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now-i-understand-that-reference · 4 years

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I just remembered having this stashed somewhere in my library... It’s a movie dossier for Swing Kids (1993), featuring info about the cast, the production, and some nice colour photos. It’s pretty nice :)

Thought I’d share and leave a link to the pdf scan if anyone’s curious, but since the text is in French, I’ll leave a translation for the parts related to the production under the cut hoping that my knowledge of French is still enough after decades of not speaking it. I’ll leave out the historical background and the cultural information as you can probably read that online whenever you want :)

You can find the pdf here

PRODUCTION NOTES

From the rebellion to the participation

Jonathan Marc Feldman (screenwriter):

«Can a youth rebellion lead to an authentic revolt? This is the question I asked myself when learning about the existence of this protest movement, which was born under the nazi regime, and which was called The Swing Kids. These young people appeared to me as the symbol of the strength of the human spirit: if a revolt was able to express itself in such an oppressive context, are not all hopes allowed?»

Jonathan Marc Feldman’s script evokes the friendship between two seventeen-year-old adolescents, Peter Muller and Thomas Berger, both firmly determined not to enlist in the Hitler Youth. When circumstances beyond their control eventually force them to join the “JH”, the two boys claim they will resist their hold: they will be “JH” by day and “Swing Kids” by night. But is it possible to belong to a totalitarian movement without submitting to it with body and soul?

Robert Sean Leonard (Peter Muller):

«SWING KIDS begins in 1939, before the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Peter, like many young people, does not have a sharp political conscience, although he guesses what is happening in the country. He is divided between the swing, which allows him to “have a blast”, and the pride of serving his homeland by submitting. These two temptations are equally powerful, and it is only after discovering the true nature of nazism that Peter will make the right choice.»

Christian Bale (Thomas Berger):

«SWING KIDS is also, and above all, a movie about friendship. Peter and Thomas make divergent choices that will gradually distance them from each other. Thomas does not resist the seduction of the Hitler Youth, he lets the Party’s ideology corrupt him and becomes a cog of the nazi machine. But in the end, the friendship that ties him to Peter will win.»

The origins of the project

After discovering the existence of the Swing Kids in an obscure historical review, Jonathan Marc Feldman undertook in-depth personal research and collected solid documentation about this movement. Passionate about the subject, he quickly communicated his enthusiasm to producers Mark Gordon and John Bard Manulis, who dedicated four years to the development of the script. «It was clear that it could have given rise to a great movie» Gordon points out, «it was a rare opportunity to make a historical movie that speaks to today’s young people» adds Manulis, who personally funded the development of the script. «The Swing Kids looked for their identity in music and dance, just like the following generations, and it was fascinating to observe the contrast between the social oppression they were experiencing and the - incredibly free - form of expression they had adopted».

Jonathan Marc Feldman:

«The young Germans were attracted by the swing because it represented a new, wild, radically original sound. The swing of the years 38-39 possessed a violence that we can clearly perceive in the famous “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman. Moreover, this music was strictly forbidden, for its Jewish and black origin. The mere fact of listening to it was a political challenge.

These young people were fervent anglophiles, who walked with an umbrella at any season, wore Anthony Eden hats, puffy trousers, Scottish coats. They dressed with great elegance and let their hair grow like Hollywood cowboys. Rejected and despised by the good Germanic society, they were the hippies and the punks of their generation».

To make SWING KIDS, Mark Gordon and John Bard Manulis chose Thomas Carter, prestigious television director, winner of several Emmies, who here signs his first movie.

Thomas Carter:

«I immediately liked the SWING KIDS script. It illuminates a reality that few people know. It is both the painting of a generation and the story of a teenager faced with a painful choice that will make him a man».

John Bard Manulis:

«Thomas Carter is very interested in history and how it repeats itself. He captured all the dimensions of the subject, its nuances, its emotional substrate, and staged it brilliantly».

Filming

Mark Gordon Carter, co-producer Harry Benn and chief decorator Allan Cameron visited five countries in ten days before picking Czechoslovakia. The movie was filmed in Prague and in the Barrandos Studios.

Allan Cameron (chief decorator):

«The centre of Prague, which dates back to the Middle Ages, is of great beauty. There are still cobbled streets, beautiful buildings spared from the bombings, remarkable textures and colors. Another advantage: the architectural diversity of the Old Town makes it possible to recreate almost any city in Central Europe».

The main sets of the movie were built at Barrandov Studios, which are among the largest in Europe. Founded in 1931, they offer technical means and financial conditions that seduce international producers: in parallel with the filming of SWING KIDS, Lucasfilm produced the series “Young Indiana Jones” and BBC produced a new version of “The Trial”.

Other big sets were built at Barrandov, and about sixty interiors and exteriors were made with the help of a small British team surrounded by many local technicians. An old 18th century riding school served as the setting for the scene of the Hitler Youth gathering; a residence in the embassy district became the apartment of Thomas’s rich parents; the Prague Library was converted into the SS headquarters and a vast theatre room was redecorated from the top to the bottom for the spectacular sequences of the Bismarck Café.

Casting

In parallel with the location hunting, Carter and his producers started the casting operations by selecting Robert Sean Leonard, one of the protagonists of DEAD POETS SOCIETY, for the role of Peter.

Thomas Carter:

«Robert is an outstanding actor, both for his gifts and for his modesty and availability. We couldn’t have made a better choice. I personally consider him one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with».

To prepare for the role of Peter, which required his daily presence on the set during the ten weeks of filming, Leonard began by reading several studies about Nazi Germany. «But soon I understood that my character had no knowledge of how the Third Reich operated. So I focused my research on the swing, by listening to countless recordings of the great artists of this era. This dance rediscovers the madness of the Twenties and anticipates the promiscuity of the Sixties. Very physical, it entails a huge expenditure of energy and demands great vitality».

For the role of Thomas Berger, the producers hired Christian Bale, revelation of EMPIRE OF THE SUN, and for that of Arvid, Frank Whaley, one of the main performers of Oliver Stone’s THE DOORS. Barbara Hershey (crowned in Cannes for SHY PEOPLE and A WORLD APART) was chosen to play Frau Muller, Peter’s mother.

The other performers were selected with special care, in Austria, The Netherlands, Wales and the United States. «The casting was hard and required a lot of work» concludes Thomas Carter, «I am particularly pleased with it, as it has allowed us to rediscover the emotional atmosphere of the time».

The swing

Robert Sean Leonard and Christian Bale devoted many hours to learning swing, under the guide of New York choreographer Otis Sallid, to whom we owe the dance sequences of MALCOLM X. Sallid recruited a group of Czech, English, American and French dancers, that he initiated with his assistants to the provocative rhythms of swing, jitterbug and lindy hop, and to the “degenerate” music of Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Django Reinhardt, censored by the Reich for reasons of “racial impurity”.

Jonathan Marc Feldman:

«We picked the most attractive compositions for a contemporary ear and those that the Swing Kids actually listened to, that I was able to find. Among the latter are forgotten numbers such as “Harlem”, which was very popular at the time. By working with Robert Kraft at the re-recordings, we attempted to capture the extraordinary power, vitality of this music. In its beginnings, the swing did not resemble any other form of music. Later, it became more civilized and disciplined, but in the late Thirties it was deeply subversive, captivating. Young people gave themselves to it completely, forgetting about everything else...»

#swing kids #swing kids 1993 #Robert Sean Leonard #rsl #christian bale #barbara hershey #peter muller #thomas berger #frau muller #swing kids dossier #hopefully my translation from French to English does not suck #I’m not a native speaker of either lol #love this movie

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serenhyunjinity · 5 years

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apénanti [bang chan]

“i hear you’re into greek mythology”

SKZ BANG CHAN || CHRIS BANG

warnings: probably inaccurate descriptions

a day. finally i would be visiting greece, athens precisely, was near. greece was probably the most interesting country to me at least, and i couldn’t contain my excitement once the professor announced that twenty students had been selected to go on this whirlwind of a trip. how typical, out of the 2000 students that signed up to it, i was chosen.

meanwhile here i was, sat on my bed staring at the mounds of clothes which i was about to attempt, and most likely fail, to put into my large suitcase. the only bad thing about this certain trip was the fact my best friend and roommate, hayoung, did not get selected, meaning i was bound to be alone during a majority of my stay.

“i heard jinyoung is going” the short haired girl wiggled her eyebrows teasingly as she sat on the bed opposite mine, plugging in her charger to the wall behind.

“that’s nice to know” i mumbled as i squeezed the case together, just about zipping it up fully. “i’m not going there just to form relationships, i want to widen my knowledge on greek mythology not the science of romance”. saying this, hayoung let out a groan of annoyance as she stared directly at me.

“y/n you’re going to be there for four days, i’m sure you will have time to socialise too” i mean she was correct, but truthfully i just wanted to discover more about the culture, not eat someone’s face off in a drunken makeout session. “seriously though, it’s jinyoung, you’ve liked him since forever” she chuckled as i sighed deeply.

jinyoung was and has been my crush since i was the mere age of twelve, ever since he helped me with some math question which was probably easier than anything i’ve ever studied in university. he’s smart and handsome to say the least, but it’s obvious that he isn’t looking for a relationship any time soon. i mean he just broke up with a girl who he had been dating for around two years, all because she dissed the harry potter series.

“i don’t even want to date him” now that, was a blatant lie. “i barely have time for myself, let alone a relationship” a loud sigh was heard from the other side of the room. it was true though, 99% of the time i’m either studying or writing up presentations in a small café nearby, it would just be unfair on the partner if i did end up dating.

“you can’t be single forever y/n, who knows maybe you’ll find a cute greek boy” the shorter girl winked as she moved out of her spot, grabbing a magazine. “oh crap i need to go to class” i chuckled as she ran out of the room, sliding on shoes and dashing out of the door.

only sixteen hours, hopefully it would be at least a bit eventful.

time had passed by extremely quickly, i now sat on the airplane seat, beside a girl with headphones larger than her actual head and the dance major seulgi, who was reading some kind of romance book. from the corner of my eye i could see jinyoung, who had his eyes focused on a book which looked way too complicated for a casual reader.

the journey passed by after many hours, mainly consisting of me sleeping or reading about the gods within greece. although aphrodite always caught my eye, dare i say that she was indeed my personal favourite goddess. being the mother of cupid was truly something, although i’m not totally into romance, somehow i just couldn’t help but feel invested in the story of aphrodite and her family.

one by one, we stepped off the now landed airplane, the heat immediately hitting me in the face like fire. it definitely was a contrast to the slightly colder weather of where my university resided, but i was not complaining in the slightest. to put it lightly, it felt like pure bliss.

going through the city of athens on the coach was a long but interesting journey. seulgi still sat beside me but i could spot the old fashioned buildings which were a white tone, matching the whole typical aesthetic of the city. never in my life had i seen a place as beautiful as one like this.

it was now the next day, which meant i could finally explore the culture without anyone holding me back. that was possibly the best thing about this trip, the professors wanted to explore too, so you were allowed to wonder around as long as you didn’t stray out of the general area.

so that’s how i ended up here, standing outside of a large building covered in vines. the stone was either a chalk or a marble, but it looked stunning to say the least. it actually surprised me how it was able to hold itself up despite being thousands of years old.

i grabbed my camera and captured photos that would end up in my notebook, documenting the information that i would have gathered from my stay here. strangely enough though i didn’t find too much about the mythology that i expected. i knew everything that i had researched here, which was kind of disappointing but i should have expected it.

“they’re beautiful aren’t they?” a manly voice made it’s way towards my ears, causing my head to immediately turn to the one who was attempting to make conversation with me. little did i expect to see a boy who probably was only slightly taller than me, with white hair looking in my direction. he wore a white shirt which was not fully done up and black jeans which complimented his body well.

“y-yeah they are” i gave him a small smile before turning back to the building, capturing a few more photos before placing the camera back into its case.

“i hear you’re into greek mythology” i stopped what i was doing and looked up at him, confused. do i know him? he must’ve sensed my confusion as he chuckled, causing my heart to speed up in its pace. “i suggest going to olympus, you’ll find out more there” intriguing, maybe i should go there.

“oh thanks, are you from here or are you visiting?” i attempted to keep the small talk flowing as i moved to another white building which looked almost exactly like the one before.

“i guess you could say that i was from here” he nodded slightly and this gave me enough of a chance to look at his features carefully. he was beautiful. somehow i felt a sense of attachment to him, it was odd but i could get used to it, seeing as it’s much better than being uncomfortable at least. “do you want me to come with you?” he spoke and i hesitated, i don’t know whether or not the professor would actually allow you to travel so far.

“sure i’ll ask my professor” he smiled back and handed me a piece of paper. “call me if you are allowed then” the dimples on the side of his cheeks peeked out as he began to walk off.

eventually professor lee agreed, but that didn’t stop him from hesitating slightly when i mentioned i would be going with a boy that i had met just hours before. the first day here had been a success, although i was desperate to find out more about the gods and goddesses that once roamed greece, at least in ancient tales.

so now here i was, sitting on a bus with the white haired boy sat beside me, with his earphones in his ears. i gazed out of the window, we made sure to leave as early as possible so that we could explore for longer in the daylight. the sunrise illuminated the area below, causing an orange blanket to cover the buildings and fields. with a click of my camera, it was the beginning of a long journey.

three hours later, the bus stopped, we were here. masses of tourists hopped off the vehicle and disappeared from sight, wanting to explore immediately. i learned that the boy who i came with was named chan, but also went by the name chris. talking to him was interesting, he just sounded so invested in the mythology, particularly ares, the god of war.

the mountains sorrounded the area around us, seemingly going on for miles, i’m just glad that they had installed a lift to reach the peak, so that we could view the architecture. mine and chris’ conversations mainly consisted of our favourite foods and our lives back at home. i learnt that he was working to become a producer but he would give tours around athens as a side job.

now here we were, standing in front of a large building which had a red border sorrounding it, preventing anyone from actually touching and damaging the piece of history. chris went silent, his eyes focused on the architecture, as if he was looking back at a part of his own background. “isnt it ironic that ares married aphrodite, they were complete opposites” he chuckled and i nodded slightly.

it was true, the god of the unpleasant aspects of war married the goddess of love and beauty. it kind of was like a ying and yang type of scenario. it felt like we had been in the same area for hours, gazing at the white walls that were surprisingly not too cracked. most of the tourists had left the mountain, as it began to get colder as time went by, but neither chris or i were affected what so ever.

“i’ve always wondered how ares felt about zeus and hera despising their own son” as soon as i had mentioned that, the boy standing before me froze in his spot, before looking down at the lack of grass underneath our feet.

“he hated it” he chuckled but it didn’t sound sincere, almost as though he was finding the two gods pathetic. and with that, we kept walking. that was until a bolt of lightning erupted out of nowhere, with dark grey clouds smothering the previous blue skies.

“what the fuck” i muttered as i stopped in my steps, but chris wasn’t fazed, as if this was a daily occurrence for him. was i dreaming? no maybe it’s just a very random storm. another thunderbolt hit the ground and i jumped in shock, i’m gonna get fucking hit.

“father not now...please” chris looked up and sighed deeply. did he just say father? i’m so confused. that was when the sky glowed and a boom sounded, but it sounded like a voice in the faintest. “please don’t” he was now pleading, begging on his knees. is this some sort of joke?

suddenly i felt dizzy, my body feeling light as i glanced up at the sky once more. my ears vibrated and a high pitched noise took over, until a voice caused me to stop in my steps. “aphrodite” i looked around, nobody but chris and i stood. the voice was manly, like the typical movies where they have an extremely deep voice of a god. my eyes closed and before i knew it, i was casted into a deep sleep.

my eyes fluttered open, i was in a place which was a bright shade of white, the bright sky lit up the area. it felt unfamiliar yet so familiar, maybe i was still dreaming. i gazed down at my clothing, the strips of gold covering the white robe caught my eye immediately, diamond and gold jewellery covered my arms.

soon enough i lifted my body off the extremely comfortable bedding and looked around properly. expensive furniture covered the room, until i saw myself in the reflection of the mirror, a glow sorrounded my form and i gasped at the sight. i’m dreaming wake up y/n. although despite the many times i pinched my skin, it was clear, i was not dreaming.

there was not a door covering the way into the room, so i stepped out and was met with a figure standing near the living area which surprisingly wasn’t too far away. it was chris. he was dressed so differently from the last time i saw him. he now adorned a long, robe which showed a large portion of his muscles which looked too good to be true.

“chris what the fuck is going on” he jumped at the sudden voice, before turning to face me. a small smile placed itself on his lips as he got up.

“i finally found you aphrodite” excuse me, what the hell did he just call me? i laughed out loud but he didn’t budge. “finally i found you in your human form after all of these years, i thought i lost you” he unexpectedly wrapped me in his embrace, but i couldn’t help but hold myself back and insisted on doing the same to him too.

“chris-” i couldn’t finish my sentence, still too shocked to say anything.

“my love, you must’ve lost your memory, have you ever wondered where your love for mythology came from?” to be honest, i just remember suddenly having a love for it and it kind of just stuck.

“am i dreaming?” he laughed and shook his head, oh god even his laugh was perfect.

“i’m so glad i found you again aphrodite, but let me introduce myself as you may have forgotten” he trailed off before coming closer towards me. “i’m your husband, ares, and i fought so much battles to find you”.

masterlist

i’m crying this is so bad

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dragonofyang · 5 years

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The Heroine with a Thousand Faces

As the youngest member of #TeamPurpleLion, not only have I learned a lot in just the four months we’ve been working together, but I’ve explained a lot of what I’ve learned to others. Sometimes it’s about the history of Defender of the Universe and Beast King GoLion that @crystal-rebellion researched, sometimes it’s referencing @felixazrael‘s musical knowhow or @leakinghate‘s animation knowledge, and most recently, it’s leaning on @voltronisruiningmylife‘s expertise in how to break down and identify writing to provide corrections to those who see something in a show or article not working but can’t tell why. One big thing I learned since starting this crazy ride with my team is a massive hole in my college education on writing, which Felix filled in for me since we hit the ground running. Sure in my fantasy literature class we discussed Aesop and The Hobbit, and what the phrase “The Hero’s Journey” means and why it’s the monomyth, but there was one thing that my dear professor never taught us, although I’m sure she will in the future. Compared to Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey, this other monomyth is much younger.

What is it, you may ask?

Simply put, it’s a heroine’s journey.

[Image description: Princess Allura with her hair up and wearing her flightsuit from season 1 “The Rise of Voltron” backlit by white light.]

Let’s go on an adventure together.

To understand the heroine’s journey, I want to give you all a rundown on what exactly the hero’s journey is first. While it was never neatly labeled as “The Hero’s Journey” until Campbell, studies on common themes and plot points began back in the 1870’s. As time moved forward, Campbell published his 17 steps to the monomyth in 1949 (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) and as we move toward the present his monomyth is eventually dubbed as “the hero’s journey”. I won’t overload you with the dates and stuff I needed to study since that’s a) not the point of this piece and b) Campbell’s monomyth is actually secondary to the main one in Voltron: Legendary Defender. That said, it’s the backbone of a lot of literature both old and new, and while not every story follows these 17 steps outlined by Campbell or approaches them in the same order, you’ll find everything from the story of Christ to Lord of the Rings somewhere in these steps. It’s just that a lot of times the steps of the hero’s journey aren’t ever really explained, so you as a reader/viewer/consumer will see them and will have a gut instinct as to what’s supposed to happen, and when it happens you feel great! The story followed a formula that satisfies its audience! But it also makes a story that doesn’t follow a formula feel fundamentally wrong, from just a mild discomfort like putting on a shirt and buttoning it slightly off, all the way to triggering strong emotional responses including panic attacks or tears. Stories are designed to bring forth emotions from their audience, but what good is a tragedy without a lesson to learn? How can we enjoy an empty marriage when the couple has no chemistry?

So with this piece, I hope to illuminate just what the steps of the heroine’s journey are, contrast them against the hero’s journey, where VLD fits into all of this, and through that demonstrate why they are not interchangeable even though they share similar names.

Part I: Of Heroes and Heroines

In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell outlines seventeen steps, which are laid out in this diagram by Reg Harris:

[Image description: diagram of The Hero’s Journey using a circular diagram shape separating out the seventeen steps into eight categories, divided into the Known World and the Unknown World.]

In Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey, she writes the heroine’s journey as follows:

[Image description: The Heroine’s Journey depicting a cyclical diagram of the narrative, featuring 10 distinct steps that loop back to the beginning at the top.]

The Heroine’s Journey is fundamentally cyclical in nature, and while the diagram above shows the Hero’s Journey as a circle as well, it ultimately has finite start and end points. One of the key differences between these is that the Hero’s Journey explores internal character in an external adventure and the hero achieves a (theoretically) lasting peace once their journey is finished. Conversely, the heroine must constantly evaluate themselves in the bigoted environment that tries to disenfranchise them.

As a note, while I use gendered terms such as “hero” and “heroine”, I use them as gender-neutral placeholders to label which monomyth I’m speaking about at present. Women can undertake a hero’s journey, and men can undertake a heroine’s journey, particularly when you examine them in an intersectional lens.

A heroine’s journey, at its heart, is an examination and acceptance of the self in an unaccepting environment, and its cyclical nature stems from the fact that whenever a heroine moves into a new environment, they have to make that journey over and over. They can be a queer man of color, a white stay-at-home mom, a disabled nonbinary person, whatever the case, the constant need to re-evaluate their place in the world is what marks the heroine’s journey as separate from the hero’s journey.

But while it’s cyclical in nature, we should start at the beginning nonetheless.

[Image description: Alfor (right) holding Allura (left) in the Castle of Lions. She says, “We can’t give up hope!” and he replies, “I’m sorry, daughter.”]

In The Heroine’s Journey, the story begins when an event causes the heroine to separate from the feminine. A significant event spurs them to reject the prescribed role of the patriarchy, which in the case of a woman could be a mother, a damsel in distress, a wife, etc. The heroine is put into a box and chafes against its edges because it cuts them off from their ability to reach for the masculine, the power and privilege it affords. This marks a stark difference from how our archetypal hero lives and begins their own adventure. The hero lives a fairly mundane life for the brief time we see them before the first element comes into play: the Call to Adventure. This is generally an external force spurring the hero to action, as opposed to the internal force of the heroine.

The hero then will Refuse the Call and will be introduced to the Mentor they will come to rely upon, whereas the heroine typically immediately begins on a journey to become more powerful/masculine, generally through rejecting femininity. Princess Allura does not inherently reject her own femininity. She rejects the helplessness of being forced into cryostasis after her people have been destroyed and embarks on embracing her masculinity by finishing the war her father and Zarkon started 10,000 years ago. The heroine Identifies with the Masculine and Gathers Allies, which we see Allura do in the pilot of season 1 of VLD. She awakens to find a team of five men and her male adviser Coran, her allies in the coming intergalactic war, and she takes up the metaphorical lion herself as the pilot to the Castle of Lions, changing into her armor--pink, to honor the fallen--for the fight against Sendak as he tries to claim the Lions of Voltron for Emperor Zarkon. Her choice of pink, particularly pale pink, is reminiscent of the breast cancer awareness ribbon, baby pink, it is an intrinsically female color that she dons to assume the role of her father, King Alfor. The narrative is reminding the audience that Princess Allura--the first nonwhite Allura, no less--is just as much a princess as her previous white and blonde iterations are warriors.

After choosing their allies and undertaking this quest of gaining power (not to be confused with empowerment, our heroine is still operating within the confines of the patriarchy here), our heroine undergoes trials and faces enemies that try to persuade them back into the box, into what’s known and fundamentally safe and silencing. The words may be kind, be delivered kindly, but ultimately they can be boiled down to a single message: “go back to where you belong.” For the hero this is a point of no return as an external journey. The hero can choose to go home and leave saving the world to someone else, or they can choose to face the trials that bar them from their prize. But the heroine? They can’t. There is nobody who can save the heroine’s world because for them because their world is what they are trying to escape, and often they are the prize for a hero. It’s up to them to save themselves, and at this point in time, adopting the masculine and the power of the father figure is the way to go. And it works. Princess Allura, again while she does not get discouraged by the men around her to remain an idle princess, because this is the 21st goddamn century, her conflict arises from inexperience. King Alfor supports her drive to finish the war and take decisive action, to finish what he started. The Paladins challenge her authority as a sovereign in the beginning because even if she’s a princess by birth, she has no planet and they’re not of her planet or species anyway, and until they themselves undergo trials in the first few episodes do they appreciate that Allura is still critical as a person, despite her lack of sovereign weight.

Together, she and her team move through the obstacles and the war against Zarkon together, while simultaneously trying to build a coalition of allies to aid in the fight. In fact, much of the plot of VLD takes place during this stage of the heroine’s journey, and it’s here where we as the audience follow Allura as she meets her animus in the form of a Shadow figure: the cunning Prince Lotor. He takes on the role of the challenger to force Allura to better herself, and as Allura rises to the occasion each time, he is textually impressed by her battle skill, then by her intellect. The most iconic moment of Lotor as a Shadow (aka: the half of herself that Allura doesn’t want to accept yet), is when he baits Voltron into battle, then pilots his cruiser through the volatile environment of Thayserix. He expresses disappointment at Voltron’s ability in battle, but when Allura in Blue rises to meet the challenge he lays out, he praises her, even if he textually does not realize who is in Blue at the time.

[Image description: Prince Lotor in profile, a pleased expression on his face, and the subtitles read “Someone’s learning.”]

As a brief aside: the animus comes from Jung and is often paired with an anima, or masculine and feminine energies. The key takeaway is that these energies are complementary to each other and exist in a balance. While they typically are portrayed in a more heterosexual context, like everything else in this meta, the terms are used in a gender-neutral context when not applied directly to Allura’s storyline. While Lotor could be likened to either Meeting the Goddess or (Wo)Man as Temptress in the hero’s journey, a key difference between the heroine’s journey animus and either of these feminized roles is that the Goddess and Temptress are two separate figures--generally women to male heroes--and are generally not equal to the hero physically or mentally. The animus, however, is intrinsically the perfect match to the anima of the heroine, being their complement and their intellectual and physical equal. Lotor is not meant to be seen as the woman on Indiana Jones’ arm, he’s meant to be a force in his own right, challenging Allura to better herself and raise the standards for them both. It’s fitting that this occurs in an episode full of fog and a dangerous abyss, because the traditional hero descends into a metaphorical (or literal) one to encounter these flattened versions of feminine energy.

The trials continue for Allura through the seasons, and she makes many allies and continues to face their enemies head-on, and once Prince Lotor, now Emperor, cements his place as one of Allura’s allies he shifts from the Shadow figure challenging her to the animus in full, being encouraging and supportive as they work together as allies to find Oriande, a mythical place that should yield them the secrets of unlimited Quintessence. While Lotor challenges Allura in a traditionally masculine way (physical trials, battle, strategy), he also encourages her in a decidedly feminine way through Altean history and mythology, as Altea is very feminine-coded compared to the Galra Empire, which through Zarkon represents a familiar and violent strain of masculinity that seeks to crush Allura and force the universe to fit his will through abusive language and physical violence and genocide. Allura taking up the battle in Alfor’s place is simply her continuing the cycle and seeing power in masculine terms, rather than breaking the cycle.

Now here is where the diagrams diverge even further. Until this point, the journeys followed fairly similar trajectories. After the trials and battles of the heroine’s journey, they experience the boon of the journey, which the hero does not achieve until they face further trials and temptations. As such, we will continue to follow the heroine’s journey model and I’ll explain the significance of the flip.

Part II: Not the Place to Arrive

One of the significant things about the heroine’s journey is that when a woman undertakes it, it’s empowering and her becoming her most unified self. Campbell once reportedly said to Murdock, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.” In the hero’s journey, often a woman’s place is as the prize, rarely is she her own agent. As I stated previously, the hero and heroine journeys do not have to ascribe to gendered protagonists, however the reality is that the hero’s journey is very patriarchal in nature since it was formulated primarily through the study of male heroes and does not take into account the constant reassessment heroines must face. For heroes, they simply must survive going from point A to point B. Heroines are always subjected to reevaluation within their environment and the people around them, so their journey never really ends.

All this is to say that the hero receives their boon at the end of their story and that’s the end of it. They get a happily ever after and can return to normal life and spread their bounty to those in need or dearest to them.

The heroines?

They get their boon at the middle of the story.

And there’s still more to come for our heroine as they build toward the climax (pun intended).

Princess Allura receives the boon of Oriande’s secrets with Lotor by her side, which in pretty much every literature class would become a discussion on the ways this represents sex, or the the ways Allura is interacting with the world in terms of gender, particularly how they discover Oriande after having an emotional reaction in Haggar’s lab and activating the Altean compass stone. In the heroine’s journey, this boon is often of the same significance as the hero’s boon/reward at the end of their journey, but for the heroine it’s false. It’s fleeting. It’s not meant to last. This is the turning point for our heroine because while yes, our heroine achieved the goal of the adventure, they did so by consciously or unconsciously shunning the feminine. In Allura’s case, she’s still taking after her father, trying to follow in his--and to an extent Zarkon’s--footsteps by mastering the unlimited Quintessence.

And true to form, before season 6 is out, our heroine seems to be betrayed by her animus, returning him to the status of Shadow figure as he challenges her to unleash the power within one final time. Princess Allura thinks Lotor lied to her and has been harvesting Alteans for their Quintessence when Keith and his mother Krolia discover a living Altean in the Quantum Abyss, and with the budding on-screen romance between Allura and Lotor, this betrayal cuts our heroine deep. To her, he not only lied about there being no more Alteans left, but he actively continued the genocide his father began 10,000 years ago. That’s not an easy thing to get over. So Lotor assembles Sincline, which bears a visual resemblance to a wingless dragon--the last metaphorical dragon she faces before moving into the next step of the heroine’s journey--and with Allura in Voltron the two battle it out in a tragic action-packed scene that leads to Voltron overloading Lotor with Quintessence and leaving him in the Rift.

With the dragon defeated and the boon lost, the heroine has to sacrifice not only her animus, but the last vestiges of her home to try and undo what following the masculine has done: close not only the original Rift, but all the fractures in reality caused by their battle.

And what does a girl who has already lost her planet, people, and lover have left to lose?

[Image description: The five Lions of Voltron flying away from the massive Rift, the Castle of Lions flying straight toward the center of it.]

The heroine following the footsteps of the masculine always comes at a major cost to them. In Allura’s case, she has to sacrifice her castle in order to make right the harm done to the literal universe. In this case, she mirrors Zarkon in his destruction of the universe, but rather than directly harming billions of lives on uncounted planets, she creates a literal hole in the universe because of her blindness to the consequences of the actions of herself and those around her.

And much like her father sending away the Lions, she must send away her castle in the hopes of saving the universe from greater destruction.

Part III: Transcending the Rift

From the gain and loss of the boon, things look dire for the heroine at this stage in the journey. In Allura’s case, she is without people, without planet, without castle, and as she learns at the beginning of season 8, her found family has families of their own--other than Coran, that is. Our heroine continues to lose pieces of the things and people surrounding her at the beginning of the story: which Murdock refers to as awakening feelings of spiritual aridity or death. She is losing her place in the universe even faster than before, when she stood on the shoulders of her father, and she must move forward. Allura passed the point of no return all the way back in season 1 episode 1. As the heroine, she broke free of the safe mold she knew for the past 10,000 years, and every episode since her awakening she has had to try to forge forward on the path she knew: that of her father. Now, though, her father’s methods have failed her, just as they failed him, leaving her with no option but to keep moving forward and to approach her journey from another angle.

[Image description: from left to right, Veronica, Allura, Romelle, and Pidge (mostly off-screen) in a clothing swap shop as Allura speaks. Caption reads, “I could give you a royal decree of service from the Crown Princess of Alte…”]

Allura not only must deal with the loss of her place in the universe, but she must also deal with the fact that by leaving Lotor in the Rift, she abandons half of herself as well. Physically she is a whole person, but if we look at her role as an anima and what her fears and strengths are, destroying her animus throws her self-knowledge out of alignment. She’s careening away from the safe path of her father, but she must now rediscover the strengths within herself without succumbing to her weaknesses and do so by stepping out of her father’s shadow.

Season 8 is rife with emotional buildup and no payoff. We as the audience don’t know what happened to Lotor for the whole of season 7 and we see Allura struggling to deal with all her losses, we travel to Earth and meet the MFE pilots, a plucky bunch who probably were meant to lay groundwork for a new Vehicle Voltron, and we see that Haggar/Honerva is the final big bad of the whole show, ready to vindicate the son she lost to the Rift, but also 10,000 years ago when he was born and she became the Witch we love to hate. So when we join Allura and the gang on Earth with Luca in the infirmary, and Allura’s final trials begin…

Or they should have.

[Image description: Lance and Allura kissing in rainbow lighting where they are artificially-colored in red, then pink, then blue from top to bottom in front of a fading background of warm yellow at the top to gray at the bottom.]

Instead, we are treated to the final acts of a hero’s journey, but still following our heroine through the steps.

Our heroine wears down to the persistence of Lance, who in a heroic journey would receive a fair princess as his boon, and Allura is trying to find a place to belong. In seasons prior to this, Lance acts like a goofy everyday guy, very much a typical character in many present-day stories that allows the audience to see themselves in him. He fantasizes about wooing the princess, calls himself a ladies’ man, tries to be funny, he’s a pretty typical character that a male audience is more likely to sympathize with, and as such the fantasy is pairing up with the prettiest, smartest, etc. girl in the story. The woman as a boon, the Goddess, and the Temptress are never on equal footing with the male hero, and even in the case of female heroes, the meeting with a god(dess) means that the female hero is worthy of being a consort rather than the equal that a heroine is to the anima/animus. In fact, Campbell reportedly told Murdock, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.” In the hero’s journey, if the hero is male and heterosexual, the women will always be the prize, the virginal ideal, or the sexualized damnation, and in all of them, the woman is meant to be receptive to the man (and doesn’t THAT sound like some familiar rhetoric). Never is the woman an agent in the hero’s journey when it fulfills a male fantasy. And it is this very same box that spurs a heroine to begin their heroine’s journey: this breakdown of people to individual parts as determined by a patriarchal society.

While Lance is a hero in his own right, in Allura’s heroine journey, he acts as an ogre that comes dressed as a male ally all the way back in season 1. He’s a Subverted Nice Guy in that he’s constantly trying to woo Allura, but ultimately he’s still reinforcing the same patriarchy that not only plagues Allura in this iteration, but also in previous iterations of the Voltron franchise. The Nice Guy doesn’t challenge the heroine like the animus, but rather encourages them to stay in place or to fit a predetermined mold once more.

Look familiar?

[Image description: Lance’s fantasy, with him standing triumphant over Zarkon as the team cheers him on, Allura kneeling at his right side and looking up at him, while a flag with his face waves on his left.]

Many of the silly shots in the series have been foreshadowing, whether in the most direct sense or in the promise of subverting what’s portrayed. In the case of this screenshot, by the time Lance gets the girl, Zarkon is killed (by Lotor), Allura has already had an intimate relationship (with Lotor), and the team collectively became heroes and allies of Lotor before the end of season 6 happened. Lance, textually, is not Allura’s equal as an animus, and while he doesn’t quite view her as his equal--especially in earlier seasons--he can only textually become her equal when she is at her lowest point, and he’s still affixed to the idea that she’s a prize, going so far as to say that “winning prizes is my specialty” in “Clear Day”. Really, it’s a messy relationship dynamic that tries to show the audience why, as they stand in the canon material, they don’t work. Not only is Allura still not his equal, but his fantasy comes about at the hands of others, or with the help of others, and he comes second. He plays a role, but he is not the singular hero he once fantasized about being. Textually this subversion is teaching him a lesson about becoming his best self and acknowledging that he doesn’t have to be the hero, the payoff of which should have come in season 8 as Allura completes her heroine’s journey to become her most unified and realized self. It’s meant to be his apotheosis, the new perspective and enlightenment brought to the hero after facing all the trials of the journey as a part of the final reward.

Allura, fighting with this sudden loss of herself, must now also help spearhead the war against Honerva, the archetypal Bad Mother, in an alchemist-versus-alchemist battle for not only Lotor’s physical soul but for Allura’s metaphorical one as well. This is a new fight, the gauntlet thrown by someone other than her animus, and after all his tests, she must still rise to the challenge with the same energy, but she must do so with new knowledge now that she knows she cannot rely solely on her father.

But what’s the next step for a heroine trapped in the arid desert of the unknown self and with the weight of the world pressing onto them?

They must descend to the underworld and begin the transformation from the masculine methods to unleash the femininity that’s been locked away this whole time.

And who do we have to escort Allura to the metaphorical underworld as she falls asleep?

[Image description: A close-up of Lotor’s face in deep shadows as he stares head-on at the “camera”.]

Her Animus, acting as a Shadow once more.

His entrance is littered with sex. Not literally, but metaphorically. He greets Allura while she’s in bed, the camera does a gratuitous slow pan over his body in a way that many cameras exclusively afford to women, the presence of a blooming flower with an erect stamen, the lighting of the preview--altered in the final season itself--is purple even, a romantic and spiritual color. You know the joke in college English classes about how everything is sex except sex? That’s this scene in a nutshell. He’s always been drawn and behaved in a way designed to appeal to the female gaze (an essay in itself), but this scene really takes the cake.

[Image description: Lotor as viewed in profile from a low angle in a Garrison room, looking down at a juniberry flower in a pot.]

And it’s this scene where we see Lotor give Allura the first critical piece of information for how she can stop Honerva/Haggar, but also reminding her that some people do not change. While Allura must change to achieve her realization, he reminds her that Haggar is still the same witch, and that her pain of losing Lotor becoming public does not excuse the fact that she has not expressed remorse or tried to change herself, let alone her hand in not only his downfall but in the brainwashing of the Alteans. She is an antagonist so focused on the wrongs done to her that she justifies the wrongs she does to others with them. Allura, however, expressed remorse and wanted to save Lotor as soon as she realized what was going on, which further cements the ways in which their fates could have been the same or switched had they made slightly different choices. Honerva is 10,000 years too late. Like Lotor mirrors his father and in “Shadows” is shown to be more empathetic, Allura mirrors Honerva and both prove throughout the show to have stronger moral compasses than their predecessors. They are the Emperor and Alchemist, and while fate decrees they must take up the mantle left behind, their free will dictates that they should not blindly follow their footsteps if they truly wish to make a lasting change. Narratively, they must forge a new path if they are to bring the universe to peace again.

[Image description: A close-up shot of the juniberry flower with Allura visible in the background, but blurred. The subtitle reads Lotor’s line, “The witch may change her name, but she will always be a witch.”]

Lotor tempts Allura to take the entity into herself, and when she reaches out to connect with it, she is taken further into the dreamscape and finds herself back on Altea and greeted by her mother. This marks the beginning of the reconnection with the feminine, but while Allura has always so desperately missed her family and Altea, she finds herself in a precarious position. Suddenly, she is in the very same mech suit that Luca was found in, and to save Altea from the Galra fleet overhead, she makes the decision to use the planet’s Quintessence. However, in the process of destroying the Galra fleet, destroys Altea as well. As her world crumbles, her mother congratulates her for a job well done. This presumably mirrors the dropped plot about the Altean Colony and the decisions Lotor would have been faced with, and after “Shadows” would lend both Allura and the audience a greater appreciation for the position he was in before he died.

And when she finally wakes?

[Image description: Allura sitting up in the Garrison bunk, looking at the mice, the juniberry dry and wilted in the foreground, blurry. The subtitle reads, “It was only a dream.”]

Our oh so sexual symbol is wilted, and Allura wakes up alone.

With the visual deflowering and this new revelation about the kinds of decisions those before her have had to make, Allura can begin reconnecting with the feminine in earnest without falling into the old placements she may have been subjected to at the beginning of the story. This would have continued further with Allura reconnecting with her animus in the missing episode @leakinghate titles “The Descent”, especially fitting as she continues her descent to her feminine roots as a heroine and to reconnect with her lost animus. Reconnecting and reconciling with him--and with the side of herself he represents--is critical to her achieving unity within herself and being able to face Honerva head-on.

Once the heroine has descended to the underworld, begun the reconnection to the feminine, and returned with new knowledge on their relationship to their emotional side and the aspects overshadowed by the masculine, they are ready to begin healing the mother/daughter split. This in essence is the heroine returning to the old knowledge she has cast aside when following the path of the masculine/father, but approaching it with a new understanding and perspective. Think of it as understanding why your parents enforced rules like “don’t run into traffic”. As a kid, the danger may not be obvious, but as an adult you’re able to look at the same situation, see over obstacles younger you might not have, and realize “oh shit, that’s a car”. That said, the heroine does not allow themselves to get put back into the same or even a different pre-prescribed role because they now have a greater understanding of the situation at hand.

In Allura’s case, this means revisiting the plan on how to take down Honerva, and realizing that she must pursue the course laid out by her trip to the underworld to not only save the universe, but awaken Lotor from being a robeast. Part of the conflict against this plan comes from the team, who see the entity she took within herself as dangerous. While that’s true, stopping the plan also prevents Allura from growing in strength to be able to fight Honerva. The power flowing within her that Lotor referred to back in season 6 is at her fingertips, and like his visit in “Clear Day” reminded her, she need only take it. During both parts of the “Knights of Light” episodes, Allura is confronted with shades of Honerva’s memories as they dive deeper, and it’s here that we as the audience and the cast are meant to learn what truly became of Lotor after he was imprisoned in the Rift, and it’s meant to be utterly jarring to everyone. Instead, with how the scenes were edited together during the post-production alterations, Hate aptly points out in “Seek Truth in Darkness” that Honerva promising vengeance and seeing Lotor’s corpse has next to no impact. Or rather, it does to the audience--a melted corpse isn’t exactly Y-7 appropriate--but the characters don’t really react to this revelation at all.

That said, it’s more than likely that Allura genuinely believes Lotor to be dead (as opposed to a sleeping prince), which would explain her aggressive reaction to seeing pre-Rift Zarkon, and we don’t see his reaction to learning what he did to his son, either. This would be a prime location for Zarkon to experience and express remorse for what his actions have done to his son, subverting the toxic masculinity narrative his character had been representing prior.

At the end of “Knights of Light Part 2”, Hate mentions that Allura would need to make another trip to the underworld to commune with Lotor and realize that no, he’s not dead, but also that she not only must defeat Honerva, she must do so in order to save Lotor and free everyone of the cycle of violence that began 10,000 years ago. This is the final descent she makes before she can heal the wounded masculine, both in herself, and Lotor directly.

[Image description: Allura in profile inside the cockpit of Blue Lion, unconscious. Her window displays measurement increments and stars in red-tones, while Allura herself is lit in blue tones.]

After the end of this episode, however, Hate mentions that much of what was there is butchered in the post-production editing, so I will be extrapolating based on the content we have in the season as well as utilizing her analysis of the story as it should have been.

When Allura wakes up from falling unconscious, this is when we should see her proposing to save her animus, and it should come with a discussion with Lance about how they don’t click romantically. That said, in the version on Netflix, we see their relationship continue, however much of their shared body language doesn’t necessarily even match up with an awkward couple. Lance seems sullen and possessive, and while he might still be sullen in Allura’s original heroine’s journey, he would have had this moment of growth in which he learns to let go of Allura. She’s his fantasy, and not only is that unfair to Allura, it’s also unfair to him, and he doesn’t need to be the hero or the guy that gets the girl. He can be himself, silly, sharpshooting, video game-playing Lance. A genuinely nice dude, which completes the subversion of the Nice Guy trope his character embodied for so long.

“Uncharted Regions” is a hot mess of an episode in terms of narrative flow and consistency, but this would have marked the beginning of the alchemist vs. alchemist fight for not only Lotor’s soul, but the universe. Honerva uses the Sincline mech and her new mech to start tearing holes through realities, and once Allura jumps into the fray, that moves the audience into the next missing episode proposed by Hate: “Storming the Pyramid”. This would be where Honerva uses Allura to revive Lotor because she did not receive the life-givers’ blessing, and Allura would do it, literally healing the wounded masculine, but also falling right into Honerva’s trap in the process. This would almost certainly be a highly-controversial thing among Allura’s allies, but like Allura remaining on the path she knew, it’s easier to accept Lotor as pure evil who got what he deserved, when at no point is there a definite case against him. In fact, “Shadows” is designed to render him as a sympathetic character, and seeing his melted corpse is even more horrifying after seeing him as a baby and child. But that’s the way it is when a heroine breaks the mold. The heroine defines their own role, and as part of that, it gives them the ability to help others break theirs. The heroine experiences true empowerment by divorcing themselves from the power structures that defined them before, and doing so with the greater knowledge of their internal masculinity and femininity. Allura revisiting the war of her father with the lifegivers’ knowledge to compound her intrinsic alchemical abilities is the moment when she achieves union within herself, and it manifests physically as reviving Lotor, her animus.

It’s after this point that we see the Purple Lion and Purple Paladin manifest, our namesake.

In “Day 47”, Kolivan references the team sizes the Blades of Marmora use. He references four and five as the usual sizes, but six occasionally happening, but what he says next is particularly interesting.

[Image description: Kolivan being filmed for an interview, saying, “Seven seems rare, but… it could happen.”]

The Voltron team had four Paladins briefly after Shiro disappeared and before Allura took up the mantle, but the full team always has five. After Shiro returned for good, their team became six Paladins.

Now, with the healed animus Lotor on their side, they could have the rare seven-person configuration that Hate discusses at length in “Seek Truth in Darkness”.

With the anima and animus aligned together at last with no secrets, they can unify externally the same way Allura unified internally, and battle against Honerva properly. Now, Team V, Lotor, and the entire universe can face Honerva head-on and stand a chance at winning.

We also should get the emotional payoff for Lotor as an abuse victim in his own arc, closing up this nice little loose end that hurts way more than it did before season 8 dropped.

[Image description: An up-close shot of Lotor glaring into the “camera” in green lighting and saying to Haggar, “maybe I will take pity on you when the time comes.”]

And it’s worth mentioning that while the final battle is exciting and action-packed, the final surrender of Honerva comes quietly, in the rift of all realities. The characters of Team V are able to deliver their character-based arc lessons, it’s a somber moment of learning as Allura, using once more the blessing of the lifegivers, enlightens Honerva to her memories and what she’s done, but also restoring her sense of self the way Allura was. This is the final healing of the mother/daughter split, and it’s significant that Honerva’s abuse victim not be her healer. Not only does Lotor (as far as we know) lack the ability, but it’s never the victim’s job to heal their abuser, just as it’s not the obligation of the oppressed to appease their oppressor. Honerva can finally move on and begin atoning for what she did by setting the ghosts of the Paladins of old in her mind free, but that still begs the question of what our heroine and her animus must do to finish the job.

This is where Lotor would get his second chance, in the most literal sense of the term, where he faces a similar trial to the one in Oriande back in season 6 and the burning question for a man so concerned with survival and cunning.

Is there something he would give up the life he has known and fought so hard to keep for?

And this time, the answer is yes.

Allura.

It was always Allura.

While Honerva is able to stop the rift from expanding by, well, not expanding it herself, she lacks the ability to properly close it the way that it was closed the first time. It takes one final adventure, one final unification by the anima and animus, by the heroine and her Shadow, and one final goodbye. Allura and Lotor, born of an age long past, become the lifegivers eternal through staying behind to close the rift.

The lionhearted goddess of life and her stalwart champion of survival.

[Image description: The final scene after the credits, where an Allura-shaped nebula is nestled up against a smudged, darker nebula with a sea of stars among them, and the five Lions of Voltron flying toward the nebulae.]

Sources

Dos Santos, Joaquim and Montgomery, Lauren. Voltron: Legendary Defender. Netflix. 2016-2018.

LeakingHate. “Seek Truth in Darkness”. VLD Visuals Detective and Imperial ApologistTM. 2 Mar. 2019. https://leakinghate.tumblr.com/post/183160042843/seek-truth-in-darkness

“Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey Arc”. The Heroine Journeys Project. https://heroinejourneys.com/heroines-journey/

Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine’s Journey. 1990.

University of Kansas. “Science Fiction Writers Workshop: Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey”. KU Guinn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Workshop-stuff/Joseph-Campbell-Hero-Journey.htm

#dragon's ramblings #TeamPurpleLion #vld #the heroine's journey #voltron #allura #lotor #writing #literary analysis #strafe #hero's journey #lance #executive meddling #freevlds8 #free vld s8

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dawnasiler · 5 years

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From Red Lips to Glittery Eyeshadow: 21 of the Best Skin, Hair and Makeup Looks Lately

It's our last batch of celebrity beauty to close out the year—and these looks do not disappoint!

Just in time for New Year's Eve inspiration, there's everything from red lips to cat eyes to smoky and shimmering eyeshadow. And that's just the makeup. You'll also find an array of updos, braids and accessories below to inform your next party hairstyle.

Keep scrolling for the best skin, hair and makeup sightings lately!

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift at the 2019 New York premiere of 'Cats.'

Close-up of Taylor Swift at the 2019 New York premiere of 'Cats.'

Could this be Taylor's best look EVER? I love everything about it, from her flawless skin to the bold red lips to the cat eyes to the flirty lashes. Most of all, I think it's the bangs that make it feel so fresh, along with a few face-framing wispy pieces.

Olivia Wilde

Olivia Wilde at the 2019 Hollywood Film Awards.

Close-up of Olivia Wilde at the 2019 Hollywood Film Awards.

Olivia is making me want to bust out the glitter in a big way. I love how she layered it over a grey smoky eye to give it dimension, keeping her lips and cheeks a pale baby pink. With her soft waves, it's glamorous but not at all overdone.

Zendaya

Zendaya at the 2019 premiere of Queen & Slim.'

Close-up of Zendaya at the 2019 premiere of Queen & Slim.'

Zendaya's style just keeps getting better and better. I love the slightly Boho feel of her braided waves with warm neutral makeup and glowy skin. The blending is so impeccable, her skin literally looks air-brushed!

Lily Aldridge

Lily Aldridge at the 2019 New York premiere of 'Very Ralph.'

Close-up of Lily Aldridge at the 2019 New York premiere of 'Very Ralph.'

I want to copy Lily's soft wash of purple eyeshadow paired with warm, peachy-pink blush and lipstick immediately. What a gorgeous colour combo! The rest is just fresh skin, fluffy lashes and full brows (along with her amazing bone structure, of course).

Lily is wearing: Foundation in Medium Cool

Emilia Clarke

Emilia Clarke at the 2019 British Fashion Awards.

Close-up of Emilia Clarke at the 2019 British Fashion Awards.

What do you wear with a neon yellow gown? Slicked back hair, bare-looking skin and the most perfectly drawn cat eyes, as Emilia demonstrates. There's only a hint of rosiness to her lips and cheeks, which keeps all the attention on the colour statement.

Emilia is wearing: Eyeliner in Black • Tinted lip balm in Mighty Mimosa

Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba at the 2019 Baby2Baby Gala.

Close-up of Jessica Alba at the 2019 Baby2Baby Gala.

I'm not crazy about the new padded headband trend, but I have to admit Jessica pulls it off. I think it's the simple hair (apparently a faux lob!) and understated makeup that saves this from looking too busy. I also like the contrast of the cool-toned dress and accessories with her warm-toned makeup.

Jessica is wearing: Moisturizer • Matte primer • Illuminating primer • Foundation in Amber • Blush in Peony Pink • Eyeshadow in Supreme • Liquid liner • Mascara • Tinted lip balm in Lychee Fruit • Lipstick in BFF

Emma Watson

Emma Watson at the 2019 New York premiere of 'Little Women.'

Close-up of Emma Watson at the 2019 New York premiere of 'Little Women.'

The last time we saw Emma, she was sporting some controversial baby bangs. (Okay, real talk—they were just bad.) Fortunately, they've now grown out enough to frame this romantic updo, crowned with a thin hairband and what looks like a dusting of gold shimmer. The deep brownish berry lipstick and matching eyeshadow gives it some edge.

Rihanna

Rihanna at the 2019 British Fashion Awards.

Close-up of Rihanna at the 2019 British Fashion Awards.

Rihanna's look is all about accentuating her mesmerizing eyes. The smoky brown shadow creates a feline effect, while the lighter shade beneath the crease makes it pop. Long braids (a style known as Fulani braids) and a slick of brown lip gloss complete the look.

Margot Robbie

Margot Robbie at the 2019 premiere of 'Bombshell.'

Close-up of Margot Robbie at the 2019 premiere of 'Bombshell.'

Margot's dress is over-the-top feminine, so I like that she pared down the makeup to rosy lips, flushed cheeks and only a hint of mascara—anything heavier would've been too much. The same goes for the hair, worn in loose waves instead of a serious updo.

Margot is wearing: Eyeshadow in Pierre de Rose • Eyeshadow in Rose Synthétique • Eyeshadow in Quartz Rose • Eyeliner in Contour Mauve • Lipstick in Rouge Brûlant • Lipstick in Warm Up

Ana de Armas

Ana de Armas at the 2019 premiere of 'Knives Out.'

Close-up of Ana de Armas at the 2019 premiere of 'Knives Out.'

Holy glow! Ana looks so healthy and radiant here, it can't possibly be just makeup—can it? But I'm in love with that too, especially the shimmery eyeshadow, sheer blush and stained glossy lips.

Ana is wearing: Foundation • Illuminator in Metal Peach • Eyeshadow in Lumière et Opulence • Lip gloss in Noir Moderne

Lily James

Lily James at the 2019 British Independent Film Awards.

Close-up of Lily James at the 2019 British Independent Film Awards.

In case you're pondering your next haircut, Lily is serving up lob goals (not to mention brunette hair colour goals!) in this ensemble. I'm equally obsessed with her deep pink lipstick, copper eyeshadow and thick black liner. These colours work so well on her!

Lily is wearing: Foundation in Medium Neutral • Concealer in Honey • Highlighter in Nude Gold • Eyeshadow in Smokey Brown • Eyeliner in Midnight Brown • Mascara in Ultra Black • Brow pencil in Sepia • Lip liner in Medium • Lipstick in Rosewood

Naomie Harris

Naomie Harris at the Nordstrom New York City flagship opening in 2019.

Close-up of Naomie Harris at the Nordstrom New York City flagship opening in 2019.

Naomie's take on a classic red lip is far from boring. First, there's her cool braids (which appear to be jet-black now, after dabbling with highlights in 2018). Then, there's a thick fringe of lashes (which I think work here) and dewy skin to set off the rich, matte red.

Gigi Hadid

Gigi Hadid at the 2019 WSJ Innovators Awards.

Close-up of Gigi Hadid at the 2019 WSJ Innovators Awards.

I love seeing Gigi in a more ladylike look than usual, with her hair tied back and in simple, monochromatic nude makeup. She has so much lid space, the matte shadow all the way up to her brows is quite dramatic (accentuated by only mascara).

Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez at the 2019 ACLU SoCal Bill of Rights Dinner.

Close-up of Selena Gomez at the 2019 ACLU SoCal Bill of Rights Dinner.

Not one but two Selena red carpet appearances this fall? We are blessed! This is fall in a makeup look: a rich, brownish-red lip and warm smoky eyes to go with her bright orange dress. (She may have smudged the lipstick a bit... it happens!) The only part I'm not crazy about is the curly false lashes.

Katherine Langford

Katherine Langford at the 2019 premiere of 'Knives Out.'

Close-up of Katherine Langford at the 2019 premiere of 'Knives Out.'

Katherine is always surprising us on the red carpet, and this look is no exception. In fact, those are tiny black crystals adhered to her eyes to mimic the shape of chunky lashes. It works because her hair is scraped up into a ballerina bun, and the rest of the makeup is super subtle.

Daisy Ridley

Daisy Ridley at the 2019 London premiere of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.'

Close-up of Daisy Ridley at the 2019 London premiere of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.'

Clean, precise, modern—those are the words that come to mind with Daisy's hair and makeup. I particularly like the colourful liquid liner and the velvety deep pink lip stain. I'd just tidy up the hairstyle, though. What is that one loose piece hanging out?

Olivia Munn

Olivia Munn at the 2019 Baby2Baby Gala.

Close-up of Olivia Munn at the 2019 Baby2Baby Gala.

The dress is a bit bridal, but I'm a big fan of Olivia's pretty pink makeup. It's actually the bold blush that makes the look—something you don't see too often! There's also a lovely glow to her skin.

Amber Heard

Amber Heard at L'Oréal's 2019 Women of Worth event.

Close-up of Amber Heard at L'Oréal's 2019 Women of Worth event.

Although Amber didn't stray from her red lipstick comfort zone, I think the unusual choice of outfit gives this a fresh spin. I also like the volume and waves in her updo. I'd just tone down the brows a tad (they're maybe a little too warm and intense).

Saoirse Ronan

Saoirse Ronan at the 2019 London premiere of 'Little Women.'

Close-up of Saoirse Ronan at the 2019 London premiere of 'Little Women.'

Saoirse is still doing her no-mascara thing, but it kinda works! Instead, she played up her eyes with a smudgy brown shadow, and then did a bright strawberry hue on her lips. With the loose updo, the effect is really pretty even if it's not making a major fashion statement.

Mandy Moore

Mandy Moore at the 2019 premiere of 'Midway.'

Close-up of Mandy Moore at the 2019 premiere of 'Midway.'

Mandy is as adorable as ever in this unexpectedly edgy eyeliner look. (She's wearing a chic black suit, so there's more leeway to experiment here.) The shiny pink lip gloss and textured waves keep it girly.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley at the 2019 Revolve Awards.

Close-up of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley at the 2019 Revolve Awards.

Rosie went for all-out glam: big hair and even bigger lips, painted with a deep red that's a little off-brand for her. Even if she's looking a little over-injected, I always like her straight brows, subtly shaded eyelids and long lashes.

Which celeb had your favourite (and least favourite) beauty look lately?

If you buy something through our links, we may earn a commission. See our Disclosure for more information.

From Red Lips to Glittery Eyeshadow: 21 of the Best Skin, Hair and Makeup Looks Lately syndicated from The Skincare Edit

#skincare #beauty #makeup

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louisysl · 7 years

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I’m pasting a snippet of my wip, Heilig, mainly for my own safekeeping as it is the same snippet I tend to send whenever somebody asks for one, but also for any curious eye with a couple minutes to waste. It contains no spoilers as far as the storyline goes, in case anyone was wondering.

The party is hosted at the finest mansion of the island. Long, grandiloquent columns support the nearly ostentatious building, waterfalls framing the entrance. At the door stand two doormen, both clad in expensive suits and movie-like sunglasses, highly unnecessary given the dark night.

As someone who’s only ever been to the front yard, Louis is undeniably curious to see if the mansion will meet his expectations. He’s more excited than he is nervous, walking through the crowded front yard with a tight hold on Niall’s hand, so as not to lose him.

In eight inch heels, one might expect Louis to tower over most partygoers; and truth be told, he can see over most men they pass, but as seems to be the theme of most parties thrown around their neighborhood, most partiers are women in high heels.

Coming to a stall near the waterfalls by the entry, Niall turns around. “Maybe we should stay outside for a bit? Not look so eager to go in?”

Louis huffs, pushing past him. “I don’t give a rat’s trembling whisker if they think I’m eager. You dragged me here, I might as well make it worth it by snooping around the mansion. Besides, Kat’s probably inside already.”

As was to be expected, Niall’s eyes light up at the mention of her name, and he follows Louis to the doors easily enough. In a party of Styles’, your face is your ticket, and while Louis has never seen either of the men standing before him, he and Niall are let through without a second glance.

The doors open to a spacious lobby. It’s just as pretentious inside as it is outside; marble floors and skinny black railings, white walls lit with clear lights. There’s a staircase to the right behind a pillar, and a door to the backyard after the spacious hallway decorated tastefully with plants on the windowsills of the pass-through walls on each sides of the hallway, behind both of which is a decorative waterfall.

Louis wonders oddly if the waterfalls are behind crystal clear windows, for there are no splashes of water on the floor, but he doesn’t dare test the theory.

Everything as far as the eye can see is clean, enough so that they can see their odd reflections on most surfaces that they pass by as they follow the sound of music. Before following Niall upstairs, Louis spares a glance at the empty backyard, making a mental notice to find a silent moment to go explore the garden there.

His heels click noisily with every step he takes. Niall grins at him over his shoulder, waiting for him at the top of the stairs. The view outside is stunning as they turn around, leaning against the railing preventing them from falling off the open platform the stairs led up to; a full moon against a clear, dark sky, illuminating silvery rays of moonlight on the wall behind them.

“This is fancier than I expected”, Niall whispers, eyeing the blend of moonlight and shadows on the wall. “I feel like we’re seriously trespassing, or something.”

Louis can’t help but agree; the music isn’t exactly loud, and neither are the voices conversing in soft tones. All noises are coming right behind the wall they’re standing by, and the only logical explanation is that the party inside is barely a party at all – a private gathering sounds more appropriate.

“Well, we came all this way. Might as well at least peek behind the wall, yeah?”

Niall doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he shrugs, and despite the frown between his brows, he pushes past Louis.

It’s nothing like Louis had expected.

It isn’t your ordinary parlor (as if the fact alone that it is a parlor of all things wasn’t absurd enough). The room offers a striking contrast to the rest of the mansion, dark floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering each wall. Despite being dark, the room is spacious, lounge chairs and sofas arranged in a tasteful yet practical fashion.

There’s an entry to a living room with a fireplace on the right, a room likely separated from the books in fear of a fire hazard. As far as Louis can tell from where he stands, there doesn’t seem to be any sofas in the living room, the floor instead covered in comfy-looking pillows and, to his surprise, bean bags as basic as they come.

As for the people currently occupying the room – Louis can name them all.

Liam, Zayn, and Sebastian are stretched out on two of the sofas by the back wall, most of Zayn covered by Liam’s body. On the floor between the sofas is Styles, sitting cross-legged with an open book on his lap, a book which he doesn’t seem to be currently reading, absorbed in a conversation with Sebastian as he appears to be.

Louis can’t help but notice it mustn’t be very comfortable for Harry to be sat like that, without a pillow on a thin carpet.

Kat and Melanie are cuddling on an armchair, Kat mindlessly playing with Melanie’s hair. There’s a cat at their feet, one Louis hasn’t seen before, but it’s purring softly and rubbing its head on their feet, and Louis is helplessly endeared.

Instead of waiting to be noticed, Niall clears his throat, startling everyone safe for Harry, who doesn’t even bother turning around. Kat, however, squeals happily, untangling herself from Melanie gently before rushing to the two of them, embracing Louis in a tight hug.

“Thank Satan you came”, she sighs, rubbing his back. “Here I feared I’d have to deal with Niall all by myself.”

Louis chuckles. “You know how he is. Forced me to come, the little minx, yet he’s likely going to leave me within a minute to go snog you”, he pokes her side with his forefinger accusingly, “in some room I can’t find, and I’ll have no choice but to awkwardly wait in my lonesome for the two of you to finish.”

Giggling, Kat shakes her head vigorously, “No, no!”

“Bet you a dollar.”

“A dollar? My, my, you get cockier each time I see your pretty face”, she tuts.

“It’s the compliments”, Louis assures with a kiss to her cheek.

With Kat moving on to embrace Niall in a hug much too sensual, Louis gets an opportunity to observe the familiar, if not particularly friendly faces now gathered in a group. It seems absurd to Louis, how Styles is sat in the middle of the odd circle formed by his friends, as though he’s the center of it all – of the universe, Louis thinks bitterly. He’s probably the type to think it all revolves around him. If he was a planet, reckons Louis he’d be Jupiter; bigger than all others though no competition to sun, his friends like the sixty-seven moons; helpless to his gravity.

It’s Sebastian who makes the first move, face lighting up in a smile that seems rather genuine. “Tomlinson”, he says, head tilted as he walks forward with his hands outstretched.

Feeling mildly awkward, Louis gathers his composure and works up a smile. “Sebastian”, he greets, the smile on the man’s face widening at the friendliness of his greeting.

“First names, hm?”

“You shouldn’t let your surroundings fool you. We live in the modern day.”

“I dare say, that has been said for centuries before us, and that history you’re referring to once wasn’t quite as romantic.”

Louis snorts. “Oddly poetic, you are. Is that what you do here? Read and practice poetry in hopes of seducing a lover too stupid to detect the act?”

Sebastian smiles prettily, lashes grazing his cheeks in a blink slower than the ordinary. “Should I think I could seduce you, would be an insult to your wit, my darling.”

“An insult to my wit”, he repeats, pursing his lips in wonder.

The silence that follows doesn’t last for long. As Sebastian turns and goes to whisper something in Harry’s ear, Zayn walks up to Louis. He’s got this ethereal, cool air to him that Louis has never really cared for like many others, but he can tell, up close like this, why people think him so unapproachable.

“We were just about to head down”, says Zayn, fixing his hair in a smooth flick of his wrist.

There was a time, few years ago, when Louis wanted to learn more about Zayn; he’s always taken unnatural interest to humans, found some so irresistible they’ve taken up his mind entirely for days, even weeks at a time.

Zayn, he recalls, didn’t hold his interest for long.

One doesn’t have to spend long with a person to realize they’re putting up an act. The reason isn’t always as easy to tell, though usually it comes down to an insistent need to fit in while still holding a place of importance, for which one would need to stand out from the crowd; though not so much as to appear a freak.

Zayn’s a textbook case of just that, to Louis’ disappointment.

What was even more disappointing to figure out was how, frankly, boring company Zayn was. It’s not like Louis’ spent tons of time with the guy – but he’s tagged along some time or another as Niall’s friend, and with the intrigue of his act gone, he’s no less or more than a pretty face for one to admire.

Niall once called Zayn art, and Louis laughed so hard his tummy hurt with it. It’s not that Zayn, in his own way, isn’t art – he is. He’s beautiful, possibly the most physically beautiful person Louis has ever laid eyes upon.

And to someone not all too interested in art, he may just appear the most beautiful piece of art they ever have laid eyes upon.

Louis isn’t particularly into art, would never claim to have an eye for it. But he can appreciate beauty in its many forms, and Zayn’s beauty is almost boring, in that it is indeed so perfect. He misses that quirk that would complete him; there isn’t an eyelash out of place.

It could, of course, be argued that his undeniable perfection would make up for the lack of flaw.

At the end of the day, to Louis, Zayn is just another pretty face in a sea of pretty faces, standing out only due to his outstanding features.

But to be so beautiful, yet so dull, to Louis, is tragic.

Obviously, Louis doesn’t only hang around people he finds intriguing. Everyone, at some point or another, becomes dull in one’s eyes; it’s never a question of if, but of when.

Niall is a great example of someone Louis never was all too interested in. Niall has always been an open book, bright in not only his spirit but his wit. Regardless, there has never been so much as a shadow of mystery to him.

But Niall makes up for it with his personality. It’s not an interesting one – but it’s undeniably fun, and more importantly, one would struggle to find a friend more loyal and caring than him.

As much as Louis would like to, he can’t walk through life collecting people. He would, if he could. There’s nothing so interesting to him as people are, and if he could only bottle up the brilliance of a human mind – if he could carry around with him the brilliance of people…

He huffs out a breath he’d mindlessly been holding, searching for Niall with his eyes. He’s not hard to spot, all over Kat as he still is. Louis can’t really blame him for it. If he was into women, Kat without a doubt would be hard to resist.

She’s great company. What Louis most adores about her is her strength and stubbornness. She’s never afraid to give back as good as she gets, at times even better. Her bright nature compliments Niall’s, and her tendency to take consequences into accord have saved Niall’s ass more than once.

All in all, the two of them would make a lovely couple, should they ever desire to go there. They’re both free spirits, however. Both much too thrilled to explore the world and people to be happy in a relationship.

Well, that’s what Niall told him once, anyway. If you ask Louis, the two of them could be amazing as a couple, exploring the world together- exploring people together; neither of them have a jealous bone in their body.

Frankly, Louis has never met two people more eligible for polyamory than the two of them.

Uncaring of the minutes that have passed, Louis turns his attention to Zayn with a quirked brow. “The one downstairs?”

Zayn’s eyes snap to him. He makes a face before huffing, “No.”

Sometimes, just sometimes, Louis wishes he could tell Zayn to… well, stop. But he’d rather not crush the poor man’s illusion.

“They’re taking us to Finland”, grins Niall, appearing from behind Zayn’, cheeks tinted pink and eyes bright.

“Finland?”

“Yeah, you know”, Niall vaguely motions with his hand, “Santa and shit.”

“I know what Finland is”, Louis rolls his eyes. “But what the bloody heck makes you think I’m getting on a plane to Finland in this”, he grabs the front of his shirt and lets the fishnet slap against his chest as he lets the material slip through his fingers. “And without warning, no less?”

From across the room, Harry’s eyes flicker to Louis. Louis isn’t entirely sure he doesn’t imagine the faint curiosity of his gaze.

Zayn, who’d been silently following the scene before him, looks at Louis now with a hint of pity to his expression. “Nobody here cares to take a plane to Finland.”

Letting out a noise of distress, Louis shifts his weight onto his left leg. “What?”

Sebastian takes pity on his confusion and smiles from next to Harry. It’s an odd contrast to Harry’s obvious disinterest; he’s twirling a curl of his unruly hair in his fingers, eyes set on Louis.

“We aren’t going to Finland. We’re going to a winter party across the lake, and Kat mentioned Santa. Niall insisted he comes from the North Pole”, Sebastian waves his hand around, as if to vanish the subject from the air. Probably because he doesn’t find it poetic enough, Louis grins to himself mischievously.

Choosing not to question their decision to attend a party not thrown by them when Harry’s supposed to be hosting the one downstairs, Louis takes a few steps to the side as the others slowly make their way downstairs.

He’s surprised to witness the order in which they all leave the room; Liam, with his arm wrapped loosely around Zayn, is the first to go, Kat, Niall, Sebastian, and Melanie stumbling behind them in a laughing, loud mess of bodies tangled together. They appear drunk despite the lack of alcohol in their system.

Louis would give a lot to feel ease like theirs.

Just as he’s about to follow the racy group, a soft thud stops his step halfway, making him stumble over his feet. In his confusion over the fact that Harry hadn’t lead the group out, as he’d thought he would, for Harry’s clearly the uncrowned king of the group, he’d completely forgotten what his absence from the front would inevitably mean.

He’s not sure whether he should turn around, perhaps ask Harry if he’s coming, or if he should just leave him behind and follow the group. He’d feel terribly odd waiting for Harry, seeing as they’ve never so much as exchanged a greeting, but the thought of leaving him behind makes him uneasy.

And while curiosity may have killed the cat, it’s always been one of Louis’ biggest weaknesses. A slave to his nature as he is, Louis turns around with his arm still resting against the wall separating the room from the stairs.

The thud, it appears, had been caused by Harry sitting down on one of the pillows laid out on the floor. He’s not doing anything, really, but sitting there with his legs stretched out before him, crossed from the angles, head resting against the bookshelf and hooded eyes set on Louis.

If it wasn’t for the genuine lack of interest in the deep green of his irises, Louis probably would’ve turned back around and caught up with the group. But it’s that clear indifference to Louis’ companion or lack thereof that makes him curious to stay.

It’s silent, and odd, in the most curious of ways, as Louis walks to Harry, who isn’t looking at him now, his attention caught by a piece of paper on his palm that he’s thumbing mindlessly. Louis can see gracious curves of words written in black ink that’s bled through the stained paper.

It’s just as Louis’ about to sit down that Harry stands up, something in his eyes that might have edged on playful if it wasn’t for the cruel burn of his gaze. Wordlessly, Harry drops the ball of paper on Louis’ lap, the side of his calf crazing Louis’ side as he walks past.

The sound of Harry’s footsteps melts away as the words written on the paper disassociate his mind from everything around him.

Father where to find you?

Louis swallows around the bitter taste of the words, brows furrowing involuntarily as he huffs air out of his lungs. He looks up only to be met with an empty room; Harry’s already gone, nothing but the poisonous words on the crumbled-up paper left in his wake.

It’s cruel.

It was never a secret, that Louis’ father died. He was known, if not loved, by the entire island, and his death was discussed in the newspapers as much as it was gossiped downtown; the chances of Harry not having heard were a flat zero.

Pressing his palm upon his heart in an attempt to calm down its rapid beat, Louis blinks away his tears before they have a chance to fall; to bring him down with them.

Drawing his legs to his chest, Louis wraps an arm around them, holding up the paper with the other. The words are blurry through his wet gaze, but they burn the same.

Hell, Louis wants to say. Hell is where his father would be found. He’d be embraced by Satan himself at the gates of Hell, crowned the new ruler of the great downstairs. He never did sin, and who better to punish those who sin, than one who hasn’t?

And he’d punish Harry, take him from earth prematurely like he had been taken from Louis.

But then is there a Hell greater than earth itself? Harry must know earthly Hell. No man who’s never been hurt would wish to ever write something so cruel to another, for he wouldn’t know such cruelty.

Why would Harry wish to hurt Louis? They’ve never taken particular interest on one another, never looked twice in passing.

If one stared at a picture of Harry Styles, they wouldn’t imagine him cruel. His long curls make him appear most royal, his dimples giving him boyish innocence that flatter the kindhearted. Often, he looks very human. There’s softness to his features, softness which he seems to take full advantage of.

Oddly, Louis wants to know more about him. Wants to study him but do so in secret. One doesn’t study Harry Styles in secret, though, for he’s much too aware of his surroundings even if he may not appear so.

With his uneven lips and barely-there forehead lines, Styles is human. Despite what Louis may have thought not long ago, Styles doesn’t seem to bother putting up an act, either. It is as though he truly is completely unbothered by most everything, from those around him to his surroundings.

Humans, while endlessly interesting for their flaws, often bore Louis. It’s the sudden awakening following every obsession that makes it all so depressing. If it wasn’t for the transparency that humanity curses one with, perhaps his obsessions would last beyond those two weeks that they tend to.

#mine #wip #my fic #whenever people go ''oh have you published anything?''#i'm like ......well a shitty phone sex fic sure......... which isn't written well and which #i'm not particularly proud of #hence why i chose this snippet of my new fic that i #feel represents me better as a writer than that one shot does

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patriciadanielletan · 8 years

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Space, Image & Sound: Week 1 - some inspirations

I’ve yet to pin down a specific concept to develop for my own SIS project, however if there’s anything I want to achieve as an outcome, it’s to provoke. Reflection, discussion, action, a visceral reaction - anything, so long as it challenges in some way. That to me marks the success of a piece of art as ultimately a tool for communication, which is what I want to learn more about in this paper and explore in my own practice.

When I think of multimedia artworks/installations that have elicited the strongest response or engaged me the most personally, one common thread they all share is a strong participatory element -- that is, they invite the audience to not only observe the work, but to become part of it, to complete its narrative through some means of interaction. Below are a couple of interesting examples I’ve come across:

“Going Around the Corner Piece” - Bruce Nauman (1970)

An installation I was introduced to by Clint during a discussion around themes of identity and surveillance. As the viewer walks around the closed rectangular installation and are captured by a live camera feed, they are only ever able to observe themselves from behind on small television displays, creating a disconcerting feeling of disjointed self-observation. This work embodies the level of simplicity yet effectiveness I aspire to.

“Promoting a More Just, Verdant and Harmonious Resolution” - Postcommodity Collective (2011)

youtube

A five-channel video and sound installation that draws attention to the widening gap between our comfortable idealisations of the world vs the harshness of its reality. “The video imagery volleys back and forth between footage of pastoral, utopian scenes and jarring, dystopic visuals [...] The juxtaposition of beautiful, bucolic imagery with the horror of an apocalyptic future filled with pollution, overpopulation, and the decay of the natural world creates a powerful tension, between what is inevitable and what we cling to in denial. [...] The sound component of the installation depends on the viewer for activation: while walking through the gallery space, you detonate an audio land mine hidden beneath the floorboards. The experience is quite jolting, even when you’re expecting it. This aspect of the piece references the IEDs (improvised explosive device) that were employed to horrific effect in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” (source) I thought the severe thematic contrasts in the audiovisuals of this piece were particularly powerful at conveying the underlying message, and the incorporation of the viewer-activated element increased its sense of direct personal relevance/accountability of the individual.

“Pollination” - Postcommodity Collective (2015)

An immersive installation that takes the premise of a seedy bathroom peepshow where the viewer inserts a token to enter a cubicle. Once they do so, they are presented with a windowed view of a garden contained by mirrored walls and illuminated by artificial light. “Postcommodity comments on fantasy, objectification, and the male gaze. Yet by presenting an actual garden, the piece also speaks to the powerlessness of nature in the face of mankind’s domination and abuses. The incorporation of the “pay-to-play” model, meanwhile, brings in capitalism’s role in the devastation of the natural world [...] Though the piece only requires the viewer to insert her token to participate — a small gesture — it implicates her as she sees her reflection in the garden room’s mirrors.” (source) I love the multiple layers of nuance in this particular work, and the use of the uncomfortably bold metaphor of a peepshow cubicle. I think it’s even more compelling that the viewer’s participation itself is what gives meaning to those layers.

“Network Effect” - Jonathan Harris (2015)

Network Effect is an interactive web experience that “explores the psychological effect of internet use on humanity”. It consists of thousands of overlapping video and audio clips overlaid with thousands of other points of information, all presented in a classically-designed data visualization environment. As I spent time navigating and browsing, I found myself growing more and more overwhelmed by the disconnected arbitrariness of it all, yet at the same time compelled to keep searching for some meaning that I clearly wasn’t going to find. I thought this did a powerful job of illustrating the flaws in my own psychological relationship with the internet and making me question the nature of my dependence upon it.

“Your Double My Double Our Ghost” - Sarah Golding (2016)

vimeo

Your Double My Double Our Ghost is an audiovisual art installation that “invites the viewer to consider representations of themselves alone and together with other viewers". I consider this to be a uniquely participatory experience as the work draws the audience’s focus to themselves as the primary subject. I’m fascinated with the idea it presents of “perceptual distortion of self”, and there’s something mesmerising and contemplative about the way the artwork materialises that distortion through the use of audiovisual trickery and manipulation.

Whatever form my outcome takes, I aim to incorporate a similarly strong element of participation that weaves a dialogue between the viewer and the ideas behind my work.

Stay tuned.

#BCT #creativetechnologies #spaceimagesound #multimediaart #CTEC700

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marauders1971-1978 · 8 years

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Marauders 1971-1972 Chapt. 2 (Part 3/3)

Harry Potter book canon - Marauders Era

Characters: James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Lily Evans, Severus Snape (+ Marauders Era background characters)

Genre: Friendship, Close to canon

Rating - same content warning as original series (K+)

The last lesson of the day was Defence Against the Dark Arts, which got off to a loud start as a result of the muddy, ruffled looking Gryffindors which caused a fair amount of hilarity among the Slytherins. The professor didn’t particularly enthuse Sirius, a tame looking blonde woman who dressed in some bizarre amalgamation of wizarding and muggle clothes called Fairley. In contrast to the madness of flying, the class consisted of a long introduction to the history of the Dark Arts and an explanation of how malignant and benign magic is categorised by law.

“You’ll find,” Fairley lectured, “that despite the classification of spells by severity, it is difficult to take a witch or wizard to court on the basis of the use of a spell alone. This is why wizarding law relies on case law for convictions. For example-”

Sirius heard James quietly thunking his forehead off the desk next to him. He allowed himself to zone out and cast around for something more interesting. September sun was setting and shining through one of the high windows, casting the two rows in front in blinding yellow light. They spent the first lesson copying down the different classifications of spells and making notes of the Latin roots of many spells. Professor Fairley left each student with a long list of spells with instructions to translate them loosely into English and classify them.

Sirius watched Severus and Lily talking as he screwed the top back onto his ink bottle and dropped it into his bag.

“My mum told me that they used to teach Latin at Hogwarts – you know?” Severus told her, scanning the list of spells. “She tried to teach me some, but it was really difficult when it came to spell roots – well you know how my dad is.”

“I can’t imagine anything more dull,” said Lily, stuffing the homework into her Defence textbook. “Be quite useful to know how incantations are created though. Do you think that means that a person could just make up spells? Are all Latin words spells? Or does a wizard just pick one at random? I wonder how it’s done…”

Sirius thought he remembered his tutor talking about the nature of spell incantations, but he must have zoned out because he seemed to have retained very little of it. He scowled, thinking that if he had just paid attention, he might have been able to do this homework without spending hours on end in the library looking up Latin root words.

“Do you know any of these?” Sirius asked James, who had a red blotch on his forehead from where it had been pressed against the desk for the hour.

“Yeah, a couple – some of them are a bit obvious though – don’t you think ‘lumos’ sounds like illuminate? I’ve never heard of some of them though. What’s this?”

James pointed to a spell on the list.

“Equus Venaticus.”

“I’ve no idea. I can’t even take a guess.”

“I thought you had a tutor?” James accused.

“Yeah, but it was boring sometimes,” Sirius confessed. “Hurry up, we can dump our bags and go to the library to get started before dinner.”

James actually groaned and stamped his feet up the grand staircase. “It’s the first day for God’s sake,” he whined. “I picked the wrong friend. Is it too late to change? I wanted to go exploring.”

Sirius paused on the stairs in thought, allowing others to barge past him, before making the decision which would decide what kind of person he was going to be from this point on.

“We’ll do it tonight!” He called after James, running to catch up. “We’ll go to the library and do the homework, then tonight, we’ll go!”

James turned to him, grinning.

“At night?”

“Yes,” said Sirius, nodding breathlessly.

“If you’re sure -”

“I promise! Let’s do it!”

James actually clapped his hands in excitement, his eyes shining. “Then I’ve got such a great secret to show you!”

~*~

James and Sirius had decided over dinner to go to bed on time with the other first year boys to avoid suspicion. Sirius was utterly unable to fall asleep, as time wore on he grew steadily more and more excited – for whatever secret James had managed to keep tight lipped about, for being up at night in a huge castle, for defying his parents, for exploring… He lay looking at the red canopy, waiting for Remus’ quill to stop scratching in the darkness, thinking that he was quite excited about being in Gryffindor and having a real friend.

A few moments after the silence had reached a deafening point in the first year boys dormitory, Sirius slipped out of his four-poster and padded across to James. He pulled back the curtains with minimal noise and peered around to see if he was awake.

Apparently excitement had exhausted James – he’d clearly tried to stay awake as he was slumped sideways and was wearing his dressing gown, his glasses still on but digging into the side of his head.

“Hey,” whispered Sirius, poking James. “Hey, let’s go!”

James sleepily complained until he came to his senses and seemed to remember their plans a few hours ago and suddenly came to life. He grinned at Sirius and pushed him out of the way to get to his trunk.

“What’s the secret?” Sirius reminded him, kneeling down and trying his best to maintain his manners and not snoop over his friend’s shoulder into his trunk.

“I’m getting it, hold on…”

James’s smirked, having caught something at the bottom of the piles of clothes and books. He tugged at whatever it was rather than just unpacking his things and so it took some effort, but the reveal was worth it.

“Wow!” Sirius breathed, reaching out to feel the lighter-than-silk material James had presented to him. “Is that an invisibility cloak?”

“Yeah – like in ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers.’ It was my dad’s, but I think it’s a family tradition to give it to your son on their first year of Hogwarts – I don’t reckon I’d be able to give it up to my kid if I had a son.” He confessed.

“I don’t blame you,” Sirius said, his eyes travelling hungrily over the cloak, his fingers drifting over the surface in something akin to an act of worship.

“It’s cool, isn’t it? Come on.” James stood up and threw it over his head, vanishing from sight. Sirius clambered to his feet, reaching out to feel for James before his new friend threw the watery material over his head so they were face – to – face under the cloak.

“Let’s go then.”

Sirius smiled to himself as he crept down the dormitory stairs and out of the portrait hole, keeping as close to James as possible to avoid their feet appearing. He felt a distinctive thrill at the thought of how furious his mother would be if she ever found out about his short, smiley friend with a taste for rule breaking and the adventures that they had planned to go on together.

#harry potter fanfiction #Marauders #marauders era fanfiction #James Potter #Sirius Black #Remus Lupin #peter pettigrew #defence against the dark arts #Lily Evans #severus snape #beckett simpleton #marauders 1971-1978 #chapter 2 #part 3/3 #hogwarts

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birdlord · 8 years

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What I Watched in 2016

Here are the movies and TV series I watched in 2016, some with commentary and some without. The number after the movies is the date of release, my faves are bolded, and rewatches are marked with as asterisk. Last year’s list!

01 Do I Sound Gay (14)

02 We are The Best! (13)

03 Hateful Eight (15)

04 Welcome to Me (14)

05 For Your Eyes Only (81) - I listened to a lot of back episodes of the James Bonding podcast early this year, which of course led to watching a bunch of Bond movies. Not all, and not in order, certainly.

06 She’s the One (96)

07 * Diamonds are Forever (71)

08 It’s Complicated (09) - I think it was an article about the kitchen design in this movie that led me to watch it?

09 The Natural (84)

10 * Anna Karenina (12) - Never having read the book I can’t REALLY speak to this movie but haha I kinda love its commitment to artifice.

11 About Time (13)

12 What We Do in the Shadows (14) - I did enjoy this, but wasn’t as taken by it as I thought I might be. Found the werewolves the funniest by far, so I wish they’d turned up more often.

13 The Abominable Bride (15) - counting this as a movie, it was the Sherlock xmas special and I recall exactly zero about it, so…..must have been amazing, right?

14 Wake in Fright (71) - Never Go To Australia

15 Hail Caesar (16) - I think I’d have to see it again to determine if the whole thing actually holds together, but at the time, it felt of a piece with the Coen’s cheerier output.

16 In the Heart of the Sea (15)

17 The Night of the Comet (84)

18 Laggies (14)

19 * Bowling for Columbine (02)

20 A Gentleman’s Agreement (47) - confessional, experiential journalism, but done by Cary Grant in the 40s. Ahead of his time/gender?

21 Barefoot in the Park (67)

22 Suddenly Last Summer (59)

23 Tangerine (15)

24 * His Girl Friday (40)

25 That Touch of Mink (62)

26 * Charlie’s Angels (00)

27 9-5 (80) - Holy shit, somehow I thought this movie was just a rah-rah, girl power story about a bunch of secretaries getting together and overthrowing their boss and yeah, that’s SORT OF it but it gets way way weirder in the final third.

28 * Who Framed Roger Rabbit (88)

29 * The Addams Family (91)

30 * Addams Family Values (93)

31 Frida (02)

32 Bridge of Spies (15) - A E I O U and sometimes SPIES :O

33 Swimming With Sharks (94)

34 Sleeping With the Enemy (91)

35 Fatal Attraction (87) - Watched this movie and the previous one as part of an 80s/90s thriller weekend. These two are an interesting contrast to one another, being as the first is about an abusive husband and the second focuses on the most notable example of the “crazy ex-girlfriend”.

36 1 Cloverfield Lane (16)

37 The Man Who Never Was (56)

38 * To Die For (95) - This was a super fave of Teen Emily, who definitely identified with the Lydia character. Watching this time was a huge reminder than Illeana Douglas is a goddamn national treasure.

39 Trouble In Paradise (32)

40 Eraser (96)

41 * Flashdance (83)

42 * Notting Hill (99)

43 Gone to Earth (50) - Not the best Powell and Pressburger out there, but one takes what one can get, right?

44 Holiday Camp (47)

45 Never Sleep Again (10) - This is a four-hour doc about the entire Nightmare on Elm St series, and is the reason I watched Freddy’s Revenge a couple of movies down the list. It’s not a series that I have a particular attachment to, so I learned a ton.

46 Clouds of Sils Maria (15)

47 Mommie Dearest (81) - I’m not sure that I have enough appreciation for high camp to really get into this. There were some moments, but overall it’s a fine example of the kind of thing that is Not For Me.

48 Nightmare on Elm St: Freddy’s Revenge (85)

49 Inside Man (06)

50 Trainwreck (15)

51 White God (14)

52 * Sleepwalk With Me (12)

53 Amy (15)

54 * Meatballs (79)

55 Everybody Wants Some!! (16) - I found this a huge disappointment, and I’ve been a bit mystified by its positive reviews and inclusion on critics’ end of year lists. While D&C definitely has a “main character”, and we do follow him and his friends, other people and subsets of the high school are given serious time and consideration. Ultimately, I don’t think following this one dude tripping through a bunch of different college subsets was as illuminating. Plus, weak jokes.

56 * Dazed & Confused (93) - had to cleanse the mind-palate by watching the original!

57 Summertime (55)

58 The Money Pit (86)

59 Zombeavers (14)

60 Mistress America (15) - I am finding Greta Gerwig more and more charming, the more I see of her. Greta, let’s be friends!

61 While We’re Young (14)

62 The Invitation (16) - quite effective, very upper-middle-class bohemian LA horror film. I’ve heard some complaints about the final scene, but I thought it was an effective & clever way to show an expanding scope without an extra expense or sets.

63 End of Days (99)

64 Escape From New York (81)

65 Escape from L.A. (96) - Watched these two together, on the same night. They definitely should NOT be watched that way, given how identical the plots are. Unbelievably terrible ’96-era CGI in the second one, hard to believe that Jurassic Park was three years previous?? Gotta get that Spielberg money, am I right?

66 High Rise (16) - my only real disappointment in this movie was not being around to see the decline of the civilization - we jump straight from things being fine (if weird) and everything gone to heck. My favourite part is the decline, give me decline!

67 The Great Outdoors (88)

68 * Catch Me If You Can (02)

69 Little Darlings (80) - just your classic losing-virginity-at-camp story, but…wait for it….with GIRLS.

70 * Good Will Hunting (97)

71 Popstar (16) - diminishing returns, but some funny bits (mostly in the songs, not surprisingly).

72 Tarzan (16) - watched this with friends and relatives, at a drive-in theatre a couple of days after my wedding! It’s NOT a good movie, but it was a fun time.

73 Love & Friendship (16) - got completely obsessed with Tom Bennett based on his 100% rate of scene-stealing in this film. Sevigny feels utterly out of place - am I capable of seeing her in a period piece set before, say, 1975 without feeling weird about it?

74 The Night Before (15)

75 Ghostbusters (16) - So I know I was supposed to be charmed by Kate McKinnon, but her schtick just doesn’t work on me, for whatever reason. I was also really frustrated by the final fight scene of this movie - it had obviously been hacked up in editing, and wtf is up with punching ghosts instead of containing them? I’m glad this movie happened, and certainly a great deal of the criticism it came in for was deeply unfair, but it was distinctly disappointing to find that this movie just wasn’t that great.

76 Brooklyn (15)

77 Poltergeist (82)

78 * Before Sunrise (95)

79 Love & Basketball (00) - Effusive praise for this movie somehow came to my attention from all over the place this year, so I finally had to watch it.

80 The Man Who Knew Too Much (56)

81 * Road House (89)

82 Carol (15) - watching this FINALLY allowed me to fully participate in Today’s Meme Culture

83 * Out of Sight (98)

84 Happy Texas (99)

85 Red Rock West (93)

86 Weiner Dog (15)

87 The Trouble With Harry (55)

88 * When Harry Met Sally (89)

89 Jungle Fever (91)

90 Ocean’s 11 (01)

91 Star Trek Beyond (16)

92 Two For the Road (67)

93 * Seven Year Itch (55)

94 Maggie’s Plan (15) - like I said earlier about Greta Gerwig? I liked this one even more than Mistress.

95 The Dish (00)

96 Splash (84)

97 Desk Set (57) - watching this and the next were inspired by stumbling across a blog about depictions of librarians on film. I particularly hit on this one because I’ve always wanted to see a Hepburne/Tracy film, and never had (to my memory, anyhow).

98 Party Girl (95) - one of those movies I’d always noticed on the shelves at the video store, and never actually watched it.

99 * Young Frankenstein (74) - saw this in the theatre, Gene Wilder notwithstanding I…..don’t think it’s good. It’s only extremely intermittently funny, you guys! Plus, the Putting’ on the Ritz bit makes me uncomfortable (especially in audio-only form, which I heard TOO many times after Wilder died).

100 The House of the Devil (09)

101* The Witches of Eastwick (87)

102 The Borning (81)

103 * Shaun of the Dead (04)

104 Dolores Claiborne (95)

105 The Conjuring 2 (13)

106 In a Valley of Violence (16) - definitely watched this because I happened across an article about the movie’s dog star.

107 The Witch (16) - very effective in getting across the supernatural, natural, and social dangers of early puritan America, and Black Philip has entered my idiolect for any creepy animal/person/twitter feed.

108 * Wayne’s World (92)

109 What if (13) - riffs on When Harry Met Sally’s fundamental question of women and men being friends, and basically comes to the same conclusion. yawn.

110 The Martian (15) - I read the book as part of a book club last year, and finally got around to watching the film. Since I found the worst of the writing in the book to be those passages dealing with description, the movie was a lot less annoying to experience.

111 Sleepless in Seattle (93)

112 * Thelma & Louise (91)

113 Casino (95)

114 Other People (16) - wept several times. GOSH I love Jesse Plemons, he’s so hugely sympathetic. Would watch in virtually anything.

115 The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (43)

116 Primary Colors (98)

117 Edge of Seventeen (16)

118 *Die Hard (88) - loaded up the laptop with this and the next four xmas-set movies, for watching on planes and in airports, while we were on the road at christmastime.

119 *Batman Returns (92)

120 *Scrooged (88)

121 * The Apartment (60)

Theatre - 5

Drive-in - 1

All the rest at home or at friends’ homes!

TV SERIES

*The Office US S2-3

War & Peace (2016) - you bet your BOOTS I started the book after watching this. Did I finish it? Not even close.

Love (2016)

Better Call Saul S2 - this is a show I enjoy while I’m watching it, but I don’t particularly find it memorable. Why? Who knows. It’s still something I look forward to, but not a show that sticks with me.

Great British Bake off *S1, *S2, S7 + Xmas Specials - a eulogy for Bake-Off as it was. Pour one (pint of double cream, that is) out for what once was.

Broad City S5

Travel Man S1, S2 - I find Richard Ayoade so desperately charming, but ever time I’ve watched one of the movies he’s directed, I’ve ended up disappointed. This show is a bit hit or miss, depending on the guests he brings along, and the episodes definitely have a sameness to them, but if you find this guy even a sliver as entertaining as I do, it’ll pull you along anyhow.

The Night Manager - so looking forward to Hugh Laurie’s upcoming career phase as Bond Villain.

Cooked

Newsradio S1-S3 - I’d seen an episode or two of this over the years but never sat down to fully appreciate it. It’s making me miss Phil Hartman all over again, a fresh devastation, plus haha did u know Tone Loc plays a security guard on this show? It’s all true.

Lady Dynamite

OJ Made In America - I’ll count this as a series, since I didn’t watch it in the theatre. Still haven’t seen the other big OJ series of 2016, but I loved loved LOVED this. What impressed me the most is that, in spite of its 7 hour+ running time there were still aspects of this story that could have been expanded upon.

Silicon Valley S3

* Veep S1, S2

Catastrophe S2

Pulling - went back in time to get more Sharon Horgan in my life, since Catastrophe seasons are terribly short and far-between. I’d been aware of this show for a long time, and somehow wasn’t expecting it to be as near-devastating as it ended up being. What, did I forget what a British show was like?

Another Period S2

Difficult People S1, S2 - Another late discovery, but a great one. A fine example of just giving some funny people a show, and letting them just do their thing on it every week.

Fleabag - yes, I’m in for this, obviously. And if I wasn’t, the show designed itself to put me off, from the first moments. A wise move!

One Mississippi

Very British Problems S1, S2

Atlanta - I’ve got a bad feeling that this show’s deserved success will lead to surreal elements being deployed, but much less deftly than they were here.

Please Like Me S1-S4 - Tore through this entire series greedily, am now suffering until they make another season. Balances some very harrowing elements with comedy and an ensemble cast of loveable/terrible humans.

Divorce - Sharon Horgan’s writing minus her acting is a hollow empty shell, but hey, I’ll take what I can get, when I can get it.

The Fall S3 - I’d decided last year after S2 that I was done with this show, and yet, here we are, I was drawn back in.

The Crown

Insecure

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bluewatsons · 7 years

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Amy Chandler, Narrating the self-injured body, 40 Med Humanit 111 (2013)

Abstract

Illness narratives have traditionally been used as a conceptual tool for exploring experiences of chronic illness or disease. In this paper, I suggest that Frank's typology of illness narratives (chaos, restitution and quest) also offers an illuminating approach to analysing accounts of self-injury, demonstrating the diverse ways in which self-injury is practiced, experienced and narrated. Drawing on 24 narrative interviews with 12 people who had self-injured, I focus on participants’ accounts of their self-injured bodies. The approach is phenomenological, and concerned with talk about the experience of living with and in a body that has been marked by self-injury. Thus, the act of self-injury is not the sole focus, and particular attention is paid to accounts of the bodily aftermath: scars, marks and wounds. Scars left by self-injury can be seen as communicative, and the analysis developed here demonstrates some of the various ways that these marks may be read. Attending to these diverse narratives can contribute to the provision of compassionate, non-judgemental care for patients who have self-injured. Further, highlighting the existence of different ways of narrating the self-injured body may offer an optimistic resource for people who have self-injured.

Introduction

People who self-injure can be seen to occupy an uncertain position, one which unsettles notions of sanity and madness, and dramatically breaches imagined boundaries between physical and mental health. Self-injury1 is a contested practice, with long-standing debates regarding how it should be named and categorised.1 ,2 In part, this complexity arises from the diverse meanings that are attached to self-injury, as identified by a growing body of qualitative research with people who have self-injured and clinical practitioners who suggest self-injury is variously a method of managing emotions; self-punishment; interpersonal manipulation; coping mechanism; attention seeking; emotional expression; or communication of distress.3–7 Evidently, there are tensions among these meanings, and this may particularly arise when contrasting the views of healthcare staff with patients.8–10 The existence of such tensions underlines the importance of attending to the diverse narratives of individuals who self-injure in order to support compassionate, non-judgemental clinical responses.11 ,12

Illness narratives have become a widely used approach in scholarly work seeking to illuminate the importance of patient experience.13–17 The concept and use of illness narratives have been much debated within and without the medical humanities.18–21 In particular, concerns have been raised about the power of illness narratives to supply access to patient's ‘inner worlds’, while others have questioned the framing of narrative as a ‘universal’ mode of communication and experience.19 ,21 Such critiques are not to be dismissed and underline the importance of approaching narrative analysis with care. A great strength of narrative analysis is that it enables examination of the complex ties between individual stories and wider cultural contexts.22 ,23 This need not involve any attempt to access the ‘inner world’ of people's experiences, and this is certainly not the aim of this paper.24 Rather, in what follows, I focus on analysing accounts of self-injury provided in a particular context (an interview with me). The commonalities between the accounts provided, and especially their parallels with other work exploring illness narratives, demonstrate the importance of wider cultural resources in shaping the ways in which self-injury is understood.

Analysing self-injury using the concept of illness narratives may not, at first glance, seem appropriate. Contested as it is, self-injury is not necessarily an illness, though some would argue it should be seen as such: ‘non-suicidal self-injury’ has recently been proposed as a psychiatric diagnosis and it remains unclear how such changes in categorisation might shape individual understandings.1 ,25 Further, while illness narratives have been largely used to explore accounts of chronic conditions such as spinal cord injury or cancer,26 ,27 individual acts of self-injury might more accurately be described as acute. Nevertheless, for some, the practice of self-injury can be experienced as compulsive and difficult to stop;4 therefore, repeated self-injury could perhaps be described as chronic. In some cases, the consequences of self-injury include long-lasting, permanent marks and scars. Thus, even when individuals have effectively ‘stopped’ injuring themselves, they may carry noticeable evidence of their past behaviour; as such, the visible, corporeal effects of self-injury in the form of scarring may also be understood as chronic.

Narrative approaches to the study of self-harm (self-injury and self-poisoning) have indicated the importance and diversity of different modes of accounting for the practice. Written accounts of self-injury were examined by Boynton and Auerbach28 among teenagers, and Harris3 among adult women. These analyses demonstrated the wide range of ways in which narratives of self-injury were constructed and situated within broader cultural framings regarding gender, bodies, spirituality, punishment and pleasure. Accounts of the experience of living with a body marked by self-injury have been little discussed in existing literature. Additionally, while research has clearly highlighted the rich and diverse meanings expressed via narratives about self-injury, it has focused largely on the voices of women or those in clinical treatment.3,28 ,29 This paper builds upon previous work, exploring life-story narratives of living with a self-injuring and self-injured body, among a diverse group of men and women. Leading from the finding of Sinclair and Green29 that Frank's typology of illness30 narratives provided a useful framework for accounts of moving away from self-harm, I demonstrate that this typology can be extended, with some modification, to illuminate accounts of living with a body that has been self-injured. Frank's30 approach is particularly well suited to exploring accounts of self-injury because it invites reflection on embodied experience, and on the intimate relationship between bodies and narrative. My application of Frank's typology of illness narratives (quest, chaos, restitution)30 to self-injury partially addresses calls for the use of phenomenological approaches to understand illness experience,31 ,32 demonstrating the salience of this method for those whose bodies are permanently marked by a practice viewed by many as pathological.

Listening to narratives of self-injury

The narratives discussed here were generated during research that aimed to explore the ‘lived experience’ of self-injury, using life-story interviews with 12 people who had self-injured. Participants were recruited through community sites in Scotland, UK, and related diverse experiences with self-injury and with formal support services. Between 2007 and 2008, each person was interviewed twice, with the first interview focusing on their ‘life story’, and the second exploring their understanding and experiences of self-injury more explicitly. Interviewees were aged between 21 and 37; five were men and seven women. Of the 12 participants, eight suggested that they had ‘stopped’ injuring themselves, between 1 and 8 years prior to the research. Four indicated that they continued to injure themselves, and all four reported doing so between the two interviews. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis incorporated thematic and narrative approaches, informed by sociological theorisation on emotion and embodiment.22,33

The research was approved by the University of Edinburgh ethics committee (School of Social and Political Science). All participants provided informed, written consent including consent to reproduce quotations from the interviews in published work. Participants were given the opportunity to read transcripts, though only one participant took this up. The second interview provided further opportunity to encourage active engagement in the narratives being produced during the research; in the second interview, participants were invited to contribute their own themes for discussion. This reflected the original aims of the project which had been collaborative,34 though in practice this did not work out as planned (see 35).

The analysis presented here is based on naturalised transcriptions of interview discussions.36 Thus, the analysis might be said to focus on what Frank called ‘enacted’ stories (p. 116),30 though these stories were generated artfully in a research interview. During data collection, transcription and analysis, I was concerned with how self-injury was talked about and in order to do this, it seemed important to preserve, as far as possible, the manner in which participants told their stories. These accounts are different, then, from many of the published illness narratives Frank drew on when he set out a typology of illness narratives in The Wounded Storyteller.30 The accounts I discuss here are certainly ‘messier’; they represent stories told at a specific point in time, to a particular person. They may not be the stories that participants would tell now.

Despite the ‘messiness’ of participants’ accounts, early on in analysis I began to identify commonalities and contrasts in how talk about self-injury, and self-injury scars, was structured. Particularly with regard to accounts of self-injured bodies, Frank's typology of illness narratives (chaos, quest and restitution) provides a useful approach to exploring these structures.30 As with other studies using this typology,27 ,37 the boundaries between the three types were not always clear and participants’ accounts often contained elements of all three. The most frequently provided narrative incorporated both quest and restitution narratives. Typically, this entailed participants emphasising their lack of regret over their past practice of self-injury, suggesting involvement in the practice had ultimately changed either the individual or a situation for the better. However, alongside this, participants highlighted ambivalent feelings about scars, and detailed attempts they had made to remove, minimise or obscure scars. In common with previous research on illness narratives,26 chaos narratives were less common, with only one participant's narrative aligning closely with this type.

Restitution: returning to a preself-injured state

Restitution narratives address a desire for a return to a preillness, or preinjury, state. While in some cases (eg, spinal cord injury26) such a return may be extremely unlikely, the wish and hope to do so nevertheless form an important aspect of the overall narrative. Six participants alluded to ideas of returning the body to a preself-injured state by either concealing scarring with tattoos or undergoing surgical interventions to minimise them. However, in most of these accounts scars were discussed with some ambivalence, with participants’ accounts indicating little commitment to removing scars entirely. Only one participant, Justin, provided a dominant restitution narrative. In most other cases, participants suggested that they did not ‘mind’ their scars, but simultaneously indicated concern and anxiety around what others might think—or assume—on seeing scars.

Francis: I suppose there's a bit of disparity cos, in my mind I sort of feel like I'm OK with it, like, I'm perfectly, happy with, […] what I've, you know I don't have, any reg- I don't really regret doing it or I'm, really ashamed of it or, you know anything like that, but at the same time I'm not … I don't, wouldn't want to just openly talk about it at work […] I think that's basically cos of, I think they might have preconceptions.

Francis did not talk explicitly about removing his scars, though he did describe being cautious about when they were revealed. Careful management of the visibility of self-injury scars was common across the sample, and appeared to lead from concerns about the perceptions of others. Such concerns also seemed to underlie accounts that explicitly addressed scar removal. Justin's narrative provided a detailed and involved account of his efforts to remove and conceal scarring to both of his arms:

Justin: I also looked into like you know, trying to see, er, ways of kind of you know, making scar, tissue look less, obvious and stuff erm, … I got this quite interesting stuff that was like em, … kind of like em, a gel pad, a silicone gel pad […] that kind of, comp[ressed] and actually, made- you know you had to wear it, like every night […] and then, like it consistently kind of pushed it down […] but then if you don't keep using it you know it sort of, they sort of show more […] and you end up kinda going back to the, state […] but, em, that flattened it off […]so that, you know that was again, kind of, you know trying to kind of, get to the point where you don't feel kind of worried about kind of….

Justin described going on to get a large tattoo over the now flattened scars in order to further conceal the marks. This was the most unequivocal account of removing scarring caused by self-injury provided in this study. One other participant, Harriet, described having a medical procedure carried out in order to minimise scarring to her arms. Harriet did not detail exactly why she had undergone the procedure, but elsewhere in her account she suggested a commitment to continuing to self-injure, emphasising the importance of hiding this in order to avoid interference from others. While Justin's narrative indicated an overall desire to have his body reflect his current status as someone who did not self-injure, Harriet's indicated a wish to continue self-injuring without undue interference, maintaining an impression that she no longer self-injured while continuing to do so in a more hidden manner. The ‘fix’ being discussed in each of these accounts is not the practice of self-injury, but rather, the enduring aftermath.

With the exception of Justin and perhaps Harriet, participants’ accounts of scar removal or minimisation tended to be more ambivalent. These narratives referred to attempts to minimise or conceal scars, while simultaneously affirming that they sometimes felt confident or comfortable with them.

Emma: [a friend] once asked me, if, … if I could, go back again, … you know, if I was actually embarrassed by, … my scars and things and, …and if, it, … Em [pause] you know if I would do it again if I went back […] and I said, I probably would, still do it but, ... I do kind of regret having done it, at the same time, em [pause] but [pause] it was a part of my life for, [pause] a good, …10 years, so, … em, [pause] well, a very bad 10 years actually not a very good 10 years [later] I do regret the fact that I have so many scars that I can't [pause] you know, that I can't wear t-shirts around my parents.

As Emma reflected on this remembered exchange she was hesitant, noting that while she would not want to change anything about her past practice of self-injury, she nevertheless regretted the visible marks it had left, which she felt she had to continue to conceal from her parents. Other participants talked similarly about carefully choosing when and where to reveal or hide their scars.

Restitution narratives are portrayed as representing a medicalised approach to illness—one that searches for a cure or ‘fix’ for the illness or problem.26–28 The restitution narrative is understood to cohere closely with modernist expectations that illnesses can be cured or fixed.37 With self-injury, where there is permanent scarring, such a fix may be practically impossible. Given the difficulty of entirely removing or concealing scars, it may be that people who carry such marks are therefore more inclined to provide accounts which defend their existence. Indeed, this was at least a possibility for most, as scars left by self-injury were not described as inherently problematic. Unlike the illnesses, injuries and conditions addressed in other studies using the typology,27 ,30 ,37 scars themselves did not cause discomfort. Nonetheless, they were framed as problematic, requiring management, attention and accounting for.

In this study, although all participants talked about concealing scars—occasionally permanently—only Justin appeared to have made a concerted effort to remove all trace of them. Others, as with Emma and Francis, were far more ambivalent, and while they might conceal them in certain situations, removing their scars outright was not a feature of their narrative. This underlines the potential importance of the presence of long-term scarring in shaping the possible narratives available to those who have self-injured, and perhaps suggests that such scars position self-injury alongside other chronic conditions which similarly struggle to maintain a restitution narrative.37 Importantly, participants did not provide restitution narratives about ongoing self-injury and, as demonstrated though Harriet's account, it was possible to provide an account of medical intervention to remove scarring, while actively self-injuring.

Chaotic bodies: gaining and losing control

There is a difference between the ambivalence expressed by Francis and Emma, and the more explicitly negative—perhaps chaotic—account provided by Anna. The chaos narrative is one of the more challenging of Frank's typology.30 Frank argued that narratives characterised by chaos indicate a lack of narrative, an absence of coherence to the events or experiences being related: ‘lived chaos makes reflection, and consequently story-telling, impossible’ (p. 98).30 Chaos in illness narratives infers a lack of hope, and a lack of control over the events befalling the teller. As with the study by Sparkes and Smith26 of narratives of spinal cord injury, only one participant provided a narrative that adhered to a more chaotic form when discussing living with a self-injured body. Chaos, in Anna's narrative, was reflected in her orientation towards the future, as well as her description of her body, and the scars it carried. Other participants’ accounts were often typified by chaos when talking about their early experiences with self-injury. In each case, self-injury was described as a response to chaos, a way of coping with a chaotic situation. Only in Anna's account did the chaos appear to extend to the aftermath of self-injury as well.

Anna, like some of those described above, indicated some attempt to remove the scars generated by her practice of self-injury. However, in contrast, she emphasised the futility of her efforts. More importantly, she reflected that the presence of her scars provided a reason to continue to self-injure

Anna: :… the scars are there for, forever now, so [pause] I think that's kinda a bad thing though, because it, … see if it's something that faded over time, you might sorta go, oh well, it all faded so, that's it I'll no bother. But I've got these scars now, they're there now, the damage is done, I just cut on top eh scars now, just, covered… totally utterly covered [pause] so it's like, phew [pause] what's the point, of stopping.

Anna suggests therefore that the nature and extent of her scars provided a reason not to stop—‘what's the point’. Anna's discussion of her scars reflected her broader narrative which was often pessimistic in relation to her life in general, reflected also in her accounts about her body. She described herself as having an intensely uncomfortable relationship with her body, which was manifested in feelings of self-loathing and disgust, and practices which, as well as cutting herself, included disordered eating.

Anna: I just have this, sortae warped body image, and I don't know if that's, again, I don't know if that's part ae the ... the self-harm, d'you know, I don't know if that's why [pause] like I hate this body so I'll just, [pause] abuse it [laughs] […] I mean I cannae, can't look in the mirror, cannae look at myself [long pause] just, disgusting.

Anna's account here and during the previous excerpt was uncertain and hesitant; her tone markedly deflated. These more negative sections of Anna's interviews aligned closely with the chaos narrative form, lacking focus and hope, providing a sense that the teller did not feel ‘in control’ of the situations she described. Anna did not present a narrative which was wholly ‘in chaos’, however, and she provided a more hopeful account at other times in her interviews. In particular, at some points her narrative indicated her practice of self-injury might provide an escape from chaos. While Anna suggested her self-injury related to self-hatred, elsewhere in her interviews, self-injury was framed as an act carried out in response to overwhelming emotional and social situations, where she felt out of control. Self-injury, at times, offered a way to regain control and—perhaps—to conquer chaos, if only temporarily.

Anna: If I'm no’ in control of a situation, or if I'm no’ in control of what's happenin’ … that's when I self-harm […] It's like… if, if somebody says something or, or [pause] or… you know something's going on and I'm like ‘oh god I cannae stop this’ or … em sometimes I start to panic aboot things, and the only way I can stop panicking about it and think rationally about it is … cut myself [pause] it's just like, I dunno it makes me just stop I suppose and then, it's like right ok, deal wi it. So I think it's like getting control or gaining control.

Self-injury was described similarly by a number of other participants, and ‘control’ was certainly a recurring motif throughout the interviews when describing the practice of self-injury. Control is also an important feature of Frank's illness narratives, both in terms of implied control (or lack of control) of the body and as regards the use of story and narrative as a way of regaining control over the ill body.30 In Anna's narrative, self-injury is a response to chaos, but also contributes to ongoing chaos: generating further scars, further wounds. While Anna described self-injury as a way of gaining control, and emphasised her need to feel ‘in control’, she also alluded to a lack of control, both regarding the act of self-injury and the corporeal aftermath.

Anna: Have you seen that [scar reduction product] that's advertised? […] it kinda does fade them, but, ‘fraid I think I've got too many big, deep, ... kinda big scars now that it just, it wouldnae work. Em, but for a long time I could get away with [shorter] sleeves cos it wasnae, kinda here, but, it—progresses.

Anna's account implied less control over the progression of self-injury, and the generation of ‘bigger’, ‘deeper’ scars: scars which were less amenable to attempts to reduce their appearance. Thus, as with the restitution narratives discussed above, Anna's chaos narrative applied particularly to her account of her scars, with chaos being more complicated when describing the act of self-injury itself.

Transforming the self: re-visioning scars

In stark contrast to Anna's account, several participants provided narratives about their practice of self-injury and their permanent scarring, which emphasised the transformative, positive nature of both. These narratives align closely with Frank's quest narrative form, as the illness experience is reworked by the teller as initiating a transformed, improved self.30 Two participant's narratives indicated that the transformative quality of self-injury originated in the act itself, and their stories tied current, positive, interpretations of scars to the meanings of the initial injury. Another participant spoke of the importance of revealing her scars to others, as a form of reaching out and reassuring others.

Mark provided a narrative which frequently alluded to how self-injury had been effective at the time, helping him to manage periods of depression: ‘it worked, it worked […] it's always had a positive, feeling to me’. This affirmative account was carried through into Mark's discussion of the scars that his practice of self-injury had left:

Mark: But, because that one was so bad, em, … it almost serves as, as a [sign] I don't need to cut, I've got that […] it's like er, it's like a badge. […] I think if I hadn't done that, my arm would have been a lot more—covered in small cuts.

This particular narrative referred to a large scar left by what Mark indicated had been his final act of self-injury. Mark portrayed this event (cutting himself, ‘badly’) as effectively ending a difficult interpersonal relationship. As indicated here, he suggested that the resulting scar now acted as a signal, or reminder, that he did not ‘need to cut’. Significantly, Mark's account argues that had he not cut himself ‘badly’ on that occasion, his body may have now carried numerous smaller scars. Mark's discussion paralleled those provided by others where scars, and the self-injury which had generated them, were linguistically harnessed in order to generate an understandable, meaningful, account of both past acts and current, scarred, body.

In Rease's case, self-injury was explicitly framed as an important part of a broader transformation, helping her to feel more comfortable in her own body, as well as being a response to feelings of anger, self-loathing and depression.

Rease: It's [depression] like you're, cut-off from people. So I felt like that, and the, the self-harm brought me back to life[…] would kinda wake me up, and just make me feel so much better.

Rease argued that both her earlier practice of self-injury and the scars she carried with her in the present were positive and represented constructive acts, involving taking control of her body, her life and her story:

Rease: … it is about adornment and celebration […] And in a way my scars are as well, actually, ‘cos I do think they're really beautiful, and they're like a part of my, my experience, my history. And I very much believe about, em, your experience—written on the body and the body telling a story.

While other participants similarly emphasised that self-injury had been a successful method of managing distress, the accounts of Rease and Mark differed in explicitly tying positive meanings to both their practice of self-injury and the resulting scars.

That scars and the body might tell a story provoke questions about who the story might be for, and whether others might understand the story in the way the teller/body intends. Indeed, the accounts participants provided about hiding, concealing or minimising their scars frequently alluded to concerns about how ‘others’ might read scars. A contrast to this concern is found in Milly's account of deciding to ‘stop hiding’ her scars. Like Rease and Mark, Milly provided a provocative narrative, where she subverted concepts of stigma and shame, suggesting that viewing her scars could act as a form of support for others who might not be ready to be as open as she was:

Milly: I, for me it's a sense of pride, of being able to say to people ‘I've, been through crap, but I've got over it’ rather than keeping it hidden […later…] to be able to show, and I don't think this has, been discussed either, to be able to show, what I've done, it's not—like I said earlier on—it's not like ‘hey look at me, look what I've been through […] isn't it shit’ … it's a, … this is, this is what I have [been through], this is what I was, and this is who I am now.

Milly framed her revealing of her self-injury scars as a moral, compassionate move that opened up conversations with others who had self-injured and facilitated sharing of experiences. She emphasised her ‘pride’ in who she was, contrasting this with earlier difficulties she had faced during adolescence and young adulthood.

The quest narratives produced during this research provide parallels to Frank's discussion of the ethics of storytelling, and particularly the ethics invoked by quest narratives.30 The accounts of Rease, Mark and Milly touched on an ethics of recollection, of solidarity and commitment, and of inspiration (Frank30 pp. 132–33): Rease and Mark highlighted the importance of scars in anchoring memories of past actions, while Milly's account emphasised the centrality of scars in developing shared understandings and of inspiring others to live confidently with their own marked body. These narratives might be seen to reflect the communicative body, in action.30

Reading and listening to the self-injured body

The accounts discussed in this paper demonstrate the diverse meanings that self-injury, and the scars that it leaves, can hold. Although self-injury is not straight-forwardly an ‘illness’, accounts of self-injury reflect Frank's typology of illness narratives, particularly when attention is paid to narratives about bodies that have been scarred by self-injury.30 It is less clear that illness narratives are an appropriate lens through which to understand the practice of self-injury. As such, this analysis parallels the use by Sinclair and Green of the typology to analyse accounts of moving away from self-injury,29 though in this paper I focus in particular on accounts of the embodied aspects of being someone who has self-injured, or who still does.

While illness narratives frequently refer to or invoke the ill body, with self-injury the scars—the evidence of ‘illness’—can be both the starting point and originator of the story. Participants described deep unease about the possibility that others might ‘read’ scars incorrectly, or might make unfavourable assumptions about them as a result of seeing them; even those who provided positive accounts of scars indicated that they concealed them in certain contexts. Thus, the scars left by self-injury can be understood themselves as communicative, and narratives provided by people who are scarred provide an opportunity to control, to some extent, the nature of this communication. The analysis developed here indicates that the level of control people might have over these narratives varies, though in all cases drawing on culturally available frameworks: of overcoming and transforming bodies and stories through painful experience; of feeling out-of-control and losing hope; of gaining control via interventions and ‘fixes’ which return the body—at least partially—to what it once was.

Attending to the diverse ways in which scars—and self-injury—may be understood should comprise an important aspect of compassionate clinical practice. Carel31 has recently argued for the importance of phenomenological approaches to improving medical practice and research, suggesting that paying attention to embodiment provides a more holistic view of illness experience. While Carel suggests that narrative approaches often fall short of adequately incorporating the body, Frank's typology of illness narratives addresses bodies directly.30 The analysis presented here has focused on accounts of living in and with a body scarred by self-injury, thus providing a partially embodied perspective on this experience. Further, by highlighting accounts of the impact of living with a self-injured body, our attention is drawn to the importance of the long-term nature of some self-injury in which scars may endure long after the practice itself has ceased. Given the apparent rise in the number of people who are engaging in self-injury,6 ,12 it seems likely that medical practitioners will come across individuals marked by self-injury in greater frequency. A phenomenological, narrative approach demonstrates that care should be taken not to make assumptions about what these marks might mean for individual patients.

The existence of permanent scarring following self-injury invokes different types of account. This paper has explored three of these among a relatively small sample of adults, following Frank's typology of chaos, restitution and quest.30 Future work with the narratives of people who have self-injured should explore this further in order to ascertain whether this analysis is more widely applicable, and whether among other samples the typology might be more appropriate for the practice, as well as the aftermath, of self-injury. There are numerous factors which might shape the way in which scars left by self-injury are narrated and accounted for. Certainly, how recently a person has self-injured may help to explain some of this diversity. Chaos narratives, like Anna's, may be more likely if self-injury is an ongoing concern. It is also possible that the nature and setting of the research interview encourages particular forms of narrative. Interviews in this study were organised around a discussion of the participants’ ‘life story’ and there may have been an impulse in providing such an account to give a positive ending. Indeed, this may well be the case with much interview-based research, as noted by Bury.24 This raises questions as to the extent to which qualitative interview studies provide adequate space or opportunity for more pessimistic, chaotic stories.

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#medical humanities #self-injury #cutting #non-suicidal self-injury #illness narratives #personal narrative #phenomenology #qualitative research

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