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icollectyoursins · 4 years ago

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Kishibe Rohan x Reader SFW + NSFW

Anon said: “Consider Rohan sfw and nsfw hcs? And in nsfw Rohan could be a top,,? Prrtty pleade hhh, since there is only one work of Rohan ;;”

I hope these are good, not too familiar with Rohan, so I hope you like it!

Wanna know what I’m willing to write? Rules here!

Have a character, but no idea? Prompt list here!

Looking for more? Master post here!

WARNINGS: Making out, stands used in inappropriate ways, fingering, voyeurism, dildos, fucking machines, spanking, hand jobs, blow jobs, oral, face fucking, cock warming, nipple play, nude modelling.

Word Counts: 2201

SFW

Rohan is a jackass who cares. In the beginning, he’s very private and stand-offish, but he does warm up to you eventually, though he’s still nicer in private than he is in public. He claims this is because he’s a “celebrity” and can’t have his fans see you too close together yada, yada. It’s bullshit and you know it, but you have the feeling it’s because he’s not used to people being close to him.

Yes, he does have a binder dedicated to paintings, drawings, sketches, etc. all for you. Some are a little on the artistically lewd side, but most of them are of your hands holding something or your smile, your face and shoulders. Some of them he asked you to model for, others he quickly sketched down while you weren’t paying attention and then finished later.

When he’s not holed up inside, he enjoys walking down to either parts of Morioh where he can people watch or down to the park where he can study wildlife (and maybe draw you playing with ducks).

You are literally never bored in his house. He has every book under the earth and so many loose painting supplies that he painfully lets you use to fool around. (Though let’s be honest, He likes that you take an interest in his job and would be more than happy to give you tips.)

You know what? Rohan is a backseat artist. He watches every stroke you make over your shoulder and tells you maybe you should move the hand this way to make it more natural or add some light shading here to make it dynamic. It may come off as a little pretentious at first, but if you keep with it, he’ll notice the improvement and (occasionally) tell you how good you’re doing while being a total blushing mess.

You sat in the window seat, knees up with your back against the wall. Resting on your thighs was a sketchbook. Currently, you were just idly drawing lines of shading onto a face. Rohan himself was also busy colouring in his most recent page, though every now and then he would catch himself looking up at your silhouette, lit up by the light in some kind of halo effect.

Finally, he caved in to his curiosity. Setting down his pencils, he strode over to you. You didn’t notice until his face manifested itself over your shoulder. Startled, you jumped, causing your pencil to make a long line on your artwork.

“Jesus, warn me next time.” You said, grabbing your eraser.

“Have you been struggling with the nose?” He completely ignores you, still staring at your drawing. The paper was clearly marked up by the eraser with deeper marks from where the pencil was.

“Yeah, actually. It’s either too big or too small. Kind of just gave up.” You carefully tried to erase the long line but wound up taking away parts that you were actually happy with.

“Be more gentle with the pencil, it’ll make it easier to erase.” He suggested with a monotone.

“I tried-”

“And then you got frustrated and pushed harder. I admire your persistence, however, if something isn’t to your liking, walk away and come back. Remember to look at the picture as a whole, not just the nose.” You rolled your eyes, gently tossing your pencil onto the window seat. As much as you wanted to appreciate the advice, you had heard it all before. You were getting sick of it, frankly.

Rohan took note of your agitation, studying your face carefully. “You’ve improved, though!” You looked up, a little shocked. What? “The eyes are well done and your shading is very even. Good job.”

What? Your cheeks grew hot. That was the first bit of praise you had heard from him. About your drawing, at least. He looked down into your eyes, then felt his own face getting hot. He turned away. “Go take a break. I’ll help you when you get back in an hour. I’ll be timing you, don’t be late.”

Like I have said, he’s not overly fond of affection in public (in the beginning), but he can’t deny that holding your hand or feeling you on his arm makes him feel pretty good. The first few times, he’s internally a mess, though he won’t show anything other than a light tint of blush on his cheeks. But when he’s relaxing at home, he enjoys having you under his arm, leaning against him or with one of your heads in the other’s lap. He’s not used to people and even less so used to affection, but can be worked up to being more comfortable with stuff like kissing in front of the Morioh gang and the like.

When he’s comfortable, he is so cocky. Like, boarder line makes out with you in front of literally anyone just to prove you’re his S/O. This always makes you blush so much (unless you’re into that.) More often than not, he’ll have an arm around your shoulders, hand in pocket, looking so smug and proud and cool.

Pet names? He can either go one of two ways, depending on his mood. Either it’s just your name or babe OR it is every teasing name under the sun. Oh, darling can you do this for me? Oh, baby, oh, honey, oh, my love, oh, my flower. It’s usually used to get something from you or to get you to do something a little out of the box.

I can see Rohan as being the kind of person who is very strict about his bath time and hates when people interrupt him. On the rare occasion, he’ll let you in with him with the promise of either massaging him or something else *wink, wink*

NSFW (Dominant specifically)

Rohan literally does not shut up during sex. Praise, degradation, mocking, you name it! As a writer and an artist, he knows how to stitch words together in a masterful way that never fails to make you hot in the face.

Uh, yeah. He’s used Heaven’s Door on you before. Did he do it to learn your kinks? Maybe to put some kind of loose control over you in certain situations? Looking for people you find attractive for potential erm... art inspiration (voyeurism)? The world will never know.

Staying-on brand with HD, he absolutely uses it to learn everything that you enjoy in the bedroom. He knows how to make you squirm, where to push to make you scream, how to make you beg. He knows everything.

Particularly enjoys using this “power” to finger you, pressing into every sweet spot (that he made more sensitive with HD), licking over the edges of your hole in a way that just makes you dumb (either hole, not picky!)

A delicate finger was trailed up your twitching hole, making you shiver. Rohan had already stretched you open enough for it to easily slip in again. You were so sensitive from being teased over and over again, but with no relief that you cried out, tears threatening to burst forward.

He curled his finger up into a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves, slowly pushing into it more. You groaned and whined, blabbering out his name along with various ways to beg. He shushed you carelessly, sounding annoyed by your desperation. God, you wish you could move! You would give anything to be impaled by him right now. Or anything for that matter.

He removed the digit quickly, then promptly smacked your ass with a flat hand.

“Quiet.” You had no choice but to listen to him, involuntarily shutting your mouth and stifling your whimpers. “If you want something, be polite about it. Do you know how to be polite?”

You nodded your head, a single tear trailed down your cheek. Your hole was teased again, repeating the same process as before. Rohan was such an asshole, but god if you didn’t love it.

If you have established a relationship where he has complete control over everything you say or do, he will abuse it so much. Just, tells you to sit still, turns on a wand or vibrator and just tortures you to the point of tears. You can talk, he didn’t take that away (mostly because he wants to hear you beg), but the position he put you in on top of the order. It’s too much for you.

He’ll do the same with a dildo, a fucking machine, his own dick, does not matter! Once you give him that power, RIP to your organs.

Alright, now. Voyeurism. This man is a freak and does not try to hide it when it’s under the guise of “art.” Again, if established, he will hire random people to do whatever he wants to you. If you’re okay with it, he’ll record it for later research.

Rohan is a weird jealous type, so he checks out every person you meet and makes sure they’re perfect (ie. not competition and someone you’ll enjoy). Very rarely does he let you pick out the people. Like I said, he’s a weird jealous type. Likes to see you with other people, but not with other people, you know?

There is only one person who he considers competition that he wants you to fuck at least once and it’s Jotaro. Are we surprised? No. Dude is built like a god and has the goods to match. Even Rohan can’t deny it. He would probably want to join in as well, but Jotaro would never do anything like that.

Mmmm, punishments for being bratty? Ooooh, yes. Smack my ass like a drum! Makes you count, absolutely. If he’s in a bitchy, lazy mood he’ll use a paddle or something like that, other than that, he uses his hands.

As you’ve probably surmised, he likes having control over you in the bedroom, so it’s no surprise he also enjoys tying you up and has a particular fondness for swings where he’ll hang you up and tease you until you can barely walk.

I mentioned baths in the SFW section, now let me elaborate. Doesn’t like sex in the bath, he hates when the water gets everywhere, but loves when you worship him while scrubbing him down and will allow you to work him up with a light hand job. This usually leads to a blowjob of some kind whether it’s gentle or rough.

Speaking of! His favourite part of sex is probably oral. From sucking bruises into each other’s necks, rough kissing, right down to holding you against the wall and choking you with his dick. Or a dildo, if he wants something a little more adventurous like mirror sex with him taking you from behind and making you watch yourself choke over and over again.

Cock warming is only ever used as punishment for being too needy, but he will keep you in his lap until you’re in tears. He is absurdly patient when it comes to sex.

You whined, grinding yourself onto Rohan’s dick. He chuckled before letting out a theatrical sigh. Your grip on his shoulders got harder and you buried your face into his neck more.

“What’s wrong, (Y/N)?” He trailed a soft, teasing hand up your thigh. “You wanted attention, yes? Then, why are you complaining? Now, up, I need another look at my reference.”

You sighed, tired and riled up at the same time. With new vigour, you sat up, leaning back to show your artist his latest obsession. He hummed in appreciation, taking a minute to admire his muse before licking a warm stripe up your sternum making you gasp. He stopped, giving you a look of warning.

“Don’t move.” You gave him a curt nod, trying your best to follow your command while he returned his tongue to your chest, exploring your skin’s taste. He flicked over your nipple with the tip, testing your resolve before wrapping his lips around it, sucking harshly. A moan fought its way through your throat as he became more feverous with his suckling.

Rohan hummed with you, theatrically mulling over the saltiness, then switching to the next one. Satisfied with the redness around your nipples, he pulls back, looking you over once again. A lightbulb seems to go off in his head and he reaches for his sketchbook which only made his cock shift inside you, rubbing against your walls in a delightfully painful way.

“Rohan-sensei,” you moaned out. Admittedly, you didn’t like calling him that, but he insisted you call him sensei during times like this.

“Stop moving, you’re ruining the picture,” he chided. “Go back to the way you were, darling.” He leaned back, rolling his hips into you to punctuate his words as well as tease you.

Model nude for him. Whether you like it or not, he will ask you to do it and, if he’s in a sexy mood, you will be asked to do uncomfortable positions that will definitely leave you sore the next day. “It highlights how the muscles work for a new character I’m drawing” or so he says. Other than that, he’ll just let you pick somewhere comfortable and sexy to lie down.

#kishibe rohan not sfw #kishibe rohan n/s/f/w #rohan kishibe n/sfw #rohan n/sfw #rohan not sfw #rohan n/s/f/w #kishibe rohan x reader #kishibe rohan x reader n/sfw #kishibe rohan x reader not sfw #kishibe rohan x reader n/s/f/w #rohan prompts #not sfw #sfw

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iatheia · 4 years ago

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EDA reviews Part 1 - books 1-9

I’ve decided to take a bit of a break from the black hole that is Big Finish (I’m more than half way through listening to their library, but, oh, god, it feels like they will never end at times) and venture into another black hole that are the novels. Eighth Doctor Adventures seemed like a good place to start. I’ve committed to reading all of them (no matter how tempting it will inevitably get to skip some). Since they are not talked about as much as some of the other EU iterations out there, I’ve figured I’ll write short blurbs as a reviews - with 73 novels in total, would probably post them collated every 9 books or so.

Also, Since this is kind of a meme for Eight, couple of novels convinced me doing amnesia watches together with the reviews. #1 was in the movie. 1) Eight Doctors - well, this kind of was a waste of time. Just a run through of the greatest hits of previous Doctors with varying degree of success in terms of doing their characters justice (which they didn’t give good ol’ Sixie at all). Eight is barely a caricature of his self, nevermind that this is his second outing ever. Absolutely terrible way to introduce Sam, she is literally in just three scenes. 6/10 Amnesia watch: #2 & 3 (twice in a span of 5 minutes, once from the Master, once from being hit on the head, setting the record high off the bat!)

2) Vampire Science - Well, bringing Sam to a (gay?) bar in 1970′s right off the bat where she chats up another girl was absolutely A Choice that this novel has made, and I respect it for that. As for the rest... Eight is starting to become himself, but he is still written a bit like Seven at times. The plot is a bit mess, and, especially in conjunction with the previous novel, there are officially too many vampires. It gets more entertaining towards the back end of it. A decent enough read, even though a bit of an oddity. 8/10

3) The Bodysnatchers - Now we are getting into something juicy! Throughly enjoyable from beginning to end, excellent character work on Eight and Sam. 9/10

4) Genocide - Ah, casual attempt of sexual assault on a companion, how original. Overall, completely meh. Too many characters, too many settings, overly convoluted, back to chess master Doctor, completely missing the point of bringing up legacy characters in the most pointless way. 4/10

5) War of the Daleks - This was, apparently, the first Dalek story in the novel form? They didn’t have one for VNAs??? Almost impossible to believe. Well, the story is a bit trite, a convoluted set up that was seen a thousands of times now, especially with the over-saturation of the Daleks in the recent years. But, the story is a lively one. There are definitely worse ones featuring Daleks out there. 8/10

6) Alien Bodies - blimey, haven’t read such pretentious dribble in a long while... Too self-absorbed in this grandiose masterplan that is about to unfold to worry much about character stuff, that I gave up trying to keep track of after a while. Except, that grandiose masterplan is exposed in such a way that it’s literally in a book that the Doctor carries, handing it to Sam the second she starts asking questions, and then she immediately throws the book away.... Overall, Eight has never been less likable. Sam is reduced to nothing more than a screaming damsel in distress - that’s putting it generously. The less that could be said about everyone and everything around them the better. And the worst of all, it’s boring, the prose is pretty banal, too much exposition, and it rambles on and on and on... Judging by the word count this is the second longest book out of all EDAs (the longest, third, and fourth longest are also by the same writer, they are a good 20-30K words longer than anyone else’s). If it had any heart and soul in it at all, it’d be one thing, but it’s like pulling teeth. Really makes me apprehensive about the rest of the Faction Paradox cropping up in other novels, and certainly all the other novels by him... 3/10 Amnesia watch: #4 (kind of, remembering stuff from the previous amnesias)

7) Kursaal - Boringly mediocre. It starts off not horrible by any means, has decent characterization, and at moments even verges on something exciting, but those moments are embedded into a somewhat middling adventure. And then it flies off the rails into the uncanny. And, um... no. Just no. 5/10

8) Option Lock - This story is too grandiose for its own good. Just as I settled in for some shenanigans in a mysterious quaint English mansion, I was slapped in a face with an international political thriller. Any time there was a change of setting or a time skip, it was disorienting. And was that a stray Stargate reference I caught? It would have been better served as a Stargate novel, I’ll be honest. After all the set up is over and done with, it’s a bit easier to follow, not terribly written either. But it’s a bit blink and you miss it - is it the second time Sam was responsible for someone’s death, kind of, under mind control? Not sure I like the trend that is starting to emerge. 6/10

9) Longest Day - Starting off right of the bat with misogyny, stalking, and violence against women, frequently from the titillating point of view of a self proclaimed “nice guy”.... It’s actually not that badly written. The prose is solid, the plot is easy to follow, it’s pretty emotionally complex, the ending is pretty gut-wrenching. I just wish it had less attempted rape and later gratuitous gore that soured me a bit on the story 7/10

Overall impressions so far: Well, these novels (certainly so far) are very much a mixed bag. A couple of more enjoyable ones, but their main virtue is being inoffensively charming. The rest are... less so. Some authors seem to have a clear grasp of Eight’s character straight from the get go, but not all of them do.

Sam is nice enough, as far as companions are concerned, but often she comes across too much like Ace but without explosives - I don’t really know what makes her tick beyond that. It is not a small part due to different writers slotting in for their own idea what a companion should be. You have a slew of younger sister/niece/student/friend/just a dash romantically involved/barely there at all, depending on the novel. In that manner, there doesn’t seem to be a unifying vision for the novels, each writer just does their own thing.

Next part here

#doctor who #eighth doctor #eighth doctor adventures #eda

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nobodyfamousposts · 5 years ago

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I haven't read or watched Twilight but I'm very invested in the recent salt posts so please tell me about this Seth's flaws

In my opinion, it’s not worth reading or watching. But I am biased against it because I am a cynical person who hates the series with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.

But a brief explanation is that Seth is a side character of limited importance to the series. What little importance he has is to emphasize how “cool” the other characters are supposed to be. He is one of the werewolves introduced in the second book (New Moon) and the younger brother of the only female werewolf, Leah (whom is unfairly treated like crap for the crime of being the sole girl to be able to transform into a wolf).

Seth is a fanboy. Plain and simple. He is younger than the other members of the pack and blindly looks up to and supports Jacob (the so-called “true alpha” because bloodline says so), to the point of being fully willing to abandon his home, his family, his pack, and his duty to chase after Jacob when Jacob chooses to abandon everything in order to protect Bella, the main character and single most important person in the series despite the fact that she does nothing useful while also being directly responsible for nearly every bad thing to happen in the series.

Seth’s idolization of Jacob and the other guys is his defining character trait in that he will do anything to be recognized by them (particularly Jacob) and won’t argue with them. Even when they’re being jerks in general or actively contemplating the death of his sister specifically for being annoying and in their words, a “bitter harpy” (because she’s justifiably angry about her ex fiancé leaving her for her cousin and then being forced to transform into a wolf and follow said ex’s orders).

Seth’s importance to the series comes in two ways. Once during the mostly undescribed “Newborn war” when he is praised for killing a vampire on his own off screen (which is like…one of the entire army, so okay but not really THAT great), which seems to be used less as a matter of his character and ability and more to serve as a direct contrast to the results of his sister’s attempts to do the same. Leah, being a female who isn’t Bella, is noted to fail when trying to take on a vampire on her own off screen only for Jacob to somehow have to “save” her from it and get injured in the process, making everyone feel bad for Jacob and blame Leah for trying to handle something on her own or in any way “prove herself”. (It should be noted that the rest of the pack has never actually tried to make her welcome in the group and even indicated they kind of want her dead, btw, which doesn’t exactly make for a team you can trust to have your back in a battle but surely would have NOTHING to do with her choice to try and handle things on her own……really.) This serves the purpose of having Jacob be injured in order for Bella to have an emotional visit with him while he’s recovering without her being the one “technically responsible” for his injury so she can feel guilty without actually appearing guilty (even though the entire war only happened because of her in the first place).

The other and more notable point of Seth’s importance in the series is when Jacob yet again abandons everyone he’s supposed to care about because the wolves are planning to attack the vampires because the vampires are going to break the treaty with the wolves and turn Bella into one of them (at HER insistence, despite knowing full well there is a treaty and that the vampires turning her would be breaking that treaty). Jacob actively abandons his people to try and protect the people he still very much hates just because Bella will be at risk.

Seth is notable for being the first to leave the wolf pack to join Jacob during this time. Because he’s Jacob’s fanboy. And he gives no real thought or concern to the fact that he is similarly abandoning his home, his family, his friends, and everyone he’s ever known to follow Jacob in trying to defend what are essentially strangers who are directly responsible for the current conflict.

Bear in mind that Jacob’s initial abandoning of his people to protect the female protagonist who has made it clear by this point she isn’t interested in him is shown to be the “right thing to do”, and that similarly, Seth’s trailing after him like a puppy is also the “right thing to do”.

Seth’s leaving after Jacob results in Leah leaving the pack to join them because Seth is her younger brother and she wants to protect him. Jacob wanted to be a lone wolf in the first place and tries to use Leah as an excuse to not have Seth join him. Seth then proceeds to turn on Leah at this point and tell her “You ruin everything!” in a line that comes off as so wholly ignorant, insensitive, and pretentious that I almost mistook him for one of the main characters.

This is bearing in mind that Seth is Leah’s younger brother. He KNOWS what she has been through. He also knows damn well that what has happened to Leah was not her fault (losing her now ex fiancé, her father’s death, turning into a wolf). And whether he meant to or not, he essentially blamed her for everything that has happened to her.

Seth actually appears to be acting from this incredibly childish frame of mind that turning into a wolf and being forced to fight and kill to protect people is a super cool thing that only the “elite” get to do instead of a DUTY. He’s stoked that he’s finally allowed into the “special kids club” except that he’s stuck sharing it with his sister who doesn’t want to be there and whose only priority is keeping him alive. And with this being his mind set, he proceeds to whine and blame her for keeping him from getting to go off and do the cool and incredibly dangerous thing he wants to do just because Jacob is doing it.

AND AT NO POINT DOES HE APOLOGIZE.

AT NO POINT DOES HE EVER GROW UP.

#twilight sucks #twilight salt #twilight introspection #possible triggers

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bidean-byedean · 4 years ago

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new piece on AO3

xvi. family

Day 16 of the SPN advent calendar (not festive)

You stop for the night.

Rated: G // Tags: second person POV, outsider POV, finale denialist, post-canon/canon divergent, bar owner Dean, everyone is alive and in love, domestic fluff // Ships: Dean/Cas, Sam/Eileen, Claire/Kaia // Word count: 5.6k

The bar is unassuming, gentle, welcoming. Tucked away but easy to find, if you’re looking. It’s still the midwest after all. Dean knows how much it looks like the old haunt; some of it deliberately mimicked, some of it inevitable features of the genre, some of it only became apparent in certain lights, like a ghostly apparition in a foggy bathroom mirror. These things that were hidden until Sam laid eyes on the place for the first time, or an old regular froze in the doorway, or after hours when Dean is cleaning up and swears he heard Jo’s soft giggle.

When this happens, he pauses. Braced against the reclaimed wood of the bar, desperately straining his ears into the nothingness, begging for one more note. It’s only when a warm hand settles on his shoulder, always his left, somehow always, that he realises what he’s doing. There’s only one place that his prayers echo out anymore and all they do is remind Cas of all the things that Dean has lost, of all the parts of Dean’s life that he did not know, that he cannot restore. But at least now the old Hunter does not flinch at his touch. His body relaxes into the large, steady hand; grounded, brought back to the present where Jo’s laughter is an eternal echo that makes it neither real nor unreal. If their lives had taught them anything, the distinction is arbitrary.

Cas helps him collect the last of the glasses, stacking them into long, precarious towers. Not as tall as the ones Dean makes; he’s not as easy in his body, not as used to being observed, and he hates the sound of shattering glass, hates the silence afterwards, hates that moment of momentum when the breaking is about to happen and is happening and has happened. For angels, it’s always about to happen and happening and happened. Or, it used to be like that. When and so it is written meant something. Before, when it was Castiel and Dean Winchester, not now, in the after, when it is Cas and Dean.

There’s something deeply absurd happening here. You feel it when you first visit and you realise. Pulling off of a hunt in nowhere middle America, aching in your bones and, depending on what you killed, your heart, and you remember that Dean Winchester - yeah, that Dean Winchester - opened a bar around here. It’s already ridiculous, considering the things you’ve heard. Only half of them can be true, mostly the half that you can reconcile with your understanding of the truth.

John Winchester’s boy? Haven’t you heard?

Haven’t you heard he has a face you’d pay twice the going rate for? Haven’t you heard he’ll take it? Haven’t you heard he’s the best Hunter of his age? Haven’t you heard he sold his soul? Haven’t you heard an angel brought him back? Haven’t you heard he lost it again? To John? To the devil? To God? Haven’t you heard he was the most feared monster in Purgatory? Haven’t you heard losing his soul was nothing compared to losing his brother, to losing his angel, to losing his angel again, and again, and again?

Haven’t you heard? They’re in love.

So you roll up to the door of the bar and it just looks like a bar because the warding is painted beneath the sign holding the name, and the devil’s trap is in the shadows of the ceiling, and hex bags are stowed inside of the cushions of the stools, and a silver rosary consecrated by softly sung blessings, murmured by the human mouth of an Angel, sits in the water tank. Even if you know, you do not know. But you feel safe here, that is the point, the commandment of the space; welcome and be welcomed. And maybe you sit at the bar, tired and alone and lonely, surrounded (for the first time?) by people with whom you can speak freely and you realise the weight of speaking in code, always hiding, bearing a burden that sears into your soul until you’re not sure you have one anymore. You hear they burn out, that you can use them up, and then what are you?

But tonight you’re safe behind the warding and in front of a bar with a surprisingly pretentious beer menu and burgers that come with avocado and the word seasonal in front of some of the offerings. But there are people you’re familiar with, even if you don’t know them, you know them. Their faces hold the same weariness, their clothes practical or incongruous by design, masks and costumes and performances, all finally relaxed. So relax.

Maybe you haven’t seen him since before John died, or before he went to Hell, or before he killed God(?), but that doesn’t matter. Maybe you read the books, enjoying being in the know, enjoying that you enjoy them differently from all the other people that enjoy them, for better reasons. Maybe his name is a myth passed from Hunter to Hunter, monster to monster, or between the two (is there a two? You try not to think about this too much). Older now, so much older than he could’ve ever hoped for. Masculine in every way you hope to be masculine, if you really understand what it means, but by hoping and understanding you fail. He’s tall and broad shouldered, and wears a flannel shirt over a band tshirt and dishtowel over his shoulder, and his jaw is sharp and hard and stubbled, and his eyes framed by deep crow’s feet; he sees you and you feel seen. His forearms are too tanned for the season, but you’re distracted by how they flex under the skin, and his hands are big and rest on the wood in front of you, just hands now, but they might as well be an armoury for all the death they’ve caused.

So, maybe you’re suddenly afraid because the things you didn’t want to be true? Suddenly reality has shifted and not only do they reconcile with the truth, they are immutable from it, it is more impossible that impossible things don’t happen to this man.

Then he smiles.

“What can I get ya?”

His voice is so low it’s like traffic from a highway just out of sight from your motel room, that when you lie in the dark becomes part of your body, as essential to your existence as the thudding of your heart and the huffing of your lungs and the buzzing from the dying lights in the walkway outside. It’s atomic. It’s celestial.

Wasn’t the other one supposed to be an angel?

You don’t know. You’re not used to having choices. Simple choices, selfish ones, luxurious ones: if you want fries or steak-cut chips, American or Swiss, IPA or stout or lager, light or dark, or spirits. It embarrasses you, how difficult it is, in the face of meaninglessness, how do you fare?

“Just a beer, man.”

“I gotcha,” he tips his chin understandingly and gets to work.

Probably gets this all the time, an understood consequence of stepping outside of the comfort zone. Your comfort zone, not his, you realise. This is his domain, his playground, his paradise on Earth, as was the promised bounty for fighting on humanity’s side in the war. The one no one else had to fight in because he did.

Did he still have the sword?

‘German pilsner.”

“It’s good.”

His smile seems genuine and so is your surprise.

“What you here for?”

You keep your eyes on his, if you blink, you’ll see it again. “Shifter. Of a sort.”

“Mmm.”

“Then home.”

That catches his interest. “Where’s home?”

“Iowa.”

Then he opens the ground beneath you: “Who’s home?”

“Whoever’s left.”

He grunts appreciatively, his gaze flickering over his shoulder. You notice the bands on his fingers. Silver, you assume pure, but it catches the light in a way that isn’t quite right, you stare at it. He twists it with his thumb, an unconscious habit, a soothing touch, a comfort. Even a Winchester needs comforts. It’s a comfort in of itself.

A young woman, her blonde hair half-braided and threaded with metal, slides over the top of the bar, her leather trousers giving her enough slip over the wood. Her heavy boots thud onto the ground and she grins manically at his frown.

“What have I told you about-“

“Yeah, yeah, nice to see you too, old man.”

She kisses him on the cheek, he rolls his eyes, but leans into it, his mouth quirking upwards at the corners. Another woman appears, dark skinned and soft-eyed, she walked around the bar, civilised and grounded. The blonde throws her arm over her shoulders, you remember who they are: Claire and Kaia Nieves. The daughter of an Angel and a Dreamwalker. You heard they spared a family of werewolves on the West coast, you heard there’s a network for them, monsters who are not monstrous. You don’t like to think about what that means for you. The things you’ve done.

“Where is he?” He gestures to the back and they disappear. He looks after them, his face soft and open; you can’t imagine him torturing souls in Hell.

There are pockets of people throughout the bar: loners like you, pairs and trios quietly nursing their sustenance, groups crowding round tables, pulling chairs from elsewhere or standing when there are none free. They’re loud and joyful and free. Is it better to have a crowd? Is it enough to be adjacent? You’re not sure you have the energy to socialise, to make nice, maybe next time.

Someone enters and everyone’s heads turn, he’s called over to different tables, dropping by to say hello to everyone who calls his name: Sam fucking Winchester! He’s tall, made even taller by the short woman by his side, and their hands move animatedly as they talk, too precise, too many deliberate gestures to just be physicality. He watches her when she speaks, her voice is rounded and deliberate. Eileen Leahy. A Deaf Hunter. You remember someone telling you she was eaten by Hellhounds, dragged into the pit, and brought back by Sam, his magic, his love, willing to transcend the boundaries of life, upset the balance of the universe: all for her. You feel ashamed for wondering how she made it far enough to meet the Winchesters. It’s a fair question of any Hunter, the answer the same: in their own way. No one survives because they have all the makings of a Hunter, a preset list of requirements that they meet; you survive because you face the job with what you have and you do what you have to.

Dean salutes her playfully, she smiles so wide it looks like it hurts. You can’t remember the last time you smiled like that, the last time you felt pain that didn’t hurt. She sits at the bar and Sam sits next to her, towering and gentle. You remember him. The Boy King. No longer a boy, his throne abdicated. Does he really have demon blood coursing through his veins? Hell is closed up now, sometimes a demon pops up here and there, but not like before, when the world was full of them, when all you did was exorcise and pray and holy water became a currency and left most of the community ordained ministers from variously dubious sites of divine origin, consecrated ground became the last stronghold against the end of the world. The future placed in the hands of Sam Winchester. Now you know the face. You struggle to imagine the Devil in his eyes, not when you’ve seen true evil.

The Winchesters are not similar enough to be clocked as brothers. But there’s something in the tilt of their shoulders and their hazel green eyes and the cadence of their voices that suggests kinship, brotherhood, forged in the fires of Hell and gilded by the light of Heaven. They’re just men, you realise. Earthly and solid and real, no more myth than the one you beheaded just the other night, it’s blood as real as the blood that marks them Winchester. Just like anyone else.

“Isn’t Claire supposed to be helping out?”

Dean sighs. “She’s upstairs. Giving her a minute, she hasn’t been around in months.” You think he sounds upset. “Typical.”

“It’s a good thing, Dean,” Sam pushes. “Her and Kaia are doing a hundred times better than we would’ve.”

“We?” He snorts. “At their age you were smoking oregano with your bougie friends. I was actually saving people.”

Sam pulls a face. “You’re such a jerk.”

“And you’re a bitch,” he signs it big and deliberate, winking at Eileen. “Hey, want another?”

It takes a second for you to realise he’s talking to you, by then all three of them have their attention on you, openly appraising you. You wonder what they read in your posture, your face, the way you’ve ripped a paper napkin into tiny shreds.

“Any other recommendations?”

“Got a new dark in, like dessert in a glass.” He looks at Sam: “Finally found an apiarist to work with.”

“Apiarist?” You venture.

Dean looks towards the door that leads to the mysterious back. “Bee keeper. My-“ He pauses abruptly. “He likes bees.”

My. He.

Perhaps you don’t mean to, but you eyes flicker to the rainbow flag over the doorway. You notice more stuck in glasses on the shelves, some of them rainbow, some of the blue-purple-pink bands, some of them orange-white-pink. What is it like? You know what people say behind his back, what they’ve always said, the people in the know. The men who had paid for a moment with Dean Winchester, the men who had gotten one for free, the men who had hoped for either, for anything. They still call him names. If only John could see him now. John always knew he was a disappointment. Wouldn’t be like this if John were alive.

That doesn’t seem fair. You didn’t know John Winchester, most people didn’t. He died so long ago and Hunters have a quick turnaround, reblooded often, rarely more than a decade of history able to be told first-hand. Dean watches you and your eyes and you wonder what he’ll do, if you became a threat, how does he eliminate threats now? You shiver at the thought. You let wistfulness seep through. You try to convey the kinship. The I see me in you and you in me. The you fascinate me the same way a shadow does. The show me your throat and I’ll show you mine. The secret language you’ve learnt to speak. The other one. Hidden even beneath the Hunter’s code. The more forbidden one. The one of monsters like you. Like us.

It must work because he softens. He pours the dessert in a glass even though you didn’t order it and places it in front of you, next to the glass he places something small and shiny, he doesn’t wait for you to acknowledge it. It’s a metal pin. The silver knotted into a symbol you don’t know, impressively intricate for the size, and when you hold it, it feels unusually warm. You remember the way Dean’s ring caught the light, throwing it more than it should, almost giving off its own light, almost glowing. Whatever it is made of, this is its sibling. You pin it to your jacket, on the left lapel, the proximity to your heart neither deliberate nor indeliberate. It pleases him. You pleased him.

The drink is good, better than the last. Truthfully, you don’t like beer that much, but it’s easy and universal and unassuming. This isn’t beer, not in that way. It’s smooth and creamy and sweet, it rolls around on your tongue, asking to be tasted, not to be drunk. The honey has that sharpness of real, pure honey, the slight antiseptic burn you get from eating it straight from the jar. You remember eating honey from a jar, a chunk of comb suspended in the golden substance. You didn’t know it meant so much to you.

“Finally!”

“Get off my dick,” Claire bats back.

“Who the fuck taught you to be so rude?”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no sense of upset between them. “What do you want with me?”

“Glasses.”

“Ughh, are you serious?”

“As a werepire.”

“There is no such thing as a werepire,” a new voice cuts in. It’s grumbling like Dean’s, somehow more gravelly; do they communicate in earthquakes? “Stop trying to make werepire happen.”

Castiel.

You gasp before you can stop yourself. An Angel of the Lord, walking on Earth, living above a bar instead of Heaven. He’s nothing that you expect. Tall and commanding, but different from Dean and Sam, the same, but somehow very not. His eyes are bright and intense, as blue as the deepest sky, the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen, a blue that you never thought possible until right this second. You feel as if you should look away, as if seeing beneath a hair covering, something sacred and prized, something that is not for public consumption, only God’s eyes. Only Dean Winchester’s eyes. What is the difference now? Is this bar paradise? Where is the divinity in craft beer and crude hunters, clawing out a life on the edges of society, wading through the horror in the hope of retaining peace, but not for yourselves. Nothing is for yourself.

Except they have claimed each other. You heard Dean is branded, a scar of a handprint seared into his skin, a memento from when they met. They met in Hell. Castiel touched his soul and raised him from Hell and fell in love with him, literally fell. Who would love you if they had seen your soul? Seen the personal realm of Hell you curated? Can you even love yourself?

Doesn’t it leave you breathless?

And then the picture shifts. Castiel turns and you see a child, old enough to walk, but small enough to get away with demanding not to. It’s balanced on the Angel’s hip like it belongs there, like his body (is it his? Who did it belong to? Are they still there? Did they ask for this?) was made to hold it there. Dean ruffles their hair, their ambiguity is intriguing, refreshing for the Hunting community. Youth is a clean slate, you are never more full of options, full of potential, which slowly seeps from you as your choices narrow, as life demands decisions, assigns decisions, weighs you down with expectations and being perceived, an object for perception rather than existence.

You’ve heard about the child. A nephil. But no one knows the details. No one is brave enough to ask.

The child reaches for Dean and is pulled into his arms, plastered against his chest, small and content and belonging. You wonder what their life will be like. Will they be a Hunter? You doubt it, you doubt the doubt. How do you choose to bring life into this life? It’s too hard, too sad, too lonely, too destructive. Not even dandelions grow through the concrete paving of a Hunter’s solitude, of their broken soul and heart, tings you drag along behind you like a yoke, reminding you that you must keep going, that one day, you will not be able to keep going. The baggage. How do you inflict that on a child? When will this creature’s heart be torn out of its chest and put inside a box and chained shut, only to be your greatest weakness and source of strength?

Or will it be happy?

“You need to go to bed, buddy,” Dean says quietly, his voice so steeped in affection it makes your chest yearn. You can’t help being in earshot. That doesn’t make it right. “Want me? What’s wrong with your Dad?”

The child murmurs something silently.

“Okay. I got you,” his arms seem to tighten. “Cas? We’re going up.”

Cas. It rolls off of his tongue so easily, the repetition of a thousand, a million, making it more at home in his mouth than his own name. An Angel of the Lord called Cas because he stands on Earth, because he is not part of Heaven, because he is of Dean, not of God. He touches the child’s face gently, tenderly, motherly, and you ache for such simple, all-consuming affection, for someone to look at you with the reverence of worship at the altar of a god that speaks back. Castiel’s (because Cas is not for your mouth) hand runs down Dean’s arm, his fingers trailing, prolonging, and when it drops away, Dean leaves.

You’ve nearly finished your dessert in a glass without even realising, it’s good. Too good. You could drink it all night, but you shouldn’t. The list of shouldn’ts is getting too long. You can’t remember anything left that you can do, that doesn’t conflict with an imperative for self-restriction. Where do you have to be? Who is expecting you? What is your next move? Why are you even questioning it?

He notices you.

“Ah, Sweet Dreams. How did you like it?” He tilts his head, a little more than most people would, reminiscent of a puppy, of the velociraptors in that film, assessing your prey potential. You’re aware of his magnitude. You’re aware of your insignificance.

“Very smooth. Filling.”

“That is the problem, but Dean humours me.”

“With the bees?”

He nods seriously. “They’re dying at an alarming rate, you know.”

“I did.”

“Have you been here before?”

“First time.”

“Welcome.”

“Thanks.”

“You look tired. Are you staying the night? We have rooms.”

“Uh-“

“That’s not a proposition,” he adds quickly. “Dean tells me that I sound like I’m hitting on people when I say that.”

You smile at his humanness. “I didn’t feel propositioned.” Would you like to? “I- I usually stay in my car, to be honest.”

His smile falters. “I wouldn’t advise that, it’s very uncomfortable and you’re much safer in here. The warding is some of my best work.”

“You never actually asked if I was a Hunter.” Hoping he’ll smite you?

He narrows his eyes playfully. “I didn’t have to. I know Hunters.”

“You must know everything.”

That catches him off guard. “Not as much as I used to.”

“What?”

Another head tilt. This one is more amused. “I guess news doesn’t travel as fast as you think. I am depowered,” he uses his fingers to make air quotes around the word. He laughs, but it’s a grating, sad sound. “Fallen.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” He shrugs. “So, a room?”

You somehow agree to stay. The rates are reasonable and the weather turned recently, so you know that even if you get some sleep in your car, it’ll be fraught and restless, and a warm bed in the safest place in the US is hard to turn down. You wonder if they’re both always this attentive or if its you, if you’re really that pathetic, if it rolls off of you like a stench, trails after you like blood, someone else, yours. You accept the insistence of kindness from the Angel, former, no, current; he says otherwise, but you see divinity in his eyes, in his smile, in the way that he touched Dean, in the way he held his child.

“Was-“ You swallow and finger the pin that Dean gave you. “Was that your kid?”

Castiel nods happily. “Jack.”

“And Claire?”

Castiel looks across the bar at Claire, laughing loudly and talking in big, dramatic gestures with a group of Hunters. “Yes.”

He doesn’t offer clarification. You feel stupid for wanting some. All of the impossible things you’ve seen, why do you care? Why do you need to know the details? Why does it matter that they are together? That they created a family? Do you think you can too? Do you think you’re as special as Winchester?

He leans on the bar. ‘Claire is my vessel’s daughter. I took her father from her.”

“That’s intense.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“And Jack?”

“He-“ He pauses. “He chose me. You know how are nephil are.”

“Sure…”

“God, he is too good at that.” Dean interrupts loudly, pressing his face into the back of Castiel’s shoulder. “I always fall asleep putting him down.”

Castiel pats his head. “He’s spoilt.”

“Yeah, well, gotta make up for tryna shoot him, huh?” You and Castiel share a look. You do not ask for clarification. “You stayin’?” You nod. “Awesome. Another drink?”

The room spins gently around you, but you’re content to watch the show. It’s not one that would be on TV, but it should be, warm and carefree and soft, it’s the show of a family. They move around each other in a practiced dance; Sam and Eileen and Claire and Kaia and Castiel and Dean. So many of them. All alive. All in love. So much love. It’s hard not to watch Dean and Castiel, they’re captivating. Beautiful. You notice the magnetism, how they’re constantly touching, brushing, holding, pressing, it seems so easy, it would seem so easy if you weren’t watching, but you are, and you see how Dean watches the room, the way he look out before he does something deliberate, the way he pauses, the way he checks himself and checks himself checking himself. Dean tells a joke you don’t catch. Castiel responds by kissing him. You feel like you shouldn’t be watching. Your heart won’t let you look away. They talk an inch from each other’s faces. You wonder what it feels like to love someone like that.

Once you save the world, you can have it too.

God, you’re so tired, it’s a tired that sinks you into the ground, that makes you blood slow and your heart sticky and blinking a dangerous game. You want to see the end of the episode though. You don’t want to miss a moment.

Thud.

“Game over kiddo,” Claire comments when you sit up suddenly. “Past your bedtime.”

“I’m older than you,” you say, or slur, or think.

She laughs. “Sure. You got a room? I’ll show you up.” She frowns. “That’s not a proposition.”

You laugh. “Like father, like daughter.”

Her eyes slide over to the pair. “In all the ways that matter.”

The room is small and cosy: a double bed and thick duvet, a jug of water on the dresser, a small plate with cookies on it.

“Dean makes them,” Claire says as she watches you examine the room. “Don’t tell him I told you, if you remember that is.”

“Not tha’ drunk,” you protest, but the world spins when you close your eyes.

“Uh-huh. If you need anything just, uh, deal with it? This isn’t the Hilton. My D- Dean gets up pretty early, but if you wanna get away there’s like a key box and stuff. Night.”

The door clicks closed and you’re left alone. Your head feels fuzzy and full and empty at the same time, and you wonder how you got here. You wonder it a lot. Every time you’re searching for a hunt, driving to one, checking your weapons, reading the lore, tracking down a creature that has no right to exist.

That has no right not to exist.

For the first time in… well, you can’t even think about it, you sleep well. As soon as you crawl into bed, curled under the heavy duvet, surrounded by warmth and softenss, it creeps into your brain and takes away the tension from your body. You don’t even think to check the room for warding or make an escape plan, the assurance of safety here is like the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow, to doubt it seems like an insult to you and the universe. Maybe there is gentleness in the hunting life, a tender hand of comfort and understanding that will offer quiet and healing and rest, between the blood and guts and bones and death. Life.

You have dreams you don’t understand, but they don’t scare you. Nothing hunts you in the dark corners of your mind, you are not lost, you are not running, you are safe. Bathed in blue-white light that feels like sunshine and makes your lips tingle. It’s pure and divine and you do not feel worthy, but the feeling does not last, the self-loathing is soothed, washed away like a baptism of permission to see the way you try, how hard you fight, how hard you live.

Like any seasoned Hunter, the dawn brings consciousness, even though you definitely haven’t had enough sleep, yet you feel rested. More rested than you have in years. The ache in your bones that keeps you awake too late and forces you from shitty motel beds too early seems like a distant memory, one from a life you’re not sure you actually lived, like a reoccurring dream that permeates you waking days, but the relief, that’s real. Like the shower you take, the water almost too hot, the water pressure almost too hard, but it purifies you in a way that you thought was no longer possible, not after the things you’ve done, the things you’ve seen.

Packed and ready to go, you linger by the door, wondering, briefly, what the rush is. Why do you need to leave today? What is really waiting for you at the other end?

But this is not home. (Nowhere is home.)

Being in a bar in the morning feels wrong, the grey light filtering into the room that’s already too lit, too exposed. Somehow it feels inviting though. A couple of people are already in the room, sipping out of big mugs with plates piled with toast and pastries and even cooked food. Who’s the chef here?

“Mornin’! How’s your head?” Dean grins brightly from behind the bar. He’s wearing a stained apron that says lord of the pies and the way he looks at you makes the floor feel soft underfoot, so you forget that he actually asked you a question.

“No complaints yet,” you quip, daring to make a reference that exposes you both. Your fingers find the pin on your jacket, still oddly warm, already a comfort.

He allows a small smile. “Breakfast?”

“Coffee, please, lots.”

“You’re speaking my language.” The coffee smells good, expensive, something that you would pay $7 dollars for because you know what you’re really buying is the chance to sit somewhere beautiful and put together when you are anything but. “Milks and sugar just there.”

Although it feels like sacrilege, you forgo the pancakes he tries to convince you on; you’ve never had much of a stomach in the mornings, but especially not this early, after drinking, with such a long drive ahead. You’ll regret not eating in a few hours, but you’ve never been kind to your future self, why start now? You watch and sip your coffee and let the day seep into your brain, acknowledging that you have to live today, get on with it all. Again.

Three cups in and it’s time to go. You were hoping to see Castiel again, but he hasn’t appeared. Disembodied hands produced Jack through the doorway, but you couldn’t tell who they belonged to, maybe Castiel, maybe Claire. The toddler is more awake, he follows Dean around behind the bar, babbling nonsense that Dean replies to in a gentle, but grown up tone, always acknowledging his sentences, even when there’s no real answer to give. He’s a father. Embarrassingly you imagine him as the father of your children, however that would happen doesn’t matter, it’s a fantasy. A fantasy of security and domesticity. The only knives that Dean Winchester yields now are the ones in his kitchen; the only flesh he cuts through is whatever is on the menu, already slayed and butchered; the only fights he has are bickering with his family.

Family.

Your family is somewhere, out there, maybe where you left them, what’s left of them. Dean picks Jack up and they dance to the song on the radio, some sugary pop song that makes Jack laugh in that infectious toddler way and you get to witness the Dean Winchester sing all the words, perfectly. This isn’t the Dean that ruled Hell or Purgatory or Earth, that was the Hunter and the bow, the sword to Castiel’s shield, that fought the Devil and God and the every other cosmic entity. Could this Dean Winchester have saved the world?

But maybe this isn’t his weakness. If you do not have a soft underbelly then why do you need to have claws? If you do not have a reason to fight then what drives you to win? Dean bares his throat to the world to show it that he has something to protect, and that is what makes him so dangerous. What do you have? Where is the kink in your armour? What are you fighting for?

The bar disappears into the distance, shrinking in your rearview mirror the way a dream slips through your memory like water between your fingers as consciousness takes over. The roads are all the same, the towns are all the same, but you are not. The dread in the pit of your stomach is no longer a knife holding you hostage, but a knot attached to a rope, pulling you back, anchoring you. For all the time spent fighting it, the magnetic pull to a place you felt you could no longer love, people you could no longer have if you wanted to survive. They are what convinces you to survive. You think about the way Dean and Castiel looked at each other when the other wasn’t watching, you thinking about the way Sam never stopped smiling when Eileen spoke, you think about how Claire became a teenager again in Castiel’s arms.

On the second ring, your phone connects.

“I’m on my way.”

#personal #my fic #fanfic #spn fanfic #ao3 #destiel #saileen #2nd person pov #something a bit different #this definitely had a life of its own #bar owner!Dean #post canon spn #15x20 who?#outsider pov #domestic fluff #spn advent calender 2020 #yes I am using the prompts from this lol

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seriousfic · 5 years ago

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Again, Trank came to Slater with a skeleton idea: His Fantastic Four would be the opposite of every other franchise kickoff. “The end of the Fantastic Four was going to very organically set up the adventure and the weirdness and the fun. That would be the wish fulfillment of the sequel. Because obviously, the sequel would be, ‘OK, now we are [superpowered] forever and it’s weird and funny and there’s adventure lurking around every corner.’ But the first movie was going to basically be the filmic version of how I saw myself all the time: the metaphor of these characters crawling out of hell.”

Developing the script was a similar clamber. Slater was a badge-carrying nerd ready to convert comic book lore into bombastic, CG-ready set-pieces. Trank was the opposite, having seen a few episodes of the Fantastic Four cartoon from the mid-’90s and having a general distaste for comic book movies. “The first Avengers movie had recently come out, and I kept saying, ‘That should be our template, that’s what audiences want to see!” Slater said. “And Josh just fucking hated every second of it.”

“The trials of developing Fantastic Four had everything to do with tone,” Trank said. “You could take the most ‘comic booky’ things, as far as just names and faces and identities and backstories, and synthesize it into a tone. And the tone that [Slater] was interested in was not a tone that I felt I had anything in common with.”

In an effort to creatively engage his director by any means necessary, Slater loaded Trank up with comics from his personal collection — the greatest Doctor Doom stories, his favorite Ben Grimm moments — but nothing sparked. Trank was more interested in the early moments, digging into Reed Richards’ character development and traumatic arc. The screenwriting pair would try to find common ground, watching movies for inspiration. What was the Inception version of Fantastic Four? The Saving Private Ryan version? The Cronenberg body horror version? Once the team got its powers, that’s where it started losing Trank. Galactus, Annihilus, Herbie the Robot, time travel, multiple dimensions, old teams fighting young teams — everything was on the table, and any sequence or character could get tossed out at a moment’s notice. “It didn’t matter if they were fighting robots in Latveria or aliens in the Negative Zone or Mole Monsters in downtown Manhattan; Josh just did not give a shit.”

“I feel like I get Mole Man,” Trank said in his defense. “He’s angry and undermined by the system.”

[...] Trank faced immense pressure as he worked on the script, storyboards, previsualized set-pieces, and casting, and much of it was born from his own anxieties. The director came from behind with Chronicle, and was suddenly in charge of something that everyone expected to be a huge success. “That requires a degree of experience that we often underestimate,” one source close to the production said. Trank took bold swings where he could. Early on, he insisted to Fox that Chronicle star Michael B. Jordan was the guy to play Johnny Storm, a character traditionally depicted as white. “For the world I grew up in, a racially intense Los Angeles where we were used to seeing white superheroes, some of my friends who were black should have seen a black superhero [...] so I felt that while being in a position of power, I could change the system a little bit.” Miles Teller (Whiplash), Jamie Bell (Jumper), and Kate Mara (Shooter), as Johnny’s adopted sister, rounded out the cast.

So you want to make a movie about a black superhero and you hate Fantastic Four comics--naturally, that makes you the best choice to do a Fantastic Four movie.

ETA:

It didn’t help that throughout the making of Fantastic Four, Trank had a second job. A few months before production, Kinberg, who, on top of producing superhero movies for Fox, was a consultant at Lucasfilm, asked Trank if he wanted to make a Star Wars movie. Kinberg knew that Trank had met with Kiri Hart of the Lucasfilm story group after Chronicle, and now the company was interested in hearing his pitch for a spinoff movie.

At the time, Trank rented a house in Benedict Canyon just a few blocks from where George Lucas lived with his editor and wife Marcia Lucas when he wrote the first draft of Star Wars. With a few days to mull over Kinberg’s offer, Trank walked up to the Lucas house and basked in its glow. He called it one of the most surreal moments of his life. “The visions that I had in that moment were just out of this world,” he said. He walked back to his home with a three-act pitch for a Boba Fett movie.

Trank presented the idea to Hart, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and Disney chairman Alan Horn. Up until that point, only J.J. Abrams had been approved to play in the Star Wars sandbox, and granting permission for a filmmaker to forever impact the moneymaking mythos was a monthslong process. But the guy who made his name with a lightsaber-themed viral video came out the other end with a Star Wars movie deal.

The next June, in the middle of production on Fantastic Four, Lucasfilm announced the director as part of the family. “He is such an incredible talent and has a great imagination and sense of innovation,” Kennedy said. “That makes him perfectly suited to Star Wars.” Nearly a year later, Trank would bow out of the movie. “I quit because I knew I was going to be fired if I didn’t quit.”

Hearing how this guy is kinda a pretentious idiot with no friends, it makes a lot more sense that he’d get hired to make a Star Wars movie.

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occasionalfics · 5 years ago

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hi so i haven’t made any real posts in a while bc i haven’t really been writing that much but i wanted to just post SOMETHING for y’all to interact with

anyway, if you don’t know, i have a youtube channel and i’ve been watching (almost) every movie that chris evans is in because i love him and reviewing them for my channel and i thought i’d give a rundown of the movies i’ve seen so far (including ones i haven’t rewatched for the channel yet because i’m not gonna link to the videos - if you really want to watch, message me) so maybe you could decide which ones are worth your time and/or money 😂

for this, i’ll give a brief description, my general thoughts, and a score from 1-10 (1 being unwatchable and 10 being PEAK cinema)

i’m keeping things very light on spoilers, meaning there might be one or two overall but not for every movie.

so here we go:

The Newcomers (2000) - some indie movie with no theatrical release about a family that moves from boston to vermont because of money troubles. chris is in it for like 5 minutes and he’s honestly the second best part (second to a dog only). 3/10, mostly boring but not offensive.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001) - i feel like everyone has seen this. it’s a spoof of 80′s and 90′s teen movies (namely she’s all that and cruel intentions). chris plays the main love interest and he’s definitely funny enough to pull off the part but it’s not really my thing. 4/10.

The Perfect Score (2004) - this is the first time chris and sc*rj* worked together. 6 high school kids fail the SATs so instead of retaking them, they sneak into a government building and steal the answers. it’s an mtv movie and it’s...fine? not great, not special, but...very early aughts mtv for sure. 4/10

Cellular (2004) - an action flick where chris plays a regular dude who gets a call from a woman who’s been kidnapped, and then has to keep communications up with her in order to save her and take down some corrupt cops. surprisingly funny, i had a great time watching, would recommend! 7/10

Fierce People (2005) - i think this was another indie movie without a theatrical release. based on a book that, from the reviews of both, is identical, i think because the author of the book was also the screenplay writer. and that’s probably why this movie sucked. bby anton yelchin (rip) gets caught scoring drugs for his mom, and because she has connections to this super rich dude, they end up going to live in new jersey with his weirdass family instead of bby anton going to jail. chris’s character is not who you think he is. content warnings for drugs, rape, and murder. overall boring, not what it thinks it is, 4/10

Fantastic Four (2005) - okay everyone’s seen these. i actually hate both of these FF movies, but chris as johnny storm is the only shinning light in either. reed is the WORST and sue is treated like eye candy. 4/10 for johnny storm alone.

London (2005) - literally the worst movie i have ever seen. i hate london. also an indie movie, very misogynistic, very pretentious and self-important. lonely emo boy does drugs with random people in a bathroom at a party he was not invited to INTENTIONALLY, in the hopes that he will win over his ex girlfriend, who he repeatedly emotionally abused while they were together, even though the party is literally in honor of her moving across the country. and she didn’t want him there. please never, ever bother watching london and talking about it online - fuckbois will attempt to tell you that you know nothing repeatedly. 1/10, worst film ever made.

TMNT (2007) - does this need an introduction? chris plays casey, but the movie’s really about the turtles. honestly the writing kind of relies on you knowing a lot about the turtle lore and overall it’s a boring but ultimately harmless film. it’s just really not worth your time. 2/10

Sunshine (2007) - ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN, I HAVE NOT STOPPED THINKING ABOUT SUNSHINE IN OVER A YEAR. 8 astronauts are on a mission to ignite a nuclear bomb into the dying heart of our sun. but it’s a space film so shit goes wrong and, one by one, they start dying. very tense, very sad. the biggest complaint all around is that the first 2/3s of the movie are one genre and the last 3rd is a completely different movie, and yet it’s STILL amazing. please watch (if you can handle a space thriller)! 8/10

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) - a very bad follow up to a very bad origin movie. not even andre braugher could save this one. reed is really mean to johnny for no reason and i hate his guts. 3/10

The Nanny Diaries (2007) - second time appearing alongside sc*rj*. she’s the main character. an anthropology student takes on a nannying job for an upperclass family in new york, but the job ends up being more than she bargained for. chris plays harvard hottie, her upstairs neighbor who is THE BEST BOY. i loved this movie. 8/10

Battle for Terra (2007) - a very weird but very good animated movie about humans attempting to colonize an alien planet because we were stupid enough to destroy earth, venus, and mars. lots of big names on the cast list for a movie that not many people saw, but it goes ham in the “fuck colonizers” theme. overall, a surprising joy. 6.5/10

Street Kings (2008) - well this was directed by david ayer so my friend and i went into this with very low expectations and it didn’t even meet that bar. keanu reeves plays a sad and angry corrupt cop who almost kind of gets framed for killing another cop, and then spends a good chunk of the runtime just hunting down other corrupt cops without doing anything about his own corruption. it’s copaganda, but very bad copaganda. also chris dies. fuck this movie, don’t waste your time. this is another one where the fanboys will come for you if you say a bad thing about it on the internet, 2/10

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008) - another indie that apparently caught the eye of kevin fiege? i don’t really know why because chris’s character is very bland and the movie overall is nothing special. tennessee williams wrote the screenplay before he died in the 80′s and then this was made and nothing about it was changed. it’s basically straight people in the 20′s in the south being weird and rude. a rich girl pays a hot poor boy to escort her to parties after a huge scandal was caused by her father. she loves the poor boy but he doesn’t return the feelings and everyone’s sad, dying, or mean. skip it, honestly. 4/10

Push (2009) - honestly, an underrated movie that so often gets shit on because of x-men. push is so good! a telekinetic man meets a young girl who can see the future, who tells him that if he helps her find her mom, they’ll also come into $6 million. they run into his ex and the government department trying to control people with powers, and shit ensues. chris’s chemistry with dakota fanning as big brother/little sister is adorable and i need more people to talk about it. 8/10, very worth your time.

The Losers (2010) - apparently went up against some other star-studded action flick with a similar plot at the time of release and suffered for it, but other than that, this is a fun romp with lots of character. a team of militiamen are framed for an international scandal and forced to go underground until a mysterious woman helps them exact revenge on the billionaire who framed them so they can go back to their families. chris plays one of the secondary characters and he’s PERFECT. best character in the whole movie! you’ve probably seen the “don’t stop believing”/”lethal killing machine” scene around tumblr before - that’s just how his character is the whole movie and it’s great. definitely recommend! 7/10

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) - we’ve all seen it. lucas lee is the best. there are lots of problems in the word choice and some of the moral quandaries but overall, an enjoyable ode to videogames and comic books. 6.5/10

Puncture (2011) - once again, an indie film with very little theatrical release. WHOOOH though. this movie. SO GOOD! two personal injury lawyers take on a case when a nurse is accidentally pricked on the job and contracts AIDS. they take on a huge pharmaceutical supply company in the hopes of manufacturing and creating a legal standard for using safety needles to protect frontline medical workers, all while chris’s character is dealing with being an addict. based on a true story, honestly one of chris’s best performances (and that’s across the board). you can rent it cheap from youtube and it’s totally worth it. 7.5/10

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - i mean. it’s cap. honestly this movie feels a little long even though it’s not. overall it’s a good, enjoyable movie and watching it all the way through reminded me of why bucky was so important. 7/10

What's Your Number? (2011) - okay honestly i love this movie? a woman is slutshamed by her sister’s friends and then embarks on a journey through her past relationships to find her soulmate, only to realize that it doesn’t matter how many men she’s slept with because the right one really won’t give a damn and neither should she. everyone’s seen naked collin around tumblr. he’s a good boy. mostly. 7/10

The Avengers (2012) - so i can appreciate that this was like THE event movie of the summer of 2012 but it is LONG and there’s still so much spy shit i don’t understand. my friends and i also think that j*ss wh*d*n oversimplifies most of the characters, and ultimately the writing isn’t super strong. the performances are, for sure, but it’s still not as great of a movie as i thought it was when i was a senior in high school. 7/10

The Iceman (2012) - also an indie? based on a true story. a man (played by michael shannon) is recruited by the mob to be a hitman, and then something happens where they don’t want to pay him or something, so he starts doing a shady job with another hitman (played by chris) to support his family. overall it’s a boring film but michael and chris were both really good! watch it if you like dark mob movies, michael shannon, or winona ryder. 3/10

Snowpiercer (2013) - this movie, no pun intended, is a RIDE. poor people at the back of a train containing the last living human beings revolt against the bourgeoise. everyone’s dirty and tired and hungry. weird shit happens, but ultimately, this was SO worth the watch (and the money i spent on the blu-ray)! 7/10

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - still my favorite cap movie. excellent characterization, maybe the only time i cared about natasha. the plot should be an avengers movie given that shield is a team concern, but i will stand by the winter soldier aspect of this movie til i die. 8/10

Before We Go (2014) - an indie movie that chris directed (his directorial debut)! it’s...cute, i guess. it’s not harmful in any way, but also not special in any way. flustered woman misses her train, cute musician in the station offers to help her navigate NYC. they talk about feelings and their pasts and what they’re running from and toward. it’s fine. 6/10

Playing It Cool (2014) - indie? i don’t know?? screenplay writer (chris) wants to write action films but keeps getting hired to write romcoms, then he finds himself IN a romcom. it’s okay. some people think it’s terribly misogynistic which i didn’t find it to be, but it’s also just...kinda bland. 4/10

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - my least favorite avengers movie. i genuinely hate how ultron was handled and this movie has never once made me sympathize with the maximoffs. except for when steve defends their choice to allow experimentation to be done so they could defend their country. uh the party at the beginning is the best part, full stop. 3/10

Captain America: Civil War (2016) - this isn’t a cap film. he has no character growth. this is an avengers film at best. i also take issue with how much of this movie is really just two movies forced into one. bucky gets the short end of the deal in the overall mcu and this is really where that starts. 5/10

Gifted (2017) - PLEASE. WATCH. GIFTED. a former philosophy professor gives up his career to raise his niece, but when his mother attempts to gain custody, he has to fight for the person he loves most in the world. one of the most heartfelt, genuine movies ever. chris and mckenna grace have SUCH good chemistry. bonus octavia spencer (also in snowpiercer). 10/10

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) - probably my favorite avengers movie. great stakes. amazing acting. THE BEARD!!! 8/10

Knives Out (2019) - WHOOO BITCH. TOP TIER. ransom drysdale could do whatever he wants to me and normally, i don’t “date” villains. 9/10

Endgame (2019) - the lesser infinity war. i’m not a fan of time jumps and also hate fatphobia. thor was mistreated and i can’t forgive that.

#chris evans #chris evans ranking #i don't talk about my fanfic on my youtube channel which is why i don't post links to it openly here

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beatriceeagle · 5 years ago

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I think my TV meta ask reported an error so I'm going to repeat my questions, feel free to ignore any of them! 1) I love Looking for Alaska the book, and whilst I'm not worried about the TV show as an adaptation, I am worried about it being good... should I watch it? 2) Are you excited for Bojack Season 6? 3) How do you feel about Agents of Shield as a TV show that's constantly changing? I'll never forget their pivot in season 1! 4) SPORTS NIGHT! Why do I love Dan Rydell so much?

I don’t think I could love a meta ask more unless it included Farscape. This is phenomenal.

The highlight is that the Looking for Alaska adaptation is good and you should watch it. To get deeper, without getting spoilery, I’ve heard a lot of people say that it improves upon the book, which I don’t exactly agree with. What Looking for Alaska is is a very smart adaptation.

Basically, Looking for Alaska, the book, pulls off a thematic trick using its limited point of view. Miles spends the first two-thirds of the book wildly idealizing Alaska, and often very much in the dark about the exact specifics of her relationship with Jake, but also with Takumi and even the Colonel. Then when the turn comes, that becomes the point: Miles might have loved Alaska, but the Alaska in his head was never the real Alaska, and that means that he can never really understand what happened.

We spend a lot of time hearing Miles’ very precocious, pretentious narration, and also Alaska’s precocious, pretentious dialogue, and a lot of that has seeped into the culture as being the book, as if there’s no deconstruction happening. But there is! Miles is a little bit self-deluding, and Alaska is almost always putting on a front, and neither of their words can ever be fully trusted. This is a book about a guy who never really knew a girl.

The writers of the series, I think, wisely realized that that dynamic was going to be incredibly difficult to replicate on-screen. No matter what they did, viewers were going to get an objective look at Alaska, and the time constraints of television (ironically, the fact that they had to fill out more time) meant that they would have to go outside of Miles’ perspective. So they ditched that idea entirely, and instead dedicated themselves to expanding wherever they possibly could. We get so much more Alaska than the book gives us. She is more real than she possibly could have been in the pages, because we get to see her, not Miles’ view of her. But we also get much, much more of the Colonel, more of Sara, more of Takumi and Lara, more of the Eagle and the Old Man. And it’s wonderful! Some of the show’s most incredible scenes are between characters who are neither Miles nor Alaska.

But it does undercut the theme, somewhat. (Especially when combined with some other adaptation decisions that I won’t get into, because they are spoilery.) Looking for Alaska, the series, gives up some thematic impact in favor of a great deal of character richness, and it’s absolutely the right call for the series, given its format, and given the context in which it was released. But it was a trade, and I think it should be acknowledged.

(The other thing the show does that I think is necessary from an adaptation standpoint, but makes for a kind of weird viewing experience, is that it adds a whole plotline to the middle of the series that doesn’t exist in the book. I do think that this was necessary, because there’s not a lot of structure to the middle of Looking for Alaska, and while that’s fine for a book, a series needs a plot with some kind of forward momentum to hang itself on. But the problem is that the inevitable arc of the book means that this new plotline has nowhere to go, and it ends up just sort of fizzling out, once the book plot takes over.)

Anyway: Looking for Alaska. Very good show, very good music, exceptional performance from Denny Love. Definitely check it out if you loved the book.

I am very excited for BoJack season 6! I’m just waiting to watch it with my sister. I have hope that, since this is a planned final season, it’ll give the writers space to move the characters forward, and actually give people like Diane some measure of peace, and people like BoJack some measure of atonement.

I think that being the kind of show that was a different show every season was the smartest choice that Agents of SHIELD ever made. (The least smartest choice that Agents of SHIELD ever made was “Fitz and Simmons can never be together for more than six episodes at a time,” even if it has led to several individually successful story arcs.) It makes the show infinitely adaptable, so for instance, if they kill off their lead character thinking that the show is ending, and then suddenly get renewed for two (!!!) more seasons, it’s very easy for them to bring the actor back without walking back the story they’ve told; the show is capable of going to almost any place or time, and pulling on almost any trope of sci-fi or fantasy.

It also makes the show really interesting. One of the problems with season one of Agents of SHIELD was that the MCU is this giant world, full of lots of different settings and genres, and in comparison, AoS felt bland. The genre it was taking on (sci-fi procedural) isn’t inherently boring, but it wasn’t a particularly fresh take on the idea, and the visual trappings of the setting were incredibly sterile. But post-Hydra reveal—and especially post-season four—AoS is like the MCU in a microcosm. It can be anything! It can do a season in the future, a season in space, a season in a computer simulation. It can do pulpy action and messy comedy and gorgeous, lyrical sci-fi.

And also, it manages to do something that’s incredibly difficult (even The Good Place didn’t quite manage to get the hang of it until literally just this last episode) which is to rewrite the characters’ realities over and over without losing track of their character progressions. So, for instance, Fitz has been regular Fitz, and then he’s had his entire reality rewritten by the Framework and become the Doctor, and then he married Jemma and died, and then we reset to cryo!Fitz. And throughout all of that, the show has always been very clear about where the current Fitz is emotionally, and how all of the past and alternate versions of him affect his mental state—but also how he is distinct from any past or alternate versions of himself. And they do this while carrying on actual physical trauma from season 2; if you pay attention, Fitz still briefly loses words when he gets stressed. (As someone who takes a medication that makes me forget words easily, this is my ACTUAL FAVORITE THING on television.) The end result is that you actually know more about Fitz from seeing his reality rewritten so many times—and he still has a coherent character arc.

Of course the downside of this constant shifting is that sometimes AoS will find something that really works for it, and then leave it behind. Like, over the course of seasons three to six, they built up a lot of texture and a deep bench of characters to the space setting, and I would probably say, at this point, that Space AoS is my favorite version of AoS. But the latter half of season six ditched that setting almost entirely, and it’s not clear to what extent we’ll be going back there at all for season seven. Similarly, Fitz’s character arc remains coherent, but I’m not sure the current version of it is my favorite version of it.

But at the end of the day, I think that’s a fair trade for a show that’ll change Daisy’s name halfway through and stick with it, you know?

Well, I don’t know why you love Dan Rydell, but after putting a great deal of thought into this over many years, I can tell you why I love Dan Rydell: He is, setting aside some baseline Sorkin patronization, a legitimately great guy, going through a legitimately tough time.

Like, in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot of people who have it a lot worse than Dan Rydell, but one of the cool things about Sports Night is that the narrative is genuinely engaged with that fact: It’s aware of Dan’s privilege, and it makes Dan aware of his privilege, in a way that future Sorkin properties never really manage to do. Think of “The Apology”: “No rich white guy ever got anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks.” Think of Bobbi Bernstein, a woman who Dan calls crazy until she proves that she was right. Think of “The Quality of Mercy at 29K,” an episode that’s basically all about turning Dan’s privilege inside out.

What makes Dan likeable is that the show is aware of his privilege, it points his privilege out to him, and he learns. When Isaac calls him out, he’s immediately contrite. When he sees someone in need in his office, he overcomes his immediate reaction and tries to help. And when he realizes his error with Bobbi, he grants her an immediate, complete, and sincere apology.

The thing is, Dan wants so desperately to be a good guy, and it’s just really hard not to like someone who is trying so hard. He’s incredibly good to his friends, and honestly, I think the turning point is “Mary Pat Shelby.” You give Dan and Natalie’s scene in “Mary Pat Shelby” to a halfway decent actor, and how do you not come out of that scene loving Dan? This incredibly unselfish, incredibly well-pitched moment where, while everyone else is freaking out and trying to get something out of Natalie, Dan just says, “No, I’m not going to tell you what to do, I’m just going to tell you that I am behind you a million percent.” How do you not love that person?

But the other thing is that Josh Charles is not a halfway decent actor, Josh Charles is a phenomenal actor, so actually the turning point isn’t “Mary Pat Shelby.” It’s the speech in “The Apology.” The speech in “The Apology” isn’t Sorkin’s best writing—“high as a paper kite” is a choice—and honestly, that scene is a lot to ask any actor to take on. Performed competently, it would be kind of embarrassing.

Charles fucking impales himself on that monologue. He leaves blood and guts on the anchor desk. And he somehow does it without overacting? It is a very subtle, precisely-balanced act of self-dismemberment.

What I’m saying is that right from the very beginning, Dan opens himself up to the viewer, and we see all his vulnerabilities, all the ugly, painful pieces of him that make him. And because Charles is a really, really good actor, it’s all very believable, and it’s all very magnetic—you’re drawn to it. And he does it all while being so likeable, and so good.

So of course people love Dan Rydell. He’s generous, he learns and apologizes, he tries incredibly hard, he’s got level 25 charisma, and he’s an open book of emotion—not to the people in his life, but to the viewer.

(Hey, while you’re here, have a link to an amazing Dan Rydell vid!)

Send me meta prompts to distract me from my migraine! (Yes, I still have a migraine.)

#looking for alaska #agents of shield #sports night #dan rydell #aos #mcu #meta #congratulations asker i am now rewatching sports night

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guitarrod · 5 years ago

Text

Strictly For The Birds

( Holden Caulfield at 80 )

Holden Caulfield was you when you were fourteen. Now he knows you´re a phony. The difference is erudition. It´s impossible to be a close reader and read the Catcher in the Rye. A closer reader is a doubting reader. He has read much and knows enough to double-guess first-person narrators. When you´re fourteen you take Holden at his word. That is Salinger´s big joke. Your education has wrecked you as an aesthete. You were better off deaf and dumb. At least you could listen to Holden Caulfield. Your aesthetic values are based on your education instead of your knowing. You are hell-bent on psychoanalysing characters. There is no common trust. You got to the point where you even look to study Holden´s idiomatic speech. J.D Salinger writes to the reader you used to be. It only took you a couple of years to be a phony. You cannot pretend to be a blood brother of Holden´s anymore. The more experienced you become as a reader, the worse off you are for Salinger. It is almost as if he sticks his tongue out at you for having spent the better part of your intellectual life reading the canon, the experimentalists, the post-modernists, Faulkner, and Robbe-Grillet. Your education has taken you adrift. You catch yourself wondering if he would apply himself to his next school come next September. You remember that you knew exactly the answer when you were fourteen. But it is now a fleeting remembrance, a dispersed feeling. You can hardly remember what you thought, because you keep trying to remember what you felt. The discrepancy in your two readings of The Catcher - one at fourteen, and one at forty - is the distance you have neglectfully trodden. Salinger´s portrayal of Holden as genuine and anti-phony comes across in the way that Holden sounds. Salinger, in order to create Holden´s character could not hit one wrong note. It is much akin to what John Lennon said about Bob Dylan. If you want to know the truth, if you want to get to the bottom of it, you have to listen to how he sounds, more than what he says. Holden´s song is lost to the deafened years of erudition. You have betrayed Holden´s trust.

He is a case study to most, that´s what critics do to human beings. Here´s more :

On July, 16 1951, The Catcher In The Rye was published to a profusion of reviews and sales went up as time caught on. By 1963 it was surmised that critics had written more about the Catcher than any other contemporary novel. BY 1965 it had sold 1,500,000 copies and by 1975 it had sold 9,000,000. Certainly, Holden had hit a nerve, and while Salinger once made sure to dedicate one of his books to the few dwindling “amateur readers” still out there, criticism abounded. Everyone had a word to say. Every word seemed extra, seemed off. What needed to be known was well explicated in the book´s text. It is hard to be more on target than loving a girl for keeping all her kings in the back row. Critics aimed and tried. Nash K. Burger said “ Holden´s mercurial changes of mood, his ‘ stubborn’ refusal to admit his own sensitiveness and emotions, his cheerful disregard of what is sometimes known as reality are typically and heartbreakingly adolescent” S. N Berman for the New Yorker wrote that “ Holden is not a normal boy. He is a hypersensitive and hyper-imaginative” while Harvey Breit for the Atlantic thought the opposite “ [Holden is a] bright, terrible, and ´possibly´ normal sixteen year old. The “possibly” is how a critic plays it safe.

The fact is that criticism centered on two basic points : whether Holden was what we all were once in our inner lives or whether he was a depiction of an eccentric and possibly disturbed young man. The other point of curiosity was whether Holden would resolve his problems after ending up interred in a mental hospital. This is a much wider and essential question. It pokes at your very sense of self and society. It pokes at your discomfort of giving in to that society, selling out that which is only yours to sell, your sense of self inside the society you imagine yourself to be in and how much being a part of that society really takes you apart from yourself. This belongs to the realms of psychology or the spiritual, depending on the critic´s intellectual dependences. Critics are people too and they mostly agree with the amateur readers that Holden was a sensitive person – as we all are or were – and was going through the trials of growing up. But a critic ponders and moils about this. All that is implicit is put to discussion by criticism, when itshould be left to settle inwardly, as a matter of course, as a matter of decency. A critic vacillates. If you really want to hear about it, where Holden was born and what his lousy childhood was like, you´re too old.

Maybe the greatest achievement of the Catcher In The Rye is that it is really a token to literature. It couldn´t be sung or put to music.

The Catcher needs to speak to you. It needs to speak to you when you are alone. Nobody else is watching, waiting to see your impressions. You can lend yourself to it. The book is a brother, as you were Holden´s Allie. And he hopes to God you won´t end up like D.B, the brother prostitute writer.

Simple when you were fourteen, it is now deceptively simple when you hit forty. It was direct, because it was your voice, not a performance of your voice.The voice that speaks to you when you are quiet. That screams amidst the silence when you were growing up. The voice which told you a certain kid in school was cool and everything and a great friend if you wanted to be more popular, but not the real deal. It was the voice that spoke to you as a young bilingual kid as you rested before sleeping, thinking seriously about whether “maison” sounded better than “home” and deciding on “maison”, because everyone in America is housebroken. Americans went a little adrift. They were obviously too self-conscious about being “cool”.

Kids, young teen-agers, the younger they are, know when you pretend. They know to pretend is pretentious.

Dylan stopped being Woody Guthrie and deemed him his last idol when he took notice that Guthrie was a phony. Surrounded by statesmen and kings and leaders of every ilk.His music a national treasure. Woody was a phony just as he tried his hardest not to be one, but that´s when you knew he couldn´t remember how. A wrong word will bind you in shackles and pronounce you guilty.

The suggestion is that you were Holden because he sounded not just like you but like your very best friend. It was in his idiom, in the way that he talked. Before he even told you the facts of his life, you were aware of them, and accepted them. Because you both spoke the same language. It is like spotting a friend in a crowded room before you even get to know him. Language to Salinger is like a knowing glance.

The Catcher was book written for kids.Salinger´s kids. Kids old enough to teach you everything you forgot. The fact that they are kids only makes it easier for them to preserve that knowledge from contamination. Socialization, for Salinger, is having the cowardice to adapt yourself. Cut a piece out to fit in. This is perfectly summarized in a set of short lines. In the end of the book, Holden responds to the psychiatrist´s archetypal prodding, searching for the cure, suggesting he should apply himself and receiving the only sensible answer. “ How do you know what you´re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don´t. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it´s a stupid question.” The psychiatrist will tend to see Holden as caught up in a crossroads. The psychiatrist will try to empathize with the boy that is growing up. The psychiatrist is a critic who forgot how to read.

Holden can either grow up and adapt, or he can be true to himself and end up in a loony bin. Of course another alternative would be seeing him ending up in the crest of a mountain as a sage. Another one, still, would see him living on, one of many millions in the city streets, having resisted the fold in his teens and never having betrayed himself ever since. These are diametrically opposing paths. They are survival choices. The real tribulation, the crisis of adolescence is a test to see if you will be able to grow up to be yourself. To understand rationally, or outwardly, what you knew innately as a child. But now you speak and sound like the critic, not like the fourteen year old you once were. The real dilemma, of course, is that Holden´s crisis stopped being important and was almost forgotten until you re-read the book almost 30 years later. It is in how fast you forget that makes you reach for the nearest bottle.

It was feeling affection for a girl that leaves all the kings in the back row while playing checkers, which is also akin to thinking about your poor mother the moment you are packing up your belongings after “given the boot again and having to leave another school” and thinking of how she must have asked a million questions to the person selling the ice skates that she wanted to give to you which ended up being the wrong ones, anyway, and left in a corner of your closet in your boarding school as a relic of her caring. The skates she wanted her son to wear while swooning over the ice, playing hockey with his friends. It is exactly the same as wishing to relive the memory of the girl which made you smile when she would just leave the kings in the back row because she liked the way they looked or something.

It is like being angered at the fact that a common flashy fool like Holden´s roommate, Stradlater, is very possibly having sex with her, after chatting her up quite easily, with the same lines he uses with every girl. Holden apparently doesn´t understand girls. He repeats that he doesn´t understand girls. He stops necking when she play-acts telling him she is not ready. He cannot get involved if he doesn´t genuinely like the girl. But then, by the next day, he is necking with another one he genuinely doesn´t like and life goes on. Holden doesn´t understand girls because of the unfairness of an unworthy person being attractive to them. As if the evaluations and assessments were based on the same prerogatives as friendships. That one lusts for whom one feels affection. To Holden it is an injustice that tops off the general corruption. The icing on the cake. An injustice he is liable to commit. Holden is running the mortal risk of growing up. Sex would shut out the child and usher him promptly into manhood.

The problem, the glaring attestation of Holden´s personality and that he is much older than what most critics shunned him for is his humor. Holden is hip, attuned to the absurdity of all around him and when the world does not smother him he is willing to leave it with a laugh. And not just a sneer.A good laugh. The typethat will make your opponent throw in the towel and hand you your victory in the end.

The facility for making jokes is to sense the disjointedness in what is purported to be real and the obvious truth. It is to shred away the pretense. One example : After being enraged with Stradlater´s inane yet effective gifts at womanizing, Caulfield calls out to him as he is going to the bathroom “ to stop off on the way to the can and give Mrs. Schimdt the time. Mrs. Schimdt was the janitor´s wife.” This is appropriately toilet humor. Rowdy humor.Like hearing Brown Sugar for the first time in a honky-tonk. Any rumor of childishness was a gross misinterpretation. Holden´s way of talking has the natural lash of the wit. To bleed the victim vacant. Holden has the natural lash of the wit. His humor, however, is not restricted to a specific understanding of a precise idiom. It is not borne in time, or trapped in its streets. It makes the whole world laugh whether it finds it constructive or not. It makes the Upper East Side of New York seem universal. More evidence : “ I´m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It´s awful.If I´m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I´m going, I´m liable to say I´m going to the opera. It´s terrible.” The analyst would say Holden lies to overly protect that which is most vulnerable : his true nature. One that is on assault, almost contagiously-prone to the phoniness, or let´s be clear, the pure mediocrity of being a sheep. The problem is that the analyst is never as clear as Holden. Holden´s jokes keep you on your feet. You almost start talking like him. The critic waivers between what he should sound like and what he has grown to sound as.

Holden isn´t a child for cherishing a girl who keeps her kings in the back row, Holden isn´t just loving a girl that he kissed all over as he saw a undisguised tear fall on her cheek hard as a stone when she saw her stepdad, an insensitive, distant, and for that very fact abusive- aberrant to the core of human sensitivity - for nothing more than his distance, for choosing not to care for a child who no longer belongs to anyone, the helpless girl Holden caught and kissed all over “ anywhere – her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all- her ears – her whole face except her mouth.” Except the mouth…Stradlater´s date.

On second thought, the notion that Holden confuses sex with the stain of a loss of innocence say perhaps a little more about other people´s notions about sex than Holden. He says he is extremely horny. Maybe he kicks himself for being attracted to a girl who he doesn´t like simply because he doesn´t enjoy half-measures. He´d prefer to keep love and lust attached.Maybe you´re the one who is innocent.

Phoniness goes deeper than a lost innocence, or a love for the unself-conscious simple gesture of truthfulness as I understood Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker critic, implying in a Charlie Rose interview commemorating Salinger´s genius. Phoniness is the innate, the natural, the commonplace, human and (humane) ability to hear when somebody strikes the wrong note while playing the game of life wrongly, or half-assed, or cowardly as is often the case. Phoniness is a cop-out.

“ The band was putrid. Buddy Singer. Very brassy, but not good brassy, corny - brassy” ( Pg. 69 Catcher In The Rye – Little, Brown and Co. Edition). Or Ernie, the pianist “ He was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass.” The show-offy ripples are the same as prodded laughter. Audiences laughing on cue are more than a betrayal, they are a disappointment for betraying themselves.The superficial difference is in the fact that while Ernie was doing the entertaining, trying to impress an audience with his playing, an audience that laughs uproariously at any joke in a movie is trying to accommodate One comes with the other. One size fits all. It is still the sheep needlessly scared of the shadow of their own kind. Thinking they have missed something, they try to keep up with the bleating and the laughter, missing the fact that nothing is being said, nothing is being played, nothing is being written. The sheep are afraid to stand still. Stay silent.

(People who would rather laugh their hearts out at stupid movies or critics who care extensively about the correct academic annotations are also one of the same. They are facsimiles of the Stradlaters who you are told to laugh at because he thinks that being able to mark commas in the right places is part of fine writing.)

Art appreciation is perhaps the most discernible measure of the true ability to detect phoniness. Or as in the Taoist tale Salinger has Seymour read to a baby Franny, in the beginning of Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, it is the ability to tell a superlative animal from one that just looks good. Without hesitation.Scarcely even looking. And Franny, at tenmonths old, is expected also to know the difference. You were born knowing. You choose to forget.Blinded by the faux-gold and the flash of a grin.Deafened by words like “faux-gold”.

The critics see meat where another man sees a goldfish. They speak of “adolescent disaffiliation” – ( Carl F. Strauch, Pg. 65 “ Kings in the Back Row : Meaning through Structure – A reading of Salinger´s The Catcher in the Rye” and of a “thoroughly pessimistic novel”. “ The phony world of corrupt materialism and Holden´s private world of innocence” ( Carl F. Strauch; Pg.65; Pg, 66) “ Phrasings (that) transcend their merely conversational usage and become psychologically portentous.” ( Carl F. Strauch Pg. 68). Phoniness is, - according to S. N Berhmam ,as quoted by Carol and Richard Ohmann ( Reviewers, Critics and The Catcher in the Rye; Pg. 125) “ a heading under which he {Holden} loosely gathers not only insincerity but snobbery, injustice, callousness to the tears in things, and a lot more.” Phoniness is in a lot of things, including in its being overstated. What it isn´t is a loss of innocence or a fall from grace. You are expected to know what it is. It is self-explanatory. It is found more easily in the voice of one who is desperately trying to be heard, or who is completely oblivious of being heard at all. Both ways will work.

Little Shirley Beans. -“ It was a very old terrific record that this colored girl singer Estelle Fletcher made about twenty years ago. She sings it very Dixielandand whorehouse, and it doesn´t at all sound mushy.”(Catcher, Pg.115; italics mine). In fact, it is incredible how much art criticism Salinger wedges in the book, not even bothering to fictionalize examples. Holden says how Lawrence Olivier plays Hamlet “like a goddam general instead of “ sad, screwed-up type of guy” ( Catcher, p. 117) Salinger doesn´t fictionalize, as if he were dying to put his point across. At the point of a bayonet, Holden is man enough to laugh if he wants to, if that is what needs to be done. Or holler and cry.

Even the informality shown to highly respected artists is more than the homage many understand it to be, the wish to call an author up on the phone after reading his book is like a secret handshake between men in the know. Salinger´s realistic optimism is in his undying faith that you know, and that you are, uniquely, one of his own. As a book is addressed to anyone willing to read it, Salinger is embracing everyone, personally, body after body. It is the natural facility in literature, the reading in silence, that makes it the only art that treats everyone, individually, as the same. And Salinger knows you will agree with Holden, if you will only reciprocate the gesture. If there is the same implied propensity for treating someone you have just met with recognition and respect. Someone who won´t criticize, someone who isn´t forty, anybody who just “reads and runs” (Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction, dedicatory passage.) Holden will state the bare-faced obvious -if you want to know the truth, if you´ll give him time, if you´ll just let him talk.

At school, that biggest killer of artistic affinity, Holden was taught in a public speaking class never to digress, when he tells, passionately hurt, that what he liked most about the class was when somebody digressed, when somebody went with an idea and let it carry him in its gust.“ I (Holden) was still feeling sort of dizzy or something and I had a helluva headache all of a sudden. I really did. But you could tell he was interested, so I told him a little bit about it ´It´s this course where each boy in class has to get up and make a speech. You know. Spontaneous and all. And if the boy digresses at all, you´re supposed to stop and yell ´Digression´ at him as fast as you can. It just about drove me crazy. I got an F in it (…) The trouble with me is I like when somebody digresses…it was terrible because he was a very nervous guy (…) his lips were always shaking whenever it was time for him to give a speech (…) When his lips sort of quit shaking a little bit, though, I liked his speeches better than anyone else´s (…)It is in those unguarded moments that not only you show your nature, but what great art is made of. Great art is made of artists who did not look askance for approval and went with the ebb and crest of their inspiration. Art is not performed for anybody else. To digress is to free yourself from duty. To scream for joy. Salinger, through Holden, seems to say that great art is a feverish gush, or a little girl brushing her hair out of the way and creasing her forehead, paying attention, in earnest, to what her big brother is awkwardly trying to say. Great art is to convince yourself no one is ever watching. Great art is when you stop explaining yourself “He {Kinsella}´d start telling you all about this letter to his mother got from his uncle, and how his uncle got polio and all when he was forty-two years old, and how he wouldn´t let anybody come to see him in the hospital because he didn´t want anybody to see him with a brace on. It didn´t have much to do with the farm- I admit it –but it was nice. (…) I don´t know it´s hard to explain.’ “ I had this terrific headache all of a sudden.”( Catcher Pg. 184)

(Holden´s descriptions of his psychic pain come always muted, as if he didn´t quite understand himself where they came from. Psychiatrists will say anxiety. Sages would say they come from the moldings of the soul. He just says he had a terrific headache. All of a sudden.)

Perhaps Mr. Antolini is the most ambivalent character in 20th century American Literature. Holden is shocked when the man with whom he seeks advice and - why not? - salvation) accidentaly wakes him up while tousling his hair, soothing his head. Holden runs away like acur from hell. But maybe Mr. Antolini recognizes the adorable likeness of the boy he also once was from the distance of the man he turned out to be. Maybe Mr. Antolini seeks to protect a boy coming of age who is impossible to protect. It is in the design of life that these people are impossible to protect. They shouldn´t be. They shouldn´t be guided at all.

Maybe Mr.Antolini agrees with Holden, maybe he doesn´t. Maybe he wishes he could feel himself like Holden, maybe he is happy he has grown up and doesn´t. Maybe he suffers still. Maybe he´s gay. The most meaningful passage in the book, however is a quote by old Antolini quoting a psychoanalyst named William Stekel“ The mark of the immature man is that he wants do die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one”.

Oriental sages lived long lives in silent repudiation. Forget Oriental sages. Billions of people lived, anonymously, until the day they died without raising a stink about themselves while following a way to peace of mind, to generosity, to the humble sacrificing of losing face in public but never to themselves.

Throughout this article you have intermingled Jerome David Salinger with Holden Caulfield as if author and character were the same person, throughout this article you have committed that which is the ultimate sin and the fatal blow of the critic. Age will do that. While, the truth of the matter is that, at best -risking a guess – Holden can be viewed as someone with a choice to make, a definition, he is at that crux of the moment where he can go along – which many critics and psychoanalysts call “growing up”, or he can grow up maintaining his true self, his innate abilities to discern between the real and the false now evolved into a conscious knowledge of having irrevocably made his choice and lived with it.The wise man is the one who has an inner child brightening his eyes. Billions of people have died with that knowledge firmly grasped in hand. From J.D Salinger, who died at ninety, to a teen growing up in New York. The immature man is the one who sacrifices himself nobly and publicly for a cause. Kills himself. It took Him three days in his assisted suicide. Jesus never lasted it out in the ring.

It is important to note that you don´t fight for innocence, you fight for yourself. Holden liked whorehouse music. The Holdens of today can tell the truth from MTV darlings. There is a salaciousness to truth, a wicked malice. Being truthful is not “ I cannot tell a lie” speeches common to George Washington and the politician subspecies. Their place is up in the screen. Living life like a puppet masquerade.

“ The goddamn movies. They can ruin you” – Holden Caulfield

Perhaps the timely aspect of the Catcher In the Rye, that which traps itself in a certain period of time, is this rolling and tumbling with the movies. The tear and wear to keep your identity with so many facsimiles of personalities being applauded and lauded. Badly constructed characters as models for the living. It is this constant doubt about what is truly yourself and what you have added on from so many movies that is the real failure of today, as it was in 1951, when the Catcher In The Rye was published.

(At least, in 1951, even city kids like J.D played stickball in the streets while today´s monetary interests reach into your house and trap your kids at home in front of a computer.)

(The pervasive discrepancy of a life which included a childhood and one which doesn´t is the contrast between yourself and what you see on the screen. It doesn´t show up in exams and college applications, but it is easily seen in art.)

Holden knows how corrupted he is by the movies he has seen. He has enough wisdom to know how they stray him from how he feels, how they fabricate feelings and sensations he has not picked up in direct experience from the streets. As every non-conformist he knows how much of his core has been dictated and formed by unworthy forces. But, nevertheless, he cannot help but have fun with them. In the most emotionally-laden moments of the book, in the moments when he is feeling physical pain, he resorts to the movies. His imagination is filled with scenes once concocted and purported for a profit. The secondary reason for the movies may well be to entertain.But a distant second.And within boundaries.Of the moral kind and the marketing portfolio.

Holden´s imagination is corrupted and he must flail and hit against it to keep whole. Perhaps the tendency to interpret this as a yearning for innocence and purity is the trap. It is the exact opposite. There is nothing threatening about blearing sheep and dogs that lose their bark. You see Holden as a child clinging to childhood when you have already long forgotten what it is to be a man. When you have so far lost the constant battles of staving off what you gather from touching and feeling to what you perceive you are really seeing from second-hand experience. It is living in a time when the phrase “keeping it real” is repeated and accepted without a hint of irony.

Contrary to the aforementioned Taoist tale told by Seymour Glass to a ten-month old Franny – the one where the sage can see a roan horse for the superlative animal he is without even bothering to look - is that this sage only sees what he wants to see. He can filter the world, the good from the rotted. Holden´s angst stems from his inability to filter, he is overcome, he is bereft with the abundance of fakery : “ I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I´d hate it. I wouldn’t´ even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player. I´d play in the goddamn closet.” (Catcher, pg. 84).

Please don´t you think he´s being bashful. It is self-preservation. Or even more, just good taste.

If conscience had good manners having to hide yourself from gratuitous applause would be a direct correlative to keeping your kings in the back row, to being able to differentiate good looks from Yearbook Stradlater good looks, hating people who laugh themselves silly at any dumb movie; From being depressed while being expelled, again, from school,and packing your stuff, picturing your poor old mother taking all her great motherly cares in picking out the ice skates which you never used and were the wrong size anyway, to calling for a hooker and seeing a little girl named Sunny.To suffer and suffer with every wrong note a so-called artist plays or performs, to loving writing about your young dead brother´s catcher´s mitt in which he wrote poems just so he could read something while wasting time deep in left field. And warmly smiling at the memory of that kid brother who let himself go so much he would laugh with all the joy of the world at a joke somebody happened to make at the dinner table.

Being able to digress, play and sing and dance to the point where you don´t even feel the girl´s back against your outstretched hand, kissing her everywhere, the neck, the throat, even the eyes more endearingly while avoiding her mouth, feeling at the hip and gut the whorehouse bawdiness of a song hurled with feeling, crying about where the ducks at a pond in Central Park would spend the winter because if there is no shelter or cover for them there might be no Master Plan for us, and for, ultimately, trying to make it all work true in the madman fantasy of wanting to catch children before they fall. For a living, as a means for survival.Holden said he reads a lot, yet is illiterate. He said this in the same way he kept confusing the definition of the word intelligence for intellectual.But, don´t we all. At forty, the best critics can hardly read while pumping out pieces on the meter and measures of style. At forty you have gone to the finest schools and have turned into an intellectual while becoming more and more stupid. At forty you are a phony and the transference or relinquishment of the promise you were born with that held you together has been sold in an affair hardly of notice to even yourself. It was done smoothly, while the wool was being pulled over you, your eyes conscientiously shut until the transaction was complete. Holden was hurt with affected jazz players. We are stuck with Justin Bieber.

At forty it is somebody else´s world. And concern. As a flash of hope we remember the old Taoist tale that opens Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, where the aging Chiu-fang Kao “sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not to be looked at.” Perhaps like Holden, you, like everybody else, had the same eye for treasure but too angered by the overladen torrent of mediocrity that got you so mad you wanted to flee, play deaf and dumb, anddie, ever so nobly. You had to be able to filter. Holden loved too much. That is what angered him. He saw the lost potential.

At forty, you psychoanalyze the excessive anger at words such as : “ The next part I don´t remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open” ( Catcher, pg. 43. Italics mine. Obviously not Holden´s).

Agression occasioned by the suspicion that roommate may have partook in sexual intercourse with close childhood companion.

Boy also confuses old horny song about meeting somebody in the rye with catching a body in the rye. Transplants casual sexual encounters intosalvation.A real nut job.

Or:“ I slept in the garage the night he (Allie) died and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken (…) It was a very stupid thing to do, I´ll admit, but I hardly didn´t even know I was doing it, and you didn´t know Allie.” (Catcher,pg.39Italics mine)

Outlandish violence, unleashed fury.. Indications of (P)ost (T)raumatic (S)tress (D)Disorder which likens the rites of passage from childhood to adolescence. The mention of the dead brother a feeble attempt at overcompensating with insufficient explanation.

At forty everything is aberrant, agitated, and violent. When you were fourteen you understood, perfectly. Without even looking, or batting an eye.

The Catcher in The Rye is self-explanatory for those who really love to read. The universal and timeless amateur readers who read and run. You don´t need more analysis.I am sneaking the book inside your son´s room. I hope to catch him at dawn reading under the lamplight. If he´s like you at all…

Maybe he will, maybe he won´t.

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elliepassmore · 6 years ago

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The Hate U Give Book Review

5/5 stars

Recommended for people who like: strong female lead, realism, activism, and social issues; honestly, I think everyone should read it, thus why it went on my rather pretentious ‘Books Everyone Should Read’ board.

In honor of the movie coming out today, I thought I’d post my review of the book.

The Hate U Give is such an amazing, heartbreaking novel that deals with police brutality, identity, and how you use your voice. The story follows Starr over the few hours before and several weeks after her childhood friend is murdered by a white cop. The situation is, unfortunately, familiar, as Khalil was unarmed at the time of the shooting—and true to form, the media twists facts. Virtually from the start of the book I was shaking, Thomas weaves the prose so beautifully, so realistically, it was easy to get caught up in the events of the novel as they were unfolding. My heart ached for Starr, Khalil, Starr’s family, and Khalil’s family. It ached for the people *SPOILER* Khalil, DeVante, Iesha *SPOILER END* in the novel who did things because they had no other choice. It ached for the people who wanted things to change but weren’t sure how to make it happen, or if they could.

The book starts off with Starr at a party, talking to her half-brother's sister. It's shortly followed by an incident in which Starr and her childhood best-friend, Khalil, leave the party in Khalil's car and are pulled over by a white officer. Automatically, the officer is suspicious of the two, and the incident ends with him shooting Khalil, who was unarmed. It's such an intense scene, Starr is panicking about her friend, she was already afraid about the cop before anything happened, she knows Khalil was dead--or dying--as he hit the pavement, the cop points a gun at her, and to compound it all, *SPOILER* she saw another childhood friend shot and killed when she was a child *END SPOILER*. The whole scene gave me chills.

Starr is then faced with a decision: come forward as a suspect and risk being targeted by the cops and media, or stay silent and risk the officer walking free.

One of the best parts of the book is that Starr isn't automatically a revolutionary activist, it occurs in stages. The first decisions Starr must make involve 1) what to do about the people at school, who she tries to be a different person around, and 2) what to say to the cops, if she should say anything. These first few decisions shape the way the rest of the book plays out.

Thomas expertly weaves the different aspects of the book, from Starr's neighbors in Garden Heights, to the gangs there, to her family, to her friends at school, to the police officers involved. Each have their own version of what happened that night, and each version plays into how each group reacts to the events that occurred. Some react violently, others think Khalil deserved it, many are angry.

The book discusses the natural weapon we are all given—our voice—and what we decide to do with said weapon. One of the people at the school Starr goes to uses her voice to show how she supports the media. A barber in Starr’s neighborhood uses his voice to disagree with violence done against innocent cops as well as the violence done to black people. Starr’s Uncle Carlos uses it to support Starr and Khalil. And Starr uses hers.

Starr’s character development is interesting. From the beginning, she doesn’t want to step away from knowing Khalil, but she also has this idea ingrained in her head that she has to act one way in Garden Heights and another when she’s at school, away from Garden. So, she makes the decision to keep quiet to people, but come forward and talk to the cops as a witness. It’s a step. Soon she’s deciding to talk to her friends and boyfriend about it, to talk to an attorney/activist who helps Starr pro-bono *SPOILER* and also organizes rallies for Khalil *END SPOILER*, and eventually leads to Starr *SPOILER* making a speech at a protest after the cop who murdered Khalil isn’t indicted *END SPOILER*.

While the main vein of the story is Khalil and the cop and how that plays out, Thomas also included family as a major part of the novel. Starr’s family supports her through every step of the process. They support her in not speaking, and they support her when she decides to. Her parents obviously play a major role in her life. It’s her mother who comes to her defense in many of the scenes involving the cops and the DA, and it’s her father who helps her stay grounded in life outside of the tragedy and gets outside protection involved when things start going bad. We get to see how the tragedy plays a role in the dynamics between her brothers, Sekani and Seven, and in the dynamics with Seven’s mother and other half-sisters. We also get to see the connection outside of blood family. The people of Garden Heights are angry over what happened to Khalil, rightly so, and they band together to not only protest, but also to help one another—another point where her father plays a major role *SPOILER* he helps one sect of the King Lords and Garden Disciples make peace and set aside turf wars so they can properly unite for Khalil, he’s also shown to help kids (main ones mentioned are Khalil and DeVante) get out of trouble by giving them jobs and even a safe place to stay *END SPOILER*. And while the tragedy as the chance to rip apart the neighborhood family as well as the blood family, both groups end the story with a stronger sense of unity and connection than they started with.

This last bit also plays into the theme of identity throughout the book. Starting off, Starr has two identities: Garden Heights Starr and Williamson Starr. In one, she gets to use slang and be proud of where she lives, though she feels slightly outside of the neighborhood since she attends a private school. In the other, she tries to fit into the role of an ‘acceptable black woman,’ and that involves not using too much slang, trying not to get angry, and other things like that. Garden Heights Starr is friends with Khalil, Williamson Starr is not. It, perhaps obviously, causes friction, as after Khalil is killed, Starr has to deal with how she feels and what she knows to be true about Khalil, and what the rest of the world, and even some of the people at Williamson feel and think to be true. The resulting friction definitely causes changes in how she perceives people at school as well as who she deals/hangs out with *SPOILER* I was lowkey happy when she and Maya dumped Hailey because W O W was she awful *END SPOILER*. In the end, Starr reaches a happy medium, deciding to incorporate aspects of both Garden Heights and Williamson Starr into the ‘other’ Starr, allowing her to be the person she actually is, instead of catering to expectations.

The last few pages of the book also gave me goosebumps, though for a different reason than the beginning. In the end, Thomas lists names—

“It’s about Seven. Sekani. Kenya. DeVante.

It’s also about Oscar.

Aiyana.

Trayvon.

Rekia.

Michael.

Eric.

Tamir.

John.

Ezell.

Sandra.

Freddie.

Alton.

Philando.

It’s even about that little boy in 1955 that nobody recognized at first—Emmett.

The messed up part? There are so many more.” (443)

—and she also gives us this quote:

“Others are fighting too, even in the Garden, where sometimes it feels like there’s not a lot worth fighting for. People are realizing and shouting and marching and demanding. They’re not forgetting. I think that’s the most important part.” (444)

Many have been touched by tragedy, by this tragedy. And the ending reminds us of that. It’s a book about activism and social issues and change and identity, and it’s about family and using your voice. Starr is a strong character because she’s real. She’s had something terrible happen and she wants to speak up about it but she’s afraid and angry on so many different levels. She’s afraid of getting death threats, of the cops, of not doing Khalil justice, of what will happen if the cop isn’t indicted. And she’s angry about these things as well. Angry at the cop who killed her friend, angry at the media for twisting who Khalil is and what happened that night, angry at people who didn’t know Khalil thinking he ‘deserved it,’ angry at how everything turns out. Everyone has felt afraid at some point. Many have felt afraid to speak out, just like Starr. And there are many who speak out anyway.

#the hate u give #books #booklover #book review #book recommendations #the hate u give movie #activism #social injustice #police brutality #angie thomas #blm #black lives matter #book to movie

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studyinglogic · 7 years ago

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A self-interview

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short.

- David Hume, My Own Life (1777).

A few people have expressed some interest in knowing about me; this post aims to answer their hypothetical questions. Following Kurt Vonnegut’s cue, this will be a self-interview, in which I ask myself questions and then reply to them.

I answer the following questions: some of them might seem pretentious - but all of them are questions I’d like to ask people, and all of them are questions I thought people might want to ask me.

What’s the most important thing to know about you?

What subjects do you know about most?

What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?

What routines do you have?

How do you decide what to post on tumblr?

What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?

Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?

Who are the people you admire most?

What are the most important concepts for people to know?

What is your favourite characteristic in people?

Which artists do you listen to?

Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?

Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?

What areas would you like to learn more about?

What are your hopes for the future?

What would you like to change about yourself?

What are your main interests?

What are some works which can take us into your mindset?

What’s the most important thing to know about you?

I’m the kind of person who brings an umbrella on a sunny day.

What subjects do you know about most?

Mostly philosophy and theoretical computer science. I’m always trying to learn more mathematics and economics.

What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?

That I must make choices before I am forced into them, and that I must accept the consequences of my choices.

“It’s not my fault, but it is my responsibility.”

Tradeoffs are inevitable, and I will have to make them.

Train by recall, not recognition. (Make learning harder.)

Focus and do a little every day.

Think for the long-term.

Self-cultivation by daily routines is necessary. To paraphrase Agatha Christie from Death Comes as the End, there is always growth, in one direction or the other: if you do not grow better, you grow worse.

Just start, and correct your work later. If I wait for the perfect moment, I’ll never get anything done.

It’s bad to do what’s easy just because it’s easy. Is this making me happy, or productive, or helping me grow? If not, I should do something else.

I try to be graceful.

What routines do you have?

I drink two glasses of water in the morning after I wake up, eat breakfast within an hour of waking up (preferably thirty minutes), and try not to use social media until the afternoon, keeping the mornings free for myself. I also try to sleep by 11.00 to 11.30.

I was inspired by this passage from the Wikipedia article on Lagrange:

Lagrange was a favourite of the king, who used frequently to discourse to him on the advantages of perfect regularity of life. The lesson went home, and thenceforth Lagrange studied his mind and body as though they were machines, and found by experiment the exact amount of work which he was able to do without breaking down. Every night he set himself a definite task for the next day, and on completing any branch of a subject he wrote a short analysis to see what points in the demonstrations or in the subject-matter were capable of improvement. He always thought out the subject of his papers before he began to compose them, and usually wrote them straight off without a single erasure or correction.

How do you decide what to post on tumblr?

I post things which interest me. I try not to post things based on how many notes it’ll receive.

Very roughly, I have three types of posts. Formal posts on mathematics or academia, posts linking different ideas together, or posts on popular culture. If I post something on popular culture, it’s probably something that’s recently come to mind: tumblr is useful as a way of recording my thoughts.

If it’s a post linking different ideas together (for example, Feynman and Tu Fu), it’s because I found a nice connection which I’d like to record. I think part of having a good memory is linking different thoughts together. Even if the connection is tangential, it helps.

I try to be as clear and explicit as possible in my writing, in part inspired by Asimov. Communication is already so difficult in person that I try to avoid any ambiguity in my writing.

I try not to post ephemeral content - I only post what I’d still want to see in three years time (or more). Of course, what counts as ephemeral to me is different from what counts as ephemeral to others.

What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?

When I first started, I used to post about logic and mathematics. I reduced posting about those things when I realised that writing about logic on tumblr actually decreased my productivity. (It was too easy to get distracted.) My answer to the question above gives an indication of what I post on tumblr.

Some I learned in university, and some I read on my own; I am also lucky to have friends who teach me many things. In my free time I look up syllabi for topics I am interested in, read biographies, and find forthcoming books from academic publishers such as Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, and College Publications.

Having said that, this isn’t meant to boast: of course there’s much knowledge I lack, and I’d like to go deeper into many fields. I focus on mathematics, computer science, and economics.

Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?

While I like certain works, I can’t say that I’d unreservedly recommend them to everyone. The one exception is Donald Richie’s Japanese Portraits, which I cannot recommend enough. Side note: I’ve been meaning to read more Dostoyevsky and Hesse.

Who are the people you admire most?

On the technical side, I like the work of applied logicians: people like Johan van Benthem, Nina Gierasimczuk, Sven Ove Hansson, David Makinson, Eric Pacuit, Rohit Parikh, Raymond Smullyan, Yanjing Wang, and others. On the personal side, I admire people who are kind, honest, and intellectually curious.

What are the most important concepts for people to know?

A whole smattering of basic concepts: opportunity cost, the placebo effect, criteria for theory choice, basic probability and logic, how models are used in science, deep work, wu-wei, the importance of growth, minimax regret, and so on.

What is your favourite characteristic in people?

Honesty. Nearly every fault is forgivable if someone is honest with me about it. Intellectual curiosity is another plus.

Which artists do you listen to?

Bach (especially his English Suites) for my orderly side, Shostakovich (especially his string quartets) for my disorderly side, and Oasis for my pop side. I especially like their song The Masterplan.

I do not in general have favourite artists - I only have favourite songs.

Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?

My favourite non-fiction authors include the applied logicians mentioned above, Simon Leys, James Gleick, Steven Cahn, Steven Krantz, Sima Qian, Confucius, and Zhuangzi.

I also enjoy reading biographies. My favourites so far are Gleick on Feynman and Farmelo on Dirac. The next ones I’d like to read are Soni and Goodman on Claude Shannon, Roberts on John Conway, and Paquet on Simon Leys.

My favourite fiction authors include Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Raymond Smullyan, Borges, Italo Calvino, and Luo Guanzhong. I read the Three Kingdoms as a child, and it has stayed with me all my life.

In general, however, I do not have favourite authors. I have favourite works, such as Foundation, the Three Kingdoms, and Invisible Cities.

Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?

Sometimes I wish I didn’t study philosophy as my main subject, but that I studied mathematics with philosophy on the side instead of the other way round. But I only came to that conclusion because I’ve done philosophy, and now wish to study other fields! Having said that, I don’t regret doing philosophy: it exposed me to many areas I wouldn’t otherwise know. It’s great for breadth of knowledge - now I’d like to gain some depth.

What areas would you like to learn more about?

Theoretical computer science and mathematics. On the personal side, productivity, memory training, cycling, and knitting. I also keep intending to learn Lojban, but so far I haven’t done anything with it - there are always other things to do.

What are your hopes for the future?

To keep learning and growing, both in knowledge and self. To gain more skills.

What would you like to change about yourself?

To have greater focus, growth and self-cultivation.

What are your main interests?

Formal methods, especially as applied in multiagent systems and social software. Applied logic, decision theory, game theory and epistemic logic, linear logic, agent-based modelling, and security protocols are yet more interests.

What are some works which can take us into your mindset?

Personal:

There are three broad classes of books here: books which shaped my view on life, books on growth, and books which shaped my attitudes. There is some overlap between the three. I end with some non-books.

My philosophy of living (if I have such a thing) can be summed up in the following books:

The Tao is Silent, by Raymond Smullyan.

The Way of Chuang Tzu, translated by Thomas Merton.

Happiness and Goodness, by Cahn and Vitrano.

The Hall of Uselessness, by Simon Leys.

There does not always need to be a purpose to things; a tree grows in its own way. In general, I like stoic philosophy and Confucianism for their emphasis on self-cultivation. (Having said that, I don’t agree with everything they say. But I certainly do agree with the parts on self-cultivation.)

Speaking of self-cultivation, I’m enjoying Cal Newport’s work and Designing Your Life by Burnett and Evans.

I have certain sensibilities which came from the next three books.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, attributed to Luo Guanzhong.

The Records of the Historian, by Sima Qian.

Japanese Portraits (earlier published as Geisha Gangster Neighbor Nun), by Donald Richie.

I read the first two books in my childhood, and have been rereading them ever since. (They are both so massive that you can read them again and again without boredom - but their very size makes me unable to recommend them to people.) These books shaped me in a way difficult to describe: an aversion to power, a sense of humanism, a realisation of the power of language. Richie’s book is a series of delicate vignettes.

For non-books, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Masterplan by Oasis.

Technical:

Now for some of my technical interests!

The article “Logic in the Community” by Seligman, Liu, and Girard is a fairly accessible introduction to using logic to model social situations. The books below give a pretty good indication of my interests.

Discourses on Social Software [pdf], edited by Jan van Eijck and Rineke Verbrugge. Probably the best introduction to what I like and why I like it.

Epistemic Game Theory, by Andrés Perea.

Any book on multiagent systems (whether it’s by Wooldridge, Shoham and Leyton-Brown, or the Weiss edited collection.)

Logic in Games, by Johan van Benthem.

The Handbook of the Philosophy of Information, edited by Adriaans and van Benthem. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information also looks good from the table of contents, but I haven’t had the chance to look at it in-depth yet.

Reading in this field requires some knowledge of game theory and formal logic: Giacomo Bonanno has a textbook on game theory, and P. D. Magnus has a good textbook on logic (modified by Tim Button). My favourite modal logic textbook is van Benthem’s Modal Logic for Open Minds.

For more recommendations, see Marcus Hutter on Ai and Peter Smith on logic.

I’m still looking for a good book on security protocols! Suggestions are welcome.

This post was prompted by @the-axiom-of-hope: thank you for asking about me, and it’s always nice to be appreciated.

In the prompt post I was asked to tag other people: I’d like to know more about @bowtochris, @theparsologist, @transientpetersen, @thousandmaths, @hamliet, @linkspooky, @jebus0, @dataandphilosophy, @semantictheory, @lambdaphagy, @argumate, @matan-matika, @ambivalencerelations, @eka-mark, @mathcatalog, @mathionalist, @notthedarklord42, @jadagul, @nostalgebraist, @sufficientlylargen, @twocubes, @light-rook, @superclassical and @the-axiom-of-hope. (Yes, you were the one who originally tagged me, but I’d like to know how you’d answer these questions.)

For the people I’ve tagged, you can answer the same questions I answered, or just some of them, or you can do your own thing, or you can (of course) not participate. Whichever you choose to do, thank you for your contributions. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts.

#self #ask #learning

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justanothercinemaniac · 7 years ago

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Epic Movie (Re)Watch #183 - The Fault in Our Stars

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: Yes.

Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes. #297

Format: Blu-ray

1) This film has a strikingly strong voice throughout.

Hazel: “I believe we have a choice in this world about how we tell sad stories.”

John Green’s original novel similarly has an incredible voice throughout, as it is narrated by Hazel who is always consistent and clear about who she is as a character. This film works with that character/narrative style well, allowing Hazel to be as strong as she is in the book throughout different narrative devices.

2) Shailene Woodley as Hazel Grace.

Hazel is the voice of this film, much as she is in the novel (in that case a little more literally). To start, Hazel is exceptionally honest. She is not stepping on egg shells but she’s also not being a jackass. Woodley is able to play Hazel’s jaded personality in an empathetic and relatable way. Throughout the film Woodley is nothing short of excellent with the ability to be funny, heartbreaking, vulnerable, angry, loving, and whatever else the story/character needs her to be. It is a phenomenal performance from a great actress and I think one of her best. This film needed a strong Hazel and I don’t think they could’ve cast a better one.

3) Remember how I said this film is strikingly honest?

Hazel: “The only thing worse than biting it from cancer is having a kid bite it from cancer.”

4) Angel Elgort as Augustus Waters.

Elgort is able to take a character who could’ve easily been kind of a creepy guy (a guy who works really hard to get with a girl who says no) and makes him wonderfully charming. Augustus could also easily have been a one dimensional pretentious boy toy. But author Green was able to make him more than that in the novel and Elgort is able to do the same in his performance. He infuses Augustus with a crazy amount honesty and heart, while also being able to play his fear and flaws (namely that of oblivion) in a way which makes him human.

5) A key aspect to this film is not only making sure Hazel and Augustus are strong on their own, but also that they have strong chemistry with each other. The key thing is that you are able to see why they’re friends first. There’s this immediate trust, shared sense of interest, shared sense of humor, and an immediate investment they have in each other. Also Woodley and Elgort are just GOOD together, because of whatever the x factor is that results in sexual chemistry.

6) Augustus’ whole thing with the cigarettes is REALLY extra. I kinda dig it.

Augustus [about why he uses cigarettes but doesn’t lit them]: “It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing. A metaphor.”

7) I’m probably going to talk a few times about how wonderfully honest this film is. There is no tiptoeing around cancer, it’s not glorified or romanticized or traumatized (it’s already pretty freaking traumatic). It just is what it is and these kids know what it is.

Hazel [about Augustus getting his driver’s license even though he sucks]: “Cancer perk.”

Augustus: “Total cancer perk.”

8) This is SUCH an important distinction.

Augustus [after he asks Hazel her story and he gets her cancer story]: “No, not your cancer story. Your real story.”

Knowing from first hand experience how easy it is to let cancer define your life, I think it’s important to make sure cancer does NOT define you. That when someone asks you about your story, your mind doesn’t immediately go to cancer. I love that the filmmakers and author John Green included this moment.

9) Laura Dern is remarkably strong as Hazel’s Mom. She is able to be positive, honest, but still plays the conflict of being a parent to a kid with cancer in every scene. It’s a great performance from the veteran actress and I think her relationship with Woodley comes through wonderfully. There’s an honest mother and daughter relationship there. They clearly love each other and are able to joke around with each other, even if they’re not being fully honest (which is how most parent/child relationships are). But when they are honest with each other, it’s a wonderful honesty.

10) Nat Wolff as Isaac.

Wolff (who rose to fame early on with “The Naked Brothers Band”) does a fine job in the supporting role. He fits nicely with Elgort and Woodley, feeling like an honest friend as opposed to a third wheel. His sadness and heartache comes through well, he’s able to be surprisingly funny at times, and it’s just a nice addition to the film.

11) Okay, so when I saw this in theaters I just KNEW who had read the book. And you wanted to know how I knew? Because they started crying when Augustus and Isaac were playing video games. That’s it. NOTHING SAD HAD HAPPENED YET! But still from the back of the theater all I could hear was:

12) I geek out whenever they show the “Buffy” scene in this movie. Because it’s a Fox film, so they use things Fox owns like “Buffy” and Aliens instead of like V for Vendetta from the book (although a poster for the film does appear in Augustus’ bedroom). And there’s a parallel: the scene they’re watching in “Buffy” is one of great intimacy for eventual earth shattering heartache.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

13) This is sweet.

Augustus [after saying okay with Hazel a few times]: “Perhaps, ‘okay,’ will be our, ‘always.’”

Hazel: “Okay.”

(GIF originally posted by @oliversqueen)

14) This film plays remarkably well with visuals. There’s a lot of texting and email correspondence between characters which end up being important to the plot. This could’ve been boring but they use a nice doodle visual AND phantom images to keep our interest. It’s a nice touch.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

15) Oh Gus, look at you being all poetic. Subtle.

Augustus [at a piece of public art of a giant skeleton]: “They’re using a skeleton as a playground. Think about it.”

16)

Hazel [after a great day with Augustus]: “And then this happened.”

[Hazel wakes up in the middle of the night because she can’t breathe.]

Can I just say, from personal experience, cancer sucks. It fucking sucks. It seems like someone is doing well, that they’ve reclaimed some semblance of normalcy. Then cancer shows up to beat you down again. Fuck cancer. Cancer can go fucking die in a pit.

17) Well, this is heartbreaking.

Hazel’s Mom [in a flashback to when Hazel was 13 and dying]: “I’m not going to be a mom anymore.”

This is very key to Hazel’s primary conflict in the film, but more on that later.

18) A film is a story told in cuts.

Augustus: “Well, I demand to see this swing set of tears.”

[Immediately cut to Augustus and Hazel sitting on said swing set.]

19) This is very true of the attitude I have known some cancer patients to have.

Hazel [trying to push Gus away]: “Gus, I’m a grenade. One day I’m going to explode and I’m going to obliterate everything in my wake. And, I don’t know, I feel like it’s my responsibility to minimize the casualties.”

20) Nice to know that Augustus is being honest with himself though.

Hazel [after her mom says she and Augustus are cute together]: “We’re just friends.”

Augustus: “Well, she is. I’m not.”

21) The date night between Augustus and Hazel on the town in Amsterdam is very cute and the connection they’re able to portray with almost no dialogue speaks greatly to the chemistry between Woodley and Elgort.

22) Augustus’ declaration of love is done VERY well.

Augustus [almost out of the blue]: “I am in love with you. You heard me. I am in love with me.”

This scene is very organic and honest. It feels like the most natural next step for not only the scene but their relationship as well. It doesn’t feel forced or awkward it makes sense. And I think both Elgort and Woodley play the scene wonderfully.

23) I kinda realized half way through this film is effortlessly feminist. We make a big deal sometimes out of honest female representation in the media but honestly it hardly comes to mind with this film because all the characters - male and female - are easily honest. You don’t even think about it, they just are three dimensional characters throughout. It’s surprisingly refreshing.

24) Willem Dafoe as Peter Van Houten.

I’m not one to say to never meet your heroes, but if you do make sure your expectations are considerably low. This way if they’re a raging asshole like this guy you won’t be too disappointed. Because that’s what Van Houten is. An asshole. A raging, pretentious, alcoholic douche bag who thinks he’s SO above everything. Literally no part of the meeting Hazel and Augustus have with him goes well, leading to a very expected and very cathartic blow up. Dafoe plays the asshole well, making him a character we love to hate and a nice aspect of the film.

25)

Van Houten: “How familiar are you with Swedish hip hop?”

If you want to avoid vulgar lyrics in your music, do NOT google the translation to the Bomfalleralla. It’s worse than you might think.

26) This is SO key to Hazel’s conflict.

Hazel [asking Van Houten about his characters’ lives after the book]: “But that doesn’t mean her family and her friends don’t have a future [after the narrator dies], right?”

As Hazel will observe later, this is her biggest fear. It seems she has made her death with peace and dying but she is so terrified of how she is going to hurt the people she loves. That is the most key internal conflict she has in the film and one which will be consistent until the end.

27) The Anne Frank House.

More than anything else, this serves as incredible show of strength for Hazel. She is fighting to live, and choosing life over death by deciding to be with Augustus even if it’s only for a limited amount of time. The setting of the Anne Frank House drives home the idea of life’s unfortunate impermanence. I’m sure the use of Anne’s narration underscoring the scene acts as some grand literary device but it is difficult for me to analyze it because I am so invested in Hazel’s struggle in the scene.

28) The love scene between Hazel and Augustus is incredible. And not because it’s sexy or because it’s hot or anything. It is because it is honest. There is this incredible comfort they have around each other. They’re comfortable with their scars, with their tubes, with their limitations. They don’t worry that it will turn the other person off. It is a vulnerability born out of complete and utter trust, a trust which is not abused but respected by both parties. It is incredibly tender and just very loving.

29) Did I mention cancer sucks?

Augustus: “I felt an ache in my hip.”

Okay, Hazel just fucking KNOWS what he is about to tell her. As soon as he says, “I felt an ache in my hip,” you can see it on her face. She knows where this is going because she is uncomfortably familiar with how cancer works. And it’s heartbreaking.

30) According to IMDb:

Soon after the film's release, the street bench on which Gus and Hazel had their embrace was stolen. A few months later, it was replaced by the city of Amsterdam.

People suck.

31) It’s nice to see that this film still has a sense of humor and life to it in the face of death.

Augustus [after Hazel says they should wait until after dark to egg someone’s house]: “It’s all dark to Isaac.”

Isaac [after a second]: “Dude, I’m not deaf. I’m just blind.”

32) One of Ansel Elgort’s standout scenes is his breakdown at the gas station. Hazel even observes that she wishes she could say he’d held his courage and sense of humor to the end, but that’s not how life works. This is very honest. This kid is freaking dying of cancer! Of course he’s going to breakdown! And Elgort plays that sadness totally honestly and in an utterly gut wrenching way. It’s his standout scene in the entire film.

33) I love that Hazel calls him out on this.

Augustus: “I mean I was supposed to be special.”

It doesn’t matter if everyone likes you as long as one person loves you. If you’re important to someone it doesn’t matter that you’re not important to everyone. Just because we’re all not famous or infamous or historic does not mean we are not special.

34) Hazel’s biggest fear is that her parents won’t have a life after she dies, because her death is a fact to her. But when her parents tell her that they’re being productive, that her mother is studying social work and that they will have a life after her death, she is just so freaking happy. This incredible weight has been lifted off her shoulders, she is not the grenade she thought she was. It makes me tear up, honestly.

35) Hazel’s eulogy.

This is the climax of the film. The moment the rest of the movie has been building up towards, the moment their relationship has been leading to. It defines that relationship. Woodley shines in her monologue and Elgort shines in his quiet reaction. It is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once and just totally incredible. And this line emphasis the impact they have had on each other’s lives:

Hazel: “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”

36) There was this analytical post when the movie first came out that pointed out the shirt Hazel is wearing when she learns Augustus died is HIS tee shirt. I just can’t find any post about it because anytime you google, “Fault in Our Stars Tee Shirt,” you get a link to the song by Birdy that’s in the film. If you guys have this bookmarked anywhere I’d love to hear about it, but the fact that Hazel is wearing Augustus’ shirt when she learns he died is heartbreaking to me.

37) Hazel realized something quite important here.

Hazel [after making up a eulogy on the spot different than the one she read for Augustus]: “I didn’t believe a word. But that’s okay…Funerals, I decided, are not for the dead. They’re for the living.”

38) “Not About Angels” is still one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. It breaks my heart every time. I feel like breaking down and crying whenever I hear it. Here, share in my pain:

youtube

39) Augustus’ final letter to Hazel is a perfect resolution the film. It speaks greatly to not only Augustus’ character but also the relationship he and Hazel had. It is a wonderful emotional resolution which I think just work beautifully.

Augustus [at the end of his letter]: “Okay Hazel Grace?”

The Fault in Our Stars is a moving and honest film supported by a great cast and a wonderful method of adaptation. The spirit of John Green’s source material is alive and well in the film, with performers like Shailene Woodly and Ansel Elgort breathing incredible life into these characters. The film can be funny and heartbreaking all at the same time, but it never falters in its honest approach to these characters. Absolutely wonderful, I suggest everyone see it.

#The Fault in Our Stars #Shailene Woodley #Ansel Elgort #John Green #Hazel Grace Lancaster #Laura Dern #Nat Wolff #Willem Dafoe #Birdy #Epic Movie (Re)Watch #Movie #Film #GIF

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fukasenanairo · 8 years ago

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Some thoughts on YP’s official translation and possible explanations

This post attempts to address a few complaints on the official manga release by Yen Press, and why I believe YP’s work is an insufficiently-edited take that actually tries to adhere to the original as closely as possible.

You might have seen me around, but I used to do some minor translations for this fandom. It is not to an extent as some of the more dedicated translators, and I am under no illusion that I am an authority in anything BSD-related. However, I can offer my two cents in a time where everyone is confused, enraged and/or anxious about the official translations and what may come next.

Now first of all, opinions are divided on the quality of the official translation. Some think it’s the most horrible thing since gacha games, others like it because it’s funny and quirky, the rest couldn’t care less or don’t want to comment in fear of sparking an all-out war. Personally, I believe the translator’s choices backfired on him somewhat, but it is by no means as bad as everyone seems to be saying.

A note on the translator: I will not reveal his name, but a quick search told me he has quite a reputation. To my knowledge, he has worked in the translation business for roughly 9-10 years, and has done translations for games and light novels including Kagepro and Nier: Automata. This is not to say he cannot make mistakes, but rather you should be very careful before you criticize him.

As for the list of complaints I see the most often (if I missed something, feel free to comment and I will try to address you personally).

1. The translation sucks!

2. Why do I need to break out a thesaurus every time I try to understand something?

3. Why does Dazai talk like ______?

4. For that matter, why do I want to punch a wall every time they say something?

5. That’s not what ____ means in the original Japanese!

6. Why do fan translations have them talk normally and the official does that?

7. What should I do if the translation is so headache-inducing and I want to introduce BSD to my friends?

8. But what if I want to support the series and can’t stand the official translation?

1. The translation sucks!

This is the complaint I see most often, and the one that is the most puzzling. To ‘suck’, a translation needs to be 1) inaccurate or 2) did not portray the original meaning. While YP’s work does make me feel iffy because they try to purple prose it up, I cannot say it’s wrong. The most I can say that it’s weird and needlessly complicated, and could have used an editor. This is the only complaint I have against Yen Press, and that does not make them bad.

Now if you hate the translation because it doesn’t click with you, then that’s your thing. To be honest, I don’t like the official translation either, but I don’t necessarily have to read it, and neither do you. Other translators exist. Japanese-learning resources exist.

2. Why do I need to break out a thesaurus every time I try to understand something?

That is a very good question, one that a lot of Japanese fans would like to ask as well. Let me tell you about the first time I sought out the raws for this manga, after I read chapter 29 (the latest chapter at the time). I had no clue what game they were playing. The authors go out of their way to use difficult, even outdated, kanji in a medium that’s supposed to be easier to read. Here is a list someone compiled:

Some characters have noticeable quirks (Akutagawa has his infamous ‘yatsugare’, and if you read EGS, you’ll have seen them once complain that “No one talks like Kouyou in the 21st century”.) Is it annoying? Do you just groan at some of those ridiculous words no one uses in the modern age? I can assure you, on the other side of the world, someone is feeling just the same way about the original.

3. Why does Dazai talk like ______?

Dazai’s speech is notably...strange. To be honest, I don’t know why he got hit the worst with the ye olde speech syndrome. However, there is a question from this 2014 interview that would put his speech in more perspective.

Interviewer: What is the world view you’re mostly going for?

Asagiri-sensei: “Stylish Taishou”. The stage is the modern age, but I thought it would be an interesting remix to combine the air of the authors, who lived in the Taishou era, with the stylish atmosphere of the modern age, using old-fashioned expressions and difficult kanji.

So if you think this Dazai is talking like someone straight out of a Victorian era novel, congratulations! The translator did his job. Taishou, from around 1912-1926, is marked by rapid Westernization, a continuation of the movement Fukuzawa Yukichi advocated at the end of the Meiji era. This is the period where a lot of Japanese authors started reading Western works like Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka or Emile Zola’s works, and consequently influenced by them. We do have a few authors (Mori Ougai, Natsume Souseki etc.) who were active around the Meiji (reform) era and some (Dazai Osamu, Nakahara Chuuya, Nakajima Atsushi etc.) who were mostly around Shouwa (militarist) era, but generally the atmosphere should be Taishou, the age of modernization and Westernization. I hope it adds to your enjoyment when you look back at the translation, official or otherwise.

4. For that matter, why do I want to punch a wall every time they say something?

Pretension. The text is unbearably pretentious – is what I thought. The wording is needlessly complicated. However, there is an example I usually use to explain this.

The word YP used to describe Dazai’s ability is “Annuls any ability he touches”. I needed to throw something when I saw that, because you can use “Nullify” and achieve the same effect.

And then I read the original. It’s sprinkled with kanji no one would see in anything they usually read. And I thought, isn’t the effect the same? The words mean the same. 珈琲 means コーヒー means ‘coffee’. 凡百 can be read as あらゆる means ‘everything’. But tell me, which would you prefer to read? And which do you think is in the original?

(By the way, the 凡百/あらゆる appears in the Japanese text of Yumeno Kyuusaku’s Dogra Magra. I remember seeing 珈琲 in Odasaku’s works. They’re all present in the actual authors’ works.)

So the YP translation uses SAT words the same way the original would use words you see in old novels and N1 exams. It pisses people off, of course. I didn’t read manga for a mental exercise. However, we can agree that for Bungou Stray Dogs, which tries to achieve a scholarly effect because of its characters, this is nothing unusual and even part of its charm. Afford it the same amount of concentration as you would a novel, and if you cannot, refer to the fan translation.

5. That’s not what ____ means in the original Japanese!

First, I’d like you to have a sufficient knowledge of Japanese to understand exactly what it means in the original before you make such a claim. If you do, feel free to comment on something you think is wrong. I’ll listen you out and amend my post as needed.

That aside, when I hear this, the worst offender is usually Dazai’s weird way of referring to Atsushi as ‘lad’. While weird, it is not incorrect. ‘Lad’ is an informal way to refer to a young man. Dazai’s speech is largely boyish and informal. I can question the translator’s choice and poor editing, but I will not say that’s not what it means. You may not like it, but that’s what the fan version is for.

6. Why do fan translations have them talk normally and the official does that?

As you can see, translators take plenty of liberties. On one hand you have fan translations who either work on a tight schedule or seek to make the text easy to understand, on the other you have the official that tries to keep the air of the work to varying degrees of success. Think of it as two ways to enjoy the work.

7. What should I do if the translation is so headache-inducing and I want to introduce BSD to my friends?

The anime, thankfully, is a faithful adaptation of the original work with wonderful voice acting and easy to digest subtitles. The fan scanlations are speedy, high-quality, and supported by most of the fandom. Lastly, the plot is interesting, and the characters are colorful. Give your friends a heads-up about the official translation – “the wording takes some getting used to” – and help them understand why it is the way it is, if you must.

8. But what if I want to support the series and can’t stand the official translation?

Because the fandom has grown over the years, there is a huge collection of official merchandise in many countries. If buying Japanese books are not an option, keychains, acrylic stands, figures etc. do not require Japanese knowledge and do support the original author. I especially recommend the official artbook – I do not regret a single cent I spent to buy it. The paper quality is top-notch, the art is stellar, and the comments (if you can read them) are a treat.

You should, as always, give feedback if you think it will prevent newcomers from reading BSD. Tell YP that while you understand why they made the choices they did, some of the word choices will turn people off, and offer some corrections as examples. People listen to you if you understand both sides of the argument and offer constructive efforts. Even if you don’t understand why, ask! With how much YP has done to reply to complaints, I’m sure they will not mind explaining.

However, I will advise against telling people not to buy the official or calling YP bad while not knowing why they decided to translate it like it is. Tell people why you do not like it, warn them that liking it is an acquired taste because of the reasons above, but let them read and come to their own conclusions.

9. Conclusion

I believe the BSD fandom is really lucky. Despite its initial difficulties, Japanese fans have stuck with its unique way of portraying the manga’s atmosphere. The English fans have dedicated translators who love the series so much they try to translate every available material.

The official translation may not be easy on the eyes, but it offers another perspective to the series many did not know about before. Like it or hate it, I believe you can learn to tolerate it. You can learn advanced/hard to understand words (you’ll use some of them in the SAT for the kids who are taking it) and just have an entirely different experience. While I was searching for the list of outdated kanji, I found a question where someone asked “Where can I find manga with interesting advanced kanji like Bungou Stray Dogs?” I think it’s a great attitude to take in regard to the translation as well.

And finally, Yen Press listens. The “Chuoya” thing was an honest mistake they fixed. They listened to complaints and toned down the pretension in volume 2. Rather than digging for faults and bemoan your ill fortune, I hope that you can believe in the winds this series is riding on, and wish the best for it.

#I literally just came back to word vomit and get out #to be fair I wanted to get this off my chest #I know I have another ask and this will only invite hate but sighs at least I said something #bungou stray dogs #I'll be happy if this helps change the mind of some people who are iffy about the TL

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danihelman-art · 8 years ago

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Cyrus Twain Bio (2017) by REIdepenguin

here is cyrus’ new (and improved) character sheet! his design may not be very different but I like it much more!

character information under “keep reading”

Full Name: Cyrus Twain Gender: Male Occupation: Defense Attorney Orientation: Straight Age During Debut: 30 (Born during 1988) Height: 178 cm Appearnace: Cyrus is half Persian and half Levant (his mother immigrated from Iran when she was a child and his father was born in the US). His skintone is Olive and he is relatively tall. his dark brown hair is usually gathered in a neat ponytail and his eyes are also in a matching color. In court, Cyrus tends to wear a vest and pants in a tone of sepia brown and underneath his vest, a bright teal shirt which is complimented by his orange tie. Outside of court, he likes to wear very modest yet comfortable clothes. When it gets cold, he tends to wear a brown leather jacket with a crimson red shirt underneath so his outfit won't be completely dull.

Brief Personality description: If action's speak louder than words, then Twain's most effective actions are his words. In court, he is very skilled in the acts of persuasion and wit which gave him a great advantage in court during cross examinations because he can get information out of witnesses with the right demanor an choice of words. however he doesn't always manage to perfectly persuade the witnesses to cooperate with him whether it's because of their own personality and agendas, perhaps because the prosecution provides and obstacle or perhaps because of him because he has a tendency to push too hard on people. Another advantage that Cyrus shows during his resourcefulness when it comes to evidence. Much like Edgeworth who believes that every nook and cranny should be investigated in a crime scene, Cyrus believes that any hint that could be found in a scene needs to be recorded because you never know if it'll be needed. He jots almost any possible clue or theory about the case in his journal (even if it turns out not to be useful) and he likes to keep his journal with his ideas close to him (in the sprite where the attorney usually reads off of documents, Cyrus instead reads off his journal). his biggest downfall on the other hand is his hot headedness. whenever he loses his cool he really loses his cool, as his anger outbursts have cause him to make rash decisions and intimidate witnesses. He is constantly trying to control his temper though, considering the fact it has caused him many troubles in the past. Cyrus is also aavid fan of literature, very and he tends to write poetry and short stories in that he publishes online. He's constantly trying to improve his writing and one of his dreams is to formally publish his own writing just like his mother. When he talks, he likes to utilize his silver tongue by making plenty of metaphors and literary references, a habit of his that makes him come off as pretentious at times. Cyrus is also very compassionate and it was this compassion that helped to reignite Estelle's passion in law .Whenever he sees someone close to him who is troubled he wouldn't hesitate to find the cause of the problem and help them solve it even if he can be rather pushy at times. But he does know his limits when it comes to solving said problem because some problems are best solved by the one who struggles with them. He is also quite the familly man because he always keeps close contact with his parents and sister (even though she lives in the other side of the country due to her medical studies) by always keeping them in check about his personal life, and visiting their house as often as possible. He is truly grateful for all of the support and influence they gave him and he would love to begin one of his own.

but despite his selflessness and his care towards others, He isn't very open when it comes to his own feelings and struggles. he prefers to bottle them up to himself as he's afraid of being a burden to other people or even his judgement. this has been caused from a past tragedy that occurred because of his own actions and lack of self control, and because of that he is deeply ashamed constantly trying to redeem himself and keeping his past away from those who don't know of it.

Relations: Karima Twain (younger sister), Shirin Twain (Mother), Kenneth Twain (Father), Anya Linchevski (investigative partner and girlfriend), Estelle Crossheart (friend and Co- Worker), Eric Truman (former employer), Kim Audrey (Estelle's friend), Renee Trouver (Rival Prosecutor),

Backstory: Cyrus grew up in a familly who's financial situation wasn't the best. His father was a blue color worker whereas his mother was an author who wrote children's books. while she was very talented and some of her works recieved more than modest success, it was never a stable source of income. they always had only enough money to for basic needs such as foods, and there were even times when Cyrus and his sister bought their clothing from thrift. but despite their circumstances, Cyrus and his Sister still grew up in a very loving familly. Their parents were very emotionally supportive and encouraged them to pursue their hobbies, and helped them to be gratefull for what they have. in addition, Cyrus shared a very close bond to his sister Karima and even in present day, when they live a great distance apart they still keep a close contact. as a child, he was never very interested in law or joining the legal field. instead, his dream job was to become a famous writer because he was inspired by his mother's works and passion for writing. Cyrus was also more open with other people, wearing his heart on his sleeve and expressing his emotions in a very vocal manner, even if it lead to him being too pushy or short tempered. Due to his family's financial situation, he and his family were worried they might not have enough money for a tuition in a good college. But when he entered 12th grade, He met a man named Eric Truman, a student finance loaner who was gifited with great charisma. he promised his family he'll manage to get Cyrus into a well renowned college and the two of them even formed a mentor student relationship. Unbeknownst to him, Eric was secretly a loan shark who successfully managed to scam Cyrus and his family. Cyrus found out of that fact very late, a few days after he graduated, already enrolled to a college that promised him a stable career course of a writer. and this made cyrus snap, leading him to furiously comfront Eric, and their comfrontation ended with Cyrus shoving cyrus down a staircase, breaking his neck. Cyrus was tried for his actions but due to the usage of forged evidence by the lead detective which made it look like the victim fell down on accident (a fact he did not know about at the time), he was found not guilty. His actions and the results of the trail caused him a great trauma and spiraled him into depression. He felt extremely guilty and ashamed of his actions. there was a side of him that wanted to find out why the tragedy was ruled as an accident, but at the same time, he was scared of the consequences that will befall him. Even despite the incident that he caused, his familly still tried to give him moral support, because even though they knew of his wrongdoing, they believed the results of the trail and knew Cyrus did not completely mean his actions. They saved up money to get him meds for his depression and even managed to get the help of a psychiatrist, who happened to be Estelle's father.

In addition, when he was in college he started posting poems and short stories he wrote online. while his creations weren't the most popular or well written, it helped him to get new friends both online and IRL and they even attracted the attention of a certain interpol agent.

the support he got from his familly and friends helped cyrus to cope with his trauma, but even in present day, He mostly bottles up his guilt from others and has a hard time opening up in intimate relationships. The incident also caused cyrus to become a defense attorney, not only so he could repay the loan ' but in order to redeem for his actions by defending the wrongy accused. he went to study in law school and managed to pass the bar exams after a second time. he eventually met estelle through her father, and he the compassion he showed in his trails helped to rekindle her passion for being a lawyer.

Trivia - Cyrus is a very frugal man and he hates spending too much money. on the other hand he's an oppritunist and whenever he has the chance to get something in cheap he will do it, even if its not the most useful. - His favorite food is his mother's banana bread. - his favorite to do with Anya is debate about books and their meanings, even if their debates can get very hectic. - his name "Cyrus" Means King in Persian. His surname relates to the author mark twain. - he cannot stand winter

#ace attorney #ace attorney OC #oc

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scottpetersons3 · 7 years ago

Text

The Six Things I Have Learned In My 24 Years

If you can’t laugh at yourself then who can you laugh at? That is a realization I hit when looking back exactly one year ago in my post about the six lessons I learned in my 23 years. During points of the post, I literally can’t stand how pretentious I sound. As I read further, I constantly kept telling my past self to shut the hell up. It is interesting to see how I have changed as a person over the course of one year. Each experience allowing me to understand my own mind, which is something I will never get the grasp of. All of that considered, and to possibly give myself laughs in the future, here is a new list of six things I have learned in my 24 Years.

1. Appreciate that hard earned dollar

Well, it has been a little over a year since I have become acquainted with the real world’s cold grasp, and the first thing I have learned is this, be proud of what you do and the money you make. For a while now, I have been working a manual labor job and honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way. I just feel that physically working for my paycheck has made me appreciate what I make more. Not to mention that a good work environment filled with people who genuinely care about you can make any job a good experience.

I feel that it is also important to note that everyone should be proud of their work, even when others aren’t. I have found in the professional world, that there are tons of people that are quick to put you down and make you question your work. This is unavoidable, but what isn’t, is how you react to it. Sure their words and opinions might sting, but don’t let this question yourself. Take constructive criticism and move on.

2. Everything Happens for a Reason

I have always been a believer in fate and destiny, and maybe this plays into the lesson that everything happens for a reason. This year has been a roller coaster of experiences. All of that being said I have learned that each choice and experience, both good and bad, helps shape and define who I am. And isn’t that what we all strive for? To really get to know who we are? Everyone has tough times and honestly it is through those experiences that we learn more about ourselves and which leads us to something good.

3. Make Manageable Goals

Just a couple of weeks ago, I made a trip to Cincinnati for their comic con, and honestly I could probably geek out about this all day but I will spare you. I will say I did get to meet Kel from Kennan and Kel. Another side note, I learned that fans basically give him a life supply of orange soda. I guess being famous has its benefits.

The importance of going to the comic con is that I met an incredibly inspiring comic artist named David Mack, who coincidentally I share a birthday with. During his panel, he described how he got his start, and explained that so many people come to him and pitch their ideas of epic story lines that are multiple volumes long. The problem is that these people never get around to writing it. David explains that you need to start small and create something tangible. You could do more for your craft by creating a page long comic book that you could show someone, than a larger than life idea that was never made.

This is a thought I have always had with my own creative writing. I have always known that some of my story ideas are good, but my ability to write and craft a story is simply not ready to tackle it yet. That’s why I write more short stories now for practice, slowly building my strength to tackle my idea for the great American time travel novel.

4. Online Dating

This section of my list last year, literally made me want to throw up, because I was too caught up in my own idea of what a love story is. I will be the first to admit it. Yes, I have tried online dating. Is it the nightmare that I thought it would be a year ago? Absolutely, not. Sure I have had some funny stories through these experiences, but that is the point right there. I had the experience, the opportunity to go out and meet new people or simply reconnect with old friends. Some of the experiences and relationships I formed I wouldn’t give up for anything, which would have astonished me a year ago.

At first I assumed that it would be an instant love life saver, and man that was a blow to the ego. Just because you are on it does not mean that people will be clawing at the chance to go out with you instantly. I think that is the biggest misconception of online dating. Sometimes you just need to get over yourself and your preconceived notions of love. I’m not saying leave your pride at the door, just be open to the experience.

5. Perspectives and different viewpoints

This lesson actually has a twofold meaning. The first, actually involves a story from my ventures as a writer. While I was working downtown, I would often leave to eat lunch at the library. I know this sounds odd, but it got me away from my desk for an hour a day. The more I ate there the more I saw the same homeless people sitting around me, until one day when two regulars sparked a conversation with me. They asked me what I did and treated me like an all-star when I told them I was a writer. From then on, I would talk to these two men almost every day. I would constantly receive advice and simply interesting conversation about life and work. The lesson is that a drastic viewpoint such as this can better your outlook on just about any situation, so be open to conversation from just about anyone. You never know who will change your life.

The second meaning of this lesson is that when you find yourself in conflict with other people, take a second and put yourself in their shoes. Try to understand where they are coming from and why they think like they do. Honestly, this is something I need some work on because let’s face it I’m not perfect, but no one is. Every problem can be solved with a little understanding.

6. Break the Monotony

It comes to no surprise that the real world is not like college. Opportunities to get involved in clubs or groups aren’t always easily available. I can’t stress the importance of finding some activity or something to break the monotony of work. I learned how to do this in two ways. The first was I started writing for my movie review bog called CineSaver. Each week, I was able to go to the movies and it provided yet another outlet for my writing.

The second takes me back to when I first moved back to Toledo a year ago. Unlike when grew up here, I didn’t know many people in the area. Honestly, I fell into a rut really quickly. So I asked myself what do you know how to do? In college, I did sketch comedy, and most of my friends stemmed from that. So when I found an ad for improv comedy classes it seemed like a no brainer. The experience of performing improv has probably been one of the best decisions I made this year. It allowed me to get excited about this newfound talent, and it simply provided me with a group of people whose enthusiasm and support is never ending.

This past year has taught me a lot now that I am on my own in the real world. It has had some highs and lows for sure, but there is nothing I would change. So let’s raise a glass for all the laughs, cries, friends, loved ones, and hell even the ones you despise for each has help shape who we all are. Now with 24 years behind me I anxiously await what comes next, and I honestly I can’t wait for another year to see if this list is cringe worthy.

#birthday #cinesaver

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