i think the hottest look you can give someone after they commit acts of unspeakable violence is approval. like don’t get me wrong if there’s lust there too that’s great, but staring at someone with gore dripping down their chin and coating their hands to the wrists with undisguised appraisal and admiration. maybe giving them a little nod as if to say ‘well done’. THAT’S what says “yeah we’re gonna fuck nasty later”.
“i could fix him” well i could pat him on the head and tell him he’s a good boy
the problem with calling inanimate objects “girl” is that once you start you cannot stop. I said “girl” to the dishwasher because that bitch would not close no matter how hard I whacked her pussy. what is wrong with me
“In the same way that your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don’t, then it doesn’t.” – Brennan Lee Mulligan, D20, Fantasy High
What I absolutely love about Solanum’s name is that it works so well.
The Nomai are named after plants. Solanum is named after the Solanum Dulcamara, also known as the Bittersweet Nightshade. Like, firstly - her story is bittersweet, and also she’s on the quantum moon which i suppose has connotations of night and shade, like the shadow of the eye or something (that’s for you to dissect)
But the plant is also a flower with purple petals and is star-shaped. It literally kinda looks like the eye of the universe. If anything, the purple is symbolic of the quantum objects in the game (because they’re kinda a purple/blue, it’s hard to tell with the lighting.)
But another thing, breaking down her name;
Sol - The sun.
Annum - A year.
Her name literally means lightyear. This is too perfect I can’t. She is a brilliant character and she deserves a hug.
I feel like typically the “dead wife” montage does nothing for me, even when executed very well, because it’s often just like “here’s this woman you’ll never get to meet, she only matters because a man loves her so much and now he’s sad.”
But the montage wasn’t just Mark’s recollections. It was her perspective too. He’s her dead husband. He’s her Eurydice as much as he’s his own Orpheus.
This isn’t humanizing Gemma for Mark’s sake. This is humanizing Gemma for Gemma’s sake and it’s there not for us to root for Mark, it’s there for us to realize we’re rooting for Gemma. Every moment Mark reaches out for her, she’s reaching back.
The dead wife montage normally deprives a woman her agency, making her a tool for a man’s arc, but this episode fully restored Gemma’s agency. She’s fighting back, she’s yearning too. She hurts, she aches, she angers. She fights, she bleeds, she gets frustrated too. And has been before she was ever Ms Casey,
I’ve never seen a show restore a character’s humanity as fully as this single episode did for Gemma. She went from an abstract concept–a wife, a severed employee, a ghost–to a tangible person.
And this was realized so literally as well. We literally see her bleed, we literally watch her eat, her hands cramp up, her teeth ache. It’s like watching a hologram become flesh muscle by muscle, bone by bone.
I’m in awe of what they were able to do for her in just 50 minutes. In many ways, I feel I know Gemma better than I know half the cast.
the thing is like. of course cobel invented severance. of course the girl who spent her whole childhood doing backbreaking labor in a fume-choked factory from sun-up to sundown would dream of a way to erase the memory of the aches that came from hours spent stirring a vat. of course the girl who never had a work-life balance because lumon owned every aspect of her world would want to force that separation into existence. of course she sold her soul to the company store and immersed herself in the teachings of kier and earned every single thing she accomplished through dedication and industry. and of course jame eagan took credit for it all.
