I Absolutely Love That Tumblr’s New Obsession With Goncharov Came Just In Time For The End Of Dracula

i love how for better or worse, the women of severance simply don't fuck around. ms. cobel is a terrifying enemy to be up against, her violent outbursts make her feel unpredictable at times but they don't even hinder her, if anything they make her even more threatening because she's so calculating and unstoppable. she's ready at all times to either rip someone's throat out or ruin their life.

then helly, my beloved, is so fierce even as a blank slate of a person. if she can't have her freedom, then she'll make her captor pay the ultimate price even if it means she dies too. i don't even need to say anything else, you all know. you know her scenes by heart. even helena is so determined to make her mark at lumon that she'll undergo severance and become someone she sees as beneath herself. she'll craft this 'happy worker at the perfect company' narrative all to further her cause even as her life is at risk because that worker is deadset on killing her from the inside. the duality of this character.

and devon keeps coming in clutch. she gives no quarter to mr. milchick and is ready to protect innie!mark because she recognizes that he and her brother are one and the same. she's further from lumon than the rest of the characters but she sees the situation clearly, and even though she doesn't know how to help in the long term of this situation she's doing everything that she can in the short term. without her, who even knows how much deeper mark would be in his own grief, addiction and isolation. she's literally caring for her new baby and her grieving brother at the same time that she's figuring out this conspiracy, she's got a lot on her shoulders

also i'm such a gemma girlie. i don't mean in relation to mark or vs helly i don't care about any of that i'm a gemma girl forever. it's me and her. what if you thought you were eurydice until the last second until you turned around just in time to realize you were orpheus

thinking about "everyone hit me I was annoying" and how all the violence we've seen between the siblings involves Roman. likely because they saw their own father "beat him with a slipper until he cried" just for ordering lobster (though I think the real reason Logan targeted Roman with so much violence is obvious at this point), thinking about how they claim he liked the violence too because it became so normal for them that it was mythified into a joke, into something so unremarkable they claim not to remember. Roman's pain is a joke at most, something for Kendall to use against Logan when Kendall chooses to acknowledge it all. so, he tries to beat them to the punchline, beat them to the insult, to the abuse with loud vigour, but sits quietly in fear when there's no garuntee someone won't hurt him and deny it if it goes wrong. Roman isn't going back to Logan because he has some hope Logan is changed. He's going back to Logan because Kendall and Shiv assumed he would. Not only did they not trust him, but they threw his greatest pain and shame in Logan's face, not out of a sense of justice, but just to spite Logan. He's going back to Logan because he knows to expect that kind of unpredictable cruelty from him and so it hurts less than staying with Shiv and Kendall and getting it from them. He's not going back to Logan looking for denied love, he's gone back because he's given up on believing anyone in his family can give it and better the devil you know.

jeremy strong was SO right when he described kendall as goncharovian btw. that scene where de niro walks out of that church and keeps on walking... that's literally kendall walking back to the venue after killing that kid. he's walking into the night (which obviously symbolises his memories of russia) or he's walking to logan it is literally the same thing. what the fuck was it that matteo said in the dvd commentary? your beginning is your undoing and your salvation but you can never go back, or it tightens and winds like a chain around your neck. you CAN'T go back. clock motif my beloved. he's literally the most goncharovian poor little meow meow on earth

Fire of Love (Sara Dosa, 2022)      

Saint pentious!

One reading of what Mr. Utterson suspects the possible relationship between Jekyll and Hyde, and the 'ghost of some old sin', might be is that Hyde is his illegitimate son, but between Hyde entering through Jekyll's back door (literally and metaphorically), Utterson having a nightmare of Hyde breaking into Jekyll's bedroom while he's sleeping and forcing him to do his bidding in the middle of the night, and thinking of shenanigans around Jekyll's bed a second time, another theory he might have is that Hyde is Jekyll's secret lover, either estranged or ongoing, and between those two possibilities, the latter would be far more dangerous to Jekyll in social and legal terms if it were to be discovered or used to blackmail him.

For historical context, the novella was published in 1886, though as we will later find out, the only information we are given about the temporal setting is that the story is set in the 19th century, though it can't be any earlier than 1850, if you do the math based on Jekyll's age. Homosexuality between men in the UK in the form of sodomy was punishable by death until 1861, during which the Offences Against the Person Act was passed to amend the penalty for sodomy from death to a minimum of ten years in prison; later, and just prior to the novella's publication, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 criminalized any and all acts of homosexuality between men (not just sodomy), including those done in private with no witnesses — even a mere affectionate letter would suffice as evidence for prosecution — to the point where it became known as the Blackmailer's Charter (source); this would later be the act under which Oscar Wilde would be found guilty of 'gross indecency' in 1895 and sentenced to prison.

Meanwhile, it wasn't uncommon for upper-class men to have illegitimate children, and while potentially scandalous, it would not necessarily be life-ruining — though of course, the concern in that case could be that Hyde has other information he is holding over Jekyll's head as blackmail, including possible relationships with other men that would be both scandalous and illegal during this time period.