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turnaroundroundround · 3 years

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Opera References in Musical Yuukoku no Moriarty Op. 2

Some thoughts of mine after re-watching Morimyu Op. 2, regarding Irene's arc A Scandal in British Empire, about all the opera references and some random thoughts that come to mind during this arc. Obviously there's a lot more to Morimyu Op. 2, for instance The Two M's and Mycroft's solo (which I often refer to as "the Mycroft Anthem" lol), the entire Baskerville arc, and the train arc, and so on. And there's a whole lot of other things I'd like to discuss about them as well, but maybe just save it for another time. I don't know if anyone has discussed these references before, and I am not entirely a pro in music either. All I have is some basic knowledge on opera and harmony, so these are just some personal impression that came to mind when I watched this arc, so please keep it in mind.

A SCANDAL IN BRITISH EMPIRE

Okay, so the biggest motivation for this post is, obviously, the music throughout the entire Scandal arc. It is heavily influenced by opera, partly because Irene herself is an opera singer, partly also because the masquerade ball itself is also a perfect stage for an opera to be shown. And the opera was not simply brought in to make the music sound good, but also utilising the plot of the opera itself to create more depth and color to the musical. About Opera during the 19th Century Some side notes. Opera has originated and developed from various different kinds of stage ever since the Greek and Romans. I'm not going into details but anyway, by the 19th Century, it's still somewhat of a luxury that is mostly meant for nobles and people with high status. There are millions of stories about nobles coming to the theatre only to enjoy the music and not the play itself, or not really watching anything but waiting to see their favourite opera singer. Like when the other things in the play are going on, they stay in there box or hang out with other nobles, playing cards and all, and when their favourite singer makes her debut, they come to the front of the box and watch her. Then they return to their games when she exits. All the luxuries. Opera is really something that is meant for nobles and those with nothing but time and money on their hand back then. And another thing is (with an image that I quickly searched on Google just now lol) back them before any stages there is always a pit for the orchestra to be in. They are just below the stage so that the music can still reach the audience as equally, but also low enough that they aren't in the way of the audience's view.

By the way, the role of the conductor and stage director back then was somewhat a blur (if I remember it correctly), as the music writer would very often himself direct the entire stage and become the conductor on the performance day. In case something goes wrong, such as actors need more time to adlib, then he knows how to direct the orchestra to play accordingly. It's quite a small detail, but in Op. 3 Liam also refers to himself (yes this is still about Yuumori lol) as the maestro, somewhat very similar to the role of the conductor himself. This reference, as we can see, shows Liam's role behind the scene conducting all the plots and instructions. It's quite a small detail I think, but also quite interesting

By the way, the leading singer, or Prima Donna (as they call Irene), are always sopranos. And the same goes for Irene Adler, all of her songs were written to highlight her soprano voice, like in 大作戦ーDaisakusen or her song with Ms. Hudson

An example from a song that I was reminded of when listening to Cecile!Irene. Of course there are many other songs we can talk about, this is just one of the examples.

Obviously, Irene's song aren't entirely like classical opera songs. They were all arranged to both highlight the opera feature, but also to suit the form of the musical and all the while showing Irene's elegant and gracious manners of a prima donna, and also showing her playful side especially during her duet with Sherlock.

YAMI NO OPERA - DON GIOVANNI BEHIND THE CURTAIN

To understand Don Giovanni references, it's essential to understand the story behind the original opera by Mozart. That being said, the actual plot of the story is quite long and contains so many details it's almost impossible to fit all of them into one post while also comparing them with the one in Morimyu, so this is a link to a more detailed synopsis of the opera. Or you can also read more on wiki. I'll just give some basic details that are referenced and discussed in this post. Overall impression: This opera revolves around a playboy that flirts with women, but lacking in loyalty and commitment to keep any of his promises to them. By the end of the play, after all the sin he has committed, Don Giovanni is engulfed in hell's fire, and punished for his sin. It is very much similar to the story in Morimyu, nobles relying on their wealth and status and have the freedom to do anything as they want, without having to worry about having to bear the consequence. Because of the difference in power and status, it is almost impossible to punish all of them, therefore having a need of a "demon" to punish them with powers that no human have - the role of Moriarty gang within the play.

In this arc, Liam is "directing" a play that is inspired by Don Giovanni. His audience is Irene Adler (and of course us who is watching the entire thing), and the main character is Lorinson who ends up being punished for his crime. Mozart's Don Giovanni is being performed on stage, but at the same time Liam's "Don Giovanni" happens, in the back stage. What we are watching as the main stage is actually the "back stage" of the real story.

In the original play, Don Giovanni was a playboy that flirts with many women. At the beginning of the play, he flirts with a woman called Donna Anna, and her father tried to defend his daughter. They got involved in a duel and Don Giovanni killed the man. Donna Anna mourns and wish to avenger her father.

In Morimyu, the story of Lord Lorinson (pardon me for not knowing both the translation of his title and his name) is added in spite of the original plot in the manga. As far as my Japanese comprehension goes, the story is that Lord Lorinson is also one that uses his status to abduct other women to his pleasure, and ends up treating them poorly.

At one point, a woman came to the Lord of Crime, saying that her daughter has been murdered by the noble and mourns her. She wishes for revenge, and Liam proceed to do so.

Don Giovanni - Act I Finale

During Moran and Louis' fight with Raymond(?), in the section behind the stage we can see the opera theatre with the Finale song going on. The ensemble is still singing as the fight goes on behind them.

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In the Finale of Act 1 here, the section that was insert into Morimyu was rather short, and was meant for a dramatic effect than actually showing what's happening in the original opera anyway. But anyway, we can see that as the fight proceeds, the curtain behind also slowly closes, ending the first Act of the opera.

It's clearer here. We can see that as they are fighting there is an entire opera going on at the back. The fact that the ensemble has their back to the audience emphasises how everything we're seeing are all in the backstage, but at the same time it proceeds alongside with all the events in the "mainstage". It's quite a powerful image.

At one point in the opera, Don Giovanni attends a party where he met one of his previous lovers that he betrayed. Then there's some talking and such and more betrayal, and somehow he then decides that he would also flirt with his ex's maid.

There isn't much that I have to say with this reference in the play, only that it is actually Fred disguising as a maid for the purpose of carrying out the plan and scared the sh*t out of Lorinson lol

I couldn't catch all the details from their conversation, but apparently Fred did some kind of stand-in again as the victim who was murdered by Lorinson, also to provoke him and lead him into Liam's trap?

At the end of the opera, Don Giovanni was cornered by the 'devil', drowning him in the flames of hell. However before that happens, the women that Don Giovanni once flirted with (as well as Donna Anna whose father was murdered by Don Giovanni) gathered, chasing after Leporello - Don Giovanni's servant - who exposed him of his guilts and sins.

The song that the women sung in this scene is "Ah, dov'e il perfido?", and there is a very small section at the end of the song that was kind of re-arranged and added to Morimyu. In Morimyu, this is the scene when Lorinson is exposed of what he is done, after that being "punished" by the devil. There is also a scene in the play when Liam mentions 地獄の炎 - Jigoku no Hono (The Flames of Hell) which is a direct reference from the original Don Giovanni. In fact, what he has been telling Lorinson is the story of Don Giovanni and how he ends up being punished - only that when Lorinson realised that, it's already too late.

(A reference from the song in the original play, the section that is used in Morimyu is actually quite short, only starting from around 5:40 within the song in this video)

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In Yami no Opera, the song is arranged with Liam's part of the melody above the entire harmony. So it is indeed a proper opera that "Liam" has based on re-arranged to carry out his plan.

While Don Giovanni is happening on stage, there is also another "Don Giovanni" being punished by the devil - Lorinson. We hear part of the original song from the ensemble in the background, and also Liam's version of the punishment along with Lorinson's struggle. And at the same time the ensemble does seem to be focusing on "Don Giovanni" - all of them looking towards Liam's and Lorinson's position. A really impressive scene.

And after that very short section, the play goes on, returning their focus back to Irene Adler and Albert's conversation. There is no "Flames of Hell" erupting in any ways except for Liam's really strong section of the Yami no Opera song. And there's no need for it, I think, as Lorinson has never been the real protagonist like Don Giovanni. Liam only made him a temporary "protagonist" and not solely for the purpose of exposing him, but only as a mean to show Irene the true identity of the Lord of Crime. So there is no point making it more dramatic than it already is.

So...

That's pretty much all that I have to say about Don Giovanni and opera's reference, I think?

Well another thing, maybe, is how much I love the instrumental arrangement for violin and piano in Morimyu. They don't have the privilege of having an entire orchestra, but instead they did as much as they could for the instruments so that they recreate the original opera vibe as well as they possibly can. And the result is, just, extraordinary.

Anyhow, I've heard many of my friends comparing the songs from Op. 2 and Op. 3, seeing that Op. 3 has more of a "flow" in between the songs as all of them were written with harmony such that they have a certain connection to each other.

Not that Op. 2 doesn't do the same thing. However the second Opus does feel more separated, I think, since the music in the 3 different arcs are much more different. For instance the Baskerville arc has a "hunting" vibe to it, describing Moriarty gang's plan to bring down the nobles' game of hurting children, while the final Scandal arc revolves around an opera singer and mostly happens within a masquerade ball. So there is a big difference between the scenes, and obviously a big difference in the music brought to them as well.

Aaaand, that's pretty much all the details I've picked up (and remembered lol) up to this point.

Anyway, I've been watching and re-watching all 3 Opus of Morimyu many times, each time firguring out something else that I haven't noticed before. So if I end up realising some other details within this arc, maybe I'll come back and add to this post.

Thank you for reading ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ

Also, thank you @rikaaki for these beautiful gifs(☆▽☆)

#musical yuukoku no moriarty #yuukoku no moriarty #william james moriarty #morimyu #yuumori #Youtube

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hldailyupdate · 3 years

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For British singer/songwriter Harry Styles, 2020 was a career-defining year, bolstered by the December 2019 release of his GRAMMY-nominated sophomore solo album, 'Fine Line'

Though many people might want to write off 2020 as a year that never existed, for others, it was a year of growth, change and even success. For Harry Styles, 2020 was a career-defining year, which is no easy feat when the entire world is shut down. The pandemic left him no choice but to put his world tour plans on pause and strategize a new way to not just promote his sophomore album, Fine Line, released in December 2019, but also keep fans' attention.

What followed was a bit of a phenomenon.

Styles, who has been a star since his One Direction days, became a bigger star with every passing day. His album went multi-platinum, he got his first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single with "Watermelon Sugar," he was named Variety's 2020 Hitmaker of the Year, he landed his first-ever GRAMMY nominations of his career (Best Pop Solo Performance for "Watermelon Sugar," Best Music Video for "Adore You" and Best Pop Vocal Album for Fine Line at the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show). And the list goes on.

While these accomplishments would add up to a banner year for any artist, what makes it so unique for the British singer is twofold. For one, he's been in the business for a decade already, gaining fame at just 17 as a member of the huge boy band One Direction. While in the group, which came together in 2010 as part of "The X-Factor," Styles and his bandmates Liam Payne, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik found global success, selling millions of records, performing in sold-out stadiums around the world and winning many awards.

However, despite how massive the band became, they didn't quite crossover to listeners of all ages—they had a hard time shaking the boy band label. While their music evolved into a more mature rock sound over the years, they never got to a place where they were wholly appreciated by the public in a way that their fans knew they deserved.

Once the band went on hiatus in 2015, Styles went to work creating his first solo album, Harry Styles. It was released in 2017 to much fanfare (it also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200), but it wasn't until his second solo album that he really hit his stride. With Fine Line he found his musical voice and shared an album that not only resonated with his core fanbase but also brought him further into the mainstream.

From the first single released off the album ("Lights Up" in October 2019) all the way to the most recent video ("Treat People With Kindness" in January 2021), Fine Line has continued to grow. It was with this album that Styles became a household name, disconnected from his boy band roots in a way like never before. Gone are the days where people refer to him as "Harry Styles from One Direction." Now Styles stands alone, proud of where he came from but boldly moving forward on his own path.

The even more stunning part of Styles' year, though, and the second reason 2020 was so out of this world for him, he largely let his fanbase spread the good word about his art. Fans on social media hosted streaming parties for "Watermelon Sugar" to ensure it hit Billboard's No. 1 spot. They've created and sold their own merchandise to advertise his music. As only a dedicated stan army can do, they've made sure that every single thing he does goes viral. Even though Styles himself has a limited social media presence, he's still one of the most noteworthy internet personalities, simply because his fans have kept him there. In a world where social media reigns supreme, he lets his work speak for itself and trusts in his partnership with his fans to help him succeed.

The impact of Fine Line was substantial. Because of it, he is currently in the running for his first three GRAMMYs--Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Music Video for "Adore You" and Best Pop Solo Performance for "Watermelon Sugar." And the numbers also back up his work. Fine Line is RIAA certified double platinum, has over 4 billion worldwide streams and spawned six songs that cracked the Billboard Top 100 chart.

Before the album's release, to promote "Adore You," Styles and Columbia Records created a mysterious world called Eroda that trended before anyone even knew it was for a music video. "Watermelon Sugar" became one of the songs of the pandemic summer after the video dedicated to human touch—which has over 194 million views on YouTube—was released in May 2020.

Not one to ever let the album get stale, Styles continued to remind listeners of its existence throughout 2020, even though the world had shut down and in-person promo wasn't an option. Before that, though, Styles caused a buzz as he took double duty on "Saturday Night Live" in November 2019 as the host and musical guest, as well as performing in BBC Radio1's Live Lounge the following month. After a few shows in Los Angeles, London, and New York in late 2019 and early 2020, Styles hunkered down amid COVID and let his music videos do the talking. Aside from "Watermelon Sugar," he released a video for "Falling" in February and "Golden" in October. Fans may not have gotten to see Styles on the road in 2020, but he made sure to keep popping up on their screens, including a virtual appearance at iHeart Radio's Jingle Ball in December, one of his only in 2020.

But 2020 wasn't only a great year for Styles' music, he also graced multiple fashion magazine covers, continued his relationship with Gucci, and even landed a second major movie role, in Olivia Wilde's upcoming Don't Worry Darling. Not only was he Vogue's first man to pose on a cover alone, he did it wearing a dress. He's continued to quietly advocate for genderless fashion by wearing what makes him happy, whether it's fishnets for Beauty Papers or his everyday pearl necklace. Though many rock stars before him pushed similar gender-bending trends, he's become that person for his generation.

Styles even influenced countless people in lockdown to take up knitting, simply to recreate the J.W. Anderson rainbow patchwork cardigan he wore during a rehearsal for the "Today" show in February. After a few fans fumbled through knitting a copycat, the fashion house published a pattern that spread like wildfire. Suddenly TikTok was flooded with people knitting "The Sweater," and fans all over the world showed off their matching rainbow cardigans in their Instagram selfies from home.

As much as the phrase has been bandied about in recent months, it still holds true: It's Harry Styles' world and we're all just living in it. Despite all the setbacks and hardships, 2020 defined Styles as an artist—not just a musician, but a whole artist. It seems inevitable that Styles will only continue to grow his star power as he draws in more fans for this journey. For those devoted fans who have been there for him since he was just a teenager singing "What Makes You Beautiful," though, his meteoric rise in 2020 just made sense.

(11 March 2021)

#harry styles #harry update #article #grammys #march 2021

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kingstylesdaily · 3 years

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How Harry Styles Emerged From Teen Pop Sensation To First-Time GRAMMY Nominee

For British singer/songwriter Harry Styles, 2020 was a career-defining year, bolstered by the December 2019 release of his GRAMMY-nominated sophomore solo album, 'Fine Line'

HEDY PHILLIPS

What followed was a bit of a phenomenon.

via Grammy.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: news #hs: grammys 2021 #March 2021

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canonicallysoulmates · 3 years

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Walker 1.10

I’m gonna do this quick because I don’t have much to say about this episode. It was pretty good, let’s just jump right into it.

Things start off with the Walkers fixing up the Side Step, that’s the bar they bought from Geri a couple episodes back if you didn’t remember the name don’t worry I too have yet to care about this set but they’re fixing it up and Micki and Trey are along for all of 5 second because Micki gets a call that a friend wants her and Walker’s opinion on a case but not just any case, this case is connected to another case Micki worked years prior before she was a Ranger, it’s her white whale. And if you got a problem with the Moby Dick reference, blame the writers. So Trey stays behind to help August prep the bar for the re-opening while Micki and Walker are off to work and as you probably guessed, yes this does mean that for this week we are back to the case of the week formula.

And it’s a fun case! Someone, is stealing very expensive musical instruments and Micki is sure she knows who it is but she ain’t got no proof and to make things harder for her the person she suspects is a known singer who Walker happens to be a huge fan off, so throughout the episode you have Walker trying to be a good partner for Micki while also not fanboy over this singer. Who actually ends up giving them a hand because she’s innocent in these specific robberies, while yeah she used to steal from the rich and give to the poor a la Robin Hood that’s all in her past, the person committing the crimes now is a guy she mentored who broke the code she thought him anyways she helps them catch the guy. And honestly, the catching the guy part was very anticlimactic but I don’t care because Walker was so cute, and the dynamic between the three of them (Cordell, Micki and Minnie aka the singer) was so much fun to witness.

Throughout this whole episode I wanted to reach into the screen and give Walker a cuddle cause him trying not to fanboy and being so excited over meeting Minnie was too adorable, he was so precious in this episode and there was a small scene where he strums a guitar and when I tell y’all my Jared Padalecki loving heart exploded into rainbows over that man holding a guitar! I love this man so much, my heart cannot take it 🥰

The other big thing that happens in this episode is that Stella is dumb as hell, Trevor is completely ignoring her and while looking for him she ends up running into his dad, talking to him and inadvertently leading him, really his I’m gonna call them henchmen, to where Trevor is hiding. They proceed to attack the kids but they manage to get away, and honestly I could have used less of this in the episode; it’s a shame cause the show had been doing a good job balancing between how much of the focus to put on the family and how much to put on Walker and the cases but in this epi they kinda go back on that progress, it was just a little too much Stella. If they were gonna give us more of the family, I wish that they had taken a bit from the Stella parts and giving us some more interaction between Trey and August, we got just one little scene between them but it was really nice and these are two characters we haven’t truly seen interact with one another.

And on a smaller scale that’s gonna grow into something big in future episodes, Liam has officially announced he is running for DA! Good for him! And he has father’s support, honestly every episode I end up liking Bonham more and more, he is the surprise character of this series.

To wrap things up, the episode ends with Walker finding out that Hoyt is getting out of jail the next day which would be great if he hadn’t kissed Geri, who by the way is ignoring him, they have not discussed the kiss they shared or what it means for their relationship if it even means anything. And the poor man’s problems don’t stop there but they are on hold till next week because the episode ends with Trevor and Stella deciding to essentially run away together.

Now, I’m not really invested in the Trevor/Stella romance but if it had been developed more the whole them deciding to run away together thing would have made for a great storyline that could have lasted for several episodes and I think it’s a pity we will not get that because this is what I have wanted from this character since episode 1. I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in my Pilot opinion post, but I expected Stella to be a difficult, rebellious teen and running away with her boyfriend is the kind of dumb shit I was expecting, and wanting to see, from her. I know this is not gonna last and it’ll be resolved in next week’s episode, and that she’s not doing this to be rebellious but I’ll take what I can get, we deal with our disappointments and we march on.

Episode as a whole, I liked it. I found the case fun, there were some things I really enjoyed, anything that I didn’t care for I can easily ignore, it was a good ep and I very much look forward to seeing what happens next week.

#but seriously walker was so freaking cute #walker #walker 1.10 #opinion on walker #mine #walker spoilers

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365days365movies · 3 years

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February 27, 2021: Love Actually (2003) (Part 1)

We gotta start this Recap.

Just trust me here, this one’s gonna be a lot. Why? Because this is Love Actually.

And I really want to talk about it, I REALLY do, but...this is not only a long movie, but an anthology, so it’s gonna be...complicated. But, I will say one thing. If you’ve been reading this since January, then you’ll know that this blog was inspired by the book Shit, Actually by Lindy West, a collection of hilarious movie essays that I love. And, yeah, this film is its namesake. So, although I want to go more into it, we gotta get started. Sorry for the rush, but...TRUST ME.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

An airport! We see families and other loved ones reunited at Heathrow, as narration begins, telling us that love is everywhere. After name-dropping 9/11...TWO YEARS after it had happened (too soon, David), he states that “love actually is all around.”

Got it. So, as the 2003 film All Around begins, singer Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) is trying to sing a Christmas-themed version of “Love Is All Around,” which is pretty goddamn bad. His recording manager Joe (Gregor Fisher) agrees. Jamie (Colin Firth) tells his sick girlfriend (Sienna Guillory) that he loves her, and he takes off for something that he can’t attend.

Daniel (Liam Neeson), a fresh widower, calls his friend Karen (Emma Thompson) a mom bidding her daughter a good day as she heads to school. Jack (Martin Freeman) and Judy (Joanna Page) are...air humping on a set? I need to know more. Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet (Kiera Knightley) are getting married in a church, with their friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) as the best man. And FINALLY, David (Hugh Grant) has just been elected as the new Prime Minister, where he meets Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), a member of the household staff.

...Well, that is a lot. Goddamn. So, this is an anthology movie, huh? I’ll try to cover this as smoothly as I can.

Peter and Juliet say their vows, and as they walk out, they are surprised by a rendition of the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”, organized by Mark. At the wedding is Jamie, whose brother is at his apartment when he returns home early. He’s there to fuck his girlfriend. Oh. Shit. Well, sorry, Jamie.

Also at the wedding is Colin (Kris Marshall), a waiter and messenger who’s been trying to woo British women, but is constantly failing. When talking to his friend Tony (Abdul Sallis), he insists that he’s going to the USA, where the women will appreciate his accent. Tony tells him to simply accept that he’s a “lonely, ugly asshole”. Colin, in response, calls himself a God of sex on the wrong continent. A pair, these two.

Tony is a production assistant, working on the film that Jack and Judy are in. They’re apparently professional stand-ins, actors who substitute actors in film set-up, in order to figure out lighting and cinematography. Neat! Well, normally. Here, they’re standing in for a sex scene, and they ask Judy to go topless, to see how best to frame the shot. And it gets...increasingly awkward. And it’s pretty goddamn funny.

Meanwhile, a funeral. Oof, tone whiplash right there. It’s a funeral for Daniel’s wife Joanna, and she leaves behind him and her son, Sam (Thomas Sangster AKA fuckin’ Joffrey, but I won’t hold that against him). Back at the wedding, Mark stares on longingly at the dancing Peter and Juliet. A woman asks if he’s in love with Mark, and he replies no.

At an office building, another guest at the wedding, Sarah (Laura Linney), is a worker at a graphic design company run by Harry (...awww, Alan Rickman). His secretary Mia (Heike Makatsch) brings her in to Harry’s office, where he tells her that he and everyone else in the office knows that she’s in love with fellow worker Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), and that he should get it over with an ask him out. He walks by her, and she doesn’t say anything, while also recieving a call...from someone she refers to as “babe”. Well, I feel a little infidelity coming on.

On Mia’s radio, Billy Mack’s shitty Christmas song is playing, and a radio host agrees as Bill’s brought on for an interview. Bill shares the sentiment in what must be the most depressing radio interview I’ve ever heard. In that interview with Mikey (Marcus Brigstocke), he basically completely sabotages his own record, and probably his entire career. This interview is followed with news about the Prime Minister.

David, new PM, has been bonding more with Natalie, and the two definitely appear to like each other. He also comes up in conversation between Judy and Jack, as their stand-in sex scene has progressed to basically just straight-up sex, which feels...I feel like this doesn’t fucking happen with stand-ins in movies...right? Like, come on, that’s a LOT of breached privacy, and I feel like it’s not that realistic. Anyway, the two use the opportunity to make small talk, and Jack tells Judy that he appreciates having someone to talk to. She agrees, and it’s cute in an extremely awkward way!

Production assistant Tony is heading home, and is getting a ride from Colin, who announces that he’s bought a ticket for a trip to the beautiful land of Wisconsin, where he will certainly meet some hot, hot babes. Tony does not agree.

Back at Harry’s office, he and Mia plan the company Christmas party. Mia unsubtly notes that she kinda has the hots for him, and he’s not saying no. Meanwhile, Daniel and Karen are talking about the fact that his stepson Sam seems to be having a lot of trouble, understandably, and Daniel’s not doing much better.

Karen does her best to help him through it, and Daniel does his best to help the troubled Samuel. But he can’t coax much out of Samuel to figure out what’s wrong. Samuel finally opens up, but tells Daniel that he’s in love. Daniel’s surprised, but he insists that he’s in love, with a young woman named Sansa Stark, but he must find a way to ensure her loyalty, if ONLY HER NOBLE FATHER WASN’T IN THE...right, sorry, Game of Thrones.

OK, anyway, Sam’s in love, and in complete agony about it. Daniel tries to coach Sam through his feelings, and is genuinely being a supportive-as-hell stepdad. Also in love and in agony is Sarah, staring at Karl from afar one night as the office closes down. And then, also in agony is Jamie, fresh off of his breakup with his cheating girlfriend. He’s in a GORGEOUS AS FUCK house in the French countryside, and sits down to write.

Back in London, David tries to get to know Natalie a bit better, and they...I mean, they’re 100% gonna get together by the end. We’re just working through the romantic folderol right now. Natalie leaves, and David asks a portrait of Margaret Thatcher is she had that problem, calling her a, uh...a “saucy minx.” Well, OK.

Billy Mack is on a television show, continuing his press tour and reminding us once again that he used to be addicted to heroin. Joe is not happy. Mark, an artist, calls Peter, and is put on the line with Juliet. Peter asks him to “be nice,” but when he they talk to each other, he’s rather short when she asks for some of his footage from the wedding.

Back at Harry’s, Mia is laying it on fuckin’ THIIIIIICK, Jesus, while Sarah ends up pining once more for Karl. At his college in the French countryside, a new housekeeper, Aurélia ( Lúcia Moniz), has been hired to take care of his place. However, there’s a serious language barrier between the two, as she’s Portuguese, and he’s too talkative, goddamn. It’s awkward. It’s a little awkward.

David’s got a meeting with the President of the United States (Billy Bob Thornton), who IMMEDIATELY notes Natalie’s attractiveness. Political tensions are also rough between the two and their administrations. The two have a private meeting later, and David leaves the room for a moment. However, when he goes back in, he sees Natalie kissing the President! Whaaaaaaaat? That’s a...fucking terrible idea, Mr. President, what the FUCK? HAVE YOU HEARD OF BILL CLINTON

The next day, at a press conference, David gives into his rage about the affair, and he acts more assertive towards the President, noting that he won’t bow to the President’s bullying. Wow. International crisis time because of a fuckin’ girl! Who’s the saucy minx, now, Thatcher? WHO’S THE SAUCY MINX NOW

Right afterwards, he gets a call from his sister: Karen. Huh. She notes her frustrations with his actions, but he’s too busy and hangs up. She states her frustrations to her husband: Harry. DOUBLE HUH. After everything, though, David retires for the night. The radio station plays a song for him, and David responds by dancing around 10 Downing Street. And it’s hilarious. And I love it?

At Jamie’s cottage, he and Aurélia start to bond regardless of their language barrier, and their conversations seem to gel with each other, despite them not understanding that themselves. It’s actually...kind of cute. I dunno, I kind of like it. I think it’s sweet. Overly saccharine, yeah, but sweet as the two fall in love. Yeah, I’m a fuckin’ sap, what can I say?

Juliet visits Mark, who’s once again acting fairly cold towards her. She confronts him about it, and notes that she wants to genuinely become friends with him. Mark seems to agree with this, but still notes that he has no video of the wedding. And yet, she finds it, only to discover that Mark doesn’t hate her. Actually, he likes her. Actually...he loves her. And, uh...fuck, yeah, he LOOOOOOOOVES her. And she figures that out once she realizes that the video of the wedding doesn’t feature Peter in it AT ALL.

Y’know, I’m really worried that this is becoming an infidelity situation, but I have to admit...Mark’s a good man, and a great friend to Peter. He knows that he loves Juliet, but he keeps his distance for the sake of his friend. And that is...actually amazingly honorable. Damn. You’re a good man, Mark.

At 10 Downing Street, David asks his assistant Annie (Nina Sosanya) to put Natalie in another position, as her presence is distracting him. And that is...responsible. That’s pretty damn responsible. OK, I can dig it. She’s soon replaced, and you can see that David is saddened by that.

His sister’s best friend's stepson, Sam, has just gotten bad news. His crush, Joanna (oh, yeah, his crush has the same name as his deceased mother, forgot to mention THAT little tidbit), is going back to the USA. After discovering that she’s American, Daniel decides to cheer him up by watching Titanic together. AND AGAIN. This relationship is adorable, and I love Daniel’s hardcore good dad energy.

Jamie and Aurélia need to bid each other goodbye, as Jamie is headed back to England. However, as they part, Aurélia kisses him goodbye, which seems to break him a little. Meanwhile, Billy Mack has shot a video for his terrible song, which inspires Sam to perform in a school concert to get Joanna to fall in lover with him and get her to stay. But he doesn’t play an instrument, and chooses to learn the drums, to Daniel’s dismay.

At Harry’s company Christmas party, Mia is hitting HARDCORE on Harry, which Karen notices. She’s speaking to Sarah, and encourages her to dance with Karl, while to two stand in front of Mark’s photographs, and...

TOO MUCH. IT’S TOO GODDAMN MUCH

I...I gotta take a break, and we’re at the halfway point anyway. See you in Part 2.

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tempestpaige · 3 years

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I think I can answer the great cancel culture debate.

So: 'Cancel/Canceling' is a verb pulled from AAVE. The proper meaning/usage for it: to remove support from someone (this includes emotional, monetary, etc), normally done after the person has done something unforgiveable. But, everyone will probably do that in their lifetime.

Got a nasty friend and decided you don't want to hang out with them anymore? That's canceling them. Broke up with cheating partner and decide you no longer want any contact? Whoop, cancelled. Don't talk to estranged prejudiced family? Guess what: Cancelled.

There is no culture to it. It's a personal decision (and declaration) that a singular person makes.

'Cancel culture' is just a warped version of 'cancelled' that is a criticism of a societal shift in thinking (which happens a lot in history; nothing new); mainly towards what is considered acceptable in society and what is not. Which is also heavily influenced by technology as well as the rise of social media. Many things that are associated with cancel culture (harassment, death threats, etc.) have nothing to due with 'cancelling' someone but rather with this new societal shift (whenever anyone goes against whatever is considered 'acceptable' those things tend to happen).

I also blame the fact that words siphoned off of AAVE are almost never used properly and also tend to end up warped and convoluted, but anyway....

As far as the idea that celebrities can't be affected by it; that's relatively easy. Since the term 'cancel culture' is also used to normally insinuate the person being cancelled is being targeted unfairly they tend to suffer from very little monetary or opportunity loss. I understand emotional and mental loss is a thing to but most people simply aren't referring to that.

Take for instance: Harrison Ford who admitted that for a week he once looked for a Black man to beat and potentially kill while promoting his movie. It did pretty well. Another instance is that one country singer who's name I don't know who said then n-word and also did some stuff regarding covid?, who proceeded to gain more fans in doing so (quite a few of which were on tik-tik also saying the n-word for 'support') and also got a SNL skit making fun of both situations. Then you have Jeffree Star, Shane Dawson (till he really shot himself in the foot last year), and Pewdiepie.

There’s a lot of well intentioned and thought out stuff here, but your last part really highlights the issues with the performative need to hold celebrities “accountable”- That WASN’T Harrison Ford. It was Liam Neeson.

source

Through internet telephone, you heard about Liam Neeson, and then the story got twisted and somehow you came to associate it with Harrison Ford, and were so confident you didn’t double check. And the movie didn’t “do well”, but I’m not sure if we can attribute it to the backlash or it just being a mediocre film. It made $73 million on a $60 million budget, and a rule of thumb is a film needs to double its budget before being considered successful.

The second person you’re discussing, you don’t even know their name. Are these examples of “cancel culture” not working or not existing?

It’s true that at its start “cancelling” someone didn’t mean much back a few years ago. But clearly it means something else now. You have a bunch of younger teens and young adults on the internet who use it as a verb and wonder “when is [insert name here] getting cancelled?” Or starting trending hashtags like #[x]IsOverParty when someone does get “cancelled”.

Call it accountability, yfip culture, cancel culture, I’m sure in a couple years it’ll get another new name. But I think it does exist to some degree, and saying it doesn’t while still using the term is unhelpful.

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texastheband · 3 years

Text

Texas V Wu-Tang Clan

Interview by Steven Daly Photography by Peter Robathan Taken from The Face - December 1997

It’s the pop story of ’97, the most unlikely end to a weird year: TEXAS collaborating with the WU-TANG CLAN. First, a Scottish rock band on the verge of slip-sliding away into a tasteful obscurity was reborn via a slew of hit singles and a glut of stylish imagery. Now, in New York, their Brit-cool meets hip hop in a mutually beneficial deal. For everyone concerned, it’s all they need to get on…

Sharleen Spiteri took the call in her front hall. "Yo, Peach," growled a strange voice over transatlantic wires. The gentleman caller was none other than Ol’ Dirty Bastard, court jester of New York hip hop dynasty the Wu-Tang Clan. Apparently Mr Bastard fancied working with Spiteri and her band, Texas. It all started in August, with one of Texas’ managers discussing Land Rovers with someone called Power in New York, who turned out to be the manager of the Clan. A video of Texas’ "Say What You Want" was dispatched, and prodigiously gifted Wu-Tang chieftain RZA signed on to do a re-recording of the single for a prospective single project. Original rapper OI’ Dirty Bastard was replaced by Method Man, the next Clan member with a solo album scheduled.

The hook-up with the Wu-Tang Clan is the perfect climax to a year that’s seen Texas rise from a tumbleweed-strewn grave to grab the pole position in British Pop. A year in which Glasgow’s Sharleen Spiteri has stared out, defiantly remade and remodelled, from every magazine cover and TV show. From a media point-of-view, Texas’ – Spiteri’s – reconfiguring of music and fashion has been the year’s dream ticket. Ever since Bryan Ferry took the innovative step of getting Anthony Proce in to design Roxy Music’s wardrobe in the early seventies, successive phases of pop’s history have thrown up performers who use the fashion photographers, stylists and designers du jour to present The Package. It is these performers who most often capture the youthful mood of their time: that’s why you can see the vulgar glamour of the Seventies in the cut of Ferry’s sleazy lounge-lizard jib; the naive aspiration of the early Eighties in the box-suited and pixie-booted "style" of Spandau Ballet; and the onset of the late-Eighties mixing and matching of different cultures in Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance. When we look back at 1997 we will see in Texas’ sound and vision a new mix, all to do with living the high life but keeping it real. Catwalk and street, the designer and the understated, Prada and Nike; the slick and the cred. Ten years’ gone Scottish guitar outfit and this season’s bright young labels (in both senses). The setting too, has helped. Fashion, again, is big cultural business. Clever pop stars (Goldie! Liam!) want to be seen by the runway and hanging out at fashion parties; young designers yearn to be visible on the stage or the podium (viz. Antonio Berardi’s autumn London show at Brixton Academy). Factor in a paucity of self-motivating, button-pressing, songwriting, photogenic women in British music, and you have a ready-made media phenomenon.

Sharleen Spiteri is holding court at a New York restaurant with a gang of Calvin Klein employees who’ve just accompanied her to the VH-1 Fashion Awards. The annual ceremony is a mutually convenient arrangement, a TV cluster-fuck where the music and fashion industries exchange credibility and cachet. Texas are contemplating just such an exchange themselves, having recently been given the OK by CK. (Tommy Hilfiger has also made overtures.) Spiteri is to have an audience with Klein himself; she’s already been bribed with a trunkful of CK merch, including the streaked black dress – "inspired by [the artist] Brice Marden" – she’s wearing tonight.

Someone suggests that Texas would be perfect for Fashionably Loud, an MTV special where models strut on stage as the hot bands of the moment rock out. "Forget it," quips Spiteri. "there’s only room for one star up where we play." If Spiteri were to join Kate Moss and Christy Turlington on the Calvin Klein payroll it would not, as she sees it, detract from Texas’ music. "Fashion and music have always been connected, and now more than ever," says the singer. "You couldn’t have one without the other. If there’s shit music at a runway show it just doesn’t work."

Meanwhile, there’s the songs. With "White On Blonde", Texas’ fourth album, the music takes care of itself. Radio-friendly unit-shifters abound, helped on their way by producers Mike hedges (manic Street Preachers) and Manchester’s Grand Central. The singles have been, in sequence, nu-soul fresh ("Say What You Want"), springy pop ("Halo"), Motown-sunny ("Black Eyed Boy") and winter warming ("Put Your Arms Around Me"). The B-side remixers have covered all bases in these dance-savvy late Nineties, ranging from of-the-moment talents like the Ballistic Brothers and Trailerman to old stand-bys like Andy Weatherall and 808 State. Texas, patently, lost their dancefloor cherry by cherry-picking the brightest and the best.

Of course, while the singles have all enjoyed heavy airplay and gone top ten, and while "White on Blonde" has sold two million copies (more than its two predecessors put together), the remixes haven’t necessarily helped those sales. As the go-faster stripes of credibility on the solid saloon car, though, they’ve still been essential to The Package; all part of the thoroughly modern mix.

So now, the Wu-Tang Clan. To many, though, this latest development could smack of opportunism. One group are renegade roughnecks who mythologise themselves in epic hip hop anthems; the others are fastidiously tasteful Scots with an eye for perfectly modern consensus-pop. The Wu-Tang Clan are certainly among the aesthetically correct names that Texas always drop in interviews, but can there possibly be a legitimate connection between the two? "A lot of the Wu-Tang backing tracks have the feel of soundtracks, and we’ve always gone for a cinematic sound," says Johnny McElhone, Spiteri’s genial songwriting partner and bass player. "And I’ve always liked Al Green, and they use a lot of Willie Mitchell, Al Green, that whole Hi Records sound, and make it modern. And Marvin Gaye: Method Man, in that duet with Mary J. Blige, used ‘You’re All I Need To Get By."

Having dominated the charts in Europe this year, Texas are now, logically, turning their attention to America: the country that has always inspired them, whether it’s the dusty, pseudo-roots sound of their first three albums, or the iconic-soul and post-soul sounds of Memphis and Staten Island that they give props to now; the place where success has always eluded them. Yet given the commercial momentum of "White on Blonde", their approach to the Wu-Tang Clan is surely not driven by desperation. They are, then, viewing the collaboration with a combination of fan-like wonder and disbelief.

"Method Man is just a wicked, wicked rapper," enthuses Spiteri. "I can’t wait to hear the combination of my vocals and his – I‘m really excited about it. I have a kind of sweet, virginal thing going on, and he’s got this dirty sex vibe. It could be the perfect marriage."

It’s a Saturday night in Manhattan, and ten storeys above Times Square, Sharleen Spiteri sits on the floor of a recording studio, tinkering with her latest high-tech gadget, a Philips computer about the size of a TV remote. Across the street, three ten-foot high electronic ticker-tapes provide testimony to Monday’s stockmarket crash. No matter how much Spiteri plays with her new toy, there’s still that nagging worry: what if the Wu-Tang Clan won’t show? They’re supposed to be on a tour bus returning from a gig in Washington, DC today, but these, after all, are the original masters of disaster. The crew whose normal modus operandi seems to be chaos. The band that recently quit a national tour because only five of the nine members could be relied upon to turn up.

The studio has been booked since six, so Spiteri and McElhone breathe signs of relief when RZA and his posse finally roll in around ten. Among the dozen-strong throng, they’re surprised to see Wu-Tang member Reakwon, a stout fellow with a Mercedes cap and a Fort Knox of gold dental work. Several cigars are hollowed out, their contents replaced with weed; bottles of Cristal champagne and Hennessy are passed around as the air grows thick with smoke.

Half an hour later, method Man makes his entrance. Stooped over, he looks deceptively short – maybe only six-four in his Hilfiger fleece hoodie. "I’m John-John," he tells Sharleen, referring to his alias, Johnny Blaze. Pulling out the big blunt from behind his ear, Method Man considers the job at hand. "She got a nice voice," drawls the laconic giant. "This band not exactly my type of listening material, but they going in the right direction, if you ask me, by fucking with us. I’m waiting for RZA to put down a beat, hear how the vocals sound melded with the track before I come with ideas. I’m one of those guys."

As his friends get on with the serious business of partying, RZA goes to work, feeding a succession of sample-laden discs into a sampler. He has a diffident, genius-at-work charisma about him as he sits with his back to the room, keyboard at side. With a flick of his prodigiously ringed hand he reaches out and conjures up a brutal bassline. The speakers pulse violently. RZA takes a sip of Hennessy. "Record this, right here!" he tells the bewildered-looking engineer.

RZA has decided to dispense with the original master tapes, shipped over from Britain. He wants a completely new version, recorded rough-and-ready without the standard safety net of a time-code. This convention-trashing, wildstyle approach to recording elicits some consternation from the studio’s engineer, a central-casting white guy who warns RZA: "You won’t be able to synch to this, you know." RZA waves him away and turns to Johnny McElhone. "This riff is in E," McElhone tells RZA. "Maybe we should try it in the original key, D." "What are you saying? I understand no keys," says RZA. "You want me to sing the whole song straight through?" asks Spiteri, trying to divine RZA’s intentions. He orders the lights turned down, and offers Sharleen some herbal inspiration. She politely declines and walks to the vocal booth. "What’s her name? Sheree?" asks RZA as Spiteri warms up. The engineer wants to know if he should maybe start recording. "Always record everything!" exclaims RZA. "Ready, get set, go! Play and record, play and record!" Spiteri rattles of a perfect new version of ‘Say What You Want’, grooving along by herself and passionately acting out every word, even the ones borrowed from Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing". Now it’s time for Method Man, who at this point is so herbally inspired that he can hardly open his eyes. He jumps up and lopes around the main room, running off his newly written rhymes and clutching a bottle of Crystal. Method walks up to the mic and opens his mouth, and that treacly baritone sets a typically morbid scene: "Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest…" The Texas duo just look at each other, shaking their heads in awe.

The hours and the rhymes pass. Around 6am, things are starting to get a little weird. As Method Man snoozes on the sofa, RZA bounces off the walls, dancing like a dervish. "These are the new rhythms," he yells. "These are the new dances from Africa. I learned them when I was there last week!" McElhone and Spiteri crack up. The engineer probably wishes he were in Africa right now; he further draws RZA’s ire by making a mistake as he runs off some rough cassettes. As everyone says goodbye, RZA decides that he’s taking the studio’s sampler – he already has two of the $3,500 items, but at this point it’s all about the wind-up. The engineer, though, having last seen the end of his tether a good few hours ago, has had enough. By the commencement of office hours that morning, the rest of the session will have been cancelled and the band and Clan banned from this studio.

After a few frantic phone calls later that morning, a studio is found that is prepared to let the Wu-Tang Clan through the door. With one precondition: only two of them are allowed in the studio. Now it’s midnight, and four-fifths of Texas watch a trio of RZA-hired session men go through their paces. They shift effortlessly through a handful of soul and funk styles, and the Scots mutter approval. These are the kind of players that are so good they can get away with wearing questionable knitwear.

Soon, another couple of Wus pop in. Then another couple. In the control room RZA orders up a bottle of Hennessy and talks about hearing "Say What You Want" for the first time. "I didn’t fully understand the sound of it," admits the soft-spoken maestro. "It was obviously a popular song, a radio song, and my sound is the total opposite. But I thought that the artist had something, so I thought: "Let’s take her and rock her to my beat."

"Sweet soul, that’s what her stuff sounded like to me. Smooth. It reminded me of the Seventies: in those days, they did songs that would fit anywhere. If you went to a club getting high it would fit; if you was cleaning up your house it would fit. That’s when you’ve got a real great song right there." Whether or not "Say What You Want" is a great song, it’s not quite coming together tonight. Despite the best offers of the studio management, a full complement of Wu posse members ended up in the house. As the night drags on the trio of musicians don’t get with the track, and by eight the following morning there is little in the way of usable material. But everyone stays upbeat. Texas will work on the track in Glasgow, and send it back to RZA to finish, along with a new song based around one of his samples. After vowing to stay in touch, everyone stumbles out into the Manhattan morning light together, the Scots with an American name, and the Clan without a tartan.

From a distance the collaboration will continue. But it’s only a different kind of distance. Culturally, creatively, the gap between the Wu-Tang Clan and the old twang clan is considerable. Yet so it goes, this cross-cultural exchange programme. Whether it’s The Stones copping blues movies, Bowie digging the Philadelphia Sound, Lisa Stansfield getting soulful with Barry White, Sting getting doleful with Puff Daddy… Whether it’s Todd Terry reviving Everything But The Girl or Armand Van Helden making Sneaker Pimps the unwitting jumpstarters of speed garage, naked opportunism and risk-taking innovation have always been confused. Now, with genres blurred and tricknology proceeding apace, anything is possible and everything is permitted. Perhaps it is this, the sheer unlikeliness, that makes the Texas-Wu experiment the most illuminating collaboration of the year. Whether it works or not.

"If you play her stuff in a club, everybody be dancing, but it’s a clear room and you can see everybody’s face," RZA reflects on the departing Sharleen Spiteri. "But if you play mine, the room is smoky." And perhaps it is here, among the clouds and the clarity, between the smoke and the mirrors, where a new sound and vision lies.

Text originally posted on texasindemand.com

#article #whiteonblonde #wob #the face #the faculty #wutangclan #wu-tang clan #saywhatyouwant #texas #texasband #texas band #texastheband #texas the band #sharleenspiteri #sharleen spiteri

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daggerandrose · 4 years

Photo

Happy 28th everyone! I hope everything is doing well during this crazy time! Remember to take care of yourself and be kind to everyone.

Please leave a comment/kudos on these fics! (All of these fics are under 10k as of today)

And I’d Marry You Harry (Because You Forced Me), 24k, by @2tiedships2

Louis had blindly followed Harry back to his office, closing the door behind him.

“I’m slightly confused,” Louis said. “Actually I’m very confused.”

“About what?”

“What just happened upstairs? Did you forget that you told your boss that we were engaged? Because the last time I checked we are very much not engaged. At all. No offense, but we never will be.”

“It’s really not that complicated,” Harry explained. “We get married and in a year or so we can file for divorce. No big deal. It’s not like you can’t wait a little while to find someone else anyway.”

Louis was going to pay a bus driver to accidentally run into Harry. A concussion would be fine. Obviously a couple broken limbs. That’s something that’s not complicated.

Or The Proposal AU featuring Harry as Sandra Bullock, Louis as Ryan Reynolds, and all the fun a fake relationship and forced engagement can bring.

But When We Kiss..., 8k, by @indiaalphawhiskey

Louis only nodded, still smiling. “Right, okay. As much fun as this has been, I really doubt the lovely heated seating of my car will dull our banter. Or...” he dragged out the ‘r’, eyes mischievous. “Are you really going to let a…” he assessed Harry. “Twenty? Twenty year gap,” he confirmed. “Be the reason you get hypothermia? Is that really the hill you want to freeze on, Mr. Principled?”

–– Or, while Harry and Louis adore the chase, they find they adore each other much, much more.

don’t know if i could ever go without, 14k, by @lovehl

“We’ve come up with a solid solution. You’re not going to like it.”

“What is it?” Louis narrows his eyes suspiciously, glancing at a visibly enthusiastic Liam.

“What if you pretended to be an Alpha?” Zayn suggests.

just a little dance, 1k, by @suspendrs

“Keep your head up, love,” he says, pulling away and grabbing Harry’s hands. “Dance with me.”

“I don’t want to dance,” Harry pouts, but he lets Louis pull him into the center of the dark kitchen, anyway.

“Just a little dance,” Louis says, tugging Harry’s hands until he’s flush against his front.

Or, a tiny drabble based on the cutest lyric from perfect now

Adore You, 23k, by @2ofusmp4

When they’d first come into this lifestyle, the being in their roles in their day to day lives, Louis had struggled with it. He’d found it hard to distinguish between what Harry was doing because he thought he had to, with Louis as his dominant, and what he wanted to do just because of them being partners.

Being ‘twenty-four-seven’ in the traditional sense wasn’t exactly realistic in their life, no matter how much they tried to make it work. They could do small things within their power dynamic, they could try their best to keep it going, but more or less, it wasn’t a constant thing. Harry called it submission with weekends and bank holidays, and it worked for them.

As different as it was from what he expected, no matter what, in the end, it worked for them – and that was all that mattered.

“Can I… take care of you?” Harry had asked, his eyes looking everywhere but at Louis. Louis had just turned twenty-three, they’d been exploring things, doing new things for years, and Harry still managed to surprise him. “Like… Just do things for you like you take such good care of me.”

OR: A canon-compliant fic where Harry wants nothing more than to take care of Louis.

I Love You (From My Head To-ma-toes), 26k, by @yousopugly

When Louis is dared to ask out the attractive Man in the Sweater Vest at the pub, he certainly doesn't expect their relationship to bloom the way it does. Featuring a dare that isn't really a dare, too many vegetable references, and two silly boys falling in love.

Does it Look Devious or Something?, 4k, by @haztobegood

When someone complains about Louis’ new business, he must defend his sex toy shop to the city council.

Written for Prompt #231: The amazement at how much hot air people manage to produce.

Omega Show Repair, 6k, by @musketrois

“Can I help you with anything?” The worker asked.

Heat spread across Harry’s cheeks as he realized he had been silently staring.

“Yes!” Harry scrambled to find the words he needed when all he wanted to do was continue admiring his surroundings, the man included.

The man’s smile didn’t falter as Harry gathered himself, continuing, “I had some questions.”

Harry walked closer and placed his warm hands on the edge of the counter. “My favorite pair of boots need resoled but I wanted to check if you’d be willing to do that for me.”

Harry needs to get his favorite pair of boots fixed.

I Don't Love You I Want in Your House, 6k, by @londonfoginacup

Harry comes into the bakery almost every day trying to woo Louis.

Zayn works out at the gym maybe a little more than necessary so that he can get the chance to watch Liam train.

Niall is the only one who ever checks the mail.

Your secret's safe with me, 7k, by @cameupshort

He knew almost everything about Haz, considered him his best friend. He knew his favourite movies and books, how he liked his coffee, knew how many pets he had and what he was most afraid of. Louis knew how to calm him down when he was panicking, and that he’d lost his virginity to his ex-boyfriend when he was 17. He knew that Haz had curly hair, green eyes, that he was tall and considered himself slightly awkward. He knew his Instagram account that only had aesthetic pictures or ridiculous jokes, but in the all the time that Louis had known him, he’d never learnt, or been allowed to know, Haz’s full name, what he sounded like, or what he looked like.

Louis didn't care.

Or, when Louis' favourite singer comes back and announces he's performing again, him and the rest of his group chat decide to go. When Haz, the man Louis' fallen in love with without meeting him, says that he can't, Louis tries his best to convince him with a drunken phone call, hearing his voice for the first time. It's not until he's at Royal Variety that he swears he can hear it again.

The Finding Sea, 17k, by @angelichl

They met at the ocean, in a way. It makes sense for them to fall in love at the ocean too.

Harry is in love with his best friend. They go on vacation together.

- Fort Myers, Florida. -

Missed Connection, 39k, by @littlelouishiccups

Soulmate AU where your soulmate’s first words to you are tattooed on your skin.

With a boring and generic soul mark like Hi, Harry is pessimistic he’ll ever find his soulmate or that he’ll realize it when he meets them. But he could always have it worse, like his new friend Louis who had a drunken one night stand with his soulmate a few years ago and woke up the next morning alone.

Also, I’ve been reading a lot of sterek fics recently and I found a gold mine in @isthatbloodonhisshirt‘s fics! Holy wow! So many amazing fics!

#mine #fic rec #28th appreciation #fanfiction #larry fanfiction

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skinnyziamlove · 4 years

Text

ok, get y'all ready for this long ass post that i'm doing about this analyze that i made last night and it make sense to me and it make sense to some friends some i'm sharing:

"fresh air" by zayn is not actually one of my favorite songs on icarus falls, i've listened to it just a few times after it's release (yeah, y'all can judge for it lol) but for some weird reason i've been with one phrase of the song stuck in my head recently but i didn't put too much thought on it but since LP1 is out now (go stream it!!!!) i couldn't help but see some kind of similitaries?

as we have been knew liam recently open up about his mental health, depression, anxiety, agoraphobia and even saying that suicide was an option in his "menu" a couple of times during all of these years.

now about the album promo he said that one of his songs was going to be very honest about mental illness and something that he's never going to talk about entirely and he said that this song is "weekend", let's take a look at the lyrics:

"i might die on the weekend/ might die/ might die/ might die/ another line for my demons"

so it's not that hard to realize that it's about suicide idealization and the "demons" talking it's a very classic when singers are talking about mental illness like twenty one pilots they majorly sing about mentall illness and they refer to it as demons so yeah...it's totally about suicide idealization.

the curious thing and correlation to "fresh year" and exactly the line that was stuck with me this week:

"tell me that you wanna die but you don't/ tell me that you wanna die but you don't"

when i first listened to these lyrics all the way in 2018 i got really surprised because zayn never talked about death, he talked about hard and dark times, lots of struggles in his songs but never about death. but he's not talking about himself because he sings "tell me that YOU wanna die but YOU don't" and something EXTREMELY IMPORTANT he's singing about a man because he also says "you could be a changed MAN if YOU wanted" like i said before i never payed too much attention on fresh air so i never realized he sang about a man...zayn is a non-straight man in the closet so i'm like "why would they allow him to talk about a man??" but this song is not necessarily a romantic one, it can be took as him talking to a partner, but there's no explicitly "i love you" so i think they let him get away with it.

COMING BACK TO THE LYRICS: zayn is talking about a man, that says he wants to die...so yeah, i think y'all are following my line of thought and i really don't want to be a tinhat but it all leads to LIAM!!

now, let's keep talking about fresh year again, look at the next paragraph:

"but you're never sober"

it reminded me again of liam, because he openned up that he had struggled with alcohol addition during the 1d days until recently...so yeah!

but since i'm a very paranoid person i like to check all the possibilities before firmly believing in something, so some of you might ask "but what if zayn is talking about himself??"

these are half of the lyrics from "fresh air" and zayn always makes a difference between who is "I"/"me" and who is "you" like:

"I say I'M sorry, but YOU'RE never sober"

"it's the same everytime that YOU'RE with ME"

this post it's already long enough but i could do a whole another essay about how it must be to be in relantionship with someone struggling with alcohol and mental illness when you're also struggling with mental illness (this is zayn perspective) but i think that:

"you know i ain't tryna to go pressure you"

could be soothing enough.

zayn's album and song came out in 2018, but we don't exactly when it was written. liam's song weekend came out yesterday but we know that liam wrote or other people wrote the songs for him around 2016-2017 so the timming for zayn writing this song for liam is also right. liam has been talking about his alcohol struggles for years, suicide is a new thing for us, but liam like i said before told us it's been on the menu a couple times during his career so it's also a years long issue.

those are my thoughts on this whole situation, feel free to discuss it with me if you agree or don't (just please be respectful, i'm sensitive akjsjdhdbd)

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joealwyndaily · 4 years

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Sometimes the best Christmas presents are the ones we don’t think we need; a new Christmas Carol, for instance. Indeed it may be indicative of a certain unappreciated vacancy around the Christmas tree that in discussing the BBC’s new version of the Dickens classic both its director and leading man refer back to The Muppet Christmas Carol made way back in 1992.

“I was sent the script,” admits Nick Murphy, best known for directing the Rebecca Hall ghost movie The Awakening, “and my first thought was, ‘For God’s sake! The Muppets! They nailed it. What’s the point?’ ”

Joe Alwyn, who plays Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit in the BBC three-parter, has meanwhile posted a trailer on Instagram with the caption: “Hard to fill the shoes once worn by Kermit. But I tried.” The self-deprecation was quickly “hearted” by the singer Taylor Swift, who is the actor’s girlfriend and who will be watching the mini-series with Alwyn and his family in London in the final days before Christmas.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with The Muppet Christmas Carol. It is probably in most people’s top three adaptations of Dickens’s masterpiece (alongside, I would say, Alastair Sim’s 1951 version and Scrooged). Its endurance does suggest, however, that it may be time someone did something a bit more serious, a little darker and a touch more grown-up with a tale that excoriated Victorian neglect and associated Christmas with the relief of poverty for ever more.

And this is exactly what Nick Murphy has achieved with a bracingly fresh script by the Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. Guy Pearce’s Ebenezer Scrooge is still a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner”, but since Pearce is only 52, there is rather less of the old. At the end of the novel, Dickens wrote that “ever afterwards” — that is after Scrooge’s Very Bad Night — “it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well”. That is rather more of an achievement when, as in this version, you may have 40 Christmases, rather than a couple, left to you.

Equally remade is Cratchit, who in Alwyn’s incarnation is far from the bashfully gulping frog thanking his master for granting him Christmas Day off before scampering back to Miss Piggy’s fleshy arms. Although Alwyn grew a rough beard for the part, his is also the best-looking Bob Cratchit you have seen. As the actor and I talk at the Picturehouse Central cinema in London, I find him as mesmerising off screen as on.

“Bob is trapped by Scrooge,” Alwyn says. “He’s abused by him. He’s not treated fairly. He’s there only because he has to be. He’s treated like shit.”

I’d say there’s a definite feeling in their shared scenes that Bob might just snap and hit Ebenezer over the head with a poker. “That was the intention. He’s at breaking point. He’s pushed right to his limits and Scrooge, I think, relishes winding him up. All Bob can do is hold his ground and fight back as much as he can — but he isn’t such a sap in this version.”

Scrooge and Cratchit’s relationship so much resembles an unhappy marriage that the niggling, bitter exchanges invented by Knight, with very little reference to Dickens’s dialogue, resemble Steptoe and Son rewritten by Strindberg. The easy contrast would have been with the Cratchits’ poor but happy marriage, but this too comes under scrutiny. There is an acknowledgment of the challenges a disabled child can bring to a household, and it is somehow emphasised by Tiny Tim being played by Lenny Rush, an extraordinary young actor, aged ten, who has a rare form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, the same condition as Warwick Davis.

“It really mattered to me that nobody was photo-fit,” Murphy says from a studio where he is dubbing the last episode. “Bob Cratchit is always a winsome, put-upon nice guy and the Cratchits themselves represent this idea of an ideal, working-class, lovely family. So we looked into their relationship on the page and there seems a genuine tension between Bob and his wife. Things are hard. It isn’t easy to have no money and a disabled child, and they lean on each other and they’re not straight with each other and there is a genuine antagonism between them.”

Knight has written into the narrative a family secret that connects the Cratchits to Scrooge. The secret belongs to Mrs Cratchit, played by Vinette Robinson, whose part is greatly expanded; indeed, the novella does not even grant her a first name, although the Muppets, and other adaptors, opted for Emily.

“Inevitably the secret begins to surface and cracks appear in the family,” Alwyn says. “Something has to happen. I think what Steven has done is take the story and drill deeper. He hasn’t taken too much liberty. It’s not bending the truth too much from what Dickens would have wanted. Or I hope not.”

Murphy insists that worthwhile adaptations of classic texts should be “edgy” and have “a good bite to them”. “If you absolutely don’t want any variation from the book then I strongly suggest you sit in a corner at Christmas and read it again. But if you want to see it used as a prism through which we can see a broader and slightly different subject explored, then this one’s for you.”

Alwyn’s performance is part of the iconoclasm. “Joe’s instinct as an actor is always to push away from the obvious and into ambiguity,” Murphy says. “He’s very quietly spoken. He’s not brash at all. He’s a gentle, intelligent guy, but he just simply wasn’t interested in fitting a Dickensian cliché.”

“I’ll take that,” Alwyn says when I pass on the compliment, having not considered his technique in such terms. He is 28 and would probably accept that he is best known for two facts: the first is that he is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend; the second that, aged 25 and with no professional acting experience, he won the title role in an Ang Lee movie.

He is from north London, the middle of three sons. Their father is the television documentary-maker Richard Alwyn, renowned for making The Shrine about the public reaction to Princess Diana’s death.

“He was away a bit,” Alwyn says. “He made quite a lot of films in Africa when I was growing up. He was often in Uganda, Rwanda at one point, South Sudan. So he’d come back with stories and artefacts from all over the place. He made a great documentary in Liverpool during the World Cup about two kids on an estate growing up there.”

His mother, Elizabeth, is a psychotherapist. So, I say, although his family were comfortably off and he was sent to the fee-paying City of London School, he knew something of other people’s lives?

“All different kinds of people, all different kinds of stories,” he says. “Obviously, she couldn’t share them with me in the same way that Dad could, but both their jobs take an interest in other people and are about how to empathise, understand, and listen to stories and tell stories. I suppose it’s not a million miles away from an actor’s job; listening to other people, understanding them, trying to tell stories.”

I ask about the contemporary political resonances of A Christmas Carol. I cite the wealth of certain members of his profession and of Swift’s. Only the other day I have read that she has a private jet so she can visit Alwyn on a whim. He promises me that 99.9 per cent of what the press write about them is false, and this is an example.

I ask if he finds it embarrassing.

“Find what embarrassing?”

The disparity between the amount some people earn and the wages of workers in, say, Amazon fulfilment centres.

“I saw something in The Guardian the other day, I think, saying that the top six richest people in the UK accumulate the same amount of wealth as the poorest 13 million. I think that was the figure,” he says.

And politics today?

“It’s bigger than Scrooge, but it’s the same thing amplified; not being able to see beyond yourself, building walls, cutting yourself off from other countries. If there was ever a story to counter that, featuring someone who epitomises that and then who remembers who he is as a human being, it is A Christmas Carol.”

Unlike the young Dickens, Alwyn was not a boy to stand on a table and sing and dance. As a child he auditioned to play Liam Neeson’s son in the Richard Curtis film Love Actually, but didn’t get it. He harboured ambitions to act, but pursued them only later at the University of Bristol, where he took plays up to the Edinburgh Fringe. One night he acted before an audience of one: the writer’s mother. Undeterred, he went on to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, joining the scramble at the end to find an agent. Weeks later, his new agent rang to say that Ang Lee was working on a new film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and wanted to see an audition tape.

“I got some mates to film me in a lunch break and then my dad filmed another scene, and we got a call that night saying, ‘He wants to meet you this weekend. He’s saying, we’re going to put you on a plane and take you out of school. Come for the weekend. Learn these scenes.’ ”

As Billy, a young US Marine fêted for killing an enemy assailant in Iraq, Alwyn was painfully believable; a virgin solider returning home to be exploited for an act that had devastated him. The film did not do well, mainly because it was shot at a hyper-reality frame rate that few cinemas had the technology to show, but Alwyn was on his way.

“Things only evolve by change and people taking risks,” he says. “And Ang Lee is someone who I admire for that. None of his films are the same. Maybe thematically they draw on the same things, but he’s always pushing the boundaries.”

The same can be said for A Christmas Carol and, even more, about Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, in which Alwyn appeared alongside Emma Stone and Olivia Colman. It applies less so to his other recent films, Mary Queen of Scots, Boy Erased and now Harriet, a faithful biopic about the slave liberator Harriet Tubman in which he played a slave owner’s son. What he has managed to do consistently is work and learn from some seriously good actresses — Colman, Stone, Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Erivo. “I know. I am targeting them,” he jokes.

I tell him my daughters have insisted I ask if he minds Swift writing songs about him (whole albums, actually, but check out London Boy if you are in search of a little cringe). “No, not at all. No. It’s flattering.”

Does it matter to him that the press — it’s a bit metatextual this, I admit, for I’m probably doing the same thing — make it obvious that they are as interested in his girlfriend as they are in him? “I just don’t pay attention to what I don’t want to pay attention to,” he explains tolerantly. “I turn everything else down on a dial. I don’t have any interest in tabloids. I know what I want to do, and that’s this, and that’s what I am doing.”

The boyf, described only the other day as “mysterious” in one of those tabloids, is no mystery at all. He knows what he wants for Christmas, and it is the career he is already forging.

A Christmas Carol begins on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday

#joe alwyn #the times #taylor swift #interview #a christmas carol

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dailytomlinson · 4 years

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It’s been a long and turbulent four-year road for Louis Tomlinson. Since his band, One Direction, announced their ‘indefinite hiatus’ in 2016, Tomlinson has struggled to find a professional path that suitably represents him as an artist. As he gears up to finally release his long-awaited debut album Walls this coming January, the singer-songwriter finally feels comfortable in his own skin, finding his own unique Britpop-inspired sound which has been spurred on by the resentment towards a diluting of his vision in a bid to find radio play in the States. Tomlinson, it is safe to say, has finally found his feet and, with a new record label firmly behind him and a renewed energy propelling his every move, the 27-year-old is now a man on a mission with two fingers in the air and a point to prove.

His remarkable story really needs no introduction. Plucked from a crowd of hopefuls auditioning for the X-Factor in 2010, the then 18-year-old singer was placed alongside Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Zayn Malik by Simon Cowell much to the joy of their growing social media fanbase. Just 12 months later their debut album, Up All Night, was released and propelled the group to international fame. In the six fast and furious years as a band One Direction tour relentlessly, released five hit records and became unfathomably rich in the process. For Tomlinson, however, the immediate highs were quickly met by severe lows when it all came suddenly crashing down. The end of the band, the media relentlessly pursuing his private life, personal tragedy and more have followed. Now though, with a renewed vigour and clarity for his future, Tomlinson has picked himself up and is about to carve out his own niche of pop music. I met Tomlinson in a back bar of a central London hotel as I self-consciously began to consider the possibility that I may be underdressed for the occasion. Thankfully though—and much to my relief—he arrived casually dressed in a brown quarter-zip jacket, jeans and Adidas trainers which arrived as a refreshing change in reference to the typical, modern-day pop star. Having travelled down to London from Yorkshire that day, with my editor’s words ringing in my ears, the somewhat opulent surroundings of our meeting lacked the relaxing edge I was hoping for. It must be said that interviews with musicians of international fame can be tricky — especially when they have a new album to sell. With media training, PR managers typically watching over and a sense ill-trust with the media, it will come as little surprise that popstars can be standoffish in interviews. Despite my initial trepidation though, Tomlinson greeted me with immense warmth and immediately offered to get a couple of beers in from the bar—the first sign that our conversation would follow the laid-back pattern I was hoping for. After we’d sat down and had a sip of lager, our Yorkshire accents clashing, my mind turned to his recent performance of his last single ‘We Made It’ on Children In Need. Tomlinson looked in his element, like he’d finally found his feet as a solo artist—something that hasn’t been an easy adjustment for him to make in the last few years. “Yeah, naturally I feel as any fucking solo star finds – the longer you’re in it, the more experienced you get, the more confident you get. I think it took me a second to work out who I am musically, to fully detach from One Direction and stuff but I feel like I’m there now so, naturally, I’m more confident in my songwriting ability, I’m more confident performing, singing and all of that, so it feels good.” Following the split from the band, it did feel from the outside looking in that there was no clear direction where his solo career was going to take him. With collaborations with the likes of Steve Aoki and Bebe Rexha, both of which performed commercially well, there was a creative direction that left more questions than answers. Earlier this year, he took to social media to make a statement to claim that he was turning a page, that he was fed up with writing to a formula in a bid to chase radio play and instead he wanted to make music he loved. That moment was the beginning of the second chapter in his solo career, which he expands on looking while back at that difficult time with more than a pinch of honesty as always, disclosing: “Yeah but I’m not going to lie, it’s still something that I’m fighting up against if I’m being honest. I mean, because there’s constant opinion around me and you know a lot of people do want to focus towards radio—which I do understand—but what bugs me is just how much it limited me — especially because what I grew up listening to on pop radio is very different to what’s on pop radio now and because I couldn’t see a place for myself. I thought that it wasn’t not going to be authentic because I’m going to be trying to sound like what’s on the radio. Today, in 2019 more than ever, people can spot bullshit. So yeah, I think since that moment I’ve always been conscious of that and as I say it is a constant battle, but I think I’m winning at the moment.” The state of mainstream radio is something that Tomlinson is passionate about. As an artist who aims to make songs that are accessible to the masses without compromising integrity at the same time, Louis appears to be well versed on the shift in the popular musical landscape: “If I’m being honest, I didn’t actively search for stuff because it was on pop radio,” he said while discussing the change in approach to consuming music. “Especially a band like Catfish and The Bottlemen,” he adds after a moment of contemplation. “When I was growing up they would definitely, definitely, be on every radio and I think those bands are very important and now I have to actively search for them or listen to the right station.” He continues, “Also, I think it took me a second to come out and say what my influences are because I know what people expect from someone who has been in a boyband and stuff like that.” With this lightbulb moment, Tomlinson wanted to detail more about the inner workings of his creative process, how collaborating with like-minding musicians helped free his thought process. “Once I��d had this epiphany and put this message on social media, at that point I’d done four songs that are still on the album. I think ‘Kill My Mind’ was actually a turning point, I wrote it with a guy called Jamie Hartman and the next session we had together we wrote ‘Walls’ which is the title track for the album and is going to be my next single. I think from that moment it unlocked something and we got some momentum so then the second half of the album was written relatively quickly but I think as I say it being transitional I’d have loved 10 ‘Kill My Mind’s’ but maybe the next record.” ‘Kill My Mind’ looks and sounds like the first step towards the definitive direction that the Yorkshireman is aiming for. It has a punchy Hot Fuss era Killers’ chorus and is more reminiscent of the type of music that Tomlinson himself loves. “That’s probably the proudest I’ve been of a song because that is genuinely a song that I fucking love listening to and that’s not necessarily always the case when you’re playing for radio all the time. It didn’t get the attention that I think it quite deserved but that’s the way it is.” The shift towards the guitar-led music, which bucks the trend with current chart-toppers, is the path that the 27-year-old is determined to follow. A recent writing session with Australian indie giants DMA’s had popped up in our conversation and the beaming smile across Tomlinson’s face said it all: “I’ve hung out with those boys (DMA’s) actually, one night because we were in the same studio and I’ve written together with [them] before,” he said before clarifying that the drinks were flowing which resulted in an unfinished recording. When probed on whether this is something he’d like to re-visit at a later date, Tomlinson expanded with an eye firmly on the future: “The DMA’s session was a bit of an experiment, to be honest, when I look at my solo career I’m looking at it as a five, six or seven-year plan. I realise this from doing the DMA’s one, I would fucking love to do an album full of them but it’s a transition you know what I mean, I’ve got to understand the fan base and what they want. I don’t want anything to be so drastic so in my eyes, it’s a two, three even four-album progression before I get there and I also think to write those kinds of songs that I love I need to have more experience as a songwriter as well.” For someone who has had such rich successes in their career to date, the singer-songwriter does seem to have struggled with his self-confidence since going solo—but this year seems to have changed that. One song that stands out is ‘Two of Us’, a track which was released earlier this year is a tribute to his late Mother who tragically passed in 2017. Tomlinson’s life was then struck by more devastation following his sister’s sudden death in March this year. ‘Two of Us’ clearly carries a heavy weight of emotion. Created from the inner workings of Tomlinson’s grief, the song is by a distance the most personal release in his entire career to date. Despite that, the track manages to find the universal within the personal as it’s lyrics resonate for anyone who has ever lost anybody close to them—myself included. While our conversation remained on this topic I was keen to know whether these heart-breaking events had impacted his professional epiphany, whether the personal grief had allowed him to stop worrying about the chart and instead focusing more on enjoying the ride: “When I wrote ‘Two Of Us’ that was something I never really had with music before where I like to think every lyric has meant something. There was a different emotional weight with that song and just hearing people’s stories about what it meant to them and how they related to it, that was amazing for me.” “If I’m being honest what made me have my epiphany was me spitting my fucking dummy out because I was sick of being put in writing sessions which I couldn’t relate to, or people trying to pull me in a certain way to work on American radio. I could probably have commercial success like that, but I’ve got the luxury of having had that already with One Direction and I thought ‘what does success mean to me?’ I just thought I’ve got to follow my fucking heart and if I can win like that it’s like a double win you know what I mean.” One Direction’s immediate success was unprecedented for a British boyband. Together they conquered the world with their debut Up All Night going straight to number one in the States and shifting more than 4.5million copies globally. Just one to this moment, Tomlinson was an 18-year-old living for the weekend in Doncaster—but he was determined not to let his newfound fame change him: “Yeah I was always pretty resistant to it [fame] to be honest, I always say that when I got famous, when I first got put in band, that I was having the best year of my life. So, it was a lot to deal with to leave my favourite year behind and to be doing something else where you’re working really hard. The personal and professional problems that have occurred in recent years appears to have given Tomlinson a remarkable sense of life experience. Despite still being so young, despite having lived a whirlwind life, he still has the ability to self reflect on with a grounded honesty. “Being from Donny you don’t expect to get that kind of opportunity and I then got put into the band and then had to deal with everything on the job. Honestly, it was a fucking incredible time in my life that shaped me as an artist and shaped me as a person, I saw some amazing things but it is also nice now to have a little bit more free time because we were so fucking busy and also you know stand on my own two feet and say this is who I am.” “As far as what’s on my checklist of a credible artist you know they have to write their own tunes, that was always important to me and I did a lot of writing in the band which I think gave me the incredible experience to write now. It was like a crash course, there were so many sessions and I think it’s put me in good stead, but I feel like I’m always getting better as a writer man I feel like with every song I learn a little bit more.” Although, it’s clear from speaking with Tomlinson that he looks back on those years he spent with the band with all the fondness in the world. Yet the media attention that came with all the success was something that got the better of him at times. “That was hard and I’ve often envied artists from an era where smartphones weren’t around. There were definitely some days where it got the better of me. I suppose you’ve got to be selective on where you go and I learned the hard way from a few different people that you can’t trust. Some people want something out of you and it took me a second to understand, but again I think that helps me have a thicker skin in the real world outside of my job. There are times when I’ve gone through difficult things in my life and I’ve thought certain people haven’t been amazing but it’s part of it, fuck it.” As our conversation then meandered toward the split of the band and what life was like for Tomlinson after exiting the world of One Direction— which was all that he had known for the entirety of his adult life up until that point. A sense of honest emotion entered his voice, a moment that seemingly suggested that this permanent change was something that was taken from his own control: “It was good to be back doing normal things but I wasn’t ready for the band to go on a break and it came as a shock for me,” Tomlinson exclusively told Far Out Magazine. “It definitely wasn’t my choice but I understand why the decision was made and there’s a good argument for that. I’m enjoying expressing myself now but it rocked me for a time and for a bit and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said, vehemently. From the tone in his voice, it is obvious that the subject is still a relatively raw one for Tomlinson who initially struggled to find the right sound for him following the split of the band—a factor stemmed from his initial reluctance to move solo. From the gravitas of the moment to the importance of his first steps back into music, it was clear that Tomlinson wasn’t ready to be going out on his own so soon after the band’s breakup—a learning curve which other members of the group seemed to overcome in different ways. The break was initially thought to be just that ‘a break’, but nearly four years after the announcement there are still no signs that the group is entertaining ideas of reuniting anytime soon. With Louis Tomlinson set to release his debut album in January, Liam Payne’s debut LP1 out next month, Harry Styles’ second offering, Fine Line, being made available on December 13th and Niall Horan working on the follow-up to his 2017 Flicker, the One Direction members are firmly in solo mode. Tomlinson acknowledges that during the final One Direction tour he began to accept that the break was inevitable, admitting: “It had kind of been brewing and we knew the conversation might be coming around but it was just one of those things. It was always going to happen, we were always going to take a break, but I think there are always people who are going to take things better than others.” Looking on the bright side, however, since the break he has been allowed to live a bit more of a quieter life. From speaking with Tomlinson I get the sense that he’s in this because he loves the music, appreciates the love he gets from fans and loves playing live. However, the celebrity lifestyle that comes with it isn’t why he’s in this game. “I think I can definitely have a bit more of a balance now, there are obviously times when I’m releasing songs or releasing album when it’s really ramped up and It’s hard but definitely easier in those off times to have the balance because otherwise when you’re so busy it’s impossible to literally fit everybody into your life. It’s definitely nicer having more time to do normal fucking things,” he adds with an almost sigh of relief. Tomlinson’s solo career, which has found its feet with emphatic effect and is currently flying high with a sold-out world tour and highly anticipated debut on the horizon, was something that the singer himself had never initially envisioned. With Tomlinson originally wanting to take a back seat in the music industry following the end of the band, he revealed exclusively to Far Out: “I’m not going to lie it hit me hard but it definitely inspired me to get on with my own solo career because it wasn’t something I was always going to do. I was just going to write songs and just hopefully send them to other people and stuff like that, but everything happens for a reason, so they say anyway.” As the careers of all five members of the band have all taken off, with each turning into different avenues sonically, our conversation then turned to the competitive nature between the band since they went their separate ways. Typically, the avid Doncaster Rovers fan opting to use a hugely specific football analogy to describe the relationship with his former bandmates: “I could be wrong but I think we’ve all got that in us, there’s a competitive side to everyone. I can only speak from personal experience, and as time goes on you understand the differences. It’s not all that relevant but I liken to the feeling at first was that you’ve all been at Barcelona’s youth academy, so we’ll call One Direction ‘Barcelona’ and then we’ve all been put off at different clubs and that takes a second to understand and compute but we’re all still lucky to be able to do it as solo artists.” Having time off to relax over the last few years for the first time since stepping foot for his X-Factor audition all those years ago, Tomlinson seems to have returned with a renewed love for music and everything that comes with it. For a while, it appears the music was falling second in line to all the hysteria that surrounded his fame—a situation that has been duly rectified. Next year will see him return to Doncaster as part of his world tour for a very special homecoming and, with that mention, his face lights up with a grin on his face the size of South Yorkshire: “It’s going to be class, I can’t wait for Donny Dome. I don’t feel like my career has fully started until I do that first tour show, it’s all well and good writing songs, releasing songs, doing all the promo and everything that comes with it but the most important fucking thing is that you put on a good show. I started realising the longer that I’ve been in this that there’s a level of importance in these nights to people, especially the avid fanbase that I’m lucky enough to have. You can see from the reactions and look into people’s eyes and see what certain lyrics meant to them.” What struck me the most from the time I spent with the singer-songwriter was just how grounded he was, seemingly bereft of any level of arrogance and still just that same local lad from Doncaster who began this journey ten years ago. His working-class Yorkshire heritage, he told me, is what has made him the man he is today: “You’ve got to be fucking humble where we’re from you know what I mean? Because otherwise you get called out like ‘who the fuck do you think you are?’”. The greatest takeaway from our conversation is that Louis Tomlinson is still that music enthusiast that entered the music industry in 2010 who, despite all the success and fame, has managed to stay grounded. With surreal highs came earth-shattering lows—all of which has shaped him in one way or another. Instant success is no longer what he seeks with it now being about the long game for him, this change in attitude is a sign of maturity for Tomlinson who no longer losing sleep about pleasing streaming algorithms. Having been sitting at the mountain top of the music industry for almost a decade, it seems it is only now he is really getting started with a long-term plan of where he wants his solo-career to go. With a strong sense of support around him, his future and creative vision is firmly in his own hands. With an abundance of experience behind him and has renewed enthusiasm, Louis Tomlinson is finally ready to find his own direction. Walls is available on 31st January via Sony Music, for tickets to his world tour – visit here for tickets.

#press #291119 #louis Tomlinson #far out magazine #stunt mention #dlibyh

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badchoicesposts · 4 years

Text

Loyalty Or Royalty

Chapter 12

Summary: Mia Bhatt spent years trying to escape her past, trying to escape the feeling of betrayal that was left in her heart after the fire, and she finally had. She was marrying the King of Cordonia and was finally going to get her happily ever after. But, after a momentary lapse in judgement caused her to send a wedding invitation to someone she was sure had forgotten about her, she realizes that sometimes the past has a way of crawling back to you.

Author’s Note: In this fic Anton and The Sons of Earth were caught before the wedding. Also this story will contain flashbacks that will be in italics.

Pairing: Liam x MC (Mia Bhatt), Platonic!Colt x MC, Past!Logan x MC

Word Count: 3,246

Song: Shoot Your Gun by 22-20s

TRIGGER WARNING: VERY BRIEF IMPLICATION OF SELF HARM AND PARENTAL ABUSE

Taglist: @flowerpowell, @dcbbw, @texaskitten30, @kingliam2019, @hopefulmoonobject, @lovehugsandcandy, @los-cafeteros, @desireepow-1986 @lovemychoices, @kimmiedoo5

Catch Up: Masterlist

Mia slipped out of Logan’s arms slowly, pulling the bed sheet up against her bare chest. He continued to sleep soundly on the bed, and she slipped into the loft’s bathroom and slid down to the floor, letting out a soft sigh. Logan was nice and he made her feel safe and comfortable. She had never entertained the idea of feeling secure in a relationship, but with Logan it was different. She wasn’t afraid of him, and she wasn’t on edge around him. Or at least she wasn’t on edge anymore.

She had been at first, but that was her natural reaction around anyone she first met. She had begun to feel even more apprehensive when he had asked to take her on a date. She had seen examples of how relationships could go wrong all around her. But, Logan was different. He was a good person. He had a hard life and had suffered through more than his fair share of difficulties, but he still somehow managed to have a good heart.

A soft knock on the door pulled her out of her thoughts.

“Hey, what are you doing in here?” Logan asked, smiling down at her softly.

“I, uh, I just needed a minute,” she sputtered out pathetically.

“Wow, was I that bad?” Logan teased, holding his hands out to pull her to her feet.

“It’s not like I would know. I don’t have any prior experiences to draw from,” she shot back, shivering slightly when he pulled the sheet away from her body and the cold air touched her bare skin.

Logan pulled her into a soft kiss, and she sighed in contentment at the feeling.

“I really like you, Logan,” she said softly, pulling away from the kiss and hiding her face in the crook of his neck.

“I really like you too,” he replied, leading her back to the bed.

~~~

Liam liked to think that he knew his wife very well. Maybe not as well as he originally thought since learning about her crime lord father, but still fairly well. He knew that her favorite Harry Potter movie was the second one, although her favorite book was the third. He knew that she loved sleeping on clean sheets, but hated having to do laundry. He knew that she claimed to be a dog person but secretly loved cats and that as much as she made fun of the social season for being a royal knock off of The Bachelor, the show was one of her guilty pleasures, and she watched it when he was working late. He knew that she had insecurities about her body and mental state in general and that deep down she felt that she didn’t deserve to be with him, something that he thought was crazy because he thought she was the most amazing woman in the world, and he knew that she had a fear of abandonment even if she didn’t call it that herself. He also knew the telltale signs of her anxiety.

The glaring and more obvious one was her nausea. When she was nervous or stressed she almost always threw up. She also scratched incessantly when she was nervous. He had watched her scratch until she made herself bleed before, a habit she had been trying to combat by having shorter nails. However, the more subtle tell, one that he wasn’t even sure she herself knew that she did, was the musical numbers. She always sang showtunes when she was upset.

Since Colt showed up he had been hearing a lot of “Defying Gravity” and “Popular” from Wicked, “Marry The Man Today” from Guys and Dolls, and “We Both Reached For The Gun” from Chicago. Her renditions from Chicago sometimes made him a bit nervous. He loved Mia more than anything in the world. She was kind, caring, and compassionate, but she was also a force to be reckoned with, and she was definitely someone he didn’t want to be on the wrong side of.

As she walked around their bedroom getting ready for the day she was belting out the words to “Run and Tell That” from Hairspray. The two of them were getting ready to meet up with the rest of The MPC and Kaneko, and the nervous energy was practically radiating off her in waves. Liam walked up to where she was putting on the bracelet he had made for her with the blue grotto pearl at her vanity and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back into his chest. She looked up at him in the mirror in surprise before smiling softly.

“You have a wonderful voice, my love,” he mumbled, brushing her curls to the side and pressing a gentle kiss to the side of her neck.

“Really? I’m pretty sure I’ve disgraced singers everywhere trying to hit high notes before,” she chuckled relaxing back into his arms.

“Trust me, you’re much better than I am,” Liam said, smiling at their reflections in the mirror.

“That’s funny coming from a member of the infamous Cordonian Quartet,” she teased, turning in his arms and resting her hands on his chest.

Liam smiled down at her and brushed one of her curls behind her ear.

“I know you’re nervous, but I’m here with you. You don’t have to deal with this alone. I’ll always be here with you,” he said.

He could still see the troubled look behind her eyes, but he was there with her and that was what mattered.

“I love you,” she said, pushing herself up to her toes and pulling him into a gentle kiss. “Thank you for being the kindest and most understanding man in the world.”

“You make it easy to be,” he said, pressing another kiss to her forehead.

~~~

Mia sat down on the couch next to Liam, their fingers entwined as they looked over to where Kaneko was sitting in an armchair across from them. The rest of The MPC, Drake, Leo, and Bastien were with them as well, and Mia could tell that the rest of the crew was still in shock at seeing Kaneko right in front of them. Kaneko was watching Liam and Mia critically and his gaze was making her nervous.

“What happened that night?” Colt finally asked, causing Teppei to turn away from the couple and face him head on.

He let out a breath and Mia could see that they were settling in for a long afternoon, but she was ready to hear the whole story.

“There’s not much to tell. After I drove into the barricade I was badly burned but not completely incapacitated. While law enforcement was busy trying to get the fire extinguished, I managed to escape,” he said simply.

Mia wanted to be surprised at the way he spoke about it all as if it were not a big deal, but deep down she knew that if anyone was capable of making the process of faking their own death seem simple then it was Teppei Kaneko.

“And after that? Why didn’t you just tell us that you were alive?” Colt asked, the hurt evident in his eyes.

“It was better that way. Easier. You had all already moved on and with me dead The Brotherhood had less reason to follow after us,” Kaneko said.

“Was it easier for us or for you?” Mia asked, posing the same question she had asked Colt when he had claimed it was easier for him to leave without saying goodbye.

Kaneko turned to look at her, her hurt and anguish clear on her face, before turning to look at Colt who was wearing a very similar expression.

“I can’t speak for everyone else, but I mourned your death for months, and I’m pretty sure Colt did too. Maybe not together, but we still did,” she said.

“I’m sorry if any of my actions have caused you pain. It was never my intention,” he said, his voice softer.

Mia could see true regret in his eyes, and she wanted that to be enough. But, one half-assed apology wasn’t enough.

“Did you really think we just wouldn’t care that you were gone?” she asked incredulously. “That we would just move on like it was no big deal?”

Liam wrapped his arm around her as a stray tear slid down her cheek. Kaneko made to reach out for her but immediately drew himself back. Mia was shocked at the action. He wasn’t the type to show physical affection, but the fact that he almost did made her seem special. It made her feel like she actually mattered to him, and she wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing or not.

“Amelia, I truly am sorry. I’ve always tried my best to keep you and Colt out of harm’s way, and although my actions may have been misguided, I simply wanted the best for the two of you,” Kaneko said, his own regret clearly evident.

“Is that why you never claimed me as your child?” she asked sarcastically.

“Yes, it is actually,” he said. “I didn’t want to paint a target on your back.”

“There was a target on my back anyway,” she said harshly, referring to the years of abuse she faced from the man she grew up believing to be her father. “All you had to do was say something, anything, to make it stop.”

Kaneko looked pained now and some sick part of her felt happy about it. She was glad to know that he at least felt guilty about it.

“He wouldn’t have given you up easily. You know how he was. He liked to be in control of everyone and everything. Even if I had said something all it would have done was make things worse for you and your mother,” Kaneko tried to reason with her.

She could see the point he was trying to make. However, she still felt the need to be unreasonably mad.

“You mean the mother you had killed?” she asked, her voice dripping with hostility.

“I promise you, I had no idea that she would be there with him that night. I would never have done anything to hurt her,” he said.

There was a look of tenderness in his eyes that Mia didn’t think she had ever seen there before. She and Colt shared a look of understanding. He was in love with her.

“How did you end up in Cordonia?” she asked instead of addressing it.

“I had been laying low for a while, but I had always kept up with you. I was there when you graduated high school, and when you decided to leave to travel to Cordonia. I kept up with you through tabloids and I decided to come to Cordonia myself after your scandal,” he said, a somber expression on his face.

“And how did you get involved with Anton and Claudius?” she asked, noticing the shift from sadness to burning anger when she mentioned them,

Mia sunk deeper into Liam’s side, the anticipation causing her body to practically vibrate. He squeezed her closer and although she felt like she needed a break to catch her breath, she couldn’t seem to pull herself away from the conversation.

“I had heard rumors about a group that had plans to rise up against the monarchy and I knew that you could potentially end up in danger if their plans were to come to fruition so after a few months of slowly integrating myself into their system I managed to work my way to the top,” Kaneko began. “At first Anton didn’t trust me for obvious reasons.”

“And then you burnt down the Applewood Orchard?” she said.

“It was a necessary sacrifice,” Kaneko said, angering both her and Liam.

Mia could see that Liam was now upset as well. She had seen first hand the toll the assassins had taken on him and how troubled he was about Applewood in general.

“That wasn’t your sacrifice to make,” Liam growled out.

Kaneko tensed and relaxed his jaw. This was a habit of his that Mia had noticed growing up. He would always do it when he was trying to control his irritation.

“Anton wanted to attack at your wedding. His plan was to kidnap you, Amelia, and your friend Olivia, and lure Liam to location so he could kill you all. I convinced him to attack the rehearsal dinner instead, and while they were attacking I contacted Mona to let her know their exact location in the palace,” he said, causing everyone to look at the woman in shock. “I was supposed to be their getaway driver in case things went wrong, but instead of waiting for them I left once the coast was clear to make sure that you would catch them before they had a chance to escape.”

“You knew?” Colt asked Mona, his voice raising about three octaves.

“The boss needed someone on the inside he could trust not to tell anyone that he was alive,” she shrugged it off like it was no big deal.

Mia took a deep breath to center herself. She remembered the rehearsal dinner clearly. The bomb had gone off, shaking the castle and causing everyone to panic. In the midst of all the chaos Mona had told her she knew where the assassins were because she had seen someone suspicious before the dinner started and in the heat of the moments she had just gone along with it. Now looking back at it, she realized how flimsy the excuse really was.

“So what now?” Mia asked.

“Now we stop The Brotherhood,” Kaneko said, his voice determined.

Mia scoffed.

“And there it is. You’re only now telling everyone you’re alive because you need help,” Mia said.

“Why is that a bad thing? We all want to get even with The Brotherhood,” Colt defended, causing Mia to roll her eyes.

“It’s a bad thing because last time we tried to take down The Brotherhood, he didn’t give us all the information and look where that got us. He didn’t trust us enough to tell us the whole truth but still expected us to follow his instructions without question,” Logan said, looking over at Kaneko hesitantly.

Colt and Teppei both seemed to be annoyed that Logan had pointed this out.

“If you don’t want to be here then you can go,” Colt told him harshly.

“You may all leave if you don’t want to be a part of this. It’s been seven years, and I know you’ve all moved on with your lives. However, when we proceed with our plans this time, I promise to be completely transparent with you,” Kaneko said.

Logan, Ximena, and Toby shared a nervous look. Mona, however, looked completely satisfied with the way things turned out.

“I’m in,” she said without thinking, causing Colt to smile happily.

“Are you guys seriously plotting revenge right now?” Mia asked, actually surprised by how ridiculous this whole situation seemed.

“Yes, and I’ll give you the same choice I’ve given the rest of them. We can leave Cordonia and you can have nothing to do with any of this, or you can choose to join us,” Kaneko said, a look of almost hopefulness behind his eyes.

“You mean you want me to choose between helping my criminal father, who has done nothing but hurt me by the way, with his plot for revenge or my husband who has done nothing but love me and take care of me? I think the choice is pretty easy,” she said sarcastically.

Kaneko clenched and unclenched his jaw. He was angry now. He was angry with her.

“Amelia, I may have done some terrible things in my time, but you shouldn’t fool yourself into thinking your husband is innocent,” he said, his voice filled with controlled anger. “Your husband was perfectly content with standing idly by while the press slandered your name. He was content with standing idly by while you spent countless days looking for Tariq and countless nights crying yourself to sleep. He would have been fine with making you his whore and marrying another woman if it meant he could protect his image. Even your friend, Drake, spent more time with you and offered you more assistance. You can hate me for the things that I’ve done to hurt you, but maybe you should look closer at your marriage before you go defending all of Liam’s decisions.”

Mia was seething. Her whole body was practically vibrating with anger.

“Bas, arrest him,” she growled out through gritted teeth.

“What! Mellie, what the hell are you doing?” Colt yelled, rising to his feet.

“You burnt down the Applewood orchard and consorted with The Sons of Earth. That’s treason. Bas, arrest him,” she said, rising to her own feet. “Colt, you‘ll always have a home wherever I am, but I’m not going to sit by and watch you ruin yourself.”

Mia walked up to her and Liam’s bedroom without looking back. Her heart was beating rapidly, and she had no idea what to do to calm herself down. Kaneko had gotten completely under her skin. She grabbed her phone and connected it to the bedroom’s speakers, blaring her music as loud as she could in attempts to make her thoughts stop racing.

Spin me some sad story

Sell me some excuse

To help me understand the things you do

She hated that he knew how to do that, and she hated that she had just told Bastien to arrest him.

‘Cause the way you treat your lovers

Well I just can’t relate

Well, where’d you learn to shoot your gun so straight?

She hated herself for everything that had just happened. She hated herself because she was now beginning to question her entire relationship with Liam. She may have been completely pissed off at Kaneko, but she still knew that a part of what he said was right. Nothing he said was anything she hadn’t thought herself before. She had just never allowed herself to address those negative emotions.

Oh baby won’t you cry?

Show me there are some tears behind your eyes

Oh baby won’t you cry?

Show me there’s a hurt behind your eyes

Anyone who knew Mia knew that it was easy to make her cry. She had always been that way. She used to be embarrassed about it as a child because she would cry at the drop of a hat. She would cry if someone raised their voice, even if it wasn’t directed at her. She would cry if she thought someone was angry with her. She would cry if she was angry, herself. She would cry if she was stressed. She would cry if she was happy. But, now she didn’t even want to cry. She was so upset she wasn’t sure how to make herself calm down.

She turned off the music and walked back down to the living room of the royal apartment. Everyone was still there except for Bastien and Teppei and they all looked up at her. Liam was trying to get her attention, and Colt was shooting questions in her direction, but Mia ignored all of them.

“Can you take me to the cabin?” she asked, her eyes filled with tears as she only addressed Drake.

He gave her a look of grim understanding and rose to his feet, the two of them leaving the palace without a second thought.

#the royal romance #the royal heir #liam x mc #liam #king liam #colt kaneko #colt x mc #logan x mc #rod logan #ride or die #rod #ride or die: a bad boy romance #rod:abbr #teppei kaneko #my fics #playchoices #choices fic #choices

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nctbythemoon · 4 years

Text

hello, hello, fellow aliens ! you can call me nochu n i reside on the gmt+1 timezone ( i was hella confused for a moment about openin, i’m not very smart ) . either way, my discord is 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙖𝙧��𝙣𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙞'𝙢 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙨𝙝#6348 so if you rather there ... ya know, i’m all in ! either way, hang with me while i try to uncover this paradox

˙✫*ﾟJEON JUNGKOOK, MALE , HE/HIM :･ did you hear atlas moon is joining the cast of exposed after word of an orgy house party was revealed ? the twenty-four year old musician with 10m is trying to clear their name . they've become known as the resident bohemian in the mansion , and it's clear that's spot on because they're quite - obsessive & - possessive , but also + charismatic & + creative . you know they're heading to the confession booth if you hear if you can’t hang by sleeping with sirens blasting , most likely talking about how they're more than half tattooed sleeves enlaced with intoxicated drinks and loud music, quiet studios filled with troubling thoughts, empty hospitals at 5am, half - drunk whiskey bottles and unfinished manuscripts with coffee stains .

triggers might include : heavy drugs, schizophrenia, anxiety, neglect, toxic relationship, attempted suicide, death

full name : moon joonhyun

nicknames / stage name : atlas moon, moon, moonie

age : twenty - four

date of birth : april 25th 1996

zodiac sign : taurus sun, capricorn moon, gemini rising

place of birth : busan, south korea

occupation : songwriter / singer / performer

claims : patrick stump ( fall out boy ), jungkook’s covers ( because ... they’re gorge )

tattoos : jungkook’s tattoos ( reference, reference, reference )

piercings : tongue piercing

romantic orientation : panromantic

sexual orientation : demiromantic

mental illness : schizophrenia, anxiety

brief family history ( triggers : schizophrenia, anxiety, neglect, attempt suicide, death )

unlike many think, atlas was born in south korea ; youngest to of three , one could discuss the moon’s were never truly happy . since early age atlas was forced to understand his mother was extremely ill and that most were times where she would express her anger towards him than love . but whatever love wasn’t given, it was replaced by the many nannies and many material items they were drowned with

their father was always too busy working, merging with international companies and searching for the best medical treatments for his mother , so they barely saw him either , finding comfort with each other and the maids , trying to grow apart from that world that was his mother’s. yet it was quite impossible , as the several treatments pulled them apart from korea and all over the world . but alas, his mother’s health was more important

schizophrenia trigger // but something felt odd to atlas and it started very early as well . however busy his mind seemed to be with other things , voices , energies , always seemed to pull him to his mother’s room . not in search of love , of comfort , but in pure hatred . he couldn’t help it , these voices and delusions mostly told him to end the family’s issue ; and one day , he tried , finally caving to them . but at the same time , he wasn’t ready to see what he saw

attempt suicide trigger // blood , all red , against the purest of skins . atlas was only seven years old when he found his mother trying to commit suicide . for the next ten minutes , he stood there , unable to think through . and then , a shout , but not belonging to him . his older brother was quick , oh so quick , to cover his eyes and pull him out of the room , but the damage was done : atlas had been in there for to long . his father, a strict but caring man , was quick to hire a therapist for his youngest , but oh , how many more trouble would that arise

schizophrenia trigger // the voices . when someone asks you what made you go to that room , when being told since birth not to , the last thing you should answer is the voices . but a young child like atlas did intend to lie , did not know it wasn’t normal . nor the therapist ever told him directly , scribbling away on her notepad , but later , much later , after several testing , the terrible words were spoken . joohyun is schizophrenic . yes , like his mother . it was more than his father could take . one ? he could handle . but two ? no boy of his would have it . atlas was then sent to psychiatric hospital , away from everyone

atlas spent seven years on that hospital ( from 7 to 14 ) , alone and isolated from the world . the only people he came in contact with were the maids and his elder brothers when they could escape , but his father never visited . that grew resent and strain in their relationship , but atlas found peace in the two things the hospital supported : drawing and music . self - taught himself to play the piano and guitar and took weekly violin classes, to better express his hatred and less than ideal emotions . in a way , he was the best - behaved patient they had and with some convincing and medication , the hospital convinced his father to give him home again , to let him live a normal life . he finally accepted

death trigger // there was a catch , however . the only reason why he was allowed home was because his mother had passed . despite hating everything about his father , he attended the funeral out of respect for his brothers, promising himself he would never let his life out of control like his mother had . he was enrolled in the same private school as his brothers and the three agreed to conceal the fact he had spent the last 7 years in an “ asylum “ and he adapted pretty decently

his social skills weren’t as damaged as he thought and he got himself involved with sports and art , forming the band would become fallen , making sure he kept up with his studies , but again , tragedy struck again

death trigger // his older brother , liam , was killed in a car accident , taking all the breath and floor from atlas . their elder sibling had always taken care of them , making sure the communication between him and his father were clean , among many other things , and it was gone . atlas took it very personally , going without his medication and resorting to other ways to numb that pain , almost failing to graduate . his life turned around in 2 seconds and his father finally was ready to send him back to the hospital , but this time , atlas was ready

leaving home was one of the best decisions he took , crashing at one of his bandmate’s homes . this situation only lasted a couple of months , as a scout found them in one of their underground performances and was quick to sign them . atlas quickly kept spiraling down

thus the orgy story ...

it wasn’t meant to blow up . whenever his brother’s death comes around , he does anything to just stop the pain . he knows very well he can’t use drugs to the point of overdosing but he also can’t deal with himself . not when his own illness feeds into his pain , increasing , especially if he drops his meds . which he does , too often . he was a little too high when a phone was turned on , he didn’t realized that flash was of someone filming , taking pictures , and his pleased smile just becomes so much prominent among warm bodies and loud sounds . was his label even surprised ? not anymore , but they needed to improve his image . fast .

small details about his personality ?

he doesn’t take his meds . nope . but if you tell him to take his meds ? he’s gonna sulk all day

not that many people know he suffers from it

doesn’t like shoes for life of it . if he can go barefoot ? he will , without a second thought

much life of the party , much nice and much liking to have fun , however his mood falls really quick out of nowhere ; check him locking himself in his room if this happens ? he doesn’t allow anyone to see him like that

will kill for his friends

his fans are his family ; cares so deeply for them , loves interacting with them , just overall thriving

black clothes , black hair , black everything

tattoos are his healing process

well , this sucked so much , please bare with me , i promise i plot good ( do u rlly , nochu ) . SO . yea . do it .

#exposed.intro #tw schizophrenia #tw attempt suicide #tw death #tw drugs #tw neglect

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louistomlinsoncouk · 4 years

Link

Louis Tomlinson, a new direction

Tomlinson, it is safe to say, has finally found his feet and, with a new record label firmly behind him and a renewed energy propelling his every move, the 27-year-old is now a man on a mission with two fingers in the air and a point to prove.

For Tomlinson, however, the immediate highs were quickly met by severe lows when it all came suddenly crashing down. The end of the band, the media relentlessly pursuing his private life, personal tragedy and more have followed. Now though, with a renewed vigour and clarity for his future, Tomlinson has picked himself up and is about to carve out his own niche of pop music.

I met Tomlinson in a back bar of a central London hotel as I self-consciously began to consider the possibility that I may be underdressed for the occasion. Thankfully though—and much to my relief—he arrived casually dressed in a brown quarter-zip jacket, jeans and Adidas trainers which arrived as a refreshing change in reference to the typical, modern-day pop star. Having travelled down to London from Yorkshire that day, with my editor’s words ringing in my ears, the somewhat opulent surroundings of our meeting lacked the relaxing edge I was hoping for.

It must be said that interviews with musicians of international fame can be tricky — especially when they have a new album to sell. With media training, PR managers typically watching over and a sense ill-trust with the media, it will come as little surprise that popstars can be standoffish in interviews. Despite my initial trepidation though, Tomlinson greeted me with immense warmth and immediately offered to get a couple of beers in from the bar—the first sign that our conversation would follow the laid-back pattern I was hoping for.

After we’d sat down and had a sip of lager, our Yorkshire accents clashing, my mind turned to his recent performance of his last single ‘We Made It’ on Children In Need. Tomlinson looked in his element, like he’d finally found his feet as a solo artist—something that hasn’t been an easy adjustment for him to make in the last few years. “Yeah, naturally I feel as any fucking solo star finds – the longer you’re in it, the more experienced you get, the more confident you get. I think it took me a second to work out who I am musically, to fully detach from One Direction and stuff but I feel like I’m there now so, naturally, I’m more confident in my songwriting ability, I’m more confident performing, singing and all of that, so it feels good.”

Following the split from the band, it did feel from the outside looking in that there was no clear direction where his solo career was going to take him. With collaborations with the likes of Steve Aoki and Bebe Rexha, both of which performed commercially well, there was a creative direction that left more questions than answers. Earlier this year, he took to social media to make a statement to claim that he was turning a page, that he was fed up with writing to a formula in a bid to chase radio play and instead he wanted to make music he loved.

That moment was the beginning of the second chapter in his solo career, which he expands on looking while back at that difficult time with more than a pinch of honesty as always, disclosing: “Yeah but I’m not going to lie, it’s still something that I’m fighting up against if I’m being honest. I mean, because there’s constant opinion around me and you know a lot of people do want to focus towards radio—which I do understand—but what bugs me is just how much it limited me — especially because what I grew up listening to on pop radio is very different to what’s on pop radio now and because I couldn’t see a place for myself. I thought that it wasn’t not going to be authentic because I’m going to be trying to sound like what’s on the radio. Today, in 2019 more than ever, people can spot bullshit. So yeah, I think since that moment I’ve always been conscious of that and as I say it is a constant battle, but I think I’m winning at the moment.”

The state of mainstream radio is something that Tomlinson is passionate about. As an artist who aims to make songs that are accessible to the masses without compromising integrity at the same time, Louis appears to be well versed on the shift in the popular musical landscape: “If I’m being honest, I didn’t actively search for stuff because it was on pop radio,” he said while discussing the change in approach to consuming music. “Especially a band like Catfish and The Bottlemen,” he adds after a moment of contemplation. “When I was growing up they would definitely, definitely, be on every radio and I think those bands are very important and now I have to actively search for them or listen to the right station.” He continues, “Also, I think it took me a second to come out and say what my influences are because I know what people expect from someone who has been in a boyband and stuff like that.”

With this lightbulb moment, Tomlinson wanted to detail more about the inner workings of his creative process, how collaborating with like-minding musicians helped free his thought process. “Once I’d had this epiphany and put this message on social media, at that point I’d done four songs that are still on the album. I think ‘Kill My Mind’ was actually a turning point, I wrote it with a guy called Jamie Hartman and the next session we had together we wrote ‘Walls’ which is the title track for the album and is going to be my next single. I think from that moment it unlocked something and we got some momentum so then the second half of the album was written relatively quickly but I think as I say it being transitional I’d have loved 10 ‘Kill My Mind’s’ but maybe the next record.”

‘Kill My Mind’ looks and sounds like the first step towards the definitive direction that the Yorkshireman is aiming for. It has a punchy Hot Fuss era Killers’ chorus and is more reminiscent of the type of music that Tomlinson himself loves. “That’s probably the proudest I’ve been of a song because that is genuinely a song that I fucking love listening to and that’s not necessarily always the case when you’re playing for radio all the time. It didn’t get the attention that I think it quite deserved but that’s the way it is.”

The shift towards the guitar-led music, which bucks the trend with current chart-toppers, is the path that the 27-year-old is determined to follow. A recent writing session with Australian indie giants DMA’s had popped up in our conversation and the beaming smile across Tomlinson’s face said it all: “I’ve hung out with those boys (DMA’s) actually, one night because we were in the same studio and I’ve written together with [them] before,” he said before clarifying that the drinks were flowing which resulted in an unfinished recording. When probed on whether this is something he’d like to re-visit at a later date, Tomlinson expanded with an eye firmly on the future: “The DMA’s session was a bit of an experiment, to be honest, when I look at my solo career I’m looking at it as a five, six or seven-year plan. I realise this from doing the DMA’s one, I would fucking love to do an album full of them but it’s a transition you know what I mean, I’ve got to understand the fan base and what they want. I don’t want anything to be so drastic so in my eyes, it’s a two, three even four-album progression before I get there and I also think to write those kinds of songs that I love I need to have more experience as a songwriter as well.”

For someone who has had such rich successes in their career to date, the singer-songwriter does seem to have struggled with his self-confidence since going solo—but this year seems to have changed that. One song that stands out is ‘Two of Us’, a track which was released earlier this year is a tribute to his late Mother who tragically passed in 2017. Tomlinson’s life was then struck by more devastation following his sister’s sudden death in March this year.

‘Two of Us’ clearly carries a heavy weight of emotion. Created from the inner workings of Tomlinson’s grief, the song is by a distance the most personal release in his entire career to date. Despite that, the track manages to find the universal within the personal as it’s lyrics resonate for anyone who has ever lost anybody close to them—myself included. While our conversation remained on this topic I was keen to know whether these heart-breaking events had impacted his professional epiphany, whether the personal grief had allowed him to stop worrying about the chart and instead focusing more on enjoying the ride: “When I wrote ‘Two Of Us’ that was something I never really had with music before where I like to think every lyric has meant something. There was a different emotional weight with that song and just hearing people’s stories about what it meant to them and how they related to it, that was amazing for me.”

“If I’m being honest what made me have my epiphany was me spitting my fucking dummy out because I was sick of being put in writing sessions which I couldn’t relate to, or people trying to pull me in a certain way to work on American radio. I could probably have commercial success like that, but I’ve got the luxury of having had that already with One Direction and I thought ‘what does success mean to me?’ I just thought I’ve got to follow my fucking heart and if I can win like that it’s like a double win you know what I mean.”

One Direction’s immediate success was unprecedented for a British boyband. Together they conquered the world with their debut Up All Night going straight to number one in the States and shifting more than 4.5million copies globally. Just one to this moment, Tomlinson was an 18-year-old living for the weekend in Doncaster—but he was determined not to let his newfound fame change him: “Yeah I was always pretty resistant to it [fame] to be honest, I always say that when I got famous, when I first got put in band, that I was having the best year of my life. So, it was a lot to deal with to leave my favourite year behind and to be doing something else where you’re working really hard.

The personal and professional problems that have occurred in recent years appears to have given Tomlinson a remarkable sense of life experience. Despite still being so young, despite having lived a whirlwind life, he still has the ability to self reflect on with a grounded honesty. “Being from Donny you don’t expect to get that kind of opportunity and I then got put into the band and then had to deal with everything on the job. Honestly, it was a fucking incredible time in my life that shaped me as an artist and shaped me as a person, I saw some amazing things but it is also nice now to have a little bit more free time because we were so fucking busy and also you know stand on my own two feet and say this is who I am.”

“As far as what’s on my checklist of a credible artist you know they have to write their own tunes, that was always important to me and I did a lot of writing in the band which I think gave me the incredible experience to write now. It was like a crash course, there were so many sessions and I think it’s put me in good stead, but I feel like I’m always getting better as a writer man I feel like with every song I learn a little bit more.”

Although, it’s clear from speaking with Tomlinson that he looks back on those years he spent with the band with all the fondness in the world. Yet the media attention that came with all the success was something that got the better of him at times. “That was hard and I’ve often envied artists from an era where smartphones weren’t around. There were definitely some days where it got the better of me. I suppose you’ve got to be selective on where you go and I learned the hard way from a few different people that you can’t trust. Some people want something out of you and it took me a second to understand, but again I think that helps me have a thicker skin in the real world outside of my job. There are times when I’ve gone through difficult things in my life and I’ve thought certain people haven’t been amazing but it’s part of it, fuck it.”

As our conversation then meandered toward the split of the band and what life was like for Tomlinson after exiting the world of One Direction— which was all that he had known for the entirety of his adult life up until that point. A sense of honest emotion entered his voice, a moment that seemingly suggested that this permanent change was something that was taken from his own control: “It was good to be back doing normal things but I wasn’t ready for the band to go on a break and it came as a shock for me,” Tomlinson exclusively told Far Out Magazine. “It definitely wasn’t my choice but I understand why the decision was made and there’s a good argument for that. I’m enjoying expressing myself now but it rocked me for a time and for a bit and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said, vehemently.

From the tone in his voice, it is obvious that the subject is still a relatively raw one for Tomlinson who initially struggled to find the right sound for him following the split of the band—a factor stemmed from his initial reluctance to move solo. From the gravitas of the moment to the importance of his first steps back into music, it was clear that Tomlinson wasn’t ready to be going out on his own so soon after the band’s breakup—a learning curve which other members of the group seemed to overcome in different ways.

The break was initially thought to be just that ‘a break’, but nearly four years after the announcement there are still no signs that the group is entertaining ideas of reuniting anytime soon. With Louis Tomlinson set to release his debut album in January, Liam Payne’s debut LP1 out next month, Harry Styles’ second offering, Fine Line, being made available on December 13th and Niall Horan working on the follow-up to his 2017 Flicker, the One Direction members are firmly in solo mode.

Tomlinson acknowledges that during the final One Direction tour he began to accept that the break was inevitable, admitting: “It had kind of been brewing and we knew the conversation might be coming around but it was just one of those things. It was always going to happen, we were always going to take a break, but I think there are always people who are going to take things better than others.”

Looking on the bright side, however, since the break he has been allowed to live a bit more of a quieter life. From speaking with Tomlinson I get the sense that he’s in this because he loves the music, appreciates the love he gets from fans and loves playing live. However, the celebrity lifestyle that comes with it isn’t why he’s in this game. “I think I can definitely have a bit more of a balance now, there are obviously times when I’m releasing songs or releasing album when it’s really ramped up [...] It’s hard but definitely easier in those off times to have the balance because otherwise when you’re so busy it’s impossible to literally fit everybody into your life. It’s definitely nicer having more time to do normal fucking things,” he adds with an almost sigh of relief.

Tomlinson’s solo career, which has found its feet with emphatic effect and is currently flying high with a sold-out world tour and highly anticipated debut on the horizon, was something that the singer himself had never initially envisioned. With Tomlinson originally wanting to take a back seat in the music industry following the end of the band, he revealed exclusively to Far Out: “I’m not going to lie it hit me hard but it definitely inspired me to get on with my own solo career because it wasn’t something I was always going to do. I was just going to write songs and just hopefully send them to other people and stuff like that, but everything happens for a reason, so they say anyway.”

As the careers of all five members of the band have all taken off, with each turning into different avenues sonically, our conversation then turned to the competitive nature between the band since they went their separate ways. Typically, the avid Doncaster Rovers fan opting to use a hugely specific football analogy to describe the relationship with his former bandmates: “I could be wrong but I think we’ve all got that in us, there’s a competitive side to everyone. I can only speak from personal experience, and as time goes on you understand the differences. It’s not all that relevant but I liken to the feeling at first was that you’ve all been at Barcelona’s youth academy, so we’ll call One Direction ‘Barcelona’ and then we’ve all been put off at different clubs and that takes a second to understand and compute but we’re all still lucky to be able to do it as solo artists.”

Having time off to relax over the last few years for the first time since stepping foot for his X-Factor audition all those years ago, Tomlinson seems to have returned with a renewed love for music and everything that comes with it. For a while, it appears the music was falling second in line to all the hysteria that surrounded his fame—a situation that has been duly rectified.

Next year will see him return to Doncaster as part of his world tour for a very special homecoming and, with that mention, his face lights up with a grin on his face the size of South Yorkshire: “It’s going to be class, I can’t wait for Donny Dome. I don’t feel like my career has fully started until I do that first tour show, it’s all well and good writing songs, releasing songs, doing all the promo and everything that comes with it but the most important fucking thing is that you put on a good show. I started realising the longer that I’ve been in this that there’s a level of importance in these nights to people, especially the avid fanbase that I’m lucky enough to have. You can see from the reactions and look into people’s eyes and see what certain lyrics meant to them.”

What struck me the most from the time I spent with the singer-songwriter was just how grounded he was, seemingly bereft of any level of arrogance and still just that same local lad from Doncaster who began this journey ten years ago. His working-class Yorkshire heritage, he told me, is what has made him the man he is today: “You’ve got to be fucking humble where we’re from you know what I mean? Because otherwise you get called out like ‘who the fuck do you think you are?’”.

The greatest takeaway from our conversation is that Louis Tomlinson is still that music enthusiast that entered the music industry in 2010 who, despite all the success and fame, has managed to stay grounded. With surreal highs came earth-shattering lows—all of which has shaped him in one way or another. Instant success is no longer what he seeks with it now being about the long game for him, this change in attitude is a sign of maturity for Tomlinson who no longer losing sleep about pleasing streaming algorithms.

Having been sitting at the mountain top of the music industry for almost a decade, it seems it is only now he is really getting started with a long-term plan of where he wants his solo-career to go. With a strong sense of support around him, his future and creative vision is firmly in his own hands. With an abundance of experience behind him and has renewed enthusiasm, Louis Tomlinson is finally ready to find his own direction.

Walls is available on 31st January via Sony Music, for tickets to his world tour – visit here for tickets.

#louis tomlinson #29nov19 #far out magazine

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