#I feel like the cruelest writer on earth
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The Kingdom of Wishes- A “Wish” Rewrite
Chapter 4- The King and Queen
Chapter 3
Asha is surrounded by a thick cloud of green smoke. She feels dizzy, like she just been spinning for hours, but really that’s just the natural feeling one gets from being magically teleported for the first time.
As the smoke clears, Asha coughs a few times and rubs her eyes. Things start coming into focus and she realizes… She’s inside the castle.
She sees in front of her a huge flight of stairs that goes spiraling upwards for what seems to be forever. The walls are adorned with intricate and perfect details.
The last remaining lights of sunset entered through the large colored glass windows, creating what Asha could only describe as a light show with an array of colors that painted the walls.
She and the royal couple were in front of the main entrance, the door is open and they can hear the fireworks and people celebrating the Wish ceremony outside. The king and queen are standing right behind her, watching as she takes everything in.
As Asha looks up she can only whisper:
“Wow”
(It's exactly like this by the way)
“Marvelous, is it not?” The queen asks in a sigh while walking to be in front of Asha "It's not everyday we bring guests in here. You are quite fortunate, dear."
Asha can't help but notice how it's... Empty. Not in details tho, there's plenty of that all around, but there's no sign of people besides the 3 of them.
"It really is incredible your majesty but umm if you don't mind me asking... Where are the guards? Or the cleaning staff?" Asha asks looking around while taking a few steps forward
"Oh all the guards stay outside only.” Magnifico explains nonchalantly, as he also walks to be next to his wife “As for the cleaning staff, or really any other servant, we have them all leave when the sun starts to set"
"We prefer to have some... privacy in here at night time, if you know what I mean" The queen lets out a laugh as she and her husband gaze passionately at one another.
... "Wow… they not only need to get a room, they need a whole castle" Asha thinks
(Although she's right, another reason they empty the castle at night is so they can be their true selves without witnesses)
“But enough about us, right? Tonight’s about you.” The King smiles, as he playfully boops Asha’s nose “Now, what we want to know from you Asha iiiiiiis-- What in the blazes is that on our window?”
The king looks in bewilderment at something coming out of one of their glass windows that is closer to the ground
(they can be opened when pushed slightly, to let some air come in.)
Asha turns to see what the king is looking at. She sees coming out of the lower window two little… baby goat legs.
Followed by the sound “Maaaaa! Maaaaa!”s she knows so well
“VALENTINO!” Asha screams in surprise, running to get him. “What are you doing here?! I told Dahlia to keep an eye on you!”
Dahlia is unfortunately too busy discussing with Gabo about why they can’t just break in the castle, so she didn’t notice the baby goat went missing.
The two royals silently watch this scene play out, quite unsure how to react, this girl really never ceases to surprise them.
"hehehe- Sorry about that umm your highnesses, this is my baby goat, Valentino" Asha says with an awkward smile while holding Valentino in her arms
"Maaa!" The goat bleats to them cheerfully, but mostly he's just over the moon that he managed to find Asha.
"He says hi too" Asha says while waving one of his hooves to them.
The king smiles, giving a small wave back, finding this quite entertaining so far.
The queen is trying her hardest to keep her fake smile while thinking "please don't let this disgusting thing near me"
"Haha how charming! Say Asha, does he follow you everywhere like that?" The king asks, sounding intrigued.
"Oh yes, since the day he got the hang on how to walk hehe- Last month I went to doodle some animals in a farm, and I found him all alone after his parents were sold out. Sooo I adopted him" She hugs him tightly "And we've been inseparable ever since hehe" the girl says gleefully
The queen can't hold it in any longer and just asks quickly "That's wonderful my sweet, but would you care to leave him outside? A castle is really no place for farm animals"
“Specially THIS castle” The king says while turning his head side to side through the room like he’s looking for something “I believe it may be safer for him to leave, Asha” he says in a warning tone.
Asha tilts her head to the side with a puzzled look "Huh? Why would he not be safe here?"
*GrRrRRrrR*
As if on cue, Asha hears a throaty, low and predatory growl come from behind the stairs
“Because goats just so happen to be OUR pet’s favorite meal” the king explains, smirking ever so slightly, thinking "how ironic" since Asha is their prey as well.
Asha turns to the source of the sound quickly and she sees
An Iberian lynx
(I have a whole post explaining why I choose to give them a lynx instead of a common house cat: Here)
With grey fur covered in spots, and green predatory eyes. Walking slowly towards them, as he approaches, Asha can tell it’s about size of a medium dog.
The wild cat sees Valentino and… now it’s running- FAST-
Asha screams and embraces Valentino tightly.
She closes her eyes and…
Nothing happens.
She looks back, and the cat is frozen mid air, covered by green magic, the king managed to save them just in time.
He uses his staff to levitate the feline closer to him.
“Now now Bravo, is that any way to welcome our guest?” The king says, in a clearly faux reprehending tone.
(I’m aware that the concept art book said their pet cat would be named “Charo” but I opted to change it)
Bravo looks at his owners very confused, isn’t that dinner?
The queen takes the wild cat into her arms, like he’s her baby “Aww my poor sweet pet, you must be starving, but we both know you deserve a meal with more meat on its bones than that.” She carries him to a different room so he won’t interrupt them.
(Please do keep in mind a lynx is huge, and the queen is carrying him with relative ease, because she’s actually physically stronger than one might expect)
Asha is still a bit shaken by the scare.
Meanwhile Valentino is just smiling and wagging his tail, seeing Bravo as a potential new friend, oblivious to the fact he was in danger just a moment ago.
The queen places their pet in a different room and closes the door quickly “Well… How’s that for a welcome commitee huh? hahah” She jokes.
“I… I never knew your majesties had a lynx”
“It's probably for the best he stays a secret, unlike us he's rather... Shy” Shy is a nicer way to say he hates people. "So, will your pet be accompanying us?" The king asks, not really caring what option Asha chooses.
Asha looks at Valentino and thinks for a moment "I'm pretty sure if I did leave him outside he'd just find his way back in anyway. I’d like keep him with me, if that’s okay."
"Oh well, as you wish... And speaking of “wish”, let's talk about the wish that grandfather of yours made, shall we?" The king get's them back on track
(Now, I know this whole animal introduction scene may feel pointless but trust me, these two lil guys will be important later)
The king places a hand on Asha's back and starts walking with her to the huge set of stairs "Now, tell me Asha, his name, what he looked like, what he did for a living" He walks a step of the stairs with each topic he lists off “Anything might help me remember his wish”
All three of them are walking up the stairs, Magnifico and Asha side by side while the queen is behind them.
Asha really doubts the king will remember her Saba’s wish just like that, but might as well give it a shot "Well, his name was Sabino Lucero, he was pretty short, had a big nose and-"
"Sabino you say? hmm... Sabino, Sabi- OH YES! Sabino yes yes of course- yeah I remember him" The king lies, like he has been lying pretty much the whole afternoon.
"Wait re-really?" Asha eyes are wide.
"Yeah really ahaha! Why, I remember the wish I granted to him like it was yesterday!" Magnifico claims excitedly.
Asha is ecstatic, she jumps with joy with Valentino still on her arms "That's great! Then what was it?" She simply can't wait to find out.
"Hahah it's funny how you of all people don't know, since what he wished for was... You" He carefully places his hand under her chin
Asha enthusiasm slowly faded, she kept smiling but she was confused
"Me? What do you mean?"
"He wished to have the most caring, intelligent and graceful granddaughter one day. And now, would you look at that…" The king holds her chin gently and turns her face to one of the many mirrors on the walls "He got exactly what he wished for, didn't he?"
Now, I'm kinda repeating myself at this point saying this is a lie too, but I wanna just add this is a lie he’s veeeery used to telling people, whenever someone comes to him asking why their loved one seemingly passed away without getting their wish granted he just says "Oh they wished for YOU to be in their lives" and that just makes the person content.
Asha isn't like other people though.
She stares at her own reflection... Confused.
"You seem troubled mi rosa, is that not what you expected?" The queen asks, with a fake worried gaze.
What she expected was to get answers, but now she just had more questions: What kind of wish is that? Didn't the king just tell her earlier that a wish is something that defines you? How does that defines Saba? Why didn't he seem fully content? Was she... Was she not good enough?
(Let me just say real quick that if this was a movie this whole paragraph would just be Asha staring at the mirror looking lost, we wouldn't actually hear her thoughts, I'm just telling yall this so you can get a glimpse on where her mind's at)
She could ask those questions to them but... To be fair she really just wants to leave and enjoy the rest of her birthday with her friends, not to mention these two would most likely not know the answers to her questions anyway.
So she just turns to them with a thankful smile "I'm just surprised, it’s all. Thank you for telling me your majesty, I really needed to know, and... I'm sorry for assuming you didn't grant my saba's wish" she gives him a small curtesy
"Oh that's quite alright, people who come here believing the same thing are more common than you'd think" He says with a serene smile, but as Asha lowers her head to give him a curtesy he speaks between his teeth "Though they certainly don't make a scene quite like you did about it."
Asha couldn't quite understand what he mumbled "Sorry, what was that?"
"*cough cough* Sore throat"
"Heh well, this was definitely a crazy birthday experience, thank you again for welcoming me" Asha says as she begins to walk down the stairs towards the exit while still looking at the king and queen "I'll be sure to tell all my friends about-"
B L A M
The main entrance that was previously opened slammed all by itself... Well actually not by itself, as Asha realizes it's glowing with green magic...
Oh... They're not done yet.
"And where do you think you're going?" the queen asks in a sing-song voice "We have not dismissed you just yet, my flower"
"I-I'm sorry, I assumed now that I got the answer to my question I-"
"I invited you to dine with us, remember?" The king explains simply "But that will only be about an hour from now. That leaves us with plenty of time to get to know you better"
"Oh- you were actually serious about the dinner thing? I didn't think-"
He cuts her off again"Aaaand now that we've proved that I DO grant all my people's wishes... Perhaps we could find out what your wish may be, yes?"
Asha looks up to him from the lower steps of the stairs, quite frustrated that they’re back to this subject, she sighs as she says:
"Your majesty, to be honest I wasn't afraid you would't grant my wish. What I'm afraid of is not being the one who controls my own life, the one who achieves my own dreams." She speaks patiently and determined.
Oh the girl has spirit, they can tell.
They just gotta find a way to break it.
And Magnifico might just know how to start.
"Walk with us, will you?" Magnifico says as the two royals start walking up the stairs once more.
Asha follows them, apprehensive.
"Do you know who you remind me of, Asha?" Magnifico asks with a contemplative look in his eyes.
"My father?" She asks, kinda already expecting where this is going.
"No- Well, actually yes him too- but no, that's not where I was getting at" the king corrects her "You actually remind me of my brother."
That is in fact NOT where she expected this was going.
She almost trips on the stairs.
"Wait- K-king Florian? Really?? Tha-thank you! I heard a lot of good things about him" She says feeling flattered, but quickly her eyes lower as she remembers the tragedy of the king's situation "And I'm really sorry for your loss, your majesty."
Asha may've been surprised by the king's statement but the queen was downright dumbfounded that Magnus brought up his brother so casually, she knows how her husband avoids that subject like the plague, specially when they speak with peasants.
Magnifico just winks at his wife as a signal for her to just follow his lead.
"Thank you, Asha. That wound is nothing but a scar of the past now... I say you remind me of him because, much like you, he wanted to make his dreams come true only through his own hard work, even if that meant not taking short cuts or accepting others help, even MY help."
The queen realized where her husband was going with this... And she loved it.
Asha did not tho.
"What was his dream?"
"... The same as mine, to keep our people safe and happy. But he stretched himself too thin, doing everything by himself." Magnifico stoped and turned to look at Asha in the eyes "And look where that got him."
Magnifico worded that to sound like a warning but both him and the queen know it's more of a threat.
"Your majesty... I'm not sure I follow"
"He exhausted himself, worked for this kingdom non-stop until he couldn't take it anymore, and then... I think you can guess." The king fakes an expression of sorrow that could put hollywood actors to shame
"... That's what lead to his passing? I never knew that" Asha says
"We do try to keep it a secret, the truth is far too upsetting." the queen comments, also with a sorrowful expression.
"So you see Asha, THAT's why I grant so many wishes, more than any of the other king that came before me, because I don't want ANYONE in my kingdom to feel the same pain that my brother felt... And I don't want that for you neither, do you understand?"
Queen Amable is actually impressed, her husband just fabricated a whole sob story right then and there on the spot, surely now this girl will consider-
"I understand, but your highness has no need to worry about me." Asha says simply with a smile.
He seems taken aback by that, Asha continues
"I'm sure my wish won't turn out to be something that exhausts me, it'll be something I feel passionate about and that only brings me joy. Thank you for your concern though, I promise I'll be careful to not get carried away in the future.” She explains calmly to reassure him, innocently believing that the king worries about her well being.
Magnifico was rather disappointed, that was his best shot.
Since that didn't work, it's Amaya's turn.
"Something you're passionate about, hmm? How quaint, and what may some of those things be?" The queen says while they keep walking, they’re getting close to the end of the stairs "Anything you're particularly interesting in, a hobby perhaps?"
Asha was actually dreading this subject.
The one thing that she doesn't want to give away for even a second is her passion for drawing.
She can't let them know about it. So she just starts rambling:
"Oooh ya know haha I like umm astronomy, I've actually been pretty studying the constellations a lot lately, and philosophy too, I also love to dance and sing-"
"And you draw, correct?" the queen asks with a confident smile.
Asha is so caught so off guard by that she misses one of the steps and almost falls down the stairs, that doesn't happen only because Magnifico catches her with his magic.
"Should we take that as a yes?" he asks sarcastically
Asha turns to the queen in disbelief... HOW DID SHE KNOW?!
"H-how did you know??"
The queen laughs at her reaction "You told us yourself, my dear"
"I- I did? When?"
"Just when your goat entered, you explained to us how you met him: “I went to doodle some animals at a farm”” the queen quotes Asha, making a slightly more high pitched voice.
"... Ah... Yeah, I did say that." She sounds defeated.
Now it was the king's turn to be impressed, he didn't even pay attention to what the girl was saying at that time. His wife always had a knack for reading people like an open book, and use that to pick up on their weaknesses.
"Well now, that's something we can work with, isn't it my love?" The queen says looking at her husband with an malicious glee.
"Why, yes indeed, I don't understand why you didn't tell us sooner Asha" The king says enthusiastically "Say, why don't you wish to be a great art-"
"No" she says firmly "That's the one thing I can't wish for, your majesty"
She can’t see the king’s face because he’s still walking up the stairs, so she doesn’t see him roll his eyes"... And why is that, Asha?"
Asha thinks about the promise she made for her grandfather, she thinks about how this is important to her, and how her friends said she's been improving a lot by herself... Wait... HER FRIENDS!
"My friends know I wish to be a great artist! So umm guess I can't give you that wish, because of the rules haha" Her voice is a bit more nervous but also relieved she can safely keep this wish with her.
"Ah I see, what a shame really, guess it's back to square one" The king says as they keep going up the stairs as they approach a large door
"I suppose it's for the best, would't want waste a wish on something so trivial as scribbling on paper like a child, now would you?" The queen states bluntly.
Asha frowns at that comment.
"Excuse me my queen, but drawing is way more tha-"
"We're here!" The king exclaims, as Asha realizes they're at the end of the stairs now, and there's a huge door in front of them
The king opens it, revealing a dark room that is only illuminated by faint bluish lights, and at the center of the room there’s
A miniature of Rosas
“… And what is “here” exactly?” Come to think of it, she never asked where they were guiding her to.
“Our treasure room, where we keep our most prized possessions, gifted to us by grateful adventurers or neighboring kingdoms” Magnifico explains as his voice echos through the large room.
Asha lets go of Valentino, she’s quite tired after carrying all the way up here.
Valentino happily hops away to explore.
The queen sees Asha letting him down and worriedly tries to intervene “Umm actually Asha dear, this may not be the best place to-“
Valentino slams his head on a pillar with a pair of glass slippers, making one of them fall and break into a million pieces.
The queen can only sigh in frustration
“Sorry sorry, I’ll get him back" Asha tries running to catch him but the king grabs her by the hand quicker and pulls her closer to him
“No no no, it's fine, let him play, I can fix these with magic later anyway” He rests his arm on her shoulders and brings her closer to the table with the miniature kingdom of Rosas “Now Asha, I know we’ve been rather… pushy with this whole wish thing.”
“That’s an understatement” Asha mumbles to herself.
"BUT- and hear me out- I think all you need is a bit more... Perspective on what Rosas really is all about"
With that said, he snaps his fingers, making a bunch of wooden dolls appear on the miniature Rosas, Asha recognizes some of them as citizens of Rosas she has seen before.
(They look like Quasimodo's wood figures)
"Oh wow" Asha takes one of the dolls to give it a closer look, admiring the craftsmanship "Did you make these?" She asks, sounding very impressed.
"Why, yes I did." He affirmed proudly.
(With his magic, in the snap of his fingers, but hey semantics)
The queen approaches them "You see, each and every one of our subjects are a little piece of art, that we want to see evolve into their fullest potential." She says with a passion in her voice.
"And... That includes you, Asha." The king says as he manifests in his hands a little wooden doll that looks just like Asha.
(Because that's not creepy at all)
He hands the doll over to her, she looks at it with downcast eyes.
"*sigh* To be honest, I don't know how other people my age manage find their way so quickly... I just really don't know what I could wish for, you know?"
While she's lamenting to the doll the queen walks to the entrance to close the door...
Magnifico is toying around with some of the puppets as he says with a smile "Aww I know child, I know. It can be sooo hard for some of us to find our way in this life... luckily though, you have us to..."
Queen Amable closes the door with a slam.
All the lights in the room go off.
It's all dark now.
Asha let's out a gasp
The king snaps his fingers, casting a light only on him and the queen, who's now right by his side.
"Enlighten you."
I promised this chapter would have a villain song, didn't I? :)
Welp, I was inspired by a deleted song from Equestria Girls 3… because of course I went to look for inspiration there, Equestria Girls have banger soundtracks!
Here’s a link to my blog with only the lyrics without me describing what’s happening in the scene, as well as the song that inspired it, “Free the Magic (Demo)”.
I’ll do my best to be brief describing what’s happening during this sequence, so without further ado
It’s villain song o’clock
Lines in green- King Magnifico 🫧
Lines in Blue- Queen Amaya 👑
Lines in bold white- Puppets 🎎
Lines in purple- Asha ✨
Lines in orange- Me (commentary)
Wish Away
You've been an outcast in this land
For far too long
It's time you show to them
That Rosas's where you belong
There's a wish in you
That just cannot wait to soar
So tell us, Asha
What do you wish for?
(Not much happening here besides them just singing in front of Asha melodically and looking pretty angelic with the light shining on them.)
THINK!
But before you answer
Look around and just see where you're from
From a kingdom with no sadness, no pain or dismay
And it's all because they
Wished away
(When the king says “Think” he boops her nose, and with the same finger he raises her head to look at him while saying “But before you answer”. When he says “See where you’re from” he guides her to look at the kingdom’s miniature, as he lists off all the bad things that the kingdom does not have he makes a spell that brings all the dolls to life)
(aah-ah, aah-ah, aah-ah)
(He holds three little puppets on his hand, right in front of Asha’s face, Asha is surprised to see them singing and dancing now, going side to side on the king’s hand)
MAY
I give a suggestion?
What you lack might be just
Some self reflection
You don't know who you are
So how could you ever go as far
To know what's your purpose in life?
(When the queen says “May” she scares Asha by showing up right behind her out from the darkness. “Some self reflection” the queen places a mirror in front of Asha’s face, she caresses Asha’s face while looking sorry for her. Asha also looks upset)
(aah-ah, aah-ah, aah-ah)
(Asha is staring at the mirror before Magnifico takes it from her, takes a quick look at himself, then throws it away before he starts singing his verse)
Strife and hard work is fine, dear
But it's oh, so much easier
If you give me that wish of yours
Think just how far you'll go
Once that wish is mine-
I mean ours! I mean yours
hehehe
(He waves dismissively at what he says in the first line. Asha tries to distance herself from him, so he pulls her closer to him by her arms at “give me that wish of yours”. At "how far you'll go" (ha! Moana reference) Asha manages to struggle out of his grip and walks a few steps away from him, with an annoyed expression (Like what is it with this creep and touching her?), she has her back turned to him until she hears the slip up “That wish is mine”, she turns back in confusion, but the king promptly corrects his mistake, letting out at the end a laugh, not a nervous laugh tho, more like a playful one. Also when he says "ours" he means him and his wife, that wish won't be Asha's at all.)
And what about your future?
Will it be just some doodles, my dear?
There's much more you can achieve (thanks to me)
So forget with no-
Forget with no regret
(The queen takes Asha's sketchbook from the purse she carries on her belt, at the second line she's practically bullying the poor girl now, flipping some pages and looking at it like it’s worthless trash. She throws away the book, Asha runs to catch it, but when she crouches down to grab it there's a hand coming from the darkness who does it first, the king get's illuminated by his own spotlight as he says "Thanks to me" and offers Asha her sketchbook back, Asha pulls it away from his hand and hugs it tightly. Asha goes to talk to the queen, she looks quite angry, but at "So forget with no-" when her voice is about to come out the queen places a finger in front of her mouth, demanding silence, she's not finished, so after Asha closes her mouth again the queen looks at her pleased and continues what she was saying "Forget with no regret"... The kingdom's memo)
I don't know what I want, I've never knew
Too many pains to count, so much I've been through
But I know a wish will be for me to grant
So thanks for offering, but I need no enchant
(Asha says the first line with a thoughtful and sad gaze as she looks at the small kingdom on the table, she's hugging her sketchbook tightly. As she says "Too many pains to count" she opens her sketchbook on a page showing her and her grandfather together, and with "So much I've been through" she caresses the page fondly. She puts herself back together, no longer looking sad but determined, and puts her sketchbook back in her purse as she turns to face the royal couple, who are now just standing next to one another just smiling at her serenely. She looks at them and explains once more "A wish will be for me to grant" which makes their smiles drop slightly, and as she says the last line she starts walking back to the door they came in, she's DONE with them, and she wants to leave)
(Oh... But they were only beginning, just singing to her is not working? Then it's time to bring out the big guns...
Magnifico's eyes glow green, as he casts an illusion spell on her)
Little one, I don't think that you comprehend
(Asha hears the queen sing and feels her world spinning for a second, she blinks a few times and now she's no longer in the treasure room with them, she's IN THE KINGDOM'S MODEL, and as she looks at her hands she realizes... She's now made of wood, and her hair is made of brown wool strings.)
(Your wish will be the king’s command)
(Asha hears voices from behind her, she looks back and see a group of wooden dolls of citizens of Rosas approaching, now they're just as tall as her, or rather, she's as tall as them, because once she looks up she sees...)
With my magic I can make all that pain
end
(The king and queen are now giants looking down on her, smiling in what can only be described as expressions of fake pity. King Magnifico's eyes are glowing green)
(You can be one of us)
(The dolls keep getting closer and closer, she starts to run away from them, understandably terrified, she runs to one of the miniature houses)
If you let us help you
Just wait and see
(The queen sings melodically, very entertained by the girls suffering. Asha tries to open the door of the house but ...)
(You should be pleased)
(once she does, there's more dolls inside, they all sing in unison, smiling at her as they try to grab her, she tries to look up at the royal couple with pleading eyes, begging them to just stop whatever this is)
I have a hunch this wish
Shall set you free
(The king shrugs with a smirk on his face, he looks directly at her pleading eyes, as he's basically saying "Give me your wish, and I'll make this go away")
(free, free, free)
(More and more dolls pile up to catch her, Asha manages to struggle her way out of their grasp, and goes back to running somewhere, ANYWHERE)
Is this really the hill I'll die on?!
(Now, this expression means "An issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded focus, with little or no regard to the cost." and that quite perfectly summarizes Asha's conviction to grant her own wish, but now, for the first time, she's starting to question if it's really worth it)
(Wish a-way, wish a-way)
(Asha keeps running... This situation actually reminds her of how she often felt in Rosas, like she didn't belong, she just wishes she could make people happy... wait...)
There is no hope for you
No stars to wish upon
(Okay this line is the one I'm less confident in, since in previous scenes I didn't find a natural way to fit in them talking about stars, but gosh darn I'll keep this in here because its ironic, also JUST YOU WAIT UNTIL STAR BOY LEARNS ABOUT THIS AMAYA)
(Wish a-way, wish a-way)
(Does what she's thinking about count as a wish? She thinks as she's now climbing the base of the castle, trying to get away from the dolls)
Should I give up on my integrity?
(This line ends on a long high note btw, she's running for her life but by gosh she's gonna sing her heart out... Also yeah she's questioning if she should give up on her principles)
(Give it away, You cannot get away)
(The dolls are climbing after her, there's nowhere else to go until... Magnifico's hand pushes the dolls away, but it's not to help her oh no no... He lost his patience.)
I am the ONLY ONE
Who'll end your MISERY
So come on! Wish away
SO YOU MAY FIND YOUR WAY
(The king looks and sounds deranged, much like Chris Pine sounded like at the end of "This is the thanks I get", he's yelling a lot more than he's singing, and as his hand goes to catch Asha she sees no other choice than to yell)
OKAY!
(She closes her eyes tightly, waiting for the impact of the king's hand...)
Her eyes are shot open, she blinks quickly like she just woke up from a nightmare...
A nightmare she can't remember.
She can tell that something happened... Something really scary, but she can't remember what.
All she feels now are the effects of having your mind bend by dark magic.
"W-what happened? Uhg... My head… It hurts..." she stumbles to the side, Amable catches her just before she trips over because of the overwhelming dizziness. Amaya holds her still by the arms… Asha notes that the queen has a pretty strong grip.
“Oh you poor thing, you must be tired, that’s all.” The queen coos in that same motherly tone she so commonly uses, Asha was about to ask them why would she feel so exhausted all of the sudden, but the queen interrupts “So, are you ready to tell us sweetheart?”
Asha looks at her puzzled, still feeling slightly dizzy.
“… Tell you what?”
“Your wish.” The king says a few steps away from them, sounding slightly out of breath.
Asha looks at him and notices his hair is now messy and he’s supporting himself on the table to stand up, he’s breathing like he just ran a marathon.
(Dark magic can mess you up, don’t do it kids)
He takes a deep breath and very quickly puts himself back together, slicking his hair back to it's original look.
“Come now, don’t tell me you already forgot? You’re supposed to forget it only after you give it to me.” He chuckles darkly.
What are they talking about? Why would Asha know wha- wait… But she does know. The idea pops in her head like it was already there, she remembers now.
“… Yes… I do have a wish.”
Chapter 5
Final Thoughts
Boy oh boy, I sure wonder if that diner they promised is actually gonna happen or if it was just a lie, I’m sure you all can’t wait to find that out!
Guys, please believe me when I say hurting Asha is hurting me too! But I swear I’ll make it up to her once Aster comes down and brings all the serotonin she needs!! Aster is currently kicking his feet and screaming that he’s not in the story yet and can’t bring some much needed wholesome vibes.
Okay, oh my god, this chapter was so hard for me, I had a bunch of ideas I scrapped because I realized they would take too much time, but it turned out perfectly. We have the two villains try their own methods of manipulation, Magnifico trying to make Asha feel sorry for him, and Amaya using Asha’s own words against her. Both failed, so they resort to the method all Disney villains use to get what they want from the protagonist… VILLAIN SONG:
I got soooo excited when I had the idea of making this whole chapter take place on the same stairs Movie Magnifico goes through in “This is the thanks I get” and then get them to the room with the little puppets! AND THEN HAVE ASHA BE TURNED INTO A LITTLE DOLL TO REPRESENT HOW TO THEM SHES SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS AND HOW THEY HAVE THE WHOLE KINGDOM IN THE PALM OF THEIR HANDS AND SHE'LL SOON JOIN THEM-
Ya know I think it was neat :3
But anyway what do you think?
Try guessing what Asha’s wish was, no it wasn’t anything to do with drawing, don’t worry... Actually do worry, worry a lot, things will still be dark in the next chapter as Asha learns the truth about what the king and queen really do with the wishes... BUT HEY AT LEAST AFTER THAT SHE WISHES UPON A CERTAIN STAR SO THERE'S A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNEL WOOOH!
Oh also, I'll probably not be posting as frequently from now on because I'll start working after tomorrow.
Thank You For Reading!
#disney wish#wish#wish 2023#wish star#wish asha#wish disney#wish movie#wish rewrite#king magnifico#queen amaya#amaya x magnifico#wish reimagined#asha#Pray for Asha#I feel like the cruelest writer on earth#long post#long reads#kingdom of wishes
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I've been through three possible starter drafts of chapter 11 for The Monsters of Paris and I've hit a bit of a wall, so I'm going to ramble a bit below the cut to get some random thoughts out.
Been thinking about things. Overthinking other things. Making myself cry. You know, normal writer stuff.
Right now, I've been thinking about Plagg. I don't know if I'll go into full detail in the story why Plagg absolutely despises demons and forbids all low-beings from approaching his holders, so I guess I could say something here.
Plagg is the honorary King of Demons in the story, and once upon a time he loved the title. He took pleasure in being King, particularly because he enjoyed the largest following compared to other kwami - the most followers, the most diverse followers - and he could rub that fact in everyone else's faces. His love for demons and dark creatures went as far as to let some of them slip through the cracks when he should have been destroying them properly. Past holders had difficulty forcing him to fight demons.
That's very different from present day of the story, where Plagg despises low-beings. He hates demons.
The reason he hates them now is kind of sad.
We've already met Prince Ophelia, the demon Prince of Destruction who devoured Lord Plague's heart. Plagg had been bound to Lord Plagg the entire time his holder had been mad with rage and grief. Plagg had been forced to feel everything while Lord Plague was being eaten alive from the inside out. If pain and suffering had been the only things inflicted, Plagg might have been able to bring himself to forgive, or at the very least accept, what had happened as natural - demons are, after all, naturally occurring parasites designed to eat away at the most toxic traits of humanity to prevent them from spreading out of control and infecting others. They are, in essence, necessary evils.
But Prince Ophelia is a Prince, meaning she had eaten the entirety of Lord Plague's heart. He died. Thanks to her, he's dead dead.
Plagg is a god. He knows that every single human he chooses to be his champion will die. There are no exceptions. As a kwami, Plagg will never pass on into an afterlife. His existence is tied to the universe itself - he will exist for as long as the universe exists, and he will cease to exist when the universe finally goes dark. Although it hurts every time he loses one of his champions, he usually takes comfort in the idea that his champions will continue to exist elsewhere after their life on Earth is expired. Somehow. Someway. They are elsewhere in a place he cannot reach. Cannot see them. Touch them. Speak with them. But they are there, and that's enough.
Except Lord Plague.
Prince Ophelia ate his heart. When Lord Plague died, there was nothing left to pass on. He simply ceased to exist. No afterlife, no peace. No hope that Plagg could hold on to that his champion was out there somewhere. Just nothingness.
That loss has festered with Plagg for centuries, growing into hate for demons and low-beings, especially for Prince Ophelia and everything she represents to him. She's the cruelest thing of all - Plagg can't kill her, because killing her would destroy the last vestige of Lord Plague left in the world, but every moment that she continues to exist is a reminder of what she took from Plagg...
So, Plagg is forced to continue being the King of Demons to subjects he now despises while holding on to a festering eternal hatred for demons he has no intention of ever letting go.
Yeah, so that's what I've been musing about lately. Background stuff. I doubt that I'll ever go into detail about this in the story, so it's nice to expand on these little background points here. I feel like it rounds out Plagg as a character a little more. ^_^
#story musings#The monsters of Paris#a werecat in london#Miraculous monsters & magic#fanfiction#spoilers?#not really#just background#i just wanted to write
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Actual People.
The Abyss: Seeking Permission Through Onscreen Humiliation
For femme triple threats—actors/writers/directors—the subject of humiliation, embarrassment, and debasement is both limiting and empowering.
Long, Interesting.
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09 NOV 2023
Actual People (Kit Zauhar, 2021).
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Humiliation is one of humanity’s cruelest jokes, one of its most repugnant punishments. The Latin root of the word, “humus,” translates to “earth,” or “dirt,” the idea that a person loses dignity and returns to something inhuman, crude and trampled on. The fear of being humiliated is a specter persuasive enough to shrink whole personalities, curtail ambitions, end life as someone knew it. Many mainstream filmmakers avoid its narrative possibilities because, maybe, to degrade a character would mean to degrade the film itself. I don’t think that’s the case. To see humiliation depicted onscreen can be like witnessing a corpse flower blooming: compelling, strange, beautiful; yet you’re very glad you’re not in the room during its unfurling.
I’ve always been drawn to films that allow the power of humiliation to overcome a character; my filmmaking in both ambition and practice have been shaped by my yen to explore this unspoken taboo. And I’ve discovered several role models in quest who shared my goals, my ethos, even my gender. When I looked at the debuts of the femme filmmakers I admired, I found that many of them wrote, directed, and starred in the projects that helped launch their careers. So I did it as well. And I did find some validation with my first feature Actual People (2021), in which I play a “faildaughter,” a young and often middle-to-upper-middle-class femme protagonist who is a bit of a virtuoso when it comes to self-humiliation. When confronted with challenges (ones that are notably padded by a level of financial security), the faildaughter will zig when she should zag, have weird and sad sex when she should abstain, and quit like a coward when it’s not even that taxing to persevere (the most popular example is probably Phoebe Waller-Bridge's eponymous Fleabag, whose adventures in incompetence were not only compelling, but relatable).
At the beginning of a filmmaker’s career, there are fewer eyes on their projects and therefore little to no expectations, bringing about the chaotic combination of more creative freedom with few people who want to be involved. This leads to some artists, either brazenly or defiantly, jumping into the role of the “triple threat,” meaning that they write, direct, and star in their own film (I’m co-opting this phrase from theater, in which the term refers to a performer who can act, dance, and sing).
A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971).
On the other much longer end of the spectrum, there were the male triple threats who came in the form of charismatic cowboy legends (Clint Eastwood), neurotic intellectuals (Woody Allen, Nanni Moretti), mumblecorers like Joe Swanberg and Andrew Bujalski, and legends like Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin. The range of the masculine triple threat seems endless; they’ve been heroes, lady wooers, assholes, good-intentioned guys, lovable normies, leeches, losers, sometimes all within one movie. And they continue to be.
This is not true for many, most, of the contemporary woman writer/director/actors. Each of their worlds and their bodies in their worlds tell a more unified story: more often than not, a story of embarrassment, social faux pas, ungraceful but earnest attempts to assert their importance in a world that seems to not want anything to do with them. Particularly, the films that begin a femme triple threat’s oeuvre feel like they were born out of a singular primordial organism, squirming, writhing, already mortified at the prospect of being alive on this earth.
In A New Leaf (1971), pioneer Elaine May’s first film that she writes, directs, and stars in, she plays a bumbling cash cow, easy prey for a narcissistic and soon-to-be-broke buffoon. Issa Rae was first the “Awkward Black Girl,” constantly and gracelessly in distress. In Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), Miranda July’s unnerving portrayal of an aspiring video artist bares her tenderness like an open wound for the world to prod at. Of course, there’s Lena Dunham, first getting fucked in a construction tube in Tiny Furniture (2010) by a guy who is somehow insidiously nonchalant, then in Girls (2012-2017) wading in the tepid bathwater of shame, lingering in it till she shivered with cold.
Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1997).
In many of these films, there’s a self-reflexive, almost meta quality to the narratives. The protagonists are seen lurching through life in search of meaning and acceptance, simulating, we assume, similar struggles to those of the real-life filmmaker. At the same time, the artists seem to view the act of filmmaking itself as a means of self-searching and self-definition, a process of translating their lived experiences into something with technical and emotional resonance. Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior (2014) explores a desperate and delusional Brooklynite going to great lengths to win her ex back, playing a woman so embarrassing even her family winces at her antics. Cheryl Dunye’s Watermelon Woman (1997) shows a young, aspiring filmmaker invalidated by the faux liberalism of racist academia, navigating a dead-end job, and enduring the cringe-inducing scrutiny of her interracial relationship. Joanna Arnow’s work, including her short film Bad at Dancing (2015),and her recent fiction feature debut The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023), put her deadpan persona front and center of all manners of sexual, social, and even familial debasement in the name of trying to understand where and how she fits into the various communities and relationships she sees as making the mundanity of her life worthwhile. A review in IndieWire by Ryan Lattanzio characteristically cites her “willingness to degrade herself on camera.”
This all seems counterintuitive if you want to establish yourself as an auteur worth investing in. This promise of a big future has unfortunately become the primary marker of a successful debut: not necessarily what has been accomplished but how quickly your larger and more expensive follow-up is announced. If that’s the case, why would a femme triple threat not position themselves as some kind of glamorous maneater, a very “strong and powerful” lady, or at least some pensive ingenue who the camera always seems to catch in the most soft and flattering lighting? We know that actors are not their characters, but the boundaries of identity become blurrier when the actor is writing the part for herself (and oftentimes there is a level of auto-fictitiousness to the plot). And unfortunately, I don’t think the world is ready for a woman triple threat who makes films about how amazing her onscreen personas are. I think, actually, that woman would receive a record-breaking number of death threats. But women still need to make movies, and they still need to be seen.
When I considered the emotional scaffolding of my character in Actual People, I knew that the foundation would be forged from embarrassment, exploring a character who was flailing and failing, self-absorbed while lacking self-awareness, wanting so openly and grotesquely that her desire felt like an infection other people didn’t want to catch. This was, perhaps paradoxically, the easiest way for me to get what I wanted for my career: a premiere, an audience, streaming, the next project. It had to be through the tactics of self-degradation.
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2023).
I often received the question of why did I want to act in my own project, especially as an overstretched, struggling indie filmmaker on a dismal (or, in industry parlance, “micro”) budget? I have a lot of answers I give, about liking to act and the justification of my theater background, the scarcity of roles for racially ambiguous actors, et cetera. But if I’m considering the conception of femme triple threats as a whole, I wonder if my multi-part participation is a declaration of an artist’s complete and total competence. Not only can this woman write and direct, the triple-threat suggests, but she can carry a film with her presence.
This notion of self-sufficiency is crucial. If you are making your first film without the privilege of being a nepo baby or a pre-established industry darling via connections, previous jobs, or dating the right person at the right time, you are casting “no-name” actors (a phrase I believe should be banished from the casting glossary, but I know I have no sway). Without access to more established performers who oftentimes don’t want to take a chance on a first-time filmmaker, casting prospects can become quite bleak. The alternative to hiring known actors is a widespread process like an online casting call, which could attract upwards of hundreds of eager actors, most of whom are far from qualified for the available role. So, the filmmaker decides she’ll just do it herself. And the femme triple threat is born.
There is also some comfort in knowing that if the film is poorly received, as so many independent endeavors threaten to be at some stage of production, you’re not putting another young woman’s image in jeopardy. Onscreen nudity was and continues to be a serious consideration with my films. I thought, If I’m not willing to get naked for my own story, why should another actress? Especially for a young woman who is “unknown” as a performer, nudity in an indie film can feel exploitative, risqué for the sake of it, a film school formula to show some level of seriousness for the project (for example: black-and-white, grainy film + naked waifish woman = something French-looking and therefore “art”). But this sense of an auteur bearing all for her own project, emotionally or physically or both, has the impression of a riskier gamble. She’s putting herself, her dignity, on the line. At least if the gamble doesn’t pay off, she only has herself to pick back up.
Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham, 2010).
In a New Yorker article about two seminal pieces of vulnerable and all-bearing woman-made works, Girls and Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? (2010), Anna Holmes writes, “The passions provoked by the show—among both critics and admirers—suggest something both refreshing and a little startling: that a pop-culture product that focuses mostly on women and intimate, sometimes gruesome details of their lives, is still considered a provocation.”
The provocation comes from a general audience being shocked that they are meant to take the minutiae of a woman's worldview seriously because of the attention and seriousness the material is shown by the artist herself. Let’s say that a film or show chronicles female friendship on a microscopic level, we see how these characters interact, we become privy to their inside jokes, we understand their past even if we did not participate in it. Many mainstream films use female friendships as easy plot devices. Femme friends are side characters good for a few quips, blatant foils to the protagonist, or sexy foreshadowing to preempt the betrayal of a stolen fiancé. But that doesn’t have to be the case. If a filmmaker takes the time to make an audience understand the intricacies of a friendship, that this bond is as powerful and complex as romantic love, then whether that friendship survives or how this intimacy changes becomes crucial to the plot, energy, and point of the story. The artist is saying that the character's friendship, however trivial one could disregard it as, is not only important, but necessary, to making the film go forward. It’s being taken seriously, and therefore there are aesthetic, tonal, and technical considerations to be made. Maybe in the real world this “storyline” wouldn’t even be given the dignity of narrative, but on screen the minutiae of so many women’s lives (people’s lives!) gets its moment of glory.
There’s the argument that in a sexist landscape people don’t necessarily want women to succeed, so it’s easier for a woman to make work that debases herself before someone else can on their own terms. There is perhaps some truth to that, but there’s a big difference between self-flagellation that elicits pity and vulnerability in the name of self-empowerment. These films, which I believe succeed most magnificently when they make me cringe, squirm, die a little inside, and rebirth me into a more receptive and courageous thinker, are definitely not interested in pity. They demand to be on an equal playing field of empathy. The vision feels more sacred, like modern martyrdom. To put yourself so vulnerably on screen, and to do so knowing there is a high possibility of condemnation, is a sacrifice, but at least it’s one that the artist is in control of. Unfortunately, unfairly, maybe being a woman means having a body always on the precipice of some kind of sacrifice, and you can either accept it or let someone else take control of the ritual. The lore of legendary filmmaking is rife with horror stories of women who allowed a male director to take control of their body and psyche. They gave themselves up for a vision that was deemed greater than their individual suffering, but the films don’t necessarily honor this unnecessary loss. If a film actually necessitates a sacrifice from a woman, shouldn’t she make it for the sake of her own vision and ideals?
Appropriate Behavior (Desiree Akhavan, 2014).
To sacrifice something means that the thing given up has power and value. To degrade someone means that that person also holds in them the potential to be venerated. You don’t knock someone down unless there is the threat that they can destroy you. When humiliation is given the spotlight, it is deemed something worth filming and showing the world; even the smallest acts surpass trivialization—there is this uncompromising humanness that must be recognized, like someone has just been stripped bare in front of you and you mourn in real time that you have no covering to offer them. After all, can’t “humus,” earth, dirt, imply a person has been brought down to the most fundamental forms of existence? The film’s stakes, however small, become charged, brutal, meaningful, and you’re a part of them. You understand them. Perhaps without the audience ever fully realizing it, the woman on screen who they thought was so pathetic and unruly has gained full control of the viewer's attention and empathy. And maybe even respect.
In 2022 Elaine May, already long considered a legend, received an honorary Oscar. Akhavan went on to win Sundance. Issa Rae recently won the Trailblazers Peabody Award. There are countless other successes from these artists that once bared all and asked for nothing but someone to watch them in return. They are more than respected, they’re revered, lauded, canon. They let their onscreen personas have the most awkward sex, cry over bad decisions, suffer, fail at the easiest things, get taken advantage of, have their hearts broken by the wrong people, and a thousand more humiliations. And we took them seriously too.
At the same time, May hadn’t been able to make a movie since 1987 because she was continuously stifled by the patriarchal bureaucracy of the studio system. The gender disparity in Hollywood is still abysmal. Among the dozens of successful women auteurs I admire, some of whom I have the privilege of knowing personally, I know the struggle for funding, validity, and respect can be as difficult as when they first started out. As I attempt to get my third film off the ground, the prospect of acting in my own project feels not only like a financial hindrance, but potentially spiritually draining; I wonder if there would be anything left of me once I call the final “cut.” After all, sacrificing yourself over and over again is fucking exhausting.
Kit Zauhar
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Associationism: A postmortem for liberal decency
In the last half decade, liberal political writing has undergone a profound seachange. This has infected all strata of media: from braindead outlets like Adbusters, to intentionally digestible pap such as USA Today, to our august papers of record (only two of which remain; one is owned by the world’s richest man), all the way up to self-styled intellectual journals and peer-reviewed scholarship. This change can even be found in literal children’s media and grade school curricula. It deserves to be examined.
For lack of a better term, I refer to this shift as an adoption of associationism. Cause and effect has been abandoned as an analytical frame. The devices that used to be relied upon to adjudicate cause and effect, such as scientific method, statistical analysis, balanced reporting, and even basic “X leads to Y” logic, have likewise been marked as problematic vectors of evil.
Now, you might say this has been a long time coming. Scientific method has been used to design and excuse a bevy of historical wrongs, and balanced reporting is often deployed to obscure morally unambiguous phenomena. Those are fair points, but an astute observer will notice that these adjudication mechanisms are still deployed within liberal discourse, just that they are now used only selectively. Rigor and attention to context are now considered problematic--white, male, cis-normative, whatever--and this allows for otherwise inherently evil mechanisms of truth adjudication to be deployed only when they are guaranteed to enforce the desired narrative, often by writers who are shamelessly fabricating evidence. I mean, why not? It’s fascism to be fact checked, after all.
Importantly, moral and factual correctness have become collapsed into one another. A statement or belief is True to the extent that it is Right, and vice versa. There exist no confounding variables or contradictory phenomena. The liberal writer’s job, therefore, is to center their own subjective perception (referred to as “lived experience”) or the subjective perception of someone in a supposedly more marginalized position, and then craft a narrative that puts this perception beyond all moral (and therefore factual) reproach.
The liberal writer’s process is, generally, as follows:
Zero in on a moral outrage of some kind, be it pressing and manifest or petty and completely subjective--everything has the same weight within this frame.
Narrate this outrage via the “lived experience” of a subject who shares the writer’s opinion.
Cherrypick a handful of statistics, studies, or expert opinions that appear to lend validity to the writer’s understanding of the outrage, being careful to ignore any context or ambiguities that might soften or even fully discredit the outrage.
Demonize anyone or anything that problematizes--through their opinions or their existence--the writer’s understanding of the outrage. This is achieved typically by associating the problematizer with supposedly empowered groups, who are evil.
Clarify in no uncertain terms: anyone who does not share this outrage is a member of the evil groups, even if they are very literally not a member of those groups.
This has all been framed as a form of radical moral clarity, providing space for marginalized voices to express their once-unutterable truths, which will in turn bring about the changes this country desperately needs. But, oh no, it turns out that every media organization in this country is stolidly against any actual reform. All of our major presses and news outlets are still owned by austere capitalist psychos, including the aforementioned richest human being in the history of the world. Universities are still MBA-run shitholes that would have students march into incinerators the moment that doing so became more profitable than providing them with resources for identity affirmation. And media aggregation--the manner through which words appear before people’s eyes, 90-odd percent of the time via a screen--is controlled by a small handful of the most megalomaniacal companies on earth.
So, while we have indeed radically changed our practices of communication and truth adjudication, doing so has not resulted in any radical social changes, or even really any structural changes whatsoever. We’ve just made it radically more difficult to come to an honest understanding of the causes of social malignancies, which in turn has made it radically more easy for the vampires who run this country to make everyone else’s lives radically worse. Radical, dude!
There is no idea so cruel or horrible that it cannot be made to appear progressive under this new frame. Come up with any hypothetical, no matter how evil, and within a few seconds a media-savvy reader should be able to fashion an adequately woke headline:
Hypothetical examples:
Abolishing school lunch programs: “Should We Really Be Nourishing White Bodies?”
Pro-female genital mutilation: “The Inherent Transphobia of Those Who Oppose ‘Female Circumcision.’”
Let’s start using napalm again: “Once Considered an Effective Tool of Precision Warfare, Napalm Was Demonized by Those Who Fear Non-Normative Bodies”
Indian Residential Schools: “Sheltered From Whiteness, These Communities Were a Place Where Native Excellence Could Thrive”
Here we see the Associative aspect of Associationism. Cause and effect no longer exist, and so malignancy is a contagion, the result of the presence of bad people who cause badness. Members of statistically majoritarian groups are presumed to be empowered, and therefore oppressive. And since majoritarian groups contain by definition a majority of people, you will be sure to find their members among the detractors of your position. And even if the members of that majority make up a minority of your detractors, that’s still okay, because context is a white supremacist construct used to obscure moral clarity, and you just so happen to be the arbiter of morality by virtue of being yourself.
Now, to be fair, not every piece written in this style is done in the pursuit of abject evil. Some are, but a solid plurality are instead written in an attempt to remediate a genuine social wrong. The trouble is, they’re being printed in venues controlled by people who do not desire reform; written in thrall to a political party that does not desire reform; and reliant upon the subjective perspectives of academics, politicians, and NGO bloodsuckers who do not desire reform. This leads, inevitably, to an understanding of social problems that occludes all possibility of reform, only now the discoursal boundaries are so droolingly retarded that you cannot mention the fact that these discussions do not contain even a hypothetical description of how reform might take place.
The point is, radically altering the manner in which social problems are understood, measured, and discussed does not lead--automatically or otherwise--to those social problems being positively addressed. Shifting rhetorical frames can be a precondition for change, yes, but it can just as easily be a means of calcifying the status quo. Unequivocally, our embrace of associationism has accomplished the latter.
We can easily discern the utility of associationism so far as our elite castes are concerned: it’s getting harder and harder to simply deny the existence of malignancies, so instead let’s just insist that everyone understand them in the dumbest possible way. Their popularity among the non-elites is due primarily to American Puritanism: the more upsetting and uncomfortable something makes us feel, the more we assume it must be working.
But Puritanism is a two-way street, and the true believers tend to be the ones at the base of the food chain. Regular folx will go through the motions in an earnest desire to do something, anything, to cleanse themselves of whatever horrible brutality video they found on their timeline this morning. They can be annoying, but you can’t blame them. The real malignancy of associationism is how it’s allowed a small group of conniving cocksuckers a means of enhancing their professional status by making their cruelest impulses appear progressive.
I started this essay with the intention of digging deep into Chris Lehmann’s abominable TNR piece in which he insists that the men driven mad and homeless after participating in our genocide in Vietnam were actually doing greviance politics. By the time I finished, he had been very thoroughly destroyed. I still think it’ll be worth the effort to do a deep dive to show the machinations of his horrific essay, but has already gone long so I’ll save that for later this week.
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My Born Again Review
Note: I basically just copy/paste my review of the show that I wrote over @ MDL but I thought I’d share it with the kdrama community on here as well.
First things first: Don’t watch the show!
If you have problems with the theme of stalking, psychopaths, and the likes then this show is not for you. Towards the middle of the show, I started to feel physically ill whenever Ki Yong’s character showed up on the screen because of his behavior and actions.
Story - 1/10
What started out as a promise of two lovers that were torn apart by the cruelest means imaginable, to find each other again in their next lives ended in a tragic ending of her actually starting a relationship with the murderer of her past boyfriend. I thought I might just rip the band-aid right off from the start. Yes, you’ve read correctly. The female lead forgives this man everything that he has done from stalking her, putting her life in mortal danger not once but three times (!), killing a woman in the past (because he was planning on giving the female lead that woman’s heart) and killing her then-boyfriend right in front of her eyes by stabbing him multiple times in his abdomen. But forgive and forget.
Hyung Bin (played by Lee Soo Hyuk) and Ha Eun’s (played by Jin Se Yeon) love story as depicted in the first two episodes was full of wonder, sweetness, happiness and the promise of them getting married eventually. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the storyline because to be quite honest with you: none of it made any sense by the end of the show!
And we’re only now finding out that part of the reason for that might be the fact that the show added 7 additional writers to the staff by the midpoint and eventually got rid of the original writer.
Acting/Cast - 8/10
Lee So Hyuk - He was a delight to watch and the only reason why I stuck around until the end of the show. Hyung Bin was a puppy-like character of the first order. He was sweet, protective and wanted to take care of his then-girlfriend Ha Eun for the rest of his life. Su Hyuk was the opposite of Hyung Bin but also kind of not. I’m not sure how to describe it but Soo Hyuk did an amazing acting job. Hopefully, his agency will be able to get him a decent lead role for his next drama because he certainly deserves it.
Jin Se Yeon - I guess you could say that she did the best that she could with the script that was given to her. Ha Eun was the sweetest person on earth and her smile shone as bright as the stars above. Sa Bin on the other hand… She was frustrating to watch. Like I said, I think Se Yeon did the best that she could with the script. At one point I just gave up making sense of her character’s decisions.
Jang Ki Yong - Basically the same applies to Jin Se Yeon. I just couldn’t empathize with his character even though the show certainly tried to get us, viewers, there.
Music - 3/10
The OST was hauntingly beautiful. My problem lies with the overall background music and the music choice during the stalking scenes etc. They really tried to romanticize the stalking scenes by adding romantic music.
Overall - 3/10 (Rewatch Value - 1/10)
Frankly, I’m traumatized by the show. I tried watching other sweeter shows that feature Jang Ki Yong and Jin Se Yeon and I just can’t hear their voices and look at their faces without feeling sick to my stomach and I’m devastated! I never felt like this before. How can a kdrama do that to its viewers? I just don’t want anyone else to feel the way that I’m feeling now. I’m begging you to really reconsider if you were planning on watching the show. Even if you want to watch the show only for Lee Soo Hyuk, don’t. Just don’t. Wait for his next project or rewatch some of his other works.
Don’t watch Born Again!
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Darkseid and Thanos
If you’ve been in the comics fandom for a while, you’ve likely heard that Thanos started off as a rip off of Darkseid. This is partially true, at least from a visual standpoint. Jim Starlin, the man who created Thanos, admits that he was a fan of Jack Kirby’s New Gods, and that some of his ideas had been inspired from them, but he does not mention Thanos specifically. In his telling, he came up with Thanos (And Thanos’ foe Drax) during a psych course in college. He claims that in his initial drawings, Thanos was much skinnier and, if he resembled any of the New Gods, it was Metron. Evidently the resemblence to Metron was vary obvious, because Roy Thomas took one look at Thanos and told Starlin to beef him up, because if he was gonna Rip off a New God, he should rip off Darkseid.
So that’s one place where Darkseid’s influence on Thanos is definitely present, but I think to call Thanos a rip off of Darkseid is unfair to Thanos. I believe that both characters have a different core appeal to their villainy, and that Thanos should not be dismissed as just a rip off.
Darkseid is not just a villain. Darkseid is the world at it’s cruelest. He is the system which grinds away at your soul, the dead end job that wears away at your soul until all the zest in your life has been ground away. Darkseid is capitalism at it’s worst. He takes everything that can be taken, exploiting everyone that can be exploited. Apokalips is an Amazon distribution center on a planetary scale.
Darkseid is the institutional injustices that forever deny any form of progress, because to progress is to move on from Darkseid, and Darkseid will not allow anything to exist save for Darkseid himself.
Darkseid is, by his very nature, massive. He’s this huge, impossible to conceive of thing that no one man can defeat. He is a primal force. This is why the stories where he is reduced to just a force of nature to be punched away and discarded do not work. Darkseid represents things that cannot be solved with punching, and reducing him to a generic warlord does him a great disservice.
Thanos, though his actions are universal in scale, is much more intimate in scope. Darkseid is a system, but Thanos is a person. Thanos is a being capable of doubt and hesitation and regret, because Thanos is a hero. Rather, Thanos is what happens when one takes heroic motivation and twists it into an evil form, and this applies to both his comics and MCU incarnations.
In the comics, Thanos is a perversion of Courtly love. In the old romances, tales of brave heroes undertaking great deeds to earn the favor of fair maidens were commonplace. But Thanos love is for the personification of death, so his great deed is to eradicate half the life in the universe. But this corrupted version of love is not just in the obvious manner, there is also the more down to Earth fact that Thanos’ “love” is nothing more than obsession. He prefigures the modern day concept of the Incel, feeling entitled to love with someone who does not feel anything for him. Being a comic from the 70s, jury’s out on how much that is intended, and how much of it is the writer not understanding the women are actual people with feelings that don’t revolve around men 24/7.
Looking to the MCU, it’s Thanos perverts a different kind of hero: The hard man who makes hard decisions (while hard). In Thanos mind, he’s the only man who sees what has to be done, he’s the only one who has the strength of character to commit to those necessary evils. The Truth is, Thanos is too obsessed with proving himself right that he does not care about whether his solution has any basis in reality. This Thanos, like the comics version, also connects to real life horror. The idea that our population will eventually grow large enough that we will not have enough resources to sustain it was most famously articulated by Malthus, and this kind of thinking contributed greatly to the death toll of the Irish Potato famine, as the deaths of the Irish Poor were considered to be a long term good by the british.
Both versions of Thanos are, in some ways, modern versions of Don Quixote. They’re violent, unstable, and reject reality in favor of their pre-conceived notions*.
Thanos’ villainy stems from his struggle against society. Darkseid’s villainy is a weaponization of society.
*If that doesn’t sound like the Don Quixote that you know, I highly recommend giving a watch to Overly Sarcastic Productions video on him
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I would really love (or maybe not..) to know how Sander is truly feeling :( clearly he feels like shit going by his recent IG picture but I wonder what Sander is going to do now or how he feels about what Robbe said and whether he’s took it literally or has a feeling Robbe pushed him away by saying the most cruelest thing he could’ve said. And I also wonder how on Earth this is going to get resolved cause right now I’m so lost :(.
I’m not sure but I am really looking forward to finding out.
We’re only on episode 5, right at the beginning of it. Even if you choose to compare it to the original, we were in “hell week” right now and so it feels about right, timing wise, just told in a different way so there is PLENTY of time to solve things and make it extremely earned
I always remind people that OHN was 6 minutes long and I lived through the “THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME LEFT TO RESOLVE THIS HOW DARE JULIE ANDEM SHE IS A TERRIBLE WRITER” and we were given total perfection and proper pay off.
So have faith, love.
And Sander will be ok. He isn’t now. Nobody is. But they will be 😊
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Scion of Kings, Chapter 4
Well, this is it! The last chapter (for now...I don't think I'll be able to put away this Gil for good). I know this is a quick turnaround, but I knew what I wanted to write and the plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone (and I wanted to finish the story before going on vacation). Special thanks to @ecthvlion for betareading.
Lastly, my very talented friend Ian was kind enough to take a commission of my Gil! I think he looks very handsome - check it out and give it a reblog here!
Thank you all for joining me on this journey! This was my first ever fic, and it's been so wonderful to read all your comments and get your support. You guys make this worth doing :)
Read it on the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild and AO3.
Maedhros sat at his old desk, made for him when he reached the age of ascension and became, according to the laws and customs of the Eldar, an adult. He had always been tall, and even then, when he still had a few inches left to grow, the desk had been a little short for him. But like all things of one’s youth, it had become part of the fabric of life, the slight stoop it forced him into as natural a part of writing as breathing.
But how does one pick up the threads of an old life, its pattern no longer familiar to the fingertips? In Himring, Maedhros had commissioned a new desk, more suited to his height and station in life. It was the desk of a king, a warrior, fit for sealing and stamping and making the fate of the world, not of a boy-prince composing treatises on rhetoric in the warmth of his mother’s house. He no longer knew the stoop he had forced his shoulders into, sitting at his old desk in a life he no longer recognized.
No muscle memory to weave this new world, then.
Maedhros sighed. He rolled his shoulders in discomfort, and organized all he would need: several sheaves of paper, an inkwell, a quill, a nib sharpener. Laying them all out in a neat grid before him, he considered his options. He had to tell the lad, of course—he laughed at himself, then, breaking his own train of thought. “‘Lad’ indeed,” he said to himself. “He’s High King and here I am calling him a lad.”
The last time Maedhros had seen him, of course, he really had still been a lad, small and cold and frightened. But even then, there had a been a strength in the boy’s eyes, a steady burning—not of hatred, or even judgment, but of the will to live. (Secretly in his heart of hearts Maedhros had envied that fire even then.)
He had held the boy close, wrapped him in his cloak and rubbed feeling back into his limbs. An unexpected surge of affection had coursed through him, then, the memory of many brothers and cousins who as children long ages ago had cried in his arms. Briefly, he had considered taking the child with him. But how could he have damned a child to such a life as that? How could he have been so selfish as to risk more violence—a last retribution against the heir of Dior from his fallen brothers’ followers?
So Maedhros had let him go—called him Starlight after the fire in his eyes and sent him to the last place in Beleriand the boy might be safe. He had thought of Gil-galad often, especially after the twins had come into his life, wondered what sort of man he was growing into, what sort of education he was receiving. If he was happy.
It all fell into place, then. Maedhros had never been one for over-deliberation; once the path cleared before him, he followed it with as little to-do as possible. The words already laying themselves out in his mind’s eye, he set pen to paper.
To Gil-Galad, from Maedhros.
Greetings, my lord. I thank you kindly for your letter, and am glad to learn of Elrond’s success in court, and in friendship. You seem like a good sort of person, and he speaks very fondly of you. In another life, I think, had had things been different, I would have been very fond of you as well.
It does me great honor to know that you hold me in such regard. I am not sure what I have done to deserve it—
‘No,’ Maedhros firmly reminded himself. No self-pity, no guilt. These were, as his mother often reminded him, unhelpful emotions. And he knew this; he remembered the cocoon of loathing he had once tangled himself in. In a fit of exasperation, Fingon had once yelled at him, “It’s not good enough to just stand there and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m terrible;’ you have to do something about it! You have to stop being terrible and actually start making amends!” He had been right, Maedhros supposed, although it was a feat easier said than done. But what was this strange second life if not a chance to rid oneself of the easy familiarity we all have with the more unpleasant parts of ourselves?
“Here’s to mending,” Maedhros murmured, lifting his quill in a mock salute.
—but it is welcome nonetheless. There is no delicate way to put this, and so I shall say it right out: being your father would bring me no end of pride, but the honor is not mine.
You doubtless wish to know the story, and although I have debated with myself over the potential harm telling you may do, you seem a man of steady constitution, and I believe it is your right to know. I will try to relate the matter as factually as I can, but I beg of you to forgive whatever bias remains.
You were born Eluréd. Dior was your father and Nimloth was your mother and Doriath was your home. You had a twin brother, Elurín, and a sister, Elwing. You know what became of her. And so Elrond your dear friend is also your nephew and your heir, a fact which I hope may bring you some measure of peace. Of you and your brother I shall now relate.
When my brothers and I sent word asking for—well, I suppose demanding is really the correct word—the return of the Silmaril and heard nothing in return, I hoped that Dior would at least expect an attack and evacuate Menegroth. This was not to be, and when Dior slew my brother Celegorm, a few of his followers, blinded by hate and rage, retaliated in the cruelest way they knew how. They took you and your brother—Elwing they could not find—and left you in the woods. Your intended fate you can imagine.
When I heard what they had done, I slew them and went searching for you. It was the dead of winter, and the woods were treacherous with snow and ice and things that are not spoken of in the Blessed Realm. When I found you, you were huddled in the hollow of a dead tree, barely alive and crying for your brother. He lay at the bottom of a nearby ravine with his neck at an angle. He was surely dead, and you would have soon joined him had I not found you then. I warmed you, garbed you in my own cloak, and sent you to the one place I hoped would remain safe. I told no one but the messenger I sent you with, a woman long in my service and whom I had trusted with my own life more than once. She died at Sirion, and thus with me our secret passed beyond knowledge into the West.
Maedhros paused there, releasing a deep breath he felt he’d been holding for thousands of years. So now he had explained that facts. But how could he ever explain? How could he justify the panic that had gripped him, covered in his little brothers’ blood, as Gil-galad’s tiny, half-frozen body curled in tight against his own? In that moment he had been pierced by the distinct feeling, as cold and clear as the winter sun above, that seeing this child to safety was the only important thing in the whole of Arda. What other justification was there, besides—“I did what any father would have done”?
Forgive me for what I did. You have, it seems, forgiven me for Sirion, but if you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me for Doriath, at least forgive me for concealing your identity. I feared for your life if my brothers’ followers learned that you lived. I feared they would try to complete what their compatriots had started, either before you reached Círdan or when you reached manhood. I feared, I suppose, that if they knew, if you were found out, you would be running all your life. I sometimes wondered if I made the right decision.
But when Gondolin fell, and the mantle of High King passed to you, I knew there was no going back. I could not risk open rebellion while your reign was still young and fragile. Then—
Then the Oath had awoken again, and Sirion was burning before Maedhros knew what he was doing. In Elrond and Elros, despite his initial reticence to keep them, he had recognized the chance to start over, to do things right this time. To repair a little of the damage he had done. But all too soon came war like even Maedhros had never known before, and the Oath clawed at him, shredding him apart until it was there was nothing left of himself and the Oath was all that remained. Of the end he remembered little but a pain so strong it numbed and a gaping maw in the earth to match what he felt in his heart.
—it was too late. But I do not think there is any harm done by a small reinterpretation of the truth that heals instead of harms. Perhaps it was fate, a little tweak in the fabric of history, or perhaps Námo really does have a sense of humor. You were born to be king, after all. And as it so happened, we Noldor had need of one. It seems you have done a good job of it. Were I your sire, I could not be prouder.
Here Maedhros stopped again, making to sign the letter. But it still felt incomplete. He turned Fingon’s old words over in his mind anew—it’s not enough to say you’re sorry. You have to make amends. Maedhros thought of the little boy he had once cradled in his arms. It had been the first time he’d held a child in centuries. What choice would he make now, if he had to do it all over again, knowing what he knew?
I have been told that guilt without action is a selfish emotion. That it turns our thoughts inwards, rather than out towards the world we must seek to repair. I think, when I found you, for a brief moment I was able to transcend that guilt. I saw clearly that the duty of your protection fell to me, and me alone. I felt then what I felt for my own foster-sons when I sent them to stay with Círdan—I wanted to spare you the doom we had wrought for ourselves. Perhaps it is a strange sentiment, but not, it seems, unwelcome by you. I was good with children, you know, what with so many little brothers and cousins to look after. I think I was not so bad with my own sons. You are grown now, but I think perhaps there is still a chance to do right by you, as I did by them.
Besides, there are not so many kings of the Noldor from whom you could have inherited that silver hair.
I wish you every happiness to be found in Middle-Earth—would that I could have known your new world, and shared those joys with you. If you will have me, it would be my honor to be called
Your father,
Maedhros
#scion of kings#my fic#silm fic#silm#silmarillion#the silmarillion#tolkien fic#tolkien#maedhros#gil-galad
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Meet the Writer Tag
Thanks to @power-of-ages-writeblr for the tag! I don’t have anything for my OCs up yet, so this might be a bit of a crash course. The main squad is from a sci-fi set 300 years in the future: Sergei is an (ex-)hitman, Dex is a systems administrator, Lauren is a diplomatic envoy, Hawthorne is a former Marine and bodyguard.
1.) If one of your main characters appeared in the real world, which would you like it to be, and why?
Sergei has been various different OC’s in different stories since I was in middle school. He’s just taken on different names and backstories for the setting. I’d like to meet him, for all the time we’ve spent together.
2.) How familiar are you with the Star Wars Holiday Special? What are your thoughts on it?
I am (I think fortunately?) only tangentially familiar with the Holiday Special. Many have threatened to force me to watch it, but none have been bold enough to try. Yet.
3.) If you could only listen to ten songs for the rest of your life, which ten would you pick?
I was going to put a lot of thought into this, because I'm practically glued to my headphones, but unfortunately I seem to have already published this post and can’t call it back to a draft. So. Here’s a list I’ll probably regret:
Mercury - Sleeping at Last
Earth - Sleeping at Last
Cold (But I’m Still Here) - Evans Blue
The Long Defeat - Thrice
Roadside - Rise Against
Come Home - Jon Foreman
Empty from the Start - Noah Gunderson
Zzyzx Road - Stone Sour
The Dance - Garth Brooks
The Drifter - Devour the Day
(This is mostly a list of the songs that I get stuck in my head most frequently. It could have safely been “Space” by Sleeping at Last, just that album, but variety is the spice of life, right?)
4.) Have you ever been in love?
No.
5.) Which of your characters would be most into memes? Which memes would have an affinity for?
Dex is actually the walking personification of big meme energy.
Sergei would come in a close second - he’d be confused by the idea of memes in general but end up bonding with Dex over the “How do you like this, Elon Musk?” meme. (Hawthorne would find it funny, but wouldn’t tell anyone.)
6.) “Wake me up…?”
a.) before you go go
b.) when September ends
c.) INSIDE
CAUSE I AIN’T PLANNIN’ ON GOIN’ SOLO
7.) Which character would you commission art of, if you could?
I’d commission the whole crew for my main WIP, if I could. Actually, my cowriter and I were considering commissioning realistic artwork of settings and characters for our website for when we start seriously releasing content. If you’re open for commission, @ me and I’ll show it to him.
8.) What is the cruelest thing you’ve ever done to one (or more) of your characters?
Uh... golly. I went through a grimdark phase in Middle/early High School, so I’m awkwardly well versed in medieval torture. A previous iteration of Sergei had intentionally disabled vocal chords. The current iteration of Sergei is dealing with the aftermath of forced addiction.
9.) Which youtube video do you most regret clicking on?
I don’t tend to regret much on YouTube. The more you know, right?
I do regret getting into the rabbit hole of political... harassment, I guess is the right word. I enjoy listening to political commentary, but last year I started listening to vloggers that spend a lot of time taking cheap shots and going ad hominem. I’m just not getting those hours of my life back.
10.) What colour are your eyes? Do you like them, or is there another colour you’d be happier with?
My eyes are blue. I like the color a lot, but I also wouldn’t mind hazel.
I’m tagging you wonderful few who’ve already hit the “follow” button. Feel free to look at the tag, give it a cool-guy nod, and return to your regularly scheduled programming if you don’t feel like filling it out. But if you feel like joining in:
1.) Which Avenger would you want to be, and why?
2.) What is the last book you read, and did you like it?
3.) How did you get started as a writer?
4.) Do you speak any other languages? If not, which one would you want to speak if you could?
5.) What is your guilty pleasure band? (You know the one - it should have been a phase, but Spotify keeps reminding you how many hundreds of hours you’ve listened to them.)
6.) What is your favorite food, either to make or to eat?
7.) What is your favorite thing you’ve written to date? (Bonus points if you link it.)
8.) If you had to watch the same movie or TV show once a week for the rest of your life, which one would you pick?
9.) What is your favorite thing about the place you live in?
10.) If you could put any phrase on a billboard, what would it be? The catch is that it can’t be an advertisement.
@haroldosaur, @sammyjoejames, @holystudenttree-things
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Greta Gerwig Is a Director, Not a Muse
By Noreen Malone, October 31, 2017.
source: http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/greta-gerwig-director-lady-bird.html
Dave Matthews Band is generally not considered cool anymore. Almost certainly, it never was in the downtown New York world of which the actress and writer Greta Gerwig has become a cool-girl-real-girl avatar in recent years. But in a time and place (America’s vast, yearning middle-class suburbs, in the cultural desert of the Clinton and early Bush years) and to a certain kind of person (such as a teenager aching for the jazz-adjacent cred that jam-band fandom could provide but more comfortable with white ball caps and lacrosse than ponchos and hallucinogens), Dave Matthews Band was Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village in 1966. And so there is a crucial moment in Lady Bird, Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, in which the title character, a Sacramento high-school senior in 2003, confronts the cruelest heartbreak imaginable to her by blasting the band’s ballad “Crash Into Me”: “Sweet like candy to my soul / Sweet you rock and sweet you roll.” The result is both sympathetic, and very funny.
“There was no other song it ever was going to be,” Gerwig said. “In preproduction, I realized I didn’t know what I was going to do if Dave said no [to its use]. I wrote him a letter. ‘Dear Mr. Dave Matthews … ’ ”
Gerwig was sitting at a small corner table near the window at Morandi in the West Village, not far from where she lives with the filmmaker Noah Baumbach. “I thought it was a really romantic song when I was a teenager. I would listen to it on repeat on a yellow CD player,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine a world in which a guy would feel that way about me.”
Maybe it was because of her sexy dirndl skirt of a name, maybe because of her squinting physical resemblance to indie Gen-X avatar Chloë Sevigny, maybe simply because of her distinctive delivery. But since the very beginning of Gerwig��s career, she has been a generational lightning rod of sorts. As what the New York Observer once called “the Meryl Streep of mumblecore” — the hyperlow-budget late-aughts movie movement led by directors like Joe Swanberg and the Duplass brothers — Gerwig was near-instantly labeled an “It” girl and invested with all sorts of theories about what her success and acting style meant. Her brand of hipness was confusing — was she really that earnest? Were they all that earnest? How could that possibly be cool? Critics, especially those of an older generation, were suspicious.
She was, unmistakably, a gifted actress. But the Guardian also called her “the poster girl for wayward, brittle middle-youth,” a “galumphing work in progress.” In The New Yorker, Ian Parker wrote that, despite having a “precise, literate mind,” Gerwig “has the air, not uncommon among her contemporaries, of having swallowed a very low dose of LSD.” “Ms. Gerwig, most likely without intending to be anything of the kind, may well be the definitive screen actress of her generation, a judgment I offer with all sincerity and a measure of ambivalence,” A. O. Scott wrote in the New York Times. “Part of her accomplishment is that most of the time she doesn’t seem to be acting at all. The transparency of her performances has less to do with exquisitely refined technique than with the apparent absence of any method.” And then there was this sort of thing: “While watching Greta Gerwig on screen, you might be tempted to kiss her,” wrote Stephen Heyman in T in 2010. “This is not meant purely as praise. Gerwig, 26, plays characters who are given to discursive verbal forays with oodles of ‘ummmms.’ So planting an unexpected kiss would not only be a recognition of her adorableness but also a useful way to shut her up.”
In a way, then, Lady Bird, a remarkably self-assured debut, feels like a rebuke. Or at least an assertion of artistic intent. At 34, and moving, finally, behind the camera, Gerwig is exiting the phase of her life where she’ll be asked to represent a mysterious, fascinating rising generation. The winds have shifted some, and the microgeneration after her is just as earnest (or more so) but culturally preoccupied less with its own emotional wanderings than with larger political questions of identity, and of race. Gerwig seems still to be considering, and even reclaiming, some of the traits that hers has been tagged with: nostalgia, that earnestness, parental attachment. In other words, what does it look like onscreen when millennial sincerity is treated not with mockery or puzzlement but with, well, sincerity?
Gerwig appears to be a genuinely sincere person, a kind of spiritually permanent college student, in a way that might get under the skin of someone with more ironic armor. She wears a giant Hello, Dolly! sweatshirt and an even more giant backpack. She references Tina Fey’s Bossypants like scripture and listens to podcasts about entrepreneurship (“The one about the woman who created Spanx made me sob”) and religion (“Krista Tippett” — the host of On Being — “is like my fucking queen”). She quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to express her sadness over the Harvey Weinstein mess: “In a free society, some are guilty; all are responsible.” She goes to church sometimes, and though she doesn’t subscribe to any particular denomination (“The Catholic theatrics are pretty high quality, but the Protestants have better hymns”), she’s really into the Quakers right now: “There’s nothing that you have to believe or avow. The only thing you have to believe is that the light of God exists within each person.” She really, really loved her single-sex education, both the high-school portion and at Barnard, where she was delighted to discover that all the doctors at the health center were gynecologists and enjoyed her time on the parliamentary debate team.
Gerwig’s enthusiasms extend also to Zumba, but what she really likes is a barre class run by this one woman from Portland, Oregon, whom she admires for her “body positivity,” and on the day we first met, she was, with some embarrassment, about to try something called the Class, in which Tribeca women combine burpees and cathartic screaming. “It seems like maybe the fitness equivalent of the toy poodle,” she said. “Like, you have to admit that you love them and you want one that’s tiny. You’d rather be the girl who has a German shepherd who goes for a run. Not one with a fluffy piece of lint who goes to a place where you chant with crystals.” She considered. “Before they poured the floor at the studio, I read, they put rose quartz everywhere, and I was like, I mean … I can get down with that.” She has a friend who works for Moon Juice, and so she speaks highly of its sprouted almonds, even if “I always thought it was kind of ironic when she’d be stressing out about the moon powders.”
The author and illustrator Leanne Shapton, who knows Gerwig and Baumbach from the neighborhood, spotted Gerwig and stopped to chitchat. Shapton, as it turned out, designed the font for Lady Bird’s title and credits: “She made an entire uppercase and lowercase alphabet and painted it ten times the size that it needed to be and shrunk it down so it looks like a font but has enough imperfections so there’s a density,” Gerwig told me after Shapton had walked away. “I feel like movies are presents, and credits and fonts are bows and wrapping paper.” She paused. “I like everything to feel like it was given a lot of time. I hate it when I watch movies and it seems like they just went and picked a font and, like, called it a day.” She paused again, considering Shapton. “I also have a crush on her because she’s very beautiful. She is cool in the way that everyone wants to be, but she’s also a real person.”
“I’ve made so many films in New York,” Gerwig said, that “there was an assumption I think a lot of people had that I am a New Yorker, that I am from New York, and I always felt like nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve done a good job of convincing you, but I’m not, as so many people who live in New York are not.”
Lady Bird, which is also Gerwig’s solo writing debut, is the story of a high-school senior (Saoirse Ronan) at an all-girls Catholic school in Sacramento who longs — despite her average grades — to be the star of the school play, to go to college on the East Coast, to be extraordinary. Though her name is Christine, she insists on being called “Lady Bird,” a pretension with which her salt-of-the-earth parents — a nurse and an out-of-work computer programmer, played with extraordinary sensitivity by Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts — comply. (It’s a complicated dynamic: Metcalf calls the mother character “totally passive-aggressive.”) The plot is a gentle one. Lady Bird acquires a couple of boyfriends (each recognizable as a classic type who might appeal to a smart-in-some-ways, really-not-in-others teenage girl), chases acceptance from the popular crowd, applies to colleges her family can’t afford to send her to.
Gerwig attended an all-girls Catholic school in Sacramento, with parents who worked as a nurse and a loan officer at a credit union, who sent her off to an expensive East Coast college, and although the movie has been widely discussed as a roman à clef, she says it’s not. For starters, Lady Bird is set in 2003, Gerwig pointed out, and she graduated in 2002. “I never made anyone call me another name. I never had dyed-red hair. She’s so much more wild and outspoken, and I think I was only ever that way in my head. In a way, I felt like I kind of put into her the sheer confidence and the id I find in 8- or 9-year-old girls. They’re just brash, and they don’t know that they should feel anything but great about themselves.
“When you write something you know, you’re making a story that will work, whether or not there’s bits taken. It’s always funny to me when people say, ‘Well, it’s clearly autobiographical,’ and I say, ‘Well, how do you know my autobiography?’ ” she continued. “Certainly, there are things that are connected, but I just think it’s a very interesting assumption. In some ways, it feels akin to the assumption that I’ve experienced as an actor when people say … ‘This is you.’ Which I’ve always taken as a compliment because it felt like you were watching a person.”
The teenage Gerwig was an extensive diarist, but she didn’t look up her old journals until after she’d finished the script, called “Mothers and Daughters” in a first draft that clocked in at 350 pages. (“It originally had a lot more dances,” she said.) When she opened the old pages, she was pleasantly surprised to find that she’d accurately remembered some of the tiny details — the rumor that clove cigarettes had fiberglass in them, the very fact of clove cigarettes at all — that make the movie so spot-on evocative of high school. But mostly it was the vividness of her feelings that struck Gerwig. “I would go on for pages and pages about this crush I had, dissecting every moment. ‘Did he notice that our arms were touching, or was that an accident?’ And then I wrote, ‘Upon further reflection, I think that this might’ve been a more vivid emotional experience for me than him.’ I was like, Oh, honey, nothing you’ve written is more true.”
When Gerwig was young, her parents made a point of taking her to local Sacramento theater — she proudly ticks off the names of the companies, and the playwrights whose work they put on, and even the directors. At Barnard, where she studied playwriting, she became a Kim’s Video devotee, methodically working her way through the director-organized shelves. (It was Claire Denis’s film Beau Travail, she said, that made her shift her focus from theater to movies.) She rejected traditional paths like law and medicine. “Chekhov was a country doctor, spent all his time with people and in their homes. I was like, Well, that’s good, and then I was like, Well, I’m not interested in it, and also I don’t like blood, and there are no country doctors anymore,” she said. “The idea that I would become a doctor to become more like Chekhov is a pretty circular route.”
After college, Gerwig lived all over Brooklyn — East Williamsburg, Prospect Heights, deep Park Slope, or “Park Slide,” as she says fondly. She had odd jobs, including at the Box, the Lower East Side cabaret, and began working with Swanberg, whom she had met through a college boyfriend and who was making interesting movies that were unlike anything that had been done before, for almost no money.
Mumblecore was a big deal, for a small movement, in part for what it seemed to reveal about a certain slice of young, college-educated, mostly white people trying to figure out how they related to the world. It was hailed in the Times as something that “bespeaks a true 21st-century sensibility, reflective of MySpace-like social networks and the voyeurism and intimacy of YouTube. It also signals a paradigm shift in how movies are made and how they find an audience.”
Gerwig now physically cringes at the mere mention of the word mumblecore. “I just hate it,” she said. “It feels like a slight every time I hear it. Because of the improvisational quality of those movies, and the fact that everyone was nonprofessional, I have had a bit of an uphill battle just to say ‘I know how to act.’ I didn’t stumble into this. I wasn’t just a kid.” But she credits her roles in those films — Nights and Weekends, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Baghead — with helping teach her to write. “We called them ‘devised films,’ because we’d know the characters and what was supposed to happen in the scenes but not the words. It was a way of writing while I was acting.”
It was also that set of films — which made a bigger splash in the indie-movie scene than in the culture at large — that put her on Baumbach’s radar. (He actually recommended her to his agent before the two had ever met.) When Baumbach cast her in 2010’s Greenberg, released when she was 26, it was her big break. Shortly after he divorced his wife, the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (Gerwig had trained for the role, in part, by working as an assistant to Leigh’s mother), the two began their romance. Baumbach and Gerwig turned an email correspondence into a project: The duo co-wrote Frances Ha and Mistress America, both starring Gerwig and both markedly sweeter than anything Baumbach had worked on in the past. “I liked what she was writing so much that it made me work harder with my own to impress her,” Baumbach said.
This collaboration led to a spate of headlines referring to Gerwig not as a partner on the works but as their muse. “The actress Greta Gerwig has had the same liberating effect on Noah Baumbach as Diane Keaton had on Woody Allen: she has opened him up, lending his films a giddy sense of release,” went one typical summation in the Economist.
“I did not love being called a muse,” said Gerwig bluntly. “I didn’t want to be strident about it or say, ‘Hey, give me my due,’ but I did feel like I wasn’t a bystander. It was half-mine, and so that part was difficult. Also I knew secretly that I was engaged with this longer project, and wanted to be a writer and director in my own right, so I felt like the muse business, or whatever it was, was a position that I didn’t identify with in my heart. But I think one thing I learned early because of the group of movies that are called mumblecore” — she slowed down, a little archly, over the word, to acknowledge again her discomfort with it — “is not to attach too much to the moment you’re living through from a press perspective. I also had this sense of, Well, they’ll just eat their hat one day.”
TV was one idea when Gerwig hit a dry spell with acting gigs after making Frances Ha and Mistress America. “I felt like I had done things that I was incredibly proud of and I felt like I had authorship over, and done good work as an actor, but my wheels weren’t catching purchase with whatever the Zeitgeist was,” she said, forking her pasta. It was a curious double identity as an actress — plausibly the face of a generation, particularly of the privileged of that generation, and, just as plausibly, a near-anonymous actress who hadn’t yet made anything that any real number of people had actually seen. She met with the producers behind How I Met Your Dad, a planned spinoff of the long-running, quietly beloved CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and signed up for the starring role, along with a writing role. “It felt like this incredible lifeline for me. It felt like a place to give myself some structure,” she said of what looked from the outside like a bit of a career swerve. Not to mention that she was told it was a “sure thing.” The pilot wasn’t picked up. “They send the shows to Vegas, and people sit there with knobs, and they turn the knob down if they don’t like an actor,” Gerwig explained with a little embarrassment. “Nobody exactly told me I tested low, but it was insinuated that America did not like it.”
But that allowed her to turn to directing. “By the time I started, I felt like I had ten years of training. My film school was as an actor and co-writer and co-director, and whatever else I did, which included costuming, and holding the boom, and editing. It was a way for me to get my Malcolm Gladwell hours in.” She also benefited from more targeted instruction, in recent years, from DPs who’d heard she wanted to direct and let her sit with them while they constructed their shots. “When I finished the script, I had a moment with myself where I thought, You’re either going to do this now or you’re never going to do this,” she said. “Now you have to make your mistakes and get your gifts because you have to, at some point, jump. I think a lot of women have also particularly a need to feel that they can stand in their own expertise before doing something. A lot of my female friends will be so overqualified for what they do that by the time they do it, it’s like, Well, obviously.”
During the press tour for Mistress America, a journalist asked about whether dating Baumbach, and then writing with him, had opened certain doors for her. Gerwig acknowledged that perhaps it had, proximally, but refused to concede the larger point. “I don’t mean to sound annoying,” she told the reporter, “but I would have done it anyway. I will find that one door and then push it wide open. I’m lucky to find collaborators and kindred spirits. But I don’t need a man, and I would have done it anyway.”
A confident, direct version of ambition is another generational trait that Gerwig seems to comfortably inhabit. Recently, she saw Saoirse Ronan in London to promote the film; Ronan told her she was beginning to think about whether she could direct, inspired in part by watching her on set. “Greta is the one that I’d want to emulate,” Ronan told me. “She was incredibly clear about what she wanted but also supportive about finding our own way through the characters. We’ve been talking in a practical way, too, about stories that I’d like to do and if I could work with her in that regard. She’s a great one for the advice.”
Ronan was also struck by Gerwig’s actorly approach to directing. “She had very clearly mapped out each character’s journey, what it would be like to be a kid in post-9/11 America in California, how complicated it would be to think about leaving Sacramento for the first time,” but also “she gave us an awful lot of freedom to incorporate our own selves.” Gerwig even gave Timothée Chalamet, who plays one of Lady Bird’s love interests — a self-styled high-school intellectual — a syllabus for “what a paranoid anarchist type of thinker would have been reading back then,” he said, which included, in addition to the requisite Howard Zinn that shows up in the movie, The Internet Does Not Exist, an essay collection that warns of the dangers of a networked world. She also asked him to watch Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s, which she told me contains a character who is an example of a long-standing type: “These guys who are just completely stuck on their ideas, whether music or progressive philosophy or whatever it is. Like, ‘I’m going to train you to like Pavement.’ ” Gerwig also gave specific directions on how to play the many comic moments in the script: Humor was to be achieved not through comic acting but by playing the situation with all the seriousness with which a high schooler would feel it. “I like things that are funny,” Gerwig said, “but I don’t like things that are in quotes.”
Gerwig plans to tip the balance of her work going forward more toward writing and directing (though she’d like to keep acting). “You just stay in it long enough, and eventually you’ll just be old.” Nobody will worry over whether you are an actor or a director or a writer. “Everyone will just think, Oh, she’s such a wonderful 75-year-old now. She’s our lady Clint Eastwood.”
She has one script, something she wrote before Lady Bird, in the drawer, but for her next project, “I have an inkling of wanting to make something that’s more silent, literally fewer words.” She wouldn’t give any more detail, however. “I worry if I put an idea out in the sunlight too early, it shrivels, and I don’t want to shrivel anything right now.”
Baumbach’s most recent film, The Meyerowitz Stories, was released on Netflix and in theaters just a few weeks before Lady Bird, which comes out on November 3. Both movies open with a parent and child, driving together, on the cusp of the difficult moment when college is about to force that relationship into its next, more distant, phase; both puncture the sweetness of the scene by someone melting down immaturely. In Baumbach’s film, it’s the parent. In Gerwig’s, it’s the daughter.
With Mistress America and Frances Ha, said Baumbach, the pair were able to create “a synthesis” of their two voices, “a kind of a third thing that allows you to try different selves on.” But the couple have strikingly different tones to their independent work, although they tread the same thematic ground (and give each other notes on drafts). Family, in much of Baumbach’s filmography, has been a source of neuroticism for his protagonists, often children picking up the pieces, learning to overcome the limits of a selfish, immature parent’s love. Lady Bird, by contrast, is about a child failing to recognize, in the moment, the expansiveness and totality of her parent’s love for her — as well as the complicated dynamic between teen girls and their mothers, even those who are fond of each other. Baumbach, though, sees their emotional truths as more related. Both movies, he said, are about “how hard it is to acknowledge positive things in someone you need to move away from, and how hard it is to leave.” Gerwig’s story is, in her phrasing, “a movie about wanting to leave a place that’s secretly a love letter to the place, and a movie ostensibly about a daughter that’s secretly about the mother.”
“Oh, I’ve got a lot of guilt,” Gerwig replied quickly when I mentioned that I had seen the film as, in part, a meditation on that particular emotion, and how deeply it can become intertwined with love. “We always joked that we should put up a title card at the end of the movie that said CALL YOUR MOTHER,” she said. The guilt kicked in. “I need to call my mother.”
Gerwig showed her parents and friends the script before shooting and screened the film for them before it premiered, but she also spent a lot of time considering how she’d treated her mother as a teenager. “I could only see the faults in clear relief, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s like, Goddamn, she was right about almost everything.”
For all that she insists Lady Bird isn’t exactly her own story, it feels like a coming-out of sorts for Gerwig’s own sensibility, her preoccupations. “I only ever write from a place of love,” said Gerwig, “which sounds goofy but is actually true. Some writers write from a place of anger or analysis, or something that feels more didactic, but that impulse means that I also write out of real love, which is complicated and changing.”
“Sincerity means a lot to me,” Gerwig continued. “Actually, in Frances Ha, at the beginning, she’s reading out of a literary-criticism book called Sincerity and Authenticity. Basically, the question she’s setting up is, what do we mean by sincerity, and does it diminish the thing?” She considered. “But I’ve always felt like it heightens it.”
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The Roads Essay Themes & Publishing Assignments
• The many Pretty Horse, Cormac McCarthy. This peculiar sanctification with use, in return, suggests that the fabric point initiated a policy of to get rid of clear of its investment reputation. 21 Discover Franklin: “But Ballard’s failure to understand the foundation of the failure, or in other words his / her inability to handle frontward your comprehension your dog reached inside ‘The Subliminal audio Person,’ departs your pet mistaking eliminate capitalism for your conclusion of your world” (103). This is actually the to begin many cases the location where the child retreats into your authority position. In McCarthy’s 1st book, The Orchard Keeper, one encounters an author thus satisfied together with his plainly massive fictional power there’s zero point, on the other hand little, he is not going to test them out with. Although the actual boy has no recollection on the prior globe and it was blessed in a realm of hatred, they continuously exercise religious beliefs.
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Simon Schleusener is really a homework relate along with instructor on the University of Wurzburg’s Us Studies Section plus the Traditions Section of the John F. Even though the work of fiction definitely seems to be operating out of the indistinct no-man’s-land, noted by way of inquisitive deficiency of efforts and historical past, that article claims that it must be in fact useful for you to historicize The Road. A good guide is really a guide that is extensive, and many others. Can there be virtually any hope still left to get a earth where by ethics could mean anything once more or maybe do the man brilliant kid finally combat for a misplaced induce? The day providential to be able to by itself.
7 To get more detailed during this, see the UNHCR’s World wide Fads Record (2016) with “Forced Displacement inside 2015.”
22 See, as an example, Phase 6 around Postmodernism, Or, Your Social Judgement lately Capitalism (1991), “U (. )
14 A person may believe the following of forms of environmental calamities, your long-time negative effects of climate cha (. )
13 Notice Fukuyama: “And as we are now in the position wherever we simply cannot visualize a entire world substantially diverse (. )
21 View Franklin: “But Ballard’s failure to comprehend the cause of the retract, in other words his or her failu (. )
24 View Steven: “Our second falls short of the community for the reason that splintered shards of purposeful living currently have (. )
6 It’s true, however, which in several passages the father describes his / her child as a Lord or even a godlik (. )
In the event, nonetheless, many of us target just how this specific natural environment is really portrayed-seeing this messianic resolution simply as a way with having to pay for the scarcity of virtually any solution-then we’ve been up against the picture of a worldless community, through which simply no wish without gathered sense of the long run is out there any longer.17 With regard to that anti-futurist emotion, The Road‘s almost all stunning touch is actually as a result the picture that contains precisely what is the novel’s cruelest impression: some sort of “charred human infant” cooking on the throw by a group of 3 guys as well as a women, exactly who, apparently, received only granted beginning (Two hundred and twelve). One more moment goodness and faith is seen with the ebook will be during the consequences of the nasty underground room arena.
• Our blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy. In the following scene, McCarthy commences a new novel-long metaphorical terminology that synonymizes faith based depravity having dark. What’s noteworthy in relation to The Road, and then, isn’t novel’s night or negativity by itself, however the proven fact that seems like as a way to merely express it is unhappiness while using damaging tendencies in the modern day planet through the relatively conventional eschatological buildings with apocalyptic narrative. The man had been prepared to oppose the belief of non-violence if his or her kid had www.saddleback.edu been included. The Deterioration involving Persona.
2.A person This Man
The chance that rests within this very simple issue offers your tenuous feeling of trust that will is contrary to their mother’s vehement clamors to have an “eternal nothingness” with the exceptional father’s regular struggle from the attraction connected with destruction (p. The Exercise with Mistreatment: Rugged Consumerism around Modern-day Usa Culture. Still, similar to lots of misstatements there is kernel regarding reality towards the complaint involving McCarthy: experienced before writers doing work over the last 4 decades include and so completely minimal them selves to the basic behave connected with supplying things a new variety. Whilst the Daddy goes through any “cold autistic black,” this Youngster is usually forced to increase his / her give to receive a snowflake, just as if this were being an all natural gift, and then he designer watches them break down “like one more variety with Christendom” (r. It truly is identified on the man’s viewpoint that this kid is the hope with this severe entire world. 2 Notice primarily Aglietta (’01). The particular lack of control is actually certain and inappropriate along with the son relates to this realization presently of the novel.
This is the creator whom expressed “I don’t recognize [Proust along with James James]. Symbols really are crucial to individual dialect. A Concept of Naturalist Legislations: The usa Experience. Although audience could possibly read it’s ugliness to be a expression of wild declare, university student Lynda Ur. Zizek and also Media Research. The individual in the beginning does not have any want to harm another dude in reference to his “grey and also ageing teeth. Good fellas are the ones “carrying the actual fire” when “bad guys” are generally communicated while not really, simply because they have got various moral standards; 1 together with meaning realistic look, the other, meaningful relativism.
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Your Boy’s stubborn belief within the presence of different “good guys” is actually established correct in the event the papa perishes, recommending of which within all those few good souls resides a new wish for humanity. Within the terrifying however afraid design in this eldritch being, mcdougal represents the complicated mental health struggles that frequently do-it-yourself torture his protagonists: concern, fearfulness, or even nasty resignation. The actual youngster affects him or her right subsequently wanting to know as long as they remained as eligible to is the “good guys” and calmly makes clear in which, “love can certainly yet stimulate that which might be recognized further than language” (Barrera 1-3). The Training associated with Wrong use: Rugged Consumerism inside Contemporary American Culture. The catastrophe around Children involving Men is definitely none ready down the road, not offers the idea presently occurred.
Part A pair of) Just how do the characters’ fundamental companies connected with “the man” in addition to “the boy” impact the means the reader concerns these individuals? Concentrating on the particular novel’s dystopian “catastrophism,” a article will certainly further more check out it is relation to its temporality, history, and also the potential. Julie Sedivy offers trained linguistics and also mindsets in Dark brown College and the College or university involving Calgary, and is this writer of Words under consideration: A review of Psycholinguistics. The Youngster shows the individual to recognize an aspect with humanness from the wanderers that travel the damaging path, such as the criminal who seem to selfishly will take their particular property rather then demanding assistance. Jameson, Fredric.
1. Introduction
New york city: Scribner, 2002. 8 With regards to initially my dilemma, it is actually thus hardly any sovereign energy within The Road that induce your unsafe reputation connected with refugees moving about; it is vitally our planet by itself, which will seems to be in a state of entire rot, getting lost the majority of it has the methods in addition to possibilities. Cambridge as well as London: Stanford UP, 2012. Cooper additionally recognizes something fundamentally mind-blowing inside the Child, which is a good remedy towards the ubiquitous ashes, some sort of dismal graphic metaphor for your “coalesced suffering” of the world (s. To illustrate, Fisher attracts special focus to Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi episode Children regarding Men, a show that will came out in 2006, the identical calendar year through which The Road ended up being publicized.Thirty Naturally, to evaluate McCarthy’s The Road using a film such as Children involving Men is actually difficult for a variety of reasons. He recognizes a plain comparison amongst words like a relatively modern ethnical advent as well as the subconscious as a possible ancient scientific process; the two are constructed from solely different textile, which is the reason, as outlined by McCarthy, the particular other than conscious is definitely “loathe to go to you.” It is “just a novice to supplying mental recommendations and is not content the process,” preferring to talk with your consciousness inside images as well as metaphors.
This wording is within a Inventive Commons license : Attribution-Noncommercial 2.A few Generic Also, water furthermore corresponds to baptism, which in turn even more court warrants the truth that this specific arena may be the “good scene” of which is inconsistent with the actual “bad scene” which emerged ahead of. In this way, the particular miniscule point on it’s own which the consume is actually described by simply the name brand appears useful in the work of fiction containing usually ended up classified by way of the general “namelessness” (Murphet 119) of their people, destinations, physical objects, and in some cases its all-pervasive catastrophe. In reality, a lot more than almost every other postwar article writer he could be identified as the heir of that quintessential Southern hair stylist, Invoice Faulkner; Madison Smartt Gong has declared McCarthy certainly one of not many creators of these studies just to walk in Faulkner’s darkness and also avoid to tell the tale.
• Surface Black, Cormac McCarthy. Instead, seems like is the exclusively route left within a devastated as well as aging atmosphere notable by simply lethal physical violence as well as exploitation, causing zero viable cause of trust with no way to avoid.
Essay Theme 1
It’s within. As soon as a chimp has learned to use emblems, it doesn’t explore growing their newly received experience featuring its blogs, in contrast to individuals experience absolutely compelled to be able to. In line with a recently available estimation in the UNHCR, clearance in excess of 65 million people today worldwide are presently moving about, frequently running struggle, assault, lower income, governmental tyranny, or maybe the standard hopelessness contained in this international locations of their beginning.7 This specific to be the best number ever before in the reputation of humankind, that unquestionably seems sensible to see The Road using this backdrop, and thus ascribing them with present-day political significance. The best way Neoliberalism Lasted the actual Economic Meltdown. They ought to be less inconstant when compared with ambitions. The Stop in history as well as Very last Man, his more in depth ebook about the subject, was released around ’92.
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Absolutely, depending on boy’s with the exceptional father’s self-identification because those that “carry the hearth,” there is a wish to retain selected “forms” in addition to “ceremonies” that can help to help at the least support your memory regarding civilized life9-a task, on the other hand, which will turns into more and more challenging to achieve, to get, as being the narrator makes clear, a “names of things [are] bit by bit right after those actions into oblivion” (McCarthy 90). During this world the spot that the daddy inserted the house that has been lived on by way of inmates, the dad did not opt for the enable them to. Related, next, to your mentioning of these two protagonists’ “grocery cart” (McCarthy Three) in early stages within the fresh, the particular might connected with Coca-Cola is an piece which considerably helps the reader’s alignment in time and also living space, reconnecting The Road‘s post-apocalyptic wilderness with all the perspective of late capitalism as well as American purchaser customs. Mostly, The Orchard Keeper is presented with similar stylistic tics that that will Harold Bloom could afterwards commemorate inside Blood Meridian while, to explain, probably the most extraordinary U . Children regarding Men (2006). 18 As part of his study your “practice with misuse” throughout National client traditions, coursework writing service online Raymond Malewitz makes a equivalent controversy.
3 During Usa history, positive photographs plus symbols of movability amount to a key area of ethnic discussion, covering anything from the most conventional national mythology to your desire to have significant possibilities. Sanchez, Do. A kid comes up with them immediately after asking if they remained as qualified for being the “good guys” and gently clarifies that, “love may nevertheless call to mind that which can be well-known beyond language” (Barrera 1-3). Now, he or she is choosing a new postdoctoral undertaking within the cultural and efficient dimensions of the brand new capitalism. Part A pair of) How can a characters’ basic companies regarding “the man” plus “the boy” change the technique you concerns these individuals? Our god was just talked about at the end of a novel (leaving to one side he expressing “Oh God” in numerous moments) in the event the youngster and some women fulfilled: Women as soon as the woman spotted him or her placed the girl forearms about him plus presented them. When he is situated in jail awaiting their phrase, they’re stopped at by way of a fiercely dependable preteen kid exactly who he’s got consumed underneath his / her mentoring, in addition to who is dad he’s unintentionally slaughtered.
2.Just one The particular Man
As the daddy talks about: “Okay implies acceptable. The big apple: Macmillan, 1907. This over stated claims of sophistication this is connected with the bride and groom through the risky ethical geography of the story tends to make The Road fiction with regards to the survival involving strength plus hope-of this soul-rather as compared with of lifestyle themselves. Worldwide Photographs.
2 Find particularly Aglietta (2002).
11 This saying possesses from time to time ended up assigned to Slavoj Zizek, with regard to in the documentary video by 2004 they ohydrates (. )
1 See Trilling’s article variety The Generous Imagination (1950). The term “neoliberal imagination” m (. )
15 Notice Berardi: “A new utopia seemed within the last few years of the millennium that will dependable from the futur (. )
22 View, for instance, Chapter 7 with Postmodernism, Or even, This Societal Reasoning recently Capitalism (1991), “U (. )
13 Observe Fukuyama: “And as we are at this point for a place where we simply can’t visualize a community greatly various (. )
In truth, in every involving his / her twenty novels McCarthy offers confirmed a strong being addicted the exceptional, critical occasions when individuals have the choices that may specify their particular everyday life always. With this fixation about the previous, The Road appears to display Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s prospect of “the finish of the future.” As Berardi clarifies, while using the start of this neoliberal era, this future-orientation of gradual modernity has started to be replaced by what exactly he terms and conditions a new “dystopian imagination” (18), upset just because of the unexplained utopianism with cyberculture, which usually nowadays, on the other hand, features dropped most of it has the future-optimism in addition to destination also.15 Within The Road, it’s possible to remember that period will most certainly not halt, but that the thought of the longer term have just about wholly disappeared. The Summa Theologica with St . Sheehan claims that “although there is a surfeit of non secular allusions submitting a interstices in the book, your problems they boost about religion along with notion acquire a a lot more critically aimed political alignment because the account shows up.” Sheehan takes The Road regarding “Western worries of violence plus fanaticism,” together with latest ideas regarding refugees and out of place people, finding out McCarthy’s dude and youngster to get “refugees, seeking asylum with the soil alone, vainly unsightly pitting by themselves contrary to the deceased seed covering be the depleted biosphere.” James, P.Deb.
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While you were sleeping at The Open: Rory’s nightmare, Clarke’s smoking start, and a perfect ace
Photo credit should read PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images
While you were sleeping at The Open: Rory’s disaster at the first hole, Clarke provides the overnight entertainment, and the most beautiful kind of ace.
As European golf writer James Corrigan noted on Thursday morning, a paunchy and curly-haired 16-year-old Rory McIlroy missed a five-foot birdie putt on the first hole at Royal Portrush before blazing to his course record 61. At the same hole in the first round of the first Open at Portrush in almost 70 years, McIlroy missed another five-footer but this one was to “save” a triple bogey.
The tap-in for a quadruple bogey 8 and the parallel of the five-foot putts had me immediately re-reading a recent reminiscence of that famed 61 from the teenage McIlroy. In it, the typically forthright and insightful McIlroy admitted that he no longer has has the confidence of the 16-year-old kid that posted the 61.
“My confidence is probably more fragile now than it was then,” McIlroy said. “I had confidence and cockiness and sometimes I think I need to rediscover that a little bit even now.”
The 16-year-old starting quietly on a mostly empty Portrush carries a lot less weight than the Hall-of-Famer, purportedly in the peak of his career, playing as the betting favorite in the first major in his home country in 70 years. The common judgment and armchair psychology will be the opening quadruple bogey revealed the exposed nerves from the pressure Rory must have been feeling at this home Open. It’s the natural and quick leap to make and it’s not necessarily wrong. It’s just unknowable.
The quad outcome was likely just a mixture of mistakes and uncertainties, both mental and physical, at a horrible time. Standing on the first tee on Wednesday during a practice round with Justin Thomas, McIlroy blocked a ball way right and watched it sail out of bounds. Standing on the first tee on Thursday during a real round, McIlroy started his Open by yanking one hard left to cross the out of bounds stakes on the other side of the first fairway. Maybe that reduced 30-year-old confidence was shaken from the OB left ball on Wednesday and he overcorrected on Thursday. Maybe it was the nerves of being the headliner at a “home” Open. Maybe he’s just searching for a steady swing at the moment. Maybe it was a total fluke swing at the absolute worst time and with the worst consequences.
Here's Rory McIlroy's opening tee ball that went OB on Thursday morning at Portrush.
It was a quadruple-bogey start for the Ulsterman. #TheOpen pic.twitter.com/nzxm2G4UXI
— Golf Central (@GolfCentral) July 18, 2019
Rory hitting three with a second tee shot was then compounded when he hit four into some traditional Open junk that forced him to take an unplayable lie. An OB ball and an unplayable drop all on the opening hole is maybe how the hungover 15-handicapper eases his way into his weekend round of 91. But not the Open betting favorite, course-record holder, and most talented player in the world. The sickening feeling set in that McIlroy had just been eliminated from the dream “home” win just 15 minutes into his championship.
It was painful. No one enjoyed watching it, even the snarkiest among us and especially not the Irish rooting on the home favorite.
Watching Rory make a quad on the first hole with Marty Carr (@CarrGolfTravel), son of Ireland’s greatest amateur. Speaking for all of Ireland, he says,”This is the cruelest thing imaginable. I feel this in my heart.”
— Alan Shipnuck (@AlanShipnuck) July 18, 2019
Even with Tiger Woods in the field, McIlroy was the centerpiece of this British Open. He’s not from Portrush, but he is Northern Ireland’s most accomplished golfer, has that history with this specific course, and has, despite some underwhelming major results, played arguably the best golf of his career this season. McIlroy’s ascendance in the last decade, along with major wins by Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell, played a significant part in the R&A deciding to bring The Open back to Portrush and Northern Ireland. Rory was going to be the main attraction of that return from the moment they announced it four years ago. It had all been building up to Thursday morning’s first round.
Photo by Jan Kruger/R&A/R&A via Getty Images
The form and confidence of the 16-year-old to play in with a 61 after the missed five foot putt did not appear to be with him on Thursday. It’s a little easier to pick yourself up from a missed five footer for birdie than a missed five footer for triple bogey with all eyes watching you at a major. Rory continued to hit shots totally out of character and looked stunned on the subsequent holes. He hit a poor drive and blew an easy birdie hole at the second and then struck a horrible putt at the third for a bogey. At one point, he was a massive 10 shots back from the lead, which is an incomprehensible margin just a couple hours into a tournament for such a talent.
We’ve seen Rory blow up and slowly creep his way up leaderboards for the backdoor top 10. That’s certainly still in play this week, where the weather can turn and wipe out entire chunks of the field based on nothing more than when they slotted on the tee shot. But a top 10 is far different from the home win, which was the dream.
Rory maintained this week that he was competing as if this were a normal Open but that he was also going to “smell the roses,” as he said, appreciating the fact that this was being held in Northern Ireland again. He was operating on dual tracks this week. They weren’t necessarily in conflict, but he may only get two rounds to look around and smell the roses.
Overnight entertainment
Here is a sentence I did not expect to type when the first round started at 1:30 a.m. ET: It was an absolute joy to watch Darren Clarke play golf in the middle of the night on Thursday. I’m not just referring to the sentimental stuff, like the Senior Tour eligible player getting the honor of hitting the first tee shot in front of the home fans. That stuff was cool. But he was hitting some fantastic golf shots with long iron approaches into some of these repelling Portrush greens, even into the back nine as he came down to earth and finished even-par.
He was more than a ceremonial golfer, opening with birdie and making three in his first five holes to take the lead while sucking down lung darts almost one hole at a time.
love a sport where the guy given the honor of hitting the first tee shot at a major is ripping through smokes before 7 am local time pic.twitter.com/LdY9n2ZqlK
— Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) July 18, 2019
He was amusing, emotional, and awesome to watch actually play shots, real golf shots, into a course he knows so well.
When OB is OK
Rory probably disagrees, but the masochist in me loves the out-of-bounds on the first hole. It’s not a brutal opener — you can bunt a driving iron out there and make a comfortable par. But the white stakes are out there on both sides of the fairway just making things a little edgy in a setting where the best in the world are anxious to get started.
We’re getting a variety of scores at the first hole, too. Clarke, who had to hit driver, rolled in a birdie putt. Andy Sullivan was the first to go OB. Connor Syme holed out from the fairway. There was a the Rory debacle. And there were a bunch of safe driving irons and boring pars. Out-of-bounds, especially when it’s not technically a property boundary anymore, is controversial. But I’ve enjoyed the touch of tension it’s brought to the very first hole.
The old and new
It was a blast to watch players go for the par-4 5th green with driver and have the tracer technology there to cover it. The hole is measured officially at 376 yards but it’s downhill and had a helping wind that prompted Golf Channel’s Justin Leonard to say, “This is just a long par-3 right now.” Shane Lowry nearly hit the flagstick and Branden Grace came close just moments later.
If you overdo it on an approach, there’s out of bounds directly off the back of the green, which abuts a cliff that falls into the beach and ocean. The wind may change and make driver the wrong play. Stewart Cink remarked on Wednesday that he was hitting full 5-irons into a hole where he had a half-wedge on Tuesday. We all know and appreciate these changes as the beauty of links golf and a staple of The Open.
But early in the first round, it was driver at the 5th and it was awesome to watch. We had graphics and tools giving us real-time wind information, overhead hole layouts, and then the tracer allowing us to follow the ball flight all the way into a green jammed up against the cliff.
It was the best mix of old and new — tee shot strategy on an ancient links course with modern technology making it beautiful to watch.
The proper kind of ace
Every hole-in-one is great, but I think the most satisfying has to be the one that rolls in gently on one of the ball’s last few revolutions. Aesthetically, it’s beautiful but it also gives you more time to anticipate the possibility and hope.
Absolutely perfect!
The first ACE of the week at #TheOpen comes from @GrilloEmiliano at the 13th hole pic.twitter.com/0chk8JDHMl
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) July 18, 2019
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Cruel Fairytales
He switched you, didn’t he? How long have you been …?
But he didn’t need her to answer that. Not really. In an instant he knew. God, he was such a fool. Such a selfish, love-sick fool.
His mind raced back over all those small moments that they’d ever shared; a look that lingered too long, a touch that was hesitant to leave, a small, knowing smile that they exchanged in a room full of people, yet their eyes only saw each other. How in the last week those little moments had become overt, a mistaken hand on the arm became a purposeful movement, a knowing smile had finally translated into words. And he was so stupid, so utterly lost in his own damned feelings of elation, at the joy of he and Melinda finally, finally, taking that longed for step forward that he never stopped to think, never even considered that this was so horribly unlike her.
Alright, what’s up?
You tell me.
You’re talking. More than ever.
Because you’re not.
Melinda May doesn’t talk, never had much need for it. If it takes an average person twenty words to get their point across, May can do it with a single look. He should’ve known, should’ve realised that May’s chattiness over the past week - month? - obviously wasn’t her. Not really. Just some code written by a cruel madman, who had obviously been cunning enough to spot something in Coulson that he’d spent decades keeping hidden. They’d always been close, but they had their boundaries for a reason and he should’ve known that May wouldn’t have suddenly decided to cross that boundary, just because of yet another close call.
You’re not allowed to be gone. Not yet.
Was it even her that said that? Or the LMD, who’d been designed to get close to him? He still remembered that jolt of fear and wonderment and hope as he’d heard Melinda talking to him when she’d been unaware that he was right next to her, trapped in that rapidly darkening other world. She’d mentioned that bottle of Haig and his mind had gone back to that dark, wet night, both of them bleeding, hurting, yet still brimming with the satisfaction of having pulled off a near impossible mission. How close they’d come to each other in that bland hotel room, how he’d seen ever drop of water that still clung to her hair, how he could feel her breath on his skin …
… how he had pulled away, chin low, hand on the back of his neck as he muttered something about professional boundaries. How she had folded in on herself, stiff, sad, accepting. How he had halfheartedly offered to share a drink with her from that stupidly expensive bottle they both managed to wrangle from Fury, a reward for a job well done. And she had refused.
“Maybe, some day,” she’d said softly. “If we ever have a worse mission … then maybe we should try this again.”
At the time he’d laughed at the idea of them possibly facing a worse mission.
Me and May? No. It’s not like that.
And it really wasn’t, just not quite in the way he’d implied. Phil didn’t need to get to know her, not anymore. He knew her. For the last thirty years he’d been with her more often than not. And he loved her. He’d probably loved her longer than anyone else in his life. Yet, even then, it’d taken him years to fully admit to himself how much he loved her. After all, distance, boundaries, that was all his decision. So it was never his place to be jealous, and he wasn’t, not of her and Andrew (although he would never consider his early arrivals to their home as a way of spending more time with her outside of work — he was just punctual) or her other relationships (but he never really liked the idea of her and Ward, even before the whole Hydra thing — it was just that she was too good for Ward). He told himself he loved her like a friend.
And then she’d left.
May took off on vacation and never came back. So I lost my right hand, too.
Looking back, it was probably her short retirement that finally cracked something deep inside him, making him truly look at his own feelings for the first time. That made him realise that ‘friendship’ really wasn’t the correct word to describe what he felt for her. But he was still loathed to act on that, not when she still had things to work out with Andrew. Not when it was obviously one sided.
Something had changed between them, he was certain, but that change didn’t seem to be either good nor bad. A shift, an imbalance. A dance that somehow had become one step out of time. They pulled close, they pulled away. Phil looked for and found comfort with Rosalind for a brief moment, before she - and Andrew - were brutally torn away from them both.
That should be you up there.
No. I’m right where I belong.
After Daisy left and SHIELD was reborn again, they would go weeks without seeing each other. Was it his own self-centred imagination that made he believe that May might’ve missed him? Or was there something really there this time? Now he was back to being a regular agent, a company man, he felt like he and May were now back on much more even, familiar grounds. In some ways their relationship seemed to reset even so much so that, the first time he’d returned from a four week mission, she had invited him to train with her. At first he’d laughed - they hadn’t done that since the Academy - before he’d caught that look in her eye and realised that she was absolutely serious. She wanted to train, with him specifically … just like the old days. They’d met at six in the morning, spared, he talked breathlessly between punches and she’d used his distraction well to her advantage. When they’d finished he couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer and jokingly asked her if this was because she thought he was too out of shape to be a field agent anymore. And her answer had stunned him into silence.
“No,” she said, pausing to take a sip of water, eyes averted. “It’s because I miss you.”
He’d thought he’d be devastated at loosing the position of director, but if this was what he got in exchange then he was sorry he didn’t do it sooner.
It’ll be good to see Fitz and Simmons.
And May.
Yeah … I think you look forward to that more than I do.
Mack, Yoyo, Daisy … they had all made suggestive comments about him and May ranging from Mack’s sly smiles, Daisy’s questions about their pasts and Yoyo’s overt, smart-ass statements. And he’d deflected, avoided, shrugged it off, never once mentioning any of this to May. Now he felt stupid, reckless. If his team could see that his feelings for May might’ve gone beyond mere friendship then it shouldn’t surprise him that others would see it too. That they might take advantage of it. Every time he thought of how that replica played his emotions, how it carefully gave him every little scrap of attention that he’d always craved from her, he hated himself even more. He was so wrapped up in his own desires that he’d never even stopped to think … now Melinda was missing, lost to the world or possibly, even …
No. He couldn’t even think it. Surely the universe wouldn’t be that cruel? To have her survive one near death experience (It was a death experience - I’m over it.) only to have another twist of fate come along so soon?
Do you want to know what I saw, Phil?
Yeah.
I saw you. Don’t let it go to your head.
There. If he were to pinpoint when he should’ve begun to suspect that something was wrong, it was that moment. She had died and while Simmons had brought her back, she hadn’t been with her the whole time. May had been alone with Radcliffe and his personal robot-aid for days and with May in a weakened state and Radcliffe already in possession of her brain scans, it would’ve been the perfect time to swap the real thing for a fake. The idea that she would’ve seen him as she lay dying, him, was beyond laughable. It was simply impossible. His own death had led him to a deep interest in the subject and from all his readings the common theme he’d found was that people tended to see something that gave them a profound sense of peace — a beautiful garden, a calm ocean, loved ones long gone. Why on earth would she have seen him? He had been there at some of the most painful moments of her life … he had caused her pain with his orders, his callousness. He should’ve known from then that it wasn’t the real May. Just some fairytale that tricked him in the cruelest way possible.
Where’s the real May?
I am the real May! Her thoughts, her memories … her desires … that’s all real.
But he was already shaking his head. No, a soft voice chanted in the back of his, cutting through the numbness as he stared this replica in the face. No, it’s not real. None of it. Her desires? Why would a robot speak of May’s desires? That she could somehow desire you? He could still taste her. Maybe twenty years ago, but not now. Not after everything. He could still feel how soft and silky her hair had been, slipping though his fingers. False fingers on a false hand. Not real. None of this was real.
“May would never betray me.”
And suddenly he saw the LMD for what it truly was. It’s face hardened, finger tightening on the trigger. “Radcliffe made some adjustments.”
He knew if Daisy hadn’t shown when she did, he would now be dead. He guessed its desires only went so far.
But he couldn’t destroy it. Not yet.
Radcliffe took something from me. Her name is Melinda May, and she means everything to me.
Saying it out loud wasn’t nearly as terrifying as he’d imagined it. Because this wasn’t about him; it should never have been about him. This wasn’t a declaration of love — it was a warning of what that love could do. He would find Melinda, he would bring her home, and he was absolutely destroy any and all who did this to her.
***
So ... who else thinks Phil’s going to sacrifice himself to creepy Russian dude to get May back? That’s totally going to happen because the AoS writers are mean, and they won’t talk about their feelings until well into the third story arc. Calling it now.
#philinda#philinda fanfiction#melinda may#phil coulson#agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#because even though i need to finish my other fic#this needed to be written#stop hurting melinda may and phil coulson 2k17#send them to ireland
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A Beyonce endorsement of GMOs would probably help farmers a lot more than science
For a world that has largely forsaken religion in favour of science to base its attitudes towards food on nothing more than belief and feeling is something that should make us uncomfortable and embarrassed. This is what seems to be happening. It’s alarming.
It changes things for me as a writer. No longer is a column about food and agriculture about demonstrating truth — perhaps it never was. Instead, it’s now about staging an attractive argument, like a house that you can picture yourself living in.
According to a peer-reviewed study published in the in the journal Nature Human Behaviour and reported on by NPR, those in opposition to genetically modified foods believe they’re savvy when it comes to food science, but, actually, are far from it. Four universities surveyed 2,000 people in Europe and the United States, getting their opinion on GMOs. Then, it asked of its respondents a series of questions, some of which were as basic as is the Earth’s core hot or cold.
The stronger the opposition to GMOs, the lower the test scores, overall.
The new Canada Food Guide won’t kill farming and it’s not pitting farmers against each other either
Panic attacks, isolation, loneliness and fear: January can be the cruelest month for farmers
The problem with public trust and traceability in farming
The agricultural community has been pushing science on consumers, matching vitriol towards the sector with facts showing that hate or distrust is founded on nothing more than a gut reaction.
This has had little effect. And this goes both ways. Science that calls into question our practices and our belief systems, whether it relates to religion or our soil tillage habits, is easily dismissed as tainted by bias.
What’s left when science is no longer king? What takes the throne?
It should be difficult for anyone to admit that science isn’t what is guiding his or her food choices. It would seem foolish to say out loud or even in private that the foods one chooses to ingest, purchase or support are decided by faith.
Is story and anecdote filling the void left by our lack of confidence in scientific rigour?
It’s decidedly human to want to be entertained. And it appears that is what is happening.
As a farmer wanting to show a side of farming that is honest and accessible, I need to entertain and dazzle and otherwise make cool or en vogue a vocation that is driven by agronomy, i.e., science.
Historically, farmers have not felt the need to share stories of their operations to the public. There hasn’t been a demand from consumers. A generation ago, storytelling or communication in general was not a skill regularly attributed to the greater farming community. That is changing. It has to.
Perhaps our silence over the years has allowed for those without knowledge of agriculture in Canada to tell stories and spread information that was never theirs to tell or share. I believe this.
The left arm now wants to know what the right is doing. And in this case, they’re not used to talking to each other.
Farmers now are faced with caring about something new. They are paying attention to what they say on Twitter. They are sharing with others the stories behind the settlement of their operations and they are starting to take seriously how what they put out in the world is being perceived.
This takes time and it’s hard work. Good communication is not something learned overnight. The next generation of farmers will grow up in an environment that expects that of them.
But for now, we’re faced with a consumer base that has ousted science in favour of something much more nebulous. We may not want to admit it, and it may not sit well with us, but a Beyonce endorsement of GMOs would go a lot further than science.
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Meet the writer
@griffinwriting tagged me. Thank you for doing so
1. If one of your main characters appeared in the real world, which would you like it to be and why?
Aerwyna or the currently unnamed curse-breaking prince, because they’re nice, creative, and smart. (even though they’re a bit naive)
2. How familiar are you with the Star Wars Holiday Special? What are your thought on it?
I have now idea what that is.
3. If you could only listen to ten songs for the rest of your life, which ten would you pick?
1- Heaven Is A Place On Earth by Belinda Carlisie
2- Discord by The Living Tombstone
3- Song Bird by Jillian Edwards
4- Boom De Yada
5- Silent Scream by Anna Blue
6- Gasoline by Halsey
7- Safe And Sound by Taylor Swift
8- Wake Me Up by Avicii
9- Mama’s Broken Heart by Miranda Lambert
10- Believer by Imagine Dragons
4. Have you ever been in love?
Possibly?
5. Which of your characters would be most into memes? Which memes would they have an affinity for?
Aerwyna would probably enjoy them.
6. “Wake me up...”? A. before you go go B. when September ends C. inside D. “just 5 more minutessss mom!”
C
7. Which character would you commission art of, if you could?
I love all of them, but I’d love to have art of Aerwyna. I’ll probably commission art of her first if I get money for it. And if I fix the entire thing so it’s not as stilted.
8. What is the cruelest thing you’ve ever done to one (or more) of your characters?
Well, I killed off a character right after she helped her supposed enemy. and I’m going to tear away one of my character’s identity away from them.
9. Which youtube video do you most regret clicking on?
I once clicked on a video that was a little girl screeching about fortnight and I can no longer watch any videos about fortnight without feeling fantom ringing in my ears.
10. What color are your eyes? Do you like them, or is there another color you’d be happier with?
My eyes are light blue, but they go green when I swim or cry. I like them.
I’m tagging @azri-the-furball-midnite @usukfics @tiffanynorth
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