Tak Everlasting

jack london could write a court of thorns and roses, but sara j. mass couldn't write the sea wolf.

at some point you have to realize that you actually have to read to understand the nuance of anything. we as a society are obsessed with summarization, likely as a result of the speed demanded by capital. from headlines to social media (twitter being especially egregious with the character limit), people take in fragments of knowledge and run with them, twisting their meaning into a kaleidoscope that dilutes the message into nothing. yes, brevity is good, but sometimes the message, even when communicated with utmost brevity, requires a 300 page book. sorry.

I love antiques roadshow. I love it when Mathilda from DeMoines is on TV for the first time in her life and doesn't know what to do with her hands. I love it when a dude with a dumb hat rubber necks from the background. I love it when they tell someone that if their item was different, or not that item, they would be rich. But it's not so they're poor and they have to go home in shame. I love when someone brings a fine example of Shropshire custardwork from 1807 and finds out it has a clock in it that they never knew about. I LOVE ANTIQUES ROADSHOW

anyway the thing about the wedding banquet (1993) (cw for discussion of rape) is that the letterboxd reviews are FULL of people going “this is an EVIL MOVIE that treats corrective rape like isn’t a big deal and then has a happy ending as if it didn’t even happen and it’s all fine because they had a baby” and i’m like…. well i first of all don’t think it had a happy ending, actually. i think it is a story about characters and the decisions they make and have to live with. i think if your take on the ending was that the movie was saying “yay it’s all okay because they are a happy family” you were not thinking very much about the movie you were watching. i think the movie is saying that THESE CHARACTERS feel that their duty to their parents to carry on a specific type of family is the most important thing to them. and it is asking you to SIT WITH THAT and THINK ABOUT IT. is everything they all went through worth it? the strain on their relationships? corrective rape and the aftermath of it?? is it worth it?? because wai-tung has a biological child with a woman he is technically legally married to?? he feels that it is! how do YOU feel about him feeling that way??? engage with the art don’t just write it off as being evil and problematic because a bad thing happened in it

i am a slut for "thing that was a silly joke in the beginning of the story is later recontextualized as actually kind of fucked up" . especially when its a longrunning series and you can tell its a product of the author re-assessing the writing of their younger self. chefs kiss.