#those are his emotional support pink cowboy boots

[pjocharacterdesign]

was musing over babby Will Solace thoughts

[fuckyeahevanrwood]

Evan Rachel Wood Turns Her Trauma Into Good. On ‘Westworld’ and in Life.

When Evan Rachel Wood needs a jolt of confidence, she puts on a certain playlist, a compendium of feminist anthems and feisty classics — “I Will Survive,” “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, some head-whipping grunge and hip-hop. It was piping through her house here one chilly afternoon last month. Ms. Wood, the actress and musician, had just put herself through an emotional wringer: She testified before Congress, in unflinching terms, about being a survivor of sexual violence, then jetted to Los Angeles to perform songs by David Bowie, her musical idol, with his bandmates.

It was a cross-country head-snap. Now she was welding herself back together.

“My life is definitely going places I did not foresee,” she said, leaning over her kitchen counter, as Sia’s “Unstoppable” played in the background. “But I’m going with it. It doesn’t feel like a choice at this point. This is just what I need to do.”

Her trajectory is even more remarkable when you consider how much it overlaps, thematically, with the story line of Dolores, her character on the HBO series “Westworld.” On that sci-fi drama, set in a Western theme park where visitors can act out their most depraved fantasies with humanlike robot “hosts,” Dolores is an innocent and much-abused host who slowly awakens to the darkness of what has befallen her, and then fights her way out.

A critical darling when it aired in 2016, “Westworld” had the most-watched debut season of any HBO series, and anticipation for its new season, which begins April 22, is high. In a starry ensemble that included Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Jeffrey Wright, it was the women, like Ms. Wood and Thandie Newton, as a host madam who’s newly conscious of her reality, that were riveting, in part for how they endured — and inflicted — violence.

The show, Ms. Wood said, “completely transformed my entire life,” not because it catapulted her career — although it did — but because playing Dolores forced her to drill into her own struggles. “Her journey mirrored so much of what I had been through and what I was going through,” she said. “It gave me a strength that I did not know I had.”

For Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the married co-creators of “Westworld,” Ms. Wood was first an exceedingly “protean” actor, as Mr. Nolan said in a joint phone interview. Ms. Wood, 30, has been in front of the camera since childhood, graduating from volatile adolescents in movies like “Thirteen” to a vampire queen on “True Blood.” They cast her knowing she could pull off the lightning shifts that Dolores makes in Season 2, which finds her exacting sweet revenge even as she weighs its costs.

“With Evan’s character, I wanted to explore a hero who has flaws and had a history that was trauma and sadness, but who could overcome that,” said Ms. Joy, a writer, producer and director of the series with her husband. “To me, that’s an inspiring story, and a story that can teach. And Evan, because she is so strong and she is that person, was able to unleash even more of that strength than I imagined. Even the aspects of her performance where she’s vulnerable, or when she makes a mistake, you’re internalizing that even heroes falter. It’s the kind of hero I wish I had had growing up.”

Ms. Wood did not necessarily feel heroic when she traveled to Washington — her second time there, after the 2017 Women’s March — to testify before a House judiciary committee in February. “I shook for days” beforehand, she said. She feared she would be judged for what happened to her.

“I couldn’t even believe I was about to say these words aloud, that I probably have only said out loud to three people.”

That somebody with her background — “I’ve had practice baring my soul in intense, surreal situations; it’s like what I do for a living” — was still terrified made her even more determined to go, to represent those who couldn’t. She was invited to appear by Amanda Nguyen, the founder of Rise, an advocacy organization for rape survivors. They were endorsing the Survivor’s Bill of Rights, 2016 legislation which amended the federal criminal code to give survivors of sexual assault the right to a free medical exam and to have rape kits be preserved for as long as 20 years, among other changes. (The hearing examined the law; its supporters are hoping to get a version passed in each state, because most rape cases are tried on the state level.)

Ms. Wood called herself a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault, and described being raped twice, about a decade ago, first by an abusive partner, then by a man in the storage closet of a bar. “Being abused and raped previously made it easier for me to raped again, not the other way around,” she said. She has aligned herself with these causes before, but never in such personal terms.

She spoke of suffering from “depression, addiction, agoraphobia, night terrors” and attempting suicide; eventually, she was given a diagnosis of long-term PTSD. The assaults left her with “a mental scar that I feel, every day,” she said. She delivered her testimony in a gripping voice and broke down in tears afterward.

Around her neck, in a locket on a long silver chain, she carried a picture of her character, Dolores.

She was still wearing it a week or so later, at her home in Nashville. “Whenever I had a moment of self-doubt, I remembered — this is a part of me,” she said, as her cat, a protective Devon Rex named Smokey, curled up beside us on the couch.

She moved to Nashville a few years ago, seeking a quieter place to raise her son, now 4½ years old, she had with her ex-husband, the actor Jamie Bell. Save for an old friend turned writing partner, she knew few people there, and gets around without much fanfare, helped by a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and a choppy bob. (Her long “Westworld” hair is a wig.)

Would she have been able to testify without the show?

“I hadn’t even cried about my experiences until after ‘Westworld,’” she said. Her defense mechanism was to go numb and power through. “And I didn’t even realize that until I’d done ‘Westworld.’”

When she finally gave herself permission to cry, “it was like the floodgates opened,” she added. “It just felt like an exorcism; it was so painful but so healing.”

Revealing her ordeal, she felt freer, she said, comparing it to coming out as bisexual in 2011. “Everyone was like, ‘Don’t do it!’” she mock-yelled. “And I was like, I have to, it’s me, and it’s unhealthy if I live in a way that’s not authentic.”

Ms. Wood’s testimony, coupled with the personal revelations and shifts of the #MeToo movement, made a difference, said Ms. Nguyen, who helped draft the original bill. “Storytelling is so important in convincing people about policy change,” she said. “I know that that hearing moved the needle for progress.”

Twenty-four hours later, Ms. Wood was in Los Angeles, about to perform at a touring Bowie tribute. She has a lightning bolt tattoo, from Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane” album cover, and songs like “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide” were her beacon. “I used to just put that on when I was at my lowest points and just wait for him to scream, ‘You’re not alone!’ And that would get me through another night,” she said.

When she opened the lyric page for that song, onstage at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, her hand trembled. The words looked like symbols — “like I couldn��t even read,” she said. “Everything went white. And I thought, ‘Oh boy. Breathe, girl, breathe.’” In videos from the show, you can see her hesitate and back off, then regain her momentum. She finished the number with shattering intensity.

“Evan is a powerhouse,” said her friend Linda Perry (4 Non Blondes, Pink’s “Get the Party Started”), the vocalist, songwriter and producer, who recommended her for the Bowie gig. “What I like about her is, she’s not afraid to be vulnerable, and that to me is an extremely powerful position to be in. She stands right there with her feet on the ground and her arms open, saying, This is who I am, this is how I’m going to be, and this is how I’m going to walk through life. Take it or leave it.”

In Ms. Wood’s telling, that position is hard won. The daughter of two actors from Raleigh, N.C., where her father runs a community theater, she began performing early, and moved to Los Angeles with her mother, an acting coach, after her parents split when she was 9. A steady career followed, but looking back, she said: “I didn’t feel like I had proper training for the world. I lived my whole life asking, ‘What do you want me to do and who do you want me to be?’ I was so insecure and didn’t feel worthy of much.” As a teenager, she began a much-ogled relationship with Marilyn Manson, the older goth rocker, to whom she was briefly engaged.

Only later in her 20s, she said, and especially after she became a mother, did she find her voice. The 2016 election also impelled her to act, to set an example for her son.

In between Seasons 1 and 2 of “Westworld,” Ms. Wood filmed an indie drama, “Allure,” out now, in which she plays the gaslighting abuser of a teenage girl. It was not fun to play, she said, but a painful story she felt needed to be told. “If you’re going to be famous, for me it has to mean something, or be used for something, because otherwise it just freaks me out,” she said.

The playlist we’d been listening to all day — her soundtrack for the revolution — is called “Invincible,” she said. In a flannel shirt, dark jeans and cowboy boots embossed with stars, she was unguarded and casual, peppering the conversation with “Dude!” and the click, every now and then, of a fidget cube, to channel her energy. Her house is cozy but feels half-lived in — she’s still in Los Angeles often. “Westworld” shoots in the Utah desert; to lighten the mood on set, she and her co-star James Marsden, as a “host” gunfighter, run their lines as Veronica Corningstone and Ron Burgundy, from “Anchorman.” (She puts on her coaching voice; he’s dense. It works.)

But Dolores’s transformation, in Season 2, left Ms. Wood unnerved.

“I’ve worked for a very long time to not be angry and vengeful,” she said, “so it was hard to take pleasure in that, even though I knew that the character had definitely earned it.”

Ms. Wood’s mission is always to turn her trauma into some other force. Before she went to Congress, she had her aura read at a Nashville shop. It told her some of her energy was blocked, that she needed to get something out. Now, a week afterward, we went back, to see if anything had changed.

She was still glowing lavender — “wonderful storytellers, writers and artists,” the description said. “They have the talent to visualize and describe magical, mystical worlds.” But where before her emotional chart looked like a jagged mountain range, now it was flat, calm. “Speaking your truth!” she said.

Her hope was that — especially post #MeToo — “Westworld” would do for others what Dolores did for her: help them to feel powerful, and be heard.

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear,” she said.

[goddess4302]

Tifa Lockhart is a playable character in Final Fantasy VII, and the deuteragonist of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. She also plays a supportive role in Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII- and Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-. Tifa is Cloud Strife's childhood friend, but lost contact with him years ago. When she meets him again, she convinces him to join the resistance group she is a member of, AVALANCHE, to fight Shinra Electric Power Company.

Tifa supports Cloud as his comrade and helps him fight his nemesis Sephiroth, bearing the same hatred for him as Cloud does due to the destruction of their hometown.

Appearance:

Tifa has dark brown hair, occasionally appearing black, which falls below her waist and is tied at the tips to form a dolphin-tail split. In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Childrenand some other appearances, her hair is shorter and reaches the middle of her back—in Advent Children because longer hair is difficult to animate. Tifa's eye color has been officially addressed as red, but they have been depicted as a brown in some appearances. According to an official artwork, Tifa's bust-waist-hip measures are 92-60-88 cm (37-24-35 inches).[8]

In all her outfits across her many appearances, Tifa has worn some variation of a sleeveless shirt that exposes her midriff, a miniskirt and white teardrop earrings. In Final Fantasy VII, Tifa wears a white tank top and black mini-skirt with a belt and suspenders. She dons red and black gloves that extend to her elbows, red boots, black socks, and a metal guard on her left elbow. She wears the same outfit in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring and the Itadaki series.

n Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-, and in flashbacks in Final Fantasy VII when she is a guide at Nibelheim, Tifa wears a cowgirl outfit with a short leather skirt and vest, a white shirt, cowboy boots and hat. In Crisis Core this outfit is given more detail, changing the top into a patterned, button-up corset, giving pockets and tassels to the skirt and vest and adding a belt around her hips. In her artwork by Yoshitaka Amano, Tifa has white hair and wears a red miniskirt with a white top and red gloves. This outfit is an alternate outfit for her in Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring and Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy.

In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Tifa wears the Leather Suit: a white tank top under a black zip-up vest with black overhauled shorts that fold at the waist, forming an additional utility pocket at the front and a short duster at the back extending to her heels. She wears a pink ribbon around her left arm in remembrance of Aerith Gainsborough, and a Fenrir ring on her right hand. Her gloves are black and shorter than in Final Fantasy VII, covering only her hands. Tifa wears this attire in the Kingdom Hearts series and in Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-, and it is available as an alternate outfit for her in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy.

Personality:

While deceptively strong, Tifa is empathic and emotionally shy. While identifying and responding to the feelings of others, Tifa does not express her feelings often and when she does she struggles doing so. Tifa has motherly qualities, acting as a support for others, and keeping the others around her optimistic.

In Final Fantasy VII, Tifa is a hard worker and spends her time caring for everyone but herself, keeping the feelings of uneasiness towards Cloud locked up. She offers sanctuary and protects those in need, and is often an emotional crutch for the other AVALANCHE members to lean on. Tifa finds them to be kindred spirits seeking to end the tyranny the Shinra Electric Power Company has brought unto the Planet, although initially she joined the rebel group to seek revenge for the destruction of her hometown and the deaths of her family and friends therein. Tifa helps Cloud along the way in his soul-searching to find himself, while reminding the other party members to "be strong."

Unlike the other party members, she does not explicitly have a backstory to tell the others, which can partly be attributed to her shyness, and partly to how much of it is shared with Cloud, as they hail from the same hometown. This forms a bond between the two, and Cloud is Tifa's emotional link to the old life she used to lead in Nibelheim, which was destroyed by Shinra's influence.

In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Tifa has grown more forward and tries to keep their family unit together when Cloud falls into depression. She acts like a parental figure towards the children in her care, both defending them in battle and giving them emotional support. Though not clingy, she appears hurt by Cloud's distantness. Tifa pushes him to take action and to stop brooding with what he considers to be his past failings.

Story:

Tifa was born in Nibelheim and was Cloud's next-door neighbor. She was outgoing and had many friends, but although she and Cloud were only a year apart in age, they were not close. Tifa's mother died when Tifa was eight years old in 1995, leaving her upset and confused. Tifa believed her mother had gone to Mt. Nibel, and that she could meet her again if she crossed the mountain.

Tifa headed off to Mt. Nibel and Cloud followed to protect her, but they fell from a rickety bridge. Tifa's father found her severely injured and blamed Cloud for leading her to Mt. Nibel. Five years later, in 0000, Cloud decided to join SOLDIER like his idol Sephiroth, in part to impress Tifa. He called Tifa out to the water tower, a local date spot, to tell her of his plans, and Tifa made Cloud promise to protect her if she was ever in trouble. He left to join SOLDIER the following spring and Tifa kept checking the newspaper looking for some mention of him, and asking Shinra personnel if they knew him when they came to Nibelheim. She would find nothing, for Cloud never made it into SOLDIER, becoming only a lowly infantryman.