sometimes i feel like im climing up this incline again alone but thankully sisypus and the itsy bitsy spider and here with me
english people know what stonehenge was for. they just wont tell us so that we have to come to their wet little country
The 2054 nuclear family
Struck by a realization.
Caracalla, a horribly disease ridden forceps baby, seemingly forgets his involvement with his brother’s death a matter of hours, or days, after the fact.
I see people attributing this to neurosyphilis, the psychological effects of lead poisoning, etc. Obviously. But I feel like it could also be some flavor of a trauma response. Whether he is unintentionally repressing memories of violence, or deliberately refusing to accept reality and thus losing the thread, I’m not quite sure.
Yeah, the man is obviously deeply sick. But him and Geta have also been through a history of physical abuse. A cocktail of drinking, desensitization to violence, trauma, brain damage, and psychosis all contributed.
If Caracalla was experiencing some type of severe complex trauma or delusions (or both;) it would be incredibly easy to completely discard anything that doesn’t adhere to the reality his mind had created. Especially when that reality is a place where he is correct, protected, or vindicated. Caracalla’s deep fried and shredded brain tissue would have absolutely no problem tossing out the memory of literally sawing Geta’s head off. Caracalla might have simply dismissed it as an intrusive thought he ignored, a nightmare he had. I dunno, him being conscious of the event but not recognizing it is MISERABLE!! And I am nothing if not a creator of miserable fiction.
I don’t have all of the right words here. But god. I am sick to my stomach thinking about my blorbos.
Damn, missed it again
im always surprised how many people think venetia is the younger sibling. i feel like we get so caught up in those scenes defined as shocking and grotesque by media and pop culture at large that we skim over the quiet, lurking horrors of saltburn. poor, poor venetia, who was born first but will never be first, not to the boys, not to her parents, not to oliver, not to anyone. mommy's emotionally battered and neglected firstborn daughter. felix was born when venetia was still a baby, not even two years old, the perfect golden boy, son and heir, sun and air. and he's getting it all, the title, the estate, everything ("I will look after this house just as felix would have"). do you think they ever talked about it? which catton was getting saltburn? i dont. venetia, the butt of every joke. desperate, embarrassing, lighting her body up like a neon sign on an empty highway. if felix is the sun, venetia is the moon, shrouded in darkness when he's not near. venetia, destroying and remaking herself in her mother's eyes. always hungry, a scavenger of love, picking over felix's scraps, sucking up the detritus at the bottom of a dark, lonely ocean.