Gone

Our culture has celebrities in place of myths, and we have grief twitter instead of byzantine lore about the journey to the underworld and the proper ways of burial. When celebrities die and we mourn them in a massively public way, this is a safe way to practice mourning for our parents and our partners and our friends, to try to force ourselves to make the unthinkable familiar. 

The generational quality of this grief comes from the fact that, as the celebrities with whom we grew up die, it signals that we are at the age where people are dying, and we look ahead to the inevitable disasters, the wave that grows larger on the horizon. If our public grief is a performance, it’s a performance in the way that a disaster drill is a performance. 

Our grief at losing an icon who meant a great deal to us is a real grief but a bearable one. But that bearable grief is a test-drive for future unbearable ones. We practice together in the hope that we can be prepared, so that the idea of loss does not seem so alien. 

Complaints about the inappropriate nature of grief on social media – that it’s a circle-jerk, a joiner’s club, an obligated performance – are as defining a part of these mournings as the remembrances themselves. But to call this grief a performance is to miss the point – it’s not a performance, it’s a rehearsal. It seems right to me that grief be public, and messy, and inconvenient, that it make everyone in its path uncomfortable. 

Small amounts of discomfort, after all, increase our tolerance for large amounts of pain. Mourning celebrities who mattered to us is a way to remind ourselves that no one is spared, not even those who seemed immortal, larger than a human being with petty little organs doing their pedestrian little jobs inside their skin. Speaking things aloud removes their terror, dulls the power of their unfamiliarity. We speak this over and over to try to come to terms with something that cannot possibly be made familiar.

–Helena Fitzgerald

Black Siren in the ‘Who Are You?’ promo

Finally, it’s about time someone figured it out.

I’m not shy anymore. I am the person at the dinner party that is quiet and observing and having a one-on-one conversation. I get embarrassed when it’s a lot of people and a lot of eyes. And I am still that way. I wouldn’t say shy.

Katherine Johnson is 98 years old

Bless her

i will never attribute my growth and strength to a person i was in a relationship with bc of what they subjected me to, those lessons were not a gift, and my growth was a reaction to abuse, the credit is mine

tvd meme; three otp’s (2/3)      elena gilbert and elijah mikaelson

bonnie/annalise + jealousy

I think I heard Will Smith as a Death Trooper. Can you confirm or deny this?