#The bad thing is constantly comparing myself to every other song writer in music History

[aceofshitposts]

I saw that you like CATS the musical. What are your thoughts on the movie?

AAAAH AHHAHA oh man oh boy y'all should BUCKLE IN cuz it's a ride

my simple thoughts? it's entertaining if only because it butchered the stage show so badly in an attempt to idk modernize it? Well, modernization is one part of it I think. The other part I'll go into below lol. I don't necessarily hate some of the more modern renditions of the songs (mostly the ensemble sets like Jellicle Song for Jellicle Cats) but then others are just... so poorly done it's insulting.

I've said this at the end of this whole rant too but I'm gonna put it up here in case people don't (justifiably) wanna see me go on and on about it:

The movie wasn't made for fans of the musical. It was made to make money and I believe they choose, at least partially, to do that through making it the weirdest and worst possible adaptation they could so that people would want to go see the train wreck. Which, really, worked! It was all people could talk about for a good while so like... Goal achieved, I guess.

A MUCH MORE COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT cuz i don't wanna. flood your dash with... this

ALRIGHT SO. Most of my friends know I'm actually a huge fan of new adaptations of things. I love remakes (provided the people making it are coming at it with some form of heart and not just... cash grabbing which is more often the case) I love seeing other peoples interpretations of characters, or changing settings. It's one of the reasons I like American comics so much, getting to see different writers takes is fascinating.

I think musical movies can be wonderful ways to introduce people to a stage show that might have been unavailable to them otherwise! Chicago, for example, is one of the BEST musical to movie adaptations in my opinion. It kept the heart of the show, it's funny and the song numbers are done really well.

There are of course other famous examples, such as Grease or Bye Bye Birdie. Hairspray was also a wonderful take. These are simply off the top of my head, there are of course more.

CATS in particular has a history. If you go through my CATS tag you may see a few posts from @catsnonreplica which posts photos from non broadway productions of CATS! It's a fascinating read and I love, love, love looking at the other interpretations of the characters! CATS is a musical full of fun and wonderful characters if you take the time to see past the ridiculousness haha and the Korean and Japanese runs of CATS especially have some of my favourites.

How does this relate to the movie, I hear you say well. As you might has noticed the movie's interpretations of the characters is........ lackluster at best and downright uncanny valley at best.

CATS is, at its core, a ridiculous thing. I will fully admit that! But it's fun, it's entertaining and if you pay a little attention you can actually get the plot. (Honestly I don't understand when people complain it has no plot but that's a whole other rant for another day)

The movie was... obsessed with this idea of like... semi realism? Like obviously, as a fan, I think they should have leaned into the over the top character designs but instead we got...w ell:

Bombalurina:

Demeter left and Bomba right. Demeter was actually cut! From the movie which is. upsetting lmao.

Macavity is one of the worst offenders for me:

Macavity was... I wish I could know what the hell they were thinking there cuz it's even in his song? Ginger cat??? THAT IS NOT... A GINGER CAT...... but I digress. I would show more examples but I think you get the point.

So. We've butchered the characters appearances. Okay that's fine but what about their personalities?

ALSO BUTCHERED.

There's... there's a lot to unpack here. Just for context: the Jellicle Ball happens once a year and the Jellicle leader chooses a single cat to be reborn into a new life. In the stage play all the cats who are nominated for this honour are on the older side (Jenny-Any-Dots, Bustopher Jones, Skimbleshanks, Gus The Theatre Cat, and eventually Grizzabella) AND are always nominated by another cat. Not themself, unlike the movie where they all seem to nominate themselves.

Jenny-Any-Dots went from a doting grandmother figure who's celebrated for her selfless volunteering and tireless work into a conceited, vain younger cat who is obsessed with fame.

It's an incredibly strange dichotomy. I don't doubt some of it isn't the result of the uh people playing the characters honestly. I do think some of them did the best they could! I don't really blame Jason Derulo, for example, for Tugger. And honestly, Tugger was probably closest to his stage version (while being a trouble maker, he's shown to show Deuteronomy an immense amount of respect)

Speaking of Tugger! This will bring us to one of the biggest grievances with the movie and that is how they handled Mr Mistoffelees.

So... Ugh. So. We have Victoria as the pov character, which imo is like whatever in the grand scheme of things, and then we have Misto who they have decided will be get live interest cuz... Of course. Misto is shown throughout the musical to be awkward, unsure of himself and well. Really, kinda incompetent. Which is Wild cuz in the stage show he might be aloof but he's fairly confident in his powers.

So, Old Deuts gets kidnapped. In the stage show Tugger is the one to bring Misto forward! It's really quite sweet, imo, and I'm showing myself as a Tuggoffelees shipper here, but again Tugger is previously shown to be pretty conceited but then here he is boosting and hyping up Misto to bring Deuteronomy back. My friends and I have lovingly dubbed this the boyfriend hype song.

SOMEHOW. The movie manages to make this, easily, the MOST BORING number in the whole thing. Which, again, WILD. Misto awkwardly stumbles through his whole song, which again is... Boasting of his supreme magical powers which movie Misto clearly. Does not have or believe to have. The song, to me, feels super awkward and unnecessarily drawn out in the movie which sucks cuz it's one of my favourites in the show.

The declawing (heh) of Mr Mistoffelees actually reminds me strongly of how they changed Gaston in the live action Beauty and the Beast movie. He's gone from a beloved figure in the animated movie to someone so disliked in the town that Le Fou has to pay people off to say nice things about him. It's just. Wild character choices were made!!

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is probably my favourite in movie non ensemble number. It feels the most... Genuine? Compared to the other nomination songs.

Other problems include but are not limited to:

The inconsistent size scale of the CATS which throws me off constantly.

The weirdly overt sexual overtones added to MANY of the songs (Jenny and Bustopher being the worst)

This is just a personal gripe and opinion but I don't like that they used the UK version of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. The American version is both better known and tbh way more fun. Teazer's giggle? Adds ten years to my life every time.

Victoria's added solo song, Beautiful Ghosts, while I like the song as a song it doesn't fit the style of message of the musical. In the movie she's singing directly to Grizzabella who's being an outcast for years that she should be grateful she even has memories of being part of the tribe?? What?? But I know they had to add an original song to be able to be nominated for awards in like the Grammys n shit (which is why all musical movies will have an original song, fun fact!!) kinda funny they went to the effort though considering........... I don't think anyone could have genuinely believed CATS 2019 was gonna win anything but golden rhaspberries.

Movie Mr Mistoffelees has made repeated appearances as my sleep paralysis demon

The various cut characters, shout outs to Jemima, Demeter and Jellylorum especially

Bombalurina being a henchman to Macavity rubs me the wrong way

God I've written... So much. You probably get it by now haha. Like I said at the beginning, I try to go into any adaptation with an open mind but... Let's be honest, this movie wasn't marketed to people who are fans of the musical.

It was marketed, and made, to make money. And they choose to do that through, I think, intentionally making the worst possible version ever. Bad press is still press and the more outrageous people said the movie was the more people wanted to go see exactly what kind of train wreck it was.

Which is a disservice to the stage show, honestly, and all the people who've worked on it over the years.

But what can we do, right?

And besides all that, I do... Still own the movie version and I do still rewatch it on occasion. It is entertaining even if it's in a train wreck kind of way. I usually end up watching the 1998 version, then 2019 and then various tour runs that are on YouTube. (I highly recommend the 2016 tour, it's very good)

So in conclusion. It's fun (?) to watch. I enjoy picking things apart and doing analysis (if you couldn't tell!) so like... I don't hate it?

It did what it set out to do, I guess, and I can't fault it for that but. It's not a fair metre with which to judge the stage show imo. But I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, haha.

Jazz hands. I'm more than happy to elaborate or just chat about CATS if anyone wants! I grew up listening to the Broadway CD since I was a toddler so it's been! A very long standing obsession haha. Probably the only other thing on par with CATS is my obsession with Jurassic Park which I've also been a fan of since I was 3 (but that's a whole story in and of itself)

#astrix thoughts #cats the musical #Thanks for the opportunity to talk about one of my hyperfixations anon! #And to anyone who reads this whole mess lmao

[welcometophu]

Missed Fortunes: Self 3

Twinned Book 2: Missed Fortunes

Self 3

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Sunday is peaceful, and Carolyn’s thankful for a little quiet. Mac leaves the house early in the morning for a taekwondo tournament. Carolyn doesn’t remember where they’re heading today. She just knows that a layer of tension seems to lift from the house once she’s gone, as no one worries about Cass and Mac butting heads again.

They haven’t been arguing constantly, but things haven’t been completely normal between them either. It’s a little like living in the cold war, and everyone’s waiting for another explosion. And while Mac has assured Carolyn that it isn’t coming, Carolyn doesn’t necessarily read the situation that way.

Although Carolyn isn’t particularly good at reading people in general, so she could be wrong. She hopes she’s wrong. Still. With Mac gone, Cass spends the day in the living room, her feet tucked under herself as she reads through a book for class. Carolyn brings her own work down to join her, and the morning passes in a haze of reading through notes and trying to collate everything in a way that gives her more points to research.

It’s tempting to simple travel over to the special collections room and come back with a book so she can work in the comfort of the house, but Carolyn doesn’t want to be that person who uses her Talent to completely get around the law. Getting into the building early is bad enough, but removing books would just be wrong. Instead, she and Cass walk over to the library after lunch so that Carolyn can work there, while Cass keeps her company. Carolyn has no idea what project Cass is working on, but it doesn’t seem to matter as they both work silently.

When they head back to the house, Cass nearly walks into Soledad as she comes out, Trish close behind.

“Hey, we’re just heading over to Teas Please to get something to eat,” Trish calls out. “Since we don’t have a formal dinner this weekend, we figured we’d do something fun tonight.”

Serina’s on shift. Carolyn knows because Serina pauses to text periodically, and sends funny stories about the things people order or the strange stories she overhears in the restaurant. But Trish and Soledad… Carolyn isn’t sure she wants to barge in on any big/little sister bonding time. She glances at Soledad, uncertain.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Soledad encourages. “We’ll make notes for ideas on what we can cook next time it’s our turn.”

“None of us are good cooks,” Carolyn points out. “That’s why we eat a lot of pasta for formal dinners.” It’s true. She remembers her freshman year, when one of the seniors was a History major, specializing in food history, and was an amazing cook. Every four weeks they’d have a great meal, something different every time.

The rest of the time, it’s usually macaroni and cheese or some other form of pasta. It’s easy to make enough for an entire house that way.

“It’s always Teas Please, isn’t it?” Cass says dryly. “But it sounds better than ordering pizza. I’m in.”

Trish glances at Cass, then at Carolyn, and shrugs. “Let’s go.”

There’s a light snow falling as they walk over, and Soledad holds out her hands, catching the flakes on her mittens. “I know you all hate it, but I still love snow. I wish it snowed more.”

“Nikita accidents aside, it’s been a mild winter,” Carolyn agrees. When they’ve had anything more than flurries, the storms have been bad, but she’s fairly certain that every single one of them was caused by Nikita.

“And they say global warming’s a lie,” Cass mutters. She pulls her phone from her pocket, swipes to look at something, then shoves it away again.

“You okay?”

Cass smiles sweetly. “I’m fine. Trish, Soledad, did you have a good weekend? I’ve been buried in reading for my modern women’s lit course. Which is actually a good class—we’ve been following female identifying authors writing any time in the last hundred years, and comparing and contrasting tropes and ideology.”

“I was actually looking at that class, but you have to be a junior or a senior to get in, I heard.” Soledad’s brow furrows. “How did you get in as a sophomore?”

“I explained that I wanted to take it early for my Psychology major,” Cass says. Her voice is lighter now, warming to the topic rather than simply being polite. “The way the class looks at how women write—and how their work is received—is more than just literature. It’s a sociological and psychological look at how we perceive and present our view differently.” She glances over, gestures at Carolyn. “You’d probably love it.”

Carolyn can’t deny that, but she also can’t think when she’d fit it in her schedule with only one year to go, and a thesis to do in that time.

“I’d hate it,” Trish says mildly. She pulls open the door as they arrive at Teas Please. “I love looking at how people think, but I hate dissecting things people wrote. I mean, I write music—I know that every writer puts meaning into their words. But I don’t think we can really know what someone else meant unless we ask them. It’s like how sometimes I write a song, and when it gets popular, everyone thinks I meant something else entirely. Readers and listeners find what they want in words, not necessarily what was put there.”

“That’s part of what we talk about, as well as how the perceptions of literature are different depending on who’s reading, and when they’re reading,” Cass says. “Which is why it’s so interesting. A teenager in the fifties would’ve read something completely different than how we read it today.”

Carolyn tunes them out as they go on, Soledad jumping in periodically. There’s a short wait at the hostess station, but Carolyn doesn’t mind as she scans the restaurant. She spots Nate in his usual section toward the back. He waves and ducks into the kitchen, and a few minutes later Serina emerges and waves cheerfully.

She carries a tray of drinks and pauses at two tables to drop them off and reassure her customers that she’ll be back momentarily for their orders. Then she approaches Carolyn, smiling happily. “Did you come to break up the monotony of my shift?” Serina asks. “I get a break soon. I could come visit you, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Carolyn agrees. She’d ask the others, but the conversation has shifted to discussing some book that she’s never read, and she doesn’t want to interrupt.

Serina looks away, then reaches for menus. “Come with me. Nate’s pointing to a booth in his section, so I’m going to put you there.”

Carolyn taps Trish on the shoulder, and the other three girls trail after, still discussing. When they arrive at the booth, Carolyn waits to let Trish and Cass slide into either side, so she can manage an end seat.

Serina drops the menus on the table. “Nate’ll be over to get your order soon, and I’ll be back with water for you in just a minute when I take my break. Do you want to give me your tea order?” Serina writes down their choices quickly, grins as she taps the pad with her pencil. “Perfect, I’ll be back!”

“Writing songs,” Trish says. Carolyn isn’t sure what she’s responding to, as she apparently returns to an earlier conversation. “Or well, one song, and some music. I was working with Thorne today, because he wanted an opinion that wasn’t Rory for some reason. Plus we decided a while back that we should do some collabs, so we were working on those, too. We want to blind drop an EP of just the two of us singing songs about completely random things—totally innocuous things, like ice cream, or flowers—and see what people do with it. It goes back to that whole question of interpretation versus intention. We’ve got reputations. It’ll be interesting to see how that affects what people hear in our music.”

“Aren’t you afraid everyone will think you’re sleeping with him?” Soledad asks, and Trish brushes off the question with a wave of her hand.

“Everyone here already does. I’m pan and poly, he’s pan and poly, they figure that means we obviously had sex. Which, no.” Trish wrinkles her nose, leans on her elbows on the table. “He’s just not what I’m looking for. I don’t know what I’m looking for lately.”

Carolyn meets her gaze, and Trish looks down. Carolyn’s fairly certain that’s a lie, but she figures that Trish isn’t ready to talk about Sera to anyone else.

It’s strange being the only person who knows about something. Or probably the only person; it’s possible Trish talked to someone else. This is not normal for Carolyn.

Serina reappears with Nate right behind her. She sets down four pots of tea, nudging the correct one in front of each person, and keeping a fifth for herself. Nate pushes mugs across the table, along with silverware.

“Is it okay…?” Serina gestures to the bench next to Carolyn, and Carolyn squeezes closer to Cass to give Serina room. “Thanks,” Serina says, cradling her mug in her hands.

Carolyn smells chocolate, and there’s a thin sheen of cream on the top, as if Serina’s already licked away a mound of whipped cream. Carolyn was hungry when they started walking over, and her stomach growls at the scent. When Serina grins, Carolyn flushes. “It smells good,” she admits.

“Taste,” Serina orders, holding the mug up to Carolyn’s lips. “It’s not searingly hot; I like my cocoa a little cooled.”

It’s as rich as it smells, the consistency thicker than Carolyn’s used to. “There’s melted chocolate—”

“Blended in, yes.” Serina presses her knee against Carolyn, looks over at the others. “I totally didn’t mean to interrupt. I mean, I’m just sitting here while I’m on break. I get like fifteen minutes, but I spent a few of that making myself cocoa. And I kind of still need to eat a snack, too, unless Nate’s nice enough to bring me something.” She cranes her head, tilting back as she looks for him. “Nope, he’s busy. So don’t worry, I’ll be gone soon.” She taps her knee again Carolyn’s. “Thanks for coming to visit me.”

Cass snorts softly.

“Any time one of us decides to head to Teas Please, it turns into a party,” Trish says. She pours her tea and offers the cup to Soledad to taste, and Soledad offers her own in return. They seem to be getting along better again, and Carolyn wonders if that’s because Sera has been spending time with TJ instead of Trish.

She doesn’t wish ill on Trish’s friendship, but she’s glad to see her sisterhood isn’t faltering now.

“I got a care package from my parents,” Soledad says, leaning on the table, her voice low. “It’s four bottles of homemade wine. And I was thinking I could bring it over to the house, and we could have a wine tasting one night, with just some of the sisters. My aunt and uncle are really proud of these four batches, and I’d love to be able to share.”

“I take it your parents don’t believe in the drinking age?” Cass asks, fingernails tapping against the wood of the table.

“Are you going to tell?” Trish asks just as quickly, and Cass pulls back, affronted.

“No. That was conversational. Most parents don’t seem to just give their kids alcohol.”

“My aunt and uncle own a vineyard, and we all grew up tasting wine since we were little,” Soledad explains. “My father wanted to work with them for a long time, but he has a talent—not a Talent, we don’t think, but who knows—for working with computers. And he really doesn’t have any kind of a nose for wine, so my uncle encouraged him to follow his passion. But we help there when we can, and we all grew up close enough that we have their wines at home all the time. I’ve been missing it, and I asked at Christmas if I could have some so… care package.”

“Never did understand why more parents don’t teach their kids how to handle alcohol,” Trish says, her accent thickening softly. “All my friends never had a drop unless they stole a six pack from their folks, and they all thought it was this big deal to get hammered and drive around like fools. Momma said she didn’t raise her kids to drink or do drugs, but that hasn’t helped—”

“What?” Serina asks, her smile falling away when Trish looks at her.

“My older sisters Patsy’s an alcoholic, and Momma doesn’t know,” Trish says quietly. “We’re close as hell—Momma’s two bookends—but I don’t feel that need to drink. But Patsy started when she was on the road, and she’d never had it before, and next think she knew she was drinking herself under the table, no help required. She’s on the wagon now, but she says sometimes it’s hard, especially after she comes home. Momma’s got a strict no alcohol policy at home, though. Just like her strict no magic policy.” Trish turns her hand palm up, like maybe they can see the way her Talent plays across her skin.

Soledad’s brow furrows. “Trish, can I ask a weird question?”

“Sure. Might not have an answer,” Trish admits.

“Are you and your sister both named Patricia?”

It’s funny, because Carolyn’s never thought of that, and she’s been friends with Trish since freshman year. Cass laughs into her drink, and Serina’s eyes go wide.

“Whoa, really?” Serina asks. “I thought that was like this total fictional stereotype, having a family with the kids all named the same thing.”

“It’s just me an Patsy,” Trish says easily. “Patsy was already a teenager when I was born, and there’s like six other kids between me and her. She was all rebellious, and Momma asked what she had to do to get Patsy to help out around the house instead of leaving. Patsy said name the baby after her, so that’s what Momma did. Then Patsy left anyway, went out on tour without even graduating high school.”

“You don’t sound upset by that.” Soledad sounds bewildered. “Why aren’t you angry?”

“Because sometimes family leaves,” Cass mumbles. She pulls her phone out, looks at it, then turns it upside down on the table.

“She came back,” Trish says firmly. She reaches for Soledad’s teapot and pours herself a cup. “She was there more than not when I was twelve, and she stuck around and made sure I made it through high school without being stupid like her—her words, not mine. I was already writing songs, and I’d sent her some, and she helped me start recording. But she said I had to get my high school diploma first, and when she found out I liked engines, and that I was good at working with them, she said I should go to school for that, too. She pays my tuition now, even though I could afford it, and like I said, we’re close. She didn’t abandon me. She just needed to grow up a bit away from Momma. And I think maybe she had the right idea with that one.” She smiles ruefully. “I love my Momma, but sometimes I don’t really like her all that much.”

Nate appears at the table, sets down two baskets of crispy breadsticks and two ramekins of dipping sauces. “Serina, you’re needed in the back. Your section is filling up and people are going to want service, and I can’t do it all.”

“Gotcha.” Serina quickly downs the rest of her hot cocoa, then glances at everyone. “Anyone need a refill? Cass?” she says when Cass raises her hand. “Okay, I’ll put that in and bring out more tea shortly.”

“I’ll bring out more tea and you’ll go back to your section,” Nate repeats. “Go earn your own tips.” He stands tall until she hurries away, but as soon as she’s gone his shoulders slump. “She was excited to see you come in, but we’re too busy tonight for much social. Even for me.” He takes their orders and pockets his pencil and pad. “Carolyn, have you got a minute?”

It’s strangely formal for Nate, his usual cheerfulness held at bay. Carolyn rises, follows when he motions for her to head toward the narrow hall leading to the back where the restrooms are. “I’m not good at advice,” she says when they are out of sight. “No matter what anyone else might say. I’m really not.”

“I’m not looking to get advice,” Nate says softly. “I’m looking to give it. Anyone with eyes can see that Serina’s fallen hard, and I just don’t want to see her get hurt again. She wears her heart on her sleeve.”

Carolyn blinks. “What?”

“First she had that crush on me, and I had to let her down easy because as much as I adore her—and I do adore her—she’s just not my type.” Nate ticks points off on long fingers as he speaks. “Then there was Kit, and she was over the moon, and then suddenly they just weren’t together. And she didn’t seem all that upset, and I wasn’t sure why, but then I saw you.”

“Me?” Carolyn’s still not following.

“If you’re not interested, you need to let her know,” Nate says.

Oh.

“I don’t know if I’m interested,” Carolyn admits, just as quietly. “I mean, I think I am. But there’s—” She doesn’t want to get into all the details with Nate, and doesn’t really feel like he belongs that deeply in her psychology. “I don’t want to hurt her, either. I like Serina. A lot. And I’m comfortable with her, and when I needed someone to flee to, she’s who my subconscious chose.” She shrugs her shoulders, wraps her arms around her center before anything else slips free. “Take that as you will.”

Nate regards her for a long moment, then opens his arms and gestures for her to come closer. He wraps her up in a hug, holding on tight as he pats her back. “Don’t let her hurt you, either, Carolyn,” he murmurs. “Remember that you’re just as important as she is.”

Carolyn disengages slowly. “Weren’t you just giving me the shovel talk on her behalf?”

“You’re both my friends; I can give you both the shovel talk,” Nate says seriously. He keeps his hands on her shoulders, watching her. Carolyn isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but he eventually drops his hands and steps back. “I need to get back to my shift; we really are busy.”

“Have you had any luck with your risks?” Carolyn asks. She follows him back out, doesn’t miss the way he checks her table. Heather and Nikita must have just arrived, standing nearby. Cass slides out of the bench, pushing past them roughly as she heads out. “Nate?”

“Hm?” He glances over at her, shakes his head. “Risks? Oh, you mean fighting off the dicks for purposes of valor. No, sorry, he remains gorgeous, straight, and absolutely unattainable. And to be honest, if I could stop thinking about him, I would, but sometimes there’s nothing sensible about crushes? Right. Me, I have a thing for a human stats machine. He isn’t even my usual type. But don’t worry, I’ll get over him soon enough. Summer’s a great time around here for flirting with tourists trying to get away from the city.”

“It’s still February,” Carolyn points out.

Nate pats her cheek. “Don’t lose hope; spring is coming. Let me get that order in before you all starve waiting for me.”

They part ways, and by the time Carolyn makes it back to the table, Heather and Nikita have taken over the other side of the bench, and Cass is gone. Rather than squeeze in, Carolyn grabs an empty chair from another table, and makes her own spot at the end. “What happened to Cass? She was all over her phone tonight.”

“She got a text and stormed out,” Soledad says, looking at the door as if she could still see Cass. “She was really upset about it.”

“Dax?”

Trish shakes her head. “Not Dax; we asked if he’s okay and she said she has no idea. He’s got a project he’s working on, since Chris is away helping out with that tournament today. She didn’t want to talk about it, froze us out like Cass does.”

But it’s not like Cass does, not anymore. Carolyn’s begun to think of Cass as someone closer to her, sometime who trusts her, and that she can trust in return. She pulls out her phone as Nik and Heather pore over the menu and flag down Nate to add their orders and cancel Cass’s.

You okay? She sends the text to Cass, not really expecting an answer.

They have their food by the time Cass replies, I’m as okay as I’m going to be. It’s nothing major. Just family drama again.

For a moment Carolyn wants to ask if it’s about her sister, but she doubts that would be true. Not now, not after all these years. So instead she replies, If you want to talk about it at all, I’m here.

She figures that Cass understands just how rare an offer that is for Carolyn. And just how truly she means it.

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#welcome to phu #welcometophu #missed fortunes #phu twinned #twinned #mf self

[carriecourogen]

‘Exile in Guyville’ at 25: Still, if not more, relevant

It feels like we’re living through the ‘90s all over again right now. Everywhere you look, reboots of shows like Twin Peaks and The X-Files, slip dresses and Dr. Martens in Urban Outfitters, and reunions of bands like the Breeders and Smashing Pumpkins dot the current pop culture landscape. This is not unusual; we’ve found ourselves in these throwback eras before (think the ‘70s obsession with the wholesome ‘50s, or the ‘90s homages to the swinging ‘60s). Pop culture is cyclical, and when faced with uncertainty and turbulence (which we have in abundance), recalling “simpler times” of decades past provides some sort of semblance of familiarity and comfort.

And so, in the midst of this ‘90s resurgence, Liz Phair’s explosive and divisive 18-song debut Exile in Guyville turns 25 years old. The album came at the right time and place: in the midst of the (mostly male) rise of indie rock and trailing on the riot grrrl movement. Nearly three years in the making, it emerged as a fully-formed articulate, confident, and cutting concept — a track-by-track response to the Rolling Stones’ 1972 tome Exile on Main St. — paired with unpolished and imperfect vocals and instrumentation. It was an enormous “fuck you,” as Phair once recalled in an oral history on its making, to “people say[ing] ‘you can’t do this, you aren’t good enough to do this, you don’t know what you are doing’” giving Phair “enough rage in me to say, ‘I have as much of a voice as anyone.’”

Guyville topped the Village Voice’s esteemed Pazz and Jop poll the year of its release and thrust Phair into the role of an artistic wunderkind, even though she never thought of herself as a one, much less as a serious musician. “I was just a neighborhood kid who wanted to show the boys I could do it, too,” she told Mojo in 1994. In the decades since its release, the album has served as both a boon and a ball and chain: a critically-lauded record most artists dream of making, but one all of her subsequent work would be unfairly measured against.

Marking its anniversary is a new, expanded box set and short U.S. tour that will revisit the series of demo tapes that informed the album’s sound and concept. Revisiting emblems of pop culture from years past, and celebrating their milestone anniversaries, often drips with rose-colored nostalgia. But Exile in Guyville’s anniversary is different. To revisit Exile in Guyville in 2018 is to reckon with something that is not nostalgic, but something that strangely still feels current and all too relevant.

Exile in Guyville is a coming of age album, one that grapples with what it’s like to be a modern 20-something American woman: supposedly liberated, but not much better off than her mother, facing an insurmountable amount of societal pressures to look, act, and think a certain way. Phair wrote the majority of the album in ‘90s suburban Chicago, which the band Urge Overkill had previously deemed “Guyville”: a wasteland of “alternative” bros who, for all their feigned enlightenment, made it more than clear that, even though women were, in theory, their equals, in practice, in they would never really be their equals.

What if, in the 25 years that have passed, Guyville didn’t change or even get better? What if it just moved and grew? Women face just as many threats as they did in the early-90s. Guyville still very much exists in 2018, only now it’s come to encompass other gentrified, creative communities, be it by geography (like Bushwick) or industry (like the studio film system), or even digitally (like Twitter) — pockets where women are oppressed in some way or another.

“There’s a million Guyvilles,” Phair told the Washington Post this April. “‘Guyville’ could be a catchphrase for any oblivious community that has no idea that they’re shoving people to the side. I don’t know where it isn’t.”

Listening to Exile in Guyville today, I constantly have to remind myself that this album is almost as old as I am. It is not lost on me that I’m the same age as Phair was when it was released. Its words feel like they easily could have been written by me, by a friend, by other young, female artists coming up today, like Angel Olsen, Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, or Frankie Cosmos — all musical daughters (or maybe younger sisters) of Liz Phair. For me, and perhaps for many young women my age, Exile in Guyville is one of those albums that feels more fitting now than ever before.

Phair recently compared her album-making process to creating historical documents. “I’m doing these things to log on to history,” she told The Cut. “Like, ‘A woman lived in this time, and this is what it was like for her back then.’”

While Exile in Guyville does carry the weight of its time in some senses, its tie to a specific period lies mostly in the details: the paper map in “Divorce Song,” the stereo in “Help Me Mary,” the tight blue jeans styling of the titular “Soap Star Joe.” For the most part, Exile in Guyville seems to resist the trappings of history. Her words still sting, the taste of hurt and disgust and shame and anger in all of her words remain vivid, prescient, even. Art that both defines an era and transcends it is rare and worthy of discussion: What does that sort of status say about the art itself? More, perhaps, what does it say about our collective society?

In her 2014 book on Exile in Guyville for the 33 ⅓ series, critic Gina Arnold wrote: “Phair’s record brought out the uglier side of the indie rock scene, in the process highlighting the way that women artists, both there and elsewhere in the popular music world, are often undervalued as both listeners and consumers.”

Exile in Guyville pointed out that these problems existed then, but listening to the album now, I’m still hit with a stream of remembrances of offenses — some big, some small microaggressions that add up — that have come with being a woman in the music scene today.

I think about the conversation I once had with a male music writer who had just earlier asked me on a date. He ranted about why I was wrong to dislike a prolific male musician with a history of misogynistic behavior: “Most musicians are huge dicks,” he said. “Just put your gendered prejudices behind you.”

I think about the record store clerks who ask me if I’m looking for something “as a gift for my boyfriend.” The guy behind the counter at a used shop who rolled his eyes and told me to “just order a reissue at Urban to go with your Crosley” when I asked if they ever sell Sonic Youth.

I think about all the music dudes I meet at concerts, in record stores, and on dates, who always seem to test me, the ones who ask me what the rarest vinyl I own is, tell me that if I’ve never heard this or if I like X over Y, then I’m not serious, and I don’t know what I’m talking about. The ones who try to make me feel like I don’t belong.

I think about one of the most recent shitstorms of male @s I’ve brought upon myself on Twitter — the ones that happen every now and then when I casually denounce specific men or say simply that their art does not excuse their bad actions. Instantly, I recall the grown man telling me that a heavily researched piece I wrote wasn’t valid because I’m a woman, and that he saw my agenda as playing the victim card: “I get it. It’s the era of #MeToo and righting wrongs from 30 years ago. Getting justice for all those slighted for being female in a male world.”

“I was so disrespected,” Phair told Rolling Stone in 2010. “Being a woman in music back then, at least the level I was, was like being their bitch. Sit there, look pretty, bring us drinks and we'll talk about what music is good and bad. And it was almost understood that women's taste in music was inferior. [...] I was so angry about being taken advantage of sexually, being overlooked intellectually.”

Did Phair know something as a 25-year-old then that those of us living out our mid-20s now still have yet to figure out? A way to rise above her situation, maybe? Did she think that calling it out then would maybe lead to a change for now? How many of us girls listen to her today and wish we could wrap our arms around her like a friend and say, “Oh, but Liz, things are going to get so much worse”?

They make rude remarks about me / They wonder just how wild I would be / As they egg me on and keep me mad / They play me like a pit bull in a basement, and for that / I lock my door at night / I keep my mouth shut tight / I practice all my moves / I memorize their stupid rules

It takes Phair barely over three minutes on Exile in Guyville before she rips into the types of men who have tried to keep her in her place in “Help Me Mary.” They’re the ones who overrun her home — in her case, Wicker Park’s indie scene — and trap her, reducing her to a mothering role. Their ridicule is just barely above that of a schoolyard “you can’t play with us” taunt, nagging her with “you can’t do this” and “you don’t belong here” to her face incessantly. Instead of biting back, she swallows her anger, internalizes it and uses it as a fuel to learn their game, to get so good at it that she ends up besting them in the end. But can she really best them in the end? No matter how good Liz Phair got, she is still, at the end of the day, a woman.

In a recent essay on the prominent gender biases present in music criticism for The Outline, critic Leah Finnegan argues that perspective when writing about art matters: “How does the journalist see the world, and how do they place art in it? If you’re paying attention, an article will reveal those biases. It will sometimes tell us more about the writer than what the writer is writing about.”

Early criticism of Exile in Guyville and profiles of Phair were primarily written by men who missed the point entirely. Rolling Stone’s initial review lumped it in with PJ Harvey’s not-really-all-that-similar Rid of Me, describing both as albums by angry women exacting a strange sort of revenge, exploring “the toxic consequences of intimacy with lacerating explicitness [...] relationships don't just end, they splatter. Yet listen closely, and you'll hear these women laughing under their breath.” Meanwhile, Spin pushed their criticism further, calling Phair a “well-off Winnetka, Illinois brat” who wrote an album of “songs about all the boys she’s fucked and how soon they fucked her over.”

Attempting to follow an album that had set such a high standard would be difficult for anyone. Yet while many of Phair’s later records — Whip-Smart, whitechocolatespaceegg, and Liz Phair — were solid works, full of tender, piercing, tough, and smart songs about being a woman in this world, each faced subsequently fading reviews that placed more emphasis on her looks than her music — mostly written by male critics. Her career withered.

“Men can make middling, maudlin art and be celebrated, and women artists face harsher scrutiny while doing the same thing, and usually better,” Finnegan wrote in the same Outline piece. I can’t help but wonder how Phair’s career could have been altered if more women were writing about her back then. Women who understood what she was talking about, who didn’t reduce songs about complicated issues we face to maudlin drivel or the shallow venting of a girl who is simply angry.

But more distressing than the theme of how female artists continue to be mistreated is the theme that life as a young woman in America continues to be, more or less, the same. Maybe even worse.

Whatever happened to a boyfriend? / The kind of guy who tries to win you over. / Whatever happened to a boyfriend? / The kind of guy who makes love ‘cause he’s in it. / I want a boyfriend. / I want a boyfriend. / I want all that stupid old shit / Like letters and sodas / Letters and sodas

In 1968, Virginia Slims famously began marketing their cigarettes to women with a tagline “You’ve come a long way, baby!” The strides Gen X’s mothers had made for women’s liberation in the ‘60s and ‘70s had allowed women of the ‘90s to boldly own their sexuality as something casual, their wants and desires equal to a man’s. Except it wasn’t that simple, and on the song “Fuck and Run,” Phair laments the disposable turn that dating life had taken. Had we really come a long way? Hardly.  

Twenty-five years later, on an unusually warm April night, a friend and I were explaining Tinder to two parental figures over dinner. This was not the first time we’ve had to break down the State Of Meeting Men in 2018 to people who are our elders, but the first time I was struck by how exhausting it is, how demoralizing, how my resigned, yet defensive, argument that this swiping and scheduling our way to hookups thing just is the way it is makes no sense.

“Guys don’t talk to us in real life,” I insisted. Sitting back in my chair, I dropped my fork on the plate in front of me as defeated punctuation. “The only way to meet a guy now is on an app, and they pretty much all just want to have sex and nothing else.” They looked at us incredulously.

Millennial women share a desire planted by Baby Boomers and driven home by Gen X: That we can be independent women who don’t need men in our lives. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t times when independence becomes tiring; times when you know that even though you can do it all by yourself, you don’t really want to. Millennials are 48 percent more likely to have sex before even going on a first date with someone, even though we’re 40 percent more likely than Boomers to think sex is better with an emotional connection. Virtually having access to sex at any time is making us feel increasingly more hollow.

Sitting across from a couple who had been together for nearly half a century, Phair’s “Fuck and Run” lyrics came to mind. We both find ourselves wanting what the women who came before us have and had: stability, a relationship, affection, love. That admission terrifies us, in a way. It makes us feel like we’re betraying our generation and the freedoms we’ve earned, when, really, we’re just allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, allowing ourselves to be human.

So don’t look at me sideways / Don’t even look me straight on / And don’t look at my hands in my pockets, baby / I ain’t done anything wrong

In “Never Said,” Phair’s powerlessness against pervasive gossip and doubts recalls the strains of #MeToo. While Phair centers the track around adamance that nothing happened and #MeToo is focused on the insistence that something happened, what they both share is the painful sense that being a woman and being a person believed to be telling the truth are, at times, mutually exclusive.

When faced with doubts, both Phair and women today are forced to aggressively defend themselves as they see their reputations ruined. Past actions are called into question, personality traits turned against us, and our repeated insistences — done to keep our names “clean as a whistle” — are seen as lies or exaggerations, at best, admissions of guilt, at worst.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that a frustrating number of people think women are making false #MeToo claims: 31 percent categorized false claims as a major problem; 45 percent called them a minor issue. Do we really still think that women lie more often than not?

Why does it seem that men are believed unequivocally, but when women tell the truth, they are wrong until proven right? Why do we have to work extra hard to fight suspicions? It’s a frustrating sticking point. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. We’re not always seeking justice against aggressors, not always seeking revenge, as Phair may have been in “Never Said.” Sometimes, all we want is to be heard and accepted.

But for all its anger — and Exile in Guyville is an album full of a specific form of women’s rage — it still holds quiet moments of vulnerability. Its songs still depict evergreen, nuanced feelings so specific to this strange time period of delayed adult womanhood. The reflections on the city in which you live, the uncertain hope for a relationship with someone better than what you’re used to, the growing pains of doing and being what you want versus what is expected of you, and the encounters with the more realistic, perhaps sadder, side of elders you once considered heroic — all of those complicated situations live in the softer in-between moments of the album, from “Stratford-On-Guy” to “Shatter”, “Canary” and “Flower” to “Explain It To Me.”

It’s in these ebbs and flows that Exile in Guyville resonates. Guyville helped to usher in the transition between punks like Debbie and Viv and Siouxsie, who reached the bedrooms of young girls listening and made them feel like they weren’t so alone in their emotions and their anger, and alt-girls like Alanis and Fiona and Shirley, who built upon that rage, but let listeners know they, too, sometimes felt strange and misunderstood and were still struggling to figure everything out.

Listening to the album today can, on certain occasions, feel like listening to what the inside of your brain sounds like over the course of 24 hours, the rollercoaster of rushing thoughts and feelings that go through it. Angry. Excited. Sad. Hopeful. Complicated. So, maybe not much has changed in 25 years. Maybe being a 20-something girl still sucks in so many ways. But there’s a silver lining: At every step, we have this album in our ear, there to tell us that someone else, who is now older and wiser than we are at this moment, has been through all of this before and knows exactly how we feel.

#my writing #liz phair #exile in guyville #this album tho #cultural criticism #feminism #thinkpiece #longread #music criticism #music journalism #on lady heroes

[oneweekoneband]

Why Did It Take Me So Long To Notice That The Word Is “Fury” Not “Furry”?

Hello again. While I must admit to mild surprise at Dinosaur Jr.’s absence from the constantly growing roster of artists covered on OWOB, I should also state my attempted approach to writing about a band with no lack of wordage already available on its behalf. Though potentially futile, I will be trying to write something that benefits a cross-section of readers, from the unfamiliar but curious to the currently dismissive therefore purposely detached to the self-appointed superfan. All of this being stated, please understand that “attempted” carries one hell of an implied emphasis.

As covered in the previous post, I’m an active writer with many years in the trenches, though at least a half-decade in between my first toe-dips into this endeavor and the formative teenage moment when exposure to two Dinosaur Jr. albums (1987’s You’re Living All Over Me and 1991’s Green Mind, their second and fourth, respectively) combined to transform a fervent interest in underground music into a terminal, all-consuming obsession that almost seems to have dictated, in some way, shape or form, each lifting of a finger since. 

I’ve had a fair amount of writing published on the subject of this band, but most of it appeared during the first half of my now 18 years in this racket, barring the entries about several Dinosaur Jr. albums did make it into my second (and most recent) book, which carried the subtitle of 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981 - 1996 and a title that I absolutely hate so it shall not be revisited. On that note, attacks of full-body cringe have become as reliable as Christmas upon revisiting older writings, therefore I did not in order to guarantee no points or angles reiterated. But for what it’s worth, at some point in the early-00s, I did a long and embarrassing tribute to You’re Living All Over Me for the Perfect Sound Forever website as my first piece of writing on the band. Then once the spotlight was aimed backwards and topically in 2004-2006 for that period’s two-tiered reissue and reunion activity, I wrote a bunch of features about the Homestead and SST years (plus the early run of reunion shows) for several outlets. I interviewed both Mascis and Barlow, twice each if I remember correctly, and essentially felt like I said everything there was to possibly say about this band whose music more or less put me on a personal and professional course that continues to this day. I don’t feel like that anymore.

Two things to take into account before we move on: First, none of the subsequent entries will be this long, or at least that’s the plan. Secondly, this week will feature very little writing on the four albums of new material Dinosaur Jr. has released since the original lineup of J. Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Emmett Jefferson Murphy III (almost exclusively known as “Murph” but I find his full given name to be amusing) reunited in 2005…will be of the unflattering comparative variety. However popular it might be to jump to black-and-white, definitive conclusions, do not take this to mean I consider these albums to be bad or boring or anything of the sort. But do know that they are, despite what the rest of the world seemingly believes, inferior when placed against what I will be trying to push into your ears and lives going forward. And understand that Dinosaur Jr.’s major-label era (1991 - 1997) will be explored in a nooks-and-crannies fashion (meaning, we’re going to get into Mike Johnson’s discography), as I feel there’s a nice chunk of amazing music hidden in there that has been largely overlooked or misunderstood.

I am about as obsessed with music as I am the non-fiction ghetto in which I operate.  Therefore it might or might not behoove me to do something no one outside of this little world should waste their time with, and that would be lot of overthinking about a couple of crucial elements of artistic criticism and appreciation that appear to be under constant attack these days: context and nuance. There is no such thing as good-to-great creative nonfiction or journalism that lacks or misuses either, and the most difficult to translate of the two is, of course, context. 

These days it seems every talking head (or every record-store loiterer or live show barnacle) of similar vintage to myself should be wearing a t-shirt or rocking a bumper-sticker that says, “Ask Me What It Was Like Before The Internet!”. This is something for which I harbor a visceral and distinct distaste if not great embarrassment. Any historically-precise party line of assumed profundity is going to fail at transmitting the intended impact for two reasons. First is the obvious neutering of any meaning or relevance when beating a cultural audience over the head with something, year after year, generation after generation. The second is more problematic, as I’m not certain that being present during its heyday or for a following period of linear influence is necessitated so as to provide fundamental context needed to understand how or why a band was groundbreaking or brain-rearranging or whatnot. 

For example, Dinosaur Jr. was four albums and seven years active once its music entered my life in earnest. Still, when it comes to blanket mantras of the reality-removed like, “This Was Before The Internet!” or “We Didn’t Have Cell Phones” battle stories, usually issued as some delusional badge of struggle or evidence of authenticity, we’re talking something that means far less than is assumed to a recipient without the same experiential history. I usually cringe when I witness someone else trying to get this across to a younger generation, though I have yet to figure out myself how to do it effectively. 

Conversely, there are examples of past underground rock prescience (well beyond the legendary trio of albums released by Dinosaur Jr. between 1985 and 1988) such as Mission of Burma, Black Flag, NEU!, Brian Eno’s “Third Uncle”, The Feelies, The Embarrassment, Can, This Heat, The Fall, mid-period Sonic Youth, Husker Du’s SST years, Black Sabbath, Slayer, mid-80s Swans, and Miles Davis’ 1970 - 1975 output, to name but a few, that occurred long before I developed anything close to refined taste or the ability to let music have an impact on a deep emotional and intellectual level. Or, for that matter, the ability to breath air outside of the womb in some of those cases. 

Still, once properly blown away, I could easily wrap my head around how each example was way ahead of the curve, or scared the shit out of most listeners who came in contact with it in real time. Of course, it helps if the music in question resides in the exclusive canon reserved for that which is genuinely timeless. If it falls short of timeless it sure as hell better be a high quality, well-aged specimen of music that’s nonetheless easily identifiable as being from a certain era of yore. Much of material released by Dinosaur Jr.’s during the band’s first two phases of activity, which together span 1985 until 1997, fits into one of those two categories.

My first meaningful introduction to Dinosaur Jr. essentially played out in similar a similar fashion to formative life-altering moments spun by many writers, musicians, and fans of my generation or older. I suppose a warning should now be issued that you’re about to read yet another account of someone taping episodes of MTV’s 120 Minutes. I had a habit of setting the recording time to the shittiest quality of six hours and fitting three episodes of said show onto my parents’ VHS copies of HBO and Cinemax films like The Cotton Club and Bill Cosby’s Himself. Some time after its parent album (You’re Living All Over Me) was released, on a Christmas night when I was in my early teens, the video for “Little Fury Things” ran between a Michelle Shocked number and The Cure’s infuriatingly awful “Let’s Go To Bed” (that goes for the video and the song). At first I focused on other future life-alterers like the clip for The Fall’s “New Big Prinz” and Sonic Youth’s iconic “Teenage Riot” video, as Dinosaur Jr.’s idea of a video and that song were just too fucking dark and ominous for my young teenage mind. 

But because I had to fast forward or rewind through multiple Christmas-special live-in-the-studio tomfoolery from hosts They Might Be Giants along with crap that was somehow already “not for me” like Fishbone, Camouflage, Translator, and the not-that-bad-but-long-as-hell video for Love And Rockets’ “Dog End Of A Day Gone By”, I eventually came around to the three minutes and change that was the “Little Fury Things” video….like a moth to flame. I still have the very VHS tape I used to play and rewind repeatedly while my parents were at work during the day, blasting it through the shitty speakers of our 27” Sony Trinitron and running all over the floorplans of the three houses (well, one house and two apartments, if we’re to split hairs) I lived in during my high school years. The beginning of the video goes blank for a few seconds because I accidentally hit “record” on the remote amidst some furious bouncing all over the couches and chairs.

I seriously doubt there’s a song I’ve listened to, on my own accord, more times than this one and it still delivers a palpable, albeit much different due to time passed, charge as it plays at this very moment. The sonic dichotomy that makes this track exciting- powerful noise/distortion married to a huge, highly emotive pop hook-happens to be another dragon I chase to this day and in general has been one of the crucial elements of forward movement undertaken by post-hardcore, proto and first-gen indie-rock, punk rock, shoegaze and underground metal over the last 30 years. Because I still run into music obsessives, mostly younger, who are unaware of Dinosaur Jr.’s legacy and historical place as a paramount force of innovation, influence and well-aged listening excitement, I’ll close this entry with the aforementioned video despite it visually communicating far less than it does musically. 

Much has been written (years ago by myself and more recently in Nick Atfield’s 33 ⅓ book on the album it opens) about attempting to decipher or assign one’s own meaning and words to what is probably a bunch of lyrical nonsense. I think that’s organically symptomatic of anything that hits with this kind of power and non-cheesy melancholic punch. A personal fave, however, would have to go to the one-off “Hallelujah, the sunlight brings the red out in your eyes” line that opens the gate for an instrumental mid-section of riffs (where a guitar solo might normally be).

“Little Fury Things” official video from 1987′s You’re Living All Over Me

And here’s a couple of clips that hopefully illustrate how insanely loud and air-moving Dinosaur Jr. Mach I must have been as a live band, especially considering the average age of the members was 20 to 22.

1986 at UMass…

Germany, 1988, full set. Pretty good sound given the age/era.

#dinosaur jr

[homeawayfromhogwarts394-blog]

On the twenty-second day of Christmas, fanfiction gave to me... Thewaterfalcon! Find her stories on fanficiton.net, check her out on tumblr @thewaterfalcon, and read her interview below!

Getting to Know You

HAFH: Tell us how you fell in love with Harry Potter    

TWF: I’ve been a fan right from the start, I was introduced to Philosopher’s Stone when I was about 8 (1998), I was always a bit reader, especially as a child, but from that moment not many books have ever come close.

HAFH: Who is your favorite Character? Which is your favorite book? Why?      

TWF: Ron, he gets such a hard time in ff but he’s my favourite. I think he’s the one I always connected to the most, he felt the most real to me, I like that he made the mistakes that he did, and that he didn’t particularly have a lot of love for his classes, but I think mostly, I just relate to how he frequently didn’t feel good enough. And then, of course, he still helped save the world! My favourite book is a toss up between PoA, and OotP, they’re the ones that I’ve gone back and read the most times. PoA because I love how we were introduced to the Marauders, and how you can re-read and see that there is so much more depth to the story than you first thought (Remus seeing Harry, the spitting image of his old best friend on the train, for example). OotP because it made me laugh the most, some of my favourite chapters in the entire series are the ones in Grimmauld Place, I love that even despite the frightening state of affairs (Voldemort having just returned, etc), there was this sort of community/family feel during those parts.

HAFH: What is your favorite book (outside of HP)?    

TWF: The Lord of the Rings series, I’ve read them close to the amount of times I’ve read HP. I absolutely adore the world Tolkien gave us, the scope of the history, characters, and story are just incredible in my eyes.

HAFH: What are your favorite holiday traditions?      

TWF: Crafts, baking, decorating, etc are all staples. We go to Christmas Markets when we can, oh, and our tree topper is a penguin called Chris, who sits on top of a bookcase all year until Christmas!

HAFH: Do you like the holidays?      

TWF: Yes! I’m such a typical mum at Christmas, it’s all about the kids, and I love it all!

HAFH: Share one of your strengths and one of your weaknesses. Doesn’t have to be writing related!      

TWF: My ability to overcome is the strength I pride myself on the most. One weakness is that I can be incredibly oversensitive.

HAFH: What other hobbies do you have?      

TWF: I’m a watercolour painter, and fan artist, and I spend copious amounts of my time perfecting my bullet journal.

HAFH: Do you write anything outside of Harry Potter fanfiction?    

TWF: Yes, one day I would like to release an original work, I write bits and pieces of non-ff, but I haven’t got enough of an idea in mind yet.

HAFH: What are you doing when you're not obsessing about Harry Potter or fanfiction?    

TWF: Adulting, or bullet journalling.

General Fanfiction

HAFH: Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.    

TWF: I’ll take angst over fluff any day, I prefer rarer pairings, and a little bit of some smutty goodness wouldn’t go amiss.

HAFH: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?    

TWF: Oh my gosh, this is a really hard question! Can I alter it a teeny bit? I’d finish avis1756’s Unintentional Magic.

HAFH: If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose? Any actors you would hope play your characters?      

TWF: The History of Magic, because I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to watch Hogwarts come to life for the first time. My fancasts for Rowena and Salazar are Katie McGrath (she plays Morgan le Fay in ‘Merlin’), and Michael Fassbender.

HAFH: If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?      

TWF: If I *had* to choose, I think I’d pick Ronsy.

HAFH: Do you have a muse? What is it?! If not, where do you get your ideas?    

TWF: Primarily music; a lot of my stories are inspired by songs.

HAFH: Do you read fanfiction? Do you read similar or different things than you write?      

TWF: I don’t read it as much as I would like, but I try to write different things, that I haven’t seen before..

HAFH: Share three of your favorite fic writers and what you like about them.    

TWF: Clementine Mack; because I adore how she takes lesser known characters and gives them so much life, particularly her Millicent Bulstrode, she does for Millicent what I try to do for Pansy, she gives her this normality, and likeability, but with an unapologetic realness.      

dulce.de.leche.go ; because I find myself so drawn into the words she writes, there’s such a depth and beauty to her words that I just lap her stories up.        

@shayalonnie, because in my eyes she’s the best at what we do! Her stories aren’t simply stories, they’re epics.

HAFH: Share three of your favorite fanfictions and what you like about them.     

TWF: Savage Heart - Clementine Mack, because somehow, despite werewolf fics being fairly popular, she has managed to weave such an originality in the story and characters that it doesn’t even feel like a fanfiction now.        

The Debt of Time - ShayaLonnie, for the same reasons that everyone adores DoT! It made me feel everything, fall in love with the Marauders and feel even more connected to the canon story.       

His Little Bird - thewanderer’swanderingdaughter, this one is rough, there’s no getting around that, it’s one of the darkest I’ve read, but I was beyond pulled into it, the writing is incredible and, even though I found it hard to read due to its content, I really, really liked how the author dealt with various issues.

HAFH: Does what you read affect what or how you write? If yes, how so?      

TWF: I would say so, yes. I guess in a similar vein to how a musician often finds it difficult to just listen to music without scrutinising it, I do the same when I’m reading now, I’m constantly analysing how sentences flow, or whether the writer has done something grammatically different than I would have. If I really love a particular sentence, or passage, I often save it in my phone.

HAFH: How long have you been reading and writing fanfiction?      

TWF: I’ve read ff on and off for quite a few years, I’ve only been writing since May, so I’m a relative baby compared to lots of other authors!

Published Works

HAFH: Have you ever deleted one of your published fics? Why?      

TWF: I have not.

HAFH: Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

TWF: This is from Darkened Skies, one of the things I really wanted to address in this story is how Neville went from the accident prone target of bullies, to absolute bad ass. In canon we don’t really see this fully, because obviously the trio aren’t at Hogwarts during 7th year, and so it was fun to really dig deep with Neville in this way, also, DS has the slowest burn and this is right before Neville and Pansy finally kiss, so it was just great to get to this moment:

‘She smiled up at him. His face, which she had began to see as rather physically appealing from the minute he entered the carriage on the train, now had a whole new effect on her. She still marvelled at how good looking he had become, of course, but now there was more; he had a perfected rigidity to his jaw, and a deep sorrow in his eyes that she was certain, or perhaps she merely hoped that, nobody else could see. There was real pain and sadness in Neville Longbottom and knowing, and seeing, that, broke Pansy’s heart almost every day. And yet, despite the hurt, she knew there was also hope, and light. She saw it mostly in Herbology, an ambition in his eyes when Professor Sprout engaged him, or when Professor Flitwick commended his impressive spellwork. His Gryffindor fire was sometimes so close to the surface, she half expected his eyes to burn a deep red.

Their peers no longer regarded him in the way they once did, with mockery and pity. His abilities as a wizard had increased tenfold and his blatant defiance in the face of the Carrows’ proved he was no longer one to be trifled with. In fact, Pansy highly doubted whether Neville Longbottom would ever give anyone reason to truly make fun of him again.

Pansy smiled at his words, but said nothing. Instead,she let her head fall to the side, feeling comfortable enough, yet still nervous at first, to rest her head on his shoulder. She felt him altogether stiffen at her advance and then, all of a sudden, his whole body relaxed entirely, and she felt his head flop to the side, to rest against hers. His hand then reached for hers, and he grasped it in his own as their fingers interlaced.’

HAFH: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

TWF: This is from The History of Magic, I tried hard to really capture the Founder’s personalities, and I wanted to inject a bit of humour into the scene, and I hope I did a good job:

“And what if, at eleven years old they do not quite show the bravery of an ox-”

“I prefer lion, the lion is an animal of absolute grandeur.”

Helga narrowed her eyes at Godric. “Fine, the courage of a lion.”

“Much better!” Godric responded, this time earning him a most uncharacteristic, actual glare from Helga.

“Hush, Godric! Or, the intellect of a...a…”

“I’ve always admired the eagle, most intelligent creature,” Rowena interjected.

“...an eagle, then. Or the resourcefulness, and cunning, of...” this time Helga did not attempt to think of the relevant creature herself, instead simply gazing at Salazar, who replied without hesitation.

“A snake.”

“Of course,” Helga snapped, her arms now flailing in annoyance, much to the amusement of the other three. “a snake, so what happens? What if these children are not particularly brave, intelligent, or cunning? When their greatest attributes are kindness, or dedication, or patience, what then?”

“Well, one would assume, they would be in your House,” Godric answered the question Rowena was sure Helga had actually not wished for an answer to.

“Yes, yes they will! I shall take all the rest. And shame on all of you for not having the same attitude!” The small woman ended haughtily into a pregnant silence.

“Well, that is very kind of you, Helga,” Rowena said after a while, unable to bear the awkward quiet that had befallen the four friends. “What creature do you feel you would like to represent the House of Hufflepuff?”

Helga was taking deep breaths, and the reddening of her cheeks told Rowena that Helga was probably feeling a sense of embarrassment over her outburst.

“A badger.”

HAFH: Which fic has been the hardest to write?

TWF: More than Life, it came from this tiny idea, and I started it with virtually nothing, it’s one I should have planned out properly, first. It’s an entirely canon-compliant Hinny, and has none of my usual elements involved. It is however, my most popular!

HAFH: Which fic has been the easiest to write?

TWF: Need You Now; my filthy Ronsy smut-fest . I wrote that bad boy basically in one go, it came to me super easily.

HAFH: What is your favorite story you have every written?

TWF: Darkened Skies, it’s my baby. It started me on the journey of a writer and gave me this incredible outlet. I owe DS a lot.

Writing Process

HAFH: What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

TWF: Write to express, not to impress.

HAFH: What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

TWF: Work on only one thing at a time. Now, please don’t think I mean that this is bad advice overall, as I’m sure for many others it isn’t, but for me, and the way my inspiration comes to me, I tend to work on one fic for a while, and then not touch it for a while, whilst I concentrate on another, this helps me immensely as I know how easily I lose heart in a project, this way keeps all my work fresh.

HAFH: Describe your perfect writing conditions.

TWF: A pristine desk, a view that involved water in some capacity, and tea on demand! (typical Brit here!)

HAFH: Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

TWF: I outline my big fics, yes. Nothing too fancy, but I like to have a timeline, and bullet point what plot points are going to happen roughly in each part of the story.

HAFH: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

TWF: If a later scene comes to me, I will write it, but mostly start to finish.

HAFH: Describe the process a chapter goes through before being posted.*

TWF: I sometimes jot down some bullet points of what I’m including. I’ll try to finish writing a chapter in a few days. I then add it to the file in my drive, and let my beta know it’s there. Once it’s beta’d, I will publish.

HAFH: How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

TWF: I have two plunnies hopping about, one is a Ronsy heavily inspired by Outlander, it’s a Voldemort wins!AU, the other is a prompt I actually entered in the Q&P mistletoe comp, claimed it myself and then decided to delete it because I want to write it later, and longer, and do it justice. It’s a George/Daphne set after the war and deals with George losing Fred, which will be coupled with what has happened to Daphne (but I’m not going to give that away yet!), and how these two unlikely souls find each other, and something to cling to.

HAFH: Would you ever kill off a canon character?

TWF: I try not to, but, I mean, sometimes it calls for it, I killed Harry, Molly, and Arthur in The Whole World without batting an eyelid. On the whole though, I tend not to.

HAFH: Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

TWF: I usually write things that *could be* feasible in canon.

HAFH: Is there a character, book, scene, etc from canon (above all others) that inspires you?*

TWF: It’s actually a film scene, where they’re preparing for the final battle, oh it just gives me all the tingles! It’s one of the things I really feel they got right in the films.

HAFH: Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to? Or one you never would want to write?

TWF: Time turner, I’ve never really had much of a plunny for one though, but I do like them! I’ll probably send Pansy back in time at some point. I don’t think I’d ever write a marriage law.

HAFH: Is writing your passion or a fun hobby?

TWF: I’ve only been writing for seven months, so I’d say fun hobby that is becoming my passion.

Revision

HAFH: If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

TWF: I don’t really have any older fics, but I guess once I’m at that point it will be Darkened Skies, because I want it to be perfect.

HAFH: How do you feel about collaborations?

TWF: I’d never collaborate, I know i’d end up falling out with my partner. I think they’re often great in theory, but I know a few people who have had bad experiences with them.

HAFH: What do you look for in a beta?

TWF: Someone I feel comfortable with, and someone who will be my cheerleader, not all the time, but I need it, every now and again.

HAFH: Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?

TWF: I do, currently for two writers, and I’ll look over my friends’ work if they ask.

Works in Progress

HAFH: Talk about your current wips.

TWF: Darkened Skies is a Pansy/Neville story that takes place during 7th year when the trio are away. ‘He was her one and only chance to feel sane, she was his nights spent chasing a hurricane.’ Fire & Ice...and Everything Nice takes place after the war, and involves Pansy and Daphne taking a trip to Romania (no prizes for guessing who one of their love interests is!), it is primarily light hearted and fun, but deals with PTSD, anxiety, depression and panic attacks as a big underlying theme. “The aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts has left Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass alone; torn apart from their once-friends and shunned by the whole of Wizarding Britain. As Pansy is plagued by the worst of memories and left broken, Daphne realises that something needs to change and sets herself a mission, which, once in motion, might just alter both girls' lives forever.”

The Edge of Tonight is a Scorpius/Rose story where I make a pretty dramatic U-turn from how the next-gen are usually portrayed, it’s influenced a lot by how reckless I was as a teenager. “Baby, you are my horizon... Being sixteen is hard; between the endless expectations from being the daughter of not one, but two, war heroes, mediocre school grades and struggling to find her sense of self-worth, Rose Weasley must lean on the three people she trusts above everything, now more than ever. A coming of age story about friendship, love, late nights & poor judgement.”

HAFH: Do you accept prompts?

TWF: I’m not sure, nobody has ever given me a prompt!

HAFH: Which is your favorite site to post fic?

TWF: FFN, but I am slowly posting all my work to A03 also.

HAFH: How do you feel about smut?

I love it, to a point, I don’t overly like PWP, it has to feel natural to me, and be believable in my eyes, for me to enjoy it.

HAFH: How do you deal with trigger warnings in your work?*

TWF: I put them in A/N when they’re required, in fact I’m planning something pretty rough for DS, and I’m going to write a fairly hefty A/N which stipulates that if anyone feels they don’t want to read the chapter in question, then they can message me and I can give them the gist without details, so they can still follow the story, but hopefully avoid being triggered.

Feedback

HAFH: What kind of feedback do you prefer?

TWF: Positive, haha! I’m not going to lie, I don’t like criticism, but I do my best to take it on the chin when I do get it.

HAFH: Is there anything that you particularly like or don’t like to see in a review?

TWF: Well, I once got told my main pairing ‘would work better as Draco.Hermione’, that didn’t go down very well. I really like it when someone quotes one of my lines, or states that they think I’ve wrote something well.

HAFH: Talk about a review that made your day.

TWF: I honestly love getting pretty much any reviews! There were a couple that touched upon how I was handling Pansy’s PTSD in Fire & Ice, and it was really nice to read that they felt I was doing such a difficult and personal issue justice.

HAFH: Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

TWF: I’ve had a few, most I ignore and/or vent to friends about, I have given a couple of snarky replies though!

Thanks again to Thewaterfalcon for taking the time to answer all of our questions! We’ve so enjoyed getting to know you a little better! Be sure to check out her fics and find her on tumblr! 

#HAFH25daysofchristmas #author spotlight #christmasinjanuary #thewaterfalcon