#this show with its maddening and incredible stories has sucked me in

[topicaltropic]

🤝re rons arc!!! IDK what your thoughts about it are but i found the way it was resolved very uncompelling </3 especially re: Terry having to act responsible for Ron (which is!! pretty bad for a kid to do no matter how much their guardian loves them!!)

like, its interesting that the problem was there, I just wish theyd acknowledge it more instead of treating it as resolved.

if its ok to ask, what do you dislike abt it?

OH MY GOD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ANON !!!!!!!!!! 🤝 !!!!!!!

Okay. Reading from it meta textually you could really say its from tower of terry that they really began to transition from simple comedy podcast to dramedy. Consequently, its the arc where in trying to find that new balance for the show's settling focus that results in the most (to me) tonal dissonance. The rest of the podcast gets its footing for the right amount of being seriously unserious and unseriously serious through tower of terry, but Ron unfortunately sort of gets left in a limbo where the unhappy middle-ground is far too light hearted for tower of terry, and far too dark for the everything with his anchor.

I would honestly pinpoint this interaction as the root of the problem and what kickstarts everything im going to be complaining about with Ron's arc:

Its a silly one liner for a comedic podcast, yet in the context of the story, Ron is being abjectly cruel and has retraumatized his kid. Nothing of consequence happens except terry flipping him off and storming away. To briefly compare: Next arc they come up with a jokey plan to put grant in the minotaur to kill it. Darryl pays the full weight of that action with grant coming out completely traumatized for the rest of the series. As the tone of the narrative changes, the same actions now have different weights of importance. It could be interesting if this was used to serve a purpose narratively, but frustratingly, its more like Ron slipped through the narrative cracks and landed out of bounds, going over the negative amount of points to glitch over to the maximum like some sort of game exploit and now he never has to pay the piper.

But puting the meta aside, even more maddening is how Ron wins Terry over in tower of terry.

What does Rons father not being proud of him have to do with Terry's grief? How is Ron telling Terry he loves him in this moment impactful, when hes the person whos hurt him in the first place? What sucks to me is that this is the first moment of many where every emotional moment between these two it's all always centered on Ron and his trauma and leading to Terry becoming the one who has to take on the role of being the mature one in the dynamic and providing support to ron and becoming his emotional crutch. Like you said anon if this was explored or addressed it could've definitely been interesting except that unfortunately the creators never even saw it as a conflict to resolve in the first place seeing as the narrative itself perceives it as something positive .

To touch briefly on Ron and his father: i dont think this story is equipped to handle the heavy subject it envokes. Uncomfortable subjects have lots of merit to explore or examine, but this story uses it more as hurt for the sake of hurt. Me tearing up and feeling upset from this isnt because im being moved, it's because its touching nerves and to put harshly, doing cheap emotional signals.

I truly dislike how Ron either unintentionally by the character or the player steps on and uses Terry for his growth. Rons trauma overshadowing Terrys struggle in his grief, Terry having to put his own trauma aside for Ron, basically forgiving Rons for the pain hes caused him because Rons being abused is incredibly dissatisfying to me. A lot things in their relationship to me is deeply unearned.

[moandkatelive]

Ok so you all knew it was coming.  Yes Campwolfe Fandom Nan™ just has to weigh in on the shenanigans and current angst-fest unfolding on Holby City for our Goddess Serena Campbell oh her anguish someone hold me intrepid couple Serena and Bernie.  Many things I will say have likely already been said. Some perhaps not.  As per usual, I shall pop it under a read more because I am wordy as shit to save y’all’s dash. 

Buckle up

Now that I have had some time and distance from yesterday’s episode I feel as though I may be able to talk about it with a) some objectivity and b) without collapsing on the carpet in a heap of tears.

First of all:

Slow-clapping it out plus a raising a glass of the finest single malt to both Catherine Russell and Jemma Redgrave who killed it knocked it OUT OF THE PARK last night.  What those women are able to do with every fibre of their being is incredible and just watching them is a master-class in acting.  Like I said in a previous post, Serena’s anguished moan on her out-breath as she collapsed, against Bernie and then her restrained keening will haunt me to my grave. I had nightmares about it last night -that’s how deeply I was affected send help.

Right off the bat can we please quell the fearful speculation that this intense, dramatic tragedy is going to be the downfall of Campwolfe? I mean I suppose if you want to worry about that on top of worrying about how Serena is going to get through the next few weeks fly at it but personally I don’t feel the need to spend energy on something that is 100% not going to happen. Couples on Holby are ALL given difficulty or tragedy to work with.  It is thrown at them.  Instead of the writers creating drama and angst between Serena and Bernie in an endless cycle of ‘will they or won’t they’ or having them break up and get back together - this couple is on the receiving end of something catastrophic that will highlight bringing them closer.  There may be some bumps in the road - I can’t imagine that Serena won’t get through this without falling into depression and pushing the people in her life that she loves the most away for a bit.  Why? Because that is what happens in these types of situations and for that NOT to happen would not allow the show to highlight a very real and true to life consequence of the loss of a child. But this is a goldmine opportunity for the writers to show not tell in terms of giving Bernie Wolfe a growth arc. Bernie the emotional dumpster fire that she has been queen of the ‘let’s do a runner’ - let’s be honest sticking around and comfort and care, especially physical comfort and care are not her wheelhouse.  To watch her last night, a symphony of restrained agony, helplessness and aching love for Serena was one of the most beautiful and moving things I have seen on television in a long time.  She didn’t just hold it together in Theatre (which is her wheelhouse) but she was there for Serena every step of the way - very much the tender partner, very much physically there.  I believe that we are going to see incredible amounts of emotional growth as she hangs in and loves on Serena, despite even perhaps being pushed away, instead of just packing it in and heading for the hills because things are rough.  I’ve have longed to see this in her and I am very excited to see more - even if it is in small doses.  At the end of this arc I believe that Serena and Bernie will come through this stronger than ever.

Is it a horrible, awful, terrible plot twist that Elinor, Serena’s only daughter is brain dead? Yes.  It’s utterly devestating - but from the bottom of my heart I don’t think it falls anywhere close to the ‘lesbian death trope’. Serena and Bernie are being for the most part treated exactly the same way that any straight couple/characters would be on Holby City.  They’re getting their fair share of a truckload of tragedy.  None of the characters escape that.  None.  Do I wish Elinor wasn’t dead? Yes. I do because I adore Serena Campbell with every fibre of my being I was awake last worrying about her and then had to slap myself upside the head and remind myself that Serena is a British pretend bi-doctor and not a real person and that I was being a giant twit and I don’t want her to suffer.  But that isn’t how life works.  Tragedy does befall us and this just happens to be what is coming at Serena. Just because she identifies as wlw or lesbian or bi or as Jason says just plain complicated does that mean that she and Bernie should be swaddled gently in bubble wrap and nothing awful ever befalls them? There has to be skin in the game to make things interesting and what a gorgeous way for us, and for the broader audience to see a non-traditional couple working through these issues and supporting one another with unconditional love.

By the same token people could be furious that Dom is saddled with Issac the manipulative, abusive sociopath - why cant he have nice things I’m actually on a mission to push Issac off the roof but that’s another story, but in the harsh reality of life domestic abuse happens within gay relationships too and by highlighting this hopefully it will actually help someone who is gay or lesbian to make positive changes in their lives as Dom struggles to do this.  They can look to him and say “if he can do it I can do it.”

I truly believe the same can be said for this storyline with Serena and by extension, Bernie. I’ve seen some opinions in this tag that somehow this story is simply a riff on the “Lesbians as Tragedy” story because it is highlighted that neither Serena nor Bernie are good mothers.  I am all for people having their own opinions and fly at it.  For me - that is not the read I get at all from the way these characters have been written and what they are portraying.  How I see these characters positioned as parents, especially Serena in this case, is that they have loving and difficult and wondorous and challenging relationships with their early adult children. In the same was as the straight parents on this show are often portrayed.  Serena and Bernie are shown as flawed mothers, as human mothers.  Because that is what it IS to be a parent.  Parenting whether you are an at-home parent full time or a surgeon or co-parenting or demonstrative or more reserved is the most fucking difficult job on the planet.  There is no manual, no rulebook and despite the best of intentions parents and children often end up at odds.  That’s simply a fact.  Just because Elinor called her father, which she is want to do when she’s in trouble with the law because she’s learned from experience that her father will bail her out and her mother is going to call her on the carpet - who is the better parent there you have to ask - again a topic for a different meta, ended up reaching Liberty and asked Liberty to come be with her in no way negates Serena’s parenting abilities.  Liberty is legitimately a part of Elinor’s life.  She functioned, in some ways, as a step-parent.  She would have had a way in to talk to Elinor that Serena wouldn’t have had precisely because she was NOT Elinor’s mother.  This is the beauty of a step-parent.  We don’t have to like Liberty but she did come when she was asked.  She did sit with Elinor. She does love her in her own way and even if she’s a bit daft I believe her when she said that she was not trying to replace Serena.  And she left when she was asked to leave without kicking up a fuss. There is a certain kind of class in that and you can’t convince me otherwise. 

Fletch is a straight man the Flaf shippers notwithstanding and he has been shown time and again to be a good father, a struggling father, a father who falls short, a father who wins, a human father. Jac Naylor.  Does anyone really believe that she has been nor will continue to be painted ‘mother of the year’ because she is straight? No.  She’s the head of Darwin who is utterly problematic and has difficulty allowing people in or showing her feelings.  This will affect her parenting.  But she’s struggling through.  Trying.  She’s a human mother. Serena is a human mother.  Bernie is a human mother and I just can’t see the Holby writers slanting it in the direction that they’re anything but human women trying to figure out how to get through the day, save lives and love their families.

I think, lastly, it’s been difficult for some of us to stomach the full throttle tragedy storyline for Bernie and Serena because there were so few touches of them as they were blossoming into and settling into being a romantic couple.  Honestly - I wish we’d had a bit more fluff and happiness maybe a scene or two in the Peace Garden or drinks at Albies, bantering over a patient, wrangling about diagnoses before they were handed a dumptruck’s worth of angst but that is not how it played out.  For a number of reasons, potentially, Jemma’s vacation time, the fact that Catherine hasn’t had a real holiday in, well, forever, the way that Holby tends to gloss over the happiness of its characters and focus on drama and/or angst.  This trifecta of reasons after The Kill List and let’s face it the hiatus where we all almost expired from lack of Bernie/Campwolfe has made it more difficult, I believe, to sit easily, without worry, through this storyline. As I have said before, we are not going to love every last piece of minutiae on how the writers keep crafting Bernie and Serena’s melody line within the symphony. But the one thing I think that we can come back to is that they, and Simon and Catherine and Jemma are committed to creating, as best they know how, as best they are able all their unconscious missteps about wlw relationships notwithstanding a beautiful, complicated, human story that encompasses two women in a relationship dealing with the slings and arrows that life throws at them.

Like the fact that life isn’t perfect, no human is perfect, no mother is perfect - I believe there is some kind of middle ground.  Melanie Klein said that there was no such thing as the ‘perfect mother/mothering’ but that for optimum psychological health a child doesn’t need ‘perfect mothering’ she needs ‘good enough mothering’.  I think that applies here.  I don’t need Serena and Bernie to be the ‘perfect’ representation of wlw relationship.  I don’t need their story to be perfect or one made from fanfiction.  What I need is it to be ‘good enough’.  I need it to be raw, to surprise me, to shake me up.  I need their story to make me laugh and to make my cry.  I need it to pierce me to my core.  

Last night’s episode certainly did that.  It pierced me to my very soul.  It chewed me up and it spit me back out again.  It made me think.  It made me ache.  In it I saw humanity - the humanity of pain, of fear, of love and loss. That is what we face every day in life.  And I for one am so beyond thrilled I can watch these emotions and this turmoil played out between two characters that in some way resemble who I am.

As Serena Campbell says “Life isn’t fair.  You don’t get second chances. One knock and all that potential is just gone, wasted.”  That is the hard bone truth of it.  Sometimes there isn’t a second chance.  Somehow we have to figure out how to keep putting one foot in front of the other through loss and grief and a pain so utter it feels as though our entire being is an immolation.

And the other side of that are the people who come and stand next to us and walk with us and hold us up during those times, and into the calm times after.  I’m thinking specifically of Essie’s line “Home isn’t about the past.  It’s simply a place you’re needed the most.”  

I’m thinking about that hug that Bernie showers on Serena.  How they both sink into it, breathe one another in. Bury their faces in one another.  However this goes I believe that the strength of their home, that they are one another’s true home, will shine through, will be the beautiful gift from this trial by fire.  

This love, this fire, this pain, this ultimate home - these are the reasons that I am spellbound and will continue to watch.  These are the reasons this episode, this story, is good.

[garrothromeave]

the hell is mystreet season 6??

(warning, long post ahead)

ok so before i start this

1) ive never posted shiiiit on tumblr before so watch me suffer, im just here to talk about stuff that my friends who dont know anything about aphmau have to listen to me rant about for hours on end

2) i havent seen mystreet in like years (except season 3, i watch that frequently since im laurance and shadow knight deprived) so please bear with me because i might be completely wrong on this lol. it’s just like, pointing out things i remember

3) im sure someones already talked about this but who cares

4) im gonna do this stupid thing where i just explain myself a bit at first, if you dont want to read that just skip to the part where you see “the actual thingy:” in bold and italics 

5) mild disclaimer; i am completely aware that jessica is not a professional writer. i know that she did her best to appeal to her fans, and honestly, respect for that. while this post will come off as aggressive and probably look like hate, that’s not my intention in the slightest. it’s just... intense criticism. im sure y’all probably already know that, but yeah, just stating that anyways. i do believe that jess is doing her best, and in no way do i want to dismiss any hard work she’s done. that being said; prepare for a very strongly opinionated post.

haha watch there be 10000+ typos in this making me look like a complete dumbass

ok here we go 

one of the main reasons i stopped watching aphmau back in 2017 was the mess that was season 4. like, in the first few episodes of the emerald secret, i thought “woah!! this is kinda cool, im a sucker for mystery!” because of course i was, it was something new and something exciting. the only problem i had with it at the time was kim, but that’s just because i always found her annoying and out of place. i just didn’t understand why garroth dragged her along and honestly i still don’t to this day BUT, moving on.

anyways, as the season progressed, 13 year old me was of course just “:0!!” the entire time--that is, up until the reveal of the main villain. i remember watching the episode, seeing the reveal of ein, and then stopping. like, just for a quick break, but i was still just overwhelmingly disappointed. like, and this was the time when pdh was airing and ein just got made alpha (i think?) and i had really really liked eins character in pdh. either way, that really sucked and actually opened my eyes to a lot of things.

one of the main things bein’ the fact that this was supposed to be a slice of life kinda series that decided to take a turn to a more edgy kinda approach. which, i guess i regularly wouldnt mind? but seeing as mcd was kinda bein neglected at the time it just didnt sit right with me. BUT WHATEVER, point is i stopped watching mystreet all together at the end of season 4.

like, a whole year later my brother tells me that shit’s getting intense in season 5 + 6 of mystreet, and my brilliant self decided to give it a shot--but i refused to watch all of season 5, so i only stepped in when ein made an appearance. so whenever that was, that’s where i picked up because i didnt care enough to see 

and y’know--i honestly didn’t hate it at first. in fact, i found it oddly cool. it wasn’t enough to get me into aphmau again, but it was enough to where i was intrigued. i dont know why, but i never watched the finale, so i didnt see the ending until just a few weeks ago--but back then, i thought it was neat. looking back on it however... im just so confused. 

side note: only got back into aphmau this time around because of mcd. mainly because like, i adore the first season and the first half of the second season. and being nearly 18 now, im a lot more appreciative of plot and well-written characters n junk. 

the actual thingy:

ok back on track. imma stop spilling out my story of how i got back into aphmau, and lets just skip to what rewatching mcd made me realize of season 6′s plot and shit:

-emmalyn. how the fuck does ghost even remotely exist? if she’s emmalyn as claimed, then why have we already seen emmalyn in the mystreet universe alive? look i get that creators can do whatever they want with their stories but at the same time please provide some sort of explanation good god. and maybe they did and i just havent seen it, so if there is one--let me know. but until that day imma just sit here confused as fuck

-ok so imma just be real, the whole ‘ultima’ thing is just... not great. in my opinion, anyways. like... i saw someone mention this in another post, but if this ultima stuff was like, a really big deal, why isnt it mentioned in mcd? though i suppose since its a curse of sorts, it could be later on past the time period in which mcd takes place--but even then, how did it manage to make its way into aaron’s family bloodline? 

-WHY IS EVERYONE AT STARLIGHT ITS JUST SO CONVINIENT like what happened to this place being the most expensive shit on the planet or whatever, and how the gang happens to run into like, the werewolf trio and blaze and kai and guy and nate all of these people like god damn life doesnt WORK LIKE THAT 

-im sorry but turning people into relics? thats... thats the best you could come up with? plus, like, how does that even work? in mcd it’s established that relics are separate entitles that choose their wielder, based on a ‘personal’ connection (being a descendent of a previous wielder) or if they’re a good match personality and (i think?) moral wise. so the whole turning-people-into-relics doesnt make much sense to be honest. 

-irene really over here using her god powers to only keep her friends alive like god damn not a great god if you ask me 

-can i talk about how incredibly predictable aphmaus death was? like i just kinda sat there waiting for it to happen and when it did i literally went “haha! wonder when she’ll be revived” because god forbid we actually kill off characters 

-when aphmau + demon warlock fought in the irene dimension there was no passage of time whatsoever in the real world whiiiiiiiiich really bothers me because they fought in there for at least a few minutes

-speaking of aphmau and the demon warlocks fight does it bother anyone else that it had to be aaron who took over the fight?? like we get it hes the big protector blah blah blah but god damn it wouldve been cooler if aphmau had fought this battle as her. aaron fighting this battle was so underwhelming

-...love. like, thats the only thing thats needed to break out of a forever potion? love? LIKE YEAH, GOOD GUYS GOTTA WIN SOMEHOW, but its just so cliche and overdoneeee

-oh yeah and also when travis went bonkers and became the demon warlock or whatever, why’d he only take over katelyn and garroth?? like, zane had been influenced by the potions in the past as well? DONT GET ME WRONG--i do love some good brother edge, but uh, the demon warlock was just bein kinda a dumbass by not possessing zane too just sayin’

-can aaron please go to fucking jail for mass murder now like holy shit, he just got sent home on a fuckin boat. also why did blaze forgive him for killing him thats not even remotely realistic. then again, nothing in mystreet has ever been realistic when it comes to characters and motives and personalities, (cough katelyn being actually abusive and travis being an actual pervert) but yknow whatever

-katelyn and kawaii chan literally added nothing to the plot whatsoever. like lets be real, katelyn lost her personality the moment season 5 started and kawaii chan just kinda sits there :I

-ok im sorry this was bound to come up but cmon guys imagine laurances potential if he was in season 6 like god damn this is beyond maddening. AND YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REALLY REALLY COOL PARRALLEL?? IF IT WAS LAURANCE WHO SNAPPED GARROTH OUT OF HIS MIND CONTROL THING, because it would mimic laurance’s speech to get garroth to snap out of his rage in season 1, episode 100 of minecraft diaries. like how fuckin rad would that have been? missed opportunity 

-also?? why does kim/ghost know magicks?? like, if i remember correctly, emmalyn is a scholar--not someone who knew magicks. i mean, i guess research? study?? but its been established that knowing how magicks works =/= being able to use magicks. i dunno, just doesnt seem right i guess. maybe its explained, i wouldnt know (yes i know that makes me look like a dick leave me alone)

-melissa should have stayed dead. LIKE, NO, ITS NOT AS SIMPLE AS “haha it takes more than a few bullets to kill me”??? look ive got nothing wrong with melissa (cough lie cough) but yknow it would have just been cool a character... stay dead? for once? its just too fuckin cliche that shes alive god damn

-can i also just say the only good thing that came out of season 6 was travis’ dads sacrifice like damn that made me actually sad

-howww was lucinda turned into a relic. or yknow, anyone else? like im sure they explain it better in the actual show i just dont remember, but its just that easy? turning anyone into a relic? granted, a normal person wouldnt be able to produce a good relic, but idk man. IM JUST SAYING; that the only really powerful relics that aphmau should have been able to wield is the one that aaron + zane produced because shad relic and esmund relic moment. lucinda isnt even like, connected to a divine warrior. ALSO, another point, if its seriously that powerful of a relic getting one from just a magic user like lucinda, why go through the trouble? i mean i guess ofc youd want the “all powerful” one that the ultima produces but i mean damn whats the point

-ok this is just going to bother me but in one of the episodes (i think might have been in season 5 actually) where that like, guardian dude was chasing aphmau and zane and at one point they split up and the dude just chuckles at zane diverting paths and goes under his breath “youre not the important one here”, suggesting that aphmau somehow is? first of all, id argue that any ro’meave is significantly more important than aphmau was, especially not knowing much about her other than that shes with aaron. i might be missing some bits an pieces, but if i was that dude id forget about aphmau and go after zane 

-killing off derek for shock factor sucked, and i know the moment was supposed to be really sad because like “oh :( aarons dad is sacrificing himself for his son” but lets be real dereks still was a shitty father and i dont think his reasons for doing what he did was very good at all

-less about plot or more like: why the absolute fuck did the gang bring kim along instead of, oh i dont know, a life-long friend? like, laurance or dante maybe?? im sure its explained, i never saw aphmaus year or most of season 5, but god DAMN id hate to be apart of this friend group AND GOD LIKE, imagine reconnecting with an old friend who ends up getting closer to your best friends and taking priority in their lives over you (cough laurance) like god damn lol

-im just going to preface this one with: i dont remember everything that’s happened, so if im wrong i apologize in advance--but (you actually can correct me if im wrong and please do) didnt like, irene reincarnate her friends in order to give them better lives? I DONT KNOW IF THIS IS TRUE, ITS JUST WHAT I REMEMBER--however, if im correct, then:

a. why the hell would she bring back someone like zane, or gene, or ivy, etc.

b. why the hell do they all have the same exact names? first and last? again, im aware that the whole mystreet+mcd tie wasn’t originally supposed to be there, but i dont think that means such a coincidence can be excused? its just a bit much if you ask me.

c. why the hell is the fact that (as much as i literally hate this) aaron is a decedent of shad being ignored? like, you’d think that something like this would be something thats actually important, or something the demon warlock couldve taken advantage of. or are we completely erasing every other connections to divine warriors besides aphmau + irene? because even if irene did reincarnate them or do whatever it is she did, does she even have the power to sever the connections between them and their ancestors? my guess is, no.

d. speaking of irene why on earth was aphmau able to talk to/see irene, they’re literally the same person are they not? did she like, fuckin reincarnate herself without actually doing it?? BUT--i will give it to them, the demon warlock did refer to aphmau as something along the lines of being “one of the 3 parts of her broken soul” or something like that. however, my point still remains. also what are the other two did i miss that or is it never explained

now; if irene in fact did not ‘reincarnate’ her friends then please ignore that little bit right there :)

but yes, those are a few of the problems i have with season 6 off the top of my head. i would go into like, season 4 and 5 more as well, but i honestly didnt feel like it. at some point i might go into other things, like how important laurance could have been to the plot of these later seasons, or HELL, even dante. i might also go into what could have made season 4, 5, and 6 actually good--maybe... a rewrite? perhaps? but im getting too far ahead of myself, so i just leave you with this for now.

and i know that as soon as i post this 15 more things are just going to pop into my head BUT im going to try and not edit this post because why stress myself with that even more

anyways thank you for coming to my tedtalk 

[ava-candide]

T'aint right, t’aint fairas Prudie, the Poldarks’ housekeeper, would say. Poldark is nearing its end; let the Sunday-night-swoon audience rend its garments. It returns next month for a fifth series then that’s your lot: game over. No more shots broodily staring out to sea, no more dramatic galloping at full pelt across Cornish clifftops making me worry for that horse. But, at least, a rest for the poor overworked six-pack of Aidan Turner, whose performance as Ross Poldark has held thousands of middle-aged ladies in thrall.

And here I am sitting 2ft away from him in a tiny room at the British Film Institute in London, a man whose abdominal muscles are the most “celebrated”, by which I mean “leered over”, in Britain. “You’re a ‘hot property’, ” I tell him as if he somehow hasn’t noticed his own naked torso appearing incessantly in every newspaper and magazine since 2015. “Do you feel like a hot property?” He looks horrified. “No, I don’t,” he says, smiling through a bushy black beard. “I don’t think I’d want to know anyone who [called themselves] a hot property. That gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Good answer. Anyone who refers to themselves as a hot property is obviously a massive tool.

I assume the beard (the Daily Mail said it made him “unrecognisable”, but he is totally recognisable) is for a part in an “exciting” new project, which, he says, involves working with a director he admires but, alas, he can’t tell me what it is. “I’m so sorry, it’s boring; it sucks,” he apologises (he means having to be secretive, not the production, just to be clear).

So how does he feel to have pulled off Ross’s tricorn hat and ravished Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) in that small Nampara bed for the last time? Turner, 36, has spent about a third of his working life on Poldark. Does it feel the right time to drop the curtain? “It feels storywise that this is the right time. It just seemed the right time in every possible way. It has been an incredible journey for all of us . . . but it’s a long shoot. I think we’re all ready to do other things.” I say I hope he had a suitably tearful farewell with Seamus, Ross’s trusted black horse who has built up such a fan-base that he is known as “famous Seamus”. Turner became very close to him, sometimes having a nap on his back between scenes. He thinks they have a similar personality: “We’re both Irish.” So how was the big goodbye?

“It’s kinda sad,” Turner says. “I was gutted.” For a terrible moment I’m imagining a glue factory, but it turns out he never said farewell to the horse. “With everything else when the job was wrapping up I remember the last time I wore the boots and the last time I wore the tricorn hat and the jacket, and the last time I did a scene with Eleanor in the kitchen. And I really marked it because I wanted to remember it. With Seamus I thought I was going to see him again; but then a scene got pulled we were going to use him for . . . so I never got to say a proper goodbye. I was really gutted.” Seamus lives in York. Might he go and see him? “Maybe I will. I should drop Mark, the trainer, an email and pop down and say hello and take him for a run-out.” A reunion? There lies a payday for the paparazzi.

This is the first of the BBC series not adapted directly from the Winston Graham novels (first dramatised by the BBC in 1975 starring Robin Ellis). There was a gap of ten years in the books and Debbie Horsfield, who has written every episode of the five series, has bridged the gap between novels seven and eight using information gleaned from the later works, to keep the characters at their present ages. The Graham estate thinks she has a great affinity with the novels. It is a strong first episode, with new characters and suggests, shall we say, that Elizabeth’s death is affecting the mental health of George Warleggan (played splendidly by Jack Farthing) more than we realised. After our conversation there is a Q&A and a screening of the episode at the BFI, but Turner says he thinks he’ll duck that bit because he feels uncomfortable watching it with an audience. “I’m not very good at that. I find it a bit strange.” He is quite shy and endearingly modest for a man so lusted after. At one point some traffic noise erupts outside and he jumps up to close the window for the sake of my Dictaphone which, trust me, not every actor would do.

How boring has he found the enormous fuss and objectification over his six-pack, prompted by a famous scything scene? “I get asked a lot. It’s par for the course,” he says. “It certainly doesn’t irritate me; it’s not something I regret doing, so it’s not something I ever care to avoid talking about. I just don’t find it that interesting.”

Turner, who was born in a suburban town near Dublin and attended drama college there, probably first became well known to British TV audiences in Being Human, after which Peter Jackson cast him as a dwarf in The Hobbit. But it was Ross Poldark who has made him famous. He says he’ll most likely miss Ross —“I love him; he’s a flawed character; he’s real” — though it’s early days. Is there anything he won’t miss? He seems flummoxed for a moment. “It’s good that I have to struggle a bit for that actually,” he says. “There’s nothing I hated and despised on the show. I’m used to early mornings. I’d love to be able to give you a bit of gossip but there’s nothing . . . Maybe living in rented accommodation.”

There have been reports of rows between him and Eleanor Tomlinson on set, usually over protecting their own characters in the show. She has joked that they squabble like an old married couple. “I don’t think we fall out often and certainly nothing serious. If there was ever any tension between us it was purely to do with work because we care a lot,” he says. “These conversations came later, the last two or three years. As we became more invested we felt we had more to lose because the show was successful, but it was always very professional. Eleanor’s an intelligent girl, conscientious, polite and articulate, so it never got into any screaming matches or anything. I was always really interested in what she had to say.” He starts laughing. “And most of the time she was right.”

I wonder if he minds the level of fame that has come with Poldark. Recently the actor Richard Madden (Bodyguard) revealed that he deliberately wore the same clothes and carried the same cup of green juice every day in the same way so the paparazzi couldn’t get a different picture and would lose interest. Turner says he tried that, but the photographer waiting outside the theatre (he was performing in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, for which he got rave reviews and a Stage debut award ) told him he could change the colour of his T-shirt in a heartbeat. “And the next day he showed me! He changed my T-shirt to pink and the colour of my jeans.” But he doesn’t mind the attention from the public. “People are usually very nice and polite. I like to see the best in people.”

He rarely reads reviews or his own interviews, never uses social media and is guarded about his private life, namely his American girlfriend, Caitlin Fitzgerald, with whom he was pictured recently on a red carpet (they met on the set of a film they both starred in: The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then Bigfoot). He has also been photographed walking her dog, Charlie. When I mention Fitzgerald he raises both palms: “I can’t say anything about that,” he says, again apologetically. I imagine all those swooning fans would rather not hear about it anyway. For the record, he says he splits his time between London, Dublin and New York. Does he fancy big Hollywood films? “Wherever the work is,” he says.

He believes this fifth series is the most exciting yet and promises the issue of Valentine’s parentage will be a big story (the little boy who plays him and may be Ross’s secret son looks spookily like him, right down to the hairdo). “It’s a great story for George Warleggan; Jack is brilliant. He’s amazing, a real talent.” By the end will the audience be sad or happy, Aidan? “I don’t know,” he says cryptically. “Some people might be happy; some people might be delighted.”

But it might not be game over, actually. He does not completely rule out returning to it in ten years’ time when he is old enough to play the more mature, wrinklier Ross (Horsfield has said “never say never”). However, he says a lot of things would need to be in place. All the actors would need to be available, the Graham estate would have to agree, and most of all the audience would still need to want it, which is the most important point. Television moves on so fast these days. “It would be silly, though, to say that it’s completely off the table,” he says.

So was he emotional at the end as it all wound down? “That last day I think it was just myself and Eleanor in the bedroom at Nampara, which was lovely,” he says. “It felt like the right way to finish and probably the right place as well. Yeah, it was quite emotional.” They still had the work to finish, the call sheet to complete, but “it was lovely just to be with her”. Afterwards, when it was done, he says it was — and he searches for the right phrase — “a bit shocking. It just feels surreal because it’s over.” For him, yes, but not for us. Not quite yet.

[grimelords]

Best Of 2018

Best Comedy Podcast: Teacher’s Lounge: Teacher's Lounge continues through 2018 being one of my favourite things in the world. I don't think anything else has ever made me laugh harder or more. It is pure insanity each and every week and endlessly relistenable. The first two seasons are out from behind the paywall so please do yourself a favour and listen.

Best Non-Comedy Podcast: The Dream: A really really good and interestingly personal investigation into pyramid schemes and how they shape and reflect the entirety of the American experience, from the poorest parts of the nation to the White House - like a pyramid I suppose.

Best Movie: Museum or Roma: Feels like an odd coincidence that the two best films I saw this year were both Mexican dramas. Roma is incredible, and everything I have to say about it has probably already been said elsewhere and better. Museum however seems to have flown under the radar entirely. I saw it at MIFF and it hasn't gotten a release here otherwise, which is maddening because I am desperate to see it again and have been thinking about it almost non stop since I saw it six months ago. I've been thinking about it and about how we as individuals interact with history and especially indigenous history, national identity and culture. For a movie specifically about a Mexican museum heist feels very universal, which I suppose great movies are.

Best TV Show: Nirvanna The Band The Show: This is the most groundbreaking and hilarious TV show I've seen in a long time and it hasn't really taken off like I thought it would outside of one or two clips going around. An incredible mix of improvised hidden camera comedy and great writing it looks and feels like no other show. If you're in Australia the whole thing is on SBS on Demand so please watch it.

Best Game: Hollow Knight: 2018 was a really really good year for games but nothing sucked me in more than Hollow Knight. This game is amazingly made. It's punishingly hard but never frustrating, labyrinthinely designed but you never feel totally lost. It's a complete world on its own that'll give you back just as much as you put into it.

Best Nonfiction Book: Bad Blood by John Carreyrou: A fantastic dissection of the complete story of Theranos - the silicon valley startup that promised to revolutionise blood testing but never actually produced a product that worked despite a $1 Billion valuation and its deranged CEO Elizabeth Holmes. You really have to read it to believe just how much blind faith and money people will invest in you as long as you have their confidence.

Best Fiction Book: The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner: I'm going to be real with you; not only is The Mars Room the best 2018 fiction book I read last year, it is also the only 2018 fiction book I read last year. So it won by default. BUT, I also loved it. Rachel Kushner is one of my favourite current authors and while I definitely didn't love this as much as The Flamethrowers or Telex From Cuba it is still an incredible book. It exists on a much smaller scale than her other novels, it's about a smaller cast and a smaller timeline which allowed her to really focus down on the minute details of the lives detailed. It's also an extremely brutal read in parts, so just be forewarned going in.

Best Albums

Gwenifer Raymond - You Never Were Much Of A Dancer

This album gives me hope for the future of solo acoustic guitar music. As traditional as it is forward looking it sparked an absolute obsession in me and I cannot stop listening to it over and over again.

Jungle - For Ever

Jungle are one of the best live bands I've ever seen and I've been so eagerly awaiting their second album since 2014 and they didn't disappoint. A total maturation and evolution of their sound, every song is perfectly constructed and flawlessly performed. I just love it.

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

I cannot believe just how beautiful this incredibly purposefully abrasive music can get.

Against All Logic - 2012-2017

It feels like Nicolas Jaar's power is limitless. He can do absolutely anything he wants and has total control. Some of the best dance music I've ever heard while also sometimes feeling like a phenomenal dj set you heard over a half-tuned radio.

Kamasi Washington - Heaven And Earth

Honestly thank god for Kamasi Washington. Thanks for getting me into jazz in the first place and thankyou for making the only popular jazz in 2018 that isn't pretending to be from some other time. There's nothing throwback or vintage about it - it's right here right now music on a massive scale.

Pusha T - Daytona

What I love about Pusha T is where other rappers drug dealing braggadocio can normally be dismissed as just that, Pusha T always feels like he's putting a hand on your shoulder and assuring you that he moves drugs in industrial quantities and will have you killed for even slightly inconveniencing him. He's terrifying. I'm still furious this album is 20 minutes long and the idea that this apparently isn't the long awaited masterwork King Push scares the hell out of me because how much better could he get?

Parquet Courts - Wide Awake!

I love this album more every time I listen to it. It's got such a diversity of styles within its framework that it sometimes feels like 13 different writers for the same band which I absolutely love.

Beach House - 7

I am constantly impressed with the way Beach House can continually find something fresh and beautiful in their limited palette. At this point they've absolutely mastered it and the complete control shows.

City Calm Down - Echoes In Blue 

City Calm Down are so good and I'm furious I haven't seen them live yet. This album is a masterpiece front to back and it feels like it definitely didn't get the reception it deserved. It doesn't even have a damn wiki article. Please listen to this album and also write a wiki article for it.

Justice - Woman Worldwide

This feels like Justice's masterwork in a sense - effortlessly bringing their three pretty disparate albums into one immense party. A live album without the crowd noise, it feels like a private arena show.

Overall a very good year. Also I haven't finished writing up my December playlist yet because I've been busy (no I haven't) so look out for that in the next little while.​

[future-critical-blog]

How Pacing Fucked Steven Universe

Note: this is anonymous because I know what will happen!

Steven Universe is without a doubt one of the best shows I've ever seen. It's certainly the best cartoon series I've ever watched. The first four series, and a large amount of the fifth, are truly wonderful.

So, I'm going to be entitled and complain about the last little bit that didn't work for me. I got all those hundreds of episodes, and I’m just going to take a moment to really honk about the stuff I don't like.

Because we live in an age where Nazis are back, feminists think trans woman are the biggest threat they face and the world is burning - at this point, a bit of a moan about Steven Universe/Future will get lost I think.

Bear in mind: this comes from a place of love. I care about Steven and the characters because they took me on an amazing journey that really had an emotional impact on me. Then they tripped me right at the end, and now they're fuck-twaddling around taking up space in my brain that should be used for thinking about how great the show is.

This is about how the inability to wrap Steven Universe properly sucks and undermines all the amazing work the creators put into it. Now, that work hasn't gone anywhere: I can, and will, re-watch the series to reminisce about it. About what could have happened. Nobody has taken that away from me.

But still, there's nothing worse than a story that buggers up the ending. Worse yet, that ending is still going in Steven Universe: Future.

So what's the problem? Let's start.

Pacing, pathos and atmosphere

Things used to be teased, hinted and slowly revealed. Steven Universe used to a slow-burn that really built things up with the even-hand of a masterful storyteller.  Remember that long shot at the end of 'On the Road', after the characters leave? We see just the empty, sinister kindergarten whilst a discordant note builds in the background before... bang, credits. It builds atmosphere and tension.

What happened to that? Slowly building a feeling, weaving a narrative, and taking us on an emotional journey? We got a very rushed pay-off to all this with Series 5. The crew thought the show wouldn't be renewed, so they made the executive decision to wrap it all up.

·       Everyone’s fixed now. Pearl, Garnet, Amethyst, Steven.

·       Diamonds are friendly now. Blue got sad, Yellow got angry and White got… put in her place by a comeback?

·       The bubbled gems/corrupted monsters are all fixed.

·       The Off-Colours and Lars just got home.  No further adventures, they just got home.

Bits got missed out. Things got rushed. Homeworld, the Diamonds and five series of build-up got dealt with in the space of 40 minutes. For comparison, just Series 1 alone was 8 hours long.

Yeah, the network created that situation. You're cancelled! They seemed to say. No you're not! HA! They continued.  But it still sucks, narratively, and the creators are now compounding that problem by trying to go back and add in the bits they missed.

Worse, there's no pacing now because there’s no more overall story.  No atmosphere. Fundamentally, post Change Your Mind, everything is done. The series was wrapped up.  All we have left now is some loose-ends and Steven being moody.

It came back mostly just to tie up random ends. But more of something isn't always good: Series 1-4 and about half of Series 5 are amazing. We shouldn't clap and applaud we get more just because it's more for its own sake, we should cheer things for being good in their own right.

I don't just want more meep morp, I want the morp to have something to say and to mean something. Victory laps and adding unnecessary lore is pointless: characters and emotion are what drive stories.

This isn't about 'filler' episodes as such, nor is it about breaks and hiatuses. It's about spreading the story arc (and the individual elements within that arc) correctly over the allotted time. A story that takes 700 pages to set up, only to be resolved in 3 pages feels badly unbalanced - I'm looking at you, Stephen King. And that's exactly the problem Steven Universe has. The set-up is incredible, and the payoff is badly disappointing. That's pacing.

Being the Underdog

This was covered nicely, if ironically in hindsight, with the episode ‘Historical Friction’.  The play about olde-time mayor William Dewey was utterly uninteresting until Pearl rewrote the play’s script to make him an underdog.  This is part of pacing. It's dull to watch a winner win constantly. The characters need to be in situations where they're facing actual threats, otherwise we're just watching a series of foregone conclusions unfold.

What would Lord of the Rings look like if the Hobbits just marched from The Shire to Orodruin, with no setbacks or problems, and then just lobbed the One Ring into the fire? What's the point of the story? It'd be like a grand-scale version of watching someone go out for groceries.  Nobody wants to watch that, not really: you can go to the supermarket and see it if you’re that interested!

This couples with suspension of disbelief. Usually, the good guys win. We know they're going to win. We need to be able to suspend our disbelief, and that's something that the pacing and storytelling need to enable. We need to be able to get caught in the story, even though we know everything will probably work out by the end.

When you get it just right, even the creators don’t know for sure everything will be alright.  Remember when Picard was assimilated by The Borg?  Even the writers weren’t 100% sure how it would play out, because Patrick Stewart was playing hardball with the studio at the time over his contract.  There was a chance this could have been the end of his character.

But Steven isn't an underdog anymore. He's a bossy, self-important grump with a martyr complex. He wins all the time, not least of all because of the pacing problems. By this point:

·       Steven has healing powers that can literally bring people back to life

·       He has all the powers of a Diamond

·       He has the backing of the three other diamonds

·       He now has an army of friends who will fight at his side

So where is the story to tell? Consider, in Steven Universe: The Movie, Greg's arm gets hurt by the injector. There's no danger, no worry. We know Steven has healing powers. So why bother showing it? It's about as relevant or interesting as watching Greg brush his hair.

There’s no danger.  There’s no suspension of disbelief because the hero is now so super-powered.

This is even worse when coupled with the uneven pacing: when something takes so long to be painstakingly set up, only to be knocked down in a heartbeat, then why get invested in it?  The 21st Century reboot of Doctor Who falls into this trap a lot: multipart episodes about a Dalek (or whatever) invasion… but luckily their Evil Machine has a ‘reverse’ switch that fixes everything. Dust hands, job done. All that build-up utterly squandered on an almost supernaturally fast resolution.

You Need a Story to Tell

The first five series have a definite story. It gets rushed, badly, come series 5 but there is still a story. That is done now: there's no grand, overarching tale now. We're very much into 'oh, what if...' territory.

What's the problem with that? Things get missed, because they don't need to fit into a cohesive whole. They just happen because they're cool.

Consider The Movie:

·       Spinel goes from a cuddly, professional buddy to a would-be mass-murderer

·       Spinel knows where to find a stupidly powerful injector

·       She knows how to work it

·       It is tuned to work to her 'trumpet' sound

·       It is shaped like her gemstone

·       She knows specifically where Earth is

·       She knows how to fly a massive injector, with no obvious engines, to Earth

·       This all happens in an afternoon

And the explanation we're given, after the event in a Q&A session? It's because Spinel and Pink Diamond were close. That is supposed to explain the entirety of those bullet points. It rankles me because it's not truthful. Those questions aren't answered by that, they're answered by 'because we thought it would be cool'. It's an unsatisfying explanation, but it's true and they’ve tried to handwave it into something else.

It's also what happens when you run out of proper story. Sure, you can still come up with little adventures but there's no big narrative anymore. There is no large picture for everything to fit into.

That’s dangerous territory. Not only does it lead to weird scenarios, but it also starts generating new lore at a maddening amount. The fans don't help this, it seems to me that some people purely watch Steven Universe to demand moar fusions, moar songs and moar lore.  Even when that’s all they get, it’s not enough.

It's like demanding more swimming pools in your home because you're bored with foundations.  Sooner or later the whole structure falls down because swimming pools can’t hold a house up.  Neither can lore hold a story up: stories are about characters.

Similarly, the concept of 'fusion' relies on characters otherwise it's nothing more than the character dumps we used to get in toy-driven franchises back in the 80s. Songs have to have an emotional resonance otherwise they're just empty pop.

Remember the X-Files? How they got into a rut just generating series after series with no pay-off, but lots more wrinkles to an already convoluted story? Then it got to the end and... you can't end it. It's too sprawling, too stupid and too contradictory. That's where lore without a story takes you. Lore has to serve a vision, not the other way around.

Filler

Not filler the way it's come to mean to SU fans. I like the 'boardie' episodes - they're full of interesting characters and ground Steven's world in something resembling ours. No, I mean filler in terms of stories that don't mean anything: the characters don't learn anything, the world isn't made any more interesting. Things just happen in a self-contained bubble with no payoff or consequence.

In itself, that's fine. Some episodes are like that. If that were the only aspect to 'filler' episodes in SU, then who cares? The problem is the pacing. After glacial teasing, hinting and laying down groundwork... things get wrapped up so fast it'll make your head spin.

·       The cluster? We talked it into staying bubbled.

·       The Diamonds? They're fine now.

·       Bismuth? Steven chatted to her.

·       Lapis? She's sort-of fine, but not really.

·       Spinel? Sent to live on a farm.

These are all things that took many, many lines of dialogue and building to create and were knocked down in the space of a couple of sentences.

This is where the 'filler' comes in. Instead of another story about Onion being weird, why not devote it to tying up the plot in a way that feels paced properly? Instead of answering questions about Watermelon Stevens, why not draw-out a little more the actual conclusion to a big story point?

Why do I think Onion and Watermelon Stevens should be singled out for Calvary? Simple: they have no explanation and don't matter. They don't matter to the day-to-day lives of the characters or the world. They serve no narrative purpose. They don't advance other characters' arcs. They don't ground the world they inhabit. They turn up, do 'stuff' in a little bubble and then go back into the toybox until the next Onion episode.

As a side note, I would lay a lot of money that Onion will never get any sort of pay-off. He doesn't age. He's deeply bizarre. He's apparently a wanted criminal. He's terrifying. And I don't think for an instant he will ever get a reason for being any of those things: he'll just carry on as a quirky in-joke and take up episode space because apparently that is a story-telling priority now.

Songs

Songs are sung when something is too important for the characters to just say it. The song needs an emotional resonance, to show what a character feels effectively. Contrast 'That Distant Shore' to 'Independent Together': one is about a deep longing and sadness for a home the character has never had. The other is a soft-rock ballad about how great stuff is when you can be your own self but also be with other people... or something.

See the resonance that the former has, and that the latter lacks? Whether you like Lapis or Steg, or the songs, is irrelevant to the story and the characters. One song has something to say, the other is there for the sake of giving fanservice. Independent Together isn't something so important to say that the characters feel they need to sing it.

This really kicks off around the middle of Series 5. Previously, songs were a special event. Now, they're commonplace. Even in Mr. Greg, a fully musical episode back in Series 3, the songs have so much emotion. Plus, Mr. Greg is an experiment: 11 minutes, mostly held together by 6 solid songs:

·       Don't Cost Nothing: how much Greg and Steven just love one another.

·       Empire City: how excited they are to go on a trip together

·       Mr. Greg: Pearl almost lets her guard down, then realises and shuts down.

·       It's Over Isn't It? : A heartbroken character sings for a life they never had.

·       Both of You: A child shows the two adults they have something special in common.

·       Don't Cost Nothing: reprised as a coda.

I won't pretend that all those songs have a huge emotional impact, but they do all serve part of the story arc. You can see it there: the status quo, the trigger, the choice, the quest, the showdown, the resolution and the new status quo. Couple that with the fact that at least 4 of those songs (counting Don't Cost Nothing and its reprise) do have a very real emotional punch, you've got a great episode.

All in 11 minutes.

That's the level of truly amazing, genius storytelling we're working with. Now contrast that to the 1hr 20m of Steven Universe The Movie:

·       The Tale of Steven: A prelude to a re-cap song

·       Once Upon a Time: a re-cap song

·       Let Us Adore You: The Diamonds are emotionally disturbed and co-dependent! How adorable!

·       Happily Ever After: The status quo. Also another bloody re-cap.

·       Other Friends: The trigger! Not huge emotional resonance, but up-beat and plot-relevant.

·       system/BOOT.PearlFinal(3): The quest.

·       Who We Are: NICE. This one has emotional impact and says something important.

·       Isn't It Love?: A Garnet re-cap. So at this point we're recapping what we re-capped when we recapped the re-cap. Lost yet?

·       No Matter What: Again, NICE. Emotional relevance and says something about Amethyst and Steven.

·       Disobedient: Kate Micucci hadn't been given anything to do yet?

·       Independent Together: Aimee Mann brought a friend! Can he have a job and some dollarydoos?

·       Drift Away: CHARACTER. PUNCH. PATHOS. It's here, folks. They can do it!

and so on.

See the pattern? For every one song that brings what we saw in Mr. Greg, there are at least four that are there just because. Because we thought it'd be cool. Because we needed more tunes to fill the runtime. Mr. Greg achieved more in 11 minutes than Steven Universe: The Movie achieved in over 80 minutes.

What's the reason? The Movie doesn't really have a story to tell. It's a victory lap. It's not bad: it's fine. Bits of it are simply excellent. But this is what happens when you stop having a big, cohesive narrative arc that you're trying to bring together.

Characters

Characters grow and evolve. Specifically, they have arcs. Just like the plot as a whole, and just like the subplots that compose it.  Generally, the stages are:

·       A status quo (Luke on Tattoine)

·       A trigger (his Aunt and Uncle die)

·       A critical choice (he leaves to become a Jedi)

·       A quest (the adventure)

·       A climax (the fight at the Death Star)

·       A turnaround (the Death Star is destroyed!)

·       A new status quo (the Rebels are ready to take on the next challenge)

SU gave most of its characters arcs broadly representative of this. The problem is, once those arcs were done the characters got put back in their boxes. They were 'fixed' and that was it. Amethyst's arc probably worked best: it spread over most of the first five series and felt like a real progression. Hence her fusion with Steven (Smokey Quartz) felt 'earnt'.

Pearl doesn't really grow or evolve much at all until Series 5. Ditto Garnet. Lapis is basically the same throughout the show: she broods, runs away and then comes back because of Steven's coaxing.

So, it’s back to my main drumbeat: its pacing is badly off. Some things take their good time and evolve naturally, others are wrapped up quickly and cast aside. Examples:

·       Peridot worked to become friends with the CG. She had a character arc that took half a series.

·       The Diamonds: it mostly turned on a sixpence in the 2nd half of Change Your Mind. Off-screen they then became annoying relatives, rather than murderous galactic tyrants.

Why does this matter? Well, most of the characters are now 'done'. Pearl is no longer co-dependent. Ruby and Sapphire know they're together (as Garnet) for love. Amethyst no longer hates herself. Peridot is a sweet (albeit socially clumsy) sidekick. Lapis is... well, the same as she's always been but seems happier with it now?

How do you tell more stories when your characters are already done? When the veg is cooked, you can't put it back on the hob because you've decided you want dinner prep to take longer.

SU keeps wrapping things up, believing they're 'done', then getting more time and needing to draw it out. This means either dawdling around with characters not going anywhere (which feels like either a smug victory lap or just something for its own sake) or actively unpicking their development.

Scrubs, in my view, is the poster child for the latter option: the show's cancelled, quick wrap up JD; Elliot; Dr. Cox; Carla; Turk etc! Oh no, we got another series! Undo the happily-ever-after so we can do more stuff!

That's why the pacing, particularly around characters and where they're going, matters.

Fusion

Fusion is the absolute biggest muddle of a metaphor. Is it friendship? Understanding? Sex? All? None? In any case, it used to be meaningful. Fusion meant something, even if that something would vary depending on the characters and the circumstance.

It took special effort to do: characters had to synchronise themselves through dance, to bring their thoughts together to fuse.

Now? It happens at the drop of a hat. No synching, no dancing. Fanwank it away any way you like: the characters are all 'fixed' now, they all trust each other, whatever. Fusion now doesn't mean anything because it takes no effort: pop here's Sunstone, pop here's Smokey, pop here's Opal. The fusions have just become like alter-egos that take no more effort than a quick-change in a phone booth.

And then there's Steg. Yeah, I get it: he represents the familial love between father and son. But why is he so built? Why does he look like some sort of sex-god? I'm a long way from a prude - it's just weird is all. A 16 year old boy + his middle aged father + the memory of the mother/wife shouldn't create a weird Adonis! But let me set that aside: the true problem with Steg is we had no build-up. Greg and Steven didn't talk about it, Steven just suggests fusing (through whispered dialogue we don't hear) and then it just happens.

Steg also isn't saved by being an interesting exploration of either Steven or Greg. He's fanservice. Fans wanted more fusions and more 'what if so-and-so fused!!' so they got it. He has 0 character. Just like Sunstone has no character beyond being an 'after school special'. Rainbow Quartz 2.0 has no character, aside from being chipper and cockney.

Contrast that to Smokey Quartz. Smokey is a delightful, self-deprecating scamp. She has a definite personality and stood up to a full interview with Sardonyx.  Smokey has enough of a character that it would be possible for her to act out-of-character.  What would out-of-character look like for Rainbow or Sunstone?  Provided it was cartoon-English and early 90s cartoon dialogue (respectively) it could be anything.

What happened? Fusions used to be characters, they used to have personalities that couldn't be written down on a postage stamp in luggage marker.

The answer is the story ran-out. The characters are all fixed now - so there's no emotional or narrative drive for their relationships. Hence the concept of fusion is now just serving fans who want to see 'what if' combinations of characters.

Too Many Endings

I’ve touched on this already, but here it is again.

The problem with wrapping up a show is you put all the pieces away as well as you can, and implicitly make work for yourself if it is not the end. You've just set up a load of strawmen you need to kick over if you decide you've got more story to tell.

That's what happened here. Change Your Mind ended it. Except it didn't, so we went back and unpicked what we could. Even though everyone is basically fixed now and the characters have no real growth or underdog-fight. Then The Movie ended it. Except it didn't, so we went back and unpicked what we could. Even though everyone is still basically fixed.

Will Future be the end?  Probably not.

That's why Steven is now a moody little jackass with a hero complex - we needed some conflict to drive what little plot there is, which exists only as a vehicle for tying up loose plot threads (Jasper!) we left out because of how rushed the first ending was.

It's a bit like when you misspell something, then you go back over it with your biro. But now it looks unclear. So you go over it a few more times to make sure it's clear. But now it looks like someone took a biro and leaked half the ink onto the page. The very act of trying to tidy it has made it less clear.

A Special Note About Garnet

This isn't about pacing, but whilst I'm on the moan I'll leave this here.

I feel wicked for this. Garnet is a brilliant character. I love Estelle: she brings Garnet so well to life. Any LGBT representation in a cartoon is rare and amazing, and we need more. But Garnet also sucks.

Why?

She's a metaphor. She's a metaphor for being gay and together in love. She is a symbol of a same-sex relationship.  On a side-note: yes Gems don't have gender technically, but let’s not be wilful here: they have female-coded designs and the subtext is so obvious as to barely be subtext.

It's nearly 2020. We're now 20 years into the 21st Century. 2001 A Space Odyssey was set 20 years ago.  First contact between Zephram Cochrane and the Vulcans is now only 43 years away.  And we can still only talk about gay (or, God forbid, bi or transgender) characters in children’s' media through metaphor. I cannot emphasise enough how utterly shitty that is, and how glacial progress has been.

Now, that isn't SU's fault. However, what is SU fault is their clever (and I mean that genuinely) ploy to sneak a same-sex couple into the show means that we don't see them as a same-sex couple 95% of the time. They're hidden. Ruby and Sapphire's love and relationship literally lives under a disguise called Garnet.

And that sucks. It makes sense as a plan. It's great we have Garnet. Garnet is still amazing. But she also sucks, because she acts as invisibility for the lesbian couple she represents.  Yeah, that’s some tough mental gymnastics to work that cognitive dissonance but I managed it.

My God, I Get It: You're a Cat Person

This is also nothing to do with pacing, it's just a creator conceit that bugs me. I freely admit it's also piddly and petty.

So: I'm not a cat person. And no, it's not because I haven't met your adorable little Tiddles or whatever. I don't hate cats, it’s just that most of the cats I've ever met are simply ghastly little shits. Their owners, through some mental blind spot; ancient Egyptian curse or brain parasite have become convinced that these hairball-gobbing, furniture-shredding, wildlife-destroying little cunts are angels. Somehow they've convinced themselves everything they do is adorable.

No amount of murdered birds or small mammals change their minds.

I've met, officially, two nice cats in my life and I treasure their memories. The rest can go to hell.

Why does this matter to SU? Cat Steven. Lion. Peridot and Amethyst doing little kitty-mouths when they're being cute. My God, crew, you love cats. I got the memo.

Why does that work me up? Well, do you know what I'd like instead? If a tiny amount of that 'cats are brilliant!' energy went into a proper wrap for Pumpkin. Created by Jessie Zuke and obviously a puppy metaphor... what happened to her? The crew don't care, because they won't tell us. If they cared even a jot it would have a story around it. Instead, we got some half-arsed bullshit from Joe Johnston about 'pumpkins don't last forever' and... scene. That's it.

But Cat Steven, OMG, yes we have to make sure to include him. Whenever we're at the Beach House. Especially if Garnet is there. Because... lesbians all love cats? Or something? Just... CATS. MOAR CATS.

Couldn't you show a little more respect for a character, albeit a not particularly important one, rather than worrying about how much airtime the various cats all get?

In Conclusion

It bears restating, this is mostly ire directed at Series 5 onwards. The other series are all still there, and I can watch them to reminisce. I can still enjoy some truly wonderful episodes of just about the best cartoon I've ever seen. This show is incredible... but the endings kinda suck. And that's down, mostly, to pacing. And how it kinda fucked Steven Universe.

[hazyheel]

10 Ways WWE can improve their weekly TV

WWE has a bit of a problem on their hands: the other major wrestling promotions around the world are making a serious run at their product. New Japan has proved on several occasions that they can sell out buildings in the United States, and their incredibly powerful alliance with Ring of Honor, RevPro and CMLL gives them a huge talent pool to work with, without overexposing them. Lucha Underground (if it is staying afloat) is an interesting alternative to a lot of main stream wrestling due to its unique style of storytelling. Impact Wrestling has been improving steadily since the beginning of 2018, and they are becoming a bigger threat every year. And of course, AEW is premiering next month, and indy fans are already saying that they will revolutionize the wrestling business, and could even bring a new form of the Monday Night Wars. Now, I don’t know how accurate that is, but WWE needs to be concerned about these other companies. The reason why I took a week or two off of WWE in March was because I was watching the New Japan Cup, and I couldn’t even stand watching Raw or Smackdown because of the high quality of wrestling I was watching every day. That is a serious problem that I couldn’t watch their programing because I knew it would be a lot worse than a competitor. It will be a while before WWE falls to another company, but they need to get ahead of the curve on this. Several companies are coming for their position as number 1, and the first step to defending their turf is improving Raw, Smackdown, and hell, even NXT and Main Event. 

1. Make Raw 2 hours again: this point has been beaten to death, but that is because it sooooooooo needs to happen. A 3 hour show is incredibly difficult to watch every week, and we end up watching a bunch of low card matches that we do not care about, and the people that we do care about get overexposed because they need to be on the show every week. 205 Live and NXT work really well, because their talent does not wrestle every week, which gives them a sense of specialness and mystery that is not present on the main roster. So, why two hours instead of one like the “developmental” brands? Well, those brands simply couldn’t sustain a monthly pay per view schedule with that little air time. It works perfectly for the bi-monthly schedule of NXT Takeover, but they could not do 12 big shows a year. So, a two hour show for Raw, where all of the important storylines and title scenes are addressed in each episode, will be enough to craft good stories.

2. Form some stables: this is a very New Japan style, but there is a reason it works. Forming some large stables in WWE would give a tangible reason to put lower and midcard guys on the show. Put them in a big, multi person tag match when they need to fill time. This creates the option to have feuds between stables, allowing for actual reasons for interesting feuds on the undercard, without matches getting too competitive. It also provides relationships between wrestlers, a necessity for interesting storytelling that is not used nearly as much as it should be. In a bigger tag match, it allows for lower card guys to wrestle possible main eventers. It even would help for pay per views, giving an organic style of match to put on the pre-show: a fun 6 or 8 man tag between stables, possibly with big stars on the teams who don’t have anything real to do at the show. It shows good wrestling without showing off major storylines for free. Moving away from the booking for a bit, putting these less popular wrestlers on the show more in a capacity that fans may care about means that they have less of a reason to jump ship to another company. There are a lot of diverse benefits to creating a larger atmosphere of gang warfare, not unlike the way things were in the late 90′s

3. Clean up the announce team: another point that has been beat to death, but I am so damn sick of a three person team. There is better chemistry in a two person booth, again creating a relationship for fans to enjoy, while allowing the commentators to have organic conversation without feeling the need to chime in. Renee Young and Corey Graves have great chemistry together, and it pains me to say that Michael Cole gets in the way of that, often. He is just redundant on the team. The same goes for Byron Saxton and Aiden English. Saxton sucks, so Tom Phillips and Corey Graves would be a fun and refreshing commentary team without Saxton desperately trying to get Graves to respect him. Vic Joseph and Nigel McGuiness work great together on NXT UK, so there is no reason why they can’t on 205 Live as well. As for NXT, I actually like the team they have, but Nigel McGuiness doesn’t really need to be there. Percy Watson and Mauro Renallo would be fine on their own. Also, going in a bit of a random direction, the main roster commentators need to take a page out of NXT’s book of announcing a match or two for next week, to get fans excited a week before the match even happens. I always liked that, but it is really just a random suggestion. A two person booth genuinely works better. And though I criticized Michael Cole, that does not mean that I don’t have an idea for him outside of commentary.

4. Very professional General Managers: Drake Maverick, William Regal and Johnny Saint are phenomenal in their performances as GM. Smackdown and Raw really need something like that. This is where Cole comes in. He, as a professional babyface, would be a welcome change to the constant annoyance that is the presence of an authority figure at every turn. Cole could run the show from behind the scenes, appearing for important segments but nothing more. I think that the McMahons have far overstayed their welcome, although having them around for a few weeks at a time to abuse power is a pretty good idea. But in between those stretches, Cole has a good idea of how to come across as an authority, and he has a subtle charisma about him that would benefit him in that role. He isn’t the kind of guy WWE would want to shove down our throats, and that is the kind of GM Raw and Smackdown need right now. 

5. Fewer non-finishes: these are just infuriating, and they happen all the time. Now, not every count out is necessarily a non finish, but DQ’s tend to be, and they are maddening. I would even lump in the distraction-roll-up finish in here too, because that is waaaaaay overdone. I mean, shouldn’t the faces of the company start to realize what their rivals are doing by playing their music? I hate when the heroes just look dumb. Non-finishes is mostly just a lazy storytelling crutch, and they should be fazed out for competitive matches with actual booking.

6. Better main events: I am just kinda sick of rushed together main events that don’t end up meaning anything. WWE is normally pretty decent with this on Smackdown, but Raw’s main events seem to be repetitive and boring. Why watch a throwaway match like Baron Corbin vs. Rey Mysterio when there was a tag team championship match earlier in the night? That seems ass backwards. WWE needs to respect their belts more, and that includes those in the midcard. If there is a championship match on the card, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be the main event. It will give the final match of the night a sense of stake, and it will elevate the belts. The tag titles are never in the main event slot, and they would get a huge bump for being in that top slot on Raw. Better booking of the main events, in ways that aren’t so repetitive and pointless, will help the shows overall.

7. Keeping track of wins and losses. Because then, we will be able to understand how people are progressively moving towards a title belt. Keeping track of the wins and losses in this manner will give the audience a real sense of where things are going. It will make random title matches and open challenges feel a bit more like a great opportunity, because anyone could challenge even if they aren’t on the list. It will also be an interactive thing with the fans. It will be easier to show people on the rise as they go from contender 5 to number 1. It will just be an easier way to book Becky Lynch’s meteoric rise to the women’s championship, because people could follow it. It will make things feel like a real sport, and that is a good thing in a product that feels oddly in between a sport and soap opera.

8. Weekly press conferences with the on screen GM’s. Speaking of making things feel more like sports, this is a very interesting way to progress storylines. Gm’s come out for a little press conference things, and fake reporters ask questions in kayfabe about certain stories. For example, if there was an attack backstage on Raw, a reporter can ask about it, and the GM can talk about what he or she will do, such as keeping them apart for the night, or booking them in a match. This will be an interesting way to keep on screen authorities involved in the shows without really shoving them down our throats all the time. We don’t need to see someone like William Regal every week, because he will show up on this show and talk about the various feuds. It could also be a great way for champions, or controversial superstars to have a place to cut a promo. It will feel very professional, and interesting, to see the champions speak about their various feuds and such. And yes, an extra hour for fans to watch on the network could be tedious, but given that we are rolling back an hour for Raw, I am not too worried.

9. Use stipulation matches correctly. WWE is very weird about how they book stipulation matches. A few years ago when I started watching, they would not often book a stipulation match, but when they did, it could be anything from a no DQ match to a cage match. This era was around 2011-2012. Then I stopped watching, and I picked up again in early 2017. And boy was there a change on TV. They do more stipulation matches now, but almost all of them are multi-man matches. They happen about once every 2 weeks, whether it is on Raw or Smackdown. And I am not opposed to things like this happening, I just don’t think we need it as often as we are getting it. A good example of a triple threat was on the Smackdown after Elimination Chamber 2017. Now, if you don’t remember, Bray Wyatt won the WWE championship in the chamber that night, and it was only 2 weeks after John Cena beat AJ styles for it at the Royal Rumble. So, on Smackdown, Cena wanted a rematch, and AJ wanted a more fair rematch than he got the sunday before. So, they booked a triple threat main event. That makes sense. But last year and bleeding into this year, they have been throwing together multi-man and multi-team matches to fill out the card and get a lot of bodies on the show. And I understand that impulse to do that,  but it devalues those types of matches and makes them feel a lot less special. When they happen in New Japan, it feels like a huge occasion, because the happen so infrequently. So, if WWE wants multi person matches to feel interesting and special, we can’t have them every two weeks. But at the same time, throwing in a different type of stipulation every once in a while spices things up.

10. Make NXT a real brand. Triple H has already gone on record saying that he wanted to make this a reality, so why not go for it? Given the crazy amount of talent on each roster, having a third brand that is equal but different would really help. If a superstar is too overexposed on the main roster, draft them to NXT. Down there, they feel special, and can get their mojo back. Same goes for 205 live, if a superstar is a cruiserweight. But say someone like Finn Balor or Ricochet or Johnny Gargano just do not work on the main roster, 205 live will give them a fresh start. Now, I get that is disappointing to a lot of people, but given the quality of 205 Live lately, it would only make it and the superstars better. Then they can do some interesting things with titles crossing brands and such, maybe even an NXT vs. Smackdown show or something. It is just interesting.

So, that is how I would improve WWE tv. Not all of these things need to go together, although some of them do, but each one of them would definitely help. Hopefully, WWE can start to implement these and make their shows even better.

[spideyxchelle]

so, zendaya and tom holland were at the oscars this last weekend. and so, uh, this happened. because they looked incredible on the red carpet. mood music

tw: some implied sexual activity

when peter gets into USC for film he cries. that is the home of Spielberg and Lucas, the halls where Ron Howard walked. it makes directors.

he had always wanted to be a director. from the time he was a little kid he sat behind his shitty camera that he dumpster dived for and made dumb movies with his friends. and some of those dumb movies got a bit of a production value jump when he joined the AV CLUB in high school. and some of those dumb movies were good enough to be submitted to USC. and some of those dumb movies were good enough to get him in.

when peter stops crying long enough to breathe, the oxygen that rushes to his brain shocks him into reality. he is going to be going to LA to study film. and maybe, just maybe, one day he’ll be a director.

the four years at USC are gruelling and exhausting and wonderful. everyday is better than the last. he’s surrounded by movie magic.

and then graduation breathes down his back and he’s suddenly terrified because he’s made some high quality students films at USC (the amount of money the film school has is criminal) but students films don’t make him a director. they make him a dreamer like everyone else in Hollywood.

and for some unknown, maddening reason, the closer they get to graduation the more and more it looks like everyone he knows has a plan for post-graduation except him. they have PA jobs, or have lower-level work at studios, or have internships. its like he missed the memo on how to make his dreams into a reality.

which is why he starts writing Until I Fade Out. it’s a character driven film of his own creation. in all his time at USC his writing classes were always a burden to him. he had to take them to graduate but he never liked  them. he never felt like he had a voice, like he had something to say. and now all he has is the anxiety and the pressure of making a name for himself by 25 and the horrible nightmare of failing to succeed on paper compared to his classmates.

Until I Fade Out is refreshingly frank and honest and precious to peter. it becomes his refuge to talk about his fears. he graduates and keeps writing. and all of his friends start their industry jobs. and he keeps writing. three months after graduation its done. and he has blown all of his savings on the cost of living. he is jobless.

but he has a script and a vision and his passion is reborn. so he calls Ned, one of his buddies from school that took a job at WB after graduation. he is some executive’s assistant. but he was also one of the best writers he went to school with. he passes the script along to him asking for notes.

and he hears nothing for three weeks. until Ned shows up on his doorstep with a printed out copy of his script. “this, jesus-” he says without a hello, “you have to make this, peter.” and peter exhales. there is some traitorous anxiety he has been holding onto since he finished writing that finally withers away and dies. the fear that his work sucks. that no one would love it or want it. but Ned likes it.

and so, with Ned’s help he gets a relatively young producer to finance the film. and its not a lot of money at all. but people on indie films never have a lot of money to work with anyway, peter reasons. and all peter can hear when he gets the news that he’s been financed is that he gets to make his movie. the particulars don’t matter.

the very next thing he does is call Cindy. they went to school together. she was the cinematographer on all of his student films. and she is doing PA work for some freeform show that she hates. but the money is consistent, shitty but consistent.

so she isn’t convinced quitting her job to work on a three month indie shoot is a good idea. in fact, she tells him she adores him but she doesn’t want to shoot herself in the foot and get blacklisted in hollywood. so he tells her to read his script. and then decide.

and that’s when it happens. when Michelle Jones finds out about the project. Michelle Jones is a relatively popular young Hollywood actress. but she is at the teeny bopper stage of her career. nothing “serious” will look at her. and she happens to be one of the series regulars on Cindy’s crappy show.

and, as fate would have it, Cindy leaves peter’s script on the Kraft services table during lunch. and Michelle picks it up and takes it back to her trailer. she reads it. she loves it. and the watermark on the script has Cindy’s name on it so it isn’t hard for Michelle to find her and approach her about it.

Cindy has been looking for the missing script all afternoon when Michelle hands it back to her, “looking for this?” Cindy exhales and then gets immediately star struck, “uh, yes. Thank you.” “what’s this?” Michelle asks. Cindy is alarmed by a starlet of any caliber talking in her direction, “my, uh, friend Peter’s movie. just got financed by some guy at WB. but, like, its not a WB film. it’s a little indie film. like, the producer put his own money in it. I’m sorry, I, uh, didn’t even know you knew my name.” Michelle smiles warmly, “uh, you get my coffee for me, like, five times a day. I’d be a dick if I didn’t. besides, there are practically no women on this set so I make it a habit of learning all their names. so, why do you have the script?” Cindy gawks, like she cannot believe this whole day is happening to her, “he wants me to be the cinematographer on it.”

without blinking, Michelle advises her, “do it.” Cindy sputters, “excuse me?” “its good,” Michelle glances down at the script in Cindy’s arms, “and tell your friend, Peter was it? tell him if he’s looking for someone to play Tisha, well, I’ll make the time.”

when Cindy recounts this story to peter, all three of them (cindy, peter and ned) all freak the fuck out. and then, almost immediately peter comes to the conclusion that she was just being nice or whatever. because there is no way michelle jones is going to sign to his nothing of a movie.

except that is not what happens. when cindy goes to work the next day to quit because she has a little film she wants to be the cinematographer for, michelle stops her on her way walking off set. her hair is halfway done and she’s out of breath. “fuck,” she groans, “you move fast. I’ve been calling your name for like two whole minutes.” Cindy stares at her, “um. Sorry?” “no,” michelle shakes her head, “its cool. look, I saw you leaving and I have to ask. are you doing that movie?” cindy nods. Michelle grins, “that’s good. great even. I’m happy for you. and uh, hang on, take my number. if he can’t find anyone for Tisha…please…call me. I’m in the middle of shooting the season but I’d shoot on the weekends or late nights. whatever. just, keep me in mind. don’t forget.”

and peter hardly believes it. but he does forget about the Michelle Jones encounter. because they have two and a half months of preproduction that have to happen. they have to hire crew and scout locations and rent equipment. and all on a tiny ass budget. but once it looks like the movie is actually going to happen, peter remembers he needs to hire actors.

because he needs to put people in front of the camera and, for some stupid reason, he can’t help but remember michelle. its been nearly three months. and shooting for her show should be going on hiatus soon. the thought of her actually working on his movie sounds…feasible.

so he does something recklessly stupid—he calls her.

the first conversation he has with Michelle Jones is awkward. because she is immediately on the defensive. when she picks up he says, “michelle?” and she snaps, “how did you get this number.” he flushes and tries to correct his mistake, “no. uh. I’m peter. peter parker. you know cindy. I mean gave cindy your number.” “who?” “Cindy- nevermind. look, she was a PA on your show. and you read my movie. and you told her you were interested in being in it. and I just…I shouldn’t have called.” he goes to hang up but she nearly shouts, “no, wait. I remember now. I remember your movie. Until I Fade Out.” “yeah.” “yes,” she says. “oh sorry, of course, yes.” “no,” she laughs and his heart stops, “I wasn’t correcting your yeah. I was saying I still want to do it. if that’s why you’re calling.”

he must black out for longer than five seconds because she starts repeating his name until he snaps back to reality. “I’m sorry,” he laughs, “did you just say you want to do my movie?” “yeah,” and he can hear the smirk in her voice, he can almost imagine it, too, “I go on hiatus in two weeks. if you can wait that long.” “yes,” he immediately says. and its not exactly true. they start shooting in five days. but he’s the director. and even if the rest of the crew hates him maybe they can adjust the schedule so they shoot scenes without her for the first week or so.

like he is in a city of dreams (because maybe he is), he makes plans with michelle jones to be in his movie. ned is going to have to help him with the legality of it. she’s union, after all, and she warns him that her agent is going to be furious. but she is going to be in his movie.

and her agents are not the only people that are furious. his crew is furious that he is moving the shooting schedule around to accommodate an add-on. and the friend of his from school that thought she was going to play Tisha is not thrilled either but these are the decisions a director makes.

oh fuck. he’s a director.

that really hits home when he walks on set the first day. and its barely a set. there are lights rigged and a camera set up in someone’s living room. but there are twenty people that all look at him like he’s the boss and that means he must be.

peter pulls off his baseball hat and smooths back his hair, “hi everyone.” they all smile at him. and he feels the same pressure he imagines every director must on their first day. but he pushes through those nerves and keeps it brief, “thank you all for joining me on this adventure. now, let’s make a kickass movie.” and just like that, he is directing a movie.

and Cindy makes every shot better than he could have ever imagined. her vision, her eyes, give every scene a heartbeat. he nearly kisses her at the end of the first day. instead, he buys her a drink and makes a toast between the two of them, “to our movie.” the smile she gives him back makes him feel like he can do this, they can do this.

after nearly a week of shooting, the crew already feels like a family. there is a lot of work that goes into every shot. people in hair and makeup have made it a fun little game to try and swipe glitter on the back of peter’s neck at the start of the day. the whole crew gets on the joke.

he loves his life.

and then, michelle jones shows up on set. she drives to the house they have been shooting a majority of the interior shots in. and when she steps out of her car, peter can hear his heart beating. he wonders if the rest of the crew can, too. it is early, she hasn’t been in HMU (hair and makeup) yet, so she looks like anyone else. if they were crafted from diamonds. “hi,” he nearly chokes, “I’m peter.” she grins from ear to ear and shakes his hand, “mj.” “mj,” he raises his eyebrow and stupidly keeps shaking her hand. she has to awkwardly pull her hand out of his, “yeah, no one really calls me michelle. at least not my friends. and we’re gonna be family the next three months so—” his chest melts, “lemme introduce you to everyone.”

and the crew loves her. it takes her exactly three shots for her to pick up on the put glitter on peter game. except she sucks at it. because every time she touches him, his flesh tingles and so he knows it was her. without even having to look.

as an actress she is receptive. as a member of the crew, she is a delight.

and peter waits only five days before he groans into his pillow and admits to himself that he has a major crush on her.

the movie is goes well. better than he could have ever imagined. the scenes are clicking. the crew is bringing to life his vision. and he starts to dread it being over. because nothing could ever be better than these three months. it makes him feel at home. they feel like home.

after shooting one night three days before the end of the shoot, michelle invites everyone back to her house. she lives in the Hollywood Hills. Ned makes a joke about her being afraid of the fires in the mountains. she raises her eyebrow and dares him, “you scared?”

everyone packs into cars and goes to address given. it is not a surprise to anyone that the house is incredible. not needlessly opulent but large and open, like it was always waiting for the crew to fill it with their love.

peter sits next to Cindy and she leans against him. when everyone is drinking and laughing and swapping stories, she whispers to peter, “thank you.” he looks down at her, “what?” “this experience has changed my life. I’ll spend forever chasing this, these moments.” peter sucks in a breath and squeezes her hand. “so thank you,” cindy adds. Peter shakes his head, “no, thank you. you’re behind the camera. I could never…I could never have done this without you. and I never want to. if we…if we get lucky enough to keep doing this…we should do it together. me and you. partners.” Cindy sits up and blinks at him in awe, “you mean it?” he nods, “you’re my eyes, cindy. I can’t work without my eyes.”

the moment is magic.

like, if he has cindy on side he could hold onto this kind of magic forever. he knew from the beginning she was the key. whatever he was looking for in his writing. she was the key to getting it filmed.

he catches mj’s eye across the room and she smiles. he becomes eternally grateful to cindy in that moment, too. because he brought michelle into his life.

he squeezes cindy’s hand and she gives him a knowing smile as he crosses to mj. michelle ducks out of the room and heads to the balcony overlooking Hollywood. he stands beside her and they are both quiet.

peter tries to come up with something meaningful to say but standing her with in silence is more than enough. he takes her hand on the railing and she sucks in a breath.

neither of them look at each other.

michelle speaks, “I’m glad I read your script that day.” “you mean when you stole it?” he jokes. he does not look at her but he knows she rolls her eyes, “agree to disagree on specifics.” he squeezes her fingertips, “me too.” she is breathless when she says, “isn’t this cliché? the director and his leading lady?” he finally does look at her. and she looks scared. it startles him. because mj is always so fearless. this is the same girl who, on set, tries to learn every department when she isn’t shooting. the same girl that has a secret handshake with the gaffers. she is michelle jones.

and she looks afraid. “what is it?” he whispers. “it won’t always feel like this,” she whispers, “we spend every day together but set isn’t like real life. when the movie ends you’ll…forget about me.” “no,” he shakes his head. she nods, “you will. and whatever this feeling you think you have now will fade. this is your first movie. you can’t tell the difference yet. but you will.” “mj, I won’t. I…you…I mean, wow.” she smiles sadly but unlocks their hands and heads inside without another word.

devastated is not a strong enough word for what he feels. but he has three days left to shoot and, damn it, he is going to do it. he is a professional. and if it hurts to look at mj sometimes, well, that is just the price of making art. your heart should always be in danger of being broken. otherwise it never matters, its never true.

the last shot they film of the movie, is a scene halfway through the script. Tisha and Bill, his protagonist, are just talking. they sit beside each other on the front steps of a house. and Bill talks about feeling stuck, about how he looks around at all of his friends and they all seem to have life figured out and he is desperately behind. these are peter’s words. the scared boy that wrote them just after graduation is now a man a little less than a year later. and he remembers how the words used to scare him, but they don’t anymore.

he watches michelle the entire last shot. he knows he shouldn’t. he should be watching for a hundred other things, but she captures him. and when the scene is done…he does not speak.

the whole crew looks at him. the actors stay in the moment, suspended and confused. and then, peter remembers himself and yells cut.

when he watches playback, cindy is crying and she wraps an arm around him. he squishes her back. their movie. they did it.

with a heavy heart, he looks at the crew and shrugs, “well, that’s a wrap.” and everyone applauds loudly.

they didn’t have money in the budget for a wrap party. so they turn set into their farewell. someone starts playing music and someone, he suspects wardrobe, pulls out drinks. and the night is nothing short of perfect.

once the set is broken down and everyone is spectacularly drunk, there is nothing left to do but say goodbye.

he saves michelle for last.

she approaches him for a hug and he eagerly complies. they cannot seem to let the other go. and he takes the moment to whisper in her ear, “thank you.” when they pull out of their hug she looks so startled it makes him smile. but only for a moment because then she is smiling back and knocking into his shoulder, “you did good, Parker.”

and in the next few months in post, he learns, fuck, he did. the movie is incredible. Abe, another friend from school, puts together a small post-production office. and with the help of that team and cindy, they cut together and mix a wonderful film. when they show it to their backer, the small time producer named Happy Hogan, he cries. and he asks for a copy to send to his boss, TONY FUCKING STARK.

Peter knows that the movie is more than a little special when Tony Stark calls him after he screens it to schedule a meeting with himself and peter. peter, of course, brings cindy. and it takes only fifteen minutes before tony tells him he wants to personally finance sending it to the festival circuit. Cannes, Sundance, AFI.

he calls to tell michelle but gets her voicemail. her show is shooting again. and she is suddenly impossible to reach. or at least for him. he knows she picks up cindy’s calls. he tries not to take it personally. but he fails.

and then, they attend their first festival.  AFI.

and he does a little press. but its only a few interviews. until his film screens. and all of the sudden all people can do at AFI is talk about his little movie. it wins Movie of the Year and shit explodes.

they take it to a dozen other festivals and it begins to win a plethora of awards. and then, people outside the festival circuit begin to talk about his little movie. and they want to talk to him about his little movie.

by August, the public is frothing at the mouth for his movie. they want to see it. so, Tony gets it to have a limited release in select cities. and the internet explodes. they love it. they’re fascinated by him.

they are, no surprise, in love michelle. The New York Times says her performance is, “played with dauntless and sometimes reckless charisma, Michelle Jones proves to be one of the, if not the, formidable actors of her generation.”

and the interviews don’t stop. in fact, there is one. one that hits him like a pile of bricks. it is the first interview he does with michelle when she joins the press tour.

“I find it rather remarkable,” the interviewer gushes, “that there is no love story in this film.” peter opens his mouth to speak but mj beats him to the punch, “I would disagree.” “so you think Tisha and-“ “no,” she shakes her head, “the movie is about learning to love yourself. about waking up and trying to be better than you were the day before. my generation, every generation, somehow thinks they have to be a roaring success at 25. that’s just not true.” the interviewer smirks, “but both of you are under 25 and experiencing an insane amount of success.”

“but,” mj counters, “this was our path. it doesn’t mean everyone else will have the same journey. nor should they. if you spend your time worrying about being better than someone else you forget to better yourself.”

peter loves her in that moment. maybe he always did. maybe he did that first moment she stepped out of her car on that first day. but he knows in this moment. he knows because she knows him. and all anyone can ever want from love and life is to be known. truly and deeply.

the interviewer looks to him. and peter shrugs, “I have nothing to add to that. she said it all.”

if he had more time, he might have also added that there are different kinds of love. and they are all important. there is love in his movie. and it’s a love between two friends. he loves Cindy but he’s not in love with her. and her friendship makes him better. maybe, he thinks, he wrote this movie about himself and their friendship. and ode to selfless and supportive platonic love.

after that interview, the buzz for his movie turns into charming festival movie to Oscar worthy buzz. and Michelle freaks out. because she has worked since she was thirteen years old to be seen as more than some dumb kid on some dumb show.

it all becomes terrifyingly real when the Golden Globes nominations come out.

they’ve won awards all year round. small awards, festival awards, but the golden globes are mainstream.

they are sitting in Tony’s office waiting for the announcement to be made, peter’s entire team, when the phone rings. peter is alarmed but tony picks up the phone. they are five minutes out from the official announcement. the stream has barely begun.Tony hangs up and looks severe. peter tries not to be crestfallen. he needs to keep it together for his crew. he is the director after all. Michelle grabs his hand. “what?” Peter asks. Tony shakes his head and gestures to the screen, “watch.”

and one after the other awards start to be announced. and one by one he hears his movie’s name. from editing to music to cinematography. peter drops michelle’s hand to embrace Cindy when they hear her name. he is jumping up and down and celebrating when they get to best screenplay and in the recesses of his mind, he hears his own name. a golden globe nomination. he’s a golden globe nominee.

he is frozen. his team, his friends, his family, all crowd him and begin to shout. embracing him, shouting. he can’t believe it. until mj kisses his cheek. and the world is real again. and then, best supporting actress in a drama comes up and they say Michelle’s name. and the room starts to shout, people begin to pour drinks. they are too busy celebrating to notice that Peter gets nominated for best director (he’ll read that shell-shocked on the internet later) but he does hear Best Motion Picture. and the noise stops.

it all stops. because, fuck, they did it. THEY DID IT! and suddenly, their movie is a nine time golden globe nominee. and peter realizes they could be Oscar nominated. the rest of award season is a blur. he vaguely remembers going to Colbert and Fallon. and he sort of recalls doing lots of photo shoots and interviews. but what does know with perfect clarity is that he gets to spend almost every day with mj. the award circuit means every day is with her. and he’s so, so happy.

because he missed her. because he misses her when she isn’t in the room. because he knows she said he would feel differently in a year but that time has passed and he’s still crazy about her. when they’re getting ready for the globes, Peter decides he likes his t-shirt, jean and baseball cap look a lot better than a suit and tie. Michelle walks into the room and nearly kills him. she looks...wow.

his mouth dries. he licks his lip, “you, I mean, you look, its great. nice dress.” cindy snorts and peter shoots her a look. it is not a pleasant look. “you don’t look so bad yourself,” mj smirks, and casually adjusts his bowtie. his heart leaps out of his chest. and he knows that she knows what she does to him.

they walk the carpet together. well, sort of. they care more about michelle than him. but occasionally someone will see him and ask for a photo as well. because he’s a director. and that means he’s important to pictures but not movie-star important.

when they get inside the first thing he realizes is their table has alcohol. and it feels like a great and terrible idea. because his crew looks like they could all use a drink but he’s not sure its smart.

in the opening monologue, peter gets name checked for being the baby of the directing category. and everyone laughs. and peter’s chest warms. because he’s accepted. because he’s acknowledged enough in his industry to be the butt of a joke. because he’s a golden globe nominee. michelle must understand what the moment means to him because she grabs his hand under the table. and they lock fingers.

he turns to look at her. and they lock eyes. and he misses the camera on them. but the internet does not.

and the internet does not miss when he wins for best original screenplay and the whole table, michelle included, toss him around for cheek kisses. and the internet does not miss when michelle wins the way peter leaps to his feet and tugs her into his arms. and the internet does not miss when peter loses best director the way michelle rests her head on peter’s shoulder. the internet does not miss a thing.

the following morning peter wakes up to a million texts of congratulations because he’s a golden globe winner. and he is linked to about nine million articles about him and michelle. and its mortifying.

because those looks, the way he looks at her, belong to him, to them. they were their moments. and now they belong to the world. and he sort of hates that his privacy is on display for the world to pick apart and scrutinize.

so he texts her about it. and michelle calls him thirty seconds later. “this is the job,” she says when she picks up. “no,” he argues, “my job is to go to set and direct.” he sits up in his bed when she talks, “peter, you’re a public figure now. golden globe nominee. they don’t care how you feel. and they especially don’t care about the fact that you want your feelings for your leading lady to be a secret.”

peter’s jaw drop, “mj-” he doesn’t want to do this on the phone. he wants to talk to her. he wants to look her in the eye when they have this conversation. mj quickly cuts him off, “we don’t have to do this now. but soon.” he exhales and agrees, “soon.”

except soon does not actually mean soon. because its award season. so they don’t have the time to talk. and, okay, fine, honestly? he’s terrified.

and then, by the time the oscar nominations drop, peter and mj still haven’t spoken. but unlike the golden globes, peter and mj decide to watch the nominations privately. at his house. its not like her house. not nearly as big. but since all of the press and success of his film he’s been able to get something modest. and respectable. in an area that isn’t exceptionally dangerous.

michelle cuddles up on his couch and, fuck him, she looks so at home there. on his couch. in his home. and he wants her to stay.

he takes his place beside her on the couch. and tentatively wraps his arm around her. she smiles and turns her head slowly to him, “what are you doing?” “nothing,” he shrugs. she snuggles into his arms, “is this soon?” peter rests his head on hers, “it can be.”

michelle sits up and pivots to look at him, “okay, then. here it is.” michelle grabs his hand and looks at him in a way that makes him feel like whatever hope he is holding onto might be misplaced, “you don’t care about me. this is just...awards season. its intense. and you think you--”

“okay,” peter cuts her off, “i know you said this is a cliche, then. i know you’ve said that this is awards season or whatever the fuck that means. and you said then that i would feel differently in a year. and you’re saying now I’ll feel differently when this is all over, but, cards on the table, i don’t and i won’t. you’re still the best part of my day. and i spent every day in post-production watching one of the dailies of you. cindy tells a joke behind the camera and you, just, you smile. and it killed me. i watched it every day. and i missed you. that was my life before the movie took off. and now that i get to spend time with you again i never want you to go. this isn’t because i’m the director and you were my leading lady. this is because you’re you and i’m me. and you make me feel strong. like i could do anything. please, please don’t give up on us. not before we’ve even begun.”

she blinks at him and he suddenly feels super embarrassed. because he’s put his heart out for her and she isn’t talking to him.

the television starts to play the nominations and he awkwardly turns back to look at the television. the room is heavy. he hates it. they talked about it. and she rejected him. or whatever silence means. silence feels like rejection.

their movie gets a few nominations in the technical categories. even, cindy. peter makes a mental note to call her after. and then, just before they get to writing, michelle turns to him. “peter?” he doesn’t respond, so she tries again, and he can hear the lip tremble in her tone, “peter, please.” so he reluctantly turns and she wipes at her eyes, “please don’t be mad at me.” “i put my heart on the line and you didn’t even respond. you couldn’t even say you didn’t want me.” “that’s because i do!” she insists. he rolls his eyes, “please.” “no,” she grabs his hand, “i do. i just...when I’m not your leading lady...i’m afraid you won’t want me anymore.”

he shakes his head, “why would you say that?” “because i’m your muse. i’m your movie. and when award season ends and you start on your next project because...you’re gonna be so famous...you’ll move onto your next muse. and you’ll forget all about me. and i can’t handle that heartbreak.”

he cups her face, “you beautiful idiot. you aren’t my muse. i wrote that movie before i ever met you. and i just...love...you....” he whispers that last bit. he pulls down deep for some of his strength. “i love you,” he says again, more proud, “and i want you. and you Mi-”

“Michelle Jones,” the television set says. the two of them, their eyes bug open. they look at the television and there it is. in black and white. for best supporting actress. michelle jones. for their movie.

he pulls her into a bone crushing hug. “holy shit,” he whispers into her shoulder. she starts to cry, “holy shit.” they pull apart and echo together, “HOLY SHIT.” and then, the laughter comes. sudden and bubbly. because she is an academy award nominee. its best supporting actress just like the golden globes which is bullshit. but its the academy awards. and technically his lead is a man. but, like, FUCK.

and then, the laughter stops. and they are breathless and staring at each other. and the moment crackles over.

the last year is present in the room. and tension cannot hold. it will always break. and it does.

they crash into each other. their mouths eager and desperate. he has wanted her for so long. and now, he can taste how long she has wanted him. and it tastes like that first day on set.

it gets intense immediately. they have no time for foreplay. peter groans deeply into her mouth. and she whimpers back. they move their clothes out of the way just enough to couple.

and when he is inside her, the pair of them shutter. and it is so cliche, like a hollywood movie, but they fit. it is like he was always made for her and she him.

and they are so wrapped up in each other, the comforting rock of their love making, that peter doesn’t hear his name for best screenplay or director. he doesn’t hear that his movie gets nominated for best feature film. he doesn’t hear any of it.

the academy has nothing on michelle.

after, they take a minute to look up the nominations. and, well, they have to celebrate two more times.

its only the following morning with michelle tucked up in his arms do they talk about what it means for them. what this means for them. and they both decide-- everything.

the night of the academy awards mj stuns him in brown and he barely looks acceptable in a standard black suit. but he is the director and she is the moviestar. so he supposes, that logic checks out. on their way out the door she gives him a brief kiss and tells him, “you hit the jackpot, tiger.” the smile that puts on his face is present in every photo.

they keep a respectable distance from each other because peter tells her late one night that he doesn’t like the world knowing his business. he wants this to be theirs. he doesn’t want to share their moments. and she crawls on top of him and seals that promise with a kiss.

but its much harder to keep it respectable during the actual awards. because he’s so goddamn nervous. he knows he’s young. incredibly young. and he has his whole life ahead of him to win these kinds of awards but it feels like a sign. like, if his movie wins tonight then the universe is rooting for him and michelle.

she keeps their knees against each other for the entire night because she can’t hold his hand. and he appreciates the contact. it calms him down.

and soon, the relief starts to pour through his body. they lose. a lot of things. but Cindy wins for best cinematography and she was his eyes, after all. she is his eyes. his partner in making movies. and if she is the only one that goes home with an award tonight he’ll be happy.

and then, best supporting actress comes up and michelle’s nervousness boils over. she can’t help but hold his hand. and he sends a silent prayer that the internet will think she is leaning on her director for support.

she wins.

she wins and everyone, including michelle, is shocked. she’s young. crazy young. and it is her first nomination. and it takes some jockeying from peter for her to start to walk toward the stage. she is absolutely floored.

when they hand her the statue, she blinks back tears, “oh, wow. i can’t believe it. i just...can’t believe it. to, um, to my parents. thank you for loving me and supporting me and telling me that a little movie with a script that i loved was worth doing simply because i loved it. thank you to our entire cast and crew. this movie is a labor of love and this award belongs to all of us. thank you to Cindy Moon who lost the script to this beautiful movie. i thank god everyday i picked up that script and read it and gave it back to you. and thank you to Happy Hogan who believed in this movie and Tony Stark that helped get it off the ground so everyone could love it as much as I did. and lastly, peter, our fearless director, you wrote a movie that dared to say hard things and spoke to people’s souls. it spoke to me. and i am so thankful you put your trust in me to speak your words. thank you. thank you. just, thank you.”

when the applause fills the hall, peter knows she did it. she won the award. and she thanked him. forever, michelle jones thank you speech at the academy awards will include his name. and he feels like the universe might be on his side.

she comes back after fifteen minutes and one musical number. when she sits in her seat with oscar in her hand, he checks the area for a camera pointed their way and when he feels safe, he kisses the side of her head, “i am so proud of you.” he wants some moments to be just theirs.

then, the screenwriting award comes up and he loses. he loses to a war film that he heard was lobbying pretty hard for some awards. it stings but he will have his shot at other awards some day. he counts himself out for director.

and rightly so. he loses that, too. michelle grabs his hand and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that he is going home with the real prize tonight. the academy is second to michelle.

until something ridiculous happens.

they win best picture.

everyone on his team is shocked. they didn’t win the golden globes. but the oscar? wow. even the audience is shocked. there is a really rude gasp that ripples through the crowd. but when the presenter repeats the result they all jump to their feet and begin to hug and kiss and rush to the stage. peter and happy and tony are all handed awards. he is an academy award winner. or, well, his movie is. and peter supposes that still counts.

happy and tony speak first. they talk about producing the film and distributing it. and thank all of their families. and then, they look at peter. like they expect him to speak. that is when he remembers. he is the director. that means he is the person that lead the ship into harbor. he is the face of his little company.

he approaches the mic and shakes his head in shock, “when i wrote this movie i didn’t feel like i had a future in this business. i wrote this movie because i was lost and felt like everyone around me knew what the heck they were doing. i felt like a failure and like i would never accomplish my dreams. and so, i want to dedicate this award to everyone that has ever felt that way. and i want to tell you that amazing things do happen and you are not a failure. keep doing what you love. and thank you to my incredible cast and crew. you are my heart. to michelle who did a movie with a bunch of nobodies with no guarantee that anyone would even see it, let alone like it. and to my aunt may, for everything. thank you.”

he turns around and opens his arms and his entire team, his family, floods into them.

they drink and party and celebrate all night long. and at the end of that night michelle and peter go back to his house with two oscars in toe and they celebrate another way.

the news gets out the next day. there is a picture of them going back to peter’s house at the end of the night. the paparazzi are vultures on oscar sunday. and he is furious. because he wanted it to be private. he wanted it to be theirs.

but michelle patiently kisses his nose and tells him that he’s an idiot and that just because they can’t hide that they’re together anymore doesn’t mean that they have to tell anyone anything. so when he does his post-oscars interview and the interviewer asks about michelle he cooly says, “i’d like to keep my personal life private, thank you.”

mj is less patient because the media is sexist. they insinuate sleeping with the director to get the roll. which is ridiculous because a year ago he was a nobody fresh out of school. she rolls her eyes and kindly tells a different reporter to ask her anything that isn’t “blatantly sexist and invasive when it comes to my private relationships, okay?” and peter loves her so much its an actual ache.

then, the buzz dies down. the oscars are over. the world moves on. and peter and cindy start to discuss their next project. ned wrote them a film. a good film. a great film. and WB is going to back it this time. not just happy or tony. the entire studio.

and michelle decides to leave her show at the end of the season. she is an academy award winner. and she wants to be a superhero. or, well, play a superhero. Disney calls and tells her they want her to be the lead in a new female superhero movie. and she does look great in capes.

when peter shows up to set for his new movie nearly six months after the oscars (pre-production takes time before filming actually begins), he puts on his baseball cap and feels strange. the crew is mostly the same, he made sure of that, and cindy is right at his side but there is something missing. it takes him until lunch time to figure it out.

he goes to the bathroom and calls his girlfriend, “mj?” “peter, what’s wrong?” “i miss you,” he says. he can hear the exasperated tone of her voice, “you saw me this morning.” “i miss you here,” he corrects, “i miss you on my set.” “i can’t be in all of your movies, baby. and you can’t always cast me. people will say your biased.” “i am biased,” he grumps. “i love you. and i’ll see you tonight. go do your job.”

and, somehow, those words snap him out of his funk. because he did it. he’s a director. this is his job. so, he walks out of the bathroom, takes his place beside cindy and turns to his crew, “okay, let’s get to work.”

[terraclae]

The story of Sachairi

Epoch and Carmen finally decide to clarify who it was Arodan had seen in his dream. 

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‘They sure just put anything in these rooms huh?’ In no distinguishable order apparently. carpets piled up with seafaring tools and torchwood lined up with pieces of what must have been a fresco. It was a very strange view, that was certain. Epoch sat on top of one of the various piles. ‘How do you find anything in this mess?’ Arodan asked, walking up to a pile in the corner of the room.

‘It depends, what are you looking for?’ He said, and cocked his head in almost coy manner. ‘Just because you see chaos doesn't mean we see it.’

‘Everything is arranged in organized chaos.’ Carmen chimed, from underneath a structure of boxes, banners and carpets that seemed as if it could topple over on top of her any second. ‘We know our way around here.’ Epoch and her chimed in unison.

‘This is-This is a mess.’ He glanced around the room, and couldn't possibly look more awkward. ‘I was trying to find king Balam actually. And perhaps a new carpet because the one by shelf 18 has holes in it and it's driving me crazy.’

‘King Balam is…’ Carmen paused and seemed enraptured in thoughts. ‘Either he's cooped up in the war room or he's out in town, I don't think I've seen him today but in glances actually.’ She grinned. ‘As for your carpet, why didn't you just grab one in the hall?’

‘You sound a little neurotic.’ Epoch said, and didn't look up to see what Arodan thought of that statement. ‘But yeah, you have permission to grab anything on the grounds that you semi-live here now.’

‘I wasn't sure if I was allowed to okay, some of us like their castles orderly.’ Arodan snapped. He marched up to where Epoch sat. A chair stood next to the pile and Arodan cleared it to sit in it. ‘I'm not really feeling like hauling a carpet suddenly.’

‘What, is that our fault?’ Carmen smugly remarked, leaning on her hands. ‘Cheer up Dan. We’re just joking. You're so uptight.’

‘It isn't your fault.’ He sank a little in his chair. His hand rose to rest on his chest and he could feel a heartbeat under his palm. ‘I had something to ask him, but in hindsight I doubt he would have given me an answer.’

‘Why not try your luck with us?’ Epoch appeared in Arodan's field of view, hanging over him from his perch. ‘Why not try our wealth of knowledge?’

‘Something tells me it is something of magical scope you are bothered by.’ Carmen crawled out of her current hideout to plop down on a drawer that stuck out of Epoch’s pile. ‘So, come forth wanderer!’

‘Well, I guess.’ An awkward giggle escaped Arodan and he was quick to drag his chair so he sat facing Carmen and Epoch. ‘It is a very particular question however.’

‘We don't do palm readings-’ Carmen started, immediately followed by Epoch saying ‘or take questions about your luck in love.’ Their voices chimed in unison. ‘So leave those by the door.’

'Well, you're lucky, my question is neither.' Arodan said, his face twisting into an unamused grimace. 'I don't believe in that stuff.'

'We do, we just suck at it.' Epoch said. He tilted his head peculiarly. 'Do tell, what is your question?'

'Is there… Is someone locked in this castle? With bright golden eyes and dark wings and called Senna? Or...' He paused. 'What do dreams mean in which you find others chained up in places?' Maybe that was a better question.

Carmen looked up expectantly at Epoch with a look only siblings could clearly read. He had seen similar glances often shared between castle inhabitants but it was special and specific between Carmen and Epoch. Epoch's face gained a tense facade, and slowly turned to look at Arodan, a sigh signalling he had figured out how to best answer Arodan's question. 'Let me tell you a story.'

'I don't need-'

'You'll understand. It's only a small story.' Epoch stopped Arodan from declining his offer with a small gesture. 'Once upon a time...' He shot Carmen a look. 'Carmen, if you please.'

Carmen's hand flew up, middle finger and index finger pointed in a gesture odd to Arodan. At her fingertips and orange bolt formed and at high velocity was aimed and shot at the storage room's main light, destroying it.

'Why did you do that?!' Arodan yelled, his arms covering his head snugly.

'I can repair it, no worries.' She chimed, almost eerily calm. Carmen looked all too happy with herself and Epoch didn't seem particularly disapproving of the action either. She held her open palm before her, and another orange glowing fixture appeared in it. As if she was scattering sand she blowed the magic in her hand which floated forward and up until it like gunpowder ignited in the air, forming a magnificent spectacle before them. Within the vision a figure could be seen, a battle scarred imperial taking down its opponents with ease. When all enemies seemed defeated he stood lonely on a cliff by what seemed to be a frozen ocean.

‘Once upon a time, there was an imperial, an ex-gladiator from the fighting pits in the Shifting Expanse. Secluded, distant, not someone people would like to befriend or be interested in. His name was Sachairi.' The imperial's form shifted to a bipedal one and he sat down on the cliff.

'Yet, the gladiator, against all expectations had someone who dearly loved them and who he loved in return.' A second figure appeared, a skydancer that flew a circle around the imperial before settling down next to him in a bipedal form of their own, smaller, with long hair and thin frame. ‘The gods only know what he would have been like without him, without his heart and purpose to life, named Raz. Sachairi being imprisoned within the fighting pits kept the two apart. Yet here, in the Southern Icefields, they would be reunited, a king from the south having saved the imperial from his former life.' He held up his hand and gestured for Carmen to shift the scene. It faded to a happy looking couple both donning necklaces with a red stone set within in the company of a grand figure and two imperials who seemed awfully familiar to Arodan. 'So they lived happily, healing within the safety of the city's walls from the traumas left within them.' Epoch's eyes had a grim look to the and Carmen looked at him with a similar grim expectation, her hand rising to shift the scene.

‘This story however…’ The vision flared and changed, to a steep mountain path where the same imperial and skydancer could be seen, surrounded by figures in strange garbs. The imperial and skydancer fought the now assailing beings. It seemed the fight was ended cruelly on the skydancer's end as a bespectacled imperial with a frightening look managed to take him down entirely. He faded from the vision and the imperial was left reaching for his taken mate and assailed by countless beings that painted the entire vision black and hollow. ‘Doesn't have a happy ending for our anti-hero, for he could not protect himself from the sickness within that maddened him, driven to grief when it seemed the turn for his lover to be taken.’ The vision whirled and now showed the event of a city being besieged by the same imperial with his eyes and mouth seeping black, his face twisted into a horrible expression of terror. ‘Faced with a decision, the king took quick action that the lives of many would always be worth more than the life of one, no matter how trusted they'd might be. The now rogue gladiator was taken down-’ A pair of mages Arodan now fully recognized as Carmen and Epoch appeared at the feet of the imperial and combined a blast, taking him down and sending him sinking into the ground. ‘- And cast into the Shell, a locked room where the very depths of the royal crypts where he was left to remain in eternal slumber.’ The vision faded entirely on the last image of the gladiator in a bipedal form, laid peacefully down as one might with the dead. 'Meant to be kept forever, so he'd never attack Paramo again.'

‘Well, that isn't a very fun story.’ Arodan said before Epoch and Carmen could even ask him what he thought of it. He didn't even think it was particularly good. ‘What really happened?’

‘That is what really happened. That is what happened to our Sachi.’ Carmen said, regretful almost. ‘He was just another lost soul King Balam took in and he was part of our family. I want to tell you something different happened, I really do, but I'm afraid I can't.'

'We tell stories about him like this in his honor because we appreciated his presence.' Epoch added, glancing off to the side with an almost spiteful scowl. 'We rooted for him to learn to deal with his trauma, you know, like with everyone else. He would do the same for us.’

‘Okay, fine.’ Arodan hushed the two. ‘So… Who were him and his mate? What were they like?’

‘Sappy. Silly. The sort of couple that is grossly over-affectionate.’ Epoch answered. ‘But they were a warming presence. Raz was outgoing, sweet, he made friends easily, he wanted to be around people. Sacha, not so much. Sacha was incredibly distant and held a bad temper, would try to fight anyone who looked at him funny. Folks around here didn't think he was a nice person.’ He folded his hands on his lap and looked down at them. ‘Yet, when he was around Raz, he turned mellow, playful even. It was so easy to see that these two were deeply in love. If you didn't think it was overly cheesy it rubbed off otherwise, people looked at them wishing they could be like that.’

‘You sound like it left quite an impact on you.’ Arodan remarked. He wasn't that impressed, mostly because he hadn't entertained the thought of romance himself for a long time, Caer's words echoeing in his head. ‘What's your deal with them?’

'They were… Dear friends to us. It was nice to see others so hopeful, and to have faith we could upkeep our own goals and desires.' Epoch said in his usual monotone. Even though he was hard to read however Arodan intimately knew there must have been a fondness settling within him. 'People like them wanted to make me try harder at being more courteous towards the others I meet.'

'I think, for me they were...' Carmen held a hand over her heart. 'A little piece of Paramo itself. Not perfect but something I told myself I would protect. Flawed, and as such has a reason to be aided.' She looked up at Arodan. Heck, they even swapped their hearts metaphysically, isn't that neat? I can't believe it's here with us.'

‘I don't follow-’

‘Oh you know, the thing you have hanging around your neck.’

‘Woah.’ Arodan's hand slammed down on the spot necklace hung under his shirt. ‘How did you-’

‘Shh.’

‘Carmen-’

‘Shhh!’ Epoch seemed just as surprised as Arodan was. Carmen crept towards Arodan and sat before him, pointing at Arodan's hand. ‘I know your energy by now Dan, such a strange magical force on you is bound to be noticed.’ She grinned, mysteriously almost. 'Please tell me how you got it.'

‘I spit it out after a very strange dream, that's why I asked you who Sachairi was.’ He very softly said, pulling his legs up so there was a little more distance between him and Carmen. He could feel Epoch was staring at him judging the gaze burning into the back of his head. ‘I think I saw him in that dream.’

‘... Show me the heart.’ Carmen said, more quietly now. She rose from her crouch and held out her hand in demanding fashion towards Arodan. ‘Give it to me.’

Arodan swiftly took off the necklace and pulled it out from under his shirt, dropping it in Carmen’s hand. ‘Why did you tell me this story?’ He expectantly looked up at Carmen who had gone to fondly looking at her reflection in the red stone. He was curious how long she had known and why she hadn't immediately asked. ‘Can I know?’

‘I wanted to save Sachi, I really did. Things like what happened to him is why I wanted to become a witch.’ She flexed her other hand and small orange flowers grew in it. ‘I've saved others before, so why not him? I regret failing him like that.’

‘Carmen, you know we weren't raised with abilities to cure the Shade.’ Epoch had gotten up from the pile and crawled down so he stood besides her. He curiously inspected the necklace, and his body language was clear in communicating that he was dissatisfied with Arodan being in possession of the Heart. ‘Tell him how he figures into this. Get to the point.’

‘Sachairi, as you had seen, went mad with shade sickness because Raz had been taken from him. We don't know who took him, all we knew is that they had gone out for a walk once day and he came back inconsolable and nonverbal.’ Carmen answered. ‘He ended up attacking the city, harming or killing many residents in the process. It was that day as if something unique was ripped from all of us, from people like Kassa, or Balam. Epoch and I don't hate him, but may others do.’ Rightfully so, her eyes seemed to say. Even if there was nothing to be fine about it in the end no one was free of judgement. ‘The heart resurfacing could only mean bad news. Sachi awakening isn't a good thing, because he's a hazard to himself and others. This-’ She held up the heart, and her soft smile momentarily faded. ‘Is the first thing he will look for and if he's still caught in a frenzy then who knows what he will do trying to get it back?’

Arodan momentarily was quiet, and then immediately snagged the necklace from Carmen’s hand. ‘Okay. Fine. I understand, so I need to prepare for that, right?’ This was a problem, paired with another enemy that was going to be outside their walls soon. What Carmen wanted from him, was for him to know why everyone thought this was as big of a problem as it. ‘I'll keep it then.’ She must have had a hunch then what he himself suffered of.

‘That doesn't seem like a good idea.’ Epoch said sternly, Carmen looking fazed by Arodan’s action. ‘Let us keep it, if Sacha is awake then he will be drawn to the heart and try to come for if, he'll recognize-’

‘No, clearly if it came out of my throat then I am meant to keep it safe.’ Gods, that sounded weird. ‘I'm not going to do anything rash, but believe me, I know how to deal with shade beings. I was raised in a clan that fought them, I know what it's like.’

‘But do you have any abilities to actually counter them?’ Epoch asked, more persuasively and his hand twitching as if he wanted to yank the necklace from Arodan's hands.

'A few.'

'A few is not-'

'Let him keep it Epoch. He's right.' Carmen pushed Epoch back. 'Some things are meant to be. Like Raz and Sachi, and Arodan spitting out a solid gold necklace with a spirit ruby in it.' Her tail impatiently swished behind her again. 'But you know… If you have a bad gut feeling, let us know. I have unfinished business with the owner of this necklace so if he comes for it, I want to try again.'

'Understood.' He slung the necklace around his neck again and tucked it into his shirt. 'Can I ask you something personal now?'

'Shoot.'

'You took Sachairi down in that vision no?’ Carmen nodded as answer to Arodan's question. ‘Would you be able to do that a second time if necessary?’

She seemed to hesitate briefly. Her hand found Epoch’s hand as a momentary anchor. ‘I'm a witch. I wanted to be one when I was small because hey, I had all these skills I didn't ask for. Why not make something good of them?’ She tilted her head curiously but her thin little smile revealed she felt a little more steadfast. ‘Now I want to be someone who protects this city no matter what. Not you or anyone else will stop me from that.’

Arodan expectantly looked at Epoch now, who backed away who seemed as if he felt threatened. ‘I share that sentiment. My goals are a little more selfish perhaps, but yes, I will be able to fend him off if necessary.’ His ears fell flat against the sides of his head. ‘I'm doing this for Carmen.’

‘Epoch-’

‘Because that's what brothers do.’ He turned to her with a fond look to his eyes only tight knit siblings had. ‘So, old times.’

‘Fine.’ She smiled, a little crooked but humorously. ‘Old times.’

Arodan at that moment felt like he was intruding on something special and made a mental note to send more letters to family if they'd ever arrive or be read. So, like any respectful figure he made the first steps to walking away and giving Epoch and Carmen some space.

Instead he was grabbed by the wrist by Carmen and stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Oh hey, you don't feel weird anymore.’

‘Phrasing.’ He hissed and turned to look at the palm closed around his wrist. He only had half a mind to ask what she meant and to be fair he knew it very well. ‘Do you need something from me any further or do you need me to-’

‘No, you just got here, we’re getting you a carpet dummy.’ Carmen demanded. She dragged him along and shot Epoch a look to help push the unruly skydancer along to another pile. ‘Drop the gloom, we’re gonna talk furniture.’

‘What if I suddenly don't wanna talk furniture?’

‘Lyyyyyiiing.’ Carmen lilted in similar fashion to how he had first heard her. ‘There's a really nice lily patterned rug in the pile over yonder I think you'd like.’

‘You're just recommending that because you like lilies.’ Epoch blankly said. ‘I'd personally just recommend one with butterflies because if I remember it right, that particular patch of floor you spoke of is predominantly purple.’

‘That's why you should pair it with yellow!’

‘You guys, please!’ Arodan yelped above the two tugging at him. They ceased, and slowly but surely he caught himself laughing. It was soft and restrained, but a laugh nonetheless. ‘I'll… I'll take both.’

‘How are you going to get them to the library?’ Epoch asked.

‘I'll ask Atlas. He probably doesn't mind.’ Arodan answered, now holding Carmen and Epoch at an arm’s length. Besides, gives me time to talk to him.’ It felt quickly as if the entire earlier conversation hadn't happened, and the emotional whiplash was staggering he realized. It hadn't been until Atlas came and helped him lift the carpets and they were walking down the hall in satisfied solitude that it really hit him what the potential danger was. That night, and the nights following he slept with one of Atlas' knives under his pillow.

[darkarm66]

Breath of the Wild review

On the Wii U, I had The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess in their HD remastered forms....and barely touched. This is reoccurring issue with me and remasters, even with games I love. No matter how much I loved them the first time, there are some games I won't touch again and it was mainly due to the beginning stages. I dreaded going though Ordon Village again and knowing I'd have to put up with those tutorials again to get to the parts of Twilight Princess i did enjoy. So once Link wakes up Breath of the Wild, gets his clothes and Sheikah Slate and I got to run around with my meager abilities and items, I knew that this game was gonna be a classic. Yes, that's all it took. Now, there have been many many reviews that extolled the excellence of Breath of the Wild, much better written reviews when it came out, possibly on the verge of hyperbolic. So allow me to add to it. And yes, not only is this the best game of 2017, It very well could be one of the greatest of all time. While those reviews have mentioned Witcher 3, Skyrim, Arkham Asylum and other open world games as direct influences (Nintendo said as much as well), this game inspired feelings in me I haven't felt since Xenoblade Chronicles. And like Xenoblade Chronicles, Breath of the Wild succeeded due to not just the high amount of gameplay but also by eliminating a lot of wonky, reductive elements. 

There's no invisible barriers that prevents the player from going where they want to go, once you get off the Great Plateau after getting the runes in the Shrines, the player has everything the need to explore this amazing version of Hyrule. And the exploration was felt lacking in previous Zeldas. You knew that special icon or crack in the ground required the player to retrieve the item from a dungeon. Now, you just have to go there and a lot of it just jumps out at the player. This time around, Hyrule itself is a dungeon with so many puzzles that tempt to player to stop moving and just fiddle around for a bit. The world is littered with seemingly out of place shapes and it draws the player in a way that doesn't feel contrived or blatant. And even if a trail isn't apparent or there's no natural way to enter a place, the climbing mechanic breaks all of it. Climbing itself becomes its own minigame because its governed by a stamina wheel and the weather system, which does allow the player to be challenged by where they can climb but it doesn't allow the player to break the game by going everywhere. And speaking of challenge, get ready to eat humble pie with the simplest combat system but toughest enemies ever. 

This Hyrule wasn't afraid to hand the player its ass over and over. And the lack of tutorials and locked rooms that teach you to fight means you're not stuck in this one place until you get it right. If you die, you come back and try again or move onto somewhere else to do something that won't kill you. When I tried to put off the story as much as I possibly can, I ended up discovering Shrines (in a minute, not yet), Koroks, rupees, side quests, food. Until I became bored and started the Zora quest line, which delighted because I got to climb up a waterfall with ice blocks and led to the real menace of Hyrule: Lynels. This is when previous Zelda game would put you in this room and turn this into a boss battle to see if the player has gotten any good. Not this time, it didn't care that I didn't have enough hearts, or my shields were too weak, or my weapons were brittle. So I just turn around from the high point and glided to somewhere else instead. While players will have to fight to actually survive, Breath of the Wild let the experience teach the players.

And mainly, those Shrines is how you get experience points. The Shrines are dotted the map, some not even trying to hide, some taking maddening puzzle solving, others rewarding the player for figuring out all the clues. Not only is this how the game facilitates fast travel, it also scratches that dungeon crawling itch for a bit, but only by being a puzzle shrine or a combat shrine. It lacks the incredible intertwining of previous Zelda dungeons but the light content and brain stretching use of items makes up for it. Especially since the player is always rewarded with a great item. Unless its a weapon...

Okay, in the early goings, weapon durability can be a bummer. Weapons break too common and by the time you get used to one, its gone. That's not the worst part of it. The problem comes when good weapons do start becoming more readily available but not you're out of slots because you don't wanna waste your Royal Broadswords on some basic ass Bokoblins because you know a Lynel needs that work more. However, you deal with it because all the puzzle solving and wander lusting led to Korok seeds to expand the inventory, so now by the time you wanna start wrecking things, you're actually equipped to do so this time around.

I also believe that the durability allows the player to actually replay certain areas. While other games use powerful enemies as gates to keep the player away for a few hours, that doesn't feel like it this time around. The map allows players to actually keep tabs on where they may want to go but don't feel like dying to do so. Place that stamp down, go somewhere else and come back to it when the player truly feels ready. I remember Miyamoto talking about how they wanted Zelda games to be able to replay certain areas for a reason. And now they didn't have to force the player to do a bunch of fetch quests or pixel hunts to come back to an area they already beaten. This makes Hyrule feel more livelier this time around because no matter how much time you spent in one area, you can come back to it and discover something hiding under your nose this whole time but you couldn't see it just yet. Or it has a dope sword you really needed but didn't have room for.

But one thing to make room for: food! There was something so hypnotic about resource gathering and cooking, in a way that surpasses Final Fantasy XV's photo-realistic dishes. The abundance of materials, which not only kills the tedium that might have killed lesser games, allows players to actual feel free to consume and experiment with everything they've gathered. In the beginning, basic meals are cooked to give your health a chance withstand raiding an enemy camp. By the time you're in the 100 hour mark, players are hunting to create complex dishes that give them dope buffs to make a play session a more pleasant.

One pleasant thing this go around is the story. For all the flack Nintendo gets for its approach to stories, it only gets it because they're not telling it through the usual cinema envy of other games. This is a deconstruction of Link and being the chosen one. Link isn't just gonna be handed all the tools needed to succeed just because he was chosen. Same goes for Zelda, who seems heartbroken that she has to be the reincarnation of a goddess. And thanks to the Memories questline, you get to see those cutscenes but they aren't automatically triggered because you did a thing. You earn those previous moments beforehand that showed Link and Zelda not truly feeling going along with what destiny wants to do because it worked 100 years ago...which was probably Nintendo's feelings developing this game.

For years, Eiji Aonuma talked about breaking the conventions and in the gameplay and story, that feeling comes across well with Divine Beast Champions, especially who they just fall doing what they were told to do. This is truly about how Zelda's dev team felt about coming together to give the same results, only for it to fail before it even began and the task fell to new people to do what's necessary to defeat Ganon through new means. It's deeply personal and the emotion maturely understated. Link and Zelda develop as legit characters through their struggles and heartbreak and it gives the story an emotional richness not seen since Ocarina/Majora. Link (and the player) truly earns the right to be called a hero, not because he was chosen but because he endured and grew.

I haven't even mentioned how beautiful this game is. Forget your need for 6 billion polygons per sec to animate a face. The details astounding from up close and far away. Climb to the top of the mountain and you see a sprawling, diverse horizon to take your breath away or look down to see a forest or lake or camp to possibly sail down. None of it ever stops looking gorgeous. My favorite place in the game revolved around a Shrine that needed an Orb to unlock but the area you were in was completely dark. Seeing Link as a shadow, lighting torches to move around this area was utterly beautiful and proves that developers don't need to high end CGI cutscenes to make a visual impression that last forever. Speaking of lasting impressions, this is one of the best UI I've seen in a game. It conveys information and stats without completely cluttering the screen and taking away from the game world. Even when playing in handheld mode, you can stil take in a lot of visual treats of Hyrule.

And despite the impression that I'm ready to marry this game, this game isn't flawless. Weapon switch is a legit pain. Holding down one button to switch to a particular weapon isn't as intuitive as the other controls in the game. You're better off just pausing and switching items, which sorta breaks the immersion for the player. Also, as great as the Koroks and Korok puzzles are, did their have to be 900 of them. I'm all for trolling the player and subverting expectations for attempting 100% completion, but 900?!? That quickly veers between padding and repetitive. And the dragons can suck it. Only one item drop per appearance and god help you if you don’t want a scale. Again. Which leads to the upgrade system being underwhelming, due to its limited focus on armor and not weapons.

What makes me ignore these flaws: the game never forces you to do any thing mentioned before this (except the first four shrines and runes). You never have to find a Korok seed (but why the fuck wouldn't you?!?), you never have to expand your health and stamina, you don't need to cook a meal, get the Master Sword, ride a horse, shield surf, regulate your temperature, complete a shrine. The game is indifferent to your progress. But you will do any and all those things because Breath of the Wild is excellent at triggering your curiosity and intellect  and rewarding it, not rewarding your patience. Best of all, nearly everything you do fits into a mechanic the benefits the player, the quest aren't just a collection of repetitive checklists of escalating numbers nor is its badly tuned mechanics just thrown for the sake of variety. (Take that, open world games!)

This is not to say the previous Zeldas were awful. They didn't get tens and awards for nothing. You may even miss the linearity. They were great for what they are. Breath of the Wild is just better. Instead of telescoping design and handing you the fun stuff when you did the one thing it told you to do, it trusted the players this time around to make their own fun and build their own legend. Players will end up completing the same things but everyone will make their own path to completion. Breath of the Wild is worthy of the praise it has received and then some. It break ground by avoiding all the pot holes and wasted soil of previous Zeldas and open world games and brought  freshnesss that hasn't been felt in years. Truly a game that lives up to the word 'Legend'

[synergydevelopmentteam-blog]

Mastering The Freedom Of Forgiveness

By: Jennifer Curtet ~ Speaker, Author, Trainer, Mentor & Coach

I’ve always been praised for my magnanimous character… literally, since I was a child. I remember being wronged by friends, often, but before too long we were best pals, again.  And, again.  And, again.  It wasn’t out of desperation that I forgave, but out of empathy.  Even as a child I would defend their bad behavior and site the issues with their family, their grades, or any other challenge imposed upon them, to anyone who harshly criticized them. I would fight for the very people who had just wronged me.  I’ve always been a lover, not a fighter.  Very simply, I believe in second chances.  I believe that people make mistakes.  I believe that people are inherently good, but sometimes get off course and do bad things.

Not everyone agrees with this way of thinking and living, and that’s okay.  I’ve been criticized, ostracized, maligned, and made fun of for this… well, forever. I’ve gotten the ‘ol “I Told You So” and the “Don’t Act Surprised When…” tongue-lashing, more times than I can count.  In business, I’ve been counseled for not disciplining as hastily as I should have.  I’ve been told that I’m dragging out the coaching far too long and that it’s time to cut the cord.  Sound familiar?

Here’s the thing, though—I’m no pushover.  I’m not a wilting flower or a scaredy cat that is afraid of its own shadow.  If you know me, you know that I’m a straight shooter who says it like it is, always.  I’m a believer in rules and proper chains of command.  I’m strong and tough, and in the past was often called intimidating.  So, what gives?  I’ll tell you—I believe in people.

I BELIEVE IN PEOPLE.

I believe that people are messy and complicated, maddening and inconsistent.  But, I also believe that they are trying and fighting, every day, to be their best.  I believe that they want to do what’s right, but are often consumed with other competing priorities.  I believe that they are committed and on board, even when they seem checked out and apathetic.  I believe that they have a plan to come in as a 10, but something cuts them off at the knees and they struggle to show up as a 2.  I believe they try, every single day, to change their situation, but somehow they can’t reach the life vest or get the attention of the right lifeguard.

So, I work and work and work.  I try every trick in the book to get them re-engaged and re-ignited.  I ask and ask and ask, until they finally open up. And, then I listen and empathize, and go back to my strategies to find a better trick.  It’s not that I am afraid of conflict, and it’s not that I haven’t learned enough about criticism and discipline… in fact, it’s just the opposite.  I’ve learned so much about human behavior, over the years, and I know that empathy is usually the key that fits every lock, eventually.

I spoke of magnanimity, earlier, which is just a fancier word that was used, for forgiveness.  While I’m not the expert and “end all, be all” on this topic, I’ll tell you what I know, from my experience:  I’m HAPPY.  I wake up happy, and I go to bed happy.  Seriously.  I’m a happy person because I choose to see the world the way I do.  I’m happy because I have the relationships that I do.  I’m happy because I choose not to carry a bunch of stories around, with me. I don’t know if I’m any happier than the average Joe, but I can tell you that when I was holding grudges, (and, yes, I have done it and was bound and determined to hold them, as if I had something to prove, dang it!) I wasn’t happy.  Are you tracking?  Even though I was right, and had been wronged, I wasn’t happy.  I could lament and strongly assert my “right-ness” but I wasn’t happy.  Somewhere along the line, I realized that I had gotten off track with this baggage of resentment and I was the one drinking the poison. 

When you've been hurt by someone you care about and trust, you might become angry, sad or confused. If you dwell on hurtful events or situations, grudges filled with resentment, vengeance and hostility can take root. If you allow negative feelings to crowd out positive feelings, you might find yourself swallowed up by your own bitterness or sense of injustice.  Ugh.  Been there, done that.  And, it sucks, I might add.

If you're caught in an unforgiving loop, you might find that you:

Bring anger and bitterness into every relationship, conversation, and new experience.

Become so wrapped up in the wrong that you can't enjoy the present, because you’re drinking the poison that’s meant for someone else.

Become depressed or anxious.

Feel that your life lacks meaning or purpose, or that you're at odds with your spiritual beliefs.

Lose valuable and enriching connectedness with others, because you’re afraid it’ll happen, again.

So, what’s the fairy dust needed in order to reach a state of forgiveness?  I really have no idea what the true magic is, but I know these thoughts have helped me:

How is this grudge making you feel? What’s it doing to your balance, state of mind, your gut, and your level of consistency?

Reflect on the facts of the situation, how you've reacted, and how this combination has affected your life, health, and well-being.  Was it possibly a mistake? Can you find the empathy needed in order to understand what caused the reaction?

Actively choose to forgive the person who's offended you, when you're ready. Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that the relationship resumes, it just means that you’re not controlled by the negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, any longer.

Move away from your role as victim and release the control and power the offending person and situation have had in your life.  People are messy.  Emotions are even messier.  As soon as you can accept that you played a part, somewhere in the relationship/falling out/blow up, you stop the narcissistic loop of victim-hood.  Get your power back—enough is enough.

Oprah once said that “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different” which is all about your healing.  We know we can’t change others and we can’t change the past… so, we have to work on ourselves, right? Really, that’s all we’ve got. As you let go of grudges and allow forgiveness back in, you'll no longer define your life by how you've been hurt. Happiness is worth so much more than the momentary victory we feel when we remind ourselves that we were right and they were wrong.  It’s a trap—your self-righteousness is a trap of the ego.  I’m telling you, I get it.  Being right has a hard punch of adrenaline, but an incredibly short half-life, if we think about it.  Life has so much more to offer than the sullied and stained perspective that we look through, after being burned.  Unfortunately, there is no timeline and owner’s manual for getting through disappointments.  But, when you can clear your mind and heart of the messy stuff, it’s amazing how quickly goodness can fill those spaces, if you allow it.  I promise you, a life of compassion and understanding is far more fun and fulfilling than the alternative. 

Times a’wasting and happiness is a’waiting—time to get to work on clearing out the heart space! 

 About the Author ~ World renown Speaker, Author, Trainer, Mentor & Coach - Jennifer Curtet, is burning up the highways across the country with her powerful workshops and keynotes. Her energy and passion have won her rave reviews from audiences from coast to coast. She delivers seminars packed with real-world, practical skills, tempered with her own engaging mixture of warmth and humor. As an author and speaker, Jennifer is a master storyteller and is sure to leave you breathless and inspired.