#makamu-a-tumbling

[christophwaltzsource]

for Makamu

[wingsy-keeper-of-songs]

"“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”― Bertolt Brecht" I saw this quote and thought of your fics. Do you think you could do something with it and August or AU!Hans? Thanks in advance, love :)

I had August in mind when I wrote this, and I was going through some hard times of my own. I think we could all use an Edie in our lives. All we gotta do is look for them.

Around this time it seemed that August got more and more unmanageablyupset. After the infamous circus disaster and losing everything, he’d taken tobeing a hermit. He would lock himself inside his train car and try to drink himselfto death. It was a lonely existence and one that a part of him was not proudof, but he carried on this way because he simply didn’t know how else to cope.That was where Edie came in. Having met him in the hospital before, she wasaware of his episodes and of his behavior. She wasn’t sure how well he managedit, but it certainly couldn’t be nearly as bad as it had been in the past. Shewas one of those people who saw the good in everyone no matter how they seemedto act, and August was no exception. Oh, she’d heard the rumors surrounding himand she knew that he hadn’t been a good person, but a part of her felt somewhatsorry for the man. He needed help, and she was the kind of person who couldprovide it if only he would ask. He was proud, she knew, and he wouldn’t stoopto ask, but he’d destroy himself at the rate he was going. Edie had visited himin his train car before, and what she had found there was the very definitionof pathetic. It honestly broke her heart to see him like that, and shecommitted herself to helping him whether he wanted it or not. Now, she wasstanding outside the train car and waiting for him to open the door. She couldn’thear him shuffling along inside and it honestly began to worry her a little.Screwing up her courage, she decided to hell with propriety and opened thedoor. August was sitting at his desk, head in his hands. He looked up when thedoor had closed behind her and Edie saw that his eyes, normally bright withlively intelligence, had gone flat.

             “What areyou doing here?” He asked, his voice sounding hoarse. Edie looked around theransacked train car. Things had been tossed around, the curtains to the bed hadbeen torn down, and a poster of the Benzini Brothers Circus was torn to shreds.Interestingly enough, the part of the poster depicting Marlene was unscathed.In seemed that even in his rage, August still cared for her. It was…touching ina dark sort of way.

             “Ithought I’d drop by,” Edie answered. “Ya look like hell.” She was always to thepoint about things like this. It was something August honestly found refreshingabout her.

             “Hah,”August breathed a soft sarcastic laugh. “I’m fine.” Edie raised an eyebrow.

             “Yeah,you sure are.” She replied as she looked around the place. “Doing someredecorating?” August ignored her and instead took a sip from a flask danglingfrom his fingers.

             “Of thesort,” he answered. “And what convinced you to, ah, ‘drop by’ as you put it?”

             “I haven’tseen you at the diner recently,” Edie said as she began picking a few thingsup. She really couldn’t stand mess, and she had no idea how August lived likethis. “I was beginning to think you’d up and died in the gutter somewhere.”

             “No suchluck,” August smirked. His smile was thin and razor sharp. It was the kind ofsmile you’d see on a corpse and it gave Edie the shivers. “But not for lack oftrying.”

             “I’venoticed,” Edie said. August grunted and sipped his flask again. “You can’t keepdoing this, Mr. Rosenbluth.” Edie never called him August. She wanted to showhim some ounce of respect, even though he hadn’t done much to earn it.

             “I thinkI can and I will,” August snapped. “It isn’t like I have anyone left waitingfor me. Everything I ever loved is dead and buried, and with a little luck, Iwill be too.”

             “Sittingthere feeling sorry for yourself is a terrible waste of talent,” Edie said as shesat across from him a good distance away. She knew he could get violent attimes, and she didn’t want to risk it.

             “Whatelse is there to do?” August asked. “It isn’t like I could get a job doinganything else. There is nothing else. I built that circus from the groundfucking up, and now it’s gone.”

             “We mayin the midst of one of the worst economic depressions in history, but I’vestill got a little shred of hope.” Edie said. “You may think there isn’tanything left for ya out there, but the world is full of things to see. Youjust gotta look for it. It may be hard to find, but it’s there.” August snortedindelicately.

             “Youroptimism is what I like about you,” he said sarcastically. “It’s adorable,really.” Edie raised her eyebrows.

             “Yourdetermination is what I like about you,” she shot back. “You can mock me all yawant, Mr. Rosenbluth. But I think deep down, you know you were meant forsomething other than this.” She gestured around. “You were meant for greaterthings than being a drunken hermit and shutting yourself out from everyonearound you.”

             “Being adrunk hermit is all I’m good for anyways,” August replied as he gazed down atthe flask. “Well, other than nearly killing my wife.”

             “Marleneforgave you,” Edie pointed out. “I don’t know how she managed to do it, but shedid. She knew there was good in you somewhere.”

             “She wastoo gentle,” August said and there was a wistfulness in his voice now. “She wasso good, just…so damn good.” He ran a hand through his hair. “She saved me fora while, y’know?” He looked up at Edie and there was something in his eyesagain. It was a far cry better than the previous flat emptiness. “I worked hardso I could give her everything. She was my star.” He continued. “And then likeeverything else, I ruined her.” His voice was bitter. “She ran away from me,from what we built together.”

             “No, sheran from what you were becoming.” Edie corrected him. “You know you hurt her. Icould tell you know.” August suddenly threw the flask, making Edie jump.

             “Oh, Iknew all right. I had to fight for her, like I’ve had to fight for everythingelse in my sorry existence!” He shouted, voice collapsing a little. “I’m just…I’mjust so damn tired.” He sighed fully and slowly as he sank into the chairagain, anger gone as soon as it appeared. “I’m so tired of fighting, Edie.”Edie took a calculated risk and approached him. Tentatively, she laid a hand onhis shoulder as he started to shudder.

             “You’re asurvivor,” she told him. “You’ve gotten this far, haven’t ya? Maybe it’s timeyou stopped fighting and just started living.” August looked up from his handsand he glanced at her.

             “I’vefought for so long, I’ve completely forgotten what living is like.” He admittedsoftly. It was strange to see him admitting weakness, but it was a start. Ediesank to his level, smiling a little at him.

             “Maybe it’stime ya learned, huh?” She said. August took another deep, shuddering breathand he nodded.

             “Maybe,”he agreed. “But I might need a little help.” He glanced at her and took herhand in his. Edie’s smile was warm and reminded him a little of Marlene, butinstead of angering him, it comforted him.

             “All yahad to do was ask,” she said gently. For the first time in however many years,August felt a true, genuine smile of his own.

             “Thankyou.” He said softly. She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

             “Surething, Mr. Rosenbluth.”

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I have been reading and reblogging some of your posts and wanted to thank you for that detailed account. I have been out of fandom for a while, and antis really baffled me at first. But now I have a question: Could you talk some more about how current antis relate back to the LJ social justice scene and when the morph from debating fanworks to dissing people happened? Thank you!

I’m glad you’ve been enjoying this blog!

I think this reddit post does a nice job of summarizing the history of fandom and how it’s led to our current point. But I’m going to go more into how tumblr’s very structure led to a ‘race to the bottom’ sort of enacting of punishment via social justice.

Almost all of this is from personal observation, having been here since late 2010.

To get more into the actual history of it: Racefail ‘09 is the name given to the big, public 2009 debates about racism in genre fiction (published fantasy and sci-fi), which happened primarily on livejournal and private websites. (Racefail was itself the result of the rising awareness of social justice in the real world thanks to the democratization of information via the internet.) Racefail raised a couple of big questions: were non-white (and non-straight/non-cis/non-male) creators being silenced and erased in published genre fiction? And were the stories being told primarily racist/sexist/homophobic and lacking in representation for non-white/Western cultures (and LGBT+/queer/female stories)?

From everything I’ve read I feel like a lot of good came out of these talks; in particular, it greatly raised the awareness of social justice in genre fiction and fandom spaces - which had been there before, but not quite so prominent.  But one major bad came out of it: it revealed, via the shitty behavior of one member of the genre fiction community, how social justice could easily be used as a silencing tactic by applying arguments meant to dismantle power structures to individuals who may (or may not!) benefit from those power structures.

Fast-forward to 2010-2012 tumblr. LJ has undergone multiple journal purges and partial restorations, been bought out by a Russian company, and - final straw - changed the way anonymous threaded posts were handled, ending its value as a space for anon memes like kinkmemes. Fandom dispersed. A not-insignificant number of us eventually end up on tumblr, and those of us coming from LJ have brought with us a greater awareness of social justice, particularly lgbt/queer culture and feminism.

At the same time, Facebook has opened its doors to everyone instead of only allowing college students to use it. Facebook has almost single-handedly popularized the notion of making your offline life publicly available online.  Gone are the days of keeping your age, real name, and offline identity hidden; we share everything except maybe last names and exact locations.

Tumblr democratizes the fandom experience like never before. Livejournal and forums had moderators; tumblr has none.  Communities are gone - instead we have tags where people gather to talk about shared interests. People who previously felt shut out, forced to be ‘lurkers’ because they had nothing to say, could now have a blog and share the work of others via reblogging. The main way to gain social capital is by having the most followers and therefore the most widespread content.

But tumblr is a weird experience compared to other blogging sites because at the time it was the only one with a ‘reblog’ function. any one post can go absolutely viral and the people who see it beyond your immediate circle will lack the context of the rest of your blog. This means that either every single post needs to be entirely self-contained … or get wildly misunderstood. (Guess which one happens.) It also means that that the posts that spread the fastest and furthest are the short, witty ones or - you guessed it - the controversial ones. Finally, people tend to not fact-check - if something is interesting and seems believable, people reblog it uncritically. Tumblr’s dashboard structure actively encourages people to not leave their dash to look at provided external links - you’ll lose your ‘place’ on your endless-scrolling dash, and the little ‘home’ button in the corner is reminding you how many new posts have been created since you last refreshed. You don’t have time to fact-check.

Controversy without context is polarizing - without the original context, people provide their own context and agree or disagree based on a bunch of assumptions. Tumblr is a breeding ground for this. Opinions don’t get more nuanced - they get more vitriolic, more sharp and quick-witted.  And with people not bothering to fact-check or click linked information, misinformation spreads like wildfire.

The early experience of fandom on tumblr is one of widespread acceptance. Possibly because FB does this, people feel safe to share their age, sexuality, and gender on their tumblr profiles - and those identities get more and more specific as people learn more about gender identities and sexual orientations that are off the gender binary. People spread educational posts about queer/LGBT+ culture, feminist theory, and racism alongside fandom posts.  The importance of minority representation in the media is a hot topic and posts that criticize media for their lack of (or bad) representation get thousands of notes. Social justice theory - fighting the appropriation of colonized cultures by imperialists, promoting the voices of the oppressed over those of the privileged, the right to be angry because of the oppression and trauma you’ve experienced, not tone-policing people who have been hurt, and not erasing the experiences of others - are widely discussed.

A lot of good came out of this, too, but I believe a natural backlash resulted. Earnestly working to promote the voices of the least privileged and trying to avoid silencing or erasure, what started as an effort to even out the social strata gradually became a kind of reversed social strata. People who were oppressed on any axis could not be corrected by anybody of lesser oppression - it was considered to be silencing. People could not say their feelings had been hurt by a marginalized person’s word choice - that was tone policing. 

And this led to a secondary, and probably lesser conclusion: people who identified as ‘privileged’ - that is, white, cis, straight, mentally well, able-bodied, (and male) - felt guilty for all the privilege they had. and the promotion of marginalized voices over their own - the tendency to tell people, regardless of the validity of their points, that if they were privileged their voice did not matter - to escape their privilege, at least on tumblr.

I think we hit Peak Tumblr in 2012-2013-ish. Non-human and nonbinary identities proliferated. Asexuality awareness exploded, as did other lesser-known sexualities and paraphilias.  People wondered what it meant to be trans in a world with no gender binary. People self-diagnosed severe mental illnesses.  And this unto itself wasn’t a bad thing!   Probably many people learned a lot about themselves from the openness and acceptance.

However: there’s no way to know how much of this was from people self-discovering and how much was from people who realized that unless they had some axis of oppression they could point to they could be silenced.  And people were extremely open about these identities as well: despite all of the talk about social awareness, interactions on tumblr suggested that most people still assumed that everyone else was white, cis, straight, able-bodied and mentally well (and therefore completely unaware of social issues and in need of education). And due to how tumblr’s reblogging system could separate posts entirely from the context of the original poster’s blog and personal details, this assumption happened a lot!

Whatever the actual numbers of people who were self-discovering versus self-deluding, this extreme acceptance got its own natural backlash. It wasn’t possible for everyone on tumblr to be oppressed, but everyone on tumblr seemed to be finding some way to be marginalized - they weren’t cis, they were ‘a demigirl’. They weren’t straight, they were ‘gray asexual’.  There had to be some way to distinguish the real marginalized people from the fakers.*

Enter gatekeeping - which seems reasonable enough at first, given the sheer number of people who are claiming to be part of the marginalized club. People start making fun of ‘transtrenders’ and ‘starselves’ and say ‘heteroromantic demisexuals’ are ‘just normal’. People call one another ‘cishet’ specifically to erase their gender identity/sexual orientation.

This environment makes tumblr ripe for radfems, who greatly benefit from people putting limits on what identities other people can have. And radfems feed the gatekeeping mentality, leading to more and more policing of one another on tumblr instead of acceptance.  Instead of trusting others to be honest about their gender identity, sexual orientation, race or mental health, people increasingly decide the identity and experiences of others based on whether or not they say and do the right things.  Conversely, if you say or do the wrong things you are ostracized and your identity is erased using the reverse social strata of tumblr: ’cishet’ becomes shorthand for ‘ignorant asshole’ - and ignorant assholes are not to be listened to.

One no longer has to identify wrongly to have the wrong identity to be worth listening to. One only has to do the wrong thing.

So how does this tie back to debating fanworks vs dissing people?  Well: tumblr isn’t just the home of social justice. It’s also the home of fandom, and these two spaces heavily overlap.

Like our genre fiction friend that I mentioned back at the beginning of this long-ass post, tumblr had already begun - with the best of intentions - to silence people for having the wrong level of marginalization.  And when radfems and gatekeepers entered the scene, one’s level of marginalization became a function of how you behaved.  Now you had to behave right to have the right to be listened to - and fanworks, far from being the exception, are the rule for determining if people behave ‘right’ in fandom spaces.

In other words: debating fanworks/fan opinions and dissing people have become the same thing.  If a fanwork is for the wrong pairing, that makes a person a bad person.  And bad people are only able to create bad fanworks.

This attitude is how you get things like ‘if you ship [x] you’re straight’ and ‘oh, you ship [x], your opinion on this unrelated social justice issue is invalid’ or ‘i’m not surprised to find that this person is [x]-phobic, they created problematic fanworks.’

And that’s where we’re at today.

Man this is much. I’m sorry for your eyes.

*And in case it isn’t obvious, I think policing sexual orientations and gender identities is nonsense - demigirls and gray-ace people count as much as everyone else.

[t-eyla]

Hi! Thanks for adding me back - though I am really not sure how much you will get out of having me on your dash. In keeping with CW fandom being a very celebratory fandom - only three of us do transformative stuff - I am trying to slowly make it more transformative, but my transformative fandom space is mostly DW (new post tomorrow)...

Ah man, I know the frustration of celebratory vs. transformative. The struggle is real. :/

Don’t worry about my dash! If the CW gets too much, I might unfollow again. But I tend to follow blogs because I know the people, not so much for content (which is probably where the fucking random eclectic content on my blog comes from). It’s nice to see what folks are up to even if they’re posting about stuff I’m not immediately engaged with.

Either way, as you said, there’s always DW. ;)

[shinelikethunder]

@dendritic-trees replied to your post “And since it feels awfully complacent to whine about dogma...”:

This pretty much has always made sense to me.

You'd think, but with the way the intracommunity schisms have been playing out lately, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the next chapter in the purity-wank gatekeeping saga.

@makamu-a-tumbling replied to your post:

Can I sign this?

Sure, just remember to bring marshmallows to the bonfire.

[scriptshrink]

So, here is my follow-up question on your help with the PSTD: the world the character lives in is an alternate version of the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. I know that psychology was in its infancy as a discipline then, so I am wondering if he could get therapy for it then. For plot reasons, my MC is himself interested in forensic psychology (and psychoanalysis- yes, I know...), so I am also wondering whether he'd be able to recognise that there is something wrong with him himself?T

The Shrink was able to clarify that this story takes place in 1920′s Munich and Vienna, which is definitely an interesting time period in the history of psychology! Freudian psychoanalysis was in full swing at that point, and those cities were definitely hotspots for the newly developing field of psychotherapy. So it’s very possible to have your character seeing one of those early therapists.

PTSD as a diagnosis was not recognized until 1978, when it was included in the DSM-III, so you won’t be able to use that term. However, there were certain things back in that era that could be seen as proto-PTSD diagnoses.

These include:

Soldier’s heart / Irritable heart / Da Costa’s syndrome (1862) - It’s unclear, but it’s possible that this was used as an attempt to explain why soldiers returning from the American civil war weren’t the same. However, it was thought to be a physiological heart condition, not a mental disorder.

Railway spine (1867) - specifically referring to the symptoms that passengers in railway accidents developed. However, this diagnosis was controversial, with many thinking it was a result of neurological damage, others saying it was just another form of hysteria.

Shell shock (1915) - this term only arose in WWI, and was thought to be a result of brain damage suffered as reaction to artillery shells going off nearby. It took some time for people to realize that there was a psychological, not physical, component. 

All of these were thought to be medical conditions, not mental illnesses - so keep that in mind when writing how your character ends up in treatment. Your character was likely referred to a psychoanalyst after medical doctors could find nothing ‘wrong’ with them.

Whether or not your character could get into “forensic psychology” depends on how you define the term - it’s a pretty broad subject. There were some scattered studies related to legal settings (eye witness testimony, development of the polygraph) in the time frame you’re talking about, but generally psychologists were not taken seriously by the American court system until the 1960s (I’m not sure about other countries).

As for recognizing there’s something wrong with themselves…that’s up to your character. Honestly, it’s pretty likely that they’d realize something is wrong with themselves, but your character may or may not realize that it’s related to their trauma.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/themes/shellshock.html

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/ptsd-overview/basics/history-of-ptsd-vets.asp

http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/forensic-psychology/history-of-forensic-psychology/

http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/forensic-psychology/history-of-forensic-psychology/us-developments/

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[reinaiwaltz-blog]

Moodboard for @makamu-a-tumbling : I really love your moodboards, but since wingsy was faster than me with her last Landa ask, I'd like Schultz instead with beiges and browns, please! Thank you!

[sisterbliss007]

Translation Die Zeit interview Christoph Waltz

Hey everyone,

I have been also working (together with the support of @makamu-a-tumbling​), on the translation of Die Zeit man interview from last year. I’ve finally finished it, as it was quite a long and difficult interview to translate. I apologize for uploading it so late but hope you enjoy it! (As said it was quite difficult and if anyone finds any mistakes and/or has questions please let me know!:) I still have the original scans of the interview in German as well for those interested).

I am a “Traditionalist”

The actor Christoph Waltz and his remarkable way to happiness Actor Christoph Waltz lives in Los Angeles. We have met up with him in his chosen homeland. The timing is special as Waltz is standing right before his 60th birthday. He aims towards balance, talks about the strong and weak characters he played during his career and the decisions he made that made him a happy man.

On a spring morning, Actor Christoph Waltz is standing in the elevator of the Barclay hotel in Los Angeles, when an old man enters the lift. The Barclay isn’t used as a hotel anymore, and now serves as a sort of retirement home for Downtown LA, which also can be rented for photo and film shoots. The old man recognizes Waltz immediately and addresses him, questioning, where Waltz originally is from. "From Austria" he answers. "I was there during the War!" the man tells him. Waltz goes on, looks at the man with a skeptical look and asks:" The War was a long time ago, when were you there?"-"In the sixties!"- "In the sixties?"-Small pause-"Oh," Waltz says "do you mean Vietnam?"-"Ah yes, right, Vietnam!" the old man says.

An hour later Christoph Waltz is sitting in a restaurant close to the Barclay hotel, and can only laugh about the encounter in the elevator. The striking chin outstretched, like you would recognize from his movies. Peter Lindbergh photographed him today for DIE ZEIT magazine MANN, while both of them walked through Downtown (LA), Waltz in front (of him), (and) Lindberg with the camera behind him. At one moment, a Mexican construction worker recognizes him, and winks and shouts to him: "The Latinos love you man!" He shows his famous Christoph Waltz grin, of which you can never be sure if he really is happy or if he is hiding something; he winks back. When later a woman on the street asks him for an autograph, he signs (the autograph). When she also asks for a picture, he briefly lays his hand on her arm and tells her, smiling but firm, in perfect English: "You know what, I would prefer if we didn't take one. I've been photographed the whole day. Maybe on another occasion."- 'I understand that" the women says, at the same time perplexed and pleased, even though she didn’t get a picture, she wishes him a good day and walks on. "You see," Waltz says, when the women is out of earshot, "when you are friendly here, people understand.”

Christoph Waltz lives in Los Angeles, and loves it here. He loves going to the opera, and he has seen the whole Ring (cycle) from Wagner here, the Mannheim production. He can't really agree with the general criticism of European, mostly German actors, on the shallowness and misconstrued image (of LA). "Of course, there are more foolish people here then with us (in Europe). But there is more of everything here. Therefore, more silly people as well.”

In the restaurant he orders a cappuccino and a croissant. Even in this everyday moment he uses his speech as an instrument: "Do you want something to drink?” The waiter asks. And Waltz answers, back stretched straight, the menu like a script in his hands: "Absouuuuuutely. I'll have a cappuccino for the moment. And a croissant or something of that kind would be great." Then, you understand the luck, Quentin Tarantino must feel when he hears Waltz speaking his lines: "The way, Christoph Waltz speaks my dialogue, the ways he sings it, he is saying it like poetry."  In Tarantino's Western Django Unchained, Waltz played the German dentist and bounty hunter Dr. Shultz, and the detail that he comes from Düsseldorf, has everything to do with the fact that, according to Tarantino: "It just sounds so good, the way he speaks the word Düsseldorf."

His love for words was something that he developed very early on during his school time. "I have had six years of Latin and a nice Latin teacher, Elfriede Fiela, who was more interested in the mater itself and not being a teacher as such. That, she carried on to her students. "I find it regrettable that Latin is being labeled as a dead language, and usually…“ He makes a grant gesture, "…I get asked where they then, still speak Latin.” Again the Christoph Waltz grin. "My answer is: in your head.” He smiles.

A former classmate from Vienna, journalist Axel Meister also remembers his love for speech. "Waltz always shone with his ingenious linguistics". At his 'Feier zur Matura', the Austrian Arbitur (the party at the end of your college school years), Waltz gave the closing speech, which contained a subtle sense of deeper meaning.

"I love words" Waltz once told the London Times. Does he have favorite words? "Fiammiferi" he says without having to think about it, matches in Italian. "Or maybe even better: Uova strapazzate!" That is Italian for scrambled eggs. Waltz sneezes every syllable, while he is talking. Can he speak Italian well?  "Totally not." And again ‘The Grin’. Then he speaks better in English, as he already from the late seventies on, while he lived in New York for a while, started refining it. He is proud of that, and you can also see that during his American Late-Show appearances. "I am someone else when I am talking English" he says. "And at that, I am not a mere translator. If you ask me for a specific English word, that I use all the time, then I don't have a clue.” How does the English speaking Christoph Waltz distinguish himself from the German speaking one? "I don't analyze it, as I would be just halfway translating it. It is really pleasant that I don't have to translate. English is like an additional way of expression.” Those who have seen the (late night) show(s), the way he is telling the American public Austrian stories, and then hear him tell in LA, how well the English language suits him, understand: it is also a mask. During those regular appearances, in this chosen homeland (the USA),  Christoph Waltz can be the persona 'Christoph Waltz'; the two-time Oscar winner from the far away Europe, who holds something exotic to the American spectators, matched with a twitch of diabolic enjoyment. It is an extraordinary role. It is the role of his life, of which he has waited so long- in vain- for.

Christoph Walt was born on the 4th of October 1956 in a Viennese theater family. His grandfather (which I think should be his grandmother right?) was a famous actor at the renowned Burgtheater, his German father Johannes Waltz was stage builder, his Austrian mother Elisabeth Urbancic costume designer. At the beginning, Christoph didn't want to be an actor. "It didn't interest me. Even now it doesn’t really interest me. But when it does (interest me), then totally". He did attend the famous Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, but actually he wanted to do film, if possible in the US. As a youngster Christoph Waltz met Senta Berger, who just came back from Hollywood, and who was a friend of the family, and often visited. The glamour excited him. So, at the end of the seventies, he goes to New York, and enrolls into the Lee Strasberg institute, while he works as a waiter. Full of hope, he meets up with the legendary agent Paul Kohner, who worked with Marlene Dietrich. But, he (Paul Kohner) warns him: does he really wants to play roles in which he has to yell "Heil Hitler!" all the time? Waltz returns to Europe, goes into theater, in Switzerland and Germany, and also works for TV meanwhile becoming more and more miserable. His American dream did not come true, and in contrast, (he) experiences a German nightmare: He must play supporting parts in krimi series, just so he can act. This is how the eighties and nineties play out for him. In an episode of the krimiseries Der Alte, he shoots the commissioner; played by Siegfried Lowitz, "that was maybe culturally-wise a heroic deed" he says and laughs. Only rarely he can shine: in 1996 as Roy Black in a TV-movie about the tragic life of the shlager- singer. Waltz receives multiple awards, but the problems stays. The director Peter Keglevic, who wants him for bigger roles, is being held back by producers and directors. "On and on again he hears: no, no not Waltz, for minor quirky parts yes, but not for the main character.”

(He takes) Another piece of the croissant, and a sip of the water. "There is a certain narrow-mindedness which you cannot fight against (the literal translation would be for which no powder exist to fight it). And in some cultures, this is more the case than in others." He says:" In Germany, there is a precise distinction between E and U. E for Ernst (seriousness) and U for Unterhaltung (pleasure). E can't really be U and U definitely can't be E. It always ends in lecturing. Even in schools they understand now that only lecturing does not work, so why would you then do it in movies or on TV?" In the nineties, Waltz often sits at the Munich Shumann's bar, when he has to be there to be another rogue in a ZDF-krimi. He then tells his friends at the bar about (his) German TV (experience): "They really can't do anything with me." "In hindsight, one can recollect these miserable times (without feeling worse)", he says, "but it was mostly frustrating. They weren’t all like that, Reinhard Schwabenitzky and Peter Keglevic, those directors, did always believe in me." He doesn't name any other people.

Wailing did not help, he must work, moreover for his family. Waltz becomes a father early, when he is 24. During his time in New York, he meets his later wife Jackie, a dancer from Brooklyn. With her, he has three children, who now are adults. The family mostly lives in London, as a compromise between New York and Germany. "At that moment, I played parts just to survive, and now I find it honorable. I bit my way through something for a long time that I didn't want to bite through. That was a significant experience. It shows you that as an actor, you have to pay attention to not switch your life with the part you’re playing." "For a life,…" He says, while emphasizing the word life. "…a smaller part can be of a bigger significance than a big part." At the absolute low point of his career, when he hadn't worked for a year, his wife tries to give sincere advice: “You have so many talents; you can do something else then being an actor”. When you speak to Christoph Waltz about this advice, decades later, there is still a glimmer in his eyes, in the sense of: "How can you so wrongly asses me?" "I never thought about doing anything else. I know too much about it. To master a specific matter, you have to do it for twenty years. Hence, older actors are the most interesting. Of course it is interesting; to see a newcomer arrive, but then at least twenty years must pass before it really becomes sensational."

Christoph Walt's first marriage has now ended. A while back, he met the German costume designer Judith Holste, during shooting, with whom he has a daughter. In the beginning, he went back and forth between Berlin and the US. "But the journey was always stressy." Now, the family lives in LA.

After decades of biting trough and suffering, along comes a meeting between two men in the spring of 2008 in Berlin, both which are tattered because of different reasons. Christoph Waltz is still dragging him through German TV, while the American director Quentin Tarantino, Hollywood-prodigy in the nineties, has several problems. His last movie was a flop and for his next production Inglourious Basterds he is still desperately looking for someone to play the part of the antagonist Hans Landa. He already had hundred others read the part, Leonardo Dicaprio also wants to do it, but for Tarantino it doesn't fit. The director fluctuates between knowing that he had written one of the most interesting parts of his life, and the fear, that the part of the multilingual Hans Landa is unplayable. Then the meeting with Christoph Waltz comes, who plays the part of Landa as it he is Landa himself. Very precisely (literately translated it would mean sleepwalking-ly precise) Waltz switches between English, German, French and Italian. His former love for languages, developed during his school time in Vienna, helps him to fulfill his American dream. Shortly after the reading, Tarantino calls him, who is staying in Tuscany at that time. "Christoph, you're my man."-"If you say so, Quentin, I am."

Christoph Waltz also exceeds on set, and shines next to Hollywood stars such as Brad Pitt. Today he says that that shoot saved him. "For me it was about the confirmation that I could do it. Not in vanity, but to confirm for myself that I wasn't going mad." Mad in the sense of: "Look, German TV, German cinema, I didn't just imagine it, I can really do it”. “What would become of him without Inglourious Basterds?” "No idea." Did he ever think about it? "Luckily not." After shooting the movie with Tarantino, but before the world premiere at the Cannes film festival in 2009, Alexander Gorkow, reporter for the Süddeutschen Zeitung, meets him in a Berlin café. Opposite the reporters sits a sad, insecure man. "Who knows if I will be in the movie" Waltz tells him "Quentin is re-cutting everything." He stays in. And how. For the role of Hans Landa, Christoph Waltz wins his first Oscar in 2010. Still in Cannes, in the car to the premier, one of the producers tells him: "Enjoy it. These are the last moments of your old life".

This afternoon, in his new life in Los Angeles, Christoph Waltz notices that his cappuccino didn’t come. When the waiter re-approaches the table and asks if he can bring anything else, your reporter orders a double espresso. Waltz first orders another cappuccino, to be changed at the last moment: “A double espresso as well, please.” The waiter motionless takes this in, and murmurs a “Great.” The first cappuccino which he didn’t bring, totally forgotten. That, then still innervates Waltz. And therefore he puts, in a friendly way, this hard “fact” in front of the waiter: “So I am really happy you forgot the first cappuccino.”

Lack of courtesy, bad behavior and no sense of etiquette, puts Waltz off and he doesn’t care if he offends anyone else. In 2007, while attending the Bambi awards show (German television price show) the Jordan Queen Rania also gave away a price. When she entered the stage, Waltz is the only of 800 guests which stood up. “When a queen enters a room, I don’t have to make any decision” he says “I stand up.” He adds after a small pause: “That kind of negligence, doesn’t only hurt the Queen, but the people that stay seated. That was a painful affair for me”.

That is the old Viennese school. Vienna is and stays his ‘city’, wherever he is living at the moment. His father died when he was very young, Christoph Waltz was seven. What kind of memories does he have of his father? “We have to make a distinction between conscious and unconscious memories. For the unconscious ones I can’t really speak and for the conscious ones I don’t want to”. Here again, Waltz precisely formulates and clearly borders all the lines. “This was always important for me. Seeing all the demarcation points in my live, even as a kid.” He still remembers saying to his school mates: “That is none of your business”. Later on, as an actor, he really understood: “that it is important to make up your own mind about, and decide for yourself, what is private and public”.

To define your own life, and don’t let others define you, was something that he needed. “I wanted this from the beginning, already at school, no, actually already before going to school. I always had this questions of “Where am I?”, “Where are the others?, “How is it positioned?”, “Do I have to agree?”. He always saw himself as separated from the others. Is he a good friend? He thinks for a long time about this question, and for the first time during the conversation, there is a long pause. “I can be a good friend, but I am not automatically one. For all the stability, there also needs to be certain dynamic aspect within a friendship.” He tells about his neighbor, who was really outraged because the tree from Waltz’s property was too high. “Sometimes there are serious storms here, and then the trees move around pretty hard”. What did he tell the neighbor? “Be happy that they move. If they don’t move around, they will break down”. This is also his outlook on friendships, you need to keep on moving, and that is important. He has two best friends, maybe three, not more. Then he takes back on the tree. “I have to admit that now, I did cut the tree, as it became a bit too eerie for me as well.” How would you describe yourself to people that don’t know you? “Totally not, I am not a describer. I recently had a talk about this topic with a befriended director, that an experience is much more important than a description. ”What do you mean?” “To go to the cinema, and experience it all, even when it is not a pleasant one: That is the whole reason why I go to the cinema.” Christoph Waltz has therefore drawn the conclusion –for himself- that he does not speak about his character during the interviews for a movie. “The portrayal of a subject is more important that that subject itself” he rages. “The curator puts himself before the artist, the director puts himself in front of his writer, the painter is standing before his painting and the actor is more important than his character.” He shakes his head. Would he describe himself as conservative? “Gustav Mahler said that: “Tradition is keeping the fire burning and not worshiping the ashes”. When the tradition is genuine, then I am a ‘Traditionalist’.” The great moments in art enthrall him, he just does not want to interpret them. He raves about an essay of Susan Sontags, who has been writing against (this kind of) Interpretation, but without any success. “I am not against the intellectualizing, I am against de-sensualizing. It is all about the experience, in cinema and in theater.” Once, Christoph Waltz was a spectator at the Viennese Burgtheater and saw Otto Sander, an experience which he will never forget. “He was sitting on a cardboard prop of a rock and was telling what the play is about. It is about Oedipus. You saw him and you forgot everything around him. You forgot that the production was from Peter Stein. That Bruna Ganz played with him. That the set design was from Anseln Kiefer. You only saw and heard what he played and said. You could experience what the person goes through, and could identify with his suffering. That is how it should be.”

Christoph Waltz’s hair is longer now, then how we knew him before, and his sharp face features are now even more outspoken. Like most other famous actors, he is small, and when questioned about his height, he answers: “1m72, 1m73” (67.7-68.1 inch) as if every centimeter makes a difference. Two years ago the art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi painted Christoph Waltz for a TV documentary. At a sitting in an old ballroom in Berlin, Beltracchi complains: “You are so slim, darn!” Waltz had reacted to that by outstretching his stomach. The painter then noted different features of his face: “One eye sits higher than the other”. And: “The nose is also not simple”. Waltz reacted to that with his dry humor: “To whom are you saying this, I am having it (the nose)”. After winning the Oscar, the first German speaking one since Maximilian Schell in 1962, a lot of people, colleagues and directors, were happy for him. But here and there comments were heard, also from Til Schweiger. On one hand he congratulated him while on the other, said that this kind of luck, playing a role in such a big movie, which was exactly cut out for him, will not happen again. Unless if Waltz would get another such part.

And exactly that happened again. A couple of years later Quentin Tarantino writes the part of bad-ass dentist Dr. King Shultz in his western Django Unchained for his friend Christoph Waltz. And in 2013 he wins his second Oscar. Since then, the (Oscar) title is adherent to the name of Christoph Waltz. Wherever he shows himself, and is introduced, he is “the two time Oscar winner, Christoph Waltz”.

When he was young, the legendary theater actor Wolgang Reichmann, then already 70 years old, told him that he, in his whole life played three big parts. Waltz was startled. Only three in his whole life? Today he knows how realistic that was. Christoph Waltz emphasizes this multiple times during this day in Los Angeles, that for him, it is all about not standing still. “I can’t sit on that for the rest of my life, I want to keep on working!” He knows, that the Oscars help him with letting the lesser parts pass. There are also flops. “Of course there are bad movies. For my profession, one rule applies: as long as the movie makes enough money, then a flop will not be judged as a failure”. If it happens with three, four movies after another, then it can go quickly. Therefore, Christoph Waltz plays in blockbusters, they also pay very well, he does think that strategic. He tells, that now on set, he can better handle critique than thirty years ago. “Earlier, I would start arguing with the director, and in the end it is was all about who won. Often that was contra-productive.” Nowadays he can listen to critique, and doesn’t react to each of the comments. He learned that, that listing to critique can help. That was also the case when he worked with director Roman Polanski, while filming the Yasmina Rezas play Carnage. Waltz plays, beside Kate Winslet, a cynical lawyer, constantly on his phone, while they are discussing why their son hurt the boy of the other family. It was a showy role, equally funny and brutal.

The first day of filming, he tells, was a real catastrophe: “During the lunch break, Polanski comes to me and says: “Christoph what you’re doing is not funny”. A pretty clear statement. “I understood what Polanski was trying to say. He is a clever and experienced director. He later told me that he knows what he can say, at each moment, during each part of filming. “It was the best and most efficient director’s comment that I ever got”. What Polanski went on to tell him, he doesn’t want give away, (is this) professional secrecy? When Waltz arrives at 8 o’clock sharp, at the morning of our photo shoot, he is making a call, (and goes on to) apologize, pointing to his phone, to say “important”. When he goes back and forth in the hotel lobby while on his mobile, you automatically think about the lawyer in Carnage. About a year ago HIS James Bond came in the cinema. More specifically: THE James Bond wherein he is playing the antagonist Blofeld. Even the announcement that he would play in the new James Bond was greeted with joy under Bond fans. Who, if not Waltz, would follow in the film tradition of German speaking villains, after Gert Fröbe, Curd Jürgens and Klaus-Maria Brandauer. Financially Spectre is a success: it gains 880 million, only one James Bond movie was more successful. And still Christoph Waltz is not happy- with himself, with the result- “I can’t really pretend that I really succeeded at playing Blofeld. It had everything that it needed and all (the requisites) were checked, but it wasn’t what I aspired at”. He already noticed it when filming began, but at the time it was already too late. “An actor can only be really great, when all the possibilities are open.” He doesn’t want to say more about it but what he actually means is this: The chemistry between him and Sam Mendes wasn’t what he wanted it to be.

How does someone survive the PR-spectacle which is a James Bond movie? “I already survived worse”. And he adds: “There is a hint of excessiveness. I understand that with the premier you want to invite lots of guests. But should it really be at the Royal Albert Hall? With that you don’t really do it any good. It is still a movie, and it should stay a movie. The next premier will probably be a national holiday, and this time it was already a couple of days before one. What is so bad about a premiere cinema such as the Odeon in Leicester Square?”

His Blofeld stayed alive at the end of Spectre, would there thus be a next story with Christoph Waltz?” “That I don’t know, nobody knows. Not one word was said about that, except in the press. We don’t even know which studio will produce the next movie, if Daniel Craig will go on.” That also falls on the category of “keep on working”.

And making plans. He wants to direct, and is in the process of making a movie, even has the finances in place as well as filled all the parts with actors, but even in Hollywood an American dream can turn into a nightmare. “It is all very much like an unordered kindergarten” he says and keeps on explaining: “It is not completely dead, but at the moment it is in a condition where people only can say: “Has everyone lost their mind?!” “One of the producers, which wants to finance a big part of the movie, is blocking everything, while it is not arranged yet how big his part in the production is. After six months of work: it is still not moving on. Two actresses-from the Oscar winning category-have said yes, a first class camera man as well, everyone is ready-but at the moment nothing is moving. Then I rather not make it, film history will go on even without my directing contribution.” If you ask Christoph Waltz, who he would like to play in a movie, he answers “Muhammed Ali. I find him one of the great artists of the 20th century, a performance artist, who pays everything with cash and not on credit.” “What do mean with that?” “How he moves, he doesn’t lose his grace, his humor, all under physical treat. How he works through every defeat as an experience. When I think about him, a get a feeling of happiness. There is nothing more beautiful than his fights, even when he gets a hit.” In the eyes of Christoph Waltz, Muhammed Ali was the perfect actor, because he played like it wasn’t all a game. And because even his defeats were made part of his career.

On the 4th of October Christoph Waltz will be 60. When we mention it, he doesn’t move an inch. Will he throw a big party? He looks at his opponent like he is offended. He isn’t someone who likes to celebrate big? “Yes” He says and grins, ”That is how you can formulate it” (The sass is on here). How will he then celebrate his birthday?  “Let’s first presume that I will indeed turn 60. So, on my birthday at 1 pm I get the feeling, it would be nice to celebrate tonight. Then I start calling around and see who has the time. When they don’t have the time they are not there and when they do have the time they come. Those are still the best parties.”

He didn’t even imagine what it would be like to turn 60, when a woman around her thirties comes to the table, interrupts and says: “Hello” just to add one more thing: “You’re my favorite actor”. Then she moves away and leaves a smiling actor behind at the table. It bodes well with him, to life here in the capital city of film.

Christoph Waltz, the late movie star, is a man, who has fulfilled his dreams when he was already older, after lots of defeats and doubts. “It is a good thing that everything happened later in my career. All the success it is not only due to my own account”. He grins again: “I don’t want to life my life, believing that I have to suffer in order for my success to happen” Why not? “That is a protestant view, but I grew up catholic” Is he religious? “No, not since my youth”.

Only now and then he still remembers his old life, the former ‘survivor camp’. When the toaster in his kitchen doesn’t function anymore, he still thinks about how to fix it. His wife Judith then has to say to him, to throw the old toaster away; “Buy a new one” she says to her husband, ”You won two Oscars for heaven’s sake”.

[movieexpert1978]

Headcanon: Dusan

@makamu-a-tumbling:  ♒ for the headcanons meme - and Dusan  

Cooking/Food headcanon 

Dusan Mirkovic is not my character. 

Cooking with Dusan 

-Dusan is actually a relatively good cook. He hasn’t had too many accidents when making a meal and he’s very proud he didn’t set the kitchen on fire when he first started learning to cook. 

-however, Dusan doesn’t cook very often. Between parties and his rich lifestyle he either usual goes out or has left overs and he’s not too picky about either one. 

-if he’s very bored every now and then he’ll make a Serbian dish. 

-Usually after a party he’ll let Ngoc Lan Tran take the leftovers because it’s less junkfood for him, although sometimes he is surprised when she almost literally cleans out his fridge. 

-sometimes he likes to enjoy a quiet meal by himself and enjoy a cigar afterwards with a drink. 

With Elisa 

-Now he doesn’t do much cooking anymore as Elisa does most of it. She knows all sorts of recipes and he is all too happy to eat what she makes. 

-he particularly likes it when she makes pasta or steak or both, both is always the best in his book. 

-he turns into an even bigger goofball when Elisa is cooking because he can’t keep his hands off of her. Sometimes he’s either a cuddle bug or a sexual deviant. 

-with or without Elisa he’s terrible at cleaning dishes and oh so thankful for a dishwasher.  

[christophfanalways]

Opening night for Falstaff is the 13th, curious if anyone from the fandom will be attending??  @makamu-a-tumbling or @sisterbliss007    ?  

[wingsy-keeper-of-songs]

I lie awake at night to wait 'til you come in

The nightmares had gotten bad again. Hans didn’t know whether he’d be able to sleep at all given the frequency of the dreams. He settled for lying awake on his back, staring at the ceiling. There was just too much, he thought. He had seen so much throughout his life and there was no way it was ever going to leave him be. He sighed deeply and tried to close his eyes, but a noise from the other room startled him and he sat up immediately. A pair of familiar green eyes stared back at him and Hans felt compelled to cover himself a little, to preserve what was left of his modesty and dignity.

“What are you doing up?” He whispered. Shosanna crept closer and she sighed, sitting in the chair beside the bed.

“Thinking too much,” she replied. “I’m tired and I want to go to sleep, but my mind is racing and it won’t stop.” Hans understood. He’d had nights like those before.

“And coming to see me helps you, how exactly?” He asked curiously. Shosanna gave him a Look and he felt thoroughly chastised.

“I prefer your company than the Americans,” she said with a glance over her shoulder. “Sometimes I believe they only see Emmanuelle and not Shosanna.” Hans understood that feeling too. He felt highly underestimated by Aldo’s collection of men. It wasn’t their fault, really. Americans were like that naturally.

“I don’t see how I can help you.” He pointed out. She surprised him by sitting next to him and leaning back against the bed frame.

“Like I said, I much prefer your company. You don’t underestimate me.”

“Never,” he promised because he knew better. She looked at him and she smiled. For a while, things seemed a little brighter.

“May I stay with you?” She asked. He blinked for a moment.

“I…what?”

“May I stay with you?” She repeated. Hans didn’t know what the others might say about this, but Shosanna was looking at him expectantly and he really didn’t want to be alone tonight, so he nodded.

“Er, all right. That is, if you don’t mind.” He replied and was thankful that the low lighting of the room hid his blush. Shosanna smiled again and she curled next to him, much like a cat. Hans was certain sleep wouldn’t come to him now. He sighed and laid back, focusing on the ceiling once more. He wouldn’t be aware of her again until morning when he woke up.

[grundyscribbling]

More on elves, LaCE, and rape - feel free to skip if you find the topic upsetting.(It’s not very long, just trying to keep stuff off people’s dash they may not wish to see.) 

@mainecoon76 said:

...But the automatic assumption that Celebrian was raped bothers me on a different level. Canon never says that she was. Still I keep seeing it treated more or less as canon (in spite of LaCE, whatever your stance on that, but even accepting it, treated as a "exception"). Is this really the only torment that could traumatize a woman to the point of losing her joy in life? (I'm sure I read somewhere that torture and rape are a similar kind of trauma: both involve deliberate violation, humiliation, helplessness, and being exposed. Both can have similar long-term effects. I'd rather say it discounts the trauma of torture itself if we automatically assume rape.)

I always thought it was the experience of torture overall- regardless of whether or not ‘torture’ included ‘rape-  that made Celebrian sail. She no longer felt safe in Middle Earth, and there was nothing anyone, even her parents or Elrond, could say or do to change that. She couldn’t keep her mind off what happened and fully heal as long as she was in a place where she knew on some level it was possible for the same thing/something similar to happen again. So she had to go West. (That’s made sense to me from the time I first read about Celebrian, but I was an odd child who read a lot of history and was well familiar with the idea that humans can do really horrible things to each other before I ever read LotR, so maybe I’m an outlier here.) I don’t automatically assume rape, but I also don’t automatically discount it, either.

And @cycas, we can wave our hands and say ‘elves are fictional’ to excuse the ‘rape = death because it’s somehow uniquely worse than any other violation of free will/bodily integrity’ idea, but real world people are reading, including survivors of rape. The ones I know made the choices they made in order to live, not out of a desire to die. So I still find the idea crappy and victim-blaming, and at best coming from a place of enormous privilege/luck in not having dealt with the issue in one’s own life. (Alternately, a place of enormous ignorance, since I don’t imagine the statistics on rape were really all that different in Tolkien’s day, only that the silence and stigma surrounding the issue would have been greater.)

[noelsashiu]

Tag Game Rules: Complete the questions & say who tagged you in the beginning. When you're finished, tag people to do this survey. Have fun and enjoy! Thanks for the tag @movieexpert1978! 1. Are you named after someone? No 2. When was the last time you cried? 6 days ago 3. Do you like your handwriting? Not really I always wanted to write like my mom. 4. What is your favorite lunch meal? Wiener Schnitzel and French fries. 5. Do you have kids? No 6. If you were another person, would you be friends with you? Probably yes 7. Do you use sarcasm? Yes 8. Do you still have your tonsils? Yes 9. Would you bungee jump? Yes 10. What is your favorite kind of cereal? Cinnamon toast crunch 11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them of? No. 12. Do you think you're a strong person? No. 13. What is your favorite ice cream? Ben and Jerry's half baked. 14. What is the first thing you notice about people? Eyes. 15. What is the least favorite physical thing you like about yourself? I think my hands are too small. 16. What color pants and shoes are you wearing now? Dark blue pants no shoes. 17. What are you listening to right now? My TV watching soccer. 18. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Red. 19. Favorite smell? When I go into a bakery. 20. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? My mom. 21. Favorite sport to watch? Basketball 22. Hair color? Dark blonde 23. Eye color? Green brown 24. Do you wear contacts? No. But I love glasses! 25. Favorite food to eat? Pizza fungi 26. Scary movies or comedy? Scary movies. 27. Last movie you watched? Scary movie 2🙈😂 28. What color of shirt are you wearing? White 29. Summer or Winter? Summer 30. Hugs or kisses? Hugs 31. What book are you currently reading? Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children 32. Who do you miss right now? My dog she is in the living room 😒 33. What is on your mouse pad? I don't have one 34. What is the last TV program you watched? A German TV show called "Circus HalliGalli" 35. What is the best sound? When the basketball goes through the net 36. Rolling Stones or The Beatles? Neither, but I like the Beatles more 37. What is the furthest you have ever travelled? Paris 38. Do you have a special talent? I'm pretty good in basketball 39. Where were you born? No one will know this but... Bünde, Germany 😁 Ok this was fun I'll tag @sisterbliss007 @makamu-a-tumbling

[t-eyla]

For the drabble meme: Malapert and Angelica Schuyler (if you do Hamilton), otherweise I'd love one with Mycroft :) Thanks and feel free to shoot back

Ooh, Angelica! I

Angelica Schuyler // Hamilton // Malapert: Clever in manners of speech.

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She’s six, and Father is angry with her."Don't be smug, Angelica! It's unseemly."

"I'm sorry." She was just trying to be helpful.

“Angelica, as your husband, I ask you not tocorrect me in the presence of company.  Thingsmay be different in America, but here in London, it’s considered unseemly.”

“My apologies.” She’s learned not to protest.

“You are much smarter than you let on,” he writes. “Youshroud yourself in the pretense of mediocrity, and make a game of deceiving me.”

“Forgive me, Alexander,” she writes back. “Mostcircles consider female intelligence unseemly. I must not offend.”

------

Send me a word and a character/series/pairing and I will write a drabble!

[scriptshrink]

Hi! First of all, thank you for this blog Now, I have a question which I hope you can help me with: I am writing a story (fanfic) set in an alternative history steam. One of my main characters worked and works as a spy. According to my notes, he had a life-changing and traumatic experience, leading to survivor's guilt. Here is my question: I don't want to go the nightmares route, so I need some ideas for subtle symptoms other characters could pick up on? Thank you for your help

Survivor’s guilt isn’t a diagnosis used anymore by modern psychologists - it’s been incorporated into the diagnosis of “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD). Check out my post on the symptoms of PTSD here!

[cesperanza]

makamu-a-tumbling

commented on staff's post

“The internet could change next week, and not in a good way”

@cesperanza I agree with the principle as well, but as I (fellow humanities major here) really have to work on my code literacy (more specifically, my active ability to code and use html and css), the learning curve is making me cautious at the moment. But I am definitely interested in the way this is going to go.

I hear you! That said, a lot of the new tools make this easier than in the old days. Beakerbrowser prompts you to create a website, for example. And I’m sure coding fans will make interfaces that less technical fans can just sign up for--and lo it was in the old days, when lots of decentralized but technically-minded fans hosted and helped other fans whose fic and art they liked.  But also, as in the old days, fans will write instructions for other fans and help them do what’s needed.  I learned to make a webpage from a cheat sheet that Resonant wrote for me. Tumblr was totally not intuitive for me when we started, but the xkit hacks made it work. I’m confident we will bring each other along.