#he must be perfect! if he’s imperfect then he can’t go on stage and perform!

[fabuloustrash05]

If my AU Leo had so much as a tiny scratch on his face Splinter would kill him, so nope lol

hey you people with 2012 aus i have an important question

do your leos have scars due to fire, explosion or anything similar to that

i'm trying to see something

[nothing-more-than-hot-leaf-juice]

I couldn't really get into Azula, tbh. I mean, she is a Whole Look and I appreciate her lack of chill, but she felt like she needed more dimension.

AIGHT! LOOKS LIKE IT’S TIME TO WRITE SOME MORE AZULA META. Because I’m not about to have one of the most complex antagonists in television history slandered like this.

If you want to talk dimensions, let’s start there. From the basis of her actions, we can characterize Azula as many things: manipulative, ruthless, ambitious, and lacking in empathy. We see her as a military strategist: commanding the drill to go through the wall, conquering Ba Sing Se by staging the coup, and planning the destruction of the Earth Kingdom with Sozin’s Comet. We see her as a master manipulator: convincing Mai and Ty Lee to join her hunt in season 2, convincing Zuko to betray Iroh, lying to Ozai about Zuko killing Aang, and stalling Sokka at the invasion by taunting him about Suki. We see her trying to kill her brother and uncle all throughout season 2 just on her father’s orders, shooting Aang with lightning in the season 2 finale, almost killing Zuko multiple times in season 3, and nearly killing Katara in Sozin’s Comet. 

So from her actions, we can characterize her simply as power-hungry and lacking in empathy, sure, but it’s in her motivations that her dimensions lie. And everything, everything Azula does in this show is to prove to her father that she’s worthy of his favoritism.

We’re introduced to Azula in season 1 indirectly via Zuko and we know some things about their father already. The two main things being the whole ‘burned half of Zuko’s face off and banished him for speaking out of turn and refusing to fight him’ and the whole “[their] father said [Azula] was born lucky” and “[Zuko] was lucky to be born.” At the end of season 1, Ozai calls Zuko “a miserable failure” and we see him about to send this mysterious sister figure to do something about that. We know that Ozai had absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for his son and horrifically, publically abused him over what exactly? Showing weakness. 

That’s what we know from season 1. With Azula’s introduction in season 2, it’s clear that their upbringing was way more messed up than just this one instance. We start to see that there are these cracks in the royal family and the manipulation and callousness goes way beyond Zuko’s banishment. 

From the Zuko and Iroh plot of The Avatar State, there are a couple key moments where themes of favoritism, perfectionism, and jealousy enter. It starts with the three-year anniversary of Zuko’s banishment where he’s sitting in self-loathing just wanting his “father not to think [he’s] worthless,” holding onto Ozai’s approval as the achievable thing that will mean he’s worth something. We see Azula practicing lightning bending (something we have never seen a firebender do on the show before, it is clear that she is incredibly talented) but still berates herself for being ‘one hair out of place’. We see Zuko lash out at Iroh for implying that Ozai might not really want him to come home despite what Azula says, and we know that Iroh genuinely cares about Zuko and wants him to be safe, but Ozai doesn’t. Iroh introduces the concept that “things in [their] family are not always as they seem, but Zuko reduces this to sibling rivalry, and there’s a reason why. Zuko and Azula have been raised under a competition for their entire lives, and for that entire time, Azula was winning. And by this point she’s still winning. She’s ecstatic that she’s the favorite child while Ozai wants to “lock [Zuko] away where he can no longer embarrass him”. By the end of this episode, one thing is clear: Azula and Zuko are competing with each other. Only one of them can be good enough for their father. But while Zuko takes his first step to cut himself off, Azula doesn’t want to stray from this competition that she’s winning.

In Zuko Alone, this favoritism goes deeper. Just like with Ozai, Ursa’s approval and love is conditional, but these are conditions Azula isn’t meeting. She’s not as empathetic or sweet as Zuko and their mother isn’t shown treating her with the same affection as she does with Zuko. It’s not just Ozai favoring Azula over Zuko with that one scene of Ozai smiling when Azula performs her firebending and frowning when Zuko performs his, it’s Ursa favoring Zuko over Azula. It’s Ursa treating Zuko with gentleness and care and only reprimanding Azula for the way that she is.

Despite the fact that she’s obviously getting all her ideas from her father. This mentality of ‘I must do anything for the throne, even throw my own sibling under the bus,’ is all from Ozai. And when Ursa leaves, there’s no one to keep her in check. There’s only one parent to win the affection of and she’s already succeeding because all she has to do is be a better firebender. All she has to do is follow Ozai’s example of callousness and ruthlessness in order to be the favored child. And keep in mind, being ‘the favored child’ under this roof isn’t something petty, it means ‘one of you gets to be the heir and the other might not be allowed to live.’ This episode reveals what’s been going on in Zuko and Azula’s head this whole time. It reveals that they’re both constantly thinking that only one of them is going to be seen as worthy in their father’s eyes, as they were taught to believe that Ozai was more ‘worthy’ than Iroh since Iroh retreated from Ba Sing Se after Lu Ten died. And the other one, the one that wasn’t seen as worthy, that one was ‘disposable.’ And for most of their lives, the ‘disposable’ one was Zuko. 

But while Zuko spends most of the series slowly learning, with Iroh’s help, that the situation shouldn’t have been like this, that parental love and protection shouldn’t have to be conditional, Azula is still stuck in this mentality. And season 2 is full of examples of Azula doing everything in her power to prove herself to Ozai. Her task was to just bring Zuko and Iroh home for imprisonment, but along the way she added ‘capturing the Avatar’ and ‘conquering Ba Sing Se’ as additional tasks for herself. Why? Because those were the things Iroh and Zuko failed at doing. And she needs to prove that she’s better than them, otherwise what’s going to stop Ozai from deciding that she’s the person who he’s going to be disappointed in next? But if she does these things, if she conquers Ba Sing Se, if she finds the Avatar, that means she’ll still be considered useful to him, right? That means she’s the one who “has father’s love,” right? 

Because that’s what Azula strives to be over anything else: useful. She wants to be the person he relies on. The child he believes in. There’s a really good example of this early in season 2 when Azula goes to Omashu to get Mai: 

Azula takes control of the situation. She doesn’t really have anything to do with this city or the fake plague or the hostage trade. This is entirely the governor's responsibility and she’s just there to pick up her friend, but since she’s there, she has to make sure things are in order for her father. So she strips the governor of his power, takes control of the hostage situation to ensure that Bumi doesn’t slip through her fingers, and renames the city ‘New Ozai’ just for good measure. We see Azula as the actual proactive villain for all of season 2 and she would be well within her rights to name the city after herself. But she doesn’t. Because that’s not why she’s doing anything she’s doing. 

The flashback showing where she suggests burning down the Earth Kingdom reveals a lot with her body language. She suggests this by interrupting Zuko, who’s more resistant to the idea to ‘destroy their hope.’ He doesn't agree with Ozai’s idea, but she needs to show that she’s on her father’s side. She’s the one who can be as ruthless and destructive as he is. So she suggests this and looks to Ozai for approval, and once he gives it, that’s when she looks pleased. The actual plan to destroy the Earth Kingdom isn’t what brings her joy at this moment, it’s Ozai’s approval of her suggestion. We didn’t see her clap once his back was turned. This isn’t about the plan itself, it’s about Azula’s ability to be the heir she thinks Ozai wants her to be. 

And it’s in this moment in Sozin’s Comet shows exactly where Azula’s been coming from this whole time: 

This whole time, it hasn’t been about the destruction. It hasn’t been about what she wants. It’s been about being the favored child. It’s about being better than Zuko. In Azula’s eyes, she’s done everything right. She’s master lightning. She wasn’t the traitor like her brother or uncle. She conquered Ba Sing Se. She showed her father that she was on board with the destruction of the Earth Kingdom and proved her loyalty. She did everything right. But there’s a part of her that was waiting for this shoe to drop for years, ever since she watched her brother get his face burned off for not meeting Ozai’s standards. And she sure as hell remembers that all throughout the series and it shows: she can’t afford to be imperfect because she knows the consequences if she’s not. 

But in this moment, her fear shows. Her fear of not being good enough. The fear of being imperfect, disposable. She’s been terrified of this moment her whole life and has done everything to delay it. This moment: where Ozai casts her aside, where she isn’t good enough to come with him in her eyes. There’s no one left but her: no Iroh, no Zuko, no Ursa. Everyone else left and there’s no one else to compete with. And she’s left alone with this meaningless position of Firelord now that Ozai’s about to declare himself ‘Phoenix King’ and she clings onto that position because it’s her last chance to prove herself after this rejection. 

She goes off the deep end because she’s all alone. She’s snipped out anyone who was imperfect. She cut off her friends once they betrayed her. Azula isolated herself on the throne and demanded perfection because that’s what she saw her father do. Family wasn’t important to him. Loyalty and perfection were. So that’s the example she follows but it’s lonely and terrifying, so she loses herself. All her fears about not being good enough come back up after Ozai leaves her behind. That’s why she mentions Mai and Ty Lee. That’s why she sees Ursa. These are the people who didn’t choose her, and now that her father has left her behind and she hasn’t met his standards for the first time in her life, all those vulnerabilities and insecurities come to the surface. The thing Azula fears most over anything else is rejection, which is why she’s obsessed with perfection. Because she’s been taught that if she’s good enough: if she perfects her firebending technique, if people fear and respect her, and if people choose her, then that means she’s not disposable.

And at the end, she’s the one who challenges Zuko to an Agni Kai. To prove one last time that she is worthy. That she was worthy all along and that her father was right to choose her to be Firelord. 

And there’s an interesting parallel to consider here. The first time we ever see Azula is at Zuko’s Agni Kai with Ozai in the season 1 flashback, and at that one she’s smiling at her brother getting punished because it signifies to her that she won. Ozai picked her. Zuko was the disposable one. And in the end she wants that to still be true and finds that it’s not. In the end she loses and she doesn’t know what to do with herself now that she’s the one cast aside. 

And that’s the tragedy of Azula, really. This entire time she was conditioned to think that her value and the value of the people around her rested in perfection and she spent the entire series trying to prove herself. She was convinced that love was something that needed to be earned and that if she didn’t get results, if she didn’t win, then she didn’t deserve it. 

And that’s just a small piece of her character if we’re being honest. This doesn’t get into the details of how Ursa’s treatment shaped her, how her relationship with Zuko was ruined by their parents, how her bending is a reflection of her mental state, or how he relationship with Mai and Ty Lee reflects her view of herself and others. Azula is one of the most complex villains in television history not only because she has a rich backstory, interesting motivations, or unique persona, but because underneath everything, she’s just a teenage girl who doesn’t wants her dad’s approval and is so deeply terrified of being cast aside. She may be ruthless and she may lack empathy, but those traits stem from deeply rooted damage and vulnerability. 

(For some more Azula meta I did a deep dive into how The Beach foreshadows her breakdown and reveals her vulnerabilities and here where I talked about how she and Zuko were pitted against each other and had their relationship damaged by parental favoritism.)

[sweetshootingstars]

seamless - hoshiumi kourai

desc: his words may fail him, but his pride for you remains endless. 

pairing: timeskip!hoshiumi x pianist!reader

wc: 1377

genre: fluff, and kourai-kun being madly in love with you.

Concert halls are stuffy, but it’s in moments like these where Hoshiumi is grateful for the length of his legs and how they fit neatly underneath the seat in front of his. 

For some reason, he had always assumed that being in your mid-twenties meant getting used to suits and formalities. That when you turn 25, it imparts onto you some sort of wisdom of how to do Adult Things like close a deal on an apartment (check), buy a way too expensive suit (navy Ermenegildo Zegna, expensive as fuck, check), pay your bills (surprisingly, check) and navigate a relationship (he’s almost there, he thinks). 

He instead learns that having volleyball money can get you through most things, but it won’t get you through the relationship bit. After a particularly nasty screaming match last week (it was mainly you screaming at him, to be fair. And he had kind of deserved it), he realizes that he must put on his big man pants and be a good boyfriend. And here he is! Being a fantastic boyfriend! Like the kinds in movies! Expensive suit, hair slicked ever so slightly to the side, a bouquet of calla lilies on his lap. He knew lilies were your favourite. 

Hoshiumi felt as if he was being a good boyfriend. Watching his girlfriend do what she apparently does best- play the piano for a bunch of silent people in a stuffy concert hall. 

He scoffs internally. Your fingers flitting across the keys playing Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1 for a silent, enraptured crowd wasn’t even the most impressive thing you had done. He feels a small swell of pride- only he got to see you in your moments of piano-induced ardor in the comforts of your shared home. Relentless repetitions of arpeggios, practicing how smoothly you could reach a fermata, the constant shifting shifting of your creaky piano’s old pedals. The countless times where your body moves in time with your rubato. At the end of particularly expressive pieces, Hoshiumi enjoys the small moments where you appear to be frozen, hunched over the keys in climax. He gets to straighten your back right up with his hands on your waist and shoulders, applying the softest amount of care and pressure. 

The real concerts always happened at home. He never sat and watched you anymore, because your music was everywhere. It was in the lilting tones of your speech, how you’d time your footsteps to whatever you were listening to, the rhythm of your breathing. He had long grown used to coming home to the ever-present notes of the piano, lingering in the air long after you had stopped playing. Even during a screaming match, your voice reaching fortissimo and retorts coming out in short staccato bursts, he couldn’t help but think that you spoke in staves. 

The fight you’d had with him regarded his attendance at your performances. You would make as much of an effort to go to his games, so why couldn’t he go to your recitals? 

“You know I don’t ask you for much, Kourai. I go to so many of your games, even when they’re far away. So why can’t you come to any of my-“

“You know how my schedule is, [Y/N]. I don’t have the time to just sit around-“

“Is that what my shows are to you? Just sitting around?”

He didn’t have the words or the tact to tell you that he did find your performances a little boring, but not for the reasons you thought. Hoshiumi didn’t have the words to tell you that he’d memorized all of your pieces to heart, or that he’d watched you at home enough times to know when your body would lurch forward at what times during your pieces. Or how long it would take for you to start playing when you’d sit down on your bench, or what pieces make you cry in sadness, fear, or frustration. He thought that he’d shown you enough times- how much you captured his attention. And how more than anything, how enraptured he was with the way you’d return to the keys, the same way he’d return to the court. How your skill, your excellence, your repetition had become second nature.

You really were the second half to his soul. He grappled everyday with how to show you- and while he accepted that there would be times where his thoughts and feelings wouldn’t be communicated to you well, he knew he deserved a bit of an earful for it from time to time. You were right- you never asked him for much affection. Just for him to be there. 

He had always been there, whether you realized it or not. Around the corner of your living room, in the kitchen, humming a piece of yours, the sounds of your playing breaking through the pitter patter of the water coming down through the shower. He didn’t want to share the music he got to hear with you and you only. 

Hirugami had often told him to think a little before he spoke, and he thought that he’d learn how to do that by the time he was 25. But instead, here he was, cold water from the lilies sticking to his heated palms, hoping that he could show you what he really thought of your life’s work. Instead of telling you that you were far more impressive in his eyes when you made mistakes and tried hard to improve, rather than performing something nearly flawless. He didn’t have the words for that today. Plus, it wasn’t like he could just leave now. 

His ears twitch when he hears you stumble ever so slightly on the final page. Yet, you continue even more gracefully than before (if that was even possible), and he doubts that anyone else in this stuffy, stuffy concert hall even noticed. If his heart could swell for you even more, then it would. 

His hands grip this bouquet of lilies a little tighter as you finish, your back straightening at the end of your piece as if his hands were there to guide you back up. The hall erupts into applause, and Hoshiumi stands. 

He weaves through the seats, barely maneuvering through the purses and feet in his path as his eyes focused on only you. You, having finished an imperfect run of Debussy’s Arabesque No.1. To him, you couldn’t have played it more perfect. You curtsy and bow your head with a smile, and he swears that you had reached into his chest and taken his heart right then and there. 

Hoshiumi reaches the edge of the stage, stopping in front of you. The smile he had on since you made your mistake grows even wider at your bewildered expression, his limbs extending an armful of white lilies towards you. Your eyes grow misty. As you drop to your knees, he hoists himself up to sit upon the stage, ushering the lilies into your arms as you begin to cry. 

“When….how-“

“I’ve been here. Always.”

“Kourai-“

He vaguely registers the sounds of hoots and hollers from the crowd, the cooing of strangers as he gathers you into his chest. Your sobs muffled by his suit. He loves you more than you ever know, and he hopes that you’ll one day be able to read the bars and pages in which his feelings are inscribed. He hopes that you know that you’re the reason his blood moves, that you’re the reason he now thinks of each step in a run up to a spike as a staccato, and that there’s nothing that makes him happier than watching you make a mistake and picking back up right where you started. 

The next morning you play Schlummerlied, with Kourai’s arms around you, sitting between his legs on your already narrow piano bench. His head resting on your shoulder, lips ghosting over your neck. He is not forthcoming with his words, he is not fortissimo with his adoration. But the notes you play ring in the air with more brilliance than before, and it is then that you start to realize what you look like in his eyes. And that he has always, always been there. 

Legato. Connected, seamless, tied together. Always. 

[elle9095]

So yesterday The Boyz’ Checkmate performance on Road to Kingdom completely blew my mind and it's been all I can think about for like 15 hours so I figured writing basically a dissertation explaining what I saw in their performances is going to help me make sense of life again.

The narrative that I got from the performances tells a story about the power struggles of monarchy, both literally and metaphorically, when you consider the industry. It’s also the concept of the show, giving these bands a chance to play in the same league as the so called kpop royalty.

It like the Boyz were on a show called Road to Kingdom and decided to make it literal.

First performance: Hwarang/ Sword of Victory

I think no one could've imagined what was to come when they made this performance. It was meant as an intro to the group so it was short and impressive and I’d say that it sort of set the style of their performance but not yet the general concept that has developed over the show.

Also I just learned that hwarangs were entertainers before they became a legion of warriors and later an institution, so they're basically old-timey boy groups turned soldiers.

How quaint when you consider the later performances.

Second performance: Danger

This is where it all started I guess. They went with the thieving concept of the song, decided to take inspiration from their first performance and bam now they’re stealing crowns and climbing walls.

Third performance: Reveal (Catching Fire)

So obviously referencing the Hunger Games which is a survival game but essentially a story of revolution.

Fourth performance: Heroine

This one's a bit different since it's a collab but yeah the whole performance is basically a person's journey to center stage, which is usually occupied by the winners/royalties.

Fifth performance: Quasi una fantasia

This one didn't look like it was going to fit the narrative with it being so ethereal and so hopeful, what with the branch slowly blooming, like a good thing coming to fruition, but this is the euphoria after you've made it and they sort of tell you in the title that yes this is basically a fantasy.

Final performance: Checkmate

This one is fucking insane okay? They start off with a deja vu: Yonghoon's with the hypnotizing watch again and you notice the blooming tree in the background but there's something uncanny and the watch stops, you get flashbacks of Juyeon taking down the king, wearing his crown, Q stealing the crown, stealthily sliding and passing it on to Sunwoo who seems like he's finally going to ascend to the throne and next thing you know he's falling and waking from a bad dream…

At this point I was already cursing and gasping and having a heart attack and they haven't even started singing. And it's like everything they've done so far was just a dream, the game is on let's start all over again.

And isn't it exactly like that? Because a game of thrones (though not explicitly referenced) is exactly just that: a game. You come to power but how long is that going to last? Sunwoo’s (literal) fall from power lasted a breath. You win first place on a music chart this week, you start all over again next week. And The Boyz would know that, having spent the the first weeks on top, but it only took a single performance in one episode for them to drop to third place.

And the chess concept is PERFECT. Chess is a game of war and strategy and the big picture and that's all they've been doing on this show: they've stolen, tricked, rebelled, and dreamed before they finally checkmate. All these performances make up one big picture and I don't know if they've planned this from the start but it’s fucking genius.

The Boyz are so good at coming with a concept and sticking with it, they make a song called checkmate and whoa they have a chess concept now, they have black and white costumes, dancers dressed as pawns, chess board effect and choreo, chess piece props… Which all seemed like obvious artistic choices but there's always MORE.

Like can we talk about that fucking table? I was like 'where did they find a three-way chess table omg it's gorgeous' and then someone's dancing on it and you see the glass tube thingy under the table and MOTHERFUCKER ITS A FUCKING CHESS HOURGLASS

Also for someone to be able to dance on it they flipped the table upside down and it's either like turning back time (rewind sound effect at the beginning) or starting all over again, but also I was like 'huh the tables have turned' and then 'OH FUCK OFF'

And it's all in the details in the performances, the small things that they reference, the same imagery that comes back again and again, every time I rewatch a performance I notice something I didn't before.

There’s the flower, something that's fragile and fleetingly beautiful, also the 'hwa' in hwarang. The moon, which is always changing, like an illusion, the full moon referenced in Reveal, which originally had a werewolf-y concept.

The fire, the sword, all associated with war and power. Even the tricks and optical illusions. The chess, the crown, the king. Everything came together so perfectly in that final performance and wrap up so nicely like HOW IS THAT SHIT EVEN REAL

I love how they have all the names of the song in the title cards (Thieves, Reveal, Paradise, Checkmate) and I’ve been thinking about the lyrics 'the show must go on' and 'the game starts again' and how Sisyphean it all is.

And it's almost like in the end they understand how futile the pursuit of power is but is still pushed by their drive to thrive for better, and in the end they realize being king isn't winning the game. Chess isn't about being king, you don't have to be king to win the game.

Their final card says 'As long as the moon shines, the king of all games is the Boyz'. They don't say 'we're the king' they say 'we're the king of all games'. It’s like 'yeah we're good at this and we're ready to go at it again' be it the hunger games, a game of thrones, or a game of chess.

DAMN THESE PHILOSOPHICAL REBELLIOUS BOYZ

These performances are inspiring and stimulating on so many levels, I mean yeah, the concept is mind-blowing, and of course the performances are just (literally) breathtaking but we haven't even talked about the technicalities.

Yes, I know these performances are great but more importantly I love how self-aware they are. They really seized the opportunity to do the kind of performance that they couldn't be possibly allowed to do anywhere else.

You can hardly do these things for a live audience, since so much rely on the camera work. You can't do this on music shows or music awards where people only care about the more famous groups.

And while these performances were created with the camera in mind, they still make the watching experience so incredibly live by making the performances so risky, upping the stakes to insane levels, and I don't just mean having to catch flying weapons or falling members, but like having a crazy domino choreography where one member's misplaced limb could ruin the whole shot, or using cool props and tricks that could so easily go wrong.

Like the branch that Juyeon was so upset about? The whole trick relied on everyone doing the right thing with the right prop at the right time right place TWICE all the while making it look effortless and seamless.

Can you imagine what kind of crazy you have to be to come up with that?

I personally think that mistake was a perfect imperfection when you look at the whole picture: something not quite right in this otherwise perfect dream that proved to be a mere fantasy, too good to be true.  

Watching the Boyz on Road to Kingdom was pure delight, and for people like me who get off on the thrill of live experience, performances like these are SUCH A TURN ON. And as a writer I'm just a sucker for conceptual plots, unexpected twists and experimenting with structures.

I’m currently torn by a mix of feelings: excitement for Kingdom, anxiety about the safety of the performers, dread of the inevitable end of the show. It kills me a little to think that we'll probably not see this kind of performances as much. That they don't get to perform like this again: go all out and not just tell a story but a fucking epic that will make Bertolt Brecht cry.

I hope they get their own comeback specials or that the company does like OK Go and makes all these crazy fun performance music videos. At this point I don't even know how to organize my thoughts to express my love for the creative team behind the productions, like someone there's got imagination to spare and I want to pick their brains so bad.

I didn’t know anything about this group before my sister showed me their Danger performance clip, and I’m 98% sure I’d never have discovered this group have they not gone on RTK but holy fuck am I glad that this happened because this is probably one of the best things that came out in 2020, making this disaster of a year almost bearable.  

So yeah, that's what I thought about the Boyz performances. Thank you for coming to my ted talk or whatevs

Also I have a second theory that the whole season is just Sunwoo getting over his fear of heights through exposure therapy.

[ryanmeft]

My Top Performances of 2019, Part 2

Here is the second half of the list of my favorite film performances of 2019. I tried to be as objective as possible, but it’s also a result of personal preferences. As before, the order is unimportant. Part 1 is here:  https://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/190668845597/my-top-performances-of-2019-part-1?fbclid=IwAR3_d80vj0FbIVXqWaTV1heUlIDJJmL-JB_ZksaadO_oNRztnhBMICxzTd8

Zhao Tao in Ash is Purest White

She’s got everything you could want in a rusting former industrial town: a good boyfriend who has influence in the area’s small underworld, which gives her power, love and money all at once. In a blink it is all gone, and she finds herself adrift in the world, dealing with the resentments of people with no patience for what she has gone through. Tao is the key component of this crime drama, which is more drama than crime. She does not take the world in blazing force as a crime figure in a Scorsese film might do, but quietly and slowly accepts that the days of her power are past---and unlike the men around her, tries to adapt to, rather than battle, the inevitable.

Ana De Armas in Knives Out

Knives Out is in the grand, disappearing tradition of the character actor, albeit with the parts mostly played by superstars. Yet among a roster that includes Captain America as an irresponsible playboy and Michael Shannon as a professorial-looking semi-Nazi, De Armas’s humble heroine Marta stands out. Maybe it’s because Marta is humble but not naive or entirely innocent, and De Armas manages to capture both her cunning and her honesty without turning her into a doe-eyed victim. She’s the kind of character you want to become a Nancy Drew-esque mystery hero for adults, so you can revisit her later adventures.

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

Some hated the movie, some loved it, but one thing it seems everyone could agree on is Phoenix’s performance. He’s credited as Arthur Fleck, not as Joker, and his handling of the character couldn’t be more different than any previous portrayal. Arthur is sad and lonely, not at all an enigma---his private life is laid out for us in great detail---and Phoenix portrays him as just sort of being blown through the world, bereft of any real agency. You can debate all day whether the character deserves to be portrayed in a sympathetic way, but you can’t say Phoenix doesn’t pull it off, making us root for this maladjusted, societally-forgotten misfit almost up ‘till the end. 

Sienna Miller in American Woman

In a just world, Miller, hardly a household name, would have her face up on the stage Sunday night for playing this role, a drunken, hard-partying too-young mother and grandmother whose life begins to change when her daughter disappears. I say begins to, because this is not one of those magical stories of miraculous redemption. Debra does not become a good parent to her grandchild right away, and never becomes a great one. Instead, the film follows her throughout years of her life, during which, naturally, she must go on living as she mourns. Miller embodies each stage of this perfectly, never once allowing drama tropes to disturb her unflinching portrayal of an ordinary life.

Jeff Goldblum in The Mountain

What does the word “monster” conjure for you? Whatever traits it brings to mind, they are all present in Dr. Wallace Fiennes. He’s an egotistical, self-interested, callous man who performs lobotomies on mental patients in the 1950’s American heartland, the kind of person for whom his gruesome practice is not an outmoded method to be improved on by advancement, but an art form in itself, and his patients merely the canvas. This isn’t handled like a horror movie: Goldblum is not a mad scientist cackling away in a lab, but an urbane, cultured, engaging professional---which makes him all the more frightening.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Fast Color

Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were, to a large extent, a marketing department’s ideal female superheroes: always flawless, gorgeous even when kicking ass, unable to make any very serious mistakes. Ruth is very much not that. She’s living wherever she can, dealing with the effects of past addictions, running from the government, scared of her own powers. She’s not just unlike any other woman in tights (without the tights), she’s unlike any mainstream superhero ever has, can or will be. Mbatha-Raw is one of our most underrated actresses, and she portrays Ruth in a way that allows us to both sympathize with her plight and support her as she grows stronger. The movie’s not getting a sequel, because the Hollywood franchise machine isn’t ready for imperfect superheroes yet, but it is getting a series, so at least we’re getting more of Ruth in some medium.

Renee Zellweger in Judy

I won’t pretend I knew much about Judy Garland going in, and frankly I’m not sure I understand her after seeing the movie---it was, in most respects, a fairly typical music biopic. Where it broke the mode is in Zellweger’s performance. I think it’s fair to say the once-household name has been largely forgotten by Hollywood in recent years; she never had the perfect starlet looks or the ideal girl-next-door adorableness that is the main standard on which women are judged. But she had the acting chops, and here she finally gets to prove it. Her Garland is twisted and gnarled inside and out by years of sexist treatment and the resulting substance abuse, but still a loving mother to her children and a great singer---and justifiably angry at the industry that used her up and spit her out.

Paul Walter Hauser in Richard Jewell There was never a single chance of seeing the camera pan to Hauser during Sunday’s roll call of acting nominees---both he and the person he plays are about the polar opposite of Hollywood’s image of itself. And it must be said that while Jewell should not be forgotten, Eastwood’s movie, with its ginned-up anti-press narrative, maybe should be. But none of that is on Hauser, whose performance firmly proves that fat guys can be more than bumbling comedic relief or ineffective sidekicks in the movies. It matters that someone who looks like Jewell is portraying him, and that he does it so well that we can almost overlook the film’s other faults.

  Honor Swinton Byrne in The Souvenir

This one was little-seen, and though it generated awards buzz initially, it’s already been largely forgotten. That’s too bad. Byrne’s Julie is a woman torn between her own ambitions and her love for a man who is---abusive? How to judge him? It’s a toxic relationship fueled by addiction on his part, but the movie is more about how you cope with a partner who is committed but not capable of commitment. Perhaps the most resonant aspect of Julie’s character is the way she holds out hope even when everyone tells her not to, even when she herself knows deep down that it is hopeless. You may find this weak, but I’ve never known a human being who wasn’t in some measure susceptible to it.

Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes Everyone has strong feelings about the Catholic Church---it’s not a thing you go half-measures on. And every Catholic has strong feelings about the last two Popes---again, they aren’t the kind of personalities that inspire milquetoast reactions. What Pryce and Hopkins do in portraying Francis and Benedict, respectfully, is remind us that no matter how much they claim to be the chosen of God, these are after all two men---two men with flaws and opinions, whose own lives have shaped them every bit as much as the Bible or the church. When they are on screen together, you can imagine them in an odd couple buddy comedy, two aging road trippers tending to the flock. Lots of performances didn’t make my arbitrary 20-point cutoff. To be dead honest with you, it’s entirely possible that if you ask me in a year, I’ll have re-considered who is on the main list and who is in the honorable mentions; the idea that what I say now, when all these movies are fresh in my mind and affected by immediate emotional reaction, has to be my inviolate opinion for all time is silly. That said, here are some excellent and noteworthy performances that didn’t quite make the cut.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in Waves

Zack Gottsagen in The Peanut Butter Falcon

Isabela Moner in Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Alessandro Nivola in The Art of Self-Defense

Cate Blanchett in Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

More or less everyone in Little Women (I couldn’t decide, and thought more of the acting than the overall film)

Jodie Turner-Smith in Queen and Slim

Cynthia Erivo in Harriet

Kaitlyn Dever in Booksmart

Edward Norton in Motherless Brooklyn

[softboywriting]

I Love Everything About You | Shawn Mendes | Personal Assistant AU

A/N Sequel to Falling In Love Is Easily The Hardest Thing 

Summary: You and Shawn have been together for six months now. He knows you struggle with insecurity and he is there for you every step of the way.

Word Count: 1.7k

| Masterlist |

Insecurity. It's a bitch. It consumes you, invades your thoughts, poisons your brain and brings the world crashing down around you. It wraps around you, gripping your stomach and making you sick. But it's not until it meets jealousy that it becomes a real monster. Devouring you, making you sob and fight with everything and everyone around you for signs of validation. Signs that your good enough, that you're worthy of being loved, that you don't have to worry. Insecurity and jealousy are nasty beasts that pull you into the dark but Shawn is eternal sunshine and he washes them away, even if it takes a little time.

It's happening, again, and you hate it. The familiar bile rising in your throat, stomach clenching, the weight of insecurity perched upon your back like the demon it is. It whispers lies, lies that you believe every time.

“She's prettier than you.” “He going to leave you for her.” “No one loves their assistant.” “He's lying, he's lonely and that's all.”

You bite back tears as they sting your eyes. No. Not right now, not today. You bring your arms around yourself, holding tight, fingers digging into your soft sides and that makes your grip harder. You were too soft bodied, too flawed for someone like Shawn.

“This way,” an assistant named Bruce says as he leads Shawn towards his dressing room. You follow behind silently, black bag thumping against your butt as you walk. Every little thing reminds you of your imperfections. The bag hits your butt, it's too big. You grip your sides, they're too soft. You pass a model as she goes towards the dressing room for the show and her hair is perfectly feathered, billowing in the wind. Yours is in a braid down the back, probably crooked and you know you need to trim your ends. Everything sucks. You want to go back to the hotel.

“Someone will be in shortly,” Bruce says and closes the door on you and Shawn. Shawn turns around to see you standing there, visibly plagued by the demon on your back, eyes red and tired from listening to it's lies again. He knows how you struggle, and more so now that you're a couple.

“Honey,” he says softly, dropping his guitar case on the couch before wrapping his arms around you. His soft voice is all it takes to break the barrier you’ve been holding up. Tears spill over, wetting your cheeks and his tee. “Talk to me about it, don't hold back,” he whispers into your hair, leading you to sit on the couch with him.

“I’m not as good as these girls here. Why would you want me when there are dozens of models walking around in panties, eyes on you like hungry lionesses. What am I compared to them? Why wouldn't you want someone perfect?” You take in a shaky breath and tremble in his arms.

“I’m not interested in these women just because they're in panties. They're just people doing their jobs, just like I'm going to do my job and sing for their show.” Shawn tucks your hair behind your ear and you lean into his touch. “I'll be looking for you like I always do because you're my home, my safety, my girl. If anything I'll be thinking about you in those panties because I love your soft hips and your legs and...” He groans, pulling you closer. “Honey, those girls have nothing I want. You don't compare to them because they are nothing like you. No one is like you. No one can turn me on or bring me to my knees like you. No one can make my stomach flip and my heart ache like you do. Let them look at me, let them be hungry for me. They can't have me because I'm already taken.”

“You like my legs?” You sniff, looking up at him. You hate how pitiful you must look.

Shawn steps back and lowers himself to his knees in front of you. Your raise your eyebrows and he smiles softly. He runs his hands over the backs of your calves in your faded black jeans, traveling up to your thighs, he leans in and kisses your upper thighs and up to your hips. His hands slide over your butt and stop, grip, and slide around so he is holding your hips. He kisses his way up to meet his hands and smiles big. “I don't like your legs, I love them. I love how soft and smooth they are when you're in your underwear. I love how warm and comfy they are when I lay my head on them. I love gripping them when we're in bed and you're on your hands and knees and I'm e-”

“Shawn!” You hiss, chastising him, and he looks at you with a smug smile. He was never one to talk openly about what you did in the bedroom together. It brought a surge of excitement crashing over you and acted as a welcome distraction from your thoughts.

Shawn pushes himself up, placing kisses up your stomach and chest as he reaches his full height. “Listen, I love you. I love every piece of you and I wouldn't change anything ever. It's been six months we've been together and over two years since we've known each other. I think we both know what we've signed up for.”

“You're right,” you wrap your arms around him and he pulls you in close for another hug, hand on your back, rubbing slowly. “Maybe one day I'll be content with myself.”

“And I'll be here until you are and then after. I promise.” He drops a kiss on your head and turns to look at the door when someone knocks. It's the stylist for the show and you pull away to sit on the couch and go over his schedule for the next week until it was time for him to go on stage.

_____________

Watching Shawn interact with the models on stage should be easier since you had your talk in the dressing room but it isn't. Not at first. You're standing just behind the curtain where the ladies walk out and you can see them strut past Shawn and blow kisses and smile at him. He doesn't reciprocate and just smiles as he performs. You don't realize you're scowling until Winnie, a model and friend of Shawn's, says something to you as she waits to go on stage.

“Your face is gonna freeze like that,” she chuckles and you turn to see her. She's in a pink and yellow floral outfit with a cut out around her stomach. It's gorgeous. She's gorgeous. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just thinking.”

Winnie rolls her eyes. “I know jealousy when I see it. Does Shawn know you're worried about this?”

“Yeah. We talked about it.”

“Then why are you worried? If you are that open with Shawn, he is definitely in love with you. You have him wrapped around your finger.”

“Winnie you're on,” a voice beside you says and Winnie puts her arm around you in a quick hug.

“He's going home with you tonight, don't forget that.”

You watch as she walks the catwalk towards Shawn. She is flawless, steps perfect and controlled. Everything about her screams goddess. She passes Shawn, smiling and says something, looking back toward you. Shawn turns and looks at the entry to the catwalk and winks. He knows you can see him even if he can't quite see you. It makes your heart race and you flush. It was amazing how easily he could make you temporarily forget your flaws and feel like the only girl in a room.

___________

Shawn jogs off stage, handing his guitar to someone as he walks over and picks you up, spinning you around from where you're talking to another model named Haley who you'd met before at a few events. “Did I kill it?” Shawn asks, face pressed into your hair.

“Yes of course you did.” You wave goodbye to Haley who is being pulled away by another model for pictures. “It was a great set. I think everyone had a good time.”

“Did you see me wink at you?”

“Yes, how could I have missed it? You know you can't wink. I can't wait to see photos of that all over social media.” You giggle and he rolls his eyes.

“Anyway I heard that there are grab bags for everyone at the after party. The ladies get lingerie and other gifts in their bags.” Shawn raises his eyebrows suggestively. “I'd kill to see you in them.”

“Yeah? What color?”

“Red? Pink... black with lace,” Shawn says spacing off probably thinking about you in any of sets that were shown while you head to the dressing room to gather your things. “I'm gonna be honest honey I'm ready to go back to the hotel and skip the after party. I just want to be with you.”

You lay your hand on his chest and shake your head as the door closes behind you. “No, I want free lingerie. We're going.”

“Fine but under one condition,” he walks you back the couch and holds your hips, thumbs rubbing against your skin softly under your shirt. “I want my own personal show at the hotel.”

“No touching? Just looking?”

“Oh no there will be plenty of touching. I'm thinking maybe even a different position for each outfit and maybe ending up together in that huge tub in my suite.”

“Alright deal but you have to be extra talkative and tell me how good I look in them.”

Shawn nods. “I'll never shut up.” You laugh and he leans down to kiss you, hand in your hair and one on your side. “I love you,” he smiles into the kiss and you giggle, wrapping your arms around him.

“I love you too.”

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 152

Last time, Android 16 thought he had the perfect solution to beating Cell.   He can’t absorb your friends with his tail if he doesn’t have a tail.  Unfortunately, Cell can regenerate like Piccolo, so he just grows it back.    Cell is awesome.

Also, he does the thing where he waves his tail and tail juice leaks out and it burns the rocks and dirt where it lands.  

From here, 16 realizes the only way to neutralize Cell is to kill him.   For his part, Cell seems to fight a lot more seriously.   Well, it’s hard to tell with him.    I’m just going by how much glowier he is than last episode.

Cell puts 16 down and he can’t help but glance back at his quarry, 17 and 18.   I gotta say, I’ve begun to appreciate the Japanese voice actor for Cell.  Norio Wakamoto has a suitably rough gravelly voice for Imperfect Cell, maybe not as monstrous as Dameon Clarke’s, but he punctuates his performance with a lot of low growls.    Like, every time Cell makes this face, Norio Wakamoto is probably going “Ennnneeeggggghhhhhhhhh!” It’s great.

But it costs him, because 16′s not through yet and NEWS FLASH: 16 CAN SHOOT HIS HANDS AT YOU!

COOL!

Then he grabs Cell (after putting his hand back on his arm) and slams him into the ground so hard it makes a hole.   

Then he takes both hands off his arms, revealing a pair of cannons in his wrists.    This is terriffic.   

Then he just fires down into the hole he put Cell in.   16 calls this the Hell’s Flash and it’s awesome.   This whole fight is awesome.    16 only has this one battle to his name, but he makes good use of the time by displaying all these cool powers and abilities. 

The Hell’s Flash is so powerful that it spreads underneath the entire island, causing energy to erupt from the surface.  

On the Lookout, Goku and Gohan are monitoring the battle while they wait for Vegeta and Trunks to come out of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.  At this stage, they really have no idea what’s going on, since they can’t sense any ki from Android 16.   All they know is that someone must be fighting Cell and they seem to have him on the ropes.  

When the dust settles, 17 and 18 finally begin to realize that 16 was the strongest one the whole time.   

16 tells them... again... to run away from this place, but they still won’t listen.    They figure the battle’s over now, but 16 assures them that it isn’t.    He thinks he’s damaged Cell, but he won’t give up so easily, so 17 and 18 are still in great danger. 

But 17 won’t listen.   He really, really wants to pay Cell back for beating him up earlier, and he figures that if the three of them work together, they can finish off a wounded Cell without much trouble.    So he calls out to Cell, daring him to show himself.   

And that explains this scene here, which always confused me.    In the dub, 17 acts like Cell’s already dead, so he just talks about how the three of them are going to do whatever they want from now on.   So when Cell rises up from a hole behind 17, you see 17 angrily looking around from side to side, but it’s not clear why.  

The reason is because, in the Japanese script, 17 thinks Cell is still lurking around, and he’s waiting for him to show himself so they can resume the fight.   That’s why he’s looking around so intently, never suspecting that Cell is closer than he thinks. 

And this is Cell’s master stroke in this fight.   He couldn’t outpower 16, so he used stealth instead, getting close enough to 17 that he could absorb him before 16 could intervene.

16 rushes to save the poor guy, but it’s already too late.

I mean, I guess 16 could grab Cell in a bearhug and maybe squeeze 17 back out of his tail.  

So that’s it, then, right?   Wrong, this episode’s just getting started.   Next, we’re treated to one of the best transformation scenes in the whole show.   We see an image of 17 falling into the abyss of Cell’s eye.

Then Cell starts flashing.  

His feet change shape.   

Here’s what he looks like about halfway.    It’s awesome.    Cell’s the best.   Hands down.

16 realizes it’s too late to save 17 and it’s waaaayyyy too late to stop Cell, so all he can do is remind 18.... yet again... that she needs to run away.     To be fair, I can understand her hesitation this time.   This is a pretty messed up thing to witness.

And at last, Cell stands transformed into... Semiperfect Cell.   This form is also known as “Second Form Cell”, but I like the way “semiperfect” sounds.   Interestingly, this form doesn’t have wings.   I don’t know why they went away, and I don’t know why they came back for the third form.   

16 tries to grab 18 and drag her to safety, but Cell is so fast now that he cuts them off before they can reach the other side of the island.   

Tien can see the writing on the wall.    16 was the only one left who could fight Cell, and he failed.   Now, Cell’s even stronger and faster, so there’s nothing to save 18 at all.  

I was curious to see how Norio Wakamoto���s performance would change when Cell transformed, and he sounds much less grim and brutal than before.   His Semiperfect Cell seems a little brighter and more eloquent, although that’s hard for me to judge, since I can’t understand Japanese.  I don’t think the actual voice is any different though, where Dameon Clarke switched from this raspy bug voice to a booming, brutish voice.  

16 tries to fight, but that’s just as useless as flight at this point.    The punch does nothing.  

Cell counters with a ki blast...

... which damages the right side of 16′s cranium.  

With 16 down, there’s absolutely no reason for Cell not to move on to absorbing 18.    Of course, he licks his lips, because he’s a disgusting creep, and also he just got lips, so this is his big chance to try ‘em out.   

But 18 threatens to self-destruct, using a bomb implanted in her own body.    Cell responds by speaking with 17′s voice.   He claims--posing as 17-- that 17 actually likes being part of Cell, and he wants 18 to join them.   18 is nearly convinced, until Cell overplays his hand and has “17″ refer to Dr. Gero as “Dr. Gero-sama.”

18 reveals that she and 17 despised Gero for converting them into cyborgs.   At least, I assume that’s what she means by “reconstructing”.   It’s weird, because Gero genuinely seemed to have no idea what made 17 and 18 so rebellious.   He blamed it on their energy supply, which never made any sense to me, and he kept claiming that he could resolve the problem by reprogramming them.   Meanwhile, the answer was staring him in the face the whole time.    They didn’t want to be turned into cyborgs, so naturally they were going to resist him every step of the way.  Of course, Cell would have no idea about any of that, so his bluff is doomed.  

On the other hand, Cell has decided that he should call 18′s bluff as well.    Even if she really does intended to destroy herself, he’s betting that he’s fast enough to stop her before it comes to that.    And if he’s right, then she’s all out of options.   Z stands for the end.  

But not yet.    There’s still one more guy who can step up to the plate.

Tien’s nowhere near strong enough to hurt Cell, but is Ki Ko Ho technique is still powerful enough to keep him pinned down for a moment.    So Tien uses it over and over again, figuring that this will buy the androids time to escape.     The only problem with that is that the Ki Ko Ho drains the life energy of the user.    Using it once is dangerous.    Tien died in the Saiyans Saga, but it wasn’t because Nappa or Vegeta killed him.    Tien killed himself when he tried to take out Nappa with this same move.   And now, Tien is spamming it.   This can’t even well for him.   

And that’s the Imperfect Cell Saga.     It kicks ass.   You’ve got the best Dragon Ball villan ever, plenty of suspense and intrigue, a nice horror vibe, and then it all wraps up with a series of quick, intense battles for the fate of the world.    It doesn’t get much better.

[shipwreckseemssweet]

10 Figure Skating programs I love

With the FS off-season--and all related drama revelations--in full bloom, what better time to look back on beloved programs new and old.

Here are ten outstanding pieces (singles disciplines only) from the last couple of seasons that I managed to find online. I feel a bit guilty about not having put in Marin’s Romeo & Juliet. :(

10. Wakaba Higuchi - Skyfall (FS)

The best FS performance of the 2018 Worlds! I must admit I wasn’t a big Wakaba fan until this season. In my prejudiced view, I considered her too rough around the edges. Then she rolled out this season’s programs and I was sold. What’s more, she owned her FS - a mix of Bond music including Adele’s Skyfall - more than any other of her competitors. From her sleek dress to her cool final spin, Wakaba makes a case for a Bond girl movie starring her. And if her electrifying performance is any indication, it’ll be one to remember. The choreography unleashes all her power while funneling it in purposeful and creative ways, never letting the tension disperse. The crazy fast 3Lz3T may be her main weapon, but it’s the step sequence that steals the show.

9. Patrick Chan - Dear Prudence/Blackbird (SP)

I couldn’t skip over Patrick, our newly retired King of Skating Skills. Dear Prudence/Blackbird by The Beatles signaled his last great season and a return to form. A very good return, despite his jump ailments. If anyone can measure up to 60s pop rock, it’s Patrick with his effortless, flowing, confident skating. His classic elegance and somewhat old-fashion charm seem to recall a bygone idyllic spring. These are songs about inner awakening and struggles; about finding a place you belong. They seem to reflect Parick’s journey to reinvent himself. At the same time, Dear Prudence is about the beauty of nature: "The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful,” and it’s the pure feeling of connection to the music that stays with you.

8. Javier Fernandez -  Malagueña (SP)

Another great skater on his way out. Coming into Helsinki as the defending World champion, Javier managed to skate this short program cleanly in its two-quad glory. For me this is his finest, most sophisticated SP to date. (I welcome the absence of comical elements.) Certain programs can only be performed to their fullest potential when given another season to grow, and Malagueña is a perfect example. It’s all about getting into character, making every movement count. Obviously, having Javier perform the flamenco - choreographed by a Spanish ballet director - and go the extra mile on every element really adds to the authenticity of the program. His effortless skating is just a rung below Patrick and Yuzuru. This is what an energetic and mesmerizing skate looks like!

7. Mao Asada - Ritual Fire Dance (SP/FS)

If Mao can’t make you love figure skating nobody can. All my favorite skaters use their bodies as silent musical instruments and Mao is the leader of the pack. Her musicality, arm movements, footwork, versatility, attention to choreography and emotional projection are absolutely unmatched. In what turned out to be her swan song, all her best qualities shine through. Portraying a mysterious black bird, Mao transformed the piano version of Manuel de Falla’s ballet with her charismatic, soft interpretation. Every step and turn, every detail of the performance appears uninhibited yet polished. She has reached a level of fluidity and complexity where jump errors no longer detract from the overall quality. Also, I love the ponytail.

6. Boyang Jin - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (SP)

Boyang is one of my recent favs despite there being room for growth in his skating and other components. Beyond the excitement of watching a young skater evolve, I think he has great potential in every area and will just get better with time. His jumps are already prodigious, his performances iconic. Underlying this program is the idea to present a more complete (and serious) version of B for the Olympic season as well as blend in Chinese elements. Unfortunately I don’t think he got the recognition he deserved. Infused with the right mix of composure and energy, this is an atmospheric character-based program that wonderfully shows his refinements in interpretation and control of edges. That step sequence is *fire*.

5. Carolina Kostner - Ne Me Quitte Pas (SP)

A very sophisticated and adaptable lady. At 31 and having lived through many system changes, Caro brings new meaning to the word “veteran” in singles skating. She first hopped under the spotlight with her stunning jumps, but stayed on the stage until today thanks to her masterful skating prowess and evolving artistic “voice”. Her effortless glide and changes of speed/direction are done on the deepest of edges; her arms move like a painter’s brush. Every movement of hers is flowing, full of love for what she does. And rather than a competitive spirit, it’s the emotions and experience she brings to her performances that keep her in the sport. As Lori Nichol said, this short program allowed Caro to be the athletic and sensual woman that she is.

4. Yuzuru Hanyu - Ballade No.1 in G minor 3.0 :) (SP)

Yuzuru knows how to start off the Olympic season with a bang: breaking his own WR in his first performance at the Autumn Classic. A horifically difficult piano composition, Chopin’s Ballade No.1, with its dramatic chords, abstract motifs, dynamic rhythm and interwoven themes running from subtle to stormy, seems to fit our agile FS King like an elegant glove. Over the years, Yuzuru gave us not less than three different and perhaps equally iconic interpretations of Chopin’s favorite music. This particular one is all about the aura and intricate details. Every element is blended with the music. The final jump combo comes out of nowhere. This emotional peak then transitions into the StSq which is majestic in its smoothness; it rumbles and flows together with the fiery chords running down the keyboard. All doubts are resolved yet the mystery persists. Nothing can be added or taken away--this is perfection.

3. Satoko Miyahara - Madame Butterfly & The Planets/Princess Leia (FS)

I adore Satoko’s skating, despite her imperfections (read: jumps). The world needs skaters like her, whose elegance, musical flow, precision, and subtle presentation touch your heart. Her body lines and layback spin are gorgeous; her multidirectional skating effortless. (That reverse Walley into the Salchow!) Satoko is a strong character performer. I loved her Goddess/Princess Leia FS from 2016/17, how original the choreography was and how engaged and fast Satoko seemed. It’s such a difficult piece to skate to yet she managed to showcase different sides to her. This year’s M Butterfly was, given the circumstances, a safer skate, but her emotional projection only increased. Her showing at the JNats was the finest in that regard. Butterfly’s anguish and suicide seem to become Satoko’s own struggle with her injuries. But the piece ends with a spin to the dreamlike yearning of Un bel di vedremo, as if we’re witnessing both Butterfly and Satoko’s rebirth.

2. Kaetlyn Osmond - Edith Piaf (SP)

IMO, to her belong the two best ladies’ performances of the 2018 Olympics. With Edith Piaf Kaetlyn has finally found an iconic short program! You can tell when a skater is truly feeling the music and looking happy while on the ice, and this program has accomplished just that for K. We meet a French young lady, sauntering down the streets of Paris, wanting to be noticed by someone special. Accompanying her is the voice of Edith Piaf, who sings Sous Le Ciel de Paris and Milord. The program has it all: purposeful choreography, powerful skating, sensitive interpretation of music, ease of movement, the speed going into her huge jumps. Her outgoing character just floats up so naturally. Thanks to her charm, K could indeed give Cotillard a run for her money.

1. Yuzuru Hanyu - Hope & Legacy (FS)

During the 2017 Worlds, Max Ambesi proclaimed this as Hanyu’s best skate, and also the best skate in history. I couldn’t agree more, even if everyone has their own favs. It was an inconsistent season before Hanyu had surpassed himself to skate clean a program massive in ambition and complex in expression. It was as if he’d become an ethereal nature spirit. He was the air, wind and water contained within the melody. He made himself appear weightless and effortless on the ice, seemingly not needing any strength to execute any of the elements. A dreamlike aura surrounded him. I just love how the program highlights his natural musicality and attention to detail. My favorite part: the serene StSq followed by the 3F as the music rises.

Bonus: Alena Kostornaia - Stella’s Theme (FS)

What a talented Junior we have! In her first international season Alena has shown she has nothing to fear from the Seniors. Her charisma, skating skills, and arm movements are those of a fairy. Her jumps are spiced up with steps/transitions. Her spins sizzle with creativity. Nothing feels rushed or incomplete. I challenge anyone to watch her lyrical, immersive performances and experience “backloading” done right. :)

[psycho-slytherin]

Strangers  ch. 2

Your friendship with Agust is off to an interesting start, and he invites you to lunch.

Pairing: Yoongi x (female) Reader

Word count: 1.6k

Genre: Fluff

<––Prev   Next––>

|mlist|

“Fame, flashlight– gi-give it to me!”

You’re jarred awake by your morning alarm yelling at you from across the room. You flail your arms pathetically in an attempt to utilize your hitherto unrecognized power of telekinesis, and when that doesn’t work, you force yourself to get up and turn it off. Once you do, a series of texts greet you from your lock screen.

Unknown number: Did you manage to get any sleep?

Unknown number: You really have to be careful about walking around so late.

Unknown number: It’s Agust btw

It really wasn’t a dream. Min Yoongi texted you.

“EEEEEK!” you shriek excitedly, clutching your phone to your chest. Perfect timing: It vibrates again and you stare at the screen to see a text from Lisa.

Hello?? I’m waiting!

It’s only then that you notice the time.

“Oh, fu–” you scramble to get dressed and yank a brush through your hair. In no time you’re sitting shotgun in Lisa’s car as she pulls out of her parking spot.

“Girl, you’re late! How are we gonna take Hollywood by storm if you’re late all the damn time?” Lisa says teasingly.

“I’ve been tired,” you say defensively. “I’m taking whatever shifts I can get. Seoul is expensive.”

“Worth it, though, right?” Lisa punches you in the arm. “Top school for performing arts in the country. Woot!”

You laugh. Your friend’s energy is infectious.

“Hey, put on some music!” Lisa hands you the AUX cord and you plug in your phone.

Cypher 4 starts playing, but just as Lisa prepares to yell “Sorry, bae!” you hit shuffle on your American pop playlist.

“Aw, what?” Lisa pouts at you.

You shake your head. “Sorry, bae. Not in the mood.”

“Not in the mood for a Cypher? Are you sick or something?” Lisa looks at you with mock concern as you arrive at Seoul University of the Preforming Arts. You stick your tongue out at her, waving as she heads to the other side of campus and you make your way to Improv.

“Okay, guys, we’re gonna do this in groups of three,” your improv teacher says as class begins. “Each group gets ten minutes to show us a beginning, middle and end.”

Your teacher has already written out the order of performances. Just your luck, you’re in the last group. You settle down in the back row and pull out your phone. Your finger hovers over Yoongi’s texts from earlier. Should you text him? He did say he wanted to be friends.

A shiver runs down your spine. You have the ability to simply text Min Yoongi. Whenever you feel like it, you can just… text him. A member of one of the biggest names in K-pop and you can contact him.

You draw up your courage and send him a text. Almost immediately you see a response.

You smile uncontrollably as you stare at the screen. Savage Suga, the master of sarcasm, sassed you. And he was damn good. You could already tell he was the kind of guy you’d love to befriend, if only for his scathing commentary.

“Last group, come on up.”

You tear your eyes from his words with some difficulty and make your way to the front of the room. You’re soon joined by Jisoo and Kai.

All eyes are on your trio as your professor waves her hand. “Go.”

Immediately Kai grabs Jisoo’s hand and marches over to you. “You’re the dean of admissions, right?”

You nod. Where’s he going with this?

“My daughter is the top scorer in the country, but you didn’t admit her into any of the SKY universities.”

You stick out your chin, thinking fast. “Well, we decided to raise our standards. From now on, only students that have the top scores in the universe will be admitted.” you shake your head sadly.

“There are some Martians that are outscoring her.”

“What?” Jisoo gasps dramatically, clutching her heart. “B-but I have magical powers!”

Interesting take… okay.

“Hm.. how are you scoring on the national magic-power exam?” You shuffle some imaginary papers. “It says here you’re ranked number three. We couldn’t possibly admit you anywhere with so low a score.”

“But she’s famous!” Kai says desperately.

You stop your shuffling of papers. “She is?”

“Yes!” Jisoo cries, gesturing grandly. “I’m the secret eighth member of Bangtan Sonyeondan!”

Your jaw drops. Instead of taking it in stride, you can only stare.

Kai, seeing that you aren’t responding, takes initiative.

“Right! She’s actually the main vocalist, only no one knows.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Not even the other members.”

You give yourself a little shake and dive back in. “Well, that makes perfect sense. In that case…” You pretend to write something down.

“Congratulations, you’ve been accepted to all three universities! We could never turn away a member of BTS.” You shake an elated Jisoo’s hand as your professor calls scene.

The three of you bow while the class applauds. You rush back to your seat and grab for your phone to see a new text.

Yoongi wants to have lunch. You’re going to have lunch with him. Forget lying, this is worth all the guilt in the world. But how on earth is he going to go out to eat with you? Surely the paparazzi and screaming ARMYs are deterrents to him ever leaving his studio.

However, there’s no way you’ll look this gift horse in the mouth. Lunch with Yoongi… it’s almost like a date.

No, no. You scold yourself at the thought. Friends, nothing more. A relationship built on lies is destined to fail.

Not that you haven’t imagined such a relationship countless times, discussing every minor detail with your fellow ARMYs, reading whatever fanfiction you can find…

You’re the luckiest girl in the world to even befriend him. You can’t allow yourself to develop real feelings for him– You know from firsthand experience that the best of friendships can be ruined when anything more is introduced.

You spend the rest of improv watching the clock impatiently. As soon as class is dismissed, you dash towards the bus stop. You can’t ask Lisa for a ride; she’ll freak out if you tell her who you’re meeting.

You drum your fingers on your knee as the bus makes its way closer to the restaurant that Yoongi had specified.

You get off the bus a few blocks away from the address and you spend several minutes inwardly freaking out as you walk closer, feeling simultaneously euphoric and terrified.

CLOSED

That’s the word that greets you, painted on a sign hanging at the door of the restaurant. You check again to make sure it really is the same address.

It is. Is this a prank? You whirl around, searching for a hidden camera. Surely it it’s a joke, or a challenge: Make an ARMY look like a lost puppy, maybe? If so, it’s a success.

You sigh. You should’ve known. This sort of thing would never happen to you.

You’re beginning to trudge back to the bus stop when you hear a door open behind you.

“What’s your name?” a gruff voice calls.

You turn around to see a tall man in a suit and dark glasses.

“W-why do you care?”

The man shakes his head. “Please answer me.”

“It’s  y/l/n y/n,” you huff. “Don’t stalk me.”

The man holds open the door to the restaurant. “Sorry, just checking your identity. It’s her,” he calls inside before nodding to the open door. “Go ahead.”

“Um…” you follow his direction cautiously. The interior is decorated comfortably, fairy lights strung from wall to wall.

“Y/n.” You hear the scrape of a chair behind you, and when you turn around your heart nearly stops.

He’s really there. There’s no mistaking his gummy smile or mesmerizing gaze.

He’s wearing glasses and no makeup, and the perfect imperfection of the scene threatens to overwhelm you.

“It’s good to see you with proper lighting,” you manage as you feel your cheeks flush.

Yoongi smirks. “I could say the same.”

You silently offer your thanks to whatever led you to take acting; the skills you’ve developed for the stage are the only things keeping you from exploding as you seat yourself across from Yoongi.

“Sorry about all the fuss,” he says, waving at the door. “I, uh… didn’t want to deal with things.”

“How specific.” You lean backwards in your chair. “You’re such an enigma, Agust. It’s not even a little bit fair that I know nothing about you.”

The lie tastes bitter on your tongue; of course you know everything about him. His birthdate, family members, childhood, preferences– but it wouldn’t be fair to use any information that he hasn’t trusted you with. Damn your righteousness.

“Oh, but this is fun,” Yoongi says teasingly. “I like having an advantage.”

“That implies you don’t get advantages too often.” You gaze at him with mock pity. “That must be tough.”

Yoongi’s eyes widen at your snark and you die a little inside because he’s just so beautiful…

Nope, nope. “You said lunch, right? Let’s eat.” you look around for a menu or a waiter, but see nothing.

“I ordered ahead, hope you don’t mind,” Yoongi says.

“How do you know I’ll like it?” you cross your arms, in disbelief at how nonchalant you’re acting.

“Lucky guess?” Yoongi says with a chuckle. “Tell you what. If you really don’t like it, I’ll answer one question about myself.”

“Perfect.” You’re an actress; it’ll be easy to pretend you hate whatever meal you get.

“But!” Yoongi holds up a finger. “If you do like it, then you owe me a favor.”

“Of course,” you agree readily. Besides, what on earth would he need from you that his vast talent and resources couldn’t provide?

A/N: Thanks for reading! I’m having a lot of fun with this premise, and I hope you guys are too :)

[everythingshawnmendes]

Roses Part 2 (Shawn Mendes x Reader)

sorry for such a long wait!!

@3naomo3  @sassysweetstories @deanwinchester08 @almightydolans @zipline-mendez @swxxt-pxa  @lily–lilac @ajisantisocial @briannareneea985 @sarahdorst @melunicorn77 @escarjorts @firsttimeihadsomethingtolose  @beckymendes14 

 Part 1

+

“AND NOW LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLATINUM-SELLING ARTIST FROM CANADA, SINGING HIS NEW SINGLE ROSES WHO IS UP FOR AN AWARD TONIGHT, SHAWN MENDES!”

Y/N stood on the edge of her seat, positively shaking with pride.

Shawn came out on stage and looked directly at her.

“This one’s for you.”

I’m not try'na start a fire, with this flame But I’m worried that your heart might feel the same And I have to be honest with you baby Tell me If I’m wrong, and this is crazy But I got you this rose And I need to know Will you let it die or let it grow? Die or let it go?

It’s not that I don’t care about the love you have It’s not that I don’t want to see you smile But there’s no way that he can feel the same ‘Cause when I think of you my mind goes wild

Y/N swayed to the music but stopped dead in her tracks when she caught on with the lyrics.

The song was ending and Shawn pulled out a single red rose and climbed down into the crowd. He made his way to Y/N and stood in front of her with the rose.

“I got you this rose, and I need to know, will you let it die or let it grow?” he sang softly to her.

+

“Shawn you’re on in 10.” A Grammy technician waved at him.

Shawn snapped out of his reverie. His hands were moist with sweat and his leg was shaking. He looked around him. He was sitting in a dressing room, on a white couch, and in front of him was a white coffee table that had a cup of water and his guitar on it. He checked the time. It was 9 minutes to when he was supposed to go on. He wiped his forehead. Okay, so he didn’t go on. What he had just envisioned was but a dream. He exhaled heavily in relief. If that happened in real life, he would be in really deep shit. He revised his game plan in his head. He goes on stage, sings his song, plays the piano at the end, then presents the next award. Best Country or something, anyway he had a teleprompter to read. No stupid grand love gesture to Y/N or stupid walking up to her with a rose.

She’s engaged. Shawn swallowed the acrid taste in his throat that he got each time when he thought of her with Luke. He grabbed his chest out of habit, soothing his breathing. It’s weird. If love was a metaphoric thing, why does he feel the pain so physically? He felt it in his abdomen, feeling the muscles rip open and get salted each time he thought of Y/N with Luke.

“Good luck bud.” He heard Andrew say to him.

Weirdly enough, Shawn wasn’t nervous. This may be the biggest event he’s played at, but it didn’t feel that way. The whole Grammy nomination didn’t even seem to have impacted that deeply. Because his mind was somewhere else these days. His mind was somewhere else ever since that visit to Y/N’s parents.

Y/N waited at the edge of her seat, twiddling her engagement ring nervously around her finger. If you looked closely, it was almost like she cared about Shawn’s performance more than he even did. More than her own upcoming wedding.

He got out on stage sat down at the grand piano colored shiny black. He debuted the song, fingers cold and nervously pressing down on the keys. The audience did not notice. He began to sing softly and as he reached the chorus, the stage lit up and his band came out and started accompanying him. He got up to his usual mic stand and did his usual. He tried to put everything he had been feeling these past days in every lyric. His eyes skimmed through the A-List audience full of his idols and stopped until they landed on Y/N who was near tears of pride.

He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

+

“And the Grammy goes to…”

Y/N clutched onto Shawn’s hand as if it were the only thing keeping her sitted.

“Oh my god Shawn this is it, you know how many times we talked about this?”

“Y/N, you never know. I’m up against legends.”

“ED SHEERAN!”

They both clapped, Shawn honestly relieved because he would not be able to do an acceptance speech about Roses right in front of Y/N, whom it was about and not mention her. He was also incredibly happy for his friend.

Y/N let her head fall but smiled and cheered, having practiced her gracious loser face many times with Shawn during sleepovers.

In the cab ride home, Y/N had her entire body pressed against the window, fast asleep.

Shawn merely watched her, his gaze flickering between the lights of the asleep city and how they shone onto Y/N’s moonlit skin.

He grabbed her hand. If only this hand was his to grab.

He approached softly and kissed her. First on the forehead, then her cheek, then her lips. He felt her stir and before he knew it, the pair of lips under his were responding to his touch.  

Y/N’s eyes fluttered open slightly to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. She saw a flicker of brown eyes before she closed her eyes again and pretended to sleep.

Shawn drew back to see she was still asleep, he must have imagined her kissing him back. He dropped her hand and stared out his own window.

Y/N peeked through one eye when she felt for sure that Shawn’s body had turned the other way. Deep down, she always knew that there was something between them. Everything they did with each other was so natural, and more than once throughout their friendship had she considered maybe them being more than friends. She never had the gut to admit it to him though, because it was a huge risk, and the price was too heavy. What if he didn’t feel the same? She could not afford to lose the best friend she’s ever had.

She had noticed that he might feel a bit more. He often just stared at her, their hugs were sometimes just a millisecond too long. But they can never. Y/N needed stability and routine in her life. Shawn taking over the whole world, they would not make it. In the end, Y/N felt like their relationship would be doomed, and their wonderful friendship would go down with it. So she stuck as friends. It worked better for the both of them that way.

Plus, she was engaged to Luke. He was beautiful, loyal, grounded. He would be able to give her everything she ever needed. Wanted? Maybe not. But Y/N did not dare open that door in her mind in fear to see cons of her marriage to Luke.

Shawn had read somewhere a beautiful quote. “Maybe we’re not meant to be together right now. Maybe in another life.” He could not remember from where he had picked it up, but decided it wasn’t too shabby of a life-motto. He truly felt that there was never going to be anyone like Y/N, anyone who was a better match for him. Y/N was flawed, as is any other human. But every little flaw, imperfection, perfection, detail made her who she was and that mixed with his own self made their connection irreplaceable. So what if I don’t get her in this life? Shawn thought. I could dedicate this entire life to her and making music and art about her. And maybe in another life, we’ll be together. It was rather tragic, but not all artists live a bubblegum pink La La Land life. He’d rather his art to live on forever than to be recognized when he was alive but forgotten once he was gone.

When the car pulled over at Y/N’s driveway, Shawn woke Y/N up who feigned regaining consciousness. Both neglected the kiss they had. At the doorstep they both stopped.

Normally, they would’ve busted down the door and pigged out in front of the TV. But it was different this time. Everything was different now. Y/N was an engaged woman. Shawn couldn’t just spend the night with her anymore.

“Well.” Y/N broke the silence. “I’m still fucking proud of you.” She smiled.

Shawn smiled.

“I love you.” Y/N said.

They would tell each other that all the time casually. But this particular one wasn’t platonic.

“I love you too Y/N.”

Shawn stared intently at her, while she waited for his next move. He huffed and unclenched his fists.

“Fuck it.”

He pulled her to him and kissed her once again. Y/N kissed back, way more fervently that she had done in the car.

The next morning.

“Fuck.” Shawn said. It was like the worst hangover he ever had, except he hadn’t consumed alcohol, he had consumed Y/N.

“I know.” Y/N said, burying her head in her hands. ���How the fuck did we let that happen?”

“I’m so sorry. You’re engaged.”

“It’s not your fault, I reciprocated.”

“Look-“

“Let’s just forget this happened.” Y/N said.

“Yeah.”

“I love you.” Y/N smiled weakly, stroking Shawn’s cheek. “Always will.” Tears filled her eyes. Shawn instinctively pulled her into a hug.

“I’ll always love you Y/N.”

A month later.

A white and gold letter came into Shawn’s mailbox.

The honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of

Y/N Y/L/N

to Luke Bryant

The letter proceeded to add date and time, as well as a dress code. Shawn sighed, throwing the letter in the trash but marked the date in his calendar. He was practically Y/N’s male maid of honor, but since there was no actual thing as that, he’d be a mere audience member at the ceremony.

His phone rang.

“Hey Shawn!” Y/N’s voice came through.

“Hi! Just got your invite.”

“Perfect. Do you like it?”

“Yeah. I see you used my suggestion of gold instead of silver.”

“Course I did.” A pause. “So…you’re coming?”

“Wha-of course! Why would I miss my best friend’s wedding?”

“Aw sweet. Well, um I’ll see you then.”

“I mean, you wanna go for a walk or something? I know you love the woods around this time of year.”

“Oh I can’t. Gotta go to Luke’s parents. And um I love you dude, but maybe we shouldn’t see each other before the wedding. You know, just to get rid those tiny feelings we had.”

“Oh right. I thought we agreed to never speak about that night?”

“Right, sorry Shawn. Bye then, for now. I guess.”

The line clicked off painfully awkwardly. It was weird for both of them to not see each other every day and to not have anyone to confide in anymore. Shawn shrugged off the phone call and went to the gym, and trained ten times harder.

The wedding day finally came. Shawn dressed up in a navy suit, looking very sharp indeed. He drove to the address marked on the card and was very surprised to pull up at a church. He always heard Y/N say something about wanting a rustic garden fairy-light wedding.

He got out and joined a couple of friends. Sitting down, Shawn looked around. Everything was minimalistic and white. He hated to admit it, but it was beautiful. The church’s high arched ceiling was decorated with white butterflies, and white petunias. Those must’ve been Luke’s choice, because he knew for a fact Y/N wasn’t a fan of white flowers.

Slowly as everyone turned up, the ceremony began. Luke stood at the altar, dressed in a black three-piece suit. His shoes were so neatly polished, if pointed at a certain angle, they would be able to reflect a beam of light perfectly. He looked happy.

The band began to play, and everyone turned around. First came in the bridesmaids accompanied by the groomsmen, Shawn recognizing a couple of Y/N’s friends. Then walked in Y/N’s little niece with a flower crown and a basket full of rose petals. Those must’ve been Y/N’s choice.

She walked down the aisle happily, decorating it with bright red petals. She waved at Shawn, who has babysitted her numerous times.

The audience rose on their feet as the bridal march came on. Shawn’s stomach was twisted in a tight knot.

Y/N took a deep, deep breath and held onto her dad’s hand. And she walked out.

Y/N emerged and walked slowly down the aisle. She kept her eyes focused on Luke the whole time. She looked happy.

Shawn’s heart stopped. It froze, feeling like his arteries and veins stopped pumping blood. It just laid there in his chest, unable to function.

An angel, that’s what she looked like. What he would give to be looking at her from the altar’s point of view. She had her hair tied up, strands falling beside her cheeks. She had makeup on, a little more than necessary Shawn thought; but that was because Shawn found her mesmerising even with shadows under her eyes and chapped lips.

Y/N dared not to look on both sides in fear of seeing Shawn.

The walk that felt an hour-long ended as she got to the altar.

“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today in the presence of these witnesses, to join this man and woman in matrimony commended to be honorable among all; and therefore is not to be entered into lightly but reverently, passionately, lovingly and solemnly. Into this - these two persons present now come to be joined.”

Shawn shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“If any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together - let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

Y/N held her breath. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw a tall brunet man dressed in a navy suit raise from his chair.

+

Y/N took her fiancé’s hands in hers and looked up to him. Tears threatened to spill, how happy she was.

“Y/N, do you take this man to be your husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death parts you?”

Y/N answered through a wide smile.

“I do.”

Shawn’s eyes filled with tears as he looked at Y/N.

“Shawn, do you take this woman to be your wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death parts you?”

“I do.” Shawn answered, squeezed Y/N's hands happily.

[jimgim-blog]

Striving

As always, I begin with an apology. It doesn’t matter who or when. “Sorry, but--” is how I always begin any dialogue, whether it’s with my best friends who I haven’t called in over 2 months or with me, because everybody has to figure out which version of himself he wants to side with.

First, prose. Paul Kalanithi in “When Breath Becomes Air” sparked again, my love for literature. Perhaps unfounded, based on the fact that I’ve tried to read “Crime and Punishment” over five times, but still, a love that remains. His prose can only be described as leaping off the pages. It’s music. Especially towards the later chapters, when the “urgency of racing against time” is evident. He really poured his life out in the face of certain death. Although the vocabulary, syntax, structure and fluidity of his sentences elude my Reddit-level capacity to really appreciate them, I can tell its potential, similar to a tone-deaf drunkard happily sounding out half-flat drum beats because he can attest to the feeling the music produces.

There’s a list of quotes that I bookmarked but two that carry importance.

You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving - pg. 115

Lucy and I both felt that life wasn’t about avoiding suffering...Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving - pg. 143

During COVID-19, one prominent lesson I’ve learned is that life hangs in a precarious balance between suffering and pleasure and that our job is to find out where that tipping point is for us. If you’re good at reading people, you can see where their limit is and can carefully guide them there (that’s what a good manager does). It came at a point when I was watching an episode of The Top Gear with a glass of beer. I thought it well-deserved since I had just finished a coding project that took way too long of a time. But by the time I had finished it, it was 2 AM. And I just felt this tremendous wave of sadness. It’s as if I had crossed the point a tad too much and the yin-and-yang of my personal universe was whipping me back into shape.

But, I argued back. Didn’t I deserve it? Isn’t the whole point of crunching numbers to relax afterwards? I mean, who actually likes writing out reports to projects that have no real value? (The premise that engineering at the Master-level study program has no real value, I probably should confront at some point, preferably before I delve into a career). Isn’t life all about the reward?

Besides the rush of dopamine which evolution has carefully produced to enable the continuation of the human species, I’m starting to realize the answer to the question lies in my upbringing. The Christian life to any person with a basic knowledge of the Bible is a life of delayed gratification. Confess now and you can go to heaven. Resist the temptation and you shall receive reward in heaven. Well, that’s incorrect. The Bible reveals the Christian life as one lived with Christ, in Christ and out of Christ. It’s a life of loving Christ, having Christ love you more than you can possibly imagine, and simply telling that to anybody else you know. But, to realize that--and even the more, live that out--requires maturity. 

It helps that I went to a Bible seminary, but there are stages to a Christian life. In the initial stages, you find out what it means to deal with outward things like sins, the world, unrighteousness--things that most people can easily identify as those evil in the eyes of a Christian. But, at some point, you read Romans carefully and discover that God never expected you to perfect your resolve to never sin again. In fact, that was never His intention at all. His intention is that you would get to know Him more. To love Him more. To care about Him. The end game is when you realize that there’s really nothing more that pleases Him than Him giving Himself to you, and you allowing that.

There’s many obstacles like, your thoughts about what God is doing, who God is, or why God made things the way they are, but the point of the Christian life is to let those things go so that you would know Him.

That’s why the Bible doesn’t have any explicit answers to the problems of world poverty, hunger, unfair suffering and general illogical and incomprehensible ways that each individual life turns out; that’s not His focus. Neither does He actually owe it to you to solve all those things.

And here comes the point. Suffering is a part of human life because Adam fell. Christians suffer (arguably more than the unbeliever because of the fact that now he’s aware of not just one person, but several persons who lives within him--Satan, God and himself) and it’s just a part of life. Whoever came up with the idea that the good Christian goes to heaven has probably given Christianity a lot of thought. Philosophically, it's a satisfactory explanation for the impossible lives certain Christian biographies attest to. Politically, it’s a great tool for crowd control (Caesar Augustus). But it fails to hide the meaninglessness of it all that cloaks its happy ending. And look at the consequences! It’s become categorically almost taboo for a Catholic priest to be convicted of child molestation or some other gross sin for which he would be by the Catholic addendum to the Bible, responsible for help purging at the confession altar. The walls of Sardis and Thyatira echo with words of twisted teachings. How frustrated God must be that we’re just not getting it!

I think I’ve arrived at the cusp of understanding it. Not the point of it all, but why it’s meaningful to live in the faith. And what part suffering has in all of it. Because it’s not dissimilar to what I consider a life worth living outside of the bounds of Christian law. It’s exactly what Dr. Kalanithi wrote. Striving. That’s the whole point. Or, in layman terms, the pursuit of happiness.

When I watched Will Smith explain it to his kid (oh please, that scene was basically made for him and his actual kid) that nobody should strip his dreams away, I could resonate as an immigrant because that’s what my parents embodied in their ever-sacrificing life for me. They never said it, but I could tell. And striving was simply a part of it. They never questioned why they should strive because it was ingrained into their bones as they did everything they could to survive in the teenage stages of the miracle on the Han. But me, I have the pleasure of enjoying the fruits of their labor, never having to worry about having enough to eat. Instead, I have to re-discover why I should strive at all to find a meaning in life that they never had to question (presumably. I never asked them). But, it’s finally start to click: the pursuit is the happiness.

Like donkeys, we need the carrot at the end of the stick. I generally agree with the capitalist notion that humans need incentive to progress (or to work, for that matter). North Korean defectors have the hardest time integrating into South Korea because working is purely a status from 9 to 5, not a gateway into a better life. And look where North Korea is today; isolated, whining and throwing a tantrum every couple of months so people would notice them. So, we desperately need the idea of perfection. We admire those who have seemingly achieved it. We cling to the ideals and lift them up because it incentivizes us. “A perfect life exists and I’m going to get after it.” And, that’s really what the economy thrives on. Without grandeur ideals of a large house by the lakeside with a collection of supercars in the garage, Wall Street would collapse. Sure, some are more driven by the fact that their childhood was deprived of any sense of normalcy. I can’t say anything to that. But, the point is that normalcy is the ideal of “perfection”.

But if you see any interview of the person who’s “done it all”--I recommend for all the Asians, Johnny Kim (it hurts because my name is so similar)-- you never get the sense that they are exuberant beyond measure. Least of all, there is rarely a sense of absolute pride that they’re done it the way they wanted to and that was the end of it. The common thread is sacrifice and a bit of luck. The more they gave for their goals, the less they had time to think about if they’re happy at the moment. It’s in that precise moment of the present, when no thought of anxiety over the status of their happy-barometer is looming, that they’re actually, happy.

Perfection doesn’t exist. But if you don’t strive for it, there’s hardly any meaning at all. A perfect Christian life isn’t a life without suffering. It’s a life with, in and through Christ. But it’s unattainable, impossible. And maybe that’s the whole point. 

p.s. There’s another dimension to the concept of “striving” in the Bible. It’s usually in a negative light because the entire medium through which we can live the normal Christian life is through faith and striving, on the contrary, implies work of our own merit. Here, striving is meant in a positive way, in the sense of pressing forward, of devoting serious energy into a matter that is near to the heart. Instead of a perfectionist foolishly striving for a goal that to him is naively reachable, I think of Luganksy playing Rachmaninoff Concert No. 2 in a recording that undoubtedly is one of the greatest performances of his life but riddled with miss-hits and asynchronous crescendo into the cadenza. It captures the beauty of irony; that only imperfection can bring solace to the troubled soul, keeping it afloat amidst the chaos of life. There is no perfect anything, but striving for it, whatever it may be or to whom the conceived idea belongs, is undoubtedly the greatest blessing to life.

[mllemaenad]

Something occurred to me recently, when I was contemplating the outcomes of a Leliana!Divine world-state. Circles, imperfect as they arguably are, provide a contained environment with which to resolve a potential outbreak of possession. I acknowledge that, as you have opined, the Rite Of Annulment is a sub-optimal response to them; that said, even a less questionable solution would be easier to implement with the Nevarran Accord in place. How would the post-circle Thedas solve such events?

Well, that’s a bit of an understatement. I believe I said that the Right of Annulment is fucking evil. :)

I stand by that, absolutely. I don’t think it is ‘questionable’ or ‘sub optimal’. I think the indiscriminate murder of what may amount to hundreds of trapped and helpless people is a grotesque and horrific thing. I get these Asks, sometimes. And they all amount to ‘But when do we get to murder mages? Surely now we can murder mages? Surely this situation is bad enough that we can murder mages?’

My answer is never. You never get to murder mages without consequences. And let’s be clear here: my word is ‘murder’. If you are cornered by a mage, possessed or otherwise, who means to kill you, and you find you must kill them to survive, then you are acting in self defence. And that’s fine. But if you have arrived on the scene with the intent to kill, you are a murderer.

First thing: this business about Circles and the Annulment being set up to resolve possession scenarios. They’re not. Not at all. If they’ve ever actually accomplished that, it was incidental to their true purpose. However, I think in most cases the Circles (and in all cases Annulments) have made things worse rather than better. I know that safety is how the Chantry sells it, but the Chantry lies.

Let’s take a look at how all this got started:

In the 83rd year of the Glory Age, one of the mages of the Nevarran Circle was found practicing forbidden magic. The templars executed him swiftly, but this brewed discontent among the Nevarra Circle. The mages mounted several magical attacks against the templars, vengeance for the executed mage, but the knight-commander was unable to track down which were responsible.

Three months later, the mages summoned a demon and turned it loose against their templar watchers. Demons, however, are not easily controlled. After killing the first wave of templars who tried to contain it, the demon took possession of one of its summoners. The resulting abomination slaughtered templars and mages both before escaping into the countryside.

The grand cleric sent a legion of templars to hunt the fugitive. They killed the abomination a year later, but by that time it had slain 70 people.

Divine Galatea, responding to the catastrophe in Nevarra and hoping to prevent further incidents, granted all the grand clerics of the Chantry the power to purge a Circle entirely if they rule it irredeemable. This Right of Annulment has been performed 17 times in the last 700 years.

– The Right of Annulment

The Templars murdered a mage for practising ‘forbidden magic’. What did he do? We’ll probably never know. And that’s the root cause of the problem: Templars are empowered to perform summary executions, and are never held accountable for their actions. They are assumed to be justified in anything they do.

The Circle mages, finding themselves trapped in a building with a mob of religious fanatics who had just proved they were not even slightly above murder, retaliated. Apparently, they were really good at it. Targeted guerilla warfare that kept the Templars on the back foot, and for which they were never caught. I’d just like to pause for a moment to give a fucking standing ovation to the Glory Age Nevarran mages. It’s doubtful they were ever able to write down and disseminate their tactics. Nevertheless, they should be an inspiration for every generation that followed after.

Eventually, someone broke through the Templar lines. I’m not sure whether I believe the bit about the demon summoning. I’ll certainly concede that it’s possible: people do summon demons to fight their battles, and that can get very, very, very out of hand. But ‘demons’ and ‘blood magic’ are the Chantry’s go-to excuses for everything, and they’ve been caught out lying or misunderstanding these situations before. The mages were, as I said, doing really well. And they were Nevarran mages. This is a culture that knows how to work the Fade, and, given that this is early Chantry history, I’d expect traditional Nevarran practices to be more prominent and less suppressed by Chantry forces. I’d put Nevarran mages up there with Rivaini and Avvar in knowing how to handle spirits.

Someone got out, and they stayed free for a year. Given that a ‘legion’ of Templars were sent after them (from context I’m not entirely sure if the author means 5,000 (ish) Templars, like they sent in the Roman army, or if she just means ‘a lot’ but I suspect the latter because bloody hell, that’s a lot of Templars), and they were pursuing them over the course of that time, I would guess that the 70 people killed were mostly, if not entirely, the pursuing Templars.

Whoever this was, possessed or not, they conducted an extremely effective rebellion against the Chantry and Circle systems. They, as well as the other mages involved, demonstrated that Templars could be resisted. And not just resisted: killed. They could be taken out in large numbers. You can just walk out of a Circle.

That could never be allowed to happen again.

The Right of Annulment meant that, back at the stage where the mages were just ‘mount[ing] several magical attacks against the Templars’, the Templars could just go in and slaughter everybody, without making any effort to discover who was behind the rebellion.

The Right of Annulment is a terror tactic, aimed at suppressing rebellion. The Circle system exists to oppress and contain mages, both for the financial and political gain of the Chantry, and because Orlesian culture is genuinely anti-magic and wants to suppress magic in other cultures. None of this is done for anyone’s safety.

Look at the other times it’s occurred (where we have any details to discuss):

The third time the Right of Annulment was invoked on a Circle of Magi, in 3:09 Towers, Knight-Commander Gervasio of Antiva killed all of the city’s mages for demonic possession. However, a massacre may have already occurred at the hands of Knight-Captain Nicolas, with the Right invoked as cover-up. The Seekers of Truth later apprehended Ser Nicholas, who had left the order to kill mages and admitted to having murdered over a hundred.

– Magehunter

Ser Nicholas murdered a bunch of mages, both inside the Circle and out, and the other Templars killed any survivors to prevent retaliation or attempts to seek justice. This is a perfect case of the process Galatea implemented working exactly as intended: the Antivan mages were never given the chance to organise and resist the way the Nevarran mages did. They also claimed they did it because of mass demonic possession, which is why I’m suspicious of the original Glory Age event.

The Annulment in the Broken Circle quest was called due to Uldred’s rebellion:

Uldred will show us the way. Finally, recognition within the Circle and freedom from the scornful eye of the templars. We will not be shunned. Be ready.–Enchanter Gravid, Libertarian

The time is drawing near. Uldred has brought his intentions to light and a confrontation is all but inevitable. We will separate or walk with our brothers, but we will be free.–Enchanter Boson, Libertarian

If blood must be shed and used, so be it. I will follow when he calls. The yoke must be released, whatever the cost.–Enchanter Prist, Libertarian

I have spoken to him directly. His intentions are that we will demand the templars withdraw. I don’t know that I am willing to follow, but I will be present to hear his argument.–Enchanter Fonst, Aequitarian

Madness! I doubt blood will be of use to you if it is flowing down the tower steps. Step away from this folly, before it consumes us all.–Enchanter Luvan, Loyalist

The call is made. We will stride out of here with pride in our step, regardless of outcome. This is for the good of the circle. Uldred will see to it.–Libertarian Rhonus

– Promises of Pride

I can’t take any Templar handwringing over this situation seriously when I have to note that this is, once again, a rebellion. Uldred and his allies had an actual plan: with Loghain’s backing they were going to force the Templars out of the Circle. It is entirely within Templar interests to kill all of these people.

This is also a rare case where we can actually confirm a demon outbreak in the Circle. It is thus a clear example of why ‘containment’, as you’ve put it, is cruel, counterproductive, and indeed itself an outright evil.

If you are confronted by a demon, and lack the strength to fight it, the best thing you can do is leave. The Circle system does not allow mages to do that. They are unable to get away from the demons hunting them, and have no choice but to confront them. 

Because the mages could not leave the Circle, what started with a single case of demonic possession, when Uldred fucked up a summoning spell, became a plague. While the timeline on this is somewhat murky, the events of Broken Circle likely took place over two or three days: during that time both mages and Templars who were trapped in the Circle were hunted down by demons and either killed or possessed. This was always bad, but the Circle made it a nightmare.

The Annulment in the Kirkwall Chantry was largely called because Meredith is a terrible person who likes to hurt mages … but, it can certainly be framed as a reaction to what she perceives as open rebellion:

Varric: The more she squeezed the mages, the more they resisted. The more they resisted, the tighter she squeezed.

Mages have been attempting to flee Meredith’s brutal regime in the Gallows for years:

Here in Kirkwall, citizens actually help rebel mages escape. Escaped apostates have survived their freedom long enough to form the “the mage underground,” a network that feeds and shelters escapees and even transports apostates into remote areas of the Free Marches and beyond our easy reach.

– The Mage Underground

We can’t trust the raiders’ promise of passage - the templar’s bounty on us is far too tempting. Press on every contact you have! We must leave Kirkwall before the knight-commander does something drastic. Each night, more of our brethren make it to the coast.

If the hounds sniff out your current location, the other site we discussed is clear. Be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.

– Blood Mage Dispatches

Ultimately, of course, Meredith used Anders’s attack on the Kirkwall Chantry as a pretext for the slaughter. That had fuck all to do with the Circle mages, but it didn’t need to: the Kirkwall mages were already attempting to escape their oppression in large numbers. That couldn’t be permitted. ‘Anders’, ‘demonic possession’, ‘blood magic’ – in the end, any excuse will do, when the point of an Annulment is to both crush the present rebellion and deter anyone who thinks about trying again.

When we heard of the injustices against our fellow mages at the White Spire, the Circle of Magi in Val Royeaux, I feared what was to come. Our Circle at Dairsmuid is small and isolated; it exists largely as a façade to appease the Chantry.

When the other Circles rose up, the Chantry sent Seekers across the bay from Ayesleigh to investigate. They found us mixing freely with our families, training female mages in the traditions of the seers, and denounced us as apostates. Perhaps they thought we were spineless robes who could be intimidated with a little bloodshed. Before I was first enchanter, I was the daughter of Captain Revaud, of the Felicisima Armada. I know how to plan a battle.

They brought with them a small army of templars. We fought. And we might have won. But they invoked the Right of Annulment, with all the unrelenting brutality that allowed. It is their right to put screaming apprentices to the sword, burn our “tainted” libraries, crush irreplaceable artifacts under their heels, tear down the very walls of our home. No mage has the right to disagree.

We of the Dairsmuid Circle wait now, behind barricades. I have sent word to our brother and sister mages of this outrage. When they break through, we will not die alone.

– The Annulment at Dairsmuid

The Annulment at Dairsmuid happened because a large-scale rebellion was already underway. The Dairsmuid Circle is clearly sympathetic to the rebellion – Rivella clearly calls the events at the White Spire an injustice – but given that they are a small Circle, practically speaking they probably couldn’t add much might to the uprising. This Annulment was symbolic: the Rivaini mages have likely been living their lives like this for generations; in the context of the mage uprising any deviation from Chantry dogma could be called ‘rebellion’. This Circle could only be said to be in rebellion in the most technical sense, but that was enough. They killed them all.

The Annulment is not a solution to demon possession. It’s not intended to be. That’s not what it’s for, and that’s not how it’s used. It’s terrorism. I’m sorry for the length of this, but every time I get an Ask like this I feel like I’m somehow failing at a fundamental level to convey the horror of what is going on in Thedas. The grim, ugly persecution and mass murder that is going on day-by-day, and is being sold to the average Thedosian as for their safety. The world of Dragon Age is terrifying, but not because it has demons or mages in it. It’s terrifying because of the amount of power it has ceded to the Chantry, and because of what that means for any person who doesn’t meet the Chantry’s definition of ‘normal’.

Okay. So. How should they handle it?

There’s a flippant part of me that just wants to say ‘Any way other than this!’ Because, honestly, it’s difficult to think of a system that’s worse than the one they have now. But it’s not as though they have no way forward.

The first thing I would say is that simply abolishing the Circle system should alleviate the problem considerably, because you aren’t going to have hundreds of mages packed into a place they can’t leave. You can’t have 500 possessed mages on your hands if only three mages live in your village.

It would also limit several of the causes behind possession: you won’t be forcing people to live in places where the Veil is routinely thinned by blood magic and demon summonings (phylacteries and Harrowings, respectively, and fuck the Chantry for their hypocrisy). You won’t be constantly subjecting people to high-stress situations: Tranquility, the Harrowing, forced separation from your family, long-term confinement, Templars in general, the fact that sometimes your friends just disappear and you have to accept this as normal – you know, the standard horrors of being a Circle mage.

Of course, there will still be cases where relatively large numbers of mages congregate to deal with matters affecting them specifically: classes, lectures, magic-related competitions or other leisure activities, and the political proceedings of the College of Enchanters.

Should any trouble occur in such situations – well, most schools have evacuation and lockdown procedures in place aimed at protecting students and staff when there’s a threat on campus. Why should this situation be any different? No system is ever going to be perfect, and you can’t guarantee that no one is ever going to die (we can’t do that in our world either), but you can have strategies arranged in advance to get people away from danger areas, and on what to do if you find you can’t get out and have to protect yourself until help arrives.

First thing is clear the area. Anyone who is not actively hurting someone else right now gets to evacuate. Right now, I don’t care whether any of the people in the crowd are also possessed. You can test for that, and it may not even be a problem. Unless you currently look like this:

… and you are trying to rip people’s arms off, you get to leave.

Now, yes, that still leaves us with a possessed person. On that point, I would say that the Chantry lands need to completely change how they view spirits, mages and possession. As far as I can tell, everything they think is wrong, and a lot of it is dangerous. The Chantry regards demons as ‘the Maker’s first children’, who turned on humanity out of jealousy. They are inherently evil and irredeemable. That’s not true. No spirit has ever corroborated that story, and All New, Faded for Her demonstrates that a demon is a spirit in pain, and can be healed.

The Chantry regards possession as just about universally a death sentence. And that’s … really not true. There are some cases where possession is just fine. The Chantry would have killed Wynne just as much as Uldred if they knew about her situation. Cullen wants to lock Sigrid in a room with a Templar, because he doesn’t grasp that there’s nothing wrong with her. Your first question, when dealing with a case of possession, should always be ‘Is this actually a problem?’ If not, go away and leave them alone.

Even in cases where you are looking at outright hostile demonic possession, the mage is rarely gone. Connor, untrained child that he is, still surfaces sometimes. Having defeated her Templars attackers with demonic assistance, Evelina first flees from her kids, taking the demon away from them – although she loses control later. Marethari will contain the pride demon with which Merrill has been working until she is clear of her clan and the battle can be fought in seclusion. Grandin’s kind of a weird case, because the possession was voluntary and the two are working together – but it does seem to be a demon. Nevertheless, in that case you can speak to him, and there remains hope that the two might eventually sort themselves out.

We know that mages can be saved from demons. Connor, Feynriel, Fiona, Pharamond – all people who have survived demonic possession. It’s not even necessarily difficult: you can send Jowan in to fight Connor’s demon – this poor hapless apprentice whom they were going to make Tranquil – and he does just fine. Of course, some demons are stronger than others; I’m not saying it’s not a good idea to have specialists. But the Chantry is seriously overstating the problem here.

When possessed, most mages think they are about to die. The brave, the strong, the selfless – they fight to contain the demon until someone can come and kill them so they don’t hurt anyone else. But in those circumstances, it’s all too easy to succumb to despair. Imagine if mages could think, not ‘hold on, they’re coming to kill you’ but ‘hold on, help is on its way’.

So the next thing to do would be ask Dorian. People always seem to forget that Tevinter exists and, given that mages are aristocrats there, would seriously frown on just murdering them out of hand. Anders says in Dragon Age 2 (I haven’t got a screenshot, yet) that they help possessed mages in Tevinter. Now, when you explain to him that your previous plan had just been to murder small children because of demons, Dorian is probably going to yell … a lot. I mean … really a lot. But the entirety of southern Thedas deserves that and worse, so I can’t be too bothered. Get him to send books and specialists. Make this part of the curriculum in the College of Enchanters. It might become part of the Spirit Healer specialisation, since they’re already good with spirits.

Our third thing is … well, asking Solas is probably impractical at the moment, but there are alternatives. We need people who care about spirits and who want to help them. Ask Cole: one way or another, his entire quest line is about providing a spirit with the emotional tools to handle the mortal world. There’s more than one path that works, so regardless of whether you chose more spirit/more human, he should have some insight. Ask the Rivaini, the Dalish, the Avvar. They know about spirits, and they know how to reach the Fade. Some things the Chantry thought were impossible (like safe spirit possession) turn out to be perfectly normal in other cultures.

The Chantry needs to admit they know fuck all about this situation and have been causing incalculable harm for centuries.

This whole process should be regarded like an outbreak of a really complicated illness: get everyone clear of the area, and send in professionals to help, rather than harm. Ideally, everyone should get out of this alive. You should be aiming to save the spirit and the mage. If that’s not possible, you save whom you can. Killing is only ever a last resort.

And finally … now we need to determine whether a criminal act was committed. If you got possessed because you live in Kirkwall, and it’s hard to go three steps without running into a demon, then you are a victim and once you’ve been freed of the demon you have nothing to answer for. If you thought it was a good idea to summon a demon army in your basement to TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD, then we’re going to have to bring in the guard to arrest you.

Now … that’s should. It’s probably not will. The Chantry has ruled Thedas for centuries, and they have taught people that mages want to get possessed and kill people and/or that mages want to be magisters and make everyone else slaves. Making Leliana Divine does not just do away with all that prejudice. She may well ask the questions and do the research – she’s a bright lady, and will just give zero fucks about gossip about talks with Tevinter or ‘barbarian’ cultures – but teaching people not to stab first and think later, not to regard mages as inherently evil at worst and as expendable sinners at best will take time. I expect them to handle many things badly. We haven’t done away with bigotry in the real world either, so.

There’s also the problem of Bioware, because they would really like it if I were deeply conflicted over whether to choose mages or Templars, so I do expect more side quests where they force me to kill possessed mages. I mean – I really hope they stop that shit, but I’m not expecting it.

But Circles and the Annulment are for no one’s protection. Well, no one’s but the Chantry’s. And I say: fuck the whole lot of them.

[santmat]

Awaken Your Divine Nature

"Awaken your divine nature to God. Strengthen your soul (to be) without evil…Seek what is permanent, what is not generated. The Father of everything summons you…You have not come to suffer. Rather you have come to escape from what binds you. Release yourself, and what has bound you will be undone. Save yourself, so that what is in you may be saved…Why are you hesitating? Turn around when you are sought. When you are summoned, listen." (Book of Zostrianos, Nag Hammadi Library of Egypt, one of the Gnostic Gospels -- translation by April DeConick)

Ingredients of a Living Spiritual Path: Seven Gnostic-Sant Mat Parallels

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” (Rumi)

With a living mystic path, initiation into the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven includes inner direct seeing and hearing. If we can’t see or hear, how could we possibly begin exploring Inner Space for ourselves? The information written in restaurant menus might be informative and yet can not resolve one’s hunger. And tales in sacred texts of people who once enjoyed glorious feasts centuries ago does not feed the living.

“When we see darkness with our eyes closed we are in the realm of death and re-birth [we are unaware of our true nature.]. When we come out of the realm of darkness and enter into the realm of Light, we will at the same time transcend the web of death. It is not possible that we can remain in darkness and be free from the net of birth and death. Having achieved inner Light, we can be liberated from the cycle of birth and death.” (Swami Sant Sevi Ji Maharaj, Harmony of All Religions)

1) living masters/teachers with students (past masters, scrolls, cuneiform tablets or old scriptures are not enough: a living guide is required);

“Rumi says, ‘If you seek to know God, sit at the feet of the Saints’”.

“People, where are you rushing, so intoxicated and having so fully drunk the strong wine of reasoning unaccompanied by acquaintance? You cannot hold it; already you are about to throw it up. Stop, get sober! Look up with the eyes of the mind [heart or soul] – and if you cannot all do so, at least those of you who can! For the imperfection that comes from unacquaintance is flooding the entire earth, corrupting the soul along with the body that encloses it and preventing it from putting in at the Haven of Safety. So do not be swept away by the main current! Rather, you who can must avail yourselves of a counter-current, take to the Haven of Safety, put in there, and look for a leader to show you the way to the Doors of Gnosis (Acquaintance), where there is bright Light, pure from darkness; where no one is intoxicated, but all are sober, fixing their eyes on that Being who wills to be seen – but mentally [with the eye of the soul], for that Being cannot be heard or told of or seen by eyes, only by the mind’s eye [the eye of the soul].” (Hermetic Tractate VII, Corpus Hermeticum: The Greatest Human Evil is Unacquaintance With God, Bentley Layton translation)

2) a cosmology of several heavens/inner regions/planes/spheres; Charts of the Heavens — Inner Regions — Planes — Spheres of Creation According to Sant Mat: https://medium.com/sant-mat-radhasoami-books/9132697adaa7

“Blessed are those chosen and unified. The Realm of the Kingdom is theirs. For out of her you have come, and back to her you are returning.” (Saying 49, Gospel of Thomas, Wisdom of the Twin, Lynn Bauman translation)

3) an understanding that souls can access these realms here and now during this present life (a present-tense Kingdom of Heaven available to souls right now, not a spirituality postponed till some magical date on a calendar or hypothesized future age);

“In this life the concept of salvation all describe; To meet the Lord by dying while living, none discloses. They all speak of the goal of salvation after death; How to attain it while living, no one says. Were they to reveal the method of attaining release while living, Then alone would Tulsi be convinced of their words. Who speak, after seeing with their own eyes, and teach the method of salvation during life, Are of the stage and stature of Saints, for they reveal the quintessence of the soul.” (“Seek To See God Now – Liberation During This Life” – Mystic-Poem of Tulsi Sahib)

4) an initiation into the mysteries of the heavens, imparting to spiritual seekers the meditation techniques and sacred names;

The Living Master said, “What your own eyes cannot see, your human ears do not hear, your physical hands cannot touch, and what is inconceivable to the human mind — that I will give to you!” (Saying 17, Gospel of Thomas, Wisdom of the Twin, Lynn Bauman translation);

"Come, that I may teach you about secrets no person has ever seen. For there exists a Great and Boundless Realm, whose extent no generation of angels has seen, in which there is a Great Invisible Spirit, which no eye of an angel has ever seen, no thought of the heart has ever comprehended, and it was never called by any name*.” (Yeshua, quoted in, The Gnostic Gospel of Judas)

5) visionary and auditory mysticism (inner Light and Sound, spiritual seeing and hearing) – descriptions of souls traveling within through various inner regions;

“Man’s soul shall become, when it leaveth the body, a great flood of Light, so as to traverse all the regions until it cometh into the Kingdom of Mystery… Seek, all of you, after the Light, so that the power of your soul that is in you may find Life. Do not cease seeking day or night until you find the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Light, which will purify you, transform you into pure Light, and guide you into the Kingdom of the Light.” (Gospel of Faith-Wisdom — Pistis Sophia)

“Look at God within yourself, how ‘God is Light.’ For his Nature is a glorious, many-splendored Light. He manifests the Light of his Nature to those who love Him in all the worlds…” (John of Dalyatha, Syriac Mystic)

“When your eye turns inwards in the brain and you see the firmament within, and your spirit leaves the body and rises upwards, you will see the Akash in which is located Sahas-dal-kanwal, the thousand petals of which perform the various functions pertaining to the three worlds. Its effulgence will exhilarate your spirit.” (Soamiji Maharaj, “Esoteric Instructions”)

“At first, Mataji pointed out, there will be only darkness but eventually light will appear in the form of either small flashes or small star-like points. In any case, one should focus on the radiance, keeping one’s simran intact and allowing the light to draw the soul inward. The third and most important step, Mataji said, is to listen to the sound that issues forth from the light. It is this internal music which will numb the body and allow the consciousness to leave its ordinary dwelling. By riding this current of light and sound, like a fish going upstream, the soul will be able to go back to its original home. On the journey within, however, the soul must be guided by a true master so as not to be detained in any of the lower illusory regions. According to Mataji, what near-death patients experience is only the beginning of a vast sojourn into great universes of light, love and beauty.”

– Yogani Mataji: https://medium.com/sant-mat-meditation-and-spirituality/the-teachings-of-yogani-mataji-radhaswami-satsang-hoshiarpur-71cfc9f63223#.1eq9lmbuw

“…Listen to the Sound that issues forth from the Light.” (Some valuable guidance about correct and proper Surat Shabd Yoga practice made by Yogani Mataji.)

“I am the silence that is incomprehensible. I am the Voice whose Sound is manifold and the Word whose appearance is multiple… I am the hearing which can be attained by everyone.” (Thunder: Perfect Mind, Nag Hammadi Library)

See, The Yoga of Sound — Exploring Sound Meditation (Auditory Mysticism, Surat Shabd Yoga) in the Sacred Texts of the Great World Religions and Gnostic Traditions: https://santmatradhasoami.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/the-yoga-of-sound-exploring-sound-meditation-auditory-mysticism-surat-shabd-yoga-in-the-sacred-texts-of-the-great-world-religions-and-gnostic-traditions-tuning-the-cosmic-radio-dial/

6) they have an ethical code, and this ethical foundation includes a vegetarian diet, then and now;

“In Sant Mat all Masters have decried killing and meat-eating.” (Sant Tulsi Sahib, “Ghat Ramayan”)

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” (Pythagoras)

See my article: Uncovering A Vegetarian Jesus at the Beginning of Christianity: https://medium.com/sant-mat-meditation-and-spirituality/uncovering-a-vegetarian-jesus-at-the-beginning-of-christianity-9279741be7c4#.taipg75yt

7) The Goal of the teachings and meditation practice is experiencing direct union with God;

“Within this body breathes the secret essence. Within this body beats the heart of the Vedas. Within this body shines the entire Universe, so the saints say. Hermits, ascetics, celibates all are lost seeking Him in endless guises. Seers and sages perfectly parrot the scriptures and holy books, blinded by knowledge. Their pilgrimage, and fasting, and striving but delude. Despite their perfect practice, they discover no destination. Only the Saints who know the body’s heart have attained the Ultimate, O Tulsi. Realize this, and you’ve found your freedom (while teachers trapped in tradition know only the mirage in the mirror).” (“Within This Body” – Mystic-Poem of Sant Tulsi Sahib of Hathras)

“The center-most part of your being — THERE is the Supreme Region. It is the sacred temple of the Spirit.” (Miguel Molinos, “The Spiritual Guide”)

[barddom]

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

I had never read Two Guys, A Girl, And Pizza Place – I mean, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (hereafter referred to as Gentlemen or Two Gents) before now. This is probably because it’s not one of the big, hyped Shakespeare plays (see: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear), but upon reflection it could stand to be performed more often? Small cast, simple plot, neat – if completely ridiculous – resolution. 

 Anyway, I hadn’t read it, but I guessed, based on the title, that it was about two dudes from Verona. And I was right. That’s pretty much it. 

 Without even realising it, I’ve leapt straight from “Shakespeare’s Last Play” (Tempest) to this, which some people believe was “Shakespeare’s First Play”. It was definitely an early play, and an early comedy, written probably somewhere between the late 1580s and early 1590s. While I’m not usually someone who’s like, “Oh, it’s an early play, which is why it sucks!” it… might have something to do with why it’s not great. 

Don’t get me wrong. Gentlemen has friendship, passion, conflict, drama, loyalty, and cross-dressing! (And really, what else is there?) But after stepping off the ship from Prospero’s cell and landing in Milan, finding this scene on shore is a little underwhelming. Where are the harpy spirits and chess motifs? Why is nobody half naked and swearing at the sky? Also, Gentlemen is #problematic. But we’ll get to that. 

So many, so so many of Shakespeare’s plays are about, or involve intimate male friendships. This is because intimate male friendships were a Big Deal, at the time, and not just in a gay way, but in a totally heterosexual, platonic way. (But sometimes also in a gay way.) 

The difference between Shakespeare and other writers who lauded male friendships is that Shakespeare is… suspicious of them, or suspicious of the idealized versions of them. In all his plays about male friendship, these friendships aren’t perfect. I will talk more about this at length during my summary, I guess, but also when we read Hamlet later. (I feel a great many things about Horatio.) 

The first imperfect friendship we’re going to meet is these guys, Valentine and Proteus of Verona. (A part of me wants to already press pause and say, seriously? Valentine and Proteus? What kinda on-the-nose names are these? But then I remember that, as far as I know, while Chaucer had already somewhat popularised Valentine as a saint of love, I actually have no clue how widely that kind of language was used. And also “Proteus” doesn’t just mean “First” (first lover, first character, first play?) but is also, like, a god of the sea? So really I need to calm down about my etymological leaps.) 

Act One 

Here’s the deal. Valentine is about to leave Verona to go explore the world (see: Milan), but he doesn’t want to leave without Proteus. Normally, these two guys are inseparable! Amigos! Compadres! Guys being dudes, dudes being guys! But alas, Proteus can’t leave Milan. Why? Because he’s in looooove. He’s so gone for this chick Julia that he turns down an all-expenses paid gap year with his bff. In the next scene, we find Julia chatting with her friend Lucetta, and the conversation is basically this-- 

Lucetta: That Proteus guy totally has a thing for you. Julia: Oh my god, really? Lucetta: Uh, yeah! It’s sooooo obvious. Julia: I guess he’s… cute.  Lucetta: Julie… babes… you literally wrote I Heart Proteus in your notebook eight times since I walked into this room. Julia, looking down at her notebook: Oh shit, you’re right. I mean. What? 

Julia is so determined to deny that she likes Proteus that when Lucetta says she has a letter from him Julia literally rips it up! And then tries to piece it back together and kisses it? Like Helga Pataki or something. It’s the weirdest. (1.2.99-123) 

Meanwhile, Proteus’ dad doesn’t understand why his son would want to waste his time at home when he could go have bro-tastic adventures in Milan. (Also, I just checked: Milan and Verona are… very nearby each other. You could walk there in just a few days.) 

Proteus has received a letter from Julia saying she loves him back! They’ve traded vows! He gave her a ring! But he doesn’t tell his dad about that, because he is worried his father won’t approve. So Antonio – that’s dad – forces Proteus to go to Milan and have some fun, damnit. 

Act Two 

In Milan, we meet Silvia, the object of Valentine’s affections. He’s all over her like a rash, but he seems incapable of understanding how she flirts. Ironically, Speed – Valentine’s servant from Act 1 who is supposed to be dim as a rock – seems to be the only smart, funny character who Gets Stuff. (Unless I’m reading him as being too sarcastic where he is supposed to be sincere.) 

For example: Valentine writes a love letter to Silvia, and she tells him to keep it. He says, “Wait, no, it’s for you?” and she says, “Yeah, I asked you to write it. But it’s for you.” 

 “I’ll write you another one, then.” 

 “Then after you write that, read it, and if you like it, good. If you don’t like it, then think of ways to make it better.” 

 “And what if I like it?” 

 “Then keep it for yourself.” (2.1.109-123) 

Exit. 

Valentine is (I guess understandably) frustrated, but Speed, speaking in rhyme/verse (where he normally speaks in prose), makes fun of the situation, like, “Hahaha, you essentially wrote yourself a love letter, lmao.” Speed explains that Silvia is flirting by having Valentine write love letters and giving them back to him. She is giving him love letters: “Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.” (2.1.156)

I have a soft spot for the fools, especially the fools that make fun of love and romance. Maybe I’m giving Speed too much credit, and he’s not actually smart/witty, just mean and a foil for the lovestruck protagonists. Fools are pretty much always a case of the wisest words coming from the foulest mouths. ANYWAY.

Silvia’s dad wants her to marry this guy Thurio, who she’s not keen on at all. And when Proteus turns up, he immediately forgets all about Julia and decides that he also wants to marry Silvia. Men are so predictable. 

 See, Valentine’s busy ribbing Proteus about Julia, and while Proteus is like, “Julia’s not a goddess. I just like her, mortal flaws and all,” Valentine is busy espousing the holy divinity of Silvia. Something in Proteus’ brain flips. He must have that goddess. 

Back in Verona, Julia is coming up with a Flawless Plan to go see Proteus in Milan. She needs to see him again or she’ll die. (2.7.15)

But she can’t travel as a woman, alone, without a male escort! So, she does what any rational woman would do, and decides to disguise herself as a boy. (Worth reminding you again: Milan and Verona are about 93 miles apart. That’s about a 3 day journey on foot.) 

 As this is the first time we, on this blog, are witnessing crossdressing in Shakespeare, it is worth reminding you that women did not act on the Elizabethan/Jacobean stage. All female characters are played by boys in drag, essentially. So when crossdressing happens – and it almost always happens with a girl pretending to be a boy – what is actually happening on stage is that a boy is pretending to be a woman pretending to be a boy. Layers!  

Act Three 

Proteus is plotting against Valentine, because nothing comes between two best dude friends better than a sexy lady. He tells Thurio – the other suitor – that Valentine has been sneaking up to see Silvia at night and that they’re planning on running away to elope. 

Thurio is like, “wtf?” and dobs this in to Silvia’s dad. The Duke is like, “Yeah….. I know….. it’s an issue.” Doubly an issue because Valentine has been tryna play the Duke like a harp. The Duke is too quick for this and tricks Valentine into revealing all his wooing techniques, and through some sort of weird trick involving a ladder (the logic of this train of thought remains unclear?) finds Valentine’s love letter to Silvia and is like “AHA!!!! YOU FIEND!!!” 

Valentine is told to leave Milan and never return. Boom. (3.1.120) 

The Duke is all, “Gee, I’m so glad my new friend Proteus tipped me off to all this. He’s such a stand up guy.” 

 Silvia, who was really into Valentine, is super pissed at her dad, and also wants nothing to do with Proteus since he’s the one who screwed everything up for her. Meanwhile, Proteus is trying to play Valentine’s old game, and pretends to be in favour of Thurio marrying Silvia. (Hint: this won’t work out well.) 

Act Four 

 On “the frontiers of Mantua”, Valentine and Speed get attacked by outlaws. If Mantua sounds familiar, it’s also where Romeo get’s banished to in Romeo and Juliet, so it’s clearly where all the rejects from the Italian justice system get sent.

Valentine lies to the outlaws and says he was banished by the Duke for killing a man. And they’re like, “Oh shit! This guy is legit! Let’s make him our leader!”

 And that’s how Valentine becomes the leader of a pack of outlaws. 

 Meanwhile, Thurio is futzing up his wooing of Silvia, because Proteus is giving him really bad advice, like singing bad songs and generally being annoying.

 There’s also a bit here where Proteus says, “… Yet, spanial-like, the more she spurns my love / The more it grows and fawneth on her still.” (4.2.14-5). This is almost the exact same line that Helena says in Midsummer re: Demetrius. Just worth mentioning. 

 This is when Julia enters, in boy’s clothes. (So, I guess it’s been three days.) She hears this song about Silvia and is like, “Woooooow. Ok. So… this sucks.”

 Even worse, she overhears a conversation between Silvia and Proteus, where he says, “Look, I was in love once, but that chick is dead, so… I’m wide open.” And Silvia responds, “That’s sad and all, but you also stabbed your best buddy in the back like a total tool. So I can never trust you, let alone love you.” 

 Silvia plans to escape Thurio, Proteus, and her father, and head to Mantua where she and Valentine can be together. Also, she gets rid of the little dog that Proteus gave her. Because who needs that shit around. 

 When Proteus sees that his dog has been returned to him, he’s like, “Fine! I can up my game!” He turns to Julia, who for some reason he doesn’t recognise, a la Lois Lane not recognising Superman when he has his hair done a little different, and says, “Take this ring and give it to Silvia.” 

It’s Julia’s ring! She is… crushed. 

 When Julia goes to give the ring to Silvia, like a lamb, she basically bursts into tears and says, “I knew Julia. And this belonged to her. And he wants to give it to you. But if she knew… she would… probably die forever and ever.” 

 Silvia – who, in my opinion, realises that this boy is actually Julia – says, “Take the ring, and this purse of money. Look, I’m crying too. Wow. Ok, bye.” 

Act Five (i.e. when things deteriorate quickly). 

Silvia wants to get the hell out of Milan, and she and Sir Elgamour talk about their plans outside Friar Patrick’s cell. They’re gonna run away! That always works well.

 (A lot of conspiring happens in, or by, a friar’s cell – see: Romeo and Juliet.)

 Meanwhile, Proteus being grilled by Thurio about Silvia. Does she like me? Does she hate me? What is going on! What Proteus really wants to know is what Silvia said to Julia aka Sebastian. 

 But before we can get any answer – the Duke bursts in and announces that Silvia has disappeared! Dun dun dun. 

“She’s fled unto that peasant Valentine.” Clever dad. 

 In the next scene, we find Silvia in the forest, alright, but Sir Elgamour is nowhere to be found! In fact: Silvia is being held captive by outlaws. I’m sure you, who is not an idiot, can see where this is going. 

 In the next scene, Valentine gives a speech about how lonely being the inexplicable leader of a band of outlaws can be, and how all he really wants is Silvia. Who cares about unchecked power and the loyalty of violent criminals when the love of your life has been taken away from you? Sigh. 

 But then, there’s a suspicious noise – and lo and behold, enter Proteus, Silvia, and Julia! 

Valentine steps aside into the shadows to eavesdrop on their conversation. 

Apparently Proteus (and Julia) helped rescue Silvia from the outlaws before she could successfully be taken to Valentine. 

 “What do you mean you still don’t want to fuck me!” Proteus complains. “After me and my servant rescued you and everything!” 

 “Dude,” Silvia replies, “I would literally rather be eaten by a lion than have you rescue me from anything.” (5.4.33-34) 

 “It’s a damn shame when a woman can’t love when she’s loved,” says Proteus.  

“It’s a damn shame when Proteus can’t love when he is loved by Julia who, yeah, I know is still alive, you steaming pile of human garbage. Also, I love Valentine, who was supposed to be your best friend,” Silvia replies – though I may be paraphrasing a little. 

 This is when Proteus, and I shit you not, “seizes her” and says, “I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arms’ end / And love you ‘gainst the nature of love – force you.” (5.4.59-60) 

That’s right. Proteus fully intends to rape Silvia then and there. 

 Valentine leaps out of the shadows and goes to rescue Silvia from Proteus, rightfully calling him all sorts of despicable names that I’m sure would have been very insulting to someone four hundred years ago. 

Naturally, Proteus drops everything (‘everything’ being Silvia) and apologises profusely. 

 “Okay, cool,” Valentine says. 

 Wait, what? OKAY COOL? “Then I am paid, / And once again I do receive thee honest”? How? 

 Similarly shocked by all these developments is Julia, who swoons. 

When everyone rushes to her side, she says, “Oh, I forgot to give Silvia this ring…” 

“But… this isn’t the ring I gave you to give Silvia. This is the ring I gave Julia!” Proteus says, like a genius. 

“Oh, right. I meant this ring,” Julia corrects herself, taking out the ring that she had given Proteus that he had then given Silvia. (Lots of rings.) 

“But wait, how did you get this ring?” Proteus asks, still not getting it. 

This is when Julia gives up and has mercy on everyone, and reveals herself to not be a little boy named Sebastian but a grown woman! And a very specific grown woman! 

After a bit of blushing about being seen in such immodest attire, Julia and Proteus kiss and make up. So now instead of a very messy love triangle/square/octagon, we just have two happy couples! Yay, heteronormativity restored!

Thurio, the Duke, and the band of outlaws all then rock up, presumably for the closing song. Are there going to be any consequences for anyone’s actions? No? Does Thurio hold this against Valentine? Absolutely not! What about the Duke? Any issues with his daughter ending up with the leader of a band of murderers? 

 “Sir Valentine, / Thou are a gentleman, and well derived; / Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserved her.” (5.4.158-59) 

Nope, and nope. 

Closing remarks? 

I think we can see why Two Gents isn’t considered a piece of High Art in the way a lot of other Shakespeare plays are. It’s essentially the Shakespearean equivalent of a sitcom, or a formulaic romantic comedy. When trying to look Deep into Two Gents, most people point to the gender relations and the complications that arise with crossdressing on stage. There are also grounds to investigate the role of forests in Shakespeare’s plays – if it happens in the woods it’s bound to be interesting. Then of course there are the all-encompassing questions about love, and the truth of love, and the relativity of that truth. Proteus was so in love with Julia that he almost couldn’t bear to leave Verona, and yet as soon as he saw Silvia, any love he felt for Julia went flying out the window. Shakespeare once said that love looks not with the eye, but with the mind. I would say that Two Gents preaches exactly the opposite. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder; it just sets it loose on the nearest soft object. 

Things to accompany The Two Gentlemen of Verona 

Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place (1998- 2001) starring Ryan Reynolds. 

The Road to El Dorado 

“Same Girl” by R. Kelly and Usher 

I dunno, every sitcom ever.

[tendingthearchive]

Having opinions in digital preservation

A talk for Australasia Preserves, the digital preservation community-of-practice.

Thank you for the invite to talk to you today.

My 9 year old asked me as we hiked down the far south coast last weekend, what is digital preservation. I said to him it’s about keeping digital stuff like  things on the internet forever. I don’t think it had ever occurred to him that what’s on the internet might be temporary.

So what’s difficult about keeping digital stuff forever then?

For me there are two factors:

1) that the digital needs an ecology. My background is archives both in the professional sense and in the humanities-metaphorical sense. When people ask me what is an archivist-they rarely do, most people have an opinion about what an archivist is. But my answer is that we are experts at putting information in context.

2) that boundaries in the digital are not clear cut and decisions must be made. Here I mean how deep do you go into the website, how much of that digital ecology do you need to keep to keep it alive.

And my solutions in short are:

1) we must get used to having, showing and justifying our opinions about the decisions we make in digital preservation.

2) we need both people and things if we want to keep such fragile things as digital resources alive. we need to charge people with caring for them so that all the knowledge that must go with them stays alive. We still need the traditional things of preservation but we and we need to keep them circulating.

So that foreshadows my points for you.

Now I must give you my credentials before I flesh out why I can make these quite massive claims.

Today I am talking to you from my desk in PhD study room in the arts faculty at the Uni of CBR. I am a member of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research.

I worked from 2002 until just a month ago at National Archives, initially in film preservation, then in information management, most recently Australian government information policy.

I broke up my time at the Archives with a stint at the Maritime Museum as a records manager.

My life in archives began in local government in Sydney.

My creative life in audiovisual media began back in 1990 in New Zealand and has continued throughout.

And now I am going to turn to the data set that has pointed me to to these massive claims.

My PhD uses a case study of a perfect storm of ephemeral media–a film performance from 1976 that involves super 8 film. Some of you may know it, so I will name it ‘Man With Mirror’ by British artist Guy Sherwin. My field work consisted of testing a ‘manual’ for the artwork that my colleague and I made some years earlier. I focused my research on testing the manual to try to understand if instructions/‘the archive’ are enough to keep live things like Man With Mirror alive. I commissioned an artist to work with me and the manual coproducer to try out the instructions. As a control experiment, I commissioned some artists to work on their own with only the manual.

In my sentence ‘understand if the instructions are enough to keep live things alive’, we can substitute language more familiar in digital preservation: ‘I wanted to understand if instructions can keep performance-dependent things alive’.

I want to make that link to digital preservation explicit. My work on Man With Mirror usefully flushes out some of the problems and issues that beset digital preservation.

Why? Because Man With Mirror is old school analogue made on super 8, it involves performance, and it’s quite old, made in 1976.

Here is footage of Guy performing. It’s quite hard to understand what’s going on in this video–that’s part of my point, a recording of it doesn’t do it justice.

Let me decode it for you–Guy filmed himself in a London park in 1976 performing a fairly fixed choreography with a mirror. He repeats that performance live with the film projected onto himself and the mirror. The performance becomes this surprisingly disconcerting experience–even though you can clearly see that it’s an interplay between ‘film Guy’ and ‘live Guy’ because you can see the projector, there are no tricks, nothing’s hidden. It creates a poetic and satisfying confusion where you can’t quite tell film Guy from real Guy.

So it’s like an early kind of VR or immersive media experience, the mirror image gets projected out around the audience, there is this uncanny doubling going on. Guy has performed this work a lot since 2000.

So here are the problems Man With Mirror shares with digital preservation:

1) it has to perform, both the technology and its content just like the Word document itself and the Word program or equivalent.

2) If it’s shelved on its own without any context or metadata, it will be completely unintelligible.

3) And because of its particular content, it can’t just be straight copied, that will lose one of its main ‘reasons for being’. It’s DNA has to be ‘kept alive’.

Part of my creative audiovisual media practice looks at underground film history. About a decade ago, an artist friend and I started ‘re-enacting’ some of the live or expanded cinema from the underground. Some of you may know our work–we are Teaching and Learning Cinema. We learnt from our early re-enactments and for Man With Mirror, we recorded our experience of the process in a ‘manual’ as a set of instructions. Our reasons included encouraging others to try staging Man With Mirror themselves and also preserving Man With Mirror.

So to return to my two key points:

1) we must get used to having, showing and justifying our opinions about the decisions we make in digital preservation.

- the manual is a ‘tale of experience’. It includes background info about Guy and Expanded Cinema but its call to future attention is that its subjective.

Sub points:

made as part of our art practice

a creative practice

no manual by Guy

not just that we made it up or riffed on it, we also wanted to attend to the rules and rigours, our creative contribution was to try to ascertain what was irrefutably different because we did it instead of Guy and the next person’s experience would be different.

instructions as creative product have a history - Fluxus is one of them - Maclow spirit of collab. tact etc.

2) we need both people and things if we want to keep such fragile things as digital resources alive. Sometimes we need to charge people with caring for them so that all the knowledge that must go with them stays alive. We still need the traditional things of preservation but/and we need to keep them circulating.

Let’s work through each of these points with my data from Man With Mirror.

We need people and things:

I commissioned Laura to work with Lucas and I to test the user’s manual. She surfaced that the embodied knowledge involved in the work wasn’t captured in the manual. She wasn’t quite sure where to put her hands. TLC had never specifically discussed this nor identified it as essential information until we worked with Laura. We did know the answer but we didn’t know it was important, it never occurred to us to pass that info on. And yet it’s really important for Laura.

There are two things to note here connected to why we need people and things:

TACIT Knowledge can be buried – it’s very difficult to record all the important information. Tacit knowledge can be hidden and it’s not until you experience it that you find things that need to be made explicit.

–the second one is that testing your collection and its records is critical. Most of us know this. Certainly in the archives world, the first rule of description as I learnt it was that you must test how you describe things to see if it actually takes the user where you want them to go and where they need and want to go. So with our user’s manual, the testing came after the manual but the manual will end up with an insert in the form of Laura’s tale of use.

I am taking this idea a step further at the moment in my current project with Guy’s partner Lynn to make instructions for a 16mm performance work of hers. We will make and test the instructions in five cycles of testing with different users. We are doing this in an exhibition in CBR called The Stand in Project.

UNDERSTANDING WHERE THE EMPHASIS SHOULD GO CAN BE DIFFICULT

Recently,  after Laura’s use some students tried out using the manual unaided to set up for TLC. They had trouble working out the relative importance of things. Did the puffer brush to clean the film projector play a major part? They really couldn’t work it out and of course, the puffer brush is a completely incidental tool. This is much like TLC’s early experience in staging other people’s artworks. We showed a seminal experimental film experience Line Describing a Cone. It involves haze. Our room was so dense with haze you couldn’t see from one side to the other. after discussion with the film maker, we realised the haze was a stand in for the cigarette smoke that would have been in the room in 1969 when it was first made, far less than we created. And we were deeply worried by the film print. Did the imperfections in the print ruin the idea? Over time we learnt that these considerations which had seemed so important were minor and the real ‘site’ of the work was robust, little we could do to derail the wonderful 3D sculpture that Line Describing a Cone creates.

Laura describes this in her ‘tale of use’ that she added to the WWM user’s manual. 

In the Stand in Project, I have asked Lynn to write a letter of ‘invitation’ to a future user to tell them in her own words what’s important to her about it, to try to impart some of her wisdom to that user.

So these are problems of emphasis. Or they are knowing what’s essential about the work. Or they are identifying the DNA.

Sometimes we need to charge people with caring for them

Some of you will have heard me talk before about Rebecca Schneider. She is a scholar of performance studies, the field that blossomed in the 70s drawing together ideas from anthropology and progressive theatre. Schneider wrote a book on re-enactment so she has been mandatory reading for me. One of her ideas that’s a useful challenge to heritage keepers is that a performance can be a record. Our usual thinking is that the problem with performance is that records of it are never the same as being there. There’s a whole line of scholarship that digs into this. But Schneider’s idea that a performance can be a record then puts our emphasis on keeping the structure that produces that record alive. Her example is the religious liturgy. Each performance is actually evidence that cultural knowledge persists. Keeping the individual liturgy has less urgency for those that value it than ensuring that the performance of the algorithm of the liturgy can continue. This is similar to our ideas in producing a manual for Man With Mirror. We wanted to keep the experience of Guy’s work alive. And as you can see from my description, just keeping Guy’s film components won’t allow an experience of the work when Guy’s not around because essential to the work is a relationship between the performer and the person in the film.

And Lucas and I as TLC explored this idea of getting users partly because we wanted to see if we could establish a ‘mini ritual’ around Man With Mirror. And this goes to the idea I talked about in my iPres 2016 offering, that in this model of ‘preservation as/of doing’, a small community of ‘carers’ is brought into existence. We have no evidence yet that the small community will persist over time but that concept, of forming a ‘circle of support’ for variable media objects that we really care about seems promising.

Some other points if they come up: my idea about a circle of support for media is a massive claim. Can we scale it across things like the National Archives? If we want the records of the Wheat Exports Board, if we want to actually understand those emails are we going to be able to do that. My ambitions for the National Archives are more modest - we want to include tales of use - when people use these records, their use fleshes them out in a particular way.

Man With Mirror is in the collection of the EYE Film museum in Amsterdam, but what’s in the collection is limited to the film components. A film archives scholar proposed using choreographic notation to record the movements that are carried out in Man With Mirror. My conservator husband suggested you would in the future cast a ‘look alike’ to perform the work.

What kind of use or ‘contact’ might a future visitor/user want from the variable object.

[commedias]

🌼

SEND A FLOWER TO HEAR… (currently accepting)(from hongbin and kyungri )

🌼… a story about the past. (sequel to this post)

            the guests have been dwindling by the hour, either slumped on the sofas out of sheer exhaustion or dragged back with weary feet to their dormitories. only the two of them remain, hongbin still dozing peacefully on kyungri's lap. she's perfectly content to stay like this, to prolong the fantasy that the friends had turned into LOVERS — even though that was far from the case. she strokes his cheek tenderly, admiring how gentle he appeared in sleep. that single sight seizes her attention, drowning out the syncopated beat of music which still dutifully drummed on even at this late hour.

           a shrill ring of his phone interrupts the peaceful moment. she almost doesn't hear it, so asborbed with hongbin that she almost lets it continue its siren song of a ringtone. however, the man stirs on her lap, the notification bell bringing him back into an awakened state. he's still in a stupor from the edible, almost siding with kyungri by ignoring the consistent blare. but habit gets the best of him, leaning forward to retrieve the phone from his pocket. he couldn't imagine who could be calling him at such an obscure hour. his family scarcely called and when they did, they made some semblance of effort to consider the timezone difference.

            checking the caller id, he confirms it as a nevada number though not one belonging to his family members. brows arch in suspicion, not able to mentally process such a peculiarity in his mental state. kyungri uses a hand to lift his head up further, a coral hue tinting her cheeks from the gesture. hongbin doesn't object, if anything appreciating the support from her hand. fiddling with the phone, he positions it awkwardly by his ear while still laying on kyungri's lap. fortunately, the music has subdued to a volume where he can perform the call without leaving the room.

           ❛ hello ? ❜ he asks in a groggy tone, chagrined by such an arbitrary call. he couldn't fathom who would want to speak with him so urgently that it couldn't wait until morning. the caller introduces themselves as a faculty member of the psychiatric institution his mother had been residing in for the last year. he listens in horror, the effects of the edibles sharply wearing off upon hearing the information delivered on the call. the staff intended on withholding the information until they could better gauge mrs. oh's physical and mental condition. however, the staff had taken the initiative himself to inform hongbin of the negative reaction she had to her most recent treatment of electroconvulsive therapy. her condition seemed to swing like a pendulum, one moment faithfully taking her medication and then the next refusing it completely. her fickle nature proved too severe for them to consider out-patient options for his mother.

            he thanks the caller for his information and assures him that he'll be swiftly returning home — this time, for good. he knows neither his brothers nor father will come to her aid. their negligence was another reason she remained in in-patient programs. both of the brothers had estranged themselves from their family, jaded towards their father for his remote disposition during their childhood. he had always been so preoccupied with his private business that he didn't allot much time for his sons. only hongbin had formed some semblance of a bond with him, the pair able to enjoy each other's company from mutual interests. even then, hongbin and his father had never been entirely amicable toward each other, especially not when it came to his mother.

           the two bickered constantly over what was best for the mental stability of mrs. oh. mr. oh vehemently stood against any form of mental health treatment, renouncing it all as a sham. his brothers shared similar sentiments, the stigma common among many koreans. only hongbin had taken a more progressive attitude towards the issue. after watching his mother suffer for two years without any reprieve, the boy couldn't bear to watch any longer. he negotiated with his father to have her committed to an institution, only for the man to desert her there and never visit. hongbin knew it was for the best, yet he still found the conditions of the facilities somewhat appalling.

            the peeling wallpaper, the apathetic staff — all of it only brought more gloom to the people who must needed some form of cheeriness. with each visit he paid to her, hongbin came prepared with a bouquet of white orchids, their bright, blank petals contrasting the dreariness of the hospital. at this stage in his life, he's still clinging onto enough hope to visit her without hestitation though the habit wears off in later years. he abruptly removes himself from kyungri's lap, pocketing the phone in his trousers. although she hadn't been able to distinctly hear the conversation over the phone, kyungri could detect his concern from the shifts in facial expression. the hand which had been nestled softly in his hair now returns back to her lap sheeplishly.

            ❛ what happened ? ❜ she keeps her tone light, not wanting to further enhance the melancholy. she's the only one he's confided in about his mother's condition, meaning he can tell her about this issue freely. he needs the comfort now, still mildly disoriented from the edible he consumed earlier. at the same time, he can't afford to wait, his duty as a son compelling him to fly across the country just to see his mother. but for now, his head hangs limply, tears pooling in his eyes. he felt helpless as he had for the last several years. his mother was suffering inexplicably and yet all he could do is watch from the sidelines while professionals prodded at her. the least he could do was be at her side — thought he knew that wouldn't be enough. it would only be enough when he progressed in his career of politics. only in his third year of his bachelor's program (with law school still looming two years away), he wouldn't be able to obtain such power any time soon.

            ❛ m-my mother, she's... she's not doing good right now, ❜ granted she wasn't dying, but hongbin had trouble forming his words correctly in his depleted states, mind racing with concern for his mother, ❛ the shock therapy isn't working the way it was supposed to. she won't eat, won't take her medication, ❜ the tears spill forth, lunging into kyungri's arms without hestitation. she's startled by the action, afraid of sharing such intimacy with the man she cared for. she sets her romantic emotions aside for the time being, cradling him in her arms. her eyes become moist, not wishing for him to be in such pain. not oh hongbin, the man with an irrevocably damaged, but yet to be entirely broken. and she wouldn't let it break now, considering this as only a small fissure. he can get through this, just as he always had with his mental fortitude. he's not perfect, but his honor comes from using such imperfections to grow as a human being. and for that very reason she respects him, admires him, supports him, and above all, LOVES him — even though he might not love her back, at least not to the same degree.

            torrential tears still shedding, he forces himself out of the comfort of her embrace. he can't allow himself to wallow in pity like this, not when his mother needed him. he dusts off any lint which might have collected onto his shirt, attempting to look some semblance of put together as his world was gradually falling apart. he'll have to transfer schools. his full-ride scholarship to dartmouth which he had worked at relentlessly throughout his academic career would become useless. instead, he would have to enroll at the university of las vegas, a considerable downgrade, in order to be close to his mother. the school of his dream swapped for one that couldn't even compare in merit.

            he could shake off the acquaintances he made here without remorse, only socializing with them to entertain himself from time to time. but kyungri was far more than that to him. in their short time together, they had forged a strong friendship which neither of them had experienced prior to emeting one another. both had sacrificed their childhood for a higher objective in life. for hongbin, it had been his political ambition, particularly on bringing awareness to mental health reform. for kyungri, it meant overcoming the discrimination sent her way and pursuing law to protect the weak, as she had been at one point of her life. both of them pushed each other to achieve their goals. he couldn't imagine not having her at his side, but for now, it was a necessity.

            he knew it was plausible (thought it might cost a pretty penny) to book a flight back home to vegas for tomorrow. but his emotions wouldn't allow him to wait until then, instructing him to take his car and endure the long drive which would equate to roughly over three days. logically, it would work in his best interest to take the first flight tomorrow. at this point, logic had been thrown out the door. enough of the edible has worn off for him to safely drive, already regaining his composure to to complete the task. he steadies himself on two feet once more, no longer lounging on the sofa with kyungri. she rises to accompany him, following him loyally as she always had. the two leave the party without any goodbyes to the other guests, seunghee only eyeing them as they went out with a knowing glance.

            ❛ i have to move back home, ❜ he announces once they've made it out of the venue. let me go with you. that's what kyungri longs to say along with an assortment of other things. but her throat constricts, knowing she can't speak them. not now, not like this. as much as she would follow him without hestiation, leaving so abruptly would harm her academic career. exams loomed on the horizon, a critical period for kyungri to be attentive to her classes. she couldn't compromise her grades, not even for him. besides, this battle was ultimately his more than it was hers — though soon enough it would become THEIRS. she would leave as soon as this semester ended, determined to serve him to the best of her ability. she believed in his political ambition and intended to act as his secretary once he maanged to catch his footing. until then, she would be his friend, willing to move across the country if it it meant supporting him. most importantly, she wouldn't object, knowing he had to do this in order to resolve the conflict created by the treatment given to his mother.

            both of them stand before each other with eyes rimmed in red, bloodshot from fatigue and anguish. this wasn't goodbye, only a temporary farewell. they embrace each other without question, kyungri releasing any ambivlance she might have had before. she holds him without restraint, caring for him deeply as the first and only friend she had ever had. he sobs into the crook of her neck, still emotionally jilted from how quickly everything was occuring. what was supposed to be a harmless party had turned into one of the worst revelations of his life. their arms remain firmly secured around one another, foolishly thinking that perhaps the grip of their embrace might be strong enough to hold together everything else which was falling apart.

            ❛ i'll miss you, ❜ hongbin's the first to choke it out, kyungri never the best at expressing her emotions. ❛ i'll miss you too, ❜ she echoes, response muffled by the fabric of his shirt. they pull away from one another with one final look. in nuzzling against his frame, her glasses had been skewed to the side. hongbin reaches forward to remove them, cleaning them with his shirt before restoring them to her face. he strokes her cheek incidentally, finger grazing over the scar everyone mistook as a beauty mark. everyone but him, who couldn't be fooled. the image of her face imprints itself in his mind, a momento to keep for later to renew his strength in times of weakness. she had been a good friend, her encouragement towards him up until now an immense help to hime during this time of misery.

            ❛ goodbye, lee kyungri. ❜

            ❛ goodbye, oh hongbin. ❜

            he pivots back towards his dormitory to gather his belongings, not a single star to shine a light within the pitch-black firmament above him.