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deluxewhump · 3 years ago

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Do you think we could get a piece/snippet where Zee “reverts”? Maybe Cam says something that triggers him or grabs him a little too rough by mistake and Zee just slips back into Box Boy before he can catch himself.

Alex and Zee: Accidental Whump/ Zee acting like Z2

I ended up making this from Roman's POV, because I love the perspective of an "outsider" looking on. This is Alex and accidental whump, and not Cam, but I hope you enjoy all the same!

cw: accidental whump, bbu, finger whump, fear, cowering, past trauma, past conditioning, hurt/comfort , pet whump, brief addiction mention

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The first time Roman saw evidence of the way things used to be with his hosts' boxboy, it was a complete freak accident.

He was helping Alex move his old desk out of his room, down the narrow hall and through the sunny midday apartment to the front door. Zee was awoken from a nap, probably by their shuffling and bumping into things as they maneuvered the heavy old thing through narrow doorways. He stood with his thick, coppery hair an almost comical mess from sleeping, blinking at them in an oversized t-shirt.

"Get the door for us, wouldja Zee?" Alex asked.

Zee went ahead in stocking feet over the bare floors to open the front door. He waited near it while the two of them approached more slowly, waddling with the desk between them. It was difficult to grip the top of it. There wasn't much space to get their fingers under in order to lift its weight with any kind of ease. They had to stop at the doorway to get better grip, and to tilt it twenty-five degrees, which they'd figured out was the best method from the other two doorways they’d squeezed it through already.

This time when they tilted it, one of the desk’s drawers began to slide out, slow but gaining momentum. Zee reached for it on reflex at the precise same time Alex and Roman quickly righted the desk back to level to correct the problem. The desk smashed into Zee's fingers, pinning them for a moment between the heavy top slab of wood and the doorway.

Somehow, all he did was whimper as he jerked his hand back, cradling it to his chest. Alex’s face fell with realization, and he dropped his side of the desk so fast that Roman lost his tenuous grip and dropped his end on his own foot.

“SHIT!” he barked in surprise. “Goddammit.”

His outburst spooked an already hurt Zee. The poor kid slammed his back into the pantry door, breaking one of the flimsy slats as he sunk to the ground and covered his head like a schoolkid in a drill.

Roman removed his foot from beneath the desk. He wiggled his toes in his sneaker. He'd be fine. He wasn't so sure about their boxboy’s fingers, but his toes were fine.

He heard the jangle of keys, turned to see a woman in black slacks and a silky silver blouse locking the door to her apartment across the hall. He was standing in the front door with half of a desk jutting out of it, and couldn't really close it in a hurry. Normally, he would've waved to her and smiled, made a comment about moving furniture in the heat, but he didn't want to be seen by anyone, especially some neighbor lady. Who knew what miniscule tip could be his undoing? Some tiny detail, someone who knew someone who knew someone. He turned his back to her and waited for her heels to click down the hallway and reach the stairwell, turning slightly as she went so if she looked back she would not be able to glimpse his face.

Alex was squatting on his heels in front of his boxboy, talking softly to him. Zee was visibly shaking, like Ivan used to when he was jonesing. His posture was so different it was like he'd been possessed by someone else, someone Roman had never seen before. He was making himself as small as possible, as if he was trying to protect all his vulnerable points at the same time. Head, ribs, the hurt fingers, shins.

Alex lowered himself all the way down onto the kitchen floor in front of him, scooting real close and putting his legs, bent at the knee, on either side of Zee like extra protection. An extra barrier between him and the world. Roman watched, mildly horrified but utterly unable to look away as Alex soothed him down from whatever this was.

"Cam's gonna be home soon, too," he was saying softly, with so much affection in his voice that Roman felt a stab of it towards the poor kid himself. "And you know he's probably gonna bring you something, because he loves you so much, right?" His tone grew lighter, just a little teasing. "How come he never brings me anything, huh? I like blueberry cheesecake. It's only ever for you. Why is that?"

Zee smiled. It was a weak, watery smile, but Alex took that headway and reached out to pet his wild, slept-in hair.

"Let me see them, sweetheart. Please?"

Sweetheart, Roman thought. That was not how Alex and Zee normally operated. This was a glimpse into another time.

Reluctantly, Zee handed him his banged-up fingers. Alex touched them so gently Roman could almost see it had happened before, or something like it. Alex coming to the rescue was formative to their relationship.

"Can you bend them?"

He could.

Alex leaned in and kissed Zee's knuckles in a chaste, kiss-it-better sort of way. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to."

Zee, who had not spoken once since he came out from his nap, nodded that he knew this.

Alex stroked his cheek. "What do you wanna do?"

Roman couldn't quite catch Zee's answer, it was too quiet and meant for Alex’s ears alone. But Alex got up and helped him to his feet. Roman, not knowing how long they would be, leaned his elbows on the desk and waited.

Sure enough, Alex came back a minute later speaking in his completely normal everyday voice. "Wanna try that again?" he said, picking up his end of the desk. Roman didn't mention his foot, and they managed to get it to the curbside without further incident.

Later, when Cam came back from work, Roman learned though overheard conversation that Zee had acted strangely. He'd acted like he was "back at the house", and Alex had apparently granted his request to lie down on a sleeping bag in his closet.

Why he wanted to lie down in a closet was unclear, but Cam seemed to understand just fine. The two of them disappeared soon after, into Alex's room for what Roman could only assume was to check on their (rather beloved, it seemed to him) boxboy.

#bbu #accidental whump #finger whump #hurt/comfort #alex and zee #past trauma #fear #cowering #pet whump #addiction mention

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taylorswifthongkong · 4 years ago

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Taylor Swift broke all her rules with Folklore — and gave herself a much-needed escape The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency. By Alex Suskind

“He is my co-writer on ‛Betty’ and ‛Exile,’” replies Taylor Swift with deadpan precision. The question Who is William Bowery? was, at the time we spoke, one of 2020’s great mysteries, right up there with the existence of Joe Exotic and the sudden arrival of murder hornets. An unknown writer credited on the year’s biggest album? It must be an alias.

Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore — a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner — delivered.

“The only people who knew were the people I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and a small management team,” Swift, 30, tells EW of the album's hush-hush recording sessions. That gave the intimate Folklore a mystique all its own: the first surprise Taylor Swift album, one that prioritized fantastical tales over personal confessions.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil — and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums — something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness — something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vain, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy?

That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies?

I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing?

I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

It was weird because I had never made an album and not played it for my girlfriends or told my friends. The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team. So that's the smallest number of people I've ever had know about something. I'm usually playing it for everyone that I'm friends with. So I had a lot of friends texting me things like, "Why didn't you say on our everyday FaceTimes you were making a record?"

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret?

Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that?

Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness?

Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story?

I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House?

Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"?

F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right?

Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally?

I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change?

It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event?

I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor?

Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room?

I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first.

It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

"I almost didn't process it as an album," says Taylor Swift of making Folklore. "And it's still hard for me to process as an entity or a commodity, because [it] was just my daydream space."

I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn-of-phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere.

Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future.

I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

#ew #entertainment weekly #article #interview #folklore promo #folklore interview #quote #aaron dessner #jack antonoff #joe alwyn

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life-rewritten · 4 years ago

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Start up: Nam Dosan and his helping hands

I find it challenging to accept finding clues for 'the husband scavenger hunt' type kdramas because they always have this leftover annoyance and unfairness when the second lead gets duped and broken-hearted in the end. Shows like the Reply me series, Hospital playlist, Dreamhigh etc. always use this device, flesh out both men and their reasons and love for our main girl whilst making us hurt with the push and pull of how both men are perfect for her. If one loses her, we all lose. In Start-Up, Jipyeong joins that list of the second lead men who are known to play with our heartstrings and get us rooting for him. He's Cyrano; he's pitiful, the one who's been by the girl's side this whole time, the one who spoke to her and won her heart, the soul of the letters she clings to in her mind as her happiness and person that she wants. Her fantasy for a prince come true. He's exactly that. This is why he should end up with the girl except the main lead Dosan isn't someone to forget, he seems determined and driven to get the girl, he looks ready to give it all for her. Who should she choose? After watching episode 1 and 2, seeing the in-depth and sad yet profound background story of Jipyeong, our minds automatically leans towards him. It makes no sense why he is second lead; he has this incredible bond with her grandmother, he's precisely the guy on paper she's looking for, and he has this innate thing in him ready to protect and look out for her. In a way, fortune has brought them back together again so why is Dosan still the one she probably will end up with? I've written this analysis to stand behind Dosan despite the many people who have dropped him and gone aboard Jipyeong's ship. I want to say that as a writer the show has already given Dosan the girl 80% he's the endgame why you ask because of Fate (Luck)—warning a very long essay upcoming.

Nam Dosan and Dalmi are meant to be together

The first reason Nam Do san enters Dalmi's heart without knowing who he actually was (she held onto his picture, his name and also how smart he was (from seeing him win the awards) is because fate wanted them to interact and meet each other. Hear me out before you roll your eyes, it feels more like fate is pushing her and Jipyeong together since he's the one who wrote the letters that got her out of her depression and were her rock and anchor when she was broken and looking for something to hold on to. His words comforted her, but fate still made happen in Dosan's name. Fate has supported Dosan and Dalmi from the start. It's fate who pulled Jipyeong to notice Dosan on those tv screens winning his gold medal (a psychological trick to get him to pick the newspaper later on and be open to using him as a proxy for the letter). Likewise, him seeing Dosan winning a gold medal also hints to who's winning at the end of this. The medal has other meanings as we find out in episode 5 so I'll just move on from that for now and continue with this first. Here's how Fate/The universe is on Dosan's side instead of Jipyeong.

The universe is supportive of Dosan's journey. Most things that happen to Dosan and Dalmi seem convenient and just random luck because the universe supports them in the story. Dalmi mentions this in episode 5; it's the writers warning us already. First Dosan is good at manifesting what he wants at the right moment and time:

He needed to get support from Jipyeong (his role model who he adored and looked up to) to get into the Sandbox (something Dalmi's inspiration created/she's also the little girl on the swings). This is manifested to him by Dalmi showing up and him selling baseball being the reason she finds him (follow your dreams). Because of her, Jipyeong has to pay attention, mentor and push him into wanting to be better. It's all fate conspiring to get him what he wants; his dreams to succeed in his company despite everyone looking down on him because he's a loser.

The universe provides him with Dalmi's love and support. Dalmi is the companion he never knew he needed (he realized it so much in episode 5 as she was giving his speech; she was his missing piece to his company). She's his catalyst for inspiration and the spark that was missing from his company's startup. He's given a chance to get into Sandbox because of her, (first because of her, Jipyeong backs him in Sandbox hoping he fails, and then second she chooses him to join her team)

The universe has set someone else on his team; Alex, the other Korean American, is also another way Dosan manifests his dream into a reality. Despite everyone looking down on him, Alex is amazed at Dosan and has a past with him that he wants to repay (I'll talk more about how both Dosan and Dalmi's 'choices' is why fate is on their side in another post)

Fate is on Dosan's side, and it keeps on helping him to get there with the presence of Dalmi. Fate wants them to be together regardless if she doesn't know that he's not her first love, the universe already set him up like that by his name being the proxy for the letters, they were destined from the start.

Nam Dosan always chooses/gets the real Dalmi

The second reason why Dosan and Dalmi are meant to be together, for now, is because he loves and knows the real Dalmi. Jipyeong has been writing letters to Dalmi, listening to her express her self and he never paid attention or remembered who the real Dalmi is. That's already a sign that his slowness will cost him the win in this race. Dosan who the letter was intended for from the start (because it was to his name) reads her messages, and he's affected by who Dalmi is. He chooses to keep going to her side because of this. Her words inspire him, and her genuine self makes him want to push out of his comfort zone and want to win. Her presence in his life is so significant to him because she's meant to be there and it's vice versa for her. They both needed each other, both being pulled to each other without knowing why. Its destiny.

Let's focus a bit more on this fact about authenticity, both Dalmi and Dosan are on equal grounds (they may seem like they're just acting with each other but they're not they see through each other when it matters), they both think they're nobodies, they're not necessary, they lose on purpose for other people's happiness, and they react the same way to things. The first time we're given this idea of how similar they are is when she understands why he would lie about being wealthy and prosperous; she just did the same thing in episode 1, so it made her understanding and grateful instead of thinking about the fact she lied to him, Dalmi focused on how she found someone just like her, someone who understands what it's like to be her(it brought her comfort and confidence that he's the right partner for her)

Dosan is her father’s mirror image (the right choice)

The third, Dosan, is a mirror character for her dad. The show has had so many people come to her to mock her for choosing to stick with her dad. When in reality, as we know it was the right choice, that consequences for her choice are slowly unveiling. It's also the reason why fate is on her side She's the inspiration of Sandbox (she's always been destined to enter and become CEO, she became great at what she does because of how many times she spent helping her dad with his own startups, and she stayed untainted by greediness and wealth because she chose him she has heart and different perspectives to the others who just follow things by the books; this is important because that's what her most significant strength is).

The show is already showing you that Dalmi always choosing things that may not seem perfect for her in the long run rather than the ideal choice (Jipyeong), is already foreshadowing why she'll pick Dosan at the end (if he doesn't change). I noticed Dosan's connection to her dad when he mentioned that the food he wanted to eat in episode 3 was Fried chicken, and Jipyeong told him to erase it and criticized him for his lack of communication skills. Dosan is like that fried chicken (a weird symbol but hear me out this show has so many signs for these two), it's not very fancy, or romantic as a meal (both Injae and Jipyeong reject and look down on it because it holds the opposite connotations to wealth and success).

Still, it has a sense of comfort and authenticity for Dalmi. See again; authenticity makes its way back to Dalmi and Dosan. Fried chicken is what connected Dalmi to her father; it's also what he went to get for her before he died. It represents family, unity and just a time she was the most grateful for because it brought her to spend time with her father. It was all he could give her without it seeming like it was something, it's just like Dosan who she appreciates his hands, it may seem like nothing, but it means the world to her that he's just there by her side, together and close and real (chooses her authentic self). Just like her father needed Dalmi's steadfast support, Dosan also needs her by his side because of that; she's also his helping hand. Still, he also is that to her by choosing her to become a CEO of their sandbox company, thereby helping her achieve her father's dreams. This is again the universe supporting and bringing them together to make their dreams a reality.

Jipyeong; the fanstasy and ideal man/The mentor

First look at the ending of episode 5, the show already shows you through visual cues what Jipyeong represents; a mentor for both Dalmi and Dosan. And it breaks my heart. Life already assigned him to be behind the scenes a tool to bring them together. Let's pause and look at what Jipyeong represents. Jipyeong represents fantasy. As much as he was important to Dalmi when she was younger by being the reason she was happy all those times, he was like a fantasy to run to that wasn't real. He wasn't the real Nam Do San. As much as behind the scenes, he's the reason for why Dosan entered her life (both times), and he's falling for her slowly. Like I said the picture above is pretty telling what he is to her and Dosan, life has assigned him as a mentor. Apart from his wealth, knowledge and being her ideal guy on paper, he isn't doing much for Dalmi as of now. (Hear me out before you lose your minds) Yes, he helped her in episode 5 by teaching her how to speak and present and its all cute that he's there. He isn't Dosan who stayed up with her and stayed by her side through the whole making of the product. He is helpful as a mentor, able to offer his knowledge and wealth to help Dalmi become successful but as we've seen that's not what Dalmi needs, she just needs someone to hold her hand and be by her side and inspire her to be better. (Do san keeps on doing this for her). Jipyeong represents idealism of our first love, a fantasy, an ideal situation, but that isn't enough to make him the right person for her. Both her and Dosan actually catalyze and affect each other positively, they push each other and provide for each other things they didn't know they needed. Still, they also provide (through the lessons from each other) a healthy but dose of realism.

That's what love is meant to be about, both equally providing and aiding the other by each other's side, pushing each other to their calling.

I keep on saying it, but the Jipyeong/Fake Nam Do San she fell in love with is a fantasy, he's good with his words, but they don't hold as much authenticity as Nam Do san's actual words to her, she may fangirl over his texts and letters, but it doesn't mean anything. I fangirl over fantasies (celebrities speeches, love letters written by other people, movie characters) all the time, doesn't mean it's my true love or my soulmate you know? Unless Dosan's character switches, nothing has made me think Jipyeong is even close to being who Dalmi needs, I don't see him as her one despite him realizing how great she is and helping her from behind the scenes because he's been assigned by life to be her helper, not a soulmate. Sorry, not sorry.

Symbolism, Foreshadowing and Visual Devices pointing to Dosan

Lastly, the proof is with the writers: Symbolism, subtext and foreshadowing devices for Namdosan and Dalmi.

Let's mention a few:

1. The music box; she wrote about it in her letter. In episode 3, after spending time with him, she realized opening it was wonderful. Foreshadowing, knowing the real Do san, she finally opened the music box. This inspires him to go to her side and choose to stay there despite what's to come)

2. The baseball that brought them together despite Jipyeong and Grandma thinking there was no way it would happen. Fate had other plans. The ball received says what they are meant to be for each other, a way to follow your dreams. It's a representation of fate pulling them to each other to make their dreams a reality. Emphasis as if I haven't said it enough times already they are meant to be with each other, and they are destined to be together.

3. His hands; Her helping hand she needs, a hand pulling her up when she's down, lifting her when she's low, pulling her to her dreams, a companion by her side always, comfort, intelligence (as his friends explained in episode 5. This is also what he's looked down for when it comes to romance; his logical, robotic personality but its needed for her company, and to teach her.) Lastly, his hands represent his authenticity and potential. (like his friend said it's not about how it looks but what he does with it)

4. Her letters and his name; the messages affect him and make him choose her because of her real voice and her authentic self. His name is what makes them meet again, remember he's the actual recipient of her notes from the start.

5. Sandbox; both their dreams and reason for inspiration. They were always on their way to get there; to get her to make her dad's plans a reality, to make his company dreams a reality, a place for a push to become better, both are a team here, both are meant to work with each other on equal ground, and again both are inspiring each other and bringing their positives out.

6. And even fried chicken; her dad, authenticity vs fantasy, comfort, warmth, togetherness and looked down upon but what she wants in the end

From episode 5:

1. Tarzan and Jane; from the story, Tarzan is slow and can't provide accurately for Jane the romantic/ideal things she is meant to like and want (Flowers, bunnies etc.). Just like Jipyeong can provide for Dalmi all the things that are intended to be an ideal for Dalmi (his wealth, his status, making Dosan look rich, providing the texts for Dosan to send to her, the letters etc.). Still, it isn't what she wants in the end. Dalmi says out loud that she overlooks the pretty on the surface things, she wants the useful stuff, like Dosan's helping hands, Dosan's presence by her side, and his words of wisdom to help them create a product in episode 5. Tarzan may seem like he has nothing to offer but the rocks and the gifts he gave Jane is actually what was needed to survive and be happy. Dalmi recognized that. That's foreshadowing who she will choose.

2.The sweets: At first, I wondered why they kept using it as a recurring motif to show Dosan eager to choose what Dalmi chose for him. But no it's foreshadowing. Jipyeong tries to steal the sweets from Dosan unintentionally, and interferingly (just like he's been unintentionally falling for Dalmi and is slowly starting to want to reveal the truth). Still, Dosan chides him and takes back all the ones she chose for him. This foreshadows that he will lose her to Jipyeong, but because of his heart, and determination, he'll get her back. She's also like the sweets; people don't see the importance to her yet, but Dosan and his friends are excited and eager to have all the free food and sweets because they've struggled for a bit, they have this childlike fascination with it, and she joins them as well later. Dosan doesn't overlook Dalmi's importance, she means a lot to him, and he appreciates and is grateful for her just like the sweets.

3.Lastly, the handwriting test/ the ability to test forgery: Another symbol for both Dosan and Dalmi. It's telling that the test was able to see 99.8% of what was real and what was fake (idealism vs realism), but it failed to recognize the new handwriting created by Injae and the others. This is foreshadowing there will be a moment when Dalmi won't be able to acknowledge idealism vs realism when Jipyeong reveals who he is. However, it doesn't mean that the handwritings were authentic, they were still forged even though the machine picked them up as real. Dalmi will question things, but at the end of the day, she already said it with the Jane metaphor, she will choose what's accurate and useful to her. This also makes the metaphor she told her grandmother (Jipyeong overheard this I think) about the rain and the storms to create something sweet, instead of choosing again what is ideal (just sunshine), Dalmi chooses the other way all the time, and she appreciates the results of it. That's why I believe she will end up with Dosan/choose him if he doesn't change.

So yeh for now Dosan is endgame for Dalmi, Jipyeong has been shoved into the role to bring them together and fulfill their goals and destinies. This could change because there’s so much more stuff that can happen, Dosan maybe tempted by greed later on and change and that will pull Jipyeong ahead. But if Dosan doesn’t change, then there’s no doubt that Dalmi even after she knows he’s not her first love, will not choose him. Let’s see how it turns out.

#start up #tvn start up #start up kdrama #kdrama net #analysis #november #fcsed #cwg #nam do san #seo dalmi #han jipyeong #nam joo hyuk #bae suzy

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ohmylcve · 4 months ago

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there was a fire flowing inside of coraline's body from the moment she noticed that alex was at the same party, a fire that seemed barely impossible to be extinguished; was it only because she hadn't properly tried to extinguish - because she never wanted it to be extinguished - or was it because this fire had been kept hidden for so much time, and it just couldn't anymore? whichever was the answer for this question, what truly mattered in that moment was that cora lacked her own manners, morals and whatever else she would have when sober. if she was sober, she would never embarass her so-called boyfriend. if she was sober, she would've understood that this was a mere coincidence and would avoid at all costs interacting to him. but what she wouldn't do as sober would be to feel nothing: no matter how much cora would try, she would always fail to not feel a thing for alex. he did not deserve all of what she kept hidden - which was the exact reason why she kept it this way. "i am always overreacting on your perspective, aren't i? that's precisely why we broke up, if i remember it well." she fires back. although there was an incredible amount of rage inside of her, there was still this part that kept on trying to reach the surface, once it was really deep down. as much as she was getting the knowledge that perhaps in all of her life, the only thing she would get from him would be the acid words and the misread situations, the deeper part that wanted to reach the surface was the one who kept telling her 'even though that's all he has to offer, you want it. you want whatever it is that he can give you, because you still love him'. "i don't need to take a breath to realise that someone's been an asshole just because he can't deal with his own emotions" though his words cut like knives, she was determined to keep on talking, to keep on showing her own perspective as the truth, which was a trait of hers. "as if." she rolled her eyes, stepping closer to him, not truly believing he would do such a thing. "why?" she asked, and not wanting to be fooled again, she added: "why did you act like a child when i got closer?"

as coraline raged at him, her words slurring slightly from the alcohol, alex couldn't help but feel a mix of amusement and disbelief. she was acting like he had committed some unforgivable sin, but the truth was, they had been over for a long time. her reaction was completely over the top, and frankly, misplaced. alex glanced over her shoulder at the pool behind her. the thought crossed his mind almost casually: what if he just threw her in? the cool water would definitely calm her down, and the idea of her sputtering and drenched, her anger extinguished by the shock of the water, was tempting. he could picture it clearly—her eyes widening in surprise, the indignant shriek as she hit the water, followed by a moment of stunned silence. it would certainly make for a memorable end to this encounter. "you’re overreacting," alex repeated, his voice calm and dismissive. the smirk on his face only aimed to fuel her anger more. he wasn’t taking her outburst seriously at all. in fact, he found it a bit exciting that she cared enough to make such a scene. it was flattering, in a twisted way, to see her so worked up over him. his mind was racing with amusement. why did she think she could just storm in and start dictating how he should act? they had broken up ages ago, and he had moved on, or so he tricked himself into thinking. seeing her there tonight was unexpected, sure, but it didn’t mean anything more than that. she wasn't the center of his universe anymore, and it annoyed him that she seemed to think she still was. alex glanced around, noticing a few partygoers peeking out at them from the house. perfect, now they were putting on a show. her anger seemed so self-centered, as if she couldn’t fathom that he might have his own life, his own feelings, separate from her. it was like she was stuck in the past, unable to accept that things had changed. she wasn't the only one who had feelings, and it pissed alex off that she seemed to forget that. "seriously, cora," he said, shaking his head with a bemused grin. "you need to stop acting like everything revolves around you." he let his gaze drift back to the pool. the idea of tossing her in was becoming more and more appealing. not just because it would cool her down, but because it would be a dramatic punctuation mark to this absurd scene. it would remind her—and everyone else—that he wasn’t going to be dragged into her drama. "you need to take a breath and think about why you’re really angry." with that, alex took a step closer to her, his eyes locked onto hers. "or," he said, a smirk playing on his lips, "i could just throw you in the pool and cool you off myself."

#cora's #cora & alex #hiddcnhorizcns

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tenderloincherub · 3 years ago

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Red, White and Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston)

My thoughts on rwrb, a thread (I do know this doesn’t work by threads but it’s such an opening quote)

It’s been a bit more than a week since I finished this book, and it gave me * feelings * but if I let more time pass I’ll forget what I want to say about it. So this is a sort of review/opinion/basically-my-thoughts-on-it

I love how dreamy it can be. I know it may not be realistic but that’s somehow the point of it -to picture a world where Alex and Henry us queer people could be together and accepted and happy and carry on with our lives. I read it along with a friend, and she told me she disliked the ending because things solved too easily -I disagree, we have the right to see such world. I mean, from the beginning it was obvious it wouldn’t be a tragedy, you know?, like it’s that dreamy-happy from the beginning. We human beings have the right to read to daydream and feel hope, just as much as we read to learn and reflect upon the world and upon ourselves. It’s valid, and it’s always bee: that’s why we have Shakespeare’s both tragedies AND comedies, that’s why we have The Count of Monte Cristo (sorry, that one’s not happy for me) AND Jane Austen’s novels too. Literature’s point is also to give hope, to turn on lights. Like Dickinson said: “ The Poets light but Lamps — [...]”

The beginning didn’t really get me, that part did feel like a Wattpad-enemies-to-lovers-trope. I am sorry. I mean the part of the Cake-Gate and how they’re suddenly forced to fake to be friends. BUT I read Casey’s annotations and she wrote:

“One thing I loved doing with this book is taking tried & true romcom tropes – like forcing two people who “hate” each other and trapping them in a small enclosed space – and making it gay.” (So she convinced me.)

Alex’s sexual orientation crisis just hit me when I was having a crisis on my own. I loved his growth (as a person, in his relation with his bisexuality, his feelings, his relationship with Henry, as a to-be-politican), and it was quite honestly portrayed.

Ok, but Henry. Henry, oh, my. Oh, sweet, poetic, tender, beautiful, strong, brave-hearted, (hot), breathtaking Henry. He’s the one who made me wish to be a gay poet prince. His character is the most beautiful one that could have been written. I’m sorry, I just love him so much. He was so soft all the way in his love for Alex, he was so self-less but had also his growth to take the reins of his life and the way he wrote. Sorry, I sort of fell in love with him but also projected myself in his interests and some stuff. This friend with whom I read the book actually told me: if you were a character form the book, you’d be Henry. And that was * flattering *.

Well, all the characters. There was such diversity but all (most) of them lovable. And the dynamics between them. *chef’s kiss*

Rafael Luna was the portion of reality this book needed. His story was unfair, but his character was so strong, I could picture him in real life, actually. I loved his character as well, all the way long, I hurt for him but I admired him more.

There is this one thing that I didn’t like. Before saying it, I’ll make clear that I’m not into politics, not in the way that they don’t interest me or anything, but that I don’t know about the topic. Now, I feel the way it portrays American and English government is a complete polarization. Okay, I get monarchy is outdated and that democracy is actualized, but you can’t tell me one is black and the other white. I feel Casey portrayed American government flaws being on the people that run it, and English government flaws being on the system (so that, no matter the people, everything is wrong with the crown). *I’m not deffending England, just feeling it gives a sesgated idea.

Back to stuff I love: I am mexican, and Alex’s mexican side was satisfying. I mean, I’ve seen tons of latin characters in books, movies, and tv shows, and they rarely step out of some stereotypes. Alex’s sudden bursts of Spanish, appearance and cultural traits were so natural and meaningful and real. I really loved it.

Besides that, the way Alex’s religion and bisexuality converged was also beautiful. The passages where he compares holding Henry’s face with holding the Bible, and the mail where he talks about sacred places, and the prayer he remembers... Just beautfiul and meaningful.

“Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.”

Alex’s narration is so deeply Catholic, which I think all Catholics can relate to. (Another annotation from Casey)

Their letter-like mails, the excerpts from historical characters letters were so romantic, poetic, heartachingly beautiful. This really was my favorite thing from the book. It’s a complete new way of communication, that goes so profound into their hearts and feelings, and gives a whole new perspective, exploring Henry and Alex’s relationship so deeply. [Also, I really hated when they were outed and their letters became public :( my babies deserved better). I’ve been searching for Michelangelo’s letters since and because of them.

So, wow, this why I never write on goodreads, but I feel more liberty and just comfortable here on Tumblr. I won’t extend into my favorite quotes and my playlist and stuff that reminds me of this -there’ll be more entries for that.

Thanks for reading this, and feel free to share your thoughts on my thoughts.

Sending love.

#red white and royal blue #rwrb #rwrb henry #book review #bookworm #goodreads #thoughts #just thoughts #books i love #books i'm reading #casey mcquiston #i just love henry #ok but really #i just love #henry wales #i just love these two #this should be in goodreads not here i know

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home-is-where-the-books-are · 3 years ago

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The wood was going to splinter. The signs must have been made incorrectly; the circle of protection would not hold. Alex looked right and left at the useless Bonesmen in their ridiculous robes. If Darlington were here, he would stay and fight, make sure the Grays were contained and Reyes was kept safe.

The halogens dimmed, surged.

“Fuck you, Darlington,” Alex muttered beneath her breath, already turning on her heel to run.

Boom.

I want to see this scene from Darlington's perspective in the next book. That is, he saw that Tara was being killed, rushed to Alex, and suddenly sees that his Dante is going to run away. "Stern, don't you dare. You and I have been through all this, you know what to do. Don't you dare run away. STERN !!"

(Actually, everything most likely was not like that, and in general it is not very clear where the influence on the Grays and Alex was from the murder of Tara, and where from the demonic essence of Daniel, but I like to think that this BOOM was precisely because of "Fuck you, Darlington "

#leigh bardugo #ninth house #darlington #alex stern #daniel arlington

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path-of-my-childhood · 4 years ago

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Taylor Swift Broke All Her Rules With Folklore - And Gave Herself A Much-Needed Escape

By: Alex Suskind for Entertainment Weekly Date: December 8th 2020 (EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year cover)

The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency.

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Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore - a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner - delivered.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil - and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums - something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness - something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We’ve spent the year quarantined in our houses, trying to stay healthy and avoiding friends and family. Were you surprised by your ability to create and release a full album in the middle of a pandemic? TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vein, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy? That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies? I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

One of the other unique things about Folklore — the parameters around it were completely different from anything you'd done. There was no long roll out, no stadium-sized pop anthems, no aiming for the radio-friendly single. How fearful were you in avoiding what had worked in the past? I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing? I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Folklore includes plenty of intimate acoustic echoes to what you've done in the past. But there are also a lot of new sonics here, too — these quiet, powerful, intricately layered harmonics. What was it like to receive the music from Aaron and try to write lyrics on top of it? Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret? Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that? Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness? Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story? I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House? Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

There are a handful of songs on Folklore that feel like pretty clear nods to your personal life over the last year, including your relationships with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. How long did it take to crystallize the feelings you had around both of them into “My Tears Ricochet” or “Mad Woman”? I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"? F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right? Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally? I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

That theme continues in the next verse, which is a pretty overt nod to what’s been happening during COVID. As someone who lives in Nashville, how difficult has it been to see folks on Lower Broadway crowding the bars without masks? I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change? It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event? I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor? Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room? I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I wanted to talk about some of the lyrics on Folklore. One of my favorite pieces of wordplay is in “August”: that flip of "sipped away like a bottle of wine/slipped away like a moment in time.” Was there an "aha moment" for you while writing that? I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first. It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

On the flip side, "Peace" is bit more defined in terms of how one approaches a relationship. There's this really striking line, "The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I can never give you peace?" How did that line come to you? I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn of phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere. Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

When we last spoke, in April 2019, we were talking about albums we were listening to at the time and you professed your love for the National and I Am Easy to Find. Two months later, you met up with Aaron at their concert, and now, we're here talking about the National again. Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future. I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

*** For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

#taylor swift #interview #entertainment weekly #folklore album #folklore era #video

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gncrevan · 3 years ago

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Self-Interest and Ex Machina (2014, dir. Alex Garland)

spoilers ahead

a pristinely designed and shot thriller that explores different forms of exploitation. nathan's position as both employer to caleb and creator-owner to the robot women mirrors both class relationships and abusive domestic power dynamics. at the same time, caleb's interest in ava is equally possessive and fetishistic, just through the lense of someone who perceives himself as her saviour, while also seeking to utilize her as a tool to his own liberation. ultimately, those attitudes prove to be both their downfall, as ava refuses to play the role she has been assigned. it is nice to see a film in which a woman's self interest isn't punished, in which she ultimately gets what she wants precisely because she subverts the male-perspective storytelling. ava isn't helpless, nurturing, sexually gratifying or a price to be won to the men in her life. she is selfish and thereby escapes subjugation.

as a thriller, ex machina creates a powerful eerie and uncomfortable atmosphere. we know from the get-go that something isn't right. and even though i could see all the twists from a mile away (nathan was just too unlikeable, his creations too uncanny), i still felt emotionally involved in ava's fate. the ending was incredibly gratifying and when she finally got to step out of that cramped, claustrophobic bunker, it was like a weight lifted from my chest.

some commenters said that they watched the movie from caleb's or nathan's perspective, but i think the point of view was actually gradually shifted from caleb as the entry into this world, to ava as the real protagonist. on a meta-narrative level, this mirrors the turing test, as we become aware of ava (and by proxy also kyoko and the earlier models) as a character with interiority, thereby humanizing her to the audience.

#ex machina #alex garland #oscar isaac #domnhall gleeson #alicia vikander #nor does film analysis #nor watches telly #sci fi

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mimeparadox · 4 years ago

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Alias vs. Nikita: Sydney Bristow and Nikita Mears: On Ethos

It took Danny for Sydney to even consider that SD-6 was not what it claimed to be.

All told, the core premise of Alias is not one that stands up to scrutiny. In order for SD-6 to successfully fool nearly its entire staff into thinking that it was legitimately part of the C.I.A., the organization would have had to be either identical to the C.I.A., which presents myriad problems; its members would have had to be not nearly as innocent or patriotic as Alias pretends they are; or not nearly as perceptive or paranoid as spooks are required to be.

Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that the latter (*1) is true. Consider, for example, how the existence of the Alliance is common among SD-6 members. Somehow, despite the fact that the cartel is precisely the sort of threat a group like SD-6 would be designed to handle—“the very people I thought I was fighting against,” Sydney claims—nobody ever finds it weird that SD-6…never actually fights it. More relevantly, there’s the fact that SD-6 had a policy of eliminating security threats, which agents knew about and apparently considered to be part and parcel of what it meant to work for the C.I.A. If anyone had doubts or suspicions, they were more than happy to set them aside as they did crimes. And Sydney was no different—until Danny.

Danny Hecht’s murder was the first crack in the mirror; Daniel Monroe’s was the last straw. His death may have led Nikita to escape Division, but as the story makes clear, she already had an established history of questioning, and even covertly disobeying, her superiors. What’s more, it was not personal tragedy that led her to seriously question Division, but rather, the things she was asked to do. Therein lies the first key difference between Sydney and Nikita: they view the world through drastically different prisms.

For much of Alias, Sydney approaches the world through a tribalist perspective, dividing the world into two: those who are with her, and those who are not. Us vs. them. Right and wrong are determined not by the morality of an action or the contexts under which it is performed, but rather about who does it. Espionage is good when performed by the United States, but not when performed by an enemy. Lying to one’s friends and attempting to undermine their life’s work is forgivable when she does it, but not when someone like Lauren does.

For much of Alias, this binary thinking undergirds Syndey’s entire moral philosophy. There was nothing objectionable about SD-6 until it stopped being her tribe, after which she comes to hate it without qualms. The C.I.A. may be just as bad as SD-6 (or it would be, in a show more determined to explore its premise and or show the U.S. in a more critical light), but its actions can reflexively be excused away or forgiven. A.P.O. is as clear an illustration as one can get of this dissonance: explicitly designed to mirror SD-6, it is an admission that Sydney’s problem with her former employees had less to do with anything they actually did, but with which team they played for. Conversely, her loyalty to the C.I.A. has less to do with what they do and more what they do for her: while Sydney will likely never outright turn against the United States, she’ll bite back when she thinks they are a threat to her or her loved ones, without ever considering it to be a betrayal of her beliefs—blackmailing and extorting the government are okay when she does it. We see this in a smaller, more personal level with Sydney’s parents, whose actions Sydney considers unforgivable until she is convinced that they were done for her benefit. Once this happens, their many crimes prove very easy to get over.

One could argue, correctly, that Nikita is also all about doing the most for her loved ones: more than once we are shown that she is the sort of person who chooses her family over the world. However, her ethos is ultimately and fundamentally non-tribalist, and it is precisely this quality which led to her turning against Division. While Percy and Amanda and Michael did their damnedest to make sure their agents’ first priority was Division itself—us vs. them—Nikita never bought into that narrative, continuously choosing others—Ramón, Alex, Stefan and Ari Tasarov, Daniel, herself—over the organization.

Additionally, one of Nikita’s trademarks is the ease with which she makes allies, and her willingness and ability to work with others, even when their agendas do not align. The fact that Michael and Alex were working for Division did not stop Nikita from assisting them when necessary. Similarly, Owen joining Gogol frustrated Nikita, but it did not cause her to turn against him. It’s why she was able and willing to rejoin Division, once Percy and Amanda were driven out: just because someone is against her doesn’t mean she can’t work with them—there may be an “us” and a “them”, but not necessarily a “vs”. For Nikita, the world is complicated and requires compromise: purity is a good way to get jack squat, and condemning people for making those compromises when she herself has done the same would require condemning herself.

If only Sydney thought the same. Shockingly for someone in her field, Sydney is consistently terrible at working with people if they’re on her shit list. And while she might argue that this is merely a refusal to compromise her principles, it’s not about that at all: it’s about a desire for simplicity where it does not exist.

One of the chief features of tribalism is that it is not concerned with logical or moral consistency, and we see this quite a lot with Sydney’s behavior, which at best lacks self-awareness, and at worst is plainly hypocritical. Consider how many times Sydney goes rogue, disobeying, lying to, extorting or undermining her superiors, and how it results in lasting consequences for her, precisely zero times. Consider how she spent SEVEN YEARS as one of the top agents for an international criminal organization, and how little this ultimately matters (seriously, no one ever ever ever brings it up as a potential reason why she shouldn’t be trusted, which is appallingly stupid). Another person might notice this, realize how much they’ve benefited from others’ sympathy and understanding, and treating others similarly, but Sydney, not so much. Irina turns herself in, doing the same thing Sydney herself did a season earlier? She is the worst—a traitor, even though she never claimed to be loyal to the United States. Sloane claims to have reformed? Not on her watch. Perhaps most egregiously, when it is revealed that Lauren is part of the Covenant—the group which kidnapped Sydney and brainwashed her in order to turn her into an assassin—at no point does Sydney consider that the same might have happened to her. And not only is this mindset hypocritical, especially when she turns around and conditionally lets bygones be bygones, it actively makes her a worse spy. Because she is so often invested in not understanding her enemies, she often misses opportunities to see them as potential tools (*2). Additionally, she is often at sea when those same antagonists choose to use her.

Had Sydney persisted in her tribalist outlook throughout the series, Alias would not have worked. Fortunately, she did not, and her transition into the sort of person who could work with Sloane or embrace Rachel, who was partly responsible for Vaughn’s death, allows her story to follow a concrete emotional arc. It’s largely accidental, but the growth is there. Ironically, Nikita’s journey goes the other way, as circumstances lead her to adopt Division as her tribe, and to take morally corrosive measures she had once condemned in order to protect it. It is only circumstance, in the form of the Division mutiny, that prevented her and her friends from becoming the very thing they’d sought to escape. And in the end, she chooses to set aside tribalism: after Ryan is killed, she chooses the world over herself.

What is particularly interesting about this divergence in worldviews is that it’s largely unintentional: while Nikita is precisely who the showrunners designed her to be, Alias’ writers surely did not intend Sydney to be as morally vacuous and un-self-aware as she is. Even so, both characters’ ethos make complete sense, given what we know of them, and in the next part, I’ll be talking a little bit about how both Sydney and Nikita were shaped by their pasts.

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Footnotes!

*1: Technically, the former is also true, insofar as, if we discount the security section shenanigans, we don’t really see SD-6 or its members do the work of an evil organization. The missions Sydney and Dixon are sent on are identical to the sort of missions the C.I.A. will send them on, which suggests something rather different from what the show thinks it suggests.

*2: Case in point, Simon Walker. While he never draws Sydney’s ire the way someone like Sark does, that she never considers cultivating him as an asset despite the fact that he likes her and his relationship with the Covenant is entirely mercenary is one of the more frustrating things of that arc.

#Alias #Nikita #NikitaTV #Sydney Bristow #Nikita Mears #A vs N #My Stuff #I really do love Sydney #But she's quite hard to like a lot of the time

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