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life-rewritten · 4 years ago

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SAYING GOODBYE TO START UP-FATE, DREAMS, AND LOVE STORIES

I thought I wouldn't get to say this, but I finally had a new Kdrama that took up my attention and heart. And it was a surprise. When it comes to this show, I'm familiar with the works of Park Hye Ryun; Dream high was one of my first Kdramas to dive into, and I loved it, didn't particularly enjoy Pinocchio and was obsessed with the scriptwriting of Why you were sleeping before I got bored of it as well. I absolutely adored the drama with I can hear your voice. These are unpopular opinions. Obviously, this woman is known as a great experienced writer with a lot of hits on her portfolio, and I think Start-Up made me finally get why:’

Ratings: Plot: 8.5/10 Directing: 8.5/10 Acting: 8.5/10 Satisfaction: 9/10 Overall: A Rewatch factor: 8.5/10

3D Characters and Their Journeys

From Episode 1, I was hooked into it emotionally; I had already found my self connecting to all the characters, their dynamics, their flaws, their story arcs. I was excited at the thought of Cyrano de Bergerac being used as a base for a love triangle, and this show focusing on a love story between the characters Christain (Dosan's base) and Roxane (Dalmi's base). Normally the new modern takes on this story gives Cyrano the girl because he's the one who knows her deeply and truly. But this drama swerved on that; instead, it made me fall for Han Ji Pyeong as Cyrano, he had the qualities in the first episode, he was the one who wrote Dalmi the letters that got her out of depression, he was the one who was close to her family, and he was a bit jaded, not trusting, and had a harsh upbringing but it made me root for him and care for him so much.

I didn't understand how Dosan would be better; I was very intrigued by where the story was going. But it's not just the love triangle that caught me with this show; it's the title, actually two of its titles;

THE TITLE

We have Startup basically a business term for companies that are starting up with dreams of becoming massive; that's intriguing you have entrepreneurship, inspirational ideas, inventions, innovations in the world of business, that's really great cause I like watching how businesses grow and how people discover or make their dreams a reality. So I already felt connected and ready to feel inspired by a drama like this. Our characters all start broken, down on their luck, mocked and seen as nobodies and failures. They have to start all over again.

The second title is even more intriguing; Sandbox the actual place where they start up their companies, the place where our characters are destined to go and learn and grow; for me, the idea of Sandbox is already interesting it ties back to our main character her family, her father's aspirations to find a way for entrepreneurs to be safe and survive through the obstacles, like falling soft sand when they fall,a safe space to land, it was his inspiration and her dreams. It's a place of learning, the place where she's going to grow and become who she's meant to be. And for me, I found it so interesting and I wanted to see how she fulfilled her purpose of being the girl who inspired Sandbox.

And how the other characters found theirs as well. And this show did not fail me with that expectation; it left me so hungry to know, so desperate to discover, and just so intrigued about my self. Not only was the show focused on the business aspect of things, but it made a deal of focusing on our self-doubts, hates, and worries, all the obstacles that life throws at us; that make us feel small and make us feel like our dreams and wants are impossible.

We see Dosan someone who is incredibly genius and honestly amazing with his talent, but he has no self-love or trust or experience in how to be the person he should be. And we see how Fate/Destiny keeps moving him forward through the ups and the downs to get to where he's meant to be, to be the person he's meant to be, and to find the girl he's meant to be with. She had already held and waited for him in her heart, and he showed up becoming her dream as she was his.

LOVE STORIES AND DREAMS

That's the basis of the romance in this show, and I loved it. Because both our main characters are equal to each other, we watch the writers show us through subtext, hints, clues, plots why they should be together, why they fit, why they need each other, why they inspire each other, they were so made for each other it made my heart soft, but also it wasn't just for romantic purposes, they also were each other's partners from day one in this start-up environment they were thrown into.They found each other, in this harsh world that felt cruel, and impossible to them, they helped each other grow, find their voice, their dreams, their goals, and they found it with each other. So, of course, it made me bawl like a baby seeing Dalmi and Dosan hold hands at the end of this episode as CEOS of their now big company named after her father, who inspired her the whole time.

FAMILY; DESTINIES AND LEGACIES

This drama also delved deeply into family, again Sandbox is inspired by Dalmi's father's last wishes, and the first episode shows you, family is important; we see the break down of the Seo family, the break down of unity, happiness and dreams they had for each other as they all end up being separated because of different mindsets on what is more important. Money or Dreams.

This brings me to another character, the sister Injae, just as much as Dalmi is the main of this show fulfilling her father's dreams and hers and becoming great, Injae also goes through her own journey of self-learning, discovery and acceptance. She and Jipyeong are similar in this way; they learn as the show moves on to leave the idea of material things, and obsession with money, to find the meaning of family with Dalmi and her grandmother. Everyone returns back to the Seo family, healed, grown and matured. And everyone discovers what it is that they want to do and they come back full circle to complete their character arc from the beginning.

It's beautiful, family, love and dreams are what this show is focused on. How sometimes life seems purposeless, and a lost cause, a place where we have to keep gruelling and pushing and working with no purpose or meaning, but Startup showed that if you're brave enough, trust in your abilities enough, and do the right thing, work hard, open your mind and fight for what you want, you can make your dreams a reality. You can manifest what you wish to because Fate is on your side, driving you, pushing you and showing you clues for what it is you're meant to do.

We all have our own dreams, our own destinations, our own thing that make us feel complete, or we're still in search for that, just by not focusing too much on the future and just being brave and doing all you can in the present with a right attitude, and hope, you'll find who you're truly meant to be. You'll find your way; for why you do what you do. And I think that's what Start-Up was in a nutshell, a show about manifesting and believing in the hope that you can be who you want to be, and you can make a difference. Cheesy I know, but it's how I felt at the end of this show. I know people like to focus more on realism of the business aspect of things, focus on the logic and rules of the world that make Start-Up motto seem childish, unreal and cheesy, but sometimes in life, the things that happen for us, things that push us to our dreams, destination, to find our best self, happens illogically, weirdly without explanation. We call it luck, we call it Fate. Like Dosan a lot of people don't believe in that, but I do, and I liked that this show believed in that. I like how inspirational and positive this show made me feel, and I like how it affected me. For others, it may not be your cup of tea, but it was mine, and I am so incredibly grateful for this show.

CYRANO DE BEGERAC; LOVE TRIANGLES AND THEIR PAINS

Now I can continue talking for ages about Manifesting, becoming big and successful, following your dreams, meeting the one, as this show showed, but I also need to mention the next part of this show that was a slight negative. The Love Triangle. Now remember this show has a literature base Cyrano, so of course, the love triangle was meant to be a big focus, the love triangle was part of the big picture for this show. People have said repeatedly that they hated that the writer focused on the love triangle, but when it was her aim from the start to flesh out her own characters based on Cyrano and tell her own love story through that, fans refused to accept it. And that's okay you don't have to like a love triangle, I didn't, I hated it too.

Mostly because it made me dislike the character's actions that didn't still get the memo, i.e. Jipyeong. But what I do have to say about the love triangle is that it was needed, it was the most important device needed to push both Dosan to his growth and acceptance of himself, it made him have to tackle with his idea of how he sees himself, how he had no dreams, how he felt stagnant and alone, it made him have to deal with it when he was fighting for Dalmi.

And Jipyeong learnt about his flaws, how he hesitates, how he is too obsessed with material things, and money because that's all he's ever relied on, how he had to humble himself and finally become a good mentor. Jipyeong went through it because of the love triangle; he learnt a lot about himself and what he wanted because of losing in the love triangle. Plus Dalmi made him see how much he wanted to be part of her family.

The love triangle wasn't the best thing about this show, there were times it was too drawn out or damaging or filled with plot holes, but I appreciate this new twist on Cyrano. Like I said, usually Cyrano gets the girl (not in the original version but its adaptations in modern times). The audience wants Cyrano to be with the girl because Christain is normally daft, and does not really know her etc. Christain is generally seen in a negative light, so for the writer to make Dosan, a newer version of Christain, someone who ultimately gets the girl from the start, who inspires her, who knows and loves her for her real self, who is her helping hand more than the Cyrano of the story, someone who grows and becomes so incredible. It's amazing. She got me, she made me like Christain and want him to be with Roxanne. And I loved it.

JIPYEONG A GREAT SECOND LEAD

I loved this twist because even though it was apparent, it was Dosan, Jipyeong wasn't just a bland second lead, he wasn't stagnant, he wasn't stale with no personality, he wasn't just villainous for no reason, he was broken, and he was three dimensional, flawed, but understandable, petty but lovable. He had his own story to tell. He was important, he was Good boy, and he had his own way of making the audience root, and hurt for him. And that's excellent writing. For people to be so obsessed with his character, to find similarities with his character, to feel for his character, that's good writing.

That's a writer who made all her characters mean something. For me, Jipyeong is a second lead, and I'm not too fond of second leads, but I liked Jipyeong, and I cared about his journey for a long time. I may have become upset and disappointed at his character later on, but he was a good second lead, he made me feel conflicted at times not just because he wrote the letter, but some of his actions for her were sweet and cute. But it was nothing compared to Dosan. So as much I understand why so many people loved Jipyeong, I won't forgive the fangirls who became so delusional because of their obsession with his actor and their own feelings for him, they refused to see where the writer was going with the story.

It's not she like she lied or did things out of the blue, the writer set this up, she put clues, subtexts, foreshadowings, quotes, moments to show you; Jipyeong wasn't the kind of guy she wanted her character to be with. I wouldn't want to be with someone like Jipyeong, and that's why I'm happy he didn't end up with anyone as of that time in the ending, he wasn't still ready, he still had a lot to learn. This writer doesn't care about looks, or on the surface shows of affection, she makes you pity and care and understand the second lead, but it doesn't mean she accepts what he's doing as right. That's why she made him realise he was the one who needed to concede to Dosan, that's why he had to apologise, that's why he was the one at the end begging Dosan for an investment, he was never a good mentor to Samsan Tech, but now he will be.

So it's interesting to see what people saw in Jipyeong that I didn't, because it shows we all have our own perceptions of what we think is a good boyfriend, true love or soulmate. And fine you can have your perspectives but don't hate the writer for wanting to show a love story between someone who was not problematic, is not your typical Kdrama tsundere, cold chaebol character, but he's sweet, honest, proactive, genius and hard working. There was nothing wrong with Nam Do San, he might be unknowledgeable and slow to things because of lack of experience, he may have had such low self-esteem, but it made him modest, it made him kind, and he wasn't problematic, manipulative, toxic or whatever people liked to call him because they needed Jipyeong to be the hero. Nam Do San was a tremendous male romantic lead. And I hope I see more characters like him for our main girls in other dramas. I want a guy like Nam Do San, not going to lie, I truly fell in love with his character, and their love story so touched me despite the fact I disliked the noble idiocy plotline. The love triangle was annoying, but I enjoyed how it ended. And I hope people stop ruining the ratings of this show because they're petty that Jipyeong didn't get the girl.

THE WOMEN

I also want to mention how much I loved the women in this show, they were great, smart. important and fleshed out again. All the women Dalmi, Injae, Grandmum, Mum, Saha every one of them had something to do in the show, they all grew, they all learnt, they all became so great. I like how this show even though Dalmi relied on people, she still had to learn and rely on her self later on, with the help of Injae. I love how this show was focused on the two sisters journey and manifestation of their father’s legacy. Not only were they the mind of the company, but they did speeches, the invented, they helped with other inventions and they were the face of Sandbox. They were absolutely great and inspirational to watch. And I loved that about this show as well.

I can talk a lot about Start-Up, about all the devices, all the subtext, foreshadowings, clues, hints, metaphors, meanings, that this show had in 16 episodes. In fact, you know I can because that's all I've been doing since this show aired on my two blogs. I enjoyed analysing this show, and I think this show is now my favourite drama of this year, and I'm so grateful for it. On a serious note, it might be cheesy to believe in manifesting-dreams. All that finding true love business because sometimes life isn't easy like that, luck is very different in reality. Still, for me Start-Up really inspired me, and pushed me, it made me question what I want to do, what I have to do for my own dreams/ purpose to be a reality, it made me ask my self about how I see my self, and how I work. It taught me a lot of business terms, and it also inspired me to write an analysis. It made me look deeper into Korean dramas yet again, and I appreciate it. I have really enjoyed this drama, and I don't want to say goodbye. Maybe when I 'mature' and become colder this will all seem like rubbish to me, but I hope I keep on being this way, the girl who believes in love, the girl who believes in making dreams come true and fighting for what you want, the girl who believes in Fate and Destiny. Laugh all you want, but I like to be that girl, and I like to think that one day like Dosan and Dalmi, I'd get to where I'm meant to be and survive and make my own dreams, wants, aspirations become a reality. Thank you Start Up. And thank you to all who read my analysis of this show. It was a great time and it won't be forgotten

#start up #tvn start up #start up kdrama #startup #start-up #nam do san #seo dal mi #han ji pyeong #won in jae #wrpup #december #kdrama #nam joo hyuk #bae suzy

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god-fucking-dammit-mizutani · 4 years ago

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What are some of your favorite things about Taishiro?

I was about 2K in when I realized this could have simply been a short list but since I’m the Queen of Not Shutting TF Up, here’s some terribly rambly not-quite-meta:

1. Their characters! I really think as separate characters they’re really fun to sit down with and just consider what makes them tick. It’s been years since I dipped my toes back into the fandom and I have honestly never been bored of them. I love a lot about the other characters of course, but there’s something about Taichi and Koushirou and their stories and their growth and development that feels — I don’t know, timeless? To me, at least. I also just think Koushirou’s arc is Really Important in general, but that’s for another time. I also love the way they interact in the canon and how their personalities kind of work with each other which leads me to:

2. Their Dynamic! It’s easy to say they’re the quintessential Lovable Jock and Nerd archetypes, but overall I think one of the biggest appeals to me is how they don’t really fall back on typical tropes too much and they honestly compliment each other as characters rather than contrast. I think in the digital world specifically they were both on equal footing— they were both pretty important exactly for the reasons that made them different. Taichi was a people person, so he led them. He was a go-getter so he fought with raw power and heart. Koushirou was a thinker, a planner, and so he used his skills and knowledge to unlock secrets, to get them home, to understand their circumstances more. It could have led to a lot more fighting and shrugging each other off to see which side worked better: brawn or brains. Not to say they didn’t have squabbles, but the above was never really the exact conflict in itself iirc? There were quite a few times Taichi had to lean back on Koushirou’s skills and ask him for help, and there were plenty of times most of the kids relied on Taichi and Agumon’s strength— but that didn’t mean Koushirou shied away from fighting either (let’s not talk about the clown episodes pls). They fill in for each other’s weaknesses and I think that’s both in the digital world and just their relationship overall. Koushirou is more calm, more collected and strategic, more of a listener, and Taichi is the more brash, the more emotional one for better or worse, sometimes more optimistic to Koushirou’s realism, which I think evens out in some way. This also kind of feeds into how I feel that:

3. They better each other! Taichi has a bit of an impulsivity issue with a yo-yoing icarus complex. His heart is always in the right place, I believe, but sometimes his action takes precedent or he gets swept up or overwhelmed to the point of frustration-- which I think is where we see his occasional outbursts of anger or complete dejection. Personally I think he needs someone steady; more reasonable to even him out when things get too much. There’s a scene in the novels about the Nanomon part where Sora even thinks as much: “If Taichi didn’t have at least one person around to scold him and shake him up, he would never get back on his feet.” She thinks she’s the only who fits the bill in this particular scene at least (her attempt doesn’t work but overall I agree she’s a really steadying presence for Taichi, too), but I do also personally think it also spells out Koushirou fairly well. One thing I’ve kind of noticed, and it might just be my own poor interpretation/memory or something idk, is that he never really feeds too much into Taichi’s anger. He might be some part of the cause or the receiver of his frustration at times, but he doesn’t feed it back with the same level of anger and fists and I think that helps Taichi a lot. Most of the time Taichi seems to understand what he did wrong right after losing his temper, apologizes, lets out some of his frustration through venting maybe, and then they feel like they move on. Koushirou doesn’t throw it back in his face, but he doesn’t necessarily openly excuse it either (usually appearing more Stern I guess when speaking back), and Taichi doesn’t come off like he’s been secretly agitated by Koushirou for five hundred years— like it generally seems just a product of the time, like it stemmed from outside frustrations and internal struggles and they find a way to move on. And even with all the respect he shows towards Taichi, I don’t think Koushirou is blinded by it. For all his issues with people and believing he can’t know them without knowing himself, I think Koushirou is actually pretty good at reading people to a certain degree (maybe not all of their cues, but definitely them on a core basis). There’s a scene in the novels where Yamato tries to vy for the leadership position, telling Taichi he’s too soft-hearted, and Koushirou jumps up immediately to Shut It Down, specifically saying he won’t recognize anyone else but Taichi. Surprised by this, Yamato tries to spin it as Koushirou just being one of “Taichi’s fans”, to which he also Shuts That The Fuck Down with an accurate description of why Yamato could never replace Taichi (spoiler: it’s that he’s too emotional and Yamato concedes because he can’t argue lmao). There’s a specific line in that scene which says Koushirou, “wasn’t speaking out of loyalty to any one party,” so I think the point of it all is that, objectively, Koushirou believes Taichi is the best leader solely because of his qualities and not just because of Koushirou’s own personal biases. He’s loyal to Taichi because he knows him, trusts him, and believes in him as a person (and he’s so right to). I really don’t think it’s some sort of hero worship-- I think Koushirou can look at Taichi and see all the cracks in his armor, but instead of hollow space he sees potential; he sees the pieces welded together with gold and all the good Taichi wants to do, can do, will do, and Koushirou is willing to support him, which sometimes means telling Taichi when he’s faltered along the path and not just going along with it. I just think this is a pretty profound thing from a character who spends a lot of time distancing himself from others, including his parents up until the episode they hash things out. Essentially I think he wants the best for Taichi and he’s not going to pull the proverbial punches when needed, and I think that’s good for Taichi on an emotional level sometimes. Like his mellow compliment. He respects Taichi, and the thing is, I feel like Taichi respects him in kind. I know there’s a scene where Koushirou gets mad at him and Taichi is like, “No please don’t be,” in 02 but I’m drawing a blank as to the why right now (it’s been longer since I rewatched that than 01 haha)… but it’s a very big difference imho on how Taichi reacts to other people being angry at him. Like, he doesn’t want to disappoint Koushirou, like his opinion of Taichi matters to him. I think Hikari falls into this, too, and Sora probably, but just not the point of this post. But in general Taichi realizes Koushirou’s strengths and utilizes them. The biggest example is when they try to open the gate and Taichi asks Koushirou for his opinion on how to place the cards. This flusters Koushirou because he’s not exactly an attention seeker. Nothing he has done in the series has been towards the goal of recognition-- just simply knowledge. And Taichi knows this. He knows Koushirou is smart and lifts him up and literally tells him he’s important and the group openly agrees (here’s also how the manhwa interpreted it lmao). It is so much more blatant in the 2020!Digimon series lmao but I do think it’s sprinkled in the OG series, too, with the kids being a little less overt and little more Complicated regarding these kinds of interactions. Also on the subject of bettering each other, Taichi is the sole reason Koushirou decides to go to the camp in the first place. This is something that used to be explored in a looott of fics back in the Hay Day but essentially my point here is: Taichi is someone who will bring Koushirou out of his comfort zone, but I don’t think he’d actually intend or suggest something that would bring him discomfort. The camp itself is very blatantly not Koushirou’s Scene, but we know he doesn’t make decisions lightly. He doesn’t do it to advance his social skills, either. He does it because Taichi asked him to and he trusts Taichi enough to have his best interests at heart and I think it does in some way lend to Koushirou coming out of his shell overall. But again, that could just be me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4. They trust each other! I went through a lot of that above I think so I don’t have more to add at the moment, but it’s worth pointing out specifically.

5. They’re also not Perfect! Sounds counter intuitive from everything else I’ve said, but it’s true?? It makes thinking about their dynamic really interesting and fun to explore because they feel more like real people with flaws and their relationships with each other and others have flaws and I just love when shows can do that?? Like just give subtle enough nuances to characters and their relationships so they just feel more realistic— like you could meet another person like any of them off the street?? I digresssss. But more specifically for taishirou it makes wanting to explore their relationship more interesting— what would happen in this one scenario? What is it like when they grow older? I think for instance communication is probably an issue of sorts between them for a while. I can’t come up with the words for it right now and there’s been better stated meta before haha, but I do especially think that Koushirou would have a hard time opening up on a more emotional level for some years and Taichi would eventually begin to see that in some way as rejection until he felt the need to say/do something about it. Like I think, accidentally, Koushirou keeps some of his walls up and maybe while Taichi’s scaled most of them effortlessly, there’s like a glass left that if they’re not trying to see it, almost looks like it’s not there. If that makes sense? But this isn’t something I think is permanent, because I think there’s a section in the novels, too, where Taichi is elated that Koushirou speaks openly and honestly with him, something like, “It made me happy you spoke so casually to me, like you opened your heart to me.” So I think in a matter of time Koushirou would open up more, it’s just hard because he struggles with a lot of self worth and just… existential dread—this child I swear??? But I’m very interested in considering how they grow more, grow into each other, the way they’d learn to work better together not only on saving the world, but I don’t know like, splitting up the chores. Better people have put better words together, but I tried…!

6. Friendship is a wonderful basis for a romantic relationship! It doesn’t have to be the basis of every ship/relationship, but I think it’s a grand thing to forge as a foundation and merged with everything above just makes it better to me. They can be best friends and lovers haha. Also just childhood friends into lovers is still a good trope, yes, thank you. But, I do also love their friendship just as friendship. Again, I just really love their dynamic on the whole—I just also really love them being in love lmao.

7. They fit a “Quiet, but profound” love kind of feeling for me and it will be my end! Again this is personal interpretation, but the way I kind of feel about them is that they’re this very quiet sort of love. Like it’s There and it’s grand, but it’s not as loud as some others might be. It’s small smiles and the brush of their hands, it’s the silent, “Are you alright?” It’s dinner reheated and left by the computer; a small neck massage because Taichi sees the way Koushirou’s scrunching his eyebrows together and that means he’s going to get a headache. It’s Koushirou deciding to buy expensive tickets for a soccer match, not because he’s dying to go, but because he wants to enjoy something with Taichi that he enjoys and it’s worth the pretty penny (still not over this being technically canon). It’s the quiet stare when Taichi comes home and everything’s overwhelming and Koushirou just knows he needs to talk it out, for someone to listen. It’s looking at the other person, knowing them, seeing all the cracks and thinking, “I want to wake up to this every morning.” It’s a gradual thing, but it’s also a built thing. Years of self discovery and growth, of being at each other’s side, of integrating into each other’s lives so that it’s just all natural. Years of mutual pining. Because I’m human and I need this.

8. They fit this quote and it fucks me up:

Obviously none of this is to down play the enormous help that Agumon and Tentomon were to their respective growth. I also think the rest of the cast is wonderful and unique in their own way. Like I think Yamato pushes Taichi to Do Better in his own way, is the perfect foil, but also friend who much later on kind of Gets Him on a level others don’t necessarily, you know?? I honestly Love Them All So Much, I just…. feel like I need to point that out haha. But there is something special in the Taichi/Koushirou dynamic that has kept me invested for over a decade and I’m terrible at the meta/word thing but these are definitely some of the things I love about the ship.

#taishirou #taishiro #otp: the only exception #Digimon is a Fun Series #I always doubt things as soon I write or think them so I hope all of this makes sense hahaaa #Also thanks so much for the question anon it was definitely a fun thing to think about #Thank you so much!!#Sorry if this was completely off base haha

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meta-squash · 4 years ago

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Brick Club 1.4.2 “First Sketch of Two Equivocal Faces”

Time to meet the two least likable characters in this book, after Tholomyes. Mme Victurnien and Bamatabois try, but they can’t beat the Thenardier parents for slime factor.

The Thenardiers are animals (cats specifically) before we ever get to know them as people. Also I think this is one of the only instances where Hugo frames cats in a truly negative light? Usually cats are Liberty and Revolution and also Secret Lions. This time they’re cunning creatures taking advantage of a tiny mouse.

Hugo making quick work of some Class Opinions here. Hugo is describing this sort of in-between class, a limbo between middle and lower, made up of two types of people, of which I assume both Thenardiers are the former. When he compares them to the working class and the bourgeoisie, it’s about what they don’t have. I’m guessing that by “generous impulses” of the worker, he means solidarity? Working class people were/are more likely to help each other and engage in mutual aid, at least to a larger extent than others. Unless he’s emphasizing impulses, in which case maybe it’s more about being reckless? FMA says the bourgeois have “respectability”; Hapgood calls it “honest order.” Either way, that seems to be referencing a more “polite society,” a set of expected characteristics or behaviors and a certain level of success or money. I don’t know. It’s weird. Hugo’s class opinions are complicated and I don’t think I understand enough about French class history and culture to properly analyze all of this.

“There are souls that, crablike, crawl continually toward darkness, going backward in life rather than advancing, using their experience to increase their deformity, growing continually worse, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying viciousness.”

I can’t help but think about Valjean here. Javert isn’t Valjean’s opposite, he’s Valjean’s weird parallel. Thenardier is Valjean’s opposite. Valjean is a soul that climbs towards the light despite spending so long in darkness, while Thenardier crawls towards darkness. In the moments when Valjean is actively working to become better, Thenardier is simultaneously actively becoming worse. After rescuing Cosette, Hugo mentions that Valjean had been on the brink of falling back into old habits and instincts from prison, but Cosette rehabilitated him and reminded him to work towards being good. At the same time, the Thenardiers are presumably falling into poverty and in the process of losing their inn. Later, Valjean decides to teach Cosette charity and bring her with him to help the poor. I think in general he is, at this point, doing more charity work than ever before. Thenardier kidnaps him and tries to hold him for ransom; in the process he also destroys parts of his own home. When Valjean saves Marius, after an active effort to realize that he needs to sacrifice to make Cosette happy, Thenardier is in the sewers stealing from corpses (or presumed corpses, anyway). As Valjean is dying, again sacrificing himself for what he thinks will be the good of Cosette, Thenardier is trying to trick Marius into doubting Valjean’s goodness and reputation, and trying to get money out of him. As Valjean dies loved and good, Thenardier goes to America to become a slave trader. Valjean and Javert’s entire lives run parallel to each other; Thenardier is like a perpendicular line that they both end up crossing at the same time each time. Thenardier is Valjean’s opposite in that he embodies exactly what Valjean had the potential to become.

Hugo says “We only have to look at some men to distrust them” and I wonder if that’s part of why we don’t actually see M Thenardier until now. The entire scene last chapter was full of all these bad omens and ominous imagery, so we were already suitably aware of the danger. Only, now we’re getting a real grasp and a true description of the reality of that danger for Cosette.

I really like that we get the line “he knew how to do a little of everything--all badly” because it’s yet another way in which he is Valjean’s opposite. Valjean knows how to do a little of everything as well, only he manages to do those things well and to succeed.

Hugo talks about Mme Thenardier’s love of trashy romance novels and throws in a bunch of references, conveniently in chronological order. Clelie goes with Mlle de Scuderi; Madeleine de Scudery wrote her novel Clelie (10 volumes!) in the mid 1600s. As far as I can tell, Clelie is about the siege of Rome and the romances between a bunch of different characters, and it’s very elaborate with a lot of long conversations. She used Roman/Persian/Greek characters as a thinly veiled disguise for contemporary society figures and political commentary. Lodoiska was a 1791 opera based on the novel Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas by Jean Baptiste Louvet du Couvray. The opera (and presumably the novel) is a classic story of a nobleman rescuing his fiancee from a man who has kidnapped and wants to marry her. There isn’t much I could find on Mme Barthelemy-Hadot, except that she wrote melodramas in the early 19th century. Mme de Lafayette wrote La Princesse de Cleves, a highly realistic psychological novel, in the mid-1600s. She also wrote La Princesse de Monpensier, which was a prototype for the historical novel. There’s not much on Charlotte Bournon-Malarme, except that she was a writer in the late 1700s. Hugo is criticizing the chronological downturn of classic “romance” novels, how they’ve gone from realism and critique to dumbed-down adventure novels. It seems as though Mme Thenardier fills her time and her head with the latter.

Okay I’m not sure if I’m going to interpret the “Mégère parted company with Pamela” line right, because it might be a detail from a romance novel that I just can’t catch because I haven’t read romances from the 17th/18th century. However, I do know that Mégère was one of the Furies, the “jealous one,” and can be slang for a jealous or spiteful woman. The Pamela reference is a little bit harder, since there were two popular Pamela-based novels, but what I’m guessing at is that as Mme Thenardier aged and became less fierce and jealous all the time, she was just a woman who had been forced to marry a man 15 years older than her, who didn’t think much and was boring. I’m really not sure.

I can’t find much on Guillame Pigault-Lebrun, except that he was a fairly popular novelist during the Empire, whose quality flagged during the Restoration. He also apparently wrote some anti-Christian works, which seems to make sense for M Thenardier.

First of all, “the anarchy of baptismal names” is a fantastic band name.

So, from what I can figure out, pre-Revolution, a baby was named after a saint whose name was associated with the day of birth. For example, my birthday is April 14, so I would have been Ludivine. (I’m not sure what happens if someone’s birthday falls on a day with an opposite-gender saint associated with it. Did they just masculinize/feminize the name?) The French Revolution, as well as doing away with the old calendar, also did away with this tradition. People were now allowed to name their children (or themselves, if they did the paperwork) whatever they wanted. In 1803, this law was changed, and from what I can tell, you could either name your children the names of (Catholic) saints, or the names of people from classical/ancient history.

I’m not really sure how the Thenardiers got around this law, at least for Azelma. Epona is a Celtic goddess. Euphrasia was a saint from the 4th century. I have no idea what Azelma is. I suppose that’s the “anarchy” indicated. But maybe I’m missing something? Please someone correct me if I got stuff wrong.

Anyway, Hugo praises these changes as an aspect of equality. People aren’t restricted to the few names associated with their name day. They can branch out. Anyone can have the more “elegant” names associated with the classical/ancient history names, even workingmen. It’s also something that can’t be chiseled away like the Ns on buildings or removed like statues. People with those weird names from the decade they were allowed are living, breathing proof of the progress of the Revolution and force people around them to confront the fact that it happened, even if they’re back to celebrating the Restoration. Yet another minor but weirdly significant ripple of change.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.4.2 #les mis #les mis meta #maybe a little shorter than the last one?#maybe? but probably not

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daesungfmd · 4 years ago

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playlist 1.

seven songs describing different stages of daesung’s life so far.

lights, up we go / 2008 ― 2012.

here, in a familiar place. we got our heads down and we pretend it’s ‘cause the night is dark and running out of space for us to run around, but it’s a dead end and money’s tight. it’s been a long time of this ― something has got to give. everyone here is ready to go, it’s been a hard year with nothing to show. from down this road, it’s only on we go. everyone here is ready to go, it’s been a hard year and i only know from down this low, it’s only up we go.

2008 is the earliest year of daesung’s life that he vividly remembers. before 2008, his life definitely had downsides, but he didn’t have much that he could rightfully complain about; at the end of even the hardest day, things were still… good. but 2008 brought more hardships than daesung was equipped to handle & saw his relationship with his mother deteriorating. they were both struggling, but instead of coming together to support each other, they frequently lashed out and simply made things worse. in the three years that followed, daesung became better at supporting his mother, but he rarely felt supported in return ― internally bitter with the idea that he was having to act as a parent, but in reality, she was so caught up in keeping their family afloat that she often fell short on the emotional side. they were also beginning to struggle financially (which only got worse and worse over the months, with his mom falling far enough behind that it didn’t seem like she’d ever catch up), which added a feeling of helplessness to the loneliness that daesung was (poorly) dealing with. generally a bad time all around, but they both continued to pretend that they weren’t struggling so no one around them would pity them, even though they definitely could’ve used some assistance. this was around the time that daesung became extremely ambitious (surprisingly). set high goals in his personal life, his school life & for his future career because……. life can not suck like this forever!!! it’s gotta be up from here, right?

john the ghost, red house / 2008 — present.

if you’re not everything, you’re nothing ‘til you try to be. nobody needs saving, just a little bit of empathy. you can’t save the ones you love, but who would really want to? who would really want to?

i touched on daesung’s relationship with his mom in the explanation for the previous track, but it goes a lot deeper than a few sentences could ever explain. before 2008, she was outwardly happy and very, very loving — after 2008, she hardly seemed like the same woman. she and daesung endured the same pain, but neither of them coped healthily. neither got counseling, either, so they often took their sadness and pain out on each other in the form of harsh words and accusations. more often than not, they were fighting. the only time they got along was when they were in daesung’s mom’s salon, and even then, they still argued quite a lot, just with softer voices. after the first year, they started to build back the relationship they’d had prior to 2008, but it was a slow process and often involved daesung taking blame for things that (usually) weren’t his fault & having to calm his mom down when she got too angry or sad. things never did fully go back to how they once were and even now, twelve years later, daesung’s still bitter over how things turned out. how he so often had to take on responsibility that he was too young to deserve and how she failed to emotionally support him like he supported her. he realizes that having to provide financial support took almost all of her energy, but still — it doesn’t change the fact that he felt like he was lacking parental love at that time and even feels like he’s still lacking it now. if you get them alone, a fight is almost always sure to occur, even if it’s a passive one that only ends with secretly hurt feelings rather than outwardly hurt ones. they both acknowledge the other’s suffering, but they’re both too clumsy and ashamed to apologize for the past twelve years or even give reminders that they love each other. most of their meetings are confined to her salon; a semi-public place where they can be semi-vulnerable without necessarily viewing it as a bad thing. they spend a lot of time together there, but rarely have conversations of substance and, as a result, they’ve both begun to feel a lot like strangers rather than family.

jimmy eat world, 555 / 2012 — 2014.

i keep my focus on the simple things, trying to find some peace along the way. i wish i knew how long i’m supposed to wait. holding on, but just barely. got the feeling i’ve been talking to a dead, dead line. there’s always a reason to let it change. is there anyone there listening while you cry, cry, cry? there’s always a reason for the pain. i’m doing the things that i’m told every day, every day, every day. then why does it feel like i’m moving in place?

training, in daesung’s opinion, simply sucked. he went into training completely blind, considering he didn’t even fully realize what he was auditioning for — just that it may or may not lead to him being a musician. the competitiveness was what hit him the hardest. he’s not a particularly competitive person, so he was more interested in making friends and having a good time (😔), but he didn’t encounter a whole lot of people who were as nonchalant as he was. he struggled to adjust to the trainee life and harsh criticism from trainers/supervisors hit him hard, being some of the first real criticism he’d ever received. he spent his two years as a trainee feeling really lonely, but he didn’t have anyone outside of the company that he could reasonably turn to — his lack of time meant that most of his friendships had vanished and he cut off all contact with his mom during this time, as well, so he couldn’t turn to her. he tried very hard to stay focused and optimistic, but his strength was wavering. especially because he frequently got scolded for doing things that he didn’t even realize he wasn’t supposed to do. felt like he was getting pushed around by life & the people around him, even though half of that was undoubtedly just self-pity amplified by his loneliness.

blackbear, i feel bad / 2014 — 2016.

you’re so good at making me feel bad, at making me feel terrible about myself, good. you’re so good at making others hurt with only just your words, with only just your words and i feel bad. i don’t feel good.

daesung has a heart made of glass & his tendency to take things personal was a whole lot stronger when he was seventeen. sure, he was supposed to be the ~funny guy~, but constantly being the subject of jokes took a huge toll on his mental health in the beginning. he felt like no one acknowledged the fact that he’s an actual human being with actual feelings and, consequentially, felt like he wasn’t good for much aside from evoking laughter, even at his own expense. it didn’t help that inpulses hadn’t gotten the chance to know him on a more substantial level yet, so they, too, chose to make him into a joke. most comments or interactions at fansigns were ~playful teasing~ but enough ~playful teasing~ loses its humor, as he learned firsthand. eventually, he mastered the art of either initiating the jokes about himself so that they didn’t catch him off guard or swiftly changing the subject to something equally funny but not confidence-crushing. by 2016, he’d matured enough that he realized that’s just variety, baby! sometimes you gotta suck it up and get made fun of a little. learned to laugh at himself & fire back — nowadays, it’s virtually impossible to hurt his feelings with a joke and fans know him well enough to know that he’s more than just a jester.

glass animals, dreamland / 2015 — present.

you’ve had too much of the digital love, you want everything live, you want things you can touch. make it feel like a movie you saw in your youth, make it feel like that song that just unopened you.

less than a year after debuting, daesung had already become bored of idol life. of course, it’s not like the industry itself is boring — it’s an eventful life with seemingly never-ending work hours, but all in all, it lacks the enthusiasm, color and realism that daesung has always, always craved. as a child and teenager, he already knew how big the world was beyond his own day to day life. half the reason he wanted to be a rockstar wasn’t because of his passion for rock music itself, but because of how rock ‘n’ roll is portrayed in the media. you can think whatever you want, but to daesung, their lively and borderline reckless lives appealed to him like nothing else ever had. to live like that — throwing caution to the wind, living for yourself and having fun was something he couldn’t fathom, but he wanted to experience it so bad. skip a few years in the future and he is a musician, but not the kind he wants to be. and nowhere near as free as he’d dreamt of being. his first complaint was backtracks on music shows; thoughts of how rock musicians would be called posers if they dared to perform without… well, actually performing. his second complaint was how strict the rules were. he learned to accept that there are extreme differences between idols and “real musicians” (as daesung himself would put it), but he still isn’t happy about it. you could say that he feels like his life is lacking something and possibly always will be lacking that something, but he tries to live as freely as he can while still avoiding ~controversies~.

grayscale, diamond / 2016 ― 2018.

i know it took some time, but i got my footing right. feeling, i’m feeling so good tonight. can’t stop me from dancing, can’t keep me from blooming. welcome to my, welcome to my — this world is my diamond.

as a public figure, it took some time before daesung was able to earn widespread approval. it’s not like he’s ever done anything controversial, it’s just that the rumors of him bring arrogant from next: origin story stuck around for a hot minute & his loud, impossible to ignore persona after debuting rubbed some folks the wrong way. by 2016, he’d managed to escape the negative opinions almost entirely and was able to ignore any lingering hate comments with ease. although he’s always had a happy and energetic demeanor publicly, any long-term fans could confirm in a heartbeat that he was the happiest from 2016 to 2018. during these two years, daesung felt like he was conquering the world — in retrospect, maybe this is really just the time when fame had him feeling the most invincible. but by 2019, there were other things factoring into his overall outlook, including his strong desire to break into acting versus gold star’s refusal to let him do so. he’s still pretty happy and grateful for where he’s at in life, but the elevated sense of self was left in 2018.

waterparks, lowkey as hell / 2016 ― present.

if you need me now, i’ll be there somehow. i’ll pick you up, we can ride. i’ll fly away like i bought my own airline, i’ll take you with me, we can ride. i’m highkey and lowkey as hell your diva, just wanna see ya. i’m highkey and lowkey as hell your sweetheart, don’t wanna be apart.

as a result from reading far too many hate comments about himself from next: origin story and promoting with songs that really, really embarrassed daesung, it took him a hot minute to fully adjust to idol life. he wasn’t sure what people thought of him (and as much as he tries to come off like he doesn’t care what people think, he definitely does), so he tried to shrink his presence as much as he possibly could. if for no other reason, then to at least get rid of the general public’s idea that he was arrogant. but by 2016, impulse had started making music that only slightly embarrassed daesung & he became more comfortable with the amount of attention that was on him. moreover, he become more comfortable with the love that his fans so readily gave him. he wanted to give them just as much of himself, even though the expected distance between idols and their fans made it hard to do so. since 2016, he’s been walking along a thin line more often than not, trying to get as close to his fans as he possibly can without ~breaking the illusion~ as his managers have so elegantly put it, even though daesung will argue that he’s not a magic trick and there shouldn’t be an illusion to begin with. he loves inpulses very, very dearly and constantly dishes out reminders in any way he can. he wants to be his best self for them ― not because that’s part of his job, but because he genuinely cares about who they are beyond a view count and nameless comments. their love and support is what keeps his spirits up and he wants to give them the same strength, no matter what. (aka daesung will never understand why he has to play a character instead of jus bein able to ACTUALLY be there for his fans)

#𝐃𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐆. playlist.#2000+ words of pure nonsense tbh #i honestly don't rec reading this BUT #the songs are fire so i do rec listening to those

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conquiistador · 5 years ago

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THE DRAGON & THE KING | CHAPTER 1.

The ocean glimmered in the sunlight. Gold against blue. It was too noisy to hear the soft waves sweep against the docks. There was chatter all around him. All the conversations that passed him seemed to have the same subject - excitement about boarding the cruise ship. “Regent Seven Seas Explorer” was over 200 meters long, had 10 decks, and would carry around 750 passengers. One of which would be Doflamingo himself. The ship would sail from San Francisco to Papeete on Tahiti. The cruise would take 18 days. Eighteen whole days. Doflamingo couldn’t remember ever giving himself that amount of time to devote only to indulging in his own pleasure. Nevermind the fact that while he always traveled in style, he also always traveled alone.

His subordinates returned from the ship, having carried his belongings to his suite ( he didn’t trust the cabin crew to handle his luggage ). They wished him a safe trip, and promptly left to return to their other duties. Doflamingo remained standing. While everyone boarding Seven Seas Explorer were certainly upper-class people, Doflamingo still stood out. His peculiar shaped shades with tinted glass, his expensive suit with subtle pink details, like his pink-gold cuff-links, and his pink-diamond collar pins. He towered over most of the people passing him with more than a head. They all walked in the same direction - towards the ship, but Doflamingo wasn’t looking that way. His gaze had left the ship and the sea, turned towards the city of San Francisco, and the road leading down to the docks.

Normally, Doflamingo would never SHARE the feelings of those surrounding him. Like there was an invisible barrier separating him from the world, he would never feel what others felt. Never find himself in touch with them in any sort of way. However, that was not the case today. Because he too was excited. He supposed it made him only human, and he reminded himself that this was no way for a man in his 30s to feel. The fault did not lie with him though. If anyone was to be blamed for his emotions, there could only be one candidate. The person Doflamingo was waiting for.

They could’ve spent New Year’s together, but since Kabu didn’t want Doflamingo to come to Japan for a while, that hadn’t happened. Which meant they hadn’t seen each other in over a MONTH. Today was 24. January. Doflamingo’s impatience to see him was fitting to how ( in his opinion ) long they had been apart.

Doflamingo’s Christmas present to him was this cruise. Not because it was hard to get the tickets or anything - anyone with the money could sort that out. Doflamingo simply wanted the man to ENJOY himself more. Doflamingo lived a life of pleasure, while Kabu... Lived a life of duty. It was what separated them, and if Doflamingo could break down that fence, if only just a little bit, then he was going to do exactly that. He had told Kabu that the cruise would last for 10 days, and he knew that even that had been pushing it. Kabu was busy. Doflamingo was busy as well, but not in the same way. He only took on the responsibilities he wanted. Thinking back to when he suggested the cruise to Kabu, he could still recall the immediate happiness he felt when the other accepted. A strange, unfamiliar feeling to Doflamingo. He supposed the other would’ve done research on the cruise, and he did think that Kabu would have found out that they were going out to sea for eighteen days, not just ten. How big of a problem would it be for him?

Why had he chosen a cruise, when he owned a private yacht that was more than luxurious enough? It would’ve provided them with privacy, and all the comforts they could’ve wished for. Why choose to go on a cruise with other people? There was a very simple answer to this. Because a cruise was more romantic. Doflamingo had ALWAYS been a romantic. It was why he loved operas, the ballet, classical music, poetry. His need to have anything that was unique was his way of attempting to make the world before him beautiful. Rather than the disappointing reality that it was. Doflamingo was a man who would’ve loved to live his life in a fantasy. Curious, seeing as in many aspects he was also realistic. The one subject where realism didn’t play a part was with regards to Kabu. Doflamingo didn’t want to listen to reason. That their relationship had no place in the real world, and that their parting was inevitable. He closed off his own thoughts that told him that somebody - himself - would eventually get bored. Those ROSY feelings would fade away and die. Nothing lasts forever, wasn’t that the saying? But this. THIS--- This wasn’t something Doflamingo wanted to ever imagine ending.

A black limousine with tinted windows came driving down the road. Doflamingo followed it until it stopped. A moment later, Kabu stepped out together with two men, who immediately began sorting out Kabu’s luggage after receiving orders in what Doflamingo knew was Japanese. He rarely heard Kabu speak Japanese and he thought that maybe his voice sounded a little stricter in that language, but that might be because he generally spoke in a different manner to him. They made eye-contact right away. Kabu must’ve seen him while driving down. Doflamingo knew the other couldn’t fully meet his eyes thanks to them being hidden behind his sunglasses. He knew he could’ve waited onboard in the suite, and that waiting for him by the docks was completely unnecessary. Especially considering the fact that it wasn’t exactly warm. Despite the sunshine, the temperature lay at 14 degrees. Doflamingo could thank the good quality of his suit for keeping him warm.

Kabu walked over to him. Doflamingo looked him up and down. They were dressed similarly. Both in expensive suits, though Kabu’s outfit obviously lacked those pink details that were Doflamingo’s trademarks. He looked well. Skin as fair as ever. His hair too long to be fashionable in the Western World ( Doflamingo prayed he never cut it, the longer it got the better it was to grab ). That small furrow between his brows grew deeper as he squinted slightly against the brightness of the sun. Ah, the urge to reach out for him made itself known straight away. Doflamingo could feel it like an itch in his fingertips. He had to remind himself that they would have eighteen days to touch each other. There was no rush. Patience. Patience.

❝ Long time no see. Fu fu fu fu. ~ ❞ Doflamingo opened the conversation, lips pulled into that ever-present, teasing smirk. The line was a joke, of course. He was simply making fun of the both of them for not being able to go longer than a month without seeing each other. Doflamingo didn’t think that HE was the only one who craved the other’s presence. Kabu’s feelings had to be equally strong - if not stronger. Considering just how desirable Doflamingo was. Oh, but though Doflamingo prided himself on being a beautiful man, Kabu was definitely not lacking in the looks department. Those lips and that jawline. It should be a crime.

❝ Indeed. ❞ Kabu was smirking as well. Doflamingo was used to his tone always making others flustered and uncertain, and so he truly enjoyed how different Kabu’s reactions were compared to others. Special. He was simply special. ❝ And you’ve been waiting for me? How sweet. ❞

❝ Fu fu fu fu, of course. ~ I want to make sure you get on board safely. Once the ship departs my complete capture of you will be insured. ❞ It was a leading sentence. Doflamingo was wondering if Kabu had figured out that the cruise would last for eighteen days, instead of ten like Doflamingo had initially told him.

❝ Ah, this is your way of making sure I enjoy myself ‘ for once ‘, no? ❞ Kabu was referring to their earlier talk. One they had had many times, where Doflamingo tried to explain to Kabu that it was important that he ENJOYED himself from time to time, while Kabu attempted to get Doflamingo to understand what being a Yakuza was all about. It wasn’t like Doflamingo didn’t get where Kabu was coming from, but he simply refused to bend to rules. Especially if said rules would keep them apart.

❝ Exactly. ~ I can’t believe I have to shanghai you in order for you to take some time off. ❞ Bringing someone onto a ship was the traditional way to shanghai someone after all. Though, Doflamingo didn’t have to drug him to get him on board. But - wasn’t what Kabu felt for him kind of like a drug? Doflamingo wanted to reach out for him more than ever now. Just like he wanted Kabu to put his hands on him. If only briefly.

❝ ‘ Some time ‘? ❞ Kabu repeated, and Doflamingo knew he knew. Eighteen days was a very long holiday for a Yakuza, wasn’t it? But still, Kabu was going along with it, right? For him.

❝ Fu fu fu fu. ~ Yes, just some time. ❞ More time. Always more time. ❝ Shall we? ❞ Doflamingo gestured towards the boarding area, and the two of them headed in that direction. They were walking side by side, making their small height difference evident. Doflamingo was fifteen centimeters taller. Thanks to Kabu having a broader build than himself, the other never looked that much smaller than him though. Doflamingo was leaner. His muscles were only there because he worked out to stay fit - to look good. To take care of his body which he worshiped. Kabu was fit because he had to be thanks to his work.

The two of them boarded, and were greeted by crew members offering to take them to their suite. Doflamingo declined. He had looked at the deck plans, and knew where to go. They were going to be staying in the Regent Suite on the top deck. It was the biggest one on the ship, and would give them 280 m² of indoor space, and 130 m² in balcony, including an outdoor pool. Doflamingo was used to living in luxury, so this was nothing special to him. If he was going to be away from home for 18 days, then he needed to make sure he would be comfortable. How could one hope to achieve comfort without extravagance? They received a key each to their suite. Doflamingo already knew what kind of impression it gave off when they were sharing a place to sleep. Did he care? It was hard to bring himself to. He was well-aware that for his own safety, their relationship should be kept more or less quiet. But he didn’t think whatever enemies Kabu had were the type of people to go on a cruise. They were too BUSY for that, right? This far away from Japan and everything that was familiar to Kabu, something like that wouldn’t follow them. Doflamingo was counting on that.

❝ I checked the passenger list. ❞ Kabu informed him, earning an arch of Doflamingo’s brows. Had they been thinking about the same thing? ❝ There is nothing to worry about. ❞ Ah. Kabu had thought about his safety. He had told him once that when they were together, Doflamingo’s safety was his responsibility. Kabu took his responsibilities very seriously. Of course, Doflamingo was used to people looking after his well-being, but - only because he PAYED them. There was no doubt that people admired him, looked up to him, idolized him even. But those weren’t Kabu’s reasons for wanting to protect him.

❝ I’m not worried. ❞ Now he KNEW there was no reason to worry. Doflamingo would never tell him how being protected made him feel. It was something he would not even admit to himself. He wondered if Kabu already knew. ❝ Fu fu fu fu, after all - this is a vacation. I’m sure you’re not familiar with the word. ❞ Time to tease him more about his lifestyle.

❝ At least I’m going to follow your example and live the next few days only for pleasure. ❞ Kabu smirked.

They took the stairs up to the top deck, and Doflamingo led the way to their suite. With Kabu’s key they unlocked the door. There was nothing about their suite that stated that they were on a SHIP. It might as well have been an hotel. It was open and spacious, with a polished stone floor. The interior details were black, grey and gold. When they walked in, the dining area was to the left, and the living room area and the bar to the right. In both ends of the long room, there was a door leading to a bedroom. Not that they would need TWO bedrooms. There was a bathroom linked to each bedroom. There were large windows, and several glass doors from which one could enter the balcony. It was forward-facing, so that they would always be looking in the direction the ship was heading. Apart from the artworks on the walls, and the gold details - this was not Doflamingo’s taste in interior design. He had an eye for things that were more grandiose and less modern. That being said, his pent-house apartment where he lived ( he did own several houses, but they were not convenient to live in ) was very modern. It was out of practical reasons rather than him choosing the aesthetics. Doflamingo would’ve loved to live in a PALACE. Surrounded by marble and gold. He would’ve wanted dramatic oil paintings on the walls, and enormous chandeliers in the ceiling. And the most important part? He would’ve wanted a grand garden. Well, this was a home he would make for himself when he got BORED of living in the city. It would do him good to get out of it for a while. It was rare that he spent time at sea.

❝ I prefer your house. ❞ Doflamingo stated as he walked into the room, having a look around. There was a piano placed by one of the windows. He hadn’t played since going to university. ❝ But I suppose that’s because I’ve only ever been there together with you. ~ ❞ His gaze returned to Kabu.

The ship would depart at 18:00. They would probably be on the balcony by then. Kabu would smoke, and Doflamingo would drink a glass of wine. They would pass under the Golden Gate Bridge, and then after that they could go to dinner. And after dinner? Naturally they would return to their suite and Doflamingo could finally put his hands on him. That would be the logical way to arrange the rest of the day.

They were standing next to each other again, Kabu having joined him by the window to look at the view. Or to be close to him. Their shoulders were almost touching.

❝ I don’t care where we are. ❞ Kabu said, as his fingers made contact with Doflamingo’s hair. ❝ As long as we are together. ❞ There was a smirk on his face while he said it, and yet Doflamingo knew he wasn’t teasing. Or, perhaps he was just distracted by the hand in his hair. It almost made him want to grow his hair out, if only to feel what it would be like to have Kabu tug at it. In his teenage years, his hair had been longer, but he preferred it short like it was now. He hoped Kabu wasn’t going to cut his hair. Kabu’s hand brushed over his head from his hair line to his nape, and then down his neck. It was such a simple touch, and yet it was enough to set his skin ablaze. Was it impatience on Kabu’s part, or had he simply touched him without thinking? They had spent enough time in each other’s company to develop habits. Doflamingo wanted to think that Kabu, just like himself, simply couldn’t go longer without touching him. Now that the other HAD touched him, there was no way he could keep his hands to himself. Two fingers were placed under Kabu’s chin, to tilt it up slightly. Then, Doflamingo leaned in. The kiss he delivered was nothing short of HUNGRY. It wasn’t intended that way. Their lips firmly pressing against one another, before they both parted their lips as if on command. The kiss deepened within a second. A light taste of nicotine met Doflamingo, where as Kabu would find a much sweeter flavor. Doflamingo felt Kabu’s tongue brush against his bottom lip, and he knew the other would pry his mouth open in a moment, so he invited him to stick his tongue inside by willingly opening his mouth. Next he could feel Kabu’s tongue slide into his mouth. Excitement spread from where their bodies were now joined, all the way down to Doflamingo’s groin. Was he some kind of immature teenager that would get turned on from a simple tongue-kiss? Clearly that was how he appeared right now. Now that he was already in this situation, there was no reason for him to slow down. He might as well go all-in.

The two fingers under Kabu’s jaw were turned around, and hooked under the collar of his shirt. While attempting not to break the kiss, Doflamingo pulled him down with him onto the nearest couch. He didn’t need to use much effort to do so, since Kabu was following his moves. The other’s arms were already holding him, and that possessive vibe that Kabu always gave off was shooting through the roof. Doflamingo didn’t pull Kabu into his lap - as much as he would love to - he had too much respect for him. They ended up seated next to each other on the couch, tongues still mixing in Doflamingo’s mouth. The kiss broke briefly, allowing them both a sharp inhale. ❝ You’re eager today. ❞ Kabu commented. Doflamingo silenced him with another kiss, before the Yakuza’s expression had a chance to turn smug. Doflamingo being, as Kabu put it, ‘ eager ‘ was nothing new. Impatience had been building up in him for WEEKS.

❝ Fu fu fu fu, am I the only one? ~ ❞ He knew he wasn’t. There was no way anybody could receive such kisses from him and not be affected. Not even Kabu, who was oh so good at keeping his emotions in check. Breathing into the kiss, Doflamingo slid a hand up between Kabu’s legs and palmed him firmly. The other was already hard. He would’ve expected nothing less from that man and his insane sex drive. Having his partners pleasure as a part of his own excitement was still something new to Doflamingo, and to him this was one of the things that made their relationship intimate. As Kabu’s arousal grew, Doflamingo began to map out the outline of his cock through the fabric of his pants. His size was as impressive as ever.

❝ Trying to get me off through my pants? Don’t be so lazy. ❞ It wasn’t a critique. It was just Kabu showing that he TOO was impatient. He wanted direct skin contact. Kabu had a had on the back of Doflamingo’s head now, keeping him from pulling out of the kiss, despite how badly Doflamingo needed to breathe. Kabu didn’t let him. To pay him back for this, Doflamingo pushed his hand into Kabu’s pants and underwear, and curled his fingers around his throbbing erection. This made Kabu gasp a little, and he released Doflamingo from the hold briefly, allowing him to take a deep, much needed breath. With their kiss now broken, Kabu could brush his thumb over Doflamingo’s bottom lip. He briefly dipped out his tongue to meet his finger, and Kabu pushed it into his mouth. ❝ I want you to use your mouth. ❞

❝ Fu fu fu fu. ~ ❞ Doflamingo chuckled after biting down on Kabu’s thumb. ❝ And I wand to taste you. ❞ Usually, Kabu was the one to be the first one to perform this sort of service, so Doflamingo didn’t mind changing the order. ❝ But touch me first. ~ ❞ They way he said it made it so there might as well have been a ‘ please ‘ at the end of the sentence. Kabu obliged him right away, and shoved his hand down into Doflamingo’s palm. Those ringed fingers took a firm grip of his dick, and Doflamingo moaned as he thrust into his hold. ❝ Ah--- ~ ❞ Now distracted by his own pleasure, he began to pump Kabu’s cock with firm, quick strokes. Kabu’s thumb slid over his crown, and Doflamingo noticed how he was already oozing precum. Just from kissing him and touching him. His attraction towards this man was simply dangerous. Kabu kissed down his neck, and with his vacant hand he began to undo the buttons on Doflamingo’s shirt to expose more skin. Doflamingo pumped his dick faster to encourage him to continue. Kabu’s kisses followed down his now exposed chest. He knew what the other was going to do next, and another moan sounded from him when Kabu’s tongue brushed over his nipple. One was now being teased by Kabu’s tongue, and the other one pinched by his fingers. All while the Yakuza was working his cock at a painfully slow rhythm. Doflamingo’s pace was much quicker, and he loved how he could feel Kabu get wet for him. The other’s lips locked around his nipple, making Doflamingo moan once again when he began to suck. ❝ Mhh--- ~ ❞ Next followed his teeth, pinching the hardened bud enough to make Doflamingo gasp. He wanted more. Kabu gave him more. Enough to mark him here in a spot that was ONLY sensitive because the one doing the touching was Kabu. Doflamingo restlessly thrust himself into Kabu’s rough hand. Wanting more. NEEDING more. If Kabu hadn’t been going so slowly, Doflamingo was pretty sure he would’ve been able to cum like this. Kabu’s mouth switched with his hand, so that his other nipple could get the SAME treatment. Lips, teeth and tongue marking him and making his body feel weak. The hand that had been joining Kabu’s mouth with teasing his nipples, was moved down to open Kabu’s pants. Clearly the other thought it was getting uncomfortably tight down there, with both his dick and Doflamingo’s large hand. Once Kabu’s cock was freed, Doflamingo didn’t hesitate to lean down to use his mouth like the other had wanted him to. The tingling, almost HIGH sensation of pleasure was making him compliant. He wanted to pleasure Kabu. Tongue slid out from behind his teeth. Wet and hungry for the other’s taste. As he brushed his tongue over the other’s head, he got what he wanted. A shiver ran down Doflamingo’s spine, and he could hear Kabu gasp again. Doflamingo was quick to lock his lips around him. Precum was mixing with his own spit and it was delicious. He swallowed. Quickly, eagerly, he began to bob his head up and down, playfully popping Kabu’s cock out of his mouth each time he pulled back.

❝ Ah--- ❞ Finally it was Kabu’s turn to let his voice out. Doflamingo took MORE of his dick into his mouth. He knew Kabu was watching everything, and that just made it even more hot. Of course watching someone like HIM swallow your cock like this would look divine. It made him want to put on a good show. A few more inches of Kabu disappeared into Doflamingo’s mouth, and his tongue worked around him to smear his shaft with that mix of spit and precum. Kabu had let go of his dick now, and this allowed Doflamingo to move onto his knees in front of Kabu on the couch. It was a better angle, despite how his dick was already aching to feel those fingers again. It was almost tempting to start touching himself, but he knew Kabu wanted to be the one to bring him to an orgasm. And, in any case, Kabu’s pleasure was the one in focus now. Once he was kneeling before him, Kabu’s hand was placed on his head. It was both as an encouragement, and as a small warning. Doflamingo knew Kabu liked to FUCK his mouth. He relaxed his jaw in order to take that thick cock deeper. It was hitting the back of his throat now, testing his gag reflexes which almost kicked in. They were activated enough for Doflamingo’s eyes to begin to water. Ignoring that, he hollowed his cheeks and sucked hard. It tasted so good. ❝ Ah shit--- ❞ Kabu cursed behind gritted teeth. Doflamingo loved it when he made him curse. He began to bob his head again, but this time he made sure Kabu’s cock stayed DEEP inside his mouth, almost threatening to slide DOWN his throat. One day, he hoped he would be able to deep throat him, if only to see Kabu’s expression. Kabu’s hold on his head grew firm when both his hands were holding him in place. Carefully, Kabu’s hips nudged forward, taking Doflamingo by surprise. He pulled back briefly, only because he wasn’t expecting it. But when the next thrust was delivered, he didn’t try to get away. Kabu held his head steady while he began to rock his hips, fucking Doflamingo’s mouth just like he loved doing. Doflamingo licked his shaft and sucked while Kabu’s hips moved. The other was loud enough for his voice to sound like groans. Doflamingo knew Kabu was generally quiet in bed so this was insanely satisfying to him. He could feel his own dick throb in his pants, and precum was staining his underwear. Who would’ve thought having your lover fuck your mouth could be this hot? Kabu’s hold on Doflamingo’s head was suddenly put to use, as Kabu pushed on the back of his head, forcing Doflamingo to take him just past the back of his throat. Doflamingo gagged, and attempted to pull back. Kabu’s hold made it impossible. ❝ Fuck--- Ah--- Shit--- Doflamingo, you look so fucking hot swallowing my dick--- ❞ Kabu told him through gritted teeth. Doflamingo looked up at him, his eyes had watered over from that gag. Kabu kept fucking his mouth. Doflamingo knew he just couldn’t control himself, and somehow, he found that hot. Knowing that Kabu was in so much pleasure that he was losing his control was pleasing beyond compare. Doflamingo could feel his mouth water even more, and he had to swallow hard to not drown in his own drool. A few more rough thrusts from Kabu and then the other moaned his name loudly. Doflamingo felt Kabu’s thick, hot cum hit the back of his throat. The other thrust into him as he came, and Doflamingo swallowed around him, drinking as much as he could. That much fluid couldn’t fit in his mouth, and some escaped from between his lips, staining his chin. Kabu pumped his cum into his mouth, all while holding his head down to make him swallow it all ( Doflamingo would’ve done this anyway ). Once he was all empty, he eased up on the hold, and Doflamingo slowly pulled his head back. Kabu’s cock slid out of his mouth, and Doflamingo was panting heavily. ❝ You’re amazing. ❞ Kabu complimented him. He too was out of breath. There was no need for kind words, since the other’s orgasm had been enough evidence. ❝ I almost made you deepthroat me. ❞ It wasn’t really an apology, yet Doflamingo would interpret it as once.

❝ Fu fu fu fu. ~ As payback, let me use your ass. ~ No penetration, of course. ~ ❞ This was one of HIS favorite things to do. As much as he wished to properly claim him as HIS, he knew he would have to wait in order for that to happen. He definitely hadn’t given up on that subject. Kabu leaned down and claimed his mouth for a kiss. He knew he wanted to taste himself on his tongue, so Doflamingo opened his mouth, welcoming him inside. The kiss lasted for a long moment, before Kabu pulled back again.

❝ Then let’s move to bed. ❞ He would hear no complains from Doflamingo. A bed would be MUCH more comfortable. He was so horny he could hardly wait for his release. His legs almost felt wobbly when he stood up. Kabu got up as well, and they headed for the nearest out of the two bedrooms. It was not even dark outside and they were already walking into a bedroom? This was HUNGER.

#taintedxxflesh #[ MERRY CHRISTMAS MY LOVE ]#[ here is chapter one ]#[ out of probably 6 or 7 we'll see ]#[ and yeah there is going to be an ACTUAL plot here ]#[ with some dark themes ]#[ but AFTER they have gotten each other off lol ]#[ i feel like if they didn't do this first... it wouldn't be like them lol ]#[ i hope you enjoy it ~ ]#[ i'm excited to write the darker things tbh ]#[ and as i said - this is not canon for them - ]#[ because some dark dark stuff is gonna happen ]#[ i'm glad i could finish this chapter in time ]#[ will write the next one soon ~ ]#ʰᵉᵃᵛᵉᶰˡʸ ᵈᵉᵐᵒᶰ ;; ic.#drabble.#ᵇˡᵃᶜᵏ ᵃᶰᵈ ʷʰᶤᵗᵉ ;; verse - au.01.#lemon //#longpost //

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itsswimmingtragedycollection · 6 years ago

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The Dumpster Fire that is ‘The Order’

First of all, why is his show labeled as a horror? My humble guess is that it was intended for younger audiences?? I genuinely wanna know. Because, even if it was for teens, some blood and a few dead bodies does not a horror make. Secondly, what the fuck? And I truly mean that. I mean, the idea itself doesn’t sound bad at all. A college student joins a secret society and finds out his supposedly evil dad is the head of it? He’s also in a werewolf club that fights that same secret society? Sign me tf up. But the execution just takes a really weird turn. From the get go, you kinda aren’t sure if the show wants to be takes seriously or not. And that question is never answered. Literally in the opening scene the letter changes from ‘we regret to inform you’ to ‘congratulations’ in front of Jack’s eyes and he has absolutely no reaction whatsoever to that peculiar development, which kind of screams ‘not to be taken seriously’ similarly to the whole ‘My evil dad killed my mom so naturally I’m gonna join a secret society, become someone important and powerful and eventually use that power to fight him.’ Who on earth plots a revenge along those lines? But then a second later, the plot falls back in the supernatural drama category. To top it all off there’s a whole lot of ‘woke humor’ which most of the time comes across as cringe worthy edginess we’re all happy we outgrew after HS. But, even if you could somehow get pas the not-so-subtle jumps from complete absurdity to realism, there’s nothing else to hold on to. No character, no relationship, no plot line we’re offered is strong enough to pull us in. In fact. one of the most annoying things about The Order is that basically no character has a personality. I am 8 episodes deep (and I don’t intend to finish it because that’s how boring it is) and I still don’t know anything substantial about anyone. And can we take a second to just look at Jake’s relationship with Alyssa? What even is that? Are they flirting are they not, does he really like her or is she a means to an end, is she into him or his dad, why are they kissing and why does it look so uncomfortable, did they just cast two people with the least chemistry on purpose or is bad writing/directing? So many questions. If we draw a parallel between Jack’s progress with her and him being on board with the wolves, it makes even less sense. He needs how many episodes to decide to try and kiss her, but when it comes to dedicating your whole life to fighting bad magic, you go from ‘no way, you’re all insane, you made me kill an innocent man’ to ‘I pledge my life to the cause’ within two seconds. Speaking of things that make no sense, I have to mention Jack’s ‘friendship’ with Amir. Don’t get me wrong, I get that we meet people and think to ourselves how that could grow into a beautiful friendship, but acting as if someone you just met is really your friend, and that odd flashback to like one beer they shared, when Amir was found dead, is just... I don’t even know what to say. The Order as an organization is equally puzzling. Who are they? Why are they? What’s the purpose, what’s the goal, the mission? I can’t settle for just a group of magic users who follow strict hierarchies but kinda all look out for themselves and don’t really like each other that much. And occasionally sacrifice goats. And change people’s memories.(And they can revive a golem and ask it who made it, but the fact that Jack, who found out about magic like yesterday, sabotaged their spell somehow goes right over their magical heads. ) But essentially it’s for the good of the whole wide world.????????????? And the masks are what makes me think an 8yo came up with the whole concept. If you thought the werewolf knights are any less confusing, think again. They hear noises when ‘bad magic’ happens and solve it by killing anything that moves. Heroes. Also, how do they know what they are supposed to do if they refuse to read anything? I mean, that’s not how a secret society, since that’s more or less what they are, works. Someone has to tell you, show you, teach you. Sure, you have the wolves inside you, but if you don’t know they speak a certain language, it’s fairly certain you don’t know a whole lot. And why is there only four of you? How can four knights take down an organization as big as The Order? Especially since their preferred method is violent murder, something that is not very subtle and does not go unnoticed for long, which basically ensures the rage of the entire Order falling on their heads before they even begin their so called mission. Once again: ????????????????? And what even does ‘bad magic’ mean? The term is so vague and abstract that I have a hard time understanding how can you form an organization that fights something barely defined. All magic can potentially be bad magic. What are the guidelines here? Help me comprehend. The show also has a very odd relationship towards death. One can sort of ‘forgive’ the wizards and the wolves for being chill about it, but if someone was targeting and butchering people on your campus, wouldn’t you be at least a bit worried? We don’t see any students panicking, we saw one police officer, there were no measures taken by the college, unless you count turning Amir’s death into a bike accident. And just when you start getting used to being casual about it, Jack has a whole meltdown over killing someone the first time he turned. And then also his professor. But even that meltdown is not very convincing, since most of what he does is just screaming ‘I KILLED AN INNOCENT MAN!!!’ into the void, without a much deeper attempt to deal with that. Which is why I don’t get why the show even made an issue out of it. I also don’t get Jack’s grandpa. Like not even a little bit. Because if you think about it, it’s not * that * unimaginable that a little boy would come up with the idea of joining a secret society to avenge his mother’s death, but it is * very * odd to imagine an old ass grown up who not only thinks it’s a good idea to direct your whole young life towards revenge, but encourages it to a point of making a detailed plan on how to do that, and basically spends your entire childhood grooming you to become a little rage fueled bundle of psychological damage. All of this is only scratching the surface of the mess that is The fucking Order, because the show is a giant entangled coil of nonsense and I barely knew where to start. It’s fair to say that the biggest buzzkill is failure to pick a direction and stick with it. You don’t have to look that close to see some of the influences. The biggest one being, obviously, The Magicians, followed by some Teen Wolf, there’s even elements from Scream Queens, a bit of Buffy, a pinch of the Craft, etc. Almost like someone decided to look up successful shows in the supernatural/fantasy/horror genre and just smash them all up together in hopes of making something appealing to the largest audience possible. Personally, as a * very big * fan of before mentioned The Magicians, I get the feeling that Netflix wanted to make something that could rival it, but better. Because TM is, dare I say so, one of the best, if not the best, shows of the decade. I honestly have not seen anything like it, that has the same platform, in literally a decade. If you have, please let me know.

Whit the BDE, edgy, but in a good way, humor, strong political views, strong female characters, fun twist and turns that actually do manage to mix absurd with normal life in a magical, no pun intended, way, sexuality representation, but not in a ‘we just want to please the gays so they give us the views’ way, great male characters we wish we saw more of, compelling character development and so on. Tho the most likable aspect of the series is probably the take on overdone story lines, where they twist the narrative just enough for it to become actually relatable. We all are tired of super special chosen ones who save the world because they are soo special and specially chosen by gods to save the world and all the dumb boring unspecial people with their pure hearts and strong characters. And also find true love. You see attempts at this within The Order on every turn, except that it doesn’t work nearly as well for them, precisely because they went for that AND MORE. More wouldn’t even be a bad thing if it was’t so all over the place that it just comes off as ‘WE WANT EVERYONE TO LIKE THIS, GIVE US ALL THE VIEWS, ALL OF THEM.’ I am very much inclined to think this is what happened, considering other stuff Netflix has put out there. (Mostly referring to endlessly stupid shit like YOU, which only has the intention of being controversial and attention grabbing, for the views. Tho they do have some fun shit too, don’t get me wrong.) So I guess what I’m trying to say is, the though of making something like TM, is not a bad one, I’m all for it, but you actually have to put a shit ton more imagination into it if you want it to work out. But that’s just my opinion.

#the order #netflix #jake manley #sarah grey #the magicians #teen wolf #syfy #hale appleman #jason ralph #social commentary

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realityebooks · 3 years ago

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Unlocking Shapely Design Of Night’s Mane: 14 Truths For Success, Wellness, Bliss

By Santosh Jha

A legendary poet, known for, or rather notorious for his playfulness with words and self-possessed interpretations of realism, says –

... fresh, breezy, dark, a fragrant shadow...

gets horizoned over the land and water...

... in how very tough and complicated ways,

my poetries unlock the shapely design of night’s mane...!

Somehow, the toughest part of human acquisition and his or her passion for attainments is the gigantic vastness of the world we live in and the cosmos beyond our reach, always egging every individual to keep stretching his or her endeavors to reach at more, even while in awe of the infinity of realism... Still, when a person stands in this plane of emotions and entangled imaginative brilliance, even this infinity becomes a suffocatingly restrictive space and domain...!

There is such a small and stupidly negligible value and worth of a human being, when he or she stands in front of the colossal probabilities of life’s randomizations and resultant chaos and confusion. Still, a poet, an artist a person endowed with the faculty of emotional imaginations, is damn happy playing with these chaos and confusions...

Human inventiveness and symmetrical artistry of playful-metaphorization of life’s confusion and chaos into something meaningfully and intuitively enjoyable, in time-space situationality is sheer joy.

Very few, actually fewer than the word ‘few’ could ever describe, have this endowment and evolved faculty of the mastery of this artistry for playfulness with all things random, infinite, ephemeral, conflational and chaotic... And, as someone gets it, his or her playfulness becomes an attainment, only he or she can sing and dance to...

Life offers an unending list of material and immaterial attainments. Cultures extend another list of life’s utility and worth. The contemporary worldview sneaks in yet another list of ‘karma’ and life’s possessions... However, an artist of playfulness of probabilities has his or her own singular agenda of worth, utilities, attainments, possessions, and karma.

As the poet above said, to unlock the shapely design of night’s mane, is some playfulness of probabilities, is something no worldly list includes as of any worth and utility. Still, this playfulness of probabilities and its randomizations engender a pool of joy and satisfaction, which itself is beyond the definition of infinite and colossal...

The wise has said, “The greatest wonder of the world is that the very attainer of all attainments of life itself is mortal, even then, everyone spends his or her whole life in mad and unlimited possession of these mortal attainments, gleefully and playfully forgetting the fact about his or her own mortality and this randomized probability of the mortality.”

The few, who have this faculty of emotional imaginations, understand and accept this core and critical reality and then, they rise above this and opt for the playfulness of this very probability of randomized mortality. This mortality itself becomes the subject and object of all karma, and then everything sings and dances... the joys ride the core energy of the randomized probabilities of mortality... this playfulness for that song and dance of emotional imaginations stands out as the singular karma...

Truth, in its perceptional ‘51Shades of Grey and Blues’, seems always standing in the peripheral extremities of actionable mainstream of human life and living… The centerstage of theatre of life-living keeps staging the play of ‘fruition of futilities’… That is probably why truthfulness of realism misses the due and righteous attention… Why…?

Often, as it seems, truth is least interested in competing for ‘Recognition’ and ‘Market Space’. Therefore, it loses out to fancifulness of the charm and charisma of falsehood as well as synthetic realism… Also, it seems, truth is Unemotionally Objective and Boringly Impersonal and therefore seems to naturally be a loser to emotionally subjective ‘perceptions’, which is a fabulous lover and pampers the ‘I’ with its voluptuousness of personal charms…!

Science as well as spiritualism commonly accepts that truthfulness of realism is not an external entity; it is rather inside human brain and its plexus of processes. Had truthfulness of realism been an external thing, a single person could have manufactured it in a mega factory and distributed it to 8 billion people, equally and in enough measure; very well like a smart phone. But, we all know, truthfulness of realism is Internalized Entity – an enterprise for every individual…

However, there is a scientific, objective and singular mechanism and process, by which everyone can launch his or her personal enterprise of deciphering and installing his or her truthfulness of realism… But then, it is a boring process and does not have any charm… Nobody goes to a doctor for health and wellness; they only seek medicines as cures for illness. Doctors know it and they seldom talk, just write medicines. It is the charming thing… Truthfulness of realism is health-wellness, which is made to stand in peripheral extremities as the medicine plays its charm and charisma at the centerstage of theatre of life-living…

Similarly, personal-poise and internal-wellness loses out to rituals and external enterprises of spiritualism, as billions of men and women find larger utility in spending moneys, time and energies in external-tangible ‘spiritual-deliveries’ by celebrity saints and spiritualists… Truth, in its perceptional ‘51Shades of Grey and Blues’, always stands in the peripheral extremities of actionable mainstream of human life and living…!

There are Realities, which doesn’t come natural and innately to average person. The ‘Truth’ probably has no inclination to seek ‘fans’ and ‘followers’. The seeker may also not be obsessed about truth. Truth is everywhere and manifesting in all things around us. One does not need to strive and labor for unraveling and attainment of truth and reality. One just has to be in receptive mode consciousness. One just has to be aware of oneself in peaceful and poised consciousness. Truth is just sitting there, with we all. There are simple truths and realities all around us. Some of them are being listed below –

1. The world we live in is huge and complex, beyond our imaginations and this is why, life is not meant to be easy. Still, we have successfully dealt with all complexities and troubles of life, as we are the best problem solver of the universe. However, this facility does not come automatic to us; it needs understanding the mechanism of life and living and persevered practice.

2. Most of what we see and experience is usually neutral, neither out-rightly good nor bad. This world is not our theatre of good or bad. We are the theatre of what good or bad happen to us.

3. Problems are usually, just the positioning or situation of some elements of our immediate and ambient physical and emotional environment. The solution cannot be outside the elements, which constitute a problem. Often, solutions are just an alternative arrangement of the same elements within a problem.

4. We have the mechanism for solving problems brilliantly but, it works best when we are not in our instinctive ‘reactive-mode’ but in ‘receptive-mode’. The receptive-mode mind-consciousness is our subjective consciousness, which is the doorstep of our true intelligence – the problem solver. We need to assess a problem not with ‘reactive-mode’, but ‘receptive-mode’ consciousness.

5. This subjective consciousness is the great facility and a definitive edge for humanity, putting us on top of all other species on Earth. However, this subjective consciousness is also the single largest source of most troubles as it is usually overly “dressed-up” and burdened by the cultural-fabrics of archetypal and popular ‘learning’. We need to ‘undress’ our subjective mind consciousness, through the process of ‘unlearning’, as we grow and mature.

6. We have attained great success in mechanical and tangible matters, because of the singularity and objectivity of procedures. In emotional, inter-personal and intangible matters, we have most troubles as we always have plural, subjective and opinion-based procedures. That is why, to be equally successful in later domain, the key elements are tolerance, acceptance and compassion as it allows a holistic-assimilative-integrative mind-consciousness. This works best in the later domain where singularity is calamitous, unlike the former domain where singularity is a virtue.

7. Often, an individual’s decision about right and wrong, good and bad is based on very localized factors of ambient culture. This often ‘dresses-up’ a problem. If one accepts the utility of wider and larger environment, in deciding a value, one shall have larger objectivity. This shall help in seeing a problem in universal perspective, enabling better and quick solutions.

8. Our brain is a genius of solutions but it has its limitations. The larger mechanism of brain is instinctive, an auto-mode functioning, where an individual’s subjective consciousness has little control. We need to learn through disciplined practice, the art of reigning in our instincts and subject it to as much assimilative-integrative referrals as possible. This checks intuitive ‘dressing-up’ of day-to-day problems of life.

9. The decision-making process of mind is affected by multiplicity of factors and even we cannot know which factor prevailed over others in deciding in favor or against a situation. The conscious mind is a small space in mind compared to huge subconscious domain. We need to learn the art of ‘unlearning’ to prune our subconscious mind of unproductive and archetypal benchmarks, to ‘undress’ a problem at hand.

10. There is a state of mind-consciousness, which is greatly helpful in attaining this position, which undresses problems and arrives at naked solutions. This state has broad four elements – non-discrimination, tolerance and non-aggression, non-obsession for self-gratification and openness for new knowledge and wisdom.

11. Solutions are essentially a state of mind positioning. The best state of mind is ‘innocence’. This innocence in adult is very different from that in a child. In kids, it is unconsciously engendered out of purity of ‘ignorance’, whereas in adults, it is a conscious creation of ‘wisdom’. Adults attain it after a long process of ‘unlearning’, whereas for kids, it is a natural reward of ‘not learning’.

12. This innocence in adults is referred as ‘The State of Zero’, the state of quintessential readiness, the state of ‘Nisprih’ beingness. When it happens; all good and cherished ideals of humanity fall in your lap, they fill your being. It embodies all goodness – honesty, innocence, transparency, selflessness and egolessness and above all the compassion.

13. This innocence, the state of zero, leads you to the ultimate empowerment of self – The Ability to Forgive. When forgiveness becomes the first instinct, it is a sure sign that the stage of readiness has been attained.

14. This state of mind-consciousness accepts very little ‘problems’ and needs very few ‘Solutions’. This is a mind-consciousness, where you accept nothing – no pride, no self, no ego, no ‘I’ and you give everything as you forgive.

*****

About Santosh Jha

📷

Author, Poet, Journalist, Confabulator

I may have written 47 eBooks but I believe, I am more an affectionate and compassionate confabulator, not truly a writer in traditional sense of the term. It is a joy to talk to people, share ideas and learn/unlearn mutually. All my writings, be it fiction or non-fiction, are about the 3Cs – Consciousness, Cognition and Causality, in the light of this new wisdom of holism – a fruitful mix of old and new knowledge of humanity. I write to share ideas hovering around the 3Cs to help empower you, which then automatically translates into your larger life-living wellness and personal excellence. I believe, success of a writing enterprise is not in how many books you sell, but in how many different ways your writings can help others. This is why, very consciously, all my writings are FREE and I wish them to be very helpful.

Author Page: Find my eBooks (fiction and non-fiction), ALL of them FREE at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SantoshJha

** Also FREE at Google Play, Google Books, apple iTunes, Nook Books, Kobo, free-ebooks.net, etc.

***

#reality #wellness #success #truth #bliss #empowerment

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valhala90 · 7 years ago

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Shall we date? Love Tangle, Ryan and Cody review.

Rating for both 1 ★ out of courtesy, since I read worse shit.

Both were bad. So, so bad that I debated if I should post this review since it turned into a rant. Basically, for me, this a summary of wrong storytelling, lack of chemistry, boring plot (what plot?) and lost opportunities.

Having played most of the stories, I can say that they are at the bottom of my list. I’m not taking into consideration other add-on stories that you can get at events or buy. To me, they dropped the ball from the start, so buying extra content just to have some sort of character development or insight into their life after they ended up together is a big NO.

Both stories had so much potential, and that's what made me extra mad and disappointed. If they injected a proper dose of realism and built their relationship steadily and slowly, this would have been great. In the common route, the chemistry should have been built with both of the brothers making you a bit torn to have to choose between them. Their bickering and the main reason for fighting needed to be discovered gradually, with the culmination in the last chapter as well as the love confession. Instead, I got an abundance of fake emotions, culminations without a proper plot, and artificial arguments, often too dramatic for you to get into it since it's disconnected from the real world, and at times very annoying, forcing me to take a break from reading. The romance was equally off-putting, Ryan's biggest crime (Cody’s too) is the faked amnesia of kissing MC or hugging her. He was leading her on multiple times and somehow people should take from that that he was just nervous and didn't realize what he was doing. Excuse me, you said you liked/fell for her since the fucking airport which is the start of the story, and then you yell at her and say stay away from my brother.

Cody is no better.

His personality is insufferable. The writer portrays him as a 5-year-old. If I met people like that I wouldn't hang out with them longer than 5 minutes, because I couldn't take them seriously or expect them to be reliable. An inner child is fine to have, I still nurture mine, but imagine talking to this adult person (who has to work and pay bills, pave his way as an actor, and wants to show his brother that he's a responsible adult) and he abruptly stands up in the middle of your conversation, starts pacing, or complains about being hungry. I would think that he has some sort of mental disorder. If anything, that would have been a better and more interesting plot. If the author wanted him to have childish traits, it could be presented with cute pouting at random things, maybe being a bit petty/overreacting at certain situations, and sometimes having the "pure" moments as opposed to cruel/mature reality. The random touching he does constantly pissed me off, not to mention that he falls for the most obvious things and cannot hide his emotions even though he's “a rising star” actor.

exibit A (this is the 1st frigging chapter):

Good luck grabbing a stranger's hand like that and not getting punched or at least yelled at. It's so unnatural and I don't care if you're a "people person" or "great at making friends" (Cody is none of those). The writer gives Cody childish traits by copying the behavior of an actual toddler.Not only that, but he randomly starts talking about private things! (As a child would do). Like seriously bro, are you gonna tell the intimate conversation you had with your brother to the person you just met?

Which brings me to MC.

MC has some sort of personality you can see or maybe even relate to her struggles (depending on the route since she changes her opinions, views, and personality traits to match the love interest), but still, Julia Darwin is far from the worst MCs I’ve encountered. One of the issues I had with her, as shown in the exibit A, is that her reactions are weird.

Bitch, what? Friendship and trust takes time. Why the fuck would you be hurt? I would be uncomfortable and mind my own business.

exibit B

I can understand if Ryan was her crush, but she doesn't know him enough to have this stupid reaction. From my perspective, I would be a little uncomfortable if a stranger was in my apartment. And she doesn't specify that she's attracted to him, just says that he's a good guy again (based on the fact that he helped her carry the box and helped her unpack, but they still didn't have anything resembling a proper small talk, other than him introducing himself and his brother and weird breakfast convo where the brothers stared at her while she ate). It would be another thing if they talked about her work or his work while unpacking, and had some bonding moment, that would create a spark between them and justify why she's having those inner thoughts. It's all about that build-up, especially with the characters who are strangers. They were kids when they met and that was brief, people change for fuck’s sake.

MC doesn't realize how privileged she is. She has her dream job, an amazing place to stay, great co-workers and so many decent people in her life.

Both routes are flawed, have no plot or the plot is full of holes and ridiculous, cringe drama, where the author(s) tried to create love triangle, with absolutely forceful actions.You will find them beating around the bush a lot just so they can fill the space of 4 chapters. Brothers give MC mixed signals, and MC is put as a mediator between them. I get that even the people who are very close can have miscommunication, or be stubborn, but there were other choices for that role (people who know them a lot longer than MC), so I feel like MC was pushed into their problems and forced to solve them. Even jealousy isn't described properly (I'm not a fan of it but still, there were better ways to handle that) and falls into the category from uhhh awkward to uhh bro, just stop.

I wanted to analyze both routes in details and call the out at every single ridiculous thing but who has the time for that? I’ll just give you my quick thoughts of why Ryan and Cody as characters are shite.

I don't understand why Ryan suffers in the first place. He has a great job and his brother made it, which is what he wanted, so what's the problem, buddy? Why do you have to be an angsty piece of shit when you have people around you who are supporting you and encouraging you to pursue your passion? Even your little bro wants to take care of you, so what problem do we have here?

Not one.

It would be another thing if he despised his job, silently suffering but persevering because of life expenses (like many people do). He wants Cody to achieve his dream because he couldn't pursue his. Instant like for that kind of character, I guarantee it. Why? Because people would find him relatable. Characters who have to work for everything they have are more relatable than the two brothers living in Lilac Court (which is for famous people, and even if Mr. C did them a favor that's still some hefty rent to pay), and Cody's getting good acting gigs, so I don't imagine they starve and don't have money. Ryan's working in a five-star hotel bar, meeting celebs and whatnot, so surely he can give it a go with movie production because he has a lot of contacts. They are both privileged, unlike people who have to struggle to survive and don't get a chance to achieve their dream ever and have to settle. So, why the fuck are you whining? Not to mention how spinless he is with the girl he likes/loves, just ugh. He's moping around one moment and then in the next, he's a cheerful prick who pretends nothing happened. Oh, kiss? What kiss. Oh, hug? What hug? Sorry.

Cody... Oh boi I guess you can find him attractive if you’re into mothering grown ass men. I’m not, so fuck that.

He too, plays hot and cold. At one point he escapes after they kiss and acts all sulky, avoiding her, and in the next, he's back to his usual self, and even comments on how she doesn't need to be tense by his side and does his random grabbing. The only positive thing I can say is that he listens to MC sometimes?

What are his problems besides making it as an actor? I can’t think of anything. And that should be enough on his plate since people who want to become actors need to work their asses off just to land some roles and if they do, will it be enough to support them? That could be such a good supporting plot to romance!

Only the happy ending of his route shows a semi-realistic situation where he doesn’t get the roles so easily and is frustrated but Julia supports him. Too bad that wasn’t the whole fucking story but just a few sentences that nobody even bothers to read if you’re not like me who has to complete every ending.

#otome games #shall we date #shall we date love tangle #ryan gray #cody gray #otome games android #otome review

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fromthedeskofelizabeththird · 7 years ago

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Fracture 2/10

Chapter 2 of my retelling of V route!

I’m sorry for the lack of realism in their argument dfgdfgd who argues over a list?? Seems fake to me

Juyeon is not my oc! She is the brainchild of @yoosungshoodie, who let me borrow her for this fic

Rating Gen | Jumin x MC

It began with an argument long in the making.

She had been so excited to be married, to take the next step and build a life together, and Jumin made no secret of the fact that he felt the same way. In the weeks that followed the RFA party, they stayed awake long into the night, hands interlocked and equally wistful, imagining their wedding ceremony and the sort of life they might have afterwards.

“I’ll make you pancakes in a morning,” he whispered in her ear once, wrapping his arms around her middle. “Buttermilk ones, with a fruit compote.”

Even as she chuckled at the mental image, she knew at the back of her mind such a thing was unrealistic. Jumin usually woke several hours before her, stirring her awake quite by accident when he climbed out of bed. She had to admit she quite liked the thought of him lingering in the penthouse for several hours more every day, even if she knew she would never inflict such a thing on Jaehee.

Retrospectively, Nari did not know how she didn’t see the signs at the beginning: their engagement coming during the honeymoon stage of their relationship; the pair of them laughing and joking at a life they knew could never be. Nari was not ashamed to admit that she had fallen in love very quickly and accepted Jumin’s proposal in exactly the rash sort of manner she disapproved of in other people. She could not imagine a life without Jumin and did not particularly want to, though the fact remained that she accepted his wedding ring in the spur of the moment surrounded by paparazzi, somewhat naively believing they could return to normality afterwards.

Those weeks of wistful dreaming sat alongside harsher realities; of Nari receiving invitations to interviews at national publications, reporters calling to her across the street to ask about her shoes or intimate details of her relationship with Jumin. For the first time in her life she had a stylist, who upended her current wardrobe within a matter of minutes, replacing almost everything with something glittery, expensive and usually designer.

Suddenly she had extensive scripts of dialogue for every interview, public appearance and even casual meeting. Before she knew it, she had been invited to afternoon tea with the wives and girlfriends of almost every prominent CEO in the country, many of whom had even pursued Jumin in years past only to be rejected after they proved useful. Nari got the impression that they did not like her much, grinning into their wine glasses at such a lovely Cinderella story.

She knew she ought to have had some kind of realisation when Chief Han invited them both to dinner two days after the RFA party. Considering the awkward nature of their first meeting, Nari had not exactly been looking forward to it, though Jumin wrapped his hand around hers as she fidgeted beside him in the car.

The incident with Glam Choi left C&R’s reputation in a precarious position and if Nari’s relationship with Chief Han was not already awkward, then it certainly became so in the weeks that followed. He greeted them at dinner with a stony look and announcement that they would have to get married in six months.

“We need to promote our image as a family-centric organisation,” he said as if it were obvious, the plate of sea bream in front of him largely abandoned and at that point mostly for show. “What better than a wedding?”

At the time Nari had glanced at Jumin out of the corner of her eyes, willing him to express some sort of disagreement. Six months was no time at all and, while she had known from the beginning that the ceremony would have some degree of media involvement, she had not imagined that the event would revolve around it so completely. Jumin said nothing of the sort, though. Instead he glanced up from his potatoes and agreed that it was the logical next step.

At the time, she planned to speak up. To ask if her feelings held no bearing on her own wedding. In retrospect, she wished she had, rather than shrugging off her annoyance in favour of staying respectful. Jumin had only recently caused Chief Han a great deal of embarrassment, after all, and it would be incredibly presumptuous to demand even more of him during such a difficult time for the company.

Nari soon had an extensive schedule and an assistant, meetings with caterers, designers, architects. She came to wonder how it was she had had so much free time before and found herself sinking low into the bathtub or shutting herself away in the shower where no one might disturb her. Jumin’s schedule was twice as full as hers and, on the rare occasions that he came home early from the office, they were too tired for conversation and sometimes even fell asleep in the midst of dragging off one another’s clothes.

As strange as it seemed, she had never given much thought to weddings prior to her own engagement. At her previous job, she had grinned, squealed and congratulated colleagues on their own respective announcements, with a quiet acceptance that such things were not for her. However, despite her relative lack of enthusiasm on the matter, she had always presumed she would choose her own dress if such a thing ever happened. In reality, though, she perched on a stool while a designer she had never heard of looped pins into the hem of a dress somebody else had decided she should wear. Even with Jumin’s explanation that C&R had been scouting the studio for several years, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

And then came the final straw.

Nari had very few creative freedoms, though she did have access to the guest list.

“I think there’s a problem with the invitations,” she said one evening as Jumin took off his work clothes.

“Oh?” He poked his head around the bedroom door, tie half unfastened and lying loose around his neck. “How so?”

“Maybe I’m not reading this properly,” she said, scrolling up and down the document, “but it seems your mother isn’t on it.”

“Oh.”

The transformation was almost instantaneous; one moment he was curious and the next practically bored. Nari watched him turn back into the bedroom, and for a moment, she wondered if she had misinterpreted the few occasions Jumin had recalled his mother. He had told her only the barest of details; that her name was Ji-eun and she worked in corporate law. Nari had assumed, since he said so in the present tense, that she was alive. His reaction left her wondering otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” she said when he left the bedroom, “I thought...never mind…I shouldn’t have presumed.”

“It’s no bother,” he said, “her presence would simply be...complicated. It would probably not cause problems for the company, but I’d rather she not attend.”

Ordinarily, such reasoning would not have phased her. She had been careful, after all, to adhere to each and every memorandum passed her way to ensure she did not accidentally cause a scandal. She had made peace with each new expectation, presuming all of the while that Jumin had made sacrifices too. The guest list grew longer with each drafting, ranging from acquaintances of the company to media representatives.

His words were innocent enough, though all it did was serve as a reminder of each and every decision she had not made.

“You’d...you’d rather she not?”

“Have I offended you in some way?”

“I…” Nari began, debating whether or not to follow through on what she meant to say. “It’s not that I mind if she doesn’t attend...it’s just…”

At that, she sighed and set aside the tablet.

“There are three hundred people on our guest list and I don’t even know well over two thirds of the guests but if I were to say I’d rather they not attend-”

“Ah, of course. I understand your frustration, though each guest was personally approved by me, my father and the head of our PR sector.”

“But why are their opinions so important? I know that C&R needs the publicity, but this is our wedding and-”

She took a deep breath, trying not to imagine conversations she had had with newly engaged friends, all of whom were excited at the prospect of choosing cake and decorations with their partners. Nari would have given her left leg to have tested cakes with Jumin, to have laughed and joked about the design she chose for her wedding dress, and the more she tried not to think about it the more it weighed on her mind.

“It just...it feels like I’m marrying C&R instead of you.”

It seemed almost ridiculous to say that a list sparked an argument, though the pair of them debated in the kitchen for some time. At first, their points only slightly conflicted: Jumin confused at why she was so upset over an event that was purely for show, and Nari caught in the middle of trying to understand not only his perspective but her own. She had never given wedding ceremonies much thought, after all, and did not understand why a ceremony she had never given much thought to upset her so much.

Eventually, the debate fell to corporate, press centric weddings. Nari claimed they were soulless, while Jumin insisted they were practical and to fall into the trap of pretty dresses and champagne toasts was naive at best.

“Perhaps it is because we come from such different backgrounds,” he mused. “I have never been to a single wedding that didn’t exist to fulfill some degree of agenda.”

He did not say it maliciously, but it cut anyway. After one too many Cinderella remarks and interviews at magazines that focused so heavily on how it must feel to step out of obscurity and snare one of the country’s most eligible bachelors, Nari had genuinely come to wonder if his high society peers saw her as anything more than a carefully decorated joke. She had no job, no ties to anyone, and even Sarah and Glam Choi had represented a company.

“Do you…think of me as common?”

It was a loaded question and in honesty she did not want to know the answer. On some level, she supposed she expected him to laugh and reassure her that it wasn’t the case, leaving her head to spin when he said nothing at all.

“Do you?”

“I think... that if I had not proposed to you so publicly, in such a way, I might never have married you.”

He referred to his father’s objections, though she caught his meaning too late, long after she dragged the engagement ring from her finger and tossed it halfway across the room.

“You may not marry me yet,” she said, a clink of metal against the kitchen tiles the last thing she heard as she stormed through the bedroom door.

The moment she closed it, her legs buckled beneath her and she dropped to the floor. Just as she had while they dined with his father, the day he announced the date of their wedding, Nari willed Jumin to say something. To knock at the door behind her and give her the chance to explain herself in a way that made sense.

He didn’t, though. Instead she heard him pour a glass of wine and retire to bed several hours later than usual.

That night, Nari herself slept only briefly, checking in and out of the messenger only to find he never logged in. When she woke up, it was a little past seven and, judging from the dull ache in her neck and back, she had been sitting in the same awkward position for a decent amount of time. For a few blissful seconds she did not remember the events of the previous night, only to have a moment of stark realisation when she noticed she still wore her clothes from the previous day.

With the exception of Elizabeth sunning herself in Jumin’s usual chair, the penthouse was almost entirely empty and Nari switched on the television as she ate breakfast by way of a distraction. Her current situation was many miles apart from the buttermilk pancakes and fruit compote in Jumin’s version of their ideal future.

At eight, she received a phone call from her assistant, who seemed to be in even more of a good mood than usual.

As assistants went, Juyeon Park was exactly the opposite of what Nari might have expected from an employee of C&R. Jumin announced her one evening as they tucked into dinner, explaining that Nari’s schedule was growing so rapidly that she needed a second set of hands to alleviate the pressure. At the time she dreaded it, imagining all manner of stern faced individuals worried to make a mistake or offend her, and so it was a pleasant surprise when she met Juyeon exactly three days later. Juyeon had a wide smile and laughed at everything, taking Nari’s hand the first time they met and insisting she call her ‘Jenny’. Nari was sure she recognised her from somewhere, though had never been able to place it in all of the time she had known her. On this morning in particular, she was a welcome distraction.

“Good morning Miss Song,” she said in her usual sing song manner, “I hope you rested well! We have a long day ahead of us.”

“We do?”

“Oh? Mr Han didn’t tell you? He made an amendment to your schedule yesterday.”

Nari didn’t know how to tell Juyeon that of course he hadn’t. That they had argued from the moment he got home from work before he got the chance to tell her anything.

“No,” she said, “he didn’t mention it to me.”

“Oh, well no bother, I’ll forward you the details right away!”

Jumin’s amendment was a tour of a castle outside of the city. According to Juyeon, he was contemplating it as a location for the wedding ceremony and Nari could not help but wonder if it was a wasted effort. As she pulled on her clothes for the day, she chanced second glances at her phone, wanting nothing more than to call him and apologise. She already missed him; already regretted letting her transition into high society overwhelm her to the point that she lost all rationality.

She considered it, in fact, throughout the car journey, barely paying attention to Juyeon singing along to the pop music on the radio to Driver Kim’s amusement. She pulled her phone out of her bag once and then twice, sometimes going so far as to log onto the messenger, only to find no one online.

“This is the place!” Juyeon cried out after they had been in the car for several hours.

Truthfully, Nari had not read her e-mail in much detail. She certainly had not believed they were really going to a castle and so she could not help but stare as she climbed out of the car, taking in its enormous doors and tall towers.

“Is….this is…”

She did not know exactly how to describe her feelings towards it and both Driver Kim and Juyeon laughed at the wide eyed way she took in the view.

“I’ll find somewhere to park,” said Driver Kim, though she barely heard him. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

As she walked the dirt path to the front door, Juyeon only a little way behind, Nari could hardly believe such a place existed. It was like stepping into a fairy tale, the sort that Jumin liked alluding to while half asleep and even more affectionate than usual.

“If I kiss you, will you wake up?” He said once, while she lay a hair’s breadth from him and pretended to be asleep.

For the briefest of moments, taking in the archways and carefully kept hedges, her heart sang at the memory of his warm breath against her forehead, only to retract his lips before they ever made contact.

“What a trickster you are,” he had said, catching her with her eyes open before he could kiss her. “Stealing my kisses away like this.”

“It’s not stealing if you want me to have them,” she had joked, only to gasp as he rolled over on top of her, ready with another witty retort. It never crossed his lips, though, for she reached up to comb a few stray locks of hair from his face and he leaned into her touch, smile rapidly softening.

It was just like Jumin to find a fairy tale castle in the middle of nowhere, though that thought left her feeling rather more dejected than anything else.

They were barely halfway across the path when a young man came rushing out of the castle to greet them. Nari assumed he worked at the place, as he wore a bright magenta jacket, complete with a waistcoat and cravat.

“Good morning!” He said, lowering himself into a bow with several flourishes. “My name is Ray...I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry if we’re late,” said Juyeon. “The side roads are a little hard to navigate.”

Ray did not seem overly annoyed by any sort of minor inconvenience, however, laughing out loud at her apology.

“It’s no mind,” he said. “Thank you for coming this far.”

He turned to Nari then, presumably noticing the way she had been staring at him ever since he lifted his head and she saw him up close. If his hair were not so pale and his eyes such a bright green….

“Does something trouble you?”

“Oh!” Nari flushed a bright pink and shook her head. “I’m sorry..it’s just...you look like someone I know.”

She did not mean to offend him, and from the dark look crossing his face, she started to worry that she had. In a matter of seconds, though, he laughed off her words.

“Someone handsome, I hope!”

He turned to the castle then and motioned for her to follow, leaving Juyeon to reach for her shoulder.

“I’ll go and find Driver Kim. I’ll catch up with you inside.”

In retrospect, of course, she wished she had never set foot inside of the castle; never let Juyeon leave her side. She was sure she would never forgive herself for following Ray inside so willingly. the sound of the doors slamming shut behind her lingering in her memories like the crack of a snare.

#mystic messenger #mysme #jumin han #jumin x mc #vabverse

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zenosanalytic · 7 years ago

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Atomic Blonding(Because Of Course I Would)

I just saw Atomic Blonde yesterday and l wanted to write about it. I’ve seen a few people call it a “Bond Film”. I don’t agree; maybe if they’re comparing it to the Daniel Craig generation of Bond films, but it(like Craig’s run) is miles better than any of them from before him.

To explain that, and eventually get to what I LIKE about Atomic Blonde, this is going to have to turn into a critique of Bond films for a short time. To put it simply, Bond films are aesthetically spy movies, but there’s no actual “spying”, or any of the larger themes universal to “Spy” as a genre, involved in them.

In a Bond film(excluding Craig’s, which are an absolute sea-change), you know who the “good guys” are and who the “bad guys” are; it’s obvious, declared at the very start, and the villains act like mustache-twirling matinee stereotypes(and often with asinine racial, national, and sexual stereotypes thrown in as well). There’s no feeling of paranoia, or awareness of your own ignorance, or sense of unpredictable, ever-present malice, or unpredictable and lethal violence. In a Bond movie you know, exactly, what’s going on, and the plots aren’t just simple but obvious and predictable down to the sort of things Bond and his enemies are likely to say in any situation. There are some surprises, but they’re only there for flavor and affect; they have nothing to do with the plot or with characterization(which is equally flat and boring. And declared by their names). Bond’s enemies aren’t people with lives, agendas, objectives; they’re voiceless mooks and elemental forces that the Orderly World cannot, for some reason, touch. They are monsters for him to slay with his miraculous techno-gifts, handed down from the inscrutable yet affable Q. Bond’s a modern Perseus eternally repeating his quest to slay mythic beasts, minus the parental issues(until, as always, Craig). Most “Spy” protagonists are not unknowable, face-changing monster-slayers, silently defending the world from platonic Evil: they’re flawed, stressed-out, morally-compromised, sympathetic and charismatic yet ultimately unlikeable, human beings.

Nor are there secrets to uncover or unravel for either the protagonist or the reader; merely banal details of execution to some monomaniacal, over-large plan to be thwarted. There are no allies to wonder at the loyalty and agenda of. There are no unforeseen, soul-crushing and lethal betrayals to barely, painfully, survive. There is no oppressive sense of danger, or the constant stress of artifice and the fear of discovery, or the dramatization and exploration of dissociation that instills. There is no desperate need to know what others know, to know their motivations, and to trust them in a situation where knowledge and trust will kill you quicker and more surely than anything else. There is no invitation to the internal life of the protagonists and their incidental victims; no reason to wonder why they are doing what they are doing, or what it has done to them. In short there’s no mystery, and mystery is fundamental to the spy genre and characterization in it.

Then there’s institutions. In Bond whether Good(the Cold War world-order and its Alphabet-Bureaus) or Bad(SPECTRE and, oddly enough, the global capitalist-aristocracy, which is synonymous with world-threatening crime in Bond films, which I consider a definite +), institutions are fundamentally trustworthy; providing missions, divine gadgets, information, and support to their agents, and playing little role beyond that. In the spy genre they are monolithic, unknowable, disloyal, and fundamentally compromised by the nature of their work, their objectives, and by the individuals that make them up. They are, simultaneously, forces of immense personal destruction, chewing people and their lives up and spitting them out with no consideration or care for the damage they do, and fecklessly helpless before the personal venality of their staff, and the political expediency of their managers and governments. The ultimate fate of every Spy protagonist is to be betrayed by the very institutions they’re working for in one way or another and so Betrayal lies at the heart of the genre. For instance Smiley, probably the most famous protag in the genre, has his life utterly destroyed by The Circus numerous times and his friends repeatedly killed and publicly ruined by it, is constantly doing things he finds morally repugnant in its service, is thus led into self-betrayal by it, and never once gets an apology or thank you for any of it. There is no Betrayal in Bond; at best, only femme fatales sent to trick the protagonist into danger with their bodies and his own horniness(which, of course, Bond is always completely Aware of and Prepared for, because he is a male competence-fantasy on top of everything else).

Bond Films are action Travelogues and sexed-up Boy’s Life fantasies about “the high life” of gambling, girls*, gadgets, glamour, tourism, and lazy wealth, with Patriotism, Guns, Murder, and ~Exotic Adventure in Foreign Locales~ thrown in for spice. They’re petty-trifles; dime novels; Basic misogynistic colonialist twaffle.

Atomic Blonde, on the other hand, does manage to fit into the Spy genre while also being an effective, not-too-deep, entertainment-focused action flick, much like the Craig Bond films(particularly the first one; they go down-hill fast) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E(2015). It is Motherfucking Both Things.

It is a solid, competent action flick with REALLY GOOD, substantive, driving, fighting, and chase choreography. These scenes are weighty and believable and not distractingly choreographed or fakey. It’s really hard for an action protagonist in a fight-movie to be completely 100% believable because what they are doing is fundamentally unrealistic(one person cannot fight a dozen people, and cannot predict with total accuracy what numerous other people will do in a fight simultaneously, dancing out of the way of attacks seamlessly), but Atomic Blonde and Theron’s performance comes as close as you can get, much closer than Bourne or anything else I’ve seen in Western cinema(The Raid is another good example, and a handful of older Hong Kong action flicks), and there is an extended combat sequence in the denouement that, I would say, pretty much achieves “fight realism”. They really paid attention to verisimilitude, it shows, and it’s entertaining as hell. When people get hit, it looks and sounds painful. Injuries have lasting, visible consequences. Knives and Guns are presented as the horribly dangerous, incredibly lethal, and fundamentally untrustworthy(anyone can use them. They will always let you down when you need them most) things that they are, and they are given the focus they deserve by the characters. Cars are terrible engines of humiliating pain and abrupt death. When Charlize Theron hits that man in the throat with her stiletto heel(not a spoiler it was in the trailer) it is Satisfying and winceworthy all at once, as is what follows it(it’s great, A++ Recommended, go see it). At the same time, there are also chances to see and appreciate the artistry of fundamentally unrealistic film fight choreography(like the apartment fight). But it doesn’t stop at being just a great action movie(which it is).

Atomic Blonde is a paranoid movie: from the very beginning it is about Trust, the emotions that create it, the betrayal of it, and the toll of establishing it, having it, and breaking it.

It is a mysterious movie: from the very beginning it is obsessed with what people know and want to know, spins along on what they don’t, and is fueled by lies, misdirections, and manipulations. What its characters(and the audience) know, want to know, think they know, want to believe, say they are doing, and are actually doing, are all pivotal to it and one’s engagement with the film.

It is a movie about characters: I would not call it an “internal” movie because it is fast-paced and doesn’t dwell on or explore psychology, but it DOES focus and turn on the question of who its characters are, what they believe, what they feel, and what motivates them. The “central” plot objective, a genre-traditional mcguffin, takes a backseat to exploring the characters, is absent from most of the film, and is only questionably important to its resolution; the characters, their relationships, and the action they undertake are what draw you in and connect you to the story. Which isn’t to say its characters and what they do are all there is to it(like, say, Smokin’ Aces). While character-driven, I’d argue it’s also a story about narrative and how narrative defines and obscures self, and there’s some rich meta-dirt to dig into as a result.

I wouldn’t say it’s a movie about institutions, but they certainly play a central and heavy role. Their stability, how they change, their interest and objectives, the loyalty they demand, their fundamental disloyalty(anyone can use them. They will always let you down when you need them most), their impact on individuals and sense-of-self, and the monolithic threat they can pose to the individual; all are part of the backdrop, motivation, and plot-engine of the film which the characters are responding to. But the individuals living in them, how they do it, and their fundamental ability to undermine, confuse, manipulate, and escape them is, like I said above, even more central; both as the film’s action and as how it engages the audience. Maybe it would be more accurate to say it is a movie about people dealing with institutions? But lightly: it doesn’t dwell on this or beat you over the head with it.

So, in my opinion, Atomic Blonde is NOT a Bond movie: it is an action-oriented, character-driven, Spy Movie. It’s fun, engaging, and immediate. I definitely wouldn’t call it “cerebral”, but it wants to engage you on many fronts at once and it Respects the Forms of the many genres it sticks its toes into. Also, it’s wonderfully cast, beautifully shot, and effectively directed. And the romances in it are very light without being poorly done, and impactful to the protagonist. There’s a sex scene but it didn’t come off as voyeuristic, objectifying, or insulting to me and it creates a real, sustained personal connection, friendship, and intimacy, which I appreciate.

My one complaint, and this is the only really spoilery bit of this review because its unavoidable so stop reading here and skip to the next para if you don’t want to be spoiled for the movie, is how the partner in that relationship, Delphine, is written. As a character she’s fine, and she isn’t superfluous to the story or anything, but I just didn’t see WHY she was involved in espionage to begin with, or why her gov would put someone so inexperienced(or so the movie tells us) in such a dangerous place, and with zero apparent support from the French government. The lack of any French presence in the debriefing, when they had lost what appears to be their only agent in Berlin during this mission, was also peculiar, especially given the CIA’s presence. Delphine also dies. I didn’t find her death particularly out of step with the movie; the character who kills her had previously killed someone with improvised, if faster, methods, and the movie itself doesn’t present violence in a sanitized or glorifying way. But I do feel like it wasn’t necessary. I mean, the story beats leading to it are clear and sensible, even inevitable; her death follows genre conventions to a T. But it doesn’t really change anything for anyone. That might be the point though: the movie even comments on this by having the protag, Lorraine, say “you didn’t have to kill her” which is absolutely true. So, as a character beat showing the audience the dark side to Percival it makes some sense; by having him kill Delphine, the audience is more likely to approve of his killing later. And Lorraine’s anger about it shows us something about her as well, even if she was going to kill him anyway. Given all of this part of me wonders if Delphine was even real or just an invention of Lorraine to confuse her debriefers and help build her case against Percival, but that’s a different discussion. The point is that, while I wasn’t turned off of the movie by her death, I can def understand others finding it senseless and offensive.

Ok so, Wow, I had a lot more to say about this than I first thought I did. Hope everyone who read it enjoyed it, and I def rec this film owo

#Atomic Blonde #Long Posts #Spy Genre #Spy Tropes #Bond Movies #Movie Reviews #Critical Analysis #Movie Criticism #zA's Outside Viewing #Charlize Theron is an Unstoppable Action Goddess and I Officially Forgive Her for Aeon Flux #u_u u_u u_u

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shrimpkardashian · 6 years ago

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I am going to post this text which I used to make this 90-minute podcast where I ranked all of David Lynch's films. It’s close to 5,000 words long. Since I took the time to write all this out, I wanted to post it, edited for the page. Enjoy:

David Lynch has created ten feature films in forty years, specifically between 1977 and 2017. I am going to rank all ten films right now.

I’ve broken down the Lynch filmography into four tiers.

Tier #4 consists of two films that, while they’re not necessarily horrible, I’d be OK with never re-watching again.

Tier #3 is Dune, just… Dune… (crickets)

Tier #2 also consists of two movies, two features that are close to being really great, but are ultimately flawed for very different reasons.

And then there’s the Final Tier, Tear #1, ALL-TIME CLASSICS, of which, by my count, there are five. Not bad, considering that equals, oh I don't know... half of his filmography.

You might be wondering what constitutes an ALL-TIME CLASSIC... great question. In my book, it’s a movie that scores a 9.500 or higher on my highly scientific to-the-thousandths scale movie review scoring system. All ten of these feature films have been scored between 5.999 and 9.819. Using the thousandths scale allows for accessible gaps as I slowly fill in the list as I continue to compile my personal ranking of the greatest films ever made (and also... the not so great). I urge you to go to my website www.movies.myameri.ca to see the list of over 200 films that I've reviewed and ranked thus far.

Now, let’s get to the list...

#10

Perhaps, The Elephant Man––David Lynch’s second film, from 1980––doesn’t work for me because you can feel, in a sense, that he’s selling his soul. Sure, it's "good" and was recognized as such in all the ways and by all the metrics that the most mainstream critical pipelines assess and award art that is "good."

It's what I couldn't put my finger on at the time I recorded my initial review, and the truly repulsive thing about it: It's bad in the way these "good" films often are. It feels older than it is: a 1980 film about the 1920s that feels like it was made in the late 50s. It’s stylistic feel is both confusing and confused. The brief intrusions of Lynchian originality are present and welcome, but they’re all too quickly dispersed by stale set pieces, and performances that are either overwrought or stiffly boring. Only Freddie Jones, in the devious role of the elephant man’s original "handler," strikes a cord.

The look and feel of John Hurt’s titular character is effective, because it is grotesque. It is in no way fantastical, even if we’re looking at the height of movie magic, because this person existed. And through this realism, a sickening is induced. With every one of Hurt’s nasally slurps––while that’s surely the point, and it wholly succeeds on that level––the film becomes less re-watchable, a major tenant of my grading scale. Wherein Eraserhead’s baby is pure fantasy––a goofy, disgusting, horrifying little buddy that the viewer wants to spend time with––the Elephant Man is an abomination. Our horror with him, at him, over him, is both the movie proving its thesis, and shutting itself down.

David Lynch is on record as having been pleased with the film, but what amount of that pleasure has been framed by four decades of opportunity in large part because of its success, isn’t clear.

The Elephant Man was nominated for eight Academy Awards. No other David Lynch feature was nominated for more than one. It is his worst film by a wide margin.

It would be easy to dismiss 1999’s The Straight Story as a joke disguised. Here was David Lynch making a relatively, well, "straight" movie about a man named Alvin Straight and it was titled The Straight Story. It was released by Disney. When I rewatched this recently I imagined what the movie might have been like if it had the same plot but, you know, felt Lynchian. What it would be like if the entire film had the tone of my favorite scene, the "I LOVE DEER" scene... but, alas, it isn't that.

The film is just a feel-good story. Sometimes, when you peel back the layers, there's just more goodness hiding underneath, and nothing more. And maybe there's a kind of horror in that as well.

Dune stands alone.

Released in 1984, it's the only film among the ten wherein Lynch didn't have complete final cut. It's, by any classic metric, a bad film. At the end of the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, which details one of the first attempts at bringing the best selling science fiction book of all-time to the big screen, Alejandro Jodorowsky describes going to see Lynch's version and being filled with a perverse glee that the movie was a failure, that it sucked. And it is definitely a failure.

The film is a god-awful mess. Do not under any circumstances attempt to watch the 3-hour "extended cut" version. Lynch had nothing to do with this and it does not re-insert anything by way of noteworthy lost footage. It merely accentuates the worst elements of the original theatrical cut. The biggest crime by far being... the dreaded voice-over, which plagues both versions.

In 2011, a YouTuber posted a 9-minute super-cut compiling all of these whispered voice-overs, which––if you aren't familiar––are meant to give more clarity to the story by presenting the audience an inside look at "the thoughts" in various characters' heads. But these "thoughts" do exactly the opposite: bogging down the story and actually making it harder to follow (in my opinion).

But even with all of its many, many flaws, the film is not without its charm. The look of it is extremely interesting, if not inconsistent. Some imagery looks dated, while other effects seem ahead of their time. The soundtrack, an amalgamation of Toto's overblown rock aesthetics and a nuanced main theme co-written by Brian Eno, is kind of awesome

But really Dune is just a huge mess of ideas. For example, in one scene the actor Freddie Jones is given a cat with a rat taped to its side, hooked to a contraption, and is told to "milk the cat" if he wants to stay alive. His character is never seen or mentioned again. These are the ideas of Frank Herbert told through the lens of David Lynch and filtered by producers who were so damn concerned whether or not the plot would make sense that they butchered the whole damn thing. What's left are pieces, intriguing pieces strewn about the 2-plus hours.

It would be easy to submit this film as the last place entry, #10 out of 10. But I just can't do that. I would re-watch this under the right circumstances. The strange convergence of wild visuals, bad editing and too-fast, too-big, too-soon nature of the production, puts this in a special category among the Lynch filmography. It almost hits "so bad it's good" notes, in a way. When Denis Villeneuve unleashes his high stakes, huge expectations version of Dune in 2020, David Lynch's third film will likely become nothing more than a footnote.... a grain of sand among the great DUNES of film history, one might say. (Sorry.)

Inland Empire is, technically speaking, the final film of David Lynch's career. Released almost thirteen years ago in 2006, it's certainly the most confounding. Three hours of lo-fi footage, welded together by a director whose contempt for the industry he was a part of had reached a boiling point. And that boiling point is INLAND EMPIRE.

For years, I attempted to watch this film in stops and starts. That, for quite a long time, I never got past the relatively straight, narrative-driven first hour is probably telling. Outside of a classic Grace Zabriskie appearance as Laura Dern's crazy Polish neighbor, not much really happens.

But it isn't so much that nothing is happening that's the issue. It's that nothing interesting is happening. An actress gets a role. Her co-star is a womanizer. Her husband might be jealous. There's some mystery concerning the development of the project. They have an affair. After a burst of imagery at the start, this all unfolds in a fairly normal fashion. The most noteworthy thing about it is how it looks. Lynch used a digital camera to film some ideas with Laura Dern one day and then decided to make a feature film out of it. He's stated that he had to keep using the same camera out of necessity. That he had to make it look this way, is a very Lynchian answer to the question "Why does INLAND EMPIRE look like garbage?" Because it does truly look like trash. You can get better video fidelity from any cheap Android phone nowadays. It has not aged well.

Some might point to this and say that's exactly why it's genius, why it's underrated... but I ain't buying that line of thinking, either. It's a misstep, in my opinion. The film is a bloated experimentation of a script written on the fly. It has only one true saving grace... Laura Dern.

Even if they hadn't reunited for the successful collaboration that was Twin Peaks: The Return, I think I'd be OK with this being the pair's final work together. The film only works because of Dern. The entire thing is a testament to her ability and it transcends the hardware that was used to capture it. When I finally got around to completing this watch, I was struck by how weird it got. Which is saying something about a David Lynch film! Without Dern this might play like someone's forgotten student project of the mid 2000s. With her, it's a strange bookend to an amazing career.

One that I have no other choice but to start, and stop, and start again. Someday.

Wild at Heart was produced at the height of David Lynch's success in 1990. Riding the high of Blue Velvet, arguably his most beloved work in a critical sense, even to this day, and filmed just as the world was experiencing TV’s Twin Peaks. Lynch's fifth movie arrived just as the concept of "Lynchian" was soaking into the cultural landscape. It's a brash, outrageous film that feels like the work of an individual who could no wrong. This cockiness both makes it fun, and provides its flaws.

While there seems to be "a point," however cloudy and/or veiled and/or vague, behind most things in every David Lynch film, Wild at Heart seemingly indulges in bombast for the sake of bombast. It's no surprise this Louis CK's favorite film and the film that nearly gave Roger Ebert a heart attack. (See this video)

I'd like to split the difference between those two sentiments, if I may. I don't agree that Lynch is always trying to "get off the hook" as Roger Ebert put it. But that may be the case with Wild at Heart. That it is the only Lynch film to take the top prize at Cannes, perhaps speaks more to the idea of Lynch and his influence in the culture at the time, then it does to the film itself. CK was right to read this film as a comedy, it's the only way it works. And Ebert was wrong to crucify it for being such. But It stands outside the top tier of Lynch's career for a different reason. With cockiness comes laziness. Lynch notoriously had his hands full during the development of this project, as he abandoned the TV world of Twin Peaks to make it. Wild at Heart feels half-baked as a result.

Sure, it has its moments. Willem DaFoe gets to hang his hat on the mantle of notable, completely over-the-top supporting characters in the Dennis Hopper / Frank Booth tradition. And Nicolas Cage and Diane Ladd are every bit as crazed in their performances as well. And yet, therein lies another problem: the movie has only one speed, out of control. The Sailor-Lula love story is meant to provide the downbeat, something earnest in a sea of chaos. But it falls short. You can't stop to smell the roses if the car never stops.

That half of David Lynch's filmography constitute all time classics is no minor accomplishment. I imagine there are only a handful of directors with a better batting average. And so, the order of these next five films is fairly insignificant. Certainly there are biases at play which have placed them into the positions you find them here. For example, I certainly haven't watched Eraserhead enough and I've probably seen Mulholland Drive too many times by comparison. It's also about timing. Maybe This Moment™ in My Life™ is more fitting for Lost Highway then it is Blue Velvet, for myriad reasons, and so on and so on.

The thing to know is this... These five projects have all stood the test of time, and any one of them is deserved of the top spot. Now, back to the countdown...

Eraserhead was exactly like I thought it would be.

I neglected to watch this film for a very long time. I kept telling myself "Now is the right time to watch Eraserhead, Jeff." What I didn't realize until I finally watched it is that the answer to that question is both never and always.

Eraserhead is a feat of nature. A film that took years to complete feels and flows like it was molded together over a single month. It almost feels silly to expound on the film at this point. It's been dissected to death. Even critics who fail to understand it can appreciate it on the most basic of levels. This. Is. Art. PERIOD. There's no denying that.

Wherein the surrealists who decided to make films couldn't get past the concept of the singular idea, confining their work to shorts OR a series of loosely connected "living paintings," Lynch was able to extrapolate the aesthetic to feature length and also tell a story.

It's soundscape alone is a work of art, and perhaps the most important facet of the film from a historic point of view. This world sounds exactly as it looks: manufactured, fractured, jarring and glum. What brief respite the Lady in the Radiator provides with her haunting, off-kilter serenade is all we get by way of counterpoint to the unnerving soundtrack of Lynch's debut feature. It took Lynch, working in tandem with master sound engineer Alan Splet, nearly a year to complete. From the 1991 book, Midnight Movies:

"The soundtrack is densely layered, including as many as fifteen different sounds played simultaneously using multiple reels. Sounds were created in a variety of ways—for a scene in which a bed slowly dissolves into a pool of liquid, Lynch and Splet inserted a microphone inside a plastic bottle, floated it in a bathtub, and recorded the sound of air blown through the bottle. After being recorded, sounds were further augmented by alterations to their pitch, reverb and frequency."

Lynch's first film is also his shortest, just shy of ninety minutes, and it's hard to find any flaws. Is the detour with the severed head at the pencil factory meaningless? How about the next-door neighbor character... unnecessary? Inside the Top 5, I won't be nitpicking just to do so. In the Top 5, everything is fine.

While I don't necessarily think Blue Velvet is the best film of David Lynch's career, it's hard to argue that it isn't the most important. It is the world from which all subsequent Lynch things are built. Following the creative and commercial disaster of Dune, Lynch's fourth feature is a dark psychological horror that both expands upon and completely blows apart the aesthetic of Film Noir. And there really isn't a single David Lynch film project after Blue Velvet which doesn't also explore this form to a degree.

The movie marks the debut of a pair who would turn out to be lifelong collaborators in the David Lynch cinematic universe: Laura Dern, acting here in one of her first "adult" roles at age 19, and the composer Angelo Badalamenti. Badalamenti would go onto write the scores for every subsequent entry in the filmography except Inland Empire, and his main theme to Blue Velvet remains one of the most memorable.

Blue Velvet is also notable as being a vehicle for Dennis Hopper's re-entry into mainstream cinema. Relaunching his career, Hopper's portrayal of the deranged Frank Booth remains as skin crawling as ever.

I think the fact that I have watched Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive more than any other of Lynch's films had a lot to do with where I've placed them on this list (that they aren’t higher). But I swear I'm not being contrarian for contrarian's sake. As I said a minute ago, all five of these films are worthy. When it comes to the movies of David Lynch, well, I guess you could say, "....HE PUT HIS DISEASE IN ME." (Sorry.)

The strange origin story of Mulholland Drive somehow eluded me for years. I only found out that this movie, Lynch's ninth, released one month after 9/11, was literally developed and shot with the intention to be a TV pilot for ABC. I found this out from the book, Room to Dream, by the way. The half autobiography/half biography of Lynch's life, which came out last year that I highly recommend. Only when it was clear that it wouldn't work for television did Lynch decide to re-cut and film additional footage to release as a feature. Though this was common knowledge, I managed to watch this many times over the years with no idea. When I rewatched it again recently with this information, I couldn't help but try to pick out what was filmed when in the timeline, and if I could see any inconsistencies... a true hellish way to watch a picture. I don't recommend it. But I digress..

From Blue Velvet on, each one of David Lynch's films (outside of The Straight Story) has had a longer running time. At close to 2½ hours, 2001's Mulholland Drive was his longest to date by a decent margin. It’s something of a misnomer that Lynch's films meander, as people mistake deliberateness for slowness or frivolity. Mulholland is filled with detours, inhabiting the film like micro movies in their own right. This also continues the loose Los Angeles trilogy (after Lost Highway and concluding with Inland Empire), which, at their heart, are films about coming to grips with who you really are. This might be the most direct lampooning of the film industry itself, but all three deal with being someone who you're really not.

Lynch has repeatedly stated his admiration for the 1950 film noir classic Sunset Blvd., another film about the film industry. In some respects, the naïveté of Naomi Watts' Betty is the counterpoint to Norma Desmond. In Mulholland Drive, her character says, "I'd rather be known as a great actress than a movie star. But, you know, sometimes people end up being both." Whereas, Norma Desmond portrayed by Gloria Swanson, has already reckoned with the true fate: "No one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star."

The arc of the characters—plural—Betty and Diane, and the power of Naomi Watts' performance as them both, is behind the wheel on Mulholland Drive. I found it odd that she took second billing in the opening credit crawl to co-star Justin Theroux. Was this because she was unknown to the masses at the time, or perhaps another piece of the puzzle to this movie's greater themes?

Mulholland Drive touches all the bases. At times bleak and bizarre. Sometimes bright and hopeful. In many ways, it's modeled after the next film on our countdown, as it can almost be read as two separate entities: converging, crossing and meeting together again? Well...

No film surprised me more during my recent rewatch binge then 1997’s Lost Highway. David Lynch’s seventh film might be his most divisive, in so much as it failed to ignite the critical response that really any of his other films did upon their release.

While it’s industrial rock heavy soundtrack perhaps dates the film to its actual era of production more than any other Lynch picture, it also works as an anchor. Outside of Inland Empire, this is easily his most abstract and seemingly rambling work. It is grounded through style and feel. And it might just be his best singular statement.

Bull Pullman is a revelation as the jazz saxophonist Fred Madison. His chaotic emoting on the stage through his blaring instrument is but another counterpoint, this time to his subdued, confused off-stage demeanor. Who knew the goofy President from Independence Day could pull this off?

My critique of Patricia Arquette in many of her other roles is that she comes across as lifeless. Well, with her performance here as a dead-on-the-inside beauty, that mode has never played better. She's tremendous, acting the conduit in this strange play, this circuitous journey that is often described as a theatrical möbius strip, where our leading man has quite literally been replaced.

And that brings up another interesting point: There doesn't seem to be a traditional main character in this film. Arquette in her dual role as Renee and Alice is functionally it, but she gives way to Pullman and Balthazar Getty's Pullman––a car mechanic named Pete––for long stretches, and its Lynch's most diplomatic film in terms of dolling out the heavy lifting in this regard.

And last but not least we have to talk about... Robert Blake.

In a sea of outstanding, intensely weird and occasionally unforgettable supporting characters throughout the Lynch filmography, Blake’s Mystery Man might just take the cake. That Robert Blake, more than likely an actual sociopath, instructed Lynch on his character’s look––which, let me remind you was such: Blake decided to cut his hair cut extremely short, parted in the middle, white Kabuki make-up on his face, and an all black outfit––might be the best example of the auteur trusting his instincts, and having it pay off completely. Only on screen for a handful of scenes, Blake, who would be arrested and acquitted for the murder of his wife just a couple years later, delivers a truly unsettling performance. In his final film role ever, he encompasses true evil more than Twin Peaks’ BOB or Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. The Mystery Man is the lurking, vile corruption of what’s good that Lynch has always been looking for.

But Lost Highway is not a “what’s beneath the surface” film like Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks or even Mulholland Drive are. The “point” of Lost Highway might just be that evil exists in plain view... and there’s nothing we can do about it. Gary Busey sometimes has to watch his only child disappear in a lightning bolt of spoiled meat and that’s that. When they reappear, broken and struggling, and falling down the same path until it happens again, well... that’s just life.

One of my favorite parts of the entire movie is a scene early on when a detective asks Fred Madison if he owns a videocamera. His wife, Renee Madison, portrayed by Patricia Arquette, responds, "no, Fred hates them." Fred responds, "I like to remember things my own way." The detective asks, "what do you mean by that?" Bill Pullman, as Fred Madison, replies, "how I remember them. Not exactly the way that they happened."

(DISCLAIMER: I’m sorry if you think it’s cheating that I am including the expanded Twin Peaks Universe as one single entry on this list. I’m sorry if you think the only thing that should count is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me because that is the only Twin Peaks thing that is actually a “feature film.” But also: SORRY NOT SORRY.

This is my list and I’m putting Twin Peaks at #1, specifically: all of Season 1 of the original TV show, plus the beginning of Season 2 (until the episode where we find out who killed Laura Palmer) and the Season 2 finale. Then of course Fire Walk with Me, and the 18 hour MOVIE that is Twin Peaks: The Return, or Twin Peaks Season 3, if you will (I prefer the former as it gives the masterpiece the gravitas it deserves).

If you put a gun to my head and I ABSOLUTELY had to only include Fire Walk with Me, I would probably drop it to #4 or #5 and slide everything else on the list up a spot. End of DISCLAIMER.)

I was given the Twin Peaks Gold Box as a Christmas gift in 2007. The 10-DVD set had just come out and this was still an era when people treasured physical things like that. It was really important and meaningful to me, and I still own it despite no longer having a DVD player. Watching it for the first time was a treasure and a fond memory. The feeling I got when I heard that Badalamenti theme music start the show and everything in between...

...yes, even James in Season 2. I loved it all: the good, the bad and the ugly, the whole kitten caboodle. The original TV series is, obviously, far from flawless. Lynch stepped away for long stretches before going fully AWOL after it was revealed that Laura Palmer's father, portrayed by the great Ray Wise, is in fact her killer. After that, the show took a turn (to put it lightly).

But Lynch never gave up on the world. He returned to helm the stunning Season 2/de facto series finale. So much of the mythology that Fire Walk with Me and certainly The Return is built upon is ignited in that finale, fittingly titled "Beyond Life and Death." But really, the original series is most notable for merely existing at all. A precursor to the "golden age of television" that was right around the corner, there still hasn't been a network series remotely this daring. There's often much made, too much if you ask me, about the "cult of David Lynch." Critics of this “cult” say its followers are blind: The man can do no wrong. It's weird for weirdness' sake. And so on, they drone. Now, I'm a fairly big David Lynch fan (no duh). But I've always tried to remain grounded in regards to this. He's not perfect. But he has made near-perfect art. And I'm a fan of ART first. A practicer of admiration? Maybe some distant second, third, fourth or beyond. I see his infiltration of the masses with Twin Peaks as one of his finest achievements in the arts. How many powerful people had to be convinced that the mainstream was ready for something like this. It's baffling. That, of course, they weren't ready is kind of besides the point. Someone has to poke the bear.

If Lynch had closed the books on Twin Peaks with Fire Walk with Me, his sixth film released in 1992, that would have been fine. It's a polarizing feature and was a fairly significant box office bomb, even for Lynch. Fire Walk with Me nonetheless retains an otherworldliness among the filmography. Given the subject matter––you know, just your average super-violent father-daughter incest rape thing––it's hard to argue this isn't his darkest tale by a wide degree. It's perhaps not ripe for repeated viewings. In fact, I did not rewatch it for this review, the only film of the ten. Why? Well, I had given it a replay back in 2017, just before the debut of Showtime's Twin Peaks: The Return. And, to be honest, I just wasn't ready to return to this madness quite so soon.

Only David Lynch could mold one of the loftier aspects/thematic devices/main characters (?) of the long-awaited follow-up to perhaps his most beloved work on one of the most random, seemingly meaningless, toss-away lines spoken in a bad Cajun accent in a cameo role by David Bowie. "We're not going to talk about Judy at all..." Until, that is, the time is right... Say... 25 years later?

I just recently began to rewatch The Return and I'd like to say thank you for this, David Lynch. This needs to be put into the discussion with his greatest work, if it's not already there. I can recall after various episodes of its original run (May to September 2017), feeling a sense of awe and wonderment and confusion and joy. I say to anyone that's curious that this is an 18-hour movie. David Lynch made an 18-hour movie when it wasn't certain if he'd make any more movies again.

It would be dumb, if not downright foolish, to try and hash out the plot-lines or gush over Kyle MacLachlan's performance in not two, but three distinct roles. Here, the duality of man has fractured yet again in these modern times. And when I got to that final two-hour finale, I found myself on a family vacation. So I carved out a block of time to watch it at the house we were renting on my laptop, alone, in the dark, as the rest of my family enjoyed a sunny day at the beach. I filed Kyle and Laura Dern's Diane into one more sketchy motel and then onto El Paso, Texas, of course, just as everyone had guessed, and then back to Twin Peaks, Washington, where the series ends on a question... Special Agent Dale Cooper turns to Laura Palmer outside her childhood home and asks, "what year is this?" She screams into the abyss and the lights in the home spark off and the screen explodes into darkness. For a series that was, ultimately, about the passing of time as much as it was about the origins of evil in the universe or anything else, it was a fitting end.

#movies

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boyuantai-blog · 5 years ago

Text

I've decided to decide on the right answer to every question so I'll never have to think again.

Link to my original FB post: https://www.facebook.com/boyuan.tai.5/posts/123015615582347

Full text:

Sometimes when I'm thinking to myself in my head, I almost feel like I'm talking to someone else. And then I'm reluctant to let that person go. I know what it is, memories of past conversations, memes, random facts, whatever, but it feels so real. It's almost like when you're having a good dream, and then you wake up, and you want to go back into that dream again because it was better than the here and now. I don't know if it's possible to be in love with oneself, but I'm definitely in love with my own mind, because it carries all the memories of the good things. I'm beginning to understand more and more why people choose to become writers. Not only is writing free from the laws of reality, but it helps us see the deeper truths in reality itself. I chose to be a hermit because I dunno, I like people and I hate people. I don't do this myself, but I understand why people go to social gatherings to be alone. I prefer to view society from the outside in rather than from the inside out. Society itself is a social construct that anybody can mould to their own whim and desire if they're sufficiently intelligent and fully aware of the possible unforeseen consequences. With that said, I don't think it's a good idea to mess with the social order too much. I'm not going to talk about anything particular in this post because the particular things are precisely the things that I'm avoiding by distracting myself with writing. But I think if anybody really reads into what I'm writing, they can probably get what it is that bothers me. I'm being deliberately cryptic. I know there are loads of people who are unintentionally cryptic simply because they can't communicate well, or they overthink and then they say the opposite of what they mean, but I am being deliberately confusing because this isn't about anything. It's purely a linguistic exercise to see what sort of syntactical constructs I can generate to amuse myself. It's like the show Seinfeld. Seinfeld is literally about nothing. The show is just his everyday life. But I guess this isn't exactly like Seinfeld. Seinfeld doesn't offer a higher commentary. There's a complete lack of bias. I would say Seinfeld is nihilistic, life as it is, without a search for any deeper meaning or purpose. The nihilistic theme was very popular in the 90's. Friends had the same gist. Same with 90210 or The O.C. or a host of other shows just epitomize 90's nihilism. I'm not going to revive 90's nihilism because that's all been played out and it's boring now. What I'm talking more about is memes. Or viral Youtube videos. It's a different take on reality altogether. A meme doesn't care about realism whatsoever. In fact, the less realistic a meme is, the funnier it is. I'm going to call this 2010's realism. 90's nihilism was about finding meaning in life precisely by assuming that life was meaningless and then finding the truths the became unshakeable, like love and hope and friendship, and all the bittersweet things that anybody can use to identify the 90's. 2010's realism is about finding out what is real precisely by assuming that nothing is real, that all syntactic constructions are equally valid, and then finding the truths that are unshakeable. For example:

- the political correctness movement - the LGBTQ movement - equal rights for everybody regardless of race, sexuality, whatever - social media bots and whether or not they have passed the Turing test, etc.

Physicists went so far as to question whether the Universe itself is a simulation. So again, 2010's realism. What is real? Obviously there's also cosmetic surgery, the general cosmetics industry, photo editing, video editing, the Snapchat gender swap filter, etc., all challenge realism.

I think we're at the point, philosophically, where we're asking: "What is art, and what is reality, and which do we prefer?"

Obviously, a lot of the stuff I stated originates before the 2010's, but I have to lump it all under a common theme.

It's not a new idea to shove the unpleasant side of things under the rug, and superficially enhancing the pleasant things. But back to equality. If somebody has a sex-change operation, are they their gender, or the gender prior. There are people who believe either. Is your birth gender more real than your current gender? Opinion varies wildly on that topic. Or, to cut out any bearing on an underlying reality, can you just identify as whatever, and be that whatever. For example, furries didn't EXIST until the first person chose to put on a fur suit and identify as a furry.

It's almost the end of the decade. Some people believe you are precisely what you were born as. Other people believe you are just you, now. If you believe the past is more real than the present, then you believe one thing. If you believe the present is more real than the past, then you believe another thing. In my opinion it's a question of your own philosophical assumptions, so either position is equally valid.

As far as whether or not you really are what you identify as, well that's a question of mind versus matter. If you believe in mind over matter, then you really are a tree if you identify as one. Whereas, if you believe in matter over mind, then you're just a person who believes they are a tree. In my opinion, it's another question of your own philosophical assumptions, so either position is equally valid.

BUT an interesting consequence of this philosophical exercise is it answers the question of whether or not God is real. If you identify as a person for whom God is real, then God is real. If you identify as a person for whom God is fake, then God is fake.

Personally, well, first of all, I prefer not to ever discuss the topic of religion, period, because it raises so many questions of hierarchy and social norms and on and on and on, in exactly the same way if you ever discuss your political beliefs, then again it raises a million questions of social responsibility and individual responsibility and on and on and on. But, for the record, I don't believe in God. I trust in myself. Satirically, I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But truthfully, I trust in myself. I don't "believe" in myself, because I'm fallible, like anybody else. I'm not trying to upset the entire religious hierarchy here from the Pope down, or a similar analog if you're Muslim or Buddhist or whomever. I just don't have much particular faith in anything outside of myself. I don't have faith. Maybe I was brainwashed by all the years of Scientism. People have to realize that Scientism, the faith in Science, is itself a religion by definition. And, in this context, with the meanings of the words as I've described above, I can ask this question: "Am I a Christian or a Scientist?" and hopefully you all know what I mean with those words.

I said before I currently don't have faith in anything. So I'm neither a Christian nor a Scientist, with the meanings of the words as I defined above. I was a Scientist for a long time. Nowadays, I think I'm a trial-and-error-and-google-and-past-experience-ist.

And just a minor tangent, a person who has faith in medicine is a Doctor. I've never been a Doctor. With the meaning of the word as I just defined it. I know some stuff works and other stuff is ??????.

I remember somebody made a joke once about how a liberal decided on the right answer to every question so they would never have to think again. I feel like I'm doing that right now, which also labels me as a liberal by that person's definition.

I guess I am a liberal, but hopefully not with all the connotations attached to the word. I like new ideas. New ways of doing things. New ways of thinking about old problems or social constructs. I like new.

Anyways, I will end this post for now, seeing as I've already written a sizeable book, haha.

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