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joshjacksons · 3 years

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Joshua Jackson interview with Refinery29

Against my better judgement, and at the risk of losing any semblance of journalistic objectivity, I start my conversation with Joshua Jackson by effusively telling him what a dream come true it is to be talking to him. See, like many millennial women who grew up watching the late ‘90s and early 2000s teen drama Dawson’s Creek, Jackson’s Pacey Witter means a lot to me. Pacey is one of the rare fictional teen boys of my youth whose adolescent charisma, romantic appeal, and general boyfriend aptitude hold up all these years later (unlike The O.C’s Seth Cohen or Gossip Girl’s Chuck Bass) and that is due in large part to the wit, vulnerability, and care Jackson brought to the character.

It’s the same intention he’s afforded all of his famous roles — Peter Bishop in Fringe, Cole Lockhart in The Affair, and even as a 14-year-old in his first acting gig as sweet-faced heartthrob Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks. Now, Jackson, 43, has matured into a solid supporting actor (with memorable turns in Little Fires Everywhere and When They See Us) and as a leading man who can draw you into a story with just his voice (Jackson’s latest project is narrating the psychological thriller and Canadian Audible original, Oracle, one of the over 12,000 titles available today on Audible.ca’s the Plus Catalogue) or find humanity in the most sinister men (he’s currently playing a sociopath with a god complex in Dr. Death). His magnetic pull is as evident as it was when he was the guy you rooted for in a show named after another guy’s creek. Jackson has never seemed to mind the fact that so many people still bring up Pacey decades later, and that’s part of why as an adult, he’s one of the few childhood crushes I still have on a pedestal. I tell him just a tiny slice of this, and Jackson graciously sits up straighter and promises to bring his A-game to our Zoom exchange. Jackson is in what appears to be an office, flanked by mess, like a true work-from-home Dad. He and his wife, fellow actor Jodie Turner-Smith, welcomed a daughter in the early days of the pandemic in 2020, and he tells me that fatherhood and marriage are the best decisions he has ever made. Jackson and Turner-Smith are a rare Hollywood couple who choose to let us in on their love, but not obnoxiously — just through flirty Instagram comments and cheeky tweets. Their pairing is part of Jackson’s enduring appeal. It’s nice to think that Pacey Witter grew up to be a doting dad and adoring husband, even if his wife’s name is Jodie, not Joey.

Jackson is an animated conversationalist, leaning into the camera to emphasize his points — especially when the topic of diversity comes up. White celebs don’t get asked about racism in Hollywood the way their counterparts of colour do, and when they do, they’re usually hesitant at best, and unequipped at worst, to tackle these conversations. Jackson is neither. He’s open, willing, and eager to discuss systemic inequality in the industry he’s grown up in. It’s the bare minimum a straight white man in Hollywood can do, and Jackson seems to know this. When he ventures briefly into trying to explain to me, a Black woman, the perils of being Black, female, and online, he catches himself and jokes that of course, I don’t need him to tell me the racism that happens in the comment section of his wife’s Instagram. The self-deprecating delivery is one I’m familiar with from watching Jackson onscreen for most of my life, and seeing it in person (virtually) renders me almost unable to form sentences. Jackson’s charm is disarming, but his relaxed Canadian energy is so relatable, I manage to maintain my professionalism long enough to get through our conversation. Refinery29: Your voice has been in my head for a few days because I've been listening to Canadian Audible Original, Oracle. What drew you to this project and especially the medium of audio storytelling?

Joshua Jackson: The book itself is such a page turner. I also love the idea of those old radio plays. It's like a hybrid between the beauty of reading a book on the page where your imagination does all of it. We craft a little bit of the world, but because this is a noir thriller married with this metaphysical world, there's a lot of dark and creepy places that your imagination gets to fill in for yourself.

I'm noticing a trend in some of the roles you've been taking on lately, with this and Dr. Death, these stories are very dark and creepy. But so many people still think of you as Pacey Witter, or as Charlie Conway, the prototypical good guys of our youth. Are you deliberately trying to kill Pacey and Charlie?

JJ: I'm not trying to kill anybody — except on screen [laughs]. It's funny, I didn't really think of these two things as companion pieces, but I won't deny that there may be something subconscious in this anxiety, stress-filled year that we've all just had. That may be what I was trying to work out was some of that stress, because that's the beauty of my job. Instead of therapy, I just get someone to pay me to say somebody else's words. So, yeah, that could be a thing [but] the thought process that went into them both was very different. Even though this is a dark story, [lead character, police psychic] Nate Russo is still the hero. [Dr. Death’s] Christopher Duntsch very much is not at all. I can't pretend to know my own mind well enough to be able to tell you exactly how [these two roles] happened, but it happened.

That might be something that you should work through with an actual therapist. JJ: Exactly. Yeah, maybe real therapy is on the docket for me [laughs].

So I was listening to Oracle and you're doing these various creepy voices — I’m sorry the word “creepy” keeps coming up.

JJ: Are you trying to tell me something? You know what? I wanted to skip straight to the creepy old man phase of my career. So, it sounds like I'm doing a good job.

You're doing amazing, sweetie [laughs]. So, I was thinking you must be really good at bedtime stories with your daughter doing all these voices. Or is she still too young for that?

JJ: No! She's all the way into books. Story time is my favourite part of the day because it gives me the opportunity to have that time with her just one-on-one. Her favorite book right now is a book called Bedtime Bonnet. Every night I bring out three books, and she gets to pick one. The other two shift a little bit, but Bedtime Bonnet is every single night.

I love that. Since you're married to a Black woman, you know a thing or two about bonnets. JJ: Yeah, well I'm getting my bonnet education. And I'm getting my silk sheet education. I'm behind the curve, but I'm figuring it out [laughs].

You said in an interview recently that you are now at the age where the best roles for men are. And I wonder if you can expand on that and whether you think of the fact that the same cannot be said for the majority of women actors in their 40s?

JJ: What's great about the age that I'm at now as a man is that, generally speaking, the characters — even if they're not the central character of this show — are well fleshed out. They're being written from a personal perspective, usually from a writer who has enough lived experience and wants to tell the story of a whole character. Whereas when you're younger — and obviously I was very lucky with some of the characters that I was able to play – you're the son or the boyfriend, or you're a very two-dimensional character. It's gotten better, but still a lot like you're either the precocious child or you're the brooding one. I will say that while I would agree with you to a certain point for women, I think that this is probably the best era to be a not 25-year-old-woman in certainly the entirety of my career. And it is also the best time to be a Black woman inside of the industry. There's still more opportunity for a 40-year-old white man than there is for a 40-year-old white woman, but it is better now than it has ever been. The roles that women are able to inhabit and occupy and the opportunities that are out there have multiplied. If I started my career in playing two-dimensional roles to get the three-dimensional roles, most women started their career in three-dimensional roles and end up at “wife” or “mom.” And that's just not the case anymore. There's just a lot of broadly diverse stories being told that centre women. So you're right, but in the last five years, six years I would say, there has really been a pretty significant shift.

And I think that shift is happening because who's behind the camera is also changing. JJ: Right? Who holds the purse strings. That's big. Who gets to green light the show to begin with? You have to have a variety of different faces inside of that room. And then, who's behind the camera. What is the actual perspective that we're telling the story from? The male gaze thing is very real. Dr. Death had three female directors. The central character of Dr. Death is an outrageously toxic male figure. Who knows more about toxic male BS than women? Particularly women who are in a predominantly male work environment. So these directors had a very specific take and came at it with a clarity that potentially a man wouldn't see, because we have blind spots about ourselves. We're in a space where there's a recognition that we've told a very narrow band of what's available in stories. There's so many stories to be told and it's okay for us to broaden out from another white cop.

I hope that momentum continues. Okay, I have to tell you something: I’m a little obsessed with your wife, Jodie Turner-Smith. JJ: Me too. As you should be! I love how loudly and publicly you both love on each other. But I need you to set the scene for me. When you are leaving flirty Instagram comments, and she's tweeting thirsty things about you, are you in the same room? Do you know that the other one is tweeting? What's happening?

JJ: We're rarely in the same room [writing] the thirsty comments because that usually just gets said to each other. But, look, if either of us misses a comment, you better believe at night, there's a, "Hey, did you see what I wrote?" One, she's very easy to love out loud and two, she's phenomenal. And I have to say, the love and support that is coming my direction has been a revelation in my life. I've said this often, and it just is the truth: If you ever needed to test whether or not you had chosen the right partner in life, just have a baby at the beginning of a pandemic and then spend a year and a half together. And then you know. And then you absolutely know. I didn't get married until fairly late in the game. I didn't have a baby till very late in the game and they're the two best choices I've ever made in my life.

I'm just going to embarrass you now by reading one of Jodie's thirsty comments to you. She tweeted, “Objectifying my husband on the internet is my kink. I thought you guys knew this by now,” with a gif that said "No shame." JJ: [laughs] That sounds about right.

She's not the only one though. There's this whole thirst for Joshua Jackson corner of the internet. And it feels like there's been a bit of a heartthrob resurgence for you now at your big age. How do you feel about that?

JJ: I hadn't really put too much thought into it, but I am happy that my wife is thirsty for me. What about the rest of us? JJ: That's great for y'all, but it's most important that my wife is thirsty for me. Good answer. You're good at this husband thing. You recently revealed that Jodie proposed to you. Then it became this big story, and people were so surprised by it. How did you feel about the response? JJ: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to give context to this story. So I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist. So yes, we were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic. And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, "This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too]." She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], ‘You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.’ And then, ‘I would like the opportunity to re-propose those to you and do it the old fashioned way down on bended knee.’ So, that's actually how the story ended up.

So, there were two proposals. I do feel like that is important context. JJ: Yes, two proposals. And also for anybody who is freaked out by a woman claiming her own space, shut the fuck up. Good God, you cannot believe the things people were leaving my wife on Instagram. She did it. I said ‘yes.’ We're happy. That's it. That's all you need to know. That has been a real education for me as a white man, truly. The way people get in her comments and the ignorance and ugliness that comes her way is truly shocking. And it has been a necessary, but an unpleasant education in just the way people relate to Black bodies in general, but Black female bodies in specific. It is not okay. We have a long way to go. Jodie is such an inspiration because it seems like she handles it in stride. She handles it all with humour and with grace. JJ: She does. And look, I think it's like a golden cage, the concept of the strong Black woman. I would wish for my wife that she would not have to rise above with such amazing strength and grace, above the ugliness that people throw at her on a day to day. I am impressed with her that she does it, but I would wish that that would not be the armour that she has to put on every morning to just navigate being alive. That's a word. That's a word, Joshua Jackson.

The 13-year-old in me needs to ask this. We are in the era of reboots. If they touched Dawson's Creek — which is a masterpiece that should not be touched — but if they did, what would you want it to look like? JJ: I think it should look a lot like it looked the first time. To me, what was great about that story was it was set in a not cool place. It wasn't New York, it wasn't LA, it wasn't London. It wasn't like these were kids who were on the cutting edge of culture, but they were kids just dealing with each other and they were also very smart and capable of expressing themselves. It's something that I loved at that age performing it. And I think that is the reason it has lived on. We have these very reductive ideas of what you're capable of at 16, 17, 18. And my experience of myself at that point was not as a two-dimensional jock or nerd or pretty girl. You are living potentially an even more full life at that point because everything's just so heightened. [Dawson’s Creek] never talked down to the people that it was portraying. That's one of the things that I loved about it as a book nerd growing up. The vocabulary of Dawson's Creek was always above my level and that was refreshing. To go back to the “diversity” conversation, you can't really make a show with six white leads anymore and that’s a good thing. But I also don't know how I feel about taking a thing, rebooting it, and just throwing Black characters in there.

JJ: I hear that. And there's certain contexts in which it doesn't work unless you're making it a thing about race, right? If you watch Bridgerton, obviously you're living inside of a fantasy world, and so you're bringing Black characters into this traditionally white space and what would historically be a white space. And now you are able to have a conversation about myth-making and inclusion and who gets to say what and who gets to act how. So that's interesting, but I don’t think you’re just throwing in a Black character if you changed Joey to a Black woman [or] Pacey to a Black man. What you're doing is you're enriching the character. Let's say one of those characters is white and one of those characters is Black. Now, there's a whole rich conversation to be had between these two kids, the political times that we live in, the cultural flow that is going through all of us right now. I think that makes a better story. All these conversations around comic books in particular like, "Well, that's a white character." It's like, Man, shut up. What are you talking about? It is a comic book character! Joey and Pacey don't have to be white. Dawson and Jen don't have to be white. And this is what we were talking about a little bit earlier. We get better the broader our perspective is, both as humans, but also in the entertainment industry. So if you went back to a story like [Dawson’s Creek], what was important in that show was class not race, which I think is true for a lot of small Northeastern towns. They are very white. But if you brought race into that as well, you don't diminish the amount of the stories that you can tell. You enrich the tapestry of that show. So I think that would be a great idea.

Make Pacey Witter a Black man in 2021 is what I just heard from you. JJ: Hashtag ‘Make Pacey Witter A Black Man’. There we go!

#joshua jackson #refinery29 #interviews #jodie turner smith #dawson's creek

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mykpopconfession · 4 years

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k-pop is so very interesting even from a business point of view. there’s no messing about the companies have the reigns over the idols but the idols sign contracts without thinking. I will never get the fuss over an idol? I don’t really care to care about them specifically k-pop as a whole is not music its business. fans need to understand that contracts aren’t permanent even if idol groups didn’t last long, which the majority don’t these days

fans need to understand that they can’t and don’t have possession over their idols no matter who they like or love, no matter if they are sasaeng or not this righteous behavior and claiming of biases is the reason why fans don’t have much interest in their own life, they’d rather pour it into someone from another country in a way it’s oh so interesting because why are the idols surprised? why are fans bothered about stalking? when something like stalking it is bound to happen, come on. but I was watching the stray kids interview with the Australian network out of pure curiosity, the problem is the way “their dreams” have been marketed as is why they have a lack of privacy

they act like they didn’t have a clue what they were actually signing up for, it’s not a regular 9 to 5 job with night shifts, I don’t really get the pity party they kind of throw in interviews where they say things like oh it’s so hard and tiring to be an idol or the tours are exhausting and taxing or I only got paid this much I had to live with others in a low rented apartment but again did they expect luxury straight away?

no at the beginning especially if they are foreign of course its gonna seem wrong and even toxic or unhealthy working environment it’s business

is they think they can get by with doing just one or two dance routine sand call it a night? no cause there’s so much more than just dance. if young ppl are so easily swayed by this dream then they really need to think about it because it’s not realistic, nothing about doing what any celebrity does is ever going to be realistic and I think it’s one of the things where ppl go oooh I wanna be like that dancing away on stage and doing tours

it's not just about dance, it’s naturally going to be such a hard working environment where the companies are gonna expect more from the frisbees and if they don’t put 100% in well, they’re gonna take years before they debut. they don’t just go yep that guy can earn more than others and get treated differently or better

the idols are just pawns for the companies but obsession for the fans, contracts are gonna end if and when they break them, so i don’t get why idols or fans got so worked up over hyuna and whoever it was when rules are rules if they don’t stick by them then adios

at the start it would be like any other part time job, bc they going expecting to go straight to the top so they can get well paid enough but get away with doing whatever they like or not be treated so harshly well, then its going to be the opposite approach bc it doesn’t just gravitate to them they might generate some hype but there’s too ,any it’s overbearing and you have to really be so,etching other than another hype train if they want to really go to the top, bts mint be the top but they certainly aren’t all they cracked up to be because they wanted to go for this kind of dream now i feel like they could care less hence awful music that hasnt been up to their usual standard

if they’ve got to give so much to the fans be it online or otherwise the fans are naturally going to be obsessed they’re naturally going to stalk because the idols are part of the problem. they encourage streaming, voting, bullying others for just sharing opinion online, it’s stupid. I feel like the way idols encourage backlash by engaging in it shows to me they don’t really know how to deal with it again, what do idols expect? when this is what they sign up for. the purpose of idol is so the fans feel like they have connection to them in some form of way as twisted as it is, so no one should be shocked that when an idol does something out of the normal behaviour or acts up on social media, then later comes back grovelling and being all self pity just so fans feel bad

it seems that the idols and fans are somewhat alike because the fans easily bash both the idols and others for speaking against the idol if they don’t agree with what is being said or done, but then when it comes to the idol suddenly it’s the other way around and the idol speaks up or tries to be the mediator in the very drama they created and evoked

this is what happens in 2020, kpop might be all about mental health and being respectful of one another but they sure as hell don’t act on it when it really comes down to the things they do and say that could easily be avoided, the idols seem to quickly respond to shit but then get surprised when they get told off? I mean what do you expect? sunshine and rainbows 24/7? I don’t think so the k-pop idols r the reason sasaeng behavior exists, the company can do as much as they like to try and protect but it’s always going to be there because this whole idol fan dynamic where the fans feel they should have every bit of their idol in their life as much as possible

it’s exactly like me going to my workplace and expecting to get more pay when what I receive at the moment is minimum wage, they don’t shoot to the top, it’s naturally going to be a tiring exhausting environment to be in the public eye, u don’t have to be in it to know that either but this is what they chose for themselves so they can’t expect anything more they can’t have raged on social media whining about fans who follow them around cause again it’s in the contracts that they signed for or did they forget about it? it seems to me idols would rather blame someone or something else for making the choices that they did than to face the music or deal with the public

no one really could see the racism coming from when bts went to the west? do u all really think that western artists actually adore them or it’s because their another hype train to hop in the bandwagon… they mention bts, get articles written, draws in fan's attention equals to that artist trending using bts or any other group

the thing is it seems that idols don’t know how much they encourage fan behavior be it good or bad, they are the influence over the influenced. they are the driving force for whatever is said and done about them or to them just cause they’re in the system means nothing can go unscathed, the company watches them so if when they decide to do something that could potentially damage the reputation of course the company is going act on it potentially by removing said member from the group but again kpop is business

its not about the fans when it comes to money or reputation it’s about whether the idol is suited enough to be considered part of the group, whether they did anything wrong doesn’t matter, the companies will handle it how they think is best for both the company and group, the fans can be whiny about it but rules are put in place not to be broken

the other thing is that fans act like they don’t cause any problems either, they never apologise to kaachi for bullying those girls, whom i felt sorry for, when it comes to their precious idols they demand apologies for them whether it’s from company, or some random article writer, radio person, whatever. the double standards both from the fans and idols are the reason why it’s never peaceful or easy going for anyone in the kpop business

plus it strikes me that for whatever reason the idols that get up to stuff they really should know better about or speak just a little too much about unimportant matters or get shocked and react badly to what’s being said about them when it’s their actions and their choices lead them to be heavily watched so it’s just as much their responsibility as it is the fans, sasaengs whatever whoever, because they’re in the public eye, of course, they’re not gonna get privacy, of course, stalking is gonna occur, and of course there is going to be a backlash and they act like they don’t have a clue about how much of what they do really has the opposite effect and that is why it is the way it is

#kpop #kpop confession #kpop confessions #general

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smuthuttpodcast · 4 years

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Fetch is iconic because to read Fetch is to suffer. I say that with the warmest regards to Tam. It's an example of the medium as both a challenging, cathartic, and escapist one.

Name/Handle/Alias

@secretreylo SecretReyloTrash

About how long would you say you’ve been rooting for Reylo?

When it comes to smut I tend to go two directions: "Shipping" it or a hypothetical "They'd Be Hot Together". I've been on that TBHT train since TFA, but not contributing and only casual browsing of smut because that's what TBHT is for. Spring of 2018 was when the mediation of how to realistically get these two together, the meta aspect of shipping, really started to appeal to me because of stories I was reading ("Lilies" by diasterisms was my first Soft Ben and I loved him) and I gave writing it a try with Perfumed in Obsession, a story that is 100% mediation of opposing viewpoints. I fell very far, very fast into it.

What did you think of the way Rise of Skywalker handled Rey and Kylo’s relationship?

Really gross. TLJ was a very sensitive text. It's not about physical force; it's about persuasion. Understandable viewpoints, where they both offer so much of themselves and it still doesn't work, and that's really heartbreaking and compelling. TROS felt like it had taken several steps back. Kylo was more of a bullying, negging presence when before he'd respected Rey's power and autonomy before, he just had hopes about what she'd do with it. now he's controlling. He withheld crucial information about her trauma, which is deeply wrong. He was a generic villain and Rey was physically fighting her way out. Their ending wasn't given space to breathe or feel like something was happening, and then he drops dead in her arms. A lot of simpering was done on the filmmakers part about what he deserved by Rey doesn't get anything she deserved. Their only interactions before the Exegol Disaster are only focused on drudging up pain and hostility, so there's no moment where they "see" each other that matches TLJ. The final battle there is some grasping at recognition, but it's really imbalanced towards Ben's redemption, Rey being rewarded for essentially waiting out his bad boy phase, and nothing to address her anger and grief and darkness. It tipped the scales way out of Rey's favor, and she's an important character!

Do you think the film understood why you, and other people, felt like Rey and Kylo had something together? Did it get their chemistry?

No, it really felt like the conversations between them were missing the point. Negging, withholding, leveraging. These were two flawed but honest people (at least with each other) who had a lot of circumstantial baggage that kept them apart. Ironically a lot of the "hero" and "villain" posturing gets stripped away and they are shown as their truest selves through the bond. Finn never sees this side of Rey. Snoke never saw this side of Ben. It's a relationship that mattered because it was so nuanced that way. TROS Rey being stalked by Kylo in his Supreme Leader Helmet seems antithetic to the sincerity of the relationship. It's telling that one of Rey's lines is a generic, cliche whisper of "No": it falls horribly flat because a conversation can't just be "Yes." "No." "Yes." "No." I constantly bring up TLJ in my answers because it's what solidified my love for this ship, but their conversations that Rain wrote were a compelling back-and-forth that filled in their arguments with detail that made the arguments appealing. What about the handling of Kylo’s redemption? Was it something you had to think through in your stories?Here's the thing. I wanted Bendemption to be painstaking, bittersweet and maybe not even completed in full by the ending (but explicitly in the works). Here's where the mythology of TROS gets really wonky, and why I think fans are so upset: If Ben was mentally infiltrated and groomed by the most powerful Sith Lord in the Galaxy for 9 movies, can we actually have a nuanced conversation about what he deserves? No. We all just want to wrap a shock blanket around him and let him have a nap, which, fun fact, is the actual ending of the Exegol Metlife Stadium Battle. My point here is that TROS took his accountability, his toxicity, and his choices and rendered them meaningless. It is way too extreme. What does he have to atone for if Palpatine ruined the lives of every Skywalker so thoroughly that he never stood a chance? I adore the self-sabotage of his character. I adore that he is his own antagonist. I adore that he faces consequences for his toxicity and that his love for someone leaves the ball in his court to Fix His Shit for the potential of his own goodness. But you take a situation and make it so tragic where he was so weaponized and powerless that I'm actually impressed he only killed Han. I liked when his actions actually had weight. I adore him for how his emotions compromise his happiness and how damaging it is that he doesn't deal with them because I see so many parts of myself. Step one or writing Redemption was always facing those emotions. I love writing Ben throwing himself at his father's, his mother's, and Rey's feet and just letting these repressed emotions out, and their capacity for forgiveness sheltering this change. It didn't need to be completed by TROS but it needed to be started.

What did you think of where Rey landed at the end? There had been a lot of excitement around Star Wars having a female protagonist. Do you think she lived up to the promise of her character?

Rey's ending devastated me. It was a period of active mourning that went way beyond Ben's death for me. You know when you pick one phrase when you cry and just fixate on it? "She's alone" was mine. For days. That was all I asked for from this series. For Rey to find her home. Rey was stripped of so much, and most insulting was the fucking Skywalkers playing keep away with her own backstory until it was convenient for them made it seem like they were the actual villains. Why did she have to go in ignorant? Why did we retcon a girl coming from a shitty family and excelling despite that? Symbolically, now she as a character is most alike to Shmi, and that makes bile rise in my mouth. A single woman on Tatooine, dressed in her Virgin Whites, waiting for the Force to decide what to do with her? Smhi. It's Shmi. Here to immaculate concept some more important sacred Skywalkers. Because if she's a Skywalker, there's gotta be more, or what was the point? Thanks, I hate it.

There’s criticism of the movie that argues it’s akin to “fan fiction” and that is has too much fan service. As fans and fan-fiction writers, how do you react to that?

No; it's too corporate. Fanfiction has a love for the source that constitutes the FREE effort to write for it. I think the comparison to fan fiction labors under the assumption that fan fiction is lazy and bad: when the most popular stories that do incorporate high levels of drama earn them through painstakingly hard work. Fetch is iconic because to read Fetch is to suffer. I say that with the warmest regards to Tam. It's an example of the medium as both a challenging, cathartic, and escapist one. It had very real feelings and a happy ending that was earned in a trial by fire. TROS instead was pure studio interference. It was trying to please *everyone* instead of someone earnestly saying "this is what I love." There is no joy. Just cynicism and punishing people who were sincere. I can't validate its need for me to love it. It's desperate and sad.

Are you still writing any Star Wars fanfic? Tell us about it! (Don't forget your Ao3 handle!)

Yep. I will be updating my newest story "The Witch and The Holocron" every Saturday. It is the closest I will get to a Miyazaki Movie. I'm still on my WIPs: Soldiers in Petticoats is due soon, Virtue Rewarded requires an extensive amount of time but it's in progress, I really want to pre-write my Romanov Imposter AU before posting but I'm excited for it. I'll be around. We all know how bad I am with WIPs but I'm still enjoying writing. We'll just pretend TROS never happened.

Thank you Secretreylotrash! you can find their writing here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash

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noahcdaily · 6 years

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Noah Centineo, Shameless Heartthrob

My date with the best thirst architect the internet’s ever seen.

Now, I put my hand here,” Noah Centineo instructs as he slides his hand in the back pocket of my jeans. “And then we walk a little, like this.” He leads me around the Coney Island Aquarium like that: hip to hip, smiling at each other, his hand, to reiterate, in the back pocket of my jeans. I’ve just shamelessly asked him to re-create his signature move from Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, an adaptation of Jenny Han’s YA novel, in which he plays Peter Kavinsky, the high-school jock at the center of the film’s romantic plotline. I watched the movie and mentally flagged this scene — where he’s trying to convince a cafeteria full of students he’s dating the protagonist, Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor) — as the one that made me wonder, Who is that guy? It’s a moment that belongs in a clip reel of classic, chemistry-laden movie moments, and I, a journalist, wondered if it could inspire the same feelings when executed in real life.

Centineo tells me how he totally improvised the move during filming. It was a thing he used to do with his ex-girlfriend. They’d be walking around, like we are now, and he’d realized he could sort of dance her around by the pocket and turn her, “just like this,” and boom, propelled by just a tug on my pocket, I’m suddenly facing him. We’re pelvis to pelvis. He’s smiling, comfortably, and I’m confronted with his hazel eyes, the scent of clean laundry, and pure pheromones. I sort of squeal, I think? Who can say, because I definitely black out for a second.

If I seem thirsty, well, isn’t that the point? At 22, Centineo is the most effective, addictive sort of heartthrob: the kind who absolutely loves being one, the kind who does everything in his power to make us thirst harder than we’ve ever thirsted before — and, yeah, it works. When the movie came out in August, Noah Centineo was immediately, breathlessly given the title of Internet’s Boyfriend. Now, with his second Netflix rom-com, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, in which he plays yet another lovable, evolved jock, Centineo has graduated to full-on cultural obsession.

In less than a month his Instagram followers went from just under 800,000 to 9.5 million. In the movie, his character drives crosstown to buy his love interest her favorite Korean yogurt drinks — and no joke — Yakult stock has been going up. This man’s floppy hair is actually driving the market. He’s been stalked by fans and now employs an omnipresent security guard named Dave. He’s been the subject of a leaked nude scandal (“I understand why you have to ask that question,” he demurred when I asked him about a certain video that’s been making the rounds. “I just hope you understand why I’m not gonna answer it.”). His Twitter mentions are an anthology of fantasies — some chaste and some really not — written by women of all ages. “Tell them all to hit my line,” he says with a laugh.

We decide to tour the aquarium, where I’m idly waiting for him in the lobby when he walks in shirtless. Shirtless. Without a shirt. Holding his black T-shirt in his hand, instead of wearing it on his torso, which I can see right now. With my eyes. He has a real reason. He’s just been outside, taking pictures on a boardwalk in nearly 100-degree weather. But even with a rational explanation as to why he has no shirt on, the entrance is so on the nose it’s almost ridiculous: a smoking-hot leading man, walking into a room sweaty and half-naked. It’s like there should be a slowed-down frame rate, a treacly indie-pop song playing, a zoom-in of my pupils turning into those hunga hunga hearts. He hands his ticket to the woman at the front desk and apologizes, for some reason, for his bare chest. She makes him put his shirt back on, and greets me with a smile so huge, I can assure you he has zero cavities.

Even offscreen, Centineo, I observe immediately, has that whole thing. It wasn’t just good directing or the right song cued at the right moment that created the effect. He has all the qualities deemed necessary by early-in-life fans of Teen Bop and Devon Sawa at the end of Casper: white sneakers (Vans, of course), an easy charm, and a tendency to play it fast and loose with knowing, meaningful eye contact that says “I see you.” He knows the right way to lean against a wall, how to twirl a specific clump of hair so it slouches over one eye. He’s even got an imperfection you can moon over: this tiny scar on his chin from where his dog tried to rip his face off when he was a kid. When he greets me with a hug, it’s the kind of genuine, intentional, full-body contact that makes me feel like he’d write me a letter every day and build me a house.

“I’ve always played the love interest,” Centineo says. “I’ve trained for it for a while. These roles are just molds I can pour myself into.” He grew up in Miami, with a few years’ interlude in Park City, which he hated because he never felt like he fit in. He started acting as a preteen when he attended a general casting call sort of on a lark, but he enjoyed it so much he eventually dropped out of his Boca Raton high school sophomore year and moved to Los Angeles with his mom to pursue it full-time. Since then Centineo’s been playing graduating levels of “crush”: first on a tween-friendly Disney show Austin & Ally, then on a teen-friendly Freeform show, The Fosters, and now for admiring audiences of all ages on Netflix rom-coms (To All the Boys, Sierra Burgess, and one deep cut for the algorithm-determined real fans, SPF 18.)

“I like this rowboat. Do you want to sit in this rowboat,” he asks, upon discovering a fake rowboat stuck in the corner of an exhibition about ponds. (Fake rowboat, a move.) Ever the leading man, he gets in first to steady the fake boat, and helps me in. Then, he directs yet another adorable moment for us, and starts rocking the boat back and forth, like we’re on a real pond, laughing this huge, full-throated laugh like the only thing he’s ever wanted to do was crouch in a plastic rowboat with me. And even though we both know the answer to the question, I ask, “Why do you think everyone is going nuts over you right now?”

“People love love,” he says, and begins to explain how both of his recent movies “empower” people. “I think these are just great examples of feel-good films, how could you not like something that makes you feel good?”

He stops talking and looks at me, a little concerned. “If you’re still warm, we should move,” he suggests, perhaps noticing the sweat pouring from my forehead and rolling down to my chin. It’s such a hot day, even the AC inside has given up. “I just want you to feel comfortable,” he says thoughtfully, adding, “Don’t worry, I also sweat like a motherfucker.”

It’s now his mission to find the coolest spot in the aquarium. He leads me down some stairs, back up the same stairs once he realizes they lead to a bathroom. We go around all the exhibits, while he looks up at the ceiling, in the corners, searching for an air vent, determined to find the perfect spot to get the full blast. We finally do. “Can you feel it?” he asks, one last time, before he seems satisfied, parked in front of a manmade reef. It’s a specific sort of gallantry I recognize from his roles, the ones he describes as manly and masculine, but also “sensitive, emotionally intelligent, loving, nurturing, and protective.”

“That’s just what a great man is in life and in general,” he shrugs. In his two most well-known parts (both of which occurred in the past month) he plays an updated version of a familiar type of crush. In To All the Boys, a lacrosse player who loves Fight Club but drinks kombucha and falls for the film’s Korean-American protagonist. In the other, Sierra Burgess, a quarterback who thinks the cheerleader is way hot, but instead falls for the brainy girl who catfishes him. In both, he displays a preference for the unexpected love interest. In both, he drives a Jeep Wrangler, the preeminent car of teen crushes. He’s not the mysterious, brooding type à la Robert Pattinson in Twilight, he doesn’t have the cold, intellectual appeal of Timothée Chalamet’s character in Lady Bird. He’s not pure Zac Efron dumb-hot-frat boy or even the misunderstood, sexually experienced bad boy like the ones Adam Driver plays. What Centineo does well — and what nobody has really done with such conviction since Freddie Prinze Jr. — is play a simple, suburban-mall kind of crush with Stanislavski dedication. That’s it. He’s just fully nice and hot at a time that feels like “nice and hot” is a rare resource. He’s a throwback to a more classic sort of wish fulfillment.

In fact, Centineo can see a whole career based around this: being good at love. He imagines all the potential types of roles he can explore: romantic dramas, other types of rom-coms, action romantic comedies, edgier, more toxic and dangerous types of love. “There’s so many degrees to love. I think I have a lot more to offer the space,” he says. He’s got a few projects lined up already, most notably a movie coming out in 2019 called The Stand-In. He plays a post-grad who launches a start-up, which requires him to loan himself out as a fake boyfriend.

“Whoa whoa! That motherfucker just came through so quick! He ran up on us with his boy.”

Centineo jumps back and marvels at some large fish that just came swimming right at his head. He makes a kissy-fish face back at the fish. What a lovely time we’re having. Looking at fish! Then he points to a placard and carefully reads out the description for Slippery Dick, a type of fish native to this particular tank, and chuckles. Then I read one about the French Grunt. I have no idea what’s going on. I point to a particularly fascinating fish, and he leans in to see, angling his head so his hair brushes my hand. Our arms accidentally touch.

“How’d you get so good at flirting,” I’m compelled to ask.

“Am I flirting?” he laughs and leans and looks down at the floor. “I don’t know — I’m fucking so romantic. Like, such a romantic — it’s not even funny. I can’t help it. I swear to God, like, every day, the majority of my day is sentimental. You know, I’m thinking about past relationships I’ve been in, how I miss them so much or what I would do different, or why I wanna be with them again, or just moments I’d like to go back to or I know why I shouldn’t go back, and then you know, it’s just constantly love, love, love.”

He’s a Taurus, ruled by Venus, he offers by way of explanation. “That means a couple things: one, like I need a lot of nurturing, and two, Venus is love, I’m ruled by love.” His favorite movie is Gaspar Noe’s Love, his favorite feeling is being in love (which he has been, twice). I bet if you could cook Love and serve it over pasta, it would be his favorite meal. He lives, breathes, and expels love. His Instagram is a steady stream of soul-baring, puppy-dog-eyed selfies — “I’m pretty vain,” he jokes. His Twitter alternates between sort of yoga studio platitudes and vague flirtations like “Fuck…you’re so cute,” or, more in line with my personal interests, “THE BLACKER THE BERRY.”The messages are to nobody specific, he says — he’s single right now — they could be to somebody he just met, or he met before, or he saw across the room, or just to everybody.

Dating is going to be hard for him from now on, he suspects, even though he really doesn’t want to change how he pursues someone he likes (open-heartedly, passionately, purely) but he’s started worrying about the reasons people want to date him. Is it just because he’s more famous now? Do they just want to date Peter Kavinksy? But are Kavinsky and Centineo really so different? “I’m definitely not as innocent—” he says, with a gaze, because why say anything if you aren’t going to commit.

Centineo continues to list the differences, both philosophical and material: He’s more apt to jump out of a plane or just sit in nature than his characters. He doesn’t live in the suburbs, he lives in Los Angeles with his older sister and her boyfriend. He likes yoga and martial arts. He parties with friends. He starts every day at 6 a.m. with oatmeal, the recipe for which he begins detail, slowly: “I do Irish steel-cut oats, I do almond butter, coconut butter uh, coconut oil, honey, uh, chopped bananas, and, and, uh, like, hemp granola,” and I’m struck with this familiar feeling of being completely entranced by a man saying absolutely nothing interesting to me, which, oh right, yes, is infatuation.

#do people like these #will i post them more?#noah centineo #interview #the cut #140918 #september 18 #2017

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onceuponakdrama · 3 years

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So I Married an Anti Fan KDrama Review

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Bingo Card for So I Married An Anti Fan

Synopsis: Hu Joon is a top star. Geun-Young is a magazine reporter. For potential news material, Geun-Young decides to attend an opening ceremony for a club. There, she witnesses top star Who-Joon's violent behavior and she also vomits on him by accident. This leads to Geun-Young losing her job. Geun-Young believes Hu Joon was behind her firing and she decides to do something about it. Every day, Geun-Young demonstrates in front of Hu Joon's management office. She begins to receive media coverage on her demonstration and soon Geun-Young becomes famous as an anti-fan. A PD approaches Geun-Young about participating in a reality TV show. The concept for the show revolves around a top star and their anti-fan living together. Geun-Young is in financial difficulties and accepts the offer. Meanwhile, Hu Joon is offered the same reality TV show and he accepts to improve his image.

Overall Main Plot: Rating - 7 out of 10

I feel that this a drama with a simple plot line. For this drama, I think the main plot would be considered Hu Joon’s career, along with how it overlaps with Geun Young and with the whole romance aspect into consideration. I think I was fairly invested in it because it was also about an idol’s life and how that affects others in their life, from a company perspective and in the perspective of the people. It felt kind of generic though, in the sense that I was more interested in the romance than anything else because this is a romance drama. I think I started tuning out as things were escalating to be too much and Jae Joon was slowly starting to take over the plot line. There was also too much of a focus on their past as trainees and, while I get that it’s important, why were there so many flashbacks about it? I also didn’t understand why Jae Joon was so obsessed with Hu Joon when he had his own business to run. I have more notes on him in the next section on the characters, but his motivations and role in the main plot didn’t make much sense to me. There’s also a couple of other notes on the main plot that I did not like.

Geun Young’s Hardships: I did not like how often Geun Young got the short end of the stick. Throughout the beginning, she kept suffering and, while it made me feel bad for her, I kept wondering why she had to keep suffering. I also did not like how the writer and PD of the show kept making her look like the bad guy when she was justified in her anger. While I know it wasn’t totally Hu Joon’s fault for Geun Young getting fired, he definitely did push it. After she did the show too, she wasn’t as protected after the episode airings and then that just piled on her frustrations with his so-called fans. I just felt really bad for her and I felt like there should have been a balance for the both of them to talk about why things went so wrong for her to be deemed the anti-fan and how he keeps stirring the pot.

Concept of Fans and Anti-Fans: this gets to my second point. I didn’t like how they grazed over the fans attacking Geun Young. I get that they would be mad that she tried to “poison” him, but it was old vitamin packets.... that wouldn’t really lead to death, but more like stomach problems. She really didn’t want to physically harm him because she has enough human decency. On the other hand, I also hated that Hu Joon didn’t really protect her from his fans. Even though, they were deemed as enemies, it’s basic manners to defend her from that because she really didn’t deserve it.

Characters: Rating - 6 out of 10

↣ Lee Geun Young [played by Choi Sooyoung]: if I’m being totally honest, I only watched the drama because I found out our girl, Ms. Sooyoung, was in it. And I loved her character. I think I just empathized with her a lot and felt bad for the bad things that kept happening to her. Her character was one that I was able to root for and wish that things would be better for her. I just really wanted a good ending for her and hoped that she would be able to stomp on those who kept trashing her. There wasn’t anything major, I just wished better for her and I thought it was great how she turned out to be a writer rather than a reporter.

↣ Hu Joon [played by Choi Tae Joon]: I actually did not like him for a while. He felt so two-faced and I was afraid that this would be a drama that he would treat the main female lead badly and would continue that way as they were dating and have it be labeled that tsundre behavior. I think I started to warm up to him as the drama progressed (prob episode 7-ish) and he became so affectionate and loving and trusting (and clingy) towards Geun Young. I felt bad for him too, realizing how his past kept coming back to haunt him—whether it was Jae Joon, In Kyung, or trying to find his father. Even as things progressed, it wasn’t his fault for the way things turned out. I think one note I had about him was just that I wished he had been more sympathetic towards Geun Young as she was expected to be to him and everyone else.

↣ Choi Jae Joon [played by Hwang Chansung]: oh my god, his character felt so unnecessary. I think the only time I liked him was when he got along with Geun Young to hate on Hu Joon; it was a cute platonic relationship. Other than that though, there was nothing worth redeeming him. There was supposed to be this character arc, but I couldn’t get over the fact that he hit In Kyung and did all this insane possessive stuff. I wanna say it’s almost like he was mentally ill, but it seemed more like toxic masculinity. Sure, there were abandonment issues and he saved In Kyung from getting hit, but that did not excuse any of his actions. I don’t think the two should have ended up together because it felt too much like a toxic relationship and they needed to heal away from one another.

↣ Oh In Hyung [played by Han Ji An]: I think I just felt really bad for her character. There were so many hardships she went though: her career, her relationship with Hu Joon and Jae Joon, the lack of support from her company, etc. She just felt like a victim of emotional abuse and I hate that she went back to him because she had nothing. I wish there was more perspective on her and why things many have turned out the way that they did. She was the one who had the least amount of development and it was hard to understand her and the things she did. While I get that she’s a side character, I felt like there should have been more.

Personal Notes: I feel like this is another drama with a good main couple, but everyone else feels problematic. Other than the manager, I wasn’t really interested in the others and their b-plots. I couldn’t feel bad for the CEO because he was acting so shady. The writers and directors of the show were also kind of shady because they kept making Geun Young look bad and didn’t understand why there was so much backlash against Geun Young. This is a more light-hearted drama, so it did feel much fluffier between the main characters.

Romance: Rating - 9 out of 10

Okay, the romance for this drama was actually top tier because I’m a sucker for enemies to lovers, but only the ones that make sense and don’t include things like bully/victim dynamics. This was a slow romantic development, but when it happened, it was so easy to root for them and their happiness. There was a lot of miscommunication, but that was before they started dating—after they started dating, they trusted one another and were able to communicate and wait for one another. Once they got together, I anticipated the scenes they were in and I’ve seen so many gifs of their cute moments together. They are absolutely adorable. The reason why it isn’t a 10/10 is probably just how sad Hu Joon is—in the sense that he doesn’t really have other friends and it really seems like he depends a bit too much on Geun Young and it was kind of cute but also kind of sad. Other than that, I loved watching their relationship blossom and their moments together as a couple because they are a good demonstration of a healthy relationship where they talk things out (when they can) and trust one another, despite what other people might say.

Second Plot/B-Plot and Secondary Characters: Rating - 7 out of 10

I wasn’t super interested in the sub-plot. At first, I was curious with the whole past with Jae Joon and In Kyung, but, like I said, as it progressed, I lost interest and started skipping around their scenes. I didn’t like how the drama kind of shifted the focus towards them and they made their way into the main plot as the drama was ending. It just felt like too much. I was a bit surprised at the side romance of the writer and the PD, but it was pretty cute to see. I did like Geun Young’s friends and how supportive they were. I liked how they kept those ties throughout the entire drama too because some of those tend to dwindle in some dramas. They were cute and they tried their best to be there for her. I also mentioned the manager in an earlier section and he’s probably my favorite secondary character. I just felt bad for him third wheeling, but he did seem to be entertained at the whole situation.

Additional Notes:

This drama was a pleasant surprise. I watched the movie (the one that starred EXO’s Chanyeol) and it was (in my opinion).... so bad. I felt like this was a better adaptation of the why this story is told. I rooted for the couple more; I liked the character development; there was a better way of incorporating things about an idol life without feeling forced.

I was reading through the blogs and they were all making fun about the OST and how they kept using one song by “Hu Joon.” I was also thinking about that throughout the drama because his company kept saying new release or something, but we never heard those songs and it felt like he only had one song. It was just something that made me laugh, especially since it’s kind of like a meme for those who watched this drama. There’s also the off-sounding flute that plays when Hu Joon does something stupid and I thought it was funny.

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Recommended?

↣ Yes: this is a good romantic comedy drama (if you ignore the subplot with Jae Joon and In Kyung). The romance is great, in which you would really root for the couple and they have such a good relationship; it’s a bit more of a slow burn, but it works since it’s an enemies to lovers trope. This drama is also a good and entertaining adaptation, whether or not you were a fan of the movie. This drama also has interesting side characters that aren’t super antagonistic; again, it’s a bit more fluffy and feel-good in comparison to other dramas.

↣ No: this is a drama that is very idol-centric and it includes a lot of “trashing” of the female lead. There’s a lot that the female lead has to deal with and it’s really unfair until the second half of the drama. Because this is a bit more of a slow burn drama, you could also get frustrated easily with the romance. There’s also the toxic side characters that feel like there’s no real purpose to them. The side plot also twists in a way that focuses on the side character and male character’s relationship towards them and it gets kind of complicated. It’s also a bit more old (in a cliche way) because it was filmed earlier and released later.

#so i married an anti fan #kdrama review #kdrama recs #spoilers #mine

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sayaratyriea · 6 years

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As the youngest child who has overprotective sisters and enjoys karate, I relate to Aelia so much. Is there anything you could reveal about her? What are her powers going to be (please make her super powerful I live for deadly fairy princesses)? What's she like? Does she have a lot of hobbies? What's her love life like (apart from Sayara ofc did I mention even though I don't know them I love her and Sayara)? What's her arc in the series going to be about? Thanks, and sorry for all the questions.

No need to apologize for questions! I am ALWAYS down to talk about Aelia Ravenhart, I too adore her. Unfortunately, I can’t get too deep into her destiny here, since it’s absolutely LOADED with spoilers. She’s a character who sort of embodies the world and plot in a meta sense--while she’s not canonically a cosmic keystone or anything heavy like that, I do deliberately use her to represent the state of the world in a lot of ways. The stuff that happens to her is directly related to the stuff that’s happening to Feilan, and her personal arc and trials are deliberate parallels to the way the world changes around her and the other leads. Her magic is a key example of this... I’ll throw you some crumbs, though, she does become super powerful. Her powers are also very unique in both nature and application, she has a notably rare skillset and she uses it mixed with her martial arts in a way that’s not seen anywhere else in the world of the story. She’s gotta go through hell to earn that magic, and she doesn’t have anything remarkable until book 4, but when she gets it she gets a lot of it.

Her personal arc is about coming to a place of comfort with herself, and her relationship to her family. It’s close to a classic coming-of-age storyline. She starts out as this very gung-ho rebellious kid, and has to grow into someone who can handle responsibility without losing herself! She also has to figure out how to deal with her sisters. Aelia’s the most mentally stable of the Ravenharts, but she’s constantly exhausted dealing with the twins. Violet is always angry, Lavender is so depressed that she doesn’t seem to have a personality sometimes, and Aelia has to live with this and keep it from weighing too hard on her. It’s a lot of trouble. Plus Violet has this really toxic mentality that there’s nothing she can do about her own problems, and so she needs to be “saved” from her angst by external forces (aka her sisters). “Take care of myself? Shower unprompted? Actually go to the therapists at the national hospital, which are the best in the world, who could help me cope with this? ahhaha what’s that neurotypical bullshit.” that kind of thing. This fucks with Elli’s head for obvious reasons. She just wants to be herself, you know? But it feels like she’s not allowed to, because the twins have things so much worse, and they won’t stop reminding her about it.

She hates being forced to sit down and deal with other people’s depression trauma in general--they’re all traumatized here, but since Aelia is (relatively) good at coping, nobody notices unless she bashes them in the face with it. She won’t do that, because she’s watched Violet do it enough to know it’s an awful thing to do to somebody. At first, she straight up tries to ignore the twins’ problems and talk reason to them. She doesn’t want to hear about it. Her character development pushes her towards accepting that no, she doesn’t have to fix her family, but she should at least show them a little pity. She has to move on from her obsession with how her family suffocates her, and strike a balance between tradition and transformation. It’s not a coincidence that she’s symbolically tied to lightning, my personal symbol of rebirth through destruction--that’s what Aelia needs to represent. She needs to find it in herself to destroy some of her own status quo, and she needs to find it in herself to let her relationship with her family and their traditions be reborn instead of just fading into the void.

Aelia serves as a vessel for the series theme as a whole. Feilan is about rejuvenation and rebirth, the story of a stagnant country in a stagnant world that’s too afraid of losing something to move forward and build something new--until the algae fills the pond and chokes it out and something must be done. Elli carries the shift. She’s frustrated with the traditions of her family, she’s frustrated with the traditions of her country, she’s frustrated in all those ways that teenagers are when we start to notice that we live in a broken world. She’s not sure what to do about it yet, but she’s ready to burn things down if that’s what it takes. Sayara drives the plot, Aelia embodies it.

I wouldn’t say she has that many hobbies, honestly, other than the ones I’ve mentioned in the WIP page. Which I guess isn’t on this blog, but on my writing one. She’s a princess in a country whose royals are expected to be politically active and occupied, so she spends most of her time learning how to move through social circles and deal with the day-to-day of being a VIP. She will probably never inherit, since she’s behind Violet and Lavender in the succession and Violet would rather die, but she’s still expected to marry into higher nobility eventually and be an executive leader type. When she’s not in tutoring lessons, she’s probably practicing martial arts or music. They help her calm down.

Romance-wise, she doesn’t have much of a love life before the series. She’s had crushes, but they haven’t gone anywhere... At the beginning of book 1 she’s only just turned 14, and it’s considered inappropriate to start pursuing romances before you’re 14 or 15, especially for nobility. She’s great at slick pickup lines but has had very few chances to use them, and if someone actually responded favorably she’d panic and not know what to do. That’d be super cute for an AU Tuesday thing where Sayara has working observation skills. She’s definitely had crushes on a couple classmates, but nothing that lasted--being a princess makes the power dynamics weird, and makes approaching her very intimidating for someone who’s not on her level. (Also, if anyone tried to date Aelia, Violet would kill them. This takes the intimidation up to 11.) Once she does meet Sayara, she gets a crush pretty quickly and stops paying attention to anyone else. Unfortunately for her, Sayara’s too heartblind to notice anything. I kid you not, there is a scene in book 3 where they dance together and call each other beautiful and almost kiss, and even THAT does not get Sayara’s attention as a potential romantic approach. She’s just like “oh Aelia my greatest friend” and Aelia dies on the inside. One of my greatest fears with these books is that I’ll be accused of queerbaiting somehow because Aelia’s constantly flirting and it doesn’t go anywhere, but Sayara’s just so goddamn oblivious and focused on everything else that it takes the entire massive spoiler drama of book 3 for her to figure out Elli liked her. She is an ex-self insert, after all.

I wanna add a side note re: that romance here, since it came up, just because it’s a hotbutton topic--I do have an out-of-story reason for Sayara being a dumbass, and it’s because I don’t want to drive in any problematic Angsty Gay tropes by having them get together too early. There are a few different situations in book 3 that would become some really bad tropes if the gals were a couple at that point--everyone in this series goes through a lot of awful stuff, Aelia especially, and I don’t want even the slightest implication that any of it might be happening because of a gay romance. That would be objectively worse than teasing. They’ll get together in book 4 and it’ll be glorious and dramatic and cute as hell, but until then, they can stay just friends and angst as just friends. This is also a fair warning for you... Aelia goes through A LOT. I promise you everyone gets a happy ending eventually, but before that can happen, there’s a significant amount of pain and hard work involved.

Absolutely feel free to ask more questions, though! I do love my fairies, and I need to develop Aelia better. She’s skirting the manic pixie dream girl line right now in a way that is the polar opposite of what I want out of her character.

#taz shut up #feilan #btw you should really send these to taz-writes #that's my writing blog after all :>#there's a lot more feilan stuff there #Anonymous

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chcrliehunnam · 7 years

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oth for the tv series meme

my all-time ultimate fave character: I honestly believe this is a tie between Brooke Davis and Haley James. Because like, I adore both those girls with all of my heart. They both showed their strength, and their determination over things. And I just, love, love, love them.

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: chRIS KELLER. Okay, because he came in, and he was just a douche, and I didn’t appreciate the way he was budding into Nathan/Haley’s relationship. But over the course of the show, I honestly just fell in love with him. He was an ass, but I don’t know, I think that was just apart of his charm. Smartass that he is.

a character I used to like but now don’t: Owen Morello. I mean, I wouldn’t say that I hate him. But damn did the character disappoint me. And to be honest, I could probably add Millicent here as well. Because the moment these two slept together, it was all wrong, and I just --- no. But I am pretty bitter over Owen. And Millie went downhill around s7 or s8. Liked her in the beginning tho. She was adorable.

a character I’m indifferent about: Honestly? A tie between Mouth and Skillz. And this is simply because they never really gotta shine, you know? They had their scenes, but it just never seemed like they really gotta develop into their own standing characters. Made them easy to fade into the background.

a character who deserved better: Brooke Penelope Davis. Now, I’ll say that from s6 through s9, she got a little bit of a break with the whole Julian thing. I am glad that she found someone who loved her completely, and she had grown to love back. What I did not like about the Julian x Brooke ship was that for some reason, the writers felt it was important to have her fall in love with one of Peyton’s exes, because Peyton had fallen in love with hers. I’m just???? But other then that, this character just continued to have bad luck with quite a lot of things, and I just --- she’s a beautiful person, and she deserves everything.

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: Well, I don’t think this could count as like a ship, but consider how much of a focus it was for majority of the series, I think I’m going to say the Lucas/Peyton/Brooke love triangle. And the reason that I put this here is because I wasn’t someone who had a ship war over it? Like to me, I could’ve gone either way as far as who got Lucas, and who didn’t. Though, I will say that I do believe Brooke deserved better, and that it was always going to be Lucas and Peyton. But if by some off chance, it hadn’t been, then I wouldn’t have been bothered by it.

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: Owen and Brooke. Oh my god, I was so in love with the idea of these two when he was first introduced, but come the end of the whole thing, he was a complete and total douchebag. And IT MADE ME SO MAD CAUSE THE POTENTIAL.

a cute, low-key ship: Karen and Keith. I loved, loved, LOVED Karen and Keith. And it broke my heart when Keith died, and then Karen found out she was pregnant. And I was just ;--;

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: Jake and Peyton. I adored Jake, adored him. He was a young teenage father, who would do anything for his child. And he would’ve done anything for Peyton too. I did like them, but during their relationship, I knew Peyton would go towards Lucas again. And Idk, I feel like that left Jake deserving better by default.

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: Can I put Millie x Owen here? I mean, do they really count as a ship? Probably not, but do I care? Nope, because wrong WRONG, ALL FUCKING WRONG. Actually, while I feel that wholeheartedly. I’m going to put Dan and Rachel here. Because w.t.f was that. No, who the hell thought of putting Dan and Rachel together? THAT WAS ALL FUCKING WRONG TOO.

my favourite storyline/moment: Can I say the Naley plotline? Because while it might not be all that realistic to some, or just incredibly rare, I loved their whole story? I loved the fact that they were so freaking strong?? Because in TV, you don’t really see that core couple. You know the couple who hasn’t broken up like thirty times, even through it’s clear they belong together, but for sake of drama, gotta keep shitting on them, until it’s toxic as fuck, and then force the audience to believe they’re made for each other shit. Like, no, Naley, yes, had their hardships, but they were literally made for each other. Like that’s fucking soul mates right there, and I love it. I love that they were teenagers who had no real idea what was going to happen, but got married anyways. I love that they defined the odds and made it work. I just really love the strength in this couple, and in their general storyline.

a storyline that never should have been written: THE NANNY CARRIE PLOT. And now I’m not talking about the first half of her plot when she moves in, and falls for Nathan, and ends up in the shower with him. And nearly causes my babies to divorce. Not that plot. I felt like that was realistic enough. Shit like that does happen. I’m talking about the Nanny Carrie coming back plot. Where she kidnaps Dan or some crap, and chases Haley and Jamie through a corn field, and I believe it was Deb who came to their rescue? Before Dan shot the crazy nanny? He shot her right? I think. Anyways, no. Just no.

my first thoughts on the show: I started this show halfway into season five. I saw a premiere one night, and thought, huh, why not give it a watch. It looks interesting. And oh my god, that was the beginning of the end for the longest damn time.

my thoughts now: GOOD LOVING GOD WAS I OBSESSED WITH THIS SHOW. I was so obsessed that I did things I don’t want to write down, because I feel like a complete idiot now for them. But lets just say, I wish I knew Fanfiction existed at this time. I haven’t watched passed s7, and to be honest, I don’t have much interest to anymore? I know majority of what happened, and how it happens, but other than that, it’s eh. And I think a lot of that has to do with how much it changed. Sadly.

#answered #oth #aeirinius

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