#but seriously 2023 was one of the most challenging and life changing years of my life

[james-p-sullivan]

im very grateful for my mutuals and followers alike and all the people ive met on here, i wish you all love and prosperity in 2024

and a kitten, you deserve it champ

[nattaphum]

MILE PHAKPHUM BEHIND THE SCENES OF HIS SUCCESS WITH BOF 500 IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ELLE MEN.

KANOKPORN C.

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

UPDATE US ON YOUR LIFE, YOUR WORK AND YOUR INTERESTS.

Mile: Now i’m an actor of Be On Cloud. As for what i’m interested in now, I would like to have more time for music. In the past, fans may have seen me playing some music and making some songs. I stopped doing it 5-6 years ago, so I would like to revive that because music is what i love the most. Music is charming. Music is a friend. When we’re happy, it can stay with us, when we are suffering, it can stay with us. But most importantly, music allows us to capture various moments. This is the coolness of music. Let’s suppose we listen to something. And we may think of someone, think of some moments of life, it's nostalgia. Some people or some moments can be recorded through music so each person has different memories.

TELL US THE ATMOSPHERE AND IMPRESSION OF GOING TO THE BOF AWARD CEREMONY.

Mile: the atmosphere is that everything was fast. And we didn’t stay very long, just 3 hours. At first, I was excited before going but I didn’t create a picture in my head. I like to do this, i like to challenge myself to face whatever is presented in front of me. I didn’t create a picture in my head and that’s a technique to manage the excitement. We went there to enjoy ourselves. That night was a very fun night. Some people may plan to do 1 2 3 4 but that day I didn't think of anything. When I arrived to the event, i just let myself go. It was fun. And then I met people I didn't expect to meet and i liked them very much.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE THE FIRST TWO THAI ACTORS ON THE BOF 500 CLASS OF 2023 LIST?

Mile: I was glad to know I made it into BoF. When we knew the details and found out that it was for both of us, we really felt that our work or the way I and Apo present ourselves was understood. The important thing is that our team 'Be On Cloud' has grown to the world. It feels that we’re growing step by step. To be honest, I appreciate being 1 in 500 of BoF, but i will not be excited nor i will be bragging about this because i know that way ahead, there is still room for improvement. But thanks to everyone.

WHAT DID GETTING TO DO A WORLD TOUR GIVE YOU? AND WHICH TOUR IS THE MOST IMPRESSIVE?

Mile: it gives you that type of experience that money could never buy. It’s experience in the fashion like we said earlier, or the world tour going to play concerts. Going to the World Tour, we were able to see the energy of all the fans. Each person is not the same. Touring allows us to meet groups of fans from many countries. Sometimes we had some technique problems. We were impressed because it made us realize that errors can happen all the time, even if it is a very big stage with a strong team behind.

IF YOU HAVE TO BUY A WATCH,HOW DO YOU CHOOSE IT?

Mile: First of all, it has to be “love at first sight' inside of me. It doesn't matter what type of watch but I have to love it, there must be a certain bond. I choose watches using my feelings. It looks a bit like i’m flirting with the watches (smiles). Secondly, it has to be a rare watch. Rare, the word 'rare' is my weakness. Some watches I liked a lot, that were not rare, I didn’t buy them.

HOW DO YOU MANAGE YOURSELF WHEN EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS MESSY OR SOMETHING IS NOT AS YOU LIKE?

Mile: Seriously, I will treat my emotions by, playing music, exercising, or doing anything that feels comfortable. I’ll do anything that distracts me from the reason why i’m suffering. I’ll change the interest, change the atmosphere, i’ll take myself out of there and for a while, i will have an overlap of ideas. And then i’ll finally deal with the idea that it’s bothering me. I retreat myself of one step to look at the problem in a second moment.

AT WHAT AGE DO YOU LIKE YOURSELF THE MOST? 10, 20 OR NOW THAT YOU’RE STARTING TAPPING THE NUMBER 3?

Mile: I think the number 2 is the period that I have tried everything i wanted to do. The number 2 is a period that i like. But it's a period where i learned a lot. Actually, i didn’t need to be responsible for things or the results that came from my decisions. If anything that you do, does not affect anyone, you can try it all. So you don’t have to be very careful. But i’m not sure… I may answer the number 3 but I just entered the number 3 and i’m gonna be here for a long time.

THINKING OF THE FUTURE, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO INVEST IN, TO MAKE YOUR OWN VALUE?

Mile: First of all is knowledge. But if it is an investment related to myself, I want to invest in real estate. I think the property has the highest potential.

NOW THE SPOTLIGHT SHINES BRIGHTLY ON YOU. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR THE DAY THE LIGHT WILL NOT SHINE ON YOU ANYMORE?

Mile: It's good to change the atmosphere (smiles). It’s what I learned when I had a lot of problems. It was in my 20s. At that time, i have experimented a lot. Because there were a lot of problems, both that i created myself and not. It made me learn one thing, which is important. Life is uncertain. Therefore, if we do anything, one day it will change. It’s the nature of this world. We must be born and get extinguished. When we understand this concept, when things get worse, we can manage ourselves.

EXPRESS THE FEELING OF WORKING WITH FRANCK MULLER AND ELLE MEN

Mile: I'm very happy. I like the watches very much. And I feel that shooting for a watch is something that i wanted to do for a long time. As for Franck Muller, I already knew the brand and i was interested. Because their watches have a unique character. The more I see this collection, the more i think it is very outstanding.

WHY DO FANS LOVE YOU SO MUCH?

Mile: I think because I'm not far from being myself. It's impossible for us to be ourselves 100%, no matter what industry we are in. But we should be honest with what we feel as much as possible. Both behind the screen and on the screen. And I think I am a person who understands people and that includes understanding myself.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY TO THE FANS BEFORE LEAVING?

Mile: I want to thank them again. Because I'm not sure if every time i say thank you, everyone receives that message. Because fans are not just in Thailand, not just in Asia. There is South America. There is a lot of Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. Because the popularity of Asia has expanded a lot. Therefore, what i mean is fans around the world. So I want to thank anyone who came to read this. Fans treated us well from the first day until today. 99% cute as before. Thank you to everyone. They’re part of our happiness. We are happy and happy to be part of their happiness.

[diezmil10000]

2023 art summary + thoughts on my own art progress under the cut!!

(template by HedgeCatDragonix on deviantart)

so i've been doing this for 10 years :P

i'm not posting these pics in high quality, they're somewhere on the internet if you want to scavange for a bit. i didn't start taking art seriously until late 2015 and i honestly don't like looking back at old drawings. i still like my 2022 art summary but it wasn't until this year that i'm proud of all my finished artworks.

my art journey is complicated. i'm not one of those artists who can say they've been drawing for all their lifes. i used to trace pokémon in my school agendas but that was it. around 2013, a couple of friends invited me to their Skype server where we used to draw each other's ocs and make art memes and stuff - it was fun and cringe in the most positive way i can say it :] i didn't know shit about art and i took pride in drawing on MS Paint with a mouse just because it was hard.

(all of my drawings until may 2018 were made with a mouse)

when i was 15 yo i got into Love Live! and i decided to get better at art because i didn't want lesbian fanart to be made only by creepy cishet men. at some point i watched this video from Sycra and it rewired my brain. i understood that i needed to actually practise and understand what i was doing, and that i wasn't going to improve just by observing. its follow-up video also helped me a lot, i remember watching it on the day it was posted jskhfdjdfd.

and so fast forward until 2021 approx. i spent all of those years practising drawing in my traditional sketchbooks, so my improvement was steady. the only problem, and in retrospective i see it as a Big Problem, is that i was grinding mindlessly. by that i mean that i copied artists i liked and i drew again and again stuff i was bad at, but i didn't think too deeply about it or analysed my own art to look for faster ways to improve it. i also don't take feedback well so i didn't ask for it either, which further slowed down my progress.

on top of it, that just made me better at drawing, not at illustration. i firmly believe that a good drawing is hard to ruin but i could have made my illustrations way more interesting if i had started going wild with colors and effects way earlier. i don't exactly regret my choices because at the end of the day it's just my hobby, and i've been praised for drawing a lot and for challenging myself to practise drawing traditionally, so i want this to be read as introspection rather than complaints!!

the reason why 2021 was a big change in my art is because in november i did this monstrosity:

i got an Android tablet to be able to draw in class and took the challenge alongside my friend Nico, who also did their own Huevember. hola si estás leyendo esto Nico, aunque lo dudo :) i can't say that any of the drawings made me better at anatomy, or composition, or colors. i can't say that they solidified my knowledge, either. but they planted a seed in my brain that would fully bloom in late 2022, which is the seed of hating the finished result of some pieces so much that i forced myself to improve.

everyone has their own motivation to get better at art and i've always thought that mine was a healthy one (i want to draw more lesbians, that's all). however, i've had a very solid 2023 and now i don't cringe at any of my pieces, plus i can notice any mistakes they have without wanting to delete them from existence - and i could only get there because at the end of 2022 i told myself i wouldn't make any more ugly illustrations. like, period. i didn't want to get anxious every time i had to look back on my own art.

i also learned that no ammount of compliments from others would magically make me like a piece i see as mid at best. of course, i appreciate every single nice comment i get (genuinely, i get very happy knowing that other people love my work), but gratitude doesn't fix a skill issue.

so, late 2022, many things happened. first i got cancelled on twitter over a drawing of my beloved mizuki from project sekai (this info will be relevant later). then i spent a whole month doing this other monstrosity that is to this day the best thing i've ever done. i haven't peaked it (yet):

this comic actually made me improve and solidify my skills. it wasn't a class assignment, or a collaboration, or anything more than a headcanon i shared with a friend - it was pure brainrot over Revue Starlight and it made me put all my cunt into it. this was also the point at which i started filling in blacks with the bucket tool instead of picking a very dark color, which is a big part of my current style :3

the thing about people cancelling me is that i had to distance myself from fandoms and eventually change accunts, which also affected how i perceived my own art. even if i draw for myself, at the end of the day i still draw characters that are loved by many people, so i disabled comments and stopped interacting with other artists of my fandom circles. that led me to go on hiatus at the start of 2023, knowing that it was time for a fresh start (my art accounts were 5 years old anyway).

that period of time made me think a lot about my finished pieces. since i wouldn't post them until i had a new account, i would stare at them for longer than ever or make small changes even if days had already passed. letting my mind rest from illustrations i had been working on and knowing i could change them whenever i wanted was a big step forward.

i realised that for the past years i had been in a hurry to post my drawings as soon as i was done with them instead of appreciating them. that was a turning point for my mindset. this was also past the time i decided to stop making ugly art, but i hadn't really taken any measures to get better. so i changed the wording of the challenge: i can make ugly art but i can't post it if i don't like it.

it doesn't sound epic, but for some reason it worked. every time i was in the middle of making a drawing that looked kind of ugly, i changed it until it looked right. not perfect, but good enough to avoid cringing in the future. some times i had to redraw it from scratch with a more interesting pose. some times i needed to add a background or a graphic element to make the characters pop. and somewhere on that period, i went wild with colors and effects, and a lot of times that saved a piece that would otherwise be boring.

i have to thank Revolutionary Girl Utena and Revue Starlight for making me experiment a lot during my hiatus. both pieces of media, one being the daugher of the other, give artists so many visual metaphors and interesting topics to work with. the revstar brainrot had been there since the junnana comic, but rgu was something i had been meaning to rewatch for a couple of years and it hit me like a fucking train. it also made me create one of the comics i'm the most proud about:

then i got into homestuck and my art got. well. stuck!! >D< but it was okay because i wasn't making ugly drawings anymore. i was putting into practise a lot of things i had been learning or experimenting with, especially regarding colors and character interactions. and the yuri was delicious hmmmmmmm.

the rest of 2023 was very linear in terms of art but not so much in terms of fandoms (?). which is fine, honestly, but i was also glad to get back into Fire Emblem: Three Houses in late that year because when i first got into it in 2019 i didn't have the skill to draw everything i wanted to draw. and i still haven't drawn all the yuri scenarios that i've been cooking in my mind, but i have until forever to do it!!

so for 2024 i want to study some stuff i feel i'm still lacking in. i think i've always had a good eye for composition, but i've never actually pushed it in my finished illustrations - they depend a lot on the poses because i've always been prioritising drawing over everything else. that needs to change this year.

i also want to get better at drawing characters from extreme angles. i've always felt like my poses are a bit flat and i think i can study photos taken with wide angle lenses to improve at that.

and of course i still want to draw faster, which is something i've always struggled with. i think i have a good rhythm of "producing" art (excuse me for the poor wording), but i'm still too slow for the kind of artstyle i want to achieve, which includes having a looser lineart and less details in irrelevant areas of the drawings. i think that overdoing the lineart actually hurts my illustrations, because everything ends up pulling the viewer's attention with the same energy. i also think messy artstyles are neat.

i promise i'm not crazy and i don't hate what i do. in fact, it's precisely because this year i managed to make some pieces with that kind of feel that i know where i want to aim. special mention to the junnana comic because i haven't been able to replicate that lineart ever since.

examples:

as for the stuff i like about my current artstyle, i definitely want to keep the way i color!! and by that i mean the method i have for applying filters that make my colors pop. i could maybe play more with textures too.

i also like the way i depict intimacy, and people have praised it too. thank you for noticing. it's the yearning that's doing it, not me. but i don't think i'll ever change the content (?) of my art, i eat breathe and speak in yuri. if anything, there are still some ways of conveying feelings that i haven't been able to draw because i lack the skill to do so, but i'll keep trying ;)

i honestly didn't expect this post to be this long. i've been writing for hours now and i'm not sure my thoughts are coherent for anyone that isn't me. i also can't grasp the idea that some people know me from fanart i did in 2016 while others started following me last month, time is wild and it's an extra dimension of complexity that i don't know how to account for when i write stuff like this.

but again, as i do with art, i've written this for myself. it's been nice to put my thoughts in order. i think i've only talked about art in depth with like 5 people and it's always been in casual conversation. no creo que estéis leyendo pero Nahia y Henar os amo y he aprendido mucho de vosotras.

thank you for reading until the end if you have. i hope you have not only a nice day but a nice year. let's meet again in the future.

[cupcake-torture]

Things people (and canon) seem to forget about Captain America (Steve Rogers) (an old ass man)

Facts

• Dude was born in 1918

• Time alive (not including ice bucket challenge) = 1918-1943 [INSERT 68 YEAR GAP] 2011-2023

What he missed

• The atom bomb

• The cold war

• Civil rights movement

• Anything space travel

• Women's rights

• Lgbt rights

• Really anything to do with a computer and the internet

• Rise of neo-nazis

Based on this. He is like your grandfather's father. Imagine teaching that old bugger the new world WITHOUT him seeing its evolution.

Based on the list above he would (at least for a good long while after being out of the ice.)

Be racist

• Black and coloured people did not have rights when he was iced. Them having rights would at the VERY LEAST confuse the fuck outta him

• The N-word was commonly used before the civil rights movement. It was not known to be a bad thing to say. It was more a statement of fact.

• Also black people were not seen to really be PEOPLE during the time so take that as you will.

Be sexist

• Women didn't have rights at this time. Sure they had more than black people but at the time when Steve got iced they were still fighting for the right to vote.

• It would be almost natural for Steve to not take women seriously. (Although I imagine Peggy took some of this out of him, but we're being realistic).

• He would also probably be very Victorian man being shown an ankle about how women can dress today. (God imagine him seeing a bikini for the first time)

• He also wasn't around for the lobotomy so I like to imagine him being fucking repulsed about the medical negligence and endangerment of American lobotomies (shokingly European ones weren't as bad. I REPEAT: WERENT *AS BAD*)

be homophobic

gay people didn't really 'exist' at this point in time so I doubt steve would be all the knowledgeable in all of it

that is to say, he is Christian, being gay is quite openly a sin in most Christian interpretations, and my boy wants to do right by God.

he also wouldn't get all this gender stuff. it was never a thing for him. at least 'queer' was a word when he was around.

be fucking useless with technology

I can clearly envision steve giving tony multiple aneurysms as he shows him his inevitably virus-filled computer ("HOW? HOW DO YOU HAVE MORE VIRUSES THAN ACTUAL PROGRAMS???" "but this man said he needed to fix my email...")

the most this man used was a typewriter (so he would be infinitely better at typing on a computer than a phone)

he also was iced before modern calculators, so he would have used an adding machine at most

yet again this man is 100 and missed most of technology being made. this is not his fault, but it will still happen.

not be all that book smart

so this guy would've been... *counts on fingers* 11 when the great depression hit. so maybe 5-6 years of schooling before he would have dropped out to work because great depression

also anything he learnt in school would probably be false by now (even maths has changed since then)

I am NOT saying he's not smart. i know he's smart with military stuff and all that, but he's more a wisdom guy than an intelligence guy y'know?

would not swear

swearing wasn't really a thing in the '20s - '30s so yeah...

he would have some weird ass slang tho, and I do not doubt that tony would give him all the shit for it

(from knowledge acquired by reading the great gatsby) he would use the words probably, but more literal (like 'bitch' for female dog)

honestly be shamed for america allowing nazis to continue to exist

half of dude's life in the military was punching hitler. i think this would be pretty self-explanatory.

i think he would like how germany goes about having it all be against the law tho. he'd support that 100%.

I WANT TO SAY THIS JUST IN CASE ANYONE MISUNDERSTOOD ME. i do not believe that steve would be a bad person on purpose. he is simply a product of his time. i thoroughly believe that when pointed out, he would do his best to become better, to learn more, and to be accepting. what I am saying is that it will take time, and many trip ups, and honestly, I think that would have been a really cool thing to bring up about how much culture has changes in less than 100 years. the MCU really only brought up the technological differences and I think it would have been cool to explore this. (I am aware some things can't happen because slurs are age restricted, but still, cool concept.)

anyways, if you got this far, thanks for reading this unintentional essay. have a nice day.

[athousandbyeol]

discussion #4 (only friends): only friends cast as the seven deadly sins [part 1]

the wait is over. the official trailer of the most awaited series of 2023 was out a few hours ago, causing mayhem everywhere and anywhere (as it should).

the trailer started off strong with mew narrating the story and is covered in blue (i'm speculating this will be his and namchueam's colour judging from this post. and do notice that ray and boston are also in the same colour: white. but my theory is ray's colour will be green and boston will be red (we can see it in the official trailer. green wallpaper in ray's room. boston in the red room. i might extend this observation once the drama airs). but in this post, i won't go into details about the colour theory.

in this discussion, i'll highlight the possibility of the only friends characters as the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. the first part will cover mew, top, ray and san.

side note: this is just from my close observation of the official and mock trailers. also, since we don't get much of namchueam's story, there's bound to be an error in my judgement.

as always, please take this discussion with a grain of salt. :)

mew | sloth

sloth, in the context of the seven deadly sins, is commonly defined as laziness. however, the legitimacy of this being a sin isn't clarified and credited to an extreme extent. yet, it's still considered a sin. but in the hierarchy of deadly sins, sloth is ranked seven; the last. this somehow indicates sloth or laziness isn't as blasphemous as the other six.

in my perspective, mew is a sloth because:

exhibit #1: his solitude

in the mock trailer, mew is introduced as a studious student who has no time to date. he doesn't think it's necessary to get laid or be in a relationship while studying.

he's comfortable being single. mew isn't ready to commit because it isn't in his goals. he wants to study and earn that degree. craft a successful future afterwards. that's it. the fun in his dictionary is different from ray and boston.

i view this as laziness because mew is hesitant to change. he doesn't like/want to entertain the idea of meeting new people or hooking up with anyone (he's against one-night stands) probably because it challenges his morality. therefore, mew's reluctance in changing is a form of laziness— or reticence to differences.

exhibit #2: his (innocent) virtues

i like the parallel between mew in the mock trailer and the official trailer. he's still nerdy. he still takes his degree seriously (i hope?). and because of his meticulous/introverted personality, he has many visions.

it has to do with him being a top student in class for him to set goals and have a list of things he likes/wants in life/lover.

interestingly, in the official trailer, mew lays down three characteristics of a lover that he wants:

respectful

friendly/easy-going/adaptive

honest

as i've mentioned, mew sticks to his probity like glue. he's the kind of person who isn't fond of rule-breaking. and i've included in my previous discussion that mew (initially) isn't open to change.

why is this lazy? in persistence, there's also adamance. i believe mew's stubbornness to stick to his beliefs/virtues makes him 'lazy' to open up to new horizons. he sees only the four walls surrounding him but not the bigger picture, what's outside of this box.

he will after he discovers top's dishonesty, though.

exhibit #3: getting help from others

it's known by everyone that boston introduces top to mew. it's out of pity and disbelief because boston really can't accept that mew has never slept with anyone in four years? to boston, that's the craziest thing he has ever heard (well, boston, not everyone is like you so—)

receiving help from others can be seen as lazy because as someone who's at the receiving end, no effort is required. it's already served to them on a plate. and what should they do when someone gives? they take. and that's what mew did. he took top from boston without much thought.

side note: honestly, for a smart guy like mew, i can't believe he just let this happen to him. (are you ok, sweetie? did you think it was a good idea? coming from boston of all people?)

i see mew fitting 'sloth' the best because of his obliviousness, reluctance, kindness and innocence. his laziness in making a better judgement of his friends, his relationship with top and their hidden agenda is his deadliest sin. he perceives everything with rose-tinted glasses and innocence that aren't meant for this cruel world.

but contrary to the other six, mew's sin will change him for the better.

top | pride

when i look at top, i can't think of anything else but pride.

he's prideful. he knows he has control over boston. he thinks he has mew wrapped around his fingers (i'm sorry to break it to you, top, it's the opposite).

but why? what makes top so arrogant?

exhibit #1: boston's unwavering desire

boston: a sense of ownership

boston feeds most of top's pride. in my topmew colour theory, i've dived into top's personality (top being on the dark spectrum) and concluded he's a multi-layered persona that's only filled with insecurities and sadness. but he hides them well because he has a mask he can wear; it's boston.

top and boston share this parasitic relationship where they steal/render nutrients from each other (in this case, their perception of true love, healthy relationships, honesty and trust). it's not love per se— it's just them knowing they can always turn to each other to get what they think they can't get from their respective love interest/friend with benefit (mew and nick). their relationship is based on toxicity and ownership. and this ownership drives top to believe he'll always win. nothing can faze him. he won't crumble because of love (little did he know... poor top).

exhibit #2: the presence of mew

mew: a sense of true love

mew feeds top's pride differently. mew provides top with love, happiness and fear.

love: mew teaches top how to properly fall in love. not only for the sex. not only for the kisses and hugs. mew teaches top that love isn't who belongs to who— love is two people that belong to each other. no rankings whatsoever. mew teaches top that love is equal and one plus one makes two— two different people can come together and fall in love. as simple as that. despite the differences, they can work it out.

happiness: mew makes top happy by asking him out on dates, and doing the most boring, casual and mundane stuff together, like other couples do. something normal. something simple. nothing scandalous. just those dates from the cheesiest lakorns. but the simplest things always provide the most happiness. mew helps top appreciate the simplicity in life.

side note: do notice that most of topmew dates are mostly in the daylight while topboston's sex escapades are at night. it shows that mew brings light (happiness/positivity) into top's life. so when top discovers this light, he becomes obsessed. he genuinely falls for mew. it'll be difficult for top to let mew go.

fear: losing mew is top's biggest fear. he doesn't want mew to extract himself from his world. because he's so used to having mew by his side, that bright and sunny mew, top can't sink into the darkness again (his relationship with boston). he can't bring himself to accept the fact one day mew will know of his shenanigans and mew can't handle that because who will? who can ever be okay with your lover fucking your best friend behind your back?

boston enhances top's pride as he feels valid and needed. but mew diminishes top's pride as he loses self-control and independence.

so, who hurts top's pride the most? it's definitely mew.

ray | gluttony

in my opinion, ray and san are similar. i see ray as 'gluttony' and san as 'greed'. the connotation of these two sins is somewhat identical, but ray is gluttonous because of his indecisiveness. why?

exhibit #1: his one-sided love for mew

in both trailers, there are still hints of ray harbouring romantic feelings for mew. it's more apparent in the mock trailer. however, the raw jealousy and dissatisfaction are more evident in the official trailer (which affirms my assumption of ray as 'gluttony').

ray knows mew doesn't love him romantically. ray knows he can't be mew's special someone. and that hurts him really badly. it's the notion of knowing he doesn't stand a chance but there's always a slither of hope— ray is somewhat gullible in a sense. mew thinks of him as a good friend and nothing more. and ray can't accept that.

however, the problem ray faces is he can't quite forget about mew. perhaps it's the curiosity that irks him still, why can't mew love me? what does top have that i don't?

so he makes himself available for mew—

supports mew by confronting boston (in the mock trailer) and top (in the bts picture)—

—thinking he has a chance. but he doesn't.

he still wants to be someone important in mew's life. he still wants to be in mew's life. if he can't have mew as his lover, then he'll just be a friend to mew. that's enough to feed his 'hunger' to be valid in mew's world, to exist in mew's universe.

exhibit #2: confuses himself in wanting san for lust or stability

when mew can't love and satisfy ray's hunger for a stable relationship, he seeks companionship in san.

the mind-boggling thing about ray and san's dynamic is both of them know they want each other from the get-go. the spark is there and it's waiting to blaze. but ray doesn't know if he ever wants to let mew go. he thinks he can't. he's so used to wanting mew more than anything. the concept of getting something aside from mew messes his brain.

yet, the moment san came into his life, ready to fill the holes in ray's heart and love him with all his soul, ray is overwhelmed. he's afraid.

why? i believe gluttony has a close relationship with fear and pride. when we're hungry, we think you can eat more than we can chew. so we don't stop taking— because we believe we can finish them all. but when we're full and there are still so many on our plate, it's either we throw them away or leave them aside (i'm sorry if this metaphor doesn't make sense...)

he takes so much from san because he doesn't get anything from mew. but when san gives a portion of himself and takes a fragment of ray, it confuses him— it scares him.

san makes him full, but ray doesn't know if he can ever be satisfied without mew— like having an incomplete meal. veggies— yes. protein— check. rice— empty.

san | greed

as i've discussed, san is ray's reflection. they mirror each other's positives and negatives.

san portrays greed by wanting something stable— something certain— a label— with ray. i have an inkling that ray has set things straight the first time they met— he only wants company. this isn't something romantic or forever. this is just a one-night thing. no hard feelings, yes?

and san honestly has no right to be angry if ray can't give him that because san said himself—

so, why is he so worked up with ray? why is he so upset when he realises ray is using him for many purposes— the main reason being to feed his loneliness?

exhibit #1: friends should stay friends (san's insecurity)

i don't know if san deludes himself that ray is only his friend to avoid being heartbroken, but it's just puzzling to me at this point.

this speculation arises when top says this to san—

i wonder if top and san shared a history together. it might be them dating the same person (for example: san's past boyfriend broke up with him. and then top dated san's ex). or top and san were boyfriends in the past but things didn't work out (probably due to san's insecurity and top's dishonesty). [thanks to this user for pointing this out. i just added my own input in their discourse hehe.]

insecurity. i think this word speaks so much of san's personality. that's why he built those walls. he doesn't want to be at the broken end again. his greed, however, leads to temptation, and ray is one hell of an attractive guy, so san can't say no. he can't really ignore ray because of that— ray is just so tempting. he thinks ray can give him everything he wants— aren't they the same?

exhibit #2: san's dire need for stability and certainty

san resonates with ray. he might see the old him in ray. therefore, he wants to help ray out of that loophole. he doesn't want ray to self-destruct just because of a one-sided love when san knows ray deserves better— he deserves someone like san in his life.

as their relationship progresses, san notices the potential to shift this casual companionship into something sturdier. but sadly, ray doesn't think the same. and this hurts san the most because he believes ray feels it too— the kisses they shared, the time they spent together, the sex and everything— how can ray not feel it?

ray keeps pushing san away and it tears san into pieces. why can't ray succumb to temptation the way san falls for ray? why can't ray accept san for who he is and stop chasing after someone else? aren't both of them hungry for something similar— love?

next part: boston as envy, nick as lust and namchueam as wrath (?)

in the next part, i'll talk about boston, nick and a little bit of namchueam. i'll also conclude this discussion by rounding all seven characters as the seven deadly sins in the next post.

[side note: i just realised i can only put 30 photos per post. that's why I have to split this into two. hehe]

[1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (i) | 4 (ii) | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12]

[nikatyler]

𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟚

Time for a recap of the last twelve months! It's basically my tradition at this point. This year was a weird one. I'm not even gonna get into real life issues. It sure was something and I'm going into 2023 with no energy and zero expectations, lol. But with this mindset, I can only be pleasantly surprised, right? Or...the world will show me that when you think it can't get any worse, it will.

Anyway, simblr stuff! This is the year I started drifting away from tumblr. It makes me sad, but really, it just isn't the same as it was when I joined. The interaction is not what I wish to get so I'm simply moving to places where I feel like I'm actually heard and seen. Idk. I've tried a few times to "be the change I wanna see" but it's hard to change stuff around here. But oh well, to each their own. I'll probably stick around, even if I hang out more somewhere else and what you see are mostly queued posts. And, well, if twitter burns down, which I wouldn't be surprised if it did, you know I'll fully come back here. I love this hellsite. Genuinely. It makes me mad but I love it.

But I still love you guys. TS3 discord and a few other people who are not in that discord, I do seriously love you.

So, what was happening on this blog this year?

𝕛𝕒𝕟𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕪

I was still posting my previous BC! Well, I was finishing it. Vi became a parent and hadn't become a cheating jerk yet. 😅

𝕗𝕖𝕓𝕣𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕪

*this* is Vi's cheating jerk era. I still feel bad about how I resolved the whole thing, it was too rushed. I guess I was focusing more on the gameplay part and the NSB rules and less on whether their actions are logical? Prince shouldn't have come back to him, that's the hill I'll die on :D I know, I know, NSB rules and all, but he shouldn't have.

𝕞𝕒𝕣𝕔𝕙

We're slowly moving onto Bloom's very short generation, as well as gen 3 of my lepacy. It's Ginevra's time to shine, but first, we spent a lot of time with the winners of Axel and August's BC.

𝕒𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝

Bambi and Candy are born, as well as the BC babies. Loads of baby cuteness in April on this blog. Oh and Ross flourishes in his babysitter era. Well, he's always been a babysitter to his descendants, but I feel like this is where he 100 % accepts it 😂

𝕞𝕒𝕪

Gins' era truly starts now (why do I keep saying era in this recap lmao). I had a lot of fun playing in Twinbrook again and Ginevra and Lori were so great. <3

𝕛𝕦𝕟𝕖

Alongside my lepacy (hi Elias & other gen 4 babies), I started posting the pink gen of NSB and also, my 100 Baby Challenge! I still can't believe I actually did that, and that I completed it in like two months only. Wow. What. I mean, yeah, I hyperfocused on it, but still. How did I do that.

𝕛𝕦𝕝𝕪

Again, gen 3 of lepacy and gen 7 of NSB, not much to say here. As for playing, I mostly just played the baby challenge. Oh! And Maeve's BC, of course.

Ohh, and July was the month when I decided to dive into the wonderful sims community on twitter. Probably one of my best decisions this year as I made many great friends there...🥰🥰

𝕒𝕦𝕘𝕦𝕤𝕥

Gen 3 ends and Sawyer is ready to take over Bridgeport but he has to wait for a bit. Pastel enters the blog and her bonding with Ross is seriously one of my most favourite things. I didn't think of this at first when I was playing, it only came to me later when I was posting the generation, but he definitely grew fond of her because she reminds him of Sunset so much ;-;

𝕤𝕖𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣

Good news: Bambi and Atsuko get married. Bad news: Ross and Caleb break up. *sigh* There's so much to unpack with their breakup storyline. Yes it makes sense that they'd hit a few bumps on the road, yes it makes sense that some of them would be bad, but...deep down, the breakup only happened because of my insecurities and lowkey being afraid of using a townie in my stories. At least I kinda got over that this fall (thank you twitter moots).

More good news: I'm finally posting the BC!!

𝕠𝕔𝕥𝕠𝕓𝕖𝕣

I finished posting the 100BC and...yeah this was Maeve's month. October was also very vampiric, but I'll probably mention that in a separate recap (if I do a separate recap haha), as this one only focuses on my regular daily content (legacies and such)

𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣

In November, we saw the funniest twist to ever happen in my BCs. Sorry River :D Aaand we also have the winner of Maeve's BC! I can't wait for you all to see them again in the legacy. Next year, hopefully.

𝕕𝕖𝕔𝕖𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣

Sawyer's time to shine has come. Well, not really, his siblings are constantly stealing it. Don't be surprised if he one day, you know, steals their organs and sells them.

Oh, and it's also TS3!Ross's time to shine. Because of course it is. I knew I needed to use his TS3 self somewhere, and all things considered, this felt like a perfect time for that.

December was also the month I started posting videos on youtube. I'm sorry if I'm annoying about that, but I just enjoy it so much. Never thought I'd say that. So, if you haven't yet, feel free to check it out (and subscribe maybe? 🥺). I'm hoping to do some fun stuff next year.

What's in store for 2023? I'll probably talk about that later, but to put it simply, I think this blog will be stuck with NSB and lepacy.

Thanks for sticking around with my grumpy self. Here's to a better 2023.

Happy new year, everyone!

[appleatcha]

I had a long winded thing typed and tumblr deleted it 😭 so here we go again !

I wanted to waffle a bit about the shift in tone/aura of my blog lately.

My blogs vibe has shifted a lot since its inception, but I had really gotten into this "positivity inclusive (read: anti-trad/anti-terf) housewife" thing in 2023. And in the months I spent focusing on that in my life I learned so much about gratitude and positive thinking that has truly fundamentally changed my mental health and how I see and experience the world around me. But it always felt like I was just ignoring a huge part of myself.

I would come on here and write about gratitude and positivity and subconsciously I feel like I postured myself as this elegent and soft spoken lady when thats....not me at all. I am an air-headed and ham-handed lady that either doesn't take something seriously or has panic attacks over how serious i believe something is. I am awkward and stiff and most importantly I am NOT a positive, perfect kind of person that I feel like my blog gave off. I am an anxious mess and have a tendency to be negative. Which is a big reason why I focused so much on positivity and gratitude, which again has really positively impacted me. Even with my anxiety and mental health struggles I am way less negative than I ever was before.

I've mentioned before, but the end of 2022 brought up some challenges for me that I had never encountered before and never thought I would encounter. And I feel like I really grabbed onto the whole positivity/gratitude shtick as a way of avoiding coping with that. But when my I had to resuscitate my husband last month along with a few other stressful things that were new experiences for me, I think it kind of "uno-reversed" the stress of late 2022 and I had a real "I've lost myself bit" introspection.

I've said it twice, but the complete focus on positivity and gratitude and my role as a wife and a mother helped me so much. So much in fact, that I spent some time struggling with the thought that I'd lost myself a bit. I had this thought of "well, this way of thinking and living has done me so good, why should I ease off the gas?". But in focusing so much on that side of me, I was neglecting the other side of me. I couldn't tell you how many times my husband would sit me down and say something to the effect of "Nivids, you're going too hard in the sauce. You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket" and I would write it off. And as usual, here i am realizing that he knew me better than myself all along yet again!

So I've been trying to let loose on here. I refused to post about my interests on here beyond "nature, appalachia, housewife, positivity, gratitude, and occasional witchery" because I didn't think my weird interests or humor could mesh well with it. But im trying to just not give a damn. This has also coupled with an effort to engage in my silly weird interests in my real world life as well.

My husband points out a lot that I don't let myself enjoy my own things. One thing about my husband is that he drops some harsh truths sometimes lol. One big one is that 99% of the situations i feel i CANT do something, i am just not letting myself do it. For example, if I lament that I haven't had a chance to watch a video I've been waiting to watch because my son has been watching his stuff on TV, he will say "you can tell him he's had his turn and watch your tv" and I think "wow, I guess I really did just want to feel powerless to validate my inaction huh". And I think I've been doing a lot of that self-regulation this year to cope with everything that's been going on.

All of that is to say, I am sorry if you followed me this year because you are a fellow housewife and enjoyed my peaceful, nature-centric positivity and are like WTF happened to this girl when I start posting Mary Reilly, Chris Fleming, and clown doll lmao

[ylimemariee]

Gonna start writing about my Health Progress.

Those who don’t know I’ve been at war with a stomach ulcer since April 27th and been diagnosed with arthritis in 2021 due to 3 years of physical and psychological trauma. Your body takes a toll no matter what you do. I was working in a facility around men who believed you had to prove yourself like a man to be respected and taken seriously. So I pushed all my limits and carried things people wouldn’t believe a 5ft short little girl could carry. There is security footage of those 3 years of my life either burned or stored legally where I can’t touch it. So many times I wish I could look back at myself now and get to experience that feeling of literally knowing what I went through was truly real. When dealing with a pathological narcissist, liar who was also bipolar. Who thought it was just ADHD so they take the wrong medication and that made them crazier.

So recovery has been a hell of a challenge and I’m wanting to document my journey cause my heads getting too full of it and my motivation to do something about it goes in like 8 different ways so here’s where I’m at today. A lot of my close friends who met me seeing me work like I did, watched me also torture myself. I also DIDN’T stretch at all. Ever…. Hahaha the first chiropractor I was with didn’t laugh with me when I said I don’t stretch cause he was like WHY IS YOUR X-RAY comparable to a 70 YEAR OLD??! Yeah, doctors don’t like me cause I don’t show up or I’m 35 min late every time cause I’m not used to seeing a doctor let alone….several. At my age it’s a little alarming.

You only got one life at 18 I chose to do the unthinkable and I wanted to experience everything, the world I was hidden from. Just wanting to be myself cause I’ve never fit in and never wanted to that was my thing. I’m a rare breed is what I tell others now. I don’t do labels I don’t need to fit in a inventory. I don’t follow the trends I don’t even like the word “trend” it’s the word that started the “trend” of separating people from another…dividing. I don’t do that, I do together.

So to speed things up to 2023, my body has been one hell of a nightmare to deal with. I have a scary pain tolerance and I’m used to valuing other things over my body so. When I think about I’ve betrayed my body for 5 years. Now, I stretch…cue the church bells…😂 Once I see the results for myself I do it more and I stop hurting so when your pain goes cause you know your doing the right thing so for me it’s easier to just stop and start new habits.

I like change, sometimes it’s hard for me to adapt but once I do I’m more then fine. I love new things. Adventures I wanna live my life the best I know how to and if I wanna do that I’m having to do all this work which includes A CRAP TON OF SUPPLEMENTS. Fruit, vegetables, vitamins, my energy drinks nowadays are Mangos. The vitamin C it provides not only cheers me up but gets me on my feet. I always seem to look fine or like I’m not sick. That part sucks cause people will start to accuse you of faking two very serious illnesses. Lol. How could someone do that, man you’d be surprised. I’ve seen people fake the most craziest stuff. One girl faked a limp walking by the board of directors…😂😂 she held on to the trash can like it was for dear life. They ignored her because people at factory’s sometimes forget one simple fact. THEY. DON’T. CARE.

They ain’t gonna waste any time on you when they’re about to bring in 2.3 million. Employees: ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU ARE REPLACEABLE.

MANAGERS: You and your employees are replaceable, take a deep breathe, they suck, I know but you let them go; you may get better ones in. Wait for the right one and pass your knowledge on so each employee is prepared for what’s about to take up their life. Spread knowledge/wisdom to the RIGHT ONE. Don’t waste it on someone who ain’t gonna take it seriously. Keep them happy but know you can do better. It’s an on going cycle. Value your peace over the burdens employees can throw on you. It gets heavy when you care also. Advice I was given. Job is a job don’t let it bring the survival out in you. If your not being treated right as a manager also, report it. Do something about it, they have rules and regulations that are set for a reason, use them. If it keeps you safe do it.

Now the last month I’ve been pushing myself a little extra to gain muscle. I don’t wanna be weak anymore I want my own strength to make the energy I have that has returned. My intense soreness has almost sent me home from the job I’m at now. I feel like alot of them don’t believe that I’m being legit when I’ve gotten close to collapsing MANY times. Like above, “they don’t care.” It sucks when they get to the point to where they are pushing people who are already down. Rotating people is so important in factory work. On a body stand point it would help less people get arthritis. Very normal for people to get arthritis in factory work. It’s why stretching is important. I stretch twice technically on a work day once at home and twice at work.

I’ll even stretch in the middle. Sitting helps, it’s been a weird routine for me but I’ve been seeing progress. Just today, sept 11th my upper thighs aching from the muscles healing has gone away. So I’m hoping my legs are on their way back being in shape but I have to stay consistent as much as I can. Now having a stomach ulcer all you can drink is water. Pretty much, so I have to go to the bathroom more then others. Cause I wanna make my money and work so I’ll drink water 247 if that means I’ll make it at work. If don’t follow all these insane steps, rubbing oils on is a major factor too. I have expensive oils that people with cancer take for pain. This is the only stuff that takes my pain away when I can’t take any regular pain medication. DDR prime by doTERRA has saved my life at this point.

So let’s hope that my muscles continue to heal up cause I won’t be as slow anymore.

Hope ya like reading. Lol.

Em

[illjillproductions]

The Power of Patience

“The journey of life is a long one, we might as well sit back and enjoy it.”

– Jill Oats

They say that good things come to those who wait. I would say that the good things that come are peace of mind and calm amidst turbulence. Patience is a virtue and it has evaded me for years. The fast-paced nature of modern society complicates the intricacies of patience. From the unspoken social norm of responding instantly to emails or messages to cursing under our breath when our internet is slow. In fear of sounding ancient, I remember when you had to gauge whether or not data was moving by putting your finger over the end of the green bar and waiting for it to pop out the other side. Now, I blink a little too long and can’t judge whether or not it’s been copied or moved because it was too quick.

As the wonderful human beings that we are, some facets of our society simply are just true. One interesting aspect is that we become more impatient the closer we get to the end of the wait. We are also more fond of quick hits and shorter waiting periods which was proven by a study asking whether or not someone would want $10 now or $15 a month later (Roberts, 2023). Yes, most of us would have just taken the $10 and gone on with our day but why? Well, it has a lot to do with our desire for closure and the sweet sweet hit of dopamine when we get it (Berridge, 2017). However, distractions deceive the brain and give us a taste of instant gratification. The issue comes when we can no longer concentrate, which doesn’t only make getting work done more difficult, but also affects how we achieve our goals. Not only that but also how we feel when we hit those milestones.

For one main reason, we rely on the magnitude of the reward received. You see, if we expect no reward but get one, no matter what it is, we’re genuinely pleased. However, when we get less than we thought there is nearly no reward chemical buzzed through our brain. Now, if we were to melt all of these factors together we can see exactly why we struggle with serenity. Thus, what we must do is band together and practice this seemingly intangible art of patience. For me, one of my best practices is to reframe the way I think and feel about the goal or waiting period. We all know that good things take time but we often feel uneasy when we’re unsure of how much time exactly. Regrettably, we can never truly know when that time or reward will come, and sticking to the mantra of “it will happen when it happens, all I can do now is keep pushing forward” is a helpful way of reframing the destination deadline. Additionally, we can take a look at this three-step plan to get us through the foot-tapping turmoil of impatience.

Step 1: Noticing The Discomfort of Impatience

Each of us reading these words has had the dreaded nightmare of missing deadlines, being late for work, or the more obscure versions including nudity or some kind of embarrassment. In addition, these feelings of impatience follow us into our busy work days and even hover over us at home. Often these feelings just become the norm and we live with the uneasy tension constantly ready for when the deadline drops. Unfortunately, this holds no benefit for any of us and instead, we should fill the free time we do have with feelings of fun and calm. Simply because this will make us more adept at getting done whatever needs to be done.

Thus, it is time to take mindfulness seriously and incorporate it into our lives. At first, the biggest challenge is remembering the practices and even practicing them. So, what we can do is set reminders on our phones, plan ahead, and get into a routine. Ultimately, we want to be better acquainted with any changes in our minds and bodies that could be doing quite a bit of harm when it comes to our behavior and thoughts which is also why we need to be mindful more often. Luckily, we have access to hundreds of short and simple mindfulness meditations on most streaming platforms such as YouTube, Spotify, and countless apps dedicated to mindfulness alone.

Because we don’t have time for me to drone on about mindfulness; we can rather discuss the signs and symptoms of impatience in order to help us identify when we’re experiencing it. Numero uno would be irritability and this one is sometimes hard for us to see but is noticed plain as day by those around us. It’s the moments we get fidgety or have this sense of impending doom even though we’re in our jammie-jams at home. Or the times we feel overwhelmed and on edge, our hearts are racing, and our minds go blank while we’re desperately trying to figure out what to do first. Sadly, when we find ourselves in this state we tend to act a bit more impulsively and end up doing things we normally wouldn’t like shouting at the kids or having bursts of road rage that could have been avoided.

Signs:

Step 2: Creating A Plan for Feelings Of Impatience

To-dos are unavoidable in life but the way we approach them and what we do in between them is entirely up to us. Firstly, however, we must accept that this is just the way the cookie crumbles, and life is jam-packed with things to keep our hands from sitting idle. Also, we have to understand that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing to do and that some things we just have no control over. This not only frees up some mental space but also allows us to spend time on the things we genuinely enjoy that may not be conventionally “productive”. And this is where we get to focus on the fun part of patience—playtime.

We may be old and we may be tired but life is too short to miss out on the sillier side of things. Plus, this helps us practice the mindful goal of taking things a little less seriously. After all, getting creative is a great way to improve our problem-solving, let go of stress, boost confidence, and forget a bit about the seriousness of life. But, don’t take my word for it alone and take a look at these statistics: two groups, one of working adults, and another of studying university students were put to the test to see if creativity really does make us feel happier overall. What the study found was that there was definite evidence to support the claim and all participants who got creative before stressful tasks felt better about themselves and their performance overall (Tan, 2021).

It should be said that getting creative is different for everyone and we just have to find what helps our imagination wander again. If we’ve been stuck in a creative rut for a while this may push us to do the more common creative activities such as painting or taking up sculpting. However, for a few this can be a rather laborious task and end up doing more damage than good. With that said, I would suggest trying to add creativity to aspects already a part of our lives. For example, we all have to eat and cooking is a great way to practice mindfully nourishing our minds and bodies. Plus, you get something tasty at the end of it.

Now, I know cooking may not be for everyone so picking up reading is also a wonderful way to get the brain focused on other materials but also to inspire us. You see, when we’re indulging in the words and thoughts of others we should try and be present. Thus, taking our minds off of the daily stressors we feel, improves our focus, memory, and gives us a taste of what creativity looks like. If words are not really your thing, perhaps you could try getting your hands dirty in the garden or by adopting a few house plants to improve the landscape of our homes. Ultimately, whenever we’re adding new objects to our environment our brain is lit up by the change and the natural beauty of plants is never a bad addition to any abode.

As a last note, we never know when impatience will hit and we should be prepared. For some, it could be returning to some meditative breathing, a quick jot down or scribbling in a journal, but there are also other options. If you have children or have close friends who do then you know the need for go-to activities to keep them entertained. And, even though we may not be as youthful as we once were we cannot give up on this practice altogether as we get on in years. The trick is to have a few activities close by to take our minds off of the wait and avoid ruminating on what cannot be done right now. This type of tool has a few names but we will refer to it as the self-soothe kit. In this kit, we can have a few items that help us get into a space of creativity or help us take focus away from the wait time.

We could pack things like a set of headphones, scented candles, stress balls, coloring-in equipment, a good book, origami paper, mini-puzzles, fidget toys, or whatever your creative heart desires.

Step 3: Be Kind To Yourself

The last step may seem a little out of sorts but I think we do forget that self-kindness means taking a few minutes to ourselves every day without guilt or fear. I would say that often we feel obliged to feel stressed or as if we could have done more because of the way the world revolves. We’re bombarded with images of people having unbelievable experiences, achieving things we thought impossible, and yet it feels as if we’re just trapped in the space we are right now. We feel unhappy, unsure, and most of all in a constant state of wait for a little rest, some peace of mind, and a long long holiday. However, we have to give these things to ourselves and make time for our own mental health and well-being.

So, with patience we can accept that right now I don’t feel great and I need a little bit of an escape so that I can come back feeling rested and ready. I wish you all well on this journey to appreciating that things take time and don’t forget to breathe, get creative, and take time out of your day to take care of you.

References:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506231209002

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5171207/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8305859/

https://www.mindtools.com/a4xvpkl/patience

[yngphn-x]

Update in Life

We are nearing towards the end of 2023, dang how 11 months just fly by super fast this year.

Truly, this year has been the most challenging by far - trying to cope mentally, changing careers, and everything in between. But ultimately, I did learn so much more about myself this year, having that mental clarity, not letting things affect me too much mentally. Sure, there are bad days but mostly just being able to cope with it better as compared to previous years where anxiety and depression just takes over without any control. I'm glad whatever happened, happened. It takes so much out of a person to 'evolve' and be a better version of themselves.

Fitness wise, definitely taking my health more seriously this year, dedicating my time to head to the gym to workout as well as fight my demons there. Which is definitely the best outlet, in my opinion. Having friends who are there for their fitness journey too helps motivate. And also looking at them gymshark apparels motivates too.

Financially, I'm still trying my best to manage my financials. Not the best, but surviving better I guess? Hoping that the months to come I'll cope it even better. To the point where I would just forget that I have money yknw. Just wanna get to that feeling.

Romantically, to be very frank, not the best but I'm not even looking for anything right now except for myself. Looking to get things stable in my life before actually getting in a romantic relationship with anyone. Technically, I do have someone in my life right now. Wasn't even looking for anyone, but he came into my life unexpectedly. We're both in our individual journey but it's nice to have each other's company and knowing that either one is there to support one another. Kinda love that feeling without having the pressure of being boyfriend/girlfriend. Hoping that this would be the last relationship before settling down.

Well, on that note, here's to life, to the coming months and years. Here's to 2024. May the coming year brings so much more joy, so much more financial stability & mental clarity. Let's do this!

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony’s Stupid Daily Blog (427): Thu 18th May 2023

To my amazement I managed to finish the whole of Mr Whites Confession in a single day. It’s an absolutely gripping read and I had no problem staying out for a good three hours to finish it in almost one sitting. As stated in a previous blog the book is about a man named White who has a poor memory so he catalogues his daily activities in his diary. When he is accused of commuting a murder he can’t say for sure that he didn’t. He is eventually found guilty and sentenced to life in prison but eventually grows to love prison life because he can be alone to document his thoughts. Cleverly they never state who the killer is (so I guess it could have been White) leaving the reader to decide who it was…if the identity forge killer even matters that is. This was a fucking fantastic book and more than makes up for Cimmaron Rose, the last shitty book in the series that I plowed through. I can’t even remember when I started my challenge to read all the books that have won the Edgar Award for Best Novel but it was when I was still working at the cafe so it’s been a good few years (I think it may have been the start of 2020). Back then I never could have imagined that I still wouldn’t be finished the thing by May 2023. The awards started in 1954 and Mr White’s Confession was released in 1999 meaning that the only books left to read are the 23 that have won the award this century. Normally I can’t finish a book in one sitting but because I’m that determined to finish this challenge I’m going to power through the remaining 23. On my days off I’ll just plonk my enormous arse in a comfortable chair and sit there until my eyes have devoured another detective / thriller novel. If the 46 books I’ve read as part of this challenge there have only been a half dozen or so I would label as truly brilliant. I’m hoping that changes and that the 23 I have left to read are all absolutely dynamite. Next up is “Bones” by Jan Burke so I ordered it off of Amazon and feverishly await its arrival. While looking on Twitter tonight I saw that the terms “3x3”, “Lee Mack” and “Inside No 9 were trending. I realized that I’d forgotten tonight was Inside No 9 night on BBC 2 and I would go on to regret his because Reece and Steve pulled off yet another one of their televisual pranks that you need to be watching live at the time to get the most out of. At the start of the episode the announcer said that there was a change to the schedule and started broadcasting 3x3 a new quiz format hosted by Lee Mack. I’m hindsight it’s pretty obvious that this was phoney because this quaint, simplistic little quiz is that sort of thing they’d put in at half five in the afternoon not ten at night. Regardless this was played completely seriously by Mack and the cast with. I thing to suggest that there was anything below the surface of this inoffensive little quiz. However the episode culminates with one of the contestants revealing that she’s telekinetic and the result of a laboratory experiment, conducted by her own abusive “mother” whose head she then males explode. Man I wish I had been watching this live. I really hope that there were some people who were completely unaware of what Inside No 9 is and just watched this episode after channel hopping for a bit and settling on this innocent looking quiz. The best thing is I suspect that this is the kind of episode that gets better upon multiple viewings when you’re looking for clues as to what’s going to happen. For example, this exchange between Mack, the telekinetic / psychic kid and her mother: Lee Mack: What do we do about Stephen? Catherine: (To Margaret) What do you think? Margaret: You know what I think This is why Reece & Steve are the best writers in the world. They dangle clues in front of you and you have no idea it's happening

[336863]

The past year has sort of felt like a giant mega whirlwind, and kind of split into two distinct portions - the first half almost completely immersed with work and detached mentally and physically from pretty much anything else, and the second half felt a lot like re-settling back here in Singapore and a new team at work. Writing it down here helped me realise that my year was defined very much by my professional life.. I guess this is inevitable going into a new role but it’s generally not how I’d like to live my life. And so heading into 2023, I think some realignment of my priorities and how I’d like to organise my life is needed. No doubt I’ll still take my work seriously, but a mental pivot is probably required to remind myself of the things that actually matter at the end of the day

2022 was easily one of the most challenging in my career. From picking up trading and completely struggling with it and still trying to figure it out to losing literal millions and then having to claw it up bit by bit... I’d like to think I’ve experienced the lows of this hedge fund life but am also pretty certain that it’s pretty far from the truth. 2021 developed sort of unexpectedly and its events set the stage for a 2022 that on hindsight, I was wholly unprepared for. But now that its all done, I definitely feel a greater sense of ease than in Jul-Sep and can feel some momentum building up on my end. Fingers crossed that I continue to lead this fortunate life and that I stay humble enough to be able to make my own luck as much as possible

I think my priorities in the upcoming year will revolve around C, family and friends and pursuing my hobbies even more. I’ve been unconsciously neglecting my family and hobbies a bit too much and it doesn't feel great. I will commit to bringing along my point-and-shoot around more frequently as well as putting more effort into planning more activities with my family

I also figure its about time I firm up plans on getting our own place with C and also to have a solid timeline on settling down - this probably entails plenty of things to do, so I definitely ought to have a solid plan by mid-2023 latest

One other thing I noticed from setting up by 2023 resolutions is that how little the key ideas changed from my 2021 list. I figured that its a sign of maturity where the things I’ve found to be important to have been relatively steady over these past several years. Not sure how long it will stay this way but I’d like to think pretty much so till at least I have a family of my own

Also I’ve completely dissociated from putting my thoughts here the minute I got back to the country. Not sure why no matter how many times I tell myself that chronicling my life here is infinitely useful, I can’t seem to keep the habit consistently over a longer period of time. I 100% need to be more intentional with this space

Well, here’s to another satisfying year of growth and contentment. 2023, please be good

[dornish-queen]

Pedro Pascal on Fame and ‘The Mandalorian’: ‘Can We Cut the S— and Talk About the Child?’

By Adam B. Vary

Photographs by Beau Grealy

When Pedro Pascal was roughly 4 years old, he and his family went to see the 1978 hit movie “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve. Pascal’s young parents had come to live in San Antonio after fleeing their native Chile during the rise of dictator Augusto Pinochet in the mid-1970s. Taking Pascal and his older sister to the movies — sometimes more than once a week — had become a kind of family ritual, a way to soak up as much American pop culture as possible.

At some point during this particular visit, Pascal needed to go to the bathroom, and his parents let him go by himself. “I didn’t really know how to read yet,” Pascal says with the same Cheshire grin that dazzled “Game of Thrones” fans during his run as the wily (and doomed) Oberyn Martel. “I did not find my way back to ‘Superman.'”

Instead, Pascal wandered into a different theater (he thinks it was showing the 1979 domestic drama “Kramer vs. Kramer,” but, again, he was 4). In his shock and bewilderment at being lost, he curled up into an open seat and fell asleep. When he woke up, the movie was over, the theater was empty, and his parents were standing over him. To his surprise, they seemed rather calm, but another detail sticks out even more.

“I know that they finished their movie,” he says, bending over in laughter. “My sister was trying to get a rise out of me by telling me, ‘This happened and that happened and then Superman did this and then, you know, the earthquake and spinning around the planet.'” In the face of such relentless sibling mockery, Pascal did the only logical thing: “I said, ‘All that happened in my movie too.'”

He had no way of knowing it at the time, of course, but some 40 years later, Pascal would in fact get the chance to star in a movie alongside a DC Comics superhero — not to mention battle Stormtroopers and, er, face off against the most formidable warrior in Westeros. After his breakout on “Game of Thrones,” he became an instant get-me-that-guy sensation, mostly as headstrong, taciturn men of action — from chasing drug traffickers in Colombia for three seasons on Netflix’s “Narcos” to squaring off against Denzel Washington in “The Equalizer 2.”

This year, though, Pascal finds himself poised for the kind of marquee career he’s spent a lifetime dreaming about. On Oct. 30, he’ll return for Season 2 as the title star of “The Mandalorian,” Lucasfilm’s light-speed hit “Star Wars” series for Disney Plus that earned 15 Emmy nominations, including best drama, in its first season. And then on Dec. 25 — COVID-19 depending — he’ll play the slippery comic book villain Maxwell Lord opposite Gal Gadot, Chris Pine and Kristen Wiig in “Wonder Woman 1984.”

The roles are at once wildly divergent and the best showcase yet for Pascal’s elastic talents. In “The Mandalorian,” he must hide his face — and, in some episodes, his whole body — in a performance that pushes minimalism and restraint to an almost ascetic ideal. In “Wonder Woman 1984,” by stark contrast, he is delivering the kind of big, broad bad-guy character that populated the 1980s popcorn spectaculars of his youth.

“I continually am so surprised when everybody pegs him as such a serious guy,” says “Wonder Woman 1984” director Patty Jenkins. “I have to say, Pedro is one of the most appealing people I have known. He instantly becomes someone that everybody invites over and you want to have around and you want to talk to.”

Talk with Pascal for just five minutes — even when he’s stuck in his car because he ran out of time running errands before his flight to make it to the set of a Nicolas Cage movie in Budapest — and you get an immediate sense of what Jenkins is talking about. Before our interview really starts, Pascal points out, via Zoom, that my dog is licking his nether regions in the background. “Don’t stop him!” he says with an almost naughty reproach. “Let him live his life!”

Over our three such conversations, it’s also clear that Pascal’s great good humor and charm have been at once ballast for a number of striking hardships, and a bulwark that makes his hard-won success a challenge for him to fully accept.

Before Pascal knew anything about “The Mandalorian,” its showrunner and executive producer Jon Favreau knew he wanted Pascal to star in it.

“He feels very much like a classic movie star in his charm and his delivery,” says Favreau. “And he’s somebody who takes his craft very seriously.” Favreau felt Pascal had the presence and skill essential to deliver a character — named Din Djarin, but mostly called Mando — who spends virtually every second of his time on screen wearing a helmet, part of the sacrosanct creed of the Mandalorian order.

Convincing any actor to hide their face for the run of a series can be as precarious as escaping a Sarlacc pit. To win Pascal over in their initial meeting, Favreau brought him behind the “Mandalorian” curtain, into a conference room papered with storyboards covering the arc of the first season. “When he walked in, it must have felt a little surreal,” Favreau says. “You know, most of your experiences as an actor, people are kicking the tires to see if it’s a good fit. But in this case, everything was locked and loaded.”

Needless to say, it worked. “I hope this doesn’t sound like me fashioning myself like I’m, you know, so smart, but I agreed to do this [show] because the impression I had when I had my first meeting was that this is the next big s—,” Pascal says with a laugh.

Favreau’s determination to cast Pascal, however, put the actor in a tricky situation: Pascal’s own commitments to make “Wonder Woman 1984” in London and to perform in a Broadway run of “King Lear” with Glenda Jackson barreled right into the production schedule for “The Mandalorian.” Some scenes on the show, and in at least one case a full episode, would need to lean on the anonymity of the title character more than anyone had quite planned, with two stunt performers — Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder — playing Mando on set and Pascal dubbing in the dialogue months later.

Pascal was already being asked to smother one of his best tools as an actor, extraordinarily uncommon for anyone shouldering the newest iteration of a global live-action franchise. (Imagine Robert Downey Jr. only playing Iron Man while wearing a mask — you can’t!) Now he had to hand over control of Mando’s body to other performers too. Some actors would have walked away. Pascal didn’t.

“If there were more than just a couple of pages of a one-on-one scene, I did feel uneasy about not, in some instances, being able to totally author that,” he says. “But it was so easy in such a sort of practical and unexciting way for it to be up to them. When you’re dealing with a franchise as large as this, you are such a passenger to however they’re going to carve it out. It’s just so specific. It’s ‘Star Wars.'” (For Season 2, Pascal says he was on the set far more, though he still sat out many of Mando’s stunts.)

“The Mandalorian” was indeed the next big s—, helping to catapult the launch of Disney Plus to 26.5 million subscribers in its first six weeks. With the “Star Wars” movies frozen in carbonite until 2023 (at least), I noted offhand that he’s now effectively the face of one of the biggest pop-culture franchises in the world. Pascal could barely suppress rolling his eyes.

“I mean, come on, there isn’t a face!” he says with a laugh that feels maybe a little forced. “If you want to say, ‘You’re the silhouette’ — which is also a team effort — then, yeah.” He pauses. “Can we just cut the s— and talk about the Child?”

Yes, of course, the Child — or, as the rest of the galaxy calls it, Baby Yoda. Pascal first saw the incandescently cute creature during his download of “Mandalorian” storyboards in that initial meeting with Favreau. “Literally, my eyes following left to right, up and down, and, boom, Baby Yoda close to the end of the first episode,” he says. “That was when I was like, ‘Oh, yep, that’s a winner!'”

Baby Yoda is undeniably the breakout star of “The Mandalorian,” inspiring infinite memes and apocryphal basketball game sightings. But the show wouldn’t work if audiences weren’t invested in Mando’s evolving emotional connection to the wee scene stealer, something Favreau says Pascal understood from the jump. “He’s tracking the arc of that relationship,” says the showrunner. “His insight has made us rethink moments over the course of the show.” (As with all things “Star Wars,” questions about specifics are deflected in deference to the all-powerful Galactic Order of Spoilers.)

Even if Pascal couldn’t always be inside Mando’s body, he never left the character’s head, always aware of how this orphaned bounty hunter who caroms from planet to planet would look askance at anything that felt too good (or too adorable) to be true.

“The transience is something that I’m incredibly familiar with, you know?” Pascal says. “Understanding the opportunity for complexity under all of the armor was not hard for me.”

When Pascal was 4 months old, his parents had to leave him and his sister with their aunt, so they could go into hiding to avoid capture during Pinochet’s crackdown against his opposition. After six months, they finally managed to climb the walls of the Venezuelan embassy during a shift change and claim asylum; from there, the family relocated, first to Denmark, then to San Antonio, where Pascal’s father got a job as a physician.

Pascal was too young to remember any of this, and for a healthy stretch of his childhood, his complicated Chilean heritage sat in parallel to his life in the U.S. — separate tracks, equally important, never quite intersecting. By the time Pascal was 8, his family was able to take regular trips back to Chile to visit with his 34 first cousins. But he doesn’t remember really talking about any of his time there all that much with his American friends.

“I remember at one point not even realizing that my parents had accents until a friend was like, ‘Why does your mom talk like that?'” Pascal says. “And I remember thinking, like what?”

Besides, he loved his life in San Antonio. His father took him and his sister to Spurs basketball games during the week if their homework was done. He hoodwinked his mother into letting him see “Poltergeist” at the local multiplex. He watched just about anything on cable; the HBO special of Whoopi Goldberg’s one-woman Broadway show knocked him flat. He remembers seeing Henry Thomas in “E.T.” and Christian Bale in “Empire of the Sun” and wishing ardently, urgently, I want to live those stories too.

Then his father got a job in Orange County, Calif. After Pascal finished the fifth grade, they moved there. It was a shock. “There were two really, really rough years,” he says. “A lot of bullying.”

His mother found him a nascent performing arts high school in the area, and Pascal burrowed even further into his obsessions, devouring any play or movie he could get his hands on. His senior year, a friend of his mother’s gave Pascal her ticket to a long two-part play running in downtown Los Angeles that her bad back couldn’t withstand. He got out of school early to drive there by himself. It was the pre-Broadway run of “Angels in America.”

“And it changed me,” he says with almost religious awe. “It changed me.”

After studying acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pascal booked a succession of solid gigs, like MTV’s “Undressed” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But the sudden death of his mother — who’d only just been permitted to move back to Chile a few years earlier — took the wind right from Pascal’s sails. He lost his agent, and his career stalled almost completely.

As a tribute to her, he decided to change his professional last name from Balmaceda, his father’s, to Pascal, his mother’s. “And also, because Americans had such a hard time pronouncing Balmaceda,” he says. “It was exhausting.”

Pascal even tried swapping out Pedro for Alexander (an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander,” one of the formative films of his youth). “I was willing to do absolutely anything to work more,” he says. “And that meant if people felt confused by who they were looking at in the casting room because his first name was Pedro, then I’ll change that. It didn’t work.”

It was a desperately lean time for Pascal. He booked an occasional “Law & Order” episode, but mostly he was pounding the pavement along with his other New York theater friends — like Oscar Isaac, who met Pascal doing an Off Broadway play. They became fast, lifelong friends, bonding over their shared passions and frustrations as actors.

“It’s gotten better, but at that point, it was so easy to be pigeonholed in very specific roles because we’re Latinos,” says Isaac. “It’s like, how many gang member roles am I going to be sent?” As with so many actors, the dream Pascal and Isaac shared to live the stories of their childhoods had been stripped down to its most basic utility. “The dream was to be able to pay rent,” says Isaac. “There wasn’t a strategy. We were just struggling. It was talking about how to do this thing that we both love but seems kind of insurmountable.”

As with so few actors, that dream was finally rekindled through sheer nerve and the luck of who you know, when another lifelong friend, actor Sarah Paulson, agreed to pass along Pascal’s audition for Oberyn Martell to her best friend Amanda Peet, who is married to “Game of Thrones” co-showrunner David Benioff.

“First of all, it was an iPhone selfie audition, which was unusual,” Benioff remembers over email. “And this wasn’t one of the new-fangled iPhones with the fancy cameras. It looked like s—; it was shot vertical; the whole thing was very amateurish. Except for the performance, which was intense and believable and just right.”

Before Pascal knew it, he found himself in Belfast, sitting inside the Great Hall of the Red Keep as one of the judges at Tyrion Lannister’s trial for the murder of King Joffrey. “I was between Charles Dance and Lena Headey, with a view of the entire f—ing set,” Pascal says, his eyes wide and astonished still at the memory. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t have an uncomfortable costume on. You know, I got to sit — and with this view.” He sighs. “It strangely aligned itself with the kind of thinking I was developing as a child that, at that point, I was convinced was not happening.”

And then it all started to happen.

In early 2018, while Pascal was in Hawaii preparing to make the Netflix thriller “Triple Frontier” — opposite his old friend Isaac — he got a call from the film’s producer Charles Roven, who told him Patty Jenkins wanted to meet with him in London to discuss a role in another film Roven was producing, “Wonder Woman 1984.”

“It was a f—ing offer,” Pascal says in an incredulous whisper. “I wasn’t really grasping that Patty wanted to talk to me about a part that I was going to play, not a part that I needed to get. I wasn’t able to totally accept that.”

Pascal had actually shot a TV pilot with Jenkins that wasn’t picked up, made right before his life-changing run on “Game of Thrones” aired. “I got to work with Patty for three days or something and then thought I’d never see her again,” he says. “I didn’t even know she remembered me from that.”

She did. “I worked with him, so I knew him,” she says. “I didn’t need him to prove anything for me. I just loved the idea of him, and I thought he would be kind of unexpected, because he doesn’t scream ‘villain.'”

In Jenkins’ vision, Max Lord — a longstanding DC Comics rogue who shares a particularly tangled history with Wonder Woman — is a slick, self-styled tycoon with a knack for manipulation and an undercurrent of genuine pathos. It was the kind of larger-than-life character Pascal had never been asked to tackle before, so he did something equally unorthodox: He transformed his script into a kind of pop-art scrapbook, filled with blown-up photocopies of Max Lord from the comic books that Pascal then manipulated through his lens on the character.

Even the few pages Pascal flashes to me over Zoom are quite revealing. One, featuring Max sporting a power suit and a smarmy grin, has several burned-out holes, including through the character’s eye. Another page features Max surrounded by text bubbles into which Pascal has written, over and over and over again in itty-bitty lettering, “You are a f—ing piece of s—.”

“I felt like I had wake myself up again in a big way,” he says. “This was just a practical way of, like, instead of going home tired and putting Netflix on, [I would] actually deal with this physical thing, doodle and think about it and run it.”

Jenkins is so bullish on Pascal’s performance that she thinks it could explode his career in the same way her 2003 film “Monster” forever changed how the industry saw Charlize Theron. “I would never cast him as just the stoic, quiet guy,” Jenkins says. “I almost think he’s unrecognizable from ‘Narcos’ to ‘Wonder Woman.’ Wouldn’t even know that was the same guy. But I think that may change.”

When people can see “Wonder Woman 1984” remains caught in the chaos the pandemic has wreaked on the industry; both Pascal and Jenkins are hopeful the Dec. 25 release date will stick, but neither is terribly sure it will. Perhaps it’s because of that uncertainty, perhaps it’s because he’s spent his life on the outside of a dream he’s now suddenly living, but Pascal does not share Jenkins’ optimism that his experience making “Wonder Woman 1984” will open doors to more opportunities like it.

“It will never happen again,” Pascal says, once more in that incredulous whisper. “It felt so special.”

After all he’s done in a few short years, why wouldn’t Pascal think more roles like this are on his horizon?

“I don’t know!” he finally says with a playful — and pointed — howl. “I’m protecting myself psychologically! It’s just all too good to be true! How dare I!”

[shotsbyshae]

Coin-Operated Boy

Warnings: Language

Words: 1.3k

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader

Summary: There’s a reason you don’t tell Steve about the project you’re working on for Tony.

Song: Coin-Operated Boy by The Dresden Dolls

A/N: This is just a short little Fun Friday one shot for my friend @sagechanoafterdark​ 2k followers challenge. Congrats!! Thank you for hosting this and giving me a change to use one my favorite songs and an idea that’s been in my head for a while now. 

I will never cry at night again.

2023

Insane.

That’s what most would call it.

Unethical.

Irresponsible.

The list could go on, but you like to call it something else.

Extraordinary.

You don’t take any of the credit.

After all, you only assisted in perfecting the technology.

Separately their projects had failed, but once you mentioned Leopold’s work in regard to the quantum brain theory, Tony was able to correct the flaws which had been the downfall of Ultron.

Thus, Project Gray was born and Stark carefully and secretively scanned every member of his team – with your help.

‘This is why we started the project.’

The saying became a mantra for you in the weeks following the battle as you worked endlessly in the makeshift lab which you’d converted your basement into. The extent of casualties could have been much more severe and none of you were ready for that.

The basement is quiet with the exception of your fingers methodically moving along the keyboard, running a series of diagnostics tests on the latest hardware update you’ve installed. You have a ballpoint pen dangling from your mouth, your tongue flicking it from one side to the other.

You’re so lost in thought that you don’t hear him come down the stairs, only feel the warmth from his hands as he squeezes your shoulders. Thumbs pressing against the knots there below your neck as you tilt your head back to look up at him.

“Hi,” you smile before lifting your head back to look at the screen before you.

“You’ve been spending more time down here than Tony does,” Steve responds as he moves to stand beside you, leaning back against your worktable.

“Well,” you smile turning your attention to him. “You know an assistant’s job is never done.”

“Especially if you’re Tony’s,” he remarks sarcastically, pulling the pen from your lips. “What does he have you working on now?”

“Same project,” you say, watching him toss the pen on top of some papers beside him. “Did you see Nat today?” He nods, looking curiously at the top piece of paper he just tossed the pen onto. “How is she?”

“Good,” he responds, not really paying attention anymore as he lifts the paper which now has his attention and holds it up for you to see. “What’s an old S.H.I.E.L.D. file have to do with Tony’s project?”

You stand up slowly, taking the paper from him and point at the name on the letterhead, “Friend of mine. He went to the academy and he’s helping me out on this project. He’s coming by actually to look at a few things for me.”

“Oh, he is?” Steve says it with a judgmental tone as you lay the paper back down.

“You sound jealous,” you smirk up at him as he pulls you closer.

“Only thing I’m jealous of is this project of yours,” he comments. “It gets more of your attention than I do.”

Leaning up you press a soft kiss to his lips before pulling away with a smile, “Just a little longer, I’m waiting on him to go over a few things – then I’m all yours.”

Steve’s hands cradle your face for a moment, “Promise?”

“Promise.”

He leans in, deepening the kiss you initiated as his tongue slips past your lips. His pure want – need – for you makes you weak and suddenly you’re forgetting why you needed more time.

The sound of someone clearing their throat from the stairs halts your mini make-out session and you both turn to see a man standing there.

“Sorry, I knocked, but no one answered,” he says, a Scottish tone in his voice. “The door was unlocked, I figured you were down here.”

“It’s fine Fitz,” you remark, patting Steve’s chest lovingly. “Steve, this is Leopold Fitz. My friend I was telling you about.” Fitz approaches awkwardly as you introduce them.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve says, offering his hand to the man.

“Captain Rogers,” Fitz greets, shaking his hand while looking at him curiously as Rogers eyes him suspiciously. “Nice to meet you.”

Steve only nods, “I’ll let you two get to work.” He turns and places a quick kiss on your temple before he heads back upstairs.

“So,” you glance over at the man across from you with a smile. “How are things?”

“I just found out I have a grandson,” he responds, almost jokingly. “He’s our age.”

You furrow your brow and shake your head, “Yea – no.”

“Agreed,” Fitz nods. “Seriously though, how’s the project coming along?”

“Good, I did diagnostics earlier,” you remark. “I really think this is it Fitz. I mean between you and Tony, the two of you – what you were able to accomplish.” The smile on your face is infectious and Fitz begins to smile too. “It’s incredible – I wish everyone could know.”

“So, you haven’t told Steve,” Fitz looks at you, concern in his eyes. “About what you did.”

‘Swapping Tony with a Life-Model Decoy of himself, fully equipped with memories, capable of showing emotion, feeling pain – yea, not exactly pillow talk.’ You think to yourself as you rub the back of your neck.

Swallowing the lump in your throat you shake your head, “No – he wouldn’t understand.” You fold your arms across your chest. “It’s the whole reason Tony started Project Gray – to prevent casualties. If that had been Tony out there that day with Thanos, he’d be dead right now. The LMD is the reason he’s alive – Steve can’t see past Ultron and what he did.”

“I get that,” Fitz agrees before continuing. “And Romanoff?” He keeps his eyes trained on you. “How’s her LMD – have there been any glitches?”

You shake your head, “No – she’s perfect. Which is great and awful at the same time, because had I known I could have sent her to Vormir instead –” Your voice trails off with the surge of emotions.

“You couldn’t have known,” Fitz tries to reassure you, his voice softer as he moves closer to your workspace. “I am curious though – did you create more than one model of Romanoff.”

“No,” you respond. “I have one on stand-by for Tony though – why?”

“May I see it – him?” his politeness is genuine and very Fitz-like, so you reach for the controller to raise one of the blacked-out panels across the room from the two of you. Inside stands a Tony Stark LMD, dressed in black work out gear, head tilted down to his chest with his eyes closed as if he’s asleep.

Fitz nods his head slowly at the sight before reaching quickly to snatch the controller away from you.

You stare at him in shock, trying to take back the device, “What the hell, Fitz?”

“You’re my friend,” he begins calmly. “I’ve helped you – supported you.” The look of disbelief on his face is alarming. “What the bloody hell are you thinking?”

“What are you talking about?” you ask him in exasperation.

“I knew something was off,” he begins to ramble. “Before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, they sent his picture out – he was a fugitive or something – I don’t forget a face, but that was nearly ten years ago. Theoretically, he shouldn’t be –” Fitz places his hands on his hips defiantly. “Does Stark know?”

“About what?” you throw your hands up in the air.

The man lifts the device in his hand without breaking eye contact with you and presses the button a couple more times, lifting two more blacked-out panels. You clench your jaw, folding your arms across your chest as Fitz places his hand back on his hip before he finally breaks eye contact with you to turn and look at the containers.

Inside one stands a much younger looking Steve Rogers wearing his classic Captain America suit, while the other contains an older Steve with longer hair and a full beard, the suit much darker in color compared to the other.

Fitz turns back to you with a look of disbelief and a huff of frustration.

“What – one wasn’t enough? How long has Captain America been a bloody LMD?”

[leepace71]

When Pedro Pascal was roughly 4 years old, he and his family went to see the 1978 hit movie “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve. Pascal’s young parents had come to live in San Antonio after fleeing their native Chile during the rise of dictator Augusto Pinochet in the mid-1970s. Taking Pascal and his older sister to the movies — sometimes more than once a week — had become a kind of family ritual, a way to soak up as much American pop culture as possible.At some point during this particular visit, Pascal needed to go to the bathroom, and his parents let him go by himself. “I didn’t really know how to read yet,” Pascal says with the same Cheshire grin that dazzled “Game of Thrones” fans during his run as the wily (and doomed) Oberyn Martel. “I did not find my way back to ‘Superman.'”

Instead, Pascal wandered into a different theater (he thinks it was showing the 1979 domestic drama “Kramer vs. Kramer,” but, again, he was 4). In his shock and bewilderment at being lost, he curled up into an open seat and fell asleep. When he woke up, the movie was over, the theater was empty, and his parents were standing over him. To his surprise, they seemed rather calm, but another detail sticks out even more.

“I know that they finished their movie,” he says, bending over in laughter. “My sister was trying to get a rise out of me by telling me, ‘This happened and that happened and then Superman did this and then, you know, the earthquake and spinning around the planet.'” In the face of such relentless sibling mockery, Pascal did the only logical thing: “I said, ‘All that happened in my movie too.'”

He had no way of knowing it at the time, of course, but some 40 years later, Pascal would in fact get the chance to star in a movie alongside a DC Comics superhero — not to mention battle Stormtroopers and, er, face off against the most formidable warrior in Westeros. After his breakout on “Game of Thrones,” he became an instant get-me-that-guy sensation, mostly as headstrong, taciturn men of action — from chasing drug traffickers in Colombia for three seasons on Netflix’s “Narcos” to squaring off against Denzel Washington in “The Equalizer 2.”

This year, though, Pascal finds himself poised for the kind of marquee career he’s spent a lifetime dreaming about. On Oct. 30, he’ll return for Season 2 as the title star of “The Mandalorian,” Lucasfilm’s light-speed hit “Star Wars” series for Disney Plus that earned 15 Emmy nominations, including best drama, in its first season. And then on Dec. 25 — COVID-19 depending — he’ll play the slippery comic book villain Maxwell Lord opposite Gal Gadot, Chris Pine and Kristen Wiig in “Wonder Woman 1984.”

The roles are at once wildly divergent and the best showcase yet for Pascal’s elastic talents. In “The Mandalorian,” he must hide his face — and, in some episodes, his whole body — in a performance that pushes minimalism and restraint to an almost ascetic ideal. In “Wonder Woman 1984,” by stark contrast, he is delivering the kind of big, broad bad-guy character that populated the 1980s popcorn spectaculars of his youth.

“I continually am so surprised when everybody pegs him as such a serious guy,” says “Wonder Woman 1984” director Patty Jenkins. “I have to say, Pedro is one of the most appealing people I have known. He instantly becomes someone that everybody invites over and you want to have around and you want to talk to.”

Talk with Pascal for just five minutes — even when he’s stuck in his car because he ran out of time running errands before his flight to make it to the set of a Nicolas Cage movie in Budapest — and you get an immediate sense of what Jenkins is talking about. Before our interview really starts, Pascal points out, via Zoom, that my dog is licking his nether regions in the background. “Don’t stop him!” he says with an almost naughty reproach. “Let him live his life!”

Over our three such conversations, it’s also clear that Pascal’s great good humor and charm have been at once ballast for a number of striking hardships, and a bulwark that makes his hard-won success a challenge for him to fully accept.

Before Pascal knew anything about “The Mandalorian,” its showrunner and executive producer Jon Favreau knew he wanted Pascal to star in it.

“He feels very much like a classic movie star in his charm and his delivery,” says Favreau. “And he’s somebody who takes his craft very seriously.” Favreau felt Pascal had the presence and skill essential to deliver a character — named Din Djarin, but mostly called Mando — who spends virtually every second of his time on screen wearing a helmet, part of the sacrosanct creed of the Mandalorian order.

Convincing any actor to hide their face for the run of a series can be as precarious as escaping a Sarlacc pit. To win Pascal over in their initial meeting, Favreau brought him behind the “Mandalorian” curtain, into a conference room papered with storyboards covering the arc of the first season. “When he walked in, it must have felt a little surreal,” Favreau says. “You know, most of your experiences as an actor, people are kicking the tires to see if it’s a good fit. But in this case, everything was locked and loaded.”

Needless to say, it worked. “I hope this doesn’t sound like me fashioning myself like I’m, you know, so smart, but I agreed to do this [show] because the impression I had when I had my first meeting was that this is the next big s—,” Pascal says with a laugh.

Favreau’s determination to cast Pascal, however, put the actor in a tricky situation: Pascal’s own commitments to make “Wonder Woman 1984” in London and to perform in a Broadway run of “King Lear” with Glenda Jackson barreled right into the production schedule for “The Mandalorian.” Some scenes on the show, and in at least one case a full episode, would need to lean on the anonymity of the title character more than anyone had quite planned, with two stunt performers — Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder — playing Mando on set and Pascal dubbing in the dialogue months later.

Pascal was already being asked to smother one of his best tools as an actor, extraordinarily uncommon for anyone shouldering the newest iteration of a global live-action franchise. (Imagine Robert Downey Jr. only playing Iron Man while wearing a mask — you can’t!) Now he had to hand over control of Mando’s body to other performers too. Some actors would have walked away. Pascal didn’t.

“If there were more than just a couple of pages of a one-on-one scene, I did feel uneasy about not, in some instances, being able to totally author that,” he says. “But it was so easy in such a sort of practical and unexciting way for it to be up to them. When you’re dealing with a franchise as large as this, you are such a passenger to however they’re going to carve it out. It’s just so specific. It’s ‘Star Wars.'” (For Season 2, Pascal says he was on the set far more, though he still sat out many of Mando’s stunts.)

“The Mandalorian” was indeed the next big s—, helping to catapult the launch of Disney Plus to 26.5 million subscribers in its first six weeks. With the “Star Wars” movies frozen in carbonite until 2023 (at least), I noted offhand that he’s now effectively the face of one of the biggest pop-culture franchises in the world. Pascal could barely suppress rolling his eyes.

“I mean, come on, there isn’t a face!” he says with a laugh that feels maybe a little forced. “If you want to say, ‘You’re the silhouette’ — which is also a team effort — then, yeah.” He pauses. “Can we just cut the s— and talk about the Child?”

Yes, of course, the Child — or, as the rest of the galaxy calls it, Baby Yoda. Pascal first saw the incandescently cute creature during his download of “Mandalorian” storyboards in that initial meeting with Favreau. “Literally, my eyes following left to right, up and down, and, boom, Baby Yoda close to the end of the first episode,” he says. “That was when I was like, ‘Oh, yep, that’s a winner!'”

Baby Yoda is undeniably the breakout star of “The Mandalorian,” inspiring infinite memes and apocryphal basketball game sightings. But the show wouldn’t work if audiences weren’t invested in Mando’s evolving emotional connection to the wee scene stealer, something Favreau says Pascal understood from the jump. “He’s tracking the arc of that relationship,” says the showrunner. “His insight has made us rethink moments over the course of the show.” (As with all things “Star Wars,” questions about specifics are deflected in deference to the all-powerful Galactic Order of Spoilers.)

Even if Pascal couldn’t always be inside Mando’s body, he never left the character’s head, always aware of how this orphaned bounty hunter who caroms from planet to planet would look askance at anything that felt too good (or too adorable) to be true.

“The transience is something that I’m incredibly familiar with, you know?” Pascal says. “Understanding the opportunity for complexity under all of the armor was not hard for me.”

When Pascal was 4 months old, his parents had to leave him and his sister with their aunt, so they could go into hiding to avoid capture during Pinochet’s crackdown against his opposition. After six months, they finally managed to climb the walls of the Venezuelan embassy during a shift change and claim asylum; from there, the family relocated, first to Denmark, then to San Antonio, where Pascal’s father got a job as a physician.

Pascal was too young to remember any of this, and for a healthy stretch of his childhood, his complicated Chilean heritage sat in parallel to his life in the U.S. — separate tracks, equally important, never quite intersecting. By the time Pascal was 8, his family was able to take regular trips back to Chile to visit with his 34 first cousins. But he doesn’t remember really talking about any of his time there all that much with his American friends.

“I remember at one point not even realizing that my parents had accents until a friend was like, ‘Why does your mom talk like that?'” Pascal says. “And I remember thinking, like what?”

Besides, he loved his life in San Antonio. His father took him and his sister to Spurs basketball games during the week if their homework was done. He hoodwinked his mother into letting him see “Poltergeist” at the local multiplex. He watched just about anything on cable; the HBO special of Whoopi Goldberg’s one-woman Broadway show knocked him flat. He remembers seeing Henry Thomas in “E.T.” and Christian Bale in “Empire of the Sun” and wishing ardently, urgently, I want to live those stories too.

Then his father got a job in Orange County, Calif. After Pascal finished the fifth grade, they moved there. It was a shock. “There were two really, really rough years,” he says. “A lot of bullying.”

His mother found him a nascent performing arts high school in the area, and Pascal burrowed even further into his obsessions, devouring any play or movie he could get his hands on. His senior year, a friend of his mother’s gave Pascal her ticket to a long two-part play running in downtown Los Angeles that her bad back couldn’t withstand. He got out of school early to drive there by himself. It was the pre-Broadway run of “Angels in America.”

“And it changed me,” he says with almost religious awe. “It changed me.”

After studying acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pascal booked a succession of solid gigs, like MTV’s “Undressed” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But the sudden death of his mother — who’d only just been permitted to move back to Chile a few years earlier — took the wind right from Pascal’s sails. He lost his agent, and his career stalled almost completely.

As a tribute to her, he decided to change his professional last name from Balmaceda, his father’s, to Pascal, his mother’s. “And also, because Americans had such a hard time pronouncing Balmaceda,” he says. “It was exhausting.”

Pascal even tried swapping out Pedro for Alexander (an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander,” one of the formative films of his youth). “I was willing to do absolutely anything to work more,” he says. “And that meant if people felt confused by who they were looking at in the casting room because his first name was Pedro, then I’ll change that. It didn’t work.”

It was a desperately lean time for Pascal. He booked an occasional “Law & Order” episode, but mostly he was pounding the pavement along with his other New York theater friends — like Oscar Isaac, who met Pascal doing an Off Broadway play. They became fast, lifelong friends, bonding over their shared passions and frustrations as actors.

“It’s gotten better, but at that point, it was so easy to be pigeonholed in very specific roles because we’re Latinos,” says Isaac. “It’s like, how many gang member roles am I going to be sent?” As with so many actors, the dream Pascal and Isaac shared to live the stories of their childhoods had been stripped down to its most basic utility. “The dream was to be able to pay rent,” says Isaac. “There wasn’t a strategy. We were just struggling. It was talking about how to do this thing that we both love but seems kind of insurmountable.”

As with so few actors, that dream was finally rekindled through sheer nerve and the luck of who you know, when another lifelong friend, actor Sarah Paulson, agreed to pass along Pascal’s audition for Oberyn Martell to her best friend Amanda Peet, who is married to “Game of Thrones” co-showrunner David Benioff.

“First of all, it was an iPhone selfie audition, which was unusual,” Benioff remembers over email. “And this wasn’t one of the new-fangled iPhones with the fancy cameras. It looked like s—; it was shot vertical; the whole thing was very amateurish. Except for the performance, which was intense and believable and just right.”

Before Pascal knew it, he found himself in Belfast, sitting inside the Great Hall of the Red Keep as one of the judges at Tyrion Lannister’s trial for the murder of King Joffrey. “I was between Charles Dance and Lena Headey, with a view of the entire f—ing set,” Pascal says, his eyes wide and astonished still at the memory. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t have an uncomfortable costume on. You know, I got to sit — and with this view.” He sighs. “It strangely aligned itself with the kind of thinking I was developing as a child that, at that point, I was convinced was not happening.”

And then it all started to happen.

In early 2018, while Pascal was in Hawaii preparing to make the Netflix thriller “Triple Frontier” — opposite his old friend Isaac — he got a call from the film’s producer Charles Roven, who told him Patty Jenkins wanted to meet with him in London to discuss a role in another film Roven was producing, “Wonder Woman 1984.”

“It was a f—ing offer,” Pascal says in an incredulous whisper. “I wasn’t really grasping that Patty wanted to talk to me about a part that I was going to play, not a part that I needed to get. I wasn’t able to totally accept that.”

Pascal had actually shot a TV pilot with Jenkins that wasn’t picked up, made right before his life-changing run on “Game of Thrones” aired. “I got to work with Patty for three days or something and then thought I’d never see her again,” he says. “I didn’t even know she remembered me from that.”

She did. “I worked with him, so I knew him,” she says. “I didn’t need him to prove anything for me. I just loved the idea of him, and I thought he would be kind of unexpected, because he doesn’t scream ‘villain.'”

In Jenkins’ vision, Max Lord — a longstanding DC Comics rogue who shares a particularly tangled history with Wonder Woman — is a slick, self-styled tycoon with a knack for manipulation and an undercurrent of genuine pathos. It was the kind of larger-than-life character Pascal had never been asked to tackle before, so he did something equally unorthodox: He transformed his script into a kind of pop-art scrapbook, filled with blown-up photocopies of Max Lord from the comic books that Pascal then manipulated through his lens on the character.

Even the few pages Pascal flashes to me over Zoom are quite revealing. One, featuring Max sporting a power suit and a smarmy grin, has several burned-out holes, including through the character’s eye. Another page features Max surrounded by text bubbles into which Pascal has written, over and over and over again in itty-bitty lettering, “You are a f—ing piece of s—.”

“I felt like I had wake myself up again in a big way,” he says. “This was just a practical way of, like, instead of going home tired and putting Netflix on, [I would] actually deal with this physical thing, doodle and think about it and run it.”

Jenkins is so bullish on Pascal’s performance that she thinks it could explode his career in the same way her 2003 film “Monster” forever changed how the industry saw Charlize Theron. “I would never cast him as just the stoic, quiet guy,” Jenkins says. “I almost think he’s unrecognizable from ‘Narcos’ to ‘Wonder Woman.’ Wouldn’t even know that was the same guy. But I think that may change.”

When people can see “Wonder Woman 1984” remains caught in the chaos the pandemic has wreaked on the industry; both Pascal and Jenkins are hopeful the Dec. 25 release date will stick, but neither is terribly sure it will. Perhaps it’s because of that uncertainty, perhaps it’s because he’s spent his life on the outside of a dream he’s now suddenly living, but Pascal does not share Jenkins’ optimism that his experience making “Wonder Woman 1984” will open doors to more opportunities like it.

“It will never happen again,” Pascal says, once more in that incredulous whisper. “It felt so special.”

After all he’s done in a few short years, why wouldn’t Pascal think more roles like this are on his horizon?

“I don’t know!” he finally says with a playful — and pointed — howl. “I’m protecting myself psychologically! It’s just all too good to be true! How dare I!”

x

[thisdaynews]

DOWN-FALL OF NIGERIA: How Tinubu, Others Packaged Buhari For Nigerians---Babachir Lawal

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/down-fall-of-nigeria-how-tinubu-others-packaged-buhari-for-nigerians-babachir-lawal/

DOWN-FALL OF NIGERIA: How Tinubu, Others Packaged Buhari For Nigerians---Babachir Lawal

A former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who was sacked from office over allegations that he misappropriated funds, Babachir Lawal, tells HINDI LIVINUS that the party risks losing the next presidential election if some things are not done

Some members of the All Progressives Congress, including Mamman Daura, a nephew of the President, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), have said competence and not zoning should be the key determinant for the President’s successor in 2023. What do you think about it?

You said some senior members of our party, but I am not aware that Mamman Daura is a card-carrying member of our party. Ideally, Daura is supposed to be considered as an elder in the North on account of his age and achievements in public service. On that basis, we accord him a level of respect to the extent that his comments will carry weight.

But since he has never contested any position, either in the party or in government, we will not take his comments on zoning very seriously. My own inclination is to take it as a personal opinion. The issue of zoning is a very critical component of the Nigerian entity. Zoning is not entrenched in the APC constitution nor is it in our (Nigerian) constitution but a political party is in the business of politics to win elections.

And for any political party to be successful, it has to take into consideration the diverse demography and political structure of its constituents. Don’t forget that our politics is built on some fundamental understanding, though not legal. First, there is the issue of religious balance. We want a country in which every Nigeria feels secure to live their life in a peaceful and prosperous manner in an environment created by the government. Any political party that ignores this is obviously digging its grave. Nigerians like to count the numbers of Muslims and Christians in the Federal Executive Council to see if there is balance.

And one of the things Nigerians have criticised about the security architecture is the fact that they see the top echelons of the security service as being predominantly dominated by Muslims. To that extent, Christians find faults in whatever they do. I suspect that most of the calls that the leadership of the security agencies should be rejigged is because Christians don’t feel comfortable with the dominance of one religion, especially as cases of insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, and so on, have soared and Nigerians have factored in the religious orientation of the perpetrators.

Two, politically, Nigerians want zoning in the polity. In states where the people are homogenous on the basis of religion and tribe, they tend to rotate power across the zones or blocs within the state. At the national level, it translates into North and South; that is the understanding and every Nigerian has come to accept it. That, however, does not mean that Nigerians do not believe that merits should count. But people who have merits are available in all parts of the country and are not localised to any geopolitical zone.

There are fears that the Peoples Democratic Party may field a northerner in 2023 and that it may give them an advantage if your party picks a southerner…

No! The PDP introduced the principle of zoning. Even the All Nigerian Peoples Party, the Congress for Progressive Change, and the Action Congress of Nigeria, which existed then but now defunct, never discussed zoning. The concept was largely successful because the party had elder statesmen like Adamu Ciroma, Alex Ekwueme, and Solomon Lar who could come up with a workable political structure acceptable to the generality of their party members when things got hot. Now, the APC has found itself in the same situation and has to toe that path, or else it will not win the next presidential election. To win the next election, the APC must apply the principle of zoning, though not clearly stated in the APC constitution. We believe by 2023, after the North has produced the President for eight years, the South should have a go at it.

Do you think that will be practical if the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, is again put forward by the PDP as its candidate? Don’t you think he will win by securing the majority of the votes from the North?

I am not thinking like that. Atiku Abubakar is from Adamawa State and is a northerner like me, but I will like to contest the basis of your statistics. The conclusion that the North produces the largest bloc vote is not true. The North-West geopolitical zone in the North tends to go in one direction all the time. The North-East tends to go in another direction. They have never voted along the same lines and we are not even talking about the Middle Belt.

If the South-West, South-East and South-South agree to vote for one party as they do in the North-West, the chances are that our so-called (northern) numerical strength may be challenged, and we may come off worst.

With Adams Oshiomhole and the APC’s National Working Committee’s removal and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s alleged presidential ambitions, do you think there could be divisions in the APC?

First of all, I want to declare that I am a Tinubu man. There’s no denying that there’s a Tinubu factor in the APC. Just like I was a Buharist and every time Buhari’s name was mentioned, I stood by it. But the crisis that started in the APC has nothing to do with 2023. It just had to do with the mismanagement of the party by those entrusted with that responsibility – namely the NWC.

We had a chairman that had deficiencies in management skills in a political system where everybody needed to be carried along. As much as possible, he was like Alexander the Great. In almost every state, because of his approach to politics and conflict resolution, there was crisis, even in states where the APC had no governors. So it got to a stage where everybody was fed up with having Oshiomhole as the chairman. However, there were some people who wanted Oshiomhole out more than the rest and members of the APC knew they had ulterior motives that were not altruistic, but majorly selfish.

Does the selfishness have anything to do with 2023?

Yes, like some governors who wanted to go back to the old days when they would sit down and decide what would happen and who got what in the party. Many within the party felt that as a former governor and labour leader, he would be able to stand up to the governors. We also felt that coming to that position with some affluence; he would not sell our party for pecuniary considerations. But Oshiomhole, to some certain extent, did not give the governors one inch because he was autocratic or a dictator. And the governors who wanted to go back to running the party created a crisis. It got to a point when even those of us who ordinarily supported Oshiomhole later became disappointed because he so messed us up. But because those who wanted to throw him out were worse than him, we stood by him. They deployed all kinds of arsenal and Machiavellian tactics that no one after something good would be inclined to do. Some of us advocated for a ‘soft landing’ for him. Like every other human being, Oshiomhole had his weaknesses. He, however, started to change towards the end of his reign but it came too late. Those who wanted him out were more desperate. From my own observation, there is very little the national chairman of a party can do to impose a presidential candidate on their party.

Do you see Buhari supporting zoning ahead of 2023?

Buhari believes firmly and strictly in what is legal. Once you point out to the President that this is what the law says, he goes with it and other considerations won’t matter. I don’t know what he will do but it is only necessary that any leader, whose tenure is running out, ought to show interest in who their successor will be. Not for personal reasons but for the continuity of their policies and programmes. To that extent, even if Buhari is not inclined towards it. I will urge him to.

Do you think the President would support that power should move to the South?

When we were in the CPC, we got many votes but didn’t win. But there were other challenges; there was an unhealthy perception that Buhari was a religious bigot. He was also seen as someone who would be hard on corrupt persons and many groups didn’t feel they would be safe if he became the President, especially the Christian community. So we sat down as a strategic group and thought of what we could do. Which bloc could give us the votes that could make Buhari to become the President? There was no other bloc other than the South-West bloc, which had the defunct ACN in control of states in the South-West as a regional party. This was done as far back as 2010, so we planned to have a merger before the 2011 general elections. But time ran out on us. The merger didn’t work. After the loss, we were encouraged to start the merger process again. I remember a letter from the chairman of the CPC Board of Trustees directing our committee to work with the ACN, only towards having a merger. It was when we read his letter for discussion that we decided that we should not restrict it to the ACN. We moved to include the ANPP. One of our specific goals was to make Buhari the President. Tinubu was a colossus of South-West politics. If he had said there would be no merger, there wouldn’t have been any merger. By the time we went to the APC national convention, the North-West was not with Buhari. The North-West people were either for Atiku or Rabiu Kwankwaso; most of them, at least. The late Inuwa Abdulkadir and I continued to pile pressure on Tinubu, giving him the statistics. There was no point supporting a candidate that would not win the election. We told Tinubu that this man had 12 million votes, and that there could be two million votes for Atiku and four or five million votes for Kwankwaso at best, and that it would not translate to any electoral victory. It became very clear that Buhari was going to win that primary election once Tinubu declared publicly his support for him and accepted that the South-West would vote for Buhari.

Between Wednesday and Thursday (before the convention), it was clear Tinubu and Bisi Akande were going to support Buhari and the North-West had no choice but to support Buhari, otherwise they were going to lose out. So if Tinubu had not conceded at that point, I think probably Kwakwanso would have won the presidential nomination of the APC. For that reason alone, you can see Tinubu’s contributions to the emergence of Buhari as President and his role in building the party.

Everybody knows Buhari had no money and he doesn’t play money politics. So he won his presidential primary election without spending money. Also, Buharists didn’t have money; they only had ideas, zeal and fanaticism. And politics requires money. Tinubu, who had his tentacles spread across the corporate world, was the only man who knew where and how to raise the funds needed. He was the one that reached out to all the ‘big men’ who were at the time scared of the then President Goodluck Jonathan. These were all rich men that depended on government’s patronage. But somehow, Tinubu was able to persuade some of them to support Buhari. We had so many experiences, Timipre Sylva (now Minister of State for Petroleum Resources) and I thought we could do it but found out we couldn’t until Tinubu came in and we won the election.

How did you manage to turn around the negative perceptions the public had of Buhari?

At the time, Nigerians saw Buhari as just a wood. He had no emotions. People weren’t seeing him as a loving husband and father, and doubted if he could be humane. It was Tinubu who brought in consultants from the US – the firm behind the successful execution of President Barrack Obama’s campaign. It helped to repackage Buhari to Nigerians. They came and started from the scratch; they did some research work for us. They told us where Buhari was weak and the messages needed to change the long held perception, using billboards and other campaign methods.

That was when you started seeing Buhari wearing a suit, and in Igbo, Yoruba and Kanuri attire. It was then people started to see Buhari as a family man with his beautiful daughters.

The strategy was to transform his image and show a humane, loving and trustworthy person. It helped us. At some point during our strategy sessions, the consultants asked us: why don’t you allow Buhari’s wife to come out so that she can be contrasted with Dame Patience Jonathan? When you do that, you would have won the election already, they said. She provided a contrast to the former First Lady. Rallies don’t win elections. It is the underground work that wins elections. Almost the same thing repeated itself in 2019. Tinubu doesn’t like to take credit for what he does; he lives for politics, gets his money from politics and spends it on politics. He has no other interest except politics. The monies he spent out of his pocket that are unaccounted for outside of the party’s campaign finances, are quite enormous. I know this because he’s my friend and because I am also involved in the Buhari government. So when there is a crisis, I am the one whose duty is to run to the South-West.

Therefore, except we want to bring the wrath of God on our heads, which we don’t want, the party must create an environment that is free and fair for anybody who wants to contest, including Tinubu, to do so. Allow the delegates, who must have emerged through a similarly free and fair process, decide who they want to vote for. It will be our duty as ‘Tinubu’s boys’ that time to say, ‘Let us vote for Bola’.

By the way, what did we get from several years that the Presidency has resided in the North? Along that line, we have also had vice presidents who were northerners. We have had presidents who were northerners but for some reason, the system is not improving. Presidency from the North is like an albatross around our neck. We northerners can do with power going elsewhere so that at least, we can now complain. But you cannot be holding on to power while things are not working fine. Let us also be able to complain, especially those of us who play active roles in the country.

There have been problems between the Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), and the suspended Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, people that should be working together to promote the President’s anti-corruption war. How bad do you think this is for the country?

Like the Bible says, the heart of man is desperately wicked: who can phantom it? The conducts of certain people, whether in government or not, is incomprehensible to a normal person with a decent character. Both of them are like my younger brothers. I have known Malami since I was in the CPC and only got to know Magu when I was in government. And I like his sense of duty and commitment to his job. That’s all I know about him. I don’t know however if there had been attempts to address these issues in another way before the options were exhausted and the issues resulted in the escalation of those differences. What I consider painful in all this is that this government has fought corruption and committed all its energies and resources to fighting corruption irrespective of the parties the people they go after belong to. Some are politically motivated; some are not right. I would not be self-serving if I say take my own case, for instance. This issue has given the international community the impression that we are not serious about our anti-corruption campaign. When I was removed as SGF, the general outcry was that because of my closeness to Buhari, they wanted to weaken my flanks so that they could come after me.

But now in the case of Magu, the narrative is that corruption is fighting back. These are the impressions and the consequences of such conducts. Initially I had the feeling that the system would come after Magu, especially the press and the social media. If you are very discerning, you will know they are with him. The preponderance of opinions is in support of Magu’s position. The views being laid out are as if it is a witch-hunt. There are better ways to end Magu’s reign because no matter what anybody tells you, Magu tried. I used to joke that if you are a thief and you are caught by Magu, nobody can release you unless you cut off his hands.

PUNCH