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boxboxlewis · 7 months

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Share a DVD commentary on Come get your honey

I'm so obsessed with this fic forever. Honestly I would read a line-by-line director's commentary of the entire fic but to rein it in I'm really curious about what Max is thinking throughout the fic? Daniel is so focused on how good the sex is (for him) and at times, how connected and possessive he feels toward Max, but is Max in that emotional space with him or is he focused more on the simple pleasure of it?

also! if you wanted to! i'd truly just chin-hands raptly listen to you talk about anything you wanted to talk about in this verse. like do they ever get together? do they ever have sex that is emotionally overwhelming for max / what would that look like?

ahhhh sarah ilu thank you! come get your honey is one of my secret favourites of my own children fics so i'm esp pleased you like it. dvd commentary below the cut :)

The first time Daniel and Max have sex is also the last time, has to be the last time, so Daniel tries to memorise every detail as it’s happening. Max’s stubble, spikier than Daniel might’ve expected / the awkward way he giggles when Daniel reaches for his belt / how he immediately apologises for the giggle, voice raspy, “Sorry, I just—”

max is giggling here from NERVES bc he has had a big fat crush on daniel for one million years. however! he is a professional at Being Around Daniel Without Getting His Heart Broken, so he's also determined not to make a fool of himself.

Daniel has no fucking idea what to do with someone else’s dick, except, presumably, touch it in the same way he likes to touch himself, and he has low-key worried about this, when he’s thought about having sex with Max, which has been always, over the past few weeks/months/years, except as it turns out it’s not an issue because Max tells him exactly what to do: every bitten-back gasp from Max’s stupid-plush mouth when Daniel nips at his skin and then soothes it with his tongue, every motion he makes, the way his hips jerk up how he rolls his eyes at Daniel how he says “No, like this, here—”

the max pov of this scene is basically "oh my god how is daniel so hot and also so bad at this"

The next time Daniel and Max have sex is an error. A mistake, a lapse, a moment, and it’s Max’s fault, really. He looks at Daniel while they’re waiting for the pre-race press conference to begin and he smirks, and Daniel looks at his mouth: that’s it, that’s waiting the whole press conference with a half-hard dick and a racing pulse, that’s walking back to his motorhome when he’d rather run and texting Max “ok then” and texting again a minute later, “come over dick.”

max: [smiles hello at daniel]

daniel: AW yeah he wants that ricciardo D again 😎... come on OVER baybeeeee

He’d thought Max would be new to this, would be unsure, maybe, waiting for Daniel to take the lead, but Max is so comfortable, knows just what he’s doing, he shows Daniel how to use his fingers, he opens for Daniel so easily and beautifully, Max is good at getting fucked, and relaxed about it, which means he must’ve done it before, and probably not just a few times, probably lots of times.

daniel is right, max has had a lot of sex in this universe and he knows what he likes!

“You make me crazy,” he grits out, pressing his forehead into Max’s shoulder his collarbone, getting high from the smell of Max’s skin his armpit his hair, he’s trying to give it to Max so good Max will never go to anyone else for sex ever again, will just keep coming back to Daniel over and over and over and maybe if he thrusts deep enough hard enough at just the right angle he’ll make Max his wife— Max just laughs and kicks his heel against Daniel’s ass, says “Daniel, c’mon,” grips his hand in the back of Daniel’s hair and tugs Daniel’s head up and looks at him all cool and handsome and rolls his fucking eyes and pulls Daniel in and bites his lip, hard, and Daniel comes in an agonised rush, no grace no finesse much too soon. He hasn’t even gotten Max off yet, has to pull out and get his breath back and then make his way down the bed so he can get his mouth on Max’s dick and his fingers pressing back inside where Max is still loose and sloppy. He can feel Max’s fucking heartbeat inside his asshole, secret and lovely against his fingers, he can taste how close Max is to coming, and then Max is groaning, salt-bleach warmth coating Daniel’s mouth, choking him.

max is dying here. he likes daniel SO MUCH but also he's like "im literally giving this man a roadmap and a torch what is he doing"

Max has never in his entire life known when to stop. “I think I can tell maybe that you’ve mostly fucked girls.” He’s still tracing Daniel’s tattoos: the cherub on his forearm, now. “Because you kind of, you ignore my—uh.” Daniel guesses the “uh” is Max for “prostate.” He wants to die.

this is max being like "well naturally daniel would want to know if he is bad at sex, so he can improve" and just 100% not getting why it's painful for daniel to hear god bless

Max riding him is good, is better than Daniel could’ve believed, and Daniel can’t worry anymore whether it’s good for Max because it’s so fucking good for him. He can see Max like this, the entire glorious country that is Max’s body, whole vistas open for Daniel’s gaze. The softness of Max’s stomach / his puffed-up little nipples / his perfect fucking thighs, his perfect fucking thighs clamped around Daniel’s hips no one else’s. Daniel’s cock disappearing into Max’s body, Max’s frown, how he bites his lip, focussing, how he throws his head back and hisses when he finds an angle he likes. Daniel can reach up and pinch his nipple, cup his tit and draw a thumb across it, watch how Max flushes blotchily across his whole chest, he can follow Max into the rhythm he’s setting with his hips he can watch as each thrust makes Max’s eyelids flutter he can hope he can hope that this time he’s getting it right.

this time around is much better for max. good work, daniel

Daniel says “I have something I need to tell you, but you're not gonna like it,” and Max looks at him with wide eyes and says “Well don't tell me yet then,” and Daniel kisses him and thinks, one day.

max has some inkling of what daniel wants to say but he is TERRIFIED that he's wrong and maybe daniel will just be like "i think we should try reverse cowgirl" or something. so he elects not to hear it, so that the beautiful possibility that maybe daniel really likes him can live on a little longer 🥲 they do get together eventually but it takes a while!!

#smut asks #asks #maxiel #mv33 #dr3 #sarah this is so long lmao im sorry!!!#i am meditating upon your question about what emotionally overwhelming sex for max would look like in this universe #by “meditating upon” i mean “adding to my fic ideas list”

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jojo-schmo · 6 months

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My old Good Omens art from 2019-2020!! :O (In somewhat chronological order)

In the interest of sharing my art in one place, I thought I'd revisit this era of my art! I made much more traditional art at the time. But I like thinking about the evolution of my skills over the past few years.

Director's commentary below:

I believe the first four images are from 2019, when the first season of GO came out. Boy, did that show come out at a good time for me! I was in a deep art slump that had lasted for a few years at that point. Long story short, because of untreated depression and a chronic illness that brought me physical pain, I didn't get everything I wanted to get out of college classes and I was deeply self-conscious of my skill level. I knew I wanted to tell stories but I was frustrated that I seemingly couldn’t make my ideas come to life at all.

Being alive was very difficult for me at the time and I was fighting my own dark and negative thoughts that I directed towards myself constantly. I didn't see a psychiatrist until the Spring of 2020, and only then did things start getting better. If I had to describe it, it's like a storm in my head finally cleared. The weight on my shoulders lightened up a lot. I had enough mental clarity to gain more self-awareness and really work on myself. And that included my art. And it shows a little in the last few drawings.

(Side note, I am much, much better now. Medication and ongoing therapy has completely changed the quality of my life. I am very happy to be here!)

Anyway, I was making efforts to get better at drawing after college by taking Aaron Blaise's online art classes. (Side note, his class on drawing human anatomy helped me immensely!!) But it was just the beginning of a long art improvement journey!

But I see the stiffness and insecurity that was still present in my art from that time. Whenever I shared it on Twitter (which was my main social media at the time) I'd be lucky to hit ten notes. It didn't bother me all the time, but it did get discouraging as time went on. Until one day I decided to just deal with it. Whatever the reason was that nobody was seeing my art- whether it was due to the Twitter algorithm or if my art was just not appealing enough. I was going to keep drawing. If nobody clicked the like heart on my art, fine! I was going to keep throwing it into the void anyway and see what sticks. If it got ten likes or one I tried not to care as much.

My transition from drawing what I thought other people wanted to see, to drawing what made me happy, made a huge difference. Likes and reblogs do feel really good, but I'm happy to hear even what one person likes about my work. I try to keep that mindset with me as much as I can. And I'm not perfect at it. But it helps me a lot.

Of course that transition in my mindset was gradual. Took place over a few years. But I realized lately that I have a confidence in my art that I've never had before. And I'm really happy about that!!

All this to say, whether you've been drawing/writing for ten years, one year, or a few months, it's always nice to remember where you came from and far you've come.

Looking back, I wish I could tell my past self that her best was yet to come. And I still have a long way to go but I'm excited to see what I can make in the coming years!

If I had one preachy piece of advice to offer as a final note, remember that the ability to draw and write is an awesome skill to have. A skill that not every human being has. But a skill that can be developed and cultivated over time if nurtured. It's a beautiful thing to me, to be able to create something that didn't exist before. Something that only you can bring to life. And while it might not resonate with everyone who sees it, it might resonate with one person. And I love that. So when you can, create things that make you happy, the happiness might just be contagious to its viewers. <3

...I think I should draw some more Good Omens sometime soon. I miss those guys and they are dear to me :)

#tw mental health #good omens #jojo rambles #not to get too dramatic about myself on a post. I just wanted to share some thoughts aloud :)#and in the hopes that maybe someone will learn from my journey and not make the same mistakes I did

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watermelonsugacry · 2 years

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What was the trope 1D band mate!Reader had in the steal my girl music video? I could see her dancing around with Harry at the end during the water scene.

ok so after they all come out of the trailer they're all like:

"Where's the director?" Harry starts.

"Who's the director?"

"Do we even know if this guy's legit?" YN questions from her spot between Niall and Harry.

"He's the greatest artist of our generation, apparently." Louis shrugs.

"Maybe, but he's late."

Then Liam points over to their right as a car pulls up into the lot.

And then when Danny assigns them their roles, he tells YN, "You are beauty."

And she's with the rhythmic gymnasts with the ribbon stick thingys. So she's in the middle of those dancers as she sings:

I got it all 'cause he is the one

My mum calls him "Love",

My dad calls him "Son"

Alright, alright

Other clips show her quickly stepping on the tips of her toes as she waves her own ribbon wand around, trying (and comically failing) to keep up with the other dancers.

And at the end of the video when it's raining, there are shots of Harry taking her hand and giving her a spin, both laughing as she falls into his arms. Another shows him behind her as they dance, his arms extended out by his sides and he looks down at her as she moves her body the beat of the song.

BTS clips:

The chimp that partners up with Louis is hanging off of her side. His arms go around her neck in a tight hug and Harry takes a picture of her while she laughs, her nose scrunched up and her eyes squeezed shut.

Before Harry does his shot with the ballerinas, YN can be seen taking his sunglasses off of his face and putting them on herself. The BTS camera man goes over to them for some commentary.

"S'quite hot out here innt?" YN says as she chews her gum, looking up at Harry with an amused smile.

Harry, now sunglasses-less, puts a hand above his eyes to block out the sun. "It's very warm, m'wearing a coat, nobody knows why," he says in a very monotone voice. That is until YN lets out a snort and that leads them both breaking out into a fit of giggles.

And once they've finished shooting, the band gets handed towels. When Harry is handed his, he doesn't think twice about wrapping it around YN first. It goes around the top of her head and shoulders so she's swaddled up in the fluffy towel.

Taglist:

@wobblymug @be-with-me-so-happily @ashtongivesmebutterflies @kiwiskiwiskiwi @darlingdesire @obsesseddd @hopefulwastelandcreation @cacapeepee @breezie-b00 @harrysfolklore @theekyliepage @sunshinemoonsposts @nervousspiderling @tbslonelyhes @tenaciousperfectionunknown @harrystylesrecs @certified-nalayak @itsjustsel @iknowyouthinkimbulletproof @gviosca @behindmygreyeyes @twobluejeans @allisonxmcu @theemeraldbutterfly @jean-love @marvellover-sam @b-reads-things @theekyliepage

#harry x 1dbandmember!reader #since 2010 series #harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles blurb #harry styles x you #harry styles fanfiction #one direction #one direction fanfiction #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #harry styles one shot #harry styles fic #harry styles and reader #harry styles and y/n #harry styles writing

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morallyinept · 3 months

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Shoot: Flaunt Magazine, March 2023, Issue 185

Photographer: Christopher Schoonover

Interviewer: A.E. Hunt

Grooming: Courtney Ullrich

Full interview, behind the scenes, outtakes & shoot photographs below. 👇🏻

Jett's Pedro's Shoots Masterlist

• Cover shot and original images used in the magazine.

• Outtakes and behind the scenes images.

• BTS Video

• Full Interview

PEDRO PASCAL - THAT THUNDER BOLTING SOFT POWER? IT'S NICE

When he wants it to, Pedro Pascal's face can flood the screen with backstory and emotion in little time. In his decade plus working as a 'job-y' actor prior to his breakthrough as Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones, he made indelible impressions in bit roles on network television: such as Eddie, the handsome college freshman who is emphatically introduced as a potential love interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, just before he is suddenly killed off; or as Dio, a sassy goth who interrogates the police more than they interrogate him in NYPD Blue; and as Ed Indelicato, a trim police inspector, in the unaired pilot of Wonder Woman (2011, predating both Warner Bros. Discovery's decision to kill the finished Batgirl and Pascal's batty turn as Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984), and so on.

In few words, slicked back hair, and a parted pencil mustache, the actor's under four minute performance in Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk as Pietro Alvarez, manages to flow between standoffish to disinterested, out of his depth to flirtatious, annoyed to defeated to reluctantly sympathetic. In the director's commentary track, Jenkins observes, "I love that Pedro's leaning way back, there's this idea of 'Soft Power.'" He doesn't need to be up in her face, he doesn't need to raise his voice, yet she needs to appeal to him."

'Soft Power,' aptly describes Pascal's buff-teddy bear duality on and off-screen. The actor also leans far back into his seat as Oberyn Martell on GOT, his shins folded against the table, as an unwanted guest of prim House Lannister. Prince Oberyn moves swiftly, his body is simultaneously soft and taut. He loves indiscriminately of gender and quantity, and can reliably be found in the nearest brothel with or without his 'paramour,' Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma).

It's with this bright and magnetic bisexuality that Pascal caught the eye of mainstream audiences and never let go. In a battle to the death with the 7 ft tall (and seemingly 5 ft wide) 'Mountain,' Oberyn prances around the stage with his long spear to the amusement of himself and the audience, before his head explodes under the weight of his opponent's canister-sized fingers bearing down on the back of his skull through his eyeballs. As with many of his supporting roles and guest appearances, Pascal so fully fills out his space and time on the screen that it's hard to imagine him leaving; when he does, it can be shocking and we miss him.

Then playing the lead character of Mando, a bounty hunter, in Star Wars' The Mandalorian gave him overdue screen permanence, albeit beneath a helmet the character has sworn a creed not to remove. Come Season 3, Pascal's invitingly chiseled, action-figure mug may more liberally come up for air motivated by the character's relationship to his clan's code of honor. And with his new role in HBO's The Last of Us, he is finally a lead laid bare for the audience. He plays Joel, the tough and gruff mumbling protagonist of the beloved video game franchise the show is based on.

Trauma has tensed his character, and made him unusually adept at surviving a zombie apocalypse where cordyceps puppeteer human bodies to spread. Here, Pascal's face is always visible, if always seemingly slicked in a tasteful layer of dirt, and is uncharacteristically uninviting. But events beyond his control put a young girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), in his charge, whose silliness in spite of the always dire situation cracks his hard facade, letting out a glimmer of the old Joel, whose looser face more resembles the actor's own.

Although he is too humble to say so himself, Pascal carries a lot of the series' weight on his character's shoulders, and in his face, a bottomless bag of expressions and storytelling magic tricks. When complimented on his performance, and asked about the acting language he brings to the series, he refuses to highlight his own work, and defers to complimenting that of the show's creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (creator of The Last of Us video games), and his co-star Bella Ramsey.

Fortunately, there is much else to talk about with Pascal, including his family's move to and from Chile, and his many moves around the United States. But perhaps most importantly, he talks about his beloved dog Greta, 'a hottie' with whom he shared the early days of his career in New York.

Beginning the conversation, though, is talk about his fathers' a follower of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left against Chile's then Dictator Augusto Pinochet. His parents fled with the family to Denmark, where they had political asylum, and then to the US. His father is a fertility doctor, and his mother, from whom he eventually inherited his surname, Pascal, was a psychologist.

The actor has called many places home. And at least for the length of the interview, he resides in California.

It sounds like you're in California.

How does California sound?

It sounds warmer than New York? Where do I start?

Where do you start? Where does it all begin?

I wanted to begin by asking a question about dads. My dad watches a lot of your films and shows. You're attached to a lot of passionate fan bases, and I feel like there's a big-

A big daddy issue?

I feel like dads comprise a significant part of your fan base. What has your engagement with dads been like?

It's funny to think about: from being a kind of aspirational working actor for many years to then being a working actor for many years but without any large-scale exposure until Game of Thrones' they weren't specific at all about what that character should sound like, and I remember thinking, 'He should sound like my dad.' Not that my dad goes around with a swashbuckling accent, but I do remember immediately anchoring myself to a sound because I knew Oberyn Martell couldn't have a natural, Orange County, California accent, you know?

I don't even know what my fucking natural accent is. I spent 20 years in New York, and if I'm back there I start to sound like everyone around me in Brooklyn. So I guess it all starts with dad. I guess it begins with dad quite literally.

My dad's family and my family also moved around a lot. You mentioned before that you moved from Texas to Orange County at around 13 or 14 years old. Suddenly you didn't fit in, you felt lonely, and you leaned into movies. I reacted by trying to blend in and performing to the new crowd. I wonder if you developed a...

A need for attention?

That, or if you think moving so many times had any significant effect on how you performed for people in your day-to-day?

As you know from moving around a lot, what you learn to do is adapt. I would say that my older sister, who did all the moving with me, was smarter at that. She really knew how to adapt to her environment and I was different, I would call more attention to myself because I had that kind of need for attention, frankly. That would work for and against me depending on the circumstance, but it couldn't stop me. Look at what it's done to me.

If only I knew then, I would have shut up and gone to medical school! I wasn't smart enough to go to medical school. This fantasy about what if I would have been a doctor is such bullshit.

I'm older now, and I think it's a matter of coming to discover all the influences that different places have had on you and what it means to have moved around so much and not identify any one place as home other than basically where you are when you're there. New York is where I lived longer than I've lived anywhere in my life, but I didn't get there until I was 18 years old. Chile has always been a huge part of my identity, inside of the house I grew up in, and because my parents were fortunate enough to get out [of Chile] when they did, and also fortunate enough to get on a list of pardoned exiles by the time I was eight years old.

So we were able to reunite with our families, we have very big families on both sides. We would continue to go back my whole life. My younger siblings ended up growing up in Chile because my family moved back there when I was like 19 years old, which is part of the reason I ended up in New York for so long. I'm sure I would have crawled back on my hands and knees to Orange County at some point if the option had existed.

But Chile's home. Texas can feel like home because my entire childhood was there. Orange County just feels like trauma. [laughs] Not actually. I actually had a great time in High School. I went to high school in Los Alamitos and I loved it there. That's a long-winded answer to a question you didn't really ask. Anyways, are you in Brooklyn?

Bushwick.

I guessed it! I moved out to Red Hook in March 2002.

Was the giant IKEA already there?

The IKEA hadn't gotten there yet. It was imminent, imminent, imminent. And I was pretty north of the IKEA. I was just off of Union Street so I would take the F train to Caroll Street, step onto Smith, make a left on Union and walk literally straight to the river, cross over to the BQE, and then get to the river where Union St. ended and [there I lived] in this literally lonely building with two empty lots on both sides and an abandoned playground behind it, and the river in front of it. This four-story, weird little, it looked like something out of a grim little fairy tale, some kind of urban storybook or something.

It was right around when things just started to suggest gentrification. A block away somebody I became very close to actually, Helen and Selena Couloufacos, had opened a gourmet food store [Helen's Fabulous Cheesecake] where they had these famous cheesecakes, and they'd feed them to me when I was too broke to feed myself. Me and my dog actually. That's all to say that there was this radius of energy that was so amazing and comforting in a pretty rough time, right after 9/11, and me really struggling to keep my head above water in New York and get after it and everything. Now, I think I heard from an old neighbor that the building just sold, so who knows what they're going to put there.

When you had nothing else you and your dog ate cheesecake.

Gourmet.

It's bold to have a dog in New York.

It was rough. I felt so bad for her. She was the love of my life actually. People in the neighborhood would help me out and walk her when I was doing a double shift, brunch and dinner in Times Square, which was quite a schlep from Red Hook.

Was Red Hook as hard to get to and out of?

It was an easy taxi ride, but I didn't always have money for a cab. You get on the Brooklyn Bridge, jump right on the BQE and the BQE dumps me out right where I was. It was fast in a cab. And if it was a weekend, as you know, they reroute those fuckin' trains man! You get out of work at like midnight, 1 AM, and you should be able to get home in 30 minutes and it takes like 3 hours to get home. Those were brutal nights that I remember.

Talking about performing for others reminded me of that Marlon Brando interview with Dick Cavett, where Brando is analyzing in real-time the ways Cavett is himself acting, saying acting is not an art but just something everyone does in their day-to-day.

My observation with that interview: I feel like Brando is being confrontational because people ask him so many questions about acting. But then again, he's positioning himself to be asked those questions, and it's such an interesting conflict that is incredibly demonstrated there. There's so much mystery to [acting] and yet at the same time, it's completely pragmatic.

Acting can be as completely procedural as getting an A on an essay in a High School English class or learning how to play an instrument practice makes perfect! But the achievement of the magical thing, or the constant sense of dissatisfaction that drives you to keep pushing yourself. It's all of those things. He's the north star of acting for so many of us, and you can kind of see that being that good, and that famous, takes its toll.

Has fame taken any toll on you?

I think in a practical way [fame] really isn't normal. That's the conflicted relationship that like a child has to seeking attention. When they get the attention, it doesn't feel natural. But it's very exciting. I guess I'm always kind of in denial about it. Like you ask that question and I'm like, 'What are you asking me that question for?' and you're like, 'You're famous!' I'd be like, 'You're wrong.'

I think you are famous.

You're wrong! It hasn't taken its toll at all [groans in exaggerated pain].

Before we get too far away from her, what was your New York dog's name and what breed was she?

Her name was Greta. She was like a Pit mixed with an American Staffordshire Terrier. She was the most attractive fucking dog. She was like a seal with floppy ears, and this kind of, it wasn't black and white, but espresso, almost purple brown [coat] with a white river that separated her temple, a snow-white neck and a pig pink belly, these white socks, and this little white tip at the tip of her tail. she was such a hottie. She was the coolest dog, man.

Do you have any dogs now?

I got a dog out of shelter many years ago and found him a home. I considered keeping him and then realized he was not into having to move around so much. Then I found him the perfect place. I've always had this weird worry that while I do love dogs generally, I'll never get over Greta. No other dog will live up to her! I'm setting them up for failure!

I could keep asking about Greta, but time is limited and I should probably ask about your latest roles.

Oh, right! We should probably talk about The Last of Us.

What was it like to study a video game performance in The Last of Us, which is the combination of so many different elements?

I was more excited about discovering the world and how fun it would be if I had the fucking skill to play the game. It's funny to get into the details of it. I didn't have time to get good at it, to see how it unfolded, which is why I depended on my nephew, who was so good at it. He would play it to get me further and toward the story points. I wanted to understand the emotional tone of the world, not necessarily just the character of Joel, to kind of put those puzzle pieces together and see how much it could activate my brain to deal with what was so available on the page.

Craig Mazin's a brilliant screenwriter. I feel like he knows the medium better than most. So much of the work is already done. I was frankly just curious about the game and in that curiosity discovered Troy Baker's incredible authorship of the character that I needed to put together for myself. I feel like I couldn't have done it without what he had already done. Like it was a character in a book. How a writer describes the internal monologue of what a character ís going through is sort of how detailed the motion capture performance is. It was a great guide.

Any specific things that carry over?

It was amazing that Craig and Neil were so confident in handing [the role] over [to me]. When I think back on it, they're nuts! Where are you getting your faith? It was a little strange. If anything, I was always being reminded to bring more of myself to it. But specifically, there was a physical presence that I thought was very very important and that could be completely lost on audiences watching the show, but it was definitely essential to me to anchor myself into the skin of the character that I drew directly from Troy's performance and the visuals of the game.

It's just like putting information into your brain and not necessarily knowing how to organize it, but just absorbing it and hoping it's going to help you. Believe what you're doing and be believed. You don't necessarily know if it's going to work. It was just the totality of it that I wanted to take in, and have that consciously in some instances and unconsciously in others inform what I was doing.

I think you bring something unique to the character that was not there in the video game Joel. There's a complex resentment that can be read in so many of your gestures and expressions.

Trauma and grief are such layered and textured things and so much of it is a mystery to us the way it shapes us. That's really well drawn with the character simply by circumstance: how the game starts and the story starts and it's something that Craig really leaned into in the adaptation. He saw these golden nuggets of emotional trauma. He knew how to nourish it on the page.

As wonderfully executed as it is when you read what Craig writes on the page, it is almost like reading a book and the internal thoughts and emotional tone of the character and emotional movement of the episode are so written out for you that it really does get all the work done, to be honest.

You're very humble.

No, I'm serious I'll send you one they'll have to publish one of the scripts so that people can understand how much of a river of language, which you usually do not get from television or movie scripts, come through the technical aspects of interior, exterior, cut to this, cut to that, etc...

But I also think there's a rich language to how you specifically are reacting to things, the way you very slowly and reluctantly open up to Ellie as an actor.

It's so clear what's going on, you know? There is incredible story structure that starts with the game, and the adaptation takes every opportunity to flesh stuff out. There might not be a bunch of Molotov cocktails being thrown or a hundred different ways of killing infected and choking people out, but the story points and the opportunity for it to be expanded on is what they're doing. Essentially the relationship between this man and this young girl, who reflects his own violence, his world-weariness, and his own kind of basically cynical worldview back at him.

But her cynical worldview hasn't shattered her hope and fascination with the world that she's discovering. So I think ultimately to see a shred of hope and to kind of activate what in his heart he thought was long dead, that died twenty years ago with his daughter, and his failure to save his daughter, is reignited by the character of Ellie. That is a very simple format, but the simplicity of it allows for so much layering in terms of finding hope again and being unwilling to lose that hope again at any cost.

The moment when Joel realizes Ellie has also committed violence that is something intimate that they share is a sort of breakthrough and point of connection for them.

What connects them is a beautiful but also scary thing. In this relationship, what Craig and Neil are doing is basically showing how the relationship between parents and children isn't a two-dimensional thing or there's not one moral compass around it. It's fascinating to share the richness of that kind of relationship with the world of the apocalypse, horror, and action, a very genre-related franchise.

Queerness was a part of the video game series, but Mazin and Druckmann have foregrounded it in the show. In the former, Joel doesn't really engage with Ellie's queerness. I'm not sure if you can answer this without spoilers, but does he engage with it in the show?

In Joel's heart, he's an aspiring musician. As tough as he may come across, and although his skills may be in construction and killing, he wishes he was in Crosby, Stills, & Nash. Heartbreakingly he has more of an artist's heart.

As a single father, I think he would completely accept that Sarah was gay and also with Ellie, it simply it isn't even a moment of pause, it's just, 'Oh, I didn't know that. Makes sense. Moving on.' I guess it's a non-issue for Joel, which I find kind of beautiful in that masculine archetype.

That brings me to Pedro Almodóvar's upcoming queer cowboy short film, Strange Way of Life, in which your character is in love with another cowboy played by Ethan Hawke. I imagine this character is a kind of deconstruction of some of the masculine archetypes you've played in the past, including Joel?

Have you seen Almodóvar's films?

Yeah.

He was one of my biggest influences when I got a little older. I remember seeing Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown as a teenager with my family as a kid. He's one of my family's most beloved filmmakers. So it was an opportunity to get to work with one of if not my favorite filmmakers. Anything that he does, whether it's more dramatic, comedic, or thriller, is very personal to him. But in this piece, as in Dolor y Gloria [Pain and Glory], I feel there's a very personal expression that he is asking me to step into.

This is the case even in wearing his colors. I've got this bright green denim jacket and red plaid underneath. I hadn't even realized it until later, when I wrote him and said, 'You're putting your colors on my body.' And he's like, 'Duh.' Stepping into something that is personal to him and achieving that for him, what that means takes care of itself in the telling. Whether it's breaking down tropes that you find in westerns or masculinity, sexuality between men, love. If you're anchoring yourself to a truthful telling of the story you're inherently expressing all of those things honoring them, deconstructing them, questioning them.

Was it easy or difficult for you to act attracted to Ethan Hawke?

Very easy. That's a dumb question! Think about staring into those steel fucking blue eyes. Brown eyes are great! Chocolate chips! But, you know, that steel blue stare of his. Oh god, I don't mean to make Zoolander references while talking about this film.

It seems from past interviews that you saw a lot of R-rated films when you were young. Were there any that disturbed you so much that you had to look away?

It's so hard to look away. I remember the ones that gave me nightmares for sure. I had a real taste for horror and still do. I just think it's a safe thrill-seeking kind of energy, like rollercoasters knowing that nothing real is going to happen to you but you're not convinced of that because of how scared you are.

My parents would fall asleep and I would have already looked up Children of the Corn coming on at like 11 at night on HBO. Turning it on and putting it on mute and hoping I wouldn't get caught and scaring the shit out of myself. I guess I found it thrilling in some cases, and in others, I really regretted it because it really gave me nightmares. But I couldn't help myself.

In your Wired interview, you expressed some guilt about your relatively new success and living 'capitalistically.' In that regard, how do you think someone with your fame and power can live effectively and responsibly?

I don't think there's any one way. I think there's an endless amount of ways that you can make your responsibility, be open to, and discover and make use of or not. I personally believe that, while not religious and not growing up in a church, and not having that influence shape my mind, there is still a moral obligation at the center that drives me to do good.

That doesn't make me an activist. It doesn't make me talented in that regard, as far as figuring out how to make a contribution. But just meaning to [make a contribution], and deciding to when and where, if possible, even in a personal way, even in a small way in the day-to-day, just treat people with respect and protect the underdog.

Jett's Pedro's Shoots Masterlist

#pedro pascal #jose pedro balmaceda pascal #pedro pascal shoot #pedro pascal magazine #pedro pascal interview #pedro pascal photoshoot #pedro pascal flaunt

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theharddeck · 2 months

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sending in a ⭐ for coyote x cross's most recent chapter. dealer's choice on what you'd like to share 😌

ames @laracrofted

the love i have for coyote x cross!!

okay so we're going with this scene before things get too too heated--the makeout with Cross on the counter and Javy in front of her

Javy pulled a long breath in through his nose, his shoulders rising as he pushed away from where he’d been leaning on the counter to stand in front of you. One of his hands ghosted over your knees, now digging into his stomach, and you parted them, so he could stand closer to you. It was kind of like that first night on your stoop, where the steps had given you extra height you didn’t have normally, but this time Javy was physically between your legs, and you decided that was nice too. His other hand was on the back of your neck, his thumb stroking up your jaw as he cradled your head with the rest of his hand. “Why isn’t the weekend longer?” Javy mumbled between kisses, his words lingering between your lips. The momentary separation caused by his words gave you an excuse to kiss the corner of his mouth, then down his jawline.

it is SO important and real to me that Javy Machado is a man who likes kissing. He's not someone that sees it as a warmup or a precursor to sex, or something he gives a partner to make her feel cherished, I feel it in my SOUL that not only is he a good kisser, he loves kissing. after any time apart, he wants to be sitting on the couch and making out for a couple hours. if you're slowdancing at someone else's wedding and you try to press a quick kiss to his lips halfway through the song, he's holding you close and kissing you until someone (probably Mickey) yells that there are children present.

am i projecting here, 10000%, but i think just the intimacy is really appealing to him. I think he likes to be so close, likes to be sharing air, likes to be tasting you. and when it comes to sex, I think he likes being edged a bit, so building up all that passion and heat and sweetness and keeping it PG in a kiss is absolutely his vibe. he's savoring it, relishing and reveling, and i love him sm for that.

send me a ⭐ for director's commentary

#misskielanswers #javy machado #javy coyote machado

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laiqualaurelote · 3 days

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star emoji (i'm on pc) for all the men and women merely players?

thank you for this ask for fanfiction director's cut! any director's commentary for all the men and women merely players is going to be insufferably long, especially as it involves literal directors, but I'm going to focus on one of my favourite parts to write, the Hamlet chapter.

stop! Hamlet time

The first thing to know about me is that I am a massive Hamlet nerd. I've studied it academically and watched it multiple times onscreen and onstage, in multiple languages, including Chinese and Lithuanian (I do not speak Lithuanian). Hamlet is a pivotal play in the structure of this fic - it is the "turn" in the magic trick of the "pledge, turn and prestige".

There are seven past/potential Hamlets in this fic: Nate, Isaac, Colin, Dani, Sam, Jamie and Roy. Even though Nate is the one who ends up actually playing Hamlet, what I wanted to set out here is that every single one of them could have been Hamlet, a very different kind of Hamlet, and it's rather a question of when in their lives they could have played this role. Hamlet is one of those paradoxical roles where you need a ton of experience to do it well, yet by the time you gain that experience you might be considered too old (textual clues indicate Hamlet is in his 30s). There are exceptions, of course: Ben Whishaw played Hamlet at 23, Ian McKellen at 84. I imagine Roy played Hamlet before he was ready, when he did not fully understand the role; Sam, similarly, is too young here and Jamie too immature. This is why the role eventually goes to Nate, who intrinsically understands Hamlet best of anyone in the company because of his own existential self-hatred. The one thing he lacks - and that Roy and Jamie have in abundance - is the main character syndrome that Hamlet possesses. He gains this in later chapters, but his insecurity around it leads to disaster. Anyway, my point is that there is no such thing as a single perfect Hamlet because all the Hamlets are valid.

The title of this chapter is "a little more than kin, and less than kind", which is the first line Hamlet speaks in the play. He's using it as a veiled insult of his mother's abrupt marriage to his uncle so soon after his father's death. This chapter deals very heavily with kin - in the sense of family ties, especially parental ones - and kind, in the sense of kindness but also in the sense of being like one another, of the same kind. I think a lot about how Shakespeare is performed, and what kinds of people get to perform Shakespeare, and this chapter explores that.

We open with Nate's dream of playing Anita in West Side Story (a nod to show canon), mixed with his memory of what he perceives as his father's rejection of him. (This is one of the earliest scenes I wrote for this fic, before we got more of an insight into Nate's actual relationship with his father, which was a lot less antagonistic than many of us anticipated). The epigraph to this chapter is from Gertrude to Hamlet: "Do not for ever with thy vailed lids/ Seek for thy noble father in the dust". This is what Nate is doing in this fic, and Ted, and Trent, and Jamie - whether they intend to or not, they've all got their heads down, seeking their fathers in the dust.

Used to be I didn’t know fuck-all about Shakespeare. Where I come from, if you talked about shit like that, they’d rip the piss out of you. I’d have done it myself. I got into a lot of fights back then. Someone’s trying to vex me, I beat the shit out of them. Sometimes I just get so mad and I don’t know where to make it go. You know? Nah, you don’t. Not by the looks of you. I’d probably have beat the shit out of you back then, if I’m honest.

This is Monologue No. 5, Isaac's (the monologues are numbered after the number each player wears in the show). The difference between a monologue and a soliloquy is that a monologue is a speech by a single character, but there may be others onstage; in a soliloquy that character is alone. ('To be or not to be' is strictly speaking not a soliloquy but a monologue, as there are other characters eavesdropping on Hamlet). The four monologues in this chapter all allude to Trent as the invisible, silent listener. In contrast, Jamie delivers Soliloquy No. 9 because he is truly alone.

Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war. Well that’s fucking epic, Miss Jameela, I said. Well why don’t you take a look at the rest of it, she said. And when I spoke the words out loud it was like something I could pour my rage into. Nothing fancy about it. It were right on. Turned all that anger into something to lend your ears to.

Isaac's entry point to Shakespeare is Antony's speech in Julius Caesar. This was a parallel I had initially intended to give to Roy, who has a clear affinity for Shakespeare's soldier characters, but after Isaac's captain speech in Sunflowers, I realised it should go to him. Isaac, like Roy, has rage issues, which he learns to channel into his acting; like Roy, he comes from a working-class background (I imagine them both being from council estates in South London) and came to acting through community theatre, which is under threat in the UK today because of funding cuts (Christopher Eccleston wrote movingly about this after the closure of the Oldham Coliseum, which was where actors like Bernard Cribbins got their start).

I’m no orator, yeah? Just a plain blunt man that loves his friends.

This is nearly word-for-word what Antony says in his speech at Caesar's funeral, which ironically demonstrates that he is a skilled orator - he deliberately casts himself as "plain" and "blunt" against Brutus' sophistry and succeeds in alienating his opponent in the audience's eyes. This leadership quality of Antony's is reflective of Isaac's own captaincy style - he's a "plain blunt man that loves his friends", even if he can't bring himself to tell them in so many words, and that is how he keeps his team together.

Nate contemplates this. It’s not exactly that they’re short on skulls in the apocalypse. Probably be easier than making one out of papier-mâché, which he’s had to do for a lot of their less scavengeable props, and which is a bit trickier when you have to make your own glue. The problem, of course, is getting the flesh off. How long would you have to boil human bone to get it clean? Beard probably knows. Nate should check with him.

This is morbid - but also, I assure you, a completely accurate depiction of how single-minded props people can be.

Colin strikes a pose with his imaginary skull. “Alas poor Yorick! I knew his fellatio.”

This was an actual piece of graffiti I once saw etched above a fly floor.

I only figured it out when we did Twelfth Night in sixth form. It was an all boys’ school, so some of us had to do the girl roles. I got Viola, the lead. Thought that was tidy. Only at the end I had to kiss the boy playing Orsino.

Colin's monologue is based on a real anecdote, but in reverse; I knew someone who played Orsino in a mixed school, so he had to make out repeatedly with the girl playing Viola and it did absolutely nothing for him and that was how he discovered he was gay.

It’s funny that we’re doing this now. You a journalist, and me telling you all this. I fantasised about it sometimes, you know, telling everyone. I had nightmares about it. Could’ve gone on not saying anything after the world ended, but then I figured, if I might die any moment, I want to die having lived as a whole person.

I did not think I could top Colin's coming-out scene in the show, so I chose to let it have already happened in this AU. (I then retroactively decided it took place during the one and only time the Richmond Players performed Chekhov.) In contrast, it's implied that Trent still hadn't come out prior to the apocalypse, and that he is inspired to do so to Colin here.

“If he’d just made up his mind earlier it could all have been over by Act Two,” Roy is saying. “Macbeth would’ve done it. Othello would’ve done it. Fuck, even Romeo would’ve knocked Claudius off before making a puppet show about it.” “But that’s why they’re tragedies, you see,” Trent argues. “They’re all in the wrong story. Hamlet wouldn’t have killed Desdemona, or assumed Juliet was dead based on hearsay.”

I am quite fond of "the tropes are hungry and the hero is in the wrong goddamn story" discourse. There's no point complaining that Hamlet the play is too long and the hero needs to make up his mind. He can't, because he's Hamlet! that's the tragedy.

When I was a boy, there was this travelling theatre company that went around the vecindades, and they performed Shakespeare in the courtyards. We sat on our doorsteps and watched them. In the last scene they threw a big party, and they knocked on all the neighbours’ doors and brought them out to dance. I thought, if this is what theatre is like, then theatre is life!

The play in Dani's monologue is based on the vecindades staging of Othello by Arturo Ramírez and Martín López Cruz (an anachronistic reference, since it took place in Mexico City in 1988, meaning that Dani would not actually have been alive to see it). I'm fascinated by this particular site-specific staging because it was so calibrated for the vecindades, literally bringing the action to their doorstep - it was a staging that drew on the sense of community in these multi-family dwellings but also implicated said community in the tragedy, because they all ended up witnesses to Desdemona's murder. (A headcanon for this AU is that Dani played Desdemona opposite Sharon in the Richmond Players's gender-bent version of Othello).

On the one hand, Dani is the least likely candidate among the seven, because he is fundamentally too cheerful to play Hamlet. On the other hand, I think he would have turned the entire thing into a telenovela, which I for one would have loved to see.

“If your director, your lead actor and your stage manager are in a burning house right before your show is about to start, who do you save first?” Trent hazards: “The lead actor?” “Exactamundo, Aureliano Segundo! By the time the show’s about to go on, you don’t need the director any more, and your stage manager can take care of themself, or they wouldn’t be your stage manager.”

Again, a joke I've heard among production managers (who are always joking about disasters because a big part of their job is crisis prevention) but one that also reveals how what Ted views as a show of confidence might be interpreted by Nate as hurtful neglect. Also, a One Hundred Years of Solitude reference! No reason, I just always have Aureliano Segundo on the mind.

Did you know that the first recorded performance of Hamlet took place in Africa? English sailors performed it off the coast of Sierra Leone. Some people don’t believe this.

The earliest recorded performance of Hamlet was allegedly in 1607 on board an East India Company ship, The Dragon, lying off the coast of Sierra Leone, though the authenticity of the record has been called into question by some scholars. It would, however, have been performed at the Globe earlier in the 1600s. It's just interesting to think of the already-global nature of the play, even in its infancy, and of Shakespeare as a cultural accessory to colonialism.

I thought you have to sound British when you do Shakespeare, so I tried to do this RP accent, like I heard on BBC. And it was so bad. My father was helping me film the tape and he had this look on his face. I said “Daddy, I got to do it like this. They got to know I can play their roles the way they want.” And he said, “No, Samuel. You got to let them know that the way they want is your way.” So I did the monologue in my own accent, and we sent in that tape. And I got in.

Accent work in theatre is a sensitive subject that is quite close to my heart (though I live in the UK, I'm not British and don't have an English accent, which is something I'm always conscious of). Also: what does a decolonial approach to Shakespeare look like? Is it even possible? Is that what Sam's doing here? Questions, questions.

The fandom discourse around accents was also at the forefront of my mind when I was working on this chapter, because of an ask I had received about writing Jamie's POV - the asker was (rightly) concerned about how I would be depicting the Mancunian accent, as many in fandom were phoneticising it, which is considered offensive. This chapter contains five distinct character voices and for each one I listened to/read multiple sources to find subtle ways to depict the unique elements of that voice accurately and respectfully.

People always assume I want to play Othello. And I mean it is a great role, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to do Othello. I don’t want to do Aaron. I want the roles that everyone is up for. I want to do Hamlet. I want to do Romeo. I want to do Lear.

This is, IRL, what Toheeb Jimoh is doing! He's played Romeo, he's playing Hal in Henry IV, I can't wait to see what he takes on next.

This is also a complete coincidence (I conceptualised this chapter before S3E7 aired) but Nonso Anozie, who plays Sam's father Ola, holds the Guinness World Record for the youngest actor to play King Lear professionally, aged 23 in a 2002 RSC production. That's why I made Lear the favourite play of Ola in this AU, and had Sam make the (otherwise quite off-beat) choice of Cordelia's monologue for his RADA audition tape.

You know, when Orlando first comes onstage, he is talking about his father, who is dead. I don’t know if you could tell, the first night when you saw me in the role, but I almost could not do it. I almost could not speak those lines, because I do not know if they are true.

While it is left open-ended in the fic if Sam's parents are still alive, I like to think that they are. I like to think that he makes it back to Nigeria eventually - perhaps even soon after his successful run as Hamlet in the fic's epilogue, when international ship travel is revealed to be back on the cards - and that he sees them again.

“Am I a coward?” says Nate softly. [...] “Who calls me villain?” It is as if Nate is outside himself, his mouth speaking words unbidden, his nerveless fingers letting the book fall. “Breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' the throat, as deep as to the lungs – who does me this?”

When I was watching Nate's villain arc in S2, these lines from Hamlet blazed across my mind, and from that moment on I always subconsciously associated Nate with Hamlet, but a Hamlet who loathes himself to a nigh paralysing degree. Nate may fancy himself a villain of Richard III's ilk, but he simply does not have the evil chops. He's just insecure, indecisive, prone to seeing insult when there is none.

He’s watching himself now. He’s standing across from himself as he delivers the lines seared into his brain, fascinated and horrified. He watches his own throat work, sees the spit fly, feels it strike beneath his eye and roll down his cheek like a tear.

Mirrors are significant in Hamlet - it is, after all, the play that gave rise to the idea of art holding a mirror up to nature - and I wanted to find a parallel for Nate's ritual of spitting at his reflection, which was hard, because mirrors are not abundant in a post-apocalyptic AU. I found the answer in a stage direction from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, in which Hamlet spits at the audience, then wipes his face as if his spit has been blown back at him by the wind.

Nate's flashback to what really happened with his parents fills in the blanks for the reader - his father pushing him away wasn't rejection, but his last act of love for Nate. And Nate knows rationally that there was nothing he could have done to save them, but he will always be haunted by having been the one to walk away.

A terrible emotion swamps Nate's chest. A little more than hope, and less than fear. “The play’s the thing,” he says.

"A little more than hope, and less than fear" is a callback to the chapter title "a little more than kin, and less than kind".

The full line that Hamlet says is "The play's the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." He's conceived a play-within-a-play to prove Claudius' guilt and provide him with the impetus to actualise this revenge business.

Throughout this chapter, the question of whether a play is "real" or "not real" comes up repeatedly - Colin: "I was scared of what it meant if it wasn’t acting. If it was real"; Dani: "And they say, but that is not true. Theatre is only pretend"; Sam: "Maybe one day I will see him again. And all this will only have been lines in a play". And of course a play isn't real, a play is only pretend. Ted Lasso isn't real. This fic isn't real. But that's not to say they're not holding up a mirror to our reality, the reflections in which have the power to affect us and shape us and change us in very real ways. That's the thing about plays. The play's the thing.

#fic ask game #procrasktination #ted lasso #ted lasso fic #shakespeare #hamlet #long post

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oboetemasuka · 2 days

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(A little bit of a delayed ask lol, but) can I have director's commentary on Betrayal, your counterattack drabble 😤

Gladly! As you know, "Betrayal" is directly based on your first drabble, but with Amane being more closed off.

I wrote this one entirely digitally, so I don't have any existing notes to pull up. I did annotate your drabble a little more, though.

My commentary is in pink.

I'll cross-reference your drabbles in blue text.

(cw for discussions of Amane's cult/abuse mindset as well as sketches of the injuries)

Mahiru walked through the open door to Shidou's cell, holding two trays of breakfast in her hands. Shidou nodded and gestured to a table, and Mahiru set the trays down.

Amane woke as she came in with breakfast.

When I was rereading your drabble for the purposes of making this, I only realized then that Amane was in bed and not in the dining hall.

She looked over at the patients resting on opposite sides of the room, with their injured sides by the respective walls. Uniforms cut for ease of movement, not that they would be moving much. Mahiru had cut her own sleeves during the brief moment of freedom (at Shidou and Yuno's suggestion) so she could help out. Every free hand counts.

The two prisoners' visible injuries are on opposite sides of each other. Pretty convenient for a visual.

I figure the uniforms would be tough enough that it usually isn't worth the effort to cut them every time, but now that two people are in critical condition, they have to make sure they aren't aggravating their injuries. And while they were at it, it'd be better for Mahiru to be free as well.

The uniform cutting is further explored in the "restricted existence" side story.

I've sketched a few concepts of the cut restraints.

Mahiru noticed that Amane's head was turned towards the wall. Could she be awake? She quietly approached and took a seat.

"Oh, Amane-chan… are you-"

“Oh, sweetheart…!” Mahiru rushed over to her. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

Get interrupted.

"Shiina Mahiru. Why did you betray me?" Full-name basis? Amane's words stung.

Maybe I didn't need to spell out the full-name basis, but… just to be sure.

In canon, Mahiru is the only one whom Amane still addresses with honorifics.

"Betray? What do you mean?"

"Why did you take Kirisaki Shidou's side?" Her voice sounded choked.

Trying not to cry…

"I wasn't taking sides… what is this about?"

Amane turned her head and locked her eye on Mahiru. "You let this happen to me." She gestured to her eyepatch.

“It’s this. It’s all of this. It’s sinful. I took it off last night, but he must have…”

Forget the injuries, you let Kirisaki Shidou put this on me.

Mahiru felt a pang of regret for asking Yuno to come to her cell. "I'm sorry… I would have stayed in Yuno's cell if I knew-"

This is the guilt that Mahiru constantly deals with.

As Fuuta puts it (chapter 6):

If it wasn't for you, someone might have saved me sooner! Yuno might have heard the attack right away.

He doesn't say all of it out loud, but Mahiru knows exactly what he means.

"You think it doesn't keep me up at night? Wondering what it would have been like if things were different? If I was the one alone, if Kotoko-chan had attacked me first, if you and Amane-chan didn't have to go through all of this because I wanted a little comfort? If…"

"That does not matter. You let Kirisaki Shidou take my trial from me."

Forget the injuries, they're just a trial.

Amane put a thumb under her eyepatch to lift it. Mahiru gently pushed her hand away from her eye. "I can't let you-"

With a careful motion, Mahiru held it in place and took Amane’s hands into her own. She’d been picking up on the signs ever since they arrived here together, and a final wave of understanding washed over her.

“I can’t let you do that.”

"Let go!" Amane shrieked, slapping Mahiru's hand with her other hand. Mahiru withdrew her hand and held it at a distance, then she looked over her shoulder and shook her head so Shidou wouldn't intervene.

Amane’s expression twisted, though words came out far more frantic than fiery. “Let me go.”

Far more frantic than fiery indeed. In this case, because of the betrayal, she does fight back. Mahiru has to let go, or things will escalate. She also makes sure Shidou doesn't intervene (and he trusts her) because it'd just be a disaster if he did.

"I'm sorry. But I care too much to see you hurt."

Mahiru didn’t. “I’m sorry. Amane, you need this treatment.”

"If you care about me, then why would you see me off to my doom?"

"I don't want you to die."

“I know. But I can’t watch as you… I can’t sit by again while someone…”

"That is not your place—or that doctor's—to decide. This is my trial alone." She blotted the tears from her left eye. "All I wanted was to be a good girl… No matter how difficult it was to achieve, no matter how painful the trials… and now I can't even hope for that now…"

“That is not your decision to make. That is not any human’s decision to make.”

Take this example from the rp, where Marchleader Amane helps Eyepatch Amane sit up after the tag-grabbing incident. (I am not linking it for everyone's sanity):

But once her emotions settle, she realizes. They're going to punish me. I couldn't make it through this trial. I couldn't stand. I couldn't denounce that... monster. I was going to plead for mercy. "I'm such a bad girl..."

Mahiru took a moment to figure out what to say. "It's not too late, Amane-chan. You have your whole life ahead of you… well…" She realized Amane wouldn't hear out any more concerns about her health. "…I'm trying to be a good girl too. I've done terrible things… Someone I loved is dead because of me. Is it too late for me?" She looked at Amane hopefully.

“Listen, Amane. Can you do me a favor? I’m trying to be a good girl, too. To make up for something awful, I need to make sure you’re alright."

Appeal to what concerns Amane.

Amane took her time to answer. "N-no… It's not."

"Then can you help me out here?" Quiet. "I'd need you to stay alive to help." Still quiet. "Can we be good together?"

"Can you help me? Can we be good together?”

Mahiru almost thought that Amane was ignoring her until she mumbled under her breath.

A long pause followed. Amane’s voice spoke up, ever so gently.

Sitting in silence has turned into a sort of love language, hasn't it? To think it all began with your first drabble…

"Shiina Mahiru, You are asking a lot of me. But I care about you very much."

"Hm? I missed that last part. Can you speak up?"

"Oh, did you say you care about me?" "No."

"I said, I see very much potential in you. A lot of innate goodness in you. I suppose, for your sake, I can bend the laws of my faith."

“I suppose I can consider it.” She added quickly, “for the sake of your redemption. Of course.”

Amane makes compromises because she cares about people ;_;

"Thank you, Amane-chan."

It would be a long way to forgiveness, but at least there was a way.

I think this would be enough to put OoA back on track. The tag-team to help Fuuta would probably be more strained, though. Amane would probably find out that Mahiru told Fuuta to listen to Shidou, and it wouldn't be pretty.

#milgram #amane momose #mahiru shiina #asks #ask game #bad things happen to amane #cw cults #cw child abuse

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professorspork · 5 months

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fanfic director’s commentary ask: forever my favorite. so I can be for you what you want to see.

Fighting with Nora is easy.

(—er. Alongside. Fighting alongside Nora is easy. Emerald’s done fighting with these people. Very done.)

It’s weird, because Emerald’s finding working with a full team to be a real adjustment. When battles get big enough to merit it, she’s used to keeping to the sidelines to use her Semblance for nefarious purposes, or, in a jam, used to having Mercury’s six—literally, because all the forward momentum from his feet-first style always left his back wide open. Figuring out where to put herself so that Oscar can use her shoulder as a fulcrum as he dodges, or trying to aim for the Grimm Ren isn’t already shooting (ugh)—it’s taking work.

But somehow, it’s not work for Nora. Nora seems to anticipate with perfect ease how Emerald will move or what she’ll be doing; Nora bobs and weaves around their ragtag little band with her war hammer like it’s breathing.

It doesn’t bother Emerald until it does, and she means to bring it up casually but there’s never a good time. So it just… stews, and stews, until she can’t keep it bottled up anymore.

well first of all writing Emerald POV is always a joy so jot that down. the ways that she'll just... contradict or judge herself for her own thoughts, because she doesn't have the filter to keep them from coming out in the first place but doesn't have the grace or self-possession to move on from them when she misspeaks is one I find massively entertaining, and enjoy deploying in narrative instead of just dialogue to give the whole thing a more Emerald flavor.

as far as this particular moment goes, something that RWBY has always done well is show characterization through combat. that's something I rarely cover in my fics because it's not really my wheelhouse, but I wanted to try and take a stab at it here because I was doing something canon-compliant.

so like. the meat of this story is about how Emerald and Nora are both very codependent people, who came at it from different directions and are trying to grow past it in different ways. I needed an entry-point that would eventually get them talking about this, and how they'd fight Grimm together seemed the most useful way. because we know nothing about how Vacuo's going to go down, it made sense to me to assume the most interaction our survivors would have would be protecting other people on patrols. Emerald isn't a social butterfly; she'll need to be forced into Nora's company, and this was the most reasonable excuse.

and of course Emerald would be hyper-aware of everyone else, because she's still not sure of her role in the group or if she'll be accepted. even if she weren't nervous about that stuff, Emerald is now without Cinder, her lodestar, and Mercury, her constant companion... so how does she function? all of her habits and assumptions have been turned on their head, and it makes her feel clumsy and lonely and awful.

and then she looks over at Nora, who's lost Jaune and all of RWBY and always seemed like kind of a pushover mess who was all about her friends, and she's like... fine? or at least to Emerald it seems that way? and of course Em would obsess over that.

but meanwhile on Nora's end, she's just doing the same thing she's always done: coping and making the best of it, because she doesn't have time to break down or do something else.

#fic what i wrote

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hello-eeveev · 1 month

Text

How to Rest: Director's Commentary—Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is for cozy vibes, further establishing themes, and lightly pushing my grey-ace Caleb Widogast agenda. Chapter 2 Commentary is for discussing where Caleb’s head is at at this point in my timeline for this fic series and why it’s there, and further explaining my grey-ace Caleb Widogast agenda. In fact, I’m realizing that this chapter is kind of a companion piece to On the Nature of Attraction and I’m posting this on its anniversary! What perfect timing!

Let’s get started!

(spoiler warning for the entirely of How to Rest)

The setting for this is New Dawn, aka Exandrian New Year. It’s snowing in Rexxentrum and Essek visits Caleb to welcome in the new year. I imagine that just before this chapter begins, they had a nice dinner. I wrote this back before Mighty Nein Reunited came in and made my fics not canon-compliant, so I was working under the assumption that Beau and Yasha also lived in Rexxentrum, so maybe Caleb and Essek had dinner with them or maybe they stayed in. That can be up to the reader. Either way, it’s time for a fireplace, hot chocolate, and a cat, so it’s cozy vibes all around.

Let’s discuss the cat. I love cats. I don’t think that really leads into the discussion, but I gotta say it. It’s probably also pretty evident in how I wrote the cat. Anyway.

I haven’t written Caleb as adopting any cats of his own yet, and that’s because even this long after the campaign ended (1.5 years), he’s still not quite… settled. In 141, we’re given “six months to a year” before the shadowgast Aeor trip, which is implied to take place after the close of the Ikithon trial, and in my mind, it has always been much closer to that one year mark. So in the continuity of this fic series, Caleb spent the better part of a year dealing with the trial, which is not the most grounding thing to experience, and then he goes to Aeor with Essek for a month or two, during which he has to decide if he is going to risk the entire timeline to bring his parents back. That’s a lot. On both a material and spiritual level. And adopting a cat is big and permanent, and that’s just not where Caleb has been until quite recently. And it’s only now, after all this emotional turmoil has been resolved, that he is even able to start to settle into this life he’s making for himself, but he’s also still learning what that looks and feels like because he has next to no experience with a life of comfort and rest. The closest he got was his childhood, but that was 20 years ago, and even then, his life in Blumenthal is so drastically different from his current one.

That’s where the title “How to Rest” comes from. Caleb doesn’t know how to properly rest and he’s trying to learn how. That’s also why he hasn’t started teaching at Soltryce even though that is very much his plan for the future. He needs to learn to live for himself for a while before he takes on the next big thing. Mentally, I am throwing blankets and pillows at him and begging him to take a nap.

…so yeah. no cat quite yet.

But he does feed the strays, and he’s been doing that long enough that they know where he lives and that he’s a safe person to go to if, for example, they need a warm house to sleep in when it’s snowing in Rexxentrum.

Anyway, that’s a lot of preamble to discuss what is, essentially, 1500 words of Essek and Caleb kissing, but hey. that’s why we’re here :)

I’m not going to do a detailed breakdown of the initial cat section because it would pretty much just be, “hey, here’s a cat doing cute cat things and here’s Essek doing cute Essek things,” and I think that sums it up well enough.

They each drank from their cocoa, and as Caleb lowered his cup, he felt a tentative shoulder against his own. Essek was staring straight ahead, looking nonchalant as their arms brushed. Warmth flared in Caleb’s chest. He leaned further against Essek and caught a glimpse of the corner of Essek’s mouth pulling into a slight smile, despite his best efforts to hide it behind his mug.

It is still early enough in their relationship that Essek is still working out how to be direct, especially when it comes to bids for physical affection, but he’s self-aware enough that his coyness is more playful than it is an actual mask. He’s not really trying to hide his intentions, but he knows he is unable to just express them outright, so he does the “subtle” thing that his brain allows him, knowing that Caleb will understand and reciprocate.

He cupped Essek’s face in one hand and turned it towards him. Smiles such as the one Essek wore now—genuine smiles that touched his eyes and created a small dimple in his cheek—were once a rarity, but they seemed to be appearing with increasing frequency. At least whenever Caleb saw him.

Caleb gets a front row seat to the gradual lowering of Essek’s walls, and he is a big reason why Essek is able to! He makes Essek happy! These smiles are precious for those reasons and because Essek does not get the opportunity to be so genuine or so content most other places.

And something something who else does Essek let close enough—both emotionally and physically—to see all the ways his smile changes his face.

Then there’s cuddling and kissing, and they like each other so much, and it’s all very cute and sweet, but then we get into my grey-ace Caleb agenda. This is for two reasons: 1) set up the plot point for On the Nature of Attraction, and 2) the more grey-ace Caleb content there is, the happier I am.

He leaned forward eagerly, knowing how much closer he could hold him and how much better he could kiss him if they were laying down, without pesky things like knees and legs getting in the way.

This is Caleb’s intention. Nothing more than that. Caleb as the narrator is not obfuscating any secondary motive.

Essek tensed for a moment, as if he were considering something, then pushed them both upright with a small shake of his head.

Essek, however, cannot read Caleb’s mind, and isn’t sure if the motion to lay down is an implication of or invitation for sex. Certainly, the way romantic relationships are talked about would suggest that it is. And when confronted with the (perceived) possibility, Essek learns that his answer is “nope,” and he draws that boundary, which is readily accepted.

And it is because of this boundary that Essek establishes that Caleb realizes that his internal script for anything “romantic” that involves physicality has been very much affected by the Volstrucker training (see: that one tidbit Liam gave us in lockdown-era Talks Machina, that they were taught to be “as sexual as they needed to be” to get results for the Empire) and by his relationship with Astrid and Eadwulf being his main coping mechanism during that time.

I have written in my notes for this chapter that Caleb has this internal script of “lots of kissing leads to intense make-outs leads to, if not sex outright, something more sexual than not.” And while I believe he understood in theory that this does not have to be the case, and that it certainly wouldn’t be the case with Essek this early on in their relationship, it isn’t until this moment that it really starts to sink in. And then he learns that he likes that they can just kiss and cuddle and that it doesn’t have to be a preamble to more sexual things, which he is also starting to get an inkling that maybe there’s some trauma mixed up in there.

and idk i think grey-ace Caleb is neat and considering the ways his trauma impacts that is cool (she says, feeling a great deal of complicated emotion)

Essek leaned fully into it, smiling and hooking his legs over Caleb’s so he was practically in his lap.

One thing I wrote when I was planning out this chapter was “this is a conversation without words.” Obviously, there’s some words still happening, but they’re not terribly explanatory, so they must rely on non-verbal cues.

With his boundary established and respected, and now that he has had a moment to come down from his initial “nope” and recognize Caleb’s action for what it really was—a desire for more physical closeness—Essek is able to respond in a way that meets both their needs.

“I am very happy that you are here,” he whispered. Essek’s fingers curled tighter in Caleb’s hair, and he turned his head and pressed his nose to the side of Caleb’s. “As am I.”

They just like each other so much. And they make each other happy just by being there.

“Sometimes I wish we were back in Aeor,” Caleb said after a while. “Do you now?” Essek sounded amused, if a bit drowsy. “Mm,” Caleb said with a nod. “I miss studying magic with you every day, knowing that you were always close by.” “I could do without the bitter cold and mage-killing monsters,” Essek chuckled. He tightened his arms around Caleb’s shoulders. “But yes. I miss that, too.”

One thing I frequently try to do when writing Caleb’s dialogue is have him say something that’s like, a few steps removed from what he actually means. People talk like this in general, but Caleb’s meaning tends to be a few more layers deep than the average person’s, especially when he is stressed or experiencing heightened emotion. It’s one of the things I like about him; I think it’s funny.

This exchange is a very obvious example of this: Caleb says something, Essek lightly challenges him on that, and then Caleb is able to state more clearly what it is he actually wants. In this case, while it’s still in the frame of Aeor, Caleb is able to tell Essek that he wants to spend more time with him and that he feels better when Essek is nearby. And Essek is able to reciprocate while still keeping it within the “safe” zone of “haha wouldn’t it be nice to be back in Aeor? haha jk… but?” They are starting to build ways of communicating with each other, and this is one of them.

“Where will you go after this?” Caleb asked. “You know I can’t say.” He sighed. “I know. But you will be safe?” “I will, I promise. And I will see you again as soon as I am able.”

And the tragedy of their situation is that Caleb can’t know where Essek is most of the time, only that he will be far away, because that’s the best way to keep them both safe. And yes, Essek promises to be safe, but how much of that is within his control?

“I am afraid,” he said, taking Caleb’s hands from his waist and bringing them up to his lips, “that it is time for me to go.” Caleb groaned and felt his face contort into a pout that was almost embarrassing, except that it made Essek laugh, and it was a sound so beautiful that it washed away any feeling of shame, leaving only warm happiness in its stead. “Soon, Caleb Widogast,” Essek said as he kissed Caleb’s knuckles, voice brimming with fondness.

I love this image. It is so full of affection, particularly on Essek’s behalf. If I could figure out a good and interesting angle, I would draw it. I just think it’s cute and sweet and that’s what we’re really about over here.

Essek kissed him on the cheek. “Rest well.” “Travel safe.”

These are their hopes for each other at this point in time. Essek wants Caleb to have peace and rest, and Caleb wants Essek to be safe while he is alone on the road. They are very normal things to say when parting, but they are being completely earnest here.

So Essek leaves, and Caleb has a one-sided conversation with the cat. So to close out this chapter commentary, I will be showing you this scene again, with the cat dialogue included:

The cat he was hosting for the night, seeming to notice Caleb’s sudden lack of companionship, stood from his spot in front of the fire with a meow, stretched, and padded up to the couch. “Hello.” “Oh, hello. Do you need something from me?” Caleb asked. The cat butted his head against Caleb’s legs, then ran the whole length of his body along his shins, tail curling around them. He meowed again—“I would like pets”—and looked up at Caleb with round, eager eyes. “Oh, come here, Kätzchen.” Caleb scooped up the cat and laid down on the couch with him on his chest. “Thank you for keeping me company.” He scratched the cat’s ears and chin. “I think I must like him rather a lot, hm? To feel his absence so soon after he’s left.” “Perhaps you’re in love with him,” the cat chirruped as he settled into a loaf, paws softly kneading into Caleb’s shirt. “Well, I don’t know if I would say that,” Caleb answered. “Something akin to it, maybe.” The cat pressed forward and rubbed his head along Caleb’s beard, purring loudly. “I think so.” “Probably,” Caleb conceded. “But patience, my friend. These things take time. It is not as simple for everyone else as it is for you.” Caleb kissed the cat on his little forehead and closed his eyes. Purrs rumbled through his chest and ribs, and he let the rhythm lull him into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.

And that’s Chapter 2! I hope you enjoyed! May you all have a nice nap with a purring cat (or whatever your preferred equivalent is).

Until next time!

#this one's less quote heavy than the last one. and probably the future ones #i have a headcanon to discuss. that being:#the grey-ace caleb widogast agenda #and the fact that with the way this chapter is it makes more sense to approach it this way #as a whole rather than line-by-line #long post #eve talks #eve's writing #how to rest #how to rest director's commentary #chattering at birds #shadowgast #caleb widogast #essek thelyss

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armageddon-generation · 2 years

Text

What The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Could Have Been

(All the deleted scenes, cut concepts and studio notes that could've saved this movie)

(Sequel to this post on TASM deleted scenes)

COMPILED FROM:

deleted scene compilation

Comparison to a rough cut

An analysis of an earlier draft, from the International Business Times

Badass Digest’s look at the earlier script

Kevin Feige’s notes on the movie for Sony

BTS footage of Mary Jane scenes

OPENING

“There are too many story lines and we need to choose which ones we are focusing on and lift out the other ones, ie; could reduce father arc to just Roosevelt?

"Could cut out plane crash and Richard destroying spiders”

Young Peter and Harry play chess at the Parkers’ Wake, mentioned in the director’s commentary:

“Peter was this lonely child in this room of adults, and he snuck off to his Dad’s study, and in walked Harry … They started playing chess, it was kind of a metaphor and I can’t remember the exact dialogue, but it was this lovely moment of these boys connecting and finding each-other. [Before this] Their relationship had been all about going to their fathers’ labs … They turn and there’s this silhouetted man in the beginning of his degenerative disease holding onto his cane.”

Starting the movie in Richard Parker’s study (just like hide and seek in TASM) creates a thematic through-line with the first film

Much stronger setup of Harry and Peter’s friendship

Better setup of the disease and Norman’s shadow over Harry and Peter

Ties into Fiege’s recommendation:

“If you cut Richard from the opening and the plane crash maybe you could instead do Harry coming home and seeing Norman at the top of the movie as a cold open.”

TRUCK CHASE

MJ is waitressing at a café during the opening truck chase

“Don’t start with Spider-Man….let the danger/stakes to NYC build first and then have Spider-Man enter the scene heroically.”

“Tone down Paul Giamatti performance, so he seems a bit more menacing and less cartoonish.”

“There could be a better way to reveal that Peter is missing graduation – maybe when you cut Gwen you cut to the wide shot?”

“Tiny note – don’t think Peter would lie to Gwen about sirens --- maybe he just downplays it…”

“Stan Lee Cameo – maybe need a little more emphasis on Peter here trying to get out of his costume and not be in seen…set up a little more the pressure of the principal getting closer and closer to calling his name.”

“Instead of seeing the ghost of Captain Stacy, can just here the voice in Peter’s head and maybe flash back to the last movie? Don’t think we should add Cap Stacy back into car chase.”

Flash at Graduation

Just a cute little character moment, and more continuity from TASM. Webb does these so well

“There is too much back and forth with Peter and Gwen – can we recut the Dim Sum scene so that it doesn’t feel so repetitive of their break-up in the last movie – Can Peter be more honorable and definitive and less wishy-washy?”

TIME JUMP

“There’s an entire year gap between the high school graduation and most of the rest of the film. This year gap makes Peter’s forlorn attitude towards Gwen cute instead of creepy, and it establishes that they’re college students. Gwen’s application to Oxford make more sense – in the finished film it’s like she decided to go to college at the last minute.”

Max’s Mother

Max is looking after his bed-bound mother, who is emotionally abusive - she doesn’t remember or care about her own son’s birthday

Stronger setup of Max’s isolation, more personal than just his rejection by Spider-Man

His freakout here plays better than the one at Oscorp for ‘disrespecting’ Spider-Man

Links to an important deleted scene later on

Gwen and Max in the elevator

“It must be pretty cool, to have the whole world see you like that. I wish I was like him.”

J Jonah Jameson

Peter, now a student at Empire State University, brings his first Spider-Man pictures to JJJ, who gives him a tour of the Daily Bugle offices in Times Square.

We meet Robbie Robertson and JJJ complains that the internet is killing print media

Electro in the Subway / wandering New York

Electro returns home

He finds his supposedly bedridden mother walking, and cashing in on his death

Much stronger, personal reason for Max’s psychotic break as he heads to Times Square

Extended Times Square Battle

“Spidey and Electro’s first fight send them crashing through the Daily Bugle offices and the printing presses-”

JJJ gets his scoop

This could’ve fed into the city treating Max like a freak

Peter Meets MJ while working on his Electro-proof webbing

MJ and her drunkard father have just moved in next door. She builds motorcycles as a hobby and has a spider tattoo on her wrist; she’s a Spidey fan and has a crush on Peter

Peter and Gwen angst in their rooms after Times Square

Harry tells Peter Oscorp is watching him

Cool introduction of the Goblin suit, and we establish the power plant for the finale

More Felicia. Another moment showing Harry’s disease

“He spent more time watching you than me.”

The boys are united in their quest for answers about their dads

“Surveillance scene should be about following Harry not Peter…no one should be following Peter.”

“Harry story feels like the main plot of the movie – Peter should look into the past b/c of Harry – maybe find some photos of them together as kids…use obsession wall more to set up this part of his past not just what happened to parents.”

Feige seems to want the order to go:

Gwen and Peter angst in their rooms

Surveillance scene (focusing on Harry)

Obsession Wall (focusing on Harry)

Spidey vs Copycat

Just a cute Friendly Neighbourhood scene, this movie did them so well

Spidey Confronts MJ's Father

Something we never got from the Raimi version, fitting for this version of Peter. Another cool Neighbourhood moment

DR RATHA

“[In TASM] Dr. Ratha seems to have been killed in deleted scenes, but the actual movie leaves him alive … He shows up in the script for TASM2, filling the same role as Donald Menken... the Oscorp stooge who engineers Harry’s dismissal from the company.

Nice continuity [from TASM]. All of the basic elements of Ratha’s role are in the finished movie, there’s just a different name attached.”

ALTERNATE GOBLIN SUIT BACKSTORY

“In the original script the Goblin suit isn’t for military use but was specifically built in secret to heal/help Norman Osborn [After] Richard Parker wouldn’t give his blood to Osborn (the Parker DNA still being the key to it all). The suit went into Norman’s boathouse where Harry finds it.”

Harry finding the Boathouse parallels Peter finding Roosevelt

Norman making the Goblin suit emphasizes how Harry is being manipulated by his father from beyond the grave

“Don’t like the idea that May tells Peter his parents were spies b/c two seconds later he finds out they are not.”

Gwen is accepted into Oxford

This is such a brief moment, why didn’t we actually see it?

Gwen Writes a Letter to Peter

Replacing the voicemail she leaves him in the Theatrical cut

After escaping Ravencroft, Max meets Harry at his father’s grave

Max considers killing Harry as revenge for his accident

They consolidate their partnership. Doing this at Norman’s grave foregrounds his influence on Harry

Spreading Max and Harry’s union across two scenes is just better pacing, considering they’ve never met before Max’s escape

Gwen visits Aunt May as she’s leaving for Oxford

Gwen meets MJ:

MJ asks how she can find someone like Peter, all the guys she attracts are “dickheads”. Gwen replies “date a nerd”

Aunt May encourages Peter to go after Gwen

MAY: Peter, what is the matter with you? You love this girl with all your heart and soul. Does she know that? Have you told her?

PETER: No.

MAY: Then give her that. The rest of it’s up to her. And you don’t have forever, none of us ever do.

Great character beat alluding to the loss of Ben, foreshadowing Gwen’s death, and setting up “I love you” on the bridge

Another mirror to TASM, where May encourages Peter to pursue his relationship with Gwen (“If there’s one thing you are, Peter Parker, it’s good.”)

Extended birth of the Goblin/ Harry attacks Oscorp

Love the body-horror here

Pumpkin bomb!

Menken's [or Ratha’s] death. Plus it just gives Harry more to do

Alternate final Electro battle

Spidey cocoons Max in his new webbing.

Instead of blowing up, Max is drained and ends up in the river- I prefer Spider-Man not outright murdering his villains

“Spider-Man needs to feel more directly responsible for preventing the planes from crashing.”

“Don’t show New Yorkers looting.”

Peter nearly kills Harry

Harry is still conscious and laughing after Gwen’s death. Peter beats him and nearly impales him with his own Glider

we hear Uncle Ben's words from the first film. He doesn't kill him and tells Harry the serum did it to him.

“Need to underscore capture of goblin…more sirens as you linger on the clock 1;21, 1:22 am (nice touch)”

Peter asks for forgiveness at Captain Stacy’s grave

Much better expression of Peter’s guilt than the ghost

“Like the idea that May finds out he’s Spider-Man – finds his costume instead of just the rosemary harris wink-wink all the time.”

“Maybe intercut the ending montage and hearing Gwen’s speech with someone going into special projects and revealing more easter eggs and see that the rhino case has been broke into and the suit is missing…great way to transition to rhino ending.”

Other stuff that isn’t better:

Peter gives Harry his blood

Although this makes Peter a better friend, it also makes him directly responsible for the creation of the Goblin

Extended Goblin Fight

Harry keeps chasing Peter as Gwen falls and breaks her neck with his own hands

Gwen’s last words encouraging Peter

I prefer her instantaneous death, also Peter quitting for months immediately after she says this makes him a huge dick

Richard Parker approaches Peter in the graveyard:

I’m torn on this one. On one hand it finally gives closure to the ‘Untold Story’ subplot Webb allegedly originally envisioned finishing in Film 1

“With great power comes great responsibility”

Andrew acts the shit out of this scene

However you’d need to keep the opening plane crash to properly pay this off and the Parker Blood Destiny gimmick is bad

Post-credit scene: Norman’s Head

An extension of the 'Special Projects' Easter-Egg vault, Michael Massee's Gustav Fiers visits Oscorp Vault #3. There we see Norman Osborn's disembodied, frozen head. Fiers ends the scene with "wake up, old friend"

Norman actor Chris Cooper said:

“We shot the scene -- it's so weird -- but it didn't make it into 'Spider-Man 2.' I’m sure it would probably have been one of the opening scenes in 'Spider-Man 3' if they had gone ahead. But he was coming back. It's very bizarre, what they came up with.”

TLDR; We could've got a more cohesive, character-focused film driven by Peter's relationship with Harry. A better-developed Electro, more continuity from TASM to stop the film feeling like a reboot, expansion on Harry's illness and Norman's manipulation. MJ could've been our representation of Spider-Man's 'Friendly Neighbourhood' impact, and the worst of the Super Spy Parents would be gone.

It's just a massive, massive shame, man.

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crash-channel · 10 months

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Destroying yourself in the Infinity Pool

2023 sci-fi/thriller

Director Brandon Cronenbreg most definitely is following in his father's footsteps. In that disturbing mind bending story telling with deep underling social commentary way. Although in no way is he just like his father, Brandon is for sure, a beast of his own.

For context I will begin to dive into his most recent movie infinity pool. Which if you haven't seen it was an excellent film and I highly recommend watching it. I will go into some spoilers here to discuss overarching and underling themes I feel are important in this movie. So again if you haven't seen this movie I highly advise you go see it and come back to this article.

Plot: Guided by a seductive and mysterious woman (Mia Goth), a couple on vacation (Alexander Skarsgard, Cleopatra Coleman) venture outside the resort grounds and find themselves in a culture filled with violence, hedonism and untold horror. A tragic accident of hitting a local with their car, soon leaves them facing a zero tolerance policy for crime: either you'll be executed, or, if you're rich enough to afford it, you can watch yourself die instead.

At first James (Alexander Skarsgard) is pretty shocked and disturbed by the reality of being cloned and watching himself die. Then he's accepted into this club in which he starts to forget his anxiety over the experience of what had happened. Being convinced this is a get out of jail card, a path way to be invincible almost. James slowly begins getting high on this power, not realizing that those he's surrounded by what are not the best people. Again and again he watched himself die and loses any empathy that had been there before. Finally Gabi (Mia Goth) sets him up thinking he's attacking someone else with a hood on their head. When she reveals he was about to kill his own clone and he begins to panic realizing it's not the same. Trying to leave the group stops him forcing him to fight his clone with a final blow and he kills his own clone.

I feel that this is commentary on joining the IN-GROUPS. More specifically wealthy or rich class, although it could apply to any popular In-group. I feel like he's saying that when you join these groups a little piece of you dies. The further in you become the more you die and to become the full fledged member you have to kill off that last remaining piece that is you. We get peer pressured into this through society. By the groups themselves wanting us to join. By the systems giving us the options to do that or face consequences that may be damaging or harmful. Society always pushes us to destroy ourselves to be part of the upper class, the popular groups. Even if that means shooting out a bus window and stopping the car in front of the bus screaming come out James!

#horror movie recommendations #horror monsters #classic horror movies #horror movie review #horror #movie ratings #horror movie #movie review #movies #sci fi horror #sci fi #sci fi movies #sci fi thriller #infinity pool #alexander skarsgard #mia goth #cleopatra coleman

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youhideastar · 4 months

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I know you don’t write hockey fics anymore and I totally get why!! Buuutttt if you’re willing, I LOVE the scene in To Be Seen As All Right we’re Sid overhears his As giving a speech to the new guy. Seriously, fav scene ever. Would you be willing to do a directors cut of that?

Awww, thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed that scene from To Be Seen Aright, and sure, I'd be happy to do a director's commentary for it. 💛

So the whole point of this scene is for Sid to overhear the guys saying that he's "hardcore" and describing the kind of submissive that he thinks he is. Everything else is just frosting on the cake.

Eavesdropping scenes are tough, because when you write in limited 3d person, like I pretty much always do, the temptation is to do them ALL THE TIME, because they're the only way your POV character is going to find out what other characters say about them when they're "not there." But if you do it too often, it becomes implausible - in real life, most of us rarely overhear other people talking about us. This is... maybe? the only eavesdropping scene in the whole fic (I can't think of any others but it's been a while since I wrote this!), for that reason. But it needs to exist, because the whole fic is about how Sid is perceived by others--it's in the title!--and he needs to know how he is perceived.

Every year, Sid holds his breath at the trade deadline, but this year, the team stays pretty much intact. They’re headed for the playoffs, which means additions rather than subtractions; in Pittsburgh’s case, a new defender from the Panthers.

Like I said, the purpose of the scene is the overhearing... but this also allowed me to cover a question readers might have (how does Sid handle traded players?) and cover an important real-life event in this season.

Sid’s not planning to lecture any new players about how to treat subs; it’s easier on them if they can just pick it up from the rest of the team, and if he does have to drop the hammer, it’s useful for the rest of the team to get a teachable moment out of it. He discovers, though, with Leopold, that the rest of the Pens’ leadership group has its own ideas.

The day after Leopold joins the team, Sid steps out of equipment room to hear his own name, coming from around the corner. He stops and tries to decide whether or not to walk away—in the end, his curiosity overcomes his good manners.

Damn, just noticed the missing "the" in the first sentence of that paragraph.

He hears Tanger speak first. “So, Sid is a sub.”

It’s a little harder for Sid to identify the second voice, but the very fact that it’s new to him tells him it must be Leopold who replies, dry as a bone, “I’ve heard that, yeah.”

“Right.” That’s Duper’s voice, softer than Tanger’s. “But there’s some stuff you should know, related to that.”

“Okay, shoot.” Leopold sounds a little nervous.

Ugh, so, eavesdropping scenes are like telephone conversation scenes - you're stuck describing things with only one sense: hearing. It means you spend a lot of time trying to describe people's tone of voice in a way that's not repetitive. It's a pain.

“First, you don’t give him any shit for it,” Tanger says fiercely. “You don’t call him a brat, you don’t expect him to look down when he talks to you: none of that shit. Or you will be killed. Probably by me.”

Doing a little drive-by worldbuilding here, establishing the kind of stuff that Sid has probably had to put up with on past teams.

Evenly, Leopold says, “Not a problem.”

“Good,” says Tanger. “Okay, second thing is, even if you’re not giving him shit, you don’t treat Sid like a sub. Ever. Not even in a nice way. It’s not that I’ll kill you if you do. It’s that Sid will bite your head off. Or worse, he’ll get all miserable and flinchy, in that way that, if someone made your sub look like that, you’d punch them, but Sid doesn’t have a dom to punch people for making him sad, so you’ll just end up wanting to punch yourself in the face. So don’t do it.”

This is a WALL of dialogue. It's not best practice to do this, imo: in real life, people don't usually make speeches. On the other hand, this is clearly a circumstance where the whole reason Tanger is talking to Leopold is to deliver a speech, so I think it works. But the problem is heightened by the fact that this is an eavesdropping scene: again, Sid can't see the speakers, so there's no opportunity to interrupt the dialogue with descriptions of, e.g., Tanger's facial expression or posture, so yeah. Just a wall of Tanger talking.

I can, however, show Sid's reactions:

That’s… pretty vivid. Probably too vivid not to come from personal experience, Sid thinks, somewhere between amused and appalled. He can’t argue with the “miserable and flinchy” description, although he hadn’t realized his reaction was that obvious.

“I’m not…” Leopold sounds confused. “I should pretend he’s a dom?”

This is the second "Leopold sounds [adjective]." in this scene. Eavesdropping scenes are the worrrrrrrst to write.

“No,” Duper says immediately, “it’s not—you can acknowledge that he’s a sub, you just can’t… get possessive over him, or hold his wrist, stuff like that. Or fight people on the ice for him – he will chew you out right there on the bench, it’s not pretty. And you cannot offer to dom him,” Duper adds, sounding dead serious. “Even if you really want to. And you will really want to, because Sid gets wound pretty tight sometimes, and also he’s a sweetheart. It’s a dangerous combination.”

Another speech, alas. But again: the whole reason Tanger and Duper are talking to Leopold is to deliver a speech to him, so it's okay. As for the content of what Duper is saying - if only they had stopped the conversation right here, I think that would actually have been really good for Sid, because, as I'm about to show, he's pleasantly surprised to hear what doms think of him. He's pretty much always thought that doms want to dom him for shitty reasons: to shut him up, to feel superior to him, or because they think he can't function without it. Here, he learns that they want to dom him because (a) he's sweet and (b) they think they can help with his stress. Not so bad!

A sweetheart? Sid thinks, turning pink. He’s not sure he likes that – but Duper didn’t say it in a condescending or belittling way. His tone was matter-of fact, like obviously Sid is a sweetheart and we know this and you will, too, once you get to know him. He’s still not sure he likes it—couldn’t Duper have said I was a badass? he thinks, crossly—but he supposes that if the team thinks that he’s kind and thoughtful, well… there are worse things.

Sid wishing Duper said he was a badass is so funny to me. I can just picture the little pissy face he'd be making while he thinks it. Awwww.

Leopold says slowly, “I could see that.”

Duper responds, “Right. But Sid does not need a dom – he can handle his shit just fine without one. Okay?”

“Sure. I got it. Is that it?”

And here's where the car crash happens. It was a struggle, actually, figuring out how to get Tanger to say this next thing, even though it's the whole point of this scene - like, how do I get one of Sid's teammates to tell someone else what they think about Sid's supposed sex life? In what context would that be relevant instead of shitty and disrespectful? This is what I finally settled on - that he'd be warning the new guy not to be shitty about Sid subbing for people outside the team. To be frank, I don't think that's totally convincing, and he doesn't actually need to talk about what Sid supposedly does in bed to get that larger point across to Leopold. But I really, really needed Sid to overhear a teammate saying he was hardcore and sounding admiring about him looking beat to hell. Sometimes you just do your best and hope that you can sell something with the strength of your writing even if you actually kind of think it's BS.

“Last thing,” Tanger says. “Sid does not need a dom. But every now and then, he’ll go find one anyway, and he’ll come back looking beat to hell or like he’s gone three rounds with a grizzly bear. That’s just how Sid rolls; he’s pretty hardcore,” Tanger adds in an admiring tone, before his voice goes sharp again. “Don’t be the shithead who takes it personally, talking like Sid should get it from us. It’s none of our business where Sid gets his fun. Got it?”

“Got it, yeah.”

Sid hurriedly takes off in the opposite direction as the conversation breaks up.

It's amazing how, in eavesdropping scenes, the eavesdropper can always tell when the conversation is about to break up, in time to absent themself. 😝 Unless you want the eavesdropper to get caught, but that's a different kind of scene, with a different purpose.

As he drives home, Sid tries to decide how to feel about what he just heard. At first, he thought it was a “this is how we treat subs” talk, of the kind that Sid gives when he has to… but it wasn’t that, not really. Tanger and Duper didn’t say anything about how to treat subs in general. This was specifically a “care and feeding of Sidney Crosby” talk, even though much of the advice—can you call it “advice” when it’s followed up by threats of bodily harm?—would apply to subs or switches on the team in general. But maybe Tanger and Duper think giving the “subs in general” speech is Sid’s area of expertise. Or maybe, he thinks cynically, they just don’t care. God knows there are plenty of doms who are happy to treat most subs like shit, but if someone looks funny at their sub, or their sibling, or their captain…

"Care and feeding of Sidney Crosby" still makes me laugh, as does the bit about whether it counts as advice when it's accompanied by threats.

Anyway, Sid’s not sure he loves the implication that he’s so weird or difficult that his teammates need to be specifically warned about him… but it’s not like Duper or Tanger said anything that wasn’t true. And the stuff that they’d warned Leopold not to do is stuff that would make Sid miserable. If Leopold takes their warnings to heart, Sid will be a happier person.

It also probably works better coming from other doms than it would from him, especially since some of the stuff they’d talked about is stuff that would never have occurred to him. Are there seriously doms on the Penguins roster who are miffed that he’s been hooking up with doms outside the team? How does that even make sense? he asks himself, baffled. And he had no idea, before, that there was something specific about his personality that was making his teammates want to dom him. Apparently, nice but stressed is especially attractive? I do not understand doms at all, he thinks ruefully.

Watch me hang a lampshade on the fact that it doesn't necessarily make sense for his teammates to be upset that he's been hooking up with non-teammates.

Still, it’s nice to know that some of his lessons have finally sunk in, even if it took years of metaphorically beating his teammates over the head with a stick. Sid doesn’t need a dom, Tanger and Duper had said, and He can handle his shit just fine without one. You can’t offer to dom Sid, they’d warned, and also, It’s none of our business where Sid gets his fun.

Sid laughs to himself and says, under his breath, “They can be taught!”

I don't know whether "they can be taught!" is something that normal people actually say as, like... a thing. In my family, we say it with big vaudeville, Barnum-and-Bailey ringleader energy: "They CANNNN be TAUGHT!"

There’s another part of the conversation, though, that gives him a little thrill in the center of his chest when he thinks about it. Sid’s pretty hardcore, Tanger had said, and he’d sounded… approving. Maybe even impressed. Interrupting here to note: Sid rehashing this memory allows me to actually build it up more than I could get away with in the moment: it would have been weird for me to pile on all these adjectives while Sid was overhearing Tanger (like, how many adjectives in a row can you use for someone's tone of voice?), but I've now gotten "admiring," "approving," and "impressed." The reader will notice this. They have to, or the whole point of the scene will fail to land. It had felt really good… but more importantly, it had confirmed that Sid was right about what kind of submission makes a good sub, a sub that doms will respect. And it confirmed that, as far as his teammates are concerned, Sid is living up to that standard – that he’s proved himself.

That is sooo sad. Sid! No! But this is how it works: sometimes it's praise that hurts us more than criticism, by laying out the standard for what others think is "good," which we then hurt ourselves trying to meet. Think of all the people who say, "Have you lost weight? You look great!" Ouch.

All I have to do is not fuck it up, he concludes, ignoring a queasy little turn in the pit of his stomach at the thought. All I have to do is make sure that, if I scene with a dom again, they leave a lot of nasty-looking marks. Easy.

And if Sid doesn’t always like the process of getting those marks—if he still flinches sometimes at the sound of a belt buckle—that doesn’t matter. This is what’s expected of him. And Sid is all about exceeding expectations.

Double ouch.

That's the end - hope you enjoyed!

#asks #fic asks #dvd commentary #director's commentary #hockey rpf #to be seen aright

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throttlegainwell · 1 hour

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⭐️

Hi, Faith! Thanks for the director's commentary ask.

I think I want to talk about Lonnie's role in Blood, Wine, & Roses. It's a slightly different take from what I've seen (not that I've seen much--I'm lucky if I read one fic every couple of months), and it's different from anywhere else I've written him. And I've written a fair bit about him by this point. His function in this story is a little different as well, both for what he represents and for how he accomplishes this within the narrative. I also want to talk about how Jonathan sees and responds to him, which is a bit different here as well.

Cut for discussion of child abuse (and Lonnie's whole deal) and for length (a LOT of length, sorry!). Apologies if it's a little disjointed or I repeat myself--I've had to leave and come back to it a bunch of times.

I want to preface this by mentioning that the title isn't just for show; it's claiming to be a retrospective because it is. These aren't static feelings at discrete points in time. It's all sort of an amalgam of what Jonathan remembers thinking and feeling and how he recalls these events, which is why it jumps back and forth. So it's a little contradictory in parts and doesn't necessarily read like the thoughts of a child that young because that's not the perspective of the story. I tried to imply that in parts, but I didn't want to necessarily beat anyone over the head with the framing. The other thing is that, conceptually, it's roughly broken down into four parts to explore these three aspects of Jonathan's relationship to masculinity: gender and gender roles, sexuality, gender expression, and the synthesis of all of these things. There's overlap, of course, but that was the idea.

Anyway, onward!

Lonnie

The Lonnie of this story has somewhat different goals and engages a little differently with his family because of this. He's still an abusive, manipulative schemer who routinely degrades and torments his family. But I wanted to do two things: strip some of that power, on one level, and on another to elevate it to show the real estate he came to occupy in this kid's mind. Maybe highlight it like a dye tracer lighting up a scan. That contrast between the reality and the idea--the grip he has on Jonathan's view of the world, so I could show it loosening. There's a lot of imagery in the fic as Jonathan is turning over his feelings on Lonnie, trying to figure him out, and it builds into this kind of primal folktale horror of his subconsciousness (and by the end, Jonathan becomes aware of and confronts this as well). So it's two sides of the same coin for Jonathan: the way he synthesizes everything he learns to reach a very intellectual conclusion (stripping that power, seeing Lonnie for what he really is and what made him) and the way he still, on a very deep emotional level, viscerally responds to Lonnie as a kid with coulrophobia would upon encountering Pennywise.

So what does this incarnation of Lonnie want? He wants to basically have the freedom to do the dumb shit he's already doing, either for fun or for profit. He wants his son to not embarrass him by being human and for that son to reflect a very specific concept of masculinity that he feels benefits him. He wants to push when it's fun and to be obeyed when the game isn't fun anymore--to see what Jonathan will do and to toughen him up. He wants to have his way, and in some spheres (his family, over whom he has a lot of power), he gets this. None of that is necessarily different from how I normally write him, but I peeled back the overlay just a bit in this one.

Lonnie largely achieves these simple, mundane goals. But this isn't a happy guy. He's not unhappy, necessarily--he's not suffering by any means--but happiness is not the absence of sadness. That's the deal with the food, though. (I also don't see him as particularly interested in food generally--it's just not something he remembers or, frankly, thinks of at all; I just expanded on that here.) In this story, the food is kind of a metaphor and kind of a straightforward demonstration of his attitude toward a lot of things. It's a potential path to connection and joy and love. Lonnie wants none of these things; he's offered them and he rejects them. So he's rejecting these things conceptually, but he's also, on a very literal level, rejecting Jonathan's offering to his face--he's rejecting his love and affection, while Jonathan is still young enough to try to offer it. This is partly a practical matter because he doesn't want Jonathan cooking or performing care-taking duties or other stereotypical feminine or "weak" things, so he's not going to encourage it. But he also doesn't see the value in what those things represent. (He also mocks Joyce's cooking--in essence, he's mocking her care-taking and disparaging her efforts, but he thinks that's what she's supposed to be doing. So he devalues these things generally.)

This is not a guy who considers the well-being of his family when he makes his decisions or when he reacts. He's certainly not concerned with destroying them. But he's also not necessarily setting out to do so. They're really just... there. When he wants something, they're resources; when they're impediments, he treats them as such. Is there a cruel streak? Yeah, I think I showed that pretty heavily. But a lot of this disregard is entirely down to indifference, immaturity, and selfishness. So that's not necessarily a very different side of Lonnie, but... I'm getting there.

We know that Jonathan, in the show, hates his dad. He harbors a lot of anger toward him, (rightfully) thinks the worst of him (see also: checking the fucking trunk), and resents him. While I don't think he would admit to being afraid of Lonnie, he very much does have Lonnie-shaped fears--some complex and nuanced and some more like the simple childhood terror sparked by shadows passing under the door. This is not a relationship he values, nor a man he loves.

But here's the thing:

1) Jonathan freely refers to his father as Lonnie, on several occasions, and probably does so with some degree of intention--he's signaling his disdain for Lonnie and his refusal to recognize Lonnie's connection to him. So I think it's a choice, not a habit, and I'm torn on whether or not Lonnie would give a shit about this--maybe in certain contexts he would, but overall he's too indifferent to fatherhood to care about Jonathan's opinion or respect. But there's this moment in S1 that's haunted me since I first saw it. When Joyce picks up the phone, thinking Lonnie is calling her back, Jonathan says, kind of stunned and under his breath, "Dad?" And it's so… There's something so heartbreaking about it. It's nakedly vulnerable and piercingly hopeful. And I think it's the first and last moment we see something like that--this idea that maybe his dad could come through after all when they're most in need, that there's a connection there, that they matter to this man on some level. That it's not completely impossible. And that's also where it dies when it becomes clear that Lonnie hasn't called. But if Jonathan had never cared about that man the slightest bit--if all he felt was uncomplicated loathing and rage--then that moment wouldn't have happened. I'm sure that he felt mostly anger and loathing on a conscious level, but some part of that kid either held some closely guarded shred of hope or was so shocked by Lonnie's apparent heel-turn that he momentarily hated Lonnie a tiny bit less. Some part of him maybe even wanted to believe that Lonnie was capable of doing the right thing--the absolute bare minimum--for once in his fucking life. And I wanted to explore that here because I don't know if I've personally seen that aspect discussed.

2) He's a child. Even if Jonathan on the show were completely dead-set against Lonnie and had no complicated feelings toward him, Jonathan is reflecting on various points in time during this story, including some when he was very young. And I'm not saying that all children have to love their parents, but... most want to. He's young enough, during the darkest parts of the story, to still be searching for that love. He's not a hardened ten-year-old.

3) Most people aren't on their worst behavior 100% of the time. They usually have their decent moments at least occasionally. Lonnie is an asshole and he doesn't give a shit about being a father, but, again, he's not looking to make Jonathan suffer; that's just an incidental thing that he's kind of indifferent to, something that he perceives as a weakness on Jonathan's part that Jonathan should be able to prevent and for which Lonnie is, therefore, not responsible. Because his goals and Jonathan's do not align in any way, and one of them is wrong, and if Jonathan could get with the program, then he probably genuinely thinks they'd get along better. But it's kind of an "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" situation.

Lonnie's Brush with Decency

Again, Lonnie isn't specifically setting out to torture Jonathan; that's a side effect of his actual goals that's acceptable to him, if not preferable. He just doesn't particularly value Jonathan's feelings and thinks that he should be tough enough to deal with discomfort because Lonnie is wrapped up in a lot of toxic masculinity bullshit and it shapes his interactions.

Here's where I think this story probably diverges from mainstream Lonnie: when he perceives genuine threat, he steps in and actually makes a brief protective gesture in Jonathan's direction (in "Dodge and Burn"). But it's not a noble gesture and it's not because he's secretly a decent guy or really loves this kid deep down.

There are a few things going on here. It comes back to that sense of ownership, in some ways--he can do whatever he wants to this kid, but that doesn't necessarily extend to everyone else in all scenarios. What he generally wants is for Jonathan to stand up for himself and show some spine, so I don't think he'd take joy in all of these potentially fucked up scenarios--provided he's not the one enacting them--but he wouldn't defend Jonathan in most of them. Some of them, maybe. So why does he in this one?

Well, is he really protecting Jonathan in the first place, or does Jonathan just perceive it that way? Lonnie is probably thinking of his reputation here more than Jonathan's safety; I imagined him blocking Jonathan from sight more than shielding him, you know? He's saying "don't look at this kid--pretend he's not here." This venture hasn't worked out the way he'd hoped, and he's regretting bringing him. Lonnie doesn't like being wrong, doesn't like looking foolish, and doesn't really like some of the people he has to deal with (particularly the ones with power over him), so he unloads all of these frustrations and all of this unease onto Jonathan.

And there's maybe a small part of him that does feel some flicker of something adjacent to paternal obligation--because he doesn't necessarily care about Jonathan and thinks he should be able to look after himself (and doesn't have sympathy or compassion for people he considers weak or pitiful)--but he's not completely indifferent to him at all times. It's like... if Jonathan were about to walk into traffic, Lonnie would grab his collar. He wouldn't just watch him get smeared by a passing truck. But that's the extent of the obligation. If the threat is real and valid to Lonnie, then it's conceivable that he would respond to it as one. That doesn't negate all of his other bullshit.

And Jonathan is very aware of this. He does want something from his father, but that's not it, and so he distrusts and resents this turn of events--and he's right to do so.

This scene contrasts sharply with Jonathan protecting Will in a scene that occurs earlier in the story but chronologically after the pivotal events of "Dodge and Burn".

“Don’t listen to him,” he said, automatic as breathing was supposed to be. “It’s okay to cry when it hurts. But you’re okay. You’re all right.”

She iced his wrist. Said it was okay to cry when it hurt. Said the kind lie. She’d never tell him to quit being such a pussy. She’d never tell him that because Dad was wrong, and he knew it, he knew it, he knew it.

So this is something that he's absorbed from Joyce and chosen to pass on to Will. It's a direct rejection of what Lonnie is trying to instill in him. Lonnie performs no care-taking and disparages it the whole story, so it's clear to Jonathan by this point that that's not something he wants to emulate. More on that below.

As a side note, the placement of "Dodge and Burn" within the story was deliberate. It's the heaviest scene, so I wanted to build the tension throughout the story with these glimpses of Lonnie's cruelty, disdain, and priorities, but I was also trying to show Jonathan working through it on his own. He's peeking at these memories around the edges, and it all leads up to that day in the woods before the first section ends.

Jonathan and Masculinity

Masculinity is not one thing. But Jonathan is steeped in a very specific and violent form of it, and this is what he's working through during the story.

Lonnie is that specific form of masculinity in action. Lonnie directly causes the material harms that Jonathan comes to associate with socially expected performances of masculinity (direct violence that he endures as well as a generally unsafe environment illustrated by the imagery he conjures), and it's Lonnie against whom he positions himself when he rejects this brand of masculinity. So he's rejecting it because he's rejecting Lonnie, but the crucial thing here is that he's not just rebelling against his shitty father--he's recognizing the greater absurdity of these expectations being forced on him (represented by Lonnie), and although he doesn't buy into them, they're nonetheless harmful in ways he can see and ways he can't.

He has all these other sources of proof that, actually, this masculinity shit is a trap. You can play the game, but everyone is losing--even Lonnie, King Shit of Masculinity Mountain. Lonnie is squeezed by these chains, too. It's a shitty way to live, even though he'd probably say that he's pretty content. He just can't see beyond those bars the way Jonathan can.

But you know what else Jonathan has? He has Joyce. I don't for one moment subscribe to the belief that abuse is inherently cyclic, at least in the way that it's popularly understood. (The "cycle of abuse" narrative typically oversimplifies a very complex subject in problematic and often harmful ways.) But we do learn from our environments, and especially from our families. Lonnie does not really love Jonathan, as an action--if he feels some type of affection for him untainted by his sense of ownership over him, then I'm not sure I'd call it love. Maybe he feels something, but he does not demonstrate love.

So this relationship and what it represents (that toxic masculinity that governs so much of their dynamic) will never be a source of safety or a place of belonging for Jonathan. But he could play the game, if he wanted to. He'd do it badly, but he could probably be worn down enough, under the right circumstances, to find it necessary to his survival to try a little harder. It's certainly a strategy, if not a desirable one.

Which isn't to say that I think he'd have grown up to abuse others without Joyce's tempering influence. (Again, it's much more complex than "A abuses B, therefore B goes on to abuse C because they never learned differently, until C breaks the cycle and does not go on to abuse D.") I think Jonathan is an innately kind person. That's just his personality. But I think that he was given space to express and nurture that kindness--limited, and within particular contexts, but nonetheless real. Joyce showed him kindness and gentleness and encouraged it when she saw it in him, and he had Joyce and Will to pour it into. So when he was watching the effects of so much cruelty--from his father, his peers, the town, society at large--it was contrasted with what he knew to be possible. He probably never would have bought into what Lonnie was selling, but he also had evidence of a better way and examples of how to do it.

But that's the idea behind "Dodge And Burn". I went really heavy on photography as metaphor in this story. It was a way of showing Jonathan taking charge of his narrative and his life. He's very powerless for a good portion of this story. But he's actively processing and reframing his experiences and observations every step of the way, trying to understand. At his rock bottom, after Lonnie violently lashes out at him in his anger and embarrassment, Jonathan is tired and ashamed and wants to make sense of how he's been treated.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel.

So that's what I'm driving toward: he's a kid, and the urge to make sense of the world never goes away but it's bone-deep at that age, and when you don't feel love surrounding you, you go looking for it. This is a time when Joyce has already pulled away from him; she's busy, she's relying on him to look after Will, and she's fighting with Lonnie when they're home. And he basically has nothing outside of these two relationships because his prospects are limited (by several things).

Basically, Jonathan knows what love looks like, but it's cold in that house these days. So he comes very close to justifying and accepting Lonnie's behavior. Because from the outside--seeing how he treats Joyce and Will--that's terrible and infuriating. But for himself? … Well, maybe that's just how it is. Maybe he's uniquely bad and deserves this. Maybe his expectations are unrealistic--they're too high. Maybe there's something to cling to there between all the pain, if only he can just accept Lonnie's premise.

I worried a little about that bit because it's obviously quite disturbing. It may even be more disturbing than the assault itself, that low moment where Jonathan considers whether this treatment is an acceptable facsimile for love and whether it's all he's entitled to, before he rejects it and, in doing so, validates his own self-worth. But I kept it in because I think it's important and realistic, and it shows how much of Jonathan's identity and perspective is a choice--not just because he's a nonconformist but because it means that his kindness is deliberate.

We search for love, and when we don't find it, we'll often create it to make sense of poor treatment. It's very common. And he's a child. This is a time when the anger hasn't yet crystallized. He's a kid in pain who wants for his father's behavior to not mean what it means. But it's pretty huge to say, no, this is not who I want to be to the world, this is not how I want to treat people and I don't have to and I will find a way not to, and I deserve more than this, too.

Does Lonnie actually feel remorse for his extreme reaction? For terrorizing his barely ten-year-old son on the side of the fucking road for the crime of being visibly afraid in a scary situation? Probably not, no. But Jonathan wants to believe that he does--in that moment, he wants to believe that his father is capable of that remorse and cares enough about him to feel it--so he briefly lets himself believe it. But even then, he knows that hope is dangerous and he talks himself out of that indulgence because he's a pragmatic kid and because it'll just hurt more next time if he hangs onto it. And there will be a next time. So he lets it go. It's an act of self-preservation, in one way, and in another a very painful realization not dissimilar to that moment in S1 when he very briefly thinks that Lonnie has actually called, then learns the truth.

So. Lonnie is a little different in this story because I wanted to expand on that moment in S1, and because I wanted to honor the kid Jonathan was (the kid who maybe still hoped his dad could be decent to him just once), and because so much of their dynamic is rooted in toxic masculinity that there was no way I could run with a Jonathan and masculinity prompt without digging into Lonnie Byers.

Anyway, I am SO SORRY for the length. I don't know what came over me. But, uh, I hope it was interesting?

#answered asks #writing tag #ask game #lonnie byers #jonathan byers #blood wine & roses #director's commentary #child abuse cw #long post #very long post

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oboetemasuka · 3 days

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Hi pal! I DMed a passage from A More Restricted Existence for director's commentary if you want 👀

Hi! Sorry for the delay. Motivation can be finicky.

You might know from the previews that the original passage was a lot shorter. That was because I really wanted to send out the preview before I went to sleep.

"W-why did you…” Amane wasn’t sure what she was trying to ask Mahiru, but it wasn’t the question so much as the sentiment that needed to get across. Mahiru extended a hand to help Amane sit up. “Look, I get that I can be… overbearing at times… all of us, really. But I really can’t bear to see you so distant. So afraid. So hurt. If you could just let us in, wouldn’t it help us all?” Amane nodded quietly. Why was she the one relying on others now?

You might remember me asking for tips on the ending. I felt that it didn't have enough time to sink in.

So when I went around to revise it, I broke it into parts and fleshed each part out.

Here's what it looked like on paper.

Now sit back and enjoy the commentary!

Amane tried to breathe slowly, making up for lost air without agitating her injuries. Mahiru waited for her to speak.

Poor girl is trying to calm down, but it hurts. Good thing Mahiru is patient with her. (I'm trying to remember if Mahiru is this patient in canon.)

"W-why did you…" Amane had no real question in mind, just a sentiment.

I, uh… I didn't have a solid question in mind either. Something along the lines of "Why did you come find me?" perhaps, but it didn't feel right. On the one hand, it would have been a rhetorical question. Why? Because the restraints have reset (Yuno probably spent a moment helping Mahiru first) and Amane isn't around and she's terribly injured and who knows where she is and if she's trapped and if she's in danger and how much pain she is in-

Their fears are not unfounded.

Mahiru extended a hand to help Amane sit up. "Look, I get that I can be… overbearing at times… all of us, really. But I really can't bear to see you so distant.”

Amane-chan, stop running away. We're only trying to help :(((

The way Amane averted her eye only proved Mahiru’s point.

Y'know, every time I write OoA, I worry that I'll accidentally mention her "eyes". (The only post-attack exception is the voice drama, when she took off her eyepatch.)

“So afraid.”

The light from the door shone on Amane’s face. She hated that it let Mahiru see her expression.

I wanted to say something about Mahiru being backlit. So Mahiru can see Amane's face but not the other way around. Ah well. Can't put everything in writing.

“So hurt.”

Amane moved her hand to cover her right eye, but Mahiru gently pushed it away and clasped it in both of her hands. Despite Mahiru’s calm demeanor, Amane could feel her hands trembling.

This is meant to mirror your first drabble.

“That’s not…” Amane pulled away. Her voice stayed level, despite hiccups interrupting her. A hand reached up to her eyepatch. “It’s this. It’s all of this. It’s sinful. I took it off last night, but he must have…” She started unwrapping it. “They’re going to punish me...” With a careful motion, Mahiru held it in place and took Amane’s hands into her own. She’d been picking up on the signs ever since they arrived here together, and a final wave of understanding washed over her. “I can’t let you do that.” Amane’s expression twisted, though words came out far more frantic than fiery. “Let me go.”

But this time, Amane doesn't resist.

“If you could just let us in, wouldn't it help us all?"

As you can see from the original passage, I drew out this part of the dialogue. I wanted it to sink in more.

Amane didn’t respond for several minutes. She thought she would break if she said anything. She just let Mahiru hold her hand in silence.

Is it a common feeling to be too choked up to speak? To not want to talk when you're about to cry, or else you will cry?

Until.

She leaned forward and rested her head on Mahiru’s shoulder, gripping the sleeve with her free hand. If anyone asked, she was not crying. Not even a little. Mahiru softly patted her on the back.

You know you want the comfort… you know you do. Oh, the reluctance to admit weakness. When I sketched out this scene, though, I kept her right eye away from Mahiru's shoulder, so she was holding the sleeve with her right hand.

Amane used to be the one who went around offering help. Why was she the one relying on others now?

Something about Amane being an emotional core even in canon Milgram. She wants to help the other prisoners. (Even if the audience is wary of her, I maintain that she's only trying to help in the way she knows how.)

Take this lyric from "Magic":

Dear wise one, Is this ok? Is it ok to be weak sometimes?

I imagine the answer she knows is "no".

Supplementary reading material! This ask from the rp blog, regarding Eyepatch Amane's feelings on "Positive Parade.

#milgram #amane momose #mahiru shiina #asks #ask game #bad things happen to amane

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