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orpheus and eurydice

Yosano Akiko, transl. by Kenneth Rexroth, from The Burning Heart; Women Poets of Japan

eurydice is the memory of life, while orpheus is the memory of death. eurydice will forever carry within herself a life lived; orpheus will forever bear the burden of loss.

something something Eurydice is life even though she died, while Orpheus is death even though he lived.

@mr-mystery-man

having a cat is great. there's a small little animal wandering around. effervescent

dying is easy, young man. living is harder.

I do love that you can see the influence of Tolkien meaning for Eowyn to die throughout her arc. That girl just screams "doomed by the narrative". She's set up for this grand yet tragic death, and wants for nothing else than a grand exit and a glorious end to all things.

But having her live is so much more interesting. And having her live to find happiness especially. She seems like a tragic character. She thinks herself a tragic character. She is overwhelmed by a sense of doom and helplessness. Her narrative is overwhelmed by a sense of doom and helplessness.

But she isn't doomed.

Turns out, decent healthcare, clued in and concerned family members, and a decent support base, go a long towards towards un-dooming her narrative.

Disclaimer: I am not the original owner or creator of this content. The source account is listed below.

for some reason my blog's glitching out and won't let me reply to other people's replies, so i include my thoughts here. to the person who asked "what was the point of this post", here's my full answer:

the point of this post was to draw attention to accounts and influencers who glamorize the "trad wife" lifestyle while ignoring its harsher realities. it's a dangerous image to plant in young girls' heads that they'll be perfectly happy and forever taken care of if they give everything up to become stay at home moms. that's simply not true. i very much agree that being a mother under any circumstance requires sacrifice, and if you willingly choose that sacrifice for the sake of raising a loving family, more power to you. i commend that. but if you tell young women in their late teens or early twenties with little to no life experience and no safety net that being a stay at home mom is the perfect, most idyllic lifestyle, you're setting them up to be trapped in a reality they were not prepared for and have little chance of escaping once they're in it. that's why the harsher aspects of the traditional lifestyle need to be accurately portrayed, because if you aren't conscious of and willing to make the sacrifices that come with being a stay at home mother and wife, you're ill prepared to be one.

on a similar note, yes, both working mothers and stay at home mothers need to sacrifice a lot for their families, but the difference is that working mothers have job experience, an income of their own, and the ability to provide for their family or help to provide for their family if something goes wrong. they have the means to leave their marriage (or be left, or widowed) and still support their children. stay at home mothers are far, far more vulnerable in that regard. anyone who chooses a traditional lifestyle needs to know the risks they are facing by doing so.

just once, i'd like to see a "tradwife" blog where the wife in question looks 10 years older than she really is. i'd like to see the prematurely white hairs, the dried and wrinkled hands, the cracked and dull nails from constantly cleaning and washing dishes, the dark circles and eye bags. i want to see the trad wives who gained weight during pregnancy and never managed to lose it, the ones who have nowhere to complain that their knees and backs ache from scrubbing bathroom floors, the ones dead tired from spending all day on their feet sweeping and cooking.

i want to see the trad wives who look messy and disheveled because they had no time to wash their hair this week, whose faces hurt from falling asleep with their makeup on every night from sheer exhaustion. i want to see the trad wives who haven't bought a new dress in years, whose prettiest clothes don't fit them anymore, who only have one bra at this point and it's five years old and the underwire's starting to come out. i want to see the trad wives who are ashamed of their appearance, of the way their bodies changed, the baby weight they never shed. the ones who look longingly and jealously at wealthier women their age who look 10 years younger, those who have the time and money to invest in their looks and hobbies.

i want to see the trad wives whose children take them for granted. those whose children think the beds make themselves, the meals cook themselves, the house cleans itself. those whose children never help out around the house because "that's mom's job". i want to see the trad wives whose sons take after their fathers and never lift a finger to help because "that's women's work", and whose daughters are forced to become mini mothers and housekeepers from a young age because "that's women's work". i want to see the trad wives whose sons never grow up and whose daughters never get to be kids, because that's what they're taught.

i want to see the trad wives whose children are disabled. those whose toddlers aren't beautiful and docile little angels, but who have behavioural issues, developmental issues, health issues of all kinds. children who are crippled, paralyzed, on the spectrum, with down syndrome, deaf, blind, nonverbal. those whose children will require permanent care or even hopitalization throughout most of their lives, who require therapy or medication, who struggle with chronic pain or emotional regulation, for whom every day is a fight.

i want to see the trad wives whose husbands struggle to make ends meet. i want to see trad wives faced with a near-empty pantry, trying to figure out what to feed their children with. i want to see trad wives whose husbands are breaking down under financial strain, constantly irritable and withdrawn because they don't know how they'll afford the mortgage this month. i want to see the trad wives who have no idea how to help pay the bills because men are the ones who handle finances. i want to see trad wives struggling to hold back tears when their children complain about eating spaghetti and tuna for the second week in a row, or when they ask for a christmas gift they can't afford.

i want to see the trad wives who can't remember their own hobbies. i want to see trad wives whose eyesight's so far gone that by the time they have time, they can no longer read, or paint, or sew. i want to see the trad wives who gave up on their self-care routines long ago because there wasn't time nor money, the ones who haven't bought a candle or a new novel or a colored pencil set in years because their kids' dental surgery or college tuition was more important. i want to see the trad wives who say "i used to be a wonderful dancer once" or "i really loved pottery once" or "i was very good at math once, doubt i remember any of it now" with a sad, faraway look in their eyes.

i want to see the trad wives who are real. these pastel moodboards full of flowers and shining kitchens and blonde babies and thin young women with perfect skin are an illusion. they don't exist. to be a traditional housewife is to accept a life full of sacrifice. it means you're willing to waste away, to shrink in on yourself until there's almost nothing left, just for the sake of your family.

even if you do everything right, if you marry a good man who provides for you and doesn't abandon you, or cheat on you, or abuse you in any way (which is already like finding a needle in a haystack), you will still be faced with exhaustion and suffering. your children will not be perfectly angelic and lovely. your house will not be clean and flawless at all times. your husband will not be loving and doting forever. you will have to work yourself to the bone; you will have to sacrifice your looks, your health, your hobbies, your emotional needs, your physical and mental well-being. nothing about you will be a priority anymore.

if that kind of sacrifice is worth it to you, then i commend you; you are far braver and more noble than i. but if you are not willing to sacrifice everything about yourself for the sake of your family, then you should take a long, hard look in the mirror, and ask yourself if you've fallen in love with a fantasy. because i can promise you, the reality is so, so much uglier than you ever could've imagined.

A gothic horror story where a gentleman from a good family gets haunted by something monstrous, which follows him around and keeps killing people around him at utter random, in cruel and horrifying ways. Specifically within circumstances where the protagonist has no alibi, and everything indicates that he committed the murders.

But the real horror is not that he would find himself accused of the murders, but that the people around him naturally assume that he did do it, but genuinely do not care, because the victims are never people that the society around him considers "important". The scullery maid of his household is found brutalised beyond recognition in a room where even the ceiling has been splattered with blood, and a constable of the local police brushes it off as a case of household discipline gone wrong, being horrifyingly casual with the assumption that the protagonist severely beat a girl in his service to death, and will dismiss it as an accident. The street urchin that the protagonist was seen talking with - wanting to help this poor little orphan - is found decapitated, severed head in the protagonist's fireplace. This, too, is calmly swept under the rug.

After every horrifying murder, the protagonist tries to seek help, to present the crime to authorities in hopes of getting some semblance of help, or at least clearing his own name of this, but every time it's brushed off. "These things do happen", he is reassured, like it's perfectly normal that a mansion of that size has a secret garden of unmarked graves in one shady corner.

The real horror is the ever-encompassing implication that this is perfectly normal.

i'd like to consider myself in this category tbh

i am very aggressively protective over nonbinary people who look amab because some of you are very quick to accept nonbinary people who look afab but shit on anyone else.

and stop saying "afab nonbinary" and "amab nonbinary" because we all know you're just treating us like "female" and "male" which, yk is the exact opposite of what nonbinary is meant to be.

treat nonbinary people like nonbinary people, nothing else.

*looks at sherlock* it’s very smoll

if you're pro-life and you're not actively fighting to make this a reality for women everywhere, you're not really pro-life. you're just anti-abortion.

it's not the same thing.

It’s incredible to me that surrogacy is so normalized. We all understand that you can’t sell your organs because that would incentivize people to put themselves in harm’s way. But interestingly, you can rent a woman’s entire body and have her go through a process that could result in physical/mental trauma and even death. But oh, I forgot, when it comes to women, it’s okay because our bodies are always the ultimate sacrifice

the cognitive dissonance is strong with this one

It’s incredible to me that surrogacy is so normalized. We all understand that you can’t sell your organs because that would incentivize people to put themselves in harm’s way. But interestingly, you can rent a woman’s entire body and have her go through a process that could result in physical/mental trauma and even death. But oh, I forgot, when it comes to women, it’s okay because our bodies are always the ultimate sacrifice

just once, i'd like to see a "tradwife" blog where the wife in question looks 10 years older than she really is. i'd like to see the prematurely white hairs, the dried and wrinkled hands, the cracked and dull nails from constantly cleaning and washing dishes, the dark circles and eye bags. i want to see the trad wives who gained weight during pregnancy and never managed to lose it, the ones who have nowhere to complain that their knees and backs ache from scrubbing bathroom floors, the ones dead tired from spending all day on their feet sweeping and cooking.

i want to see the trad wives who look messy and disheveled because they had no time to wash their hair this week, whose faces hurt from falling asleep with their makeup on every night from sheer exhaustion. i want to see the trad wives who haven't bought a new dress in years, whose prettiest clothes don't fit them anymore, who only have one bra at this point and it's five years old and the underwire's starting to come out. i want to see the trad wives who are ashamed of their appearance, of the way their bodies changed, the baby weight they never shed. the ones who look longingly and jealously at wealthier women their age who look 10 years younger, those who have the time and money to invest in their looks and hobbies.

i want to see the trad wives whose children take them for granted. those whose children think the beds make themselves, the meals cook themselves, the house cleans itself. those whose children never help out around the house because "that's mom's job". i want to see the trad wives whose sons take after their fathers and never lift a finger to help because "that's women's work", and whose daughters are forced to become mini mothers and housekeepers from a young age because "that's women's work". i want to see the trad wives whose sons never grow up and whose daughters never get to be kids, because that's what they're taught.

i want to see the trad wives whose children are disabled. those whose toddlers aren't beautiful and docile little angels, but who have behavioural issues, developmental issues, health issues of all kinds. children who are crippled, paralyzed, on the spectrum, with down syndrome, deaf, blind, nonverbal. those whose children will require permanent care or even hopitalization throughout most of their lives, who require therapy or medication, who struggle with chronic pain or emotional regulation, for whom every day is a fight.

i want to see the trad wives whose husbands struggle to make ends meet. i want to see trad wives faced with a near-empty pantry, trying to figure out what to feed their children with. i want to see trad wives whose husbands are breaking down under financial strain, constantly irritable and withdrawn because they don't know how they'll afford the mortgage this month. i want to see the trad wives who have no idea how to help pay the bills because men are the ones who handle finances. i want to see trad wives struggling to hold back tears when their children complain about eating spaghetti and tuna for the second week in a row, or when they ask for a christmas gift they can't afford.

i want to see the trad wives who can't remember their own hobbies. i want to see trad wives whose eyesight's so far gone that by the time they have time, they can no longer read, or paint, or sew. i want to see the trad wives who gave up on their self-care routines long ago because there wasn't time nor money, the ones who haven't bought a candle or a new novel or a colored pencil set in years because their kids' dental surgery or college tuition was more important. i want to see the trad wives who say "i used to be a wonderful dancer once" or "i really loved pottery once" or "i was very good at math once, doubt i remember any of it now" with a sad, faraway look in their eyes.

i want to see the trad wives who are real. these pastel moodboards full of flowers and shining kitchens and blonde babies and thin young women with perfect skin are an illusion. they don't exist. to be a traditional housewife is to accept a life full of sacrifice. it means you're willing to waste away, to shrink in on yourself until there's almost nothing left, just for the sake of your family.

even if you do everything right, if you marry a good man who provides for you and doesn't abandon you, or cheat on you, or abuse you in any way (which is already like finding a needle in a haystack), you will still be faced with exhaustion and suffering. your children will not be perfectly angelic and lovely. your house will not be clean and flawless at all times. your husband will not be loving and doting forever. you will have to work yourself to the bone; you will have to sacrifice your looks, your health, your hobbies, your emotional needs, your physical and mental well-being. nothing about you will be a priority anymore.

if that kind of sacrifice is worth it to you, then i commend you; you are far braver and more noble than i. but if you are not willing to sacrifice everything about yourself for the sake of your family, then you should take a long, hard look in the mirror, and ask yourself if you've fallen in love with a fantasy. because i can promise you, the reality is so, so much uglier than you ever could've imagined.

i get why people were criminals back in the day. if i was running from the cops in the thirties and i turned around and saw three horses and a model t id probably slow down to a light jog

Too many Sherlock Holmes adaptations forget the Sherlock Holmes who told Watson the story of one of his early jobs to get out of cleaning their flat

the overwhelming feeling of sadness sometimes when someone treats me with kindness

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