Brandon > Recent Status Updates

All revolutions have to create a grim image of the past or the status quo against which they are revolting. Every “Renaissance” has to manufacture its own “Gothic” period or “Dark Ages,” that came before it, and the American food transformation that began in the early 1970s is no exception.

haymitch’s no good horrible very bad day

interesting friction between the social activists who considered fine dining too bougie and the kind of work Waters does in terms of localization and de-corporatization

i think boromir could have been a really good dad :( he was doomed to be seduced by the ring tho :((

Sry but Celeborn is kind of a cuck

listen i never said the people who can’t read lotr because “it’s boring” are WRONG (it’s just that that’s okay with me. mostly.)

Do u think the blessing Gandalf gave Bill the pony was just some bullshit to make Sam feel better 😭? (I dont. Btw. Just wanted to be funny.)

I want the Four Seasons cookbook with glamour shots such as a lobster in a vase and a soup tureen staged on a snowbank

interesting that in the book Gandalf is ready to go through Moria and it is Aragorn who is against it. In the movie they make Gandalf against it. Different vibe between reluctance in service of saving a friend vs of saving yourself. maybe it’s bc we don’t know how Aragorn knows there’s a danger (at least I don’t) and it seems more likely for movie-only ppl that a wizard would know futurey stuff

maybe it’s just how im reading it (erratically), but I feel like there’s some structural issues here, that make it repetitive or backstepping

ouhhgh aragorn 💕❤️💞💓💕❤️❤️💖❤️💞💞💓

Fuck Enkil fr, like Akasha does heinous shit on purpose, and has her rhetorical echo chamber, Enkil just goes along neutrally in such a default way that’s really disgusting to me tbh

weird how Howard Johnson’s and Four Seasons both turned into hotels

let us not forget how smart merry and pippin are in planning frodo leaving, and how brave they are in going with him! (Movie kinda does them dirty)

Marius’s fucking fish always make me sad :(

Khayman my Khayman:( he is such an emotional center to this part of the book! another character I wish anne rice hadn’t lost interest in in later books:(
(also, I don’t think I realized how that whole part ii is just back and forth between Daniel and Khayman! that actually means so much to me.)

really striking how the enforcement of white supremacy, both violent and systemic, shapes every aspect of American cultural history

oop updated to wrong page#

a lot going on, as usual. i just can’t quite reconcile the tone and the romance and the plot all together. anyway, i got so emotional over Cameron’s brother and the stuffed animal. i am not immune to tuoy.

I think Jesse is one of the few characters who ever really cares about Claudia. The tragedy of it makes her sick, makes her somewhat disgusted with the usually-popular male characters of IWTV. Her character is really fascinating, with that tensions between the talamasca and The Family (the Summer, at least). Something very poignant about it all coming to a head that fall.

This chapter felt like it was about The Mandarin only tangentially, as opposed to Schraffts and HJ’s being the focus of their respective chapters. Also I couldn’t shake the judgement that Cecilia Chiang just gives off an elitist vibe….idk. He really kind of tries to tell the entirety of Chinese immigrant history in USA and can’t quite do it.

like low key idk if they have chemistry. it feels forced.

“Oh i have cool milf aunt giving me money to do anything i want my whole life and then i get chosen to join a group where i get unlimited money to just do research” fuck you fuck you fuck you (jk Jesse ily. miss u girl.)

OH. NOT WHAT I EXPECTED AT THE HALFWAY POINT.

Something something white-American love of “exotic” food while simultaneously enacting systemic and social racism on the immigrants connected with it. thinking about (marxist?) alienation and also double-think / cognitive dissonance.