#Vendela's story was good
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As much as I liked the Darknights bits in Episode 13, on the whole I found it pretty frustrating, because it kinda devalued every storyline from Episode 12.
Amiya once again gets an arc about generational Sarkaz bullshit. The Revenant is barely mentioned, despite being a really damn big deal.
What about the Dukes? Last chapter has shown that they are willing to become more involved in the conflict, and now that their forces barely avoided getting hit by The Shard, surely we will get more from them? Nah, the Duke of Windermere probably holds the record for the shortest amount of time it took an established character to die, the biggest impact her forces did was GTFO-ing for the sake of Siege's arc, and the most the other Dukes managed was finally lifting their asses and telling us to tune again in half a year for Episode 14, where they maybe will do something. Maybe. Probably.
Speaking of Siege, remember all the introspection she did in 12? Morgan's realization that they aren't some heroes of legend? Who cares! Let's go full superhero comic, complete with hyper aggressive fighting, deep wound in a polluted area with no consequences, being given a convenient banner to rally people around, and even returning a fallen friend we knew for a week and mourned deeply!
…Baird who? Her buddy Delphine doesn't even get a line connecting her to Glasgow, let alone actually include her with the group in the archives. Nice CG with the real heroes, though!
Last time we saw Paprika she was with Manfred, one of our main antagonists. Will we learn more about him? Will it have some kind of effect on her? LOL. LMAO, even.
Remember all the soul searching Damazti did? How the climax of the chapter was their death? Forget it, we got not one, but two of them, complete with reset personalities!
Obviously, this means we don't get more insight from them about Golding, and Heidi is long forgotten by the narrative, but look! Lettou's arc is hitting rock bottom, perhaps he can spare some thoughts for his old friend he drove to suicide? Maybe even do some elegy about how it ties into Gaul's fate? Nope! His catalyst is actually some rando with a dementia (which I loved on a thematic level, but, you know *gestures at the list*).
Even Ines, who frankly barely did anything in 12, got her injured state completely ignored in favour of telling us Hoederer got a haircut, so that she could do some acrobatics atop a flying skeleton a few days later. But hey! They actually acknowledged her big moment of jumping from the airship, now that's a progress!
#Arknights#in case you are wondering#ep 12 is one of my absolute favs#i put it on the same level as 6 and 8#but then ep 13 got things like Siege and Damazti#and it felt sooo cheap#Darknights trio hard carried the whole thing for me#Vendela's story was good#but it bothered me how we got her chapters back to back#when the gimmick of the episode was juggling different POVs#Delphine would be compelling if she wasn't reduced to Siege's sad sidekick#Horn and Misery were welcome#but once again i hated how they ended as vehicles for Siege's arc#Reunion's side was a bunch of nothing#we saw all of that elsewhere before#i guess it introduced a new long-lived guy?#i'm sorry i don't have any reason to care for him at the moment#and Sanguinarch just. wouldn't. shut. up.#he overstayed his welcome#by the time we fought him i was mostly just rolling my eyes
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some Thoughts on chapter 13 now that i've finished:
I LOVE HOEDERER.... i already did but like. Really enjoyable to get his POV in this event and see more of his inner thoughts and motivations. I'm fond of characters who are so tired and worn down and jaded, but manage to hold onto some scrap of hope regardless, even against their own better judgment. A lot like Mlynar in that way, tbh.
regrettably this chapter sold me on hoederines a little. i'm CONFLICTED because i love wines so much, dammit. (and manhoe, but there's not as much of a conflict with my headcanons there.) But their relationship is so good regardless of whether you read it as romantic or platonic.
speaking of, Ines was a delight in this chapter. Love her role as the resident non-Sarkaz Sarkaz who is completely unaffected by whatever arcane bullshit is getting to Hoederer and W in any given moment, so she can yell at them to snap out of it and save all of their lives lmao. I love her deep loyalty and care for them that she expresses in everything but words. ugh ugh i love her
the little subplot with Vendela and the Sarkaz commander who tried to keep her safe was sweet and sad, I wish he'd gotten a unique sprite at least. I kind of want to see her meet Flamebringer now and her reaction to the friendship between him and Perfumer... I feel like there's some parallels there.
We're starting to see some payoff to the buildup with Siege in this arc, and I'm so glad! I've never really understood the hate her arc gets - I know it's partly that I'm biased, she was my first 6* so I'm rather fond of her, and I just really like the whole concept of the Glasgow Gang. And I think it doesn't help that ch12 was (imo) the weakest part of act 2 so far. But also, it was always really clear to me that we've been just... laying the groundwork with her up til now, I didn't really expect her to have big moments or turning points yet? Idk. i kind of want to write a whole post about her arc and my thoughts on it at some point. BUT, I really liked her in ch13, seeing her start to really come into her own and how all the events of act 2 up until now have shaped her decisions.
I'M REALLY SAD ABOUT GUARD ACTUALLY??? :( Tbh I have not really cared much about New!Reunion until this chapter, except for Talulah, but I'm finally getting invested. And Talulah's confrontation with Eblana was AMAZING. I've always seen her as a foil to Talulah - while Talulah started down her path with good intentions and ideals, Dublinn seems to have been like late-stage Reunion from the very start, because Eblana has always cared more about seeking power than about the oppression of the people around her. SO FUCKING SATISFYING to see Talulah, of all people, calling her out on that, and protecting Reunion from her. I really hope we get more of these two in future, and also more Reed in main story please please pleeeaseee.
This chapter was wonderfully cohesive with the themes of tradition and bloodlines vs forging a new path. Siege, Delphine and Horn, all beginning to break away from their inherited roles in Victoria's hegemony and fight on their own terms instead. The Kazdel flashbacks, the spacetime feranmut, and Hoederer's POV - a character who wants to see a better future for Kazdel, while still remembering and learning from its past. Nine, Guard and Talulah dealing with what Reunion means as a symbol, and figuring out what it should become. Shining and Nightingale, confronting the Confessarii and their own past. Even Vendela, having to let go of the life and traditions she'd grown up in, the townspeople clinging to familiarity and the hope that things would go back to normal to the point that it was literally going to kill them. The confrontation with the Sanguinarch was such a great culmination of all of this, with his fixation on blood purity and the glorious lost past of the Teekaz. And he's defeated by several people who all soundly reject his vision of what the Sarkaz "should" be - Amiya, the outblood King; Logos, who does have a "pure" bloodline by the Sanguinarch's standards but refuses to be defined by the role he inherited; Hoederer and W, two of the mixed-race "commoner" Sarkaz he's so contemptuous of (and Hoederer specifically rejecting the idea that the Sarkaz's destiny must always be soaked in blood); Ines, who isn't a Sarkaz at all, except she is, because her family is Sarkaz, and she's always going to be one of them. It was! So fucking good!
#arknights#i need to properly write up my thoughts on act 2 in general at some point but.#CH13 WAS REALLY GOOD
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Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion (Part I)
GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY AND I WISH ALL THOSE WHO WISH TO BE HOEDERER/VENDELA/VERDANT OWNERS TO BE HAVERS BECAUSE IT'S A WONDERFUL DAY AND I AM SO OVERDUE WITH WRITING THIS ACTUALLY!!!!
WARNING: This post is going to contain a lot of yapping from me about Hoederer and how much I love him and would also have a LOT of spoilers.
I am also a great yume-shipper, so my Dr. and Hoederer are married, that information should help with the weird comments sometimes.
Might make it different parts because all those SS will never fit even up to the part I am right now.
Perhaps first of all I need to mention how the pulling went? Apart from my day being catastrophically long and arduous, I managed to sneak some snacking in-between the one additional hour I had left after returning home.
I was actually shaking. Jittering out of my bones, near-heart attack type of activity was happening on my side of the screen while everybody else watched. I was supposed to take SS of every 10-pull but... I got ahead of myself. I think I had around 130 pulls, excluding the ones that I could buy from the ticket shop and the Originium that I blew for a skin.
I even kind of... Skipped my first Hoederer. The one below is the second one, that I ended my funds for, until I could buy the level 60 pack from the shop.
But we caught the third one.
And as it happens I was underprepared with money and XP cards, though I had all the materials for his skills. Bless the green tickets for allowing me to bulk-buy some of them actually since... My god farming for the RMA70-12 is tedious, fruitless and sad.
If I could get a penny for every single time this loser was being problematic I would have enough to buy them and never have problems again.
In any case, he could be immediately E1 lvl80d, and I have been grinding enough to get him to E2 on the same day. He's currently lvl60, cooking his M3 on S1 with Wishlash giving him a thumbs up every time he pulls out a whole boiled chicken to eat.
Starved Sarkaz, am I right?
Even his little token that you get when he joins you another time... I am actually crying, I love him so much and I am so happy he became playable.
Speaking of, did anybody know that the furniture set is separated into a couple other, smaller sets, or was I supposed to learn this from googling it myself?
Apparently, the whole set is called Mercenaries' Hideout, but the smaller sections of it are:
Writing Is Meaningless
Don't Ever Truly Rest
Secondhand Goods
Maintain Your Health
And I am sitting here, tears in my eyes reading their descriptions... When I first remembered that Chapter 13 was coming with a new set I almost screamed. Dr. Pinkie was making fun of me for calling this jail cell basically the same epithets you would use for a five-star hotel, but it really was close to my heart the way it mixed compact with DIY/'Hey, you'll never guess what I found on the street' kind of interior.
And because it is based around Hoederer, we are going to look through it first and read the descriptions before I actually descend into the story.
Description of the full set reads:
A recreation of a hideout in Kazdel, based on Hoederer's description and a number of additional details provided by Ines. As for anything not recreated from their recollections, it's best not to touch—Anything added by W might just blow up.
I love to imagine that these three have to share a dorm and the Doctor just goes up to Ines and Hoederer and asks if there is anything they can do to make it cosy or somehow homey. Also to think that both of them would have recollections of these 'hideouts' in Kazdel... Meanwhile, W seems like she's never been in those? My memory is kind of fuzzy about just how old the three are in comparison to each other.
Before/After Kazdel is pretty much like Before/After Eve was on the internet.
Basement Flooring:
Flooring that recreates the vibes of the basement where the mercenaries lived back in Kazdel. Ines sometimes muses that the place would be more suitable as a small shop. The two both ignored W's suggestion to sell potatoes there.
Basement Wallpaper:
Wallpaper that recreates the look of the basement where the mercenaries lived back in Kazdel. The gray walls look almost exactly the same as before. This time, when they look out the window, it is not the dust-covered Kazdel that they see.
'Our Current State'
A light tube is attached to a frame haphazardly welded together from multiple iron plates, letting out a warm glow despite its appearance. No matter how unstable it may seem, its light can carry the mercenaries through the dark night.
Somehow this little light contraption is 10000x better than any glaring white LED lightbulb that you could ever introduce to me these days.
Rust-colored Rug
A rug showing signs of age that look almost like rust. For some reason, this makes it blend in with the room's style. Is there a color that better reflects life in Kazdel? At least it's not blood-colored.
WHAT IF I JUST EXPLODE IN TEARS???!!!!????!!!!!
Writing Work Desk
A desk piled with books and documents. There are clear traces of manual craftsmanship. Few of the Sarkaz publications sitting on the desk are actually written in the Sarkaz language.
Hoederer's writing desk, I love him so much. The place he might be writing down the different things he wants to be telling to his class, because you KNOW I will absolutely be filing for sponsorship to get him those books and songs he might want to use. Pull in other Sarkaz on the ship to help. Not sure who I have who could be specifically from Kazdel times, but we will find them for you sweetie.
Intel Organizer
A must-have document pegboard for mercenaries, usually used to confirm target information and locations prior to missions. The photographs are always taken down whenever their owner returns. Yet sometimes, their owner never returns.
... I think I am actually going to die from sadness and we have not even started the chapter yet.
Storage Steel Pipe
A rack welded together from steel pipes and plates, normally used to hang clothes and hats. "How many times do I have to say this? Do not hang your work aprons here!"
I don't know who is speaking but the 'work apron' looks like it's Hoederer's and if I have to assume it's probably Ines who is scolding him about it. Little rebel, does it anyways.
Mercenaries' Bed
A flatbed trolley turned sofa bed. The fabric has frayed, but it is indeed soft and roomy. The broken wheel hubs ensure that it stays in place. For a very long time, this was the only place where the nights were not plagued by nightmares.
Imagine being on your trolley sofa-bed and suddenly RI begins moving because there is an emergency and your silly wheels go squeak-squeak towards the other end of the room at the same speed at which you were sitting still because everything else is moving but the bed is trying to stay at the same spot---
Me: "Do we know how fast RI moves?"
Pinkie: "As fast as Czernobog can move towards Lungmen. It has to be fast enough to outrun a tornado."
Me: "OH. Alright. Yeah, that makes sense."
"No Overloading"
Originally an exquisite wooden hanging lamp that lets out a warm glow. There are always knickknacks piled on top. It has a warning placed above: "No stacking!" Hoederer asked Ines, "Is this really something we can use?" Ines answered, "Yes."
IS THAT A PHOTO???? IS THAT??? WHAT ARE THEY???? Books???
Simple Study Ceiling Light
A part that the mercenaries removed from who-knows-what and hung from the ceiling. It started glowing, and not only is it very bright, it's also very hot. Ines asked Hoederer, "Is this really something we can use?" Hoederer answered, "Yes."
Hoederer, sweetie, I think if Ines gets to ask 'Can we use this safely?' then perhaps we might not have to use a random fire stick someone found somewhere.
Portable Stove
A stove that's portable, easy to assemble. What's on it likely belongs to a certain dangerous individual. Do not touch. "Oh, the paper in the stove? I ran out of fuel. By the way, Hoederer, you hungry? I cooked some potatoes over there."
YEAH? WITH HIS BOOKS, DIDNT YOU W???
"Versatility"
A bookshelf put together from multiple recycled materials. The lamp at the top was brought back by Ines. She said it was to make it easier to see shadows. The box at the foot of the shelf is full of historical studies.
Yeah, I too need a dowry chest full of books to feel satisfied.
Secondhand File Cabinet
A heavy steel file cabinet containing the historical data of each Sarkaz clan. Today, even the names of many of the clans documented within are indecipherable.
TO BE CONTINUED...
#arknights#doctor of ri shenanigans#doctor of ri#doctor arknights#arknights chapter 13#arknights chapter update#arknights hoederer#arknights vendela#arknights verdant#arknights pulls#arknightc gacha#arknights ines#arknights w#arknights babbling#the whirlpool that is passion#eve is insane again#also a winner
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“The future belonged to the showy and the promiscuous”: Why the 21st Century Loves Edith Wharton
Emily J. Orlando
E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in the Humanities & Social Sciences and Professor of English
Fairfield University
Photo: John Singer Sargent, Sybil Frances Grey, later Lady Eden 1905.
If ever there were a good time to read the American writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937), who published over forty books across four decades, it’s now. Since the Wharton revival of the late 20th century, when directors were adapting (the Pulitzer-Prize winning) The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, The Buccaneers, and The House of Mirth, her star has continued to rise. As I yesterday prepared to teach The Custom of the Country, which many have called Wharton’s greatest novel, a friend texted me Sofia Coppola’s article on the surprising appeal of its social-climbing heroine. Coppola is developing Undine Spragg’s story for Apple TV. A kind of Gilded Age Material Girl, Undine has been ready for her close-up for years.
Coppola joins an impressive roster of contemporary admirers of Wharton that includes Roxane Gay, Laura Bush, Lisa Lucas, Peggy Noonan, Jennifer Egan, Stephin Merritt, Claire Messud, Meg Wolitzer, Mindy Kaling, Doug Hughes, Brandon Taylor, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ali Benjamin, Vendela Vida, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Kristin Hannah. At a time when publishing houses are compelled to scale back, new editions of Wharton’s books are appearing in print with introductions by Coppola, Egan, and Taylor.
Photo: Sofia Coppola.
Those who think they don’t know Wharton might be surprised to learn they do. A reverence for Wharton’s writings informs Sex and the City (whose pilot welcomes us to “the Age of Un-Innocence”), Gossip Girl, Downtown Abbey (whose “Lady Edith” suggests a nod to Wharton), and HBO’s The Gilded Age which, like Downton, is created by the Wharton-appreciating Julian Fellowes. His Bertha and George, after all, are named for the power couple from The House of Mirth.
But why Wharton? Why now? Perhaps it’s because for all its new technologies, conveniences, and modes of travel and communication, our own “Gilded Age” is a lot like hers. For the post-war and post-flu-epidemic climate that engendered The Age of Innocence is not far removed from our post-COVID-19 reality. In both historical moments, citizens of the world have witnessed a retreat into conservativism and a rise of white supremacy. Fringe groups like the “Proud Boys” and “QAnon” and deniers of everything from the coronavirus to climate change and Sandy Hook are invited to the table in the name of free speech, and here Wharton’s distrust of false narratives resonates particularly well. Post-9/11 calls for patriotism and the alignment of the American flag with one political party harken back to Wharton’s poignant questioning, in a 1919 letter, of the compulsion to profess national allegiance:
how much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?[i]
Her cosmopolitan critique of nationalist fervor remains instructive to us today.
Edith Wharton seems to have foreseen the excesses, obsessions, and spectacles of our current moment. The scandals documented in Wharton’s narratives serve as harbingers of the sensations that flash across our hand-held screens. Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking touches on the same nerve as the sexual exploitation of minors in Wharton’s Summer (1917) and The Children (1928). The quid pro quo run-in between Wharton’s Lily Bart and Gus Trenor looks uncomfortably forward to Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo. The rise to power of Donald Trump would not surprise Edith Wharton.
Photo: “Vanity,” by Auguste Toulmouche, circa 1870.
Wharton’s tenacious Undine Spragg—as horrifying to progressive era readers as she is admired by Generation Z—can be conceived of as the original social media influencer conscious of her brand. For Undine and her creator know that “the future belonged to the showy and the promiscuous”[ii] and that the turn-of-the-century “world where conspicuousness passed for distinction”[iii] foreshadows our own. Wharton would describe Undine in terms we might use for a “Real Housewife of Park Avenue”: “If only everyone would do as she wished she would never be unreasonable” (162). Undine’s world encourages her to aspire to the rank of trophy wife and the sexual double standard dictating that “genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair”[iv] would apply to Wharton herself who, on the 150th anniversary of her birth, would be assessed by a male novelist in terms of how she sizes up to Grace Kelly or Jackie Kennedy.[v] The writer who would declare, in her wildly popular interior design manual The Decoration of Houses, privacy “one of the first requisites of civilized life”[vi] would be appalled by what is broadcast across social media. Wharton also would’ve anticipated the racism directed at Meghan Markle and why granting Oprah an interview would not help relations with her spouse’s family. Children forcibly separated from families due to morally dubious immigration policies echo the plight of war refugees for whose welfare Edith Wharton labored, while the distrust of the cultural other echoes the writer’s own complicated nationalist allegiances.[vii]
Ten years ago, Lev Raphael took the temperature of Wharton studies declaring in the Huffington Post: “Edith Wharton is hot.” She is now positively on fire. I offer below a short excerpt from the introduction to The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, which appears in print today.
*********************
The image gracing the cover of The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, capturing a scene on the terrace of Edith Wharton’s French home, reflects the cultural work that this book takes as its task. The writer is in her element: she cradles in her lap her beloved dogs, she sits outdoors at a well-appointed property she lovingly transformed, she surrounds herself with fashionably dressed cosmopolitans, and she smiles. The moment validates an idea expressed in The Age of Innocence: that “the air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.” As host, Wharton, by this point an internationally acclaimed artist, has brought together representatives of an admiring generation from diverse backgrounds that would outlive and perhaps learn from her. That sunlit terrace is doing something we hope this book will do: provide a foundation for future conversations with Edith Wharton at the center.
Photo: Edith Wharton publicity shot.
Around the time this photograph was taken, Wharton would reflect in A Backward Glance that “[t]he world is a welter and has always been one; but though all the cranks and the theorists cannot master the old floundering monster, . . . here and there a saint or a genius suddenly sends a little ray through the fog, and helps humanity to stumble on, and perhaps up” (379). Wharton’s writings arguably send a ray and help humanity stumble on and up in our own Gilded Age. It is the aim of this collection of essays, produced by leaders in the field at a time of global crisis, to make a meaningful contribution to the scholarship on and dialogue about the work of Edith Wharton and to open up new possibilities for understanding and embracing a writer whose corpus is as enormous as it is resonant. To borrow from Wharton’s preface to her anthology The Book of the Homeless (1916), in which she conceives of her volume, as she so often does, as a house: “You will see from the names of the builders what a gallant piece of architecture it is. . . . So I efface myself from the threshold and ask you to walk in.”[viii]
Emily J. Orlando is the E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in the Humanities & Social Sciences and Professor of English at Fairfield University. She is the author of Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts and editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton. She is currently preparing for publication a new edition of Edith Wharton’s first book, The Decoration of Houses.
[i]Lewis, Letters, 424.
[ii]Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country, New York, Penguin, 2006, 117.
[iii]Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, ed. Elizabeth Ammons, 2nd Norton Critical ed. (New York: Norton, 2018), 186.
[iv]Edith Wharton, The Touchstone, in Wharton, Edith, Collected Stories, 1891-1910, ed. Maureen Howard (New York: Library of America, 2001), 170.
[v]Jonathan Franzen, “A rooting interest: Edith Wharton and the problem of sympathy,” The New Yorker, February 5, 2012.
[vi] Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr., The Decoration of Houses (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897), 22.
[vii]See Melanie Dawson, “The Limits of Cosmopolitan Experience in Wharton’s The Buccaneers.” Legacy 31.2 (2014): 258-80. Print.
[viii]Edith Wharton, Preface to The Book of the Homeless (Le Livre des Sans-foyer) (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), xxiv-xxv.
#Emily J. Orlando#Fairfield University#Edith Wharton#Gossip Girl#The Custom of the Country#Sofia Coppola#The Age of Innocence#Undine Spragg#Summer#The Book of the Homeless
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NCT 127×NET ViVi Series vol.13
In NCT 127, Taeyong, Yuta, and Jaehyun don’t talk a lot? We’ll reveal those three crosstalk and favorite fashion♡
This week’s NCT 127 series, we directly interviewed 3 people, Taeyong the leader, Yuta the Japanese member, and Jaehyun who is always a gentleman! The favorite fashion style corner is also a unique selection and we will deliver one thing or another that will make you know more about these three people♡
Q. Who cries the most?
Taeyong: Yuta!
Yuta: That’s me (laugh)
Jaehyun: I have no objection. Yuta hyung is very sensitive.
Yuta: Yes. Even when I watch dramas or anime, I usually cry right away
Q. Who is the most meticulous?
Taeyong: If you dare to chose from among three of us, I think it’s either Yuta or Jaehyun. I’m sure it’s not me (laugh)
Yuta: Umm… I guess it’s me among three of us.
Jaehyun: Yuta hyung and I. Probably we’re about the same?
Yuta: Ah… It may be so (laugh)
Taeyong: I think two of them are good in hardworking and being sincere. But being meticulous… I’m not sure about that (laugh)
Q. Who takes care the members the most?
Yuta: Ah~ (laugh). You shouldn’t ask three of us this question!
Jaehyun: (chuckles)
Taeyong: There aren’t much though I care about their birthday presents. I can’t always take care of everyone…. At the beginning of the year, I think, “I’ll take care of the members properly.” But as time goes by, I gradually forget about it… (laugh)
Jaehyun: I like to be taken care by the hyungs, but I think I should take care of my younger brothers too?
Yuta: I’m bad at taking care of someone (determined)
Taeyong: Yuta doesn’t look after someone (laugh). But to be honest, Yuta only takes care me! For example, on the stage or when someone is watching… (laugh) (he glances at Yuta) I-I’m kidding! (laugh)
Yuta: Well, yes! It’s a business (laugh)
Taeyong: I’m kidding! But he really takes care of me well~
Q. Who is the most narcissist?
Yuta: isn’t this fit for all members?
Jaehyun: I think narcissist is a strong self-loving, but it’s important to love yourself, right? I think Johnny hyung is the one who expresses it the best.
Yuta: But I think self-love is something that absolutely should be done
Taeyong: I originally didn’t have that kind of thing. That’s why in the past, I couldn’t see myself in the mirror in the practice room. But I think I’ve been working hard and I’ve been able to love myself little by little…. If you ask me why, there are times when I feel disappointed with myself. As I took these things one by one and improved them, I felt that I could love myself. But I think I’m still in the process of knowing and loving myself.
Yuta & Jaehyun: (listening to Taeyong’s story in quiet)
Taeyong: That why when I was asked whether I’m meticulous or diligent, it may seem like something is not good when I answered, “I’m not like that.” But I have a background in accepting such bad things, so I think it can admit, “that’s not true.”
Q. Who is the most popular?
Yuta: It’s definitely Jaehyun!
Jaehyun: Thank you (laugh). But I think what attracts people depends on them. That’s why I think it differs from person to person.
Taeyong: I also think it’s Jaehyun, but I think Yuta is popular as well. Yuta has a good sense of humor and is very considerate to people!
Q. Who is the best insider (fashion-conscious and popular)?
Jaehyun: I think it’s Yuta hyung. There’s a “sense of humor” and Yuta hyung has it. I think so, especially when Yuta hyung and I have the same sense of humor!
Taeyong: I also think it’s Yuta! I agree!
Yuta: It’s my first time to know the word insider (laugh)
Q. Who talks the most?
Yuta: Among the three of us, isn’t it me…? But in the first place, we are the type who don’t talk much, right?
Jaehyun: I agree. Isn’t three of us talk in the same amount? (laugh)
Yuta: If I were with Johnny, I would talk more.
ー Johnny talks a lot, but everyone said they didn’t listen to him
Taeyong & Jaehyun: hahahaha!
Yuta: I’m listening! (laugh) but you two weren’t listening, were you!?
Taeyong & Jaehyun: Yes~~ (laugh)
Q. Who has the biggest gap between on the stage and on private?
Yuta: Who is it…
Taeyong: I think it’s the same. I used to think that it was different, but when I thought about it, I started to think that there’s no gap because I’m showing my true self on stage and the fans are watching me like that.
Yuta: I don’t really change that much, either.
Jaehyun: When I debuted, even when I stood in front of the camera and when I got on stage, I was so nervous, that I couldn’t show my comfortable figure. But as I gained more experience, I felt that I was able to show more my natural and comfortable appearance. I’m happy with that. But I would be glad if all the fans would like me to look natural.
~Extra Edition~
Please tell us your favorite fashion style!
The season is spring! For that reason, the members picked out their favorite fashion with ViVi in one hand♡
Jaehyun: It’s difficult….
Yuta: Jaehyun is like this, he takes a lot of time.
Jaehyun: (keeps flipping through the pages)
Yuta: Hahaha (laugh). Maybe you should ask him again in an hour (laugh)
Jaehyun: Ah, well, I’ll pick all the styling on this page! I think it’s nice to do a lot of different styles like this!
Yuta: You picked everything in the page? (laugh). Well, for me is this styling. I like clothes that show the body line, so I like clothes that show the silhouette clearly. Then, when I see women wearing high waist pants like this, my heart flutters a bit (laugh). But everything looks good because ViVi’s models and clothes are very beautiful.
Taeyong: I like this.
ー It’s the same with what Johnny chose.
Taeyong: Eh, then I’ll choose this one! (laugh). The color scheme is very beautiful. I like ivory or pastel colors, but this coordination is a perfect combination of blue and pastel pink!
Shot of the members and staff!
「Today’s picture by NCT 127」
For the kind of flowers that we used in the photoshoot, we have prepared a few flowers that suits the members image.We decided to talk with the members on the spot.
Taeyong... Rose (variety: Vendela blue)
Yuta... Orchid (variety: Vanda)
Jaehyun... Ranunculus (variety: Kirameki)
This week, there are three people: Taeyong who was a bit playful and polite on this day, Yuta who was singing to NCT 127′s songs during break, and Jaehyun who was really worried about his favorite fashion.
Next week, it will be the last episode of the Tokyo edition!
We’ll also release wonderful photos, so please look forward to it!
Original source: here
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An Interview with Noah Baumbach (with occasional interjections by Greta Gerwig) - Excerpts from The Believer Magazine May 2013
BLVR: What was the genesis of Frances Ha’s character? She’s lovable but can’t find love; she’s quirky but universal. In some ways, she’s a modern-day Annie Hall.
NB: It was a character that Greta [Gerwig] and I developed together. And it’s funny, because I think when we first started showing it to people, people would remark about the character and things they found interesting or unusual or winning about her. I think we both just intuitively had a sense of who this was going to be. Greta has said it felt like it was someone she had inside her.
BLVR: You’ve collaborated with other artists in the past: you worked with Wes Anderson on Fantastic Mr. Fox, and I’m wondering, what did your days look like when you and Greta were working on this together?
NB: It varied, because a lot of the time we weren’t in the same place. Or she was working or we would send pages back and forth. First we sent ideas back and forth, just things that maybe we would want to consider for this movie—ideas for character or story or wardrobe. Some of them stuck, some didn’t. And once we got writing it, we got some writing done in the same place, and then we did a lot of it virtually.
BLVR: Were there any scenes that you wrote that you were confident would end up in the movie, and you were surprised to find didn’t end up in the final cut, for one reason or another?
NB: Well, a big one was Greta wrote a [he looks at Gerwig in the front row]—I can say this, right?—a whole Sacramento section, like a “going home” section, that was great, and really funny and moving, and when we had sort of the first maybe full draft—it felt too… it was a lot to introduce in the middle of the movie—we were meeting new people—but the instinct I think was right that we wanted Frances to go home, and we wanted that to be a part of the movie, but it was probably fifteen to twenty pages or something? [Looks at Gerwig] Twenty five pages, yeah. We were trying to add a chapter that the movie just wasn’t going to hold. We condensed Sacramento to a feeling of going home when you no longer live there. But if Greta hadn’t written that section, we wouldn’t have been able to distill it in quite the way we do in the movie.
BLVR: The script felt very literary to me, too. It struck me as a descendent of a novel that I love, Mary McCarthy’s The Group, which is about a group of Vassar women who go to New York—and I’m sure many of you have read it—but they’re all trying to figure out their lives as they get married and work in publishing and date and some move abroad. It seemed apropos because Frances’s character graduates from Vassar. I’m not saying that book influenced your movie, but I wondered, were there any books that you or Greta were reading at the time you were writing the film—or thinking about it or conceiving it—that were more influential than you realized at the time?
NB: I’m embarrassed to say I never read The Group, and I went to Vassar. I haven’t seen the movie, either. There’s a Sidney Lumet movie of it, too. It should have influenced me! [Laughter] Greta was reading this Joseph Conrad book, The Shadow-Line, around that time, and I had actually been introduced to that book through the Philip Roth book Exit Ghost. And Greta was reading it, and Greta’s a great underliner in books. I still have this sort of idea that I can’t mess up a book, that I have to keep it—
BLVR: You wouldn’t write on a movie.
NB: Right, right. I just can’t somehow bring myself to do— it’s for another time. But the book is about being twenty- seven. It’s about the concept of passing through a shadow- line into adulthood. You know, twenty-seven, being that age. Do we have another book?
[Gerwig calls something from the audience.]
NB: Oh yeah, yeah. Also, this Elizabeth Bowen book, The Death of the Heart. I guess [Greta was] reading that, too. Greta was reading books I had read a while ago and didn’t remember so well anymore. So she could say, “This is a great thing from that book.” And I could say, “Yes, yes.” But I’d have no recollection of it.
BLVR: If you’d underlined it—
NB: If I’d underlined, I would’ve remembered. There’s also that Colm Tóibín book—I don’t know if that’s how you pronounce that—Brooklyn. Yeah. The Dud Avocado, too. Elaine Dundy, I think. I mean, she’s a very different character than Frances but is, like, a single girl getting out there in the world and causing trouble.
BLVR: In the dinner-party scene, when Frances is with couples who are a little more mature and settled than herself, I felt like she was revealing to the audience how other people perceive her. It’s a time you really see her in a context with other people. And I love the whole description she expresses to the dinner table: that her whole idea of love is being at a party with someone and not having to talk to them but being able to make eye contact with them from across the room. And if I had thought about it, I would have assumed that by the end of this movie she’s going to make eye contact with another man—a boyfriend—but you totally duped me in a really good way. She ends up having that exchange with her best friend, Sophie. And it’s such a powerful moment. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the genesis of that scene, and that sentiment, and if you knew then that the contact at the end would be between the two friends.
NB: My recollection of it—[looks at Greta] and you can tell me if I’m wrong—is that, um, that you wrote that just anyway.
GRETA GERWIG: What, uh, oh. I’m sort of participating in this? [She is handed a microphone.] No, we had talked about having Frances want something or believe something. I think you just said to me, “Let’s have her want something, or believe something.”
NB: Oh yes, yes. Can I just back up and—oh no, you keep it [the microphone]. And I’m going to catch up to you. There’s an Eric Rohmer movie called A Tale of Winter—and I love this about Eric Rohmer movies, almost all of them have a person who has a kind of either moral or religious, just a kind of general sense about themselves and the world about how they should be and how their life should be. And some people have trouble with those characters because they feel like they’re so stubborn that you want to shake them, but I love them. Often, in the movies, they really do miss out on things, opportunities: they fail to participate in their lives in a way that could really kind of open them up or change them in some significant way. My Night at Maude’s is that. The earlier ones are like that more. The very beginning of A Tale of Winter is this kind of idyllic montage with this beau- tiful blond couple, and they have this summer fling, and, uh, she gives him her number, and she writes it down wrong— like she’s so flustered that she writes her own number down wrong, if I remember it right—and then she goes home and she finds out she’s pregnant, and she has a kid, and the whole movie is kind of her compromised life because she still be- lieves this guy’s going to resurface. And everyone around her thinks she should get realistic—you know, she’s never gotten over it—and you think it’s going that way, and then, oh, I don’t want to give it away. But at the end, she’s on a bus, and he just gets on the bus, and there he is, and she sees him, and she brings him back to her mother, and her mother’s like, “You were right!” I always loved that she was rewarded for sticking with her fantasy. I thought that was really beautiful. When we were writing Frances, I had some idea that it would be great to have something that she believes in that seems kind of… unrealistic, but openhearted. Her dream of being in the main dance company, for instance, is not going to happen, but this one does [the idea that one day she’ll see someone across a room and just make eye contact and they’ll know what the other’s thinking]. And then you—
GG: [Quietly] And so I wrote that. [Laughter] No, I mean, some of the writing process was like that. Noah would say, “I have this idea.” And then he’s like, “Let’s give her a belief, let’s see what that is,” and I think I went off and wrote that speech and brought it back, and I don’t know if it was contained in the idea that that would be the moment with Sophie, but it is how it ended up.
BLVR: Can you talk a little bit about that scene when Sophie and Frances are looking at each other? Maybe I’ll ask you, Greta—it seems like it’d be a really fun scene to shoot, actually. Looking at your best friend in the film and going through all these transformations with your eye contact—do you remember shooting that?
GG: What’s funny is I don’t think Mickey knew when we shot it that that was the moment. We didn’t give her all the script, so she didn’t know [about Frances’s dream of connecting with someone with eye contact at a party], but it was intense. I mean, it was meaningful when it was happening. It felt like it feels in the film while it was happening. It felt funny and mournful.
NB: I think the trick, also, when you’re doing those kinds of scenes, is not to play the moment you want the audience to be having. The actors can’t be playing the end of the movie, they have to play a moment in time, and because of its context it will hopefully have this other kind of impact. It’s often tricky shooting endings of movies, because no matter how experienced the actors are, there’s often this feeling of—
GG: It’s the end!
Excerpt from The Believer Magazine - Interview by Vendela Vida - Illustration by Tony Millionaire
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