“The image of a woman suffering because of a man’s violence is, unfortunately, a timeless one. Practical Magic’s 19th birthday took place only two weeks after the Harvey Weinstein stories broke, and just a day after #MeToo rose to mainstream prominence. It’s relevant on its 20th birthday, too, with Brett Kavanaugh recently sworn onto the Supreme Court. The anniversary falls so shortly after women all over the country watched Christine Blasey Ford testify in front of Congress, already so sure of her own annihilation, forced to relive her trauma decades after the fact in an act of public violence. A community rose up for Blasey Ford around her testimony. That testimony and the conversation around it were a stark real-world reminder that we all live next to survivors of abuse every day, that the process of healing is a rough road, and that our moments of trauma still live in us, intruders in our lives.”
Bonus: Nicole and Sandra reunite at the 2018 Oscars:
I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH. You guys have no idea. It changed my life.
It was while watching this movie that I first thought to myself, “Hey you know what? I wanna be a witch.”
I practically know it by heart and I still can’t rewatch it enough. I used to watch it as a matter of course as background sound during the early days of my serious practice. At one of the lowest times in my life, I cast a spell based on Amas Veritas and I firmly believe it led me to my true love. We just celebrated our second wedding anniversary.
This is the movie I turn to when I need inspiration and nothing else is working. When I can’t remember how to witch. When I can’t remember how to be strong. When I can’t remember how to focus on the positive in the midst of grief or pain or sadness. This movie is there for me. It is visual comfort food, friendly and familiar and safe.
date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.
She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.
“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”
The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.
So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.
Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.
The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.
She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.
When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.
She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.
And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.
The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.
“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.
“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.
She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”
A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.
Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”
She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”
The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”
It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.
The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.
“Ohhh, Woah,, I Want A Monster Boyfriend,,,, I Want To Date,,, An Eldritch Monstrosity,,” some of you freak out at the concept of finding a fat person attractive so excuse me for being a little skeptical
Not just making it illegal, but making being gay punishable with death.
This is one of the many reasons why I walk by every single red bucket in the run-up to Christmas. They’re not getting my money, I don’t care how nice the people ringing bells are.
Ever since the time they threatened to close all their soup kitchens in NYC if a law that did something as simple as allow companies to extend spousal benefits to their employee’s same-sex domestic partners I have refused to buy from them or donate to them.
It’s that time of year again! In case people don’t know… the Salvation Army is shitty peoples.
Also, the married women are not paid (and therefore can’t qualify for assistance if they should ever divorce, etc). And worth “of course” less than a man.
“
In the Army’s case, the agreement for compensation is that the officer allowance be paid jointly to the husband—the check is written in his name. Officially, the wife is a “worker without expectation of remuneration,” and her husband receives 40 percent more of an allowance as a married man than he would as a single man.
Don’t abuse the bell ringers unless they get aggressive, but don’t give them a bent penny.
me: i’m gonna check wikipedia to see what they’ve done, see some sources, etc
wikipedia:
In November 2013 it was made known that the Salvation Army was referring LGBT individuals to one of several conversion therapy groups.[162] As a response the Salvation Army removed such referrals from their website.[163]
Dama Cherepaha 