#i was just trying to write a therapy scene and then stuff happened afterward and it just got away from me. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moonlit-imagines · 3 years ago

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Pent Up

Helmut Zemo x reader

warnings: death, slight self inflicted injury to reader, anxiety attack, blood mention, alcohol

a/n: i FINALLY got around to writing this HELLO and sorry it took FOREVER dhshhshsh its 3am as i am starting this lets see where it goes

prompt: anonymous: “Hello, Zemo anon here ! Resending request, hopefully this has more plot details Could I get a one shot please ? Details/Plot stuff/ : This takes place during TFATWS ( the falcon and the winter soldier ). Reader lost some of their family members after some bad guys went after them, Zemo, Sam, and Bucky for revenge. Reader is obviously shaken but they don't have time to grieve properly because they could be in danger. Since reader didn't/doesn't have time to properly grieve for what they lost, they just shove their emotions aside. After the threat is averted, Reader has so much bottled up emotions that they have an anxiety attack/breakdown. They head outside for a walk to try and clear their head but end up punching a wall impulsively. Their hand isn't broken but just swollen and bruised a little. They head back inside ( to zemo's safe house ). Zemo is the only person awake and he immediately can sense that something is wrong. Reader tries to tell them they are fine but he isn't convinced. He, out of pure concern, follows them to their room. He notices they are favoring one of their hand and he goes and gets an ice pack. He comforts them afterwards. Okay, if that's too much, then I'm so sorry omg. My brain can be very weird sometimes. ~ 🖤”

You sat in silence on the jet after hearing the news. “Troubling” was the way you outwardly described it, only because you knew how much was at stake right now. For now, you would only stare down at your feet and wait for the next horrible thing to happen. After a while, Sam had rested his hand on your knee to let you know he was there, but you desperately needed to be kept on track. You couldn’t bare think about it because if you let yourself begin, you’d picture the whole scene, every painstaking moment up until the end. What they saw, what they felt, how you failed them.

You had only been gone from home for a few days, but that was enough for your enemies to know your family was unprotected, completely exposed. Your enemies wanted revenge and they’d gotten it at the worst time. Although, any time would be considered the worst when you lose everything.

You kept trudging along despite the burning pain in your chest from all the emotions you wouldn’t show. Sam, Bucky, Zemo, they could surely imagine your pain. They’d lived through loss, but right now you weren’t interested in any comfort. “Y/N? You wanna talk about it?” Bucky asked you, bringing you back to Earth.

“I don’t need you sharing your therapy tactics, Buck.” You snapped at him and he glanced over at Sam, who just shook his head in an effort to get him to cease. But Zemo wanted to take things into his own hands. This was a pleasant trip for him, he couldn’t let you bring it down.

“You know, y/n,” Zemo turned around and looked at you, who was fighting back tears that would not escape in front of him, “the Avengers murdered my entire family. I know that it hurts, I know you are angry, but you must think clearly and make wise decisions in these next few days, weeks, months, even years.” He explained with some alluding to his own experiences.

“Yeah, I’ll make sure not to frame a war hero for terrorism and murder in order to further my revenge agenda.” You calmly but fiercely replied to the Sokovian and Bucky stifled a laugh, making Sam swat him.

“Alright, enough from you, Zemo. No more talking about murder.” Sam prematurely ended the conversation and just went back to the normal bickering between the three of them to keep the heat off of you. He knew you needed space more than anything. Sam had lost people during his service in the Air Force. It really does sting, and this job doesn’t leave much time for grieving, but this wasn’t the military, you’d get your space and your respect for the time being.

You were quiet for the most part, just letting that blanket of stillness take you over and let you believe that everything would be fine for now. Bucky and Sam kept a good eye on you, making sure that you didn’t lose yourself during this mission.

When you landed in Latvia, you found some solace in the unfamiliarity and calmness of the streets, making private walks your temporary thing and starting immediately. During the walks along the intricately laid stones, you reflected on your mistakes, regretting taking up this mission and feeling guilty for the pain you caused your family.

You made your first round of exploration and went back to Zemo’s safehouse, and upon re-entering you saw Sam and Bucky waiting for you in their usual comforting way.

“Hey! How’re you feeling?” Sam asked you for the tenth time, knowing you wouldn’t answer honestly. He just needed you to know there were people there for you.

“We got you some food.” Bucky handed you a plate of random snacks he’d pulled from the cupboards and walked it over to the table along with a glass of water. “Just sit and eat for a minute. It’ll be good for you.” You sighed and obliged him, sitting down near Zemo and getting crumbs all over his couch.

“You’re—” Zemo nearly commented on said fact, but Sam butt in quickly.

“Ah, ah,” Sam cut him off with a raised finger, “stop talking. Right now.” Zemo rolled his eyes and you continued your snacking for a few minutes, casually asking questions every once in a while.

“Guys, any mission updates yet?” You perked up to ask them and they simply said “no.” They were telling the truth so far, but even if there were, they were a bit hesitant about you joining up. Now, after some things went worse, like the new Captain America finding you four and causing a giant scene in Latvia, you became even more distressed.

You watched a man get executed in front of a crowd. It only reminded you of how your family was hurt and your friends knew it. Sam and Bucky pulled you near as you stared at the scene in shock, clenching onto one of their arms as your pain finally hit you. You had to go and it had to be now. “I’m gonna go take a walk.” You bluntly told them and they both stared at you like you were crazy.

“Right now? Y/N, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Sam tried to protest it but you just walked straight away from the bloody scene and they let you. You could handle yourself, for sure, but they still worried for you and your safety. And they had good cause since you ended up having a massive anxiety attack that you simply insisted on walking off. They tried to contact you several times, but you just turned your comms and tracker off and told them you’d be back when you were ready.

You walked dozens of circles around the area until you had felt stable enough to come back, but on the way, you went from anxious to angry, resisting the urge to scream into the night and instead balling up your fist and launching it into a brick wall. Your judgment was quite clouded and throwing your hand into the wall was anything but a good idea, but for a split second it just felt good. The ache afterwards did not, though, as your knuckles bled slightly and your hand began to pulse in a light swell. You stuffed your one hand into your pocket and marched back to the safehouse in a new mood, not much better than before, but at least you were feeling.

You expected them to all be asleep by now, especially considering the day you all had. But Zemo was still awake, sitting beside a small lamp with a glass of whiskey as he watched you enter the building.

“Huh, I thought we had locked that.” He looked into his glass and rocked the ice in it back and forth. “Would you like a drink?” Zemo offered like a true host.

“No.” You growled and tried to find a room to stay in for the night. He noticed the fresh bloodstain that came through your pocket and deduced what may have happened.

“Are you sure? It may help you feel better.” He suggested and you stopped in your tracks, slowly turning to him.

“I. Am. Fine.” You sternly tried to convince yourself and Zemo sighed, setting his glass on a coaster and standing up, cautiously heading toward you as if you were some feral cat he was trying to catch. You took a deep breath and angrily stared at him as he drew closer. Zemo then gently took your hand from your pocket and inspected the irritation.

“You are not a great liar. I’m surprised you used to be a spy.” Zemo poked fun at you and held your hand up in front of your face as you turned your gaze away. “This is not a good idea. This is self harm. I am sorry it has gotten to this point.” He genuinely offered that apology to you and headed towards the refrigerator to grab an ice pack originally meant for his children. That explained why it was shaped like a princess crown. “This should help the swelling. You know, I understand that there are not always bad guys to punch, but the walls of this nice town are not a great substitute.”

“You’re idea of coping is literally bombing UN meetings, don’t comment on my coping mechanisms.” You snatched the icepack and set it on your beating hand.

“I know. I wasn’t saying it was right.” He agreed with you and took a seat back on the couch, right where he left an indentation. “As I mentioned before, I know what it’s like to lose family like that. Suddenly, violently…without a proper goodbye. I’m sure they knew it wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my fault, I was supposed to keep them safe.” You told him as he poured you an optional glass.

“These were adults, as well, right? Ones capacity of defending themselves and their home?” Zemo tried to reason with you, although it was a bit rough. “I figure a smart person like you had a handful of backup plans, as well, just in case you were ever to leave the home in times of trouble like now.” He pointed out and you looked away from him, assuring him that he was on the right track. “Please, sit.” He tapped the couch seat and waited for you to join him willingly.

“Just because there were backups doesn’t mean I can’t feel responsible. Guilty.” You told him as you took the seat he suggested and grabbed the drink.

“I never said you couldn’t.” He replied.

“You implied it.” You shot back.

“I certainly did not mean to.” Zemo frowned. “I felt guilty when my family passed, even if it wasn’t directly my fault. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hurts to think that, but I had no power after leaving the house.” He explained his grieving process to you a bit, making him feel more human to you. “Grief is not going to be a linear path, and no one can tell you how to grieve, but people will be there for you. Barnes and Wilson, they are here for you. They have shown that.”

“And you?” You looked him in the eye once more.

“In a way, I suppose. It seems I’m your only option in this hour.” Zemo smiled and refilled both of your glasses. “I’d like to add that just because no one can tell you how to grieve does not mean you cannot do something wrong. I am not proud of my actions in Lagos. Barnes was trying to hide and live a normal life away from what he was forced into. Although I do hate you heroes and would very much love if you all died, I took innocent lives that day and I broke up a family. My grief only caused more pain.”

“Glad you see it that way.” You clinked your glasses together and downed the next supply. “I’ll…I’ll get through it. Without killing any innocent people, thank you very much.”

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red-hood-vigilante · 4 years ago

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more hbo spn rambles, thoughts, drabbles etc. long long post.

part 1 here

there’s some things i’ve omitted here bc others have already posted about those things, certain headcanons and characterizations and stuff. those posts are in my likes somewhere (and i’ll reblog them someday), and there’s some posts i’ve read but not liked, which i now can only vaguely remember, which is why some ideas/thoughts are similar

ALSO most of these follow the model i talked about in part one: how s1-5 will stay more or less how they are but s6-10 is changed (some things are cut out entirely, some things are tweaked and some characters + arcs are more fleshed out. more focus on sam’s trauma and post-cage adaptation to the real world as well as dean letting his rage and control issues consume him and how he’d recover and redeem himself)

as i typed these paragraphs, i realized i really have 10 seasons mapped out and ready to go. hbo hire me!!

alright go:

sam and dean get wearier as the show progresses (second half), and eventually they stop putting so much care and thought in the people they save. like...hm how do i say this, like as long as a victim/victims are saved, they don’t care about how that happens or how those people suffer potential consequences, like if the victims lose a limb or have their homes burned down because of the monster, then sam and dean don’t really care. they saved your life, now they’ll leave you with your life in potential shambles and not care because all that matters is that they saved your life, not how it is afterwards. they still care about saving that one person, but eventually it pales a little in comparison to a war between heaven and hell, being the vessels etc. ---> saving people becomes less about making sure they’re actually alright and healing from horrific events and more about just making sure they have a pulse before they move on

when angels lose their wings they are either burned off in the actual fall or ripped off of them in their vessels, which leaves pretty nasty scars on the vessel

ed and harry are so young and bright eyed about the whole hunting thing; sam and dean as kids, idolizing it, finding it exciting and intriguing when they shouldn’t. sam and dean try to get them out of the business before they too are too traumatized and desensitized to do anything but hunt. neither sam or dean will say it but they are jealous of ed and harry and their freedom to leave, and hate them for choosing this voluntarily instead of being dragged into it by tragedy

hbo spn is a slow burn. there’s a lot more shots of sam and dean in silence just sitting together after a hunt, exhausted and too tired to move yet. they’re covered in blood and guts on the side of the road after killing or covered with dirt in a graveyard after burning bones, sitting next to the fire, just watching it. the times they park the car and watch the stars? we get to see it.

dean wears rings and the amulet all the time in the beginning, for the first five seasons. the rings vary; first they’re some of john’s old ones and stuff he finds in thrift stores. then later on he begins wearing rings from people they’ve saved/haven’t saved as a keepsakes etc. when he begins his descent to the holy murderer in s6-10 he wears less and less rings. they don’t matter anymore -> symbolically shedding who he was and what mattered to him

the only accessories sam has is a rosary/cross around his neck. he has jess’ engagement ring in his pocket/wallet. after the cage he vaguely remembers why the ring was there and who jessica was (more on this further down)

the four horsemen are manifestations of different aspects of human nature at its most grotesque and strongest, can’t be killed as long as humans live. war is conflict, famine is desire, pestilence is physical and mental illnesses.

(the seven sins are like the horsemen, tulpas of human nature instead of demons)

death isn’t a concentration of an existing aspect of humans as much as it is the end of life, the antithesis of life. death the oldest of the horsemen and has existed since the beginning of any life, organism, cell and atom. the opposite of life and light, the other half of god (as i’m typing this i’m confused as to why amara was the opposite of god instead of death). death isn’t evil or good, remains 100% objective. doesn’t care for sam or dean at all, but has a begrudging respect for their stubbornness and entertainment they provide due to their flat out refusal to do as they’re told by celestial bodies when anyone else would crumble

by including death i feel like it very naturally begs questions of who decides when someone dies, when someone lives, why would death follow these guides instead of reaping whomever whenever, what happens if a life isn’t reaped at the right time etc. the reader in me adore the idea of death having a library with books and records of everyone who has ever lived and died and how they died - but then, who writes these books and why? do they decide, and if in that case, how? these questions are above my paygrade but you know what i mean? like there has to be some sort of system right, god created everything, death executes to maintain order, some third party deity writes the laws and the books. the three branches of government. ok but it’s hbo so again, i think we shouldn’t dive this deep into things, like as much as these topics intrigue me i don’t want to stray too much from the dirt road trip aesthetic

shapeshifters are extremely rare because they don’t require any kind of human blood or organs/sacrifice to live

i want more exploration of how magic is like science, like it just needs the right ingredients and right conditions. sam thinks of magic as an obscure branch of science; it just requires research and knowledge and clear intentions because science can be controlled and do a lot of good when used responsibly. dean doesn’t like it. he doesn’t trust the unpredictable elements and he’s seen enough to know it never goes well. magic is a force that can’t be controlled by anyone.

sam and dean have full on fist fights regularly. to practice and keeping each other sharp, but also because they’re siblings. they’re feral, insane and unhinged with each other and they get on each other’s nerves A LOT. it’s petty and childish and sometimes it can get a lil ugly but it becomes their way of family therapy. after a fight the next scene cuts to sam and dean with ruffled clothes, nosebleeds and swollen lips at a diner eating silently after beating each other up. either they sit in silence because they’re tired or both are harping on the other’s openings and weaknesses

sometimes they’ll fight a little dirty but they do so in different ways; dean will pull the old ‘look!’ and point to something and then tackle sam when he turns to look while sam will just cry out in fake pain which makes dean stop dead in his tracks before sam headbutts him or kicks him in the groin

we, the audience get used to these fights, they’re sometimes funny and for comic relief, sometimes for narrative purposes (like tricking a monster they’re fighting each other when they’re really not) BUT. then comes the times when sam and dean are actually fighting without holding back and we see how much they are capable of hurting each other or how heartbreaking and difficult it can be to watch when of them are incapable of fighting back/doesn’t defend himself -> swan song when dean doesn’t fight back against possessed sam, or when dean beats soulless sam unconscious

sam and dean also just verbally bully each other constantly but they do have their odd ways of expressing affection and care. they get the other person their fave snack whenever they go grocery shopping without being asked to and are the only other one they truly trust to have their back in hunts. have a cup of coffee ready before the other asks for one. brothers and each other’s best friend. nightmare duo but in a sweet way. the cooperation of ‘the usual suspects’ when they’re in different interrogation rooms but still has the cover story down to a t. code words and code names and cover stories, they know it all

when sam and dean fight together against a common enemy they’re a damn nightmare - because they know each others weaknesses and habits, they cover each other perfectly and in complete silence. they’ve been at it together since they were kids and read each other’s nonverbal cues like a picture book

to build off of what i said in part 1; the winchesters are pretty hated in the hunter’s community. even the people sam and dean frequently work with (bobby, ellen, jo, ash, rufus, bela, kevin, charlie, castiel etc) roasts them all the time and don’t hesitate with calling them out on their self-pitying crap when it get’s too much (spn was just objectively better when characters weren’t afraid of dragging sam and dean through the mud for being selfish and stupid) and this WILL persist in hbo spn. the only reason people continue working with sam and dean is because they know deep down a lot of the things that happens aren’t sam and dean’s fault - but they still blame them for it. doesn’t make it easier how sam or dean sometimes start crap on purpose to save the other

the winchesters are terrifying and people for sure tell stories about them, but not like ‘they’re heroes’, more like ‘they’re insane and dangerous. stay the fuck away from them’. some stories are true, like how they’ve worked with demons, but some are just game of telephone. (dean has apparently a ghost he is frequently possessed by while sam is actually a mutant vampire). hunters hate and are scared of the winchesters. sam and dean are never invited to hunter stuff (burials, memorials etc) but crash them nonetheless even though the hunters do NOT want them there.

you know what drives me insane when i think about it? how some characters in spn already are their hbo spn counterparts; john. mary. adam. maybe kevin?

other things that already are their hbo spn counterparts: dean throwing away the amulet right in front of sam. eyes burning when angels are seen. how ghosts are just tragedies, stuck in a loop they can’t leave. how a lot of the monsters they meet are just victims or their circumstances or the first victim of a curse. the impala being sam and dean’s home. dean not knowing how to comfort sam when he’s upset other than trying to do things for sam that usually brings dean comfort (driving the impala, listening to rock music etc). the roadhouse. heaven being an eternal version of the memories that made you the happiest even though it’s not real. sam wanting independence and freedom but never fully having it. dean fearing being alone more than anything else and that’s where he always ends up. sam has an eating disorder after the demon blood and dean has an alcohol problem he refuses to see as a problem. dean saying “i’d do it again” without an ounce of regret and pouring himself a drink when sam tells him it was fucked up to lie to him about gadreel

the demon/angel hybrid: THIS could be sooo interesting to explore. an angel and demon hybrid are you kidding me?? not to toot my own horn too much but i’m so clever. i should write this story myself. SO. does this creature have parents who fucked in their vessels or was this an experiment by god (yes i love the ‘mad scientist’ idea, that really should’ve been played up way more) or did a pre-existing creature (human or otherwise) drink demon blood and angel grace at the same time so that it created itself? so much potential for some really intriguing storytelling and character exploration - not only the creature itself and what they would be like, but also for the people around; sam, dean, castiel, jack etc. how would they react to this thing that is the very definition of defying heaven and hell and all the natural laws? does it exist before the show starts or will we see its birth?

the powers of the demon/angel hybrid would be tricky; a mix of holy and defiant, grotesque and beautiful. unconsciously forces people to tell the truth when talking to them. poisons whatever they touch. eyes of a demon, wings of an angel. can smite but skin will burn when touching iron. can do deals but will require a sacrifice in return, not a soul, usually a body part taken then and there (the hybrid eats it. it favours eyeballs and the liver - angels like raw meat). lights always flicker. makes things explode when angry (esp people and cars). can manipulate feelings, thoughts and memories. can travel to both heaven and hell, not welcome in either places. + standard stuff like telekinesis, teleportation, mind reading, super strength etc.

sam and dean’s wardrobe are pretty much the same; whatever’s cheap and not covered in blood. however, they do have stylistic differences. sam thinks graphic tees are funny, dean uses whatever’s black combined with john’s leather jacket. their wardrobe melds as they stop thinking of themselves as individuals and more of “me and my brother,”. their clothes are tattered and torn to shreds all the time. hand me downs, hand me ups. when they stray off their “path” and do things that are the crux of a storyline/character arc, this would reflect in their clothes. when sam is with ruby and becomes more and more “evil” he wears more and more red, a colour he has stated in the past he doesn’t really like. when dean is dead, sam starts to wear his rings and john’s and dean’s leather jacket. when dean decides he’s going to say yes to michael he dresses in white, when sam is dead dean takes off every piece of jewelry except the amulet. he holds it clenched in his fists when he’s whispering what comes close to a prayer

logically the amulet should have a backstory but you know what? i love that it’s hinted to be just a piece of cheap jewelry sam found in a thrift store he decided to give to dean. but narratively it should be explained so... idk. what could be logical solution as to why it would react to GOD himself? maybe god wore it once cuz he thought it was neat but he sold it for three dollars because he wanted coffee and then sam found it a week later

i would prefer it if god didn’t show up at all (absent father number one) but if he DID he’s not all powerful just a true neutral (like death, 100% objective) who created a thing that just took a life of its own, much like a parent and a child - the parent helps the child but can’t control it. the times he did intervene or tried to do something it didn’t really have any real long lasting effect so he gave up on trying a while ago.

@spneveryseason talked about this, how the storyline of sam being possessed by gadreel would be horrifying if we saw everything from sam’s perspective instead of dean’s (her fic is wonderful). in the ‘dean slowly descends into a righteous murderer to become holy’ idea i have this tracks so damn well because again, if dean believes something is right, it is right, no questions about it. everyone around him is like “that’s really fucked up and you should make amends” but dean doesn’t see any reasons for why - sam is alive isn’t he? and seeing it from sam’s pov would really underline how horrifying, dehumanizing and belittling that experience was

john and mary are adam and eve. sam and dean are cain and abel are michael and lucifer. time is a flat circle. history never stops repeating itself.

sam is the villain of s4. he is manipulated and key information is withheld from him but in the end... would it made a difference? it crossed his mind, that he could be tricked because ruby is a demon after all, but maybe he likes the power, the feeling of freedom, that he wasn’t just the baby, the one who always needs permission to do things. if he has to drain possessed people to get that power... so be it. and it’s for a good purpose, until it isn’t. he’s hungry for more, to be feared and respected. he’s enticed by lucifer’s sweet words, the potential of all that power and the idea of ruling two out of three realms. dean manages to pull him back from the brink because sam decides he doesn’t want to be what john thought he was and fail dean and himself like that.

dean is the villain in s9. he is controlling, the mark of cain without the mark. what he says goes - it’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. he doesn’t see how much pain, doubt and fear he causes the people around him. if some victims or civilians die on his watch that doesn’t matter - just some collateral damage. sam can’t make dean listen to him because dean is the older one, the one who’s always called the shots. dean is the angelic one, heaven’s chosen warrior, he is untouchable and unkillable. he’s is an excellent killer, filling the void with blood and rage which is better than the crippling fear of loneliness carved into his bones. 'i butcher for love, to protect,’ he tells himself. ‘why shouldn’t i exterminate, regardless of the cost? i’ve followed the rules, i’ve always sacrificed. now i call the shots. it’s my right.’

sam’s hell trauma is never magically removed. he’s stuck with the memories and the nightmares and the occasional hallucinations. castiel can’t do anything but offers to wipe his memory completely, but sam says no, he is still doing penance.

after dean comes back from hell he starts calling himself old man and jokes a lot about he’s 40 years older now (after he’s more comfortable about speaking about hell)

when sam comes back he feels ancient (he’s over 900 years old at least but he lost count), weary, tired and so so so out of place in this world. he’s forgotten how to put gas in a car, how to drive, how to use a credit card, all the song lyrics he and dean used to yell together, the faces of people he knew before he fell, the softness of a bed, the schools he went to, most of the hunts he and dean, how john died, who mary is, the initials carved into the impala, the taste of food that isn’t raw meat. it’s so much he’s forgotten that he has to relearn. he prefers figuring things out with castiel instead of dean because castiel doesn’t silently resent him for everything he’s forgotten

sam doesn’t laugh anymore. despite dean’s many and castiel’s few awkward attempts, it’s more like quick smile and a quiet “hmm”. on some days he recoils when he sees blood and guts, on other days he’s so apathetic it’s unnerving

sam sympathizes with the brought back mary and castiel more than ever. dean tries to get sam to remember things he’s forgotten from his childhood but sam can’t connect with it anymore. he stopped being that sam a long time ago. dean doesn’t know what else to do than try to force this connection to be revitalized and he fails. sam isn’t that person anymore and this wedge in their relationship becomes a central factor in dean’s s6-10 desperation and isolation. sam is here and safe but it’s not really sam, not the sam dean grew up with

while sam has forgotten how to make coffee, he now knows everything about angels, effective torture tricks, a bunch of lore + biblical history, how to navigate hell, the most powerful and influential demons, rare and powerful spells as well as perfect enochian (he will speak enochian without realizing and it feels more natural than english). lucifer and michael were surprisingly talkative (raging about the unfairness) when taking their anger and hatred out on sam and adam and each other. sam had access to all of lucifer’s memories and knowledge for the time he was the one in control. walking library and encyclopedia of biblical lore.

he still has some muscle memory from hunting and sparring, but sam is ghostly thin and very rusty. even though he’s an expert on lore, he’s not fit to go on hunts anymore and he knows it.

sam remembers adam and swears he’ll try to get him out, but he can’t. just thinking about the cage makes him vomit. he can’t talk about it, much less go near it. after a while sam thinks it might be better to let adam stay down there than let him come back up and feel this crushing emptiness and loss of direction

sam’s trials take place in s9 instead of 8; coinciding with dean’s villain arc. for sam the trials are a chance to redeem himself again, this time for good by closing hellgates forever. they’re scrubbing him clean of the demon blood and his sins and they give him a sense of purpose again now that he can’t join hunts anymore. it doesn’t matter if he dies because of it. it would be nice with a permanent and peaceful death that did something good. dean is taken aback by sam’s devotion to repent for something that happened years ago and for something sam has already paid for a thousand times over. dean realizes how messed up he himself has become and how he’s helped put sam here, on the cusp of self sacrifice again because of sickening guilt and self hatred. dean begs sam to not complete the trials at the cost of his own life and swears he’ll better himself, be a friend and a brother, not a jailer, dictator or a murderer. ‘if you won’t give yourself or life another chance, please give me one.’ ---> s10 pacifist dean learning to let go of the control, the violent tendencies and the rage

oh wait what if gadreel still possessed sam after the trials to heal him but sam is the one who invites the angel in? he’ll keep his promise to dean about staying alive, as well as heal from the inside and have breaks from the world when he doesn’t want to be present, like he and gadreel will alternate being the one in control. he keeps it a secret from dean and helps gadreel imitate him so dean won’t notice. it’s not so bad, being possessed by this angel - sam can say no anytime and gadreel is a nice guy. since they alternate on who’s present they can access each other’s memories, which is terrifying and embarrassing at first, but since gadreel and sam have been tricked and used by lucifer and been punished for it for far too long, they understand each other. now another creature knows their trauma and terrors without the need for verbal explanation. also having an angel residing in his body makes sam feel like he can hunt properly again because gadreel can heal him and take over in situations sam’s overpowered. this could show how messed up sam has come to view himself and his body.

dean is conflicted when he finds out; sam lied but gadreel does help sam heal, sam’s traumatized and his self-worth is fucked up and dean has contributed to that. dean convinces sam to push gadreel out, that sam is still valuable, loved and a good person who shouldn’t be in a place where he views his body and mind like a property to be occupied. sam’s faith begins to come back bit by bit, not in god, but in himself, his brother, in the good things in life. they build their little family; sam, dean, castiel, the hybrids, whomever of their allies that are alive at this point.

castiel can heal sam and dean’s wounds but they are never completely gone; they leave scars and phantom pains. the brothers have SO many scars over the years. dean flaunts them to impress people because he likes the questions and the fearful admiration, the attention and the nods of approval. sam hides them.

when dean is in a bad mood or needs to get his mind off of things, sam just drops something like ‘i don’t get the deal with led zeppelin. one of the most overrated bands of all time’ and dean will go OFF every single time about the entire led zeppelin history, their discography and how they’ve shaped rock music. this will go on for hours and sam will zone out after 1 minute. but dean rants nonsensically the entire drive and it does get him to think about something else for a little bit. they stop at a motel and dean is STILL ranting while brushing his teeth. stops when going to sleep but without fail picks up where he left off the morning after and is so into it he doesn’t notice sam not paying attention at all. we could see this once in s1 when they’re searching for john, another in s3 when dean is anxious about his deal coming to an end and then again in a later season, when sam doesn’t remember to ask/doesn’t have the patience or mental capability, so they’ll sit there in tense silence, showing how much they’ve changed.

---> i can see this SO clearly in my head, how they’ll get in the car and we, the audience, will recognize the camera angle, the same lines and dean’s grumpy mood, and we’ll anticipate what comes next. but sam isn’t that kid anymore and he’s not peeking at dean to gauge what his mood is and how much of a shit eating grin he should wear when being an annoying little brother to cheer dean up. now he’s looking out the window, leaned back, they’re not looking at each other. this shot is a minute or two long, uninterrupted. dean turns on music but neither are singing along or doing anything to lighten the mood.

s1-5: sam gets hooked on demon blood, dean has an alcohol problem. when sam goes through withdrawals, dean decides to quit drinking and joins him because he wants to be supportive, and he realizes that when he drinks two beers for breakfast there’s a problem

s6-10: sam takes painkillers, anti depressants and anti psyhosis meds to numb himself from the phantom pains and reduce post-cage effects. dean started drinking again after sam jumped and still does, but started smoking in addition because he still drives a lot and doesn’t want to die in something as pathetic as a car crash.

there a scene in an episode in the first half of s8, when sam has decided to stay with dean instead of amelia, and dean has rejected benny in favor of sam, and then the brothers sit in a couch watching tv while drinking beer and neither of them look particularly happy about it - that’s how their relationship is a lot of the time. they know they’re fucked up and neither of them will ever be truly happy when the other’s around, but they owe each other so much and they don’t have to explain themselves to each other the way they do to others. they know each other so well, each other’s traumas and the things they’ve done, it feels fake and exhausting to try to be something other than the veteran hunters they are. misery loves company; they are miserable together but would be far more miserable apart and living a normal life. they do love each other, but neither of them are particularly happy as the show progresses. family is hell and so is the lack of it.

OK OK i mentioned it in part one, how i had my own very specific idea about how jack should come to be and here it is. long winded but (might just write a damn fic):

after lucifer was cast back into the cage, he is stronger than he has been in a long time (being in his true vessel helped him stretched muscles he forgot he had. and fresh air.) sam is pulled out of the cage and it leaves a rift in the magic and chains - the binding is weaker and lucifer must act fast to get out before it heals. the cage is still strong enough to hold two archangels, so lucifer has to become weaker somehow to slip out through the cracks. he can’t get out of the cage, but souls can come in. demons bring themselves and human souls as tools for lucifer to use. there’s not much he can do here - consuming them, eating them, touching them, dissecting them doesn’t give him what he wants

eventually lucifer realizes he must do like azazel and create something new of two halves, like when he created demons. he begins melding his archangel grace with a human soul. he tries with demons, but his archangel grace automatically purifies them and leaves them too weak. he must try with a human soul who is good. he finds the soul of kelly kline, who sold her soul to save a loved one. with her, the merging, works.

he has another self, a twin, a son, who’s half human and half archangel. half lucifer. the old lucifer will die but that’s ok, his desires, presence and self will live on in his new creation. the new lucifer barely makes it out of the cage, only able to due to its human side. on earth it creates a body for itself and takes shape, no longer a form of pure power and energy akin to the sun itself but now a person, reminiscent of kelly kline on earth and lucifer in heaven. they name themselves jack. jack searches for familiarity and finds it in sam, their old self’s perfect tool and another hybrid. jack finds a mentor in castiel, a younger brother and fellow angel with human elements. they do not find anything in dean, the key to his former self’s doom.

jack’s powers: their powers are like and unlike the angels because he is half archangel. jack has wings but sometimes they don’t work, or they’ll end up somewhere else entirely. their body is their own, not a vessel, so jack can’t possess people. doesn’t talk but people “know” what they’re saying or want because jack emits their emotions and thoughts to people they’re talking to like a radio tower. jack can also have this empathic connection and communication with animals. his mood affects the weather. immortal. reads minds. can remove a soul from a body and send it to heaven/hell by touching it, with practice they don’t need to touch a body.

other stuff about jack: the human/archangel nature means jack only need sleep and food once a week or so. eats only nougat and raw meat. because jack is a kid they nap a lot. levitates when sleeping. never blinks, stares intensely at everything. their eye colour changes based on their mood. eyes glow in the dark. normal humans who look at jack for too long experience memory loss, fainting spells or migraines and eye contact for more than 10 seconds give vivid hallucinations of their worst nightmares. always barefoot, often floats like 10 cm off the ground because they find it more enjoyable than walking. wears the wildest clothes they can find, nothing matches and nothing is weather appropriate

i have a very specific image of jack in my mind; they look like delirium from the sandman comics with the hair that looks like it’s underwater and the fishes floating around their head, here and here are examples. in live action this would look not good or maybe even ridiculous for sure but in animation... endless potential for angels and monsters to have super interesting designs sigh

castiel’s arc should end with him going from blind soldier, to the unwilling ruler of heaven, finding a place on earth with sam and dean, becoming closer with humanity and eventually a father of three (the hybrids).

#hbo spn #sam winchester #dean winchester #supernatural #iben spoke #ok i'm tired of looking at this now #i just needed to get these thoughts out of my head to get some peace and quiet #more character centric than part 1 #and it turned into such a long post.... jesus #i should make a separate post for post cage sam headcanons #ana if you see this i'm so sorry to drag you into this mess but i wanted to give credit where credit is due

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bthenoise · 4 years ago

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Q&A: Tyler Posey Talks New Travis Barker-Featured, John Feldmann-Produced Solo Single “Shut Up”

Today officially marks the start of a brand new era for actor and musician Tyler Posey. After years spent in various bands, the outgoing singer/songwriter is officially stepping out on his own to showcase his distinct brand of pop-punk-inspired music.

Front and center for the very first time, Posey is treating listeners to his bold new single “Shut Up” featuring alt-indie artist phem and none other than blink-182′s Travis Barker.

Discussing the new John Feldmann-produced track, Posey said, “From start to finish, this song really did feel like something special. I wrote the verses on a trip in an RV with my dogs and my friend and felt like it was progressing so naturally in a perfect way.”

He added, “I took those bones to John Feldmann and phem and when she went into the vocal booth to record her vocals, I was so stoked. I had been wanting her on a track but was too nervous to ask. It was an emotional session and then finally to get Travis to play drums on it is just literally a dream come true. I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”

Diving further into the moving new song, the passionate performer spoke with The Noise all about working with an idol like Barker plus what he thinks the future of pop-punk will look like. To see what Posey had to say, be sure to look below. Afterward, make sure to stream “Shut Up” here.

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How hard was it to keep it a secret that you made a song with Travis Barker?

TYLER POSEY: Fuck man, I mean, I've got blink-182 tattoos, they've been my favorite band since I was a kid and I've got posters of them on my wall that I'm looking at right now. It's such a big deal for me. But like, I think in some way, it was easier to keep it private because it's one of those things that you want to keep sacred. But at the same time, I’m super fucking stoked to release it. So it's like, it hasn't been that hard to keep it a secret because I'm just relishing in the fact that I got to play with him before anyone else knew. It's just so fuckin’ cool.

How did the collaboration come together? Guessing John Feldmann had something to do with it?

Yeah, exactly. I've always been piquing his interest in getting like my favorite people to collab with us. You know, I'm like, “Hey? What is Mark Hoppus doing today?’ if I’m ever at the studio with him. So this kind of came about like that. I was like, “What’s the possibility of Travis getting on the track?”

And [Jonh's] like, “Maybe the next album” because for some reason he thought sense this album I'm debuting just my name and kind of going solo, he thought [we should] keep the focus on that. But then, he hit me up one day after we recorded “Shut Up” and he FaceTimed me and he was in the studio with Travis. He's like, “Hey, so you want Travis to play on a song?” I was like “What!? Yeah, of course but I thought you said no.” [laughs]

So Travis was like right there and he's like, “What's up, dude?” And I was like, “Hey man! Yeah, so ‘shut up.’ If you dig that track then please I would love for you to feature on it.” And he loved it so that's how it started, kind of unconventional.

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A post shared by Tyler Posey (@tylerposey58)

Had you met Travis prior to this?

I have, yeah. So Feldy lets me fill in on bass for Goldfinger whenever Mike Herrera can't -- which is like the coolest thing to put on my resume, like I’m the fill-in bassist for Goldfinger. So, [John] has this Christmas party (or he used to before COVID) and he does it at his house and he has this huge fucking Christmas party where Goldfinger and all these other bands usually play and he sets up a stage. And one year, Travis was playing drums [for Goldfinger] and there's this one moment in “Superman” where it's just bass and drums and I like locked eyes with him for as long as I could before he cracked a smile [laughs]. So yeah, we’ve met a couple times before. He was super stoked to be a part of this song and he's just killing it with collabs lately so I was just honored that he wanted to work with me.

Speaking of Travis’ collabs, are you a fan of some of his recent crossover stuff with artists like Machine Gun Kelly and Trippie Redd?

Yeah, absolutely dude. Like, I grew up in the punk scene so, for some reason, when I was a punk kid going to Warped Tour all the time I was really headstrong about maintaining being “punk” and I didn't listen to anything outside of the genre. I was like, “Fuck everything else! I’m punk!” So it kind of took a little while to kind of break that. But that was like years ago so I love what [Travis] is doing with them. I think it's fucking cool too that it's putting -- so like I've been in the punk scene forever and I've always played punk music, no matter what I write, it just comes out punk -- so it's cool that pop-punk is now making a resurgence with Barker and Machine Gun Kelly and Trippie and all these other people. I think it's setting a cool precedence for punk bands that have been really trying to make it for years. So hopefully that happens.

It’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for pop-punk music thanks to people like Travis Barker and yourself who have a big platform and use it to help bring pop-punk music to a wider audience.

Yeah, dude. That's kind of how I met and got involved with all these punk bands. I was kind of vocal about them on Twitter like a long time ago, when I used to use Twitter a lot. I would just be listening to punk music and would just post a picture of it 'cause I wanted the kids to know about it so that's kind of how my involvement got started. Like State Champs hit me up and I got in good with them and rode with them on Warped Tour. Then I met Knuckle Puck and Neck Deep and just all these huge punk bands kind of brought me into the world and then it was kind of an easy transition once I started releasing my own shit. So I'm super thankful that they welcomed me with open arms and that I am, you know, part of this like, showing people the way of the punk [laughs].

So going back to “Shut Up,” how would you say this song differs from your previous projects like PVMNTS and Five North?

I think with every album, every artist says “we try to evolve” and for me it's just always been this progression. It hasn't really been anything that I've been trying to have happen, it’s just sort of happened naturally. So I think anything that I put out will always have that element of it sounding a little bit different, a little more mature [and] grown up. So I really like the song, it's polished. I love that phem is a part of it. I think it adds this kind of dynamic that I used to think my music writing was missing lately. I just think that it's more mature. Like I said, I can't really step out of like pop-punk world 'cause it's in my blood, that’s how I write. So it's not too different, it's just a more sort of mature vibe than I guess I was doing before. But like, with my last band Five North with Feldy, we really tried to experiment and kind of push the envelope a little bit. So we had like weird synth sounds but it all kind of worked because we always kept it like this pop-punk melodic sort of drive with driving verses and vocals. So it's kind of like the same vibe but just, you know, more mature. Long story short [laughs].

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Is it nerve wracking for you to to put your name strictly on things now as a solo artist as opposed to having a band?

No, I don't think so. I think I've always sort of viewed myself as a solo songwriter. It's just, like, growing up in the punk scene, you know, you always had a band name and for the longest time I was part of bands that everybody, sort of, had an opinion and we all would song-write. But for what I've been doing lately, it's just been me so it felt right. It's more of like an experiment at this point. You know, I don't know how it's gonna be received, but it kind of frees me up to be a little bit more creative artistically. Whether it's writing, filming something. I just feel like it's the right move.

This song seems to makes sense as a Tyler Posey solo song considering how personal and open it is. Was it challenging for you to be that candid writing these lyrics?

No, no it wasn't. I've always viewed music as a kind of therapy. You know, it's just sort of been my outlet. As much as fuckin’ everybody says that, it holds true. So I've never really held back when it comes to writing music. Like, I've gone through a bunch of shit. My mom died like six years ago so I've written about that a bunch of times. So I've never really been one to struggle being open when it comes to writing lyrics. But this one, this one definitely is a heavy song. Like I got sober during the pandemic because I was just abusing a little bit too much and going too heavy and couldn't seem to get out of this cycle. So I was sober for a while, but like, I was just kind of dealing with an ex and kind of using that to lean on as sort of a new drug. So it's kind of what the song is about. But yeah, it's just coming together at a really vulnerable time in my life but it’s never really been too hard to be that open. I think that people deserve to know that everyone is going through the same shit that they're going through -- even if it's just one person.

For people who can relate to this song, is there any advice you can offer to them? Maybe how you felt when you were writing it?

Fuck [laughs]. My advice for somebody who's listening to this song – I don’t know dude. Life is fucking weird. Sometimes you try to do the things that you think are going to lead you to the right path but it feels like it's not. So I think that everything happens for a reason, as corny as that it. Like, if there’s some bad shit that happens, the reason is [because] you learn from it. So I think that's kind of the model for this song. Whether it's good or bad, you're gonna learn something from it and you're hopefully going to grow. It's just up to you if you want to grow from it.

That’s a great way to put it. So lastly, not giving away too much, should fans be expecting more solo music from you moving forward?

Yeah, absolutely! So this is just a sneak peek. I'm going to be releasing two EPs. We were going to do a full album but we just split the album in half and we're gonna do two EPs. The first one is called DRUGS and is all about my experience becoming sober, why I got sober and the shit that happens during that. Then the next EP, they're both going to be 7 tracks, I'm gonna release it later on in the year. So there's gonna be a bunch of shit coming out. This is kind of like the new course of action for releasing music for me, it's all going to be under my name.

That’s exciting! Guess there really isn’t much else to do during a pandemic so it makes sense to write and release a bunch of music.

Yeah dude, exactly. So I'm going to try and get some visual content out too. Start doing some videos, I’ll be filming the music video for “Shut Up” soon. So just going to keep on that course.

#Tyler Posey #John Feldmann #Travis Barker #Phem #Shut Up #Big Noise #Five North

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meepmorpperaltiago · 5 years ago

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Intertwined, part 2

Aka an extension of the pop star AU that I’ve been way too obsessed with for way too long! You don’t need to have read the other fic set in this ‘verse to understand this fic, it’s a standalone thing. Thanks so much to @397bartonstreet and @jake-and-ames for all your help with this fic!

He sees that she’s shaking a little as she leaves. He takes her hand, runs his fingers over her rings.

He says softly “You don’t have to do this”.

“I know”, she says in response. “But it’ll be good to get everything out there”.

He nods. “Ok, as long as you’re sure”, he says, kissing the top of her head.

“I love you��

“I love you too”

When I meet Amy Santiago in a four-star Brooklyn hotel, she’s a far cry from both the fresh faced, bright eyed 15-year old I first spoke to at the ’98 Popfest and the troubled megastar whose life was crumbling around her around a decade ago. There’s a new wisdom in her eyes, but there’s also a sense of calm and stability that’s clearly come about since her darkest days.

She’s surprisingly humble compared to most people with her level of fame, handing me a coffee before we even sit down and then momentarily panicking when she considers that I might’ve preferred tea.

But she’s also unsurprisingly guarded, responding to my casual question of if she lives close to this area with an almost sarcastic glare. It’s a look that says “come on, you know my life, why would you ask me that?”.

In hindsight it was a pretty stupid thing to say. From the time when she first burst onto the scene to become the biggest selling teenage artist ever in only 2 years, the amount of scrutiny into her life so suddenly and so young must’ve been overwhelming.

“It was a really crazy time and for a while it was incredible”, she says with a hint of nostalgia in her voice, “but it was so so overwhelming and I never had any time to just breathe, y’know?”

When I ask tentatively if that was the real root of her later troubles, she silently nods.

“I have a confession to make”, he says with a smile, as if a joke is forming on his lips. She grins back at him, inviting him to say whatever it is he’s thinking.

“You were my first ever concert”

“No way”, she says, her hand flying to her mouth dramatically as her grin grows to match his.

“Yeah way - don’t tell Gina I told you this but she was obsessed with you, we went to your shows in matching T shirts, we had different ones for each album”

“Awww, babe that’s so cute”

For the next seven years it seemed like the undisputed Princess of Pop could do no wrong as she brought out three more critically lauded and record-breaking albums and sold out corresponding tours within minutes. Rather than dropping off like many of her contemporaries, she also grew as an artist, transitioning from cutesy bubble-gum pop of her debut album Amy and follow up Dulce into the more grown up sounding, R n B infused dance pop of Fascination and then into the pop punk and guitar sounds of My Lullaby and Our Song.

But from what she says, things weren’t so perfect behind the scenes.

“I was lonely; I didn’t get to just be a normal kid, I didn’t have any real friends, I didn’t feel like I could trust or turn to anyone. And my whole life other than my music was controlled by my management and even then every song I wrote had to be vetted. And over time I started to get really depressed”

She sighs then, looking down, as if preparing herself for the next topic of conversation.

“And”, she says slowly, “that’s when the drinking and the drugs started. That was my medicine”

“Ames, are you sure you’re ok?”, he asks as they sit in Shaws.

“Yeah”, she says, looking away from him. But he knows her too well.

“Do you wanna just go home and watch a movie? I’m sure everyone will get it”

She smiles then, takes his hand and they leave together. The warmth of his hand in hers doesn’t take away or fix her demons, but the love she feels for him does drown them out on nights like this.

“I kept it under control for a while and no one knew. But then as it got worse, it started to get to the tabloids. And then Vegas happened”

She was of course referring to the infamous incident that triggered the start of her fall from grace in 2008. The crazy vacation and a drunken fling leading to a marriage that was officially annulled within 24 hours was what turned the previous buzz of press around her constantly into a storm. The man, a failed musician named Constantine Kane, selling his story to every paper he could find for a very tidy sum also didn’t help.

“I guess that was the point where they figured out how lucrative it was when I messed up”, she comments, a sarcastic tone thinly veiling wounds that are clearly still present.

“After that, they were everywhere”

He doesn’t understand why they’ve suddenly stopped. Why Amy is looking around so nervously. Until he sees and hears them. There are 2 cars, both with different photographers speeding up behind them. His heart drops at the fear in Amy’s eyes as they race away.

She brushes it off, but later, when they’re back in his apartment, he can tell there’s something on her mind.

“Ames, are you ok?”, he asks, wanting to make whatever’s upset her better. She sighs and then says:

“I think we need to talk about what happened today. Things like that are scary, but they’re something I’ve gotten used to, I’ve been in that world for a really long time. But being with me… it means you’ll probably have to deal with shit like that too… and that’s not fair on you. Are you sure you want that? Because you could just walk away from all this now and you’d be fine-”

“Amy”, he interrupts, taking her hand. “I’d deal with all of that every day for like 100 years if it means I get to be with you. This is special. And I’m not giving up on us just because of some shitty papparazos.”

She smiles and laughs a little at that and kisses him and he’s never been so sure of anything in his life. He knows in that moment that he’ll be with her no matter what.

After we bring up Vegas and the press intrusion that followed, strangely enough she seems to zone out for a second and smile a little, as if she’s fondly remembering something. Then she comes back from whatever she was thinking of and we move on with the conversation.

Not wanting to upset her too much, I let her drive the conversation on the rest of her breakdown – the increasing stories of her crazy parties, the infamous incident where she hit a photographer with her car after he jumped in front, the lawsuit that followed in spite of the man being completely unscathed, her fines for drink driving and the crazy braids that started to appear in her hair. Then the climax of it all, for want of a more appropriate term: when she barricaded herself in her bedroom for over 24 hours in the lead up to the Grammys, where she was eventually forced to perform after her management broke down the door. She snuck out of the awards show afterwards and eventually collapsed from alcohol poisoning. I can tell that she’s holding back tears when she answers my next question: what happened?

“It just felt like everything was spiralling so far out of control and it just kept getting crazier and crazier and as things got worse, all I did was drink more and do more of whatever substances I could find. And in the end, all I could do was shut myself off, by shutting myself in. And it happened so long ago, I shouldn’t still be crying over it…”

I try to comfort her as best I can and ask her if she wants to continue the interview or scrap the whole thing.

“No, this is a story I need to get out. If I keep it all in and internalise it and never talk about it, it’ll be even worse.”, she responds, wiping the tears off her face. In the face of everything she’s been through, she has a remarkable strength.

What happened after that is something she’s kept pretty under wraps, but she tells me now, after taking a few minutes out.

“After I got out of hospital, I quit everything, I left my record label and went straight to rehab. Then, I wanted a fresh start, so I moved to New York and started therapy, which is where I met my husband.” She smiles as soon as she mentions him, looking down at her wedding and engagement rings. Although not many details of him or their relationship are public knowledge, other than the fact that he’s a cop from Brooklyn, he’s been assumed to be the subject of some of her most well-known love songs since she came back to music.

“So, what are you in for?”, he asks jokingly. “Sorry, I use humour as a defence mechanism, it’s kind of my thing”.

“It’s ok,”, she says with a smile. “For me, it’s a heck of a lot of childhood issues, mostly typical child star stuff”

“Samsies!”, he responds, “Except my childhood issues aren’t to do with being famous and I’m also here ‘cause I got framed and went to jail, I’m a cop, it’s a whole thing – but almost samsies”

They hi five at that and both smile. The therapist calls him in and before he leaves, he turns around.

“Hey, I’ll see you later, right?”

“Sure”, she responds.

“After we met in therapy, we started hanging out a lot and after about a month we started dating and eventually we got married. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without him. When I was at my lowest point, he was there to make everything better, and I’ve never felt happier or safer than I do with him”

“I’d also been writing music the whole time and eventually I set up Brooklyn Records, so I could release new music on my own terms and support new artists. I still have struggles – things like addiction and depression don’t’ just go away. But I’m ok now and as I’ve already said, I have an amazing family to support me now”

When I comment on the success of both her label and the five new albums she’s released since her comeback in 2011, she smiles fondly. It seems clear that in spite of all the bumps in the road and how much time has passed since her debut, I’m talking to a pop star still very much in her prime.

“How was everything?”, he asks when she gets home.

“It was great”, she says as she hugs him.

“Did you mention me?”, he says jokingly.

“Actually, I did”

He looks at her softly, before turning serious with genuine concern. “Aww, babe – but seriously, are you ok?”

“Yeah. I’ve never been better”, she responds. And she truly means it.

#b99 #peraltiago #brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn nine nine fanfic #jake x amy #jake peralta #amy santiago

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eroticcannibal · 6 years ago

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Getting off to consent: a personal defence of rape kink and noncon/dubcon fic

This is a jumbled mess of thoughts but that’s how I’m gonna be doing this so.... (I thought about editing it but it’s stressful to write so fuck y’all deal with it)

Also if you have anything to say, you read through this whole damn thing first, or I’ll ignore you till you do. This is my trauma and you’ll show it some fucking respect.

My teen years were full of sex, all quite respectful and gentle and vanilla. They asked if I liked it, they never physically forced me or held me down. They kissed me and cared for me and showered me with affection and adoration.

It was nice, and people were often jealous, even when I had to stop messing around because I had a kid now, cus I had a lovely little flat that was only infested with fleas and ants, some hand-me down furniture, a beautiful baby and a gentle man to look after us. Even if he was a bit lazy and liked to look at younger girls.

I could never call what happened “rape” then. Didn’t seem right f I was smiling, initiating it, acting like I enjoyed it.

There was one time I easily could call it that though. When I woke up to a mutual friend on top of me, and he was in the kitchen sulking because I’d reacted more in my sleep to the friend raping me than him. They’d only done it to make me happy, he said. His feelings were so hurt, he said.

Rape, real rape, for me, has always been gentle and kind and considerate and performatively respectful of my feelings, and when someone gets hurt it’s never me who’s allowed to hurt. And I don’t even get to consent.

Those things became hurtful and unsafe.

I’d already leaned towards rougher things in my thoughts, but the shame young-looks-like-a-girls get kept me quiet. But after that, my brain pushed me in head first. Because I needed to escape what hurt me.

I needed it to be rough rather than gentle, I needed nasty words and a performative lack of regard for my wants while paying close attention to if I’m ok, rather than asking me if I’m ok and ignoring how mechanically I’m reacting and how I won’t look them in the eye. I needed to be allowed to be pissed off, to hit and kick and cry and feel. I needed to be able to fight back instead of just accepting what was happening. I needed what I wanted, consenting, to be not just a necessary box to tick, but to be the theme, the central focus of the event. I needed to recontextualise my trauma, make it not about sex, but the violation.

It’s not my fault that gets called having a rape kink.

Since then I’m not sure if I just get raped more or if I’m just noticing it more. It’s never the people who are willing to be a little rougher if I ask them too. I don’t do full rape kink IRL, but I’ll ask for things that are approaching it. Those people I trust, they care about me. They are gentle with me afterwards. They are careful with how they hold me down when I try to wriggle away from them. They want to hurt me but they don’t want to hurt me. People who know the difference between fantasy and a scene and reality, those are people I can trust.

It’s the ones you’d never flinch at that rape me. The ones who are born again and celibate who molest me even after I already willingly fucked them, the ones who bring me dinner and aren’t into anything weird who take advantage of me when I’m unconscious, the ones innocently offering to help me with a problem at college who trap me in the toilets at the pub. The nice ones everyone trusts, the ones who would never be like those gross dangerous kinky freaks. And they are always so nice with it, so gentle, so respectful.

I can’t even say no anymore. At least I can fool myself, if I don’t say no, it’s not rape, right? If I come on to him so he doesn’t throw a carseat at my head again, that’s not rape, right? But a safeword isn’t no. And no is less scary if you say it when someone is rough with you, because rough people don’t rape me. “Oh that’s unhealthy!” I can’t really care, when playing pretend while consenting is what got me to the point where I have finally, once, said no.

It was pretty amazing, my friend who’s a strange kind of rough. Likes to hold me down and force me and push my limits and make it so that I can’t even talk... He’s not really into hurting me, but he holds me in a way that lets me know he’s strong enough to. And I was sucking his dick when I suddenly thought “Eh, don’t really want to be doing this.”

But that time was different, it had clicked for me, you see. I’d not have managed that without rape kink, I don’t think. Cus the whole thing with rape kink, it’s all about wanting it, in a way all other sexual activity isn’t. And right then, I didn’t want to. It was different.

And I managed to say no. I managed to stop and say “I’m really sorry but I don’t want to do this right now.” And it was terrifying, it had been so long since I’d even tried to say no, because I’d learned so early that no doesn’t matter, it’ll happen anyway, so you may as well let it. And he was fine with it. More than fine. He thanked me for telling him. I thanked him for not making me continue and he got a bit pissed off and said “No. Think about what you are saying.” It was a life changing moment. I’d never have got there without rape kink.

I keep getting told it’s retraumatising, but that’s just not how this works. It doesn’t even resemble my trauma, for a start. But even for those who it does... that’s not how it works. I know because that’s my current relationship with vanilla sex. Thanks to my kinks I’ve got to a point where I feel safe enough to try it occasionally. Because if these people won’t rape me in one situation, they won’t in another, right? If they’ve respected my “no”, they’ll keep doing that. It’s still scary, and it will be for a while, but it’s like therapy. Do you know how talking therapy works with trauma? It’s important to wait until you feel safe, you can’t rush it, because if you don’t feel safe, you affect the memories in the wrong way.

When you remember, talk about, or play out a traumatic event, your memories don’t remain static. They change. They change depending on how you are feeling. If you feel scared, the memories become scarier. If you feel safe, the memories won’t be as scary. That’s how talking therapy works, you talk about it over and over while feeling safe and eventually that memory can’t hurt you any more. Thats how rape play, and for me, vanilla sex, works. You play out the trauma with someone you trust, where you feel safe, where you are having a good time and it reduces the trauma.

It kinda baffles me when people say “you are getting off to rape” too. This isn’t rape. Rape is a sex act without consent. Rape is just... rape. Kink isn’t rape, because you consent. f you don’t consent, it’s not kink, it’s rape. It’s mutually exclusive. Real rape doesn’t get me going, it horrifies me.

Rape fiction has it’s values too. Yes even the “glorifying” stuff you all hate. Cus let’s be honest, you don’t know how to use that word.

Let’s take for example Killing Stalking. I can understand why people think it’s glorifying. It’s written in a way that makes you feel how the victim feels. And how a victim feels can be complicated. Loving your abuser is so complicated. Abusive relationships are intense, and I’ll be honest, there are times when I miss being abused, because yes it may be awful but it’s also so fucking good. Abuse requires the good to get you trapped. It requires that tenderness and love. It’s a very intense kind of love. Non-abusive relationships rarely reach that level of intensity, that’s a stable kind of love. Abuse requires that intensity to keep you stuck. And people feel that love in the writing and it makes them uncomfortable, they call it “glorifying.”

Funny how the experiences of the abused are so often turned against us to further hurt us.

We all know how important representation is. It doesn’t just apply to identities though, it applies to experiences. And survivng trauma is rarely neat and respectable. That’s just the story you’ve been told. It’s messy, it’s gross, it’s confusing, it’s full of shame, it’ll turn your stomach seeing how we drag ourselves out of it. It’s rare to see that shown honestly. It hurts that I can see those emotions, my emotions, layed out on a page and then hear people say I think rape and abuse are a good thing just because I feel relieved over finally seeing the truth of my trauma honestly represented.

And you know what, you should feel uncomfortable reading things like that. It’s uncomfortable! Like, that’s the minimum response you should have! Imagine fucking living it! But that doesn’t make feeling that, and connecting to that feeling a bad thing. It doesn’t make me a bad person, to have been hurt like that. I’m not a bad person for being a messy victim, they’re the bad ones for doing this to me!

I write a lot of rape stuff, in fact until last nanowrimo it’s all I wrote. I needed to get it out of my system, I guess. It’s cathartic. I can play with how things could have been. How could it have been better? Could I have noticed a red flag? Fought? Got away after the first time? Can I do better in future? But also, how could it have been worse? Did I actually fuck up? Is fighting someone abusive really a good idea? Is confronting someone when you are trapped in a hotel room with them wise? It’s ok to prioritise survival if it means not being torn and broken and killed, right?

But not just from the perspective of the victim. Remember what I said about what being raped was like for me? How kind and loving those men were? It’s a hard thing to reconcile, that someone so gentle and loving hurt you so much. I couldn’t understand it, because I would never do that, and the people who were rough and rude with me at my request... they never made a mistake. They were so attentive, they watched me so carefully to make sure I was ok. So how could these men have raped me?

I understood when I wrote on character in particular. That time, I wrote from the perspective of a rapist. The victim was like me, very passive. He was very kind he didn’t do anything weird. But as I wrote, everything started to make sense. He could see the blank face, he noticed the panicked breathing, he noticed them not reciprocating. He knew. He didn’t make a mistake. He knew what he was doing. He raped them because he wanted to.

They raped me because they wanted to.

Anger is better than shame. It’s better than still loving him. Anger keeps me safe. My writing made me angry and I’m so grateful I experienced that.

I think most of all rape kink taught me not just how important consent is (the one thing that is the difference between sex and rape), but also how to practice it. I don’t know how sex ed is now, but consent was never taught. We were just taught the mechanics of vanilla sex. Essentially for me, a lesson on how to let rape happen. Kink gave me autonomy and power and a way of saying no.

In the end, it’s all pretend. Just a way for me to explore things I need to, and heal myself. I won’t accept that it’s retraumatising or unhealthy, because I’m getting better because of it. I won’t accept that it’s something that should be hidden, because it was others being open who helped me stop feeling like I’m a gross slut who deserved what I got because of these feelings, and no one deserves to feel alone. No one deserves to feel ashamed for the way they’ve survived. We should never have to hide. You can avert your eyes if we are too much of a mess for you.

#word of god #rape tw #kink tw #kink discourse

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dougbeamer · 5 years ago

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Brightburn - Movie Review *Spoilers*

I saw this movie almost a month ago. I tried doing a video review for it several weeks ago and idk...nothing stuck. What I wanted to say just felt like it could be the same as everyone else. I just don’t think I’m gonna add anything new to the consensus.

But then I got thinking about it again for some reason I felt a desire to talk about it again.

So! Let's start with the plot and what this movie is about.

Brightburn is a film that came out in May of 2019 and tells the story of a family Tori and Kyle Breyer trying to have a kid. By a miraculous miracle, a spaceship crashlands on their farm and they adopt the baby boy inside naming him, Brandon. Many years later the family begins experiencing weird things with their now 12-year-old child. He sleepwalks to the barn where the ship he crashed landed in mumbling a strange language and trying to get inside.

Eventually, Brandon Breyer’s powers take effect and he starts using them to kill people rather than saving people. Brandon Breyer’s is on the full path to becoming a supervillain.

With the plot, in a nutshell, I can tell you there isn’t much more to it than that. If there is anything that I don’t like when making my reviews is explaining the plot. I know I need to in order to give everyone a heads up of what I am talking about but I never seem to talk about the plot specifically enough. I never actually describe it well. My store manager had an opportunity to see this film and said it pretty simply. “It’s like Superman meets Annabell”

While I never have seen Annabell it seems like an apt description. Annabell seems like a small film in scale and terrorizes folks who come close to it. The stakes are personal, intense and not much beyond what you are given. Of course, Superman is the spot on the comparison you can give because this film screams, “WE ARE SHOWING WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF SUPERMAN WENT EVIL!” as a concept piece.

Every time I think about this film the less I like about it.

I know there are some people out there that probably L-O-V-E this film and can’t wait to see what is next in this obvious start to a twisted franchise.

This film is basic. Very basic. Nothing more to it than a kid coming to his own with superpowers with his parents in denial of what he is capable of. The father is less in denial than the mother is who refuses to think her child is capable of such things.

At the beginning of this film, I actually loved it. The took just enough time to create the conflict between these two that they wanted a child. Just then their house is rocked by an earthquake and they proceed to check it out. It was mysterious, it was solid.

The rest of the film...not so much.

When I watch a film I lookout for a few things. One of them being dialogue, moments to establish the relationships as true, real and tangible, stakes that make sense no matter how much it derails the people involved, and above all else how the film constructs this. Bring it all together with enough pomp and circumstance to say we are functional.

To me, this movie is barely functional.

Dialogue is stiff. When people talk to one another it's so short and to the point that it feels like there is more than can be said. This may not be a legitimate critique but I do feel like the technique of talking is wasted here.

There was a scene where after Brandon crushed a girl's hand and the following scene the parents were all talking in the principal's office. The mother of the daughter was clearly upset and rightfully so. She was spouting this and that, “he should go to jail” and other justifiable remarks. Until...she talks about Brandon's real mother and calls her an inbred psycho. This obviously crosses a line as Tori simply states that if trash-talking a 12-year-old child helps erica sleep better at night maybe she is the one that needs help. After that, the scene wraps up and it's over. It's not without consequence, of course, but I feel that the scene was stunted with a lot of missed opportunities with dialogue. Instead of Erica overstepping her bounds and Tori putting her in her place within seconds of the scene ending I felt that should have been the biggest conflict in the scene. A longer more emotionally driven scene.

Granted I know the script has been flipped and instead of Brandon being the good guy he's bad. The parents are sticking up for him wrongfully but are on the side of good and Erica is in the middle. The scene conveys mixed emotions that I feel no one is good, no one really knows what to say or do. Brandon is not arrested, he is suspended and will have therapy there afterward and one simple insult closes this off and they move onto the next subject. With the knowledge of the looming fate, Erica will endure. I feel the scene should have been at least a few minutes longer where we are given a chance to really understand where other people are coming from. By this point, we know where Kyle and Teri are coming from but not Erica. She is actually smack dab in the middle of a situation she has to immediately respond to. Before that, she only was apart of Brandon’s birthday and saw him throw a temper-tantrum where the electronics around him went out. No speaking lines and that may be enough for her to call Brandon a psycho but allow me to point out...

There is an entire bit of backstory faded out to the prolonged stare Teri was making with her son Brandon. A lot of dialogue was muffled out do to her zoning out. They only time she snaps out of it is when insults are being thrown out towards Brandon and questions of who his real mother is.

That entire scene should have been insightful! Erica could still stay as the emotional mother who just hears and sees the aftermath of her daughter's hand crushed but we could have known at some point where she stood with the family, what kind of friends they were and some back history. Cause we just found out in that very moment more than just the family knows about Brandon’s adoption. That there in of itself leaves me to believe a lot has to be assumed in order to understand where everyone is coming from.

My mind goes to the phrase Expectations vs Reality. When I think about this movie there were a lot of expectations and when the reality hit we basically see what could have been opposed to what we got. Brightburn had a criticism that its full potential was not realized.

This is where I have to disagree.

Yes, I have to disagree.

We have had over 10 years of great storytelling and bad storytelling at our expense thanks to Marvel, DC, various TV shows throughout the last decade. We know exactly what we want in these types of films. So when we get a what-if concept there are only a few ways we can go with it.

Our expectations are seeing a complex take on the tale of Superman becoming evil and the reality is we see a kid who is being manipulated by a ship speaking an evil language. We don’t really see where the kid is coming from except for getting upset that he is different and was lied to for 12 years.

The reality is this is probably the best way to convey a what-if piece. Keep it Simple. Keep it just as grounded as it is right now. My biggest gripe is how everyone talks to one another. How the situations play out are almost perfect to convey such an excellent concept.

So sticking up for this film in this regard, it did exactly what it was setting out to do. Become a concept piece that would show the makings of a villain that was based on one of the most powerful superheroes we will ever know. In fictional terms of course.

The fact that it didn’t go in any direction we were really hoping it to is not a bad thing though. Sure maybe we could have seen the makings of a villain rise up and maybe the parents are in on it. Maybe the mother takes Brandon under her wing and teaches him to channel his evil tendencies towards people that deserve it much like dexter. Instead, Patricide and Matricide are inflicted, Uncles and Aunts are killed, and next-door neighbors are terrified in cliche fashion before they are horribly killed.

What really doesn’t make this film work for me is not really buying into the fact that this kid who seems well to do, not a single psychopathic bone in his body is suddenly turned when the spaceship he crashed landed in, activates.

The film does not do a good job giving us anything that could give us a clue into Brandon’s head. Is he being controlled? Is he acting out of rage? Well, the answer to that is yes and yes. But when? When are those moments? Because one scene he is going back to the girl (the one whos wrist was broken) and tells her that she is the ONLY person who knows how special he is.

One scene before it or after it I can’t remember which...shows him going into a rage as soon as he figures out what the alien message is saying to him. So he either had a small influence then took what he could and left the rest. Or he gets small doses of this throughout the time he first encountered it. Its really unclear.

One big thing is how people write off each weird happenstance throughout the story of the film. The father, Kyle believes Brandon got in and killed some chickens late at night. The best excuse Tori has is that a wolf opened up a locked door and killed some chickens.

I mean, the reasonings of what to talk about and what not to talk about is out of this world.

The parents find Brandon's secret stash of naked women that soon turn more grizzly where there are pictures of surgical diagrams and graphic photos of organs. Tori exclaims, “Maybe we should have the talk”

In the next scene, they go on a camping trip and the father and son have an awkward conversation about this. But the only thing mentioned was sexual urges and nothing more. DUDE, you found diagrams and organs! That is much more specific than showing off a desirable swimsuit model! TALK ABOUT THAT! This stuff gets pretty redundant after a while. You get it. Dialogue doesn’t work, the scenes and situations mentioned don’t add up when they need to talk about more important things, the relationship between the mother and father work but not with the kid, sadly.

I feel this movie did deliver upon its potential I just feel it could have been written better. I could care less that it was a cliche horror murder movie. Give me something basic and grow from there. You could have had the characters a lot smarter, capable, flesh out the scenes better and you would have had one solid film on your hands.

Perhaps I don’t have anything better to say than anyone else but this movie came close to frustrating me on how it presented itself.

The ending sparked more curiosity and obvious means to a sequel that I feel should have been introduced in the middle of the film. But, hey, that's just my expectations talking.

I know there are some out there that love the film. One who can justify actions and means of what really could have been going down. But I am a very literal person so if it ain't shown to me I am not going to assume so much happened in-between scenes. I am not a psychic so I don’t know what one is thinking and if you keep a kid quiet I won’t know where he is coming from.

That is exactly what this film did. It alienated me. Me no likey.

**/***** (2 out of 5)

#Brightburn #Brightburn movie review #Brightburn movie #Brandon Breyers #Tori Breyer

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heilewelt · 5 years ago

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“I like anything that’s good for me.” – An Interview with Orville Peck

Orville Peck is a good one. When we sat down in the lobby of his hotel it was easy to forget about the mask he was wearing – instantly I was caught by the glint in his eyes when he talks about his music. I love the idea of creating a new persona and starting fresh without the names of previous bands giving you an expectation of how the music should sound like. The debut album “Pony” is one of a kind – based in Country it opens up to so many more music genres like punk, Rock and even the huge singing style of musical. I’ve been in love with this beautiful dark voice since the first time I heard “Dead of Night” a couple of month ago, before I knew anything about him or the mask. We talked about his voice and that it wasn’t always this beautiful dark. If you want to know more about this and how everything came together, please enjoy our little conversation.

The first thing I thought when I heard your music for the first time – I didn’t see a picture and I didn’t know anything about you – I had to think about Jandek. He makes a little weird music and for 40 years or so no one knew who he was. When I heard your voice, I thought about him and afterwards I learned about the mask and everything.

Orville Peck: That’s funny. I haven’t thought about that for a while.

Would it be something you’d like to accomplish – no one knowing your face for so many decades?

I don’t think it’s a goal of mine. This look is just part of who I am as Orville Peck. That’s not really a conscious decision to conceal anything. It’s just part of my face.

What was first: Having your very personal songs and then hiding or hiding and then say now I can write about myself?

I think it was a bit of both at the same time. Some of the lyrics I’ve been writing for quite a long time now. For example I’ve written the lyrics for “Turn To Hate” about 4 or 5 years ago, before I really knew what I was going to do with it. Growing up with the music I really liked, I was always into the lyrics. I remember when I got the CDs I always loved reading the lyrics in the CD pamphlet and things like that. For me lyrics are very, very important. I’m a big Patti Smith fan and I think her lyrics are so important, maybe even more important than the music. The music just adds to it. I’ve always looked at music like that. I’ve always liked the stories behind songs and I’ve always loved reading tour bios and things like that because I love hearing about what a song is about and who they were written about. That kind of stuff always intrigue me. I just like making music that has a story. I think it was something that was already in me and the mask just gave me the confidence to actually do that finally.

I’ve recently done an interview with William The Conqueror from England. Actually there is no William in the Band. The singer and songwriter Ruarri Joseph said that going away from his own name gave him the freedom to write about his own past and get really personal. It’s quite funny to meet you now.

Maybe something similar I guess. I used to think I’m a really open person with friends and everyone and a very easy person to talk with. Until this project and writing very personal stuff, I realized that the older I gotten that I’m a bit of closed person and it’s actually hard for me to talk about my feelings in a real way which is funny because I never actually thought I was like that. People would always say that to me. So, it’s been an interesting, cathartic thing for me to do this album. When I get to sing these songs on stage, it’s sometimes hard for me. It’s been very good for me as a person because it made a lot more open.

It’s a bit like therapy.

Totally. It’s really special to see other people in the audience getting emotional because relate to it or they know the lyrics for a particular song. That’s very cathartic as well because it definitely feels to me like I’m not alone in it.

I think what always happens to all of us at least once is that we think we are alone with a problem and because of that we don’t want to talk about it because we maybe don’t want to annoy someone with our stupid problem or the stuff we’re scared of.

Exactly. There is a song on the album that is very personal to me. It’s “Nothing Fades Like The Nights” which is actually about a heartbreak but a heartbreak in a different way. It’s not about somebody else, it’s very much about my own heartbreak and disappointment in myself. At the time I didn’t really understand it but now that I’m older I kind of understand it better. I went through a long period where I felt very numb emotionally and I couldn’t cry when I was sad and I didn’t know why. I’ve been in situations where people were feeling all these emotions and I didn’t feel anything. I thought something was really wrong with me. Ironically that was saddest times of my life, when I didn’t know how to feel sad.

I think it’s not always that easy to let sadness take over. It sometimes takes some courage to be just sad, especially when you have people around you who don’t expect you to be sad.

I’ve travelled my whole life. I’ve been living in so many different places, so I’ve formed a lot of quick friendships that are usually quite intense. Some of them were on a superficial level where I felt like we could just exist, travelling, crossing path and I never had to be a 100% real with anyone a lot of the time. It was an easy way for me to remain a little bit closed because I had all these friends all over the place. I could travel and see them all and put the focus on them, their issues and tend to not address my own feelings for a long time. This album is very exposing in some ways because it’s dealing with topics I’ve been struggling with my whole adult life. It’s the first time I’ve put it into any kind of performance or art. The experience is a personal thing.

Was there an initial spark to do this?

Yeah, I played in bands for many years. Then I took about five years off making music after my last band stopped playing and touring. I went to focus on other things. I acted my whole life, was a dancer and many different things. I went and focused on other kinds of performance. I thought I was done making music and touring. I really felt jaded about it all. After a lot of time passed I felt like something was missing from my life. I made music since I was a very little child and realized I missed it so much that couldn’t really be without it. I wanted to do something new and totally different from what I’ve done before. I loved Country music my whole life and loved singing my whole life. I’ve never really been a front man that often. I’ve usually played other instruments in my previous bands. I knew I wanted to do it my way finally. A lot of different factors encouraged me to do this. Up until a few months ago when we started releasing singles, I wasn’t sure how people were going to react to it. I feel very proud of the music. I feel like it’s music I would listen to but I didn’t feel confident that people were gonna respond in the way it has been. It’s been really, really lovely for me as well.

It’s sort of old-school but fresh at the same time and it has sometimes this schmaltz which I love.

I grew up with a very diverse taste in music, art and film. I really genuinely love every type of music. I understand when people are genre purists but to me I just don’t know why I would want to deny myself. Why would you want to do that? I think some music sucks but it’s not by genre. I like anything that’s good for me. I knew I wanted to root this album in Country music. That’s the main influence, especially Outlaw Country from the 60ies and 70ies. I definitely wanted to add a little bit of flavor of different influences of mine – those range from Punk to New Wave to Classical Music to Musicals. There are a lot of things on this album that I purposely referenced and slit in in different places. When I listen to complex artists I really like knowing that there is something in there they’re referencing, something totally different. I love finding those things as a music fan. I love nerding out over that. So I wanted to put that in there for people to find it.

I think if you wouldn’t do that as an artist you would just copy pasting what has been there beforehand.

For me it’s not even necessarily about trying to stay authentic in myself and that…of course it’s that as well. For me, I think, it’s about artists sometimes not giving the listener enough credit and they think they have to spoon feed something or have to do something very one dimensional for someone to buy it, especially nowadays. I think people appreciate complexity a lot more than we give them credit for.

It’s maybe not what you find in the charts but it’s here for the long term.

It’s maybe paves you a way as an artist.

I’ve read that you’ve lived in a lot of places like Africa, US, UK… how did you treat the local scene and the folk scene from those places as it’s different from Country or Americana, especially in Africa.

Although people might not pick it up right away but there’s a lot of African influence in the songs that I make. The kind of African music I really love growing up is penny whistle jive and Miriam Makeba or Brenda Fassie. The thing that I really love from that time period is that it is has a really upbeat sound to it and the rhythms are very specific and the core progressions are very specific but the lyrics are sometimes so somber and so sad but you wouldn’t notice it right away. I think someone like Miriam Makeba was really amazing at that. Essentially she was the South African Nina Simone. All of her songs were very much about Civil Rights and race and oppression but from the sound you couldn’t tell it right away. I actually have a song that didn’t make it on Pony eventually which is specifically about the longest period I’ve been living in Africa. That probably be on the next album.

You recorded your album in British Columbia and then my head started spinning with the mask and everything and all of a sudden you became the lone ranger to me. [we laugh] In the wild west…well, not that wild. I looked it up and the studio is pretty remote on an island.

Definitely. It’s a very rural part of British Columbia, it’s a small island called Gabriola. It has a very small population of people. If you don’t have a car… you can’t walk around at night because it’s just pitch black. There are really incredible beaches there and phosphorescence in the water. It’s a really picturesque place to make an album like this. I spend a good amount of time living in the pacific northwest mountain region and wrote quite a few songs there like “Big Sky”. I think a lot of people associate cowboys with the desert and that very dry atmosphere and a lot of my songs have that setting. The sound I wanted to capture for “Big Sky” is a rainy, dark feel, maybe a campfire in the mountain with a rainy, kind of cold feeling - that pacific north west your socks are always wet kind of feeling.

When I looked at a map, Vancouver is just across the sea - as if you could see it from there and I thought it’s a perfect setting for your music.

I think a lot of the things I sing about on this album were experiences that happened on the west coast of North America – from Vancouver all the way down to Los Angeles and Nevada. A big portions of the event in these songs take place along this coast.

You’ve got a big variety in landscapes just like in your music. My favorite song is “Buffalo Run”. It sounds very angry and aggressive but the words you chose always make me smile, too.

I’m a big fan of bluegrass which is a certain type of country. Bluegrass is famous for being really fast with the banjos and the mandolins with quite steady slow vocals on top of it. It gives the song a dichotomy. The thing I always love in is the key it is played in a lot of the time and the speed the banjo and mandolin are played at. It sound quite frightening to me, even though they are singing about some folky thing. The music sometimes sounds frantic and kind of scary to me. With Buffalo Run I wanted to make a song that brought that and also a little bit of my past of playing in punk bands. I wanted to combine these things and make a scary Orville Peck song. I also wanted it to feel like buffalos charging since it speeds up and has this stampede feel to it. That song is definitely going back to my old days of playing in Punk bands where when we played out every night I was getting to release a little bit of tension. [laughs]

It’s perfect for that. How long did it take you to find your voice? I love the tone of your voice.

I’ve been singing since I was very little. I always loved to sing as a child. I never was able to sing low at all, I used to sing in a high register. I did classical training as a tenor for most of my young adult life. When I moved to London about six years ago, I was doing this very intensive performance training and learned that I have this whole other two octaves to my voice that I never really knew about. For me, who sang very high my whole life, it was very exciting to find out something so drastically new about myself.

It doesn’t happen every day.

As a singer I was really excited to suddenly have a three octave range. I’ve always been such a fan of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and all these Country crooners who sing so low. I always wanted to make music like that and suddenly I was able to. I trained as a kid but this just happened by chance.

It’s so funny especially since you’ve been making music you whole life.

It’s bizarre. It’s like someone told me something like ‘you’re a tenor, you sing high’ and I was just like ‘yeah, ok’ and never even explored that other part of my voice for 20, 25 years or whatever.

To discover something that new that late, has it influenced the way you approach music nowadays?

Definitely. In some respects it has opened a literal range but also an emotional range within me. Maybe it was what I had to do to unlock my feelings. For instance “Winds Change” is a song on the album I go from really, really low in my register to going really high in my register. For me to be able to perform that… it is something really indescribable to perform that song because it just moves through my entire range of emotion. It makes it a lot more fun and it makes it a lot more liberating in the creative sense. I don’t feel like I’m trapped in one part. I feel really grateful that I can do it now.

As far as I read you played most of the instruments yourself.

Yes, for the first three songs that I wrote and recorded for this album, which were “Dead of Night”, “Big Sky” and “Roses Are Falling”…and “Take It Back” actually. On those songs I played probably 95% of the stuff on them. And then the engineer who recorded my album – his name Jordan Koop and he lives on Gabriola Island – plays a couple of instruments in those songs. And then some of the others were a mix of different musicians I worked with on the east coast and on the west coast. There is a really fantastic banjo player named Tina Jones. I play banjo on one of the songs and she plays banjo on a couple of the other songs because I wanted a very particular sound and it’s not my first instrument. I got her to play on the album. It was really nice. It felt very much like I got to choose the right people to fill the roles were I knew I wanted them instead of me.

How do you know you’re not able to do it yourself? Try it first and then figure out that maybe you should take some who can actually play that part?

I think for instance for an instrument like banjo there’s bluegrass, there’s folk banjo, there are just so many different sounds. The way I approach playing banjo is just from the banjo stuff I mostly listen to - bluegrass, faster banjo. For “Big Sky” there is a really beautiful line that Tina wrote that clicks just underneath everything. She is more of a Folk banjo player. I knew I wanted to have someone who has a better ear for that. Even though I can see and hear it in my head I need someone to execute that. Same as my guitarist Duncan Jennings who plays in my live band. He helped me to write a few of the songs and arranged some of the songs because he definitely more of a technical skilled musician. All the instruments I taught myself. I never went to music classes or anything like that. I sometimes feel like I can hear something in my head or visualize it but I don’t know how to execute it because I don’t have the technical skill. It’s good to have someone like Duncan in the studio because then I can be like ‘I want it to sound like it’s 1980’s and it’s slow motion and it’s on the beach in Malibu but it’s raining and that it’s that kind of guitar sound’ - I don’t know how to describe it and he’ll be like ‘like this’ and it’s perfect.

That’s magic!

That’s literally how I described the sound of “Hope To Die”. I approach music from a visual point of view because I’m a visual learner and I don’t have the technic. Luckily I know people who can not only help interpret that crazy explanation but also can execute it. Sometimes it’s a lot of experimentation but we get there in the end. It was a really cool experience working on this album because I had such a clear vision what every song should sound like and what it should look like, what emotion I wanted the people who listen to it will feel. We worked really hard that it will come across. I’m very happy with the outcome.

How did you make sure that people feel what you want them to feel whilst you were writing and recording the songs?

I’m saying this in a way that I hope it does do it. As I said to you earlier – I just used to spend a lot of time taking the focus off my own feelings, listening to all of my friends problems and put the focus on them because I didn’t want to be open. So, I think I’ve learned to be a really good listener and I understand other people very well. I think it’s actually the biggest skill that I have is to understand how to navigate all different types of people. It also comes from the fact that I’ve travelled so much and lived in so many different cultures, societies and class systems. I just understand that among all of us there is a common threat all the time and I know to access that with other people because I think it’s just about telling a story that everyone can relate to even if it has specific differences. It’s about knowing that we all have the same story. I think it has been really special for me with Orville Peck, or with “Pony” rather, that I sing about men a lot on this album, about men relationships.

I think it’s very good. I listen to a lot of music made by men who sing about women, so I usually have to switch the gender in my head.

I think the thing that is really interesting, that is so wonderful to me, is that a lot of people who are coming to my shows or messaging me are older middle age straight men with kids and a wife who say ‘man, that song is so beautiful. My wife and I are listening to it all of the time’. It’s so funny for me because it’s a song about two men and the fact that it doesn’t bother this person and that they connect to it regardless is so comforting for me as well. It’s funny because I feel like a lot of the songs on this album are about me feeling like such an outcast and such a loner in life and the fact that all these people love it so much and relate to it, suddenly I feel like I’ve so many people around me supporting me – it’s almost this ironic full circle where these songs are about my loneliness but now there are all these people around me. It’s a fascinating thing that has been happening to me with this whole album.

Thank you for the interview, Orville!

youtube

“Pony” has been released a couple of month ago and it’s been my favorite album of the year so far! He will be back beginning of November and be fast - the first concert is already sold out.

8.11. Nochtwache, Hamburg 09.11. Badehaus, Berlin - sold out 10.11. Folks! Club, München

Thank you for reading,

Dörte

#orville peck #interview #pony #country #outlaw country #on tour #music #rock #punk

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nightmaretyrantvantas · 6 years ago

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So I have a rant and a half build up of rambling about my very first Percy Jackson Oc Elysia and I need to let it spill so all of you get to hear this info dump about her and my feels

Im putting a trigger warning here I made her when I first read the whole series a few years back. Her backstory isnt the happiest. So im going to put trigger warnings for mentions of (but not going into detail of) abuse, self harm, suicidal thoughts, so if you cant handle mentions of that please dont read this I dont want to upset you

Anyways I have years of work into this bab of mine and I need to get it all out

Also An important thing to note is the timeline of her(and my other ocs) stories. Basically it kinda takes place...as if Trials of Apollo didnt happen?? Sorta? I made her before it ever came out and set her story after Blood of Olympus before trials of apollo was announced so its basically diverges after Blood of Olympus...if that makes sense...I hope it does.

So basically....At the start of her story Elysia is 13 Nico is 16(from what I remember its been about two years since I read the books so please forgive me)

Ok this might jump around alot because im kinda word vomiting and info dumping about her so if something doesnt make sense please feel free to ask me to clarify I love to

OK SO MY BAB

So her full name is Elysia Angela Melina and shes a Daughter of Hades. At the start when she gets to camp shes 13.

Im going to attatch two pictures ive drawn of her to the post here

This is her with a referrence sheet of her at 13-14 and the digital picture is one of her at the present time that I tend to write about her at age 16.

So Elysia doesnt have things easy. She comes from an abusive household that really fucked her up mentally and emotionally before she got to camp. She ran away at 13 after getting kicked out of her sixth or seventh school and thigs got ugly at home. Stuff happened and she was brought to camp(im refining and probably going to redo how that happens) and well...she doesnt exactly fit in.

Shes on the shorter side for her age and shes lanky and skinny(partially from both skipping meals and sometimes only eating when she can sneak food at home) and she comes onto the scene wearing oversized hand me downs in all dark colors and long sleeves thats got a clear fearful and insecure posture and stance and is always trying to blending into the background and hide from being noticed. Shes got a thick mane of not very well cared for black hair and eyes so dark in color they look completely black, sometimes even in the light with pretty dark bags under them highlighted by really really too pale skin. So it makes her an easy target to be bullied ya know? But she silently takes it like she always does while clutching this beat up little backpack she ran away with as shes put in the Hermes cabin until she’s claimed(which has a 1-3 day delay depending on the god, because a lot of kids come to camp especially at the start of summer)

When she gets claimed she freaks out and panics because everyone is staring at her and shes suddenly the center of attention because it happened in the middle of the campfire.

So begins the bonding with her big brother.

Shes got alot of inner turmoils and traumas and problems and inner demons and as a result she has undiagnosed anxiety disorders, depression, and some PTSD along with a very low amount of self-esteem and confidence in herself from the ordeals of before reaching camp. Though once shes at camp and she eventually settles in she starts recovering bit by bit. She slowly gets close with nico(it starts kinda awkward for both of them and she comes off really quiet and shy and terrified of sudden movement so its a little hard but they overcome it)

By the end of her first year at camp shes gotten close to Nico but has a really hard time making friends with other campers her own age so she ends up sticking close to Nico and following him like his shadow because theres a period of time that heś the only person Elysia feels even remotely safe and comfortable around. And as a result at first she spends alot more time with Nico’s friends and various members of the Big Seven and she gets close to them as well(more to her siblings at first but she gets there shes a nervous bean give her time)

Though in the middle of that first year she meets a girl that soon becomes one of her best and closest friends, a daughter of Hephaestus named Karter Becks(the second oc for this fandom I made) and I’ll get to more about their friendship later.

So by the second year at camp shes settled in a little, shes decidedly become a year-rounder because she would rather be eaten by a harpy than go back to “that horrible place”as she dubs it(not to mention its very very dangerous for her outside of camp)

More things about Elysia!!!

At thirteen she had absolutely NO control of reign of her abilities. She couldnt raise or summon the dead, her shadow travel was horribly spotty and half the time she couldnt even do so correctly and her most experience with spirits is that she can sense them and she can hear and speak to them but she cant really see them( they appear as really really blurry shapes that hurt her eyes to look at for too long) of course she beats herself up over this lack of skill, mostly because she(stupidly but understandably) compares her lack of teaching and training and beginner skill level to Nico’s at the time current skill level. Yeah its dumb and yeah in the back of her mind where her common sense is she realizes this but she cant stop herself from doing so, just like she unfairly to herself compares her sword fighting skill to older campers that have been there longer.

She eventually gets her own sword of Stygian Iron, because no matter what else she tries no other swords feel...right to her. They’re always too heavy or too light too awkward to hold dont work right with her swings or just dont feel right to her so at some point shes overthinking herself to death about it and beating herself up for being too picky when Karter suggests innocently that she tries swinging around her brother’s sword. “After all Elys, whats the worst that would happen, that it feels too heavy?”

But what ends up happening is that though its too heavy for her, it still feels...right. The best way to describe it is that she feels more connected to her powers and to herself in a way. After hearing that she gets her own of Stygian iron and its...perfect to her. Its not too heavy on her wrist or too light to wield. And afterwards she actually starts getting some more confidence which helps her improve a little faster than before.

Once Elysia is fully apart of camp life it takes a long time for it to fully click that her belongings...are hers and her likes and interests and likes are respected. They wont get taken away or threatened, she doesnt have to hide what she likes or pretend she doesnt like one thing or another. She’s free to be her own person for the first time in her life and she struggles for awhile to adjust to that and accept it. Those struggles result in alot of scattered breakdowns and even one or two...relaspes that for once in her life she has a support system of her half brother and half sister, his friends, her two close friends, and chiron to catch her and help her back to her feet. She has people to lean on and depend on and not have to be afraid of and this helps alot into her recovery and acceptance of herself and her mental illnesses. It takes her two of the three years shes been at camp for her to get at the better place shes at when shes 16, where she now has a small group of good friends, shes managed to bring up some of her self-esteem and self confidence, shes been clean for a year and shes in therapy for her PTSD and depression and shes opened up more to those around her and shes not the terrified jumps at her own shadow kid but a more quiet but kindhearted and sometimes even giggly teen whose slowly getting her life back together with plans for the future.

But on the topic of things she likes...

This girl loves-no ADORES animals, all kinds mythical or not. She didnt show it at first but she was so SOOOO excited when she realized the camp had Pegasi even though she tried to keep a distance from them because she realized she made them nervous. Oh man you shouldve SEEN her when Chiron took a group of campers her age into the woods and they caught a glimpse of a passing through unicorn. She was giddy about it for DAYS guys. She just...she has so much love and admiration and excitement for animals its so cute you guys.

Elysia also loves(ironically) learning about Mythology, from all over the world. Its her special interest and when she finds and buys a old broken touch screen phone(or one of those touch screen i-pod or something) and gets Karter to fiddle with it and (eventually after shenanigan filled misadventures of trying to upgrade it to not be detected by monsters and fix the cracked screen) she fills that thing to the brim of downloaded auidobooks of different mythologies as she can and she listens to them when doing schoolwork(she ends up having do be “homeschool” by online classes because things just do not go right when trying to attend schools outside of the protected borders)

She also loves anything soft. Especially stuffed animals. Oh my god she loves stuffed animals, well into her teens. She had one she managed to bring with her to camp that is her ultimate comfort object, a older beat up and been through a life time of ringers and back stuffed husky doll that she cherishes and takes care of like one might take care of gold. Over time (once they found out her birthday--October 5th) she starts getting stuffed animals as presents or just even as little splurges on herself . She also loves soft blankets soft clothes soft anything. She loves the texture and feel of it and it makes her happy.

She’s an aspiring writer and songwriter and can even sing a little but she has no confidence in her ability in any of those. But she has boxes and piles of notebooks and journals filled with little cartoony doodles and pages upon pages of stories and songs shes been writing for years now

Fun fact during her first year at camp Percy and Annabeth dropped by for a visit during their winter break to visit friends and I have this whole little story I might post about hoe when Percy’s walking to go meet someone he finds Elysia sitting alone at the beach doodling animals in her journal and he goes up to her(shes sitting all curled up so at a distance it probably looked like she was crying or something) to see if shes ok and because Nico had been telling him about her via iris messages and updates since she got there but he didnt get to meet her during the summer(stuff happened and she kinda hid from alot of people) but he finds her and he sits with her(after announcing his presence because Nico has told him about her being very jumpy and easily scared and that at that point hes the only one she really opens up to so dont take offense to it) and they sit for a bit and Percy asks her about her doodles and she just, for the first time like ever, she starts to open up because she gets so freaking excited and hyper about it that she just starts babbling away about her doodles and the animals of them and then about animals in general and she goes on this whole, like 30-40 minute info dump/ rant about them complete with diverting tangent questions that she answers herself before continuing with this just lit up and openly happy and ecstatic expression as she goes on and on while hes sitting there just listening to her and smiling down at her partly nostalgically because at that moment she reminds him so much of how Nico was when he first met him and you got him started on Mythomagic and that shes being so open about her excitement and then she looks at him and realizing what she was doing and she shuts herself up now panicking about how much she just word vomited on her big brother’s friend and more importantly this huge shot demigod Son of Poseidon whose saved the world not once but TWICE and who is probably very busy too busy to be hanging around with her--you get the idea of her panicking until Percy slowly reaches out his hand and she nods to let him know its ok and he ruffles her hair and tells her its ok he liked listening to her and holy shit I went on a tangent about that.

She also has alot of sweet bonding moments with Nico and Hazel because they teach her about having a loving and caring family and what thats like and its really sweet and cute and emotional

Did I mention she likes taking Nico’s shirts? Oh yeah she likes “borrowing” Nico’s shirts, and some of his jackets, mostly t-shirt and long sleeved shirts because once they get close his scent and presence really relaxes her nerves if she gets anxious. Of course its not stealing, its just borrowing and eventually giving back on laundry days...or he just lends it to her without being fully aware of it. Its cute because shes so short that they end up really big on her and she loves flapping the sleeves and the feeling of being engulfed in the safety of his presence without him even being there

ANYWAY COUGH COUGH

uhhhhhhh....yeah thats alot about her huh I think i’ll leave you all with that to take it and make sense of and I might make a part two(or you guys can ask about her too)

and yeeeeeeeeeee thats my PJO oc Elysia Melina!!

@phantommoonpeople

@kid-crashed

@demidorks (im sorry if im bothering you by tagging you youre one of the pjo blogs I follow and one of my favorites)

#percy jackson #percy jackson oc #percy jackon and the olympians #my oc #oc info #oc introduction #i guess #my art #my artwork #art wips #pjo #pjoverse #tw abuse #tw self harm mention #tw suicidal thoughts mention

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winstonhcomedy · 6 years ago

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“Dope A-F” - 1/28-1/30- “I Think I’m Going to Lose It”

What’s up baybees!?!? I’ve got a lot of shows to cover in a short amount of time. We’ve got a couple good ones, but for the most part this week has been a struggle. Definitely some super trying times, and I don’t know exactly what to do. I figured it’s time to share with you some of you laydees! So let’s get to it.

1/28

We had a twofer Monday night. I was super excited about it. For a lot of reasons. I had a spot on the showcase at Bottom’s Up pizza hosted by Patrick Buhse, and then I was going to go do a set at Jkogi’s open mic run by five comics (Brittany Andersen, Mu Cuzzo, Rick Williams, Beau Troxclair, and Kate Carroll).

So the Bottom’s Up showcase is going to be interesting. It will be the first show there in like 6 months. It used to be an open mic every single Monday hosted by a comic who is no longer a part of the scene. He lost the room after some accusations came out about some misconduct. I am not going to comment too much on it because I know there are some court proceedings going on/about to start going on.

Needless to say most people thought comedy would never happen there again. Thankfully Patrick Buhse got the room, and he booked a pretty dope lineup for the first showcase. I invited some people from work, and made sure to share the event info quite a bit. I thought this was going to be a dope show, and people would be excited for comedy to be back.

I get to the show a couple hours early and try to get some writing done. As we get closer to the show there is only two audience members. I am starting to get worried. I always do. Which is dumb, and I need to work on it. I just freak out about attendance for every show I am at. It is a dumb fear, but for right now I can not help it.

Jesse Jarvis shows up and sets up the PA. He and I start to move the tables and get the room set up. Buhse, James Muñoz, Kate Carroll also show up. After a while some people start to filter in. I have about three people from work come out (thankfully they haven’t seen a lot of my comedy so at least it will be new to them). We keep pushing the show back waiting for a crowd. It never happens. We have 8 audience members who aren’t comedians. They are all spread out, and usually this means the show is not going to be fun.

Buhse goes up and has a good hosting set. The people there are actually laughing. I realize they all have good energy and this is actually going to be pretty dope. After his set he brings up Jesse Jarvis who keeps the train rolling with a. strong set. Kate Carroll followed him and we get more of the same. The energy in the room is great for such few people. During her set Francesca Lyn comes in and we have the full lineup there.

It is my turn. I go up and I see a lady in the front row. I ask her name, and after she tells me I say, “ok cool now I officially know everyone in this room.” That gets a good laugh and I go into my material. I do about ten minutes featuring bits I have been working on for a bit. I feel like this chunk is taking longer to get finished than most. I think I’ve been lazy which is on me. Also the topics are a little more sensitive (race, gay conversion therapy, politics) so that also makes them tougher to sell. The set goes really well. Honestly I’d give it a solid B. I felt really good about it.

Afterwards Francesca goes up and has a dope set, and James closes it out with a hot one. He had manic energy while he read off a huge list of jokes. he was like a human Twitter stream. Everybody had a good set, and the show was fun. it was fun enough that I hope Buhse can start to pack it out and turn it into something awesome.

I hop in my car and drive to do a spot at Jkogi. There is a pretty good crowd, but they don’t seem super into it. I walk in and the PA sounds pretty busted. It keeps cutting in and out. I walk in during a dude bombing and see my buddy Alex there. We talk for a bit and then he goes up. He has an amazing set. He caught some lightning in a bottle. All of his riffs on the PA not working killed. His jokes worked as well. It was definitely the best set I saw of the night. He did so well he made it really tough for Jameson who had to follow him. He didn’t have the energy to really follow the type of set Alex had. You really had to grab the dingy and ride the wave.

Jameson bails early and I find out I am on stage next. I don’t even have time to grab my notebook so I just go up and do my set. I don’t even remember what I did. I am a little out of it and that’s to my detriment. Some of my jokes do ok, but I never really capture the audience the way I want to. I get a couple pops but thats about it. It is also distracting because to my left Jameson is just talking about how his set went. It wasn’t loud enough to distract the crowd, but he was close enough to the stage that I could hear it so it just felt like voices in my head. It is also weird when a show has multiple hosts, because most of them are lighting so I have to acknowledge like 3 different lights. I’m like I GET IT I’M BOMBING! I’d give this set a D+ or C-. Idk it was fine, but I didn’t love it.

I go outside and talk to Alex, and Mike Engle for a bit. We get a good riff session in and Alex walks me to my car. We talk about bombing, and how his set went. Alex also tells me that even though he doesn’t read it he is proud I am keeping up with the blog. Which is as nice and honest a compliment you can give someone. It was a good talk. I hop in my car and head home.

1/29

So this is where it starts to get juicy. This is one of those rare nights in Richmond where you have the opportunity to get up not once, not twice, but three times!!!

I pick up Alex Castagne and we go grab a bite to eat before the shows. I take my goPro in and we make a video. I came up with my new video series called the Lunch Boiyz. We went to Golden Corral and Beau Troxclair joins us. We end up shooting a super funny video, and have a really great time.

After this we head back to Alex’s place and meet up with Paige. We all head down to Mojo’s to find out where we are in the lineup. We were going to do Mojos, City Dogs, and then end at Fallout. We talk to Buhse and find out that won’t work so we reassess and head to City Dogs first.

We get there and the host Benjamin Braman is setting up. There is like 4 audience members, and only like 5 comics total on the list. Kenn Edwards and Liz Carr show up, and we make up the 5 comics.

Braman goes up and does a short hosting set before bringing up Paige. Paige is working out a new chunk of trans material and he has ben nervous to. try it in RVA. It goes ok. Not a bad set. I go up next and honestly have a really hot one. All of my stuff is really hitting and the four audience members are super into it. I am able to riff some new lines which feels really good. I’d give this set a B. Honestly I don’t know if I could have done better with my material in that room.

After me Alex goes up and has a good one. He does a bunch of crowd work and works out his new shit as well. They dig it and a few more people walk in during his set. I wish more people did this room. It is a humongous shame that people have a chance to get a lot of stage time and refuse to do it. A lot of people talk about grinding and trying to make it but I think only the three of us ended up doing all three open mics. They also aren’t even that far apart and the timing is perfect to do all three.

Before Kenn goes up I head over with Paige to Fallout. We talk in the car and head inside. Beau is there and so is Kate. Kat Malone is hosting and she gets us a good spot so we can also make Mojos.

Alex goes up after the same comic who did a street joke at Hof Garden two weeks ago. The PA is absolutely garbage for Alex tonight. Every time he moves he gets crazy feedback. Then he riffs on the bad PA and this time unlike Jkogi it doesn’t work. So he gets some laughs but all in all it is a rough set. Paige then goes up and he tries some stuff and gets some laughs. He works on his trans chunk again (I'm proud of him for doing it in RVA). After his set I go up and proceed to eat a fat one. I can’t connect. Some stuff does ok, but most of it falls flat. It’s like idk wtf I'm doing anymore. I’d give this set a D. I needed more energy and needed to sell it more.

We finally head over to Mojos. The hang is fun. I am up in like 8 comics but I really am exhausted so Paige and I switch and I get to go up a few comics earlier. Alex goes up and is getting nothing. We watch a few more comics bomb. The crowd was kind of dead. They were all in the back of the room and either comics or just people that don’t give af about comedy. I tell myself I am just going to do my material.

I go up and bomb harder than I did at Fallout. I did my set and kept working on the wording, but it felt awful. Legit it felt like I was just like staring into the eyes of 30 people who have just started comedy looking at me thinking, “how the hell does this guy get booked on anything.” It sucks. I’d rate this a D or D- as well. Maybe one thing worked, and it wasn’t what I really wanted to work. I mopily walk to my car and drive home.

1/30

I have a solid day of work. I get to go to the Science Museum which was super dope. I am trying to destress after a rough night of comedy. I edit together my Lunch Boiyz video and I am crazy happy about it.

After work I do some relaxing with friends, and then grab dinner with Alex. We go to this Philly Cheesesteak place next to Garden Grove in Cary town. It is pretty good. I show him the LB video and he loves it.

There is two shows tonight. Home Sweet Home hosted by Jacob McFadden and then Nuevo Mexico hosted by Moe Singleton. HSH is a pretty fun hang. Tons of new comics, but also some of my buddies show up. The show starts and I’m going second. Jacob starts us off and there is an ok sized crowd upstairs. So I am anticipating having an ok set. I’ve got about five new minutes on teaching that I want to work on.

Jacob always does a joke intro for people. They’re always funny, and can put you in a weird spot on stage because the audience has no idea that it is a joke. He really got me this night. It was a perfect aligning of the stars. I get brought up to, “this next comic used to do this super offensive character where he pretended to teach autistic kids, but thankfully he stopped Winston Hodges.” So now all my teaching stuff is out the window and I just work out other material.

I BOMB SO HARD HERE. Like according to Alex I did better than I think, but I felt like legit nothing was working. There was a dude there who was doing comedy for the first time as a punishment for fantasy football, and he came up during my set and he is just talking. I can’t shit on him because he brought the crowd, but I truly feel like I am floundering. I feel like nothing is working and I want to bail early. I do my time, but do not feel good about it. I’d give this set an F. Alex goes up and has a hot one. Gets lots of laughs, and everything at least hits a little bit. It is dope to see.

I walk outside with Alex after and I am furious. Like legit am having a breakdown. I feel like all of the newer comics hate me, they think I’m unfunny, and they’re just staring at me because I’m a hack. This kills me. The bombing hurts so bad. I feel like all of my jokes are trash and I legit feel like I can’t remember what a good set feels like or how to do crowd work. I don’t see the point in continuing to work out new material. We have a nice talk. I am in my feels, and am devastated. I decide I am not going to Nuevo Mexico. I can’t do it. I am defeated. Alex says let’s go inside and say bye to Jacob. He goes in and I sit down to talk to Beswick and wait for Alex.

Beswick and I have a good talk. He understands where I am coming from. He gets what is going on, and he knows it is tough. He reaffirms what I already know. That I have to keep doing new, because that is how you get good in the first place. Him and Alex both remind me we don’t need to impress anyone, this is all about working on our acts.

It has been like 15 minutes and I don’t see Alex. I assume he is upstairs. He calls me and then texts me asking where I am. I tell him I’m driving. I figured it’d be a good gag because I’m his ride. He’d rush downstairs and we’d leave.

So like another twenty minutes goes by and I go upstairs to watch Brown Frown the Clown ( a character portrayed by Mike Shea). It is insane. It has ballads about poop, jokes about rimming, and Brown Frown eats shit on stage (literally). It is nuts. Mike does a lot of characters. They are always insane sets that change the energy in a room. I respect what he does a lot. I could never do it. It is so different from what I do on stage it is kind of astounding to watch. Audiences are always trying to figure out what is going on and that is the beauty of it. Super funny and fun set.

I finally text Alex did you leave? He says yes. I go outside and we talk on the phone. Apparently it was a miscommunication. He was outside waiting at my car when he texted and called. He thought me saying I was driving was me telling him to screw off so he got a ride to Nuevo Mexico. I am pretty furious. Not at him but at the situation. I wouldn’t have sat in the room where I bombed so hard I wanted to die in for an additional 40 minutes if I had known he left.

I say screw it. I get in my car and drive to Nuevo. I don’t care if I bomb again. I legit refuse to let comedy beat me. I get to Nuevo and as I walk in Alex told me he was texting me it was good I didn’t come there. Super light and drunk crowd. Super talkative. Alex said he did pretty well with crowd work but you really had to work it.

Ben Oliver, Nathan Carlson, John Marg, Rebecca Hyman and Moe were all there. I get to see John and Ben go up. There are some moments in each set that are dope. Marg had a strong set. First time I’ve ever seen him do crowd work and he weaved his jokes in and out. Definitely a good thing to see. Ben did some as well. He is still working on being comfortable on stage, but I love that he isn’t afraid to do the tough rooms to try to figure that shit out.

The it is my turn. Even more people have left at this point. I look at Alex and we both share a side eye. The look that this might not go well. We start laughing. I see Moe has a shit on that he made that says “embrace the bomb”. So I decide to just go up and do my thing.

I have an incredibly hot set all things considered. I do about fifteen minutes. Most of it is crowd work with some rowdy hecklers. I really go in on this guy and he loves it. I get a few applause breaks (weird with only 7 people) and some super good pops. I feel so good during this set I don’t want to stop. I do about three actual jokes and they both kill. I ended on an applause break. I know this might mean nothing to most people but this was one of the most validating sets I’ve had in a long time. I’d give myself a B+ or A-. It was a reminder of what I can do when I am not in my own head. Bombing is part of the process, and always will be. I just have to keep working on accepting it and accepting that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about my act other than myself/audience.

I stay and watch Rebecca’s set. She closes on her song and I dance and sing every word to the delight of Alex. It is super catchy and I memorized it fast. I had a blast. I give Alex a ride home and then drive back to my place late and pass out. I needed this week. This feels like a big moment for my growth comedically.

So that’s it folks. We are all caught up finally. WOOO HOOOO. Yall’re the kindest laydees who have ever lived and I love you so much. Check out the Lunch Boiyz on Youtube! XOXO love you

#comedy #lunch #vlog #dinner #jokes #standup #improv #richmond #character #hilarious #bomb

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poetryasf-ck · 6 years ago

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Good Grief #4 - Lloyd Robinson

Lloyd Robinson has almost twenty years of performance experience as an actor, poet, and musician. He is one of the few performers holding the title ‘Bad Boy Of Spoken Word’, is a multiple slam winner, the reigning Axis slam champion, and qualified for the Scottish National Slam Championship the last three years running.

Lloyd is the host and co-organiser of Edinburgh’s most exciting new-material poetry night, ‘The God Damn Debut Slam’ in the Scottish Poetry Library. He has been featured at many of Scotland’s more popular spoken word events, in particular Hidden Door Festival and StAnza literary festival. He has also independently released an album of spoken word and music, ‘Reclaimed Memories’, has a degree in Creative Writing & Drama, and a diploma in psychotherapy.

Image credit: Perry Jonsson

1. Why, if there was a reason, did you write this poem/these poems?

Catharsis. Therapy. As a tribute to my brother in law who took his own life, and to raise awareness of the very real issue of Male suicide. I have a compulsion to try and ‘fix’ bad situations, but obviously this was unfixable, so writing about it was the closest I could get.

2. Why, upon writing this poem/these poems, did you perform them?

To raise awareness. And to be totally honest, to shock the audience. I want them to be uncomfortable. I want them to remember this material out of everything else they see, and have a newfound respect for the gravity of the subject. Not only that, but suicide is still socially permissible to joke about, and I want people to think twice next time they laugh at it.

3. How does performing this piece change how you look at what happened to you?

It makes me feel more in control after something very chaotic. I like to think that he would like the piece and be proud of me.

4. How do you separate artistic performance from lived personal experience?

Focus entirely on replicating my more successful rehearsals, improving performance and heightening audience reaction. I am making art for public consumption, so I choose that as my focus. Also, quite subconsciously I (for the most part) avoid the ‘I’ pronoun, instead using ‘we’, which gives me a little more distance.

5. Do you find yourself affected negatively by performing this piece? If so, how do you look after yourself?

When I started performing it, I would be somewhat exhausted afterwards. These days though, not so much. It can depend on the audience. If they’re clearly very emotionally affected that has fed into my performance before. I’ve never lost control and become tearful, but I have felt intense.

6. Do you practice any aftercare after performing this piece (either for yourself or audiences)? (E.g., talking to audience members who are upset, taking some time out after your performance to ground yourself, ensuring you perform in places where you feel safe etc.)

I try and be around post-show; I reliably get at least one audience member come up to me afterwards who has been affected by suicide. They always thank me because being bereaved in this manner can completely alienate people and make them feel alone. For that reason I consider it important to perform this piece and make the time for them, so they realise they are not.

7. Do you do any content warnings for this piece? Why?

Depends on the night. If it’s a night with a more therapeutic lean, or it is specifically designed to be a safe space, or friendly to vulnerable people then yes. Really, in that context I probably wouldn’t perform it anyway unless it was actually requested or on theme. If not, then no. When people go out to see live entertainment, the performer should work in service of entertainment. Theatre isn’t supposed to be 100% safe, and performance poetry IS theatre. If an audience has come to a poetry show on purpose, the implicit relationship is that there will be emotional themes addressed, you don’t have to know anything about the scene to realise that. People watch theatre to be elevated and catharsis through experiencing challenging performances is a big part of that. Content warnings, unless handled very carefully, can break the rhythm and illusion of the show, as well as creating preconceptions about a piece.

EG; I have been in the audience when someone has started a poem with ‘trigger warning, suicide’ which IMMEDIATELY put me on edge. However, the poem itself was really comforting and I’m glad I ignored my instinct to leave.

THAT BEING SAID context is important, I’m not about to blanket damn trigger warnings. A LARGE part of serving the entertainment of the night is the ability to read the room, spot when something isn’t appropriate and make a call. If I’m doing the poem as part of a longer set, I will usually do a brief intro to it, not specifically making a content warning (although one is implied), but to steer the audience into a different energy. In reality you can never 100% tell which way a performance will go. Someone could be fine hearing a poem about suicide, but get upset with a poem about food because they have a history of eating disorders. There does come a point where you have to acknowledge all audience reaction as valid even if the audience straight up walks out. Sometimes trigger warnings are very necessary. Sometimes putting a trigger warning in front of a piece is actually more about giving yourself an illusion of control that you don’t, in reality, have.

8. Does the artist owe any kind of protection or safeguarding to their audience?

Yes and no. The artist owes organisers and programmers an accurate representation of their performance practice and general content so they can be booked for appropriate nights. They owe it to the audience to create art to the best of their ability. If their art is massively triggering, though, they have to be prepared to not be booked very often, or only for specific nights, or to have to put on their own shows. It is the organiser’s job to keep the audience safe, especially at curated nights, where they should know their regular audience well enough to bring in acts that will succeed. When there is an open mic element, the responsibility is a little more shared. Again, you have to read the room but you also have to acknowledge that you are a part of a community. If you are unfamiliar with the nights setup/it’s your first time, you should either scout it out first or bring a backup piece in case your chosen material isn’t going to work. There is no ‘don’t be an asshole’ rule, but there is an understanding that you should ‘try not to be an asshole’. Still, ultimately it is the organisers responsibility. They have to serve the needs of their night, and if someone steps to the mic and directly works against those needs, they have to be able to stop it.

BUT AGAIN this is not a hard and fast rule. Art practices don’t exist in a vacuum and absolutes are rarely sufficient to support the balance between safety and progress. Nuance exists.

For a scene in rude health, there needs to be a wide variety of event types. The safer spaces need to exist, because vulnerable people deserve entertainment and self-expression, but they ideally would exist in parallel with middle-of-the-road-pop-Poetry for the newcomers, and a more extreme end of the spectrum where limits can be tested, because such testings are VITAL to the evolution of the artform. ‘Saved’ by Edward Bond featured the stoning of a baby onstage and it resulted in a court case that DESTROYED the Thatcherite censorship of British theatre. ‘Shopping & Fucking’ featured drug abuse and violent rape, but broke new ground, opened doors for today’s pioneers of queer theatre and predicted the neo liberal society of today. ‘Ubu’ by Alfred Jarry was considered so nonsensical and artless that it caused TWO FUCKING RIOTS on opening night, but it spawned numerous artistic movements, without which we wouldn’t have Monty Python or Mighty Boosh. Nights need to exist where decency is malleable, simply for the evolution of the artform. Great art is not impossible when subjects are considered ‘off limits’ or ‘inappropriate’ BUT there are great things that can be achieved by breaking perceived barriers.

HOWEVER. NUANCE AGAIN.

We can’t have a blanket ‘anything goes’ approach, even at the most basic level. You have to restrict hate speech for a start, because one confident speaker given a platform can convert others to a cause. You have to no-platform predators and abusers because they will pretend to be innocent and use a platform to find more victims. This, as far as I can tell, is the most pressing responsibility an artist and an organiser has. It’s not a service to the artform, it’s a service to society, so in this case, yes, the artist, and to be honest EVERYONE is responsible for bombarding hatespeech, bigotry and abuse with poison until it dies like the fucking cancer that it is.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

9. Do you believe writing about areas such as grief, loss or trauma is a form of healthy catharsis or memorialisation?

Yes. NEXT QUESTION.

Alright, alright;

Writing stuff down can allow you to recognise and acknowledge your feelings much more clearly. Also, there are three poems that, whenever I perform them, will make me feel like the lost are still here with me.

In fact, every year on the anniversary of my brother in laws passing, I meet with my family, we chat, we support each other, and I perform two poems; the one I’m writing this survey about entitled ‘jump’, and another, more personal one that I rarely perform in public. Before I started organising this, we were stuck with ‘just getting through the day’ when it came around. It’s still the worst day of the year for us, but we have something to focus on that brings us together.

However, once again, we should be wary of absolutes. People can process grief in many different and utterly unexpected ways. This works for me and a few folk I know, but it could be catastrophic for others. Grief is one of those things where you have to acknowledge every possible emotion, no matter how illogical, as valid. If the bereaved responds by instinctively picking up a pen, whether to memorialise or seek catharsis, then writing is a valid response to grief. Therapy and/or seeking advice from medical professionals are also valid responses. It’s a simple case of ‘you do whatever makes you feel better’. If that includes enrolling in clown college and riding a unicycle everywhere; valid response.

10. What kind of warnings signs would you point out to someone new to poetry or performance who was performing about their traumas?

First of all, unless they specifically asked me, I don’t think I would. In this hypothetical I’m going to assume they are an adult presenting as neurotypical. They have a right to explore their own trauma/reclaim their narrative in whatever fashion suits them and I wouldn’t want to patronise them by giving the impression that I thought they needed help (see my question 9 chat about valid responses; we mustn’t tell people how to or how not to grieve). Humans are much hardier than they often give themselves credit for. The only context in which I would intercede would be someone clearly exhibiting signs of severe anxiety/depression, & I had even the slightest suspicion they might be a danger to themselves. However, these conditions make it very difficult for new voices to leave the house, let alone sign up for an open mic, so while I acknowledge there’s a risk, it isn’t a particularly likely scenario. I feel like that’s not the sort of answer you’re after, though.

I do think there is a bit of a danger (the extent of which I’m unsure of) that a new poet could see performances on YouTube and in slams that lead them to think they have to mine their own trauma to get material. The warning signs of this would be asking yourself ‘what can I write about’ and the answer being ‘ooh, that horrible thing that happened’.

When rehearsing the poem, it is perfectly normal to cry (or similar emotional release) even a few times. If you well up during a public performance, also fine AS LONG AS THE PERFORMER FEELS IT HELPS.

If, however, you have an uncontrollable emotional response EVERY TIME you perform it, I’d start to question whether you should.

If the idea of performing it causes anxiety above the usual pre-show nerves, and that anxiety reduces when you decide ‘oh I’ll perform something else instead’ then that’s a CLEAR indication.

It is hard to point to specific warning signs other than the above and feeling peer pressure to perform grief-motivated poetry, because everyone’s responses can be incredibly varied. All I’d really say is some advice I was given when I started writing;

“There are two types of writing; what you send out into the world and you do for yourself. The first type needs to flexible so you can improve it based on the responses you get. You have to learn that constructive criticism is valuable and not a personal attack. The second is imperfect and often messy, but it helps you learn about the craft and your own mind. Always remember the two are flexible. You can start writing something personal and realise it’s for everyone. You can send something out into the world and then entirely take it back upon realising that this was just for you.”

lloydcarltonrobinson.bandcamp.com/releases

https://www.patreon.com/poetryasfuck

#lloyd robinson #suicide #poetry #poet #poem #spoken word #grief #loss #trauma

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shiobookmark · 4 years ago

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Violet Evergarden Movie

... wow, book fans really don’t like this movie huh? Spoilers below. And a linguistic and cultural question for native Japanese speakers.

It was a good movie. I don’t think I was in the right emotional state to watch it unfortunately, it just didn’t explore Violet’s psychology as deeply as I would have liked. The series really hit the hardest for me when it was exploring Violet’s trauma and survivors guilt. There were hints of that in the beginning of the film what with her insisting she’s no one to be glorified, and that scene with Diedfried returning her hair ribbon. She’s walking past him, away somewhere else and not even conscious of who he is, but when he reaches into his pocket she thinks he’s about to pull a weapon and puts him in an armlock. He forgives her for it instantly, which considering his spitting hatred of her in the TV series is... interesting. Honestly that dropped plot thread is what I find the least forgiveable. Hodgins is understandably leery about letting him anywhere near Violet considering he’s why she was in the army in the first place, but Cattleya points out that maybe their reconcilng is what Violet needs. I’d argue that maybe she needs to stay far the fuck away from her abuser but okay, they both lost Gilbert, I kind of get what she means.

Now the issue fans of the books seem to have is with Gilbert. In the novel my understanding is that he faked his death, and everyone knew he was alive and kept it from Violet. His goal being that she should learn to live without him, because when she blindly follows his orders she can’t ever be free. Which is admirable, but seeing how much Violet suffers and becomes suicidal with grief, the fact her friends apparently keep up this charade in the novel is pretty heinous. Maybe she takes it better in the novel? In the movie, Gilbert was displaced following the war, ending up at an enemy hospital without his ID tags. A reviewer mentioned that they found it hard to believe he’d be displaced, and that his uniform wouldn’t give him away but: 1. Pretty sure that happens to soldiers all the time in real war.

2. From memory both sides of the war wore green uniforms, it’s not hard to think Gilbert’s uniform badges were burned and blown away since he lost an arm and was under fallen rock. Afterwards, he drifted to an island that used to be part of enemy territory but had since become independent. They had lost all their young men to the war*, not a single person had returned and the town was dying as a result. He stayed on as a teacher. And he didn’t want to see Violet because despite claiming to love her, despite wanting her to have a happy childhood, to see things that were beautiful and enjoy cute and pretty things, he made her into a killing machine. We can debate about how much of a choice he had, the implication in the series is that Diedfried demonstrated Violet’s killing prowess in front of the higher ups and if Gilbert hadn’t taken charge of her someone less scrupulous would have. But the fact is he felt he’d ruined her life and wanted to stay out of it. Plus her existence reminded him of his failure to protect her, the cruelty he was forced to commit in war and all that stuff. Perfectly sound motivation in my opinion. Staying on the island was a weird sort of penance, helping former enemy civilians rebuild and educating their children. This particular fan didn’t like this weakness because apparently Gilbert in the book spends his time amassing power and resources to help defend Violet however he can. And this Gilbert is not that. I don’t love what that implies about novel Gilbert, because while yes, he’s paying her back, it does imply he has an awful lot of control over her future and pokes his nose into her business. Even if it’s to keep bad people off her back it’s not exactly hands off, is it? In the movie he’s characterised as a boy who was drafted into the army young, with all the weight of his family legacy on him, never got any freedom and basically had to carry that responsibility alone. And the idea of having broken a fragile and helpless little girl into a tool of war broke him. I liked that, to be frank. It really put to bed any lingering doubts I had about his feelings for Violet because frankly even if it is romantic (which aishiteiru would imply) I can’t believe he’d ever take advantage of or hurt her. He seems to have enough awareness of his effect on other people to be capable of not doing that. Now, the ending. Their future together is left really ambiguous but we know Violet pretty much retired from ghostwriting on the spot and lived on that island with Gilbert for the rest of her days. While people on the mainland are mostly unaware of where she retired to, the people on the island remember her as something of a local hero who helped their people write letters and built their post office into a thriving business that’s still got the highest output (in the country?) even 60 years later. She may have also taught at the school. The same reviewer had issues with the implication she basically abandoned everyone for Gilbert, but I don’t think that’s the case. Rather she had no reason to continue ghost writing. It wasn’t a passion of hers, she began as a method of therapy and healing, to learn to understand love. Once she’d done that there was no reason to continue. Her writing evolved. She found a place to stay and she’s remembered. There’s no mention of Gilbert at all. She’s on the local stamp in her iconic costume, we have no idea if she married Gilbert, if they were simply lifelong friends, or even if either of them are dead. Did she outlive Gilbert? We don’t know! Now the problem I have with this is a problem I was always going to have: The movie sort of implied she needed Gilbert in order to move on, and she did leave behind her friends in some capacity to be with the one she loved. I was hoping for a more nuanced ending where it was far clearer she didn’t need Gilbert to survive, but wanted him. The movie certainly implies that’s the case, as she’s willing to leave the island without seeing him for the sake of the terminally ill boy she made a promise to. Her other relationships take priority. But the ending sort of undermines that with the explanation she stayed on the island with him. Personally I think it’s left ambiguous enough that we can easily interpret it the way we want to. Which leads me to my question. I’m curious as to if there’s any cultural ambiguity to the word ‘aishiteiru’ at all or if Japanese simply lacks an intense expression of love that isn’t romantic.

Is Violet and Gilbert’s relationship one that delightfully transcends traditional labels, defying the audience to pin it exclusively as ‘platonic’ or ‘romantic’? It would certainly seem to be in keeping with the overall series theme of love that’s difficult to express in words, in the emphasis the series places on familial and platonic love over romantic. Or is this a nuance exclusively created by a Western framework? Where an ‘I love you’ is capable of being platonic, no matter how dramatic the circumstances? Is ‘aishiteiru’ only for Romeo and Juliet, or can it be for friends and family too? Is the series trying to transcend the limitations of its native language? If aishiteiru is usually romantic, is this series trying to use it in a broader context? Daisy writes a letter to her parents and the screen cuts to white text on black that reads aishiteiru, with that editing implying it’s what was written in the final lines of her letter, or at least it’s what she’s saying behind the words. Is it the sentiment? Are they using the phrase aishiteiru as a link between Daisy and Violet, as the series catchphrase, while the loves are supposed to be seen as different?

And if aishiteiru is always romantic, how would a Japanese author write about an ambiguous ‘I love you’? When ‘daisuki’ just doesn’t cut it? I doubt Gilbert would say ‘daisuki,’ would it have as much weight? Am I interpreting it as less meaningful than it actually is? Does Japan have a concept of phillia? Deep, long lasting and intense love between friends? Is there even a line between ‘different’ love? And how does this Steven Universe scene read in Japanese?

This is said as aishiteiru in Japanese, I saw it in a random clip on youtube. In English, he’s clearly addressing Connie and the gems, his family, as he leaves them behind. In Japanese, would this simply be a romantic confession to Connie? Do you lose that nuance? In English he could be confessing to Connie, but given his general freedom with his affection it’s far more likely it’s meant for everyone. He’d not likely single Connie out as the only person he says goodbye to. In comparison, here’s a similar scene where he says ‘I love you’ to Peridot, who he’s far less close to. I can’t check, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was ‘daisuki.’

This is driving me nuts please is there ANY ambiguity to this phrase at all? Or is it just normally used romantically? As in a ‘well you could use it platonically. We’d understand from context, but it’d be a bit weird.’

#I can't sleep without knowing the answer to this one #Japanese #Violet Evergarden #Japanese Language #Japanese culture

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commanderfreddy · 7 years ago

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Hey. I'm twenty years old now. I've been alive for two whole decades.

When I was like 14 or so, I read an article for teenagers who wanted to become published authors, and one of the pieces of advice it gave was to "not go overboard", reminding readers that your writing style changes a hell of a lot, and very quickly, during your teen years (and even beyond, into your 20s) and so instead of trying to get published as young as possible and ending up with an eventually pretty embarrassing work on the market, the aspiring teen author should tell themself that they would be published by the time they were 20. Well, I did. And I'm not. I realise now that a large part of that advice was actually just a false goal just far enough in the future to keep kids motivated without making the future seem too distant, and didn't really intend for anyone to end up with a book of their own before they hit the big 20, but it still kind of stings to know I didn't meet one of my biggest goals. Okay, if you want to get technical, a short story of mine I entered in a contest ended up in their finalists anthology, which people bought with money, but I'm sure you can all gather that wasn't what I was thinking of when I sat down with a ratty blue notebook and a head full of OCs at age 13.

Honestly, looking at my writing now, I'm glad my Big Work hasn't been published yet. I don't think I'd be satisfied continuing the series with the kind of foundation I'm capable of laying now. But, still. I'm pretty torn up that I couldn't even manage the work ethic to get a single short story finished and sold to a magazine. I've got two in the works, but… Fuck.

I can't stop thinking about the way my mum talks about me. She keeps boggling over the fact that she was only a year older than I am now when she moved to Melbourne, when she landed the job that would keep us well-fed for the rest of our lives, when she got my dad to leave his wife for her. I'm not like that. I've always admired my mum. She's really strong. Powerful. When she enters a room, you know. She takes up way more space than you'd expect any 150cm bespectacled former gymnast to be capable of. She has this way of speaking, this calm force that lets you know she's already won. And when she tells a story, you can feel yourself in the antagonist's place, being beaten down by her. I don't think anyone's ever yelled at her. I don't think anyone can. She just has so much raw energy radiating off her.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do to get the same effect. I can't imagine her being just a kid y'know, someone with no clue what's going on or what she wants to do with her life.

To be honest, I have a hard time thinking of myself as a kid, too.

I lost, I think, a year to bullying that set off abandonment issues I didn't even know I had. I'd just moved, uprooted from my home city by yet another family mistake I wouldn't learn about until I was way older. New kids have a hard time fitting in, y'know? Especially when they immediately befriend the most gender-nonconforming kid in the grade. I, uh. When everyone else spurned me, I grew to hate him, in hopes they'd accept me once I dropped him. They didn't. I took out so much internalised transphobia on that poor fucking kid, who was already getting the brunt of everyone else's ire. I hope he's okay now.

I think that's my biggest regret. I was only eight, yeah, but so was he. I. I don't know.

I don't really know anything, I guess.

I don't know what happened to my life, to the youth I was promised. I don't know how teenagers live, what they do, who they are, even though I was still one just a few minutes ago. I can't drive. I don't know fuckin' anything. How do clothes work, what the fuck? Who am I? I spent so much of my life on the edge of tears, always about to burst but never even getting the catharsis of letting it all out. I think the hardest I ever cried was when I was 12, and I was at a musical with a primary school friend and it ended up running way over time. Her mum was with us, and my parents weren't mad, but just the fact that everything had been thrown out of my mental schedule was enough to make me ill with how violently I cried.

I want to scream so fucking bad. But there's nowhere I could go that I could feel safe enough to scream, I think. No matter where I went I'd always be too afraid that someone would hear me, that I'd disturb someone. I don't want to scream into my pillow, I want to rend the air with my voice and feel my chest burst open with the force. I want to be hoarse for days, I want to scream until I run out of fear, until it's all washed clean out of me. But at the same time I know that screaming like that won't actually do anything, and I'd just feel weird and dissatisfied afterwards.

Hey, did I ever tell you the abject terror I felt after my very first date? It went really well, we went bowling and then to an arcade, where I let him kiss me. And then my leg jiggled the whole train ride home and I figured that was what love felt like. I went up to my room and thought of that scene in the fuckin' Beethoven movie (the one about that bigass dog) where the enamoured teenage girl flops back onto her bed and her hair splays around her face like a perfectly shellacked halo. I sat down on the edge of my bed as gingerly as ever, faced the wall, and burst into tears.

My mum was so angry when I couldn't explain why I was crying.

"What, do you not want to date him?"

But I did. I wanted to be dated so bad. I wanted to be loved, to be kissed, to be held, to be spoken to.

I never really considered that was different to wanting to love someone myself.

I think it was that same year, later, around September, when I went to Germany, that I actually fell in love for the first time. Back then, I had no idea. I thought I had a crush on an older girl in my cosplay circle, because she had big boobs and was so nice to me even though she was like 23 and I was 16. But, in Germany, I grew to be so fascinated with this girl from my rolecall class (that's Australian for homeroom btw) that I'd rarely spoken to before. We liked a lot of similar things. We had that same tentative "fangirl" approach to gayness that heralded that whole "overinvested ally" kind of self-closeting, and we liked not the same shows or books per se, but we had the same approach to things we loved - over analysis, deep emotional investment, and a desperation to find those tiny slivers of potential in truly shitty series. I wanted to know everything about her. I loved her sarcasm, coming out just as hesitant and awkward as the rest of her words, blending in perfectly and catching me every time. I stumbled over every word she said, just to hold onto them for longer. I'm embarrassed to admit I eavesdropped on her once, in rolecall, when she was talking to another girl in the class about her antidepressant dosage. The emotions I felt when I realised we had similar mental problems is something I doubt I'll ever be able to give a name to. I kinda prefer it that way. A first love should be full of unpronounceable wonders, and a secret solidarity fits well enough for me.

I wish I'd had the guts to actually ask her out.

We had a few moments of silence, just looking at each other, waiting for the other to speak. I know now what I should have filled those moments with. If I'd kissed her, I don't think she would have minded.

I wish I'd gone out with her instead. But I didn't, and I let a perfectly nice boy kiss me on the lips for eight seconds while I stood stock still in a noisy arcade, and told myself that was what I was looking for.

I spent a lot of my teenage years lying on the floor.

I imagine my twenties will be much the same. But I hope, at least, it'll be a different floor, and there will be people lying there with me. Maybe, I think, my youth won’t be so wasted if it gets all of my loneliness out of the way. I want to be ready to learn to love, to learn to speak, to know, to feel, to be all the things I was afraid of before.

I need to go back to therapy, but I know I've made some progress. There are some things I'm not so afraid of before. I'm a lesbian! I'm a bigender lesbian and my name is Friedrich! And those are good things, things that bring me joy and help me understand myself and bring me closer to my loved ones, as well as helping me find said loved ones in the first place. And yeah, there are people I love. I have friends! I've always felt real nervous saying that before. I remember in my cosplay circle there was a lovely girl who said "I love you" every five minutes and I could just never say it back. No matter how many times she said it I was still unable to reciprocate, unable even to call her a friend. But I have friends now, I know it. I love them, and sometimes I can even tell them! Out loud, even. I don't think I'm ready to go first yet, but I can reciprocate. And I call them my friends! And I'm ready to accept that some of the people I was closer to in high school I'm not close to anymore, but there are still some people from there that I talk to on here, and I'm glad I know, and I count as friends too.

I went to get a cup of tea and completely lost my train of thought fuck.

I don't exactly have great memories of the past two decades of my life, and there's still a lot I'm working through, a lot I don't know how to talk about yet. And I know quite a few times in the past I've said "good things are gonna happen" or "I'm gonna change" or whatever, and things haven't really moved. So, uh, I'm gonna set some concrete goals I think. And real ones, that I choose for myself, not given to me as a placeholder until my youthful bravado runs out.

1. Go back to therapy (by the end of august)

2. Get a short story published (by the end of 2017)

3. Ask out a girl (by the time I turn 21)

4. Be more vocal in supporting my friends, do more things for them, like drawing or writing stuff for them, and tagging them in stuff I see that reminds me of them, telling them when they do something cool and just genuinely trying to be more open with my feelings yknow? (from today onwards)

Thanks for reading, if you managed to get through all that lmao. It's been a weird twenty years, and I can't say growing up on the internet was a healthy thing, but… I'm not too ashamed of who I am today.

#long post #SUPER LONG POST INSIDE YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED #fred says a thing #personal #birthday 2017

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coshayphinelove · 7 years ago

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now that the finale afterglow has faded, i’ve been kind of looking back on the series with a more critical eye than a “PLS DONT LEAVE ME” eye.

this is by no means the last time i’ll write some kind of long-winded essay, i’m sure i’ll find other things to overthink about on rewatches and as i write more fic, but it is a direct reaction to the finale and the five years i have spent with this show.

in short, the finale was amazing. it was probably the best finale of any show i have ever seen. it was satisfying and true to the characters that we had grown to love. it was realistic insofar that the problems didn’t end with the evil being defeated. it was bittersweet and made me emotional where i didn’t think the show could anymore.

(although i still haven’t watched the last two episodes of frin/ge so it’s rank may change).

if the rest of the season and the previous two seasons had set it up, it would have been even better. it is, to this day, my firm opinion that season 1 was the tightest, most well thought out season of television i have ever seen. like, if you had asked me in season 3 where i thought the finale would be, i would have had such a different answer. (please do ask me, i have so many thoughts.)

most of my criticisms are on the co-phine/delphine front bc that’s where i’ve curated the most facts, having a few transcripts saved to my computer for ease of access. and the first thing i have to talk about is the plot holes this season, bc wow, so many. like, delphine was only there when it was convenient. that much was clear.

like she only helped siobhan bc there needed to be a good guy survivor to tell the rest about what happened. she was only invited to the big house so cosima could invite herself along. she was only put in the dress so that cosima could be in the suit so that the pr team could tease a wedding.

and she was only in the final clone scene to reinforce that ‘’we can trust her now guys’’. like she and cosima never talked about anything. not the shay snafu in season 3, not the lying, not the spying, not the secrets. which are really big things. and i’m not saying it had to be 45 minutes of therapy jargon but i am saying that they should’ve said... ‘sorry’ or explained what happened and where they were coming from. bc to this day i don’t actually know why delphine did what she did in season 3. what happened in frankfurt? why did she threaten shay like that instead of just asking? why was she suddenly working for topside? none of that ever gets mentioned after it happens.

and as much as the sarah hug helps me with my sarcoshayphine struggles, they hadn’t spoken since ‘piss off delphine.’ how did they get from there to hugging? ‘we’re doing all of this on account of bloody delphine?’ to soft hugs and kind words? like yeah, it fit and it worked and it was touching. but when you think about it, it kind of dissolves. which is kinda fitting for a lot of the plot this season.

and to me, that left this season of c0p/hine feeling kind of empty. we reused the ‘can we trust delphine’ plot. we reused the ‘delphine’s off in a foreign country and therefore unreachable’ plot (eighty times this season, right?). i still stand by my point that in season 4 she could have been in hiding, having driven off into the sunset to do mrs. s’s bidding. like they could’ve had delphine funneling info for all of season 4 through mk/siobhan completely off screen. but she just.. did nothing for all of season 4. right. boss ass bitch corporate delphine just... sat around getting told what to do... sure..

or in 5x09 she could have just been around the corner at the grocery store rather than france. and why even bring that up if you’re never going to do anything with it? she went home right when cosima would’ve needed her and she was free to be there for her? what the hell? and there was no setup for it either. one second they’re ‘on the precipice of doing anything they want’ and the next delphine went home? without cosima before the fight is over? like, season 2 delphine would’ve been doing The Most: cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, chores, snuggles, etc etc. but instead she hears the news and hops on the first plane out of the country?

like you guys do realize they didn’t say ‘i love you’ this season at all, right? delphine is ‘motivated by love’ but she doesn’t say it at every possible opportunity? cosima thought she was dead, but doesn’t blurt it out the first time she sees her after waking up? like fuck a sex scene, normalize wlw couples saying ‘i love you’ to each other first.

idk... i know there were scheduling conflicts and i know they had to keep rewriting as the schedule got rearranged, but come on. i can, right now, change a few key scenes that do something for both cosima and delphine’s character, that keeps them both active and doesn’t just ignore 3 seasons of characterization.

which is another point. there was so much they could have done with delphine’s character. not just this season, but for a while. instead of like.. idk following up on the threads they presented (affair with l**kie, changing sides, the girl who slit her wrists which was implied to be delphine herself, seeming to be worth shooting and kidnapping and nursing to back to health to neolution, what she was doing before cosima got there, what she did in geneva, etc etc) they only brought her back to kiss cosima. like bottom line. like, she didn’t really do anything active that someone else wasn’t doing elsewhere except warn siobhan about kira. which they didn’t even listen to her about.

and several times they referred to her as a lesbian when in 1x08 she clearly and fully called herself bisexual. and they shot her. for being in love with cosima. regardless of what they have recently said about ‘knowing about byg and always intending to bring her back’ they... still did it. and right afterwards said some really gross stuff about fans who were upset about it. i don’t really remember all of it, but i do distinctly remember the word ‘reductive’ used to say that fans were reducing her to her sexuality and that was the real problem. which... see the above several paragraphs. pot, kettle. kettle, pot. (i have separate thoughts on the season 3 debacle..)

which brings me to my main thought. i think they were too hyperaware of the fandom. they tried to roll with the scheduling conflicts and make a nice new shiny ship for us. but when there were complaints (*cough* hate *cough*) thrown at creators/cast over it they waffled and changed their minds. which then led to a shay shaped plot hole. also a shay shaped hole in my heart.

and i think someone around season 1 told them they were being progressive and they just... didn’t try to learn new things? idk how to phrase this. like season 1 was genuinely feminist. and the fact that they saw this story unfolding from a female perspective was incredible. and sarah’s storyline throughout the seasons was incredibly feminist. and the fact that they thought to include characters of genders other than cis and sexualities other than straight was fantastic. but after they got a pat on the back for being progressive, they stopped actively trying to call themselves out. they were like, ‘yes i am progressive and feminist therefore everything i produce is good without a second check.’

but this past season was all about petey and the clones were only used to further reinforce his evilness. and felix was more active than sarah, the protagonist. and tony actually got mentioned but he never actually showed up. and their ‘stand-in for the patriarchy’ got to violently murder two women (of two different underrepresented minorities, ASD and middle aged) while going back and abusing another woman (and praising him and saying he actually loved her!!!!). and their lesbian character centric episode was primarily focused on her romantic entanglements rather than, say, her and her character. (which i’ve been learning is actually kind of a problem in the wlw community, is losing yourself to new relationship energy and they could’ve actually taken a stance on this and said something important, but... anyway..)

and the creators were touting this as the most feminist season ever.

...

like okay. by walking0 de..ad and game- of9 thro///nes standards it is. but what they said in interviews and what they put on the screen did not match up. and i think that’s my main problem. like when i turn on my tv i generally turn off my feminism eyes and my lgbt rep wants. bc i generally know that not every show is going to be perfect and as long as it’s not like last man standing then i can tolerate it. but season 1 and their interview presence just got my hopes up. and they just didn’t deliver on their promises, imo.

and that wouldn’t be so bad, but they were so close, like this close!! you can’t see my fingers rn, but they’re almost touching... like they had the perfect setup, a meatball straight down the plate, just begging to be a home run, but they shanked it to right field and got stopped at second base.

like implying in interviews that some characters are nonbinary or confirming characters sexualities is really cool!!! i used to be a r//izzl//es fan, i know how awful it is when cast/creators genuinely don’t want you in their fandom. getting a confirmation is super cool.... but technically it’s not canon, it’s not In The Show. like it’s not untrue either, it’s not not canon. but being Progressive and Feminist and Positive LGBT Rep would’ve been.. idk saying it on the show, in the character’s own words? bc i can go anywhere and get coded representation, i can go back to the fifties and watch stuff with thinly veiled metaphors and small little nudges in the confirmation direction. it’s not something you get to pat yourself on the back for.

like, imo 1x08 was probably the best handled lgbt scene. like delphine stated her identity. and cosima just went along with it. and they got to talk candidly about it. they said ‘gay’ and ‘bisexual’ in the same scene. like??!!?!??!?! that was amazing. but for some reason they couldn’t do that for sarah, or felix. or let tony talk about being trans rather than having it be a hushed whispered conversation between two (then believed to be) cis people without him.

and it was just so frustrating to me, as a viewer, knowing what they meant and seeing what they put out there.

bc they are two different things. i can say whatever i want about this post, but at the end of the day it is just a grammatically incorrect, rambling, walk-about way of saying i have insomnia and was thinking about this enough to try and organize my thoughts. the creators can say whatever they want about the show, but eventually those interviews and those panels will get buried in the internet and all that will stand is their product. which doesn’t have confirmations of those themes within it.

like i’m forever going to love the show and i’m always going to go back and rewatch. it’s always going to be an influence on my writing. it’s just not... me trying to replicate and be like this show it’s trying not to make the same mistakes. which is kinda sad, bc it used to be the other way.

and at the end of the day it is feminist. like it’s about women told from a women’s perspective about allegories for womens’ issues. it’s just not by women so it missed the mark. same goes for the lgbt stuff. it is progressive that they thought to include it, but the stories they ended up telling were closer to the older stuff than what they thought.

i just wish they had brought in a third showrunner that was a woman and had lgbt writers come in to tell the lgbt stories. that doesn’t mean that it would’ve automatically been 100% Unproblematic™ but i think it would have been a lot closer to what they had promised.

anyway, i miss it already.

#thinky thoughts #this has been stewing for the better part of 5 years

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notesandcoffee · 8 years ago

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Opinions 4.19

Psychotherapy is hard to write well, Gale continues to provide more entertainment than any TK plotline, and I try my hand at figuring out how to forget things.

There was so much going on this episode that it was actually hard for me to start somewhere. Everything is just such a good idea. The execution ranges from questionable to excellent, but there's nothing I would consider irrevocably "bad", as we've seen in some previous episodes. Definitely stuff I feel could be improved, so I guess we'll start there.

The "therapy" that's the centerpiece of this episode, where Dr. Krilov stages an abduction and then implants memories in Ressler's memory is okay, given what comes afterwards is both absorbing and entertaining. The payoff is worth the suspension of belief for this part, but I feel like the therapy could have been done better and closer to, you know, actual science. In the scene in question, Krilov goes from narrating Panabaker's language in Ressler's "dream", for lack of a better term, immediately to explaining to his colleagues what exactly he's doing.

I feel like this was done for time purposes, rather than believability, but that doesn't really make it better. Combined with the cut idea that Ressler's memory was supposed to be triggered by Sriracha scent rather than auditory input. There's no real way to do that on-screen without losing at least part of the audience or taking up a lot of time, so I understand why it was cut. But immediately going against a rule that was just made doesn't really seem cool either. It would have kept the audience enrapt if Krilov had only voiced Panabaker in the "dream", and maybe if the colleagues had spoken to themselves, quietly, off to the side. It would give the impression that Ressler is completely hypnotized to the sound of Krilov's voice and is inputting memory rapidly (which he would have been, according to the scene).

That's my strongest real criticism, though. I wasn't really feeling the tension at the beginning, but I also didn't realize quite what the plan was for Ressler and to have him go directly against Panabaker by himself, but it ultimately brought about something that I hadn't expected. Again, there's a bewilderment and a payoff that was more than worth it for me.

Ressler, while trying to talk Gale out of pursuing Reddington through the bodies on the ice rink, receives a call from a detective in Philadelphia about the Reven Wright case, which of course he pursues. Jailing Panabaker for Wright's murder has been a longtime goal of Ressler, one that we've seen him struggle with numerous times in the show after Wright's demise. There, he meets Linda McFadden, who saw Hitchin carrying a body out of Wright's house, presumably her body. Shortly after, the area is SWATted, and everything goes dark. Ressler is picked up by a flip Panabaker shortly after, and pushes her for answers on Wright and McFadden. The two go back and forth for a while, before Panabaker excuses Ressler and instead calls in a threat against McFadden from her own cell phone.

The cell phone Ressler drops doesn't ever payoff, though. I don't think that's really worth pursuing, in this case.

Gale continues to impress with his relentless pursuit of the truth, and he finally meets Liz, after trying to reach her by phone numerous times. He wants her to see the body-filled ice rink to guilt her into telling him where Reddington is and the story. He's already got a great grasp of what happened, complete with memorized dates. He's made a timeline with dates and evidence, all of it through records and without the characters we've known and fallen deeply in love with. He's an acknowledgement that Reddington is still a criminal, in addition to all of the other things we know him to be. He's not a direct threat to Liz, but presents a threat to Reddington, which puts Liz in yet another conflicting position.

However, unlike previous scenarios with TK, the conflict isn't based on Liz's romantic feelings for anyone., something that the audience cannot share. It's about Liz's loyalty, and what she wants to find meaning in. She either protects Reddington and values him as more than an informant, or she finds justice for the victims on the ice rink and turns him in properly. For the first time in years, the audience is asked questions that aren't centered on "what is abuse?" but rather, what's morally more meaningful. Murciano is great at speaking quickly and not allowing Liz or Ressler enough time to think about a reaction before his next statement, even if it caused problems for me personally when I tried to watch the episode sped up.

There isn't enough Aram in this episode. Aram and rest of the P.O. sans Ressler take a backseat, though they're next in line as Gale continues to rip through the task force in order to get to Reddington. With Ressler sidelined, it's anyone's guess as to who Gale targets next. Cooper would be an interesting choice to go after next, as he could use the task force as a shield or insist on taking on Gale himself.

We did get a peek at how Saram is doing, with Aram's line: "... and these days, [Navabi and I] don’t really agree on anything so, you know, it’s gotta be good advice." They've been fighting about a lot, and as colleagues, that's not particularly good for the P.O. as a whole. But because they can come to at least this agreement without much of a conflict, they both care about Liz (and by extension, Reddington) enough to want her to stay away from Gale.

Based on what we know from the Katai Fellowship ordeal and Janet's appearance in the P.O., Navabi has had issues addressing Aram plainly, something Aram isn't comfortable with at all, stuttering and peppering his speech with more fillers than usual in this particular line. I'm still a bit unclear as to why Navabi has such a distaste for her colleague, but it's nice to know that something that trivial will not break up the team... yet. With the pressure Gale is using as a weapon in this arc, it'll be interesting to see how that affects Saram, which it ultimately will.

Red mentions how Kaplan's personality has changed, something longtime fans have noted since the beginning of the arc. It's an acknowledgement that it's not quite the same Kaplan we've seen in previous episodes of the show, for better or worse. Now that it's a noted adjustment of Kaplan's personality, we can start looking as to why her personality changed drastically so quickly, and what changes can be retroactively made to the flashback episode, if any. Last Opinions I theorized that the new personality was the result of an untreated TBI, but because we're working slow closely with memory, I thought it was worth a second look.

But we see something new here -- Krilov mentions that he saw Liz two years ago, not twenty-five. And he doesn't seem to be lying about it either. @eaglechica19 has a great thesis on Caul hiring Krilov and how it intertwines with Red's relationship with Liz, and if you haven't read it yet, open a tab for it here.

And because I was curious, I wondered if Kaplan remembered things differently than how they actually occurred, inspiring her change in personality and autobiographical memories being disjointed. If that were the case, it would be similar to how Krilov's implanted memories in Liz and Ressler worked. Except, as I mentioned previously, Kaplan's access to medical attention, be it nefarious or not, was incredibly limited. If Kaplan's fake memories weren't implanted by Krilov or Orchard, how did she get them? And could we use that to learn about Liz's memories?

Disclaimer: I am not a neuroscientist. I'm a fucking nerd with an internet connection. Please consult actual fucking medical attention if any of these things might apply to you.

This is on the Mayo Clinic's website for amnesia:

Another rare type of amnesia, called dissociative (psychogenic) amnesia, stems from emotional shock or trauma, such as being the victim of a violent crime. In this disorder, a person may lose personal memories and autobiographical information, but usually only briefly.

Reading this looks like a terrible plot device, I'm aware, but this is a real thing that happens to real people. It's worth reading up on, in my opinion, for that reason alone.

But in our world of fiction, we've been exploring two different people's memories. Both of whom have survived traumatic incidents -- plot-dependent incidents -- that we've only seen in that autobiographical memory. Liz's memory was toyed with intentionally, at least once by Red. If those memories are wrong, then we’re not viewing the story completely. So where can we find that story?

From WebMD, emphasis mine:

Dissociative amnesia is not the same as simple amnesia, which involves a loss of information from memory, usually as the result of disease or injury to the brain. With dissociative amnesia, the memories still exist but are deeply buried within the person's mind and cannot be recalled. However, the memories might resurface on their own or after being triggered by something in the person's surroundings.

This fits with what we've seen so far from Liz, in her shooting Connolly. We also see this in how Kaplan recalls her past, with bits floating in and out as she goes on her grotesque road trip to dig up bodies. The memories themselves are shattered, and while certain parts of the memory are intact, some of the most crucial bits are fuzzy. As @eaglechica pointed out, we don't know for sure who is fighting in Liz's memory. Certain parts of Kaplan's memory are missing as well, such as the long time gaps that were barely covered by a cut on-screen.

As noted, Krilov's psychotherapy is a bit of a farce on Ressler, easily broken by Liz, which leaves me to wonder what exactly he did to Liz to make her forget... whatever he was told to. When successful, how does his psychotherapy actually work, and can we learn anything from it? Is there any way for someone to completely forget something happened?

It's tempting to say "repression" in the same way Freud imagined it -- that is, traumatic experiences were sealed off but left behind a specific behavior associated with it, like depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, etc. This concept has largely been disproven by the scientific community. Long story short: victims telling someone they forgot what happened was more beneficial than coming out with the truth for a incredible amount of time. Likewise, I wasn't able to find a psychotherapist who specialized in making people forget experiences, but an incredible amount of hypnotherapists who specialized in dealing with the effects of trauma.

As far as I can tell, there hasn't been a documented experiment where a person was able to successfully completely forget an experience. However, it's well-documented that every feeling you have, every thought, is a result of a series of neurons firing off at the right time with the right signal. Mess with the timing, mess with the signal or how its carried, mess with the part firing off in the first place, and the results can be vastly different. The closest to having someone intentionally forget an experience that I was able to find in academia was an experiment in 2010, where a drug was able to block "fear" signals when mice encountered a loud noise. Because our communication with mice is limited, we don't know if they "forgot" what a loud sound means in the same way that humans might forget a phone number or a grocery list. We do know that when we drug mice, they don't have the same chemical reaction that would cause them to feel fear or anxiety after they've had a bad experience. For our purposes, they know what happened previously when there was a loud noise, but they excuse it and continue with their day, while on drugs.

If Kaplan's working with a traumatic brain injury that's fucking with her memory, Liz needs to be on drugs consistently to wholly forget hers. We haven't been with Liz 24/7, but I'm going to go ahead and say she hasn't been on memory-altering drugs for most of that time. Instead, Krilov has used a combination of hypnotherapy and drugs (as seen in Ressler's "dream") to make the emotions associated with that memory less traumatic and harder for her to recall.

If Kaplan is suffering from dissociative amnesia, we might be able to get the whole story soon, similar to how Liz is revealing her memories. If Liz happens to hit the right trigger, we'll get the memories that we desperately want to see.

#the blacklist #opinions #gale needs a nickname so bad #cinnamon roll hacker supreme

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