lamajaoscura

[lamajaoscura]

If I had a nickel for every time Kim Soo-hyun plays a softie who falls for a baddie, I'd have (at least) two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but I'm here for it. Like, he saw these intimidating women and was like, wife me up!

#kim soo hyun #it's okay to not be okay #queen of tears #kdrama

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the gender role subversion of hyun woo (and the son-in-laws married into the family) being in a position and undergoing treatment usually reserved for women combined with the class differences and oppression that comes with marrying into a family with immense wealth and power is so interesting esp. when other characters comment on either how he's lucky to marry into a rich family when the reality is the opposite or consider him a gold digger and undermine his capability and intelligence

like, even situations and treatment that would be considered as a given if he were a woman are seen with sympathy for his state by other (male)characters. even tho ojs's character as a doctor was supposed to be a fun cameo, it did add a lot bc after listening to hyun woo he was so grateful for his wife and that he wasn't living his life when like. actually ur wife could probably relate to a bit of hyun woo's experience!

#queen of tears #down to the being forced to have a baby ooooooh

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I love all of these employees so much:

I also just want to watch the rich argue!

#queen of tears #I love office workers sitting down with their popcorn

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hyunwoo really said there’s no point in serving cunt when your wife isn’t around to acknowledge it

#queen of tears #laugh rule

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KWAK DONG-YEON as HONG SOO-CHEOL Hae-in's younger brother and CEO of Queens Mart Queen of Tears (2024)

#kwak dong yeon #queen of tears #kwak dongyeon #fair of face and dumb of ass #himbo husband

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I'm not saying that Soo-cheol has entirely won me over with his cute stupidity but he has one chance to talk to his wife and he sends English and Korean vaccination records for the kid who might not even be his son? And he reminds his wife to sing baby shark? And we see the appointment and he's crying more than his son? And he's not even mad at her he just wants to know that she's okay?

My poor heart!

#queen of tears #love your himbo husband he deserves it #even if he doesn't he's cute #he's so cute but boy is he dumb #fair of face and dumb of ass

[lamajaoscura]

soon as she unblocks me, the wedding is back on

#queen of tears #so hot but so evil #and delusional

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“At your door I want you to fumble for your keys, postponing our good-bye, or–better–not find them at all so the two of us would have to spend the night in the field at the end of your street like ancient travelers plotting our next day’s journey by the stars.”

— Mark Brazaitis, from “I Know I Could Love You,” The Other Language: Poems (ABZ Poetry Press, 2009)

#mark brazaitis #poetry

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"When it comes to rural resentments, again and again these scholars insist that if rural whites are mad, it’s only because they have good reason to be. We are hardly unaware of the sufferings of rural America, many of which are born from late-stage capitalism. In fact, we dedicate the second chapter of our book to the causes and consequences of declining economic opportunities, outmigration of ambitious young people, hospital and pharmacy closures, and other very serious problems that pervade rural American communities, white and nonwhite alike. In our reporting, we heard many moving stories about the challenges rural communities face.

"What isn’t said enough is that rural whites are being told to blame all the wrong people for their very real problems. As we argue in the book, Hollywood liberals didn’t destroy the family farm, college professors didn’t move manufacturing jobs overseas, immigrants didn’t pour opioids into rural communities, and critical race theory didn’t close hundreds of rural hospitals. When Republican politicians and the conservative media tell rural whites to aim their anger at those targets, it’s so they won’t ask why the people they keep electing haven’t done anything to improve life in their communities. "

#rural resentment #rural america #paul waldman #new republic

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I don't trust anyone who hasn't acknowledged their capacity for evil.

#uwugirl #i swear i know at least five of these folks

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#aboriginal australian #first nations #great barrier reef

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“One of the most solid pieces of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers – you can find it in the choreographer Martha Graham’s biography. But it relaxes me in front of my laptop the same way I imagine it might induce a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes. Graham writes: ‘There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.’”

— Zadie Smith (via campaignagainstcliche)

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Dinner's ready :)

[lamajaoscura]

I’ve started rereading His Dark Materials, what with the BBC/HBO adaptation coming out, and… I’d say “I forgot how delightful the worldbuilding of Lyra’s universe is,” except it’s not that I forgot. It’s that I wasn’t equipped to appreciate it the first time around. Because the first time around I was a precocious little brat barely past Lyra’s age, and the broad differences were a fun puzzle to figure out as I went along, but most of the small details and slight shifts in terminology only registered as minor local texture, or flew completely over my head because I picked them up like I’d pick up any other unfamiliar term based on context.

But it’s delightful? It’s omnipresent, and it soaks right down into the nooks and crannies of that universe, and it’s based on an absolute magpie’s nest of random historical knowledge. The thing that made me stop reading, stare at the wall for a second, and pick up my laptop to write this post was the offhand use of “cauchuc” instead of “rubber,” which was recognizable because I knew the French word “caoutchouc,” but still not a straight-up borrowing. And it didn’t even surprise me when I looked it up and discovered that “cauchuc” was the original loanword from Quechua that “caoutchouc” and Spanish “caucho” come from. There are dozens of little things like that–tiny little artifacts of a world where the division of metaphysics into science and theology took a slightly different course, a world whose Industrial Revolution doesn’t quite repeat ours but it does rhyme, a world whose geopolitics are cut from familiar cloth but subject to a different set of historical accidents and linguistic fashions.

(Not that all the details are small. For sheer brain-breaking density of worldbuilding implications, I don’t know if you can beat the punch packed by the three words “Pope John Calvin.” Which is not an offhand “wow look at how bonkers this world’s history is” noodle incident–it’s the backstory of the entire Magisterium. Like, you could construct a whole argument that the relationship between Lyra’s world and ours is more like a Y-shape than a pair of parallel lines–an alt-history with the aborted/absorbed Reformation as its single major point of divergence, rather than “our world, but perpetually a little to the left in a thousand tiny independent ways.” From three words tucked into a short paragraph smuggled into the description of Lyra’s Oxford–but backed up, extensively, by the implications of which tiny mundane details Pullman chose to alter. That’s… a whole separate essay that I probably shouldn’t write while I’m only six chapters into the first book, though.)

Even with the big changes, there’s a sense that they tie back into the everyday ones and the everyday ones tie back into the big ones. An England whose sources of rubber are different is an England whose imperialism was just as extensive and exploitative but with a differently-shaped map, and it’s also an England whose techniques for electrical insulation depend on a different supply chain, and therefore probably an England whose history of undersea telecommunication cables was bonkers in a completely different way than ours. Was Pullman thinking about How the World was One when he renamed rubber? No idea, but with the way his HDM worldbuilding works, it actually seems more likely than not.

Anyway. It’s delightful. It’s an entire virtuoso performance by someone who’s thinking about the broad strokes of history, but who also knows and loves the history of everyday things, and takes great joy in re-imagining the paths that brought them about.

(I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FACT THAT LYRA’S WORLD APPARENTLY HAS NUCLEAR POWER THOUGH)

#his dark materials

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[lamajaoscura]

Fact 1: In most versions of Dungeons & Dragons, when infected – as opposed to natural-born – lycanthropes transform under the full moon, they assume the default alignment of their type during the ensuing mindless rampage.

Fact 2: In most versions of Dungeons & Dragons, the default alignment of werebears is Lawful Good.

Conclusion: When an infected werebear transforms under the full moon, they go on a mindless Lawful Good rampage.

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Saturn: King of Ages