#again i will always defend both actresses when someone behaves like a | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

morizoras-cave · 4 years

Text

Sleepyhead (Request)

MCU cast x gn!teen!co-star!reader, Benedict Cumberbatch x gn!reader

Genre: Angst, fluff

Request Description: Hiya♥️could i please request a teen x marvel cast were they always find her sleeping and taking naps everywhere around set and they confront her about it and she says something about having to take care of her little siblings because her parents are never arohnd do she gets no sleep. Sorry if its to long.❤❤❤❤❤😍🥰

Warnings: irresponsible parents, negligence, slight insecurity, stress

(A/N): sorry this is kind of centered around benedict, i find these mcu cast x reader ones difficult. also im watching a belarusian war-movie from 1985 about the holocaust. its absolutely terrifying (im very serious, i’d be cautious for trigger warnings). if you’re looking for a horror movie or something, search “come and see movie” on youtube and you’ll find the entire thing there (:

At first, it had been sweet. A testament to the insomniatic youth, if you will. In every closet, behind every door, and on every soft surface, you could be found in between takes, snoring away.

They all agreed you were probably watching movies or playing games up late at night, computer screen illuminating your face. Or maybe you were chatting with your faraway friends. Either way, it was almost endearing to find you drooling on the couches scattered around the set.

Sweet and endearing at first, yes. But then the feelings about it, the longer it went on, the more your mature and well behaved personality clashed with the idea of you staying up all night, the more the feelings about your frequent naps changed.

To the set workers, the coordinators and overseers of the countless tasks on set, it became an issue.

“Where’s Y/n? We need them for the next scene!”

More often than not, several people would be running around set in search of you. And of course you apologized profusely when they found and woke you, but it didn’t matter when you never changed.

But to your coworkers, the talented actors and actresses on set of this huge movie production, it was concerning. Because you were their friend, undoubtedly.

When you would be pulled out a distant break room, rubbing your dark and drowsy eyes, mumblings would start among them.

“Are they okay?”

“They just seem so sensible, I don’t understand why they would stay up like that.”

And then there was you. Young and unfortunate you. Just trying to do your best, trying to please everyone. It was impossible for anyone to know how much you were juggling with.

You felt like a bird with a broken wing, still flying but bound to fall to its death. You knew it was too much. You knew it was only a matter of time before you broke.

Most teens felt stressed with just schoolwork, and then there was you. Battling long set days and huge mounts of schoolwork. And then the family.

Your parents that never seemed to be around. They were both working all the time and often left you and your siblings to yourselves. The problems with that was that you were the eldest, and your siblings were too young to take care of themselves. You were the one left to bring home groceries, to make dinner, to bring them to bed, and to help them with any of their schoolwork or difficulties.

And it was too much. Simply put it was too much for you. You had managed back when you were just another teen at school, but now you were in a movie, you had a JOB.

Usually you’d go to set and work your ass off, get home and help the kids all day, and then do your schoolwork in the night. You almost never got more than an hour or two of sleep, which was why you settled for small naps during your filming sessions.

You were so stressed, and you wanted to be angry, because in truth you had every right to. But you were too tired and too busy to be angry. Too focused on your siblings and doing good as an actor. But you would never want to involve your coworkers. You thought it would be embarrassing and unprofessional to involve them. So you carried the weight all alone.

“Wake up! Wake up!”

Someone was shaking you awake. You blinked your eyes open. A redhead set assistant was yelling in your face, grasping your shoulders.

She stopped when she saw your eyes turning to slits, before widening to look at her.

“Am I on?” you mumbled, rubbing your eyes. The lady scoffed.

“Are you on? Yeah, you’re on,” she spat and swung around, heels clicking on the floor, as she exited the break room briskly.

You were ashamed. Of course you were. You were so unprofessional and problematic. But you knew you had no other time to sleep, so this was your only option. The thought made you want to cry.

Instead, you stood up and walked to where the scene would be filmed, through several hallways and technical rooms, before you arrived to the large set.

Benedict, Robert, Tom (Holland), Chris (Pratt), Pom, and Dave were all gathered and ready to film. Your face was on fire, so you avoided their gazes, and just got into position to film the next scene.

Benedict and Robert exchanged glances as you yawned, but before they could talk to you (as it seemed everyone was getting fed up with your constant sleepiness) the director yelled “action”, and the acting resumed.

You all did the scene and you, surprisingly, did okay for having woken up about five minutes earlier. You continued doing several scenes for the movie all together, going through about three full scenes.

When the director was satisfied, everyone started scattering. You, rubbing your tired eyes, was already beelining for the break room, hoping to see an empty couch for you to crash.

However, before you could sneak off to catch some z’s, you felt a firm hand on your shoulder. You blinked, turning around and gazing at the person who had grabbed your shoulder. It was Benedict, Robert, Tom and Chris not fat behind him. He had a stern look on his face.

“Y/n, we need to talk.”

“Yeah, sure, what’s up?” your tone was casual, or perhaps too exhausted to express any real emotion, but inside you felt your stomach churn with anxiety.

“Why are you always sleeping?” Robert chimed in.

“Yeah, because if you’re up watching Youtube or whatever, you probably shouldn’t!” Tom said.

“Not that we’re assuming that that’s what you’re doing! It’s just- You know..,” Chris explained, voice full of panic.

You smiled softly. You recognized that they were coming from a place of worry. Then, your heart sunk slightly. You could cry. Again. Over the thought of your lack of time and your endless responsibilities.

“It’s nothing serious, it’s just..” you trailed off, trying to figure out how you could make it sound less sad. Things always sounded worse when spoken out loud, you found. “I have two siblings, and my parents are never around, so I’m kind of the person taking care of them.”

Your coworkers in front of you fell silent. You could see it on their faces. They didn’t like it.

“You?” Robert said finally, and you just nodded.

“So, you’re doing a movie, doing school, and taking care of your siblings at the same time?” Benedict repeated slowly, and once again you just nodded. There was nothing more to say.

“Why aren’t your parents there?” Chris asked in his serious-unserious voice.

“They’re working a lot,” you mumbled, disliking the collective attention on you. The thought of the couch made you yearn for some rest. You could tell that there were many things they wanted to do in that moment. They wanted to fix it all.

“Can’t you tell them you don’t have time?”

“I’ve tried that already. They say they don’t have a choice,” to this, both Robert and Benedict scoffed and shook their heads. You just watched with heavy eyes.

“Alright. Here’s what’s going to happen,” Benedict said quietly, eyes boring into yours, “I’m going to call a nanny to look after your siblings for a couple of days, don’t worry I’ll pay. You’re going to back to the hotel and sleep for at least 10 hours. When you’ve done that, and only when you’ve done that, will we talk about how we’ll move forward with your parents.”

You were quiet. You couldn’t stand up to your parents like Benedict wanted you to. You just couldn’t. They were busy and that was understandable.

Although, you had to admit, the thought of sleeping for 10 hours was enticing. Heck, worst case scenario, you could settle for 5! Your tiredness was like heavy cuffs and chains on your body, and Benedict stood with the shining, golden key right in front of you.

“Benedict, I- I can’t do that to my parents-”

“No, your parents can’t do this to you! This is absolutely outrageous!” He was frustrated you could tell. Robert seemed upset too, while Tom and Chris stepped back and let the adults handle it. Though, they seemed sad for you.

You went quiet.

“I just-”

“I don’t want to hear another word about how they’re somehow excused for their behavior. This is negligence, Y/n! This is too much for you and you know it! You’re exhausted and it’s so painful to see, so please. Just take me up on this.”

You sighed.

“Alright, then.” you said, body finally giving in to the attractive offer. Benedict’s face carried the ghost of a satisfied smile, before going back to the stone cold determination.

You drove to the hotel in Robert’s car and they booked you an extra room, knowing that your siblings occupied the other one. As soon as you could fall back on the bed, you were gone, body screaming for rest.

You woke up 14 hours later, feeling happier, brighter and well-rested. That feeling had been forgotten by you, but it was alright, you decided. Every inch of you blossomed with energy now.

As promised, Benedict had ordered a nanny for your siblings (the nanny was a lovely human being, and simply amazing with kids). Benedict, Robert, Chris and Tom has split the bill.

You called him when you woke up, and he dragged you to a restaurant, where the two of you had a long, long talk about why what your parents were doing was serious and unacceptable. He could tell he needed to explain it to you, because you, like many children, were ready to defend your parents’ at all costs.

Needless to say, after Benedict’s advice you didn’t have to go through that kind of thing again. You settled it with your parents (as well as your siblings), and after that you were so grateful that Benedict helped you out of that responsibility, because it wasn’t yours to have.

Benedict was just happy to help, the memory of seeing you sleep everywhere, now less endearing and simply painful. He didn’t like thinking about it, and so he tried not to, but rather focused on your laughter and bright smile. In truth, that’s the only thing that really mattered.

___________________________

Tag List:

@hera-the-writer @marvel-madness @40srogcrs @whatthefuckimbisexual @snarky–starky @garbage-potato @eviemarvel @lozzypoz321 @allthecreativeonesaretaken @missamericana713 @rororo06 @shady80smusicsingercolor @ireadfanficforfun

#benedict cumberbatch x reader #benedict cumberbatch #robert downey jr.#robert downey jr. x reader #mcu #mcu x reader #mcu cast x reader #marvel x reader #marvel cast x reader #avengers #avengers x reader #avengers cast x reader #avengers x teen!reader #avengers cast x teen!reader #dr strange #dr strange x reader #stephen strange x reader

1K notes · View notes

sailingintothenight · 4 years

Text

“WANNABE.” T.H. Imagine.

And what if after years of chasing each other like a cat and mouse, you and Tom started to wonder if you wanna be something else in each other's life?

A/N: I am posting a one shot after weeks of writer's block. I hope you like it. It's 9:30 pm in Peru and it's still April 28, so it's still my birthday! Give it a try. Pleaseeeeee! And yes, I borrowed a scene from Mean Girls (Because I loveeee that movie)

“Hello God, it's me again, (y/n). What's up? I know we haven't talked much lately, but, hey, listen, I have a favor to ask you- I have behaved well, I haven’t gotten drunk at any crazy party of any Hollywood star and I haven't accepted drugs, ever: I'm afraid my grandmother will appear in my room as a ghost and pull my blankets in the middle of the night, plus, I haven't make out with any Stone-cold Hollywood hottie, and trust me, I've had more than one chance. Anyway, about the favor–”

"Yes, but (y/n)'s grandfather invited us to his birthday party..."

Tom's voice startles you and cuts off your internal dialogue, turning you back to the reality.

It’s 6 am. The sun shines in the clear sky, and you are on a flight back to England in a luxury privet jet that is about to arrive at the airport, while Haz, Harry, Tom and you are sitting in comfortable velvety seats, with the view of morning sky on your left side.

The exciting memory of your last recording still seemed to run through your veins, too exciting to let you sleep. Because that was the end, the goodbye after incredible months. All your efforts from the past months were hidden behind that last performance that looked like a fantasy, except for the kiss, ugh, you had to erase it from your mind. But now, you're going back home, ready to take a break away from the set-up bridge and blue and green backgrounds, away from the makeup artists who gave your face the final touches of the magic of Hollywood, far from the suit of a superhero who had just won her last battle and who got the cute boy, Peter Parker.

But not far away from Tom Holland.

Because evil takes a human form in Tom Holland, your lifelong neighbor.

How do you even begin to explain Tom Ho– Stop, people say that if you pronounce his name 3 times a curse falls on you.

But fans say Tom Holland is flawless, you heard his curly hair is insured for 10,000 dollars, his favorite movie is “Spider-man Homecoming”, duh, and very soon, “far from home”. One time he met Robert Downey Jr. in his own village and he started hyperventilating, and once he threw a fan's phone on the floor and she said it was awesome.

"Please don't tell me you're going to his birthday party." You complain, because you can't help it.

"Would that bother you that much, darling?" Tom smiles, tilting his head back so that his tender smile fits perfectly with his tender face. “Then of course I will go. Also, your grandfather still has the hope his granddaughter would get a man like me.”

"Ew. Why would my dear grandfather want me to be with someone who enjoys keeping a frog in his mouth?" You ask, earning yourself an Oscar for best actress with the innocence you exude and the seriousness you manage to put on your face, even when Tom's eyes narrow from the attack you just launched, while, enjoying the show, his friend and his younger brother laughs, shaking heads with a familiar expression on their faces because of the familiar discussion between you and him that happens, every two or three days. "Seriously, Tom, give the poor Henry a break."

"Henry?" Tom asks with real confusion, his accent thick, while the other male voices ask it in a collective whisper too.

"I named your frog Henry, hope it doesn't bother you." And you laugh, victorious to feel how Tom exhales the air through his nose.

“Seriously, (y/n), when will you confess that you are in love with me? You don't have to be so shy, darling.” Tom laughs too, using his finger to tap your nose, because he knows perfectly well that you don't like that, just as you don't like being called darling anymore. “Ray is a wise man, you should listen to your grandfather."

"Yes, if you like skinny ones."

"I'm not skinny. I have the perfect body.” Tom defends himself.

"For now, but in a couple of years you will named your big belly as your dad does after drinking with mine." You laugh like a little girl because you love Dom, because he's warm and funny, because he loves his wife and children, and because of how funny he is when he and your dad have had too much alcohol, like the time they started a cartwheel contest in the middle of the street. "Who's there? It's Dom Junior.”

"Shut up! My dad is still sexy!” A heavy silence falls over the small place as everyone looks at Tom with furrowed brows and true confusion, but that's when he realizes the choice of words he used to refer to his dad. "That's not what I meant!"

You raise your hands in a sign of peace, your gaze avoiding his as you stop yourself from laughing and mocking him.

"That's so wrong, Tom." Harry says, with a certain bittersweet taste on the tip of his tongue. "Now because of you I won't be able to see dad's belly the same way."

Harry and Haz chuckle at Dom's expense.

But when the jet landed smoothly on the headlight-lit runway in the early hours of the morning, the heavy hours from the past months feels now as if they weighed the same as a feather, pain and exhausting sleepless nights disappeared in the blink of an eye, and now, there is no oceans that could make you feel far away, because in the end, you always came back home.

"Besides..." You say to finish that conversation, your backpack on your shoulder before making the victory path towards the stairs to get off the plane. "I would like a boyfriend who can grow a mustache, not like the failed attempt on your face. Thank you very much."

"Hey!" Tom frowns as you pass him by, and his voice rises even higher than it already is. "My doctor says it's just a hormone problem."

"Damn, bro..." Harry laughs as he puts an arm around Tom's shoulder, giving him a brotherly hug before walking out to the car waiting outside. “(Y/n) will be hard to catch, you know? But try it, maybe you will make it in this century."

Harry laughs, and then, walks out of the plane.

"What does that mean?" Tom asks Harrison, who is still waiting by his side.

"I think he meant that you are in love with (y/n), but you haven't noticed it yet."

Harrison chuckles, but after patting Tom on the back, he rushes to place a hand on his best friend's shoulder to stop him.

“Hey, mate… you, uh…” Tom's eyes soften, almost to the point where his brown eyes resembled the gaze of a little 5-year-old boy, sad, and lost. “You haven't told anyone why we came back, right?”

“Of course not.” Harrison says, and his gaze smiles just like his lips. “Don’t worry about anything, okay? We are home, you are home. You can take the time you need to rest.”

Tom nods, unsure, but tries to be strong as they both get off the plane.

The gray autumn clouds hang with invisible strings in the sky as Tom Holland, actor, handsome, wealthy, and the loneliest person in the world, releases a deep breath that is lost among the sounds of the world, because his world is no longer sparkling or velvety thanks to the cameras or a red carpet, and while his new movie is a box office hit that never in his best dreams he would have imagined, something wasn't right for him.

That’s why he is back home.

The car ride is silent as some sleep, except you and Tom, because your eyes seem to recognize the streets you grew up in, because your hearts recognize your home. But for Tom, he recalls tilting his body to the left and a camera captured his best actor pose a week ago, but since then, his body has felt null, as if floating in the air and no longer responding to his orders. He was crystal clear, but a few people seemed to see clearly through him. Tom tries to convince himself that the tickling in his hands is his body's response to tiredness and not his anxiety, because he suffers it too, but he feels that something is eating his soul.

"Are you okay, Tom?"

Among a sea of people, Tom Holland has always pretended to be an interesting person, but now, he takes a deep breath and looks at you, nervous, lost in the middle of that huge world, but you, looking back at him gives him peace, because he doesn’t feel alone anymore.

What did you think? That someone is interested in knowing if you are really okay? Of course they care, right?

“Of course, darling.” Tom smiles, as if in a snap of fingers, everything is fine.

But there, he catches a movement of yours.

You tilt your head to the side, like his beloved Tessa when she is curious about something, but he doesn't say it out loud because you would take it the wrong way, but the movement in slow motion worthy of a Hollywood scene and the serenity of your gaze makes Tom hold his breath, that breath that previously didn't fit his chest with so many problems that he carried inside.

But suddenly he can breathe again, finally.

“Okay.”

The minutes pass until the car stops on a street that you two recognize perfectly. When everyone is out, the car leaves, but because your favorite boys are about to leave, too, you hug everyone as the promise to celebrate Harrison's birthday next week hangs in the air. You love them so much, because they are beautiful people who helped you to save yourself from the storms of doubts and fears, each of them in their own charming way, and for that, you were grateful.

"My friend Danielle is coming so I would like you to meet her, Haz." You chuckle adorably before leaving, noting that Harrison's smile is as real as his desire to meet her.

"I'm looking forward to it, darling."

"Wait, why he can call you darling?" Tom says, and for a second, you see a sparkle in the brightness of his eyes, but as the door of his house opens and his beloved Tessa runs to receive him, the confusion disperses like the morning haze.

"There she is the only darling you will ever get, Thomas."

And the moment you turn around, because the door of your house opens too, you lose sight of Tom's honest smile and the question that he hides behind his sweet eyes. Was he in love with you all this time without realizing it? And what if he wanna be your boyfriend?

Oh, right. The favor that you were going to ask God for? To get you a boyfriend, a cute one, a hot one... maybe like Tom. Weird, isn't it?

Tag list: @galaxies-of-the-heart

#tom holland imagine #tom holland fanfic #tom holland fluff #tom holland spiderman #tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #tom holland x y/n

229 notes · View notes

rapeculturerealities · 5 years

Link

I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress at 24. These are character descriptions of roles I have read for: “thin, attractive, Dave’s wife”; “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering”; “her breasts are large and she’s wearing a red sweater.”

I stuffed my bra for that last one. I still did not get the part.

After a while it was hard to tell what was the greater source of my depression: that I could not book a part in a horror film where I had three lines and died on Page 4, or that I was even auditioning to play these roles at all. After dozens of auditions and zero callbacks, my mom suggested I get breast implants. From her perspective, I had walked away from a coveted job at Goldman Sachs and chosen a profession of self-commodification. She wanted to help me sell better.

But I wasn’t drawn to acting because I wanted to be desired. I was drawn to acting because I felt it would allow me to become the whole, embodied person I remembered being in childhood — one that could imagine freely, listen deeply and feel wholeheartedly.

I continued to audition and continued to fail. My depression deepened. My self-esteem plummeted. My boyfriend would get drunk and punch holes in the wall next to my head. I let him. He spat in my face. I let him. He dissolved into tears in my arms. I let him. And then I sifted through the ashes of his anger and his father’s anger before him to help him uncover the forgiveness he needed to move on. I was auditioning to be “Dave’s wife.” I was “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering.”

After a day of running from men with chain saws in audition rooms and a night of running from the man I shared a bed with, I decided I was done auditioning. I felt I had to write my way out of these roles or I wouldn’t find my way in the real world, either. I could not be what I could not see onscreen.

So I went to the library in downtown Los Angeles and started reading books and watching films about how to write dramas for the screen. I clung to Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs,” to Holly Hunter in Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

But aside from a handful of exceptions, I was overwhelmed by the number of dramatic narratives that murdered their female characters.

In “The Big Heat” she has a pot of boiling coffee thrown in her face and is then shot in the back. In “Chinatown” the bullet tears through her brain and out her eye. And in case this seems like a trend of the past, consider the more recent noir “Blade Runner 2049,” where the holographic femme fatale is deleted and the remaining women are stabbed, drowned and gutted like a fish.

Even the spirited Antigone, the brave Joan of Arc and the unfettered Thelma and Louise meet tragic ends in large part because they are spirited, brave and unfettered. They can defy kings, refuse beauty and defend themselves against violence. But it’s challenging for a writer to imagine a world in which such free women can exist without brutal consequences.

We live in a world that is a direct reflection of these stories we’ve been telling. Close to four women a day are murdered in America at the hands of their partners or former partners. One out of every four women in America has been the victim of a rape.

I am one of those one out of four. Our narratives tell us that women are objects and objects are disposable, so we are always objectified and often disposed of.

There are centuries of trial and error inside the “hero’s journey,” in which a young man is called to adventure, challenged by trials, faces a climactic battle and emerges victorious, changed and a hero. And while there are narrative patterns for the adventures of girls — “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz” — those are few and far between, and for adult women, even less so.

Even when I found myself writing stories about women rebelling against the patriarchy, it still felt like what I largely ended up describing was the confines of patriarchy. The more fettered I felt inside the real world, the more I turned toward science fiction, speculative fiction and lo-fi fantasy.

I eventually co-wrote, produced and starred in two microbudget films, “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice.” Both stories left reality just far enough behind to give me the mental freedom to imagine female characters behaving in ways not often seen onscreen.

I emerged from the Sundance Film Festival with offers to act in projects I would never have been allowed to read for a week prior. Most of those roles were still girlfriend, mistress, mother. But there was a new character on offer to me as well, one that survived the story.

Enter, stage right: the Strong Female Lead.

She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.

Acting the part of the Strong Female Lead changed both who I was and what I thought I was capable of. Training to do my own stunt work made me feel formidable and respected on set. Playing scenes where I was the boss firing men tasted like empowerment. And it will always feel better to be holding the gun in the scene than to be pleading for your life at the other end of the barrel.

It would be hard to deny that there is nutrition to be drawn from any narrative that gives women agency and voice in a world where they are most often without both. But the more I acted the Strong Female Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow specificity of the characters’ strengths — physical prowess, linear ambition, focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power.

I thought back to the films I watched and stories I read burrowed deep in the stacks of the library. I began to see something deeper and more insidious behind all those images of dead and dying women.

When we kill women in our stories, we aren’t just annihilating female gendered bodies. We are annihilating the feminine as a force wherever it resides — in women, in men, of the natural world. Because what we really mean when we say we want strong female leads is: “Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.”

It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as strong. When I look at the world our stories have helped us envision and then erect, these are the very qualities that have been vanquished in favor of an overwrought masculinity.

I’ve played the Strong Female Lead in real life, too — as an analyst at an investment bank before coming to Hollywood. I wore suits, drank Scotch neat and talked about the women and the men I was sleeping with like commodities on an open market. I buried my feminine intelligence alive in order to survive. I excelled at my linear task of making more money from a lot of money regardless of the long-term consequences for others and the environment.

The lone female V.P. on my floor and my mentor at the time gave me the following advice when she left to partner at a hedge fund: Once a week, open the door to your office when they finally give you one, and place a phone call where you shout a string of expletives in a threatening voice.

She added that there doesn’t actually need to be someone on the other end of the line.

I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance? Or how do we evolve beyond the limitations that binaries like feminine/masculine present in the first place?

In 2014 I went back to the library and encountered Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” a sci-fi novel written in 1993 imagining a 2020 where society has largely collapsed from climate change and growing wealth inequality. Butler’s heroine, the 17 year-old Lauren, has “hyperempathy” — she feels, quite literally, other people’s pain. This feminine gift and curse uniquely prepares her to survive the violent attack on her community in Los Angeles and successfully encourage a small tribe north to begin again from seeds she has saved from her family’s garden.

Butler felt to me like a lighthouse blinking from an island of understanding way out at sea. I had no idea how to get there, but I knew she had found something life saving. She had found a form of resistance.

Butler and other writers like Ursula Le Guin, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood did not employ speculative fiction to colonize other planets, enslave new life-forms, or extract alien minerals for capital gains only to have them taken at gunpoint by A.I. robots. These women used the tenets of genre to reveal the injustices of the present and imagine our evolution.

With these ideas in mind, Zal Batmanglij and I wrote and created “The OA,” a Netflix series about Prairie, a blind girl who is kidnapped and returns seven years later to the community she grew up in with her sight restored. She opens up to a group of lost teenage boys in her neighborhood, telling them about her captivity and the inter-dimensional travel she discovered to survive it. It turns out these boys need to hear Prairie’s story as much as she needs to tell it. For the boys face their own kind of captivity: growing up inside the increasingly toxic obligations of American manhood.

As time has passed, I’ve come to understand what deep influence shaping a narrative has. Stories inspire our actions. They frame for us existences that are and are not possible, delineate tracks we can or cannot travel. They choose who we can find empathy for and who we cannot. What we have fellow feeling for, we protect. What we objectify and commodify, we eventually destroy.

I don’t want to be the dead girl, or Dave’s wife. But I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, if my power is defined largely by violence and domination, conquest and colonization.

Sometimes I get a feeling of what she could be like. A truly free woman. But when I try to fit her into the hero’s journey she recedes from the picture like a mirage. She says to me: Brit, the hero’s journey is centuries of narrative precedent written by men to mythologize men. Its pattern is inciting incident, rising tension, explosive climax and denouement. What does that remind you of?

And I say, a male orgasm.

And she says: Correct. I love the arc of male pleasure. But how could you bring me into being if I must satisfy the choreography of his desire only?

And I say: Good on you. But then how do I bring you into being?

Then I hear only silence.

But even in the silence I dream of answers. I imagine new structures and mythologies born from the choreography of female bodies, non-gendered bodies, bodies of color, disabled bodies. I imagine excavating my own desires, wants and needs, which I have buried so deeply to meet the desires, wants and needs of men around me that I’m not yet sure how my own desire would power the protagonist of a narrative.

These are not yet solutions. But they are places to dig.

Excavating, teaching and celebrating the feminine through stories is, inside our climate emergency, a matter of human survival. The moment we start imagining a new world and sharing it with one another through story is the moment that new world may actually come.

#sexism #misogyny #entertainment #workplace #strong female leads #voices

38 notes · View notes

fandomele · 5 years

Note

I don't wanna start anything but I've seen the lack of love for POC ships happen in dozens of fandoms now and I just gotta say you can't fault people for not liking what you like bro. You could make a show full of diverse representation but no one's truly gonna care unless the characters are actually interesting. I'm black but I'm not gonna enjoy a show JUST b/c there's a black person in it. If I don't like them I don't like them and them or me being black has nothing to do with it

okay so racism tw , supergirl, anti supercorp fandom, anti supergirl fandom. long post for ts

no, it’s okay, you are free to express your opinion, just like I’m free to get annoyed at the tag being filled with Lena and Lena and Lena I haven’t watched a show that has an ace character in it, Sex Education, because it’s not my kind of show and it bores me (though I do reblog gifsets of the Ace Scene and I am so happy about it. Because I do care about ace representation, I try to promote these things and also to share so that it might reach people who are interested in shows like that and will get a kick out of it. But I’m not saying everyone has to), and I’m not saying you must like everything, but at the same time a fandom like ours simply ignoring the plot of entire episodes because… what, they only find one character interesting and they couldn’t find ANY other worth mentioning, is something I personally found ridiculous.

And that’s kind of the thing, isn’t it? You raised a great point. If this was a part of the fandom that from the beginning had simply said ‘I like this because of my tastes, and everyone has different ones’ I wouldn’t be exasperated, but given how it actually went, nope, THEY said it wasn’t just about people’s tastes, it’s about having representation and supporting fellow lgbtqia+ fans. So good part of my frustration depends on this specific fandom and how it behaved in the past.

For more context, it bothers me that the loudest (even if small) group of fans left watching supergirl on tumblr are the ones yelling about how Kara and Lena not being together is homophobia, and how they are being queerbaited and how the show (and non supercorp fans) is against gay people, while the tag itself is full of posts either complaining about the lack of Lena, and writing posts about Lena, and completely ignoring the amazing wlw couple there and the trans character there, and in fact those episodes with little Lena but focused on those characters get downvoted/boycotted/ignored by the fandom, and while they hate on all actors and writers if they so much as point out it’s not canon or that they are being bullies, and attack minorities, people of colors, transgender people, people with mental illnesses all day long to defend their ‘rights’. Not to mention that it’s the same group that back in the day accused people of shipping Kara and Mon El, also canon, together because they were against James, who is black, and so it was because ‘racism,’ and then turned around and hated James as soon as he was canonly together with Lena. And there is proof of them being racist as well like when they photoshopped James’s actor as an ape* next to Lena’s actress, and how Raul who played Lena’s ex also commented on that behavior. They use social issues to attack everyone and then show they don’t really care about supporting a show that actually has the representation THEY say they are not getting.

I was bored by James and Kara. Nothing to do with him being black. I found him cute with Lena at first but then it became a bad relationship for him to keep. But if you (always a general you, not YOU-YOU anon) accuse me of shipping Kara with someone else (Mon El) only because I’m racist and don’t want her with James, that’s the only reason, and then you start insulting James like hell for being with Lena, you basically said it yourself that it’s racism, and on top of it you used his being black and the ‘you are racist’ card as props to attack people, and then disregarded him and the actor as soon as you didn’t need it anymore, and that sounds also racist to me. As well as how pretending to care about trans issues only to ignore the trans character after you stop needing it is using that character/actress and it’s transphobic, if you ask me.

I’m not saying it’s everyone, I’m not saying it’s all those shippers, I’m not saying personal taste doesn’t count, but come on. Just admit you only care about your ship and it’s not about ‘moral’ reasons, that’s fine, but make it a social issue, and then turn around and ignore episodes about canon representation and downvote them and ask people to boycott episodes. How can you also not find ANYTHING but Lena interesting in a show that isn’t about Lena? So many choices, and yet.

At least this is my opinion, and seems to be the opinion of all the people who liked posts and reblogged. Again, there is a lot of stuff to talk about so the answer is chaotic, but to sum it up:

1) if you build a whole case around the fact that your fanon ship (Kara and Lena) is about representation too, about gay rights, and how much you care about it, and have spent years telling everyone else that they are racist and homophobic because they ship other things, and then you don’t even make a peep about the representation you are getting and just complain about your fanon ship, which by the way up until now involves a white, straight, woman, you are using social issues to prop a ship you like and you don’t really care that much about them outside of it. Admit from the beginning it’s about your tastes and that you just like those two women together, it’s not about a show giving you representation, and it’s fine, but you can’t have both. You can’t tell people that your fanon ship is all about representation AND if they don’t like it it’s because of homophobia, and if they like another it’s because of racism, AND simultaneously ignore everything you get that isn’t about said fanon ship.

2) the cast was attacked in the past with racist and transphobic tweets so some people, not everyone, are also motivated by them. Also really, you are telling me that all these people who like Lena but do care about social issues just happen not to like Nia, a trans woman, and not like her ship with Brainy, a man of color, and not like Alex and Kelly, and not like about the whole plot about the guy going after Nia because transphobic, there is just NOTHING interesting to talk about? Either they are using social issues to their advantage which is kinda homophobic and racist and transphobic in itself, or this is a giant coincidence, because there isn’t one of these plots that is worth a post or that won’t make them not complain about the lack of Lena in a show that has all these characters together.

3) for me it’s frustrating to get all this good stuff and then find nothing but comments about Lena in the MAIN tag, where one usually goes after an episode to talk about the episode itself. That’s how tags work in all fandoms except this one.

4) I’m white, that means that I can’t declare that tumblr deciding not to ship biracial couples in nearly every show where there is one is a matter of tastes or is a matter of racism, it’s not for me to decide, and my personal opinion is that it depends on the person but there is such a racist culture in some places that it can’t not have a role in it. And I’ve seen people of color bring up that yes, it’s about tastes too, but since I’ve also seen many others instead bring up the issue that it’s just happening too much to be a coincidence, that every single time people say a ship is platonic if one of them isn’t white, I feel like it would be racist of me to dismiss those concerns. Because it is a trend and because the racist insults thrown at actors more than once do say that while for some people it is a matter of tastes, for others it’s definitely not just that. Just going to leave this as a little example that represents that hundreds we saw in years:

edit: and

#Anonymous #ele answers #it's been YEARS of this which I can't sum up in one answer #so it's kinda hard to believe that they are ALL being like this without any maliciousness #and that they do care about representation that much and that their insults were in good faith #when they ignore 100% of canon representation #none of it interesting #because their fanon one isn't happening #transphobia tw #racism tw #long post for ts #long post tw #anti supercorp fandom #anti supercorp #anti supergirl fandom #pics from facepalmong-since-chernobyl

12 notes · View notes

alittlelifenovelquotes · 5 years

Text

He was so naïve, he thought as he made his slow way back to the hotel: about his career, about Jude. Why did he always think he knew what he was doing? Why did he think he could do whatever he wanted and everything would work out the way he imagined it? Was it a failure of creativity, or arrogance, or (as he assumed) simple stupidity? People, people he trusted and respected, were always warning him—Kit, about his career; Andy, about Jude; Jude, about himself—and yet he always ignored them. For the first time, he wondered if Kit was right, if Jude was right, if he would never work again, or at least not the kind of work he enjoyed. Would he resent Jude? He didn't think so; he hoped not. But he had never thought he would have to find out, not really.

But greater than that fear was the one he was rarely able to ask himself: What if the things he was making Jude do weren't good for him after all? The day before, they had taken a shower together for the first time, and Jude had been so silent afterward, so deep inside one of his fugue states, his eyes so flat and blank, that Willem had been momentarily frightened. He hadn't wanted to do it, but Willem had coerced him, and in the shower, Jude had been rigid and grim, and Willem had been able to tell from the set of Jude's mouth that he was enduring it, that he was waiting for it to be over. But he hadn't let him get out of the shower; he had made him stay. He had behaved (unintentionally, but who cared) like Caleb—he had made Jude do something he didn't want to, and Jude had done it because he had told him to do it. "It'll be good for you,” he'd said, and remembering this—although he had believed it—he felt almost nauseated. No one had ever trusted him as unquestioningly as Jude did. But he had no idea what he was doing.

“Willem's not a health-care professional,” he remembered Andy saying. “He's an actor.” And although both he and Jude had laughed at the time, he wasn't sure Andy was wrong. Who was he to try to direct Jude's mental health? “Don't trust me so much,” he wanted to say to Jude. But how could he? Wasn't this what he had wanted from Jude, from this relationship? To be so indispensable to another person that that person couldn't even comprehend his life without him? And now he had it, and the demands of the position terrified him. He had asked for responsibility without understanding completely how much damage he could do. Was he able to do this? He thought of Jude's horror of sex and knew that behind that horror lay another, one he had always surmised but had never inquired about: So what was he supposed to do? He wished there was someone who could tell him definitively if he was doing a good job or not; he wished he had someone guiding him in this relationship the way Kit guided him in his career, telling him when to take a risk and when to retreat, when to play Willem the Hero and when to be Ragnarsson the Terrible.

Oh, what am I doing? he chanted to himself as his feet smacked against the road, as he ran past men and women and children readying themselves for the day, past buildings as narrow as closets, past little shops selling stiff, brick-like pillows made of plaited straw, past a small boy cradling an imperious-looking lizard to his chest, What am I doing, oh what am I doing?

By the time he returned to the hotel an hour later, the sky was shading from white to a delicious, minty pale blue. The travel agent had booked them a suite with two beds, as always (he hadn't remembered to have his assistant correct this), and Jude was lying on the one they had both slept in the night before, dressed for the day, reading, and when Willem came in, he stood and came over and hugged him.

“I'm all sweaty,” he mumbled, but Jude didn't let go.

“It's okay,” Jude said. He stepped back and looked at him, holding him by the arms. “It's going to be fine, Willem,” he said, in the same firm, declarative way Willem sometimes heard him speak to clients on the phone. “It really is. I'll always take care of you, you know that, right?”

He smiled. “I know,” he said, and what comforted him was not so much the reassurance itself, but that Jude seemed so confident, so competent, so certain that he, too, had something to offer. It reminded Willem that their relationship wasn't a rescue mission after all, but an extension of their friendship, in which he had saved Jude and, just as often, Jude had saved him. For every time he had gotten to help Jude when he was in pain, or defend him against people asking too many questions, Jude had been there to listen to him worrying about his work, or to talk him out of his misery after he hadn't gotten a part, or to (for three consecutive months, humiliatingly) pay his college loans when a job had fallen through and he didn't have enough money to cover them himself. And yet somehow in the past seven months he had decided that he was going to repair Jude, that he was going to fix him, when really, he didn't need fixing. Jude had always taken him at face value; he needed to try to do the same for him.

“I ordered breakfast,” Jude said. “I thought you might want some privacy. Do you want to take a shower?”

“Thanks,” he said, “but I think I'll wait until after we eat.” He took a breath. He could feel his anxiety fade; he could feel himself returning to who he was. “But would you sing with me?” Every morning for the past two months, they had been singing with each other in preparation for Duets. In the film, his character and the character's wife led an annual Christmas pageant, and both he and the actress playing his wife would be performing their own vocals. The director had sent him a list of songs to work on, and Jude had been practicing with him: Jude took the melody, and he took the harmony.

“Sure,” Jude said. “Our usual?” For the past week, they'd been working on “Adeste Fideles,” which he would have to sing a cappella, and for the past week, he'd been pitching sharp at the exact same point, at “Venite adoremus,” right in the first stanza. He'd wince every time he did it, hearing the error, and Jude would shake his head at him and keep going, and he'd follow him until the end. “You're overthinking it," Jude would say. “When you go sharp, it's because you're concentrating too hard on staying on key; just don't think about it, Willem, and you'll get it.”

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Part V: The Happy Years. Chapter 1, pg. 474-476

#A Little Life #Hanya Yanagihara #quote #willem ragnarsson #jude st francis #naïve #marriage #career #relationships #long term relationships #fear #uncertainty #self-doubt #trust

27 notes · View notes

unkindnessofone · 7 years

Text

Change In The Weather

Sometimes I just sit and write and see what comes out. This is one of those times. It was going to go in a few directions, but I decided to keep it shorter and simpler. Sending this out to @clumsy-grace, my fellow hockey loving boo. Enjoy!

1. Where there were open bottles of champagne, there was always a smile on Grace's usual resting bored face. Coming back to tour after hers and Michael's sporadic break had been a surprisingly good for her. She never would have guessed that babysitting drunk young men and listening to the same songs every night would nurse her bruised heart. She was grateful for the room Michael made for her even if she wasn't always fast to express it to him.

"You good?" Underneath his girlfriend, holding her knees as she sat on his lap, Michael rested her chin on her bare shoulder and asked directly in her ear over the music playing in the London night club. It was Ashton's girlfriends birthday and no one planned to go home sober.

"Yeah." Grace knocked her head so that her cheek landed on top of his head, her contour looking particularly chiseled under the flashing red lights. "I'm having a really good time." She had only been back for two weeks and it hadn't been an easy decision to return. She had left for two months and driven a painful wedge between herself and her musician boyfriend. She covered one of his hands on her knees, holding it by slipping her fingers between his. Illuminated rouge, they grinned gingerly at one another, eyes locked and refusing to move. He leaned in quick to stun her with a kiss, but Grace invited it with a pull from her bottom lip between his. She tasted like the bubbles she had been drinking all night and Michael hoped to get drunk off her perfect painted red pout. "Do you want more?" He asked, tapping the side of her empty flute with one of his fingers. He wanted another round of liquor himself. Michael was looking forward to being a beautiful klutz with his stunning girlfriend later, fumbling in a friend's guest room and kissing her until every inch of her had felt his crazy he was for her. "Please." A second hadn't passed since he asked and Grace pushed her glass into his chest, twisting herself to better face him. It didn't occur to her to get up off his lap until she felt him move beneath her butt. She carefully stepped off of him, keeping her knees tight since her dress was shorter than her paitience. "I will be right here." Grace wasn't in the mood to dance tonight. She just wanted to cuddle in a booth with Michael, laugh with the drunk British celebrities that Simone was lucky enough to call friends, and drink free Cristal. Michael kissed her once more, adventuring his hands down her perimeter, enjoying her firm curves, and then leaving to the bar. He felt so lucky that she was back. For a second, he wondered if his drunk prayers had Ben answered when he would lay awake, missing her, and wishing she would change her mind. She laughed as he excitedly introduced himself to Kit Harington on his way. He nearly knocked the birthday girl over with how fast he reached out his empty hand to shake the actor he had watched religiously. Grace slid back into the leather cushioned booth, hugging herself and how warm she felt inside. She was like a pillow and she felt so scared that someone would unfluff her at any moment. It was one of her least favourite things about herself: She was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Grace watched Michael until he disappeared in the crowd, Kit and Ben Barnes following him around dancing bodies to the bar that they had deduced had the shortest line. She reached across her drawn on and painfully right cleavage to her clutch by her side and checked her phone inside. No one from LA had called her. She hadn't heard from her old life since leaving again. Grace felt disappointed, but not surprised. She was about to open her texts to reread the last message from her sister when she felt the cushions beneath her shift. Quickly, she turned her face with an ecstatic expression she strictly reserved for Mike, eyes stretched open with lashes fluttered and lips working a tried and true smoulder. As soon as she realized it was Ashton and not Michael, Grace relaxed her face and set her body upward with tense shoulders. She was always ready to defend herself and many people found it off putting. "Hi..." She curled her right hand at him lightly, showing off her coffin tips. Grace was boldly herself when she met people, unafraid to show off the person she raised majorly by herself. She felt embraced by a couple of Michael's friends, like Calum, and accepted by the others, but there was an uneasiness between her and Ashton that everyone could feel. He sized her up whenever he looked at her and he never pointed his body to face her. There was space between them and he put it there on purpose. Grace could feel it and she complained to Michael who never denied it either. So Grace always put on an invisible apron and slipped into her old waitressing shtick when he was around her. She did everything she could to leave him without a reason to dislike her. "Mike just went to get another round." She leaned closer to.gim, her back never leaving the booth, and shouted to Ashton over the music. Grace doubted that the drummer was there for her. When close enough, she could inhale the marijuana and beer sweating through his skin. It prompted her to find it painted in different autumn hues in his eyes. "Why are you here?" Ashton just yelled back while holding back a small involuntary burp. "Your girlfriend invited me." And because she wanted to be, but Grace had to remind herself that a good waitress wouldn't say that to a customer no matter how rude. "Sim is nice." He didn't slur, but his words were dripping from liquid courage. "It's a nice thing to do to invite certain people." Grace only nodded, her eyes taking the the time to notice the stain from a spilled drink on his dark brown pants. She didn't have to ask, she knew that she was one of those 'certain people'. "I meant why are you here?" He called again, pressing his hand into the leather between them and bringing his mouth closer to her ear. "Like in this booth? Or in London...or..." "No!" He cleared his throat after shaking his head sending the top part of his hair bouncing as he did. "Why are you back? You left without a fucking word and then you just came back." "It wasn't quite like that." It always bothered Grace that Ashton spoke and behaved as if he knew everything, but she didn't pick a fight. He was one of Michael's favorite people after all and Michael was truly her most favorite person that wasn't an old Hollywood movie star she saw on TV. "There's more to it." "Mike was starting to move on. He was happy and fine and then you came back." Ashton continued, his eyes growling at her through the darkness. "Is this really how you want to be spending your girlfriend's birthday?" Grace bit on the tip of her tongue for just a moment. He was working her last nerve like a patron who instructed her to smile. "Interrogating me?" "He was seeing someone and then you came back." "Yes, I came back. I can tell you're really miffed about that." Grace gripped her clutch to her side with one hand, pushing the tips of her nails into her side deeply as a way to maintain her temper. "I don't trust you." Bluntly, he came right out and said it. Grace wished for a moment that she was insulted by Ashton's omission, but she wasn't. It was obvious in how he shifted his position when she walked in a room or how he barely greeted her when she was around. "Color me stunned." In monotone, she answered and kept eye contact with an uninterested stare. For Michael, she could show off a tapestry in her gaze, but everyone else was given frosty blank stares. "You were an actress in a music video, you knew Michael liked you, you played hard to get, you slept with him, you went back and forth, you ghosted him..." Ashton listed improperly for her, not earning a nod back of acknowledgement from the pin up looking beauty. "You don't give two shits about his feelings." Grace waited, making sure Ashton was done before jumping down his throat. He leaned back proud of himself and took his last sip from his bottle of beer. "I actually slept with him before I played hard to get." Confidently, she corrected even though she never intended to play hard to get. Grace had a bout of indecision that kept her from completely giving into her own feelings for Michael. She wasn't about to go into that with Ashton though not when he was being so unwelcoming to her. "That's your first mistake." She scooched closer to him. "Unless you are so inadequate that I've fallen asleep every time you've joined Michael and I in bed, I don't think you're actually a part of our relationship. So, you don't actually have all of the facts, believe it or not." Ashton cleared his throat and tried to look away, but Grace would not let him. She knocked her knee against his leg and pulled his focus back to her. "This is the most you and I have ever said to one another, so maybe that is is why you don't trust me because you don't know me. If you knew me, you would know not to corner me in a booth and try to read me." She moved Ashton along the seat, her waitress costume removed as she lost her self control. "Lucky for both of us, I don't need your trust. I sleep fine without it and you better fucking believe that Michael doesn't need it in order to love me." Grace scooched closer just a smidgen more and Ashton lost his balance. He almost fell right off the booth and onto the floor with a hard thud. However, Grace's quick reflexes from a life of shoplifting and running from strangers sprung into work. Her hand curled around his wrist and she yanked him into place. "Do not come for me." Her teeth were locked tightly as she held him before her, warning him. This was not her first time having to stand up to a man who thought he had the upper hand. Grace relinquished her hand and grabbed her clutch, instantly putting more space between them. "And not that you deserve to know, but Mike means everything to me." One last time, Grace shouted over the music to Ashton before standing up to leave from the other side of the booth. "Think about that when you go and fuck yourself." In front of him, the black round table between them, Grace finished and started to walk away. She ran into Michael who would recognize her pissed off face anywhere. He looked over her straightened hair to see his dumbfounded friend, but chose to chase after his dream girl instead. All Grace was thinking was that Ashton was lucky she didn't have her refill because he would have been wearing it.

******* *** *** *** *** * * * *

2. She had on his flannel shirt, one he usually wore open over a plain t shirt and loose over his shoulders, but even though it was keeping her warm outside and under the midnight Finland breeze, Grace still fumed angry with her husband. Emmeline was fast asleep back at the hotel with Cagney and Penelope, but Grace was contemplating waking her daughter who was knee deep in the terrible twos. Michael had been on tour for forever it felt like to Grace even if it hadn't been nearly as much as it was when they first dated. There was a lot more standing still in his life since Emmeline was born. Maybe even before that when Ashton and Simone were expecting Molly. It was around then that they took longer expansions of time off and stayed in one place at a time more often. Michael had come home every weekend when Emmeline was two months old and the band was finishing their music festival commitments. He always tried to put them first at the cost of his own comfort. Six months pregnant again, Grace was livid after being promised that Michael would have time to themselves before their second child was born. Michael's parents has already agreed to take Emmeline for a weekend, she booked a day for them at a spa since she knew she wouldn't be encouraged to fly by then, and Grace was looking forward to it. Having two small children was a frightening reality as much as she was hungry for it, more excited during this pregnancy than her first, but Grace had focused on her week at home when she needed to relax. She had let herself feel giddy at the prospect of finishing up a nursery for their new little person and preparing Emmeline to learn to entertain herself or hold a baby. She hadn't had much practice since she was only a touch older than Connor Irwin and Penelope Hemmings. Perhaps, she had overreacted, but Grace couldn't manage her hormones along with the disappointment Michael's life brought her sometimes. There were times where she felt like he didn't even consider her and it hurt when she had been made his priority for so long. Grace hugged her arms around herself and sighed. The night was clear and while Helsinki was far away from everything that felt like home to her, the cool breeze across her face was comforting. She closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh air. She wished she was at one of the parks, staring into the water and watching swans, instead of at the arena where the crew was still packing up. "Hey..." Making her jump in her skin, Ashton's voice poked in to make himself known before he walked in front of her. She opened her eyes, startled, and saw him apprehensively approach her. "You stormed out so fast, you forgot your coat." He had her red parka hanging over his arm and offered it to her. "I also grabbed you a banana." She had craved them with Emmeline and was craving them again this pregnancy. It led her to believe that she was pregnant with another diva. Once Grace took the coat from Ashton's limb, she saw the freckled fruit. She slid her arms into her jacket that barely zipped up now that she was showing and then took the banana from him. "Thanks." It was very thoughtful of him. She knew he had overheard her shouting at Michael in the hallway. She had even noticed him put down his plastic cup full of vodka to hear if they were okay. "You don't need to tell me to understand or see things from your managers perspective, Ashton, I get it." She began to peel her snack, sighing through his nostrils with exasperation at what she suspected he had come to say to her. "I wasn't going to say anything, just wanted to check that you're okay." Ashton held up both his palms as if he was the victim of a stick-up. She was pregnant and she ran out of the arena like it was on fire. He noted the way she raised her boldly drawn on brows at him and sunk into himself, taking down his hands as she took a big first bite of banana. "You said you were going to leave..." They hadn't always liked one another, but Ashton had come to appreciate Michael's wife from spending so much mandatory time with her. She had been a great supporter of Simone's work and helped at all hours of the night when Molly was teething. She was someone who always rose to the occasion and Ashton appreciated that. She was feisty and not always kind, but she loved his two kids like they were her own, she rocked Michael's world, and she always tried to make Simone's life easier. Ashton also privately thought she was one of the funniest people he had ever met which was strange to him because he knew her upbringing had been far from joyful. "I don't want to startle Emmeline and make her fly all day with me." Finland to Sydney wouldn't be the longest flight they had taken together, but they never flew commercial when there was a great distance. Grace didn't know how she and Emmeline would do on a standard airline for hours and hours. "I'll have to see how things are in the morning." With her empty hand, she shook her hair back from its crown and kept biting at the fruit in her other hand. "Simone doesn't like all the schedule changes either. She thinks it's inconsiderate." He couldn't say the last word without hearing his wife's posh accent in his head, yakking at him through a speaker phone. "It is." Grace agreed without hesitation. "It was before you had your own families, but even more so now. We plan our lives to the minute so that everyone's day works and then everything changes just because." It was nothing she hadn't already let out inside the building. "I get it too. It's part of it, I know. I just ... " A sigh like a gust of wind was forced from her body, making it shudder as she dropped her Ames to her side, the banana peel hanging by her knees. "I wish Michael seemed more upset about missing out on time with me or Emmeline." "Grace, come on," Softening, Ashton came closer to her and leaned up against the building right by her. "You know how much you two mean to him." A very drunk Michael had expressed to Ashton and Calum that he would have nothing to live for if something happened to his two girls which really frightened his band mates to hear. "I think he keeps himself level because he knows you're so worked up. You're worked up enough for everyone." He sort of chuckled. It wasn't a completely safe thing to say around her, but Ashton took his chances since it was true. In his relationship, Simone was the one to keep calm while he tunneled into tizzies. He knew she could feel things just as urgently, but chose to play it cool since no solution could come if they were both freaking out with their head in their hands. "We are about to have a second kid. I can do it by myself..." Grace felt that she could do anything on her own even if that was hyperbolic. "I don't want to though." "Simone said a very similar thing to me after Con was born." He understood where she was coming from completely. "Yeah, well she had a business to run to so I can only imagine." She rolled her eyes at herself and began to walk over to a garbage can to drop her banana peel in. "It doesn't matter. You want your team mate there." He said to her back before she turned to rejoin him. "Would you be cool if I talked to him?" Ashton was going to anyway unless she explicitally didn't want him to get involved. He considered himself the self appointed Dr.Phil of their on the road family. He liked to be needed. "Actually, yes." Vigorously she nodded to his offer. "Michael listens to you. He tunes me out." She could be like a dog without a bone, relentless, she knew that. "He just hears how angry you are," Ashton corrected with a smile, reaching out and running a hand from her shoulder to elbow. "Not what you're saying". Michael wanted to do right by his wife, Ashton knew that. It was a challenge though to please all the pieces of his life. Feeling somewhat better, Grace reached for Ashton's hand and put it on her stomach. "Whoever you are, this is Uncle Ashton. Don't give him any trouble, he kept your mother from leaving your dad." She jokingly talked to her stomach before looking to and laughing with Ashton. "Thank you though. You're very good to us." She said, referring for her whole family - unborn second child included. Grace was very grateful for Ashton. Their friendship had grown organically and they had both had to come to understand one another. It was work, but it had been worth it for both of them. Ashton saw Grace like an older sister and she saw him like a father figure, something neither had had before. "You're my family." He shrugged like it was nothing and then tossed his arm around her shoulder, pulling her in for a hug at the side. "Let's get a car to take you to the hotel. You should be resting." He growled as he pressed their cheeks together, just like he would to his wife when she was pregnant and working all hours of the day. Ashton placed his hand on her stomach again, feeling around for signs of who was inside, while walking her through the warm hallway. He was always excited, each time their band family grew. Ashton wanted their kids to grow up to be as close to one another as they were. It was his biggest hope for them.

34 notes · View notes

moodboardinthecloud · 5 years

Text

I don’t want to be the strong female lead

By Brit Marling

Ms. Marling is a filmmaker.

Feb. 7, 2020

I stuffed my bra for that last one. I still did not get the part.

Unlock more free articles.

Create an account or log in

But aside from a handful of exceptions, I was overwhelmed by the number of dramatic narratives that murdered their female characters.

I am one of those one out of four. Our narratives tell us that women are objects and objects are disposable, so we are always objectified and often disposed of.

Editors’ Picks

What’s a Quibi? A Way to Amuse Yourself Until You’re Dead

Jewish Women Move Into a Male Domain: Ritual Circumcision

‘I Was About to Walk Away When a Woman Approached the Mailbox’

Enter, stage right: the Strong Female Lead.

She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.

She added that there doesn’t actually need to be someone on the other end of the line.

I don’t want to be the dead girl, or Dave’s wife. But I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, if my power is defined largely by violence and domination, conquest and colonization.

And I say, a male orgasm.

And she says: Correct. I love the arc of male pleasure. But how could you bring me into being if I must satisfy the choreography of his desire only?

And I say: Good on you. But then how do I bring you into being?

Then I hear only silence.

These are not yet solutions. But they are places to dig.

Brit Marling (@britmarling) is the co-creator and star of “The OA.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/brit-marling-women-movies.html?fbclid=IwAR3DSJ3Q6shZQwE8jGHxNhuU5skF62SAcfJzXap0j_XPFdZHK4JKYa5n02E

0 notes