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certainglitterhologram · 4 years ago

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Lysander Scamander and Lily Potter II

I have a feeling that growing up, Lily and Lysander were best friends. Lorcan was super, super, SUPER close friends with Lily, and obviously Lysander, since they are twins, (trust me on this,), but Lily and Lysander just shared a bond the tiniest bit stronger.

Lily being an adventure seeking, adrenaline junky, while was Lysander, also adventure loving, but with limits. He knew his boundries and where to draw the line, but struggled to show that line to Lily, who would just jumped into every tree, every river, wanting to ride the hippogriff that she found in the woods behind the Scamander’s house.

Lysander putting his head into his hands each time, saying “Lily. It’s dangerous. It could bite you, you could fall off, it could have rabies, fleas or something even worse. “

Lily rolling her eyes and attempting to do it anyway, running up to the hippogriff and almost getting trampled to death. Like Scorpius’ dad, but actually life threatening.

After getting her out of there, Lysander smirked at her and said, “Don’t really wanna say I told you so, but....... *Pause* Oh who am I kidding, of course I do. Never tell me I’m wrong Lily, and expect to succeed in whatever dumb thing you’re doing. Lily just scoffing and said “I’m Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley’s daughter. The only reason I almost got trampled was obviously because the hippogriff sensed you behind that tree.”

Lysander, used to these egotistical comments, says “Oh yes, how could I be so stupid. It’s not like I’m the great-grandson of Newt Scamander, or anything. And the situation we are talking about involves a damn hippogriff. “

On the Hogwarts Express, Lily, Hugo, Lysander and Lorcan in the same compartment and a tall, lanky dark haired boy comes in. He introduced himself as Matthew Corner, and Lysander, being the best with people, gets up and politely introduces himself, and introduced the others.

Matt is immediately liked by everyone in the compartment, and they form their own little quintet, bonding over candy and pranks in the compartment.

When Albus and James come in to check on Lily, she just giggles and waves, before redirecting her attention to Lorcan, who had eaten one of those cool sweets that make you grow features of an animal, that Hugo had brought on the train.

The Sorting Ceremony went as expected, really.

Matthew, was one of the first, and had barely sat on the stool, before the hat shouted “RAVENCLAW”

Hugo went next. He was on the stool for a long time with that hat on his head. Not enough to be a hat stall, but just enough to be notably long, before the hat yelled “HU-GRYFFINDOR!”

When Lily was called, she sashayed up to the stool, with an overwhelming amount of confidence, and James yelled “YES, LILS! WHOO!”. The hat suprisingly sat there for a while, debating between Slytherin and Gryffindor, before ultimately deciding on Gryffindor.

Lysander had a feeling of dread at that moment. He did have seperation anxiety from Lorcan, just a mild case, but enough to make him dread the thought of them being in different houses. He hadn’t thought of it until that moment, becuase Lorcan and him were so alike. He ruled out that thought, and focused on relaxing himself

Lorcan jumped on the stool and only had a couple seconds of deliberation, before “HUFFLEPUFF!”

Lysander knew even before going up there, that there was no way he would be in Hufflepuff. He wasn’t exactly the definition of hardworking. Not that he wasn’t, no, he just had a tendency to quit things that no longer interested him, rather than working throught it.

When his name was called, he was immediately sorted into Ravenclaw. He knew he should feel proud, as he was taking after his mother, and had one of his closest friends with him, Matthew, but being away from his twin, best friend and other close friend, was paining him. But Lysander was known to almost always be happy, so shut these feelings down, sucked it up and got used to it. Eventually, he found that it wasn’t that bad, and that Lily and him were still best friends, and Lorcan was still his right hand man. And vice versa.

In their second year, Lily tried out for the Gryffindor quidditch team, and made it, as their Seeker. A few weeks into the season, it was Lily’s third match, Gryffindor vs Hufflepuff and literal miliseconds after Lily caught the snitch and secured the win for Gryffindor, in a rage, one of the Hufflepuff beaters bat a bludger straight at the back of her head, knocking her out.

Lysander, Lorcan, Hugo and Matt sprinted down the stands, running over towards her. She was crumpled on the grass and being levitated onto a stretcher by Headmistress McGonagall.

The culprit of the injury had jumped on his broom and flew towards the castle, and Lysander was trembling with rage. He snapped at the other boys (Hugo, Matt and Lorcan,) to follow him to see if they could find the boy. They found him trying to run into the castle without being seen, but Lysander jumped on him, and pinned him down, so he couldn’t get away, while Lorcan and Hugo sent red sparks to the teachers, letting them know the found him.

Then, of course, Lysander did the unexpected. Just when the teacher and the student were coming into view, he let go of the boy and punch him straight in the nose, breaking it, as soon as the first met the boy’s face. A single punch before Lysander pulled him close and whispered in a deadly calm tone

“Never. NEVER touch my Lily, EVER again.” Dropping the boy on the ground, before walking over to a shocked twin and Matthew. Leaning against the wall behind them and wiping the blood from the boy’s broken nose in the white-blond hair, not even caring at the streak of red in his hair.

Consequently, he recived three weeks of detention. Could have been worse, I suppose, was his attitude. For the next month, he recived fist bumps from James in the hallways and tiny smirks from Albus, telling him, they were proud.

Three years later, in fifth year, Lysander was noticing that he was catching feelings for Lily, but then, Matt had shyly asked her out, and she replied with “Why not?”.

Everytime they held hands, hugged, kissed or did anything of the sort, Lysander felt a rage build up inside of him. But for Lily’s sake, he tried to be happy. For Lily.

Lorcan noticed immediately, and after teasing that Albus owed him 12 Galleons, comforted him and said that he was sure that Lily felt the same way, but just hadn’t noticed it yet, and told Ly to just play along and calm down.

Hugo noticed it in History of Magic, his first class after breakfast, where after seeing Lily and Matthew snog right in front of him, Lysander had crushed a goblet with his hands. After giving him some kind of twin telepathic look that Hugo couldn’t interpret, Lorcan sighed and muttered “Reparo”.

Hugo thought it was weird, but thought not much of it until he realized in the middle of HOM. (He is Ron Weasley’s kid. Ofc he wouldn’t fucking notice.)

Hugo sent a note to the table where Ly and Matt were sitting, across the room, in a oragami swan (^-^) that read on the outside

Matt, if you’re reading this, just give it straight to Ly. Nothing really that interesting here,

In it, read

Lysander, mate...I realized you like Lily. Or Matt. I’m not sure, mate, i’m not going to make any assumptions. If it is Matt though, good for you. If it’s Lily, It was kinda obvious, so maybe, don’t crush a goblet next time they snog... just trying to help, but just know, that if Lily doesn’t choose you or doesn’t feel the same way, (Which she does.) the whole Potter-Weasley-Granger-Johnson-Delacour clan is on your side.

If you need anyone to talk to, I’m always here, mate. Just say the word.

-Hugo

and Hugo got a paper dragon back, saying

Well, I shouldn’t really suprised, but it’s Lily. I’m not fucking gay. But thanks for being supportive. Love you, bro.

~Ly

Lysander walked out of that class feeling a lot better, while Hugo felt smug. Hugo ran up to Fred II saying how he was about to have won his little bet with Rose. But they walked into the middle of the hallway to see Lily and Matthew, both looking solemn, (which was a first for Lily, who was almost always happy.)

They were speaking in hushed tones, Matt nodded and hugged Lily in an almost friendly manner, before walking away, with a smile on his face.

“What happened?” Lysander asked Lily, plainly curious.

“Oh, Matt and I both agreed that this relationship wasn’t working. We did like eachother.. but we agreed that being friends was more benefical for both of us.

Lysander tried very hard not to break out into a grin, while saying “Aw.. You two were cute together. “

Lily snorted and just walked into the Transfiguration classroom and plopped down in her chair.

During the passing period after the next class, Lysander quickly told Lorcan the news, who encouraged him to ask her out at dinner. And Lysander agreed

Lysander worked up his courage to ask her out and was about to walk over to the Gryffindor table, went she walked into the Great Hall, smirking.

“YOU!” she yelled, pointing at Lysander. The hall went silent.

“ME!” Lysander yelled back, sticking his toungue out at her.

“GO ON A DATE WITH ME ON THE NEXT HOGSMEADE TRIP?” Lily shouted, across the hall and out of nowhere.

“ANYTHING FOR YOU LILS!” The sentence slipped out of Lysander’s mouth before he could stop it, but he was glad he did.

Lily ran over to them, while Lorcan and Matt nudged Lysander, but Lily ignored them, pulling Lysander into a kiss that lasted a good forty five seconds.

The Great Hall cheered, and Lily whispered “I saw you crush that goblet at breakfast today, Ly. I didn’t even remember it until an hour ago. I knew you felt the same as me, so I did something so you wouldn’t have to ask me out. Carriages to Hogsmeade at 10 sound good?”

Lysander couldn’t say anything, so he nodded.

“Perfect! “ And Lysander watched Lily walk to her awed girl friends and a particularly smug Hugo.

Let’s just say a lot of money was exchanged that day.

#Hp #harry potter #harry potter next generation #hp next gen #hp next gen headcanon #Love #first kiss #harry potter oc #Lily Luna Potter #Lysander scamander

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z3r0-f4ilur3 · 4 years ago

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The Record Begins With a Song Of Rebellion

First Draft Of the Capitalist Surrealist Writing Project. Steal and appropriate, critique and interrogate, with the author's full endorsement and permission. Looking (back)(for)wyrds After the Bush interregneum and the long, terrible, progress destroying Reagan years, the American empire had something like a moment of hope. Riding high on the peace dividend and a delusion of idealism among the donating classes, the economic aristocracy which in effect was the senior partner in “American Democracy” (and so duly represented in both parties) and the voter was a paternalized junior to be both petted and protected had selected the Clinton dynasty. The grand bargain between labour and capital against the state resulted in the bitter fruit of the Bush years, as Conservatives paternalists rightly mocked the Clintonian urge to middling action on domestic issues while gladly partnering with him to rob labour at large. While a wealth transfer had already been going on as part of a trend for the better part of a century, this phase in which a semi-coherent ruling class dynamic of the donating classes and the government service classes became visible. It is beyond satire now, but this was not always so visible, as racism, white supremacy, American exceptionalism, various fundementalist and conservative (as well as equally harmful, supposedly liberal versions of the same) religious beliefs; Turtle Island was rife with reasons for temporary cross class solidarity in order to oppose an other or to advance an idealistic goal.

And yet moments of class consciousness and solidarity have perenially emerged, from the “grassroots” as the insiders like to say. They frame the people as “the base” or “the grassroots” and narrowly target their interests to make people find conflict with each other. It is irrelevent (for this missive) whether this is a conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious process; it is enough to notice it happening. Despite this, moments in the pre new-modern (to be defined later, promise~) politics that predate terms like Black Lives Matter or Trans Rights are Human Rights show that these movements represent an unbroken chain of revolutionary attempts at self-consciousness and conscience transformation that coincide and are just as important as any history of violence. The Ides of March, and the campaign of anonymous internet citizens against Scientology, represents such a moment. Occupy Wall Street was such a movement. “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It!” was such a phrase. The many quotes attributed to names like Mandela and James Baldwin; the Black Panthers, the revolutionary feminists, the Hippie movement, down back to the (In the American mind) hoary days of yore when the Wide Awakes would march a brass band around the houses of pro slave Senators.

It is a poor yet accurate summation to say that the ‘present’ (a dubious notion) political reality is the sum of all of these and more; a reader can orient themselves to the history of late stage capitalism by the growth of the donating classes influence and the acceleration of their detachment from society at large. Moments which also impact this reality are the donating classes sense of pessimism about the future; the devaluing of nearly all forms of labour, the increasing visibility of law enforcement brutality; the list can be referenced in the moment to moment, wide eyed and angry reporting of self-matyring, news-junkie amateur journalists found anywhere online, the shocked and angry expressions of young activists at protests and the weary, numbed faces of the old. Up and down the class system, there has been a wide spread death of hope.

Enter the climate crisis.

Before climate consciousness achieved real steam, our escatological fears were (mostly) confined to the realm of human action or cosmic events unimaginable (and unrelatable) to the modern person’s experience of life. For decades, the effects of climate change were reported to a world told not to care. As Terrance Mkenna said, ““The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”

The impact of this can and will be expanded upon, but it is safe to say that the bubble has been popped. Whatever finds popular currency within the dialogue around it, that the climate is changing rapidly in ways inemical to human society at large/at present is true by material impact; people everywhere have experienced some negative result of the changing conditions, and there is a rising anxiety in the classes who cannot afford an escape pod or fortress bunker that the people they’ve entrusted themselves to intend to withdraw to safety and abandon them, or even expose them to more harm in order to “make more of the earth’s carrying weight available in the reclamation” (this kind of talk is not alien to them, though this specific quotation is my own invention.

It is important to acknowledge that the bubble has popped. It is the exclamation on Capitalist Realism; it is the moment of awareness, that encounter with a death of hope, in which Capitalist Surrealism, our phenomenological experience of the Capitalist Real, is born. While this Surrealist stage is both uncomfortable and has deleterious effects on the human condition, it represents the chink in the armour of banality and inertia, and the diminishing politics of the powerful. The sense that anything, absolutely *anything,* can happen to you, is both incredibly terrifying, and when looked at squarely, an opportunity for radical freedom.

It is this radical freedom that we see ourselves invited to in the many facets of human expression and convention which have experienced an awakening of new consciousness (or the restoration of old ones. Beliefs, ways of interacting with the world, and surviving are no longer benefited by or even neutrally treated by their operating environment anymore; if the complete weight of propaganda in circulation at the moment could be translated into sound, it would present an impenetrable and unlistenable wall.

It is that environment that individual ideologies not sanctioned by the operating environment have struggled against; all of them now have new life and vigor because despite that wall, and the spectacle societies which generate them, the literal truth of material impacts trump all prior arguments. With awareness of most likely outcomes of the climate crisis on a sliding scale, we see radicalization and existential depression of all varieties spike; the answers they attempt to generate to these apparent conditions lack hope in broad but uneven spikes along that scale of awareness, with the suicidally depressed expert climatologist and the radical anarcho-primitivist sharing the same ontological space in orientation to that crisis.

This project, among other things, is an attempt to generate an alternative answer (what that project consists of is entirely based in literature and mutual aid, the oldest Christian platforms for emancipatory action.) Terms like Solarpunk and Cloud City Futures approach but fail to capture the spirit of an alternative answer, mostly with an appeal to the world of aesthetics, a dubious method for summoning change at best. Terminology alone, or even in tandem with education, is also not sufficient; the noise environment they enter into immediately drowns out the creators meaning, especially if these terms are successful and gain currency with the wealthy.

Rather, we must articulate the positive from all our apparent negatives: The apocalyptic futures we anticipate cannot begin actually describe the terrain of the future, and the apparancy of our material conditions impact on our lives is now drowning out the sound of the standing ideologies. This is a brave time, where people blaze trails for others to follow out of the collapsing structures of the past and into the dwelling places of the new future. Our experience of reality, though surreal, has now unlocked an awareness of an apparent power: making meaning.

It is with the tools of meaning-making that these, who are the heirs of their elders, queer and colour revolutionary and indigenous land defender and abolitionist, pioneer the hopeful vistas of the future. It is necessary that they *be* hopeful; it was the Buddha who taught that people deceived by Samsara may be “deceived” by the apparent gifts of pursuing enlightenment, the majority of which are ancillary incidentals not to be meditated on. The king calls his indolent heirs out of the burning palace with a promise of gifts; when they arrive, they protest the lack of gifts, but it is in his embrace of them we realize they are the gift, and their survival was worth the promise of chariots and ponies.

But there must also be chariots, and ponies; luxuries, and finery; the grim tools of “defense” and all the things the human animal finds comforting in their resting environment to assure them of its stability. In the Dao De Jing, (Though Mueller butchers the poetry,) the Sage articulates this and describes how to create it: “Let there be a small country with few people,

Who, even having much machinery, don't use it.

Who take death seriously and don't wander far away.

Even though they have boats and carriages, they never ride in them.

Having armor and weapons, they never go to war.

Let them return to measurement by tying knots in rope.

Sweeten their food, give them nice clothes, a peaceful abode and a relaxed life.

Even though the next country can be seen and its doges and chickens can be heard,

The people will grow old and die without visiting each other's land.” A.C. Mueller Translation, The Dao De Jing, Attributed to Lao Tzu

It is as naked an appeal to a return to the life of the community and the village as can be found. A return to idigenous ways of being, which speaks to the preservation of folk ways, while the reality that the sage is administering them (even if only by moral teaching) shows a potential for new ideas to be instanced; innovation is not a property innate to the colonizing and walled world, and memetic culture and the society of truth-telling through representation around it reflect callbacks to this desire. The political movement around Land Back, while perennial to the causes of indigenous people, crystalizes an actionable answer for individuals and collectives to support. Its cousins in other colour movements, many of them representing indigenous people displaced by imperialism in the first place, are also generative of positive futures; it is a fact of history that as the rights of people classified as “minorities” are raised, the general quality of life for all in society rises, with the exception of those who could never be touched but by the highest tides.

These movements and moments of consciousness are their own inestimable goods, not mere ends for the would be conscious person to hijack for their goals. This is in fact a position inimical to the success of any of these movements; grifting starts at home, and it is the white leftist who is more easily conquered by the white liberal, since neither of them have conquered their own whiteness in the first place. But that supporting them generates positive benefits for all can only be argued against if you value the lives and comforts of some over others; those who value the general benefit first can see a clear path.

It is that clarity that gives meaning makers license to create the vistas of the future. It is the “Mandate of Heaven” that endorses the artists, a general operating license to create. Because the material impact of the present is louder than the noise of Capital, there an outburst of fertility and growth, the very seeds of hope, breaking out in the midst of this Surrealism. It is with the tools of meaning making, and the canvas of the crisis, that people escape the real.

#capitalist hell #Capitalist Surrealism #newfuture #say anything

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smpetechnoblade · 5 years ago

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Conquering the World: Day 1 - SMP Earth

Duration: An absolutely ungodly 7:40:04 what is this man doing

TDLR at the end, if you really have no time to read sorry

Our story begins in Africa; and with Technoblade immediately proclaiming his master plan world domination.

After gathering resources (diamonds, emeralds, iron, etc.), he exits pursued by Jamakattack.

He sets his course for Antarctica. As he begins his journey, he enacts his first foolproof plan to gain world dominance -- placing dibs sign on each continent he visits.

Techno then gets into VC with TommyInnit, who’s opener is literally “I've made a lot of enemies in a short period of time”. While trying to butter Techno up, he is interrupted by Junky Janker telling him to stop making enemies. Tommy says that Techno and him aren’t enemies, but Techno says that Tommy is in the middle of geopolitical conflict that Techno doesn’t want to get into by association with Tommy.

Tommy tries to explain why he has so many new enemies made within the hour, but it just makes Techno more concerned.

He finally arrives in Antarctica, makes his faction -- the great “AntarcticEmpire” -- and P1lza offers to join.

Ph1lza teleports to the newly set faction home, and the two immediately murder the incoming Jamakattack.

After death, Jam is quick to claim he simply wanted to deliver Techno some much needed steak to sustain the pig in the harsh Arctic climate -- but Techno believes Jam was far too dedicated and far too heavily armored for it to be a mere Death Stranding escapade that spanned multiple continents.

VoiceOverPete joins the VC.

The two teammates start exploring the South Pole. Underneath the mountain, they find a "stronghold". Air quotes are used here because it’s not naturally generated — it’s the ruins of an ancient civilization and is littered with paintings containing memes and strange symbols. They notice that the stronghold seems to hang above an absolutely massive cavern, and because of shaders and distance, they can’t even see the floor.

Due to popular demand, Pete gets added to the faction with one requirement: Bring one singular leather piece. This marks the start of the complete AntarcticEmpire.

Phil and Techno explore as they wait for Pete to complete his task, and they find that the cavern floor is actually layered -- much like an onion or an ogre. Except not like either of those things because it only had two layers.

They find nothing but snow and ice on either layer.

Techno explores some more, and finds the portal room. He claims the area, and finds that there’s an Eye of Ender already in a portal frame and another in a barrel inside the room.

After discussing the recipes needed to get to the End, they realize they can’t actually ruin the moon for everyone immediately :(((

Turns out they have hella faction power, and Technoblade proceeds to claim a massive chunk of Australia

Tommyinnit enters the vc, and offers an allyship again. Techno asks about what kind of alliance it would be. Tommy decides that it would be a defensive agreement, and both Techno and Phil’s chat floods with messages not to ally with Tommy.

Many, many people then join the vc (the vc almost got full and ItsAsaii, Sneegsnag,and Antvenom were all at the base)

Tommy gets roasted. Tommy tries to justify the alliance with a scenario of AntVenom declaring war on AntarcticEmpire, and tries to say how much Techno would regret not teaming with Tommy and his “pvp prowess” when Techno asks about his credentials. Tommy claims that he’d once killed TimeDeo and TapL in duels. Techno doubts the TapL part, and it turns out that Tommy completely lied about that part.

Fit offers himself up as a guinea pig to test out how much power/land you lose when you die, and also bears sugarcane as a gift.

Tommy greets Fit, to which Fit replies “Hello, who are you”. Tommy gives an offer to Fit for an alliance, and Fit gives a hard no. Tommy tries one last time with Techno and Phil, and they also refuse. He then gives a veiled threat of a war and tells them to keep an eye peeled. Techno and Phil brush it off lightly.

Fit finally arrives at the base. He types his last words “I SACRIFICE MYSELF TO THE BLOOD GOD IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE.” Before he gets killed, Techno offers an alliance, to which Fit readily accepts.

They find out that they only lose 100 power.

MichaelMcChill travels to the base, only to die of fall damage from falling off a small ledge on the mountain.

Techno flies over to Australia to unclaim some unnecessary land ,and chat is quick to tell him that Michael has returned and is now in their base.

Michael joins the VC as he flies above their base-- asking for confirmation on the information his chat is telling him about being shot on sight

Neither Techno or Philza have actually made any such claim, the chat is being dramatic

Michael says that he’s simply there for allyship, representing the nation of Northern California

When asked what exactly is in Antarctica, since the only visible resources are the becon marking the South Pole and a single tree, Techno says that they have a “cool stronghold” but denies having an end portal.

This is also where Michael makes the infamous “Technoplane brings the Technopain” meme

Techno then begins engaging in Plane vs Man on a Mountain warfare with Michael

Techno wins, killing Michael

Michael, James (whos not online but joined the call with Michael), Techno, and Phil continue to chat as Techno tries to leave Antarctica

Techno makes it to Greenland (which he insists on calling Iceland) and finally finds an unclaimed volcano

Techno mentions that he’s running on one hour of sleep, as he was trying to slowly rotate his sleep schedule so that he went to bed later and he was going to bed at 9 am when the time that SMPearth would begin was announced. Someone help this tall child dear Lord.

Having been forced to make a small stop in Ireland, he finds some animals. He then puts into motion his master plan — taking a chicken named Alfred from Ireland to Antarctica in a boat.

It takes so fuckin long.

Pete rejoins the VC with Techno and informs him of a tip he’s gotten

In the bottom left of the map, there is a strange symbol that was originally believed to be something akin to the compass found on real maps

However, Pete has found out that it is actually a landmark on the actual server.

Techno and Pete also make note of how similar the symbol is to some of the paintings found in their stronghold base.

While Techno is still oceanbound, he explains to Pete how to buy and fly a plane

He heads over to investigate, finding beacons marking a chest. After Techno deposits Alfred, they both head back and investigate the loot — a single broken, enchanted music disk titled Octangula (worth noting that, according to chat, this is also the name of the symbol in the ice).

They snatch the resources surrounding it (nine diamond blocks, 32 iron blocks, and 5 beacons) and head back to base

Using a jukebox, they discover the disk they collected, named “Octangula”, is a distorted version of the Garfield intro music with morse code

They then move on to looking at leads on the other end of the map

They look at the “Chien” engraved in the ice. It offers nothing, simply being a signature from the creator of the map.

Techno takes a look at the “chip was here” in the ice, and underneath the eye shaped portion of it. He claims the area, and digs in the center of a large ball of dirt, and places some signs so that water will not flow inside it. This later gets him called a bitch by IAmSp00n, who got stuck down there and had to wait for a while for Techno to let him out. He couldn’t get out because the area was claimed.

Pete drowned, while Michael and Kara were nearby. They also end up drowning trying to help get Pete’s items, and Techno finally gets their stuff back. He spends nearly the rest of the stream holding it hostage, until finally agreeing to give it partially back.

The stream ends. TL;DR: Techno makes a guild with Ph1lza and VoiceOverPete, they take over Antarctica and become popular. They find lore to the server.

#smp earth #smpearth #technoblade #smpe recap #god this was long #this man slept for an hour and did an 8 hour stream what #smpe technoblade recap

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khazadspoon · 5 years ago

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Name ten favorite characters from ten different things (books, tv, film, etc.), then tag ten people.

I was tagged by @flintsredhair - thank you~

1. Thomas Hamilton, Black Sails (is anyone surprised). Kind, caring, conscious of societies evils, “the virtue of being the right thing to do”, LOVES JAMES AND LOVES HIS WIFE. He is soft and tall and I love him so much. This guy has principles and he is Right.

2. James McGraw/Captain Flint, Black Sails (again is anyone surprised). Complex, distressing and distressed. Has so many layers Shrek looks like a piece of cardboard. Feels everything intensely, likes Books, can Cook, will burn England down for Thomas and Miranda. Also is small.

3. Roland Deschain, The Dark Tower. Leader of my number 1 found family. He’s charismatic and complex but not homicidal like Flint. Dry wit, deep commitment, loves to teach and guide, will destroy you if you hurt his family. Could fight God and win but probably wouldn’t. Missed his friends a bunch. Loves Pepsi, hates mayonnaise (me too bro).

4. Eddie Dean, The Dark Tower. MY SON MY BOY DESERVES THE WORLD. Junkie turned Gunslinger who loves his 80’s vibes. Sensitive and caring to a Fault. Doesn’t hesitate to call out your bullshit but will 100% back you up when it gets tough. Loves his wife and just needs to be needed. Babey.

5. Ellen Ripley, Alien quadrilogy. I mean what can I say? She’s tough, she’s smart, she knows what she’s doing but she is also caring and gentle when it comes to those she cares about. “I won’t hesitate, bitch” in a nutshell. Looks great in a tank top with a shaved head while saying all these ungrateful men’s asses. Queen.

6. Xie Lian, Heaven Official’s Blessing/tgcf. HIS HIGHNESS THE CROWN PRINCE OF XIANLE. Softest, beautifulest, babeyist boy. Will tell you he can’t die but is dead inside for the longest time. Epitome of the “this is fine” dog. Has fantastic control of what is some terrifying power and anger which he could literally destroy the world with but doesn’t because a grumpy farmer gave him a hat once. Also loves his hubby. Puqi Shrine is my Home now.

7. Lan Zhan/Lan Wangji/Hanguan-Jun, The Untamed/mdzs. This man.... pined for 13 years over a dead guy. Is gay as the day is long but will not say it because Quiet and Repressed. Will fuk u everyday when ur married tho. Honourable, LOYAL TO THE RIGHT THING, loves bunnies, the most powerful and most beautiful and most incredible citizen. BE GAY DO CRIME is his drunk motto. W E I Y I N G.

8. Arthur Morgan, Red Dead Redemption 2. This...... this man broke my heart. High Honour Arthur only. Loves dogs, loves kids, is soft and kind but has a shotgun so stfu. Picks flowers and draws animals on his day’s off. Is prime beef and kills but has a hidden heart of gold and I love him so much I cried for the last few hours of the main storyline. My soul still aches.

9. Inspector Javert, Les Miserables. SOMEONE HUG THIS MAN AND TAKE HIM AWAY FROM BODIES OF WATER. Goodness he is misguided when it comes to the law but he has Deep and Meaningful emotions that have been hidden to keep him safe from the grey nature of the world. A gentleman who is also 70ft tall and could bury me alive and I’d say thank you. Only cop with rights.

10. Mera, DC comics. This is a Queen in both title and demeanour. This is a powerful woman who doesn’t need a king but chose to have one because she loves that himbo. Capable and determined, can kill you by taking the water from your body with a thought, a good ruler and a great fighter but also soft for her loved ones. What a woman, what a queen. Looks great in spandex because comics.

I couldn’t think of 10 different things so I did it wrong oops

Now I tag....... @ruensroad @jamesflintmcgrawhamilton @penflicks @nuizlaziart (I can’t remember your other blog name) and anyone else who fancies a go

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youknowmymethods · 6 years ago

Text

Content Creator Interview #11

Hello folks and happy Friday! We’re back, and this time @likingthistoomuch interviews @ohaine (aka, me) so I’m jumping straight into the interview because it’s awkward af to introduce yourself.

Trigger warnings: here be brief discussions of grief and mourning, and because it’s me, there’s also some bad language. Sorry.

OhAine: She arts, she fics, now you can add witty limericks to her repertoire for she is truly an accomplished young lady; because when the question of how to introduce me for this interview came up likingthistoomuch chose to write a poem.

It goes like this:

She is smart

She has sass

Thinks her writing isn’t good

Someone get her head outta her ass.

Charming. And as that isn’t massively helpful to anyone reading, I’ll flesh it out a bit for you. My name is Áine (yes, my pseud is that imaginative), I’m Irish, married to a tall, curly haired Brit (no, not *that* tall, curly haired Brit). I’m a professional doer of double entry (that means I’m an accountant not a p0rn star, get your dirty minds out of the gutter), an amateur writer who is obsessed with Sherlock and Sherlolly to a point that isn’t dignified. I’m the mod of this interview project, and also of the MaybeItsJustMyType Collection on AO3, a double SAMFA winner (yay me!) and I also won a Community Games gold medal when I was eight ( @hobbitsdoitbetter will know what that is, but she’s literally the only one of you who will) for a picture I drew in crayon of a cat jumping over a skipping rope (although if I’m honest I think everyone who entered the competition got a prize so I really don’t know if I should brag too much about it.) Currently I’m in the market for someone who’ll do a better job of my eulogy than I’ve done with this intro, so maybe it’s best if I stop talking now and we just move along with the questions… Ahem… Gee it’s back to you.

likingthistoomuch: I’m going to start with Kat (aka satin_doll, aka @ashockinglackofsatin) who’s submitted a few reader questions if you’re ready.

OhAine: Sure. Shoot.

satin_doll: The Fate of Glass is one of the most beautiful and touching stories I’ve ever read dealing with grief and the aftermath of the death of a character. It also illustrates perfectly Molly’s relationship with Sherlock from her side. We know you were dealing with your own loss when this was written. How much of your writing springs from your own real life emotional experiences?

OhAine: Well first, thank you dear heart. It’s a tricky question to answer because The Fate of Glass is unique for me. I wrote it and ‘Where the Lost Things Go’ in the same two week period, at a time when I was really struggling to accept what had happened to Kieren. Funnily enough, Gee (likingthistoomuch) and I were talking only a few weeks ago, and I told her this: for the only time I can ever remember doing, I put my words into Sherlock’s mouth. The bit where they’re sitting on the floor, smoking and talking about Mrs H, where Sherlock finally says what’s on his mind – that he’d failed her – was exactly what I felt at that moment about Kiki’s death. I drew on something deeply personal in a way I hadn’t done since ‘Take me and erase me’ and the death of Molly and Sherlock’s son. Initially that story was me working through my feelings and grief, but after the first draft I had to abandon that agenda and remember that this was about Sherlock and Molly now. The real life experience of survivor’s guilt, of losing someone you love was there, but oddly Molly’s rebuttal to Sherlock’s assertions about blame were very much me too, they came from my father’s loss, and that reconciling a terrible end with a life well lived and full of love. Of all my stories, it’s the closest to describing my actual experience in a given context.

I suppose in the first instance, what you write has be honest, authentic. That doesn’t mean that it has to come from your experience directly, but if you have the framework there for something that you want to say, then you use it. There are small bits of me in all of my stories, but I can’t rely on my own emotional experiences too heavily because then I’m limiting the characters. What I’ve found you can do is take the essence of an emotion, distil it down to its component parts and feelings, and then apply them to a different situation. Your job when writing a story is to tell someone else’s story, so you have to be able to extrapolate beyond your own experiences. But if you can ground that in something real, it somehow gives it a ring of truth that wouldn’t otherwise be there.

satin_doll: Amor Vincit Omnia is quite simply devastatingly beautiful, despite the pain that runs through it from beginning to end. You’re so adept at writing Molly’s steadfastness and loyalty despite Sherlock’s rough treatment of her over the years and it seems to be a recurrent theme in your stories. Can you talk a little about where this picture of Molly comes from, how she developed as a character in your head?

OhAine: We get so little of Molly on screen, and in a way that’s a blessing: we have so much room for interpretation, so many directions we can take her in, you know? But something Mofftiss have gone to pains to point out is that not only is Molly loyal to the bone, but that Sherlock trusts her loyalty in a way that he doesn’t trust anyone else’s.

You have to be careful how you allow her to give that loyalty, it can’t be done in a way that demeans her, or would make her bitter. In order for that not to happen you have to imagine why someone would give so much in the face of – what you termed – rough treatment. I’ve come to the conclusion that although she’s sometimes hurt by it, impatient with it, she views his actions not as intentional, but rather as him simply not knowing how to do things any differently. He’s ever so gentle with her in TEH, when no one else is around to see, and that episode informs so much of what I imagine their between-the-scenes life to be like: he shows respect for her, love, affection, he respects her mind, her opinions, he is eternally grateful for all that she has done for him, and grateful that despite everything he’s done she still allows him to call her friend.

Sherlock asks in TRF, ‘If I wasn’t everything you think I am, everything that I think I am, would you still want to help me?’ and Molly doesn’t hesitate, she’s straight in with ‘What do you need?’ She has zero doubts about the man that he is.

Earlier in that episode she says, ‘You’re a bit like my dad,’ going on to tell Sherlock about how her dad behaved when he was dying, and I think that’s a very under rated line. I think it shows that to Molly he’s more than – what other’s call him – the great detective, machine, freak. It shows she sees the man beneath. She sees that he is more than the sum of his parts. She’s telling him that she sees his humanity.

She doesn’t want to change him into someone he’s not. She sees deeper, she sees the bits of him that he guards, the parts of him that are just like you and me. Molly’s not blinded by his brilliance. To her he’s just a man, albeit one who has a very special gift.

Even when she says ‘Why do you always say such horrible things?’ she’s not treating him like a bold puppy and smacking him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper like the others do, she’s attempting to understand him, perhaps even asking him to try to understand himself.

He’s a very vulnerable man, and she treats him with care because of that. His actions weigh on her I think, they have a cost, but it’s one she chooses to accept and she doesn’t punish him for her choice.

It can be argued that Molly is the only one who loves him just for him. Lestrade wants his brain; Mycroft sees him as an asset; John is a junkie, Sherlock his dealer; Mary takes his help; Hudders once took help from him. But amongst those who take, there’s only one person who takes nothing. Molly.

I suppose the other large part of her development in my mind is the ethical code that she’s had instilled into her from an early stage of her education. Medical ethics, and the application of deontological and utilitarian principles in her everyday decision making, must have influenced the person she became by the time we meet her. There are four major principles at play for her: do good, avoid doing harm, be fair, and respect individual autonomy. And I think it’s those principles of fairness and respect that she applies to her relationship with Sherlock. I think she respects his mind, his abilities, even his education (because they have components of their formal education in common), but I think it’s fairness that she applies most liberally: he is unique, different, and he lacks certain skills when it comes to interacting with others, Molly takes his treatment of her in that context.

satin_doll: In Take Me and Erase Me, one of your earliest stories, you mention Lorca (the Spanish poet) and you’ve made numerous references to poetry since you started posting fics. What else besides poetry and fanfic do you read these days? What do you see as the biggest influences on your writing?

OhAine: Biggest influences. Honestly? Stephen (both of the King and Moffat varieties) have said that the best advice they could give aspiring writers was to read as much as you can of the kind of thing you want to write, and I’ve found that to be so true. The Sustain Stories are probably the single biggest influence on my interpretation of Sherlock and Molly. I remember saying it to someone once (I think it was actually you Kat) that I’ve been writing Sustain fanfiction rather than Sherlock fanfiction all these years. It was that big a deal for me.

As for what I’m reading now… I always have a few books on the go, currently open are Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing (Jesus, the raw intensity of his imagery), Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (the absurdity of it appeals to me) and James Joyce’s Dubliners (The Dead is my favourite short story ever, so I finally decided to read the rest of the book).

Thank you Kat for your lovely questions x

likingthistoomuch: Going all the way back to the beginning, what prompted you to start writing fanfic in the first place? Where did that first impulse come from?

OhAine: I’d never heard of fanfic until I became obsessed by Sherlock, but once I found it, it was like falling down a rabbit hole. I read. And I read and I read and I read. When I first found Sherlolly in mid-2014 there were about 3,000 stories in the tag on AO3 and I went about systematically reading them all in descending order from the largest hit. It took me about six months or so to get through them and then I hit a wall, there was nothing left to read. But by then I started seeing Sherlolly everywhere: in every song I heard, every poem I read… and at the time I was living away from home while doing a master’s degree, and I remember so clearly driving back to my little flat outside Galway one night after a late lecture and Lana del Rey’s Young and Beautiful came on the radio, and it was like, BANG!, this fully formed story of an insecure Sherlock hit me. It was so clear, so well defined and complete, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. The end result was Saving for a rainy day, and the other two stories in The Dance series.

Honourable mention too at this point to @sundance201 and her beautiful fic Hello My Old Heart. That story was the beginning of my love affair with music in fanfiction, I started my Sherlolly playlist with the song it references and I don’t know if I would have ever made the connection between music and writing without it. So blame Sundance201 :P

Likingthistoomuch: When you wrote your first fic how did that process go? Did you have someone review the work? Also, when did you share the fact that you had attempted fanfiction with someone around you?

OhAine: As above. No, it was a type and go thing. Literally. I have no idea what madness overtook me to actually post it on the internet where other real live people would see it. It was (still is) full of mistakes, and reads like an outline rather than an actual story, but I knew no better at the time. It was the first piece of fiction I’d ever written, and I had zero expectations that anyone would read it. I bawled like a baby when the first comment came in.

Anyway, it was a Sunday morning, and I was staying at Uni that weekend because I had exams the following week, hubby was coming that day to see me and make sure I hadn’t died under a pile of textbooks and fast-food containers. When he arrived I showed him the post on AO3, and he was so sweet. He still reads all of my fics, gives me feedback and suggestions. He’s even got an AO3 account now so that he can leave kudos. Bless him. He’s still the only one I share with.

Likingthistoomuch: You are amongst the few who seem to write comic themed, angsty, fluff as well as explicit with ease. At least that’s how it comes across. Which genre is the easiest for you and which one would you prefer to write as, say an outlet for real life pressures?

OhAine: I’m shocked that it comes across that way, because writing doesn’t come easily for me at all. I’m not a writer, I’m an auditor who writes when she has time. Every single word is like squeezing that last bit of toothpaste from the tube, and although I’m a very verbal person words are not my strong point. My vocabulary is technical and that’s fine when I’m writing reports and letters for work, but I don’t have an emotional vocabulary so I have to work really hard at finding the words to describe the feelings I want to write. And I’m not a fluffy person so writing anything sweet is like pulling teeth for me. None of it’s easy, but Molly and Sherlock are in my bones now so I keep doing it.

I suppose comedy and angst are slightly less of a struggle. But comedy is a tricky one, because you’re either in the right frame of mind to write it or you’re not. It can’t be forced, you can’t make something funny if it’s not.

I don’t have a favourite genre, and none of them come naturally, but if it’s a question of what’s an outlet, then I’d say all of them serve an equal purpose, although the most satisfying to get right is definitely angst, even if it’s a rare jewel. I think I’ve only ever managed to get it almost right twice, maybe three times: Amor Vincit Omnia, The Fate of Glass and possibly A Sunset Bird in Winter. I kind of hold those three up as times when I was happy with the finished product.

Likingthistoomuch: How do you plan out your work? Do you plan the end, the beginning and what’s in the middle before you start posting?

OhAine: Bold of you to assume I plan!!!!

The beauty of writing (mostly) one-shots is that you’re presenting a finished piece. I’ve written just one multi, Take me and erase me, and that was done completely on the fly. I was so traumatised by the whole thing that I’ve been put off for life.

When it comes to the one-shots, I usually have a pretty good idea what the beginning, middle and end are before I begin – even if the end result turns out to be something else entirely. I do a first draft, then revise, revise, revise until the flow feels good and I think I’m saying what it is I set out to say.

Likingthistoomuch: You work with a beta - do you share the entire plot of your fic and discuss before you start the writing process? How does that work?

OhAine: It works differently with different people. When Kiki and I worked together, every detail was shared and there were masses of emails over and back discussing plot and structure. A three thousand word doc could come back with fifteen hundred extra words of notes. She had an opinion about everything. It worked because we were each other’s beta, and we’d built up a rapport and trust. She was never afraid to offend me and I loved that about her. She was also very verbal, so feedback was always detailed, she’d be very clear about the whys of it. We were both new, both learning, so that extra communication was great to get. And I genuinely miss being a beta for her.

Kat on the other hand has a light touch approach, she gives me a far longer leash and lets me express myself – just myself and my ideas. If I have a specific concern I’ll share that with her, and she’ll give me advice and her opinion. What I tend to share with Kat is what I’m hoping to achieve, and she’ll let me know if, in her opinion, I’ve done what I set out to do. She trusts me more as a writer, if you know what I mean.

likingthistoomuch: I am heavily influenced by Bollywood songs and get one shot ideas by the ton. Kat mentioned your love of poetry, and I wondered has there been a poem that literally made you wanna rush home and write down stuff as soon as possible?

OhAine: Oh that was Where The Lost Things Go, by Anne Casey. She wrote an entire book of poetry about loss (in particular losing her mother) and it makes for a devastating read. When I heard her recite that poem:

“We sat upon a golden bow, my little bird and I, indivisibly apart, we dived into the sky. And to the purple-hearted dark, an ocean we did cry, for all the lost things gathered there, in rooms beyond the eye.”

I could see Sherlock and his little bird crying for the things they’ve lost, things hidden in secret places. I’d had the image for ages and ages of a little girl coming to Sherlock with a case, but the story that went with it never presented itself. Stories are like that sometimes, bits of them linger until the right structure comes to you. The fic came out in one draft, I did minor revisions later, but it was just this one thing all of its own from the start. And it was sort of the poem coming to me at a time when I was grieving too, and it fitted so well with this image I had of Watson in her big boots and pink hair. Everything coalesced into a coherent story. The end result was my own ‘Where the lost things go.’

Generally that isn’t how it works for me. I usually take away just an image or a phrase, sometimes just a feeling, and I try to structure something around it. But like you, I get a lot from music (Elbow’s music could be the official soundtrack of Sherlolly) and movies as well as poems

Likingthistoomuch: Let’s be honest here, you get tons of reviews. I know, I read most of them (turn down that stalker alarm!!!). Has your story ever been influenced by a comment given on the initial chapters of a multi fic? Not the plot per say, but maybe a small scene or interaction?

OhAine: No, I really don’t think so. But then there’s really only ever been one multi of any real significance, Take me and erase me, and the initial chapters of that got very few comments, or even hits for that matter (chapter one got 17 hits on its first day, but I stuck with it and it did okay in the end). What does happen with comments is they encourage me to keep going, to keep writing, especially when I feel like I’m just rubbish at this. I’ve been blessed with people who are generous and kind when it comes to egging me on and making me feel okay about what I’ve written. I tend to be very sure about where I want to go when I write something, and I think that if you allow things to intrude on the picture you have in your mind you run the risk of ending up with something that’s a bit all over the place. The reader you write for is you, and you either live or die by it.

Likingthistoomuch: In your fic “The Pinch Hitter” (I absolutely love the Simple Chemistry series) there is dialogue that has the potential to turn the fic any way you want:

“I don’t want you because I’m lonely, you little moron.” He shouts, full to breaking point with impotent frustration and clawing at his own hair. "I'm lonely because I want you!"

Funny and yet heart wrenchingly raw. Did you work specifically on introducing something like that, which can be a palate changer for a moment?

OhAine: Oh boy, tough question. Short answer is no, I wasn’t looking specifically for that line. The prompt for this fic came to me by way of a pinch hitter assignment in the 2017 Sherlolly Fic exchange, and I had about four days to come up with a story that fitted the brief. I work at a snail’s pace under normal circumstances, and I was under so much pressure to get something done. I’d pissed away three of the four days on a fic that I couldn’t make work (still can’t, *sigh*) and in desperation I turned to the next prompt on the list of four. In the end this one just came out, and I’m lucky it’s as okay as it is given the rush it was written in. That line: if I recall, it came out of some wanky meta that was doing the rounds at the time, the mirror theory, and I guess that line is my response to it. He wasn’t running to her because she was a surrogate, she, Molly, was the reason he ran to Molly.

On the other hand, that line is very much part of my overall head canon for Sherlock in the series. He’s the cause of his own isolation and I remember either Moffat or Gatiss saying that he was like a child pressed up against a sweet shop, window, longing. I see him very much that way. He doesn’t make friends because he’s lonely – the loneliness is part of the choices he’s made – but he acutely feels loneliness now because he finally understands friendship and love. Does that make sense??

I don’t seem to be able to do straight comedy, there’s always a little angst with my absurdity, a little absurdity with my angst. Some of that is to do with wanting to introduce contrast, some of it is because I think the show does that too and when I’m writing, to some extent, I’m trying to emulate that style.

Likingthistoomuch: On the topic of light works or ones with a comedic thread, you seem to have mastered the tough-as-nails art of writing genuinely funny work which is not slapstick by a mile. Is the writing process for that different than your other works?

OhAine: It is. Totally. I can’t decide to write something funny. It either is or it isn’t, and I don’t have much control over that. No amount of revisions will make something that’s not funny work as a comedy piece. I tried that once with The Truth Will Set You Free, and I think it was 20+ drafts before it started to get giggles from my beta. That was when I realised that trying to be funny wouldn’t work. Kiki said to me after that one was posted that she thought I was rubbish at comedy, which was strange given how often I made her laugh in my emails. It dawned on me then to just be myself, write in a more naturalistic tone and focus on being absurd instead of laugh out loud slapstick.

The next one I tried my hand at was The Adventure of the Berenstein Baby. I took a different approach and wrote it as though I was telling a friend about something hubs and I did, using the exact same style I’d use in conversations (like the side bar thing, my emails are famous for them, I go off on so many tangents) and the result was one draft with minor revisions to get the finished product. When that fic won the 2017 SAMFA for humour, I almost died of pride.

Likingthistoomuch: The Fate of Glass, that letter, that fabulous, fabulous, piece of work. How long did you take you write that?

OhAine: The first draft contained all the bones of the story, it was 1,700 words long and it came out in one afternoon. The letter was there right from the start, always at the end. The rest needed much more work, I think I added another 2,000 words during revisions. I have a memory of it being an easy one to write, but I had a week off work that January, and I know I spent at least another 40 hours picking at it during my leave. It had the story right off the bat, but none of the detail. My vocabulary isn’t what I’d like it to be, so when I feel I don’t have the words to tell a story I read. I had an anthology of Pablo Neruda’s poetry on the arm of my Queen Anne, and every night I’d read for an hour or so, and the next day I’d have the words I needed. Reading, for me, is sort of an ignition tool, it sort of opens that part of my brain that isn’t bogged down with technical language, it opens up my creative side. I sometimes forget just how many revisions even the easy stories take. I forget sometimes that I have to work hard at it, but I do.

Likingthistoomuch: When it comes to naming you work, how do you plan that out?

OhAine: More bold assumptions about planning!!!!

Sometimes a story has an obvious title, like The Science of Seduction (because it was about the application of mathematical theories to love and relationships, so it just seemed obvious). Others, like Better, or The last person you’d think of, they were obvious because the whole story is geared toward making the point that these phrases represent. When I find a name I want to use I do an AO3 search of the Sherlock/Molly tag just to be sure no one else is using it (or has used it for a very long time).

Names are something I struggle with, and at the beginning I went almost exclusively with lines from songs, but I’ve stopped doing that now because it felt, I don’t know, a little forced? These days I try to make a stronger connection between the story and the title without making it too wordy or over explaining what’s going on in the story. I often have a placeholder title while I’m working on it, but keep trying out new ones as I go to see how they fit.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of a good title: along with the summary they’re your elevator pitch to the reader. A brilliant story can be sunk by a bland title or bland summary.

Likingthistoomuch: How do you gauge the success of your work?

OhAine: Oh jeepers. I’m a numbers girl, so the stats page on my AO3 account is my enemy LOL. I’ve tried to find my own metrics, because it’s easy to fall into the trap of judging success on hits and kudos when there are so many things that can influence those little numbers. Like, Trial by Existence was a failure if you go by the stats, but I still feel in my gut that it’s a strong fic, and I learned so much about writing from it. Anyway. There’s a bunch of things I ask myself during the inevitable post-mortem: first and foremost, did I say what I wanted to say? Did I convey the message that I was attempting to put out there? But then I also consider was the quality up to standard, did I build on my learning from the last thing that I wrote? If it’s a gift work, did I please the person it was gifted to? In terms of grammar and punctuation, phrasing (none of which are my strong suit) have I improved? And though I never set out meaning to, I start to fret about the stats…

But I also think that if someone has said in the comments that they’d love to see more of this particular story, then you’ve succeeded in making something that someone else connected with. That’s always a really important metric for me.

Likingthistoomuch: Coming to the topic of Social Media, what effect does that have on your work? Have you ever faced rude reviews or comments or called out for offending people? Because we know, if you log in, someone somewhere is offended.

OhAine: And I specialise in offending people LOL it’s why I stay off social media for the most part.

Everyone gets the odd rude comment, I think. It’s the risk you sign on for when you put something out into a public space. I try hard not to take those personally.

It seems to me people are looking for a fight and they don’t care what it’s about. I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how convinced I am of my position or opinion, if there’s even a hint of aggression I walk away because to engage with them is just giving them what they want. Don’t add fuel to the fire, you know? And it’s not my job to educate. It just isn’t. So I do what’s healthy for me, and I avoid the nonsense even when I know I’m right and they’re not. I don’t need to explain myself to strangers.

Having those things said, I wouldn’t trade away the positives of social media just to be rid of the negatives. I’ve found fantastic friends on sites like AO3 and tumblr, I get so much from our little community and the lovely people in it. I suppose the Sherlolly community is lucky: we’re small, able to self-regulate, and the people here are genuine and kind. I’ve learned so much, gotten so much joy from writing, so much from reading, the beautiful artwork that’s posted here, and my fellow shippers… I’m grateful for that, so that’s where I keep my focus.

Likingthistoomuch: As per the new guideline, the blue hellsite will not allow explicit work to be posted. Does that make you want to write more E rated stuff, in a virtual Up Yours to Staff?

OhAine: I gave up on writing E-rated fics two years ago, and I suppose I am kind of sad that I don’t anymore because I would dearly love to say to anyone who tries to censor others to go fuck themselves.

On the one hand, the ban doesn’t really affect me because I don’t create that kind of content anymore, so I could just be tempted to shrug my shoulders and move on. But. It affects others who do create that kind of content, and I’ll support them all the way, not only because they should be allowed freedom of expression, but also because the purge is part of a bigger problem: the suppression of freedoms, under the guise of protecting the innocent, and is driven by a puritanical streak that’s becoming pervasive in our culture, one that is more about control and suppression of free ideas than protection. Tumblr is lying to us, pure and simple. They could deal with the p0rn problem but they don’t, and therefore you have to assume this isn’t about p0rnbots: this is about commercial considerations, and the suppression of creativity that they can’t commercialise. It’s also very telling that the ban is overly focused on the female body (and I can’t help but feel that because a good percentage of content creators are women, that the purge conveniently silences women’s voices) and the ideal of womanhood held by a very narrow band of its user base.

Historically, censorship (and that is what this is) doesn’t lead us anywhere good. It’s a slippery slope, folks. We’ve got to be careful, or next thing you know we’ll be in red capes and white hats remembering the good old days when women were allowed to read.

likingthistoomuch: Last question: If you could change just one thing about BBC’s version of Sherlock, what would it be?

OhAine: Oh dear. Just one??? Okay, let me discount a few contenders first:

I would ask that there be more Molly. Lots more Molly. That the kiss had been real. That Sherlock be naked at all times. That the shirts were tighter and the curls longer. That Mary had lived. That Holmes got the Watson he deserved. That Moriarty had lived. That Eurus hadn’t. That Paul McGuigan had stuck around. Ditto Stephen Thompson. That they had kept production values at primetime and not Saturday tea-time CBBC levels. That the production staff hadn’t stirred the shit just because they liked the attention. That Mofftiss had had a beta, or at least someone who challenged their ideas…

But if I could choose just one thing, one thing that would be possible for them to do and not go off at a tangent, then I would have them stick to the cases. Tell the story they were telling at the start: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as told by his Boswell. I’ll be forever sad that they chose not to do that.

Next week, Friday 10th of May, part two of this interview turns the tables and @ohaine interviews @likingthistoomuch.

#content creator interviews #Sherlock #sherlolly #likingthistoomuch #ohaine #tw: discussion of grief and mourning #tw: mild profanity

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shes-soparticular · 6 years ago

Note

I adore you for all of the music references in your fics. Do you have a playlist?

I adore you for noticing and asking this question! Like mostwriters, I rely on music BIG TIME for inspiration. I don’t have any playlistscreated, but here’s a little masterlist of songs I’ve referred to in my writingthat usually play some kind of role. Warning, it ended up way longer than Irealized lol

Darling, So it Goes“Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley – Okay, don’t we ALL fantasizeabout Shawn singing this song to us acapella? That old clip of him singing it?Kill me. The title of this one-shot comes from that song as well, of course.

Take Me Back to theStart“The Scientist” by Coldplay – I think this would be Shawn’s go-to breakup song,the one he’d play on repeat to try to process his feelings. Which is exactly whatI had him do when he and Alex hit the rocks. Naturally, that’s where the titlecomes from as well.

Every Little Part ofMe is Holding on to Every Little Piece of You

“End of the Road” by Boyz II Men – Just as The Scientist isShawn’s go-to heartache song, Alex’s is End of the Road. Her mantra is “if thelove don’t feel like 90s R&B, I don’t want it”. Also, I have to admit I kindof stole this from my OG crush Seth Cohen, as that was his “play on repeat”breakup song.

“Water Runs Dry” by Boyz II Men – Alex’s backup song to cryto, which is playing when Shawn shows up.

“I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men – Sensing a theme? Luckily,Boyz II Men is there for you both in times of sadness and times of makeup sex. Andas Shawn knows, Alex cannot resist a slow jam.

“Tough” by Lewis Capaldi – I took the title from the lyricsof this song. Lewis Capaldi is one of my favorite artists to listen to forangst/fluff inspiration.

Wouldn’t Fall forSomeone I Thought Couldn’t Misbehave

“Nobody” by Hozier – This one-shot is all about Shawn’sjealousy over her fangirling for Hozier. So it was a no-brainer to choose aHozier lyric as the title, which comes from this song.

“Movement” by Hozier – I don’t call this song out by name,but it’s the one I imagine her teasing him to in the car. It’s just a hell of asultry song and would have definitely driven Shawn even further up the wall.

Put in Work

“All Mine” by Kanye West – As we ALL know by this point, Kanyeis Shawn’s go-to gym music. When it comes to a one-shot that’s literallyuncalled for fantasy gym smut, what song would have been more fitting? Yeah, you supermodel thick, damn, that assbustin’ out the bottom, I'ma lose my mind in it. Definitely the wordspounding through Shawn’s airpods while watching Alex on the stair climber.

Bonus: “Skin” by Rihanna – Alex is a freak too, let’s bereal. Although I didn’t mention it in the fic, her gym play list is 100% heavyon Rihanna. This is the song that ends up on repeat anytime she watches Shawnlifting.

Might Just Be MyEverything and Beyond

“What’s Your Fantasy” by Ludacris ft Shawna – If you’re alate 90s baby and don’t know this song? You won’t understand how ridiculous itis that it’s Alex’s go-to karaoke song.

“Beyond” by Leon Bridges – For one, this is an altogetherbeautiful song. I listened to the acoustic version non-stop while writing thisone-shot and thus it’s where the title comes from. Just the kind of fluffyboyfriend vibes I imagined Shawn feeling waiting for his girl to come home.

“Lost in Japan – Remix” – Okay, ya’ll know this one. But I’mmentioning it anyways since it pops up in the insta story of Alex jamming outto it pool side, a proud girlfriend hyped for her man.

Slow Burn

“There’s No Way” by Lauv ft Julia Michaels – This songinspired the entire fic, tbh. It’s the definition of a Slow Burn song.

“American Girl” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Only mentionedin passing, but Shawn and co realize at some point early in the European legthat if you play this song? Alex loses her fucking shit. Even if she’s having abad time, cranky, pissy, argumentative, what have you – this song gets her to shoutalong and dance like the happiest little bean on earth. So it becomes a runninggag for them to play it whenever possible, just to watch the only American chickin the bar go nuts.

“Free Fallin’” by Top Petty and the Heartbreakers (but alsohave the live John Mayer cover in mind) – As slightly established in the firstchapter, Alex is a huge Petty fan. In chapter six, this is the song Shawn isattempting to teach her on the guitar. The one she’s too impatient to learn andmakes him just play for her instead.

“Feels Great” – Cheat Codes ft Fetty Wap & CVBZ – I couldn’tthink of a better song for the “young crew” to be listening to during a heated pre-showping pong game in the green room. It’s just a fun fucking song about beingyoung. That’s all.

“Outta My Head” by Khalid ft John Mayer – This is the songAlex is mumbling in the elevator before everything…intensifies. No deep reason here, I just bet they’ve all beenlistening to Khalid’s new album a ton and that song is a bop. Oh, and I GUESSthe lyrics are kind of fitting…. Can youfeel the tension? You’ve got my attention, I know we’re just friends but I’drather be together.

“Power Over Me” by Dermot Kennedy – These are the lyrics Iuse in the opening of the second chapter and a song that definitely inspired my interms of Shawn’s feelings for Alex. Especially early on, when everything isstill completely unspoken. Honestly, Dermot’s music has inspired me A LOT whilewriting this fic, so check him out if you’re not familiar.

“Uh Huh” by Julia Michaels – First off, Julia is a QUEEN. Hervibe is something I picture for Alex so I listen to Julia a lot particularlywhen writing more deeply from Alex’s point of view. Hence using it as theopening lyrics for chapter three. This is definitely a song that demonstrateshow Alex’s mind and body are at odds over her feelings for Shawn.

“Lost” by Dermot Kennedy – Again, on a constant Dermot kick.His lyrics are so poetic and it’s impossible not to take inspiration from him.I used his lyrics to open chapter four and I think they perfectly describe theatmosphere of that night in Krakow. I particularly love the lyric “since thatnight the moon has never looked the same” which I think perfectly puts the wayShawn and Alex both feel after that turning point of a night, dancing oncobblestone streets in the moonlight. Yep. Lost in feels again.

“Can I Be Him” by James Arthur – The perfect song about aguy falling for a girl that’s already attached. Because using TYB would havebeen to on the nose, haha.

“Peer Pressure” by James Bay ft Julia Michaels – If you’veread chapter six, it’s pretty obvious why I used these lyrics to start itoff. Generally, it’s another song I’ve listened to a lot while writing Slow Burn.It seems fitting for two people that are used to being in control of themselvesand their emotions but losing that control and giving into one another.

Look How They ShineFor You (Slow Burn Bonus)

“Yellow” by Coldplay – This song is a HUGE part of this littleblurb and I highly recommend listening to it while you read that one. It’sbeautiful as a piano cover and if you’ve ever heard the Vitamin String Quartetversion??? Jesus. Let’s just say that’s going to be the song Alex walks downthe aisle to someday. Now I’m all in my feels.

BONUS: Current Songson Repeat While I Write

Pretty much all of Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You” album. It puts me in a kickass mood. That’s all.

“Falling like the Stars” by James Arthur – It’s just a sweetsong that makes me want to write Shawn and Alex all loved up.

“Wilderness” by Jon Bryant – See above. A song that makes mea soft little puddle of inspo.

“Can I be Honest?” by Anatu ft Zubi – I don’t know how Istumbled across this song but it’s fucking fantastic and you should listen toit.

“Night Moves” by Bob Seger – Alex is a classic rock junkie,if she could time travel she’d head straight back to the 70s (possibly the 60sso she could live through both decades). That’s her entire aesthetic, honestly.This is the type of song she puts on to dance around her hotel room while Shawnbegs her to hurry up and get ready to leave.

“Drive” by The Cars – Honestly, this is just a personalfavorite of mine because there’s something so 80s RomCom about being drivenhome by a guy you have romantical tension with. Maybe it just very, veryspecifically relates to my high school experience. A song that puts me in a starry-eyed,butterflies in the stomach type of writing mood.

#slow burn fic #shawn mendes fic #music masterlist #shawn mendes imagine

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upontheshelfreviews · 5 years ago

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Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

We open on snippets from the original Fantasia…IN SPAAAAAAAAACE!

It reminds me a little of the opening to Simply Mad About The Mouse, where bits of classic Disney nostalgia fly about to evoke the mood of this upcoming musical venture. In a clever conceit, snippets of Deems Taylor’s original opening narration explaining Fantasia’s intent and music types plays over the orchestra and animators materializing and gearing up for the first sequence, which jumps right into –

DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUN – I mean, Symphony #5 – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Here, a bunch of butterflies flee and then fight off swarms of bats with the power of light – I can’t be the only one who saw these things and thought it was butterflies vs. bats, right?

It does look cool with its waterfalls and splashes of light and color bursting through the clouds, but this brings me to a bit of contention I have with the movie.

When I planned this review I was going to do a new version of “Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing”, except there were only four major complaints I could think of that. On further introspection, I admit they are legitimate grievances worth addressing. I’m going to get them out of the way all at once in order to keep things rolling.

#1 – This Seems Familiar…

Certain sequences are noticeably derivative from the first movie. It’s as if they were afraid of trying too many new things that would alienate audiences so they borrowed from their predecessor in an effort to say “Hey, we can do this too!” Symphony #5 is clearly trying to be Tocatta and Fugue with its abstract geometric shapes swooping all over to kick things off. Though I love how much character the animators managed to give two pairs of triangles, Tocatta’s soaring subconscious flights of fancy leaves me more enthralled. Carnival of the Animals literally began as a sequel to Dance of the Hours until the ostriches became flamingoes. And Roy E. Disney openly stated he wanted the last sequence, The Firebird Suite to have the same death and rebirth theme as Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, which they got, right down to a terrifying symbol of destruction emerging from a mountain to wreak chaos.

‘Sup, witches?

#2 – Too Short

Speaking of repeating the past, the original idea for Fantasia 2000 was to follow Walt’s vision in that three favorite segments would make a return amongst the newer ones – the Nutcracker Suite, which was eventually cut for time, Dance of the Hours, which I’ve already stated morphed into Carnival of the Animals, and finally, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the obvious choice to keep since that’s the most popular piece out of any of them. Cutting things for time doesn’t make that much sense, however, when you realize that Fantasia 2000’s runtime is only 75 minutes. A very short animated film by today’s standards that lasts barely half as long as its previous installment. I don’t see why they couldn’t keep at least one other sequence from the first Fantasia to make things last a little longer and keep in the original idea’s spirit.

#3 – All Story, No Experimentation

Unlike the first Fantasia, all of the sequences have a linear narrative structure that’s easy to follow. Not a bad thing and kudos to you if you’re among that group who prefers Fantasia 2000 for because of that, but again, I admire how the original film didn’t stick to a coherent story the whole time; how it was unafraid to let the music, atmosphere, and visuals speak for itself without sticking to a three-act plot and designated protagonist for every piece.

#4 – The One You’ve Been Waiting For, The Host Segments

One of the things that turned Fantasia off for its detractors was Deems Taylor’s seemingly dry narration. But maybe Fantasia 2000 can fix that with some folks who are hip and with it, perhaps a wild and crazy guy or two…

Eh, he’ll do.

Now, the idea of varying segment hosts isn’t an altogether bad idea. Most of them work well: Angela Lansbury gives the lead-in to the Firebird Suite plenty of gravitas befitting the finale, as do Ithzak Perlman, Quincy Jones, and James Earl Jones, who build plenty of intrigue for Pines of Rome, Rhapsody in Blue and Carnival of the Animals respectively; this seriousness makes James’ reaction to what the Carnival segment is really about a successful comic subversion. Even Penn and Teller for all their obnoxiousness kind of works with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice due to the linking magic theme.

I suppose what turns people off is the self-congratulatory tone and seemingly forced attempts at comedy you get from Martin, Penn, Teller, and Bette Midler. But you know what? They still make me laugh after all these years (well, you have to laugh at Bette Midler’s antics or she’ll come after you when the Black Flame Candle is lit). In fact, I have to hand it to Midler’s intro in particular. Fantasia 2000 came out right around the time I began taking a keen interest in what animation really was and how it was made. For me, her preceding The Steadfast Tin Soldier piece with tidbits about Fantasia segments that didn’t make it past the drawing board was like the first free hit that turned me into an animation junkie (plus this was before you could look up anything on the topic in extraneous detail on the internet, so it had that going for it). If I have to nitpick, though, The Divine Miss M referring to Salvador Dalí as “the melting watches guy” is a bit reductive. That’d be like calling Babe Ruth “the baseball guy” or Walt Disney “the mouse and castle guy”. Plus, Dalí and Disney were close compadres with a layered history. They planned on many collaborations, though the fruit of their labors, Destino, would not be completed in either of their lifetimes. Couldn’t show just a modicum of respect there, Bette?

Ahhh! I take it back! Don’t steal my soul!

So, I wouldn’t say I hate or even completely dislike the host segments. Sorry to disappoint everyone who was hoping for me to rip into them. They’re not awful, just uneven. And if you think they ruin the movie for me, you’ve got another think coming.

Pines of Rome – Ottorino Respighi

The idea for Pines of Rome’s visuals came about due to an unusual detail in some concept art. Someone noticed that a particular cloud in a painting of the night sky heavily resembled a flying whale. So why make a short about flying whales? The better question would be why NOT make a short about flying whales? A supernova in the night sky miraculously gives some whales the ability to swim through the air over the icy seas. Again, seeing this in IMAX was incredible. There’s just one minor issue I have with. This and another segment were developed well before Pixar made its silver screen debut, and unfortunately, it shows twenty years later; the worst cases are the close-ups.

Okay, who put googly eyes on the moldy beanbag?

There are ways of blending CGI and hand-drawn animation well, and this isn’t one of them. I understand the necessity of having expressive eyes but simply dropping one on top of a CGI creature gives it a bit of an uncanny valley feel. They should have either stuck with traditional all the way or made the whales entirely CG. The CG animation of the whales themselves isn’t too shabby, so they could have pulled it off.

Because simply giving whales flight apparently isn’t enough to hold an audience’s interest, we have an adorable baby whale earning his wings, so to speak. Once he gets his bearings above the surface, he swoops ahead of his family and bothers a flock of seagulls. They chase him into a collapsing iceberg, leaving him trapped, alone and unable to fly. The quiet dip in the music combined with the image of this lost little calf adds some genuine emotional weight to this piece. The baby navigates the iceberg’s claustrophobic caverns until he finds a crevice that elevates him back to his worried parents. From there a whole pod of whales rises out of the ocean to join them as they fly upwards to the supernova’s source.

“So long, and thanks for all the krill!”

As the music reaches its brilliant crescendo, the whales plow through storm clouds until they reach the top of the world and breach through the stars like water. It’s an awe-inspiring climax of a short that, flaws and all, reminds you of what Fantasia is all about.

Majestic.

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin

The music of jazz composer George Gershwin? Timeless. The art of renowned caricaturist Al Hirschfeld? Perfection. All this brought to life with the best animation Disney has to offer? It’s a match made in heaven. Eric Goldberg, who animated the Genie among other comedic characters, idolized Hirschfeld and drew plenty of inspiration from drawings, so getting to work alongside him while making this was nothing short of a dream come true. That attention to detail in rendering Hirschfeld’s trademark curvy two-dimensional style goes beyond mere homage. It is a love letter to a great artist that encapsulates everything about him and his craft, and to a great city that we both had the honor of calling home. The story goes that Goldberg screened the final product for Hirschfeld shortly before his 96th birthday and his wife told him after that it was the best gift he could have ever received.

All this to say I am quite fond of this particular short, thank you very much.

The piece follows four characters navigating 1930’s Manhattan and crossing paths over the course of a single day:

Duke, a construction worker torn between his steady, monotonous job and following his dream of drumming in a jazz band,

Joe, a victim of the Great Depression desperately looking for work,

Rachel, a little girl who wants to spend time with her parents but is forced to attend lesson after lesson by her strict governess,

and “Flying” John, a henpecked husband longing to be free from his overbearing wife –

And her little dog too!

By the way, John is modeled in name and in looks after Disney animation historian John Culhane, who also was the inspiration for The Rescuers’ Mr. Snoops, hence why the two look so similar. He’s not the only name who appears in this sequence: Gershwin himself makes a surprise cameo as he takes over Rachel’s piano solo halfway through the story.

Speaking of, my family used to compare me to Rachel because at that point in my young life I was doing or already did the same mandatory activities as she – swimming, ballet, music, sports, all with the same amount of speed and varying degrees of success.

No one can argue that art is where we both excelled, however.

The physical timing of Rhapsody in Blue’s animation is hilarious, though it doesn’t rely wholly on slapstick for its humor. The sight gags and clever character dynamics all weaved into the music milk plenty of laughs, and envelop you in this living, breathing island that is Manhattan.

I speak from experience, this is the most accurate depiction of commuting on the 1 train that there ever was.

Even with such a premise and two masters of combining comedy and art, there is still enough pathos to keep the story rooted. Take when all four characters are at their lowest point. They look down on some skaters in Rockefeller Center and picture themselves in their place fulfilling their deepest desires. Seeing their dreams so close in their minds and yet so far away while paired with the most stirring part of the score is heartwrenching.

In the end, things pick up as the characters unwittingly solve each other’s problems. Duke quits the construction site, leaving an opening for Joe to fill. Joe accidentally snags John’s wife on a hook and hauls her screaming into the air, allowing him one night of uninhibited fun at the club where Duke performs.

“Anyone hear something? Nah, it’s probably just me.”

Rachel loses her ball while fighting with her nanny, which Duke bounces off the window of her parents’ office, which in turn gets them to notice their daughter about to run into traffic and they save her. Everyone gets their happy ending and it ends on a spectacularly glamorous shot of Time Square lit up in all its frenetic neon glory.

And not a single knockoff costumed character hitting up tourists for photos. Those were the days, my friend.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I adore Rhapsody in Blue. It’s easily my favorite part of the movie; a blissful ménage-a-trois of art style, music and storytelling, and it’s so New York that the only New York things I could think of that are missing are Central Park and amazing bagels. This sequence is gut-busting, energized, emotional, and mesmerizing in its form. I don’t often say I love a piece of animation so much that I’d marry it, but when I do, it’s often directed at Rhapsody in Blue.

Piano Concerto #2 – Dmitri Shostakovich (aka The One With The Steadfast Tin Soldier)

This piece has an interesting history attached to it. Disney wanted to do an animated film surrounding Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales – including The Little Mermaid and The Steadfast Tin Soldier – as far back as the 30’s, but the project fell by the wayside. During Fantasia 2000’s production, Roy E. Disney asked if they could do something with Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto #2 since he and his daughter were attached to that piece. He looked over sketches and storyboards made for the unrealized Tin Soldier sequence and discovered the music matched in perfect time with the story.

This is the second sequence that features CGI at the forefront. Unlike Pines of Rome, though, it works because the main characters are toys, and you can get away with your early CGI looking shiny and metallic and plastic-like when you’re animating toys.

Hell, it worked for Pixar.

The story centers on a tin soldier cast with only one leg who is shunned by his comrades for routinely throwing off their groove. He falls in love with a porcelain ballerina when he mistakes her standing en pointe as her also missing a limb. Despite his embarrassment when he learns the truth, the ballerina is enamored with him as well. This rouses the jealousy of an evil jack-in-the-box who I swear is a caricature of Jeffrey Katzenberg minus the glasses but with a goatee and Lord Farquaad wig.

“MUST. CHOP. EVERYTHING!!!”

The jack-in-the-box and the soldier duke it out for a bit before the former sends the latter flying out the window in a little wooden boat. The boat floats the soldier into the sewers and attracts a horde of angry rats who attack him, because animated rodents seem to have a natural hatred towards toy soldiers.

Case in point.

The soldier hurtles into the sea where he’s eaten by a fish – which is caught the following morning, packed up to be sold at market, bought by the cook who works at the very house he came from, and he falls out of the fish’s mouth on the floor where his owner finds him and places him back with the rest of the toys. Now the story this is based on hints that the jack-in-the-box is really a goblin who orchestrates the soldier’s misfortunes with his malicious magic. But based the extremely coincidental circumstances of his return home, I’d say the soldier’s the one who’s got some reality-warping tricks up his sleeve.

The soldier and jack-in-the-box duel again that evening, but this time the harlequin harasser falls into the fireplace and burns up. Our hero gets the girl and lives happily ever after. A nice conclusion, though a far cry from what happened in the original tale: the ballerina is knocked into the fire, the soldier jumps in after her, and all that remains of them by morning is some melted tin in the shape of a heart. I gotta say, for all my love of classic fairytales, Disney made the right call. Andersen’s life was far from magical and it reflected in his stories, making many of them depressing for no good reason. The triumphant note the music ends on also would have clashed horribly if they stuck with the original. Even the Queen of Denmark agreed with Disney’s decision to soften their adaptations of Andersen’s work. I don’t know if I’d call The Steadfast Tin Soldier one of my very favorite parts of Fantasia 2000, but in the end, s’all right.

Carnival of the Animals: Finale – Camille Sant-Saëns

This shortest of shorts (clocking in at less than two minutes) kicks off with James Earl Jones asking with as much seriousness as he can muster from the situation, what would happen if you gave a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos?

The answer –

Good answer!

Fie on those who dismiss this part as a silly one-off that doesn’t belong here. Fie, I say! It’s a pure delight full of fun expressions and fluid fast-paced action. Once again we have my man Eric Goldberg to thank for this, though this time he animated it entirely by himself. I’d call it a one-man show except for the fact that his wife Susan handpainted the entire thing with watercolor, making it look like it sprung to life straight from a paintbrush. It’s a simple diversion about a flamingo who wants to play with his yo-yo while the other snooty members of his flock try to force him to conform. As you can see from the still, they fail quite epically. Nothing beats the power of nonconformity and yo-yos (also every yo-yo move featured here is authentic; I love when animators go that extra mile).

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice plays next, but since I already touched on that in the first Fantasia review, I’m skipping over it. The segment ends with Mickey congratulating Leopold Stokowski (again), then crossing the barriers of time and space to inform the conductor, James Levine, that he needs to track down the star of the next segment, Donald Duck. Levine stalls by explaining a bit about what’s to come while Mickey frantically searches for his errant costar. The surround sound sells the notion of him moving around the back of the theater accidentally causing mischief all the while. Thankfully, Donald is found and the sequence commences.

Pomp and Circumstance – Edward Elgar

This famous piece of music was included at the insistence of Michael Eisner after he attended his son’s graduation ceremony. He wanted to feature a song that everyone was already familiar with. Of course, since this was after Frank Well’s untimely passing and no one was bold enough to temper Eisner’s worst instincts with common sense, his original pitch had every animated couple Disney created up to that point marching on to Noah’s Ark – and then marching out with their babies.

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Okay, A: Unless you’re doing a groin hit joke or are Ralph Bakshi or R. Crum, cartoon characters don’t have junk as a rule. And B, one of the unwritten rules of Disney animation is that barring kids that already exist like the titular 101 Dalmatians or Duchess’ kittens, the established canon couples do not in any official capacity have children.

To which Eisner laughed maniacally and vowed that they would.

But in order to placate Eisner’s desire to turn every branch of the Disney corporation into a commercial for itself, the animators compromised and agreed to do Pomp and Circumstance with the Noah’s Ark theme, BUT with only one couple – Donald and Daisy Duck. In this retelling of the biblical tale, Donald acts as Noah’s beleaguered assistant (I guess Shem, Ham, and Japheth were too busy rounding up the endangered species). Daisy provides emotional support while preparing to move on to the ark as well. It’s refreshing to see these two not losing their temper at each other for a change. I wish we got to see this side of their relationship more often. Donald returns Daisy’s easily lost plot device locket to her and as the rain rain rain comes down down down, he starts directing the animals on board; the lions, the tigers, the bears, the…ducks?

Anyway, all the animals and Donald get on board – well, most of them do.

The world’s first climate change deniers.

Donald realizes Daisy hasn’t arrived yet and runs out to look for her, unaware that she’s already boarded. Daisy sees Donald leaving but is too late to stop him before the first floodwaters hit their home. Donald made it back to the ark in time, however, though both of them believe that the other is forever lost to them. I find it astounding that they never run into each other not even once during the forty days and forty nights they’re cooped up on that boat. It’s the American Tail cliche all over again, and well, at least it’s happening in a short and not the entire movie.

Soon the ark lands atop Mount Ararat and the animals depart in greater numbers than when they embarked on their singles cruise. Daisy realizes halfway down the mountain that she’s lost her locket again, which Donald finds at that very moment while sweeping up, and the two are joyously reunited.

“I thought you were dead!” “I thought YOU were dead!”

I kid around, but I truly enjoy this short a lot. There’s so much warmth to Donald and Daisy’s relationship that makes their reunion at the end all the sweeter, and there’s plenty of great slapstick to offset the drama in the meantime. I will admit it’s nice to hear there’s more to Pomp And Circumstance than just the famous march, and the entire suite matches flawlessly with the visuals, though the main theme itself is so ingrained into the public consciousness that it’s difficult to extricate it from that what we’ve seen accompany it countless times.

Come on, you all know what I’m talking about.

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“What? Don’t tell me YOU don’t think of heads exploding like fireworks when you hear Pomp and Circumstance! Name one other life-changing moment could you possibly associate it with…you weirdo.”

The Firebird Suite – Igor Stravinsky

Fantasia 2000 comes to a close with a piece that has some emotional resonance if you know your history. You might remember from my first Fantasia review that Igor Stravinsky was disappointed with how Rite of Spring turned out, especially since he was a big admirer of Walt Disney and really wanted to do more projects with him beforehand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they picked his premiere ballet to end the movie on decades later. After all these years, Disney worked hard to do right by Stravinsky – with a few twists, though. Instead of a balletic retelling of Russian folktales involving kidnapped princesses and immortal sorcerers, we have a fantastical allegory for the circle of life.

No, not that circle of life.

A lone elk who I’m fairly convinced is the Great Prince of the Forest walks through the forest in the dead of winter. With his breath, he awakens the spirit of the woods and one of the most beautiful characters Disney has ever created, the Spring Sprite.

I. Love. This character. Her design is gorgeous, shifting from a shimmery opalescent blue as she steps out of the water into an eternally flowing fount of live greenery spreading from her hair in her wake. Wherever she moves, grass, flowers, and trees blossom, fulfilling the idea of a springtime goddess more than Disney’s own Goddess of Spring ever did. The Sprite was a massive influence in developing my art style, particularly in her face and expressive eyes, and I used to draw her a lot. Visit any relative of mine and chances are you’ll find a picture of her by me hanging up on a wall somewhere in their house. Yet there’s far more to her character than just a pretty representation of nature; there’s plenty of curiosity, spunk, determination, and a drive for creativity. I love her frustrated expression when she’s dissatisfied with the tiny flower she sculpts out of the ground and how her face lights up when she morphs it into a buttercup as tall as she is.

The Sprite paints the forest with all the colors of the wind (mostly green) until she reaches a mountain that isn’t affected by her magic. Perplexed, she climbs it until she finds a large hunched over rock figure – or is it an egg? – standing inside. She reaches out to touch it and…

The Sprite has awakened her counterpart, the wrathful and deadly Firebird. Think giant evil phoenix made of smoke, flame and lava. And it goes without saying that seeing this on the biggest screen left quite the terrifying impact. One of the biggest inspirations for this sequence was the eruption of Mount St. Helens (though the shot of the Sprite surveying the breadth of the Firebird’s destruction reminds me far too much of the Australian bushfires going on) and the sheer horror of nature’s irrepressible chaos is fully captured here. But the Firebird refuses to settle for merely destroying the Sprite’s handiwork, oh no. It won’t rest until creation itself is consumed, and the Sprite is reduced to a powerless mite as she scrabbles to escape the Firebird’s relentless pursuit of her. Try as she might, however, the towering monster corners and devours her in one fell swoop.

The forest is reduced to gray ashes in the wake of the Firebird’s rampage, but the Great Prince has survived. Once again he brings the Sprite to life with his breath, only this time she is tiny and weak (the animation of her slowly developing from the ash into her huddled ragged form is breathtaking). Now, I didn’t think I’d get emotional revisiting a small part of a single movie I’ve rewatched countless times before but viewing this through a mature eye combined with the beauty of the Firebird Suite’s climax and its timely message has caused me to see it in a new light:

The Sprite is utterly broken by what she’s been through and the destruction she carelessly caused. She’s lost all faith in herself and in the idea of returning the forest to what it once was. Even so, the Prince gently insists on carrying her on his antlers to the remains of their favorite cherry blossom tree. Where her tears fall, grass shoots begin to sprout. This fills the Sprite with hope, and she soars into the air becoming one with the sky and rains life down on the forest. New trees burst from the earth. The air is filled with leaves and pollen and new life flowing from her essence. The Sprite’s joy and power grow so strong that she even encircles the Firebird’s mountain in all her verdant glory. Life and creation overcome death and destruction. It’s not Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, but it’s close.

And unfortunately, that’s the biggest problem Fantasia 2000 has.

While working on the original Fantasia, a storyman made the mistake of referring to the work they were doing in “the cartoon medium” in Walt’s presence. Walt turned on him and snapped “This is NOT ‘the cartoon medium’. It should not be limited to cartoons. We have worlds to conquer.”

And conquer they did…just not the way Walt intended.

The point I’m trying to make is Walt was breaking new ground and experimenting with things nobody ever tried when it came to Fantasia. While those risks were initially deemed a failure, it eventually gained the recognition it deserved from the animation and filmmaking community. Any attempt to recreate the magic of Fantasia is no small feat. But rather than taking new risks that not even the first film dared, the studio opted to adhere to Fantasia’s formula with pieces that recall if not flat out copy from the original segments. I hesitate to call it a pale imitation or cash grab however because this was done for the art much more than the money (though Eisner was probably hoping it would bring in some bank). There’s even a little bit of depth to it: while the first Fantasia had themes of differing natures in conflict – light vs. dark, fire vs. water, etc. – Fantasia 2000’s theme is accidental but brilliantly meta: CGI vs. traditional animation, a conflict Disney would become very familiar with in the decade following the film’s release. In some ways, it reminds me of Epcot’s genesis. The driving force behind it was long gone, but the attempt to bring it to life as close to the original vision as possible is still much appreciated.

For all my gripes, I really do enjoy Fantasia 2000. Perhaps not on the same level as its predecessor, but it has its moments, oh yes. And believe me, as far as Disney sequels go, you could do far, far, far worse than this one. Fantasia 2000 is Fantasia’s kid sister mimicking its beloved older sibling in an attempt to show it can be cool like the big kids too. But hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this review, please consider supporting this misfit on Patreon. Patreon supporters receive great perks such as extra votes for movie reviews, movie requests, early sneak-peeks and more! If I can hit my goal of $100 a month, I can go back to weekly tv series reviews. As of now, I’m only $20 away! Special thanks to Amelia Jones, Gordhan Rajani and Sam Minden for their contributions! I’ll see you in a few weeks when I and review the 1959 Disney animated classic, Sleeping Beauty!

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Screencaps from animationscreencaps.com

Yes, I know The Lion King and Lady and the Tramp ended with the titular characters having babies, but was there anyone out there apart from Eisner who demanded there be sequels to those films that focused on their offspring?

January Review: Fantasia 2000 Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general.

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grandhotelabyss · 2 years ago

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Thanks, great question! I don’t react all that viscerally to fictional prose these days. I also agree with Lovecraft when he writes in Supernatural Horror in Literature about how true horror requires a metaphysical dimension, what he calls “cosmic horror.” This disqualifies from the truly frightening merely human evil unless connected with this horror-from-beyond. For this reason, I’d separate “most frightening,” which for me implies Lovecraft’s stricture, from “most disturbing,” which can be more purely material or human-scale. A few answers, then:

When I was a child, around 11 or 12, the most frightening book was definitely The Exorcist, which I read in one day and then didn’t want to have in the same room with me: my dad’s old crack-spined purple paperback movie tie-in edition from the ’70s with the hardcover’s out-of-focus demon-girl face on the front bisected by a banner with some boasts about the film.

I found the book almost more frightening than the movie (which I’d seen in a TV-redacted version when my age was in the single digits) because more detailed and portentous. From the tortured epigraphs forward, the last three words on the epigraph page being “Dachau Auschwitz Buchenwald,” the whole modern world seems possessed as far as Blatty was concerned. Obviously the movie is the superior work of art and the novel in fact practically a screenplay. James Baldwin’s quip, “I forced myself to read The Exorcist—a difficult matter, since it is not written,” is fair. But these aesthetic niceties didn’t comfort me in childhood. Whether the novel will have the same effect on adults not raised Catholic, I’m not sure.

Since I brought it up, I find James Baldwin’s aforementioned celebrated critique of the movie a bit small-minded. His hostile plot summary is admittedly very funny, but a skilled writer can do that to any narrative. And especially insofar as Baldwin’s denunciation also encompasses Ken Russell’s The Devils, I detect an iconoclastic Protestant dislike of Catholic phantasmagoria beneath the political bluster of the essay’s peroration, which just amounts to the usual leftist admonition that art must be about social injustice. To give Baldwin his due, though, this sentence is justly immortal:

For, I have seen the devil, by day and by night, and have seen him in you and in me: in the eyes of the cop and the sheriff and the deputy, the landlord, the housewife, the football player: in the eyes of some junkies, the eyes of some preachers, the eyes of some governors, presidents, wardens, in the eyes of some orphans, and in the eyes of my father, and in my mirror.

But I digress. The most unsettling thing I ever read in a novel as an adult must be the central narrative, “The Navidson Record,” in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. The rest of the book isn’t that good, as I complain in this review written in a comic vein. But Danielewski’s vertiginous pit-of-the-stomach play with the invasion of cosmic scale into private life recalls Borges, whose own stories, come to think of it, don’t get enough credit for creating a real frisson of metaphysical terror.

Now for “disturbing,” I’m afraid I have to take leave of prose, which just doesn’t cut that deeply for me (I’ve been behind the curtain, as it were). As I recalled in my essay on the graphic novel From Hell, the first time I read the chapter where William Gull spends 30 pages dismembering Mary Kelly (or some other woman in her stead) as relevant mythical archetypes and architectural motifs flicker at the edge of his awareness, I literally threw the book down in admiring revulsion. I felt Moore and Campbell had genuinely conveyed a certain kind of extreme consciousness or fugue state that disquietingly fused aesthetic achievement, political power, mystical experience, and misogynist murder into one and the same event—not how I’d choose to look at things, but useful knowledge insofar as it is how some other influential people do so choose.

From Hell is also a work saturated in conspiracy theory, and this is the other type of reading, often online, often purportedly but disputably nonfictional, that actually disturbs me, for all its flights of fancy, for all its grains of truth. I still remember when I discovered the Rigorous Intuition blog in the early 2000s. Its counterintuitive mix of leftism with Satanic Panic—I would at that time have dismissed the latter without the former—had me afraid to leave the apartment lest Michael Aquino in his black robe (say, how am I connected to Michael Aquino?) was going to jump me in an alley. A half-silly notion—only half, though, as I do agree with Baldwin that there must be something evil, if we may call anything evil, in many if not most of the principalities and powers that be.

#horror #horror fiction #william peter blatty #james baldwin #mark z. danielewski #alan moore #eddie campbell

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capricxs · 6 years ago

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👫 for laney & james,,

send 👫 for headcanons abt our ship !

i’ll start soft bc i know this is gna get Heavy Real Fast

i’m not trying to say that james is a multi talented queen but he’s a multi talented queen. i mean,,,, he writes beautifully, he cooks beautifully, he sings beautifully. he picked up guitar in college so he’s literally a heaven sent angel i didn’t want to write a god but i guess i just kind of did. anyways… catch him some early sunday morning with laney still asleep, only to be awoken by his sweet hums and the light plucks of a guitar string as he just plays around with sounds and tunes to see if something sounds good and honestly it does sound like heaven

james doesn’t really spend much time at her place bc well,,, her family is there and why go when he has their own place where they can be alone? not to mention he knows she’s not super crazy about being there. but her cat really,,,, is not his favorite thing. not only does it look terrifying but said cat probably does not like james very much and he has gotten bitten a couple times trying to pet the cat. he’s stopped trying. he and the cat remain respectful distances away from one another.

it’s not Great Forever bc we have two really really fucked up people here and listen…. james fucked up - ness was so deeply rooted i can’t imagine it doesn’t slip through the cracks sometimes. not on purpose. but there’s nights where he disassociates so bad, where his hands shake and the only thing he wants or feel could make him feel any close to a real human being is whatever substance he can get his fingers wrapped around. people aren’t magically fixed, and it might be over a year since getting clean but james is a completely magic fixed prince nor is he some troubled prince who struggles like james was a top notch a+ terrible person for a really long time and he has to rewire that just as much as his sobriety. he tries not to have that bleed into his relationships but there has probably been a time or two when he’s texted laney last minute to cancel on plans and just drops off the face of the earth for a bit. i mean literally. he’s not at his apartment, likely not even in the country he just up and left. texts her to tell her he’s fine but he had to fucking meditate in some mountains or whatever. this doesn’t happen a lot but the Good Catches Up to him sometimes and it has to implode.

on another sad note, james who foundation of life has essentially been ripped out form under him since rehab. most of his friends aren’t alive, or they didn’t have enough money to bail them out of whatever trouble they go into and now sit in prison, where they also rot. even now, more keep dying and a little part of james cracks each time. each time he gets the phone call that one more person didn’t make it out this time and he has to go to a funeral of junkies with too much money and he has to see people he loved get put in the ground and that’s… so heavy for him. he went really hard, and his friends did too and he was lucky, and he doesn’t get why he had to be the one who made it out alive and they don’t. and i think sometimes he dumps that on laney, which isn’t fair, but ur man james over here can’t handle all this Weigh sometimes and he jsut needs to cry on the kitchen floor because this world is brutal and unfair and nothing makes sense and he just wants someone to understand that he feels like he’s drowning most of the time and how come in a world of drowning people he’s the only one with just enough air to stay alive. he’s a sweet prince but boy does he have a lot of baggage.

#mazerp #* otp: james & laney.#the others are under read more bc...#they're Too Sad

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spector · 6 years ago

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second dp2 viewing thots:

hgngnng cable hot

i fully missed juggernaut calling him a midget at one point, this is goddamn incredible its still so funny to me, LET CABLE BE A MANLET

nate’s gun IS! SO! LOUD! KEEPS MAKING ALL THESE NOISES JUST LIKE HIS ARM, HE NEEDS AN ASMR CHANNEL PRONTO

god he fucking loves his fuckin tactical knife from the future its honestly the best thing?? he goes at wade (whos dual wielding katanas) with just his knife at one point hes such a chaotic knife bastard i love him

HE EVEN LIKE. when at the end that principal is shouting shit at them, the first thing he does is just pull out the knife and bark back, just! SCHWING!!!! we love an aggressive knife bitch !!!!! REPLACE BIG GUN WITH JUST KNIVES

he says he hates dubstep but his theme is just like. future trap music. btw the score is acutally pretty good at moments, i might like it more than what junkie xl did for first deadpool

this movie is so weird bc... i caught myself thinking ‘wow, the editing is pretty good??’ during the first part of the movie, but after the convoy scene it goes to shit??? did the editors switch mid-movie or

i am allowed to have one (1) bad opinion in my life and im cashing that in by saying that baby legs scene is fucking funny, i will die on this hill

BUT NOTHING. ABSOTLUTELY NOTHING. WILL BEAT THE SCENE. WITH CABLE, DP AND DOM IN THE CAB. because josh brolin’s decision to have cable lean in and say ‘spoiler alert, youre no hero. youre just a clown dressed as a sex toy’ and lean back with a?? INCREDIBLY SELF-ACCOMPLISHED SMILE AND A SENSE OF LIKE ‘yeaaa i showed him’ its jsut so fucking funny like im laughing as im typing this

as james put it once, he basically calls wade a fuckable juggalo and reclines, satsified

i also missed the scene in which he calls wade a buttplug. who. who-- who calls other people ‘buttplug’. like. what is going on im crying why does he keep sexualizing wade (i mean i know why but)

theres a ?? genuine moment of emotional connection during the baby legs scene where cable tells his manpain backstory and wade actually looks him in the eye and says hes sorry and nate is so taken back by a genuine emotional reaction he just slightly-- moves his head and grunts, we love a caveman

remarks wade made at nate: swiping right, grindr jokes. remarks nate made at wade: FUCKABLE JUGGALO, BUTTPLUG

conclusion: hes [REDACTED] for wade

when the t-bagging scene happens, wade breaks the 4th wall and narrates the slow mo but also. just chills and puts his arms behind his head in a relaxed position before smothering nate with his crotch. the muffled grunt that follows this scene will haunt me in my dreams

speaking of, when wade dies for the first time (in the finale), nathan just looks at dom, grunts awkwardly and starts shuffling away. incredible.

I STILL. dont feel like post-credits scenes are canon because how would?? some kids fix a time-travelling device from the future like dont get me wrong i love those funky lesbiams but???? that is literally so fucking weird

i thnk i had more shit to say but i forgot it im very sleep deprived rn. all in all, i like this movie, its tight, but third act... third act comes off a bit... hm... weird. something shifts and the movie doesnt flow right anymore, it feels like it underwent some reshoots or re-cuts?? the dialogue seems forced at times and the editing aint as smooth as before and im pretty sure there are some ADR lines added... STILL THE MIDPOINT IS SO TIGHT, the convoy scene and ice box scene are cinematic masterpieces, thanks!

#dp2 spoilers #deadpool 2 spoilers #im not proofreading htis i had 2h of sleep today

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tmcastandcrew · 7 years ago

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Hollywood star Simon Baker said he had no acting ambitions at first

April 28, 2018

Thank you @YohkoTheHunter

Huge Interview ahead >>

He was working as a pool attendant at the newly opened Sanctuary Cove resort. Any spare time, any spare thought, was spent chasing waves on the Gold Coast, and crashing with his surfie mates at their fibro shack which backed on to the beach at Surfers Paradise. It was the twilight of the 1980s and Simon Baker, a carefree school graduate, had no idea, and no real cares, about what lay ahead.

“No, no, no, I didn’t have any acting dreams,” the now 48-year-old father-of-three insists when U on Sunday sits down with him at the plush QT Hotel in Surfers Paradise for a chat about his latest film, Breath, based on Tim Winton’s novel.

It’s about 30 years since Baker lived here. In the interim, his ruggedly handsome face, sharp blue eyes and self-deprecating smile have taken him all the way to Hollywood Boulevard, where he has his own star on the sidewalk; and seen him receive critical acclaim, and an adoring fan base for his movie roles (Red Planet,The Devil Wears Prada and Margin Call) and television gigs (The Guardian, and his most famous role as maverick police consultant Patrick Jane on The Mentalist).

Not surprisingly, this same natural charm led to Baker’s first acting opportunity which came by accident rather than by design. And it happened in Brisbane.

“We were going camping,” he says, setting up the story of how he and a mate were driving up from the Coast when his friend said they had to make a slight detour into Brisbane because he had an audition for a TV ad.

“My friend told me I could wait in the car or come in and hang out; so I came into the waiting room and the casting woman came in with a clipboard and said to me ‘Have you signed in’ and I said: ‘Oh no, I’m just here with a friend’, and she said, ‘why don’t you sign in and go in’.

“I had never done drama or improvisation before. I was used to knocking around with my mates – a bit of jive talk on the beach, on the streets, that’s all,’’ he laughs.

Needless to say he got the gig. Two years later he landed a job on the Australian TV soapie E Street (“I wasn’t trying for it,’’ he again insists) playing fresh-faced Constable Sam Farrell. It was on that series that he met his future wife, Gold Coast-raised actor Rebecca Rigg.

Baker apologises in advance for eating during our chat. His mop of boyish golden-curled hair and grey flecked-stubble is lit with a wide grin, and deep laugh before he proceeds to wolf down a salad wrap and some fruit pieces. He is refuelling after making the most of a rare break from promotional duties at last week’s Queensland premiere of Breath at the Gold Coast Film Festival, to catch up for “a quick paddle with the boys’’.

The boys are Samson Coulter and Ben Spence who play the lead roles of Pikelet, 13, and Loonie, 14, in the film. Baker co-wrote, co-produced and co-stars in Breath which is also his directorial debut.

As a father of two teenage boys himself, Baker has developed a strong bond with his young proteges with Coulter from Sydney and Spence from Western Australia.

Baker’s own family are never far from his mind, and, at an exclusive U on Sundayphoto shoot earlier at Burleigh Heads, he was keen to capture a shot of the stunning beach scene to show his tribe at home. He celebrates 20 years of marriage this year to Rigg and the couple has three children, Stella Breeze, 24, Claude Blue, 19, and Harry Friday, 16.

He says all of his children go for a “paddle now and then’’ but it is his youngest Harry, who has inherited his father’s passion for surfing.

“It’s a great joy in seeing him (Harry) surf and catch waves,’’ he explains. “I like seeing him gain trust and physical confidence in himself; to trust his wits in certain situations, because that is what a lot of what surfing teaches you.’’

Baker explains he tries to find the right balance between encouraging Harry and ensuring he doesn’t pressure his son to tackle challenging waves he is not yet ready for, because “you can’t push them into those things’’. He says it is important that Harry develops his surfing skills at his own pace.

This caring fatherly approach is the opposite pathway taken by his character “Sando’’ in the coming of age film Breath. The adrenaline-junkie Sando is former world professional surfing star Bill Sanderson who becomes like a “guru’’ to his “wide-eyed disciples’’ Bruce “Pikelet” Pike and best friend Ivan “Loonie” Loon.

Pikelet and Loonie, under the tutelage of Sando, learn to surf increasingly bigger and more dangerous monster waves as Sando conditions their minds and bodies to pursue the extraordinary. Pikelet’s parents, played by Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake, remain oblivious to their son’s adventures, as Sando lures, even bullies, them on his increasingly perilous missions.

Roxburgh says Baker is a natural director, and an excellent mentor to the young novice actors.

“I was attracted to working with Simon because I’ve always thought he was a lovely bloke, a terrific actor, and I thought he would work really well with the young actors,’’ he says.

Roxburgh says his role as the staid and reserved father becomes a counterpoint to Baker’s risk-taking and larger-than-life Sando.

“My character is part of the domestic backdrop, I’m often at the garden shed, being very kindly and terribly worried about my son’s wellbeing. I know something is wrong, but I cannot identify it,’’ Roxburgh says.

When Sando and Loonie go overseas on a big-wave excursion, an unsettled Pikelet starts spending unhealthy periods of time alone with Sando’s headstrong wife Eva (Elizabeth Debecki), who carries a permanent knee injury from competitive aerial skiing.

“The film is about the anguish of parenting, of being a parent and watching your son moving and shifting away, being pulled away from you in this strong current and the terrible fear that goes with that,’’ Roxburgh says.

It took Sydney-based Baker a year to cast the two leading actors after a social media call-out to competent surfers netted thousands of entries from around the country including many from Queensland’s Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.

Baker, who did much of his own surfing, is surprised that Winton envisaged him as Sando for the film version of his 2009 Miles Franklin Award winner and much-loved bestseller.

“I suppose I don’t know too many actors who surf, there’s a few that have a paddle,’’ Baker says. “I’m at that point, where it is sort of getting sad, because my body is not keeping up with what my heart and mind want to do, sometimes it’s humiliating and sometimes it’s exhilarating.’’

When producing partner Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad) gave Baker the novel to read in 2015 he was immediately smitten and secretly harboured dreams to direct a film adaptation. Baker has directed several episodes of his television shows, including The Mentalist, over the years.

“We started meeting with a few different directors and started developing the script and at one point Mark turned around and literally said ‘has it occurred to you, that you should direct this film’ and I said ‘Yes’,’’ Baker says.

He did have doubts and he worried about time constraints, but then his seven-year contract on The Mentalist ended.

He has devoted several years to bringing the film to the screen including extensive scouting of the Western Australia coast, where the novel is set, and finding the perfect locations on the southern coastline at Denmark and Ocean Beach.

Baker enlisted “colourful’’ Brisbane-based screenwriter Gerard Lee (Top of the Lake) to help with the film script.

“I knew I had to reduce it down to certain key thematic moments and hone in on those and the story, I had to let go of the book in a lot of ways,’’ he says.

Tasmanian-born Baker sees some similarities with his own childhood, growing up in Lennox Heads, on the northern NSW coast, and spending plenty of time at the beach with his surfing buddies. The former Ballina High School student admits he was more like the reserved and restrained Pikelet than the confident and thrillseeking Loonie or Sando.

“I grew up riding around with a pushbike with my mates, discovering the ocean and surfing,’’ Baker says. “There are a lot of parallels there with the book but there are obvious parallels with a lot of people who grew up in Australia.’’

Roxburgh agrees: “Tim Winton can really write about water, especially about the nature of water: what it is; what it does for us; and what it is to be with it; and to live with such a passion for it.’’

It was while growing up that Baker first developed a love for going to the movies.

“As a kid I would go to see a movie and I would be instantly transported by the story and characters. You go, ‘oh wow, I would like to do that one day’,’’ he says.

The 1957 American classic Old Yeller, about a young boy and his ill-fated dog, profoundly affected him as a Year 3 student.

“It’s funny because I watched Old Yeller with my kids 10 years ago and they were saying ‘why are you making us watch this?’,’’ he says. “It’s so heartbreaking and powerful. I can track back the emotional impact that cinema has had on me over the years to that point.

“I still get so excited about going to the movies, getting a choc-top, sitting in that dark room and letting a film take me away.’’

Baker grew up as Simon Denny – the name of his stepfather – but changed it to Simon Denny Baker after reuniting with his birth father as an adult. He later dropped the Denny part.

In 1993 he won the Logie for most popular new talent and then appeared in Home and Away (as James Hudson: 1993-1994) and Heartbreak High (as Tom Summers: 1996).

Baker and Rigg – who married in 1998 after five years of living together – decided to try their luck in the US, which became their base for 18 years.

Soon after arriving, he landed a role as troubled gay actor Matt Reynolds in the Oscar-winning LA Confidential (1998) and a couple of years later snared the key role of lawyer Nick Fallin in the television series The Guardian (2001-2004).

But it was his role as the cheeky and sharp-minded former conman Patrick Jane on The Mentalist (2008-15) which saw an astronomic popularity rise, especially among women. It was rumoured he signed a contract that delivered a payment of $US30 million for his role as Jane. Some 17 million watched the final episode of The Mentalist in the US alone.

His rising profile also led to contracts promoting prestigious French perfume house Givenchy as well as Longines watches.

“I take my hat off to Simon, and others, who have moved to America and have achieved over there,’’ Roxburgh says.

For Baker, his focus is not on the past but on the future, and that continues to look bright with the actor recently optioning Winton’s latest novel The Shepherd’s Hut.

“You should read it,’’ suggests Baker, flashing that trademark winning smile once more.

#simon baker #simonshoots #simon 2018

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mozgoderina · 7 years ago

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Through a legend, darkly (The Globe and Mail) / Chet Baker

When Bruce Weber's Let's Get Lost had its world premiere in September, 1988, at the Venice International Film Festival, it was hailed by some as both a masterpiece -- and a masterpiece of good timing.

The reason: On May 13 of that same year, the subject of Weber's film, jazz legend Chet Baker, had plunged to his death from a hotel window in Amsterdam -- just a year after Weber had spent six months, off and on, filming Baker in various locales across Europe and the United States.

Not surprisingly, Let's Get Lost came to be seen less as a portrait of a talented, troubled artist than an invitation to read every crease in Baker's once-pretty face, every lovelorn lyric he sang and every moody melody he played as an intimation of doom. Was Baker's end a suicide? Murder? An accident precipitated by the drug abuse that, along with music, had been the major motif in Baker's life?

Visitors to this year's Toronto International Film Festival get to consider all the singer's highs and lows anew when Let's Get Lost is screened tomorrow as part of the festival's Dialogues series. Weber, now 60, will be there, talking with Canadian broadcaster Ross Porter (who prepared a Chet Baker documentary of his own for CBC Radio several years ago) and Douglas Brinkley, head of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization at Tulane University in New Orleans. Weber is also bringing Scottish singer Angela McCluskey to perform the Baker classic, My Foolish Heart.

Weber's appearance is a homecoming of sorts: Let's Get Lost had its North American premiere, just a few days after its Venice launch, at what was then called the Toronto Festival of Festivals. The TIFF screening marks the start of a second commercial life for Let's Get Lost, for which Weber spent almost a year preparing a restored print. It's going to be re-released in theatres early next year, in tandem with the release of an expanded version (28 songs in total) of the soundtrack issued in 1989, followed by the DVD of the film.

The man who would go on to become a world-famous photographer first became interested in Baker when Weber was still a dreamy 16-year-old living in rural Pennsylvania, and spotted a photo of him in a Pittsburgh record store on the cover of the 1955 vinyl LP Chet Baker Sings and Plays with Bud Shank, Russ Freeman and Strings. Included among the 10 tracks was Baker's cover of the Jimmy McHugh-Frank Loesser composition Let's Get Lost.

Later, Weber would say that seeing Baker's chiselled features and muscular physique in a knit T-shirt "was sort of the way I always wished I had looked, or wished I had known somebody like that."

But it wasn't just Baker's looks that appealed to Weber: Playing Chet Baker Sings, he told James Gavin, author of a controversial 2002 biography of Baker called Deep in a Dream, "I heard a sound . . . that was beckoning me to go West. It was a sound you felt when you listened to the ocean, when you were at the beach late in the afternoon."

In 1986, Weber directed his first feature film Broken Noses, a documentary about a hunky Olympic hopeful named Andy Minsker and the troubled youngsters he coached in a boxing club in Oregon. When it came time to do the soundtrack, Weber went to the cool California sounds of his youth -- Joni James, Julie London, Gerry Mulligan and, of course, Baker.(It's now Weber's belief that "you can literally film anything and put Chet's music with it and it'll work, you know?" he said in our interview. "Someone will say to me, 'Bruce, I'm doing a film about my grandmother.' And I always say, 'Oh, why don't you put some Chet Baker music with it?' ")

It was while finishing Broken Noses that Weber finally connected with the object of his adolescent desire, at a club in New York. Except Weber was by then a bearish 40 and Baker a hollow man of 57 dreaming of speedballs and looking, in the words of one writer, "more like Jack Palance than Jimmy Dean."

Nevertheless, Weber was enamoured. After persuading the trumpeter to do a photo session, then a three-minute "documentary" in a vermin-infested tenement, he suggested the two of them do a longer film and Baker assented. Shooting began the following January. That May, when Weber premiered Broken Noses (whose sole opening credit reads "To Chet Baker") at Cannes, he brought Baker and Minsker along with him -- and shot footage for Let's Get Lost along the way.

Today Weber describes Let's Get Lost as "a very ad hoc film. When we had some money and some time, we'd just go and do it." By the end, he had poured more than $1-million (U.S.) of his own money into the film, which he now calls "my grad-school project."

Working with an often cranky junkie who had an ill-fitting set of dentures and "no concept of holding onto 10 cents for tomorrow," was occasionally a strain. But 20 years later, Weber confesses that he kind of misses him.

"Chet was really fun when he was in a good frame of mind," he says. "He saw the world like a kid. There was this strange kind of innocence about him. . . . He really took pleasure in simple things. He had this kind of backyard mentality, 'I'm just happy sitting under the apple tree.' When the waves are spraying just so, the wind's nice, I still like to say, 'It's a Chet kind of day.' "

One of the most striking conceits of Let's Get Lost has also proved to be its most controversial: Weber staged numerous events -- such as the visit to Cannes, a reunion with photographer William Claxton (who had immortalized the young Chet), and cruises in a convertible down Santa Monica Boulevard.

Weber also convinced Baker to don some posh threads and have himself worked on by a hairstylist, makeup artist and dresser. Occasionally, he surrounded the trumpeter with attractive young women -- the sort Baker no doubt had partied with 35 years earlier -- and men (Minsker, singer Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Chris Isaak) whose unlined good looks Weber contrasted with Baker's cadaverous visage.

Later, the filmmaker brought that same blend of fantasy and reality to bear on Baker's estranged third wife, Carol, and their three children, Dean, Paul and Melissa (all of whom are now in their 40s), when he filmed them at their home in Stillwater, Okla.

"I don't think Bruce Weber's a true documentary maker," Baker's widow told me in a recent interview. Now in her mid-60s, she met Chet in 1960 when she was a 19-year-old English showgirl in Italy, married him in 1964, and never divorced. Since this past June, she has been living in Toronto, where she is considering settling for good after meeting local promoter-artist Jhames Lee and naming him executive director of something called the Chet Baker Foundation, which recently put on a three-day tribute to the artist in the city.

"Giving you haircuts and telling you what clothes to put on and driving you around in an expensive convertible isn't about making a documentary," said Baker's widow. "A documentary, to me, is about what you are."

She is writing her own story of life with her famous husband and, Lee promises, "It'll be the definitive book . . . since there's nothing definitive about Chet out there at all," including, she says, the Gavin biography, which she characterizes as "a trash job, so disgusting -- negative, negative, negative."

Weber is quietly unapologetic. "I kind of like films where they're kind of like a project on how to live your life. . . . They're not like a tunnel view of the subject where, you know, you're locked in a chronology or you just talk with the people you're supposed to talk to and it's all about the old days."

It's likely Weber's go-with-the-flow approach will be fully in evidence in another upcoming feature: a documentary about Robert Mitchum, which Weber started filming in the mid-1990s, but put on hold when the actor died in 1997, and, he says, "I got hauled off into other stuff."

Now Weber says he's going to have that doc finished for a 2007 release and -- get ready for it -- there are going to be scenes of Mitchum singing with Marianne Faithful, Dr. John and Rickie Lee Jones. For Weber, it seems, the stranger the bedfellows, the better the biopic.

Source: The Globe and Mail / Written by James Adams. Link: Through a legend, darkly Illustration: William Claxton. 'Chet Baker at the piano, Hollywood', 1954. Moderator: ART HuNTER. ✓ FAcEBook pAGE → ✓ piNTEREsT BoARD →

#jazz #brainslide bedrock great art talk #article #chet baker #the globe and mail

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dazzledbyrob · 7 years ago

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NEW INTERVIEW WITH ESQUIRE UK

Robert Pattinson’s Darker Materials

Three years since he last met Esquire, Robert Pattinson remains dedicated to redefining himself as an expressive actor beyond the teen-hero hysteria of his early career. In his new film, gritty heist thriller Good Time, he finds redemption as a cold-hearted criminal and achieves the almost supernaturally impossible — walking around New York unrecognised

When he was shooting his latest movie, Good Time, in Queens last year, Robert Pattinson would start the day with a run. And he’d be recognised, as always. Such is life for the 31-year-old actor formerly known as Edward Cullen, the broody vampire in the Twilight movies. Over five years and five films, he inspired such a vast and hysterical following that more than any star of his generation he became a prisoner of his own celebrity. He was forced to sell his home in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, because of paparazzi at the gates. They trailed him everywhere, entailing all kinds of Jason Bourneism, like swapping clothes with friends and assistants in restaurant bathrooms, sending them off in decoy cars, up to five at a time. And if he failed, if just one tweet went out with his location, then armies of paps and Twi-hards, crazed and shrieking, would come galloping over the horizon like the Dothraki hordes.

But after each run, something extraordinary happened. He got into costume as his character in Good Time, Connie Nikas, a Greek-American criminal from Queens, and just like that, the staring stopped. He could walk down the street unmolested. This latest film is his best performance by some distance, an electric, adrenalin shot of a movie that will establish him as one of the most vital actors of the day, so there’s that. But this gift of anonymity may be equally precious. Good Time will put Pattinson’s name in lights while simultaneously helping him blend into the background. Shooting it gave him his life back. It’s handed the prisoner a set of keys, because as Nikas, Pattinson could move through the world again. He was free.

“It was amazing. Invisibility cloak,” he says. “I’ve always wondered what can you do, just a simple thing to your face so you can just… exist in the world. And now I know. Darken your beard and put on these acne scar things and people will look directly into your face, and not even a glimmer. It’s fascinating. Also earrings, there’s something about fake diamond earrings.”

He looks a bit Connie Nikas today, actually. We’re in a booth at a private member’s club in West Hollywood, and he’s wearing a sports jacket on top of a hoodie, never mind that this is the height of summer. The jacket’s Lacoste; very hipster I tell him. And he laughs.

“Is anyone not a hipster now? I think it’s just normal culture,” he says. “Anyway, I found this on eBay so, you know… I’d be cool if I had it from school, like, ‘I’ve had this for aaages. I still dress exactly like I did when I was 12.’ Ha ha ha!”

He looks happy, energised, garrulous. The hands move around, the Lacoste rustles, he’s chewing on a toothpick and tipping his head back to laugh and laugh. He looks like a guy who made a bet on himself and won, which he did. And this is what he’s here to tell us: chase what you want in life, take the risk, who cares what people think in the end. This is your life, not theirs.

The last time I saw Pattinson for Esquire, three years ago, he’d only just made that bet. He came over to my house for lunch, and we got the barbecue going, there were beers — things celebrities never do — and we talked about The Rover, a film he made with director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom). It was his first major step on the route away from Twilight and towards Good Time, a life that he actually wanted. He’d made a pact with himself to only pick roles that were unlike anything he’d done before, that would broaden him as an actor and human being, and to work only with film-makers he loved, with no compromise. So post-Twilight, his CV is just one auteur after the next, in a string of movies that don’t make money but are always compelling. Besides The Rover, there’s his second film with David Cronenberg, 2014’s Maps to the Stars; The Childhood of a Leader directed by his friend Brady Corbet; The Lost City of Z with the film-maker’s film-maker, James Gray, not to mention the Safdie brothers, Josh and Benny, who made Good Time.

Back in 2014, he was living next to rap impresario Suge Knight in a gated community on Mulholland Drive, still in hiding from Twilight fans. It was a secluded life, with just an inflatable boat and an assistant for company. “Aww, I miss my assistant,” he says. “He’s now a real estate agent in Phoenix. Couldn’t take it any more. 'All you do is play video games!’” Most of Pattinson’s time was spent in one room, watching films and reading books, much as it is today.

“Probably my fondest memory from that house is watching the first three seasons of Game of Thrones over four days.” He laughs. “So lame that’s my fondest memory!”

He dreamed of escape. #Vanlife on Instagram became an obsession, posts celebrating the nouveau hippy world of attractive young surfer types living the free-spirit life in camper vans, free of all material possessions beyond a hammock, a book of poetry and a mobile phone to upload selfies to madden people in cubicle offices.

“I nearly did it,” Pattinson says. “I was 100 per cent going to live in a van, but not just any van — a stealth van! It’s a special niche, not like living in a trailer. Stealth vans looks like a normal Transit van, so you can park on the street, put signs on saying you’re a plumber or whatever and no one would notice.”

Van life promised anonymity, freedom, mobility: all the things he missed and wanted.

“It’s that thing, where you can just leave in the middle of the night and, like, drive to Nebraska,” he says. “And with solar power, you’re totally off the grid. I’d love that so much. And I was like, I’m still young, this is my chance…”

So he looked into it. The Mercedes-Benz Sprinter looked tidy; it had a toilet and shower in the back. But no.

“The Sprinter’s too fancy. It draws attention. So I visited different companies to retro- fit Transit vans but it’s complicated,” he says. “Once you build [in] a toilet and shower yourself, you can’t get it insured and blah blah blah.”

Still, he hasn’t ruled it out. One day, maybe. For now, though, instead of Nebraska, he moved five minutes down the road, to another secluded mansion in the hills. Only this time it’s not quite such a Spartan existence. He lives with “Twigs”, aka FKA Twigs, the British singer, and their little dog Solo. He won’t talk about her, though they may be engaged after three years together. And one can’t blame him; the Twi-hard fanbase has already subjected her to a torrent of racist abuse. Which is partly why they spend half their time in London, out east near Hackney Downs (hipster level: high). Pattinson gets hassled much less back home. “I go around on my bike,” he says, “so I’m basically a ghost.”

He was deep into #vanlife when he saw a still from the Safdie brothers’ movie of 2014, Heaven Knows What. It was just a close-up of the actress Arielle Holmes in a pink/blue light, her eyes sunken and strung out as if on heroin; she was playing a homeless junkie, a life she’d led until Josh Safdie approached her in a Manhattan subway and asked to make a film about her. The realism was palpable. And Pattinson was hooked at once: he had to work with these people.

“It was so cool, this photo, it had an amazing vibe, but also they’re American. Normally with an image like that, the director turns out to be Czech or something,” he says. “And my agents hadn’t heard of them either, so I knew I’d found something before anybody else.” This is what Pattinson loves more than anything — making discoveries.

Without even seeing the movie, he wrote the Safdies an email rich with compliments, a tried and tested ploy. “I basically say, 'Look, I’m not playing. I like very little and I like this thing you did, I think you’re good, and I just… know!’ And after that I call repeatedly.”

He’s done this with James Gray, with acclaimed French film director Claire Denis (who’s writing and directing his next film High Life). It’s a winning strategy. “I realised about four years ago, this is the best way to do it. I don’t even tell my agents.”

At first, Josh Safdie was hesitant. He was working on a movie about New York’s diamond district and Pattinson just wasn’t right for it. But they clicked, and once they met up, Josh saw something: “He has a wounded war veteran vibe to him, like there’s a major trauma in his life and he’s constantly trying to hover, trying not to be seen. I thought that was perfect for a guy on the run.” So the Safdies created a project for Pattinson, essentially writing him a movie.

“The thing about Josh and Benny,” Pattinson says, “is their energy and drive. It’s astonishing. And that’s how their movies feel, like there’s too much fuel in the car! I wanted that energy, something superkinetic. A lot of the stuff I’d done before was reactive, so I wanted to be forced into a situation. That’s their tone: runaway train. Their genre is literally panic. And that’s kind of who I am as well. So I said, 'Just push push push, be as audacious as possible.’”

The story centres around Connie, a sociopathic street criminal who can’t stand the thought of his mentally challenged brother Nick — played brilliantly by Benny Safdie — being institutionalised. So Connie takes him on a bank robbery, the first of several terrible decisions, each one cascading chaotically into the next. It’s a film that seizes you by the lapels and doesn’t let go for 100 minutes.

Unlike anything else he’s done, Pattinson was involved throughout the writing process. He was in the jungle in Colombia at the time, making The Lost City of Z, a gnarly experience by all accounts: he has stories of picking maggots out of his beard, and crew members being bitten by snakes. But at the day’s end, he’d find a volley of emails (there’s wi-fi in the Amazon, apparently) from the Safdies about Connie Nikas, about criminals, about the world of their movie.

They worked together painstakingly on Connie’s backstory, and Robert read all the books the brothers were inspired by, The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer and In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott. He watched the documentaries they sent over, notably One Year in a Life of Crime (1989) by John Alpert, and episodes of Cops, the Nineties reality TV that featured police chasing down and arresting a whole menagerie of street criminals. Josh calls it “America’s greatest TV series”. There would often be dialogue or behaviour that would be useful in building Connie Nikas. By the time Pattinson was ready to move to Queens, he was already halfway there.

Pattinson doesn’t do method; he’s more or less untrained, apart from a short stint in the Barnes Theatre Company aged 15. The Safdies introduced him to a new level of improvisation and research. They had Robert as Connie writing Nick letters as though from prison. Then they went on a tour of the Manhattan Detention Complex.

“Rob came as Connie, but he didn’t have the accent yet so he just looked around and kept to himself,” says Josh Safdie. They met people that Connie might be friends with. “My friends at Lucky’s Automotive Repair in Yonkers, basically. We started bringing Benny in as Nick then.” And from there, Rob and Benny took their characters out into the world, going to Dunkin’ Donuts, even working at a car wash together for a week.

“We had Nick drive the cars off after they went through,” says Benny. “But Nick has issues. He can’t do what Connie wants him to, so there was tension between them, it almost got violent. And that’s what we wanted. We wanted to give Rob a history of the emotions he would feel in certain moments.”

Critically, though, no one clocked Pattinson through all this. The car wash manager knew who he was, but no one else did, and they didn’t ask. It was a revelation. As Connie — with the clothing, hair and makeup — Pattinson could go unrecognised to such a degree that when they shot a scene toward the end in an apartment block, local residents didn’t even see him as an actor. They knew a movie star was in their midst but had heard it was Bradley Cooper.

“So, I was in this packed elevator and people were like, 'Yo, you like Bradley Cooper’s security guard?’ It was amazing,” Pattinson says. One of the joys of Good Time is remembering just how different Robert and his character Connie actually are. Pattinson is from south-west London, where he went to The Harrodian, a nice public school in Barnes. The son of a vintage-car salesman father and a model-booker mother, he grew up middle class and comfortable, an artistic type who set out after a music career (his band’s name: Bad Girls) before acting won out. He never came across characters like Connie Nikas in real life, so he imagined them; they were “fantasy figures”, as he calls them. And as such, no less influential.

“Growing up, you see Pacino and you want to be that,” he says, and then laughs. “I sound like a dick already, comparing myself to Pacino!”

But the point is sound; to Pattinson, Connie falls into the tradition of Pacino’s Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon, or Robert De Niro’s Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, the very characters who inspire people like Pattinson to become actors in the first place. Like all middle-class kids, he craved Connie’s authenticity.

“Everyone wants to say, 'I’ve gone through hardships’ or whatever. And some kids at school got so obsessed with looking tough that eventually they just were. They were mugging people. It’s like, 'Why are you mugging people? You live in Wimbledon!’ But you could see the progression,” he says. “It was born out of desire, not necessity. It’s fascinating.”

As for Pattinson, he just lied.

“I decided the best way to be real is to fake it! I used to lie all the time when I was younger. Like even though I had a London accent, I’d tell people I grew up on a farm in Yorkshire. That was about as gritty as I could pull off.”

His own life of crime was limited to stealing porn mags, aged 11, a story he told US shock jock Howard Stern. Eventually, he was caught, of course, the moment of humiliation seared into his memory as, in front of a line of old ladies collecting their pensions, the shop owner reached into his bag and pulled out one jazz mag after another.

“I turned on the tears and everything. I was desperate!” he says. “And when my mum heard, I totally threw one of my friends under the bus: 'Dan did it!’ It’s pretty terrifying when you’re backed against the wall. When people ask how would you behave in an emergency, now I know. I’m a wimp! I guess that’s pretty obvious!”

He says wimp, but there’s a quiet strength behind that self-effacing, affable front. Not everyone would confess to being a cowardly kid, or lying about their background, as insecure people don’t admit their flaws so freely. One of the reasons he was so drawn to the role of Connie, for instance, was the character’s lack of fear or shame. “I’m the opposite. Shame is the most crippling thing. I don’t even know what it is, it’s not connected to any other emotion. So I choose work to directly combat elements of my own personality.”

Josh Safdie spotted Pattinson’s ambition early on. “There’s a mania to him,” he says. “A manic desire to conquer the world. I was very happy to see it.”

And for all his self-deprecation, there’s a pride there in what he’s achieved post-Twilight. None of his subsequent film choices are obviously commercial, which suits him perfectly: low-budget indies, he says, have a lower bar to break even and with his international stardom, courtesy of Twilight in no small part, he can usually rest easy. Sometimes, his involvement is what makes these projects actually happen.

But artistically — and this is where he’s definitely not a wimp — every project is a risk, a test, a leap, yet another opportunity to fail and land very publicly on his arse. But that’s just how he likes it. The nerves, the threat of failure keep him interested.

“I like a big mountain to climb,” he says. “Some parts no one would think of me for, and I don’t blame them.”

Why go for those roles though, if they’re so against type? He shrugs.

“Probably just to prove I can, really.”

As the bill arrives for our meal, Pattinson chomps merrily through another round of toothpicks. It seems he’s been entirely sensible this time around. Not even one beer. “If I drink I’ll sound like a cock,” he says. “Actually, I probably sound like a cock already!” Anyway, he’s saving room for a cognac tasting later tonight with the Good Time producers. Not the kind of thing he does that often but these are heady times, what with the excitement around the movie, the critical acclaim. It’s such a buzz that even the press tour isn’t so painful. There’s room for some mischief at any rate.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he tried to make fun of Josh Safdie but it came out wrong. He told Kimmel that Safdie had asked him to jerk off a dog. “It got [animal charity] Peta angry… everyone. It was like a whole American uproar for a day-and-a-half,” Josh says. “He’s a little shit, I promise you. But I love that about him.”

For the most part, though, Pattinson leads a fairly quiet life. It’s just him, Twigs and Solo kicking around at home. When he’s not working, he says, he’s looking for work.

“I’m basically flicking through the pages of Loot every day. I live the life of an unemployed person.” And for him that means watching art house movies, trawling film-geek websites and — so long as Game of Thrones isn’t on — cold-calling directors.

In a couple of weeks, he’s off to Germany for cosmonaut training for the movie he’s making with Claire Denis. It’s about another ex-con, this time in space as part of a human reproduction experiment. He mentioned it in a Q&A session in LA after a screening of Good Time, and no one in the audience had heard of Denis. Such is Pattinson’s particular taste.

“I don’t think Claire has made a bad movie in, like, 20, but I don’t know if any have been commercially successful!” he laughs. “That’s what it’s like in France. There’s a market there for less conventionally commercial movies, and that’s the world I want to be a part of. I just want to do stuff that people are only making for themselves, because it ends up being, by definition, more singular.”

The project that has him excited comes at the end of the year: The Devil All the Time, by Antonio Campos, who made Christine last year, a brilliant drama about a depressive Seventies news anchor in Florida. (For the record, Pattinson cold-called him too.) “There’s this line in it — and sometimes that’s all you need. And it’s like, 'Ooh… that’s scary to say’. Because it’ll go down in posterity and I’ll be the one saying it. You literally cannot get darker. It’s fucking dark. This character is an evangelical preacher in the South in the Fifties, but he’s gleefully bad and kind of funny and charismatic too. I know, it’s irresistible.”

Like, sexually repulsive, violent?

“Mmm… yes, all that. But you know when actors say, 'I refuse to play someone who does something bad.’ I’m, like, why? That’s fucking crazy. You can’t do anything bad in your real life. I think if someone needs to play a hero all the time, it’s probably because they’re doing really gross stuff in their real life.”

So you’re telling me, this is the only chance you get to be bad?

He laughs, and gets up to put on his Lacoste jacket, his camouflage, and flips up the hoodie underneath. Now he’s safe to leave our meeting without causing an incident. But it’s impossible now not to see shades of Connie, the sociopath bank robber from Queens.

“Yeah,” he grins. “The rest of the time, I’m an angel!”

Good Time is out on 3 November

#robert pattinson #robertpattinson

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