#stuff like the girl in the beginning of diary film saying this is how the story of how we get split into eight pieces again
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Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023)
★★★★☆
Written and Directed by: Kelly Fremon Craig
Based on the Novel by: Judy Blume
I definitely read the book by Judy Blume back when I was a kid, probably around 1986 or so. Unlike other books by Blume that seemed to speak a little more directly to me (the Fudge series in particular) which I read multiple times, I only read Are You There the one time so it never quite embedded itself into my subconscious the way other books did. Which is all to say that I went into this movie knowing I'd read the source material but not sure how much of it I really remembered.
Having now seen the movie, I can say with authority that this is not the kind of review where I have any business bothering to compare and contrast the original to this adaptation. Certain bits like the chest-growing exercise mantra ("I must—I must—I must increase my bust!") were familiar and I did recall there being a lot of discussion about the main characters' first periods and other puberty-related milestones which is reflected in the screenplay. But, for example, I didn't recall the book having religion as such a core factor in the overall plot though a quick scan of the Wikipedia entry for the book indicates it was central to the novel as well.
So I can't say whether or not this film is particularly faithful to the source, but I can talk about how the movie plays as just a regular coming-of-age story set in 1970 New Jersey made in 2023. And from that perspective there is a lot of great stuff to talk about. One comparison I am comfortable making is that this feels a lot like Pixar's Turning Red from last year. In fact, I'd be shocked if Are You There God (the novel) wasn't a huge inspiration to the writers and producers of the animated film. Are You There God is obviously a lot more grounded and aimed at audiences a little bit older (Turning Red definitely Disney-fied the most overtly sexual elements of pubescence which Are You There definitely does not shy away from). But there are parallels between the friend groups the protagonists rely on, the meditation on the changing nature of relationships between mothers and their children as those daughters begin to grow up, and the awkwardness of youthful forays into romance and relationships.
Are You There God? It's Me Margaret tells the story of Margaret Simon (played with fearless gusto by Ant-Man alum Abby Ryder Fortson), who comes home from camp the summer before sixth grade and finds out her father (played affably by Benny Safdie) has been promoted and they're moving to the New Jersey suburbs before the start of school. Margaret's dad is Jewish and her mother, Barbara (Rachel McAddams, bringing an earnest but lived-in energy to the role), is a lapsed Christian whose parents ostracized her when she chose to marry a Jewish man. They've chosen to raise Margaret without a formal religion and are allowing her to choose when she's older. As such, Margaret has forged a unique relationship with God, where she has casual prayer-conversations that serve as sort of a verbal diary.
Immediately after moving into the new place, Margaret is introduced to a neighbor girl her same age, Nancy Wheeler (played with complicated mean girl perfection by Elle Graham). Nancy inducts Margaret into her tight-knit circle and they begin a club in which they talk candidly about their crushes, the size of their bras, and the status of their first periods. A lot of the second act of the film is comprised of a series of loose vignettes where Margaret and her friends try to buy sanitary napkins for the first time to practice with, or prepare for an awkward birthday party where the class plays spin-the-bottle type kissing games. Margaret visits her paternal grandmother (portrayed with force-of-nature aplomb by Kathy Bates) back in New York and asks to accompany her to Temple. She joins one her friends at a raucous southern baptist service, noting afterward that she isn't sure she feels closer to God as a result, but she sure enjoyed her time. She learns about her maternal grandparents and why she's never met them, and struggles with jealousy and mistrust among her close friends.
Eventually Barbara stumbles into a partial reconciliation with her parents, leading to a tense scene where her parents and grandparents share an uncomfortable meal together before the religion issue rears its head and forces Margaret to question whether there is value in religion at all. In the end, she adapts as best she can and the film ends on a positive note where it's clear not all of Margaret's problems are completely solved, but she's in a better space and looking forward to middle school.
The film is sweet, funny, and utterly charming. The cast is great all around and McAddams in particular does some excellent work elevating a role that could easily have been buried in the editing room but works to provide a wonderful counter-weight to Margaret's tale as it highlights they way uncertainty and indecision can have repercussions long after adolescence is through. There is one scene in particular where Margaret is asking about the grandparents she's never met. Barbara is trying to calmly and dispassionately relate the high-level version of events but it's obvious the wound she thought was so old and unserious is far more painful and present-tense than she expects. She casually swipes the tears away, tries to change the subject and downplay the impact her parent's intolerance has had. But as Margaret grows incensed on her behalf, you can see Barbara's pain begin to overwhelm her even as she's touched by her daughter's indignant rebuke of people she's never even met. It's such a real-feeling, dynamic bit of screenwriting, directing and acting.
Even bit players like Isol Young (as early bloomer and source of savage envy from Margaret and Nancy, Laura Danker), and Kate MacCluggage (as future blueprint for Nancy, Jan Wheeler) bring a little something extra to their roles. Director Kelly Fremon Craig wrings every bit of sincerity and warmth from the film's modest hour and forty-five minutes.
The complaints I have about the film are sparse and relatively minor. A few of the more emotionally intense scenes feel a little choppy (which may be the director/editor working around some young or inexperienced performances), a handful of plot threads seem a little under explored (Margaret's crush on someone other than the class stud causes her to break her own "no lying" rule but this isn't remarked upon, even when Nancy's own lies cause a rift between Margaret and Nancy, as one example). I also wondered if the old-fashioned feel of the movie (in terms of filmmaking, pacing, and direction, not setting) might make age-appropriate middle school audiences a bit restless. I suspect this film plays best for adult audiences—particularly those who grew up in the 70s and 80s pre-Internet/mobile phones—for whom I suspect this will be ridiculously nostalgic even if they hadn't read the book. But none of it sours what is otherwise a fantastic bit of filmmaking.
In the end I recommend this movie. It's exquisitely crafted and wonderfully entertaining for most audiences, though younger viewers may find the laughs a bit too spaced out and the prominence of the adult characters a bit perplexing for a movie about kids trying to grow up. But I suspect that even though I can't remember it well enough to do a thorough comparison, if you or your kid enjoyed the book, you'll have a great time with the movie as well.
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it’s me, hi! (i’m gonna start every ask with this i guess lol) 🎅🏻 happy taylor swift day bestie! i hope you had a lovely day riding the tails of a good concert.
film production and tv??? that’s so cool! do you like it a lot? and yeah, not sure but it was super reminiscent of the candids of her and joe in nyc from last month or whenever haha.
traditions are always so much more fun when you’re young i suppose, because i sort of feel the same way. i loved tracking santa too…it was so fun and exciting. watching polar express definitely counts. that’s one of my favorites. it always makes me cry lol. it’s kind of the same for me…not a lot of “traditions,” just stuff i do. like i always watch the jim carrey grinch, and i always watch love actually while i wrap presents. when i was a kid my mom and dad would give me one gift every christmas eve, and it was new pajamas. i’ve always loved that, and last year i got my husband and i new pajamas. it’s more fun when you’re little though and you get to open gifts feeling fresh and new. where in the UK are you? i’m in america, but i’ve heard lovely things about christmas roasts. i wonder if taylor has a christmas roast too now. this is long so last thing: what tv shows and movies and all that do you like?
happy belated taylor day !! sorry i didnt reply straight away its my last couple classes before the holidays begin on friday so everything is hectic
its super cool and i mostly like it!! it can just be super stressful because its 90% paperwork and working on a tight schedule, and i really signed up for the editing and graphic design so u can see how thats hard 😭 im just really grateful the place im at has a great studio and great connections
ahh i love the grinch! i dont think ive ever watched love actually though for some reason so i'll need to add that to my list. the pyjama tradition is so sweet oh my goodness 🥹 i live in south east england ! i absolutely recommend following a british recipe and trying to make your own one day, its so good and i think it would be similar to what you guys have for christmas or thanksgiving?
oooh thats hard, studying film has ruined my perception of tv lmao. i LOVE the princess diaries, tangled and anastasia though. kind of odd but i love the original cloverfield movie from a technical perspective. and im also making my way through the hunger games books and movies right now so i think that counts. tv series i would say sex education, derry girls, bridgerton and wednesday are my top favourites. its so hard to think of shows when you're not mid watching them omg
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So from the evidence I've collected, I'm very sure my Yeosang came here from another timeline/world theory is correct.
This mostly stems from what we learned from fever part 3 and the deja vu mv but honestly the Yeosang being sus about this had already been foreshadowed in his diary entry of fever part 2. (You'll have to forgive my terrible pictures I have fever part 3 in front of me and I'm too lazy to grab fever part 2 to take better pics)
Basically our setup to this was how at the end of the diary film we switched dimensions into the world of fireworks which I'm fairly sure is called Strictland. Everyone basically says how much the new world feels like their old one but different. The first time I read this I wasn't sure what he meant by "Everyone says this is a new world but somehow, I'm familiar with the scenery here. " line and just took it at face value to be metaphor. But given his repetition of staring down the camera to say "I remember" in Deja Vu, it would make a lot more sense if we take it quite literally too mean I remember this place because I'm from here. There's also a lot of talk about the word world in "wanting to escape the world I've lived in, the world I've been trapped in" as well as "the friends who have willingly invited me to their world". Basically the tldr of the matter is that yeosang escaped from the world of Fireworks into the world of school!Ateez using a chromer that breaks. (IMO we see this exact moment where it breaks at the end of Deja Vu) I say it's likely a chromer since Yeosang shows an at least approximate knowledge of what would happen if he breaks one when he breaks the one the black pirates/halateez gave to hongjoong while the android guardian/white mask holds him hostage.
Yeosang seems to have an approximate knowledge here of what would happen if the Chromer broke, to the point where he doesn't even call it the Chromer when he's thinking about what they know about the object, he specifically calls it a sandglass when any other mention of it has been the Chromer.
There's also the matter of him going out of the way of saying "My friends would not have been all scattered if I had not met them at first". This could very well be talking about where they lost Yeosang and scattered in the hallway but given his wording of at first, I'm putting this as evidence that Yeosang was a newcomer to their world when he got here with the chromer and wasn't a part of their friend group originally.
This theory gets backed up by the ending bit of Not Too Late playing at the end of Deja Vu and if you do a quick look into the lyrics, Not Too Late comes across very much as the beginning of school Ateez where they're all lamenting about being lonely before they all get together to make friends.
Except for two things.
One of which is Wooyoung and Yeosang talking about not being able to get out or escape (Which lines up for Yeosang if he's trapped in this new timeline and adds some interesting implications for Wooyoung I'll get into on a post about him later).
The second of which is Mingi's part. Mingi brings up killing and saving, both things that happen and we see happening during Inception and Thanxx in Fever Part 1 when Hongjoong keeps resetting the timeline using the chromer. There's two implications here: one, Mingi is aware of the timeline resetting (something that I already suspected but is now confirmed) and two, while this might seem like a song from the very beginning of school Ateez, Mingi gives us the added context that it is very much not. (It's also interesting that Yeosang's the one that pulled out Mingi's headphones to make him past attention to the world around him in diary film but like Wooyoung, I'll get into Mingi later in another post)
Since we're assumedly several timeline cycles in, why is this song playing over Yeosang breaking the Chromer? I posit that instead of this being the moment where Yeosang breaks the Chromer while escaping the white Android, this is instead either the moment Yeosang crash lands into school Ateez's world via his own "sandglass" for the first time or this still is that moment, but due to time shenanigans, the Yeosang that escaped just so happens to have escaped back to when he first got to their world making him trapped not only in school Ateez's world, but in an endless cycle of breaking the Chromer to get there in the first place.
We see that Yeosang doesn't go back to their original world and warehouse with them afterwards. Likely because he wasn't a part of their world to begin with to return back with them.
There's other bits of evidence that say that Yeosang with the broken Chromer at the end of Deja Vu is going to school Ateez like the hand that reached for Yeosang had a sleeve similar to their school uniform in Inception.
(Interestingly enough, Yeosang has an emblem that isn't like anyone else's on his uniform and Wooyoung has several emblems. Not necessarily relevant to my current point but food for thought.)
I'm not one of those people that obsess over hands, so idk whose hand that is exactly, but I do have suspicions.
If we're looking at the rings and at how one hand kind of mirrors the other, we can come to the conclusion that it might be the same person. We can go so far as to think that maybe, that hand might even belong to another version of Yeosang. Potentially even the hala!Yeosang that we catch a glimpse of in the diary film giving Hongjoong the chromer. (Side note: I only just realized that it was actually hala!yeosang that gave hongjoong the chromer and not hala!hongjoong like I thought going in. Yeosang really does just have a longstanding history with the Chromer huh.)
Edit: it's now basically been confirmed by the making of deja vu mv that the hand is Hongjoong's so basically depicting the moment Hongjoong reached out for yeosang when the timelines reset. I still standby the rest of my theory. Here's the screenshot I grabbed off the alternate hand angle in the mv making video:
For me personally, a lot of things start to click into place when we consider the possibility that Yeosang is actually from another world. Even his like a bird in a cage stuff makes sense when viewed in this light. He has the freedom of song and dance that he didn't have in Strictland, which banned any form of music or dance thinking it would lead to human emotion, but is stuck in this new world with no other option but to potentially repeat the cycle of when he got here.
#ateez more like aquila shut up#aquila shut up no one cares#ateez theories#ateez#Casper was the one that told me hongjoong got the chromer from himself back when I was first getting into ateez#and I didn't know the members enough when I watched diary film the first time to know any different#like yea hongjoong stole the chromer in the beginning but yeosang gave it to school hongjoong#the stuff I've seen researching into this just further proves my point and doesn't refute it#stuff like the girl in the beginning of diary film saying this is how the story of how we get split into eight pieces again#emphasis on the again part#sorry if this is rambly I'm just excited that I'm pretty sure I'm right since everything points towards it
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2017 BJYX Timeline : At First Sight.
Everything starts with a blank canvass. Oh we painted each others lives inch by inch. from black, gray and blue to colors we never thought existed. Two photos from different places, longing to be one.
Let’s start from the beginning of this whirlwind timeline. There will be very minimal interaction between our boys, but this will also be a good time to see how they were before working together. I wanted to paint a picture of XNINE’s Xiao Zhan and Idol Wang Yibo. Before their names got tied to the Untamed and each other.
They were doing their own thing, working hard with their careers, no clue that one chance meeting will be so important. Warning, this post is video links, image and information heavy. I am missing some stuff because this hell site refuses to save things and continues to glitch.
🡆 MARCH 2017
03242017 : The story starts when XNINE was a guest in Day Day Up. When asked, they always say that this is the first time they met. However, they did not interact at all.
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But there are definitely times on this episode where they pay attention to each other and it’s so cute. You can find different videos that will highlight these moments better than any screencaps can.
1. Web Stealing a glance at GG
2. First meeting
3. Gun heart - This is the gesture GG used when he introduced himself. The hosts all imitated him and teased, that included Web who smiled too. The same love gesture will be seen in the following years as “their thing”.
4. Doing the same steps for the dance.
5. Web allowing GG to pass and did not lift up the bamboo to trap him when it’s his turn.
6. Red string of Fate
7. Love at first sight-ology
When asked about this shooting, especially the segment when they were in the fields— GG said it was too cold. There is also CPN that the bag Web was using was GG’s.
03252017: Yin Yue V-Chart Interview with XNINE. GG talking about being scolded for not updating his video diaries and updating his fans. 😂 On the same day that this interview came out, he posted a selfie.
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🡆 APRIL 2017
04022017 : XNINE shanghai concert - BE A MAN. blessing us with this dance from GG. The next one is the one that the Untamed Cast were watching. He also posted a selfie for this night.
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Full video of the concert
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04082017 : The Wolf starts filming. According to GG, this is the drama that made him decide to really be an actor.
04092017 : Web attends the 17th Top Chinese Music Awards and wins Best New Idol. This also blessed us with the blindfold dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9gM7tfyFM
04132017: Southern Metropolis Entertainment Interview - XNINE. GG sings Jay Chou’s Love confession on this one ( I died ). We also see his very shy side when people say that he is the Visual of the group. Also, LOL at Peng Chuyue’s face when GG says this.
https://youtu.be/X8Xoax8dIHM
04162017: Posts a selfie on set of The Wolf in the blistering cold.
04242017: XNINE “Say No” BTS is released.
https://youtu.be/wU_tKzK64Ns
04252017: GG posts a selfie.
04282017 : Release of Single “Say No” - XNINE
04292017 : Wang Yibo X Guan Xiaoton release of the song Once Again for the Once Again OST.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0TT8y7VXNk
🡆 MAY 2017
05072017: GG posts himself with that stubble.
05292017: Another selfie in specs.
🡆 JUNE 2017
060172017 : Both GG and Web posted selfies for Children’s Day.
06082017: Zhelife
06222017: Another selfie. I’m side eyeing the date this was posted wtf. 622.
06232017 : Posted alot of selfies this time. This is one of those.
🡆 JULY 2017
072017 - Filming for GG’s “Battle through the Heavens” has ended where played the role of Lin Xiuya.
07032017 : GG posted a bare face selfie, wearing Stussy!
07032017: Adidas NEO CF for Web
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNYqVa58mgg
07102017 : Web CF for Estee Lauder. Our boi in shorts and white shorts, using estee lauder in the morning.
https://youtu.be/xeTT0QR_iKs
07192017: Idol Interview - XNINE @ Asian Music Gala. They won the Most Popular Group award. This is Where you can see a very quiet GG who does not speak at all. https://youtu.be/7dwA6WwD-5c
07202017: Cute selfie.
07272017: Posted a selfie photoset which includes the photo he sent to Web, apparently, in 2018. I’m a love at first sight believer, so I don’t buy the story that this was only sent in 2018. hahahah! don’t believe me.
🡆 AUGUST 2017
08042017: GG posted a Happy Birthday message to DDU for their anniversary. DDU weibo account responded with :
“Thank you handsome and attractive little zhan zhan! ( btw little Day Day won’t tell you that a colleague of us already became your fan. )”
08082017 : XNINE Metersbonwe photoshoot.
https://youtu.be/jM9lla6aF08
08152017: Episode 1 of Love Actually Drama aired with Web acting alongside Joe Chen. He played the role of Zhai Zhiwei who is an IT genius.
08162017 : First episode of the TV program "When we were young" airing. Web guest starred on this, for episodes 16-17 and played the role of Lin Jiayi.
08242017 : Web shoot for Once Again MV the making released.
https://youtu.be/-yn_st5vOO0
08252017: XNINE “be strong girl” campaign message. Have some encouraging words from GG.
08272017 : XNINE performs at Fresh Asia Awards.
https://youtu.be/PzGlTQ3Fga0
08302017 : “Unsurpassed Conference” ; Where we got this absolute gem of him not wanting to talk but ended up being a host on DDU.
Web : I don’t really like talking
Host : so you went to DDU
Web : I don’t know why I went too..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjO5vIfD_PQ
🡆 SEPTEMBER 2017.
09052017 : Wang Yibo and Joe Chen video in an Amusement Park shooting the drama “Love Actually”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__gIWih39Is
09162017 : Wang Yibo attended the “2017 Asian Influence Awards Ceremony.” and won Best New actor.
09222017: Web interview and photo shoot for Hey idol. This shoot is responsible for that photo where Web eats an orange like an Apple.
https://youtu.be/wCqVxog9i18
09232017: Selfie time again
09262017: Web and Wenhan represent UNIQ as they perform in TV Online Video Influence Ceremony
https://youtu.be/lc_cvlLtSaA
09272017: Web AD for KFC. Please watch this. He looks good in Yellow- dancing and eating chicken. I STAN THIS BOI!
https://youtu.be/ABH3BfZf4dg
🡆 OCTOBER 2017
10102017: Posted cute selfies with him as a cat and a Pig. hmmm. pig?
🡆 NOVEMBER 2017
11072017: Web’s Just Dance single is announced. This is the Theme song of 4th Xuan Wu Festival
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvsyOxC6cs4
11092017 : Filming of Oh My Emperor has finished. GG plays the role of Bei Tang Moran in this drama that will be broadcast in 2018.
11092017 : Web attends the Ifeng Fashion show event where he won Most Popular New Actor.
11162017 : Web recording the song “just Dance”. does the clothes he’s wearing remind you of another recording session?
11212017 : Web x Fashionable Photoshoot
11262017 : Attending and performing in Star Night of Mister Inke. His style in this one is really Joker-like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75wtl-JAjis
🡆 DECEMBER 2017
2020 : Web is cast in the science fiction drama Super Talent/ My strange friend.
12032027: XNINE performs “ We want what we want”.
https://youtu.be/IJNIgPl8ImI
12032017: Web performs JUST DANCE in Tencent Games Carnival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbIzvMut2CY
12092017: Photoshoot with Rayli
12122017: Photoshoot with Cheese Fashion
12132017: Photoshoot with NTSnap
12142017 : BEST TASTE releases one of it’s short films that include Wang Yibo. We see two personas in this feature and it’s really interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP83-bEOEv0
This one called “耳” Ear; about sounds. [What we heard can’t take away by time 🕙 ]all the good memories when we were a child, some one them we might not be able to remember what happened, but when you hear the sound/voice of them, they trigger our memories
12152017: Volunteer Union photoshoot / campaign
12172017 : Attending Tencent Star Charity Night
12202017 : Photoshoot feature with our street style AKA everyone's favorite Web flower boi spread.
12222017: "Just Dance" single MV release
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asb8I3oqG00
12222017 : Winter solstice post from both of them. Talking about eating tangyuan. It’s of those mirroring posts, but again, could just be coincidence that they posted something similar.
12312017 : Web Participates in Hunan TV’s new year countdown as a Host.
*** Note 01 : In 2017, XNINE was transferred from EE media to Long Danni’s Wajijiwa Ent. Company. Some initial problems that they had was that their company was more interested in promoting them as actors and not as an idol group. They were also not kept safe in public venues which will be a recurring issue to GG as we go along other timelines.
*** Note 02 : I wanted to add Web’s Rossi posts and more pictures but it won’t save (will try again at a later date, but I think Web’s awards and projects are more important to highlight here). LOL. Thankfully, GG’s selfies worked. I mainly added stuff that they did in 2017 to give a sense of where they were career-wise.
*** Note 03 : Looking at how this timeline turned into a monster, I will probably split the 2018 timeline into two parts. Forever Summer Part I & Forever Summer Part 2. Seeing the amount of Activity these two did in 2018 alone is STAGGERING. Plus, this site is glitching with all the content when I save it so splitting it might be better. if you have suggestions, let me know.
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Do you have any Romanian (language or just content-wise) media recs? Particularly novels and poetry but really any must-sees/must-reads are welcome!
uuuu!
my brain is too fried right now to do any kind of exhaustive list so i’m gonna rec a few things that i know you could get your hands on/available in translation:
for two thousand years, by mihail sebastian - really heartbreaking yet also lucid, adventurous and darkly humorous memoir of a Jewish writer in his youth at the height of nazism in romania (there’s even a Penguin classic of it)
diary of a short-sighted adolescent by mircea eliade - a funny and bittersweet bildungsroman about a bookish teenager who wants to read everything now and be the cleverest person alive while also struggling with being super lazy and unmotivated because he’s young and restless, it’s very #relatable. but it’s also fascinating to read this in opposition with “for two thousand years” because eliade entertained legionnaire nazi sympathies at one point. (also, you should check out his novellas too, especially the fantastic ones)
anything you can find in translation by gabriela adamesteanu - just lovely, delicate prose about growing up, being an adult, inhabiting your body and your feelings in an oppressive world
the hatchet by mihail sadoveanu (apparently, there is a translation) - a lot of people give this novel flak, mostly because we had to read it in high school, but it’s a great and deceptively simple little novel that says a lot more about people than it cares to admit. the action takes you through several villages in the East-Carpathians, where a peasant woman goes in search of her missing husband. it’s a fascinating mixture of crime and folklore and mythology.
any novella by costache negruzzi, but especially “alexandru lapusneanu”, another classic we had to read in school and which gets a lot of flak. it’s so bonkers and #quality-trash. let’s just say there’s a scene where the power-hungry voievod/prince lapusneanu enacts a red-wedding situation and builds a pyramid of freshly severed heads to impress his lady wife *swoon*
the forest of the hanged by liviu rebreanu - i know people argue this isn’t his best novel, but it’s got the most heart. it’s the story of a soldier/philosopher in WW1 who falls in love with people again. that’s it. he falls in love with people, and the war and everything in between doesn’t matter anymore. or it matters only as it pertains to people, and people alone.
gallants of the old court by mateiu caragiale - a bizarre gem of early 20th century Romanian nightlife, a wonderful, orgiastic fugue, feverish and infuriating. it’s mostly about rich men and social-climbers getting into existential trouble, but also into real trouble. normally, because the action takes place right before WW1, this would signify the end of an era. but we don’t really have a beginning or end. we are part-balkan, part-french imitators, part-whatever-sticks. nothing moves us, and everything does. and that’s why it’s a sort of love/hate letter to romanians
in terms of poetry, some personal faves: nichita stanescu, ana blandiana, monica pillat, marin sorescu, a.e. baconsky, lucian blaga, emil brumaru, nora iuga, marta petreu, nina cassian. and yes, mihai eminescu, our national poet, though i’m often in two minds about him.
poetry in translation is really hit and miss because of the “untranslatable”, so here’s two lines from a poem by nina cassian, because i want to show you what i mean:
De când m-ai părăsit mă fac tot mai frumoasă
ca hoitul luminând în întuneric.
this roughly and poetically translates to:
Since you left me I’ve grown more beautiful
like the corpse lighting the dark
and this is sort of lovely on its own, but you’d need to know and hear and taste the word “hoit” in romanian to really feel the abjectness, because “hoit” is a smelly, ugly yet also alluring, already decomposing version of “cadavru” aka cadaver/corpse. also “ mă fac tot mai frumoasă” cannot be accurately summed up in “i’ve grown more beautiful”. a literal translation would be “I make myself more beautiful”. in romanian, this is obviously idiomatic and not literal. and yet, these strange self-reflexive valences make these lines strong and eerie, as if the speaker were authoring her beauty, shaping it out of clay and darkness and “hoit”, like a butterfly cracking the corpse’s shell to get out, but also retaining some of its mesmerizing stench. why did i pause to do a close-reading of romanian poetry??? anyway, you catch my drift
in terms of movies, a recent one i really loved was sierranevada by cristi puiu, which is a neurotic family drama that drains you but also lifts you up
and yeah, the hype is real, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days by cristi mungiu really is that good (about two young women trying to get an illegal abortion in communist romania. it won the palme d’or for very legit reasons. it breaks you in small ways. the very last shot of the film you’ll carry with you forever). i also liked graduation by cristi mungiu, where a young overachieving girl is about to graduate high school and go on to study abroad, until a terrible event unmoors both her and her family. the movie turns almost hallucinatory at one point, filled with ambiguity and a kind of sleep-walking quality
tales from the golden age by cristi mungiu (him again!) is also fantastic for anyone who wants to get a taste of communist romania and the sad-funny absurdities of everyday life. this movie is split in 2 parts and the format is that of an anthology, almost like watching several short films at once. and there is one film in the anthology that always turns me inside out, and it’s really silly, it’s this bonnie and clyde type story about this girl and boy who meet at a party and devise an ingenious get-rich scam and just run around a few neighborhoods trying to put it into practice and it’s...the sweetest, most incomplete thing. there is such a strange, lovely connection there that never gets realized, and there is a MOMENT between them where he helps her step down from this ledge and he holds her briefly to him and i remember being in the cinema and thinking THIS, this is THE MOMENT where i felt these people were real. it was such an honest, lovely moment. like the equivalent of this song. ANYWAY, why am i rambling so much??? this ask was supposed to be SHORT.
aferim! by radu jude is also a really neat movie and provides a look into the historical romanian/rroma relationship and why it’s so messed up, yet also so organic
the death of mr. lazarescu by cristi puiu is also a great little film about a man who gets sick and goes to the hospital. and...dies, as you can tell from the title. on the surface, he dies because of institutional ineptness and a broken healthcare system. at a deeper level, he dies because we no longer know how to help people. various hospital staff in the film do try to help him and fail for various stupid or quietly heartbreaking reasons. it’s a movie about being physically unable to care. there’s indifference, sure, but also this great exhaustion of the human spirit. but the movie is also darkly funny. might not be a great pandemic watch, but then again it might be exactly what you need
there are soooo many other classics in terms of books (morometii by marin preda, for instance, about a patriarch in a small village in the South who slowly realizes the world he used to live in doesn’t have room for him anymore, and maybe it never had) but i’m gonna end on a quote from ion creanga, one of the most cryptic classics of romanian lit:
“Şi eu eram vesel ca vremea cea mai bună şi şturlubatic şi copilăros ca vântul în tulburea sa”
my translation: “and I was cheerful like the best weather and frolicsome and childish like the wind in its cloudiness”
and again, the words in romanian and their particular sound and bite (”şturlubatic”, “tulburea”) immediately take me elsewhere. creanga writes about childhood, but it’s never really childhood. he writes as an adult who, in my opinion, was never really a child, but a weird, small god of the land. i mean the word “tulburea” can mean both “turmoil” and “muddiness”. the wind can be anguished, but also just a little cloudy, just a little hazy, shrinking its agony, howling it in the child. it’s eerie and gorgeous. so, that’s what he does: creanga writes about children as if they were wind-like spirits. he writes stories about devils and the peasants who trick them and school books filled with spit and flies, and warm eggs stolen from nests and fairy-tales of a world that is buried somewhere inside us, but not too deep, things hidden under our clothes or nails or even in our hair. and it’s all so physical and convoluted, just like his prose. and i don’t think anyone will ever make sense of him and that’s what makes him so discombobulatingly great.
anyway, this was supposed to be...like, really short! and not gassy! i’m sorry. i love waxing about all this gay stuff. i’m so gay about it.
realistically tho, the nearest thing you’ll find in your local bookshop is probably books by famous ‘theater of the absurd’ playwright, eugen ionesco, or novels in translation by contemporary author mircea cartarescu. both are pretty good, so go for it! (if you want to start small, i’d recommend REM by mircea cartarescu, because it’s so trippy and meta and captures that summer holiday eeriness so well. it goes well with this romanian song sung in english)
okay byeeeee
#romanian lit#recs#romanian literature#reference#my thoughts#romanian cinema#i hope no actual romanians come across this list and eviscerate me haha#im sorry this is such....MUCH
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and i’ll be okay admiring from afar (max mayfield x fem! reader)
Pairing: Max Mayfield/Fem! Harrington! Reader
Word Count: 3337
Warnings: One swear at the end, period-typical homophobia
Notes: This is so self-indulgent lmao,, I hope some of yall like it but even if you don't it doesn't matter bc I really just wrote this for me haha. title is from she by dodie
“Hey, Max, pass me the popcorn,” you whispered, aware that other people in the cinema were still trying to watch whatever movie was playing. You didn’t particularly care what the film was - you had let Max choose it because you knew that you’d spend your time staring at something other than the big screen.
The redhead grabbed the popcorn from where it rested on her lap and wordlessly passed it to you, smiling at you when you whispered your thanks before returning her attention to the movie.
You had spent the last hour of the movie stealing surreptitious glances at the girl next to you, hoping that she was absorbed enough in the action that she didn’t notice. She was beautiful, but you already knew that. The dim lighting in the movie theatre seemed to reveal another type of beauty in her though - the way the lights from the screen danced across her features was mesmerising, and the way her eyes lit up in wonder at the screen in front of you caused your heart to skip a beat more than once.
Having lost yourself in your thoughts once more, you didn’t realise that the film had ended until you heard Max shifting next to you, grabbing her bag from where it lay at her feet. You quickly jumped into doing the same, not wanting her to know that your mind was elsewhere.
“So, how’d you like the film?” She asked as you made your way out of the cinema. You scolded yourself in your head - you should have at least paid attention to some part of the movie because she always asked the same question whenever you two went to the cinema together.
“Um, it was great! You know I prefer comedies to action films, but it was still entertaining. What was your favourite part?” You deflected, knowing that asking that question would send her into a (very cute) ramble about all the best parts of the movie.
As predicted, she immediately launched into a speech about her favourite moments and characters in the film, gesturing wildly in her hands to explain her thoughts about a particular scene. You could honestly listen to her for hours, just to hear her sound so enthusiastic about a topic.
You both made your way through the newly-constructed mall and out towards where your brother was going to pick you up, Max still talking about the movie and you still listening intently, hanging on to every word she said.
Sometimes it worried you, how deeply your feelings towards Max ran, but at other times, such as now, you were just content to be in her presence, ignoring the way your heart stuttered whenever she glanced up at your face.
When you reached the doors of the mall, you and Max made your way towards Steve’s car, finding both he and his friend/coworker Robin occupying the front seats. You pulled open the trunk of the car, grabbing Max’s skateboard and passing it to her before throwing your bag in and slamming it shut.
Turning around, you opened your mouth to say goodbye before pale arms wrapped themselves around your torso and a mess of curly red hair was pushed into your face. You blushed heavily as you returned the tight hug, willing the redness in your cheeks to retreat before Max pulled away.
Eventually, Max broke the hug, but before you could see her face, she spun around and skated off, shouting a goodbye into the air as she gained speed. You called out a quick goodbye too, but it was likely she didn’t hear it, as she was already quite far away.
Deciding to not question why she just ran off like that right now, you clambered into the backseat of your brother’s crappy car and he started the engine, and as he pulled out of the parking lot, Robin turned to you and asked how the movie was. You mumbled something about how it was very intense, repeating some of the things Max had said earlier, hoping that Robin would be satisfied with that answer.
After a few minutes with no reply from Robin (or any input from Steve), you sighed and rested your head on the window, wistfully watching the houses as you passed them as your thoughts turned towards Max again. You knew how you felt about her - you’d known for quite a while, and though it was hard, at first, to feel okay with having a crush on your very female best friend, you were now comfortable enough in your sexuality to admit it to yourself, even if not to others.
The only people who knew you liked girls were, coincidentally, the other two occupants of the car, and while they both knew you liked someone, neither of them knew who (but you had a sneaking suspicion that Robin was beginning to work it out, being the observant person she was).
It had been a great relief to be able to come out to someone you knew would be okay with it, and Robin had been the first of the pair to know, for obvious reasons. She was like the older sister you had never had, and she had comforted you when you had cried to her, still trying to figure out your sexuality - she had reassured you that she didn’t hate you and that Steve wouldn’t either. She had been there when you told Steve too, and, true to her word, Steve took it very well, and had even joked about you two being able to talk about girls together now.
“It’s Max, isn’t it?” Robin whispered, pulling you out of your reverie. Her statement shocked your thoughts into disarray, but at the same time, it wasn’t surprising that your latest parting with Max had solved the puzzle for her.
You nodded, unable to find your voice as tears began to gather in your eyes. Your throat felt full, clogged with words you couldn't say, and your eyes started to burn with unshed tears that you refused to let go. You’d known for so long about your feelings for Max, but hearing them spoken aloud was difficult.
Robin reached around behind her to pat your knee in a comforting gesture, and Steve met your eyes in the mirror, a soft look on his face. Just having the pair of them be so nice about it is enough for the tears to start rolling down your face, all the pent-up worry you had about telling anyone that you were crushing on your best friend evaporating as your brother and the girl who is basically your sister are both so understanding and kind about it.
After sharing a glance with Robin, Steve turns his gaze back to the road as he breaks the silencing, stating: “You should tell her - even if she doesn’t feel the same way, it’s pretty damn clear that she cares about you enough to not ostracize you because of it.”
You snort despite yourself at the words he uses - he’s clearly been hanging out with Dustin and Robin way too much if he knows what ‘to ostracize’ means. You can tell that it was intentional, that he knew the response it would garner, and you are thankful to him for easing the tension you felt.
“It’s not that easy though, Steve. I know that she’s my best friend, but what if she decides that she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore when she finds out I like girls, let alone if she found out I liked her. I couldn’t risk our friendship by telling her. She means too much to me.”
Sighing, you turned to face the window again, trying to signal to the other two that the conversation was over. You couldn’t bear the thought of losing Max’s friendship, especially over something you could quite easily keep from her, although hiding it was becoming increasingly harder as the days passed and your feelings became stronger.
Luckily for you, neither Robin nor Steve pushed you any further, and the three of you spent the remainder of the drive to Robin’s house in silence. Once Robin was safely inside, Steve drove back to your home, which you already knew would be empty. Your parents were never home, always out on business trips or vacations, leaving the house to just you and Steve. This had made it ideal for sleepovers with the Party when you were younger, but now that you were in high school, it was more lonely than anything else.
When you got home, you went upstairs and lay on your bed, grabbing your Rubik’s cube from your bedside table and fiddling with it as your mind drifted elsewhere. It was silent except for the clicking of the cube as you played with it until a tapping on your window interrupted the peace.
Feeling slightly confused, you got up and walked towards the window, opening the blinds to see what was making that noise. Below stood Max, a couple of pebbles in hand, just getting ready to throw another one when she noticed that you had seen her. You raced down the stairs to let her into the house, wondering what she was doing here.
“You could’ve just rung the doorbell like everyone else does. My parents are never home and Steve doesn’t care about who comes over.” She stepped around you to come in as you spoke, and once she’d propped her skateboard against the wall, she turned around to face you.
This close, you could see the tiny freckles that covered the bridge of her nose and her cheeks, and you also thought you could see a pinkness beginning to tinge her cheeks, but that must’ve been your imagination. Before you could ask her why she was here, she began to speak.
“I- when I got home earlier, my dad, he asked where I’d been, and I said out with you, and then he said that while I was out, he’d been through my things in my room and found my old diary, and- and- and he saw what I’d written in there, and then he- he said some really, really mean stuff, Y/N, and t-then he… he kicked me out because of what I’d written in there,” she was sobbing as she spoke, choking on her words as she tried to get them out, and you immediately wrapped her in her arms, trying to tell her that it was going to be okay, even though you had no way of guaranteeing that.
She took a moment to try and catch her breath as she continued to cry, and then she began to speak again. “I had nowhere else to go, Y/N, I- I’ve got no money or clothes or anything, I just grabbed my skateboard to get out of there before he physically threw- threw me out. Please, can I stay here for tonight? I just need to let him calm down, and-” You cut her off before she could finish her sentence, pulling back from the tight hug you had wrapped her in so that you could look her in the eye as you spoke.
“Max, you can stay here for as long as you need, okay? Don’t worry, it’ll all be okay. You can borrow some of my clothes, we’re basically the same size, and you can take one of the guest rooms,” you said, trying to reassure her that it was going to be fine.
As you were talking, you heard your brother come down the stairs to see what had happened, evidently having heard the door open and then the sounds of conversation. You briefly explained what had happened as you held Max close to you again, the redhead in question trying to calm her breathing. At your request, Steve disappeared upstairs once more, off to make sure the room Max would stay in was ready.
“Hey, Maxie, let’s go upstairs, shall we? We can go to my room while Steve sorts out yours, and if you’re okay with it, we can talk some about what you wrote that made your dad do what he did, alright?” You coaxed her up and into your bedroom, sitting down on your bed with her. Her arms were still wrapped around you tightly as if you were her lifeline, and she hadn’t said a word since you’d started talking.
You heard her sigh as she loosened her grip on your torso, flopping bonelessly back against your pillows and reaching for your hand, wanting to maintain some sort of physical connection while she tried to explain what had caused this situation.
“First, before I tell you anything, I need you to swear to me, truthfully, that you won’t stop being my friend when I tell you this. I need you to promise me that things will stay the same between us, no matter how you feel about what I’m about to say.”
“I.. I promise, Max, but I don’t understand why this is really necessary - nothing could make me hate you or stop being your friend! You’re my best friend, Max, and nothing will change that.” It worried you slightly, how serious Max had become about this, but then again, you reasoned, she did get kicked out for this.
“Okay. So, uh, I don’t really know how to say this… um, okay. I’ll just spit it out. Here we go. Y/N, I like girls. Not.. not boys.” Never in a million years could you have guessed that she would say that. But she had said it, and it was causing your brain to short-circuit. Max took your silence as you hated her for it though and immediately began rambling, tears forming in her eyes and falling down her cheeks.
“I- I’m sorry, I know it’s not okay or anything but I can’t help it, and-” you cut her off, tightening the grip you had on her hand as she tried to pull away.
“Hey, hey, stop crying, alright? I was just… shocked, which is why I didn’t say anything. But I don’t hate you and I’m not gonna stop being your friend, okay? So please, please don’t worry about that. It would be quite hypocritical of me to not support you liking girls, after all.”
You maintained eye contact with her until your own confession, when you tore your gaze down to your lap, blushing heavily. She picked up on what you had meant quite quickly, and when you glanced up at you, she was grinning widely.
“You- you mean…?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I, um, I like girls too.”
It was a relief and a half to finally get that off your chest to someone whom you didn’t view as a sibling. There was silence between the two of you for a while, both of you trying to process what the other had just revealed.
All you could think about was that Max likes girls, Max likes girls, she actually likes girls! and although you knew better than to get your hopes up, you did secretly wish that because she liked girls, she’d like you, but you knew it didn’t work like that.
Still, a whisper of hope remained in your heart as you spent the rest of the evening trying to distract Max from her worries with more light-hearted conversation. Steve ordered pizza when it was time for dinner, and the three of you watched some dumb game shows while eating it, laughing over the ridiculous answers some of the contestants gave.
By the time you felt tired enough to sleep, Max was already half-way dead to the world, so you supported her weight back up the stairs and then grabbed her some pyjamas to sleep in. After you were both changed, Max dragged you into her room for cuddles, still needing comfort and reassurance from you.
It didn’t take long for Max to fall asleep, but sleep seemed to be evading you - your heart was hammering too hard from your proximity to your crush for you to feel even a semblance of tiredness.
Eventually, you began extricating yourself from Max’s grip (the girl was surprisingly strong, even in her sleep) so you could get back to your own room. When you were free of the sleeping redhead’s hold, you looked back down at her, taking in the peaceful look on her face.
She was beautiful all the time, but now, she was… breathtaking. The thin light of the moon, unobscured by unclosed curtains, danced across her features, making her seem to glow. She was an angel, then, with an aura of serenity and a halo of hair surrounding her head.
Seeing her like that, all of your control flew out of the window and you acted on impulse, leaning down from your perch beside her to lay a small, feather-light kiss upon her forehead. It lasted only a second, but that second was enough for you to feel how soft her skin was under your lips, and you wished you could kiss her all the time just to feel it again.
Your heart was racing as you forced yourself to move away from her, making your way towards the door, but you stopped dead in your tracks when you heard Max’s soft, sleepy voice from across the room.
“Did you just… kiss me?” She asked. Fuck. Clearly, she hadn’t been as asleep as you had thought. You had no idea how to respond, your mind drawing up blank as you tried to think of something, anything to say.
“... Yes,” you whispered hesitantly, still not turning to look at her even as you heard her shuffling around to be able to see you better. You knew what was about to happen - she would tell you that she didn’t like that, and would either stop being your friend, or your friendship would just be really weird from here on out.
“Come here,” she said, holding out her hand to you, and you never could say no to her, could you? You slowly made your way back to her bed, taking the extended hand and going to sit down on the bed before you found yourself being tugged to lay back down next to Max, who nuzzled her head into the crook of your neck as soon as you were close enough.
“Why?” she asked, the word coming out slightly slurred due to her sleepy state. It was the question you had known was coming but had hoped wouldn’t be voiced.
“Because I,” you started, getting choked up on the words you had suppressed for so long. “I like you, Max. As more than a friend.” There. You said it. There was no taking it back now, but you had some reassurance in the fact that she may not remember it come morning.
You had expected Max to say something after that, so you were fairly surprised when she lifted her head and pressed a chaste kiss to your lips. It wasn’t like how first kisses were always described in fiction - there were no fireworks or anything extreme like that, just a warm feeling of affection flowing between the two of you.
“I like you too,” Max murmured, pulling away from your lips and snuggling back into you. She fell asleep quickly, leaving you with your thoughts, the memory of her kiss playing on repeat in your head. Feeling tired yourself, though, you pushed your analysis of today’s events from your head to be dealt with tomorrow and cuddled into Max, finally falling asleep in the warmth and safety of her arms.
Much later in the evening, a tired Steve Harrington is making his way towards his bedroom when he sees the guest room door ajar and, feeling curious, peeks inside to see his sister and her friend tangled together in their sleep. He smiles softly, closing the door behind him as he moves away, thinking about where he’ll get the twenty bucks he now owes Robin.
#max mayfield#stranger things#post-season 3#robin buckley#steve harrington#max mayfield x reader#max mayfield x fem reader#stranger things oneshot#oneshot
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Wave 2 Diary of Draculaura
15♥September
I “broke up” with Jackson Jekyll today... not that we were ever really dating I mean officially, which would have been nice but every time he would ask me out he would totally pull the invisible boy act on me and not show up. Or call. The next day he was always very sweet and apologetic but he could never remember why he forgot our date. I guess the final nail in the coffin was when he didn’t meet me at this party and I totally felt like a one tombstone graveyard. I ended up dancing with this scary hot DJ named Holt Hyde who acted like he knew me although I’m pretty sure that we hadn’t met before. Jackson and I are still friends but sometimes that’s just how the tombstone crumbles.
25♥September
Went to the beach with Frankie, Clawdeen and Clawd to watch Lagoona surf. It was a beautiful day, which meant I had to break out the sunscreen although the stuff I have to use is more like sunwall. It’s so thick it’s like being coated in honey and it’s like a sand magnet so I pretty much have to stay on a blanket the whole time or I end up looking like a sand sculpture. Oh well, it’s worth the annoyance to get to spend the day at the beach.
30♥September
I stayed up late reading a new novel about a forbidden romance between a werewolf girl and a vampire boy... like that would ever happen... but it’s so sweet and tragic I couldn’t put it down. Of course I slept through my alarm and was almost late for school, which meant my makeup was a mess cause I couldn’t take my time putting it on. Luckily, Ghoulia saw me before anyone else did and she helped me straighten it out so I didn’t walk into my first class looking like an undead clown... not that there’s anything wrong with that.
1♥October
I took one of those quizzes to see what kind of creature I am - I think all the teen monster mags have them now - which seems kind of strange since like I already know. Anyway, the quiz had questions ike: What is your favorite haunt? What is your favorite food? Would you rather be dead or undead? Do you run, shamble, fly or ooze? So after I answered all the questions I turned to the back to read:
Congratulations! You are a Woodland Nymph! You are kind, gentle and love sunshine and nature. You probably make your home in a tree where you enjoy the company of many woodland animals that you would never scare or eat. I wonder if I should share this with father? LOL... maybe not = )
7♥October
Clawd and Spectra had a monster argument today and it created such a fuss that both of them got called into Headmistress Bloodgood’s office. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Clawd so angry or Spectra so self-righteous but neither of them would talk about it when they came out of HHB’s office - not even to me! Clawdeen thinks it has something to do with Cleo and Clawd but I totally don’t understand how she made that connection. Now Clawdeen is mad at Cleo. Again. This is really sad and since it seemed like they were starting to actually tolerate each other.
12♥October
I know a lot of monsters are not excited about having to write an essay on our monster heritage but I think it’s creeperifically cool! First of all, I’m writing a screenplay about my un-life and I think this will really help the third act and secondly because it gives me the opportunity to set the record straight about a couple of things. Beginning with the fact that my father is much older than any monster realizes. I mean he was already a vampire back when togas were first considered fashionable... sooo glad father doesn’t wear one anymore. Then there was that whole identity theft calamity that happened when we rented our castle in Transylvania to a total con-monster who went around pretending to be father. Now I have to carry a copy of my death certificate to prove that I really am as old as I say I am cause some monsters think I must be related to that loser. Unfortunately for the imposter his bats came home to roost and not in a good way either. The rest of my story, like how father took in me and my mother when no one else would and why I’m a vegan vampire I’m going to save for the screenplay which I would like to film in pink and white. How scary cool would that be?
16♥October
In the span on 3 days Clawdeen missed a test in Mad Science, a school dance and a buy one get one shoe sale at the Maul. Frankie and I knew something had to be wrong but Clawdeen wouldn’t answer our texts or emails. Finally Clawd showed us a picture he took of Clawdeen with his iCoffin. Her hair... it was... it was... not of this world. Clawd said she couldn’t fix it and had to “ctrl+alt+delete her new ‘do” with a pair of electric clippers. He said she was so depressed that she turned all her mirrors toward the wall and wasn’t even growling at Howleen for borrowing her clothes. I suggested we shave our heads too but then Frankie reminded me how fast Clawdeen’s hair grows and that we’d be bald a lot longer than she would so we came up with the idea of going to the Maul and buying Clawdeen a fierce fashionista scare package to cheer her up instead and that’s just what we did. Of course we bought some things for ourselves too = )
25♥October
I was supposed to fang out with the ghouls last night but I didn’t. I tried to explain what happened to Clawdeen but I couldn’t. She was annoyed with me cause I always tell her everything. She thinks I’m keeping a secret from her which I guess I sort of am but I’m not sure I want to talk to anybody about it yet. So I wrote this poem to describe what happened. I don’t know why it’s easier for me to express emotions in verse but sometimes it just is. I read it to Count Fabulous who usually leaves the room when I get too sappy but this time he flew down and gave me a little bat hug when I was finished.
One fall autumn night I took a walk jaunt
to meet some friends at a familiar haunt
The sky above was very starry bright
and there seemed to me not a cloud in sight
So off I went without sans umbrella or coat
although what I probably needed was really a boat
Caust the clouds came rolled in with a dragon’s roar
and shortly thereafter it bagan to pour
Not a pleasant rain, good for plant and flower
but a driving, unfriendly, cold hard icy shower
Now I was halfway between home and there
my makeup was running ruined and so was my hair
With no shelter in sight or a way to get dry
I put my head face in my hands and started to cry
When out of the shower rain a voice broke through,
“Hey D it’s me Clawd, hey D is that you?”
As I blinked through the tears and rain I could see
Clawdeen’s brother Clawd, waving at me
Across four lanes of traffic bravely he dashed
with umbrella in hand to my side he flashed
He led helped me back to his car warm and dry
said not a word till I’d finished my cry
“Here’s a hot coffinccino whip cream no foam,
it’ll warm you right up while I drive you home.”
From the car he walked me up to my door
protecting me still from the storm’s downpour
As he turned to leave I placed a kiss on his cheek
then I ran inside before he could speak.
And while I watched his car disappear from sight
I felt something happen change for me that night
No longer did I see him as just my best friend’s brother
that night, to me, he became something other.
The great thing about poetry is that it doesn’t have to be epic to express how you feel. Now I have to wonder, “Does he feel the same?”
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Yes, yes I know I've been obsessing but I've just finished Psychopath Diary and well, wasn't that drama Amazing? So here's a spoilers-full list of stuff I can't get out of my mind
This drama proved that Yoon Shi Yoon looks good in anything, the grandma outfit ✔, the prison uniform ✔, the red hat ✔
Playing someone like Dong Sik must have been so much fun, he was so dedicated to make that dork over the top in ANY situation
The real scene stealer of the drama though was Park Sung Hoon, he possessed the last brain cells of the entire cast and it showed. He was an antagonist I respected and was fascinated by. He was evil, cold and totally obessed with our main guy.
Dong Sik being a drama queen and overreacting was so fun to watch, especially in the beginning when he had embraced his psychopath self
All the films and monologues he went around quoting
The stupid questions he asked jerk director while pretending to be Jigsaw
They threw around the word psychopath, predator and profiling a bit too much for my liking, but I've seen worse in other thriller dramas
The ost for this drama was nice, especially the theme that always played at the end of the episodes
The whole copycat thing was distracting, but it made sense story-wise
The accumulated guilt dong sik started feeling episode by episode broke my heart
Officer Shim is a precious leading lady
I love that she is like so small but they never made her wear heels, that she was smart and competent until the end, that she had a moral compass like no other
I love the fact the she was not there just to be in danger: she was targetted by the murderer because of her father, because of her digging for the truth no matter what
I love that she doubted herself during the process, most of the times you see these characters that have so much misplaced confidence that I'm like... how?
Also my girl shoot the psycho in the end and took a bullet in the arm
Taek-Soo and Chil-Sung were so precious
Take-Soo thank you for showing that friendship is real and you don't have to romantically like your female senior colleague to respect her
"I see your beard is growing nicely"
Blood Brothers T.T
How could you think he'd betray you (my heart seriously)
Dong Sik family omg, you usually see so much conflict with stepmothers and stepbrothers (see psycho-boy family), but they just... loved each other so much? and I was like... is this really happening? did kdramaland gave us a functioning extended family...? Is this the real life?
The whole plan Dong Sik had for being a serial killer was actually getting beaten up and smiling like a maniac. But even then he ended up saving people. We stan one precious boy.
Thinking about it Dong Sik was actually the leading lady of this drama: nice to a fault✔, mistreated✔, not the brightest out there✔, has a rich guy take a liking to him✔
Park Sung Hoon was mesmerizing with his outfits and evil laughters, he slowly became the puppeteer pulling all the strings
The whole thing started with him being fascinated by Dong Sik, the elevator scene had me screaming, the music was so perfect but you'd still think they were flirting, c'mon
He thought he'd found someone who could understand him and then he discovered he was a weakling with amnesia, and how dare he be!
But ah! too late, he was obsessed so he wanted to take Dong Sik to his level and then defeat him
The dude actually set up cameras to watch Dong Sik murder the detective! Ehm sir you could have continued with being drinking buddies, this is all very intense
I think he was so intoxicated with these games that he slipped, he understimated other detectives, forgot other players, provoked Dong Sik the ultimate selfless guy
Dong sik escaping prison Only when officer Shim was being threatened (how is he so... good?)
The phone call was pure genius
Both of them
The glasses trick, yes take that, psycho boy, his blood brother taught him that
I'd have loved to see more of Detective Shim in action, the actor was amazing
Dong Sik letter to his mom T.T
It's not a fault to be nice
All the scenes in the escape room were hilarious (okay not the first attempted murder, that was just intense)
The team plans to go against the killer were satisfying, you could see them holding on against evil
The family reunion healed my heart, together with Dong Sik's dad shouting in order to drive away his son and not let him get caught by detectives
When Dong Sik showed up, painted his face with blood and then gave us the purest smile in the history of smiles
Did... did Dong Sik start throwing random stuff at a serial killer with a gun?!
And there I thought this drama could not pleasantly surprise me anymore
I loved that Dong Sik became a writer, I'd say that it suits him
Also they were giving me Castle and Beckett vibes in the end😍
All in all this drama was a rollercoaster, it went from hilarious to sinister in a heartbeat and delivered so many satisfying moments.
It wasn't perfect, but you bet it's one of the greatest kdrama I've ever seen and it made my top5, no doubts.
(Also I may add stuff to the list, I am so forgetting something)
#your gif are all so amazing#psychopath diary#psychopath diary spoilers#tvn#kdrama#incoherent whatever
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WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY
Kage Baker’s Company Series
In the Garden of Iden
Sky Coyote
Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game
The Life of the World to Come
The Children of the Company
The Machine's Child
The Sons of Heaven
The Empress of Mars
Not Less than Gods
Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea
Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers
Gods and Pawns
In the Company of Thieves
Ø Science Fiction written by a woman with Asperger’s. Wildly uneven. Main protagonist is female, but there are lots of POV characters, male and female.
Ø Big ideas.
Ø Lots of adventure, some action.
Ø Small doses of humor.
Neil Gaiman
Good Omens (with Sir Terry Pratchett)
Neverwhere
Stardust
American Gods
Anansi Boys
The Graveyard Book
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Ø Neil’s books are a road trip with Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and a baggie full of sativa.
Ø Ideas are incidental. The Milieu’s in charge.
Ø Adventure happens whether you like it or not.
Ø Cosmic humor. The joke’s on us.
Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel Series
Firewatch
Doomsday Book
To Say Nothing of the Dog (and the novel that inspired it – Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat)
Blackout/All Clear
Assorted:
The Last of the Winnebagos
Ø Connie loves her historical research. Blackout/All Clear actually lasts as long as the Blitz, but anything in the Oxford Time Travel series is worth reading. Doomsday Book reads like prophecy in retrospect.
Ø One idea: Hi! This is the human condition! How fucking amazing is that?!?
Ø Gut-punch adventure with extra consequences. Background action.
Ø I’d have to say that Doomsday Book is the funniest book about the black death I’ve ever read, which isn’t saying much. To Say Nothing of the Dog is classic farce, though. Girl’s got range.
Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash (After the apocalypse, the world will be ruled by Home-Owners Associations. Be afraid.)
Cryptonomicon
Anathem
Seveneves
Ø Neal writes big, undisciplined, unfocused books that keep unfolding in your mind for months after you’ve read them. He’s a very guy-type writer, in spite of a female protagonist or two. Seveneves, be warned, starts out brilliant and devolves into extreme meh.
Ø Big. Fucking. Ideas.
Ø Battles, crashes, fistfights, parachute jumps, nuclear powered motorcycles and extreme gardening action. Is there an MPAA acronym for that?
Ø Humor dry enough to be garnished with two green olives on a stick.
Christopher Moore
Pine Cove Series:
Practical Demonkeeping
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Okay, yeah, Christmas. But Christmas with zombies, so that’s all right.)
Fluke (Not strictly Pine Cove, but in the same universe. Ever wonder why whales sing? They’re ordering Pastrami sandwiches. I’m not kidding.)
Death Merchant Chronicles:
A Dirty Job
Secondhand Souls (Best literary dogs this side of Jack London)
Coyote Blue (Kind of an outlier. Overlapping characters)
Shakespeare Series:
Fool
The Serpent of Venice
Shakespeare for Squirrels
Assorted:
Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Cargo cults with Pine Cove crossovers. I have a theory that the characters in this book are direct descendants of certain characters in Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.)
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (So I have a favorite first-century wonder rabbi. Who doesn’t?)
Sacre Bleu
Noir
Ø Not for the squeamish, the easily offended, or those who can’t lovingly embrace the fact that the human species is pretty much a bunch of idiots snatching at moments of grace.
Ø No big ideas whatever. Barely any half-baked notions.
Ø Enthusiastic geek adventure. Action as a last resort.
Ø Nonstop funny from beginning to end.
Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Series
Rivers of London
Moon Over Soho
Whispers Under Ground
Broken Homes
Foxglove Summer
The Hanging Tree
The Furthest Station
Lies Sleeping
The October Man
False Value
Tales From the Folly
Ø Lean, self-deprecating police procedurals disguised as fantasy novels. Excellent writing.
Ø These will not expand your mind. They might expand your Latin vocabulary.
Ø Crisply described action, judiciously used. Whodunnit adventure. It’s all about good storytelling.
Ø Generous servings of sly humor. Aaronovitch is a geek culture blueblood who drops so many inside jokes, there are websites devoted to indexing them.
John Scalzi
Old Man’s War Series:
Old Man’s War
Questions for a Soldier
The Ghost Brigades
The Sagan Diary
The Last Colony
Zoe’s Tale
After the Coup
The Human Division
The End of All Things
Ø Star Trek with realpolitik instead of optimism.
Ø The Big Idea is that there’s nothing new under the sun. Nor over it.
Ø Action-adventure final frontier saga with high stakes.
Ø It’s funny when the characters are being funny, and precisely to the same degree that the character is funny.
Assorted:
The Dispatcher
Murder by Other Means
Redshirts (Star Trek, sideways, with occasional optimism)
Ø Scalzi abandons (or skewers) his space-opera tendencies with these three little gems of speculative fiction. Scalzi’s gift is patience. He lets the scenario unfold like a striptease.
Ø What-if thought experiments that jolt the brain like espresso shots.
Ø Action/misadventure as necessary to accomplish the psychological special effects.
Ø Redshirts is satire, so the humor is built-in, but it’s buried in the mix.
David Wong/Jason Pargin
John Dies at the End
This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It
What the Hell Did I Just Read?
Ø Pargin clearly starts his novels with a handful of arresting scenes and images, then looses the characters on an unsuspecting world to wander wither they will.
Ø Ideas aren’t as big or obvious as Heinlein, but they are there to challenge all your assumptions in the same way that Heinlein’s were.
Ø Classic action/adventure for anyone raised on Scooby-Doo.
Ø Occasional gusts of humor in a climate that’s predominantly tongue-in-cheek.
Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s Series
Just One Damned Thing After Another
The Very First Damned Thing
A Symphony of Echoes
When a Child is Born*
A Second Chance
Roman Holiday*
A Trail Through Time
Christmas Present*
No Time Like the Past
What Could Possible Go Wrong?
Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings*
Lies, Damned Lies and History
The Great St Mary’s Day Out*
My Name is Markham*
And the Rest is History
A Perfect Storm*
Christmas Past*
An Argumentation of Historians
The Battersea Barricades*
The Steam Pump Jump*
And Now for Something Completely Different*
Hope for the Best
When Did You Last See Your Father?*
Why Is Nothing Ever Simple*
Plan For The Worst
The Ordeal of the Haunted Room
Ø The * denotes a short story or novella. Okay, try to imagine Indiana Jones as a smartassed redheaded woman with a time machine and a merry band of full contact historians. I love history, and I especially love history narrated by a woman who can kick T. Rex ass.
Ø The ideas are toys, not themes. Soapy in spots.
Ø Action! Adventure! More action! More adventure! Tea break. Action again!
Ø Big, squishy dollops of snort-worthy stuff.
Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell Series
The Beekeeper's Apprentice
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
A Letter of Mary
The Moor
Jerusalem
Justice Hall
The Game
Locked Rooms
The Language of Bees
The God of the Hive
Beekeeping for Beginners
Pirate King
Garment of Shadows
Dreaming Spies
The Marriage of Mary Russell
The Murder of Mary Russell
Mary Russell's War And Other Stories of Suspense
Island of the Mad
Riviera Gold
The Art of Detection (Strictly speaking, this is in the action!lesbian Detective Kate Martinelli series, but it crosses over to the Sherlock Holmes genre. If you’ve ever wondered how Holmes would deal with the transgendered, this is the book.)
Ø Sherlock Holmes retires to Sussex, keeps bees, marries a nice Jewish girl who is smarter than he is and less than half his age and he’s mentored since she was fifteen in an extremely problematic power dynamic relationship that should repulse me but doesn’t, somehow, because this is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche out there. Mary should have been a rabbi, but it is 1920, so she learns martial arts and becomes an international detective instead. Guest appearances by Conan Doyle, Kimball O’Hara, T.E. Lawrence, Cole Porter, and the Oxford Comma.
Ø Nothing mind-expanding here, unless the levels of meta present in a fictional world that is about how the fictional world might not be as fictional as you thought come as a surprise to anyone in the era of tie-in books, films, tv, interactive social media and RPGs.
Ø If these two geniuses can’t catch the bad guys with their dazzling brilliance, they will happily kick some ass. Adventure takes center stage and the action sequences are especially creative.
Ø Amusement is afoot.
Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
First Among Sequels
One of Our Thursdays is Missing
The Woman Who Died a Lot
Ø In a world where Librarians are revered and Shakespeare is more popular than the Beatles, someone has to facilitate the weekly anger-management sessions for the characters of Wuthering Heights, if only to keep them from killing each other before the novel actually ends. That someone is Thursday Next – Literature Cop.
Ø Mind-bending enough to give Noam Chomsky material for another hundred years.
Ø Adventure aplenty. Action? Even the punctuation will try to kill you.
Ø This is a frolicsome look at humorous situations filled with funny people. Pretty much a full house in the laugh department.
Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series/City Watch Arc
Guards! Guards!
Men at Arms
Feet of Clay
Jingo
The Fifth Elephant
Night Watch
Thud!
Snuff
Raising Steam
Ø If this were a game of CLUE, the answer would be Niccolo Machiavelli in Narnia with a Monty Python. Everything you think you know about books with dragons and trolls and dwarves and wizards is expertly ripped to shreds and reassembled as social satire that can save your soul, even if it turns out you don’t really have one. Do not be fooled by the Tolkien chassis – there’s a Vonnegut-class engine at work.
Ø Caution: Ideas in the Mirror Universe May be Larger Than They Appear
Ø The City Watch arc has plenty of thrilling action sequences. Some other of the fifty-million Discworld novels have less. Every one of them is nonstop adventure. Most of the adventure, however, takes the form of characters desperately trying to avoid thrilling action sequences.
Ø Funny? Even though I’ve read every book in the series at least ten times, I still have to make sure I have cold packs on hand in case I laugh so hard I rupture something.
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My Dissection of The Hilltop Scene™
I’ve been meaning to write this for ages, and here it is!
As is the case with many, Gentleman Jack changed my life. Weirdly enough, I had heard about Anne Lister a priori (I even watched The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister the movie), but the show really brought it home for me, with so many emotions involved that I can’t even.
Like for so many of us, The Hilltop Scene™ was what absolutely tore me apart, in a good way.
Two things to know about me before I begin: one, I typically don’t remember shit from the first time I watch a show or a movie; and two, I never did get the whole hype about Victorian romance novels, love stories a la Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, all those girls (including my mother) swooning over a Mr Darcy and wanting a kiss in the foreground of a sunset.
Well, now I know that it’s because they’re all hetero-oriented. Furthermore, The Hilltop Scene™ officially tricked my shitty memory because I clearly remember the first time I saw it and how it immediately left a permanent mark on my heart and soul (along with the “But you came so close” scene). After it was done, I had to pause the episode and literally scream into the void (much like Anne herself just before Ann walked up) because of the swirl of feels that came over me.
From the get-go I was Team Lister, which is perhaps why The Hilltop Scene™ resonates with me. Anne is so freakin’ brave and unapologetic and I can only strive to be more like her, but it is her vulnerability and the inability to control her roller coaster of emotions that really spoke to me in this particular instance - certainly helped by the fact that Suranne Jones’s acting was impeccable, as was Sophie Rundle’s, of course.
Because we know that this scene did not historically happen, at least not as such, in my opinion it gives even more credit to the brilliant writing, the photography, the direction, and of course the aforementioned acting. I’m unaware of how many takes they had to shoot (probably not many, since they were filming during sunset), but this definitely feels like a scene you would see in a theater, one where everything just falls into place because the actors are feeling it and because absolutely nothing is missing. To think that the final product was even better than what the script anticipated as well is just one more bonus - a drop of honey on top of a cherry on top of a red velvet cake, maybe?
This little observation of mine will tend to get into almost every little detail of The Hilltop Scene™, as if each and every one of them was put there deliberately and for a reason (who’s to say it wasn’t?). I like to think they were all a choice anyway, because so much of this show shines through the subtleties, the little things, the unspoken promises they make to each other through gazes and body language, creating images that will stay with me forever.
The Hilltop Scene™ opens with Ann Walker - wearing the gondola pin - arriving atop and seeing Anne Lister there. Her heart is almost visibly beating out her chest; her face is one of relief, of a happiness that makes her tear up immediately, as if they haven’t seen each other for years but at the same time no time has passed since they last met.
She calls out to Anne. Anne turns out and she probably thinks she is imagining things - after fifteen days on a ship through winter seas, I would probably think so too. She’s breathless as she utters “good lord” with her husky voice that gets me every time.
Ann tells her “I thought you were in Copenhagen” in a way that feels both curious (that she’s back) and accusing (as if Ann wishes to remind Anne that she left her, and went as far as Denmark). She slightly nervously holds on to the hems of her dress.
“I am. I was..” Anne is likely still a bit confused from her journey, seeing as she had to leave so hastily. She is taken; her “Aren’t you in Scotland?” question sounds much more accusing than Ann’s, as if she also wants to confirm that Ann really is standing there and is not just an apparition, a figment of her imagination, as she was for much of the time during her travels.
To this, Ann starts blabbing, probably out of being nervous around Anne after all this time. She starts telling Anne that she didn’t know about the letter Anne had sent her because no one told her and she starts marching towards Anne, to which Anne flinches and steps back. I cannot stress enough how much this moment was important for me: she is also not physically ready to have Ann close to her. She is still so hurt and broken that her body formed a defensive reaction to protect her from more heartache. To see Anne retreat like this, knowing her otherwise quite confident and forward personality, was really interesting to me, something that had already happened in the “But you came so close” scene in a more emotional, less physical way.
This gets Ann to stop, also instinctively. She goes to explain that her sister couldn’t write back because Anne’s letter disappeared, and then moves on to talk about how she thinks her sister’s marriage is not a good one, all the while Anne is a little surprised at how many words are coming out of Ann right now, as if it is hard for her to catch up with it all. She wants to say something in response to Ann, but she can’t because Ann just keeps going, talking about her brother-in-law and how he is probably not a good man. A notable moment here is Anne taking her top hat off, pulling her ponytail hair back and wiping her nose - don’t know what it is, but that was so goddamn sexy.
Ann finally ends her rant, realizing that she’s been talking so much, and she gets a little embarrassed for it in a really cute way. It is now Anne’s turn to speak - she tries to keep the conversation formal, which I guess is another form of self-defense, by saying “Well. I suppose that’s the trouble with being very rich. You never can be sure of people’s motives.” She says it in a petty way, one that makes it sound like it’s a curse, and that Anne is glad that she is not rich herself (something she so longed for), or that she dodged that bullet by not ending up with Ann. This also references Anne helping Ann shrug off her gold-digging cousins and also her asking to borrow money from her herself - as if those things never happened.
In a twisting turn, Ann says that she and her sister talked about her, to which Ann’s look changes: there is a glimmer of hope, because why would they possibly be talking about her when their whole deal was off? You can see that the light in her tired eyes is firing up again, only to be stifled again when Ann says “She said… she thought that sometimes, often, a good friendship is better than a marriage.” This is where Anne’s face goes dark and she looks down to the ground, probably thinking “Not THIS shit again?!” I think many wlw went through this many a time with a straight crush they had, and well, what can I say, Anne Lister gets it better than anyone.
Ann sees Anne’s low spirit and worried, she asks: “Are you alright?” In previous instances, whenever someone would ask Anne this question, she would famously answer: “I’m always alright.” But with Ann, she can’t help but be completely honest, and she looks like the question hit her right in the spot and that she can’t hold it in anymore. Following a tired, crying “Mmm”, she tells Ann that the pit collapsed, that it flooded, but that it can be fixed with more money. She’s annoyed at herself: “I took a gamble! I shouldn’t have.”
“But we’re not alive, are we? If we’re not taking the odd risk… now and again…” She looks at Ann as if to remind them both of how well Ann knows her, as if to say: “You know how this goes… I can’t stand still and I have to make life interesting even if it makes me poor.” Anne also knows that she took a gamble with Ann herself, attempting to form a relationship that had to be secret and had to rely on so many different factors that it’s no wonder it was doomed. But what got me is the way she said it and the way she looked at Ann while saying it; as if the gamble she took with Ann was worth it, even though it ultimately failed.
To Ann, on the other hand, this gives that courage Anne asked of her a few episodes prior - she is about to take a gamble herself. She steps forward while replying: “No… no, we’re not.” She looks at Anne with a kind of confidence that was never there before, which Anne immediately feels and responds to, this time without another choice. She can’t talk about other stuff anymore: she admits that she should have written to Ann again. “But when I didn’t hear back, I…” That’s when she spots the gondola pin.
They are standing close to each other now and the tension gets palpable. Anne is overtaken with emotion: the see-saw of losing and getting hope back on the top of this hill carries on as she looks at Ann to once again examine her intentions and to simply get lost in her eyes. Ann looks back the same way, her gaze letting Anne know that she is there, ready for whatever happens next.
“God I’ve missed you,” Anne says while her voice goes thin and shaky. There’s no more pretending, no more holding this avalanche of emotions back. Ann looks so relieved while taking a deep breath. She takes Anne’s hand and asks: “Have you?” with a tone of voice that could probably not be replicated so easily; it’s asking Anne to reassure Ann once more, to tell her that all might just not be lost, that her hopes that Anne misses her and wants her still have been valid and true all along.
Anne, once again, feels like she should probably not go any further than that, not knowing for sure what Ann’s feelings are right now - the scars of having been burnt on that same fire are still very sore. She’s holding Ann’s hand, takes it up and starts kissing it nevertheless, taken by the fact they are close again, that she can touch her again. She turns her hand over and sees the scar on her wrist. Ann pulls it away, but Anne takes it back: it really is a wrist cut. “There was just one morning I just thought I couldn’t stand it anymore.” Ann’s honesty is daunting, one that she is only able to have for Anne as she is the only one who could possibly understand her pain.
Anne is worried, she’s feeling guilty for not being there for Ann, she would have come straight back if she had known that (just like she was planning to before changing her mind last minute). Ann feels guilty too, perhaps thinking that Anne would think her too weak for this as well, because of the danger she put her own self in. She looks down in shame and sorrow.
Anne is holding her face, but then… she takes a step back, determined to make a confession she can no longer keep quiet. There’s the long sign, there is the head tilt, the taking the gamble, yet again.
“Do you know… I don’t think one hour passed where I didn’t think of you.” Truer words have never been said for Anne.
Ann is shocked - she did not see this coming. She worked hard to convince herself to expect the great Anne Lister to be thinking about her at all, especially not after all this time, and to tell herself not to think of Anne either. This so evidently fills her tender, tired heart with joy.
“I tried not to,” Anne continues, “But every time I closed my eyes… there you were!” Suranne’s delivery of this line is some of the finest acting I have ever seen: Anne is filled to the brim with sadness, honesty, torment and finally love, with just a liiiiittle bit of comedy spicing it up to take the edge off. Ann, on the verge of tears, nods and looks down, saying nothing, probably contemplating and taking it all in - it had, after all, been the same for her too.
But for Anne, this appears as hesitation. She gives Ann enough time to say something back, but when Ann doesn’t, it is time for her to put her guard up, once again. When Anne realizes that Ann probably won’t respond, and most certainly not with something she’s been so desperately wanting to hear from her for months, she pulls herself together and goes back to talking about general stuff - but this time with a little more affection.
“I met the Queen of Denmark!” Anne is not one to shy away from telling everyone about her achievements, certainly not ones including Royalty itself. The way she tells Ann about her experiences in Copenhagen - the excitement in her voice, the vivacity of her body movements, her holding of Ann’s hand that was not interrupted yet - reminds them both and us as viewers of just how close they are, how intimate their relationship still is, how themselves they get to be in each other’s presence.
Now it’s Anne’s turn to babble on - she tells Ann all about the Queen’s birthday ball the way she would tell her family, leaving no detail behind. Ann looks at her in awe and so in love: she laughs and giggles and she can see it all in front of her so vividly, as if she was there with her. “But all night I kept thinking: if you’d have seen me! You’d laugh!” Anne is grinning now because it’s true - Ann has been in her thoughts the whole time and now she gets to finally tell her about it, because she’s right there in front of her, they are finally reunited, the distance does not separate them anymore and the pain is gone, even if just for a moment.
“I had to wear white! Head to toe in white satin,” Anne tells her, again as if saying: “Me! Can you imagine?” And indeed, Ann cannot, as she laughs at it as if it was the most unnatural thing she’s ever heard. “But I made a bit of an impact,” Anne says, “One way or another.” It’s what she does, she makes an impression on people, as Ann knows very well. Ann looks at her hypnotized by her story, her arms, her voice, her eccentric yet endearing persona.
Anne’s speech too is now drawing to a close. “Friendly people, the Danes,” she concludes. “I think I shall go back there.” She realizes she probably will leave again soon, and alone, once more, like so many times before. “One day,” she says.
Ann, in her own right, realizes now is the time to show that courage she’s been mustering since leaving Scotland. She looks down for a second, looks back up and says: “Perhaps I could come with you.”
Anne has been here before; how many times she had wished for Ann to tell her exactly this, but at the same time knows the outcome of it all very well. Her look is telling Ann: “Please don’t do this, because we’ve done this already, remember?” Her grief is washing over her, as she cannot take false hope anymore.
Ann understands Anne’s reaction but is not pushed away by it. She carefully draws herself closer; we have never seen her be this bold, this convinced before. “You know… If you asked me to marry you again...” The camera is documenting Anne’s emotional journey: she too is taken by surprise by the way Ann carries herself, by the things she is saying. “I wouldn’t say no.” Could it really be?
This time it is Ann proposing to Anne.
Until this moment it was always Anne talking about marriage, and Ann being her wife. Here we see Ann taking initiative, we see her bring it up using Anne’s own proposal, fearlessly and sure of herself and the decision she made. Though this convinces Anne, it is only for a second: she can’t shake off the feeling that she will be let down yet again. She simply cannot trust Ann on this, even if she is so wonderfully, finally brave. “Hm… but would you say yes?” She looks deeply into Ann’s eyes, expecting to find hesitation.
But Ann is so far from hesitant. With a determination she has so longed for, with a conviction she so searched for, she says: “Yes.”
“Would you? And stick to it? And mean it?” Anne wants to make sure Ann understands her well.
“Yes.” Ann has never been more sure of anything in her life.
Anne gets closer to Ann, encouraged. “Take the sacrament with me? In church? And mean that too?” She needs to make the deal clear.
Ann loves the way Anne is thorough and persistent. She smiles and goes to place her hand on Anne’s face. The music gets louder with a revealing, hopeful tone. It all probably feels like a dream to Anne, as Ann becomes the girl she always hoped she would become: one that would take Anne for who she is, and there would be just the two of them on the planet. Ann wipes the tears from her cheek: “I love you, Anne.” She is the one sealing the deal now. Anne cannot believe her ears but is thrilled at the same time. Ann reassures her: “I’m in love with you. I always have been.” Ann is finally at peace with what she’s been feeling all along, and is ready to own her happiness, and to make the woman she can’t, and doesn’t want to, live without, happy as well.
Anne is speechless. The long, exhausting journey and the ache she’s been feeling have all come to an end, and she will at last be able to live her truth with someone she loves. “Don’t hurt me,” she says to Ann while taking comfort in her hand. It’s an unexpected statement from one Anne Lister - even Ann Walker thinks so - the woman always in charge of her feelings, always with a brave face on. Her walls are finally down. “I’m not as strong as you think.” She can be honest with Ann while she’s giving her her heart. “I mean I am, obviously!” She is Anne Lister, after all. Ann knows it; she knows her, and she recognizes her trying to remain the dominant, tough one. “But… sometimes I’m not.”
There are no words left to be said. They look into each other’s eyes - this is it. They are both in the same place, at the same time, the universe has aligned and all the obstacles are gone, there is just Anne for Ann and just Ann for Anne and nothing else can possibly matter as much as this. Ann tilts her head forward, signaling to Anne, and Anne dives in for a passionate kiss as the music is triumphant in crescendo. She looks at Ann for just a second - yes, she really is there, and this really is happening. The sun reflects on the tears streaming down her face as they get lost in each other, lush Yorkshire landscape and a vast blue sky behind them.
#long post#really long post#gentleman jack#anne lister#ann walker#the hilltop scene#anne x ann#ann(e)dom#suranne jones#sophie rundle#about me#kinda like fanfic#but not really
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Actor Casey Affleck Reflects On The Past And 'The World To Come'
The last time I saw Casey Affleck was after an 8:30 a.m. Sundance Film Festival screening of “Manchester by the Sea,” which left my colleagues and I so emotionally drained we were pretty much useless for the rest of the day. Affleck finds this very funny. “Oh man, that’s awesome,” he laughs. “That was a tough screening. At Sundance I’m usually just going to sleep at 8 a.m.” We’re talking on the phone a few days after the festival’s virtual premiere of his latest movie, “The World to Come,” which made its Sundance debut last month under very different circumstances. “It’s so strange doing these things sitting in front of your computer,” he sighs.
Directed by Mona Fastvold, “The World to Come” is a powerful period piece about a forbidden love affair between pioneer women played by Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby, set in upstate New York during the early months of 1856. Affleck produced the picture, in which he plays a supporting role as Waterston’s uncomprehending husband, and he did his best to soldier through a crowded Zoom Q&A after the Sundance screening, with results pleasant enough, but nonetheless missing that in-person festival magic. “I used to love going to film festivals and talking to journalists and seeing all the movies and talking to other filmmakers,” he laments. “Sitting here alone in a little office in my house is such a drag. But it was nice to know that the movie was getting seen, at least.”
While big brother Ben plays Batman in studio pictures, Casey has exhibited a restless independent streak ever since he was a student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. (Our ninth-grade classes competed against each other in the Mass. High School Drama Guild Competition. His won, perhaps unsurprisingly.) A longtime friend of the Brattle Theatre and former creative advisor for the Independent Film Festival Boston, the younger Affleck has always seemed more at home in indies. Not a lot of actors would follow an Oscar-winning role in “Manchester by the Sea” with a microbudget art film like “A Ghost Story.” But then his internalized, minimalist acting style is often at odds with the concerns of contemporary blockbusters. There’s a weird dissonance watching something like Disney’s hokey Chatham sea adventure “The Finest Hours,” with Affleck going full Montgomery Clift while surrounded by CGI silliness.
“The World to Come” is the most ambitious project yet from Affleck’s Sea Change Media, which partnered with Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon’s legendary NYC indie institution Killer Films for the arduous production that began with a conversation between Affleck and novelist Ron Hansen nearly a decade ago. “When I did ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ I got to know Ron Hansen, just because I loved the book so much. Ron has a very unique talent for writing 19th century language. He’s just from another era. I asked him if he had something he wanted to work on together, and I thought he would send me one of his things. Instead, he sent me this story by Jim Shepard. It was beautiful. I said, why don’t you and Jim write the script? And they took about six years, but it came together beautifully. Good things come to those who wait, I guess.”
The film eventually shot in Romania with a break built into the schedule to accommodate the changing seasons that are so crucial to the movie’s rugged, outdoor textures. “We were way out in Transylvania, out in the mountains,” Affleck explains. “We were just in some valley and they built a couple of farmhouses. I like being far away in a new place. It makes you feel outside of your life. And I love working in weather. There are so many aspects of moviemaking that are artificial, but when there’s extreme weather, it’s real. I did this Disney movie about a boat rescue, and it was, like, December in friggin’ Quincy and they were just soaking us with water every single take. There’s not a lot that you have to quote-unquote act. You’re just standing there, teeth-chattering, shivering, just being.” This reminds me of the scene in “Manchester” when he and Lucas Hedges have an argument walking in the blistering cold and can’t remember where they parked. “I forgot about that one,” he laughs.
I’d never say so on the phone, but I consider Affleck’s performance as Lee Chandler in “Manchester by the Sea” among the finest I’ve seen in my 22 years of reviewing films, worthy of discussion alongside Brando’s Terry Malloy in “On the Waterfront” in its aching, inchoate longing. Lee holds his grief somewhere very private and dear, as if to begin to forgive himself would be an act of betrayal. The movie nails a gruff, emotional constipation popular among men of a certain stripe, especially in New England. (My mother offered my favorite review of the film: “Why don’t they just talk to each other? Jesus, this is like watching you and your father.”) Words don’t come easily to most of Affleck’s movie characters, but he chafes at the description of them as inarticulate. “It’s funny, I find the characters in ‘Manchester’ to be sometimes very articulate,” he argues. “There’s misunderstandings, but they end up communicating what’s inside.”
“The World to Come” is rife with such mixed signals and miscommunications, about which co-star Katherine Waterston raved during the Zoom Q&A after the Sundance screening. “It was so much fun to play the scenes with Casey,” she said. “A lot of these scenes are written as dances, where somebody tries to reach out and engage and they’re misunderstood. Inarticulacy is a very interesting thing to see in film. The failed attempts. Failed communications. It’s actually fun to play those things. You don’t know what the other person’s going to throw at you. It keeps it really alive on set. Mona and I felt if we had the money we could have kept shooting this thing for months, because the scenes were so much fun to explore.”
Affleck agrees. “When Katherine’s character writes in her journal or she starts talking to Vanessa, they have this beautiful, expressive way of speaking to each other,” he enthuses, whereas his character “says what he’s gotta say in as few words as possible. He’s very brusque and curt, which I enjoyed. The way that he talks is the communication equivalent when he gives her a birthday gift of sardines and a tin of raisins.”
Indeed, her increasingly florid diary entries — originally intended as a ledger to keep track of the farm’s monthly expenses — become the heartbeat of the film, providing an emotional release otherwise suppressed by the rigid formality of the era and the ugly drudgery of day-to-day farm life. “The World to Come” is ultimately a movie about the need to share our stories, and how through telling them we make sense of ourselves. As producer Koffler explains in the press notes, “Part of the film’s vision is to dramatize a very basic human impulse: to create, to connect, to say ‘I was here, and I mattered.’”
This has become a recurring theme in Affleck’s recent work. In 2019, he wrote, directed and starred in “Light of My Life,” a little-seen but strikingly tense post-apocalyptic road movie about a father and daughter hiding out in the wilderness after a pandemic has wiped out most of the women in the world. The film begins with Affleck telling the little girl a bedtime story that runs almost 13 minutes and sneakily sets up the movie’s major themes. Then in last month’s well-acted but regrettably soggy “Our Friend,” he starred as real-life journalist Matthew Teague, whose soul-baring Esquire story about his wife’s struggle with cancer became a national phenomenon.
“Matt Teague wrote that article and then wanted it made into a movie as his way of processing everything that had happened,” the actor elaborates. “You transform pain into other things as you go through life. That was all him working through it. I like stories about storytellers and I like stories within stories. Obviously, I wrote and directed a movie that starts with a 12-minute bedtime story. I love that. I know that other people don’t love it as much as I do, so I have to be careful about it.”
That kind of love led to last summer’s “Stories From Tomorrow,” a project initiated during lockdown by Affleck and his schoolteacher mom Christine, encouraging children to send in poems and short stories to be read on social media by celebrities like Matt Damon and Jon Hamm, as well as his “The World to Come” co-stars Waterston and Kirby. “That was something I started out at the very beginning of the quarantine as a small project to encourage kids to write creatively, because I know it can be a great way of processing anxiety and working through feelings that you aren’t really talking about or aren’t aware that you’re having. It wasn’t something I thought would go on forever; once the kids are back in school that ought to be where they should be doing all that kind of work. But while they were sitting at home, I thought it would be a good way to get their attention off the awful news and into something more imaginative. And I also got a chance to read all these super-cool stories! Really creative stuff that kids sent from all around the world.”
Finally, as a Boston publication it would be dereliction of duty not to mention the hysterical Dunkin Donuts commercial parody from when Affleck hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2016, so dead-on in its depiction of a local 'regulah customah' that on one of my critics’ poll ballots that year I tried to nominate the sketch for Best Documentary. Alas, the performer shoots down a pet theory I’ve been hanging onto ever since, that the dirtbag Boston guy in the Bruins hat is secretly a grown-up version of Affleck’s scene stealing, bug-swallowing Morgan from “Good Will Hunting.”
“I hadn’t thought about that, dude. That’s really funny. It never crossed my mind." He pauses before confiding, "I wasn’t that great on SNL… I just wasn’t all that funny on the skits, because it’s live and you’re reading the cue cards and it was my first time. But when we went to make that little pre-recorded short film of the Dunkin’ Donuts ad, I really felt like that was my wheelhouse there. I could’ve played that character in a movie. I could have gone to work and played him every single day, and I would have had a blast. That was really fun to do. I would love to do another one of those. That would be funny to see that character again.”
I bet that guy’s got some stories.
“The World To Come” is now in theaters and will be available via video on demand Tuesday, March 2.
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WHAT TIME IS IT? SUMMER TIME! The polaroids are stuffed between the pages of her childhood diary, which she’ll take back to America as fodder for her eventual tell-all she’s planned with Faith over a bottle of red wine sometime or when the apocalypse hits (she can’t remember which date they decided on). The pictures feel more like a revisited past.
“We have summer students, your room isn't a storage facility. You're very lucky we didn't take these boxes straight to the dumpster.”
When Luce got back to Georgetown, she wasn’t able to enter her dorm room. She went to the porter’s office and was given her belongings, which consisted of five boxes worth of stuff, made heavy by her synths, pedals and guitar. She took her mail and promised that she’d come back for the boxes later. The porter was pissed off that she couldn’t take it now and Luce felt like a berated child. In her stack of mail she found out her credit rating had dropped to an R-2, with a notice of delinquency. She figured it was similar to when she got a warning for torrenting Game of Thrones, but never actually got fined.
“I was on Pluto. I wrote you a letter, but it was too cringy to send. Have you heard of The Magnetic Zeros? Let's listen to them for a bit.”
He always lets her talk first. Even after months of silence. Luce traipses around his high rise apartment and touches everything in sight ; the frames of pictures and the thin film of dust that has settled on the coffee table. Then she says sorry for an absence that wasn't her fault because she needs the money and feels immediately icky for acknowledging that her apology has a motive behind it. She can sense his disappointment radiating like underwater sonar pulses, dulled by the glass of whiskey empty on the side table. A year's tuition down the drain. It's not about the money. Need to go home. It's about the money. He kisses her cheek instead of her neck and writes her a cheque. Luce booked her flight that night.
“Oh Luce. My baby.”
Is what her Pa said over and over again, scooped in his arms at arrivals. She was already crying walking towards them, a visceral happiness so intense that the only other feeling it can be compared to is grief. Luce spends the first week as a tourist, waking up early and watching her parents do menial tasks: like making coffee and checking the weather report on their phones. She takes long walks, and when she doesn't, she waits for her parents to come home like a puppy eagerly waiting to hear the clink of an unlocked door. Family gatherings are planned for the weekends and she goes out with her parents whenever they do. In this time she drinks a lot of beer and no Four Lokos.
"No one uses Facebook anymore Lucie, relationship statuses are obsolete. Would you not have reached out if you knew?"
Weeks pass and waiting for her parents gets tiring. She walks around the house in her pyjama shirt and an old acoustic guitar with a fraying strap hanging across her. She drinks juice from the carton and eats cereal by the handful. She Facetime's everyone on her contact list and it's still not enough to bridge the space from 12-9. On a particularly boring Tuesday afternoon she messages her ex on Facebook and asks if he'd like to catch up and get drinks. He brings his girlfriend and their Yorkshire Terrier, Bozo. Like the clown. He says what he says in reply to a casual jest, it was her fault for saying it. "Always too cool too make it official." His girlfriend's several paces behind picking up Bozo's poop. When she doesn’t have an immediate reply to his retort back, he takes the few seconds of silence to his question as an answer, and his lips curl into a wry smirk. She looks away and takes a drag of her cigarette like she's a girl in a black and white French film.
"...Same old Lucie."
Jack calls her Lucie because he was there when the nickname was created and think it's degrading to call herself that. He thinks he's doing her an act of kindness when he calls her Lucie and thinks he's special for being allowed to do so. She goes home after the split pitcher is finished.
“Anything it is, anything. You can tell me.”
She spends her nights with her mam hanging upside down from the couch. This time though she's curled up like a cat in her lap, and mam's combing through her tangles with her fingers. Through trembling laughter she tries to explain, but it's a high roll on a game of Monopoly where she skips straight to the exact square instead of moving through them. Tells her she just really needs a job, has no money is all. Her mam gets her a job at the grocery store. She catches up with every familiar face to the sound of beeps and closed cash registers. She notices how whole lives are spent in this town, not a place to retire or spend your youth, the whole package. She misses America.
“Wa-sah!”
Scott visits the weekend she goes home to the States. It’s good because their flights are both on Sunday night, but bad because it’s her last weekend here, so her house is teeming with family. She introduces him as her good friend, but it doesn’t ease her parent’s enthusiasm, intent on giving him a proper welcome to Ireland, which for the Frear family includes an early afternoon pub crawl. He takes it like a champ, keeps up with the banter and doesn’t shake her nephew off his leg when he attacks it as soon as they enter the front door. When the night dies down she excuses themselves, wooden stairs creaking under their weight, silent until they’re sat next to each other on the edge of her childhood bed. Luce takes a picture with her phone, so close-up that his face doesn’t fit in the frame. A fit of giggles erupt looking at it, thankfully it doesn’t wake the little ones camped in the living room. She wants to thank him, or apologize, tell him it’s not usually like this and it’s a lot for anyone, but instead when her laughter trickles away she thumbs the hem of his shirt, tugging it upwards.
“Call us when you land, love you.”
Is what her parents say and is what Marlowe and Atty say too. They're going to be together forever. Scott is dropped off at his gate first, which she prefers because she wouldn’t have wanted him to see her weepy with her parents. She spends the last few weeks of summer in complete bliss, basking in the South Carolina sun. She sticks a magnet with a naked leprechaun on their fridge and tucks a bottle of Irish whiskey away for them. Marlowe can’t drink right now, and Atty doesn’t really drink to begin with, but the bottle is pretty and her folks wouldn’t let her go home without it. She spends her days listening to Marlowe play, streaming on Twitch with Atty and buying baby clothes whenever she goes shopping because they're significantly cheaper than adult clothes and can't resist the temptation. They eat a lot of Taco Bell. She burns through her month and a half wage at the grocery store in the span of days. Luce wonders how that's possible while listening to Greetings From Asbury Park, then gets up and puts the kettle on.
#luce on matty's air mattress [ jean ralphio vc ] technically im hoMeLeSs#consciously Efforteted to cut the introspection so it wldn't be long and Yet .#yes i am vibin with 2016 polaroid manip aesthetics *Shields Face*#gallagher:task#ft. / marlowe .#ft. / atty .#ft. / scott .
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Hilarie Burton Morgan On Home Beyond Hollywood And Working Beside Her Husband On ‘The Walking Dead’
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From her standout performances on beloved television series to a recent bestselling memoir, Hilarie Burton Morgan continues to take us along on her journey called life. Beginning her career as a MTV VJ in 2000 to regularly lighting up the small screen ever since, the 38-year-old actress and author wears multiple hats these days, with an even more important title of mother & wife leading her charge. Now with several exciting projects on the horizon, including her long-anticipated introduction into the expanding world of The Walking Dead beside her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan , Hilarie is no doubt maintaining a lasting impression.
To truly appreciate her on-screen chemistry with Jeffrey, it would be helpful to know how they first connected off-screen. “I knew right away,” Hilarie tells Forbes about how soon she knew Jeffrey was the person for her, while sharing the story of how they met. “My very dear friend Danneel Ackles is married to Jensen Ackles and I would stay at their house every time I would go out to LA. When I was 26, I went to stay at their house and I think they got sick of me dating drifters. So Jensen was like ‘I’m going to introduce you to someone that I want to hang out with’ and he introduced me to Jeffrey, who had played his dad on Supernatural . It was pretty from the jump. He started sending me packages right away of books and love letters and he laid it on nice and thick and it worked! Here we are 12 years later.”
AFP via Getty Images
Easter Sunday on AMC, The Walking Dead will reveal to viewers the backstory of Jeffrey’s character Negan and his ailing wife Lucille, played by Hilarie. Even though this important “Here’s Negan” season finale episode will be the first time you will actually see Lucille in action, Hilarie points out that her character has played an integral part on the hit series for some time now. “The mythology of Lucille has been around as long as Negan has been around,” Hilarie explains. “When it was introduced that he had a baseball bat that he used to kill people named Lucille, obviously there were questions surrounding who that was named after and he has been pretty forthcoming throughout the series that his dead wife was the inspiration for the name and he has talked a number of times about her cancer diagnosis, about her death, about what that loss meant to him. While Negan and my husband have been vilified over the last five or so years, to me what Lucille is, is a real glimpse into who Negan was pre-apocalypse and the man that she wanted him to be.”
Hilarie says being a real-life married couple portraying a married couple on television was an experience they really enjoyed together. “It was really wonderful. We have a really similar energy on-set. Neither one of us takes ourselves very seriously. We like joking around.” Hilarie also hopes that fans will better understand the violent ways of Negan after they get to see the love and heartbreak that he came from. “If there was ever a time for people to understand Negan’s aggression or his way of doing things, I feel like the entire world has been prepped for that over the last year. So Lucille comes in as the person who loves him the most and loves him even with his flaws. Perhaps the audience if they don’t already love him, which they should, perhaps they can follow Lucille’s example and love him through the tough stuff.”
Josh Stringer/AMC
In reality, Hilarie’s life with Jeffrey and their two kids is far less dramatic. When their son was in preschool, the couple decided to set roots as a growing family in Upstate New York and ultimately build their home on a farm. “We rescue animals and we got tons of chickens and ducks and cows and llamas and an emu and a donkey that are in love. We have got a really large vegetable garden that we definitely expanded on during quarantine and our son just turned eleven and our daughter is three and they are fully onboard with getting involved in there.”
Following the unexpected death of their local family friend Ira Gutner, Hilarie and Jeffrey decided to become co-owners of Samuel’s Sweet Shop to keep Ira’s storefront from closing, with the help of a handful of nearby friends, including another familiar face, actor Paul Rudd. “It has been such a wonderful experience for our kids because they all know what their first job is going to be,” Hilarie adds. “It has been fun for our community because we have been able to use it as the trophy case for all our food artists in town. During quarantine, when you can’t celebrate with the people you love, we hired all new people and created a new space to do gift baskets. It was so wonderful that our community and people from all over the country were supporting a small business, because we know what lockdown did to those this year.”
AMC
Last May, in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hilarie published her memoir The Rural Diaries: Love, Livestock and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm . In the book, which she says is meant to be a love letter to her husband, her community and her children, Hilarie very openly discusses the miscarriages she endured and says she did not expect so many people to connect with her story over the past year. “This has been a book that people have gifted their friends or their loved ones during a really difficult time. For me, the responsibility of being a voice for people who have felt like they needed to keep miscarriages or infertility a secret, I’m very serious about it. I never want to cheapen that for anyone because I know how terrible it is to fall asleep at night devastated.” Hilarie is currently writing a second book, which she hopes to have done by next year.
Even as new projects continue to pop up for Hilarie, her nostalgic fan-favorite projects from yesteryear also seem to have the possibility of returning in some capacity. When discussing her role as Sara Ellis on the stylish con artist series White Collar and her commitment to finding a way to work with that cast family again through a revival series or simply together on a new project, Hilarie says, “We’re going to get the band back together, hell or high water. We love each other.”
Hilarie’s six seasons starring as Peyton Sawyer on the hit drama series One Tree Hill has led to her having a substantially large and vocal fanbase for nearly two decades now . “Peyton was the Negan of One Tree Hill because there are people who really hated her and then there were people who really loved how messy she was. Those are the characters that I have always been drawn to, which is probably why I am so defensive of my husband’s character. I love Peyton Sawyer. I put so much of my real self into that character and really fought for her a lot behind the scenes.” When reflecting on the longevity of this series that ran from 2003-2012, Hilarie has noticed the loyal One Tree Hill fan community growing larger and larger as time goes on, as younger generations are now experiencing the series for the very first time through the in-demand world of video streaming. “It’s going to be weird when my son or my daughter comes of age and has to reckon with all the dumb stuff their mother did in her early twenties because it’s there forever,” Hilarie jokes.
FilmMagic
When referencing her One Tree Hill co-stars, which include Sophia Bush, Bethany Joy Lenz, James Lafferty and Chad Michael Murray, Hilarie says, “Those are going to be the people that I’m close with forever. Those are the people who were with me when I was most unsure about myself and we’ve all seen each other fall in love and break up and been through it. All of those life experiences matter, now that we are almost twenty years later and we’ll love each other forever. We’re always scheming on how to continue to work together.” When hoping Hilarie will elaborate further with any hints for fans, she responds, “I will say that the girls in particular are very, very close. We went through a lot together on that show and we evolved together on that show and so we may have some things in the works that we will be excited to promote later this summer.”
As Hilarie strives to make time for her new and revisited projects, she is consistently striving to make her family’s schedules work as one. “We definitely take turns. Jeffrey’s Walking Dead schedule is obviously the thing that takes precedent. So if I can maintain my side hustles around that (laughs) . The kids’ school year is a big deal for us and what has been really lovely is that in the time we have lived in the Hudson Valley, the film community there has really blossomed. Everything is about making it work for the family and I think once you have that as your center point, it makes every other decision that rolls around it very easy.”
Hilarie wrapped up our conversation thinking about other women in the world right now that have to juggle many responsibilities at once during this life-altering era of the pandemic. “For me, the struggle is always between being a good mom and working and quarantine pulled so many women out of the workforce. When I see those numbers of the amount of women that had to leave work to be able to take care of their children because schools were closed and because we didn’t know what this virus was going to do, that’s heartbreaking. Being able to be a working mother from home and take my kids to school and take them to dance class and write my book and produce movies is something I don’t take for granted at all. I want a shine a light on all the women who are doing it. Homeschool and working and cooking dinner and cleaning the house and just all of it. You’re never good enough. So for the women who out there trying their absolute best, I just want you to know you’re good enough and you’ve kicked ass and your kids are going to be great and they saw how much you cared and how hard you worked and that’s important.”
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13 Best Blumhouse Horror Movies Ranked
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Has any single person had a greater impact on horror this century than Jason Blum? The one-time Miramax executive struck out on his own in the 2000s when he founded Blumhouse Productions, a company where he remains the CEO. And in the ensuing years, Blum’s production label would define, and redefine again, the trends of horror movies and thrillers.
Operating on the philosophy that a horror film with a micro-budget will almost always turn a profit, Blum frequently allows directors broad freedom to make what they want within the genre, and in the process has kept multiplexes perpetually spooky. In 2009 Blumhouse helped reinvent the found footage horror aesthetic, and in the 2010s, the modern phenomenon of talent-focused horror gems began with Blumhouse’s gambles.
Working with filmmakers like James Wan, Scott Derrickson, Ethan Hawke, and Jordan Peele, Blumhouse Productions’ title card is now a promise of something different, if still eminently commercial and entertaining. It even paved the way for the controversial modern discourse around “elevated” horror, with Peele’s Get Out being the first chiller to win an Oscar for screenwriting since The Silence of the Lambs.
So with a new Blumhouse horror movie in theaters this Friday the 13th, we thought it a good time to count down the 13 best Blumhouse efforts that paid off with a bloody good time.
13. Hush
At the bottom of our top 13 is this taut thriller from Mike Flanagan, director The Haunting of series and Doctor Sleep fame. Flanagan and his co-writer and star (and also wife), Kate Siegel, wanted to make a horror movie with little to no dialogue. So they came up with this concept of a deaf-mute woman (Siegel) in a remote house, who is stalked by a killer with a crossbow. Hush is at its peak in the first 20 minutes as the masked man (10 Cloverfield Lane’s John Gallagher Jr.) realizes his quarry can’t actually hear him and begins to play games.
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The pair’s relationship with sound makes an interesting dynamic in this tense home invasion movie, though the cat and mouse chase does grow somewhat repetitive and generic as the film progresses. Still, a fine performance from Siegel and an indication of what Flanagan could do on a small budget make this very much worth checking out. – Rosie Fletcher
12. Happy Death Day
The Groundhog Day formula where an odious person is doomed to relive the same day countless times has proven remarkably flexible. And Happy Death Day is no exception with its horror-comedy blend of Punxsutawney hijinks and ‘80s slasher movie clichés. Starring a ridiculously game Jessica Rothe as Tree, the sorority girl who is constantly waking up with the hangover from hell, Happy Death Day follows the typical “Queen Bee” slasher archetype, and forces her to relive the same horror movie again and again. Until she can figure out who her masked killer is, and maybe how to be a better person, she’s condemned to die in increasingly preposterous ways. Worse still, she must also wake up in a dormitory afterward.
It’s derivative in a million different ways, but delightful in many more thanks to a cheeky atmosphere from director Christopher Landon and a very savvy, self-aware script by Scott Lobdell. Most of all though, it benefits from Rothe’s comedic talents on full display, as she backflips between initial verbal bitchiness and constant physical comedy. She even manages to find a little pathos, one stab wound at a time. – David Crow
11. The Visit
The Sixth Sense may remain M. Night Shyamalan’s masterpiece, but it was an oft-referenced moment from a different film that became key to Blumhouse pulling him back from the brink of irrelevance.
Having made four objectively terrible movies in a row, including the notoriously bad wind-smeller The Happening, Shyamalan seemingly decided to use what he’d learned from a very effective part of 2002’s Signs, where Joaquin Phoenix reacts to a tense home movie of an alien sighting, and took the next logical step: What if the director put together 90 minutes of unsettling home movie moments just like that?
Your mileage may vary with the handheld, mockumentary style of The Visit, but it’s hard to argue that this brisk, low-budget tale of two young siblings staying with some very, very odd grandparents they’ve never met before could play out more wildly than it does here. And Shyamalan certainly doesn’t pull many punches when it comes to putting those poor kids in peril during the film’s climax. – Kirsten Howard
10. Creep
No, not the one set on the subway, this Creep, directed by Patrick Brice, written by Brice and Mark Duplass, and also starring them both in a tense two-hander, is an altogether more unsettling affair. Brice plays Aaron, a videographer who answers an ad posted by Josef (Duplass), the latter saying he’s dying and wants a video diary made to leave to his son. But Josef’s behavior is weird – exactly how weird is too weird is the challenge faced by Aaron.
At just 77 mins long, this is a compact, unusual, often funny movie which picks at male relationships in the modern day, and how far kindness and politeness can override instinct. Duplass and Brice are incredibly natural in a film that’s extremely unusual, steeped in unease but not really like a traditional horror, with laughter and tension relief keeping you on your toes throughout. There’s a sequel which is good too, though if you can watch the first without spoilers it delivers a particular kind of dread that’s hard to replicate. – RF
9. Upgrade
A couple of decades ago, there were plenty of films around like Upgrade. You didn’t even have to move for fun sci-fi action movies, really! But the glory days of never having to wait for the next Equilibrium, Gattaca, Cypher, or even Jet Li’s The One are long behind us. It’s pretty tough to get a slick little concept movie made when you’re expected to compete with huge action tentpoles at the box office—unless you’re Leigh Whannell, one of Blumhouse’s integral puzzle pieces.
Whannell paid his dues at the production house for 15 years as both a writer and helmer before unleashing his sophomore directorial effort, Upgrade. The film, which follows ludicrously named technophobe Grey Trace after he loses his beloved wife in a violent mugging, sees a paralyzed hero get implanted with a chatty chip that allows him to regain the use of his whole body. Soon Trace become virtually superhuman—imagine an internal K.I.T.T.—but all is not as it seems.
It shouldn’t be as delightful as it is. Admittedly, the whole thing isn’t too far removed from an elevated episode of The Outer Limits. But if you miss old school sci-fi nonsense and feel nostalgic for a time when smart sci-fi projects didn’t end up as eight drawn out episodes on a major streaming service instead, Upgrade really scratches an itch.
Of course now might be a bad time to mention that an Upgrade TV series is in the works… – KH
8. Halloween
In resurrecting one of horror’s most enduring—yet stubbornly uneven—franchises, director David Gordon Green (working with screenwriters Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley) made the smartest move he could: He stripped away the ridiculously convoluted and nonsensical mythology the franchise had built up over decades. Instead he simply made a direct sequel to Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece.
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Movies
Best Modern Horror Movies
By Don Kaye
Movies
Halloween: A Legacy Unmasked
By David Crow
The result was easily the best Halloween movie since the original itself, bringing the characters and the story into the present while reverting Michael Myers back to the enigmatic, unstoppable, unknowable force that was so terrifying in the first film. Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, and Andi Matichak as three generations of Strode women bring healthy feminine empowerment to the proceedings while the intense violence and uneasy psychological underpinnings give this Halloween a resonance that has been lacking for so long. – Don Kaye
7. Split
As the movie that suggested M. Night Shyamalan’s renaissance was real, Split is still a surprising box office win for the eclectic filmmaker. With a grizzly premise about a man suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as split personality) kidnapping teen girls to hold in a zoo, this could be the stuff of ‘70s grindhouse sleaze. While there is a touch of that to Split, more critically the movie acts as a buoyant showcase for James McAvoy at his most unbound.
Playing a character with 24 different personalities, a shaved and beefy McAvoy is visibly giddy bouncing between multiple alters that include a deceptively sweet little boy, an OCD fashion designer, and a bestial final form. The commitment he shows to each also becomes its own special effect, causing you to swear his physical shape is changing with his expressions.
Similarly, scenes with theater legend Betty Buckley as his psychiatrist also rivet with the energy of a stage play, and suggest a sincere sympathy for mental illness. A rarity in horror. Nevertheless, the movie still comes down to his alters’ obsessions with their kidnapped prize (Anya Taylor-Joy), a young woman who hides demons of her own. When these true selves finally cross paths in a genuinely tense finale, Split is maniacally thrilling. – DC
6. Sinister
An unsettling entry in the horror subgenre of writers who destroy their families, Sinister marked director/co-writer Scott Derrickson’s (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) return to horror after he detoured with an ill-fated remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Thus Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill concocted a unique, if somewhat scattershot, mythology about a pagan deity that murders entire families in the ghastliest ways imaginable.
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Movies
M. Night Shyamalan Movies Ranked
By John Saavedra
Movies
Best Horror Movies on Netflix: Scariest Films to Stream
By David Crow and 2 others
True crime writer Ethan Hawke discovers the extent of those murders in a box of 8mm films left in the attic of his new home (where the last killings took place), and it’s the unspooling of those films—along with long sequences of Hawke moving through the shadows and silence of the house—that provide Sinister with its sickening core and palpable dread. Derrickson sustains the film’s foreboding mood for the entire running time, making the movie an authentically frightening experience. – DK
5. Oculus
The film that brought much of the world’s attention to Mike Flanagan, Oculus turned out to be a preview for the horror filmmaker’s interests. It also remains a truly unnerving ghost story. Not since the days of Dead of Night has a film so successfully made you scared of looking in a mirror.
Officially titled the Lasser Glass, the mirror in question is the apparent supernatural cause of hundreds of deaths, including the parents of Kaylie Russell (Karen Gillan) and her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites). When they were children, their mother starved and mutilated herself before their father killed her. But now as an adult, Kaylie is convinced she can prove the antique glass is the true culprit, and she’ll document its evil power before destroying it. But the funny thing about evil mirrors is they have ways of protecting themselves, and wreaking havoc on a sense of time, place, and certainly self-image.
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TV
The Haunting of Bly Manor: Mike Flanagan Discusses Standout Eighth Episode
By Alec Bojalad
TV
The Haunting of Bly Manor: The Poignant Tale of Hannah Grose
By Louisa Mellor
With the movie’s near masterful blending of events occurring 11 years ago and in the present, Flanagan revealed a knack for dreamlike structure, and stories about the past damning the future. These are ideas he’s gone on to explore in richer detail with The Haunting of Hill House and Doctor Sleep, but Flanagan’s ability to juxtapose childhood trauma with a nightmarish present was never more potent, or tragic, than in Oculus’ refracted gaze. – DC
4. Paranormal Activity
It may take some mental gymnastics, but if you can take a step back and ignore all the sequels that followed in the wake of this surprise 2009 blockbuster, then you’d remember Paranormal Activity is a stone cold classic. It is also the movie that put Blumhouse on the map. Already mostly finished when Jason Blum saw a DVD screener of Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity, this $15,000-budgeted terror is arguably the most evocative use of found footage in all of horror.
While Peli is obviously influenced by 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, that earlier movie is as famous for its shaky disorientation as it is its scares. By contrast what occurs in Paranormal Activity is excruciatingly clear. Seriously, the camera barely moves! Instead we’re asked to sit back and watch in near slow motion as an unwise couple (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) meddle with forces that were better off left undisturbed.
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Movies
How Jason Blum Changed Horror Movies
By Rosie Fletcher
Movies
The Best Horror Movies to Stream
By Alec Bojalad and 1 other
It begins when Micah brings a home video camera into their house to track apparent ghosts in the dark; it ends in a demonic rush of violence. Everything in between is tracked by a disinterested lens, which usually sits statically in a corner or on a tripod, capturing the tedium of everyday life in its everyday natural lighting. Only occasionally does the horned shadow on the wall manifest. But then Paranormal Activity is chilling in its isolation. – DC
3. Insidious
As the fourth feature film directed by Australian filmmaker James Wan, Insidious follows a couple named Josh and Renai Lambert (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne), whose son inexplicably falls into a coma and becomes a vessel for malevolent entities from a dimension called the Further. The family enlists a psychic named Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) in a battle involving astral projection and demonic possession.
Following an era of horror films that were more torture porn or police procedural (including Wan’s own Saw), Insidious was a return to the kind of horror filmmaking that was dependent on atmosphere, suspense, and what you don’t see lurking in the shadows. And Wan seemed to imbue that creepiness around the edges of every shot. Using actual adult characters and developing them (as opposed to the hipster teens that infested nearly every horror movie for at least 10 years previously) also set the film apart as a serious attempt at a genre that had been too often exploited in a tossed-off fashion.
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Movies
Universal Monsters: The Invisible Man Shows Life After Dark Universe Death
By David Crow
Movies
Blumhouse Horror Movies Update: Halloween Kills, Insidious 5 and More
By Don Kaye
The world-building of Insidious left the door open for sequels, of course, and while the three produced so far have had their moments, none has matched the sheer invention and terrifying fun of the original. – DK
2. The Invisible Man
Leigh Whannell’s reimagining of the classic Universal Monster, the Invisible Man, was as much of a surprise when it hit screens earlier this year as the titular villain himself. As a smart social commentary on domestic abuse and gaslighting, while also being enormously effective as a straight up horror, this was a highly fresh take on an old standard.
At the core was the terrific performance of Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia, a woman stuck with her controlling boyfriend Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) in their high-tech, high security fortress of a home. When Cece finally manages to escape and Adrian appears to take his own life, she hopes her ordeal can finally be over. But in fact it’s just beginning.
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Movies
How Leigh Whannell Made The Invisible Man Scary Again
By Rosie Fletcher
Movies
How The Invisible Man Channels the Original Tale
By Don Kaye
Playing on the true horror of not being believed, Whannell’s Invisible Man is as harrowing at times as it is thrilling. Yes, there are some extraordinarily shocking set pieces – the restaurant scene of course stands out – but it’s the increasing desperation of Cece, whose world is falling apart at the manipulative hands of a man who won’t let her go, which stays with you.
The Invisible Man is a thrilling horror, for sure, with a feel good ending (if you want to read it that way…), but it’s something altogether more exciting than that too: a fresh, relevant take on a classic, expertly directed and boasting star power delivered on a moderate budget, which flexes exactly what horror can do. – RF
1. Get Out
More impressive than any awards it won, Jordan Peele’s Get Out encapsulates the essential draw of horror: through entertaining “scares,” it unmasks truths folks might find too horrifying or uncomfortable to acknowledge. In the case of Get Out, it is the despair of Blackness and Black bodies still being commodified by a predatory American culture.
Wearing influences like Rosemary’s Baby and Stepford Wives on his sleeve, Peele pulls from classic horror conventions for his directorial debut, but gives them a startling 21st century sheen. His movie’s insidious conspiracy is neither an obvious coven of witches or the openly racist heavies of a period piece. Rather Peele sets his story about a Black man (Daniel Kaluuya) coming to meet his white girlfriend’s parents in a liberal conclave of wealthy suburbia. Written during the final days of the Obama years, Peele casts these parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) as genial and welcoming, shielding cries of racism behind fashionable political correctness.
Yet once Peele moves past that trendy veneer, he finds a potent allegory in which the ghosts of slavery are still alive and well, even in Upstate New York. Peele also packs anxieties about interracial relationships, culture clash, and childhood trauma into a film that is nevertheless gregariously funny. Ultimately though, its final effect is triggering in the best way. Get Out offers an opportunity to confront real dread, one uneasy laugh, and then sudden jump scare, at a time. – DC
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Taylor Swift sits in a window box, pouring over the diaries she kept when she was a kid. They’re childish, but they’re also full of big ambitions and dreams. She muses on the super seriousness of some of her words, and amusingly tells us that at one point she went through a phase where she wrote everything with a quill. “I had an inkwell,” she says before rolling her eyes at herself.
This is how Miss Americana begins, and we don’t know it yet, but it’s setting the stage for the story as a whole. This isn’t so much a documentary about Taylor Swift as it is a documentary about Taylor Swift growing up – letting go of childish things and realizing she’s much more than some “good girl.” It’s about a talented young woman spending the bulk of her life in the limelight before realizing she doesn’t have to worry about making everyone happy all the time.
A documentary like this comes with a question: just how honest is it, really? Director Lana Wilson and her team of editors have cut together a snazzy, flashy, emotional crowd-pleaser that packs a punch and promises to show us the real Taylor Swift. But Swift obviously had input into the doc – she allowed the camera crew to follow her everywhere. One must assume that she had some sort say in the final cut. And yet…Miss Americana feels brutally honest. There’s no sense here that Swift is mugging for the camera, or holding back. Because she seems so achingly human here. She’s funny, she’s charming, she’s a bit of a dork. It’s easy to become endeared to the pop star as the cameras roll.
Miss Americana kicks-off with Swift receiving news that her album “Reputation” has received nearly no Grammy nominations (it did score a nom for Best Pop Vocal Album, but we don’t see Swift learning that news). She looks crestfallen, although she immediately says “That’s fine, this is fine.” But her voice shakes a bit. And from here we’re thrust back through Swift’s rise to fame, starting out at the age of 14 and becoming a sensation over the years. It’s a rosy look at a young girl become more successful than her wildest dreams.
But then it grinds to a halt at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, where, after Swift scores a Best Female Video award, Kanye West rushes the stage to declare that Beyonce should’ve been the real winner. The moment leaves Swift spinning, because it somehow never occurred to her that someone out there wouldn’t like her. From her teen years into her late 20s, Swift’s entire modus operandi was to be liked. Everything she did, every action she took, was in the name of making others happy, and hoping that happiness would be returned to her. After playing a huge show, Swift leans back in the car ride home and dreamily says of the crowd: “They were so happy.” She’s thinking about the screaming fans – but not herself.
It’s easy to shrug off the problems of rich and powerful people, but the intimate nature of Miss Americana lets us see how surreal Swift’s world can be – where hundreds of shrieking fans literally camp out in front of her house, where talking heads go on Fox News and call her a slut, where she somehow keeps getting pulled into a beef with Kanye West. These are problems none of us will ever have to face, but it’s impossible not to sympathize with Swift here.
And the megastar also clues us into issues she’s dealt with that are very much the types of problems of everyday people. She confesses that for a period of time she suffered from an eating disorder – she’d catch a paparazzi pic of herself, decide she looked too fat, and literally starve herself. She also talks about her sexual assault at the hands of morning DJ David Mueller. There were witnesses to – and even a photograph of – the assault, and yet Mueller still dared to accuse Swift of lying and then sue her. Swift countersued (for a dollar) – and won.
The sexual assault and the events following it are something of a catalyst here. Even though Swift had already spent years as a power superstar, it’s the act of being believed in court that convinces her she has real power. Power to not just entertain, but to enact change. As a result, she makes what could’ve been a career-damning decision: to get political.
With her background in country music, Swift had been trained to never get political, with the swift damnation of the Dixie Chicks for criticizing George W. Bush held up as a prime example. But as the singer watches the odious Marsha Blackburn run for office in Swift’s home state of Tennessee, she decides enough is enough. Disgusted with Blackburn’s seemingly anti-women stance, Swift decides to publicly endorse her Democrat opponent. It’s a move that leads Swift’s management team to have a conniption fit. They flat-out do not want her to do this. But tearfully, the artist takes a stand. She has a voice – and it’s time she used it. Despite Swift’s best efforts, Blackburn ultimately wins – a move that stuns Swift, but then empowers her to keep pushing. To have hope in a future where fascist-leaning Donald Trump supporters are no longer in power. (Trump gets a casual mention here and there, with one of the funniest moments arriving when Swift is informed her political stance could lead Trump to attack her, and Swift promptly replying: “Fuck it. I don’t care.”)
Miss Americana isn’t a political screed, though. The politics take up the back half of the film, and result in powerful scenes. But in between it all we’re treated to glimpses into Swift’s everyday life: she drinks wine (with ice) with a friend; she hangs out with her cats; she spends hours and hours in the studio coming up with the music and lyrics for her recently released album “Lover.” This stuff is light and fluffy, and some may find it to be little more than filler. But the singer’s spirit shines through: it’s fun to watch her just be herself, to get worked up over her own lyrics, to chow down on a burrito, to be human. But most of all, it’s empowering to watch Swift finally come into her own. To realize she doesn’t have to give a fuck about making everyone in the world like her anymore as long as she’s found a way to like herself.
/Film Rating: 8 out of 10
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'Legacies' EP Brett Matthews Teases How Characters Face Their Demons in Film Noir Episode (Exclusive)
It's an episode you do not want to miss!
Titled "There's a Place Where the Lost Things Go," Thursday's Legacies sees Hope (Danielle Rose Russell), Josie (Kaylee Bryant), Lizzie (Jenny Boyd), MG (Quincy Fouse) and Rafael (Peyton Alex Smith) transported to a fabulous film noir world.
In order to deal with all their recent traumas -- including Kai Parker's return and a black magic-filled Josie -- Emma (Karen David) makes them participate in a group simulation where they confront their conflicts head-on or risk the game's consequences. However, like most situations, things don't go as planned and the students come face-to-face with something they never imagined.
ET caught up with executive producer Brett Matthews, who also co-wrote the episode with Mark Ryan Walberg, where he shared the inspiration for the episode, why Professor Vardemus (Alexis Denisof) has returned and teased if there could ever be something more between Hope and Rafael.
ET: What was the inspiration for this episode?
Brett Matthews: It really goes back to a class I took in college at Wesleyan University... Film noir is a genre that will stay with me forever and is something very near and dear to my heart that I never really thought the right opportunity would present itself in this way to explore. I'm really glad it did. It's like an itch I had since I graduated college that I finally got to scratch.
What will surprise fans most about it? Is this a one-off episode or how will this push the narrative forward?
We don't really do one-offs. We do a lot of format break episodes, but we only do them when it's really the best way to explore the characters' journeys and the things that all of our characters are going through as they come to a head. A format break episode or a special episode will do that better than a conventional one. That's when the time's right. So absolutely we are telling this episode because it's where our characters are at coming off of [episode] 12 and 13, and really traumatic events. It's a group therapy exercise that kind of goes awry. It always starts and ends with the characters and they got us into it and the discoveries and revelations that they experience in the film noir world will come to influence them on the other side, when we're back to our normally scheduled program.
Is there a reason everyone has their distinct characters in this episode? Is there more than meets the eye with their film noir roles?
Yeah, everybody is sort of at a point in their emotional journey for the season, where they have some things they have to face, and the therapy sort of puts them in a role which allows them to make the discovery that their, sort of, person needs to learn from, move on and process. Film noir is a really good fit because it has all these tropes and archetypes and it was really fun. Mark Walberg and I, who I wrote the episode with, who's our script coordinator here, really got those characters into those different types based on where they are coming from and where they were headed for the rest of the season. That's really the "why" of who's the movie starlet, who's the gumshoe and who's this. I got to say, it was really fun to put Quincy Fouse's MJ sort of front and center in an episode. That was a really neat opportunity. We really enjoyed to be able to do that.
We see Alexis Denisof's Professor Vardemus back, I thought he was gone? Am I wrong? What's his role in this?
[Ryan] Clark took Vardemus' identity at the beginning of the season and [this episode] sort of gives us the answer to where Vardemus has been this whole season, which is his mind has been locked in the therapy box and his body has been stowed in the school. And inadvertently, the kids end up setting him free and we finally look forward to getting to know the character of Vardemus as Vardemus, and not someone pretending to be him. [We will learn] who he actually is, a scholar with a bit of an edge, who's lived a really interesting life, but has a really great amount of knowledge to share with Alaric and other educators at the Salvatore School. We just really love Alexis and what he did with the character, so we're excited to begin exploring this new facet and get to know the actual Rupert Vardemus.
So he will be sticking around for more episodes?
Yeah, we hope so. We obviously have a lot of characters to service and that's always the hard part about running a television show, there's never enough time. But Vardemus is just a character [we love], and Alexis is one of the kindest, most professional actors you hope to work with in this business. [Creator] Julie [Plec] and I really love what he's doing and he is a character you will see pop up here and there, and we would love to explore more in the future.
Landon is not in this episode, but we see Rafael and Hope together. How much tension is there between them and is this foreshadowing them getting closer in the future?
I think that Raf's takeaway from this episode is that he is part of a very deep mystery that disturbs him and that he needs to get to the bottom of, and obviously feels uncomfortable enough about it that he is lying to people about it. And so, that is sort of what's forefront in Rafael's mind, but he does have this deep relationship with Hope and a super neat and profound relationship with Landon. Both of those characters will help him unwrap and get to the bottom of, and hopefully solve, the situation he's found himself in.
We've seen Josie, Kaylee Bryant, just come out of her shell this season, from a sweet, kind and shy girl to this badass, evil villain. How has it been working with and getting that dynamic range from her?
Kaylee is a wonderful actress and it's not real hard. Dark Josie really makes a lot of sense because it's just that repressed part of the character she usually plays. Josie is a selfless character and puts others above herself, and I think it's a very human thing to have that part that says, "What about me?" or somebody always putting off their own wants and desires, and that often comes to a head and people often snap. That's a little bit of what she's going through. So I think for her it's probably a little more hand and glove than it would be for somebody coming from the outside in because our actors really do inhabit their characters and live in their skin year-round in a way another person doesn't. I think it made a lot of sense to her and then to translate that to the physicality and the surface menace of it all. I think she's doing a great job with it.
How was the cast's reaction when they saw this script for this episode and started getting into their wardrobe?
I think they always enjoy the format break episodes because they allow them to really just do something fun and exciting, and I feel like the whole crew feels that way about it as well. Like Julie said, when I gave her the script, she's like, "They're not going to know what film noir is," and I said, "Well, I don't know if it's that large of a problem." But we did pull a couple landmark film noir episodes that we thought really encapsulated the genre and everybody watched them and did their homework and very quickly, whether they had prior experience with the genre or not, understood what it was and really gave it 110 percent, as did our director Mike Karasick. But the cast, like they usually do, gave it their all and made it shine. I'm sure it was fun for them because of wardrobe and they got to be in another world for an episode and those are always fun for everybody.
Will fans get to see another themed episode like this in the future?
We'll have another one or two over the course of the season. We're doing a really big, exciting musical episode this year, as we try to do one every year. So we're working on that one now and that's something that sort of revisits our history as a franchise. We're very excited about that. So you can definitely look forward to that one and seeing all your favorite characters singing and dancing and all that good stuff.
Last question, both Ian Somerhalder and Michael Malarkey told ET that they would love to work on Legacies. Ian wanted to direct an episode, while Michael wouldn't mind reprising his role as Enzo. What are your thoughts?
I love both of those guys! They are part of our family and like we say to all our members of our family, the door on Legacies is always open. All they gotta do is give me a call and I will certainly, always take that call. I'll always be interested. In terms of characters, you want to make sure that you have enough, you know, like, Vampire Diaries and The Originals, they had their own endings. So just on a character level, it's always a case-by-case basis to make sure that they're respecting the integrity of our cast, but god, if there's a way to do any of those things, we're always inclined to do them. It's just the people you know and the relationships you form and that makes up for the long hours and all these things. We're very lucky people to have worked with so many wonderful, talented artists and we would love to work with them all again in the future.
Legacies airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on The CW.
#Legacies#TheOriginals#TheVampireDiaries#TVD#HopeMikaelson#JosieSaltzman#LizzieSaltzman#MG#RafaelWaithe#AlaeicSaltzman#EmmaTig#LegaciesSesson2#Malivore#MysticFalls#SalvatoreSchool#There’sAPlaceWhereTheLostThingsGo#JuliePlec#TheCW
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