the first place). The geese are blameless for acting like geese and you are blameless by reason of being 4 years old.
I ALSO want to be clear that being SCARED of something DOES NOT equal HATING something. Hate can stem from fear, and fear can stem from hate, but they are not the same thing. There are PLENTY of people, for example, who are terrified of spiders but who will either remove them from a place with a cup and paper, or fetch someone to do so, to prevent a spider from dying for the crime of being small. You (general) can be afraid of something and still treat it with respect. You do not have to hate the things you are afraid of.
70 notes
·
View notes