He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. […] Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I. I will have you in my hoard, Marya Morevna, my black mirror.
Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
Italo Calvino, Il barone rampante
“we are two reflections that cross swords with each other,”
Octavio Paz, Is There No Way Out? (tr. by Eliot Weinberger)
Anna Swir, A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, “The Same Inside,” tr. by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
Tamer, Beautiful Crime
Last night I dreamt about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally somehow you caught fire.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers (tr. by Bernard Frechtman)
Muse, Map of the Problematique
We love shadows of our hidden selves in others.
Anais Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart
Ilyas Abu Shabaka, Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology, “You or I?”, tr. by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard
not to post even more Villains Discourse on main but it really bugs me how people read giving villains tragic backstories as inherently excusing their actions and/or demonizing trauma survivors.
the actual message of Tragic Villains is (almost) always “people who are never taught or given any healthy, constructive outlets for their emotions will often find unhealthy, destructive outlets.” it’s that people who are traumatized and never learn how to cope with that trauma can become a danger to themselves and others. the message isn’t “trauma makes you evil!!!!” or “genocide is okay if you’ve been sad before!!!!” it’s “people need compassion and help to recover from trauma instead of becoming increasingly angry and harming themselves and others in the process.”
this site takes an alarmingly behaviorist and punitive approach to everything and it’s literally the most annoying thing. y’all have this concept that “if we just punish people hard enough, if we just scare them enough, if we just make them feel guilty enough.” that people just Do Bad Things Because They Do Bad Things, I Guess, and Because We Didn’t Threaten Them And Shame Them Enough. but humans are an innately social species. at our very core, we need compassion and kindness. we need healthy relationships with other humans.
you can keep looking at traumatized villains and being like “haha this dumb pathetic sadboi thinks murder is okay because his parents died” but as a survivor myself, unaddressed/untreated trauma absolutely can make you ragey and destructive. i was lucky enough to have support and eventually get the treatment i needed. but it’s not hard at all for me to imagine how, if that hadn’t been the case, that could’ve been me. obviously not on a movie-villain scale like murder or war crimes, but it’s so irritating as someone whose trauma has always manifested as anger to watch people on this site be like “this is just bad writing!!! real survivors/good survivors don’t end up like that the writers just hate survivors and want the audience to condone murder!”
Unreasonable Ideas
how it started how it’s going
Beauty and the Beast Concept Art by Karl Simon Part 2
please, like or reblog if you save/use
Japanese Ukiyo-e inspired / “The Forest”, “The Palace” and “The Sea”.
Me: I’m strong and independent. I don’t need love to be happy!
Also me: If a tall, rich, and handsome man doesn’t walk across a field in the early morning mist to tell me that I have bewitched him body and soul soon I might have to do something drastic
From Italy. I love: Gothic. Darkwave. Visual Kei. JRock. JPop. KPop. Japan. Korea. Manga. Anime. JDrama. KDrama. TDrama. Ireland. Celtic Metal. New age. Books. Star Wars. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Battlestar Galactica. Fringe. Supernatural. Black Sails. Peaky Blinders. Penny Dreadful and more. YA and fantasy novels. Visual Kei & JRock: ONE OK ROCK ♥. Malice Mizer. Moi dix Mois. MUCC.
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