lmao the worst thing about being Palestinian is you’ll be fucking grieving and you are STILL expected to articulate all your thoughts in the most coherent manner IN ENGLISH and have at least 25 citations backing up any point you make, even if you’re just talking about the way you are feeling . otherwise the west is just going to paint you as a barbarian
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probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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Frodo: Sam hates Gollum, but that is what I shall become once I have lost myself to the ring... he’ll despise me...
Sam if Frodo did turn into a Gollum: That’s a very nice fish you caught with your bare hands, Mr. Frodo, and its very smart of you to eat it raw, saves us the trouble of starting a fire. I knitted you a sweater in case you get cold running around in that loincloth of yours. Is the sun hurting your eyes? I’ll kill it if it’s bothering you. I’ll kill the sun
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btw did you guys see how the hannah arendt prize committee tried to revoke masha gessen's prize after gessen, a jewish journalist, wrote an essay about how zionists and zionist-sympathizing gentiles, particularly in germany, wield accusations of antisemitism to shut down anti-zionist jews... an essay in which they specifically quoted hannah arendt several times
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Needlessly close reading and long commentary on chapter 57 and how the audience actually has an extremely limited view on what Marcille has been like over the course of her life.
I am once again thinking about how pre-dungeon Marcille is so quiet and stoic that she seems like a completely different person. How jarring chapter 57 is for the audience. Like you have Marcille, who has been just the most blindingly expressive person with resting baby face
And then the chapter drops a title page of Marcille hearing from Falin for the first time in four years and it's like.
Who is that. Genuinely. Would you even realize that's Marcille without the context clues?
And then the chapter just keeps coming in with the sucker punches.
We have SEEN Marcille meet strangers. It was never with this understated of a smile.
literally who the hell is this. the few times the audience gets to see some Signature Marcille Faces that they're used to is when she finally gets to see Falin again
when she's testing out her new spells
(and when Laios and Falin are fantasizing about her being their damsel in distress, funnily enough)
And then finally. Finally you get to a fully recognizable Marcille when she fucking DIES and comes back to life to geek out about necromancy.
We know she loves magic. We know she loves Falin. So it's not so surprising that she wouldn't be able to keep a mask up when thinking or talking about the things she loves. But why the mask in the first place? Where does it come from? It's tempting to think that, maybe, Falin's departure just hurt her so much that it turned her into a quiet person.
But that's only half true. If you go back, the first instance you see of this incredibly mild personality is actually introduced much earlier, in chapter 17.
What if she was always like that. What if her default after her father died was to hold people at arm's length, to never really emote past being polite and friendly. What if Falin was the first person who was able to bring her out of her shell, and when she left, Marcille just went back to how she was.
And when comparing her detached demeanour with someone else...
It's not exact, but wouldn't you say there's a resemblance? Wouldn't you think she might be trying her best to imitate what she saw of her own mother working as an accomplished mage?
It would certainly explain why she's hiding behind her portrait in her nightmare, at least.
We aren't told that Marcille has been distancing herself from everyone around her using a mature and dignified personality she modelled off her mother. But we sure as hell are shown it, I think.
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