#clare has a breakdown on main

[badassbutterfly1987]

The Haunting of Maddy Clare (Simone St James, 2012)

CW: the sexual assualt and later suicide of the titular character are major elements of the book; there is also an explicit sex scene between the main couple but the context makes it feel more dubious than I think the author intended

Plot: A mere few years after the end of World War I, Sarah Piper is hired as an assistant to Alistair Gellis, rich eccentric ghost researcher, alongside the temperamental already-present assistant Matthew Ryder. Together they investigate the case of Maddy Clare, a nineteen-year-old maid who is rumored to still haunt her employer's home after her recent death and seems to be especially hostile to men.

Spooks: the ghost stuff was mostly well done. The atmosphere is uneasy and Sarah is quite reasonably spooked. Maddy is angry and hurting and I don't blame her for being so hostile. Didn't like her dialogue, it felt very "Crazy=Dangerous=Monster" in a way that just felt generic horror villain which doesn't sit right knowing that this is a traumatized victim. Also the weird obsession with Alistair that could have worked but wasn't set up or explained well.

Romance: Sarah and Matthew have a Hallmark-level romance but it isn't even decent Hallmark. Every conversation until the last third features some kind of misunderstanding they don't resolve. More than once Matthew crosses some kind of boundary, including when they barely know each other and Sarah's narration has already mentioned worries about abuse from employers, seemingly just to make her uncomfortable; and no, I don't think pressuring her into half-undressing supposedly to look at her ghost bruises but really as petty revenge for accidentally walking in on him and seeing his burn scars is equivalent. Throughout most of the book Sarah is convinced he hates her, even after they have sex, and I don't find their bond compelling enough to make up for it.

Sex Scene: On a technical level, it's fine. I've read worse (and better) in fanfiction. BUT Matthew enters her room in the middle of the night, he just climbs right in while she's still a little groggy, and there is absolutely no dialogue until afterwards. And it's framed as completely consensual, which is good I guess, but I really hate that there's no talking between a couple that has had so many prior misunderstandings! All they had to do, is say "I couldn't sleep/was having nightmares" and "do you need a distraction?" That's it, just a bit of ultimately unsatisfying comfort sex that doesn't feel like it's edging into dubious consent. And as an extra dick move, Sarah doesn't get to climax before he abruptly leaves and is left wondering if he is actually attracted to her or if she was just conveniently nearby. Later sex scene is leagues better.

Trio: Sarah, Matthew, and Alistair have some fun banter in the second half but I wish the dynamic felt consistent. Like early on it seems to be setting up as Alistair the self-centered and his assistants having to look out for each other, but then it switches to an actual team dynamic with Matthew and Alistair being old friends and Alistair being a bit of a prick but not really. Wish the dynamic was either more consistent or had steady development.

Sarah: not the most compelling POV. Alternates between being timid or having a backbone, and even her backbone moments are quickly followed by timid embarrassment. Also very insecure about her looks, comparing herself to Mrs. Barry (Alistair's sort-of former girlfriend who is the ideal 1920s beauty) and wondering if her male companions find her attractive. Her personal trauma is the weakest of the leads, as I forgot it was a thing until her sudden breakdown, but I think there's some implication that her father's sudden illness related death and her mother's resulting suicide led to her current reserved outlook. Like the idea, wish it was more developed.

War Trauma: Matthew and Alistair were both soldiers in WWI and are both coping with those scars (both physical and mental). Matthew has nightmares that keep him up at night. Alistair has a full-on flashback episode caused by Maddy later that is recognized as shell shock and treated respectfully. There is thankfully acknowledgment that romance won't fix the trauma.

Disability: Alistair has some kind of leg injury that causes a mild limp. I don't recall mention of a cane, and his status as higher society could probably let him use the excuse of looking classy, but maybe he doesn't need one. Some writing weirdness when he chooses to take a 20 minute walk instead of a carriage, with no acknowledgment that it might bother his leg despite that occuring in the first chapter; it does later mention that he's feeling sore but no reflection on him pushing his limits and his emotions on it. Matthew has severe burn scarring on his back and arms, and is notably uncomfortable with Sarah seeing it during their second sex scene, which they still fail to discuss beyond arguing about whether or not to keep his shirt on, because even by the climax of the book I'm not convinced they can hold an open conversation.

Grade: 3 out of 5 stars

#haunting of maddy clare #book review #had more thoughts than I expected

[clare-with-no-i]

just here to let you know that i will forever be angry that i didn't write the lines "he'd never known before that alive could be a synonym for beautiful," "...understanding that to feel cold on the surface of his skin means that there must be something warm and living underneath," and "...(because when the day needed saving it was always, always James.)" all from bond & free bc... i will never get over them & sometimes go back just to reread them and engrain it in my brain

oh man. I’m about to get a bit emo so pls forgive me, u did not ask to be word-vomited at by this random person on tumblr. but thank you so much, because this means the world to me.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with Bond and Free lately, wondering if it has any meaning past my own quiet enjoyment; if it brings anything new to the figurative Marauders table, especially in the presence of so many amazing canon works that are so well-written, that exposit so many parts of canon that I barely even wrap my head around. so I really just want to tell you how happy I am that there are lines that resonate, and that you have enjoyed the story. putting prose together for Bond and Free is really such a joy.

this is a very strange moment for me with Bond and Free so again, thank you. this was so lovely to receive💕 xx

#clare has a breakdown on main #ask #emerqldv #bond and free #THANK U THANK U

[thequibblah]

Director's cut ask ✨ a scene that has really stuck with me from If We Never Meet Again is when they are filming P&P and that scene happens (trying to avoid spoilers in the ask but I feel like you know which one I mean). The heartbreak was palpable, and the way it moved from lust to pain was just, wow. Would love to hear any thoughts you have on how you went about writing that turning point!

send me a ⭐ for director’s commentary!

ahhhh thank you, you are so sweet!! lets... get into it (brain autofills "yuh" to the end of that phrase. thanks)

so, i actually wrote most of this fic out of order and then rewrote the bridge bits so they'd fit (which was where the magazine clippings were fantastically helpful LMAOOO). but the first few lines WERE actually the first few lines i wrote down:

“I love you,” Lily says, quietly. The night holds the words for a moment, then releases them. She hasn’t yet looked at him. “I’m in love with you, and I’m tired of pretending I’m not.”

and i actually wrote them right in the promo tumblr post for the fic JKHJDKFG because i was paranoid i'd find a way to make it not sad enough so i was like we are putting this right at the top and emphasising the tone!!!

so at some point after writing a couple of other scenes (a lot of the rome ones were done early on) i was like, right, i have to eventually write the bit where she actually says what i promised she'd say, and i knew it'd be on the p&p set partly because drama but partly because on the set of p&p 1995, jennifer ehle and colin firth did actually start dating and the crew were afraid of what would happen if it ended badly before they finished filming

and i was like haha but what if—

(obviously it goes fine for the miniseries itself but uh not so much for the actors personally heh)

so that was the foundation i was building off of! another reference i was trying to make (and then ended up flubbing because when i reread i realised the scene doesn't actually go this way) was a scene in conversations with friends by sally rooney (clare don't look) in which the main character and the guy she's having an illicit affair with argue during one of their late night trysts and she flings an i love you at the guy. somehow i told myself the couple also has unprotected sex in that scene but i believe they do NOT so thankfully i can take sole credit for that bit jkdfghkd

but basically the idea was they've truly just. given up on even the illusion of casualness without emotion — in rome they at least maintained the fiction that they wouldn't sleep together again, and though they do hook up a handful of times it is truly nothing compared to the regular sneaking-around they do during p&p.

add to that the unspoken agreement that this is just the regular agreement, and it's already a bit suspect, since they've known each other so much longer and already soooo deep in denial. but it gets worse i think when they start to wade into territory that implies an even greater degree of trust — and they won't acknowledge that's the case, nor will they admit the effect that territory has on them. sure this is smut (JKHFJKGDF) but it's also a breakdown in communication from start to finish, and they barely even realise until they're in it because they know each other well enough to get each other, and haven't even considered the spaces and ways in which they might get each other wrong. (side note there are plenty of other spots in the fic where they say things to each other that they themselves interpret to various degrees of correctness, and what's most fun about this is when people in the comments ALSO extrapolate in ways i hadn't thought of myself!)

anyway, there is a straight line from here:

He has never seen the bottom-most layer of her costumes, but he seems to know exactly where its edges run, beneath her stays and her dresses.

to here:

Before she can embarrass herself into staying silent, she says, “But I want you to. I want you.” His gaze darkens. The press of his fingers is sharper, just momentarily. “Lily, I’m serious.” She frowns, thrown by this line of reasoning. “Well, I’m serious too.”

and then to here:

“You have me,” he says quietly. Lily glances up, disbelieving.

and from there to the confession. like how are you supposed to reconcile this

They are both pretending to be less affected by this than they are, she can tell. His jaw is tight with something withheld; she bites her bottom lip.

with this

Maybe she just wants him to see her.

!!! god why am i getting angry at my own characters rn

obviously something had to give, and what gives is lily's resolve. this was tricky to write and even plan — pretty much all conceptions of canon have james being the unrequited lover, and i was truly honestly scared to try and go the other way, but we're deep enough in lily's pov that we have all her blind spots — and hopefully not so deep that the reader doesn't notice james's suspicious devotion to and care for her.

for james, it's like, ok the first time we could've had a conversation about What We Are (back in rome, when he pointedly brings up his flight leaving) she played it cool. so surely that means i too must play it cool, because this is how it is. oh wait! it's almost like...

The easy, instinctive reactions they have to each other in front of a camera are slowed-down, hesitant, when they’re alone. They’re always waiting to see what the other will do next, anticipating some future cue.

wait i'm getting sidetracked KJHFGJKDFJG

obviously an unexpected i love you kind of, uh, ruins the mood, but the fine line to walk was james's response, for me. mostly he's just surprised, and given the chance to digest his shock honestly might have had a more measured, kind reaction.

but obv lily comes with baggage of her own — she's been hurt before in love, and she's taking a big, big leap baring her feelings when she doesn't know for sure how they'll be received. so to have really one of her closest friends and certainly the artist she trusts most in the world not immediately respond with care is an automatic dagger to the chest. (similarly, if lily hadn't been in the throes of her realisation and flung it out impulsively, maybe she'd have felt it out and told him in a way thats more conscious of his stated reluctance to date. but again! the baggage!)

so it was a question of trying to really get into those frames of mind for that conversation, plus also making sure that no one really said anything caustic enough to really fuck shit up here. mostly i wanted the effect to be one of a lack of closure. lily walks away from him twice in like less than twelve hours and is like K NOW I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN but it is so patently a lie because of all that's unsaid between them!!! i actually considered a fuller, more thought-out argument where they each explain where they're coming from (in the form of yelling obviously) but i thought a jagged, improperly-addressed break was both sadder (lol) and better to mine for a bit more misunderstanding before the end

and really, most things in life aren't clean and easy. granted, the movie star love of your life doesn't typically fly cross-continent to tell you he loves you, but also, you can't always cut off an ex-spouse entirely and convince yourself you never loved them anyway. you can't always find the kind of instant love your parents have. these are two people who live half their lives in stories, and i wanted a fuckin reality check for them both

but then again, these are two people who live half their lives in stories, and they really cannot let go of each other lmaoooo. and i wanted to seed that unresolved what if but almost if only so that it only takes one sweet exchange via magazine quote to give one of them enough hope to try again

#i spent an hour writing this instead of writing iwep #good job me #ask me #possessingtheproperspirit #iwnma #director's cuts

[girl4pay]

ooh for the ask thing whichever derry girl character from the main five you would like!

if i think they can roll their own joints: michelle can do a passable job erin's shit but she insists on doing it out of pride clare's good but she usually won't out of principle orla never buys and never rolls because there's one in every friend group and james does an okay job when the other four aren't hovering over his shoulder heckling him which is never 

 if they can set up ikea furniture without phoning a friend: erin and orla buy the furniture and erin is like we can do this and then michelle and james show up about two hours in erin starts bossing james around james is baffled they call clare clare has a breakdown and then they abandon it but in the morning both james and clare who were unable to sleep went and finished it wlw mlm solidarity 

what their go to gas station/corner store purchase is: they pool together for pick n mix. i wish i knew what pick n mix was like in ireland in the 90s so i could tell you exactly who gets what. i could do current pick n mix but idk if it would be the same 

how many pillows they sleep with: erin orla and michelle each all sleep with a million pillows orla kicks all hers off in her sleep. clare has two sleeping pillows and keeps her little cute ones at the foot of her bed. james has one pillow rip 

how many steps they have in their skincare routine: erin has 4 and sometimes steals products from her mum, orla just moisturizes and washes her face w shampoo but her mum will give them both facials every so often and then they’re walking around broken out for a week, michelle has a TROVE but doesn’t really use anything often enough to call it a routine, clare uses the exact same as her mother but with a spot treatment, james washes his face with shampoo and does NOT moisturize

[yetanotherbuffyblog]

So, uh, this episode.

The Trio tries to frame Buffy for murder! 

I mean, basically, while Buffy recruits Tara to try to research the spell used to resurrect her, because she’s sure that with Spike’s chip not caring about hurting her, and the fact that she’s willing to have sex with him, there must be something wrong with her (though she only tells Tara about the chip thing), the Trio has finished work on what they call a “Mental Dampener.” They want to use it on a woman to make into a sex slave.

Uh, yeah. And it gets worse from there. 

Because Warren is in charge of picking which woman to use it on, and he runs into his ex, Katrina, the one he built a sex bot of? And he takes her back to base, changes her into a French maid outfit, and talks about sharing her with the other two after he has his way with her. And he’s about to do just that when the machine thing wears off, and she gets very angry about the Trio kidnapping and attempting to rape her, and storms off. They can’t get their doohickey to work anymore, so Warren clocks her on the head with a bottle, and oops! She’s dead.

Freaking out, trying to come up with a plan to fix this, they end up getting Buffy to go somewhere? And then distracting her with these time distortion demons that came right out of nowhere? And she tries to fight them? And because she doesn’t know what’s up she doubts her sanity and they drop off the body so it looks like she accidentally killed someone?

Buffy actually goes to turn herself in to the cops, with both Dawn and Spike being against it (Spike actually fights her over it). But when she goes in and hears who the person was, and that it was Warren’s ex, she knows that the Trio is involved and pokes around to find out more. 

Tara gives Buffy the results of her research: there’s some molecular shift that fooled Spike’s chip, but other than that it’s her, through and through. Buffy has a breakdown, because she wanted to believe that her attraction to Spike was because she Came Back Wrong; if that’s not the case, then that means she can’t blame something else for the fact that she’s having rough sex with him all the time. Tara tries to comfort her about this, but it doesn’t really work.

Thoughts!

-...are the Trio really the Plot of this season? I want more Plot! I have probably been spoiled by how shows are done now, in which Plots tend to move a lot faster in order to facilitate binging, but this season’s starting to drag again! No! I want something more to happen!

-The Trio have to be told that using mind control to kidnap and have sex with a woman is rape. Jonathan and Andrew look horrified when it’s spelled out to them. Which is kind of a ‘duh’ but there really are people out there who couldn’t work this out. Ever watch the show Almighty Johnsons? One of the main characters can mind control people, and he mainly uses it to have sex with women. And yet it’s mostly treated as annoying and sleazy, and the show moves past the fact that one of its leads is an unrepentant rapist. Ew.

-But then the other two members of the Trio call out Warren on picking his ex--of course, if he just picked some random woman, then if she’d died they wouldn’t have this problem of facing criminal charges. By picking his ex, there’s a connection.

-Man, Warren sux. They all suck! But especially him.

-Spike has sex with Buffy in the Bronze? On like a platform thing? With their clothes on? I know that it’s entirely possible to do [waves hand] Stuff with clothes on, but the way they’re moving makes it look like it’s vaginal sex, without any sound of zippers or anything, and unless Spike just walks around the club with his pants unbuttoned that’s… unlikely to have happened without someone commenting.

-Buffy claims that Spike can’t love her because he doesn’t have a soul, and I have questions? Like, is she right? Is she wrong? Vampires are demonic spirits in a human body, right? Except we’ve firmly established that “demons” in the Buffyverse are more supernatural beings from/relating to other dimensions, rather than fallen spirits as such?

I think.

[Which, if so, is remarkably similar to what Jace says about demons at the beginning of Mortal Instruments. Which I’d leave unremarked upon, if it weren’t for the fact that Cassandra Clare has a history of hijacking lines from Buffy during her fanfiction days. Hurm…]

-Dawn has a sleepover, and this time, Willow bothered to check it out to make sure it actually is a sleepover. Which is cool, but rubs in how uninvolved with Dawn’s life Buffy is now, that this all happened without her knowing.

-The job at Doublemeat seems to be going better?

-According to TV Tropes, anyway, this season had the least involvement from Joss Whedon, because at the time he was working on Firefly. Which is… interesting. Not sure what to make of that.

-Time distortion demons come right the fudge out nowhere. I get that they needed to do something to cause this effect, and there’s such a wide variety of demons that it’s not too egregious, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this never comes up again.

#6x13 #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #The Trio #Buffy Summers #Spike #Dawn Summers #Willow Rosenberg

[scorbleeo]

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

by Holly Black

Synopsis

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown's gates, you can never leave. One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12813630-the-coldest-girl-in-coldtown

Thoughts

I’ve been writing too many reviews in the span of three hours so please pardon me for this sad excuse for a book review. My brain has been fried so instead of my usual breakdown, I am going to point out what I liked about the book instead. Oh, and before I begin, yes, I love The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.

Every time I finish reading an amazing book that was added to my to-read list years ago, I ask myself the same question. Why did it take me eons to even read it in the first place? I have not read a book with the vampire trope in a very long time. (Cassandra Clare’s books do not count because vampires are not the main part in her books, at least not to me.) I almost forgot I do love reading abut vampires.

Apart from Holly Black’s beating around the bush writing style, I thought everything else about The Coldest Girl in Coldtown was great. I enjoyed those morbid quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I loved the back and forth focus on different characters or timeframes in each chapter even though I needed some getting used to. Additionally, I love how gory the story got despite it being some twisted sort of fluffy romance.

Needless to say, I adored the characters. I thought Tana was going to infuriate me but she is one tough girl with a little altruism. I also thought I was going to hate Aiden but boy did I think wrong. Reading about Aiden through Tana’s memories, I really thought she was going to be stuck with a jerk the whole journey to Coldtown. Aiden isn’t really a jerk.

And Gavriel. I cannot stress enough how much I love this vampire. He’s not sane, not a saint either. He is also the kind of vampires the arts do not tend to romanticise. Gavriel is new and that’s why I really liked his character. A breath of fresh air is what some would say.

If you are sick of vampire novels but still want to read them, give The Coldest Girl in Coldtown a try. It is not what you will expect. Hell, I didn’t even know I was getting into a vampire novel when I started reading this book.

Rating: 4.5/5

#book review #the coldest girl in coldtown #holly black #tana bach #gavriel #aiden #young adult #fantasy #paranormal #vampire #horror #ya

[orbemnews]

How Amazon can keep thriving even without Jeff Bezos What’s happening: Bezos said Tuesday that he’ll move to the role of executive chair later this year. He’ll be replaced by Andy Jassy, who’s worked for Amazon since 1997 and serves as the head of the company’s cloud business, Amazon Web Services. It’s a big change. Bezos has grown Amazon from an online bookstore that he launched out of his garage in 1994 into a $1.7 trillion behemoth. But the company’s shares have barely budged in premarket trading. That’s a sign that Wall Street is confident enough in Amazon’s trajectory to brush aside the leadership transition. And it has good reason to be. Such profits weren’t always a given. In fact, Amazon was unprofitable on an annual basis as recently as 2014, as Bezos opted to focus on growth and build out new parts of the business. But that’s helped Amazon grow into a diversified company that in many ways looks future-proof. Money from the company’s retail arm has been plowed into building out cloud infrastructure, an advertising business, a massive logistics network, consumer electronics and even drug delivery, setting it up for success both during the pandemic and once it ends. “Bezos created the blueprint for internet businesses: rapid innovation, huge scale and relentless focus on the customer,” said Nicholas McQuire, senior vice president at CCS Insight, a research firm. Observers believe Jassy will follow this model when he takes the reins. “He … fully understands the wealth of assets across Amazon’s flywheel of operations,” McQuire said. Jassy’s cloud experience signals that the AWS division — a huge profit driver for Amazon — will play a central part in the company’s next chapter. In the most recent quarter, AWS grew sales by 28% to more than $12.7 billion, which the company attributed to “significant customer momentum” after bagging new commitments from the likes of JPMorgan Chase, Twitter and MGM. “AWS is well on its way to creating an annualized $50 billion revenue company,” analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy told my CNN Business colleague Clare Duffy. “This makes AWS larger than Salesforce.com and SAP combined.” Watch this space: Bezos’ decision to move on will leave Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg as one of the few remaining founder-CEOs in charge of a top US tech firm. But Bank of America analysts Justin Post and Michael McGovern said they’re heartened by the fact that Bezos will still be involved as executive chair, and note that other companies, including Apple and Microsoft, have done just fine under new leadership. One big risk: As Amazon gets bigger, it will have a target on its back, especially as antitrust regulators in Washington ramp up their crackdown on Big Tech. It could be one of the biggest problems Jassy has to navigate. How Wall Street is keeping tabs on the Reddit crowd Hedge funds, investment bankers and other professional investors are desperate to discover the next GameStop before it’s too late. That’s why Thinknum Alternative Data quickly built and launched a tool that provides its hedge fund and investment bank clients with a ranking of the most-mentioned stocks on Reddit’s popular “WallStreetBets” forum, as well as the main “Stocks” page, my CNN Business colleague Matt Egan reports. The tool gives sophisticated investors a way to avoid getting their short positions blown up — and the option to bet in tandem with retail investors. “The inbound inquiries from people asking about the dataset has been insane,” said Justin Zhen, Thinknum’s co-founder and president. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Thinknum’s offering shows how quickly Wall Street is adapting to this new phenomenon, ensuring it maintains control even as traders on Reddit try to gain the upper hand in their fight against the establishment. Remember: Some hedge funds that bet against GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other stocks popular on social media have been crushed by the Reddit-fueled rally. Those gains caused a massive short squeeze, where a stock climbed sharply, forcing those who bet against it to buy the stock back to avoid even greater losses. “Everyone is saying, ‘I need to track Reddit.’ It’s become one of the most important drivers of market movement,” Zhen said. Thinknum isn’t alone. Nomura and Wolfe Research recently launched the Wolfe Retail Red Alert basket. The tool analyzes Fidelity, Reddit and other sources of retail investor trading flows to monitor mentions and trading activity. The latest: GameStop’s stock plunged 60% on Tuesday, while AMC Entertainment shares lost 41%. But the tumult may not be over; on Tuesday, investor Mark Cuban urged members of the WallStreetBets community to keep their eyes on the prize. “I know you are going to hate to hear this, but the lower [GameStop] goes, the more powerful WSB can be stepping up to buy the stock again,” he wrote in a question-and-answer session on Reddit. Oil companies are facing a moment of truth The climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic are rapidly dividing the titans of the oil industry into two camps. There are big consequences depending on which side they choose. The breakdown: One group is made up of European oil giants like BP (BP), Shell and Total (TOT), which are trying to pivot away from oil and gas production and transform their companies. Then there are America’s ExxonMobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX), where executives are betting that oil demand will boom again after the pandemic despite global pressure to decarbonize the economy, reducing the need for dramatic overhauls. Both camps were hit with billions of dollars in losses in 2020 and face an uncertain 2021, according to recent earnings reports. But while the BP and Shell can point to their green initiatives, US producers are under growing pressure, especially given the change in direction of climate policy on day one of the Biden administration. Experts say that if these companies are really going to change course, it must happen soon, or their businesses will simply fall too far behind. “Both [sides] can’t be right,” Andrew Logan, senior director of oil and gas at sustainability nonprofit Ceres, told me. “Billions of dollars are being bet on the outcome.” Investor insight: Wall Street remains skeptical of the entire industry. Investors aren’t convinced that BP and Shell can succeed in the increasingly-crowded renewable energy sector, while Exxon faces huge pressure from activist investors to chart a new path. Oil stocks could be in for a tough year ahead no matter what. Read more here. Up next AbbVie (ABBV), Biogen (BIIB), Humana (HUM) and Spotify (SPOT) report results before US markets open. Allstate (ALL), eBay (EBAY), Grubhub (GRUB), MetLife, PayPal (PYPL) and Qualcomm (QCOM) follow after the close. Also today: The ADP private employment report for January posts at 8:15 a.m. ET. It’s an important preview of the official government report coming Friday. The latest ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, which tracks the US services sector, arrives at 10 a.m. ET. Coming tomorrow: Earnings from Shell (RDSA) and Ford (F). Source link Orbem News #Amazon #Bezos #investing #Jeff #Premarketstocks:HowAmazoncankeepthrivingevenwithoutJeffBezos-CNN #thriving

[topmixtrends]

LAURA VAN DEN BERG’S 2015 novel, Find Me, tells one woman’s tale of surviving the post-apocalypse. In the first half, her world is clearly demarcated, a sterile hospital facility that keeps the survivors of an outbreak separated from the world outside. The second half takes place after an escape from the facility, when the woman begins a nebulous journey through a ruined landscape to find her mother’s house in Florida. In her 2013 short story collection, The Isle of Youth, van den Berg creates tales of similar strangeness, mystery, and unease, which function as eerie echoes of the unique danger women face in their daily lives.

The Third Hotel, her new novel from FSG Originals, seems to fall into it’s own unique category — it is a noir mystery that heavily references horror pop culture and melts itself into a surrealist bent. The main character, Clare, is not a detective and doesn’t have a gun, and there is no gory resurrection of purifying flesh. There is her husband, Richard, a professor who specializes in horror movies. There is the city of Havana, gearing up for a horror film festival that will bring in many foreign travelers. Clare is not the kind of person to ignore details and coincidences. Her observant nature has lead her to look for meaning in the strangest of places: hotel rooms, which by design are meant to be aesthetically invisible. When she finds unique things about them, from her childhood growing up in a hotel in Florida to her on-the-road elevator repair career, she speaks in awed terms. The discovery of a fingernail in a drawer, clean and perfect, leads her to wonder “what kind of person would abandon to a hotel room drawer such a perfect specimen of their existence.” Nearly from the beginning of the novel, the reader is able to pick up on something else stirring in Clare — a silent rage, the fuel of which is complicated and their consequences, uncertain. All we know is that “the fury that had left Clare wanting to feel as little as possible, to press an ice cube against her heart.” But Clare’s trip to Havana will become a tipping point for her journey into the unknown — her life is about to crack and realign in a fusion of the new.

When the reader is introduced to Clare, it is in the aftermath of a tragedy — her husband has been killed in a car accident. Clare decides to visit the horror film festival he planned to attend in his stead, as if staying close to the subject of her husband’s studies keeps a part of him alive. When she checks into the “third hotel,” so called because it was the third option available to her, she can’t help but draw connections between the life she lead and her present reality: the broken elevator, calling back to her career in elevator repair at Thyssenkrupp; the business trips she took for that career, nights spent in Nebraska, feeling almost like a purgatory; the strange thread of the impersonal woven between all hotel rooms, calling back to her childhood growing up in the Florida hotel her parents operated; her parents, raising Bobtail cats while her father slowly sinks into dementia, a father who kept himself nearly as impersonal as the hotel rooms; her husband, so distant toward the time of his death, seemingly disconnecting himself from her. These events exist in Clare’s mind not as a chronological finality but as a long string, one that can be pulled forward and back, perhaps even tied to a cyclical end. “She imagined the suspension transforming into a warm flood of inevitability as the gate swung open and she stepped into whatever new dislocation of reality lay ahead.” As time becomes even more frayed throughout the events of the book, nights melt into days, and the true nature of Clare’s narration fades in and out of clarity.

She contemplates these events as she participates in the festival, drinking too much and waiting for the premiere of Yuniel Mata’s Revolución Zombi, the first horror movie in Cuba’s (fictional) cinematic history. In the midst of socializing, she sometimes lies and sometimes tells the truth, relishing the opportunity to carve out a different narrative for herself. In a way, she is weakening her already loose grip on reality, compounding the heady feeling of absence that someone can either ride like a wave or sink like a stone. The landscape of Havana is very much what you’d expect — classic cars parked along baked sidewalks, stray cats lounging in the spots of greenery dotting the concrete, the air alive with the noise of the people of a nation facing the future. But for Clare, the landscape itself becomes a road map for her own disordered mind: “Ahead she couldn’t see anything beyond the flat gloss of the ocean, and the longer she stayed, the more it looked like the rising sun was setting the water on fire and so she stood there, in a blaze fierce enough to remind any person that they were never not at the raw mercy of the earth, and waited to be burned up.” At the center of it all is the third hotel, with its jungle forest wallpaper hinting at a tangled mystery within, a false backdrop in more ways than one — the white cardboard box found with her husband’s effects, a literally sealed enigma she carries with her; the star of Revolución Zombi, Agata Alonso, who may or may not be attending the festival in disguise. If that wasn’t enough of a bombardment of mysteries, the culminating moment that kick-starts the novel in a new direction: Clare spots her husband in busy Havana cafe, not as a zombie but a new version of him, “as if he had not just died in a car accident five weeks ago.”

What, exactly, is happening here? On paper, The Third Hotel has all the makings of a horror movie itself. But much like Twin Peaks: The Return, van den Berg only allows us slight glimpses of terror before yanking us back, insinuating a greater meaning, a deeper connection than just fear itself. Maybe Clare’s entire ordeal is presented as a red herring — she mentions the Alfred Hitchcock quote in which he claimed you had to “torture the women” to make a good horror movie. Are the strange events befalling Clare to our benefit, an innocent character trapped in the circumstance of entertainment? It stands to reason that this is why The Third Hotel features an ever-present horror movie in the background — to point out to us that real life is often stranger than plot formulas. The anxiety of our daily lives, the lack of closure to our emotional wounds, and the simple unknowing of what will come next trumps any movie-magic gore or jump scare. In this way, The Third Hotel isn’t a horror story, in the way that Under the Skin wasn’t science fiction. To be more accurate, both these stories contain elements of the cut-and-dry genre definition, but also explore different aspects, allowing the reader the mental breathing room to feel both confusion and unease.

The Third Hotel begs for an update of the old adage of “good artists copy, great artists steal.” Specifically, in the noir genre, the standout quality among the good examples is the transportation of the reader not just to a landscape but a feeling, tapping into an area in our minds where places become as familiar as smells. From the smoky intensity of dusk in Chandler’s Los Angeles to the neon-lit rain puddles of Gibson’s Chiba, noir can defy genre expectations and become a flavor that heightens the senses. But the truly great noir writer isn’t finished yet, not until they subvert those expectations we’ve already created and reshape them to their liking. As a reader, it often imbues the flavor into us and challenges what we consider real or not, how things — both physical and mental — are not always as they appear to be. In other words, good noir creates an iconic backdrop, but great noir isn’t afraid to push the backdrop down and reveal the concrete soundstage behind it. In the spirit of true noir, with all of Clare’s effort focused on finding her husband, how can we know that he wants to be found? Or whether the reader can trust her motivations at all?

The twisting landscape and disengagement of self-narration is similar in feeling to Catherine Lacey’s 2014 novel Nobody Is Ever Missing, in which a woman named Elyria abruptly leaves her life in the United States to travel aimlessly around New Zealand. Despite being an excellent portrait of atmosphere and dread, there was criticism that Elyria was not given enough motivation to leave her life this way, that she had no reason to. Ironically, this proves the very point that the author was trying to make — that when men disconnect from reality, it signifies deep thought and reflection, while a women behaving similarly must be having some kind of breakdown. It could also be interpreted as a sign of the times, in that applying the story of The Third Hotel to a male character in a different time period would be considered his artful way of processing his grief. One could even draw parallels to Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, with Clare’s mission becoming no less important when it presents itself. The tinges of surrealism are just enough to keep the reader on their toes — a touch of Lynch without the violence, or Cronenberg without the gore. At its heart, The Third Hotel is a novel about precarity — the fragile nature of memory, sanity, and how the reality we perceive constantly changes. Clare’s unease in Havana bears striking resemblance to the political state of our world now, where reality changes almost daily, twisting to fit new logic, new thought, new flesh. Financially, politically, socially, environmentally — we live in precarious times, walking along the edge of a knife. Like Clare, we must try to reaffirm the realities we can, lest we fall prey to the uncertainty that waits patiently for doubt to weaken us. Is it only a matter of time before we become like her — chasing her husband down unfamiliar streets, her thoughts aflame with the certainty of the thought: “You are dead. How could you have forgotten?”

¤

Matt E. Lewis is the editor of Ayahuasca Publishing and co-editor of the horror anthology series States of Terror.

The post Our Dead Man in Havana appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2QTyK5N

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

[roseinaconcreteworld]

Upon the LMVH announcement of Hedi Slimane replacing (sob😢) MY *beloved* http://roseinaconcreteworld.tumblr.com/search/Celine Phobe Philo at Céline earlier this week, one's got to wonder: what is it with the never ending, dizzying chess moves amongst our treasured, highly esteemed industry? With the Womenswear shows just around the corner (starting Deb.8 to be exact), these stepups (and downs) are admittedly, rather disheartening. The constant House-hopping is undoubtedly keeping designers and aficionados alike on their toes. While Philo's departure was considered a longtime coming, is her rock'n'roll-inclined, rebellious substitute a good fit for the minimalist-focused Philowers? But that's a thesis for a different article.. In light of these major shakeups, breakups and makeups, I thought I'd breakdown the recent designers walkouts and fill-ins, a [precarious] little cheat sheet of some sort. Departures and replacements timeline •04/16 After his tenure at Dior Homme, Hedi Slimane exits YSL as creative director (2012). 37-year old Italian-Belgian Versus Versace alum Anthony Vaccarello takes on a few days later. •10/15 Raf Simons departs Christian Dior and is confirmed 8/16 as Calvin Klein's CD following Francisco Costa (who left in April '16). Simons' offerings are critically acclaimed and well received by the loyal CK fashionistas/fashionistos at his first show for the design label on 2/17. •7/16 Maria Grazia Chiuri leaves her co-designer position (and Pierpaolo Piccioli high & dry) at Valentino. She heads to Dior a few days later and becomes the French fashion label's first ever female Artistic Chief. Her first showcase on 9/17 is met with mixed reviews. •1/17: Clare wright Keller split with hobo heaven brand Chloe. She was there for 6 years. Previously at Pringle of Scotland, Keller then stands in the luxurious house's first Female Artistic Director following Riccardo Tisci's ebb which I'll touch on momentarily..👇🏾 •2/17: Tisci leaves Givenchy after 12 years handling the luxe label's Womenswear, Couture AND menswear collections. The London's Central Saint Martins graduate, whose Nike collabs become sportswear staples shortly after, is rumored to take the reins over at *Versace*. This statement hasn't been affirmed nor denied. Stay tuned, I guess 🤷🏾‍♀️ •3/17 After 4 years seconding Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton, Natasha Ramsey Levi lands at Chloe, becoming Clare wright Keller's successor. Still keeping up? I barely can. At any rate, let's resume.. •4/17: Jenna Lyons (pictured above 👆🏾) steps down from J.Crew after 26 years as AD and president. This came out of left field. I honestly thought it was a tasteless April's fool prank 🎣🎏.Sadly it was not. Somsack Sikhounmuong takes over the American RTW brand's Head Women's design. •12/17 Jonathan Saunders resigns from DVF as Chief Creative Officer after shutting down his 10-year eponymous line back in 12/15 (exactly 2 years later. Humm🤔) He was hired in 5/16. •1/18: news report that Kim jones departs LV as Men's Artistic Director •1/21: Hedi Slimane is nominated to join Céline, effective February 1st. The designer will take on the title of Artistic, Creative & Image Director and expending the design house's Menswear, Couture and fragrance. The French-Tunisian creator is set to reveal his first collection for the brand in September during Paris Fashion Week. I couldn't go without dribbling a few gossip bits on you 'dolls 🤗✨ •I heard through the grapevine that Sicilian designer Fausto Puglisi is highly considered for a position at Roberto Cavalli. This would make total sense considering their similar ingenious imPRINT. If proven to be true then this definitely gets the RIACW stamp 🕹of approval! •We shouldn't worry too long about Phoebe as it is being whispered that she is on her way to take the reins over at Burberry, replacing Christopher Bailey [who quit the U.K. house this past October]. •Rumor has it that Lanvin alumni Alber Elbaz has been taking meetings at Chanel's HQ. This makes me ecstatic as he would be perfect as Karl's heir in perpetuating his legacy. YASSSS! But it's just hearsay. You haven't heard it from me.. And let's not omit the recent (read: numerous) designer migrations to the Cities of Angels AND Lights: •The Fall' 2017 collections saw Rebecca Minkoff and Rachel Zoe staging shows in LA in disfavor of NY •1/17 Proenza Schouler's Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough announce their Paris Couture invasion, ditching NYFW's runway altogether. The dynamic designing duo combined the brand's Main RTW and Pre-fall collections proposals during the event's Spring/Summer presentations. Yeah. My head is spinning while writing these lines 😗💨 •6/17: The exodus wave 🌊 continues as Tommy Hilfiger, high off his #TommyNow affair, vanishes from the US of A🇺🇸 and flies across the pond to see what the U.K. 🇬🇧- London precisely- is all about. •7/17 Paris born and raised Joseph Altuzarra announced his return to his hometown, forlorning his adopted city. Invited by La Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la mode, he releases his Spring '18 Ready-to-Wear in September of that same year. 1/18: A. Wang deserting the Womenswear calendar. The prominent fashion designer decided he was going to chuck up the deuces ✌🏾to NYC right after his upcoming Fall'18 collection unveil in the Big Apple on Feb 10. Moreover, his Spring 2019 collection will show later on this year in June instead of September. So what exactly causes these frequent demotions, step-outs, switch-ups and relocations? Collection overload and exhaustion. 6 offerings a year can be hard on anybody, even the most zealous style superhero. On the other hand, us fashion spectators and consumers get collections shoved down our throats with no time to digest. A brand's regular calendar withdrawal could be motivated by a desire to streamline its business and refocus its efforts on design. Again, another topic for another post. An understandable reason for American labels to flee the States is global expansion. Our darling domestic brands head overseas in hopes to build and capitalize upon their international presence. Speaking of finance, these are evidently {underlined} commerce-driven decisions as well. Yes, it is good to delve into new waters, new talents that bring in fresh ideas and perspectives. But these perpetual turnarounds and trade-ins are not the beeznass, literally. Evidently, or visibly some STEADY, long-lasting and long term adjustments will have to take place in the industry. Be it producing smaller collections or targeting specific consumer demands. Until then I predict several other swaps. These ADs better pray that they won't be next on the chopping block. Oh, and Olivier if you're reading this, please remain at Balmain and keep slaying my existence. Stay there🤚🏾Do not move a single dreamy lash set of yours. I couldn't take this heartbreak 💔 What say you? Is your head spinning from all these style shifts? Or do you think that fashion change is good and is a normal part of evolution? Sounds off in the comments below! xoxo, Deb sources: fashionnista.com, fashionnetwork.com, businessoffashion.com, Harper's Bazaar, Fashion United

[anavontechnologygroup]

Phone Repair: How Is It Done? | Traverse City Phone Repair

This article has tips and useful information about Traverse City phone repair. Unless you have an insurance policy, and not all of them cover failures outside the manufacturer’s warranty, the repair will be out of your pocket. The good news is that the breakdowns are mostly repairable. Only some major damage, such as a piece of equipment broken into pieces after a fall or completely immersed in water, renders the phone unrecoverable.

  Phone Too Hot?

Excessive heat is not to be feared, as phones turn off automatically when it is too hot. This is useful when you forget your phone in the trunk of the car. If the sophistication of these devices avoids certain inconveniences, it must also be known that it also prevents cheating. Sensors are available to find out if the phone was in water. On the iPhone, the water indicator is visible to the user himself. On other models, the water indicator is seen by opening the phone.

  3 Solutions for Phone Repair

To get a smartphone repaired, there are three solutions. Go through a mobile operator, an insurer if you have insurance, or go to a repairman. For iPhone owners, you do not have to call the operator. It is Apple that manages its after-sales service.

  Advantages of an Authorized Repairer

The advantage of an authorized repairer is that the delays are much shorter. Since this type of repairer is approved by the manufacturer, the technicians are continuously trained. In addition, the company is committed to backing up the phone data and to reinstating it after the repair.

In cases of major damage, however, a loaner mobile can be offered to the customer. It is also necessary to have such a shop close to home. It is always possible to send the device via mail, but in this case the time-saving aspect disappears.

  Unlicensed Repairers

There are also unlicensed repairers, whose main competitive advantage is convenience. They are not necessarily cheaper, and are not approved, therefore any intervention voids the manufacturer’s warranty. In addition, they do not necessarily use original spare parts, so the confidence level is lower.

Can you afford to spend at least a week without your business phone to send it to an authorized repairer? Going through an independent repairer is cheaper, but if the iPhone is very new, the costs are prohibitive. For the first six months, the iPhone is very expensive to repair. But Apple customers are not the only ones paying for expensive screen repair.

  Insurance for Your Phone?

Should you take out insurance? Consumer associations urge caution. The insurance guarantees are too limited.

The advertising brochures ignore the true guarantees of the contract, and insurers sometimes play on the very short deadlines for making a declaration, to escape their obligations. However, some packages include a mobile lending or exchange service, even for breakdowns not covered by warranty. Most insurance does not cover breakage.

For the iPhone, the Apple Care Protection Plan extends the hardware repair coverage to two years from the date of the purchase of the device, but this insurance does not cover breakage. Even the express replacement service of the iPhone included in this insurance does not trigger in a case of breakage. Better to opt for insurance only if the intention is to insure against theft.

  Sounds great! What areas do you service?

We install Security Systems, Hosted PBX Phone Systems, Premise Phone Systems, and Service & Repair in these and MANY other cities in Michigan:

Traverse City

Mt. Pleasant

Manistee

Cadillac

Gaylord

Petoskey

Charlevoix

Grayling

Clare

Kalkaska

Beulah

The post Phone Repair: How Is It Done? | Traverse City Phone Repair appeared first on Anavon Technologies.

from Anavon Technologies http://www.anavontech.com/phone-repair-done-traverse-city-phone-repair/

[touristguidebuzz]

Ireland Is Blaming Currency Issues For Decline in UK Visitors Post-Brexit

UK arrivals to Ireland are down more than six percent for the first half of this year. Pictured are travelers at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland. Leland Paul Kusmer / Flickr

Skift Take: UK travelers, along with travelers from many other countries, are facing a lot of uncertainty these days about the value of their currencies. It will take more than a few famous filming locations to convince UK and other travelers to visit a place like Ireland.

— Dan Peltier

Ireland is touting double-digit increases in visitor arrivals from the U.S. and Canada for the first six months of 2017, citing the mass appeal of the country’s filming locations for the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones” and movies such as “Star Wars Episode XII: The Force Awakens,” for example.

But last year’s Brexit vote, a drama unfolding in the UK, in 2017 is hurting Ireland’s UK arrivals — Ireland’s largest, and one of its most lucrative, visitor markets.

UK arrivals in Ireland are down 6.4 percent year-over-year for January to June, according to data from Tourism Ireland, the country’s destination marketing organization.

Tourism Ireland said in a statement that it anticipated a UK visitor decline this year because of currency challenges from Brexit.

The value of the UK pound against the Euro has also fallen more than 20 percent in the 13 months since the June 2016 Brexit vote.

UK visits had been up nearly 16 percent for the first six months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. While there could be multiple factors influencing UK travelers to book fewer trips to Ireland, it’s clear that visitation numbers began to drop after the Brexit vote and that’s continued so far this year.

Tourism Ireland data show overall UK arrivals still increased nine percent to 3.6 million in 2016 (3.6 million), up about nine percent. That was slightly lower than the nearly 10 percent growth in UK arrivals in 2015.

Ireland’s visitor data for 2017 has so far painted a bleaker picture for UK arrivals and future arrival numbers will likely be impacted by how Brexit negotiations play out.

Ireland was also one of the fastest-growing European destinations in 2016 with international arrivals increasing 11 percent to more than 10 million.

The drop in UK visitors is impacting Ireland’s tourism industry, said Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, in a statement. “The decline in the value of sterling has made holidays and short breaks here more expensive for British visitors and economic uncertainty is undoubtedly making British travelers more cautious about their discretionary spending,” said Gibbons.

The tourism board is overhauling its UK marketing strategy, said Gibbons. “Therefore, competitiveness and the value for money message are more important than ever in Britain right now,” he said. “Tourism Ireland is placing a greater focus on our ‘culturally curious’ audience, who are less impacted by currency fluctuations.”

“We are also undertaking an expanded partnership program with airlines, ferry operators and tour operator programs, communicating a strong price-led message,” said Gibbons.

TV shows like “Game of Thrones,” which is partly filmed in Northern Ireland (part of the UK) which Tourism Ireland also promotes as a destination, have generated plenty of global buzz for Ireland as a destination in recent years.

“Game of Thrones” continues to be a significant component of Tourism Ireland’s marketing arsenal after the Brexit vote.

Tourism Ireland’s “Game of Thrones” campaign has been one of its signature marketing initiatives during the past three years and is still ongoing in the UK and other key markets.

More than 1.2 million UK travelers from England, Wales and Scotland visited Northern Ireland in 2015, the most recent year that Tourism Ireland has a breakdown of visitor data by region. “Absolutely we see that many British fans of ‘Game of Thrones’ are traveling to Northern Ireland to check out the real life filming locations which are featured in the series,” said Sinead Grace, a spokesperson for Tourism Ireland.

Still, many UK travelers have indicated that they’re not as tempted as travelers from other countries might be to visit TV and movie locations.

From June to October 2016, Tourism Ireland conducted an online survey in its main visitor markets, such as the U.S., France, Germany and Australia, on a variety of topics, including which information sources influenced their decisions to book a trip to Ireland.

Only three percent of UK respondents said “Films/movies/TV drama” was a source of inspiration for booking a trip.

In comparison, some eight, nine and 12 percent of North America, overall Mainland Europe and French respondents, respectively, said flims/movies/TV drama was a source of inspiration.

What’s also interesting is that nearly 100 percent of UK respondents said they were satisfied with their most recent Ireland trip but fewer UK visitors than North American or mainland European visitors, for example, said that an Ireland trip is a good monetary value (see chart below).

Those findings came after the Brexit vote.

While many UK travelers likely visit Ireland for very different reasons than they’d visit Southern European or other Mediterranean destinations, for instance, Ireland is a cautionary tale to other pricey European countries that UK travelers — one of the world’s most valuable tourism group — are seriously considering how far their money will stretch when thinking about where to plan a trip.

Overall Monetary Value Of An Ireland Trip By Market

Overall value UK North America Mainland Europe France Germany Rest of World Very good 17% 12% 30% 10% 6% 5% 14% Good 44% 39% 44% 47% 50% 42% 51% Fair 34% 41% 25% 37% 40% 48% 31% Poor 4% 7% 1% 6% 3% 5% 4% Very poor N/A 2% 0% N/A N/A N/A 1%

Source: Tourism Ireland

[clarebowenweb]

New Site Update has been published on Clare Bowen Web

New Site Update has been published on http://clare-bowen.com/2017/07/press-nashville-star-clare-bowen-to-play-in-tamworth-during-australian-tour/

Press: Nashville star Clare Bowen to play in Tamworth during Australian tour #clarebowen

When a delegation from Tamworth visited Nashville in June 2013 to sign the sister-city agreement at the Country Music Hall of Fame, Clare Bowen spoke at the ceremony. But you may be surprised to learn she has never visited Australia’s country music capital. That will change on July 11 when the Australian actress and singer, who has made her name playing a fledgling country music artist in the hit TV series Nashville, plays live at West Tamworth Leagues Club’s Blazes auditorium.

It is the second time Clare has returned to Australia to play a string of concert dates since coming to prominence on the small screen. With her debut album just about ready to drop, and filming almost wrapped up for Nashville’s fifth season, the diminutive star spoke to Fairfax Media over the phone from her home in Nashville. Clare describes the city, known as Music City USA, as the place where she feels she belongs and recalled a memory from her childhood.

“The very first time I heard the Grand Ole Opry, I was sitting in my grandad’s kitchen in Revesby. The Grand Ole Opry, WSM, was on the wireless, and it was Dolly Parton singing Coat of Many Colours live, and I think I must have been about eight. I was really young. It was a weird memory that came back recently. It’s just funny how things come around.”

Since her childhood, her career has taken her from the stage in Sydney, then to Los Angeles, and eventually Nashville.

After completing a Bachelor of Creative Arts degree, Clare was working for the Sydney Theatre Company, where she was encouraged by Cate Blanchett to move to Los Angeles. “I spent a week working with her as the artistic director, and she took me aside backstage, after the first show we did I think, and said have you ever thought about moving to Los Angeles.

“I said that sounds terrifying, but she said do it anyway.”

After arriving in the states in 2011, Clare spent time couch surfing between homes, as she teed up management and scored her first movie role in the same year. The following year she auditioned for Nashville, a new TV series created by screenwriter Callie Khouri – best known for writing and directing Thelma & Louise.

“It probably sounds like it happened really, really fast, but it didn’t feel like it,” Clare said. “It feels like it was yesterday I was working four service jobs in Australia. (I worked at) three different bars, and a tea shop during the day, as well as auditioning and trying to pay my phone bill.”

It was raining the day the auditions were held for Nashville, as Clare waited for the bus, which didn’t arrive at the usual time. I turned up looking like a drowned rat, really late, but they waited for me, and I read a script and I just loved it. I loved Scarlett.” But immediately, there were doubts.

“I said to myself, this is going to be something that happens to someone much more experienced than me, who is much more well known and incredibly deserving of this wonderful role. But I said to myself, I’ll go in and have fun, meet the cast and directors, and learn something.”

She walked in, speaking with a southern accent, learnt from watching movies her father had brought home when she was a child, such as Steel Magnolias and The Wizard of Oz. “I’d never met a southern person in my life, but I knew my lines and I knew a song, so that was about as prepared as I got.”

Having never had any training on accents, Clare said she had learnt by listening. And having never met a southern American, she said she just hoped she wasn’t offending anybody, as she acted with the southern accent she had learnt as a child. Following the successful audition in 2012, Clare was soon moving to Nashville – the city – to begin filming the series which changed her life. And Nashville has been home ever since.

“I bought a house out here, rescued a bunch of animals and found the love of my life.” She was referring to her long-term boyfriend, singer-songwriter Brandon Robert Young. The pair, who will have two wedding ceremonies this year, one in Australia and one in the US, got engaged in 2015 after Young popped the question during one of Clare’s performances at the Grand Ole Opry. “We go out on the road together and have a whole lot of fun, not a lot of rest, but a whole lot of fun,” she laughed.

Her dream run on Nashville looked like it might have been all over last year when it was dropped by the ABC network after four seasons. It sparked outrage from fans on social media, and Nashville was soon picked up by the country music channel CMT for a fifth season, then in April this year CMT announced the show had been renewed for a sixth season. Over the five years the show has run, there have been guest appearances from a lot of country artists in Nashville, including Zac Brown, who Clare sang with in one episode.

“Reba was so sweet, Vince Gill is like the nicest person on the planet, Steve Buchanan, the executive director of the Opry, he was on the show playing himself. Brad Paisley has been the show, gosh, Kip Moore. We’re just so grateful for their acceptance. The fact that we have all these people wanting to be on the show makes us feel very much accepted.”

Now Clare has recorded her own music, with her debut album full of stories from her own life, and from the lives of people she cares about. That is evident on Love Steps In, her first solo single released earlier this year, which is a tribute to her younger brother, Timothy, who spent all of 2016 fighting end-stage cancer. When writing the songs for the debut album, Clare wrote with other artists, including Timothy and her fiance Brandon. The new release is different from what we see Scarlet O’Connor perform on Nashville, with Clare saying the album is truly her, when asked about the difference between her character’s music and her own.

“We’re different because we’re two different people. It’s funny, because it’s like sharing a body with someone, sometimes it’s Scarlet’s turn to walk around in this thing all day,” she laughed. “I thankfully have far less dramatic life than her. She’s been through a lot.”

That includes breakdowns on stage, breakups with boyfriends, putting up with an abusive mother, who later dies after an operation, donating a kidney to save her uncle’s life. While it might be less dramatic, that’s not to say Clare Bowen has had it all easy in her own life. Years before her brother’s battle with cancer, Clare herself was diagnosed with late stage Nephroblastoma at the age of four.

“I was a kid they brought in who was given two weeks to live, and I’ve outlived four life expectancies,” Clare said. “So even just letting people know that, it’s giving other parents whose children have been given a really dire diagnosis, hopefully a little bit of hope, which is the idea behind Love Steps In. Standing by and watching someone go through this horrible illness, you can feel helpless, but really you have the most important job in the world, as parents and loved ones.”

Clare has been an Australian Cancer Council Youth Ambassador since 2008, then last year she was asked by St Jude’s Children’s Hospital, which is one of the world’s leading childhood cancer research centres, to be a guest keynote speaker, where she told spoke in detail about her battle against cancer, for the first time.

“I feel very lucky to still be alive, and to be living the life I’m living. I’m very grateful. I try to spread the message that anything is possible, because I’m still here and my brother is still here. I feel that there are people out there who maybe need to hear that.”

Her brother Timothy is now in remission, and will be the support act for Bowen’s Australian tour dates.

Getting back to the new album, Bowen said she felt her main mission in music was to tell stories that reassured people they were not alone, which has clearly been influenced by her brother’s battle, and her own battle, with cancer. Will we ever hear Bowen’s original songs on Nashville?

Ultimately that is up to the network, and there is a long list of people involved with the series who have to sign off on the songs that make it to air. But Bowen did say she has had songs that have sparked some interest, despite not having one make it onto screen yet.

“Ultimately they have be super right for the characters,” she said. “But I’ve been focused so much on my own album, (and that is) taking musical precedence at the moment. But they’ve shown interest which is incredibly flattering. “I know Chip’s (Charles Esten) got a song on there, and Jonathan Jackson, and it’s so lovely to see that integration, from the actors. But I’ve been so focused on my own album, that I forgot about trying to write for the show. They’re doing just fine without me,” she laughed.

For 10 months of the year Bowen is busy filming for Nashville, and most of the remaining two months and spent touring with the live Nashville show, which takes the actors across the northern hemisphere during their summer months to perform the songs from the TV series live. Which means she has not had break for about five years now.

“It’s so funny when people say ‘you need to do more shows’, I’m like, I really need to go and lay down.”

In June the tour went to the UK, then after Bowen returns to the USA, they play 10 dates through late July and early August before returning to Nashville to start filming season 6. – Source

[dingoes8myrp]

Orange is the New Black: The Road So Far

Now that I’ve finished the fifth season, here are my thoughts on the show.

For the most part, I feel like this season was 80% filler, 2% character development, 8% set-up, and 10% compelling story.

I should mention, as a viewer and as a reader, I loathe filler. I’m a minimalist. I probably write this way, too. I like every piece of dialogue, every description, every scene, to either move the story forward or give important information. I like to be constantly moving or thinking. My perfect movie, episode, or book is one where I’m captivated and engrossed. And this doesn’t have to be a high-octane thriller either. Really, it just has to keep me moving or keep my brain working. I lose interest in books with paragraphs and paragraphs of detailed descriptions (George R. R. Martin and Cassandra Clare). I tune out of shows or movies with a lot of side-stories with no real bearing on the main arc (The Vampire Diaries and Game of Thrones), or with a lot of expositional dialogue and unnecessarily long shots (The Walking Dead). I’m not a fan of old Westerns with their wide, expositional shots and slow-moving stories (3:10 to Yuma). However, I’m captivated by mysteries and thrillers with unsettling suspense (The Killing and Gone Girl). I love a story that focuses on character development even when the plot doesn’t move much (Titanic and Lost). Just an aside so anyone reading understands where I’m coming from before I get into the nitty-gritty of this.

Season 5 of Orange is the New Black wasn’t bad. It was well-written, and some of the performances were absolutely amazing. Danielle Brooks (Taystee), Uzo Aduba (Suzanne), Selenis Leyva (Gloria), Elizabeth Rodriguez (Aleida), and Brad William Henke (Piscatella) were particularly stand-out for me. However, there is a stylistic difference in the later seasons of the show versus the earlier ones. The first two seasons in particular were well-paced with a steady arc and compelling characters. I couldn’t stop watching because I felt like I was being pulled through the story by what was unfolding. Last season and this season in particular felt different: drawn out and inconsistently paced with an overarching story that was muddled and unclear. I believe this trend began in season 3. Seasons 1 and 2 focused on Piper’s arc as the main story with everyone else’s stories revolving around it, much like the spoke method used by Seinfeld. Other stories and characters were artfully folded into this main arc, but Piper was the show’s heart: the lens through which we viewed the world. Gradually, other characters came into the spotlight with Piper. Dayanara’s relationship with Bennett became its own strong story. Nicky’s battle with addiction and her relationship with Morello became a compelling story on its own. Meanwhile other characters became near and dear to us through compelling personal arcs: Taystee with her dynamic personality and her drive, Red with her no-nonsense Alpha vibe and maternal role, Suzanne with her troubling but endearing quirks, and of course Alex with her anti-hero road-to-redemption arc. There was a nice structure and momentum to the first two seasons that made me feel grounded, and managed to reveal layers of individual characters while balancing a few different side-stories without losing sight of that main grounding arc.

Season 3 began to lose this balance. The departures of Bennett and Mendez drastically changed Dayanara’s story and took something away from the dynamic of the guards. Nicky’s stint in Max left Morello with nothing to do and removed an entire layer of story from a lot of other arcs Nicky was involved in. Larry was ultimately written out of the story, which removed a complication from Piper that made her relationship with Alex less dramatic (so other plot elements were added, presumably to keep the drama going). Meanwhile new characters were introduced or focused on, and those characters didn’t have two seasons of story under their belts to help them carry the weight. As a result, we started getting these “filler” episodes that focused on an underdeveloped character to sort of catch them up to everyone else (i.e. Boo in “Finger in the Dyke,” Flaca in “Fake it Till you Fake it Some More,” Chang in “Ching, Chong, Chang,” basically the bulk of the episodes). We were introduced to a whole new cast of characters and their stories while the characters we’d gotten to know took a back seat. While I appreciated some of these episodes individually, I didn’t appreciate them as a part of the whole. Pulling so many new or background characters into the spotlight so quickly created a need to hit “Pause” on a number of stories and slowed down the show’s momentum.

Seasons 4 and 5 continued this trend of introducing or expanding characters, but also reintroduced characters that had been minimalized or written out. This has bloated the story to the point where it’s difficult to discern the main arc or to keep up with all the side stories and character arcs. We’re picking up threads of stories that were back-burnered trying to remember where we left off while some newly introduced stories are put on pause and some even newer stories are being set up. There’s just way too much going on, and the 10% of it I’m actually invested in has gotten lost in the shuffle. Aleida being released from prison was a big deal at one point, and I was very interested to see how she adjusted to life outside. However, a very small amount of screen time was spent on this compelling story and instead Aleida’s role became relative to Dayanara’s story (which stopped being compelling as soon as she lost the gun). Alex killed a man and buried him in the garden and that somehow wasn’t even in the top 5 storylines. It was just something we were reminded of every few episodes through expositional dialogue, presumably so we didn’t forget that this was once an important plot point. Poussey, a beloved main character, was horrifically killed. Instead of the fallout becoming the main story, as was set up in season 5’s premiere, it somehow became a setting in itself rather than a plot. This is actually something I’ve seen in other shows, where a character’s death becomes a part of the atmosphere (Sons of Anarchy and Outsiders come immediately to mind). However, if Poussey’s death wasn’t the overarching plot, and the riot it caused wasn’t the overarching plot… then what the hell was? I still don’t know.

My major problem with season 5 is that it took way too long for anything to move forward in a significant way, and when it did everything happened all at once. Red, Lorna, and Suzanne are all competing for Little Miss Crazypants of Litchfield. Piscatella’s in the house and he’s also throwing his hat in the Crazypants ring with a side of torture just for funzies. Humps died and no one seemed to give a shit despite his death being a BIG FUCKING DEAL because all the negotiations between the inmates and the gun-toting officers hinge on the fact that no one has died, and because a beloved character shot the guy while another blew into his I.V. for shits and giggles, and another whole shit load of characters fought like hell to save him. All but one of the remaining guards got out, which was also a big deal. An overzealous S.W.A.T. team stormed the prison. I mean, Jesus, we couldn’t have spaced this out a bit to make the previous 8 episodes more interesting? As entertaining as it was to watch Angie and Leanne fuck around like Lucy and Ethel, I really didn’t need as much of it as I was given and I would have loved more of Alex or Almeida or even Pennsatucky. As fun as Linda as an inmate was, that was an entire storyline I could have done without in the grand scheme. Brook’s grieving was super compelling and we barely got any time with her. 

This brings me to my secondary problem with season 5, which was the fact that a number of compelling stories and characters got lost in everything going on. Lorna got pregnant and doubted her sanity while playing fast and loose with everyone’s medications. Burset became a badass MacGyver style medic and then disappeared for the rest of the season when she could have been super useful to have around. Pennsatucky engaged in a consensual relationship with her rapist and somehow that wasn’t the most interesting thing going on. Bayley was having a straight up mental breakdown because of his role in Poussey’s death and it’s just a side story we get a glimpse of here and there. Instead of focusing on any of this, we spent a lot of screentime watching Caputo and Taystee negotiate with Figueroa. We followed Leanne and Angie around while they decreased our brain cells with their stupidity. We hung out with Red and Flores in an office for some reason. We watched Frieda and company smoke pot in a bunker because why the hell not? We watched Boo court Linda despite the fact that her friend Pennsatucky was clearly in need of some sort of support. We watched Piper walk around talking to people while Alex rolled her eyes (legit, that is the extent of their plot this season as far as I can tell).

Oh my God, that ending. Really?? You’re going to cram all the good stuff into the last 3 episodes and then end with a fucking cliffhanger? Not an earned one, either. This reminded me of the end of season 6 of The Walking Dead. Whatever impact the S.W.A.T. team storming into the bunker is going to have, they just cut it in half by making us wait a year to finish watching that fucking scene. I’m not a fan of that trick. So, they could kill off anyone in the bunker and they’re shipping the bulk of the cast elsewhere (“probably not max” is all we know). So, does this mean we’re going to be splitting our screen time between THREE different settings next season? Or does it mean virtually ALL of our beloved characters are being written out? Either way, it doesn’t look good.

All told, while this wasn’t a bad season, I felt like we were focusing on all the wrong things, and it slowed everything down while hurting the flow and momentum of the other stories. Not my favorite season by far.

#orange is the new black #dingometa

[bookintroventure-blog]

Review: The Girl At Midnight (Book 1)

Title: The Girl At Midnight Author: Melissa Grey Genre: Fiction/YA/Fantasy Series: The Girl At Midnight, Book 1 Date(s) Read: 01/16/17 – 01/18/17 Rating: 2/5 Summary: Beneath the streets of New York City live the Avicen, an ancient race of people with feathers for hair and magic running through their veins. Age-old enchantments keep them hidden from humans. All but one. Echo is a runaway pickpocket who survives by selling stolen treasures on the black market, and the Avicen are the only family she’s ever known.

Echo is clever and daring, and at times she can be brash, but above all else she’s fiercely loyal. So when a centuries-old war crests on the borders of her home, she decides it’s time to act.

Legend has it that there is a way to end the conflict once and for all: find the firebird, a mythical entity believed to possess power the likes of which the world has never seen. It will be no easy task, though if life as a thief has taught Echo anything, it’s how to hunt down what she wants…and how to take it.

But some jobs aren’t as straightforward as they seem. And this one might just set the world on fire.

Overall Review: With an ill-paced series of events, characters difficult to picture in the mind’s eye, and just a bit too much familiarity to aspects of other YA novels, the only redeeming quality to The Girl At Midnight is the main character’s smart mouth, and the occasional demonstration of logophilia in the narrative.

Detailed Review: While I boasted the last novel I reviewed to be the best I’d read so far this year, I’m sad to say that I followed it up with the worst so far. It was like washing down a glorious dinner of chicken and orange cream sauce, creamy Parmesan risotto, fresh steamed vegetables, and a rich slice of tiramisu with half a can of warm, flat, store-brand diet cola that had a cigarette butt and someone else’s backwash in it. I know that sounds harsh – it’s not like this book ruined my life or anything – but I was on such a high after The Bellwether Revivals that crash-landing in the meaningless chasm of The Girl At Midnight just left me feeling a bit...bitter. Anyway, I guess let’s go all the way. Here’s…

The Breakdown: Echo was taken in by the Avicen – an ancient race of birdlike beings – when she discovered as a homeless pickpocket at age seven/eight. Ten years later, Echo steals an object that sets into motion a quest for a (possibly fictional, according to some) object called the “firebird,” which is capable of ending the Avicen’s centuries-old war with a race of dragon-humanoids called Drakharin. The Dragon Prince is also in search of the firebird, believing that whoever wields it holds all the power, and will end the war on their terms. A series of clues, trespasses, betrayals, and begrudging circumstances bring together an unlikely team of Echo, a human, Ivy, Echo’s best friend an Avicen apprentice healer, Jasper, a wayward Avicen thief, Caius, a dethroned Drakharin leader, and Dorian, Caius’s best friend and personal bodyguard. Being hunted by both Avicen and Drakharin and with only each other to depend on, the group follows the clues that lead them to the firebird of lore.

Okay, so The Cons: 1. Quick progression of events. It seems silly to get caught up on realism when it comes to a fantasy novel, but it’s really not that unreasonable. The best fiction – be it real-world, fantasy, supernatural, et cetera – can be made believable as long as you get the timing and the circumstances right. This novel, unfortunately, falls flat on the former. Everything progresses so quickly that I had to stop several times and think, “well that was abrupt,” or “no, that wouldn’t happen so easily.” 2. The characters. The author, Melissa Grey, treats her characters like paper dolls in series of dioramas. Even though there isn’t a lot of death in the novel, you still get the feeling that all of the characters are expendable somehow. You are told how much they mean to other characters in the story, but they’re not shown or treated as such in such a way that you really see their value. To an extent, this made it seem like none of the characters were really real in the story. 3. I recognize that tree. By which I mean, a lot of aspects of this novel were reminiscent of other popular YA novels. I should have been marking them down as I went for better examples, but I didn’t and I am not going to re-read it just for fodder, but there were many times I found myself comparing a particular situation or line of dialogue or romantic interaction to that of Harry Potter, Twilight, The Mortal Instruments, et cetera. It’s not that the novel sounds like a rewritten fanfiction (I see you over there, Cassandra Clare, don’t even play), but more that a lot of avenues on the YA roadtrip have been driven too many times. It’s very hard and you have to be very talented to write a truly original YA fantasy novel anymore, and this just didn’t quite hit the spot. 4. Predictable ending. Yeah, you’ll see it coming. You’ll see it coming from miles off. You’ll see it coming with both your eyes closed, a blindfold on, and in pitch darkness. 5. Predictable romantic plotline. She falls for who? OMG, I am so surprised. Wait, I’m not, because I’ve seen every CW show ever. 6. The two competing races of creatures. The Avicen look like birds – they have feathers covering most of their bodies and they have birdlike eyes. I’m all for creatures, I collect folklore stories from all over the world, but I could not imagine such creatures in my mind unless I thought of them as characters in anime. It was a wholly unfamiliar experience, because I’ve always been able to picture creatures – even the blobby toad demons from the Dresden Files – clearly in my mind, in the real world. The descriptions just weren’t quite sufficient, and the Avicen were stark contrast to the Drakharin, who were mostly human with the exception of a few scales across their cheekbones and knuckles and the like – they were easy to picture. 7. None of these characters know how to interact with anyone else effectively. That’s all. It’s infuriating. Like, I get that you’re not human, but use your words.

And now The Pros: 1. You kiss your mother with that mouth? In spite of how I felt about the novel, I did enjoy Echo’s dialogue. She is a grand-level sassmaster and I dig that. 2. Learnt ya real good. Echo is a logophile and so am I. She collect words with strange meanings from all over the world (“Callipygian” – having a nice butt. “Kalverliefde” - the euphoria you experience when you fall in love for the first time) and uses them in her narrative, and I promptly jotted these new words down in my handy-dandy notebook. As a fellow logophile, I wish there had been more of them.

TL;DR: The Cons: Pretty much everything. Too-quick events, characters you’re given no reason to be invested in, familiarity to other (better) YA novels, predictable ending, typical romantic plot, odd physicality to the characters, and terrible communication. The Pros: Echo is a smartass and she knows some cool words.

By the quality of the writing, I would say this novel is good for more of an 11-14 readership, but there is some violent action and some language more befitting of the 14-17 age range. But really, I think you could just skip this one. A most unfortunate quirk of my own personal character is the need to read series’ all the way through, so now I have to read the second and third of this frankly uninspired series – I’ll let you guys know if it gets any better in Book 2. (Though I’m in no hurry to read it, so it could be a while.)

**If you feel like you have to have this novel, if only for the admittedly lovely front cover, they have a butt-ton of copies over at my favorite outlet of books for just $2.99, and you can follow this link to get there.**

#book review #the girl at midnight #Melissa grey #girl at midnight #the girl at midnight series #novel #fiction #YA #fantasy #romance #avicen #drakharin #firebird #review #52-in-52 #52 books in 52 weeks #book 4/52 #2/5 stars #blog #books #bibliophile #literature #introvert #adventure #introventure #bookoutlet #book outlet