#the idea that other people are aware of these characters that ive been devoted to for like seven years

[darling-archeron]

I realize that acotar is definitely a mainstream series at this point but its still so bizarre to me. People i went to high school with like the same posts as me on Instagram. I once had a discussion that ended with me realizing someone I knew could definitely have read my fic without knowing it was me. I was in Target today and saw the books in no less than four seperate places. Yes this is a wildly successful series with millions of copies sold and a successful fanbase on every platform. But to me it is me and a dozen mutuals reblogging the same fanarts and silly little memes.

#the idea that other people are aware of these characters that ive been devoted to for like seven years #is so bizarre to me #and i dont know why #also i think part of me will always just yearn for the less chaotic pre acosf days #kate talks #acotar #but thats not to say i dont still enjoy the community #so many wonderful people have joined in the past few years

[voxxisms]

heres some lore about the alastor i plan to write. please note that he's being written with a lot of intent, not necessarily reflective of the canon character or even all of my actual headcanons about him. he is a character i am essentially building for my own entertainment - i love all of the portrayals of alastor, ive been enjoying making one thats meant to make my friends' alastors upset essentially LMAO anyway under the cut bc you know it got longer than i meant it to

alastor was born january 1, 1897. death date marked for june 1, 1935. born to esther && marcus durand in louisana. there will be no ties to voodoo/houdoo in any way, i do not know enough nor do i think i want to put any sort of focus on it personally. its purely aesthetics with the stitching on his face, more meant to make him seem like someone who was puppeteered. he's been molded into who he is.

his father was a killer first, when alastor found him butchering a man, at the ripe age of eight, he chose to try to make a sort of assistant out him, && he succeeded. he raised alastor to be a killer, with grey morals, if any. esther was a doting mother && wife, but entirely unaware of her husband && son's activities. alastor was mostly socially isolated, his father kept him away from his mother as much as he could in an attempt to keep their secrets, well, secret. their relationship already was tumultuous for the time && kept as much under wraps as possible, && to give alastor a good shot at things, lived with his father, while his mother lived in another neighborhood. they weren't unhappy by any means, a devoted && loving couple, arguably very sweet to alastor, save for his father's choice of passed on passion for killing.

alastor developed into an adult with little idea of what normal male relationships were like. his mother was off - limits to harm, as were any other women, but men were their primary targets. no rhyme or reason, really, not for marcus, but alastor later would find himself killing only those he liked. a sick, twisted devotion.

he went into radio, with a voice smooth for it && his father wanting someone on the inside of the information circuit. he enjoyed it greatly, made a name for himself very well there for a local celebrity of sorts. he made good money, brought attention to the family name, earned his father's further respect.

in 1928, his father was caught. begging his son to solve this problem, on his hands && knees, asking him to do something, anything, alastor murdered his own father to save him the torture of prison or death row. he spun a web of lies to his mother, he was reported missing, && his body never found at the bottom of the nearest bayou.

alastor, however, would not stop there. intimacy && loyalty was now marked by murder, && his favorite of people would suffer by his hand. he would kill them, lovingly, slowly, relishing their voices && cries && pleas. but eventually it had to catch up. he was the common denominator, after all. he was caught, persecuted, && hanged, with his own mother present for his death, sobbing for the loss of her son && husband both, aware now of his wrong - doings.

he found his father in hell. marcus was very angry, a very angry man, indeed, && for the better part of three months, they fought every time they crossed paths. marcus would claim that he had not asked for his death, that he failed his mother, that he was a failure of a son, && that if he was here, it was all because of alastor. when the first extermination came after alastor's arrival, he managed to lock his father out on the open, allow him to be cornered, leading him to his second && final death.

alastor started working towards gaining power, displeased by the lack he had, && determining the easiest path forward was removing those above him, all the while gaining contracts over time. he began to broadcast the screams of his victims for all to enjoy. eventually, he found himself at the top, with few left to antagonize && a deal having to be made otherwise to keep him under one's control. so he settled down upon a throne of bones && screams, before he disappeared for seven years && then returned with a new investment, in the one && only hazb.in h.otel.

#【 LEE ONE && ONLY | ( AUTHOR ). 】 #【 THE BATTERIES ARE DOWN | ( OOC ). 】

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Cats 1986 (and Others) vs. 2016

A post I made a few months ago comparing information gathered from interviews with different Cats casts has come up again recently and I’ve heard even more interviews since, so I want to add on to that a little and elaborate on the things I’ve already said.

CW: Some of the language regarding Demeter’s backstory is a bit darker than I’ve previously mentioned

So, I’ve now heard interviews from US Tours III, IV, and V, spanning from 1986 to 2012. They’re all Broadway-based, and the Broadway Revival went in a very different direction, but the three tours were all very similar to each other.

In both the tours and in 2016, the cast was sat down before rehearsals to hear the “story of Cats”. However, this meant two completely different things. The Tour casts were told the plot of the show, who their characters were and what they were meant to be doing. The 2016 was told the story of how the show Cats was created, how ALW had the idea and made a show out of it. No mention of the story and characters. This means that the Tour casts were given useful information for building their characters, while the 2016 cast got something that was interesting but did nothing to help them do their jobs in the present. More emphasis was put on the show’s legacy than on how to actually perform it. Trevor Nunn did the 2016 explaining, I believe, and it sounds like he was on an ego trip, talking about what he did instead of what the cast was supposed to do. Trevor Nunn is one of the few people who knows how the show works, so this is quite frustrating.

Though the Tour cast was given a whole story, most of them only remembered the perspectives of their own characters. The point of learning the plot was so that they knew what they were doing. It wasn’t supposed to matter to the audience. So, everyone mainly focused on their own jobs. But, everyone knew Demeter’s backstory, because it was the first thing they were told and it caught their attention. It almost became a meme that the first sentence of the plot was “Demeter was raped by Macavity”.

The story begins with Demeter having just escaped from Macavity. He kidnapped and raped her. Though she didn’t want it, she kind of enjoyed the sex, which messed with her head quite a bit. Bomba went through the exact same thing, but because she enjoyed it, she acts like the whole thing was nothing more than an annoyance. The two react to the same situation in different ways.

Jacob Brent was either given a toned down version of the story (he mentions kidnapping, but not rape), or he chose to give a toned down version to avoid the uncomfortable subject. 

The 2016 knew that Macavity and Demeter had some sort of backstory, but they weren’t very clear on exactly what happened. They decided that they’d had an abusive relationship, but that the whole thing was consensual and there was no kidnapping, because the only element of this story that the audience can pick up without context is that there was some sort of sexual relationship between Macavity and Demeter, but she’s now afraid of him.

At least one cast member said that Macavity was a rapist, but she didn’t elaborate.

This messed with Demeter’s character far more than anyone expected. The rape element honestly isn’t necessary. Demeter and Macavity had some sort of sex, but it could’ve been consensual, with Demeter enjoying the sex but hating the man. That’s actually what Gillian Lynne seemed to have implied in interviews. However, the kidnapping part of the backstory is important, because it establishes the connection between Demeter and Grizabella. While hiding from Macavity, right before the story begins, Demeter sees Grizabella on the Bad Side of Town. Due to not being a Jellicle before this night, she doesn’t know who she is, and therefore has no bias against her. She just sees this woman living on the streets, humans wondering aloud why she isn’t dead, and felt sympathy for her. 

So, when Grizabella appears at the ball and everyone hates her, Demeter wants to intervene, but she doesn’t want to upset her new friends. She came to the Jellicles for protection and is afraid of them rejecting her for siding with their enemy. Still, she tells the tribe what she knows about Griz, possibly trying to convince them to be nicer to her, but it doesn’t work and Demeter just starts following the crowd.

The lyrics Demeter sings, by themselves, are musical exposition that doesn’t imply sympathy. A line like “You’d really have thought she’d ought to be dead” sounds like it could be played as an insult. The words can either mean “I’m surprising the poor thing’s still alive in her condition” or “Why can’t the bitch fuck off and die already?”. Without the context of Demeter’s backstory, Kim Faure picked the latter, when with the context, it’s clearly meant to be the former. So, Demeter’s delivery of her lines in Glamour Cat in 2016 is venomous, almost sadistic.

Later on, towards the end of act one, 2016 Demeter reaches out to Grizabella like she does in most other versions, despite the earlier delivery. What made her change gears? I have no idea.

So, there was a lot of insight on Demeter. She’s the character with the most detailed backstory, making her the closest thing the show has to a protagonist. 

Another character that gets a lot of attention, as he demands, is Tugger. Many Tugger actors were interviewed. I think he’s the favorite character of the host of the podcast. Different Tuggers from different eras responded to certain topics differently. Tuggers from the 1980s were unaware that Tugger was commonly interpreted as Not Straight and that Tuggoffelees is a thing. But, the more recent the show their from, the more they’re aware of and interested in the topic. The Tour V Tugger joined very late, during the last few years of the tour. He had access to the internet and could see what the fandom was up to. He played Tugger as ambiguously bi and, though he hadn’t thought of it at the time, liked the idea of the Tuggoffelees pairing. Tyler Hanes, 2016 Tugger, was the only one interviewed who played Tuggoffelees on purpose.

Tyler Hanes was very interesting. He watched the 1998 film while preparing for the role and didn’t seem to like it very much. He wanted his version of Tugger to be his own and avoided taking inspiration from any other version. John Partridge’s Tugger and Hanes’ Tugger being so different from each other might’ve been deliberate.

But, the choreography is what really messed with Tugger’s character. The host of the podcast mentioned Tugger’s pelvic thrusts and Hanes said that he wanted to do that sort of thing, but the new choreography removed all of it. He couldn’t make Tugger as horny or sexy as he wanted to. It was a key part of the character, but the choreography just wouldn’t let it happen. The result is that a bunch of queens fangirl over Tugger, but because Tugger’s defining trait in his number is being vain and obnoxious, the reason why he, of all toms, is considering the sexiest is completely lost. He’s just a dick to everyone (except Misto) and they love him anyway. 

Other Tuggers do act like assholes during the number, but it’s not the focus. The lyrics are about Tugger being difficult, but the choreography, often to a comedic degree, isn’t about that. The message of Lynne’s choreography is that DESPITE Tugger being obnoxious, he’s a sex god and that’s what matters to his fans. Blankenbuehlers’s choreography mainly focuses on Tugger being obnoxious, which is a better match to the lyrics, but it makes the character less likable.

Also, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The two most sexualized numbers are Tugger’s and Macavity’s. Tugger’s number is about a man being sexy. Macavity’s number has two women being sexy. Blankenbuehler redid Tugger’s number, toning down the sexuality, but he left Macavity alone completely, so it’s as sexual as it always is. Male sexuality needs to be toned down, but female sexuality is fine. This is what happens when a woman is replaced with a straight dude. I doubt it was done on purpose, but there was definitely some subconscious bias going on there.

The way the casts talk about the two choreographers is also different. Both of them are treated as the experts on the show, more like how a director is normally treated. But, how well they filled that role varied. Lynne could explain what every single move meant. Those who worked with her knew exactly what they were doing. Nobody has ever described any of Blankenbuehler’s choreography with the same detail. In numbers in 2016 that Blankenbuehler left alone, even without Lynne present at all, everything was clearly explained. Skimble actors, since Skimble’s number wasn’t altered much, describe people who’d worked with Lynne talking them through the choreography. No one talked about Blankenbuehler’s work like that. Every move of Lynne’s Jellicle Ball apparently represented something. Blankenbuehler’s Jellicle Ball looks fine, but there isn’t that level of detail.

The rehearsals of the the choreography were paced differently as well. 2016 was apparently put together in something of a hurry. Most Cats rehearsals begin with several days of the cast studying cats and learning how to move like them. 2016 devoted only a few hours to this. Gillian Lynne reportedly visited a rehearsal and was upset the none of the dancers knew how to move like cats. Cats has unique choreography in a unique cat-like style, but the 2016 team had no time to practice it, so they often come across as a bit too human. They’re talented human dancers, but they’re not very cat-like. Blankenbuehler’s choreography is often in a different, more modern urban style, that doesn’t seem like it was done with cat-like movement in mind.

I don’t hate Blankenbuehler. In behind the scenes stuff, he seems like a nice guy that the team liked working with. But, I don’t think he really understood what his role was. He was a choreographer and he did choreography. This would’ve been fine, even great for any other show, but not Cats.

Most modern musical theatre is based on opera. Characters sing about their feelings and that tells the story. The added element of dance takes the feelings of the song and amplifies them. The actors are emoting with their entire bodies in a larger-than-life way that creates an emotional intensity that audiences can empathize with. The music makes the audience feel what the characters are feeling in a way nothing else really can. Music is kind of magical. You hear a certain melody with certain instruments, and suddenly you’re happy, or sad, or angry.

This, by the way, is why going for realism in musicals is a terrible idea. Musicals don’t exist in physical reality. They exist on an emotional level that realism takes away from.

Cats rarely works like opera. The lyrics are mainly just adaptations of whimsical poems, so they don’t tell you much of anything. Memory, which features original lyrics and no dancing is an exception to this rule. In general, because they’re not dance roles, Grizabella and Old Deuteronomy have to use music and song lyrics to play their parts in the story. Jemima also does this whenever she does something connected to either one of them.

But, Cats is normally more of a ballet than an opera. Ballet tells a story purely through dance. Because the lyrics in Cats matter so rarely, it ends up working like a ballet, because the dance, unrelated to the poems, means something. It’s still a heightened reality where music invokes emotions and actors emote with their whole bodies, like in other musicals, but instead of the dance being an amplifier, it’s the storyteller.

ALW really liked a bunch of poems and wanted to put them to music. The result was a bunch of songs with a similar them but no real connection to each other. That works as a concept album, but Webber wanted a musical, an actual show where people danced to his concept album. He didn’t care about the story and didn’t expect anyone else to.

But, other people cared about the story. No one knew how to make a musical that’s not about something. Trevor Nunn added Memory and the storyline with Grizabella as an emotional centerpiece. There wasn’t a clear plot, but, on an emotional level, it now felt like something was actually happening. Gillian Lynne had no idea how to choreograph a musical about nothing, so she didn’t. She came up with her own interpretations of things and made the show about something. Several somethings, in fact. Victoria is going through puberty and discovering her sexuality. Demeter is recovering from an abusive sexual experience, with Bomba having a different attitude towards being in the same situation. The women in the story were given detailed story arcs that often revolved around their sexuality.

How sexuality is portrayed in Cats could be its own essay. 

Anyway, Cats tells its story with a unique style of choreography. Because the choreographer is the story teller, Lynne had a lot of influence over the show. She was the one who knew all the details. Blankenbuehler was brought in to choreograph a show, like a normal job for him, not knowing what that would actually mean. He came in to have dance amplify the emotions in the song lyrics like in any other musical, not knowing that that’s impossible to do with Cats. The role of choreographer meant a level of knowledge and control that would normally belong to the director, composer, and lyricist. He didn’t realize that the show having any story at all depended on him.

So, he did stuff that looked cool, but didn’t tell the story, or that took the story in a direction that it wasn’t supposed to go. Tugger dancing in front of a giant mirror is funny in the moment, but that sort of narcissism, though funny, isn’t likable, and Tugger needs to be likable. He’s a major character and he helps save the day at the end by hyping up Misto. But, 2016 Tugger hypes up Misto because if feels like Misto is the only cat he truly respects. He has the same respect for Old Deuteronomy that the others have, but he doesn’t sound quite as sincere when he sings about him. He spends so much of his number antagonizing Munkustrap in particular that it’s hard to believe that he has any respect for him.

What can be learned from these interviews is that Blankenbuehler didn’t know what his job truly was and was there because someone important thought Cats would be more popular in 2016 if it was more like Hamilton and got the Hamilton guy to give it a make-over. Nunn was so proud of the show’s success that he neglected what made it successful in the first place, and the 2016 cast was rushed through rehearsals without proper instructions. Everyone tried their best, but they were all stuck.

For the most part, I blame whoever decided to have Blankenbuehler rechoreograph the show. Blankenbuehler did what he thought his job was and the cast did their jobs to the best of their ability. What really ruined Cats 2016 was an executive decision to fix something that wasn’t broken, believing if they made the Old Big Show more like the New Big Show, that would make people love it again. But Hamilton is no more like Cats than a cat is like a dog.

#cats 2016 #lots of cats tours #really long post #andy blankenbuehler is bad at cats #but it's not his fault #a cat is not a hamilton #gillian lynne #don't let her legacy die with her

[yeoldontknow]

🖊writerly conversation tag

tagged by @j-pping to do this amazing interview/reflections tag. of course she put together one of the most amazing tags ever because she is brilliant. thank you for tagging me angel! 

questions below the cut!

2020

what was the most challenging part of writing this year?

gosh...i think for me the hardest bit was staying both motivated and inspired. a lot of my inspiration comes from being out in the world. im an introvert but i enjoy being out in the city around the noise and the people and the buildings on my own. the majority of my writing used to be done while riding the subway or on a weekend after id gone out somewhere. a lot of my fics are inspired by locations, and experiences within those locations. being inside for the majority of the year made it hard for me to remember how...people interact with or relate to the spaces around them. so i felt like a lot of the time staying inspired was coming from places within just me that felt inauthentic. i think my writing benefits from my ability to see multiple perspectives, so i felt like a lot of dialogue or writing itself was suffering just coming from me alone. it took a lot of work to ensure that it wasnt like that. 

and then, motivation was also so hard. the internet and the news and everything about america, the planet, the everything was unrelenting and draining. we as people were privy to so much trauma this year, to the collapse and fracture of communities, lives, governments. there were several weeks at the end of may and into june where i just...couldnt. i had no energy for anything. it happened again in november after the election and the windfall of it. energetic tensions were so high it just felt so hard to push out words when things were breaking everywhere. like there were more important things i needed to focus on, and healing was one of them.

what was the most enjoyable/rewarding part of writing this year?

i enjoyed the new community of writers/friends i found by writing for bts again. they challenged me and pushed me to better myself. @jamaisjoons is so inspirational in the way she generates community and encourages relationships between storytellers. doing the summer bucket list pushed me out of my hermit hole for camp nano, and i cranked out molotov cocktail and felt so proud of it. it mattered so much to me because it was the first long thing id written after a period of feeling deceased, and it was so enjoyable because there was a sense of community around it. its easy to forget how essential having a support system in your creative community is.

what piece has left the most impact on you and why?

probably ciperion. words cannot express how proud i am of that story and the direction its going in. i read it back sometimes and i realize that my writing was elevated because of that piece. tbh molotov was responsible for that lift, but ciperion was just a whole other tier. ive also never written anything like that story before and it felt so good exploring the themes of seafaring and pirates. 

what have you learned about yourself through the process of writing in the past year?

that i absolutely am someone who took for granted how inspiring the world is even if i see it as a stressor. but also that writing isnt necessarily about being inspired. its about pushing on when its hard. some of my best pieces came from that kind of push this year. 2020 felt like...a slog through most of it, but i kept pushing myself to write even when i was low and tired. i realized that some of my best writing comes from that push, when its not easy and when its difficult and i have to think harder. thats where i grow. 

how has your writing changed in the past year? how have you grown?

i think im more syntax and detailed focused than i used to be. lately ive been experimenting with making the act of reading feel like pleasure. my favourite books are the ones where i read a sentence, and im moved because it felt nice to read or it felt powerful. the sentence itself had power, not the image it was trying to convey. somehow separate, if that makes sense. theres a lot i need to learn before i could go off comfortably and try to write a book, and this is what ive been trying to master. my attention to detail has grown, and sometimes i think thats a detriment. i think sometimes im too detailed and i dont leave my reader enough power on their own. im still finding that balance, but i think im pleased right now with what im trying to push myself to master.

2021

ignoring your wips for a second, if you had all the time and energy in the world to write your magnum opus piece, what would it be about? why is that the dream story you’d write, all other things controlled for?

ive had two books in my mind forever. one was originally being written as a fanfic in a different fandom before i stopped and realized its too big and so much more important, and is worth being a book id like to write. if i wrote an opus like this it would actually be a book id submit to publishers but ~

- hundreds of years in the future, society has learned how to cure most diseases. for those we cannot, the sick person can be cryogenically frozen for a period of time until a cure is found. there is, however, a limit to the length of time they are frozen. no one has ever been frozen for over 100 years, and the main character is a scientist embarking on the experiment to do just that. it is, effectively, time travel. the main character is rash, selfish, sarcastic - not a very nice person; invested in their work and science and little else. they freeze themselves and wake up in the future. during their time in rehab they have to confront the horror theyve made of themselves, the horror people have made of the future, learn to be vulnerable. they end up falling in love with another scientist etc etc. theres so much more to this story and the world is enormous. one day ill revisit it

- a fictional play on orpheus in the underworld where a female main character’s brother was sold by their mother to the goddess of the underworld (helena instead of hades) for eternal youth. the gods all live in a hotel (the concept of this main thing is being used in elysian fields but its not remotely the same) after they were removed from the heavens. main character (ophelia) must gather several totems from the gods to prove her worth and survive her trip into the underworld to rescue him. id like to not focus on a woman finding romance, and instead a woman finding herself, her strength, her devotion to family, her power, and connecting with her history.

how do you want to grow in your writing this year?

this year id like to find balance, like i mentioned above, with my need for detail and my trust in my readers. the balance between detail and dialogue. i want to try to condense my writing again so not everything is a goddamn series. the ideas i have are huge and thats great but i need to remember how to parse things again, while still maintaining impact.

what’s one thing you’d wish to see in the fan-writing community this year?

i want more community, in general. as a multi fan, i see pockets in the kpop fandom where it exists and im well and truly aware that its recently become incredibly hard to foster on the exo side. ill just say that. maybe i dont witness it or its happening amongst blogs i havent found or have not found me. i want to see less dialogue about ‘popular blogs,’ whatever that means; less focus on notes; less worries about statistics. i want people to remember that fandom is not about numbers, and the moment you make it about that is the moment you stop having fun. i want less fear from writers regarding sharing work they read and liked, less shame around it. i want to see more vocal communication for the things people like and don’t like, more engagement and more interaction. the concept of popular blogs is so ridiculous to me, because no one has any control over the metrics. no one has control over who follows them or reads their work except the person doing the actual reading. i want people to realize they hold so much power - a person with 10k notes has as much power as a person with 2 notes because sharing is what fosters community. i want this fandom to remember to share again.

name one new thing you want to try doing in your writing this year.

gosh i really love postmodernism in writing. think like mark z danielewski, who plays with the shapes of words or the act of holding a book - the physicality of it. id like to maybe write a choose your own adventure, or do something that encompasses multiple platforms. or even, more importantly, finish as still as sound and time runner. those are more reasonable goals. time runner actually is done, i just need to stop pressuring myself about it and edit it to get it up. asas, too, is largely done i just need to get my ass together. i have so many other ideas no one has ever seen i need to finish what ive started. thats a real goal.

tagging: @yehet-me-up @jamaisjoons @kyungseokie @jenmyeons @luffles424 @yoonia @shadowsremedy @chillingkoo @onherwings @inkedtae @ninibears-erigom @imdifferentshadesofpurple @readyplayerhobi @ditzymax @sugaurora @snackhobi @yeojaa @sahmfanficbts @xjoonchildx @johobi and anyone else who wants to do this. as always please only do so if comfortable or you want to!

#writer conversation tag

[bellamygateoldblog]

i will never be over the way this show has continuously tried to frame bellamy and clarke as heroes and good people, or the way the fandom has almost completely embraced and supported that narrative

the amount of times i’ve read “[clarke] saved everyone’s ungrateful asses” makes me seriously consider turning evil. like aren’t y’all bored? don’t you have a different sentence you would like to say for a change?

i want to talk about this but i probably don’t remember a lot of the details of this show so if im forgetting something or get something wrong i apologise, but i never have any desire to rewatch past s2.

clarke isn't even the hero of her own side, she took power of them using the military force of the grounders, someone else’s people, she’s forced them into alliances without their knowledge that weren’t in their best interest (while she literally had no idea what they were even going through because she’d abandoned them after upsetting their entire political structure, and this leader she’s bowing to is responsible for the slaughter of their children, has broken an alliance previously with them, has hung the threat of genocide over their heads, and who isn’t even wanted in power by her own people- dragging skaikru into that conflict, too), she’s sacrificed them and what’s best for them in order to cater to/concentrate on the grounders newest demands or pursue her own personal mission, she’s lied to and patronised them, she’s abandoned them and surrendered them to die while they were under her protection and responsibility, and in Book 2 (and these aren’t her people but in canon she’s their leader anyway apparently despite trying to blow them all up a few days before...) she’s abandoned them again, and is speaking for them without consent or any connection to what’s happening with them again,.........her inner circle/her ‘friends’ have to be extremely careful to remain important to her or on her team or they’ll be sacrificed, harmed or become acceptable losses to whatever her newest goal is too (but hey at least she says she cares about them) all while acting very ‘woe is me’ about the whole crushing weight of responsibility she shouldn’t have.

but she’s the hero, she’s beloved, she’s special, she has relationships that were never built, she and only she saved everyone again and has all the lines telling us so no matter how dishonest those statements are.

like this is where i personally see what you said in your ask most: when it concerns clarke.

bellamy on the other hand...i don’t place him at all on the same level as clarke when it comes to this. clarke has privilege that bellamy just never had as a character. and i think that does probably play into why i like him.

him being a hero to the delinquents/the 48 is completely believable to me. he was the original leader, he got them through a tough time, he chose to put himself on the line for them, and he’s the one who stayed. i also think it’s reasonable that fandom might romanticise him this way because he is one who has been shown to value the one life as well as the many of his people, a guy doing his best and making big mistakes along the way, a mixed complex bag of good and bad, i find him very likable and i love the toxic/pained/vulnerable ones lol but more than anything i find him to be one of the more interesting/entertaining characters on the show (Book 1).

we also see him torment himself with his own mistakes instead of just having other people do it for him/remind him like we see happen with clarke- and we all know fandom loves equating that with a “redemption arc” and as much as i personally dislike seeing pity parties i do like self-awareness and responsibility in characters that goes beyond a 3-second-long puppy dog look or straight dismissal of someone else’s pain, and for the most part bellamy’s expressions of this don’t come across as demanding sympathy from others but from genuine self-loathing and an honesty to himself, internalising the effects of his actions/childhood.

i know i personally prefer The Flawed Protector over The Tortured Saviour nobody asked for (same white male hypocritical moral hero in a woman’s body).

i don’t believe in assigning “hero” to any of them though like that’s the whole entire point of the show lol “there are no good guys.” and i also think a major chunk of fandom/shippers have warped bellamy’s character so much that it isn’t even him anymore, so this man they’re celebrating as a hero/good person isn’t even bellamy sometimes.

all of the genuinely “good” and kind people are dead.

i don't think i'd say bellamy was ever framed as a hero. like he was just never important enough to be, he’s just not put into those positions (despite being the male lead), clarke is. as the protagonist ig. bellamy...he’s the protector/knight of the heroes, but not the actual hero himself (applies to octavia too i think, where she acts and he reacts).

like take mount weather, clarke becomes empowered by her “wanheda” status, bellamy’s (and monty’s) part in that is lost...clarke is “bearing it so they don’t have to” (rme) which simultaneously strips the other boys from claiming the ‘victory’ of saving the 48 while still leaving them with the guilt, like it suits how i see clarke perfectly that she’s the only one to refer to the genocide (and shutting down the CoL, i realised) as “i” while monty and bellamy say “we” and it was clarke’s actions that got them to that point in the first place, but this is one of those times she’s clearly The Protagonist. if that makes sense lol.

bellamy is on the opposite side to clarke in s3 and s7 and he needs to be moved to her side in order to be on the ‘right’ one. now i don’t agree with that one bit mind you (when it comes to s3, idc about s7 lol) and i didnt see it that way but imo that’s how the show wrote it, to the point he was either demonized endlessly by fandom or woobified in a way that denied him his own agency. during s5 i don’t i think anyone was framed in a good light. i can see this applying in s6, though- where he was his absolute worst self yet, betraying his own development, failing at every point to “do better” despite claiming it, but still was given that reasurring line that they did better and saved people and was in that “heroic” position i guess? but is that because he was back to being clarke’s “good little knight” tho? (but do we claim s6??? do we really??? do we claim it ladies???)

s6 was 100% dedicated to making clarke look good/like a 'good' or sympathetic person. the bodysnatching plot (and the s6 sheidheda plot because if it was supposed to be about bellamy and address his s5 actions he would’ve been present to experience/observe those consiquences himself but he wasn’t lmaoooo. instead it was to tell the audience ‘actually clarke was right last season and here’s another reason to feel bad for her and how those ungrateful bitches were treating her’) has no other purpose for existing. clarke's character has consistently been elevated at the expense of everyone else's. but im not sure the writing did a very good job convincing me she was a good person if it was trying to do that LMAO like my interpretation of her is so fitted to canon, and no amount of throwaway lines telling me how good she is did anything to change what i saw yk? and in s6, combined with being patronised by the writers, i found her to be at some of her most obnoxious.

i don’t agree with placing bellamy and clarke in the same boat tbh. like they just come from completely different places and come across differently, especially in the way they interact with other characters.

in my experience this fandom (on tumblr) is extremely skewed in favour of clarke, like ive never seen a fandom so obsessed with their protagonist. there’s A LOT of clarke stans who stan her for being one of those “deserves better :(” characters, selfless and heroic, and support that view that she’s the superior character, entitled to other character’s devotion, love and validation yet doesn’t have to reciprocate any of it. the CL/BC ship war was just a bunch of people fighting over clarke, who deserves her more, which character is more toxic to her, which other character would 100% be her bff supportive of that relationship, treating her as a passive whose actions don’t take affect. im not sure how much i blame the writing for that because if so many of us are capable of recieving her character in this way then...why aren’t so many other people? how is there such a massive disconnect between the ways we see her?

and imo a lot of the bellamy love in this fandom comes from shipping him with clarke too rather than being because of who he actually is.

#the 100

[ofprevioustimes]

Miranda Barlow, the scandalous mystery.

From Black Sails

I. BASIC STATS

i. OTHER NAMES: Miranda Hamilton (married name) ii. MAIN PERIOD: 18th Century iii. PLACE OF BIRTH: London, England. Also resided in Nassau iv. OCCUPATION(s): Noble v. RELIGION: Protestant vi. TERMS OF ADDRESS: “Miss Barlow”, “Lady Hamilton”, “My Lady” vii. MUSE LEVEL: Average

II. PERSONALITY

Clever and keen-eyed, Miranda appears to have been born with powers of observation that enable her to see right through people. This comes from no magic power, though, merely wisdom. A challenger of beliefs, she is a poised, educated, well-read English noblewoman who finds great amusement in tearing down society’s preconceived ideas of what is proper, what is right and what is wrong. A lover of literature and art, she likes to be in the society of like-minded people and indulge in long conversations about philosophy, civilizations, among other things.

Miranda values brightness, intelligence, love and honesty.

III. MUSE-SPECIFIC POTENTIAL TRIGGERS

Mentions of homophobia (not from Miranda). Blood, violence, fertility issues.

IV. SKILLS & ABILITIES

Social intelligence. Horse riding. Hunting. Drawing. Painting. Music. Gardening.

V. INTERPRETATIONS OR CANON DIVERGENT POINTS

I have two important headcanons for Miranda: 1) The relationship between her and Thomas was never sexual and she was aware of his sexuality from the beginning. 2) Miranda wanted to have children and since their relationship was open, that would have been a possibility with one of her lovers, but despite that, she was unable due to infertility issues.

VI. MUSE-SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

ONE. Despite the HCs above, I am willing to write AUs with Miranda being a mother if that matters to the plot. TWO. We're all entitled to our own HCs about the sexuality of our muses, but I will not adjust my Miranda to fit with some popular hcs in this fandom concerning her relationship with Flint. By that, I mean some interpretations that place him as an unwilling partner in having a sexual relationship with Miranda. I do not see their relationship as a romantic one, but nonetheless Miranda loved and cared for him and interpreting their sex life as an imposition not only makes me uncomfortable af but also denies the mutual care and respect that they had for one another, in my opinion.

VII. INTERACTIONS & BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

Miranda is social and graceful. She loves being around other people, loves conversations, parties, intimacy. Cultured characters get along perfectly with her. She is not difficult to befriend, but her acute perception and teasing nature may be a little intimidating at first.

Possible dynamics include, but are not limited to: common interests, social circles, common goals, intellectual, etc.

VIII. SHIPPING

Miranda is caring and dedicated. She likes to love for the feeling of loving and being loved and enjoying the other person, without the weight of social demands burdening the relationship. Jealous and controlling characters wouldn’t be a match for her. When she loves someone, she will care and tend for them with the devotion of a mother, as well as with the responsibility to call them out if they’re following a wrong path.

Possible dynamics include, but are not limited to: free love, casual lovers, ‘throuples’, friends to lovers, etc.

IX. TAGS

General tag. Answered asks. Threads. Visage. Musings. Tunes.

#miranda: bio. #long post cw #[without capitulation or complaint]: miranda barlow

[girlcriedwoolf]

✍🏼 On the act of re-reading and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020)

I’m a chronic re-reader. I reread the same books copious times, rewatch the same TV shows over-and-over and find solace in exhausting my own Spotify playlists until the songs become unbearable. I know I’m not alone in this practice - there are thousands of other people around the world that share my comfort of revisiting sources of previous enjoyment, but there are also thousands of people that don’t. It’s always fascinated me - how people can enjoy a book, film or TV show without any desire to experience it again, ideally as soon as possible. I’ve subsequently internalised this as a sign that these individuals live fuller, more exciting (better) lives as they’re able to consume a greater amount and a wider variety of cultural content than I ever will. My tendency to reread Twilight - for, let’s say the seventh time - instead of reading a new book that I know I’d enjoy has been something I’ve become ashamed of. Is it an immature and somewhat cowardly cop-out to revisit a source of comfort from the past rather than engaging with the present? 

At its core, Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic masterpiece Tenet (2020) is a film about the act rewatching and re-experiencing, both structurally and conceptually. More specifically, a lot of the film rests on the idea of the protagonists travelling to - or existing in - the past, using technology sent from the future, in order to fix the present. It messes with your mind in all the best ways - don’t say I didn’t warn you. The structure of the film lends itself to comment on the nature of time: rejecting a linear, chronological structure of time and instead alluding to at least two other possible shapes that embody the abstract, meta notion of time. 

First, is the illusion to a ‘temporal pincer’ shaped structure (visually resembling an elongated horseshoe shape or alternatively, a hairpin). References to this structure of time are not limited to dialogue alone - instead, a visual reference is seen explicitly in the last part of the film during which a planning meeting for an army drill takes place and a temporal pincer shape is drawn on a whiteboard to convey the operation. In this scene, the protagonist can be heard asking which order the two groups are going to enter the site, to which the commander, Ives, replies that both groups (lines) run simultaneously to each other rather than subsequently, ultimately shattering liner constructs of measuring time. In doing so, Nolan suggests that revisiting the past (or by extension an experience in the past like a book or film) may not be a backwards step but merely a progression in time. In this way, we understand revisiting and experiencing things from the past, not as redundant acts that waste time but instead as signs of time progressing. Tenet embodies the experience of great cinema and the role of film as a medium of storytelling.

True to Nolan’s fascination with ideas of inception, (see: Inception (2010), Tenet itself could be seen to project the experience of watching a film. The audience exists on a different timeline to the film’s narrative and metaphorically ‘catch’ the bullets that are fired the first time around. In watching the film for the first, second, third or fifteenth time, you will start the experience at a different point in time meaning you are going forward but ultimately the nature of rewatching something means you know where you’re going to end up in the future. An aspect of Tenet that draws on a specific interest of Nolan’s is the transformation of scientific concepts depicted through the language of storytelling. The nature of rewatching in itself is paralleled through the scientific concept of inverted entropy, which, in the most basic reduction, is the idea that a system goes from disorder to disorder. In Tenet, the suggestion is that broad systems can go through the process of disorder to order upon the experience of rewatching.

Whilst the scientific aspects of Tenet are largely far beyond my comprehension for obvious reasons, there are other bewildering pieces of the puzzle that raise an infinite number of questions despite seeming simple on the surface. Namely, the character of Kat: devoted mother to a young son and wife of a powerful (corrupt) arms dealer (see: the bad guy). On the first watch, it’s hard to appreciate or understand the role of this character as one of the few female faces in the film. There are some scenes that make you question whether her character’s inclusion is purely veiled misogyny: the idea that men are only capable of making slightly less morally corrupt decisions if they have a beautiful wife by their side, or that a ruthless C.I.A. agent will be immediately thrown off if they so much as a glimpse at a beautiful blonde woman. Yet, after thinking more about Kat’s character I have grown less hostile and more understanding of Nolan’s vision for her as a character burdened with emotional trauma. In relation to Nolan’s toying with time, Kat represents a timeline of autonomy and agency, a dichotomy of an oppressed or empowered woman. The P.T.S.D. that Kat seems to exist with further challenges our understanding of time. Is the trauma something from the past, present or future? Can we ever tell if we have agreed to reject a linear structure for time? Kat appears to be burdened with the emotional trauma of all the characters in the film, whilst they get the privilege of making rational, emotionless decisions; Kat must consider the feelings of not just herself but those around her - like her son - at all times, in turn preparing and recovering from past and future trauma. 

An ambiguous mantra of Tenet comes from Kenneth Branagh’s character, declaring at various points that ‘we live in a twilight world’, a phrase that is initially introduced as the code name for the protagonist’s mission at the film’s opening. This statement garners more meaning at the conclusion of the film as the protagonist and Neil reflect on their wider mission with the protagonist finally becoming aware of the temporal world that Nolan creates. Our protagonist has the revelation that the moment is not the end of their time together as it would be on a linear structure but instead is the beginning of his friendship with Neil on a temporal pincer structure whereby time is not so objectively universal. Though this point does mark the end of Neil’s life, the protagonist is only at the beginning of his experience or rather, re-experience. In exploring the end of Neil’s life, who is played superbly by Robert Pattinson, the idea of twilight reemerges. As Pattinson’s connection with the idea of Twilight runs deep (the start of his career being with the Twilight franchise) it becomes an excellent metaphor for the film’s thesis. Etymologically, beyond the definition relating to the natural process of twilight, the noun holds a second definition of ‘a period or state of ambiguity, absurdity or a gradual decline’. This definition could define the film’s plot as a whole - obscure and ambiguous and seeking to stop the impending event of World War III. Moreover, the natural phenomenon of twilight occurs both at the beginning and end of the day, further rejecting a linear temporal structure. Though devastating, emotionally, for the protagonist to find out about his close friend’s imminent death, it is seemingly not the end but also the beginning of their friendship, impossible to define. In the same way, at the point of twilight, it is impossible - and meaningless - to say whether it is the beginning or end. 

I started my week feeling annoyed at myself for ‘wasting’ time revisiting books I have already read and films I can already recite every line of, but having experienced the cinematic masterpiece of Tenet, I have been forced to consider whether re-experiencing things is a monotonous extension of the past or whether, as Nolan might argue, the act of re-experiencing things is a radical way of bringing the future to the present. 

#tenet #tenet review #rereading #twilight #christopher nolan #robert pattinson

[mountphoenixrp]

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

                                   Calix Song, who is known by no other name;                                                    a 24 year old son of Aphrodite.                                          He is a freelance photographer and author.

FC NAME/GROUP: yook sungjae / btob CHARACTER NAME: calix song AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 24 / 25 dec 1995 PLACE OF BIRTH: seoul, south korea OCCUPATION: freelance photographer & author HEIGHT: 180 cm ( 5'11" ) WEIGHT: 68 kg ( 149 lbs ) DEFINING FEATURES: eyes: dark brown, flecks of gold and black ( from divine heritage and curse respectively ) notable markings: a birthmark shaped like a heart near the end of his spine ( much to his horror ) style: hoods and masks, doesn’t give a damn about fashion but somehow he always picked the nice combinations without trying anyway ( and generally looks good in things ). wears a trench coat and the sort during the cold seasons. generally goes with black and dark monochromatic schemes. PERSONALITY: positive: observant; independent; practical; level-headed neutral: sharp-tongued; dramatic;circumspect negative: morbid; apathetic; aloof; hateful

you see, this child is one of loathing. right in his core was an ugly beast that despised everything and anything, including himself. he seeks for isolation as his only solace, the idea that it was there that he could finally be in peace and merely do what he enjoyed. uncaring, but hateful, a man that was cold and yet held the flames of utter loathing. with a silver tongue that can pick apart arguments, but also stab into people’s heart. there’s a tendency to be dramatic, though, a trait that gave him more life, one that was mainly produced due to his hate and reactions to what he despised. always wary, always to himself, he didn’t like to make connections and didn’t like the idea of messing things up because he was too easy. very sharp, eyes always watching and noting things down mainly for inspiration more so than anything. always alone but knew how to live like in isolation, kept his head in the game and remained practical. under the the dramatics and spite was a cold and rational man. HISTORY: tw: gore, death

chapter i.

he was born beautiful. blessed by his mother, of love and beauty. but left by her in his father’s arms, who wept as his heart broke and held the baby close. only her powers and a name gifted to him. and from afar, another divine being sent out a curse. one that landed on the mortal realm and it seeped into the small little boy that had yet to grow. young soul that could be so easily morphed, it twisted into an ugly manner and latched onto his very core. oh beautiful child of love and beauty, he had been ruined by hate for a mother he didn’t even know. he screamed in his father’s arms, so oblivious to what’s been done, and held his child closer and muttered reassurances. but it only made the young one scream more. he burned. he burned from this love.

chapter ii.

as he grew, so does his beauty. mothers came to coo at how pretty he was, other children comes closer under his allure, and he was in the center of it all. but they all seem to not care about the frown on his face, his ducked head and how he abhorred to be under the spotlight. pretty, gorgeous, beautiful—they lathered him in praises and eventually he runs away from it all. and it rains, but he didn’t stop. he wanted to be alone. but when his little legs couldn’t run any longer, he stopped and panted heavily. looking down at a puddle underneath his feet he saw his reflection. wide doe eyes, soft but drenched locks, cheeks rosy from the run he had. g— grotesque. he stomped on the reflection, screamed at it until his voice was hoarse. covered his face as he wept. this face of his that looked so, so utterly disgusting in his eyes. father told him he was just as pretty as his mother, others adored him, but it only served to make him loathe it all the more. if this was beauty he didn’t want it. if love was like what his father had for a woman who left him, he didn’t want it. the people who came to him with kind eyes were all vile, they were worse than the worst. people so prejudiced and foolish. could they not see? they tortured him the most. could they not tell? he just wanted to be alone, by himself, in a world where he did not have to see his own face. a child of love and beauty, his father told him. and oh how he wanted nothing but to scoff at the pitiful man. and speak of the devil, he shall arrive. the man fretted over him, put him under the umbrella and gently tried to bring him back home. how he wished he would just leave him so.

chapter iii.

he thought of his father as a heartbroken fool. the man gave him love, unconditionally, despite all the sneers and insults. his vocabulary has broadened, sophisticated and biting. he was cold but fiery, frigid flames that were as contradictory as his existence. he also thought the people around him were horrid. many came to him with shining eyes, a charming smile, and a desire to get close. all he saw were ugly monsters trying too hard. infatuated little things they were, trying to seek for more in him but all he responded with was distaste and insulting them with ease. a heart breaker, they called him, yet so many still tried to reach out to him. foolish children indeed, and he wanted nothing to do with them. he’s a spiteful one really, and in all honesty he didn’t really think he could have interests. but he was human enough, with a heart somewhere under the cacophony of hate and disgust. but even his interests were unconventional. of horror novels, tales of serial killers, myths about vile creatures, they catch his eye and he indulged himself with it. he’s charmed by the sight of people at their worst, by how their face twisted into desperation and how monsters were fearlessly themselves. they’re horrible things, so ugly, yet he thought—this was true beauty. unique, different, everything that the majority’s view of beauty were not. yet at the same time, when they were confident to show themselves to the world then that was what defined them as beautiful in his eyes. he’s not in love, no, he enjoyed it but even then something about it always had a bit of it that made him hate it ( there’s nothing in this world he couldn’t hate ). it’s his only joy. through this life where he couldn’t appreciate those that people normally would. he drowns himself in the morbid genres, and he pushed himself away from others. tried to hide himself with hoods and a mask, but even then there was an allure. how troublesome really, but at least he learned to ignore by reading his books.

chapter iv.

love and obsession, madness born from infatuation. he was never aware of the idea of having powers, all he could think were that people must be idiots really. but there’s been that one boy, one he met since middle school that kept on trying to meet him. he loved him, was what that boy would say. and he’d follow him, read the books he loved to share his interests and tried to catch his attention. but the demigod found him to be a fool, an idiot without class. he watched as the lackluster boy tried his best to reach his heart. the boy that heard and saw him curse his mother and his father out more. a boy that knew he loved the morbid sights far more than of luxuries. the boy that went mad, went to his home to kill his father and leave an utterly disgusting sight of gore. strewn out intestines, gouged out eyes, words of utter devotion and love carved out in his body and written in the man’s blood. a mad boy in love waits for him next to the heartbroken fool’s corpse, arms open wide and a smile so wide on his face asking him “do you love me now?” son of the dead man, he looked at the sight with a blank gaze. he hated his father, a dull man that compared him to his mother. the man who took care of him despite his demeanor. the man that which fed and worked his hardest to keep him safe and living a good life. he was a boy of hate, spite festering within him like a swarm of locusts. however, he was a child of love first and foremost. and somewhere deep inside under he pile of loathing, he had loved his father. without missing a beat, he threw his bag at the obsessed fool to knock him out. calmly, he took his phone out that’s been shoved in his pocket beforehand and he called the police. but even with the acknowledgement that he may care for his father, he didn’t cry for the man. he accepted it as it was and waited patiently for the police to come. his heart’s a tiny little thing under the black curse that enveloped it whole.

chapter v.

a funeral was done, and he met many people he didn’t care about. they were more or less those his father knew and he never bothered to get to know about them. people gave their words to him, but it all turned into white noise. he gained all that belonged to his father. even in death he loved him greatly. the most peculiar thing was a letter, rather old but kept well. only meant for his eyes if his father was to die. and he took it, read it, reread it again, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

dear calix, i don’t know when you’ll receive this but i’m sorry if i’ve left you pretty early on. i know you may not love me, but i’ve always loved you unconditionally. even if i was head over heels for your mother, i don’t think i can love anyone more than i had with you. and i admit i was selfish to wanting to keep you here for as long as i live. unaware of who your mother really was because i feared that you would one day leave me like she did. i apologize if i never did good enough for you. but i tried my best, i really did. that aside, what’s important now is that with me gone, you must go somewhere safer. a place where you can fit in. and i say this because you’re not a mere man like i am. you are the son of aphrodite as well, goddess of love and beauty. and i know this seems far-fetched, but go to incheon, nearby the airport, and you’ll find a bridge. a bridge only you can see and come by. there you can find a place meant for demigods and gods alike. maybe there, you could find more about yourself as well. and i hope that you can live on happily and safe. always love you. sincerely, your father song sooro

it’s outlandish really, completely so. something beyond comprehension. but at the same time, things started to click. of how no matter how he acted or do, the people around him seemed to love him even then. and not to mention the obsessed criminal now detained. clicking his tongue, he decided that right now…what had he got to loose? there’s not much to really live for in this city anyway. and maybe he can do something about his powers. because he really just wanted to live life as normally as he could.

chapter vi.

he reached mount phoenix, applied for phoenix university as a literature major, and went to continue on with life. living alone wasn’t so bad, he’s cooked for himself, did chores and all before. he was an independent soul, and it was nice to finally have a place he could call belonging to himself. he didn’t bother trying to find aphrodite, or to want to meet her. he’s not keen on knowing the woman that was the embodiment of everything he loathed. instead he focused on his studies and tried his best to control his powers. unfortunately, there’s something that altered his powers, a dark curse that ruined his very being. however it also couldn’t be removed, too deeply rooted to his being that once removed—he’d lose a large part of himself. it was chaotic and vile, having pushed his powers to be stronger but ruining his own mind and preventing proper control. the curse was much of him as he was it, as if becoming the embodiment of it yet still possessing the very essence of love and beauty. a twisted blend that have merged down to the molecule. he was unsure what to do, for he had wanted to live a normal life damn it. not this load of bull that seemed to put him into a position that prevented him from living a perfectly normal life. he wanted to curse the gods, but all he could do was clamp his mouth shut and bear it. the professors told him it was best for him to stay in mount phoenix only considering his powers. at least then he’d be surrounded people with heightened resistance against it. and so he did. stayed in this place filled with divine beings he loathed. another year pass by, moving on because there’’s nothing else he could really do. what gave him life and joy being his jobs as an author and a freelance photographer. although his pictures were dark, depressing and gave off a negative mood, it still held a beauty to it that he had a knack of capturing. and his books were famous for it’s morbid and dark themes, but it sold well and that’s what mattered. and maybe he’ll learn how to deal with the curse and the powers, and the idea his mother was around somewhere. and he might have siblings. ugh, did he hate the idea of family.

PANTHEON: greek CHILD OF: aphrodite POWERS: a fatal attraction, an allure that could not be ignored. even with his hood up and mask on, people can’t help but look and wonder. he was beautiful, charming, an appearance that which was enhance by his powers and enough to make love at first sight seem true. prolonged exposure may lead to obsession, one that can go off the limits ( he’s done it before without his intentions ). a touch may even lead to the urge to bed with him ( but he wouldn’t because that’s not his thing ). thing is, his powers were also increased thanks to a curse that he grew up with. the curse that which puts the target to hate aphrodite and everything she stood for with a passion. it’s merged to his soul and he could not rid of it due to that very fact. STRENGTHS:

thanks to the curse, which was another divine essence that had merged to his soul—his powers have heightened to a level above other demigods but still lesser than actual gods. still, it was more potent and had a higher chance of putting mortals into a state of obsession.

he can use it as a means of persuasion by offering the smallest of things, such as a hug or a kiss to the cheek. unfortunately, such things disgust him. nonetheless, an easy way to get what he wants.

he draws attention, makes anyone dreamy-eyed and focused on his face. if he was a thief, he could easily snatch things away if he wished to. he could also use the clouded mindset to his advantage in arguments and the sort.

WEAKNESSES:

the curse prevented him to have any sense of control of his abilities. no matter what, his powers had the switch turned on permanently. he also couldn’t take away the curse because of how fused it was to his core.

his own personality, if exposed to it long enough, could be a turn off. as beautiful as he was, he was—to put it simply—an asshole. there’s only so much insults you can take before you drop him.

he couldn’t affect those that were truly in love. although those that had their heart in a state of wavering can still be partially affected by him, generally he was ineffective against them.

he never used his powers the way it can be used. in fact, he tried to avoid using it for as long as he could.

obsession can be terrifying. he once drove a man so madly in love with him that said man would kill his father to attract his attention.

#kpop rp #krp #btob #yook sungjae #btob sungjae #mp; welcome

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, EMILY! You’ve been accepted for the role of MIRANDA. Admin Em: Emily, it was your parallel of Maeve and Joan of Arc and their martyrdom that convinced me that you really do understand Maeve, inside and out! From her love and light to her unwavering belief in a peace between the two warring territories, and this line-- “Her flaws are something she is blind to, both in her very nature and perhaps by choice in some small way, even if that choice is a bit unintentional,” we’re all so deeply enamored with your Maeve and her beautiful voice and can’t wait to see her on the dash! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character Alias | Emily Age | 24 Preferred Pronouns | She/her/hers Activity Level | So I am very busy - with work, applying to graduate school, and other such things. However, when I really adore a character I find it hard to stay away, so I’ll be on at least three nights a week, plus at least one weekend day/night. I also promise to ask for hiatuses as they are needed. Timezone | EST

Current/Past RP Accounts | both past - http://marvelousevelyn.tumblr.comand https://camelliafairchild.tumblr.com/

In Character Character | Miranda // Maeve Petre What drew you to this character? | I’m very drawn to morally grey characters, and I am also very drawn to characters who are very good, without question. Maeve obviously falls more into the latter, and there is something so incredibly beautiful about who she is, what she believes in, and her utter devotion to fight for it.

It is funny to me, because of Shakespeare’s non-history plays, The Tempest is one I am not as familiar with as others, but I have had a fondness for Miranda’s character for a long while, so I will be fascinated to play her out and see how she changes and how she holds true to herself amidst the horrors in the city.

When she hardens, it is not in the way that some expect - she hardens in her desires, not in her sense of being.

I think that even though she is very good, and very innocent, she has the possibility to still have great development, and I would love to be able to help develop her. She is so innocent and is to the point of being naive, and I wish to explore that - she is kind and gentle, but also flawed, and flawed in ways that she would not/does not/cannot quite see, at least now.

Her flaws are something she is blind to, both in her very nature and perhaps by choice in some small way, even if that choice is a bit unintentional.

“Miranda” means “worthy of admiration; wonderful", and Maeve means “the cause of great joy” (at least these are two meanings I found). There is certainly similarities to be found between these names, but I find the subtle differences - how Miranda in some ways feels more as though it has to be earned, and Maeve is something she can just be is a bit of an interesting concept. Something I might like to explore, as I find the power of names incredibly interesting. Maeve was/is her parents’ greatest joy, and now that she is part of the Capulets she has a name that gives her things to live up to - both for herself and in the eyes for others. She is content with what she is doing, but she still sees herself being looked down upon. How will those two things come together? Will they come together? Only time will be able to tell.

I have to say, as someone who likes history, I have also seen her in some ways as a Joan of Arc archetype - although less likely to up and literally ride into battle, she has some similarities, and I certainly can see her as a bit of a saint/martyr type in a number of ways.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

I. I would like for her to find out about how her mother died - I hope it is okay (and that I did not somehow miss something?) to assume it was the Montagues, because I could see that as being the reasoning behind how her father was involved with the Capulets, but I would like to expand on this, and should she ever find out about the circumstances of her mother’s death, how that might affect her view on things. I wonder if it will make her more keen on joining the Capulets more fully - because she is part of them, but she is part because of her father, and has not thrown herself into it because that can limit her ability to do peace - but should the Montagues be the cause of her mother’s death, I could see someone maybe using that to push her into being more of a solider of the Capulets.

However, it could also push her desire for neutrality more - if a feud killed her mother, wouldn’t neutrality be a more desirable option? It would make it so that she would not have to worry about people killing simply because of the other’s associations.

II. I do really wish to do things with her father - I realize he may not be brought into the RP, so even if through a self-para, or through interactions with others who are more well acquainted with the side of him Maeve was unaware of, would be fascinating. She joined with the Capulets to understand him, and yet she still sees hope, she still sees a wish to make everything better - she still hasn’t quite grasped the way that turned Philip into the hardened man whose hands have been covered far more than once with another’s blood. If he’s not brought into the RP, and even more if he is, I would really like to explore how they work together - because they’ve been a father and daughter pair for as long as Maeve can remember, but the context in which they live now is so entirely different…

III. How will her friendship with Santino affect things? Although of course some Montagues and Capulets speak, it is not nearly as common for true friendships to form. How did it blossom? This both has to do with past and future, which I sincerely hope is okay to talk about, but I think that it is crucial in her development, even if when she first met Santino she was not aware of his allegiances. Given how unaware she was of everything, I see this  as quite feasible. When she first met him, she thought he was another kindred soul, and she was not deterred when she found out about him being one of the Montagues - because, perhaps, if she can find kind souls amongst both sides, that will make her goals of peace all the easier.

IV. I am absolutely and entirely here for any interactions with those within the Capulets who oppose her wishes, and also for her finding those she has more in common with than she initially might have expected. I realize this is very vague, but I am also interested to see what her reactions would be if she had more in common with someone more violent than she is, and how that’d play out?

V. She is… very kind, very much seeing the good in most anyone. Quite clearly, this is something that will allow her to fairly easily run into issue. There’s already the chance of it being an issue with regard to her and Santino and how both sides might see that friendship, but there is more to explore. There is the issue of people taking advantage of her desire to see good, to do the opposite of what Rafaella has done and to not push her away and try to make her see the horrors and to fight - but instead, to take her and use her refusal to see anything but beauty in the world and mold that to their liking.

VI. She’s a solider, and soldiers get assignments. Perhaps she somehow gets a violent assignment - probably not from Everett, just because he and she are similar souls (as she would say, too) - but someone else. She is fiercely loyal, and though it would conflict with her desire for bettering the world, she would not want to disappoint someone, especially if she admired them. So how will that affect things? Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes, I do. Not right away of course, but should a situation call for it, I am. Angst fuels the RP world, does it not? :) In Depth In-Character Interview:

Papa might not want her to be meeting someone for an interview, but if it allows her voice to be heard, Maeve is more than happy to agree, to go and spread her message. She holds onto her mug of tea, the smell and warmth of cinnamon making its way into her nose.

The first question is to be expected, though she finds herself grateful for it nonetheless. "What is your favorite place in Verona?”

There is a pause, as Maeve considers her options, weighing them - of course she could say her childhood bedroom, one she found comfort in, with posters and carefully cared-for plants, and books neatly arranged on her shelves. But after a moment, she gives a nod - “The Castelvecchio Bridge. I enjoy watching the water from it, and although I am well aware such a memory should not exist, I have vague memories of being held against my mother’s chest as she walked along it, just before sunset, trying to calm me before I slept.” She brushes a curl of her hair out from her face and grins. “How could anybody not adore the bridge?” There is the hint of a would-be wink, her eyes practically squinting shut as she grins. “It is quite hard to resist, and furthermore quite difficult to miss, should anyone come to visit our dear Verona.” She takes a sip of her tea, and nods - the hint that she is ready, without speaking such.

"What does your typical day look like?”

A nod, a laugh. “I wake up - quite often with the sun, and I like to pull my window shades open and keep all the lights off in my room, and then I make myself a cup of tea sweetened with honey,” she gives a nod and gestures towards the teacup that sits in between the two of them, "and I sit at my dining room table and read, before I go off to explore.” She brushes a finger against her nose. “I am in search of a job at present, but that should all come soon, and once I find one, I will surely go there with a bag slung over my shoulder with a book inside, filled with dried flowers.” She knits her brows together. “I also cook dinners for Papa, because someone must help to keep him alive, regardless of everything that has happened.” She bites her lip. “It is what I have done for as long as I can remember, I see no reason as to why I ought to stop.” She waves the interviewer on, “Please, continue.” Please do not ask me why there would be even the barest of considerations that I should change how I have behaved around Papa. I never shall. Never. I do not think.

The interviewer clears his throat, although there is something in his eyes that hints that he might wish to return to her answers in greater depth. "What has been your biggest mistake thus far?” The grin is not wicked now, not exactly, and Maeve remains unaware, instead offering a quick and light shrug. “I am not certain.” Too much trust?  Though that thought leaves practically before it can be fully established. Because her trust is beautiful, it is part of what makes her who she is. “For I believe everything allows one to grow, and though I have made stumbles, calling my life’s path a mistake at any turn seems perhaps far too harsh. I am only sorry I do not have a greater answer, perhaps I can come and find you once I have more time to think on this.”

“What has been the most difficult task asked of you?”

She takes in a breath of air, not wanting to make eye contact. Because difficult is not so often a word that graces her tongue. It may be naive, and there are certainly those who would call it so, but it is her truth. “It is not - was not - exactly a task,” she drums her fingertips against her thigh, but accepting - becoming aware - of exactly what it is that Papa does -“ She presses her fingertips into her thigh for a moment, letting her breath catch. “Nothing can quite compare to that, although it has certainly given me a greater resolve to do better by this whole city.”

Perhaps it sufficed well enough for now, because the interviewer took down a few scribbles onto his notepad, before glancing back up. “What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?”

This one is easy. The answer flows from her pink-tinted lips. “I think that I will be the one to cause its end.” Her wide eyes look up. “Because peace is natural, and if flowers can grown amidst concrete, then peace can overcome war.” There is the glimmer of a smile that crosses her lips, turned up at the edges, though if one is to observe closely, they will notice that it is her eyes which truly glimmer at the idea. “Perhaps that is too self-centered an idea, but it is my belief. My thoughts are that it is not needed, and that it will burn to the ground, and we will rebuild and have peace, finally.” She gives a firm nod, and the curls of her hair bounce softly.

——

Extras:

Pinterest Board: Found here!

HEADCANONS:

I. She is allergic to dairy and to peanuts. She found out when she was only about two years old, and was rushed to the hospital. She manages it just fine now, but it is one thing that she does remain cautious about.

II. She loves flowers, and has many plants all over her home and takes incredible care to tend to each of them each day. Her favorite flowers are daffodils (which mean things such as new beginnings - with daffodils, she has a small pot growing), daisies, and violets. She is 100% the sort to have made flower chains/pressed flowers/etc for those she cares about.

III. The first knife she trained with was one from her own kitchen - the same one that she cut up vegetables for soups - because it was a reminder of home, another reminder (not that she should need one) of why she had taken up this cause. To help better her family, to help fix the wrongs of the city.

IV. She wears subtle perfumes every day. Maeve is not one to focus on much make-up, besides some lipbalm or gloss, but she does enjoy perfumes, and has a few bottles (tbd which) that she will rotate.

V. She speaks English, Spanish, and Italian. Although born and raised in Verona, speaking Spanish is something important to her, and she will slip into it with certain terms/phrases because it is a comfort to her.

Mini playlist:

The Power of Love - Gabrielle Aplin

Hallelujah - Kate Voegele cover

Yellow Flicker Beat - Lorde

To Be Human - Sia ft. Labrinth

Now is Not the Time - CHVRCHES

#accepted: miranda #accepted

[oilooknohands]

Why Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood was way better than Skyrim’s

Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood was arguably one of the most memorial parts of The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. And as for Skyrim’s, well, I’m convinced that if you took out the pure awesome idea of killing the emperor, it suddenly falls very flat.

Note: I’ve been obsessed with these two games lately. On my latest assassin play-through of Oblivion, I downloaded Deepscorn Hollow, took the weapons of all my fallen comrades after purifying the Cheydinhal Sanctuary and placed them in spots of honour within my new home. Vicente’s claymore, whom I considered my mentor and closest friend after Lucien, was in the pedestal of my bedchamber. I would’ve put Lucien’s there, but I couldn’t find it after he was made into a meat hanging (thanks Mathieu, you fuck). The Overall Organisation

I’m willing to accept the idea of Skyrim’s guild being weaker. In fact, I think it’s a great idea and even gives it more substance. But without the old ways, I’m honestly not sure why the Dark Brotherhood exists at all. I’m not only talking about the Black Sacrament going unheard, because the idea behind the Night Mother goes a little deeper than that.

Let’s look at Oblivion, and how Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood failed to emulate it.

The old ways were a lot more than just a bunch of rules; the attitude that came with them is what bound an unlikely collection of psychopaths together into what they called a “family”. They’re the reason the assassins had such a fondness for each other.

Let me give you a quote from Lucien Lechance:

“Have you not heard of the Dark Brotherhood? Of the remorseless guild of paid assassins and homicidal cutthroats? Join us, and you'll find the Dark Brotherhood to be all that, and so much more. We are, more than anything, a union of like-minded individuals.”

You’ll note that Lucien wants you to know that the Dark Brotherhood is a union. It’s kind of like a “we’re all in this together” kind of way. And it’s not just tough love, because the mythos of the Night Mother and the assassins being her children is the reason for this family-like bond. Even as you join the brotherhood for the first time in Oblivion, everyone (except Dar) welcomes you with open arms and overwhelming support, because they know that you are now their brother, someone who has come forward to adopt their strict ways of life. Like family, merely by being apart of the brotherhood, you are already deserving of respect and affection, unless you outright prove unworthy.

Now, this whole bond came from the old ways and the attitude it put into its subordinates. Without this way of life (which Astrid refers to as ‘outdated’) why exactly is everyone in Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood apparently so close with one another? Why do they consider themselves a family if they’ve apparently abandoned this life-style and instead live as they see fit?

Take Nazir for example. He says “-the dark brotherhood saved me from myself.”

Saved you? How? They’re just a bunch of cutthroats with a truce against each other. There’s nothing binding these people together except for the fact that they’re all crazy and homicidal. You can describe them the same way you describe bandits. Why do you, and the rest of these people, apparently have an unbreakable bond, if you’ve abandoned the old way?

I get that Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood is different, and has purposely abandoned the old ways, but without them it makes no sense that they would even have a reason to call each other a “family”, which they do anyway. It almost downplays how Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood was so special. The game is saying that any bunch of jokers could become a family as long as they didn’t kill each other and lived together in some place.

The Characters

When Alduin scalds you for not meeting the standard set by the original heros, I feel the same way meeting Skyrim’s Assassins. Aside from Babette and Cicero, I don’t really like any of them. I’ll explain each character, next to the character I think they’re closest to in Oblivion.

By the way, I won’t cover Babette and Cicero, but I’ll quickly say this: Babette had some questionable moments herself, but I forgave them because she was colourful. And Cicero, well, it’s hard to dislike him after you read his journals, and see the way he went to hell and back because of his devotion to his duty. 

MOVING ON.

Astrid/Lucien Lechance

Now, I know Astrid was a traitor, which makes a lot of people dislike her, but I’m going to say that even before the quest Death Incarnate, or even before the quest The Cure for Madness, she’s still kind of awful.

Let me compare these two leaders by describing them without talking about their appearance, abilities or roles.

Lucien LeChance: Cold, calculating, intelligent, strong-willed, loyal, honest, sadistic.

Astrid: Proud, arrogant, paranoid, foolish, short-sighted.

In the simplest terms, Astrid was weak. But I’m not going to dwell on this any longer, because in her case, it was intentional, and this is more salt than criticism. 

Nazir/Vicente Valtieri

I like Nazir. But there’s an issue here.

The reason Vicinte’s role in the story was so genius relates back to what I said earlier, about the old ways being essential to the dark brotherhood’s identity as a family. Vicinte is your first quest-giver, and he tells you not to worry about him feeding on you, because the needs of the dark brotherhood are too great. His role is a great way to introduce to you the mentality behind the merry band of murderers.

The first time you met Nazir, well, he’s an asshole. I know he got better toward the end, but if truth be told, respecting someone after they kill the emperor isn’t exactly a big thing to ask.  

Now, Nazir did grow on me, I’ll admit, but the role of these two characters kind of represent my problem with the Skyrim Dark Brotherhood as a whole.

Festus Krex/M’raaj-Dar

Festus introduces himself as the kranky old uncle that everyone should avoid. I mean, isn’t it a contradiction to introduce yourself like this? It’s like going up to a random stranger on the street and telling them to not talk to you, because you hate talking to people you don’t know.

M’raaj-Dar downright ignored you the entire time, but you could still seamlessly talk to Festus about whatever you wanted. There wasn’t really any reason for him to be a grumpy outsider and it never fit into the story.

Festus grew on me about the same time that I grew on him, but his character is rather uninspired. He’s just a grumpy man who likes being known as the grumpy man.

Feeling that family love right about now.

Veezara/Teinaava + Ocheeva

Veezara isn’t bad, but he wasn’t nearly as interesting as Teinaava or Ocheeva, who set a hard bar to compete with. 

The twins are clearly well-connected, as Ocheeva has been trusted with leadership, and Teinaava is tuned in enough with Argonia to know when and where to send you to kill Scar-Tail. And you get the idea that they’re intelligent and well-travelled. For example, Teinaava knows how to exploit Fort Sutch’s defences and how to escape from Gaston Tussaud’s ship. Ocheeva even mentions completing a contract on a ship at sea near Vvardenfel.

Aside from being a shadowscale, which was cool, Veezara didn’t have much going for him. Ocheeva and Teinaava were very colourful. Most of Veezara’s conversations were like this:

               Tell me about yourself.

                               Well, I am a shadowscale, and I was trained to kill.

               How do you feel about Cicero and the Night-mother?

                               I don’t know. All I know is, I am a shadowscale, and I was                                     trained to kill.

And that’s pretty much it.

You know it’s cooler if you don’t go flaunting it around in everyone’s face. 

Basically, make Veezara an Imperial or a Nord, and he will be far less memorable.

Gabrielle/Telaendril

I don’t really know what to say about Gabrielle, because I don’t know anything about her. (I have the official game guide for Skyrim, and it has bios for every character in the Dark Brotherhood. It doesn’t say much about Gabrielle.)

These characters aren’t even that similar, except for the fact that they’re both Mer archers.

Telaendril had personality. She was eager to please and lusted after the chance to advance in the guild, as seen by her disappointment by not being given the “special assignment”. She also tried telling Gogron about the virtues of stealth, and in doing so she was showing her loyalty to the old ways. However she also let her guard down around Gogron because she had a soft-spot for him (and a wet spot too, or so Gogron claims). It made her seem well connected and apart of the family, and not just a shoe-in to have an archer in the assassin’s guild.

Which Gabrielle was.

I didn’t even know she was an archer until I destroyed the Dark Brotherhood in another profile. I killed Gabrielle’s pet spider and used its venom to poison her, and then I cut her head off of and threw it in the pond.

Arnbjorn/Gogron gro-Bolmog

These characters both fit in the role of “ignorant warrior who just likes to kill”. Gogron likes you from the start, Arnbjorn is an asshole but becomes nicer (am I noticing a pattern here?).

Gogron’s ignorance made him charming, because he was just in the Dark Brotherhood doing what he loved, and he was happy to talk to you even if he wasn’t completely clear on what he was doing.

When asked about the night mother: “All I know is, she pays me to kill people. My own mother should’ve loved me so.”

When Arnbjorn is ridiculed about disrespecting the night mother: “Keep talking little man, and we’ll see who gets punished.”

One of them isn’t aware of his ignorance, and it makes him likeable. One of them embraces what little he knows, which makes him annoying.

Not to mention, why exactly did Arnbjorn dislike you, only to end up respecting you towards the end of the questline? Apparently it’s because you “proved yourself time and time again” but if he was just distrusting of your competence, why wasn’t his wife’s testimony enough? Or, killing Alain and his gang, or something earlier?

Each time I do The Purification, it’s completely heartbreaking. For Death Incarnate, I don’t care.

So long Arnbjorn! I hope you skip the Hunting Grounds and go straight to BURNING IN HELL!

Quests

Something tells me I won’t need to try hard to prove this point.

Skyrim’s assassinations were all very basic. You had a bunch of side missions, where you killed targets who weren’t going anyway. And, you also had the main quests. There were no unique ways to kill any of your targets, and no extra effort required for any of them, except for thinking about an escape.

Oblivion’s assassinations were all so incredible and memorable. Even the most basic one involved smuggling yourself onto a ship to kill the captain and escaping through the back.

There was also the quest where you became a sleuth and tracked down an Altmer skooma addict, or another where you were invited to a party and had to murder each guest (or turn them against each other), or there was infiltrating an occupied military fort, and the prison you started the game in.

The purification, which broke everyone’s hearts, I will speak no more about.  

And my favourite part, defeating the members of the Black Hand. Replaying the quest knowing who these targets REALLY are makes each of them seem like a legend in their own right.

J’Ghasta, the Khajiit martial artist who could kill with his enemies without being armed. Shaleez, the Argonian huntress (who is probably also a shadowscale) who made her lair in an abandoned flooded mine. Alval Uvani, the travelling Dunmer wizard who is a master of destruction. Havilstein Hoar-Blood, the Nord barbarian residing in the mountains, who is probably strong enough to send you down the mountain in a single swing of his axe (or was it a hammer?). And finally, we come to the listener, Ungolim. The Bosmer archer who has by now been anticipating you, and whose hunter-like instincts make him detect you before you strike.

As terrible as it was to learn that you killed even more of your comrades, you learned that each of them was a formidably killer with deadly prowess, not only making them worthy targets of a highly-trained assassin, but the perfect leaders for the shadowy organisation.

Was there anything that memorable in Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood? 

You fought against some Imperial agents, I guess. You fought Alain.

…

The end :/

In Conclusion

I know most people probably already agreed with me on these points, but I just wanted to get them settled. Hopefully in the next Elder Scrolls game, the brotherhood is strong with the old ways again, and not everyone dies.

#dark brotherhood #oblivion #skyrim #black hand #the elder scrolls #lucien lachance #astrid #veezara #nazir #teinaava #ocheeva #shadowscale #tamrielle #cyrodiil #cicero #babette #assassin #Night Mother #sithis

[brightbeautifulthings]

Les Misérables: Part II, Book IV - Part III, Book VIII

Once again, I'm great at reading and bad at posting updates about it. I can consistently manage one thing on my blog--book reviews--and everything else gets fit in at random. I'm still reading Les Misérables regularly, and I just finished the Marius section this week so it seemed like a good time to post an update (although last month would have been better). This is slightly over half the book, which I'm really excited about because that means I'm slightly ahead of my schedule, and the prognosis is good for actually finishing it before the year is over.

Somewhere a while ago, I was starting to warm up to this book and actually look forward to reading it, and then I hit a bunch of dry sections including Terrifying Nuns & Their Living Habits, and the warm feelings went away. I've never had a book go so far in either direction as far as my feelings about it. Sometimes I can barely get through a section, and other times I'm completely drawn into the plot and the characters. I feel like there's probably a better way to balance this, but I don't know what it is. Maybe there's just no way to make boring historical things less boring. (In the novel's defense, history has never been my subject.) In those sections, I typically feel like I need another book just to explain to me what it is Hugo's getting at. There are probably some really good companion books out there, so I'm open to suggestions if you've read one.

"The bishop had taught him the meaning of virtue; Cosette had now taught him the meaning of love."

It's difficult not to love Jean Valjean as a character, and the contrast set up between him and Javert is one of the best I've ever seen in literature. Valjean is an ex-convict, but he's pretty much always the most (or the only) morally good character on the page. Javert is a police inspector, but he's so rigidly committed to the law that morality escapes him sometimes. He's the danger of a doctrine that only sees in black and white. The chase scene when Javert first discovers Valjean's identity is very tense. I wished the narrative hadn't moved away from describing Valjean and Cosette's relationship over the years in more depth. The next time we see them, a lot of time has passed.

Things pick up again with the introduction of Marius and Les Amis de l'ABC. I found Marius easy to identify with, since he's like a lot of academics I know. We're terribly committed to whatever theory has caught our attention lately, have difficulty resurfacing from our books, and have absolutely zero chill when the person we like is nearby. I nearly died laughing in the chapters where he walks by Cosette (again and again and again) and basically acts like a super-kook whenever she's around. Hello, my name is Marius. I am a Dork Fish extraordinaire. Except he'd never make it past hello, as most dork fish do not. If that isn't my college love life in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

I'm still having trouble distinguishing all the members of Les Amis de l'ABC. In typical Hugo fashion, they're introduced in great detail and then not mentioned again for two hundred pages. Alice and I were making each other laugh sending videos of Aaron Tveit coaching people on how to pronounce Enjolras (very helpful). Then there’s the obvious romance between him and Grantaire. "He was austere, seeming not to be aware of the existence on earth of a creature called woman." There's a word for that, Hugo. It's called gay. "But, skeptic that he was, he had one fanatical devotion, not for an idea, a creed, an art or a science, but for a man - for Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras." As if it needed more angst, Enjolras kind of hates Grantaire. Ships are built on way less than that, and I can see why they're the couple who have launched 10,000 fics on AO3. I think I care more about their potential love story than Marius and Cosette's actual one.

"In the animal world no creature born to be a dove turns into a scavenger. This happens only among men."

I hope there's more Eponine later in the book, since she's my favorite character in the movie. She's played a much smaller role so far, and I'm interested to see how she moves from barely knowing Marius to being in love with him and how Marius moves from distracted bookworm to revolutionary (and I'm going to be sad if that's purely an invention of the musical). Hugo proves once again that he can build tension when he puts his mind to it, but Marius's crisis of conscience when Thénardier corners Valjean is much less satisfying than some earlier in the novel, given the outcome (trying not to be spoilery). I'm back to having mostly good feelings about the book, but also nervous about how many more sections might be passionately dedicated to a single day in history or the minutiae of the Paris sewer system.

#yrstruly #les mis readalong #readalong #les miserables #victor hugo

[its-just-like-the-movies]

Darkest Hour (17, C)

In the time period between Christmas and New Year’s, my family spent two days with my dad’s parents. In those two days, we all went to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Darkest Hour together, movies I wasn’t particularly excited about, and that made one person fall asleep at each screening. I’m hoping to ring in the new year with more reviews, and certainly more articulate reviews about things I liked, rather than the rambly piece about The Work. Given that I should be posting a personal ballot in the coming months, that will definitely happen. But in the meantime, here is an unimpressed assessment of a new release, with another possible to come soon.

The one that has its talons deepest in the Oscar conversation, or at least in the most prominent categories, is Darkest Hour, the story of Winston Churchill’s (Gary Oldman) ascendancy to the seat of Prime Minister and subsequent organization of the Dunkirk evacuation. It’s a fraught story, one I didn’t realize was such an uphill battle for Churchill, newly anointed as a compromise choice with a somewhat shoddy record up till that point. Churchill himself seems nervous and unsure about the prospect, as his wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) primps him for his meeting with the King and banters with him as encouragement. It’s a generous step for the film to depict his home life before fleshing his new political station, especially since the couple sparkle with so much warmth and humor in their conversations. In her first scene after Churchill accepts the position of Prime Minister, the couple has a celebratory drink at home with their adult children, who are never seen again. Clementine’s speech is a diplomatic love letter, recognizing that Churchill’s real love is to his country. It’s a credit to Scott Thomas that this speech and her performance throughout rings with as much good cheer and devotion as it does, and then the film recognizes her acknowledgement as number two in his life by more or less leaving her behind. She’s left to fret about financial woes that are only brought up once and bolster his confidence, romantically but without building him up from nothing. It’s a good sport rendering of a woman who relegated herself to being sidelined, and not every film with this Supportive Wife character needs to look at these characters through the angles that Nixon and The Lost City of Z do. Not all are able to either, but Clementine Churchill as written, directed and performed cannot help but pale next to what those films do with the same biopic archetype.

Still, if Churchill is unsure about the prospect of becoming Prime Minister, he and Clementine stand as the only characters who are remotely for him ascending to the position for a long while into the film. In Parliament, Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup), the previous PM, and Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane), scheme to remove Churchill from his position to put Halifax in power in reaction to Churchill’s vehement refusal to even consider peace talks, going all out on the side of fighting the Nazis until Britain is no more. The arc itself is compelling, and would be even more so if the film hadn’t basically opened with Halifax stuttering his way through a refusal of the position of PM. He doesn’t give a real explanation then or in subsequent scenes, despite his turn-around carnivorousness for the position. Churchill himself even brushes aside the idea that Halifax would turn the position down, considering it unthinkable. So must we in the audience, if only because we never learn why he decided to fight tooth and nail for the job only after he had brushed it off his lap. But Chamberlain’s fear that Churchill will undo everything he stood for in office, as he stands on the brink of a cancerous death, makes plenty of sense, as does King George IV’s (Ben Mendelsohn) reticence to this blustery opponent. George dislikes Churchill as a person, a politician, and the Parliamentary grandstanding from the opposition that forced Chamberlain to lose his position. The ceremony of Churchill accepting the position of PM from George is pointedly awkward, the men standing yards away from each other and stiltedly conversing about when to have their weekly meetings. Churchill kisses the back of George’s hand, and George almost immediately wipes his hand on his back. Animosity is prowling around Churchill, and he does nothing to stop it save stomping it underfoot by trying to prove the assumptions of his opponents wrong.

I’ve seen several reviews that position Darkest Hour’s interpretation of Churchill as a refreshing antidote to the leadership in America, even heard this from my grandfather after the film ended, but it’s odd to see this position after so many of the insults hurled at Churchill are ones that have been at Trump. From the outset Churchill is demonstrably angry and uncooperative, plagued with criticism for his war-mongering tendencies, awful diet, brutishness, lying to the public, and terrible people skills. Aside from Churchill’s vivid eloquence, it makes some kind of sense for the shriveled orange sack of cheese running America in January 2017 would be enamored with this film and the man at his center.

The film also shares in Churchill’s pro-war tendencies, one that can’t simply be excused as being subsumed into his own point of view. Small scenes without Churchill, with Chamberlain, with Halifax, with new secretary Elizabeth Layton (Lily James) keep the film from claiming a full POV with Churchill. Though departing from the protagonist doesn’t necessarily mean we’re outside their subjectivity - look at Birdman or, again, Nixon - neither Joe Wright’s directorial stylization or his interpretation of the narrative suggest that we’re seeing it through Churchill’s perspective. Of course, fighting Nazis to the death is always a superior option, and though Darkest Hour doesn’t mock Chamberlain and Halifax’s quest for peace, it frames them - Halifax especially - as outright antagonists. The decision makes sense, since the two were trying to force him out of office, but the film primarily portrays their efforts for peace talks as provoking a scenario to force Churchill out of office. There’s little sense of what either man genuinely sees in the option of surrendering to Hitler, and because of this their beliefs register only as flat opposition rather than an actual political stance. Wright is obviously filming for an audience that’s lived through this and knows exactly how World War II will turn out, but that doesn’t explain or excuse his refusal to illustrate why surrendering in the hope of keeping British culture alive is such a tantalizing option, nor why anyone would believe Hitler in the first place.

Where does this leave Churchill? In a way, who cares? Wright and Oldman do a fine interpretation, not getting gummed up on showing off how “transformative” it is. In fact, the cast handles their vocal and cosmetic changes with little fanfare across the board. Similarly, Wright does some of his best work in Darkest Hour filming Churchill’s speeches, capturing the fluctuations of the mood in the room as well as Churchill’s own state of mind in each speech, which moments are earnest or performative or compensating or meant to rile up his audience. Oldman also slips in more vulnerability than is necessarily scripted, willing to show how much this man is out of his depth and fully aware of the past mistakes he believes should have kept him from this position in the first place. But there’s something ultimately hollow about the men and women that Wright throws onto the screen, and it’s noticeable that the film’s central character is as bloodlessly realized as the figures floating around him. We hear him orate his will to keep Britain under its own sovereignty and to fight Hitler to the death, just as we hear Clementine’s fondness for her husband, as we hear George resents that Chamberlain was forced out of office, as we hear Chamberlain and Halifax want to negotiate with Hitler. None of the characters have a genuine interiority, just goals they want to support and accomplish, and Wright’s visual flourishes end up backfiring as the characters remain so opaque. Zooming towards the sky as Churchill looks up in contemplation (where I realized my sister had briefly fallen asleep), filming his lunches with King George in a wide shot to focus on the enormity of the room, over and over these vital meetings are depicted with outsized embellishments, ones that would work better if the operators involved were given a sense of depth or personhood that motives their political ambitions.

All in all, Darkest Hour winds up a politically muddled and narratively stodgy object. The effect of framing Halifax and Chamberlain as Churchill’s most physically present enemies is disorienting, especially since the Nazis are such a comparatively abstracted threat, the war kept largely off-screen despite being all everyone talks about. Dunkirk is allowed to keep the Germans offscreen in nearly the same way because their presence is omniscient and forceful, the stakes fatally present throughout. Nixon is even more stylistically and narratively baroque, but it commits viciously to the interiority of its central characters and the men and women in his orbit and how Nixon’s actions have so much political and personal history motivating his decisions. Neither Joe Wright’s direction nor Anthony McCarten’s screenplay digs as deeply into the situation as it might, refusing to complicate or personalize it for the participants and gives no room for the cast to do so either. It’s politically thin and stylistically excessive beyond it scope, a dire combination that leaves this vital history feeling under-explored, overblown, and utterly ill-served.

#darkest hour #my reviews #my posts #2017

[serahne]

ive been seeing a lot of stuff saying how problematic and gross dr3 was but no actual descriptions, and since your analysis is thorough, evidenced, and trustworthy, i was hoping you could explain why dr3 is so taboo? thank you if you do!

So much pressure, haha. Well, my main reason for loathing dr3 is the terrible writing, the retcons, the plotholes, the characterizations of characters, the plot in general that runs on stupid, so not exactly the ‘problematic part’.

However, as always when writers didn’t care that much about writing something that makes sense, they didn’t care either about the subtext. That is to say, things that aren’t explicited by the plot or the characters, but are there not matter how you look at it. For a funny exemple of text VS subtext, I already made a semi-serious argument about Nanami being a sociopath in the anime.

As for the rest, I’m scared that I’m going to let my years in sociology take over…

             - The anime supports an ultra-liberal point of view when it comes to society. Which is a surprise, considering that dr1 and especially sdr2 were really clever at showing that human being’s behaviour has nothing do with some kind of ‘human nature’, and people just react to their environnement they are put in and the one they grew up in. This is not something revolutionnary, but it still asks the question of someone’s responsability in their own acts, and the difficulty to become someone you want to be despite the society putting you in a case.

Hope’s Peak treats his Students as Ultimates ( or Reserve Course ), and not as human beings, totally neglecting to deal with their complicated past, or their particularities. And the anime, by making the whole sdr2 classe completely cartoon-ish, by erasing these particularities ( everyone becomes despair for the same reason, none of their past is ever brought up… ) and by re-opening Hope’s Peak Academy at the end, the anime promotes the idea that it’s a good way to see things. That people being defined by the fact that they are talented is enough.

             - More generally, the anime is a lot more conservative. The entire blame of the Tragedy is put on Junko, as if nothing bad would have ever happened without her coming to Hope’s Peak. Which is ridiculous, or Junko is just the match that lights up the oil that has been poured all over Hope’s Peak for years. She is the unstoppable force meeting a still object. She makes the thing goes boom, but she wouldn’t have succeed without the state of corruption Hope’s Peak was in.

Hi, girl you are literally describing any system where elites dominate the society. Eventually people who managed to take the ‘social’ elevator wants to keep their position and we assist to a elite reproduction, where elites are the ones who runs the systems and chose themselves the next generation of elites - which, again, encourages the corruption.

Going back to the subject of Hope’s Peak, the school was doomed, no matter what. The opening of the Reserve Course was probably a last try to sustain the elitist system from Hope’s Peak, but it blew up in their face. They created their fate, and they tried to avoid it by playing God, by creating Kamukura ( which is pretty funny, by the way : trying to go back to the way things were at the beginning by creating another ‘Hope’, as if themselves realized that something had been lost in the process ).

The anime is infuriating by trying to say that Hope’s Peak is the ‘good guy’ defeated by the ‘bad’ guy, Junko, and it’s emphazised by the ‘happy end’ where Naegi, elite from Hope’s Peak and FF, and Kirigiri, elite from Hope’s Peak and FF decides to re-open the school. Which the anime is trying to tell us is an happy ending. But will eventually fall exactly the same way, realistically.

           - The anime doesn’t recognize opression. This one annoys me a lot. I mean, yes, we kinda have Hinata and Natsumi being sad that they are in the Reserve Course Student, but we have nothing about the systemical opression that RCS goes through. Their motivations are always personnal ones ( Hajime wants to be proud of himself and to be Chiaki’s friend, Natsumi wants to be with her brother ) and almost… irrationnal. Again and again, characters who are portrayed as the ‘wise ones’ like Chiaki and Chisa - and who, unfortunately, are themselves opressors - claims that there is nothing bad with being a RCS, that it’s actually even better, and that it gives them so much freedom. Which is basically like someone being super wealthy talking to a homeless person in the street ‘damn, but at least you don’t have to work, you’re free to do whatever you want !’. Sure, jan.

Even when Hinata confronts Juzo and he is violently treated, we are always reminded that the Main Course is actually kind and nice, and caring and without any class prejudice, for the only reason he was rough with Hinata was for his own good, to keep him away from the building.

I’m going to make a point about sexism later, so I won’t stay on this one for too long, but Nanami being the Ultimate Gamer is problematic in itself, since we never get any hint of sexism being directed at her. In a similar way that Yuri On Ice! is a world without homophobia so straight fangirls won’t need to reflect on their behaviour in real life, Nanami lives in a ‘world without sexism’ where she obviously never met an annoying guy ever, who would put her down because of her talent. Fetishizing a cute gamer girl is okay, targetting the main audience for the anime ( straight gamer guys ) and trying to make them think about their behaviour in real life ? Nuh-uh.

        - Talking of homophobia, the way the anime treats it is… terrible. Everyone rejoiced when Sakakura was confirmed as gay but… at the end of the day, he was forcibly outed as supreme humiliation, and then went right for the ‘bury the gays’ trope. It’s not respectful. It’s not positive representation. It’s lame. Obviously, Komaeda and Tsumiki were given a shitty treatment too, with the anime going to hell and back to erase their sexuality/canon feelings. Komaeda being apparently… turned on by Hope ( which makes me think that the writers may have read too much fanfictions from the old fandom ), and Tsumiki only falling for Junko as a result of brainwashing ( when her ‘normal self’ would have been so much cuter with the Imposter, right ? ).

They also turned the little joke from the Twilight Syndrom Murder Case into… Sato being yandere for Mahiru I guess ? Ugh. All that while force-feeding literally any straight couples they could. In 24 episodes where we are supposed to get a plot somewhere we have 8 straight couples being teased. None of them being even remotely well-written (Ruruka and Izayoi is at least interesting but that’s it). The only gay couple being given some attention is Tokomaru in one (1) episode.

        - Finally, sexism and misogyny. Something that I’m honestly really tired of when it comes to Danganronpa, but that has never peaked as much as in dr3. where do I start off ? Maybe with the terrible treatment of Mikan someone who has been canonically emotionally and sexually abused and being turned into a joke, before being sexually humiliated and used for fanservice, again and again. Or the way female characters can fall into the ‘good girl category’, the category where girls have rosy cheeks, no personnality, and are devoted to their man, and dies for their character development because that’s what good girls do. These girls have to be very good-looking but absolutely unaware of it, for fetishized innocence and childish attitude is cute, even in a grown-up adult. Obviously

Obviously at the moment where they are aware that they are good looking, they become “bad girls’ who manipulates men, aren’t good waifus, and deserves to die, too, of course, but alone and in despair because how dare these girls having personalities and their own agendas ? Ruruka and Junko falls into these categories.

And uh… other females characters don’t really exist. Peko becomes a poor little thing for Fuyuhiko to protect, Sonia seems to give absolutely no thought to her kingdom, Ibuki is a comic relief, Mahiru lost all her temper. Asahina is bicycle for Naegi, I guess. They are 100% irrelevant for the plot, for only men are allowed to further it in any way.

#answer #dr3 negativity #this is going to be my masterlist just in case haha #danganronpa

[kiaronna]

Hey beautiful author, may i ask you a question? What do you think of JJ? A lot of different author write different JJ. Are you the one who like to write 'Annoying to everyone JJ' or 'Lowkey aashole but not Bad person JJ' or 'not an aashole but very narcisstic and fun to get bullied 'harmlessly' by others JJ' or simply 'JJ neutral' OR 'I love JJ'? And do you think he's an aashole or not?

Hi, Nonny! Thanks for your interest in my opinion, but whatyou were blissfully unaware of is that I’m an obsessive little perfectionist,so my answer to this question is gonna be long. Personally, I don’t love JJ—I’mkind of indifferent to him. However, I think he’s an excellent, fleshed outrival to Yuuri and an excellent person to compare to Yuuri. I’ll go overthis in three points, which are explained below the cut:

1.     JJ is confident to thelevel of arrogance (note: NOT a narcissist)

2.     One of JJ’s goals is tocompete against and defeat Viktor

3.     JJ is a misunderstood butgood guy, though he’s not that nice

1.     JJ is confident to thelevel of arrogance (note: NOT a narcissist)

This isn’t really hard to see. The man hashis initials tattooed on his back, he calls himself the “king” and skates to anoriginal song about him, and spends a lot of his internal monologue kindof…bragging about himself. Turning our eyes to Yuuri, who thinks he’sdime-a-dozen even after making it the GPF two years in a row and winning the heartof the world’s most eligible bachelor and his idol, we can see the comparisons.

Yuuri is underconfident because he puts alot of internal pressure on himself, keeps setting his personal standardsextremely high—obviously he’s under external pressure, too, but his main enemyis himself. Yuuri’s family doesn’t care if he’s a champion or not, despite whatYuuri may think, and while Japan clearly adores Yuuri, he’s moved to the USAand is notoriously reclusive (though he does read what people say on theinternet). Obviously, feeling like he’s stolen Viktor from the world puts himunder external pressure, but that’s fairly new in his life. On the flip, wehave JJ, whose parents coach him, whose siblings are Juniors skaters that arelikely nipping at his heels, who has a pretty devoted fanbase he interacts alot with—heck, Isabella is one of his fangirls and he’s marrying her—who a bandwrote a whole song about. That’s a lot of long-lasting external pressure todeal with, and I’m going to suggest that a lot of JJ’s arrogance comes from aneed to combat this pressure.

When he brags, JJ isn’t just bragging—he’spumping himself up, because he’s nervous. We all know that his nervesand pressure got to him in the Barcelona GPF, and that wasn’t some isolatedincident. This has to do with an idea I’ve seen from a lot of people: that JJis a narcissist.

JJ isn’t really a narcissist. Narcissiststend to overplay their achievements and consider themselves superior orspecial. They demand admiration, feel entitled to victory, and lack empathy tothe extent that they take advantage of others (DSM-IV criteria). JJ brags a lot, but he actuallyhas earned a lot of his own achievements—this guy was destroying ice skatingcompetitions, okay? He was favored to win the GPF till pressure did him in, andif that hadn’t happened… he probably would have won. All of that takes a lot ofwork—it’s not weird to be somewhat proud of it. JJ claims he’s superior because,by some skating standards, he is. 

Also possibly because if he doesn’tbelieve himself to be superior, invincible, he’ll collapse to nerves andexternal pressure. JJ isn’t a narcissist because he does feelempathy: he wants Isabella to be happy, and fears losing her and the support ofhis parents/country. Finally, JJ definitely isn’t a narcissist because… well…look at his response to losing, or his response to the success of others. Inepisode 8, when Seung-Gil lands a quad loop, JJ doesn’t downplay thisachievement—he claps, and tries to bring it up to the rest of the room (albeit awkwardly,we’ll get into this later). He acknowledges that Yurio wants to beat Viktortoo, and expresses a genuine desire for them to climb podiums together. When JJcrashes and burns at the GPF, he doesn’t fly into a rage over how he’s lost, orfeel he’s been robbed of the medal he’s entitled to: he’s worried he’ll losethe support of the people he loves, and understands that he’s screwed up.Friends, this is a guy who’s intimidated by cinnamon rolls like KatsukiYuuri and Phichit Chulanont—he’s not a narcissist, he’s not only ego-driven, he’sa complex character who behaves like he does for some good reasons.

BAHAHAHA HE GENUINELY THINKS YUURI ORPHICHIT WOULD DO HIM THIS WAY

Basically, JJ is a normal teenage(YES, HE IS A TEENAGER, THIS ALSO PLAYS INTO HIS BEHAVIOR) guy who compensatesfor a lot of external pressure and nerves by talking himself up. I hatewhen JJ gets made out to be a total jerk—he’s not one, and Kubo made him thatway for a good reason.

2.     One of JJ’s goals is tocompete against and defeat Viktor

JJ states that he wants to take Viktor onagain in the GPF and beat him—of course, Viktor takes the season off, so thisdoesn’t happen, but honestly I think this plays a lot into his behavior.

We all felt terribly for Yuuri when hisidol, Viktor Nikiforov, seemed to have no idea who he was. Well guesswhat? JJ has literally been on a podium with Viktor, the man he aspiresto defeat and probably idolizes at least a little… and Viktor doesn’t really knowwho he is, and doesn’t care. Now, Viktor doesn’t have to care, but imagine thatyou’re nineteen and the guy you admire and want to beat won’t give you the timeof day—that’d suck, wouldn’t it? JJ mostly responds to this by trying to getViktor’s attention in any way he can. We’ll walk through one particularinteraction that is going to lead straight into the JJ is misunderstooddiscussion.

In episode 8, JJ approaches Viktor andYuuri to talk about a quadruple loop. Yuuri, as we know, is already nervous andtrying to get in the zone by listening to his headphones. Viktor is supportinghim, and JJ busts in yelling about how accomplished some other skater is—Viktoris annoyed and rebuffs him, mostly because it could make Yuuri panic.

But honestly, JJ’s intent wasn’t to rile upYuuri—it was to snag Viktor’s attention. Look at this:

JJ passes Yuuri right by. If he was tryingto intimidate Yuuri, you’d think he’d talk to him, wouldn’t you? But he goesstraight to Viktor, tries to talk about Viktor’s achievements, and hegets brushed off. LOOK AT HIS AWKWARD LITTLE FACE:

HE IS TRYING SO HARD GUYS. He just wants totalk to skating’s Living Legend, and geez, with his accomplishments, he’searned the right to do so by this point. But Viktor doesn’t want to talk tohim. It’s a little sad that JJ pays no attention to Yuuri, but Yuuri is acompetitor and not the guy JJ wants to surpass, so we’ll let this go.

Yuuri idolizes Viktor, and we all know thatdeep down, he also wants to compete against Viktor and beat him (the Nishigori conversation), though he’shesitant to say it. When he initially interacts with Viktor he is Awkward witha capital A.

I’d like to say that JJ probably alsoadmires Viktor, and has clearly stated that he wants to compete against him andbeat him. When he interacts with Viktor he is Awkward with a capital A. Theparallels go on.

Anyway, this analysis goes straight intothe next section, so onward!

3.     JJ is a misunderstood butgood guy, though he’s not that nice

JJ is not the nicest guy. He calls Yuri feminineand acts like this is meant to be funny, which is honestly the closest to intolerancewe get in this show. He busts into conversations and focuses a lot of attentiononto himself. But you know what? Overall, JJ is a good guy who is nice to hisfans, loving to his girlfriend and parents, and is hardworking.

He annoys the other skaters, but hegenuinely wants to be part of their ‘crowd’—something they deny him. Here heis, about to be rejected by the coolest of the cool, Otabek. Look at how EAGERhe is:

I,at the very least, was startled when he arrived during the restaurant scene,directed the conversation to himself and drove the other skaters away, and hislast words were “I was just joking!!” JJ is AWARE, guys. So when JJ bragsabout himself and says he’ll defeat others he’s… joking?? He’s… trying to laughwith other people, talk about the competition?

Most of the characters, and a lot ofpeople, think JJ is obnoxious and self-centered. JJ is not. JJ is Awkward. Halfof his interactions are please talk to me, please hang out with me, we’recompetitors! Viktor calls him unapproachable, and I think this is mostlybecause JJ’s attempts to interact with the other skaters gets misunderstood ashim being annoying and bragging. In actuality, JJ is just not all that great attalking to other people. We can blame him for this… or, we can understand that,like Yuuri, JJ can be socially awkward and make mistakes. He looks atsituations, like Yuuri trying to get into the zone, and fails to read themproperly and insert himself appropriately into them.

We don’t blame Yuuri for failing tointeract perfectly with people—we just encourage him to get better, and lookforward to his growth. I think we should treat JJ the same way, and hope hegets some humility, social skills, and a less annoying coping mechanism fordealing with pressure.

As a final note… I’m just going to say thatthe parallels between Yuuri and JJ are in no way an accident. Good rivalcharacters tend to be good foils, I think. Honestly, having JJ also be engagedand claiming he’ll get married after the GPF– and the resulting pressure hefaces– is a great example of how the narrative compares JJ to Yuuri, and ups therival tension.

Whew. So that’s what I think of JJ. Again, it’sprobably TMI. I don’t write JJ into a lot of my fanfic, because as I’ve said, Idon’t particularly love him or anything. But I think he’s misunderstood bycharacters in the show and by consumers of the show. Frankly, he’s human and agood rival for Yuuri—I love how Kubo made him sympathetic and real. So that’show I would write him, if I ever did.

#yuri on ice #meta #jj leroy #here have an opinion piece #character analysis

[sjweminem]

@god whyd u make me sensitive and paranoid 24/7

[viralhottopics]

Geena Davis: Thelma & Louise changed everything for me

It was the moment she realised how few inspiring women there are on screen. Now the actor is on a mission to fix that

Somewhere in a parallel universe, Geena Davis is having the time of her life. Yes! Enjoying this new era in American history! As one of the few women to have played a US president on screen, in her parallel universe Davis is having a lovely conversation with me about how fabulous it feels to see a woman finally make it to the White House.

This isnt the first time the actor has found her presidential fantasies preferable to reality. Eleven years ago, she was President Mackenzie Allen on the TV show Commander In Chief. It had been the number one new show, and it was going to run for eight years. I was going to do two terms, Davis grins ruefully. She won a Golden Globe for the role. Then internal studio politics intervened and the show was cancelled after a single season. For a long time after, I felt like, in an alternate universe, I was still on that show. In my mind, she says, laughing, I wanted to set up the Oval Office in my garage and pretend I was still the president.

Davis hoots at her own absurdity, but for the record she did receive a fairly presidential greeting on arrival at the restaurant where we meet. The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills hotel is a fantastically kitsch extravaganza of salmon-pink table linen and bad taste, but a Hollywood institution nonetheless. While I waited, the lunch tables filled with industry types, and my requests for a quieter corner were defeated by the expert indifference of waiters who understand the rules of Hollywood hierarchy better than I do. But the instant Davis arrived, the matre d descended into an obsequious froth Miss Davis! Welcome back! and whisked us off to a coveted booth.

So good to see you again! he purrs, before blanching in horror. Davis has a white napkin on her lap, but her trousers are black. Quelle horreur! The offending item is whipped away and replaced with a black one, while Davis tries not to giggle.

With Susan Sarandon in 1991s Thelma & Louise. Photograph: Allstar

Davis has no publicist in tow, and nothing about her outfit would suggest celebrity: she is wearing a loose white T-shirt and the sort of plain and comfortable black jacket and trousers one might put on for Sunday lunch in a nice pub. Were she not so tall (6ft), I might easily have missed her when she arrived, full of apologies for being all of 10 minutes late. I take the matre ds instantaneous excitement to mean she must be a regular, but as soon as hes gone, she whispers, No! I cant even remember the last time I was here. Its this very weird phenomenon. If I go to hotels, they always say, Welcome back, even when Ive never been there before. That must be rather disorienting. Yes, weird! She nods cheerfully. You have all these people saying nice things to you, and it can really be like, Wow, Im very fortunate, arent I? Im very, very grateful for it, you know?

When lunch arrives, she gets the giggles again: her salad is a strangely regimented platter that looks like someones idea of gastro-sophistication circa 1974. Its so kitschy! I was going to show your tape recorder my salad, but that wont work, will it? When her phone rings, the mother of three murmurs the universal prayer of working parents everywhere: Please dont be the nanny, please dont be the nanny, please dont be the nanny. It feels like lunching with a gloriously irreverent and relaxed old friend.

Davis has been a Hollywood star for 35 years, but at 61 her status now is a curious hybrid of insider and outsider, a bit like cinemas Ofsted inspector. When starting out, shed have been astonished to know shed devote the later years of her career to exposing her industrys flaws. Back then, she admits, she couldnt see anything to worry about.

With William Hurt in 1988s The Accidental Tourist, for which Davis won an Oscar. Photograph: Ronald Grant

When I was first starting out was also when I first started really paying attention to the Oscars and stuff like that. And I remember thinking, wow, everything is great for women in Hollywood, because Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Jessica Lange, Sally Field: theyre all doing incredible work. Every year, fantastic movies were coming out: The French Lieutenants Woman, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sophies Choice. I think I did hear that, for women, when you get older it can be a problem, but these actors were already in their 30s, which seemed ancient to me then. So I thought, whats the problem? I started getting really cool parts left and right and centre, and I was like, well, even if it turns out theres a problem, its not going to impact on me.

After making her debut in 1982s classic comedy Tootsie, Davis averaged a movie a year, and could easily have made more had she not been fussy. She did sci-fi horror in The Fly, comic fantasy in Beetlejuice and literary drama in The Accidental Tourist, for which she won a best supporting actress Oscar. She played a baseball star in the sports comedy A League Of Their Own, a bank robber in the crime drama Quick Change and, most memorably, a housewife turned outlaw in the feminist road trip Thelma & Louise. Then she turned 40 and in the entire decade that followed, we saw her face only in Stuart Little.

By the time she turned 50, she was fed up. The neglect of women in film and TV was definitely happening she knew that but to prove it the Mensa member realised she would have to measure it: Because people just make assumptions, dont they? Even when the reality might be completely different. I remember talking to a woman editor of a magazine about all this a while ago, and she said, Oh no, no, no, thats just not a problem any more. I told her it still was. She said, and Davis begins to laugh again, But it cant be. Look at Meryl Streep, she works all the time! I was like, Er, Meryls schedule is the exception.

So, 10 years ago, the actor founded the Geena Davis Institute On Gender In Media. I am completely obsessed with numbers and data. I have become a scientist in later life. The institute conducts exhaustive research to establish the facts of gender representation in family entertainment, and they are grimly arresting.

Male characters outnumber female in family films by a ratio of three to one, a figure that has remained startlingly consistent since 1946. From 2007 to 2014, women made up less than a third of speaking or named characters in the 100 top-grossing films distributed in the US, of which less than 7% were directed by women. Of the female characters that did make it on to screen, fewer than one in five were aged 40-64. Last autumn, the institute partnered with Google to launch the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (the GD-IQ), a software program that measures the amount of screen and speaking time given to male and female characters. The results were even more confronting: in the top 200 grossing films of 2014 and 2015, males, Davis discovered, enjoyed literally twice the screen time of females, and spoke twice as often.

Its easy to see why this would matter to Davis, or any other female actor, but why should the rest of us care? This gender bias is so ingrained in us, and stuffed into our DNA from when were little, from our first exposure to popular culture. If kids movies and TV shows have profoundly fewer female characters than male characters, and theres nobody saying, By the way, honey, this isnt real. Thats not how the real world is. From 2006 to 2009, not one female character was depicted in a G-rated family film working in the field of medical science, as a business leader, in law or in politics. Our motto is: if they can see it, they can be it. Completely unconsciously, boys and girls are getting the message that girls are less important and less valuable to our society, because theyre not there. And if they are there, theyre not talking.

Playing the first female president in the TV series Commander In Chief. Photograph: ABC

Another way of looking at it, I suggest, would be that what we see on screen is, in fact, uncannily accurate. In a typical crowd scene, female extras account for just 17% of the faces we see a figure close to this crops up across all sorts of sectors in real life in America. Fortune 500 boards are around 20% female, as is Congress. Fewer then 20% of US legal partners, the military and cardiac surgeons are female.

Yes, Davis agrees, but I think the impact of media images is so profound that we actually could make life imitate art. You know, you see a dog or something and you say, Oh, hes cute? The default is always male, and its because weve had such a male-centred culture. And its because its what we see and hear from the very beginning.

I remember I was once with my boys [she has 12-year-old twins, and a 14-year-old daughter] in a park and they saw a squirrel. I consciously decided to say, Look, shes so cute and they both turned to me with surprised expressions and said, How do you know its a girl? I was like, wow, Ive already failed. They were four years old.

Davis takes all the data to Hollywoods decision-makers and creators: heads of studios, production companies, guilds. Does she come in for a bit of oh-no-here-comes-the-feminist eye-rolling? Oh no. No! If I was going in just saying, Youre making fewer movies starring a female character than male characters, theyd say, Yes, we know that. Were fully aware of that. We hope we can do better. We wish we could do better. And they would probably turn to this myth in Hollywood that women will watch men, but men dont want to watch women, so were forced to make all the stories about men.

Instead, Davis shows them the GD-IQs findings on profitability. Films featuring female leads make on average 15% more than those with male leads, while films featuring male and female co-leads earn almost 24% more than those with either a solo male or female lead. Their jaws are on the ground. She grins. Everywhere we go, its the exact same reaction. They are floored.

***

Had anyone told Davis in her youth that she would one day be an activist and advocate, she would have been equally floored. She grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, a bookish child and church organist, and was constantly shy. Just totally shy, especially about men. I had one date in high school, that was it, and he didnt ask me out again, she laughs, because I was taller than everybody. I was very gangly and awkward, and I wore weird clothes that I made. I think my fondest wish as a kid was to take up less space.

My fondest wish as a kid was to take up less space. Photograph: Amanda Friedman for the Guardian

Most peoples childhood self-image can seem surprising by the time theyre in their 60s, but in Daviss case the discrepancy feels comical. She is 6ft and appropriately proportioned, so occupies as much space as you would expect someone with the dimensions of an imposing man to fill. Her voice is gutsy, soaring from throaty depths to gales of laughter, and her beauty is unlike anything Ive observed in an actor. Beautiful women who have lived their life in the public gaze tend to convey an awareness of others admiration that can sometimes seem self-conscious, and sometimes almost pointedly detached. Davis, on the other hand, reminds me more of my cat, a ludicrously gorgeous creature who seems to take as much pleasure from its beauty as any admirer ever could. If I picture Davis looking at herself in the mirror, she isnt frowning anxiously but smiling back at her famous dimples.

And yet she goes on, I think I really wanted to take up less space. It seemed like every time I was exuberant or free, I would get pointed at. Things that really stand out from my childhood were incidents where people told me to tone it down. Like my beloved aunt Gloria, who was a role model and just everything to me, and who adored me, and would say things like, Youre really going to have to learn to laugh more quietly, because boys arent going to like a loud lady.

She knew from the age of three that she wanted to act, and studied drama at Boston University. But the most important thing was that people like me and think Im no trouble. It was as if I lived in some bubble of extreme femininity where you must never say your feelings. I had people who wouldnt date me because I couldnt even decide what restaurant I wanted to go to, literally. I never said my opinion about anything. I was afraid to.

Everything changed in 1990 when she made Thelma & Louise. Davis played Thelma, an unhappy wife who takes off with her friend Louise, played by Susan Sarandon, for a two-day road trip in an old Thunderbird convertible. When a man they meet in a bar tries to rape Thelma, Louise shoots him dead. Convinced the police will never believe their account of events, because Thelma had been drinking and seen dancing with the man before he attacked her, the pair take off. Liberated from the constraints of social convention and the law, they embark on a raucously anarchic adventure from which they will never return.

With then husband Jeff Goldblum in 1989. Photograph: Getty

Davis had her agent call Ridley Scott, the films director, every single week for a year in a concerted campaign to land the part. So it was really, really a passion project for me. And I was aware of womens position in Hollywood by then. But then, when the movie came out and I saw the reaction women had, it was night and day: completely different from anything that had ever happened before, you know? Women wanted to really talk about how it impacted on them. Theyd tell me, This is what I thought, this is who I saw it with, this is how many times Ive seen it, this is how it really changed my marriage. Sometimes Id even hear, My friend and I took a road trip and acted out your trip. Her eyes widen as she laughs. Im like, I hope the good parts? But that really struck me, and it made me realise how few opportunities there are to feel inspired by the female characters we watch. That changed everything for me.

Working with Sarandon changed everything, too. Every day on set, I was just learning how to be more myself, you know? Just because she was such a role model to me. Davis would arrive each morning with her notes tentatively framed in the apologetic, would-you-mind-awfully register of regulation feminine decorum. Sarandon would bustle in, open her mouth and speak her mind. Davis still beams at the memory, and credits it with revolutionising the way she operated.

Her institute is now in its 10th year, but has yet to generate any measurable change in onscreen representation. I feel very confident thats going to happen in the next five to 10 years, though. I know it will. Theres one childrens network that tells us, every time someone pitches a new idea, someone asks, What would Geena say? She roars with laughter. Which is exactly what I want! The parallel between her work and recent increasingly successful campaigns for greater ethnic onscreen diversity in Hollywood speak for themselves, she says. Its exactly the same problem, with exactly the same solution. When a sector of society is left out of the popular culture, its cultural annihilation.

Davis does still act; in recent years, she starred in the TV shows Greys Anatomy and The Exorcist, and appears in the forthcoming sci-fi thriller Marjorie Prime. Shes also in Dont Talk To Irene, an indie film about an overweight cheerleader, which premiered recently in Canada. But its very clear that acting is no longer her driving ambition. She gets much more excited talking about the film festival she co-founded in 2015, the only one in the world to offer its winners the prize of guaranteed distribution, both theatrical and through DVD. The Bentonville festival explicitly exists to champion and promote female and other minority film-makers, and last year became the eighth biggest film festival in the world; this year, it will open in early May in Arkansas and more than 100,000 people are expected to attend.

With husband, Reza Jarrahy, in 2013. Photograph: Getty

The most conventionally starlet thing about Davis these days is probably her marital history: she is now on her fourth marriage. The first, in 1982, lasted less than a year; her second, to the actor and her sometime co-star Jeff Goldblum in 1987, lasted only slightly longer, and was over by 1990. In 1993, she wed the director Renny Harlin, but divorced again in 1998. She has been married to her fourth husband, Reza Jarrahy, the father of her three children, and an Iranian-American plastic surgeon, for 16 years now. Giving birth for the first time at 46, followed by twins at 48, is not an entirely advisable maternal strategy, she laughs. I dont know how I assumed I could wait that long, and I wouldnt recommend it. Id always known I wanted to have kids, but somehow, before then, there wasnt any time I was planning it.

When we part, she gives me a great bear hug and her phone number, and it strikes me that she must be one of the happiest movie stars I can remember meeting. The parallel universe she inhabits appears to have much to recommend it. I had assumed she would put Hillary Clintons defeat down to her motto If she can see it, she can be it so ask if she thinks America would have voted a different way last September had the notion of a woman in charge of the country looked more familiar.

You know, she surprises me, I dont know. I like to just think that she won the popular vote by an enormous amount. She was not this horrifically flawed candidate everyone wants to paint. I mean, OK, she didnt win the electoral college vote. But, in another way, she did win. In Daviss parallel universe, the popular vote determined who would move into the White House, and all is well with the world.

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