#but satisfying to finally create a female version that looks just as or more BAD than him

[lokitvsource]

You came into the show with the idea of Loki clashing with the TVA already in place. How exactly does this kind of arrangement work at Marvel? Michael Waldron: There was a creative brief that was 20 pages or so that basically said: “We want to do something about Loki running up against the TVA. Here’s some different avenues that might be cool to explore.” It was really serving it up for writers as a jumping off point for us to put together our pitches. Then I went off and really worked on the idea of Loki being brought in to hunt another Loki, and that becoming the heart of the show, and the Loki/Sylvie relationship. The big thing that I did in my pitch — even as early as pitching it to Kevin [Feige] — I really walked through the six episodes, kind of similar to what they were. I knew I wanted Episode 3, for instance, to be a little bit of a Before Sunrise, with Loki and this character walking across this apocalyptic moon. But Marvel had the initial, probably the most important spark of genius, which was just Loki and the TVA.

Where did the idea of the variant being a female Loki come from? That was one of my ideas, that we then confirmed in the writers room. Yeah, we knew from the get-go that it was going to be Loki falling for another version of himself.

Why was that appealing to you? I love writing any romance; it’s fun. Especially, it hasn’t been done a ton in the MCU. There’s an obviously self-reflective quality to it. And a show that’s quite literally about self-love; it is Loki getting to see parts of himself. At the start of the show, he kind of hates himself. He assesses himself to Mobius as a villain. And then he meets Sylvie, and he sees her as someone on a heroic crusade. He sees the good in her, and is able to see the good in himself.

Mobius suggests that, of course, Loki fell in love with his own variant, because he’s a narcissist. Do you think he’d be capable of falling in love with someone who is not a version of himself? [Laughs] I don’t know if he didn’t fall in love with himself first. Maybe after that, but the first time he falls, maybe this is what it had to be.

What’s the key to telling a time travel story that takes advantage of the concept without confusing the audience? I think it’s doing a lot of work that the audience never sees. It’s really understanding the logic of this thing, building out the TVA as a real organization that actually exists in our minds. Our writers room, we had a TVA handbook, encyclopedia, what they do and why they do it, a glossary of terms. And then you want to only give the audience the absolute bare minimum to understand the story, and to just get swept up in the emotional stakes of everything. If the sci-fi of it all, if the time travel logic of this show did not hold up week to week, then that would have distracted from the emotional journeys of the characters. So I’m glad that even though everyone had to take their medicine a little bit, along with Loki, in episode one, I’m glad it didn’t distract from the story we were telling. And we had the benefit of Loki being the audience’s eyes in. The audience is learning as he is.

There’s a funny scene in Avengers: Endgame where the Avengers start arguing about exactly how time travel works in the MCU. How much did you have to study what other Marvel movies had done with the idea to make sure your rules were consistent? Fortunately, Endgame was the main one, and that’s how they understand it. The TVA is an organization that understands time travel on a deeper level, probably more comprehensively than the Avengers do in Endgame. We wanted to make sure we were staying true to any rules that they laid out, but sort of establishing our own rules. It’s a time travel show. What was I thinking? A movie’s one thing, but a show is hard.

How many Loki variants did you have on the writers room whiteboard at various points? Hundreds. So many different Lokis. There was one Loki, actually maybe it was a version of Mobius that took off his glasses, and he just had really tiny eagle eyes, like he could see everything. There was stuff like that all over the white board. Tom Kauffman, who wrote that fifth episode, he’s an amazing comedy writer, and was on the first three seasons of Rick and Morty. His first draft of that episode was just bananas.

Was there a variant, or a crazy idea in general, that you really loved but couldn’t ultimately do? There was so much different stuff that we wanted to do in the Void. But the truth is, I don’t want to say any of it, because you never know. The ideas that I want to do the most may pop up elsewhere.

Okay, so let’s stick with a variant we did see. Was Alligator Loki actually a Loki, or just an alligator that happened to be wearing a Loki’s crown? A magician can’t reveal his tricks, man. That’s the great debate. Let it rage.

What was Alligator Loki‘s origin story on your side of things? Who pitched him and how was that initially received? That was maybe my very first meeting with the producers at Marvel, Kevin Wright and Stephen Broussard, talking about the show, and me saying, “When we’re doing this, you can encounter lots of different Lokis. You could have an alligator Loki. Why? Cause he’s green.” And us all laughing about how stupid that was. I think I made the point that it’s that energy of what we can do with the show. We can have something like that, but let’s play it straight. Alligator Loki, you get a laugh out of it, but by and large you try and play it straight. That was the fun tonal balance that we tried to strike in the show.

There’s been some conflicting information out there about whether the big bad was originally just going to be He Who Remains, who’s a different comics character altogether from Kang, and whether the casting of Jonathan Majors changed the plan. From your point of view, what happened? The character was always written as a version of Kang, as early as the first draft of the script, we knew in the writers room, relatively early on. He Who Remains, that’s the guy behind the curtain with the TVA, and we saw an opportunity to fuse that mythology with the Immortus mythology. And that was just really compelling. It was a way to elevate, it just felt right for Loki, because Loki was there in the first Avengers, he’s the one who brought the Avengers together, and here is directly related to the exploding of the multiverse, this event that will drive the events of Phase Four. Certainly, when Jonathan came in, it allowed us to step on the gas of just how eccentric and charismatic this character could be. I was inspired in the writing of He Who Remains by Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia, trying to give it that Frank TJ Mackey energy a little bit. He captures that and then elevates it to something else that’s different and weird.

You just said how important the multiverse is going to be to Phase Four of the MCU. How challenging is it to have to set up this big thing for the larger Marvel endeavor while also serving the needs of the particular story you’re telling on this show? It’s a challenge in the sense that it’s all a relay race, and you’ve got the baton on this thing, and you want to do a great job. The name of the game over at Marvel is with each movie or TV show, make it the best it can possibly be. And they’re really supportive of that, and trust that it will organically fit into the larger blueprint of everything. We were excited about introducing a version of Kang, because yeah, to introduce this new big bad was cool for our show. I was aware, and cautious, of the thing I read in your review, that it might not be the most sound storytelling to introduce a new character at the very end that we’ve never seen before as the big bad of this thing. Obviously, we had the benefit that people know who Kang is, and there’s a meta thing where a portion of the audience knows Jonathan Majors is going to be playing Kang in Phase Four. But the finale was only ever going to work if He Who Remains, in a compelling way, serviced the Loki and Sylvie emotional story. That was the most important job that that character did in the finale: he laid out a very compelling conflict that ultimately drove the two of them apart.

There has also been some confusion as to exactly when you knew that there would be a second season, as opposed to you just making a limited series. Initially, in the writers room, we were not operating as though there would be a second season. And the whole way through was, this should be a story that should stand on its own. I referenced The Leftovers and Mad Men all the time. I think about those seasons, they pushed the overall stories forward, but you can pull any one of those seasons and look at it on its own as an individual story. I wanted that to be the case here, whether we did a second season or not. I think we always felt that we would want to propel Loki forward into the MCU after the conclusion of our season. The only question was, would that be in an appearance in a movie, or would that be in a second season. And it was only over the course of development that the stars aligned to make a second season.

But that end scene, where Mobius no longer recognizes Loki and the TVA is filled with Kang statues, wouldn’t have been a satisfying conclusion to a limited series. That is an ending that only works if there’s going to be a second season. So there is another conclusion to the story that I wrote that exists out there, that I guess is just for me. My own little play, that I perform with my action figures.

What was Sylvie’s original plan, before Loki hijacked her to that dying moon? It was to empty out the TVA. The entire bombing of the Sacred Timeline was to create a diversion. She’s not going to be able to create a multiverse from doing that. Ultimately, the TVA has the manpower to get out and take care of these events, but they’re going to have to scramble a lot of their minutemen teams, and it leaves the Time-Keepers significantly less guarded than they would have been otherwise. That was her plan.

You didn’t come into this as a big comic book nerd. So was there someone on staff who could tell you, “Well, there’s this giant cloud called Alioth that eats time,” or, “Well, one time Thanos had a helicopter,” or maybe someone assigned to you by Marvel? I’m constantly reading the comics but trying to not be so beholden to the and do our own thing. I charged our writers assistant, Ryan Kohler, with, “You’ve got to become the authority on all things TVA, all things Kang, and all that.” So he and my assistant, Sophie Miller, became a support staff who read a ton of these comics and became a wealth of knowledge for the writers to turn to. And then the Marvel producers, obviously are very well versed in the comics. It was Kevin Wright who came in one day and was like somebody throwing down a blueprint in an asteroid movie, going, “Alioth! Look at this!” And we were like, “Ohmigod, this is perfect!” The best thing about working on these comic book shows is that if it’s from the comics, it doesn’t matter how much of a deus ex machina it is, it’s just cool, like, “I can’t believe you pulled that from the comics.” Alioth, that was a big breakthrough that unlocked the last two episodes for us.

That is not a famous comic book that introduces Alioth. It’s an obscure Nineties miniseries, with really ugly art. But you look at it and see what it could be. You say, “If we do this, and it feels like Twister, it’s going to be really cool.”

Was Mobius’ love of jet skis there simply to illustrate his character, or did you have a grander idea in mind? I will come clean: I’m a jet ski guy. I’ve spent a good amount of time on jet skis in my day. I used to tow a jet ski to a lake and ride it in college. So it probably was me. Loki, I was just becoming a steward of that character. Mobius was a character I really felt I got to create from nothing. There’s not really anything to that character in the comics. So bits and pieces of me found their way in. I just think there’s something so poignant — here Mobius is, a guy who is literally fighting to preserve all of time in the multiverse, and yet his interests are maybe the most humble, human, terrestrial, unremarkable thing you can think of. Just a jet ski. And when you’ve got Owen Wilson playing him and it’s just that much better.

Will you be back in some capacity for Season Two? [long pause] Time will tell.

‘Loki’ Head Writer Michael Waldron — and ‘Rick and Morty’ Alum — on MCU, ‘Heels’ and More

#loki tv #loki series #michael waldron #interview

[cybernaght]

The Rebel/叛逆者: A Review of Sorts

After being only semi-invested in the Rebel, I ended up getting so into it in the final weeks of its release, I’ve shelled out on IQIYI premium just to get the final couple of episodes a few days earlier.

That’s right kids, it’s a Review of Sorts. Unfortunately, I could not find a translation of the novella the drama is based on, so will be looking at it as a separate entity. 

Most of this post is spoiler-free, however I have dedicated a few paragraphs at the end of it to discussing the final episode, as there are a few specific things about it I wanted to mention. There is a clear spoiler warning before that part.

If you don’t want to risk it, TL;DR version of this review goes something like this: Rebel is very decent, and positively one of the best things that I have seen to come out of China since I’ve jumped into that particular rabbit hole. It’s pretty well written, it’s very beautifully dressed and shot, and the cast is killing it. I thought it dropped the ball a little in post production, and I did not always love the pacing. Other than that, it’s incredibly decent, and well worth watching, unless communist propaganda really irks you, in which case stay very well away. 

I have been having many conversations with @supernovasimplicity​ all the way through watching this drama, so there are likely to be some thoughts here that are influenced by those. 

The story centers around Lin Nansheng, a struggling servicemen in the Guomingdang party. He has a great analytical mind, and absolutely no emotional capacity for his job. He has trouble handling violence, he is impulsive, he cannot speak to his superiors without bursting into tears, and has nothing even remotely resembling a poker face. And that is what makes this drama as enjoyable as it is. 

I don’t think Lin Nansheng’s journey would have been nearly as exciting had he started it from a place of competence. He botches up everything he touches because his big brain switches off the moment his emotions kick in. And so, when you see him grow in confidence, learn to control himself, learn to fake his smiles and compliments, you can’t help but feel a strange sense of pride. It also makes Lin Nansheng very likeable as a character for reasons other than Zhu Yilong’s ability to look like a bush baby.

It did take me a while to feel fully engaged with his performance - not because there is anything lacking in it, but just because it’s hard to be truly surprised by his choices after the exposure I have given myself to his work. That said, at about a half-way point I got charmed by him anyway, and there were quite a few scenes that were truly mesmerising. There were scenes where he broke out of the familiar mould of big unguarded eyes and fluttering wet eyelashes, and tried something that was not pretty: every time to a great success. I am hoping to see more of that in his future work. 

I really wanted to like the female lead, Zhu Yizhen, but unfortunately both the way she was written and the way she was performed by Tong Yao left me somewhat cold. It did not help of course that the screenplay ended up sidelining her at every turn, leaving her with very little personal agency. She was set up so interestingly, but in the end her sole purpose became being someone for Lin Nansheng to pine over. It is particularly curious from a perspective of meta storytelling: seeing how this is all centered around superiority of communism, which as a whole was, arguably, ahead of its time in the matters of binary gender equality.

The ensemble cast of the drama is stunning. Wang Yang came very close to  stealing the show at several points as Chen Moqun, somehow managing to make his rather unlikeable character interesting. I can say the same thing about Zhu Zhu who absolutely shined as Lin Xinjie, showing an incredible range and imagination in her performance.

The overarching story of the show is engaging, with some incredibly suspenseful elements; every narrative arc including a nice progression through it. As spy thrillers go, it was fairly well plotted. You could if you go looking for a few things that did not pay off in a satisfying way (notably, the Chekhov’s cyanide capsule), but you overall the story really was well told for the most of it. 

I did, however, feel like the pacing started to fall apart in the last quarter of the drama. Last episode in particular really did feel rushed, not just due to its pace, but also in a way it failed to pay off the final mission in any visible way. There will be more on that in the spoiler section of this post.

Important to note that The Rebel is a show made in Communist China in the year 2021. It does not ideologically side-step from the path that was laid out for it by that fact. Which is to say, it is, undeniably, filled with propaganda. Communists are the good guys, and if you think a good guy (or gal) is not a communist, they probably secretly are. With one exception of a friendly character who is not a communist, and whose fate we actually never find out. Curious, that. 

The Rebel is not a kind of a show where censorship-appeasing scenes are shoehorned in. It’s a kind of a show in which the main theme is Sacrifice For the Party.

Aside from the being the moral vector of the show, Mao’s gentle teachings explicitly help get Ling Nansheng out of prolonged depression following his injury, and almost annoyingly, this sat incredibly well with the character, as he was written. Lin Nansheng is conceived as this naive idealist who wants to be on the front line, who needs validation and support of others. His - and I can’t believe I’m saying this - his being disillusioned in his beliefs and choosing to join a party which includes people whom he likes and trusts makes sense. Him finding this one thing that gives him hope and letting it propel him into gaining confidence and competence makes sense. 

In many ways, the Rebel is a story of Lin Nansheng’s failure to become an antagonist within the world of the drama.

I have honestly spent this past couple of weeks pondering whether being well written makes political propaganda better or worse, whether the subtlety of it makes it more or less palatable, whether it’s enough, as a viewer, to be aware of it to shrug it off. Ultimately, this is not something I could or should make moral judgements on, but I do believe that it’s possible to acknowledge the fact that propaganda exists in the drama, and still appreciate it for a good piece of television that it is. 

That said, I am very well aware that me being kind of okay with it stems entirely from my own removal from the culture this is made in, and I am, perhaps, lucky to even have a choice as to whether I want to engage with a product which is, undoubtably, here to dress political ideology in fancy clothes.

I have, on the other hand, also seen many things in Russian media of the “Annexation of Crimea is Good Actually” variety and those make me feel very unwell, so feeling somewhat at ease with blatant political propaganda in Chinese media makes me the biggest hypocrite.

But, I digress.

Before we go into some specific plot-related things, I would like to mention that the Rebel has this weird dichotomy in which the production is sublime, and the post-production… not so much. The show very well shot. Every element of it sits perfectly together, not a single prop out of place, not a single extra underdressed, not a page of script not put to good use. It’s lit to perfection. It’s scored beautifully. So much of this show is just stunning.

And then… there is post-production. 

This is not even about bad CGI (and the CGI is, indeed, bad), it’s just that most of post-production as a whole feels rushed.

Starting with surprisingly imperfect editing, which at times just fails to make the scene flow together. The final line of dialogue would be spoken within a scene, and it would fade to black instantly without a single breath to indicate a full stop. A montage sequence would be created, but every shot within it condensed to a second, making it feel incredibly fast-paced when the effect should be the opposite. There would be a cut away from a speaking character and to the same speaking character from a slightly different angle, making it dynamic without any reason to do so. There are a couple of truly startling jump-cuts.

I did not speed this gif up. This is part of a romantic montage, edited like it’s a goddamn action sequence.

And of course dear old friend slowing down footage shot at 24FPS. Please don’t do this. You think no one notices - but we do.

There are other tell-tale signs of production rushing to the finish line: occasional, but very noticeable ADR glitches, very sloppy job done at sound mixing, which contribute to parts of the show feeling ever so slightly off.

It’s not unforgivable, but it does make me wish the same amount of care and efforts that went into shooting this drama would also go into it after it was all in the can. 

Oh, and just because if you know me you know I have a professional fixation on fights, and I am happy to say most action scenes are toe-curlingly delightful. Hot damn those fights are good. I am absolutely in love with the shot below, for example. Placing an actor behind a piece of set so he can exchange places with the stunt double during a one shot is such an old trick, but the execution, timing and camerawork are just... flawless. This is what perfection looks like.

Now we got all that out of the way...

SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE BELOW

Here’s the thing. I wanted to love the ending and I found that I could not.

The final mission was presented as important, and honestly the scene in which Zhu Yizhen is sending the vital message out as Lin Nansheng holds his ground in hand to hand fight is incredibly dynamic. Party, this is due to the fight itself being incredibly well choreographed, yes, but it’s also where it sits within the narrative, how high the stakes are for everything surrounding it. 

But then, the tension all but bleeds out. The Important Message is sent, the fight is won, and we are treated to ten minutes of a very slow car chase, problem of which is not even its speed as much as its placing within the story. As in, by this point both of those operatives have lost their cover, and completed their Very Important Mission. It would be very sad if they died, but their survival does not technically contribute to their cause. Moreover, Zhu Yizhen getting mortally injured in order to protect Lin Nansheng as part of her mission read a little empty when the mission is technically over. 

While I personally found Lin Nansheng slow recuperation and his low key ending enjoyable, I think I would have preferred to have seen a more tangible pay-off to all the sacrifices made in the name of “bright communist future”, just a little more justification for every moment of death and despair we witnessed. I would have certainly at the very least preferred to see Wang Shi’an’s death on screen. Considering how many likeable characters martyred themselves on screen, denying us the death of the one antagonist just seemed cruel. 

I really did love the ambiguity of the final few scenes however, if we consider the children choir at the end a fantasy. The idea that Lin Nansheng will live out his life in this hope that Zhu Yizhen is still alive, imagining her just outside of his field of vision, his only joy being in this fantasy of her… now, that is incredibly strong. I equally like the idea of rest being promised to him at the end of his journey, and said rest being painful, and slow and unwelcome.

But it felt like as they chose not to to lean into the “sweet” part of the bitter-sweet tone of the ending and we’re unable not commit to the “bitter” part either, so it lands with a splat which is somewhat lacklustre. 

---

This concludes my thoughts on the Rebel. 

I am more or less out of Zhu Yilong’s filmography to watch, which is probably a good thing at this point. I have just emerged out of several back to back work projects - literally today - and will hopefully once more have time for things I grew to enjoy doing during the lockdown. 

Those things, if you have not guessed, include watching Chinese television and writing things about Chinese television. 

#the rebel #叛逆者 #Zhu Yilong #review of sorts #now with gifs #chinese drama

[the--sad--hatter]

Mischief & Madness - Chapter 12 (Loki x Reader)

Fandom: Marvel

Pairing: Loki/Reader (No physical description of reader other than female presenting)

Warnings: LOKI, Angst, lots of violence, graphic gore, extreme cursing, anxiety attacks.

Summary:

Living in New York has its ups and its downs. Upside - You have a cushy job at Stark Industries. Downside - You wind up getting yourself kidnapped by The God Of Mischief.

All you wanted was a decent cup of coffee, now you’re stuck on the otherside of the universe with a sociopath who has only begrudgingly not murdered you.

To get back home you’ll have to work with Loki, and probably stop trying to stab him.

To regain his power, he’ll have to work with you, and probably stop trying to slaughter you.

When Mischief and Madness collide, chaos ensues. Even if you survive this, the universe probably won’t…

Masterlist     Spotify Playlist Link

Chapter Twelve 

Loki was staring at you like you’d grown a second head. You waited patiently for him to process it, occupying yourself by kicking rocks and watching them explode into dust.

 “You want to what?” He eventually demanded, his eyebrows raised so high that they practically merged with his hairline.

 You shrugged at him, your smirk growing exponentially. Flummoxing the actual God of Chaos was satisfying as hell.

 “The Infinity Stones! We just go back to before Taa was destroyed and remove the Deathwaves.” You grinned.

“We can not just go back. Even if we could, we wouldn’t be changing anything. We would just create an alternate timeline with no Deathwaves, this universe would still die out.” He argued.

 “Fine, ok… Let’s not go back in time. Let’s reboot the universe. Look we can try and determine who or what is causing these Deathwaves and we can try and stop them, or we can just delete the program and rewrite it without the bug in the coding.” You tried to explain giddily.

 “How?” He asked.

 “We use the Infinity Stones to destroy the universe, just wipe it all out, clean slate. Then we rebuild it exactly the same way, minus Deathwaves. Nobody will even know what happened, they won’t feel a thing.” You told him.

 “Are you quite mad?” He questioned, a little fearfully.

 “Quite.” You agreed.

 He gaped at you but you could see the spark in his eyes, he could see the (psychotic) genius in your proposed plan.

 “Look, I’m not a hero. Hunting down the bad guys and kicking ass isn’t my thing. I create things, and when they don’t work I burn it all down and start again. That’s the only thing I have to offer this partnership. The universe, it’s just a really elaborate computer program. So we save all the coding, the people and the plants, download the files into the infinity stones and then we upload them to version 2.0. No time travel, no hunting down baddies, just straight up ‘saving’ the universe.” You coaxed.

 “And what do I bring to this madness?” He asked, mirroring your slightly maniacal grin.

 “You’re the god here, you’re not only strong enough to use the Stones, you’re the only person I can think of who’s smart and cunning enough to pull this off. This is going to take more than brawn and power. Besides, come on Loki… Don’t you want to destroy the universe?”

 “This is quite literally the most insane, chaotic plan I have ever heard.” He sighed.

 “Yeahhh, and you’re totally on board aren’t ya?” You needled.

 He started impassively at you while he weighed it all up in his head and when the corners of his lips started to gradually curl upwards; you knew you had him.

 “Very well. Say I am willing to go along with this plan of yours. How do you propose we obtain The Infinity Stones?” He challenged.

 “We…” You faltered as soon as the first word was out of your mouth. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” You admitted.

 “This entire mad scheme of yours hinges on us having The Infinity Stones, how have you not thought that far ahead?” He grouched.

 “How am I the one doing all the work? You could do something more useful than standing around bitching and being pretty.” You shot back, crossing your arms in a sulk.

 “Am I infringing on your territory? I do apologise.” He scoffed.

 “How many are there again? Five?” You asked, ignoring his snide compliments.

 “Six. The Space Stone, The Reality Stone, The Time Stone, The Soul Stone, The Power Stone and The Mind Stone.” He corrected, rolling his eyes at for not even knowing how many of the darned things there were.

 “Well, we know where three are. The Time Stone and Mind Stone are back on Earth so that’s easy.” You shrugged. “Tessie the Space Stone is…”

 And right on cue, as if summoned by your voice, The Tesseract materialised right in front of you. It spun in the air, glowing before it dimmed and dropped towards the ground. You instinctively reached out and caught it, flinching when you realised what you’d just done.

 But nothing happened. You remained on Taa and The Tesseract remained in your hand.

 “Found one?” You breathed out in awe, holding it up to an equally awestruck Loki.

 “Vænn, how are you doing that?” He asked fearfully.

 “Doing what? It just popped up, I didn’t do anything.” You said.

 You tilted your head at it curiously before you realised exactly what it was you were doing. You were holding The Tesseract. You. A mortal.

 “Ahh!” You yelped, dropping it.

 You admittedly didn’t know that much about The Tesseract, just what you’d read from the files you hacked one afternoon and skimmed through in boredom. What you did know was that it was too powerful to be held directly by anyone human.

 Loki’s eyes were burning into you suspiciously as he slowly approached and knelt down to pick it up.

 “You’re human.” It wasn’t a statement, but it wasn’t a question either.

 “100%. I don’t even have any Kree DNA, I got tested after those fish oil pills started turning people into husks.” You confirmed.

 “What?”

“Oh, Inhumans. They gots little bits of alien DNA and can get superpowers. I was curious, I got my DNA tested. I am utterly, unquestionably human.”

 He looked down at The Tesseract, turning it over in his hand before he looked back up at you.

 “Curious.” He said softly, holding it back out to you.

 “Nah. You keep it.” You grimaced, backing away fearfully.

 “Just take it.” He demanded.

 “No.”

 “Vænn.”

 “Nope, not on your fucking life - LOKI YOU BITCH!” He tossed The Tesseract at you in the middle of your sentence and you had a split second to decide whether to catch it or let it smack you in the face.

 You clutched it in both hands, inches from your nose. Looking up at Loki you found him smirking at you.

 “What the fuck Loki? I could have been vaporised!” You screeched.

 “You weren’t.” He replied calmly.

 “You didn’t know I wouldn’t be!” You protested.

 “You were holding a moment ago, so I did know. I’m not sure how you’re managing it but you are. For all your arguments about how you are nothing special, you appear to attract powerful entities Vænn.” He pointed out smugly.

 “You think The Tesseract has a crush on me?” You frowned.

 “Not that kind of attract. You are like a magnet, pulling power into your orbit.” He said, almost… proudly?

 You scoffed and opened your mouth to rebut his claim but paused and actually thought about it. Of all the places in the city, it was your window that Iron Man flew past on his way to The Tower. The intern you’d taken under your metaphorical wing turned out to be Spiderman. Vision inexplicably turned up in your lab on an almost daily basis. Earths Mightiest Heroes had taken to you without any hesitating. And then of course there was Loki.

 “Huh. Guess I do attract trouble.” You snorted, regarding The Tesseract in a new light.

 You knew without a doubt that you were human, nothing special about you. But apparently fate disagreed, because here you were.

 “So now we have The Tesseract under our control, as it should be. There are still five more stones to obtain, and we will need The Gauntlet. Do you have a plan for talking your friends into handing the Time Stone and The Mind Stone over to us?” He prodded.

 “Well, The Mind Stone is literally in Visions head so… no. And it’s not like we can just waltz up to Earth and ask them to hand the Stones over to us. It would take us months to convince them to trust you and we just don’t have that kind of time. Maybe we should leave those two till last. At least we know they’re safe. You don’t happen to have any idea where the other three are, do you?” You shrugged.

 He held his hand for The Tesseract with a smirk. You happily handed it over, grateful not to be touching it anymore.

 “I know exactly where The Aether is but obtaining it will not be easy. We will need to be careful, we will need a plan. I suggest we take refuge somewhere safer while we decide how to get it away from The Collector.” He told you, holding out his hand to you.

 “Wait.” You said softly.

 He didn’t have to ask what he was waiting for, he knew what you were planning and only rolled his eyes ever so slightly as you backed away.

 “Hey, um… We’re leaving now. Would you, would you like to come with us?” You asked gently as you approached The Stranger.

 They hadn’t moved since you’d wandered after Loki and they didn’t move when you spoke. Shining blue eyes gazed into the distance, bearing witness to the lingering death of their home world.

 “We can take you anywhere. You don’t have to stay here.” You whispered.

 “You are standing in the remains of the temple I have spent my life worshipping in. The Temple may be gone but I am not, so I remain. My world will not die unwitnessed.” They finally answered.

 “Your world isn’t going to die at all. We’re going to fix this.” You promised.

 Because if you could reboot the Universe, you could reboot it to the point before anything went wrong and no worlds would fall to the terrible destruction you had witnessed. You weren’t going to bring those worlds back, you were going to ensure they never fell in the first place.

 If fate kept putting you in the path of powerful people, if fate had led you to Avengers tower then this was the reason. The Tesseract chose you to help Loki, and this was the only way you could think that you would be of any use.

 So you didn’t feel bad as you walked away from the lonely Stranger. As you placed your hand in Loki’s, you let go of all the pain of not being able to save the fuzzy Druffs. It didn’t matter anymore, none of it mattered. You might not be a hero, but Loki could be. And you, you would be the Tech Support.

 He gently scooped your slumbering Winnie from his pocket and gave him back to you, watching as you secured the little dreaming Grofflink in your own pocket before he laced his fingers with yours, and then in a blinding flash of blue you left Taa and the Stranger behind.

A/N - What's this? A second chapter in one day? :OBeen a while since I pulled one of these!Honestly, I just got kinda giddy reading all the comments and needed to give you (and myself) more! You guys deserve all the chapters I can give for being so supportive and lovely 💖💖💖

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#Loki #Loki x Reader #Loki Odinson #Loki Laufeyson #God of Mischief #Loki x Y/N #Loki series #Loki Fic #Loki Smut #The Avengers #Avengers x Reader #Avengers x Y/N #Avengers Reader

[nat-20s]

I WANT THE GERTRUDE THESIS

time to demonstrate  my superhuman inability to SHUT UP here u go

*cracks knuckles* Okay so part of the enjoyment of Hamlet and what, I think, makes it a classic and intriguing play is the amount of ambiguity in it. Is Hamlet ever actually mad? Is the ghost real? If it is is it actually his dead father or some other vengeful spirit? Is hamlet like 19 or like 30? etc.

I personally love the ambiguity and how much is left up to interpretation, because even beyond staging and prop work and setting, it makes seeing multiple versions of the play immensely satisfying rather than repetitive. You get to watch each version and see what choices each director and actor made, which interpretation they decided to go with, how they wanted the characters to shine, whether they wanted to keep a lot of the ambiguity or eliminate it. For example, because the David Tennant version was the one I most recently watched, it seemed like it very much wanted to enforce the ghost is real by, even in the scene where only Hamlet can see it, having the ghost brush Gertrude’s hair and having her react to it. That little choice creates a huge amount of context.

“Nat,” you may say, “this is supposed to be about Gertrude, could you stop prattling on about why Hamlet good?”

Yes I can hypothetical You.

To me Gertrude is one of the most variable/ambiguous but also FASCINATING characters in the play. There’s SO MUCH you can do with her character, and it’s fascinating how the morality of other characters can be so deeply influenced by how you choose to portray Gertrude that it would almost work better as like, a flow chart, than a mini essay, but whatever.

The first place to start with her to me is with with how Aware of King Hamlet’s murder Gertrude was, ranging from the mastermind behind it to completely oblivious.

If you pick the first option with mastermind or at the very least co-conspirator, then you still have a sliding scale of whether or not you want to make her sympathetic or fully villainous. What’s interesting about that is that the more sympathetic you make her in the “in on it” scenario, the morality of both king hamlet and baby boy hamlet are likely to have to worsen in response. In a sympathetic scenario, Gertrude would be in on the murder of her husband but NOT on the murder of her son. In order for this murder to come across as sympathetic- you HAVE to make King Hamlet a bad man. If you’re going for tragic angle, you can make him abusive to Hamlet, and then you have a Hamlet that still worships and grieves for a man who was cruel to him. If you make him abusive to Gertrude but not to Hamlet, which she’s kept hidden, then it turns makes Hamlet look worse when he treats her incredibly poorly, grieving for a man he thinks is great but she knows better.

ON THE FLIP SIDE if you want to make Gertrude villainous you can a: have her in on the plot to kill Hamlet as well and/or B: make King Hamlet a kind man that she was having an affair of and decided to dispose of. In turn, by choosing either of these options, if Hamlet is aware of these things, you can make him seem more justified in his anger towards her.

Now lets loop back round to an Innocent Gertrude: if she is unaware of Claudius’s villainy, she becomes instantly more sympathetic to the audience, but it takes away much of her agency. King Hamlet can be a good man who she’s grieving or a bad man who she has conflicted feelings over her own relief towards his death. Her decision to marry Claudius may seem more abrupt, but it also becomes less costly to her morality: she is doing what she thinks she must and simultaneously trying to deal with her grief AND trying to help her son who she does genuinely love. You can even have her be so innocent that it results in her death- she drinks the final drink without knowing it’s her doom.

I personally prefer the Innocent Gertrude that becomes increasingly aware of Claudius’s true nature and tries her best to stop the oncoming fate but can’t fully- she’s into this too late, she’s waited for too long, her doom becomes inevitable. and it makes her story parallel Hamlet’s, and it makes her final sip become incredibly heavy. There’s also something more eloquent than i can manage right now to be said about her choosing death with open eyes (in order to try and save her son and or out of despair) as her only true act of agency- similar to how Ophelia’s likely suicide was hers. Kinda fucked up, but very much in line with the world created by Hamlet.

(note: no matter how you choose to play Innocent Gertrude, it does make Hamlet come across as a bigger prick. Just a fun little side note)

OKAY

tldr: Gertrude’s characterization alone has massive ramifications on how a hamlet telling goes, to the point where it almost makes hamlet a directorial choose your own adventure, and she’s a fascinating character to look at for innocence vs agency, especially with female characters both in the broader context of Shakespeare and the time period.

#hamlet #gertrude #hamlet meta #moody dane #sensicalabsurdities #replies

[ofmargos]

chicago’s very own margo rosas has been spotted on madison avenue , with a striking semblance to camila mendes ! you may know them as @margo or hitting the front page of tmz as margo rosas is making her comeback on broadway ! according to tmz , you just had your twenty-third birthday bash . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re overdramatic , but being passionate might help you . things that would paint a better picture of you would be the sound of stilettos hitting the pavement , the thunderous sound of applause , and having the poise of a well-mannered lady but the mouth of a sailor . ( cis female + she / her )

omg hey y’all it’s ya girl lia back at it again with the broadway b*tch herself , margo ! fun fact : i’ve been writing for margo off n on for THREE years ?? that’s wild . no matter what i do i cannot get rid of this muse akjsdnk but i love her and i hope y’all do too ! under the cut is far too much info on her ( i’m sorry it’s long !! ) pls go ahead and give this post a like if you give me consent to come bug you in the im’s / discord ! <3

*+:｡.｡ 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒 ｡.｡:+*

–;; 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞: Margaret Lucia Rosas – ;; 𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞(𝐬): Margo ( preferred name ), Mars, Mar, Pain in the Ass, Drama Queen – ;; 𝐀𝐠𝐞: Twenty-Three – ;; 𝐃.𝐎.𝐁: 31 October 1997 – ;; 𝐙𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐜: Scorpio sun, scorpio moon,  leo asc ( yikes ) – ;; 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫: Cis Female – ;; 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Bisexual Biromantic – ;; 𝐇𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭: 5ft 2 – ;; 𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞: Chicago, IL – ;; 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: Luxurious apartment in Manhattan – ;; 𝐎𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Singer / Songwriter + Broadway Performer ( Julia Michaels VC ) – ;; 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐬: Passionate, creative, dramatic, distrusting, outgoing, ambitious, fun-loving, loyal, daring, sarcastic, stubborn, overconfident, impulsive, hard-working, petty, secretive, short-tempered, vindictive

*+:｡.｡ 𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘 ｡.｡:+*

*TW: undiagnosed illness, death

grew up as an only child in chicago, illinois. her family was definitely in the middle class but her parents both worked hard to provide their pride and joy with everything she could’ve wanted out of life

and it became apparent early on that what margo wanted was to perform. she was always singing around the house, putting on one-woman shows for her parents, and following along to the choreography of her favorite DCOM on tv. and in order to keep her satisfied, and also out of the house while they were both working, her parents threw her into an abundance of performing arts classes: ballet, tap, and jazz classes + singing lessons + acting workshops-- you name it. it was a very expensive hobby but her parents were willing to put in the extra work hours to fund her passions

she honestly grew up blissfully unaware of the sacrifices her parents were making on her behalf. they just never made her feel like she was inconveniencing them in any way. if she wanted to spend her day turn acting, singing, and dancing then so be it. they supported her emotionally and financially 100%

*ILLNESS TW* but the rose-tinted glasses were ripped from her eyes around the age of fourteen / fifteen. her mom had always had a weak immune system-- the first one to catch a cold or the flu, knocking her on her ass and leaving her bedridden for days at a time. it only got worse as years went on and she avoided doctor appointments out of fear of being charged unnecessary costly fees. she downplayed her compromising situation for as long as she could until she physically couldn’t carry on any more and had to stop going to work

margo and her father urged the stubborn woman to seek medical attention for any sort of relief for months until she finally conceded. soon it became the new norm for her mother to be in and out of hospitals, getting tests done, trying various medications. but nothing helped in the long-term and they were unable to come to a strict diagnosis *ILLNESS TW END*

and she had been right, it was terribly expensive. their funds were short considering the family was down to one income. so margo took on more responsibilities by working part-time jobs as well as going to school. she was sixteen and teaching dance lessons at her childhood studio in exchange for a small amount of pay + free lessons as well as working at a local movie theatre 6 days a week. she cut back on extracurricular lessons to save some money, instead pouring all her creative energy into only school related clubs such as choir, theatre, and so on

honestly, if you knew margo in high school you’d likely not even know about her familial situation. she liked to keep her cards close to her chest and portrayed herself as this larger than life character that no one would believe had experienced any hardships. she distracted from her own worries by playing the role of ‘queen bee’ or more accurately rachael berry from glee ( a cursed character at this point but it’s true unfortunately )

margo had big dreams of making it to broadway one day and had planned to get there by going to college in new york and make a name for herself. but with her mother’s healthy declining the closer margo got to graduation, the more put off she was by the idea of moving away from home. she was willing to put all plans for her future on hold and take care of her mother but her parents wouldn’t let her. being as encouraging as ever, they convinced her that she needed to follow her dreams. she had already given up a majority of her teenage years to help them out when they needed it most. they wouldn’t let her miss out on anything else

so with a heavy heart but on a good scholarship, she left for columbia university without any idea of what to expect. new york was a whole new world for her and she was thrown off by how talented, beautiful, and wealthy her peers were. she had felt like a big fish in a really small pond during her high school days. but for once she was a tiny fish in the big wide ocean

her larger than life persona came back into play-- masking her worries and insecurities with a version of herself that was so confident that she even began to fool herself. she got a bit lost in the fantasy. her true self-slipping away. she almost had this alter ego ??? ( come thru hannah montana moment okay ) wannabe starlet rubbing elbows with the future CEOs and celebrities of the world by day and local pizza parlor waitress by the night, working to make a decent living while also sending money back home when she could

she also had to maintain good grades to keep her scholarship and participate in performances that her department put on in order to rise in the ranks

honestly the only time she got a little peace was when she was hanging out with her few GOOD friends. like the people that actually got to know her past her fake personality. they were also music people so they spent a lot of time together just messing around with instruments and vocals and writing songs in their own little makeshift studio / hangout spot

it started off as just fun and games, but with their help margo created some original songs and released them as an indie artist. she put herself out there on her social media profiles like “hey stream my new single!!!!!!” and people ate it up. after releasing a few tracks and establishing her own following, her music eventually got to the right people and she was given the opportunity to sign to an actual label which was wild ???

and while it was an amazing opportunity, releasing music under the label was also very demanding. when she was releasing music from the comfort of her friend’s studio it was purely a fun creative outlet and done on her own time. it was just... rough. but how could she complain when she was making a name for herself in the music industry + making bank from royalties + getting to meet all these cool famous people and go to parties with them and y’know ... spiral and slack off on other responsibilities

*DEATH TW* it was around her junior year that things started to go from bad to worse. she remembers exactly where she was and what she was doing when she got the call from her dad informing her of her mom’s extended stay in the hospital. things weren’t looking too good. there wasn’t anything they could do for the older lady and honestly she was done fighting. margo flew back home to chicago immediately and stayed at her childhood home for the following weeks until her mother passed. it was absolutely devastating. she stayed in chicago with her dad for months as they worked through their grief together *DEATH TW END*

columbia was pretty understanding of her situation and was willing to be accommodating so she could finish her degree plan, but margo put things off for so long that she eventually just withdrew from the university and was dead set on just living in chicago forever

i’m not gonna lie, margo was down and out for a little while. didn’t talk to anyone really, rarely left the house, stopped making music, and just sorta fell off completely. the only good thing that came out of the year or so that she spent back home was she stepped away from the false reality she created for herself in new york, which helped her realize that she didn’t love the person she was becoming or the things she was doing. she wasn’t even really involved with her one true passion which was theatre / acting

it was with a little boost from her dad ( literally her biggest fan , i love this man okay ) that she started acting like herself again. he told her that her mom wouldn’t want her to give up on everything and neither would he. so with a new found determination ( and a pretty exciting career opportunity ), margo put on her big girl pants and moved her ass back to new york to finally do what she loves to do

and here we are now ! she’s stepping into her break-out role onto broadway as lydia deetz in bettlejuice the musical

she’s only been back in new york for a few months at this point i’d say ??? and i can’t wait to see her come into her own and grow into the margo i know and love ... but also hate because she’s so so dumb :-) <3

*+:｡.｡ 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘  &  𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒｡.｡:+*

she has no chill, probably will never have any chill, and i am sorry for that ASJNDLK she’s just overdramatic as hell !!! she’s a theatre kid at heart and i would expect absolutely nothing less from her

generally good-natured though and has good intentions. just simply has piss-poor execution sometimes

down to clown and ready to have a good time all the time all in the name of enjoying life to its fullest while we all have a chance

the only thing she takes seriously is her work life. she’s on her grind okay, it took a lot for her to get to where she is today and she’s not going to just let it slip away that easily. she’s doing everything she can to make not only herself proud but her parents :’-)

still releases her own music under the label but her primarily focus is on her budding broadway career and the label is understanding of that ... mostly because she called an executive meeting ( against her manager’s better judgement ) and was super up front and threatened to walk out if they didn’t see reason ... but at least things worked out well !!!

she mostly writes songs for other people at this point in her career. some big names too ( just like ... google julia michael’s career and apply it to margo okay thank u )

honestly her management teams worst nightmare simply because she does not listen and will do whatever she wants and post whatever she wants and will not apologize for being her authentic self in media

like, she’s just starting to figure out who she is again and they want her to stop and act fake because she’s not being very “family-friendly” or because it doesn’t make her “look good to the public” ??? nah f*ck that !

while she is sociable and fun-loving, she’s also hard to seriously get to know sometimes because of all those years of putting up a front. like sometimes she doesn’t even realize that she’s not being 100% genuine ??? so you could be hanging out with her every single day and still not know her completely and she might not open up and that’s okay, she’s working on it

she is a pretty good friend tho ! super loyal, a true ride or die, will want to fight anyone that you have a problem with, showers you in compliments and gifts, truly 10 / 10

but if she doesn’t like you or if you’ve mistreated her in any way at all she will in fact hold it against you for the rest of her life. just petty as a mf and i hate her for it like sis pls leT SH*T GO !!!!

didn’t grow up rich so now that she’s making bank she’s one of those people that just buys dumb things just because she can ??? the size of her closet is absolutely ridiculous, just overflowing with clothes and accessories, and the amount of random packages that get delivered to her apartment that she doesn’t even remember ordering is even more so ... just ... irresponsible spender

stubborn ?? what is compromising ??? doesn’t know her but will try ( begrudgingly ) if she really likes you

hates being bored. can and will go to excessive lengths to avoid boredom

partygirl margo has not stopped, will not stop, and cannot be stopped much to my own disappointment

self-proclaimed dancing queen. really puts all those years of classical dance training to good use by hopping on top of tables / countertops at parties to shake some ass

surprisingly a responsible adult that can cook and clean and get shit done when she really puts her mind to it ??? this developed over the years that her mom was sick and bedridden and she stepped up to take care of household chores while her dad worked doubles

very family-oriented and talks to her dad all the time. like, calls him daily for really dumb reasons. any time she feels down the first person she wants to talk to is him ( well it’s actually her mom, who was her best friend in the whole world, but since she’s not here anymore they make do as just the two of them )

her ego is LARGE. GRANDE. thinks very highly of herself as a result of being praised too much as a child probably. not to mention she is very very good at what she does, has more talent in her little pinky then i do in my whole body. she’s secretly insecure on the inside but she presents as an overconfident bad bitch

a staple to her character that i wish she would shake is her inability to handle her own feelings in a healthy way ... she just sorta ... shuts down ?? runs away ?? acts like nothing is happening ?? it’s bad. would rather leave than get left and bottle up all her feelings and kick them under the bed then ever open up

has a terrible sleeping pattern and cannot stay on a solid sleep schedule to save her life. undiagnosed insomniac. when her mind just won’t calm down she often goes out to keep her occupied and avoid any overthinking that might occur when she’s in her own company

her life motto is #YOLO and does a lot of stupid sh*t because of it

probably uses tiktok too much both as a consumer and a content creator. vlogs her backstage experiences and also just posts dumb, amusing things

this is so long i’m sorry if you read this whole thing i just have a lot of feelings about her after writing her for so many years AKJSDK i’ll shut up now BYE

i have margo’s wc page HERE but just some ideas are best friends, frenemies, confidants, fellow music people, party friends, pr friends or pr rivals, crushes, on and off again, exes, roommate, childhood friends, family friends, good influence, bad influence, honestly truly anything and everything PLS i love to plot and write w/ all of you ! <3

#wealthyhq:intro #i finally finished this so imma post it #pls love my baby 🥺

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

More Female Characters to Avoid in Your Writing

A long while back, I typed up some posts ranting about characters and tropes I disliked.  These were Male and Female Characters to Avoid in Your Writing, and they’ve become my most popular posts yet.  Recently, I was struck by some topical inspiration, and decided it was time for a sequel!  

One again, these are my personal, subjective opinions!  No one dictates your writing or portrayals but you, and no one can or should decide how you consume fiction.  Also, as you may notice, I actually like most of the ladies below;  I just don’t like certain aspects of their portrayal.

Enjoy, and happy writing everybody! 

1.  The Daenerys (i.e. the spontaneous war criminal)

Image source

Who she is:

The formerly heroic Mother of Dragons, who randomly charbroiled a city full of innocent people.

Why it sucks:

I’m not even talking about this from a feminist standpoint, or how one of the most consistently heroic and powerful female characters took an abrupt and undignified backflip into the Dark Side.  I’m speaking from a writer’s standpoint.  

Regardless of whether you liked Daenerys, she was rivaled only by Jon and Brienne as the show’s most consistently heroic character  From locking away her dragon children to ensure the safety of her subjects, to freeing countless enslaved citizens, she���s spent a decade proving herself to be an altruistic and noble figure.  And then, in the final two episodes of the entire show, the writers dracarys-ed that shit.

For some comparison, just imagine how ridiculous it would be if Jon Snow suddenly went batshit and started hacking up citizens because he was feeling stressed.  That’s about as plausible as Dany’s sudden passion for genocide.

And for the record, I’m not opposed to Daenerys becoming Mad Queen.  If it was done properly. This would mean informing the actress far in advance so she could modify her portrayal accordingly (which they didn’t), and building up to it through foreshadowing and established attributes.  Not at the last fucking minute.

Honestly, the only characters who remained narratively consistent to the very end are Drogon and Ghost, who are both precious babies who did nothing wrong.  

How to avoid her:

Decide as early as possible where a character arc is going.  Contrary to what Game of Thrones seems to believe, the character arc is important.  It should have a beginning, challenges that incite development, and a satisfying conclusion that showcases how a character has changed and evolved.  

And if you didn’t decide early?  You still have to come up with a conclusion that makes sense for your character, and not slap on the most unexpected ending possible in the name of Subverting Expectations.

On that note?  Subverting expectations isn’t always a good thing, and a reader predicting your ending isn’t the worst possible outcome.  Focus on telling a good story.  

2.  The Rayon (i.e. the transgender stereotype)

Who she is:

A transgender woman (portrayed by the male, cisgender Jared Leto) dying slowly of AIDS in Dallas Buyer’s Club.  Her role in the narrative is to teach the supposedly heterosexual (more on that later) main character that queer people are human beings.  

Why it sucks:

Rayon is many things in Buyer’s Club, and most are firmly rooted in stereotypes.  She’s a sassy, flirtatious, clothing-obsessed, self-loathing, drug-addicted prostitute.   She’s hypersexual, but never treated as romantically desirable.  She’s tragic, but also one of the few consistently comedic characters in an otherwise bleak film. 

It’s her job to gently goad the main character into treating her with basic respect, but he never quite gets there.  He refers to her with male pronouns throughout the entire film, and never acknowledges her as a woman.  At one point, he aims a gun at her genitals and offers her a “sex change operation.”  Which, is supposed to be comedic.

This isn’t to say that there are no sassy, flirtatious, clothing-obsessed, self-loathing, drug-addicted transgender sex workers, nor is there anything wrong with “stereotypical” trans people.  It isn’t the job of the marginalized to dispel stereotypes.  And if real trans people had created and portrayed Rayon, she could have been a realistic, dynamic, and compelling character.

And I say “created” because Rayon is strictly fictional.  Outside of this film, she didn’t exist.  

“Well, at least they tried to offer representation!”  you protest.  “What else was it supposed to be about?  A straight dude in the AIDS epidemic?”

Well, no.  Though the main character, Ron Woodroof, is presented to us as a violently homophobic, transphobic, womanizing asshole, the real Woodroof was, by all accounts, kind-hearted, open-minded, and bisexual.  

What could have been a powerful story of a queer man defying his diagnosis, living joyfully and meaningfully, and helping to prolong the lives of countless AIDS-sufferers, was instead watered down to a story of a straight, pugnacious asshole and his stereotypical, long-suffering, transgender sidekick who dies to Teach Him Compassion.  

How to avoid her:

Read books by trans people.  Consume media they create or endorse.  

List of youtube channels created by trans people here, and 21 books for trans awareness month here.

Put out a special call for transgender beta readers to point out mistakes, misconceptions, and offer tips on an authentic portrayal.

Garner insight into their perspective and experiences, and give them personalities outside of being trans.  

3.  The Piper Chapman (i.e. the unflavored oatmeal)

GIF source

Who she is:

The “protagonist” of Orange is the New Black, and its least compelling character.  She and Larry are the sort of people who would ask me for a threesome on Tinder.  

Why it sucks:

Piper’s hook is that she’s a privileged, affluent white woman who unjustly finds herself in prison for -- well, for crimes she committed.  But expected to get away with, because, Privilege.

This isn’t to say Piper is boring.  She’s far from likable, but being likable and being boring aren’t the same thing.  In another series, watching a relatively cushioned, naive, bourgeoisie woman string along various significant others, thoughtlessly incite violence, and navigate an unfamiliar prison setting would make for thought-provoking and hilarious satire.  

But when compared to her charismatic supporting cast, with richly developed backstories, motivations, and relationships, she’s painfully bland.  I would much rather watch a series centered around Suzanne, Nikki, Taystee, Poussey, or even Pennsatucky.  They’re just more developed, opulent, enjoyable characters. 

It could be argued that Piper is the viewpoint character, whom the audience is supposed to relate to.  But I can assert that I don’t relate to Piper.  At all.  Her lack of empathy towards others -- such as leaving Alex after the death of her mother, cheating on her fiance, and inadvertently starting a *ahem* white power gang -- alienated me to her.  

Which might not be such a bad thing, but Piper is (supposedly) the protagonist.  We don’t need to like her, but we should probably be able to relate to her.

Or maybe I’m just jealous that hot women aren’t inexplicably fighting over me.

How to avoid her:

Your protagonist doesn’t have to be the most likable character in your story.  They don’t even necessarily have to be the most interesting character in your story.  And certainly not the most morally good, powerful, or knowledgeable.  But the viewpoint character is the character who we spend the most time with, and from whose eyes we perceive the story.  It’s important that we understand and relate to them emotionally.

Look at examples like BoJack Horseman, Holden Caulfield, Tony Soprano, Beatrix from Kill Bill, Mavis from Young Adult, Nadia from Russian Doll.  All are complex characters, with varying degrees of moral ambiguity.  Yet we can empathize with them emotionally and identify with them.  Even if we’ve never been in their situation, we see where they’re coming from.

4.  The Charlie (i.e. the dead lesbian)

Who she is:

One of the few recurring openly queer characters in the incredibly long-running Supernatural.  A lesbian who’s journey was (sort of) brought to an end when she was killed and dumped in a bathtub to incite drama.

Why it sucks:

I love Supernatural  but it can be remarkably tone deaf towards queer people, women, and marginalized groups.  Which, probably merits fixing, considering its following is largely comprised of queer people, women, and marginalized groups.  

I probably shouldn’t have to explain why killing off women and queer people for drama is Bad, but I’ll delve into its history a little:  from what I’ve read, censorship laws of the twentieth century forbade the portrayal of queer people unless they were ultimately killed or “reformed.”  This is why so much LGBTQ+ fiction is essentially gay tragedy porn, and why gays are so frequently buried to aid in the emotional narrative of their straight counterparts.  

That’s not to say queer people can never be killed off.  I might not have an issue with Charlie’s death (especially in a show as violent as Supernatural), if she weren’t the only openly queer character at the time.  

And there’s plenty of room for representation!  If Dean was openly bisexual, if angels were vocally confirmed to be nonbinary, and if there were more recurring, respectfully portrayed female and sapphic characters, Charlie’s death might not feel like such as slap in the face.  But as it is, it feels like a contribution to an ugly pattern.

In fairness, Supernatural has since improved in its portrayal of queer people:  two gay male hunters were introduced and given a happy ending, an alternate universe version of Charlie was introduced to the cast, and God is portrayed as a bisexual man.  

Yes.  All of that happened.  You have to see it to understand.

How to avoid her:

Educate yourself on the history of censorship in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as hate crimes and decreased life expectancy.  Make sure you aren’t contributing to the suffering of queer people.

If you have only one confirmed queer character in the midst of a very large cast, I’m inclined to think you need more.  You could say I’m BI-ased on the matter, though.

Look up “fridging,” and think about how many stories use the death of female characters to incite drama for men.

5.  The Allison (i.e. the reformed feminine)

GIF source

Who she is:

She’s one of the most interesting members of the Breakfast Club, and that’s saying something.  A self-proclaimed compulsive liar who will “do anything sexual” with or without the promise of a million dollars (as well as one of the most quotable characters in the film) she demonstrates the emotional pain and complexity that’s often ignored or shrugged off as teen angst.  

And then she gets a makeover and a hot boyfriend, and suddenly everything’s better.  

Why it sucks:

It would be one thing if Allison’s problem was that she didn’t feel pretty or desirable.  But she never (to my recollection) offers any indication of that, and that’s part of what makes her such a refreshing portrayal of insecurity.  She’s emotionally neglected by her parents, and that is appropriately treated as devastating.  

It’s a complex and beautifully-portrayed problem that deserved far more than such a superficial, slapped-on solution.

Similarly, there’s no reason why Allison is paired up with the jock at the end of the film.  Neither showed any romantic interest in one another until her unnecessary makeover.  

A much better ending to her arc would be her finding acceptance among her newfound friends, and finally garner the recognition and acknowledgement she never got from her parents. 

I was torn between using Allison for this example, or Sandy’s makeover from Grease.  In both, girls are encouraged to alter their appearances to solve plot-related problems.  And both were “fixed” to conform to some standard of femininity or feminine sexuality that they didn’t meet before.

How to avoid her:

If a character feels the need to change their appearance to accommodate others or be respected, that should probably be treated as a negative thing.

Your character’s appearance can be a good tool to represent emotional changes.  If they alter their appearance, there should be a meaningful reason behind it -- outside of fitting into societal norms or garnering the approval of others. 

A girl putting on makeup isn’t a groundbreaking plot point, and girls who don’t perform to standards of femininity aren’t broken or deficient.  They don’t need “correcting.”

#writing #writing tips #writing advice #game of thrones #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #game of thrones spoilers #transphobia #orange is the new black #supernatural #fridging #homophobia #charlie bradbury #the breakfast club #grease #sexism

[vaguely-concerned]

Some more mass effect andromeda thinky thoughts as I run around heleus getting some achievements! 

- the murderous angaran ai is genuinely so fucking funny. “How are you feeling here on Aya?” “I hope you die” “Is there anything we could do to make you more comfortable?” “BURY THIS PLANET UNDER FIRE AND ASH” “o.oookay. Goodbye then.” “I HATE you.”

- I hope I never become irresistibly moved to write mass effect andromeda fic b/c there really is no other description for a good 70% of the expressions reyes makes than :> and how could one capture that in words

- as mentioned I’ve been doing a bit of achievement hunting and in the process I’ve been switching up a lot of gameplay stuff from how I handled it the first few times around and let me tell you it’s baller as fuuuuuuuuuck -- it just looks so awesome and is so satisfying between the maneuverability of the jetpack and biotic charge and the effects. special shoutout to what happens if you biotic charge a frozen victim enemy and the biotic pull/push combination. (throwing people around like ragdolls is actually so much fun I’ve kept doing it even after I unlocked the achievement lol)

- lol lol when you get meridian online there’s the montage of every planet coming back to life, right? well the one on kadara is from inside kralla’s song, with umi looking out at everything that’s happening. and all I can imagine is her jaded-ass voice going ‘what the fUCK did that asshole kid do now I only just cleaned up after the bar brawl he started with his krogan grandpa and now he’s rearranging the entire fucking planet right from under us goddess I need a drink’ 

- the implication that reyes ‘cards so close to my chest you won’t even know I’m playing’ vidal just does not shut up about how amazing ryder is to anyone who’ll listen gives me so much life. when you try to be mysterious and laidback but the human pathfinder is so fucking cute tho Y____Y (also go watch his scenes if you’re being standoffish with him the entire time -- he clearly wants ryder to like him so much right from the beginning, he’s doing so much work to no avail and I feel sort of bad for how funny I find it haha. interesting that it really does seem to be an emotional thing as well as y’know the practical/tactical benefits of having the pathfinder on his side. methinks the charlatan might be a bit lonely there behind all his masks lol) 

I think this is why I’m willing to give him some benefit of the doubt too, despite all the cloak and dagger stuff -- he’s so immediately drawn to ryder, who you can never make a bad person, really. something in him must respond to that, if potentially only in the ‘attracted to traits I do not possess myself’ way hahaha

- I love sam. so so much. some of the open world implementation is still grating (yes sam. yes I know I can mine this area for resources through my mining interface. we’ve been doing this for a hundred hours sam. you’ve been right here with me the entire time sam. please sam), but he’s SUCH a good and I’d argue underutilized concept (emotionally at least) and the best boy. the fact that he can get SARCASTIC on you fsdhfjsadh he’s growing and learning! he’s doing so from inside your brain which is kind of unsettling but also SO COOL! there’s something about that level of intimacy, of always knowing there will be someone there with you in your head that is super interesting and deserves to be examined more fully -- both how it could be comforting and how it’s  r e a l l y  not how people or ai are generally designed to work lol. 

he also gives us a unique link with our dad and I wonder if the writers would have explored that in more depth if there’d been more development time -- it practically SCREAMS out an invitation to get to play/see things from alec’s POV in short bursts, like the memories you unlock except you could go through playing it as him since sam is common to both of us. (see my ‘our dad comes back through either kett or remnant nonsense in the sequel and we need to find some way to connect with him’ idea. it would be. amazing. listen alec already looked at the ethical guidelines involved in creating ai and went ‘huh interesting ideas but not for me thanks!’, don’t tell me he wouldn’t have left some loophole in so this could happen)  

- reyes literally says ‘the cavalry’s here’ when we get to meridian and I for one love him more than words can express (he also asks us if we’re okay in sort of a sweet/worried way right before we get to the control room. aw buddy) 

- like we don’t think of them like that because we’re in control of them and see all the stumbles and awkwardness and how young they are all the time, but damn the ryder twins must look like something else to everyone in andromeda haha. they literally stride around like demigods restoring entire planets. on voeld spring non-metaphorically follows in their footsteps. shit dude if we’re talking realpolitik here the angara must feel  p r e t t y nervous about this -- there’s no one saying they can’t turn off the vaults as easily as they turned them on. I hope we get them somehow teaching the angara how to do it too, on a smaller scale at least, as a show of good faith or something in a sequel, because that power imbalance is disconcerting  

- I’m glad sam and I have such similar priorities whenever we’re on kadara. ‘maybe mr vidal would know. perhaps we should ask mr vidal about this. mr vidal said something relating to this pathfinder maybe we should speak to him’ . yeah sam i know the feeling, same (it does undeniably read as sam having a bit of a crush which is. hilarious?) 

- the fact that alec ryder thought ellen responded to his bad boy act in any way when what really charmed her was that he was a great big nerd <3 it’s kind of nice to see a fictional marriage that seems to have just been. nice and stable and chill? just two intellectual equals who like and respect each other very much and not a lot of drama until alec went full alec and started developing rogue ai instead of watching his wife die lol. again I would love for the sequel to involve ellen finally waking up and being like ‘death? trying to claim MY husband? I do not think so, I can die he can’t he’s not leaving me behind’ and helping out and you realize that the reason they were soulmates was that under the relatively rational and unemotional surface they’re both, at heart, batshit crazy mad scientists who are insanely devoted to each other. imagine it tho! the people of andromeda realize alec ryder is back from the dead somehow and doing some Shit out there, they put a ton of resources into curing ellen’s disease because their best shot is something to do with the implants she made, hey presto we’ve got all ryders on the board and in play. 

- just want to make it clear that I’m still sad about avitus rix and hope he’s having a good day

- do you think ryder ever asks sam to read something to him ‘aloud’ in his head if he’s anxious and can’t sleep. or just to talk at him about something boring until he nods off. again the possibilities inherent in the concept!!! he has someone who’s closer to him than any other person could be, what’s that like? 

- *me sticking to my sidewinder pistol the whole playthrough even though it’s laughably inefficient* I just wanna feel like a cowboy bioware please work with me here

- the male ryder voice actor has such amazing comedic timing, there’s a lot of reaction stuff out in the field he absolutely nails. I enjoy the female voice too and I like how much emotion she manages to convey towards the end of the game especially, but there’s a casual comedy in male ryder’s voice that can’t be beat. (well, it’s not hawke levels, but then nothing ever is, that’s too much to ask)

- I love vorn and kesh so much. nerd krogans unite & make out

- I still want to sit peebee down and have a long serious talk with her about emotional abuse, maybe give her a hug :( fuck kalinda 

- this game does not get enough credit for how stunningly beautiful it is, it all got buried under criticism about the animations and it’s a fucking shame. the last few vaults you go through are just mindboggling in scale and visual uh striking-ness. it makes me so sad to think there won’t be any more of it D: 

- I really like this mainly casual + logical dialogue options ryder I’ve found; it makes him sound like a younger and more irreverent version of his father, but also softer and less closed off and much more willing to show affection for his family especially. 

- i wonder if different people’s individual SAMs will take on a certain tone/unique pattern when they’ve coexisted long enough. have I mentioned. how much I want a sequel to this game 

- one last reyes note because don’t look at me okay -- I wonder how much we’re meant to read into ‘being honorable never got me anywhere’. on the one hand I’m fully prepared to believe he’s never even tried doing anything the honorable way in his entire life lol but on the other there’s also some interesting potential in the interplay of that sentence and ‘to be someone’. (there seems to be a deep fear in him both of powerlessness and of being truly seen/recognized -- he equates secrecy with safety pretty explicitly -- which seems... telling? of what I don’t know but telling all the same hahaha) like he might be saying he’s tried doing things the ‘right’ way and it didn’t work and the price was too high, so he just went for this instead with the ends low-key justifying the means. hmmm. :Ia (this is what happens when I get Attached to a character with like an hour of screentime my friends, and I’m already primed to give my entire heart away at the sound of nicholas boulton’s voice)

#mass effect #mass effect andromeda #I'm sorry about this my brain just won't shut up about this suddenly so here we go #reyes vidal #meta

[curtisandlewis]

ML Relationship through the Perspective of a Fanfiction Writer

Listen to the Spotify playlist I made as an auditory companion

For their anniversary I would like to discuss from my perspective as a writer of fanfiction the many layers of ML’s relationship

Onions have layers as well as cake! I learned that from Jerry’s friend Eddie Murphy.

We all know how much the boys love cake…

Layer One Partnership

I wouldn’t be writing fanfiction about two guys who worked at a gas station. Their act is the reason we know about them and celebrate them today. What all of America saw was two men equally skilled at their art (though many were too stupid to realize), both in awe and each other’s biggest fan. What was not presented to the public was the communication it took to pull off their act. It took negotiation to set up a gag and trust as well as the sense to know when not to push when doing a stunt. Their natural rhythm made adlibs come off better than scripted material. They were so attuned to one another they could do the impossible.

Layer Two Friendship

Dean and Jerry most likely met in 1942 that’s four years of friendship before they ever were on stage together. They hung out, had more fun than anyone, and were emotionally supportive of the other. A subset of this aspect is when they act like boys. Wrestling each other to the ground, play fighting, playing football in the hall in nothing but your boxer shorts, and innocent kisses are all the actions of boys not yet taught the rules of manhood. In my writing I sometimes explore the idea of them having a romantic friendship. More than friends, less than lovers. Their relationship isn’t physical and neither has a sexual attraction but are deeply attracted to each other emotionally. This love can be (and Jerry often has!) compared to romantic love. They are affectionate sometimes in the form of kisses but that’s only to communicate their strong emotions for the other.

Layer Three Family

Some people are uncomfortable with them having a romantic friendship. What part of it was a LOVE STORY do you not understand? Often these people will say they loved each other like BROTHERS. In the past I have compared them to brothers but I meant only in the sense that they have a family-like bond. Brothers are protective in this “no one beats the shit out of my brother but me” kind of way. No real life brother relationship I know of is anything like Dean and Jerry. I do, however, get strong father/son vibes from them. Dean is protective, caring, gives Jerry discipline when he needs it, and loves him without condition. It’s important to note these are all things Jerry’s biological father didn’t provide.

Layer Four Marriage

Now we’re getting deep. When I talk about their marriage I don’t mean romantic love or a sexual relationship. I’m speaking strictly of their domesticity. Their act made it so they had to live on the road, sharing hotel rooms and a bed in the early days. As Jerry once said, LIVING AND LOVING TOGETHER. It’s canon that Dean moved in with Jerry more than once. They know what the other is like in a domestic situation. Jerry knows that Dean cuts corners when doing house work and can be a slob. Dean thinks Jerry should relax and not be so fussy. They learned to accept the other’s irritating quirks and create a harmonious environment where they can enjoy each other’s company. Dean and Jerry have to work together to (Jerry would love this analogy!) nurture their baby (their act). This requires...you guessed it! COMMUNICATION. When they communicate and I mean TALK, exchange words and make hard decisions, nothing can break them. In real life their little spats were like the arguments that married people have. In my fiction when they can no longer communicate what they want or need that’s the beginning of the end.

Layer Five Dom/sub

I’m not talking about in a sexual relationship or even within them practicing an alternative lifestyle. When Dean is dominant over Jerry it makes him feel owned. For Jerry to be owned is the highest form of love. He willingly submits to Dean’s loving authority and to serve him brings him great joy. The roles often switch back and forth depending on what the other needs. When Jerry is dominant over Dean it gives him a chance to breathe. For most of Dean’s life he had to appear dominant and in control because that’s what is expected of a man. Jerry is seen as the wife, the female half and naturally the more submissive. But when Jerry takes over the dominant role Dean can just be. He doesn’t have to worry about appearances. Sometimes a man just likes to be led.

Layer Six Romantic

This is when I write Dean and Jerry as lovers. Call them boyfriends, husbands, whatever you want. They are romantically attracted and deeply in love. If you would like a description look up any quote from Jerry about their relationship.

Layer Seven Supernatural

I’m not planning on doing any crossovers with the TV show if that’s what you were thinking. I’m speaking of all the things related to their connection that cannot be explained. They were mythological. In real life they spoke of a connection so deep they knew when the other was sick, in pain, or even angry at them before they were in the same room. I create stories that hint at this connection. They were fated to be together. No matter how stupid they act or how badly they fuck everything up a force beyond their control will always bring them back together.

Layer Eight Sexual

I have left this to be the final layer because it is the most deepest and intimate aspect of their relationship. When I write them having sex all of their aspects work together. Their professional partnership, especially the part where they must know the other’s limits, prepares them for a sexual relationship. As boys they can wrestle and play and as men these games can become something more meaningful than harmless fun. If you replace father with caretaker then that aspect also plays a key part. Making love is what married couples traditionally do. Dominance, submission, the switching between the two awakens their deepest desires and fulfills their deepest need. In Dean’s case it’s a need he didn’t know he had. When I write them practicing an alternative lifestyle I include pain and that sex doesn’t have to be gentle to be deeply romantic. Sex and physical touch on it’s own is how Dean can express his love for Jerry. Words fail him but his hands never do. I write that they can feel the love as if it was something tangible and passed to the other. As for the supernatural aspect, imagine how satisfying sex could be with your soul mate who knew when you would take your next breath and who knew your body as well as you did. This is why whenever I write Dean and Jerry having sex or experiencing sexual intimacy it is always more than that. It does not matter what they do or the lies they tell they are experiencing a deeply emotional act that can sometimes border on the spiritual.

I remember hearing the writer of a TV show talking about writing sex scenes. He used sex scenes as an opportunity to show who the characters were. That always stuck with me and as a writer I prefer examining their relationship and personalities through sex scenes. I mainly write them in a sexual relationship for this reason and also because it’s fun.

Below the cut is my personal experience with writing their sexual relationship, particularly penetrative sex. None of this will be included on the version posted to AO3

It is very important for me to know if and when my characters engage in certain acts, especially penetrative sex.

I am very protective of my Jerry character. Once upon a time, I wanted Dean to be his first everything. I think we all like the idea of Jerry being in control of his experiences with men and for those experiences to be really special. But when I would attempt to write Jerry as shy and innocent it felt like I was writing an original character that had the same name. Jerry��s experiences whether good or bad make him who he is. I can’t logically write that Jerry never acted on his attraction towards men in sixteen years because his soul mate was out there waiting for him. Also, Dean’s possessiveness would take over when he found out Jerry was untouched. He would think of him as “pure” and that never sat right with me.

Jerry kissed boys and men, was held by some and maybe even developed romantic feelings for one of them and Mr. Martin is just going to have to accept that.

Another thing Mr. Martin has to deal with is that Jerry very much enjoys penetrative sex and wants that in his sexual relationships. I write Dean as his first experience with homosexual intercourse because I want that experience to be special for him. If the idea weren’t so laughable I would have Dean sprinkle rose petals on their bed. Jerry isn’t losing his “virginity” he’s had sex before. Intercourse isn’t any different from any other sexual act. Any way men choose to have sex or get off with each other is valid, intimate, and as romantic as they feel.

However, intercourse is a riskier act than the others. The first time for any gender can be tricky and a lot can go wrong. I want Jerry to be with someone gentle and caring enough that he can receive the maximum amount of pleasure. I want this person to be someone he’s in love with and only gives him positive emotions during. Most importantly I want him never to regret this happened and when he thinks of it throughout the decades he feels good.

Quite recently, I’ve decided on a specific time when they do this. Drum roll please... Dean and Jerry share this special experience in 1947 when Jerry is twenty-one.

Why such a specific time? Because in 1948 Jerry goes to Hollywood and reunites with his oh so special friend Tony. When I first joined this fandom I thought Jerry met Tony in 1948 and in my fanfiction writer mind because of their strong sexual chemistry they instantly started a sexual relationship. They did EVERYTHING. Jerry didn’t have to worry about the rules that men were supposed to follow or if he was acting too feminine in bed or not feminine enough. There was no hesitation or holding back with Tony. He bottomed, he topped, dominant, submissive he explored every side of himself. To be with Tony he has to be a fully blossomed flower of a man and when the fifties hit he knows exactly what he wants sexually and completely accepts the desires he has for whichever gender he has a relationship with.

It’s beautiful isn’t it? Tony and Jerry definitely have their problems but when it comes to their sexual relationship I always write it as positive and satisfying for the both of them. When I started writing fanfiction for them it’s what I loved the most.

#ML74 #Fangirl Writing #jerrylevitch #fuzzysebastainstan #anarchistemma #nerigby96

[satindock17-blog]

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[prince-of-places]

No One Ever Asked Me If I Wanted to Change (This is a little life story. You don’t have to read it. I just wanted to tell someone and I finally had the motivation to do it. Sorry if I clog up your dash at all, I don’t know how to do the “Keep Reading” thing)

No one ever asked me if I wanted to change. I always knew from a young age that I was different from everyone else around me, I knew that I didn’t fit in. I preferred to read on my own or sit in a corner of the playground by myself while everyone else decided to play sports (mostly football/soccer). Which was fine, since I had no interest in those things. I was quite content just being me, and not being like everyone else. I liked to learn new things about the world around me, and I had little to no value for friendships or human connection (it was there, but it was not a primary concern of mine. I liked being alone). I enjoyed learning more than anything else. My reading age was always further ahead of the rest of my class. I only learned when I turned 6 or 7 that I really enjoyed reading encyclopedias, and showing off to my fellow classmates and adult figures in my life. I enjoyed the praise and adulation I received. I also found a fondness for maths, as shown by the fact that my first two maths copies are full of correct answers (not a single mistake in my copies from my first 2 schools. Maybe a handful but most of my copies are unscathed). I used to do extra work outside of school just because I liked learning that much. I enjoyed writing reports on my favorite animals, as well as designing characters for comics and stories. I had creative outlets I enjoyed using, as well as intellectual pursuits.

My parents suspected something was “wrong” with me for a long time but could never pin their finger on it. I think my teachers suspected something was different about me but most were hesitant to tell me about it. According to my parents, I had unusual bedtimes (still do XP) and one day I stayed up late thinking about the universe and what created it. When I realized there was no definitive answer, I became incredibly anxious. I never really had any kind of faith in a “god” (at least not the Catholic one, which I’ve been surrounded by for my whole life) but when I realized it must have been a god which created the universe, I then became anxious about who created god, which has been ever-present anxiety of mine and never really gone away. The next day in school, I basically had an anxiety attack in class, which prompted my teacher to tell my parents to seek help for me (why they didn���t do so beforehand is beyond me). A temporary solution was to do yoga in school, which didn’t really help since my brain was too logical to accept that it would work. There were also various attempts to shove me into afterschool events, and while I appreciated people trying to help me, I didn’t appreciate not being asked if I wanted “help”. I was a perfectly fine being who I was, and yes, I probably did need help, but I didn’t want my whole personality to change.

This pervading feeling of being changed, sculpted by people who had no business doing so made me really upset looking back, but because I have trouble expressing myself and standing up for myself, I just let it happen. 

I start going to therapy when I was 9 years old, and this was where my personality really began to change. I never understood my other classmates, especially not the male ones (I thought for a long time that I was just a girl and no one told me. It was that or a robot. Either way, I don’t think I was ever big on gender but little me just accepted that it was too hard to bother getting worried about). My therapist told me to focus on building up my relationship with male classmates since I was more likely to have more in common with them (even though I always got on better with the girls) and so I felt like I was being forced to change my interests to adapt myself to be more sociable with my classmates. Again, no one asked me if that’s what I wanted. 

Around this time, I also started attending a local youth center, which was small and segregated by gender (essentially). It made social interaction easier, but it meant I spent a lot of time with people I didn’t really like, and it was mostly boys. My work in the center led to me being accepted on a scholarship to my current school, which is a private all-boys Catholic school. It’s a very small school (less than 200 pupils), which meant it was easier to socialize and also get specialized attention from teachers. Except that most teachers don’t acknowledge that I have certain problems (I don’t even think I could describe half of them). I then began volunteering in the youth center after school, leading group activities for children and helping raise money for the center. It was a good experience for the most part, but I soon came to realize that the stress and time I was dedicating to the center were not worth the benefits (this was when I was around 16 if anyone cares about the chronology). 

Just to back up a little bit, I finished my therapy when I was 13, which meant I had to set my own social goals. My isolation from females meant I decided to make my aim to get a girlfriend (I realized I was at an age where I could do that, and I thought the experience would be helpful for when I was older). I’m fairly certain this meant I got a crush on pretty much any girl who showed any kind of interest in me (yeah, I feel bad about that). I also got a phone around this time, as well as my first crush. I got bullied in school over the crush by everyone in my class, and older students I didn’t even know. My use of the phone also isolated me. Both of these factors made it so I was pretty depressed for most of my first year in school, and pretty much all the years after that. 

My school has a conservative, individualist approach to personal development, which made me feel like I had to sort these issues out by myself and that it was my own fault for not wanting to change enough. I was frustrated and in internal turmoil with myself over how I was feeling, which wasn’t helping the recent discovery I had made that I regretted my therapy and found it wasn’t helping me. 

I got a diagnosis of Autism when I was 9 (Asperger’s Syndrome then). I was told I have a very logical mind, an IQ of 120, and had trouble empathizing with others around me. It came along with lots of other connotations and informed my identity. It was one of the only identities I felt comfortable using. Then, when I was 14/15, I went to my school psychologist and told him about the diagnosis. A year later, he told me that someone “bullshitted me” and that he thought it was more likely that I had a vestibular disorder (a problem with my inner ear, which badly affects my balance and social skills), which meant I had near-constant anxiety over my sense of identity. 

This leads me to a place where I’m at right now. Last year or the year before I found out what a nihilist is. I found that being apathetic made it easier to live, and combined with my tendency to mask my autistic traits means that I don’t really know who I am. It feels like there are multiple “mes” in my head. 

I guess to kinda summarise,I’ve always felt different from everyone around me. People have always felt like I need to be “fixed”,without ever asking how I felt about it.or what I wanted to change. A combination of social circumstances means that I now no longer really have any sense of connection to myself or who I am. I feel like a walking contradiction. I don’t know who I am or who I want to be. I never feel fully satisfied with things,I feel like I’m always looking for more. But I never know what more is. I feel like I always push people away,and I’ve never really had other people want to stick around with me for a long time. So many people have tried to craft me into what they view as the perfect version of me, and they’ve all failed. No one really knows me,I think. So many get close,and then I usually push them away. I don’t know why I’m like this. I finder it harder and harder to learn things. I don’t know who I am,who I was or who I’m going to be. But I do no one ever asked me if I wanted to change.

#I expect to go back and edit this later #there are lots of things in this that no one irl knows about me #sorry that it's a bit of a mess. I write stream of conscience

[abigailnussbaum]

The Handmaid’s Tale, 3x01 - 3x03

There’s a loose arc to these three episodes that tries to justify June’s decision to remain in Gilead by arguing that she can form (or join) a resistance rooted in female solidarity.  That’s not inherently an awful idea, especially when it comes to rejecting the potential of Gilead’s men to offer salvation.  Nick, for example, is finally shown for the collaborator that he is.  Now a Commander, he can no longer claim to be a foot soldier merely going along to get along.  In a short while he’ll be fighting to enslave the women and children of Chicago, and his only problem with this is that it’ll endanger his own life.  Not even June can work up enough interest in that dilemma, so his only value to her is one last night of freely-chosen sex.

Then there’s Commander Lawrence, whose decision to let Emily go last season is finally given a context that leaves him looking just as ugly as a high ranking Commander should.  I think June has him dead to rights in their confrontation in episode 3.  He’s just smart enough to understand that the world he’s created is a hellscape, but not brave enough to do anything meaningful about it.  So he satisfies himself with small mercies, and much more than that, with petty humiliations of the women in his power.  And through it all, like Nick, he expects women to see to him, to coddle him, entertain him, and when necessary, to sit back and let him abuse them.

But just because men in Gilead are useless at best doesn’t mean women are allies.  This is a problem on a simple (and yet potentially life-threatening) level in episode 2.  Why do the Marthas trust June and bring her into their network?  The only thing they know about her is that she’s a troublemaker who recently tried to abduct a child from a Commander’s home, and inexplicably ended up with a new assignment instead of on the wall.  That should scream “informer”.  And yet the idea that women might inform on the Marthas’ network, either out of necessity or because they were planted there, never seems to occur to anyone, because to acknowledge the possibility might cut into the show’s simplistic notions of resistance.

Even worse are the ways the show tries to depict, if not solidarity, then at least fellow-feeling, between June and Gilead’s Wives.  She gets at least one good lick in during her confrontation with Mrs. Mackenzie, the woman who is raising her daughter, when she points out that the reason Hannah is traumatized can be laid solely at Gilead’s feet.  But then the show seems to genuinely want us to take it seriously when Mrs. Mackenzie tries to relate to June on the level of their shared motherhood.  The idea that they both love Hannah and can find their shared humanity on that score is something we’re apparently meant to take at face value.

What’s left completely out of that scene, however, is the question of what it means to be a mother in Gilead.  Mrs. Mackenzie may claim to love Hannah, but the simple truth is that she is raising her to be ignorant, illiterate, dependent, and powerless.  That she is teaching her to aspire to nothing more than to be given in marriage to a man who will have complete power over her - including to rape, beat, mutilate, and even kill her.  That if Hannah happens to be gay or trans, Mrs. Mackenzie will teach her to hate those parts of herself, to the point of self-denial or even self-harm, and in the belief that she deserves to be punished - including physically - for those aspects of her identity.  

June is trying to save Hannah from all that.  These are not equivalent forms of motherhood, and it is perverse for the show to claim that they are.  You can’t equate the love of a woman who is teaching her daughter to hate herself with the love of a woman who is trying to save her daughter from slavery.  This would be true even if Hannah wasn’t June’s biological daughter and hadn’t been ripped from her arms at gunpoint.  But again, it can’t be acknowledged, because the show loves the frisson of equating an evil person with a good one too much to admit that this equivalence is hollow and unjustifiable.

At least Serena Joy (or, I suppose, just Serena now) understands that.  Her one (semi-)redeeming characteristic is that she has finally figured out that Gilead is no place to raise a child, even if it took her own motherhood, and then her own mutilation, to realize that.  But do we really buy that awakening?  Gilead didn’t just happen to Serena.  She wasn’t a dutiful wife just going along with her husband’s plans.  Serena made Gilead happen.  She fought, bled, and killed for it.  And before we get too hung up on her sudden realization of what Gilead could do to a child, let’s think back to Emily’s gay colleague being lynched, or her Martha lover being hanged, and remember that Serena still has no problem with that.  The only parts of Gilead that bother her are the ones that affect her directly.

A more honest show, I think, would acknowledge that there isn’t that much of a difference between Serena and Commander Lawrence.  They’re both smart people who created a hell on Earth to justify their own twisted notions of superiority, and they both realize that fact, on some level, and are tortured by it (though not nearly as much as their victims are and have been).  I think episode 3 is trying to draw a distinction between them when it has Lawrence continue his mind games with June (and his casual acceptance of female fawning from the dependent members of his household) while Serena at least opens herself up to the idea of rebellion.  It might be rooting that distinction in gender, in arrogance and humility, and even in religious faith.  But I don’t buy it.  A person who did the things Serena has done (notice how her orchestrating June’s rape has simply been memory-holed?  Not just ignored for the sake of expediency, but completely forgotten) wouldn’t be as open to remorse as she is.  You don’t just wake up one morning and think “you know, maybe creating a fascist, theocratic rape-dystopia was a bad idea”.

I can’t help but think that the show would be smarter about these issues if it were better about race.  If June were a woman of color, wouldn’t it be more obvious that she and Mrs. Mackenzie have no common ground?  (If nothing else, it would do more to recall the way that children separated from their parents at the US border are being sold into adoption by white parents - usually conservative Christian ones.)  If the Handmaids were mostly non-white instead of the other way around, wouldn’t it be more clear that Serena’s project with Gilead was a supremacist one, and that her heart is too poisoned by those attitudes to ever really switch sides?  Ignoring the issue of race is what allows the show to call upon its thin, unconvincing version of female solidarity, in which any woman, even a Wife of Gilead, can be counted on to act with compassion and decency when the chips are down.  But the truth is, women like that are the enemy, and until the show admits this, I don’t see how it could tell a story worth telling.

#the handmaid's tale #season 3

[venus-says]

Kamen Rider W Episodes 19-36

Even during the most fun rides, you can find some bumps in the road.

Time for another batch of Kamen Rider W. This second part wasn't as satisfying to me as the first one, I must admit, but I'm still enjoying every moment of it.

This second major arc is the one dedicated to the "sixth ranger" of this season, Terui Ryu AKA Kamen Rider Accel, and this was without a doubt the element that made me enjoy less these 18 episodes.

Sixth Rangers, in general, is an "archetype" that gives me a lot of conflicting feelings, while I like the addition of more people to the cast, I always have this fear about this alien element and how will it blend with these characters that already have well-established relations that I care for. So more often than not I tend to not like them as much at first, but depending on how they're developed they can raise to the top of my favorite' list. Sadly in Ryu's case, he didn't cross this "barrier".

One of my problems with him is the problem I have with the majority of Sixth Rangers' being that he was never introduced to us before. Had we seen glimpses of him here and there during previous episodes, he didn't even need to have lines for said appearances, it would build up some hype for his introduction and would make the moment he turns into a Rider a very exciting moment. Sadly that wasn't what we got so I couldn't really care about him that much, especially because he was a jerk, and that weakened the character for me right from his first appearance.

My other problem with him is the lack of development he got. I don't know if the writers didn't know what to do with him, but he was very flat. He started this arc on a Point A, and he stayed the same without showing signs of improvement until we reached Point A where he had a sudden change of heart, then he flatted out again until we reached the end of this arc where he was already at Point C. Putting in other words, we didn't see his development he just went from Point A to Point B, and from Point B to Point C, being points B and C the only times we saw him changing his character.

And this is something I think would've been very easy to do. Like, make him a jerk at his first appearance, make the plot of the mom trying to cover for her son be his third/fourth story and have him actually hurt the mom to later find out she was innocent, that could've made some impact on him and already set up for his turning point that would happen after Shotaro "sacrificed" himself for him a few episodes later. Then have the victim of this last story meet up with him in some of the episodes in between these two points so we can feel something being created there making his final moment be more rewarding. This would be a much better arc, that would make me feel more sympathetic to the dude and that would actually make sense.

The next big problem I have is Phillip (again). I thought episodes 7 & 8 were his lowest point and from that point onward he could only grow because he was already so low there was no way for him to go down any further. And that was working pretty well until we reached episode 32 and the guy who until a few moments ago was saying "you're my partner, I couldn't do this with anyone else" simply dishes Shotaro out because for some reason now he thinks that's okay. Thanks, I hate it.

And we reach Akiko who at this point makes me believe she only exists because they had to fill a quota of female characters because she didn't do anything relevant during this part. She had one story where she shined, but in all other instances she was just loud, annoying, and a very not funny comic relief. You know, I never been the biggest fan of her but I recognized she had potential, especially after that episode where she infiltrated the Sonozaki mansion, but they took away everything that made her interesting, heck now she even knows her father is dead and we didn't see how she find out and how that impacted her. So much wasted potential.

Another thing I dislike, Shroud. If we had chances to see her more I think I could like her, but she appears and disappears just when the plot needs her and is very hard to get a read on her, is she a hero? A villain? Why does she help both Accel and Phillip? And why is she so obsessed with hate?

Thankfully the other ladies of this show were great. Wakana not so much, but Saeko has become my favorite of the villains. Yes, it's a little sad that all she has done during ALL of the season was involve herself with crap men, but she and Doctor Isaka were such an intriguing pair. And while I feel that she was blinded for love and obviously being manipulated, she still managed to get development and I was completely mesmerized. Also, Doctor Isaka was a great villain, he wasn't exceptional - not using his many ports to give him different forms was definitely a waste - but he served his purpose very well.

But despite all of these inconsistencies, there's one element who reigns unshaken and it proves to me that he is without a doubt THE bestest boi, and that element is Shotaro. He's just the best, and these episodes just elevated him. Yes, they made him kind of a pervert which is a downside but since it's not something overused I feel like I can give it a pass. His biggest asset, his Half-Boiledness(?), was really shining this time around since he definitely was the most ground up character and he was the voice of reasoning in most of the situations. It is really a shame that one of his biggest moments kinda lost some of its strength since it happened at the same time as Phillip going completely out of his character, but it was still a very impressive and emotional climax for him.

Before I talk about some specific episodes I wanna take a time to talk about designs once more.

In these episodes we got three new forms and... none of them are good. Accel basic form is kinda goofy, I think they went a bit overboard with the motorcycle theme and it went from cool to silly, they even made the dude turn himself into a bike. At that moment they reached the peak goofiness and I couldn't take him seriously anymore. His Trial power-up is kinda okay? It's a more toned-down version of his basic form and I think it helps in making the design stand out. Again not good, but also not terrible. W's power-up on the other hand... Xtreme would've been just fine if it was just that silver band in the middle, but then we get to the weapon and... oh god. That sword & shield thing doesn't look good, it's also very impracticable, and the effects for the finisher are just so cheesy and cheap-looking, I just can't. They should've gone with just new memories to use with their mix & match gimmick.

In any case, let's talk about episodes. I don't have a lot to say individually since I already gone through the major points I wanted to cover but here are some episodes I think deserve to be highlighted (either for good or bad).

Beginning with Episodes 23 and 24 that are filler episodes but I think they deserve some spotlight because of the musical numbers by Queen & Elizabeth, and Shotaro and Phillip, and the cameo of the singers of the OP that changed in these episodes to seem like a performance on TV, the dopant of this story had also a very interesting power so, great!

Next, are Episodes 25 and 26 that are the episodes where Akiko finally got to shine and was also very touching. Episodes 27 and 28 were one of Ryu's turning points but I'm here highlighting them just because the pandering to the male audience here is so in your face that is uncomfortable but also because the victim of this arc is Shirogane Lily and as an Aikatsu fan I need to highlight that. 29 and 30 had a very interesting dopant, and Isaka attacking while they were in the dream world was also very cool, but other than that it wasn't all that great.

Episodes 33 and 34 had lots of potential but instead of making Akihiko's sister an interesting character that seemed to be completely evil and lasted as an agent for the museum for at least a couple of episodes they went by the easy route and made her a pure girl wanting revenge and that's not the most interesting plot ever. Though the Yesterday dopant had an amazing power and I can't deny that I enjoyed this part. And lastly, episodes 35 & 36 that are kinda bad. Ryu wants a power-up and then he gets just after asking and the most work he has to do for own that power is run in a motocross course and it's just dumb. What saves these episodes is the villains' side of things that was amazing to watch. From Isaka frightening the girl to his bonds with Saeko growing and they planning to dethrone the main villain, there was no moment of them that didn't catch my attention.

I think that's all I have to say for now. I can't believe I'm so close to wrapping this season up already, I don't really want this to end. But I'm also very curious to see how this story will end so I'm also very excited. I'm feeling kinda sick so I'm gonna cut off this outro right now and go to bed get some rest. Thank yall so so much for sticking with me for another huge post and I'll see you guys a next time.

#Kamen Rider W #kamen rider

[serenity-the-firefly]

Tell me all about your blue turns into a tree rant!!! I'm so interested to read it.

anon i have been waiting my WHOLE LIFE to be asked this question. This is a tale of PERSONAL GRIEVANCE that spans SEVERAL YEARS and THREE different fictional universes. Before i get into it, here is the reason i have such strong feelings about this: as previously mentioned in this post, female heroes (especially in YA novels) get much more brutal arcs than male heroes. They often start as outsiders to society, but unlike male heroes they end as outsiders as well. One way this happens is that the female character is literally transformed into something non-human because apparently the concept of a successful woman becoming a part of society without giving up some intrinsic part of herself is just so completely abhorrent. Instead it’s preferable to have her become Something Else. Basically, female characters don’t get to live out happy, normal lives, and this is a manifestation of that. 

Okay, actual reasoning over, RANT TIME GO:

1. A Bad Beginning.

A long time ago, circa 2016, when The Raven King was released, a younger & more innocent me was tentatively excited to read the conclusion to this series that she enjoyed a lot, and to get see how everything was wrapped up. Now, there were….a lot of things that i really disliked about this book and in fact that i have largely blocked out of my memory. But the thing that i will NEVER FORGET/STOP BEING BITTER ABOUT was that blue’s arc was literally concluded by it turning out that she was PART TREE. First off, I love Blue, and I love what her character explores, and I specifically identify heavily with the whole “wanting something more” deal- that Blue doesn’t just want to be magic-adjacent, she wants something more. And the fact that Stiefvater chose to resolve that issue with “ the real magic was the friends we made along the way, and also ur part tree. have fun backpacking around the world without addressing any of your actual issues.” made me FURIOUS. On a less personal level- look at the other main characters of trc. Ronan is this dreamer with untapped raw potential who created an entire magical forest, Adam is a powerful magician in service to said forest, Gansey is somehow…the forest itself?? (still not clear on that one), and Blue is….a tree. She is a tree, singular, with barely any power in her own right, while the three boys are entire orders of magnitude above her both in terms of power. The guys get an entire world of magic and her consolation prize is that she is a tree. 

2. Twice is a Coincidence?

Then, last year I mainlined all of the Shannara Chronicles, which is SO BAD AND STUPID but also i enjoy it a lot. (It checks a lot of boxes for me and is in general a fun time!) And my favorite character was Amberle, the cool elf princess (who was absolutely into Eritrea, fight me) with a heart of gold and ironclad sense of duty. Now, Amberle was sent on a mission to find a cure for the dying Elcrys (a magical tree that, like, kept 1,000,000 demons at bay or something), because for some reason the Elcrys kept sending her visions. She was the only one the Elcrys talked to, which, cool, I’m down for a fun mystical quest involving trees. I didn’t mention this earlier, but Amberle is basically the main character of season 1. Austin Butler is nominally the protag but Amberle gets the hero arc, drives the plot, and is also just way cooler. So you spend this entire season getting to know & love Amberle and at the end of the season when they finally get to the place with the cure or whatever for the Elcrys, Amberle goes into some mystical vision only to discover that the reason she could hear the Elcrys was because……sHE WAS THE ELCRYS THE WHOLE TIME!!! LITERALLY ANOTHER VERSION OF HERSELF COMES TO HER AND IS LIKE…AMBERLE THE ACTUAL CURE IS THAT YOU HAVE TO SACRIFICE YOURSELF FOR THE GREATER GOOD AND BECOME THIS TREE TO ONCE MORE BANISH THE DEMONS. AND SHE DOES. SHE REALLY GOES THROUGH WITH IT AND BECOMES A TREE AND IS NOT IN THE SECOND SEASON!!!! like i was so mad about this that when i put this and the Blue thing together i texted my poor friend at like 4 in the morning on a wednesday. like JESUS was your big season finale idea really that AMBERLE WAS A TREE THE WHOLE FUCKIGN TIME? you put this character through the RINGER just to set her up to SACRIFICE her life and BECOME A TREE.

3. JEsus Christ…I am so tired.

Going even farther back, to like junior year of high school, i stumbled upon The Magicians books and read them all in quick succession. Then, this year I got into the TV show and remembered a crucial fact about Julia’s arc in the books: she ends up turning into a dryad. Julia, who is horribly assaulted and put through absolute hell by Lev Grossman, finally gets her shiny prize at the end of the race, and it’s that she. turns into. a fUCKINg TREE. She is traumatized and changed irrevocably and loses her humanity, but hey. she gets to be a tree goddess now, so thats cool i guess?

4. Conclusion.

In two of these cases, becoming a tree was the conclusion of a character arc where the male protagonists get to become happy, well adjusted members of society. In the third case, a female sacrifices her life and becomes a tree to save others (and give austin butler some good man angst). Separately, these could all be perfectly good and satisfying arcs! (Well, most of them) Being a tree isn’t inherently bad; but man, what does it say that this is a pattern with female characters? 

At the end of the day, this is a manifestation of society’s discomfort with women who are fully people and not just objects, and honestly i think there’s a case to be made that this is a form of violence against characters who dare to defy that. It’s misogny, plain and simple. 

tl;dr: Stop turning your girls into fucking trees. 

#I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ON THIS SUBJECT!!!!! #the magicians #the raven cycle #shannara #trc #the magicians meta

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Hungary to Eurovision with yet another father song apparently

Hungary, I love you, but you're bringing me down...

Never in my life have I wanted to fight a NF as much as A Dal 2019. The lineup was considerably less engaging with me than the previous year's one (but in the end it turned out to be even MORE engaging than the previous year's one), the design update (to which I got used to like 10 minutes later anyway) happened, the jury exterminated a handful of favourites, and a common Eurofan's worst fear apart from not having at least one glitzy-schlager-fiesta-wrapped entry a year occured yet again - the under/over-staging of songs with potential. What could've been a smooth sailing sweet ballad sung by a man with all his heart turned out to be a confused fisherman's piano boy tune with little to no emotional connection with the televiewer; a killer electropop soundscape piece sprinkled with intensity, fragility and neon-like colors was supposedly performed by a lost-on-stage housewive who probably has 2 kids and 2 cats at home; and that one folksy melody set to campfire suddenly lost all its fire with a snow backdrop behind. Truly a wrong time to become a full-on Hungary stan.

And yet, out of all this hot savaging and rampaging mess, entangled with fan-fave losses and one eliminee too late thanks to a common ESC song's worst fear (plagiarism accusations), emerged one gloriously victorious soul in the shape of a brave man of gypsy 'origo' who once has been elected to Eurovision to make his country proud with his killer ethnic track 2 years ago, and he nailed that right to the T, with the help of an onstage dancer and violinist (both female) to create some space for the song to breathe and exhale the passion of what he sang out of his heart by then - Joci Pápai. Yes, him again! Who did you expect, András Kállay-fucking-Saunders??

Anyways, his song this year is titled “Az én apám” (My father), written by him and partially co-written by a man hiding himself behind the name Caramel (and I prefer caramel candy more than the actual raw caramel tbh), who is probably finally lucky enough to see a composition of his go to Eurovision after he himself couldn’t quite make it as himself right back on the very first A Dal. This year he also wrote a cute little harmless ballad for a 16 year old girl but we’ll discuss her later (maybe), because it’s Joci’s time. Again.

As the title already indicates, it’s another song about a father, and unlike for AWS’s lead singer, Joci’s father is... alive and well, surprisingly, considering Joci is 37 and, at the time of his fatherly loss, Örs Siklósi from AWS was approximately 24-25. That definitely does not mean the parents’ loss can’t come in at any time of your year - A Dal 2019 had a contestant whose mother was murdered when he was NINE. 0_0 Not to mention that some mothers die during childbirth, too. Or even maybe some fathers die before children were born because all they need to be in part of babymaking is to give her satisfaction at the right time and boom, 9 months (or even earlier/later) of wait. But I digress. This is much different song from “Origo” as “Origo” had this ethnic upbeat rhythm to it, with violins included, and was mostly a captivating song with a little bit of rapping because Joci couldn’t fit so many words in all of the other verses he could have thought of for this song without having to extend the song for A Dal submission, so he had to do the rap, sorry “Origo” rap bit’s haters. “Az én apám”, meanwhile, has him project his feelings against a musical backdrop of a little bit more softer, acoustic, chill tune with a little poppier arrangement (and add some violins during his live performance on two of the A Dal shows, that are now a permanent part of the ESC version of the song!). And instead of the Romani onomatopoeia we’re getting “na na na, ya ya yah” in the chorus, which is as nice, but I’d rather “jalomaloma” out some bitches than have this.

For this one, he’s all alone, on his own, except for the other songwriter’s aid (dare I say that this personal song’s lyrics weren’t even written by Joci himself??? Not even a microscope??? Caramel you mastermind you). But mostly on stage, he’s alone. And shoeless. And with a starry-ish backdrop. Simple enough staging for a simple enough song, right? As it’s proven that simplicity can work in the past Eurovisions (see Sobral), and maybe, just maybe, Hungary does stand a chance for once again for being just simple, like Boggie was (but mostly she was more inoffensive and singing about a topic that’s still beaten to death every now and then, although this topic has fizzled out lately, which paved the way to all the love songs dominating NFs now, as well as the Latino craze). Though I doubted it was gonna remain so “simple” after it was revealed the Hungarian team is looking for everyone’s fathers’ pictures to be submitted to them. Yes, it was supposed to be one of THOSE kind of backdrops. I don’t even know what kind of use did Michael Schulte have of the fatherpics people sent HIM! Most of the backdrop focused of his lyric video aesthetic on the choruses, and I remember more of THAT, not the photos... so I doubted it was gonna work out on this one either. But in the end Joci wasn't satisfied with how all of those pics looked, so he will go for only showcasing his very own papi now.

Oh shit I forgot to talk what I feel about the song myself... well, safe to say that I didn’t warm up to it when I first heard the snippet ahead of every other A Dal snippet, but as in full, it just so happened to be nice enough, although I preferred “Origo” because reasons - not to mention that looking back at the A Dal 2017 state that I’ve seen from, I’d probably have had Joci as a legit fave to win it! And I already found Tótova to be too strange at first, unsure if it’s worth it to give them a second shot (post-2nd-listening-note: I did and it wasn’t that... bad?). And so, with low enough expectations, I didn’t even look into his chances all that further, especially with him being sick on the heat 3 day and only managing to barely tie-win in his heat just so he could dominate further rounds. But man did it turn out to be a beast later on.

So let’s, for now, say that I like it, but it’s just one of those artist return expectations that let you down because you really wanted to maybe see them again, but there would never be another song like the first one. Time will probably make me forget it all happened though and I’ll be able to enjoy it as much as “Origo”, as the “na na na” chorus part is really lovely enough. The song though, it is bafflingly too much reliant on too long verses in order to make the song just only have 2 of them and 2 choruses, and for the person that is biased for ‘2 verses - 3 choruses - bridge somewhere in between’ kind of songwriting that I am, it’s lowkey a glaring problem (as I'm finishing this weeks later than initially planned I actually got used to this structure and it even slightly compliments the song, but only slightly), as “Origo” has not only an engaging song but an engaging structure - nothing seems throwable out, nothing seems needed to additionally to be added. This one, however, is just there with its structure, and although hearts and minds are swayed by this, I don’t think I’ll get used to it this as a whole easy, unlike, like I said, time makes me forget the NF messfest and focus my love and support towards those that ARE going, not those that COULD’VE BEEN going. For now, I am not sure if I finished my review rant this properly, but for now, I’ll just wish Joci the best of luck, eventhough he’ll 1) never read this and 2) never understand this :( But still ^_^ Don’t let your nation down, big man and a father of two!

Approval factor: Despite reasons I’ll detail a little later, I’ll approve this entry, as I can’t be mad enough at Joci, for the humble man that he exists as, and the message he’s spreading, and the man he teamed up with. I approve of him but not of the background things.

Follow-up factor: From substance things, let’s just say it’s a bit of a yes and a bit of a no. No because ‘omfg it’s too soon for him wtf!!’ and I agree but if that’s what the juries initially wanted after seeing him in the lineup, and this return of his is now a bit more unnoticed and anonymous... but yes because it’s not a bad choice after AWS, because it was to be expected Hungary will send something softer after going out hard the last time, and they delivered the softness.

Qualification factor: depends on how does the audience feel for this emotionally, if Joci transmits his love for his father and that other supposed message as well well enough to the audience, in this simple staging of things (well if the fatherpic concept is still considered as ‘simple’ and nothing too cheesy or creepy). For now though I’ll be optimistic enough for Hungary - they won’t break their streak this year. If this simple-ish enough staging with just the singer on it doing his best worked for our lovely Ieva last year (despite these two not being a comparable songs), this would as well! And then settle around in top 15 provided enough people are there to give Joci just the right amount of love and patience that he needs (jury is a different question but since it’s not ethno-aggressive I think they might warm up to this as well, despite this being Hungary). Or even 16th-20th.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

A Dal 2019, with all things considered, needs to immediately die in a hellhole. Mainly because of the juries doing their dirty work by drowning the public favourites yet again, and especially the good ones (I've mentioned some of them earlier in the first paragraph by description). Let me demonstrate two of my favourites to the unsuspecting audience:

• Let’s get the elephant out of the room first. LEANDER FUCKING KILLS. Would you even think they’d have had any sort of victory of a NF potential?? Well, not off the AWS’s heels, considering both them and AWS play metal music. But their 2019 entry, "Hazavágyom", was something else. It’s if your dad went out with a couple of his friends to start a campfire somewhere in the woods, and then he took out a guitar because he remembered that he wanted to play something new he learned after listening to a lot of Irish folk music. And they all go off together - one rhythm drum, one guitar, the others jam out to the rhythm and create a fully-fledged campfire song, and a mysterious violinstress appears out of nowhere to help keep the party going. No really, it’s in the music video. Them being the most positive surprise of the lineup 2019 really melted my heart as I didn't expect so many people siding with another shade of their music. And even I started to draw myself into that song more and more, of how dancy and heartfelt it sounded with them decent lyrics about some sort of personal affection (maybe??), hoping that the jury will listen with their hearts and minds open to this Leander’s change of things and let them win the selection that way. But in the end... you know that Assi Azar quote. That’s right. And even so guess what - their first hurdle was their last. Sure, you can say they had a flawed live performance (no violinstress :( too rough vocals at the last chorus :((((((), but if you crush a future of good potential ahead, you’ll never know what might have you lost and how much would you have liked it better if things were slightly improved according to what you thought that needed to be changed in it. As it is for now, both "Hazavágyom" and Leander Kills ended up being robbed of Tel Aviv 2019. Hats off for trying, though.

• And then we have this fantabulous guy down here, with the name of Gergő Szekér and his journey-like legendary folk-tale, written for us guys, to let the past go, just like a (little) bird, and keep what matters only - “Madár, repülj!” mesmerized me from its first snippet (with me additionally commenting on that he’s a nice guy somehow), and then the full version came - with some rapping, wavy electronic bassline (that we haven’t seen striving since last days of dubstep’s relevancy), great choice of instruments, THAT gorgeous way of singing this whole song - I was ready to run away from the disappointment I had from Leander’s flop and immerse in this song fully knowing that it’s gonna be ‘such a jury darling!’... but a-MOTHERFUCKING-las! The boi missed the mark by 4 points in the superfinal vote-up in order just to tie with the unexpected new jury darling that was even BEATEN by Gergő in the semi, Bogi Nagy (the 16 year old I mentioned earlier)... the last juror thought that shooting up Bence Vavra to the superfinal spot was a good idea, and I can’t blame him as Bence deserved to go to the A Dal final for the little that he has participated in, but NOT AT MY BOI’S EXPENSE. ;_; I truly doubt that at this day and age there’ll be anyone capable of filling in the Gergő shaped hole in my heart... well, I can certainly TRY cutting him out of me, but the pre-NF-hype-build, his song’s remix with his X Faktor’s friends and my imagination of him dancing in the Telavivian postcards and engaging with his new Eurofandom fam through live interviews will haunt me from here on end... ugh.

And normally I hype up the NF participants that I supported last time previous year but then they become just artists for me and I wanted more of their song but not of the actual performer in Eurovision and therefore I don’t want them to ESC anymore, but if both of those above artists go to Eurovision at some point, I’m likely stanning both the hell out of their songs AND themselves, for who they are and who they stand for (hopefully nothing too controversial, we already have had a fanfave oppose gay marriage once so imagine a Hungarian A Dal winner doing the same at some point :O). Leander for his overall talent, Gergő for everything he is (and plus a little bit of mutual acknowledgment I’m gonna talk about later UwU bias is strong ahahaha).

Now with my sorrows out of the way, let’s highlight some more of this shit-fest:

• How the fuck wasn’t Dávid Heatlie’s staging a big meme during the season?? At least nationwide?? Seriously. “La Mama Hotel”, his actual entry, might not be too much of a standout (considering it’s just some by-numbers-synth-heavy song with its only major saving grace being a kickass guitar solo), and he did not perform all his best, BUT THE LAMPS. THE FUCKING LAMPS. Too many of them, and they’re slightly too oldfashioned, but so aesthetically-satisfying out of nowhere. If I were a moth, I’d immediately run to his lamps at any given time, and even stay with them after they’re eventually returned to MTVA’s stage props garage or to a Hungarian IKEA. Yes I know the moth meme is dead btw but so what?

Not to mention the guy himself is a bit of a meme in my eyes.

• I already discussed about this on my only one-time “Fanwank Assimilation” bulletin and I have no intent to reiterate all that I said from there on this one word-for-word but let’s go on anyway. Olivér Berkes, the hipster friend of Zävodi from A Dal 2017, returned on his own to win many more hearts with a soft piano/acoustic ballad “Világítótorony” (lighthouse), which couldn’t have been staged more... disconnectingly. To summarize, it’s somewhat of a love song inspired by a lighthouse symbol (quite literally lol), staged as if it was like fisherman taking care of one lighthouse himself, coming and going to do his thing. And like, there was no click with people that made Olivér stand out with something else other than just this ballad, like he did by constantly tele-qualifying with Ádám Szabó’s current girlfriend back in A Dal 2016 and being put in the superfinal with aforementioned Zävodi in 2017. His song itself was just a nice song and kind of a lot people liked it it seems, but I wasn’t really getting it until too much later on after Olivér’s heat was over, so I was surprised with his elimination, but my feelings I got from this song off my first impression weren’t disappointed over this. Check his performance here.

• Can I call Rozina Pátkai a highlight? You might have not heard of her unless you’re Hungarian and/or THAT into their jazz scene, as she’s big on there. This year though she has had a “noisy electropop” song through to the chosen 30 of the A Dal selection, and it was of the name “Frida”. Nothing was too bad until she also ended up having some unfortunate first-hand mis-staging. I did say at the beginning of this post that she kinda looked like “lost-on-stage housewife who probably has 2 kids and 2 cats at home”, and that’s just me not being fond of the outfit she got, though I don’t really imagine in better clothes, or do I? Nevertheless, the Rubik’s cube visuals of her pictures and bright pink lighting (where visible) looked great on her staging somehow (and the on-screen effects), just not the visual aesthetic of the singer’s. Witness it here. Also witness what I meant with the visual parts of things:

Triple woman?? now I’m scared

who’s this shocked gal in the background that got cubed???? UwU

curious woman telling you a bedtime story on TV

Sorry, these captions are a little too silly, but still. The jurors were alright with it except for one (and that’s also the one who killed Olivér’s chances too a little) and the televote was harsh (5 points, yikes, the lowest ever telescore of this A Dal year). Well, if it was studio, we’d probably see her through, but me personally, I saw it as a semifinalist at best when I first heard her song. Now I think it would have been decent enough for a final too maybe? As at least the chorus of this is good but I was never too hooked on the first verse as it always reminds me of the annoyingly soft indie pop that dominates the current music trends... well alas.

(Sidenote: maybe her moterly styling was dedicated to her future child she’s currently carrying? Yep, turns out Rozina is currently pregnant, just like one other A Dal contestant this year!)

• A personal highlight for me, besides that one time Gergő Sz. spoke out to an ESCBubble interviewer that “there’s this, like, a guy or a girl from Lithuania, and [he] said “yeah, I’ve some re-LAH-tivs [sic] ... in Lithuania and she was like *exasperated gasp noise* “Lithuania! Oh my God! We love you so much!”” (and for a matter of fact, it was me :) I’ve been only acknowledged once ever but the acknowledgement still exists!!), was discovering Fatal Error (and USNK but mainly just Fatal Error) before they entered A Dal 2019 with THE EXACT SAME SONG I FIRST HEARD OF THEIRS. Yeah. “Kulcs” music video featured Örs Siklósi, your favourite Hungarian screamer/singer, as a presenter rather than a part of the song, and a good-ass metal song did he present. And as the A Dal 2019 season rolled on at the beginning, Fatal Error were on my hyping target until some better songs came on and I didn’t feel like stanning Fatal Error’s song as much as I only stanned them because they’re here for the fans even more at even more times than I expected them to be - liking their comments on the band’s Instagram and Youtube posts - nothing against other contestants though (Leander included), if they have their lives to carry on and only sit down to check Instagram twice a week or so, it’s perfectly fine. :) I am quite sure Joci is probably like this also. Nevertheless, Fatal Error totally rocked, despite coming off AWS’s heels, and they’re at least encouraging other rock acts to come over to A Dal to open themselves to the world of many eager people discovering new artists every now and then. Just like the victory of AWS sort of did. Also one of the guys from that band said that their mother was delighted to see his band live, which brings us to...

• ...The Middletonz, a fresh new band for András Kállay-Saunders to leech on through next few A Dals now that the band of his name is no longer a thing. They, and yesyes, were the first ever fan favourites to emerge, mainly for sounding modern and having these artists people hate seeing back to A Dal only because of so many tries in the show, but happy to see back in hopes for them finally taking A Dal by their hands (and for András it’s a ‘finally AGAIN’ moment), but problems arose when the juries weren’t fond of both Middletonz AND yesyes, so much so that the frontman of the latter band spoke that he’s not coming back to A Dal again (unless he lies to us by coming back in 2022 or so). What amuses me more about The Middletonz, other than the song (which is fine for the most part, the D’n’B + acoustics mix is neat and catchy, but the beat drops harder than my will to live, and it IS bad (okay further listens later it’s not THAT bad but still... you gotta have had tried harder, men), is their nationality. Besides the hidden phantom member of the group that we never heard on any interview but appeared to be present (at least on the heat stage of the NF), here we have András, which is Hungarian-American, and his friend of the (nick)name of Slashkovic, which is Dutch-Iranian! That’s a colourful palette of double nationalities. And not to mention, despite it being a minority language, therefore a perfectly fine addition, some Russian language is heard in their song, courtesy of Slashko himself. That and on the A Dal 2019 final night Slashko had his parents watching him perform live for the first time... and based on the amount of years he has hidden that from his parents, it took him SO DAMN LONG somehow to reveal himself. Damn. Anyways, anyone up here to bet we’ll see András again, especially after him being reminded to “never give up” by one of his fans? Well, now that he has definitely seen Joci win A Dal twice on his both attempts, it’s highkey positive. Now with or without Slashko? We’ll see.

• The infamous plagiarism incident, which actually hung like a shadow on one of the contestants and those accusations probably scared him for life, and then the scandal outright knifed out a completely different contestant, Petruska (if you remember him from 2016, you know who he is), a little too late into the competition. If you were so certain his song sounded alike, you’d have either eliminated him in the heats or not accepted his song at all, which... maybe did sound like a Vampire Weekend song, I’ll let you judge.

I can’t be arsed to highlight anyone else because there was a lot to go after. Like, two young-bun A Dal acts that came from the same kidshow (different season though) and one did the song all by himself but couldn’t carry it quite as far despite his basic technotronic visuals, another was completely dependent on Caramel’s songwriting capabilities and fared WAY better than everyone else expected, tied-winning the heat with Joci, being the 3rd qualifier on the semi and beating Gergő Sz. during the superfinal vote-up by 4 points (and Feró’s endorsement lol). Yes the latter person I was talking about was Bogi Nagy. Have her song linked too if you want to listen to it. (I could have also talked about her sitting on a hula hoop and having a long extended projector dress to showcase her childhood pictures onto, but that’s just a song-saving gimmick in my opinion, and I don’t wanna waste my thoughts on her any longer tbh.) And USNK, those two that won X Faktor 2018, Soundcloud-rapped a song about HASHTAGS HASHTAGS HASHTAGS, gave a needlessly over-colourful stage show and took Leander’s spot of qualification to the semis through televoting (and additionally pissed me and borisbubbles off. Ya welcome for an indirect tag too!). Wow. But enough being a bitter Betty, I’ll have to let the bird fly until the next NF season and wait for some more eager names to cheer for, even if they don’t have an exciting “#háttérzaj” of nationalities. Until then, A Dal, my love...

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #hungary 2019 #joci pápai #az én apám #hungary

[randomnessunicorn-imagine]

✍️ MY STAR TREK OC:

{ Hello!

This is my Trill OC, I hope you could find her interesting, I really like trills and so I wanted to create my own!

Since I can't draw, I used some avatar generator for the pictures and I also edited some photos I found on internet for her real version.

Then I'd like writing more about her, if you want to know more or have some questions, just ask!

Since she's a trill, I think I'll create Headcanons and Posts for her previous lives/hosts as well.

For now, hope you find her pretty enough. }

Name: Nozria Bix

Age: 26 Years Old

Race: Trill

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Bisexual / Bi-romantic

Rank: Medical Officer

Birthday: Unknown

Height: 1.70

Weight: 57 Kg

Eyes: Green

Hair: Dark brown

 She is a trill and she’s living her fifth life now, the host is called Nozria and the symbiont is called Bix.

Nozria Bix did not expect to be transferred in a woman body, it’s been a while since the last time she was a woman and now she has to get used to it but she is glad and she is ready to do new experiences since trill’s life is always full of wonders and surprises.

Nozria has always been an intelligent, rebel and exuberant girl but she has always put a lot of effort to have the greatest honour a Trill can have, to become a host.

Nozria Bix appears like an outgoing, curious and funny woman, some of her manners can be considered as rude or masculine because of her previous existences and she kept some behaviours of her last hosts.

For example, Bix touches her own earlobe when she thinks intensely about something like her first host usually did, she truly appreciates music and she has ear for music like her second host –even if Nozria has never learnt this discipline-. She bites her nails when she is nervous like her third host did and she does not like sweet food because her fourth host hated sweets and so this may be the reason Nozria does not like sweets too.

Nozria is usually friendly with everyone but she does not like talking about herself especially about her previous life since her previous host was a criminal and so, she may act rude or cold when she has to talk about it since she is not proud of the things her previous host did even if it’s not Nozria’s fault bus she still suffers for it.  Even now Bix felt guilty but a Trill should not feel guilty for actions other hosts made, she just can’t forget or forgive what happened in the past. So she likes appearing confident, easy going and extrovert to hide her true worries and sorrows and she does not like when people ask to much about herself, this annoys her a lot.

Bix really regrets her past live, in fact when Bix was Ror Bix (that's her last host's name) she asked to be implanted in a new host before it was too late or he could cause other problems but Ror's willpower was too strong and it obscured Bix's will. The symbiont suffered a lot during that period. Sometimes, Bix (when still was Ror) hoped to die or make some crazy actions but it never happened and then, after Ror's dead, Bix was implanted in a new host and found finally peace. Of course, Bix still remembers her previous life and for this reason, she does not like to talk about it or, at least, she likes to remember only the good things,  the life Ror lived before he became crazy.

Nozria decided to become a Doctor for this reason, since her past host was a criminal and he committed several crimes, now Bix wants to redeem his actions and to be a better person, trying to help people. But Nozria would never admit it and she just says that she likes her job and she’s not that sentimental. Nozria is not that kind of girl who likes showing negative feelings to other because she thinks those kind of emotions are too private and then people would ask her explanation about her bad feelings and she hates talking about that.

Nozria is the kind of person who would laugh and act sarcastic in front of dangerous situations or even death and will never show her true fear.

Sometimes, when bad days come, she isolates herself and become a hothead. She is that person who ignores you until she feels better and she does not care if people worry about her, she has to deal with her problems alone, and becomes very cold during these situations.

👍 Good traits

Honesty

Loyalty

Intelligence

Determination

Sarcasm

Courage

👎 Bad traits

Stubbornness

Perfectionist

Egotism

Reserved

Coldness

Reckless

✔️She likes:

Wearing black lipstick

Sushi

Black humour

Music and the sound of violins

Horror

Learning and making new experiences

Books & Movies

Cats

Scientific subjects

✖️ She dislikes:

Sleeping

Liars

Violence

Dirty places

Sweets

Be bored

Talking about her past

Spiders

~ Curiosity:

She loves cats so much and in her previous lives she always owned a cat. She's able to train cats, she's always taught to her cats several games as if they were dogs. They could sit down at her command or give to her their paws and doing other amusing tricks like these.

She just can't cook and she never learnd since there are the replicators she finds it useless and then she's not able to cook.

She's an arachnophobe and she can't even see spiders in pictures. It's something she's always had and so it's a Nozria's characteristic and none of Bix's previous hosts had this phobia.

❇️ PAST LIVES ❇️

✴️ First Host:

Veelin Bix: She was a biologist who worked for the Starfleet and she was Bix’s first host. Veelin was a gentle, calm and altruist woman who lived a tranquil and long life. She also married a man and had children with him. This life was not very adventurous but satisfying.

Bix still keeps photograph of her old husband and children and Bix suffered a lot after their dead and even Nozria Bix often looks those pictures and remembers Veelin’s life and how much she loved her family.

✴️ Second Host:

Gaamir Bix: He was a musician, he lived for music and art. He was one of the most appreciated trill composer of his epoch. He was able to play violin and the viola. He never married but he had so many lovers and love affairs. He was an egocentric, outgoing and eccentric man and someone said he was not able to love anybody but himself.

We may say that Nozria confident and egocentric’s side come from this host even if she is still more flexible. Sometimes, she finds herself singing Gaamir’s songs or listening to his music and Bix could not believe he was such an esthete and narcisist man but Bix remembers this life with enthusiasm.

✴️ Third Host:

Yiarid Bix: He followed the Starfleet’s career and became an engineer. He was a very reserved, solitaire and diligent man, he never married and he did not care about love. He was also a little rude, had social anxiety, he was the opposite of his previous host who was very egocentric and outgoing.

It’s just an interesting thing for a trill, it only means new experiences to do and new emotions to feel.

✴️ Fourth Host:

Ror Bix: He was the most problematic host and caused so many problems. He was not a real good person, indeed he was a criminal and spent a lot of time in the jail and was killed there but the symbiont survived and transferred to a new body, namely Nozria.

Someone even said that Ror might have killed a person but only Nozria Bix knows the truth and she’s still unsure if she truly wants to speak about this story.

#star trek #star trek oc #original character #star trek original character #trill #trill oc #original trill character #original trill #nozria bix #my oc

[sargenthouse]

Interview with Brutus’ Stefanie Mannaerts // LOCK Magazine

Feature via LOCK Magazine

Belgian post-rock trio, Brutus, know how to create an impact. Their debut album BURST which released in 2017, is a thirty-seven minute long, intense, rollercoaster. With their second LP, NEST, dropping later this month, LOCK spoke to the band’s vocalist and drummer Stefanie Mannaerts.

Hi Stefanie, The new Brutus album is out this month! How excited are you for the public to finally hear it and what challenges did the band face when recording it compared to recording your debut BURST?

I think the three of us are very excited. We put a lot of work into this one – we had a lot to prove. I think the main difference between Burst and Nest is that we really thought things through, over and over. We’ve put a lot more effort into broadening our sound.

The writing progress was slower than on Burst. We’ve put a lot more time into the arrangements, and rewrote a lot. We took what we loved from Burst and merged it with another energy. It’s a more honest album as well. We worked with how we felt and the vibe we were in at rehearsals, sometimes really energetic, sometimes just fed up with everything and everyone.

‘War’ is the lead single from NEST, what was the idea behind releasing the live video of the track first, rather than a music video for the studio version?

When we started playing War live, way before the recordings, it felt like we were finally the band we had always wanted to be for so long, in my opinion. Also with Brutus, the album energy is hugely different from the live experience. We wanted people to literally see and feel what this band is all about. The way the three of us have been feeling since the start. On stage there are never arguments, on stage we are a one-piece. I love the energy we created in the live studio video. And also, we thought why just release another video with the same audio as the album? We think this live video shows an extra dimension to the band.

As you are the vocalist and drummer of Brutus, do you feel that there is enough respect given for bands that have the drummer as lead vocalist? Unfortunately it feels like there is no spotlight on this sort of band lineup. It’s not easy to sing and play drums at the same time, so surely bands that do this should get the credit they deserve?

I speak for myself that I feel like I get enough credit, especially from my bandmates. It is the same as playing guitar and singing in some way? Maybe drumming and singing is difficult breathing wise and it’s pretty hard to keep a steady beat and a solid vocal performance. But there are so many singers who are also lead-guitarists, playing totally different lines. I think every band or person who has the balls to get themselves on a stage, deserves credit. Live music is bringing feelings to the stage. Everyone is naked at that moment.

Is there a track from the new album that you are particularly excited for fans to hear?

Yes, ‘Sugar Dragon’ is definitely one of my favourites. The lyrics mean a lot to me and, like ‘War’, it is a song that gets another dimension by playing it live. It feels like a closure-song. It’s a song that ends a difficult time I went through. Nothing feels so satisfying as closure.

Brutus – photography by Eva VLONK. If you could headline only one festival in the world, which festival would you pick and why?

Difficult one! Well … Headlining is not such an important thing for me, if there are a cool bands and cool people, it’s all fine.

What musical instrument did you take up first?

I started playing the piano when I was six. It runs in the family and I was super eager to learn it. When I was older, about fourteen, I started playing drums. It was then only when we started Brutus a few years ago that I started singing.

Any personal career highlights so far?

The release of the song ‘War’ was one of my personal highlights. I am beyond proud that the three of us were in such a good place when we were making that song. It felt like magic. Everything was suddenly all so clear to us. You know when it is right. And of course, seeing all the positive responses warms my heart.

Brutus will be coming to Leeds, Glasgow, London, and Brighton very soon. How have you found playing to British audiences compared to audiences in your home country of Belgium?

To be honest I am always in another world during a show. I can’t tell who is standing there, if people were cheering or whatever. The last time we were in the UK, we felt very welcome and people talked to us after the show at the merch desk, talking about the show. We felt super welcome and we are looking forward to playing there again. It is always a blast.

If you were not in music, what do you think you would be doing career-wise?

Definitely an animal doctor. I am obsessed with animals and super vegan haha. I love everything about them and in another world I would definitely be a vet.

Name three female musicians that inspire you..

Karin Dreijder Andersson (the Knife, Fever Ray)Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac)Emma Ruth Rundle (Marriages, Emma Ruth Rundle)

Finally, what advice would you give to someone who wants to learn the drums and pursue music?Look for a band. If that is your goal. I mean, I learned everything playing in a band. I was so bad. I had only been playing for six months when a local punk-rock band asked me to join them because I had a lot of time haha. When you are the worst musician in the band, you learn the most.

NEST is out March 29th.

#Brutus #Burst #Nest #lock magazine