#love how you wrote from marcys perspective

[jojoturnip]

Screaming, crying, kicking, sobbing

Yes yes yes

They literally abandon her arc of seeking independence in the second season!!! And the rest of her story follows the cycle of child abuse. And breaking it.

That's her climatic moment: refusing to join the core (literally and embodiment of intergenerational abusers and likely-abused). It's quick, but it's there. She's the one that breaks the cycle.

She is the personification of metamorphosis. She's a metaphor for change. Her presence, her choices, and her subsequent absence change everyone else in the story. That's what cycle breakers do. They open the doors for others to escape abuse. To get better and to grow and to love and to be loved.

I love Marcy because I saw this show in the midst of trying to break out of my own family's cycle. I saw her a just a fun character first, a botany enthusiast like me! But, she means so much to me now, mostly because of the way they wrote the relationship between Andrias and her. It mirrors a lot of my life.

And she broke free. And she had friends to support her when she got to the other side.

And I'm trying to do the same.

And they include that bitter conflict as she lives. Everything in her short goodbye to amphibia, in her recognition that's she'd been running from so much, she hadn't gotten the chance to fully realize the world and people around her.

She barely says three to words in Andrias. And we know there are so many words in that girl. But she loves too much for that.

She doesn't even write about him in her journal after True Colors.

This story, her side of this story, anyway, is all about the pain in loving a guardian, putting your trust in someone parental, and how much of yourself you lose when you find out every piece of that relationship was something groomed, something fabricated to use you. It's about the shock of coming to the sudden terms that you've been abused. Badly. You've been hurt, and you're changed in a way you can't go back. But you still feel that love for them tugging at you.

And you see that they've been hurt in the same ways that they hurt you. That this was something learned.

That this is something they've never overcome.

That you have to.

It has to be you.

The few times that child abuse is written about. Its written from the view of different adults all around. Amphibia let us see it from the child's perspective. The perspective where we get to see a little girl reclaim her agency and world from a lineage a thousand years old.

Marcy broke the cycle.

It allowed Andrias to do the same.

But it started with her.

And that means everything to me.

Thinking about how Marcy doesn't really have flaws like Sasha and Anne (controlling bossiness and impulsive crowd-pleaser) because of the story given her. Her struggle is dealing with forces outside her control betraying and, well, controlling her.

There's a little bit of a "you have to accept reality as it is as it comes" and "you can't just run away from problems" and "trusting others" but I'm not sure that's the same thing as a flaw she has to grow out of.

(It could be said, Marcy setup her own situation to a certain extent, if only because her desire to get away from her problems led her to find the music box and suggest it as a present. But this breaks down when you add Andrias, whose betrayal was out of her control. \(:|)/)

[calamity-unlocked]

Here's the Andrias and Marcy story! (P.S this is unedited for the sake of keeping it to a reasonable length so apologies for any mistakes!)

----

Nowadays, the only thing that Marcy hears is the gentle whoosh of her breath rising to the surface.

Or, what she hopes is a surface. She hasn’t opened her eyes in...she doesn’t know.  She’s been drifting in and out of consciousness for much too long, not aware enough to know exactly where she is, but aware enough to know that she’s been here much too long.

It seems like she’s always tired, being left alone with only herself, her thoughts, and the coldness around her. She doesn’t like the times where she’s awake. It hurts.

So she retreats off to whatever escapist fantasy that’s been molded for her needs and sinks back into sleep, over and over. She doesn’t want to know what the tubing around her is attached to. She doesn’t want to wonder why she feels like she’s always being watched. She doesn’t want to think about whether anyone will come back for her, or whether this truly is her final resting place.

If she were in limbo, it’d make sense.

However, on the day that she hears his voice again, it feels more like hell.

The low rumble that announces his presence is unmistakable, even to Marcy’s foggy mind. It’s enough to send a jolt of fear through her spine, and everything becomes so much more sharp as she struggles to remain calm.

The only thing that reassures her is the fact that she can’t hear his footsteps. Or feel the vibrations that come from his gargantuan figure.

So he’s not near her. But she can still hear his voice. Somewhere, off in the distance.

“...I must admit, it’s gotten quite lonely in the castle without you running around.”

Marcy strains to hear him, and then wonders if she should. Why should she?

...Where even is she in the first place? Why is he here?

“The kingdom has been in grief for weeks now. There are flowers and gifts by your statue. Everytime I order someone to take it down, they either refuse or are stopped on the way.”

So she is dead. Figures. It… it makes sense. Considering how sure she was when it happened.

Maybe Sasha was the one to kill Andrias. If only she hadn’t been put into the same place as him.

Or is he still alive, and talking to her from the land of the living somehow? Maybe she’s a ghost. She did ask Anne if there was an afterlife. Apparently this is it. Dim awareness and being trapped with your worst nightmares.

“They really do love you. What a pity. I can’t decide whether I regret… no. You made me do this. All you had to do was go along and obey, and you didn’t. But I still have this. It was a nice try on your part, really, to attempt to prevent the inevitable.”

There’s a quiet sound of something being set onto a platform. Andrias shuffles a bit, and Marcy nearly chokes on the air being forced into her windpipe.

“Speaking of which, it’s funny how time repeats itself. It made me… soft, when you first arrived. You remind me too much of Barrel.”

A dim memory comes to mind, of reading by faint candlelight. Marcy had skimmed her fingers over the ripped up pages of an ancient history textbook, struggling to piece together the story behind a toad with green skin and large horns.

The few sentences she managed to recover she remembers clearly.

“...Barrel the Brave, as he was often called, is discredited with wielding the famous war hammer inscribed with his name. Rather, it belonged to Petunia Plantar, a very good friend of his. Despite her small size, she wielded the hammer with ease, and named it after Barrel because of how his expert craftsmanship contributed to its making.”

“...He was bright and adventurous, just like you, although a bit more solem. I was only the Flipwart champion for all those hundreds of years because he wasn’t around to beat me. He died protecting an entire town from a flock of herons. I was the one who sent them.”

There’s a slight change in Andrias’s voice when he speaks the last sentence, but Marcy thinks she must have been imagining it. And his words only make the awful feeling in her throat thicker.

“He wasn’t as lucky as you. If I had been there, if I knew what I know now… he would have been by my side forever. He could have lived. I would have forgiven him for betraying me.”

There’s a loud swoosh, and Marcy feels the urgent need to curl into herself (she can’t- her muscles feel like they’re made of jelly) as the sound of falling concrete and rubble echoes harshly around whatever space she’s in.

Loud, frantic breathing. The kind spurred by the kind of frustration where you can do nothing but lash out.

“And then Petunia would have come back. Because of course she would, if it were Barrel- and then I could have explained, and they would apologize, and we could have been happy. I was only trying to do what was best for all of us.”

Now, the footsteps begin to draw closer. And for the first time, spurred on by blind panic, Marcy opens her eyes.

She can’t see. Everything is a dark, blurry, watery mess. She blinks, once, twice- twenty times. Maybe more. Eventually her surroundings start to come into focus.

She’s trapped. That’s definitely glass in front of her- and that’s definitely the splitting image of Andrias stomping closer. She fears the worst.

He lowers his head to look directly at her and her wide eyes full of fear, places one giant finger on the glass.

“Oh. So you’re awake.”

She shuts her eyes again. Tries playing dead. Whatever it takes to make him go away.

“How much of that did you hear?”

She doesn’t disclose. He doesn’t deserve to know.

He’s silent for a long moment as she blatantly tries to ignore him. It’s frustrating though, because it feels like all her instincts are wrestling for control at once. She’s bogged down by her own exhausted body and slightly less exhausted mind.

“...Fine then. That’s right. I know that look. Go back to sleep. You’re much more useful to me healing and unconscious than scared and awake. Don’t worry, you won’t have to be afraid in my presence for much longer.”

She can tell Andrias has left even without the obvious sound of him shuffling away, because the light that she can sense behind her eyelids becomes just the tiniest bit more noticeable.

And as she slips back into a heavy sleep, she swears that it’s tinted a radioactive orange.

Holy shit I feel like I was holding my breath the entire time I was reading this. Gods Andrias is such a hatesink - but his backstory is so interesting and I love the parallels between him and his friends and the calamity tro.

Thank you for writing this!!!

[outshinethestars]

Like Santa Clause (Daredevil, MCU fic)

There had been cookies appearing on rooftops all over Hell’s Kitchen.  Matt smelled them when he was out on patrol, damn near tripped over them a couple of times.  Sometimes there was a glass of milk left out there, still cold, like it’d been set out on the roof late in the evening.

This time, there was a note.

It was written with marker, of all things, which meant that Matt couldn’t read it, but his burner could take pictures, and send them as texts, and read out the texts it received, so this was potentially a problem he could outsource. The question was who to bother with an idle curiosity at two am on a week night.  Marci would be awake, he knew, but she would also count it as a favor, and potentially mock him mercilessly depending on what the mystery cookies and note actually were.  Karen was definitely asleep, or at least she should be, because she had a job with actual bosses that required her to be at work early in the morning.  Foggy was back ( Foggy was back! ) but he was probably asleep too, and Matt didn’t want to bother him with night work, even something as seemingly innocent as mystery cookies.

Claire was back too, Matt realized, and she was working the night shift.  He wondered if she was the sort of person who texted at work.  He figured that if she was actively saving someone’s life she just wouldn’t answer a text, and she wouldn’t mind being bothered with Matt’s curiosity.  It would probably just be a welcome change of pace from him bothering her by bleeding out on her couch.

Actually, Matt hadn’t come anywhere close to bleeding out in almost a year, but from Claire’s perspective it’d only been, what?  A couple of months?  Matt really had done a disturbingly bad job of taking care of himself back then, it was honestly warranted everyone who’d been been blipped expressed baffled disbelief at the idea that he’d managed to survive for five whole years in their absence.

Matt took a picture of the paper and texted it to Claire, and got an answer back almost immediately.  He made sure no one was in normal hearing range and played it.

“Did you mean to send me a black rectangle?” It said.

Oh, right, light.  That was important for the whole seeing thing.  Matt took the note to the nearest working street lamp, sniffed it to make sure it was right side up, and tried again.  There was a longer pause, and then the phone rang.

“Aren’t you at work?” Matt asked

“I’m hiding in a broom closet,” Claire said, “Because you need to hear this, Matt.  A little kid wrote you a letter.”

“It’s to me?” Matt asked.

“Yes, it’s written in red marker and it says, “Dear Daredevil,” (The D has these cute little devil horns and the Is are dotted with hearts all the way through) “Thank you for watching over the city.  My little sister, who is my big sister now, says that you never stopped being a superhero during the blip, no matter how scary it got, so I wanted to say thank you for taking care of her and Mommy and Daddy and everyone while I was gone.  I made you oatmeal raisin cookies, because they’re my favorite.  I hope you like them.  Tracy from school says that you’re supposed to leave sugar cookies, but those taste boring, and anyway, we don’t have any cookie cutters shaped like devils, just Christmas ones.

If you don’t like oatmeal raisin cookies, please leave a note and I can make you something else.

Love, Sally, Age eight-slash-thirteen.”  And there’s a little stick figure of a girl in a pink dress with curly yellow hair and a speech bubble that says “Thank you Daredevil!”.  Matt, where did you find this, and were there cookies?”

“There were cookies,” Matt said, a smile curving his lips, “And milk.  There’s been cookies popping up all over the place, I wondered what it was about.”

“The city appreciates you, Matt,” Claire said, “No go back and try those cookies, I want to know if they're any good.”

The cookies, as it turned out, were delicious, and he told Claire as much.  After patrol, he swung back around to pick up the rest of the cookies, and shared them with Karen and Foggy and Marci, though he made sure to save a couple to give to Claire later.  The next night Matt printed out a letter and left it on the building.  It read,

“Dear Sally,

Thank you for the cookies.  I do like oatmeal raisin cookies, and yours were delicious. I shared them with all my friends and they liked them too.  I know it can be scary, coming back from the blip, but all of us who stayed are so happy to have you back.

Love,

Daredevil”

[seddm]

Would you please do a little something about Amphibia. I’ve always loved the way you put things in perspective :)

HUGE SPOILERS FOR AMPHIBIA'S FINALE BELOW ALSO MESSY POST I DIDN'T REALLY PROOFREAD KINDA WROTE IT AS A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

I'm still in the middle of FEELING and THINKING and THINKING ABOUT HOW I FEEL, so my ideas might change in the following days; also, while I certainly have a lot of opinions, I didn't dedicate to this show the amount of time I dedicated to SVTFOE, so I don't feel as comfortable analyzing its themes and ideas inside out.

Anyway: the finale hurt. A lot. It's your classic "change happens" finale, which is something completely in line with the themes the show always had. Could they have gone for something different, keeping the dimensions connected, maybe in a partial way but still connected? Probably. By the end of the series, all notions of escapism surrounding the characters and their time in Amphibia had been solved and replaced by more mature and positive feelings, so I don't think keeping the possibility of Anne and Sprig being in contact would have undermined anything. It's just, evidently, not what Matt Braly wanted. What's wrong with this, beyond a more subjective and personal preference for perfectly happy endings goddamnit I wanted to smile fuck? The possibility, the risk of giving the idea that Amphibia, as a place, doesn't deserve its "agency", and that its role was over the moment Anne, Sasha and Marcy went back home. That it was little more than a dream, a fantasy that stops existing the moment the coming of age journey of the characters is over, and they can leave behind their fantasies.

-which clearly doesn't apply to this show. Amphibia is the main setting of the series, it's a second world to the characters, Sprig and Anne are the main characters and their separation was THE climax of the episode. Still, a possible interpretation given the decision to throw the "leaving behind some things" in the larger hat of "CHANGE AS A POSITIVE" of the show.

Earth and Amphibia being separated, probably forever (sure there's Terri with her portals, fans can dream and speculate, but the girls are OLD now compared to the target age for Disney products, their story as far as Amphibia goes is probably over even in the super unlikely possibility of any kind of spinoff or continuation or comic), hurts a lot. I'm livid. But there was also closure in it, a wonderful goodbye that can never be tainted. It'll forever hurt and I'll forever wish they went in the opposite direction, but that won't haunt me. I accept it.

What about the girls? Somehow, that's the part that hurt me the most, and many other viewers like me. And, in my opinion, that's harder to analyze. And to rationalize.

We get this scene giving us some exposition about what happened during the timeskip, and most of the problems stem from this. Did Marcy not physically visit the girls for almost a decade, or it's a "can't believe it's been ten years since our adventure in Amphibia ended!" kind of deal?

Does this line mean Marcy knew so little about the girls' lives for all this time, or it's just a way to allow Sasha to give the viewer some exposition?

If it's the former, then why does she know what Anne is doing? A rekindled and recent interest through social media? Or they did talk during all these years, maybe occasionally, the way a lot of real life friends do even when they're not as long distance as they are? I have no answers, I pray for some kind of Word of God Clarification™ from Matt Braly, but I wouldn't count on it since showrunners rarely like explaining stuff like that. But I can, maybe, analyze some of the issues that are currently hurting me, and possible "solutions".

The show takes place over less than a year, the timeskip lasts ten years. To us viewers, 99.9% of the life of the characters happened during that one year, but to the characters, if you were to imagine them as living people with their own agency, the years of the timeskip - highschool and college and beginning of adult life - clearly represented the majority of their lives. And this is the first layer of the issue, something that can affect every work of fiction, the irreconcilable difference between the viewers' perception of the events, and how the character in the work might reasonably act.

Second layer, the show gave us some incredibly tender moments between the three girls, especially in the last episodes, when they had fixed or come to terms with most of their personal issues, forgiving themselves and each other. This probably made their friendship look stronger than it was.

I use friendship with a very specific meaning in this context, because that's feels like what the show / writing was going for. By the end of their adventure their bond is incredibly strong, more than it has ever been, but as far as friendship goes, the ""problems"" they had before might still exist. Marcy certainly learned to pay more attention to how other are feelings, but that won't magically make Anne and Sasha interested into playing Dungeons & Dragons, and so on.

In a way, this scene told us what we saw in the timeskip.

This applies to Sprig, obviously, but also to the three girls.

Life lead them in different places, maybe different interests -they already had different interests to being with, but they still care about each other more than anything else, even if they might not have (it's an odd sentence I know but it's the best way I can put it) participated in a long time in any of the common rituals of friendship. This much is clear, this scene speaks volume (and that's why I uploaded it as a video, the voice acting and body language is important).

And Matt Braly tweets this

and says in multiple interviews things like

It really allowed me to think about how we grew apart, we grew back together, we grew apart again, and we found each other again. There’s this beauty in life of these relationships that ebb and flow. That’s what I wanted to bottle up. It’s tricky, though!

And at this point I, poor little viewer who was hoping for the three girls to be best friends forever always together often bought in bulk do not separate for the rest of their lives, am forced to let the two wolves inside me fight.

The one who's fucking sad and who can't believe these girls might have fallen out enough to barely talk for multiple years after everything they went through, after all the work and self improvement and shared experiences that forever changed them and who thinks this is all bullshit and that a five seconds long scene that could have easily been dialogue-less soured a whole show and three wonderful characters for me; And the one who tries to understand the intentions of the show. That friendships come in all form and shapes, that we have the perfection of Spranne, ending at an all times high with external circumstances separating them, and the imperfection of the Calamity Trio, three girls who would (did?) die for each other and drop anything and everything to help, but who still took different paths for a part of their lives. And that's normal, happens to a lot of people, friends can not see each other for years and still act like not even a day passed the next time they meet. But it's also jarring, because in the simple world of a cartoon one would have expected more. But that's also not permanent, the show ends with a promise of change to come, Anne's narration talks of things returning in your life, the very last image of the series is one of pure happiness. It's easy to imagine any number of scenarios leading to their relationship bringing once again on the table "the standard rituals of friendship", because the love and affection never left them for a single moment.

Which wolf is going to win? I have no idea. Likely the latter, in time, but it's painful. As anyone who followed me during SVTFOE times knows all too well, understanding the themes and intentions of the writers does very little to change the perception of execution, and the way something subjectively resonated with one's preferences and experiences. Also, an open ending is still open, no matter how positive the outlook might be, and that's fertile ground for the demon that is lack of closure and doubt.

I asked a friend who doesn't watch the show for a somewhat unbiased opinion, and they said

Yeah, I can definitely see how it seems uncontroversially positive from a detached point of view

I guess I'll latch onto that adverb as strongly as I can, at least while I eagerly wait for Matt to benevolently bestow on us, through tweets and interviews and AMAs, any minuscule crumble of Word of God that might bring some manner of comfort to our troubled souls. I don't know, something like "whoops my bad didn't realize Marcy and Sasha's lines would have came across as that bad haha it's not like they became strangers soon after coming back from Amphibia it was gradual they still have a group chat Marcy shares memes every day it's just been a while the avalanche of events from highschool to college to starting to work took them by surprise but now things can change, something new can always begin, they still have decades to be together who knows maybe they'll be roommates for the next five years haha".

A man can dream delude himself...

[ramblingguy54]

     Been seeing some criticism toward Sasha having conflicting feelings being mad at Marcy, since she got them stranded in Amphibia, calling it mean spirited or outright hypocritical. As for my two cents, I don’t see it that way, as this is supposed to be the point here for Sasha. It is dramatic irony after the crap she has done, but in all fairness too she never got the chance to really speak her mind whatsoever about Marcy’s betrayal, either. Sasha has been so focused on building the rebellion, trying to make herself a better person, fixing her friendship with Anne after everything that’s happened, and most importantly become more honest about intentions, surrounding why she wants to help them this time.

    In True Colors Anne got the chance to voice her heartbroken disappointment toward Marcy’s actions, whereas Sasha was beyond angered at her and couldn’t find those proper words to describe it. That’s always been a key issue of Sasha she has struggled with, overall. Sasha has plenty of compassion in her, hence the rebellion to save Marcy from Andrias, but always had serious anger issues. It’s why things went down the way they did in True Colors’ run time. Sasha was impulsively going to maliciously tear Anne away from the Plantars as a personal, “Fuck you!”, to her at one point. Honestly, I loved the way they wrote this moment here with Waybright because it shows issues of her nature don’t go away with the flip of a switch. Sure, she wants to become someone anyone deserves to have for a friend now. However, it doesn’t change a simple fact, she’s been hurt by Marcy too and those scars of betrayal affected her, as well.

     I mean, Sasha was the first one to break away in frustration against Marcy’s desperate pleas to be understood after all. This action speaks loads of the weight Sasha carries from these revelations about Marcy, as a whole. Sasha obviously wants to save her dear friend, although now that she is reaching said final destination there’s another anxiety Waybright hasn’t spoken of, how it’ll affect their bond permanently afterwards. Sasha has been so laser focused on defeating Andrias and saving Marcy from the tyrant there hasn’t been any time for her to properly reflect on all these game changing perspectives. Anne has been able to have plenty of time, considering she was temporarily back on Earth. Granted, Anne was pushing herself to an unhealthy level in rushing to get themselves back to Amphibia, but my point is Boonchuy got moments of relaxation with her parents. Sasha never got many moments of mental peace, due to how severe conditions have become in Amphibia recently and it seriously shows.     Sasha has been fighting for her life, as well as Wartwood’s denizens, to stay alive long enough, until Anne returned to really kick things into high gear. These thoughts may have been lingering in her mind for awhile, but Sasha chose to ignore them. It wasn’t until they finally set their big plan into motion finally that these bottled up feelings resurfaced because it needs to be stated now. She wants to save Marcy, but restoring their connections to a healthy status quo? That’s a gigantic different matter Sasha has been too afraid to confront head on aloud. Can she be forgiving against Marcy ripping her away from a normal life, or learn to understand, much like Anne has, why her friend did this all stuff in the first place? Sasha may have changed, but old habits die super hard, as they say.

     It’s very true to life when you want to change for the better, where unfortunate other qualities can rear their head once again when circumstances become terrible. Sasha’s anger comes from an understandable place of hurting, which Anne doesn’t judge her for feeling this way. Just as Anne understands why Marcy got them sucked into Amphibia, she empathizes with Sasha’s plea to an extent. Anne isn’t going to demonize Sasha for feeling conflicted because Boonchuy knows forgiveness isn’t easy. Anne once again shows her best quality in understanding others’ perspectives, showing how far she has come from Season 1′s humble beginnings. Anne understands these concerns about the future because she felt that exact way about giving Sasha another chance. Anne’s best quality is her empathetic nature shining brightly here for Marcy & Sasha.

    I love this scene so much because it captures how rough friendship can be. Anne isn’t focused anymore about the actions of what one does, but the why they commit them. Anne realizes Marcy was getting ignored by Sasha & herself staying passively silent in solitude and feared permanent separation, her own issues about the betrayal aside. Anne isn’t going to let her own anger blind her from seeing the bigger picture, as it once did in True Colors when Sasha tried to warn her, regarding Andrias’ real intentions about what he plans to do with the box. This scene is a prime example of Amphibia’s greatest strength, character growth.

[gunterfan1992]

Interview with Half Shy (the songwriter of “Monster”)

For the last few months, I’ve been collecting information for a second edition of Exploring the Land of Ooo that will also cover the production of Distant Lands. This means that I’ve started to look into the new songs that we have been graced with this year, and this of course includes “Monster,” the beautiful track from the masterpiece that is “Obsidian”. And so I reached out to the song’s writer, Half Shy, who was kind enough to chat with me via email about the songwriting process!

(Photo courtesy of Half Shy)

In many ways, Half Shy is living the creative Adventure Time fan’s dream: She got asked by Adam Muto himself to write a song for “Obsidian” after he heard her music through Bandcamp! (I’ve dabbled in fan music before, and the fact that someone from the show might listen to it just blows my mind.) What an opportunity; I am so excited for her!

Since a second edition of my book won’t be coming out until after all the Distant Lands episodes air, I thought it would be best to share my Half Shy interview now. Read on for the fascinating behind the scenes story of how Half Shy and “Monster” came to be..

GunterFan: What is your origin story? How did you get involved in music, and how did the Half Shy project come to be?

Half Shy: I’ve been making music pretty quietly since I was in high school with a keyboard and guitar. I played one or two shows a year after college when I could find a friend or my brother to get up on stage with me, but I don’t really have that performer gene in me naturally. I get too much in my head and forget what the lyrics are to the song I wrote, or what the next chord is. Total brain freeze. So that whole experience is a bit of a mental drain. It’s something I think I’d like to dig into and figure out, but right now I’m really enjoying the time writing.

Even playing a song for my friends I still get pretty nervous. That’s where the name Half Shy comes from. I’ve always been interested in making things that by their nature draw a bit of a spotlight, but at the same time, I am just really quite nervous about the attention.

I recorded my first songs under my old name Hey V Kay in my bedroom and started putting them up online one at a time. When I got enough I thought about packaging it up into an album, but then got really distracted by learning how to fix up motorcycles and going to automotive tech school. When I eventually got back around to it I named the album Gut Wrenching.

After a few years I realized that I didn’t want the day-in-day-out life of a mechanic, I just wanted to know how to fix cars for myself and to have that knowledge in my back pocket. I got back into making music but grew frustrated at the process of writing and recording songs. I felt like I wasn’t able to capture the ideas I had in my head. Like trying to draw on your computer with a mouse. Doable, but it’s not going to come out like you’d hoped.

So these last couple of years I’ve focused more on learning the technical aspect of it, from the initial ideas and lyrics, to the recording and mixing. During that process I put out Bedroom Visionaries, and while writing I happened upon the name Half Shy in an old Thesaurus which felt instantly right. Learning all of that has been fun, I even went as far as to create my own book to solidify a daily writing routine (lyricworkbook.com). All that has been a bit of a tangent from actually making much music though. I should be getting my books in December from the press so I’m really looking forward to getting back into making more music instead of dealing with printing presses, setting up websites, and sourcing ribbon suppliers.

GF: What is the story behind "Monster"? How did the show get in contact with you?

HS: I keep a log of “Song Starters” with neat things I’ve heard in the world, and I would look through it every now and then and notice just how many came from Adventure Time. Eventually I thought well, I have to make a song about this show that just keeps breaking my heart. It was around the time I was nearly done with the first [Adventure Time-inspired] song “In My Element” that I got an email from Bandcamp saying “someone bought your album (Bedroom Visionaries).”

I get maybe one or two of these a month at most so I love to go in and say hi to the person and say thanks, be curious about who they are, [and] what they’re all about. Turns out it was Adam Muto, the executive producer of the show. (I asked and he has no idea how he happened upon my stuff. He guessed that I must have tagged something #adventuretime and he just happened to see it.) So I sent him an email saying, “Hey wow thanks for checking out my tunes. Also... holy crap you’ve made the best show I have ever seen in my life.” [I] played it real cool like. After finishing up writing my second [Adventure Time-inspired] song “Betty” I couldn’t help but fangirl real hard [and I sent him another message saying], “I’m sorry this is probably awkward, but I really love your show and I wrote these songs about it.” He was incredibly kind and shared them with his Twitter Universe, and a while after that I got a random email from him saying basically, “Hey, I’m working on this thing I can’t talk about, would you be interested?” I was like… well you know I’m pretty busy working at a sign shop so I’m gonna have to pass on this once in a lifetime opportunity (J/K. Obviously I fan-girl squealed and said yes immediately).

We chatted a bit about what the project was going to be and the direction. He mentioned there [would be] two Marceline songs in the special, [and he asked if I] would I be interested in giving the love song a try? Trying real hard to suppress my instant imposter syndrome I was like, “Yea, totally I’d be into giving that a shot!” So I read through the story and loved the idea of the dragon mirrored in Marceline, thinking through how they’ve both built up a protective shell, how she grew tough for a reason, but now she can open up and be vulnerable with PB.

From there I wrote the initial demo with the first two verses mostly intact and we went back and forth a few times editing it down into the final version. I recorded the final parts for the show in my little home studio in Seattle.

GS: When you were writing the song, what emotions, thoughts, or ideas were you channeling? Was there any sort of memory of event that you were trying to artistically "catch" or "recreate" with the lyrics or music?

HS: As far as channeling an emotion, generally I’d say just the experience of existing as a human. It can be so hard to open up and be vulnerable. I can remember that feeling even as a young kid—getting really excited about something and having someone completely trash it or look at you like, “Why are you so interested in that? It’s dumb.” [It causes us to grow] a little more weary to share ourselves because we know that hurt and embarrassment. The pain of being misunderstood is something I think a lot of us can relate to. Then having to decide whether to keep sharing those vulnerable parts of yourself or think, “They’re just not going to get it, I’m going to get hurt, so why bother?” and then stop putting yourself out there. You lose a lot with that thick armor though. You might feel protected, but you’re not feeling a whole lot of anything else other than the weight and chafing of it (I had a whole lot of armor-related metaphors that I didn't end up using.).

I struggle with this in songwriting too. I’m not the bolt-of-lightning type. There are pages and pages of cliches, total garbage, bad jokes, and cheesy lines that I have to get through in order to get to something that I am excited to put out there into the world: “Here I did this thing, I know it’s a little (this or that), but I made it... What do you think?” It’s hard to open yourself up to hearing the other end of that question.

I filled about 5 little pocket notebooks just thinking through the story, ideas, and trying to get this song right. I wanted it to feel familiar and honor the past songs of the show ([e.g.,] using the ukulele and referencing a few of the familiar chords from “I’m Just Your Problem”) but also be pretty open and vulnerable and different for [Marceline]. [I wanted to] show that she’s going through some tough emotions but also figuring herself out and growing.

GF: I feel like “Monster” is, at its core, an ode to the “Bubbline” ship. How do you feel about your song being intimately connected to one of the most famous LGBTQ+ relationships in animation? Do you have any general thoughts on Marcy and PB, Bubbline, etc.?

HS: Oh, I’m a total fan girl of Bubbline. The whole story of how Rebecca Sugar and Muto slowly morphed it into this deeper relationship is just great. As a part of the LGBTQ community myself it really means so much to see the representation of characters like yourself portrayed in an intelligent way. Growing up I was too young to fully understand what was going on but I saw Ellen getting cancelled, and [I] heard people around me saying they’d never watch her show again after she came out. That stuff sinks in as a kid and so to have these characters who are not only intelligent, but funny, complex, and unapologetically strong who also happen to be queer is really great. I love that the story here isn’t about their orientation, but that they’re people struggling with how to be open and vulnerable in a relationship.

It feels like something sci-fi and animated shows do so well—to show that ridiculousness of limiting who a person should and shouldn’t love. Marceline is a 1000+ year old half-demon/vampire and PB was born from the Mothergum of an apocalyptic radioactive world, but you’re going to get hung up on them loving each other? It sort of brings it into perspective in a really interesting way.

GF: Do you have any other thoughts about the experience that you'd like to share?

HS: Just how lucky, thankful, and honored I feel to be a part of my favorite show, writing a song for one of my favorite characters. It’s also incredibly cool how the people on the show are so willing to connect and collaborate with their fandom. Everyone [on the production crew] was very open and a real joy to work with.

I’d like to give a huge “Thank you!” to Half Shy for agreeing to participate in this interview; she really was quite amiable! If you’d like to hear more of her music, check out her website and her Bandcamp. You can also follow her on Instragram here and on Twitter here. And of course, here is Half Shy’s awesome video of “Monster”.

[squuote]

give us ur thoughts on the calamity trio girls

CRACKS KNUCKLES* ALRIGHT LESSGO

anne is such a fun protag like holy shit love that girl sm. i love her arc from start to finish and the finale rlly topped my appreciation for her. the struggle of not having everything figured out and the dangers of allowing the people you trust to take the reigns rlly just, god they rlly wrote it good with her. another character i rlly enjoy through personal aspects. also she only gets half on the cool looking cause while i love the outfit gag they did, i wish she would have gotten more cool outfits lolol

marcy was the original one i got attached to in terms of the 'wow.. they are literally me!' but i didnt add it because i feel like in the end, she's a lot different than I had pictured which I think is always fun fun!! love when characters can get you to change their perspective on them like hell fucking yes!! i love how she was a lot deeper than we thought she was, i love that she has dark hidden lore that was so fun to uncover holy shit. marcy is just a very fun and well written character, im so sad we dont have more marcy episodes. i do want to throw in that literally hated when people were trying to call her rude shit after the season 2 finale like god that was so annoying, shes a kid she's gonna make mistakes e_e glad we are over that tho also she had the coolest outfits imo <3

sasha is a character i didnt rlly think too much about originally but i have come to appreciate a lot because she reminds me of past people in my life that have grown for the better, despite the shit they were going through they still managed to progress and get better as a person. i think sasha as a character needs anne and marcy though, like i didnt put down the 'works better as a dynamic' cause that's not rlly my thought here, its moreso 'could not be better without the dynamic'. cause her friends are literally the light in her world and i love how they show this in the talent show episode *_* literally everything to me!! additionally same reason why I love her friendship with grime that was so fun, i love their dynamic i only wish they had more screentime doing fun shenanigans ughugh also i wish she had a buzzcut at the end i rlly liked that bit of fanon hehe

I JUST. LOVE THEIR DYNAMIC i love their lil friend group and how they learn to be better for not only each other, but for themselves too

[huntertherapyeras]

1, 6, 19, 25 for the writing ask game :)

hiiii cay :) fair warning these might be out of order since im using my phone's clipboard!

Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

so i have a few! mostly fanfics.

there's the body electric, which i haven't written for since maybe 2018 ? but i think about it a Lot. its a danny phantom fic featuring trans danny! was originally a rewrite of the show but im not sure what im doing with it now! it's probably my best work, very experimental bc i wrote it in second person, very personal because it talks about being a trans kid with trauma, and very important to me because of that. it also got an amazing reception, which im super proud of! gosh i gotta keep writing for that. my writing isnt nearly as good as it used to be bc im rusty and have cognitive issues but i really want to get back into it!

and then there's your past so present you can feel your baby teeth. its a catradora college au where catra and adora are cult survivors. i really want to do the subject justice, but i think im gonna rewrite the last few chapters i have published bc i feel like one scene is not sensitively written enough so i gotta go back and fix that. i have a lot of plans for this one! i just kinda am having trouble with motivation now ever since noelle made that racist joke awhile back. really hurt me and turned me off of the fandom lol, im sensitive. slavery jokes arent funny my friends.

im also working on in bloom. its a fic about autistic amity learning to unmask and heal from trauma surrounding ableism around her. very important to me. luz is such a light for amity and i really wanted to convey that!!!! i love luz so much!!

the most recent multichapter fic ive been working on is a post amphibia fic called just like an amnesiac (tryna get my senses back). its about marcy healing from the events of amphibia. mostly just kinda sad rn, but things will be looking up for her soon 💜 only two chapters in so far!

i have multiple one shot prompts sitting in my ask box and i really want to write for them and have ideas, i just have a really hard time getting started. and i had some original story ideas a long time ago too, but memory problems washed most of the concepts away so i guess im starting from scratch! i don't mind tho 💜

oh and theres one original short story i never finished from a few years ago but i cant remember the title rn... still tryna figure out how i want to end it but its nearly done lol

What character do you have the most fun writing?

ah jeez, i write for so many different fandoms at this point its kind of hard to pick just one! i like characters that i find easier to relate to. so danny fenton, marcy wu, amity blight, catra AND adora. i find luz fairly easy to write too, though im a little nervous to write from her perspective for some reason! i did a lot of writing from kurama's (from yyh) and ryou bakura's (from ygo) perspectives as well back in the day when i was still working on the ygo/yyh/hp crossover that ive long since abandoned. that was my longest fic at about 30k words when i abandoned it and like 70 pages! they were pretty easy to write about too i think!

What part of writing is the most fun?

honestly? projecting onto characters. i just think its neat :)

Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

nightmare sequences are a fave. something about being comforted after a nightmare or panic attack is so good to me... i think its bc i Want That lol

thanks for asking!!!!

[tuiyla]

A Definitive History of Bubbline

With “Obsidian” coming out in two days, it really is time for a definitive history of Marceline and Bubblegum’s relationship. And by that I mean the tumultuous road that led us to “Obsidian” from a production and fandom point of view. For a list of Bubbline episodes, check out my Bubbline Guide (and part two) - which I need to update, I know I know. For this post, I wanted to highlight how far this pairing has come and what Bubbline means to queer representation in children’s cartoons.

This is less of an analysis and more of an overview with links to more information on specific incidents to keep it (relatively) brief. I say it’s a definitive history but it isn’t an exhaustive one, so do check out the links included to learn more about how we got here. I realize not everyone cares about these kinds of things but I think it’s important to know how hard Adventure Time’s creators had to fight. Bubbline is a pioneer ship in many ways but it doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves.

Initial Concepts

As is the case with much of Adventure Time, the initial concept of who the characters of Bonnibel and Marceline were going to be is very different than what we ended up getting. @gunterfan1992 explores this and other production tidbits in depth in his book so I do recommend checking that out. The short version is that these two were created to be opposites and with a Betty and Veronica type dynamic in mind where they would both be love interest to the protagonist, Finn.

This didn’t quite end up being the case but remnants of this concept are seen in “Go With Me” (March, 2011), the episode with the first on-screen Bubbline interaction. As Marcy helps - and sabotages - Finn in asking Bonnie out, she also becomes a potential love interest for him but she shuts him down immediately. So while Finn’s crush on PB continues, the notion that Marceline would be part of a love triangle is dismissed. Instead, this first Bonnie and Marcy interaction established that the two already know each other and there’s some bitterness in that past.

“What Was Missing” and the Mathematical Controversy

A potential preexisting relationship between the two was further explored in “What Was Missing” (September 2011) just a season later. The episode was written and storyboarded by Rebecca Sugar and eventual showrunner Adam Muto. Sugar was responsible for much of the character depth added to Marceline and later even played, quite aptly, her mother in the Stakes miniseries. It was Sugar who wrote the now beyond iconic “I’m Just Your Problem” based on personal experiences and suggested that Marcy and Bonnie be queer characters with a complicated romantic past.

“What Was Missing” was hugely important in how it hinted at a complex relationship through character interactions, Marceline’s song, and the last scene twist with PB’s shirt. The AT crew were supportive of the idea and sneaked in plenty of queer subtext, but this is where I have to point out that 2011 was a very different time and it’s thanks, in part, to Bubbline that things have changed. Autostraddle’s article from back when covers what is now known as the Mathematical controversy. Audiences picked up on the subtext and Cartoon Network was not having it. The popularity of the ship soared but the execs were not taking to queer implications kindly.

Great Bubbline Drought

So, the ship has sailed but controversy looms over it. “What Was Missing” s subtle by today’s standards but it was enough to keep Marceline and Bubblegum apart for two years on-screen. Each character went through wonderful development in the meantime, as did the show itself, but there’s a certain sense of bitterness to what came to be known as the Great Bubbline Drought. CN got so afraid of the potential backlash that they waited two years to have a new episode featuring the pair, “Sky Witch” (July 2013), by which point Sugar had left AT to work on her own show, Steven Universe. I’m happy that Sugar got to create her own show and push for even more queer representation, but it’s also sad that she never got to write more for the ship she pioneered.

“Sky Witch” still happened, though, and featured even more subtext, from PB’s side this time around. The shirt returned and there was hope as Marcy and Bonnie were seen hanging out together more often (”Red Starved” and “Princess Day”). Another controversy threatened to emerge in August 2014 when Olivia Olson, Marceline’s voice actress said that creator Pendleton Ward had confirmed a pre-show Bubbline romance. It was a messy ordeal with deleted tweets and questions about whether the two could get together again in the series. Fortunately, though, things changed in the three years between 2011 to 2014 and another Bubbline drought didn’t follow.

The Season That Changed Everything

It took another two years after “Sky Witch” but the ball was finally, inevitably, relentlessly rolling. “Varmints” premiered in November 2015 and three episodes later, the Stakes miniseries kicked off. What season 7 meant wasn’t just breadcrumbs and (not so) subtle songs anymore: suddenly, there were too many Bubbline moments to count. “Varmints” served as a follow-up to “What Was Missing” and a final reconciliation, and though Stakes was primarily about Marcy, it also developed her relationship with Bonnie. Afterwards, it became clear that Bubbline was heading somewhere.

It’s worth noting that the cultural context also changed between when “Sky Witch” and “Varmints” aired. In December 2014, The Legend of Korra ended with Korra and Asami beginning their romantic relationship, and Rebecca Sugar was making Steven Universe more and more explicitly queer by the day. Adventure Time started the ball rolling but now it wasn’t alone as a popular Western cable cartoon with queer characters. However, Bubbline was still very much subtext at this point, just with significantly more hope of becoming more.

Late Series Entanglement

But at what point does subtext become plain text? Bubbline fans sure did have fun with that question between Stakes and the finale. Bonnie and Marcy became near inseparable, with most of their major appearances involving one another from this point on. These included the meet the adoptive dad date “Broke His Crown” (March 2016), the Elements miniseries (April 2017) and the nigh on obnoxiously on the nose “Marcy & Hunson” (December 2017). In fact, all but two of Marceline’s major appearances from season 7 on included Bonnie - the exceptions being “Everything Stays” as part of Stakes, and “Ketchup”, which really wasn’t any less gay.

Bubbline moments really did become too many to count, with the vast majority of them having romantic implications. And with queer representation becoming more and more prominent in Western animation, canon Bubbline romance seemed like a question of when rather than if. I’d like to point out here how this was often frustrating, though. After the very rocky start, this relationship was thriving and was really basically confirmed, but that last little push to make it undeniably a part of queer history was still needed.

“Come on!” - The End and Beyond

The almost three years that passed between Stakes and “Come Along With Me” (September 2018) were much more tolerable than the Drought; after all, there was plenty of Bubbline content in the later seasons. The big question as the finale came was whether Adventure Time would fizzle out on its early pioneer of a wlw ship or follow through, once and for all. Almost four years after LoK ended and just before season 1 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power dropped, Marcy and Bonnie had an emotional moment, kissed on screen, and ended the series together.

The intricacies of why a kiss was needed as a signifier of romance is a discussion for another day. But wouldn’t it have been strange after almost a decade of build-up for them not to seal the deal with a kiss? And to think it almost didn’t happen, as by that point it was so obvious they were together. Again, I direct your attention towards Paul Thomas’s book, he explains how it was storyboard artist Hanna K. Nyström’s call to add this final detail. Because, come on! Sometimes, you need to be as clear as possible, and that’s the case with queer representation in animation.

Since the finale, the comics have been continuing the Bubbline train - which are not technically canon but one can have fun regardless. In any case, the existence of Marcy and Bonnie’s relationship, of their queer identities, is not something that can reasonably be denied. It was a long road, and, make no mistake, an arduous one, but this is the story of a win. A win for storytelling and a win for wlw relationships.

We’ll Build Our Own Forever

So, there you have it, a Bubbline timeline of sorts. In March of 2011 we had the first on-screen interaction and now, in November of 2020, we’re getting a 45-minute-long special with the two of them as the central characters. They’re canonically in love, with King Princess covers of Bubbline songs and more. I tried to contain myself, for once, and not write too much. I think it’s important that people have a general idea of just how monumental all of this is and how, even just 9 years ago, “Obsidian” would have been totally inconceivable.

Some of this might have come as a surprise to you. It’s certainly not been easy to get to where we are now with Bubbline and it’s yet to be seen how open “Obsidian” will be about the relationship. I’ve been talking about Bubbline for years and attempted to chronicle their relationship many times so I’m happy I’ve finally done it from this perspective as well.

Adventure Time: Distant Lands “Obsidian” is streaming on Nov 19 on HBO Max. If you can, stream it so we can show that there’s popular demand for stories like that of an angry vampire and a despotic piece of gum.

[lucasmeows-blog]

Why Daredevil series is so good

I was re-watching the Netflix Daredevil series.  I really love Daredevil, I read a lot about him, one of my favorite stages was the one Bendis wrote (after his success they gave him the ultimate universe, he was director of marvel and everything went to hell) he rethought Frank Miller's style, brought many great supporting characters and in addition to that unique tenure where his secret was in danger and he tried to convince the press that he was not daredevil while they investigated him. Bendis ends his stage with Matt going to jail and another very good stage begins

The thing is, the series portrayed the best of comics with an interesting three-dimensional character development: the bad guys aren't just bad, the good guys aren't totally good, they're all human. The daredevil series is faithful to the comic in the sense that it captures its essence and adapts it to reality (we all know that Daredevil has the gallery of the most ridiculous villains that exist)

The chosen color palette seems very appropriate to me because in a comic you can look good in his red devil costume but finding someone dressed like that would be quite ridiculous when what Matt was looking for was to instill fear in his enemies (or was that Batman?)

 They gave Karen an importance more than being the love of Matt's life that in reality the only thing she basically does is leave him and come back to leave him again. Karen never earned my love in comics, especially for selling Matt's identity FOR A SINGLE DOSE OF DRUG

I mean she could have asked for a lot more. However I had liked his return as a feminist activist who wanted to destroy the porn industry. The thing is that they gave her a personality from the beginning and a greater participation in the series, was not only the pretty secretary that both lawyers fall in love with (she had to be a naive and hegemonic blonde because they were going through times much more misogynistic than now. In fact the subject of misogyny in comics is left for another day to delve deeper)

 and the most important thing Karen is not alone to break Matt's heart and screw everything, he is convinced by the truth and becomes a reporter (a bit abrupt maybe but I accept it)

I always liked that formula from the comics where a client with a somewhat unusual problem presented himself, a difficult case that was not credible that Matt accepted when he learned that he was not lying and investigated the case as Daredevil. Something I really appreciated about the series is that Foggy is the first to find out his secret, Foggy always deserved more and was always treated as the naive friend of Matt Murdock, I think they gave him some of the respect he deserved, also many will remember his incredible bad luck in love, but the relationship with Marci that although it is a little strange ends up being pretty? I dont know

     What impacted me the most: Wilson Fisk and Bullseye, are one of the biggest villains daredevil faced, I had no faith that they interpret them well but OH MY GOD. I empathized with both of them and then I worried about myself. But it is great, I mean yes, maybe it is not the size that Kingpin has in the comics and it took a long time to put on his white suit but they show how he is building his empire, manipulating and convincing people, it was like a construction, when he finally Put on his white suit is like  ready. He did it, he became the Kingpin.

     I never thought Bullseye could be portrayed in any way other than a psychopathic killer incapable of feeling. They show us as a beginning, it reminds us that it necessarily had to be a person who lived in society until he got fed up and became what he is. It was quite ingenious and interesting, also a way of talking about mental health, and touching on that subject I would have liked to see a little more about Melvin Potter "the gladiator", who if you read comics you know him, but if you don't is going to be only the man that makes the costume for daredevil. I found his story very beautiful because it was not easy for him to recover, he needed Matt's trust and he became a very tender and sensitive giant human that unfortunately was easy to manipulate. Justice for Melvin. 

    I like that too, there wasn't a big obsession with saying who they were and remembering him all the time, they just were (I talk about the super cliche conversations where they yell daredevil, he yells the name of the villain and then replies -you'll never catch me daredevil because I ...- and they say his name and tell his whole evil plan). 

    In general I liked everything about the series, I love it, I found it so perfect, a work of art. It is the best adaptation I have ever seen and we know that the story of the comic is not perfect in its entirety. I was amazed at how good the scripts were, the character transformations, the tense moments, the way they portrayed Matt's heightened senses (haha I can smell the suit, Matt you should know that sounds super weird). Yesterday reading the credits I came across the list of thanks, and I understood why they managed to capture that essence. Look at those writers, that team, it's just incredible.

There is a lot to talk about, I just wanted to highlight those general aspects, as I already said I really love daredevil, I really like his relationship with Ben Urich and the numbers narrated from his perspective, it broke my heart a little that this character did not exploit but it is fine It doesn't have to be exactly like the comic. I think the proper enemies had to be carefully chosen to display, I also believed that the owl was going to survive and become a major villain eventually but it didn't. The series is really good, anyone can watch it and enjoy it, you don't have to be a comic fan to understand it. The coordination of fights, the camera movements, the lights, the scenery, the scripts, it is beautiful to see.

The man without fear. (Oh and Charlie Cox was so sexy)

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

EVANESCENCE's AMY LEE On Political Polarization In America: 'We Have To Be Able To Have A Conversation Still'

EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee has lamented the partisan split in America, with people on opposite political sides unable to talk — and listen — to one another as polarization continues to increase.

"We have to be able to have a conversation still," Amy told Marci Wiser of the 95.5 KLOS radio station (hear audio below). "Things haven't always been this way, where we couldn't have a conversation. It's either that you believe like me or I don't talk to you and I don't agree with you and I'm not listening to you, and, in fact, I'm plugging my ears and running in the other direction. That isn't how this works. That's not how any relationship works."

She continued: "We are a country together, and we have to work together. And we all believe different things and we all have been through different things, we all have different perspectives, and that's good — that's part of what makes it awesome. And it's made up of a whole bunch of different people, and we have to find a way to work together. And we're not always gonna agree, but that's always been the case. We have to be able to move forward with respect and honor, and speak to each other like family, because we need to function like a functional family."

Last May, Lee said that she was " angry, horrified" and "ashamed" over the murder of George Floyd in police custody as well as President Donald Trump's response to the subsequent protests and riots.

Just three months earlier, Lee opened up about her political views for the first time, explaining that she couldn't "stand by" and keep her mouth shut while her "country's freedom is taken away." He decision to speak out was apparently prompted by the GOP-controlled Senate's vote to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment without calling witnesses.

She wrote at the time: "I do not accept lying, cheating or bullying from my government… Accepting this abuse says it's okay for our leaders to lie to us, cheat on us, make decisions without our input, and silence us when we try to speak up. This isn't about your policies or beliefs, it's about our freedom."

Lee added: "I will never bow down to a dictator."

In August, EVANESCENCE released a new single, "Use My Voice", which was written to celebrate the power of speaking out in order to promote more justice in the world. The track, featuring contributions from THE PRETTY RECKLESS's Taylor Momsen and HALESTORM's Lzzy Hale, was chosen by HeadCount in the USA to encourage voters to register, check their registration, or find out about their remote voting options amid the COVID-19 pandemic at UseMyVoice.org.

EVANESCENCE's long-awaited new album, "The Bitter Truth", will arrive either later this year or in early 2021.

The band's new music is being produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who also worked on 2011's self-titled LP.

EVANESCENCE spent much of the last two years recording and touring in support of 2017's "Synthesis", which contained some of the band's best-loved songs — as well as a couple of new ones — reinvented with full orchestra over a deep electronic landscape.

[mrsrcbinscn]

Franny Robinson HC Infodump #7: More Music Stuff

tw: mentions of psychedelic use (it’s clear it is in moderation but)

Cover Contributions To Tribute or Charity Albums (and other notable covers):

King of the Road: A Tribute to Roger Miller - Franny recorded a cover of The Moon Is High (And So Am I) for the album. There’s a really cute video uploaded on her YouTube channel of her recording the song and she’s playing acoustic guitar and dancing around in place as she sings in several takes. It’s one of the few internet videos where her husband is seen, because sometimes the camera pans to the sound engineer booth when he’s sitting next to Serghei, her go-to sound guy.

She participated on the charity album BBC Children In Need: Got It Covered, since England’s been her home from nearly twenty years now. She sang a slowed down, gentler version of Pat Benatar’s Shadows Of The Night. (inspired by that being a song I vividly remember my mom singing to my siblings and I lmao)

For the album The Music Is You: A John Denver Tribute, Franny sang Rhymes and Reasons.

On a John Prine tribute album released in 2017, Franny and the other half of the duo Dara & Danny, Daniel Maitland, recorded In Spite Of Ourselves for the album.

For a Connie Francis tribute album, Franny sang Where The Boys Are

Franny, along with black country singer Erica James, curated a Charley Pride tribute album, featuring solely country or country-adjacent singers of color. “Charley Pride, when I discovered a black country artist, as an Asian-American growing up in the 80s, that was amazing to me. Because little Cambodian me was like, ‘wow, so you don’t gotta look like Dolly or Willie to love this music.’ Everyone thinks country and bluegrass music is white people shit, but it ain’t. It was always a mix of folks influencin’ it. DeFord Bailey paved the way for Charley Pride, who paved the way for Darius Rucker, who paved the way for Jimmie Allen, Willie Jones, Mickey Guyton, Erica right here, and non-black POC like myself and Dan(iel Maitland). It was such an honor to get to curate this album with Erica. Amazing.” Franny recorded Does My Ring Hurt Your Finger for the album.

On the Tracy Lawrence tribute album Good Ole Days, she recorded As Any Fool Can See with him

She was featured on Brooks & Dunn’s Reboot, recording She’s Not The Cheatin’ Kind

During a SiriusXM session, she sang Gretchen Wilson’s When I Think About Cheatin’, and the performance w/ent viral

On a Leonard Cohen tribute album, she recorded A Thousand Kisses Deep and that cover also became popular

During a Spotify Sessions recording with Seoul Hanoi’d, Franny recorded a cover of Marcy Playground’s Sex & Candy, which also blew up, prompting Seoul Hanoi’d to officially release it on their 2018 album. It was the second of five singles off of the album, and Franny in the music video was Hot ™

During a Spotify Sessions recording as a solo artist, Franny recorded a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s From The Bottle To The Bottom

Khmer Music:

Franny, for the most part, does not record or perform pop music. However, she’s collaborated on tracks with Cambodian pop singers

She writes a lot of songs used in the soundtracks of Khmer tv dramas, and sings a lot of them as well

She’s known as The Soundtrack Queen in Cambodia

In addition to a lot of songs for film and tv, she’s released three albums entirely in Khmer. A jazz album comprised of original songs and Khmer language versions of classic jazz songs; and two in the indie/alternative style of music similar to Seoul Hanoi’d

And she’s recorded Khmer versions of several of her most famous songs

With other Cambodian diaspora musicians, she regularly collaborates on special covers of iconic Khmer 60s and 70s songs

Songwriting

Franny’s even more active as a songwriter than a recording artist. She’s got over 1,000 songwriting credits to her name.

She began writing songs “when I was 11, but they were atrocious, unsalvageable things. The first song I wrote that ever saw the light of day even after heavy edits was first thought up when I was thirteen.”

Franny is openly bisexual and explores that in her songwriting-- however, most of her songs about women or her sexuality that she wrote “pre-2009-ish” she’s scrapped or sold to other artists. Why? “Look, I’ve been married to my husband for almost twenty years now. And that doesn’t make me any less bisexual. But a lot of the songs I’ve written about women are from the perspective of a thirteen through twenty year old me, and at forty, I’m not the best narrator for those stories anymore.They are my lived experiences and my lived feelings, but I want to see how someone actually going through that will take it and interpret it. The songs I write about women loving women now are about characters I make up for the purpose of storytelling so they’re about women closer to my age, it’s about big girl love, not adolescent love.”

Common themes in Franny Sor Robinson songwriting: geography, vivid imagery like she’s showing you a picture of what she’s singing about, Buddhist themes, Christrianity (she’s a Buddhist but grew up in the Bible Belt so she’s very familiar with Christian themes), alliteration

Franny came under a degree of controversy in 2014 with the release of a song called “The Sabbath” because it was a tasteful song about how much she likes sex with her husband after they’ve been apart for a while, and Franny was like “you know you’d think the pearl-clutchin’ folks would be glad I practically worship my husband, but I forgot women ain’t supposed to actually enjoy sex.”

She's written another really sweet song about making love with her husband that did Not get hate because it was Acceptable TM and pretty romantic actually. Think along the lines of Josh Turner's Your Man or Dierks Bentley's Come A Little Closer. Songs deff about how they wanna get down but sweet.

After Franny retweet a clip of that Tyler Childers song in 2019 with the caption “big relate”, she was asked in a tweet if a follow up to The Sabbath was in the cards. Franny replied with “there’s a demo recorded for a song I wrote about six years back and that’s that on that.” Yes, Franny Sor Robinson indeed has written a song about masturbation. She’s performed the song live a few times, however, it is still unreleased officially

Franny’s written songs with lyrics alluding to her family’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge and escaping and resettling around the world, she cleverly hides them among her albums so people accidentally digest some education

Cornelius is the well-documented muse for “every love song I’ve written that I don’t specify in the album notes or an interview is written about a character. My husband is the love of my life and had given me twenty years and counting of great material to write about.”,

Franny’s been on both ends of this story. In 2019, a song Franny wrote but didn’t record became a smash pop hit after she and her producer sent it around to other producers. They recorded Franny’s demo in mid-2017 and they and the bigger pop producer that worked on the song with them listened to over 20 demos of the song until they found the right person to sing it.

And in 2013, Franny got a huge boost to her fame when she was the featured vocalist on a pop song that became a global smash hit. Franny doesn’t typically do like...super top 40 pop type music, but she liked the song so when her agent suggested she record a demo for it and send it back to the producer looking, she was like “sure, okay” and then was absolutely surprised that they chose her over some of the names she knew also recorded demos for the song.

Misc. Music facts

In 2019, a group of NYU students (where she did her undergrad) made a Franny Sor Robinson tribute album project; the majority of the students were Asian students in the university’s music programs who cite her as a big inspiration for them pursuing music. She 100% cried

For the Netflix show Just Trust Me that she co executive-produces, Franny is also one of the people who soundtrack the show

In 2020, to celebrate the 10 Year Anniversary of her biggest solo album’s release, she pulled a The Story And Cover Stories (we stan Brandi Carlile) where it was re-released along with cover versions of each song by other artists including some of Franny’s biggest living musical influences. All proceeds for the album were donated to Cambodian Living Arts.

Franny has openly admitted in interviews to using mushrooms, LSD, and DMT before in songwriting sessions. Her stance is Kacey Musgraves’ stance. Franny quote from 2019, “Used responsibly, I think psychedelics are a worthwhile experience to have. But safety and education are key. I truly don’t believe they are party drugs. Psychedelics aren’t a party, they’re a deeply spiritual and philosophical journey.”

[secretlystephaniebrown]

oooo an ask meme!! 7, 13 (im more interested in the second part of this!), 17, and 20

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Hmm. I usually think I tend to lend myself to the kind of... Joss Whedon (sigh) style of writing, with even my darker stuff having moments of jokes or levity. @dykewing once told me she realized halfway through a fic that it was mine because of the style of humor, so I think other people agree that it’s a very “me” characteristic.

Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself?

Hinn_Raven over on Ao3. But yes, I do keep things to myself--or, more commonly, myself and a friend.

I’ve got approximately 200k of unpublished Donut Siblings content that only @sroloc--elbisivni has ever seen, mostly because I deemed it too bizarre, specific, or incoherent to make sense to an audience that doesn’t understand the intricate headcanons I have for my own OCs, who had center stage in those AUs.

In general though, I write to publish or share, and if I haven’t shared, it’s probably because it’s not finished. If a work is finished, it’s probably out there somewhere. If a work isn’t shared, it’s either a WIP or abandoned.

Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?

I’ve recently discovered that there were people who did not, in fact, perceive me and my work as inherently gay, which was very disturbing and I set about to immediately correct it.

I also think people who read only one fandom of mine in particular end up with different perspectives on my work--RVB my work tended to be darker, and I wrote a fair chunk of M/M, so some of my readers tended to be taken off guard when I indulged my gay ass, meanwhile my Bat Fam readers occasionally get taken aback by my angst loving self.

I think something that surprised people was how I viewed the Red Hood Steph universe. A lot of my readers seemed to think it was a revenge fantasy, a story about triumph, and #GirlBoss while I viewed it as a tragedy, up until Bruce’s death, when it finally became a story about pulling oneself out of the dark.

Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Someone was just asking me about this on twitter, so I’ll mention it here: I had an entire series of RVB NPCs to fill out the New Republic and Feds, and they appeared in the background of several fics, but the story where they originated never actually got published.

Similarly, Marcie from Twist and Turns and Tina from Red Hood Steph have had background cameos in several works. If I’ve made a character, I see no need to keep them in one place.

Neverland was a gen story but it’s also the story that made me realize I shipped StephCass, because their rooftop tag scene in that fic nearly ended up as a kiss without me realizing it.

If you read Batman, you know that memorial cases in the Batcave are meant to be broken. There are two memorial cases in Zugzwang. Let’s break some glass.

[the1rei]

Little Moments: Reboot Chapter Nineteen: Speaking my Language By  Ericobard and shadows59 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Fandom: Ben 10 Series Relationship: Ben Tennyson/Gwen Tennyson Some Additional Tags: Bullying, No proofreading, Family is Drama, Long burn

Summer’s over and school is in session, made worse as it is middle school.  Amidst the troubles of the new year Gwen finds something she’s always wanted and was beginning to fear she would never have, a friend.  Except Ben of course. 

Read my review below:

Why is Gwen still going to an elementary school?  It is directly stated in the story that Ben is in middle school, "Middle School blows. You're so lucky you don't have to deal."  They are identical ages, so they should be in the same grade as they were in the original, or an explanation should be given as to why they aren't in the same grade.  Gwen's school is a K-12 school; it wouldn't be called an elementary school.  

Gwen answering her phone in school and her receiving no repercussions for throwing away the note Mrs. Adams wrote to her mother shows that scene in chapter eleven was completely needless.  It should have ended after Gwen's viable scolding.  

" - even old Squid Face was this horrible!" I suspect Shadows59 meant to say 'wasn't' here.

The phone call in the middle of school and the deluge of texts that they exchange is supposed to show that they are a sweet couple that is very affectionate with each other.  But it ends up coming across as they are obsessed with each other in an unhealthy way, so much so that they can't go very long without contact of some form.  Even with young infatuation, couples need time apart so they can continue to be individuals, but Ben and Gwen come across as clingy and co-dependent.  She even calls the phone a 'lifeline' to Ben as if she'd die without him.  This wasn't the case in the original, and Shadows59 came across as a much more mature author in how he depicted a healthy but highly romantic love between two kids.  

Flint continues to be a caricature of a creepy guy.  He just says disgusting, hateful things so the reader will be disgusted by him and hate him, but any reader that understands this will just see him as a shallow character with no substance.  Antagonists need to have well-reasoned motivations behind their actions, and yet for all the times the story has brought up Flint, it never tells the reader why he is the way he is.  

Additionally, the things Flint, an eleven-year-old, says are highly sexual and complex suggestions.  It's not the mere perversions of a boy who would say something such as 'show me your panties.'  Instead, he suggests an advanced form of sexual degradation play, which further raises questions about why he is the way he is.  

Even non-prestigious schools had computer labs and teachers who were experts to deal with them long before 1999.  Even with her affinity for computers, it's unrealistic that Gwen would have then said teacher or would be called in to deal with an administrator's computer.  Said computer might even be too old for her to understand at all.  Honestly, I feel like I would let this pass if the story was more like the show and not trying to be a serious story.  

Gwen comparing the reactions she gets from kissing Ben, her love interest in the story, to the reaction a younger brother gives to his older sister when she kisses him is, odd to say, incestuous.  These two reactions should not be comparable because the reaction she should be getting from Ben is one of a peer who hasn't come around to discovering the romantic feels he has for another peer.  The other is the reaction of a younger sibling at getting a kiss from an older sibling who is, in this case, Gwen peer.  So not only does this compare Ben and Gwen as sister and brother but also Ben as being younger than Gwen, making their romance come across as highly inappropriate.

In the original, Gwen has social anxiety, which prevents her from talking to Michelle at first, and it's only when she thinks of Ben is she able to encourage herself to be open the new girl.  This is a very relatable problem, and Gwen displays her courage and willingness to follow another's example, like a hero, overcoming it.  In the reboot, Michelle asks one innocent question, the first thing she has ever said to Gwen, and Gwen is ready to judge her as being like Marci.  Prejudging anyone is a very unheroic act, and Gwen has to remind herself that Ben wouldn't do something like that to convince herself to give Michelle a chance.  

It's unclear why Michelle finds what Gwen says funny, why it makes Gwen "crazy," or why this makes Michelle like Gwen.  In the original, Michelle is shown to be as lost and alone as Gwen, so it's natural to her to like the person who reaches out to her, on Gwen's own accord, and offers to show her around.  In the Reboot, Gwen has been conscripted by the principle to interact with Michelle and show her around.  That can be a fine way to bring to people who will be friends together, but the story of the original is stronger.  

Having Ben's liberal parents protesting a new army base is a weak stereotype.  It is a stereotype as no reason is given for them not to want the base built.  

It makes no sense that Michelle, probably before she was 11, would be able to sneak out and go to a protest that turned violent given that when Gwen came near violence in this story, teenagers and adults treated her like a toddler.  

Gwen comes across as bad friend allowing Marci to pull Michelle away from her with putting up a fight to get her back even though she knows Marci is lying, and she is abandoning Michelle to Marci's lies and possible bullying.  Instead of doing anything to stop this, she just sits down and feels sorry for herself, thinking badly of other people, especially Ben.  Gwen isn't concerned with Michelle; she'd not watching the new girl make sure Macri's not making her feel uncomfortable or anything, instead just assuming that she would fall for Marci's corruptive influence.  

There is more overuse of italicized text in this chapter where it displays translated speech.  First, this visual clue that Gwen hears translated speech weakens the story, because in the original, where the speech was not emphasized, the reader is confused with Gwen as to what is happening, but because we already know or can guess that something is happening we're just waiting for Gwen to figure it out.  This distances the reader from the character's situation unnecessarily.  Second I am left wondering what would happen if Gwen was in her plumber suit, speaking to someone on the phone, in a different language, and emphasized what she was saying.  I assume the universe would implode, or explode, or both.

Marci's using the word cousin in place of boyfriend as a jab at Gwen's relationship with Ben would be good if it didn't require Gwen to understand french to be effective.  Marci has been established to be able to speak some french, but Gwen hasn't, so there is no way that Marci would know Gwen would understand her.  If Gwen couldn't understand what she said, then it would lose a lot of its punch.  It's a cause of the scene being written from the author's perspective instead of the character's.

"she was going to drive through a perfect little nose" Don't try to blame reflexes when there is clear intent on the part of the character.

Gwen anticipates that Michelle is going to leave her for Marci several times, and it's only after she refuses to several times that Gwen starts to trust her.  The foundation of their friendship is Gwen constantly mistrusting Michelle.

Every time Gwen nearly explodes on Marci, I'm just reminded of how much healthier she dealt with her anger in the original, channeling it into little pranks she pulled on Marci with her magic.  

"I kind of like the one I have - " Shadows59, you probably meant to say 'ones' here.

The previous chapters had Max leave and created a great deal of drama.  Erico even stated, "Grandpa is gone... They have nobody else they can turn to... They only have each other..."  Every indication in the story and the co-author indicate that Max is gone, and yet he just shows back up in the story like none of the drama of him leaving in the previous chapters occurred.  The original lacked that overly dramatic element, so when Gwen calls Max to find out why she can speak french, it makes sense they can just talk to him, whereas in the reboot, it doesn't.  There's no pay off for all that drama.

"Some part of her - most of her was sure it was Grandpa saying that something came up and she felt sick at the idea. She missed him. She'd been missing him since he disappeared and how could he? None of the eight weeks made that bit any smaller..."   Shadows59, you should consider revising this section.  It isn't clear what is meant by 'Some part of her-'  Because that is unclear the 'None of the eight weeks made that bit any smaller...' part isn't clear either.  Additionally, the sections are separated, but they feel like they are part of the same thought and are referring to one another without clarification.  

"No!" "No!" Shadows, you either repeated the "No!" accidentally here, or the two knows don't need two sets quotation marks.  

"He was just Ben and hers and she wasn't going to share him, not even with Michelle..." This shows that Gwen has a very unhealthy attachment to Ben that goes far beyond romance and young love.

"He was just Ben and hers and she..." There should probably be commas after 'Ben' and 'hers' as they are separate statements.

The added content for Michelle doesn't add much to the story of their friendship.  Some might have found it sudden that the pair met in this chapter, and one chapter later, we're best friends, but that at least was marked with a time jump, so the development of their friendship could take a mundane pace normally in the skipped time.  Here their transition from strangers to best friends really does seem sudden, and there's no real reason why these two because so attached after just a few hours.  There's no real reason for their closeness save on Gwen's part because she notices that Michelle is somewhat like Ben, an unsettling fact given how obsessed she is with the boy.  

Ben and Gwen sound like old people talking about 'kids fashion these days.'

"she was so much faster and back on her feet before she even got any water on her skirt." It's physically impossible to pour water all over someone's head while their head is in your lap and not get wet.  

I'll just say there is a big difference between Gwen staring a little because Ben is shirtless and her ogling him while describing droplets of water running down his muscles.  One is appropriate for an eleven-year-old, and the other is not.  Once more, I just think these characters are older in Shadows59's mind, not that he's trying to be inappropriate.  

That ending is so cute, I love it.

-Erico

"...carries much more depth and heart because Michelle's first day and Gwen's first day back address it from Gwen's perspective." This sentence makes no sense.

You make it sound like Gwen is taking advantage of Michelle's uncertainty.  

It makes no sense for Gwen's classmates to ostracize her for doing things for the school staff; all students get called to do such things.  So unless the faculty is ostracizing the other students and only calling on Gwen for help, the students' opinion of her shouldn't be affected by that.  You are also showing just as well as I that Gwen has an unhealthy attachment to Ben when her focus is getting the day to get back to him.  An attachment that again, goes far beyond healthy romantic attachment.  

So what I hear from you is that Michelle is guarded because the concern she sees from people is usually because she is her father's daughter, and its more their concern for him, or his opinion of them, then it is for Michelle herself.  This isn't expressed in the story, and while it would be difficult to do so while locked in Gwen's perspective without creating awkward dialogue, it is still possible to express it.  For instance, by Michelle extending her father's gratitude instead of her own, or assuring people that she will tell her father what a good job they did.  

You talk about Gwen and Michelle like they are going through the friendship equivalent of love-at-first-sight.  This is a trope that is used, most commonly, by poor writers to establish romance first and justify it later, but real friendship, like real love, is slow to start.  The original had that at least in feeling; the reboot has chosen to forgo it instead.

(As always, please go leave Shadows59 a nice positive review he won’t delete.)

[letterboxd]

Horse Power.

The Nest’s writer-director Sean Durkin talks about creating atmosphere, watching films without judgment, and the best movies of 1986.

Downfalls in Hollywood movies tend to be chaotic, dramatic and a lot of fun along the way. From Citizen Kane to The Wolf of Wall Street, outsized ambitions are realized on screen in castles, exotic holidays, wild parties, sweeping us up in the extravagance of it all, before the inevitable crash. The Nest takes a slower, far more British view of ambition and its effects on family—or, as Charlie writes, “this movie is a reminder that people who call themselves entrepreneurs should instead be stay-at-home dads”.

The new film from writer-director Sean Durkin, the brain behind cult-survivor slow-burn Martha Marcy May Marlene, is less “strap in and enjoy the ride”, more “slow disintegration of all sense of sanity”—a tense psychological drama focused on the person who usually gets hurt the most: the wife. And that horse-lovin’ dream wife Allison, as played by Carrie Coon, is a character to behold (and the subject of many obsessive The Nest reviews on Letterboxd).

Just as Durkin takes time to carefully explore Martha’s vulnerability in his earlier film, in The Nest, he closes in on Allison, as she and their children adjust to 1980s life in an English manor, far from the comfort of Allison’s American home, while wheeler-dealer husband Rory (Jude Law) chases a new opportunity.

There are thematic similarities in both films; a case to be made that ambitious men wreak a comparable mental destruction on their families as cult leaders do on their followers, breaking them down with charm, persuasion, false promises. There’s also something about the juxtaposition of periods in the film—the fifteenth-century manor vs the ’80s bangers on the soundtrack—that adds to The Nest’s unnerving atmosphere (other parts of the soundtrack are composed by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry in his first film-score credit).

Keen to understand more about Durkin’s influences and memories, Jack Moulton put him through the Letterboxd Life in Film interrogation.

Carrie Coon as Allison O’Hara in ‘The Nest’.

The Nest feels like a very personal film. In what ways are the emotions of the premise personal to you? When I was making Southcliffe in 2012, I was back in England where I spent my childhood and I hadn’t been back in close to twenty years. It really struck me how London and New York felt very similar now but they didn’t when I was a kid. I thought maybe I wanted to make a film about a family that moves in that time and how a move can affect a family. As I wrote the script, I became a parent, so it became as much a reflection of modern adulthood as it did about my childhood in the ’80s. Although it’s a period piece, I wanted to make it feel very close to today to look at the celebrated values of the time and how those are still very relevant.

The mansion the family moves into is the titular ‘nest’, and the use of space and atmosphere contribute so much to the film’s subtext. What were you looking for when location scouting for the house? Was it an easy or difficult process? Yeah, it was difficult. It was like doing an open casting call. I had a very specific idea in my head but [my production designer] was able to put it into actual architectural terms so we were able to find a house that a successful commodities broker would live and commute from in Surrey. We needed something beyond that, but if you go too far, you get small castles. Once we located the right exterior, there were a bunch of [houses] that would’ve been great, but when we got inside, there were no open spaces. I wanted to have long hallways to be able to see through multiple rooms to create that isolation—the opposite of the cozy American house that they were living in before, to really highlight the good life they left behind.

Carrie Coon and Jude Law in ‘The Nest’.

We love the soundtrack; not just the choice of songs but the way that they’re mixed. Can you give us some insight into the song selection? When writing, I build a playlist that I write to. This one was a mix of personal memories from childhood—like Simply Red, which takes me back to falling asleep in the back of my dad’s car—so there’s a way into writing there on a sensory level, and then I build upon it with songs that I love from the time. I was listening to Richard Reed Parry’s Music for Heart and Breath album a lot and he ended up being the composer of the film, so his music was always part of the heart of the movie as I was writing it.

I would spend my drives to set with my assistant talking about music and he would turn me onto some stuff that would make it into the movie. It was a mix of a long-running preparation and things that I pick up in the moment then making that all work at the right level so it feels of the world. Like with The Cure, we actually played that off a tape cassette when Allison walks into the room.

Since your debut feature in 2011, you’ve had a prolific career in television and as a film producer; you’re a founding member of Borderline Films with fellow directors Antonio Campos and Josh Mond. Do you see yourself more as a producer who only occasionally directs films yourself? No, I don’t really consider myself a producer. I’ve produced movies for filmmakers and friends and I help people where I can. I’m not someone who’s out getting properties and thinking about how to put together a film, I’m only thinking about my own work as a writer and a director. Between finishing Southcliffe in 2013 and The Nest in 2018, I had a five-year gap where I was developing lots of projects one after the other—two features and a television show—that were both so close to [being greenlit] but something fell through, which was really bad luck.

What film made you want to become a filmmaker? The Goonies and Back to the Future were those movies as a kid that first made me want to make movies and tell stories, but the moment where I realized what filmmaking is was seeing The Shining. I saw it for the first time when I was eleven or twelve and a friend showed it to me because his older brother had the VHS. It was my first time understanding atmosphere and direction and I just had a sense that I could do it too. It was a really crucial moment, and I kept that thought to myself for a very long time.

Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély shoots Carrie Coon in Soho.

What’s your scariest film that is not technically horror? AKA, your area of expertise. Oh man, scariest? Something I’ve watched recently is The Vanishing and it’s probably one of the most unsettling films I’ve ever seen. It was incredible to rewatch it because I’d last seen it when I was in college—I watched everything back then—and I’d also seen the American remake, so when I watched it this time, I was trying to remember things [that were different] from the remake. I was like “he’s gonna get out, right?—oh no, that’s in the American version!” I find it an astonishing movie. There’s a real human element to the pain of the killer.

Let’s nerd out: what’s your top film of 1986, the year that The Nest is set? [Laughs] I’ve no idea what came out in 1986. Can I look up a list and I’ll tell you? Let’s see, films of 1986… This is fun! Alright, “popular films of 1986” I’m seeing: Blue Velvet, Short Circuit, Stand by Me, Platoon, The Color of Money, what else have we got here? River’s Edge… Pretty in Pink… Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—Ferris Bueller’s gotta be up there. Big Trouble in Little China! That’s it! I’m sure there’s other things, but from my quick search, I’d say Big Trouble in Little China. That was a movie that was always on in my house because it was one of my dad’s all-time favorites.

Which is Jude Law’s best performance? I love The Talented Mr. Ripley so much. I constantly rewatch that movie—it’s perfect. I also loved him in Vox Lux recently.

Sean Durkin and Jude Law on the set of ‘The Nest’.

What is the best film about marriage and why does it resonate with you? Shoot the Moon was really influential for me. I’d say it’s a bit more about divorce and family than it is about marriage but [it depends on] if you take the ending to mean that they’re going to stay together—I kind of do. You could say a separation is part of a marriage. I love that movie for how it finds light in humor. Albert Finney is struggling with his masculinity where, even though he’s the one who left, he still thinks he owns it all, and Diane Keaton is quite liberated by this scenario. It’s like their journey to find language again. I find it very beautiful.

Which film was your entry-point into international cinema? I’m trying to think back to what I would’ve seen, there certainly wasn’t a lot growing up. In college I really discovered Michael Haneke and Michelangelo Antonioni. L’Avventura made a huge impact on me. I think [because of the way] the mystery kind of dissolves and it’s about the journey, not the solution.

What film do you wish you’d made? I don’t. Filmmaking is personal and it’s so much an expression of perspective when done with care and love—though obviously, there’s stuff that’s just churned out. I never see something and say “I wish I made that”. One of the things I find hard is when people critique films and say they would’ve done this differently. I’ve become very sensitive to that over time because every choice you make as a filmmaker is so specific and thought out. I try to consume movies without knowing anything about them or making any kind of judgment. I just let them be what they are and wash over me.

Which newcomer director should we all keep our eyes on? I don’t think I’m looking out for new stuff necessarily. Once I get to see something, everyone else already knows about it. One person I would say is Dave Franco, who I just worked with on The Rental. I was an executive producer and I was a creative bounce-board for Dave through the process. It’s his first film and it’s astonishingly directed. We were getting dailies from the first week and we were like, “This is his first movie? This is insane!” I think he will do some exciting things.

Finally, what’s your favorite film of 2020 so far? I was absolutely blown away by Eliza Hittman’s film Never Rarely Sometimes Always. I miss having retrospectives at local theaters, which I’m always keyed into no matter the city I’m living in. I’ve started watching a lot of Criterion Channel and I watched a movie recently that’s taken over my brain: Variety, by Bette Gordon, from 1983. It’s set in New York City around Times Square, and it’s this incredible journey that this woman goes on that captured my mind.

Related content

Sean Durkin’s Life in Film list

Sean Durkin’s Sight & Sound Top 10

Clarissa’s list of films that burn slowly

Everything Carrie Coon watched during quarantine (and the best of that huge list)

Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon’s 24-Hour Movie Marathon

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

[rapeculturerealities]

In the new “Black Christmas,” a remake of the 1974 horror film, Cary Elwes plays Professor Gelson, a priggish classics instructor who spends a lot of time with frat boys, laments the good ol’ days when men ran everything, and goes into a rage when he thinks women are trying to usurp his power.

“The Brett Kavanaugh hearings had just happened, and I think I was really struck by how emotional he was, how aggrieved he was,” said Sophia Takal, who directed the movie and co-wrote the script with April Wolfe. In the original, a foul-mouthed weirdo terrorizes and murders a group of sorority sisters during the Christmas holidays. So: the guy who may be the villain of Takal’s slasher remake is patterned after … Justice Kavanaugh? “Yeah, pretty much,” she said.

And thus, a slasher movie for the #MeToo movement is born, one where women take center stage in front of and behind the camera.

Opening on Dec. 13, “Black Christmas” is the latest release from Blumhouse Productions, the Los Angeles-based company behind Jordan Peele’s 2017 Oscar-winning hit “Get Out,” and the franchises “Insidious” and “Paranormal Activity.” After 10 years making scary movies, Blumhouse had never hired a woman to direct a theatrically released horror film — until now. “My gender was definitely part of the conversation, where they thought a woman would tell this story well,” Takal said. “But yeah, no one said, you’re the only woman we’ve ever hired.”

On a recent afternoon, Takal was having a late breakfast at Foxy’s, an old-school diner that reminds the actor/director of her native New Jersey. “I love that they have toasters on every table,” she said. Takal was discussing all things horror, from “The Exorcist,” which she considers the scariest movie ever (“I’m too scared to even say the name of the movie, or even refer to the thing that the movie is about”), to the first-look deal she recently signed with Blumhouse, to why she may not make the best horror-movie companion (“I’m the person in the theater you hear screaming like crazy”).

Takal’s tenure with Blumhouse began last year, when the producers Marci Wiseman and Jeremy Gold enlisted her to direct “New Year, New You,” a feature-length episode for the Hulu horror anthology series “Into the Dark.” Her first two features, “Green” and “Always Shine,” which had successful debuts at South by Southwest and the Tribeca Film Festival, hadn’t skimped on the tension and creepy moments. But Takal had never directed a straight horror film before. For “New Year,” she assembled an all-female cast to create a psychological thriller that explored the toxic nature of social media and the self-care movement, among other things.

In November 2018, when Takal was wrapping production on “New Year,” the Blumhouse founder and chief executive Jason Blum was asked in an interview with Polygon why his company hadn’t hired a woman to direct one of its horror films. “There are not a lot of female directors period,” he replied, “and even less who are inclined to do horror.”

When Takal found out about it, “my reaction at the time was, this was such a weird thing he said, because I’m making something for them right now! And he was developing another horror movie with Shana Feste, ‘Run Sweetheart Run.’ It just seemed like a not particularly thought-out way of articulating something that actually really resonates with me.”

Blum apologized soon after, and again, repeatedly, during a recent phone interview. “It was a stupid thing to say,” he told me. “I am guilty of saying dumb things, and this is one of the dumb things that I’ve said.”

Four months later, Blum approached Takal to direct “Black Christmas.” The 1974 original had inspired countless slasher flicks to come, from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (the Christmastime setting; seeing the action from the perspective of the killer) to 1979’s “When a Stranger Calls” (the killer’s calls are coming from inside the house). Blumhouse had just scored big with its recent remake of “Halloween,” pulling in over $255 million on a reported $10 million budget. Why not reboot the film that inspired it?

The offer was tempting, but it came with a pretty big caveat. “They said, you can do whatever you want as long as it’s called ‘Black Christmas,’ but it has to come out this December,” she recalled. “This was in March, and there was no script.”

To prepare, Takal watched the original film (“I liked that it wasn’t just about a bunch of sorority women who were bimbos”), and ignored the 2006 reboot. She screened a clip reel of scary movies sent over by Blumhouse, and became a student of the jump scare (in a 2017 Times interview, Blum listed a number of foolproof ones, including “door swings closed, someone is now standing behind you in the room”), and the more difficult and labor-intensive “dread-building scare.”

At the end of the original film, Olivia Hussey stabs her sexist boyfriend to death with a poker, believing he’s the killer, but — surprise! — the real murderer is still very much alive, and eager to kill again. Takal was struck by how much the ending of that film mirrored what was still happening in 2019. “All of these men were being exposed for all the terrible things they had done, like Louis C.K. or Mark Halperin, but then they were coming back into the public sphere,” she said. “I was like, what’s happening? We felt like we had had a victory where women had finally found their voices, and then these men kept popping back up.”

Inspired, Takal tweaked several slasher-film traditions in this latest version, including the trope of the “final girl” (think: Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween”). “I really wasn’t interested in making a movie where men just kill a bunch of women,” she said. “It didn’t feel like the movie I wanted to make in 2019.”

Outsider takes like Takal’s are becoming more and more common at Blumhouse, whose horror films have tackled a range of social issues over the years, from racism (“Ma”) to income inequality (“The Purge”). “Jordan Peele is an excellent example of somebody who has really brought the conversation about race and racial privilege into the horror genre,” said Aviva Briefel, a professor of English and cinema studies at Bowdoin College. “‘The sunken place’ has become a phrase that people use and think about, even if they haven’t seen the movie.”

Even so, Blumhouse isn’t shying away from creating horror for horror’s sake, with sequels of franchises like “Halloween” and “The Purge” in the works. “I love movies that have bigger ideas behind them, but I also love straight scary movies,” said Blum. “With ‘Black Christmas,’ I think we’re lucky to have both.”

In the end, Takal found working on the film cathartic, particularly working alongside guys who, she said, didn’t look all that different from some of the film’s villains. “These were, superficially, the same types of men who might be characters in the movie, but they were all so supportive and engaged and encouraging,” she said. “I think it allowed me to explore this anxiety I have about misogyny, and to work through my fear that, underneath it all, men just really want us all dead.”