Just Wondering, Did Anyone Else Think That This Is What The Psychic Meant When She Said That Rebecca

Jack and Angela are Bi4Bi

Hull-House interview with the Ghoul Boys

I finally watched the interview Ryan and Shane did with the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (The Haunting of Hull-House with Shane and Ryan of Ghost Files) and it was great.

They talked with the Hull-House Education Coordinator Nadia Maragha who not only did a great job as an interviewer but also seemed to be a fan of Unsolved and Watcher too.

The video started with the history of the Hull-House and the interviewer also told them about the space they had the interview in. I really liked that Ryan and Shane just sat there and listened. I love listening to what those two dorks have to say as much as the next queer but it was also great to listen to someone who knows what she is talking about and just watch Ryan and Shane.

They also talked a bit about the role of the Hull-House today - it is a museum on a college campus and part of the University Illinois-Chicago. The video will also be seen by the students of the university.

The interviewer said “Hull-House hasn’t really engaged very much with its supernatural history” and I find that incredibly interesting. Watcher got invited to Hull-House instead of reaching out first which I also find very amazing.

Shane said: “I think if you get people to read into these things or get them interested in these things then it’s worth what you’re doing. I’m sure there’s a ton of people who don’t know about Hull-House or Jane Addams or anything that goes on here cause it does seem a little more localized.”

And he is right, I did not know about it before but now I do. ^-^

Ryan said there is value in learning about other people’s beliefs and I agree with that 100% (and may I just say, the man is an absolute treasure).

They talked about locations they investigated - most creepy locations, favorite locations, and dream locations.

One question was especially interesting to me: How do they avoid sensationalizing places with a heavy history, how do they keep the balance between that and the comedic aspects of the show?

Ryan gave a very careful/thoughtful answer (seriously watch the vid) and he also said that believing in ghosts is perhaps one of the more optimistic things you can do because it proofs that there is something after you die. “Trying to kind of find proof of that is something that still drives me in terms of just my natural curiosity of the world.”

On how to get started with ghosthunting, they had this to say: use the phone you already have and go to a haunted place (Ryan), be safe, be vigilant, wear some boots, don’t go into a condemned building (Shane). Both answers I love because it’s basically just: “This is accessible, you don’t need fancy equipment”, and “Be safe, don’t get hurt”.

Nobody ever got to check out the attic! It is so cool to me that they were the first ones who hunted for ghouls and devil babies there. Amazing.

The interviewer said it is common that people don’t want to go upstairs because they don’t feel right about it, even if they don’t know about the haunted history.

Some random things:

Shane said when he was in grade school, he wanted to be an art teacher.

Shane did a project in school where had to present something about insects and he edited a video about bees.

Bergaraism - The Science We Don’t Know About Yet. A nice little reminder of “There is other science we don’t know about yet”. :D I enjoyed that a lot.

The interviewer also spoke about her own beliefs which was SUPER interesting.

Also, I really like her flower pen! ^-^

coparents nursing their fucked up evil child with highly flammable gas

EVERYONE SHUT UP THIS IS THE BEST TIKTOK

*stares pointedly at Heartstopper fandom*

I wanna know about Richard and Jan Maas’s dynamic. Their banter about the supermodel in the Christmas episode. Richard’s absolute refusal to sightsee Amsterdam or eat Dutch food. The way they hugged at Sam’s restaurant. Jan squeezing his shoulder after cooking teases him. Tell me what’s going on between these twoooo

Norm is absolutely one of my favourite characters in the Fallout universe. The fact he loves his family and wants what's best for them being what drives him to look for the truth of what has happened to them and why is fantastic. The ultimate difference between him and Chet, too, is a great show of his character. It began with him choosing to help his sister find their father and ends with him coming to the same realisation as she has – their father was not the man he said he was and much of their life has been a lie. Watching him decide to take the hunt for the truth into his own hands, even when it could be the end of him, is incredibly compelling.

What makes Norm so enjoyable to watch, too, is just how human he is. All of the characters in the show are that way, which is part of what makes it great (yes, even the ghouls as they were at one time human). The distress he feels at seeing what happened to Vault 32 being swept under the rug, and the anger he feels towards Betty and the others for doing it seemingly out of a desire for control and power more than anything else is tangible. The fact it drives him to take the risk of sneaking into Vault 31 shows his bold and couregous side, and also that it's driven by not only his own curiosities but his desire for the truth. It’s a great parallel trait he shares with Lucy and, as she comes to find out, their mother. The anger he feels towards his father and also the desperation he feels to survive are a great contrast of his truth seeking and his baser humanity.

All things considered, Norm's competing feelings of a desire for truth, a desire for safety, curiosity, and a love for his family are what make him a great character. The fact he shares those traits with Lucy but expresses them in different ways creates a strong parallel narrative for their characters, and also does a great job showing the two sides of courage. The fact neither he or Lucy are impervious or shy away from moments of weakness and subsiming emotion latch onto the naivety from their upbringing and also their humanity. With them both now having to reckon with the truth about their father, a reunion between them will I'm sure be great and also remind them that not all of their family members are bad. Reckoning with the truth about their mother and Lucy's love for her being what compelled her to end her suffering before breaking down at the gravity of it is another layer of complexity to their family dynamics that both of them will need time to sit with. The contrasting feelings of how they knew their father versus what they've come to learn about him serve well to separate them from others like Chet; where he, their cousin, chooses to remain wilfully ignorant, they chose to put aside their fears and look for a truth they knew was out there.

Chet is a coward because he chooses to ignore the truth he has seen with his own eyes.

Lucy is brave because she is willing to go to any and all lengths to find her father and is then willing to end the suffering her mother is under because of him; she is openly emotional and driven by that and the love she feels for her family and is horrified and shattered by her father being a different man than the one she had always known.

Norm is brave because he is willing to do anything for his sister and father and, when faced with the choice to stay in blissful ignorance, because he chooses to seek out the truth even when it could hurt him; he, too, doesn't shy away from the pain the truth about his father causes him and, like Lucy, has to learn to live with the competing memories of their father and the reality of who and what he is.

Hank is a coward because, while he goes to the extremes to attempt to preserve himself and his family, he refuses to accept the fact his actions have consequences for the way his children (and, previously, their mother) had seen him and instead tries to force things to go back to the way they were before his children could learn of his ability to be selfish.

And Rose was brave because she loved her children so much that she would and did do everything for them, even when she had to put her love for their father aside and risk herself so that she and her children could have a chance to live in truth rather than lies. Her children share that with her, even though they didn't know it, just as much as they share her love, empathy, and desire for the truth even when living in wilful ignorance could have been easier.

Tl;dr – the entire MacLean family being driven by love for each other but expressing it in different ways that ultimately drive them apart is not only great at showcasing the different sides of courage and cowardice but showing the way Lucy and Norm are so similar and are driven by their love for their family just as much as their desire for the truth and that neither Lucy or Norm shy away from their emotional and impulsive reactions to it presents them as not only fully human but two sides of the same coin; they are both couregous even though they take two different paths to the truth.

icemav coded

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.

knives out 1: in a world full of exploitation -- amidst rich assholes who are all playing their own games, in a country that feels entitled to a land they stole -- you have to play your own game, and a strategy of kindheartedness is valuable.

knives out 2: but beating them at their own game is also valuable. burning shit down will be the answer sometimes. and the rich are not immune to destruction, despite all their resources, because their networks are so toxic and codependent. and also they're dumb. they're a very shaky tower of cards.