This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones. Consider yourself warned.
Ever since his first appearance in Game of Thrones season one, Tyrion Lannister (played by Peter Dinklage) has been a fan favorite. The drunken womanizer-turned-trusted political advisor often provides brief bits of humor and levity to a show that’s mostly “dark and full of terrors,” but he’s also a driving force in the plot. Tyrion is positioned to play a major role as we move forward from the battle with the Night King and his Army of the Dead to King’s Landing and a showdown with Tyrion’s sister, Cersei Lannister.
Now. a new theory, (via The Independent), suggests how Tyrion might die (NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!).
Here’s what the theory posits: Think back to season four when Tyrion kills his own father, Tywin Lannister, with a crossbow—while Tywin is on the toilet, no less. It’s a pivotal moment for the character and may come back into play in the final three seasons. Stay with us here: The Independent points out that many characters on GoT die by same method they employed to end the lives of others. Olenna Tyrell poisoned Joffrey and was subsequently poisoned by Jaime Lannister. Ned Stark beheaded a member of the Night’s Watch and then publicly lost his own head. Ramsey Bolton used his hounds to kill his mother and sister, then Sansa turned them back on him in the end. The list goes on.
HBO
So it’s notable that in a previous episode, we see Qyburn give Bronn the same crossbow Tyrion used on his father. We know that Cersei wants Bronn to eliminate her brothers, Jaime and Tyrion, now that they have turned against her. Could this be a signal that Bronn will kill Tyrion with that crossbow?
As much as we don’t want it to be true, it does make a lot of sense. Then again, maybe Sansa will use that dagger she now has in her possession to protect him. A girl can hope, right?
Although I was born on the cusp of Gen Z, I identify with a lot of millennial stereotypes. I have social anxiety, a baby pink Away suitcase (totally worth the money, IMO), and I’m addicted to my phone. Recently I’ve fallen into another trope newly associated with my generation: I’ve become a plant mom.
I’m certainly not alone in this obsession. In 2016 more than 5 million millennials took up gardening for the first time, according to the National Gardening Survey. And in 2017 the number of 18- to 34-year-olds who bought plants reached an all-time high. Altogether, the gardening industry raked in a record $47.8 billion last year. It could be Instagram or a growing interest in our health as more studies are confirming the benefits of houseplants, but plants are now as much a millennial status symbol as Glossier and weighted blankets.
My journey started slow, a succulent here and there to make my college dorm feel more homey. When I moved into my first apartment, I adopted a tall leafy plant that I found on the street. In hindsight, this was probably a terrible idea, but what first-apartment decoration really ever is? Now in my current place, cacti and small palms line the windowsill in my living room. Flowers from Trader Joe’s cover my kitchen table, bedroom, and living room. A bodega bamboo plant sits on my dresser among my collection of perfume bottles and vintage ashtrays, and a planter shaped like a young pope holds an ivy plant on the window by my bed.
With every big, waxy Monstera leaf or pint-size succulent that flickered across my feed, my inner green thumb ached.
Before I knew it, my house held almost as many plants as pairs of shoes, and I couldn’t pop into a bodega or Trader Joe’s (two of my favorite spots for affordable plants) without leaving sans greenery. To be completely honest, the reason I first become a plant hoarder is the same (embarrassing) reason I make most of my decisions these days: Instagram. I follow more models and It Girls than people I know in real life, and it no longer felt like enough just to dress like them, I wanted to live like them too.
With every big, waxy Monstera leaf or pint-size succulent that flickered across my feed, my inner green thumb ached. I didn’t even know I had it, in fact, until literally all I could think about were plants. How would a cactus look in that corner? Ooh, what about a palm over there? I wondered as I aimlessly scrolled away, designing in my head to try an emulate the apartments I lusted over online. For every selfie posted with a lush green leaf in the background, I picked up another bouquet in hopes that it would make me more like the person I wanted to be.
Of course, that’s not how it works. Buying more plants didn’t make me more photogenic or outgoing—but it did make me feel like an adult who has her shit together. Instead of spending money on a quick thrill like a new lipstick or sweater I’ll wear once, I was purchasing something beautiful for my home. Studies have shown that houseplants can make us feel calmer and reduce toxins in the air. I’d like to think that’s mostly true. There really is something cozy and relaxing about being surrounded by greenery, especially when you get so little of that living in a city.
My plant purchasing habits also made me feel responsible in a way I never have before by giving me something to take care of. I’m not quite ready for a pet, and kids are way far off in my future—if at all—but I still have that maternal ache to care for something. Enter my collection of house plants. They don’t have names, but I lovingly refer to all of them as “she.” They give me something to tend to; plus, they help make my small, cluttered apartment feel a little more like a sanctuary.
PHOTO: Bella Cacciatore
My non-Insta material dresser—despite the plants
The problem is I’m a terrible plant mom. About 70 percent of the plants I bring into my apartment die within two months. Buying the plants only gives me the illusion of responsibility, but I have absolutely no follow-through. I’m awful at remembering to water them. Thankfully, my boyfriend is much more attentive, and I credit him for keeping our plants alive at all. My apartment has very little natural light and is shared by five people, so it’s super crowded and things are constantly being moved around. This isn’t a great environment for plants to flourish, and my apartment is often so messy that caring for them seems pointless. It’s not having them there magically transforms my space into an Instagram apartment.
And still, I continue to buy them. The initial thrill is so good that I convince myself this time will be different—this is the plant that will beat all the odds and live. But I’ve had to set a few ground rules. I won’t spend more than $20 on a plant (my boyfriend doesn’t follow this rule, though, so we have a few plants from The Cactus Store), and I tend to stick to succulents or cacti since they require less attention.
Although I longingly scroll through The Sill’s Instagram, I will not invest in a plant from them until I prove to myself I have the skills to care for it. Instead, I stick to corner stores and the local greenmarket. If I’m looking for something a little more interesting, I’ll splurge a bit at Rosehip and Other Times, which are both in my neighborhood and have reasonably priced plants. And for those not in NYC, obviously Urban cornered that market quick. (There’s an entire “Grow Shop” section on its website.) I’ve found I’m more likely to keep something alive if I keep it in a cute vessel—that way it feels more permanent—so I buy vintage planters and vases on Etsy as motivation.
Even though I’ve proved myself time and time again an unfit plant mom, I won’t let it stop me. The allure that, if I could just take care of it, I could be the woman I’m meant to be is too strong. Maybe one day.
Bella Cacciatore is a beauty assistant at Glamour.
The saga of Sex and the City 3 dominated the Internet for months last fall. We know a script for the movie exists—one that Sarah Jessica Parker says is “beautiful” and “heartbreaking”—but Kim Cattrall opted not to get on board. Why she turned down the project is still a mystery. Cattrall claims it was always a “respectful, firm no” for her, but others say negotiations did take place. Regardless, the movie isn’t happening, which means there’s a whole chapter of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha’s lives that exists but we’ll never see.
A few details about the third movie are pouring out, though. In the latest episode of Cadence13’s podcastOrigins, host James Andrew Miller interviews several SATC cast members and gets to the bottom of why a third flick never panned out. Miller reports that Cattrall’s inner circle believed she’d never do SATC 3 for two reasons: One concerned the film’s plot, which, according to Miller, called for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack. Yup.
“People close to Kim believe she never wanted to do the third movie, period,” Miller says.”And they point to two large issues that made it impossible for anyone close to her to talk her into doing it. First, although each woman was to get $1 million up front, they believe the way the backend had been divided up among the five—the four women and Christopher Rosa Michael Patrick King—was unequal and unfair. And second, people close to Kim believe that the script for the movie didn’t have a lot to offer the character of Samantha. They pointed a fact that it calls for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack in the shower relatively early on in the film, making the remainder of the film more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.”
Let’s process that for a second. If Sex and the City 3 came out, Mr. Big would’ve died of a heart attack. Talk about bleak!
However, that might’ve been just what Chris Noth (who played Mr. Big) wanted. The actor reveals in this podcast that he wasn’t keen on the cheesier scenes in the Sex and the City movies.
“I really didn’t enjoy any of the movies,” he said. “I really hate corny stuff. It could be because I’m a little bit of a cynic. The whole thing at the end of the [first] movie with the shoe and the closet: hated it. I’m a team player, but I never really enjoyed the movies. I thought they were sentimental as hell. Even the humor didn’t match the series.”
Release the SATC 3 script, Michael Patrick King! We need to know more.
Let me take you back exactly two years ago: Kanye West had just released a new song, “Famous,” in which he rapped about how he’s responsible for Taylor Swift’s fame. He specifically said, “I made that bitch famous,” a line Swift claimed she didn’t know about or approve of. Fast-forward to July 17, 2016: West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, uploaded a series of Snapchat videos that showed Swift having a conversation with West about “Famous.” Swift said she hadn’t approved of the phrase “that bitch,” which the Snapchat clips corroborate, but the damage was done. Twitter users took the videos as “proof” she lied about her knowledge of “Famous,” and they branded her a “snake.” It was all very petty and dumb and ridiculous.
So what did Swift do? She made snakes the focal point of her Reputation album era. Ever since she dropped “Look What You Made Me Do” in August 2017, Swift’s been all about the snakes: snake outfits, snake social media posts, snake images in her music videos—the works. She did this all in an attempt to reclaim her narrative, which she has. We get it! Snakes are cool now! The feud is over!
Well, not for Swift’s fans, at least. They took to social media yesterday—the two-year anniversary of #SnakeGate—demanding Kardashian “apologize” to Swift for what happened. The “Delicate” singer seemingly nodded to the anniversary herself too, wearing a snakeskin-patterned bag around New York City. Of course, that could’ve just been a coincidence.
But what she said during her concert last night definitely wasn’t. “Happy National Snake Day: my favorite day of the year,” Swift exclaimed Tuesday night while performing “LWYMMD” on her Cleveland Reputation Stadium Tour stop.
She also opened up about #SnakeGate in May when she kicked off her tour, saying, “A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media and it caught on. And then a lot of people called me a lot of names on social media. And I went through some really low times for a while because of it.”
So now we have definitive proof that, yes, Swift is still very much thinking about this hoopla. That bag might’ve actually been intentional, after all. Drama, drama, drama!
Here’s the thing: National Snake Day is pretty much what created Swift’s Reputation album, which is an absolute bop parade, so I can’t be 100 percent mad at it. That being said, Swift and Kardashian should probably just let dead dogs snakes lie at this point. They both are too paid and too iconic to worry about something that happened on Snapchat years ago. Their million-dollar empires and kids and British boyfriends who low-key look like Ken dolls are far more interesting talking points, TBH. After two years it’s high time for them—and their fandoms—to just shake it off.
One of the most poignant moments in Titanic—which is turning the big 2-0—is, of course, when Rose has to let Jack go once they come to the conclusion that they both cannot share the floating board that will ultimately save one and only one life. (Of course, it sure seems like they could have huddled on it together, but hey, that’s up to director James Cameron and the props department and Cameron has corrected my absolutely child-level knowledge of physics and pointed out it’s a matter of buoyancy, not space, but ah, the loss of young love.) In any case, we’ve wrestled with the untimely collapse of these star-crossed lovers for the better part of two decades, and Cameron himself is here to clear up any lingering doubts. And also he is here to chastise us for still being obsessed with it (sorry not sorry).
In an interview with Vanity Fair published on Sunday, he says that the reason Jack had to die is that on page 147 of the script, Jack dies. Which like, come on—we weren’t there on handout day and no one sent us notes.
He then expands a bit. “I think it’s all kind of silly, really, that we’re having this discussion 20 years later. But it does show that the film was effective in making Jack so endearing to the audience that it hurts them to see him die,” he told Vanity Fair. Yeah, no kidding. That pile of crumpled tissues every time I watch isn’t because I keep spilling my wine.
“Had he lived,” Cameron continues. “The ending of the film would have been meaningless. . . . The film is about death and separation; he had to die. So whether it was that, or whether a smoke stack fell on him, he was going down. It’s called art, things happen for artistic reasons, not for physics reasons.”
But…but…the door! “Art” could have supported them when your physics could not!
Fine. If it’s for art, well, Vive le cinéma! And if this is the Romeo and Juliet of the sexually repressed Edwardian era, we can maybe accept it. At least they had that steamy time in the back of that car. Good on them!
But, IDK, maybe a smokestack would have been better? That water was cold.
Stranger Things season two is set to premiere on Netflix on October 27, but one beloved character will be missing: high school student Barbara Holland, AKA the inimitable Barb. Of course, we’ve known this for a while—she was killed in season one by The Monster/Demogorgon in the Upside Down pool—but that doesn’t make our grief less real. But even though she’s gone, the Internet was captivated by her, falling for her epic eye roll, coke-bottle glasses, and her loyalty to her best friend, Nancy Wheeler. (Jimmy Fallon even spoofed her death on The Tonight Show.) But we still need closure—namely, why did she have to die in the first place??
Gaten Matarazzo, who plays compass genius Dustin Henderson, shed some light on the matter Saturday night at the BAFTA pre-Emmy tea party.
“She has passed. She is dead,” Matarazzo told Elle in no uncertain terms. “The character was written to die.”
Ah. He went on to explain that the point of Barb’s character was merely to illuminate how vulnerable everyone actually was to the Upside Down and the Demogorgon.
Matarazzo continued: “That was what the character was, and I think that bringing her back would kind of defeat the purpose.”
Barb’s fate is certainly unfortunate, but Matarazzo did reveal some good news. Her mysterious disappearance hasn’t been forgotten by himself, Will, Mike, Eleven, her best friend Nancy, and the rest of the crew. He also reiterated to fans that there will be #JusticeForBarb in the show’s second season—a plot point that will delve into her backstory.
Although we will sadly never get to relate to Barb’s social awkwardness and third-wheeling tendencies ever again, she will live forever in our hearts, the hashtag, and perfect Halloween costumes for years to come.
.jpg)
.jpg)
