#so many of my most beloveds are athletes or are otherwise real women it feels wrong not to include them

[wimbledon2008]

i was tagged by @billhaders to create a poll of some of my favorite female characters and let you all choose your favorite! 💖

i tag @wernerherzogs @killerqueenmp3 @clytemnestraaa @irenabean @tsnbrainrot @metaphorror @buffiest @want2bwell @kittenspeak @freekicks @cherubinas @buick118 @outdiaz @buckleydiaz and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it!

[happyendingsong]

hi orla i hope yr doign well !! i luv yr thoughts on media bc tehyre always so well thot out and i just wanted 2 know what you thot about the royal rumble (the womens one not hte mens that shit was lame besides edge)

AW JOEY ur so sweet, how are u!! sdhkhgfdhsdk THANK U for giving me a platform, let’s get into it.

i thought it was a really fun rumble!! like redundant bc the rumble is so conceptually up my alley that im ALWAYS gonna have a good time with it but it was still GOOD.

huge showing from the nxt girls, i really wish the men’s rumble took that same cue bc besides keith lee and edge no one was really......exciting, like it just felt like a wild card episode of raw/smackdown from a couple months ago. the women’s rumble built a ton of momentum where there was genuine excitement with every entry and i thought the spots were well used (BARRING NO.29 LOL,,,,,,,,)

bianca was AMAZINGGGGGGG oh my god what a LEGEND. bianca vs brock let’s GO. really gives me hope they’ll let her take the belt off rhea, god that match is gonna SLAP.

NAOMI’S RETURN!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAA i hope they pay attention to how big a pop she got and realise how beloved she is. there’s only so many times we can hear ‘one of the most athletic wrestlers in all of wwe’ on commentary every time she comes out before she should be seeing the opportunities to match.

i love naomi getting the kofi spot, so fab :’) i was half expecting kacy catanzaro to come out and one up her again esp after kacy came back for the nxt battle royal a couple weeks back. im glad naomi got the spotlight to herself for her return but in the future id love to see some spot where naomi and kacy both try to save themselves and inadvertently knock each other off the rope or whatever. hijinks.

mercedes martinez...........im so fucking excited. she’s gonna kill it. oh my fucking god.

i had a feeling beth phoenix was gonna enter the rumble!! truly legend shit, i love her. but holy shit she got REAL BLOODY REAL QUICK i was so queasy watching the back of her head :’0000 she’s fucking incredible for sticking the whole match out wtf

my predictions for the winner were either sasha or shayna (or ronda but like ive been terrified ronda is gonna come back since like summerslam last year LOL i need a fucking confirmation that her impregnation vacation worked cause im gonna keep shitting myself at every ppv otherwise)

i wish shayna got a bit more to do? her choking her opponents out while dangling them over the top rope MISSSSSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  HOLY FUCKING SHIT we saw her do it at the battle royal and im sooo glad she brought it back. but the final battle she had with charlotte, i wish it went on a bit longer? feels like it ended too soon with little suspense, idk.

im seeing some people theorise that sasha was meant to win the rumble but she was taken out due to injury so they defaulted to charlotte, which tbh rings pretty true. sasha winning sets soooo many things in motion, like the tension in whether she’ll pick bayley or becky and inevitably always picking bayley. and that’s a feud that writes itself all the way to mania, i would like to SEE IT!!!!!!!! i really hope sasha heals up soon and she can see the fruit of this storyline she and bayley have been building for months now :’0

like im not disappointed in charlotte winning, she’s a great wrestler and she was always gonna retire with ‘rumble winner’ somewhere on her cv. i just wish she could’ve won in a year where she actually has a storyline to go with it instead of just picking her as a safe enough bet and just half assedly falling backwards into a mania buildup before april. like that’s not fair to charlotte let alone the other women in the division who could’ve used this momentum. i still think shayna would’ve been a great pick, building to her main roster debut and a feud with becky.

now i’ve ALSO seen people theorising that charlotte is gonna challenge for the nxt women’s title at mania and holy shit now THAT has flavour............ charlotte vs bianca is gonna make a killer feud one day anyway, if we got it now i would NOT BE MAD!!!!!!!

i feel like we’re at a tipping point with the women’s division where they gotta start calling up more of the nxt wrestlers to the main roster. nxt is gettin all this buzz about having The Best women’s division on tv at the moment and i think it’s really smart leaning into it. unfortunately it feels like raw and smackdown’s divisions have really stagnated, absolutely due to the writers not having interest in building any storylines. like i live for the girls but i can only name like 3-4 women on either brand at any given time? the danger is always that the writers will fuck over any nxt graduate but i think shayna has a good chance of really taking off at least.

AND THAT’S ON PERIOD, LUV! X

[narwhalhowell-blog]

skam spin-off

to keep with the theme of positiveness for this blog, i wanted to talk a lil about the US version of skam ! admittedly hopes for the show aren’t the greatest, but rn there’s heaps of love in the tags for some really promising outcomes for the series and where it could be set. and it got me thinking, what if in some alternate universe we could have an english spin-off of skam that wasn’t set in america ?? i, as an australian, think skam would translate perfectly into a quaint little show set in australia, and below i wanna list why !

Most of what I’m going to say below is applicable to southern Australia (Melbourne and surrounds) so if you’re a fellow aussie and this doesn’t make sense, this is the geographical context !

also this is kinda long (....2440 words....) bc i got super passionate about this so if you wanna chuck me a like (even if you didn’t read it) it will make me feel better for wasting the past hour of my life AHAHAH

Australia is an incredibly diverse country, both in the people that live there and the terrain. Where I live, you could drive for thirty minutes in any direction and could find yourself in a) a bustling city b) a small suburbia c) rural areas/farms d) dense bushlands, and e) a beach. i’m not being dramatic either, i could legit do this right now. 

but i think the allure of skam and love of it is not because of the characters and the appeal of a new culture (although character reliability helps, especially with the personalised touch with real-time clips and texts) but the authenticity of the experiences in the show transcend geographic barriers, and although australia has so many customs that may not translate well (but may in some places in the uk or in nz), we would still get the same feelings behind it if the show was treated well. below i have a small template about what the show would be like if it was set in australia, following the themes our beloved characters have left behind in the original series. 

also keep in mind this is an abstract reimagining of the themes, the events i’m hypothetically discussing (and secretly wishing someone would hire me to write lmao) are about a show like skam, not an actual remake. this is basically an Australian!OC au of skam.

season one; eva (and noora) equivalent

for this to make sense, if set in australia, it would probably set in a small suburb near melbourne. the main character would have moved from a small town (probably rural) and settled into a new high school. i want a storyline about a girl dealing with the societal expectations behind vanity, appearance, and how we present ourselves. i want a character that’s not a size 0, and a story following her. especially in australia, with a massively sports dominated culture (seriously, it’s all we care about), and her love of sport often being disregarded because of her weight and the fact that she’s a woman. fun fact, AFL (an australian sport that’s the most popular sport in southern states and has been around for DECADES, only just created a national league for women this year). alongside AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE that would be displayed throughout the season about embracing self-love, health doesn’t equate appearance, and we all have the right to pursue what we love, the main would befriend other girls in the school (and the local sports club, where i’m assuming a lot of time will be spent since that’s a fairly small town aussie thing) that don’t particularly ‘fit in’ and would become close, much like our girl squad. also along the lines of eva/jonas in s1, i want the romance for the season to follow the main and a boy, who she doesn’t like but feels obligated to like because she feels no one else will. this is something so many young people deal with, and i’ve never once seen it adapted to screen. it would be amazing to share the message that you have the freedom to love whoever you want, and you never have an obligation to like anyone back, even if you feel like there won’t be ‘anyone else’ (and hint: there will always be someone else). the season would end with the main having a beautiful group of friends, loving herself, allowing herself to play a sport she loves, and not feel the pressure to love someone because they like her.

season two ; sana equivalent

unlike skam, it would be awesome if season 2 (and arguably the show’s main premise) to follow the sana equivalent as opposed to a noora. this main season’s character would be another girl from the first season’s new friendship group, who happens to be an indigenous australian. for those of you who don’t know about australia’s institutionalised racism, indigenous australians (or aboriginals) were the nation of people who lived in australia before the british colonised coastlines in 1788. basically the british ignored them and still claimed australia despite the land being rightfully theirs, and the settlers built our nation on segregation and racism. from 1905-1969 (and in some places, even still in the 70s) the australian government actually seized mixed-race aboriginal children from their families in what is now known as the ‘stolen generation’ because the white men running the country believed that every single aboriginal was unfit to take care of their own children. many aboriginals still live in poverty, some retaining their old customs and others trying to 'join in’ westernised culture (with much reluctance, because like i said, so many people are still racist as shit). even in australia we hardly talk about this racism, let alone the rest of the world. so i think it would be so incredible to have an entire season (and really, a show) centered around a young aboriginal girl who’s grown up in the suburbs like everyone else (due to the tireless efforts of her parents who battled adversity) to try and ‘fit in’ despite no one accepting her. unlike sana’s season, this hypothetical season 2 would primarily focus on the season’s main, her insecurity about her heritage and thus distancing from her family and perhaps engaging in behaviour she wouldn’t otherwise. it’s so important for this character to have a personality in the sense that she’s more than a stereotype, and i see her as being a bright but quirky girl who isn’t very athletic but she’s so kind and optimistic but has a lot of self esteem issues and tends to distance herself from people due to her feeling inferior. the season’s romance would probably orientate around one of the more popular guys in her school (but nothing like william) - he’s very extroverted and funny and charismatic, hence why he’s popular, but the main feels like she never has a chance because he’s not indigenous so why would he acknowledge her??? i want them to develop an unlikely friendship (the viewers knowing that the main has a massive crush but unbeknownst to the actual main herself) and idk the exact details but the season will revolve around some sort of event that will end with the main embracing her heritage and proudly sharing her origin story and being extremely proud of her aboriginal ancestors, as she rightfully should be! also, she eventually gets the boy despite resistance (both on her end and her family’s) and we’d have a really sweet interracial relationship to grace us. :)

season three ; isak equivalent

This is still such a big issue in Australia, all things lbgtqia+ related, because as you may know, Australia still hasn’t legalised our marriage equality bill (although our government technically legalised it in 2013, albeit not properly so it was nullified after a month). But surprisingly, especially in sports clubs and smaller towns, Australia is still so conservative in the way it views gender roles. Everything is still so static. School uniforms at school are still so strict and gender orientated (people can get sent home for not doing up their shoes, legit. And this was at a public school). And the sports clubs we have here are typically an AFL/Netball club, in which the boys play Australian Football, and the girls netball, and it’s sort of just assumed you date the opposite gender depending??? (Much less allow boys to play netball and girls to play football, until recently at least). This season would follow a boy, who probably befriended the season one main at the football club and helped her out during that time, who is gay. Now it’s important to note that yes, there’s still a major deficiency of good wlw relationships and trans, intersex and asexual characters, well, everywhere, but funnily enough australia seems far more accepting of wlw as opposed to mlm, in terms of sports clubs, which is why i think this is still an important story to tell. often homophobic language is still tossed around and some people don’t even know there’s an underlying context to it. it’s just so ingrained in the culture that it’s hard to think of alternatives (if you’re wondering, i live in a family of football players, grew up at one of these clubs as a netballer and have many footballer friends, so i know all of this from experience). This season would follow the main, as all of his mates are getting girlfriends and boasting about it as they tend to do, all hyped up for the end of season presentations after the football finals, which people usually showcase their girlfriends at .The main is obviously terrified, thinking there’s something wrong with him, that their entire team/family will discard him if he comes out. The sideplot of this season would follow season one’s main, who contrasts to this season’s main as their both the other’s main support (I also want the season one main to be bi or pan, not only to demonstrate to the s3 main than there are such sexual orientations outside heterosexuality, but damn i want some cute and healthy wlw relationships okay). Let’s say this season’s main is either the captain of the team or the coach’s son, and he feels so much pressure to excel that he’s lost a piece of himself and has such receded into himself and his battling his own demons (cue my lame ass excuse to play troye sivan constantly). NOW THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT HAPPENS, some clubs in smaller towns develop rivalries with the closest club and it’s actually a tangible thing??? Like my dad still speaks badly of his rival club even tho it was such a childish thing based on nothing omg. So I picture insecure season main training up, and meets a guy from the other club (either as a player, or maybe a rare male netballer bc that is a thing, or even just a worker in the canteen but still tied up with the other club) and it’s basically about overcoming the prejudice of class (which is why the clubs are rivals) as well as homophobia and how supportive a group of these ‘manly men’ (die gender roles, really) and it being just the sweetest and most important thing ever. as well as a romance that, even though sort of forbidden bc of club rivalry, it all works out in the end and the main ends up taking the boy to that end of season presentation despite all the conservatives bc he’s proud and happy and so are all his friends. ALSO I NEED A MAJESTIC BEST FRIEND that supports the main so much, a Jonas!equivalent. I think it would be really special if it could be the romantic interest from s2, purely to see more of that healthy interracial relationship, but bc he’s also popular and to destigmatise status and see the only reason you have for not understanding other people is bc you’re an asshole. stop making popular kids in school inhuman or completely removed from ‘normal’ people.

season four ; even equivalent. 

so this final season would obviously deviate from skam as well, and i mean even equivalent in the sense of his character, not as the s3 romantic interest. i feel mental illness (and disability) are things that skam could have explored much more, and a season dedicated to mental health would be so incredible. i feel like this character would be a female character in the original girl group, and the main drama of the season is the end of year exams in the final year of high school. as for which specific mental illnesses or disabilities this character could have, i haven’t done enough research on this to give a proper and educated answer, but i’m sure ao many of you can name some that are so relevant in today’s society but aren’t discussed in the media at all (and should be). back to the season, unlike norway we don’t have any ‘big’ graduation things, besides muck up day (a day where everyone really goes crazy with pranks and dress ups), schoolies (which is where you go on holiday for like a week and be drunk the whole time) and val (formal dinner/dance/graduation thing). but unlike a lot of countries, australia’s education system is kinda stupid bc if you wanna go to university (in victoria, australia anyway) your exams for your final year are the only thing that can get you in. in australia, you are literally only assessed on the final year (every other year of high school is irrelevant) and universities don’t see any extracurriculars or anything about you. we also don’t do entrance exams or essays. literally all universities get is a number (out of 100) that ranks you with the rest of the state by how you went in your exams. that’s literally it (i honestly almost died in that year, it was the worst thing). so i want a season to sort of talk about the school stress, and anxiety of planning out your future, and mental health because although everyone relates to the stress of school, there’s not much media about why it’s so stressful (and hence, why no governments will ever try to change it). it’s also so important to talk about mental health issues, and i think this would be a wonderful way to end the series because it will be good to devote this season to other characters as well (so it’s not as heavy) but can end on a really uplifting note and talk about health and how the bad things, no matter how bad, are never permanent, and even though friendships aren’t permanent either, there are such things as soulmates (platonically or not), and i want to emphasise the platonically part in the friendship of these girls and how they survived these years together and overcame adversity in different ways.and that the experiences we all feel as teenagers and young people are not only relevant but are valid, and no one can demean you or your thoughts for your age. because we lack in wisdom doesn’t mean we lack knowledge, and our generation has plenty of love in our hearts to hopefully share and ensure we can overcome adversity together. 

~

... so yeah. That was a rant and a half about what an australian skam could look like! This is basically a fanfiction, really. But the whole point of writing this was just to say that yeah a non-US based skam adaption would be great (I would also love to see a Canadian or New Zealand skam, purely because they are countries that are also rarely acknowledged in terms of english-speaking countries in the media). Also this wasn’t a dig at Julie or her incredible show, as regardless of what happens I’m so glad I’ve been part of the skamily. But all I’m saying is that Julie has definitely inspired me, and hopefully others, to start telling more stories that are authentic and real, and not just what people want to hear. 

Alt er love. <3

[theliterateape]

The High-Maintenance Problem with The Atlantic’s Revisiting "When Harry Met Sally"

By David Himmel

If I had to choose my top five favorite romantic comedies without spending too much time thinking about them, they would be: 1. Annie Hall 2. Grosse Point Blank 3. When Harry Met Sally 4. High Fidelity 5. Better Off Dead

Now, having done that, I realize that I might have a thing for John Cusack. But this isn’t about that. This is about When Harry Met Sally, which was released on July 21, 1989. Being that it’s thirty years old, retrospectives of this adored movie were bound to come out. On July 19, The Atlantic published “The Quiet Cruelty of When Harry Met Sally” by Megan Garber. The subhead reads: “The classic rom-com invented the ‘high-maintenance’ woman. Thirty years later, its reductive diagnosis lives on.”

When Harry Met Sally struck a chord with us then and its affects linger with us now, which Garber did a wonderful job of pointing out in her piece. It is a well-written piece, structurally. But her thematic positioning is off the mark.

Her issue, made clear in the subhead, takes issue with the scene where Harry (Billy Crystal) tells Sally (Meg Ryan) that she is a high-maintenance women. The worst kind, at that. “You’re high-maintenance, but you think you’re low-maintenance,” he tells her.

Garber writes, “[T]he term today does precisely what it did 30 years ago, as backlash brewed against the women’s movement: It serves as an indictment of women who want. It neatly captures the absurdity of a culture that in one breath demands women do everything they can to ‘maintain’ themselves and, in the next, mocks them for making the effort. She wears makeup? High-maintenance. She shops? High-maintenance. She’d prefer the turkey burger? High-maintenance.”

But Harry doesn’t list Sally’s fashion sense or desire to shop or what item on the menu she wants as examples of her high-maintenance behavior. He uses one example of how she is particular with how she wants the item on the menu she’s chosen. Garber quickly over generalizes and assumes intention. She’s not alone. It’s what many have done with the phrase over the last thirty years.

Garber points the blame at Harry when she writes, “It’s so casual. It’s so bluntly efficient. The man, inventing the categories, and the woman, slotted into them. The man exempt; the woman, implicated.”

There’s a difference between being high-maintenance and being difficult. Sally is quite likable. Which is exactly why Harry befriends and falls in love with her.

To give credit to Harry’s glib assessment of Sally as “the worst kind” of high-maintenance creating yet another negative box with which to put women as feminist backlash at the hands of a male director and character is to give it too much credit. If we’re going to talk about Hollywood productions creating tiny boxes for women to exist, we must look directly at Sex and the City. The TV show, the films, as well as the source material and the author of the book and so many of the others penned by Candace Bushnell.

The four women weren’t shallow characters, but we the viewers did everything we could to drain the little depth they did have by posing and answering the question of Which Sex and the City Character Are You? (I’m such a Miranda, by the way.) It’s a terrible thing we do to women, but it’s not just female characters who are boxed in. The men of Sex and the City were stereotyped and shoved into shoddy bivouacs of categorization. Mr. Big, the rich dreamboat; Aidan Shaw, the nice guy who finished last; Jack Berger, the tortured, self-loathing writer; Aleksandr Petrovsky, the aloof foreigner who rejects American customs; Harry Goldenblatt, the safe Jewish lawyer who was too bald for Charlotte to even consider dating at first; Smith Jerrod, the young hunk who was perfect until he no longer needed Samantha to reaffirm his value. As a man living a single life hunting for companionship during the height of Sex and the City’s influence, I had to wade through these male stereotypes constantly. It sucked.

And I’m sure the same kind of wading sucks for women.

Simple, stupid character categories and stereotypes exist all over the place in popular media. How we invite them into our real lives and use them to govern our opinions and decisions is not the responsibility of the writer, actor, or director. It’s ours.

Garber writes, “But high-maintenance is one of a particular subgroup of pop-cultured insults that are applied, most commonly, to women — a category that whiffs of feminist backlash. There’s MILF, popularized by American Pie; and cougar, popularized by the 2001 book Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men; and cool girl, introduced by Gone Girl; and gold digger, an insult of long standing recently revived by Kanye West. There’s butterface, derived over time from movies and music. There’s Monet (Cher in Clueless: ‘From far away it’s okay, but up close it’s a big ol’ mess’). There’s cankle — whose coinage added one more entry to the ever-expanding list of body parts women might feel insecure about — popularized by the allegedly romantic comedy Shallow Hal. (‘She’s got no ankles,’ Jason Alexander’s character, Mauricio, says. ‘It’s like the calf merged with the foot — cut out the middleman.’)”

Some of these are insults. Cankle is mean. Butterface isn’t all that nice. But calling someone a Monet is less an insult and more a dig at the unfortunate reality that some of us look better from far away thanks, in some part, to makeup. And yes, women and makeup is an issue steeped in sexism. But I could be a Monet, too. Maybe I am. Beauty and taste are in the eyes of the beholder.

My wife and I had a conversation early on in our dating days about women shaving their legs. She was all for letting her hair grow. I said that I had no problem with women who don’t shave their legs or their arm pits or whatever else. But I’m not sexually attracted to hairy legs. That’s just my preference. There are plenty out there who may find someone I consider a Monet to be the most gorgeous face on this planet. And that’s great. That’s how it should be. Different strokes and all that.

High-maintenance doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Owning a boat requires high-maintenance and I love owning a boat. Being a parent to a toddler requires high-maintenance and I love being a parent to a toddler. Flying a plane, driving a race car, being a professional athlete at the top of your game… all things that are high-maintenance. There are those who don’t want to deal with that sort of stuff, and that’s perfectly okay. Driving a Honda Civic while wearing a baseball hat because you didn’t style your hair is pretty low-maintenance. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

As it relates to Sally being high-maintenance, Garber misses the fact that there’s a difference between being high-maintenance and being difficult. Harry, while he does pin the term on Sally as a mark in the negative column, does not say she’s difficult. Because she’s not. She just wants it the way she wants it. She’s never rude to anyone when ordering a meal or whenever she’s being high-maintenance. And because of that, she’s not difficult or mean or snooty. Sally, for the most part, is quite likable. Which is exactly why Harry befriends and falls in love with her.

In the climax of the film, after Harry has stormed into the New Year’s Eve party and confronts Sally, he lists all of the high-maintenance things about her as top reasons he loves her so deeply. If that’s so, how can it be a negative thing? For all that I love about my wife and friends and family, I would never list the things I dislike about them as reasons I love them. Or would I? Perhaps that’s what makes human relationships so complicated. We love or hate the whole package. For good or ill. 

Harry is a jerk. Well, it’s his veneer. Harry is a typical male who flairs his feathers and pounds his chest to present himself as an alpha male. When we meet him, his a smug college graduate — a kid. He’s sure of himself and his view of the world and no one can shake his confidence. Because he’s a twenty-something in his sexual prime, he’s going to over simplify the complexity of relationships because that’s what twenty-somethings do when they’re trying to get laid, which is what Harry is trying to do.

Later, after he’s been married and divorced, he’s a broken man. Even after he comes out of his mopey funk, he maintains his guard because he’s been hurt, hurt bad, and doesn’t ever want to feel that pain again. This is the Harry we have when he makes the high-maintenance accusation. Who among us hasn’t been cold and closed off and dumbed down human personality traits to the most simple state when trying to protect our wounded heart and ego? If you answered, “Me! I’ve never done that!” then you’re a liar or have never been hurt bad enough or are too careless with your feelings. But there I go… over-simplifying things and putting in a box.

When Harry Met Sally removed the honesty, the reality to make room for laughs.

Harry is only likeable because of his wit. He grows on us and we forgive his stupid comments because that’s what we do with people. When the good we see in people outweighs the dumb shit that comes out of their mouths, we forgive that dumb shit. We laugh at it. We find it charming. And thank Christ we do otherwise I wouldn’t have a single friend to my name.

But do not mistake that last statement as a defense of Harry. That conversation he and Sally have in their respective beds via split-screen is Harry at his most obnoxious in effort to deflect Sally from noticing his vulnerability. At that point in the film, he may well already be in love with her. Even so, I’m not defending Harry because there’s nothing to defend. It’s a pithy conversation between two friends. Yeah, it occurred in one of cinema’s most beloved films but so what? To take anything anyone says late at night during drowsy conversation over the phone as Rule is silly. Not every line of dialogue should carry equal amounts of weight.  

Garber writes at the end of her article, “Movies’ magic can take many forms. Their words can become part of you, as can their flaws. Thirty years after When Harry Met Sally premiered, in this moment that is reassessing what it means for women to desire, it’s hard not to see a little bit of tragedy woven into comedy’s easy comforts.”

She’s spot on there. Tragedy and comedy go hand-in-hand in theatre, be it on the stage or the screen. According to the short documentary How Harry Met Sally, director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron both planned on ending the film with Harry and Sally not pursuing a lasting romantic relationship, choosing to remain friends instead. But they caved to the Hollywood ending because, well, Hollywood. Though they both agreed that ending was far from realistic.

The impetus of the When Harry Met Sally story was based in reality. Reiner wanted to make a film where two people became friends but didn’t screw because it would ruin the friendship. Ephron liked it and signed on. She based the Harry character on Reiner’s experience as a man reentering the dating life following his divorce from Penny Marshall. Crystal, Reiner’s best friend at the time, punched up the screenplay to make Harry funnier. Because before Crystal got hold of him, Harry was an even greater misanthrope. Ephron based Sally’s character on her friends.

Reality, as representative as it is in art today and thirty (forty, fifty, sixty…) years ago, is not what movies are. And certainly not romantic comedies. Annie Hall may be the truest of all romantic comedies. But Annie Hall wasn’t meant to be a romantic comedy. It was originally intended to be a look at the man in a mid-life crisis. The end result is essentially one chapter of that larger idea. Allen even sacrificed some laughs in order to tell a story about human beings, according to a PBS documentary about the writer-director.

When Harry Met Sally is the opposite. It removed the honesty, the reality to make room for laughs. So to take anything from a movie that was positioned to pull laughs from a culture using characters that had been twisted out of real people and real feelings is both oversimplifying and over aggrandizing the point of a romantic comedy. It’s lazy thinking, really. And lazy thinking is the kind of thinking done by low-maintenance kind of people.

[andsotheadventurebeginsblog]

Slaying Demons on the Autumn 100.

I sit here 5 days after completing the biggest physical challenge of my life to date with sore shins, suspected stress fractures, and a totally renewed sense of calm. I did it. I ran 100 miles in under 24 hours.

The night before the race I meet up with Dave, who is glorious, and we go and get some dinner and drink way more wine than any real athlete would even consider healthy. I feel calm. Nervous but calm. Tomorrow I do the thing I love doing the best. After fractured sleep we get up, eat and get to the village hall where the race goes out from. There are a LOT of men here. A lot. There are many people I admire, there are women that have run literally hundreds of 100 mile races, there are men who have done it in under 14 hours there are ultra legends and there is me.

Me standing here in a semi trance, feeling sick and feeling excited and unable to worry about my broken mental state because I have to achieve this. I get my number from Lou - a friend of mine from the online running group I am a part of. She is wonderful and gives me a hug and tells me how excited she is for me. I tell her I’m scared. Because I am. Then at 10.10am on Saturday the 21st October I take the first steps on a 200,000 step journey to running 100 miles. I chat to people, I try and hold my nerve and keep it slow. The pack thins out and it’s very slippery underfoot. My legs feel heavy and I realise I am not enjoying this at all. It’s fairly lonely on these runs. You get people that want to chat and people that definitely don’t. At the first aid station I meet Dan Barrett - he’s so lovely and kind to me. I wonder why. We’ve only met a few times. After 12 miles I bump into someone I met running Bournemouth Marathon - he remembers me - we exchange pleasantries and on I go. I’m really not feeling this today. I am 13 miles in and bored and already tired. This doesn’t bode well.

I get to the 25 mile mark in 5 hours. All on time. All as planned. I didn’t like that leg. I get my drop bag and get changed into a new long sleeve top and have a couple of sandwiches. I feel tired and slightly out of it. I feel a bit hopeless and lost. I get confused as to what I need and what I don’t. I try and do the change over as fast as possible and get out for the second leg. I leave my mobile charger and battery pack in my drop bag. I am an idiot. I am not strategising. It seems like SUCH a long way. I have 75 miles to go and I feel rubbish.

I get my headphones out and put on a podcast. The second leg is better - more forest and the ridgeway is beautiful. Theres technical paths weaving through forests and Kites soar over the fields. These are the trails I love - I feel like I am finally starting to get into my stride, but Storm Brian is on his way and he brings rain and 50mph wind that squalls across the open fields and makes the trails into wet wind tunnels. I nearly get blown over a couple of times but I feel stronger. I have fuelled properly. I love sandwiches. At the 37 mile turnaround point are kids in halloween costumes helping with water. They remind me of my nieces and nephews and make me smile. For the first time I know I will finish this. I’m on the way back. The way back to Goring village hall, to my beloved sister who is pacing me for the next 25 miles. It’s getting dark, I get my head torch out but the route is fraught with obstacles in the shape or tree roots and holes and I fall over twice - once into a patch of stinging nettles - once in a puddle. Classy. My phone runs out of battery. No music. My watch is dying - no mileage or time. I manage to catch up with the guy in front about 3 miles from the halfway point and we chat - he’s lovely and time flies by.

The village hall comes into view - another 5 hour leg. Right on time. And I see my mum and her husband and my sister and three of my best friends who have come to surprise me from London. I double take. WTF. What the hell are they doing here?! I am overwhelmed with love and joy but I don't think it shows. I am in a trance like state. They have come all the way from London to see me for nothing more than a few minutes as I hastily try and get changed and get nutrition sorted. That’s amazing. I can’t tell them how much it means to me. It’s so above and beyond I can’t fathom it. My mum looks a bit worried - my sister is very excited. My friends are warm and cuddly and drunk and I love them. I get changed, I get a hot meal I say thank you and then me and my sister are out, back out into the night. It is 8.20pm. I have been running for 10 hours and I have run 50 miles.

I’m walking as fast as I can trying to guzzle down my dehydrated pasta meal, trying to ignore the tell tale warnings my legs are giving me that I’ve run a long way. I have done this part of the route before. But in the daytime. Night is a totally different game. The ridgeway is exposed and it’s so windy and pitch black. The light from my head torch confuses me.  We are running head on into the wind and it’s soul destroying. My sister is brilliant - she has fresh legs and bags of enthusiasm and I feel bad I can’t keep up with her. I am stuffing my face with as much food as I can but I’ve started to feel sick and tired. And then come the hallucinations. I can see people laying by the side of the road in the foetal position. My sister comments on the beautiful horizon. The beautiful horizon is actually a fence. I dodge things crossing the path in front of me - but there is nothing crossing the path in front of me. We get to an aid station at the top of a hill. It’s in a Luton Van because otherwise it would just blow away. I get coffee and snacks and a cuddle from Lou - plus the personal goodie bag she’s prepped for me that includes the all important mini bottle of jagermeister (I am a pro athlete). 4 Miles til turn around point so we press on - my sister is talking to me about everything and anything. We listen to music and start talking utter nonsense. Then we see the turnaround point adorned in lights but we can’t work out if we’re hallucinating or it’s real. Its 11pm. We are knackered.

A quick coffee then back down the ridgeway with the wind at our backs - it’s like a totally different night. The wind makes all the difference and now the stars are out and its very beautiful. We listen to Foo Fighters. We sing along. We’re trying to stay awake and running. We come across a huge puddle. This wasn’t here on the way out. Shit. We’ve gone the wrong way. It’s so dark and so hard to work out where we are. We retrace our steps and get back on track - we lose about 15 mins but I am determined to get back to the village hall. If I can get back there I can do the final leg. We come in at 2.45am. The last leg has taken 6 and a half hours. I have now run 75 miles.

I hug my sister and send her on her way back to my hotel to sleep. It’s now that I pick up my final pacer Lee. Lee’s pretty experienced when it comes to these huge distances and I trust him implicitly. He knows I am knackered. He knows I am confused and does his best to help as I grab my newly charged watch and some food and spare batteries and get changed for the 4th time. We set out along the Thames Path to Reading at an OK pace but now my legs have started to hurt. My shins are burning. I take some codeine and try and get through it. Lee is a dream and a nightmare. In doing his job as pacer, he becomes the single most important and annoying person in my life. He is making me eat. He is making me drink. I don't want to eat. I get pretty angry with him but he’s having none of it. I eat sandwiches, I drink water and coffee. We keep pushing forward. We’re breaking it up by running and walking but the walking breaks are getting longer and longer and I know I have to keep a 14 min mile pace to break 24 hours. We get to the aid station, quick turnaround and then back out into the dark only to find another aid station a mile down the course. Hang on. It’s the same aid station. We’ve come round in a fucking circle. How the fuck have we done that? Nevermind, on we go. Lee is so chirpy, shouting encouragement at the other runners who say nothing back or just grunt. I imagine they would punch him if they had the energy. It’s 4am and I am running through Reading. I am talking to the swans and ducks, I’m telling Lee his music choices are shit. And then we get to the turnaround point. It’s up some stairs. SOME STAIRS.

I grab a load of fruit and eat about 7 pieces of watermelon - the sugar and gels are making me feel terrible and I am just craving fruit. We head back out. We head back to the village hall for the last time. Its is not about 6am. Birds have started to sing and the end is in sight. Lee is doing a great job of working out times and how fast we need to go to make it sub 24. He keeps telling me I am 10th woman but I don’t care. I just want to finish. Then at about 7am it happens - the sky breaks and the sun begins to come up. It’s another day. I have to finish. I am in a lot of pain and Lee is still making me eat. We are walking and running and walking and running and I am using Lee’s poles because my legs hurt so much. We get the the aid station 4 miles from home. We zip in and out. I am on the way home.

The last 4 miles were such a mix of emotion. I knew I was going to do it,  and everything hurt. My skin hurt. My eyes hurt. My legs hurt. I was very quiet but inside my head was raging. I had a little cry. I walked on ahead of Lee and had a little cry, I think with tiredness more than anything else. Those miles dragged and dragged and everyone we met along the way - the early morning fishermen and the people walking their dogs had a different distance to tell us… “Just 3 miles left” “it’s only a mile!” ARGH!

The one thing I won’t ever forget though, is the feeling that I had beaten the Demon. The Demon that tells me I am not good enough and riots through my head an stomach. That fucking Demon was beaten. Of course there are others in there but the big one was gone and I know I can beat them. I realised the extent of what I had done 3 miles from the end. I am strong. I can keep going physically and mentally.

When I came into the hall and saw my mum, when my sister ran down the last part of the path to meet me, when I saw how proud they all were of me, the Demon was beaten. 100 miles. 23hours 35 minutes. The Demon was beaten.

I am so happy to finish. I am so happy. My adrenaline is high and I pose for the pictures and get undressed and everyone helps me and I am so glad, and I put on my one piece and I step outside. I am shaking and I have to sit down because I think I might be sick. My mum comes with my things and puts me in the car like a baby. She helps me upstairs at the hotel and I just get in bed and curl up, all grubby and sweaty. I find a note form my sister which tells me how proud she is. It makes me cry so much because I love her so much and I am so proud of her.

I just want to sign this off with a thank you to everyone that helped me on this particular journey - my Mum and her husband Jim for their unwavering support. My sister, Janey Wise for her support and pacing and being the best friend and biggest inspiration I could ever ask for. The wonderful David Harvey for his time and patience and training and being brilliant (#withyoueverystep). Lee Stuart-Evans for his advice and pacing and force feeding of an angry toad (me). Tom, Abi, Amy and Lauren for trekking out to see me for 2 mins on a cold October night - thank you, I love you. Lou and Dan from the BBR group - thanks for all your support and encouragement at the aid stations.

This story does not end here.

TBC