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wickedobsessed101 · 4 years ago

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Fanfic Writer Asks

[SOURCE: criminal-minds-fanfiction: Most of the writer ask posts I come across are only like ten or so questions long so I thought I’d try to make a longer one because we like talking about our writing! Feel free to reblog!]

I’m answering all of these b/c I love Q & A’s about my writing, both for my fics and other things.

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction? It was 2013, so I was 14 years old. I’m now almost 23.

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one? I’m mostly in the Wicked Musical fandom, but I like to read for other fandoms, like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Chronicles of Narnia, ect.

3) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer. OCs, but I’m more than willing to create an OC for someone based on characteristics they give me.

4) What is your favourite genre to write for? I love me some fluffy romance and hurt/comfort, but I also love some angsty drama.

5) If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi-chaptered stories, which would it be and why? OMG, don’t make me choose! They’re all my babies! I love all my children equally! They all hold special places in my heart.

6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why? Goodness, most of my stories prior to 2017, because I was in high school and had no idea what I was doing because I was just getting my feet wet with writing.

7) When is your preferred time to write? Anytime really. The latest I’ve stayed up writing a fic was 4AM. *Glares at ‘Threads of Truth’*

8) Where do you take your inspiration from? Where ever it happens to come up. I’m not picky. Movies, music, people I’ve seen on the street, random thoughts that enter my head, anything.

9) In your xxx fic, what’s your favourite scene that you wrote? In ‘Threads of Truth’, it’s a tie between Villy’s first date, and an argument that happens in an upcoming chapter. And that’s all I’m saying about that.

10) In your xxx fic, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternative ending in mind? In ‘Play The Game’, I liked the epilogue ending that I gave Elphaba with her family, even without Fiyero. I like writing her with kids. Another ending would be with the Fiyeraba still together, but I’m satisfied with the ending it has.

11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it? I’ll go back and fix typos that are pointed out, but I don’t change plot stuff. Like, I wrote what I wrote and I will amend my technique in future stories.

12) Who is your favourite character to write for? Why? Other than my OCs, because I get to fully create them and my lowkey babies, I’d have to say G(a)linda. She has so much potential and she’s so much fun.

13) Who is your least favourite character to write for? Why? Boq. Not because I hate him (I don’t!), but because I don’t normally know what to do with him. If he’s not with Nessa, he’s literally just standing there like a brick wall. No offence, Boq!

14) How did you come up with the title for the xxx? - You can ask about multiple stories. [Ask me about a specific story(ies)]

15) If you write OC’s, how do you decide on their names? I usually change consonants and vowels to already existing names, or add unnecessary letters because... reasons.

16) How did you come up with the idea for xxx? [Ask me about a specific story]

17) Post a line from a WIP that you’re working on. “Hopefully, this will soak up any more leaks.” (Upcoming Wicked fanfic)

18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them? Yes, 2. Both of them are a few years old and I’ve grown as a writer since then. Maybe one day, I’ll edit them and repost, but not anytime soon.

19) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to? Not everything can have a sequel, y’all! XD

20) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently? Yes! Around 60% of them.

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire? @vinkunwildflowerqueen @raven-curls @mylittleelphie @weaselspeedfanfic Ultimate Queen of Cliffies

22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it? This goes back to Question #6; most of what I posted prior to 2017.

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence? Silence. I need to focus.

24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes? I can’t write it. They’ll make out, and then be pregnant in the next chapter. Y’all can do the math for yourselves.

25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story? YES! Yes, I have! Both sad tears and tears of joy. I’ve also cringed from second-hand embarrassment at the things the characters do and say. I’m not in control of their actions all the time. Sometimes they tell me what they’re gonna do, and I’m like, “Well, alright, then.”

26) Which part of your xxx fic was the hardest to write? [Ask me about a specific story]

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow? I write bullet points of things I want to happen in a chapter on the Word Doc, or in the story as a whole, and I try to keep those bullet points in order. And the Notes App on my phone holds a lot of my ideas, and sometimes full scenes.

28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction? That I’d become obsessed with writing and continue doing it for almost ten years, as well as expanding to writing plays and musicals.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like? Yeah. I’m not gonna say which one, but just know there’s one... or a few.

30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at? Yes, and I’m still not gonna say which one(s). I want all the love!

31) Send me a fic recommendation and I’ll post it for my followers to see! (The asker is to send the rec, not the answerer) Yeah, sure!

32) Are any of your characters based on real people? Yes. Villy Doiir from ‘Threads of Truth’ is based on 4 people I know in real life, all mixed together into one wholesome, mother figure/ mentor. Perhaps that’s why I like writing her so much.

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten? All reviews keep me going, no matter the length. But I love it when people review saying that they picked up on little references that were really just for me. It makes me feel like we’ve shared a moment.

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten? A guest reviewer once said, “You tend to write Fiyero as an abusive person”. It wasn’t harsh, just... NOT TRUE. Especially for the story they were reviewing.

35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest? Close to my chest. I’ll share it with the world when I’m ready.

36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s? NOPE! You’ll just have to wait and see! LOL!

37) What’s the funniest story you’ve written? I... really don’t know. My stories all have their funny moments.

38) If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? (Perhaps this question will inspire some collabs!) If you’re shy, don’t tag the blog, just name it. I’m very busy, and collabs aren’t really my thing, but I’m always willing to lend an extra pair of eyes pre-posting.

39) Do you prefer first, second or third person? I’ve written one story in the first person and it was fun to get into the character’s head, but I love third person, cause I like knowing what everyone is thinking. Second person makes me feel a certain way and that don’t really like.

40) Do people know you write fanfiction? IRL, no. It’s not something I bring up over dinner. I’ll talk about my plays and musicals, but not fanfiction. I like keeping my fics for the online peeps and my more personal writings for the RL peeps.

41) What’s you favourite minor character you’ve written? My OC, Princess Hannalyn, from ‘A Royal Romance’. She was so much fun!

42) Song fic - What made you decide to use the song xxx for xxx. I haven’t done a song fic.

43) Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it? Not fully, but they’ve had little inklings, but certain details were still a surprise. And I’m not mad about it.

44) What is the last line you wrote? “I don’t want this to be the last time we see each other.”

45) What spurs you on during the writing process? When I’ll have one idea, and it spirals into many others, and when the characters write themselves. It makes it so much easier for me. Sometimes they tell me that they’re about to make a bad decision, and I just go along with it. They need to learn and grow somehow.

46) I really loved your xxx fic. If you were ever to do a sequel, what do you think might happen in it? [Ask me for a specific story]

47) Here’s a fic title - insert a made up title. What would this story be about? [Ask me]

48) What’s your favourite trope to write? I love a good Royalty AU (not fully AU ‘cause of our princey-prince, but still) and Holiday AUs. And I’ve never written a Coffeeshop AU, but I LOVE reading them. I’ll read anything. I’m not picky, and I love to see what ideas others have.

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about? Yes, and both of them were Gelphies: 1 - “Easier Said Than Done” by mecelphie - It’s part of a long, wonderful series of Elphaba and Glinda together at Shiz and how their lives evolve together and has many lovable OCs. 2 - “The Thropp Diaries” by denpa wave chick saki - It’s first-person Elphaba POV of the book. It expands on lots of mentioned moments and we get to journey through Elphaba’s thoughts.

50) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why? I’d have to say fluff, so I can get my escape from reality. But it’s hard to write pure fluff without a little bit of conflict.

If you wanna read my stories, they’re all right here: Fae’sFlower

#wicked the musical #wicked #wicked fanfiction #fiyeraba fanfic #faesflower #Q & A #Fiyeraba #gelphie #Elphaba #Fiyero #Glinda #Galinda #fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction.net #let me tell you about my writing and my stories #writer #Q & A with Nia

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years ago

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I think you've mentioned the Percy Jackson series before in regards to Rick Riordan. Have you read it? And if you have, what's your opinion on it? I'm currently re-reading and I honestly forgot how good a series it is since I haven't read it since I first did in seventh grade.

I’ve read it, I loved it, I am all about it! I’ve also read Heroes of Olympus and I’m about halfway through Kane Chronicles.

Percy Jackson was actually my gateway drug into Tumblr fandom — some college friends talked me into making my first tumblog for a Camp Half-Blood RP. I spent two years playing Luke Castellan and/or Kronos, I quickly tired of forum-style RPs, and I switched to more traditional blogging. And yes, I’ve always cared too much about meatsuits, whichever fandom they’re from.

Anyway, Luke Castellan is probably my favorite antagonist of all time, and I’ve used him as partial inspiration for my own villains (including Margaret). This is because Luke:A) kinda has a good point, and B) does unforgivably terrible things to prove that point.

When you get down to it, Luke is right that every god in Olympus should be in prison for the way they treat their kids. His dad (and great-uncle) performed horrific next-level gaslighting on his mom, and Hermes genuinely cared for her but was also like “eh, what’s one mortal more or less?” Percy, Thalia, and Nico all watch family members die and grow up under desperate circumstances because the alternative would be any of their dads admitting that they exist. Luke is right to be bitter, after becoming homeless at age nine and witnessing the impact of homelessness on Annabeth and Thalia. Luke is right that “they’re from a different time” has never excused that kind of treatment of one’s kids, and will never excuse it.

What Luke is not right about is what he does with those beliefs. He’s happy to let Percy get killed if it’ll sow chaos for the Big Three. He sends Chris into the Labyrinth knowing that it’ll probably cost Chris’s mind and life. He stands there and lets Annabeth — whom he claims in his diary is the little sister he never had – get slowly crushed to death by the sky in order to trap Artemis. He’s willing to let Kronos destroy most of Manhattan if it means destroying Olympus along the way. He poisons Thalia. He gets Silena killed.

Luke is the quintessential rogue folk hero, an agent of chaos with intentions of gold, taking down the big bad establishment by any means necessary. He’s Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy, Nate Ford from Leverage, Kaz Brekker from Six of Crows, Finn Rider from Tangled, Kelsier from Mistborn, Han Solo from Star Wars, Mal Reynolds from Serenity, etcetera. Only, the thing is, Luke is the unromantic version of that trope. Because we’re not seeing the story from his point of view as he zooms around being a debonair rogue who wants to save the world. We’re seeing the story from the point of view of the people he manipulates and hurts in order to accomplish his ends. Just because he’s got a good point, that doesn’t give him the right to destroy lives indiscriminately.

Not only is Luke a brilliantly subversive villain, but his role also casts Percy as an atypical hero. Because how often do we see heroes in adventure series that defend the established order instead of trying to take it down? How often do we see heroes that try to prevent violence and chaos instead of starting it? Not only that, but how often do adventure series end with the hero and the villain meeting each other in the middle and finding common ground? (Avatar the Last Airbender is the only other example that comes to mind.) Percy learns from Luke, and Luke learns from Percy, even as they are actively working to kill each other. And Luke’s impact survives long after he himself does.

My favorite part of Heroes of Olympus is just how much Percy comes to resemble Luke, when seen through Jason’s eyes. He’s this older, tougher hero, one who cares deeply about his fellow demigods but is also shockingly cynical about the gods themselves. He doesn’t hero-worship anyone (no pun intended), even literal heroes or literal objects of worship, and he doesn’t concern himself with high ideals as much as he does with keeping his friends alive. Because Percy’s hero’s journey is not a traditional Campbellian cliché archetype, but instead about him coming to find the middle road between his initial naive faith in the gods and Luke’s bitter hatred toward them. It’s about finding a path between Hermes-like chaos for chaos’s sake and Zeus-like order just to uphold tradition, about embracing the Classical ideal of heroes finding their own paths regardless of what their ancestors might have done.

#percy jackson #rick riordan #percy jackson and the olympians #luke castellan #nothing to do with animorphs #pjo #pjo meta #sol cares too much about the meatsuits #'cool motive still murder' is my favorite kind of villain #anonymous #asks

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sage-nebula · 4 years ago

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Game Review — Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition

About seventeen years ago, I played a Gamecube game called Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, and for the most part I really loved it. I got lost in every single dungeon all the time, and I really hated the annoying moogle I had to drag around, but other than that I loved the game. So it makes sense, then, why I would be excited when I heard it was getting a remastered release on Switch.

Overall Score: 6/10

While I was happy to get a chance to play this game again, I feel like Square-Enix whacked both of its kneecaps in two different ways. One, they did a remaster instead of a remake, meaning they just gave it a little polish instead of fixing existing issues; and two, they decided for some reason to port it to mobile phones, which I feel created some issues, though I admit I don’t have any proof of that. While I still enjoyed my time with the game for the most part, it definitely receives a lower score than I think I would have given the original in my youth. More details under the cut, best viewed on my blog for formatting.

The Pros:

This isn’t specific to the remaster, but rather more about the game itself, but one thing I think is notable about the setting is that it’s essentially a post-apocalyptic story, but it’s one where the people haven’t completely fallen into despair and ruin. I mean, some places have; there’s a village called Tida whose caravan never returned and so they all died slow deaths of miasma as their crystal’s protection ran out. But in other villages, including the player’s hometown, people are living their lives as best they can. Some people are even trying to find a way to get rid of the miasma altogether. While of course there is much to stress about and also people’s memories being taken from them, overall the world looks a bit brighter than in most post-apocalyptic stories. It’s always nice when post-apocalyptic stories recognize that even after the end, life still goes on.

I’ve also always rather enjoyed the way the way the game constantly reminds you that you’re not the only caravan out on this journey. You encounter caravans from other towns and villages pretty often, and their stories intersect with yours, growing as the in-game years pass. It’s another thing that makes the world feel alive, because you see again and again that there are other heroes out there, heroes of their own stories, that you’re just one of many in this world trying your best to get by and keep your village alive.

The soundtrack is also something that deserves praise, because it has a very . . . Celtic, I think? flair to it that really suits the setting, especially since the narrator has (what I believe is) an Irish accent. I can’t think of a single bad song in the entire game, and many of them are catchy and bouncy and fun to listen to.

After each little cutscene or dungeon, you get an entry added to the in-game journal, and I enjoy those as well. It helps keep track of the little side stories going on (since they span over years), and I like how some of them change depending on the choices you’re given in any given cutscene. That said, I do have a slight issue with them as well, but I’ll discuss that in a different section.

If you play single-player, the game assigns a moogle named Mog to carry the crystal chalice through the dungeons with you so you don’t suffocate due to the miasma. (In multiplayer, another player has to carry it.) This results in Mog getting tired, saying, “I’m tired, kupo, it’s your turn!” and making you carry it sometimes anyway, even if you’re being chased by monsters. When I played this game as a kid, it seemed like he was saying this EVERY FIVE SECONDS and it was THE MOST annoying thing. But it didn’t feel as frequent this time, and when I looked it up, I saw that the devs actually did extend the amount of time Mog could carry the chalice before he got tired. I appreciated this very much, even if Mog was still annoying.

The Neutrals:

From what I can tell, there wasn’t really a graphics overhaul done, except to increase the jiggle physics on female Selkies, which . . . I’m not a prude, I don’t really care that much (even though it can be distracting), but of all the things you chose to fix, it was this? Square-Enix, please.

While on the one hand I like that there’s no set order that you can encounter the random travel cutscenes in, that they can happen whenever, because it makes it feel like a more realistic journey . . . it also creates the problem that the events will still trigger even if you’re already finished the associated quest line. For example, to get the Unknown Element that lets you reach the final boss area, you have to complete a series of actions in Lynari Desert. You find out what you have to do through a series of travel cutscenes with a swindler named Gurdy, who gives you poem verses that strongly hint at what you need to do. I had a few of these before I reached the desert, but not all of them, so I just looked up a guide to get the remainder of the instructions. Despite this, I still later triggered the final Gurdy cutscene, and so it was like my character was standing there with the desert treasure while Gurdy told her about the desert treasure . . . it’s not a huge deal, but it does show how the idea of having random travel cutscenes is kind of flawed. (Additionally, you can beat the game without even finishing certain stories as a result, so it’s entirely possible you could get to Mio and not know who she’s talking about in the end. It’s not game breaking, but it is a bit of an issue too.)

The Cons:

The LOADING TIMES, OH MY GOD. This game has the longest loading times of any game I have ever played on the Switch, and I confirmed with someone who has played the original a billion times that these loading time issues were not present in the original game, meaning they are a direct result of development on the “remaster.” Literally, the game goes to a blank loading screen that lasts a good minute or two for almost everything. For every cutscene you have, any time you leave or enter a place, hell, even QUITTING THE GAME has a “Closing Software” box for FAR LONGER than any other Switch title, to the point where it made me afraid for a moment that my Switch, brand new though it is, was broken. I don’t know why the loading times are so bad, but I personally blame it on Square-Enix wanting to make the game multiplatform (multiplatform including fucking cell phones), thus not optimizing it for any one console. And on a similar note . . .

Online multiplayer is region-locked. Yes, you read that right. Two friends who I’d originally intended to caravan with live in Europe, and since I live in North America, we were unable to play together since Square-Enix decided to region-lock online multiplayer. It is honestly the most batshit stupid thing I have ever heard of. The only reasoning I can think of for why they did this is because of mobile phone support; it’s entirely possible that there is something within a phone’s SIM card that would make it not possible to play multiplayer across different continents, but honestly I have trouble believing even that since I believe that’s not a problem in other mobile games. Either way, the entire point of online play is to be able to play with anyone, no matter where they are, and the fact that in the year 2020 Square-Enix decided it was a good idea to region-lock online play is fucking ridiculous.

A minor complaint, but you can’t use the left joystick to scroll between items in menus. You have to use the little arrow buttons instead. This was also the case in the Switch port of Final Fantasy XII, so I think it’s a Square-Enix preference thing, but it annoyed me and I wish they’d at least give the option to change button configuration around.

There’s backtracking as the years go on that I personally found kind of annoying, especially when it made me go to dungeons I didn’t particularly like. The thing is, the gameplay in FFCC doesn’t have a lot of variance; you go to three dungeons, you fight three bosses, then the year ends and you repeat it the next year. The only real variety is in the dungeons themselves as you get to explore new ones. But in Year 5, you HAVE to repeat dungeons because you’re blocked off from going to new areas. And at a certain point there stops being new dungeons altogether, so you have to repeat dungeons if you want to get myrrh for the village. And yeah, the dungeons are a bit harder each time, but the layout is still the same, and so it made what was already a repetitive style of gameplay even more repetitive, which honestly made me eager to finish it as quickly as possible despite wanting to grind as long as possible when I first got the game because I wanted to avenge my childhood self, who never managed to beat the final boss.

The four different races to choose from all have different styles of gameplay, and you can make multiple characters in one file to fill out your caravan / open specialty shops all around town. The problem is, the only character in the caravan who gets stat boosts and experience from the dungeons is the one who goes through them, and the dungeons get tougher each time they’re completed. So unless you constantly rotate your characters, creating more characters to fill out the caravan and be able to use different play styles per different boss (such as using a Yuke when facing a boss like Dragon Zombie who can really only be affected by magic) is a pointless waste of time because your extra characters won’t be strong enough to face the boss you need them to face. I don’t know if this was an issue in the original, but it’s definitely a disappointing issue here.

While some of the journal entries change depending on your answer choices, I found it disappointing that the journal entries don’t change (or at least don’t always) change depending on what type of character you chose to play as. The specific example I have in mind is that I chose to play as a Selkie, and through the course of the journey I of course traveled to Leuda, which is home of the Selkies. If you choose to play as a Selkie, you can participate in a minigame there and no one will steal from you. Additionally, since you see in various dungeons that Selkies have had a very rough time of it and for the longest time couldn’t put a home base anywhere, I had it in my head that my Selkie character would feel like she returned home, in a sense, even though she personally didn’t grow up in Leuda. I mean, this is the land of her people, this is where Selkie history is richest, this is the reward they got for all the suffering they experienced. (And sort of still do, since the other races tend to be prejudiced against them, and one Selkie in Leuda even says that he thinks everyone else wants Selkies to just disappear.) But despite all of this, the journal entry for Leuda states that the main character had their wallet stolen and never wants to go back. That sort of entry makes sense if you’re playing as one of the other three races, but it doesn’t fit Selkies at all and was pretty disappointing. That’s just one example, but I’m sure there were others, and it would have been nice if a bit more thought was put into play here.

All in all, I still think that Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is a game worth playing. I really like the worldbuilding, as well as the characters, and I did have fun with it. With that said, though, I think that Square-Enix should have given this game a proper remake instead of a remaster, and should have made it a Switch exclusive (just as the original was a Gamecube exclusive) so that they could optimize it for the hardware, instead of being greedy and putting out one that didn’t play very well just so they could make cross-platform money. But despite those issues, if you want a unique action-RPG, I don’t think that FFCC’s remaster would be a bad choice to try out.

#2020 game reviews #final fantasy: crystal chronicles

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sometimesrosy · 5 years ago

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(1) Thank you for the gif(t)s of Misters Elba & Morley. I could always use a little more of them in my life ;) Sorry for the last rant but I’m perplexed by those regarding Bellarke as a six season platonic friendship possibly to turn romantic in the last stretch or not at all. And “turn” is generous since some prefer to use “forced” instead. I suppose it can technically be true but only in the strictest, most surface-level sense. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of Bellarke as NOT part

(2) of a romantic narrative. I look back and see Bellarke as a three-sided dynamic- partnership, friendship, and romance, with each side of the triangle pushing and influencing the others and each season deepening the dynamic. Even season 1 had elements of all three. I’d say progression is the most accurate term to describe their story. Strangers of different hierarchical classes to political rivals to co-leaders to friends to lovers separated by trauma, politics, death, time, other partners to

(3) future couple. Not a single step exists in a vacuum. Their relationship and individual character development are pieces fit to form a complete puzzle over time. Or as I’ve come to see, a seamless 100-episode tale with interconnected threads from start to finish. The only right way to decipher meaning is to look beyond a collection of scenes to the full picture of what we have so far. All stories are chronicles of progression from one point to the next and romance plots are no exception. JR

(4) didn’t invent some newfangled revolutionary storytelling protocol. His story just requires us to look beneath the surface and connect the dots across a seven season sequence. By 6x10, there are no layers needed to be looked under. The romance is smack dab in the middle of the room for all to witness, figuratively and literally. Even the nonshippers can see it, it’s not exclusive to the trained eye of the romance lover. I thought I signed up for a great story years ago. But I never would’ve

(5) known HOW great it was without the thought-provoking, deep-dive analyses by you, jeanie205 and the 3rd in the triumvirate of fandom heroes, travllingbunny, the kind of insights that bring an accompanying joy to the show itself and leave one stupefied in awe. Thank you all, truly. I don’t have sure plans to watch the prequel yet but if the 3 of you will, it may just tip the scales for me into the affirmative. It’d be fun to geek out with you guys on a new-ish adventure from the start.

+++

I got chills when you said,

Not a single step exists in a vacuum. Their relationship and individual character development are pieces fit to form a complete puzzle over time. Or as I’ve come to see, a seamless 100-episode tale with interconnected threads from start to finish.

That was the most unexpected thing about this show. That it wasn’t just another fun show with hot people in the apocalypse with shocking twists dealing with complex questions-- which would be good enough, you know? Lots of fun. No, it was more. I did NOT figure out that it was a novelistic show until we got to season 3 and even then I didn’t understand how LONG TERM a novel was being told here. Not a novel, more like a series. A novel would be season long, but the narratives here have lasted for 7 seasons.

It is seamless. Subplots weaving in and out of the 7 seasons. Character arcs taking the whole series to complete. That actually really confused me in season 3, because I expected both Clarke and Bellamy to finish their hero’s journeys in that season, and instead, there I was, feeling like it was unfinished because they HADN’T returned from their journeys wiser and stronger, ready to change their worlds. Nope. They were still struggling and learning.

Just because I SAW the hero’s journeys in season 3 (a little late, mind you, since they started in s1 in the ‘hot people in the apocalypse’ phase,) doesn’t mean THAT was the entirety of the hero’s journey. It actually stands to reason that if they’re on a hero’s journey, that it’s a whole series long journey. Oooh. But then this hiatus, someone was like... are you sure Clarke isn’t on a HEROINE’S journey? And I, not really being an expert on the heroine’s journey and only seeing the hero’s part of it (which is like the first half of the heroine’s journey?) had to go research it and LO AND BEHOLD, her journey was the HEROINE’S journey, which TOTALLY fits with the dual protagonist, yin/yang, dark/light, head/heart, binary stars, feminist, mythic, epic love story of it all. NOW it all makes sense, why I couldn’t understand that her hero’s journey hadn’t finished yet (because it shifted into the more unexpected heroine’s journey.)

It always frustrates me when people say I can’t admit I’m wrong and am delusional about bellarke, because I have continually adjusted my theories as the story has gone on, changing them when something is off and doesn’t match canon and THAT’S why my theories are still holding up, which they are. Because I keep checking them back against canon. And when canon confirms the theories I have, I keep using them. When canon josses my theories and headcanons, I adjust. I ask myself, okay where did I go wrong? what is he really saying here? I’ve been struggling, particularly with Raven and Murphy’s roles in the show, and talked to various people about them, because I couldn’t grab ahold of them. With shipping, particularly, things can get confused. I’m wondering if Raven’s love story is not for another person at all, what if it’s self love? Because her most consistent relationships have actually been with familial relationships. Clarke as sister. Bellamy as big brother. Abby as mom. Sinclair as dad. While the romances have failed her. (whether they intended to start out this way or not idk, since all the actors who played her love interests asked to leave or were fired.) And I’m wondering if Murphy’s main love story is actually a spiritual love story. His romance with Emori is a good one, but here he is now wondering about immortality and morality, and he’s always been concerned with that just not secure enough to have answers. Maybe spirituality is his route to finding peace within his soul and coping with his mental illness and trauma? IDK. ANYWAY

I don’t think this show is flawless, and maybe they’ve had to franken-stitch some of their plotlines together to fit when things didn’t work out, and maybe some of their subplots ended in a way that didn’t satisfy us because we wanted something BETTER for those characters even though the tragic ending was part of the larger narrative, but I agree that it is seamless, one leading to the other to the next. When I look back at the storylines I didn’t understand or didn’t like as much, I can see how they fit with the larger narrative. How they lead to the ending the whole show is heading towards.

It’s actually very exciting. It’s not a new way to tell stories, it’s an old one, but it’s not one we see on tv very often, with its ratings and early cancellations and dependence on seasonal !POW! endings to keep people watching, and it’s impatience with slow story telling. They COMMITTED to a long term story despite the risk, and that must have been really hard with the pressures from hollywood and the money people and fandom and reviewers and even the cast. it’s remarkable and I can’t wait to see how it’s wrapped up. No matter what the endings are for our fave characters, I think it will be fascinating to see. And being able to watch the whole show, knowing how it ends, and that it was all crafted to be that way, is going to be really cool. It’s impressive, actually. I think the future will actually be much kinder to this show than the present is. Watching it week to week, you can’t see the development so much, but when we get the whole thing, everyone will be able to see it. I think this series is going to count as a future classic.

It’s like the reverse of GOT. We expected GOT to be novelistic, based on the epic ASOIAF novels as it was, we expected it to have a grand structure that pulled everything together and gave it a bigger meaning, and in the end, it was trash shlock with no meaning past boobies, action, trauma porn, and dragons. HOWEVER, The 100 was thought to be some trash teen scifi soap with no meaning but hooking up, action, trauma porn and apocalypses, and it’s ending up being an epic novelistic series with a grand structure that pulls everything together and gives it meaning. Basically, if JR had been hired by HBO to do GOT, he would have done it right. But D&D were hollywood hacks and flim flam men who only know how to do surface and don’t understand story. (and are also racist and misogynistic bullies.)

ANYWAY, nonny. Do you have a blog? You should be writing this stuff down under your own name. If you send it to me on anon because you don’t have your own blog, you should think about it. I’m pretty sure that @jeanie205 and @travllingbunny would agree with me. I have limited what meta I reblog due to past experiences, but I think other people would like to follow you.

#the 100 #epic story #novelistic #narrative arc #series finale

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ahgaseda · 6 years ago

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the hot tea || chapter 03

⇥ synopsis : your best friend, Jackson, never fails to argue against your apathy toward love and romance, but his plan to confess his true feelings toward you is rudely interrupted when you start a blog chronicling your past relationships...

⇥ warnings : this story in its entirety includes but is not limited to strong language and dialogue, recurring alcohol or drug use, and explicit sexual content, and is intended for an adult audience only!

It was a cold and dark winter’s night when I decided that love doesn’t exist. Not just the concept of love either. I was convinced that sustainable, healthy relationships were a myth conjured by Disney movies and condom commercials.

I hadn’t come to this decision lightly. In fact, I tried to argue against my own rationale, but when I sat down in the middle of the night and evaluated my choices where romance was concerned, I realized I was the problem. I was incapable of building a life with someone.

Naturally, since sleep was a long gone option, I did some research and I came across an interesting theory. In 1985, psychologist Robert J. Sternberg hypothesized that there are, in fact, seven types of love which he categorized into the Triangular Theory of Love. According to him, there are three key aspects in a relationship and depending on which ones you do or don’t have, defines the type of love experienced in said relationship.

Okay, that was a mouthful. Don’t worry, I will break it down. I’m only mentioning this theory, because it will influence the narrative later on.

It seems I have been lucky - or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it - enough to have experienced all seven types of love over the course of the ten years of frolicking I did before finally swearing off dating. I’ve loved and lost. I’ve almost walked down an aisle. I’ve been taught many lessons by pain and pleasure.

To be honest, I don’t know what I hope to achieve with this saga of my attempts to find a happily ever after. I’m assuming this will be a cathartic process for me. Maybe I can move on and accept my fate as a lonely girl with a string of lovers in her wake. Or perhaps I can convince myself that I’m wrong and happiness is still waiting out there...

You were tempted to smash your face on the keyboard and delete everything. Who in the hell thought this was a good idea? “This intro blows,” you groaned loudly.

“Hey,” Jackson called, sitting across from you at the small table and pushing a cup of tea your way.

“Hey back,” you replied with a smile, taking the drink eagerly. “Thank you.”

He tilted his head. “Ready to post?”

“I think so,” you told him, chuckling with nerves and hiding your obvious hatred for your opening monologue. “Once I do, it’s out on the internet forever.”

“You’re not using any real names, though,” Jackson reminded with a noncommittal shrug. “Nothing to worry about it.”

You sighed, “I know.”

Jackson pretended to peer over your screen, but you didn’t flinch. With a raised eyebrow, he teased, “I’m included in this fuckery, right?”

You droned, “Considering we’ve been having sex for the past year, yes.”

Jackson snorted.

Lifting your eyes from the laptop, you asked quietly, “Did you tell him we’re sleeping together?”

Jackson gave you a look that the mere thought terrified him to the core. Of the few occasions he had been in physical fights with his best friend, he had lost every single one of them. Jackson chalked that up to him being a lover and not a fighter, generally to soothe his battered dignity.

With a nervous smile, he explained, “I told him that I’m sleeping with someone, but I didn’t drop any names.”

You already assumed that, because you had never received an angry phone call from your ex suggesting otherwise. “Good, because that’s a conversation I never wanna have.”

“You and me both.”

The two of you drank your tea in unison, an air of silence falling over the room. After a pregnant pause, you studied Jackson and asked, “Are you going to read it?”

“I want to,” he answered without hesitation. “But that’s up to you.”

Letting your head rest on your hand, you pressed, “May I ask why?”

Jackson said nothing and you knew he was deciding what to say. He was the type to answer right off the cuff; honest to a fault. When he couldn’t come up with a decent lie, Jackson finally said, “Maybe I like a little insight.”

“You wanna know why I am the way I am,” you replied, not surprised.

He sipped his tea. “More or less.”

“And you think reading a rundown on my exes will explain everything?”

“It’s supposed to be cathartic for you, right?” Jackson barked, trying to shift the focus off of himself. “For others, it will be entertainment. I hope you know that.”

His harshness was out of character and unwarranted, but you took it in stride as best you could, knowing the last thing he intended to do was hurt your feelings. With a nod, you murmured, “I do.”

Jackson shook his head, noticing your voice had softened, and scrambled for words, “I only meant to say...”

“Hello, my beautiful ride or die bitch,” Krystal greeted as she marched inside the shop. When her eyes fell on Jackson, she frowned and grumbled, “You’re still here?”

“I own the building,” Jackson reminded flatly.

After hugging your best friend, you chided, “Krystal, he’s literally the nicest person I know and you manage to get a rise out of him.”

Krystal cut her eyes at Jackson and hissed like a viper, “He irritates me.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Jackson returned, his tone a borderline growl.

You chortled. At this point, you were accustomed to their general disdain for each other.

Krystal landed her attention on your laptop and chirped excitedly, “Ooh, are you posting yet? Can I read it?”

“It’s just an intro,” you told her, again stifling the urge to reveal how much you loathed it. “I won’t get to the meaty bits until later.”

“Speaking of meat, I think you should get some, Krystal,” Jackson spoke up, feigning concern. “There’s that new dildo shop around the corner.”

With a scowl, Krystal retorted, “Is that where you bought the one currently shoved up your ass?”

“Disappointed but not surprised,” you hummed, throwing up your hands. “Can you two ever get along?”

“No,” said Jackson and Krystal simultaneously.

Waving her forward, you crooned, “Krys, as the one who gave me the idea, you should come read the first post.”

Narrowing her eyes at Jackson, she sashayed to your side. “I will do that.”

Jackson pointed and muttered under his breath, “Yeah, you’re the one encouraging this.”

“Since I’ve been with her through all of said relationships, I know first-hand how novel-worthy they are. Now, shoo.”

Jackson took your empty cup, you thanked him, and he disappeared into the back momentarily. A hand sharply swatted your arm.

You shrieked, “Ow, what was that for?”

Krystal was scathing in reproach, “You’re supposed to defend me. I’m your best friend. I don’t care how big his dick is.”

“Girl, last night…,” you started, holding up your hands to demonstrate the size you were dealing with.

Krystal made a swift array of screeching sounds, yelling, “I don’t want to hear it!”

“You know there’s gonna be a lot of sex on this blog, right?”

“I’m prepared for that and very much looking forward to it, obviously. It’s just…,” she trailed, glancing up as she frowned. “Jackson is too nice.”

You gawked at such a pitiful excuse. “What’s wrong with that?”

She folded her arms and leaned back in the chair, musing, “I don’t trust someone who doesn’t have a dark side.”

You mirrored her posture and countered, “Maybe his Mama raised him right.”

“He’s still a man,” she deadpanned.

Jackson returned from the kitchen and announced, “I’m back. You can stop talking about me now.”

Krystal rolled her eyes.

Retaking his seat, Jackson rounded on your friend and said, “I do have a dark side, you know.”

“Is that so?” she asked without missing a beat.

“Yeah, one time when I felt particularly snarky, I microwaved a pop tart inside of its package.”

You snickered, amazed that such a kind-hearted and mischievous boy could turn into such a ruthless animal in the bedroom.

Krystal asked, “And how did that work out for you?”

Shamelessly, Jackson replied, “It exploded.”

“That’s why it says ‘don’t microwave inside the foil,’ dumbass,” your best friend howled.

Jackson leaned against your side and nudged you with his arm, declaring, “No one tells me what to do.”

Giggling slightly, you reached over and tickled his waist.

After a grimace at the affection, Krystal promptly finished reading your entry and said, “Short and sweet, I like it.”

You smarted, “This may come as a shock, but I hate it.”

Krystal seemed genuinely surprised at your admission. “Why? It’s perfect. A little humor, some psychology, and a hint of what’s to come.”

“It’s awkward,” you began.

Jackson chimed in playfully, “You’re awkward.”

“That’s not what you said last night,” you quipped under your breath.

“Ew, stop,” Krystal exclaimed, holding up her hand. “What if you try a different format? Like… diary or journal entries?”

“Sure, I can see it now.” Jackson continued dramatically, as if narrating a book, “Dear diary, I sucked my first dick today.”

There was no fluctuation or amusement in her voice when Krystal said, “Very funny.”

“Dear Diary, I will now be embarking on a journey of self-discovery and bullshit,” you spoke, whimsical but wholly sarcastic. “On this blog I will attempt to regale my audience of two with the emotional - and sexual - highs and lows of my past relationships.”

“And at some point along the way learn to love myself a little more,” Krystal prosed, smiling as she pushed the computer toward you.

Jackson rubbed your shoulder encouragingly, offering his signature smirk.

Sinking your teeth into your bottom lip, you clicked the button to publish your first post and quickly closed the laptop. “Alright, no turning back now,” you said, content to be distracted by the company and support of your best friends for the rest of the evening.

Tomorrow you would write about your first love.

chapter 02 ⇤ chapter 03 ⇥ chapter 04

- Katya

{ do not copy or re-post without my permission }

#got7 fanfiction #got7 smut #jackson wang smut #got7 imagines #jackson wang imagines #got7 scenarios #jackson wang scenarios #got7 fanfic #jackson smut #jackson imagines #jackson scenarios #jackson fanfic

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erraticfairy · 5 years ago

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Podcast: Meet the Schizophrenic Stunt Girl and YouTuber

Rachel Star Withers is a speaker, YouTuber, and lives with schizophrenia. She is also a professional stunt woman and tends to describe herself as a “schizo stunt girl.”

In this episode, Rachel tells us a little of her history with the disease and details how she first started in mental illness activism. Originally meant to just help other people with schizophrenia know that they were not alone, her YouTube channel, RachelStarLive, has become the longest existing chronicle of a personal experience with schizophrenia. Listen Now!

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

Guest information for ‘Schizophrenic Stunt Girl’ Podcast Episode

Rachel Star Withers has appeared on TV shows including MTV’s “Ridiculousness,” “TruTV,” “America’s Got Talent,” and is the host of “Insanity with Rachel Star” on Amazon Prime. She grew up seeing monsters, hearing people in the walls, and intense urges to hurt herself.

Rachel creates videos that document her schizophrenia, share ways to manage mental illness, and let others like her know they are not alone and can still live an amazing life. She has written the book, Lil Broken Star: Understanding Schizophrenia for Kids, and developed a tool for schizophrenics, To See in the Dark: Hallucination and Delusion Journal.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Schizophrenic Stunt Girl’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: Welcome to the Psych Central Podcast, where each episode features guest experts discussing psychology and mental health in everyday plain language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Show Podcast. I am here with Rachel Star Withers. She describes herself as a “schizo stunt girl” and I’m going to let her explain what that means. Rachel, welcome to the show.

Rachel Star Withers: Hey what’s up, Gabe? Welcome back. I’ve actually been here before. If you recall a few years ago?

Gabe Howard: That is true. Do you remember being here before?

Rachel Star Withers: It was such an intense time I think I might have blocked it out. Just all the excitement, it might have been overwhelming to me.

Gabe Howard: I completely understand that. So, let’s explain what schizo stunt girl means.

Rachel Star Withers: Well, I am a schizophrenic, so that is the first part of it. And the stunt girl is, I like to do crazy stunts. When I was younger, Lord, I am so old, when I was younger my like early 20s, there used to be an internet show called Homestar Runner and Wild Boys, which was a spin off Jackass, which was on TV and they did stupid stunts and then there was this like new thing like Internet entertainment was really new and I was like, what if somebody did stupid stunts, but on an internet show? Bam! And I became stunt girl and have pretty much since then been doing crazy stuff. I topless skydive, bikini paintball, wrestle alligators. It was very humane for those who just like had a heart attack about animal stuff, like it is actually at a rescue center. It wasn’t just a circus thing. I get a lot of feedback about that, but yeah, just like pretty much crazy things that. I’m really big into fire; setting myself on fire, blowing fireballs. Pretty much anything I could find to do with fire.

Gabe Howard: So you sort of helped pioneer the fail movement. I think a lot of people are familiar with these stunts on the Internet like Fail Blog

Rachel Star Withers: Yes.

Gabe Howard: Except the Fail Blog is they did it accidentally and you’re more

Rachel Star Withers: Did they?

Gabe Howard: On purpose.

Rachel Star Withers: Did they?

Gabe Howard: Did they. But you know you say that you like doing crazy things and you put it on the internet, but that’s not the whole story because you’ve also been in Marvel movies. You’re an actual Hollywood stuntwoman.

Rachel Star Withers: I try to be. I have all the training and those jobs are just so hard to get. And you would think they would be impressed by alligator wrestling on your resumé. They are not. I mean I’m impressed by it.

Gabe Howard: You were in Black Panther. You were literally in Black Panther.

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, I got exploded.

Gabe Howard: You got exploded?

Rachel Star Withers: Yes.

Gabe Howard: In Black Panther, and you can see your face.

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, it is unfortunate.

Gabe Howard: Like, if you actually go to the movie, you’re on screen for like three seconds.

Rachel Star Withers: It is a very long few seconds of my life as I’m making a weird stank face. I don’t know guys. I don’t know if you watch it. It’s very easy to pick me out. I’m the one making this horrible stank face for a disturbingly long amount of time staring at the main characters. And then there’s an explosion.

Gabe Howard: I think this is an absolutely fascinating psychological trick that we do because before you were in Black Panther, you were probably like oh man I would do anything to be in Black Panther and now that you were in the movie you were like oh I stank face. Not good at all.

Rachel Star Withers: I mean, I’m so excited I got it. But you should see. When like that came out, I mean everyone saw that movie everybody and I’m getting these texts from people I haven’t talked to in like six years be like Oh my God Rachel. There’s someone in Black Panther who looks just like you. And I’m like hurtful because I think I look terrible. And so you haven’t seen me in all these years but you recognize me in this I’m like so hurtful that is how I apparently looked in five years ago and still look. It’s rough on the self-esteem.

Gabe Howard: Well, I’m just going to focus on you being in a Marvel movie. But the question that I have is you do live with schizophrenia and you live publicly. You know this. This isn’t a secret you have a very popular YouTube channel. YouTube.com/RachelStarLive where not only do you put the stunt work but you also make videos about your journey and living with schizophrenia. So this is not a secret. Everybody knows it. Rachel Star lives with schizophrenia and also everybody knows that Rachel Star likes to set herself on fire and wrestle alligators.

Rachel Star Withers: I would hope so.

Gabe Howard: Do you have a problem getting jobs because of this? Are people worried about hiring somebody with schizophrenia to do a job that really is dangerous.? I know that there’s safety. You know there are safety precautions and things in place but I don’t think anybody would deny that being a stunt person is a dangerous job to do. People who hire, do they have a problem with that, or are they worried about the schizophrenia dangerous connection?

Rachel Star Withers: I am very careful to keep like certain parts more professional than others so when I am at a situation where I have to apply I have to send in a resumé. Yes. If they google me it’ll be like probably the first thing that comes up and I understand that. But it’s definitely not like on the top of my resume. When I am you know submitting to get exploded and to be set on fire by other people because they don’t want, you know for insurance purposes, someone who really doesn’t know what they’re doing. However when it comes to my own stuff, whenever somebody comes to me and says Rachel we want you to create content for us I’m very upfront about it and you’re asking for me. You’re going to get me. I’m not going to sugarcoat anything.

Gabe Howard: If you can sort of go further on this because you’re very aware of the stigma of living with schizophrenia because like you said when you apply for a job while you’re not hiding it you’re not volunteering it. And we have other examples of this in society. You know I’m sure that women don’t volunteer if they have children or if they’re pregnant or if they want to get pregnant so that it’s not unheard of to not volunteer information that you think might keep you from getting a job. But this is kind of a personal one, right? I mean you’re very open about living with schizophrenia. So I mean could you just talk about that a little bit because it just it seems very meaningful that you’d have to do this too. Do you wrestle with it and is it harder to wrestle with that than alligators?

Rachel Star Withers: You know the alligators are kind of scary. I’m a, I was kind of I was, I was shaking and that’s how you know I’m scared is if you see me shaking and you really don’t want to shake trying to wrestle alligators. Your hands are very important like they were like whoa step back. We’re kind of afraid you’re going to lose your hands if you don’t get under control and I’m like No I’m good. But as far as wrestling stigma, when I first found out I had schizophrenia I thought pretty much like most people think oh my gosh I don’t know what this is. I don’t want anybody to know. I was a shamed. I didn’t know how to tell my family; I didn’t even want my little brother to know. I just was trying to keep everything on a need to know basis with a few people and I felt so alone. Rewind back to like 14 years ago. There was not as much stuff on the Internet as there is today. You know you didn’t have all these You Tubers, you didn’t have just normal people talking about it. If you looked up schizophrenia, you had references to old movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, that kind of thing. And like these cold medical articles. You didn’t have anything real and reassuring and it kind of got to the point that I was like I don’t want other people to feel like I do because there have to be other people that are finding out they have schizophrenia going on the Internet and being like, “Oh wow. I’m alone.” But here I am alone over here also. So let me make a video. So I started with normal living with schizophrenia and I was like I don’t know if anybody is going to see this thing. And looking back now on it I cringe so so much. I cannot stand myself in it. I’m like, “Oh my God, you’re so dramatic Rachel. Like you don’t even know how bad it’s about to get. That was nothing back then. Come on.”

Gabe Howard: And you started this how many years ago?

Rachel Star Withers: 14 years ago.

Gabe Howard: 14 years ago. And I believe at one point you got an email from a university that said that you had maybe created, do you know what I’m talking about?

Rachel Star Withers: Yes. Mm hmm. So that started with that first video and I just kind of started making more. Documenting me and my schizophrenia and I talked about hallucinations and delusions and I just kind of kept this going and I actually started getting these messages from college students and they were saying, “Hey we’re studying you in class. And for extra credit, I thought I’d reach out to you and interview you myself.” And I’m like What? Like I had no idea. And that’s really freaky especially if you’re schizophrenic to be told hey there’s people studying you that you don’t know about. There’s a class and you’re like What? So it was a little unnerving at first. Also kind of cool and I reached out to the professor. It’s like Hey so I heard. And then I get like messages from Cambridge and Harvard and like all these other schools that pretty much for doing the exact same thing. And what I had done, not even realizing it, is I’d created one of the longest video documentations of a schizophrenic. Like they had tons of documentations, but not to this in depth. And I had just done that documenting my own life, not realizing like oh this hasn’t really been done before because no one had access to cameras like we do now in this age. So here I have yeah. You can like watch me. I don’t want to say grow as a little schizophrenic but you definitely. Yeah. You see like me go through multiple, you know, things and where now I’m like so confident and in the beginning you know I’m like you know on the edge tears over the littlest thing. You know the littlest horrible hallucination when I’m like Oh yeah yeah yeah I mean I’m used to that. I see you know demons all the time now. They’re chillin.

Gabe Howard: But that’s kind of an interesting thing that you brought up. You know 14 years ago you probably didn’t understand it very well and the viewer who’s watching this kind of grows with you. So my question is what was the difference between the hallucinations that you experienced 14 years ago and any symptoms or hallucinations that you may experience today? I mean what can you kind of walk us through? You know so we don’t have to watch 14 years worth of videos. Can you give us the Reader’s Digest slash BuzzFeed version of that?

Rachel Star Withers: I think the 14 years of videos is incredible for anyone to watch. Just kidding I wouldn’t.

Gabe Howard: I mean we’re busy.

Rachel Star Withers: Just get the top viewed ones.

Gabe Howard: We’re busy, Rachel.

Rachel Star Withers: Well, get the top rated, not the top viewed. Okay. Let’s just get the quick version. When I look back I definitely I mean it’s not that my hallucinations have ever lessened. I would say I am way worse. Not way worse as in sick, way worse is I have a lot more symptoms of schizophrenia now than I did even five years ago. It’s one thing that you always hear people kind of say and I know they mean well but oh you’re going to get better, things get better. And the truth is for me, if you look back over my videos they have not. Things have gotten so much worse but I’ve gotten stronger and the stuff that like used to bother me a couple of years ago are nothing today. You know I had all of this bad stuff happening. Yeah I was terrified out of my mind of these monsters. I couldn’t sleep at night with the lights off and now I mean I see them all the time and they don’t bother me because I’m used to them. So it’s one thing I always try and push that if you’re out there I cannot promise you that things will get better. And honestly I don’t think they will. But what happens is you get stronger and that’s the most incredible thing ever and I think it’s way better than your stuff going away to be able to look and be like Oh that’s nothing. And when you get to that point that’s when you can actually start to help others.

Gabe Howard: To clarify a little bit you’re not saying that your life doesn’t get better. You’re saying that your symptoms stayed relatively the same but you got better at managing them and handling them.

Rachel Star Withers: Mm hmm. Yes

Gabe Howard: And working around them so that you could lead the best life possible. So while the symptoms may not have improved and again everybody’s results may vary.

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, everybody’s different. I mean it’s not like I’ve been on just a constant line of the same you know they’ve spiked. I’ve gotten at points where I thought Hey I’m cured I don’t have any schizophrenia. And then I’ll go off my meds and that is wrong. That is we learn very quickly. No Rachel you were just kind of we’re very happy and very good on meds for a little bit there. Don’t do that kids.

Gabe Howard: Not a good idea but we’ll be right back after these words from our sponsor.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: We’re back talking with Rachel Star Withers. It’s fascinating to listen to you discuss schizophrenia because I think a lot of people they really have this very narrow stereotype of schizophrenia. And one of the largest stereotypes in schizophrenia is the rocking back and forth, the drooling, the shaking legs.

Rachel Star Withers: I say as my knee is like shaking out of control as we’re sitting here, yeah.

Gabe Howard: But I’ve come to understand that some of those stereotypical symptoms that we all think of that have to do with schizophrenia are actually part of the treatment of schizophrenia. And you did a really cool video on that and kind of explain it. Can can you explain that for us now?

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, especially when it comes to the shaking. So one of the side effects of many mental health medications is tardive dyskinesia which is basically a drug induced form of Parkinson’s. And now they have medicines you can actually take to control the tardive dyskinesia that’s been caused by the other medication. And it’s just like Oh great. Now just because you take medication does not mean that you’ll start shaking. So please do not think that. It’s just a random side effect that yes some people will get from different mental health medications.

Gabe Howard: And the newer medications don’t have this particular side effect.

Rachel Star Withers: Yes. This is for the older medications.

Gabe Howard: They’ve learned a lot. They’ve made it safer.

Rachel Star Withers: But we know what it is you just kinda shake and sometimes it’s pretty bad. And other times I’m like not shaking at all but I’ll get to a point where I’m like out with friends and because I’m like at a restaurant I’m using their silverware. I have a hard time holding the silverware. Whereas I’m at home I have like forks and stuff with big handles and you’re like, “Rachel, just bring those forks to restaurants.” That is the goal. But I never remember. Everyone’s just like oh it’s such an easy cure. Like yeah no I know but you try and remember these forks. It’s actually harder than you think and then you’re like pulling knives out your bag and be like OK.

Gabe Howard: I love your sense of humor about this because often when we talk about schizophrenia we talk about it in the scariest of terms ,the most medical of terms and I think we do realize that you know having serious and persistent mental illness or just being sick in general is not a happy time. How do you put those two things together? Because I have to imagine that you don’t want to have schizophrenia but you also don’t want to have a bad life. You want to be happy and jovial and you also want to inspire hope in others but that’s kind of a tall order. Hey be happy about living with schizophrenia seems like a ridiculous thing to say but essentially that is what your advocacy is doing. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, and I get messages from people that are very angry and a lot of them it’s just they’re very hurt because they’ve lost someone in their life who had schizophrenia due to suicide or kind of situations around and they’re like how do can you make these videos you make light of this? This isn’t a joking matter. And I on one side I agree with them you know and I understand that pain. I have and I constantly deal with these urges to hurt and kill myself my whole life. They’ve gotten a little less but it’s always like something sitting there in the back of my mind. However, I can’t change this. I can do my best to manage it. I can take medication. I go to therapy but at the end of the day there is no cure for schizophrenia. I’ve had it since I was like a little baby. I assume so at least since I was like talking, I was talking to nothingness. So we know from that point on but I assume a little baby Rachel was trippin when it popped out. But I can’t change this. So my options then in life are to pretty much give up and just be sad and depressed like well I have this horrible mental illness. Man I just really got to go sit in the corner and give up on life because yes sucks to be me or I can look at it and think OK this is what it is. Let’s go. Let’s go do what I want to do and yeah I’m going to have to make adjustments but that’s OK and for me I like the second of those two options. Honestly throughout my life yes I have chose the first one sometimes where I’m just overwhelmed and I’m just like I just want to give up. I’ve had suicide attempts and things like that like. It has absolutely happened that I did not see any light and it was all darkness. And I’m lucky that I have a very strong support system and different things that have helped me through those times. So it’s also not just one or the other. But my media, I try to keep upbeat. And if you google schizophrenia right now you’re going to get a lot of not upbeat stuff. You know if you do schizophrenia facts you’re going to hear about the homeless rate, the suicide rates, like all these really depressing mortality rates of schizophrenics. And I was like I don’t want other people to just find that. So I did this one video. Fun Facts About Schizophrenia and which I just thought were fascinating about how the brain works and how people mental disorders brains work differently than the norm and I was like these kind of cool but rather useless super powers that we have. I was like yes I knew I was an X-Man but the ones when they leave back at the command center because they cannot help in any way. You know? You’re stuck there with Jubilee and you’re like Oh my God you’re the baby sitter of all the useless X-Men. But I was like yes, I totally have superpowers. This is so cool.

Gabe Howard: I completely understand what you’re saying and you’re right. There’s is no shortage of hopeless scary information and that information has a lot of value.

Rachel Star Withers: Oh absolutely.

Gabe Howard: You’re not you’re not trying to erase that from the Internet.

Rachel Star Withers: No.

Gabe Howard: You’re just trying to balance out the conversation.

Rachel Star Withers: I want people to not just feel okay I got this diagnosis of schizophrenia and all hope is lost. I just I don’t want that I want you to be able to be like oh OK here’s one person that knows they’re not perfect. I definitely document me being very depressed and things like that, but you have all these videos of her and she’s able to keep going and that’s not like a gold star in my head because I even have to look at other people’s videos. I have to look at other people’s writings and stuff when I get down and I think as a collective community though, that helps all of us keep going.

Gabe Howard: I really really like that. That’s really really awesome. You have recently launched a podcast here on Psych Central, It’s bonus content for Psych Central Podcast fans. It’s called Inside Schizophrenia. You might hear a familiar voice on there because I help. But tell us about that. What is Inside Schizophrenia?

Rachel Star Withers: Inside schizophrenia. So it’s a podcast similar to this one except way cooler because it’s all me. I’m just kidding. No it’s really interesting. And it was an exciting project for me to get to do because we have about 45 minutes to really delve into some kinda hot button subjects on schizophrenia. Some that I haven’t been able to hit on because my videos are much shorter and upbeat but to be able to actually have a discussion you know between me and Gabe, and to bring in experts about you know looking at some of the darker sides but the realities. So for instance, violence in schizophrenia. Dealing with hallucinations. The caregivers that are involved sometimes when you have you can’t take care of yourself. So kind of like those areas that are not fun to talk about being able to kind of look in and say OK what is the reality here? What goes on behind the scenes, you know? Whereas if someone has, I have a brother, I have a son, I have a sister, I have a close friend that I’m finding I have schizophrenia. What can I really do to help? What can I like really dig in there and you know do and learn about this disorder and for people? I’ve been learning so much. Me just doing the podcast, it blows my mind. And to learn things about like my mental disorder I didn’t know really helps me manage cause I’m just like oh wow that’s really cool. More useless but cool superpowers.

Gabe Howard: The first episode is out now and it’s called What Is Schizophrenia? And it certainly contains you know facts about schizophrenia. The definition of schizophrenia. Your lived experience, Rachel, with schizophrenia, some personal stories and then of course it also has Dr. Ali Mattu from The Psych Show, a popular YouTube channel and he is a researcher from Columbia University and he gives us all of the medical facts so at the end of the show like you said it’s a pretty good deep dive into all facets of what is schizophrenia not just like you know a paragraph on Google where it’s like oh you know everything.

Rachel Star Withers: Yeah. And it’s not just me talking it’s kind of going into exploring different things that lots of people with schizophrenia have.

Gabe Howard: You know sometimes people hear about podcasts that are deep dives and I think oh you know it’s an educational show so it’s really really heavy on facts and I’m going to be bored. But then some people hear Oh it’s an entertaining show so they think oh it’s fake news. It has no relevance. It’s just somebody rambling on about their personal experience. How does this show sort of bridge those two gaps?

Rachel Star Withers: Well I don’t do well being serious for more than about a minute at a time. And then I have to like break it up and then I can go back to serious. So I like to think it’s I’m teaching you things but it’s fun. So it kind of like an after school special like that’s just wow you can consider this like hey I want to learn something. But I don’t just want to listen to some person talk for the next hour and you want to get involved and have a good time. That’s where I am and then bam look at that she learned all this stuff you didn’t know.

Gabe Howard: That’s very very cool. When I was in school I had a science teacher that said pay attention and you might accidentally learn something. I think that if you listen to the show you will absolutely learn something and whether it’s an accident or not is really up to the listener. Thank you, Rachel, very much for being on the show and thanks to all of you for tuning in. Remember wherever you downloaded this podcast whether it be iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or otherwise, give us as many stars as humanly possible. Use your words and write us a review. Share us on social media. Email us to your friends. We’re trying to get a giant advertising budget but until we are in a Marvel movie, we’re just stuck where we are.

And also remember you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counselling anytime anywhere just by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We’ll see everybody next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Psych Central Podcast. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at GabeHoward.com. PsychCentral.com is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, PsychCentral.com offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com. If you have feedback about the show, please email [email protected]. Thank you for listening and please share widely.

About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar and anxiety disorders. He is also one of the co-hosts of the popular show, A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. As a speaker, he travels nationally and is available to make your event stand out. To work with Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

from World of Psychology http://bit.ly/2K4kvuL via theshiningmind.com

#World of Psychology #child psychology

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juliayepes · 7 years ago

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The Unexplainable Energy of David Lowery

DAVID LOWERY IN NEW YORK, JUNE 2017. PORTRAIT: TESS MAYER. Filmmaker David Lowery has an intriguing conception of what a ghost is: In his words, it’s “a spirit that refuses to move on.” His understanding of the term—more figurative than it is literal—may be a key part of why his odd new movie, A Ghost Story, works so well. Considering that he himself was the inspiration for the namesake phantom in the film, it’s funny, too. Lowery’s breakthrough film, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), paired Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as Bonnie and Clyde-style Texan outlaws. The 36-year-old’s new movie, which he also wrote and edited, reunites Affleck and Mara as a young couple whose shared life we glimpse only briefly. Affleck’s character dies in a car accident, and A Ghost Story chronicles his existence after he becomes a ghost. Mara gives a soulful and volatile performance as his widow and Affleck deftly manages the tricky task of embodying a haunted spirit. Unable to communicate with Mara’s character, Affleck’s ghost can only observe her grief and watch her slowly move on, spurring him to journey through memory and history and to meditate on time, meaning, and existence. We recently met with the dynamic filmmaker—who also adapted the Disney movie Pete’s Dragon (2016), and who recently wrapped production on a movie starring Robert Redford that was adapted from a New Yorker story—at an office in New York. A Ghost Story, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, is decidedly different in spirit and form from the more commercial Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Lowery, who made his name as a film editor before developing the script for Saints at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, sounds curious and a little wistful about the possibility of watching the two movies for the first time, back-to-back. Then he tells us about the genesis of his unconventional new film. DAVID LOWERY: In terms of the script, the movie spontaneously combusted in one sitting. It was a bunch of ideas that had been circling my subconscious or conscious mind for years in some cases, but I’d never done anything with them until I sat down to write this. One of those ideas was a haunted house movie starring a ghost with a sheet. I’d always loved that idea, and I wanted to use it. I’d seen it elsewhere and wanted to do my own spin on it. Then, on a personal level, the root of it came from a move I made from Texas to L.A., and the house I’d left behind, which I’d grown incredibly attached to, even though it was just a shabby old farmhouse that we were renting. It was the first house my wife and I lived in after we got married. I’d, for better or worse, laid down many roots there, emotional and otherwise—I actually planted a garden for the first time in my life—and I didn’t want to leave it when we had to leave. I was really upset and kind of heartbroken to move out of it, and I wasn’t sure why because, on a pragmatic level, it made no sense to stay there. I had suggested that we just kept paying rent there, so we had it as a place to go back to, and that made zero sense whatsoever. So that was a lingering thing throughout the latter half of 2015 as we laid down new roots in Los Angeles. That Christmas, I went home to visit my family for the holidays, and my wife and I got into a huge argument while we were there because I suggested we move back to Texas when our Disney movie [Pete’s Dragon] was done. She had a very vehement reaction to that. She was done with Texas. It was one of those arguments where, in the moment, I felt like I could see a potential end to our relationship, and the idea that our relationship could come to an end over something as trivial as where we were living, was very strange to me. Also, I recognized that I was the problem in that situation—because I was the one holding onto something and not wanting to let go. That tendency that I have—that unwillingness to let go, that obsession with sentimentality and nostalgia and attachment to physical things in my past were all to blame for that problem we were having. That was where a lot of this movie came from. JULIA YEPES: It’s interesting that you mention your attachment to physical things from your past and your sentimentality toward them, because you have letter-writing in both Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and this movie. Is there something that’s poignant to you about the act of letter-writing or even that of people simply trying to document their feelings? LOWERY: Completely. My wife and I, we knew each other back in 2001 but had fallen out of touch. One day I had a dream about her and wrote her a note on Facebook—I was living in L.A. at the time—and that turned into six months of just letter-writing. It started off with Facebook messages and turned into emails and eventually became actual hand-written letters. We got to know each other very well through that, and when we finally met up in person, we were basically already in a relationship, and six months later we were engaged. I attribute a great deal of it to the tactile and patient qualities that letter-writing demands, and the degree to which it’s a personal act. It’s almost one of the ultimate personal expressions because you’re doing it by hand. I take a great deal of value in things that are done by hand, or executed by hand. The act itself is something that fascinates me, almost more than what the contents might say, which is why you don’t see what’s on the note in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. There was the scene where she’s writing the letter, and it wasn’t until the final stages of post-production, I finally gave in and said, “Okay, let’s hear what she’s writing.” Up until that point, I was always going to just leave it a secret, not because I wanted to keep it a secret, but just because I felt it was unnecessary to show it. YEPES: Harvey Weinstein gave you notes for that movie. Was that something he suggested? LOWERY: No. We’d done some test screenings and people were like, “What does it say?” It was a long dolly shot pushing in on her writing. And people were like, “What does it say? We should know what it says.” And I was like, “You know what, you’re right. Let’s hear what it says.” So I wrote a letter and people loved hearing it, and it was a very emotional moment for the movie and probably was the right thing to do. YEPES: It’s a release for the audience. LOWERY: Yeah, exactly. It was probably a week before we showed it at Sundance that I added that in. Rooney went to a studio and we just recorded it over the phone and dropped it in, so it was literally last minute. YEPES: The argument that you had with your wife is interesting because the movie is pretty spare with the dialogue between Casey’s character and Rooney’s character, and it feels consequential when she says, “What is it you like about this place?” And he says, ��History.” And when she says, “We’re supposed to be making decisions together.” Both of those exchanges felt really real and I think the audience connects with those snippets of conversation immediately. LOWERY: Those were literally things my wife and I said to each other. Casey and Rooney, in those scenes, are playing us, and my wife was there when we were shooting them, and I remember her rolling her eyes. She thought it was really cool, but at the same time very strange, and knowing me, she felt it was probably just a little too on the nose and obvious for me to literally put our entire discussion into a movie. YEPES: It’s also funny when you see Casey Affleck who looks a little bit like you… LOWERY: Yeah. We have vaguely similar cheekbones. Every now and then, it’s just so obvious— YEPES: It’s comical, some of the images of the two of you standing side-by-side. LOWERY: Yeah. If only he shaved his head. YEPES: I want to hear about how you worked with ghost iconography and ghost mythology in this movie. I read on your blog how you really liked the title of this children’s book, Gus Was A Friendly Ghost (1962)—you liked that the title referred to the ghost in the past tense. LOWERY: I’ve always loved ghosts, ever since reading those books. That might have been my first introduction to ghosts as a child because my parents had those books on our bookshelf. It was one of my earliest memories, them reading them to us. And they were never a scary thing to me—until I got a little older and understood the potential for them to be scary—and I never dressed up as a ghost for Halloween because it was too simple and I always took Halloween way too seriously, but my brother did, so that image is something that is deeply rooted in my childhood. I liked the idea now of taking what is basically the universal symbol for a spirit who refuses to move on from this realm of existence and unpacking it. Because it is a common symbol—it’s Snapchat. Snapchat’s logo is a sheet ghost. YEPES: Oh yeah, that’s funny. LOWERY: And if you write the word ‘ghost’ on your iPhone, the emoji pops up of a little ghost with a sheet. It’s an image that is very commonplace, and one which we take for granted, and one which has a lot of potential to be charming and goofy and childlike, but which also packs a great deal of meaning into its very simple form. I wanted to tap into that a little bit. My fascination with tactile objects and handmade materials comes into play as well because I love the idea of taking something that is very ethereal and meant to be phantasmagoric but rendering it with the most handmade approach possible. I also have to admit that I liked the challenge of trying to take what is an inherently silly concept and imbuing it with some degree of gravitas. YEPES: Right. The line between the supernatural and the mundane is blurred in the movie in an interesting way. There was a scene where it seems like somethingsupernatural is happening inside the house, and it’s actually a bulldozer coming through the roof. LOWERY: Exactly. YEPES: But you think it’s something spiritual— LOWERY: You think it’s the Rapture. Later in the movie, there’s a giant bang on the door, but it’s just Rooney scaring Casey. YEPES: Yes, you play with stock moments that we’re familiar with from scary movies. LOWERY: Exactly. I love horror films. I love ghost movies and haunted house movies. I wanted to be able to use those tropes, not to turn them on their head, but to use them in a different way than one would anticipate, so it’s a haunted house movie that’s not scary, except at times when it is—but it’s not the ghost that makes it scary. YEPES: How did you figure out that you needed the scene where Rooney eats the better part of a whole pie as a way to show grief? LOWERY: When I initially conceived of the idea of this movie, I wanted the whole thing to be a series of tableaux—one tableau for each scene that would represent the entirety of what that scene was about, and for that one I knew that it was about her grieving for a lost loved one. I wanted it to be very physical because I find that grief is very physical. You feel it in your stomach and you feel it through your whole body and you can show someone burying their head in a pillow and crying, which we do one scene later, but that doesn’t convey the depths to which grief reaches. So I wanted there to be a physicality to it, and I wanted it to be a very private moment that was almost uncomfortable to watch, and so eating seemed like the natural thing. I’d read Joan Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)—I shared it with Rooney too—because I thought it was a really good window as to what goes through someone’s mind when they’ve lost a partner, and she describes the ways in which grief manifests itself the most profoundly in the most mundane activities, and the most unexpected, everyday, quotidian activities are the source of some of the deepest sorrow she felt after her husband passed away. Eating is about as mundane as it gets, and I felt that that was something that would be powerful and uncomfortable and also incredibly relatable, and it was also something that I knew would be memorable because I knew that Rooney doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the movie. After that scene, I think she has one line in the whole film, aside from some of the flashbacks, and it needed to convey quite a bit. I felt that that was an appropriate vehicle to do that. YEPES: Right. And it’s very expressive in a way that actually registers, whereas if she was just hysterically crying, we’ve seen that so many times that— LOWERY: You sort of check out. YEPES: Yeah. Why did you choose to have the Spanish speaking family inhabit the house and not to have subtitles for those scenes? LOWERY: I love the Spanish language. I don’t speak it very well—I don’t speak it at all, really, but I can get by if I go somewhere and I need to—but as a language, I just think it’s absolutely beautiful, and I found while we were shooting that scene, that I could understand like every fifth word. I’d written all the dialogue in English and had it translated into Spanish, so I knew what was going on, but it was easier for me to just tap into the emotion of the scene and direct it on an emotional level rather than to articulate what I wanted for a certain line of dialogue. I just loved that experience. It was a really profound experience for me. It made me realize that even though all the dialogue was written with a great degree of originality and what she’s saying in every scene matters, to some extent, it’s more of an emotional sequence than it is a literal sequence. So removing subtitles allowed audiences to participate with it on a purely emotional level, similar to how I was participating with it as a director. At that point in the movie, I wanted to have a classic ghost story sequence that was similar to Poltergeist (1982) or The Haunting (1963), and to work with a lot of traditional haunted house material. If I really wanted to go all the way with Poltergeist, I could have had another suburban family move in and really riff on that, but I thought it would be really cool for it to be more reflective of society, especially in Texas where it’s so multi-cultural, and every other person does speak Spanish, and that gave me the opportunity to have part of the movie in another language that I love listening to. YEPES: I love that the kids can see the ghost. LOWERY: Yeah. It’s just like classic Spielberg. We’d do those shots of them gazing at the ghost and be like, “That’s us ripping off Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).” I love also that the ghost throws his temper tantrum and tries to scare them out, and they don’t leave. She picks up the plates and looks at the ghost with the same kind of maternal gaze that she looks at her kids—even though she can’t really see him, there’s that moment where they appear to be looking at each other that was just really beautiful to me as well. It put Casey’s character in his place after throwing that ridiculous temper tantrum. YEPES: I know that you are an atheist and you say you don’t believe in the afterlife. Have you ever seen a ghost? Also, you have the scene where the ghost seems to commit suicide, but then you’re like, “Is it a dream?” Can the ghost die, or maybe he can’t because he’s haunted? LOWERY: The idea there is he’s trying to find a way out, but it’s not time for him to move on yet, so he just winds up unstuck in time, and having to relive certain events to get back to where he needs to be. But I do believe in ghosts, even though I don’t believe in an afterlife, and there’s an inherent paradox there, which I can only explain as the result of my faith in the mysteries of the universe. I think that there are things we can’t explain, there’s energy around us that we haven’t been able to quantify, and within those mysteries lies my ability to believe in ghosts. I’ve never seen anything, but I’ve had circumstances occur that are strange—noises, lights turning on, rooms that feel like they’re the wrong temperature. I’ve had phenomena that I could technically explain logically, but I allow myself not to, because I’d rather believe that maybe there’s something supernatural afoot. YEPES: With A Ghost Story, did the actors come up with any good ideas that helped shape the movie? Did they have the instincts to do that, or was it too hard to do because the movie is so experimental? LOWERY: There was a little bit of that because we shot a lot more with Casey and Rooney prior to his character’s death than is in the film. We spent two days—which really isn’t that much time—just filming them in domestic situations and digging into their characters. I’d written 10 pages of material that we filmed almost like a stage play, and we spent a day doing that, and there’s a little bit of that in the movie. I wrote ideas for a bunch of other scenes, and the next day, we just jumped in and out of the house, and some of it was recapitulations of dialogue they had done the previous day, but just in a new context. Other things were brand new pieces of information or brand new ideas or just moments for them to share together. Within that exploration, they were able to come up with a lot of material on their own. The scene that opens the movie, where Casey and Rooney are lying on the couch together, that was an idea he had, and we didn’t know what he was going to do. He said, “Hey, I want to shoot a scene where the two of us are on the couch together and we just finished watching a movie, and I’ll take it from there.” And so the first line of the movie is Rooney saying, “I’m scared,” and she’s laughing, and the reason she’s saying that is we’re about to start shooting and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. That was 100 percent just her anticipating whatever curveball Casey was about to throw at her. Ultimately, we used a lot of that. Yet if I hadn’t let Casey have enough creative input to propose a scene, we wouldn’t have had that opening scene and I don’t think the opening of the movie would have been as strong, so I did let them bring a lot to it, but obviously the movie was much more rigid and much more formal than Saints, and much less narrative. And of course without dialogue, it often comes down to body language and that is a much more rigorous thing. YEPES: Right. And then there are these stationary shots in this movie. LOWERY: But even in that, when Rooney comes home from the funeral and is eating pie, she had the idea to sit down on the floor. That was all her. We had planned the scene differently and intended to shoot the scene differently. But when she suggested that, that redefined the scene in terms of how we were going to block it out and how we were going to execute it, and it made it a million times better. And that was all her. So even in those very restrained and minimalist scenes, I did count on and court their input, and I value that. But I am also learning to value my original instincts more and to give myself a little bit of credit for the amount of time I spend writing dialogue, so I’m not changing gears so much. There are times I’m less willing than I used to be to just throw everything out the window for any random reason—because sometimes I’ve realized it’s more important for me to convince an actor why I wrote a thing a certain way than to just let them change it. YEPES: You also kind of suggest in the film that there are ghosts all around us. LOWERY: I don’t know if it’s ghosts or what it is, but I do believe in the burnt toast theory, as elucidated in The Shining (1980), which is that when you leave a room, you leave a little bit of yourself behind, and I don’t know what that is, I don’t know if it’s quantifiable or not, but I do subscribe to that idea. Out of that subscription, I am able to believe in… well, let’s call them ghosts. But whether they’re presences, whether it’s just leftover energy, whether it’s an actual spirit that is stuck in the space, I think they are all around us, whatever “they” may be. Beyond that, I have no idea. Beyond that, I don’t pretend to have any clue how these things work or what the rules might be or whether it’s actually real or not, but I like to believe it is. A GHOST STORY OPENS TOMORROW, JULY 7.

—Julia Yepes Editor: Emma Brown

July 6, 2017

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psawomen · 7 years ago

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From drawing comparisons to examining bonds: philosophy of science and animals

I. Then and Now

When I was in graduate school in a philosophy department, talking about the cognitive capabilities of animals meant risking being suspected of being unphilosophical -- unscientific, even! It depended upon the context and company, of course. An indication of the depth of the rift that existed in my department was the exchange that occurred when, at my mock interview, one faculty member asked me a question involving animal belief and another faculty member advised me (in an authoritative tone) that if an interviewer ever asks about animal cognition, rather than try to answer it, my response should be to change the topic immediately!

But I soon learned there were philosophers working on the topic, and quite seriously, too. Many were women in philosophy of science. Not too long after that exchange, I got to hear Kristin Andrews speak on something involving dolphins and mirror recognition. Her papers exhibit all the rigor of the most careful work in analytic philosophy, while venturing into the muddy territory of experimental research on animal cognitive abilities. [A good example is her recent "Chimpanzee Mind Reading: Don't Stop Believing" in Philosophy Compass. ] I say muddy territory metaphorically, in that the research questions and methods in animal cognition were often not as precise as was needed to answer the philosophical question she had formulated. But it's possible it fits literally, too, as she sometimes actually works with animals herself, making her own observations firsthand. Soon I ran across others: Colin Allen co-edited The Cognitive Animal.' Sandy Mitchell argued that anthropomorphism was "not necessarily nonscientific" in an anthology devoted to the topic, Thinking With Animals, edited by the historian of science Lorraine Daston. Frans de Waal showed up in philosophy venues more and more, and was invited to give the Tanner Lectures in 2003, and gave one with the subtitle "Continuity with the Other Primates." And, Kristin Andrews went on to make a career out of her interest in the topic, publishing Do Apes Read Minds? which put forth a novel account of how to think about attributing beliefs to apes. Far from being rejected as not philosophical by the profession, the Canadian Philosophical Association awarded it the 2013 Biennial Book prize. She has since published The Animal Mind: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal Cognition, which some are using as a textbook. A sign of the acceptance of animal mind in philosophy is the mammoth Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Animal Minds, which just appeared on the scene a few months ago, which she co-edited.

That odd exchange at the mock interview took place over fifteen years ago. Things feel very different now. Philosophy of science on animal cognition gets funded now, too. Philosophers are becoming ever more adventurous about the kind of projects they are proposing.

II. "How close to us?" -- two senses

Much of the work -- at least the early work -- on animal cognition was occasioned by questions involving comparisons of the cognitive abilities of humans (often human children) and animals. This is asking how close animals are to us in the sense of comparing their abilities with ours. Here mirror self-recognition and counting are two iconic examples. Animal cognitive abilities are sometimes even labeled using developmental milestones originally designed for human children.

People who work with animals, though, are aware not just of animal cognitive development, but of the significance of the quality of the bond between animals and whom they learn from and interact with, whether those others are animals or humans. Pets -- or companion animals, as they're usually called in academic settings -- are of course a special case of the animal-human bond (as opposed to animals raised in herds for their wool, say), but why should studying them in their role as pets be any less scientific? It should be okay to ask "How close are they?" in this sense, too.

It's not unscientific to study animals in their natural habitat, and a dogs' natural habitat often is co-habitation with someone of the human species. The canine-human bond is certainly not thought to be unnatural, in fact, some find it to be one of the most amazing things natural selection has wrought. Some dogs seem able to detect more about their human's emotional and cognitive state than humanly possible. That's worthy of study in and of itself. But, then how is the canine-human bond involved in training them?

III. Philosophers as Explorers

This brings us to an unusual project by philosopher of science Carla Fehr that is an investigation into an intriguing meld of canine cognition, the canine-human bond, scientific consensus, and scientific method. Her investigation, though not devoid of all sorts of fun pet ownership aspects, means to find answers to some serious questions, and will be chronicled at a blog devoted to the project, called ontheroadwithmilo.com I am reminded of travel narratives of eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers like Humboldt, Wallace and Darwin, though the territory explored with be different; something more like an exploration of an unprobed landscape in science studies than a land Europeans have yet to study and map. Here are some excerpts from the site:

"This project is a chance to look more closely at the social, political, and scientific research on the dogs who share our lives, and to do so from the perspective of my relationship with Milo the AwesomeDog. https://ontheroadwithmilo.com/about/

"My goal.

I want to learn about dog-human relationships from expert handlers and trainers, from scientists working on this topic, and from my own relationship with Milo. I’ll explore the connections among these different kinds of knowledge to help answer a bunch of questions. [see blog for these questions]"

"The journey.

Milo and I will visit Canadian veterinary schools, and talk to veterinary and other scientists doing research on dogs. I’ll take Milo to obedience trials across the country, compete with him, and talk with people who have practical expertise training and handling dogs. I want to know these scientists’ and practical experts’ thoughts about how we generate and use knowledge about dog minds and relationships."

By now there are a number of posts up. Several concern a critique of the literature on the effectiveness of clicker training. I think this is a fascinating project, with an unusual and insightful conclusion about how the scientific method is used in invoking evidence for dog training methods. Here's a post on that: https://ontheroadwithmilo.com/2017/06/07/my-method-is-scientific-3-the-trouble-with-clicker-training/

Some knowledge comes from observation in naturalistic settings, such as this one about Milo watching action films -- or is it about Milo's reactions to the philosopher in the room viewing an action film? Good question, right? Right. https://ontheroadwithmilo.com/2017/06/06/on-watching-action-movies-with-sensitive-dogs/

And, I realized, the two posts are related. The one about observing Milo in his natural habitat of his human's living room provides background knowledge that's valuable in investigating the question about scientific method. The human-animal bond is part of the picture that is being investigated, which enriches the picture and helps open up new possibilities to consider regarding what is going on. The question "How close are they?" in the sense of bonds with humans is not unrelated to investigating "How close are they?" in the sense of comparisons with humans.

The actual journey is about to start, if it hasn't already.

Those journeys by Humboldt and Wallace and Darwin provided a lot of material to British and European scientists in the nineteenth century, and well beyond. Who knows what will result from this journey? You can sign up to get notices of new posts to the blog at ontheroadwithmilo.com

--Susan Sterrett, Wichita State University

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