*stares Pointedly At Heartstopper Fandom*

Miles Teller as Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw Top Gun: Maverick (2022) dir. Joseph Kosinski

I do think the majority of us should strangle the shame that lives inside of us like wringing water from the rag until we are soft and dry and weightless

jamie & rebecca + making choices

This is probably my last post on the whole “Liz is dead” situation but I want to talk about my great grandmother, who is currently 92 years old. When I was growing up, hell even now, she’d tell me a lot about her own stories, mostly about how terrifying life was under both the British Raj and Nizam rule (her side of my family is from Hyderabad - Google the Nizams and the Razakars if you’ve never heard about them, that’s a whole other thing of its own).

Something I remember very clearly is her telling me about this one song she was forced to sing in her school - she went to a Christian convent school - and the song was about the greatness of “George Prabhu and Mary Rani,” aka George V, Elizabeth II’s grandfather. Recently my mom was able to film her singing this song so that we could listen to the lyrics, which are originally in Telugu, and roughly translated it means “we’re singing in honor of George and Mary, who are the rulers of India and have brought great fortune to India, and we see them as our father and mother.”

This is just a really difficult reminder that when we’re talking about why Elizabeth II and the royal family don’t deserve our respect or condolences, many of us have very personal stories that run deep through our families. “But she was a mother, a grandmother, a person” and I don’t care because she and her family were in the business of dehumanizing and erasing the identities of millions of other mothers, other grandmothers, other PEOPLE. Why else would my great grandmother be forced to sing a song in their honor? “But she wasn’t responsible for India” fair enough, her darling grandfather had a great time doing that, but how about you go and talk to Kenya? Or anyone in Africa? Or the Caribbean? I’m sick and tired of being told to “not speak ill of the dead” when REALLY I and millions of others should be getting an apology from anyone who wants to “praise her legacy” and talk about how “revolutionary” she was.

edit: i got the george’s mixed up before. george v is elizabeth ii’s grandfather. george vi is her father.

can we just take a second to appreciate Aryan Simhadri? he's a fantastic actor, every second he's on the screen he manages to make his actions scream GROVER. he's perfect for his role just like Leah and Walker are yet I don't see nearly enough people talking about him and his contribution to the show in this fandom. he's not only nailing the Grover Underwood vibe but he's also providing so much phenomenal Indian/Asian rep. he's giving so much depth of character and that is so rare for Indians (and Asians generally) in popular media, and he's so conscious of how his background interacts with Grover's. Aryan has given so so much to us and now I wanna hear y'all celebrating that.

ryan bergara is the emma perkins of puppet history send tweet

The fact that Ted Lasso cut away from Colin coming out to the team, after we hear him saying he doesn’t want to be a “spokesperson”, is so powerful to me.  As much as I love queer representation in media, I feel like sometimes there is this hyper-focus on the coming out scenes, as the pinnacle of the queer experience that get thrust into the spotlight for the emotional payout from the audience. 

That may resonate for some people, as coming out is obviously a big thing and can feel like a spotlight moment.  But I feel like there are a lot of people out there whose greatest wish is for coming out to not be a thing. To not be a big moment.  To not have to be a spokesperson.

And I love that Ted Lasso gave Colin that.

The way this scene made me actually sob:))))) I’m fine:)))))

Book Jessica x Leto <3

I think one of my favourite things about Jessica x Leto in the Dune book is the fact that they are so secure in their love for each other:

You have Jessica; who is a very well trained Bene Gesserit, who can control every cell in her body, that when it comes to Leto instinctually let's herself feel and emote naturally. (Conceives Alia out of "instinct", cries/breaks down when Leto is in danger/dies, visibly gets upset when people ask her about them getting married etc.)

But Jessica is also very secure in her knowledge that Leto loves her and only her, she says to Hawat that "he'll not marry anyone else, not as long as I live." And she is very confident in that which suggests through words/actions that Leto has assured her of this before.

Similarly with Leto, he's very secure in knowing Jessica loves him and he doesn't consider even for a minute that she is the actual traitor. He says "she's opened/showed her heart to me" and that he "knows her", he also tells Paul himself that he'd sooner distrust himself than Jessica.

And so I think that while we didn't get a lot of them speaking directly to each other in the book, the conversations they have with other characters about their relationship is very telling. There is a sense of communication and deep understanding between them, whether it's verbal/non verbal/physical, that they love each other very much and that they are it for each other.

Then there's an aspect of their relationship that is a bit more tragic to me;

From the start of the book through to the end, even after Leto has died, there is this sense of defence that is constantly surrounding their relationship.

It starts with the Reverend Mother accusing Jessica of having a son purely because of Leto and Jessica has to defend that decision.

Then it's everyone thinking Jessica is the traitor and Leto has to defend her (obvi he gives into the plan for his own schemes but anyway).

Jessica has to defend her love for Leto to Yueh, Hawat, and eventually Gurney later on in the novel. She has to fight off all these accusations and questions about why she hasn't married him or why he didn't marry her.

Paul has to defend his parents' love as well to Gurney when Jessica can't convince him she's not the traitor. (Gurney was a real one for wanting to die for doing that lol.)

And it's really sad that that was something that consistently happened, like after 15/16/17 years they were still having to defend what they had. They were probably very private people and while they did have their own love and understanding of each other, other people just didn't get to see that and so there's this constant sense of protection for both of them for who they love and their family.

And especially for Jessica, who at that point had betrayed the Bene Gesserit more than once, being accused and having to defend her loyalty when everything she had done was out of love for Leto.

There's something so visceral about their story and the way they love each other that really resonates with me idk