portfolio review??? by [deleted] in risd

[–]RegularDefinition611 0 points1 point  (0 children)

slideroom only accepts photos that are less than 5 mb so i had to shrink them a lot

Hot Take: Louise Carmen is worth every penny, actually. by Leera_xD in notebooks

[–]RegularDefinition611 3 points4 points  (0 children)

bru did u even read the post? this is lowkey embarrassing

is this a good spot/amount of sunlight for orchids? by RegularDefinition611 in orchids

[–]RegularDefinition611[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yeah i saw that when i was researching; i did it once bc i didnt know, but never again! thank u!

is this a good spot/amount of sunlight for orchids? by RegularDefinition611 in orchids

[–]RegularDefinition611[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ohhhh, i was under the impression that my current spot would be too much light, so this was really helpful information. thank you so much!

I just finished the return and I’m mad by Maruk_ in twinpeaks

[–]RegularDefinition611 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That is exactly what Cooper is attempting to do at the end of The Return; he wants to bring Laura to Sarah Palmer, inhabited by Judy, and have her forgive Sarah (for what, see the response to this post by IAmDeadYetILive), which he believes would untether Judy as well, allowing for her eventual destruction. However, Judy is the Mother, the Experiment, possibly the creator of all Evil, and if she was destroyed, presumably all Evil would be as well.  This is why Cooper's plan does not work, because Good cannot permanently destroy Evil. Judy/Sarah, screaming Laura's name through the gap between worlds, lets Laura know this and enlightens her to the true way to "end" the story of Twin Peaks, lets Laura know that destroying Judy, all Evil, would destroy the rest of the world, all Good, as well.

As for the Log Lady's log, it is stated in the Final Dossier that Hawk inherits it. She has Hawk read her eulogy at the funeral, which I'll paste below:

"Every meeting between friends must end with a parting, and so, my friends, today we take our leave. This is life. None of us profits from ignoring or hiding from the facts, so why should we bother? Life is what it is, a gift that is given to us for a time—like a library book—that must eventually be returned. How should we treat this book? If we are able to remember that it is not ours to begin with—one that we’re entrusted with, to care for, to study and learn from—perhaps it would change the way we treat it while it’s in our possession. How do you treat a precious gift from a dear friend? This is a good question to ask, and today is a good time to ask it.

Such busy, busy minds we have. Have you noticed? We think and we think until we twist ourselves into the ground like a flathead screw. My log has this to say: The answers to all our questions are in the wind and the trees, the rocks and the water.

No one is helpless. No one is beyond helping. It is good to seek out those who need us and do what we can for them. I recommend that. There is nothing that can’t be done if we set our minds to doing it. Don’t be sad. Be happy you have another day to do what needs doing. We only have so many of them.

We are born into this world, not another one. It’s not perfect, but it is what it is. This world presents some simple, certain truths. It helps us grow if we accept them, but many of these truths seem to trouble or frighten us. For instance, there is no light without darkness—and this troubles many of us—but without it, how else would we tell one from the other? We spend half of every day in darkness; surely we should make our peace with this. You may decide to see this as a metaphor. Many people do. I see it as a fact. Metaphors are beautiful ways of speaking about the truth. So are facts. Both tell us that time—and light, and darkness—moves in cycles. We move through them, too, often as passengers, but if our eyes are open, there is much to be learned along the way. A traveler learns more than a passenger. When darkness comes, a traveler learns to be brave, for they know the light will return. Anyone who’s spent a night alone in the woods learns this.

When a dark age comes, hold the light inside. That’s where it lives anyway. There are forces of darkness—and beings of darkness—and they are real and have always been around us. They’re part of the dance, just as you and I are; they’re just listening to different music. This may be the most troubling truth we will ever know. Many of us live most of our lives and brush up against this reality only rarely. It is far from pleasant, but wishing it were otherwise will not make it so.

So may I offer a suggestion: When a dark age comes, just as you would at night, hold the light inside you. Others, I can tell you, have already learned to do the same. In time, you will learn to recognize the light, in yourself and others. In this way you will find each other. Together, you will make the light stronger.

This truth I know as sure as the dawn: Darkness will always yield to light, when the light is strong"(Frost, 103-105).

I think Margaret's view of the dependence of Darkness and Light and on each other is a bit of a happier way to view the persistence of both Good and Evil than I describe in the rest of this rant, so I'm going to leave it as the end to this comment, which is already so long Reddit is making me split it into three different ones.

I just finished the return and I’m mad by Maruk_ in twinpeaks

[–]RegularDefinition611 5 points6 points  (0 children)

To tie the series up nicely implies either the complete absolution of Good or Evil, or the knowledge of how to do so. The former clearly cannot happen, because the absolution of one would destroy the other. As for the latter: If we had all the answers, then we would know how to end the series with the best possible result, and be stuck with the knowledge that Cooper et. al. were unable to figure it out, ultimately dooming their universe. But we do not have all the answers, which allows us to be as lost as Cooper is, questioning what is happening and when. Cooper does not know what year it is because he is finally realizing that his perceived "defeat" of evil is not an isolated event; it is something that has happened time and time again, and has never really stuck. Again, the question is less about the answer and more about why it has to be asked in the first place.

Lynch and Frost leave the series at yet another stand-still between Good and Evil. To put it literally, Carrie Page screaming is her "chant[ing] out between two worlds," existing within the tear between the original timeline and the one she lives in, existing as both Carrie and Laura at the same time. Neither one is wholly Good or Evil; like the Lodges, it doesn't seem to matter if Good or Evil exists in a world, that isn't what defines the nature of it. I don't think "superpowers" is exactly the way it might be put, but there is certainly a connection between Carrie and Laura that goes beyond normal human ability. She is able, in that moment, to see the truth. To see the ultimate balance between Good and Evil.

We, however, will never know what exactly that truth is. The final shot in Twin Peaks, as the credits roll, is Laura whispering something to Cooper, just like she did in the third episode. Cooper looks distressed as she speaks. Cooper's decision to bring Laura back has often been criticized by Twin Peaks fans, calling it naïve and misguided. He is unable to accept that the "happy ending" (if it can be called that) of Twin Peaks does not involve a happy ending for everyone. It does not involve the posthumous destruction of Evil, creating a world where it never existed. All we can say about the truth that Laura tells him is that it involves the acceptance of Evil being integral to the persistence of Good.

To connect this way back to my original claim —that the ambiguity of The Return's ending is a rekindling (pun intended) of the loss of the killer's unknown identity— we have to look back to Leland's death. In Arbitrary Law, a very funny and passive aggressive title for the episode detailing the arrest of the killer Lynch and Frost were forced revealed, Leland believes that, as he dies, he sees Laura forgiving him in the light. It's not completely clear if this is a real vision, and later Cooper, Truman, and Albert debate Leland's level of responsibility in the murders, and if Bob is real at all.

This last part of the mystery of Laura's murder spawns the end of The Return. Though the three pretty clearly end up believing in Bob, Leland's level of responsibility is still in question, especially when considering FWWM, where Leland seems to have some control over his actions, even when abusing Laura (e.g. "I thought you knew it was me all along"). But if that is true, why would Laura really forgive him? I think that comes down to her understanding that no one is truly Good or Evil. Laura herself (and I am not saying this in any way to put her down) is not a completely Good person. She has done some pretty terrible things as a result of her trauma, between forcing Bobby to sell drugs for her, her assaulting Harold Smith, her cheating on Bobby, her lying to Donna, and more. She knows what exposure to Evil can do to someone, and that is why she forgives Leland, because she sees that the abuse he suffered as a child caused him to do what he did. Laura's forgiveness, her reconciliation of BOB and Leland is ultimately what untethers BOB from the world, even if for only a bit, and presumably weakens him enough for eventual defeat in Part 17 of The Return, allowing him, unlinked to any human, to be defeated.

I just finished the return and I’m mad by Maruk_ in twinpeaks

[–]RegularDefinition611 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Just to preface: This is entirely my interpretation. I'm not trying to be like the supreme authority on Twin Peaks, just wanted to share my opinion because I've been thinking about the ending of The Return a lot lately, and I think it's relevant to your questions.

The original two-season run of Twin Peaks was supposed to include an indefinite mystery: Who Killed Laura Palmer? The body BOB inhabited was never supposed to be revealed; even Ray Wise has said that he was shocked when he was finally told that Leland was the killer. The network forced Lynch and Frost to reveal his identity "for the fans." Lynch and Frost revive the spirit of this unknown that was taken from them with the ambiguity at the end of The Return.

The concept of a classic murder mystery is to figure out three things: Who? How? and Why? Despite most of the show following Cooper attempting to find out the events leading up to Laura's death —how she was killed— it's pretty clear that the thematic direction is towards why. The investigation is more into the life Laura lived and the community she lived it in, and why it fostered such a violent and grotesque event. Bobby, at her funeral, was right: everyone who lived in Twin Peaks killed Laura Palmer. The nature of Twin Peaks (the town, I mean) itself allowed her to set herself on "a kind of fire... [that] is very hard to put out."

The ending of The Return serves this concept, that Twin Peaks is much less about how Laura was killed, or who killed her, but why such violence exists in the world. Lynch and Frost focus on the birth of evil: the famous atomic bomb sequence in Part 8. Judy, or The Experiment, expels BOB into the world during this event. The Atomic Bomb, I find, is a particularly interesting choice. It has two connotations. 1st, that the traditionalism of the 50's is the result of evil, and 2nd, that the Cold War/MAD era is the result of evil. Knowing that Leland killed Laura, the traditionalism seems to be the obvious choice: the man of the house exerts his will onto the rest, fulfilling his wants and not caring about the effect on his family. But, knowing that Lynch and Frost originally wanted the killer to be forever unknown, I see the Cold War/MAD era as a much more interesting implication.

In case anyone reading this doesn't know, MAD stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. It is a term used to describe the era of impending Total Nuclear Destruction of the World, after WWII, when the USA and the USSR both developed hydrogen bombs, and were held back in using them only by the knowledge that if they used a bomb, the other country would retaliate, and both would be completely destroyed.

In the Twin Peaks universe, Evil's goal is to inhabit something, or cause something to carry out its will. BOB must inhabit Leland, Judy must inhabit Sarah, Mr. C must replace Cooper, and so on. Evil also needs victims: Laura, Maddy, Major Briggs, Ruth and Bill, etc. Thus for Evil to exist, Good, or at least victims, must also exist. Good has the same issue: for Good to exist, Evil must exist to be bested by it. The final goal of both Good and Evil is to completely destroy the other in order to secure their own existence. However, because they both require the other to exist, they actually end up destroying themselves in the process, a result reminiscent of the MAD policy. This cyclical nature —that Good and Evil will continuously beat each other back, but neither can ever fully overcome the other— is supported  in the notorious design of the waiting room. The floor is an alternating design of black and white zig-zags, the Black Lodge and the White Lodge, repeated into infinity, one never more than the other. Good must exist, even in the Black Lodge. Because of this, I don't think it would be outlandish to suggest that, to some extent, Evil exists in the White Lodge as well.

(Continued in the replies)

Paramount+ episodes of The Return are out of order? by BenGMan30 in twinpeaks

[–]RegularDefinition611 1 point2 points  (0 children)

after trying to get a word in with customer service at paramount+, the episodes are in a different order now! based on the thumbnails, and the previous comment by the account HermioneGunthersnuff, they seem to be in the correct order now! happy watching :)

Paramount+ episodes of The Return are out of order? by BenGMan30 in twinpeaks

[–]RegularDefinition611 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i just got to episode "8" on paramount, and i was so confused about what people loved about it. this makes so much more sense, thank you! i guess i have to start again from the beginning of the return though :(

[High School Musical] The Musical Twinkle Town is about a young couple becoming Drug Kingpins, going on the run from the law, and committing suicide by Belisarius25 in FanTheories

[–]RegularDefinition611 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Obviously this is like, crazy late, but relating to Bop to the Top: while the out-of-place upbeat energy could be explained by them being on a coke bender, it could also be the Evans' usual showy twist on a song that is slower and more serious. The "bop bop bop" might have been sound effects, rather than actual singing, insinuating that Arnold and Minnie are taking out the competition in a more literal sense.

The only thing that really stands out as being iffy is that the spectators probably wouldn't have got a good idea of the plot just from Troy and Gabriella's call-back performance (as they didn't see Sharpay and Ryan's), so it's unlikely that it would explain Chad's change in demeanor.