#Rose doesn’t physically turn into an old lady but the world does treat her like some poor nobody

[hamletthedane]

Howl’s Moving Castle (film) and Rose Tyler’s run in Doctor Who are like the exact same story…if u even care…

[katnissmellarkkk]

Andddd here’s my chappy three thoughts 🥳🥳🥳

Hmmm Katniss saying that her mother has a dress made of velvet is actually really interesting because it shows that Mrs. Everdeen Lily-Rose really was well-er off before she married Katniss’ father Hunter.

Or did she get the velvet dress from Maysilee? Oh well, who knows.

Aww, Katniss’ nervous habit of touching soft things repeatedly to soothe herself 🤧🤧.

“Crying is not an option. There will be more cameras at the train station.” — someone tell that to Peeta 🤣🤣🤣.

Okay I gotta stop picking on Primmers, I know but like. How small is she that she sits on Katniss’ lap like a toddler but then in the following year is the same height as her? Doesn’t matter I know but still I wonder.

Okay so Mrs. E is the doctor for the people of the Seam? Idk I never thought about this but who does people like Peeta or Madge or Delly go to if they’re sick or hurt? Is there a still running apothecary shop that Katniss never mentions? Are her grandparents still running the family biz?

Also okay, I gotta stop having so many thoughts on all the lil details I know but like. Katniss says here she’s familiar with the herbs her mother doesn’t grow on her own so like a). Katniss is more of a healer than she leads on because no average person knows what kind of plant is medicinal and b). Her mother is just growing herbs and Katniss never mentions it again in the whole series? Or I just missed it.

Okay imma move on from this one singular paragraph but Gale and her made a pact a year ago that they’ll supply each other’s family with game if they were to be reaped... I’m feeling like their close friendship is probably only one year old then? Idk. Just my interpretation.

Honestly I love Katniss getting mad at her mom here.

She’s sixteen, for God’s sake, of course she’s angry at what her mother’s illness put her through.

Also I lowkey like that her mother got mad back because that lady in the movies had zero personality.

“Boys who are two to three times my size.” She sounds so little, omg 🥺🥺🥺.

“I don’t care if we’re rich, I just really want you to come home” 🤧🤧🤧😩😩😩😩 okay Primmers, you got me here.

“the Peacekeeper is at the door, signaling our time is up, and we're all hugging one another so hard it hurts and all I'm saying is ‘I love you. I love you both.’ And they're saying it back...” this is so sad leave me be 😫😫😫😫

Katniss is burying her face in a pillow to block out her emotions this is too much for me 🥵🥵🥵

Omg I forgot Peeta’s father visits Katniss 😅

Why does he visit Katniss?

She describes Peeta’s father as a “big, broad-shouldered man.” And then describes Peeta as stocky. Idk the comparison of the two descriptions has always led me to think Peeta is gonna be a big dude when he grows up like his father. This made no sense and had zero correlation but I thought, so I said it, no regrets

Oh he brought her cookies 🤧

WAIT WAIT WAIT. I just had a new thought, y’all. What if instead of the baker bringing cookies being a thing he does for all tributes, what if he’s bringing the cookies because Peeta asked him to, because he made them and wants to give them to Katniss and knows she’ll never accept / trust them coming from her competition? What if that’s the real reason the baker visited her in the first place? Because Peeta asked him to? This was such a shipper comment but idc, no regrets, remember?

Omg Peeta’s father is just mute 🤣🤣🤣

Between an abusive, angry mother and a mute for a father, the Mellark brothers must have had a fairytale of a childhood 😅😅😅😅.

But seriously #PoorPeetaMyBaby

Aww Peeta’s father is gonna help keep Prim alive 😭

Omg I just remembered he’s her mother’s ex boyfriend. Haidon Mellark, as I named him in my fics.

That one fic where he was thought to be Prim’s real father is just playing now in my head, rent free.

But does Katniss not realize that he may be offering to help Prim as a favor to her? Like she claims Prim is just so wonderful people adore her but there’s like zero evidence in the text that make her endearing? Okay I need to turn this bus around, I need to find a love for Primmy Deen.

Madge is not one for preamble apparently. No “hi, how are you? I’m sorry you’re gonna die? What will your last meal be?” Just right to “here, wear this family heirloom of mine, k thanks.”

I like that Madge had to kiss her cheek for Katniss to realize they were friends 😅😅😅.

I remember always loving her and Gale’s hug here. I’ve always felt like it was platonic, but especially when I first read the books and had zero preference one way or another for Gale or Peeta, I really liked how she said even with nothing romantic between them, “when he opens his arms, I don’t hesitate to go to him” or something I’m paraphrasing ok I’m lazy

Also though, this is the first time they’ve ever hugged? Idk why that surprises me? It shouldn’t because where is a hug gonna fit into a hunting trip 😅🤣😂 “I just caught a deer!” “let’s celebrate with a hug!”

I like that Katniss remembers how her father even failed to make a good bow sometimes. Random, I know.

I like that the Capitol weren’t entertained by the people freezing to deaths because it wasn’t bloody enough 🤭🙃

“How different can it be [to kill a human vs an animal]?” She’s about to find out, Gale 🥺. And when she comes back you won’t understand 🙄😔

What did Gale want to say before the Peacekeepers dragged him away?

I used to think it was a confession of love but I’m actually sure it wasn’t now? Just the wording “remember I-“ doesn’t sound like it, considering he never confessed anything prior to her coming home.

I’m assuming now he was just gonna give her some more advice to stay alive 🤷🏼‍♀️. Clearly if it were relevant it would have made its way to the others books.

Aww, she’s never been inside a car before 😭😭. I didn’t even know they had cars in this universe but okay.

I notice though how she says “In the Seam, we travel on foot.” So is Peeta just riding his trolly down the street every day with the other merchants then? 🤣

Peeta just openly crying on camera 😅😢.

I like how Katniss is like “ooo is this an act to get sponsors?” when in reality Peeta’s like “no, I’m just a soft and genuine boy ™️”

Omg I just realized this totally goes along with Peeta’s thing later on “I want to die as myself”

He’s refusing to hold back his emotions because he thinks he’s doomed to die and he’s already refusing to pretend to be or feel something ingenious.

But a Johanna mention in book 1 chapter 3 woohoo 🥳🥳🥳 also Katniss comparing Jo and Peeta is kind of like foreshadowing of their shared torture in book 3.

Omg she just called Peeta broad-shouldered and strong. 🥰🥰🥰 my headcanon for his post-canon body is confirmed

Also why does Katniss keep allotting his strength to carrying bread trays around? Are they heavy? Why have I never once heard of people who carry bread trays being strong? I always thought Peeta was really strong because he learned to fight in order to defend himself against his mother but that’s probably wrong.

But if a mother is abusive, it can lead to one of the kids being physically violent as well and we know Peeta isn’t but he has two older brothers I’m gonna cut myself off now but I think we all smelled what I just stepped in.

Also I just find it so fascinating now how she regards herself vs Peeta here.

When talking about herself, she says, “The competition will be far beyond my abilities. [...] Oh, there'll be people like me, too. People to weed out before the real fun begins.” But when she talks about Peeta, she immediately says, “It would take an awful lot of weeping to convince anyone to overlook him.”

It’s just funny how she discounted herself right from the start but thought he was a real contender and then come to find out, Peeta believes it’s the exact opposite 😂🙃. They’re both so stupid I can’t even take it.

Wait did they actually give the location of the Capitol and the location of District Twelve in today’s world? And I just overlooked it? Brb I’m gonna go to google maps right quick.

Okay so basically what I gathered is the Capitol is probably in New Mexico and District Twelve is somewhere between Kentucky and Alabama. Irrelevant I know. But just a reminder now to everyone that Katniss and Peeta are literally speaking, crying and screaming in thick, backwoods southern accents.

It’s literally so sad how everything for Katniss is about food. Like every motive she has, every action she does is about preventing starvation ever again. 🤧🤧🤧

First mockingjay mention 🤭🤭.

“My father was particularly fond of mockingjays” 😭😭😭 I bet he was 😭😭😭😭

We always go on and on about how Katniss is a mockingjay or her children are mockingjays but Katniss herself here says mockingjays represent her father imma cry, y’all 😫😫😫😫

“It’s like having a piece of my father with me, protecting me” shut up shut up shut up shut up

Awww, Katniss has never had food like this before 😔😔😔

Neither has Peeta 🤧🤧

Katniss disliking the way Effie put the two kids from the year before down and so began to eat like a pig just to prove her point, is so her. And the beginning of her fighting for the underdog.

Omg the Rue introduction 🥺🥺🥺

Bahahahaha the commenters calling District Twelve backwards but charming 😅😅😅 they really are the hillbilly district

Peeta’s unexpected laugh 🥺🥺🥺 I love you, baby

“He was drunk. He’s drunk every year.” “Every day.” Katniss and Peeta are already finishing each other’s sentiments and teaming up to get on Effie’s nerves I love them so much 😍

Oh my God, Effie, you selfish jerk. They’re kids having fun for like one second, no need to throw in their faces they’re gonna die if the drunk won’t help them. I’d forgotten why I don’t really like the book version of her. I actually prefer her as comedic relief in the movies.

I actually just realized I really dislike Effie Trinket, I hope they never speak to her again Post-Mockingjay. Idc how you’re raised you don’t need to treat teenagers who are sentenced to a probable death badly just because they laughed at you 🙄🙄🙄😡😡😡😡. They didn’t even really laugh at her, she’s just annoying and awful, we don’t stan Effie in this household.

Okay, that’s all for my thoughts on chapter three! Until next time, y’all ! If anyone actually read this long mess of a post.

[dessarious]

The Angel of Death Pt37

Inspired by this Story Starter by @someone-ev​

AO3   Prologue   Beginning   Previous   Next

“I would like to formally request that you train me to fight.” Tris looked up in confusion to find Kagami standing in her doorway. The girl seemed serious and she didn’t usually make jokes; it was one of the reasons Tris actually liked her. At the same time, it didn’t really make sense.

“You’re being trained in fencing and two forms of martial arts. I’m sure your skill is already adequate.” Kagami’s hand twitched slightly towards her neck and Tris realized what brought this on. They’d been attacked, almost two weeks ago, and Kagami hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight. “You were caught off guard, training how to fight and reacting to real life situations can be very different things.” The girl just scowled at her.

“You were caught off guard as well yet while I was useless and couldn’t even defend myself you knocked out both attackers and saved me.” Tris sighed as she tried to come up with an explanation that wasn’t the truth. Partially because it would be safer for Kagami if she didn’t know but also because she didn’t want another person here acting like she was a bomb ready to go off. Adrien and Chloe both tried to hide it but ever since Brazil they’d been treating her differently. Whenever The Angel of Death was mentioned in the news they’d be whispering in corners and walking on eggshells for days after and this had been going on for close to four months now. Tris didn’t want to admit it, but it was driving her insane. She now had an almost constant urge to sneak up behind one or both of them and shout ‘Boo!” and she had no idea where the impulse was coming from.

“You know how I told you that Chloe used to bully me?” Kagami nodded and Tris decided half truths were her best option. “Well there were a lot of people that used to bully me, and many of them were a lot more physical. I learned to fight by being attacked and I learned to survive by being able to find and utilize my opponents weaknesses quickly. It’s not about being well trained or knowing the proper forms. It’s about seeing an opening and taking it no matter what it is and no matter what you have to do.” That was true enough. In the league Talia had believed in a trial by fire method of training for her. Just like that first fight with Damian she’d always just been thrown into situations and forced to react.

“That does not seem… fair.” Tris actually snorted with derision and Kagami eyed her warily. “I just mean that it doesn’t seem very sporting.”

“There are no rules in real life. All that matters is doing what it takes to survive. Honor is meaningless to the dead.” Kagami just stood there frowning at the floor and Tris waited for another lecture. She didn’t get one.

“Then I want you to teach me that.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That was how they ended up in the lobby of the Grand Paris the next weekend. Tris was trying to teach Kagami how to spot physical infirmities and weaknesses to exploit by pointing out different gaits or even the way a person held themselves. Luka, Adrien, and Chloe had all decided to tag along but she wasn’t sure why. When she asked they just said the two of them shouldn’t be left alone together.

Tris was in the middle of pointing out a gentleman who had obviously suffered a recent back sprain when the boy next to him drew her attention. The smug, superior way he held himself, the walk that said ‘get out of my way or I’ll go through you’, the way he seemed to look down on everyone and everything around him… she knew that pose. She knew that boy. Before she was even aware of her intentions she was stalking over to the duo as the others called after her. As she got closer he turned to look at her with that same haughty expression and she felt rage consume her. His expression showed recognition and shock for only a moment before her fist made contact with his nose. Her knee went to his stomach a moment later and he was on the floor.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” She only vaguely realized she was screaming at him in Arabic, too consumed by fear, anger, and pain to process much else. She watched as Damian rose from the floor and glared at her.

“I was.” That was it. Tris felt the sneer on her face but didn’t have time to wonder at the uncharacteristic reaction.

“I should have known you’d follow in your grandfather’s footsteps. I’ll only say this once so I suggest you listen. If you, your mother, or any of the degenerates who still follow you try to come after me they will be finding pieces of you for decades. And don’t think for a second that you know me or my skills well enough to stop me.” His expression flashed to annoyance for just a moment but it was enough for her to prepare. When his hand shot out to grab her neck he only caught air as she stepped in to trip him. She had to fight down a smug smile at his obvious confusion when she pinned him to the floor. “I know your fighting style better than you do al Ghul. Consider this a warning.”

“M. Wayne I am so sorry! Chloe get this hoodlum out of here!” Tris was finally brought back to her surroundings by the Mayor’s voice. Shit. What had she just done? Damian hadn’t even seen her, let alone figured out who she was, what the hell had possessed her to out herself like this? When she released him, Damian just got up and dusted himself off.

“It’s fine Sir. We’re old friends, though I’m sure it was a strange greeting to witness.” Damian never took his eyes off her as he spoke and she couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at him. The boy was still bleeding from her first punch and he expected that to explain things.

“Oh well… if that’s all then… are you sure you don’t want me to at least call the Police to file a report?” The man he was with must be extremely wealthy for the Mayor to be falling over himself like this. What had he called him.. Wayne? She finally looked at the man’s face and realized exactly how screwed she was. How could Talia possibly have formed an alliance with the owner of Wayne Enterprises? With those resources at her disposal there was no telling what she was capable of.

“Everything is perfectly alright Mayor. My son is simply a little rambunctious; it’s nice to see someone who can take him down a peg or two.” Son? Only her luck could possibly be this bad. He switched to Arabic to address her. “I’d very much like to continue this discussion. Perhaps in private?”

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[thebluelemontree]

We know Sansa has a connection to the Seven through her wishes, but do you think the same could be said of the Old Gods? Also, do you see magic in her future storyline like the rest of her siblings? Thank you!

Of course, she has a connection to the Old Gods too. GRRM confirmed all the Stark children are wargs, even if Sansa’s abilities didn’t have the chance to manifest at the same time as her siblings since she lost Lady so quickly. Skin changing was already inherently in her and still is. It’s just that the ability is dormant for the most part. The connection between Sansa and Lady never weakened either. I already wrote about this here a while back, and it may have to do with Lady’s bones and hide being interred in Winterfell. She still longs for her, dreams of her, and even feels her direwolf’s presence close by sometimes. I don’t think she’s aged-out (if that’s possible) of ever skin changing an animal since she’s still younger than Robb and Jon when they received their direwolf pups. 

Sansa was also bonding with the old blind dog on the Fingers, but their time together was also cut short. Dogs are the easiest to skin change according the Varamyr prologue, so in theory Sansa could have started to have “dog dreams” if she’d stayed in physical contact with the dog. Her time in the Vale has had her separated from animals, but that doesn’t mean it will always be so. There’s always the possibility of skin changing a bird like a falcon perhaps.  

And ya know, she does have a greenseer little brother that she was always close to that might be able to help her grow her magical side. Maybe even break in an animal for her to make it easier to slip into perhaps? That’s a thing.  

Slipping into Summer's skin had become as easy for him as slipping on a pair of breeches once had been, before his back was broken. Changing his own skin for a raven's night-black feathers had been harder, but not as hard as he had feared, not with these ravens. "A wild stallion will buck and kick when a man tries to mount him, and try to bite the hand that slips the bit between his teeth," Lord Brynden said, "but a horse that has known one rider will accept another. Young or old, these birds have all been ridden. Choose one now, and fly." -- Bran III, ADWD.

I don’t see any evidence that the door is permanently shut on her skin changing something eventually. 

But if you mean does she have a connection to the Old Gods through prayer, the answer is yes too.

The night the bird had come from Winterfell, Eddard Stark had taken the girls to the castle godswood, an acre of elm and alder and black cottonwood overlooking the river. The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood. Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon rose, Arya several hours later, curling up in the grass under Ned's cloak. All through the dark hours he kept his vigil alone. When dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon's breath surrounded the girls where they lay. "I dreamed of Bran," Sansa had whispered to him. "I saw him smiling." -- Eddard V, AGOT.

It might be something that Sansa dreams of her greenseer brother in the godswood after they’ve received word of Bran awakening from the coma where his own third-eye was opened by the three-eyed crow. If this scene isn’t a glimpse of the future in ADOS, I’ll eat my hat. 

Sansa is a person of faith who observes both her religions, albeit for a time she favored the aesthetics of her mother’s faith more than her father’s.  

She prayed in both the sept and the godswood for her father, unfortunately to no avail on that one. In the crisis of her captivity, she makes more space for the Old Gods in her religiosity.   

By the time she reached the godswood, the noises had faded to a faint rattle of steel and a distant shouting. Sansa pulled her cloak tighter. The air was rich with the smells of earth and leaf. Lady would have liked this place, she thought. There was something wild about a godswood; even here, in the heart of the castle at the heart of the city, you could feel the old gods watching with a thousand unseen eyes.

Sansa had favored her mother's gods over her father's. She loved the statues, the pictures in leaded glass, the fragrance of burning incense, the septons with their robes and crystals, the magical play of the rainbows over altars inlaid with mother-of-pearl and onyx and lapis lazuli. Yet she could not deny that the godswood had a certain power too. Especially by night. Help me, she prayed, send me a friend, a true knight to champion me . . . -- Sansa II, ACOK.

I don’t think Sansa ever really turns away from her belief in the Seven to embrace the Old Gods as much as some claim. It’s the Seven she prays to during the Blackwater and the Mother she invokes when she sings for Sandor Clegane. She wants to light candles in the sept to ask the gods to protect Margaery and Loras. It’s more that she’s disillusioned with some of the earthly institutions and that causes a momentary flash of anger at the gods for (in her mind) never hearing her prayers. 

When she’s in the Eyrie, a place devoid of spiritual connection or comfort, Sansa feels the pain of loss of both her religions.

It was the old days she hungered for. Prayed for. But who could she pray to? The garden had been meant for a godswood once, she knew, but the soil was too thin and stony for a weirwood to take root. A godswood without gods, as empty as me. -- Sansa VII, ASOS.

Even the gods were silent. The Eyrie boasted a sept, but no septon; a godswood, but no heart tree. No prayers are answered here, she often thought, though some days she felt so lonely she had to try. -- Sansa II, AFFC.   

During this period of time, Sansa’s faith has taken a real beating from being manipulated and coerced into being a part of Littlefinger’s crimes. Cynicism and corruption appear to be winning for the time being as Littlefinger rises and succeeds in the Vale. The presence of spirituality in her inner dialogue has grown ever more faint and weary; however, as I’ve shown above, a restoration of faith is likely as she progresses toward Winterfell and reuniting with her siblings. Does that mean she will begin to embrace the Old Gods (and magic) and to let go of the Faith of the Seven? Maybe, we have to wait and see. Or it’s possible she expands her consciousness to accept more of both in her life. 

Martin is a lapsed Catholic and atheist himself, but he never treats Catelyn or Sansa’s religiosity with the Seven as a joke or as less than religions that have demonstrable magic attached to them. I think it helps to keep in mind GRRM’s position on the nature of the relationship between characters, religion, and magic:

“Well, the readers are certainly free to wonder about the validity of these religions, the truth of these religions, and the teachings of these religions. I'm a little leery of the word "true" — whether any of these religions are more true than others. I mean, look at the analogue of our real world. We have many religions too. Are some of them more true than others? I don't think any gods are likely to be showing up in Westeros, any more than they already do. We're not going to have one appearing, deus ex machina, to affect the outcomes of things, no matter how hard anyone prays. So the relation between the religions and the various magics that some people have here is something that the reader can try to puzzle out.”

[officialleotolstoy]

Oh Anatole Brainrot* We’re Really In It Now, aka Anatole playlist annotations!

*I only have brainrot about him in terms of his relationships with Hélène and Dolokhov idc about him on his own 🤢

This playlist is infuriating because it has so many good songs on it and he does NOT deserve to have a playlist that slaps so hard :/

My Type - Saint Motel

“You’re just my type; you’ve got a pulse and you are breathing”

The lyrics are literally just I Will Have Sex With Anything That Breathes which is Anatole’s only personality trait. It just is.

Fool For Love - Lord Huron

“I’m asking her to be my bride, I know there’s another man but he ain’t gonna delay my plans”

This song is about eloping with a girl who already has a boyfriend, it is THE Comet section Anatole song. Which angers me because it’s such a good song, it doesn’t deserve to be associated with him in my head.

The Cult of Dionysus - The Orion Experience

“Wine and women and wonderful vices”

HEDONISM BABEY!!! Also the phrase “wine and women” with “he spends his money on women and wine” in Comet...makes ya think.

Everybody Loves Me - OneRepublic

“Look so good I might die, all I know is everybody loves me”

You know that quote that’s like “[Anatole] cultivated an air of superiority blah blah blah whatever” (paraphrased)? This is that in song form.

Bedroom Hymns - Florence + The Machine

“The wine and the women and the bedroom hymns”

Thottery AND the phrase “wine and women”? Anatolecore.

Talk - Hozier

“I’ll try to talk refined for fear that you find out how I’m imagining you”

I think if he needs to, Anatole can sugarcoat carnal desire with pretty words. It kind of comes down to “I’m pretending to be eloquently and romantically interested in you but I really just want to have s*x with you”. He might not have that much self-control, but the bottom line is that this song is horny and so is he.

Someone New - Hozier

“I wake at the first cringe of morning and my heart’s already sinned”

All my notes say is “commitment issues thot anthem” which is fair. I think it’s physically impossible for him not to fall in love with someone new every week, which is the entire point of this song. Also “you knew who I was with every step that I ran to you” tracks, Anatole doesn’t really try to hide it.

Paradise City - Guns N’ Roses

“Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty”

I won’t lie, I’m not sure if this is what the song is actually about but that bit at least has hedonism energy. Also this came up on genius lyrics and it feels like something Anatole would do:

Hallelujah - Panic! At The Disco

“I got caught under the covers with secondhand lovers”

Ok whore. But also the vibes of knowing you’re a sinner and reveling in it feels like Anatole. It’s the complete lack of shame for me.

Why Should I Worry - Billy Joel

“Why should I worry? Why should I care?”

Has he ever actually cared about anything other than his own personal wellbeing? Jury’s still out. This song implies he has street smarts which may not be true but not every lyric is gonna work 😔✌🏻

Only The Good Die Young - Billy Joel

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun”

The entire song is just seducing a devoutly Catholic girl, and it doesnt exactly work but I always assign this in my head to that time he tried to marry Marya B. But just in general, the reckless seduction vibes work.

Mambo No. 5 - Lou Bega

“To me flirting is just like a sport”

Unironically this is such an Anatole song. Listing off all his different lovers and their attributes is absolutely something he’s done. This is just a carefree thot song which is his vibe.

Ex’s and Oh’s - Elle King

“Ex’s and oh’s they haunt me like ghosts”

This is also on the Hélène playlist but this time the ex messing things up is his wife (not that any of that was her fault). I also think the general vibes of “I’m gonna make you want me so much and then leave you” are Anatoleish

Rasputin - Boney M.

“Russia’s greatest love machine”

LOOK ME IN THE EYES AND TELL ME THIS DOESN’T WORK. It’s about the seduction of upper-class Russian women come ON

I’m Born To Run - American Authors

“I’m gonna live my life like I’m gonna die young”

This is almost a more wholesome version of his careless hedonism, more skewed toward seeing the world rather than just having drunken fun but the energy is still there

Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen

“Tonight I’m gonna have myself a real good time”

It’s the “having fun is the only thing that matters” mindset. He doesn’t deserve this song 😔

Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy - Queen

I don’t have a lyric for this one, it’s just like. Yes I am a professional flirter! He is not this into commitment but i imagine he tells a new person this every week.

Oops!...I Did It Again - Britney Spears

“But to lose all my senses, that is just so typically me”

The lack of commitment and not treating relationships seriously is very Anatole, and so is the refusal to take responsibility for the heartbreak you directly caused.

How Bad Can I Be? - The Lorax

“How bad can I be? I’m just doing what comes naturally”

I KNOW I KNOW. HEAR ME OUT. This is pretty much Tolstoy’s “defense” of him verbatim. It’s the idea that he’s just so naturally like this it has never occurred to him to be any other way or to think about other people’s wellbeing. Anatole is the Onceler and Natasha is a straight girl on tumblr circa 2012.

Runaway Baby - Bruno Mars

“When I play, I never stay”

He would never be this self-aware, but otherwise it fits. The whole thing is about an inability to commit and a propensity for causing heartbreak. Also, I’ve had a grudge against this song for years and the blind rage it fills me with is reminiscent of the blind rage Anatole fills me with.

California Girls - The Beach Boys

“I’ve been all around this great big world and I’ve seen all kinds of girls”

This song is like, “What if we objectified every woman ever but made it a bop?” which is massive Anatole energy I think.

Girls, Girls, Girls - Motley Crüe

“I just need a new toy”

Literally the exact same justification as California Girls

It’s Raining Men - The Weather Girls

If I’m gonna add songs about objectifying women, I’m gonna add songs about objectifying men too. Equal opportunity whorery.

Parental Guidance - Judas Priest

“You say I waste my life away but I live it to the full”

This is just him to Vassily. Refusing to be controlled by your parents’ expectations and just going off to have fun is Vassily’s whole gripe with him and also the point of this song.

How To Be A Heartbreaker - MARINA

“You gotta have fun, but baby when you’re done you gotta be the first to run”

The bits about not getting close to anyone because you’re afraid of getting hurt don’t really apply but the “here’s how to make people like you and also we are for sure not staying together this is just for fun” definitely fit.

The STD Song - Top Memes

“Sinning with your naked bod is evil and atrocious”

I uh. I forgot this was on here but I was RIGHT when I added it. This is the lecture Vassily gives him after his Polish wife debacle-

Do It All The Time - I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

“I’m only doing anything I want to do because I do it all the time”

He literally just does whatever he wants without thinking about the consequences. It’s just got huge entitled kid thot energy which is Anatole’s whole character. And the line “I’m taking your girl and I’m making her mine” is deeply Anatoleish.

Until The Night Turns - Lord Huron

“I got a helluva view for the end of the world, I've got a bottle of booze and a beautiful girl”

This doesn’t fit into any particular situation but I do think if the world was ending and Anatole was drunk with a pretty lady he would have this exact reaction. Also the repetition of the word sunrise (which is what the name Anatole means) is just a fun little extra bit.

Girls - The 1975

“What’s the fun in doing what you’re told?”

Rebellious kid energy! Also “she can’t be what you need if she’s 17” is everyone with morals @ him about Natasha (I know she was 19 at the time shh it’s about the energy).

Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) - The Offspring

“In his own mind he’s the dopest trip”

This man is The Worst but he really thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips huh! Literally everyone can tell he’s not the brightest bulb in the bunch EXCEPT HIM. Smh.

[moretreasurewithinarchive]



Ella's mother calls her clever at least twice that I heard.

LITTLE ELLA HAS A LEGIT FULL SIZED CAROUSEL HORSE IN HER BEDROOM??? And with that, it looks like there was at least 1 puppet stage, what I can only assume to be a carousel music box but it's built like a Christmas Pyramid, a mobile, and a canopy bed.

The way she and her dad both say thank you this must have been very difficult for you when they get news the one they love is dying???

The Just So and Shall We lines repeat too.

The dress she's wearing when her father returns and when her mother's dying are the same, it just had fake flowers on it when he returns.

We see 3 different Ella's walking with her father toward the meadow. There's little Ella in Black after her mother dies, then what I assume is teenage Ella in a white or blue floral dress sand her hair work to the side and flowing over her shoulder, and then Lily.

Ella lets her shoes hand off her feet a lot

Her physical reaction to her father mentioning Lady Tremaine even before he says anything about marriage.

That butterfly comb will never NOT remind me of Rose's in Titanic.

I can't see anyone in that time period actually making their day Lucifer???

I hate Lady Tremaine's black hat when we first meet her.

The way Ella smiles and laughs for her father and then visibly deflates the instant he turns around KILLS me.

When the Tremaines arrive, Ella's mother's portrait is on the bookshelf in the study/parlor/whatever that room is where she died.

Drisella tells Anastasia their mother's lying about the house being charming and says it's just manners. Anastasia tells her to shut up.

The look Ella's father gives Anastasia when she says they never thought to decorate, and how he looks back at Ella.

Before he leaves on that last trip, Ella KNOWS he isn't well and she can tell something going to happen.

Why the fuck does Tremaine get so jealous of hearing about Ella's mother when she CLEARLY doesn't love her father?

The way Anastasia and Tremaine both look at Drisella after the complexion line kills me.

Like... Tremaine legit kept up a smile until the carriage pulled away and it was gone in less time than it took to blink.

The harp just sitting in the corner. Totally Ella's mother's. Js.

When Tremaine banishes her to the attic, it sounds like Ella was going to say something about staying in a smaller room?

By the time Ella and Tremaines talk in the study/parlor, all of her things, her father's things, and her mother's things are packed up and set aside, including the portrait of her mother. Suspicious much?

Anastasia and Drisella have toys. At first, we are Anastasia holding a doll and Drisella a rabbit, but they switch later.

Casual reminder that Ella's the youngest, since Anastasia calls her their little sister.

I want a full version of Lily singing Sing Sweet Nightingale and Lavender's Blue.

There are flower decorating and motifs all over this house. The walls. The clothes. Even in the stone wall in the kitchen.

Ella's look at Drisella while she's singing. And like... Tremaine herself tells her to shut up, but she gets mad at Ella for being like cringe.

Ella immediately knows as soon as she opens the door and see Farmer John.

Tremaine is a damn good actress though. Her eyes treating when they get the news.

THE BEEHIVES ARE SO CUTE.

That red bedroom of Tremaine's is so garish though.

Another casual reminder: ELLA NEVER GOT TO PROPERLY MOURN HER FATHER BECAUSE SHE WAS WORKING 24/7.

I imagine the scraps they gave her to eat lessened as time went on and they had less food and money. But she always shared them, no matter how meager.

Jacqueline is iconic.

A GIANT POT OF LAVENDER IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRS TO THE ATTIC FROM THE KITCHEN.

Gods that robe of Tremaine's is AWFUL.

"Is there someone we've forgotten" They're dehumanizing her already. What a cunt.

Ella riding barebacked and workout reigns will never NOT impress me tbh.

Convince me the stag wasn't a test for both Ella and Kit from Fairy godmother.

Gods Richard was PERFECT in this role. And every time I hear his real accent I'm shook.

Kit's fucking whipped from the start.

Ella only calls him Kit. You can't tell me otherwise.

His sympathy when she says "They treat me as well as they're able". Tell me that this like doesn't ring in his head later and that's why he knows she's been stopped from coming to him.

RICHARD'S DIMPLES

IT'S KIT. KIT. I'M KIT. You absolute fucking disaster of a man 🤣🤣

And you know the Captain never lets him live that down.

Kit goes away a little and comes back when he says he hopes to see her again.

Ella's little lip bite.

Gods those blue and yellow split outfits on the palace staff are ATROCIOUS.

The banter with Kit and the King. And Kit and Ella in the secret garden.

MASTER PHINEAS.

Why are Kit's outfits so attractive?? 🥺

Kit and the king are so short compared to the Captain and the Grand Duke.

The Captain's laugh.

"That's very kind of you. To think of me." My poor baby.

THE LOOKS AFTER SHE CLAPS BACK IN FRENCH. SLAY.

Also, "I speak French not Italian".

Kit, honey you can say it's for the people all you want. You're not fooling anyone.

What the actual fuck does moonface even mean??

Ella making her dress in a day??? Damn girl.

I love Fairy godmother's beggar woman cloak???

Gods I HATE Lady Tremaine.

Ella's pink dress swear her mother's wedding dress like in the deleted song from the cartoon. And this is the hill I'll die on.

"Hairy dogfather" JFC.

I'd have liked the whole fairy godmother getup better without those dinky little wings tbh.

Ella not knowing what cantaloupe is.

MR. FUCKING GOOSE.

I'm sorry, but the lizard footmen creep me out. THEY DIDN'T NEED TO GIVE THEM THOSE TEETH LIKE WTF.

Ok but like... Would the greenhouse have been repaired at midnight though???

Honestly, Disney deprived us all of Lily being trapped in the pumpkin a la the Cinderella episode of Britannica's Tales Around the World with Pat Morita.

WHY TRANSFORM THE MICE. IT'S A FARM. THEY HAVE HORSES.

"I can't drive, I'm a goose" is my favorite line.

Unpopular opinion??? But I liked the ballgown better either without the butterflies or during the transformation when there was only those few blue ones.

I do like the gold butterflies in the slippers though.

I want to know how they got the crystals to stay in Lily and Helena's hair.

Sitting in a crinoline must be awful.

The palace is stunning.

I love every single one of the chandeliers in this movie.

The king waves at Chelina and Kit KNOWS.

The girl on the staircase next to the Tremaines when they get introduced laughs at them. And honestly, same.

"Someone I meet once TONIGHT".

For real, how did the guards at the stairs not hear Ella's name or that her footman was a lizard? They were like not even 5 feet away.

Ella playing with her skirt when she happy and scared.

KIT'S SMILE.

I wish we saw more of the purple in the ballgown.

I love that Ella's descent had Lavender's Blue and the dance has Once Upon A Dream in the score.

The Captain HAD to have told Kit that the Grand Duke already promised him to Chelina. And who gave him the right to do that anyway?

Kit's stammering.

Ella's gasp when he takes her waist and the way she looks at him is like the signature Lily shot. They did the same thing in War & Peace.

"They're all looking at you. Believe me they're all looking at YOU".

The one part in the dance where they kinda flap their arms up and down reminds me of a butterfly and idk why.

Dancing wearing a sword had to be tough. Especially when your partner's in a crinoline and a heavy ass dress. Props to Richard.

Lily tripping at one point during the dance.

Even Chelina loves Ella let's be real here.

Why is there so much telling people to shut up in this movie???

WE GOTTA FACE FACTS HERE, KIT AND ELLA ARE EVEN BETTER AND MORE LOVING PARENTS THAN THEIR OWN WERE.

I love the secret garden scene so much.

When Kit puts the shoe on her foot... Why is that like 😏😏. I hate feet. Why is that breathtakingly romantic??

Why do they always hesitate? GO AFTER HER IMMEDIATELY DAMN IT.

The crier's aids when he hits his head on the stairs.

Ella's interaction with the king.

Kit you're so slow. She's in glass heels and a crinoline and she still outran you.

DISNEY I WANT A DIRECTOR'S CUT OF THE FILM WITH ALL THE DELETED SCENES PUT BACK IN. I NEED KIT SAYING THE LADY ISN'T HERE TO DEFEND HERSELF.

They honestly don't see the footman using his coat tails to lower the portcullis??

Anastasia actually seemed pretty nice to Ella after the ball? Saying she looked cheerful and patting her arm? But then again, we really only see Tremaine and Drisella ripping the dress soooo?

ELLA YOU CAN'T KEEP A SECRET TO SAVE YOUR LIFE.

Girl you need a better hiding place than under the floorboards.

But like the music in the attic after the ball is so sweet???

KIT AND HIS FATHER. THANK YOU FOR LETTING HIM CRY AND SAY I LOVE YOU.

Also like... Notice that Tremaine's Just so to Ella's father was really patronizing and condescending. Ella's to Kit was insecure and uncertain. But the king's to Kit was proud.

At least Kit's not dumb. He's meet this girl multiple times. He don't need a shoe to tell him it's her.

WHY RIP THE ORIGAMI BUTTERFLY THOUGH.

Ella was full on ready to die in that attic to save Kit.

Why do all they guys' pants fit really well except Stellan's? His are loose and baggy.

Y'all know this girl is young and blonde wtf.

Also, fun fact. The girl that asks the Captain if she can try the other foot is Mimi Ndiweni. She played Fringilla in The Witcher on Netflix.

The Grand Duke turning away from the old lady, but the Captain letting her yet the slipper on anyway. 🥺

I want to know where in the line Kit was hiding.

Also how many takes they had to do of Sophie and Holliday trying the slipper on. Cause I wouldn't have been able to do it without laughing. Especially at Holliday's face.

Like... Even if the plan had gone down the way the Grand Duke and Tremaine wanted, I don't see him keeping his word to make her a counted and get good marriages for Anastasia and Drisella.

"YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN AND YOU NEVER WILL BE MY MOTHER".🗣️🗣️

Ella and Kit is my favorite score in the whole movie.

You know, the girls actually seen happy for Ella. Especially Anastasia. Her and Ella getting along better like in Dreams Come True is canon ok.

NEVER GONNA GET OVER KIT AND ELLA WEARING THEIR PARENTS' RINGS.

I love Ella's wedding gown.

Where did they get all those flowers in the winter though 😂

[shellheadtm-a]

anon | What about Tony/Nat? I love the relationship you’ve built with her!

the great thing about tony and nat is that...overall, there’s not a lot you have to actually build because the canon’s done it for you.  so here’s my spiel:  i encourage anyone, i implore everyone, if you have not dipped your toes in the world of comics, please do so.  please.  you’re gonna love parts, you’re gonna hate parts.  parts are gonna break your heart.  but everything - and i mean everything - the wishful thinking 2012 mcu avengers fandom wanted has literally already happened there.  literally all of it.  okay, spiel over, but i make it because tony and nat have this...entire relationship that contains a little of everything in a way that just...you won’t get otherwise. 

like, let’s be honest here, nat and tony started out with her trying to kill him.  more than once.  he was a target, not a friend.  but look at them now, right, they’ve come such a long, long way.  part of it is nat’s change of heart, her new life, the whole thing.  part of it is tony’s indomitable spirit that got her attention, because it’s true.  tony stark really is invincible.  but he also has this amazing, unique ability to look at someone, see the worst they’ve done, compare it to who they are now, and still hand over his faith and trust to them implicitly.  he can see someone - and in nat’s case it’s very true - doing something that confirms the worst in them, and resolutely stand there and say no, they had a reason to do it, a good reason.  it’s bitten him in the ass a few times.  it really never has with nat.

the early days are all wrapped up in post-mccarthyism cold war propaganda, to a degree, so you gotta take that stuff with a grain of salt, but...let’s be real here people.  tony stark is pure of heart, dumb of ass, and will always believe the best in people.  he’ll call himself a pessimist and then throw the weight of his belief behind the dark horse in the race, the underdog.  the one you’d never bet on in your right mind.  nat’s one of those.  and listen...listen...tony...loves nat...so much.  he really does.  i wonder a lot about him coming out of his coma to be told, sure, about all the bad shit that went down, but about nat.  how she died.  (luckily we pretend secret empire was a fever dream on this blog so he doesn’t have to deal with that, too).  like there’s just...something i really can’t explain very well between them that directly comes from being on opposing sides and ending up on the same one, but without the begrudging antagonism that trope usually has.  nat’s soft with tony.  tony’s soft with nat.

to put it in perspective, look.  nat’s disabled tony’s security and climbed on his bed to sit with him until he wakes up, and this isn’t necessarily really treated as being all that unusual.  or shocking.  it’s like a joke between them, like nat regularly just climbs into tony’s room and plops down on his bed and he’s used to waking up like this.  that kind of trust.  and even when she whammies him, still.  that kind of trust, because no...no...nat’s not bad, nat has a reason, nat is doing what she has to do i believe in her.

(he’s never forgiving the lipstick whammy, though, nat, forget it, he’s holding it against you for literally ever, he’s still whining about it canon, deal with it.)

tony’s always so quick to point out hey you don’t have to go this alone, you know, we’re here, we love you, we’re you’re friends, despite...doing the same shit himself but no one ever said tony’s not a hypocrite.  he worries about her, because he knows what kind of shit she gets up to.  it’s as bad as the shit he gets up to when he’s going alone and the world is against him and while they are very, very different people with very different ways of dealing with things?  he’s got some perspective other people might not.  he doesn’t remember it, but he played spy master once.  and nat’s choice in that fight was no doubt pragmaticism than picking between two friends, she does remember that.  she also probably remembers how tony damn near drove himself into the ground with it, because i am 1000% sure she was the majority contact between tony and bucky at the time, considering bucky had declared he was doing shit his own way, which meant, on the surface, tony couldn’t be see publically supporting him.  that was a lot of fun and games, let me tell you (and by fun and games i mean everything was horrible).

and hey, it’s not like nat and tony haven’t canonically been at least friends with benefits.  whether it went deeper than two friends who love each other a lot having a bonus physical intimacy and not a full blown relationship is up to your interpretation, but that happened.  tony was comfortable with that, they had a thing.  and obviously it’s fine because it really hasn’t effected anything between them, you know?  like even today, this minute, this very moment, tony can see natasha in a situation that, to him, points the job, and he won’t do anything, won’t draw any attention to it, except ask her where she needs him, what she needs from him, what he needs to do.  no questions.  no prying.  just unfailing support, that...metaphorically taking her hand and giving a squeeze because he’s there for her, he’s got her back, no matter what.

and since i just reread name of the rose the other day, this is a good example of just...where tony stands with nat.  this guy really thought he was gonna turn them against nat.  really thought he was gonna shame bucky, clint, and tony about all having known nat intimately in some fashion.  and these three assholes...they close ranks around her.  put up a shield around her.  are very much an active part - along with logan, who taught her - in doing what they can to help her, this badass lady who goes through surgery with no anesthesia, while they’re really helpless to help there.  someone they’ve all loved in their own ways.  like, fucker, please, you could never turn tony stark against nat.  ever.  who the fuck do you think you are.

(this is also another old guard of the avengers thing when i say that - there’s a closeness from being so close to the start that just...has bound a very exceptional, very unique group of people together for what’s going to be the rest of their lives.  it’s special.  it’s sacred, kind of, in a way.)

endless wartime was...mostly a shit comic, but it had some nice touches on the tony/nat relationship, too (also nat and clint but i digress).  her joking that tony talking to bruce meant they were all going to die.  and then getting on his ass when his suit gets taken out (after being shot) when he says he can’t stand because he’s an avenger, isn’t he?  to be the one to walk him off the quinjet because he’d been hit, he’d been hurt.  like...nat and tony have been, in some way or another, nearly everything to each other.

tony and nat are...they’re just different, sure, but they’re people that have pasts rooted in war and the machinery of war and have found themselves out the other side.  it’s a unique co-fraternity to belong to.  and i can promise you tony loves nat with his whole ass heart, would do literally anything she asked, no questions asked, no blinking, because he trusts her implicitly.  their intimacy isn’t really like...i think other kinds of relationships might have, it’s having a shared part of the past and becoming better people, better heroes, and finding each other and others that give them things they had been missing, or missing for a long time, like a real family again.

INSERT TONY SHIP GET THOUGHTS | ACCEPTING

[spideyxchelle]

Princess Michelle’s land has been invaded. And to save her country she knows what is expected of her, she knows she is set to marry a man she does not know, hardly respects and hates for forcing her homeland to its knees. Affection cannot grow in the face of war. Not even when the face of that war has the most gorgeous eyes she has ever seen. 

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4] [part 5] [part 6]

Michelle loved the routine of tournaments. She was often kept from the unpleasant matters of fighting and war but the grand tradition of a tourney was considered more of a celebration than a violent affair. And she loved them. They always began with less challenging trials, mostly magic demonstrations—hitting a target with a lightening bolt, coercing animals to jump through hoops, magic battles. Then moved into Michelle’s favorite events of physical competition where speed, strength and wit were all tested.

In the foolish naivety of childhood, Michelle used to imagine herself as one of the epic magic knights from history. She would picture herself sporting the royal standard and fighting with duty and honor in the grand contests. When she turned twelve, the princess’ dreams were dashed. Her father, the King, sweetly kissed her brow and said, “Knighthood is for men, my sweetling. Not women. And especially not princesses.”

And that had been the end of Michelle the Knight.

She was forced into etiquette lessons and taught how to dance and curtsy and giggle thoughtlessly behind her fan. She was fashioned to be a paper doll, something so two-dimensional and flimsy that the wind could have blown her away. But behind her fashioning was the heart of that imaginary Knight. Those dreams had been dashed but sometimes, when she was alone, she picked up those broken pieces of wishing and imagined she was made of iron. Not paper.

When she was sixteen her world was shaken at the foundations when foreign invaders plundered her homeland. Her father fought valiantly. And her father lost.

The King of that foreign land, the Stark Lands, was an inventive madman or so the stories said. Michelle had heard that he pushed the limits of magic with some rudimentary madness called machinery. And his son, the prince, Peter, rode a red and blue dragon into battle with him. They were fierce, they were unstoppable, and they had brought her homeland to its knees.

When her father, the King, returned their court with his tail between his legs, Michelle had known then that the war had been lost. She had read enough history books to know that conquerors did not make slaves of competing monarchs. They killed them.

She sat on a nearby chair as she braced herself for the news.

It was far worse than she could have ever designed. “Married?” she balked.

“Married,” her father nodded, “To the Prince. We will join houses or we will die.”

Her chest rose and fell unevenly, nearly gasping for air, “I can’t.”

The words tasted hollow. She was a princess of a great house. She was always going to be bought and sold like cattle. Alliances were how monarchies survived. And if her house was to survive this invasion, she would need to do her duty.

And so, a tournament would be thrown. She had always liked the routine, the mastery, displayed at such games. This tournament, however, was going to be the fashioning of a new Michelle. She would no longer be a paper doll, or the iron maiden she dreamed once; no, she would be a stolen pride, a prize for a barbarian prince.  

The Starks wanted to celebrate the impending nuptuals of their dear prince with all the bells and whistles of a joyful union. It was not to look like what it truly was: the exchanging of goods to maintain the peace between two hostile countries, an arranged marriage.

Michelle woke in the early hours of the tournament and stared at her ceiling in deep thought. If today was going to be the beginning of the end of her life, she wanted to feel the way she had before she was stuffed in a corset and told princesses were not allowed to dream. She turned her head to stare at the flickering candle lighting her bed chamber. The flame danced and burned and billowed. Michelle blew it out.

She went rifling through her drawers and found an old pair of dirty trousers from her horse-riding days. Michelle slipped them on and found they were snug and the ugliest shade of brown. They were incredible. She tugged on a white, linen shirt that often doubled for a nightshirt and stole one of the beated, dusty vests from the stables. She wound her hair up in a knot on the top of her head and a few lose curls tickled her ears.

It was barely dawn when she began to wander aimlessly around the empty tournament. In that pale, morning light, she began to pantomime the tasks, as if she were a great Knight herself. The way she had once recklessly dreamed.

Her magic was unpracticed and unfocused—women were not allowed to use magic outside of cooking and cleaning—when she tossed a flash of green lightening toward one of the targets. It missed the middle by several feet and buried itself in the grass. She cursed unprettily.

“You have to follow through when you throw it.”

Michelle jumped at the offending voice and spun around to face her potential attacker. A few feet away stood a boy, no older than nineteen, dressed in unkept trousers and a well-worn vest. His hair was almost auburn and his smile was unusually kind. She had not spent much time with boys her age outside of dull courtiers in years. Michelle had once been friends with the stable boy, but that friendship had suddenly ended when she was considered a woman. Thirteen had been a rough year all around.

She forced herself to stand tall, “I can handle myself, thank you.”

He smiled sloppily on one end of his mouth, “I’m sure you can. The suggestion still stands, miss.”  

Michelle huffed but curiosity won out, “How would you throw your bolt, Mister-“

“Parker,” he supplied, “You can call me Parker, miss.”

“Well, Mister Parker,” Michelle crossed her arms over her chest, “If you are so clever, give it a go.”

He laughed and took the short walk to her side. Mister Parker squared his hips, lifted his hand and began to conjure a strikingly red bolt in his fist. It crackled wildly in his hand before he exhaled and threw the bolt all in one go. It found the center of the target.

Her mouth opened in surprise and when she turned to look at him he was already watching her. “That was-“ she tried to find the words to describe him.

“-well aimed,” he finished, cheekily.

She rolled her eyes and smiled at his candor, “You are rather forward, Mister Parker. To finish a lady’s sentence.”

“Well,” he smiled that maddeningly bright smile again, “I would never presume to call you a lady, miss.”

In any other place, in any other time, such words would have cost the man his head. But in the safety of the dawn, with no one to hear him being so disrespectful to his princess, Michelle laughed. She laughed because she was free to laugh and because he did not know who she was dressed so plainly. She had anonymity as this messy version of herself.

Her laughter only made him smile wider, “What is your name, miss?”

“Em,” she said. “My name is Em.”

He inclined his head in a show of respect, “Well, Miss Em. Would you like me to show you how to throw your bolt?”

They spent the next hour or so, as the sun began to creep up the sky, working on a few of the magical tasks set for the tournament. Mister Parker was competing. She had gathered that from the moment she watched him throw his first red bolt. But Michelle was too afraid to ask for which side he was competing. He was nice, he was gentlemanly even, and if he was one of the Stark bannerman it would gut her insides.

The castle began to wake and Michelle knew her taste of short-lived freedom was coming to an end. “Mister Parker,” she whispered, as he flitted around the battle ground to show her the best way to aim a flaming arrow through a hoop, “I need to leave.”

His eyes clouded with confusion and he dropped the bow to his side, “Why? The tournament doesn’t start for hours yet.”

“I’m one of the princess’ ladies,” she lied easily. “I will be expected to help her rise and prepare for the day.”

A shadow of some deep thought flickered across his face and it made his joyful features momentarily severe. He took a deep breath and whatever thought ailed him washed away in a wave of good cheer, “She can wait.”

“No,” Michelle said firmly, “She can’t.”

“Miss Em,” Parker licked his lips, “What…what is she like? Your princess?”

Michelle tried not to smile, she bit down the urge to regale this competitor with ludicrous tales of her kindness and beauty and intelligence. It would be so easy to feed the mythos of herself. But she had already lied so much to this gentleman and she wanted to keep a drop of honesty between them, a kernel of genuine respect. She liked this man. He was kind and funny and respectful. He did not try and press his advantage of having a woman in his clutches in the early hours of the morning. He treated her with respect and listened to her stories with eager ears. She liked him a great deal. “She is loyal. Loyal to her people and her kingdom.”

“No,” Parker ran a ragged hand through his messy hair, “But what is she like?” Michelle gawked at him, so he explained, “My prince is going to wed her. I would like to know who would one day be my Queen.”

Michelle tried not to let her heart fall at the knowledge that this boy was the enemy. He had been so kind and giving and genuine the entire morning. It should not matter to her that he was a bannerman for the Stark Lands. It should not. But it did. She knew that he could see the apprehension now whirling in her eyes. He hastened to comfort her, “I know you think my people are foreign aggressors. I know you think that we are evil. And I know you hate us for invading. But we are not an evil people. We are usually peace but-“ He trailed off.

Michelle pressed, “But-?”

He shook his head, “I should not be discussing such unpleasant things with such a lovely lady.”

Michelle sucked in a breath, “And you were doing so well.”

Parker raised an eyebrow, “Meaning what?”

“I am more than a lovely lady, sir.”

“Of course-“

“And,” she said loud enough to silence him, her commanding tone acting as the briefest flicker of her royal lineage, “to diminish my worth to something as trivial as lovely is beneath me.”

His eyes heated and she felt her stomach lurch in an almost pleasant manner, “I was not diminishing you. I think you are smart and capable but you are also lovely. Does it repulse you so to hear it?”

“Yes,” she spat. “Then,” he sighed, “We are at an impasse. Give my regards to your lady.”

There was a part of her that wanted to chase down the bannerman as he began to exit the field but her eyes were now blinded by morning light. If her real ladies had not already gone to collect her from bed, they would do so soon and she needed to be back in the safety of the castle before anyone learned she had left. She turned back to the castle and, then, recklessly ran after the bannerman. “Mister Parker,” she called.

He stopped and turned around to watch her as she ran toward him. She ripped the tie that was holding her hair securely on the top of her head down. It was a silk, blue ribbon. Michelle pressed the fabric into his hand. He stared at her, his mouth agape, and she whispered, “A token. May it keep you safe in today’s contest.”

Parker’s mouth twisted upward and he bowed his head to kiss her hand, “It would be my honor.”

When they parted, Michelle ran to the castle. She entered through the back of the kitchen and bounded up the stairs to her chambers. Her ladies were all waiting anxiously in her room when she arrived. She stared at a sea of watery eyes and lied, “I was out for a walk. I could not sleep.”

The tournament field was sticky and hot from the summer sun. Michelle wanted to tear the black veil off of her face to gulp in fresh air but her lady’s maid clutched her free hand in a silent plea to keep her clothing unruffled. The princess rolled her eyes under the safety of the veil.

When the young competitors began to flood the field, as the tournament began, Michelle kept her eyes pealed for Mister Parker. It was hard to tell any of the gentleman apart dressed head-to-toe in their armor.

But then, she spotted her ribbon tied to the breastplate of one of the Knights. Michelle leaned over to her lady’s maid and whispered, “Who is that man? The one with the ribbon?”

The lady’s eyes flitted across the field looking for the offending gentleman. Michelle clutched the fabric of her dress in her hands. She began to imagine a horrible reality where Mister Parker was one of her future husband’s guards and she would be forced to be near him but eternally apart for the rest of her days. And then, she imagined a worse reality where Mister Parker was some lowly Lord from a far-away house and she would never see him again. He would go back to the country to man his estate and pick a simple wife and laugh at her jokes the way he had done to her that morning.

Her lady’s eyes found Mister Parker.

“That, your highness,” her lady whispered, “is your betrothed.”

The world went woozy and Michelle heard the cries of concern before she fell unconscious from shock.

[julystorms]

The men in power were from the old government. They were the ones running the world. But now look at who holds the highest authority, Historia, oh and guess what she's a woman. Eren and Reiner who both hold the title of protagonist didn't make number one Mikasa did, oh and she's a woman and pretty much stronger than half the males there. Also as the other anon stated Maria, Rose and sina. So I doubt Isayama is as sexist as you make him out to be.

Dude, separation of writer and text, thanks. I stated that in another post earlier today. Whether or not Isayama is sexist has nothing to do with the fact that his world is sexist. I try not to include writer opinions in my interpretation of a text; it’s not always relevant. (Yes, you can choose to interpret these things with the author’s intention (or author’s opinions, however unconsciously they exist) in mind if you want to, but I actively choose not to.)

Moving on. I want to address your comments re: SnK as a sexist (or not) world.

1.) Historia is a puppet queen. She has no real power. I’ve discussed this before. Darius Zackly is the one who was actually in charge the last time we checked and God knows how many cronies he has working for him.

2.) One female character who ranks #1 in a class of badassery does NOT mean that all women are equal in the world. I mean, for fuck’s sake, she’s an Ackerman: a science project born with special talents. If Levi wasn’t in the story at all, I’d maybe give him a few points for Mikasa being a badass and not needing a male counterpart to balance her strength but nope, she can’t just be strong on her own merit alone or the only special female character. (Not that fandom wouldn’t call her a Mary Sue if she wasn’t balanced out by Levi anyway but ya know. Fuck fandom.) For a real life example how about the US women’s soccer team? 

3.) Legendary/mythical/important women are great but they don’t make the world somehow less sexist just because they exist. I have two things to talk about in regards to this:

The first is the Bible. You don’t think there aren’t a lot of women in the Bible? You don’t think every good little Christian learns about prominent figures like the (Virgin) Mary and (Other) Mary and Elizabeth and Deborah and Sarah and Anna and all of the other women who appear in the Bible and mean something? Play important roles? You don’t think little Christian girls latch onto those women ‘cause it’s the only positive representation they get? You don’t think those SAME LITTLE GIRLS (and boys!!) aren’t taught to be sexisT AS FUCK THROUGH the use of women like Delilah and Jezebel? Taught to hate women like that? Shown them as Bad Evil examples of What Not to Be? Hell, even Rahab is used as an example that Wicked Women Can Change Their Ways and Gain Favor with God–not by helping Joshua’s spies and doing what she feels in her heart is the right thing* but by changing her career (whether or not Rahab ever had a choice is never discussed). Oh, and don’t forget Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt. Boy howdy Christianity has lots of ladies!!! But it’s also a religion that has by default rooted itself so goddamn deep into the patriarchy and sexism that it’s become more toxic than I can even parse properly.

*don’t get me started on the canaan land y’all.

So cool, let’s go back to SnK. SnK has three walls (objects, hello) named after women that are kind of like goddesses of a religion that is scoffed and laughed at by most of the population within the walls. The wall cult is crazy, they say. HELL, THEY CALL IT A CULT for fuck’s sake. It’s also a religion that isn’t real? It’s a front for the fact tHAT THERE ARE TITANS IN THE WALLS. Don’t damage the walls it’s our religion lol (but really we don’t want the titans to get out.) Pastor Nick knew this (and notice that it was a man privy to this secret, not a female religious leader).

Also, I mean, there have been lots of historical queens. It didn’t make their countries or people any less sexist. HM. WONDER WHY.

Literally every person in this series with REAL POWER or control over others? Is a man.

I’m not talkin’ Team Leader Nanaba here; she has very little power. 

I’m talkin’ actual power. I’m talkin’ can make a big order and have people follow it under penalty of being accused of treason or worse, or has the kind of money to make a difference. I’m talkin’ Dot Pixis, Erwin Smith, Nile Dok. I’m talkin’ Darius Zackly, whom these men all answer to. I’m talkin’ the noblemen that we see who supposedly were abusing their positions (and yet no noblewomen talked about or even, iirc, in the throne room when Erwin’s about to be hung). I’m talkin’ a fake king and Rod Reiss. I’m talkin’ Reeves. I’m talkin’ Magath and all the men in Marley at their big important meetings. I’m talkin’ about the fact that every council meeting we see, every military meeting we see, we’re LUCKY if we see even one woman in the room, and many times we don’t see a single one. When Eibringer walks into a room to play cards and smoke/drink and hands his duty over to Marlowe, he goes into a room full of other men. When all the bigwigs are in meetings? Again, men. 

Who cares if Marley has Pieck, Gabi, Annie, Zophia? They have no power. They’re all being used. They’re little more than slaves, and we don’t even know how many of them volunteered for the job or were forced into it via coercion or otherwise.

And who cares if Paradis has Mikasa graduate her li’l class at #1? Has Nanaba in a team leader position? Gives us Rico (who is also an elite team leader)? Rico takes orders from Kitz who takes orders from someone who takes orders from Pixis who takes orders from Zackly. Nanaba takes orders from Mike who takes orders from Erwin who takes orders from Zackly. And hey, they gave us Marlene, who served no real purpose except, idk, to die; she doesn’t even count. She was made to tease Hange and die horribly. That’s not power.

Mikasa is physically strong. She’s an awesome female character who has seen some lovely character development in this series. But…where is her power? Her ability to influence thousands of other people? It’s not there. She’s strong, and she can make a difference, but she lacks that influential power–the kind men have in this series. Women don’t rule this world. Men do. 

Women are not equal to men in SnK. If they were, you’d see a 50/50 split of women in the trainee corps, women in roles of power, women as merchants. You’d see stay at home dads. You’d see women wearing pants and skirts as casual wear in equal measure. Notice that you don’t. Notice that every shot of random characters is almost entirely random men. Think about it. It’s not equal.

And Mikasa’s existence in the series doesn’t balance out the fact that she lives in a sexist world. She shines because she chooses to, not because she lives in an equal-opportunity world where women and men are treated exactly the same.

[quoteablebooks]

Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult, Fiction, 

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:

Looming war threatens all Feyre holds dear in the third volume of the #1 New York Times bestselling A Court of Thorns and Roses series. Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's manoeuvrings and the invading king threatening to bring Prythian to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit – and one slip may spell doom not only for Feyre, but for her world as well. As war bears down upon them all, Feyre must decide who to trust amongst the dazzling and lethal High Lords – and hunt for allies in unexpected places. In this thrilling third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Sarah J. Maas, the earth will be painted red as mighty armies grapple for power over the one thing that could destroy them all.

*Opinions*

**Spoilers**

A Court of Wings and Ruin is the end of the trilogy if you don’t count the add on novel that I am assuming is a bridge to the next series, and finally, war breaks over Prythian. The novel starts not too long after the events of A Court of Mist and Fury, with Feyre back in the Spring Court after the disastrous showdown with King Hybren. Feyre must navigate her way in a Court that is no longer her home and find a way to get back to the Night Court, her sisters, and her found family before Hybren starts his assault on Prythian. I have to say that the pacing in this novel was much better than in Mist and Fury with a number of moving pieces keeping the reader engaged. Yet, I found the ending slightly disappointing in terms of emotional payoff. Don’t get me wrong, I like a happy ending, but there was very little sacrifice to get that ending so it didn’t feel that it was earned. Now I have praised Maas before for letting Feyre make mistakes and have emotions as any individual would have. However, as the series progressed, I felt we saw less and less of this. It might have been deliberate, showing that this experience was maturing Feyre, but it got to the point where she does nothing wrong, and even when she does, it’s instantly forgiven because she is High Lady. Also, I know that this is a romance, but when 85% of Feyre’s thoughts are about Rhysand it was as if she wasn’t her own person anymore. There are no consequences to her actions that don’t somehow end up exactly how she wanted them to be, which became a little annoying. I didn’t have any fear of Feyre surviving or being hurt because things always worked out for her. Even with the Spring Court, the one time that Feyre’s choices came back to have some sort of negative effect, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Tamlin is still in love with her and ends up helping her against Hybren and Lucien, who is probably the worst treated by Feyre, goes with her to the Night Court due to Elian being his mate. I guess everything was just so neatly tied up that it didn’t seem realistic to me. Acts should have consequences more than “this could have gone so wrong but it didn’t, yay.” That being said, Tamlin is the definition of a messy bitch in this novel. While there is no condoning his treatment of Feyre, or Lucien, at the end of the day he is not a pure villain. Also, in defense of Lucien, I know a lot of people could point out that he let Tamlin treat Feyre badly and didn’t do enough to help her. I want to remind everyone that this is a man who was abused by his family and his best friend has control and rage issues which he doesn’t have powerful magic to counteract. Living like that for centuries will make anyone a little hesitant to step in when tempers are brewing. I understand Feyre’s anger, both for them aligning with Hybren to get her back like a possession and Lucien not helping her when she needed him the most, but Lucien very early on also acknowledges these mistakes. As Feyre manipulates him, I understand her reasoning, but I feel for Lucien as well. Maas pulls on those feelings from A Court of Thorns and Roses to make the reader both want Feyre to succeed in her machinations, but also find it a bit cruel what she is doing to Lucien. I would have liked for Lucien to decide to come with Feyre because of what Tamlin did and not just to see his mate, but I guess Feyre wouldn’t have believed him without the mating bond. After the time in the Spring Court, it’s as if Maas doesn’t know what to do with Lucien so she just sends him off on a quest and he’s gone for hundreds of pages. The addition of Faebane to the world was needed because, quite frankly, the fact that Feyre has the powers of every High Lord and wields them with efficiency was a bit hard for me to swallow. I know that we saw her train for months to master them, but she seemed to have no weakness, so while a lot can happen in a war, I didn’t really have any fear she would be harmed in one to one combat. The introduction of the faebane took away those powers and forced Feyre to think on her feet, use her physical abilities, and sometimes make deals to get out of sticky situations. While it was negated for the war itself, Feyre didn’t fight at all and Hybren had equally powerful magic so that didn’t bother me. However, all that training for Feyre to not enter a single battle during the actual war was a little ridiculous. All this power and she stood by and watched because she wasn’t trained to fight with the legion? I got the reasoning but why give her these amazing powers and have her not once use them in the final battle? Now, my biggest grievance with this novel is that Elian, and to some extent Nesta, are just walking plot devices. Elian is literally only mentioned in the narrative to push some other action forward, sending Lucien to look for Vessa, to warn them about the Ravens, and to force Azriel and Feyre to go and rescue her from Hybren so he goes after the humans. I learned nothing about her in this novel and honestly didn’t care about her in the slightest even though I enjoyed her character in the first two novels. When she faced her human betrothed I couldn’t have cared less because she wasn’t on the page enough for me to care and even that was just to show that Jurian was working against Hybren. While Nesta had more page time due to her connection to the Cauldron and therefore we had more emotional connection to her, she still didn’t seem like a character in this novel. I know that she is getting her own set of novels and I hope that they do her justice because I think she is one of the more interesting characters in the series when they actually let her be more than an ice-cold. Maas wanted to show that both sisters are traumatized by being turned, I get that, but you need to make us care about this trauma instead of just making both women useful for their skills and not talking aside from that. It was because of this disconnect that the real emotional moment for the sisters at the end of the novel really didn’t hit for me. My next grievance is that while they are in a war and a lot of people die, it isn’t any of the characters that the reader cares about. Sure, it is sad when the Cauldron blasts countless Illyrians out of the sky, but it wasn’t Cassian, thanks to Nesta, or Azriel. I am not saying that I wanted one of the inner circle to die, but literally all of the named characters make it through the war without any lasting physical effects. I guess that isn’t the truth, the Suriel, The Carver, and The Weaver do not survive, but again we really didn’t have an emotional connection to any of them save maybe the Suriel. Especially when Feyre realizes that The Carver came into the battle knowing he was going to die. Also, Feyre doesn’t lose anything in the battle other than her father, who she had been distant from for years. While his death was sad, Feyre really never planned to see him again so why should the reader be upset? Feyre doesn’t go mad looking into the mirror for The Carver and while I am all about learning to love the good and the bad in yourself, doing it in the span of hours is a little rushed. Feyre does not have to give up any of her powers to put the Cauldron back together, Rhysand doesn’t have any ill effects from dying to but the Cauldron back together, all the High Lords survive the war along with the named allies and mates. Even Amren’s big sacrifice was nulled as she came back as a High Fae. Again, I am a huge proponent of happy endings and maybe the emotional turmoil is shown in A Court of Frost and Starlight, but I still don’t really feel as if the happy ending was earned. I also don’t think that this series is Young Adult after A Court of Thorns and Roses, but New Adult. I have nothing against sex scenes in YA books because teenagers have sex, but the amount of sex in the last two books and how detailed the sex scenes were didn’t read like a Young Adult book. Feyre was nineteen at the beginning of all this (in hopes that we wouldn’t have an issue with a centuries-old Fae wanting to sleep with her, but that’s a different issue) and has had to take care of her family so one could say she is mature. That’s why the sex scene with Tamlin in the first novel didn’t bother me at all (though there are things to say about the Under the Mountain, again not now) because while it was detailed, it was a culmination of a novel's worth of relationship building. However, in A Court of Mist and Fury and A Court of Wings and Fury, the sex scenes are more prevalent and at points, all Feyre and Rhysand think about, like the library scene. I, personally, didn’t mind all that sexuality in this novel, but I don’t think having multiple sex scenes is the only way the novel could have been empowering for young girls and their sexuality. I don’t need to know that Feyre’s legs are still up on Rhysand’s shoulders to understand the deep and intimate bond they share, just saying. Again, in an adult novel, give me all those details, not needed in YA. Overall, I enjoyed the series, but I see why people have pointed out the problems with how romantic relationships have been portrayed. I am not sure if I will seek out A Court of Frost and Starlight or Nesta’s novels, which are apparently an adult series. Maas didn’t exceptional world-building so that Prythian was a living, breathing world. However, I don’t feel as if the emotional hits really worked in this final novel and the happy ending was just a little too perfect for my taste. Maybe I’m just a cynic at heart after all.

[gretagerwigarchive]

Greta Gerwig Is a Director, Not a Muse

By Noreen Malone, October 31, 2017.

source: http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/greta-gerwig-director-lady-bird.html

Dave Matthews Band is generally not considered cool anymore. Almost certainly, it never was in the downtown New York world of which the actress and writer Greta Gerwig has become a cool-girl-real-girl avatar in recent years. But in a time and place (America’s vast, yearning middle-class suburbs, in the cultural desert of the Clinton and early Bush years) and to a certain kind of person (such as a teenager aching for the jazz-adjacent cred that jam-band fandom could provide but more comfortable with white ball caps and lacrosse than ponchos and hallucinogens), Dave Matthews Band was Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village in 1966. And so there is a crucial moment in Lady Bird, Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, in which the title character, a Sacramento high-school senior in 2003, confronts the cruelest heartbreak imaginable to her by blasting the band’s ballad “Crash Into Me”: “Sweet like candy to my soul / Sweet you rock and sweet you roll.” The result is both sympathetic, and very funny.

“There was no other song it ever was going to be,” Gerwig said. “In preproduction, I realized I didn’t know what I was going to do if Dave said no [to its use]. I wrote him a letter. ‘Dear Mr. Dave Matthews … ’ ”

Gerwig was sitting at a small corner table near the window at Morandi in the West Village, not far from where she lives with the filmmaker Noah Baumbach. “I thought it was a really romantic song when I was a teenager. I would listen to it on repeat on a yellow CD player,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine a world in which a guy would feel that way about me.”

Maybe it was because of her sexy dirndl skirt of a name, maybe because of her squinting physical resemblance to indie Gen-X avatar Chloë Sevigny, maybe simply because of her distinctive delivery. But since the very beginning of Gerwig’s career, she has been a generational lightning rod of sorts. As what the New York Observer once called “the Meryl Streep of mumblecore” — the hyperlow-budget late-aughts movie movement led by directors like Joe Swanberg and the Duplass brothers — Gerwig was near-instantly labeled an “It” girl and invested with all sorts of theories about what her success and acting style meant. Her brand of hipness was confusing — was she really that earnest? Were they all that earnest? How could that possibly be cool? Critics, especially those of an older generation, were suspicious.

She was, unmistakably, a gifted actress. But the Guardian also called her “the poster girl for wayward, brittle middle-youth,” a “galumphing work in progress.” In The New Yorker, Ian Parker wrote that, despite having a “precise, literate mind,” Gerwig “has the air, not uncommon among her contemporaries, of having swallowed a very low dose of LSD.” “Ms. Gerwig, most likely without intending to be anything of the kind, may well be the definitive screen actress of her generation, a judgment I offer with all sincerity and a measure of ambivalence,” A. O. Scott wrote in the New York Times. “Part of her accomplishment is that most of the time she doesn’t seem to be acting at all. The transparency of her performances has less to do with exquisitely refined technique than with the apparent absence of any method.” And then there was this sort of thing: “While watching Greta Gerwig on screen, you might be tempted to kiss her,” wrote Stephen Heyman in T in 2010. “This is not meant purely as praise. Gerwig, 26, plays characters who are given to discursive verbal forays with oodles of ‘ummmms.’ So planting an unexpected kiss would not only be a recognition of her adorableness but also a useful way to shut her up.”

In a way, then, Lady Bird, a remarkably self-assured debut, feels like a rebuke. Or at least an assertion of artistic intent. At 34, and moving, finally, behind the camera, Gerwig is exiting the phase of her life where she’ll be asked to represent a mysterious, fascinating rising generation. The winds have shifted some, and the microgeneration after her is just as earnest (or more so) but culturally preoccupied less with its own emotional wanderings than with larger political questions of identity, and of race. Gerwig seems still to be considering, and even reclaiming, some of the traits that hers has been tagged with: nostalgia, that earnestness, parental attachment. In other words, what does it look like onscreen when millennial sincerity is treated not with mockery or puzzlement but with, well, sincerity?

Gerwig appears to be a genuinely sincere person, a kind of spiritually permanent college student, in a way that might get under the skin of someone with more ironic armor. She wears a giant Hello, Dolly! sweatshirt and an even more giant backpack. She references Tina Fey’s Bossypants like scripture and listens to podcasts about entrepreneurship (“The one about the woman who created Spanx made me sob”) and religion (“Krista Tippett” — the host of On Being — “is like my fucking queen”). She quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to express her sadness over the Harvey Weinstein mess: “In a free society, some are guilty; all are responsible.” She goes to church sometimes, and though she doesn’t subscribe to any particular denomination (“The Catholic theatrics are pretty high quality, but the Protestants have better hymns”), she’s really into the Quakers right now: “There’s nothing that you have to believe or avow. The only thing you have to believe is that the light of God exists within each person.” She really, really loved her single-sex education, both the high-school portion and at Barnard, where she was delighted to discover that all the doctors at the health center were gynecologists and enjoyed her time on the parliamentary debate team.

Gerwig’s enthusiasms extend also to Zumba, but what she really likes is a barre class run by this one woman from Portland, Oregon, whom she admires for her “body positivity,” and on the day we first met, she was, with some embarrassment, about to try something called the Class, in which Tribeca women combine burpees and cathartic screaming. “It seems like maybe the fitness equivalent of the toy poodle,” she said. “Like, you have to admit that you love them and you want one that’s tiny. You’d rather be the girl who has a German shepherd who goes for a run. Not one with a fluffy piece of lint who goes to a place where you chant with crystals.” She considered. “Before they poured the floor at the studio, I read, they put rose quartz everywhere, and I was like, I mean … I can get down with that.” She has a friend who works for Moon Juice, and so she speaks highly of its sprouted almonds, even if “I always thought it was kind of ironic when she’d be stressing out about the moon powders.”

The author and illustrator Leanne Shapton, who knows Gerwig and Baumbach from the neighborhood, spotted Gerwig and stopped to chitchat. Shapton, as it turned out, designed the font for Lady Bird’s title and credits: “She made an entire uppercase and lowercase alphabet and painted it ten times the size that it needed to be and shrunk it down so it looks like a font but has enough imperfections so there’s a density,” Gerwig told me after Shapton had walked away. “I feel like movies are presents, and credits and fonts are bows and wrapping paper.” She paused. “I like everything to feel like it was given a lot of time. I hate it when I watch movies and it seems like they just went and picked a font and, like, called it a day.” She paused again, considering Shapton. “I also have a crush on her because she’s very beautiful. She is cool in the way that everyone wants to be, but she’s also a real person.”

“I’ve made so many films in New York,” Gerwig said, that “there was an assumption I think a lot of people had that I am a New Yorker, that I am from New York, and I always felt like nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve done a good job of convincing you, but I’m not, as so many people who live in New York are not.”

Lady Bird, which is also Gerwig’s solo writing debut, is the story of a high-school senior (Saoirse Ronan) at an all-girls Catholic school in Sacramento who longs — despite her average grades — to be the star of the school play, to go to college on the East Coast, to be extraordinary. Though her name is Christine, she insists on being called “Lady Bird,” a pretension with which her salt-of-the-earth parents — a nurse and an out-of-work computer programmer, played with extraordinary sensitivity by Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts — comply. (It’s a complicated dynamic: Metcalf calls the mother character “totally passive-aggressive.”) The plot is a gentle one. Lady Bird acquires a couple of boyfriends (each recognizable as a classic type who might appeal to a smart-in-some-ways, really-not-in-others teenage girl), chases acceptance from the popular crowd, applies to colleges her family can’t afford to send her to.

Gerwig attended an all-girls Catholic school in Sacramento, with parents who worked as a nurse and a loan officer at a credit union, who sent her off to an expensive East Coast college, and although the movie has been widely discussed as a roman à clef, she says it’s not. For starters, Lady Bird is set in 2003, Gerwig pointed out, and she graduated in 2002. “I never made anyone call me another name. I never had dyed-red hair. She’s so much more wild and outspoken, and I think I was only ever that way in my head. In a way, I felt like I kind of put into her the sheer confidence and the id I find in 8- or 9-year-old girls. They’re just brash, and they don’t know that they should feel anything but great about themselves.

“When you write something you know, you’re making a story that will work, whether or not there’s bits taken. It’s always funny to me when people say, ‘Well, it’s clearly autobiographical,’ and I say, ‘Well, how do you know my autobiography?’ ” she continued. “Certainly, there are things that are connected, but I just think it’s a very interesting assumption. In some ways, it feels akin to the assumption that I’ve experienced as an actor when people say … ‘This is you.’ Which I’ve always taken as a compliment because it felt like you were watching a person.”

The teenage Gerwig was an extensive diarist, but she didn’t look up her old journals until after she’d finished the script, called “Mothers and Daughters” in a first draft that clocked in at 350 pages. (“It originally had a lot more dances,” she said.) When she opened the old pages, she was pleasantly surprised to find that she’d accurately remembered some of the tiny details — the rumor that clove cigarettes had fiberglass in them, the very fact of clove cigarettes at all — that make the movie so spot-on evocative of high school. But mostly it was the vividness of her feelings that struck Gerwig. “I would go on for pages and pages about this crush I had, dissecting every moment. ‘Did he notice that our arms were touching, or was that an accident?’ And then I wrote, ‘Upon further reflection, I think that this might’ve been a more vivid emotional experience for me than him.’ I was like, Oh, honey, nothing you’ve written is more true.”

When Gerwig was young, her parents made a point of taking her to local Sacramento theater — she proudly ticks off the names of the companies, and the playwrights whose work they put on, and even the directors. At Barnard, where she studied playwriting, she became a Kim’s Video devotee, methodically working her way through the director-organized shelves. (It was Claire Denis’s film Beau Travail, she said, that made her shift her focus from theater to movies.) She rejected traditional paths like law and medicine. “Chekhov was a country doctor, spent all his time with people and in their homes. I was like, Well, that’s good, and then I was like, Well, I’m not interested in it, and also I don’t like blood, and there are no country doctors anymore,” she said. “The idea that I would become a doctor to become more like Chekhov is a pretty circular route.”

After college, Gerwig lived all over Brooklyn — East Williamsburg, Prospect Heights, deep Park Slope, or “Park Slide,” as she says fondly. She had odd jobs, including at the Box, the Lower East Side cabaret, and began working with Swanberg, whom she had met through a college boyfriend and who was making interesting movies that were unlike anything that had been done before, for almost no money.

Mumblecore was a big deal, for a small movement, in part for what it seemed to reveal about a certain slice of young, college-educated, mostly white people trying to figure out how they related to the world. It was hailed in the Times as something that “bespeaks a true 21st-century sensibility, reflective of MySpace-like social networks and the voyeurism and intimacy of YouTube. It also signals a paradigm shift in how movies are made and how they find an audience.”

Gerwig now physically cringes at the mere mention of the word mumblecore. “I just hate it,” she said. “It feels like a slight every time I hear it. Because of the improvisational quality of those movies, and the fact that everyone was nonprofessional, I have had a bit of an uphill battle just to say ‘I know how to act.’ I didn’t stumble into this. I wasn’t just a kid.” But she credits her roles in those films — Nights and Weekends, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Baghead — with helping teach her to write. “We called them ‘devised films,’ because we’d know the characters and what was supposed to happen in the scenes but not the words. It was a way of writing while I was acting.”

It was also that set of films — which made a bigger splash in the indie-movie scene than in the culture at large — that put her on Baumbach’s radar. (He actually recommended her to his agent before the two had ever met.) When Baumbach cast her in 2010’s Greenberg, released when she was 26, it was her big break. Shortly after he divorced his wife, the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (Gerwig had trained for the role, in part, by working as an assistant to Leigh’s mother), the two began their romance. Baumbach and Gerwig turned an email correspondence into a project: The duo co-wrote Frances Ha and Mistress America, both starring Gerwig and both markedly sweeter than anything Baumbach had worked on in the past. “I liked what she was writing so much that it made me work harder with my own to impress her,” Baumbach said.

This collaboration led to a spate of headlines referring to Gerwig not as a partner on the works but as their muse. “The actress Greta Gerwig has had the same liberating effect on Noah Baumbach as Diane Keaton had on Woody Allen: she has opened him up, lending his films a giddy sense of release,” went one typical summation in the Economist.

“I did not love being called a muse,” said Gerwig bluntly. “I didn’t want to be strident about it or say, ‘Hey, give me my due,’ but I did feel like I wasn’t a bystander. It was half-mine, and so that part was difficult. Also I knew secretly that I was engaged with this longer project, and wanted to be a writer and director in my own right, so I felt like the muse business, or whatever it was, was a position that I didn’t identify with in my heart. But I think one thing I learned early because of the group of movies that are called mumblecore” — she slowed down, a little archly, over the word, to acknowledge again her discomfort with it — “is not to attach too much to the moment you’re living through from a press perspective. I also had this sense of, Well, they’ll just eat their hat one day.”

TV was one idea when Gerwig hit a dry spell with acting gigs after making Frances Ha and Mistress America. “I felt like I had done things that I was incredibly proud of and I felt like I had authorship over, and done good work as an actor, but my wheels weren’t catching purchase with whatever the Zeitgeist was,” she said, forking her pasta. It was a curious double identity as an actress — plausibly the face of a generation, particularly of the privileged of that generation, and, just as plausibly, a near-anonymous actress who hadn’t yet made anything that any real number of people had actually seen. She met with the producers behind How I Met Your Dad, a planned spinoff of the long-running, quietly beloved CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and signed up for the starring role, along with a writing role. “It felt like this incredible lifeline for me. It felt like a place to give myself some structure,” she said of what looked from the outside like a bit of a career swerve. Not to mention that she was told it was a “sure thing.” The pilot wasn’t picked up. “They send the shows to Vegas, and people sit there with knobs, and they turn the knob down if they don’t like an actor,” Gerwig explained with a little embarrassment. “Nobody exactly told me I tested low, but it was insinuated that America did not like it.”

But that allowed her to turn to directing. “By the time I started, I felt like I had ten years of training. My film school was as an actor and co-writer and co-director, and whatever else I did, which included costuming, and holding the boom, and editing. It was a way for me to get my Malcolm Gladwell hours in.” She also benefited from more targeted instruction, in recent years, from DPs who’d heard she wanted to direct and let her sit with them while they constructed their shots. “When I finished the script, I had a moment with myself where I thought, You’re either going to do this now or you’re never going to do this,” she said. “Now you have to make your mistakes and get your gifts because you have to, at some point, jump. I think a lot of women have also particularly a need to feel that they can stand in their own expertise before doing something. A lot of my female friends will be so overqualified for what they do that by the time they do it, it’s like, Well, obviously.”

During the press tour for Mistress America, a journalist asked about whether dating Baumbach, and then writing with him, had opened certain doors for her. Gerwig acknowledged that perhaps it had, proximally, but refused to concede the larger point. “I don’t mean to sound annoying,” she told the reporter, “but I would have done it anyway. I will find that one door and then push it wide open. I’m lucky to find collaborators and kindred spirits. But I don’t need a man, and I would have done it anyway.”

A confident, direct version of ambition is another generational trait that Gerwig seems to comfortably inhabit. Recently, she saw Saoirse Ronan in London to promote the film; Ronan told her she was beginning to think about whether she could direct, inspired in part by watching her on set. “Greta is the one that I’d want to emulate,” Ronan told me. “She was incredibly clear about what she wanted but also supportive about finding our own way through the characters. We’ve been talking in a practical way, too, about stories that I’d like to do and if I could work with her in that regard. She’s a great one for the advice.”

Ronan was also struck by Gerwig’s actorly approach to directing. “She had very clearly mapped out each character’s journey, what it would be like to be a kid in post-9/11 America in California, how complicated it would be to think about leaving Sacramento for the first time,” but also “she gave us an awful lot of freedom to incorporate our own selves.” Gerwig even gave Timothée Chalamet, who plays one of Lady Bird’s love interests — a self-styled high-school intellectual — a syllabus for “what a paranoid anarchist type of thinker would have been reading back then,” he said, which included, in addition to the requisite Howard Zinn that shows up in the movie, The Internet Does Not Exist, an essay collection that warns of the dangers of a networked world. She also asked him to watch Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s, which she told me contains a character who is an example of a long-standing type: “These guys who are just completely stuck on their ideas, whether music or progressive philosophy or whatever it is. Like, ‘I’m going to train you to like Pavement.’ ” Gerwig also gave specific directions on how to play the many comic moments in the script: Humor was to be achieved not through comic acting but by playing the situation with all the seriousness with which a high schooler would feel it. “I like things that are funny,” Gerwig said, “but I don’t like things that are in quotes.”

Gerwig plans to tip the balance of her work going forward more toward writing and directing (though she’d like to keep acting). “You just stay in it long enough, and eventually you’ll just be old.” Nobody will worry over whether you are an actor or a director or a writer. “Everyone will just think, Oh, she’s such a wonderful 75-year-old now. She’s our lady Clint Eastwood.”

She has one script, something she wrote before Lady Bird, in the drawer, but for her next project, “I have an inkling of wanting to make something that’s more silent, literally fewer words.” She wouldn’t give any more detail, however. “I worry if I put an idea out in the sunlight too early, it shrivels, and I don’t want to shrivel anything right now.”

Baumbach’s most recent film, The Meyerowitz Stories, was released on Netflix and in theaters just a few weeks before Lady Bird, which comes out on November 3. Both movies open with a parent and child, driving together, on the cusp of the difficult moment when college is about to force that relationship into its next, more distant, phase; both puncture the sweetness of the scene by someone melting down immaturely. In Baumbach’s film, it’s the parent. In Gerwig’s, it’s the daughter.

With Mistress America and Frances Ha, said Baumbach, the pair were able to create “a synthesis” of their two voices, “a kind of a third thing that allows you to try different selves on.” But the couple have strikingly different tones to their independent work, although they tread the same thematic ground (and give each other notes on drafts). Family, in much of Baumbach’s filmography, has been a source of neuroticism for his protagonists, often children picking up the pieces, learning to overcome the limits of a selfish, immature parent’s love. Lady Bird, by contrast, is about a child failing to recognize, in the moment, the expansiveness and totality of her parent’s love for her — as well as the complicated dynamic between teen girls and their mothers, even those who are fond of each other. Baumbach, though, sees their emotional truths as more related. Both movies, he said, are about “how hard it is to acknowledge positive things in someone you need to move away from, and how hard it is to leave.” Gerwig’s story is, in her phrasing, “a movie about wanting to leave a place that’s secretly a love letter to the place, and a movie ostensibly about a daughter that’s secretly about the mother.”

“Oh, I’ve got a lot of guilt,” Gerwig replied quickly when I mentioned that I had seen the film as, in part, a meditation on that particular emotion, and how deeply it can become intertwined with love. “We always joked that we should put up a title card at the end of the movie that said CALL YOUR MOTHER,” she said. The guilt kicked in. “I need to call my mother.”

Gerwig showed her parents and friends the script before shooting and screened the film for them before it premiered, but she also spent a lot of time considering how she’d treated her mother as a teenager. “I could only see the faults in clear relief, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s like, Goddamn, she was right about almost everything.”

For all that she insists Lady Bird isn’t exactly her own story, it feels like a coming-out of sorts for Gerwig’s own sensibility, her preoccupations. “I only ever write from a place of love,” said Gerwig, “which sounds goofy but is actually true. Some writers write from a place of anger or analysis, or something that feels more didactic, but that impulse means that I also write out of real love, which is complicated and changing.”

“Sincerity means a lot to me,” Gerwig continued. “Actually, in Frances Ha, at the beginning, she’s reading out of a literary-criticism book called Sincerity and Authenticity. Basically, the question she’s setting up is, what do we mean by sincerity, and does it diminish the thing?” She considered. “But I’ve always felt like it heightens it.”

[watchthisspacegrl-blog]

Kintsukuroi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

2019 is my year to repair: my emotional/mental state, my health, and my life as a whole. A lot of time when a new year arrives, I say 2018 was such a bitch to me. Really, it was myself... I’m the director of my life and the things that happen, that I have no control over; I have allowed the horrible occurrences control me and how I feel. In October I reconnected with a friend, it was serendipitous really... I play this game called “Party in my Dorm” I have played this game for six years and have met some amazing people from all over the world. You wouldn’t believe the emotions you can experience for people you haven’t met physically.

I have so many friends, but only a handful of close friends on this game. One of my bestfriends there is hilarious, she can make anyone laugh I swear she could. One of the sweetest souls, I’ve ever met on there... Another close friend is Jz, he is such an awesome person, down to earth and genuine. Marra isn’t playing right now, but she is a spitfire! She is someone who listens and cares about everyone. Nisa is my pupil on the game, she doesn’t play much but she is a Jamaican bombshell.

I’m grateful that I got a chance to play this game, it has a lot of people in it who are near and dear to my heart.

Yesterday... was hard... Yesterday, I thought of killing myself... I was wishing that I would die so that I don’t have to deal with anymore heartache and confusion. That’s not me... I am not a depressed individual, I am a happy go lucky, roll with the punches type of girl. I have not thought suicidal thoughts since a decade ago. Yesterday crept up on me... I was taking care of some very complicated issues with a handful of patients, when I received messages from my boyfriend Todd.

Oh let’s rewind... Todd... We met on the game about 5 years ago, we met as friends and talked days on end. Well we lost touch and reconnected in October... It’s funny really... on my alternate account, I unfollowed everyone I didn’t know.. besides a handful of people. I get a message out of nowhere from this barcode account “hey” I wrote back to him asking who he was and when he followed me. He replied saying that he wasn’t sure when he followed me, well I tried to reject him telling him that I’m an old lady and I need to go to sleep. He replied saying “That’s hot! I’m an old man, wanna ride on my scooter.” I was intrigued because I didn’t expect that answer at all. We kept chatting and he explained his name is Todd, I was like “meh... doesn’t ring a bell.” An hour later we were still talking! I was saying goodnight to him, when it came to me... He’s the Todd I spoke to ages ago who I would always laugh with. 

Our relationship progressed in a very short amount of time, we would leave each other voice messages on Line. Soon upgraded to phone calls, where we would be on the phone all night and even fall asleep on the phone together. We had so many laughs and good conversations, “I love yous” were swapped before we knew it. I fell fast and hard... but I didn’t think of it as fast since we had known each other longer than when we reconnected. Though we had aledi said ILY and both fell for each other... I hadn’t seen Todd, I had no idea what he looked like. I didn’t ask him for pictures and I reassured him that I would wait until he was ready for me to see what he looked like. A month passed and still nothing... I asked him if we could video chat on Black Friday, he agreed. I got PLASTERED that night with my family. BUT I was still within my senses to remember our video chat, hell I had been waiting to see him for a month. I texted him seeing if he was ready and he said he needed to charge his phone first. I waited for a while and fell asleep in the chair in my room. I cried... because I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to see him, but I had a smidge of hope that I would. I was so disappointed and he was mad at me for being upset. I ended up giving him short answers to things he would ask. He then said he was really nervous and that’s the reason that he didn’t call. He asked if pictures instead would be ok. I told him that would be fine, because shoot... I really wanted to actually dream about the guy I’m in love with/ in a relationship with. I was thinking he would send me the pics within a few minutes of talking.... Nope... I became upset again, because seriously??? How freaking hard is it to snap a pic and send? After giving him more short answers the rest of the day, I woke up to 4 pictures on snapchat at 2AM. I was ECSTATIC, to finally see him... He is way younger than me, to that in the beginning I was hesitant tbh... Because I had a rule for myself to never date anyone more than 3 years younger. I made an exception with Todd, because we had such amazing chemistry. His pictures... He looked as if he was 16, I told him he really does have such a babyface. 

Time passed by and I sent him pictures, but none were sent back. He asked me for pictures and I asked him for a selfie first then I would send him multiple pics... He laughed it off... His texts became less and less and the phone calls became less and less. I asked him for calls, to which the same thing happened that happened on the video chat night. I still tried my best to be understanding... Hes tired... blah blah blah... I then stopped texting good morning, stopped sending memes daily, stopped sending singing videos, etc... One convo we had was when I joked about him being a catfish, he then came at me saying that he will send me a “proof selfie” where he has my name in the picture and when he does... he wants a full apology. I replied that I don’t mind giving him a full apology, he repeated that a few times. Then he didn’t reply to me for a day or so... I ended up texting him asking if he just wants to stop this and move on or if he wanted to brood some more? He agreed to move past the argument.... a day or so after I saw that he sent his RS (This gives you a strength/intel boost in the game) thongs and she sent to him. I sent him VMS asking if he wanted to just be friends I would understand... that I love him, but that I needed to speak to him and if he ever cared for me at all... to please call me. He didn’t call me... I cried that whole day. My brother came for Christmas a couple days after... We spent time together and I told him what I was going through and he advised if he doesn’t facetime me that I don’t need him in my life and that it doesn’t make sense as to why he wouldn’t want to. Later that day... I cried when we were driving home... silently cried. My brother was driving and my head was turned away, but he heard me sniffling and asked what was wrong. I burst into tears and cried hella ugly. I told him that I’m so tired of trying so hard in relationships and its never enough. He replied that I’m not supposed to try so hard, to let it happen and that in a relationship it should be equal effort.

Todd ghosted me for 5 days... he even at one point had “Single Pringle” on his status on the game.

I cried every day in December over Todd. Those five days were the worst... At one point I woke up to myself crying in my sleep. On the 5th day I only cried a lil bit... I was feeling better, like I could move on okay. Then he texted... I tried to give him the cold shoulder, but I was still in love with him. He said he didn’t understand why I thought that he broke up with me and asked for SS of him saying it. I told him that him ghosting me for 5 days was indication of that. We went back to normal and was talking that day. A day or so passed and I noticed his RS sending him more gifts and he sent roses back to her in return. I pmed saying that I didn’t know he was collecting them and asked if I could get roses back too. He accepted the gifts and sent none in return... I sent him VMs saying again if he wants to just be friends we can... I was speaking calmly...patiently... and then I messaged him on the game asking why I wasn’t getting gifts though he gifted his RS. He blew up at me asking me what my problem is. We went back and forth that day... 

Yesterday... that worse day, that had me thinking the unthinkable... Because my good wasn’t good enough... I wasn’t good enough for someone who said he loves me to keep treating me like shit regardless of the things I overlooked with him. He treated some chick better than me... after everything we had been through... that was the last straw. I told my closest friends that I had to take a few months off the game to deal with my mental and emotional state. I keep meeting guys on there who are so sweet and amazing when we talk and then gradually they get sick of me and annoyed... they don’t want to spend time on me and the excuses pile up. Last night I thought to myself of how I should focus on things I can control. So this is my first day of not playing the game... We will see where this takes me.

So I uninstalled the game and uninstalled Line (the messaging app we sometimes used) Todd still has my phone number... that he blocked a couple days ago. LOL see... who blocks their GF in a LDR??? someone who doesn’t give a shit. If he were to call... I’d be happy... If he facetimed... I would be over the moon. But tbh if anything he might text, but I doubt anything else. I’m not going to settle for anything less... I can’t, even though I am still in love with Todd, I need to love myself more. Yesterday showed me that... I am loved by so many people who prove that they love me... I am beyond blessed with good friends. I need to focus on taking care of myself.

So here I am... going to try the blogging thing again... not for anyone else.. just for myself.