#and what's crazy is that artists fundamentally know how what we see in our heads is not going to match up to reality
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If only comic artists understood how little effort they have to put into their work for their fans to continue to fall in love with them.
#I'm not saying that would be particularly good#we only get better if you practice and the constant hating of one's own artwork is what gives many artists the motivation to keep practicing#I'm just saying#how many times I've fallen in love with a newly submitted comic thinking it is perfection#and the artist grumbling because they had to forgo a normal finishing touch and 'sorry it's not as polished'#wouldn't have noticedâ and if I did notice I would have seen it is as an intentional choice and better than past work#and what's crazy is that artists fundamentally know how what we see in our heads is not going to match up to reality#especially commissioning artists who have to deal with the customers who are never happy with the resultâ not fully#and that's because we take images and morph them in our head#the people who notice tiny differences in an artist's work enough to criticize themâ that is a specialized hobby of theirs#everyone else takes your image and let's their imagination take over and entertain themselves#keep working hard and bettering your craft but man if only you guys knew how much less you had to do to impress your fans
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Hey guys, hope you're all okay with the current situation.
After a couple days, I'm finally more level-headed to talk about this without crying, so I wanted to make a little announcement.
I'll close this blog until new notice, I'm supporting the boycott, and yes, I still love the boys.
I know for some people the boycott seems useless since Seunghan already left, and I'll be fr with you all. Now, I don't know if I (emphasis on I) want him back. What happened was traumatizing in so many ways, I just want him to breathe and get better. I'd love it if he came back, but after everything that happened, I only hope he can be happy, regardless of what his decision is.
Still, I find the boycott extremely important because this has become a precedent I don't want to see again.
Over the years being an SM stan I've seen uncountable times how the company has done nothing to support their artists, and I don't want to support such a useless place anymore.
Being an older fan I'm thankful that my boys have careers stable enough to not depend entirely on the company, but even like that, my older boys (Suho, Chanyeol, Xiumin) have talked about how the company has mistreated them despite the time they have there, which makes me think that SM might be genius at finding talents, but they have no idea how to treat them.
What I'm talking about is not my imagination at all. In the past, cases like Henry, JYJ, F(x) and others have been handled like shit, and I simply don't want the rest of Riize to go through that. As I said, there are precedents, and Seunghan's case is merely one more on the list for them.
Yes, they're a big entertainment company, they'll never be affected by one member leaving since they can simply not care and they'll continue making a ton of money. They could easily find a replacement, or even worse, create another group and forget about all of them (No one will ever make me forget f(x) so don't pretend it hasn't happened). And we've seen that it doesn't matter what we think, they'll continue with their own thing if we're not loud enough (Yes, I understand the concept of obligations, but to have contractual obligations doesn't mean they can continue moving in silence). The boycott, in no way, it's the only way fans have tried to make their feelings clear. It's the last resort to be loud enough.
Honestly, I never expected things to get so out of control. I thought it would be like Chen's case. Maybe a little noise and then things would continue with presentations of Riize as 7 like nothing, as if this was just one of the things we'd remember as a fandom but finally move on from.
Of course, we've seen that this idea was extremely wrong.
I considered common sense like reason enough for Seunghan to come back, and that blinded me into not considering that: 1) Seunghan was still a rookie without stable years of trajectory with a fandom way younger and immature, and 2) Common sense is not an objective or strong enough fundament on which a conclusion could be developed from.
I might sound dumb or pretentious as fuck in that last sentence, but the translation of it is just: I didn't consider those crazy assholes would send a hundred funeral wreaths and bully Seunghan until he left (Only because he dated a girl before debut. Let's be honest, the cigarette was never the cause of this hate.)
This whole post might sound like an order to boycott, but I have no control over anyone's actions as much as no one can't control mine. We, in the end, are free to do whatever we want. I won't judge people who will continue consuming SM's content (let's not forget, Riize's content IS SM's content) as much as no one should judge me for deciding to support the boycott. We all have our own reasons, morals, and values, and that's something I appreciate a lot from the fact that we as people (I deeply hope we all) have the freedom to decide how to act for our own wishes. And, as much as I appreciate my freedom to do what I want, with this last resort I hope Riize gets a fraction of said freedom.
I based my decision to support this boycott on the fact that there are too many cases of SM having terrible management with their idols for years and that I don't want Riize to ever be wrongly treated by them again. First was Seunghan, bullied until he was kicked out/forced to leave, but let's not forget what happened when Anton's picture with his friend (holding hands) got leaked from her private account, and when the picture of Sohee and his friend (kissing his cheek) did too. Like this, we don't know with accuracy what other privacy could be violated tomorrow, who the affected one in the group will be, or the SK fans' reaction.
Will they be forgiven? Will they be forced to apologize? We don't know, and there's no way to conclude what the reaction will be.
I understand that all the boys are going through something delicate right now and that some people might not want to affect them more, I respect their choice to not support the boycott, but in my opinion, the situation already got out of control, and this damage might never be fixed, but the next one could be prevented.
I could continue with a whole post about SM mistakes and how useless they are, but I feel my disappointment should be directed to real action now.
I hope we all (the people who wish to support the boycott) do it better this time, and this means, no kind of interaction with Riize's new official content.
That should be the bare minimum for the case, but I'm not really someone who gets satisfied by the bare minimum.
I (again, emphasis on I) consider that there's no official content that doesn't go with this little standard. With this, I mean fanfiction, fanmade videos, and anything based on Riize's new content (even old one, but I'm a little tired of continuing this idea, you can think on your own). Therefore, I won't be writing for Riize to also support this boycott. (I know some might laugh saying You didn't even post that much anymore, well yeah that was a block but now it's a decision.)
I'm not sure when I will feel comfortable enough to write about Riize again, but I hope not much time goes by. In my case, I don't expect Seunghan back because I don't know what he's really thinking, and I deeply wish he did, but I don't want to force him to do anything he doesn't want after these traumatic events.
I could say he has to come back, but deciding to be more empathetic, I don't wish any kind of hate (and definitely not this kind of hate) over anyone, not writers, not fans, not idols, so I don't expect him to be on the public eye immediately after officially leaving the group, but I do not want to support a company that puts all their idols to this kind of risk, and I expect them to at least show they're doing something to prevent this on the future.
There's a concept I remember a lot, and it's that by doing nothing you're still risking a result. SM, being silent and non-acting, is putting all the boys at risk, and I only expect SM to prevent this invasion of privacy and damage from repeating and the situation from getting out of control again.
We, as fans, have no obligation to protect them, but SM is their employer, and as such, they have it. Yet, until now, these roles have been reversed.
I believe SM has the resources to do something, and until that happens, I hope we continue giving the message through the only way they'll listen: The boycott.
#In summary if you don't want to read the whole post: THIS BLOG IS CLOSED UNTIL NEW NOTICE#I'M SUPPORTING THE BOYCOTT#AND I WON'T BE WRITING OR INTERACTING WITH THEIR CONTENT UNLESS IT'S ABOUT THE BOYCOTT#(also)#Yes#I'll create another blog but it won't be related to riize nor will interact with their content
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Runaway with AURORA: we meet the songwriting sprite to talk about music old + new
'We simply have to survive. And that is enough'
Interview by Blossom Caldarone for gigwise (July 8th, 2021).Â
A textbook empath and considerate soul, Norwayâs AURORA has an endearing air of childlike sensitivity. Comfortably seated in her motherâs French dress, we caught up over Zoom amid the frenzied #runawayaurora trend and the singerâs monumental TikTok rise.
AURORAâs 2016 single âRunawayâ is now the dainty accompaniament to millions of short videos on the increasingly influential TikTok. Predominantly featuring suburban teenagers, the trend has encouraged people to find the charm in their otherwise mundane corners of the world. âSeeing the beauty in the small things is something we all lost on the wayâ she says. Whether users film lakeside days out, pose elegantly or capture early morning sun beams, the trend's theme is strikingly on brand for AURORA: âItâs nice that people have created a wholesome vibe to it - you never know with the trends! Iâm happy itâs not anything horrible.â
Momentarily gazing at the mountains outside her Bergen window, itâs clear to see AURORA isnât fazed by the numbers that currently skirt her name. âItâs a very abstract thing for me and therefore I donât spend time trying to understand it. Iâve just been home, doing my normal things, cooking my dinner, reading my books and being in the studio. Iâm very grateful that people are letting my song into their heartsâ she softly explains.
Written when she was only 11, the song platforms a prematurely advanced AURORA grapple with the concept of running away from the people we love when we are in pain. âJust like a dog that goes out and dies alone in the forest, we do the same. We struggle so much in talking about these very mutual, normal feelings but canât deal with them when we are going through them ourselves.â
Itâs a universal reality that stumps any age or decade, and her philosophy on the songâs ability to resonate is profound: âMusic, unlike us, has no age. If itâs good or relatable, or if it has nerve, it will never die and it will always make sense to someone.â
Sheâs embarked on a week of interviews, and Iâm her last before the weekend. Conscious she may not want to wax lyrical about Runaway any longer, I turn the discussion to the things that make AURORA tick. âMy biggest muse is Mother Earth and nature. It always has been and always will beâ she gushes. âIt grounds me, it opens me up. It humbles and strengthens me.â
Her Nordic roots affording her the luxury of stunning outdoor access, she talks effusively of its importance, and how lifeâs increasingly high tempo is detrimental. Astutely describing being human as an âextreme sportâ, she accredits success to ending up in her own bed at the end of the day. âThe world is way too demanding in every area. Itâs almost impossibleâ she laments. Her approach to living is one of simplicity; where surviving is the only necessity and anything else a mere plus. âItâs a matter of life or death, we simply have to survive. And that is enough.â
With last yearâs lockdown allowing her to fully immerse herself in her artistry, AURORA found herself revelling in the desolate streets and empty shops, whilst finding ultimate inspiration in the silence. Her introverted intentions thrived whilst she empathised with the struggling extroverts in the world: âSilence is so rare and I love it. I try to be in silence as much as I canâ. AURORA famously doesnât listen to much music apart from fellow celestial Enya: âIâm afraid Iâll miss out on an idea if Iâm listening to something else. And I donât want to be effected by other melodies. It contaminates meâ she explains. A theory shared with anything but pretence, AURORA evidently has an ability to hone in on the nuances within the quiet; a skill that requires patience and devotion to creative processes. Â
Her timely mid-pandemic single âExist For Loveâ is a song that prioritises the fundamental importance of love. A delicate step away from previous AURORA releases, its traditional tendencies embody the timeless essence of a '50s love song, a trait only enhanced by its cinematic Isabel Waller-Bridge arranged strings: âI just felt like we needed a divine love song. I truly believe that when we understand love - unselfish pure love - we understand why we existâ she plainly explains, again finding a way to strip down concepts that feel hard to define.
âWhen I write, I think a lot about what the world will need. I wish to make something that will be good for people.â Often writing selflessly, boundaries are key; being an empath can be exhausting. âI canât really read the newspapers. I have to learn things through discussion, and then dive into matters if I want to educate myself more. I spend little time on social media because it makes us sad, but it also makes me sad to see so many sad people on social media.â Surrounding herself with others who also tend to give more than they receive, AURORA ensures her good intentions are not misplaced.
As for her fans, they are at the forefront: âI think a lot about them. Itâs all for them.â But it will come as no surprise to learn that she doesnât like the more vacuous side of the industry, and finds getting recognised slightly unsettling. âItâs good to know itâs all worth it. As long as you can say something that means something, you can use the music as a tool to support people out thereâ she justifies.
Her new single âCure For Meâ, out now, is another example of AURORAâs altruistic approach to songwriting. A playful tune that will surprise fans with its cheekiness, it debunks the idea that humans should ever need to be cured, and that anything other than who we are is abnormal. âPeople are very self-critical and it doesnât take much for us to assume that something is wrong because we look different, or act different, instead of just accepting that we are different. We are all biologically designed to be uniqueâ she explains. We go on to discuss how weâre led to believe that weâre crazy for being emotional or sensitive: âThatâs what inspired me to make this song, as an anti-gaslighting song where you just celebrate that itâs fine, and youâre going to be fine, and I donât need a âCure For Me' because Iâm perfectly ok as I am.â
The songâs juxtaposed setup is a peek into whatâs to come: âItâs fun for me to be less serious about things. Itâs very new for me. I am often very serious in all my music. I really feel like we need a bit of light right now, everything has been so intense.â
Heading into a newfound artistic side, AURORA is considering how the new sound should be consumed too. With her mystical ability to sonify nature and art, AURORAâs eclectic and ethereal world has always captured feeling in a visual way. âI love to be able to shape how people see my music, even if just a little bit. For many people, itâs easier to understand the whole thing when they can see it as well.â She is currently painting an âintimidatingâ canvas and studying Egyptian history, alongside Greek and Roman mythology. Finding inspiration in their bohemian attitudes towards female roles, AURORA is focussing on the old, the new and repeated behaviours in between: âEverything weâve done in history, both good and horrible, has sometimes taught us to be better and sometimes not. Our patterns of behaviour are very interesting.â
So with âCure For Meâ here and a well-researched new artistic process in full flow, AURORA is peacefully going about her business and prioritising the small things that make her feel truly content. Currently, she's filling her home with flowers: âIt makes me more happy every day than I could ever imagine.â Her intentions are in the most authentic place; a space that prioritises connection and understanding, and one that prioritises the heart in a world where its complexities are so often dismissed. âAs long as we remember to take care of the mind and the heart, weâll have the capacity to care for others as wellâ she finally assures me.
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Trust your instinct. Interview with Luca Marinelli
âUnhappy the land that is in need of heroesâ wrote Brecht. Let alone superheroes. The vices and problems of the characters, however, are extraordinarily human.
There are people enthusiastic about the film and others who have seen it and have told me: "You know, it's not my genre, actually I wouldn't have gone to see it, but I would have been wrong because it's special, it thrilled me". Because it's about something real. There is the suburban boy who lives for his own sake, who only thinks about how to turn the day, then the superpowers arrive and he wonders what to do, and itâs like if the question was addressed to the public. After will comes the love, that will change him, will makes him go further. Love is the greatest superpower. I don't know, maybe Iâm too romantic but the superpower of love is a very strong one, that we all own and that changes the movie as well.
Is Lo Zingaro one of the many young people "sick" of social networks?
He uses the modern roads to arrive at what for him can be the success, to be seen by anyone, so he uses the channels of social networks. As a kid he had tried to become someone and they closed the door in his face, so now that the world is moving in this direction he wants respect, he wants his greatness recognized. In my opinion he has never really been seen, maybe this is the problem.
Is this why he loves to perform?
The character has always been like that and that's the thing that drove me crazy: his histrionic side. It was also for this reason that when I went to the auditions I greatly exalted this theatrical part of lo Zingaro, but Gabriele planted my feet on the ground saying to always remember his paranoia, his strong pain, his great and real need. Then we gradually looked for these things, to enhance his desire to be recognized by everyone on the street.
Cesare from Donât Be Bad and Lo Zingaro: two outcasts, two fragile characters who harbor anger.
I loved them both but I find it hard to put them side by side, but the fact that there is this suburbs background is certainly the common starting point of the two. And I like how Gabriele wanted to respect this place and its inhabitants, without ever labeling, without representing Tor Bella Monaca as the den of pirates, the place of bad guys.
Ostia for Cesare represented a prison from which to escape, does Lo Zingaro want to escape from Tor Bella Monaca as well?
There is this desire to go out, itâs true, to succeed in something, to escape, to at least try to escape. The watershed of the suburbs is different, if one never grow up there, they will never understand it. Itâs a question of sensitivity. Cesare chooses one thing or the other, he sees his friend taking a path but doesnât believe it completely, perhaps because he finds the other much more concrete. There is a basic desperation there, there is the world that crumbles under his feet little by little, here instead there is something different: itâs the nature of lo Zingaro, the nature of wanting to be, he is there. It must be. Lo Zingaro wants to escape from there, but even if he had been born in the Parioli it would have been the same.
For his androgynous look, Lo Zingaro resemble David Bowie. When building a character, do you start from an external characterization?
As for me, when I approach the character I try to mimesis with the text, with the director's ideas, with my visions. This changes everything, from the physical to the attitude. The character becomes a robe. When you put on the character's clothes, you are him, then you take them off and really slowly you separate yourself from him, then he comes back the next day when you get dressed, and maybe you just keep him as a memory in your head in the evening, at home, when you want to do something with it.
How important is instinct instead?
Fundamental. Many times things have happened, that I don't know how to explain. You have to trust your instincts, always. Itâs a bit of a form of self-respect. Many times when preparing a character you don't have to think about it too much. You need to think about it first, then you have to make a blank page, because what you need is permeated inside.
âUna parola detta piano basta giĂ ed io non vedo piĂš la realtĂ â (A word said slowly is already enough and I no longer see reality), reads the lyrics of âUnâemozione da pocoâ, the song you sing in the movie.
We were looking for a song that could catch the eye of lo Zingaro during his adolescence. And if you go to re-watch Anna Oxa's performance at Sanremo, her first festival at the age of sixteen, here, putting myself in the role of the character, but also in mine, I thought: "Wow! Look at that woman. Look at that force." From this comes the fact that this is his song, which itâs also his cell phoneâs ringtone. What I also like is that all his explosive strength comes from our wonderful singers of those years: Loredana Bertè, Nada, Gianna Nannini and Anna Oxa. And it's nice that it comes from there: itâs the strength of women.
I remember your featuring in a song by the hip-hopâs crew âJagermasterzâ. Do you also have a passion for music?
A friend, Dj Demis, asked me about it many years ago, and I enjoyed it a lot. I've always had a passion for rock music, when we were kids we had a band, we played funky: we covered Red Hot Chili Peppers, but mostly our songs, good times.
Did you imitate Anthony Kiedis?
I was a little more in tune (laughs). No, I actually played the guitar. I was the second guitar of the group. I still keep playing for me, though. Every now and then I tell some friends to get together and make a small group, but it's just moments where we get together and play some covers. An artist with a folk guitar is something that drives me crazy, I really like everything acoustic.
I know you used to watch a lot of movies with your grandmother as a kid.
With my grandmother I saw all the great classics of our past, but as a kid one of the first films I saw alone was âThe Silence of the Lambsâ: I found this videotape and I watched it, my parents thought I was playing and instead ⌠But I wasn't scared, I saw the fun of those people and I liked that. That's what I find in my work right now. I feel like I could make a movie for a year, because waking up in the morning and knowing I can go to the set is a great luck, itâs never a burden to me.
Now that the journey of Donât be Bad is over, how do you remember the journey with the Caligariâs band?
For me it's not finished, tomorrow I will have to meet some guys in Rebibbia because there will be a screening of the film. I still feel it intensely. We are still a strong group, I still like what Don't be Bad means. The Caligariâs band is always there, it's in the heart.
Don't you have the impression that with his death, Caligari was "canonized"?
Itâs sad. A person who was only allowed to make three films and now people cry it a miracle, when he could have made many more. This is the greatest sin. But I say âalways and in any case, cheers to Claudio!â. I have never lived an experience like this: a person who is dying and wants to give something to others. Seeing a person who isnât afraid in this way, who wants to give but without knowing what he will receive back. Indeed, knowing how many doors in the face he had received. A crazy life lesson. In the end, itâs an attitude that does not surprise me, it gives me a little stomach ache but that's okay. The film remains, this is the important thing, what a whole crew carries in their hearts remains, Claudio and the Caligariâs band remain.
For sentimental reasons you have lived in Berlin for years. How is our cinema perceived from abroad?
We are always a great cinema. All our movies that were in Cannes last year are now in theaters in Germany, in short, we are there, we are always there. I am really convinced that last year some great Italian films were released, not many, not distributed at their best, but all films that make me proud. The thing I like least about our cinema is the lack of courage of the producers, if I think that Donât be Bad risked not being realized, I get goosebumps: a film that took us to Los Angeles risked not being made. And the same story goes for They Call Me Jeeg. The truth is that only comfortable things are done.
Money, glory, passion, desire to recover from shyness: Luca Marinelli for what reason is acting?
It seems a simple question, but itâs not. Passion in the end means nothing. I would tell you out of necessity, but maybe that doesn't mean anything either. So I'd tell you why I like it so much. Just like the Roman say: me piace (I like it). I think I'm lucky to have chosen what I love to do in life, and to be able to do it. Because I can't imagine being able to do anything else. Of course, if in five years I can't do it anymore, I will have to invent something.
What?
I donât know. Before this I thought I was an archaeologist, unfortunately with little success. I was making a mess, I even got the lesson times wrong.
minima&moralia
Just wanted to translate this old interview for the non-italianâs fans ^^ (sorry for my English)
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9 Taylor Swift Moments That Didnât Fit in Our Cover Story
By:Â Brian Hiatt for The Rolling Stone Magazine Date: September 30th 2019
Taylor Swift had a lot to say in our recent cover story (on newsstands now), tracing her eventful path to Lover, her political views and many other topics in a lengthy, revealing interview. There was even more to the caffeine-fueled conversation, which Swift made it through on four hours of sleep after staying up greeting fans at her parentsâ Nashville house. Here are some highlights:
On releasing âThe Archerâ after âMeâ and âYou Need to Calm Downâ: Thatâs sort of the world in which a lot of the album lives. Itâs weird, because in pop, I love hooks and bop and catchy melodies so much. And I also love writing the songs you need to ugly cry to. So I really enjoy âYou Need to Calm Downâ and the brattiness of âdamn, itâs 7 a.m.,â and then the next song being like, this is how I feel about myself in my lowest moments⌠It was unexpected when people liked âThe Archerâ seemingly sort of unanimously, I was like, What? This doesnât happen to me. This almost feels like foreign and strange.
On Loverâs place in her catalog: Reputation was so far from what I usually do. And Lover feels like a return to the fundamental songwriting pillars that I usually build my house on. Itâs really honest; itâs not me playing a character. Itâs really just how I feel, undistilled. And there are a lot of very personal admissions in it. And also, I love a metaphor. I love building on the metaphor for a very long time. You know, the whole of Reputation was just a metaphor, but this is a very personal record. So thatâs been really fun.
Writing the title track of Lover: I was sitting up at the piano up in my loft, and I had the chorus. It just kind of happened immediately. It was one of those ones that I wrote very very, very quickly. And I was working out the cadence of the first verse and it just sort of fell together. But then I took some time to write the bridge because I wanted to really level up with that bridge. That one would for me be less of a ranting bridge and more of a story-time fable type bridge. Sometimes I like to imagine a bridge as like a sort of fairy-tale lullaby fable expanding upon a song that has been not as detailed until that point. âCan I go where you go/ Can we always be this close forever and everâ Â is less detail then when you go to the bridge and you realize like, oh, it just got really personal in the bridge. It expands on it all.
Writing âPaper Ringsâ We just were messing around, just wanting to make something really, really fun. And I had all these lyrics about all these funny memories of how something can start off in a really quirky way and surprise you. Like how it says, âI hate accidents, except when we went from friends to this.â So I wanted to show the quirkiness of a relationship and how itâs like, wow, this really fell together in really interesting, funny, playful, cute pieces. And now itâs something weâre both really stoked happened exactly the way it did.
On her creative burst circa 2016: I was writing constantly. And a lot of the things I was writing ended up being songs for Reputation. So after 1989, I didnât write really anything. After I made 1989 and put it out, did all the promo stuff, went on tour... The Grammys happen, which is like this unbelievable blitz of excitement, followed by me going, âOh my god, what am I going to make next?â I had no idea what to make next, because I was so proud. 1989 â Iâm still so, so deeply proud of that record. But I was like, where do we go from here? I have no idea what comes after this. And so, when my life took a very dramatic shift, all of a sudden I knew what to make next â which is a strange dichotomy to feel like, âwhoa, this is all really weird, twisted, dark and dramatic, but I canât stop writing.â
I think I would have made Reputation whether or not I actually put out the album or ever made another album again. That album was a real process of catharsis, and I thought I experienced catharsis before, but Iâd never had until that album, because it was creating this strange defense mechanism. And, Iâd never really done that in that exact way before. The only way Iâd done it in the past, was with âBlank Space,â which I wrote specifically about criticisms I had received for supposedly dating too many people in my twenties. I took that template of, OK, this is what youâre all saying about me. Let me just write from this character for a second.
On the Reputation Tour: Thatâs just such a fun album, Reputation. Iâm so proud of how that whole process was because Iâd never had an album that made more sense to people after they came to the concert. Literally people would be like, âI came to the show and now I completely love the record.â Now I get the record. Whereas before with 1989, I felt like it was such a great listen but it was harder to portray it live because when you when you see it live, youâre like, âOh, I love that song and now sheâs performing it live.â But it never had songs that came alive live.
With Reputation, I wanted to keep my head down, not say anything, but work harder than I ever worked. It was really motivational for me to just have the stadium tour to prepare for and prove myself almost. My career was in a weird spot, but still have that kind of ignite something in you to work harder, to practice longer, to think of bigger, better concepts for the live show. I was thinking, if anything can pull me out of this weird disillusionment I have with the way that things have gone in my career that I was feeling back then, I knew it would be playing live. If I could be proud of the live show and if I could feel that connection with fans, that would remind me of why I love this.
On the challenges of choreography: Itâs really hard for me to memorize choreography. Dancers keep count, but I canât memorize choreography that way. So I have to assign movement to an exact lyric. Everything in my brain has to be assigned to a lyric. Because I have to learn choreography in a way that reverts back to songwriting. My vibe is I have to rehearse so, so many times for so long that I can do the choreography without thinking about it. Because when Iâm thinking about choreography, my face says it. You can see it in my eyes. Thereâs a fear and, like, a deadness to my eyes if Iâm trying to remember choreography.
On being less caught up in chart battles: Iâm just a little more chill about stuff like that now. Obviously, you want to do well, and you want to do things that people like and you want people not to make fun of you for that. A lot of the pressure that I feel in my career is just the fact that Iâm compared to everything Iâve ever accomplished in the past and also new artists. I canât live in that pressure cooker. Charts â I truly, truly do not understand how they work anymore. My friend Ed [Sheeran] is such a chart monger. Heâs obsessed with how it works and the math of it. I have no idea what goes on with the math with it now, it used to be so easy. I donât even get how, people get a big release week, because they sold T-shirts, or they sold concert tickets with their albums. Itâs just very confusing. But I was stoked about the âME!â music video getting that many YouTube views. I was like, well, thatâs like, thatâs something to write home about.
On the longevity of songs: I think it often takes a lot of time for people to understand how they feel about music. And I know that now because thereâs a song on Red called âAll Too Wellâ that Iâm really, really proud of, and it took people about three years to note that that was one of the best songs. I didnât see that starting to pop up when people would talk about my music until about two or three years after the album had its moment. So one thing thatâs actually really comforting about music â and I know that people consume at a crazy speed now â but I think that things settle for people after a long period of time. My music kind of assigns itself to maybe a moment in somebodyâs life; thatâs the way that my fans usually describe it. So when youâre dealing in memory curation in a way, if they have memories that include one of my songs, they go and they live their lives and those memories become further in the past and more nostalgic to them, and the music becomes more important to them.
#this is cool#Rolling Stone magazine#is really feeding us well =)#taylor swift#interview#lover era#Brian Hiatt
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Will Butler: âI am very American and that is my thing I have to deal withâ
In times like these, where some of us are reflecting on what the future will bring and what role we can play to make it more bearable, Will Butler uses his new solo record âGenerationsâ to ask profound questions in a very intense and compelling way.
As a member of the renowned Indie Rock Band Arcade Fire his fans quite often perceive the multitalented musician as an entertainer who likes goofing around with his bandmates and who gets carried away on all kinds of escapades on his instruments. Nevertheless, there is a very serious person behind that facade who is deeply involved in community work with a strong political opinion. Not only a Masterâs Degree from Harvard in public policy can prove that, but also his engagement in countless events with political focus.
It was a special honor to chat with Will Butler about his new solo record âGenerationsâ. An album which sounds quite joyous at first glance but has a lot to offer when you listen closely. We talked about how the Covid crisis affected his work and life, how he deals with the political situation in the US and how it is for him as a live enthusiast to not be able to perform his new record on stage:
Great to have you back with us! Last time you talked to my colleague Gabi about your first solo album âPolicyâ. That was quite a while ago. Â
Oh yes, many years ago. Five years and a lot changed since then.
How is life treating you, how is the whole Covid crisis treating you?
Itâs been weird six month. This summer I am in New York. The summer felt pretty good, it seems we are through the worst and people were out and about and going back to living their lives. Now fall comes and we will see what happens.
How does it feel to release an album in those times? We interviewed artists with quite opposite opinions. Some say people can´t focus on music at the moment as they are distracted with more important things while others say itâs especially important now to have the distraction of music. Which side are you on?
What I have been seeing is that people are very grateful for music that has come out, both a as a distraction but also as a spiritual nourishment, like some sort of comfort. Music sometimes works like food, where it comforts you and make you ready for the fight ahead. That side to me is quite beautiful.
Honestly, I was very thankful that you released that album. For me music is exactly what you just described, it gives me comfort and positiveness. It often helps to escape reality, although I have to say that your album âGenerationsâ pushes you right into reality.
(laughing) Oops.
I have the feeling it´s not an album for pure distraction, it´s music you have to dive deep into and confront.
Yes, it definitely has an urgency to it. It is contiguous with the last four or five years which have been very intense, especially in the US but all around the world. So, it´s definitely coming from the same soil as this mad year.
I think you already started working on the album before the whole lockdown happened?
I finished recording the album on March 9, I thought that was the perfect time, so it was marked in my calendar. It happened that just a few days later New York shut down and went into complete lockdown. Mixing then took probably the next six weeks; half the record was mixed in Montreal. And suddenly we had to deal with a lot of things like schools closing, people had to figure out helping their parents and how to get help for other people. It was suddenly chaos and a terrifying time. That itself was complicated even though only the mixing was left to do.
Interestingly enough the record sounds as if it was written with all the things happening already in your head. It fits so much with the times.
Yes, I kept checking in with the record and I thought yes, itâs still the same world. So much  has come out of the police crisis, the refugee crisis happening at the same time, which is still ongoing. These where part of the impetus for the world we are in right now. The pandemic is particularly strange and not what I was imagining. It just adds to the weirdness that was already there.
I saw you live several times with your band Arcade Fire and also solo. You seem to be such a live person. The new songs sound to me like theyâre made for being performed live. How do you feel about not being able to play them now?
I am really sad to not be touring this fall. I planned on touring the US before the election in September and October. I wanted to do political town halls where I can have local politicians and invite activists to talk about shit. Now I´m very sad to not be able to do that. It´s such a crazy time and I want to be useful, useful in a sense of being able to talk to people in different cities about important stuff. It´s hard to not have that toolbox. Also, the songs were very much written live. I booked shows before we went into the studio and we were trying to figure out how to play the songs live.
That sounds tough, so it´s even more devastating not being able to do it. What do you do now to raise your voice?
It´s hard. I´m not that good at the internet. I do some stuff online but this is not my natural medium. So what Iâm doing is I´m talking to friends, my wife and I are also very active in our community. I think it´s very important to have that intimate connection to friends and family and talk to them.
Listening to your lyrics you seem to have a lot of questions but no answers. I think none of us do, but it makes exchange of thoughts even more important to make sure the head is not exploding.
Yes exactly. For me music is a force that is moving forward, by its nature it is a creative act. To me there is hope in the music and hope in the drums that are a bit of a propulsion. But there is not a lot of hope or knowledge in the head. I think that is a bit true for all of us these days. Our heads are completely toasted. Nevertheless, there is still hope in our friendships, there is still hope in our neighborhoods, there is still hope in our families.
It´s great that you talk about hope. That would have been actually my last question, what gives you hope? I think we all need something positive to not go totally mental.
Yes, very much though and you have to be grateful to see a lot of people around you being safe and remind yourself that you are not alone. Follow the ones who have a good common sense and surround yourself with the good ones out there.
What I learned is also being thankful for the little things and everything we took for granted for a long time. I, for example, took concerts for granted. I could never imagine that there is a world without live music. When I see videos from gigs it feels like another life.
You are so right. I could also never envision that this is going to happen and now I´m like what? It´s genuinely deeply confusing. It is going to echo in our lives for a very long time how strange this year was.
Talking about how important friends and family are â you have recorded âGenerationsâ with the same solo band as âPolicyâ. Do you need that intimacy of knowing the people well you work with?
Yes, my actual touring band consisted of my wifeâs sister Julie, my wife contributed a lot to the record â she is a great musician, and Sara Dobbs who is a friend and was our neighbor in New York. My drummer Miles is also part of it. There is a lot there, weâve been playing together for five years now. There is a lot of instinct and call and response, thatâs hard to manufacture. That´s how it works; you always work with the people you are familiar with.
You come from a very musical family with your grandfather Alvino Rey being a musician, your mom playing the harp, you and your brother in the same band. Is the title âGenerationsâ referring to that legacy?
Yes, very much so. My momâs grandfather was the last son of a Mormon pioneer from across the American west. He decided to be a musician and he encouraged his children to be musicians. My grandmother, who grew up in a family band, married the grand Alvino, they had kids who were all musicians, so there is a beautiful heritage that stretches back and such a deep privilege to have. But there are also very horrifying things you inherit, every country and every people inherit their different stretch of horrors, as part of why they are where they are. In America it is particularly situated around race and gender. I think we are starting to unpack those burdens as a country but this will take a couple of generations.
Tackling those inherited problems will be even harder if Trump will be elected again.
(sighs) Thatâs going to be really dark. I can´t predict anything anymore, my capacity for prediction is just gone but if it happens it will be really bad.
So now we are back at all the questions you have in your songs about the past, the future and where we are.
You are exactly right!
You have lived in Canada for quite some time. Do you sometimes wish you have stayed there?
No, never to be honest. I love Montreal, it´s one of the greatest cities in the world and I have friends and family there. I am very American and that is my thing I have to deal with â these are my problems, I´m a citizen here â let´s try to fix it to the extent we can.
Do you see the future differently since you became a father? You have always been a very political person but did something change since you have a family?
Having kids didn´t really change my vision of the past or future in a particular way. It´s not like now I make sure my kids have a better world but I feel like I have learned a lot about humanity, about nature and nurture and where humans come from and particular reasons why they are cruel and why they are kind and something about fundamental things like human love. I learned a lot about all those things in the past years. I feel a great responsibility â not so much to make a better world for them but to make sure that they´ve got their shit together as much as I can.
Unfortunately, we are running out of time. I could go on with you forever. I wish you all the best for the record. I really appreciate that you put some good music out, although it is something you have to get your head around and digest while swaying to the joyful tunes.
Thank you. This is something very meaningful. Thank you for letting me know.
I have to be honest I also need a deeper thought about your video for âBethlehemâ which you just have released.
I´m thinking in metaphors my whole life, so I was like let´s just cook our way through this one. Let´s just cook some of our anger and fear into a big meal.
To me at first glance it looked like a big feast inspired by Klu Klux Klan in a way. Watching it once I was not quite sure what feelings to have about the scenery; if itâs something positive or negative.
Oh wow, I was not intending that but that is not the worst vision of it. It was part of the goal to create something beautiful but also horrifying. It´s a horror film kind of comedy. It should be contradictory, so you are absolutely right with your feelings. Â
So again, good luck for the record and let´s hope that we can get all back together again at a concert and celebrate and sing and shout together and enjoy the moment.
Thank you. Thank you so much. And yes let´s hope so (sighs). Fingers crossed on that one.
https://fastforward-magazine.de/will-butler-i-am-very-american-and-that-is-my-thing-i-have-to-deal-with/
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ancient names, pt. ix
A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic
Ancient Names, pt ix: heartlines
Masterlink Post
Word Count: ~7.3k (yes I am a clown)
Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.
Warnings: Language, some âlightâ religious blasphemy (itâs Far Cry 5). Strong canon deviance.
Notes:Â I have nothing to say for myself, except: thank you thank you thank you! Everyone's comments really just got me through the real brunt of this chapter and it's a long one, oh boy. I cannot reiterate enough how much the hopeless romantic in me desperately wants them to just live happily ever after, and also how MUCH it really means to me to see your guys' feedback, but alas alack, here we are; I, with my long-winded author's notes saying the same thing every time, but I am just as grateful each time it happens.
As always, I have the best, sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful and wonderful proof-reader but most importantly friend who helped me block out this chapter because I was really, really struggling with it. @starcrier, my lover my life my shawty my wife, she is Elliot's number one stan and also an incredible writer so please go check out her stuff!!
On a brief tangent, I have some beautiful artwork made the artist @raviolliesâ on tumblr, which you can find here! I definitely did cry a little tiny bit over it.
Itâs your fucking fault.
Elliotâs words, venomous little baby snakes spitting their venom, crawled around the bone arena of his skull. John could not stop replaying them in his head, even though he desperately wanted to; the idea that the rookie deputy might now well and truly hate himâreally hate him, more than she maybe ever had beforeâwas an unsettling one. He liked to think that it was because he was worried what Joseph would think if they no longer had her cooperation, her good behavior, butâ
But there was something else that dug at him. There was something else squirming in the cavity of his chest, sinking its nails right into him, but he couldnât pick it out, couldnât pull it apart.
(Or maybe he didnât want to; maybe the idea of identifying what this strange and unknowable beast inside of him was kept him from trying too hard, a good enough reason to throw up his hands and say, sorry, I just canât.)
He pushed the door to the church open, stepping back inside to the cool, dim quiet. Jacob had pulled a map out and spread it over the table, the radio set aside; Joseph sat in a front-row pew, one leg crossed over his knee and his expression mild.
âDid you get the opportunity to chat?â he asked, without looking at John, as though he just knew that it was him and not someone else coming in. âShe seemedâŚâ Josephâs head tilted, just a little. â... Unseated.â
John hesitated, and then began walking down the aisle. âYes,â he replied. âAlthough, I donât know if chat is the proper word for it, considering that she all but put her teeth in my neck.â
âI thought you liked that kind of thing?â Jacob supplied without a hint of a humorous inflection in his voice, and John shot him a dirty look.
âBleeding out to death? Not particularly.â
Joseph nodded, the gesture gentle, ignoring the bickering. âIt does appear as though our deputy is not a damsel in distress, but rather a damsel under duress.â He turned to look at the youngest Seed brother when he reached the front of the church. âBut it is nice to see the foundation youâve put down, John. Youâre taking my advice, and it isnât going unnoticed.â
He felt something pleasant and warm bloom in his chest, billowing up into his head until it almost completely gassed out the venomous little vipers Elliot had planted in his mind. âI did have an idea about that,â he added, feeling more emboldened by Josephâs praise as he walked past the table. âAbout endearing the deputy to us.â
âOh? Well, Iâm all ears.â
Johnâs gaze flickered across the space between his two brothers. Jacob had said nothing; he was bent over the map, dog tags glinting in the single beam of light that hit them from the window, one veiny hand clenched into a fist as it held the map in place.
âMaybe,â John continued, âour dear brother could try to stop antagonizing her.â
âWhy?â the red-headed deadpanned, not looking up from the map. The fact that Jacob didnât even deign to make eye-contact with him was enough to make irritation prickle in his chest, raise his proverbial hackles.
âWhy?â John reiterated. âPerhaps because each time you open your mouth, you incriminate yourself as a villainâand us too, by proxy.â
âYou can drop the attorney lingo,â Jacob said dryly, finally lifting his head to look at Johnâand John wished that he hadnât, because the half-lidded, arrogant gaze of his eldest brother only served to stoke the fires of anger inside of him.
âItâs just my vocabulary, Jacob, and you missed the entire point, by the way, so in the interest of making sure weâre all on the same pageââ
âânot an idiot, little brother, so you donât need toââ
âI think John is right,â Joseph interrupted, effectively silencing the argument that was brewing. âHeâs done exactly as I asked of him. Think of a stray dog, Jacob; you donât beat it into submission. You feed it, nurture it, gain its trust, and then it becomes a lifelong companion.â The hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. âA loyal companion.â
âThis is an age-old philosophical debate.â Jacobâs brows furrowed together; a deep-set frown sat on his face. âA classic: is it better to be feared than to be loved? I think that weâre going to disagree fundamentally on this one.â
âWell,â Joseph replied mildly, âarenât we lucky that thereâs only one of us in charge of how our deputy is treated, then?â
Johnâs breath flickered out of his chest in a single blink at Josephâs words. Casual and ever-so-patient, as though Jacobâs jaw werenât setting in preparation to argue, as though it didnât strike John right in his gut to hear Joseph say, thereâs only one of us in charge of how our deputy is treated, as though it didnât twist the knife right between his ribs to hear Joseph refer to Elliot as their deputy, over and over again.
A stamp. A brand. Joseph claimed, like he always did, the things that he thought rightfully belonged to him.
âSomeoneâs lucky,â Jacob said at last, a final and reluctant acquiescence.
Josephâs small smile did not disappear. In fact, it seemed only to root itself more firmly on his face, as though he were pleased at Jacobâs unease. Josephâs gaze flickered back to John, settling on him and then beckoning him forward.
He did as Joseph bid, coming and sitting beside his older brother and clearing his throat. He wanted to stop thinking about the way that Joseph had said our deputy, like he had any claim on Elliotâand that shouldnât have bothered John, but it did, wriggled its way through the spaces between his ribs and squeezed, nice and tight.
âShe was upset,â Joseph said, when John had settled next to him; it was not a question, but a statement, an assertion of what Joseph knew to be true. Their eldest brother scoffed from his spot at the table, bent back over the map, tracing and re-tracing the topography lines. John shifted in his seat a little.
âI think Jacob might have ruined any chance at a merciful conversion when he mentioned that her friends would deserve it if they didnât make it out.â Johnâs voice was hard when he shot the red-head a stinging look, but unsatisfyingly, Jacob did not lift his head this time. John felt the strain of his brows furrowing at the center of his head, and then Josephâs hand was on the side of his face, fingers spreading against his hair, primed and comfortable to grip.
âGrief,â Joseph said, his voice low and soothing, âis a part of change. Like shedding a skin.â
âItâs notâshe was furious with me,â John replied, grimacing. âShe just kept saying she hated me, and us. Joseph, I thinkâit would be beneficial to let me do things my wayââ
âOur deputy is killing the person she used to be, John.â Josephâs gaze was steady, piercing, a venomous yellow. His other hand came to the right side of Johnâs face, cradling him. âStrangling her old self, with her own hands. People like us, weâre lucky; weâve always known who we were meant to be.â He leaned against the wooden backing of the pew again. âYouâve guided her here. Give her a while to grieve that girl from before. Patience is a virtue.â
Johnâs throat felt tight. He thought the Elliot in the bar those years agoâflushing and soft, breathless when he leaned into herâand the Elliot threatening to choke a man to death in front of him if he didnât beg for his life, and the Elliot who played baseball with a shovel and a manâs head, and the Elliot that smoked a cigarette down to nothing while she cranked Welcome To The Jungle up on a van stolen from a group of crazy Swedish cultists.
He was not convinced she had not already killed the girl she used to be.
âYou have got to have faith.â Josephâs voice broke him out of his reverie. When John looked over to his brother, Joseph was absently dragging his thumb along his lower lip, his eyes fixed on the Edenâs Gate emblem glowing above them in the afternoon light. âRemember what I said; you have to love them. I know you can do this for me.â
His throat felt tight. This would be easier, he thought, if he could have just done everything this way. Wrath, he thought, would look perfect on her. But that wasnât right; wrath already fit her. There was no skin to be shed. It was already on.
âJohn.â
He dragged his gaze from the white collar of Josephâs shirt to his brotherâs gaze, meeting it.
âTell me you can do this,â Joseph said, his voice lower now, softer. It was not his counseling voice; this was Joseph asking him, his brother, not the man who led the masses. Asking, demanding, but waiting patiently for it to be given, never taking before it was time.
He was no longer thinking about Elliot at her fiercest, but rather the way she had softened for him, on occasion. Pressed against him for warmth, lashes wet with tears, unwilling to let go of his arm.
âI can,â John replied, âfor you.â
ââââââââââââââââââââ
Elliot didnât know for how long she slept. When she woke, the sun was still in the sky, the air felt sticky and wet with late-summer humidity, and while she slept sweat had gathered at the nape of her neck and in the hollows and dips of her body. For a second, panic filled herâshe couldnât remember where she was, or how she got there, confusion twisting and knotting its way through her.
And then she remembered. She was in Josephâs compound, in a bunkhouse that served as a home to Edenâs Gate members, dressed in Edenâs Gate clothes sans her boots and underclothes. Elliot wiped the sweat from her forehead and pulled her hair out of the ponytail. Standing proved dizzying, and she felt the dehydration twisting around in her stomach like a scorpion; stinging, and unkind.
âFuck,â she said, pressing the heel of her palm to her eye. The gesture reminded her that she had done it just recently; just before she screamed at John, just before she told him that she hated him. Oh, yes. That.
Grief still squirmed around inside of her, but it had been abated, for now, and she thought that she almostâ
âNo.â Elliotâs voice was firm, but still wobbled on its legs, when she spoke to herself. âI donât feel bad about what I said.â
âGood to know.â It was Johnâs voice from the doorway, bringing with him a hot breeze that should have felt good being that they were on an island, but it just added to the humidity. Elliotâs stomach twisted violently at the sound of his voice. It wasnât anger that populated her mind, now, but embarrassment: that sheâd let him get under her skin, that sheâd let him see her without her veneer, that heâd been there and endured it and now he stood here again, undeterred, as though John Seed were someone with a moral high ground that allowed him to endure verbal attacks and return as though nothing had happened.
I hate you. Elliot willed the words to her mouth, tried to muster the venom, but she couldnât. She fixed her eyes instead on the knot of a wooden floor panel, trying to ignore the sight of John moving in the corner of her eyes, closing the space between them. He did this, alwaysâinvaded her space, overwhelmed her, until saying things like I hate you became harder.
He smelled like sweat, and day-old cologne, and heat and dust and outside, and when he put his hand on her arm she opened her mouth to say somethingâanything, any of the venom that might come to her in the heat-addled and perspiring confusionâbut he put a cold water bottle, slick with condensation, in her hand.
Her eyes went to find the bloodstain on his shirt when she realized that he wasnât wearing that shirt anymore. He was in a white shirt, the same kind that Joseph wore.
âDrink,â he said. âI promise it isnât poisoned.â
Elliot turned the cap of the bottle. It cracked, promising that the seal was freshly broken, and she brought it to her mouth and took one heavy swig before she pulled it away. Her nerve-endings immediately screamed in relief at the water in her mouth, but her stomach lurchedâshe knew sheâd need to pace herself, or sheâd be puking it up in a few minutes.
âDid you sleep?â John asked when she didnât say anything. Elliot sucked her teeth.
âI donât think we should play at being friends,â she said, her voice wicked with a dry, crackling, wildfire-in-the-making heat. Johnâs gaze was steady, though, once again unfettered by her words and remaining in her space. She was more aware of it than ever, now: as though resting, and having basic necessities like shower and drinking water also made her all the more aware of Johnâs presence, the heat radiating off of his body and the way he was watching herâ
(like he couldnât get enough of her)
âlike he wanted to make sure that nothing she did escaped him.
âWeâre not playing at being friends, deputy,â John drawled, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels a bit as he looked at her. âWhether you like it or not, you and I are on the same side.â
âFor now,â Elliot bit out.
âFor now,â he acquiesced, as gracious as ever.
Her eyes narrowed. John was not the kind of person who forgave and forgot the sorts of things that sheâd said to him. Elliot felt the suspicion rising up in her throat. She kept waiting for the punchline; for John to say something stupid like, and when this is over youâll be begging for me to absolve your sins, or something equally driven by ego and his desire to have Josephâs approval.
âSo,â John began again, arms unfolding elegantly to be held out in a gesture of harmlessness, âdid you sleep?â
Elliot took another swallow of her water bottle, stepping around John. Her body instantly braced itselfâas though she expected him to try and stop herâbut he didnât; merely turned with her, a planet trapped in her orbit.
âBriefly.â She kept her voice short and clipped as she headed towards the door. âAre your friends back?â
âJacobâs ready whenever you are.â
Her face scrunched up at the mention of the eldest Seed brother. She was now unsure which of them was the most unpleasant to be around; they all found their own special ways to get under her skin. John, perhaps, was the worst; Joseph and Jacob, she could handle their particular brand of crazy, but Johnâhe was harder for her to read, because all of the time spent with him had started to cloud her brain.
âWhy are you being nice to me?â she demanded, turning suddenly to find that heâd crossed the bunkhouse again, as though to follow her outside. Because she hadnât quite gone out, yet, he now stood nearly nose to nose with her, even with her back pressed against the door of the bunkhouse.
Johnâs gaze swept over her. âDoes it bother you?â
The plastic of the water bottle crunched in her hand. Her jaw set, painfully tight, holding back her gut reactionâto tell him that yes, it did bother herâand instead swallowed thickly. It would be just like John, to go out of his way to be nice to her because he thought it would unsettle her. But then, wasnât John all about bending and cracking someone to his will, no gentleness required?
A headache splintered behind her eyes, throbbing painfully. She was spending too much time trying to parse John Seed out, and that was her first mistake.
âIâm just surprised you know how,â Elliot snipped, watching the way her words ticked the corner of his mouth upward in that easy, boyish smile.
âI can be nice,â John offered, âif someone isnât spitting venom at me nonstop, calling me pathetic.â
âFucking pathetic,â she pointed out, ignoring the way Johnâs eyes flickered down to her mouth and then back up to meet her eyes. âI shouldnât have said thatââ
ââno need to apologize after the fact, deputyââ
ââbecause I know how sensitive you are,â Elliot finished, wiping the smile off of Johnâs face, âand since weâre on the same side, I suppose I canât afford to have you down and out.â
Johnâs eyes narrowed. His hand found the doorknob, and he was very close, so close all of a sudden that for a brief moment Elliotâs brain short-circuited and all she could think about was how unjust it was that a man so deserving of her venom could make cologne smell so good.
And then he said, âNo, I suppose you canât,â and opened the door behind her, the heat of the afternoon sun sunk into her skin, sticky and hot. âI work best when my partner isnât trying to fight me the entire time.â
She turned and stepped out of the bunkhouse, clutching the water bottle in her fist and putting as much distance between herself and John as she said, âAnd I work the best if you stay the fuck out of my way, John.â
No more, she thought, decisively, no more of that.
Images of Edenâs Gate members scattered in her periphery; they were eager to look, but not eager to be seen, so that when she turned her head to find them they were already disappearing behind a corner or into a building. The heat was no more bearable if she was moving, either, the sun high in the sky and threatening to burn any exposed skin.
John fell into step beside her, his hand landing on the doorknob to the church before she could open it, holding it closed while she stopped on the landing.
âJacob likes when he gets under your skin,â he said to her, the words sounding a little different than before. âHe might say whatever he can to rile you up, and make you look unreliable to Joseph.â
Elliot hesitated. She didnât know why John was giving her this information; not only because she already knew thatâbecause of course Jacob enjoyed pushing herâbut she didnât understand why John was trying to be helpful. It was always going to be the Seed brothers against her, wasnât it?
She thought of the way they had been bickering, the two brothers, while she tried to gather herself after her call with Jerome. She wished sheâd been paying attention so that she could know what it was they had been arguing about.
John waited expectantly. He said, âYou want to get Joey out of there, donât you?â
âOf course.â Her brows furrowed. âWhat kind ofââ
âAnd I want Faith out of there, with as little risk as possible,â he plunged on, keeping the door in place, âso we canât get outvoted in there. Joseph does take you seriously, though who can imagine whyââ
âIf youâre trying to convince me weâre actually partners,â Elliot deadpanned, âyouâre doing a shit job of it.â
âAll Iâm saying,â John continued irritably, âis that if we present a unified front in there, we have a better chance of us both getting what we want.â
Elliot didnât want to admit that he was right. The last thing she ever wanted to do was tell John Seed that he was right about something. But if she had to weigh her options, sheâd rather tell John he was right than do whatever the fuck it was that Jacob and Joseph wanted her to do. One Seed brother she could handle.
So, she relented, âFine.â
John stuck out his free hand to her, grinning. âShake on it, partner?â
Elliot groaned and swatted his hand away. âDonât push it, buck,â she replied, pushing the door openâand this time, John let her, trailing in after her. Jacob and Joseph were in their spots at the front of the chapel, waiting ever-so-patiently. She reminded herself of what John had confirmed; that Jacob liked to see her on the brink of a meltdown, that he was a pusher.
It did not escape her that John had not offered any insight into Joseph.
âHave a nice nap?â Jacob asked as she came up to the table with the map.
âFunny, John asked me the same thing.â Elliot kept her voice even and took a drink of her water before she started tying her hair back into a ponytail. âSo, where are they? Where are Joey and Faith?â
âSouth of here, the faithful say,â Joseph said before Jacob could speak again. âAt Sacred Skies Lake. Just past Angelâs Peak. It sounds like they donât go by any name, and just call themselves a family.â
âAnd do the faithful say what theyâve been doing?â she asked tartly. She had an idea of where they had made their home; probably at the abandoned youth camp, though as far as she last remembered that had been occupied by Josephâs own.
Well, probably not for very long. There was no way Josephâs little rednecks could hold up to the precision that these crazies had.
âLiving,â Jacob replied, his gaze hard and his jaw set. âTheyâre not doing anything. Theyâre justâthere. Like theyâre waiting for something.âÂ
Elliotâs stomach plummeted at Jacobâs words. There was no way he could have known, surely; she hadnât told John, and she hadnât said anything to them in the car, about the way Ase had cradled her face, and called her mor, and had said, I know that you will always come back to us.
Fuck. Thereâs no fucking way.
But there was. If Ase didnât have absolute confidence that Elliot would seek them out, why would she have let them go? Why would they have been mostly unscathed? They were playing with their foodâa sick, drawn-out catch-and-release.
The brothers had started speaking again. The aqua curve of Sacred Skies on the map burned into her retinas the longer she stared at it without blinking.
âWaiting for me,â Elliot mustered up after a moment, her mouth feeling very dry. âTheyâre waiting for me.â
Three pairs of eyes fixed on her, all with the same uncanny precision. There was no time for it to bother her; her stomach was already rolling with nausea.
And then Jacob barked out, âExplain,â and she thought she might punch him in the face if he didnât shut up. Elliot took in a deep breath, mustering all of the composure she could manage, and focused herself on the map.
âWhen John and I gotâwhen we had our run-in with the family,â she began, âwe were separated, andâthey drugged me, with something. But their leader, Ase, she was there for a little whileââ
âWhat?â John demanded. So much for presenting a unified front, she thought ruefully. She shot him a look, willing him to be quiet, to just let her gather her thoughts; blissfully, he did.
âShe kept calling me something in Swedish,â Elliot explained, âand she kept saying all of this weird stuff, likeâlike that she saw my color, that she saw me, and thenâŚâ
The Seeds all stared at her, waiting expectantly. Even Jacob remained silent.
âAnd then she said something like⌠Like that she was going to let me go, but only because she knew I was always going to come back to her.â
A moment of silence stretched in front of her, endless and dizzying, where no one in the room said anything and all Elliot could think about were all the things that Ase had said.
And then, as though these words had almost no impact on him, Jacob said, âWell, at least we have proper bait.â
âAbsolutely not,â John cut in immediately, angrily. âYouâre not putting Elliot out there to try and lure them hereââ
ââthey want her, I donât see why we wouldnâtââ
âBrothers,â Joseph interrupted, his voice effectively bringing both John and Jacob to heel. Like before, he stood directly across from Elliot; her gaze was fixed on him now, tumbling Aseâs words around in her head while the Seeds argued about whether or not she was shark bait or not. âWhat do you think, deputy?â
The words were gentle. Elliot knew what they were; certainly, Joseph knew how long it had been since someone had asked her opinion, rather than her having to fight tooth and nail for someone even to consider it.
âI thinkâwe could get Ase to come out of the youth camp, which is probably where theyâre holed up,â she said after a moment, willing the charm of Josephâs attentiveness away. Her gaze slid to John for a moment. âIf we used me as bait.â
âAre you serious?â John demanded. He took her arm in his hand, pulling her from the table and hissing, âWhen I said present a unified frontââ
âIf weâre partners, you have to trust me,â Elliot insisted tersely. His expression hardened. A part of her hoped that he regretted suggesting they be anything remotely close to on the same team, and a part of her was glad that he had, or he wouldnât look like the words youâre right were sitting right on his tongue.
Finally, at last, he said, âFine.â
Elliot turned back to Jacob and Joseph, with the brunetteâs hand still on her arm, and asked, âAre you any good with a sniper rifle?âÂ
âThe best.â Jacobâs voice was clipped, insistent. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
âSo if I can get Ase out to meet me,â she continued, âcan you not shoot me?â
His eyes narrowed, but there was a tiny, tiny smile pulling at his lips. âScoutâs honor.â
John exhaled a sharp, short breath. âThis is ridiculousââ
But before he could plunge onward, Joseph held up his hand to stop him. He turned his gaze to her, now, studying her for a few long heartbeats before he said, âDo you think they wonât kill Faith if we kill their leader?â
Elliot shrugged his hand off of her arm and walked back to the table, setting her water bottle on the table and crossing her arms over her chest. âI think like any snake,â she replied, âthe body wonât function if you cut the head off.â
âAt any rate,â Jacob interjected, âpush comes to shove and you can get in without a firefight to get Faith out of there.â
âAnd Joey,â Elliot replied firmly, and stifled down the absolute fury when Jacob shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.
âWeâll start making the preparations immediately.â Joseph sounded pleased. It took everything in her power not to say something just spite that, to remember that even though she didnât want to be, she supposed that she was on their side, too.
Jacob gathered up the map from the table and immediately set off after Joseph, who had stepped down from the small stage and gone to the side door. Elliot picked up her water bottle and took one more heavy drink to finish it off before she turned and looked at John.
His brows knitted together at the center of his forehead. He looked troubled. It was not an expression that she was used to seeing on John Seedâs face; it might have been endearing, if she didnât know that he was troubled by her, and not in the fun way.
âSpit it out, then,â Elliot prompted. John heaved a loud, impatient sigh.
âThis is a stupid idea,â John said abruptly, angrily. It was a change of pace from the cocky asshole he normally liked to be. âThereâs no way that they know they arenât waiting for you to show up so they can skin and gut you, andââ
She waited, patiently, for him to get the words out. Whatever they were, they stuck in his throat.
ââand what use would you be then?â he finished, his lip curling up in clear distaste. Ah, there he is, Elliot thought absently. Almost thought Iâd lost you, John.
âDonât worry,â she said lightly. When she had capped her water bottle again, she headed to the back of the church. It feels good, she thought, pushing on the door, to have a plan again. âIâll far outlive my use to you, Seed.â
ââââââââââââââââââââ
The plan was simple.
Elliot was going to walk herselfâunarmed, much to her personal chagrinâout to the Sacred Skies Youth Camp, once they dropped her off. Jacob would already be in a position where he could get a good look at what was going on, and when he got a clear shot at Ase, he was going to take it.
And they were banking on the woman coming out to get Elliot herself, based on what Elliot had told them. John was not convinced, but he had been overruled; it was no longer his choice, and instead of going in and being on the same team as Elliot, he had found himself on the opposite of the playing board from all three of themâhis brothers and the deputy.
Not ideal.
But now, as John parked the truck at the bottom of the hill leading up to the youth camp, all he could feel was dread knotting his stomach. The plan was supposed to be simple, but John remained unconvinced that it would be executed as easily as everyone seemed to think it would.
Elliot seemed in perfect spirits; sheâd eaten a handful of granola bars, finished off two other water bottles, and her coughing had become less frequent. Not once had he seen her reach for a cigarette, either. It was like the second she had an actionable plan, she no longer stressed: there was nothing for her to worry about, beyond getting the job done.
John met her gaze through the rearview mirror. âYouâre sure?â he prompted, and ignored the way Josephâs head gently cocked to the side. Elliot flashed him a smile.
âJust focus on making sure Jacob doesnât shoot me in the head,â she replied, âokay? And Iâll focus on getting Joey and Faith out of there.â
Joseph said, lightly, âThatâs all we could ever hope for, deputy,â and when he did Elliot shot John a look through the mirror, a look that said, can you fucking believe this guy? And for one, brief second it felt like they shared a joke only between the two of them.
Then she pushed the back door of the truck open and kicked her legs out, landing on the dirt road with a soft thump. The blonde closed the truck door and then came up to Johnâs window, which had been rolled down, and said, âYouâre sure you donât want to give me a weapon?â
It would blow the whole fucking thing if they caught her with a gun or a knife, Jacob had said; if by some strange happenstance he didnât snipe the shit out of the crazy fucking Swedish woman, and Elliot wound up getting dragged into the belly of the beast, having a weapon on her would out her immediately. They would know that she hadnât come willingly, but that she had come with the intent to harm.
At least in the instance that they somehow avoided Jacob, she could lie her way out of it. Maybe.
âI have absolute faith,â John said, mimicking Josephâs veneer of confidence, âthat you can make a weapon out of just about anything if you need to.â She patted the side of the truck and took one centering breath, but before she could set off up the hill John said, âElliotââ
The blonde turned back around to look at him, life and vigor back in her face and one brow arched loftily at him.
Be careful, he thought to say, the words sticking in his throat. Thatâs what he should have been saying, if they were actually partnersâeven fake partners, even tenuous partners, partners-by-proxy because John insisted for the sake of feeling like he had some control over the situation and Elliot because there was no one better that she had the chance to pick. Not exactly setting the bar very high, were they?
âAny day now, John.â Elliotâs voice snapped his attention back to reality. She was waiting expectantly, but there wasnât impatience in her voice; she was content, at last, to have motion. He cleared his throat.
âDonât start going yet,â he said, instead of the things he thought would matter, like, donât forget to breathe. âGive Joseph and I a chance to get up to where Jacob is.â
She gave him a two-finger salute, wisps of hair fluttering into her face from a late-afternoon breeze. âYes, boss.â
John threw the truck into reverse, pulling back and then into a u-turn to head off down the road. The car was silent for a moment, blissfully, with the golden-hour light drenching the two of them in a warm glow. If he didnât know what was going on just out of reach, he might have felt like he was transplanted into a different time and place entirely.
âYou donât need to worry about her, John,â Joseph said lightly.
âIâm not,â John replied, pulling the truck off of the road. Dry brush crunched and snapped beneath the weight of the tires. âSheâs perfectly capable of handling herself with three granola bars in her system and healthy bout pneumonia.â
âYou sound frustrated.â
âI just think that maybe we could have picked someone thatâs notââ John inhaled. He parked the truck deep into a grove; to the right of them, a small trail would lead up to where Jacob waited with his perfect vantage point to see Ase come out and collect Elliot. ââSick,â he finished, after a moment, âand not such a wildcard. You know she tried to kill one of the guards when I had her at the ranch? She was going to choke him to death, right then and there. Forâtouching her, or something.â
Joseph looked unaffected as he stepped out of the truck. âIâm unsurprised, if thatâs what youâre looking for.â And he paused, looking thoughtful for a moment, before he said, "Touching her, you said?"
John ignored the question. âWell, then maybe that should speak to the level of reliability Elliot displays.â
âI think youâre underestimating the power of a positively-reinforced bond.â As Joseph spoke, John fell into step beside him, climbing up the slope. Behind them, he heard the distant sound of voices; the members of Edenâs Gate that werenât holed up would be waiting for Jacobâs signal to swarm, if things looked grim. âDidnât she say she hated you, and us? And yet today, here she is. In a good mood, no longer frothing at the mouth, rabid and dangerous.â
âSheâs still dangerous,â John started, but Joseph stopped him by pressing his hands to his shoulders.
âYouâve done exactly as I asked,â he said, a mirror of the words heâd said before. âRemember? You havenât beaten your stray into submission. Thisââ Joseph gestured with his hand in the general direction of where they had dropped Elliot off. ââis all only possible because of the work that you have put in, John. And when we bring Faith home, and return to our followers, that is what theyâll remember. Not the person the deputy used to be.â
Johnâs felt something hot and painful twist in his chest, prickling pain squirming up his spinal cord. He should have been pleased to hear Joseph refer to Elliot as something that belonged to them and instead was giving him some ownershipâbut he realized too late that it wasnât what he had been wanting from his brother. This wasnât what he wanted from Elliot.
He swallowed and said, thickly, âYes, Joseph.â
âGood boy.â Joseph held him in a tight hug, the pressure of the gesture relieving some of the stress in his shoulders like muscle memory pulling it right out of him, and then he pulled back. âNow, letâs go and get our sister back, yes?â
His brother stepped up the last stretch of the slope, and he followed obediently behind. Jacob was perched carefully, eyeing the scope and muttering to himself; as John crouched beside him, and Joseph on the other side, the redhead breathed out a little swear.
âStupid piece of shit,â he sighed. âRemind me to get these upgraded next chance we get.â
âWhatâs wrong?â John asked, already on edge.
âNothingâs wrongâthe gunâs perfectly functional, itâs just not as stealthy as a rifle should be,â Jacob explained. âItâs got a red dot sight on it.â
Johnâs eyes narrowed, his teeth clenching. âSo theyâll see it the second you get it on that woman.â
âThey might,â Jacob protested, âIâll just have to be fast.â
âWhereâs your rifle?â
âItâs back at the center,â his brother snapped. âI didn't have the opportunity to grab it before I went on a wild hunt for you across the Montana countryside. Anything else I can help you with today, little brother?â
âThereâs no time for arguing,â Joseph interjected, sounding almost tired now. âQuiet, now.â
From their vantage point, they had a clear view of Elliot. The blonde was yelling something to garner attention, to lure people out, and there was some movement through the trees that blocked off the camp up the road. He could see her start to walk farther up, and then stop, hesitating.
âSomeoneâs coming,â Jacob said, peering carefully through the scope.
Tentative bodies drifted down the road, breaking the treeline: though John could not see Aseâs strange, lithe form anywhere among them, he could hear what he thought was certainly her voice, saying something to Elliot, who had her hands up carefully to show that she was weapon-free as best she could.
The movement that he thought might be the Swedish woman stopped just before the treeline. Come on, John thought, taking in a breath, come on, you fucking bitch, come out here.
It was someone else that stepped forward from the protection of the tree line. It was Aseâs man, the tall, broad-shouldered ginger, though he too looked unarmed. John tried not to think about how easily he had nearly disposed of them with only his hands, last time.
The man made it to Elliot, gesturing for her to come forward, to close the last foot of distance between them herself; she did as he bid, straying to her right, feigning innocence. John knew what she was doing: leaving room for Jacob to make a shot.
âThatâs not her,â John hissed.Â
âYes, Iâm not fucking blind.â Jacobâs voice was sharp but steady. âSheâs leaning for me. Who is he?â
âHerâright-hand man, or something. I donât think you should take...â
Johnâs voice trailed off. The man had stopped Elliot, snagging her wristâwhich looked tiny in his handâand said something to her that did not look pleasant.
âI think I should,â Jacob muttered, shifting the rifle.
âJacobââ John began, sensing the way his eldest brotherâs muscles tensed, ready.
Elliot was saying something to him. She paused, just briefly, and John saw her head tilt down; she saw it, first, and then the ginger looked down at his chest just as Jacob was lining up his shot.Â
The incriminating red dot gave it away. The manâs head shot up and locked on them instantly, and before Jacob could pull the trigger, heâd twisted Elliot around and pulled her right against his chest, his hand gripping the pillar of her throat.
Johnâs stomach plummeted. He heard, as though in a last-ditch effort, Elliot shout his name: and he didnât know if it was because she wanted help or if she wanted someone to take the shot anyway. He didnât know if either of those options was more comforting than the other.Â
The man had shifted her so that the red dot now lay directly over her chest, pinning her, and Jacob did not pull away from the scope. Even from this distance, John could see the wicked grin splitting across his expression.
âDo not fucking shoot,â John hissed, âJacobâdo not fucking shootââ
For sure, now, he heard her voice. "John," she said, desperately, his name choked in her throat by the grip of the Swedish man bruising her skin.
âThereâs a good chance it would hit him and kill him,â Jacob insisted, his finger hovering over the trigger. âTheyâre goading us. This is the perfect opportunity toââ
âYou fuck,â John seethed. âJoseph, tell him not to shoot!â
Joseph was silent, his jaw set lightly and his gaze fixed on the scene before them; Elliot, struggling to breathe, while the man began to make his way back to the treeline with her body shielding him. For the first time since Elliot had become a problem of theirs, John saw his older brother take time to consider whether or not he really needed her alive or not.
âKilling a right-hand man would beââ
âThe plan was to let her get taken in,â John snapped. âNot to fucking shoot through her to get to some nobody!â
âThat was before they knew we tried to trick them,â Jacob insisted. âI wouldnât expect you to understand, little brotherââ
âLeave it.â Josephâs voice was final, and sharp. It seemed his brother was bringing an end to fights like this more and more often. âThey wonât kill her, or the others. They want her for something. If you shoot through her, weâll lose our one person on the inside.â
Jacob looked, for one split second, like he might willfully disobey Josephâs final ruling on the matter. The hard lines of the eldest Seedâs face sharpened, steeling, before he finally flipped the safety on the rifle and straightened up.
A swift, hot breeze drifted through, picking up dust along the dirt road, and right as the shade of the treeline began, the man stopped. John could see Elliot squirming against his grip, her fingers grasping at his wrist and hands, scratching as she gasped for air: but he was immovable, and his attention wasnât on her, anyway.
It was on themâwhere he thought they might be. He lifted his hand, thumb up, and two fingers out in the shape of a gun, pointed it at them, and mimicked a single gunshot.
Jacob was seething, the emotion rolling off of him in waves. âThe fucking gallââ
But John wasnât listening anymore. He felt like he was going to throw up. This was exactly what heâd been worried about happeningâand here it was, laid out before him, a feast spoiled rotten by reality. He couldnât get the sound of the way sheâd called for him, desperately, like he was the last safeguard she had left.
And yet again, he had failed her. Her, and Faith, and sure, while he was at it, he could stick Joey Hudsonâs name on the list; and didn't that mean he'd failed Joseph, too?
John came to a stand. âI have to go in,â he said, assertively, drawing both sets of eyes from his brothers now. âThey know, now, andâthey think Elliot is a big threat, so if thereâs a chance sheâll put up a fight theyâll drug the fuck out of her. I should go in, and Jacob can watch my back, becauseââ
Because I donât trust anyone else to get this done the way it needs to be. The thought auto-completed itself in his brain, but the words didnât come, and it didnât look like Jacob nor Joseph expected it out of him.
âJohn,â Joseph said, âare you sure you want to do that?â
âFaith is our sister,â John replied, âand didnât you say thatâs who I was? Ever-giving?â
The man hesitated, just for a second; the sound of chatter below, and Elliotâs furious voice rising as she presumably was given more room to breathe, echoed in the air.
âYes,â Joseph said at last, relenting. âWe did.â
John nodded, turning and making his way down the slope. He kept thinking of the way Elliot had said his name, because it wasnât the first time she had done that; in the van, too, his had been the first sheâd said.
And he couldnât stop thinking of Aseâs man, either, and the way heâd wielded her with ease, the way heâd grinned when heâd spotted them, the way his hand gripped Elliotâs throat like heâd choke her to death right there if heâd gotten the chance.
No, John thought furiously as the truck came into sight, that wonât do at all.
#far cry 5#john seed#john seed x deputy#ch: elliot honeysett#fc5#john seed x ofc#fic: ancient names#my writing#me: KISS KISS KISS#also me: elliot will strangle john with her bare hands if he's not careful#this is true love and no one can tell me otherwise
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Ahhh, interstellar, a simple classic movie, about a farmer his family Some dust and a transdimensional interstellar quantum gravitational space travel.
Seriously!
So the basis of this movie is that in the future, the earth has become a global dustbowl due to humanity being excessive. Itâs mostly a commentary on monoculture farming, which weâve explored in our food series. Primarily by farming the same thing on the same land over and over, you lose the majority of your nutrient base due to lack of plant diversity. You also lose your root system, making it easy for winds to pick up dirt and throw it for miles and miles. Interstellar begins with a warning - if we continue living the way we are, this could be our world.
So the film introduces us to our main characters, Cooper, or Coop for short, and his daughter Murph. Now, thereâs an interesting thing in these opening scenes, where we see Murph's teacher talking to Coop about his daughter's progress in school. She remarks about how the moon landings were fake. They were entirely propaganda to fool the Soviets into pouring their resources into the space program so that the Americans could gain an advantage in the war.
Itâs so exciting seeing a Hollywood movie talk about this, because of course, if you google this, there are massive conspiracies today that say the moon landing was faked. Then again, we also have ex NASA officers and astronauts who publicly have said: âYeah, we went up there and met a bunch of aliens and it was so crazy that NASA hid it from the world, and never went back.â You can learn more about that in our Sumerian Epic series. Ultimately, youâre going to have to decide for yourself on this one, but still interesting that we even see it mentioned in Hollywood!
Now, in many storylines today, we see this narrative of the heroâs journey, which often begins with a call to adventure. Interstellar features this through these strange gravitational anomalies vibrating morse code patterns in Murph's bedroom, which Coop and Murph translate to be co-ordinated to a nearby location. They make their way there and find none other than Nasa.
In this movie, Nasa is a driving force of the plot, providing the technology and the plans to execute a journey into a magical wormhole way out near Saturn. Now, Iâm not here to get into the drama and conspiracies against or for Nasa, though yes, these things exist out on the internet. Curiously, we find a spiritual lesson about this in the film itself, and weâll come back to that soon.
In these scenes, we see the opposing mentality of the many vs. The few. Mostly, everyone these days are just concerned with farming, theyâre focused on survival and just getting enough to make it through to the next season, even though their crops are slowly growing smaller and smaller. The few, on the other hand, such as Coop, exclaim, âwe used to be pioneers, explorers, adventurers⌠not just trying to surviveâ. And this becomes a question we can personally ask ourselves are we pushing the boundaries of what we know, or are we just trying to get by in life?
So upon the discovery of Nasa, we learn about this wormhole, a link through the spacetime into another galaxy, where there might just be a way to save their dying species. So Coop, Anne Hathaway, and two other characters who donât make it to the end all get in a rocketship and blast into the universe to save the human race. Bringing with them, some unique and friendly robots, and a bunch of test-tube humans that they plan on growing somewhere, and they intend that if they can, maybe they can even transport some people there.
Perhaps one of the most fundamental hidden spiritual truths of this movie is that the deeper you get into science, into the unknown, into the universe, the more mystical reality gets. We see this with the wormhole itself. The funny thing about the wormhole, though, is that it was produced using the mathematics of an actual wormhole according to General Relativity! The visual fx artists worked with renowned Physicist, Kip Thorne, and used a mathematical representation of a massive black hole, then plugged it into their VFX generator, and this is what it turned into! They even produced a scientific paper about it. So this is an actual wormhole simulation, not just a fancy visual effect.
Now, maybe this is just me - but watching the sequence of going through the wormhole felt to me like my mind was expanding. Like reality was being stretched, like more was possible than it was before. It feels to me like this was an encoded message for the audience watching the movie, implanting within us this idea of what it looks and feels like to perceive spacetime differently, getting us ready for our transcendent evolution of consciousness.
Now, on the other side of the wormhole, they have three planets to visit in hopes of finding a new home for the human race. Their first guess takes them on a short trip to Waterworld, where they go surfing and chilling in the shallow side for the equivalent time of 23 earth years. It doesnât go so well, and returning to their ship, theyâre limited on fuel. So thereâs this moment where they have to decide on which of the two planets to visit next, and they better pick well.
So itâs revealed that Dr. Hathaway is in love with one of the astronauts on one of the nearby worlds, Dr. Edmund. And thereâs this very rousing speech from her about following our hearts., that love is powerful - it has to mean something. Love is the one thing weâre capable of perceiving that can transcend the dimensions of time and space. Itâs an overall very moving and emotional scene, and it might even make you cry.
Now, this IS Hollywood, so OF COURSE, the man immediately takes control of the situation and steers directly towards the other guy. The legendary, the one, the only Dr. Mann.
I gave him a little hype just now because this is how Dr. Mann is portrayed in this film. He is a legend; he is the best of the best; he was the one who brought everyone together and made this mission possible And then, well, this happened.
Dr. Mann is a personification of the ordinary human consciousness and our ego. I mean, his name is Mann. He is the one who could create miraculous things, but watch how quickly that personality can turn when it is filled with fear, dread, and isolation. This is what happened with Dr. Mann - He was isolated, stranded alone on a frozen planet with nobody else for the rest of his eternity. The last time he went into cryosleep, he didnât even set wake-up time. This isolation and the fear of not surviving caused him to lie, caused him to tell people to come to his planet because it was the one. It caused him to betray his comrades, and in arrogant defiance to the truth - got himself killed. A valuable lesson for all of us doesnât arrogantly defy the reality, or you shall suffer horrific karmic repercussions.
With the power of persistence, determination, and undying faith in the universe and himself, coop successfully reconnects his ship to the space dock even with it exploded and spinning like mad. Herein lies another secret lesson - if we set our hearts upon doing something, and we do it well, thereâs nothing we canât accomplish!
Okay, letâs pause for a moment and reflect briefly on the events back on earth. Throughout the film, it is slowly revealed that the head of Nasa has been lying. Coop's daughter noticed that it looked like he was doing equations with two hands tied behind his back. Then it was revealed that he knew a long time ago that it would be impossible to save the human race by using science to negate gravity and lifting off into a super space station. He could not reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. Still, he convinced everyone that it was possible, and he was working on it - so that people would work on the technology and carry out the mission.
THIS is the key to the whole Nasa conspiracy thing that we mentioned earlier. Because look - there is some evidence and speculation that NASA is hiding something, but instead of throwing shade, the film reminds us this valuable lesson that even the people who are behind NASA and other giant organizations are just that - people, subject to human desires and emotions, the positive and the negative, and are easily influenced to do things, such as lie or create deceptions, out of their fears and insecurities. The Nasa chief in the movie wasnât able to see beyond the solution to his formula, he couldnât conceive of a quantum interdimensional answer, probably because there was nowhere for him to go and take Ayahuasca. So he fooled everyone in a way that he believed was safe.
Jumping back to another galaxy and another timeline, Coopâs new plan is to slingshot them around the wormhole and over to their last remaining planet where maybe theyâve got a shot at growing some modern humans. In the process, coop sacrifices their robot and himself to make it happen. In a scene of great wisdom, Cooper says, âto get ahead mankind has always had to give something back/let something go,â and in this case - it was him. Honestly, this was a scene of tremendous bravery and courage to let oneself die to save their species.
And this is where Interstellar becomes a mystery school for us all. Cooper falls into a massive sphere inside the black hole, which then becomes these tunnels of lines, revealed to be pockets of time. On the other side of his tracks is his daughter's bookshelf, and he connects through his radio with Tarz, his robot buddy, also trapped inside this wormhole - who explains that he is inside a three-dimensional manifestation of a 5th-dimensional timeline. Itâs time represented as a physical dimension, and Cooper can manipulate gravity from inside this time matrix because gravity is the only thing besides love that can go forwards and backward in time.
Cooper realizes that the gravitational anomalies that he saw at the beginning of the movie were him all along, giving himself messages from the future. He realized that the whole time he was thinking, âwow, it was THEM who have been helping us along,â alluding to some alien species. Still, honestly, that âthemâ was us - it was the evolved human consciousness that became 5th-dimensional beings through conscious evolution. It sent gravitational anomalies through time to help humanity grow in the first place.
Whatâs especially surprising about this is that thatâs EXACTLY what the channeler Bashar has been saying in his channelings for years. That who he is channeling is himself from the future who, along with the rest of humanity, has evolved to higher consciousness, and heâs sending back information from the future about human evolution and how to make it happen.
Now, hereâs a fun question that the movie will not even get intoâŚ. Why did the wormhole bring him THERE? Why that moment in time? Why that location? Well, in the bigger picture of the story, itâs because his daughter was the genius who could finish the mission and get quantum gravity liftoff to their earth-tech and save humanity. However, thatâs only half the reason. The other half is because of something Dr. Mann said. When youâre about to die, you push a little farther to connect with your family and live longer.â The reason he went to the bookshelf was probably just as much because thatâs what his subconscious manifested for him. After all, his loved ones were what he wanted most in life. Much of his driving actions in this film were because of his love for his children. Embodying the true spirit of the word Husbandry - the original meaning of which speaks to the nurturing and supporting of everything around the masculine father figure. This film asks us - what is it we truly care most about in our heart of hearts? And to dig deep into ourselves and find out what lights us up inside.
So Cooper transmits the quantum data to his daughter through time using morse code, and then he disappears into the void and wakes up in a hospital bed. A very long time has passed since he first left home, and his daughter is now an older woman on her deathbed. But Plan A is now fulfilled, using the data Cooper was able to send through the wormhole, young Murph was able to solve the gravitational propulsion problem to get Plan A, and the massive space station where Cooper awakens, out in space.
In an absolute heart-shattering scene, she tells him to leave her, sheâll be with her new family now, and that he should be with Anne Hathaway, and start a new life on a new planet and raise a new generation of humans on a new world. Iâm sorry, this whole scene made me cry.
And so, thatâs what Cooper does, bringing this film to an end. But the hidden spiritual meaning here goes on. See, the foundational message of Interstellar is not what most people think - the most excellent idea conveyed here is that of human evolution. That one day, we will evolve into a higher dimensional species, capable of perceiving time fundamentally different than we are today.
However, it will take some time to get there, and itâs up to us to make it happen. Interstellar warns us - we have to learn the lessons of caring and nurturing for each other and our world if we want to have a world to live on at all. We very well could destroy ourselves with our greed and excess. In other words, we must check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.
One thing Interstellar does make us feel this message takes us through large jumps in time. After Coopâs relatively short visit to the water planet (where heâs there for only several hours), the audience and Coop see both their astronaut comrade and young Murph age by 23 years. After he emerges from the black hole at the end of the film, his daughter is an older woman. These events show us viscerally that time is always passing, and compels the audience to make the most of what time they have, and show us the deep pain of missing out if we donât seize the day, every day!.
But there is an even deeper message from this - because also if humanity destroys itself, even if we are pushed to the very brink of destruction, we can ALWAYS find our way back. All that it takes is unshakeable faith, love, and determination to see it through and do the things that are both scary and exciting.
So get out there and evolve into a multidimensional being!
Make sure to let us know what else youâd like to see a Hidden Spirituality about, and weâll be sure to cover it soon! Peace out, and lots of love!
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Two things Iâm sitting here thinking about yesterday:
One is that I think sometimes I struggle because I donât spend as much time with my best friend as I should. And, thatâs not me feeling guilt-ridden for it. Itâs more being frustrated with adult life and responsibilities and only having so much time in a given day, week, or month. Ideally, we see one another once a week, maybe every two. But, this last stretch was the better part of three weeks. Which, in the scheme of things isnât that long... But, it feels long. I am extraordinarily lucky to have someone in my life that just gets me so well. (And I would like to state here, for the record, that sheâs not the only one that does... But, sheâs the closest of my dearest friends geographically.) Not just because weâve spent so much time together, but because our brains function very much along similar wavelengths. So much so that I know when thereâs a third party they might feel left out except that we work hard to pull them in on the fun- and more often than not we succeed. We have our own language (rather like, we are quick to point out, the episode âDarmokâ in Star Trek TNG) made up of an extensive vocabulary of quotes (from shows, music, and ourselves) and a mythos that is constantly evolving over time- some ~15 years worth at this point.
I say all that not to brag, but to say that thereâs a lot of healing and bolstering that comes just from being known. From being amongst your own kind. I spend a lot of time feeling out of step with the people in my daily life. I love them; of course I do. And, I like to think they love me, too. But, they often donât know what to make of me. And Iâm baffled by their motivations, mistrust, and behaviors. A joke that misses the mark. A story that I tell that doesnât fit in with their world view. Sharing a bit of my silliness and color and queerness that drops at their feet and stays there. I feel very alone at my core most of the time, very separate. Not even a square peg in a round-hole world, but something else entirely. Thereâs no space that quite feels like one I should occupy. I can manage for a time, but itâs tiresome and and makes me sad. I worry a lot that thereâs something fundamentally different about me and Iâm mostly being humored because thatâs what people do when they canât connect with something they donât understand. Or worse, when the one theyâre trying to connect with doesnât understand them.
Which is why itâs necessary for me to take this time with my best friend because when Iâm with her I donât feel like that. From the moment we met, I never felt like that. Not just because sheâs capable of relating from the outside, though she can, but because she looks at my life and sees something familiar. I donât have to explain what Iâve done or how I feel, because sheâs a step ahead and there with me already. But, I can explain and not feel like a crazy person.
Which, I suppose is a long-winded way of saying I missed her these last few weeks and Iâm grateful for the time we got to spend together. Since she lives across town itâs not often sheâs in my space anymore... Having her here and accepting it off-hand (because itâs all very you and you are great!)... Iâve said that my home is very much the place I let go and just be me. How everything in it is a carefully curated collection of the things I love, collect, have been gifted, etc. Having someone who knows me inside and out and loves me... in my space loving that space that is an extension of me? I needed that. Because we canât have people in our heads, not really. But I can watch someone walk through my home which is a physical representation of my headspace, and see that being appreciated. I donât realize how much that means to me until itâs happening.
Thing two is that I did get to do some explaining of the new things in my space to my other guest. And if thereâs one thing I love itâs explaining why I have something in my home- everything has a reason. Most of them are very sentimental. Â
âWhy is this card here?â Well, it was sent to me by a friend- she made it. Like this card here, and that card over there, and that card over there... âWow, I didnât even notice those!â They didnât make them all by hand, but they still thought enough of me to pick them and send them to me.
âWhat even made you decide you wanted to have x trinket??â I saw it and thought âthatâs nifty! Iâll have it!â That is how decorating works, right? Â
âWho did this artwork?â Oh!! My bestie painted that! And the one over there. And those two. And the one in the bathroom, too!
âWhat is that thing on your bed with the teeth??â OH! That was a birthday present- itâs an angler fish hat.  âItâs so ugly!â I love it. :D I have a painting over here of an angler fish. âWow! Thatâs something else, too!â Yes, but itâs painted by the same artist who did this cute painting, and those five over there and OH these that I get every month for being a patron!
I live to tell the tale of my things because the stories are more important than the things, but the things prompts the story. Thatâs why I keep them. Mostly to tell myself the stories, of course. But, I love telling them out loud, too. Any amount of poking around my space is like an archaeological dig in to my headspace: my interests and the people I care about.
I dunno, itâs just rolling around in my noggin today: that it was exhausting and lovely to have people in my space that love me. Even if the one doesnât always get me. She tries. And especially the one who sees me exactly for who I am. It is so very important to be seen.
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ok itâs clown movie fanfic time
We Go On
(you can read on ao3 here)
Itâs been three years now and Derry, Maine is a nice town, anybody will tell you that. Thereâs been a little boom of people moving in, who knows whyâ getting away from the city, enjoy the suburbs, commuting in to work. Itâs a nice town. The people are nice too. There were some⌠incidents, quite recently actually, but who wants to talk about that. So some madman who once killed his father busted out and killed some kids. Well, he died. (The cops never found out what happened to Henry Bowers, his skull split open, but they werenât investigating too hard). So that one poor man got thrown off a bridge. The town had a nice little candlelight vigil. It made the local news, and those boys all went to juvie. Nobody talks about these things anymore. Sometimes itâs as if theyâve forgotten entirely. Itâs a nice town. Sure thing.
(The five of them will never, ever go back.)
Billâs new book is coming out, finally, and the preorder numbers are higher than theyâve ever been. The New York Times gave the ARC the best review theyâve ever bestowed upon him. Something about âfundamental humanity in the face of terrorâ. Something about âthe agonies and joys of growing up and facing your childhoodâ. They still think the ending is shit. Thatâs alright. Canât win âem all. Anyways, he doesnât love the ending either.
He and Audra got divorcedâ a month after the movie project heâd split from came out. The critics loved the movie. (Loved the ending especially, though itâs not his ending, itâs the work of some guy they yanked out of nowhere to âfix things upâ). Everybody said the directorâs an auteur, Audraâs a genius, that if the academy didnât hate horror itâd get nominations for sure. All the buzz drove him crazy while he meddled around in his office. He screamed once too often. She left him. Itâs probably a good thingâ he didnât know how to cut the chain. Three years later and sheâs doing prestige stuff now, sheâs engaged to that pretty boy actor boyfriend of hers. Heâs happy for her. He really is.
Heâs left California for Oregon. Itâs cool, northern, but with a touch of that west coast freshness. Everything back east is so old. He doesnât date, heâs taking time to âwork on Billâ as he tells any interviewer who asks. One day he might try againâ find some nice woman. A blonde or a brunette. Somebody who doesnât remind him of anybody.
Richieâs still in LA, and heâs started dating, really dating, for the first time in his life. There were some half hearted attempts at having girlfriends in college, and a few hookups with men here and there, but heâs never done the whole romance thing. He feels awful pathetic, dating for the first time in his life at over forty, but itâs alright. The men heâs gone out with have been very understanding. This latest oneâs real niceâ a clever, tidy sort of guy, doesnât care for stand up and had never heard of him before a mutual friend introduced them. Theyâve been going for a month maybe. He doesnât think the guyâll last, but heâs hopeful someday someone will.
He took a long break, after Derry. An unexpected and abrupt hiatus. There were a few months were he wanted to die, a few months after that where he went to a lot of parties and snorted a lot of coke. That ended, and he started visiting this therapistâ some beaky little woman his manager recommended. He still wanted to die a little bit, but he decided it was probably better to live. The tour after that crisis was the âCome Out Comeback Tourââ he wrote some of his own jokes for the first time in a long time. He told funny stories from when he was a kid. It was strange, he reflected, that he had funny stories to tell. Rooting around through his memory was like running his tongue along a line of rotten teeth. It ached, almost unbearably. But there were pleasant moments, and he was glad he hadnât forgotten them.
âI guess my first real crush was this kid in middle schoolâ heâd been one of my best friends forever, but about seventh grade I started having all of these feelingsâ and I decided to do something nice for him, something discreetâ I was going to give him a popsicle. Like a literal popsicle, you perverts! Câmon! Anyways, at lunch one day I bought a bomb pop, I went to our lunch table and⌠I chickened out. I stuck the popsicle in my pants pocket, because I was 12 and a fucking idiot, and I went on my merry way. It was only after my next class was over that I realized the popsicle had melted through my jeans. It looked like I pissed my pants. But I pissed my pants for love, and how many seventh graders can say that?â
The divorce was a messâ Bev had expected it to be, but it still made her panicky. She didnât so much as want to see Tom again, much less have a legal battle. For months, sheâd wake up crying, miserable dreams dripping out of her mind like water. She won, in court, testified and showed pictures of bruises and witness reports and described how it was all her work, and wound up getting a restraining order against Tom and full ownership over Rogan and Marsh fashionâ now just Beverly Marsh fashion. She thinks about changing the name to something modern, anonymousâ but she doesnât. Itâs nice to know she has something hers. That she can be just her, and be alright. âYouâll be nothing without meâââ well haha, she is something. Sheâs Beverly fucking Marsh, and thatâs something.
Itâs nice to be loved, though. Divorce is as sweet as a summer's day, and remarriage is as sweet as honey. She and Ben got married less than a week after itâs all finalized, in a courthouse, in their everyday clothes, a couple of her friends as witnesses. They bought rings on the way home, simple little bands. They split their time between Chicago and Nebraskaâ Benâs used to working remotely, and she doesnât mind it. Heâs started talking about maybe building them a house of their ownâ she says maybe New Mexico? Itâs so warm and dry and safe in New Mexicoâ and all the artists love Santa Fe.
So maybe theyâll move to New Mexico, or maybe theyâll stay here. It doesnât really matter where they go. Theyâll be together. It feels so good to be loved like a person. It feels so good to know sheâs a person. She still has bad dreams, but she has nice ones too. Lovely onesâ a boat on the ocean with the sky clear and blue. A litter of puppies she can hold. Her husband kissing her. A group of children, laughing children, playing little kid games. Thereâs seven of them, the children, all splashing each other in a lake, like theyâve never suffered and they never will. She wants to have children, though sheâs getting older now. She wants two or three of them. She likes to think sheâd be a good mother.
Ben thinks sheâd be a good one too. He adds plans for childrenâs bedrooms to his favorite piece of mental drawing paperâ a building titled âthe dream homeâ. Heâs been working on it for a decadeâ the dream home had a double bedroom before he had anybody to share it with. He was so used to loneliness it took him a while to get used to another personâs rhythmsâ how sheâll get into bed and just then remember to brush her teeth, hopping back out again, how she sings in the shower and refuses to acknowledge it.
Heâd once thought heâd be lonely forever. Now, at 43, heâs trying once more to make friends. He goes to dinner parties and makes meaningful conversation, he takes up fishing with a man from work. You might never love your friends as brilliantly, as totally as you do at 11, but there's a comfort in the easy, mild talks about the weather, about work. He lets himself eat ice cream, now and then, and a social life means less time for working out. Nobody really noticesâ Bev says heâs still hot. But of course sheâd say that, she loves himâ And oh, it rushes over him sometimes, she loves him, she loves him, she loves him.
He used to write poems, but he hasnât since college. He feels like heâs getting rusty with words somehow, and heâs always been better with his hands. Heâs fixing to unveil this stunner of a municipal building in Chicagoâ itâs maybe the best thing heâs ever designed. He takes Beverly on a private tour a few days before the ribbon cuttingâ thereâs some last minute things being put together, furniture and lighting, but she still tears up when she looks around. âItâs so lovely,â she says, âthis is the most wonderfulââ and cuts off, moved. He thinks, looking at the light caught in her hair âIâll build you something even better, darling. Iâll build you a future.â
Mike heads down to Florida, like he used to dream about. On the way there he made a stop in Atlanta to see Patty Uris. She was very polite, pleased to meet one of her dead husbandâs old friendsâ hungry for stories of a childhood he never spoke of. The mirrors were still covered, and she tangled her hands in and out of knots. Mike still felt guilty. Heâs been trying to not feel guilty. He told her anecdotes about Stan as a childâ he didnât know him as long as some of the others, but he knew him enough. He knew him when it was important. âYour husband was a brave man.â He told Patty, who closed her eyes. âHe was, he really was.â
He contemplated, for a moment, staying in Atlantaâ befriending Patty, telling more stories. But heâs a little sick of playing historian, of being a keeper of ghosts. He heads down to Florida. He gets a job in a small town library, makes acquaintances, meets a woman. If he wants, he can go anywhere in the world. The freedom shocks him, the lightness. Anywhere in the worldâ Rome, Tokyo, Sydney, Helsinki, Cairo. Places where it never rains, places where it rains all the time. He keeps a framed photo of his parents on the counterâ his parents as he never knew themâ young and just married and laughing to each other. He likes to think theyâd be proud of him for leaving. For having the world at his feet.
He has two dogs and a cat, eats vegan, takes up biking. The children at the library call him âMr Mikeâ and climb over his arms like a jungle gym. Eventually, his neighbors start calling him Mr Mike too, which is funny. Most people donât look at him like an intruder, and when they do itâs easier to shake off their stares. His hair starts greying at the temples and he relishes it. Heâs made it this far. He hopes to keep making it.
Itâs almost always Mike who send the emails, a tradition at this pointâ âHey everybody!! Want to meet up? Where, this time? Kansas? Colorado?â And the others will replyâ yes-yes-of course-yes-letâs go to Denver-lets get Greek food-I know this really great spot-how about Mexican-July-maybe August?â And he amalgamates their suggestions into plans, sends off the group message, mark his calendar. He sits back and smile, types out âI canât wait to see you all againâ. Presses send.
So itâs been three years now. And here they are, in a Mexican restaurant in Denver (they never get Chinese). Theyâre chattering about their lives, the five of themâ Mikeâs girlfriend, Richieâs boyfriend, Bev and Benâs fertility treatments. Billâs a little quiet. They look at him. He pulls the new book out of his bagâ four copies. They coo dutifully over the cover, flip through the pages. Get to the dedication. Stop. To six that made my lucky sevenâ Stan, Eddie, Richie, Beverly, Ben, Mike. All my love. The loserâs club rides forever.
âThe endingâs still awful.â Bill says, to stop their tears with laughter. They shake their heads and say theyâre sure theyâll love it. He thinks they probably wonâtâ even he thinks the ending isnât great. Heâs bad with endings, heâll admit that now.
The friends in the book, they all go off. They kill the bad guy, get their tidy endings, resolve their trauma, end up with their sweethearts or happily alone. He wrote it, and yet it still rings half hollow to him. No one can walk off the page happily ever after. Theyâll still have nightmares. Theyâll ruin relationships, try to pick up the pieces. Things are always going to be difficult. But theyâll keep going. And thatâs the other thing heâs always hated about endingsâ the finality, the never-see-you-again. Thatâs the worst thing of all. Heâs lucky, he thinks as he looks at his laughing friends, his best friends, the loves of his life, heâs lucky that life isnât a story. That it goes on. That theyâll keep going on.
The loserâs club rides forever.
#it chapter 2#richie tozier#bill denbrough#reddie#benverly#ben hanscom#beverly marsh#mike hanlon#mine#it fanfiction#my writing#speech#sk tag#it
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Moth Work Intro + False Idol | Writing Update
Hey People of Earth!Â
Today I thought Iâd do a writing update on a project Iâve mentioned a lot in my vlogs but havenât mentioned as of yet on here! This is a personal âpassion projectâ that Iâve been picking away at since January and have recently taken on as my transition project from Rewired to my next book.
So yee! MOTH WORK (or âboys on a boatâ for those who keep up with the vlogs lols) has been my current project for the last few weeks since finishing REWIRED. I didnât really mean to expand it as much as I have as it simply started off as a spinoff story of my boys Lonan and Harrison which I write every few months when Iâm having a breakdown and need something to cheer me up. :-)
Iâve mentioned a few of these stories in the past (like Fishbowl and Mandarin), though this story is a bit different, as Iâve expanded it quite a lot more than I intended to! If you arenât super caught up with Rewired, Iâd definitely scroll through a few of my last updates so this one will make more sense!Â
Whatâs it about?Â
Moth Work is a FOSTERED spinoff story following Lonan and Harrison (dumb+dumber) at the peak of their relationship. I *was saying* that the plot went loosely as follows: after finding a photograph of a woman in Lonanâs fatherâs dark room, they set out to find her, HOWEVER, because I never stick to plans, I have yet to follow through with this main plot thread, lol. Vaguely, Iâd just say the most important part of this story is their relationship at its most fragile because who is plot I donât know her.Â
Moth Work follows the events after REWIRED, and is a bit of a bridge between it and the next book. This makes it kind of hard to explain because a) itâs in a different POV, and b) context, but hopefully that makes sense! In essence: Lonan + Harrisonâs relationship is big sad and Harrison tries to make it less big sad and it gets even more big sad.Â
Iâll share a very quick profile of both of the boys so thereâs some context for the following excerpts Iâll share!
Harrison
My boy
Generally very outgoing, tho around Lonan this fizzles. Only wants the best for Lonan despite their history. Heâs the âmainâ narrator of the piece (third limited to him though Iâm guilty of head hopping lol), so the work has a softer tone than Iâm used to. Though Harrison tries to be a Macho Man, around Lonan heâs most himself--mellow, a lil stupidly romantic, and vulnerable.Â
Lonan
My problematic son/probably should be cancelledÂ
The âissueâ in the relationship loool. Heâs emotionally immature and lacks accountability, but because of his past, lacks the ability to recognize these faults and work on them. Because of this, heâs fundamentally stayed the same for the last few works heâs been in (if not gotten worse). Lonan requires a lot of emotional assistance, though he isnât self-aware enough to recognize this. This is often the cause of much conflict.Â
Conception:
Like I mentioned, I often write short spinoff stories following these boys because itâs a safe happy place for when Iâm feeling stressed. This is basically how this piece started, though Iâve continued it for different reasons which Iâll get into. I donât remember how the first scene was brainstormed, but I do know when I started writing this a few months ago, I wanted it to be a lot longer than my previous stories--a place where I could just dump my writing, even when it wasnât good. I think I did this to cope with the stress of my writing class honestly, lol, I think I needed a break from âseriousâ writing AKA a place I could just goof off and have some fun.Â
The writing bit:Â
Writing this story has been a bit inconsistent. Iâve been drafting it in little pieces since the beginning of the year, and only recently picked it up as more of a âfull-timeâ work. This is subject to change depending on whether or not I get more of book 7 done. Iâve gone from writing 20 words a day to 0 to 1000--thereâs really no consistency with the drafting process here.Â
I have recently decided that Iâll most likely expand this into either a novella or novel itself because there is literally so much tea left to explore and itâs surpassed 10k words. Drafting Moth Work has been so helpful in easing me back into the world of FOSTERED and piecing together the huge time gap from the end of book 6 to the start of book 7. Iâve been a bit anxious to really dive into book 7 for the fear of the unknown, so inching myself closer to that timeline through this project has been very helpful!
The editing bit:
I recently did an edit around the line level for this entire piece (itâs about 12k words right now) because a) it really needed it b) I was losing steam/starting to get embarrassed and c) I needed a refresher of what had happened because je suis tres forgetful. This edit made me feel so much better about the project. It initially started off as a work where the writing didnât actually matter and this mentality was working until I got so embarrassed of the prose I found it difficult to read through old scenes to refresh myself and thus couldnât productively draft.Â
This project isnât written exactly in my usual style--itâs pretty stripped back and actually reminds me a lot of how my style wouldâve been in book 3 had I been a better writer four years ago lol. I think the looser style works for the voice/the story itself but I def wouldnât categorize this as litfic (what I usually write). Although the prose isnât very complex, it took me a really long time to get comfortable enough to edit?? But once I got into the rhythm of it a few days ago, I completed the edit fairly quickly, and Iâm 100% feeling better about the project overall! Though the prose is still not my top priority Iâm not as embarrassed of it currently lols.Â
I also divided the project into chapters because it was getting pretty long to just be one mass of text. I currently have 3 chapters. This update will cover chapter 1.Â
Playlist:
Yo this is literally the best part of writing this project, lol, I get to listen to so much different music?? Iâve made a comprehensive playlist for this story with a character by character breakdown (if anyone wants to see that/highlights, let me know!). This playlist pulls from every song from my library, so we span genres and artists like crazy. Nothing But Thieves has been the primary artist for this story (specifically their self-titled album). These songs (all NBT oop) are the most relevant if you want to get the general tone lol (anything with a star has explicitly inspired the project):
Excuse Me*
Honey Whiskey*
Tempt You (Evocatio)*
If I Get High (II)
Gods
Lover, Please Stay*
I Was Just A Kid*
Get Better
Hell, Yeah*
Afterlife
Reset Me
Particles
Sorry
Number 13
Excerpts:
I donât have *many* because prose hasnât really been a top priority for this project, but Iâll try to include at least one per scene.Â
This is one of the opening paragraphs from chapter one which Iâve titled âFalse Idolâ. In short, the chapter follows the boys first attempting to destroy the dark room and then getting distracted and eventually not pulling through after Harrison finds a picture of Ominous Lady.Â
The chapterâs chronology is wild so we can break it up as follows:
Scene A
The boys enter the dark room with the intention of burning it down
Harrison reaches for his lighter and drops it which prompts him to find the photograph of Ominous Lady
Him and Lonan mildly argue about Ominous Lady until Lonan takes it too seriously and throws a tantrum :-DD
Scene B
Not really a full scene, just a bridge between scene A and C.
Harrison has been waiting for Lonan to return to their campsite for the entire day and he decides to at the very last moment
âhey so iâm unable to apologize for anything but also! cigarette! letâs share it! lungs!âÂ
Scene C
The boys exercising their canoeing skills
This leads us to our first âbeatâ.
Lonan interrupts Harrisonâs peaceful evening by having a mild crisis
This takes place right after the events of Lolita, Lolita (chapter 16 of REWIRED). We then jump back to the fictive present.
 This alternates like 5 more times lol then the chapter is done!
The following excerpt describes their entry into the dark room. Donât know how smart it is to be smoking in a room full of highly flammable material but we out here.
I donât think sheâs particularly special but I also donât hate her so!! hoping an aesthetic photo will make it read better :â)) I ! donât ! think ! it does ! but !
Harrison shoulders the door first, traps it open with the clip of his boot. Dust and streaks of light rake behind him as he pushes through cardboard boxes, mountains of photo paper on the ground. Lonan follows silently, still wearing Harrisonâs jacket. Trails of smoke from his cigarette catch in the negatives hanging by the clothespins, chemical peel between the layers of ink. In one hand he tends to his cigarette, and in the next, lugs in the canister of gasoline they found in the cabinâs cellar. As Harrison fumbles for his flashlight, Lonan sets it down by the table so it sloshes like the Pacific.Â
This is a bit of when Harrison finds the photograph of Ominous Lady:
He turns the photograph over, and shines the flashlight on it. Itâs scratched and developed wrong, little bits of orange obscuring the womanâs face, but itâs very much a woman. A dark bob and bangs in her eyes, jewelry hanging from her septum. Sunshades enough to reflect the European street behind her. The discreet jet of ink on her skin, blues and greens peeking out from under her sleeve. Izzy, he recognizes. Lonanâs mother.Â
Nudging Lonan with an elbow, âI didnât know your mom has tattoos.âÂ
Lonan takes the photograph cautiously, holding it by the corners like itâll burn him. His brow trembles, but it takes him only seconds to say, âThatâs not my mom.â He takes the flashlight from Harrison and examines it closer, fingers nimble and tracing the edges. In the grey light of the dark room, he looks nullified. Just a monochromatic hum of chromosomes and skin.Â
thatâs not my MOM
After the boys find the photograph, Lonan gets triggered at Harrisonâs suggestion to find the woman (he presumes her to be someone involved with his father) and promptly has a tantrum and exits. This leads us into the next scene where the boys! actually! get! on! boat! In this scene Lonan tries to say sorry for his tantrum by offering Harrison a cigarette (lol) and because Harrison is hopelessly romantic and also hopelessly dumb, says yeeeees sir! They go for a canoe ride on the water. Thought it was going to be sweet, ended up being a shitstorm but!
This paragraph is kind of toast but:
The canoe isnât hard to get into the water. After a few nudges from the dock into the slow dip of tide, it stabilizes easily. Harrison is convinced it will capsize but Lonan knows it wonât. They take one ore each, and ignore the life jackets at the back of the shed.
The moon is large and mesmerizing. As Harrison and Lonan take turns pushing the canoe into the water, mast first, then its entire belly, it colours them silver. Lonanâs protected the cigarette in the pocket of his shirt. Harrison stares at its faint outline stretched under the fabric. Lonan steps into the canoe first, rocking with the current, and extends a hand for Harrison. He pulls him in and they row until the cabin is the size of a fingernail, the wave steady and dense. Each cut of the paddle feels like plunging a scalpel into flesh and Harrison watches Lonan do it easily. In the distance, the cabin doesnât look so menacing. Reeve has left the lamp on by the loft, and it glimmers back like an eyeball, effervescent and tiny. Nothing but a reflective penny in the distance.
Hereâs some Harrison being lame:
The water laps at the base of the canoe, and Ris reaches over and touches it like itâs holy. He makes the sign of the cross and it feels perverse, cold water dripping from forehead to chin.
For a while itâs quiet. Just the distant hum of crickets, the slash of the paddle, and the off-chance flash of something in the distance; an animal, a flashlight. Ris tries not to think about Lonanâs dad, like a dead man slithering through the water, following their boat. He picks at a saltine, sucks it between his tongue meditatively. Against the sky, Lonan is backlit and lovely and flecks of his hair peek up from around the jacketâs collar. Harrison wonders if as a child, everyone said he looked just like his father.Â
On top of lacking accountability, Lonan is also a professional canoeist so he takes over while Harrison eats saltines and reminisces about an encounter they had weeks prior. This leads into the solid chunk of backstory that I weirdly jump in an out of for the entire chapter. :)
Backstory consists of drunk Lonan having a crisis while Harrison tries to have a peaceful evening of taping up his drawings to his bedroom ceiling. The following excerpt describes the moment right after Lonan enters the room.
Harrisonâs lips secured around his cigarette, his hand mid-air with packing tape and line drawings of the moon. A tinny country song dribbled through the radio. The minute-meal heâd heat up in the microwave lying forgotten and cold on his desk. Harrison set the pile of drawings down and turned off the music.
âEmily left?â Lonan asked. He kept his face upward, stared clumsily at the ceiling. Harrison watched his eyes trace the new drawings, following the uncalculated pattern.Â
This paragraph is made up of 5 similes and this is the only reason Iâm sharing it :)))):
Lonan has stopped paddling. The canoe sits in the middle of the lake, lifeless, like a bone in the water. Heâs turned so Harrison can see him in profile, and Ris canât tell if itâs relieving or worrying to see his face. Lonanâs jaw is taut, like there are words he wants to say there but canât. Filling up the hollow bone. He blinks slowly, like heâs trying to re-centre himself, his chest quivering with breaths meant to steady him. The water laps at the base of the canoe, whirling. Dark hair tangles down his cheeks like the fingers of a poltergeist.Â
I think thatâs a pretty good way to end this post lol! How many similes have you put in one paragraph? Whatâs your record lol this is probably mine!
Hope yâall enjoy the intro to MOTH WORK. I have two other chapters already written which Iâll update on in a separate post! For now I hope you like this more laid back project, let me know what you think!
---Rachel
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NORMANI - MOTIVATION
[6.94]
Then again, we might have discovered some get-up-and-go...
Josh Buck: In a single four-minute clip that plays like the arthouse version of the reference-heavy "thank u, next" video, Normani decisively earns her mononym. [9]
Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Once, the great TSJ writer Josh Winters said that Normani would be the Dawn Richard of Fifth Harmony, and man, "Motivation" just proves him right. [8]
Alfred Soto: What a powerful track: the Fifth Harmony singer chooses a falsetto floating above the whomping beats just enough for us to hear how the beats toughen her and her falsetto lightens them. To record an empowerment track that abjures self-help nostrums is deserving of a nineteen-week stay at #1. [9]
Alex Clifton: As someone who came of age in the 2000s, I remember a time when the radio played good R&B to dance to; it was the soundtrack of every bar mitzvah and prom I attended. There's been a dearth of those sorts of songs since -- we've had some EDM bangers, but I've longed for a song that was less like a rave and more like a late summer block party. This is everything I could've wanted: the best song BeyoncĂŠ never released, a powderkeg of energy and fun that overwhelms and delights. The video choreography is already classic (I've been thinking about the basketball-bounce move for a week solid), I anticipate seeing this memed to death, and I'll enjoy every variant I see of it. Moreover, it's so wonderful to see Normani finally get a song where she can let loose -- rather than "Love Lies," which I found rather wet, "Motivation" is an actual showcase of Normani's talent. We're witnessing the bona fide birth of a star. [10]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: An iconic video with beautiful representation and killer choreography, a cast of A-list songwriters all bringing their A-game, and a song sturdy enough to back it all up: "Motivation" is nothing less than the birth of Normani as a star. [8]
Katherine St Asaph: The fact that the Normani Starmaking Apparatus wasn't cranked into gear for the ludicrously underrated "Waves" but for this midtier 3LW song is baffling. It's "Check On It" when the moment calls for "Crazy in Love"; it's Kelly Rowland's "Motivation," i.e., managed expectations. [4]
Tobi Tella: Everyone is begging and clamoring for Normani to happen, and while I have nothing against her, I'm not sure why? Maybe it's because I don't look on the days of Fifth Harmony with fond memories, or maybe it's all of her previous singles being generic midtempos. She has a nice enough voice but I just don't know if the it-factor is there somewhere, because it's certainly not in "Motivation." It's definitely fun and upbeat, and the 2000s noisy R&B pop intro gave me nostalgia for an older, tackier time, but everything about "Motivation" is too safe. The instrumental is nice but never really gets to the next level, the lyrics are beyond empty outside of slang, and there's nothing in the vocal performance that makes me want to call her out as the new superstar of our time. Props for the music video though -- I'd definitely play an only-Normani Just Dance. [5]
Jessica Doyle: Something about this song isn't clicking for me, in a very fundamental way: the stutter of the background feels at odds, uncomfortably, with the rhythm of her voice. Watching the video didn't help: it felt like the choreography was designed for yet a third different song. I tried to concentrate on her voice alone, but then got distracted by wondering why the decision was made to draw on the final n in "motivation" but speed through consonants during the verses. "Dancing with a Stranger" drove me nuts because Normani was so good and everything else was so mushy, and now even when she's solo, there's all this noise (rather than song) getting in the way. I want her next song to be a simple power ballad, and I don't even like simple power ballads. [4]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: A lot of excitement over an Ariana Grande b-side, huh [4]
Kylo Nocom: Chirpy Dangerous Woman kitsch-pop that makes me happy in a way music hasn't in a long time. All music will henceforth be rated on whether it would be improved with a brass band breakdown or not. [7]
Will Adams: The impressive video helps loads; without it I find myself checking Spotify to make sure I'm not listening to Ariana. [4]
Joshua Copperman: The video is so clearly a [10], Dave Meyers finally forgoing special effects extravaganzas for something nostalgic that invites viewers into the celebration, rather than pushing them away in smug "you had to be there" (or "I had to be there") fashion. It props up the song, which has some already-iconic moments like the horn riff and the meme-in-waiting "it ain't regular, that ain't regular" but can't quite capture the same energy. A lot of this is due to how sparse the song is; the a cappella "think about it, ooh, I think about it" repeating at 1:52 and 2:37 shows a strange lack of creativity in the arrangement. With the video, those things can be forgiven, but there's not nearly enough nuance or detail in the production or even the lyrics to make this a vital listen on its own. [6]
Joshua Lu: I can't shake the feeling that this is something I would find 30 songs deep into an algorithm-generated workout playlist, but regardless it's refreshing to hear Normani emerge so fully realized after years of unthreatening collaborations. Let's savor this moment before she's forced to work with Zedd or whoever. [6]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Normani talks about giving us "innovation" but she's really doing everything but that here -- "Motivation" is a combined-arms formation of nostalgic R&B tropes, leaving behind the smooth, boring ballads that her first few solo singles trafficked in for something much higher energy. There's nothing really new here but Normani makes a compelling argument that there doesn't need to be -- to witness her at the head of the ersatz marching band is spectacular enough, she seems to claim. "Motivation" is a pop jam designed to show off its performer as a student of the game -- Ariana's co-write is painfully obvious, and the overall BeyoncĂŠ-ness of it all is a little on the nose. But the joy of "Motivation" is that it's a lot of fun even when you can see the machinery. [8]
Nortey Dowuona: I have nothing to really say except: if Normani isn't the artist my (imaginary) niece names as her inspiration to pursue pop music, we have failed as a species. (Also, The Dancing is Better than that other guy.) [10]
Vikram Joseph: "Motivation" just refuses to sit still. It snaps, fizzes, sways, pops, bounces off every wall in the building. It's an unadulterated hit of pure summer that makes me want to dance in ways that would be deeply ill-advised for me to attempt. It's incredibly immediate and possesses at least two instantly iconic pop moments ("ain't regular, that ain't regular!" and that sweet, delirious trumpet hook), and yet it's sonically rich and intensely intricate. It's irresistible, and really, why would you want to resist this? [9]
[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]
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City & the City by China Mieville
"We mourn the incomparable Ursula Le Guin, and it hurts. A writer of intense ethical seriousness and intelligence, of wit and fury, of radical politics, of subtlety, of freedom and yearning, Le Guin was a literary colossus." - C.M.
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris StrugatskyÂ
"Those who see science fiction simply as a way of writing novels welcome the more Tolstoyan approach, in which a war is described not only from the generals' point of view but also through the eyes of housewives, prisoners, boys of sixteen, or an alien visitation is described not only by knowledgeable scientists but also by its effects on commonplace people." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Strange Bird A Borne Story by Jeff Vandermeer
"I think the biggest thing I took away from her fiction, and her nonfiction, was the sharp thoughtfulness and humanity behind it all." â J.V.
At the Mouth of the River of Bees Stories by Kij Johnson
"Itâs just as good as I thought it was going to be, if not better ... the variety is tremendous, exhilarating. The book definitely wonât do that short-story-collection thing to you where all the stories run together into a sort of depressing porridge in your mind." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood
"We can't call Ursula K. Le Guin back from the land of the unchanging stars, but happily she left us her multifaceted work, her hard-earned wisdom and her fundamental optimism. Her sane, smart, crafty and lyrical voice is more necessary now than ever. For it, and for her, we should be thankful." - M.A.
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
"Ursulaâs work holds a prominent place on the most cherished part of my bookcase." - N.O.
The Strange Case of the Alchemistâs Daughter by Theodora Goss
"There is one thing I wish I could have told her, although she probably knew: that she has hundreds of daughters. All those teenage girls who also found her books in local bookstores or libraries and grew up to become writers. She taught them that women could write about other planets and political philosophy, with clarity, profundity, and grace. She gave each of us a little bit of her voice, and we are all better writers and human beings because of it." - T.G.
The Ambiguity Machines & Other Stories by Vandana Singh
"A most promising and original young writer." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
"Ursula LeGuin was my first science fiction inspiration as a kid and she continued to inspire me throughout my adult life. Her stories are permanently installed in my mind." - A.N.
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
"This was a subtle gift that Le Guin gave to a young person wanting to be a writerâthe idea that there was more to writing fiction than ticking off plot points, that a rewarding story can be told without overt conflict, and that a world wide and deep can be its own reward, for those building the world and those who then walk through it." - J.S.
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
"Whereas all my beloved PâG Wodehouses and Philip Pullmans are neatly arranged on the bookshelves, my Pratchetts are strewn under the beds, in the bathrooms, the glove compartments. They have shopping lists, takeaway orders and Scrabble scores scribbled on the fly leaves. They were part of life." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
Kelly Link has been hailed by Michael Chabon as "the most darkly playful voice in American fiction" and by Neil Gaiman as a "National Treasure". If you don't already know Kelly's work, start here with her debut collection.
Blindness by Jose Saramago
"Blindness scared me to death when I started it, but it rises wonderfully out of darkness into the light." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older
"⌠a tremendous human being and storyteller who helped make fantasy a more imaginative and humane genre." - D.J.O.
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
"She is willing to change the landscape of your head with her ideas and there's such power in that. It is the power of ⌠that things could be different." - N.G.
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
"Sheâs a cornerstone of speculative fiction, and so much of our best storytelling traces its roots back to her. The more I write, and the more I think about fictional politics and societies, the more I find myself in awe of her singular powers. Nobody else can ever equal Le Guin, but many of us will spend our whole careers striving to build on her incredible legacy." - C.J.A.
Little Big by John Crowley
"⌠a book that all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy âŚ" - Ursula K. Le Guin
Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar
"And what a surprise it was to find as I grew up that the author of some of my favorite childhood fantasy novels was also a brilliant essayist, enlightened political commentator, a champion of feminism, and an activist for a more inclusive publishing industry. A true example of an artist who, both through her books and activism, changed the world for the better." - J.K.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Â
"It inspires me with pity, with terror, with awe at the mystery of human destiny, and the mystery of the art that can, for a moment, illuminate it." - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Yiddish Policemenâs Union by Michael Chabon
"Of course if you haven't read Kavalier and Clay yet, go read it at once, what on earth have you been waiting for? Then read this. It is even a little crazier, maybe. Crazy like a genius." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Shades of Milk & Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
"I think she did a lot for science fiction and fantasyânot just for women and women's roles because of her feminism but also legitimizing us as an art form. There are a lot of people who will read an Ursula Le Guin book and go, 'Well, this isn't science fiction, it's literature.' But of course, it is science fiction. A lot of times, she can be a gateway drug for people." - M.R.K.
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
"More than anyone else, Le Guin showed me how to write SFF with an anthropological approach while interrogating the colonialist agenda and assumptions of the field itself. More than any writer of her stature, she constructed worlds in which I thought I could find and lose myself. I will miss her dearly." - K.L.
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1)Â by N.K. Jemisin
âIâd definitely still be a writer if not for her, but I donât think Iâd be as good a writer. Le Guin is one of the writers who taught me that beauty and fearlessness go hand in hand." - N.K.J.
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mazie Is Transforming the World Around Her Into a Surreal Pop Dream [Q&A]
Photo:Â Daniela Salinas
Like twisting the rotating ends of a kaleidoscope, looking at mazieâs music from an even slightly different perspective unveils a host of varying takeaways. Thereâs âno friends,â her debut single, written and released at the beginning of quarantine, perfectly unaware of the universal nature her track would soon envelop. Twist a little further and you arrive at âdumb dumb,â an unconventional and surreal pop song written in response to the Capitol Insurrection and the ensuing deluge of memes. Yet, no single twist, turn, or bend of the neck begins to fully encompass mazie, the artist.Â
To fully begin to understand mazieâs psychedelic, dreamlike vision perhaps there is no better place to start than her debut EP, the rainbow cassette. Throughout the EPâs eight-track run, the rising artist delivers her idiosyncratic take on pop, one that feels like falling straight down the rabbit hole. Yet, in many ways, itâs an exploration of everything mazie loves about music, including working with her dearest friends.Â
Every track is produced by Elie Jay Rizk, mazieâs teenage friend and go-to producer who has always been there to bring every left-field idea of hers to life. In addition, the rainbow cassette contains a newly-realized rendition of her debut single âno friends,â featuring spill tab and Mia Gladstone, who mazie notes as both friends and inspirations. Taken altogether, the rainbow cassette feels like a bold and utterly enjoyable step forward in expanding the world of mazie. Â
I had the chance to speak to mazie about writing her debut EP in the midst of a drastic period of change, coming up in the pandemic, and the simple joy of a rent-controlled apartment.Â
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Ones to Watch: Who is mazie?
mazie: mazie is me! Iâm Grace. Iâm 21-years-old. Iâm originally from Baltimore, Maryland, and I just moved out to LA. I have no idea how to describe myself (laughter).
Letâs start out with the hard-hitting questions. Would you rather be able to speak every language or be able to speak to animals?
Ahhh, dude! That sucks! I think Iâd rather speak... this is controversial... I think I would rather be able to speak every single language, because, what if we find out animals are so mean. And theyâre talking behind our backs, theyâre just roasting us all the time. That would be devastating.
That is my newly realized fear. What if animals are just extremely problematic? Just have to cancel every single one of them.
Exactly. Like, dogs are racist? That sucks.
How would you say you have evolved as a person since your debut single, âno friends?â
Wow, Iâm extremely evolved. This last year, everything in my life changed. I dropped out of college. I moved with all of my friends from home out to LA, and I feel like being 21 and being totally financially independent from your family and pursuing music at the same time is really fucking intense. Every day is a struggle trying to be an actual adult, but itâs been awesome.
Whatâs the hardest part of being a financially independent adult?
That all of your money goes to rent and nobody tells you that.
Welcome to LA.
Yeah, dude, every dollar goes straight to my rent. Cool⌠cool⌠cool.
What is the rainbow cassette?
the rainbow cassette is my debut EP. Itâs my favorite body of work Iâve ever made. It feels really complete to me, which is fantastic. I havenât had a strong sense of my artistry until the last two years, and I feel like this EP is exactly what I want to be doing right now, which is a really cool feeling.
the rainbow cassette was written during not only a period of change, you moving from Baltimore to LA, but in the midst of a pandemic. How did the world around you affect this EP?
I think the EP is exactly the world around us for the last two years. We released âno friendsâ peak quarantine, when nobody had any idea what was going on. And then we made the rest of the EP throughout the whole thing, so I feel like the entire project is centered in this experience, whether we liked it or not.
âdumb dumbâ was written in response to the Capitol Insurrection. How do you go about turning such a surreal experience into an even more surreal pop song?
I think the more absurd the better. I feel like every single thing weâve been experiencing for the last few years has no fucking context at all. Where did this shit come from? How did we get here? This is brutal. So, I think the day that the insurrection happened, we were just like, âYeah, this makes no sense anymore, so letâs also make a song that makes no sense.â
Itâs like when the worldâs going mad, what can you do but laugh?
Yes, exactly. Or else youâll cry, and thatâs even worse.
Is there a song on the EP youâre excited or even scared for people to hear?
That was how I felt about âdumb dumb,â because that was the first song I released after eight months, because I was in the process of signing to Good Boy, so we couldnât release anything. But it ended up being so much better than I could have ever imagined. Iâm so excited for people to hear the intro to the EP, because when Elie and I were in the studio last summer we made the intro before whatever else, and we were like âThis is it. This is exactly what we want to be going for.â Iâm so excited for people to finally hear that; weâve been sitting on it for so long.
And why were you scared for people to hear âdumb dumb?â Was it the political nature of the track?
Not even. Itâs just because itâs a zany song, you know? I feel like I havenât heard a lot of songs like âdumb dumb,â so I never know if people are going to be receptive of that or if people are going to be like âWhat is this?â
Speaking on the absurd, surreal nature of not just your music but your overall aesthetic. Where did that originate?
I feel like it came from psychedelics to be honest. Sorry to my parents. Itâs definitely psychedelics that really changed my relationship with music, changed my relationship with myself in such a positive way. Itâs just who I am today and what the music is today, so yeah, straight-up psychedelics.
Was there a defining moment where you knew music was what you wanted to pursue?Â
Yes. Iâve never had a plan B, which is a little crazy now that I think about it. I was singing opera by the time I was ten years old, so either Iâm going to go to a conservatory and this is going to be my life or Iâm going to be a music therapist or something. But then when I met my producer when I was 15, he tracked my vocals the first or second day I was in the studio, and when he played it back for me, I sobbed hysterically. It was the most mind-blowing experience ever, and I was like âThis. This is it. I have to do this for the rest of my life.â
Elie is not only your producer but your teenage friend. Whatâs it like creating music with someone who has always been there for you but is also growing into adulthood with you?
Oh, I could cry talking about this. Itâs the most powerful, incredible experience ever. We love each other so much as people. He is my best friend, and heâs seen me grow up over these last five or six years and we get to make the best music because of our closeness. You canât fake that intimacy with other people when youâre getting in the room for the first time. He just understands me fundamentally as a person and therefore understands the music so fundamentally. Itâs the greatest thing ever.
What do you hope people take away from the rainbow cassette?
I hope that theyâre interested. I hope that they feel really good listening to it. I hope they have a lot of fun, because I had so much fun making it and I really enjoying listening to it. Iâm a little biased though. Yeah, I just hope people really enjoy themselves, because itâs a bit of an experience.
Youâll be heading out on tour with COIN this fall. What are you most excited for?
I think just doing it, you know? Every single person I talk to about going on the road is like âI could tell you what itâs like but youâre just going to have to go through it and learn for yourself.â I came up in the pandemic, so live shows have not been a thing for me. Iâm really, really excited to go play shows and see what itâs like.
Speaking of coming up in the pandemic, did you feel a heightened need to be involved in social media, as it was the only way to connect with fans?
Yes, yes. It required me to be really adept at social media super fast, which is something I think Iâll always be working on especially because content creation is kind of hard. But with Instagram and being able to connect with fans in that way, it provided me purpose when nobody had purpose. It felt like I had a job, like I was doing something constructive. It made me really get on board with social media.
Regarding social media, thatâs a very positive outlook, especially during the pandemic where one had to find reasons to get out of bed in the morning.
Exactly. And if thatâs an Instagram post, Iâll take it!
If you could have one thing in the world right now, what would it be?
Oh my god. If I could have anything in the world it would be an apartmentâŚ
A rent-controlled apartment?
(laughter) I want a rent-controlled apartment. I want to be like Monica from Friends. An apartment in Tokyo! Thatâs it. Thatâs the one
Who are your Ones to Watch?
Iâm on Good Boy Records and Good Boy is all the homies. Theyâre literally my best friends. I am so excited for georgee who just put out his song âbaby4u.â Itâs my favorite song ever right now. And judith, who is about to put out her debut single. Just reppinâ Good Boy because theyâre my family. Outside of that, Iâm obsessed with my friends. spill tab, Wallice, marinelli. I think theyâre all stars. ella jane. Chloe George. Oh my god. The world is not ready for Chloe George.
the rainbow cassette is available everywhere you can stream it.
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Voiceactors in my Head
One of my many contradictory feature sets is a silent, circumventing stubbornness paired with a pathological fear of confrontation. I will get what I want, and I will not stand my ground if verbally pressed on it. I concede points like itâs an Olympic sport. But as long as everyone's still smilingâgently, snidely, or otherwiseâthen I can go on forever. Case in point, I once trolled a stranger on the internet for over a year. (Donât worry; by the end of the story youâll be on my side again. And if youâre not, well, I mostly agree with you.)
It all started with a CD which was, at the time, exclusively available through the record labelâs website. This was back in 2005, when online retailers still ran on frontier justice and only fools uttered the words âfree shipping.â Needless to say, I did not have an existing account.
But we do what we must. So I bent the knee, and delivered my modern-day rogation of name, email, and PII governed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in order to receive my one CDâthen I defiantly wasted that effort by never patronizing their establishment again. I mean, the album was fine, and Iâm sure they had other struggling artists whose work I would have enjoyed, but apparently Iâm against creative expression and the American small business owner or something.
Anyway, five years of blissful non-interaction go by. Then one day in 2010, I get a mass email from the founder of this little indie record label. It wasâor at least it aspired to beâa classic âstarting a new chapterâ kind of announcement, letting everyone know that he had sold his (incredibly!) successful company, and was using the proceeds to start a charity that would bring music lessons to inner city children.
And, hey, I thought, thatâs cool. Music is great for kids. Except⌠the tone of the email was weird. It was more than just casual; it was chummy. The concept of a YouTuber didnât exist back then, but here was its primordial ancestor, testing the beachhead with its nascent flipper-legs of peppy chic.
âYo, J-dawg, how's it hanging? Remember back in [mail-merged year] when you bought [whatever]? What a great album, am I right?! Anyway, it's been so long since we rapped, I thought I'd update you on my sitchâŚâ
Obviously, Iâm paraphrasing, but thatâs how the voiceactor in my head performed it. And it just rubbed me so hard the wrong way. I mean, look, I get itâwe live in a promotional society, and there's no avoiding that. Iâve done my fair share of book pimping, and if you have a legitimate fan base the intrusion can even be a welcome one. So, fine. Tell me about your thingâonceâand maybe I'll buy it. But don't act like we're friends, like I have some kind of obligation to you beyond this basic consumer relationship that we've established.
So my gut reaction was a hard pass, pleading childrenâs eyes be damned. But the email didnât include a link to unsubscribe. This spammer was so brazen, he had sent the message from his personal email account, as if threats like âmore updates to come!â belonged in anything but a ransom note font. If I wanted my name off the list, I would have to actually write him back, creating exactly the kind of low-stakes, one-on-one confrontation that we all know is worse than torture.
How would I even phrase it, knowing that his overture was from the heart and my rejection would travel right back along that path? âListen, amigo, I know you probably spent an hour composing this raw, honest self-reflection on your priorities, but itâs garbage, and I never want to hear from you again. Please keep in mind that while you have failed to inspire me, youâve also failed the children. Because youâre a failure.â
The actual words wouldnât matter; I was sure thatâs what heâd hear. In fact, I would argue that a polite rejection is often worse, because it leaves no option for the rejectee to write off the loss as a dodged bullet. They really were a nice person, and youâll probably never find anyone so humble again, you loser.
So instead, I got out my favorite piece of social armor: the ironic âyes, and.â In improv theater, if a scene partner implies that youâre the best of friends, you donât argue with them. You commit to the bit. So I did.
âOh my God, Steve, it's so good to hear from you!â I wrote (except I used his real name, of course.) âI canât believe you still remember our special album. Makes me weepy just thinking about what it meant to us. Anyway, hereâs whatâs been going on in my life...â Then without warning, I dumped several yearsâ worth of emotional trauma on himâabout severe autism, and how hard day-to-day life was, and how each treatment brought hope and frustration in equal measure while somehow never easing my crippling fear of the future. It was a therapy session on steroids, directed at a stranger under the guise of bitter sarcasm. My flippant sign-off left no doubts about my true feelings: âAnyway, as Iâm sure you can imagine, we are flat broke with medical bills, bruh! So I'm gonna need you to take us off your list. But in the meantime, here are some autism charities that you could donate to on our behalf, since we're such good friends.â
To be clear, open snark isnât remotely in the spirit of âyes, and.â But it felt better in that moment than honest rejection, and I figured heâd take the hint.
Instead, the guy wrote back.
âWow, what an amazing story!â he said. âCrazy world we live in. I'll go ahead and take you off the list, but I do hope you'll think of us in the future.â
Ugh. He had met my bad behavior with empathy, and I felt moderately ashamed. Then again, you couldnât argue with results, and at least I knew this ordeal was behind me.
Except he didn't take me off the list. A couple of weeks later, I get another fake-personal email, which I must again paraphrase, though I remember with furious precision the way it made me feel. âHeyyyy Jenn-ster, it's me again! I know how much you've always loved music, so I know you're gonna want to hear about this...â
BITCH. YOU. DONâT. KNOW. ME.
âSteve, what happened?!â I wrote back. âYou used to be such a good listener! I think the money's changed you, man.â And I asked once again to be taken off the list.
This time, he ignored me. No reply, and the spam kept coming.
So I just decided that this was going to be our thing. Every time he sent me an email full of stuff I didn't care about, I was going to send him an email full of stuff he didn't care about. Except I kept pushing it a little farther each time, like, âOoh, potty training's not going so great, let me tell you all about it...â And at the end of every email I'd always remind him, âHey, anytime you want to stop getting updates on my son's bowel movements, all you have to do is take me off your list.â Sometimes I bolded it; once I super-sized it into a 40-point font. But he never did.
This went on for over a year.
But I won.
Itâs a trite saying, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. The last email I ever got from this guy was short, which was unusual for him, and it said something like, âGreat news! We've just graduated our first class of studentsâcheck out these pics!â (Why am I paraphrasing so much, when email is forever and I could just go back and give you direct quotes? Stop asking questions and roll with me for a minute.) Anyway, embedded in the email, like already loaded and filling the screen HTML-style, was this giant picture of⌠I donât know, a kid kissing a trumpet or something. It was probably super cute, to be honestâbut I was on a mission.
âGreat news!â I wrote back, trying as always to mimic the exact structure of whatever he had sent me. âMy son just had a colonoscopyâcheck out these pics!â And I pasted the actual medical photos of my childâs rectal passage into the email, pre-loaded and filling the screen, so heâd be forced to view them against his will, just as Iâd been forced to endure his endless marketing crap.
Sure enough, he never emailed me again.
Pretty good story, right? And that closerâI mean how can you top sending medical photos to a complete stranger just to gross them out? Unfortunately (or fortunately; Iâll leave it up to you,) this one has a weirdly philosophical denouement. If you like your narratives sassy and single-layered, I suggest you duck out now.
Around 2015, I was trawling my past for wild stories that could be condensed into a tight three minutes for open mic night, and âthat time I emailed colonoscopy pics to a spammerâ was an obvious contender. Once I had the basic structure written down, more or less exactly as I remembered it, I went digging through those ancient emails to finalize the details.
And what I found was⌠not what I remembered. The story I told above clearly had some emotional embellishments (see: paraphrasing), but it was fundamentally true in circumstance, I thought. And, yes, I really did send this guy two pictures of my sonâs colonoscopy, though they were just thumbnail attachments, not embedded. But the text of my actual emails to him barely came off as snarky at all, and I never once told him in clear terms to take me off his list. There are a few lame hints at irony that you can pick out if you really squint, but by and large I was just⌠writing him back. Like we were friends.
Which is a good thing, because his emails to me were even less accurate in my memory than mine had been. He hadnât cut me off; heâd replied to every single email Iâd sent, in a way that made it clear that heâd watched every video and read every article. He was cordial, empathetic, and seemed genuinely interested in my kids. It was a therapy session on steroids, all rightâminus the steroids.
BITCH.
YOU. KNOW. ME.
And in return for all this kindness, I had sent him horrific medical photos for no reason. To which he had replied (and this time Iâm not paraphrasing,) âThanks for the update on your son. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work. All the best to you both.â The updates from him had indeed ceased after that, but from what I can tell it was just a coincidental winding down of that particular enterprise, not a removal of my name from any specific list.
Eventually, I ended up emailing him again, this time as a penitential mea culpa to ease my own conscience. I explained the situation, and apologized for my unfair judgment of years past, plus of course the unsolicited sigmoid landscapes. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, and admitted that heâd never once picked up on my poorly-conveyed bitterness.
More important than the personal amends, though, was the lesson I had to swallow about how emotions donât just cloud memoriesâsometimes they invent them out of whole cloth. I swear, I swear I remember a photo of a kid graduating from his charitable music lessons, but I can find absolutely no evidence of it anywhere. My brain made it up to retroactively justify my behavior: yes, I sent a photo, but only because he sent a photo first. Itâs not even a remotely good justification, but I guess it took the edge off just enough to keep seeing myself as a good person.
It was an important lesson professionally, too. History is nothing but a mashup of inherently self-serving memories, and multiple perspectives can only draw a narrative closer to objective truth by half-steps, never to fully reach its destination. Even hard evidence is fallible, because my emails as written did not accurately represent how I felt when I wrote them, which is an important part of the story in its own way. Misinterpretations and flawed perspectives are inevitable, but theyâre also necessary, and stripping them out as a historian is just as wrong as taking them at face value. A story is both what the participants think it is, and what we know it isnâtâespecially when those two conflictâand every non-fiction piece I write is just somebody elseâs therapy session on steroids.
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Horror Movie Origin Stories: Directors, Actors, and Writers on How They Fell in Love With the Genre
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If youâre a horror fan youâll have one. A memory of a moment, or a series of moments, where you first felt the thrill of the genre. That sparkly feeling of fear and delight, when you want to look away but you feel like you canât.
It could be a book, a film, a tv show, a snatched glimpse of something you shouldnât have seen when you were too young to understand it. We all start somewhere.
Den of Geek spoke to a whole range of top people working in horror movies and tv to find out where it all started.Â
Horror fans â let us know your origins stories in the comments!
Clive Barker
Playwright, novelist, film director, and visual artist. Author of Books Of Blood, director of Hellraiser.
âAt the age of 15, I went with a friend of mine to see a horror movie called Psycho, which was in a double bill with George Palâs War of the Worlds. And we mistimed the time of going in to see the movie. We walked in at the end of Psycho. Just the moment that Lila Crane is going down the stairs to the apple cellar, where she will soon encounter the dead Norman Batesâ mother.
That was the first scene I ever saw of a horror movie, honestly. Nothing on television, of course. This is England in the â60s, so there was nothing on the television. And I was bloody terrified. I had the satisfaction of then watching the movie again, and finding three girls sitting in front of my friend and myself. We knew what was going to happen, and they didnât. I was 15, and that was a lesson, that I enjoyed vicariously watching people get scared. Itâs probably something deeply sick about me. â
Harrowing.
Ben Wheatley
Director of Kill List, Sightseers, High Rise, Rebecca
âWell, I mean thereâs two answers. One, the first horror shock that I had wouldâve been the end of Carrie. And probably walking into it as a kid not even seeing the rest of the film. And the hand coming out of the ground. I never felt so terrified in my life. I can still feel the contraction of my heart now, of how fundamentally afraid I was about that.
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By Rosie Fletcher
And that was a proper introduction to it. But the other real introduction for me for horror, which is not a horror film, is the public information films of the â70s that were shown to schoolchildren, which were much more violent and terrifying than anything that was in the cinema.
Which is not throwing Frisbees into electricity substations, donât play on the railway, donât play at building sites. And they would show these films and they would show children being killed again and again and again. And you were just like, âOh my God.â And that itâs so graphic. It was weird because it kind of unbalanced horror, I think, in the UK for a whole generation. Especially because itâs kids dying as well. And you were a kid. Thereâs a whole thing thatâs like a sports day that they do on the railway. They do a series of events and one of them is running up the tunnel. And so these kids, all in their sports gear, run up a tunnel and a train comes down and then theyâre all dragged out, arms and legs. And itâs just unbelievably horrible. And so that has haunted me my whole life.â
Jason Blum
Producer, head of Blumhouse Productions
âWell, it was a movie that we did. I mean, the experience I had on Paranormal Activity is what made me want to make scary movies. Not just because it was a hit, but because I finally found⌠Iâd always had straddled studio and independent film. I loved making independent films. I hated independent film distribution. I loved studio distribution, but I really didnât like making studio films. Horror movies, you could have the best of both worlds. Horror movies, still to this day, are independent movies distributed by studios.
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How Jason Blum Changed Horror Movies
By Rosie Fletcher
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First Look at Halloween Kills Footage Reveals Return Of Legacy Characters
By Don Kaye
âThat for me was a way to get to fly my freak flag, or whatever you want to say with that, to be weird, and different, and make things that were subversive and strange, but have people see them. Itâs always been important to me that the TV shows and the movies that I do found a broad audience. They donât always find one, but I intend to make things that find a broad audience. They donât always, but Iâm always going out the door hoping that they do. Thatâs what I love horror for. You can do crazy stuff, and it can still find a broad audience.â
Katharine Isabelle
Star of Ginger Snaps, American Mary
âI did not watch horror growing up. I grew up on a small island where the convenience store in town had a little wall at the back with VHS tapes, and we hardly went to town so I had the same three movies growing up. I had like Willy Wonka and The Black Stallion.
One of my favorite movies, it isnât technically a horror, although I think it is because it is fairly horrific is Apocalypse Now. That has such terrific elements in it, but I never really was introduced to the real horror genre. I watched my first Freddy Krueger movie on set at night in my trailer on Freddy vs. Jason. I think my mean, older boy cousins forced me to watch The Thing or something stupid like that when I was a child. And I was like, âarrgghhh!â I screamed and ran out, so I wasnât really familiar with the whole genre at all. It wasnât until Ginger Snaps came along, which I didnât see as being a horror.
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Katharine Isabelle on How Ginger Snaps Explored the Horror of Womanhood
By Rosie Fletcher
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By Ryan Lambie
When I thought of horror before, in my ignorance, it was like scary slasher, monster from the deep stuff. I was into The Abyss. And Apocalypse Now, those are my scary movies. With Ginger I was like, âOh, this is a really cool movie about a fucked up insecure teenager, exactly like me.â So I just connected with it on that level.â
Daniel Myrick
Director of The Blair Witch Project, Skyman
âI remember loving classics like The Exorcist, The Omen and The Shining back in the day, as well as Jacobâs Ladder, but it may have been indie-hit, The Legend of Boggy Creek sitting in a Florida drive-in that hit me with the horror âgut punchâ when I was a kid. It was the first film I watched that was a narrative story made to look like a documentary. It was also about âBigfootâ, (in this case the âFouke Monsterâ of Arkansas), which was on everybodyâs mind back in those days, so that really hit home. I remember one scene where a kid, about my age at the time, is running through the woods and comes across that hairy beast staring at him in the distance. That one made me jump out of my seat.â
Dan Trachtenberg
Director of 10 Cloverfield Lane and Black Mirror âPlaytestâ
âA Nightmare on Elm Street. Wes Craven, Iâve quoted him throughout my entire career for everything Iâve done. I think heâs a genius. A Nightmare on Elm Street deeply affected me. Itâs dealing with our personal histories. Itâs dealing with the past and what our parents pass on to their children, and you break cycles. Thatâs in almost everything Iâve done and everything I continue to think about doing is that thematic. A Nightmare on Elm Street was really the gift that keeps on giving. Itâs something that could feel on the one hand so deeply, deeply primally un-scary. I think itâs the scariest idea of all horror movie ideas.â
Rose Glass
Director of Saint Maud
Maybe two films I remember really specifically watching quite early, around the same sort of time. I wouldnât say either of them are definitely horror films, but theyâve hopefully got a foot in that. That would be Pi, by Darren Aronofsky, and Eraserhead by David Lynch. I just kind of remember the two of them particularly, I think maybe I was, I donât know, thirteen or something when I saw them both. Those were the first films where I remember my mind starting to shift and be like, âOh. Films can be like this.â Because I was a massive, Lord of the Rings fan until then. Most of the films I would have seen were things I would have maybe seen at the cinema with my family or on TV, and quite mainstream basically.Â
That was when I started to work out maybe, what my personal tastes were a bit more like, and I just found it very exciting to think that somebody could actually do that. So I think, Pi was the first film I remember. I discovered IMDb and would spend hours scrolling through that, reading synopses of different weird films and looking at âHundred weirdest films of all timeâ kind of thing. And Pi kept popping up, so I ordered a DVD of that off Amazon.Â
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Saint Maud and the True Horror of Broken Minds and Bodies
By Rosie Fletcher
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How A Creepshow Animated Special Pays Tribute to Series Legacy
By Matthew Byrd
With Eraserhead, I think maybe my dad even saw me watching a bit of Pi, or maybe not. I donât know. But Iâd started to make noises about being interested in movies and he came back from work one day and was like, âSo I got you this film, itâs the only thing I ever walked out of in the cinema. But maybe if you want to make films, itâs something you should watch.â And it was an old fashioned VHS of Eraserhead. In hindsight Iâm like, âThatâs such a cool bit of parenting that.â And again, I was just like, âWhat the fuck is this? This is great.âÂ
Neil Marshall
Director of Dog Soldiers, The Descent, and more
âI saw Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and things like that on television and was definitely kind of hooked into that. I remember being so scared of Doctor Who and hiding behind the furniture when I was a little kid when Doctor Who was on. I think inherently, I got some kick out of that. Watching scary movies is both youâre scared of them, but thereâs an addiction to it as well. Â
I think it was an aunt of mine who had A Pictorial History of Horror Movies by Denis Gifford, in the house. And I would just pour over that book and the pictures just sucked me in. Every time I went round there, I used to look at that book and read it and study about horror. I have my own copy of it now. I think itâs all of these elements just got me into that world really.Â
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By Mike Cecchini
Itâs also a timing thing as much as anything, but I was in my teens during the â80s, during the origins of VHS, the beginning of rental, the beginning of the whole video nasties thing. And I saw a lot of those films before they were banned or tried to track them down after they were banned. But certainly when VHS came into our houses and we were able to watch whatever we wanted to watch from the rental store, so much of that stuff was horror. And that really sunk its teeth into me there, for sure.â
Corin Hardy
Director of The Hallow, The Nun
âAge 6⌠on my Grandmothers bed watching King Kong (1933) both terrified and moved to weeping tears at the end when the great beast falls. I wasnât yet aware but I had been âbitten by the monsterâ.
Aged 7 â 9⌠a combination of Ray Harryhausenâs creature features that always aired over the xmas period on tv, captivated by the wonderful mythical monsters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (now thats an epic Horror Movie!) at the local cinema and a triple whammy of The Twilight Zone movie, (âWanna see something reaaaallly scary?âŚâ) Salems Lot (the kid at the windowâŚ.) and Alien (sheer utter sci-fi terror) on VHS when the babysitter was over, left me traumatised. Yet infatuated.
American Werewolf In London aged 11, whilst on a family camping holiday on the moorsâŚ. (Imagine how that wentâŚ) followed by my main gateway/highway into the land of horror at the start of secondary school was when I began to fully accept that this was an addiction/obsession/fascination with the dark side of the genre and the Nightmare On Elm Streets, Halloweens, The Thing, Aliens, Predator, Robocop, Fright Night and all Friday The Thirteenths would consume meâŚ.Â
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By David Crow
Largely it was the monsters that I loved, Pumpkinhead, The Blob, The Fly⌠And the idea that someone was actually paid to make them excited me and I decided that I wanted to do that, so I started creating my own home-made monsters and makeups and basic animatronics in my old bike-shed sculpture studio.
But it was at aged 12 when I think the notion of actually wanting to MAKE HORROR MOVIES struck me like a lightweight bolt, and that came like a shock to the system after beholding the greatest movie to touch mine and your eyeballsâŚâ
 Evil Dead 2
âThat film blew my mind wide open with its wicked concoction of creative inventiveness and I was never the same again. Raimi coined a phrase that I think is perfect description of what makes Evil Dead 2 and a lot of his movies of that era as well as 2009âs Drag Me To Hell, the riotous rollercoaster experiences combining gore and gags in double measures. He described them as âSpook-A-Blastâ â one moment youâre screaming terrified and shortly after youâre uncontrollably laughing and then repeat. Spook-a-blast! But itâs a very fine tuned balance and Evil Dead 2 is the perfect example and as a result it caused me and my group of horror and heavy metal loving friends to instantly pick up a Super 8mm camera, pool our collective paper-round money and shoot Evil Dead, Friday The Thirteenth and Thing-style gory zombie horror movies across our weekends.Â
It was through this process of enthused experimentation that I gradually became aware of storyboarding and shot composition, camera movements and timing, as well as the need to get actors better than myself and my mates in front of the camera⌠And that was a challenge.
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By Hannah Bonner
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By David Crow
The monster bug never left me and through my teenage years I continued creating many grotesque designs in latex and strove to get work experience and summer jobs in prop and FX houses in the UK whilst doing my own special effects at home and shooting low fi shorts and music videos, until after studying in a degree at Wimbledon School of Art in sculpture and technical design for the stage and screen I made my first proper short film which was stop-motion ode to Ray Harryhausen entitled Butterly.Â
Following the premiere at The Edinburgh Film Festival I began a 10 year career as a music video director making 50+ music videos for the likes of Keane, The Horrors, Biffy Clyro and The Prodigy, whilst developing a number of my own horror features, which eventually culminated in getting my own debut âcreature featureâ The Hallow into Sundance in 2015 followed by my first studio picture for âThe House That Freddy Builtâ â New Line pictures The Nun in 2018. There are plenty more monsters on the horizonâŚ.â
Christopher Landon
Director Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, Freaky
âOh God. Well, I remember the first time I saw something terrifying in a film and it really left its mark on me. My parents were watching Psycho and I was supposed to be in bed. I snuck out of my room, I went into their room and I hid behind a chair in their room and they didnât know I was there. I was watching it and thereâs the scene where Norman Bates, towards the end of the film, comes charging down the stairs dressed as his mother. It scared the living shit out of me. But I remember that charge, and I remember that feeling of wanting to see more, even though I started screaming and I got caught.
That was the bug for me. My parents divorced when I was pretty young and my dad, which is probably not good parenting, but it worked for me, he let my sister and I start watching horror movies at a pretty early age. We were just obsessed with them. We saw everything. It was an interesting childhood.â
Rob Savage
Director of Host
My parents tried to raise me without TV, which backfired horribly. Their protectiveness only made me want to watch as many films as possible, the nastier the better. I hid a portable TV under my bed and spent my Sundays browsing car-boot sales, the only places I could get hold of 18 certificate VHS, which I then hid within a loose wall cavity in my basement. Whenever my parents left the house, Iâd stick on a Video Nasty and revel in the sleaze.Â
I was all about the gore, but every now and then Iâd watch a film that made me pause. Hellraiser, Candyman, The Thing. There was something going on in these movies beyond the viscera. I realised that these movies were actually⌠good? Until that point, Iâd never really considered horror as anything beyond a fuck-you to my parents rules, but slowly I began to tune in to their unique frequency. I still get a kick from trashy gore movies (I have Cannibal Apocalypse on in the background while I write this) but from that point forward I became a horror evangelist â no other genre can reach the heights that the best horror does
David Kerr
Director of Inside No. 9
âIt would be The Innocents, because itâs a film that, on the surface, seems reassuringly similar to other black and white films that were shown when I was a kid growing up in Northern Ireland in the 70s, that I just chanced upon on TV. It looked like it could be an Ealing Comedy, because it was black and white and on BBC Two, but itâs a really chilling, terrifying film.
Seeing that was pretty much a wallop, and when youâre forming your taste as a kid or a teenager, thatâs what speaks to you. On the one hand, itâs âI donât want to see that againâ, but also⌠âI want to see that again!â Thatâs really what horror is about. You have a feeling of terror and attraction at the same time. Take it away! Donât show it to me! Can I see it again?â
James Kniest
Cinematographer of Hush and The Haunting of Bly Manor
âI saw The Exorcist when I was way too young and it still sticks with me. It scared the bejesus out of me as a kid. The next film that really affected me like that was The Ring as an adult. I donât know why. Iâm not particularly afraid of the Freddy Kruegers and the Chuckys and things like that. Iâm more afraid of this kind of evil that is harbored in every human to some degree and also the devil really. So those kinds of things scare me, the stuff thatâs more psychological.
Itâs funny because Cape Fear isnât really a horror movie, but it sure is scary. Those kinds of things I think that are really possible are the ones that scare me and that I kind of always think about and less the slasher kind of stuff.â
Rachel Talalay
Director of Tank Girl, Doctor Who, and A Babysitterâs Guide to Monster Hunting
âThere are two types of people. There are the ones who love horror and want to be more scared and are challenging themselves. And then thereâs the people who are scared of absolutely everything. And as a kid I was scared of absolutely everything. So the original Star Trek and Twilight Zone, absolutely. And then when I had access to Doctor Who, that got added to that list of just⌠those images in my head that wouldnât go away and terrified me. I was even scared of Time Tunnel, which is really cheesy. And of course I was terrified of the monkeys in Wizard of Oz.â
Natalie Erika James
Director of Relic
âI was a real scaredy-cat as a kid, could not handle anything, was scared of E.T. even. I would have really bad nightmares, would crawl into my parentsâ bed in the middle of the night until I was seven. Really a scaredy-cat.Â
But it was probably when I was about 11, the first film that I went and saw with friends, without parental supervision, was The Others and it scared me shitless. So I was so terrified. And I remember sitting backwards in my seat just so that I didnât have to look at the screen but feeling such joy at having survived that experience with my friends. And that was quite incredible. Not dissimilar to going on a roller coaster or something like that. The closest you can get to death without dying or something like that. So it kind of started there.Â
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By Kayti Burt
And then in my early teens, again at sleepovers, we would watch horror films and scare ourselves. So that was probably my way into it. I also was really into darker fairytales. Slowly, I became more interested in Gothic horror literature as well. So probably more from a reading perspective. And then when I went to film school I started making dark psychological drama and then, slippery slope, I just slowly started embracing more extreme horror elements from there.â
Kevin McKidd
Star of Dog Soldiers and Rome
I lovedâŚI mean â80s horror movies were my jam. The Nightmare on Elm Streets, all that stuff. Poltergeist was huge for me. Obviously, The Shining⌠That movie was huge. Alien, the original Alien movie still has this psychological hold over me.
Roman Coppola
Visual effects and second unit director of Bram Stokerâs Dracula, screenwriter of Moonrise Kingdom
âAs a kid, I had one particular friend who really deeply loved horror movies. In fact, his mother was in Dementia 13. His name was Jeffrey Patton, and his mother was Mary Patton, who was one of the actors in Dementia 13 [under the name Mary Mitchel], which of course was my Dadâs horror movie that he made as a young man. And we used to watch horror movies. So when I think of that genre, I think of films, and again, particularly the canon of Universal Movie Monsters.
I became very interested in makeup when I was a kid, theatrical makeup. And so Jack Pierce is sort of a hero to people who love that kind of thing, you know the Famous Monsters of Filmland [magazine]. Thereâs a lot of fan activity. Thereâs a guy named Forrest Ackerman, who I had the pleasure of meeting, and he had a wonderful selection of horror memorabilia, and heâs very generous to let me do tours of his home. In fact, I think he has the ring, Draculaâs ring from the film and had a lot of King Kong armatures, a lot of great stuff.
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Bram Stokerâs Dracula and the Seduction of Old School Movie Magic
By David Crow
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By Jack Beresford
⌠I think of the horror movies, and especially this particular friend, Jeff Patton, who introduced me to all that. In terms of literature, reading, itâs not really the same, but the Grimmsâ Fairy Tales are something that I had a selection of. I used to read those, and of course, theyâre very outrageously kind of gruesome and kind of shocking and horror-esque. So thatâs kind of what I think of when I think of horror in reading and films.â
Sean Pertwee
Star of Dog Soldiers, Event Horizon, Doomsday
âI was sort of obsessed with ghosts. With my father being an actor, we stayed many times in lots of different places, wherever he was filming we used to rent and I had a few experiences myself. My mom absolutely doesnât believe in ghosts, but she has had the most horrendous experiences of anyone being a non-believer. I, on the other hand, do and I had quite a few experiences. Coal thrown at us, bouncing balls, all the clicheâ stuff really.
With my cousin, we used to tune in when we were very little because there were only three channels in this country at the time. We used to tune in to the television and listen to Ingrid Pitt, Christopher Lee, and all these wonderful people. All the Hammer House of Horror movies, we used to tune in and listen to them on the radio to freak ourselves out when we were little. But I always loved it. Village of the Damned, all those kinds of movies, I loved that style of movie making.âÂ
Brannon Braga
Director Books of Blood
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âI think the first movie I saw in the theater as a kid, which was probably ill-advised, was Tales from the Crypt. The 1972 one. More memorably, seeing John Carpenterâs Halloween at age 12 was very similar to the Psycho experience that Clive [Barker] described, in that the audience was going berserk like Iâve never seen an audience do. In fact, you can go to YouTube. Somebody tape recorded an audience reaction in 1978 to the last three minutes of Halloween. You have to listen to it, because itâs an old movie now. But at the time, people are going crazy from the suspense. It was the filmmaking. I wanted to make movies like this.â
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