Sun's out buns out

“Gasper Throaks,” he said and lingered on the s-sounds. For you can take a boy from the Underdark, but you can never wash his tongue clean from the sibilants.

I wish we had spent more time exploring the implied abuse or at least anger issues and favouritism that Edgar and Susan had on their family. Both of them are rude and abrasive to Alice. Edgar snaps at both Polly and Joe. They heap praises onto Will whilst cutting Joe aside. Polly is restrained in unfair positions.

A lot of Edgar's pre-deadite warning signs of increased aggression go unnoticed bc this behaviour (if not abuse, then aggression) is clearly normal. Alice points out that Susan knew that Will was abusive.

Susan enables her family's behaviour, right up until the end. She would kiss the corpse of her husband moments after he violently attacks their son because he promised that they were only hurting him because he needed something, and if Joe would just behave and give it to them then he would stop. And so she enables him, and she lets him in again, and she gets him killed.

Joe - presented as a least favourite child, and afraid of his brother and father's outbursts - is also an enabler. He didn't protect Alice from Will, and he left Thya when she needed him the most because that fear of his father enabled the cycle of abuse. Thya literally points out that he had an easier time fighting back against his wife than he did his father.

That is to say that Alice is paying the price for a cycle of aggression (from half the family) and enabling (from the other half).

If they spent much more time on the abuse, I think it would have suffered for it. They made a nice line where there was still the horror of things without it being just a bummer of a movie with horror elements. I think too many movies have gone that route these days and it's starting to get tiring for me how much the horror of those movies is the abuse and the trauma. I really would love to escape it sometimes, but when its the whole movie instead of shown in the behaviors of the characters, its like.. shit, I can't use this as escapism when its as bad or worse than my own trauma/triggers.

second rule of fandom is everything goes back to kirk/spock

third rule of fandom is everything goes back to holmes & watson

the funny thing is. I originally typed out "fifth rule of fandom is everything goes back to gilgamesh & enkidu" but then I thought 'no, I can't trust that people will be familiar with the epic of gilgamesh'