#time and twilight are terrible influences on a young pirate

[maesonc-artistic-adventures]

You’re not the boss of him! 😤😤😤

[mrneighbourlove]

The Mask over the Man. The Demon over the Beast. Majora over Ganon.

I love both these villains. The N64 was my first console I delved deep into, and Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask introduced me to two of my favourite villains in gaming. Today though, I want to delve into why I see one of these characters as the superior ‘villain’. Just my opinion, but I hope to share my case strongly and passionately. I’ll go over each character, than why I believe that one reigns over the other, even if ever so slightly.

Ganon

The King of Evil. The King of Darkness. And the Great Calamity of Hyrule. I love the pig demon. His constant presence in the Legend of Zelda series cannot be ignored. Gameplay wise, he can be so much fun to fight against in the final battle for the sake of the world. Doesn’t matter if you fight him as a wolf, if he’s a wizard, or just a mighty beast. Story wise is where a have a slip with him. Ganon set the standard for me in the ‘Dark Lord’ archetype, however, he can sometimes feel simplistic in that regard, simply wishing to conquer the world. And as the beast, barring perhaps Link to the Past, he lacks any real character. It’s also unfortunate that most of the time you meet him, you defeat him immediately afterwards. The best he’s ever been as a threat to me, was in Breath of the Wild.

Calamity Ganon

This is Ganon as almost a force of nature. No real conscious we can see, having thrown away any shell of a man for hatred and malice. What really makes this Ganon work, is the relationship you *rediscover* with the old champions, and feeling the heartache at knowing they’re dead. The fact that it festered in Hyrule for over a century, is highly impressive. But the biggest complaint people had (and why everyone is going crazy over the mummified corpse of MummyDorf) is that because Calamity Ganon was just pure hatred, we lacked the relationship of the three Triforce users seen in past games. Which leads me talking about the man, the legend, the best part of Ganon.

Ganondorf

Making Ganon into Ganondorf did wonders for the character. His goals became more relatable, because we as humans can relate with another human being, or at the very least, understand the goal. Hailing from the Gerudo desert, there are two Ganondorf’s that I want to pick out. The Wind Waker split, and the Twilight Princess split. In Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf is the best evil conquer he’s ever been, even without the long locks of Hyrule Warriors. He set out with a long purpose goal to take the Triforce and conquer the world. And he was the main focus as a villain. Ganondorf was also young, and brash. He had a flair, which made him a fantastic villain. He truly appeared to be the King of Evil. Upon his defeat, he gave a loud speech of getting revenge, very classic villain monologue. The next game we saw him was Wind Waker. I feel confident in saying that despite not seeing too much of him, this is the best Ganondorf becomes as a character. He’s far more relaxed in his evil plot. The man goes out of his way to make sure his kidnaped girls aren’t hurt, and when dealing with both Link and Zelda, he gets straight to the point with them, yet, he doesn’t kill them. And up until the end, he still has an air of menace when he wishes to be theatric, despite having more experience and wisdom. After the frightful Puppet Ganon fight, you learn why Ganondorf set out for power in the first place. His people suffered under the desert heat of day, and the icy cold nights. In his own words, the winds carried death. His desire for the Triforce was to bring back the old land of Hyrule. Despite what might have happened after he brought back the land, Ganondorf wanted to *restore* the old land of Hyrule from under the sea. That’s almost heroic. You emphasize with him. Which I argue diminished his villainous qualities in exchange for a more flushed out character. He only tries to kill Link and Zelda after his wish is denied and he snaps into insanity.

Then there’s Twilight Princess Ganondorf. A really cool Ganondorf. His design is awesome, I love his boss fights gameplay wise and musically, but this is one of the Ganon’s I’d place into the ‘cockblock’ section of Ganons. Real talk, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but I really like Zant as a villain. He was incredibly intimidating until you face him in the realm of Twilight. His relationship with Midna was interesting, and he carried a cool air not seen before. He was chill... until the very end into his sudden crazy decent. I feel that both Ganondorf and Zant suffer because of the formers sudden conclusion. Each character lost time in the game that could have been used to develop them more. Zant could have had more time to develop into madness as the final boss, or Ganondorf could have been established from the beginning, instead of being diet OOT Ganondorf. His evil goal of placing the world into Twilight didn’t have any drastic changes to the world either. Civilians didn’t even notice the danger they were in. At least OOT Ganon ruled Hyrule for 7 years, and Calamity Ganon was around for 100 years. When Ganondorf takes away time from other villains, it makes him a weaker villain as well. Which is why the Mask stood tall in such a unique story.

Majora

The entity of Majora’s Mask stands out to me as something insidious and inhuman. Unlike Ganondorf, you can’t identify with an unblinking Mask like you can a human being. It stands out as a villain that doesn’t need Ganon in its story or to take his form. The duel relationship with Skull Kid is interesting, as Skull Kid isn’t entirely innocent in his actions, but the transition Majora takes over Skull Kid makes you wonder who’s control until the very end. In my recent play through, I just discovered this, but in Day 1 or 2, the Skull Kid will do a little dance when you spot him in the telescope, and once you look back, he spanks his ass at you and jumps away. However, at Day 3, his head is sideways, looking at you, and constantly twitching, rooted to his spot. It’s like Majora is a drug to Skull Kid that has finally caught up. And that’s a terrible fate to think about.

What stands out to me the most about Majora over Ganon, is the stakes as a hero. First, looking at the world. Ganondorf ruled Hyrule for 7 years, yet villages like Kakariko are still around. The world hasn’t been ruined. Even with Calamity Ganon having been around for 100 years, he’s in a prison with Zelda, and civilization keeps ticking by. The moment you enter the world of Termina and you look to the sky, you can see Majora’s immediate tool of armageddon.

The Moon

This rock in the sky slowly falls to the Earth over a period of three days. The stakes are felt immediately. You either stop Majora from crashing the moon into Termina, or you burn with the rest of the world. Swept away by a wall of fire compered to an atomic bomb. If the ticking timer doesn’t remind you of your duty, the earthquakes on the third day, then looking to the sky will. Another peek of interest for me in the camp of villainy, is the people you meet along the way. The world of Termina is full of colourful characters that Link meets throughout his adventure. From Tatl to Pamela and her Father, you get heavily invested with them. And they all are aware of the danger of the moon. Almost all are directly or indirectly affected by the Skull Kid and the power of Majora that he immaturely wields. Mikau is killed by Gerudo pirates because they were influenced by Skull Kid to steal the Zora eggs. Areas such as the Woodfall Swamp, Snowhead mountains and Ikana Valley are cursed due to the Monsters Majora unleashes after sealing the giants away. Kafei is cursed into a child directly by Skull Kid and has his wedding mask stolen by a thief as a result. Cremina, god willing that you save her sister Romani from the “Ghosts”, drugs her sister with alcoholic milk so she sleeps through the destruction of the world. The acts of villainy Majora does ripple big and small. With Ganondorf and Ganon, you are given free room to take your time, you lose very little allies, and you have Zelda backing you up most of the time in a battle of destiny. With Majora, however, Zelda is no way involved, many people you meet die and suffer, some you can’t save even with rewinding time, and if you don’t stop the villain, he isn’t going to reshape the world, or control it in his own image, it’s going to destroy it. That is terrifying. Ganon has never truly terrified me. He’s just too human enough, and his villainous acts have never put me on edge. Unlike the champions of Breath of the Wild who you are avenging, the people of Termina are here and now, and that puts so much more tension on me.

Ganondorf is a great villain, but the inhuman characteristics of an entity that wanted to destroy all left a bigger impression on me. When you finally defeat Majora and save everyone you can correctly and within the time you’re given, including Skull Kid I might add, the credits feel so amazing because you truly saved the world, but more importantly, you saved the people that inhabit it. Defeating Ganon as a villain is a battle of destiny. Defeating Majora is a battle for everyone’s tomorrow.

[rebelcourtesan]

KH4 Wishlist (SPOILERS)

Finished Kingdom Hearts 3 and I have to say its a stellar game.  Definitely the gave we’ve been waiting for years to arrive.  And I’m looking forward to the second installation, though I do have a wishlist.

Below are spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 3.  Do NOT read any further if you haven’t finished the game and/or don’t want to be spoiled.  

THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

1.  A Smaller Cast of Characters (excluding World/Disney characters)

    Don’t get me wrong.  I love the characters of Kingdom Hearts, but the problem is that it became congested with too many characters with their own stories and plots.  Some characters are actually extensions of other characters.  Roxas/Ventus/Sora and then there’s Naimine/Kairi.  Not mention Riku/Replica Riku/Darkness Riku and Xehanort/Ansem/Xemnas/Young Xehanort and so on.  You see where it can get confusing.

The cast needs to be reduced by about 75 percent so we have a more simple story that’s not convoluted web of plots and backgrounds.  The best solution to this is to let these ‘cut’ characters retire to their happy endings or be reduced to background or minor characters.  Let Lea/Axel, Xion, and Roxas live happily together in Twilight Town with Haynar and the gang.  Have Ansem and the redeemed members of the Organization do research on Radiant Garden.  Pick a core cast and expand that cast’s backgrounds and slowly introduce new characters. 

 2. New Protagonist

    I might get flamed for this, but bear with me.  I like Sora as much as anyone, but while playing KH 3, his personality grated on me.  I understand he’s the protagonist with the heart of gold and boyish charm, but watching him interact with the other Disney characters was like eating spoonfuls of sugar and washing it down with syrup.  I understand that his ability to make friends with whomever he meets is a special ability that makes him stand out in Kingdom Hearts, but it gets annoying after a while to constantly hear him introducing himself and his companions over and over and over and over and over again and again and again!    

Don’t get me wrong, there were good moments such as when he, Donald, and Goofy jumped on Davy Jones for stabbing will Turner and when he was upset at the idea of losing his friends showed a rare depth of character for him.  .  

But for too long Sora has been like this KH savior with no flaws save for not being as bright as others.  His personality has changed very little since his first introduction way back in the first KH.  In fact, he was more interesting in KH1 because he had self doubts about his capabilities which he overcame to confront Riku and regaining the Keyblade.  

I feel that Kingdom Hearts series is in dire need of a soft reboot, and the best way to do that is to replace Sora as a protagonist.  He’s had a good long run across six games and 17 years, but now it’s time to pass on the torch to another. 

3. Aqua as the Next Protagonist

 I adore Aqua.  She’s a mature, beautiful, talented, brave, and loyal female character in Kingdom Hearts.  My favorite play through of BBS is playing through her storyline and I wish there was more worlds for her to explore.  I enjoyed the scene when she insisted on trying on the glass slipper in Cinderalla’s world to buy time for Jaq to free Cinderella.  When she went to Olympus Coliseum she was flirted with by both Zack and Phil.  

The interactions with other World characters would be far more interesting when the protagonist is a capable young woman and not a ragamuffin boy who gets slotted as the new kid and friends.  

What Aqua has that Sora doesn’t, is that she has more of an edge in her backstory.  She spent ten frickin’ years in the Realm of Darkness!  That has got to carry some scars for our blue haired warrior maiden and it could have even corrupted her.  The experience could have given her PTSD, (GASP!  A female character with PTSD that isn’t the result of sexual assualt?).  She could go on a journey to other worlds to find a way to remove the corruption or to find Sora who has disappeared at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3.   

By extension, Aqua need not go it alone . . .

4. A New All Female Trio

Again, assuming they go with Aqua (or a female protagonist), instead of iconic Disney characters like Goofy and Donald accompanying the lead, let’s have female characters go on the journey instead.  Of course, your first thought would be Minnie and Daisy, but they wouldn’t be well suited as Aqua’s companions.  

For starters, both characters are female version on their love interests.  Hell, they were originally created so Donald and Mickey could have girlfriends.  Besides, both of them are rooted in the Disneyland world with their respected paramours.  The more suitable companions would be Disney women who don’t have love interests tying them down and would make for excellent comrades in battle.

Merida from Brave could offer range attacks and support.  She has a bold spirit with an impetuous nature that could offset the other women and sometimes get them into trouble.  I can see her hopping on a Gummi ship just for the adventure of traveling to other worlds.  

Elsa would be the ‘mage’ of the group with Ice magic.  She would bring diplomacy and calm that could clash with Merida’s fiery personality.  You’d have to convince her to leave Arendelle behind for advantage, since she’s the first Disney Queen who isn’t the mother of a princess nor evil.  

We need more positive female friendships for young girls to emulate.  Setting aside Disney characters, the bromance in Kingdom Hearts has been done to death with Riku/Sora, Riku/Mickey, Sora/Donald/Goofy, and many many others.  Very rarely so we see the female characters together in the same room and hold a positive conversation with each other.  Yes, we know, guys can be the best of friends to each other and girls, but how about we see girls being besties with each other.

5. Maturer Storylines that aren’t so Heart centric       

That being said, let me explain.  As I mentioned before, watching Sora interact with Disney characters has been like eating raw sugar.  It’s sweet, but sometimes it was terribly too sweet.  

When I say mature, I don’t mean Adult Situation, Sexual Content, or Gore and Violence.  I mean a story that deals with darker themes than just the power of friendship.  Just as dealing with loss, betrayal, self-doubt, trauma, and conflicted feelings.  

Aqua could go from world to world to experience an array of emotional problems and come from it a stronger woman, mentally and emotionally, with the support of her companions.  It would give her the strength to overcome her past traumas from her time in the Realm of Darkness.  

We keep getting hit over the head  about Hearts connecting people, which is a powerful message, but good grief, it gets old after a while.  I get it, it’s in the title Kingdom Hearts, but can’t we focus on something other Hearts?  Connection between people is important, but there are other connections other than friendships.  Brotherly or sisterly love, parent/child, rivals, enemies, lovers, comrades, coworkers, etc.   

6. Let the Protagonist have more Influence in the Worlds

In Kingdom Hearts 3, the worlds I enjoyed most were the ones that didn’t follow the central plot in their respective films.  These are all popular movies most people have already seen prior to playing the game and I found myself becoming a little bored when I see the same scenes replay themselves in the game.  

On a side note, I really appreciate the care and detail that Square Enix put into recreating these iconic scenes.  I REALLY REALLY DO!!!  Especially with Pirates of the Carribean.  But I wanted to see more interaction between Sora, Donald, and Goofy and not have them be observers to the story.  In some worlds, they were outsiders looking in, especially in the Frozen world or tag alongs as they were in Tangle and Pirates.  

The best worlds were Monster Inc, Big Hero Six, and Toy Story which didn’t follow the movie plots, but had their own stories for the game.  Sora and gang has better interaction with these groups of characters.  Buzz was suspicious of them, they were practically adopted by the Big Hero Six, and helped Sully and Mike protect Boo and save the company. 

Best moments for me was when Sully and Mike threw Vanitas through the doors and Jack Sparrow’s bad breath sent Luxford overboard.  

  6. World Wishlist

Assuming that I get my dream team of Aqua/Merida/Elsa, these are the worlds I would love for them to explore.

Tron Uprising - it’s still considered canon, though it lasted one season.  I can see Aqua wearing blue circuits, Merida green, and Elsa with yellow. 

Zootopia -  A world with a transformation magic. Aqua is a blue bird, Merida a bear, and Elsa as a snow leopard.  

Star Wars - Team up with Ahsoka Tano to take down Separatist droids and/or Sith. 

Marvel Universe - Meeting the Avengers

Gravity Falls - I can see the DreamTeam aiding the twins in an investigation of a new mystery of the town.

Wreck -It - Ralph - Let’s have video game characters meet iconic video game characters.  

DuckTales (2017 Reboot) - Aqua has already met Scrooge McDuck, I can see him enlisting her to help in a quest.

Mulan - Always a plus to see strong women teaming up with others.  

Gummi Bears - This old gem deserves some love.

Last - Let this Journey be more about Self-Growth

Heroes save worlds and people, but the hero’s journey is about discovering what one is capable of.  Discovering and drawing lines, overcoming challenges and fears, and finding inner strength.  

Let’s see a protagonist learn a lesson from each world she visits and take that lesson into her core and reaches the end of her journey as a stronger person.  Let this journey be one of self-discovery and not just to oppose a growing threat, though it would be alright if there was one lingering in the background.

Aqua’s journey could be to conquer her own darkness, much like Riku had in his own journey.

That’s all I have for this wishlist.  Or maybe I just outlined a Kingdom Hearts fanfic.  *shrugs*   

[your-dietician]

Billie Eilish and the Pursuit of Happiness

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/entertainment/billie-eilish-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/

Billie Eilish and the Pursuit of Happiness

210413_ROLLING_STONE_06_1486_v4-billie-opener – Credit: Yana Yatsuk for Rolling Stone

From the outside, the house isn’t terribly different from others on the block: a cozy bungalow in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood with an old lilac tree blooming near the entrance. In fact, it’s legendary: the place where a prodigal teenager and her older brother recorded the album that made Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell the queen of Gen-Z pop.

It’s a location familiar to any Eilish fan, and at first glance on an absurdly beautiful day in April, not much appears to have changed about the house in the couple of years since it became famous, along with its teenage occupant. The O’Connell family’s rescue dog, Pepper, trudges through the backyard, now joined by Eilish’s year-old rescue, Shark, a gray pit bull. Signs of home-schooling linger in common areas, like an old-fashioned pencil sharpener attached to the wall and dingy supplies precariously placed on a desk.

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But look closer, and plenty is different. For starters, contemporary pop’s most famous home studio, set up in the childhood bedroom of Billie’s brother Finneas, is no longer a studio. Instead, the siblings’ mom, Maggie Baird, has taken over the space. “It still looks similar. There’s just no equipment,” Billie insists as she greets me in her kitchen, gathering ingredients and utensils for the cookies she wants to bake. Her mom’s added a blue rug to the bedroom and sleeps there with their cat, Misha. “We kept [the studio] for a while, then we were like ‘We don’t need this,’ ” Eilish says.

Finneas moved out a couple of years ago, settling down in Los Feliz with his influencer girlfriend Claudia Sulewski. He constructed a new studio in his basement, where he and Eilish began recording music last year. Eilish is, at first, cagey about admitting that she’s moved out as well. “I’m secretive about what’s really going on,” she offers conspiratorially, rummaging around the cabinets of her parents’ kitchen like a college student visiting home on a long weekend. “It’s been a couple of years now where I’ve been doing my own thing. But secretly, because nobody needs to know that.”

Story continues

Eilish hasn’t been totally lying about where she lives; she still spends a lot of nights in her childhood bedroom. “I just love my parents, so I want to be around them,” she says, shrugging. Maggie and her husband, Patrick O’Connell, buzz in and out of the kitchen, commenting on the cookie baking and helping Eilish use the old oven. Eilish is sporting her new blond-bombshell look. A 180 from her formerly signature black-with-green-roots ’do, the new hair caused an uproar when she debuted it on Instagram in March. Today it’s damp from a shower, and she’s cozied up in a black T-shirt from her own merch store, along with a pair of matching sweats. On today’s menu are vegan, gluten-free peanut-butter-and-chocolate-chip cookies. She’s reading off an old recipe displayed on a food-stained printout that has clearly been well-utilized over the years. Eilish used to make them whenever she was sad. “It was a therapeutic thing for me,” she explains.

It’s been a while since she’s made the cookies (“You’re seeing history,” she teases). She’s found other ways to process her feelings, namely through writing her second album, Happier Than Ever, which is due out July 30th. The title is no fiction: She has, in fact, felt happier than she ever had before. But like a lot of things in her life, it’s not quite that simple.

“Almost none of the songs on this album are joyful,” Eilish explains, refuting the possibility that her second album is the bright, cheery counterpoint to 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? The Babadook-inspired debut conjured up vivid memories of night terrors and lucid dreams over textures ranging from industrial electro-pop to jazzy ballads. Her videos were just as dark, full of spiders and black tears covering her face.

On the surface, Happier Than Ever is a different kind of nightmare. Emotional abuse, power struggles, and mistrust — stories drawn from Eilish’s life and the lives of people she knows — take up much of the lyrics, alongside musings on fame and fantasies of secret romantic rendezvous. The sound is mellowed out from the haunted-house sprawl of her debut: lush, somber, mesmerizing electronic soundscapes trickle down your spine, right along with Eilish’s words.

And yet, even on the darkest songs there are moments of reflection, growth and, most important, hope. This is an album from someone who began to heal long before she wrote it. Or at least tried to.

“Have you ever gotten stung on your head by a bee?”

Eilish mentions she got stung “like 20 times” on a camping trip when she was eight or nine. It’s a story she’s told before. “I don’t know why that popped into my head,” she says. “Why did that pop into my head? I have no idea.”

She posed the question after a bit of mesmerized silence as we watched Shark go to town on an empty can of peanut butter. Eilish doesn’t like silence; she even narrates the cookie baking like a food vlogger. She shows me how to make oat flour (“It’s literally oats on their own; pour them in this thing [a Vitamix blender], full power”) and figuring out the right chocolate chip to peanut-butter-dough ratio. (“Some people like too many. I like too little.”)

“I can’t go to the bathroom without watching something on my phone,” she says. “I can’t brush my teeth. I can’t wash my face.” Over the past year she rewatched a lot of things: Sherlock, The Office “probably like six times,” New Girl “like four times,” Jane the Virgin. There was also time for Good Girls, Killing Eve, The Flight Attendant, The Undoing, and Promising Young Woman “like four times.”

“It’s all on my phone,” she explains. She rarely watches anything on TV, except The Twilight Saga, which she took in for the first time recently, with a friend. “I just watch it while I do anything because it takes my mind off the reality of life. I should go on My Strange Addiction,” she says, coincidentally referencing her 2019 song of the same name (which, by the way, samples dialogue from The Office).

Eilish can’t really go outside anymore. There are paparazzi and creeps waiting for her every move, and some have threatened her safety to the point that she needed a restraining order against them. The instant recognizability of her When We All Fall Asleep-era look — bright-green hair, oversize clothes, saucer-like ocean eyes — helped keep her caged. She grew resentful: “I was a kid and I wanted to do kid shit. I didn’t want to be not able to fucking go to a store or the mall. I was very angry and not grateful about it.”

billie eilish rolling stone cover

When We All Fall Asleep and the image she projected at the time marked her uniqueness from the rest of the pop world. But those things also cemented a view of her she’d love to leave behind. I mention an instruction during a musical challenge on a recent season of RuPaul’s Drag Race where a competing drag queen was told the song she was performing was “very Billie Eilish.”

“What do they think when they think that? Do they think what the internet thinks, which is whispering or whatever the fuck people say? Anytime I see an impression on the internet, it just reminds me how little the internet knows about me. Like, I really don’t share shit. I have such a loud personality that makes people feel like they know everything about me and they literally don’t at all.” She wants people to understand a few things: “That I can sing. That I’m a woman. That I have a personality.” Happier Than Ever offers a statement on all of the above.

“Anytime I hear somebody say, ‘Oh, your songs sound the same,’ it gets me. That’s one thing I really try hard to not do. I think the people that say that have literally only heard ‘Bad Guy’ and ‘Therefore I Am.’ ” Both of those songs feature Eilish’s tendency for muted, moody sing-rapping. These days, she’s channeling the jazziness in her voice, a timbre honed from years of touring, on songs like “My Future” and “Your Power.”

Eilish’s privacy was more precious than she had initially realized. She put a lot of herself out for the world to consume early in her career, when she was an “annoying 16-year-old” (her words) trying to engage with her fandom the way she wanted her favorite artists like Justin Bieber to do back when she was a preteen fan. “It’s sad because I can’t give the fans everything they want,” she says. “The bigger I’ve gotten, the more I understand why [my favorite celebrities] couldn’t do all the things I wanted them to do.”

She struggles to find the right way to frame it. “It wouldn’t make sense to people who aren’t in this world. If I said what I was thinking right now, [the fans] would feel the same way I did when I was 11. They’d be like, ‘It would be so easy. You could just do it.’ No. It’s crazy the amount of things you don’t think about before it’s right in front of you.”

Eilish describes her life as “normal as hell,” and at times, it is. She’s watching Twilight. Going on first dates again, as discreetly as possible. Getting first tattoos (she got a giant black dragon on her right thigh in November and “Eilish,” in an ornate, gothic font, in the middle of her chest the day after the 2020 Grammys). “That’s why it’s hilarious when I see, like, ‘10 reasons why we think Billie -Eilish is in the illuminati,’ ” she says. “I’m like, you know how regular I am, dude?”

She wants to share more details with her fans, but the thought makes her nervous. The songs on Happier Than Ever are buzzing with the fear of “interviews, interviews, interviews,” of the names of abusers or toxic friends being forever tied to her, of her own words coming back to haunt her.

“I wish that I could tell the fans everything I think and feel and it wouldn’t live on the internet forever. And be spoken about and called problematic, or called whatever the fuck anybody wants to call any thoughts that a human has,” she explains. “The other sad thing is that they don’t actually know me. And I don’t really know them, but obviously we’re connected. The problem is you feel like you know somebody, but you don’t. And then it’s like, yeah. It’s just a lot.”

We move outside, to the sole picnic table in the yard, and enjoy the warm, crumbly peanut butter cookies. Shark finds a particularly bright patch of sunlight to lie in. Suddenly, he hops up and runs along the fence, in response to the barks of a neighbor’s dog that he desperately wants to befriend. Eilish is a bit jealous.

“Don’t you just wish that was you?”

billie eilish rolling stone cover

“My mom was saying this yesterday,” Eilish says. “When you’re happier than ever, that doesn’t mean you’re the happiest that anyone’s ever been. It means you’re happier than you were before.”

After an adolescence plagued with depression, body dysmorphia, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts, Eilish started feeling better in the summer of 2019, while on tour in Europe. It was shortly after the release of When We All Fall Asleep, and she was seeing a therapist, had just broken up with a boyfriend, and was joined on the road with one of her best friends (as well as, of course, her parents and brother). “I was thriving,” she says. “I felt exactly like who I was. Everything around me was exactly how it was supposed to be. I felt like I was getting better. I felt happier than ever. And I tried to continue that.”

Early 2020 was a whirlwind. Eilish swept the Big Four categories at the Grammys and started a headlining tour that would have eaten up most of her year. She was more excited than she had been for previous tours, which left her with sprained ankles, shin splints, and chronic pain. She played all of three dates before the pandemic forced her to cancel the rest.

Eilish kind of got to say goodbye to the When We All Fall Asleep era (and the look that helped make her famous) at the Grammys this year, performing the one-off single “Everything I Wanted” with Finneas. Happier Than Ever was nearly complete, but she wasn’t yet ready to show off her new blond look. So she hid it beneath a green-and-black wig. “It was weird,” she reflects. “I was playing this former Billie Eilish with green hair, singing a song from a year and a half prior, while I have 16 new songs that I haven’t put out yet. The fans didn’t really even know that it was a goodbye to an era. That’s kind of heartbreaking but endearing at the same time.”

Recorded as the world went on pause, Happier Than Ever was an opportunity to dig into her personal trauma. “I went through some crazy shit, and it really affected me and made me not want to go near anyone ever,” she says, though she declines to give details.

Like everything Eilish does, the lyrics are sure to spark debate, side-eye emojis, and conspiracy theories as people ponder who she’s singing about. The songs are a mosaic of experience, ripped from her own life and those of people she knows. They juggle deadbeats, secret lovers, emotional abusers. Eilish won’t name names or get into specifics, and she’s quick to remind that this is not just her life she’s talking about. But she also says the stories in the new songs are more honest than When We Fall Asleep, which she describes as “almost all fictional.”

Eilish says she’s letting go of the Old Billie, who would tuck away her own emotions to make others feel better. “There’ve been times where I’ve been really affected by somebody, and I said to them, ‘I need to tell you how you’ve made me feel.’ And they said something that was like, ‘I can’t handle this right now. I just can’t handle this right now. This is going to be too much for me.’ ”

She says she spent so long “being fucked with” and had to realize that while the toxic traits she sings about were often born out of pain, that doesn’t make it OK. “I was talking to a friend about their life, and they told me all this crazy traumatizing shit that happened to them. And I’m like, ‘Oh, right, you don’t have to treat everyone like a piece of garbage, just because you’ve been hurt.’ It’s OK to be traumatized by something and have bad instincts, but also, there’s no excuse for abusing people. There just is not. I feel like everything is excuses all the time. Excuses, excuses.”

Album opener “Getting Older” was particularly harrowing to write. “Wasn’t my decision to be abused,” she sings over a delicately plucking synth beat. By the end, she lays bare what’s on her mind. “I’ve had some trauma/Did things I didn’t wanna/Was too afraid to tell ya/But now I think it’s time.” Eilish recognizes how shocked listeners may be by the rawness of the song. “I had to take a break in the middle of writing that one, and I wanted to cry, because it was so revealing. And it’s just the truth.”

The title track, which starts like a mopey breakup song, then fires off into an electric-guitar-driven rager, was the first thing she started writing for the album, back on the European tour where she felt like she was thriving. The rest of the songs bare different kinds of catharsis, teetering between sexy, electronic beats and warm folkiness, reminiscent of her earliest music. Each song is delicate, sensuous, and balancing naked vulnerability with a bit of self-protective confidence posturing.

Writing about her deepest emotions wasn’t easy for someone who had painstakingly kept the details of her relationships under lock and key. “I’ve been in two [relationships],” she says. “I’ve experienced a lot in what I have done. But I’ve never been in something really real and normal.” The news cycle and fan response to her Apple TV documentary, The World’s a Little Blurry, earlier this year cemented her decision not to name names or get specific about details in the new songs. People are like “ ‘Well, you’re an artist, so when you put something out there like that, you can’t expect people to not dive into it more.’ Yes I can,” she says. “You should absolutely respect me giving you this much information and saying, ‘This is all you get.’ The rest is for my own brain.”

billie eilish rolling stone cover

The most the world has gotten to see of Eilish’s romantic life was in The World’s a Little Blurry, which spanned from the final weeks of recording When We All Fall Asleep in late 2018 through the 2020 Grammy Awards. Eilish wasn’t necessarily psyched for it to come out. “I don’t like to share that part of my life, and I was not planning on sharing that part of my life ever,” she says.

Her ex, Brandon Adams, an artist who performs under the name 7:AMP, played a pivotal role in the film. The World’s a Little Blurry showcases a painful give-and-take between Eilish and Adams, who was then in his twenties. In the aftermath of the documentary, fans went after Adams and his family on social media.

Many have assumed Eilish’s chilling single “Your Power,” which mentions a relationship between a teen girl and an older man, is about Adams. Eilish — who released the song in late April, along with a statement saying, in part, “this is about many different situations that we’ve all either witnessed or experience” — strongly objects to this notion. “Everybody needs to shut up,” she says. The documentary, she insists, “was a microscopic, tiny, tiny little bit of that relationship. Nobody knows about any of that, at all. I just wish people could just stop and see things and not have to say things all the time.”

Eilish describes herself as “clingy,” but since she and Adams broke up in 2019, she’s spent the past two years trying to learn how to exist on her own. “I didn’t know how before,” she explains, “which is ironic because I had never been in a relationship that allowed me to really exist with that person anyway. My emotion always is because of somebody else’s, and that had been such a big pain in the ass.”

She’s still trying to grow out of that. “You heal eventually.”

Eilish and I actually weren’t supposed to meet at her parents’ house. She wanted me to see where she recorded Happier Than Ever, in Finneas’ basement studio. But a pipe burst, nearly destroying the space. “The room had to be completely rebuilt,” he explains later over Zoom. “But my hard drives, synthesizers, and guitars and stuff were all fine. I feel very lucky for that.”

Eilish speaks with relief at how much less draining the recording process for Happier Than Ever was compared with her debut. It was partially due to some peak-mom advice from Maggie early in the pandemic. After nearly a month of lockdown, Maggie suggested that her kids get on a weekly schedule. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Eilish would drive her matte-black Dodge Challenger over to Finneas’ house. Some days they would write songs. Other days they’d play Animal Crossing or Beat Saber. Every day they would eat good meals: “A lot of Taco Bell, homemade pizza, taro boba, Thai food,” Eilish lists. “Crossroads and Little Pine. Nic’s once. Fatburger once. It was such a reward.”

In The World’s a Little Blurry, the teen’s misery is palpable as she finishes When We All Fall Asleep. Eilish and Finneas had been largely left to their own devices, but pressure still loomed from the label. There were deadlines (the album was due right around her 17th birthday), constant meetings, and an expectation that a star was about to be born, thanks to a couple of years of growing buzz. “I hated every second of it,” she admits. “I hated writing. I hated recording. I literally hated it. I would’ve done anything else. I remember thinking there’s no way I’m making another album after this. Absolutely not.”

This time, there was no pressure. No notes from the label. No meetings. No rush to meet deadlines. “No one has a say anymore,” Billie says. “It’s literally me and Finneas and no one else.” On April 3rd, 2020, the first day of their new weekly work schedule, they wrote “My Future.” Within a couple of months, they realized that they were making an album.

She pulls out a clear acrylic sign holder with the track list written in marker, songs clearly erased and moved around. “I think I’m going to frame this,” she says, smiling. There are some water stains on it, since it got drizzled on when Finneas’ studio flooded.

The 16 songs on the album are the only 16 they worked on. The pair are completists: Once they start a song, they have to see it through with meticulous precision until it’s perfect to them. The way the album sounds is a testament to that, each song a unique, avant-pop soundscape that elevates the baroque trip-hop-ness of her debut.

billie eilish rolling stone cover

“I admire artists that can make, like, three songs in a day and keep doing that over and over,” Eilish muses. She compares songwriting to running, in that it would be “fucking exhausting” to do all the time. “Songwriting is like that for me. I’m pretty good at it, but it takes a lot out of me. I feel like I just ran a marathon whenever I write a song.”

Finneas saw the change in his sister this time around. She liked writing songs, feeling less tortured by the process than before. “It’s been awesome as a big brother to see her become more confident and feel more ownership and just to be more excited than I’ve ever seen her about the music that we’re making,” he says. “I also just think she has objectively gotten even better. That’s my opinion. If she were an Olympic gymnast or something, she would’ve gotten better. She’d be able to do a higher vault or something.”

Since “Bad Guy,” Finneas has become one of pop’s most in-demand producers, working with everyone from Tove Lo to Selena Gomez. He also has his own solo career that’s taken off, though the studio flood came at the worst time possible for it, as he was working on his debut album. Eilish has found Finneas’ career outside of being her creative partner to be “fucking great” and easy for them to adjust to. “It doesn’t interfere at all, and it’s fun for him,” she says. “He only does what he wants to do. He’s not a slave to it.”

“I scratch a lot of itches working with Billie,” Finneas continues. “I think my primary goal was to just go deeper. This was Billie’s sophomore album, you just . . . you have the opportunity to go further inward and further down in your Mariana’s Trench.”

Finneas says that their process is “50-50” creatively, and he speaks proudly about the gated tremolo and distortion that elevate songs like “Oxytocin” and “NDA,” two tracks that look at romance and hookups through the lens of a very famous person attempting to have both under the radar.

“Billie Bossa Nova” takes that theme one step further, building a fantasy around the life of a touring pop star. “We have to do a lot of goofy bullshit when we go on tour, where we enter through freight elevators in hotels and stuff, so that paparazzi doesn’t follow us to our room,” he explains.

“And so we acted as if there was also a secret love affair going on in there of Billie being like, ‘Nobody saw me in the lobby/Nobody saw me in your arms,’ as if there was a mystery person in her life during all of that.”

“I write songs with my brother, and we kind of have to plug our ears when we’re writing about desire for other people because we’re fucking siblings,” Eilish says later. Songs like “Oxytocin,” named for the hormone released in the bloodstream due to love or childbirth, has her wondering “What would people say . . . if they listen through the wall?” over a slinky beat. The folky “Male Fantasy” features her distracting herself with pornography, then meditating on the effect porn has on men.

“The thing is, we’re very open about both of our lives, so it’s not weird, really,” she continues. “It’s just fun. It’s songwriting and it’s storytelling. We just have to think about the art of it and not think too hard about [the lyrics].”

As 50-50 as they are, Finneas drives home the fact that everything is under Eilish’s name for a reason. “In many instances we’ve been asked about our relationship as a duo when it’s billed as a solo artist,” Finneas says. “It’s her life. It’s all her world. I’m helping her articulate that, but it’s really her experiences that she lived through, and on this album she let me into it a lot. But I don’t know what that’s like to go through.”

He quotes his friend, the singer-songwriter Bishop Briggs, who says writing is how she copes with everything. Finneas agrees. “Billie making this album was her working through a lot of this stuff.”

When Eilish releases a new song, she can’t listen to it again. It disappears into the universe, only to be heard by its maker if she happens to catch it as it’s played on radio every hour on the hour. “It’s not because I don’t like it anymore,” she explains. Happier Than Ever has become Eilish’s favorite album in the world, but she’s already mourning the loss of it, months before it even comes out. As we talk, it’s a couple of weeks before the first single is even public knowledge.

“I don’t know how to explain this, but all the songs on the album feel like a specific time, because they feel like when I wrote them and made them,” she explains. “It’s so funny that to the rest of the world it’s going to feel like a certain moment for them, and it’s going to be so different than mine. That’s such a weird, weird thing to wrap my head around. And I will fucking love it. I love it. That’s the reason you do this. It’s for that.”

When Eilish and I speak one last time, “Your Power” has been out for a few days. It spurred reflective conversations online, with many women sharing their own experiences with sexual or emotional abuse. The lyrics about an older partner taking advantage of a younger woman struck a particular chord, and Eilish herself is still processing that reaction.

billie eilish rolling stone cover

“I feel like people actually really, really listened to the lyrics,” she says, flopping around her room in an oversize Powerpuff Girls shirt. “I was scared for it to come out because it’s my favorite song I’ve ever written. I felt the world didn’t deserve it.”

She broke her own Instagram “like” record that weekend as well: Her shoot for British Vogue showed her in more revealing clothes than she had ever been pictured in, channeling Forties boudoir shoots. The images were a topic of internet obsession for days: Was it a betrayal of her more “modest”-seeming fashion before? Did she make the decision herself? But it’s not like her body hadn’t been up for debate even when it was clothed: Her baggy outerwear was used to shame her peers, and she was subjected to belittling, fatphobic assumptions from the too-curious. “I saw a picture of me on the cover of Vogue [from] a couple of years ago with big, huge oversize clothes [next to] the picture of [the latest Vogue]. Then the caption was like, ‘That’s called growth.’ I understand where they’re coming from, but at the same time, I’m like, ‘No, that’s not OK. I’m not this now, and I didn’t need to grow from that.’ ”

Like her fashion experiments, Happier Than Ever is not about resetting who Billie Eilish even is. It’s about expanding the definition and range. But like she feared, she stopped listening to “Your Power” after it came out. “I don’t know. Something changes,” she says, still confused by her own habit.

The song has already taken on a life of its own, so she doesn’t have many expectations for how people will react to the rest of the as-yet-unheard songs. She’d like to make a visual for each track, and plans to embark on a world tour at some point.

She has one other wish for her new music. “I hope people break up with their boyfriends because of it,” she says, with only the slightest tinge of humor. “And I hope they don’t get taken advantage of.”

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