#it’s not really a review it’s just an outpouring of my thoughts but it’s still Reviewing the movie | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

makkinmusic · 3 months ago

Text

TTPD - What Works and What Doesn't

The name Taylor Swift is a common household name in the music industry. Known for her breathtaking lyrics and music, she takes the top spots in every single album and music list. Her marketing for her music is thought provoking and keeps her fans guessing and looking for more. Recently, she released her latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, which has stunned her audience because of Taylor Swift’s different artistic approach. In some ways I would say I really enjoyed this piece and in others, I would think it to be lacking.

First off, the lyrics in this album are genuinely out of this world and kind of all over the place. This album was written right after Taylor’s semi-public split with her long term boyfriend, Joe Alwyn and her spontaneous and uncalled for relationship with the football star, Travis Kelce. The songs reflect this fast change of relationship status with both breakup songs and songs about a new and fresh romance. The lyrics about the brekaup are gut-wrenching and depressing (I wonder how people currently in a breakup are dealing with these lyrics) and her songs about a new forming relationship feel silly and child-like (So High School). I can understand that the emotions that may go into breaking up a relationship of six years to be messy and all over the place, and that's exactly how the lyrics and songs in this two hour album were presented: messy and all over the place, a whiplash, as mentioned in Review: “The Tortured Poets Department” A place for the broken, the broken-hearted and everyone else, too . That being said, I still love listening to her songs and I love trying to decode them for their true meaning like a puzzle. This album requires a lot of background knowledge and an in-depth understanding of metaphors. If you’re not too keen on that kind of stuff, maybe grab a friend in the English major, or this album just won’t be your cup of tea. In my opinion, this album doesn’t live up to the lyrisism or fun of (in my opinion) her albums 1989 or Folklore, where she took pop to another level and her creativity of lyrics to another level.

Adding onto the talk about my favorite albums, 1989 and Folklore, the musical production of those albums were different from each other, 1989 being pop and Folklore being indie and full of acoustic instruments. This relates to my talk of TTPD because I have been noticing that Jack Antanoff, being the great music producer he is, makes a lot of the instrumentals in Taylor’s recent music to sound the same as her other recent albums and songs. I’ve noticed this in her album, Midnights and in the rerecording of her old albums and her songs from the Vault. Something I’d like to call “Jack Antonifying the music,” because everytime I hear his song I can tell he produced it. It kind of becomes boring and repetitive after a while and this album was FULL of it. Every song sounded the same, just with the lyrics rearranged, to put it shallowly. Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poet’s Department Review. TTPD is a weird mix of indie pop and a weird mix of Midnights and Folklore/Evermore in the sense that there was nothing different or diverse in the collection of songs in this album compared to her others.

I’m kind of stuck when I’m trying to talk about my opinions on this album because I’ll still enjoy the songs, but this album is not the first I’d go to when I’m trying to listen to Taylor’s songs. This isn’t her best album, but it’s also not her worst. The best way I can put it into words is Meh. I’ve been an avid listener to her music since, well, forever, and I’ve been an avid listener because of her ability to diversify her music and lyrics. In this album the lyrics were an outpour of her uncensored thoughts and ideas which is what kept me listening and wanting to keep decoding them. My top 5 favorite songs, would be:

Clara Bow

Fortnight

The Alchemy

Guilty as Sin?

Imgonnagetyouback

While this album was not my cup of tea, I’ll still always look forward to her new songs and albums. Now it's your turn to listen and let me know what you think!

#fun #music #taylor swift #taylornation #swifties #the tortured poets department #ttpd #ts ttpd #music lover #album #album review #Spotify

4 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 7 months ago

Text

When I speak with Anne Lamott, she is in a “hotel-motel” in Ypsilanti, Michigan, halfway through a cross-country book tour, flaunting sparkly pink nails. The manicure was part of a coping strategy initiated in response to a bad review – “seriously the worst review” of her life, said Lamott. No matter that Somehow: Thoughts on Love, her 20th book, is cresting the New York Times’ bestseller list – a dig by a prominent critic can still capsize her day.

But this is Anne Lamott, known for her preternatural ability to uncover grace in all her trials, from the trivial to the existentially unmooring. Lamott has found Christ-like qualities in a colicky baby, self-love in the abyss of addiction, and even ways to shepherd her own neuroses when they arrive at the writing desk like damaged relatives “with their weird coppery breath”.

In this latest book, which reads as a collection of parables, themes of love and grace are often interchangeable. Lamott recalls, for instance, a friend who found a small frog in the shower, which she picked up and carried to its rightful place in the grass outside. The frog, panicking en route to safety, was insensible to the murmured comforts of its carrier. “I think this is one of the best examples of how love operates when we are most afraid and doomed,” writes Lamott, “carrying us to a safer place while we pound against cupped hands.”

The idea that we can entrust ourselves to such tender devotion – no matter how ill-fated our lives might seem – is a central thesis of Somehow. Through anecdotes about marriage, illness, best intentions, and penance for a misfired transphobic tweet in 2015, Lamott presents love variously as a vessel, a shelter, a meditation – and “our only hope”.

And now, in the face of a bad review, Lamott is trying to exercise the wisdom she extols. She’s leaning on her loved ones back home in Marin county, and drawing strength from the outpouring on social media, where fans remind her to shake it off. “And then they said really horrible things about the reviewer and the review. And that, of course, was the best thing of all.”

I spoke with Lamott over Zoom. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your book launched last month and the next day you celebrated your 70th birthday. Does that number carry any particular significance for you?

Anne Lamott: It certainly sounds old. When I was younger, I really loved drugs and alcohol, and I didn’t think I’d see 18. And then I didn’t think I’d see 21. Then I didn’t think I’d see 30.

Then I got sober when I was 32 – almost 38 years ago – and I thought, oh, I’ve reached the mountaintop. Then I had a kid and felt this urgency to try to stay alive, which I hadn’t felt for a long time. Then I saw 50.

But I loved my 60s. I felt at the height of my mental and spiritual and psychological wellness. As you get older, you just start throwing this stupid stuff off your airplane that kept you flying so low for so long. You just think, I don’t have the time. I don’t care any more. I don’t care what my butt looks like.

By my age, you’ve seen so many people die, many of them younger. And so you get serious about understanding we’re all on borrowed time, and that you’ve got to make a decision about how you’re going to live this one short, precious life.

How does that realization change the stakes when it comes to love?

Over the years, I have picked some really terrible but charming and well-known men. Sometimes attractive and sometimes not. Sometimes they were just good company and the world loved them. But I always secretly knew that if they were a woman, they wouldn’t be my best girlfriend. They wouldn’t even be a close girlfriend.

And then when I was 62 I met this guy, Neal Allen. And just after one coffee with him, I realized that if he were a woman, he would be my best girlfriend. That’s the value I held out for and that’s what I encourage people who still long to find a soulmate to hold out for: it should be a person who you want to talk to for the rest of your life. A person whose commitment is to kindness and who has read every single book you’ve ever read and loved and vice versa.

In December, you wrote in the Washington Post about the slow descent of “the creaking elevators of age”. Apart from death, what awaits you at the end of your ride?

I imagine I will be surrounded by my husband and son and two friends. And they will have called hospice because we all do now. And the hospice is the calvary. They will come in with their syringes full of morphine, so I know I won’t have any pain and I won’t have any fear.

View image in fullscreenLamott in Berkeley, 1997. Photograph: Darryl Bush/Getty Images

There is so much money and attention being spent on longevity these days, which, I think, entails a certain denial of death. I was chatting a while back with people who work in end-of-life care, and their view was that our fear of death detracts from our ability to live a good life.

There’s an American way of forward thrust: you must always be moving and you must be moving higher in terms of recognition or acclaim or stature. I developed that toxic self-consciousness. It kept me from being here, breathing it all in and observing with a small degree of amusement and wonder and tenderness, because I was so fixated on what I looked like and how I was coming across and how I was doing.

The forward thrust has to do with the fear of death, because if you keep moving very quickly, then you’re going to outrun the abyss. The abyss isn’t going to open at your feet and swallow you up. But everything I’ve learned that’s of any importance, I’ve learned because the abyss opened up and swallowed me. Christians call it the dark night of the soul; an alcoholic will call it a bottom. And when you hit that bottom and you have to be in it for a little while, boy, you find out who you really are.

Your parents were atheists. How did you come to Christianity?

Well, it was really an accident, believe me. I’d always studied God and different religious traditions and believed that there was something that heard me if I said hello quietly in the middle of the night. But I avoided Christianity like the plague. I feel about Christians the way everybody feels about Christians. I love what Gandhi said, that he loved Christ, but it was Christians he had a problem with, and that’s totally how I feel about it.

And then at the end of my drinking, there was this flea market near this tiny house where I was living. And I’d go over there because when you’re really hungover you want greasy food and strong coffee. And I could hear music wafting out of this ramshackle, cruddy looking church with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree outside of it. It was the music of the Weavers and Joan Baez and Pete Seeger that my parents had been very fond of. So I just started going over there because I loved the music.

For me, one definition of grace is just running out of any more good ideas. So I get my greasy food and my strong coffee. I was bulimic at the time. I was hungover every single day, and I just went and sat down, and they didn’t hassle me. They didn’t try to get me to join them or to figure out anything or to take Bibles. They just got me water. They could see I was a really sad, damaged person.

I always left before the sermon because it was just too ridiculous for words. And then one day I didn’t, and I experienced saying to Jesus, kind of bitterly: “OK, fine, you can come in.” And I just tried that out, and it was really sweet.

What role did that new faith play in your sobriety?

I converted a year before I got sober. So I had a kind of gap year at church, where I was very smelly and weird and arrogant all at the same time. I had terrible self-esteem because of the way I was living and then I was very arrogant because I’ve been raised to think that the Lamotts were better and more educated.

I stayed there for a year and then I got sober. Church did not get me sober, but my deterioration did and I finally had no place to go. I would have died, I think. And so I just gave recovery a shot.

You mentioned that you married your now husband Neal in your 60s. You’ve had your share of loves and opportunities – what made you ready for Neal to enter your life?

I was raised in the 1950s and early 1960s to understand that women take care of everybody else and that your value comes from being a flight attendant to everybody in the world. I also have a really warm and open heart and I like to take care of people, but my life force was entirely spent on my son and his little baby and the baby’s mother and everybody around me. I was depleted.

And one day, my older brother, who’s a fundamentalist Christian, was staying with me and I said, “I’m just so isolated. I just am so empty right now. I’m all used up.” And he said some sort of happy Christian horseshit. I adore him, but it was like a bumper sticker and I was just furious.

I got in the car and started driving and crying and pounding the steering wheel and telling my son and grandson and the baby mama and my parents and my brothers how much I hated and resented that they sucked me dry and how sad I was.

Later, I came back to town and I called my mentor of 38 years, Horrible Bonnie (she’s horrible because I can’t get her to not love me). And I said, “I’m nobody’s priority.” And she said, “Oh, Annie, this is what we paid for.” She said, “You’re not anybody’s priority because you’re not your own. You’re going to need to take a few months off to have to have a love affair with yourself. You’re going to start with getting the overpriced tamales at the health food store and some flowers. And you’re going to have to do that every day.”

And I was like, no, no, it’s too California. I’m not going to do that. But when all else fails, follow instructions. So I did it. And about three months later, I met Neal. There’s a site called OurTime that’s an offshoot of Match for older people. I met him and we had coffee and we’ve never been apart.

You’ve talked about your own experience with addiction, and you’ve been sober now for almost 38 years. But you also watched your son go through his own battles with addiction. What happened during that time?

Oh, God, it was so awful. He’s got almost 14 years clean and sober now, by the grace of God, but at about age 14, he started to get drunk and stoned a lot of the time. He got into meth and anything he could get his hands on and it was just terrifying.

And I did what you do if you’re a mother. I tried everything. I sent him off to the highest peak of the Allegheny mountains for three months, and then to an organic tofu farm. And when he came home he was dealing the next day. He got his girlfriend pregnant at 19, and they had the baby, and he just got worse and worse.

Nothing I tried worked. Eventually, I left him in jail. The bail bondsman said, “Oh, my God, Ms Lamott, you’re the first mother in my 20 year history as a bail bondsman who left her child in jail.” And, you know, I’m not positive he’d still be alive if I hadn’t.

And then I said, “You can’t come over. You can’t be on the property wasted.” And he stomped off. I didn’t know when we’d ever talk again. But then about 10 days later, he called to say that he had a week clean and sober.

I imagine so many families in similar positions of watching their loved ones suffer would not be able to make those 10 days. They would capitulate to wanting to help. If you were to offer advice to those of us who are watching loved ones suffer, what would you say?

I would say that help is the sunny side of control.

There are these little acronyms in the recovery movement, and one of them is the five M’s: We try to manage others. We martyr ourselves, we manipulate them, and we mother them and the entire world. And the fifth one is so awful: we monitor them, like I’m an android or something, where I can monitor people’s behavior and the number of drinks they’re having or whether I can smell pot on them.

I just learned to release him. Horrible Bonnie taught me this tool, which was to close my eyes and picture the person there and to push them away into the arms of their own destiny.

I had to make peace with the fact that maybe I would lose [my son]. It wasn’t anything but a nightmare. Either he would die driving drunk, or he’d commit suicide or he’d overdose. And I just had to release him.

Somehow is your 20th book. At this point, is there anything that you feel you still urgently need to say?

Not really. I wrote every single thing I know about writing, motherhood, grandmotherhood, mercy, faith, hope.

My dream is not to publish any more. I hate publishing. I hate book tours. I’m exhausted. I’m a homebody. I like to be on the couch with the dog and the New Yorker or People magazine – either one will do.

[ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org]

#Anne Lamott #Interview #recovery #addiction #quotes

6 notes · View notes

makkin10 · 3 months ago

Text

My thoughts on TTPD

Clara Bow

Fortnight

The Alchemy

Guilty as Sin?

Imgonnagetyouback

While this album was not my cup of tea, I’ll still always look forward to her new songs and albums.

#taylor swift #music #ts ttpd #ttpd era #for fun

1 note · View note

oceanmonsters · 5 years ago

Text

thoughts on “tall girl”

I’m gonna make another post actually going into detail (edit: made post here) about some of the points that really bothered me (because I had a Lot of thoughts while watching this) this is just an overview & what I was thinking while actually watching the film:

movie about a straight white girl opening with Make Me Feel by Janelle Monáe playing...........

the movie is going so hard straight off the bat with the “Jodi is alienated and unaccepted by society because of her height” with the parallel being made between Jodi and the character in the book

“You think your life is hard” god I was really trying to go into this movie with an open mind but literally within the first 5 minutes they’re doing exactly what I predicted and making it seem like being tall is literally the biggest source of oppression ever. Like yes, her life is harder than it would be if she was average height but she’s still a rich cis straight white girl. That doesn’t mean she can’t have problems but there are SO MANY people with lives harder than hers. This line was so tone deaf that it’s so hard to give the rest of the movie a chance.

“How’s the weather up there” is literally being treated as if it’s a slur. Like yes it’s annoying but it’s really not that deep.

this school seems very racially diverse which is usually a good thing but when you’re framing the white girl as having the biggest problems and being picked on / harassed by everyone else, it’s really not...

the scene with the mom taking about her “problems” in high school for being so beautiful and popular and asking Jodi if that counts as adversity and her being like ‘what the fuck, is this what she really thinks adversity is’ is literally a metaphor for me watching this movie rn

her friend Jack is Sam from American Vandal and that’s not relevant to the plot but I keep thinking of his name as Sam now

Sam: He might not even be smart

Stig: *writes the molecular formula of the molecule drawn for which literally all you have to do is count the number of atoms of each type, and happened to recognise the molecule

Sam: oh NO what’s he DOING fuck I’m screwed he’s a genius he’s literally the PERFECT GUY

also is the movie really trying to tell me Jodi is the tallest person in her whole school? There are NO guys taller than her? Because my school was definitely smaller than most American schools and there were definitely at least 5 guys in my year taller than 6’

most of the mean girls making fun of & laughing at Jodi are WOC which really feels wrong...

why is he talking about c-sections what the fuck that was so creepy!

why is Jodi acting like just because she’s tall she somehow has some sort of claim to Stig over Kimmy... like I know Kimmy was horrible to her and now she’s dating the guy she likes which sucks but Jodi’s not entitled to Stig’s affections and he clearly likes Kimmy back but she’s acting like Stig is rightfully hers or smth

Sam is the best thing about about this movie so far, like his character is annoying but he’s actually not bland and is somewhat amusing to watch

also I literally can’t remember his character’s name, they just call him Dunkers or Dunkleman, they haven’t mentioned his first name since they first introduced him so I’m just gonna keep calling him Sam

he just kissed her even though he has a girlfriend... Jodi, run away girl

why is she enabling her sister’s extreme dieting?? This is a teen movie, they should really not be normalising this

I don’t know if it’s because of Griffin’s acting or because of how bland the other characters are so far but Sam is actually my favourite character so far even though he’s annoying and is actively trying to sabotage their relationship... like at least he has personality

also she keeps going on about how tall girls never get the guy or aren’t considered attractive or whatever but she’s had 3 GUYS be interested in her throughout the course of the movie

this kissing scene is making me very uncomfortable... like it’s sooooo zoomed in on their faces to show how they’re all looking at each other

who let Sam just come into her room while she’s sleeping???

he’s sitting on her bed and watching her hello????

he’s now weirdly touching her hair

SHE FUCKIN DECKED HIM SHKSHDKSJ and he deserved it

also this has been bothering me for a while but why does this kid wear so many rings. Who made this style choice bc it adds nothing to his character and imo just looks weird

I’ve also been noticing this for a few scenes but her house is SUPER nice, damn. Like she’s definitely rich, which makes the “You think your life is hard?” comment even more tone deaf.

okay Sam’s actually redeemed himself, if your friend wouldn’t charge at someone way bigger than them with a fucking crate for being an asshole to you are they even your friend

although DAMN if he’d actually hit him with that crate he could have seriously injured him, he was going straight for the head

why was everyone cheering so much for that bland, cheesy speech that was all about her. If I were in that crowd I’d just be like “girl get down & let us enjoy our dance, jesus.” Like realistically hardly anyone would be invested or really care about what she has to say because they literally don’t know or care about her. The movie’s acting like she’s known by everyone in the school, when in reality while people would recognise her they probably really don’t care that much.

also yes, some people in her school are assholes but I refuse to believe that the majority of her school constantly going on about her height - especially if she’s been at the school for a long time, they should be well past used to it by now. Most people in the crowd probably literally just don’t care about her at all and just want this to be over

this guy carried his shit around in a milk crate for all this time JUST IN CASE she ever wanted to kiss him?? I honestly don’t know how to feel about this because on one hand that’s a really extra level of dedication, which I somewhat respect but on the other hand... it’s just way too much

I literally feel nothing for this couple at all - I like Sam but as a couple, I wasn’t rooting for them or particularly happy or satisfied when they got together. Also, they didn’t show Jodi liking him at all up until this point. He was in love with her but there was no indication that she had any kind of feelings for him whatsoever. I guess it could be one of those situations where something happens and you see them in a whole new light and realise that you’ve been overlooking them the whole time but I feel like the timespan between her realising this and then getting together was way too short for me to actually care about them as a couple because for like 98% of the movie the attraction was completely one sided. If they’d shown her starting to have feelings for him earlier in the movie, e.g. when he started dating Liz, and shown her feeling jealous or upset or anything that indicates she actually does have underlying feelings for him but is scared to date him because of the height difference or whatever, I think I would’ve found the romance way more believable.

Also the characters of colour are so underdeveloped & sidelined in this movie - there’s Fareeda, who is literally just a walking “angry black girl”+”sassy supportive black friend” stereotype. She has no other development throughout this entire film. We literally know nothing about her other than that she’s Jodi’s best friend and always sticks up for / supports her even though she’s clearly ungrateful. Kimmy is a one dimensional caricature of a Mean Girl with apparently nothing else that matters to her but being a dick to Kimmy for no reason and being popular and being Homecoming Queen. There’s literally no reason given for why she hates Jodi so much either, because she’s never shown being awful to anyone else - she just really has it out for Jodi. And apart from Fareeda, the only named characters of colour only exist to be rejected romantic interests for the white characters and have no purpose or personality beyond this.

Overall I wouldn’t say this was the worst movie I’ve watched but I disliked it more than a lot of objectively worse movies I’ve watched - it was definitely one of the least enjoyable and most frustrating movies I’ve ever watched. I was hoping that even though the premise seemed dumb it would still be a cute, enjoyable teen movie - but they focused so much on how much supposed adversity she faced and how difficult life is for a tall girl that it’s hard to focus on anything else. Honestly I think that if they’d just cut out all of the dialogue about how hard life was for her, about adversity, about how “tall girls don’t get happy endings” or whatever, the movie could actually have been somewhat enjoyable with the rest of the plot being the same. It could’ve just been about a taller-than-average girl who feels insecure about her height trying to date a tall guy but realising her best friend is actually the right guy for her - and realising that it’s not the world that’s holding her back, it’s actually her own insecurities. My opinions on the quality of the plot and romance are obviously just my opinions and you obviously don’t have to agree with them but I don’t think you can deny how objectively tone deaf the premise is and how the characters of colours are basically sidelined and only exist to support the white character’s storylines, which is why I’m definitely putting this movie in the Never Watch Again pile.

#tall girl #tall girl spoilers #movie review #kind of #it’s not really a review it’s just an outpouring of my thoughts but it’s still Reviewing the movie

198 notes · View notes

jacaranda-bloom · 3 years ago

Photo

Annual Writing Self-Evaluation 2021

Thank you to all the lovely people who tagged me to do this @zanniscaramouche @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed @parmahamlarrie @disgruntledkittenface @kingsofeverything @justalarryblog @larrydoinglaundry @uhoh-but-yeah-alright @allwaswell16 and @larryyouknow. It’s sure been a helluva year!

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 14

2. Word count posted for the year: 450,639

3. Fandoms I wrote for: One Direction

4. Pairings: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

5. Story with the most:

Kudos: Love, Ever After (1240 - ABO wins out yet again lol)

Bookmarks: In A Twinkling (441)

Comments: In A Twinkling (1364 - still blown away by this)

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): This would have to be a toss-up between Full Moon Dreaming, which was written for the Soulmates Abroad fest, and In A Twinkling, which I wrote independently as an advent fic.

Full Moon Dreaming started as completely different story, on two separate occasions; once for Big Bang last year, which I ditched, and once using a different soulmate prompt, before landing on the story it ended up being. If you read the author's note for this fic, you’ll understand why it was so special to me and I’m proud that I was able to tell this story.

In A Twinkling ahhhhhh my little Christmassy, 10k, meet-awkward, one-shot that briefly shifted to a 25k advent fic, before morphing into the 90k behemoth of an advent fic that it became. This one really came out left-field and knocked me flat on my ass. I never expected people to take to it like they did, nor for it to end up in a single month surpassing the success of every other fic I’ve ever written. But I think the reason I’m most proud of it is because the way the core messages of the story really resonated with people; self-discovery, self-reliance, looking within to find your own happiness, and that while relationships with others are great, it’s the relationship with yourself that is most important.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why): Fuck U (Even) Betta - I learned a big lesson this year which is that writing Part 2’s/Sequels is absolutely NOT my thing. I had 3 of them planned for WordPlay and gave up after this one. It was a good process to go through though, because now I know I won’t try it again, but it was a frustrating couple of weeks and I’m not particularly happy with how the story turned out.

8. Share or describe a favourite review you received: I truly don’t think I could single one out, but I was completely overwhelmed in the best possible way with the comments I received on In A Twinkling. The kindness and generosity of people who read this story as it was being posted over December was something I had never expected. From the pages-long essays about character development, to the keyboard-smash all-caps outpourings of emotions, to the heartfelt sharing of personal stories as the story resonated with people, to the validation of the journey of self-discovery the main character went on; I appreciated them all so much. Lots of them made me laugh, many of them made me cry, reading how people were creating their own self-insert characters and subplots was utterly brilliant, and seeing the readers build their own little community and reply to each other's comments was really lovely.

9. A time when writing was really, really hard: I had some health issues at the beginning of the year, which really hampered my writing to the point where I thought I might have to drop out of the Big Bang. Thankfully, they abated and I was able to finish it, but yeah, that was really tough.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: 100% the epilogue for In A Twinkling. Originally it was just my standard 2k wrap-up; x period of time later, fluff and love, tie up all the loose threads, and add a heaping dose of closure. But then people started reading the fic and really getting involved with the main characters and the side characters too. I realised on around December 23 that the standard 2k wrap wasn’t going to be enough, and that the readers and the story deserved more. So I ditched what I’d written and wrote a 9k epic-logue in 2 days instead. In the chapter [spoiler ahead], I had them waking up in bed on Christmas morning a year into the future, and it was just meant to show how happy and couple-y they were, but then Harry followed Louis into the bathroom and then it kind of got away from me resulting in a marriage proposal in the shower that I never even saw coming. But it somehow felt like it fit perfectly and clearly, by that stage, the characters knew better than I did how they wanted the story to end, so I just rolled with it.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: Gosh. Having written as many words as I have this year, it’s kinda hard to narrow that down. I have favourite pieces from lots of my stories. I love the scene in the bar from Moments where Harry and Louis enact a bit of Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You. The bushfire scene in Full Moon Dreaming where Louis gets injured. The scene from Man, Deconstructed where Harry’s secondhand embarrassment reaches new heights of mortification. The smut in Wild Hearts Run Free which felt so raw and was a bit of a new take on the concept of heat in an ABO fic. The sexual tension in the car on the way to the lake in my Dirty Dancing AU In The Still Of The Night. The scene in A Hungry Heart when Harry discovers Louis is the guest judge. The bit in Player where Harry has Instagrammed his dick to his 18m followers and Louis turns up utterly frazzled to try and sort out the mess. In The Future Is Now when Louis finally realises that the fortune telling machine has been trying to point him towards Harry the whole time. All the interactions between Louis and his Nan in In A Twinkling as well as the scene where Liam gets Louis to see things from a different perspective.

But I think my favourite standalone excerpt was actually from The Pirate and The Piper, my Hook/Peter Pan AU (note - Hook is Harry, but he’s under a spell, Smee is Smee, and Minerva is an evil Siren):

Finally, Louis’ gaze lands on Hook. He stands motionless, one arm hanging loosely at his side, his hook at the end, the other cocked at the elbow, hand resting on his sword. His mouth is set in a firm line, eyes glazed over, vacant, his soul in limbo. But Louis knows Harry’s still in there, somewhere, clawing to get out. He just has to find the trigger to break the spell.

Proximity to Louis hadn’t, on its own, been enough to keep the spell at bay for Harry when Minerva was right there, but maybe… maybe there’s a way to increase the effect, even just for a moment. That’s all they need, a few precious seconds.

He stares at Hook, imploring him with his eyes. Please, Harry, come back to me. But he gets nothing in return. Louis is about to turn away, resigned to his fate in the murky depths of the ocean below, and then he sees it. The fingers on Hook’s hand that are draped over the hilt of his sword move. It’s barely a twitch, but it’s there. Louis’ eyes dart back up to Harry’s face and there he finds the smallest crease between his brows, barely visible, but there nonetheless.

Smee prods him again, puncturing his shirt and pricking his skin. Louis knows it’s now or never. He’s got one last chance to save himself, to save Liam and the Lost Boys, to save Harry.

With all the courage he can muster, and with all the strength he has left in his muscles, he jumps toward Hook, landing sure-footed in front of him. He surges up, pulling him down by his neck and crashes their lips together.

Time seems to stand still as a bolt of electricity fires through his bloodstream, igniting him from within. Static rushes in his ears, loud, powerful. Hook pulls back and gasps, sucking in air like a drowning man finally breaching the surface of the water. Louis searches Hook’s face as his eyes come to life, the blackness replaced with the most beautiful green Louis has ever seen.

“Lou,” he breathes out as a smile spreads across his face.

“Harry,” Louis says on an exhale.

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: Wow. So, this has been a big year for me, but 3 things stand out the most. 1. I finally managed to move from writing exclusively on my phone to writing on my laptop. I had tried so many times before to do this before and had been unsuccessful, but this time I was adamant it had to happen and I’m so much happier for making the change. 2. I started exploring themes more heavily laced with angst and drama, which I feel has started to add a new depth to my stories. 3. I continued to develop the whole ‘show, not tell’ aspect of my writing and worked hard on my dialogue too.

13. How do you hope to grow next year: I learned a lot from writing In A Twinkling in terms of pacing and plotting and I’d like to take that forward into my other fics too. Having to write with a very rigid ‘one-chapter = one-day’ structure was a huge challenge, but I really enjoyed it and I feel that it significantly changed how the story came across to the reader. This fic also showed me that I can write outside of fests and people will still read my stories, and that WIPs aren’t to be shied away from, so I’d like to try my hand at that again in 2022.

I also made a few trailer videos for my stories this year which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I’ll be continuing that too and will also look into other software to enhance and streamline the process.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): I was without a beta for around a year, which was super hard. But then I randomly saw a post about someone offering their services, and on May 13, I reached out and the rest, as they say, is history. I’m not sure I can even put into words (which is mildly concerning given the subject of this post) how much of a positive influence having @parmahamlarrie come into my life has been. From dealing with my overuse of ‘says’ in dialogue, to fondly side-eyeing my Aussie sayings, to all the wonderful comments you leave as you read my stories, to falling in love with the characters I create, for being the best cheerleader when I need it the most, for never letting me get away with plot shortcuts, for beta-ing the epic-logue rewrite for In A Twinkling on CHRISTMAS DAY (what!?!). You’re amazing and I appreciate you more than you can ever know.

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: Oof. Yeah, but very much accidentally. It was absolutely, hands down, Louis’ character in In A Twinkling. I will forever remember the day I sat on my deck, half way through December, and bawled my eyes out as people’s comments began coming in validating the core messages of the story around self-discovery, self-reliance, and finding your own happiness within. Until that point I hadn’t realised I’d essentially written a fairly autobiographical novel, so every new validation that was posted, was a validation of my own life decisions. I sent my wonderful beta a string of garbled messages through my tears to which she replied, with some level of confusion, that she thought I already knew and had done it somewhat intentionally, and then held my hand (virtually) as I proceeded to unravel. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me, so it was definitely a surprising (and quite confronting) day, but altogether amazing.

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: I think this year has taught me a lot about how to structure my stories, to get the pacing right, and also to not be afraid to keep writing until the story is told. I used to try and squeeze the plot into the word count I had allocated time for in my schedule, whereas during the second half of this year, I started to just ‘let it flow’. It’s resulted in some fics that were much longer than I had originally intended (In A Twinkling, I’m looking at you), but it’s been wonderfully freeing too. So, I guess I would say to just let the characters take you where they need to go to tell their story and just go along for the ride.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: Definitely my Big Bang, the plot for which is a totally new adventure for me, and also a second advent fic because I enjoyed the interactive process this year with the readers so much.

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read: @falsegoodnight @crinkle-eyed-boo @juliusschmidt @evilovesyou @absoloutenonsense @lululawrence @beelou @louandhazaf @2tiedships2 and @princelyharry if you’d like to do this and haven’t already.

#December 31 2021 #Annual Writing Self Evaluation #2021 #tag games #this was super fun #and also ridiculously long #apologies

32 notes · View notes

fyeah-bangtan7 · 3 years ago

Text

Jimin: “There’s people who’ve been rooting for us throughout this difficult time”

In the “ARMY Corner Store” video posted by BTS on their YouTube channel BANGTANTV to mark the eighth anniversary of their debut, Jimin talked about the leather riding jacket that the older members passed down to him when he was still a trainee. The jacket was first worn by SUGA, handed down to j-hope after SUGA’s debut, then given to Jimin with the words, “This riding jacket is passed down from generation to generation.” Jimin still wears the jacket when it’s cold. Many things change, and, even in times when they must, there are things that do not.

You released three songs in a year: “Dynamite,” “Butter” and, finally, “Permission to Dance,” and BTS grew more popular all the while. How do you feel? Jimin: At some point, it stopped feeling real. The reactions from fans, the cover videos they uploaded and the dance challenges they did—I’m just so thankful for that. It lit up my life. We made those songs with a good purpose in mind, so just hearing people say they enjoyed listening to them was fulfilling. And that was our original goal. “Permission to Dance,” in particular, was the perfect message for right now, so I think I got a lot of comfort from it, too.

How so? Jimin: I think it was both the atmosphere and the actual content. It was comforting right from the title. Thinking about it now, the fact that it made me think, Oh yeah, I might not be able to see ARMY right now, but I will soon, was one good point. I’ve been thinking by myself about how the future’s going to be better, and being more careful, and ended up waiting longer. And meanwhile, we had a fan meeting in the middle of all that. So my thinking changed to be more positive. That was great.

Was there any part you placed particular emphasis on to express such positive emotions in the song? Jimin: I think I just followed my heart. Before, there’d be some kind of concept, and I wanted to show off something about myself in that context, but lately I’ve just been following my heart, following the feeling of conveying the feelings I want to share with others. At first I was worried whether the feelings we were trying to convey in the songs would get across to people since we’d never tried songs in those styles before, but after giving the performances a shot, we found out they’re really fun and easy for us to follow along to, too. So I thought it should be easy enough for people to approach these songs, thankfully.

Even though the three songs—“Dynamite,” “Butter” and “Permission to Dance”—all have something in common, I imagine they were all completely different when it came to figuring them out. You did “Butter” before “Permission to Dance”—how was that? Jimin: They’re totally different. The attitudes I take on are different, the thought process is different, and I think the emotions I feel are all different, too. I think “Butter” was a bit hard for me. It wasn’t a style I was used to, but I thought the actual dance was elegant when I saw the video and it had a lot of footwork, so I thought I’d be good at it, but it was way harder than I thought. During practice I even thought, Why am I so bad at dancing? If you look at our usual choreography, it has very powerful parts with big movements and lots of power, but “Butter” felt really difficult because all the power went in at the same time even though it was loose. So I watched Hoseok dancing a lot, and since every member has their own style of dancing, I watched the way Taehyung loosened up, and the way Jung Kook danced by the book, and I combined all those. So for some of the broadcasts of “Butter” I really loosened up and for others I used a little more strength. I tried all different things.

Maybe that’s why even the style of clothes you’re wearing seems to change the way the dancing feels. It felt like you danced a little differently in a suit than when you were dressed casually. Jimin: I never noticed before but the songs do sound different depending on what I’m wearing. Sometimes I danced all excitedly when I wore casual clothes, but when I wore a suit, something about the song sounded sexy. There’s a different vibe when I dance alone versus when I dance as part of a group, so I visualize how I should dress to make my dancing look cooler every time.

The “Dynamite” performance at the Grammys was very impressive, too. I felt that the music, clothing style and poses where you jumped out were all a perfect match. Jimin: I think it all depends on what kind of outfit I wear, where I am for a given part, and how much I weigh. There’s a pronounced difference to the way a dance looks and feels based on how much I weigh. I think the dance and outfit were a good match in “Dynamite.”

On that note, when you performed “Black Swan” at the end of the year, what pair of shoes could you dance the best in? Looking at the fancam focus video, your dance changes in feeling slightly depending on the design of your shoes. Jimin: For me, it’s barefoot. I think it’s got to be barefoot when I’m doing a classic style dance. It looks sharp and attractive when I wear dress shoes, but it always feels more natural to express myself barefoot. It’s more dynamic, I guess you could say. So I wanted to go barefoot for all my other performances, too. I wanted to be barefoot for when we recorded “ON” at Seoul World Cup Stadium at the end of the year, too, but I gave that up because it could’ve been dangerous.

The performance of “ON” at Mnet 2020 MAMA, right? I was curious about something while watching that video: I wondered how the members of the group could perform with such effort in that big, audienceless stadium, with the new solo performances added into the original choreography and everything. What helped you to find strength even under those circumstances? Jimin: There’s people who’ve been rooting for us throughout this difficult time. I think we have to give them a reason to root for us, then. If we’re going to make them want to see us and make it fun for them to watch us, I wanted to give them a good reason.

Then how did you feel when you performed at the Grammy Awards? Surely it must’ve been meaningful to you in a number of ways. Jimin: I wanted our performance to show what it meant for us to be up on that stage. A group of kids from Korea, each from their own neighborhood, can do this, too, so what’s the big deal about winning an award? That’s one thing I thought. Of course you can’t get it if you’re not capable enough yet, but the important thing is that the people who like us can be proud of us, too. We did the performance in return for all the support they show us.

It must be hard being unable to see your fans since you can’t hold any concerts. It’s hard to tell how well the performance was able to convey that return of their support. Jimin: I learn a lot from going on tour. I combine the audience’s immediate reactions and the parts I wasn’t satisfied with and practice based on that, and ask the other members about it too, but right now there’s no time to review that. So I keep practicing a lot, but it’s hard to tell how the things I’m doing will end up looking, so I keep trying things out on my own but without any feedback.

That must’ve made it harder to get ready for “Dynamite,” “Butter” and “Permission to Dance,” especially since you still have to sing in English and the emotions in the songs are a lot different from your previous ones, and it’s hard to feel the reaction in the concert hall under these circumstances. Jimin: Even the pronunciation is definitely different, and the part of your throat the sound comes from changes depending on the pronunciation. I think that’s why I was a little flustered. On “Butter,” if I had done it the way I always do, it wouldn’t show up. So I studied a lot on how to sound more clean and simple.

It felt like you had to meet all sorts of conditions; you have to keep it breezy and hit high notes, all while maintaining your unique voice. Jimin: I guess you could call it the song that most made me think like I was just starting out again. I think I practiced harder than ever before. I think I’ve worked extremely hard to have my own unique style, but then I hit a wall and had to go back to the beginning to find a new way. And I went over it a lot with Jung Kook. What if I sing it like this? Or what about this way? How should I practice? I asked so many questions like that and practiced a lot, too. But I enjoyed the process. At one point I was like, I can get that kind of voice out of my throat too? Even though it didn’t make it onto the final recording, I tried doing different adlibs while singing other parts and I found my strengths that way.

In previous songs you had fairly strong emotional vocals when you sang high notes, but this time around they’re cooler. How does it feel having different emotions in your vocals? BTS also sought to allow people to feel more positive emotions during the pandemic. Jimin: It was hard to adjust to the changes, but in other ways, since the group saw a greater outpouring of love, I thought we should be featuring emotions and content that’s a little more comprehensive. Personally, it was hard adjusting to a situation where I couldn’t perform. But after “Butter” was out and we moved on to “Permission to Dance,” I saw how lots of people took positively to the way I put so much effort into attempting to change things a bit more with these songs, and I realized that we could find a new side to ourselves in the process.

I saw on “ARMY Corner Store” that you were drinking with the other members recently and all talking together, which makes me think you’ve had a lot of thoughts since the pandemic started. The world’s changed so much, and the group’s status has changed since “Dynamite” came out, too. Jimin: It wasn’t just the time mentioned in “ARMY Corner Store”—we also talked while going here and there by car, whenever we would get together, and when we were on set. I think it took me a long time to calm my nerves. It took around four or five months, I guess, but after we kept dealing with it and talking with each other, I think that’s when we got used to the new normal and our new selves.

When you performed “Daechwita” at BTS 2021 MUSTER SOWOOZOO, the part you did was, as it happens, “Remember, remember days gone by remember.” Maybe it was a coincidence, but now that BTS, the team who debuted with “No More Dream,” currently sits at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, I’m wondering how you feel about the days gone by. Jimin: I only realized it recently, but I used to be really unstable. I was acting like I was well-grounded when I was around other people, like my family and friends. It meant I had to pretend a lot. I worried about others by saying things like, I’m fine, but how are you? I spoke like I could always take care of anything that came up, but looking back, that wasn’t the case.

What made you think like that? Jimin: I’m still young, and because I’m making a lot of money at a young age, I end up wondering what money and success ultimately mean. Because I’m young, I hear a lot of people talk, and some people can be jealous or envious. But there’s a lot of people I have to repay and a lot of relationships I need to hang onto. I thought I could take care of all these problems, but looking back, that wasn’t the case. It hasn’t been very long since I realized that I was the one to grab on and forced everything to happen.

Was it some sense of responsibility? It reminds me how you called yourself “the kind of person who likes to be loved” in your last interview with Weverse Magazine. So I imagine you probably try your best for the people in your life. Jimin: Yes. I was just being headstrong, you know. Being headstrong. (laughs) It’s the kind of situation where people look at you and they might say, You can’t even take care of yourself. (laughs) But there were still a lot of points where I kept thinking things like that. Now I think I didn’t have to go quite that far, and as times went by, I started to think, Oh, I’m glad I can think about this now so I can let things that I should let go of, go. When I couldn’t let things go, my resentment kept growing. My pain, too. Rather than admit I had those feelings at that time, I’d say there were emotions in different situations that I came to unconsciously accept, and I started to feel like I could see how much of a hard time I was having after some time passed.

You’ve tried so hard. How did you feel after letting go of all those feelings? Jimin: I felt like I was becoming empty sometimes, at first. I felt like I was denying my own thoughts and beliefs. But I talked a lot with my parents, and I said, Did you know I was going through all that? And they said, We didn’t know what you were going through, but we knew it was something. So finally I shared what I was feeling with them, and my mom and dad talked to me like they were my life coaches. After coming out of that whole period, even when I do similar things, I can tell my mind has changed a lot. If I was more focused on my surroundings before, now I’m able to focus on myself as well. My mom told me it means I’m growing up, and that I’m finally becoming an adult. So I said, I don’t wanna be an adult—it’s too hard. (laughs)

It seems like you ended up doing a lot of self-reflection during the pandemic. Jimin: Last year I saw how lots of people were having a rough time and how there was a big social crisis, but as time dragged on I started to feel like I was trapped. But it was mostly okay when I was working.

What would you say work means to you these days? Jimin: I guess it’s hard to separate it from myself. I’m me, and there’s also a separate me who works, but it’s hard to tell the two apart.

#bangtan #jimin #m:weverse magazine #210801

35 notes · View notes

tamakiamajikistentacles · 4 years ago

Text

broken. {Dabi}

A/N: Please be sure to reblog, comment, review, and like if you enjoy! Feedback is what keeps me motivated! So sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted- between holidays, work, and this being a generally not great time of year for me there hasn’t been much room for writing. As you can see though, recent manga events totally inspired me for one last story in 2020 for ya!

He liked going out once the sun had set. Daylight hadn’t been his friend for a long time, and whatever lurked in the shadows grew disinterested as the glow of his cigarette illuminated his staples when he passed, aware of who they were seeing but uninclined to make a report.

How could they really? By day they walked the streets freely, unassuming, but beneath the moon they found sick pleasures in ways that would make any hero grimace. As dangerous as they were it couldn’t compare to the likes of him—the deranged and recognizable with only a quick glance that sent chills down the spines of millions.

He slept during the day and rose at dusk to begin sowing chaos. After all, the freaks come out at night.

The long since burned out butt of his cigarette dropped from between his lips as he approached one of the seedier bars in the slums of town. Whatever its name is or was had been lost to time and inattention to the sign hanging askew over the door but damn, they had the strongest liquor in the city and a reputation for looking the other way when criminals passed through the door. Hazy smoke stung at his eyes and throat as he entered but he’d been used to that for nearly three decades and really, what was another lungful when they were burned to hell as it was?

The blonde bartender gave him a curt nod from across the room, already reaching for the amber bottle he knew Dabi favored. Around the room were other patrons that gave an assessing glance in his direction before turning back to their drinks. All but one turned his way.

In the darkest corner of the bar sat a woman with her back to the room. He couldn’t see her face, just the contrast of her revealing shirt against the skin of her chest, but he was interested. The mysterious chick vibe always did do him in.

“What’s a cute little thing like you doing here alone?” he asked as he approached her table.

“Cute?” she scoffed, dark-lined eye rolling in clear annoyance. “You really think that?”

In what seemed like a well-practiced move she tossed her hair over her left shoulder and pulled the already low collar of her shirt down further to expose more of her chest and shoulder. Smooth skin bled into a gradient of marled blotches of red and purple burn scars, the severity of which he’d only ever seen in the mirror.

“You wanna rethink that ‘cute’ comment?” she challenged without so much as a glance at his slightly parted lips.

“Yeah,” he breathed out with a nod. “Think I wanna change it to gorgeous.”

“Look, if you wanna know how I got ‘em just ask so I can tell you to… fuck off… already…” her voice trailed off after she looked up, haughty attitude dropping as she took in the darkened skin on his face and chest. She marveled at the handsome features still so clearly defined beneath the burns and the glint of his staples in the fluorescent lights.

Seeing interest cloud over her eyes as she trailed them over his face and down his body, he seated himself in the chair across from her and folded his hands around his glass on the table.

The rough rhythm of his hips against hers scraped her back against the gnarled wood of her bedroom door and drove the staples in his lower stomach into hers but she couldn’t find it in herself to care when it felt so good. As thin as he was he was able to lift her thighs around his waist and hold her with one hand while the other pressed against her throat.

“Fuck, please,” she panted, head spinning but wanting more.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he teased, “you already got two and I haven’t even had one yet. Not exactly fair, is it?”

“Dabi!” she groaned.

He huffed out a laugh as he buried his face in her shoulder, licking at the bead of sweat that trailed from her hairline. He was close so she really wouldn’t need to wait long considering the pleasure pooling in his lower stomach was building with each smack of skin on skin.

His hand left her throat to wrap around her other thigh so he could quickly readjust his grip. Pulling her back from the door, he bounced her against him as he carried her the short distance to her bed. He sat back against the wall and guided her hips against him, smirking at her eagerness as she started riding him desperately.

She gasped when one of his hands drifted between her legs and another type of warmth spread through her. “Fuck!”

“That’s what we’re here for,” he scoffed, his other hand coming up to grip her throat once again.

A few more rotations of her hips had him surging forward to sink his teeth into her scarred shoulder as his hand between her legs drew tight circles on her clit, both of them breathing hard as they met their ends.

She slumped forward, breathing heavily as he held her steady against him while they caught their breath and heartbeats slowed. When he finally felt the calm sweep over him he guided her down to lay beside him before reaching to her night table for the pack of cigarettes he’d spotted. Placing one between his lips, he ignited a small blue flame at his fingertip to light it.

“Is that how you got your burns?” she asked in a whisper, eyes half-lidded.

He stared straight ahead, cheeks hollowing even further as he took a drag. Without looking he took it in two fingers and passed it towards her through a cloud of smoke. She grabbed it and placed it between her own lips.

“Mine are from a hero,” she said after blowing out her own puff.

His eyebrows raised and he looked down at where she laid, interest alight in his turquoise eyes.

“I used to work in this high-rise building in the western district, did normal office type shit you know? Sent faxes and filed documents everyone thought I was too fuckin’ stupid to understand because I grew up poor and quirkless,” she started. “Some low-level villains attacked a few blocks away and when the heroes came the fight was small enough that we didn’t get evacuated. We couldn’t even see anything, all we heard were sirens and for that district its background noise anyway. But then Endeavor showed up.”

Dabi stiffened as she handed the cigarette back though she didn’t seem to notice as she continued.

“He blew the fight out of proportion to make a bigger show of capturing the villains I’m sure, but when he did it lead them towards our building. Three quarters of the floors were engulfed within ten minutes.”

“Lemme guess, your floor was lucky enough to be one of ‘em?”

She hummed. “Yeah, lucky enough to land me some wicked burns and a high as fuck medical bill.”

“What? The Hero Commission didn’t cover it?”

“Nope. None of it. Despite being told not to evacuate because we were farther from the initial attack and then being caught in the crossfire that we literally had no choice in, we were told that only loss of life would be covered by their insurance payout.”

“Zero casualties?”

“How’d you know?” she drawled, reaching for the cigarette once again. “Never fucking mind that I have limited mobility with my left arm that literally impacts my day to day life or how I can’t go anywhere without being stared at like a sideshow act or that the company I worked for dissolved their branch in the district. All because of some asshole looking for glory from a fight he didn’t need to be in.”

He chuckled as he watched her finish off the cigarette and stub out the last few embers in the ashtray on her opposite night table. This chick was something else.

“How’d you feel if I told you I got my burns from Endeavor too?” he asked.

Now it was her turn for her eyebrows to rise with intrigue. “I’d ask how, when, and why the fuck you didn’t melt his face off.”

“I was just a kid,” he shrugged.

“Endeavor—”

“—wanted to make sure his son could surpass All Might. Didn’t go according to plan, at least not with me.”

Her eyes widened.

“Pushed a bit too hard on a kid who could produce flames so much hotter than his. Surprised it took so long if I’m honest, but it doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill him.”

She sat up, slowly bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, eyes twinkling with wonder. “You’re really going to kill him?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, baby,” he said with a smirk. “What—you wanna watch?”

“Fuck yes,” she breathed out. “He needs to burn. Just like we did.”

A blue flame ignited and danced in his palm. She could feel the heat on her face but it didn’t scare her like most would assume. The fire wasn’t at fault for her pain, the false hero who wielded it had been.

She looked between the flames and his handsomely stapled face.

“How can I help? I want to be a part of taking down Endeavor.”

He closed his hand and the fire disappeared in a wisp of smoke. Reaching over, he fisted the hair at the nape of her neck and brought her closer.

“I’ll let you help sweetheart,” he laughed, “but the best thing you can do right now to help me is to put that pretty mouth to work. You’re still at three while I’ve only got one.”

“THE PAST NEVER DIES!”

The corners of her lips curled upwards in a smirk as the broadcast overtook the large billboard in downtown Tokyo, projecting the voice of a now white-haired Dabi. He steamed from his quirk being overused but also from the outpouring of emotion he was finally able to confront his family with.

“Oh Dabi,” she sighed fondly.

Vengeance years in the making was unfolding in front of the entire country in real time and she was privileged enough to know it had been coming. She knew the plan and she knew the backup plans and she was essential to the very last resort plan too. Her own revenge was being carried out though not by her own hand. At least not directly.

She looked down to the slightly rounded bump beneath her sweater, caressing it gently.

“If he doesn’t kill him, I’ll make sure you do for him,” she murmured with a smile.

A/N: Please be sure to reblog, comment, review, and like if you enjoy! Feedback is what keeps me motivated! Good heavens, its been a while since I’ve done smut so that was an experience lmao. Anyway, Dabi is such a fun character for me to write and I love exploring different emotions for him!

45 notes · View notes

janeyseymour · 4 years ago

Text

"the wrath of mama seymour- or whatever the hell I’ve been labelled as" -Jane

Jane takes it upon herself to handle some nasty comments one particular account has been leaving the queens.

WC: 3072

For the most part, the queens got rave reviews, and their queendom was full of love and support. Every once in a while though, the queens got some hate, specifically Anna of Cleves and Jane Seymour- the two queens who arguably had it the least bad. While the others got hate sometimes, it was never anything that the queens would deem as true. Some might tell Katherine or Anne that they were “whores”, but the two knew this was not true. History might have depicted them as this, but they lived their lives. They knew they weren’t. Anne had actively tried to reject the king, and Katherine was forced into her situations. What these people had said about Jane and Anna was true- or at least those two thought so.

The fourth queen wasn’t one to put up with the comments. She would openly complain about them to the other queens, and she had even made it a point to call out the hateful comments that she got. Jane Seymour wasn’t like this.

The silver queen, hot-tempered and not so kind in her first life, knew that if she had said anything, it would only fuel the hate comments. So, she stayed quiet about it, letting these comments eat at her slowly.

“You’re responsible for Anne’s death. Don’t you feel even the slightest bit guilty about that? Bitch.”

“We all know the “i’m a kind sweet mum” act is fake. If you’re a bitch, just show it and let us hate you.”

“You don’t even deserve to be in the show. You had it the easiest.”

“The only one he truly loved? He only loved you because you had a son. But that son died before he could even do anything. After you died, you still failed. You don’t deserve to be remembered as queen, and you definitely don’t deserve to be in the likes of the other queens.”

That one hurt. That one comment hurt. The third queen did what she could to let it roll off her shoulders, but to no avail. That comment made her stomach flip.

Still, she did her best to stay kind, finally deciding to put out a video on her Instagram in attempts to stop the hate coming her way.

“Hi queendom. It’s Jane,” she said as sweetly as she could. “I’m here to address something with all of you. As we know, the idea of the queendom is to build others up, not tear them down. Now, I know we all know I say in my song that I’m unbreakable.” She paused, mulling over how she was going to word this. Her tone lowered a bit as she spoke quietly, “But the truth is, I’m not.” Her voice broke a bit as she said this. “I see every comment you all leave. I see every direct message, every private message, all of it. The kind comments are so lovely, and I appreciate them all so much. The not-so-kind comments are few and far between, and for that I’m thankful, but the ones that I do see hurt. I think we all just need a reminder to be kind to one another. Please remember the golden rules we were all taught: treat people the way that you want to be treated. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. That’s all I have to say for today, but I’ll leave you with this- you are enough. I’m sending you all so much love! Thank you.” She blew a kiss to the phone and waved before turning the camera off.

Almost immediately, fans started outpouring love to the third queen.

Roseamongstthethorns: i just wanna know who said something mean to jane because we are going to have some words

Sixqueenswalkintoabar: @janeyseymour we love u pls know that

AnnieBoleyn: whos talkin shit on my janey. I’ll fight em for u

Jane rolled her eyes at the green queen’s comment before replying.

JaneySeymour: @annieboleyn, i’m just speaking in general terms. Also, language dear.

AnnieBoleyn: @janeyseymour i say what i want #sorrynotsorry

Catherine_Aragon: you chaotic gremlin @annieboleyn

Jane laughed a bit at what Catherine had commented when she saw a notification pop up. A direct message from the account that had left that one particularly nasty comment.

Stop acting like you don’t talk shit on people. All you did was talk shit on Anne in your last life. That’s what got you the “queenly position” that you clearly didn’t deserve in the first place. Right? Just shut up bitch.

And so, Jane shut up. She ended up deleting her last post where all she did was try to address the issue, something that the other queens did quite often. She almost deleted her entire page accidentally (or not-so-accidentally if you asked the third queen).

“Janey! What are you trying to do: delete your whole account?” Anne teased.

“N-No,” the silver queen stammered out. “I-I uh, was just trying to delete a post. I guess I just hit the wrong button. Could you show me how?” She feigned confusion. It worked- the blonde was always asking for social media guidance anyway.

Everyday, this hateful account would send her messages. And every single day, against her better judgement, she opened the messages. The silver queen would roll her eyes and try to go on with her day, but it was affecting her, and the other queens were starting to take notice.

“Mum?” Katherine tried to get her adoptive mother’s attention. “Are you okay?” She had glanced at Jane, who was staring at her phone with tears in her eyes.

“Hmm?” The blonde lifted her gaze to the pink haired queen. “Oh.” She blinked away the tears. “I’m just fine dear. Just-”

“Are you having some trouble reading what’s on your screen?” The fifth queen was trying to be helpful. It was known in the house that the blonde wasn’t the most educated when it came to reading and writing. It was also known that Jane sometimes had a hard time reading what was on her screen if she didn’t have her glasses. “Here. I can help you.”

“Oh no, it’s nothing. I just-” The blonde was interrupted when the youngest queen took the phone out of her hand and read over the message on the screen, a horrified look appearing on her face.

“This fucking account,” Katherine huffed.

“Kit,” Jane sighed, never one for cursing unless necessary.

“Mum, this is necessary. This account has been harassing all of us.”

“Have they really been?” Jane’s interest piqued. Kat nodded her head. “Interesting.”

Over the next few days, Jane stayed quiet on social media. She saw the tweets and the comments on her “most recent post” asking why she deleted the video of her talking about being kind. Before she made her next move, she had to speak to the other queens.

“Hey Lina?” Jane asked one night as she was making dinner, the first queen accompanying her.

“What’s up Jane?”

“Kat told me about this horrid account and how they’ve been sending all of us hate messages. Do you mind if I take a look at what they’ve been sending you?”

“If you want, but you have to promise you won’t go all Mum.”

“I- I can’t promise that, but I’ll do my best.” The Hispanic handed over her phone, the messages already on screen. The first queen knew the exact account she was alluding to.

Queenly my ass. If you were so queenly, Henry wouldn’t have gone through all of the trouble he went through to divorce your sorry ass.

“What the-”

“It’s really not a big deal mija. Whoever this is, they don’t matter. Just leave it be.”

“Annie?” Jane wandered into the second queen’s room as they were all winding down for bed that night.

“What’s up Janey? Need some makeup remover again?” the green queen laughed as she scrounged her room for the wipes that the third queen asked for every once in a while.

“Actually, no. I bought a big thing of them the other day. I came to ask about something else.”

“Oh. What’s up?” Anne unceremoniously threw herself down on her bed.

“Kit and Lina were telling me about this awful account that has been-”

“Do you want to see the messages?” The blonde nodded, and the green queen threw her phone at the blonde.

You deserved to be beheaded, you whore. You should’ve never been queen in the first place, chasing after the king and getting him to divorce Catherine. How does it feel to be so wanted for such a short amount of time before all you were was another body?

“Annie, know that is not true.”

“I know Janey. Why do you think I’ve just ignored it? He’s not worth any of our time anyway.”

“I mean, he’s going right against the entire reason for our show.”

“Yeah, but he’s just not worth it. Don’t go all Mama Bear on him, okay?” Jane shrugged.

“Cleves?” Jane made her way into the kitchen first thing in the morning. “Are you back from your run yet?” She pulled her robe close to her body, muffling a yawn as she reached for the coffee pot.

“Seymour, you’re up early,” the fourth queen noted as she walked in through the back door.

“Well you know we’re both the earliest risers. Anyway, I have a question for you.”

“You wanna see my phone to check for any messages from that one shit account on Instagram?”

“How- how did you know?” Jane sputtered, flabbergasted.

“I heard you talking to Aragon and Boleyn. Here.” Anna tossed the blonde her phone.

“I don’t have my glasses with me. Oh boy.” Jane squinted her eyes to see the text on the phone.

Ugly bitch. How’s it feel following the only queen he truly loved, only to be rejected 6 months later? Shouldn’t even be compared to the other five. No idea how you managed to get yourself into the group, you irrelevant bitch.

“What he said isn’t true Cleves. You earned your place here.”

“What he said isn’t far from the truth Seymour. I know I didn’t have it the worst. I arguably had it the best if we’re being honest.”

“Please don’t let what he said get to you.”

“Hey Cath?” Jane wandered into the writer’s room late at night, two mugs of tea in hand.

“What’s up Jane? Can't sleep?”

“Not really. I’ve had a few things on my mind lately.”

“That account that’s just been shitting on all of us lately?” The sixth queen looked at the blonde knowingly. Jane just nodded.

“Here.” Cathy handed over.

What other stories do you have to claim? How about the one where you allowed your husband to groom Elizabeth, Anne’s precious daughter, and you joined in? Why don’t you reclaim that one, you sick twisted bastard?

“He’s-” Jane started.

“He’s not wrong.”

“Anne’s forgiven you for that.”

“She has, but I’ll never forgive myself. Is there a reason you’re so invested in this one account?”

“They’ve sent some not so kind things to me in the past few days.”

“Hey Kat?” Jane nudged the girl sitting next to her. When she heard a hum, she continued, “Can you tell me what that one account was saying to you?”

“Oh, it’s really nothing far from what other hate messages I’ve gotten.”

“Can I see? Only if you want to show me. You don’t have to of course.” The pink haired queen silently passed her phone over. The blonde adjusted the glasses on her face before she began to read.

You whore. You deserved to die. And I hope you felt that axe come down on your neck.

“Oh my god.” Jane was disgusted.

Did you really think you posting a stupid video of yourself speaking about being kind would stop me? It won’t. You six are all terrible women and it’s honestly deplorable that you would paint yourselves to be angels and use your stories to embrace the power of women when you know you have no power. You never did. You were all terrible people in your past lives. There is no way you changed that much in your present life. Worthless bitches.

To say the blonde was fuming was an understatement.

The next day, Jane went live- something she had never done before. It took her a few tries, but she was able to figure it out without any help from her fellow queens.

“Hello sweet queendom,” Jane said sweetly as she still tried to adjust her camera. “The other queens are out for the day, so I figured I would go live. We’re just going to wait a bit until a few more people get here, but then I have something that I’d like to say.”

The third queen greeted as many fans as she could as they made her way into the live, but she kept her eyes peeled for the one account that was sending them all hatred. As soon as she saw them enter, the warmth and love that had been in her eyes vanished.

“Ah, okay. I think we can get this started.”

Roseamongstthethorns: Why did you delete the video of you telling people to spread kindness?

“Well Rose, that’s actually why you’re all here right now. I have something to say about the hate that the fellow queens and I have been getting. So listen up, because I’m only going to say this once. Do you hear that, instagrammer1549?” She knew she was being ballsy calling out this one particular account, but there were no names attached to the account. She wasn’t doing anything to put this person full of hatred in danger.

“We can all deal with some of the not so kind comments that are thrown our way. We as queens choose to ignore them and carry on with what we do because we love what we do. We support each other, and we hope that using our voices and sharing a part of our story will help empower other women to share their stories too. We’re all in this together. However, when you start coming at us for things that we couldn’t prevent, like... dying... let’s say, it is absolutely disgusting. Catherine couldn’t prevent being divorced. She handled that situation like a queen, even going as far to get down on her hands and knees and beg Henry to let her know what she did wrong. Anne refused the king for years. I couldn’t help that I died, and I certainly couldn’t help that my son, who you have no right to talk about, was plagued with a sickness that took him much too soon from this earth. You have no right to talk to Anna like that. She was beautiful then, and she is beautiful now. And even if she wasn’t so beautiful on the outside, she is so much more beautiful on the inside than you could ever be. You sending those comments does not help your case much. Katherine was forced into those relationships. She was a mere child, and we all know that children can not consent. How very dare you go and tell a young woman that you hope she felt it as the axe came down on her neck. What kind of, as you called Cathy, “sick, twisted bastard” says something like that to a nineteen year old? And finally, how dare you bring up horrid stories from our past and plague Cathy with the guilt of something that happened almost 500 years ago.”

Sixtudorqueens: okay Jane, go off. We support.

“None of us are perfect. We all know our imperfections, and we’ve all made peace with it. Yes, we all did some very questionable things in our past. What happened then, while we all are horrified at our past behaviors, we have forgiven each other because we know the truth of our story. We did what we had to do to survive. But, the six of us as a group have made such wonderful process in this life, and we are truly coming out of it better than we ever could have by ourselves. Those girls are my family. Say what you want about me. I don’t care. I have a family to help me build myself back up when haters tear me down and my heart is broken. But, so help me god, if I hear of one more person coming after any of our children or my sisters again for something so personal- well,” Jane laughed bitterly. “-quite frankly, you don't want to know what will happen. Keep your disgusting comments to yourself.”

The comment section blew up, and the amount of likes her live was getting was astronomical.

Sixqueenswalkintoabar: okay mama seymour, GO OFF!

Roseamongsttthethorns: YES JANE. @instagrammer1549, there is a special place in hell for you.

Catherine_Aragon: Jane I thought we talked about not going Mum.

“Lina, I bit my tongue for long enough. It had to be said. On that note,” Jane paused to take a deep breath, the warmth that usually radiated off of her returning. “For the rest of the queendom who has shown us nothing but love and kindness, thank you. We really do see every message, comment and twitt-”

Sixtudorqueens: tweets*

“Tweet,” Jane corrected herself. “So thank you for that kindness. For now, I’m ending this live, but I do hope that you will all remember what I’ve said. Please, only spread kindness. That’s the, as Anne and Kat say, “vibe” that we’ve created for the queendom. If you don’t have anything nice to say, perhaps just don’t say anything at all. Please remember that you have a voice. Please remember to use that voice to spread kindness and love, not hatred. The world already has enough of that in the world. No need to create more.” With that, Jane ended the live.

“So,” Anne bit back a smirk at the dinner table that night.

“We all saw your live Seymour,” Anna bit the bullet and spoke about what they were all thinking.

“Kind of impressed you could figure that out without one of us Mum,” Katherine smiled slightly. “I'm proud of you.”

“What I said had to be said,” Jane affirmed as she took a bite of her dinner. “You don’t come after my family and not feel the wrath of “Mama Seymour” or whatever the hell I’ve been labelled as.”

#six the musical #six musical #six fanfiction #six the musical fanfic #six the musical fanfiction #six fanfic #six musical fanfic #jane seymour

55 notes · View notes

allisondraste · 4 years ago

Text

Temperance: The Man, The Myth, The.. Hype Post?

I finished my first ever longfic back in March, and ever since I’ve been waiting for the right time to hype it up a little. I thought that time would be after I meticulously read through all the chapters and correted the typos that I know are there, but considering that it’s Fanfic Writer’s Appreciation Day, and I haven’t created much lately, I thought that I’d bring a little advertisement to you.

Hey you there! Yes, you.

Have you recently found yourself in search of something else to read? Perhaps something different and just off the well-beaten path of major pairing territory?

Do you ever wish that we knew more about the relationship between the Cousland and Howe families, and what went so terribly wrong.

Do coming of age, childhood-friends-to-lovers, slowburn, and hurt/comort really get your goat?

Do you appreciate the exploration of love beyond the context of romance, and intimacy outside the bounds of convention?

Have you ever thought “I wonder if Nathaniel Howe and the Youngest Cousland Sibling knew one another as children?”

Do you appreciate strong supporting casts and uniquely placed cameos?

How about non-linear story-telling across two points of view?

Do you sometimes long for something that explores mature themes while remaining clean and family friendly?

Maybe you, like me, were incredibly disappointed that Bioware did not let you romance the dashing rogue and pariah of the Howe family, and you need something to ease that betrayal.

Or perhaps you just want to try something you’ve never done before.

If any you nodded along to any of these points, then I have the fic for you, my friend.

Temperance is my 42 chapter, ~150K word, completed story that follows the lives of Nathaniel Howe and Elissa Cousland for nearly seventeen years, from childhood until after the events of Dragon Age Awakening, as they struggle with growing pains and grief, separation and heartbreak, and friendship that develops into something else entirely. With guest appearances from the Theirins and Mac Tirs, the Hero of Ferelden and her Amaranthine Wardens, a Starkhavener Prince, and everyone’s favorite assassin this story has a large cast, and several subplots interwoven into the romance that it ultimately is.

But don’t take my word for it!

Here are some reviews plucked from the comments on AO3:

Y'know those fanfics you enjoyed following so much, you'll probably still refer to them years down the line, when reminiscing about good fic you've read? I think this might just be one of those for me. Absolutely fantastic, wonderful, ARGH, I have no words! Thank you so much for all the word you've put into this! Thank you!

I absolutely love it. There's this tension, but it's once again softened, because we have people who not only love each other, but know each other so well, and care for each other, and have been friends for so long. I love how in this story it's impossible to forget that for one second because that long-time friendship (and love, essentially) is palatable in their every interaction.

There is something I've realized throughout reading this, and especially in this chapter: the most poignant moments are the ones that have nothing at all to do with Dragon Age specifically. The Blight, magic, assassins... they're window dressing. Beautiful window dressing, but there's something so moving about these "mundane" emotions and situations you continue to masterfully explore.

I wish I could kudos this story x1000.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!*heavy breathing* *coughs a little* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (No coherent comment is available at this time. Please check back at a later time. Maybe)

...and quite a few more.

When I started this project in March 2019, I was very green when it came to writing fanfiction, especically longer works. I started the journey to write a story that I wanted to read, and I’ve been so touched by the outpouring of support for my amateur endeavor, and I’m continually amazed that people are still finding it and reading it.

Thanks for reading this ridiculous schtick, and I hope you can swing by and check it out ;D

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age awakening #nathaniel howe #nathaniel howe/cousland #hype post #long post #fanfic writer appreciation day #celebrating #temperance #my writing #'bout time

145 notes · View notes

zalrb · 4 years ago

Note

hi! same anon from before, hahah. first of all thank u so much for answering - i'm a big steve mcqueen fan too and i was wondering if you were ever interested in reviewing your favourite mcqueen movies? a few words for each kinda thing. i love your movie reviews because way more often than not, i find myself agreeing with you and you seem to find the exact right words. of course, it's merely a request you don't *have* to take seriously.i hope u have a great day!

OK so here is my list, starting from favourite to least favourite. The only feature film of his that I haven’t seen is Hunger.

What I will say are general Steve McQueen characteristics that I like about all of the movies is the fact that his films require patience and attention. If I’m tired or not really in the mood to devote my focus but I want to watch something, I’m not putting on a Steve McQueen film. I want to be fully present. His work demands that. I appreciate that.

I have also come to respect that there are what you would consider holes in his movies. Like we don’t really know anything about Brandon’s backstory in Shame, we know his sister says that they come from a bad place but we don’t know what that place is and the movie doesn’t find it necessary to divulge that information. Widows has a lot of loose ends that a typical heist movie may at least attempt to sort out but I don’t think McQueen really concerns himself with those details, he concerns himself with the emotional present and he concerns himself with the present to such an intimate and almost unbearable degree that it can make you flinch and cringe as a viewer because it’s uncomfortable to kind of stew in emotional truth like that, it’s uncomfortable to stew in the present that way.

There is an artistry and a poetry to his movies, it reminds me of paintings and I can say without irony or without being corny or without being pretentious, that these movies really do examine the human condition, do deep dives into emotion or deep dives into emotions that a particular event or issue would bring about.

1. Lovers Rock

I love this movie for so many different reasons. It means so much to me as a woman of Jamaican descent to see an ode to Caribbean party culture in the diaspora

and even though it’s in London and even though it was in the 80s, there is so much overlap in Canada, it was basically like a spiritual experience watching this movie and on twitter, there was so much outpour of gratitude and feeling seen by Caribbean Canadians, it was like a whole moment, so this movie makes me super emotional.

Like this scene, where they yell “Jah!” “Rastafari!” it got me in my chest and I had never experienced feeling so seen in film before because it’s specifically Caribbean, in this case Jamaican, and what I usually see is African American or movies from the Continent and this was diasporic and it was Caribbean

But what I also love about it is that even though it takes place over one night, it’s a love story between two young dark-skinned Black people and it’s handled with the kind of grace and beauty and weight that I like in my love stories, like it’s not Atonement, it’s not POTC, but it’s this culturally specific courting and coming together and it’s super sweet and just very nice

2. Alex Wheatle

There is this scene in this movie that is excruciating to me in its simplicity and it’s one of McQueen’s techniques or choices. So this installation in Small Axe is about Alex Wheatle who is an author and in the beginning we see his life in an orphanage and how he’s abused and ridiculed and how as a child he would be thrown in a room for hours just lying on his side

Then we get to him as an adult and we see the way the police harass Black youth and they take Alex throw him in the back of their van and he’s bloodied and beaten and he’s just lying on his side for hours. And I cried because that callback to his childhood was so brutal to me even though we don’t see excessive violence onscreen, it was just him lying on his side like when he was a kid and how systems upon systems are failing him and failing Black children, Black people and I didn’t need that spelled out for me, I just needed to see him lying on his side for minutes. And that’s kind of the power of McQueen’s directing/storytelling to me?

Another reason I really like Alex Wheatle - and the Small Axe anthology as a whole - is showcasing Black history in other countries

and it’s a great story about identity and figuring out your history, your roots, where you come from and how it informs you

3. 12 Years A Slave

I didn’t know if I was going to watch 12 Years A Slave or not, I kind of make it a point not to watch movies about enslavement now and I haven’t seen a movie about enslavement since (I did watch the show Underground though). What I love about this movie is how it examines the human condition, how it examines resilience, how it examines the soul, really, through many of the characters but particularly Solomon. It’s that unflinching portrayal of emotion and the present that really stuck out to me. And also again some of McQueen’s choices, like when they’re on the slave ship, for a lot of it we don’t see inside, we see the rudders

but that inspired such dread in me? We see the trees a lot.

We see the setting. We see the environment and that just adds a whole other layer, Lupita Nyong’o spoke about that when filming, about just thinking about the trees and what they witnessed. But I watched it, I didn’t cry until the third act then I wouldn’t stop crying then I pulled myself together and a week later, my roommate was playing it in her room and I could hear it and I was trying to write for workshop and it was just the score that I could hear and I got so emotional I had to ask her to put her earphones in so I could work.

4. Education

This installment of Small Axe was again an educational one for me (pun intended) because I know the ways in which the education system in my country and in my province and in my city fail Black children and I know enough about how that happens in the States, I didn’t know so much about how it happened in England and this was very illuminating for me without it taking on the tone of a docu. There is this scene that is just so uncomfortable to watch because it’s long and it’s boring and it’s irritating and that’s exactly what you’re supposed to feel because you’re supposed to feel exactly what the characters would feel in those moments:

Education also has a scene where we hear an entire song, but it’s deliberately not fun, when the teacher torments all the kids with his acoustic version of “House of the Rising Sun.” Why that song? That happened with me!

Oh my god. The teacher brought in his guitar, and he started to strum. We’re this captive audience. That was it. But it’s interesting, about that sequence. Because it’s funny, and then it gets irritating, and then you get bored. You have to go through boredom to get to the other side of it, and then you get to something else. And then there’s another understanding of it. So it had to play out that way, in real time.

and you know by the end, the movie explores how to engage children, how to encourage children, how to advocate for children and the different ways you can educate children so it’s an optimistic movie and I appreciated that

5. Widows

My second best experience at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) was watching Widows. TIFF screenings tend to be very quiet. But there’s a scene in Widows where after the protagonists (four women) do the work and get the money, Daniel Kaluuya watches them, holds them at gunpoint and takes the money, then leaves in his car. Then you’re with him in this car and he’s feeling good about himself and he’s laughing and he’s listening to this speech his brother makes then you see another car gain on him, run into him and it’s the protagonists and they take their money back and the entire theatre cheered and clapped and it was awesome. And that is the type of “girl power” scenes I like that aren’t “girl power” scenes? Where it’s just this man thought he could take what he wanted from these women and leave and they were like ummmmmmm?

I would say Widows is McQueen’s most commercial movie and it still doesn’t read very commercial and unfortunately Liam Neeson is in it but again I like the choices he made, I like that when Colin Farrell’s character is going on this racist rant in his car, we see the exterior of the car with his dialogue as a voiceover.

I like how controlled and tight the direction is and how throughout the movie I was on the edge of my seat in a different way, I was just tense until it was all over. It was also interesting watching his direction with Gillian Flynn’s screenplay interact with each other.

I had issues with this movie, mainly one moment which is when Alice, who is white, slaps Veronica (Viola Davis) -- Veronica slaps Alice first but Alice is a character who has been abused and who has been controlled by the men in her life, by her mother and she’s finding independence and so she exerts that by slapping Veronica back and I just thought there were other ways to show that.

6. Red, White and Blue

Another installment of Small Axe. My first husband stars in it and won a GG for it

and has this gem in it

It’s a good representation of what it looks like trying to right a system from the inside, since this is about Leroy Logan who became a police officer and ended up policing the neighbourhood he grew up in and how he was trying to be a positive change in the environment and in the police force and the racism he experienced as an officer

7. Mangrove

The first installment of Small Axe. To be quite honest I wanted to like Mangrove more than I did. It’s Steve McQueen so it’s a good movie, although the accents had some Trini people I know be like mmmmmmmmmmmmno, and again it’s also an educational movie because you learn about the Mangrove restaurant which was a Caribbean restaurant and hub for the community and for artists and authors and the police saw it as a threat so they constantly harassed the costumers and did raids and did everything in their power to shut it down.

And there are some great lines in this movie, I was most compelled when it became a courtroom drama, because that was some masterful directing

8. Shame

Shame was definitely uncomfortable for me to watch haha and it’s interesting because there were reviews that were like the title doesn’t match what we see because are we really expected to believe that the protagonist feels shame when we see him in New York having anonymous sex with [conventionally] attractive strangers and he has awkward moments with his sister and I was just like ............ if there’s anything McQueen is able to do is show how mechanical and compulsive Brandon’s sexual conquests are and his inability to actually connect because once he does he becomes impotent and pushes Marrianne away, his life is sterile and unfulfilling

so, I don’t know, some of the reviews had me like, what movie were you watching?

13 notes · View notes

anincorrectpetunia · 3 years ago

Text

But the note. The note. The fucking note...

y'all had feelings and I loved them:

But the note. The note. The fucking note. gutted me! I am amazed at how you can weave these big words (that i admittedly look up sometimes) and also able to make me feel sucker punched with these three sentences. I love it. I love both.--@ugotpoped

I'm glad you enjoyed that note. I will confess that the last scene was one of 3 scenes that held up the update, because I couldn't access the Fitz character because of my own...stuff going on. I knew that letter was key to they way the whole scene would evolve. Olivia couldn't feel him if I couldn't feel him.

Ugotpoped, thank you for saying the part in parentheses. I am not a poser;I just love words--but only if they feel right . And I make sure to mix in everyday vernacular and some jokes, too, along with the sentimental and lyrical. I'm glad you're responding well to my brew.

Wow, that letter! That letter is exquisitely written and it said everything. It brought tears to my eyes. I can see why it made Liv emotional. He apologized, praised her for her accomplishments, and gave her a meaningful and thoughtful gift. She cried. She cried because he didn’t seem angry with her and wasn’t petty like she was in her letter to him. But she cried mostly because of the tone and sense of finality to it all. He wished her well. I can’t stop crying as I write this review. It’s all happy tears though cause this is so well written and so well put together. ... This letter brings me back to the show when Fitz told her he was “letting her go” because that’s what she wanted and he walked away leaving her sitting at the restaurant crying. That moment by the way broke me till today. However, this letter is so much more powerful and tear-jerking and emotional than anything shonda did. It’s just everything to me. And it’s everything to Liv. She now lost any hope that he still wanted to be with her after the way she behaved towards him and after everything she had said to him. She finally realized that she wasn’t really moving on with her life. She was in denial about everything up until she read the letter.--@Olitzloverforever /@edelineSchneid3

It is amazing that the letter touched you so much. Thank you. Yeah, I think the letter allowed her to unleash a lot of what was pent up inside about him, even after she was moving forward in the other areas of her life. Remember,

unlike with Edison and Cyrus, she didn't resolve much with Fitz. She literally reduced her emotional outpouring down from a four page letter to a 4 line paragraph. To me that said she wasn't done, but was not ready to move forward with him. I think she's still trying to understand what's holding her back. But I feel like a door has been cracked open.

I also love how she keeps his notes. Does she put them in a box and take them out and read them? Will we find out, P? --@aprillea

One thing I hope you noticed is that we first see Liv leave Fitz a note in Episode 2. We learn that he finds them endearing, even when she could easily text him some of it. So, you think she's the one that started it. But...

Episode 7 shows us the true genesis. Now, as to whether she keeps them in a box, and Fitz knows this, or knows that her note-leaving is related to what he started...

We shall see. Stay tuned in the present storyline.

#olitz fan fiction #responding to reviews

2 notes · View notes

lavender-lotion · 4 years ago

Note

monday, tuesday, wednesday, friday, september!

monday: do you struggle with the ‘boring’ parts of writing?

what... what are the boring parts of writing?? I hate editing and I really struggle with that, because it takes so long but has so little word count pay off, that it can feel really... low reward? and since I work towards a yearly word count goal, editing can get frustrating if i’ve been low on words.

other than that... I had thinking of tags and finding titles. does that count???

tuesday: name a fic you have posted which you think is overrated?

Breathing You In

I binge wrote and edited this 30k fic in two weeks around working overtime. I hated it as I wrote it, and by the time I posted it, I hadn’t ever actually read the whole thing through - I wrote, edited and sent sections to a beta as I wrote them. when I posted it, I didn’t even totally know that the work flowed together, ‘cause... well, i’d worked on it scene by scene, and sometimes the scenes weren’t linear.

it. blew. up. it blew up SO MUCH. I have never, to this day, had a fic get this type of immediate and positive outpouring of love. in the moment I didn’t get it. I hadn’t liked writing this fic, felt like it was poorly thought out and rushed and... people loved it. looking back, two and a half years later, I can kinda see why it took off (lots of popular fandom tropes) and while I don’t hate it as much as I used to, it still blows my way that it got as popular as it did!

wednesday: name a fic which you have posted which you think is underrated?

Sing to Me, Oh so Sweetly

i’ve said this before, I believe, but this fic has a special place in my heart. it was my LONGEST fic for a really long time, and is still my third longest fic ever. sitting at 53k, it’s literally one of my longest works AND I... I liked it. it wasn’t incredibly ship focused, it was incredibly introspective, it went through a entire journey through stiles growing up and...

well.

it hasn’t done good. it hasn’t done as good as I would have liked at all, because it means so much to me and holds such a special place in my heart as something that is ENTIRELY outside of my comfort zone (there’s even angst in this!!!).

so. yeah. this is the first fic that i think of and it’s the first fic that i’ve thought of for years now with this type of question. it sucks. I hate thinking about this fic.

well, this fic and then literally any emmangel i’ve ever written. the x-men alt timeline fandom sure isn’t fond of femme slash, huh?

thursday: have you ever written a high fantasy concept?

hmmmm I don’t think so??? I think the closest is probably Sing to Me, Oh so Sweetly OR this other teen wolf fic:

Witchling

but other than those two, this really isn’t a genre that I write a whole lot of

friday: most self-indulgent fic you have ever posted?

ahhhhhh this one is so hard BUT I am just going to list the first fics that come to mind

patience is a virtue (i'll reap what i've sown)

(baby) maybe that matters more

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you

with those kind eyes

Draw the Line (Cross Over it With Me)

september: share a comment or review which still warms your heart?

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh I. am not good at remembering positive comments :pensive: ask me about negative ones? I can tell you a fic I wrote four years I don’t write angst. a fic from a year ago makes me insecure every time I write an accented character.

positive ones.

ironically midrashic, you recently left me a comment that brought me tears. it was on my recent cherik 5+1, and I genuinely cried, I was so emotionally touched at your kind words. you leave INCREDIBLY comments that genuinely warm my heart and always fill me with so, so much joy.

(I don’t want it to sound like I don’t LOVE getting amazing comments. I do, and I cherish them I get them. but. truth be told im incredibly insecure, and... it’s easier to remember something you agree with than something you don’t.)

fanfic questions themed around time

#my writing #writing meme #ask lav #writing #midrashic #lav answers

5 notes · View notes

musicfordinner · 4 years ago

Text

MAGDALENE by FKA Twigs

OK so boom: I was fucking around on this random music app because I like to find things and try them out… this app is called music something something.. it proclaimed itself to be an app where people write reviews on albums and chop it about albums, kind of in the vein of — Letterboxd or Goodreads.. so I was down to try it. It promoted this “great community”, music nerdery, blah blah blah.. so I joined and spent 30 minutes writing a review on an album of my choice, an intro if you will. I chose MAGDALENE by FKA Twigs. Mainly because if I have to write an intro review, this is the album I was most obsessed with in the last two years enough to process fully from beginning to end, next to Chromatica, which I’m still not done processing internally.

Anyway, the app was wack and had a bunch of fake profiles and old reviews/non-current activity, so I deleted my review. However, I didn’t want to let it go to waste because I took so long to write it! I’m going to post it here! ✌🏾

There’s no one quite like FKA Twigs. She’s the student in your class that everyone overlooks because she’s quiet and strange, but that’s only the surface layer. She’s also the student with the highest grade, who’s the most lethal with both her free flowing pen and her shaved-into-a-shank pencil.

This album is a masterpiece from its lighter opening moments to its complex and layered final cuts.

On the album opener, Thousand Eyes, she’s letting you know that she sees you, all of you, and she wants to know just what you’re willing to do to hold her, to keep her safe, to engage with her.

Moving through the record, she pushes and pulls you into her world, all the while checking in on you, and asking you to check in on yourself. Sad Day, Home w/ You and Holy Terrain (feat. Future) finds Twigs questioning her surroundings, our mutual loyalties to each other, the listener, the artist.

Mary Magdalene and Fallen Alien finds Twigs looking more closely at the things you said you wanted juxtaposed against all the different things that she represents, that she is. Sharing private truths many women hold close to themselves; Twigs lifts the legacy that women carry within up to the light breaking down the textures and elements that we give away to our lovers and loves without a second thought, but that we may need to piece back together when they’ve moved on to other things. Fallen Alien captures the rage of this reclamation process, with Twigs screaming, “I was waiting for you, I was outside, don’t tell me what you want cause I know you lie.” Reclaiming the used pieces of who they are against their exalted lovers and loved ones. “I’m a fallen alien… I never thought you’d be the one to tie me down..” When you’re meant to be free and you’ve given yourself away and gotten wrapped up in someone else, a Jesus or Robert Pattinson like figure, sometimes you feel like you’re outside your body.

By the time we get to the final cuts on the record, she’s trying to figure out the realities of the world, of all its connections. It’s a relatable endeavour.

Pain makes itself seen and heard, coming out in hisses, coos and screams on Mirrored Heart. Twigs wants to know just how much blood she has to leave on the ground for you to love her. She also wants you to know just how special you are to her to make her put herself out there in such a vulnerable manner. No track identifies these lunges towards understanding more than Cellophane, where she literally asks “Didn’t I do it for you?” — After the intense outpouring of attention and care in the previous 9 cuts on the record, you start to question your judgment if you really want any more after all she’s given you.

Secretly, you do want more. As talented as Twigs is, sometimes you feel like you can’t get enough. However, you’d be a liar if after everything she has said and done for you in this listen, you still said that you still weren’t satisfied.

#chantel’s sound diary #self isolation #music journal #quarantine #choice trax #music diary #music nerd #music nerds #music dreams #fka twigs #music apps

2 notes · View notes

musicollage · 4 years ago

Photo

Benoit Pioulard. The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, 2016. Kranky. ( Mastered By – Rafael Anton Irisarri ) ~ [ Album Review | 1) Pop Matters + 2) Exclaim! + 3) All Music + 4) Impose Magazine + 5) Echoes And Dust ]

1) The peculiar title of Benoît Pioulard’s latest album gives the impression that it could be some kind of best-of collection. It isn’t, but The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter could stand in as a succinct summation of Thomas Meluch’s charismatic melding of dream-folk, field recordings, and sandwashed atmospheres.

The completion of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter has been trailed by poignant timing and tragic coincidence. Meluch’s first album for Kranky, Précis, was released ten years earlier, nearly to the day. His brother, for whom the record is dedicated, passed away on the same day that it was finished. Listening Matter’s mood is not easily read. Its pleasure and melancholy are both wary. Meluch being a photographer as well, several of his Polaroids serve as the album art. There’s surely some reflection of the music to be drawn from the cover image; a fish eye mirror on a dark weathered wall, offering a detached and bent view of a beautiful day.

Starting with Sonnet in 2015, Benoît Pioulard has let loose an outpouring of ambient releases. There was Stanza, a companion to the Sonnet LP, Stanza II, the Noyaux EP put out by Morr Music, and the tour EP Thine. This past June he released the Radial EP, which featured an ‘interpretation’ of the Aphex Twin song “Stone in Focus”, to help pay for medical bills he incurred breaking his wrist while hiking in the Cascade foothills near North Bend, Washington.

Listening Matter swings back toward the singer-songwriter yin to Meluch’s structure-averse yang, a mode he hasn’t dwelled much in since Hymnal in 2013. Working again with Benoît Pioulard here is Rafael Anton Irisarri, who mastered the album at Black Knoll Studio in New York. Along with being the go-to guy for completing his own music, Irisarri is a composer with whom Meluch collaborates as Orcas. The duo’s stunning, underappreciated second album, Yearling, is a standout in both of their bodies of work.

Opening euphoric gust “Initials B.P.” is both a clearing of the throat and a girding of the loins. Outside the door lay a progression of perils to face down. “Narcologue” wastes no time, cutting into time and distance’s grip on love: "But this freezing of the heart / Is a shameful shuttering born of being apart / With numbness but in command / My senescence proves we hold together like sand”. Addiction lurks in “Layette”, which begins with the admission, “In a matter of time / I’ll slowly burn through my vices / Cos when I level with them / They still put me through my paces”.

The elated melody of the brief but voluble “Anchor as the Muse” belies its sense of futility. Nearly halfway in and there’s still no resolution in sight on “I Walked Into the Blackness and Built a Fire”: “So I will give chase / The back roads are clearer than before / But mist is in pace / And I can’t see the paths anymore”. Not to overstate the point, but after going practically speechless since Sonnet, Meluch has a lot to get off his chest here. He also gives himself a narrow window in which to do it; a baker’s dozen of future-past pop songs etched onto water-warped tape that average in length somewhere in the two-minute range.

Contradictions being key to the album’s balance, it is only natural that Listening Matter’s greatest moment of levity comes wrapped in cataclysm. On “The Sun Is Going to Explode But Whatever It’s OK”, each successive verse is an eloquent capture of a different thought or perspective in the context of the end of it all; a couple of the sentimental kind, but most of the ‘oh well’ variety. “Oh in the great conflagration of the universe / The sun is going to fucking explode/It doesn’t help to block it with your hand / So just tremble with the ruptures in the land”. It’s the “Take It Easy” this generation deserves.

2) Over the past decade-and-a-half, Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard) has covered a lot of musical ground. The Washington-via-Michigan producer has averaged a release per year, tackling electronic, ambient, electroacoustic and even shoegaze and folk along the way but on his latest LP, the aptly titled The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, Meluch has focused on a subject that has seemed to elude him over the years: himself.

According to Pioulard, the album was recorded during a rough period in his life; the 13-track LP tackles such subjects as grief ("I Walked Into a Blackness and Built a Fire"), turmoil ("In-the-Vapor") and self-medication ("Narcologue"). Opening the record off with the bleary and antonymous electronics of "Initials B.P.," Pioulard goes on to fill the album with guitar strums and vulnerable vocal sighs, while distancing himself from his most recent work. Despite the themes covered throughout, tracks like "Defect" and "A Mantle for Charon" sound honourably optimistic and cheery as Pioulard's voice comes off clean, clear and often chatty, akin to the warbling vocals of the Beta Band's Steve Mason.

Surrounded by ambient hiss and faint female backing vocals, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter shows Pioulard expressing emotion through simple but intensely personal songwriting.

3) Over a decade's worth of albums, Thomas Meluch took Benoît Pioulard's music in such wide-ranging directions that, by the time of Sonnet's expansive ambient instrumentals, it seemed unlikely he'd return to the project's folktronic beginnings. However, he does exactly that with The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, an album title that hints at coming full circle: if Precis was a concise introduction, then these songs are a poignant summary. Benoît Pioulard's music feels lighter and freer than ever, even as it touches on heavy subject matter. Within half an hour, Meluch reflects on life's impermanence ("Narcologue"), the fleeting comforts of vice ("Layette"), and mortality ("A Mantle for Charon") in ways that give Precis' affecting simplicity a greater depth. On songs such as "Perennial Comforts" and the gorgeous "I Walked into the Blackness and Built a Fire," he couples his flair for atmosphere with lyrical storytelling that paints a more complete picture of his world than ever before. Meluch surrounds these deep dives with ambient pieces that are the mainstay of Benoît Pioulard's work -- the breezy album opener is even called "Initials B.P." -- and the interplay of space and texture is lovely as always on "In-the-Vapor" and the velvety final track, "Ruth." Nevertheless, a voice as expressive as Meluch's should be used as much as possible, and his singing is especially welcome after Sonnet; on the lilting "Like There's Nothing Under You," he says as much with his circling harmonies as he does with his poetic words. Indeed, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter features some of his catchiest songs in some time, from the shimmering "Anchor as the Muse" to "The Sun Is Going to Explode But Whatever It's OK," a brisk singalong for an end-of-the-world campfire. A tenth anniversary is as good a time as any to take stock, but to Meluch's credit, it doesn't feel like he's revisiting the past merely for nostalgia's sake. Instead, adding the clarity of experience to his early work's atmospheric conciseness only makes The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter all the richer.

4) Musicians often need to assume a persona, giving an alter-identity to better create and perform. Thomas Meluch has been working under such a pseudonym for his solo efforts since 2005, moving deliberately toward his current intersection of folk and ambient electronica. His previous output under his Benoît Pioulard name has often been nebulous and, as with the case of last year’s album Sonnet, voiceless. With the release of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, Meluch opens up his expressions both lyrically and via acoustic guitar. With this new effort, he shades his atmospheric music with a humanity that also works as a curative measure for his grief and emotional state.

Listening Matter begins with one of Meluch’s signature drone-based expressions, reminding of the ethereal and isolating moods of Brian Eno. Throughout the album, he uses these quick interims as a respite between vocal sets, seemingly giving himself a breather from his realizations and confessionals. When he does open up, his voice has a calming lilt reminding of many heartfelt troubadours like Nick Drake and Elliot Smith, recalling moments while looking forward. “Narcologue” has a flamenco flair but soothes like a opiate, emulating that painless relief from reality. With the bright outset of single “Anchor and The Muse”, Meluch reaches for balance and awareness in the aftermath of his struggles. Meluch states poignantly that “If you still resent me after everything I’ve done/ Well, then I can’t really blame you, can I?”, owning his faults with a weary finality.

The tracks on The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter rarely last beyond the three minute mark, but the impressions made are distinct and indelible. His production is stark yet sprightly, finding the right moments to add a layer of anodic ambience or environmental hum. The harpsichord produced on “I Walked Into the Blackness and Built a Fire” matches well with an understated gallop as rhythm track, echoing with rich history and a tangible sound. The album’s best track “A Match for Charon” features an uplifting chord progression and swells that creep out gradually bursts through the mix like sunlight. The listener acts almost as an audience member in a theatre, where Meluch’s songs are vignettes to be experienced as well as heard.

That hazy, memorable ambience is a trademark of the music from Chicago-based label Kranky and its impact is easily recognized on the Benoît Pioulard signature. What makes the efforts of Meluch distinct on this LP is his representation of the ebb and flow of life, acting both as the cause and effect of his music. One can perceive Meluch lift the weight off of his shoulders as his songs resonate with individual pain and resilience. This feeling becomes clearer with the knowledge that he lost his brother tragically upon completing this album. With this, Listening Matter is an unmistakable release from a record label committed to a singular sound and an individual effort from a musician still coming to terms with his own art and station in life.

5) Following an excursion of a wholly ambient release, one that truly enveloped the listener into a world that offered intrigue and mystery, composer Thomas Meluch offers his latest work under the Benoît Pioulard moniker. Returning now to his roots of experimental ambient folk, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter features Meluch taking a step back from his 2015 album of Sonnet, utilizing his incredible range of ambient composition to further push and extenuate his own acoustic-folk musings. The result of it all is an album that that feels strangely familiar and comforting, whilst managing to express many ideas and notions that are certainly different.

Whilst Sonnet emphasized ambient techniques greatly and featured very sparse vocals, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter instead focuses around Meluch’s own folk notions, all accompanied, pushed, moved and broken up by his own ambient techniques. At the heart of every musical technique, is Meluch himself who examines himself and his own experiences and understanding of troubling times with great examination, using the recording process of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter as a growing and healing process. Vices, virtues, life and death are all mused upon and expressed by Meluch, all blurred and obscured by ambient washes, as though there’s only so much we’re supposed to see.

There’s a great intrigue following this album and its release. Meluch seems to have spent much of the past two years really turning his gaze into himself, looking at how he views the world and understands it, before turning at introspection outward through the medium of his songs. There’s an incredible fragility to much of the work on the album, whilst also being incredibly headstrong and confident. As a body of work, much of the album seems to jump further ahead than much of Meluch’s work, sounding more concise and direct than the 2015 ambient work of Sonnet or even the more folk-directed 2013 album of Hymnal.

Meluch’s works may sometimes feel a little hard to really tap into at times, especially much of his earlier work which really felt experimental at times. It seems now Meluch has really honed in his incredible range and talents, creating an album that is no doubt experimental, but is also much easier to digest and understand, whilst still being a wonderful album experience that simply achieves everything it has set out to do. It’s arguable that Meluch has created a perfect entry point into his music for those who may be unfamiliar to his unique style, whilst also releasing a work that will really inspire his many lifelong fans.

#rock music #pop music #electronic music #ambient music #folk rock #benoit pioulard #kranky #rafael anton irisarri #2016 #2010s #2010s rock #pop matters #exclaim!#allmusic #impose magazine #echoes and dust #review

6 notes · View notes

hearttstopper · 5 years ago

Note

“i have a lot of thoughts about this too especially with the whole watermelon sugar/nameless thing” pls miss britt share ur thoughts id love to hear them

This got so long. I’m really sorry. My thoughts about HS2/In Watermelon Sugar/a bunch of other random stuff under the cut.

These are all thoughts that are only vaguely connected, and stuff that I’m sure has been said a hundred times before mixed with a ton of my own personal conjecture, so please bear that in mind… This is just like total rambling from me.

But I have been fascinated with Harry’s connections to In Watermelon Sugar since we first heard the stupid rumors about the song. Especially the quote from the book about the narrator’s name. That quote got me thinking about how when it comes to Harry, tons of people only see what they want to see based on whatever ‘version’ of Harry is most appealing to them.

Read these quotes from the book with that in mind:

My Name

“I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was raining very hard.

That is my name.

Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.

That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.

That is my name.

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.

That is my name.”

and:

“My Name. I do not have a regular name. I am a mystery to you. I wished Margaret would leave me alone…”

— Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

The narrator of In Watermelon Sugar isn’t just a nameless figure, he actually invites the reader to give him whatever name they find most fitting for him. A positive connotation, a negative one, a nonsensical one… whatever you, the reader, decides. And that feels like a very apt description of Harry and the various ways fans have perceived him from the very beginning… by now, so many people have projected so many different images onto Harry that over time it has completely blurred all lines as to who Harry actually is.

Here’s a review I found of the book that summarizes the world within In Watermelon Sugar better than I can (as well as somehow still aligning perfectly with the concept of struggling with fame and identity, etc): “Much of the sense of disparity in [in Watermelon Sugar] results from the incongruity inherent in the person of the narrator, who insists that everything in iDEATH is exactly as it should be—the people gentle, pleasant, and tolerant. Despite the narrator’s insistence that iDEATH is a stable Utopia, however, many of the things that happen are fraught with pain and violence. Balancing the easygoing and vegetarian people with their light chores and flower-filled parades are the man-eating tigers, the burning of the mutilated corpses of inBOIL and his gang, Margaret’s suicide, and the emptiness felt by the narrator but never named.”

So essentially within In Watermelon Sugar, we’re shown that in the surrealist, post-apocalyptic setting of iDeath, things are only perfect on a surface level. Everyone in this world appears to be happy (or at least, they should be), but a closer look reveals the true nature of iDeath: it’s beyond grim. And so despite the happy, shiny surface, being a part of that happy, peaceful commune is unable to cure the narrator of the inexplicable emptiness he feels inside of him. (‘All the lights couldn’t put out the dark running through my heart.’ ‘Having sex and being sad.’)

The sadness that Harry has already admitted is very prevalent in HS2 has already been implied to be about a ‘breakup,’ but it’s clear to me that Lights Up is anything but a breakup song… (“[Lights Up is about] freedom, self-reflection, self-discovery, things that I had thought about and wrestled with…” + “For me, it’s a very uplifting song. In some places, it’s kind of dark, but to me, it’s like, very liberating. I think, you know, over the past couple of years… It’s about self-reflection, and freedom. It feels very free to me, which is I guess things that I’ve been trying to process… I guess, kinda wrestled with a little over the last couple of years. It’s kinda like, about accepting all of those things.”)

His sadness/whatever emotions and problems he’s been wrestling with have seemingly spanned the course of a few years, and are very personal to him… which is why I feel that releasing Lights Up as the first single sets the tone for the rest of his album centering around his own identity. The line “Lights up and they know who you are, know who you are… Do you know who you are?” poses the question - who is Harry? - and then, “Shine! Step into the light… Shine! So bright sometimes. Shine! I’m not ever going back.” shows us Harry having the strength and bravery to overcome his fears (stepping into the light, although it’s ‘so bright sometimes’ - overwhelming) and reclaim/express his own misunderstood identity.

A lot of people have been trying to tie the In Watermelon Sugar thing back to someone else, but at this point I completely disagree. Not only have we seen him make literary references in the past (the Charles Bukowski reference in Woman), but… given everything that he’s said about Lights Up so far – which was surprisingly a lot – I think that Harry genuinely just took a lot of inspiration from the book because it seemed to hit close to home with his own feelings about self-acceptance and living an authentic life within the public eye.

I think a lot about the scene we’ve yet to see from the directors cut - a room full of many different iterations of Harry.

“My name depends on you… Just call me whatever is in your mind.”

Which leads me back to more total conjecture on my end, but I think that when Harry initially set out on tour / kicked off his solo career, he seemed determined to continue performing within the safety of the walls that had been built around him, so to speak. In one of the interviews he did earlier, he talked about tackling his first album from the perspective of ‘bowling with the bumpers up’ - he wanted to play it safe. He didn’t want to veer too far out of his own comfort zone and fuck it all up… and in doing so, he seemed to hold himself back quite a lot. “I wanted to see if people would enjoy an album without knowing everything about me.”

I think that heading into writing with that mindset explains songs like ‘Complicated Freak’ and ‘Medicine’ being scrapped and excluded from being released on HS1. In retrospect, all of his tour - and especially Medicine - seem a lot like Harry dipping his toes in the water. Being totally presumptuous again, but I find it likely that Harry has had it ingrained in his mind for a long time that he needs to fit certain molds and keep certain narratives alive in order to continue to be successful. And I imagine that this idea is not his own, but instead something that has been hammered into his head over and over from a young age. And I would guess that a lot of anxiety and doubt has stemmed from that - go back and watch that shaky first performance of Medicine and tell me what you think he was likely feeling in that moment. But again, it circles right back to the strength and bravery of doing what he knows needs to be done to expel all of the darkness inside of him - stepping into the light. (“Never going back now / Be so sweet if things just stayed the same.” It’d be so sweet if he could live in that fantasyland forever.)

Anyway. I really don’t think Harry was at all prepared for just how many people would show up to support him in that sense… but his own community just rolled up in droves, bringing a total outpouring of love for him every single night. He had entire arenas lit up in rainbows, people bringing hilarious and heartfelt signs, flags after flags after flags after flags… all in celebration of him and the feelings of safety, strength, and bravery that he has continuously imparted back onto his fans. It was such a queer lovefest that even other artists likened his tour to “pride parades every night.” That’s so unbelievably powerful? I can’t think of any other artist who’s crowds do that for them… not even gay icons like Elton John? I still maintain that one of the most incredible things to have come out of HSLOT was the safe spaces he + his fans created for one another. It meant a lot to us, and it clearly meant a lot to him:

“The tour, that affected me deeply. It really changed me emotionally. Having people come to sing the songs… For me, the tour was the biggest thing in terms of being more accepting of myself, I think. I kept thinking, “Oh, wow. They really want me to be myself. And be out and do it.” That’s the thing I’m most thankful for, of touring. I feel like the fans in the room — it’s this environment where people come to feel like they can be themselves. There’s nothing that makes me feel more myself than to be in this whole room of people. It made me realize people want to see me experiment and have fun. Nobody wants to see you fake it.”

I think that going on tour, and seeing the reaction and the acceptance of his audience, definitely made him want to take the bumpers down… to ‘be out and do it’ because ‘nobody wants to see him fake it.’ It seemed to help him massively in terms of his own ‘self acceptance and the things he’s been wrestling with’ and to make an incredibly, incredibly long winded answer short, it’s why I STILL do not think that releasing Lights Up on National Coming Out Day was in any way incidental. I think that was a big part of what Harry meant when he said that no one wanted to see him ‘faking’ things.

And… that’s basically it, I think, for now. I’ve just been sitting here nodding along at everything he’s been showing us the last few weeks… Impressed by the direction that he seems to be heading. And taking notes. I’ll go ahead and shut up now because I KNOW it’s still too early to draw definite conclusions on his intent for this new ‘era’ (and this new song could be about choking on literal fucking watermelon seeds for all I know, nothing Harry does ever makes any kind of sense does it), but I can’t help but come to my own conclusions based on what I feel he is sharing with us.

#like if anyone actually thinks that it makes more sense for harry to be crying over borrowed slippers from an ex #and writing entire songs based off of his ex's supposed favorite book... be my guest or whatever #but it totally undermines how smart harry actually is. he used the word 'regalia' in a fucking interview the other day #like c'mon lmao #anyway #this is just me rambling for like... a solid 2k #sorry #when he makes me look like booboo i'll at least be a more educated booboo or whatever #:')#*

246 notes · View notes

bexical · 4 years ago

Text

The March 2021 Atlanta shooting

On March 16, 2021, a white male went on a series of shootings at three spas or massage parlors. Eight people were killed, six of which were Asian American.

There has been an outpouring of responses. Leadership within my company shared a statement standing with the Asian community, saddened by the “hateful violence”. President Biden shared a tweet decrying the attack as “un-American”.

Both of these responses, as well as many, many others, completely neglect the following: those six victims were Asian American women. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence indicating that the targeted massage parlors were in fact illicit and that the women were targeted for being sex workers: to briefly summarize from here, “All three businesses where people were fatally shot Tuesday have detailed recent reviews on an online site that leads users to places that provide sexual services” and “Investigators believe Long had previously visited two of the Atlanta massage businesses where four of the women were killed, police said.” Both aspects are integral to a complete understanding of the crime.

This is not to say that race played no part. Others have noted that the shooter was apprehended alive and that certain members of law enforcement have seemed to downplay his actions, which seems unlikely if not for him being white. There is also a significant possibility that the shooter especially sexualized Asian American women, leading to his actions. Race has certainly played a role in both the act itself and in the response to it.

But to denote the act as ‘hateful anti-Asian violence’ is overly simplistic.

To describe the act as ‘hateful’ glosses over how terrible, tragic events can have commonplace and seemingly benign causes.

We as a society like to think that racism is hateful, that evil is obvious. That’s the (faulty) reasoning behind the oft-mocked claim, “I can’t be racist! I have friends who are [X]” or “It’s just a joke! I’m not a racist.” If we are not hateful, we aren’t racist, and everything is fine.

But racism doesn’t have to be hateful to hurt. Racism isn’t just the time an idiot in middle school called me a ch*nk, it’s also the time some buddies joked about me eating dog meat. They didn’t hate me, but the joke also showed how, at least in that moment, I wasn’t part of them. Others have shared the now-common “Where are you really from?” story. The asker is never hateful, they’re merely curious, trying to be friendly - and sometimes that is how it comes across and it can be a pleasant conversation, but it can also be othering, alienating, dehumanizing.

To accept that racism isn’t always hateful, that evil isn’t always obvious, is to also accept the possibility that we have harmful thoughts within us. Very few people are perfect - I’m certainly not. But fairly few of us are actually hateful, which gives us the (false) security to believe we're fine. But if we continue to believe that evil is obvious and thus we (and our peers) are incapable of it, we will be blind to the same kind of act happening again. We must understand and address how violence can manifest from other emotional causes if we are to make meaningful progress and prevent this kind of tragedy in the future.

Furthermore, to describe the act as simply ‘anti-Asian’ ignores that it was explicitly due to intersectional issues.

This was a crime against Asian women. To me, as an Asian American man, this is of the same relevance as the police brutality against George Floyd and Breonna Taylor: all of these events reflect deep social issues that I care about, but I am not part of the group that suffered. To claim otherwise, that the targeted group includes me simply because I am Asian, would be disingenuous.

This fact does not lessen the severity. From a legal perspective, it seems to still fit the Georgia’s definition of a hate crime: his stated motivation (that it was to ‘eliminate temptations for his sex addiction’, to paraphrase) makes it clear that the target was women (if not explicitly Asian women), and gender is among the categories designated in Georgia’s hate crime laws. But twisting the act into a racially motivated hate crime and connecting it to other instances (or even the broader history) of anti-Asian violence borders on deceitful.

More subtly though, the ‘anti-Asian’ designation ignores that this was a fairly explicit attack on sex workers.

Unlike race and gender, ‘sex worker’ is not an officially designated category in Georgia’s hate crime laws (nor in any legal definition that I’m aware of). Nevertheless, as a group they are one of the most victimized in our society, in part because they are one of the least protected. Mayor Bottoms of Atlanta avoided discussing the nature of the massage parlors in an effort to avoid “victim blaming” and “victim shaming” - but if they were sex workers, why should that bring blame or shame to the victims? Why does our society treat the death of a sex worker as unimportant? Why do we only care about the victims if we can assign a racial motivation, as if the violent murder of sex workers were any less heinous an action?

To be clear, the evidence does suggest that this violence was caused primarily by the dehumanization of sex workers. Admittedly, this would be taking a murderer at his word (but again, his word doesn't even absolve him of the hate crime penalties), but it seems that he had personally gone to these establishments and considered them to be 'temptations to be removed', their lives being worth less than his sick sense of purity. When we ignore the sex worker aspect, when we take their tragedy and use it to center a national discussion on anti-Asian hate, we similarly dehumanize sex workers.

And frankly, that's unacceptable. It is imperative that we discuss sex workers and their rights when we discuss this event.

#atlanta shooting #intersectionality #politics #sex worker rights

1 note · View note