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softasheijis · 5 years

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Hi! I recently finished watching bf and I loved every second of it. I want to know at what point you think Ash fell in love with Eiji? I personally think he started catching feels after Eiji pole vaulted lol

thanks for the question! i think in order to understand when ash fell in love, you have to understand why and how. i’ll try to break it down for you without accidentally writing 50 pages worth, haha. to begin with, i often think of ash’s relationship development with eiji as that one famous quote from john green:

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

sure, they’re star-crossed, and over the span of 24 episodes it doesn’t seem like it, but it was fast. ash didn’t even see it coming, and there’s really only seven stepping stones before it happens.

1. episode 24 provides us with some insight into ash’s first impressions upon their meeting. when eiji asked to see his gun, he was mostly thinking things like, “oh, this guy is too innocent. he’s weird. he doesn’t know a thing about the real world.” his face was carefully blank but he was studying eiji underneath. he didn’t see ibe and eiji as threats and/or equals in any way. the interview was tedious, but there were more important things going on at the moment with arthur anyway, so none of it really mattered. this was just another stranger entertained by his glamorized life of crime, and he was indifferent to it.

2. that changed when eiji pole vaulted over the wall to save ash and skipper in an act of bravery. his feelings towards eiji became recognition. he was so taken aback, he couldn’t stop staring. eiji was unpredictable. this guy could fly. he was a bird, he was free. it was clear then that eiji was everything ash wasn’t, and everything he wished he could have been. suddenly, he was an equal. they lived in two completely different worlds and ash was so envious of that, but on the other hand, he actually liked him. no one had ever bothered to help ash out without wanting anything in return, and his disposition was gentle and kind. although ash thought he was the one who was saved, eiji still thanked him for saving his life and even cried for him. because ash had no reason to hurt someone like eiji, who wanted nothing from him, and because eiji was too trusting and innocent to hurt anyone at all, ash let his guard down. big mistake.

3. consequently, he gives eiji a chance. he kisses him, sends a message, asks him to get something done. clumsy as it was, eiji delivers. he meets ash’s best friend, shorter, and they get along great. i believe shorter is a good judge of character and he’s also a best friend to ash, so that’s significant. at this point, ash is aware he can depend on eiji.

4. next, they visit his childhood home in cape cod. i believe the following moments they share indicate the start of ash beginning to feel something for eiji, regardless of whether that something is a small crush or just strong friendship and solidarity. the arc starts off with eiji learning of his past and ash spending quality time with him. they laugh, they talk freely, and eiji asks him questions no one has really bothered to ask him before. interestingly, eiji seeks him out (as seen right before jennifer is killed and they haul ass) and he looks happy to see him. i’m sure this isn’t the only time he’s done so, and this has to be something unusual to ash. he is used to people seeking him out for business or to kill him. eiji also becomes a sort of catalyst in ash making friendships with others. it’s because of him that ash starts to lean on others more often rather than doing everything himself.

so after all this, he starts to like eiji a little more. their relationship suddenly shifts and deepens. it’s so obvious, ibe and yut-lung take notice of it quickly. ash trusts him now. he doesn’t tense up when eiji sneaks up behind his back, he’s comfortable with letting eiji know what he’s working on, they rejoice together and high-five like children when successful, etc. they’re a team. he starts to like eiji a little too much, in fact. by the time he tells eiji to go back to japan, it’s too late. he allowed himself to slip, and now ash, a gang leader, has to actually resort to drinking in order to get his shit together because he can’t stop feeling guilty. he’s so in his head about it, he doesn’t even notice max is right next to him and clumsily drops his glass in the sink. this is rare. this scene, however small and funny it is, is intentionally put there to show you just how easily his defenses around others are brought down when it comes to eiji. it’s clear that ash didn’t want to hurt him and that he knows he did. naturally, yut-lung sees this as a weakness and promptly carries out his mission.

5. eiji gets kidnapped. in the height of danger things become a lot more clear to you, and so ash is now forced to face how important he is to him. he’s given a choice: kill your best friend or let eiji die. this is the biggest turning point in their relationship. after this, eiji becomes his rock while grieving. he becomes more important than anyone else. since ash is convinced he’s so monstrous and evil, he decides he can at least protect the one pure thing that’s been in front of him all this time. he can keep eiji from going down the same road he has. eiji doesn’t have to get blood on his hands, because ash can do it for him.

6. shortly after this cognizance, eiji reveals he’s worried about ash and that he feels strongly for him as well. not only does eiji tell him he isn’t afraid after ash had just killed a man in front of him, he tells ash he’ll wait for him forever, and that he’ll go crazy if he loses him too. the look on ash’s face here is so telling. eiji’s honesty and genuine worry for ash’s safety leaves him so surprised and vulnerable. after the confession he almost can’t tear his gaze away from him, and immediately orders alex to protect him, twice. alex notably raises an eyebrow and finds this odd, but doesn’t question his boss. this is when ash begins to realize the definition of their relationship and how he feels about him romantically.

7. after spending intimate time together away from the world, everything finally clicks into place. ash opens up, crying and spilling his guts out to him in the middle of the night after a nightmare. in the midst of his sorrow, eiji declares that he’ll stay by ash’s side, even if the world turns on him. eiji will stay by his side, even if he’s a murderer. eiji will stay by his side, even if ash doesn’t deserve anyone. and it’s these words that break a dam inside of him that has been kept shut since he was eight. this is when he absolutely, completely falls in love.

ash latches onto his promise without any hesitation, like it’s all he ever wanted to hear. he tearfully pleads for him to stay even if it’s not forever, to which eiji reassures, “forever”. if i had to pin point an exact scene, i’d say it’s definitely this one in episode 11.

ash has been waiting. he’s needed comfort and warmth for so long, and finally, eiji is here. eiji accepts his pain and helps him work through it. eiji listens to him. eiji treats his wounds and protects him. eiji falls asleep with him. eiji is patient. eiji cooks for him and nags him like a mother would. eiji’s touches are soothing and have no awful motives. eiji believes in him and his future. eiji gives him a glimpse of a normal life and makes him feel like he could be someone other than a worthless street punk. eiji is his shelter.

you have to understand that ash has never, never had that. he’s said it himself before to blanca. everyone has feared him in some respect. everyone has needed and expected something from him at some point, or taken it from him by force. he grew up on dino’s demands and manipulations, and even his friendships were first formed by alliances and/or beneficial circumstances.no one has simply done things for him.

eiji has no obligations to be there for him. he just wants to be next to him, even if that means he’s in serious danger. eiji is so different from everyone else, and he stood out to ash from the very beginning. ash just didn’t know why at the time.

we’ve gone through when and how already, now here’s the reason why:

since they met, eiji is the first person to have looked into ash’s eyes and only seen a kind soul, hurting. not a beast, a cold-blooded monster, a sexual weapon, a leader, a murderer, or a wild lynx. just aslan jade callenreese, lost to the world.

so after such sweet words and actions, of course ash falls.

and he doesn’t stop.

#yayayay i love it when you guys ask me stuff #asheiji #anonymous #answered #personal #meta

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youknowmymethods · 5 years

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Content Creator Interview #12

Tissues at the ready, because, sniff sniff, this is the last post in the current series. And we’re ending with me, @ohaine, putting questions to one of my favourite people in the whole world, @likingthistoomuch, who answers questions about her secret squish, how culture and language influence her writing, and why her eyeball occasionally rolls under the bed.

If you’ve been in the Sherlolly corner of the fandom for any length of time at all you’ll already know that likingthistoomuch is funny, sweet and not afraid to say what she thinks. What you may not know is that she’s one of the kindest, wisest people that you’ll ever meet. She’s a beautiful person, a wonderful friend, a bit crazy, a bit sarcastic, and now, by public vote (well, I voted for it), an honorary Irish cailín dána. As if all of those things weren’t enough she’s a damn fine writer too. Want me to prove it?

Molly looked surprised but followed his lead. They moved to the silent tune being played in his head, upping their tempo as the notes seemed to flow fast and with certainty until they reached a crescendo and slowly seemed to fall as leaves in autumn, leaving a wonderful silence in their wake.

“There’s no silence when I’m around you. It’s music. And its beautiful.”

The simplest symphony, one of her sixty two stories, is one of my all time favourites, and I was so happy to get the chance over Christmas 2018 to pick her brain about where these beautiful words come from.

OhAine: I’m always impressed by the gentle way you treat your words, and I’ve often wondered is that because English is a second language for you?

Likingthistoomuch: I am always surprised when reviewers say that because I honestly just blurt it all out. There is no deliberate attempt to make the words the way they are. And English, though it may seem like my second language, is in a way my first because my entire education has been in English. (I just may be more fluent in it than the local languages but that’s a discussion between my mum and me that you really don’t want to know.) The only real barriers are when it comes to the British way of putting words. Because we are so exposed to American TV, that’s the language that forms immediately in my mind. But it’s getting better, because nowadays it’s all British TV for me! (GoT is worldwide and based in Westeros so it’s not American ok!)

OhAine: Brit-picking you mean? Nothing will throw me out of a Sherlock story faster than reading something that just shouldn’t be there, so how do you get around it?

Likingthistoomuch: I (le gasp!!) ask people like you and Emma Lynch but mostly I just bulldoze ahead. (My muse lasts less than the winter here so I need to move it quickly.)

OhAine: And is it that love of film/TV/stories that inspired you to write in the first place, or are you a life-long writer? What was the very first moment that you thought to yourself; I can do that?

Likingthistoomuch: I would call myself the Accidental Writer (I can almost hear the play-writes scribbling that title down...royalties people!!!). I wanted to read a story with a certain story line, and the then regular prompt takers were all busy. @writingwife-83 was the one who suggested that I try writing the fic on my own, she said, “Why don’t you just give it a go!” And I did. The result, Moving with time, didn’t seem to be too bad considering. Of course I get the cringe moment when I read it now, but that’s what started the ball rolling!

OhAine: This seems like a really apt moment to slip in a reader question submitted by @writingwife-83. She asked; How does writing inspiration tend to strike for you? Does it hit you out of the blue or does it come from something more external?

Likingthistoomuch: It’s literally a hit from out of the blue! It can be a movie or a song or recollection of a scene, literally anything. That is exactly why my post-TFP took so long to finish, the story (Our love has a way about it) was just not getting through!! So I look at admiration when writers take on a prompt and expand it into stories. My mind’s inbox is full of Asks, waiting for the brain to acknowledge and work on it :).

OhAine: When I looked at your sixty two stories as a body, it occurred to me that there are two types of stories that you excel at; Victorian!lock, and short scenes—

Likingthistoomuch: Ooh thank you.

OhAine: No, genuinely, no smoke blowing here LOL. I think you have a real affinity for Victorian Sherlock. So, how do you get into the mind set and what about that era particularly inspires you?

Likingthistoomuch: The mind-set isn’t much of an imaginative journey. We Indians have a saying, "The English left India but left their bastard behind." This refers to the narrow minded, sexist mind-set that was highly followed during Victorian times, remnants of which we are still fighting to get rid of here. Not blaming it all on the English, we have been pretty inventive with our own original regressive thought process too. So for the social mind-set and fic setting, all I need is to look out the window.

I love putting Molly and Sherlock in that era because on some front, both of them epitomise "not all heroes wear capes". She is trying to reach for opportunities that are denied to her just because of her gender and he is seen as the almost vulgar, rude and insensitive soul who is ready to judge people on their merits alone...(oh how dare he!!) It’s a personal favourite to put them in an era where they do struggle and fight but eventually it always work towards what they want, and of course, they get it via some unrelenting angst but hey what’s the fun if it’s all bubble gum. (It’s almost my inner romantic peeping out but don’t you dare tell anyone about it, I have a reputation to keep!)

OhAine: I can kind of relate to that – and this is something I put to @hobbitsdoitbetter too, because she writes Victorian era Sherlolly so brilliantly as well – I often think of Molly in the Victorian works as being like Irish women of the last generation who took their small victories where they found them.

Likingthistoomuch: True, unfortunately every geography and people has a similar story to tell. Things are changing but this change has yet to reach the grassroots levels.

OhAine: We can’t talk about your Victorian!lock without mentioning With eyes shut tight, where you did a very interesting thing when you switched to John’s voice in a very ACD way. What inspired that? How did you find John’s voice?

Likingthistoomuch: I actually found John's character (and Martin's fabulous portrayal) in TAB to be very interesting. Here is a man who can see what’s correct, will support it but is also so short sighted that he doesn’t realise that in supporting the women's struggle elsewhere he is ignoring the struggle going on in his own home. So there was the empathy for Molly not getting her due treatment as Sherlock's wife balanced by the outrage at her wanting to follow her own heart. Martin's performance in TAB is my favourite of the special and it was fun to try and bring in his voice, the sarcasm battling the disbelief. I had great fun doing it :)

OhAine: I have this theory that you have a secret squish on John, am I right?

Likingthistoomuch: You mean crush? I absolutely adore the boots off Martin Freeman, his performance is exquisite. I know we all look in awe at Ben's work, but for me, performance wise Martin takes the cake.

As for John...you know Sherlock puts on a veil of indifference to hide that he feels so much. I think for John it’s the opposite. He thinks he feels a lot and understands it all, but he too is hiding the inner struggling man. That’s why the TLD exchange between these two, (S: Underneath all we may just be human. J:You too? S: No, you too) is so profound. Just as Sherlock found in John a partner, John did too. It’s just that Sherlock accepts that he needs John, John is too blind to understand that he needs Sherlock too. That is one man who has his emotions so cross wired and tangled, it’s a very interesting character. And the thing is I feel Sherlock understands that and hangs on to John, not looking at it as a weakness. John, if he ever introspects, will find his dependency on Sherlock as a weakness. It’s basically asking Sherlock to do something, which he himself would not apply.

And Martin adds a different layer each time he plays him.

OhAine: One of my favourites of yours is a short story (<1,000 words), New paths. There’s a very calm, meditative feeling to the story: could you tell me a bit about your inspiration?

Likingthistoomuch: So, couple of years back we made a trip to England, and had visited Filey, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. After a long drive from London, we arrived and realised that there was a view of this cliff face from our cottage. And while my city bred, urban self gawked at the lovely site, the cloud thing happened and the hills actually turned pink. In that moment, it went all quiet and I literally felt the tiredness from my long journey seep away. And it’s only nature that can do that magic.

While writing New Paths, I wanted to see things from Molly's perspective. Do I feel she broke down and cried buckets and ate two tubs of ice cream? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think she just felt tired and also at the same time, like a huge weight was off her back. And sometimes, what you need for your soul to just feel even a little better is a few moments away from humanity. Not necessarily to forget things, but more like to recharge your batteries and get the energy to deal with things in a better way. So I made her experience what I did that evening. I made her experience the sea, the beautiful colours that nature shows and just heal her tired heart a little. God knows she needed it.

OhAine: Misty silhouettes is a unique story, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like it before. Can you tell me about how it came to you and what are the challenges of writing Sherlock and Molly through so many lives?

Likingthistoomuch: Misty came about because of Mirrors, a short one I wrote on my phone, half asleep and trying to get rid of an ear (brain?) worm. Kiki had loved it and encouraged me to expand on it, which I attempted to do. I think I had just recently watched a historic Indian movie and was highly impressed with the battle scene, hence the opening sequence. I thought; why not work through time as well as geography, bringing these two closer and closer, like they showed in the short Sherlock episode before S3, where Anderson comments Sherlock is coming home? So they start in ancient India, and then slowly weave geographically as well as chronologically towards their current destination, London.

The challenges were to keep the story along the same theme as Mirrors, so trying to find characters, stories and their ending as well as the transition into the next life was some work. In short, I feel I have exhausted my small quota of creative imagination where the story stands right now, on the cusp of the last chapter where Sherlock is now in current time. It is definitely NOT abandoned; I have at least formulated ten stories and discarded them all because after such a long journey, Molly and Sherlock deserve a good reunion. And I trust myself to write it one day. Because that right end WILL come, I am sure of it.

OhAine: Have you found that end yet?

Likingthistoomuch: I may have! I have just started on that path, praying I stay on it.

OhAine: What does your proofreading and editing process look like?

Likingthistoomuch: Going through the document three times, checking for typos. Posting the fic, finding those three escaped typos and correcting them. Finding typos the more times I read a story. Yes, that’s the process. Elegant, no?

OhAine: Super elegant, LOL!!! You would rather do it yourself than press a beta into service? Or do you find working with someone else restrictive?

Likingthistoomuch: I think it may just be because I am such an impatient writer. I have loads and loads of ideas but putting them on paper takes a lot out of me. So once it’s there, I can’t wait to get it published and for you guys to see (and maybe get a few reviews too.)

I am learning. I do at times ask for help to oversee the plot and the work and it’s worth waiting.

OhAine: But you work without a beta most of the time… Is that a deliberate choice, or something that’s just evolved?

Likingthistoomuch: Actually, that’s just how it evolved. My first impression of a beta was someone who would do a read through and call out my typos and grammatical mistakes. Then it dawned that I could ask about the story line and if / how/ will it work. The advantage of working with someone is that you might get a better way of putting your story forward, get help when you are stuck. Or they’ll help you understand character’s motives and inspirations even more, which was a fantastic new experience for me. On the downside you could end up telling someone else's story.

OhAine: I think that’s a great point; you can end up telling someone else’s story, and it sort of has me reflecting that I’ve done that when I was very new to writing. Has it ever happened – even in relation to reader input – to you?

Likingthistoomuch: Actually no. But that’s also because almost 95% of my fics are one-shots. As for inspiring something new, only Kiki's advice at expanding Mirrors was an exception. The rest...? I am a free bird!!

OhAine: I’ve seen it argued lately that sites like tumblr stifle creativity and can lead your writing in directions you wouldn’t have otherwise taken it. What’s your take on that?

Likingthistoomuch: Oh good question! The social policing at times can inhibit your writing and introduce undue caution at best or a total change of direction of the story at worse. It’s something that every writer has to take a call on, and finally write a story that he or she wants to tell. Because, at least for me, I know when I have written something good, and maybe not many would like it. But it’s the story I want to tell, and if I am not able to do that, no matter how many accolades I get, there would always be a feeling of dissatisfaction bubbling beneath the surface. I may just not share my work next time, and that would even further piss me off :D So not a good cycle to get into. I would encourage writers to take pride in their creation and own it like a boss. Your words indeed are your baby!

OhAine: Does that mean that social media has been a stimulator more than a damper of creativity for you?

Likingthistoomuch: So far I have had a relationship with social media where I have been able to distance myself if there indeed is shit happening. Which, if you have been on tumblr long enough, you know is pretty frequent. I keep to my lane, and I expect you to do the same. So far it has been a stimulator, and the few moments where it could’ve been a dampener, I was able to remind myself that’s it’s all virtual and imaginary and I have a real life outside, and hence was able to ignore the shit.

I have a very simple mantra, you no like, you unfollow or block or ignore. I will survive, indeed thrive, in your absence....if I notice your absence in the first place.

OhAine: The thing that puts me off social media is the combative purity culture that seems to be so prevalent now.

Likingthistoomuch: *roll my eyes so hard am still looking for my right eyeball that rolled under the bed, the bugger* All I can say is, real life is tough as nails, Social Media should be a platform to release some steam, not to order or bully people around. Again, instead of telling people what to do, what to post it would be better if the Social Police (aka Staff) got their act together and BLOODY ADDRESSED THE PORN BOTS. (I got 5 new followers yesterday and no prizes for guess what they are.)

Also, as a blogger, it’s not MY responsibility to ensure that YOUR children and young people see clean content. There are tags and blocks meant for filtering NSFW stuff. I came to your free site because I thought I could post/follow the stuff I want. And people will always find a way to find 'blocked' content. It’s called Google.

OhAine: And a few quick fire questions to wrap it up. Starting with: how do you find your titles?

Likingthistoomuch: Like literally throwing a net out there and hoping the words caught make sense. Sometimes it’s just *snap* and you have your title, sometimes it takes time. I always hope the story inspires the heading but that rarely happens. Except for my post TFP, Our love has a way about it. That was purely the after effect of finishing chapter 1 that I had been trying for months.

OhAine: How do you gauge the success of a story? What’s the metric you live by?

Likingthistoomuch: Reviews! Comments! God, I love them. But honestly, sometimes it’s more about being happy myself and putting an honest effort on the paper. I feel the best when I know the job I have done is a good, genuine one, like for Our love has a way about it. It’s a lovely feeling and very few things can replace that knowledge of a job well done.

OhAine: Do you find writing is an outlet for real life pressure?

Likingthistoomuch: Not really. How can I say this, it adds a bit of colour? Like people who art! Writing makes me feel good, that I can do things that may not have a tangible benefit for anyone but it is a big achievement for me. And since not many know that I write, it’s a very personal feeling, a fight to the finish with myself.

I had a great time addressing all these questions, Áine. I am surprised that the answers aren’t one worded, as I half expected them to be. Caught me in a chatty moment I should say :) This has been a wonderful exercise, and dare I say, a wonderful initiative. Kudos to you for coming up with this.

OhAine: Aww, thanks Gee, you’re such a sweetie :) It’s been great fun, but I’ll be glad to get Friday afternoons back to normal!!

So guys, that’s it for now. I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who read, followed, re-blogged, liked, left comments, and supported this project, none of which would have been possible without the oh-so many lovely writers and interviewers who gave up their their time to participate, and who so kindly shared their fandom and writing experiences. Thank you all so, so much ♥

#content creator interviews #Sherlock #sherlolly #likingthistoomuch #ohaine

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enchantment1385 · 6 years

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OC interview meme ... Pt 2

I was tagged by @dickeybbqpit @keeperscompanionsdai and @shield-maiden-of-sherwood You guys are all beautiful and lovely for thinking of me ;) So, let’s ask post trespasser Faeron some questions, shall we?

1. What is your name? Faeron Tamlith Lavellan

2. What is your real name? Ummm... That... That is my real name...

3. Do you know why you were called that? My mother once told me it means "Bright in Mind and Spirit" *he giggles* I expect they really chose it because they liked it though.

4. Are you single or taken? *he almost winces at the question* I... WAS with someone... It... We... *he sighs sadly* Single.

5. Have any abilities or powers? Hmmm... I can cook? Although... The lack of arm hinders that somewhat. Need more help nowadays with the preparation and stuff. *A small sweet smile graces his face* Or.. did you mean stuff like this...? * He waves his hand and it begins to snow inside...*

7. What’s your eye colour? *he chuckles* Good question! You tell me *he winks* I once got told they were the colour of magic... That was very sweet. I’m honestly not sure if they’re periwinkle blue with golden flecks, OR, golden with periwinkle blue flecks?

8. How about your hair color? *He blows his hair in front of his face* From what’s left of it... Still looks to be blue black. Someone once called that ‘raven’. *he says sweeping his hair back again*

9. Have you any family members? Nico is well, if that’s what you’re asking? *he smiles* Father is still as strong as an ox... I... I have been a little... reserved as of late... There are people I should have visited now there’s time again... It’s just been... Difficult... * He seems to fade away for a moment staring at the floor* The clan is well. Varric keeps asking for a visit too! ...I should probably save him from the paperwork at some point...

10. Oh? What about pets? *sigh* No one let me keep the dragon egg we found *he says with a pout* I told everyone it would be fine, but... They still said no. I still have my Halla, Ghilas? He’s such a good boy! He likes it when I let him sleep near the fire when we are traveling and rub his tummy... Nico, doesn’t like that so much though... She just... glares at him, and mutters things like ‘Just try scaring me, you shit horse...’ ... It’s uncomfortable. Father says he’s not a ‘pet’, but he is! He likes to be spoilt. *he gives a big smile*

11. That’s cool I guess, now tell me about something you don’t like. That’s... A BIG question... Isn’t it? Do.. Do you mean big life things like, pain, and sadness? Or, more trivial? Like... The fact I don’t like wearing clothes?

12. Do you have any hobbies/activities you like doing? I feel like... *he clutches the stump of his missing arm.* Like, I’m relearning how to do everything at the moment. The first cake I made was... Lumpy and when I tried to dance and spin Harding... I lost my balance... and ended up in her arms! I still love Varric’s books?And can read them one handed! .... No, wait that sounded wrong... *he blushes*

13. Ever hurt anyone before? I... I hope not.

14. Ever… killed anyone before? *he looks ashamed of himself and looks at the floor.* Yes...

15. What kind of animal are you? Oooo! Ummm... Hmm... Maybe... Maybe a stag? Or a raven? Ooo! What about an owl?

16. Name your worst habits. I... I have been told I’m too soft, too kind, and too self sacrificing... *he give a humorless chuckle* I also cry a lot.

17. Do you look up to anyone at all? Oh yes! Nico, is strong and beautiful, clever, and brave. Varric is smooth and funny. Blackw- Thom, is Noble and kind. Cassandra is pure and wise. Josephine is sweet and friendly and soooo diplomatic! Bull is strong and unshakable. Cole is gentle as a breeze Lady viviane is... Well, she scares me... But, She is amazingly shrewd. Sera is brave and funny. We... We don’t talk about the others... It... It’s too fresh.

18. Gay, straight, or bisexual? *his eyes widen and he blushes bright red* I... I’m gay.

19. Do you go to school? Not... In... the traditional sense? Me and Nico were taught in many things though. Even when we didn’t want to be... Father, he... He wanted us to have every opportunity, so we learnt most of the trades of the camp.

20. Do you ever want to marry and have kids one day? *His face falls and it looks like someone has just ripped his heart out. He places a hand to his mouth and sits quietly for some time* More... More than anything... *he snuffles*

21. Do you have any fanboys/fangirls? Tut! Have you been talking to Nico? *he chuckles* Don’t pay any attention, it’s not true.

22. What are you most afraid of? I... I think the worst thing that could have happened, HAS... *he looks sad again* So now... Now I supposed I’m scared of pain... Loneliness... That my life will now be a void...

23. What do you usually wear? As little as possible. Clothes are always... Rough against my skin... I don’t like it... So, soft things?

24. Do you love someone? Of course. *He smiles* I love lots of people.

25. When was the last time you wet yourself? I have no idea... I expect when I was out with this? *he holds up what’s left of his arm* I mean... It’s not a regular thing, I can say that! *He smirks*

26. Well, it’s not over yet! Okay! *he smiles*

27. What class are you? (High class, middle class, low class) Ummmm... I... I’m an elf? I mean... I know people are nice enough to us now because we saved Thedas and everything, but... Still an elf. *he giggles*

28. How many friends do you have? Lots! I made friends with the soldiers... *his face contorts into confusion* Want to know something really weird? So many of them were call Jim... It got creepy!

29. What are your thoughts on pie? I have made many! Why? Did you want one? I can probably make you something if you’re hungry?

30. Favourite drink? Anything with apples and elderflower. Meed is yummy... and jasmine tea.

31. What’s your favourite place? There’s this little nook behind the waterfall in the undercroft... It’s nice there.

32. Are you interested in someone? I adore them... *he gives the saddest smile you’ve ever seen, his eyes glassy* But... Love isn’t always enough... so I have learned....

33. What’s your bra cup size and/or how big is your willy? *Faeron’s ears flick (which only happens when he gets realllllly flustered) and he goes beet red* I... Ummm... I.... I don’t know how to answer this... I’ve seen bigger... But no one has ever complained?

34. Would you rather swim in the lake or the ocean? Lakes. I love swimming in them.

35. What’s your type? I would say I don’t have one... Nico says I have a weakness for rogues and redheads...

36. Any fetishes? *He pouts and looks up thinking* Don’t think so... I mean, depends what you call a fetish I suppose? I LIKE certain things... But nothing ‘weird’. *he giggles*

37. Seme or uke? Top or Bottom? Dominant or Submissive? *he chokes and sputters going as red as ever* I ummm.... I’m not great at being dominant... Ever! As for... Ahem... I ... I like both...

38. Camping or indoors? I like both, but... Outdoors has the stars. *he smiles*

39. Are you wanting the interview to end? I don’t mind. *he gives a soft shrug and a smile*

40. Now it’s over! Oh. *he giggles* Okay! Was... Was it okay?

Tagging: @dreadhobo @tessa1972 @dinah-myles @queen-of-the-crows @john-cousland @long-liv-prairies @sassylavellen @hoehoehoelt @gugle1980 @inquisitorsmabari @inquisitor-julia @mamawolf0714

#faeron lavellan #post trespasser #dragon age #my OC #my poor boy

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softboywriting · 7 years

Text

Happy Birthday, Honey | Shawn Mendes

Summary: Shawn wishes you happy birthday, and gives you a very unexpected present. [fluff] [non au] [making-out]

Word Count: 1.9k

|Masterlist In Bio|

You sit in your bedroom, legs crossed, laptop on a pillow on your legs. It’s early morning, around eight so not too early. You’ve just woken up because your video chat alert was going off on your laptop and you see that it’s Shawn trying to video chat. You laugh to yourself, of course he would call you first thing in the morning.

“Happy birthday!” Shawn yells, voice crackling through the laptop speakers.

“Thanks, now I can’t hear anymore,” you laugh and shake your head. He doesn't video chat very often, usually you text back and forth or send snaps making stupid faces or using ridiculous filters. It’s just easier when he’s on the road all the time and doesn’t have a lot of time or privacy to talk to you one on one. It makes meeting up in person that much more special.

_______________________________

You met Shawn about a year ago during a concert in the Midwest. You had taken a job as a merchandise vendor for the event center he was playing. It paid pretty well and came with the perks of sometimes meeting artists and free merch if they were really nice. It was probably your fourth event since working for the event center when you met Shawn, and at the time you didn’t really know who he was. Of course you’d heard some of his songs on the radio, and you knew his name but you couldn’t pick him out of a crowd.

It all happened so fast, you were pushing your little three tier cart loaded with shirts, hats, cups and what not through the inner concourse to get to the stadium’s west wing merch booth and you got stuck behind some guys pushing band equipment on flatbed carts. It was nothing new, you just had to inch along behind them until they turned down the stage corridor and got out of your way. Well, on this particular day, someone didn’t secure a guitar case to the flatbed and it went tumbling off as they hit a crack in the cement floor.

Not paying attention, though you swore to your boss you had been after it was all over, you kept pushing your cart; hit the escaped guitar case, and went tumbling over the cart. There was a lot of commotion, the crew members hurrying over to you asking if you were okay. At first you were a little disoriented. You had just flipped over a cart and landed back first on the edge of the guitar case. But then, Shawn happened. He was the first person you realized was talking to you.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Shawn asked, voice calm and his hand on your side. He was crouched down beside you with a look of pure worry and concern. “Can you hear me?”

You laughed, you actually laughed. Your ribs were aching, the back of your arm was burning for a reason you couldn’t quite sort out, and you were a bit dizzy but here there you were laughing. “Yes, I can hear you.”

Shawn smiled, all pearly white teeth and adorable dimples. He bowed his head forward, laughing with you before asking again, “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes I’m fine but I think I hit something.” You turned to see what you were leaning against and realized it was an instrument case and there was a huge dent where you landed on the top of it. Shawn’s face fell as you looked back to him and you felt your own stomach sink at the sight.

Shawn looked away, the pain of seeing his guitar damaged obvious. He offered his hand and helped you to your feet as he looked over your arm, fingers gentle, ghosting over the red welt that was burning. He said something about getting a medic to look you over just in case but you weren’t paying attention. He was standing so close, he smelled so good and he was so warm in the cold hallway. He started talking again but you couldn’t hear him, you couldn’t stop staring at his face and focus. He was so gorgeous you couldn’t help but start to feel a little flustered that this attractive man you didn’t even know was fussing over you.

“Did you hear me, Honey?” Shawn asked, ducking his head to look at you eye to eye. His hand was on your side and you couldn't focus on anything but how warm he was and how his fingers were pushed into your back ever so slightly as if he were afraid you would just collapse.

“Y-yeah. Sorry I-...Sorry about that. Is that yours?” You asked, pointing at the dented case and he looked past you and nodded. You groaned, knowing it would be bad for you if your boss found out. “I’m probably going to get fired.”

“No, no, I’ll tell them it was my fault” Shawn assured you with a soft smile before leading you away from the wrecked cart toward a small room with some waters on a table. He helped you to sit down, though you really did feel fine, before talking to a security guard about having someone come to look you over.

After that, he formally introduced himself and kept apologizing that his stage crew hadn’t strapped everything down properly. He really wanted to take full credit for the accident when he wasn’t even directly involved. You really couldn’t believe that a guy of his popularity was so kind and genuine. Weren’t celebrities supposed to be douchebags or something?

An on site medic came and gave you an assessment, said you would be alright save for some possible bruising. As soon as the medic was gone, you and Shawn talked for a good hour before he had to go on stage and perform. He even gave you a staff badge, in case you wanted to see the show from the floor where his team would be, still apologizing like everything was his fault. You didn’t go out to the show, afraid of your fellow staff members finding out. Instead you took your cart to the merch booth, said you had to go back and help the other merch booth and then ditched and went back to the green room.

When Shawn came back, he was surprised to find you still there. You talked some more, thanking him for being so kind and understanding about the accident. One thing lead to another and while his team waited for fans to clear out of the arena and parking lots, the two of you kept on talking. It turned out you had a lot in common, and kept each other laughing until his bodyguard knocked on the door saying it was time to head to the tour bus. Shawn gave you his number, making you promise not to give it out, and the two of you have texted every day since.

_______________________________

“So how does it feel being so old?” Shawn laughs

You gasp dramatically. “Hey! I’m only a year older than you!”

Shawn rolls his eyes and says he has to go get your present to show you, that it’s somewhere in his bodyguard’s hotel room because he left it in there earlier. He leaves his laptop open to the view of the hotel bedroom wall and you put your headphones in and switch your screen over to youtube for a few minutes to watch a video of his most recent interview. You had to arm yourself with a way to tease him like he always teases you about the things you post on instagram and twitter.

It’s not until more than twenty minutes pass, that you realize he hasn’t come back yet. You try yelling into the mic to see if he had just gotten distracted as he sometimes did. But you get no response. You pick up your phone and text him.

You: where did you go?

You: Shawn???

You: This isn’t funny. I’m going to call John if you don’t answer me in five minutes.

A minute ticks by slowly and you open your contact list and start scrolling until you find John’s number. You’re about to open up the call screen as two arms snake around your waist and you jerk back; knocking your laptop to the floor, and yanking your headphones out in the process. You elbow the hard body behind you as you’re pulled close to it. It takes you a second to register that they’re laughing and that ‘they’ are Shawn.

“Is that anyway to treat your present?” He says against your ear, smile coming through with every word. You let out a surprised scream and pull away from him for a moment to turn around and hug him tight, hands gripping his back.

“You’re such an asshole. Scared the shit out of me,” you mutter, pressing your face against his chest.

Shawn kisses your head and rubs up and down your back. “I’m not an asshole, you love me.”

“I do.” You lean back enough to get a good look at his face. He’s grown so much since you last got to see him in person. Snapchat didn’t do him justice. He is definitely taller, and his face is less boyish and a bit more angled but his eyes were the same as ever. Warm, inviting, full of emotion as he looks down at your smiling face. “How did you get here?”

“I told Andrew I needed a few days off and I flew in last night. We didn't have anything going on before the next show, so I just ditched to come see you. I still have your key from last time I visited, and I thought surprising you would be fun.”

“You didn’t have to do all that. You really scared me there for a second.”

He presses his forehead to yours and smiles, his breath smells like minty sweet gum as he speaks. “I know, but I’ve wanted to see you so bad, it’s been too long,” he breathes, lips so close they brush against yours with every word. Your heart races and his eyes are locked with yours. Before you can say you missed him too and mention he’s too close, his lips are pressed against yours. They’re soft, plush and it’s a simple kiss. Lips closed against yours and his eyes fall closed.

Your hands slide up his back and you open your mouth a bit to let him in. Shawn slides a hand into the back of your hair, gripping, tilting your head back as he licks into your mouth, moaning as your tongue meets his. He moves his leg a bit to get comfortable and you take the opportunity to do the same, but you straddle his thigh, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. He notices this change of pace and his free hand finds your hip and moves you faster causing you to groan into his mouth.

Shawn slows the kiss, pulling your lip between his teeth, tugging and then letting it go before going back in to do it again. After a moment he pulls back just enough so his lips aren’t touching yours. He grins big and his breath is hot and a little labored. You hear his voice breaking a bit as he says, “Happy birthday...Honey.” He smirks as you roll your eyes at the sickening sweet pet name. ” I hope you like your present.”

“I love it,” you say, smiling back for only a second before he surges forward to kiss you harder as he lays you back on your bed and crawls over you, mouth still locked with yours. It was definitely the best present you could have hoped for.

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

*****Note: none of my works should be posted anywhere outside of my linked accounts. I do not give permission to repost with or without credit to my accounts. Please notify me of any reposted fics.*****

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes smut #shawn mendes oneshot #shawn mendes fanfics #shawn mendes fanfic

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sweet-rose-of-mine · 6 years

Text

Interview with Julianna Sedbrook (the groupie who, allegedly , got pregnant by Axl Rose in ‘87)

In the above picture: Lisa Reed, Adriana Smith and Juliana Sedbrook (GNR’s groupies).

Exclusively for DailyBetter Group © she tells her days with GN'R, and Axl's son who never was. December 2009 Welcome to the Jungle is perfect introduction to one the greatest RN’R album ever, Appetite For Destruction, and the video introduce us to the classic line up, and with them one the luckiest person who was witness of the birth of GUNS N’ ROSES. Julianna Sedbrook is the girl that in 1987 had the honor to be in which is the first video of the band, video of the Welcome to the Jungle song, because of Steve’s call, which one she used to share not just her house with, but also a great friendship. Today a mother of two beautiful girls, she’s back in city that joined her to the so – called bad boys, California, and ready to be in touch with her past. She shares exclusively on his first and revealing interview the trunk of her most cherished memories. DailyBetter Group© was fortunate to be able to contact her and after several talks, she given one of the strongest interviews that we have done, not only by the importance of Juliana in the beginning of the legend of Guns N 'Roses, but also for the data cast that, for us, were absolutely unknown. A life history and deeply rooted feelings of Axl Rose, has broken the silence after more than 20 years and she has wanted to provide with the highest respect and affection. But by the time this interview was arming, a person posing as Rose and asked that gently unpublished photos she scanned for us and were published without her authorization, making everything work, confidence and effort see damaged. We strongly condemn this act that only serves to prevent persons of this type give better data. We try to tell a story that was never told, the history of a man who barely became one of the most loved and hated in the world of music, and history can only be told by him and those who I have surrounded and loved so much. Exit interview with you from the bottom, a silence broken, a strong affection and loyalty to the greatest character in this story, the story of Guns N 'Roses. DB: How and when did you meet the band? Julianna Sedbrook: I met them at clubs at 1st, then me and my best friend Lisa Abbate moved to LA and we moved across the street from one of GN’Rs hangouts. It was the NY (New York) boys house were Del James and West Arkeen (the co-writer for it’s so easy) and Axl’s side band “Smith&Wesson”) all lived, billy (who designed Axls cross tatoo and the 2nd cover to Appetite) lived there also with Reed, and a couple others, everyone used to get together and play under the name "The Drunk Fux", Slash would play, Duff, sometimes Axl, Del James, Todd Crew (RIP who was in Jet Boy), it was great mostly cover songs, all the girls would get on stage and dance and sing back up vocals. A lot of parties were held there, I have some funny photos from there! Steven was homeless, so we asked him if he wanted to move in a spare “washroom” we had it was big enough for his bed and TV had a private entrance and rent was only $100.00 a month, he moved in right away! Then I met Adriana, they were dating and all the band and friends of theirs were always there, we used to have their “band meetings” there as well. DB: How did you do to be the girl in WTTJ Video? Did it influence or made any difference in your personal life? JS: I was actually sick at the time and got a phone call from Steven saying, Axl didn’t like the girls Geffen had sent down to do the video and he wanted me to do it, so sick, I went down “for the band” lol and we filmed ALL night. After the video was done, Axl came back to my house and spent the night, it was our 1st time together and it was amazing. It has made a difference in my life in many ways, just being seen on tv is strange for me, I remember when they had their 1st tour to England, me and Lisa went too- I saw the welcome video on TV at the hotel, it was surreal! Then at the show, people wanted my autograph, it was a lot of fun, I had some great pics Robert John took of me and Axl before a The Cult show, I would love to get copies of, they were really nice just of me and him. The video connects me to them forever and he used it again in the “Patience” video, Axl’s sitting on the couch, looking like he’s thinking back on his life and he’s watching the “Welcome” video with the parts of me in it, it’s sweet. DB: What can you tell us about the recording of Appetite For Destruction and the recording of the WTTJ video? JS: I know it took awhile, Axl had about 4 different producers, he’s a perfectionist and wanted it just right, he sure did it too- that album is one of the best ever! I remember how excited Steven was, I have a picture of him and Ronnie the roadman in his “room” in our house holding the Original cover album in his hand, finally it was out and the rest was history! They just blew up world wide! The video was just like making any video although I can say that the scene where Axl is in the electric chair with the metal band around his head, he was shaking around so violently he cut up his forehead. DB: You have the luck to be in some tours, in shows, etc, How was the band backstage? Any story or tale that you remember? JS: Well the early shows were always fun, they were soooo crazy. But I think my favorite was when they went on tour w/ the cult we all went to the LA show, and I spent the night in Axls room with him, Adriana Smith called up and wanted to sleep with us, she seemed to be there in a lot of my sexual experiences hahahaha, not a part of it, just there : ) then the next night they played in San Diego and we drove down there and when we got there he said to me “you’re a sight for sore eyes” he gave me a rose ”which I still have“ and after the show, grabbed me by the hand and led me to the bus so we could have some “private time “. It was a sweet couple days. DB: What kind of relationship did you have with the members of the band or If you had one in particular with one of them? Any memory with each of them that can you share? JS: I had a great friendship with Steven, he’s such a sweet person with such a good heart!, his addiction started getting bad while he was living with me, it was sad, but it was nothing compared to how bad it ended up. Slash used to come over to mine and Adriana Smiths house when we lived together; we had some fun times there. Mostly, it was always Axl, my favorite time, and it was the last time I saw him. We met up at the coconut teazer I think ?? but drove back to his place in his “favorite” black BMW, we spent about 3 days together, just doing normal things ,watching movies, eating frozen pizzas, he would go to interviews I went to work, I was dancing then too, and would go back over to his house after work. We had a BEAUTIFUL time together. He was so romantic and gentle with me, he would wash me with a warm wash cloth, etc. just the really amazing Axl that I love. He played piano which will bring tears to your eyes and chills to your arms, it’s so pretty! He ended up having a depressive episode and I told him I would always love him (he had locked himself in the bathroom) and always be there for him no matter what and I left….. sad ending to one of my best memories, besides having my kids : ) but my love when I love someone is unconditional and it never ends… I miss him so much and it would mean so much to me to be able to be in contact with him or have him in my life, now that I’m back in LA, Cali again. DB: Why and when did you get away from the band? JS: Well I never have EVER revealed this to anyone before! After the 3 days me and Axl spent together, I turned up pregnant, I had a miscarriage as I was partying like a mad women, we all were, but it killed me losing our baby (he doesn’t even know this!) I know Axl has always wanted kids and the women he has dated that had them, he has always gotten very close to. I started dating another talented musician named Giovanni and we moved into together, I was still dancing, and I got pregnant with my GORGEOUS daughter Angelina, and dropped out of the “LA” scene. That’s what made it so hard for Marc Canter to find me for his book, or anyone else I was close to as well. I went through some serious downs in my life and have in the past 9 years made it great again, I have had another baby girl who is now 2 her name is Lilianna, and is Amazing and so beautiful! She’s made my life worth living when at times I thought it wasn’t worth it anymore. DB: When you found out about your pregnancy, did you try to contac Axl? JS: No, I told no-one, it broke my heart, even though I don’t think having a child with him at that time would have been good for either of us, I was devastated as I loved him so much but I never told anyone, until now, i figure enough time has passed, I have healed emotionally enough to make it public, and I am curious to know how he would feel about it, but I may never get an answer to that. I never told him, because I lost it before I had a chance to, so I never really got a chance to make a choice if I/we wanted to keep it, so I never said anything. DB: Are you still in touch with any of them? When and how was the last time did you see one of them? JS: Yes I’m in contact with Steven, and so happy to be talking with him again and know his life is on track and he’s happy has a great wife. He deserves the best!. I haven’t talked with the rest of them in a very long time and just in the past year started putting myself back out there to be able to be found and would love to get back in contact with them. DB: How was you relationship with Axl? Any fun, crazy or amazing memory that you still remember of him or private time that want to share? JS: As I said my relationship with Axl was special, amazing and strange all at the same time, fun, crazy, and sweet. I previously told my favorite story of him and me together, of all I miss him the most because what we shared in private was something special between just him and me. I also miss Steven, we had a great friendship, he’s so funny. DB: In the times that you spent with Axl, how was he at personal level with family and friends? JS: Very different then with the public, he was different with different people though, I have heard he threw girls out of his house naked and told them basically to F__K off.. but I never experienced that side of him, I have seen him cause a lot of throwing bottles etc. in clubs but he was crazy at times. He had a lot of issues with his family I really don’t want to get into though it is his personal deamons. DB: Did you meet Erin Everly? Do you remember how was the relationship between Axl and Erin? JS: Yes I met Erin several times, she didn’t like me for obvious reasons, I always thought she was his (Axl) true love, but they had a STRANGE relationship and volatile as well. Yet very loving too, they had many physical fights etc, but she was a lot younger than him (so was I), but I do know they loved each other. DB: What can you tell us about this triangles? Adriana, Steve and Axl? JS: The making of rocket queen with Adrianas background part did cause a lot of waves for all 3 of them. Adriana is a free spirit and did and I’m sure still does do what she wants at the moment, and lives for today, as I do now myself!! Barbi however gets very little credit for the song and it was written for her, Adrianna just did “backups” but it has given her a huge amount of attention. She is a sweetheart and we had some really great times together and I always wish her the best too! It is a great song and the end lyrics are so sweet. DB: Did you meet those people? And if you did what can you tell us about them? Vicky Hamilton I don’t recall meeting her, but of course heard a lot about her, I got my copy of the video and album from Geffen, I’m not sure if it was her personally, but she helped them get off the ground! Paul Tobias I never met that I re-call. It was a long time ago.LOL The girl in Axl’s tattoo The girl in Axl’s tattoo I have heard many stories around that and the one thing I do know, it’s a beautiful song!!!!! DB: Tell us about you, your life, your dauther and your family! How are you today? How has been your life since then? JS: Both my daughters are great my oldest Angelina is in college with a 4.0 average : ) I’m a proud mama .. my littlest Lilianna is amazing she’s ½ Dominican so at 2 she speaks both English and Spanish. And she’s so beautiful, both are!, my life is good now, I love animals, we have 2 dogs and a cat which is a small amount, I usually have a Zoo hahahaha.. They are my family, I don’t have contact with my other family, I have a brother in Seattle, who’s very kool! And my biological father died when I was 12 years old. DB: What did it make you come back to LA, California? JS: I came back to LA, Cali from NY because I grew up here and have family here, a better place to raise my baby DB: What do you feel when you see the video these days? What memories come up to your head? JS: So many, sometimes I cry, others I smile and laugh, I miss those days, but you can’t live in the past, you have to live for the day! So I try to do that and know I have had a life many would have loved to have had! DB: Looking back how do you remember those years? JS: The best in my life! They really were, I had more fun then, than anytime I can remember. DB: What do you think about CHINESE DEMOCRACY and Guns N’ Roses nowdays? JS:It’s very different then the old GN’R but I think Axl has what he wants – it his way, I actually haven’t even listened to to CD yet, I will but I’m just happy all of them continue to do what they love and what they are so good at~ making GREAT Rock n Roll!!!! Thank you so much for hearing my input in the making of GN’Rs beginning; there are so many people who were there. I feel privileged to have been apart of it. Thanks again and much love to all the members of GN’R… I love you always~ Julie “The Welcome To The Jungle Girl” Thanks Julie, DailyBetter Group © sends you our warmest greetings and we really appreciate your confidence and choice of providing this great interview, We're sorry about the pictures. Thanks to you we know a little more about the history of Guns N 'Roses, we hopefully that Axl give you a chance to see he someday. We communicate to Rose this interview and data have been provided with the deepest respect that we have him for the sole purpose of being able to help put together a nice history with a happy ending. Management: María Angélica Torre Alba-Staff DailyBetter Project © Preparation, translation and adaptation: Matias DailyBetter Group © Natalia Salaberry-DailyBetter Group © María Angélica Torrealba-Staff DailyBetter Project © DailyBetter Group © DailyBetter Project © You Are Fan, You are Daily! Source: www.dailybetter.com.ar Legal: All rights reserved to DailyBetter Group © and DailyBetter Project ©. DailyBetter Group © prohibit the reproduction in whole or part of this interview without appropriations credits that appear at the bottom of this note and the relevant link. Juliana Sedbrook only authorizes at DailyBetter Group © the publication of the photographs contained in this note with the credits previously agreed. Note and photos based in intellectual property rights and for the deposit required by law. Declarations: Juliana Sedbrook and DailyBetter Group © declare that the interview has been quite agreed in their structure and wording to avoid misinterpretation. Juliana Sedbrook states that the only persons authorized to publish the photographs in this interview is DailyBetter group©, also declares that it's under rights and intellectual property rights of DailyBetter Project ©

#axlrose #erineverly #axl e erin #axlanderin #guns n roses #gnr #axlerin #julianasedbrook

48 notes · View notes

spreadplaylist · 7 years

Conversation

SPREAD CH.2 ARTIST SPOTLIGHT - Taylor Jamison

Hi SPREAD listeners! I hope everyone has been having a meaningful Pride month while enjoying the PRIDE playlist! The featured artist off SPREAD CH. 2 is dear friend of mine and a force to be reckoned with. Get a glimpse below of Taylor Jamison's life as an unapologetic songwriter and artist. HERE WE GO!

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Taylor: Hey hey, my name is Taylor Jamison and I’m a songwriter/singer right here in most-of-the-time-sunny Los Angeles! I’m originally from Boulder, CO, but have been living here in LA for a second now, writing for some amazing new artists, and creating some cool tunes under my name as well!

Dan: Hi Taylor! Welcome! I am so glad that u are PRIDE's featured artist. You are a songwriting beast who is constantly on the grind. I'm excited for people to hear about ur career and your thoughts about the industry, so let's get started.

Describe a typical day in the life of a songwriter. What do u enjoy the most about it?

Taylor: I’d say a typical day in the studio with me, at least, is catching up on life with whoever I’m working with, joking around, sharing funny moments of the week, usually someone has a good hook up/sex story as well. My favorite part is that, from these shared moments, a story unfolds itself. I see myself as a “Storyteller for the Ears,” so whether it’s myself singing the song or another artist, I love being able to share a moment/feeling in time through music and watching how people react to it.

Dan: I would say that u just perfectly summed up the reason songwriters do what they do! It's all about the story and the connection. In finding this connection for yourself, describe the place that makes you feel the most inspired creatively.

Taylor: I absolutely LOVE the beach because it’s so many things to me. Gentle, but powerful. Beautiful, with a dark side. Tranquil, yet full of energy. It makes me nostalgic for days passed, while making me think forward into the future. I love going out and laying by myself with a notebook, letting the sound wash over me until the words start falling out of my head onto the paper.

Dan: LA beaches are definitely hard to beat, too! I could use a beach day myself. It's a great way to reset and get those creative juices flowing. After running through all of those emotions we then get to the actual songwriting process. Now you have countless songs to ur name. Out of those, what song of yours are u most proud of? Why?

Taylor: Ooooooo, this is a hard one. I’m gonna have to have a tie on this between, “Down”, and, “The Last Time”. When putting together the production and sound scape of, “Down”, I really wanted to create a sense of longing because that’s essentially what that song is: it’s the complete taking-down of your walls for somebody because you want to fall completely into them, letting yourself be vulnerable so they know just how much you want them. For, “The Last Time”, I decided to keep that song with just piano and vocals because adding production was going to end up making it sound cheesy, and this song has such a powerful sense of nostalgia that I wanted it to almost seem completely empty, just like how you feel sometimes when you think back on someone from your past. Plus, that key change is life (have to toot my own horn on that one lolz), I want more artists to do key changes again!!!

Dan: Girl, key changes are UNDERRATED. When done just right, they can completely change a song for me. The key change in "The Last Time" makes me scream every single time. I think we could see them make a comeback.

Now, just like anyone on this journey, there are numerous high and low points. Tell us about when the music industry has maybe made you feel inadequate. How did u overcome this?

Taylor: Ummmm, the industry can make you feel inadequate on almost a daily basis if you let it, honestly. I’d be lying if I were to say that every day is a walk in the park, cause it’s not: you feel like you're constantly trying to prove to the world that you’re talented, yet it falls on deaf ears. However, I think the cure for those feelings of inadequacy is surrounding yourself with amazing people who are just as creative, driven and positive as you are, but always making sure to be humble. Nobody likes a cocky bitch, ever, lolz.

Dan: You are speaking TRUTH in this interview, girl. Surrounding yourself with positivity is almost the only way to get through those moments of feeling inadequate. And you're right, nobody enjoys being around cockiness, even though there can be a lot of that in this industry.

As you surround yourself with driven and encouraging people, I know that also includes artists u look to for inspiration. Tell us about an artist/songwriter who inspires u. What about their artistry/ability would you like to emulate in your own?

Taylor: To kick it a bit old school, I’m gonna say Elton John because I think he was so groundbreaking and just what was needed in the world to move forward progressively. He was completely unafraid to be flamboyant and unapologetically homosexual in a time that it was still not acceptable in public overall. Plus, with Bernie Taupin on the lyrics and Elton on the melodies, they made some prettyyyyyyyy amazing music that still stands the test of time, if I don’t say so myself.

Dan: Elton is a legend and an icon, especially for what he did for queer visibility in the mainstream. I had to include him as a part of the PRIDE playlist. It would have been a crime not to, honestly.

I have mentioned earlier that u are pretty much on the go all the time, whether it's working on ur own stuff or writing for other artists. In the midst of everything u have going on, how do u manage a busy schedule and stress? How do you recharge when u need to?

Taylor: I actually work WAY better on a busy schedule, so I’m a fan of back to back sessions, all week long! But, when I do need a little break, I love getting out of LA for a sec and visiting places like San Diego, Palm Springs, Santa Barbra and more. I also love having parties with my friends, dancing around, being gay, playing beer pong. Oh, and Tequila. Tequila is always an answer to stress and busy schedules (Silver Tequila only though).

Dan: I think that LA is such an encompassing city that sometimes the only solution to getting a break is getting out. I do the same thing. Also, I did not know u liked playing beer pong! I sense a duel between you and me coming soon...

Looking past u only liking silver tequila (sorry I had to throw some shade), what do u think is the biggest misconception people have about working in this industry?

Taylor: Oh lordy, probably that you can just show up in town and become a super star. Sorry to say it, but being a cocky bitch doesn’t get you very far hahah. The only way you’re becoming an overnight pop star is if mommy and daddy are loaded, or a family member is tied into a label somehow. Gotta put in the work to really earn respect from people, at least in my book.

Dan: There are many, many people that agree with u! This industry easily and quickly exposes true talent and true intention. I love how honest and open u are.

Touching on your openness, how has ur identity influenced or affected your journey as a songwriter and artist?

Taylor: I think being gay totally influences my journey as both a songwriter and as an artist because it’s not, “normal”, per say. It doesn’t fit the cookie cutter mold of what a male pop artist has been for the past 5+ decades, so it’s sometimes difficult for people to want to get behind something still so new and not fully understood. But, even though it sometimes makes the journey harder, I wouldn’t change it for the world because I feel like it brings such a unique and interesting view to songs that straight men, and even women can’t entirely relate to.

Dan: I am holding onto hope that as time continues, more queer artists will be accepted as major label and mainstream like their straight counterparts. I think that progress in this aspect will really be made by people just like u, who are unapologetically themselves. What advice would you give to up and coming LGBTQ+ songwriters and artists?

Taylor: I would emphasize not trying to hide who you are, letting it all fall out, even if it’s hard to do. We’re in a time where LGBTQ kids need role models, people that they can say they want to grow up to be like. Unlike straight men and women, LGBTQ kids have had to feel the need to hide who they are from such a young age so as to “fit in” with normal, American society; now is the time for us to live our lives to the fullest so we can keep paving the road towards the future. (I felt like a motivational speaker there on a soap box lolz.)

Dan: U are dead on. The more LGBTQ artists and musicians that are in the spotlight, the more LGBTQ kids and youth will see that it really is okay to be themselves. We have to watch out for our LGBTQ youth as much as possible because our government doesn't seem to look out for them enough...

I am sure thinking through these questions has made u, in a way, look back on your own journey as an artist and songwriter. So what would you has been the biggest highlight of your career as an artist/songwriter so far?

Taylor: I think one of the coolest moments so far was opening for Bonnie McKee at OC Pride in 2014. Even though I now look back on my outfit and shake my damn head, it was so amazing to meet her in person, definitely one of my songwriting idols!

Dan: Hahaha, that's incredible. How cool that u were able to open for her at a Pride event! She is a songwriting queen. Definitely an idol of mine, too! (For those of you that don't know Bonnie, u can thank her for hits like 'Teenage Dream,' 'California Gurls,' 'Dynamite,' and 'Hold It Against Me.')

Taylor, it's time for my signature question. What artist/album/song have u had on repeat lately?

Taylor: Ok, album for SURE would be Kehlani’s, “Sweet Savage Sexy”: that shit is AMAZING. I’m also digging The 1975, Jon Bellion, Blackbear and Julia Michaels. “Issues”-Julia Michaels, “Do-Re-Mi”-Blackbear, “Escape”-Kehlani, “Bad Liar”-Selena Gomez and “Death Wish”-Terror Jr are definitely the go-to songs on repeat currently!!!

Dan: This list is SO solid. U know Kehlani has a soft spot in my heart. I was so excited to include her on SPREAD CH.2 as well!

Now that we are sadly wrapping up this Artist Spotlight, how can we check out ur music and stay up to date with ur releases/posts? Anything we should especially be on the lookout for?

Taylor: My Insta/Twitter handle is @TaylorJamison77, and you can listen to my shit on Spotify, Apple Music, iHeart Radio and more under Taylor Jamison! Also, you can check out Matthew John’s EP, “Chain Reaction” on all streaming sites as well (I wrote the title track, “Chain Reaction”!). In the next few months I’ll be having some new music come out, as well as some more releases with other artists (follow me on Insta for the most up to date info, as I share mostly on there. Plus, my InstaStory’s are usually pretty fun, from what I’ve heard!)

Dan: I can attest that Taylor is very fun to follow on social media! Everyone PLEASE go check his pages and his music out, and then go give his song '(Never Gonna) Change For You' another listen on PRIDE! Thank u so much for being so real with us, girl. I cannot wait to see ur name in lights one day.

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Thank u for tuning into the second SPREAD Artist Spotlight! Big thanks to Taylor Jamison for serving some tea today and giving us a closer look at his career as a gay singer/songwriter.

I hope u all enjoy the last few days of PRIDE month! I can't believe it's almost over. In just a couple of days a new playlist will be gracing the SPREAD website, and this one is about to be veryyy refreshing... ;)

Cover e v e r y inch!

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familyvisionis2020 · 4 years

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Day 2 - Knoxville

Somehow the post I made about Knoxville got deleted so this is me trying to remember some of it but this is deficient and I am mad and sad I lost that writing because it was good and heartfelt.

Before we went to bed in Asheville we heard birdsong in the trees at like 1am and I said ‘nightbirds?’ and Jeremy laughed a little. Jeremy and John and me remarked in the morning in Asheville how nice it would be live here. The cool mountain breeze was nice. We left the house we were staying at and headed into town. We went to the mechanic first to try to find out what the problem with the van was. The mechanic looked at it and explained it was our pittman arm and the steering box was shot which was causing the play, and that it could be repaired for about $280, and we confirmed with the van owner from whom we are borrowing the van that they would reimburse us for the repair, so we left the van with them, put on sunglasses, walked past the moog factory and down thes street to the Five Points diner. It was a greasy spoon where they served typical Denny’s fare plus a bonus section of greek and italian entrees in the back. I got a big omelet of spinach and feta, hash browns and grits. It felt so warm and full and substantial to eat those things. Later John would remark that “when your needs are met on tour, they’re met so much more intensely,’ which I agree with. Sleep is precious even thought it’s usually cramped and smelly and uncomfortable, the water bottle and coffee cup and meal feel like real ballast and fuel. I had said this more poetically before I lost the post but whatever. We eat our breakfast and then stroll around town for a bit, visit the bookstore Malaprops downtown where I see more muppet-looking people busking and spanging, flying signs, nodding out, sleeping on benches, the nexus of muppet and homeless is an unclear one for me and I try not to be too judgy. We meet Kabir’s friend Alex Brown at Malaprops, Kabir buys a book called 1491 which is a precolonial history of the US I think, we walk down town past one plaza and to a park with a bandshell and a stage and a lawn cordoned off because two men are testing the sprinkler system. The soil near the bench where we sit is aerated and I confirm the squat columns of earth littering the ground are soil and not goose shit. We all four sit on a long bench and all cross our legs together and read each of our individual books in this way that was kind of comically synchronized, so much so that Kabir just bent over so we wouldnt look exactly the same. Me and John were on Ursula K Leguin and Kabir on Kingdom Cons by Yuri Herera, a novella, and Jeremy on Capitalist Realism on his kindle. A townie ambles by, he has a deeply asymmetrical hircut with a shock of purple dyed hair on a mostly shaved head, a loud Pittsburh steelers hat, a cane, and that familiar mix of affability and psychosis that seems to characterize a lot of home bums. He sees us all reading and remarks: “I like Shakespeare myself.” Mercifully, he walks on, goes to another group of tourists down the sidewalk and does something that’s not quite heckling and not quite visiting with them.

We leave, the drive is short, we have had the steering box/pittman arm/linkage repaired and so the play is gone out of the steering but the wheel itself is permanently at 10 o clock and evidently it wants to drift left. Jeremy is driving and negotiating the misalignment expertly, we agree to find a place to get this fixed in Knoxville. On the drive we listen to Blue Smiley, The Durutti Column, Andy Shauf, Frank Zappa, Toro y Moi, Toshifumi Hinata, and best of all we listen to a track called “Style and City’ by Stand High Patrol, which is just an upbeat litany of naming music genres and then naming the city that genre originated, a genius idea, Jeremy said it came on in a club in Brooklyn and the crowd got incredibly loud and everybody loved it. This time around on tour rather than despairing at the poverty of my music knowledge as compared to the expansive encyclopedic aural erudity of the boys in the band, instead I just ask what song is on when I like a song and like it on my Spotify. The other day my friend was asking me where I find out about new music from and I said without thinking ‘I just borrow my music taste from my friends’ which like yes, of course I do. I had this issue for a long time like I must be the originator of my taste, that I must dig in the crates and find the rarest music that no one has ever heard of before, and that I must never be influenced by anyone. Which is dogshit egotism, I’m pleased and relaxed to learn that I can just ask and my bandmates will happily give me a track ID and not think twice of it, and I can take these new songs home with me to enjoy and share.

We get into Knoxville and there’s a giant JFG sign that looks about a century old and a bizarre system of concrete staircases snaking and zigzagging and carved into a steep hill and I want to go visit them but we end up not visiting them. We get to the house we’re staying at, the people who live there are Royal and Kayla, ‘betrothed’ is how Royal describes his Kayla, they are married. Royal is an architect, exceedingly kind and jubilant and gregarious and gets close to you and involves you in jokes and has a laugh that comes so easy and his jaw kind of jerks in time with his jaw and palate when he laughs, the same sort of motion you see in an opera singer or like Mariah Carey when they are modulating vibrato on big belting sung notes. We hang at the house, Kabir breaks out his big thing of homemade chipotle hummus, we start to feast but Kayla brings out a homemade loaf of sourdough she has and then warms up four thick slices in the cast iron and puts a gentle golden crust on it and serves it to us with a big stick of butter on one of those covered narrow butter plates, and also she brings out sweet bell peppers and cuts them into sections we can dip into the hummus, and she pulls out the drum throne from royal’s kit for me to sit on. She’s a nurse, she’s southern in this special way that treats hospitality like breathing, makes it not hard to accept kindnesses and graces. She gets up after eating to work on her pottery, she has a throwing wheel outside in the garage area and she has lined their stone retaining wall with cups and pots she’s made, I learn later that the plates she served us bread off of were all made by her as well. The life she and Royal have in Knoxville seem so breezy and solid and supported and full and healthy.

Royal is an architect, the home has a couple little miniature homes and buildings made out of what look like high-grade matchsticks. John recognizes a poster on the wall of a friend’s band. Their dog, Willow, approaches me, I get annoyed and think it’s going to be mean or bark or smell bad or be annoying, but then I’m petting it for an hour, she jumps on the couch beside me and I put her in this kind of hug-headlock and fall asleep with her on the couch, Jeremy, I learn later, has taken a picture of this, I feel really happy he did that, and I ask for the picture from him and I send it to a girl I like in an effort to confirm my putative cuteness and genteel nature. When Royal is home we watch funny videos on youtube on his projector, weird interviews with furries and flat-earthers and then of a guy screaming about something while in the middle of traffic outside Universal Studios in L.A., I try to explain to the guys how there was a meme I saw wherein there is a picture of a cat who is reciting the lyrics of a Kanye song but in a cute speech impediment style where it can’t say Rs: “Pwease Baby No Mo Pawties in Ew Ay” and it is basically impossible to explain and gets no laughs and that’s fine and we move on. Jeremy puts on a Vimeo of this incredible short film he made with the title “Guided Meditation for Increased Kill/Death Ratio,” which is exactly what it sounds like, it’s built in Unity, which is like a framework to design video games in, it looks like a generic FPS with a character holding an assault rifle moving down a long spacy looking corridor lined with metal, and with a very calm amniotic ambient track Jeremy comissioned his friend to make, and Jeremy is doing the voiceover, and the conceit is it’s like a guided mindfulness meditation except instead of reducing anxiety or avoiding panic or grappling with trauma or mending depression or whatever the usual purpose of these meditations are (meditations I do daily, using the app Headspace, btw, which no one here knows as far as i know), instead of that, the purpose is to like reassure the video game player that they are a perfect efficient killing machine. Stuff like ‘focus on the feeling in your HUD, now the feeling in your body armor, now the feeling in your M4A1 carbine, now visualize your next spawn, you are not your avatar, you are pure death’ something along those lines, and it hits hard home for me being a former competitive Counter Strike player and casual Halo and Call of Duty player and now being like mentally ill to whatever extent I am such that I believe I require these meditations. ITs really well executed, the player glides through corridors, clips through the ceiling, encounters nebulas and NPCs and aliens and eventually spirals into space. Jeremy shows the original video that inspired him, same basic thing but in a virtual Costco rather than in a FPS. We move slow, Royal screen prints tee shirts for his band, Tired Frontier, on his living room table as we watch the videos. The plan is to spend tonight and the next three tour dates wth Tired Frontier. We eventually go to the show.

It’s a house show, the name of the place is CBD Castle, above the front door they have a huge cardboard sign that says CBDB’s in the style of CBGB’s and there’s a big porch with a huge couch on it and a guard rail thing that you can sit on or prop your feet on perfectly if you’re slouched way down on the couch. We mingle a little, the show gets started, the opening act is Kind Magic, which it becomes evident is something of a joke band, perfectly suited to a house show, they don’t take themselves too seriously, they mostly have just mustaches, 80s style, one guy has wraparound oakleys, he’s the lead singer, he climbs up on his bass amp at one point. Royal comes in, and people start moshing, gently, just like running into each other, Jeremy does a silly dance and I watch it happen and I want to do it and I have to wait a few songs to get up the courage but eventually I give it up and start spinning around and let myself get bounced around and I am 32 years old and feel just right and not self conscious and silly and afraid how I used to always feel at the metalcore concerts when I was 16 in Ace’s Basement in Greensboro and the moshing was this awful violent masculine chauvanist bullshit thing. This is the opposite. One song, the lead singer, it becomes evident, is chanting “Pogo! Pogo! POGO!” and I think this means pogo mosh but it does not, it means the drummer gets up off his throne and picks up a big pogo stick he has secreted in the corner and starts jumping up and down on it WHILE playing a complex drum pattern on the drums, it is unreal the level of dexterity and coordination this guy has, I learn later that he spends half the year touring with a professional pogo troupe whose gigs are mostly basketball halftime shows, and include a guy named Danger Rus, aka Russel The Muscle. This band rips and is so fun and loosens everybody up and people are drinking and getting kind of sloppy and I plan to be mad and indignant about this but instead I just don’t care and it’s lovely. Next up is us.

We set up, I get to use the backline kit so load in is minimal, just setting up breakables again. We get locked in, Kabir revs us up, we get started, and right from the jump either I pushed the tempo with my count-off or the guys pushed the tempo or we all did most likely, but we are playing louder and faster than last night and I am going in all the way hard on the drums, playing with my whole body, i come down with my right hand on the floor tom so hard my butt bounces up off the throne, I’m surprised but I like that so I keep letting that happen, I head bang as hard as possible, my neck is immediately sore and hurting but the crowd is crazy live, everyone is dancing after a few songs. I manage to thrash the wingnute off the hihat clutch which and try to repair it, flounder, and give up, which all that means is I can’t modulate the hi hat and so our set is just louder and more raw which matches the room anyways. By the last two songs the people are dancing so hard that I give up my usual veneer of grimacing and lasering my eyes to the side or corner to avoid the crowd, instead of grimacing what I do is watch what is happening in the crowd, which is the crowd smiling dancing moshing grooving with us, with me, and I get a huge smile on my face which I can’t hide and I’m so incredibly happy just playing and being heard by these people. We end and Royal rallies the crowd and they chant ONE MORE SONG ONE MORE SONG for like 3 minutes but we just don’t know another one, and so there’s no encore, but how special and lovely to be asked to do one.

Tired Frontier plays and they rock and they have keys by Paul who has a master’s in music theory and currently pursuing a second music masters in production or something. Royal has 10 pedals I think, and a super weird tuning, and they make a big wall of ambient noise between the keys from Paul and the feedback from Royal’s “stack,” which is his guitar running through a Fender guitar combo for an amp and with a Fender bass combo for effects. Their set is a little longer and the vocals don’t come through that clear and they don’t give super clear definitions to the start and end of their songs so the set may have been 4 or 7 songs. They finish, and I am so starving hungry I get the keys from Kabir and go to the van and eat about a half a jar of peanut butter and an apple and then go lay on the big white couch outside and just doze, super tired. It starts raining sheets and we learn from somebody that Knoxville’s adjacency to the mountains makes it a temperate rain forest and it rains almost every day. It’s warm and breezy and perfect. Me Kabir and John go get taco bell, the best taco bell in town, I just order the same thing as Kabir rather than taking a million years to choose and that works out great, two spicy potato soft tacos, and we just sit in the parking lot and wolf and chomp. The parking lot is sparkling, spotless, a big street sweeper truck is skrrting around finishing the job, someone who I imagine is on opiates walks very very slowly up to our van and then walks away. Someone is asleep outside near a building in the strip mall. Some car drives up and maybe drops off food or clothes. We go back to CBDB’s Jeremy is involved in a dance party there, Paul is choosing tunes based off what he calls ‘forgotten hits from the 80s.’ We eventually go back to Royal’s I fall asleep almost immediately on the couch.

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

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Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: October 4, 2018

10 NEW TO NETFLIX

"Billy Madison" "Blade II" "Blazing Saddles" "Chappaquiddick" "The Devil's Advocate" "The Green Mile" "Monty Python's Life of Brian" "Mountain" "Mystic River" "The Shining"

7 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD

"Andrei Rublev" (Criterion)

It's funny how classic directors can ebb and flow into the national conversation. I feel like I've heard Andrei Tarkovsky's name more in 2018 than in many recent years. Some years everyone thinks everything is "Hitchockian" or "Kubrickian." Perhaps Film Twitter is expanding its auteur vocabulary because I've seen several recent films, including "Annihilation" and "High Life," compared to Tarkovsky's work. Did Criterion somehow know this was going to happen, thereby timing their HD upgrade of his epic "Andrei Rublev" for late September? Probably not, but you never know. As for the release, it's a beauty, including both versions of the film, a few documentaries, and new interviews. Some of the Criterion upgrades are merely that (imports of special features with an HD transfer) but this is more like a brand new release. After all, Andrei Tarkovsky has never been hotter.

Buy it here

Special Features New high-definition digital restoration of the director’s preferred 183-minute cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray The Passion According to Andrei, the original 205-minute version of the film Steamroller and Violin, Tarkovsky’s 1961 student thesis film The Three Andreis, a 1966 documentary about the writing of the film’s script On the Set of “Andrei Rublev,” a 1966 documentary about the making of the film New interviews with actor Nikolai Burlyaev and cinematographer Vadim Yusov by filmmakers Seán Martin and Louise Milne New interview with film scholar Robert Bird Selected-scene commentary from 1998 featuring film scholar Vlada Petric New video essay by filmmaker Daniel Raim New English subtitle translation PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman

"Leave No Trace"

Debra Granik's first film since "Winter's Bone" remains one of my favorites of 2018 and loses none of its remarkable power on second viewing at home. It's just as phenomenal as I remember when I saw it at Sundance. This is a gentle, truthful tale about a father and daughter growing apart, a division deepened by his severe PTSD. Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie gives one of the most genuine performances of the year, and Ben Foster nearly matches, finding a more subtle register than the one for which he's most well-known. This is a beautiful movie, one that I hope everyone gets a chance to see.

Buy it here

Special Features Creating Leave No Trace - Featurette Deleted Scenes Behind the Scenes Vignettes Location Scout Photo Gallery

"The Naked Prey" (Criterion)

Academy Award nominee Cornel Wilde stars in this adventure film, which he also directed and produced, reportedly based on the life of John Colter, an explorer chased by Blackfoot warriors in Wyoming. The script for "Naked Prey" was Oscar-nominated but if you're thinking this is a relatively obscure choice for Criterion, especially when compared to the other two films in this column, you're not wrong. The company often includes at least one film a month that you probably haven't heard of or at least haven't seen in a very long time, to go with it's more widely-acknowledged collection of classics. Such is the case with "Naked Prey," a film that reportedly earned mixed reviews on its release but is now considered influential both in its focus and brutality. Roger himself was not a fan. Buy it here

Special Features Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray Audio commentary from 2007 by film scholar Stephen Prince “John Colter’s Escape,” a 1913 record of the trapper’s flight from Blackfoot Indians—which was the inspiration for The Naked Prey—read by actor Paul Giamatti Original soundtrack cues created by director Cornel Wilde and ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey, along with a written statement by Tracey Trailer PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Atkinson and a 1970 interview with Wilde

"A Raisin in the Sun" (Criterion)

When Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun in the '50s, do you think she had any idea it would become a staple of American theater, and regularly adapted for film and television? The play has really stood the test of time, and it's still produced in near-constant rotation around the country, but Criterion has gone with the original, and still-best, film production of it, starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, and Louis Gossett Jr. Regular readers of this column know that I'm always curious about the timing of Criterion releases. So why "Raisin" now? Well, it's clear that the themes of the play still resonate today, and perhaps the company is responding to criticism that their collection is largely full of white filmmakers telling white stories. Whatever the reason, "A Raisin in the Sun" remains essential to the story of American theatre in the '50s and '60s and this is a great way to bring this seminal work to a wider audience.

Buy it here

Special Features New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray Interview from 1961 with playwright/screenwriter Lorraine Hansberry New interview with Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine Episode of Theater Talk from 2002 featuring producer Philip Rose and actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis Excerpt from Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement (1978), with a new introduction by director Woodie King Jr. New interview with film scholar Mia Mask, coeditor of Poitier Revisited Interview from 2002 with director Daniel Petrie Trailer PLUS: An essay by scholar Sarita Cannon and author James Baldwin’s 1969 tribute to Hansberry, “Sweet Lorraine”

"Solo: A Star Wars Story"

If you ask a certain sector of the movie-going public, they'll tell you that "Solo: A Star Wars Story" was a massive bomb. They'll claim that negative feelings about "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" caused a backlash against "Solo" and the box office reflected that, leading to the lowest-grossing "Star Wars" film of the modern era (and that includes the prequels). The truth is that "Solo" likely wasn't as impacted by "TLJ" as it was over-saturation. There was a time when a "Star Wars" movie was an event, which is inherently more difficult when one is practically still playing in theaters as a new one comes out. There's also the fact that, sorry, "Solo" isn't very good. One can see the struggle behind the scenes that led to Ron Howard being brought in to helm the pic, and the result is a film that's only sporadically entertaining (and horribly under-lit). The Blu-ray is solid, as they often are for "Star Wars" films, but I think the lesson to take from "Solo" is that any universe loses its luster if we visit it too often and the best thing this franchise could do after "Episode IX" would be to go away for a little while. Absence makes the Wookie heart grow fonder.

Buy it here

Special Features Solo: The Director & Cast Roundtable Team Chewie Kasdan on Kasdan Remaking the Millennium Falcon Escape from Corellia The Train Heist Becoming a Droid: L3-37 Scoundrels, Droids, Creatures and Cards: Welcome to Fort Ypso Into the Maelstrom: The Kessel Run Deleted Scenes The Millenium Falcon: From Page to Park

"Three Identical Strangers"

2018 has been an amazing year for documentaries. Films like "RBG," "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," and now "Free Solo" have become surprising arthouse hits, finding devoted fans. I'm hoping that the trend brings people to one of the best docs of the year, a hit at Sundance and the Chicago Critics Film Festival earlier this year, "Three Identical Strangers." This is one of those WTF documentaries that keeps unfolding new secrets and revelations as it progresses. Without spoiling anything, the craziest part of this story is not what you think it is. It's not merely that three identical triplets found each other after years apart. There's more to this tale than any writer could possibly devise. Check it out and see for yourself.

Buy it here

Special Features Audio Commentary with Director Tim Wardle and Editor Michael Harte Q&A with David Kellman, Robert Shafran, Brenda Galland, Ellen Cervone, and Director Tom Wardle Photo Gallery Trailer

"X-Men Trilogy"

The MCU may be thriving but the "X-Men" franchise is in a weird phase. The "Dark Phoenix" trailer dropped last week only for the movie's release date to then be pushed back. People just don't seem as excited about "X-Men" as they used to be, but that shouldn't stop superhero fans from going back to the beginning, Bryan Singer's wildly influential first film about Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, and company. Christopher Nolan gets a lot of credit for influencing where the market is now, but Sam Raimi and Bryan Singer deserve just as much, if not more, for creating the templates for the modern superhero movie. The first two films in this trilogy are phenomenal, and they hold up beautifully in these new 4K editions. The third film? It was horrible then and it's horrible now, another film that can be used as a template for what NOT to do in the superhero genre.

Buy it here

Special Features Audio Commentaries Behind-the-Scenes Footage Deleted/Extended Scenes The Mutant Watch Animatics Character and Production Design Stills

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latestnews2018-blog · 6 years

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There Were Zero Things Better This Week Than These Grandma Twins

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There Were Zero Things Better This Week Than These Grandma Twins

Welcome to Good Stuff, HuffPost’s weekly recommendation series devoted to the least bad things on and off the internet.

The best thing I saw this week was this photo of two old women I’m going to assume are twins because they look exactly the same and are wearing matching pink outfits. If I’m wrong, sue me.

Why do I like it? I don’t know. I just do. Maybe it’s been a so-so week, but I can’t think of anything else that has brought me more joy. Look at their outfits! The shirts! The glasses! The hair! Are those called shorts or pants? Who cares! I love them!

My colleague Ashley Feinberg described this photo as “fucked up,” claiming “there’s no way you get to 80 and still keep buying matching outfits with your twin without something being extremely fucked up.” She is wrong. Sometimes two cute twins (presumably) are just two cute twins (presumably).

Do you know these twins? I would like to interview them. Thanks. ― Maxwell Strachan

Jonathan Chait’s BOFA Tweet

Twitter

On July 12, in the year of our Lord 2018, at 10:51 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, persecuted white man Jonathan Chait tweeted three perfect words: “What is BOFA?”

BOFA, as any self-hating internet user knows, is “bofa deez nuts.” It is the “What’s ‘updog’” prank, only vastly stupider and consequently infinitely funnier whenever an unsuspecting target takes the bait. Jonathan Chait took the bait, and the result was more beautiful than any of us could have ever hoped to deserve.

Jonathan Chait, however, deleted his tweet — the tweet in which he asked, “What is BOFA?” — and deprived us of our constitutional right to dunk on Jonathan Chait. Just one more example of illiberal deplatforming from the radical left.

Anyway, congratulations to the remarkably damp Jonathan Chait on giving brief, beautiful life to a perfect tweet. We should all be so lucky. ― Ashley Feinberg

Sweet Soccer Boys Sharing Gentle Hugs

ALEXANDER NEMENOV via Getty Images

This week I wanted to recommend hate-watching (or more like “confused-watching”) Fox’s nightly special “World Cup Tonight,” but my editor made me turn it into a standalone blog.

Instead, I will recommend a more healing aspect of the World Cup spectacle: watching the beautiful boys of soccer comfort and celebrate with each other through emotional embraces. Jezebel’s Sheena Raza Faisal saluted these loving clinches in a very on-point post that features not quite enough images of man hugs ― check the comments for more, especially England manager Gareth Southgate soothing Colombia’s Mateus Uribe after Uribe missed a crucial penalty kick in a shootout against England.

Boy, it sure is dusty in here, etc., etc. ― Claire Fallon

Glynnis MacNicol’s New Book

Illustration: HuffPost/Photo: Simon and Schuster

After hearing Glynnis MacNicol talk about her new memoir, Nobody Tells You This, at the Strand in New York City, I’ve had this one sentence stuck in my head. When asked about the plight of unmarried, childless women and our society’s treatment of them as somehow other or incomplete, MacNicol hit back with a statement that resonates with me still: “We look at women as a problem in need of a solution.”

In her book, MacNicol draws attention to the ways strangers feel they have a right to women’s bodies and lives in service of the ultimate goal, motherhood. The shame around it all, the general lack of freedom or agency, is really frightening. Although I have yet to read Nobody Tells You This, I’m excited to. And I’m ready to recommend it as a refreshing take on what life can be like for women who choose not to do what is expected of them. ― Anna Krakowsky

The Birth Of Kulture

Kulture ❤️❤️anything else woulda been basic 💁🏽‍♀️💁🏽‍♀️💁🏽‍♀️Okrrrrr

— iamcardib (@iamcardib) July 12, 2018

Cardi B had the baby and her name is Kulture with a K. That’s self-explanatory Good Stuff. ― Julia Craven

When June Smacked The Shit Out Of Commander Waterford On “The Handmaid’s Tale”

In a moment when it feels like terrible men are trying to whittle away women’s rights on a near-daily basis, sometimes you just really want to see a lady righteously smack the shit out of a dude who deserves it. Enter the “Handmaid’s Tale” finale!

June (Elisabeth Moss), who has spent two seasons being psychologically tortured, raped and belittled by Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) ― a man who desperately wants to be powerful and desperately wants the approval of women he knows are better than him ― finally stops bottling up her rage and lets him have it, right across the face. I could watch this GIF on repeat for the next two years. ― Emma Gray

England’s Loss

WATCH: Mario Mandzukic scores the game winning goal in extra time to put Croatia in its first ever World Cup Final. #ENGCRO #WorldCup pic.twitter.com/dnRpjSNPHo

— Jurado (@JuradoNYC) July 11, 2018

It’s not coming home. LOL. ― Travis Waldron

The Enya Song In “Eighth Grade”

You know a movie’s good when an Enya song pops up in a pivotal scene. But even without “Orinoco Flow,” Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” would be an indie masterpiece ― one you should definitely, totally, run to the theater to see.

It follows “Most Quiet” superlative winner Kayla (Elsie Fisher) during her last week of eighth grade, as she tries to come to grips with her social anxiety and lackluster lifestyle before high school. Behind her phone, she’s confident, even funny. But in real life, Kayla is quiet, a loner. Burnham allows viewers to study her every move in a tech-obsessed world while contemplating their own adolescent memories. It’s beautiful, raw and utterly sweet. ― Leigh Blickley

Megan Amram’s Emmy-Nominated Web Series

vimeo

Please watch “An Emmy for Megan,” a hilarious and weirdly poetic exercise in doing the bare minimum, while remaining utterly extra. The concept is simple: Writer Megan Amram, best known for her work on “The Good Place” and Twitter, decides she reeeeally wants to win an Emmy Award. (It’s her favorite award!) So at the last minute, she decides to write, direct and star in a short web series about making a short web series to win an Emmy.

The six episodes, under 10 minutes each and created in the week leading up to the submissions deadline, use the constraints of the Emmy requirements like forms of meter and verse. There are tears and tantrums and alcohol-fused meltdowns and even a surprise MUTINY along the short (so short) way.

Amram’s feat is not only hilarious but effective. On Thursday, the series was nominated for two Emmys: Outstanding Actress in a Short-Form Comedy or Drama Series and Outstanding Short-Form Comedy or Drama Series. Don’t sleep on the most inspiring tale of our time. ― Priscilla Frank

A Podcast About A Cult

When I was a kid, my best friend’s name was Robin, which was kind of weird because my mom’s childhood best friend’s name was Robin. The difference between my Robin and my mother’s Robin (aside from their being entirely separate humans) was that the latter ended up in a “Wild Wild Country”-ish cult.

My mom told me the story of her friend’s descent into Cult Town, U.S.A., and the teen girl power rescue mission that boldly extricated her a million times. Everything about it fascinated me. For a while, I actually thought it was a cosmic inevitability that my Robin would end up in a cult from which I’d need to liberate her. Anyway, she didn’t. But “The Gateway” is a good podcast about a cult. ― Katherine Brooks

Road Trip Music

Over the past few years, there’s been renewed interest in the work of John Fahey, the instrumentalist who put American primitive guitar on the map. As the genre has surged in popularity, acolytes and like-minded explorers have come out of the woodwork. Specialty labels have reissued private-press recordings that had long since gone out of print. It seems as though every town had an uncelebrated devotee of these obscure, mystical tunings. Worshipful but questioning, celestial and homespun, primitive guitar uses repetition and drone to access the pleasures and enlightenment of devotional music.

In April, Fahey’s hometown of Takoma Park, Maryland (just outside D.C.), honored the genre he helped create with a multiday festival. Lauding his work, it also shone a light on others who followed a similar path, devoting years to decoding the light and limber picking of Mississippi John Hurt and replicating the primal thump of Reverend Gary Davis. It was only fitting that one of this generation’s best pickers showed up ― Marisa Anderson, a guitarist based in the Pacific Northwest.

Anderson recently released a new album, “Cloud Corner,” which should be her breakthrough. She does something that I think most Fahey followers miss. She captures his melancholy, favoring mood as much as speed and technique. Her songs put you in places and moments. One song off an earlier album, she has said, is a tribute to her favorite swimming hole in Kentucky.

The new record lands on weightier subjects like the Syrian refugee crisis while other tunes process Tuareg-style playing through her fuzzy, electric style. But mostly, the songs ring clear, notes hushed or plucked pure. The album is meant for one of the few modes of escape where we can all still worship in peace: the road trip. ― Jason Cherkis

And Finally, The Women Of Color Who Dominated The Emmy Noms

Noam Galai via Getty Images

Sandra Oh was nominated for her role in “Killing Eve.”

This week in Good Stuff for me was the plethora of amazingly talented women of color who got Emmy nominations for best and supporting actress, including Sandra Oh (the first Asian woman to be nominated for lead actress in a drama), Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Zazie Beetz, Letitia Wright and my queen Thandie Newton. ― Zeba Blay

Get last week’s Good Stuff here.

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funnythingshere0-blog · 6 years

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Spike Lee teams up with Jordan Peele for the funny, pointed, uneven BlacKKKlansman

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Spike Lee teams up with Jordan Peele for the funny, pointed, uneven BlacKKKlansman

BlacKkKlansman

Photo: Cannes Film Festival

BlacKkKlansman (Grade: B), Spike Lee’s first entry in the Cannes competition lineup since 1991’s Jungle Fever, never outright mentions that it takes place in 1979. We can ballpark the year through context clues, like the ostentatiously dated fashion choices and the opportunity Lee takes to play around with the imagery and attitude of blaxploitation classics like Shaft and Coffy. But a date card never arrives, and no one ever clarifies the exact when aloud, either. That’s probably because BlacKkKlansman isn’t a period piece, not really. The America it depicts—where white cops harass and murder black citizens, where white supremacists complain of their own supposed social disadvantage, where the ideological tendrils of hate groups extend into the political sphere—looks an awful lot like the America of right here and now. And Lee makes the point over and over again through spoken dialogue or unspoken parallels, long before one of his signature film-ending archival montages explicitly hammers it home.

It doesn’t have the volcanic personality and power of Spike’s best work, like his timeless Do The Right Thing, which premiered at Cannes in 1989 and came up at this morning’s post-screening press conference. And it lacks the sheer baptizing outrage of his Bamboozled, one of the most caustically truthful (and underrated) films ever made about how deeply racism has burrowed into the pores of our culture. But BlacKkKlansman, which Lee produced with Jordan Peele and Blumhouse for the same wide-release audience that hungrily devoured Get Out last year, still counts as a rousing comeback for the writer-director: a messy, proudly mainstream, sometimes riotously funny biopic-crowdpleaser about fighting, and clowning on, the dipshit thugs of skinhead America.

Based, as the opening credits announce, on “Some Fo’ Real, Fo Real Shit,” the film has a great hook: the true story of how a black Colorado Springs police officer, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, from HBO’s Ballers, who got his start with a bit part in Lee’s last biographical drama, Malcom X), managed to infiltrate a local arm of the Klu Klux Klan, making phone contact with “the organization” and masquerading as an aggrieved kindred spirit in the white-power movement. Of course, pulling off the ruse required meeting with the KKK in person, which meant that Stallworth needed a face to go with the voice on the line, a Christian de Neuvillette to his bigot-whispering Cyrano de Bergerac. He finds him in Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a Jewish officer with his own heritage to conceal from the marks. (“You’re passing,” Stallworth tells him.)

Most undercover cop movies are, in one way or another, about identity. The Departed, for example, turned its dueling-mole premise into a statement about class, about faking your way up or down the social ladder to fit in. BlacKkKlansman turns the espionage games of Stallworth’s scheme into a metaphor for the different masks he has to wear as a black man in America. He gets close to the KKK, including a young David Duke (Topher Grace, whose milquetoast WASPiness counts as a good burn on the one-time Grand Wizard), by presenting himself as a sympathetic ear, flattering their intelligence while exploiting their lack of it, swallowing his anger. But he’s also playing a role for his superiors and colleagues, maneuvering around their often less-overt racism, and for the student activist (Laura Harrier) he courts—a romantic subplot built on its own deception, as Stallworth, a cop trying to change things from the inside of a hostile institution, entertains her down-with-the-pigs philosophy. (Their discussions include some of the movie’s most nuanced ideas.)

As is often the case with Spike’s joints, the storytelling can be uneven. Beyond one corker involving Driver’s Flip attempting to talk his way out of a lie detector test, BlacKkKlansman doesn’t get a whole lot of suspense or urgency out of the subterfuge of Stallworth’s con. Was Lee limited by the details of the true story, which builds to a climax less thrilling than what one might expect? Although he’s made his most narratively entertaining movie in years, the filmmaker often still privileges polemical discourse over drama, grinding things to a halt for minutes-long speeches—he’s not so different from Godard in that way—and sometimes getting rather on-the-nose with the already exceptionally apparent contemporary echoes. (Yes, there’s a play on MAGA and a gag about the country never being stupid enough to elect someone like David Duke to the presidency.)

Still, it’s undeniably exciting to see Lee make something this incensed again, and BlacKkKlansman scores some big laughs at the expense of its villains, tricked and schooled and gloriously insulted by the hero, in telephone conversations—some based on interviews with the real Stallworth—that play like crank calls on white supremacy itself. Lee, who begins the film with an excerpt from Gone With The Wind and includes a scene of the Klansmen hooting and hollering through a screening of Birth Of A Nation, understands the agitprop potential of cinema—its capacity to speak to a wide, captive audience, sympathetic to ideas and hungry for inspiration. With any luck. BlacKkKlansman, flaws and all, will find that audience at the multiplex this year. We need its anger right now.

Happy As Lazzaro

Photo: Cannes Film Festival

Earlier in the festival, I noted rumors that Cannes had switched up its strategy for the main competition, selecting films more for their overall quality than for the reputation of their makers. (Hence the relative lack of major auteurs.) With the festival more than half over, I’m about ready to call myself convinced. This year’s slate of contenders has been rock-solid, with only a couple of turkeys. Of course, I’ve managed to miss one of the most acclaimed of the bunch: Shoplifters, the new presumably gentle drama from Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows, Still Walking). And since I’m leaving Friday, I’ll miss a few more, including the latest from Turkish Cannes royalty Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Even discounting a potential missed masterpiece, though, the programmers did well in 2018.

I was mostly charmed by Happy As Lazzaro (Grade: B), from writer-director Alice Rohrwacher, who won a prize at Cannes four years ago for The Wonders. For a while, her new one plays a bit like a meandering descendant of the Italian (and Palme-friendly) peasant epics of the 1970s, focusing as it does on the entwined livelihoods of two families living in a small, remote village—one the dynasty of a powerful cigarette baroness, the other impoverished sharecroppers working for her. This dynamic is encapsulated by the exploitative relationship that develops between spoiled scion Tancredi (Italian pop star Luca Chikovani) and endlessly accommodating peasant Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo). The former ensnares the latter in a plot to bilk his rich mother out of some phony ransom money, and you think you have a handle on where the film is (slowly) going. But Rohrwacher has some unexpected reveals up her sleeve, including a rather delightful fissure in the movie’s carefully established neorealism and milieu. Though gently outraged in its portrait of class divisions, Happy As Lazzaro mostly takes its tonal cues from the eponymous character’s comically gentle, trusting nature. Tardiolo’s performance flirts with parody—he’s the living embodiment of the “simple” virtue of the working class, that cliché about inherent salt-of-the-earth goodness—but the movie mostly believes in his sweet integrity. Touchingly, if maybe to a fault.

Asako I & II

Photo: Cannes Film Festival

Deceptively slight in its own way, the lovely Asako I & II (Grade: B+) rounded out my day of good movies with the best intentions. I know Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s last film, Happy Hour, only by reputation—which is to say, I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it offers over five hours of gentle naturalism. That makes his only-two-hour encore, which scored a surprise competition slot, slender by comparison. Shy, uncertain Asako (Erika Karata) moves from Osaka to Tokyo, two years after her aloof stud of a boyfriend (Masahiro Higashide) mysteriously skips town, dropping out of her life without a trace. Here, she encounters the spitting image of her MIA beau (also Higashide), and tiptoes into a relationship with this sweeter, goofier fellow—mostly, it would seem, because of the uncanny resemblance.

Hamaguchi exhibits a careful, un-showy command of the frame, and a talent for creating small, sometimes comic surprises through editing. (One scene, for example, depicts Asako and her first love canoodling in the street after a motorcycle wipeout, only to cut to a wider shot of onlookers standing nearby, trying to survey the damage.) Gently and leisurely, he charts the mundane rhythms of the romance, to the point where a viewer might wonder where the movie could possibly be going, if anywhere. (Is this a secret cousin to last year’s perverse Cannes black sheep The Double Lover?) Gradually, though, the shape of the narrative comes together, and all that mellow downtime reveals its purpose. At heart, this is a film about looking for the past in the present, and about how hard it can be to shake that impulse; there may be two men in Asako’s little black book, but as the title indicates, there are really two of her as well. Asako I & II ultimately works as a mellow date movie with some big insights about relationships—accessible and artful, a combination that should be more common, honestly. It was also a prelude of niceness before the very nasty film I saw half a day later, and which I’ll write about…

…Tomorrow: Lars von Trier returns to a standing ovation, followed by mass walkouts. Is his latest provocation as shocking as you’ve heard? Is there method to its madness? Stay tuned for more on The House That Jack Built, plus one of my most anticipated films of the festival: It Follows director David Robert Mitchell’s reportedly strange L.A. noir, Under The Silver Lake.

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identity-matters · 7 years

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Edinburgh Fringe: My Reviews

I've just come back from The Fringe and these are my thoughts. You can scroll down to see play-by-play reviews but I have a short pre-amble first. Theatre has been a passion of mine for quite a long time so I'm surprised it's taken this long to get up to Edinburgh. On the basis that I didn't know when I'd next be up I took full advantage of my trip and saw as much stuff as I could; and as varied stuff as I could. I like taking risks with theatre because in my experience, for every 3 shit things you see, you see 1 thing that stays with you for a very long time. I've rated what I saw below but it comes with two very strong provisos: 1. These are personal opinions shaped by, among other things: my life; my hopes and expectations of theatre; how I felt during the show and the particular performance I saw. A high grade means I enjoyed it and is no guarantee you will do the same. 2. Everybody who came up to Edinburgh to put a show on is amazing for contributing to the cultural hotpot. A poorer review does not reflect on my views on the people behind it. They are all genuinely great artists for throwing so much into the melting pot. I've given 'A' to three shows, all very different. This is as close as I'll get to giving you my 'pick of the fringe'. * Michelle McManus: The Musical. A great crowd pleaser for lovers of cheese and musicals. * The Last Resort. A dark semi-immersive examination of Guantanamo Bay. * John Robertson (Dominant). Do not go if you are at all prudish or shy, but if you are not this is a anarchic comedy tour de force. With that, on to the reviews: (Monday August 7th) The Dark Room: B+ Comedy based on getting audience members to play an impossible 80s retro text-based game. It had built a cult following - which did not improve the show for first time viewers. The formulaic game portion was surely innovative and hilarious at one point, but now felt like an inside joke with the repeat audience chanting along from the start. That said, the new material and the improvised audience interaction was great and kept it fast-paced and snappy. 5 Guys Chillin': B- A drama exploring the gay 'chill'/sex party scene using verbatim quotes from interviews. This felt like it wanted to be eye-opening and expose a subculture. The problem is that it was exposing a subculture I'm well aware of. I knew the people they speak about and their words. It was certainly interesting and well-acted, but (for me), it slightly outstayed its welcome. This is not culturally significant: D A naked one-man character-driven show that seemed to build itself on the brief 'emotional whiplash: the sketch show.' It seemed to be well-received by many in the audience so it's possible I missed something. The problem for me was that the humour never hit hard enough and the vulnerability felt quite contrived. The actor and especially the technical team were excellent, but the content felt like it was at 60% of what it needed to be to make an impact. (Tuesday August 8th) Briony Redman: B A traditional 'Harold' comedy sketch show exploring screenwriting and modern genres. It was an gentle show, never offensive, often giggly. However, it lacked the bite to be hysterical. None the less, it was sweet and fast-paced and always had something interesting to say. The Canon: B A comedy sketch show based around the literary canon. There is nothing groundbreaking or truly original about this show, but it does present a lot of interesting scenarios and garners a steady stream of laughs. Bonus points for Taylor Swift/Shakespeare mash-up. Shame: B+ A drama about female sexuality told half through vlog and half through live action theatre. This was a really interesting medium that added to the story, made up of likeable but distinctly human characters. The ending packed an emotional punch but the moments leading up to it were slightly too expositionary and fell a bit tepid. Michelle McManus: The Musical: A Actual Michelle McManus from actual Pop Idol puts on a Glaswegian Hyacinth Bucket character for her fictional comedy musical revue. This is a riot from start to end. The songs (ballads from broadway) add to the show and are delivered powerfully and comically. The numbers are linked by an extremely funny and well-delivered performance that surprised a lot of the audience. Evocation: E A retelling of Giraud poems through the medium of gothic puppetry and drone music. This mark may be very harsh, and reflects more my inability to interpret what the hell went on than any mistakes the production team made. It looked gorgeous and chilled me out. It turns out watching theatre has a hard mode and this is it. Reformed Whores: B Musical comedy duo, satirising country and western through sex-positive messages. I like country music and the songs here were definitely catchy. There was a danger they relied a little too strongly on shock humour at times. The biggest problem here was the venue. These are performers that need interaction and raucousness. You're never going to get that in a sterile, small conference room. (Wednesday August 9th) Heroes: B+ A drama from an Icelandic company about how demonising enemies of war impacts young communities. This was well-acted, and the young cast clearly had a great time putting it on. There were definitely scenes in this that had strong impacts on the audience, and this made it well worth watching. However, the characters and fictional backdrop of the play were so one-dimensional and far-removed from reality. I feel like this eroded the social commentary they wanted the play to take on. The Last Resort: A A dark and invasive play, in which you play residents of the recently converted Guantanamo Bay holiday resort. This is excellent and a key example of why it's worth taking risks with theatre. The semi-immersive approach is a great way to make you laugh and relax before the show takes a dark and eye-opening turn. You will feel uncomfortable and you will love it. Oxford Imps: C A standard improv troupe from Oxford Uni. I saw them a lot whilst I was there and enjoyed them, so I went in with high hopes. Despite a few great moments, this was generally a disappointment. Enough of the troupe felt like they were trying to get their own ideas heard at all costs. This made the scenes feel messy and loose because they didn't agree on a reality. Monster: B+ A one man show about toxic masculinity as it relates to domestic abuse. An excellent character actor explains how tapping into unsavoury characters to method act leaks into his every day life. The blurring of all the characters builds into a heavy momentum. There's no payoff here - though I wonder if possibly that's the point. It's an interesting piece of theatre with a great actor but one that feels a little unsatisfying at the end Paul Sinha (Shout out to my ex): B Chaser/Comedian/Former GP performs a stand-up set about the annus horribilis since his partner left him. Stand-up comedy has a different job from a lot of the other work I've seen. First and foremost it's about making you laugh: and the show did that. The audience was in a good mood and the personal anecdotal style kept the laughs rolling. It may not have made me cry, or think, or challenge my beliefs but that's likely beyond its brief. John Robertson (Dominant): A This was billed as stand-up, by a crude and acerbic Australian (host of The Dark Room). In reality, none of it was scripted and instead we got a loose collection of thoughts inspired by the audience and his S&M past. It was a small audience (15ish people) and so all bets were off. Anarchy reigned and all audience members were involved. It was shocking, anarchic and unsubtle but constantly hysterical. He is a master of his work. We're All Going to Die: C+ An ensemble comedy about a group of scientists dying one-by-one on a remote research station. This had a young cast, and I assume this was scripted by them as well. The script was trite and lacked direction or purpose. The constant quipping removed anything but facile humour from what we watched. The characters were all one-directional. That said, it was enjoyable enough. There were some fun one-liners and set ups. It was a perfectly pleasant way to pass an hour. Thief: B+ A dramatic monologue by a queer sailor who puts a brave and defiant face on being forced into sex work. The acting deserves considerable credit here for bringing this complex character to life. In lesser hands this would surely fail, but it was a captivating if invasive performance. The show never knows what it wants to do with the character, though, making his backstory almost comically dark. There is an attempt at moralising at the end that feels a little too neat and tidy. At the end, I left feeling impressed at what I watched, but wondering why I watched it. (Thursday August 10th) Salome: D A one-man production of the Oscar Wilde epic. In typical Wilde fashion the dialogue is clever and knowing and that pulls you through this otherwise ropey production. Production values are low; characters are barely distinguished (Salome speaks falsetto and wears a scarf) and audiences are left questioning whether Salome really needed a one-man production. Kafka & Son: B A dramatic monologue adapted from a letter Kafka wrote to his father explaining his fear. The aesthetics of the play were beautiful and the team clearly had a great deal of respect for Kafka. It was an interesting and relevant biography: I feel like I'll see Kafka's works very differently now. The issue was the content of the show was dry, and at multiple times I found myself looking at my watch. The Odyssey: B+ A highly energetic physical performer reads the story of the Odyssey with pep, gusto and silly noises. The energy and tightness over the whole 70 minute show was impressive and brought a lot of life to the performance. The problem was, I felt like nothing was added to above the story. It brought back feelings of sitting cross legged on the floor in primary school being read classics. It was certainly charismatic and enjoyable but unmemorable. Noose Women: C- A comedy-drama about a TV production company who are convinced by a charismatic cult leader to host a reality show where the prize is death. It was perfectly watchable but a deeply flawed production. The story was paper thin and all drama was resolved within seconds. The central conceit took a back foot to meandering subplots that went nowhere. None of the characters were likeable or consistent; and unfortunately the humour did not make up for it. You could do much better than this at The Fringe.

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