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eilidh-eternal · 6 months

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Chapter 2 - Places!

Simon Riley x Johnny MacTavish x F!Reader 4.4K words Warnings/tags: 18+ MDNI, mild swearing, feelings of loneliness/isolation, imposter syndrome, feelings of anxiety, reader is oblivious to Johnny and Simon's advances. Masterlist

Delaney O’Riordan, despite her petite frame, pulls you along with a strength that rivals some of your male counterparts in the English National Ballet, iron grip wrapped firmly around your bicep as she berrates you for making her come looking for you.

“What on earth are ya’ doin’ down here?! An’ drinkin’ no less!” She doesn’t let you get a word in as she hauls you out of the hotel bar away from the two men, through the lobby, and herds you into the lift. “We’ve forty-five minutes to get to the theater and you’re down here flirtin’ with strangers?”

“Laney, it’s fine. My bag is packed and I’m dressed to go, all we need to do is grab it from the room and catch the bus. It’ll take thirty minutes, tops,” you assure the fiery-tempered woman as the doors to the lift close and she presses the button for your floor. “And I wasn’t flirting.” You weren’t, right? You just lost your balance. He’d caught you–they’d caught you–and set you upright again. That was it. No flirting. Even if the way the dark-haired man had called you pretty made your stomach flip-flop the same way it does every time Connor has to toss you through the air in rehearsals, and the way the blond wearing the mask, Simon you think he was called, made your skin warm with the hand that lingered on your back for longer than any polite touch should have.

“Aye, so you admit you were drinkin’ then?” Delaney crosses her arms and fixes you with an admonishing glare.

“It was just a cocktail, a mint julep. There was hardly any liquor in it,” you say in an attempt to placate her, knowing her irritation comes from a place of concern rather than annoyance. “Just something to calm the opening night jitters.” Despite decades of experience and many, many opening nights for productions big and small, for company exhibitions and tours abroad, some of them still had you tapping your fingers methodically over your thighs and shifting your weight from one foot to another every few seconds.

Her gaze softens but her arms remain folded tight to her chest. She knows tonight is important. It’s your first show as the company’s first principal dancer. The prima ballerina of the English National Ballet, dancing the lead role of one of the most quintessential ballets—a night that will define the rest of your career. “You’re going to do just fine tonight. I know it feels different, having the title now, but you’ve danced this role before. You’ll dance it hundreds of times more, no doubt, now you’ve made a name for yourself. The Bolshoi will be beggin’ ya to dance for ‘em in Moscow after tonight. I know it.”

You scoff at this. “Bolshoi made Swan Lake, Laney, they don’t let just anyone dance for them. Especially for Odette and Odile.” You couldn’t imagine being asked to the Bolshoi Ballet. It’s one of the oldest, toughest, companies to dance with and for. Their dancers are all hand selected, scouted for their looks and physique in their youth, and train with a militaristic intensity to be the best of the best. The Soviet and American schools of ballet are both similar in that way. Aggressive. Emphasizing and attacking their movements and the sharp lines of their form with an energy the English and French schools lean away from. But that was the very reason why you’d been offered a contract with the Kensington-based company. For your ability to dance the part of Odette with the elegance and grace required for the demure damsel, and simultaneously portray the brazen and arrogant seductress Odile, who moves with much darker intentions. A duality that is coveted among dancers.

The soft ‘ding’ of the lift alerts you to the fact that you’ve reached your floor, heavy doors sliding open to reveal the gaudy carpet and busy wallpaper lining the hallway of the hotel you’re staying in for the time being. You nod a brief goodbye to Delaney, promising to meet her in the lobby, and step off the lift. The room is comfortable, has everything you need and is by no means lacking, but still it’s less than ideal. You miss your cozy apartment in the suburbs, the early but peaceful mornings before rush hour and all the sounds that come with it, and the beaux-arts architecture giving way to modern urban highrises. Soho isn’t that different, all things considered, but staying in a hotel until you can find a new apartment in London leaves you feeling out of place and untethered with just a few suitcases full of essentials and a contract for work in your possession. It makes you feel temporary. In this city. In this job. Easily replaced at a moment's notice. You try not to imagine what your life would look like if those things were true, pushing away the poisonous and intrusive notion that at any moment you’ll wake up from this dream and mourn it for being just that–a subconscious fantasy–as you sling your duffel over your shoulder and head back down to the lobby to meet Delaney and catch the bus.

Backstage at the London Coliseum thrums with the typical pre-show chaos. Last minute adjustments to props and the set before rolling everything into place behind the curtains, mending any overlooked rips or tears in costumes sustained in dress rehearsal, and hundreds of dancers, crew and musicians fluttering about the narrow halls between dressing and storage rooms. Hairspray lingers thick in the air of the dressing rooms and the scent of gels and pomade have a cloying effect that leaves you grateful for the privilege your status as first principal affords you. A green room.

It’s not very big. Just enough space for a backlit vanity, a rolling costume rack, small loveseat and a powder room. It feels odd, not sharing a room with fifty or sixty other dancers as you prepare for the show. Feels even stranger that someone else is doing that for you now, slicking back your hair and affixing your headpiece, rouging your cheeks and lining your lips in a blush tone. One more thing you’ll have to get used to.

Once the hair and makeup artist deems their work is finished you waste no time breaking in your pointe shoes and allowing yourself a final warmup before leaving your little bubble of calm amidst the chaos of opening night. The sound of the orchestra checking their pitch and tuning accordingly mixes with the chatter of the settling audience, and as the stage manager announces five minutes to showtime the wings of the stage begin to fill with all manner of performers. Everyone stretches, marks choreography, and goes about their pre-show rituals, wishing one another a good performance with smiles and encouraging embraces. Across the stage, you find Delaney smiling at you among the other dancers in the wings. She lifts her hands, presses them together in the shape of a heart over her chest, and you mirror the gesture. ‘Good show.’

“Places!” the final call rings out, and the house lights dim. The audience falls silent as the opening bars played by the orchestra signal the opening of the stage curtain, and with a deep, steadying breath, you leave behind the wings to take the stage.

By the time you step off stage you’re exhausted but elated. You had a stellar performance, a standing ovation from the crowd, and your directors sing their praises to you all the way from the stage after curtain call to your green room. However, the theatrics aren’t quite done for the night. There is to be a rotation of swans to pose with families for photos after each performance, and as first principal you are expected to set an example. That’s how you found yourself back in front of the vanity with another hair and makeup artist taming your hair back into place and making adjustments to your makeup. A costumer comes to help you change, guides a pair of wings onto your shoulders and shows you how to fasten them to your wrists, how to pose with them, and you’re sent off to the lobby.

You greet each child with a hug, mindful of the extra berth required to do so with the wings, and smile for cellphone cameras through the pain radiating from your knees and ankles. Some of the smaller children are too enamored with the feathers and the rhinestone-dusted gossamer to pay attention to their parents, and it takes several attempts to steal their attention away and take a satisfactory photo. Parents throw apologetic smiles your way as the children all take their turns, and you assure those who voice them that it’s really no trouble at all, though the twinging of your right knee would beg to differ. You’re holding a back attitude, relying on the small section of barre hidden behind the small recreation of the lake erected around you to maintain your balance and sustain the pose with your leg high in the air behind you, and you nearly sigh in relief when the child in front of you darts back to their parents once the photo is taken.

That relief is short lived, however, as you come back down on two feet again and turn to greet the next family. You’re wholly unprepared to find the dark-haired, blue-eyed man from the bar, masked, blond companion at his side, towering over you.

“Hello, little bird,” the former greets you and a roguish grin tugs at the corners of his mouth.

He has a mohawk. You hadn’t noticed in the bar, and you tell yourself it must have been the dim lighting that had kept that detail hidden from you. It certainly wasn’t the way his arm had felt wrapped snugly around your waist, or the way concern shone in his eyes and made them look more like sta-

“Yer friend carted ye off before we could have a proper introduction. Name’s Johnny. Ye remember Simon,” he says with a gesture to the statuesque, masked blond, and you force the shocked expression from your face and replace it with a polite smile, nodding in recognition.

“Yes. It’s… nice to meet you both. Officially. Would- would you like a picture together?”

Simon’s eyes dart towards Johnny and the shorter man turns his face up to meet his gaze. There’s a moment of silence between the two, an internal conversation you’re not privy to. When Johnny looks to you again there’s an impish look about him, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he steps forward, leaving Simon with his phone.

“Si isn’t fond of photos,” he says as he approaches, sidling up to you between the wooden props. He bends down to whisper into the shell of your ear, “We’d like to have a photo of ye though, pretty little bird that ye are.”

Heat blooms across your cheeks, and before your brain can fully process the implication of his words he’s wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you closer. Your lips part on a yelp of surprise as you’re suddenly being hefted into the air and-

He’s perched you on his shoulder, you realize with no small degree of shock, a large, steadying hand firm on your thigh and the other resting on your shin just above your ankle. The look in his eyes and the sultry smile he gives you as he peers up at your shocked expression causes your stomach to flip and you grip onto his other shoulder to balance yourself. “Sorry for the scare, hen, but I can’t have our pretty bird stranded on the ground. Ye should be up there,” he says with a wink.

What do you even say to that?

“It’s ok, I just- I wasn’t prepared is all,” you reason aloud and cross your ankles, willing yourself to relax in his hold. When you lift your gaze from Johnny’s you find Simon right where you left him, brows pinched together in what you think is exasperation, but the corners of his eyes crinkle in a way that suggests amusement.

“Quit your yappin’, Johnny, and look ‘ere,” he grumbles, and Johnny does as he’s told, reluctantly tears his gaze away from you to look at Simon, holding up his phone for the photo.

You plaster a demure smile over your features, hold yourself steady with a hand on Johnny's shoulder, thick, corded muscle rippling beneath- No. Stop. Now is not the time for thoughts like this. This man is a stranger and you’re still at work. You inwardly chastise yourself and extend your free arm above your head, attempting a loose fourth position, posing prettily for the photo, and dutifully ignoring the warmth of Johnny’s hands on your legs, how solid he feels beneath you.

Just as easily as he’d hoisted you upon his shoulder he guides you gently back to the ground, hands lingering around your waist, unwilling to let you go again. “We want to ask ye somethin’,” he says as Simon steps forward, hand finding its way to the small of his back and Johnny’s hands pull away from your waist reluctantly to lean closer to Simon. “When yer done here with…” He pauses and gestures broadly to your wings and costume, and his smile turns apologetic. “Performance? I’m sorry, I dinnae ken what to call it. But, we’d like to have a proper drink with ye.” He looks hopeful as he slips his hands inside his pockets, and Simon’s head tilts ever so slightly to the side as they wait for your response.

You? They want to have a drink with you? You shift your weight nervously from one foot to the other, fighting to hide the scrunch of your nose as your knee barks under the pressure. “I won’t be done here for at least another hour, it will be quite late.”

“That’s not an issue for us,” Simon quickly supplies. “You’re stayin’ at the Broadwick?”

You nod.

“We’ll meet you there then, at the bar. Same place as before.” His voice is confident. Commanding. He says it like it's a fact, like you’ve already agreed. And at this point, you might as well. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t curious about the two men. Curious about Johnny’s flirtatiousness and Simon’s encouragement of it. And you need friends outside the company. Someone who you can talk to about boring and mundane things like the weather or how outrageous the price of a latte is at that little corner bakery you’d been frequenting. Something other than commiserating over long rehearsals and the blisters they cause, or how the director was in a sour mood with the cast that day over something beyond their ability to control. Anything other than work.

“Ok,” you finally agree, and you think Johnny's face might tear in two if his smile were any wider.

An hour and a half later you’ve returned to the hotel and rushed yourself into the shower, scrubbing at your skin with a soapy washcloth and carefully avoiding getting your hair wet. It’s still done up nice enough, and there's no sense in going downstairs looking like a drowned rat with damp hair when it’s already been… Shit, they’ve been waiting nearly an hour. You speed through the rest of your routine, washing the thick show makeup off your face, digging around in your suitcase for the sweater dress you know is here somewhere- Ah! There, buried under a mountain of leotards, and, graciously, next to the comfy flats you planned to wear with it. You trade the generic hotel bathrobe for the dress and step gingerly into your flats, mindful of the blisters already forming, and spare a few minutes more to swipe some mascara over your lashes and conceal the ever present dark circles of exhaustion under your eyes before heading downstairs.

Your heart pounds behind your ribs the same way it had earlier in the evening standing in the wings at the start of the show, and you take slow, deep breaths as you approach the hotel bar, half expecting to find it empty after you've kept them waiting for so long. You wouldn’t blame them if they’d left already. It’s nearly eleven p.m. on a Thursday, well past late for most of the working professionals in the city.

And yet, there they sit, occupying the same seats at the bar they had hours earlier. Johnny spots you first, beaming at you from over Simon’s shoulder, and your heart calms a bit, flooding with relief at the sight of his smiling face and easing some of your fear that they would be upset having waited so long.

“I’m so sorry for making you wait down here, I didn’t want to show up covered in sweat or looking like I’d come straight from the shower-” you say by way of greeting, and Johnny is quick to smother your apologies.

“Dinna fash, hen,” he interrupts, standing from his seat and guiding you to take his place on it with a warm hand on the small of your back. “We didn't mind waitin’. Had ourselves a nice little chat, eh Si?”

You settle yourself on the barstool and Simon hums thoughtfully beside you. “We did.”

Johnny takes the open seat beside you, angling his body so that he can brace an arm on the bar top and sit facing you. “So our little bird’s a dancer?”

“‘S a bit obvious, Johnny,” Simon quips.

Johnny huffs an exaggerated sigh as he retorts, “Aye, but what if she’s not really? Could be a spy. The Russians have done it before,” he says and winks in your direction.

Simon groans but you can’t help grinning at Johnny’s teasing. “Yes, I'm a dancer. Not a spy. I don’t think they could keep up with our training.”

Johnny lifts a curious brow and leans forward. “How long do ye train for somethin’ like that?”

You make a show of pausing to think before answering. “Hmm, it’s been a little over twenty years now, twenty-two I think?”

He mutters something under his breath that sounds like swearing. “Twenty-two years?!”

Simon’s eyes shine a rich, amber color in the low light of the bar, and a glimmer of something akin to recognition passes through them as he nods appreciatively. “Ya must be good at it then, if you’ve worked that long for it.”

You feel warmth blooming across your cheeks and a similar warmth working its way from your chest to your stomach, lower, as his eyes, the only part of his face visible above the mask, continue to study you, and your dress suddenly feels too tight against your skin. “I’m as good as any other dancer who’s worked most of their life for it.” A modest answer.

“Which one were ye then, on stage tonight? Were ye one of the swans?” Johnny’s voice pulls you out of the hold Simon’s wandering gaze has on you. You blink several times to clear your thoughts, and when you finally turn your attention back to him he's smiling down at you with a glimmering fascination in his own eyes.

You hesitate, briefly consider lying so they don’t make a fuss over the truth, but ultimately can’t find it in yourself to do so. “Yes, two of them actually. Odette and Odile.”

Johnny’s brows furrow, and Simon sighs with feigned annoyance but explains for him anyways, “She’s the swan Johnny. She’s the leading lady.”

“Christ, yer the star of the whole thing and yer playin’ it off like yer just in the background! I’d be tellin’ everyone if it were me.”

“Thankfully she’s not. She has class, something you could use more of,” Simon chides and you laugh quietly to yourself at their back and forth.

Johnny looks as if he’s about to come back with another smartalec comment but the arrival of the bartender defuses his need to have the last laugh as a glass of scotch is pushed towards him, a mint julep for you, and a tumbler of bourbon for Simon. Johnny takes the drink without question, swirling the contents of the glass and taking a slow sip, but it’s your turn now to pinch your brows in confusion.

“I didn’t- I haven’t ordered anything?”

“The bartender came by while you were explainin’ your trainin’ to Johnny. I ordered for us,” Simon explains.

You look from Simon to the drink in front of you, brows still pinched together.

“‘S what you ordered earlier, would ya rather have somethin’ else?”

“No! No, this is perfect, thank you. It’s just… I don’t think anyone’s ever bothered to pay that much attention to me?” you quickly explain, pulling the mixed drink towards you.

“Aye, he’s a charming bastard like that. Observant to a fault.”

You hum in answer and bring the glass to your lips, taking a slow, savoring sip.

“How long have ye been in london?” Johnny toys with the glass in his hand as he watches you, tracking the movement of your throat and your tongue as it darts out to swipe across your lower lip.

“We’ve just come back from tour a few weeks ago, so not long.”

“And you’ve been stayin’ in a hotel?” Simon seems perturbed at the notion.

“Hard to look for a place to live when you’ve been on tour for three months.” You take a longer sip from your drink this time. You really need to dedicate some time to that this week, maybe contact a real estate agent.

Simon and Johnny share a look, another unspoken conversation between themselves, and that glimmer of recognition returns to Simon’s eyes. “We’re… familiar, with that particular struggle.” When you turn to him with a puzzled expression he explains, “We travel a lot for work.”

“You work together?”

“Somethin’ like that,” and that’s the end of it. Their closeness makes sense then, if they travel together often. It’s hard not to get close to someone when you're obligated to be with them all the time. Hell, it’s the reason why you and Delaney are so close, having shared a room while on tour.

“D’ye have a borough in mind?” Johnny asks to redirect the topic of conversation back to you.

“The studio is in southern Kensington, close to Stamford Bridge, and we perform at the coliseum and Royal Albert Hall when we aren’t touring, so I’m hoping I can find something centrally located. Maybe in Belgravia or Westminster.” The few places you've been able to find online are quite pricey, but your contracted salary is enough for a decent flat in either neighborhood. It’s not like you order takeaway every night and your busy schedule certainly doesn’t allow you to party every weekend. Well, maybe the takeaway part isn’t exactly true. Frozen dinners from Tesco don’t count as takeaway, do they? Either way, if you have to spend the money, it may as well go towards a comfortable and conveniently located appartment, even if it’s overpriced.

“Bit of a highbrow area,” Simon comments and Johnny does his best not to outright snort when he starts to laugh, taking a long swig from his half-empty glass of scotch.

“Highbrow is an understatement. Ye’d be a stone's throw from the palace in either borough,” he seems to agree, and tacks on under his breath as he drains his glass, “The whole south of London is full of posh bampots.”

Simon huffs from behind you and when you peer up at him you’re met with a simmering glare pointed in Johnny’s direction.

“Och, dinnae gi’ me tha’ look Si. Ah Ken yer fer Queen an’ country, but ye ken well enough how Ah feel aboot-“

You try and fail to hide your amusement, doubling over to clutch at your sides in a fit of giggles and half-suppressed laughter, finding both Johnny’s thickening accent and disdain for the richer neighborhoods and the stuck-up personalities they breed within them comical in an ironic sort of way. You’d always been of a similar opinion, holding contempt for the privileged and entitled attitudes of the people who lived in gated communities—and now you would be one of them.

When you regain your composure and right yourself once more, your lungs take longer to catch up, breath stalling in your chest as you realize you’re being watched.

In the dim lighting, Johnny’s eyes are luminescent, the reflections of headlights as cars pass by the window like comets blazing a path across the steely-blue night, and it reignites the warmth you’d felt under Simon’s gaze. He regards you with the kind of rapturous intensity you think a soul ascended to the gates of heaven might behold a guardian angel and the heavenly fire they wield, and it leaves you breathless. It sucks the air from the room like a raging inferno, rips the oxygen from your lungs and replaces it with delicate whispers of smoke and a burning need to draw lungfuls of the very thing he’s stolen from you, but all you can do is inhale the intoxicating fumes it leaves in his wake.

“Sorry, it’s just… the irony, and your accent. I didn’t mean-”

“No dove, don’t apologize. Not for makin’ such beautiful sounds for us,” he says in a husky voice and that spark of heat flares brighter, low in your belly.

Oh. Oh… Your denial of all his flirty comments and your resolve to ignore them begins to disintegrate as you realize this isn't just some bit for him. He really means it. He simply watches you for a moment longer, and you shift nervously under the scrutiny of his gaze until you think he must know you're having trouble breathing because a slow, confident grin splits his lips as he looks past you, over your shoulder to where Simon leans casually against the bar. His glass of bourbon is somehow empty despite never seeing him drink from it and he’s bent forward at the waist, elbow braced against the bar top and his fist pressed to his temple.

“Think I could get drunk off’a that,” he murmurs, and you know that no other proclamation has ever sounded as delightfully dangerous as those eight words.

En Pointe>>>

©️Eilidh-Eternal.2024 ~ The intellectual property of Eilidh-Eternal is not permitted for reposting, transcription, translation or use with AI technologies.

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rhysdarbinizedarby · 6 months

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Couch surfer in his 30s. Oscar winner in his 40s. Why the whole world wants Taika

**Notes: This is very long post!**

Good Weekend

In his 30s, he was sleeping on couches. By his 40s, he’d directed a Kiwi classic, taken a Marvel movie to billion-dollar success, and won an Oscar. Meet Taika Waititi, king of the oddball – and one of New Zealand’s most original creative exports.

Taika Waititi: “Be a nice person and live a good life. And just don’t be an arsehole.”

The good news? Taika Waititi is still alive. I wasn’t sure. The screen we were speaking through jolted savagely a few minutes ago, with a cacophonous bang and a confused yelp, then radio silence. Now the Kiwi filmmaker is back, grinning like a loon: “I just broke the f---ing table, bro!”

Come again? “I just smashed this f---ing table and glass flew everywhere. It’s one of those old annoying colonial tables. It goes like this – see that?” Waititi says, holding up a folding furniture leg. “I hit the mechanism and it wasn’t locked. Anyway …”

I’m glad he’s fine. The stuff he’s been saying from his London hotel room could incur biblical wrath. We’re talking about his latest project, Next Goal Wins, a movie about the American Samoa soccer team’s quest to score a solitary goal, 10 years after suffering the worst loss in the game’s international history – a 31-0 ignominy to Australia – but our chat strays into spirituality, then faith, then religion.

“I don’t personally believe in a big guy sitting on a cloud judging everyone, but that’s just me,” Waititi says, deadpan. “Because I’m a grown-up.”

This is the way his interview answers often unfold. Waititi addresses your topic – dogma turns good people bad, he says, yet belief itself is worth lauding – but bookends every response with a conspiratorial nudge, wink, joke or poke. “Regardless of whether it’s some guy living on a cloud, or some other deity that you’ve made up – and they’re all made up – the message across the board is the same, and it’s important: Be a nice person, and live a good life. And just don’t be an arsehole!”

Not being an arsehole seems to have served Waititi, 48, well. Once a national treasure and indie darling (through the quirky tenderness of his breakout New Zealand films Boy in 2010 and Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016), Waititi then became a star of both the global box office (through his 2017 entry into the Marvel Universe, Thor: Ragnarok, which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide) and then the Academy Awards (winning the 2020 best adapted screenplay Oscar for his subversive Holocaust dramedy JoJo Rabbit, in which he played an imaginary Hitler).

Waititi playing Adolf Hitler in the 2019 movie JoJo Rabbit. (Alamy)

A handsome devil with undeniable roguish charm, Waititi also slid seamlessly into style-icon status (attending this year’s Met Gala shirtless, in a floor-length gunmetal-grey Atelier Prabal Gurung wrap coat, with pendulous pearl necklaces), as well as becoming his own brand (releasing an eponymous line of canned coffee drinks) and bona fide Hollywood A-lister (he was introduced to his second wife, British singer Rita Ora, by actor Robert Pattinson at a barbecue).

Putting that platform to use, Waititi is an Indigenous pioneer and mentor, too, co-creating the critically acclaimed TV series Reservation Dogs, while co-founding the Piki Films production company, committed to promoting the next generation of storytellers – a mission that might sound all weighty and worthy, yet Waititi’s new wave of First Nations work is never earnest, always mixing hurt with heart and howling humour.

Waititi with wife Rita Ora at the 2023 Met Gala in May. (Getty Images)

Makes sense. Waititi is a byproduct of “the weirdest coupling ever” – his late Maori father from the Te Whanau-a-Apanui tribe was an artist, farmer and “Satan’s Slaves” bikie gang founder, while his Wellington schoolteacher mum descended from Russian Jews, although he’s not devout about her faith. (“No, I don’t practise,” he confirms. “I’m just good at everything, straight away.”)

He’s remained loyally tethered to his origin story, too – and to a cadre of creative Kiwi mates, including actors Jemaine Clement and Rhys Darby – never forgetting that not long before the actor/writer/producer/director was an industry maven, he was a penniless painter/photographer/ musician/comedian.

With no set title and no fixed address, he’s seemingly happy to be everything, everywhere (to everyone) all at once. “‘The universe’ is bandied around a lot these days, but I do believe in the kind of connective tissue of the universe, and the energy that – scientifically – we are made up of a bunch of atoms that are bouncing around off each other, and some of the atoms are just squished together a bit tighter than others,” he says, smiling. “We’re all made of the same stardust, and that’s pretty special.”

-----------------------------------------------

We’ve caught Waititi in a somewhat relaxed moment, right before the screen actors’ and media artists’ strike ends. He’s sensitive to the struggle but doesn’t deny enjoying the break. “I spent a lot of time thinking about writing, and not writing, and having a nice holiday,” he tells Good Weekend. “Honestly, it was a good chance just to recombobulate.”

Waititi, at right, with Hunt for the Wilderpeople actors, from left, Sam Neill, Rhys Darby and Julian Dennison. (Getty Images)

It’s mid-October, and he’s just headed to Paris to watch his beloved All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup. He’s deeply obsessed with the game, and sport in general. “Humans spend all of our time knowing what’s going to happen with our day. There’s no surprises any more. We’ve become quite stagnant. And I think that’s why people love sport, because of the air of unpredictability,” he says. “It’s the last great arena entertainment.”

The main filmic touchstone for Next Goal Wins (which premieres in Australian cinemas on New Year’s Day) would be Cool Runnings (1993), the unlikely true story of a Jamaican bobsled team, but Waititi also draws from genre classics such as Any Given Sunday and Rocky, sampling trusted tropes like the musical training montage. (His best one is set to Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears.)

Filming in Hawaii was an uplifting experience for the self-described Polynesian Jew. “It wasn’t about death, or people being cruel to each other. Thematically, it was this simple idea, of getting a small win, and winning the game wasn’t even their goal – their goal was to get a goal,” he says. “It was a really sweet backbone.”

Waititi understands this because, growing up, he was as much an athlete as a nerd, fooling around with softball and soccer before discovering rugby league, then union. “There’s something about doing exercise when you don’t know you’re doing exercise,” he enthuses. “It’s all about the fun of throwing a ball around and trying to achieve something together.” (Whenever Waititi is in Auckland he joins his mates in a long-running weekend game of touch rugby. “And then throughout the week I work out every day. Obviously. I mean, look at me.”)

Auckland is where his kids live, too, so he spends as much time there as possible. Waititi met his first wife, producer Chelsea Winstanley, on the set of Boy in 2010, and they had two daughters, Matewa Kiritapu, 8, and his firstborn, Te Kainga O’Te Hinekahu, 11. (The latter is a derivative of his grandmother’s name, but he jokes with American friends that it means “Resurrection of Tupac” or “Mazda RX7″) Waititi and Winstanley split in about 2018, and he married the pop star Ora in 2022.

He offers a novel method for balancing work with parenthood … “Look, you just abandon them, and know that the experience will make them harder individuals later on in life. And it’s their problem,” he says. “I’m going to give them all of the things that they need, and I’m going to leave behind a decent bank account for their therapy, and they will be just like me, and the cycle will continue.”

Jokes aside – I think he’s joking – school holidays are always his, and he brings the girls onto the set of every movie he makes. “They know enough not to get in the way or touch anything that looks like it could kill you, and they know to be respectful and quiet when they need to. But they’re just very comfortable around filmmakers, which I’m really happy about, because eventually I hope they will get into the industry. One more year,” he laughs, “then they can leave school and come work for Dad.”

Theirs is certainly a different childhood than his. Growing up, he was a product of two worlds. His given names, for instance, were based on his appearance at birth: “Taika David” if he looked Maori (after his Maori grandfather) and “David Taika” if he looked Pakeha (after his white grandfather). His parents split when he was five, so he bounced between his dad’s place in Waihau Bay, where he went by the surname Waititi, and his mum, eight hours drive away in Wellington, where he went by Cohen (the last name on his birth certificate and passport).

Waititi was precocious, even charismatic. His mother Robin once told Radio New Zealand that people always wanted to know him, even as an infant: “I’d be on a bus with him, and he was that kind of baby who smiled at people, and next thing you know they’re saying, ‘Can I hold your baby?’ He’s always been a charmer to the public eye.”

He describes himself as a cool, sporty, good-looking nerd, raised on whatever pop culture screened on the two TV channels New Zealand offered in the early 1980s, from M*A*S*H and Taxi to Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson. He was well-read, too. When punished by his mum, he would likely be forced to analyse a set of William Blake poems.

He puts on a whimpering voice to describe their finances – “We didn’t have much monneeey” – explaining how his mum spent her days in the classroom but also worked in pubs, where he would sit sipping a raspberry lemonade, doodling drawings and writing stories. She took in ironing and cleaned houses; he would help out, learning valuable lessons he imparts to his kids. “And to random people who come to my house,” he says. “I’ll say, ‘Here’s a novel idea, wash this dish,’ but people don’t know how to do anything these days.”

“Every single character I’ve ever written has been based on someone I’ve known or met or a story I’ve stolen from someone.” - Taika Waititi

He loved entertaining others, clearly, but also himself, recording little improvised radio plays on a tape deck – his own offbeat versions of ET and Indiana Jones and Star Wars. “Great free stuff where you don’t have any idea what the story is as you’re doing it,” he says. “You’re just sort of making it up and enjoying the freedom of playing god in this world where you can make people and characters do whatever you want.”

His other sphere of influence lay in Raukokore, the tiny town where his father lived. Although Boy is not autobiographical, it’s deeply personal insofar as it’s filmed in the house where he grew up, and where he lived a life similar to that portrayed in the story, surrounded by his recurring archetypes: warm grandmothers and worldly kids; staunch, stoic mums; and silly, stunted men. “Every single character I’ve ever written has been based on someone I’ve known or met,” he says, “or a story I’ve stolen from someone.”

He grew to love drawing and painting, obsessed early on with reproducing the Sistine Chapel. During a 2011 TED Talk on creativity, Waititi describes his odd subject matter, from swastikas and fawns to a picture of an old lady going for a walk … upon a sword … with Robocop. “My father was an outsider artist, even though he wouldn’t know what that meant,” Waititi told the audience in Doha. “I love the naive. I love people who can see things through an innocent viewpoint. It’s inspiring.”

After winning Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for JoJo Rabbit in 2020. (Getty Images)

It was an interesting time in New Zealand, too – a coming-of-age decade in which the Maori were rediscovering their culture. His area was poor, “but only financially,” he says. “It’s very rich in terms of the people and the culture.” He learned kapa haka – the songs, dances and chants performed by competing tribes at cultural events, or to honour people at funerals and graduations – weddings, parties, anything. “Man, any excuse,” he explains. “A big part of doing them is to uplift your spirits.”

Photography was a passion, so I ask what he shot. “Just my penis. I sent them to people, but we didn’t have phones, so I would print them out, post them. One of the first dick pics,” he says. Actually, his lens was trained on regular people. He watches us still – in airports, restaurants. “Other times late at night, from a tree. Whatever it takes to get the story. You know that.”

He went to the Wellington state school Onslow College and did plays like Androcles and the Lion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Crucible. His crew of arty students eventually ended up on stage at Bats Theatre in the city, where they would perform haphazard comedy shows for years.

“Taika was always rebellious and wild in his comedy, which I loved,” says his high school mate Jackie van Beek, who became a longtime collaborator, including working with Waititi on a Tourism New Zealand campaign this year. “I remember he went through a phase of turning up in bars around town wearing wigs, and you’d try and sit down and have a drink with him but he’d be doing some weird character that would invariably turn up in some show down the track.”

He met more like-minded peers at Victoria University, including Jemaine Clement (who’d later become co-creator of Flight of the Conchords). During a 2019 chat with actor Elijah Wood, Waititi describes he and Clement clocking one another from opposite sides of the library one day: a pair of Maoris experiencing hate at first sight, based on a mutual suspicion of cultural appropriation. (Clement was wearing a traditional tapa cloth Samoan shirt, and Waititi was like: “This motherf---er’s not Samoan.” Meanwhile, Waititi was wearing a Rastafarian beanie, and Clement was like, “This motherf---er’s not Jamaican.”)

With Jemaine Clement in 2014. (Getty Images)

But they eventually bonded over Blackadder and Fawlty Towers, and especially Kenny Everett, and did comedy shows together everywhere from Edinburgh to Melbourne. Waititi was almost itinerant, spending months at a time busking, or living in a commune in Berlin. He acted in a few small films, and then – while playing a stripper on a bad TV show – realised he wanted to try life behind the camera. “I became tired of being told what to do and ordered around,” he told Wellington’s Dominion Post in 2004. “I remember sitting around in the green room in my G-string thinking, ‘Why am I doing this? Just helping someone else to realise their dream.’ ”

He did two strong short films, then directed his first feature – Eagle vs Shark (2007) – when he was 32. He brought his mates along (Clement, starring with Waititi’s then-girlfriend Loren Horsley), setting something of a pattern in his career: hiring friends instead of constantly navigating new working relationships. “If you look at things I’m doing,” he tells me, “there’s always a few common denominators.”

Sam Neill says Waititi is the exemplar of a new New Zealand humour. “The basis of it is this: we’re just a little bit crap at things.”

This gang of collaborators shares a common Kiwi vibe, too, which his longtime friend, actor Rhys Darby, once coined “the comedy of the mundane”. Their new TV show, Our Flag Means Death, for example, leans heavily into the mundanity of pirate life – what happens on those long days at sea when the crew aren’t unsheathing swords from scabbards or burying treasure.

Waititi plays pirate captain Blackbeard, centre, in Our Flag Means Death, with Rhys Darby, left, and Rory Kinnear. (Google Images)

Sam Neill, who first met Waititi when starring in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, says Waititi is the exemplar of a new New Zealand humour. “And I think the basis of it is this,” says Neill. “We’re just a little bit crap at things, and that in itself is funny.” After all, Neill asks, what is What We Do in The Shadows (2014) if not a film (then later a TV show) about a bunch of vampires who are pretty crap at being vampires, living in a pretty crappy house, not quite getting busted by crappy local cops? “New Zealand often gets named as the least corrupt country in the world, and I think it’s just that we would be pretty crap at being corrupt,” Neill says. “We don’t have the capacity for it.”

Waititi’s whimsy also spurns the dominant on-screen oeuvre of his homeland – the so-called “cinema of unease” exemplified by the brutality of Once Were Warriors (1994) and the emotional peril of The Piano (1993). Waititi still explores pathos and pain, but through laughter and weirdness. “Taika feels to me like an antidote to that dark aspect, and a gift somehow,” Neill says. “And I’m grateful for that.”

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Something happened to Taika Waititi when he was about 11 – something he doesn’t go into with Good Weekend, but which he considered a betrayal by the adults in his life. He mentioned it only recently – not the moment itself, but the lesson he learnt: “That you cannot and must not rely on grown-ups to help you – you’re basically in the world alone, and you’re gonna die alone, and you’ve just gotta make it all for yourself,” he told Irish podcast host James Brown. “I basically never forgave people in positions of responsibility.”

What does that mean in his work? First, his finest films tend to reflect the clarity of mind possessed by children, and the unseen worlds they create – fantasies conjured up as a way to understand or overcome. (His mum once summed up the main message of Boy: “The unconditional love you get from your children, and how many of us waste that, and don’t know what we’ve got.”)

Second, he’s suited to movie-making – “Russian roulette with art” – because he’s drawn to disruptive force and chaos. And that in turn produces creative defiance: allowing him to reinvigorate the Marvel Universe by making superheroes fallible, or tell a Holocaust story by making fun of Hitler. “Whenever I have to deal with someone who’s a boss, or in charge, I challenge them,” he told Brown, “and I really do take whatever they say with a pinch of salt.”

It’s no surprise then that Waititi was comfortable leaping from independent films to the vast complexity of Hollywood blockbusters. He loves the challenge of coordinating a thousand interlocking parts, requiring an army of experts in vocations as diverse as construction, sound, art, performance and logistics. “I delegate a lot,” he says, “and share the load with a lot of people.”

“This is a cool concept, being able to afford whatever I want, as opposed to sleeping on couches until I was 35.” - Taika Waititi

But the buck stops with him. Time magazine named Waititi one of its Most Influential 100 People of 2022. “You can tell that a film was made by Taika Waititi the same way you can tell a piece was painted by Picasso,” wrote Sacha Baron Cohen. Compassionate but comic. Satirical but watchable. Rockstar but auteur. “Actually, sorry, but this guy’s really starting to piss me off,” Cohen concluded. “Can someone else write this piece?”

Directing Chris Hemsworth in 2017 in Thor: Ragnarok, which grossed more than $1.3 billion at the box office. (Alamy)

I’m curious to know how he stays grounded amid such adulation. Coming into the game late, he says, helped immensely. After all, Waititi was 40 by the time he left New Zealand to do Thor: Ragnarok. “If you let things go to your head, then it means you’ve struggled to find out who you are,” he says. “But I’ve always felt very comfortable with who I am.” Hollywood access and acclaim – and the pay cheques – don’t erase memories of poverty, either. “It’s more like, ‘Oh, this is a cool concept, being able to afford whatever I want, as opposed to sleeping on couches until I was 35.’ ” Small towns and strong tribes keep him in check, too. “You know you can’t piss around and be a fool, because you’re going to embarrass your family,” he says. “Hasn’t stopped me, though.”

Sam Neill says there was never any doubt Waititi would be able to steer a major movie with energy and imagination. “It’s no accident that the whole world wants Taika,” he says. “But his seductiveness comes with its own dangers. You can spread yourself a bit thin. The temptation will be to do more, more, more. That’ll be interesting to watch.”

Indeed, I find myself vicariously stressed out over the list of potential projects in Waititi’s future. A Roald Dahl animated series for Netflix. An Apple TV show based on the 1981 film Time Bandits. A sequel to What We Do In The Shadows. A reboot of Flash Gordon. A gonzo horror comedy, The Auteur, starring Jude Law. Adapting a cult graphic novel, The Incal, as a feature. A streaming series based on the novel Interior Chinatown. A film based on a Kazuo Ishiguro bestseller. Plus bringing to life the wildly popular Akira comic books. Oh, and for good measure, a new instalment of Star Wars, which he’s already warned the world will be … different.

“It’s going to change things,” he told Good Morning America. “It’s going to change what you guys know and expect.”

Did I say I was stressed for Waititi? I meant physically sick.

“Well…” he qualifies, “some of those things I’m just producing, so I come up with an idea or someone comes to me with an idea, and I shape how ‘it’s this kind of show’ and ‘here’s how we can get it made.’ It’s easier for me to have a part in those things and feel like I’ve had a meaningful role in the creative process, but also not having to do what I’ve always done, which is trying to control everything.”

In the 2014 mockumentary horror film What We Do in the Shadows, which he co-directed with Jemaine Clement. (Alamy)

What about moving away from the niche New Zealand settings he represented so well in his early work? How does he stay connected to his roots? “I think you just need to know where you’re from,” he says, “and just don’t forget that.”

They certainly haven’t forgotten him.

Jasmin McSweeney sits in her office at the New Zealand Film Commission in Wellington, surrounded by promotional posters Waititi signed for her two decades ago, when she was tasked with promoting his nascent talent. Now the organisation’s marketing chief, she talks to me after visiting the heart of thriving “Wellywood”, overseeing the traditional karakia prayer on the set of a new movie starring Geoffrey Rush.

Waititi isn’t the first great Kiwi filmmaker – dual Oscar-winner Jane Campion and blockbuster king Peter Jackson come to mind – yet his particular ascendance, she says, has spurred unparalleled enthusiasm. “Taika gave everyone here confidence. He always says, ‘Don’t sit around waiting for people to say, you can do this.’ Just do it, because he just did it. That’s the Taika effect.”

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Taika David Waititi is known for wearing everything from technicolour dreamcoats to pineapple print rompers, and today he’s wearing a roomy teal and white Isabel Marant jumper. The mohair garment has the same wispy frizz as his hair, which curls like a wave of grey steel wool, and connects with a shorn salty beard.

A stylish silver fox, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he suddenly announced he was launching a fashion label. He’s definitely a commercial animal, to the point of directing television commercials for Coke and Amazon, along with a fabulous 2023 spot for Belvedere vodka starring Daniel Craig. He also joined forces with a beverage company in Finland (where “taika” means “magic”) to release his coffee drinks. Announcing the partnership on social media, he flagged that he would be doing more of this kind of stuff, too (“Soz not soz”).

Waititi has long been sick of reverent portrayals of Indigenous people talking to spirits.

There’s substance behind the swank. Fashion is a creative outlet but he’s also bought sewing machines in the past with the intention of designing and making clothes, and comes from a family of tailors. “I learnt how to sew a button on when I was very young,” he says. “I learnt how to fix holes or patches in your clothes, and darn things.”

And while he gallivants around the globe watching Wimbledon or modelling for Hermès at New York Fashion Week, all that glamour belies a depth of purpose, particularly when it comes to Indigenous representation.

There’s a moment in his new movie where a Samoan player realises that their Dutch coach, played by Michael Fassbender, is emotionally struggling, and he offers a lament for white people: “They need us.” I can’t help but think Waititi meant something more by that line – maybe that First Nations people have wisdom to offer if others will just listen?

“Weeelllll, a little bit …” he says – but from his intonation, and what he says next, I’m dead wrong. Waititi has long been sick of reverent portrayals of Indigenous people talking to kehua (spirits), or riding a ghost waka (phantom canoe), or playing a flute on a mountain. “Always the boring characters,” he says. “They’ve got no real contemporary relationship with the world, because they’re always living in the past in their spiritual ways.”

A scene from Next Goal Wins, filmed earlier this year. (Alamy)

He’s part of a vanguard consciously poking fun at those stereotypes. Another is the Navajo writer and director Billy Luther, who met Waititi at Sundance Film Festival back in 2003, along with Reservation Dogs co-creator Sterlin Harjo. “We were this group of outsiders trying to make films, when nobody was really biting,” says Luther. “It was a different time. The really cool thing about it now is we’re all working. We persevered. We didn’t give up. We slept on each other’s couches and hung out. It’s like family.”

Waititi has power now, and is known for using Indigenous interns wherever possible (“because there weren’t those opportunities when I was growing up”), making important introductions, offering feedback on scripts, and lending his name to projects through executive producer credits, too, which he did for Luther’s new feature film, Frybread Face and Me (2023).

He called Luther back from the set of Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) to offer advice on working with child actors – “Don’t box them into the characters you’ve created,” he said, “let them naturally figure it out on their own” – but it’s definitely harder to get Waititi on the phone these days. “He’s a little bitch,” Luther says, laughing. “Nah, there’s nothing like him. He’s a genius. You just knew he was going to be something. I just knew it. He’s my brother.“

I’ve been asked to explicitly avoid political questions in this interview, probably because Waititi tends to back so many causes, from child poverty and teenage suicide to a campaign protesting offshore gas and oil exploration near his tribal lands. But it’s hard to ignore his recent Instagram post, sharing a viral video about the Voice to Parliament referendum starring Indigenous Aussie rapper Adam Briggs. After all, we speak only two days after the proposal is defeated. “Yeah, sad to say but, Australia, you really shat the bed on that one,” Waititi says, pausing. “But go see my movie!”

About that movie – the early reviews aren’t great. IndieWire called it a misfire, too wrapped in its quirks to develop its arcs, with Waititi’s directorial voice drowning out his characters, while The Guardian called it “a shoddily made and strikingly unfunny attempt to tell an interesting story in an uninteresting way”. I want to know how he moves past that kind of criticism. “For a start, I never read reviews,” he says, concerned only with the opinion of people who paid for admission, never professional appraisals. “It’s not important to me. I know I’m good at what I do.”

Criticism that Indigenous concepts weren’t sufficiently explained in Next Goal Wins gets his back up a little, though. The film’s protagonist, Jaiyah Saelua, the first transgender football player in a FIFA World Cup qualifying match, is fa’afafine – an American Samoan identifier for someone with fluid genders – but there wasn’t much exposition of this concept in the film. “That’s not my job,” Waititi says. “It’s not a movie where I have to explain every facet of Samoan culture to an audience. Our job is to retain our culture, and present a story that’s inherently Polynesian, and if you don’t like it, you can go and watch any number of those other movies out there, 99 per cent of which are terrible.”

*notes: (there is video clip in the article)

Waititi sounds momentarily cranky, but he’s mostly unflappable and hilarious. He’s the kind of guy who prefers “Correctumundo bro!” to “Yes”. When our video connection is too laggy, he plays up to it by periodically pretending to be frozen, sitting perfectly still, mouth open, his big shifting eyeballs the only giveaway.

He’s at his best on set. Saelua sat next to him in Honolulu while filming the joyous soccer sequences. “He’s so chill. He just let the actors do their thing, giving them creative freedom, barely interjecting unless it was something important. His style matches the vibe of the Pacific people. We’re a very funny people. We like to laugh. He just fit perfectly.”

People do seem to love working alongside him, citing his ability to make productions fresh and unpredictable and funny. Chris Hemsworth once said that Waititi’s favourite gag is to “forget” that his microphone is switched on, so he can go on a pantomime rant for all to hear – usually about his disastrous Australian lead actor – only to “remember” that he’s wired and the whole crew is listening.

“I wouldn’t know about that, because I don’t listen to what other people say about anything – I’ve told you this,” Waititi says. “I just try to have fun when there’s time to have fun. And when you do that, and you bring people together, they’re more willing to go the extra mile for you, and they’re more willing to believe in the thing that you’re trying to do.”

Yes, he plays music between takes, and dances out of his director’s chair, but it’s really all about relaxing amid the immense pressure and intense privilege of making movies. “Do you know how hard it is just to get anything financed or green-lit, then getting a crew, getting producers to put all the pieces together, and then making it to set?” Waititi asks. “It’s a real gift, even to be working, and I feel like I have to remind people of that: enjoy this moment.”

Source: The Age

By: Konrad Marshall (December 1, 2023)

#rhys darby #taika waititi #next goal wins #our flag means death #hunt for the wilderpeople #interview

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mercurygray · 6 months

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So I Hear You Liked...World War Two Dramas

What's that? You said you wanted a World War Two series where women actually speak to each other? Have I got a deal for you!

When Band of Brothers first came out, I did not have cable, but what I did have was a card at a library that owned seemingly every PBS drama ever broadcast. I know and love a lot of these shows, and I hope you do, too.

As we wait for Masters of the Air to join us, maybe you can fill some time with one of these!

Classic: These shows were made in the 70s and 80s and while the production values are not the same as something made more recently, they're all fun to watch.

Danger UXB - daily life in a bomb disposal unit.

Dad's Army - comedy show about the Home Guard.

Hogan's Heroes - situational comedy about life in a POW camp.

Piece of Cake - follows British pilots stationed in France as the Phony War begins.

Homefront Perspectives:

✨Housewife, 49 - Based on the wartime diary of Nella Last, who participated in the Mass Observation project. One of my favorites.

✨Foyle’s War - procedural crime drama following DCS Foyle and hsi team as he solves murders in wartime Britain. Another favorite.

Island at War - Wartime life on the Channel Islands during the German occupation

Land Girls - Follows the lives of a group of Land Girls working on an estate farm.

Bomb Girls - Follows the lives of a group of workers in a Toronto munitions factory.

Home Fires - Life in a small British town near an air base. Based on a book.

World On Fire - Follows the disparate lives of several people in several countries as the war begins.

✨All Creatures Great and Small - The life of Yorkshire Vet James Herriot, based on the book series of the same title. A favorite, both the 1970s original and the 2020 version.

A French Village - Daily life in a French village is upended as the Germans invade. Follows the same village through the entire war.

My Mother and Other Strangers - An Irish village deals with the introduction of an American Air Force base.

Colditz - life in one of the war's most infamous POW camps. Features Damian Lewis!!

Atlantic Crossing - the life of Crown Princess Marta of Norway as she tries to advocate for her country while living in the United States.

The Halycon - Life in a posh London hotel during the 1940s

Spies and Science:

X Company - Canadian drama about life overseas for spies

Resistance - French wartime drama about a woman in the French underground movement

Restless - Postwar drama about a woman who spied for the Russians in England during the war.

✨Manhattan - If you liked Oppenheimer, have I got a show for you!! Follows the lives of several scientists and their families as they move to Los Alamos. A favorite.

✨The Heavy Water War - Norwegian/British operations Grouse and Gunnerside to destroy German heavy water plant. A favorite.

The Twelfth Man - Norwegian sabotage operation gets shot down in occupied Norway.

✨Generation War - German experience of war from variety of perspectives. This show is excellent. Everyone should watch this.

✨SAS: Rogue Heroes - Follows the foundation of a parachute regiment in North Africa that would eventually become the basis for Britain's commando units. A favorite.

Postwar:

A Place to Call Home - very soapy Australian post-war drama about an upperclass family.

Our Wonder Years - Follows three sisters in post-war Germany as they attempt to confront the past.

Tannbach - Follows a family whose German town is split in two along the new East-West border.

The Defeated - Crime drama following a policeman trying to find his brother in post-war Berlin

Small Island- a Jamaican woman moves to London after the war and tries to adjust to a country that doesn't want her there

Call the Midwife - Social drama in the 1960s addressing the health and lives of the post-war poor of London.

#band of brothers #so i hear you liked #i'm gonna rec it #masters of the air

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 9 months

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AITA for lying to my friends due to a psychological disorder?

Ever since I (21F, american) was quite young (I would say around my 9 or 10 years) my mother noticed I had a tendency for lying, sometimes even for no reason at all. Some years after that I started going through therapy and psychiatric sessions and was diagnosed as bipolar and, more specifically, mythomania (compulsive/pathological lying, the diagnostic changed depending on which psychiatrist I went through). My manic episodes usually last longer than the depressive ones and, when those happen, I usually just lock myself from everyone in my bedroom (I rarely leave home even during manic episodes due to my own fear of anything bad that could happen outside)

And I'd say it's during those manic episodes that the bad things start to happen. Ever since my early 17s I started fabricating my own life to online friends since I have extreme difficulty making friends on real life. This ranged from stuff such as me saying that I'm disabled and that's why I don't leave my house (not true, I can do it when necessary but otherwise I am able bodied) and other simple, white lies to stuff like my relationship with my family and living condition.

It was in 2021 I think it started to go downhill. I still don't think I was in the wrong for it since, again, it is a mental disorder but I decided to come ask others too since the one friend I have that knows about it thinks I might be an asshole about this in specific.

Around 2021 I started playing a specific game with gacha mechanics. To this point, the image I had painted to most online friends (with the exception of that one friend) was of a girl on her 20s with a good relationship with her mother but a bad one with both her dad and brother (a lie, as our dad left us when we were children and I have a pretty good relationship with my brother), disabled and in bad living conditions. Because of that, it had been some time (since the beginning of the lockdown) since some of these friends started sending me money whenever I said I needed it for one reason or another (usually to buy food or necessities like hygiene products) and, since I didn't need it at all, I would just end up using it on stuff I enjoy like art supplies or makeup.

The moment I started playing that game though (which none of my friends knew about since they still thought I didn't have my own computer), I started spending all of that money on the game to pull for characters. It wasn't a constant thing but it got specifically bad on 2022, when a character I really enjoy was released.

I still think it's not that bad since none of them gave me a lot of money anyways, but after what I already had was spent on the game and I didn't have any money to buy the currency, I went to the discord servers venting channel and started writing by impulse stuff like how my dad had evicted me and me alone from the house after I stood up to him and now I was living in my cramped old car on the streets with no food, clothes etc. Some of those friends got extremely worried or something like that and ended up sending me more money than usual so I could 'pay for a hotel' until I had time to get government support etc (I don't really know how that works anyways, but I said I'd try and thanked them a lot for it and said that as soon as I was safe I'd draw something for them as payback but I never did because it wasn't really like it was a commission anyways) and I spent it on the game to get the character and I did!

I had to keep the lie about being homeless and then getting government support ever since and last month me and my "real life partner" (not real but i made it up a few months before this so i just used it as a excuse that he was working to get us both a place to stay) were finally in a safe apartment. However, one of those online friends knew about my condition and started to suspect about it all and got angry at me for no reason, saying that I was stealing from my friends and being unfair on even denying that to her. After that she blocked me but I was able to lie to the server that she had threatened me and implied I was lying about it all which wasn't true because that was my real living situation.

I still don't think I am in the wrong, they all did offer it to me on their own after all and I already spent it so there's nothing I can do. Am I the asshole for lying due to a mental health condition?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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A "secure" system can be the most dangerous of all

Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing Bruce Schneier explain that “security” doesn’t exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won’t protect you from burglaries. A condom won’t protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about “security” without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?

Take the US welfare system. It is very “secure” in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a “Utopia Of Rules” (as David Graeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

(The right says it wants to “shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub — and then drown it” — but not the whole government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping “DENIED” on every claim.)

The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system — but it’s a highly selective form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against itself, with no thought to protecting benefits recipients themselves from fraud.

And those recipients — by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us — are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud. These benefits are distributed via prepaid debit cards — EBT Cards — that lack the basic security measures that every other kind of card has had for years. These are simple magstripe cards, lacking basic chip-and-pin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.

That means that fraudsters can — and do — install skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using SNAP (AKA Food Stamps), and receive other benefits.

It’s impossible to overstate how widespread these skimmers are, and how much money criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for Businessweek, Jessica Fu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans

One of Fu’s sources, Lexisnexis Risk Solutions’s Haywood Talcove, describes these EBT cards as having the security of a “glorified hotel room key.” He recounts how US police departments saw a massive explosion in EBT skimming: from 300 complaints in January 2022 to 18,000 in January 2023.

The skimmer rings are extremely well organized. The people who install the skimmers — working in pairs, with one person to distract the cashier while the other quickly installs the skimmer — don’t know who they work for. Neither do the people who use cards cloned from skimmer data to cash out benefits recipients’ accounts. When they are arrested, they refuse to turn on their immediate recruiters, fearing reprisals against their families.

These low-level crooks stroll up to ATMs and feed a succession of cloned cards into them, emptying account after account. Or they swipe cards at grocery checkouts, buying cases of Red Bull and other easily sold grocery products with some victim’s entire SNAP balance.

Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who’s running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end. Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.

Indeed, that’s why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century “glorified hotel room key” territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: “incentives matter.”

When your credit card gets cloned, it’s your banks and credit card company that pays for the losses, not you. So the banks demanded (and funded) the upgrade to new anti-fraud measures. By contrast, most states have no system for refunding stolen benefits to skimmers’ victims.

In other words, all of the anti-fraud in the benefits system is devoted to catching benefits cheating — a phenomenon that is so rare as to be almost nonexistent (1.54%), notwithstanding right wingers’ fevered, Reagan-era folktales about “welfare queens”:

https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/

Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system — fraud perpetrated against benefits recipients — is blithely ignored.

Really, it’s worse than that. In deciding to protect the welfare system rather than welfare recipients, we’ve made it vastly harder for benefits claimants who’ve been victimized by fraudsters to remain fed and sheltered. After all, if we made it simple and straightforward for benefits recipients to re-claim money that was stolen from them, we’d make it that much easier to defraud the system.

“Security” is always and forever a matter of securing some specific thing, against some specific risk. In other words, security reflects values — it reveals whose risk matters, and whose doesn’t. For the American benefits system, risks to the system matter. Risks to people don’t.

It’s not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.

Medical facilities that use or dispense powerful pain-killers have exquisitely tuned, sophisticated, frequently audited security systems to prevent patients from tricking their doctors or pharmacists into administering extra drugs (especially opioids). “Extra” in this case means “more drugs than are strictly necessary to manage pain.”

The rationale for this is only incidentally medical. Someone who gets a little too much painkiller during a medical procedure or an acute pain episode is not at any particular risk of enduring harm — the risks are minor and easily managed (say, by keeping a patient in bed a little longer while they recover from sedation).

The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people. There’s a genuine problem with opioid abuse, and that problem does have its origins in overprescription. But — crucially — that overprescription wasn’t the result of wimpy patients insisting on endless painkillers until they enslaved themselves to their pills.

Rather, the opioid epidemic has its origins in the billionaire Sackler crime family, whose Purdue Pharma used scientific fraud, cash incentives, and other deceptive practices to trick, coerce, or bribe doctors into systematically overprescribing their Oxycontin cash cow, even as they laundered their reputation with showy charitable donations:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions

The Sacklers got to keep their billions — and people undergoing painful medical procedures or living with chronic pain are left holding the bag, subject to tight pain-med controls that forces them to prove — through increasingly stringent systems — that they truly deserve their medicine.

In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself — not the patients who need opioids.

There’s an extremely disturbing — even nightmarish — example of this in the news: the Yale Fertility Clinic, where hundreds of women endured unimaginably painful egg harvesting procedures with no anaesthesia at all.

These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control. But the doctors and nurses at the Yale clinic ignored their screams of pain and their post-operative complaints.

It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.

This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of “The Retrievals,” a new New York Times documentary series podcast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html

If the pain medication management system was designed to manage pain, then these thefts would have been discovered early on. If the system was designed so that anyone who experienced pain was treated until the pain was under control, the deception would have been uncovered almost immediately.

As Stafford Beer said, “the purpose of any system is what it does.” The pain medication management system was designed to manage pain medication, not pain itself.

The system was designed to be secure from opioid-seeking addicted patients. It was not designed to make patients secure from pain. Its values — our values, as a society — were revealed through its workings.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee

[Image ID: A down-the-barrel view of a massive, battleship-gray artillery piece protruding from the brick battlement of a fortress. From the black depths of the barrel shines a red neon 'EBT' sign.]

Image: Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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scotianostra · 6 months

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November 9th 1903 saw the birth near Pittsburgh of Margaret Fay Shaw, the American writer who did much to record the music and culture of South Uist.

Margaret Fay Shaw was one of the most notable collectors of authentic Scottish Gaelic song and traditions in the 20th century. The arrival of this young American on the island of South Uist in 1929 was the start of a deep and highly productive love affair with the language and traditions of the Gaels.

Shaw was also an outstanding photographer, and both her still pictures and cinematography contributed to an invaluable archive of island life in the 1930s. She met the folklorist John Lorne Campbell on South Uist in 1934; they married a year later and together helped to rescue vast quantities of oral tradition from oblivion.

She came of Scottish Presbyterian and liberal New England stock. The family owned a steel foundry in Pittsburgh and her parents were cultured people. Margaret was the youngest of five sisters and her early years were idyllic. Her first love was for the piano and she continued to play throughout her life.

By the age of 11, however, she was orphaned and obliged to develop the independence of character which was to lead her into a life's work far removed from her upbringing. At the age of 16, she made her first visit to Scotland at the invitation of a family friend and spent a year at school in Helensburgh, outside Glasgow, where she first heard Gaelic song.

Wanting to hear it in its "pristine" state, in 1924 she crossed the Atlantic again, this time engaging in an epic bicycle journey, which started in Oxford and ended at the Isle of Skye, where she remained for a month. It was during this trip that she began to use photography to earn a living, selling prints to newspapers, and magazines such as the Listener.

But it was not until she arrived on South Uist that she found her spiritual home. She was invited to the "big house" in Lochboisdale for dinner, and two sisters who worked there, Mairi and Peigi Macrae, were brought in to sing for the company. Margaret had never heard singing like it. For the next six years, she became their lodger and dear friend. They shared with her all of their immense stock of oral tradition which she faithfully transcribed, learning Gaelic as the work proceeded.

Her most important published work was Folksongs And Folklore Of South Uist, which has never been out of print since it was first published in full by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1955. Not only was it a scholarly presentation of the songs and lore which she had written down during her sojourn on the island, but also an invaluable description of life in a small crofting community during the 1930s.

This classic work was undoubtedly the centrepiece of Shaw's career, though she also wrote several other books, including an autobiography, From The Alleghenies To The Hebrides.

On the neighbouring island of Barra in the early 1930s, an extraordinary social set - a kind of Bloomsbury in the Hebrides - had developed around the presence of Compton Mackenzie. One of his closest collaborators was John Lorne Campbell, who came from landed Argyllshire stock and had developed his interest in Gaelic at Oxford.

The two patricians set about producing The Book Of Barra, a collection of the island's history and traditions, to raise funds for an organisation called The Sea League, which they had established to campaign for the exclusion of trawlers from Hebridean waters.

Hearing great reports of an American woman's photography on South Uist, Campbell crossed over by ferry to seek her involvement in illustrating The Book Of Barra. He walked into the Lochboisdale Hotel one rainy evening in 1934 and found Shaw sitting at the piano; a suitably romantic initiation to a relationship which was to last for more than half a century. They married the following year and made their home on Barra until, in 1938, Campbell bought the island of Canna, where they lived for the rest of their scholarly lives. The island was given to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981, and John Lorne Campbell died in 1996.

There was nothing dry or academic, however, about Shaw. She travelled regularly to America until her late 90s. The fearsome ferry journey between Mallaig and Canna was regularly undertaken with equanimity, and she fortified herself to the end with the finest Kentucky bourbon. Her love of the Hebrides was, above all, for the values and lifestyle of the crofting people, and, particularly in South Uist in that 1930s heyday, it was deeply reciprocated. It is there that she will be laid to rest.

During her latter years she stayed at Canna House until her death at the grand old age of 101 in 2004.

#scotland #american #scots-amerocan #folklorist #writer #history

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skarsjoy · 15 days

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NEW portraits and interview from British GQ

Alexander Skarsgård on his “emotional support” tuxedo at the Met Gala 2024

“Going to these types of events is quite stressful”

By Daisy Jones, 7 May 2024

For Alexander Skarsgård, prep for the Met Gala 2024 starts weeks beforehand. Not physically – that doesn’t take long at all – but mentally. “I ask my family to, every time they see me, call out ‘Alex! Alex! Over here!’ to get ready for the press line. And throw out a lot of questions, like ‘Alex! Alex! What are you wearing? You look amazing!’” he says in his Nordic meets American twang, amusement dancing down the phone line.

He’s joking of course. But he’s also not. Events like the Met Gala can be “quite stressful” and “intense”, says Skarsgård. There’s a lot of adrenaline. Flashing lights. Faces in every direction. So on the day of, he likes to keep things comparatively quiet: staying inside, reading a book, mooching around in silence until it’s time to get ready. After the Met Gala, to decompress, he does exactly the same thing. “It’s a lot of fun, you meet a lot of friends, a lot of people you've met throughout the years and haven’t seen in a while. But again, you’re drained. Being in a quiet hotel room on my own is quite nice a few hours beforehand and I feel the same way after.”

We’re speaking a couple of hours before the big event, and although he says that red carpets like this can be stressful, he sounds relatively relaxed, joking and laughing often (although he is an actor, so). He hasn’t gotten dressed yet – he’ll be wearing a custom double-breasted wool suit by Calvin Klein, a brand he’s worked with for over a decade – with his hair styled in the way he usually wears it (no product, no shampoo for a day or two). “Because my hair’s very straight, I look like a Monchhichi doll when I wash my hair,” he says.

It was the timelessness of the tuxedo that spoke to him. After all, The Garden of Time (1962) by J.G. Ballard – this year's dress code – is all about the inevitable march of time, and trying to hold onto it for as long as possible. “I wanted to go for something timeless but also in my mind a throwback to James Cagney; that kind of double-breasted Hollywood look from the 1930s and 1940s. But then obviously, from Calvin Klein, it’s a slimmer silhouette with some classical components in terms of the rich wool fabric and the cut of it; the little details that I thought were really interesting.”

Did he have any other ideas ahead of the night before he landed on this one? “I felt like there are so many ways to go,” he says, that amusement creeping back into his voice. “You could go in a stone suit, because the couple obviously turned into stone at the end of the story. But we had to scrap that idea because moving in stone pants would be pretty difficult. Another version would be to go completely naked, I’m sure someone will do that on the red carpet. Because the exhibition involves a lot of very old, very fragile pieces that can’t be worn so that’s an interesting way to interpret it.” In the end, the tuxedo seemed the least extreme. “It helps to wear something that you’re very comfortable in. An emotional support outfit.”

His own style has always been understated and classic – and he doesn't like to buy an entirely new tux every time he attends a red carpet, never to wear it again. “The Met Gala is fun because it’s the only time of the year in which I have several fittings and wear something that’s tailor-made to me,” he says. “Normally, I have a couple of suits, one being my Calvin Klein suit from 10 years ago. I usually wear that to events. I don’t want [the situation to be that] every time you’re on the red carpet, you have to wear something new and then never wear it again. I think we consume enough in our society, that’s not something I’d want to promote or endorse.”

Despite the fact his own style is mostly understated, his favourite clothing item isn't understated at all. And he's wearing them right now: his Infinity Pool shorts, merch based on the Brandon Cronenberg film he appeared in last year. It's an insane film, one in which he plays a complicated, wildly hedonistic novelist. “They did some rare limited edition clothing and they gave me a pair of shorts and I love them. I wear them all the time. I have mixed feelings because it says ‘Infinity Pool’ all over my ass and the front is a profile of my face in neon as it's being scanned. It feels very narcissistic to walk around with a pair of shorts with the name of a movie you're in on your ass, and the front is your own face, but fortunately you can't really tell.”

Skarsgård won't be partying into the night post Met Gala. Sure, he'll go to a few post-gala events, but he needs to get some sleep. He'll be flying to Toronto first thing in the morning, where he's filming The Murderbot Diaries, a new sci-fi action comedy series with Apple TV+. “I play an android who has hacked his system so he’s got – or it’s got – free will, and it’s talking about going on these crazy adventures, but instead it’s watching soap operas,” he says.

“It’s been a blast for the last couple of months. I’m sure I’ll be tired going to Toronto tomorrow, but I am looking forward to it.”

#alexander skarsgard #alexander skarsgård #Met Gala 2024 #Calvin Klein #Murderbot

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lolchicsa · 1 year

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Skulls and Chaos

Simon “Ghost” Riley x Fem!reader

Warnings: 18+, MDNI, nsfw, description of gore

Part 1 of 2: smut in next part (link here)

No use of y/n

Loosely follows the events of the ‘Alone’ mission. Reader’s vacation was ruined by Shadow Company going on a genocidal rampage :( But fear not dear reader! Mr Ghost is here to make it better ;P

A/N: First time using Tumblr to post stories and using mobile to write this. Apologies for bad grammar, it’s been a while, and I have no idea what to tag for this story. Story inspiration comes from a post by @fanficsforfun so here’s my twist on it.

Chaos.

The streets of Las Almas could be described using only one word. Chaos…

Usually, at this time of night, children would be asleep, lovers back in their homes and just a set few would be enjoying the dreamy sight of stars littering the night sky. It is truly a beautiful place to visit, if you can ignore the cartel’s presence that is. The cartel is known for being violent… but this… this was different. This wasn’t the cartel.

The screams and cries of children and parents echoed through the city. Gunfire sounded off at irregular intervals, surrounding me in fear. I had abandoned my hotel room when the screams first started, trying to find my way out in this maze of a city. The first dead body I had come across was that of a young boy. A trail of blood, starting from a small hole in his head, ended on the ground in a pool of crimson liquid. At first, I was fear stricken and unable to look away.

My reality felt surreal, a distant nightmare I could escape when my mind decided to end the torture. But no, I wasn’t dreaming, I was wide awake and running for my life. I officially lost count of how many dead bodies I unfortunately came across after seeing an alleyway filled with them. I wanted to cry, to curl up in a ball and forget the world exist. But I couldn’t bring myself to do so.

Exhaustion took over a few minutes ago, leaving me walking through the streets of death alone and on edge. The sound of death still polluted the air, I was trying my best to avoid the gunfire and escape. Easier said then done, trust me. It felt like the chaos was following me, taunting me with thoughts of escape.

And then I heard voices. Must be a sick joke my mind was playing on me. Logically, I knew there was very little chance of finding a living soul, but hope has shimmering at the back of my mind. Maybe these people can help me, maybe they know how to escape. I travelled closer to the orchestra of voices until I noticed something… odd.

They where speaking calmly to one another, acting like this was a pleasant walk instead of hell on earth. It made me uneasy, but something caught my attention. Their accents. Not to different then my own, but definitely a rarity around here. Americans.

I round a corner and there I saw them. All black tactical gear, guns, knives, they looked ready for war. My heart leaped into my throat, a surge of newfound adrenaline propulsed me closer to them. These soldiers most be here to bring an end to this chaos.

“Man, that Ghost guy gives me the creeps” One said, the pack turning their attention to him. They where huddled close together, seemingly enjoying a 10 minute break of freedom before continuing on. A few snickers broke the silence following the soldiers comment.

“It’s only one guy, c’mon he can’t do much against all of us” replied another.

“Don’t forget about the other one” a third chimed in. Their conversation helped keep their attention off of the street corner I was currently stalking. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in eavesdropping on these guys. The more you know, the better right?

“You mean the one that goes by Soap? Ha! What kind of name is that anyways? How can you be scared of a guy like that!”

“An angry Scotsman is not to be trifled with, trust me”

“Man if you get killed by someone named after a cleaning product, no matter what he is, you’ll be a laughing stock in whatever hell we end up in”

“Oh so getting shanked by Ghost is better?”

As far as conversations goes, this might be the worst one I have had the privilege of eavesdropping on. Their arguing… over names? I don’t get it.

“Hey you! We know your there! Come out with your hands in the air and slowly walk towards the middle of the street” yelled on of the soldiers. The command was directed towards my general area and my stomach dropped. Anxiety started prickling through my veins, thoughts racing through my head a mile a second.

Just do as they say, my conscious brain screamed. It’s the only way to survive this nightmare. With that, I made my way towards the middle of the street with my hands up, just like I was told.

“Mind explaining to me what you are doing here ma’am?” asked one of the soldiers. From the looks of things, he seems to be the leader of this rag tag group of men. He’s got the scariest voice of them all, I would say. Sounds like the type of guy you can easily trust, but would stab you in the back if he had too. He didn’t have a gun pointed at me, not yet anyways, but he did have a death grip on his rifle.

“Please, I mean no harm. I was here on vacation and I just want to go back home” I begged.

“You’re American? Odd to see you here. You’ve got ID to prove your story miss?” His grip on his rifle loosened and his posture reflected that of a calm man. I started searching through my small purse, searching for the requested object.

The moments leading often where a blur. Adrenaline had left my system, leaving me tired and emotional. I remember giving my ID to the man, which I now know goes by Graves. Something in him changed, going from the on edge soldier to overprotective best friend. One of his men was ordered to strip off his armor plate and give it to me. A jacket was placed over my shoulder, a signet stitched on the jacket sleeves. I was told it was their company’s logo… Shadow company.

Graves had me follow a couple of his men out of the city to safer location. They where ordered to protect me with their lives. I felt safe, like really safe. Here I was, following three armed men, tasked with protecting me, out of this city of nightmares and closer to my warm bed back home. Currently, our small group was engaged in conversation. The topic? Well…

“These guys don’t play around. All this death? They caused it. We don’t know why, but we’re tasked with hunting them down” specified one of my bodyguards.

“Specifically that Ghost guy. He has this weird mask thing he wears all the time. It’s like a skull and it covers most of his face. Scary fucker” another added.

I hear admiration when they describe this guy, that and fear. My gut tells me there is more they are keeping from me. Part of me couldn’t give two shits, but another was curious.

Fwoosh

My brain froze, my body stopped moving. The world shifted, the quiet chatter turned into loud commands I couldn’t make out. I saw red. Blood red. This time not painted on walls or flowing down the cheeks of children. This time, I saw it spray out of the neck of one of my new friends. A blade had materialized out of thin air, implanting itself into the soldiers neck.

His body made a sickening sound as it hit the ground. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run, but fear stricken as I was, I could only watch. Watch as the other two had knives plunged into their throats like the first. Watch as lifeless bodies hit the floor.

My body moves, but not because I ordered it to do so. The colours shift into each other, sky and ground blurring together. It only last a couple seconds, but has an everlasting effect on me. Slowly, my senses come back to me and I realize something is very very wrong.

It’s him.

It’s the man with the skull face mask.

It’s Ghost.

He’s the first thing I see when my vision finally focuses. I’m to unfocused to realize what’s going on, but I can feel a wall behind me. His eyes are staring into mine, hands holding me tightly to the wall behind me. I can feel the heat radiating of his body and I can’t help but feel attracted to it.

That’s when I realize he’s shouting at me, but I’m having a hard time making out what he’s saying. I feel trapped, unable to move, forced to keep eye contact with this dangerous killer. His eyes are mesmerizing. I can’t look away, I can’t focus on anything other then his eyes.

“Tell me where Graves is and I promise to give you a quick death”

His words still sounded unclear, but the anger rolling off of them helped snap me out of my daze. This is the killer the soldiers were talking about, the dead soldiers. He killed them… just like he killed everyone else. Fear gripped my soul, my fight or flight instincts finally kicking in. I started trashing about, trying to loosen his hold on me. The wall of pure muscle in front of me didn’t seem fazed by my attempts to escape.

“Answer me now, shadow bitch. I’m losing my patience!”

His hand bolted towards my throat and gripped it with a force I have never felt before. It was getting hard to breath, my already tired body didn’t know how to react. He wasn’t playing around, he’s making that very clear. I have a feeling he’s the type to not make empty threats, especially when it comes to death threats.

Wait, did he call me “shadow bitch”? Hold on.

“Wait! Wait! Wait! I’m not part of that group! I just stumbled upon them and they were gonna bring me home! I swear! They were protecting me!”

His grip on my throat relaxed and for a second I thought I was in the clear. That’s until he moved impossibly closer to me. My head rested on the wall behind me, tilted up so I could keep eye contact with the behemoth in front of me. Our chests was flush to each others. His breath slowly fanned over my face, his warmth bringing some sense of safety.

We stood in silence, staring at each other for awhile. I had to remind myself of the atrocities this man committed… the children he killed. But something felt off.

“Why… why do want to know where Graves is? Are you going to kill him? Like you killed these civilians?” My tone was shaky, filled with whatever authority I had left. I hope this doesn’t get me killed.

Instead, the man stepped back from me, leaving an empty void where his warmth was moments ago. He acted like I had just stabbed him through the heart… if he even has one that is.

“What? You think I am responsible for this genocide? No, the Shadow’s are responsible for that”

This new information served to confuse me even more then I already was. Did Graves lie to me? Or is Ghost lying to me? Who to trust? Graves did seem like the lying type, and if Ghost really was behind all this, why was he being so nice? Well, as nice as someone could be in a situation like this, I should say.

“We have to move. Forget about Graves, survival is a priority. If the Shadows find you with me, they will kill you” His tone suggested he wasn’t lying about that last part. My gut told me to trust him, follow him. So I did and I don’t regret a thing.

A/n: omg I’m finally out of writing hibernation and boy does it feel good. I plan on making shorter stories that focuses more on smut eventually because Ghost melts my brain and I need to share. Pardon any grammatical errors and the fact that I split this in two. Any criticism is welcome, like straight up tell me if this is shit cause I’m trying to get better. Might do story requests if people are interested enough. Anyways, I hope every single one of y’all has a great day!

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film-classics · 14 days

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Constance Bennett - The Hollywood Fox

Constance Campbell Bennett (born in New York City on October 22, 1904 – July 24, 1965) was an American actress born to an aristocratic family of actors of English and Spanish ancestry. Blonde, stunning and honey-voiced, she glided through Hollywood with a sprite-like lightness and definite air of style and sophistication, receiving the moniker, "The Hollywood Fox."

The eldest of three daughters of actress Adrienne Morrison and actor Richard Bennett, she attended the Chapin School in New York along with her sisters Joan Bennett and Barbara Bennett, both of whom were actresses.

She was first Bennett sister to enter motion pictures, appearing in New York–produced silent movies before a meeting with Samuel Goldwyn led to her Hollywood debut in 1924. She took a hiatus during a brief marriage, but resumed it after her divorce.

In the early 1930s, Bennett was frequently among the top actresses named in audience popularity and box-office polls due to hits like Topper (1937). Her contracts with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, and RKO made her a big star in Hollywood, and her cutthroat contract negotiations earned her the sole female spot among Hollywood’s poker-playing elite comprised of top movie moguls.

By the 1940s, Bennett was working less frequently in film but was in demand in both radio and theatre, and she also formed her own production company, Constance Bennett Pictures, which produced two films. Nonetheless, shrewd investments made her a wealthy woman, even founding a cosmetics and clothing company, called "Fashion Focks."

Shortly after Madame X (1966) was completed, Bennett collapsed and died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 60 in Walston Army Hospital at Fort Dix, New Jersey. In recognition of her military contributions, and as the wife of John Theron Coulter, who had achieved the rank of brigadier general, she was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Legacy:

Was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood during the early 1930s

Founded the Constance Bennett Cosmetics Company and a clothing company called "Fashion Frocks" in the 1930s

Formed her own production company, Constance Bennett Pictures, which produced two films: Paris Underground (1945) and Smart Woman (1948)

Made smart business investments, including holding stocks in the historic Arrowhead Springs Hotel

Awarded military honors for her role in coordinating shows flown to Europe for occupying troops (1946-48) and the Berlin Airlift (1948-49)

Nominated as the Hall of Fame: Actress Award in the 1978 Photoplay Award

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard

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fuckyeahworldoftaika · 6 months

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Taika Waititi: “I just want to spend my money and enjoy it”

As he talks about what a fabulous thing it is to be Taika Waititi, he occasionally glances out the window of the hotel to the gin palaces moored in Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour. So, which one is his?

“They’re all mine. I’m actually trying to get rid of some of these to make room for my QE3.” Everyone in the room laughs – there’s a Disney PR team with camera crew present for a small conveyor belt of local interviews with journalists under instruction not to ask our most prominent global celebrity anything unrelated to his new movie. But Waititi does present as a man who has done quite well for himself. That’s assuming the jewellery that is adorning his fingers, neck and ear is as expensive as it looks. Of course it is. The man’s been on the cover of Vogue, after all, albeit as half of a “power couple” with wife of a year-plus, UK pop star Rita Ora.

It’s not the Listener that has brought up the fruits of his success. Just before the boat quips, Waititi had been pondering the difference between being the young Taika following his creative whims and the 48-year-old one, who now doesn’t have the option of starting things – like multimillion-dollar superhero films – and not finishing them because he can’t be bothered. Add to that, he has so many irons in the fire, there is a risk of a stable overflowing with shoeless horses. That’s whether it’s writing that Star Wars film (“four pages,” he deadpans on how far he’s got), acting in pirate comedy series Our Flag Means Death, making videos for the All Blacks, among other corporate gigs, or supposedly doing remakes of seemingly everything he ever liked growing up. Yes, there is a New Zealand film on his to-do list. More of which later.

To that work-in-progress pile (“I’ve got a few irons underneath the other irons”) you can also add a redo of Mel Brooks’ classic comedy Young Frankenstein. The Jewish-American comedy great liked Waititi’s Hitler-spoofing Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit very much – it reminded him of his own Hitler-spoofing good old days. He asked Waititi if he’d like to remake Young Frankenstein, the 1974 film starring Gene Wilder that was arguably his greatest big-screen comedy. You don’t say no to Mel Brooks. He is 97, after all. That said, Waititi says he could do with a break from the blacksmith shop. Right now, he says, “I just want to spend my money and enjoy it”. Well, reportedly, he has splashed out on that unobtainable thing for many Kiwi artists of his generation – a nice house in Auckland. The NZ Herald last month reported he’d bought a $10.5 million waterfront property in Point Chevalier, supposedly as a base for his joint custody of his two daughters with his former wife, producer Chelsea Winstanley.

We would be discussing his purchase – after all, who doesn’t like a natter about Auckland real estate? – but this interview is taking place back in April. Disney stipulated it couldn’t run until the local release of his new film Next Goal Wins, which it eventually bumped until the end of the year, having made its New Zealand staff redundant in the interim. Next Goal Wins is based on the true story – there was an earlier doco of the same name – about the American Samoan football team, the biggest losers of any Fifa World Cup qualifying round, having gone down 31-0 to Australia. It stars many familiar faces including Oscar Kightley, Beulah Koale, Dave Fane (“all of my mates – I think Robbie Magasiva is the only one not in this”). And, as the Palagi saviour coach, is Michael Fassbender, an actor not exactly known for his comedy. He plays Dutch-American Thomas Rongen, who became the team’s coach and lifted them from the bottom of the Fifa rankings, a little.

It’s a film that seems to have been stuck in extra time. It was shot in Hawai’i in 2019. Then came the pandemic, which paused production for a year. Along the way, Armie Hammer, who played a minor role as an American Fifa official, became persona non grata due to a storm of sexual abuse allegations, which required reshoots with comic actor Will Arnett subbing in. “I was actually already changing that character in the edit and Will came in and played a different version of it,” says Waititi, who isn’t the first director caught with a cast member who’s acquired a toxic reputation. But all his films, even his modest budget New Zealand ones at the start of his career, have taken years. “This is just the normal Taika schedule … I started working on Star Wars three years ago. By the time I finish, it will probably be another four years from now.” Next Goal Wins debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and opened in North America last week. The reviews have been decidedly mixed. That’s possibly because, like his parody-risking Thor films, it’s trying to be two things at the same time – a feel-good underdog sports film with the coach trying to redeem himself, and a send-up of feel-good sports films.

The American-Samoan team featured Jaiyah Saelua, a fa’afafine who was the first transgender international footballer. Played by fa’afafine actor Kaimana in the film, the character is a big chunk of the story. Some reviews have wondered why the film’s whole focus wasn’t Saelua. Why wasn’t it? “Jaiyah’s story is really interesting, but I was not tempted, because I really wanted it … to be about that relationship between the team and Thomas. But also him and the team, because there are a lot of other interesting characters there … [Jaiyah’s story] wasn’t something that I was massively drawn to as the main thing.” Waititi wanted to keep things light and bright in what he has said is his least cynical film yet. By which he means? “It’s more just that in this film nothing bad happens to anyone. In all of the other films there’s some darkness there. Jojo Rabbit is probably the most cynical, but in a satirical way. But with this film, the message is on the poster: “Be happy.” I think one of the most important parts of the film is when Thomas says, ‘I can’t win’, and Oscar says, ‘Well, then lose, but don’t do it alone, come lose with us.’ That’s a really important thing. If it was in an American’s hands, it would be all about winning … I think it’s good to embrace losing but doing it together.” Waititi isn’t much of a football fan. He played as a kid for a while before switching to rugby. “I played it from, like, eight to 10. I just felt like it was a real white sport, so I was a bit turned off because all of my mates were playing rugby. I just enjoyed playing touch a lot more than waiting for that round ball to come my way … ‘Can someone, like, kick it to me?’ “Notoriously, soccer is one of the worst things to try to film, because it just always comes across as super boring … It’s bad enough watching it when you’re waiting for something to happen in a big game. But it’s just a hard sport to make look interesting on film. And I think we did a really good job.” Whatever Next Goal Wins does at the box office – and it’s unlikely to be troubling Oscar voters – you suspect Waititi’s life and career will continue on its seemingly charmed way. According to the man living it, it has always been thus.

“It’s like The Truman Show – everything has just been put in front of me, for me. Like, you’ve just been sent in here to entertain me for 15-20 minutes, then you’ll go and these people [the PR team] will do something for me. My mother says this to me all the time … I used to write stories about how the world was on fire and everyone was dying. My parents died and I was the only one who survived. I’m always, like, the star of my own show … This is basically my whole story, just for me.” There are words for that. “It’s called being a Leo. Oh, narcissism? It’s true.” But with that, he says, is the self-doubt of being a fêted figure but feeling a bit of a fake. “It all comes from a deep place of insecurity and imposter syndrome – all the things that everyone else in this industry has – the deep sense of not feeling like you belong here, or that you’ve gotten away with something, and no one’s found out yet. “Most people in this industry have that fear or that sense that it’s either all going to be taken away – the window is going to close – you’re going to be irrelevant soon, or that you’ve somehow stumbled into this undeservedly – that there’s been some sort of glitch or mistake, and no one has noticed that you don’t know what you’re doing. “If anyone asks me, ‘So, how do you make films?’ I don’t know. I don’t know any of the names of the equipment on set. All I know is what I’d like to see as an audience member in a rectangle on a big screen, and I’ll try my hardest to get that. “I think directing in general is just you making decisions fast and confidently, and then people will believe you and follow you.” Does he have anything left to prove? “Nah, I’m good. Film wasn’t even my dream. I didn’t have a dream of doing this, and I’ve already achieved it. I don’t care about anything other than just my happiness and my family.” His marriage to Ora has made him both tabloid-famous and a glossy magazine fixture. He also appears to have met everybody. Yes, he has been starstruck on occasions. Such as when Ora introduced him to Mick Jagger at a party. He gulped, excused himself and departed.

“It was, ‘I’m not going to sit down and talk to you because I’m going to fuck this up, so I’m just going to walk away.’ ‘Have a good night.’ That was enough for me.” He will be busy for the foreseeable future with whatever is next on his Hollywood to-do list. But he does have the makings of a New Zealand film in a drawer somewhere. One of his early short films, Tama Tū, was about six Māori Battalion soldiers in World War II Italy. He’s been tinkering with an idea about a battalion feature. It is the “Don Quixote of all films that every Māori film-maker has been trying to make,” says Waititi. He’s not the only one – Muru director Tearepa Kahi also has one in the works. Waititi feels his is a good 10 years away. “I think the problem is we shouldn’t be making a Saving Private Ryan version of the Māori Battalion film because we’ve already got Saving Private Ryan, right? So, it has to be something that celebrates being Māori – the stories, the cool, amazing stories of the battalion. It’s got to be in our style, which means it has to be entertaining and fun.”

By Russell Baillie, 24 Nov, 2023 And thanks to @sassy1121 for the article

#taika waititi #next goal wins #nz herald

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attorney-anon · 5 months

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Hey, I’m a law student and I’m also autistic and ADHD and I was wondering if you have any tips for working in law as a neurodivergent person? I love my course and I can’t wait to work but the 85% unemployment statistic really scares me.

This is a long answer, so I'm going to cut it for the sake of mobile users. I do link some products below; I'm not getting paid, and I'm only linking them because they honestly work for me. Also, as a caveat, a lot of this advice assumes that you're American and/or working in-person at a private law firm; unfortunately, that's my only experience other than a month doing part-time intake for my regional legal aid service.

The biggest hurdle you will meet is the bar exam*: you need a study buddy who does not have ADHD and can help keep you on track. Don't study separately then meet up; do things like watching lecture videos together and keeping pace with one another in person. I'm not ADHD myself, but my best friend and forever study partner is, and she struggled to self-start.

Buy a bar prep course. This is not the time to be a scrooge; don't buy Kaplan just because it's cheaper (it also sucks). Barbri and Themis are both good - of these, use whichever you can get for cheapest or, if the costs are comparable, use Barbri if structure gives you comfort and use Themis if you need some control over the order in which you do things. Also use Themis if humor engages you; the Property and Contracts lecturers are hilarious. Stick to your bar prep program, but be gentle with yourself if you fall behind pace - realistically, you need to get through all the topics at least once, but you don't have to do every practice MPT, every practice essay, and every practice MBE quiz. Use the same study techniques that got you through law school. IMO, useful supplemental tools include the Critical Pass flashcards (get them used if possible, or get a referral code from somebody) and the Finz Multistate Method guide. Do your best to treat the bar exam as a game - because it is one.

There's a strategy for every section, and you should practice these strategies. For the MBE, use the Finz method - it works. For the MEE, or any other essay exam, use IRAC - and make up the R if you need to. The UBE, and most state bar exams, are graded such that you do get more points for knowing the rule, but you can still get points if you make up a reasonable-sounding rule and then apply it correctly. For the MPT, just throw in as many case and rule cites as possible. Try to cite every document you're given.

Join a bar prep FB group if you use FB; I was in Themis Memes for Should-Be-Studying Teens, but I know there's a Barbri group too. I found that being able to laugh at my bar prep course made it less miserable to do it. Don't be afraid to turn the videos on 2x or 0.5x speed - or faster or slower as needed. Some of the Themis lecturers talk to slowly that we went up to 3x; one of them talks so fast I had to slow him down.

Practice for the test in as many different environments as you can. I took the 2020 Pandemic Bar, so my bar was different than standard (I took it in a hotel room with my back to the door and proctors patrolling the hallways, it was mildly traumatizing fun), but I highly recommend getting used to noise while you're taking the test. Your ADHD/Autism hyperfocus will help here - make the bar exam your hyperfixation to the extent possible.

Once you pass the bar exam, your next hurdle will be the job search. You are going to have to mask for interviews, there's just no getting around it, but how much you mask will depend on your area of law. Big Law firms and intense, litigation-focused practice areas (e.g., business lit or criminal law) will expect you to be gregarious, friendly, and charming from the get-go; less litigation-focused practice areas (e.g., probate or family law) will often have more tolerance for quieter, less aggressive types.

Do not panic if you wind up at a less-than-favorable firm on your first or even your second job; a lateral shift between firms won't kill your resume as long as you can give a tactful reason you left (e.g., "I found that I prefer to focus on X instead of Y," or "I found that I had more opportunities to explore X at Y firm, and I am interested in focusing on X"). It is not normal to cry every day after work. It is not normal to routinely have panic attacks in the bathroom.

Once you have a job, billing is going to be difficult unless you gamify it. I use the Finch self-care app, so I have a task at the end of every week to make sure I have billed my time. My friend rewards herself for every day she bills by buying herself a new pen. Some people thrive off of timers (MyCase and Clio are popular case management software programs; both have timers built-in), but if nothing else, simply note when you start tasks and when you finish them by sending e-mails to yourself (or others, if relevant) at the end of every task. If your case management software can integrate with your e-mail (MyCase can integrate with Outlook, for instance), then use that to tag outgoing e-mails so you can be sure each one gets billed.

Outside of Big Law or intense practice areas, very few people bill 8 hours per day - a lot of the work you do will be non-billable, but also you will suffer from exhaustion or burnout if you try to bill 8 hours per day (my minimum is 20 hours per week, which is just 4 hours a day). You also will usually have some discretion in billing - use that to make yourself feel better if inattention issues make something take longer than you feel is fair. As for billing enough, if you find that you are most productive outside of work hours, find a firm that will let you access client files offsite - work at home if they'll let you.

I do a lot of my best billing either in the mornings right when I get to work or at 10:00 at night. That's okay so long as you take breaks during the workday (I watch a lot of TikTok during my breaks, but I also fiddle with various online games and such); you'll need mental rest to reset between cases. If you struggle with task-switching, use a break to help reset your focus. I strongly recommend setting an alarm for yourself during breaks so that time blindness doesn't derail you. Make your alarm kind of annoying; something you won't just mindlessly ignore.

Let yourself hyperfocus on things; all of that time you spend researching and drafting and correcting and perfecting that motion or brief is billable, and it's also good practice of law - your client and your partner will appreciate your thoroughness, and the judge will almost never hate it (some judges prefer brevity, but I've never had a judge upset at me for wordiness).

I also recommend getting apps that can automate things for you; I use Espanso to make my life easier by having easy-to-type shortcuts for common phrases and information (e.g., the current date, my bar card number, my work e-mail address, etc.). You can customize these things to make sense to your own brain - your process doesn't have to work for anyone but you. Similarly, I use macros in Word to make drafting go faster by letting buttons do all my formatting for me.

Excel sheets make excellent task lists because you can split them up by case, and set them up to highlight things (e.g., today's date) automatically. Most firms will have some kind of "docket meeting" where everyone goes over the status on each case - some people prefer handwritten notes (my best friend does), some people prefer digital notes (I have an excel workbook I use). Find a method that reduces distractions but lets you keep up with the flow of conversation.

On the topic of technology, if your firm provides a computer for you, or if your firm will provide accessories to supplement your own computer, push to have multiple monitors - I use my own laptop, but my boss provides monitors and I have two plus my laptop screen. It is WAY easier to keep up with billing if you can keep your time entry software open and visible on one of your screens.

You will be spending a lot of time in your office; make it comfortable. Once you are making enough to get by, invest in a good office chair (that you own, so you can take it with you if you leave the firm) and some basic office supplies that you like, such as a post-it note dispenser (mine is a cat!). My office chair is designed to let me sit cross-legged - I highly recommend having an office chair that matches your most comfortable sitting style. Having some things that are yours will make any future moves less awkward. I also strongly, strongly recommend getting some simple and quietish fidget toys - I have several spinners, wacky tracks, tangles, and clicky fidgets in one of my desk drawers, amongst others, to help me self-stim, as well as a sensory sticker on my desk pad (on the linked set, I have the rough version of the bottom middle sticker, the rainbow finger labyrinth one).

For me, I find that actual litigation requires scripting. Whether it's an oral argument or just a temporary orders hearing, I typically have every word I intend to say written down as much as I can (re-direct examination or re-cross examination can't be scripted before the day of, but I usually at least scrawl a summary of the question I need to ask as I'm taking notes). I don't necessarily read from it, and sometimes I veer off-script, but there is a specific comfort in having the words scripted out. On the few occasions I have ad-libbed things, I find that I come off less authoritative and confident, which gives the judge the impression that I am guessing. I also find comfort in having a copy of the code I need (which is always the Texas Family Code for me) on-hand at the counsel table. You are allowed to tell the judge you'd like to consult the statute when the judge asks you a question.

I also find that, for courtroom litigation, it's worthwhile to make sure your court clothes are comfortable. Courtrooms in my area are universally a little too warm, so I have a linen blazer that breathes and a variety of shell tops that don't have sleeves. I also have bad ankles, so I wear exclusively flats despite the fact that I am less than 5 feet tall. For me, heat sensitivity is a part of my sensory issues so I am all about setting myself up for success. It's also worthwhile to bring extra water bottles; at my firm (we are almost all ND in some regard), the standard is 2 per attorney and 1 for each support staff, then 1 for the client.

For out-of-court days, even "business" can be comfortable if you're a creative shopper. My last firm required business attire, though not necessarily courtroom attire. I wore a lot of dresses to stay cool, and a solid-color dress in a modest cut paired with a black blazer (which you can remove when you're just working in your office) almost always makes the cut. For those who don't like or can't wear dresses, comfortable slacks and a modest blouse or dress shirt, paired with a blazer, also works. My current firm only requires business casual for client meetings, courtroom attire for court, and otherwise as long as we cover our shoulders and don't wear shorts, we're good to go. I use a cardigan to cover my shoulders when I'm outside my office, as most of my blouses are sleeveless. It's worthwhile to invest in a good office sweater anyway; I like a thin t-shirt material cardigan for me, but my officemate uses a pullover knit sweater. Do what's comfortable.

Office meetings, or even court hearings, can sometimes get loud and overstimulating - buy you some Flare Audio Calmer ear inserts, they really do help take some of the 'sharpness' off of the noise. I also recommend a playlist that contains binaural beats (assuming you like them) or colored (white, brown, pink, etc) noise and a solid pair of ANC headphones or earbud, depending on your preference (the linked products are far from the only options, they're just reasonably-priced options that I know work; I personally use first-gen Airpod Pros). If you don't like binaural beats or white noise, instrumentals of pop songs are also excellent.

You can also get phone apps that layer binaural beats over your music - I find that it sometimes helps me calm down when I'm close to a meltdown, though I personally feel worse at the lower frequencies (I usually stay around the alpha-beta frequency line, but ymmv). I think there are probably also some apps for colored noise over your music, but I haven't looked. If you haven't before, I recommend experimenting with binaural beats and/or colored noise - I find that they can help calm down some of the staticky feeling I get from overstimulation.

Offices also sometimes involve other sensory dangers - like, for instance, food texture issues (another big one for me). You can often get out of things like that by simply explaining that the food doesn't agree with you, or that you're not very hungry - or, if your boss knows that you have sensory issues (mine knows I'm autistic), you can just quietly explain that it's a sensory problem and you have it under control. Keep some safe snacks in your office. You can avoid alcohol, if you're picky about it or just don't like it, by explaining that you're not in the mood to drink (or that you don't drink, period) and that you'll stick to soda/tea/water/whatever. Only major assholes will push past that.

Most coping mechanisms for sensory issues can be justified with "I don't feel good" or "I have a headache."

If your office chair hurts your back, get up and walk around. You are not in elementary school; at most firms, you can step out and just let your coworkers know where'/how to find you, and when you'll be back.

For intra-office and extra-office communications, if you have any doubts about the quality of the communication, you can put it in writing afterwards. A quick e-mail saying, "Okay, so this is my understanding of X, please let me know if I've misunderstood anything or if anything changes" is a good CYA to cover any communication difficulties; don't use idioms or shorthand in these e-mails - actually spell out exactly what you think happened, or what you think you've been asked to do.

If you're worried about your tone in written communications, Chat GPT is good at doing a first draft. It can also do a first draft of your attorney bio, if you're asked to write it yourself. Tell it the message you want to convey, and the tone in which you need it said. For instance, if you need to convey to a pro se opposing party that your world does not revolve around them, but you want to do it professionally, you might tell Chat GPT, "Write a professional e-mail to my opposing party conveying that my world does not revolve around them and that I will get to them when I get to them." That won't give you a perfect e-mail, but it gives you an idea of how to set the tone. Never trust any citation the thing gives you, but you can also use it to simplify complex thoughts for motions that you need to be simpler.

Law practice is also emotionally draining. Take the time to cry if you need to, or to go outside or into a breakroom and breathe.

Essentially, working in law when you're ND means finding tools to help you. It's definitely doable (as I said, most of my current firm is ND), but you'll need to find coping mechanisms to soothe yourself. If you've gotten into law school, I think it's clear that you're competent enough to work. The trick is not burning yourself out entirely, which I hope the above can help with.

* - This is not and never will be an endorsement of bar exams as a measure of competence for new attorneys. The bar exam is a racist and classist institution born from the desire of old white men to keep their good-ol'-boys club exclusive. Fuck the NCBE and abolish bar exams nationwide.

#lawblr #real lawblr #ask anon #anonymous ask #bar exam #attorney

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sweetbillwriting · 27 days

Text

The Finer Things

Psycho - Part 8

Characters: Vincent De Garmont, The Marquis, From John Wick 4.

Setting: This story is set in my own universe, so not exactly the John Wick universe.

Warnings: 18+, SO MANY. Sex, abuse, violence and murder.

Ines sat in the big hotel bed under the covers in a black slip. It was Vincent’s room, or now it was theirs. They shared a room now, more or less. He didn't let her move all her things there because he thought it became too cluttered. He didn't want her make up close to the bathroom and had been really clear with that after he had gotten her powder on his white suit pants.

She looked around the tidy room and listened to the faint sound of Vincent brushing his teeth in the bathroom. She had gotten some new information about him that she couldn't stop thinking about.

Boyfriend. Vincent has had a boyfriend. Of course she had thought about what sort of partners the Marquis could have had before her, she had even wondered if he had experience with men but that thought hadn't come up while they had been more intimate with each other. She just saw him as her guy then and the thought that he would have chosen the company of another man before he met her had been erased.

The door to the bathroom opened slowly and the tall man came out, dragging his hands through his unstyled hair. She knew he got stressed by feeling hair in his face and when he didn't have any products in it he showed his annoyance by his soft hair openly. He was dressed in a baby blue satin pajama set with his cursive initials on the breast pocket. It was so shiny it snatched all the lightning from the room. Ines looked at him from top to toe and smiled to herself with mixed emotions. Yeah, the Marquis had had a boyfriend.

He crawled down next to her and did the last of his nightly routine. He put on a black eye cover on his head, moisturized his lips, and then his hands. No wonder he was as soft as a baby. He took care of every part of himself with the best French products.

Ines looked at the sleep mask. It had become a signal for her: no sex tonight. She had a much bigger need for it than Vincent, and she suspected the only real satisfaction he could get was from seeing a life fade away in his hands. But the mask also meant they could talk; if he hadn't a book in his hand, it was okay.

“So you're bisexual? Or Pan?” She asked curiously with an expecting expression. It was probably the most private question she had asked The Marquis.

He looked at his hand while giving his cuticles some extra moisturizing.

“You Americans...” he said with a downgrading tone. Ines looked at him tiredly.

“You're also American!”

“Not in my heart,” He said it like it was an obvious fact.

“Yeah, yeah. Continue.”

“With what?” He looked up at her with a bored expression.

“Are you bi?”

Vincent clicked his tongue and laid down in bed on his back, while Ines sat up more instead, against the headboard.

“I don't see it like that. I am with the person I want to be with.”

“So you're pan?”

“What the fuck is pan? A frying pan? Peter Pan?”

“Ha ha ha.” Ines faked a laugh but smiled when Vincent gave her a dimpled one.

“I just think it's unnecessary to throw around words. Why does it matter? Do you want a word so you can judge me?”

“Noo…” Ines felt stupid about her conservative thinking, especially because she in one way wanted to judge him. She wanted to be able to put a label on him.

“Can we stop talking about this now? It's such a boring subject. I've been invited to the opening of Dior’s boutique this weekend. That's a better subject.”

Ines looked at him unpleased and crossed her arms.

“You don't need to come with me,” he said irritatedly, pulling down the eye mask.

“Must you be like this? Why can't you just share things with me?”

Ines sounded irritated for real now, and it made Vincent pull up the mask again.

“I do! I just said you can come with me to fucking Dior!”

“I don't want Dior! I want to know shit about you! I know you know my whole fucked up story while you don't tell me shit!”

Vincent sat up and pulled on his pajama shirt, which twisted around his body.

“Your “fucked up story” is just bullshit! It was just child play! I will not share my story with someone who can't even handle their own bullshit story.”

In his upset state, Vincent lost his accent again, but also that elegance that otherwise lay over him like the thinnest chiffon.

“You maybe let your fucking junkie mom die in front of your eyes, but I broke every fucking bone in my trashy parents bodies with a hammer! And that's fucking soft for me!”

Ines turned to him in shock. She furrowed her brows. She looked upset, but Vincent looked at her with a killer look. She knew he would kill her then and there if she said the wrong thing. The thought of that was so hot. She wondered for a second how he would do it. Strangle her? It felt like the easiest way, but something told her that was too boring for him. It was more believable that he would bite her and drink her blood.

Ines squirmed and Vincent looked at her pressing her legs together. His angry look changed slowly to a mocking one.

"Filthy girl,” he said lowly and sat up on his elbow.

“Shut up,” she said but with an amused smirk. Vincent laughed and sat up more and lifted the cover to look at her panties.

“You're such a psycho. Who gets wet from such a story?”

“I said shut up!” She whined but with a laugh and pulled up the cover. Vincent smirked and shook his head. Ines looked at his handsome face and thought about jumping him, begging for his cock but she had a question she needed an answer to.

“What happened after you killed your parents? Did the police understand it was you?”

Vincent laughed and laid down again with his hands behind his head.

“Of course not. Do you know how cute I was? I was fourteen with angel eyes and the cleanest record. High grades, liked and good mannered. Appearance is everything.”

Ines looked at his proud smile and thought about how he was now. Appearance was still everything to him and he had slowly taught her the same thing. Her Dr. Dre t-shirt and leggings with holes was probably not the best look to have to be trusted.

“Why are you so sexy?” The word just jumped out her mouth. She couldn't control her horniness any longer. She laid her chin on his chest and looked up at him.

“Because I'm everything other men wished they were.”

Ines laughed and kissed him. He was probably right, she didn't care really, she just wanted his cock.

She unbuttoned his pajama shirt and looked at his broad chest and his biceps. His body contrasted beautifully with the soft shirt and even that was turning her on. Appearance was everything but under it was a sexy, wild man.

They kissed again over and over, Ines straddling his hips, grinding against his erection. She was so turned on but even when The Marquis moved her panties to the side to touch her sensually she couldn't stop thinking about one question. She pulled away from him a little which made Vincent look at her confused.

“Did you take or give?”

Vincent didn't understand at all and looked even more confused.

“I guess you slept with your ex. Did he fuck you in the ass?”

Ines furrowed her brows when she saw how offended Vincent got. She just wondered. Or maybe it would be a little hot if he had?

“Did you just ask me if I…” he looked at her still as offended.

“What? It's not a big deal. I've had anal sex too. It wasn't pleasant but that's another story.”

Vincent pushed her away from his lap and shook his head in disbelief.

“I guess that means you didn't? You seem offended…” Ines felt nervous now, it felt like she had maybe said something stupid. Vincent stood up from the bed, still without a shirt. He didn't say anything, instead he walked out of the room slowly. Ines looked after him with pain in her stomach. She hadn't expected that it would be so sensitive. To her surprise he came into the room again, but with a glass of an amber colored spirit.

“You know that you're the most annoying girl ever, right?” he said and sat down in bed again.

“Yeah?” She answered and smiled nervously. He looked at her while taking a sip of his drink.

“If I tell you… My story, will something between us change then? Is it something you can't handle to hear?” He looked at her with big eyes and when Ines looked closely she could see there was worry in them. He really had some sort of feelings for her.

“Maybe rape?” She said honestly. He showed himself vulnerable so she had no reason to lie.

“I have never done such a thing. I promise,” he said sincerely while looking into her eyes. “The only woman I have hurt is my mom but she was worth it.”

Ines laughed low and crawled closer to his side. Vincent laid his arm around her shoulders and took a deep breath before he started to talk.

×××

Vincent didn't understand at all why his parents left France. They moved to his relatives in New Orleans, his poor, trashy relatives. He looked at them with distaste, even if he was just eleven years old, and looked down at them like they were vermin in his life. In France, his life had been totally different; his mother came from a noble family, and he learned at four years of age to eat escargot, with pincers and all. His grandparents thought it was amazing but also a bit funny that he showed more class than both their kids—his mother and uncle. He was a natural. Early in his life, he stopped playing games like normal kids and instead focused on what he noticed his grandparents seemed to think was important: culture, food, politics, history, and how they looked. He was born to live like the rich, but his parents had other plans.

Vincent hadn't thought about who would inherit after his grandparents and had a naive belief that he would be able to continue his luxury life. There was nothing else for him. Money and luxury were the grounds he was standing on. The day both his grandparents had died, the family realized there was just one person who would inherit everything: Vincent's uncle. He was older than his mom, was a man, and had more class. His mother had chosen a man from a simple background, a dentist without his own practice. Vincent was ashamed of his father, the peasant, even if he hadn't been alive without him. He wished his mother could find someone else, but she chose to stay with him and rip away everything that was important for the eleven-year-old Vincent: money, good food, and pricey wine. They destroyed his life and moved to his father's home country. USA. The land of tastelessness and hydrogenated fat. He was sure he wouldn't survive.

His parents became middle-class and believed they could spoil him with soda and chips. They seem to believe the American lifestyle would fit an eleven-year-old boy better, but Vincent looked at everything with distaste. His family, relatives, and everything around him. He dreamed about champagne and oysters. He wished for hand-tailored suits and cufflinks in platinum.

Even if he felt like a prince lost in a garbage dump, he succeeded in charming most people around him. He knew he had the looks for it, the manners, but also the intelligence. It was known in the area that he was an unusually smart boy, an unusually well-mannered boy. He was the golden boy, so golden neighbors bragged about him, even if they just met him once or twice. Females were especially weak for him, and even he thought it was weird how grown women wanted to be around him, a thirteen-year-old boy. It was also how he got money. They gave him money just to listen to their problems. They gave him liquor to make him stay longer. He thought it went well for him until he noticed a group of people who would give him even more money: men in “not so functional straight relationships." He knew it was strange, and many would have looked at him as a victim, but he never saw himself as a victim. He was not the type.

He probably earned more money as a boy courtesan than his mother did as a social worker, and he spent it all on himself. It was the day his father came home in anger after hearing a rumor about his son selling his body to rich men Vincent killed both of his parents. He hadn't planned it, but seeing his father throw out his Louis Vuitton bags on the floor, spilling out his YSL perfumes, and digging in his jewelry box, he had enough. They were so disrespectful and also so below him that he needed to get rid of them. So why not do it in a fun way? That night, he snuck into their room, tied them to the bed, gagged them, and gave them a hammer hit for everything they had taken from him. Bourgogne wines, seafood, belts in real leather, a good hairdresser, watching polo... The list was long, so their bodies looked more like minced meat when he was done. He looked at his craft in excitement. It felt like a great accomplishment, maybe even an artwork. He wished he could take a picture of it and show people, but he knew no one would understand. People around him were way too unintelligent to understand it.

×××

Vincent had pulled her up in his lap and held her face and kissed her deeply. He made a sound of pleasure and kissed her again.

“But you understand, right? It looked like a blood red butterfly, a meaty, powerful butterfly. And it was what they were. Finally they were there they should be, you know? Their kill was the most beautiful thing in their lives,” he said with wonder in his voice. Ines giggled.

“You sound like a psycho!”

Vincent looked at her and licked his lips.

“Noo… I just know my art.”

Ines shook her head in amusement and kissed his lips again.

“But what happened after that?”

Vincent leaned back against the headboard and looked around dreamily.

“I went to one of the rich men and then I had my alibi. Not like he dared to say something else. He was fifty years old hanging around with a fourteen year old boy. Better they believed I was there as his literature student than telling the cops I was there getting drunk on cognac and showing off in his pool. Everyone was on my side anyway. I was the golden child.”

Ines dragged her hands through his hair. She wasn't surprised. He had that aura that made him feel like the most valuable thing, person in the room.

“And then?” She asked.

×××

Everyone felt sorry for him. He was an orphan. Several people offered to help him and open their homes for him, but Vincent knew where he wanted to be. He wanted to go back to France. He had his uncle there. Social service thought he should live with his father's cousin, but Vincent handled that situation with crocodile tears and an accusation of abuse. He got what he wanted, what he had planned, and moved in with his uncle and his family in their castle. They still had his grandparents estate, but the family didn't want to live with the elderly couple’s old things and bought a castle for the inherited money. Vincent loved it. All the big rooms, the light, but mostly the soft rugs that were in every room. He could spend a whole day just digging his toes into the rugs. He was happy there. He could live as he wanted again. He didn't need to dress up for pathetic old men but instead did it for the other young socialites. He met his first girlfriend that way, but then there was also the young man who would change his life. Mael. His father was a sponsor of several politicians, and when they got power, they paid him back from the state's treasury. Vincent admired the father, but it was the son who created lust in him.

×××

“But seriously, now, can't you just answer if you take or give?” Ines pleaded and dragged her fingers over his shoulders. She still sat over him. Vincent looked at her tiredly.

“It depends on the person,” he said, just to please her. Ines nodded a little.

“And Mael..?

“Both. Okay?”

Ines smiled in excitement and then giggled. She couldn't hold it in.

“Is it weird I think that's hot?”

Vincent now smirked at her pointedly.

“You're a filthy girl, so...”

She smiled teasingly, and he smiled back in a similar way. Both of them reached out to each other so their tongues could meet. Ines pulled away again in a flirty way, but continued her nosy questions.

“Is it Mael I will kill?”

“Mael died a long time ago... So no,” said Vincent, looking around in the room. It felt like he didn't want to look at her. She hadn't felt before when he talked that Mael was such a loaded subject, but now it felt like a minefield. They were quiet for a while, with Vincent dragging his hands over her thighs with a low gaze until he spoke again.

“Should I continue to tell you?”

Ines nodded eagerly.

×××

Vincent didn't get what he had wished for on his eighteenth birthday. He had hoped for a car or a trip, but instead his uncle said goodbye. He was grown up now and could leave their home. He knew his uncle didn't like him very much because he always made him look bad. He could talk about politics, history, and art in a relaxed and confident manner, while his uncle pretended to know. Vincent couldn't stop himself from correcting the older man and making the other socialites laugh at him. Vincent laughed too, like he was the man of the house making fun of the servant. His uncle wanted to get rid of him now, when he could. Finally, he could throw the boy out.

Vincent’s ground tumbled under his feet again, and suddenly he stood homeless and penniless on the street. Maybe he could have treated his uncle and family better, but he was never mean; he was just more sophisticated than them. That they sat on the money was a stupid mistake from his grandparents; it was he who could make their family name flourish and not buy a castle and let the family estate decay.

Lucky for Vincent, he had a rich boyfriend. Mael was kind, beautiful, and caring. A man to trust. He was the same age as himself, but instead of getting kicked out into homelessness, his parents gave him a luxury apartment in central Paris as an eighteenth birthday gift. An apartment big enough for them both. They didn't know if people understood they were a couple, but they didn't really care. No one said anything about it, and if people want to believe they lived together as two buddies, they could believe that. That they shared a bed and let each other in as close as possible was not anyone else's business.

Still, Vincent wasn't pleased. Mael took care of him in every way, but Vincent walked around in annoyance because of the emptiness in his chest. He needed more. He needed what his parents gave him. Their lives and blood. The only thing that could make him sleep was the image of the fleshy butterfly. Its beautiful scarlet color and the satisfaction it gave him. The feeling of pumping power into his veins.

Mael started to talk about his father's plan for him one day. He hadn't shared it before, probably because he was afraid of hurting Vincent, but their relationship had started to fade. He didn't seem to have such a big interest in closeness and seemed restless and trapped in his modern apartment.

Mael’s father wanted to send him away for some sort of education to become a soldier in a special group of the army. It was not only the fancier group but also the group with more interesting jobs. Guard the premiere minister, be a spy in Russia, or do secret operations in the Middle East. Mael had started to think about it, but he hadn't expected Vincent's eyes to become even bigger and rounder. Mael believed he saw a chance to get an important job that could connect him to the socialites again, but Vincent just felt the butterflies wet wings around him. The smell of metal and death.

×××

“Was it there that the thing with your back happened?” Ines asked softly and dragged her hands over his waist, back to his sensitive back. Vincent looked at her a bit surprised that she understood that.

“Yeah. I got the most physical jobs because… I was good at it while Mael…” Vincent looked down but nothing of his manners gave away sadness, he masked it so well. “He couldn't handle it. We were in Somalia, searching for someone together. The mayors saw us as best friends so they let us work together, but also because he was weak but also rich while I was strong.”

Vincent continued to talk neutrally about his young love and Ines couldn't really say if he was upset over his death or not. He even sounded a bit condescending when he called the young man weak.

“He got a panic attack while we talked with some guys and started to wave with his weapon and they started to shoot. That weak boy died at once while I survived but with my back all messed up and without a job. No one wants a soldier who can't run.” He looked at her with an empty gaze but she could see a sadness sweep by when he talked about his back. He seemed more upset over his back than Mael. His first love. Ines dragged her fingers through his soft hair and inspected his cold expression.

“Are you not sad? For Mael?”

Vincent looked around in the room but his expression was still unreadable. “I was. But now he's dead and I'm not. It was fun while it lasted.” He leaned back and took his glass with the amber colored drink and took a sip. He looked elegant and calm even if he was without a shirt and talked about the death of a loved one. She looked at him a bit worried. She wondered if he maybe lied to himself and hadn't gotten over Mael or if he maybe didn't know what real love was. It wouldn't surprise her.

“But-” she wanted to ask what happened when he once again stood outside of the social elite but his phone rang on the night stand and he took it in his big hand. He looked at the name for a few seconds and bit his lip then he answered in french. Ines, who still sat over him, could clearly hear the male voice from the phone.

“Bonsoir ma chérie, je te manque?”

#bill skarsgård #bill skarsgard #fan fiction #writing #story #bill skarsgård writing #bill skarsgård fanfiction #fiction #vincent de gramont #the marquis #john wick #4

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rebeccalouisaferguson · 3 months

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Rebecca Ferguson: "I'm done with super power women"

At the same time that Rebecca Ferguson is seen in cinemas in the blockbuster Dune: Part two, she dreams of making small films and acting in theatre. For Gunnar Rehlin, she talks about the sex scenes, the successes - and why there won't be more films with Tom Cruise.

Rebecca Ferguson is tired of playing "super power women".

-I'm good at it, but it's boring, she says.

Therefore, there will be no more impossible missions with Tom Cruise - she was asked to make another film in the series, but declined.

-For the first time I feel like a free agent (a player without a contract with a club, ed. note), she says and laughs.

Instead, she wants to enter the narrow world of cinema.

- And then I want to be on stage. I've never done it, I didn't study acting, I was almost thrown into it. So right now I'm sitting with the freedom, but I don't have any pieces. The other day I read a play for the first time, I haven't done it before.

Rebecca Ferguson wants to make smaller film and theater It might seem a little contradictory that we're sitting at the luxurious Rosewood Hotel in London talking about Rebecca's desire to make smaller, leaner films, as she's currently doing interviews for the mega-budget production Dune: Part Two, with an estimated production cost of over $120 million. This day I meet Rebecca and Stellan Skarsgård, the day after I meet Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh and the director Denis Villeneuve, among others.

But Rebecca's desire to do smaller films seems sincere. She says:

- Just this morning, I received an offer to do a small role in a studio film, for a lot of money. But I don't want to feel like I'm working just for money. I discussed this with my husband. Many people say that you should strike while the iron is hot, but I don't want to. I'm very happy with what I'm doing now, I want to do roles that neither bring me down nor lift me up. I don't care.

Now, this shouldn't be taken as saying she doesn't want to make a third Dune movie. Number two ends with a cliffhanger that points to a sequel.

-I have spoken to Denis about it and I would very much like to do number three, she says.

In the Dune films, a powerful science fiction epic set on distant planets, she plays the mother of Timothee Chalamet's protagonist.

- But I don't just see her as a mother, in Dune: Part Two she is a person who wants to get her way, says Rebecca.

"A lot of talk about the sex scenes" And that is probably something that also characterizes Rebecca Ferguson as a person. She is an extremely nice and spontaneous person, who is really not afraid to speak up when there is something she wants to protest against, but also does not shy away from handing out spontaneous hugs.

She has a very Swedish way of looking at work and its consequences – such as doing nude and sex scenes, something that was plentiful in the TV series The White Queen.

- It's not particularly convenient to do sex scenes, man, I have control over the scenes I do and what I show. This couple that Max Irons and I played in The White Queen had many children, so there was as much battlefield as sex in the series. When I was interviewed in the US, there was a lot of talk about the sex scenes and I said: "How do you make children in the US? This is how it works in Europe". By the way, the series was made in two different versions, there is more sex and nudity in the American one than the one shown in England. Sex sells, that's how it is.

Nowadays, London is both home and the hub of her career. She previously lived in Simrishamn. Her mother, who is from England, had moved here and Rebecca followed. For a while she kept the home in Simrishamn (her former partner Ludwig, with whom she has a son, lives there) parallel to the apartment she got in Richmond.

Began his career in the TV soap "New Times" But let's go even further back in time, when Rebecca lived in Stockholm and her career began, with a role in the TV soap New Times. She says that it was a coincidence that she was cast in the series, that it was because she attended Adolf Fredrik's music school and could sing.

The job with New Times caused her to miss high school. She moved away from home, took different jobs, enrolled in high school later, ended up in the United States where she was in a Swedish-American TV soap.

-Imagine being 17 years old and spending a year in Miami Beach, where the biggest problem was whether it would be the pool or the beach.

After that year, she still wasn't sure what she wanted to do.

- I traveled around, was in Thailand and got a diving certificate and wanted to become a diving instructor. I love the sea, love to dive - even though I suffer from claustrophobia. To swim with fish and to float around...

In 2011, she was back in Sweden and met the director Richard Hobert, who asked if she wanted to be in his upcoming film En enkel till Antibes. In it, Rebecca played a cold-blooded woman trying to trick an aging man, played by Sven-Bertil Taube. The film received good reviews, a foreign agent caught the eye of Rebecca and not too long after that she had auditioned for and landed the lead role in the BBC series The White Queen, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

Saying no to more Mission: Impossible Soon after, she caught the eye of Tom Cruise, which led to a contract for three films in the Mission: Impossible series. Since the third has been split into two films, number two (Mission: Impossible – Dead reckoning part two) will arrive later this year.

But there won't be a fourth film with Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, says Rebecca.

- I'm done, I've turned down part four.

What now occupies her most is the TV series Silo, which is filmed in a studio outside London. Rebecca stars in the dystopian sci-fi series about how humanity is forced to live in a large underground silo after the apocalypse. The first season was a great success, now the filming of season two is underway.

A few days before we meet, Rebecca was at the gala premiere of Dune: Part two in Paris. But while Stellan Skarsgård and the others went to the party, Rebecca had to take the train back to London in order to be there early the next morning at the recording.

-I film basically every day, it's a lot of stress. The others from Dune travel the world and do PR. I'm doing New York, I don't have time anymore.

Still getting starstruck Both Dune and Silo are sci-fi, but it's not like it's a genre that's particularly close to her heart. She says she enjoys the complexity of the worlds depicted and that the Dune films made this accessible in a way that the books they're based on couldn't.

- I like imagination, I'm at an age where you no longer fly on broomsticks. I want to go on adventures, and that's more than fantasy and science fiction.

A few years ago, she married Rory St Clair Gainer, with whom she has a daughter. Rebecca is keen to keep the family out of the limelight, although they sometimes accompany the filming around the world. The husband is a businessman and philanthropist.

Rebecca's work includes filming with mega stars such as Tom Cruise, Meryl Street, Hugh Grant and Hugh Jackman. Can Rebecca still be starstruck? Well, she became that, for example, during the filming of Dune: Part two, when an important role was played by the legendary Christopher Walken.

-I sat on my throne, with a cloth over my face, and did not dare to make eye contact with him. How could I dare speak to him? Then someone said he knows a lot about Marlon Brando, so when I got the chance I asked him to tell me about Brando - and he did.

Rebecca's career has long gone straight up. How does she herself view the successes?

- There are people out there who drive around with scripts and go to castings and never get any roles and who are probably better than I am. I don't mean that I'm bad, I work very hard at what I do.

- But I have never seen a future, I have never predicted that it would be a success. I haven't had sharp elbows to make it in Hollywood. I've wanted to do what I'm doing now for a long time, and it feels like such a damn luxury.

Translated from swedish for @rebeccalouisaferguson

#rebecca ferguson #interview #dune interview #mi7 interview #twq interview #miscellaneous

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