#tangent but its just these things are so timeless. we should know better now. there's got to be something wrong with us that we don't

[foreverandaday-1]

Tenderly They Turned To Dust All That I Adored

Inspired by @julielilac s post/gif on the doctor and the master. The first 14 lines of a dialogue are hers, with a few minor changes.

I kind of went on a tangent, and turned this into a weirdly tense hurt/comfort fic, but oh well. Also inspired by my Renamed fic on AO3, under foreverandaday_1

‘Doctor,’ came a voice from the shadowed corner.

‘We meet at last,’ said the woman, equally as wary, yet with a predatory sharpness to her eyes. She wanted answers, and she would get them.

‘I’d like to say I’m glad to see you, but I’m not,’ he said, a slight teasing note, something comfortable but still wary.

‘Shame. I was actually hoping for a welcome for a welcome kiss,’ she returned, voice relaxed slightly.

‘Oh really?’ was his reply, full of put-on amusement to mask the confusion at her unusual playfulness. Yet playfulness wasn’t right, unless describing the way a lion played with its soon-to-be-dead food.

‘I was joking,’ her tone was back to serious.

‘Right. So why are you here then?’

‘I’m looking for answers and you are well aware of this. Who or what the timeless child is, and why you destroyed our home,’ she raised her eyebrows, as if offended by his question, it was obvious what she wanted.

He huffed out a laugh, looking amused. She didn’t notice his slight twinge when moving his ribs.

‘Also, what happened to your hair?’ curiosity was evident in her voice, and she was trying not to compliment him. Luckily she was distracted by the hopefully-soon-to-be-given answers.

‘There were difficulties in escaping from the Kasaavin Dimension.’

‘And yet you were able to escape?’

He huffed, ‘no thanks to you.’

‘You were expecting me to help? Why would I put you somewhere, that took effort and time, just to bring you back out again? A little counterproductive don’t you think?’

‘As if I’d want help from you.’

She smirked, ‘so no help with your injury?’

‘What injury?’ he played off.

‘You’re ribs, I saw you wince.’

‘I’m perfectly capable, thanks.’

‘Manners? Take off your shirt Kos.’

‘Trying to undress me?’

She sighed, crossing her arms.

‘I’m fine.’ 

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Ok, ok, maybe I could collapse within an hour, but it’s not that bad.’

‘Shirt. Off.’

‘Fine. you’re ever so bossy, love. I can’t say it’s just in this regeneration either.’

She ignored his comments, and, thankfully, only slightly affected by the pet name. ‘That looks painful. No wonder you were wincing,’ she moved closer, ‘go lay on the table.’

He rolled his eyes before doing as she said, flinching slightly as he bent his torso. She prodded at the bruised skin of his chest. There was a slightly green glow coming from the deep purple bruised across his lower right ribs. She tried not to enjoy inflicting pain, but sometimes it was nice to have revenge, even if that reinstated her hypocrisy. 

‘So,’ he said after a few minutes, ‘you going to do anything?’

‘I want an explanation of what the hell happened to you later.’

‘Of course, love.’

Well there’s an easier way and a harder way.’

‘For me or for you?’

‘Easy for me, painful for you. Easy for you, stupid for me.,’ she tilted her head, thinking. His mental barriers were just out of reach. Even though it was a bad idea to get closer again, she wanted to. The last time before the Paris thing had been centuries ago, and sometimes her mind felt empty. Lonely without another presence.

‘Well I vote the least painful way.’

‘For me or for you?’ her voice was looser and calmer, she was relaxed in his presence. It probably wasn’t the best idea but it was as if they were young again, without the millennia of pain and fire separating the strands of time.

He smirked at that, looking like he wanted to laugh. She walked towards his head with a contemplative expression, before voicing her thoughts.

‘There’s a quick way, and it’s not like I don’t have any left. Who knows how many I actually have.’

He grimaced, ‘about that…’

‘What?’

‘You have an infinite amount.’

‘I’m going to ignore the fact that you shouldn’t know that, and jump straight to what the hell?’

‘That's not for today's conversation, because I also happen to have none.’

‘You have, but… If you die, you’ll be dead?’

‘That is how death works, love.’

She rolled her eyes, ‘I mean, permanently, no resurrection or trick or stupidly thought out yet genius plan to surprise me again?’

‘No, dead as in gone forever.’

‘But you can’t,’ she said thickly, almost crying for the first time, she realised, with this particular face.

He looked shocked that she was actually voicing some feeling for once.

‘Koschei,’ she said, looking in his eyes, voice carrying the musical lilt of Galifreyan, ‘you can’t die, not now.’ Not ever.

He smiled at the language, one that they hadn’t spoken for a long time. It was a genuine smile, not seen for as equally as long of a time.

‘You said you had an idea, Theta,’ he said softly, comforting with a press of his consciousness against hers.

‘I,’ she sniffed, ‘ when River… you know who she is right?’

He nodded, ‘one of three humans I can tolerate, yes.’

‘Because River had… weird genes… when she broke her wrist, I used regeneration energy to heal it. I wasn’t able to regenerate for a few hours after, or heal as fast, but it worked.’

‘Awfully sentimental of you.’

‘She was important, and had pretended to be fine for my benefit.’ she paused, before looking up at him. ‘How come you don’t mind that I married her?’

‘While I may hate your pets because they don’t deserve your attention, she was different. She was important to you, and not a pet of yours. I could actually get on with her, and have an intelligent conversation.’

She smiled, happy that two people that shaped her life could have gotten along.

‘Now love, enough of the emotion, we should get to your plan.’

‘I can use my, apparently limitless, regeneration energy to heal you. It might have to be a full one, to properly work, but I don’t think you’ll change,’ she sounded happier, a slight touch of sarcasm evident in her voice.

‘Won’t that mean you can’t regenerate for a while? Or that you’ll regenerate with me?’

‘Possibly. But, again with River, when she revived me, she didn’t change.’

‘What?’

‘She may have killed me after regenerating before giving up all of hers to bring me back to life.’

‘Ignoring the fact that she of all people managed to actually kill you for the first time in all of history…’

‘It’s probably why Daleks seem terrified of her,’ she cut in.

‘... yes, but you need a mental and physical connection.’

‘Yep, full open contact between consciousnesses, and a close physical contact, with as many inner surfaces close.’

‘You and River, properly married?’

‘Yeah, Bonded and everything. It was partly in a separate timeline that no longer exists and also never existed.’

‘Okay, but, love, mouth to mouth?’

‘I wasn’t entirely joking when I mentioned a welcome kiss earlier.’

‘I didn’t think so.’

They stayed close together, and she stood by his form laying on the table, hands clasped in each others. They reached out their minds, before he sat up, wincing. Both closed their eyes, physical sight wasn’t needed. 

They leaned together, hand-to-hand, forehead-to-forehead, hearts-to-hearts.

‘Contact.’

Contact.

They both whispered it quietly, and spoke loudly in their minds. Volume didn’t matter as much as intent did. Intent to re-bond completely after a lifetime of mental separation. It took both eons, and no time at all.

It was an explosion of thought and feeling. A sensation unlike any other, yet reminiscent of coming home. A sense of welcoming in a place long forgotten yet forever remembered. A contradiction and cycle, of my thought is yours, your thought is mine. Memories were absorbed, and information shared.

She tugged on the always-there well of energy, as if waking it up. It swirled within her, before spreading out to her limbs, gathering at her fingertips. 

His hands glowed the same pale gold, as the tangible glow drew up his arms. They pushed closer still, tilting their necks to have better access.

Her lips pressed to his. His lips pressed to hers.

The energy pushed through completely, moving around them both. A swirl of pale gold and a feeling of life hanging in the air.

The glow collected around his injury, the bruised fading, sickly green hue leached away. Small scars knitted seamlessly, and any more bruises disappeared. His ribs shifted slightly, returning to their original position.

After a few seconds, minutes, hours, she stepped back. Not just one, but continually walking back to the door.

‘It’s not the time to ask,’ she smiled with an air of bittersweetness. ‘We’ll find each other when we’re ready.’

[onelastbreath-writes]

I’ll Meet You There (Part 3)

Pairing: Marcus Moreno/ Wife!Reader (AFAB, no y/n) 

Word Count: 2.6K

Warnings: Talks about loss of spouse, loss of child, medical conditions/inaccuracies, grief/mourning, manipulation/brainwashing (subtext/implied, but we’ll get into it later *winkwink*)

Tags: Hurt/No comfort (for now), ANGST, eventual happy ending, one really sad man for whom I just keep making things worse, #sorrynotsorry, and now I’m just making stuff up as I go along

Summary(lite): You are Marcus’s wife, and you’re definitely not dead. No one is having a great time right now, but like hell if there's a force on this earth that’ll keep you apart forever. This is not a goodbye, its just a see you later. And the interim is going to be everyone else’s problem, you’ll make sure of it.

A/N: Hello dears, welcome back to my twisted mind story,,, guess who showed up like 2 weeks late with a smoothie! So things about this new chapter: I am a criminal with italics and someone needs to stop me, hello switching scenes and perspectives because I just want to fast forward to the good stuff but y’all don’t live in my head and don’t know all the stuff that happens to get us there so here we are taking the slow lane, and I keep brainstorming new and horrible things for my characters because I am A Lot, All The Time, and will not be stopped. Also hey, Marcus the Simp is here for you, so much. I hope this is acceptable to be a reader fic still, because I am giving you some serious personality traits... ehh, it is what it is. Tell me if you spot any of my various references, there’s a lot of ‘em. Thanks to everyone who has liked/reblogged/commented, y’all are gorgeous and I’m so grateful for the love <3 Drop me a message/ask if you want a secret about one of the characters (specify which one), I need an outlet for my endless b.t.s. plotting >;) Please enjoy p3!

AO3|Masterlist

[Previous Part]

---

There were more casseroles in his fridge that Marcus knew what to do with, and more sympathy and “thinking of you” cards stacked in piles around the house than he could count. He appreciated everyone’s gestures, but he could recognize the difference between people who were kind in the interest of helping others, and those who were kind only to help themselves. It was quite obvious which type were flooding his mailbox.

Hell, most of the people sending him cards, his fans, didn’t even know his wife, never spoke to her, didn’t feel the empty Her-shaped-space in their very souls. They just wanted the clout, the prestige, of being ‘involved’ and sympathetic to a grieving superhero. It was exhausting, but no one seemed to empathize with him on that.

The Heroics upper management, and the director specifically after his press conference and the publicity the attack had brought the organization, had insisted on Marcus taking an undetermined amount of leave from the team so he could “process and mourn his loss in the comfort of his own home.” Like he didn’t look around and see every piece of himself and his wife over the years; the Home they built for their family, filled with all the hopes and dreams of two starry eyed lovers ready to take on the world together. Like her absence wasn’t slowly killing him. 

And it wasn’t like she was gone gone.  

Dead.  

She wasn’t dead.

No way in Hell.  

Whether it was because she worked with superpowered people, her experience as a medical professional, or if she was just more paranoid than most, his wife was a planner, and she was prepared for this. “In the event of my death...," like she just knew it would be necessary.

Truthfully, she had schemes and contingencies and all manner of reactionary plans prepared for if (and when) the worst happened; terrified to be blindsided or caught unaware, unable to help those she would have been able to, if only if she had the time to think. Unpreparedness costs lives in both of their careers, and she refused to leave anything up to chance if possible. And so, she’d plan, and he’d listen.  

All throughout their relationship, from before they’d even gotten serious enough to discuss marriage, to when they heard their unborn child’s heartbeat for the first time, and just on random weekday afternoons when they would take Missy for walks around the neighbourhood to show her the beauty in their lives, his wife would paint her theories and ideas like artwork. She’d tell him a story, full of action and mystery, humour and theatrics, tragic romance and harrowing adventure; she could spin a tale like she had a silver tongue, but she never lost herself in her own narratives. In the end, they were messages, lessons, for him to remember when everything was going wrong.    

“It’s all about momentum, babe. Bleeding off energy and taking a bad hit instead of a fatal hit. You can’t just full stop; you’d absorb all the kinetic energy, and the resulting trauma will turn all your squishy internals into, like, body soup, which is just super unpleasant. And of course, head is always number one priority. Bracing for impact works better at giving you fewer serious injuries, especially for your neck and head. Muscles should absorb as much of the energy as possible, instead of letting it fall to your ligaments, discs, and nerves to take the force. So, tense up and roll in the case of a low air evacuation.”

Low air evac... she was concerned he was going to have to jump from an aircraft without a parachute at some point in his life. Which was probably accurate he’d admit, but still, he wasn’t hoping to actually need that plan.

Thankfully, it wasn’t always fire and brimstone with her, and she had many strange and terrible schemes to keep the common, everyday superhero family on their toes. Always carry at least two lip balms... never tell someone you don’t have plans for the evening... don’t smile in your mugshot... no clowns. Ever.

She was so weird, a total nerd, and so completely the girl of his dreams.  

He loved teasing her about her unending train of thought, the brain that never sleeps, how she’d go on tangents while on tangents but always circle back around; even nicknamed her (quite cheekily, and because it made them both laugh) Doctor Batman, which was usually saved for when she was being particularly dramatic and gloomy. Turn the supercomputer off for a second, Bats, come see what Missy’s doing!  

He was her anchor, always ready to pull her back to earth when she started drifting off too far from them, but he never asked and never wanted her to change. He adored her, silly or serious, or when she woke him up in the middle of the night to make him promise that he’d never get their kid(s) a pet owl (because they’re “scary”, and “our kids would be too powerful, Marcus. Promise me!”), or that in the event of them inviting a third to their bed, it would “absolutely never, ever, ever be Miracle. No way!”  

He thought it was quite entertaining most of the time, listening to her plan for zombies and old gods and what to do if everyone just started hating cheese one day, but if it was all so important to her: having him remember this or agree to that, he’d accede to her requests in a heartbeat. Most of it was cute, harmless stuff he didn’t think would even happen, but sometimes she would hit him with serious stuff. Entirely out of left field, she’d go for his heart, and ask him for things that would hurt him, destroy him inside, if he ever had to follow through with it.

“Marcus, if it’s a choice between my safety- my life, and Missy’s? I’m always going to choose her. Kids come first, okay?”  

She wasn’t superpowered, didn’t have a shred of anything other than pure, normal human in her, but she was easily the strongest person he knew. Fearless and brave, kinder than this world deserved, she’d do anything for the people she cared about. And she’d promised him, maybe as a way to repay him for all the things he’d agreed to over the years, that she’d move heavens and the earth to return to their family. That nothing in this world, or beyond, could keep her away. “Eventually,” she’d stared into his eyes, glossy with tears from how forcefully she believed, “I will find my way back to you. I swear it, so keep a weather eye on the horizon.” See? A whole-ass nerd, and he couldn’t have loved her more.

So, she wasn’t dead. Pure and simple. She was somewhere, somehow, and he was going to find her again.  

---

“Marcus, the grieving process is different for everyone, but it is always unpredictable and painful. You will have days where you will feel like you haven’t made any progress, or even lost the progress you’ve previously made, but please know that this is natural; it's something everyone experiences, and that it doesn’t mean you’ve failed in your objective. Healing takes time, and a major part of recovery is learning to forgive yourself when you slip up. No one expects you to be back to normal tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Healing from grief is not a race, so we will go at your own pace, and we will work together to accomplish your recovery goals. You aren’t alone in this journey, and you don’t need to handle everything by yourself.”

The grief specialist he was seeing was someone he would describe as an “old soul”. She exuded the patience and peace of someone who had watched empires rise and fall, seen the turning of the wheel of time and drifted along with the current. Her voice was deep, rich in emotion and empathy for those who needed guidance, calming and intriguing with a soft lilt on her vowels. Timeless and ancient all in one, and even if he wasn’t actually mourning the death of his wife, he did find himself deeply grieving being without her. They were two halves of a whole, and though his soul was at a loss without its partner here, he still had their greatest creation, their pride and joy, their baby girl to raise.  

He would do whatever he had to do to be the best parent he could for Missy. And so, if meeting with a physiatrist every week was something that would help, then he would be here, every week. He'd learn to live with his grief, his sadness and loneliness, with just the memory of his Everything, and he’d help their kid with all hers too.  

It’s what he promised to do, after all.

“If anything ever happens to me, you’ll just have to love her enough for the both of us.”  

---

There was nothing they could recover of the people closest to centre of the explosion. No remains, no blood, nothing. Like they hadn’t been there at all.  

Suspicious.

Upper Management had brought in a team of private investigators to handle the case, people who would keep the details quiet and the public appeased with what little information they’d choose to release.  

Marcus was a superhero, and sure, his job was to hit things until they weren’t a problem anymore, but he couldn’t understand why all the highly trained professionals didn’t question the sheer amount of evidence that just wasn’t adding up.  

He tried to bring up the inconsistencies once with the lead investigator, but they had just given the distraught, widowed husband, so lost in his own denial and grasping at straws, a sad smile and told him they would do everything they could to find the truth for him and the rest of the victims’ families.

Typical.

After being brushed off without a second thought, he decided to keep his ideas quiet, and since they’d proven their unwillingness to listen, he’d just have to solve the mass disappearance himself.  

“Have you ever thought about how to commit the perfect murder, mi amor? I have. First: If there’s no body, they can’t prove the person is dead. No evidence of death? No murder. Simple. But of course, completely vanishing a full human would be a challenge. Short of having the superpowers necessary to, like, erase someone from reality in their entirety, there would be a lot of chances to leave evidence. Ordering suspicious chemicals leaves a trail, driving out to a pig farm in the middle of the night is shady as hell and all neighbors are professional narcs, and fires? Hah! Do you have any idea how hot the fire needs to be to cremate human remains, and how long they would need to grill for? Huh, maybe the perfect murder isn’t a murder at all...  

Hey babe...  

Always doubt a body, but always doubt no body, more.”

---

You tended to lose time when there was no one else in your room. It was hard to tell when your eyes were open because you started dreaming about the only things you could see since you first woke up: drop-ceiling tiles, white walls, and pale blue curtain dividers. And it was easier that way, in the end. Your heart didn’t hurt when you only dreamt of the room. You couldn’t mourn the things and people only your soul could remember if you thought of the room. Drifting in and out of consciousness was how you were coping.  

---

You had been here, left in this room alone, for ages. You had agreed to help the man who had saved you from the explosion that killed your family, but apparently you couldn’t help him until you had recovered enough. You’d read your charts, grilled your nurses and doctors more and more the longer you were kept here. What were they all waiting for? There was nothing wrong with you except the mild post traumatic amnesia, and the whole not-remembering-much-(or anything, really)-about-your-personal-life-and-family-of-the-recent-few-years thing you had going on. It was nothing compared to when you first awoke and could remember nothing. It killed you to be without the memories of your husband and child, to know only of them instead of actually knowing them, but there was nothing you or the doctors here could do. The brain was a tricky thing, and you had to accept that your memory loss might be permanent.  

That just meant that you had to put all that you could remember to good use. You could help people here, and work towards getting justice for your family. Years and years of school, practical experience and training, you had gained it all back; re-read textbooks and studies, wrote papers on your re-emerging knowledge and jogged your memory about long nights and early mornings, surgeries and follow ups... it was all still in your head. It had returned to you easily, like diving into a cool pool on a hot summer day. It was like coming home and taking off your shoes; it felt good, freeing, as-it-should-be.  

But still they weren’t letting you leave. So: what were they waiting for?  

“Ah, Doctor, it’s lovely to see you, as always. How are we feeling today?” Okay, so the guy who “saved” you (read: paid the people who actually saved your life)  gave you the heebie-jeebies. He looked like a classic pompous asshole bigwig, like, oil tycoon or something. And he definitely had some sort of thing for you. Gross.

“I’m doing as well as can be expected, trapped in a room with nothing to do, you know, brain rotting, et cetera. Thanks for asking.” The sass was a choice, probably not a great choice, but your choice none-the-less. You really hadn’t had many opportunities to choose anything for yourself in a while.  

Well...

You were bored, and that was going to be everyone else’s problem.  

“Ah, well, good news then! You have been cleared from observation and you’ll be able to be discharged soon. Isn’t that just delightful!” Mister Craig (“Please, just Greg is fine”), was some sort of horrible group hallucination, you were convinced. No one was that cheery, that animated, unless they were on something, or you were on something. “I’ll have someone bring you your personal effects shortly, and then I can show you to your new apartment. The complex isn’t in the best neighbourhood unfortunately, but it's got some real charm, very vintage! You’ll love it!”

“I’ll look forward to seeing it then; sounds like it’ll be a real interesting place to stay. You can also explain what it is I’m going to be doing with your organization. Because you haven’t specified yet. And I expect a proper contract and wage agreement. Legally binding preferably, for your sake, of course, Mr. Craig.” Even if you weren’t the most physically intimidating person around, you knew how, and more so, when, to assert your dominance in a conversation. Especially with men like him. He was the type of guy who would pinch a nurse’s ass and then accuse them of not being able to take a joke.  

“You wound me, Doctor, I am a man of integrity! I promised you an opportunity to make a difference! To get justice for the loved ones so cruelly torn from you! You have nothing to worry about!”  

Sounds legit. Totally above board. Can’t wait.

---

Taglist (omg!! thanks love): @killtherandomness​

Drop me a line if you want to be added <3

[adorable-elsanna]

I don't mean to be rude, and I apologize in advance if I am!! But why do you ship this nd WHY does this ship exist? Aren't Elsa and Anna sisters? And blood related at that. I don't want to hate on ships, you can ship washer you want as long as you aren't hurting anybody!! It's just that ships like these with incest startle me a bit. Maybe I'm just confused since I really shipped Kistof and Anna so I'm missing out on this? Ahhh sorry if this is annoying!! -confused anon

 Hi Confused Anon ( aren’t we all? ;) ),

Thanks for your polite ask, lol finally I get to dust off this blog’s ask box! :)) I’d love to respond with a whole essay xDD but I don’t really have time :’( so maybe I’ll just give a quick rundown for now. 

I might not be the most representative person to pose this question to lol because I am an outlier in general, meaning due to my life experiences, my development, my major in college, my deep meditation practice, and more, I do not abide by normative, dominant, hegemonic social structures and social constructs (nor do I actively resist them per se), so I am unfazed by anything. 

I started shipping this after I watched the first movie when it came out in Nov. 2013. One of my first posts on this blog, 7 years ago, was me explaining how I came to ship this (I had made the post private, but now you can read it here. Also this other post, but I wrote it when I was a college student, so it’s a little too analytical for my tastes now. Those were my views at the time). 7 years is a long time, so my mindsets and reasonings have changed, but all the reasons I had for shipping them from before are still with me today. 

I didn’t go into the movie with the intention to ship them, but while watching it, I picked up on a lot of chemistry between them because their interactions and even storyline were infused with strong popular romantic tropes, tropes that were used in other classic Disney movies themselves. I used to watch a lot of romantic comedies so I was very familiar with common romantic tropes. Of course, having came away from the movie having noticed all these romantic notes between them, I was a little confused and thought maybe it was just me. But when I went online to search a bit to see if others saw/felt what I saw, I found out it wasn’t just me! 

So one of the reasons why this ship exists is because people picked up on the romantic tropes that colored some of Elsa and Anna’s interactions, tropes that have usually only appeared between romantic couples, in films and in real life. Even if the creators didn’t intend to and didn’t actively put the tropes there, they are there. 

If we apply the principles of Buddhism (not the religion. Many ppl mistakenly practice things as devotional worship or for superstitious reasons. But if ppl really want to know everything about the mind, how the world works, the universe, who they are, about themselves and “other” people and why people do what they do, the meaning of life, true happiness, the end of suffering and stress and conflict, and consciousness, then forget psychology [not saying it’s not useful though]. Buddhism, or rather Buddhadharma, is the true science of mind, or at least the much more effective tool), it says that there is the law of cause and effect, the universal law. Everything that is created in the universe and each phenomenon that happens is the result of the momentary coming together of causes and conditions that make that thing happen. There are many many causes and conditions and intricacies and things are interconnected and interdependent, no one person can control something to happen (certain conditions have to be there for something to happen). Something can not come from nothing. If something happens, then certain causes and conditions have been created to bring that result. A seed was planted. If we plant an apple seed, what comes out will be an apple tree (provided the right conditions were met, like water, soil, sunlight, etc.). It will never come out as a banana tree. And so we can understand the underlying principle behind how each situation and phenomenon arises, about existence itself, why each thing exists. 

Now WHY did I go off on that tangent??? LOL All of this is to say that certain causes and conditions have been created to result in the effect of many people shipping Elsa and Anna together and there being a fandom for them. (These principles and explanations might seem very simple and like kindergarten stuff, but despite that, many people can’t accept it. ESPECIALLY when it applies to heavy stuff in their regular everyday life. Or even trivial things tbh lol) The last I checked, there were people from at least 26 different countries shipping Elsa and Anna together. 

Everyone thinks they see reality exactly as it is and takes it for granted, and thus attach strongly to the notion that they’re right. But if that’s the case, then why are there so many fights over who is right? So who is actually right? Even if someone were to follow the majority consensus or some popular, ingrained, long-standing ideas / societal rules, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right. There are many cases of the blind leading the blind. People used to follow the geocentric model of the universe before they discovered heliocentrism. Ideas are always in flux and keeps changing and transforming, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes conspicuously. If you ask 100 different people why they ship Elsa and Anna, you will get 100 different answers (with a lot of overlap of course) with unique spins on their reasons. Because in the world, each person sees reality through their own color-tinted glasses and filters and adherence to labels, concepts, beliefs, upbringing, etc. And then the person seeing “reality” through red-tinted glasses gets mad at the person seeing with blue-tinted glasses for not seeing the world how they see it (and gets frustrated not understanding why), and vice versa. In this scenario, what is actually best? To realize you’re seeing “reality” through color-tinted glasses, and so you should take them off and truly see reality without any filtered lenses. (This is a little off-topic, but I had to bring some Buddhism into this because first of all, dharma applies to everything lol, and secondly, Buddhism is all about dispelling confusion. There is definitely a way to see reality exactly as it is, it typically involves meditation.) 

Yes, Elsa and Anna are sisters. But I’ve never seen any pair of sisters act like them before (if there are, then that’s great!). I have a sibling myself, and we are very close, but we don’t act like how Elsa and Anna act with each other. With most siblings, I would say there’s a lot more joking around, teasing each other, sarcasm, pranks, and casual relaxed communication than the intense intimacy, deep eye-contact, and soul-bonding that Elsa and Anna share. Disney has portrayed many other sibling relationships before, but it seems like they tried something a little different with Elsa and Anna’s relationship that made it pretty easy for many people to ship them together. 

I ship Elsa and Anna together because their pure true love for each other transcends all labels, concepts, preconceived notions, and time and space. They are completely selfless when it comes to one another and that’s what true love means. They make each other better people and it empowers them to extend this selflessness toward other people. Their sacrificing themselves for each other and selflessness in action is true love exemplified. No one deserves Elsa more than Anna, and no one deserves Anna more than Elsa (speaking from my shipper heart xD). Confining and defining their love as just sisterly seems limiting and not allowing the full potential of their true, expansive, infinite love to manifest. (A sibling relationship is really beautiful, but it still has to be shaped and look a certain way, it has to fit into a particular mold and box and abide by certain conditions. Otherwise, as we have incontrovertibly seen, people will scream bloody murder and be squicked out and all hell will break loose.)  

We can even go one step further to say that the same similarly applies to people’s definitions, notions, concepts, ideas, and beliefs about love. They say this love is like this and that love is like that, this is what love should look like, this person can love this person but only if it’s like this and not like that, this is what it means to love and to be loved, etc. Again, it’s limiting, and placing restrictions on something whose essence is boundless. In Buddhism, with the realization of Enlightenment, one realizes that true love is selfless, unconditional, boundless, free, all-encompassing, nondual, timeless, compassionate, wise, nondiscriminating, infinite, universal, endlessly flowing, non-judgmental, creative, indescribable, and inconceivable. So THIS is the love that I see and ship between Elsa and Anna. I love their relationship as sisters, but their love is so grand that it cannot be contained inside that label, so it transcends and goes beyond any attempts to neatly define and characterize it.

It’s okay if incest ships startle you. Uncomfortable feelings come up whenever the ego experiences anything that challenges its worldview and everything it’s ever known and held to be true, and that prompts it to question and reconsider its mind-constructs. We have a knee-jerk reaction to grasp, hold, and attach to what we like, and to avoid, reject, and push away what we don’t like and what makes us feel uncomfortable. For what it’s worth, Buddhism tells about the cycle of life, death, and rebirth from beginningless time, so we have all lived infinite past lives and been each other’s lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, enemies, grandparents, etc. at one point or another. (Deep, but intriguing!, topics for another time.)  

If you really like to ship Krist0ff and Anna, then go ahead and ship happily. First rule of Buddhist meditation: Whatever you do, ONLY DO IT, 100%. ;) And if you don’t do something, then don’t do it, 100%. And then move on to the next moment. Be in the present moment. And remember that everything is changing moment by moment. Mind is changing moment by moment. Don’t need to anticipate the next moment. Who knows where our shipper hearts will take us. 

I like to ship people based on their chemistry and characterization. Elsa and Anna have a great true love story that is theirs and theirs alone. I don’t like to ship relationships that seem contrived, thrown in there for the sake of it, not fleshed out, lacking in substance, trite, and with characters who are underwhelming or underdeveloped. 

Lol no worries, this is not annoying, I’m sorry this is so long and that I took 7 days to get back to you. I wish I could give specific examples from the movies with beautiful gifs to explain why I ship them (I’ve probably written such posts in the past. Maybe I’ll come back to edit this reply one day), but I’ve gotta skedaddle! I’d like to hear your thoughts about my reply if you actually read this, so please send me a message in the ask box again if you can. 

Also I’m a girl if that makes any difference, but yeah anyway, skedaddle time, love you all! 

Oooooh I never finished replying to someone else’s ask box message asking me why I shipped them, it’s from years ago :’(, I started typing my reasons and saved it in my drafts, but it’s incomplete. But here’s what I wrote at the time!

1. I just love everything that Elsa and Anna feel and do for each other. Elsa isolates herself from Anna to keep her safe, and Anna persists in trying to get Elsa to open up to her and goes to find her when she runs away. They’re always thinking of each other and worrying about each other. They act selflessly for one another and their unconditional love is expressed so genuinely. This kind of devotion in any relationship is rare.

2. There was a lot of chemistry between them in the movie. At the coronation ball scene, I get that the creators were trying to depict awkwardness between them since they haven’t spoken in a long time, and Anna wanted reassurance that Elsa didn’t hate her so she was nervous about getting Elsa’s attention and approval, but the scene came off as Elsa being kind of suave and flirty and Anna being flustered because her crush just complimented her. Then Anna gave Elsa a playful smile when she was dipped upside-down as if she only had eyes for Elsa.

When Anna stares admiringly at Elsa as she stands atop the staircase, it was like a scene straight out of A Cinderella Story or Enchanted where the prince stares at his true love like she took his breath away.

[hardblazesong]

CRINGING RIGHT NOW

Hello, Teddy Anon again. Sorry, I’ll make paragraphs this time so your eyes don’t cross, but I would have run out of space last time.

Well, dearie me, this is beyond embarrassing, isn’t it? C’s engagement ring featured in an article titled ‘The Most Gorgeous Celebrity Engagement Rings of All Time’. What is wrong with these people, have they no impulse control. PUSH PUSH PUSH Doesn’t work, just push some more. We’ll drive this narrative home with a sledge hammer if necessary. Don’t get me wrong, her ring is certainly attractive (not my personal taste, nor would I have thought, hers) but it very obviously does not belong in the company of those other 'celebrity’ rings. There are 1 or 2 that don’t appeal to me personally but all are unique & spectacular. Some because of their seeming simplicity, classic & timeless but with a little tweak & designed to showcase the beautiful (& large) stones, most of them fancy cut; whilst the others have a quite distinctive style as well as beautiful large stones. C’s stands out from the crowd only because it doesn’t belong.

Haven’t they learned their lesson. Look at what their last two attempts have spawned. C’s engagement announcement (or should I say both of them) surely must belong in The Guinness Book of Records in 'The Most Fucked Up Engagement Announcement Ever’, esp as it was a double header. New category perhaps. There was a deluge of disbelief & derision (like the alliteration), not just from fans but from the media as well. Marie Claire’s article was sarcastic. As Marie Claire, ELLE (who also seemed to be pro S&C) are under the same umbrella as Town & Country who published the ring article, I did wonder for a minute if they were having a subtle dig at the engagement as well by including her ring. Lol. 

The re-emergence of 'Surplus to Requirements’ has had a really interesting, & to me unexpected, fallout (apart from making them all look ridiculous all over again). The secret baby theory has been around for some time, but I always thought on the periphery. Since the appearance of STR (after S forgetting she existed for 4mths, which includes but is not limited to, her b/day, Christmas, NY, his recent visit to LA where she could have strutted her stuff at the Audi party, her rise to fame as a top selling Avon lady) there has been a veritable avalanche of photos & 'remember this’ comments suggesting a secret child. I’ve never really subscribed  to that theory, but some of those photos, several of which I hadn’t seen before, do raise some Qs.

I admit that one photo I had seen previously did make me wonder at the time, & while I hadn’t knowingly taken much notice of her boobs before, as soon as I saw them in S3 I thought they looked different & not a difference I thought a surgical procedure would produce. Some other stills where she’s lying down, & ya know gals how they kinda disappear into your armpits when you lay down, hers didn’t - at all - very firm like a feed is due soon & I thought I could see veins which only occur when breastfeeding. Then my mind went back to people saying S wasn’t doing his signature moves in that area in S3 & I remembered thinking when I saw that ep that he was being very delicate & skirting certain areas, but thought OK 20yrs apart, doesn’t want to come at her like a slavering dog. But now, was he avoiding stimulating the let-down reflex? They’ve really poked the bear here with their heavy handedness. They’ve thrown things in willy nilly and look what’s shaken loose. A previously not terribly popular theory, that was never discussed in great length or detail probably due to respect for the people involved, has now come back hard. I can’t believe this is the result they wanted, but you reap what you sow.

That being said, I DON’T WANT TO PERPETUATE THIS RUMOR - AT ALL.   To hide a child seems unbelievable & after looking at it from all angles I can only come up with 1 reason to do this & it is equally unbelievable but if true, doesn’t necessarily have to involve a child, but is pretty scary stuff & could explain the lengths to which they are prepared to go, but it could have been handled better. Although I guess hindsight is 20/20. Sorry to be cryptic.

'Oh, what a tangled web we weave…’. Whoever is orchestrating this needs to step back & look at the repercussions of their actions. As I said previously 'There’s no such thing as bad publicity’ but that adage comes from a time before SM & may not be quite a reliable platform to build a PR strategy on anymore. Every step they take digs them into a deeper hole. Honesty 2yrs ago, & even up until the fauxgagement, could have eventually resolved & healed some of the issues that have arisen, even eventually resolved my crazy theory if it’s correct, which I must doubt.

In the meantime, they have lost many fans. Some of the prominent shippers who don’t believe the narrative have finally thrown up their hands in surrender & disgust & left their blogs. In the grand scheme of things, STARZ prob think the loss of a few shippers is not problematic, good riddance to some thorns in their sides. But these prickly little thorns were their biggest & most devoted fans, who provided better promo of the show as well as the actors both professionally & privately than STARZ themselves, voted tirelessly for public opinion awards, & supported & promoted the actors charities as well as projects of their friends. I don’t think they realize what they’ve lost. I don’t think a show going into its 4th season will necessarily gain a huge number of new fans & they’re unlikely to be as invested or supportive as those who’ve been here for a long time. 

Wow, sorry this kind of got away from me & I’ve really gone off on a tangent. Anyway, this latest article including C’s ring which (I’m sorry I’m not being mean just stating a fact) is not anywhere near being in the same class as the other rings, is embarrassing to C & has to have been planted by hers or STARZ PR to once again push an unbelievable narrative. STARZ PR & their personal publicists need to take a good hard look at what they’re doing because they’re making one huge mistake after another & everyone looks bad, sketchy & unhappy. At the end of the day, honesty & transparency are the best policies.

Submission from Teddy Anon. I have not edited this @hardblazesong

[getoffthesoapbox]

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Kylo

The tragedy of Luke and Kylo is as timeless as it is rare in modern storytelling. The master who failed the student, and the student who failed the master. The lesson which could only be taught at the end, when hope was all that was left. The lesson which could only be learned, when all was lost. These things are part of all our lives, if we’re lucky enough to live to see the other side of them.

While I have a significant bone to pick with how Luke and Kylo’s past unfolds, the relationship between these two characters is sunk deep into the marrow of this story and manages to rise above its narrative shortcomings to be something which, with time, will stand out as a high point of the Star Wars meta narrative, in this writer’s humble opinion.

This is the fifth post in my Star Wars The Last Jedi First Impressions series. The list of the topics this series covers, including links to the previous posts, is included below:

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - A Flawed Triumph

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - The Thematic Heart

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Finn & Rose

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Rey 

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Kylo ← we are here

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Leia

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Rey’s Trajectory

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Kylo’s Trajectory

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Rey & Kylo

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - The Romantic Heart

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Misleading Love Polygons

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Schrödinger's Futures

This behemoth got away from me and ran off on its own. Can’t win ‘em all, I suppose. ;)

Although Kylo and Luke don’t meet until the end of the film, their narratives are twined together throughout every moment. Luke is clearly the father figure who failed Kylo, not Han, and it shows.

Let’s start with the backstory, which is where my biggest hang ups are with the Luke/Kylo trajectory. We don’t get much illumination on what actually went down at Luke’s little academy--we don’t know how old the padawan are for one thing (Kylo was at least in his twenties, which makes it likely the other padawan were of age). We don’t know when Kylo was shipped off to Uncle Luke’s, or what his family circumstances were, or even why he was sent to jedi training, other than vague hints from Han and Leia in TFA. We don’t even know if Kylo wanted to go or if he was pushed into it.

While this backstory may be covered in ancillary material, it creates a massive yawning crater where Kylo’s motivations should be in the trilogy itself. I won’t cover this here (this I’ll cover during Kylo’s section), but I do want to point out that this makes it difficult to fully understand Kylo’s perspective--and the characters from the original trilogy’s perspectives as well.

So, let’s take several assumptions as “fact,” despite them not being confirmed:

For whatever reason, Leia and Han were afraid of their son, distanced themselves from him, and shipped him off to Luke in his teens. (How can we know this? From what Kylo didn’t do: he didn’t run home to Mommy and Daddy when Uncle Luke tried to kill him. If he was close to his parents, he’d have run to them rather than the owner of the nasty voice in his head.)

Kylo trained with Luke and his padawan at Luke’s academy for 5-10 years (depending on how old he was when he was shipped out). This would mean that the students at Luke’s academy could potentially be friendly or unfriendly to Kylo for a wide variety of reasons--we know nothing about them (more on them in a moment).

At some point Luke began to view his nephew with suspicion and lost his senses enough to ambush him at night in a tent, ransack his dreams without him knowing, and determine (even if only briefly) to kill him rather than the villain in his head.

Given the sheer list of assumptions I had to make above, I think it’s pretty clear we have a very weak and unfleshed-out backstory for Kylo and Luke that doesn’t even begin to cover the sheer emotional turmoil between them or explain a blasted thing at all. While the “twist” of multiple perspectives may work on an initial viewing, it’s not enough to justify anything either of the two characters do before or after their hut confrontation.

As much as I like The Last Jedi, I think this is terrible writing on Rian’s part. I’m all for Luke failing--I love failure in heroes. I’m not for out-of-character failure which does not serve the character and only serves the “plot” such as it is. This is a contrivance Rian concocted which doesn’t work and falls flat on review. If Luke knew about Snoke’s involvement with Kylo, he should have gone after Snoke. Kylo was at his side fighting this thing in his head! That should have encouraged Luke to help Kylo! It’s utterly preposterous that this is what makes Luke turn on Kylo.

Now, if Luke hadn’t known about Snoke, that’d be a different thing entirely, but if that was true, then the minute Leia told him the real cause of Kylo’s potential for turning (which we know for sure she was aware of), Luke should have picked his rear up and raced across the galaxy with Han and Leia to kick Snoke into the black hole from which he came and drag Kylo home by the ear. So I have a terrible time buying this from Luke as even remotely in character.

I probably would have felt better if Luke had tried to take Snoke down and failed there and that’s the reason he is in exile. If he tried to reach Kylo after Snoke had corrupted him and failed, then his descent into despair is completely understandable. But, alas, that’s not how things went down.

Setting Luke aside, we have Kylo. Now, obviously, we’re hampered here by not knowing a blasted thing about what was going on through Kylo’s mind at this time in his life--to his credit, even when he talks to Rey, he’s cryptic and secretive; he never once tries to justify himself to her and only gives the barest hint of an explanation for his own past. Kylo doesn’t seem to think he’s a good guy in any way, even if he thinks he’s justified, which I find incredibly troubling, but more on that in the post on his trajectory. Regardless of what was going on in his head at the time, there are a few things in Kylo’s response to Luke that I don’t feel justify his character on a narrative level:

Kylo was 20-some-odd years old and up until this point in his life had shown no signs of “going off the rails” into darkside land, despite some turmoil in his head.

Even if Kylo was angry at Luke, Leia, and Han, how on earth does that turn into him killing half the uninvolved padawan just because Luke tried to attack him? That makes absolutely no sense. Even if we go back to the dreadful prequels, Anakin at least had proper setup for the murder of the padawan in the third film. What on earth does Kylo have?! His vendetta is personal--it’s not ideological like Anakin’s! His only enemy should be Luke, and at most Han and Leia too, but no one else.

Given the two items above, I don’t think I’ll be satisfied with Kylo’s backstory until the temple burning is cleared up (along with how Kylo got to be so estranged from his parents, who clearly loved him, that he wouldn’t run home to them in the first place), and I’m afraid JJ won’t do it because, well, it’s JJ. When has he ever cleared anything up?

They can get away with not explaining this to us in this film because Luke obviously awoke to find the temple burning (so he wouldn’t know and would just make assumptions based on the dead bodies), and Kylo of course is closed-mouthed with Rey and won’t open up to her beyond what’s absolutely necessary. Right now my head canon on this is that when Kylo escaped the hut, half the padawan who probably envied him as the teacher’s pet or disliked how cocky he was attacked him, and the other half who were his friends defended him. When his friends found out how Kylo was nearly killed by his uncle, they decided to abandon ship with him. So there was no “murder” in the “muahahah I have gone evil” sense, but it was just a brawl between jedi and Kylo’s side had the better/stronger boys, who probably were able to overpower the others since they had the prodigy on their side. (Also, fairly sure these kids are either the KoR who were killed off over time or Snoke had them secretly dispatched in order to get Kylo to his side. If Kylo had friends, there’s no way he’d go to Snoke--abusers have to isolate their victims and make them dependent on them--which Kylo clearly is--, after all.)

Anyway, tangent aside, this is the only part of the Kylo/Luke story that I flat out dislike and can’t come to terms with, more’s the pity. The rest is absolutely perfect in every way.

After his failure, Luke can’t face Leia or Han and he knows he has no leverage with Kylo--he himself broke the bond between them by choosing the dark side response over the light side response. With shame heavy in his heart, he begins to reassess his life and falls deeply into the grips of nihilism--he failed “once,” and by extension reflects on the failures of all the jedi before him. Once on this mental trajectory, the only conclusion is naturally that the jedi should be destroyed. This is echoed in his discussions with Rey--he views the past of the jedi as a string of useless failures. It is Rey who reminds him that he once saved the galaxy, but he feels his failure with Kylo negates that victory.

This descent into nihilism after a deep and traumatic personal failure is something that strikes me to the core, as I only recently overcame a similar descent in my own life. Luke’s struggle reflects my own, and I applaud Rian for this because he nailed it. Luke can’t see any purpose in action anymore; he can’t see how he can help make things better when he’s only ever made things worse in his own estimation. Nothing Rey says can help him, and even R2D2’s reminder of his past idealism is written off as “cheap.” Luke heeds the call out of obligation initially, and watching him wrestle with finding the light again is painful and heartbreaking, but it also offers such a message of hope for all of us in the real world who have failed in ways we cannot justify. It’s a message for our times in a way we haven’t seen in modern filmmaking, and that’s quite the achievement for a silly franchise about wizards in space. ;)

What’s interesting to me during this section where Luke is working with Rey is that Kylo, although he knows Rey is bonding with Luke, doesn’t seem to have any jealousy or envy toward Rey, nor does he try to push his resentment onto her. He does tell her “his side” of the story (such as it is, and it’s certainly not all of it)--but his words feel more like a warning for her than an attempt to sway her from liking Luke, at least in my estimation. He’s such a strange character in many ways; there’s a deep center of love within him that he suppresses, and even his hatred seems filled with how fiercely he loves. I have my thoughts on why his story unfolds the way it does, but more on that later.

Luke eventually comes upon Kylo and Rey during their little hut tryst, and what he thinks of them together, I don’t really know. I think initially he must have felt a bit betrayed by Rey and afraid of what she was involving herself with, but at the same time Luke loves Kylo, so it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t want Rey to help his nephew where he cannot. But he’s wise enough to know Rey’s plan is doomed to fail--he has a better grasp of what Kylo’s currently grappling with than Rey does. When Rey leaves to go to Kylo’s side, Luke is overwhelmed by his own helplessness; he thinks he’s lost Rey now too.

Yoda is the one who helps Luke realize what he can still do to help Rey, and through helping her, reach out to the nephew he failed. Yoda reminds Luke that they lost Kylo, but they can’t lose Rey. This, in my estimation, is more than merely “Kylo’s a lost cause and Rey’s not,” as one might expect from the original trilogy’s black and white mindset. I understood Yoda to mean that Luke can’t bring Kylo back because that’s Kylo’s decision, but Luke can still influence and help Rey find the right path. And Rey wants to bring Kylo back, so all of it circles together into one grand solution for Luke--he can teach Kylo the final lesson, which Yoda reminds him is not only that great masters fail, but also that they overcome failure and face the people they’ve harmed, if they still can. They own up to their mistakes and they act to rectify them by whatever means they can. 

This is, indeed, the master’s lesson and on a meta level is the right one for our times. No one is perfect, and everyone makes serious, often life-altering mistakes, and these mistakes hurt the people around us, but even the worst mistakes can be atoned for and overcome if one takes responsibility for one’s role in them. This is the lesson Luke must teach Kylo, in order to keep Rey’s faith in the law and the hope and the balance of the universe intact.

So Luke faces Kylo. But Kylo, by this point, has lost everything other than an empty dream planted into his head by a master whose life he took with his own hands for a girl who offered him her own pipe dream variant. The Kylo Luke faces is a lost, angry child whose world has at last crumbled at his feet, and he’s lashing out with his toy army at the remainder of the things that have hurt him--his mother’s crumbling resistance, Rey’s and his father’s ship, and the man who steps out to stop it all: his uncle.

Luke appears before Kylo in the guise Kylo knew him as--a middle-aged man with a full brown beard, not the grizzled ancient Rey met. Luke is here for Kylo, not for anyone else, not for Rey, not for Leia, not for the resistance. He came for Kylo. The boy he ran from for over half a decade. He at last arrives to face the person he hurt and take responsibility for it.

At first Kylo clearly doesn’t want to deal with Luke. Like a child, he orders Hux’s his army to point every last gun on Luke and fire at once. It’s a bit overkill, which Hux points out in one of my favorite moments in the whole film. Of course, Luke’s a projection, so he survives it all. With his characteristic good cheer, he deliberately antagonizes Kylo by flicking his shoulder to indicate how helpless Kylo is against him.

Predictably, Kylo is a Skywalker, so being a hothead is in his blood, as Luke surely knew from their time together. Kylo is frozen in time, an adolescent trapped in a man’s body, and the boy Luke knew is still here, even if he’s out of control. Kylo orders his men to stand down while he takes Luke on alone, as Luke intended.

The showdown between Luke and Kylo is probably the second best part of the film (the best goes to the entire Red Room sequence, in my humble opinion). It’s cinematic as an old western, and the difference between the young and the old is clearly highlighted in the body language of long silhouettes the two characters cast. Kylo is hunched over, defensive--for all his posturing and screaming, his body language is that of a frightened, wounded beast. Luke’s posture is steady and easy, a man who has found peace with himself after years of self-torment.

Luke lets Kylo make the first move between them. It is Kylo who demands if Luke’s come here to fix him and “save” him and bring him back to the light. It’s clear from this how deeply Kylo was hurt by Luke, and also how much love he bore for his uncle. In his heart of hearts, perhaps he always wanted his uncle to come and save him--to be the Luke of Legend and rescue him like he rescued his father once long ago.

But Luke is not here for that, because he knows there’s more to Kylo than even Kylo knows. What Luke says to Kylo sets the tone for the whole fight and tells the audience exactly why he’s here--he tells Kylo the words he always wanted to say, that he’s sorry for what he did. Kylo immediately lashes out with all the fury of the hurt child and with false bravado declares that he’s going to destroy the resistance and Luke too, and when Luke’s gone there will be no more jedi.

And here at last is the lesson of failure that Luke teaches Kylo. In a callback to Rey’s first lesson, Luke says, “Amazing. Every word of what you just said is wrong.” He tells Kylo that the rebellion is reborn and that he will not be the last jedi.

What I love about this line is that it’s clearly meant to be provocative for Kylo in the short term, but it’s so much more than a provocation to a villain--Luke never once says that “Rey” is the last jedi (a manipulative film trick of cutting to Rey implies this, but the words actually don’t). What Luke says is that “he” will not be the “last.” This is the exact same thing they did with Maz back in TFA--Maz told Rey her parents couldn’t return, but someone still could.

Just like Rey in TFA, Kylo makes a wrong assumption (which is the same assumption the audience makes). In TFA, Rey thought the person who could still return to her was Luke--but it was not Luke, it was Kylo. In TLJ, Kylo thinks Rey is the last jedi, but she is not--she is part of the total rebirth of the jedi and Kylo is too. Kylo and Rey together will create the new order, and as we see with broom boy in the ending, neither of them will be the “last.” The force has awakened throughout the galaxy and the jedi will be reborn.

Luke did not come to teach Kylo that he would never succeed and that he was a doomed villain who would be crushed by Rey--he came to give Kylo the lesson he’ll need when his world at last crumbles around him and he sees the truth of himself and the love Rey will extend to him and the path of atonement he needs to take to right the wrongs he’s committed.

Kylo stupidly doesn’t listen to Luke; he declares he’ll tear everything down, including Rey (lol, whatever, Kylo, more on that later). Luke reminds Kylo that if he strikes his uncle down in anger, Luke will always be with him, just as Han is, which is exactly Luke’s plan and the only way he knows how to be by Kylo’s side without putting the entire galaxy in danger.

I think Luke didn’t want Kylo to actually bear the burden of his death, which is why when Kylo does strike him, he discovers that Luke is merely a force projection. As Kylo realizes how he’s been played, Luke gently says to him, “See you around, kid.” The love in his voice and the assurance of his return to Kylo both break my heart--Kylo meant so much to Luke and Luke is going to make sure Han’s and Leia’s boy finds his way back to the path he was meant for, even if it’s not the path they wanted for him.

Kylo is left more alone than ever, as he’s abandoned by Rey and Leia. In what should have been his most triumphant moment, he’s no more than a lost and devastated boy kneeling with a projection of his father’s dice in the middle of the ruins of an old military base, surrounded by the bones of a historical past he can’t seem to escape no matter what he does, despite it not even being his personal past.

When I first saw the film, Luke’s choice hit me really hard, and I had to think about it for a long time. In the end, I do think this was the best way to help Rey and Kylo. Kylo can’t be reached through conventional means; he’s too hurt and devastated and torn up inside. He needs someone to help him from within, and since there are no therapists in this universe, a force ghost he can’t kill (unless he cuts himself off from the force, which he’ll never do because he’ll lose his ability to talk to Rey if he does) is the perfect solution.

I hope we get to see Kylo trying to ignore Luke pestering him during the next film, and I hope Luke helps Kylo realize the unnecessary destruction, devastation, and harm he’s caused over his own petty grievances and the people he’s hurt and stepped over on his path to destroy both himself and the legacy he inherited. Through this, Kylo may at last come to see the steps he needs to take to begin atoning for all of it. I don’t want Han’s sacrifice in the first film to go to waste, and I don’t want Leia to lose everyone she loves, because that’s too bleak for Star Wars and too bleak for our times--we need hope, and there’s no hope in an ending like that. 

By narrative necessity, Kylo has to get his act together in the next film--too many people are counting on him for him not to, and I just don’t see enough darkside in him to justify him playing Supreme Ruler for very long. Surely he’ll see, now that Snoke is gone, that it was never his dream to begin with--it was some stupid thing Snoke put in his head, no different than Luke, Leia, and Han expecting him to be some great jedi and save the world.

It’s time for Kylo to find his own path, acknowledging the legacy of not only his family’s past but his own failures, and freeing himself to atone and make the most of the sacrifices that have been made for him. Luke standing by his side throughout this journey is the best thing that could have happened for him, in my estimation. =)

Until next time!

[onestowatch]

Q&A: Two-Time Mercury Prize Nominated Artist Nick Mulvey Channels Protest Into Protect

What is music’s role? Music has often been championed as a medium to express the inexpressible and simultaneously obligated to convey the monumental woes of the world at large. Nick Mulvey is a transcendent voice in songwriting who crafts songs of thematic timelessness without purposefully setting out to do so. Mulvey’s music is the result of not setting out to push forward a particular agenda; it is the result of a musician who is in many ways searching for a deeper understanding of his place in the world at large, while not turning a blind eye to the woes and celebration of the people residing alongside him, far and near. 

Mulvey first gained international recognition as a founding member of Portico Quartet, an instrumental band founded in London that blended together ambient music, jazz, and electronica. During Mulvey’s time with Portico Quartet, the band would go on to release two critically acclaimed albums and earn a Mercury Prize nomination. To many, it may come as a surprise as to why Mulvey would leave Portico Quarter at the band’s seeming height, but for Mulvey, it was an eventual inevitability for someone who always saw himself foremost as a songwriter. The decision would find himself in new yet welcomed territory as his debut album, First Mind, would go on to amass critical acclaim and his second Mercury Prize nomination. 

Wake Up Now, Mulvey’s 2017 follow-up to 2014′s First Mind, would be three years in the making, and his sophomore effort feels like those three years were more than well-spent. Wake Up Now immediately feels moving and poignant, as it captures and frames recent events in a way many artists and albums may not dare to. Touching upon issues such as the refugee crisis and environmental destruction, Mulvey’s Wake Up Now tackles these pertinent issues head-on but never in a way that fees overbearing or from a place of anger. Instead, Nick Mulvey transforms protest into protect, crafting songs of celebration for the natural world and the struggles of its people. We sat down with two-time Mercury Prize-nominated artist to glean greater insight into what had made Mulvey the artist he is today.

Photo: Eliot Lee Hazel

OTW: You were originally a member of Portico Quartet, a Mercury-nominated quartet. What spurred the decision to venture off into a solo career?

Well, I think I’ve always had this kind of broad love for music and have been interested and open-minded about music and that led me into Portico Quartet. And kind of making a band that mixed of all the things that we loved back then, which was somewhere between Radiohead, John Coltrane, Philip Glass, and Aphex Twin. So, there was Philip Glass and Steve Reich – all the repetitive stuff. There was John Coltrane and much more than that – there was a lot of jazz music that we loved. Radiohead we all just adored and electronic music as well. But within all that, I was always actually something else, which is a songwriter, and I always brought songwriting sensibilities to the band. The other guys would find really adventurous, experimental sounds and be really striving to make interesting textures, and it was normally me who would want to communicate it in a popular vernacular. The songs had hooks, they were songs first of all, but they were also much more than that. 

And then, two albums, five years of an amazing journey with friends – we had no idea of what the music institute was or like any interest other than just playing. So, we really had all our first journey into what it means to be a musician and things happened that we didn’t ever expect like a nominate for the Mercury Prize and the album doing really well. But five years and two albums, and I was kind of ready to have independence in my own musical direction – play the guitar again, because I wasn’t doing that, and work with lyrics. So, all of those really basic obvious things that I’m doing now, and I wasn’t actually doing in the band, so it’s no wonder I wanted to make that change.

OTW: So, before even joining Portico Quartet, were you writing songs with lyrics? Was songwriting something you had to rediscover?

I did initially start with writing songs and lyrics, and in fact, the first very brief incarnation of the band [Portico Quartet] was with the same players around me as a songwriter. We did one gig; it went really bad. It just happened that within the same week we all got together, but this time with these instruments called the hang drums. And two of us, me and the other player Duncan, started playing these hangs, and without ever having to think about it or communicate it, the bassist Milo and the saxophonist Jack just started playing, and we had this identity and an energy. So, it amuses me to think – I never really say this because it was so inconsequential – the very first thing we ever did was actually around me as a songwriter, cause that’s what I thought I was about, and that was what I was doing. Portico always happened as this unexpected tangent, you know? And that was a joy, and I just loved it, but then I think it was always a question of when, rather than if, I would carry on with the songs.  

OTW: You have this profound ability to transform stories and messages into a song, which lends itself extremely well to the genres of folk and singer-songwriter. Did you always envision yourself going down this particular path?

I think it’s different for me in a more fundamental sense. There’s kind of a following the materials, or something like that, as an artist and having a relationship with my instrument – the guitar mostly. It’s like I don’t think about styles or genres in a kind of intellectual way. It’s more like following the material, the strings, the wood, my fingers, and then switching off my mind and just really processing my own shit, my own emotions. There are things I’m looking for, and that’s mostly not a songwriting thing, that’s more of just a repetitive thing, playing music, strumming things through. So, those are the origins of the expression, and then from there I get into the writing the songs, and it’s only down the line that I start kind of thinking what is this? And that’s also the case in the studio when it comes to choosing the other instruments and stuff. In a very fundamental sense, I always think of it as being an exploration of songs and songwriting and more instrumental, repetitive and hypnotic music. Those two worlds, in fact, they are kind of one. The deeper I go into it, the more I realize they’re not distinct. But on the surface, they seem different, and I’m exploring where they always meet.

OTW: What was it like picking up the guitar and fully devoting yourself to it after so long?

Well, it was great. I remember just being, I don’t mean this with any sort of bad light on the band, but for me at that moment, I was free to really indulge in what I needed to do and explore it. It was never an effort because I loved it so much, you know?

OTW: So, when did you first pick up the guitar then? Was music something that was always an integral part of your household and upbringing?

Definitely, yeah. My mom is a professional musician, a singer. But she’s also quite formal about it, so she always tried to get us do lessons as a kid. And I’ve always played music of some kind all my life, and it was always just fun and a playful thing, so I was often quite resistant to my mom’s approach. My dad he’d sing us songs before we go to bed. That was really normal for me, and I always liked that approach more. So, I played the drums since I was a ten-year-old, and I always feel in some fundamental sense like a drummer. I feel like I play the guitar and piano like a drummer. It’s about rhythm, groove, momentum, and motion. The music always has motion. I never put a chord down and just sit there and put another – it’s always got a buzz and a tick-tock. But I did want to learn the piano. I was a teenager; I had more sophisticated ideas. I was like yeah, I want to play the jazz piano; that’s cool. And I loved that. I had a good teacher who really understood I was more of an intuitive player. So, I never learned to read music and he taught me in a really intuitive way the theory that I needed. So, I did have some theory about what a chord is made of, how you make a chord, what are the relationships between chords, what is the blues sequence, why does that energy happen like when you lift up in “Billie Jean” to the second chord? Like what is that? The question is still a mystery. It’s beautiful. Lou Reed said there’s nothing better in music than that interval. I was seventeen when I picked up the guitar, but immediately it was home, and I could combine everything I learned from the drums and piano and just put it right there.

OTW: You left England for a time to study art and music in Havana, Cuba. One could say that African and Cuban sounds permeate styles of your music. Did you find your time in Havana to be a rather formative time for you and your music?

It was in a way, yeah, but not in a surface-level way. If you were to listen to Cuban styles, you wouldn’t hear them in my music. It’s not like a direct thing – there is a love of African music that runs through my work, and that’s why I wanted to go to Cuba. I mean it was kind of random why I went there – a friend had been there and just came and said, “you should go.” And I was like, “yes I should. Brilliant, let’s go.” So I went there, and it was a really formative time for me, because I got into playing five hours a day with a whole bunch of people I never met. It was a very international school, lots of young musicians, we’d study during the day, which was difficult for me because although I had these moments of lessons of the piano and stuff, I was a very self-taught musician. I had terrible technique and the vibe in Cuba is kind of with this Russian influence from the Soviet cultural influence. They have this kind of high standard of academy, and the teachers kicked my ass every day, and then I would go in the evening and through the night and just play and play, play, play, play, play, play – often percussion but at the guitar as well and singing all the time. And then it was like that for three months, then I extended it four months, five months, six months, eight months I was there. So, I came back definitely having grown a lot as a musician.

OTW: You had the opportunity to meet with a living legend, Brian Eno. How did this meeting come about and in what ways did it end up influencing you?

Yeah, it was very cool. At the beginning of this second album, we had quite an open page in terms of who do I want to work with and where do we want to go. And they said well, we can contact Brian Eno. I remember joking with them and I said, “Let’s do that, and can I have coffee with Robert De Niro next week, as well?” It felt almost ridiculous, very ambitious. And amazingly, he got back in touch saying he was a fan of the first album, and he’d love to help. He was very clear from the start that he wasn’t taking on full producer duties – He hadn’t done that in awhile – but that he’d love to help. He’s a very gracious dude. I think that it’s kind of a natural and integral part of being a rounded artist is that some of your time is spent working with younger artists. He said in this initial email that he had some keys for me, so I was flipping, as you’d imagine. I got very excited, basically, and I went to see him at the beginning of the process. This was at the beginning of 2016, last year, and the days were great.

We did two days in his studio with a little bit of plugging in the guitar and recording, but mostly he was really interested in my guitar patterns and the way I play this repetitive aspect. He was very much, unsurprisingly, interested in this more ambient, hypnotic approach to music. His instructions to me were like just go there. Now for me, at this time, on this album, I still had more to do with songs and song form, but initially, these sessions with him were all about that. We listened to Talking Heads and we listened to Fela Kuti, and we talked about how do chord sequences work in that music, and what’s the journey of the release of that energy in that kind of music. It’s mostly about the suspension of energy and holding tension. You know, normally in normal songs you have four chords you might go around quite quickly, whereas in Fela Kuti you might stay on the chord, stay on the chord, stay on the chord, change, change, stay on the chord. So, I showed him my newest patterns, and they were mostly conforming to the songwriting chord changing. And he said, “Let’s play a game. Give me the control. You’ll play, and I’ll tell you when to change the chords.” So, I would play around, and he would hold it. I began to realize, “Alright, cool. It’s just opening up the space.” And then he’d say, “Change, change, change back.” He summed all of that up with a little piece of advice, which could have been one of his Oblique Strategies, and when he said it to me it felt like a kind of parody of Brian Eno saying it to me. He said, and I wrote this down in my book, “Use familiar chords for unfamiliar durations.”

It’s not necessarily about pursuing new musical ground by finding more complex harmony or cleverer tricksy stuff. That’s not my vibe anyway. So, use familiar chords but use them for unfamiliar durations – have changes that aren’t expected. And then there were lots of other things. It was so interesting. We talked about all of the different societal shapes that music can represent. Like an orchestra represents a pyramid of power, from God to the composer to the conductor to the first violinist to the second violinist to outwards to the masses. That speaks to a feudal system of power, while a four-piece rock and roll band is different, or a community in a Fela Kuti band with eleven, fifteen people on the stage speaks of another kind of social structure. And he said, “Beware of the messages that you communicate through the choices you do.” Because if I wasn’t careful with it, in my own music and within the idea of the singer-songwriter, you’ve got this notion of the lone artist who’s in communion with the divine and who gets his ideas from nowhere. And he’s kind of suspicious of that. Yes, on one level, ideas come from somewhere mysterious, but also on another level you live in a web of influence with all of your friends and collaborators, so make sure to involve to that. He sowed some seeds basically, and down the line six months later when I was making the album a lot of them came to bear.

Photo: Eliot Lee Hazel

OTW: You mention those seeds that came to bear. On your sophomore album, Wake Up Now, you opted to record it with a live band, which is increasingly uncommon nowadays. Do you believe this was one of those seeds of Eno’s that came to bear?

I have to see it as connected. In my mind, I didn’t necessarily think of it as Brian said to do this, therefore I’m going to do it, but for sure he planted those seeds. The reason that guided me into the live recordings was quite interesting, because it wasn’t necessarily about the sound. I wanted the sound of living and breathing music, but that was secondary. The reason I went there was that my journey up to this point had always been working with click tracks and multitracking. I would put down the guitar and a guide vocal, and then maybe I’d play the bass and some percussion, and then me or a collaborator would play some synths. One after the other, that was just the natural way it happens. As a guy with a guitar, I was always aware that people would think of me as a folky thing, and that always never felt quite right for me because I love equally as much electronic music or all kinds of things. I would often choose collaborators or methods of working that played into other ways to express the fact that there was more to what I’m doing than just a folk singer-songwriter thing. While that was necessary in some ways, it also meant that I never got into being a singer and all of what’s that about. And for me, that was about what it means to really make true performances on record, of real emotion. I would say that, although I’m proud of my first record, I didn’t know about that then, and I wasn’t working with a producer who was also thinking that way and pushing me, so I realized the new level for me was getting into the idea of what it means to properly create emotion on a record.

It then invited me on an interesting journey, because so much of the recording process is about locking things in and capturing the music, and I had to realize that I needed to create the environment that would push me into the unknown so that emotion could be real and genuine. Because if you’re singing a song you’ve always planned and the red light goes on, then it’s really easy to not turn up. So, one of the ways in which I could ensure that surrender would happen – which is an interesting sentence, because am I controlling surrender? It became this really interesting thing of how do I surrender? Because when you surrender, it’s not you who’s doing it. And one of the things was a live recording with people recording at the same time, so you have all the sonic spillage across the microphone. So, after you’ve done the take, you can’t necessarily go and overdub that vocal, because it’s got cymbal splash or whatever it is. I had to surrender more. And then the other thing was not only just musicians live at the same time but my friends. Now it helps that I was already on a journey with my friends and that they’re amazing musicians. It helped because if I tried to control them and tell them what to do, with affection, they’d say Nick I love you but fuck off. So, it became this intention, or this game of I’m going to get them all together, and then I’m going to have to jump into the river and go with it and that’s going to make better music.

OTW: I would say the risk worked out well. The album, in my opinion, turned out beautifully.

It’s living and breathing. It’s joyful. The celebration has an energy and a wildness, and that’s because we let it be. I’m really amazed by it, and I mean that in a humble sense. I’m really proud of it. I’m happy for all of us who made it together.

OTW: There’s also some really powerful messages on the album, from references to the Dakota Access Pipeline to the refugee crisis. Was that an intentional thematic choice when you were going into the songwriting process of the album?

It was and it definitely became so. Even though there ends up being kinds of themes and messages in the album, the majority of the whole process, with the one exception of a song called ”Myela,” which is about the refugee crisis, is much more of an exploration into the unknown where I’m following my fingers. I’m thinking musically. I’m thinking about shapes. I’m thinking about phrases, sounds, and feelings, rather than concepts or ideas. I’m all the way into the process before I start looking at okay what are these words, what are these themes? So, I’m still following that artistic journey, which is not about I have an agenda or whatever. But at the same time, and definitely in parallel with becoming a father and also in parallel with 2016 – 2015 was fucked up, 2014 was fucked up, 1996 was fucked up. If you except that the west is built on racism and injustice and you open up your heart in hell and you say you can’t numb yourself anymore, you equally start to realize that every breath is unbelievably beautiful. And you also start to open up to the reality of quite how fucked up things are, then 2016 when it kind of went mainstream or something. Now, if you’re like let’s say Thom Yorke in the ‘90s, it was hard work for him to say all this stuff about hang on a sec, I think things are fucked up.

And now, we have Trump in power, we have Brexit happening, we see that none of these reasons for going to war are real, and we have climate change – I believe climate change isn’t an issue like all the other issues, it’s literally messages from planet Earth in its own language of weathers and storms and biblical droughts. Therefore, summoning the energy to go deep and make some work and make an album, it felt something like the house is on fire and I’m going to suggest we all have a cup of tea? No, it’s like the house is on fire; it’s just obvious. We have to talk about it. So, Standing Rock was something that really captured me, like the rest of the world, it’s not something that feels American so much, because the song also references the commencement of fracking Lancashire in the UK, despite an almost unanimous referendum that people don’t want it. The collusion between big business and government is the same, but beneath those issues, the song is about what I indeed I think the whole album is about and again all the songs are about, which is the nature of consciousness. And in this instance, it’s about our mentality behind our ability to destroy our own home, which is a belief that we’re spate from the whole. That belief that we’re somehow separate from everything is really coming down now, which is a celebration.

OTW: You’ve described Wake Up Now as a protest album, or rather a protect album of sorts. Would you mind elaborating on the concept and intention behind the album?

That was such a profound element of what is happening at the moment. Particularly here in the US, where you’ve got indigenous communities at the forefront of these climate battles, which is slightly different than in Europe. And a respiriting of our material worldview. That’s really something fundamental that’s happening. A respiriting of the material worldview where the beauty of such is that we don’t have to abandon the scientific approach but it has to be reunited with a reverence for the living universe. I was reading the other day, if we can say that our energy is recycled sunlight and we are conscious, should it not be therefore that the unrecycled, original source is conscious in a way that we cannot even imagine. I think these are very conscious planetary beings. So, that distinction between protest and protect, I hope it is reflected in the album. Even though it goes to these places of, as best as I could, not shying away from the suffering – more than that it’s about celebration. That’s kind of I hope the same twist as those protectors. It’s about the mentality and the state of being that you’re coming from with it, because the action or the gift will be always defined by the state of being it comes from. So, if you’re protesting against something you’re making more of that same friction, that same energy. Whereas if we’re creating things out of falling in love with the planet, and that’s what this album is, it’s a celebration of wonder and the joy we had making it. It is alive and kicking in it.

OTW: In the same vein or protest and protect albums, were there any albums or artists with similar veins that really struck you?

Yeah, there were moments of definite protest. Most recently, Anohni and the Johnsons, specifically Anohni with Hopelessness. It’s a recent one, but it was profound for me to hear that. Because there’s this kind of relish and relief to hear an artist of profile with an album where the first song is about drone bombing, the second song is about irreversible climate change, the third song is about states spying through the internet, the fourth song is about Obama’s kill list. It’s just like thank you, you know? And not that that’s easy listening or that I enjoyed that, but I needed to see an artist doing that. And for me, I knew that I wanted to go there, and it was an important thing for me to hear. Following the distinction of the question, which I really like, there have been albums throughout my whole life that have been protect albums that have taught me reverence for the joy of living and wonder for life. Paul Simon’s Graceland was really one of those, and I remember having a moment previously I had felt like lyrics were something that I didn’t get. It was listening to Paul Simon when he said in, a song called “Under African Skies”, This is the story of how we begin to remember, This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein. I remember just this euphoria of he’s describing this thing that I feel that I thought was just me. I think we all know that in our own ways with music. This was definitely one for me, and that was an amazing confirmation. I love that music can do that, and I hope this album does that a lot for people – having inclinations about life, about themselves and to get confirmed when they listen to this music. 

OTW: You’re now a recent father. Did that have any effect on how you approach and view music, or what you believe music’s role is?

I think it might have had an effect on a broader scale, but the effects are really, really interesting. Really tangible and material. I think it’s for a lot of new parents, as you get close to the birth and then after the birth, you have to go to work in this new way where you’ve got something to live for and work for. The effectiveness of my actions, I could see them change. They became really powerful. Before that, I had great support from the people I worked with, I was privileged to just have all this time to write an album, which was another reason why I wanted to write something useful, profound, and worthwhile. Because it’s a privilege to sit there writing music. So, what am I going to write about? Myself? Boring. So, I’m here writing all this music with a lot of support and resources and possibly too much time, not enough perhaps pressure on me, and I was a bit lost for a minute. After seeing Brian, that was really great. I was making these demos, which were multitracked and click tracked, and they were leaving me cold. I didn’t quite know what to do, and my wife was now in the late pregnancy, and I was stumped. But because she was in the late pregnancy, it was actually obvious for me that I had to change the priority in my life for a minute – relegate the album over here and actually focus on setting up the house, getting ready for this baby, and supporting my wife. Being very practical, you know? And not making many plans, not being busy, just being at the house.

I’d be literally cooking the food, cleaning the house, and in that mode I started to get all this insight into the album. “That’s the way in which I’m being a control freak. I need to record live. I need to do it with my friends.” All the fundamentals that came to define the album really came from preparing to be a father. So, before the baby was even born it had this effect on my music making. So, I don’t know if it makes me feel any different about music in general. After the birth, I definitely just knew, “We need to record here. We need to record now. I want these players.” And the songs really started flowing as well. The days were spent obviously changing nappies and 99.99% in this new world, and then I’d have five minutes where I’d write a verse. All that time throughout the whole year I had too much time. I wasn’t pressurized enough to really focus, so that was quite a positive thing.

OTW: Continuing on the in the subject of fatherhood, do you know what kind of music you’re going to raise your son on?

Good music. I think that’s really the answer to that, which is like to say the styles, the genres, and the artists are as rich as they can be today. We just cherry-pick what we want. We have music on tap from Spotify. So, I think even for our generation the idea of the genre is really breaking down. For my parents, you were either a mod or a rocker. You liked this and you dressed that way and you define yourself that way. That’s dissolved, and I wonder what it’ll be like even further. So, as long as its good music that’s shot through with proper artistic nutrition and integrity then that’ll be the soul food he needs. I’m fascinated by what he’ll end up liking down the line when he starts to exert his own tastes. Already, he definitely responds to music really, really clearly. It’s amazing, actually. He’s really responsive to music, and he’s often around us making it. He was in the studio when were making the album as a six-week-old baby.

OTW: Hanging in the studio with your newborn certainly must have been an interesting experience.

There were a few takes where we had to do it again. And when you’re like editing or you’re kind of in the process, you don’t just listen to a song once. You spend the whole day in loops, so he knows the patterns of this album really well. So, he might back in the backseat crying, and I’ll put it on and as soon as “Unconditional starts, he just drops into this place where he’s content. It’s really sweet to see.

OTW: Who are your Ones to Watch?

I think she’s no secret but there’s this artist called YEBBA. Everything I’m hearing is amazing. Nilüfer Yanya as well.