did jarth change his eyeliner color for the imaginary party
Its not exactly new information that Jareth is just super extra
Jennifer Connelly in Louis Vuitton at the LA premiere for Only the Brave on October 8, 2017.
This is fun
#OK ALRIGHT OK ALRIGHT OK ALRIGHT #seems like sarah went back at a later time and took the gobin king up on that offer
Ugh okay so.
I GUESS WHILE I’M HERE IN LABYRINTH HELL FOR SOME REASON.
I.
Haven’t read the comics despite having them and there’s. A reason for htat besides The Executive Dysfucntion that has made keeping up with any comics impossible:
I was never terribly interested in Jareth having a backstory, even in fanfic. Ever. And it hit me that the reason for that is I have always been desperately invested in the idea that Jareth is an invention of Sarah’s, Sarah’s idea of what a goblin king –and by extension arguably a romantic interest–is supposed to be. Maybe she had a mythos developed in her head for how he became that, maybe she didn’t, maybe he was just Powerful Sparkly Man In Tights I Dream About Sometimes (Who I Kind Of Want To Boss Around Maybe?). Maybe the book had a backstory for him, but that’s doubtful and it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter because Jareth was always supposed to be a centerpiece for Sarah’s fantasies of power, a prop for her games. We talk a lot about the final exchange, but the line that always gets me is ‘I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me’. *He’s trying* to be what her fantasies want (and we can go into the fact that it isn’t going into the probably sometimes risque fantasies Sarah has and Jareth is scrabmling to fix THAT but that’s. there’s a fanfic there okay)–so focusing overmuch on How He Got Here kind of.
Defeats the point of Sarah’s Jareth. Maybe there’s another version of Jareth who needs All The Backstory to make sense in another girl (or boy’s) fantasy, but not Sarah’s, and the tl;dr here is this is why all the prologue stuff just seems Insufferable to me and I need the fandom to better adult Sarah fic with Sarah* ealizing he needs a better story (…and also that she wants to boss him around look I just surfafced form the hell that is the ao3 tag all right)
Listening to Wicked Girls when I’m having emotoins about Sarah Williams is uh.
A Thing.
(I keep having Thoughts about how Labyrinth is the only fairytale-as-sexual-awakening thing that doesn’t make me angry because within the narrative it is driven by Sarah figring out what she wants for herself, not just accepting what she’stold she’s supposed to find desierable)
….
I just saw the term ‘lemon’ used in an AO3 summary.
Anyway the labyrith tag is horrifying
Hairspray and the Shape of Water both take place in circa 1962 Baltimore and I absolutely think of the events of the two happening simultaneously
♪ Good morning Baltimore! There’s the fish man who lives next door. There’s the lady who rides the bus. I think they’re boning but I won’t judge. Good morning Baaaaaaaaltimore…. ♪
Do you think you can (/are allowed to) enjoy something that 1. was created by a piece of scumbag, and 2. has a lot of things in it which really are very problematic, in lack of a less overused word?
I think so much depends on a) when you were first exposed to a thing, b) how regularly you have been exposed to it after that first time, and c) whether you’re trying to pretend the thing has no issues.
I mean, you’re really asking two different things here. “Do you think you can enjoy something that was created by a terrible person?” Absolutely. For one thing, we don’t all have a complete Rolodex of Every Bad Thing Anyone Has Ever Done. I have read and watched and loved and treasured things made by people who I later found out were awful; their awfulness clearly did not render the thing completely unenjoyable to the ignorant.
“Can you continue to enjoy something that was created by a terrible person?” Yes, although that takes a little more awareness, I think, of what’s going on, and it’s going to be very, very personal, and very, very situational. Joss Whedon cheated on his wife and abused his power over young actresses and was kind of a terrible person. But Buffy was still incredibly important to me as a teen, and if it comes on the TV, I’ll get through about ten minutes of most* episodes before I forget what I know and only remember what I feel, and what I feel is nostalgia and joy and yes, enjoyment. I don’t get to erase what he did. I will think long and hard before I do things that put more money in his personal pockets. But I can still enjoy some of his work.
(*Most: the episodes that clearly show certain tendencies were hard to watch before I realized how personal they were for him. I can’t deal anymore. I just can’t.)
“Can you enjoy something that has a lot of problematic elements?” Absolutely. Part of this is really going to be when you were first exposed. I know a lot of the things I read, watched, and loved as a kid are super-problematic by today’s standards, and I’m careful to review them before I recommend them to other people, but my love doesn’t necessarily die because I learn more. Obviously, this is subjective: Revenge of the Nerds was absolutely tainted for me by the rapey aspects of the carnival, which went completely over my head as a child, while I can still handle Real Genius despite some of the casual sexism. How problematic is too problematic is completely individual.
“Are you allowed to enjoy something that has problematic elements?” Everything has problematic elements. Everything. If we can’t see them yet, we’ll see them in ten years, and maybe we’ll be horrified, but it will also be a sign that the world is getting better. Are people going to interrogate your enjoyment of certain things? Yeah. There’s a reason my friends who still love Ender’s Game mostly preface that love with “I know OSC is a bigot, but this book was so important to me when I was eleven,” or something of the sort. There’s stuff I don’t discuss enjoying because I don’t want to have the conversation. But unless it’s hurting other people, of course you’re allowed to enjoy it. You get to enjoy anything you want.
okays eriously where are you all hiding the actually good Labyrinth kink fic because it’s apparently not on AO3 and I *cannot* fix this on my own okay.
“…you will find what you want only as long as you stay in your dream. Once abandon it, and you are at the mercy of other people’s dreams. They will make of you want they want you to be. Forget them, Sarah. Trust to your dream.”
Sarah was spellbound.
“Trust to me,” Jareth said, moving his face close to her. “Can you do that?”
i’m pretty sure “cats and humans can never have a bond as strong as a dog and a human” is just code for “i’ve never even tried to treat a cat correctly in my life”
Also dogs are man-made to be loving towards us. We didn’t selectively breed cats the same as we did dogs. I’m 100% a dog person but with them it’s more of, “this tool that I use is also very cute and I’ve removed 96% of its ability to not love me” whereas with cats it’s more, “Ah yes, this is my roommate Craig. He’s very nice to me unless I ignore his wants and treat him like an asshole.”
Cats are the only animal that domesticated itself. The bond between cats and humans are on the cats’ terms, not ours.
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