always bitchy

1. Dani isn’t just haunted by her fiance, she’s haunted by what he represented. When she sees him it tends to be in mirrors, so he’s stood with her like some perverse image of heterosexuality. He tends to touch her in a sexual/romantic way which she’s clearly uncomfortable with. He is both literally the spectre of her dead fiance and a metaphor for compulsory heterosexuality.

1b. see also: dani seeing him while literally trapped in a closet against her will.

2. The last episode is 100% a metaphor for being in a relationship where one partner has a chronic/terminal illness. This includes chronic mental illness (the suicidal ideation is not there by accident). Theres a lot of subtext about feeling like a burden on your partner, being scared to put them through the trauma of your illness and being scared theyll leave you when youre too much trouble. These ideas are brought up earlier in the series when discussing Owen’s mother’s dementia (and i could make a whole other rant about Jamie’s character development in this regard).

3. Preface: I dont like peter he’s an abusive arsehole and controlling freak. BUT I think this dislike is making people less likely to examine Peter’s motivations and the character’s themes. I think he represents one of the show’s central themes about the cyclical nature of abuse; how abused people often take out their abuse on others, therefore creating more abused people. 

We know peter was abused by his father (probably sexually abused if the comments about ‘other boys’ and ‘innocence’ and his mother knowing are read into) so it’s interesting to me that his actions towards Miles and Flora could be seen as him grooming them by taking over their bodies without their consent. They both seem to know to keep their interactions with him a secret, he promises them rewards for their compliance and when they complain that he ‘tucks them away’ without their consent he acts contrite and promises not to do it again. Peter embodies the cycle of abuse, grooming the children the way he himself was likely groomed. I am not in any way excusing his actions, just saying its interesting. 

4. Linked to the above point: the cyclical nature of the lady in the lake (how she walks the same path each time, how her years trapped in the trunk were a repeating cycle) parallels the cycle of abuse and this is totally intentional. Viola started this cycle of pain, abuse and death through her unwillingness for her loved ones to watch her die. She and Perdita murder each other, another strange cycle of violence, and the ghosts created by the cyclical violence are trapped in her “gravity” and unable to leave (aka unable to leave the cycle of abuse). The cycle will keep on going forever until it is stopped actively, just like real cycles of abuse.

4b. Dani stops the cycle (both the cycle of abuse and the lady in the lake) through a totally selfless act of love. this makes me cry bc she’s so good, she didnt deserve any of this.

5. Peter and Rebecca’s “love” is intentionally compared to Dani and Jamie’s. Dani and Jamie discuss how “love is not about possession”. Peter LITERALLY possesses Rebecca so he can force her to stay with him forever. Jamie knows that Dani will have to leave someday and cherishes every minute, Peter murders Rebecca to prevent her from leaving. Poetic Cinema.

don’t spend more time more time making your notes than actually revising them

note-taking itself honestly isn’t the best study method when used by itself; you’re overloading your brain with content and you can go on autopilot very quickly 

the key to note-taking being extremely useful for your studying is making testable notes. before uni I was into flashcards, but I was definitely guilty of making the mistake I first outlined; taking forever to actually flashcard everything and not using the flashcards enough times. the easiest way to get around this is making cornell notes, and I 100% recommend doing so digitally.

type your lecture/class notes like you would normally, and then in a separate document, create a table with two columns and make the column on the left side significantly narrower. copy the lecture notes you took and paste them into the larger column on the right. colour code these notes if you wish (I recommend it). I personally underline headings, use arrow subheadings, have yellow highlight for terms and bolded orange for any important information.

write the cue questions in the narrower column. 

this cuts down the time you take to actually organise/make your revision notes like no tomorrow, so when exams come around you can just say the cue question, recite the information verbally or write down your answer depending on what type of learner you are, and write down the information you missed on a blank sheet of paper.

rule of thumb: don’t handwrite EVERYTHING. it takes forever, and time is of the essence. type the things that will help you understand content, handwrite content that is super vital/you struggle with, which are definitely not mutually exclusive. think of typing as the bones and flesh, handwriting for the bones and any flesh that you keep forgetting about. weird analogy, let’s move on.

don’t listen to music when you study. or at least, try not to. this is crazy for me to say personally, because in high school I HAD to have music to be able to do any work. but first year has led to this bizarre shift of not listening to anything at all, and I recommend trying it out. if it’s still not working, I have a suggestion; listen to a genre of music that you NEVER or RARELY ever listen to in any other area of your life (preferably a genre with limited words). for me that was jazz. that way, you’ll only associate the playlist with studying. sometimes when I have zero motivation, I play my jazz playlist to get myself working, and then around 5 minutes in I have to pause the playlist to focus on my work. i never thought that would ever happen but here we are.

this one’s a little more ~controversial~ but don’t take super rigid and routinely breaks. say you have a system of studying for an hour and taking a ten minute break. a lot of the time, this will work and satisfy you. but sometimes, you’ll get to around the half an hour mark, and already feel tired/drained/antsy/not in the mood/done with the content already, you name it. it’s better to take a micro break then to re-energise so you can plough through that revision than wait for your scheduled break; you’ll probably spend the rest of the hour unfocused and impatient, and by the time you get to your break you’ll probably end up taking a much longer one than you anticipated because you were tired long before. will you ever actually return to your work that day? hm.

so, allow flexibility for study and break times. 

examples of micro breaks; making a beverage, writing a quick journal entry, decluttering your desk (depending on how messy your desk is tbh, don’t worry, we’ve all been there), checking the news, staring at the wall for a bit (again, we’ve all been there), finding study quotes on google, looking at pictures of Elle Woods etc etc etc

if you’re in a time crunch and you can’t do as many timed essays as you need, please type up essay plans (I say type instead of handwrite because typing makes it 500 times easier to edit and add sections). low-key for certain subjects plans can be more helpful than writing full essays

past papers are your best friend, but only if you; mark them, write down why you got an answer wrong (usually best for calculations or mcq), edit your response with the marking criteria (usually best for short answers), rewrite the marking criteria word for word if your answer and the criteria answer are vastly different (i.e the energy of reading and comparing the two and wondering if the responses were for two completely different questions or alas even courses), redo the questions you get wrong (all of them pls). simply doing a past paper and adding some ticks and crosses here and there isn’t going to do anything, there’s no magic involved.

voice memos are also extremely helpful, especially if you’re an auditory learner. don’t drone out information for each topic word for word (the voice notes will be like three hours long, and if that isn’t enough to demotivate future you, listening to it will feel…well…will you feel anything at all? that’s the true question), but definitely record yourself explaining a topic or question type to yourself. voice memos are also really great for working on assignments. trying to flesh out your thesis? record yourself and title it thesis. trying to figure out what the heck your arguments should be? record yourself and title it what the heck are my arguments. trying to understand a crucial part of set reading? title it help me what is happening with ‘title of set reading’