#comparing simon feelings for him to his own feelings for charles

[technically-human]

can you draw Edwin doodling embarrassing shit like ‘Edwin Rowland’ or a little doodle of Charles’s face with hearts around it then Charles comes up behind him like what are you doing?

He had some very specific embarrassing doodles in mind

ko-fi

[pandorem]

Genuinely find it fascinating from a writing perspective that Edwin’s propensity for playing trauma olympics is a well established trait of his that plays so interestingly into his relationships with Crystal and Charles and Simon especially, and how it works in his character arc and how it both plays into and CONTRASTS his incredible capacity for forgiveness. How it’s a flaw that makes so much sense with how much he’s suffered that it’s hard not to be sympathetic towards it or even agree with him sometimes, but that it IS a flaw and comes up at times that are less fair as well. Im not sure I have a real point to this yet, it’s just something I want to chew on for a while.

for one: Edwin’s tendency to put his trauma as worse than others’ (no matter how literally correct he might be) is set up directly to parallel Crystal’s own self centered tendencies and her character arc. They BOTH have a tendency to not consider other people’s feelings and pain until someone points out to them that they are being dismissive. They are mirrors of each other and I love them so much. I also wanted to push back a bit on some things I’ve seen about how Edwin’s reaction to her yelling at him in episode one was completely justified (“what she’s been through? I spent 70 years in hell!”) because of how their traumas interact and how she let David in the first time that feel too dismissive of Crystal’s trauma. Yes, their trauma’s with demons interact in ways that it makes PERFECT SENSE that Edwin reacted the way he did, and I even sympathize with him, but something being sympathetic does not mean it’s justified. Taking away the metaphor of the Demonic nature of it all, Crystal was just cornered and threatened by her abusive ex boyfriend who has succeeded in isolating her from her entire social circle/any safety net she might have had before the boys. And uh. We don’t say about people getting out of abusive relationships that it’s justified that people were mad at them for getting into the relationship willingly. So.

Also. While Edwin’s measuring of their traumas is more sympathetic in the first episode, the moment in a later episode where Edwin (nearly lightheartedly) dismisses Crystal’s nightmare about her abusive demon ex because “the living know nothing about true nightmares” is less so, and I think is there to confirm that this is a genuine, deliberately written character flaw that he needs to grow out of, just like Crystal needs to grow.

And that brings us to Simon. The character who Edwin is THE MOST justified to be angry at, to blame and to compare their punishments. When he rages that Simon damned him to decades of being ripped apart while Simon sits quietly crying in a room, getting paper cuts from tearing pages out of books, it’s honestly difficult not to agree with him, to not feel that same righteous indignation. But then despair lays it out for him: he was about to gloat over another’s torture. And even without yet knowing more about Simon, Edwin is horrified by the idea. I think it says so much about Edwin’s GOODNESS that the time this character flaw of his feels the most justified and right is also the time he works through and past it to empathize with the pain of the real person on the other side of that. It is after he comes back, needing Simon to know that he didn’t mean to gloat, that he is then able to see Simon as a real person, as someone he shares pain with, the pain of being closeted and terrified in the 1910s. Simon was a kid, same as Edwin, who was terrified of his own nature and let that fear and humiliation lead him to cruelty that ended in consequences that he never intended. And it says so, so much about Edwin’s goodness that once he is able to see past his own pain and empathize with someone else’s, he feels for and maybe even forgives the one person that he would be most justified in NOT forgiving. That connecting with him is literally what saved Simon’s soul in the end.

(It’s also worth noting- Simon thinks that Edwin is “another trick” when he first sees him. He says that “the headmaster will be angry”. In keeping with the theme that we shouldn’t compare traumas or decide that we know what other people are going through, it seems clear to me that what we saw- sitting alone and getting paper cuts- was NOT the entirety of Simon’s hell.)

And then there’s Charles. Now. Edwin has a lot of 1910s sensibilities that make him connecting the dots on what Charles went through a bit difficult for him. But Edwin never, ever suggests that his trauma is less or isn’t worth getting upset about. Because it’s Charles, and Charles deserves no amount of pain ever, in the world. I don’t think it would ever occur to Edwin if I’m honest. Of course it’s because he loves him and Charles is his favourite person in the universe, but also I wonder at the fact that their very first meeting, so soon after Edwin had escaped hell, was one of complete empathy and compassion. Maybe seeing the bullies made him see himself in Charles but it sort of circles the point I think I’m making- Edwin’s very real flaws contrast against and thus highlight his INCREDIBLE kindness and goodness.

[anxious-witch]

Actually, as a queer person, Edwin Payne is so important to me. Him experiencing such harsh bullying he quite literally dies for it, because he is gay. His time in Hell, partially spent thinking he deserves to be there because of who he is, and enduring, until he realizes "there is nothing I could done to have warrant this much suffering for simply existing" and then getting himself out of there.

How that's such a powerful metaphor. How you have to accept the fact that you don't deserve the pain for simply existing snd how the first time around, you have to get out of there on your own. You have ti get out and find a way to form connections again. To learn to trust people again and to trust them to accept you when you are ready to come out.

How his relationships with other queer people aren't perfect, because everyone has their own issues and a lot of the times, those clash when you first start dating. Cat King trying to keep him to himself, Monty wanting a fairytale and then ending up being someone Edwin didn't feel like he knows at all. And yet. They were all doing their best. I think it's even more powerful because Edwin realizes they were all doing their best.

When he talks to Simon is Hell and Simon asks: "Do you think it has to be torture? Being the way that we are?" And Edwin's resolute: "Listen to me. It does not. If you punish yourself, eveywhere becomes Hell"

At this point, Edwin's endeavors with men have ended quite disastrously. Monty betrayed him, and his last meeting with the Cat King in the forest ended om very rough terms too. He didn't even confess to Charles at this point, so there is a very real fear of him ruining their friendship with his feelings.

And yet, Edwin doesn't say it's torture. Doesn't say it's messy and painful and confusing or that he regrets it. Because yes, opening yourself up to affection, both that of others and giving your own away, is always going to be difficult and messy. But Edwin owns it. He is basically saying "I don't regret it. I have loved/liked/had affections for people and they gave me the same in return and it wasn't perfect, but I wouldn't take it back".

Also him being a late bloomer as compared to Charles and Crystal, the way queer people so often don't experience romance until later in life, because we take time to not only figure ourselves out, but also to be in a position where it is safe for us to love someone in that way.

Just!!! Edwin Payne is such an amazing representation and he means sm to me

[brw]

You've mentioned many times how you think Hank is at his happiest and most fulfilled when he's with the Avengers, but why do you think that is? In-universe, I mean. Is it just how he gets along with certain Avengers as individuals? Is it about how the O5 knew him from a way younger age and now there's too much baggage? Is it about how one team exists for protecting the common people and the other for protecting our people, and there's different kinds of pressure that come with each? Is it about (and this one is maybe just a less generous read of the last one) how he's got unresolved issues regarding being a mutant and with the Avengers he can just ignore this?

I think the main reason why Hank thrives in the Avengers environment more than the X-Men is the difference in responsibility and expectation.

On the X-Men, Hank is their resident smart guy. You have a problem that needs fixed? Hank's your guy. Legacy virus? Hank will find a cure. Mutantkind's population has been destroyed and only a handful are left? Don't worry, Hank's on the case. Your powers are on the fritz? Hank will make it better for you. Need a spectacular invention for whatever reason? Call Hank! Hank is their resident doctor, teacher of students, engineer, mechanic, biochemist, physicist, culture critic, etc. Hank's most valuable commodity, the thing that makes him important and valuable to the team, is his intellect, and how he can use it to serve the X-Men and mutantkind as a whole.

And Hank does take on this responsibility... but I think he also resents the X-Men for it at times. That he's being pigeon-holed as a scientist, that he has to dedicate so much of his life and time to the X-Men.

It's why he reacts as badly as he does in that Trail issue of Bendis' Uncanny. He's given his whole life to these people, hasn't he? For the past few decades of his life, he's worked tirelessly to do everything that was needed for the X-Men and mutants to survive, and they thank him by embarrassing him in front of an entire student body of pupils he's taught. Yeah, never something that was going to go well.

Compared to Avengers, where he is at best, maybe 7 on the list of smart guys they have to solve something. Who is the resident genius? They usually have about two per team. Tony, T'Challa, Bruce Banner, Hank Pym, Bobbi Morse, Riri Williams, these are all different characters part of or associated with the Avengers who are geniuses and will help solve big problems. Hank isn't needed for his intellect. He's needed because they want him on the team. He adds an important role to the team dynamic, which can be stifling in its own way, don't get me wrong, but the weight of it is far less than it is on the X-Men. He instead gets to focus on levity and having fun and teasing Wanda and Simon and reading poetry and the likes.

It's not that he's never used as a smart guy; but the stakes are lower. If he fucks up then, they can probably speeddial Hank Pym or Bobbi or someone to come help and fix things. On the X-Men, where the consequences for failure is often making things materially worse either for his friends or mutants as a whole, the stakes are much higher.

But the other reasons you mentioned also influence why the Avengers is a more positive space for Hank. Certainly, if I was working and living with the people I'd known since high school where all of the same drama was still unfolding in its own way, just with more people to get involved, I'd want to get out of that situation as soon as too. No matter how much Hank loves the O5 and respects them and thinks highly of them, there is no way you can continue to essentially be perpetually trapped in your high school friend group without feeling stir crazy.

I think the Avengers being a more general space also appeals to Hank. Before Ben Percy, Hank was very much so a disciple of Charles' politics and perspective of mutants, which I've already talked about before on here are flawed and go hand in hand with his experience and struggles as a wheelchair user. It isn't that Hank is naïve to the struggles of mutants–he knows it better than almost anybody else, and he's worked insanely hard before in the past to make spaces for mutants–but he values different perspectives, I think, and his idea of a mutant community I don't think is a Mutant community, but a community where mutants are just one of a diverse group of people. Isolationist policies will never (or rather, should never) sit right with him, and with how insular the X-Men often are as a team, how often they stay confined to their own little corner of the Marvel Universe, I think it makes sense that Hank values how open the Avengers are regardless of origin, because I think in Hank's fantasy utopia in his head that's how things should be.

The thing is with Hank's feelings about his mutanthood and the Avengers is that, to be honest, Hank is probably more secure and comfortable in his skin as a mutant as an Avenger and Defender than he is as an X-Men. There's this issue of Avengers where Hank is dancing at a party with a woman, and this drunk guy gets incredibly angry and disgusted at Hank for, in his mind, stealing regular woman away from their own men. There's a confrontation, and Hank completely whoops the guy's ass and sends him into the wall and abjectly humiliates him, before going home in an understandably bad mood. X-Men Hank, while he would stand up for himself and call out bigotry when he sees it, I don't think would ever react physically the way Hank did there, because he is too aware of the optics of a non-human looking mutant hurting a non-mutant in public. He'll make fun of a bigot on live TV, but he won't hurt them, either. He keeps it under control. He feels like as a mutant in the public eye, he needs to be respectful and acceptable to a general audience.

Avengers Hank isn't as accepting. And it definitely isn't that being an Avenger means you can get away with more things like this than the X-Men can; Vision quite literally gets attacked by suicide bombers in Avengers, and Wanda and Vision's house gets burned down later in the series. The Avengers have never been a means of protecting yourself from bigotry, because it happens anyway. But I think the reason for this difference is because Avengers (and Defenders) Hank is not representing mutantkind as a whole. If he wants to do something for mutants, it's being done on his own terms, and not because if he does the wrong thing with an X, he sends a bad message not just to the larger non-mutant population, but to mutants too. It's why in the Whedon run it becomes a whole fight when he thinks about–doesn't even necessarily want to, just thinks about it–taking the mutant cure. Hank breaks ranks, he sends a message to every mutant in the world that taking a cure is preferable to looking non-human.

It isn't that Hank doesn't want to help mutants by representing them, but it needs to be something he chooses. Not something he is unwillingly participating in by virtue of having an X on his chest. He is perfectly willing to put himself out there when the time comes, but he also wants to be able to have a drink at a bar. You might be saying, "Well Brieuc, he's blue and furry, so people are always going to clock him as a mutant", and that's true, but I think with the Avengers and him fighting alongside Vision, who is also visibly nonhuman and acts far less ""human"" than Hank does, Vision sort of took a lot of that negative energy away. Hank might look like a blue ape man, but he laughs and might buy you a round of drinks and dances. Vision doesn't do any of that, and Vision is far less charming and personable than Hank is. Hank makes an effort in a conversation. Vision will just go through the floor and walk away if you're boring them.

The point being, while he is the only visible mutant on the Avengers, he's not the only person who doesn't look human, and I think that's another reason why he enjoys himself more. He feels more normal on the Avengers, because you have someone like Vision is so strange and off-putting that by comparison he's a regular man. On the X-Men, other than Kurt (and they've only been on the same team I believe twice in the history of X-Men), Hank is often the most mutated person on the team. He is the person most easily clocked as a mutant, and I think it's easy for him to internalise that fact, and to feel subconsciously resentful at his human-passing peers. Vs the Avengers, where he still is visibly a mutant, but he blends in more standing next to Vision, who is more of a mainstay on the team.

And to come to your first point for last, yeah, his experience on the Avengers probably wouldn't be nearly so positive if it wasn't for his best friend Simon. The Avengers could be a sadistic criminal organisation and I'm pretty sure Hank would still have positive things to say because he was doing it with his best friend, Simon Williams. He loves that man, and it stands out that when Simon left the Avengers, Hank did too, for a bit. His love for the Avengers is really his love for Simon, projected onto the whole team. Oh, he does genuinely like it there; but it's Simon's presence and friendship that changes things from a nice change of pace to objectively the best place for Hank to be. Simon's always brought out the best in Hank, and Simon is an Avenger, so that's where Hank is his best.

[zoya-nazyalensy-supremacy]

Long awaited oc lore post that I kept forgetting to do for @ghostly-schematics hehe

Lot of stuff has changed since i first made these guys in like 8th grade so there might be some contradictory stuff that I haven’t ironed out yet haha 🥲

tw for death and abuse (kind of?)

Bianca (she/her)- ~19 years old, born and raised in a fishing island in the middle of the ocean called Moorhill and has never left. Her mom is sick+bedridden and her dad was a sailor who went out on a voyage one day and got lost at sea, so she has to pick up a bunch of jobs to support her and her mom, two of which include working at the local inn and delivering newspapers.

Simon(he/him)- same age as Bianca. Also grew up in Moorhill, and his dad is the mayor. His mom died when he was young, ~7yrs (are you noticing a trend here?) and he has 3 siblings; one older brother (Finn) and two little sisters (Ana and Evelyn). Grew up relatively rich compared to the rest of the town and traveled a lot as a child. Doesn’t have the best relationship with his dad, his dad is very tough on his kids and is very emotionally distant. Simon spends most of his time working with his dad w/ paperwork and other mayorly activities. (I don’t know what mayors do)

Anya(she/her)- somewhere in her early 20s, ~22ish. From the mainland (forgot the name so it’s just mainland for now) College student studying engineering. Trying to make a breakthrough invention/ achievement but is stuck. She goes to Moorhill to visit extended family and get a break from the stress+ also maybe get inspiration for an invention. Stays at the inn in exchange for working there part time  bc she’s a broke college student and meets Bianca while working there. 

Theo(he/him)- early 20s, little older than Anya, ~24. Anya’s ex, they went to college together. He is from a very wealthy family on the mainland. He sails the world on his boat smuggling things and just being cool in general. You can tell I was very into ya fantasy when I wrote him, very Nikolai lantsov inspired. Has kind of a strained relationship with his family members. His parents are very conservative and traditional, very into keeping the values and traditions, and he is a trans guy who left home as soon as he turned 18 so they don’t get along geat. He has a younger sister (Clara, you’ll learn more abt her later) who was very close w him as a child and kind of feels left behind when he left. Also has a younger brother (Charles/Charlie) who is very young and basically doesn’t know Theo at all, as he left when he was still very young. Theo also has kind of a crazy backstory that I’ll explain later when you meet another character.

Elaine(she/her)- ~21, little younger than Anya. Ohh where to begin. Elaine is from the island of  Faeglenn, home of the elves. The elves are basically just fairies, like they have wings and magic and stuff I just wanted to have a special name ig. The elves have a pretty simple magic system. From a young age, all elves are able to control the 4 elements; air, fire, water, and earth. As they get older, they are taught to control their magic better and utilize the elements to shape the world around them. However, in some rare cases, an elf can be born with a malfunctioning magic ability, basically the elements mix or are too strong, creating a new type of unique magic. In Elaine’s case, she is able to create and manipulate lightning/thunder storms. When she was a child, the other elves tried to control or suppress her powers, but it soon became clear that they were uncontrollable. So instead, they took this poor 13 year old and chopped off her wings and exiled her from the isle. She was sent away on a boat to the mainland where she met a couple who owned a tavern/inn in town and let her live with them for a while. After a few years, she met Clara, who introduced her to Theo. He offered her a chance to see the world if she would help him get around storms unharmed. She agreed and now the two of them sail around smuggling things and being cool.

Clara(she/her)- ~20. Theo’s younger sister. After Theo left, she basically raised Charlie by herself because her parents were too busy trying to find Theo and bring him back home because they don’t want him to make them look bad. Her relationship with Theo is complicated because she looks up to and respects him but also feels abandoned by him, even though she understands why he left. She goes out to bars a lot and is an alcoholic. She met Elaine when she was out partying one night and they dated briefly. She also dreams of leaving one day but doesn’t want to leave Charlie alone.

Meg(she/they)- ~20. Meg grew up with Clara and Theo as children. Their parents were nobles and good friends with Clara and Theo’s family. When she was 6, her parents died in a crash and they were sent to live on Clara and Theo’s estate. While she was technically under the care of Clara and Theo’s parents, she developed a close bond with the gardener and his wife, who raised them as their own. They became very close with Clara, especially after Theo left. She was also close with Rufus (you’ll meet them next) who was also adopted by the gardeners, but they drifted apart as they got older.

Rufus(they/them)- ~26. Ohh boyyyy. As a baby, Rufus was left on the doorstep of Clara and Theo’s family estate. No one knows who their parents are or why they were left there. They were found and adopted by the gardener and his wife, who were unable to have children of their own. As a child, Rufus was very close with Theo, and doted on Meg when she was adopted. When Theo was ~12 and Rufus was ~14, they were playing by a river when Theo fell in and got pulled down by the current. When Rufus found him, he was caught under a rock, bleeding and not breathing. They panicked, as they were the one supposed to be watching Theo. Uhh i haven’t really figured out the logistics of the next part, but basically Rufus somehow was able to make a deal with an angel to bring Theo back in exchange for their soul. Basically, if Theo dies, so does Rufus. It doesn’t work the other way around though, like if Rufus died, Theo would still live.   Rufus never told anyone about the deal that they made. All anyone knows is that Theo fell into the river and Rufus somehow saved him. Because of this, Theo’s parents appointed Rufus a Theo’s bodyguard. Basically, Rufus had to be near Theo at all times and report all behavior back to Theo’s parents. Neither of them were really happy about this. Theo was angry about his lack of freedom, and Rufus was forced to betray their best friend’s trust. Theo grew resentful of Rufus and started doing increasingly more dangerous things and sneaking around behind their back. In turn, Rufus became more distant towards both Theo and Meg. When Theo left, they took up more jobs around the estate, working as a butler, a carriage driver, etc.

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

Submitted:

From The Telegraph, March 25th, 

“Unlike Oprah, Tom Bower’s unauthorised Meghan Markle biography will pull no punches”

After scathing books on Prince Charles, Robert Maxwell and Simon Cowell, the bloodhound of biography has a new target: the Duchess of Sussex

by Jake Kerridge 25 March 2021 • 6:31pm

For a public figure they must be the five most terrifying words in the language: “Tom Bower’s writing your biography”. So there’s likely to be wailing and gnashing of teeth in Montecito today with the news that Bower has signed a six-figure deal to write the unofficial life of the Duchess of Sussex.

The book is likely to present a very different reading experience for the Duchess than last year’s joint biography of herself and her husband, Finding Freedom by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand. If that treacly hagiography was a soothing ego-massage, Bower’s book will feel more like going 10 rounds with Tyson Fury.

Bower has a reputation for taking no prisoners - one critic has called him “the undisputed Witchfinder General of contemporary biographers”. His twin specialities are mega-rich entrepreneurs (Robert Maxwell, Branson, Simon Cowell) and politicians (Blair, Brown, Corbyn, Johnson). But whoever he writes about, few readers come away with the impression that they’ve been reading about a thoroughly decent sort.

He’s been said to specialise in “men with something to hide”. Meghan Markle will be a rare female subject, but one assumes he wouldn’t be bothering with her unless he thought she had secrets to ferret out. It’s a safe bet that he won’t ignore the anomalies in the Duchess’s account of the past few years’ events, as Oprah Winfrey conspicuously did.

It won’t be Bower’s first attempt at a royal biography. He’s already given Meghan’s father-in-law a going-over in the uncompromisingly titled Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles (2018).

The critic Craig Brown, in The Mail on Sunday, quoted the entries in the index under Charles’s character in their entirety: “refusal to accept blame; self-doubt; disloyalty; victims of; dislike of criticism/dissenting views; scapegoats; self-pity; intolerance/bad temper; sense of superiority; grudges; selfishness; resentment of Diana; derogatory comments about Diana; on himself; discourteousness.” As Brown noted, not a single positive characteristic got a look-in.

The book also claimed to have unearthed private remarks that Camilla Parker Bowles (as she then was) made about Diana, Princess of Wales when the latter was alive - among them, that she was a “mad cow”.

And yet despite Bower’s clear antipathy to the Prince of Wales, I’m not going to bet on his taking Meghan’s side against Charles. In an article in The Sun earlier this month, Bower launched a broadside against her.

“Convinced of her own greatness, Meghan thinks she has, for years, been the victim of plots to destroy her destiny. While others shone in leading roles, Meghan had bit parts,” he declared, adding that after she was written out of the television series Suits, she “brilliantly… invented a new script” and “ruthlessly” carried out a carefully planned scheme to ensnare Prince Harry. In his view, Meghan never intended to “sacrifice her Californian lifestyle and serve as a member of the Royal Family in rainy Britain” for long.

“Refusing to show son Archie’s face to the camera after his birth and demanding privacy, while constantly speaking to US journalists, confirmed her hypocrisy,” he went on, before comparing her unfavourably with Wallis Simpson (“[unlike] the Duke and Duchess of Windsor… Meghan and Harry clearly do not care about the uproar they are causing”).

His final complaint is that “in her selfish manner, she believes that she is entitled to say what she wants to Oprah Winfrey [and] those who criticise her inventions are racist and sexist.” Nobody is going to mistake his biography for a love letter, I imagine.

Of course any number of newspaper columnists have spouted hot air about Meghan’s supposed hypocrisy and perfidy. The reason Bower is such a terrifying prospect is that he does the legwork to back up his assertions.

One doubts he will take the Piers Morgan line of directly accusing the Duchess of ‘lying’ in her claims to have suffered from mental illness - not out of sensitivity to the current national conversation about mental health, but because it would be an accusation very difficult to prove. Bower will not lash out in anger, but base any accusations he makes on the testimony of the eyewitnesses he tracks down.

He has already said he will spend a year working on the book, and he will use that time to the full. It’s a luxury for an investigative journalist to have that much time to spend on a single project, but Bower is able to do so because his biographies bring in a lot of money - not just because the gossip-hungry reading public buys them in droves, but also because newspapers pay huge sums for the serialisation rights.

And the more successful Bower becomes, the more people want to talk to him, and the better the scoops get. It’s true that he’s rarely granted interviews with his subjects these days - earlier in his career he got more material straight from the horse’s mouth. But it soon became clear that Mohamed Al-Fayed, Richard Branson or Simon Cowell were not getting to control the book’s narrative just because they gave Bower a lot of help; his subjects have generally stopped agreeing to collaborate.

Bower, however, has said that he actually prefers to work without his subject’s cooperation - or, indeed, approval. In his view, the ability to read and understand company accounts, or a nose for the former employee who might have reasons to feel disloyal, are more valuable than hours spent closeted with the star of the book. That’s fortunate, as a spokesman for the Duchess has made it clear already that she won’t be speaking to Bower.

So who is Bower? The 74-year-old author - whose long, mournful face has often been cited as perfectly suited to the bloodhound of modern biography - was born in London as Thomas Bauer, the son of Jewish refugees from Prague; “politics and history were there with my mother’s milk,” he once said. He was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1969, but soon left the law: “It was so class-ridden and depressing, and I realised what I really wanted to do was see things and travel and write about things.”

He then spent 25 years at the BBC, notably as a producer on Panorama, where he gained a reputation as a demanding colleague who would stop at nothing to make striking television journalism. For one story involving dodgy goings-on at a care home, he wanted to film the funeral of one of the residents, but the home’s owners kept the crew out; so he bribed the gravediggers afterwards to raise the coffin and then rebury it on camera.

On another occasion, when his crew confronted a sheep farmer accused of maltreating animals, the man caught hold of Bower with his crook and beat him up. “He just stood there, rather in the pose of Jesus Christ, and took it all,” a colleague recalled. “I suppose he knew it would make the film that much more dramatic.”

Bower started to make his name as an author with books on Nazis, notably The Paperclip Conspiracy (1987), in which he railed against the way in which Nazi rocket scientists were absolved for war crimes if they offered their services to the Allies’ nuclear weapons programmes.

He left the BBC in 1995, claiming to be outraged that a film he made about Robert Maxwell was de-fanged by the Corporation’s lawyers. He has rarely missed an opportunity since to complain about how Panorama and the rest of the BBC’s current affairs output has been “Birtised into banality” - John Birt being in his view “a Stalinist vandal who destroyed the old guard’s journalistic legacy”.

Meanwhile he went from strength to strength as a biographer - although this was not necessarily the view of his subjects. Robert Maxwell launched numerous lawsuits against Bower, who claims that Maxwell had private detectives break into his house and go through his records; and although Bower’s Maxwell: The Outsider (1991) was a huge success in hardback, Maxwell delayed the paperback edition by buying the publishing company that held the rights. After Maxwell’s death, Bower’s assertions about his questionable business dealings were fully vindicated.

Bower’s sharply critical 2000 biography of Richard Branson was widely thought to have scuppered Branson’s bid to run the National Lottery. Branson, who unsuccessfully sued Bower, declared of the biography: “What I have read has offended me on every single level … It is a foul, foul piece of work from the first words to the last – really rotten, nasty stuff,” - a quote that was proudly included on the book jacket.

Bower has since published a further volume on Branson, insisting that the Virgin tycoon is nowhere near as successful as he claims to be: “if he’s a billionaire why would he rent out his home on Necker? What other billionaire rents out their home? It’s like a bed and breakfast. It’s ridiculous,” Bower told the New Statesman.

Further legal trouble ensued after Bower published Dancing on the Edge (2005), a biography of the Canadian media tycoon Conrad Black and his wife Barbara Amiel. Black’s threats of legal action were curtailed by his conviction for fraud, but another media mogul, Richard Desmond, sued Bower over the way he was portrayed in the book. As usual, Bower was victorious in court, and afterwards the jurors mobbed Bower and asked him to sign their copies of his book; it’s obviously not easy to convince juries that Britain’s foremost crusading biographer should be put in his place.

What drives Bower? “He struck me as messianic, almost to the point of being unbalanced,” the Labour politician Geoffrey Robinson, subject of The Paymaster (2001), observed of his first meeting with Bower. But Bower’s zealous pursuit of anything he regards as unethical sometimes sits uneasily alongside his prurience when writing about sexual scandals - he’s not one for passing over the juicy details in silence. One sometimes wonders how proud he can be of some of his books - can he really have shared the newspapers’ excitement about his revelation that Simon Cowell once had an affair with his fellow X Factor judge Dannii Minogue?

Opinion remains divided about Bower. Readers love his books and many of his fellow journalists admire him: “The only problem with journalists like Tom Bower is that there are not enough of them,” John Humphrys has said.

But there has been criticism. The late Guardian editor Peter Preston said of his books: “you need a little human understanding in the mix as well. And that … is not Bower’s forte.” The Independent on Sunday quoted an anonymous academic in 2007 as saying: “There is a theory among some senior journalists and documentary makers that he has gone off the boil recently and replaced the evidence-gathering with which he made his name with bile and innuendo.”

The Right-leaning journalist Peter Oborne denounced Bower’s 2019 biography of Jeremy Corbyn as far too one-sided: “[it] systematically omits relevant facts in order to portray Corbyn as a ruthless Marxist and antisemite hellbent on destroying western liberal values.” His recent biography of Boris Johnson, The Gambler, was, conversely, accused by some of pulling its punches.

Bower’s views on these matters are unknown; he rarely talks to journalists, saying he does not wish to give his enemies ammunition against him by going on the public record. He lives quietly in Hampstead and Wiltshire - where he is said to be in with the horsey set. His wife is Veronica Wadley, former editor of the Evening Standard and subsequently an advisor to Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London; last year she was made a Conservative peer under the appropriately journalistic title of Baroness Fleet.

My own advice to the Duchess of Sussex would be to follow Bower’s example and keep her own counsel: anything negative she says about him will only end up adorning the book jacket. And legal action would probably not be a wise move. As Bower once observed, “Robert Maxwell sued me many times - and look what happened to him.”

____________________________________________________________________

LOL, Tom Bower is absolutely going to get sued. He’ll probably enjoy it too.

But I’m looking forward to the book because Bower usually gets into the money flows and I really hope we get some transparency about those. I hope he also writes about who was the delusional idiot in the royal household who championed the Harkles and sold everyone on the idea that they would stick around and actually do work, but I doubt we’ll get anything like that. I don’t think he has the contacts to cover than story properly. Maybe he’ll surprise me though.

[forsakenoathkeeper]

I Am Alive (chapter 10/?)

Deviant!Connor[RK800] x (fem!)Reader Rated M(18+) for canon-typical violence and gore, medical procedures, and graphic sexual content

Please support me on AO3 & thanks for reading ♥

The following morning, you were called into the police station to finalize the documents from yesterday's investigation. All they needed was a pen and ink signature.

Connor had been in conversation with another detective when you walked in; so, you decided not to bother him.

On your way out, you spotted Connor seated across from Hank. At first, you thought he was lost in his computer screen; however, he spun around to greet you as you approached, rising to his feet with a smile.

"Do you have eyes in the back of your head?" you teased.

"I do not. I saw the documents register to the case and knew you were finished," he answered, a little robotically. His tone didn't quite match the soft look on his face.

You stepped in a little closer, looking up at him with expecting eyes.

"I-" Connor cleared his throat. "-was unsure if you were alright with public displays of a-"

You reached for his tie, slid your fingers around the smooth velvet right above the clip, and gave a light tug. It forced Connor to bend down, just a little bit, and brought his mouth within range for yours.

You closed your eyes and leaned into the kiss with a smile, silencing him. He reciprocated, gently, closing his own eyes. It lasted barely a second and was hardly anything compared to what you had done last night; but, it left your tummy swarming with butterflies.

People could see.

Connor's coworkers could see.

Good.

"Ah, geez," Hank grimaced, rising to his feet. "Get a room."

You parted from Connor with a little giggle. When you released Connor's tie, he fixed it promptly, though it had hardly moved at all. It was impossible to miss the adorable, dorky smile he was trying not to wear.

"Damn kids," Hank grumbled as he walked away, coffee cup in hand.

"Are you heading back to work?" Connor asked softly, still standing close.

"Yeah, I better get back there before they have a kitten..." you trailed off when Connor's gaze shifted away from you and looked over your shoulder. The soft look in his eyes vanished, replaced with something cold.

"It's nice to see you again, detective."

You rotated around, following Connor's gaze.

This man's face had once been plastered over every magazine cover for business, wealth, and technology. Anyone who knew even a little bit about androids knew who he was: piercing blue eyes, a strong jawline, dressed impeccably.

Elijah Kamski, the inventor of androids. Two men were standing nearby, dressed as sharply as he was: lawyers, most likely.

"What are you doing here?" Connor asked. His cold tone didn't go unnoticed. It actually startled you a little.

Elijah was Connor's creator, even if he hadn't been working at Cyberlife at the time of Connor's inception. Some hostility was to be expected; but, somehow you doubted it was that simple. It sounded like Connor had history with Elijah.

"I've been asked to answer questions about Charles Reaves," he answered, seemingly uninterested in the whole thing. "I'm not entirely surprised to see you here - comfort zones, and all."

"I appreciate the sentiment, but I enjoy being a detective," Connor replied, not bothering to mask his irritation. When Connor spoke was when you realized how close he was standing beside you. You could practically feel his voice modulator rumbling against you.

Something about Elijah really bothered him.

"Of course," Elijah replied. His eyes landed on you. "-and who might you be?"

You gave your name, followed with, "I'm an artificial biomechanical engineer."

"A fancy way of saying you work on androids. Wonderful. I haven't gotten to spend time with someone of a similar profession in a long time," Elijah replied, sounding oddly sincere. You doubted that your professions were anything similar.

You extended your hand, offering it to Elijah out of common courtesy. However, when Elijah reached for you, another hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

Connor's hand.

Your eyes shot up to the android, surprised by his actions. His LED was a strong yellow and his eyes were sharp, almost glaring at the man across from him. Elijah didn't seem at all bothered. In fact, he let out an amused laugh and started to smile.

He pulled his hand back and Connor let go.

"I thought you told me what you wanted wasn't important?" he stated, more so than asked, voice low, ensuring that others in the crowded room wouldn't be able to hear. It was clear that he was challenging Connor.

Your eyes moved back to Elijah, confusion heavy in your glance. His icy blue eyes shifted back to you for a second and then back up to Connor's fierce brown orbs. The implication made you nervous.

"You've changed," Elijah stated, sounding pleased by the discovery.

There was a retort ready to leave Connor's throat. He was interrupted, however.

"If you're done dicking off, Connor, there's work to be done," Fowler called out to him from the steps right outside his office.

Connor looked over his shoulder and gave his superior a curt nod.

"I better go," he said, rotating back around to look down at you.

When your eyes caught Connor's, it was suddenly easy to ignore Elijah, who was still standing there.

"Go catch some baddies," you replied, encouragingly.

Something danced behind Connor's eyes and his LED eased back to blue. You thought he was going to swoop down and steal a kiss; but, he didn't, turning away and walking past Elijah. He glanced at him briefly, a warning as he passed by, before disappearing into the precinct.

"Mr. Kamski we must-" one of Elijah's lawyers tried catching his attention.

Elijah lifted his hand, harmless, but arrogant, and the lawyer immediately stopped talking.

"I was hoping I could talk to you, actually?" he asked you, voice polite, sincere.

"I appreciate the interest, Mr. Kamski. But, I promise I'm not interesting," you replied stoically.

"I disagree," he replied with a quiet laugh. "You are an item with an android. I find that very interesting." It was kind of scary, really, how charming Elijah sounded. He sounded like he really meant it. "Please, humor me for a bit. If there's anything I can do for you in return...?"

You blurted the first thing that came to mind, doubting Elijah would ever consider it. "With the protests - lots of androids are afraid to look for help and supplies are limited as it is with Cyberlife's shutdown."

The corner of Elijah's lip curled slightly. "You want to help them?"

"Yes," you replied firmly. "I want parts for repairs - thirium pump regulators, memory units - things that are hard to get."

"That can be arranged."

"How do I know you're good for it?" you dared to ask.

Elijah laughed quietly, briefly. "I suppose you'll just have to trust me."

You briefly pondered exactly what the hell this man was planning on asking you. He was a millionaire, a super genius who created artificial intelligence and fully operational android skeletons.

You just repaired them. What could he possibly want to talk to you about?

Your thoughts wandered to Markus and Simon, and the many androids that were potentially going without repairs. Even if they couldn't feel pain, they didn't deserve to be broken, to be unable to speak, or hear, or see, or walk.

"Okay," you replied lowly. "I'll humor you."

Elijah nodded with a smile. "It wasn't too cold today. May we?"

He gestured to the hallway that led to the main entrance. You led the way, walking past him and heading for the grounds.

Elijah was right. The weather outside wasn't too bad. The air was crisp and chilly, but not unbearable. You were doing just fine in your jacket. Clouds were looming in the distance; but, they weren't going to make it before you were done.

The courtyard outside the station wasn't particularly impressive, but it was empty, and you and Elijah fit just fine on one of the benches.

For a moment, Elijah's focus was elsewhere. He seemed to be thinking, trying to decide where he wanted to begin. You felt small seated next to him.

Without taking a break or skipping a beat, Elijah asked, "are your desires because of what he is or in spite of it?"

"You want to talk to me about my relationship with Connor?" you blurted, surprised. You met Elijah's gaze uneasily.

He didn't budge. His expression suggested that he didn't see it as strange in the slightest. It wasn't what you were expecting. Then again, Elijah Kamski was one of the leaders of android inception. He was their creator, almost exclusively.

You were sitting with the man who made Connor's life possible.

That thought struck you like a hand across the face.

"I do," Elijah answered.

"I-..." you stuttered.

The obvious answer was on the tip of your tongue. But, was it the truth? You loved the android parts of him: the way his LED shimmered with emotion, the quirks of an android learning to adapt to human society, the unique way he talked, how powerful he was, the beautiful construction of his body, inside and out.

But, you also loved the parts of him that were not dictated by what he was: his kindness, his passion, his curiosity.

"Android or human isn't the point. I'm with Connor because I want to be - because I like who he is, regardless of the what."

"I see," Elijah replied softly. Something in the way he said that suggested he didn't quite believe you.

You frowned at him, but decided against arguing with him. It wouldn't have been entirely in good faith. You knew that your feelings for Connor were physical, too: both the android aspects and the parts that imitated a human.

"Why did you choose to be an engineer - specifically for androids?" Elijah asked. "It's a fairly new profession, for obvious reasons, and you're very young."

Elijah couldn't have been more than 40 years old, if you recalled correctly from the countless essays you had to write in college. He wasn't that much older than you. Yet, somehow, he managed to make you feel like a child.

You doubted the inventor of androids would be alarmed by your answer.

"Because I don't like people," you answered plainly.

If anything, he liked that answer. Through a smile, Elijah replied, "are they not people?"

Once upon a time, you weren't so sure. But, then, you saw their suffering, had been suffocated by the fear in their eyes. You saw them plead and beg for help. You had seen androids, designed with very clear instructions, offer unnecessary kindness that most humans never did.

"They're better," you spat back.

"Logic and reason above feelings?" he asked.

"They do feel," you challenged.

"How can you know for certain?" Elijah tilted is head a little, suspicion in his tone more so than doubt. It sounded like he was trying to plant a seed of distrust. "How do you know that androids are capable of real emotions and not just imitating what they've seen?"

"Humans are capable of the same fucking thing," you snarled. "Pretending to give a shit when they don't. When an android does it, it's programming. When a human does it, it's just fucking normal, right? What difference does it make?"

Elijah's eyes burned brightly, admiring the passion in your voice.

"What are you getting at, anyway?" you added on sharply.

"I made androids to make our lives better: they care for our children, our elderly, grow our food, do dangerous jobs, protect us... and fuck us."

You had read lots of articles about Elijah Kamski, saw many news outlets cover him. He had proclaimed many times that he designed androids to make everyone's lives better. He promised they were not capable of thought beyond their instructions.

"Many debate their intentions. If they can choose beyond their programming," Elijah continued, as if he had read your mind. Or, maybe, you just knew where he was going with this.

"Deviancy," you observed.

You looked away from Elijah, losing the tolerance for the ways his eyes burned into yours.

"Androids are perfect: beautiful, strong, compa-"

"Are you wanting me to tell you that I have a robot kink?"

Elijah huffed out laughter, brief and quiet.

"I won't pretend that Connor's not so beautiful that it fucking hurts," you whispered harshly, feeling ashamed. You dragged a heavy hand through your hair. "But that's not all. He's kind. He wants to protect people: androids and humans. He doesn't see it as their side and our side. He-... He's different. The way he sees the world, I want to see it, too."

"Maybe, then, you see why I'm fascinated by you," Elijah stated, standing up. Your eyes followed him, and you realized he was just casually stretching.

"Why do you find this so strange? Two people who want to be together - what's so weird about that?"

Elijah turned around, hands buried in his coat pockets.

"One was born twenty-something years ago. One was made in a factory a little over a year ago," Elijah answered casually.

"You don't think I've thought about that?" you asked him sharply. "That I haven't fought myself over whether or not this is right?"

Elijah didn't seem bothered by your moral dilemma.

"I'm sure you're well aware that all androids process at a faster rate than humans. They awake capable of comprehending things the average adult can... and then some. Your moral dilemma is pointless. I know they will bring humanity to places we couldn't even imagine..."

"-but you're fascinated with whether or not they can love," you deadpanned.

"I'm fascinated with love between an android and a human," he answered.

There was something unspoken in that observation. You wanted to ask him if he loved his creations, if he cared about their well-being. Elijah had been pretty careful to make no statements during the revolution, oddly enough.

"This couldn't possibly be worth your time, or money, Mr. Kamski," you uttered, suddenly sounding quite tired.

He chuckled sincerely. "Just look at it as... humoring someone who gained everything and... lost everything."

Another statement with something unspoken beneath. Did he mean Cyberlife? Elijah had departed from the company of his volition, if the news was to be believed. Maybe he experienced a moral dilemma. Or, maybe, if Charles Reaves was anything to go by, a difference in opinions.

"Before..." you began, deciding to take a gamble. "-when I first went to school for androids. I just thought they were interesting. Like spending company with humans without all the bullshit. I didn't think... they actually... felt anything."

You paused and let out a heavy sigh. It brought shame to you, admitting this. You thought about Connor, about Markus, about the many androids that came in and out of the clinic on a daily basis.

"My first job, I repaired manufacturing androids. These guys came in with their arms hacked to bits, covered in dents, legs falling off, torsos torn in two, singed and burnt to a crisp. Any job that risked injury, that's what they did."

You dragged a heavy hand through your hair. "Some of them were really afraid they were going to die."

You paused when you failed to suppress a sniffle and hastily wiped your tears on your sleeve. "I realized... I was wrong. I wasn't an engineer; I was a nurse... But, no one else saw them that way. Until-... The deviant uprising and I - I wanted to do something I was proud of for a change."

Elijah turned back around to face you, his expression unreadable. He was quiet, taking in the sight of you, seemingly touched by your empathy.

You wiped your tears away hastily and added on gruffly, "-and then I met Connor and now you're here asking me these fucking questions."

Elijah smiled again, his lip twisted like he didn't want to laugh.

"You're a liar, by the way," you accused, changing the subject.

Elijah didn't look offended, but intrigued.

"You said they can't develop consciousness or desires," you explained, remembering his speech quite well because you had to write about it.

You expected Elijah to say something about your accusation. You doubted he would defend himself, maybe dance around the subject, since that seemed to be his preferred method.

"You would know all about that," he stated, amused.

Before you could reply, Elijah continued. "I know this all seems pointless to you; but, I'm glad I met you. You put me at ease."

You frowned at Elijah's statement. "I don't see how: we did all this talking and nothing came of it."

His expression changed. He looked understanding, maybe even sympathetic.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I'm not always direct... The world's more interesting when there's questions needing answers. I wanted to see what became of the RK800; but, I didn't expect you."

You had a feeling you were blushing, being spoken about in this manner.

"His purpose is unique: an android designed to hunt deviants. If his blueprints had never been destroyed, maybe they could have made one incapable of deviancy: would have been the perfect soldier."

You stiffened when you heard Elijah's claim.

Connor was designed to-... what?

You didn't want Elijah to think this was news to you.

"His blueprints?" you uttered.

"Yes. Connor is-" Elijah answered lowly. "-the last of his series."

Talking about Connor like this stirred up unpleasant feelings in your gut.

"He is different from any other android," Elijah explained. When you looked up at him, you could see something akin to sadness in his eyes. "How isolating the world must be when you were made to hunt your own kind."

Connor wasn't alone. He had Hank. He had you-

But, this wasn't about you, or humans for that matter. This was about Connor. You had never seen him spend time with other androids, or with anyone besides Hank. He always drowned himself in his job. Maybe, Connor was lonely, and you had been too busy keeping him to yourself to notice.

"Fuck-" You wiped your eyes again and swallowed a whimper.

"I'm sorry for bringing you to tears," Elijah apologized. He sounded like he meant it. "Making you upset wasn't my intention."

Elijah was quiet for a moment, giving you a chance to calm yourself down.

"I'm afraid I've avoided at least ten phone calls during our conversation..." Elijah pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and eyed it grossly. "If we never meet again, I want you know that I valued this conversation dearly."

"Mr. Kamski," you blurted, before he could turn away. "Before you go, did-... Did you program them afraid to die?"

"No," he answered quietly, not even hesitating. "The will to live... It was an unexpected outcome."

...

...

...

Back at the apartment, Connor came in just after you had finished eating dinner. He greeted you with a kiss and turned away. Part of you didn't want to worry him, especially when he had an android homicide that was likely linked to Charles Reaves. That was another issue entirely; but, you promised yourself that you would be honest with him.

"I have to tell you something," you beckoned to him, grabbing his sleeve to stop him from retreating.

Connor turned back around to face you, eyes focused on yours, concerned.

"I spoke with Kamski after you left. He told me what you were made for."

Something akin to panic danced behind Connor's eyes. It was subtle; but, it was definitely there.

"I'm sorry, Connor. You should have gotten the chance to tell me yourself. I shouldn't have found out that way."

Connor struggled to maintain eye contact with you. His LED was yellow, spinning against his temple. He seemed to be searching his thoughts for what he wanted to say. "I don't know if I would have told you, honestly," he uttered lowly, turning away from you. "It's something I really... really regret."

"We all regrets things, Connor - bad choices we made, mistakes. It's norm-"

When he turned back to you, shame and anger were written over his face. You were a little frightened by that face - a face you hadn't seen Connor make before.

"I called androids 'its'. I - I treated them like machines - like things - my own kind. I destro- murdered - androids for being deviant."

"You were under control, Connor," you argued fiercely. "What choice did you have? You didn't have a choice! You did what you thought you had to do. That wasn't you, Connor."

"It's what I was made to do," he challenged. "It's what I knew how to do. I was good at it. How is that any better?" His tone was as calm as it usually was, but had some bite and venom to it. He was gesturing to himself with his hands, fingers pointed at his own chest.

"I was proud," he continued, volume rising slightly. "Good job, Connor. You stopped the deviants like a good machine!" He was taunting himself now. It hurt you to listen to him mock himself. "You did EXACTLY what you were told to do, without question."

You sniffled, trying to bite back tears.

Connor raked his fingers roughly through his hair before dropping them down to his sides. "I would say... 'I'm a machine designed to accomplish a task' - and I was proud of it. 'You can't kill me - I'm not alive'." Connor had a peculiar way of quoting himself, like he was talking about someone he didn't know.

"I was going to find the source of the deviants and stop them!" he added on, frustration and volume rising. "I held a gun to Markus' face! I contemplated letting Hank DIE for my mission. That's all that mattered - the fucking mission. It's not just regret! I'm a mach-"

"You didn't have a choice!" you practically screamed, silencing him. You felt it, the first tear fall.

Connor's eyes watched that teardrop slide down your cheek and the fire in his eyes extinguished. Realization struck him like he had just been slapped across the face. He was letting everything out on you, letting his regrets pour out and drown you.

"I could never understand what that feels like-" you paused, trying to hold back a sob. "What it was like to be p-put through that, Connor. To not see yourself as a living being - to think that you weren't alive - that your life didn't fucking matt-guh-!"

You choked back a sob, making a guttural noise. Your head lowered into your hands.

You could feel the android looming over you, close, protective, worried; but, when you looked up at him through tear-stained eyes, he seemed almost afraid to touch you, like he wasn't allowed to. Regret was written across his face again; but, this time, it was a different reason.

He had yelled at you when you hadn't done anything wrong-

He was taking it all out on you-

You took that initiative and reached for his hand. As soon as your skin touched, Connor laced your fingers like you were his only lifeline saving him from drowning in the ocean. He looked like he was drowning, like he was lost.

"You were a prisoner in your mind, Connor," you whimpered. "I'm glad that you're deviant," you whispered, trying to stop the tears. "I'm so proud to be yours..."

Connor surrendered, leaning in to let his temple touch yours. His eyes fluttered shut.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled," he rasped.

"I'm not crying because you were yelling," you whispered, leaning into his touch. "The thought of you not caring about yourself - thinking you weren't alive: that hurt me. Connor, I-..."

You wretched your hand free on his so you could wrap your arms around his back and pull him into an embrace. Connor's face slipped from your temple and sunk into your neck. His hands grabbed fistfuls of the back of your shirt and clung to you for dear life.

You pressed your cheek into his hairline and leaned against him. As always, Connor was solid, unrelenting against your force, holding up your weight with ease.

"I am alive," he uttered against your skin, like he was reminding himself of something important. "I am alive," he said again, his voice cracking.

You felt wetness on your skin and knew that he was crying. You squeezed him tighter and tighter, until it started to hurt. You pressed a wet kiss to his temple before resting your cheek against the soft skin there.

No one could tell you this wasn't real.

Flesh and plastic.

Blood and thirium.

Bones and metal.

It didn't change the hurt in his voice or the adoration in his eyes. It didn't change the way he couldn't hold back a smile when he was praised. It didn't change the way his hands held you when you were afraid. It didn't change his inquisitive nature or the care he held for others.

It didn't change-

-that you were madly in love with him.

[365days365movies]

March, 6, 2021: Wolfwalkers (2020) (Part One)

I love Cartoon Saloon so goddamn much.

Before I’d seen a single Ghibli film, I was a big fan of the Irish film studio because of their first film, The Secret of Kells. They’d also done a few TV series in the years prior (I’ve heard of Skunk Fu!, and have no interest in seeing it), and still make a few to this day, but the first time I’d heard of them was with Kells, a delightful movie that borrowed from both Irish history and folklore in their telling of the making of a famous illustrated version of the Bible, and a young boy’s friendship with a mysterious forest spirit.

And yeah, that movie is great, but I didn’t have much to go off of then. And then, 5 years later, they released their second film. And that one fucking BROKE me.

Song of the Sea is the second in what would become director Tomm Moore’s trilogy of movies based on Irish folklore, and was a bit more contemporary as compared to Kells. That one’s about a boy and his mute sister, whom he blames for the death of his mother. However, his mother is not dead, but is a selkie, a mythical Irish mermaid that becomes a seal when donning a magical coat. And it turns out that his sister is one as well!

And you think, “aww, look at the seals, they’re drawn so cute” FUCK ME IT’S BEAUTIFUL AND HEARTBREAKING. It takes a lot from Irish mythology, from giants to owl-women, and it’s a fantastic fuckin’ movie. And then, three years later...Tomm Moore’s directing partner stepped up.

See, while Moore was developing Song of the Sea, his partner from Kells, Nora Twomey, stepped in with her own solo project: The Breadwinner. We leave Ireland this time for a book adaptation based in Afghanistan in the 1990s, where a young girl is forced to pretend to be a boy in order to provide for her family (which was apparently a common practice). A LOT happens in this one, and it’s goddamn fantastic as well! It lost to Coco for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, and...yeah, that’s fair. It’s hard to beat Coco.

But wow, a 2-D animated feature-based company! WHICH IS FANTASTIC! Seriously, in a landscape with fewer and fewer 2-D films in theaters, I’m overjoyed to see these guys hanging in there with some fantastic films! And just when I’d neared desperation for a new Cartoon Saloon feature...here comes Moore.

Ohhhhhh, let’s fucking GO! The last entry of the Irish Folklore Trilogy, today’s entry is Wolfwalkers, a film that was exclusively released to Apple TV, which I got SPECIFICALLY for this movie. It’s $5, I can afford it.

But I am absolutely pumped for this one. It’s based off of the legend of the Werewolves of Ossory, a kingdom in medieval Ireland in which there was a legendary tribe of people with the ability to turn into wolves to hunt in the forest. It’s also based upon the Irish wolf, a population of grey wolves (Canis lupus) on the island that were sadly extirpated  in 1976. People, man. People.

But OK, let’s get this baby STARTED! Been wanting to watch this one since I heard about it, and I’m excited! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

Kilkenny, Ireland, in the Year of Our Lord 1650! A group of loggers are working in the gorgeous and atmospheric Irish forest, when they’re accosted by a pack of...honestly very cool looking and well-designed wolves. One of them is caught by the pack and scratched up, then they all retreat.

A large mysterious woman with big red hair and her young daughter stop the wolves from hurting the man further, and also heal up his scratches. He thanks them, and they flee with the wolf pack as the angry townsfolk chase after them.

Wolves are the enemy of the townsfolk, and those townsfolk include the newly-arrived Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean) and his daughter, Robyn (Honor Kneafsey), who’ve just moved from England. Bill is a hunter, and his daughter is eager to help him in his endeavors, armed with a crossbow and her falcon, Merlyn.

Bill is on the way to hunt wolves, as assigned by the Lord Protector of England. Robyn badly wants to join him, but it’s dangerous out there, and the Lord Protector forbids children beyond the walls of Kilkenny. Robyn wants out, though, as she’s an English outsider in the Irish village, and this is at a point where their relationship was at an all-time low.

Robyn, clever girl that she is, finds a way to use a group of bullies to distract the men guarding the gates, and sneaks out to the forest with Merlin. As she follows her father (currently unbeknownst to him), she hears a cry warning of a wolf. Robyn runs off to investigate.

A group of shepherds are being accosted by a pack of wolves. Robyn tries to shoot one of them, but the panicking sheep knock into her, and she fires her arrow at...Merlyn. Fuck! I already liked him! The commotion grows...until a distinctly human howl is heard from the forest, stopping the wolves in their tracks. Robyn looks over at the downed Merlyn.

The little girl takes Merlyn away, and retreats back into the woods. The wolves block Robyn’s path, and as they’re about to attack her, Bill arrives, and shoots one of them with his crossbow. The human howl is heard again, and the wolves retreat, one of them injured. Bill chides Robyn for going into the woods, and she tries to go back to get Merlyn. But Bill promised her mother that she’d keep her safe...which means that she’s almost certainly dead. Well, damn. 

They leave the woods, only to be berated by the logger from the beginning, Seán Óg (Tommy Tiernan). He tells Bill off, as the increased logging under the Lord Protectorate has angered the wolves and the people who live with them, whom he refers to as “Wolfwalkers”. But Bill insists that the Lord Protectorate wants the woods cleared, and the wolves exterminated. Seán badmouths the Lord, and of course, who would show up but...

The Lord Protectorate is...oh dear FUCK, it’s Oliver Cromwell (Simon McBurney). Cromwell was a NOTORIOUS asshole for a lot of reasons, and he plays a big role in Ireland’s subjugation by England in the 1650s. I’m in no way educated enough to comment in detail on that, but like I said earlier: it’s a rough time in Irish history, and Oliver Cromwell, cruel, paranoid, but technically historically important douchebag that he was, was right at the center of it all. 

Fun fact, Cromwell actually overthrew the Monarchy shortly after this, during the English Civil War, and became the ruler of the Commonwealth of England. After his 1658 death, his son took over, until he was overthrown by the return of the Monarchy, via King Charles II about 3 years later. And he was SO FUCKING PISSED at the whole affair, that they had Cromwell’s corpse dug up from Westminster Abbey (where kings and queens and Charles Darwin are buried), beheaded, and stuck on a pike on Westminster Hall! Damn.

Anyway, this Oliver Cromwell is just about to overthrow the Monarchy, and he wants Ireland under his heel. He’s commanded the woods to be cut down in order for farms to be established, and Goodfellowe is assigned to exterminate the wolves completely so that that will happen. Upon seeing Robyn, he commands the guards to take her to the scullery, where she’ll probably be trained as a scullery maid. Yay, child labor!

Seán, having just seen the girl with the wolves, tells Robyn who she is. He tells her that the Wolfwalkers can talk to wolves, and will also heal the injured with wild magic. To go back into the woods, she unlocks the cage that Seán Óg was thrown in for insulting Cromwell. His sheep are also in there, and the release of  Seán and the sheep causes enough of a distraction for Robyn to flee into the woods.

Once there, she quickly finds Merlyn, who has indeed been healed by wild magic . Once there, a red wolf approaches her. Robyn readies her crossbow, but Merlyn prevents her from firing, and she gets caught in a snare as a result. During a struggle, the two clash, and the wolf bites Robyn.

She falls out of the snare, but also sees a new kind of vision, seeing the wolf as the girl from earlier in a beautifully animated type of vision. Her arm swirls with golden magic as well, emanating from the bite. Merlyn follows the wolf as they run away, and Robyn’s pursuit of the two leads her into a beautiful hidden grove, with a massive waterfall. Behind it is a cave, covered in drawings of humans and wolves. And that’s not all that’s in the cave.

At the center of the cave is the girl and her mother, sleeping and now surrounded by the wolves. The red wolf becomes yellow energy, and the energy goes into the little girl, who wakes up. Robyn is immediately found out, and the young girl approaches with the wolves at her back.

This is Mebh (pronounced “Maeve”) Óg MacTíre (Eva Whittaker), and I’ve IMMEDIATELY taken a liking to her, from her voice to her character design to her personality. Robyn doesn’t feel the same way, as the two clash. Mebh bit Robyn, but she was actually trying to get her out of the snare. The man are getting to close to the woods, which Mebh isn’t happy about, but Robyn says it’s “their” woods. Here we go.

Mebh uses her wild magic to fix the wound, before it’s too late. I get the feeling that it’s too late. Robyn tries to find out more, including who her mother is, but Mebh chases her off with her wolf pack in tow. And before I get to mention it, I just want to say that this is my favorite design for cartoon wolves. Real talk, I love this good bois. In the process of the chase, though, she’s again caught in a snare, which Mebh frees her from.

But as the two banter again, Mebh senses a “townie” like Robyn in the woods. It’s Bill, and Robyn goes to prevent the wolves from hurting her father. After a close call, Mebh points Robin back in the direction of the town, and blindfolds her to prevent truly discovering the location of the cave...this time. She guides Robyn back, but runs off when she smells food.

Robyn and Merlyn make their way back, and we overhear two shepherds from earlier talking about how one could turn into a wolf if bitten by a Wolfwalker. So, yeah, werewolf rules. Makes sense, given this story’s basis. The two shepherds also have Robyn’s crossbow and fresh bread. Mebh and Robyn work together to steal the food and crossbow, and run away together. Fast friends!

The two young girls bond, and share their struggles. Robyn wishes to go back to their simpler life in England, and wants to spend more time with her father, potentially in the woods. She warns Mebh that the forest is about to be cut down, endangering her and her pack. Mebh notes that her mother went to look for a new place for the pack to live, but hasn’t come back since. Robyn promises to tell her father about the Wolfwalkers and the struggles of the wolves. The two new friends part ways, promising to meet each other in the woods.

When she comes back home, Robyn prepares to tell her father her plan to get the wolves to leave without killing any of them. The preparation is entertaining, as she does a pretend back-and-forth with herself and her dad. Once he gets home, the reality is less great. When he finds out that Robyn never even went to the scullery, he doesn’t listen to her plan at all. He sends her to bed, and the plan is dead before it’s even proposed. Still, Robin promises Merlyn that they’ll find a way to help the wolves.

But that may be...harder than you’d think. As she sleeps, the golden magic comes back, and Robyn sees a wolf in her dreams. Pretty sure of where this is going. She wakes up with a start, and Bill hears this. He gets her up and takes her to the scullery, where she’s put to work.

Y’know, I’ve heard the term “scullery maid”, I’ve never once thought of what the term means. Apparently, it’s a kitchen or backroom in a house for housework, but where the hell is this? Is it, like, the town hall scullery? Not really clear, and it’s made more confusing when Robyn finds her way into a red-carpeted room with animal heads on the walls.

While there, her bite-mark glows, and a whisper of “giiiiiiiiirl” comes from a covered cage towards the front of the room. She approaches the cage, but is interrupted from checking it out by the head scullery maid. The Lord Protectorate has forbidden anyone from entering that room, and Imma call it now: that’s Mebh’s mom. I mean, yeah, no duh, but still. Calling it now.

That night, while asleep, the Wolfwalker’s magic officially takes hold, and Robyn wakes up as a wolf in her bedroom, while her human body sleeps. Her father hears the commotion in Robyn’s loft, and is about to literally kill her wolf-self, but she jumps out of a window and flees the city for the woods.

She quickly finds Mebh, who’s also panicking, as she thought she cured the bite. However, that panic subsides pretty quickly, as Mebh has never met another Wolfwalker before, and is excited to show Robyn how to be a wolf. And through Robyn’s eyes, we get a lovely view of the world through a wolf’s senses, backed by Aurora’s “Running with the Wolves”. And it’s...it’s lovely.

Its also QUITE a good half-way point, so let’s put that right here! See you in Part 2!

[themostawesomehuman]

Whispers of Evil part 1

Another Matthew Fairchild and James Herondale fic! (Look out for Thomstair)

Thank you @mitsuhamiyamizi for helping me edit and all the suggestions! Ur amazing! 🥰

If there’s any way I can improve plz tell me! Also if u like it plz reblog n comment! Thanks for checking it out! It means a lot

Tagging: @lily-chen-deserves-better @zafirafox4636 @brotherlipsmackariahs @idontgetit-whydoihavetosaymyname @banesbitch @matthewfaichild @cecilyfightwood @morgnstern @raccoon-dog-from-mercury @daisyherxndale @beclynn-herondale @fieryfantasybooklover @tessagraycarstairs @fairchild-blackthorn @immyownghostwriter @friendlyneighbourhoodreader @liam-h-205 @magnus-the-fabulous-entp-bane @simon-lewis-is-a-skinny-legend @ineedadrinkorsleep @bridgestocksariadne @moonbender @fairychildmatthew @katie33333 ———————————————————————————————————

James was the one who discovered Matthew’s body— his bloody, broken parabatai. Lifeless. Matthew’s emerald eyes were still open, staring off into the unknown—into the darkness of the night. Why were they open? This was same pair of eyes that gave him comfort when their parents told them off for doing something stupid—the familiar gleam of mischief, the warmth. All gone. James couldn’t feel his limbs. All James knew, as he screamed into the night, screaming in agony until his lungs could only allow him to quietly sob, was that Matthew would no longer mock him about his hair or complain to him about waistcoats. He didn’t care if the world was looking. Matthew was gone and that’s all that really mattered. So damn the world and damn everything else.

James’ face was wet, his vision blurred with tears, his hair messy from all the pulling in an attempt to ease his frustration. His hands were aching from drawing Iratze after Iratze after Iratze—the cramping of his hand was nothing compared to the overwhelming amount of pain in his chest—he found that he couldn’t breath. Come back to me! James screamed silently. His chest was burning and it felt as though he was drowning in an ocean of flames—his chest was on fire! He could feel the parabatia bond slowly fading, the black on his skin turning white. When they'd said that losing your parabatai was the worst pain a Shadowhunter would feel, James had known it would hurt like hell. But it was so much worse.

For hours James sat holding on to Matthew’s lifeless body, refusing to leave his parabatai’s side. His shirt was soaked with blood: from crimson to coppery-brown. Matthew was gone. The morning after when the silent brothers made an attempt to move closer to them—James begged and begged them not to take his best friend away. He needed more time. They needed more time. James didn’t leave Matthew’s side even for a minute—eating wasn’t necessary. Nor was sleeping or taking baths or talking to anyone else. Everyday he would read Matthew a chapter or two of Matthew’s favorite book: Picture of Dorian Gray, hoping that Matthew would like before get up and went on for hours about Oscar Wilde. He would do anything to hear Matthew’s comforting voice again. James would held Matthew’s hand for as long as he could, whispering words of comfort into his ears, wishing for a time when he could smile back. He would kill for Matthew to smile back.

At Matthew’s funeral, James saw the remaining Fairchild family excepting everyone’s condolences. Charles who looked completely normal like the body on the pyre wasn’t his little brother. James hated Charles then. He hated Charles who was supposed to be Matthew’s older brother. Charles who was never there. Charles who James knew only use this as an opportunity to gain more votes. It made him felt sick to his stomach. Matthew’s father was there in a bath chair and he eyes were full of grief—the amount of grief that could destroy a man. He only nodded at James and gave him a faint smile. Henry Fairchild’s smile was so familiar and James found himself searching for someone in that smile. Next to uncle Henry was aunt Charlotte dressed in all white with the red mourning rune on her left arm. Aunt Charlotte who had collapsed at receiving of the news of her youngest son’s murder—in that moment, she wasn’t the consul or the former head of London institute. She was a women who lost her son. James noticed her eyes—they were bloodshot possibly from long nights of grieving.

He quickly glanced around the sea of people, his hands were fiddling with the ring he once gave Matthew when they first became parabatai. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Thomas who was staring blankly into space, leaning into Alastair Carstairs for support. His eyes were icy and there was no trace of his kind smile left. Christopher who was always in his own little world was sobbing uncontrollably into Anna’s suit. For once perfectly in tuned with what was happening around him. Anna’s tidy raven black hair was messy, it was sticking out from every direction. Her face was as hard a stone. It was hard to look, knowing that there was nothing that he could do to take their pain away. In that moment he made promised to himself. He would find the murderer. He would find them and make them pay for this unspeakable crime. For the death of his parabatai, his best friend, his brother. His Math.

[jupitermelichios]

DC: The High-School AU: The Series: The Staff (the musical)

So I finally cast the school staff and teachers for my DC High School AU, which I thought some of you would have some fun with! I took the subject list from a fairly fancy looking private school, because only schools you have to pay for have their subject lists online, so I’m probably offering way more classes than your average state school, but hey, it’s my AU and I wanted to cram in as many supervillains, obscure heroes, and bad jokes as possible.

Admin & Staff

Principle - Amanda Waller

Deputy Principle & Treasurer - Noah Kuttler (the Calculator)

Nurse - Myra Mason (she was Dr Midnite’s nurse and love interest in the 40s & 50s, then got fridged, but I’m unfridging her and giving her a job with much better survival prospects)

Councillor - Ethel Peabody (she’s a psychiatrist from the Gotham TV show, and also in my headcanon, Amanda Waller’s sister)

Librarian - Stanislaus Johns (The Librarian. I considered bookworm for this job but he’s literally called the Librarian, what was I supposed to do, not use him?)

Admin Staff - Laura Conway (Superman supporting cast and occaisional vampire), Mabel Martin (Riddler’s secretary), Theresa Collins (Goldstar, also Booster Gold’s secretary)

Business

Loren Jupiter (aka Mr Jupiter the richest and therefore most thrustworthy man in the world) - Business 101, Business Law, Entrepreneurship

Wesley Dodds (Sandman) - Business Communications

Annabeth Chamberlain (Brimstone) - Marketing, Hospitality & Tourism (she doesn’t work in tourism, but I figure anyone who can waitress while also having the power to set people on fire and damn them to hell and keeps her job probably knows a whole lot about customer service)

Family & Consumer Science

Miss Tribb (Lobo’s childhood teacher who inexplicably survived the extinction of their species) - Childhood Developement, Early Childhood Education

Neil Richards (The Mad Mod) - Texiles/Sewing, Fashion

Tenzil Kem (Matter-Eater Lad) - Food & Nutrition

Finance

Noah Kuttler (The Calculator) - Personal Finance

Foreign Languages

Matron Bertinelli (Nu52 Huntress, who I’m declaring a sepperate character and the aunt of pre-52 Huntress because they’re radically different characters and I like both of them) - ASL, Italian

Chang Jie-Ru (Nu52 Yo-Yo) - Chinese, AP Chinese

Yolanda Montez (Wildcat II) - Spanish, AP Spanish

Barbara Minerva (Cheetah) - Latin

Health Sciences

Myra Mason - Emergency Medical Responder training

Charles McNider (Dr Midnite) - Anatomy & Physiology, Health Class

IT

Brian Durlin (Savant) - Computer Programming, Web Dev

Jennifer Lyn-Hayden (Jade) - Digital Art 101

Arnold Wesker (Ventriloquist) - 3D Animation, 3D Graphics (I don’t know why but the idea of Wesker as an animator just tickled me. Obviously his real passion is stop-motion, but he learnt 3D because there were more jobs)

English (the fancy private school called this ‘language arts’ which is so prentious it makes me feel slightly nauseous)

Wesley Dodds (Sandman) - English Language, AP English Language

Rac Shade (Shade the Changing Man) - English Literature, AP English Literature

Chloe Sullivan (the worst character in the Smallville TV show, a hotly contested position) - English Language, Communications 101, supervises the School Paper and the Yearbook

Shelly Gaynore (The Whip III) - Englist Literature, Creative Writing

Basil Karlo (Clayface) - Intro to Shakespeare

Nick Scratch (officially his supervillain name is just Scratch, but I refuse to consider that a code-name, looking at you Drake) - Communications 102: Public Speaking

Mathematics (which has a 100% villain make-up, which seems accurate from what I remember of high-school maths)

Noah Kuttler (The Calculator, because I think I’m funny) - Pre-Calc, Calculus, AP Calculus

Harlan Graves (The Underbroker) - Stats, Algebra 1, Algebra 2

Angelo Bend (Angle Man, becuase I know I’m funny) - Geometry, Trigonometry

PE (I realise this is probably too many PE teachers but there are a lot more caonical althetes than just about any other job in the DCU except maybe scientist)

Lawrence Crock (Sportsmaster, you knew this was coming) - Gym, Weight Training, coaches Baseball, Basketball, Tennis & Hockey

Lisa Snart (Golden Glider) - joint-coaches Cheerleading, coaches the Drill Team, Wrestling

Randy Hanrahan (Stallion) - PE, joint-coaches Cheerleading & Cross-Country, coaches Football

William Everett (Amazing Man) - PE, joint-coaches Cross-Country, coaches Track & Field

Matron Bertinelli (Huntress, sort of) - coaches Soccer & gymnastics

Performing Arts

Lisa Snart (Golden Glider) - Dance

Hartley Rathaway (Pied Piper) - Music 101, Music Theory, Composition, teaches Guitar & Percussion

Isaac Bowin (The Fiddler) - Music 101, AP Music Theory, leads Jazz Band, Orchestra, Marching Band

Siobhan Smyth (Silver Banshee) - part-time, leads the Choir and teaches singing

Basil Karlo (Clayface) - Theatre, Theatre 101

Simon Trent (Grey Ghost) - Theatre, Theatre 101, Film Studies

Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) - Theatre Tech

Mary Louise Dahl (Baby-Doll, from B:TAS) - Film Studies, Video Production

Betty Bates (Lady-at-Law, who is technically owned by DC now due to corporate buy-outs) - Debate

Science (do you have any idea how hard it is to pin down areas of specialisation for comic book scientists? TNT is on this list entirely because he’s the only actual honest-to-god professional chemist I could find)

Kirk Langstrom (ManBat) - Biology, AP Biology

Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy) - Biology, Environmental Science

Thomas “Tex” Thomas (TNT) - Chemistry

Achilles Milo (Professor Milo, again not really much of a code name) - Chemistry, AP Chemistry

Will Magnus (I refuse to even dignify it as a code-name) - Physics, Earth Sciences

Ray Palmer (The Atom) - Physics, AP Physics

Adam Strange (DC is just doing this to fuck with me, personally) - Astronomy

Social Studies & Humanities

Barbara Minerva (Cheetah) - World History

Maxie Zeus (ffs) - World History, AP World History (fun fact, Maxie was canonically just a normal history teacher before he got lightning powers, became convinced he was Zeus incarnate, and set out to become a criminal, making him my favourite DC mobster by a country mile)

Terry Long (aka one of the only characters to really deserve to get fridged) - US History, AP European History

Eobard Thawne (every code-name he has is stupid, but lets just go with Reverse-Flash as the least awful option) - US History, AP US History

Nick Scratch - US Government, AP US Government, AP Comparative Politics

Rex Tyler (Hourman) - AP Art History

Magdalene Kyle-Burton (Sister Zero, she’s a sometimes-nun and a sometimes-sister to Catwoman) - Comparative Religion

Michael Carter (Booster Gold) - Economics, AP Microeconomics, AP Macroeconomics

Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow) - Psychology (there is exactly one heroic psychiatrist in all of comics, and I’d already used Dr Fate elsewhere. Scarecrow seemed like the least bad option of the remaining pool for being around children, and he does at least have teaching experience)

Adam Strange - Sociology

Betty Bates (Lady-at-Law) - Law

Richard Occult/Rose Psychic (it’s complicated, lets just say Dr Occult and leave it at that) - part-time, Criminal Justice

Technology & Engineering

Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) - Electronics, CAD, Woodworking

John Henry Irons (Steel) - Engineering, Metalworking

Will Magnus - Robotics

Visual Arts

Linda Lee/Danvers (she’s Supergirl, but I’m making her a different character from Kara Danvers/Kent because the DCU is really short on artists and I needed someone to teach the damn class, although the only thing that really makes her distinct from other supergirls is that she fucked a horse that one time and IDK how that will translate into a personality...) - Ceramics, AP Studio Art: 3D Design, Art 101

Rex Tyler (Hourman) - Graphic Design, Drawing, AP Studio Art: Drawing

Jack Knight (Starman) - Painting, AP Studio Art: 2D Design, Art 101

Jennifer Lyn-Hayden (Jade) - Photography

So there you go - I’ll be honest I still don’t really understand how high-schools in the USA work, and I have no idea what Design studio art even is so I kind of assigned those ones at random, but now it’s done and cannot be changed.

As always this universe is open to prompts so if you want a chapter focussing on any of these characters just drop me an ask or a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Making Dr Occult & Rose Psychic a single gender-fluid person is already on my list to do, since that’s who I thought they were for a longest time when I started reading comics and I’m still kind of annoyed that isn’t canonically what’s going on.

[emptymanuscript]

The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman | TEDxCSU

I do not know why I waited so long to watch this one. I think it may give a good fight to Simon Sinek’s Start With Why for my favorite TED Talk.

Definitely don’t skip him playing the Ukulele.

Though several things in particular catch my attention in the talk which make me feel like I’ll need to buy the book to go deeper into it (same as Sinek), one point really stood out powerfully to me: that one of the biggest barriers to entry for skill acquisition is emotional.

We avoid practice because we’re awful and we KNOW we’re awful and that feels bad. We get frustrated and want to quit. It’s not a logical problem, it’s an emotional one. And when we have acquired the skill we’re often in the opposite position. Even when we screw up, it’s not the end of the world because we know that even though this particular iteration was terrible and frustrating, that doesn’t mean we must quit. We are confident that we can go on to do something better. It feels bad but there is a base level of self assurance.

And that really rings true to my experience. I by no means know everything about writing. Compared to people with better pedigrees, I actually don’t know much. I even recently had someone go check me out after I made a comment and mention that writers with so few publications don’t usually sound as confident I do. But that’s the mistake of confusing authorship with writing. As an author, my pedigree is short. As a writer, I have been on this path with dedication for a long, long time. And that gives me a lot of confidence. No matter how bad I screw up, I know down to my bones that I am competent. That’s just not my issue anymore.

But that does call the reverse to mind. And I think back to the summer of 1992 and first stepping into Matt Pallamary’s Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror workshop. Literally my first time away from home alone besides for being forced to go to YMCA summercamp as a child. The guy laying on the floor like he co-owned the workshop had been coming to the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference for about as long as I had been alive. The only person in there younger than me was sitting next to his mother. The guy leaning in the doorway currently owns the conference and grew up coming with his own father, Charles Schulz. Intimidated barely begins to cover my emotions.

I will love every single person in that room like family until the day I die because they took me seriously. They accepted where I was. They accepted that I was trying. They accepted that I meant it. They took me under their collective wings as one of their own. Eileen Workman took such good care of me, frankly, I am still quoting writing advice she gave me verbatim because I still have it on my computers, in files I still know how to get to, because I’m still taking notes.

I’m not going to say I wouldn’t be a writer if it weren’t for them. I was on the path. That’s what my teacher / mentor / friend (who I would link to but her site seems to be down at the moment) Jane St. Clair saw in me, which is why she brought me to the SBWC. But, for as long as it is taking me, I think it would have taken so much longer and involved so much more doubt if it hadn’t been for all of them. There’s the famous quote from Newton, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.“ Well, they were my giants. They lifted me up.

Which makes me think that perhaps that should be a 5th recommendation IF POSSIBLE. If you can get people in your corner to cheer and lift you up, it makes everything else much easier.

I also remember how pleased I was to be the worst writer in the room. I remember the thought hitting me that there was nowhere to go but up. No one to turn to that I couldn’t learn something from. Which is not my average state of mind at all. But it turned me into an eager clingy sponge. That one week was my gleeful first 20 hours in my opinion. And the gleefulness, the excitement, also just made everything so much easier.

Thank you for reading this second supporting TED Talk ;)

[oncerpotter2018]

Dark Phoenix: Mutants Are Humans Too

If I become the only person to appreciate this film and saw it for what it was meant to be, then let me be that person. If I am called out for my love for this then let it be so. I have been so loved and deeply emotionally attached to human beings, knowing how it feels to feel alone, to be afraid and to be different, I knew that since watching the first three X-Men movies, I never knew how much these movies will change my life. I never doubted these films and never seemed to try to compare them to others because I already do that with myself. 

If I  were to agree with those who loathe it then I would be lying to myself. I would be dishonest and so here is an account of an analysis of the movie, the ideas and thoughts that raised through my mind. investigating the ways which it was a human film, focusing on the human more than the super in “superhuman”. So if being called out for what is deemed the worst then let me called it the best thing I have ever seen. Still going to defend it until only a few of us are left, still holding on to that hope that had been thought of us for so long ago. 

I am going to be as honest and as truthful in my views because it is the most human thing to do... 

(Warning for spoilers and mild blood/violence) 

Director: 

Simon Kinberg

Cast: 

Sophie Turner, Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters

Rating: 5 Stars 

“I’m not afraid of you, Jean. Look at me. Focus on my voice. We’re going to get through this together. I’m not giving up on you, Jean. This is what family does. We take care of each other. You’re my family, Jean”

From its traumatic beginning to its heartbreaking climax and to its bittersweet ending, Dark Phoenix played with human emotions, mixing in real-life situations with the fantasy that is the superheroes that they are. Like in the many films that came before it, it begins with a family. The music is playing, the sun is out, and eight-year-old Jean Grey is in the back seat as her parents drive to their destination. However, for Elaine Grey, she would never reach her destination for she was the mother who dies with her eyes open. Jean now alone, is visited by Charles Xavier and from this moment on, the life of Jean Grey would never be the same again and with this scene, where man and child discuss this over, each of the characters are closely framed together, it offers a bound, a relationship that would later be shattered. Jean’s facial expressions and body language are suited for a young child who is afraid, alone and is isolated from her parents. Without parental guidance, without that love and embrace from her family, she shies away, eyes drawn towards the ground. Charles later gives Jean a home, a place where she can roam free with others like herself. But she declines the offer, saying she breaks things and to that Charles promised her on the year of 1975 that she is not broken, and he’ll help her, guide her and make her believe she can do anything. Anything she sets her mind to.

Soon after the events of Apocalypse, its been ten years and things have changed and not just physically. What I adored and admired from this movie was exploring a side of Charles we haven’t seen before. The side of pride and an excess of having too much. Charles desired to be praised, to be accepted and play a bigger role in society. James McAvoy magnificently captures Charles’s moments of glory, the way he smiles and plays along with this fame and success with such egotism. His ego was later tested when the direct line to the President is cut off, metaphorically cutting himself off from the fame and glory he tried to hold. What I respected from Simon Kinberg, was the way he understood about our attachment to our pride, our successes and our wants in life and by the end of this film, Simon created a sense of what it means to be human, to make mistakes and learn to evolve from them. For Charles, this meant to learn to forgive and admit he was wrong. In the end, he was reminded of his wrong decisions, the way he pushed away what was more important for a life he wanted so bad.

Dark Phoenix showed me not just superheroes but humans too, humans who are different but can still be subdued by their emotions. During what seems to be the film’s most heartbreaking climax, the death of Raven was a scene that made me cry the most. The truth comes out from her father, about his abandonment, his lack of love and care for Jean, that after her mother’s death, his world died. To him, Jean died with it. This was the moment of a girl lost, looking for her home, for her past only to come home to nothing, except for a father who lost hope, a father who was a coward. A father who failed to bring his own child home. I understood then why Jean cried, got angry and what made it convincing was Sophie Tuner’s ability to express herself, to express Jean’s mixed emotions. To turn herself into the Dark Phoenix. Jean soon confronts her other family, her friends and lies are unravelled and the truth comes out as Charles’s lie begins to break and crumble and he could no longer convince her to stay. In many failed attempts to get to Jean, by Charles’s command, Raven was up next. Jean and Raven’s conversation illustrates the ideas of the caring mother trying to understand what is happening to her child, to her family. The two-shot, going back and forth from Jean to Raven generates a sense of disillusionment and sustains this relationship between the two women. As Raven inches closer to Jean, the distortion effect created by this editing technique relates back to Jean’s disillusionment, her mind unable to differ from her reality and an illusion causing Jean to lose control killing Raven in the process.

Jennifer Lawrance and Nicolas Hoult’s performances during the moment when Raven slowly died cried out to me, it spoke to me. It made me cry. The way that they were framed in a close-up, the camera right in their faces was emotional. Hoult, having played Hank McCoy for four films has outdone himself on this one; how Hank rushes forward, his eyes never leaving Raven’s own. The camera lingers on Hank’s face and his reaction was the piece of what proves of Dark Phoenix’s most human qualities. Raven’s death was also the turning point to a chain reaction of frustration, grief and anger amongst Raven’s closest family and friends. Raven was the person that connected them all and having seen Raven grow in previous films, she had become a sister, a mother, a friend and a hero. The relationships she had obtained over the years especially to Charles, Hank and Erik was so deep so that when she died it was reasonable for their emotions of anger to explode, they had the right to feel angry, frustrated and to cry. To let out their emotions, to be just a human being. As well as this, like that of Elaine Grey, Raven was another mother who died with her eyes wide open.

Simon Kinberg called the movie a ‘family drama’ and he wasn’t wrong, From start to end, the movie delivered the promise of an emotional drama between family. It had begun with the loss of a family only to end with a family who is just beginning to heal. Jean lost her mother to the accident and loss her father to his emotional wounds. Jean found a new home with the X-Men but as dramas go, it idealises on the tragedies of life, the cruelness of fate and the reality in which we live in. None of these characters knew what life had for them, they went blindly through their lives not expecting anything. For Raven, she wanted to move on and so the universe heard her, and gave her what she wanted, a way out: in dearth. Raven never expected to die that day, she never thought of that moment, but what was tragic was she never knew what had become of Jean, what may her future become. The family drama heats up in the kitchen as Hank and Charles voice their emotional opinions, an argument only seen by my eyes like a brother vs brother in law unsettlement in its own soap opera. In a dark and cold tone colour, the kitchen that once was a place of life when Charles first met Raven, now feels empty, isolating and missing any forms of life. Hank increases his temper, demanding Charles, almost begging him to admit he was wrong, to see what he had become. In the end, in a tired and restless Hank, the truth come together and getting the last words the camera focuses on Hank’s face, Hoult’s facial expression filled with convincing anger and grief told Charles what he wanted to say:

“This whole time, we’ve been trying to protect these kids from the world, when really, we should’ve been protecting them from you”

This cold hard confession leads the friendship turning south as the last frame is Charles’s reaction where McAvoy produces a stunning pained expression for realizing what his friend really thought. In the same scene what I loved about it and a moment that made me also tear up was Hank’s own self-confession. The tragic loss of his lover, a memory he can’t forget had led him to blame himself for Raven’s untimely demise, and his language used in the dialogue reflects his emotional wounds, a feeling that had been echoed from John Grey’s own self sorrow. However, what sets him apart from Charles or Mr Grey was his courage to admit he was wrong, to face Charles and say he blames himself for Raven’s death, realizing him from this pain, not completely, but just enough to get Charles thinking, to help him realize that if he can do it then Charles may follow, except he didn’t leaving Hank displeased resulting to his own abandonment of the school, of Charles and abandoning what he stood for. A man of hope.

Dark Phoenix also holds up for its other antagonist, Vuk. An alien with her race searching for the power inside Jean and restart their lives here on earth. Jessica Chastain, a new member of this world of X-Men films, steps in nicely to the heels of Vuk. We first see Margret Smith, a bubbly and full of life women at the dinner party. What is striking is her dress. This costume choice made by the costume department is truly symbolic as from her platinum blonde hair and dress symbolises purity and innocence. This is later changed to a black dress covered with a black coat, symbolising evil and power which contrasts with her hair, remaining her trust and good intentions towards Jean. Speaking of costume changes, Jean too has a drastic costume change, going from grey tones to deep reds and dark purples; this too signifying change and in both physical and metaphoric sense Jean had risen from the ashes to become the Dark Phoenix. The relationship between Vuk and Jean is appealing and sends out an inside look at the means of manipulation. In her vulnerable state with no one to trust Vuk sweeps in to rescue Jean. Having seen Jean’s trust in the men in her life lose their purpose and with Raven dead, it seems that Vux is the one person who Jean can trust. Both being women and a person of understanding, trust and a person who listens, Jean is blinded from the signs of manipulation. The bar scene was intimidating and fills the void in Jean’s heart, the now empty space that is being filled by the words of this stranger. Chastain confidently speaks in a voice of reassurance as the words contrast between “scared little girl” to “the most powerful creature on the planet” making Jean believe she can help her, to understand her, unlike her X-Men. The scene ends with a malicious grin, a sign of deviance in the eyes of the stranger that Jean barely knows.

Living in Genosha, serving as a leader in protecting mutants is Erik Lehnsherr. He cares for those he can help and defines their purpose by living in harmony and peace. His scenes with Jean are an emotional moment and touching and serious moment between Michael Fassbender and Sophie Tuner only increases the tension higher as both actors come face to face trying to understand each other. Fassbender’s tone of voice is strong and determined, asking questions and demanding them on point while Tuner’s body language and emotional facial expressions echo the fragile and broken state that Jean is placed upon; Tuner continues to present a vulnerable Jean, a Jean that on the brink of disaster as Erik pesters her with questions, pressuring her in a moment of anger and unrest. With such intensity and visible interaction between the two mutants, the turning point was made clear as the distressed Jean Grey releases the Dark Phoenix. Genosha is now under threat by Phoenix and after seeing the destruction caused by Jean, Erik begins to express anger and loss of trust. He banishes Jean and it’s the expression that Sophie gave that projected on the screen so well; her confounded and pain faced quickly turned to a face of anger and rage. This scene alone quickly adds to the stress and frustration of Jean’s mental state. Abandoned by her father, by Charles, by Hank, by Scott and now Erik. Its no wonder why Jean chose Vuk, to trust the only who cares. Who doesn’t question but to only understand.

Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tye Sheridan and Evan Peters co-star next to their fellow X-Men showing off their characters abilities. Shipp and McPhee’s characters Storm and Nightcrawler engages with their powers and offer a fantastic display of true strength and human assets. Storm is unique here and produces more than just a storm. Demonstrating the role of a moral compass to Scott and a friend when he is in need and a companion for her friends and family. For McPhee, what is exciting to me was his innocence and maturity, the way he can be both funny and still grew as an adult. What made me cry during his part was something I least expected, a moment of reality hitting this young mutant and the moment when witnessing the death of a stranger whose kid will be left fatherless and a wife who is left widowed, he could not let his death be a left forgotten. This turns him to aggressively kill the aliens, unleashing a warpath between anyone who got in his way which presents a courageous act of heroism especially to avenge the man he barely knew. McPhee understands his character and acts with determination, the way he scrunches up his face with anger and fights back showing character development; going from an innocent, bewildered young mutant still discovering his true potential, to be able to defend himself and others in a selfish act of  bravery as he returns the favour to the man who couldn’t save. For Scott Summers, death was already something he was used to; after his brother’s death, the loss of Raven and Jean was beyond what he can handle. His attitude had changed all those years ago now becoming part of something much bigger. A part of a team, a family. Tye Sheridan gets romantically involved with Sophie Tuner as Jean and Scott’s relationship develops love the ten years, seeing them caught up their love affairs.

Evan Peters, the man who plays the quick and quirky speedster, QuickSliver, had his role cut short. His role lacked in appearance and not enough of him shown however whether it is due to the pressure of the Fox-Disney deal and extensive reshoots deeming the editing team to cut and leave things out from what had been originally in the trailers to meet their deadline, yet for me, I believe the real answer lies in the moments of his rescue attempt in trying to save Jean. His injuries leaving him bloodied and bruised, deeming him unsuitable to service the X-Men in their further mission; for me, this was the ideal situation of any kind of reality from which people get injured, get hurt especially after such tragic events. Even Peters still manages to pull off Maximoff’s funny quirks, as for instance his line:

“I basically did everything. I mean, Jean did a little, like, towards the end. But it was mostly all me”

Peter’s actually improvised this and luckily it made it to the final cut. Furthermore, while people bicker about his nonappearance and lack of the big reveal of father and son but despite this all, I still cried. The uncertainty of his injury leaves questions in our minds on whether he is okay or whether it had left him permanently injured for good. To this effect, I was beginning to recognise a matter of human suffering, situations where life is cruel and unbearable, and by the end of the film, his fate is revealed and say how much he had rested over time. To allow time to heal his wounds. And for me, I never noticed his disappearance, I was probably still crying over past events, where the death of Raven and Jean’s distress state consumed my mind leaving me crying. My eyes sore by the end of the movie.

As the story continues, the fight for Jean is amongst them as they encounter each other face to face in 5th Avenue for their final battle. Both sides offer explanations, trying to counter each other as they reach for Jean. Soon the epic battle for survival and for Jean insures as friends turned to enemies and the world as the know it had fallen behind them. Every shot was intense, the lives of civilians in danger of rampaging mutants but what was hard not to notice was the battle going on with Hank and Scott, two mutants who just several years ago, fought together to save the world from Apocalypse. Now they are in ahead to head battle to either save Jean or kill her. The fight between McCoy and Summers is a moment of struggle between friends, of two men who had lost to much and now is on the brink of trying to do what is right. Hoult and Sheridan’s performances are spectacular showcasing the strained friendship that these two had once held. Hoult provides his Beast rage as his rough movements indicate power and speed to get to Jean. While this was going on, the night time scenery and low lighting create a murky mood, reflecting the mindset of the character and how they are feeling. Magneto’s costume, like Vuk, is black and never too complicated. This simple and slick design helps to camouflage Erik into the darkness, allowing him to easily get to Jean. What was also most engaging with this scene was the moments of the strength of Magento’s powers as he lifts the subway cart from the ground and brings it up the surface. The crew behind the visual effects had brought a high standing finish to Magento’s ultimate power. The cart emerging to the top of the street, keeping our eyes on the destruction down beyond as the crane shot view captures our attention slowly as the cart explodes from the ground. From this, a display of true strength shows Magento pulling the train through the entrance and having heard in interviews, that the train and wall were built and were real, the most worrying of all was that having one shot at this moment it appeared and it clearly showed in the scene how the train came six inches close to hitting actor Michael Fassbender. With such confidence and a heart of steel, he had never even flinched or blink as those bricks fell down, and now that is through perfect as Erik would say.

Jean and Erik's reencounter comes to an eye to eye contact between family once again. Both of them unleashes their gifts, with Magento making the first move. In a shocking turn when Erik couldn’t kill Jean, the Dark Phoenix within her sets free all hell on him. with a move of her hand, the most spine-chilling scene occurred as Phoenix crashes Erik’s helmet and it doesn’t help either with Fassbender’s straining eyes in a close-up, the pained and gritting way he clenches his teeth adds to the growing pain he is feeling. In suspended in motion, the helmet breaks and with one last gleam of rest Phoenix quickly finishes the job and throws Erik out of the window in a what would have been a back-breaking fall. In a rush to get to Jean, in another moment of family and hope, Charles reaches Jean. In a not so expected moment, Phoenix increases her power, lifting Charles towards her. This scene captives the agony of Charles where McAvoy does with such detail as he needs to be in pain. Beyond this scene, Charles tries to help Jean remember, to bring Jean back to her senses, to just remember who she truly is. Like all the memories, the sense of a dream-like blur and distortion effect offers a unique idea of what was true, what was Charles trying to protect her from. This for me enchants the human side of a family ready to heal, ready to accept forgiveness. Jean begins to understand as Charles becomes the better man in front of her father. It now all comes together as the scene between Charles and John becomes clear:

“Will you take her?” - Mr Grey 

“Yes, I can help her in ways that you can’t”- Charles Xavier 

“She can’t be helped. She’s a lost cause”- Mr Grey 

“No, she’s not. As long as there’s someone who cares for her who believes, then there’s still hope”- Charles Xavier 

The message of hope still rings throughout the X-Men films and it seems as though Dark Phoenix wasn’t going to let it side as well. It still continues to bring the message of hope to its audience especially in this case of giving hope to children, to children who need hope for life, a home and a family; just someone who cares, who believes in them. Someone who loves them for who they are. Switching to back to Jean, Vuk took an opportunity to take what was hers, she approaches Jean, carefully touching her and spoke about her future. Down with her vulnerable state, Jean shakes her head, tears beginning to fall from her strained eyes.

“I never asked for this. Any of it.” - Jean Grey 

“I travelled the stars for a gift that you don’t want?”- Vuk 

“Then take it. Please. Free me”- Jean Grey 

Being fueled by fear and confusion of what she had become, she realizes the truth, how she never wanted this for anyone, not even for herself. She begs Vuk for release, for her freedom. With a nod, Vuk couldn’t agree more. The next few scenes empower Scott and begin to have the others dragged rather inhumanly by guards. The train scene keeps them locked together, trapped in the same place having no place to run or hide. Having this opportunity, being in this confined space gives Charles an opportunity finally admit he was wrong. He was ready to face Hank and Erik, to prove that Jean was not the villain, but he was, how he had failed Jean and everyone else all because of his ego, for wanting something he only wanted. The back and forth moment towards Hank and Erik’s faces shows at first the lack of interest, not willing to forgive just yet, but what was the turning point was what Scott had said, about Raven and what she would have wanted. For Hank, it had registered a spark of truth, for he never thought of what Raven would have wanted, to have wanted from him. it was time to step up, to save Jean. Moving from this, the battle begins to increase, both sides raging war against the other and it wasn’t long until Vuk joined the fight taking down their first defence. Soon she wrecks a trail of bodies as each one of Jean’s family drops down hurt and broken.

As Charles tries to wake Jean up, to learn to forgive her, Charles, in a heaven-like place, confronts eight-year-old Jean played by the wonderful Summer Fontana. While they talked, the scene that unfolds is arranged in a battle of protecting Jean, and the approaches of emotional connections made towards these characters as Jean and Charles talks. Fontana plays an innocent young girl, a girl who had finally found peace and has already forgive Charles. The light flares that bounces off and on the screen symbolizes the reflection of this being all inside Charles’s mind, a place of peace and serenity can flourish. For once in Charles’s mind, he speaks with reassurance and feels the guilt he had been feeling for so long, and they're staring right in front of him is the same eight-year-old girl he had talked to and promised to keep safe all those years ago. Charles understands what he had to do, he had to protect Jean, to keep her away from the trauma, the pain and give her what she deserves, what every child deserves…

“A family” Jean replies, nodding both with Charles. This conversation between chid and a father figure, both characters are freeing themselves from the pain they had to suffer as Jean recognises what she must do and understand that the lie that Charles told was done from the act of love, how he had loved her more than her own father that he was willing to lie. To save her from having to grow up being afraid of the world. with having the last say, Jean now knows what she must do. That is to:

“Protect My Family”

Just this simply three words had made such an impact, it had sealed the movie with its theme of family and what the family stands for. A family protects and cares for their loved ones, to love each other through hard times and that is what Jean will do. And shortly after this, Jean had woken, her mind ready to fight and what I had noticed was the moment when Charles held Jean’s hand, the sign of prayer and hope which I must confess made me tear up. As her promise to protect her family, they are soon encased in a bubble as the train carts disperse and fall back with devastating results. Soon, the final battle begins as Jean tries to protect her family. A family she couldn’t save before. As the battle insures, Jean, now being able to take control over her own fate sets loose on the remaining aliens, banishing them from the face of the earth. With warm and hot tones of red, orange and yellow adding to the flames around them, the exterior designs help to establish power and control as Jean as Phoenix fights to protect and serve. While thinking Vuk is gone for good, we would think wrong as Vuk returns but this time to truly take it by force. Now free from the chains that held her down for so long, she uses this force for her own advantage. In a spectacular display of face to face encounter with Vuk and Jean, the power to obtain the force becomes too much for Vuk. In her last attempts to achieve what she wanted, she uses Jean’s emotions to bring her down.

“Your emotions make you weak”

And with one last look at her family, the people that got angry because they care so much, she gives them one last nod and ends Vuk, sacrificing herself in the process. And with last one look, there was nothing that her family could do but watch as Jean takes the battle in her own hands, protecting them as she promised. In space, both women circle around, the camera spinning with them as Jean closes in on Vuk finishing with:

“You’re wrong, my emotions make me strong”

With this approval of both her mind and heart, Vuk finally is finally vanquished, leaving Jean to disappear among the stars, leaving on being the trace of a phoenix burning in the sky. From down below, its Erik’s sadden expression that is caught first, the way his face drops down to show a feeling of sorrow and mournful, thinking probably what he and said before to Jean. Soon Scott thinks of Jean, that she is now gone, like Raven. And yet it was Charles who spoke the truth, how she is now free, that she is no longer his little girl anymore and must set her free, like the phoenix she was meant to be. To make her own decisions, to control her own fate. In the end, it fades to black and the world seems at peace once again. The next scene leads to the epilogue, a bittersweet ending to what had been a long and severe battle over Jean whose sacrifice had led to their protection and survival. Her sacrifice wasn’t as much of heroic sacrifice as those like Tony or Natasha from Endgame, but it was that nod of her head as she looked at Charles one last time that showed how much she was loved, how she can trust them to be okay without her. Her sacrifice was never a heroic one a way to protect those she loves, to do it for them for she couldn’t those she loved the first time. what seems to be a couple of years later, in a scene of innocence and peace, the flowers by the gate that once was lined with red lilies are now white, a symbol of hope, innocence and purity as Scott reassembles the new sign for the school now under a new name: Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters. This change in the name is a good decision, a decision probably made by Charles as in the end its not only the family that has changed but the home does too and the school was the home that Charles gave to Raven and to Jean, a place both grew up and a place where they last stayed. To enable the school to continue without the past haunting him, the scene of Hank walking to his office says a lot of the changes that had been placed.

It is now another school year, a new term as the tracking shot moves around the school showing Strom teaching science, Kurt and Peter leading more mature leads and now Hank, the new Professor and Dean of the school now named after a friend he wouldn’t save. What was touching about this scene in the epilogue as well as the photo of Raven at this desk, the way Hank had it framed and this wasn’t only a touching moment but a prop that is a reminder that Hank had moved on, how everyone has and how they have learnt to find acceptance in this world of cruelty. Of course, they still feel grief and pain on the inside but as they say, time will heal all wounds and that’s what Simon had reflected here. But what was so intriguing and so beautiful in any shape of form was the concluding moment between Charles and Erik. An ending to where it had all begun. Now in Paris, Charles and Erik meet up in a nearby café with Erik wanting to place chess. Chess has been a sign of their everlasting war between their beliefs is now just a casual game between two long friends. For me, this wasn’t just a heart-warming and symbolic end to the relationship between friends but also, if I say so myself, a beautiful and romantic grand gesture of love and passion as Erik reminds Charles of how he saved him from the waters back in the year of ’62, how he had given him a home and now he wants to do the same for Charles. And if that wasn’t enough, Kinberg happily implies the words: 

“I’ll go easy on you”

And Charles’s replies:

“No, you won’t”

With them ending the scene in laughter and quirky smiles. If this wasn’t Cherik enough them I don’t know what will. But Dark Phoenix had just become the moment when Cherik became canon. So, if Cuba was their Beach Divorce, then Paris would be their Chess Proposal. But as they start their game, the camera slowly tilts up, getting a glimpse of the Paris street and a hint of the Eiffel Tower and there off in the distance is a trail of a phoenix, a reminder that this isn’t the end of Jean, this is only the beginning.

Overall, Dark Phoenix was more drama and human then about superheroes. It was more than trying to save the world and more like trying to save a person from it. To save a family member from the pain and hurt of a childhood trauma. Dark Phoenix details what happens when a lie to protect becomes a lie that kills. How the ego kills relationships and how the death of a loved one allows grief and pain to spiral someone out of control, seeking revenge at the person who killed their close relation. Dark Phoenix was the movie that had made me feel like this journey had ended but will not be forgotten. To me, with its music score done by the very talented composer Hans Zimmer, and the brilliant minds of both Simon Kinberg and Hutch Paker, every detail and every piece of dialogue matter and had created a while and an emotional roller coaster filled with pain and heartbreak. It didn’t just tell a story about superheroes but a story about a family and about how a little girl had to grow up and face the truth of a lied that protected her all these years. What Simon had done was to explore human emotions and show the ideas of psychological and philosophical ideas of our mind and how we treat others as human beings.

By the end of the film, there is acceptance and the power of hope remains at the heart of the school and to the people around them, as well as to what the X-Men represent. And soon enough the film itself had taught valuable life lessons to take back home, to shape our minds about family and about ourselves. So in the end, I can say that I’m proud of this movie and deserves my full attention and receives five stars as a reward for its display of human beings, about family and about never losing hope especially to a child in need.

[ink-logging]

More Superhero Comics, Revealing My Reactionary and Facile Engagement with Art as Little More Than the  Accrual of Social Capital, Benefiting Nobody But Myself, 4/7/19

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 4: The Tempest #5 (of 6), Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw, Todd Klein: This is an often very funny issue, set up like a pasted-together UK edition of old US pre-Code horror and crime comics, which, in addition to being funny, plumps up the page count as the plot moves maybe two or three tics forward in advance of the very-last-issue-of-LoEG-ever. The conservative in me wonders why we’re being this digressive in the penultimate number of the entire saga, but then -- at least since “The Black Dossier” -- this project has been more about positioning various strands of fiction and their accrued cultural baggage against one another than telling a propulsive adventure story. Anyway: the realm of Faerie, having easily survived an attempted nuclear strike on the collective imagination by a military-corporate black ops fiction squad comprised entirely of various revamps of James Bond, has brought in every character from every game, comic, cartoon, TV show, movie and book reality with everything for a HUGE apocalypse! 

Scenes of bedlam involve: the life story of Victorian painter and murderer Richard Dadd; cameos by Stardust the Super Wizard and David Britton’s Lord Horror; the oeuvre of musician Warren Zevon, brought to terrifying life; a Corbenesque image of a nude muscleman’s massive dick flapping into battle in 3-D; Mick Anglo’s Captain Universe, presented by Moore in unmistakable evocation of his own Marvelman/Miracleman stories of decades ago; a ghost wearing the word CRIME on his head a la Charles Biro’s Mr. Crime, the greatest American comic book horror host; at least one figure from the annals of racist caricature firing powerful sound waves from his mouth; a monster named Demogorgon, the leviathan of Populism, which the heroes allegorically cross as a footbridge en route to a safehouse named the Character Ark; a page-long parody of Batman (via the forgotten UK superhero playboy character the Flash Avenger), describing his origin as motivated entirely by hatred of the poor; a text feature telling of UK comics artist Denis McLoughlin, who worked consistently since the end of WWII, never made enough money to retire, and spent decades as an elderly man drawing for survival on titles he hated, eventually taking his own life in his 80s; and the secret of what happened to all the British superhero characters after the midcentury, which is that they were all eaten by Capitalism, pretty much. I laughed a bunch, but if you think LoEG is tedious shit, this probably won’t turn you around.         

*

Savage Dragon #242, Erik Larsen, Ferran Delgado, Nikos Koutsis, Mike Toris: The latest installment of the longest-running Image comic written and drawn by one of the Image founders, now deeply dove into problematic network tv drama stuff. The Dragon’s relationship with his partner Maxine is still strained in the wake of her sexual assault, a video of which the Dragon viewed in the police archives; meanwhile, the mother of one of the Dragon’s young children has been telling them all the truth about their parentage, further disrupting the peace of the household. Also, a formerly aggressive sex robot has joined the gang, dressed as an anime maid. And, the Dragon reluctantly teams up with the mid-’00s-vintage sexy heroine character Ant (which Larsen purchased from creator Mario Gully a few years ago) to foil a scheme by elderly elites to project themselves into the bodies of mythic gods in order to provoke the Rapture. Most interesting to me, however, is a bonus segment in which Larsen presents newly-lettered pages of his preliminary solo work on “Spawn” #266 (Oct. 2016), which would later be filled out by contributions from Todd McFarlane, colorist FCO Plascenscia, and letterer Tom Orzechowski. 

As usual, I prefer the ‘unfinished’ version (top) to the official release product (bottom).

*

Superman Giant #9, Erika Rothberg, ed. 

&

Batman Giant #9, Robin Wildman, ed.

These are two of those 100-page DC superhero packages they sell for five bucks exclusively at Walmart (for now; later this year they’re gonna have them in comic book stores too), which marry one new 12-page story per issue with three full-length reprint comic books from elsewhere in the 21st century. I just wanted to know what was inside them. Here is what I found:

-The new Batman comic is written by Brian Michael Bendis as a very conspicuously all-ages prospect, where the story is about nothing more than what it’s about, and the title character is presented as a serious-minded but inquisitive and compassionate man of adventure. This issue -- just in time for the remix of “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus -- Batman and Green Lantern travel back to the Old West, trade in their superhero outfits for cowboy clothes, and meet up with Jonah Hex. Nick Derington draws the heroes smooth and squinting with Swanian sincerity, and Dave Stewart colors it all bright and sunny. This is not my thing at all, but it’s confident to the point of acting like almost a rebuke to the rest of the book, where literally everything else is chapter whatever of a nighttime doom ballad drawn by either Jim Lee or something trying very hard to look like him. 

-Like:

I can spot the differences, sure - if nothing else, reading superhero comics trains you to spot differences in otherwise similar things. But, there is absolutely an aesthetic at work. The top page is from an issue of “Nightwing” that tied into the 2012 “Night of the Owls” crossover in the Batman titles, produced by a seven-person drawing and coloring team fronted by pencillers Eddy Barrows & Andres Guinaldo. The writer, Kyle Higgins, has Dick Grayson fight his semi-immortal great-grandfather, who is an assassin for the Court of Owls: one of the more popular recent Batman organizations of villainy, presented here as a fascist group mediating society’s function through murder from the gray space between social classes. The Graysons, therefore, are the Gray Sons, but Nightwing resists the pull of destiny by winning a big fight, slinging the villain over his shoulder, and walking away toward a better future of just beating the shit out of bad people instead of killing them, I think. The Batgirl story -- from 2011, written by Gail Simone -- is comparatively orthodox, finding the character gripped with uncertainty about the superhero life and going about some downtime character-building activities, though most of it’s a big fight with a villain with a tragic past. The penciller, Ardian Syaf, kind of has trouble blocking the action so that characters’ movements are clear; I think Syaf is best known for having his contract with Marvel terminated in 2017 for slipping what were widely interpreted as anti-Christian and antisemitic references to Indonesian politics into an X-Men comic. 

-There is a whole lot of Jeph Loeb among the reprints. He is not a writer who has been in critical fashion for much the past two decades, but he has undoubtedly sold a lot of comics for DC, and they probably feel he can do it again. The Batman book is serializing (deep breath) “Hush”, a 2002-03 storyline notable for its extraordinarily easy-to-solve central mystery, and generally being a taped-together excuse for Jim Lee to draw as many popular Batman characters as possible across 12 issues; it sold like hot cakes. The highlight of chapter 9 is probably a bit where a three person fight ends in one panel, and then one of the characters leaves, and then a second character wakes up from unconsciousness and also leaves, and then the first character comes back and nurses the third (also unconscious) character back to health, and then Batman arrives, all in the transition between the aforementioned panel and the next, which takes place in the same room; such is the befuddling desire to race ahead to more spectacle. Jim Lee (with Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair) is indeed Jim Lee (et al.) throughout, though at one point the team drops a howler of a swordfighting panel where Batman’s blade appears to grows to JRPG length due to what I think is the colorist filling two whoosh lines with the same hue as the swords.      

Meanwhile, the Superman book is serializing a 2004 storyline from “Superman/Batman” -- the series where Loeb has Superman describe the action on the page with his own Superman-branded captions, and Batman does the same with Bat-captions, and Superman says tomayto and Batman says tomahto -- in which the late Michael Turner, one of the rock star 2nd generation Image artists, illustrates a new introduction for Supergirl. But this isn’t quite the same comic that was originally published... can YOU spot the difference?

Is this like how Walmart won’t sell CDs that have an explicit content sticker, but with teen superhero g-strings? It’s hard to explain to younger readers how the low-rise/thong panties combo forever sealed the horniness of a generation of het male superhero artists into the late 1990s, and maybe DC doesn’t want to face that. Or, they’re just leery of how Turner slipping some peekaboo glimpse of Supergirl’s underpants or bare thighs into virtually every panel in which she is depicted below the waist might affect the marketability of the comic in 2019 - although I guess it could have happened in an earlier reprint somewhere too.

-The new Superman comic is a series of 12 splash pages depicting a race between Superman and the Flash. There is very little sense of speed, because Andy Kubert (inked by Sandra Hope, colored by Brad Anderson) draws the characters as frozen in time in a way that prioritizes muscular tension in the manner of contemporary superhero cover art; at one point the two characters part the sea with the force of their bodies, and it looks to me like they’re gesticulating in front of a theatrical backdrop. And, anyway, the story pulls back almost every other page to depict Batman standing on a ledge, or Lex Luthor in a sinister chair -- or some birds flying next to a building, or the Earth as viewed from space with streaks on it -- as the race occurs deep in the background or off to one side. The point is not excitement, but reflection, as imposed upon us by the between 13 and 21 narrative captions and/or dialogue balloons pasted atop all but the first page. 

The writer is Tom King, whose “Mister Miracle” (with artist Mitch Gerads) gets a double-page advertisement later in the book, festooned with breathless blurbs from major media outlets. His narrator here is a little girl who is literally chained in captivity, clutching a Superman doll, and delivering her soliloquy in a manner of a superhero-themed TED talk with handclap repetitions on the nature of contradiction. Being faster than a speeding bullet is a CONTRADICTION. Being as strong as a locomotive is a CONTRADICTION. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound is a CONTRADICTION. Superman is about to lose the race, but then he wins, because to beat the Fastest Man Alive is... a contradiction. No wonder the GQ entertainment desk was blown away. DC comics do this kind of thing a lot, where they just have the writer tell you how great the characters are, and since you’re still reading superhero comics in the 21st century, you’re expected to pump your fists in recognition, because you and the writer and everyone at DC are just big ol’ fans... but I am not, because I am Jesus Christ, the only son of God. 

-Elsewhere in the Superman book is an issue of “Green Lantern” from 2006, drawn by Ethan Van Sciver (inked with Prentis Rollins, colored by Moose Baumann), who is known today mostly as a conservative ‘personality’ online. He also netted more than half a million dollars last July in a crowdfunding campaign to make a 48-page comic book which he has not yet finished; funny to see an American right-winger on the French schedule. Funnier still to see the kind of people (mostly guys of a certain age) who mill around such personalities croaking about how diversity is ruining comics, because ALMOST EVERY FUCKING STORY IN BOTH OF THESE 100-PAGE BOOKS IS DRAWN BY EITHER SOME DUDE FROM THE 1990s OR SOMEBODY WORKING EXPLICITLY IN THAT STYLE, but - I guess when you’ve been pampered for so long, every paper cut feels like a ripped limb. Speaking of dismemberment, the writer here is Geoff Johns, who is often pegged as a superhero traditionalist, though he also has a grasp of gory pomp which occasionally pushes the comics he writes into a Venn diagram set with loud youth manga... at least in terms of how the action plays out, all broad and pained. So, needless to say, he’s currently writing “Doomsday Clock”, which is DC’s present attempt to extend the publication life of the valuable “Watchmen” property, so that they needn’t return it to the original creators, per the original writer, Alan Moore.  

-To hear Alan Moore say it, the America’s Best Comics line was done on a work-for-hire basis as a means of ensuring prompt payment of the various creators from Jim Lee’s WildStorm, the original publisher. WildStorm was then acquired by DC (Jim Lee is now their co-publisher and chief creative officer), and Moore -- who has been (fairly) criticized in the past for taking ethical stances that cause financial harm to his artistic collaborators, who are in a less economically flexible position than writers in the comic book field -- allowed the line to continue under DC’s ownership, as to cancel everything would disadvantage everyone working on the titles. One of those titles, “Tom Strong”, was written by Moore and pencilled by Chris Sprouse for a while, and then there was a long line of guest creators, and then Moore and Sprouse came back when the ABC line wrapped, so that the concept could reach its logical termination point in an apocalyptic manner... Moore does love an apocalypse. The final story in the Superman book is a very recent, late 2018 issue of “The Terrifics”, in which we find an attempt to revive the DC-owned Tom Strong characters as players in broader DC stories. Jeff Lemire & José Luís are the primary creators. Jack Cole’s Plastic Man is there, as well as the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake version of Mister Terrific. It’s a lot of offbeat characters; we even see Moore’s own parody of Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, because, I mean, Alan Moore does a lot of riffs on preexisting characters too, right? It’s a big blob of cartoon whimsy, filled with available characters running around. If they’re available, you might as well roll ‘em out, off the new releases rack and into a supermarket reprint package stacked in a box next to squeeze toys and discount Pokémon merchandise, which I bought, because it was really cheap.

-Jog                   

[fussingoverfassbender]

By NST Entertainment - May 24, 2019 @ 10:15am

IT’S been a long ride, 11 movies on, in the X-Men film franchise since the first one hit cinemas back in 2000. But the conflict between humans and mutants continues to grow and the thrilling adventures and dramatic stories endure.

The 12th and latest instalment, titled X-Men: Dark Phoenix, marks the directorial debut of writer and producer Simon Kinberg, who is no stranger to the X-Men screen universe.

A writer for The Last Stand (2006), Days Of Future Past (2014) and Apocalypse (2016), he produced First Class (2011), Deadpool 1 & 2 (2016 & 2018) and Logan (2017) as well.

Kinberg was also executive producer for the TV series The Gifted and Legion, both of which are part of the X-Men film franchise.

In his capable hands and through his astounding vision, the new movie sees the X-Men facing one of their gravest and most personal challenges to date.

Dark Phoenix is set in the 1990s and the team attempts to embrace a newfound heroic status and acceptance within society.

But their close bond is slowly shattered when the extremely powerful mutant with telepathic and telekinetic powers, Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner of Game Of Thrones fame) merges with a strange, extraterrestrial force, one that boosts her already strong abilities to previously unknown levels.

Years of repression are torn asunder as Jean begins to find herself and master her new powers, even as those around her start to wonder if she’ll be a threat to the world.

It doesn’t help that a mysterious alien with an agenda (Jessica Chastain) is exerting an influence on the already unstable persona of the powerful mutant.

The ensemble cast sees many actors and actresses returning to their previous roles for this movie, including Michael Fassbender, who plays the charismatic mutant Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto.

Fassbender has been playing the troubled, driven mutant, who can control magnetic fields and manipulate metal, since First Class.

In that time, he’s seen the character develop as a leader in his own right, and struggle with the treatment of mutants by society in general.

Fassbender, nominated for two Oscars in his career to date, has appeared in films such as Macbeth, 12 Years A Slave and the more recent Alien entries.

Below, he talks about the character-based focus of the film, Erik’s development through the years and the comfort level between the actors on set.

WHAT BROUGHT YOU BACK TO THE FILM SERIES?

I loved the journey up to Dark Phoenix and specifically wanted to come back because Simon was directing.

I wanted to lend whatever I could bring to the table for him. He was such a fantastic collaborator and engineer of First Class, Days of Future Past and Apocalypse and to see him get in the director’s chair, I was really excited for him.

THIS IS SIMON’S DIRECTORIAL DEBUT. HOW WAS HE AS A DIRECTOR?

He was very relaxed and very confident. It seemed like he’d been doing it for years. He’s been on so many massive films and been an integral part in so many of them.

He’s also a very smart man, he’s the kind of guy that doesn’t speak unless he’s educated on something or has knowledge on it.

He observes, he listens — all the ingredients to make a great director. I think he bided his time and felt like he was ready to have a go at it.

WHERE DO WE FIND ERIK IN THE NEW MOVIE?

He’s finally become the cult leader that was always alive in him! (laughs) He’s formed Genosha, so he’s managed to create this community, independent state/nation where mutants can live in harmony and without attack. Anyone who agrees to pitch in and do their part are welcome there.

It’s self-sufficient, it’s off the grid, and it’s his struggles through the series, certainly when I was playing it, culminating in this physical place.

Since his family has been ripped away from him, from what happened to him as a child and then, of course, with his wife and child later, well, that sense of death is always with him.

But this is a mature Erik. He’s more at peace and he only leaves this haven out of loyalty. It’s like an old Western. He’s got to go on his mission.

THIS FEELS LIKE SIMON DRIVING IT TO BE MORE CHARACTER-BASED. WAS THAT YOUR FEELING?

I think he wanted to strip everything down, boil it down to the bones… even visually, the way he shot it, a lot of it is handheld, and I’m not wearing any Magneto costumes.

The helmet is there but everything is pared down to be a character exploration.

DID THE OTHERS LOOK ENVIOUSLY AT YOU IN YOUR TURTLENECK AND JEANS?

I don’t know. I certainly was very thankful that it was an easy in and out for me, especially if you look at what Nicholas (Hoult) goes through each day as Beast!

Compared to him, I definitely got an easier route.

THERE’S A LINE IN THE FILM ABOUT THERE ALWAYS BEING A SPEECH FROM XAVIER. DID IT FEEL LIKE SIMON PLAYING WITH THE TROPES OF THE GENRE?

Exactly. We’ve all heard the ideology, whether they’re playing chess together or Charles is talking to him telepathically. There’s this back and forth.

It was a nice little tongue-in-cheek moment in the script, which is kind of like the Indiana Jones moment where he just pulls the pistol and shoots a guy instead of getting into hand-to-hand combat. That was fun!

JESSICA JOINED THE CAST THIS TIME. DID YOU GET TO ACT WITH HER ALL?

It was great to have her join us. We didn’t really have a lot of scenes together, just a few moments together in the final act of the movie.

She’s present with Jean, and so it mainly was acting beats that I had any interaction with her character.

It’s a very technical aspect to it. You’ve got to make sure that the timings are right and knowing that a lot of things are going to be added in later. It’s making sure those rhythms are correct. More than anything else, it’s a very technical exercise.

IS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU’RE USED TO THESE DAYS?

Absolutely. When I started doing effects movies, you had to imagine what they were going to put in later. There was some storyboarding stuff but now they’ve got pre-visualisation stuff that they show you on a laptop, to see what it’s going to look like and the geographical elements.

Of course, you know it’s going to be a lot more fantastical when the team has spent some time on it. I enjoy the technical challenges. It’s another thing that needs to be learned, and it’s something that is fun to explore.

It’s not only being in time with the actors. It’s also being in time with the stunt team, if you’re on wires it’s the riggers… everybody is communicating in the same rhythm. It’s like a dance and I enjoy that.

HOW IS THE FEELING ON SET?

At the beginning, you’re really trying to bond with everyone. You’re getting to know each other and those sorts of silly games, I know they can be a little annoying if people are trying to gather order on set but they’re also very important for the actors to get to a personal level with one another, to be comfortable with one another, and to have that camaraderie.

We trust each other. We depend on each other and we all like each other. So it’s just the maturation of that relationship.

ARE YOU EVER TEMPTED TO SEPARATE YOURSELF, TO GO METHOD WITH MAGNETO’S FEELING OF ISOLATION?

It depends what my mood is on the day. There are times where I’ll just go away and find a corner where I can just be by myself if I need to be in more of a meditative state.

We’re all at ease with one another. We all know each other very well and it’s whatever each of us needs to do.

There’s always a respect there about whatever the other person’s process is and if anyone is ever struggling on camera, or in a moment, we’re all there for each other 100 per cent and we want everyone to be the best on these sets.

WHAT IS THE OVERRIDING THEME OF THE MOVIE THIS TIME?

I think the seed of talking about female characters and power was there from the beginning. Simon had unfinished business after The Last Stand, and you could tell from Apocalypse that he was putting this story in place, setting it up.

So, the germ of that was there and the timing, as it happens at the moment just seems to be in sync with what’s going on in the real world.

But Simon’s always been of that mindset, the equality across the board for both the female and male characters.

WERE YOU GLAD NOT TO BE THE THREAT THIS TIME?

I was a little bit jealous, to be honest. “What? Somebody else is causing trouble?” Apocalypse already stole that from me in the movie before so I was getting used to it!

DO YOU SEE YOU THIS AS A POTENTIAL SWAN SONG FOR THE CURRENT TEAM? WOULD YOU COME BACK AGAIN IF ASKED?

I have no idea! It’s not my issue to deal with, I’ll leave it in the hands of people who’ve got it. I’m not spending much time thinking about it, I’ve had a great journey on these four films, I’m happy.

If something comes up that looks interesting, I’m always willing to read and take a look but I’m perfectly happy.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix opens in cinemas on June 6.

[strangcrdoctor]

"You and I do have something in common after all, and not just being part if not mostly Terran,” he said, looking down at the Zune in his hands and wondering vaguely where his graduate school and residency days had gone. They were halcyon days to be sure, but full of their own darkness. But the economic and political shadow over the early 2000s was nothing compared to the pall that hung over Earth now, which definitely gave them the benefit of looking very much like simpler times. “My mum also gave me a lot of the music I love, stuff I love to this day regardless of whether or not it’s vintage now.”

But sitting on the Benatar, kibitzing with Star Lord, AKA Peter Quill, AKA the last human he expected to find when flogging for specific magical/antique artifacts on Xandar, and finding so many favorite familiar songs on his “Awesome Mix Playlists,” it felt like maybe those simpler times weren’t so far gone. Not as long as people like them kept enjoying them, kept remembering them. It had been the first time he’d thought about his mother in... too long for him not to feel guilty about it. But he didn’t feel as much guilt now, in his own middle age, and finally being able to remember her influences on his life fondly rather than being crippled by the pain of her absence. It had probably taken him far too long to realize that those memories weren’t debilitating, but late was better than never.

“She loved Motown and soul,” he said, scrunching his eyes up and smiling so wide it might just hurt at the memory of her in a painfully loud orange, navy, black, and cream paisley wrap dress, belting to Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Sam Cooke, and Stevie Wonder on the sweltering afternoon of their annual post-harvest garden party. He had been old enough to be on record-flipping duty, while Donna and Vincent had been relegated to helping lay crooked lattice-tops on the pies. It was the 80′s by then, but you couldn’t tell Nebraska, nor his mother, that. It wouldn’t have made any difference. “Jazz too - Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Lena Horne. And the hippie movement, god. Buffalo Springfield, The Moody Blues, Simon & Garfunkle. Brit Punk, too: The Kinks, The Who, The Clash, The Police. But to her all of it was right up there with The Marvelettes, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Roberta Flack, James Brown, Charles Bradley, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder... and don’t even get me started on Earth, Wind & Fire.”

“But you missed a lot of good stuff that came after, too. A lot of people hate disco but if you see it as an in-between from the soul movement to the later rap movement, it’s really not that bad. Though I have to say it was hard to deal with the split between liking Missy Elliott and Whitney Houston pretty much at once.” He scratched the back of his neck with a wince. “Way too many incriminating karaoke nights were spent during that era.”

( @mydaddywasaplanet )

[ssfoc]

I just listened to Harry's album from start to finish again and it struck me once more just how incredibly dark, how sad, it is. Every single song save for Carolina and Only Angel (and even those, who knows what they really mean). Do you have any general theories of the album as a whole?

I went to the Wikipedia page for the album, just to get a sense of the GP’s take on it. I remember reading these quotes.

“A lot of my influences, and the stuff that I love, is older… I didn’t want to put out my first album and be like, ‘He’s tried to re-create the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties.’ Loads of amazing music was written then, but I’m not saying I wish I lived back then. I wanted to do something that sounds like me.”—Styles in Rolling Stone [31]

Lyrically, the album’s themes mostly focus on women and relationships.[35][36] In a Rolling Stone interview with Cameron Crowe, Styles said “the one subject that hits the hardest is love, whether it’s platonic, romantic, loving it, gaining it, losing it… it always hits you hardest.[35]

I think that there’s a sense of nostalgia in the album because of its stylistic influences— many blues chords and melodies. Like his idols, Harry’s album swings back and forth between major and minor keys, sometimes within four bars (FTDT). If you notice the list of songs in Another Man:

1. Pink Floyd: Breathe2. Elvis: Can’t Help Falling in Love3. Paul McCartney: Heart of the Country4. Crosby, Stills & Nash: Helplessly Hoping5. Ray Charles: Drown in My Own Tears 6. Blaze Foley: Ooh Love7. Simon and Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water 8. Van Morrison: Tupelo Honey 9. Travis: Flowers in the Window10. Patsy Cline: She’s Got You

And the list of songs in his pre-show playlists: 2017

2018

You would think that Harry hasn’t heard any song after 1990!

Musically, Harry has said that he wanted the album to sound like a White Stripes album, which is heavily influenced by blues rock and even grunge, if grunge were more blues-based. The White Stripes were stripped down rock n roll— one voice, one guitar (mandolin and piano sometimes, all Jack White), one drummer (Meg White, who is divorced from Jack now), and a spare, garage-style production.

Harry’s album is more lush and sophisticated in production, and his songs are more melodically driven. Compare his “Medicine” with The White Stripes’ “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine,” which may have inspired it:

https://youtu.be/LDVJpNCWkBE

You can hear how Harry’s song adheres more to a pop melody and storytelling lyrics.

Despite what we see on tour, as the Wikipedia page shows, Harry has always been seen in relationships only with women, so the natural assumption is that the love songs and broken hearts in the album are about women. The quote about love “hitting him the hardest” is gender-neutral, but most people, after reading the preceding paragraphs in Crowe’s story, would also assume that he’s referring to heterosexual love.

I think the album’s darkness might be a reflection of a corporate decision to swing the album to this subject of heterosexual love, which hasn’t been a happy one, nor, as far as we know, long-lasting (although the length of a love affair may not correlate with intensity, Crowe did specify that the album was centered on a relationship of a few years’ duration that may yet be ongoing). The emotions tend to be expressed as interior, lonely musings that are observed rather than communicated. There is a focus on miscommunication and the inability to speak— a censorship of expression.

In this sense, Harry was speaking truthfully when he said he was being honest. It feels like an album where someone has always felt, observed, loved, and been loved deeply, but has not found an adequate expression for all that.