La Creatura.

The Roys React to You in Heat:

Shiv:

She pinches her nose. Ugh. Seriously? Here? But secretly, she loves your scent

Roman:

Uhhh Y/N did you just rip ass? God it smells fucking disgusting in here. I mean, sure, it gets me rock hard, like leaking through my knot or whatever but seriously THAT’S your scent?? He’d never say it but he envies your abilities of pregnancy.

Kendall:

Y-you wanna? I can smell it on you haha. You’re so ripe right now like a fucking uh peach, my little fucking peach. Call me Timothee Chalamet then. This time it’ll fucking work. You do not get pregnant that night. He’s infertile and knows it

Connor:

Alright, let’s get this show on the road! I’ve taken those supplements I was telling you about, I’ve been tracking your cycles and taking them in conjunction to ensure the best possible breeding I can give you. We got this! Don’t come this time though, if you can, my message boards are saying an omega’s orgasm can cause asthma in the baby.

Logan:

Get the FUCK out of my way! Y/N, now’s our chance! I NEED to get them pregnant right fucking now! I NEED AN HEIR!

Tom:

Ooooohhh what’s this aroma wafting over me? Is that a fresh pie sitting on a window sill? Will you see me floating over to you, lifted asunder by your scent? Come here, Y/N, let me get a good smell of you… He spends a good hour smelling your glands until he gets you very heavily pregnant.

Greg:

O-oh, uh, for me? W-wow I’m like… so flattered, like, honestly but right now isn’t like… the best time? Yeah, I did get that promotion but like I’m not the best at spending money on others? It’s just like a thing but… you do smell really good… okay how about this, w-what if I get you pregnant and then you can take care of it? Like sometimes I’m around when the baby is chill or whatever and you take care of it? For the most part? Please?

Donna tartt wrote these gay guys so well because she did participatory field research asa gay man

Is the music from Kendall’s point of view?

So I’ve had a thought. Throughout the show, I noticed that whenever it’s talked about that Kendall would inherit, these moments are underscored with music that is often absent during the equivalent scenes with the other siblings. The most obvious example of this is in Dundee, when Rhea is trying to court each of them individually by telling them they ‘have what it takes’––with Shiv and Roman this kinda falls flat, but when she says to Kendall that “it’s you, it’s always been you”, there are these dreamy piano chords which inherently lend more weight to the idea. Initially, this seems to be a foreshadowing device meant to signal that Kendall WILL one day be the successor. Similarly, more dramatic chords are played when kendall talks to Frank about his name being on the piece of paper in Logan’s office. And later in Season 4 the new composition Allegro Bellicoso––which is initially played during Logan’s terrifying ATN speech––becomes paired with Kendall during scenes when he starts to behave more like his father (blackmailing Hugo, assembling cronies after the funeral). This again feels like the show is trying to foreshadow the whole tragic ‘kendall winning but only after he becomes the thing that he hates’ ending which we are meant to expect. 

HOWEVER, knowing how the show ends, and the cruelty of the fact that kendall becomes the thing he hates (and loses all of his loved ones + what was left of his soul) but STILL doesn’t inherit.. these musical motifs start to take on a different meaning. Rather than being a meta-narrative device which we look back on and say Ah! they told us the ending all along!, these moments seem more like a reflection of Kendall’s interiority––his belief that he IS the chosen one, that he CAN become his father––than a confirmation that such things could ever be true in reality. Then I started thinking about how many of the score’s most pronounced appearances in the show come when kendall is experiencing some emotionally significant event: the press conference, the near suicide in the pool, the final walk with Colin...and I realized, is Nicholas Britell’s music basically just from Kendall’s point of view?

‘course I’ll admit I might be generalizing a bit here, because there are strong compositions with other characters (particularly Shiv). But at the very least, this has made me very curious about how they went about scoring the show, and the discussions they must have had about perspective; and who’s emotions they chose to reflect in the music. 

here’s a balloon animal of an insect parasitized by Cordyceps sp. fungus

you want some?

What makes Poor Things so ultimately triumphant for me is the way that Bella Baxter is, despite it all, her own creation. She came into the world in an experiment that violated the autonomy of both Victoria before her and Bella herself, but she steps beyond the parameters of the experiment and into the world, to learn from it. The intentions of men may be to possess her or use her or take joy in despoiling her vulnerability, but their intentions do not determine her experiences. She decides. She explores. She looks at a world full of sorrow that could render her helpless and chooses instead to do what she can about it and then sleep easy at night. She listens to the call of her curiosity before all else, her happiness second, her compassion third. The family that she makes for herself in the end is unconventional, but it's ultimately hers and allows her to flourish as a doctor with an experimental nature and a heart of patinaed silver.

And I don't think it could be that particular kind of triumphant if the movie wasn't so fucked up.

Oddly shaped lava formations look like a mass of twisted bodies in Hawaii shot by Laszlo Kestay (1996)

Me in the shower thinking about my wife: i think one of the big reasons why het culture "wifey/hubby" "his/hers" "tiaras/mustaches" matching sets other than the cis binarism of it all is that it reveals the thought process behind heteropatriarchy wherein ideal love is a product of inversion; two puzzle pieces that fit together but are separate and made functional solely by the utility of their differences. Heteropatriarchal love retroactively redefines a person as a half of a whole, their functions and idiosyncrasies only valuable when curtailed by another's. But more than that, heteropatriarchal love is so divided. My "hers" towel and your "his." Married on a friday because saturdays are for the boys. Your woodsmoke-scented deodorant and my lavender. We cant possibly hope to understand each other and that's what lends our partnership value, somehow. But the love i cherish--the love that nurtures me--is inextricability. Not the teeth of your personality spinning the cogs of mine but the blend and blur of our edges together. The further in the tide rolls the better. The love that nurtures me is accepting everything about you into my life even if i dont feel the same way about it that you do. Its a becoming. Becoming you, becoming myself, becoming us, again and again. There are no puzzle pieces to snap together, and im no more or less of anything with or without you. But no matter what happens i carry you with me now. Even in the small ways like how we wear each others jackets and deodorant and hats. I wear your mannerisms, and your jokes. I have your interests. You have my music taste. We subsume and consume one another. We explore each other by exploring ourselves and vice versa. The process of loving you is a mapping of a vast expanse and it is the creation itself of that expanse, ad infinitum. Loving you is a fluidity of the self. I try out new ways of living through you. I see through your eyes. My life doubles by virture of sharing it with you. We finish each others sentences and joke that were the same person but its truer than we have the language to describe. My selfhood blurs into yours; Im not half of a whole, but together we are a whole. You could draw a straight line from one end of me to the other end of you, no breaks. And why shouldnt we travel that line? Step inside my head and get comfy. Mi casa es su casa. Youre me and im you.

What comes out of my mouth when she walks into the room: id let you wear my skin if i could

As we come up on autumn I must say that the pumpkin is a magnificent creation. Both tasty flesh and seeds and can be even made to have a silly face

succession + random glimpses into the roy's childhoods

bonus: