#convinced Davide has a different netflix to the rest of us

[lifetheuniverseandnothing]

Call out post for Davide @gimmickbird

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Have you watched Lupin? What did you think? (And are you a fan of the books or other adaptations of the character?)

The short answer is yes, I have seen Lupin on Netflix. Overall I enjoyed it so long as I suspended my disbelief at certain things.

Unfortunately it took being struck down by Covid and being bedridden for me to actually to binge watch the whole series. So I was behind the curve when my friends, French and those outside of France, started to talk about it around me. I had to beg them not to give away spoilers until I had seen it all.

It did surprise me that it won rave widespread reviews outside France because usually French drama series don’t travel very well outside of France. I’m sure even Netflix had no idea how successful it would be for them. I’m sure being in Covid lockdown had something to do with it. In any case I don’t begrudge its success as it’s well earned.

However I wasn’t too surprised that within France itself the French reviews were decidely mixed and divisive. The critic at Le Point painfully hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “Le plus gros défaut de l'ensemble reste la pauvreté des personnages, tous unidimensionnels, caricaturaux et aussi épais que du papier à cigarette.“ - loosely translated as, ‘the biggest flaw of the whole thing remains the poverty of the characters, all one-dimensional, cartoonish and as thick as cigarette paper’.

There’s a growing amount of good French stuff on TV and streaming services but a non-French audience will not have had the chance to have seen all of it yet. I can think of any number of French television drama/dramedy/cmedy series that are much better than Lupin with better plots, characters, and even a truer perspective of French society and even modern day France (Dix pour cent (Call My Agent!), Le Bureau des Légendes, Engrenages, Baron Noir, and Paris Police 1900). But you would be hard pressed to find anything that comes close to Lupin just for the sake of something fun to watch during the Covid lockdown.

What makes the current generation of home made French television series so interesting is how much of it is a reflection of France’s own anxieities about itself and its role in a increasingly English speaking dominating world. In a funny way it sees itself as defiant plucky Asterix fighting off the Roman American cultural hordes from totally invading their Francophone culture.

For sure, it has societal and racial issues stemming from its colonial legacy and issues of immigration and integration (France has the largest Muslim population in Europe). However it seems to want to ‘resolve’ these issues through the almost sacramental adherence to French secularist ideals rather than American inspired ideas of social justice and equity. There’s always been something very admirable about the French - from the time of General de Gaulle and perhaps before - always swinging from snooty ambivalence to outright antipathy towards the influence of American culture ‘americanising’ French culture (no to Walmarts or fast food chains for example).

Is it any wonder then that Netflix’s ill-conceived American series ‘Emily in Paris’ was widely hated and mocked within France for just perpetuating those lazy American tropes of Paris and French culture?

Personally I know Francophile Americans, long resident in Paris, who were frankly embarrassed and spent a lot of time apologising to their French friends. I have one American friend who has told me that she was so mad that she would have blind folded Emily and shoved her hard in the car boot and drive her all the way to the poorest of the banlieues in the grimey crime saturated suburbs of Paris - Seine-Saint-Denis came to mind - and dump her preening arse there. She would slap her and tell the spoilt entitied brat to make her own way back home - you know, to her spacious apartment in one of the most expensive arrondissements of Paris that of course(!) any American intern working for French marketing firms can afford.

I digress. My apologies. Watching this God awful show gives me PTSD.

Onto Lupin.

Thankfully Lupin doesn’t try to play to non-French tropes of what Paris is or isn’t. It does skim the surface of current discontents within French culture and society (race, class, power, and money) but ever so lightly so as to not get in the way of just spinning a good crowd pleasing yarn. It invites you to have fun and not to think too much. I have to be honest and say I enjoyed it as long as I suspended my disbelief here and there.

Lupin refers of course to the character Arsène Lupin, the French gentleman thief who stole jewellery from Parisian haute bourgeois and aristocracy at the turn of the century. Lupin, as written in the novels and short stories by Maurice Leblanc between 1905 and his death in 1941, was the archetypical anti-hero, a Robin Hood who stole from those who deserved it but kept the loot himself. He was often portrayed often a force for good, while operating on the wrong side of the law.

Lupin never really made much of an impact outside of France as he had within France where is revered with many French film and television adaptations. In England, we already had a Lupin type character in the form of A.J. Raffles, a cricket playing gentleman thief with his aristocratic side kick, Bunny. E.W. Horning’s stories of Raffles’ daring heists proved to be quite popular with the British public when Raffles first appeared on the scene in 1898. And even later Leslie Charteris’ The Saint took over the mantle from Raffles as the gentleman thief/adventuring Robin Hood.

I think Hollywood tried to introduce him to an English speaking audience (legendary actor John Barrymore even played him) but he didn’t really take off and eventually they found their gentleman thief archetype in Sir Charles Lytton aka The Phantom (played by David Niven and Christopher Plummer) in the Pink Panther movies. So Lupin never got the English audience he deserved.

I first got wind of who Arsène Lupin was when I was growing up in Japan as a child. As strange as it sounds Lupin was big in Japan especially after World War Two. The Japanese did their own take on the Lupin character using Japanese actors and plot lines but it was Lupin.

I don’t know how exactly but I remember watching these scratchy DVDs of these Lupin inspired films. I think it was one of my parents’ Japanese friends who was mad for all things Lupin and he had studied French literature in France. Jogging my memory I now recall these black & white films were done in the 1950s. One starred Keiji Sada and the other version I remember was with Eija Okada (he was in Resnais’ classic film, Hiroshima Mon Amour) as Arsene Lupin called (I think) Kao-no Nai Otoko. I didn’t understand most of it at the time because it was all in Japanese and my Japanese (at the time) was pitiful, but it looked fun.

There was even a Japanese manga version of Lupin which was called Lupin III, - so named because he was the grandson of the real Arsène Lupin.

The 1960s manga series spawned generations of TV series which I do remember watching and finding it terribly exciting if somewhat confusing.

It was French expatriate friends whom my family knew that introduced me to the real Arsène Lupin. They had a few of the books authored by Maurice Leblanc. It was in French so I read them to improve my French but enjoyed the story along the way.

I also remember them showing me scratchy episodes of the 1970s Franco-German TV series ‘Arsène Lupin’ with the monocle wearing Georges Descrières in the lead role. It was a classical re-telling of the adventures of the aristocratic gentleman-burglar and very family friendly viewing. I don’t really remember much of it to be honest.

It was some years before I actually started to read more of the Maurice Leblanc’s novels and short stories collection. I have them all now. I was a teen and I remember being stuck in a snowed in a Swiss Alpine chalet and with nothing else to do but pull out a few dog eared books from the bookshelves belonging to our French host and read to pass the time.

I read Les Dents du tigre, Arsène Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes, and Les Huit Coups de l'horloge and thoroughly enjoyed them in the original French. I was already reading classic detective and mystery novels (Sherlock Holmes, Poirot etc) so it was natural to read the adventures of Arsène Lupin.

I haven’t got around to reading all the novels and short stories but I have read most of them and I enjoyed them all immensely. In the same way Conan Doyle, through Holmes and Watson, manages to conjure a convincing picture of late Victorian and early Edwardian England, so Leblanc manages to give us a taste of Belle Epoque France through the eyes of his suave gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin.

Indeed it's a lot like reading Sherlock Holmes in that you're always trying to figure out how he did it, but the difference is that you are rooting for the bad guy. You can’t help but be drawn to this gentleman thief who is charming, comic, playful, and romantic and generous. Lupin is not an intellectual puzzle-solver but first a master criminal, later a detective helper, who maintains his curious ethics throughout his adventures. In this regard he is very much the anti-Sherlock Holmes; and I wasn’t disappointed when I actually read the story where Lupin faces off with Holmes himself. Brilliant!

I’ve also seen the 2004 French movie with Romain Duris in the Lupin lead role and it also starred the majestic Kristin Scott Thomas and the sexy Eva Green.

It was a decent adventure flick and it was a clear confluence of different Lupin novels (The Queen's Necklace (introducing Lupin's childhood), The Hollow Needle (where the treasure is the macguffin of the story), The Arrest of Arsène Lupin (the gala on the ship as a backdrop) and Josephine Balsamo, (one of Lupin’s most memorable opponents in the The Countess Of Cagliostro).

Romaine Duris, a fine classical actor, was I felt miscast because he didn’t have Lupin’s levity of wit and be at ease within himself. I love Duris in his other films but in Arsène Lupin and even in his other film, Moliere, he seemed ill at ease with the role. Perhaps that’s just me.

The latest Netflix adaptation (or reimagining to be more precise) is a welcome addition to the world of Arsène Lupin.If you don’t over-think it, it’s bags of fun.

Omar Sy is immensely likeable. Sy is a deservedly a big star in France - he won the best actor César for “The Intouchables,” an international hit - and has played forgettable secondary characters in big-budget American special effects movies (he was Chris Pratt’s assistant in “Jurassic World” and a minor mutant in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”). It was reportedly his desire to play Arsène Lupin, whom he’s compared to James Bond (“fun, funny, elegant”), that led to the series, created by British writer George Kay. And it is on his charm that the series largely, though not entirely, rests.

So the basic story revolves around a jewellery heist. Sy plays Assane Diop, a first-generation French-Senegalese man in contemporary Paris. A collection of Lupin stories, a gift from his father - whose undeserved fate Assane set himself to avenge in long-delayed, Count of Monte Cristo style upon a criminal tycoon - has made the actual Lupin books a foundation of his life and profitably illicit career. This fan-ship goes as far as borrowing practical ideas from the stories and constructing aliases out of anagrams of “Arsene Lupin,” a habit that will attract the interest of a low-level police detective (Soufiane Guerrab as Youssef Guedira) who shares Assane’s love of the books. (That the detective also shares an initial with Lupin’s own adversary, Inspector Ganimard, is possibly not a coincidence.)

Among the many comic delights of Lupin, is an unspoken one. Time and again, the show’s hero, master thief Assane Diop is able to slip into a place unnoticed, or by assuming a minor disguise that prevents witnesses from providing an accurate description of him to law enforcement.

Why is this funny?

Because Omar Sy is six feet three (and, since most actors are short, seems even taller), is roughly as wide as soccer pitch, and is memorable even before he flashes his infectious million-Euro smile. This is not a man for whom anonymity should be possible - even allowing for racial bias in a majority-white country, Assane would be memorable and distinctive - and Lupin seems cheekily aware of this. Like the various incredible sleights of hand Assane deploys to pull off his thefts and escapes, his ability to be anyone, anywhere, is treated more as a superpower than as something even the world’s greatest criminal would be able to pull off.

At one point, when he’s slated for a cable news appearance as a much older man, we learn that Assane is also a master of disguise. The revelation of this skill arrives with a wink in the show, and it feels pointless to ask where he learned it, or how he affords movie-quality latex and makeup. Or rather, asking the question feels wrong.

We know this is impossible, the show seems to be asking its viewers again and again, but isn’t it so much fun?

The performances and the production - it has that particularly European filmic quality of feeling natural even when it gets stylish - keep the series warm even as the plot is made up of incredulous contraptions that require everything to go right at just the right time and for human psychology to be 100% predictable. Its physics are classical rather than quantum, one might say, and like the world itself, which becomes more curious the deeper you peer into things, it is best handled along the surface. You do not want to take too much time working out the likelihood of any of this happening. Just go along for the ride.

Somehow, though, it all works because Sy is so magnetic and charming that questioning plot logic feels wildly besides the point. Though he never looks appreciably different in his various aliases (including one ill-conceived live-TV appearance done under old-man makeup and a thick beard), he changes his posture and voice ( if you watch it in French that is) enough to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief, in the same way that any lead actor as Superman has to do when playing Clark Kent. But Sy and the show are at their strongest when Assane is just being his own Superman self, utterly relaxed and confident in his own skin, and so captivating that his ex-partner, Claire, can’t really resist him despite ample reason to.

If Assane seems practically perfect in every way, he is not perfectly perfect. His most obvious failing is that his criminal shenanigans and revenging make him less than reliable in his daily life, affecting his relationships with ex-partner Claire (Ludivine Sagnier, whom non-French audiences might recognise from “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope”), who despairs of his inability to show up on time to see his son Raoul (Etan Simon). Like Sy, Sagnier brings a lot of soul to her part - though onscreen far less, she’s as important as Sy to the series’ success - and the two actors have great chemistry. Also impressive and key to creating sympathy are the actors who play their flashback teenage selves, Mamadou Haidara and Ludmilla Makowski. Really, you could do away with action elements and build a series around them.

This is a pity because Lupin often fumbles its emotional reveals in other parts - the story of Diop being torn between his job and his family feels like wheel-spinning, rather than genuine emotional intrigue.

Soufiane Guerrab is wasted in the Young Detective Consumed by the Case role and spends most of this season pinning colour printouts of book covers to cork boards and getting waved off by his colleagues, who are all blinded or otherwise hampered by careerism.

But to my mind the weakest link is the villain himself and his daughter. Veteran actor Hervé Pierre hams it up as Hubert Pellegrini, a business tycoon who is the patriarch of the Pellegrini family. He just comes across as animated cartoon villain with no character depth (think moustache twirling Russian villain, Boris Badenov, in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon shows). He just emotes anger a lot without any nuance or hint of complexity.

Even Clotilde Hesme who plays the daughter who is unaware of her father’s criminal tendencies is miscast. For the record I adore Clotilde Hesme as she one of France’s most talented classical actresses (that non-French outsiders will not have heard of). She is a classically theatre trained actress and is one of the best stage actresses of her generation that I have ever seen. I’ve seen her in plays where she is just mesmerising. She has said before that she’s more comfortable on the stage than she is on the screen. And when she has been on screen she still has been a powerful presence. She’s actually won a César too. Here in Lupin, she seems to have no agency and looks bored with nothing really to do.I really hope they give her more scenes in the next part of Lupin.

The series is at its best when following Diop enacting his plans, and when revealing each one from a different vantage, making us privy to every moving part like a magician revealing his secrets. The show captures the momentum of a clockwork heist, the tension of sudden obstacles and the ingenuity of improvised responses, with thrilling precision (especially in “Chapter 1 - Le Collier de la reine,” directed by Now You See Me’s Louis Leterrier).

Lupin is also politically incisive when it wants to be; it brings to mind Ladj Ly’s Oscar-nominated 2019 film Les Misérables, which adapted the broad strokes of Victor Hugo’s novel about the 1832 Paris Rebellion, and modernised the story by focusing on the police brutality faced by non-white Parisians.

Lupin opens with Diop disguised as cleaning staff and entering the Louvre after-hours, alongside dozens of forgotten, anonymous non-white workers as they pass by “La Liberté guidant le people,” Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting of the July Revolution of 1830 which replaced France’s hereditary rule with popular sovereignty.

Before any semblance of plot or character, Lupin centres broken ideals and promises unkept (without giving too much away, the show’s primary villain has much more nationalistic view of French culture and history which merely adds to a cartoonish caricature than a complex character). The rest of the episode is about valuable jewels once owned by Marie Antionette - one of the most recognisable symbols of wealth and extravagance in times of extreme poverty - which are put up for auction by the Pelligrini family, and bid on by other wealthy collectors with bottomless purses and no sense of irony.

Granted, beyond this auction subplot, explorations of race and class are largely limited to individual interactions, but the show continues to refer back to (and implicitly comment on) its source material in ways that wink at the audience. An elderly, unassuming target of Diop’s schemes seems like an unlikely victim at first - Diop, though he acts in his own self-interest, usually displays a moral compass - until this victim reveals the colonial origins of her wealth, immediately re-contextualising the ethics of the situation, in a manner that Leblanc’s stories did not. (The show is yet to apply this lens to Arsène Lupin himself, who Diop treats with reverence, but that’s a secondary concern since Lupin is entirely fictional in-world).

Barring some nagging structural problems - like cutting to flashbacks when things are getting exciting, or epilogues that feel ten minutes too long - Lupin mostly works. It plants a few personal seeds early on, which it keeps hinting at without fully addressing, but by the time its scattered elements come into focus, the show finally figures out how to weave them together, and delivers a mid-season cliffhanger that renders many of these flaws irrelevant.

Lupin manages to have fun even with an antiquated premise - the story of a suave con-man who charms his way through high-profile robberies - while adding just enough new spin on the concept to feel refreshing. Omar Sy may not have much to work with, but his alluring presence makes Assane Diop feel like a worthy successor to Arsène Lupin.

Lupin isn’t going to win César, BAFTA, or Emmy awards, or even turn heads for its ability to develop tertiary or even secondary plots or characters - that doesn’t really matter. You’re there to see a difficult hero be difficult and heroic - everyone else is there to be charmed, vexed, or eluded by them. Sy’s performance bounds off the screen, and is almost musical. He floats through scenes like he glides over the roofs and through the back alleys of Paris; he outmanoeuvres his foes with superior literary references and sheer athleticism. He is irresistible and also good at everything he tries, even kidnapping.

I would encourage anyone to watch Lupin for a fun care free ride. But the only caveat I would make is watch it in the original French.

If you don’t know French then put on the subtitles to understand (that’s what they are there for). The real crime is to watch this (or any film or television series) dubbed in a foreign language. It’s disrespectful to the actors and film makers and it’s silly because it’s comical to watch something dubbed over.

Please watch it in the original French.

Then go and read the books. You won’t regret it.

Thanks for your question.

[hms-chill]

Father’s Day

Summary: Father's Day in the Claremont-Diaz-Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor household is a lot. Henry is the father of the youth shelters, so it's his job to look after the one in Brooklyn at the very least. And Alex and his dad are close, so of course they'll spend the day with Oscar. But Henry's missing his own father, too. (lots of Emotions™)

When Henry gets home from work, he wants nothing more than to relax with Alex for the night. They've got one of their biweekly cooking lessons planned if Alex doesn't have too much work to do, and hopefully, they'll have time after that to just relax together. David greets him at the door, and Henry rubs his ears a bit before going up to their shared office to drop his bag off and say hi to Alex. He's just opened the door a bit when he hears Alex's voice. When he peeks through the crack in the door, Alex is on the phone, leaning back in his desk chair.

"Yeah, I mean, I'd like to, but I'll have to talk to Henry. I'm not... we haven't really talked about it yet, and I can see it being hard for him... exactly. So I don't want to do anything to make it harder for him. I don't know if he'll need me or want me here, but I'll see... sounds good. I'll talk to him."

Henry pulls the door to the office shut. Now isn't the time to bother Alex, and he tries to convince himself he only thinks that because Alex is on the phone. He leaves his bag in their bedroom instead, leaving his tie there, too, as he goes to feed David. David follows him, whining slightly, and when Henry bends down to feed him, David all but climbs into his lap. Henry sighs.

"I'm okay. You're a good boy, but you don't need to worry about me. I'm okay." David whines again, and Henry nods. "I know. But whatever it is, Alex will tell us when he's ready. He said he'd talk to us, and he... he wouldn't let me stop him from doing something he wants. Once he wants something, he just goes for it, so we don't have to worry, okay?"

Except that, maybe, Alex would let Henry stop him from doing something he wants to do. He'd only picked NYU for law school because Henry was going to be in Brooklyn. He could have gone anywhere, and maybe he would have liked it better somewhere else. Instead of even looking other places, Alex had changed his whole life plan and ignored everything to be able to live close to Henry. If he'd let something as simple as Henry's presence change that much of his life, Henry has no idea what else Alex would sacrifice for them, and the realization scares him. Maybe he's already given up big things so he can stay close to Henry, or because he thinks it's something Henry wouldn't like. Maybe, if it weren't for Henry holding him back, Alex would be happier or more successful.

He's still trying to think that through as he finishes feeding David, and he's watching to make sure David doesn't eat too fast and make himself sick when he hears Alex coming down the stairs. A moment later, arms wrap around his waist and pull him in for a hug, and Alex leans up to kiss his cheek.

"I didn't realize you were home."

"I got in a bit ago. You were on the phone."

Alex's arms tighten a bit, and he asks, "everything alright? You'd normally say hi, at least, or make sure I know you're here."

"It's fine. How was class?"

"Okay, see, that's how I know it's not fine. When you're actually okay, you'll say you're okay, or that nothing's wrong, or something like that. You don't just change the subject. You... you can talk to me, you know that, right? Baby?" Henry closes his eyes and takes a breath, his hands moving to rest on Alex's arms.

"I know. It's okay, really. Let's... let's just focus on dinner, alright? If you have time tonight?"

Alex turns him around to study him for a minute, then nods. He looks concerned, but he lets it slide, going to get their aprons and focusing on Henry's cooking lesson. They're making tacos today, and it should be easy enough, but Alex is insisting they make their own seasoning blend and their own tortillas, which add a layer of complexity that Henry wasn't quite expecting. Still, it's nice to have something else to focus on, and even if he keeps sneaking worried glances, Henry is thankful that Alex hasn't asked anything more about what's wrong. It gives him until he's at the stove, focused on browning taco meat, to ask "you... you wouldn't let me hold you back from anything, would you? If there was something you wanted, or somewhere else you wish you could be. you wouldn't let me stop you?"

"You're not holding me back, Henry. If anything, you're pushing me to be better."

"But if there was something you wanted, you... you'd do it, right? You wouldn't let me stop you?"

"What's this about?" Alex asks gently. He's at Henry's side, cooking tortillas, but Henry keeps his eyes trained on the meat.

"I... I overheard a bit of your phone call. You said you wanted to do something, but you'd have to talk to me first. If you want to do it, you should; it doesn't make sense to wait for me to tell you that. I love you, and I want you to do things that make you happy no matter what."

It takes a second, then Alex pulls Henry closer and wraps an arm around him, hooking his chin on Henry's shoulder. "That was a phone call about lunch plans. I don't want to make plans on a day you might need me. Not that you need me or anything; you're a strong independent prince who don't need no man. But, you know. I wanted to be around if you want me here."

Henry just hums, and Alex leans over to flip a tortilla, though he keeps his arm around Henry's waist. "But if you really wanted something, you'd tell me? You wouldn't let me stop you, or tie you down or anything?"

"Of course I'd tell you, and if it took me away from you, we'd make it work. We did distance for over a year, and it sucked, but it worked. I don't want to do it again, not ever, but, you know. We could, if we had to." Henry nods, and Alex hesitates for a moment, then says, "if you wanted something, you'd do it, too, right? You uprooted your whole life for me; if anyone's worried about something like this it should be me."

"Alex, I... I think I would have moved here even without you. You were the push I needed, but moving away from Pip and Gran and all that is the best thing I've done since I kissed you."

"Are you telling me you didn't move across the globe just to be closer to me? You didn't base your life-changing decision purely on the fact that it would make it easier to see my ass? I'm shocked, I'm upset, I need three to five days to process this. But hey, it looks like the meat's done, let's get it in a bowl and we can keep going from there, okay?"

Henry agrees, and they finish up, and dinner is considerably lighter than it could have been. It's not until they're cuddled under a blanket on the couch, Henry held safely under Alex's arm while he scrolls though Netflix, that he thinks to ask who Alex was talking to.

"Oh, just my dad. We... he thought maybe, if on Father's Day you're doing something like what you did when you brought moms to the youth shelter for Mother's Day, he could come up for the day. June and I make fun of him for being like... the most stereotypical dad, so he thought maybe he could hang out there for a while and just, you know. Make dad noises, tell bad jokes, listen to old music. That kind of thing." They'd also talked about Oscar coming over to make dinner to celebrate, but Alex isn't sure how Henry would feel about that. British and American father's days are the same, and it feels wrong to celebrate if Henry's going to need to take the day to grieve.

"I'd like that," Henry says, pulling Alex back into their conversation about plans, "is there anything you usually do for Father's Day that you want to do?"

"Well, the past few years, June and I would get breakfast or brunch with Leo, then I cook dinner with my dad and June hangs out. So he... Dad offered to bring steaks and corn on the cob and we could make dinner here, but we don't have to. What... what about you? Is there anything you want to do that day?"

Henry sighs, picking a bit of fluff off the blanket and flicking it away before he answers. "I... I hadn't really thought about it. We visited his grave the first year, but that felt wrong. Then I just tried to ignore it for a year, just pretend it was any other day, but that... that felt wrong, too. And it's sort of impossible to ignore. Bea and I watched some movies we were on set for last year, and that was nice We all have movies where he snuck us into costume and into a shot or two, so we watched those and some home videos. We'd pause them and share stories about what we remembered from being there, or what we missed about him. But I... I don't really know if we're planning on anything happening this year."

"Alright. Well, whatever you need, I'm here, okay? I... you don't have to make a decision now, but when you do, I'll support whatever you want. Promise."

"What about your dad? I want you two to have a good day, too."

"My dad gets it. I can make dinner with him another day if I need to."

Henry smiles, leaning over to kiss the slight stubble on Alex’s cheek. “How did I get lucky enough to have you?”

“I ask myself the same thing every morning,” Alex says, smiling. He plays with Henry's hair for a moment before adding “just let me know what you need that day, and we’ll do it. Even if it’s different the morning of, or halfway through, or anything. Dad and I get it, and we love you.”

“I... I’ll let you know. Thank you, Alex, truly. It means a lot to know that you..." Henry struggles to find the words for everything he appreciates about Alex, but there aren't enough words in English or French for everything he's feeling. "Just... thank you for being... you know.”

“I think so,” Alex says, laughing a bit. He kisses Henry's forehead, and Henry just smiles as he leans his head on Alex’s shoulder with a yawn. Alex pulls him closer as they find a show, and Henry is overwhelmingly thankful for him, and his dad, and the opportunity to think things over before he decides on plans for Father's Day.

--

What he decides is that they'll do a Father's Day celebration at the youth shelter, and then Oscar will come over for dinner afterwards, and he'll be fine. He'll call Bea in London that afternoon, and then he and the Diazes will go to the brownstone to cook dinner together. He'll join Alex and Oscar's tradition, and they'll be happy to have him, and he won't have any problems with it. Alex teaches him to grill corn the week before so that he can make elote, and Oscar buys plane tickets, and everything is set. Alex is excited, and Oscar is excited, and if Henry's a little less excited than they are, it's just because he's not quite sure what to expect. Still, even if he's not thrilled, he is looking forward to it.

Except that, when Father's Day comes, Henry doesn't want to do anything. He'd thought he'd be okay, he really had, but then a tweet about how much Pez loves his dad is the first thing he sees when he opens Twitter, and all of a sudden Henry misses his dad so much it physically hurts. All he wants to do is cry, or maybe spend the day in bed with David and Alex, but he can't. He can't disappoint everyone who's expecting things from him, not today, so he kisses Alex's forehead and gets up to build a prince around his grief, burying it in pomade and Burberry and a perfect press face. Alex comes in just as Henry's about to start shaving, pressing a kiss to the stubble on Henry's chin before it disappears for the day.

"Good morning," Henry says. His smile is real as Alex's arms wrap around his waist, even if it is a bit smaller than it would normally be.

"Good morning. How are you doing? Feel okay about today?"

Henry could tell him. He could say something, and Alex would abandon his plans in a heartbeat. But they're plans Alex is excited for, plans he wants to do with people he loves, so Henry nods. "I feel good. I'm excited to see your dad."

"Me too. What time is it?"

"His plane lands in half an hour; we should head to the shelter soon if we want to beat him there."

Alex just hums, planting another kiss on Henry's stubbly cheek. Half of Henry's face is coated in shaving cream by now, but until Alex stops rubbing on it like a kitten, his other half will stay stubbly.

He's shaved the free half of his face and finished with his hair before Alex moves away to start getting ready himself, and Henry finishes shaving and goes downstairs to heat water for coffee and tea. Alex joins him not too long later, and Henry, who's given himself a few moments to text Bea and let himself be sad between starting the water and feeding David, greets Alex with a thermos of coffee just the way he likes it. Alex thanks him with a kiss, and they take their drinks to go, Alex driving to the shelter and occasionally glancing over to make sure Henry is doing alright. Henry smiles every time, eventually convincing Alex not to worry enough that Alex just grins and talks about how much the kids at the shelter will like his dad.

Oscar arrives only a few minutes after they do, greeting them both with big smiles and bigger hugs. He calls Henry "mijo", and while Henry normally loves that, today it feels like twisting a knife. He just smiles, leaving Alex and his dad to catch up while he goes inside to greet other dads who've volunteered their Father's Days to help kids who might be missing parents.

He thanks them for coming, and he wonders how many of them know about his dad. How many of them know that he's grieving today, and can any of them see it on his face? Will any of them bring it up? They've got a pancake station set up, and as he leads the pancake flippers to their griddles, he wonders if any of them have lost their own dads or children. Maybe, if they're in the same boat he or the kids at the shelter are in, this will help them. He hopes so. There are grills set up in the back, so he leads the dads who know how to grill to the back yard, where they've got grills and backyard games set up. Then it's back inside to great the kids who've come to breakfast, wondering how many of them know about his dad.

Oscar is sitting with Alex and a group of kids, at a table full of smiles and laughter. Alex moves over on the bench and grabs Henry's hand as he passes, clearly expecting Henry to sit down, but Henry just leans down to kiss him before moving on. If he spends too much time there, Alex will know something's wrong. So he finds a different table, with a dad who seems completely different from his own, and he laughs with those kids and that dad, playing board games when they finish their pancakes. He keeps seeing Alex and Oscar in passing, and he doesn't let it become obvious that he's avoiding them, just tells Alex something about wanting to spread out to not pick favorites as he finds another table to join. Hopefully, Alex doesn't realize he's never worried about that in the past.

After lunch, Henry slips out of the main rooms and goes to his office to call Bea. The knot of sadness in his gut has been steadily growing, twisting and turning and pulling more and more of him into it as it threatens to overwhelm him. And it hurts. He misses his dad so much his whole body aches with it. Bea and his mum are together, and he video calls them, and they laugh and cry and share stories about his dad for so long he has to plug his phone in. They're both proud of what he's doing today, and his mum says that his dad would be proud, too. She tells them both how proud he'd be, and how much he loved them both, and them Philip joins the call and they get to mourn with him, too. For the first time all day, Henry lets himself miss his dad. He lets himself feel sad, even for a few minutes, and it helps. There's still a twisted knot of pain and loneliness that he's hiding, but it's not as all-consuming as it was.

Eventually, it's late enough in England that his mom is going to bed, so they end the call and Henry is left alone in a quiet office.

He can't go back to the party. He doesn't have it in him to pretend to be happy and put together anymore, not without more time to process everything. So, instead, he takes out a piece of paper and a pen to write a letter.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

I’m spending it with some of the kids at a youth shelter I’ve opened in Brooklyn, New York. It’s... it’s a bit bizarre, really, how different things are now from when you left, but I think you’d be proud. If you were still here, maybe you’d come visit today. Alex’s dad is here, and the kids love him a lot. I think you’d like him, too. You’d probably give Gran a heart attack if you spent too long together, but she has it coming you’d have fun. Maybe if you were still here, you’d be here in Brooklyn with us today, stepping in as a dad for kids who need one. You’d be good at it. You’d have your guitar, and you’d somehow know every song they asked for. Maybe you’d do a duet with Oscar, and you’d make them all so happy. But you’d be there for quieter moments, too, to tell kids who were lonely or sad that you love them. You'd find every kid hiding in a corner or who was upset, and you'd help comfort them, just like you did for us growing up when everything got to be too much. Maybe you’d be a pen pal dad for some of them, writing in to keep up with their lives and love them. They’d like that a lot, I know it.

We're planning on going home-- Alex's and my home, I wish you could see it-- soon. Alex and his dad always make dinner together on Father's Day, so we're doing that. He's been teaching me to cook so I can help them, and I'm not as bad as I thought I would be.

I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you so much. So, so, so, so, so much. I wish you'd gotten to meet Alex. I wish you could have met Oscar, or seen the life we've made here. I wish you could meet Martha, and see how amazing and tough Bea is, or all the good things Mum's doing. I wish... I wish I'd told you. About me. I'm gay, dad. I know I've written it before, but I never told you out loud, and I wish I had. I'm sorry I didn't. I should have said something, but I was scared. I don't know why; you wouldn't have cared. You loved me, right?. You loved me. You would have loved me no matter what.

I hate writing about you in the past tense. You love me. You're... somewhere. I don't know what I believe, but I want to believe you're somewhere, still loving and looking after me. I want to believe you've seen Alex, and you know him some, at least. Oscar's Catholic, and I don't know everything about how that works, but it means he believes in an afterlife. Maybe he can get a message to you or something.

I love you. And you love me. Whey you were here, you said it was past, present, and future, so it's still true. You're somewhere, and you love me, and you always will.

I have to go; we're heading home soon so Alex and Oscar have time to cook, and I have to put a game face back on so I don't ruin their day. I love you. I miss you. Happy Father's Day.

-- H

He folds the letter, then seals it in an envelope, then just stares at it for a long moment. Mailing it feels stupid, and he's not sure where he'd even mail it to, but he's not sure what feels right. Eventually, he reaches for the candle on his desk and dips the corner of the envelope in, watching it catch fire and slowly start to burn. They'd cremated his dad, maybe by doing the same to the letter he can get it where it needs to go.

When the letter's gone, Henry straightens his tie in the mirror and puts on his best press face, the one not even Alex can see through sometimes. He takes all the emotions he's let himself feel for the past couple hours and twists them into the tightest ball he can. If it unravels him a bit, leaving him frayed at the edges, well, at least all of the pain is in one place instead of being woven into the fabric of his being. Then, he takes that twisting knot of pain and shoves it into the deepest, darkest hole he can, down into the pit of his stomach where he can ignore it as it slowly pulls him apart and makes a home in his gut. They're having dinner with Oscar before he takes a late flight back to DC, which means Henry has to keep it together for another few hours at least before he can curl up in a ball in bed and feel all the emotions he's spent the day burying. He tries not to think about what Alex will say when he does retreat to their bedroom, because he knows it will just give him more emotions to twist up and bury, and the pit where he's been putting everything is already getting dangerously full. He's not sure how many more bits of himself he can pull away before he falls apart completely, but hopefully, there's enough of him left to make it through the night.

He rejoins the party, smiling at and helping kids and doing his best to ignore the dads. He's looking for Alex when he finds one of the kids instead, curled up in a corner. Henry sits down next to him carefully, and says, "can I help?"

"I... I just want my dad back. I don't want someone to try and pretend; I know some kids need that but I... my dad loved me. It only got bad at home after he died, so I don't want people trying to replace him, I just... I want him back."

"I'm sorry. I... I know how you feel, at least a bit; my dad died, too. It can make Father’s Day hard.”

“What do you do?”

“I just... when it gets to be a lot, I let myself feel it,” Henry lies. The mass of repressed feelings somewhere in his gut twists. “I wrote him a letter earlier, just to have written it. It didn’t bring him back, but it felt good to spend time with him and tell him things.”

“Does it... does it get easier after a while? Do you miss him less?” The kid asks. His eyes are so big, and Henry swallows.

“Yes and no. Parts of it get easier, and it’s... it’s not so consuming, but it’s never gone. You always miss him, and there are always bad days and hard days. I never plan anything on my dad’s birthday because I know it’s a hard day. But it's... there are good days, too. There are times when my sister and I just talk and laugh about him, and it doesn't feel sad anymore. It doesn't feel sad to remember him, at least not all the time. So I... I guess you just sort of learn to navigate it and find ways to celebrate and ways to grieve. I’m sorry I can’t promise it stops hurting.”

“It’s okay. It... I think, if it went away totally, I... I’d feel bad. I think I’d feel like I’m forgetting him if I wasn’t sad. But it... sometimes it’s okay to be sad, I think. Like in Lord of the Rings, when Frodo has to leave and Gandalf says that crying isn’t always bad. Sometimes, if we’re sad, it’s because we lost something important or good, and then it’s okay to be sad.”

“Exactly,” Henry says, shoving his own sadness deeper as it threatens to explode. “Sadness has a place and a role, just like everything else. It helps us remember and process things.”

The kid next to him nods, then says “thank you for sitting with me. It felt good to talk. I know there’s a therapist I could talk to, but that... that feels like a big deal. It was nice to just talk to someone like it’s normal.”

Henry smiles, then says, “Want to come out for the barbecue, or would you rather I bring something in?”

“I’ll come. My dad couldn’t grill, so it’s... it feels different.”

“Okay,” Henry says. He helps them up, and the kid smiles, and Henry puts on his best press face as they head toward the fleet of grills and he looks for Alex and Oscar.

He finds them looking for him, and they slip out of the party to head home. Falling behind a bit, Henry can see just how happy Alex and his dad are, and it's so overwhelmingly clear they're related. Henry has no place in this Diaz world of expressive hands and roaring laughter, not with the knot of feelings he's been burying or the quiet letters and phone calls he's been using to get through the day. He slips into the back of the car, insisting Alex and Oscar take the front, and he leans his face on the window and squishes all his feelings down.

He won't cry.

He will not cry, no matter how much he misses his dad.

He misses his dad so, so, so much.

Alex's hand lands on his knee, and Henry processes that he's said something about Oscar staying for dinner, and Henry agrees that it sounds great. He wants nothing less, but it will make Alex happy, so he'll push down the part of him that wants to cry and he'll be a good boyfriend. Even if every moment between them adds to the knot in his gut, and even if every time Oscar calls him "mijo" he wants to scream, he'll smile and laugh and let Alex be happy.

At the house, David comes straight to Henry and refuses to even go out until Henry picks him up. He immediately starts licking Henry's face as Henry carries him outside, and he barely moves away to go to the bathroom before he's back to whining at Henry's leg. Henry just sighs, settling for sitting on the ground and letting David climb into his lap.

"Hi, boy. I'm okay. You.. you don't need to worry." David doesn't seem at all ready to listen, just to curl up on Henry and lick at his hands and face. That's how Oscar finds them eventually, Henry trapped under David and trying to process things as Oscar sits down beside him, reaching over to rub David's ears. Henry, who's started to let his emotions out again, slams them back down with the force of a meteor crashing to earth.

"That was a good thing you did for those kids today. I can't imagine what you're going through, but just... just know I'm here if you need me, alright, mijo?"

At that 'mijo', Henry feels the knot in his stomach twist as his last thread of composure gets sucked into the yawning pit that's taken over the inside of his being. He stands up so quickly that David has to scramble to get his legs under him. Henry knows that he says something, some empty, meaningless platitude that hopefully excuses his abrupt exit, then he's inside, ignoring David's cries and Alex saying something in the kitchen as he goes to curl up on their bed, barely remembering to close the door as hot tears spill onto his cheeks. He can barely hear David whining outside, but he's pretty sure whatever excuse he gave Oscar wouldn't justify kidnapping David, so he ignores him in favor of curling up on the bed, hugging a pillow to his chest as all the loneliness and pain of the past day overflows.

He misses his dad.

He's lonely, and he's sad, and there's a twisting in his gut that feels suspiciously like guilt. Guilt for trying to be happy today, guilt for acting like he could forget his dad. Guilt for letting Oscar call him 'mijo' all this time. Guilt for leaving Oscar outside when this isn't really his fault.

He doesn't hear the door open, but somehow David is there, snuggling into the space between Henry's knees and his chest and licking at Henry's tears. Henry hugs him, sobbing, and his sobs renew when he feels Alex's arms wrap around him, pulling him in close.

"I'm... I'm sorry," Henry manages. "You... you should... should be with your dad."

Alex just shushes him, pulling him closer and rubbing his back. "It's okay. We'll cook together another time; he had to take a call anyway. I'm sorry I didn't notice you were hurting. I... it's going to be okay. I love you. I love you, and your dad did, too."

That gets another sob out of Henry, and Alex just rubs his back gently, keeping him close. Slowly, Henry's tears die, replaced by quiet hiccups as he curls in on himself more. He tries to move away from Alex, to let Alex get back to his dad and his happiness, but Alex moves with him.

"You... you don't... your dad. I... can you tell him I'm sorry? I... I can't... I can't do the rest of today, but can you... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If... if I could I'd help with dinner, and we'd have fun, but I... I can't. And I think I might have yelled at your dad, so now that I'm okay and you can go back, can you tell him I'm sorry?"

"H, I'm not going anywhere."

"But your dad. You... he's here to see you; it's Father's Day. You should spend it together. He's still got his face buried in a combination of a pillow and David's fur, so he's not sure what Alex's face is doing. He's almost afraid to check. Alex should leave; he should go back to join his dad and not let Henry ruin their night. He's ruined so many things for so many people; he doesn't want to ruin this, too.

There's a hand in his hair, gently tugging his face out as it plays, but he just curls in tighter around David. He's not going to ruin Father's Day for Alex and Oscar.

“Baby, I... I thought we agreed you’d talk to me today. I thought you were going to tell me how you feel; my dad and I both knew things could change. We planned for them to change if you needed. Either one of us is happy to do anything you need, just... just please don’t shut me out? I... I love you.”

Henry’d thought he was done crying, but at ‘baby’, another sob claws its way up his throat. Alex pulls him closer, and Henry says, so softly he’s not sure Alex can hear, “I miss him.”

Alex's hug gets impossibly tighter. "I know. I'm sorry he's gone. I'm sorry I can't do anything to bring him back. I love you."

Henry just cries more. He's not sure how long it takes for him to uncurl from his little ball, but when he does, he's pulled closer to Alex immediately, and any space between them that's not occupied by David disappears immediately. Alex plays with his hair and presses kisses to whatever skin he can find while Henry cries off and on, just missing his dad.

"I'm... I'm scared I'm forgetting him. That I... I don't remember his hugs, or the way he smelled, or... or so many other things. This place... my whole life is so different from what he knew, and I'm... I'm losing him."

Alex pulls him closer, somehow, and Henry cries. He wants to grab Alex’s shirt, to keep him here, but he’s already doing so much to ruin Alex’s day he doesn’t want to make it worse. So he keeps his hands down, so Alex can leave whenever he wants. If he leaves Henry curled up on the bed to cry, well, that's not the end of the world.

"I'm... I'm sorry. Do you... would it help to tell me about him? You don't have to, but would it help?" Alex asks, and Henry freezes. He's not sure. He'd talked with his family, and that had helped, but Alex... hasn’t he ruined enough for Alex today? Alex doesn’t need Henry’s sad memories or his guilt on top of everything else.

But Henry does want to talk. He wants to talk about his dad, wants someone else to understand. So he says, “I... I don’t want to make you sad. I’ve... I already ruined your day; I don’t... I’ll just make it worse. You should go be with your dad.”

“You didn’t ruin anything. If you want to tell me about your dad, I want to hear about him.”

So Henry does. He starts slowly, talking about things like movie sets and public appearances that Aelx probably already knows, but it's not long before he's getting deeper. He tells stories of his dad sneaking them out at night to look at the stars or get ice cream. Stories of his dad looking after him when he was sick, or staying home when the kids were uncomfortable going to an event, and it never felt like a chore for him. He was what got them out of things they didn't want to do as kids; as a non-royal he could avoid things more easily than their mom. Henry talks and talks, telling stories to Alex's chest and David's back until he finds the courage to talk to Alex's face. When he finally does look up, Alex's eyes are watery, and there's so much sweetness on his face Henry almost can't bear it. Then he notices tears on Alex's cheeks, and he stops in the middle of a story to reach up and brush them away.

"You... I'm okay. You don't need to cry; I'm fine."

"I know. You're so tough. It just... it hurts to know you've been upset today, and you've had all this buried inside you, but I missed it. It's scary. I... I just want to be here for you, okay? Whatever you need." He takes Henry's hand in his, pressing a kiss to each of his knuckles and Henry wipes a tear from Alex' cheek. "I love you."

"I'm sorry you had to--"

"Hey, no. I didn't have to do anything. I wanted to come look after you. I... I wouldn't leave you alone. Not on a day like this."

"Still. I'm sorry I couldn't do everything we planned. I wanted to, I did, I just... I woke up this morning and just missed him so much, and it all... it felt like I was cheating, somehow, or I was moving on and forgetting him. I'm sorry. I thought I'd be okay, I really did."

"It's okay. I... I don't understand, exactly, but I know feelings are complicated and hard. I'm sorry I didn't pay attention. I... I should have known something was wrong."

"It's not your fault; I've been avoiding you all day. I didn't want you to know."

"Still. I'm sorry. If you get to be sorry you were hurting, I get to be sorry I didn't notice."

Henry's quiet a moment, and Alex uses that quiet to brush a few tears from Henry's cheeks. Henry turns to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist, then says, "I love you. Thank you."

"I love you, too. And I'm here for anything you need, okay?"

Henry nods, and Alex presses a gentle kiss to his forehead. "I'm going to get some water and some dinner, okay? If... if you want to come, we can cuddle on the couch, but otherwise I can bring things up and we can stay here."

"What... what about your dad?"

"He was going to see if Nora was free, or if Cash wanted to go somewhere together."

"If... if he wants, we... maybe we could still do dinner? I know it's probably too late to cook, but he... he came all this way." He can hear how small his voice sounds, and he hates it. Alex just studies him for a minute, then nods.

"I'll see what he's doing. We could order pizza and play some card games or something? Maybe, if you want, Shaan and Zahra could join us? I think she came up with Dad so they could spend the day together."

Henry smiles, and the face Alex makes is so loving he's nearly speechless with the force of it. "I was just thinking I should thank Shaan for everything he's done. Before you, he would have been the one to help like this. I... if your dad's still here, I think having them all would be fun. I bet Zahra's great at poker."

"Oh man; I am the worst at poker. You'd have to be on my team and help me," Alex says. He's smiling, and even if the room still feels a bit heavy, it's better than it was. They go downstairs together, and they find Oscar on the phone, though he ends the call as soon as he sees them.

"Henry, I am so, so sorry. I never meant--"

"It's okay. It... it wasn't you, it was just... I missed my dad a lot today. Way more than I thought I would. I'm sorry I snapped."

"Forgiven and forgotten," Oscar says. He looks almost hesitant, but he opens his arms, and when Henry hugs him, Oscar hugs back tightly.

"I... I do like it when you call me 'mijo'," Henry says. "Just... it was just a lot today."

"I love you. I'm sorry."

"Forgiven and forgotten." Henry smiles when he pulls out of the hug, and Oscar pats his back a few times. Alex explains their plans, and Oscar agrees that pizza and games sound good, so Henry texts Shaan while Alex orders pizza. Shaan and Zahra come, and they rope Cash into their games so they can play in pairs. When Oscar has to leave a few hours later, he leaves behind smiling boys and a stack of empty pizza boxes. They wave goodbye to him and Zahra from the stoop. When they're out of sight, Alex kisses Henry's cheek and goes inside, leaving Henry and Shaan alone.

"Thank you," Henry says. "I don't say it enough, but I mean it. Ever since Dad, you... you've just been here for me, and I really appreciate you. Thank you. I... I love you."

"I love you, too," Shaan says. He pulls Henry into a hug, and Henry hugs him back tightly. "It has been an absolute pleasure to get to know and watch over you. Your dad would be proud of you. I know I am."

Henry hugs him a little tighter. Somewhere, he knows, his dad is watching. And wherever he is, he's proud.

On AO3

Notes:

I wrote that fic for mother's day, and then I saw that Henry refers to himself as the father of the youth shelters, and what can I say. I needed this to exist.

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[little-bit-of-cinnamon]

I Just Hid it Better - Javid AU

Anything Javid love confession I’m a sucker for love confessions like either Davey confessing his love to Jack on accident (please) or “hand holding but it’s complicated” 

Javid Modern AU - 2.3k words Jack sketches David as he sleeps 

The sound of the door slamming woke David up from his nap on the couch. Groggily, he rubbed his eyes and sat up to see Jack setting his bag down by the door. He could see the guilt on Jack’s face when he realized he woke David up. 

“Sorry,” he said with an apologetic frown. 

“Nah, you’re good.” David repositioned so he was sitting properly. “Tough day?” 

“It’s my stupid drawings class,” Jack started, moving into the living room. “It's already not my favorite because charcoal isn’t my medium-” 

“Because you prefer oil paint.” David nodded. 

“Because I prefer oil paint. And drawing with a group can’t be good for creativity or whatever, I mean how does it make sense to have one model in one pose and it’s just supposed to work for all thirty of us?” Jack sat next to David, kicking his feet onto David’s lap. 

“It’s bad enough that we only do portraits, ya know?” 

“Because you prefer landscapes.” David nodded, again. 

“Because I prefer landscapes. It’s like, I like portraits, but I like drawing people I know, ya know. I feel like I can really get the mood right when I know what they’re like, what’s going on in their head.” At this point David wasn’t convinced Jack could actually hear him over his own rant. 

“I wanna work on charcoal and I wanna work on portraits, it’s just that the class isn’t the best environment for me.” Jack took a slow breath. “I’m sorry, I woke you up. Tough day for you too?” 

“Just tired.” David rested his head on the top of the couch cushion. “Work was long.” 

“I’ll never understand how you get to work at 5:00 in the morning.” 

“People need coffee in the morning and somebody has to serve it.” It was silent for a second before David spoke again. “You can draw me if you want.”

“You hate sitting for my art.” Jack said, surprised. 

“I’m not gonna. But I am gonna take a nap, and if you happen to draw me that’ll be okay with me. We’ll see if you can draw what’s going on in my dream or whatever it is you’re looking to do.” David tapped Jack’s legs on his lap so Jack swung his legs back onto the floor and stood. 

“Geez, Dave. Isn’t that a little intimate?” Jack joked, but he was already walking toward his bag with his sketchbook. “I mean, I didn’t mean it like,” David was relieved Jack had walked away and couldn’t see him blush. 

“I know, Dave. Take your nap, you deserve it.” Jack settled on the floor with his back against their coffee table and his sketchbook in his lap. Surprisingly easily, David drifted off to sleep. 

David woke up to a completed sketch on the coffee table and Jack cooking dinner in the kitchen. With a yawn and a stretch David stood up and wandered into the kitchen, he sat on the counter and kicked his foot out to nudge Jack. “Whatcha making?” 

Jack turned and grabbed David’s head and gave him an exaggerated kiss on the forehead. “Stir fry!” He said with a smile. 

“Damn, you’re excited, must be the one from Trader Joes.” “No, it’s just,” Jack waved a wooden spoon as he spoke. “I’m just really happy with how my sketch came out and I actually feel really good about my drawings class now. I mean, I have to keep up the practicing outside of class so I don’t get stuck in a rut again-” “But you’re feeling better?” David filled in.

“But I’m feeling better!” Jack turned the stove off and took two plates out of the cabinet. He served two plates of the stir fry before joining David on the counter top. “Thanks for letting me sketch you,” “I literally just took a nap on the couch, but I’m glad you got your groove back. Thanks for dinner.” David was always willing to help out, well, he hated sitting for Jack’s art. Just sitting here for as long as it took for Jack to either finish or get bored, hours. But if all he had to do was nap on his couch after his six hour opening shift, well that wasn’t a bad deal. 

The next few days were business as usual until Jack’s next class and David’s next shift. David came home, got changed, and took his place on the couch. He scrolled through Instagram, attempting to stay awake but the fatigue from his early shift and long work day caught up to him. 

This time, he woke up to Jack on the couch beside him and Netflix playing quietly on the TV in front of them. When David stretched his arms out he accidently hit Jack on the chest. “You’re up!” Jack turned the volume of the TV up. 

“I’m up.” David sat up so he was sitting next to Jack, rather than lying with his head by Jack’s lap. “How was class?” 

“A lot better than last time. Obviously it’s still not my favorite but it’s not a drag anymore.” Jack pulled some of David’s blanket over his own legs. 

“That’s great, Jack.” They settled into a comfortable silence for a while, ordering a pizza for dinner and watching Netflix until the evening. Eventually, Jack left to take a shower and David noticed his sketchbook sitting on the coffee table, again. 

He picked it up and began flipping through the pages, Jack never was secretive of his work. There was a mixture of drawings of his friends and models from class and they were all amazing, David would be the first to tell you how talented Jack is, but David could tell the difference. He could see the love and concentration on the sketch Race’s face as he worked out a problem in his notebook. 

The sketches of the models were more technical. Each stroke looked calculated, precise. It looked incredible, but in comparison it just wasn’t the same. David flipped the page and there was the drawing of him from earlier in the week. He looked peaceful, calm. David was surprised by how… nice he looked. He always thought Jack’s art presented David as much more attractive than any photo. It was probably just Jack being nice and not including his imperfections. 

The next page was another model, from class today. Again, beautiful but with less emotion than the ones of David and their friends. David was about to set the book down when he noticed there was another sketch on the next page. 

It was David. Asleep on the couch with his phone resting next to him. Asleep. David didn’t know Jack was going to sketch him again. He wasn’t like, weirded out or anything but he was a little surprised. He figured Jack would prefer a more interesting subject than a sleeping David. But, still, he looked better than David saw himself. It was a beautiful sketch. 

“Sorry, I hope it was cool that I sketched you again.” Jack stood in the doorway of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. 

“No, it’s no problem. I figured you’d want a more interesting subject now that you’re more inspired, or whatever.” Jack walked into his room to get dressed as David spoke. 

“Dave, I got all the inspiration I need sleeping on my couch everyday.” David pretended that his heart didn’t skip a beat. 

“That so?” David managed to squeak out.

“Yeah, Dave.” Jack came back, dressed, using his towel to dry his hair. “I mean I know you so well I feel like I always know what’s going through your head, conscious or not.” 

David could practically feel his heart beating in his ears. He hoped Jack couldn’t tell what was going on in his head at this particular moment. 

“It doesn’t hurt that you got a nice face to draw, too.” Jack wandered into the kitchen, casually looking in the fridge, as if he isn’t making David’s heart go a mile a minute. 

David wanted to smile, to tease Jack as they’ve been doing for years but for some reason he was nervous. He couldn’t get the words out. Something about the compliments, the vulnerability, the emotion in the art. He just felt different than he usually did with Jack. Flirting isn’t uncommon in their friend group but Jack sounded genuine and David could tell he was speaking differently than he usually would with the guys. 

But it was getting late and he was tired, he’ll probably feel differently in the morning. 

“Good night, Jack.” David stood up and stopped in the kitchen for a bottle of water. 

“You alright, Davey?” “Yeah, work in the morning, that’s all.” 

“Good night, then.” David couldn’t see the way Jack watched him walk into his room, a concerned look on his face. 

Work. Home. Change. Nap. 

David got tired of the routine but he needed the money, and he liked his job, really. Good coworkers and regulars he could chat with. It wasn’t all bad. When his classes change next semester he’ll get new shifts and all will be well. 

David had hardly woken up when he saw Jack. “Hey,” David said softly, voice low from his drowsiness. 

“Hey, Dave. Sorry, I thought you’d be out for a little while longer.” Jack started to close his sketchbook. 

“No, it’s okay, I love you.” And suddenly David was awake. 

“I mean, I love it. Your art, I mean.” He lost control of the words coming out of his mouth. 

“Don’t worry about it Davey, you’re tired. I get it.” Jack grinned. 

“Yeah, tired. Sorry if I ruined your process or whatever.” “Don’t worry about it, I’m sure I could draw you with my eyes closed.” Jack continued his sketch. 

He wasn’t making this any easier for David. 

“You want some tea?” David wouldn't be able to get back to sleep now so he would at least need some caffeine in  him. He knows Jack won’t touch coffee. 

“Do we have peach?” Jack called to the kitchen. 

“I wouldn’t have offered if we didn’t.” David turned the coffee pot and the kettle on before taking the tea out of the cabinet. 

He leaned on the counter, looking into the living room. Jack was still sitting on the floor, sketching, even though David had left. He stood and watched him until the kettle began to whistle. He did love Jack, and so what if his feelings might be romantic? He and Jack have been friends forever, this can’t be the thing that brings them apart. Still, that doesn't mean that he should say anything to Jack, or say anything else, really. 

He prepared their drinks and brought them into the living room, he set Jack’s mug beside him on the table, not wanting to disturb him further. As soon as David sat down Jack closed his sketchbook and joined David on the couch. 

“I feel like I haven’t seen you lately, you’ve been working so much.” Jack sat dangerously close to David. 

“The money’s good. I’m hoping if I keep up the hours next semester I could be a manager over the summer.” David sipped his drink slowly, taking in the heat. 

“But I miss you, shouldn’t that be a consideration?” Jack took a sip. “This is good, Dave.”

“That’s the kind of good work that’s gonna land me the promotion. I’m scarily good at putting a tea bag into hot water.” 

“Shut up and take the compliment.” 

David didn’t realize he missed Jack too until they started talking again. Usually they would sit and eat together while watching TV or they would hang out in groups. He and Jack have been friends for years but he still missed him. Suddenly Jack seems far away. He wishes he could be closer to Jack, romantically. He wants to reach out and touch him, kiss him, love him. 

But he doesn’t want to lose what they have. He’s probably worried about nothing, but still. He can’t just look to his best friend and say “hey I think I’m in love with you.” It was bad enough when he accidently let it slip. But maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing? Jack’s been single for a while and it’s not like he’ll be infringing on something. And Jack wouldn’t judge him, would he? 

“Hey, Jack?” Jack hummed in acknowledgment as he sipped his tea. 

“Earlier, when I-” “Don’t worry about it, Davey. You were tired and it’s not like I don’t love you too.” Jack leaned into David, bumping their shoulders together. 

Jack really wasn’t making this easier. 

‘Right, right. It’s just that, recently, I don’t know. I feel like I might be developing some… feelings. For you.” David stared into his mug, afraid to look up at Jack. 

“You feel like you might maybe?” Jack said, cautiously but with a grin. 

“Jack.”

“Right, sorry. You’re sure about this?” Jack looked to David. 

“I felt like it would be better to just tell you, so it doesn’t affect our friendship.” David finally made eye contact with Jack. 

“Actually, that’s not the best idea.” 

David’s heart dropped. 

“I mean,” Jack began, “our friendship is for sure gonna be different.” “Jack, I’m so sorry. I just-” Jack cut him off. “I mean kissing you stupid, that’s gonna affect our friendship. And going on dates and stuff.” 

“Do you mean..?” David couldn’t finish his sentence, couldn’t get his brain all in one place. 

“I mean I would do anything to be your boyfriend, Davey.” “I was so scared that I was gonna ruin everything.” Jack could hear the smile in David’s words. 

“I’ve been scared to say something for years, you’re just braver than me.” Jack grinned back. 

“Maybe changing our relationship up a bit won’t be the worst thing,” David said, leaning into Jack. 

[leoninapelliolovesconchitawurst]

ENGLISH TRANSLATION ( Jeannette Nobbe)

VOLSKRANT.NL 31/01/20

by Mennon Pot

https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/conchita-wurst-sorry-dat-ik-zo-n-wandelend-cliche-ben~b0477817/

(Conchita) Wurst: 'I'm sorry I'm a walking cliché'.

Above all we know Conchita Wurst as the bearded 'female 'singer who won the ESC in 2014. But we've moved on and are a bit wiser. It´s just Wurst now, but the beard is still there.

With light feathered steps, Thomas Neuwirth (31) enters the conference room of the hotel in Groningen where he is staying: black combat boots, black leather pants, tight black T-shirt, the black beard and the perfect short trimmed jet black hair..

He introduces himself as Tom. It's not difficult to recognise the bearded drag queen Conchita in him. (Kopenhagen, 2014, remember?) but the dress and wig are stowed away for a while. Conchita has a sort of sabbatical, so to speak.

Neuwirth is on tour as a man. Stage name: Wurst. Yesterday evening he performed in Groningen; the next concert will be 7 february at the Melkweg in Amsterdam. His new album 'Truth over Magnitude' also carries the artist´s name Wurst.

Let's get this straight: when the subject is Conchita Wurst, the word 'transgender' sometimes comes a long. Wrongly. Neuwirth is a man, ('but incredibly gay, of course'), who has a choice from now on: being on tour as a drag queen (Conchita) or as a man (Wurst) .

´a lot of fun, being a masculine stage persona', he says. Conchita will turn up again somewhere else.

Holland appreciated Conchita's 'Rise like a Phoenix' with the highest score, almost 6 years ago.

Neuwirth didn't forget: twelve points, douze points from Holland for the bearded diva from Austria.

Then hectic years followed. 'After the Song Contest I thought, I have to make the most of it now, build my fame and cash it in. So I surrounded myself with all kinds of experts, managers, stylists, make/up artists, the whole circus. After 3 years I was exhausted. I couldn´t do it anymore. I told my audience every nigh, be yourself, believe in yourself. But along the way, I forgot myself.´

He got rid of the experts’ circus and is having a relaxed tour now, with a small entourage. He feels good again, although in 2018 he had to announce he is infected with the HIV virus. His manager politely asks, almost in an humble manner, not to talk about that.

Tom doesn´t appear to be very worried about that. There has seldom been a star who starts an interview so cheerfully. ´A great photo shoot and after that talk about things I find beautiful and fun.

Terrific, I was already looking forward to it when I came out of bed.´

´Curriculum Vitae'

1988 – Born as Thomas Neuwirth in Gmunden, Austria

2007 – Candidate at the talentshow Starmania, and boyband Jetzt anders!

2011 – Debut as female persona Conchita Wurst, the debut single `I´ll be there´

2012 - Second place at the Austrian Songfestival

2014 – ESC winner with ´Rise like a Phoenix

2015 – First album ´Conchita´, co-presenter ESC

2018 – Second album ´From Vienna with Love´

2019 – Debut as male stage persona ´Wurst´, third album ´Truth over Magnitude´

2020 – Wurst ´Trust over Magnitude´ Sony Music

Wurst will be performing in the Melkweg in Amsterdam on February 7

SOUNDTRACK

Music from the Motion Picture Titanic ...1997

´My first CD. I was 9 years old when I bought it. `My heart will go on´’changed my life´. As it were, Céline Dion gave me permission to be utterly dramatic and to be over the top. When I came out of the closet, I heard that song in my head.

It was also a liberation for me as a singer. My mom always sang with a thin, high falsetto voice. I thought that was how it should be. Dion taught me, you may yell as hard as you can, with all the power you have in you. When you sing so loud, you can’t fake it. The sound you push out of your body, is the sound of your body, unique and by definition authentic. Céline Dion taught me that singing is something really physical.´

SERIES

The Crown ..Netflix..., 2016 until 2019

´For me it´s getting difficult to watch a movie to the end. I guess that´s because of all the series on Netflix and HBO. My favorite is `The Crown´.. ´the intro alone is so beautiful, that liquid gold that forms a crown, such art. I used to watch it twice. Ít says something about the fact that I can´t choose between the two women who play Elizabeth and the two men who play prince Philip. All the actors are great. The costumes, the stories, the palaces, it´s so delightful. The history also intrigues me, after every episode I checked on Wikipedia if it was really what had happened.

PARTIES

´At Christmas I always come back to Vienna. I love the lights, glitters and decorations, my inner Mariah Carey is looking forward to it every year. Christmas 2019 was extra special because it had been a long time since the whole family came together at my grandmother´s house.´

I would love it to be like that every year... A couple of days being together in one home. Talking, getting to really know my family. Maybe now you think, days on and on with uncles and aunts, such horror! It is easy to say that I don´t really have much in common with these people. But I do, Really. They all have a story and similarities with your stories. Ask them about your life and tell them about yours.´

That´s what Christmas is all about to me. To me, the birth of Jesus has not that much to do with it.´

ISLAND..

I have an agreement with my best friends to go on vacation at least once every two years. We have been to Mykonos a couple of times, THE especially gay island. I´m sorry I sound like a walking cliché.´

The sun, the sea, the beaches, the small streets, so cosy. We rent a house with a pool and for a week or two we live in our own little paradise, actually being a bit tipsy the whole time. Go shopping and cook.´

`What´s also very important, on Mykomos, the wind is always blowing the right way. I love to watch the women, because their dresses and their hair flutter so beautifully.´

STYLE ICON

Victoria Beckham

I was and still am a big Spice Girls fan and I especially admire Victoria Beckham, because she lives her life the way she wants. She appears in tabloids every day, but has survived a crisis in her relationship and has stayed happy with the love of her life and her family. I think that it´s really strong.´

In regard to her style, she can go from very classy to very trashy, I like that. One day she´s wearing a designer dress, the next she and David Beckham are walking in identical jogging suits. She couldn’t care less. I think that it´s inspiring.´

´I think she is utterly authentic, raging through the glamour. Although I have never met her, I´m sure that I could have a lot of fun with her. I´d love to drink some tequila with her for an afternoon or so.´

AGE

30

´I thought becoming 30 was really special, I lost my wild behaviour, came to be more restful. Some way or another I think a lot about some things my mother said: in my twenties, I ignored those lessons, but now I´m 30, I suddenly realised she was right for example how important family and friends are.

I´m 31 now, I have inner peace and my life in order, but I still feel young. I´m convinced that this the best period of my life´. My advise to everybody... be 30.´

ALBUM

Recomposed by Max Richter / The Four Seasons ..2012

I don´t play any instruments and until not too long ago, I didn´t really know much about music. I really found that a pity sometimes. Fortunately, my good friend Martin studies at the School of Musical Arts... !! He´s studying the history of music intensely and tells me about a lot of great composers. I learn a lot from that.´´I never understood classical music and didn��t really know anything about it, but thanks to the listening sessions with Martin I fell in love with Vivaldi..

The pop artist of the classical artists.

´Max Richter interpreted Vivaldi´s Four Seasons and composed it in a modern fashion. It´s a modern, post minimalistic piece, completely different from the original one, but you still recognise it. Greatly done, at the moment it´s my favorite album.´

BOOK

Friedrich Schiller « Ueber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen ». About the aesthetic upbringing of the people..´

´A good friend advised me to read the philosophical letters from Friedrich Schiller ..Letters, 1794-1795)

That´s a hard job to do. Because of the old fashioned German I had to read some sentences 5 times. You always have to wrestle yourself through a thick layer of 18th century sexism.

´But further on you´ll find something beautiful. Schiller writes a lot about finding your inner beauty and your own truth. Dare to be yourself. Embrace your darker sides. Those are important as well.´

´At the same time he preaches self-perspective.. don´t take yourself too seriously, you´re not the center of the universe. That is very worthy to me. Namely because I DO think I´m the center of the universe, haha.

`Still it´s very wise of him, to send a message from 1795 to a 21st century queen with a Mariah Carey complex.´

CLUB

Circus in Vienna

´The Arena is a huge complex in Vienna, a concert building with a mega discotheque. A couple of times a year they organize Circus, my favorite gay club night. I always go there with my group of closest friends, but it´s actually a bit of a rule that we lose each other and disappear into the crowd.´

´I roam around all night- Every room, every floor has its own musical theme and decoration. I love the types of people I meet there, their clothes, their fetishisms, everything.´

….Arena Vienna, Baumgasse 80, Vienna

CITY

Amsterdam

´I live in Vienna, I love Vienna and I will always come back there, but the greatest city I´ve been to is Amsterdam – since then I traveled all over the world so I know what I´m talking about.

´Of all the cities I visited, Amsterdam is the only one where I would want to live a period of time. So that´s what I´m gonna do, this summer, for a few months to begin with.´

´I can see that Amsterdam also has the flagship stores from all known store chains. And a lot of tourists, like every special city. But I see all these small jewelry shops where they sell their self-made jewelry. Little bakeries. Cosy streets. And a lot of water. I love water. I love cities with lots of water.´

[jessiewre]

Day 20

Fri 24th Jan

Wow a big bed with no dip is good. But feeling of happiness was fairly short lived after a face full of drain sewage hit me when opening the bathroom door.

Dammit forgot about that.

The weather was grey and wet but we were up early so we headed to the buffet breakfast about 7:30am. Had a banana & coffee, some vegetable soup (obviously) and bread and then a Spanish omelette.

Just a small breakfast.

Bad weather meant may as well watch Netflix so started to try and watch Dark again. Still not convinced about it but its the only programme we had downloaded so right now it’s the best show we have.

Around 10:15am, we had a knock at the door from the receptionist to ‘remind us to get breakfast before it finished’.

What a great idea I thought, guess we’ll head back to breakfast for brekkie no 2 then.

More banana and coffee followed by a soup each, this time finished off with some bread and chocolate spread. I wonder how long TWO breakfasts will put lunch off for...

We had a chat with the guy on reception and bargained down a boat trip from 50$ to $25. Still was expensive but we couldn’t be arsed pushing it anymore or going down to the boats to try and haggle there.

Two bodas collected us and we headed to a little bay where a boat was waiting for us.

Emmanuel and David were the boat guys and they weren’t super chatty.

I wasn’t sure it it was a personality thing or a language thing. So we just looked around at the view and I tried to imagine it was sunny and not grey.

The first island we reached was Napoleon island, due to the shape of it slightly resembling Napoleon’s hat. We pulled up and jumped off, not really sure what we were doing on the island. Emmanuel and David didn’t say a word or explain anything. So we just followed David as he led us on a path through the shrubbery and trees. We started to hear some sort of squawking and then David began to clap and whistle and shake the trees.

I suddenly remembered that I’d read about guides doing this to try and get a reaction from the bats that lived in the trees so I quickly asked him to Stop, saying Don’t worry, its ok. He was doing it on our behalf so we that could see the bats but the bats were getting louder in distress and that is definitely not the way we want to see nature. Thanks David, but no thanks.

We continued up the path and the sweat began. Phil regretted bringing the rucksack but it was hard to know what we’d need considering NO ONE TOLD US WHAT WE WERE DOING.

Started to wonder if our haggling had resulted in the lowest budget boat trip available.

Every time we tried to talk to David, he would give a shrug or a basic reply. Like ‘What do the bats eat?’ he said ‘Don’t know’.

Wicked mate, you should enter the Tour Guide Awards 2020. BUT NOT REALLY COS I’M BEING SARCASTIC.

We reached the top of the hill which was the peak of the island and the view was cool, plus the sun came out a bit too.

Actually, David really came into his own at this point as he took some photos of us that we’ll never look at again, and told us that the cows on this small island actually SWAM HERE from other islands, just to visit. Ok...seemed a little far fetched, but maybe its true who knows. David certainly doesn’t.

On the way back down to the boat, we went a slightly different route and ended up in the trees below all the bats (I think they were fruit bats, it remains unconfirmed) and we could see them just above us as they hung out (literally) and climbed through the trees. Then a load of them just started flying about being bats an that. That bit was really cool.

Next we headed to an island famous for its monkeys. Let’s call it Monkey Island. David whipped out a banana on arrival and headed down the path shouting ‘Monkey! Monkey! Where are you! Come get banana, MAAANNKKKEEEYYYYY!’

Slightly unorthodox approach.

Phil then asked David ‘What type of monkeys they were?’

His reply was

‘12’

Ok so at this point we realised it was quite likely a language barrier that stood between us...

Felt a bit bad for David now. Poor guy just didn’t have a clue what we were saying.

We walked along and I suddenly spotted a monkey sat on a tree stump right next to us. He - and I’m pretty certain he was a he - had an electric blue ball sack with a bright red penis. They were almost neon in their brightness and the rest of him was grey and black. It was like he’d ordered the jazz hands of penis packages.

David immediately handed the monkey the banana, didn’t play hard to get whatsoever, which the monkey took and then quickly ran away into the forest. 
And that was Monkey Island.

We briefly stopped off at Peace Island where there were the foundations of a restaurant that the government had closed down 5 years ago and some rubbish left behind which was a shame, and then we headed back.

The trip was about 2 hours and despite my report, we did actually enjoy the trip!

It was better than doing nothing for sure.

And guess what Phil wanted to do on return??

GO FOR A RUN OF COURSE.

But in his haste to get ready, he misjudged the pouring of the water into his sexy water waistcoat, and spilt about a litre of water all over the bed.

He was really angry with himself so started to shout at me to clear it up quickly and I reaaaallllly wanted to laugh but then he was like ‘Jess! The FOLDER has got WET now, come ON hurry up!’ So I called him an effin thicko and then went outside to the balcony to laugh.

He then saw me and did start laughing and said Sorry for being a psycho.

I tried to hold off ordering food till Phil returned but considering how long food takes in Rwanda, I changed my mind. Ordered a Russian salad and chips weirdly, but its tricky trying to eat vegetarian in all these countries as its always a vege burger.

Annoyingly for me, Phil turned up at the exact moment the food did, so I pretended that this was my plan all along and shared the food through a forced smile.

Yes Phil, I wanted that food all to myself next time take the hint.

Dinner was vege curry and rice again and Phil’s starter of carrot soup turned up at the same time, so Phil sort of ate it all together like a weird gross carrot vege curry soup. Delicious, recipe coming soon.

[bbclesmis]

The Guardian: Les Misérables' Andrew Davies: 'I haven't added much sex to it. Sorry to disappoint'

Britain’s greatest transformer of literary classics on his BBC One adaptation of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece

We’re just minutes into our interview and already the conversation has turned to brothels and sadomasochism. But perhaps this is not entirely surprising. Sauce is, after all, Andrew Davies’s trademark. As Britain’s greatest transformer of literary classics into raunchy, bodice-busting primetime TV, Davies is the man who added incest to War and Peace, put daddy-issue sex into the backstabbing Westminster drama House of Cards, and reinvented Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice as a wet-shirt-clad Colin Firth. None of those things, purists note, appear in the original texts.

Despite all these achievements, the 82-year-old writer never quite managed to smuggle his steamiest offerings into the nation’s living rooms. Take his adaptation of Fanny Hill, the 18th-century “memoirs of a woman of pleasure” that became one of the most prosecuted and banned novels. “This is a pornographic book,” says Davies. “There are lots of whips and sadomasochism – and I did try a couple of more explicit brothel scenes. But one works with a producer and a script editor, and they might say: ‘Um, we don’t think this is quite right for the BBC, Andrew.’ And so OK, it was worth a try.”

Speaking with Davies, who lives in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, is not unlike watching one of his dramas: innuendo and humour keep appearing, to spice up the serious and the considered. Conversation can quickly take on the slight sensation of romp, like when he talks about visiting sets. “I tend not to go much during filming,” he says. “As the writer, you don’t have a job so you’re hanging round like the spare prick at a wedding. I’ll go a couple of times, arrive before lunch, tell the actors they’re brilliant, and then leave shortly after.”

It’s easy to forget his advancing years: Davies has a mischievous laugh and still writes every day. But the biggest difference between now and when he started out comes whenever he goes to an award ceremony. “I’ve got a bad back,” he says, “so I don’t do as much dancing.”

As we speak, he is excited about Les Misérables, his much-heralded adaptation of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece of the 1832 Paris uprising. Three years in the making, and about to headline BBC One’s new year schedule, the series is spread over six hour-long episodes and boasts a principle cast of more than 100 – including Dominic West, Olivia Colman and David Oyelowo. The aim, clearly, is to be every bit as epic as the original 1,400-page novel – and, possibly, to banish memories of Russell Crowe bursting into song in the 2012 Hollywood musical version.

“Our tagline is ‘nobody sings’,” says Davies, who has won five Baftas and two Emmys. “It will be interesting to see how fans of the musical react, because I think they will be surprised by how much of Victor Hugo’s original story never made it into the musical. There’s so much more to it than many people know: about the cat-and-mouse relationship between Javert and Jean Valjean, and about Fantine and her early life – her happiness before the misery. We have explored all that. We’ve done it properly.”

The big question is of course this: how has he sexed it up? There have been rumours that Dominic West’s rear end gets an airing. He laughs. “You know, I do think sex is a huge motivation in a lot of these great 19th-century books but not so much in Les Misérables. I don’t think I’ve put a great deal in that wasn’t there. I’m sorry to disappoint.”

In reality, Davies rarely disappoints. He is a master of his craft. His gift lies in taking complex, sprawling novels and, while retaining the original spirit, boiling them down to something fast and fierce, full of fun and frolics. In his adaptations, nothing is sacred. Classic scenes are hacked away and completely new ones added, while beloved characters get killed off early or just never appear.

In House of Cards – his 1990 take on Michael Dobbs’ novel about Tory party skullduggery – he decided he wasn’t keen on the story’s original ending. His solution? To reverse it entirely and have the bad guy win. Dobbs liked it so much that, in a re-released edition of the book, he did likewise. When Netflix transferred the drama to Washington for a new US version in 2013, it followed suit.

“I think we all have this feeling when we’re reading a book: ‘Oh, I wish they’d written a scene between this character and that character.’ Or: ‘I wish this person wasn’t quite so prominent.’ And for me, it’s a question of being alert to those feelings, then writing them in. I do what I would like to see and hope the audience goes with me.”

Generally, it does. His credits read like a best of British TV and include definitive Dickens adaptations of Bleak House and Little Dorrit (in which the reclusive Miss Wade was transformed into an insatiable lesbian). Then there was Tipping the Velvet, complete with taboo-busting dildo revelry, not to mention Sunday night favourites Mr Selfridge and Doctor Zhivago. Among his fans is none other than Vladimir Putin: the Russian president said 2016’s War and Peace “captured the Russian soul, the epoch and the depth” of Leo Tolstoy’s original. “I’m certainly no fan of Putin,” says Davies. “But I’m happy enough he’s a fan of mine.”

He hopes Les Misérables, which has been made by the same team, will receive similar international acclaim. While writing it, he found himself surprised by its relevance, finding parallels between 19th-century France and the world in 2018. “This huge difference between the haves and have-nots still exists,” he says. “People are taking to the streets in Paris right now, but the inequalities are here in Britain too. And you wonder if anything has been learned. We had a very grand BBC launch in Piccadilly and it was pouring with rain and you had beggars sitting there on the wet pavement with nothing as we tiptoed past them in our best clothes and went in for a champagne reception.” He seems momentarily troubled. “There is a huge irony there. I see it, but I don’t know what can be done.”

Davies is rumoured to be the highest-paid screenwriter in the business but he comes from a background more aligned to the have-nots. Born in Cardiff, the grandson of a miner, his main dream as a young writer, he once said, was to “go to London, get drunk a lot and have loose women”. His first TV play, called Who’s Going to Take Me On?, was broadcast when he was 29, yet it was another 21 years before he became a full-time scriptwriter. In the meantime, he moved to the Midlands with his wife, Diana Huntley, had a couple of children and taught at schools and universities while continuing to write screenplays.

In a way, the teaching was a great apprenticeship. “I spent years trying to bring these classics to life for students,” he says. “In a sense, doing it on screen is just a grander, more expensive way of doing a lecture.” He chose to focus on adaptations, he has said, because his original works were always autobiographical – and this was a problem. “I live a very quiet life. There’s not very much to write plays about.”

His most famous work is perhaps 1995’s Pride and Prejudice, a Jane Austen retelling so filled with life, lust and laughter that it revolutionised costume drama. “We wanted to show that these were young people with all the same passions that we have,” he says. “They weren’t just bonnets.”

He is currently working on a new Austen adaptation. Sanditon, which will begin filming in spring, is a reworking of her great unfinished work about the transformation of a fishing village into a seaside town. ITV has described it as “lavish”. “She only wrote 100 pages or so,” he says, “which I’d used up midway through the first episode. So the rest I’ve had to make up. It’s been a blast.”

Yet there have been critics of the project. Some have asked if it is still appropriate for a man to transform the work of a woman. The word “appropriation” has been used. “To adapt a novel,” he says, “whether it’s by a man or a woman, it doesn’t matter what sex you are. You just have to know a lot about novels and a lot about adapting – which I do. You know, Sarah Waters didn’t have any problem with me doing Tipping the Velvet, which is not only by a woman but about lesbians. And I’m not one of those either. Will people say you have to be a murderer to write a convincing killer? It’s barmy.”

Sanditon is not the only thing he’s working on. He may be in his 80s but Davies hopes this decade will be his most productive yet. Another project is his upcoming version of A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth’s majestic novel set in post-colonial India. It will be the BBC’s first drama featuring an entirely non-white cast.

Another is a series based on John Updike’s Rabbit novels, which may be Davies’s first work made for a streaming service. “It’s early days but that might be on the cards,” he says, mentioning both Netflix and Amazon as potential platforms. “It would be a thrill.” And neither, I suggest, is averse to turning up the phwoar factor. “I know,” he says and gives that mischievous laugh one last time.

• Les Misérables starts on BBC One on Sunday. (x)

[shittyreviewsformovies-blog]

XX

XX   2017   Rated: R   Genre: Horror   On Netflix

XX is a four part anthology of short films with a background story taking place. The movies were written by women and are from the woman’s point of view. Three explore a dark side of what all a mother would do for her children and the fourth plays more on the realm of being careful where you go. I normally am not the type of person to like films like this, but from the very beginning of the stop motion, I loved it, a soft spot for that macabre inspired stop motion. I would highly recommend this movie.

The Dollhouse

The beginning. An old house which within sits a doll house. Using stop motion animation, we see a disembodied doll hand crawl from the doll house and open a drawer, revealing the movie title. We see a doll face within the dollhouse, woken up by moths and rotating to look out of the house and then back in. Inside are the torso of a doll sitting in a bathtub and the lower half sitting against a wall. The moths make sounds like birds and a trap door opens within the top room, it makes a growling sound, the moths going inside of it, and then the door shuts, revealing teeth on it’s outside.

Part One: The Box

We begin in a train, a mother and her son travelling peacefully, the mother narrating for us as they head home for dinner. Her son Danny asks a man on the train what is in the large red box that he is carrying. Danny looks inside, his expression changing to something serious. Back at the house, he refuses to tell his sister what was in the box. The dinner that their mom has given them is a really good looking dinner, but Danny refuses to eat any of it, asking instead to go and play. Danny also refuses any popcorn that his father offers him.

Oddly over the next few days, Danny refuses to eat his dinner and also starts to not eat his lunch. He is very polite, but his parents go concerned by the third day of him not eating his lunch at school. The mother and her husband discuss it at dinner, his father thinking that maybe they should go to the doctor with him, but the mother doesn’t think that anything is wrong. Robert, the father, tells him that he really needs to eat something that night at dinner, that Danny really loves spaghetti, that he might be sick. But Danny says he feels completely fine.

Every night, he just scraps his fork across his plate and says that he’s not hungry. Robert can’t even get Danny to eat when he shouts at him out of concern. The fourth day, they take him to the doctor, but other than not eating, he doesn’t have any symptoms of anything else. Danny asks the doctor why it’s so important that he eats to which he replies that he’ll simply die if he doesn’t eat. Danny replies “so?”. The doctor recommends a therapist, saying Danny has lost five pounds and that he might be having some emotional problems.

We see the mother sneak to smoke a cigarette. Her kids are talking in Danny’s room and she can’t get them to tell her what they were discussing, but we are alluded to that Danny has just told his sister Jenny why he isn’t eating. Jenny seems a little distant after that and the next morning, she refuses to eat a poptart. That night at dinner, neither of the children are at the dinner table. Their father grows increasingly worried and he’s frustrated that she seems completely fine while their children are starving.

Robert goes to talk with Danny, asking why they won’t eat, asking for him to please tell him. Danny whispers something in his dad’s ear, who looks at him blankly. That night he seems off and doesn’t tell his wife what their son said. That night she has a dream that her children and her husband are eating from her body like she is a carved ham or something. But in the dream she is happy.

By Christmas, Danny is horribly emaciated, having to be carried through the house. Jenny was so thin you could see her ribs, her sweater obviously being much too large for her. The family gives their mom a present in a large red box, similar to the one that the old man on the train was carrying and she manages to put the two together. She asks Danny what the man had inside of the box, but he replies nothing refusing to say if it was actually empty or not. She continues to ask, asking if this is all some kind of a joke, but all of them refuse to tell her what was in the box. We’re shown Danny, Jenny, and Robert all three in the hospital, and are told that all three of them died within a little over a month. She says that everyday since then, she rides the train hoping to find the man and his box, explaining that it’s the only that she can feel close to them. That she’s hungry.

The Dollhouse

We’re brought back to the dollhouse, the stop motion showing it going through the home exploring. In the dollhouse, we see a doll’s stomach open up and bugs crawling inside, closing. The doll face wipes its mouth with a cloth and rubs it’s stomach. It opens its stomach again with its doll hand, showing bloody rags inside and we go into the stomach.

Part Two: The Birthday Party

A woman, Mary, wakes up on the morning of her daughter’s birthday party, finding that her husband isn’t in bed. She finished setting up the party while in her pajamas and is surprised by their housekeeper Carla. The mother refuses that her husband is home, asking the housekeeper to finish some last minute things. She jumps when she goes in her husband’s office, seeing that he has actually returned home. She starts talking to him about Lucy’s birthday party, that Lucy hasn’t been sleeping well. But when she wraps her arms around her husband, she sees that he is actually dead. She turns the body around when Lucy walks towards the office. Lucy has to change her costume after she has an accident, changing to a ghost instead.

The mother returns to the office, holding a pill bottle. She sniffs the glass that her late-husband was holding and then looks in the bottle, implying that he took the medication and killed himself. Instead of calling 911, she picks David’s corpse up, walking him over to the closet and hiding inside of it watches as Carla gets a drink of his alcohol stash. Lucy bursts in the office to find Carla, asking about some colors that Carla was looking for.

Her friend Madeleine walks in and tries to talk to her wanting to come to the party and Mary finally gets her out of the house. Mary continues to try to find a place to hide her husband but is interrupted by the entertainer that she had hired for the party. She pays him $1000 and medical marijuana and he gives her the suit. She puts her husband in the suit.

Children, all dressed in very weird costumes enter the house, laughing and dancing around while Mary sits at the head of the bed. She looks very out of place amongst the other parents, all of whom are dressed extremely well and their hair is absolutely perfect. She pours alcohol in her party cup and stares at her dead husband in the panda suit at the other end of the table.

Carla brings in Lucy’s cake, sitting it in front of the panda who falls over. She tries to fix it by sitting him up, but Carla accidently pulls the head of the costume off. Everyone starts screaming, seeing that in the bear costume is a dead body.

The Dollhouse

The house continues walking through the house, exploring and putting things in its babinet. We see the implied ‘lungs’ of the doll, a pin cushion that has the pins moving in and out as it breathes. The door in the lungs opens and we are shown fabric outside of the door. A pin is put in the fabric and a needle begins sewing pieces of cloth into the fabric, moving on its own with red thread. We see the door close back and then the pin cushion continue to breathe.

Part Three: Don’t Fall

The desert. Friends are hiking through some rocky landscape, talking about scorpions. At the top of the rocks, Gretchen, Paul, Jay, and Jess stand and are amazed at the view. Jay takes some pics of Paul. Jess finds a drawing on the wall of some rocks, showing five figures and then three lines. One figure is above all the rest, encompassing them while another one of them has horns.

The decide they need to get going to make it back before night time. They have a camp that’s an old camper, sitting under the stars and getting high. Gretchen constantly worries throughout the entire short, her friends making fun of her the entire time. After a lot of being messed with, she decides to just go to bed while her friends stay awake for a while longer.

We are given a different view, looking in the camper windows in the darkness, and then hear the sound of the door opening and closing. Gretchen has made it outside, waking up laying on the ground. Her hand seems to have all of these lines on it, coming from the place where she had hit her hand earlier. She finds more of those writings on the walls of where she is, including a depiction of a creature, just moments before the creature starts to attack her. The creature takes over Gretchen’s body, teeth sharp and spine protruding. Jay goes to use the bathroom and hears her crying but when he sees her, he realizes that it’s the monster.

He runs back to the camper, screaming and attempting to drive away, but Paul screams that he has to help his sister and runs out the door. Jess struggles to get past Jay to go outside too, but Jay refuses. Hearing screeching and then a series of crunching noises, they both freeze right before Paul’s body comes flying through the back window, mangled and bloody. They hear the creature crawl over the roof and then begin crawling through the camper, tearing into Jay and ripping him apart.

Jess runs away as fast as she can, falling off one of the rocks and breaking her leg. The creature descends down the rocks, crawling towards her as she tries to convince Gretchen that it’s her. The creature jumps.

The Dollhouse

The dollhouse is looking out the window as thunder claps. We see it’s heart, an apple in a small bed, beating red and full before transforming, rotted and purple. A door is closed on the heart.

Part Four: Her Only Living Son

A woman, Cora, is talking to a doctor, rolling a cross necklace in her hand. The doctor wishes her well, but she says no. She then wakes up in a panic, alarm clock blaring and her dog looking at her. She checks on her son, who is asleep and smiles at him. Her son plays outside with the dog before coming in the house and making breakfast, a bloody egg fascinating him as he eats it anyway.

We are told that her son is going to be 18 the next day, that his father is a an actor, and that his mother is having to go talk to her son’s teacher at school about something that he did. She packs up cleaning supplies into the back of her car as the mailman flirts with her sweetly and then she goes into work.

At the school, she is sitting with the principal and another mother. A mother whose daughter had her fingernails torn off by Andy. The mother argues that this can’t be her daughter’s fault at all, but Cora is concerned with how he has his teacher’s convinced that he is a perfect boy. She wishes that the school would punish him, but they refuse. The other mother says that they will be contacted by a lawyer later that day.

At home, she finds a note from Andy saying that he’s going to a friend’s house after practice. Cora makes a cake for him while he is gone. That night she dreams about when she gave birth to Andy and while sleeping, a weird baby hand carresses her face. She hears thumping in her house and calls for her son who is in the bathroom. He angrily pushes her away and leaves to his bedroom, blood all over the bathroom.

In the morning, she sits with a birthday cake that he completely ignores, saying that he’ll be gone again today. She scrubs the blood from the floor and his clothes. As she hangs the laundry, the mailman comes to talk to her again. She confides in him that she doesn’t know what to do about Andy anymore, but he states that he was never really hers and that fighting with him will just get her hurt. But she doesn’t want to fight with him. He ends up saying that she shouldn’t fight Andy’s real father, that he was here to watch them grow and be there for them. She runs into the house and locks the door as the mailman stands there saying ‘Praise his Darkness’.

In the house, she digs through her son’s room, finding a box in Andy’s room full of fingernails. Andy comes into the house, slamming the door and she shoves the box back under the bed and hides in the closet. She watches as Andy removes his shoes, claws revealed to have taken place of his toenails. He leaves after trying to remove one. Cora goes into the kitchen after him and he stares out the window. He says that a woman came up to him today that he’d never seen before. He says that the woman said that he is his father’s only living son, demanding that Cora tell him what she meant. Cora refuses to tell him what is going on.

Andy admits to her the kinds of thoughts he has, the horrible dreams that he has about hurting people including her. He then demands that she kneel before him. She hugs him as he says that he wants to go live his dad now, the room turning dark. She holds him and tells him to shut his eyes, not to look at him, as she tells him the story of his birth.

He had made her so sick when she was pregnant, unable to eat anything. She was in a lot of pain, she had apparently been raped by the devil or something similar, and when she went to go see a doctor or priest, he had given them money to leave the city and they had been running ever since. Andy winces horribly when she says God, but she just holds. She says that she chose Andy over anything that she had. She is angry with the devil for showing up now after she is the one who did all of the hard work. She tells him that he is the only one who gets to make the decision, not her or the devil.

The devil shows himself and the two of them embrace, holding each other so fiercely  that their bones break. Both of them embrace while dead on the floor.

The Dollhouse

The doll’s hand sees a baby doll on the floor. It tries putting a moth into its chest and then shakes the doll, but it doesn’t wake up. The dollhouse drags the doll through the house, grabbing a black hummingbird from another room and putting the bird into its chest. The dollhouse watches as the babydoll comes to life, crying. The dollhouse removes the bird. Walking into a room, we see a young girl sitting in a chair with a door on her chest. The dollhouse puts the bird into the door and the little girl comes to life, smiling at her dollhouse as the storm outside continues.

XX creates a space that draws us in and makes us care about what is happening. I feel like, as a woman, that this movie might actually not be as appealing to the cis-het horror movie dudebro. The only one largely appealing possibly being Don’t Fall. I really don’t know what all to say about this film other than I think it was beautifully put together and that I just love the stop motion. 9 out of 10, easily.

[aion-rsa]

Game of Thrones at 10: The Series That Changed TV Forever

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During the Game of Thrones series finale, there’s an exchange between Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister that is as much about the series’ legacy as it is the characters’ inner turmoil. Only a handful of scenes earlier, these same two men conspired to murder the woman they called their queen, Daenerys Targaryen. Now living with the consequences of that heavy deed—with Jon again banished to the white hell Beyond the Wall and Tyrion conscripted to a lifetime of public service—a tormented Jon asks his friend was it right what they did?

“Ask me again in 10 years,” Tyrion says tersely. After all these years, the craftiest of Lannisters finally has learned he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know—and who really knows how the decisions in the here and now will appear to posterity? It’s easy to speculate that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt the same way about their controversial ending to Game of Thrones. And like Tyrion and Jon, they probably could not anticipate the entire fallout that was to come.

It’s been two years since the contentious farewell to the series that defined its pop culture decade. But define it, it did. Running from 2011 to 2019, the show’s rise and fall traces eerily close to the rhythms of its era, perhaps more so than any series ever produced. It launched as the biggest gamble in premium cable history, and it ended as the most popular televised phenomenon of the 2010s. Some have argued Game of Thrones was the last of the “watercooler shows.” Even the divisiveness of its finale was monumental, shaping the next era of TV in still unseen ways. Pop culture really does live on in the realm forged by HBO’s fire and blood.

So while it hasn’t been a full 10 years since Tyrion dodged Jon’s question, a decade has passed from the moment three riders in black emerged from an icy gate, and Game of Thrones premiered on HBO. That’s more than enough time to ask what did Game of Thrones mean to us and the television landscape it shaped?

The Coming of Winter

Television was a different universe in April 2011. Netflix was still that mail rental/streaming company which didn’t produce its own content, storytelling was full of cynicism, and cable television remained king. But within that fiefdom, HBO was facing a problem: the once undisputed ruler of premium cable drama was now seeing challengers for its throne.

“HBO was still coming out of The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood,” Michael Lombardo, then-HBO programming president, told James Hibberd for Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, an oral history on the making of the series. “We were getting questions like, ‘Why did you not get Mad Men? How come you didn’t pick up Breaking Bad?’ We had been the place for all things quality drama and were looking to regain our footing. But Game of Thrones didn’t seem to fall into our category.”

In retrospect, it obviously should have. Based on George R.R. Martin’s sprawling A Song of Ice and Fire book series, the show was pitched (somewhat inaccurately) as The Sopranos meets Lord of the Rings. Martin may have written his novels to be unfilmable, but at HBO, Benioff and Weiss would create an impressive facsimile of his Westeros on a budget.

Very much a product of its time, Game of Thrones came out at the tail-end of the “antihero” era of television, the period where HBO led the way in populating TV with flawed if not outright repugnant protagonists. A reaction to television being defined by network censorship for all the decades before the 21st century, the sliding spectrum of lapsed morality between Don Draper (Mad Men) and Tony Soprano was exhilarating in its time. But unlike all those series, Game of Thrones was offering a vast tapestry of protagonists in its ensemble, which provided an even greater range of moral complexity than most popular American shows at that time.

There were fantasy stalwart heroes like Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean) and his oldest sons, but also enigmas such as Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), antiheroes who were introduced as full-on villains (read: most of the Lannisters), and young heroines whose nigh transcendentalist adventures belied darker traumas, such as Arya Stark (Maisie Williams). It was both of its moment and a far cry from the cynicism of other popular shows, not to mention the popular image of fantasy, which on the small screen was closer to Xena: Warrior Princess than Lord of the Rings.

“There were a fair number of reasons not to do it,” Carolyn Strauss told Hibberd about the show’s early days at HBO. As the former HBO programming president who first greenlit the Game of Thrones pilot, and then became executive producer on the series, Strauss can recall the apprehension she felt toward the idea of making a fantasy series for adults. “There are many ways a fantasy series can go south. Any show that relies on a mythology that isn’t thought out in enormous detail can go off the rails. You’re maybe good for a season or two, and then after that you start running into brick walls.”

Yet it was Thrones’ moral complexity in such a dense, heightened world that caught Strauss off-guard. “The way [Benioff and Weiss] told the story in the meeting made it sound much more involved and character-driven than I usually feel from fantasy stories. It was not good vs. evil, but characters who had elements of both things.”

That level of nuance was shocking when Game of Thrones premiered in 2011. Nowadays the series is often reduced by TV critics as being simply the show that introduced convincing blockbuster spectacle to the small screen. But in its early seasons that really wasn’t the case. While Benioff and Weiss were quietly aware of how massive in scope Martin’s novels eventually became, they sold the series to HBO as a “chamber piece,” not a symphony. It’s about intimate family drama—at least in the first season/novel—not magic and battles.

In that first episode, there was hardly an unsullied viewer who didn’t gasp when sweet 10-year-old Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) was pushed out a window by Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). The thrill wasn’t seeing dragons lay waste to armies; the excitement was found in character moments or decisions with drastic repercussions on every other scene that followed. At its heart, it was a fantasy series drenched in human psychology and human history (particularly that of the English War of the Roses), and those hooks made the eventual ice and fire spectacle that much more extraordinary five years down the line.

Game of Thrones didn’t come out of the gate as a culture defining event—its series premiere netted just 2.2 million viewers, about 1.6 million less than HBO’s similarly epic and ill-fated Rome—but like the armies of one silver haired queen from the east, it’s rise seemed blessed to gradually, and unwaveringly, build until the bloody end.

A Golden Crown

The moment that personally got me wholeheartedly invested into Game of Thrones, however, wasn’t Bran’s fall from a Winterfell tower, nor was it Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion verbally humiliating his demon seed nephew. The scene where the show fully clicked was in the sixth episode, “A Golden Crown.” Up until that moment, the series was dense on world-building and lore, but the narrative was so finely tuned, and hidden in such a tightly wound coil, that it could feel impenetrable at first blush. It also seemed to be built on a certain set of fantasy archetypes, such as the noble hero Ned Stark and the old fat king, Robert (Mark Addy).

Another seeming archetype was Viserys Targaryen, a malicious blonde-haired misanthrope played so ably by Harry Lloyd that one would recoil when he was on screen. Technically, he’s a lonely exiled prince whose family lost its dynasty. But as seen through the eyes of Clarke’s put-upon and abused Daenerys, Viserys’ younger sister whom he mercilessly abused, Viserys was really just an ugly bully. The kind you might imagine Harry Potter’s Draco Malfoy growing into, except with the creepy addition of a leering, incestuous gaze. Also like Draco, I feared Dany would have to endure his pestering for the rest of the series.

Then “A Golden Crown” occurs, and Viserys is plucked from the series like leaden dead weight. Moments before his death, Viserys has realized that no matter how much he calls himself king, no one will follow him. Meanwhile Dany has won the hearts of the Dothraki, a nomadic warrior culture. She now rules as their Khaleesi (queen) alongside Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), the husband Viserys sold her to. Viserys expected Drogo to become his mercenary, but by episode 6, that obviously is never going to happen. So his simmering resentment seemed to suggest Viserys would undermine Dany’s fledgling power and character growth at every future opportunity. But at the end of “The Golden Crown,” the self-styled king threatens Daenerys before the whole Dothraki court, and perhaps more chillingly in Dany’s eyes, threatens to cut out the baby growing inside her womb if he does not get his way.

Drogo ultimately gives Viserys what he wants: a crown. Only it’s made from the molten hot liquid gold he’s melted down to pour on the wretch’s head. Daenerys watches the gold slowly boil before the deed is done, and she sees her brother begging for his life. But the moment he raised her hand against her unborn child, the man was already dead to her. After Viserys’ head is crushed by the burning gold running through his skull, she doesn’t even blink. Rather Clarke says with maximum disaffection, “He was no dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon.”

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This hard left turn in the plotting was so sudden and shocking that it signaled what the series would become: a narrative where every character’s action and decision (at least pre-season 7) had potent consequences. Narrative conventions could be cut short in an instance. In this case, it was one that left viewers thrilled, but a few episodes later the same creative instinct would shatter them when the series’ main lead, poor Ned, lost his head. Such twists led me to buy all of Martin’s books and read them within a few months.

However, there was something more unsettling about the sequence. Daenerys Targaryen, our ostensible hero in her own storyline, did not flinch or bat an eye at her brother’s demise. He was rotten to the core, but Dany was no more affected by his death than she would be at the sight of hundreds of strangers crucified along a road on her order (an event which would occur later in the series).

The ambiguity of some of these characters, including Dany who in the early seasons was initially presented as an impending threat to the Starks and Lannisters a world away in Westeros, is what gave the drama so much life. There were reasons to root for nearly every faction and reasons to have pause with each character. You knew, eventually, your favorites would be in mortal conflict. While featuring a greater array of heroes than any of the other popular cable shows of the early 2010s, Game of Thrones also wallowed in moral relativity and bleakness. In 2011, it was like a high; in 2021, that kind of televised storytelling has largely fallen out of popularity.

Thrones also had a hand in that shift.

“Tits and Dragons”

For all of Game of Thrones’ good qualities, they cannot be extracted from its sins. Ten years ago, premium cable networks indulged in heavy use of obligatory nudity (mostly of young women) to keep viewers watching. Game of Thrones didn’t invent this, but it pushed it to its limit in the early seasons, even leading to the new term of “sexposition,” which describes when a show cynically includes images of naked women, usually portrayed as prostitutes in Thrones’ case, in the background during dry exposition.

Even before Thrones ended, these elements had aged badly, and were notably toned down in the later seasons. But they still occurred, even as gags, up to and including the final year. Neil Marshall, who directed two battle episodes on the series, even recalled in 2012 a disquieting note he received from an executive on the episode “Blackwater.”

“This particular exec took me to one side and said, ‘Look, I represent the pervert side of the audience okay?’” Marshall said. “‘Everybody else is the serious drama side, [but] I represent the perv side of the audience, and I’m saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene.’”

This cavalier attitude about using (some might say exploiting) young actresses who are anxious for a job on a popular series in such a gratuitous way contributed to the creation of a new profession in Hollywood: the intimacy coordinator. The actual HBO series which finally triggered this was The Deuce, not Game of Thrones. Still, Thrones most famously contributed to that sensationalism on television. So much so one of its most lauded guest stars, Ian McShane, deadpanned the show was only about “tits and dragons.” It became the figurehead for a media culture so problematic that there needed to be a reckoning at all networks and streamers in the post-#MeToo era.

That those elements on Game of Thrones were so often used in association with rape or sexual violence has led to a long overdue reevaluation of how stories with women are told in popular media—particularly from writers’ rooms dominated by men.

In truth, Game of Thrones has a litany of fascinating and complex female characters, many of whom end up in positions of power during the final seasons despite the grueling restraints of a medieval patriarchal society. Stars like Sophie Turner, whose Sansa Stark concludes the series as Queen in the North, has argued the series is actually quite feminist in its depiction of a wide range of nuanced female leads navigating medieval misogyny. And Clarke has said the show has taught her to “embrace her feminism.”

Yet both actors’ characters were forced to endure scenes of rape and sexual assault on the series, quite graphically in Clarke’s case during the first season. Even 10 years ago, viewers were rightfully disturbed by that. Clarke’s own thoughts on the use of nudity in the first season have also evolved. These elements, which only seem more glaring to the modern eye, have inspired a shift in how all “adult” stories are told, as well as how fantasy stories and historical dramas are received by audiences increasingly critical of one-sided titillation.

Those scenes likely contributed to the fan backlash when Clarke’s Daenerys, who suffered so much early on only to remake herself as a godlike savior, was revealed to be painfully mortal… turning into the villain of her own story.

A Legacy of Conflict

Game of Thrones began as a gamble for HBO, but even in its first year the bet was paying off when the fantasy show with dragons and ice zombies was nominated for Best Drama Series at the Emmys. Dinklage would go on to win his first of four Emmys for playing Tyrion that year, and even as the show lost the top prize then, it would eventually win Best Drama Series in four subsequent years.

It’s also worth noting that Dany’s dragons were barely present in the first season. Before the 2011 finale, they were creatures of a bygone age that, we’re told repeatedly, have long gone extinct. But in the final minutes of season 1, her ancient dragon eggs hatch, and a scene of biblical import plays out when she emerges from ashes as the Mother of Dragons. With each following year, Dany’s children grew larger in size, as did the pyrotechnics they unleashed. They were not much bigger than cats when they burned down a city of slavers in season 3. By the show’s end, they were the size of 747 jets while laying waste to Lannister armies.

As the creatures grew, so did Game of Thrones’ budget and, just as importantly, its audience. No other series in the modern era grew bigger with each season, from the cradle to its grave. In an age where Netflix invented the term “binge watching,” Game of Thrones remained the rare holdout of old school appointment television, with most audiences simultaneously watching live when the episode premiered on Sunday nights. Entire cottage industries based on fan speculation were born, and reading Martin’s books like they were sacred texts with hidden meanings that only the most learned scholar could translate became a pastime.

The first season premiered with 2.2 million people watching; the final season debuted with an audience of 17.4 million viewers. The finale brought in 19.3 million viewers. By comparison, the most popular scripted drama series on network television in 2019, This is Us, was averaging around 7-8 million viewers.

Yet as its popularity grew with its dragons, so did a vocal sense of dissatisfaction. There was a confluence of factors involved, many of them having to do with showrunners Benioff and Weiss running out of Martin novels to adapt. While they had a rough outline of how the series would end, the final two seasons of Game of Thrones arguably felt at points like just that: an outline the series was hitting by bullet point in each episode, often without the intricate plotting that made the early seasons and novels so addictive.

Yet it was really only during the series’ final two episodes, as a long built-up dragon fulfilled his destiny, that the rift between audience expectation and artistic intent erupted into a social media outrage. After watching Dany’s power build and build, and spending the final seasons with her pivoting from a threat to the Starks and King’s Landing to their ally against the Army of the Dead, Dany did what the series had long been famous for: she took a hard left turn.

In the final few hours of the series, Daenerys burns down the Westerosi capital, kills tens of thousands of people, and takes the Iron Throne in fire and blood, just like her ancestors. It was not the ending audiences, including myself, wanted for Dany, and it was an ending that disappointed even Clarke. Especially Clarke.

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Game of Thrones Season 8: This Was Always the Ending

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In many ways, it is one of the most Martin-esque elements of the series’ final years. You were promised high fantasy excitement and then got the cold, harsh reality of death and suffering. The fairy tales and fables which inspired modern fantasy are often derived from uglier histories and troubling sides of human nature. This is what conquest looks like, be it by dragon or sword.

Unfortunately, the execution of the ending left something to be desired. And there are plenty of write-ups out there to unpack the problems with the final season. Nonetheless, it is fair to wonder if for the first time in the series’ whole run, the show was finally out of step with the zeitgeist, and the subversion that was celebrated a decade earlier was no longer of the moment? When the show premiered, it was a realpolitik fantasy about the corrupting influence of power and how it can be wielded. When the series ended, corrupt abusers of power were on the rise around the world. Even Martin noted it was like King Joffrey had come to the White House.

The series not only denied viewers their favorite theories for the series’ end, but also a sense of escape from a world that was feeling uncomfortably closer to Westeros than it had eight years earlier.

In its own realm though, Game of Thrones was a series that shaped the modern television landscape. Spectacle on a scale comparable to Hollywood blockbusters is now deemed as attainable by content creators with deep enough pockets. Amazon paid $1 billion for the television rights of Lord of the Rings alone. But the industry has also reacted to Thrones and the antihero era it came from with a growing sense of wariness, too.

One of Game of Thrones’ contemporaries from its heyday was The Walking Dead. As another gritty, violent, and at times nihilistic genre show that became a mainstream hit, The Walking Dead started in the same TV season as Thrones. And one of its most pivotal writers from those earlier glory days, former showrunner Glen Mazzara, recently tweeted about the change in the industry’s tenor.

“TV development today is all about optimism,” Mazzara wrote. “Buyers don’t want anything dark or bleak.” While he then went on to add that he’s nonetheless writing the “darkest [and] scariest” thing of his career, the point remains that what was once the most popular thing on television, first as austere dramas and then as gory spectacles in shows like Thrones and The Walking Dead, is out of step in a modern TV landscape that has reacted to those shows.

Ironically, genre is more popular than ever, but the moral ambiguity and relativity that attracted HBO to Benioff and Weiss’ pitch is not. Rather than antiheroes, television is increasingly dominated by good natured and heroic individuals (Marvel Studios is even making the most popular shows). Characters, meanwhile, are proactively trying to solve social problems, not reveling in how broken things are. Creative spaces are also thankfully becoming more inclusive, giving a platform to a wider range of voices, including writers’ rooms where someone might be able to say the equivalent of, “You know, maybe Sansa shouldn’t be raped by Ramsay Bolton?”

This environment is a reaction to the popularity and then backlash endured by Game of Thrones. Which means our relationship to the series is far from over, even as the show’s run becomes an increasingly distant memory.

And yet, there’s (clearly) much to be said about what Game of Thrones accomplished in its time, right down to ending the way it did. It’s hard to imagine a show becoming that popular again and existing with such artistic freedom, and for its creators to be allowed to end it where they would like. Even in the 2010s it was rare, hence The Walking Dead lumbering onto an eleventh season this fall as a pale shadow of its former self. When that series ends, it also really won’t be the end, with more spinoffs, movies, and other forms of content planned.

Under new management, HBO has signaled they’ve developed a similar temperament, even with Game of Thrones. Benioff, Weiss, and apparently Martin saw their story end exactly the way they wanted to (even if few agreed with them). But the network has announced five live-action spinoff series in various stages of development, plus an animated one on HBO Max. In the age of endless streaming content, it’s easy to imagine that every corner of Westerosi history will be explored if WarnerMedia thinks there is an appetite.

Our feelings toward the legacy of Game of Thrones have evolved over the last 10 years, and will likely continue to do so for another 10. But it was a show that hit the right beats at the right time, and changed the culture while doing so. It burned brightly and then snuffed out its candle on its own terms. You don’t have to wait a decade to appreciate how rare, and unforgettable, that really is.

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INFPs make for some of the greatest characters in fiction due to their quirky and whimsical demeanors. They are especially great in romance films considering the fact that INFPs are some of the most romantic individuals out of all the 16 MBTI personality types.

RELATED: Myers-Briggs® Personality Types Of Disney Princesses

They dream of one day finding that special person, and people are captivated by their unusual personas. People with the INFP personality type are warm, charismatic, selfless, and imaginative making them an ideal love interest for most. With that being said, here are some essential characters in romance films who embody INFP characteristics.

Updated on February 5th, 2021 by Kristen Palamara: Romantic comedies continue to be one of the most popular movie genres from classic rom-coms being revisited and watched over and over again to new rom-coms becoming new favorites. The INFP, the mediator, personality type might seem shy at first but once they let people into their world others realize the INFP is creative, loving, and open-minded. INFP personality types are also extremely caring and are typically are looking for to build close relationships with those they care about so they make for fantastic rom-com leads. 

15 LARA JEAN - TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE

Lara Jean is a shy high schooler who has had multiple passionate crushes in her past and has written love letters to each of them although she was too afraid to ever send them. Her sister sends the letters and changes Lara Jean's life forever when her crushes are able to read her innermost feelings about them. Lara Jean is creative with her multiple craft projects and love of baking. It's clear that Lara Jean also cares deeply for her father, sisters, and learns to let Peter into her life when they begin dating.

14 SAM - SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

Sam (Tom Hanks) is a widower with a young son and the movie Sleepless in Seattle begins with his son calling into a radio station to talk about how lonely his dad is after his mom's death. Sam ends up talking to the radio host and passionately describes the relationship he had and how much he truly cared for her and misses her. Hundreds of people listen to the radio broadcast including Annie (Meg Ryan) and several women try to reach out to him to try to date him. It's clear that Sam cares deeply for his son and is a romantic at heart who just wants a relationship with a loving woman.

13 FAITH - ONLY YOU

Faith (Marisa Tomei) from Only You is extremely similar to the INFP personality type. Faith is completely obsessed with finding her soul mate and has been convinced since her childhood that she's meant to be with a man called Damon Bradley. Faith believes this wholeheartedly and has high expectations for her romantic relationships and needs a particular level of magic and flare. Faith meets a man who claims to have the name Damon Bradley (Robert Downey, Jr.) and she has to reckon with the difference between her expectations and her reality.

12 ALEX -CHANCES ARE

Alex (Robert Downey Jr.) is inexplicably drawn to Miranda (Mary Stuart Masterson) and her family, specifically her mother Corinne (Cybill Shepherd), as he begins having strong memories of the family that aren't his own. It's an odd and unique rom-com when the audience realizes that Corinne's recently deceased husband was re-incarnated as Alex, but Alex is a passionate, creative, completely empathetic, helpful, and caring character.

11 ELLIE - THE HALF OF IT

Ellie (Leah Lewis) is a quiet and extremely shy high schooler who is in love with Aster (Alexxis Lemire) but agrees to help Trig (Wolfgang Novogratz), a boy in their class, who is also in love with her, woo her. In a classic Cyrano de Bergerac storyline, Aster falls for Trig even though she has been talking with Ellie the entire time over text messages and letters. Ellie is a complete romantic and deeply cares for Aster while also developing a friendship with Trig.

10 RAMONA - SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD

Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is definitely an INFP character. Many people are drawn in by the INFP's whimsical charm and their mysterious demeanors leave others around them constantly wanting more. This is why Ramona is so sought after in the movie by all of her exes as well as Scott Pilgrim himself because her wild-hearted personality is so alluring to all those around her. Also, INFPs are known for their lack of a desire to conform, which is why Ramona always sports unconventional colored hair. She couldn't care less about fitting in, and people tend to admire this aspect found in her character.

9 ELISA - SHAPE OF WATER

Elisa from The Shape of Water fully embodies all of the essential character traits of the INFP personality type. Her character is warm, extremely empathetic, and creative. Like most INFPs, she always seems to be daydreaming about a fantasy world that is far from reach. Mundane aspects of her everyday life do not interest her as much as the fantastical elements that she comes across.

She falls in love with an amphibian man because she can identify with the fact that he's an outcast. INFPs tend to fall for people based on their personalities rather than superficial qualities such as appearance or financial status. It is also important to recognize the fact that Elisa befriends a bunch of characters who are labeled as misfits by society because she tends to find them more interesting than those who conform.

8 BELLA - TWILIGHT

Bella Swan seems to embody the INFP personality because she is someone who appreciates fantasy much more than reality.

RELATED: Twilight: 10 Things About Bella Swan That Make No Sense

Prior to meeting Edward, she was a bookworm who loved reading about imaginary worlds far beyond her own. When she met the Cullens, she was fascinated by them rather than afraid, and she fully accepts them into her universe despite the fact that vampires are deemed as dangerous. She's willing to embark on any crazy adventure that comes her way rather than shying away from it.

7 BELLE - BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Princess Belle from Beauty and the Beast is basically the patron saint of fictional INFPs. Like many others described on this list, Belle is much more concerned with fantastical matters as opposed to what is going down in her everyday life. She couldn't care less about what's happening in her little town, yet what she does care about are the books she consumes on a daily basis. INFPs love reading fiction because it's a form of escapism and requires the reader to use their imagination.

6 CHARLIE - PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

Charlie is the definition of an INFP character. He is extremely sensitive and he will cry over the little things in life because he is so in touch with his emotions. For example, his character will often burst into tears over a song that touches his heart. Charlie is a wallflower, which means that although he is extremely shy and reserved, he is able to make observations and see things that others cannot. INFPs are experts when it comes to making observations about details that most people would not be able to pick up on.

5 EDWARD SCISSORHANDS - EDWARD SCISSORHANDS

Johnny Depp is an actor who often plays INFP characters. This is because there is a strong chance that the quirky celeb is an INFP himself. Edward is an outcast and he finds it very difficult to connect with others around him, yet he isn't desperate to fit in with the rest of the crowd.

RELATED: 10 Hidden Details Everyone Missed In Edward Scissorhands

He is comfortable with his status as a misfit, and he cares more about making others happy than blending in with the rest of the crowd. INFPs are sensitive, romantic, and giving, and these are all traits that can be said about Edward Scissorhands. Despite the fact that he has scissors for his hands, he is completely harmless.

4 AMÉLIE - AMÉLIE

Amélie is a quirky individual who is known for her reserved nature and her giving personality. She cares very deeply about making other people happy, and sometimes she will go so far as to put other people's needs before her own. Since the majority of people with the INFP personality type are wildly empathetic, they can often forget to take care of their own desires because they are too busy trying to help others. They are extremely selfless in that way, and this behavior describes Amélie to a T. She is also incredibly imaginative and creative, which is why she's always fantasizing about dazzling worlds that are far from reach.

3 SABRINA - SABRINA

Sabrina is a character who wants nothing more than to find love. She is crazy about a man named David, and she is willing to go great lengths in order to win his affection. Yet unfortunately for Sabrina, David refuses to notice her. INFPs have a bad habit of yearning for what they can't have. Like most people with this personality type, they will do just about anything in the name of love. Audrey Hepburn herself is typed as an INFP, so it's no wonder her personality emulates throughout her films.

2 ELIO - CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

Elio from the romance film Call Me By Your Name is very much an INFP. While he is extremely bookish and intelligent, he leads by his emotions rather than logic and he wears his heart on his sleeve.

RELATED: Netflix Originals: The 10 Most Popular Teen Rom-Coms, Ranked (According To IMDb)

As is the case for all INFP personality types, Elio is incredibly sensitive due to his high levels of emotional intelligence. He loves to read and be alone as well, and his imagination is endless. Timothee Chalamet's character is a total INFP.

1 CELINE - BEFORE SUNRISE

Celine in Before Sunrise embodies the "mediator" personality type. Her character is a great listener, and she loves to discuss theories and ideas rather than engaging in small talk. There is nothing an INFP hates more than small talk because they have no interest in surface-level conversations. When they are getting to know someone, they want to get to the heart and soul of that other person and they will be unafraid to get to a deeper level with a person that most people would never be willing to reach.

NEXT: MBTI: 10 Disney Characters Who Represent INFP Traits

MBTI®: Romantic Movie Characters Who Represent INFP Traits from https://ift.tt/2wi1lwk

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by Bryce G. Hoffman.

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THE INSIDE STORY OF THE EPIC TURNAROUND OF FORD MOTOR COMPANY UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF CEO ALAN MULALLY. At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dys­functional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses. It was an extraordinary risk, but it was the only way the Ford family—America’s last great industrial dynasty—could hold on to their company. Mulally and his team pulled off one of the great­est comebacks in business history. As the rest of Detroit collapsed, Ford went from the brink of bankruptcy to being the most profitable automaker in the world. American Icon is the compelling, behind-the-scenes account of that epic turnaround. On the verge of collapse, Ford went outside the auto industry and recruited Mulally—the man who had already saved Boeing from the deathblow of 9/11—to lead a sweeping restructuring of a company that had been unable to overcome decades of mismanage­ment and denial. Mulally applied the principles he developed at Boeing to streamline Ford’s inefficient operations, force its fractious executives to work together as a team, and spark a product renaissance in Dearborn. He also convinced the United Auto Workers to join his fight for the soul of American manufacturing. Bryce Hoffman reveals the untold story of the covert meetings with UAW leaders that led to a game-changing contract, Bill Ford’s battle to hold the Ford family together when many were ready to cash in their stock and write off the company, and the secret alliance with Toyota and Honda that helped prop up the Amer­ican automotive supply base. In one of the great management narratives of our time, Hoffman puts the reader inside the boardroom as Mulally uses his celebrated Business Plan Review meet­ings to drive change and force Ford to deal with the painful realities of the American auto industry. Hoffman was granted unprecedented access to Ford’s top executives and top-secret company documents. He spent countless hours with Alan Mulally, Bill Ford, the Ford family, former executives, labor leaders, and company directors. In the bestselling tradition of Too Big to Fail and The Big Short, American Icon is narrative nonfiction at its vivid and colorful best.

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Let's be real: 2020 has been a nightmare. Between the political unrest and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it's difficult to look back on the year and find something, anything, that was a potential bright spot in an otherwise turbulent trip around the sun. Luckily, there were a few bright spots: namely, some of the excellent works of military history and analysis, fiction and non-fiction, novels and graphic novels that we've absorbed over the last year. 

Here's a brief list of some of the best books we read here at Task & Purpose in the last year. Have a recommendation of your own? Send an email to jared@taskandpurpose.Com and we'll include it in a future story.

Missionaries by Phil Klay

I loved Phil Klay’s first book, Redeployment (which won the National Book Award), so Missionaries was high on my list of must-reads when it came out in October. It took Klay six years to research and write the book, which follows four characters in Colombia who come together in the shadow of our post-9/11 wars. As Klay’s prophetic novel shows, the machinery of technology, drones, and targeted killings that was built on the Middle East battlefield will continue to grow in far-flung lands that rarely garner headlines. [Buy]

 - Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Battle Born: Lapis Lazuli by Max Uriarte

Written by 'Terminal Lance' creator Maximilian Uriarte, this full-length graphic novel follows a Marine infantry squad on a bloody odyssey through the mountain reaches of northern Afghanistan. The full-color comic is basically 'Conan the Barbarian' in MARPAT. [Buy]

 - James Clark, senior reporter

The Liberator by Alex Kershaw

Now a gritty and grim animated World War II miniseries from Netflix, The Liberator follows the 157th Infantry Battalion of the 45th Division from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of Italy and the Battle of Anzio, then on to France and later still to Bavaria for some of the bloodiest urban battles of the conflict before culminating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. It's a harrowing tale, but one worth reading before enjoying the acclaimed Netflix series. [Buy]

 - Jared Keller, deputy editor

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff

If you haven’t gotten this must-read account of the September 11th attacks, you need to put The Only Plane In the Sky at the top of your Christmas list. Graff expertly explains the timeline of that day through the re-telling of those who lived it, including the loved ones of those who were lost, the persistently brave first responders who were on the ground in New York, and the service members working in the Pentagon. My only suggestion is to not read it in public — if you’re anything like me, you’ll be consistently left in tears. [Buy]

- Haley Britzky, Army reporter

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry

Why do we even fight wars? Wouldn’t a massive tennis tournament be a nicer way for nations to settle their differences? This is one of the many questions Harvard professor Elaine Scarry attempts to answer, along with why nuclear war is akin to torture, why the language surrounding war is sterilized in public discourse, and why both war and torture unmake human worlds by destroying access to language. It’s a big lift of a read, but even if you just read chapter two (like I did), you’ll come away thinking about war in new and refreshing ways. [Buy]

 - David Roza, Air Force reporter

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor

Stalingrad takes readers all the way from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to the collapse of the 6th Army at Stalingrad in February 1943. It gives you the perspective of German and Soviet soldiers during the most apocalyptic battle of the 20th century. [Buy]

- Jeff Schogol, Pentagon correspondent 

America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich

I picked up America's War for the Greater Middle East earlier this year and couldn’t put it down. Published in 2016 by Andrew Bacevich, a historian and retired Army officer who served in Vietnam, the book unravels the long and winding history of how America got so entangled in the Middle East and shows that we’ve been fighting one long war since the 1980s — with errors in judgment from political leaders on both sides of the aisle to blame. “From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift?” the book jacket asks. As Bacevich details in this definitive history, the mission creep of our Vietnam experience has been played out again and again over the past 30 years, with disastrous results. [Buy]

 - Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer and August Cole

In Burn In, Singer and Cole take readers on a journey at an unknown date in the future, in which an FBI agent searches for a high-tech terrorist in Washington, D.C. Set after what the authors called the "real robotic revolution," Agent Lara Keegan is teamed up with a robot that is less Terminator and far more of a useful, and highly intelligent, law enforcement tool. Perhaps the most interesting part: Just about everything that happens in the story can be traced back to technologies that are being researched today. You can read Task & Purpose's interview with the authors here. [Buy]

 - James Clark, senior reporter

SAS: Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre

Like WWII? Like a band of eccentric daredevils wreaking havoc on fascists? Then you'll love SAS: Rogue Heroes, which re-tells some truly insane heists performed by one of the first modern special forces units. Best of all, Ben MacIntyre grounds his history in a compassionate, balanced tone that displays both the best and worst of the SAS men, who are, like anyone else, only human after all. [Buy]

 - David Roza, Air Force reporter

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network is a gripping novel which follows two courageous women through different time periods — one living in the aftermath of World War II, determined to find out what has happened to someone she loves, and the other working in a secret network of spies behind enemy lines during World War I. This gripping historical fiction is based on the true story of a network that infiltrated German lines in France during The Great War and weaves a tale so packed full of drama, suspense, and tragedy that you won’t be able to put it down. [Buy]

Katherine Rondina, Anchor Books

“Because I published a new book this year, I've been answering questions about my inspirations. This means I've been thinking about and so thankful for The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. I can't credit it with making me want to be a writer — that desire was already there — but it inspired me to write stories where the fantastical complicates the ordinary, and the impossible becomes possible. A girl in a nice dress with no one to appreciate it. An unremarkable boy with a remarkable knack for finding things. The stories in this book taught me that the everydayness of my world could become magical and strange, and in that strangeness I could find a new kind of truth.”

Diane Cook is the author of the novel The New Wilderness, which was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Read an excerpt from The New Wilderness.

Bill Johnston, University of California Press

“I’ve revisited a lot of old favorites in this grim year of fear and isolation, and have been most thankful of all for The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Witty, reflexive, intimate, queer, disarmingly occasional and monumentally serious all at once, they’ve been a constant balm and inspiration. ‘The only thing to do is simply continue,’ he wrote, in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul'; ‘is that simple/yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do/can you do it/yes, you can because it is the only thing to do.’”

Helen Macdonald is a nature essayist with a semiregular column in the New York Times Magazine. Her latest novel, Vesper Flights, is a collection of her best-loved essays, and her debut book, H Is for Hawk, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction and the Costa Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

Andrea Scher, Scholastic Press

“This year, I’m so grateful for You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. Reading — like everything else — has been a struggle for me in 2020. It’s been tough to let go of all of my anxieties about the state of the world and our country and get swept away by a story. But You Should See Me in a Crown pulled me in right away; for the blissful time that I was reading it, it made me think about a world outside of 2020 and it made me smile from ear to ear. Joy has been hard to come by this year, and I’m so thankful for this book for the joy it brought me.”

Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of five romance novels, including this year’s Party of Two. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Time.

Nelson Fitch, Random House

“Last year, stuck in a prolonged reading rut that left me wondering if I even liked books anymore, I stumbled across Tenth of December by George Saunders, a collection of stories Saunders wrote between 1995 and 2012 that are at turns funny, moving, startling, weird, profound, and often all of those things at the same time. As a writer, what I crave most from books is to find one so excellent it makes me feel like I'd be better off quitting — and so wonderful that it reminds me what it is to be purely a reader again, encountering new worlds and revelations every time I turn a page. Tenth of December is that, and I'm so grateful that it fell off a high shelf and into my life.”

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series and the Carve the Mark duology. Her latest novel, Chosen Ones, is her first novel for adults. Read an excerpt from Chosen Ones.

Ian Byers-Gamber, Blazevox Books

“Waking up today to the prospect of some hours spent reading away part of another day of this disastrous, delirious pandemic year, I’m most grateful for the book in my hands, one itself full of gratitude for a life spent reading: Gloria Frym’s How Proust Ruined My Life. Frym’s essays — on Marcel Proust, yes, and Walt Whitman, and Lucia Berlin, but also peppermint-stick candy and Allen Ginsburg’s knees, among other Proustian memory-prompts — restore me to my sense of my eerie luck at a life spent rushing to the next book, the next page, the next word.”

Jonathan Lethem is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Motherless Brooklyn. His latest novel, The Arrest, is a postapocalyptic tale about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Riverhead

“I’m incredibly grateful for the magnificent The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. This book — a mélange of history, memoir, and reportage — is the reconceptualization of Native life that’s been urgently needed since the last great indigenous history, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s at once a counternarrative and a replacement for Brown’s book, and it rejects the standard tale of Native victimization, conquest, and defeat. Even though I teach Native American studies to college students, I found new insights and revelations in almost every chapter. Not only a great read, the book is a tremendous contribution to Native American — and American — intellectual and cultural history.”

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is author of the novel Winter Counts, which is BuzzFeed Book Club’s November pick. He is also the author of the children’s book Spotted Tail, which won the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Read an excerpt from Winter Counts.

Valerie Mosley, Tordotcom

“In 2020, I've been lucky to finish a single book within 30 days, but I burned through this 507-page brick in the span of a weekend. Harrow the Ninth reminded me that even when absolutely everything is terrible, it's still possible to feel deep, gratifying, brain-buzzing admiration for brilliant art. Thank you, Harrow, for being one of the brightest spots in a dark year and for keeping the home fires burning.”

Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, and her next book, One Last Stop, comes out in 2021.

"I'm grateful for V.S. Naipaul's troubling masterpiece, A Bend in the River — which not only made me see the world anew, but made me see what literature could do. It's a book that's lucid enough to reveal the brutality of the forces shaping our world and its politics; yet soulful enough to penetrate the most recondite secrets of human interiority. A book of great beauty without a moment of mercy. A marriage of opposites that continues to shape my own deeper sense of just how much a writer can actually accomplish."

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright, and his latest novel, Homeland Elegies, is about an American son and his immigrant father searching for belonging in a post-9/11 country. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Vanessa German, Feminist Press

“I'm most thankful for Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether. It's a YA book set in 1930s Harlem, and it was the first Black-girl-coming-of-age book I ever read, the first time I ever saw myself in a book. I appreciate how it expanded my world and my understanding that books can speak to you right where you are and take you on a journey, at the same time.”

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. She is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Read a story from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

Philippa Gedge, W. W. Norton & Company

“As both a writer and a reader I am hugely grateful for Patricia Highsmith’s plotting and writing suspense fiction. As a writer I’m thankful for Highsmith’s generosity with her wisdom and experience: She talks us through how to tease out the narrative strands and develop character, how to know when things are going awry, even how to decide to give things up as a bad job. She’s unabashed about sharing her own ‘failures,’ and in my experience, there’s nothing more encouraging for a writer than learning that our literary gods are mortal! As a reader, it provides a fascinating insight into the genesis of one of my favorite novels of all time — The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as the rest of her brilliant oeuvre. And because it’s Highsmith, it’s so much more than just a how-to guide: It’s hugely engaging and, while accessible, also provides a glimpse into the mind of a genius. I’ve read it twice — while working on each of my thrillers, The Hunting Party and The Guest List — and I know I’ll be returning to the well-thumbed copy on my shelf again soon!”

Lucy Foley is the New York Times bestselling author of the thrillers The Guest List and The Hunting Party. She has also written two historical fiction novels and previously worked in the publishing industry as a fiction editor.

“The books I'm most thankful for this year are a three-book series titled Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend. Walking a fine line between comedy and horror (which is much harder than people think), the books follow Jack, an employee at a gas station in a nameless town where all manner of horrifyingly fantastical things happen. And while the monsters are scary and more than a little ridiculous, it's Jack's bone-dry narration, along with his best friend/emotional support human, Jerry, that elevates the books into something that are as lovely as they are absurd.”

T.J. Klune is a Lambda Literary Award–winning author and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries.

Sylvernus Darku (Team Black Image Studio), Ayebia Clarke Publishing

"Nervous Conditions is a book that I have read several times over the years, including this year. The novel covers the themes of gender and race and has at its heart Tambu, a young girl in 1960s Rhodesia determined to get an education and to create a better life for herself. Dangarembga’s prose is evocative and witty, and the story is thought-provoking. I’ve been inspired anew by Tambu each time I’ve read this book."

Peace Adzo Medie is Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020). His Only Wife is her debut novel.

Jenna Maurice, HarperCollins

“The book I'm most thankful for? Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. My mother and father would read me poems from it before bed — I'm convinced it infused me not only with a sense of poetic cadence, but also a wry sense of humor.”

Victoria “V.E.” Schwab is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Vicious, the Shades of Magic series, and This Savage Song. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is BuzzFeed Book Club’s December pick. Read an excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Meg Vázquez, Square Fish

“My childhood best friend gave me Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle for Hanukkah when I was 11 years old, and it's still my favorite book of all time. I love the way it defies genre (it's a political thriller/YA romance that includes a lot of scientific research and also poetry??), and the way it values smartness, gutsiness, vulnerability, kindness, and a sense of adventure. The book follows 16-year-old Vicky Austin's life-altering trip to Antarctica; her trip changed my life, too. In a year when safe travel is almost impossible, I'm so grateful to be able to return to her story again and again.”

Kate Stayman-London's debut novel, One to Watch, is about a plus-size blogger who’s been asked to star on a Bachelorette-like reality show. Stayman-London served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has written for notable figures, from former president Obama and Malala Yousafzai to Anna Wintour and Cher.

Katharine McGee is grateful for the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Chris Bailey Photography, Firebird

“I’m thankful for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. I discovered the series in elementary school, and it sparked a love of big, epic stories that has never left me. (If you read my books, you know I can’t resist a broad cast of characters!) I used to read the books aloud to my younger sister, using funny voices for all the narrators. Now that I have a little boy of my own, I can’t wait to someday share Redwall with him.”

Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling author of American Royals and its sequel, Majesty. She is also the author of the Thousandth Floor trilogy.

Beth Gwinn, Time-Life Books

"I am thankful most for books that carry me out of the world and back again, and while I find it painful to choose among them, here's one early and one late: Zen Cho's Black Water Sister, which comes out in 2021 but I devoured just two days ago, and the long out-of-print Wizards and Witches volume of the Time-Life Enchanted World series, which is where I first read about the legend of the Scholomance."

Naomi Novik is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nebula Award–winning novel Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and the nine-volume Temeraire series. Her latest novel, A Deadly Education, is the first of the Scholomance trilogy.

Christina Lauren are grateful for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Christina Lauren, Little, Brown and Company

"We are thankful for the Twilight series for about a million reasons, not the least of which it's what brought the two of us together. Writing fanfic in a space where we could be silly and messy together taught us that we don't have to be perfect, but there's no harm in trying to get better with every attempt. It also cemented for us that the best relationships are the ones in which you can be your real, authentic self, even when you're struggling to do things you never thought you'd be brave enough to attempt. Twilight brought millions of readers back into the fold and inspired hundreds of romance authors. We really do thank Stephenie Meyer every day for the gift of Twilight and the fandom it created."

[angeltriestoblog]

I watched a couple of movies! (April roundup)

I’m glad to announce that I finally found a way to rave about the movies I’ve watched without boring you all to death, driving myself to the brink of insanity, and damaging my eyesight even more. Instead of giving a comprehensive review on each one, I decided to give you my top picks for every month in an attempt to convince you to watch these life-changing pieces of cinema! Maybe someday I could include some of the worst I’ve seen as well because it's easier (and more fun) to point out the flaws I spot.

So without further ado, here are the creme of the crop for the month of April!

Philadelphia (1993, dir. Jonathan Demme) ★★★★★

This superbly crafted film was one of the first in Hollywood to tackle the issue of HIV/AIDS—and with the right amount of sensitivity—during a time when discrimination against victims was at its most rampant. That fact alone makes it deserving of the praise, recognition, and accolades it has collected over the years. Add to that the remarkable performance of Tom Hanks as Andy Beckett, the lawyer fired from the prestigious firm he works for who enlists the help of Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) to take this matter to court. His dedication to the role is evident not only in his dramatic weight loss but the intensity of the emotions he brings to all of his scenes. Though I know a lot of audiences are concerned that the account is told mainly from Miller’s perspective, I found this aspect crucial to his growth as a character and the movie’s effectivity as a call to empathy and compassion.

Certified Copy (2010, dir. Abbas Kiarostami) ★★★★½

It's so difficult to review this without giving away what makes it different from anything that's ever been made, probably. But then again, even if I dive deep into the plot and provide my theories, I doubt it’ll make sense so I’ll say this. Certified Copy is a mind-bender of an arthouse film disguised as a love story of the Before Sunset variety. It’s a deceivingly linear tale of a French woman known only as “She” (Juliette Binoche) who goes to a book signing and offers to explore the city of Tuscany with the author (William Shimell). His work asserts that the reproduction of a certain thing possesses as much value as the original, so much so that it can even take its place. The extent to which this is true is shown in the many ways their relationship changes in the span of a single afternoon. It’s normal to be frustrated once you’ve finished it. I had a “What the hell?” moment myself and had to rewatch some parts a few more times. But once you realize that the plot is an artifice, like fiction and art itself, that’s when you come to terms with how real it actually is.  

The Farewell (2019, dir. Lulu Wang) ★★★★★

This is practically Wang's two-hour thesis on why grandmothers are the best people on the planet and we don’t deserve them. It's not like I needed an external source to prove it was true but I adored it anyway. This Oscar snub is “based on a true lie”: Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), the matriarch of a Chinese clan, is diagnosed with cancer, and her loved ones go to extreme lengths to keep it a secret from her. I appreciated the accurate depiction of the mess that is the Asian extended family: immigrant parents, their first-generation kids, and the relatives they left behind at the homeland under one roof can only mean endless bickering and picking at old wounds. But in all seriousness, its grasp of human emotions—as seen in the brilliant acting performances and authentic dialogue—reels you in instantly and keeps you emotionally invested and painfully waiting for the heartbreaking (?) conclusion.

Interstellar (2014, dir. Christopher Nolan) ★★★★★

In what is arguably Nolan’s most complex and ambitious work yet, we find Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) in what appears to be a shadow of the Earth we live in right now. After a fateful turn of events, he is tapped by NASA to carry out a mission in search of a habitable world for the human population. Rarely do we see a creative project that aspires to be everything at once and succeeds with flying colors. Interstellar is that gem for me. It pushes the limits of our imagination and tests the very boundaries of science and space while serving as a reminder of what it means to be human. It may clock in at 167 minutes but I think that if the run time had been cut down, it would be impossible to do justice to this multi-faceted story. In fact, with the emotionally resonant performances by the cast as well as the phenomenal score (Hans Zimmer, you are a god) and cinematography, I am honestly willing to see another three hours of extra footage.

Mommy (2014, dir. Xavier Dolan) ★★★★½

This… was a lot. I remember watching this first thing in the morning a couple of weeks ago, and not being able to do anything of importance for the entire day since I was too busy wondering if I’ll ever be suitable for the lifelong commitment that is motherhood. This award-winning, affecting tale revolves around Die Despres (Anne Dorval), a struggling journalist and single mom to Steve (Antoine Olivier Pilon), her hyperactive, abusive son diagnosed with ADHD. Although a law had been passed in Canada which lets cash-strapped parents place their troubled kids in hospitals, she refuses to give him up and takes him under her wing: after all, they’re best at loving even when it’s hard. What unfolds after makes it hard to tell how the whole thing ends, but it’s a visually arresting and thought-provoking experience anyway. Dolan also possesses a strong command of the language of filmmakers: critics agree that its most notable aspect is the fact that it was shot in a 1:1 aspect ratio, which allowed me to assume the position of a next-door neighbor peering through their living room window.

Frances Ha (2012, dir. Noah Baumbach) ★★★★★

Before Greta Gerwig was the director extraordinaire we know her to be, she was Frances Halladay, an aspiring dancer who moves to New York City with her best friend and comes face to face with several, consecutive life crises. Her reality couldn’t be any further removed from mine (as a 19-year-old student on the complete opposite side of the world), but it remains highly relatable. At their core, her problems are rooted in a fear of loneliness and failure—just like the rest of us! Come to think of it, maybe that’s why it’s in black-and-white: to give the movie a sense of timelessness since it tackles themes and issues that remain universal and prevalent across generations. I loved Frances as a protagonist, though she far from perfect: she’s immature and petty and quite frankly, she had no clue what she was doing until the last 15 minutes—just like me! And yet she powered through in the end, which gives me hope that I’ll be able to do the same.

Fight Club (1999, dir. David Fincher) ★★★★½

Believe it or not, despite its straightforward title and predominantly male fanbase, I was completely taken aback when the unnamed narrator (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) started beating each other up in the middle of a parking lot—the very event that led to the establishment of their underground fight club. What initially appears to be a man’s search for a way out of the boring humdrum of his everyday existence evolves into a structural analysis of consumer capitalism and critique of toxic masculinity. There’s a lot of gore and violence but I pulled through thanks to the stunning visuals, unpredictable plot, and Brad Pitt’s beautiful face. Although the twist towards the end wasn’t exactly revolutionary for me because it kind of resembled Primal Fear (1996), it was still a mind-blowing and fitting conclusion to this cult classic.

Pretty Woman (1990, dir. Garry Marshall) ★★★★★

This modern-day Cinderella story about a hooker who falls in love with a wealthy businessman has become problematic for my generation. There are a ton of essays on Letterboxd attempting to start discourse on its ethics, calling it out for its misogynistic undertones, and criticizing it for being unrealistic. I actually saw a review that said it indirectly promotes prostitution as a means to get ahead in life, which could wrongly influence teenage girls. (How stupid do you think we are?) At the end of the day, this is a romantic comedy—and an outstanding one, at that! This probably has the most equal distribution of swoon-worthy scenes and laugh-out-loud moments out of all the romcoms I’ve watched, and we have the lead actors’ insane chemistry and the consistently witty script to thank. Needless to say, Julia Roberts is an absolute delight as Vivian Ward and it’s only fitting that it was this particular role that catapulted her to superstardom. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna rewatch this then proceed to play It Must Have Been Love for another 70 times.

The Fundamentals of Caring (2016, dir. Rob Burnett) ★★★★★

I genuinely think that everything Paul Rudd touches turns to gold. Here, he plays Ben, caretaker to Trevor (Craig Roberts), a sarcastic teen suffering from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Together, they make a spur-of-the-moment decision to take a cross-country road trip to see several roadside attractions and of course, come to terms with their own issues. I admit that my love for this comes with the acute awareness that if I had found it on Netflix at a different time, I wouldn’t have appreciated it as much. It’s fairly predictable, it doesn’t strive towards anything complex or require much reflection on our part but it ties together neatly and satisfyingly in the end—truly a perfect comfort film! The equivalent of the warm, 10-second-long, oxytocin-inducing hug that we all need and can't have right now, given the state of our world!

Edit (05/09/20): I’m currently binge-watching Timothee Chalamet interviews and he just told Stephen Colbert that he had auditioned for this but wasn’t accepted for the job. Imagine him and Paul Rudd together... the visual power that duo would hold... I would miss the point of the movie entirely.

So, that’s it for this month! I’ve actually been spending more time writing lately but I hope I can continue to squeeze in something to watch into my schedule so I can actually be consistent with this series. Till next time! Exciting things up ahead! Wishing you love and light always, and don’t forget to wash your hands, check your privilege and pray for our frontliners!

[unbreakablejemmasimmons]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thanks for signing up for this superfun exchange! This is the fourth year I’ve participated now, and I’ve always enjoyed it-- I hope you do, too.

Below you’ll find the following:

General Likes/Kinks

General DNWs

Fandom Specifics/Prompts

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano

Schitt’s Creek - Stevie Budd, David Rose

The Good Place - Eleanor Shellstrop, Trevor the Demon

Newsies - Katherine Plumber Pulitzer, Jack Kelly

I’ve tried to list some varied prompts for each fandom, but please don’t feel like you have to stick to what I’ve come up with! If the rest of my letter gives you another idea you’d like to write, I’d love to read it!

A little about me to start:

My AO3 name is SuburbanSun; you can also check out my Tumblr if you’d like, and my tags for each of my requested fandoms (that I’ve posted about before-- apparently that excludes Schitt’s Creek!) here: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Good Place, Newsies.

General Likes/Kinks:

I’m a big trope fan in general– faves include rivals/enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, bed-sharing, trapped in an enclosed space, mutual pining, secret dating/sneaking around, slow burn, FWBs that turns into something more. Subversions of tropes are also great, so don’t feel like you have to go the obvious route if you choose to write something tropey!

I have a weird (not weird because it’s uncommon, more weird because it doesn’t fit in obviously with the rest of my likes and favored tropes) love for Secret Service/bodyguard/witness protection AUs and private eye AUs.

Epistolary fic, either as part of a story or as all of it, is always fun to me, if it’s up your alley. 

I love strong female friendships, strong-but-flawed-and-realistic female characters in general. Ladies kicking ass, preferably through cleverness and wit and competence as much if not more than through brawn, is the best, and I love it when they’re allowed to make mistakes and fuck up and dig themselves into a hole, too. That said, I will literally never turn down a Vampire Slayer AU. They’re among my faves. (I loved the one I got for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend last Yuletide, but am always excited to see more of them for other fandoms!)

Smut is cool and fun and here are some kinks that I like to read: Teasing. Phone sex/sexting. Semi-public sex (not actually getting caught though). Workplace sex. Dirty talk. Light domination (aka more like just bossing each other around rather than actual D/s stuff). Oral sex. Playfulness/joking around during sex.

General DNWs:

Darkfic. Sad endings. Gore/intense violence. Miscommunication that could super easily be avoided. Babyfic/kidfic/pregnancy in general. Self-harm/abuse. Noncon/dubcon. A/B/O, mpreg, incest, bestiality, hard kink. Poly/threesomes/orgies. Members of my ships being paired romantically with other people (unless it’s just briefly, on the way to an OTP-happy ending). First person POV.

Fandom Specifics/Prompts:

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano

I love this show so much. It’s clever, it’s feminist, it’s funny, it’s real (even as it features elaborate musical sequences!), and the characters are so flawed but so great. I got a couple of great giftfics for this fandom last Yuletide that I loved, but I’m always excited to read more.

I ship Rebecca and Greg so hard, in spite of their many flaws, and am bummed that Greg’s gone, and hope they find a way to bring him back someday. I just love their chemistry– bickery battle-of-wits style relationships are a huge favorite of mine. I also really just love Rebecca as a character. She’s such a mess and makes so many mistakes but I find her really relatable.

I’m very interested to see where the show goes this season with Rebecca’s revenge plot and seeming descent into (back into?) madness, but I don’t know that Greg easily fits into that trajectory for now, so don’t feel like you need to write something that takes place in current canon. I’d be happy with a story set while Greg was still in West Covina, or a future fic, or just a total AU.

Prompts:

Rebecca/Greg + any number of tropes– stuck somewhere together; inconvenient bed-sharing; fake dating, the works.

Rebecca’s blindness toward money is intriguing to me, in a “when is this shit going to REALLY hit the fan” kind of way. What if that had come to a head somehow and she had to get a second job at Home Base? How would she and Greg have taken to working together into the wee hours of the night? (Store-room sex could be a good addition here if you’d like!)

What’s their dynamic like in a couple of years when Greg returns from Atlanta? Are they over each other or not quite so much?

Conversely, what if a couple years go by, and Rebecca feels compelled to leave West Covina? Maybe she moves back to NYC (hopefully after a few hundred hours of therapy with Dr. Akopian to give her the coping mechanisms she needs to be happy there). Maybe Greg moves to NYC for a job after graduating Emory. Have they kept in touch enough to know they’re both in the same city again, or do they run into each other randomly, an echo of her NYC run-in with Josh in the pilot, only better, because she’s older and wiser and hopefully better-adjusted?

Schitt’s Creek Stevie Budd, David Rose

This show is so funny, dry and ridiculous at the same time. I love how absurdly out of touch the Roses are, and how the show balances their outrageousness with the humdrum middle-America of the town of Schitt’s Creek.

I can’t help but ship Stevie and David, and I hope the show leans into that. If you aren’t into them romantically, though, that’s okay-- they are also fab as begrudging BFFs. I love how they challenge each other and one-up each other, always smirkingly pushing each other’s buttons.

*Note: Season 3 was only just added to Netflix US this week, so when I wrote this letter I hadn’t seen it yet. I just marathoned it (loved it obvs) and it’s pretty clear that they’re not going go lean into Stevie/David, and that’s ok! I’m really digging the Patrick thing so far too. For the purpose of Yuletide, feel free to write something that takes place earlier in the series, or goes AU, etc. 

Prompts:

David finds out Stevie’s birthday is coming up, and decides (or perhaps is convinced by Alexis) to throw her a party, as posh as the parties of his old life with the limited resources of Schitt’s Creek. Of course, everything goes wrong.

I love Stevie teaching David how to adult. What other normal things has he never experienced before that she needs to walk him through?

Schitt’s Creek throws a fall festival, complete with a parade. Stevie gets chosen to be Sweet Potato Pie Queen or something equally ridiculous, and David will never. Stop. Teasing. Her. Until the Sweet Potato Pie King (or similar) comes down with shingles and Roland insists David step in.

Somehow (perhaps through a series of dares?), Stevie winds up running for local government. 

The Good Place Eleanor Shellstrop, Trevor the Demon

There’s not much on Earth I love more than a Mike Schur show, and I’ve always loved Kristen Bell, so I was pretty destined to dig this show. It’s just so clever and interesting and fun to watch!

That said, I wasn’t really shipping anything on the show yet. I like all the characters but nothing leapt out for me romantically. But then they introduced Trevor, and the thing is, Adam Scott is my weakness. If he exists on a show, I can’t help but ship him with somebody, and I have loved his and KBell’s chemistry together in other shows (Party Down! VMars!). I’m not proud of it, but my mind immediately went there.

But things are a little more complicated now! Is Trevor just a Bad Place demon who was acting like the head of the Bad Place, or does he actually hold some kind of leadership role? Is “Trevor” even his real name?? There are so many possibilities! I’m cool with fic that assumes any of them are true.

Prompts:

Trevor has a bad day at the "office," because he's really just a Bad Place underling who enjoyed the chance to play a big-shot evil-doer in Michael’s first attempt. He somehow runs into Eleanor get sloppy drunk together.

Eleanor and Trevor have to team up for some reason-- so he can get ahead in Bad Place bureaucracy, and so she can try to defeat Michael, for instance. How does that work out?

Any sort of stuck together/trapped in an enclosed space tropefic would be great– especially if they start to have feelings for each other.

Nothing wrong with a little good oldfashioned hatesex.

Newsies Jack Kelly, Katherine Plumber Pulitzer

A friend of mine invited me to go see Newsies when they did the first Fathom Events screening early this year, and I had nearly no familiarity with it-- hadn’t even seen the movie. So naturally, I loved it and immediately fell down the Newsies rabbit hole.

I love Jack and Katherine individually and together. I love how cocky he is, and the vulnerability that cockiness masks. I love how headstrong she is, and ambitious. I would love to see fic for them that takes place after the events of the show-- what happens next? How do they begin to have a real relationship, as different as they are, now that the strike is over? Does Jack take that cartoonist job? Does he keep selling papes, too? Where do they live? What do they do on dates?

Prompts:

Even out from under her father’s thumb, Katherine’s lifestyle is certainly a bit ritzier than what Jack’s used to. How does it go the first time she has him over to her apartment?

Jack likes to leave little notes around for Katherine to find, sketches, doodles, and the like. I’m not opposed to epistolary fic here or elsewhere.

Katherine has to plot with the other newsies behind Jack’s back, for some reason (surprise party? Surprise gift?).

So, that’s that! I really hope you enjoy the whole process this Yuletide season, and thanks for participating! Happy writing!

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s Fake Accounts Ponzi Scheme

Digital Elixir Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s Fake Accounts Ponzi Scheme

Yves here. We edited this post from a version to appear on Aaron Greenspan’s website. Lambert reordered it to make the likely magnitude of Facebook fake accounts the starting point, which we see as the most damning evidence against Facebook. Most people accept the proposition that Mark Zuckerberg is running a less than trustworthy business that among other things, has no concern for the safekeeping of personal information. But the idea that his business looks like a Ponzi scheme is a new disclosure and merits a hard look.

By Aaron Greenspan, founder of the Think Computer Corporation1

Facebook now has a market capitalization approaching $600 billion, making it nominally one of the most valuable companies on earth.  It’s a true business miracle: a company that was out of users in 2012 managed to find a wellspring of nearly infinite and sustained growth that has lasted it, so far, half of the way through 2019.

So what is that magical ingredient, that secret sauce, that “genius” trade secret, that turned an over-funded money-losing startup into one of America’s greatest business success stories?  It’s one that Bernie Madoff would recognize instantly: fraud, in the form of fake accounts.

Old money goes out, and new money comes in to replace it.  That’s how a traditional Ponzi scheme works.  Madoff kept his going for decades, managing to attain the rank of Chairman of the NASDAQ while he was at it.

Zuckerberg’s version is slightly different, but only slightly: old users leave after getting bored, disgusted and distrustful, and new users come in to replace them.  Except that as Mark’s friend and lieutenant,  Sam Lessin told us, the “new users” part of the equation was already getting to be a problem in 2012.  On October 26,  Lessin, wrote, “we are running out of humans (and have run-out of valuable humans from an advertiser perspective).”  At the time, it was far from clear that Facebook even had a viable business model, and according to Frontline, Sheryl Sandberg was panicking due to the company’s poor revenue numbers.

To balance it out and keep “growth” on the rise, all Facebook had to do was turn a blind eye.  And did it ever.

In Singer v. Facebook, Inc.—a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California alleging that Facebook has been telling advertisers that it can “reach” more people than actually exist in basically every major metropolitan area—the plaintiffs quote former Facebook employees, understandably identified only as Confidential Witnesses, as stating that Facebook’s “Potential Reach” statistic was a “made-up PR number” and “fluff.”  Also, that “those who were responsible for ensuring the accuracy ‘did not give a shit.’” Another individual, “a former Operations Contractor with Facebook, stated that Facebook was not concerned with stopping duplicate or fake accounts.”

That’s probably because according to its last investor slide deck and basic subtraction, Facebook is not growing anymore in the United States, with zero million new accounts in Q1 2019, and only four million new accounts since Q1 2017. That leaves the rest of the world, where Facebook is growing fastest “in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines,” according to Facebook CFO David Wehner.

Wehner didn’t mention the fine print on page 18 of the slide deck, which highlights the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam as countries where there are “meaningfully higher” percentages of, and “episodic spikes” in, fake accounts.  In other words, Facebook is growing the fastest in the locations worldwide where one finds the most fraud.  In other other words, Facebook isn’t growing anymore at all—it’s shrinking.  Even India, Indonesia and the Philippines don’t register as many searches for Facebook as they used to.  Many of the “new” users on Instagram are actually old users from the core platform looking to escape the deluge of fakery.

The last time Mark suggested that Facebook’s growth heyday might be behind it, in July 2018, the stock took a nosedive that ended up being the single largest one-day fall of any company’s stock in the history of the United States.  In about an hour, it plunged 20% from around $220 per share to about $165.  Needless to day, the loss of about $120 billion in market capitalization in an hour provided a sufficient disincentive for Mark to avoid a repeat performance.

Having narrowly escaped the ire of Wall Street, Mark knows he cannot get off the growth treadmill he set in motion years ago.  The only solution: lying to investors about growth in an attempt to convince them that everything is fine.

Yet signs that Mark’s fake account problem is no different than Madoff’s fake account statement problem are everywhere.  Google Trends shows worldwide “Facebook” queries down 80% from their November 2012 peak.  (Instagram doesn’t even come close to making up for the loss.)  Mobile metrics measuring use of the Facebook mobile app are down.

And the company’s own disclosures about fake accounts stand out mostly for their internal inconsistency—one set of numbers, measured in percentages, is disclosed to the SEC, while another, with absolute figures, appears on its “transparency portal.”  While they reveal a problem escalating at an alarming rate and are constantly being revised upward—Facebook claims that false accounts are at 5% and duplicate accounts at 11%, up from 1% and 6% respectively in Q2 2017—they don’t measure quite the same things, and are impossible to reconcile.  At the end of 2017, Facebook decided to stop releasing those percentages on a quarterly basis, opting for an annual basis instead.  Out of sight, out of mind.

One could argue that SEC disclosures are subject to strict regulations under the Securities Exchange Act and that Facebook would never be so bold as to lie to investors in black and white.  That’s true: it qualifies its fake account disclosures with the quizzical legal phrase “significant judgment” and it chose the color orange instead of black (insert Netflix joke here) for its transparency portal graph disclaimers that read, “These metrics are in development.”  And one could further argue that the transparency portal metrics are reviewed by a team of academics, known as the Data Transparency Advisory Group (DTAG), who are supposed to vouch for their validity. But the DTAG academics—not one of whom is a statistician, despite Facebook’s direct claim to the contrary, now erased—fully admit that they are paid by Facebook, and even after months of hard work, their final report released in April mentioned fake accounts only three times, and all three were in passing. On the accuracy or validity of Facebook’s fake account numbers, the DTAG oddly had absolutely nothing to say.

What Facebook does say is this: its measurements, the ones subject to “significant judgment,” are taken from an undisclosed “limited sample of accounts.”  How limited?  That doesn’t matter, because “[w]e believe fake accounts are measured correctly within the limitations to our measurement systems” and “reporting fake accounts…may be a bad way to look at things.”

And how many fake accounts did Facebook report being created in Q2 2019?  Only 2.2 billion, with a “B,” which is approximately the same as the number of active users Facebook would like us to believe that it has.

A comprehensive look back at Facebook’s disclosures suggests that of the company’s 12 billion total accounts ever created, about 10 billion are fake.  And as many as 1 billion are probably active, if not more. (Facebook says that this estimate is “not based on any facts,” but much like the false statistics it provided to advertisers on video viewership, that too is a lie.)

So, fake accounts may be a bad way to look at things, as Facebook suggests—or they may be the key to the largest corporate fraud in history.

Advertisers pay Facebook on the assumption that the people viewing and clicking their ads are real.  But that’s often not the case. Facebook has absolutely no incentive to solve the problem, it’s already in court over it, and its former employees are talking.  From Mark’s vantage point, it’s raining free money.  All he has to do to get advertisers to spend is convince the world that Facebook is huge and it’s only getting huger.

No one in the media, let alone Congress, dares to ask potentially embarrassing questions, and few understand the minutiae of real-time pricing auctions, cookies and user disambiguation anyway.  Everyone would rather talk about the company’s dedication to “innovation” and the laughably remote chance that Libra, a needlessly complex pseudo-cryptocurrency system will disrupt central banking.  In fact, Libra is best described as Facebook’s Business Model Plan C (Plan A having been “no privacy at all” and Plan B being “encrypt everything”), which may actually be necessary as the scheme is starting to unravel.

Mark is smart, but he’s never been smart enough to listen to those with experience.  Instead, he has prioritized growth at any cost, pulling all of the control rods out of the reactor to achieve it, and now that those costs have caught up with him—namely, genocide, a role in putting a fascist, white supremacist in the White House, and severe reputational damage—he literally has no idea what to do. His usual go-to acronyms—VR?  AI?—aren’t quite cutting it, and much like Chernobyl, the resulting fallout is everywhere, impossible to clean up, and there are dead bodies on the ground.  Even his co-founder and former roommate can’t fully support him anymore, though Chris Hughes did still obsequiously refer to Mark as a “good, kind person” engaged in “nothing more nefarious than the virtuous hustle of a talented entrepreneur.”

That’s obviously false.  Mark is not a good, kind person, as I have written for years .  The only hustle he is engaged in is the usual kind: the fraudulent kind.  And if I’m wrong about any or all of this, and Facebook releases the data and methodology it is using to reach the conclusions that it has about the strength of its platform, then I will gladly admit that I’m wrong.

But I’m not wrong.  Facebook is a real product, but like Enron, it’s also a scam, now the largest corporate scandal ever.  It won’t release its data about the 2016 election, about fake accounts, or about anything material—and because Mark knows it’s a scam, he won’t agree to testify before the British parliament in a way that could require him to actually answer any substantive questions, as I did in June.  And because Facebook is also a component of the S&P 500, countless people have an incentive to maintain the status quo.

So should we break up the tech companies and Facebook in particular? It’s already a campaign issue for the next presidential election. Elizabeth Warren says yes.  Beto O’Rourke wants “stronger regulations.”  Kamala Harris would rather talk about privacy.  Everyone else—even Donald Trump—generally agrees that something needs to be done. Yet the unspoken issue at the center of it all remains: Mark is running a Ponzi scheme, but Wall Street, Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, the think tanks, and their associates haven’t figured it out.

At this point it should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention that Mark is a bad-faith actor.  He has no appreciation for the rule of law, or the role of a free press, and he has a dangerous tendency to view himself as infallible.  After discovering a gaping security flaw in his product that revealed bulk information about friends of friends, exactly like Cambridge Analytica, I warned Mark in writing about the way his sloppy code would inevitably lead him to cross paths with the FTC and cause massive privacy and security concerns—in April 2005.  His response: problems with the “Mark Zuckerberg production” were actually someone else’s responsibility and “not worth arguing about.”

Clearly, Mark can no longer argue that his decisions as Facebook’s CEO are immaterial (though he has tried).  Many have already lost their lives, whether through avoidable suicides or avoidable genocidal acts in Myanmar, due to his string of increasingly tone-deaf and spectacularly dishonest decisions.

Now, fifteen years and approximately as many false apologizes after my classmate started a grand social experiment that first captivated the media, then locked it in a profitless box, and then played a major supporting role in bringing fascism to America, the general consensus is that the best way to handle Mark and his tech brethren is through the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  But the consensus is wrong, based on a mountain of misapprehensions.

In a nutshell, the argument in favor of anti-trust action is that in the midst of the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, it’s the Progressive Era all over again.  A recent New York Times op-ed penned by Mark’s co-founder, Chris Hughes, made essentially this point, relying heavily on input from the Roosevelt Institute.  The Open Markets Institute agrees.  In a talk at Harvard Law School, Matt Stoller argued that Facebook, Google and Amazon were “born as monopolists.”

It’s a compelling story, so long as one is willing to ignore the reality on the ground.  For one thing, software products are not railroads, which require significant physical capital and labor to establish.  Were he determined to do so, it would take Mark a few weeks to re-build Instagram and WhatsApp, and there really isn’t any way the government could stop him.  For another, I know that on this particular issue, Stoller is incorrect, because I was there when The Facebook was born on my hard drive on September 19, 2003, in Lowell House.  It hardly resembled a monopoly.  Monopolies are what happen as the result of prolonged neglect by law enforcement.  They’re not born; they’re nourished by years and years of perverse incentives.

The biggest problem with treating Facebook as a monopoly, as opposed to the byproduct of what Jesse Eisenger calls “The Chickenshit Club,” is that it wrongly affirms Mark’s infallibility and fails to see through him and his scheme, let alone the reality that he’s not even in control anymore because no one is.

Would it have helped to separate Madoff Securities LLC into one company per floor, or split up Enron by division?  Probably not, but talking about it is Facebook’s dream come true.  Because the question we should really be discussing is “How many years should Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg ultimately serve in prison?”

_____

1 Aaron Greenspan is short Facebook stock. Think Computer Corporation made a donation to Aurora Advisors Incorporated as part of its 2016 Naked Capitalism fundraiser.

Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s Fake Accounts Ponzi Scheme

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[adustierstar]

Tagged by @ohsososophisticated​ ! Thank you! (just getting around to these, months late...)

Coke or pepsi: Coke

Disney or dreamworks: Disney, minus Frozen, plus How to Train Your Dragon (and Rise of the Guardians)

Coffee or tea: i don’t really drink either reliably

Books or movies: my gut says books, but I think they’re about equal these days? maybe not, i don’t see that many movies. idk

Windows or mac: Windows, i’ve had one mac and one iphone apiece, and will probably not go back to either

Dc or marvel: Overall i’d say Marvel, but recently.....

Xbox or playstation: i have both, and use my ps4 more, but only for Netflix/Hulu, etc (though Starz is on the Xbone, so there’s that)

Dragon age or mass effect: never played either, but suspect i would enjoy both

Night owl or early riser: neither! i sleep too much. i get most of my work done between dinnertime and bedtime, though.

Cards or chess: i’ll say cards. i was big into chess in 2nd grade, but not really ever since then.

Chocolate or vanilla: depends on the thing. i tend to prefer vanilla ice cream, but chocolate custards etc. idk it has to be a good, well-made dessert before the flavor matters.

Vans or converse: i mean i have owned converse, but never vans, but like...i don’t care?

Lavellan, trevelyan, cadah, or adaar: is this a dragon age thing? see above

Fluff or angst: Fluff forever *clap clap clapclapclap* (this answer was perfect as-is)

Beach or forest: are there bugs in the forest? is the beachy sun a deadly lazer? can’t i go to a cafe or something instead?

Dogs or cats: dogs. i don’t need a pet’s help judging me, i do that enough thanks.

Clear skies or rain: this depends. am i inside or outside? do i have work to do?overall, i prefer clear skies, but some days rain is so cozy.

Cooking or eating out: Eating at restaurants is one of my favourite things to do and I’d do it every day if I could :9 I can cook, I just find it tedious so I tend to make simple, quick meals when I’m cooking for myself. (YES THIS, at least while i live alone)

Spicy food or mild food: I am too weak and white to handle actually spicy food. pain is not a flavor.but i do LIKE flavors! i try, you guys.

Halloween/samhain or solstice/yule/christmas: i love both ;_; except as an adult, halloween usually has less to offer me, bc i don’t drink/ do the bar thing, so i guess christmas? but i love costumes and candy almost as much as i love presents and cozy winter foods/ peppermint so this is difficult

Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: a LITTLE bit either way is fine, but these days, being Old (TM), i am equally uncomfortable in both extremes

If you could have a superpower, what would it be: Teleportation would be sweet. i really like to sleep, and traffic is the WORST

Animation or live action: depends? i tend to think if it can be animated it should be  (but this is only true for 2d, i don’t support willy-nilly cg modeling), but i like plenty of live action films as well.

Paragon or renegade: i think this one is mass effect, but see above.

Baths or showers:i usually shower, but sometimes you need a good soak.

Team cap or Team ironman: cap

Fantasy or sci-fi: itend to prefer fantasy, but like plenty of sci-fi

Do you have three or four favourite quotes? If so what are they?:

“If you’re not afraid, you’re not paying close enough attention.” The Simpsons

“Not my circus, not my monkeys” (internet-attributed) Polish proverb

“Ðæs overéode, þisses swa mæg” - the Wanderer

“ʒæð a wyrd swa hio scel” - Beowulf

“Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto/ ogni viltà convien che qui sia morta” - Inferno

Youtube or netflix: I use Netflix more often, but there’s plenty of stuff you can’t get outside of YouTube (like Seth Rudetsky’s Obsessed videos, or Broadway cams, etc etc). SO I also vote both.

Harry potter or percy jackson: I’ve not bothered with Percy Jackson, so I guess HP wins it.

When do you feel accomplished: When I actually do something I’ve been meaning or needing to do. Also when I consider how many things I have done that other people haven’t, or would consider hard, even though I am in the habit of downplaying the difficulty or importance of these things.

Star wars or star trek: Both! They’re very different and fulfill different requirements.

Paperback books or hardback books: It’s much easier to read paperbacks, but hardbacks are so pretty! So it depends. And both, depending on how much I like the book.

Horror or rom-com? There are very strict limits on both. If the rom-com is stupid, I don’t want it. If the horror movie is gory, I don’t want it. That said, the repercussions of a bad rom-com are less terrible than horror, so I guess that?

To live in a world without literature or music: I don’t understand (read: hate) the question and I won’t respond to it

Pastel colors or dark colors: Depends what for? I like pastels but don’t look good in them. I like dark colors but often don’t look good in them, either. So whatever? All colors?

Tv shows or movies: TV shows. I love movies, but am way more likely to watch a TV show.

City or countryside: I have recently come to the conclusion that I am a suburban mouse. I need both in manageable distance. 

If any other zodiac sign could describe you, what would it be: I don’t know the first thing about the zodiac and have always enjoyed being associated with centaurs, so I refuse.

If you could only listen to one album for the rest of your life what would it be? This is cruel. I feel way too lazy rn to think of a good answer, but it would probably be a cast recording.

Cinema or theatre? I appreciate that I can see movies more than once and they’ll be exactly the same, but I also deeply appreciate that I can see a show more than once and it will be a little different. Plus live actors tend to be MASSIVELY talented, and you really can’t compete with some of these people singing your face off in the same room as you.

If you could be any fictional character’s best friend, who’d you be? I love too many characters!!!! But I feel like if I could convince Death to give me Albert’s job I might like it.

Smiling or smirking? Idk I do a lot of both. But I probably actually smile more.

Are you an ‘all or nothing’ type or are you more consistent? I’m beginning to realize that there are some things I’m really all or nothing about - like I dive in headfirst and give it everything, but the second I lose momentum I’m out. Maybe not everything, but a lot of things.

Playlists or your whole library on shuffle? Playlists on shuffle. Man I’m being an ass about every single one of these either or questions. But honestly I don’t care about the order, but I do care about what songs are associated with each other. Unless it’s a show, then it’s on in order.

Travelling or staying at home? I like to travel! I’m such a homebody most of the time that I really enjoy getting out and seeing the world. We only get so much time, and there’s a whole lot of world!

If you could have a meal with three people, alive and dead, who would you choose? Terry Prachett, David Bowie, and Carrie Fisher. I want to meet all of them and be their friends, and if you’re giving me magic necromancy damnit I’m going to make use of it. Plus I love them all and feel like they might have a good time together.

Favourite sports team? Ummmm...honestly idek I don’t follow any sports anymore, except wrestling (and then not closely) so...the Fashion Police?

Tag amongst yourselves, I don’t like to pressure people. But please feel free to act as though I tagged you - I want to know about you!

[weightlossfitness2]

How to speak to your purchasers in regards to the newest Netflix diet documentary

When it involves diet, there’s lots we don’t know.

Although it might be arduous to just accept, the jury’s nonetheless out on purple meat. On eggs. On low carb versus low fats. On Paleo versus totally plant-based.

In truth, there’s little or no we will say with absolute certainty.

Science hasn’t recognized one finest eating regimen or consuming method.

Because of that, you could be positive no documentary filmmaker has. No matter how compelling or convincing the film.

(This contains filmmakers you agree with, by the way in which.)

So what do you do when a shopper—or a good friend or member of the family—watches a trending diet documentary and turns into passionate about:

diet recommendation that contradicts what you’ve been telling them?

questionable consuming strategies you imagine will set them again?

an excessive eating regimen you’re fairly darn positive will fail?

First, take a breath. (Or two.)

Next, perceive that, normally, you’ll be able to’t “prove” anybody mistaken.

More importantly: You shouldn’t even attempt.

There’s a a lot more healthy and more practical method in your purchasers, what you are promoting, and your sanity…

Aim to be useful, not proper.

This mindset lightens the tone of your conversations, fosters belief and appreciation, and permits you to in the end have larger affect. (It’ll make you extra likable on social media, too.)

Admittedly, this doesn’t all the time really feel second nature. But with observe, it will possibly turn out to be that approach.

The payoff is big: Instead of dreading the subsequent huge diet documentary, you need to use it to construct a stronger and extra productive relationship with anybody who seeks your assist.

This article will present you the way.

Why you don’t must be proper.

Before we get to serving to purchasers, let’s deal with a giant hurdle: Our deep must be proper.

The actuality is that this: Most diet debates received’t be resolved anytime quickly. Probably not even in our lifetimes.

(To higher perceive why, learn: Why diet science is so complicated.)

You would possibly even consider it this fashion:

Scientific progress is extra about being progressively much less mistaken than all of a sudden understanding some final reality.

So in some ways, we’ll by no means actually know if we’re “right.”

Accepting this might help you turn out to be a extra considerate, open coach (and human being).

Plus, attempting to show to your shopper that you simply’re “right” interferes along with your capability to develop a robust teaching relationship. It would possibly even hinder your probabilities of serving to them.

Because until you ask questions to search out out what resonates along with your shopper about “Diet Fad X,” you’ll by no means perceive what want they’re attempting to satisfy with that method.

That’s a missed alternative to leverage what issues to your shopper to create actual change. (More on why the most effective coaches shut up and pay attention in a bit.)

There’s one draw back, nevertheless, with accepting that there’s usually no “right” reply in diet: It could be unsettling.

For some coaches, dietary uncertainty raises foundation-shaking questions, akin to: 

How can you’re feeling comfy giving steering based mostly on incomplete data?

How are you able to keep away from a disaster of confidence whenever you encounter a brand new, thrilling dietary principle—that goes in opposition to all the things you have been taught?

How are you able to inform the distinction between evolving your teaching philosophy and getting caught up in a fad?

To assist reply these questions, Craig Weller, Precision Nutrition Master Coach and resident train specialist, factors to an enchanting analysis paper titled, The End of History Illusion. It supplies a helpful analogy for coming to phrases with dietary uncertainty.

The scientists’ findings: If you ask somebody how a lot they’ve modified as an individual prior to now and the way a lot they imagine they’ll change sooner or later, they’ll just about all the time say that the majority of their change is already behind them. This is true whether or not they’re 18 or 68.

“As humans, we tend to believe we’re already the person we’ll be for the rest of our lives, but that’s not how it actually works,” says Weller. “It’s the same in science and nutrition.” 

“If we glance again 150, 20, and even simply 10 years in the past, there have been issues individuals strongly believed to be true about diet that finally have been disproven or proven to be irrelevant.”

This isn’t to counsel it’s best to ignore the present pondering and analysis on diet. It’s to emphasise uncertainty has all the time existed, not solely in diet and science however in virtually each side of life.

Even if we really feel sure about one thing at present—the love of our life, that superior new job, a SpongeBob tattoo—we’d really feel very completely different in a decade.

So what are you able to do?

Focus on what you understand with the very best diploma of confidence in any given second. 

(We’ll cowl the specifics within the subsequent part.)

Then discover new concepts and various strategies as experiments. Gather knowledge, and select the most effective path ahead based mostly on the result.

The profit: You don’t must be proper earlier than you begin. You can use diet experiments to higher perceive what works for every particular person. 

This is actually custom-made diet teaching, and it retains you open (and chill) to any method your shopper desires to attempt.

What we (largely) know for positive about diet science

If you suppose dietary uncertainty causes issues for you, think about what it’s like for purchasers.

“There’s a lot of contradictory information out there, causing tribalism and discord where there need not be any,” says Brian St. Pierre, MS, RD, CSCS, Precision Nutrition’s director of diet.

“These passionate and often conflicting messages only end up confusing people and discouraging them from getting started in the first place, since it appears that ‘no one knows what’s right anyway.’”

This is the place you’ll be able to assist present readability and focus.

How? By emphasizing the significance—and effectiveness—of only a handful of very fundamental ideas.

Despite the entire seemingly-conflicting data, there are a number of foundational parts that just about everybody agrees with, says St. Pierre:

Eat extra minimally-processed complete meals and fewer highly-processed meals

More greens are higher than fewer greens

Eating sufficient protein is essential for well being, efficiency, and physique composition

In the long-term, studying to handle your meals consumption based mostly in your physique’s starvation and fullness cues works higher than weighing and measuring all the things you eat. (Read extra on this matter.)

“Make these four principles the foundation of your dietary recommendations,” says St. Pierre.

Think of the center of the Venn diagram as the basics of diet. These maintain purchasers on monitor and enable you to really feel assured in your recommendation.

And these outdoors sections? They aren’t life or demise. Whether your shopper desires to eat like a caveman, hand over meat ceaselessly, or make olive oil their life power is a matter of non-public desire.

Ultimately, your shopper is the boss of how they eat. 

So in the event that they wish to attempt one thing new on account of a diet documentary, that’s their name.

Your position: Help them do it higher. 

Here’s how one can do exactly that.

Your 5-step information for serving to purchasers (even in the event you suppose they is perhaps mistaken)

Step 1: Give optimistic suggestions.

If a shopper is happy by a diet documentary, don’t inform them it’s mistaken. This can really feel dismissive, and it minimizes their ideas and emotions.

Instead, do as David Burns, MD, a pioneer within the discipline of cognitive behavioral remedy and creator of the T.E.A.M. counseling methodology says: “Find the truth in what they’re saying.”

One approach to do this is thru optimistic suggestions, says Precision Nutrition Master Coach Kate Solovieva, MA. “This allows your client an opportunity to engage in ‘self-enhancement,’ a basic type of motivation that’s associated with both increased self-esteem and sense of control.”

These are belongings whenever you’re serving to somebody enhance their diet.

Welcome their questions, opinions, and considerations in a approach that claims, “What you think matters, and I want to talk about anything important to you.”

For instance:

If they ask a query, you would possibly lead with: “I’m so glad you asked!”

If they’re involved about how their present habits would possibly impression their well-being: “It’s awesome you care so much about your health!”

If they’ve taken a eager curiosity in a selected documentary or diet matter: “I’m impressed you’re looking into nutrition in your spare time. That’s pretty cool!”

Step 2: Express curiosity.

“See if you can have a discussion about the film without explicitly stating your beliefs about it,” advises Solovieva.

So, ask plenty of questions and be listener. Or as Solovieva says: “Practice good coaching.”

Your cost: Find out what they realized that was so intriguing (or unsettling) to them… and why.

Here are some questions that would enable you to study extra, and doubtlessly enable you to determine (collectively) what to do subsequent:

If they’re resisting what you’ve been telling them as a result of the diet documentary conflicts… 

Ask this: “Can you tell me a bit more about that? Which points stood out to you? What seems like a better approach to you, and why?”

If they’re anxious their present plan is taking them down the mistaken path… 

Ask this: “I can understand why you’re concerned. I’m wondering if you can tell me more about how the documentary conflicts with the work we’re doing together? Is there anything specific you’d like to do differently?”

If they’re fascinated with implementing modifications based mostly on the diet documentary…

Ask this: “What about making this change feels appealing to you? How do you think this change will benefit you? Is there anything about it that you think will be challenging?”

This method helps present your shopper they’re in management. And merely figuring out they’re the decision-maker—and that you simply’ll help their selection—provides them extra confidence in your recommendation.

Step three: Support, don’t decide.

No matter what, you need your shopper to know you’re on their facet.

Let’s say they wish to attempt an method you wouldn’t typically suggest. For occasion, relying in your views, it is perhaps veganism, keto, or intermittent fasting. You need them to really feel comfy discussing their selection with you—in order that they’ll come to you in the event that they slip up, need assistance, or determine to vary course.

In different phrases, there’s no place for “I told you so” in good teaching. 

Because in the end, your shopper is both going to:

Decide to not make any modifications after speaking it over with you.

Make a change, notice it’s not working for them, and lean on you for assist.

Find out they really do love vegan, keto, IF, or [insert whatever diet].

All of that are optimistic.

Here are some methods you’ll be able to present your shopper that you simply help them it doesn’t matter what they determine to do:

If they’ve already made up their thoughts about making a selected change…

Say this: “That sounds like an interesting idea. Would you like suggestions on how to implement it and monitor your progress?”

If they’re undecided what to do subsequent…

Say this: “I can tell you’re unsure about what happens next. What are the options you’re considering? Let’s talk through them.”

If they struggle one thing new and it doesn’t work out: 

Say this: “This is great intel. Learning what doesn’t work for you is really important. What are your takeaways from this experience?”

Step four: Collaborate on an motion plan.

After you’ve listened to and understood your shopper’s considerations—and proven you’ll help them—it’s time to take motion.

But don’t inform your shopper what to do. (Even if they need you to.) Instead, take what you’ve found and use it to information your shopper.

Maybe they simply wish to make a small change, to search out out if it might make a distinction for them.

In this case, give your shopper choices. Let’s say they wish to incorporate extra celery juice into their eating regimen. They heard it might enhance their well being whereas attempting to shed weight, particularly if they’ve it on an empty abdomen for breakfast.

You would possibly current these choices:

Option A: Keep all the things the identical. “Things are already going pretty well, so you might not even need the celery juice.”

Option B: Go for the center path. “If you want to try incorporating celery juice, you could plan to have it a couple of mornings a week, but still eat your regular breakfast, too.”

Option C: Go all out. “You could also switch to having just celery juice for breakfast every morning. I’d want to make sure you get some high-quality protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats at your next meal, though.”

These three decisions—do nothing, do one thing, do probably the most you’ll be able to probably do—work for many any diet change your shopper could also be fascinated with.

If the change is one thing that doesn’t appear dangerous to you—like consuming extra greens or consuming extra celery juice—be at liberty to not provide your opinion.

If you suppose the “all-out” possibility might put your shopper’s well being in danger, or critically derail their progress, converse up. 

You would possibly say one thing like, “I personally recommend option A or B, as I’m concerned that option C could actually be detrimental to your health. But it’s not up to me. Only you can decide how we move forward.”

Now, your shopper might wish to overhaul the way in which they eat completely. But don’t panic! This is the place experimentation is available in.

Step 5: Encourage your shopper to suppose like a scientist.

Self-experimentation is without doubt one of the cornerstones of the Precision Nutrition teaching program. Because each individual is completely different, you by no means know precisely how a selected approach of consuming goes to work till you attempt.

Here’s how one can body an consuming experiment in your shopper, courtesy of Krista Scott-Dixon, PhD, Precision Nutrition’s director of curriculum.

“Use phrases like ‘exploration,’ ‘attempt,’ and ‘sport,’ when speaking about this with purchasers,” says Dr. Scott-Dixon. “Say one thing like:

We’re going to play a bit sport for the subsequent two weeks.

You’re going to be a scientist, and also you’re going to gather knowledge about your self. Let’s provide you with some indicators to trace that may assist us determine whether or not that is shifting you in the direction of or away out of your objectives.

Once you collect the info, we will analyze it collectively. We may even make some charts and PowerPoints if you need.

Then, we’ll draw conclusions and do some outcome-based resolution making, similar to scientists, to see what our subsequent steps are. But you’re going to be the authority by yourself expertise.’”

Talking in regards to the experiment as one thing scientific however enjoyable encourages your shopper to place their scientist hat on. There are many advantages to working this fashion. It could assist your shopper:

detach emotionally from the result of the experiment

uncover one thing new about their relationship with meals/diet

put apart “the research” and turn out to be immersed in their very own expertise

acknowledge that what works for others could not essentially work for them

contemplate different experiments that would get them nearer to seeing outcomes.

You can apply this course of to any sort of consuming change, from attempting out intermittent fasting to experimenting with an oil-free eating regimen.

The better part? It places your shopper in command of their expertise and ready to study by way of motion. And it casts you, the coach, as a supply of technique, steering, and help—as an alternative of a diet documentary fact-checker.

Remember: It’s all about your shopper.

Sensational documentaries could be difficult for coaches to cope with. Trust us, we get it.

But for many individuals, these docs are their first publicity to diet science. It is sensible your shopper could be satisfied by, and perhaps even involved about, what they noticed in a movie.

Listen intently. Show empathy. Be their ally. 

Using this framework, you’ll be able to ease your shopper’s nervousness, harness their enthusiasm, and assist create an efficient plan that feels proper to them.

And you could be 100 p.c sure: Those are critical sport changers.

If you’re a coach, otherwise you wish to be…

Learning how one can coach purchasers, sufferers, pals, or relations by way of wholesome consuming and way of life modifications—in a approach that makes them really feel empowered and motivated—is each an artwork and a science.

If you’d prefer to study extra about each, contemplate the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. The subsequent group kicks off shortly.

What’s all of it about?

The Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification is the world’s most revered diet training program. It provides you the information, methods, and instruments it is advisable to actually perceive how meals influences an individual’s well being and health. Plus the flexibility to show that information right into a thriving teaching observe.

Developed over 15 years, and confirmed with over 100,000 purchasers and sufferers, the Level 1 curriculum stands alone because the authority on the science of diet and the artwork of teaching.

Whether you’re already mid-career, or simply beginning out, the Level 1 Certification is your springboard to a deeper understanding of diet, the authority to teach it, and the capability to show what you understand into outcomes.

[Of course, in the event you’re already a scholar or graduate of the Level 1 Certification, take a look at our Level 2 Certification Master Class. It’s an unique, year-long mentorship designed for elite professionals trying to grasp the artwork of teaching and be a part of the highest 1% of well being and health coaches on the earth.]

Interested? Add your identify to the presale listing. You’ll save as much as 30% and safe your spot 24 hours earlier than everybody else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our subsequent Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification on Wednesday, April eighth, 2020.

If you wish to discover out extra, we’ve arrange the next presale listing, which supplies you two benefits.

Pay lower than everybody else. We prefer to reward people who find themselves keen to spice up their credentials and are able to decide to getting the training they want. So we’re providing a reduction of as much as 30% off the final value whenever you join the presale listing.

Sign up 24 hours earlier than most people and improve your probabilities of getting a spot. We solely open the certification program twice per 12 months. Due to excessive demand, spots in this system are restricted and have traditionally bought out in a matter of hours. But whenever you join the presale listing, we’ll provide the alternative to register a full 24 hours earlier than anybody else.

If you’re prepared for a deeper understanding of diet, the authority to teach it, and the capability to show what you understand into outcomes… that is your probability to see what the world’s prime skilled diet teaching system can do for you.

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