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#this book and their relationship speaks volumes about john as a person
orchidsncrake · 19 days
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and watch them fall
pairing: joe goldberg/rhys montrose
rating: explicit
tags: au - canon divergence, s4 rewrite, obsession, strangers to lovers, POV Joe Goldberg, murder, bookstore owner Joe Goldberg, Rhys Montrose is a real person, developing relationship, slow build, eventual relationship, eventual smut, tags to be updated
word count: 3,512
chapter 2/?
ao3
A mugging. First, it was a mugging, and now, it was a jealous stalker. Only Malcolm Harding could afford to die twice. Joe squints at the TV critically, eyes trying to bore through the little screen tucked into the corner of the bookstore. The few customers mill about its cramped floor, fingers drifting over books they won’t buy, reading summaries and feigning interest. An older woman – she must be in her 70s – comes up to the counter and sets a cookbook down, then follows Joe’s gaze to the television.
“Could you turn it up, dear?” Joe nods and grabs the remote from beside the register, cranking the volume. The posh English accents bark into the small building, demanding attention.
" ...Police have arrested Maddie Key for the murder of Malcolm Harding, whose body was found in his flat in London on Tuesday. Law enforcement says Key has supplied a confession, claiming that she did not intend to kill Harding, but when he rejected her romantic advances, she flew into a rage. Law enforcement is seeking charges of stalking and murder, but Key’s lawyers are alleged to be pursuing voluntary manslaughter on grounds of insanity. The autopsy puts his time of death sometime late Monday. This story will be updated as law enforcement… ”
The old woman scoffs, and Joe returns the volume to a low murmur as Maddie Key’s mugshots flash across the screen.  She shakes her head and faces Joe as he rings up her book. “Who goes and kills someone they love? Doesn’t make any good sense to me.”
I do. “No sense at all, ma’am.” 
She nods curtly, makes a chuffing sound, and signs the receipt messily. She tucks the cookbook under her arm and looks at the TV on her way out. “Bloody psychos.” The bell chimes, and the woman is gone. Joe signs, fixing his hair momentarily before sliding out from behind the counter. The landline suddenly rings behind him, and he starts, clipping his hip into the counter’s edge in his haste to get to the phone. He hisses a swear, pressing his lips together in annoyance, and picks up.
“Subtexts, this is John speaking. How may I help you?”
“Oh, lovely. May I speak to the owner?” A feminine voice chimes loudly, making Joe recoil for a moment. He clears his voice and straightens his posture uselessly.
“Speaking.”
“Perfect!” She bubbles. “My name is Irene Crosby. I’m the PR representative for Mr. Rhys Montrose, I’m sure you’ve heard of him.” She pauses, expecting some sort of fawning and only getting shocked silence. “Well, Mr. Montrose is set to go on a second tour for his memoir since the first was such a hit, and I’m looking to connect a bit more with the common people of London for this one.” Real nice, lady. “And Mr. Montrose visited your bookstore a couple days ago and raved about how… quaint it was! Now, I’d like to offer you the honor of hosting a meet-and-greet for London’s next mayor in your very own bookstore!”
Joe stares at the phone. This woman works for Rhys fucking Montrose. The man he assumed he’d never see again because, hello, why would he?  He’s tempted to say no just because of her pretentious attitude or maybe go full American and hang up without another word, but he doesn’t. In his hand sits his connection to Rhys. Rhys wants to visit him. Or his bookstore, at the very least, which is still something. Still – would it be beyond stupid to accept and welcome him back here? What if he makes a fool of himself? Would it be even worse to decline? He doesn’t even want to imagine the impression that would give, especially if Rhys runs and gets elected. Then he’s just the guy who told the mayor to fuck off and hold his meeting elsewhere. He clears his throat and pinches the bridge of his nose, forcing his foot to stop tapping.
“When would this be?” He asks, trying to sound more rational than he feels.
“Oh, well, let’s see. It’s the 24th, and the tour is going until the 15th of next month… so, how about Saturday?”
Joe pulls the phone away from his ear to stare judgmentally. He smiles apologetically at a customer when they give him a look. “As in this Saturday?” “Yes, this Saturday. How does that sound?”
“Impromptu,” he blurts. The line goes silent for a long moment.
“Yes, well, you see,” Irene starts nervously. “Oh, alright. Mr. Montrose’s second tour has already commenced, and he wants to add your bookstore as a last-minute venue. This of it as an encore. He said the atmosphere would be charming for a smaller event, as he quickly tires of the extravagant panels.” She pauses for a moment. “So, what do you think?”
He should decline. Hosting a last-minute PR event for one of London's most famous men is a bad idea from every technical standpoint he can imagine. The store is too small, and there isn’t any seating other than some library-style tables and chairs in the back. Never mind the fact that Rhys is, all things considered, a complete stranger. Who sics their PR manager on a bookstore clerk they met once a couple of days ago? Crazy people, that’s who.
Still, is it not flattering to have made a good enough impression to get this opportunity? It’s a compliment, really, and a huge one at that. It’d be rude to decline. If it goes well, he may even be able to buy some armchairs for the store through publicity and increased sales. It’s practical. “What do I need to do to prepare?” Lunatic. 
“Oh, wonderful, Joe!” He cringes at the name but quickly reasons it as a misstep on Irene’s part. No deeper meaning, just a reckless disregard for the most basic information about a person she called. Next, he’ll probably be Jim. “I’ll send over a folder. What’s your email?” He rattles off the handle to her, listening to the smashing of keys in the background. One loud click and the noise stops. “Perfect! Please contact me if you have any questions. Mr. Montrose will be thrilled!” Joe opens his mouth to wish her goodbye or thank her for the opportunity, maybe even suggest a Xanax, but the line goes dead. He sighs, sets the phone in its base, and looks over the counter. The same customer squints at him suspiciously and then looks at the phone. 
“Witness protection,” he says before he can catch himself. The customer only grins, and Joe smiles back faintly. God bless cultural sarcasm. 
***
The clocks are really starting to piss him off. He stares at the ceiling, listening to the soft hum of the occasional car driving by his apartment. Going postal with a hammer on everything ticking in his apartment seems increasingly rational. He rolls over to look at his alarm clock – digital and silent, thank god – and groans. 4am. What an awful time of night. The only people awake now are petty criminals, insomniacs, and bookstore owners obsessing over the potential next mayor. He feels ridiculous even as his mind whirs, throwing imagined images of and conversations with Rhys at him. He knows it’s absurd, and yet he can’t sleep to stop it. Sleeping means closing his eyes, and closing his eyes means being greeted with an absurdly charismatic smile and gunmetal blue eyes. He shouldn’t even know how to imagine his face with such detail, but the television is constantly streaming an interview with him or showing off pictures of his stupid fucking face. Or maybe he’s constantly watching that one news channel and hasn’t changed it in a week. Either or.
He swears and rolls onto his back again, blinking at the ceiling. The irrational anger part of sleeplessness is beginning to kick in, making his skin feel too tight. His own breathing pisses him off. He squirms a bit and lays his hand over his abdomen limply, the other pressing against his eyes. Why had Rhys sent his hyperactive flying monkey on him? And complimented its ‘ambiance’ of all things. As much as he loves it, the only time the media would praise his bookstore would be in retrospect once it’d burnt down. Oh yes, such a lovely little place with its lack of floor space and suffocatingly tall shelves. Such a shame it’s all ashes now. Now, onto Jack with the weather. 
It had to have been to see him, hadn’t it? Joe thrashes out with his foot, tugging his comforters to one side, and removes his hand from his face. He knows he has a certain tendency for presumption, but he can’t discern any other reasoning. London is full of bookstores with nicer atmospheres and more reliant HVAC systems – so why his? He can’t imagine he’d charmed Rhys to that degree or even charmed him at all. Joe’d felt like the one on his back foot when they’d met, vulnerable to the flurry of unfailing comebacks and the smile that reached his eyes. He wonders if Rhys is always that lighthearted, or was it just for his public image? He clearly cared about it, if his attire was anything to go by. He had only been wearing a sweater and slacks, an admittedly casual outfit, but they had been noticeably well-fitting. A tailor, then? However, Joe doubts all the credit is due to the clothing. He’d read from some particularly invasive article that Rhys follows a strict workout routine, including but not limited to calisthenics and ungodly amounts of cardio. That has to do the body good–
Oh, what the fuck? 
That’s… new. Not entirely welcome, either. Joe yanks his hand back from where it’d been creeping down his abdomen and stuffs it under his leg as if it needs to be restrained. As if it’s not part of him. He stares at himself incredulously, shocked by his own train of thought. He shifts and realizes, mortified, that he’s half hard. What is that about? He – he doesn’t like men. Even when Cary, who is objectively the prime specimen of masculinity, had stood in front of him jerking off (a memory that softens him a bit, thankfully), he’d felt nothing but uncomfortable. Why is it now that he’s fantasizing about another man’s body? It wasn’t really fantasizing, was it? Can’t a guy just idly wonder about another’s workout routine? Sure, but you can’t then wonder what he looks like naked and try to jack off about it.
Joe groans, throws the comforters back impatiently, and sits up, running a hand through his hair. 4:30 am. His socked feet thud dully on the floor as he pads to the bathroom, almost making the mistake of turning the light on. He yanks his hand back, not wanting to be flashbanged. He pisses quickly, happy for once that his hamster-wheel of a brain is a turn-off, washes his hands, and wipes them on his sweats. Joe freezes a step out of the doorway. A dark figure ducks out of his periphery, and his head is consumed by his own heartbeat. Had he left the door open?
No, of course not. He’s better than that. Still, as he slides down the hall quietly, he tests the knob. Still locked. He’s not hallucinating, is he? He’s unsure if he’d rather have that or someone in his apartment. Reaching the junction between the hall and the living room, he cranes his head in, half expecting to be hit from behind. It doesn’t happen, and air rushes from his lungs in relief. Emboldened, he scans the entire room and decides it’s empty. As he turns back to the bedroom, the wind whips into his apartment. He furrows his brows and returns to find a window open a few inches. Confused, he shuts it firmly and locks it. Odd
That handled, he pads back and crawls into bed, turning his alarm clock to face the wall. His pillow is warm, and he flips it and smashes his face into it. It strikes him for the umpteenth time how ridiculous it is that to fall asleep, you have to mimic it when the last thing he wants to do right now is lay motionless and control his breathing. The strife of being alive, he supposes. He doesn’t know what time it is when he finally falls asleep, but the last thing he registers is the tweeting of a bird and the flash of rage that goes with it.
***
The email from [email protected] (how much did she have to pay to get that handle?) arrives promptly in his inbox at 8am. Joe’s phone dings where it sits on the counter as he makes coffee, and he reaches for it, browsing through the slew of PDFs and links attached. He would think he’s being visited by the queen with how exhaustive it all is. The message of each is essentially the same: don’t ask for personal photographs, no recording, and don’t tell your friends. He half expects to find a DNR at the bottom of the list, but he doesn’t. Joe’s phone returns to the counter when the coffee maker bubbles loudly, going about preparing a mug and pulling out the creamer. The kitchen reeks of cheap coffee, but it’s welcome. White blooms up from the mug’s bottom as he sweetens it, then returns everything to its rightful place and settles at his dining table. 
He reads the lists carefully on his laptop and finds that most of what he’s instructed to do is clean. While vaguely offensive because it presumes that he doesn’t ordinarily clean, it is easy enough. He’s to close the bookstore all day Saturday, and the event will start at 11am. The PR team will arrive at 9am, and Rhys himself will be at 10am. It runs until 4pm, leaving an hour after for the unofficial signing session (presumably to affluent customers who have enough money to presume time doesn’t apply to them; evidently, it doesn’t). Another hour after that is allotted to disassembling whatever decorative banners and balloon nonsense the PR team will desecrate his bookstore with. That means eight hours of Rhys in his bookstore, and even the presumed presence of Irene the Hurricane can’t dispirit Joe.
He’s suddenly acutely concerned about what he’ll wear. He wrinkles his nose as he sips his coffee, disgusted at himself. He’s thinking like a teenage girl, but he wants to be presentable for the event. Isn’t that reasonable? A possible mayoral candidate is going to be in his store, and it’s an excellent opportunity for publicity for Rhys and Subtexts, and it’s only reasonable to look good when he knows there’ll be cameras–
Fuck! Cameras! How could he have been so stupid? He can’t be surrounded by cameras; he’s supposed to be dead. While highly effective in obscuring his face, the beard isn’t cover enough, especially when he’s going to be in close quarters with the literal press. And he didn’t exactly ‘die’ under unassuming circumstances. He doesn’t have the luxury of melting into the muddled group of the nameless dead. He sets his mug down and scrubs his hands over his face, eyes darting to his phone. He could cancel. He could call Irene, curtly call everything off, and then hang up before she tries to convince him otherwise. But what would Rhys think? 
He can’t think about Rhys right now. He needs to do the reasonable thing and continue disappearing into London. Oh god, what if someone recognizes him in the back of a photo, and it gets back to the States? He’d have to run again to some even less favorable corner of the world. What if he had to hurt someone to get away? That’s precisely the last thing he wants, and he’d have to uproot his life all over. The skin of his face tightens as panic sets in, and he hardly notices that he’s rocking in his chair. His phone screen suddenly jumps to life, ringing deafeningly into the room. He blinks at the name, finding there is none. Just an unknown number. He’s unsure what possesses him, but he lunges for it, fingers fumbling over the screen until he accepts the call.
“Jonathan Moore?” His voice is shakier than he’d like it to be. The voice that hums over the line almost makes him drop his phone.
“John? This is Rhys. Rhys Montrose.” Joe stands up abruptly, almost knocking his chair over. He catches it with a bitten-back curse, then smooths his hair. He can’t think of what to say.
“Oh, Mr. Montrose. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. I got a call from Ms. Crosby-”
He gets cut off by warm laughter. The sound seeps into his chest, soothing his panic like honeyed tea. He exhales heavily, lets his shoulders droop, and slumps back into his chair. “Please, just call me Rhys,” he says. “Irene told me you agreed to hold the event, and I wanted to call you to thank you myself.”
“Oh–,” Joe starts, then takes a breath again. He just needs to quit panicking; he’s not some prey animal, and Rhys doesn’t bite. “I appreciate that. I was surprised to hear from her.”
“Ah, yes, well, it was admittedly an unusual ask. An impulsive one, at that.” Rhys exhales, sounding timid. Joe cocks his head curiously. “Which is why I was so pleased to hear of your acceptance. I trust you got the email from her this morning?”
“Yes, I did. I’ve been reading through the PDFs, though I’m only part way through.”
Rhys laughs, and Joe can imagine his smile. “To be entirely honest with you, most of them are bullshit.” Joe straightens at Rhys’ swearing. He doesn’t know why he likes it so much. Must be the accent. “It’s all largely bureaucratic and functionally useless. As long as you don’t outright stab me, you should be fine.”
Joe grins, air puffing from his nose. “That’s a pretty low bar to set. What if I had a history of stabbing mayoral candidates?” He knocks his palm into his forehead as he says it. Really?
“I’d still be safe, wouldn’t I? I don’t fit the M.O. quite yet.” Oh, he’s funny now.
Joe taps his forehead a few times, scolding himself. It doesn’t stop him. “I guess you’ll escape the event unscathed.”
Rhys’ voice rumbles with laughter. “From you, at least. Fans can be a bit touchy, but luckily, I have a cockney goon-squad to deal with that.”Goon-squad? “Now, I don’t mean to hold you too long–” Please do. Wait, what? “– so I’ll let you get your day started. Thank you again for accepting. I think it’ll do the book well. I’ll see you Saturday, yeah, John?”
Joe swallows, trying and failing to find a way to extend the conversation. “Yeah, I’ll see you Saturday. Uh, good luck with your ‘goon-squad.’”
Rhys laughs. “I knew I wasn’t going to get away with that.” The call ends.
Joe drops his phone on the table and plants his elbows just to facepalm. Did he just threaten to stab Rhys? He drops his hands and stands up to wash his mug. Mortifying, unintentional threats aside, it had been thoughtful of Rhys to give him a call. Not only thoughtful, but it had dissolved all worry about the event, probably dangerously so. He could dodge a few cameras, couldn’t he? He’s evaded the less-than-rigid line between life and death (at least legally). The English paparazzi are nothing in comparison.
Joe sighs and sets the mug on the drying rack upside down. It had been irrational to panic and even crazier to consider canceling. He can’t do that to Rhys, not when the other had specially requested his bookstore. It would be rude. Worse than that, he’d forfeit a second chance to talk to him. He needs to meet Rhys again. He couldn’t read Rhys as well as he could the others, and the not knowing is killing him. He shakes his head at the grouping; Rhys is not one of them. He’s different. Rhys could be a friend, a confidant – well, maybe not that far. Rhys may be remarkably intelligent even in the first meeting, but he surely wouldn’t be down for befriending a serial killer. No matter how much of a progressive he is.
That settles it, then. Joe’ll clean, help decorate, and hide the corner as the media have their field day. He doesn’t think that’d come off as too weird. What else would a bookstore owner be around a celebrity and his followers but awkwardly-almost-creepily shy and holed up behind the counter? He looks up at the clock; 9am. Picking up his keys, he makes for the apartment door and then locks it behind him. He gazes down the stairs at the wooden floors of his bookstore. Time to clock in, sell books, pretend to care about unprompted personal anecdotes, and not obsess over the fact that Rhys will be back in a matter of days.
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moth-of-chaos · 2 months
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books i read this january:
1. 'station eleven' by emily st. john mandel
5/5 stars — literally so good, such a great start to the year. i loved the writing style and the story and the characters and i am forever grateful to the friend of a friend who kept telling me i should read this because he was totally right and it's so good. definitely recommend this if you like apocalyptic stuff that's more an exploration of humanity than action/thriller
2. 'ghosts: the button house archives' by mathew baynton, simon farnaby, martha howe-douglas, jim howick, laurence rickard and ben willbond
3/5 stars — everything i wanted from a ghosts book tbh, loved getting to hear more about the characters but i would've liked a bit more serious stuff about fanny (this isn't really a criticism just wish there had been because she's such a compelling character to me)
3. 'i am malala' by malala yousafzai
4/5 stars — really good for anyone unfamiliar with pakistani culture and politics to help explain recent history as well as being genuinely very interesting. definitely recommend
4. 'heartstopper: volume 5' by alice oseman
3/5 stars — cute and nice to read as a queer british teenager, i like alice oseman's art a lot and i liked how she approached the topics discussed in it. only 3 stars just because like it doesn't really speak to me personally not because it isn't good or anything
5. 'never let me go' by kazuo ishiguro
4/5 stars — i have a weird relationship with his writing i feel like with both the books i've read by him the endings have just been a bit lacking for me? but not for a reason i can actually define and i still really liked the rest of the book and i really like his writing style as well
6. 'yellowface' by rebecca f. kuang
4/5 stars — not my favourite work by her but i found it really interesting to read. idk it's been quite controversial and i don't think i know enough about the issues discussed in the book to have an opinion but it did make me think about a lot of things i'd never really considered before which was why i found it interesting
7. 'gideon the ninth' by tamsyn muir
5/5 stars — this book was right up my street; i absolutely love gideon and the way the book's written. gideon and harrowhark's relationship was really compelling and i love the concept. if you read this book (please do) i would recommend that you read the glossary before you start the book because i spent at least the first 50 pages with no idea what was going on but after that it was amazing
8. 'the seven husbands of evelyn hugo' by taylor jenkins reid
3/5 stars — kind of just not my thing, sorry to all my friends who love it (none of them are on tumblr lol). i thought it was interesting but it just wasn't really my taste
9. 'tsunami girl' by julian sedgwick and chie kutsuwada
4/5 stars — i definitely didn't expect to enjoy this as much as i did but i actually really liked it the whole way through. the characters were great and i found the romance subplot way more well-written and believable than i expected (this might just be me because i'm a bit weird about reading relationships as romantic in books so a lot of straight romance where they sort of just expect you to pick up on it as romantic purely because it's a boy and a girl comes across as really flat to me and i end up just deciding that they're only friends to me whereas in this book i actually did read their relationship as romantic and wanted them to go out)
10. 'nation' by terry pratchett
5/5 stars — i think this is the first terry pratchett i've read other than good omens and i really, really enjoyed it. it took me a while to get into but i liked the characters and also found the sort-of-romance in this believable which was cool. also just really interesting to be honest, i recommend this as well
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Cyberpunk 2077: Johnny is Pistis Sophia
Disclaimer: I wrote my analysis based on Book I. XI Volume of Nag Hammadi Studies, edited by Schmidt, C. and translated by Macdermot, V. in 1978. I'm not a Gnostic and I don't have credentials in this matter. For terminology I've placed links to outside sources.
Basics first.
Pistis Sophia, aside of being an abandoned hotel in Cyberpunk 2077, is a Gnostic text, supposedly written between 3rd and 4rd centuries AD. It's divided into four books, with only first two directly following each other, and academics are convinced the whole content comes from multiple sources.
The text's title is also a name of feminine Aeon who ought to form a pair with another to become Syzygy (Syzygoi), which in Greek means "conjunction, yoked together"…
And that's where plot of Cyberpunk comes to play.
Pistis Sophia fell into disgrace after or simultaneously being deceived by Authades, masculine Aeon, who grew jealous of Sophia's will to worship the Light rather than continuing the known ways of Aeons. Authades' doings led Sophia into realm of Chaos, in hopes she loses power. How? By manipulating Sophia to transform into Syzygy on her own. As you can probably guess, it went wrong. Horribly wrong. Luckily, someone heard Sophia's call and rescued her.
Now let's look at our rockerboy, Johnny Silverhand. From TTRPG and 2077's lore we know he deserted from military and spent whole three months in the hotel Pistis Sophia, eyes fixed on a fan and scruffy ceiling. Robert John Linder back then, he named himself Johnny Silverhand and swore to be someone new. Except he, just like Sophia, was completely alone at this very moment. It's no secret we humans are the worst judges when it comes to ourselves, our existence is dependable on others. Johnny's not an exception.
Therefore, all Silverhand's royal fuck-ups are no secret. His life, even post mortem, is c-h-a-o-t-i-c with capital C.
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Aeon I mentioned before, Pistis Sophia, received help from — better buckle up, chooms — Jesus Christ. The catch is: she had no idea it was him. Sophia prayed all the time* for help to the Treasury of Light, not knowing it belongs to the same deity. That's literally the only reason she found salvation in the first place.
If we look at the relationship between Johnny and V, technically speaking they're the same person. Johnny saves V all the time… or does he? After finally reading that Gnostic text on my own — I'd say it's the other way around.
Johnny Silverhand is Pistis Sophia, while V is Jesus Christ to him.
Think about it. Johnny has I, me, myself attitude. He's socially awkward and arrogant, I could almost swear for sometime of the story he'd rather be returned to Mikoshi than to admit to anyone V affects him (*coughs* Panam's story line *coughs*). Doesn't change much even during that segment of Tapeworm quest.
Johnny's convinced it is HIM who HELPS us, it is HIM who CHANGES us, it HIM who PLAYS Pistis Sophia scenario in front of our eyes. What he does forget is that he and V are the same person to the rest of the world.
Moreover, unfortunately for Johnny, he's not completely honest with not just us, but himself in his former hotel room. He hadn't found his Light yet, and he's scared. The first thing he does after V surrenders their body, is getting himself wasted. Conversation with Rogue seems to be an afterthought. What I really appreciate about this moment, is how V knows it isn't going to end well for their health, yet agrees to help. They call Johnny out on his bullshit later, but y'know… holding someone accountable for wrongdoings can be an act of love.
If it wasn't for V, Johnny most likely would still "sleep" in Mikoshi, not able to reunite with old friends, without any chance to try redeem himself. V got Silverhand out of a really dark place, similarly to Christ towards Sophia.
When visiting Oil Fields, shall you pick the line "Here likes Johnny Silverhand, the guy who saved my life", after a moment of thoughtful silence Johnny responds "V… You don't know how much I want that to be true". He knows the reality is different. He accepts it, wishing he actually helped us like we helped him. Feels grateful and sincere. At least I interpreted his [body] language that way.
But because it's Cyberpunk, we can only dream of happy ending for everyone involved.
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*"You're fuckin' closest to me by a long shot. There twenty-four seven. And yet… You don't seem to hate my living guts." — Johnny Silverhand, 2077.
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phoenixflames12 · 2 years
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What is your favourite The Terror scene? 🙂
Goodness, I have so many!
I think the first one that springs to mind is John and Henry in the steward's cabin, when John gives Henry Anabasis. The tactile nature of their relationship is expressed in so few words and in so many gestures with their thumbs curling over the book and John Lynch's face speaks absolute volumes in what he doesn't say. He knows that he probably won't be able to save Henry from whatever Hell they're facing, he knows that death is in all likelihood going to come to them, but he can try.
He does try.
And Henry- for Henry, personally, I think that his 'transition from an adventure to a horror story moment' either comes here or in the tent when he's showing John his bruises. (For John that transition is solidified there and seeing the tiny fractures of composure becoming more and more evident in JL's face becomes more and more painful each time I think about it.) And neither of them can do anything about it, but what they can do is hold onto each other. They can love each other in hidden glances and the embrace at carnivale and try to keep the other safe for as long as possible.
Thank you so much!
Much love,
Phoenixflames12 xxx
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agaritas · 9 months
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Now im imagining how cute that moment between Arthur and Mary would be when things would get heated and she would say no to sex and Arthur would immediately back off since he’s so respectful and gentle. I can imagine him apologising and get a little shy with Mary 😆 Which also makes me wonder how he was while in relationship with her which is another thing that makes me mad at Rockstar because we only get to see Arthur being a sassy and mad at Mary for what she did to him which only shows how much he loved her and even in that time he still treats her with respect. The fact that he writes “A ❤️ M” at the end whenever he writes in his journal about her speaks volumes!!! But yea im mad that we didn’t get to see him in his fully in love era😭 I bet he was such a gentleman 🥰 If you just think how kind he is with Tilly, Mary-Beth and Karen i can only imagine how great he would treat a woman that he romantically loves. Which is why i want Rdr3 to be even later in the game while Arthur is younger and the gang is in their prime because i just want to see the story between Arthur and Mary😩 How they met, how they fell in love, how they later made their relationship sort-of-work (because we knew she joined the gang for a while) and then what ultimately happened that caused their break up.
omg this is such a late response i’m so sorry but i’ve been keeping your ask close to my heart like it’s a flower i’m pressing into my favorite book bc it’s such a heartwarming, lovely concept 🥹🥹
this might be controversial rip but if we get rdr3 i would much rather find out more abt his story with isaac and eliza bc i know rockstar would skimp out if it was more mary/arthur. they barely fleshed out his backstory and most of it is abt him and mary, i would really love to see arthur as a dad struggling (and ultimately failing) to fit this newfound parental responsibility into his life as an outlaw. i strongly believe isaac’s death was a major catalyst to arthur hardening up as a person and it affected his relationship with everyone else, especially john, tremendously. seeing arthur trying to make it work with eliza romantically or platonically and seeing him change before and after their death would be so so incredible and rewarding.
but anyway 😭 i’m glad we agree that arthur is horny and respectful. he channels his eternal blue balls into respecting women 😭 and do NAWT get me started on how gentle, supportive and open he is with tilly, karen and mary beth bc we will be here until 2032. he’s the best big brother there’s no competition
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ourladylennon · 3 years
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Pete Shotton on John's endless humor:
“You might say that he would transmit to me by stages his own mental picture of a situation. As I tuned into his vision, my laughter would inspire him to elaborate further. This, in turn, would get me off even more- until ultimately we’d both be laughing so hard we literally couldn’t speak, stand, or- in my case- even breathe.
‘Squeaking’ was John’s word for this last phenomenon- the high-pitched noises I’d make while gasping for air. ‘Let’s here you squeak, then, Pete,’ John would say, deliberately winding me up yet more, until I’d not only writhe helplessly on the floor, but would actually develop excruciating stomach cramps and a temporary blindness brought on by my own uncontrollable tears of laughter.
When I attained that state, there was nothing anyone could do to alleviate my convulsions; not even the most drastic measures of parents or teachers could bring me to my senses. Thanks to John, I almost died laughing at least a thousand times.”
-excerpt from John Lennon: In My Life
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dragonsareourfuture · 3 years
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Death Note as Stand-Up Comedians
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Mello
- he’s allowed to complain about Near in front of an auditorium full of people as long as it’s in the form of a joke — of course he loves it.
- He has a lot of passion up on stage. The audience loves it because it makes them feel really immersed into the show.
- Mello has a tendency to get really loud when he gets really into a joke or bit, so the tech crew has gotten used to lowering the volume on his mic as the show progresses and he gets louder and louder.
- Mello has a harsh sense of humor, often using exaggerations and sarcasm to accentuate a point.
- He would tell stories from his time at Wammy’s house, mainly the chaos moments with Matt because the rest is pretty traumatizing for him.
- It’s his style that draws people in and his sense of humor that keeps them there. He has a very unique clothing style and, even when his managers suggested he dress down for the show as to not scare people away, he refused. He said that he would rather show who he is upfront and let the public decide whether or not to invest time in him than fake his personality for people he doesn’t know or give a shit about. They got the hint pretty quickly after that.
- He would sometimes do joined shows with Matt, which is quite interesting. Their dynamic works perfectly on stage and they even weave jokes that weren’t scripted into the show to keep each other on their toes.
Matt
- He’s a pretty chill guy, so I picture his sense of humor as pretty dry. Not in a bad way, of course. For instance, he tends to say the most hilarious things with a straight face and flat tone, which somehow makes the joke even funnier.
- He likes to involve the audience a lot, so gags where he (with permission) takes an audience member’s phone and reads their texts aloud are common. Somehow he can make jokes about the most mundane of text conversations and have the audience howling.
- Like I mentioned earlier, he and Mello’s contrasting senses of humor work for a perfect dynamic when performing, so shows where they’re together are the audience’s favorite. But even though Mello’s wild passion can take the spotlight at times, Matt is never overshadowed as they’re both sure to include the other in any bit or joke they do.
- For no reason at all I think Matt it great at imitations and impressions of different people. So, like when he’s doing a bit and speaking for someone else he can assign voices for everyone and the audience knows who he’s supposed to be speaking as in that moment. Usually these people are only known to him and Mello, so the audience can’t tell how exactly spot on he is. His impression of Near gets Mello wheezing, and his Mello impression gets the audience wheezing with Mello constantly claiming “I don’t sound like that, idiot!” With the audience shouting “YES YOU DO!”
L
- L’s sense of humor tends to require a specific taste, which is why he would probably be one of the least successful of the bunch.
- Don’t get me wrong, his sense of humor is adorable and one of the best aspects of Death Note in my opinion, but it comes in short and random bursts. He’d be talking about something serious and then crack a joke (“yEs tHat mUst Be dArK”), so it requires patience to really get to his sense of humor.
- The audience, I feel, wouldn’t have the patience to stick around and wait for his humor to surface.
- But L would have a cult following of a specific group of people that appreciate his talents.
- I’m picturing a show in which he starts off by talking about some cases, and transition to jokes from there. Due to his occupation, many jokes involve a darker sense of humor but also contain surprisingly innocent little remarks or comments. I can’t really explain it better, it makes sense in my head but I’m not too sure how to put it into words.
- Most of the show he keeps his straight face, but when he gets the audience going from something he said he can’t help but crack a little smile and chuckle into the mic pretty bashfully.
Near
- I’m sorry but Near doesn’t have too much of a sense of humor. But he does do or say some of the most hilarious shit on accident.
- It was actually Halle that convinced him to take up stand up comedy, as she got to spend tons of time just sitting and talking with him, cracking up at something Near said while he just stared at her in confusion.
- She had complete and total confidence that just plopping Near on stage and telling him to “just talk” would get the audience going, so she took him to a bar that did stand up comedy nights. Near absolutely killed it.
- Eventually he learns what the public finds funny through experimentation and tells those kinds of jokes more often, learning to perfect his craft. Through this method he is able to go from ‘accidentally funny’ to ‘intentionally hilarious’.
Light
- I wholeheartedly believe that Light has no sense of humor. Period.
- Sure, he’s accidentally funny sometimes but not enough to fake it ‘til he makes it like Near did.
- So he gets someone else to write his show for him. He’s just a pretty face, and the person who wrote his show is mentioned once or twice but who really cares about them? It’s Light who’s doing all the work, obviously. He’s the one getting sweaty up on stage.
- Honestly he barely has a sense of humor he’s probably just do it as a side thing for recognition or like most youtubers who write a book or start a podcast.
Matsuda
- Okay so, I definitely think that Matsuda would be one of the most successful stand up comedians out of all of them.
- He’s just so bubbly and kind and just genuinely a wonderful person so who could walk out of a show if his unsatisfied? No one. That’s who.
- My mans here has the opportunity to make so many self deprecating jokes due to how the task force treats him and how he’s just overall looked at as inferior to everyone he works with. And guess what? He doesn’t take that opportunity at all. He thinks self worth is the most important thing in the world and instead focuses his jokes around break room stories and observations of every day life.
- However if he ever does make a self deprecating joke, it’s never with any hatred towards himself. Like, he’ll joke about how his recklessness got him in trouble with Yotsuba, but instead of cursing the trait he has, he always expresses his hopes to get better and learn from his mistakes. Meanwhile the audience is dying at how he tells the story with so much energy and just— ...he’s wonderful.
- He just reminds me of John Mulaney when I picture a show of his.
- He’s pretty goofy by nature and you can tell that he’s enjoying himself up on stage, watching him laugh at his own jokes and beam at the audience with a smile so bright it could rival the spotlight shining down on him.
- He also really likes the attention, having been pushed to the side for so long.
- He’s just overall a really nice and positive guy while also being hilarious to listen to. 10/10.
Misa
- With her already existing music career and fashion career, people know her pretty well. Therefore, there is a HOARD of people waiting to see how she fairs at something so different from her previous career paths.
- And y’know what? Misa’s great at it.
- I’d like to imagine she’s out of her terrible relationship with Light in this au and realize how messed up he was, so I think she’d do a lot of clowning Light in her shows.
- She will kinda mix the comedy with valuable life lessons on relationships, so a lot of fans come up to her and thank her because they let their kids watch her shows and they’ve learned so much from her while being entertained for a good hour.
- Also her voice is so cute and pleasant to listen to I would gladly listen to her talk for a week let alone an hour.
- I imagine her style of show and humor to be along the lines of straight up ranting and just talking her heart out. You know that friend that can talk for hours but it’s okay because they make everything, even the most mundane things, sound dramatic and fun and lively? Yeah, that’s her.
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itsclydebitches · 3 years
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Me: doesn't know anything about Witcher and so didn't read your post about it; I mainly follow you for RWBY takes
Also me: reads an anon call you an idiot for having the 'incorrect' Witcher opinion
Me again: goes back and reads your Witcher post even though I don't know anything about the material because now I want to know what's wrong with this 'Yen' person
Ooooh yikes, that character sounds emotionally abusive as hell. I guess, it's good to know that RWBY isn't the only fandom out there where you're "supposed" to ignore and deny that a character *has flaws* and you're considered "wrong" if you *personally dislike* them for said flaws.
I don't understand why some people can't get it through their heads that no single character/show/story is perfect, and that some people like/dislike different things. There's nothing wrong with a character who has flaws. Those flaws don't need to be 'dismissed' and 'denied' in order to like a character (like you said with the John Mulaney voice; liking a flawed character is fine) but no viewer should be forced to like a character and told that they're 'misreading things' or 'misrepresenting things' or are just 'too stupid' for not pretending those flaws never existed and forcing themselves to like a character anyway.
I guess there really is a 'Yen' for every 'Yang.'
That is a god tier level pun, anon, fabulously done! 😂
More seriously though, I think the closest comparison I could make (which, admittedly, isn't a great comparison but I'm doing my best here) would be to Weiss. Yen improves in the later Witcher books. Weiss improves in the later RWBY volumes. Yet some fans are still uncomfortable with Weiss' racism. So imagine for a moment (actually we probably don't have to imagine, I'm sure this drama exists somewhere online lol) that someone disliked Weiss because of where her character started out. It could be any reason from the complex "Sorry, RWBY didn't give her development enough nuance. I can't back the character who once compared the minority to a trash can and then just... forgot about her racism I guess??" to a simple "She's so arrogant and snobby. Yeah, I get that that's her thing and it's meant to just be a mask or whatever, but it drives me up the wall." Now imagine that whenever you mentioned disliking Weiss fans came out of the woodwork to remind you about her amazing character development. And nothing else you might say matters. How RWBY handled that development, or how much content we got with Weiss' flaws on full display, or how that development fits into the larger themes of the franchise, or that you're just not inclined towards the Ice Queen type characters... if you don't adore her now that she's developed you clearly didn't understand her. She's best girl! The whole point is that she moves from unlikable to, you know, the best. So you're like no... I get it... I understand how characters work... but that doesn't mean I have to like her. But they're not listening. It's two different conversations going on. A "I just don't like this character" vs. "I do like this character, so if you disagree you must not know how to read a story 'correctly.'"
Now take that very generalized situation and apply it to a character who is not an abused teenager, but rather a nearly 100yo sorceress; not spewing rhetoric taught by her abuser, but pulling informed stunts like taking over her future lover's mind to seek revenge on others; not improving very early in the series, but rather working against a franchise where, roughly, 4/5ths of the material keeps her in that pre-growth state. All wrapped up in a love story that hinges on non-consensual magic tying these people together for all time. There's a lot to unpack there! Personally, I think there are a lot of reasons to dislike Yen and I'm constantly surprised that so many in the Witcher fandom don't, as you say, just shrug and accept that as a given. She's a polarizing character. People are likely to either love her or hate her, with little in between. Yet one of the most common arguments (in both Witcher and RWBY) is that this character is The Best because they're so well-rounded, complex, nuanced in their development and flaws... but the flipside that few acknowledge is that this complexity/flaws/need for development can lead to just... not liking them. Precisely because of those things. Yen is a great character. That's not the same thing as her being a character everyone has to like. "But she's not supposed to be likeable! That's part of the point of her character." Well then congratulations, the author succeeded in making me not like her. Why are you mad again?
Honestly though, the Witcher and RWBY fandoms both suffer from that need to dismiss all flaws. Yes, even while simultaneously insisting that those flaws are what make them a great character. We've seen that with Ruby: she's not perfect, of course she's made mistakes, look she's so upset about how things have turned out... but also no, she shouldn't have done anything different, ever, how dare you criticize her. I'm not neck deep into this fandom so I definitely can't speak to all pockets, but I've been watching the Shadow & Bone adaptation (read the books a while back) and it has been SO REFRESHING to see discussions where people just... talk about how much they love The Darkling while also acknowledging how very messed up he is. Like, rather than bending over backwards to absolve him of everything to justify liking the Darkling/Alina ship (because purity culture, I guess?) fans are just going, "Oh their relationship is a mess I'm so here for it 👀" I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd bet everything I own that the same drama exists because what fandom doesn't have it? But it feels like if you grabbed an average fan, shook them by the proverbial collar, and went, "But don't you know he's manipulating her? Don't you know that relationship is abusive?!?!" they'd be all, "No shit, that's why they're interesting as a fictional couple." I have no idea why I personally latch onto some "problematic" ships and despise others, but I honestly think I might have been at least slightly more keen on Geralt/Yen if the books and fandom acknowledged the problems in that relationship more, rather than painting it with a generalized, "But they love each other, and are meant for each other, so everything else is fine" brush. When you point out things like, "Geralt was sure that Yen was going to attack him with her magic for disagreeing with her... that's kind of not great..." the reaction tends to be an essay detailing why that's not actually a problem, you ignorant person, rather than just going, "Oh yeah, the relationship has so many problems. That's one of the reasons I love it."
ANYWAY what I love is that you're out here reading nonsense posts for a franchise you know nothing about, anon lol. I'm the exact same when I see people I follow going on passionately about fandoms I'm not in. I've got the imaginary popcorn like, "John Doe did what now? Oh yes, spill the tea."
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carewyncromwell · 3 years
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“Everybody's been there, everybody's been stared down By the enemy, Fallen for the fear and done some disappearing -- Bow down to the mighty... But don't run...stop holding your tongue! Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live; Maybe one of these days you can let the light in... Show me how big your brave is! Say what you wanna say and let the words fall out! Honestly...I wanna see you be brave With what you want to say and let the words fall out Honestly...I wanna see you be brave!”
~“Brave,” by Sara Bareilles
x~x~x~x
For my next installment in my Valentine’s Day series where I focus on each of my MC’s with someone that they care about, I’m going to do something different again for my MC Anastasia “Ana” Read and focus on her relationship with her beloved stepfather, Bradley Pinkstone!
After Ana’s mother Bonnie divorced her father John Read, Bonnie -- being the sort of person who’s unable to be on her own -- dated several other men in rapid succession. Unfortunately none of those men were much in the mood to “share” their new girlfriend with her daughter from a previous marriage. Not only was Ana a constant reminder of Bonnie’s relationship with “the ex,” but she also was a socially awkward, chubby little girl who would cause weird “accidents” whenever her mother’s boyfriends were over. Ana would claim she never meant to do anything wrong (and honestly, how could she have done those things anyway, one might think -- no one can make a glass shatter from the other side of the room), but she nonetheless took the blame onto her shoulders and, in response to those boyfriends’ active dislike for or avoidance of her, soon learned to hide away in her room whenever they came over. After all, none of them came to see her, and none of them wanted to -- so it was probably best that she just stay out of the way. And she thought things would be the exact same way when her mother met and fell in love with Bradley Pinkstone.
Ana had heard plenty about her mother’s new fiance before meeting him, but it was only after she received her Hogwarts letter that Bonnie -- looking oddly nervous -- told her that Bradley would be coming over to have dinner with them. Ana dreaded the prospect: she just knew something was going to go wrong. All of the weird things that had happened to her mother’s old boyfriends had to have been her fault, after all -- what if she messed everything up for her mum again, just like she always did? And sure enough, not long after the bright-eyed, curly-haired man in the obnoxious yellow-diamond-patterned pants named Bradley Pinkstone had entered their flat and walked over to Ana as if to offer her a handshake, part of the floor disappeared out from under him, making him trip right into a side table and send several knick-knacks crashing to the floor. Distraught and ashamed, Ana bolted out of the room and up the stairs, even as Bonnie tried to call her back. Ana slammed the door of her room, locking it behind her, and then huddled up in a miserable ball on her bed, dead-set on never coming out again.
You can imagine Ana’s surprise, therefore, when her bedroom door swung open, unlocked, to reveal Bradley Pinkstone standing there, a small smile on his face.
“Hey,” he greeted gently.
Ana flinched, but didn’t answer. What could she even say? Should she apologize? How could she, without explaining that what had happened was her fault? Witches and wizards weren’t supposed to talk about their magic, right?
Noting the girl’s nerves, Bradley entered the room, quietly closing the door behind him, and slowly migrated over toward her bed in the same manner one might approach a scared animal.
“That...wasn’t my smoothest introduction, was it?” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve fallen flat on my face plenty of times figuratively, but never literally.”
Ana hugged her knees close to her chest. She hated him standing over her -- it made her feel even smaller and more pathetic than she already did.
Bradley tilted his head to the side and considered Ana for a moment, his expression becoming more serious.
“...I know it wasn’t your fault, Anastasia.”
Ana looked up at him, startled.
“Those sorts of things happen, when you’re feeling an intense emotion,” said Bradley sympathetically, “and what you did was easily undone. The floor’s been put right, everything on the side table’s fixed...even my pride will recover eventually.”
He gave a bright white grin.
Ana stared at him, very confused, as she absently let go of her knees. The way he was talking was so matter-of-fact, so nonplussed. It was...well, bizarre.
Bradley raised an eyebrow, his dark eyes twinkling.
“Would you like to know a secret?” he asked.
Ana’s throat was too tight to speak, but she gave a small nod.
Bradley reached into the back pocket of his yellow-diamond-patterned pants and slid out a long stick made of ebony wood with an intricately carved, gold-encrusted hilt for her to see.
It was a wand.
Ana’s gray eyes grew very, very wide.
“You...?”
Bradley tucked his wand back into his pocket with a white smile. “Yep -- I’m one too.”
Ana was stunned. Her mother’s fiance...was a wizard? So he...he knew everything? About the Wizarding World, about Hogwarts, about...how to do magic? ...Was that what he meant, by everything being fixed? He’d been able to undo what she did with magic?!
Her posture was still slightly guarded as Bradley lowered himself down onto the bed next to her.
“This is why your mother and I decided it was time we meet, before the school year begins,” he explained. “I hadn’t known you had magic when I met your mother...I couldn’t tell her about me being a wizard, thanks to the Statute of Secrecy, so I had to act as if I was non-magical myself. Admittedly I don’t like to use magic as much as many wizards do. There are many non-magical methods that work just as well if not better than magical ones. And there are many advancements people who don’t use magic have made that witches and wizards are still woefully ignorant of.”
He gave Ana a small wry smile.
“But...well, Bonnie would talk about you sometimes on our dates, and some of the things she said...well, it reminded me of Jasper and Preston, when they first started showing signs of magic. My sons,” he added, upon seeing Ana’s confused expression. “They’re both quite a bit older than you...but they went to Hogwarts too. Preston just graduated, actually. I’m sure Jasper and he will be really happy to tell you all about Hogwarts. And after you and Bonnie move in, I can always help you with some spells over the summer. Normally you shouldn’t do magic outside of school, of course, but the Ministry won’t punish you if you’re in a house that’s already filled with magical signatures...”
Ana could hardly believe what she was hearing. Of all the people in the world her mother could’ve decided to date, she’d somehow managed to meet a wizard? Not only that...but he actually wanted to help her with her magic?
“...Why...”
Bradley raised his eyebrows. “Hm?”
“...Why do you care?”
Bradley blinked in surprise. Ana knew her question had come out more harshly than she meant, so she tried to backpedal slightly.
“I mean...thank you -- for putting right what I did, but...I’m not your kid. You don’t even know me. I mean...”
She bit her lip and looked down at her hands in her lap.Everything she said kept coming out sounding rude, despite her best efforts.
Bradley, however, didn’t look the least bit offended or hurt. Instead his eyes looked a bit sad.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I don’t know you. But, for what it’s worth...I think I’d like to.”
Ana looked up at Bradley, whose face had grown a bit more gentle.
“Let me tell you something, Anastasia -- I’ve lost a lot of people in my life...many people I loved dearly. I even lost my mother when I was about your age. It hasn’t been easy to bounce back from any of that...but one thing I have learned is the value of loving the people in your life, as best you can. We Pinkstones...aren’t the most popular in the Wizarding World, for our stance on magical and non-magical integration...so family is very important to us. And if your mother and I are going to be married, then you will be my family. And that means I’ll do everything I can to love and protect you -- because that’s what family should be.”
He tapped his heart with his fist lightly.
“I know I’m not your father, nor do I ever want to replace him -- but I’d love to learn more about you from you, rather than just from your mother. As nice as it is to hear about how bright and imaginative you are...I’d love to see that for myself.”
Ana stared at Bradley for a long, long moment. Her gray eyes were still guarded and faintly nervous, rather like a stray cat hesitating before letting someone pet them for the first time. Then, after a very long silence, she nodded mutely. Bradley smiled.
“To start with...what are these books here you’ve got lined up on the bottom shelf?” he asked curiously. “They’re perfectly organized by number...I assume they’re volumes of something?”
Ana nodded.
“They’re manga,” she mumbled. “Japanese comic books.”
Bradley’s eyes lit up. “Really? May I?”
Ana nodded again, and he bent down to slide one of them from the shelf and look at the cover, which depicted a blond, blue-eyed girl with a blue-skirted white jumpsuit, a red-ribbon choker, and round red barrettes in her hair buns.
“‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon,’“ he read off the front cover.
He glanced from Ana to the book and back and his smile grew brighter and larger still.
“...Ahh, so that’s why you’re wearing a red ribbon around your neck -- you’re dressed as this character today!”
Ana looked down at her lap, her cheeks flushing as she smoothed out the wrinkles in her blue skirt self-consciously. “Mm-hmm.”
“That’s brilliant,” said Bradley brightly. “Oh, Jasper is going to be thrilled -- he’s quite a fashion icon himself. He’s into the ‘Gothic Victorian subculture’ -- from what I understand, it’s a fashion movement that celebrates both period clothing from the late 1800′s and early 1900′s, as well as the darker Gothic aesthetic. Jasper has quite a collection of top hats and waist coats.”
Ana perked up slightly. “...So your son likes to dress up too?”
“Yes,“ said Bradley. “He comes by it honestly, really -- I don’t know if your mother told you, but my sons and I work in a theater, in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Jasper’s the most ‘stage-oriented’ out of the three of us: he works as an actor and stage-combat choreographer. Meanwhile my younger son, Preston, works in our tech department -- he’s a master of special effects. Though that’s partially because he likes to cheat and make some of the stage magic a bit more literal than it probably should be.”
Despite a mild attempt at disapproval, he was smiling mischievously. Ana felt her shoulders loosening a bit.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m a stage manager,” said Bradley, “so I do a little bit of everything. Casting. Marketing. Settling disputes. Putting right what goes wrong.”
Ana shifted over slightly to better face him. “I guess with magic...doing that’s a bit easier, huh?”
“Sometimes,” said Bradley. “But magic isn’t always like how people who don’t use magic depict it, in stories. There are limits to what magic can do -- just as there are limits to what people who don’t use magic can do. Magic is just like any other talent you might have, in the end...like fencing, or mechanics...”
“Or writing?” asked Ana.
Bradley grinned. “Absolutely. It’s something you have to practice at and constantly refine, in order to be good at it...but once you have mastered it, you can be capable of amazing things. Once that happens, though, you then have a responsibility to use those talents for the benefit of others.”
Ana’s gray eyes were very bright as she nodded in agreement.
“‘You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed,’” she said softly. “‘You’re responsible for your rose.’”
Bradley quirked an eyebrow in interest. “Which book is that from?”
“The Little Prince.”
“I’ve yet to read that one. Would you recommend it?”
Ana bit her lip in amusement. “Well, it’s a children’s book...but the man who wrote it ended up writing it after escaping France, when the Nazis took over. I have a biography about him.”
She got down on her hands and knees to reach into the corner of one of her other bookcases, take a white-covered paperback off the shelf, and hand it to Bradley. He took it and turned it over to read the summary on the back.
“‘From a master biographer, the life story of the daring French aviator who became one of the twentieth century's most beloved authors,’” he read aloud.
Bradley’s grin grew a bit broader. “I must say, you have quite an extensive library. Might we exchange book recommendations, once I’ve finished with this one?”
Ana’s face at long last burst into a smile too and she nodded eagerly.
“Yeah.”
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maddie-grove · 3 years
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The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2020
My main takeaways:
I’m glad that I set certain reading goals this year (i.e., reading an even mix of different genres and writing about each book I read on this tumblr). I feel like it really expanded my horizons.
There are a lot of proper names on my Top 20 list this year, which possibly means something about identity? That, or I just tried to read more Victorian novels. 
Be horny, and be kind.
Now...
20. The White Mountains by John Christopher (1967)
In a world ruled by unseen creatures who roam the countryside in tall metal tripods, all humans are “capped” (surgically fitted with metal plates on their heads) at age fourteen. Thirteen-year-old Will Parker looks forward to becoming a man, but a conversation with a mysterious visitor to his village raises a few doubts. This early YA dystopia has gorgeous world-building (notably a trip to the ruins of Paris) and expert pacing. The choices Will has to make are also more surprising and complicated than I ever anticipated.
19. What Happened at Midnight by Courtney Milan (2013)
John Mason wants revenge on his fiancée Mary after she skips town following her father’s death...apparently with the funds that her father, John’s business partner, embezzled from their company. When he tracks her down, though, she’s working as a lady’s companion to the wife of a controlling gentleman who refuses to pay her wages, and John’s fury turns to sympathy and curiosity. This is a smart, well-plotted Victorian-set novella about a couple who builds a better relationship after a rocky start.
18. Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (1943)
It’s 1773, and fourteen-year-old Bostonian Johnny Tremain has it all: a promising apprenticeship to a silversmith, the run of his arguably senile master’s household, and...unresolved grief over his widowed mother’s death? When a workplace “accident” ruins his hand and career, though, he must “forge” a new identity. Despite its jingoism and surfeit of historical exposition, I fell in love with this weird early YA novel. It’s a fascinating, heartbreaking portrayal of disability and ableism, and, to be fair, Forbes was just jazzed about fighting the Nazis.
17. Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf by Hayley Krischer (2020)
After universally beloved jock Sean Nessel rapes starry-eyed junior Ali Greenleaf at a party, his queen-bee friend Blythe Jensen agrees to smooth things over by befriending his victim. Ali knows Blythe’s motives are weird and sketchy, but being friends with a popular, exciting girl is preferable to dealing with the fallout of the rape. This YA novel is a complex, astute exploration of trauma and moral responsibility.
16. The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein (2017)
Rothstein details how the federal U.S. government allowed, encouraged, and sometimes even forcibly brought about segregation of black and white Americans during the early and mid-twentieth century, with no regard for the unconstitutionality of its actions. He brings home the staggering harm to black Americans who were kept from living in decent housing, shut out of home ownership for generations, and denied the opportunity to accumulate wealth for generations. It’s an impactful read, and I was honestly shocked to learn Rothstein isn’t a lawyer, because the whole thing reads like an expansion of an excellent closing statement.
15. My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf (2012)
In this graphic memoir, Backderf looks back on his casual, fleeting friendship with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a high school classmate who amused Backderf and his geeky friends with bizarre, chaotic antics. Backderf brings their huge, impersonal high school to life, illustrating how the callousness and cruelty of such an environment allowed an isolated, troubled teen to morph into something much more disturbing without anyone really noticing. It’s a work of baffled, tentative empathy and regret that stayed with me long after I finished it.
14. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876)
Gwendolyn Harleth, beautiful and ambitious but with no real outlet, finds herself compelled to marry a heartless gentleman with a shady past. Daniel Deronda, adopted son of her husband’s uncle, finds himself drawn into her orbit due to his helpful nature, but he’s also dealing with a lot of other stuff, like helping a Jewish opera singer and figuring out his parentage. I love George Eliot and, although this bifurcated novel isn’t her most accessible work, it’s highly rewarding. The psychological twists and turns of Gwendolyn’s story are a wonder to experience, and Daniel’s discovery of his past and a new community is moving.
13. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)
The Roths, an ordinary working-class Jewish family in 1940 Newark, find their quiet lives descending into fear, uncertainty, and strife after Charles Lindbergh, celebrity pilot and Nazi sympathizer, becomes president of the United States. This alternate history/faux-memoir perfectly captures the slow creep of fascism and the high-handed cruelty of state-sanctioned discrimination, as well as the weirdness of living a semi-normal life while all of that is going on. Also: fuck Herman and Alvin for messing up Bess’s coffee table! She is a queen, and she deserves to read Pearl S. Buck in a pleasant setting!
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
Young David Copperfield has an idyllic life with his sweet widowed mom and devoted nursemaid Peggotty, until his cruel stepfather ruins everything. David eventually manages to find safe harbor with his eccentric aunt, but his troubles have only begun. Although the quality of the novel falls off a little once David becomes an adult, I don’t even care; the first half is one of the most beautiful, funny, brilliantly observed portrayals of the joys and sorrows of childhood that I’ve ever read.
11. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt (2017)
Greenblatt examines the evolution and cultural significance of the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible to the modern day (but mostly it’s about Milton). I can’t speak to the scholarship of this book--I’m not an expert on the Bible or Milton or bonobos--but I do know that it’s a gorgeously written meditation on love, mortality, and free will. Greenblatt brought me a lot of joy as an unhappy teenager, and he came through for me again during the summer of 2020.
10. The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg (2019)
Self-conscious seventeen-year-old Jordan is mortified when his widowed mother hires Max, an outgoing jock from his school, to help out with their struggling food truck. As they get to know each other, though, they realize that they have more in common than they thought, and they end up helping each other through a particularly challenging summer. This is an endearing, exceedingly well-balanced YA romance that tackles serious issues with a light touch and a naturalness that’s rare in the genre.
9. Red as Blood by Tanith Lee (1983)
In nine wonderfully lurid stories, Tanith Lee retells fairy tales with a dark, historically grounded, and lady-centered twist. Highlights include a medieval vampiric Snow White, a vengeful early modern Venetian Cinderella, and a Scandinavian werewolf Little Red Riding Hood. Fairy tale retellings are right up my alley, and Lee’s collection is impressively varied and creative.
8. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (1908)
Unnerved by an impulsive make-out session with egalitarian George Emerson on a trip to Florence, young Edwardian woman Lucy Honeychurch goes way too far the other way and gets engaged to snobbish Cecil Vyse. How can she get out of this emotional and social pickle? This is an absolutely delightful romance that gave a timeless template for romantic comedies and dramas for 100-plus years.
7. My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918)
Jim Burden, a New York City lawyer, tells the story of his friendship with slightly older Bohemian immigrant girl Ántonia when they were kids together on the late-nineteenth-century Nebraska prairie. It was a pretty pleasant time, give or take a few murders, suicides, and attempted rapes. This is one of the sweetest stories about unrequited love I’ve ever read, and it has some really enjoyable queer subtext.
6. Mister Death’s Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn (2012)
In 1956 Maryland, gawky teen Nora’s peaceful existence is shattered by the unsolved murder of her friends Cheryl and Bobbi Jo right before summer vacation. Essentially left to deal with her trauma alone, she begins to question everything, from her faith in God to the killer’s real identity. Hahn delivers a beautiful coming-of-age story along with a thoughtful portrait of how a small community responds to tragedy.
5. The Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France, with translation and introduction/notes by Robert Herring and Joan Ferrante (original late 12th century, edition 1995) 
In twelve narrative poems, anonymous French-English noblewoman Marie de France spins fantastically weird tales of love, lust, and treachery. Highlights include self-driving ships, gay (?) werewolves, and more plot-significant birds than you can shake a stick at. Marie de France brings so much tenderness, delicacy, and startling humor to her stories, offering a wonderful window to the distant past.
4. Maus by Art Spiegelman (1980-1991)
In this hugely influential graphic novel/memoir, Art Spiegelman tells the story of how his Polish Jewish parents survived the Holocaust. He portrays all the characters as anthropomorphic animals; notably, the Jewish characters are mice and the Nazi Germans are cats. I read the first volume of Maus back in 2014 and, while I appreciated and enjoyed it, I didn’t get the full impact until I read both volumes together early in 2020. Spiegelman takes an intensely personal approach to his staggering subject matter, telling the story through the lens of his fraught relationship with his charismatic and affectionate, yet truly difficult father. 
3. At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire (2010)
McGuire looks at a seldom-explored aspect of racism in the Jim Crow South (the widespread rape and sexual harassment of black women by white men) and the essential role of anti-rape activism led by black women during the Civil Rights movement. This is a harrowing yet tastefully executed history, and it’s also a truly inspirational story of collective activism.
2. In for a Penny by Rose Lerner (2010)
Callow Lord Nevinstoke has to mature fast when his father dies, leaving him an estate hampered by debts and extremely legitimate grievances from angry tenant farmers. To obtain the necessary funds, he marries (usually!) sensible brewing heiress Penelope Brown, but they face problems that not even a sizable cash infusion can fix. This is a refreshingly political romance with a deliciously tense atmosphere and fascinating themes, as well as an almost painfully engaging central relationship.
1. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)
Fanny Price, the shy and sickly poor relation of the wealthy Bertram family, is subtly mistreated by most of her insecure and/or self-absorbed relatives, with the exception of her kind cousin Edmund. When the scandalous Crawford siblings visit the neighborhood, though, it shakes up her life for good and ill. I put off reading Mansfield Park for years--it’s practically the last bit of Austen writing that I consumed, including most of her juvenilia--and yet I think it’s my favorite. Fanny is an eminently lovable and interesting heroine, self-doubting and flawed yet possessed of a strong moral core, and the rest of the characters are equally realistic and compelling. Austen really made me think about the point of being a good person, both on a personal and a global scale.
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aion-rsa · 3 years
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Val Kilmer Documentary Punctures the Actor’s Bad Boy Myth
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Leo Scott and Ting Poo’s new documentary feature, Val, is not a mortality play. It is a rehearsal for an upcoming act. During a tour of his one-man stage show, Citizen Twain, Val Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer. The actor underwent two tracheostomies, and now can only speak while covering a tube. The narration of the new film is thus done by his son Jack Kilmer, allowing the pair to share a non-verbal connection throughout the journey, and through time and expression itself. While there are flourishes of humor, the documentary is a serious study of an artist who has always struggled to be understood, told through the selective memory of Kilmer’s POV.
“I’ve wanted to tell a story about acting for a very long time,” Kilmer says toward the beginning of the documentary. “And now that it’s difficult to speak, I want to tell my story more than ever.” Kilmer is an artist, one who takes his vocation very seriously and introspectively. An actor’s voice is more than a tool, it is their primary source of communication. Non-verbal exchanges are important, but dialogue is the primary idea delivery system in staged and filmed works. Surgical procedures have split his throat, shredding the scope of his instrument. In the film, Kilmer is forced to project his story on the empty space between the notes.
Among Kilmer’s many defining roles, the one which appears to ring truest is his encapsulation of Jim Morrison, the poet and lead vocalist of the Doors in Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic, The Doors. The young Kilmer is shown onstage in a small club, lost in the music, awaiting his cue to become one with the mic. Moments in Kilmer’s personal history, like how the actor was tagged with a “difficult” label, are consigned to rests. The most overt reference to Kilmer’s “bad boy” reputation comes from Robert Downey Jr., who smashes the notoriety to bits in a moment of impromptu dismissal.
There is no gossip here. There is no discussion of A-list-bad behavior. Kilmer sees it all as artistic license.  He was searching for honesty, he remembers. Choices like lying on top of a mattress filled with ice in order to feel a real pain during his last scene with Kurt Russell in Tombstone come across as perfectly valid. Kilmer is still bitter over spending four months learning to play guitar for Top Secret!, and his first note informs him the director thinks he looks funnier faking it. There is little evidence of unprofessionalism, only growing pains.
The bulk of Val comes from clips of 8mm home video footage Kilmer has been shooting most of his life. “I’ve kept everything, and it’s been sitting in boxes for years,” Kilmer informs us. The archive was intended to tell a story about “where you end and the acting begins.” We are gifted with moon shots of both Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn, which have nothing to do with the films Apollo 13 or The First.
Early self-directed screen tests provoke a series of what-ifs. A tortuous encapsulation of a Juilliard acting class is a lesson in what-nots. Val’s hand-held approach to The Island of Dr. Moreau is a highlight. The actor respectfully rocks his co-star and idol, Marlon Brando, on a hammock they both wish was strung to John Frankenheimer. Please turn off the camera, the film’s replacement director demands. But Kilmer only hits pause when it’s time to rehearse.
The behind-the-scenes camcorder footage from sets of Top Gun, Tombstone, and The Doors are treasure troves in themselves, and possibly underused. Most of the audience will be very interested in the candid youth and truth recorded over his career. Val uses the archival clips and unearthed b-roll to establish a chronology.
Many videos were made at home in Los Angeles with Kilmer’s younger brother Wesley, who had an epileptic seizure and drowned at age 15. His death casts a mournful pall following the news that Val was the youngest applicant ever accepted as a drama student at Juilliard. Kilmer calls his brother “an artistic genius,” and one of the most revealing things to come out of the documentary is how often Kilmer used this brother’s art to augment the backgrounds of the sets he is living through on film.
Seeing how Stone speaks about Kilmer now makes me wonder if Val would have been able to put in the same performances in his movies if he knew it at the time. In his audition tapes for Full Metal Jacket and Goodfellas, we see an actor who needs to be taken seriously. He flies 6,000 miles to hand deliver his tape to Stanley Kubrick in London.
While he makes no comment, footage reveals Kilmer’s favorite Batman was played by Adam West. “Every boy wants to be Batman,” we hear, and see the Caped Crusader in every era of Kilmer’s life. A short, animated film he and his brother made with what looks like crayon is a Batman spoof. He still glories in the moment he got deposited behind the classic TV series’ iconic wheels as a youngster visiting the lot. It appears Kilmer still can’t pass a grocery store Batmobile without feeding it quarters. He wears the classic blue Halloween ensemble expecting tricks and treats as a kid, and as a daddy with his kids.
Don’t expect to see Kilmer wearing his cinematic puffed rubber suit at home, and it’s not because he left it at the dry cleaners. Footage old and new, homemade or professionally recorded, presents the Batsuit as an albatross. Heavy rests the cowl. He has to be lifted from chairs, deposited on marks, and his only identifying feature on the set of Batman Forever is a chin and bottom lip. Anyone could have been behind the mask, and the human superhero envied the subhuman villains. Kilmer comes across as quite happy Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones are able to create fully formed performance art in their portrayals. But he wanted to play with those toys.
“Batman Forever,” Kilmer laments, “whatever boyish excitement I had going in was crushed by the reality of the Batsuit. I realized it was just my job to show up and stand where they told me.” As the captured past footage is juxtaposed with modern sequences, we get an unfiltered glimpse of how little this has changed. The sequence of Kilmer at the Comic-Con autograph booth is wrenching. He initially didn’t want to take the part of Iceman in Top Gun because he felt it glorified the military. So many fans ask him to sign “You can be my wingman” on their souvenirs. It turns his stomach. He throws up in a garbage can and wheeled through hallways with a blanket over his head. Trouper that he is, he returns to the booth to finish out the signatures.
Kilmer blurred himself into the role of Mark Twain. There is a beautiful sequence where the actor walks through town to the beach, in full stage makeup, dressed in the signature white suit and long mustache of his character. It is extremely telling when Kilmer tells the camera it’s hard enough writing a good screenplay, much less a great one, which itself doesn’t even match what he feels he needs to bring to a script of a film version of Citizen Twain. Kilmer sold his ranch in New Mexico to finance the project. The documentary only captures some of the frustrations.
Most of the anecdotes are guarded, and all the admissions are part of a subjective narrative. Kilmer’s arc has rough edges, these tales are too smooth, and leave little room for impressionistic interpretation. Kilmer met his former wife, Joanne Whalley, when she was starring in a West End play directed by Danny Boyle, but he didn’t approach her.
“She was brilliant, and I was in town making fluff,” Kilmer concedes. It’s all about the art, even appearances. The documentary hints that Kilmer’s dedication to character did the most damage to their relationship. Wearing the same pair of leather pants for nine months could almost be on the books as probable cause for divorce in Hollywood.
Similarly, Kilmer’s Christian Science upbringing is brought up, and dropped. There is a loving but ambiguous undertone to Kilmer’s relationship with his once-rich-and-powerful father, who put his son in debt after trying to become a southern California land tycoon. But a sequence on his Swedish mother which juxtaposes a car ride he took with her when he was a child with one of being driven to her funeral speaks volumes without words.
Val is about the next step. “What’s past is prologue” William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest. Kilmer pondered the “too, too solid flesh” while rehearsing Hamlet, and the documentary opens after the actor faced his own mortality. Kilmer swears he feels better than he sounds and, while he finds little to regret in his memories, he expects less in the ones he has yet to create.
Val can be seen on Amazon Prime Video.
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quinnallerton · 3 years
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If Paul was a boring straight, John would've never liked him. He had enough of a doormat in Cyn already. The man was obsessed with narcissistic personalities. The fact Paul was his soulmate speaks volumes about the person he must be behind the cameras. In a way, I see why Paul is tight with Taylor Swift. She's his natural heir in manipulating public opinion with a nauseatingly cutesy image. Many can smell the con from miles away but of course they're labelled haters. I'm of the opinion that if they were as insufferable in public as they must be in private, maybe people would actually like them better. Just look at John. Being awful is actually a major part of his appeal. It's the dirty little secret of the fandom. People might publicly shun his behavior but they actually get off on his darkness.
And finally someone says that about Heather Mills? Many things she claimed not only seem consistent with Paul's behavior but also force us to look at his relationship with Linda in a diferent light. It wasn't as sugar and spice as it looked. In fact, their dynamics wasn't that different from John and Yoko. It was the same thing presented in a different package. Disclaimer: I am not hating on Paul (because his stans tend to be very touchy about anything you say about him and beloved Linda). I genuinely love the guy. I just happen to see right through his bullshit. And I think I'm not the only one.
Thanks for your comments anon, you and I think very similar!
As for Heather Mills, I feel like once Paul is gone from this earth, she’s going to release the trashiest book of dirty details, and I’m totally unabashedly going to read it!
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beneaththetangles · 3 years
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Light Novel Club Chapter 31: Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Vol. 2
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Welcome to our Light Novel Club discussion of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Vol. 2! We had a fun discussion of the first volume earlier, and with the anime adaptation giving this series some more attention, why not discuss the second volume? After all, this volume shakes up the story a bit and shows that there’s more to winning the game of life than just following along with a human player’s guide… Join TWWK, Jeskai Angel, and me as we challenge the next level of this light novel!
(Note: At the end of the post are the next light novels we will be discussing in the Light Novel Club. As a reminder, Light Novel Club discussions are held publicly on the Beneath the Tangles Discord, so anyone can join in on future discussions!)
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1. What are your overall impressions on the novel?
TWWK: I’ve watched the series but hadn’t read any of the light novels, so I took a leap by starting with volume two. The experience was quite different from the TV series, which made it feel almost new to me, despite the adaptation having followed the volume closely. I really enjoyed reading about the characters from Tomozaki’s point of view, as he himself is developed as a character with a pretty quick mind and more intelligent than I think he gives himself credit for. So it was a fun, brisk read for me.
stardf29: This was a really nice volume, mainly because it throws a wrench in the “Hinami teaches Tomozaki something about life, and he applies it” formula that the first volume had going. The whole student council election arc was great because not only does Tomozaki have to figure things out on his own, but his opponent is the very person that’s been teaching him the whole time! Using video game terms, it’s as if the first volume is the tutorial stage, and this is the first real level where the player is expected to play the game on his own. I’m also really liking how other characters are being developed, and in particular how Tomozaki and Mimimi associate with each other throughout all this. It expands what could have been a pretty one-note story concept into something more complex, and makes me all the more interested to keep going with it.
Jeskai Angel: It’s a strong continuation of the first volume. Coming back to read it again for this discussion, I also noticed that vol. 2 foreshadows good bit more than I realized during my first read. Finally, I know this is silly, but my inner historian just loved seeing JOHN ADAMS of all people come up in a Japanese novel. Kudos to the author for that historical reference.
TWWK: To be fair, I thought that was a tough question for a Japanese student. I mean…let’s be honest. How many Americans, even students at that age who might be taking U.S. History, would have answered “Jefferson” as the second president? But Mimimi’s point is still well taken.
Jeskai Angel: I mean, if we want to switch it around, maybe the equivalent question for Americans is “Who was the second shogun of the Tokugawa Period?” or something. LOL
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2. What are your thoughts on the characters in this volume?
TWWK: As I mentioned earlier, the Tomozaki in this volume comes across very differently than in the anime. His voice is more humorous and sarcastic here. I once heard Jeskai say that he thinks better of him than my favorite, Hikigaya (Oregairu), because Tomozaki is trying to better himself, and I think that’s very clear from the reading, and together with the humor makes him a fun character. He does also come across as trying just as hard in the anime, but is more obviously awkward than in the book, I think—at least how I view him in my mind while reading. The gap between Tomozaki and a top-tier character feels far less surmountable in the TV series.
Likewise, I find Hinami more compelling in the book. I thought the author did a nice job of making her a character that I empathize with, even though she’s “perfect” in all ways except for her sometimes haughty attitude. That there’s some insecurity there and questioning, particularly when she asks Tomozaki if being so good at what she does is the proper approach, humanizes her.
Finally, Mimimi, who gets top girl treatment in this volume, presents a compelling case, too. It wasn’t at all enjoyable to see her struggle in this volume, particularly in the final chapter or two. It was painful, which I think speaks to an authenticity in the development of her character. It just be that, because I don’t think it’s painfully written (it’s quite well done, I think), not do I feel like I can closely relate to her, as I never worked terrifically hard to get ahead of those in front of me academically (though I was in a similar position as her). I think she’s just in a tough spot, one that can be understood, which made for interesting reading, particularly in light of her outside self.
Jeskai Angel: Kikuchi is awesome. My biggest complaint about pretty much every volume of Tomozaki is that Kikuchi doesn’t get enough screen time. And that’s not just because Tomozaki’s descriptions of her are so hilarious. She proves herself quite insightful this time around; even though she doesn’t personally hang out with Hinami and Mimimi all that much, she makes some incisive remarks about both. I thought Kikuchi’s question, “Why does she [Hinami] work so hard to be perfect?” was profound.
Speaking of Hinami, something is seriously off with her. With the benefit of hindsight, I realized this volume reveals or expands on a lot of troubling things about her. There’s a ton of ambiguity surrounding her. Why did she suddenly change so drastically in middle school? Why does she continue to be such a perfectionist? That kind of obsession isn’t healthy at all, and should raise questions about her mental health. Plus, how can she be so two-faced, is she training to become a Batman villain, and how real / sincere is she at any given moment? Then there’s the occasional downright creepy things she says, like that remark about persuading people as the path to become a cult leader. Some of her advice to Tomozaki is legit, but it takes an increasing amount of critical thinking to sift through her words.
Hinami plays a role in my favorite Tomozaki scene of this volume. Earlier, Tomozaki told Mimimi that being number one didn’t matter so much as continuing to improve and not losing to oneself. When he reports the situation to Hinami, she responds that there’s no way he could actually believe that. “…you’re the same as me in that respect, right? You must be, if you’ve gotten that far in Atafami.” And Tomozaki comes back “…What the hell? I genuinely think that. Atafami is a battle against myself.” His advice to Mimimi was good, but it gets even better when it turns out to reflect a fundamental difference between him and Hinami. Also, it’s not like he was trying trick her, but the fact remains that Hinami was WRONG about something: she misread Tomozaki’s motivation and project her own desire to be number one onto him. It’s an important moment in establishing how Tomozaki differs from Hinami.
Mimimi was the star of this volume. She turns out to be a lot more complex than the lovable goofball we met in the first volume. And we don’t just see this through her relationship with Tomozaki, but also her relationships with various other characters, like Hinami and Tama. I mentioned it earlier, but Mimimi in particular had some moments that I didn’t pay much attention to during my first read, but with the benefit of hindsight, seem like foreshadowing.
Something that struck me while reading this volume that I hadn’t really thought about before is how the five main girls in Tomozaki’s life contrast with each other. Izumi, Mimimi, and of course Hinami are outgoing normie girls, but Hinami is duplicitous, while Mimimi and Izumi seem far more genuine. And between Mimimi and Izumi, the former is more independent while the latter is more go-along-to-get-along (though she’s trying to change that). And then Kikuchi and Hanabi are both non-normie girls who don’t quite fit in, but where Tama is bold and outspoken, Kikuchi is quiet and introverted. I knew this stuff about these characters, but didn’t realize just how much each girls serves as mirror for one or more of the others.
stardf29: Tomozaki continues to grow in this volume, not just in how he “plays the game of life” but also how he works through some things on his own, particularly with when he was helping Mimimi with the student council election. And I really like the moment when he explained how his motivation for becoming the best in Atafami is more so he doesn’t lose to himself, and then how that creates a notable difference in his approach to gaming compared to Hinami.
And yes, I like how this volume makes us question the whole mentorship Hinami has over Tomozaki, particularly with how their approaches to “gaming” are ultimately different, but also how Hinami might have her own issues to deal with, as well as how there are things she can’t handle, like the whole situation with Mimimi. It’s part of what moves this story away from just being a “self-help” book and into a more complex story with various character motivations.
Mimimi is the “star” of the volume, and rightly so. She provides an interesting “Player 3” to the story, as her natural friendliness makes it easy for her to get along with Tomozaki, while also having her own history with Hinami and her own perspective towards competition. There’s a nice line of character development for her going through this volume, and I like how it’s neither Tomozaki or Hinami who ultimately helps her with her biggest insecurities; that would be “too easy” for either of them.
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Overall, I really like how this series has been incorporating more of its side characters. Even the guys have a good presence here. I’m definitely looking forward to what role these other characters play in the story.
3. One of the themes of this volume is “losing”, and how different people feel about not being “first place”. What are your personal thoughts on how we should approach competition, particularly when we lose?
Jeskai Angel: I think we all take some competitions more seriously than others. The novel shows this with Hinami and Mimimi’s middle school teammates. Those girls just weren’t invested in basketball in the way that Hinami and MImimi were. That doesn’t necessarily mean those girls were all lazy losers who fail at everything in life because they never put forth effort. It just means that particular kind of competition wasn’t as much of a priority to them. A big factor in how seriously we take competition is the stakes. Is there a prize we care about? Alternatively, sometimes we feel our sense of self-worth is on the line in a competition. Of course, it’s not so much the case that our value as a person is on the line, but rather than our pride is what’s at stake.
This brings us to the Bible, with all its “The last shall be first,” and “The meek shall inherit the earth” messages. A consistent theme in the scriptures is that God’s idea of “winning” is different than ours, and God will overturn human expectations about who the “winners” are. The Bible promotes humility and discourages us from seeking the glory of men. Most of the winning we can do in this life just isn’t meaningful.
Now, that said, winning is a lot more fun than losing. It’s okay to wanna be the very best, like no one ever was. But “fun” and “the meaning of my existence” are very different kinds of stakes, and I think Hinami, and Mimimi to a lesser extent, have mixed them up. Mimimi felt kind of lost in this volume; she’s not competing for fun, but neither is she an ego-driven maniac on the level of Hinami. I think Hinami’s form of competitiveness is dangerous, while Tomozaki’s is more benign. Competing because it’s fun to win is much less serious that competing because we need to affirm our pride.
TWWK: Mimimi is a good example of how sport and competition can dictate your self-worth. And not just those, but anything in which we put forth energy and show talent and excellence. Jeskai points toward scripture, which is totally unique is showing that our self-worth is in the creator and his attributes, not in our own, which when lived out most fully can both help us excel in competition while lifting us up in our failures. I think that’s such an incredible and life-giving message, because my experience with some I’ve known in athletics mirrors Mimimi’s, and my own academic studies when I was younger mirrors hers, too—when we eventually fail, for we all will (look at Hinami in gaming), do we have a foundation to help us from bottoming out? If there was is a criticism I have for this excellent volume, it’s that Mimimi recovers almost unrealistically, or at least, without us being truly privy to what it is that leads to that change in her. I don’t think it’s so easy to step back up when you have such a reaction as hers to failure.
stardf29: Given how prevalent “competition” is in the world, there’s clearly something about wanting to beat others at something that is a part of human nature. One could argue it’s not inherently a bad thing, either, as there are plenty of stories where healthy competition encourages two people to both improve. This seems to be behind Tomozaki’s approach to games; he’s mainly focused on mastering the game he plays, and losing means he has more to learn and master. His statement that he mainly doesn’t want to lose to himself is a great statement: when he loses, it’s less about losing to the opponent and more about the realization that there’s still more to be done to master the game. This pursuit of getting better is the healthy side of competition, and if God designed us to seek competition as part of our nature, it would be for this reason.
Unfortunately, competition also has its ugly sides. With Mimimi, we see something more just misguided: the belief that she won’t mean anything unless she is in first place. It’s definitely an unhealthy attitude to have, but thankfully Tama snaps her out of it by making sure she knows she means something to her no matter what. It’s the kind of attitude that can easily come about if one grows up in an environment without unconditional love, and likewise one which God’s unconditional love can help a lot with.
And then with Hinami, we don’t know yet why exactly she’s so fixated on “winning”. Maybe she just likes the feeling of having asserted dominance over other people. That’s definitely a common source of unhealthy competition. She might also feel something similar to Mimimi, where she feels like her self-worth is based on successful competition. Whatever the case, it definitely seems like she’s unhealthily obsessed with winning.
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4. Were there any particular bits of advice on life that you liked from this volume?
TWWK: The bit of advice that Aoi had given Mimimi when she wanted to help Tama become integrated in their class was simple but I think helpful in many real-life situations, too—it basically was to talk to her a little each day. I’ve been in Tama’s shoes before, and thanks to friendly and extroverted classmates, have been integrated better into classes and developed good friendships, something that was far from guaranteed due to my shy nature and the frequency with which I transferred between schools as a military brat. I’ve always been grateful for the Mimimi’s in my life, though thankfully, none have been so, uh, intimate with me.
5. If you watched the anime, what do you think about how the anime adapted this volume?
Jeskai Angel: I don’t recall any glaring oddities with the anime. As with many other anime adaptations of first-person-narrated light novels, the biggest difference is the lack of the protagonist’s inner monologue. This a journey-before-destination story. What Tomozaki ultimately says or does is less important that the thought process he uses to get there, and the anime just can’t convey that with the kind of depth we get in the book. More specifically, I think Tomozaki’s comments on the other characters are especially noteworthy. His impressions can reveal things (about himself, and about the other characters) that are much less obvious without that first-person narration.
TWWK: I mentioned it earlier, but what’s most obvious to me is the difference in Tomozaki’s. No, they’re not really developed differently, but the anime is heavily focused on “what we see,” the outsider’s view of Tomozaki, which is appropriately awkward and especially voiced as such. The light novel is almost the opposite, as we mostly experience his inner voice which is witty, humorous, and just as engaging (and usually more so) than that of the people he’s trying to emulate. It’s a nice contrast, actually—I enjoyed this source material more than the anime episodes, but appreciate the anime a bit more now as well, now that I can see a fuller picture of this character.
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Christina Kelly, who voices Mimimi in the English dub, chatted with us about the character among others she’s voice.
stardf29: I like the point about the anime allowing us to see Tomozaki more from an outsider’s perspective. I’ve heard others make comments about how “cringe” Tomozaki sounds when they actually got to hear him with proper voice acting, and usage of somewhat-overused buzzwords aside, I think it’s a good reflection of how the anime makes it clear how socially awkward Tomozaki really is, which helps me appreciate his growth more. I do still prefer all the internal monologue we get with Tomozaki in the light novels, but I do like this part of the anime, at least.
Also, while not technically part of this volume, I should say, the anime really went out of its way with the portrayal of Atafami, with a whole bunch of characters designed for the anime that don’t even appear in the story. I like it when animators go just that extra little bit further for these adaptations.
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If you read through our discussion, I hope you liked it! As a reminder, our next Light Novel Club discussion is on The Faraway Paladin, Vol. 1! The discussion starts on June 25th, and will run through much of July, so there’s still plenty of time to read it and join our discussion!
The following light novel is none other than Tearmoon Empire, Vol. 4! Tearmoon Empire is basically the flagship light novel of the Light Novel Club at this point, and there’s a pretty good chance we will be discussing every volume of this series, so if you haven’t yet, why not start catching up with this series so you can join our discussion? You have a little bit of extra time, too, as our discussion will start on August 1st. Also, starting from this point, all Light Novel Club discussions will start on the 1st of the month, which should make it easy to know when these discussions start.
And why not reveal yet another light novel we will be discussing? After all, on September 1st, we will be discussing one of the most iconic and popular light novel series as we finally discuss Sword Art Online! …or rather, we will be discussing Sword Art Online: Progressive, Vol. 1! This is a re-take on the story starting from the Aincrad arc, going into more detail and overall considered an improved version of the story, so this is definitely going to be a great discussion for SAO fans.
If you are interested in discussing any of these series with us, join the Beneath the Tangles Discord and look for the Light Novel Club section. Happy reading!
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daredevile · 4 years
Text
BOOK RECS!
Well, I read a bunch of books during the quarantine and most of them were great! So, if you're looking for something within these genres - mystery/thriller, sci-fi, romance and horror - I got your back :) Also, my favourite genres are mystery/thriller and sci-fi which is why those lists are huge. Everything is linked to Goodreads, go check out the blurbs but, watch out for those reviews with spoilers!! 
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THE SILENT PATIENT - Love, love, love this book - second favourite of all time! Seemingly innocent woman randomly shoots her husband in the face and never speaks again. And we primarily follow a criminal psychotherapist's perspective as he uncovers details about the why, the how and much, much more. If you're into human psychology and are a mystery/thriller aficionado in general, READ THIS BOOK. Also, has one of the best plot twists ever!
THE TURN OF THE KEY - The story follows a very unfortunate and young nanny who ends up being accused of murdering a child in her care. No parents in the obscenely technology-controlled house that malfunctions all of a sudden. Ah, the horrors of digitalisation. And she's neither innocent nor guilty. The atmosphere created by the author is truly remarkable and you cannot stop reading. I'm warning you. Prepare to be absorbed for a few hours because this is one chair-gripping story.
THE ONE - We're getting into the Black Mirror zone here. DNA tests that pair people with their genetically matched soulmates. What could possibly go wrong? Hint: one of the characters is a murderer - don't worry that's not a spoiler! Everyone has their secrets and issues and have to navigate through a complicated mess that morphs into a different problem for each character. Have they found The One?
GONE GIRL - Do I even need to explain?
EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS - We got a killer who replicates murders from fictional books and the FBI enlist the help of a bookstore owner to solve the case. Quite entertaining and major book-nerd vibes from this one. Not gonna lie, this started phenomenally but fell a little short with the ending. Still worth the read though! Also, it spoils a few classic, well-known books [ listed on Goodreads ], if you're planning to read any of those, I'd advise you to finish them before starting this one.
THE KIND WORTH KILLING - I'd say this's the better Peter Swanson novel out of these two. Quite Gone Girl-esque in nature but equally well-written and amazing! It's a type of story that makes you question humans and our moral code. Think intense Tom and Jerry with 200% more stress, nail-biting moments and of course, murders.
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE - A classic whodunit. Who doesn't love those? Group of people trapped in a remote island and one by one they drop dead in mysterious ways. Everyone seems like the killer, but who is actually behind these murders? Edge-of-the-seat feels with this one! And as the group becomes smaller and smaller, the criminal gets closer and closer till there are none.
LONG BRIGHT RIVER - This one delves into quite sensitive themes and topics such as addiction, struggles with withdrawal and ultimately, the devastation caused by it all. The relationship between the two sisters is portrayed with powerful emotional language and it's truly heartbreaking. Tension arises when one sister goes missing the same time when murders occur in the area. Not an easy read by any means but an exceptional story indeed.
NO EXIT - Four strangers stranded at a secluded highway rest stop and one of them has kidnapped a little girl and locked her in the van. And our main character has no means of communicating with anyone but has to figure out how to save the child from the psychopath. This has thriller written all over it! My stress levels were through the roof but, the action and the twists just blew my mind! Love this book!
LOCK EVERY DOOR - Creepy high-end hotel. Check. Disappearing people. Check. Dark secrets. Check, check, check! Again, another author who perfectly conjured a ghostly ambience as the plot thickens and the main character is so close to the killer. I'll be honest, I was scared at some parts. But it was a good kinda scared, you know. 100% will read again!
DARLING ROSE GOLD - Sounds like a cute story right? Don't be fooled by the title. This twisted mother-daughter story evokes an unsettling feeling as we follow both the daughter, who became overwhelmingly ill due to malnutrition and her abusive mother, who recently got released from prison. I found the narrative style to be very unique as they're both unlikable characters with hidden motives beneath their now-tolerant attitudes to each other. In other words: this book is CRAZY AND GOOD!
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DARK MATTER - This is my favourite book. Ever. Written by one of my favourite authors. Ever. It's the perfect blend of a seemingly confusing narrative, a true mind-fuck, thought-provoking themes, slightly disturbing yet very much stress-inducing plot progression - in short: I love it!
SCYTHE - The premise caught my attention and it didn't disappoint at all! This universe is remarkably built through Shusterman's compelling imagery and mystery revolving around a Scythe's morals, ethics and concerns with their profession as they have to randomly kill people due to overpopulation. And good news, this is a series!
THE PASSENGERS - Listen, if you like Black Mirror-y stories, then you're gonna love this one! It's set in a world that's transitioning from manual to autonomous vehicles where eight driverless cars are hacked and programmed to collide in one location at a specific time! Initially, keeping up with so many POVs was challenging, but, it's completely worth it and possibly one of the most stressful books I've read in a while. John Marrs just understands writing.
THE TEST - This one's a short story - a hundred pages or so, yet thoroughly entertaining and has an intriguing plotline. Again, kinda gives Black Mirror vibes and jumps straight into the action. It's also severely messed up and horrible to think about. Dives into human behaviour and psychology in terrible this or that scenarios. Definitely one of my favourites! Are you sensing a pattern?
WE ARE THE ANTS - Alien abduction? The world in danger? And the fate of it rests upon a hesitant teenage boy's shoulders? Caught my attention. The plot is quite touching, emotionally-driven and weaves through several heavy issues such as depression, suicide, bullying and marginalisation, however, lightens up around wholesome themes like love, family and friendship. Great story and also, the book cover is pretty cool!
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RED, WHITE AND ROYAL BLUE - Yet another book that needs no introduction. Just read it fam. No regrets!
THE UNHONEYMOONERS - Looking for the fluffiest of fluff story ever? Here ya go! Christina Lauren has nailed the romance genre and this one's nothing short of spectacular. Humour, wit and banter are smoothly intertwined into both main characters who hate each other with a passion... for a little while. Also features the classic and unsurprisingly entertaining hate to love trope!
THE HATING GAME - Can't seem to get enough of this enemies to lovers trope! Hilarious writing paired with two lovable characters - definitely a mood-booster. Just the mere chemistry between the characters as you experience their both funny and tender moments is *chef's kiss*.
THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END - Another favourite! A tear-jerker that's incredibly raw and thought-provoking. It explores the connection between two strangers spending their End Day with meaningful conversations, dealing with love and loss and going on that one last adventure before - well, you know how it ends.
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PET SEMATARY - If you're into severely disturbing and horrific imagery spiralling through your mind - okay, why would you do that to yourself? Major theme of death described in a terrifying and a very Stephen King manner. Personally, I found the writing to be a little boring but still eerie, however, my friends and a lot of other readers love this book! To each their own, I guess?
THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD - Two words. Home invasion. This book made me question all the fundamental things in life and the writing speaks volumes! Filled with subtle symbolism and allusions to real societies and how they operate under crises. Possible heartbeat escalation, intense moments laced with undertones of sadness for the family. Gets straight into the action and it's utterly overwhelming. I don't read much horror but this is probably one of the best [ though some have contradicting opinions ]!
I spent a lot of time making this, so reblogs are very much appreciated! Hope you found something interesting :D
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llucy-san · 4 years
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OC Mannerisms
tagged by my lovely friends @risenlucifer @faithchel​ thank you beauties, ❤️❤️ and maybe somebody else but tumblr won't show it to me. 🤷‍♀️
@ja-crispea @nightwingshero @dieguzguz @pd3 @v3ryvelvet @fromathelastoveritaserum @chazz-anova @chyrstis @tommymillers @tomexraider @smithandrogers @f0xyboxes @fadedjacket @deathvalleyqueen @lobanhart @goodboiboomer-fc5 @geronimo-11 @gracethornwood @xbaebsae sorry for double tagg, no obligation just have fun with your own unique characters. 😘❤️
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Hayley Moore
how the smile
~ gentle smile at the corners of her lips
~ infections laughter
~ endless giggling after few drink at the gathering where she can relax and be herself
what their "tells" is for lying
~ Hayley is not good to be two-faced, and especially in front of her loved ones because they know her body language and they know that something is wrong
~ lack of eye contact, she usually look at anything else in the room but at the person. She is trying to find the best possible connection to her story just to make it sound as good as possible.
posture
~ she cares about her figure because her character and style of dress reflects her name and career
~ the most common is white blouses with black pencil skirts and heels but if she doesn't have to dress properly she likes to wear comfortable clothes such as shirts, hoodies
~ hair down or in bun
standing: shoulders back, chest pushed forward, head high, hands usually locked behind her back or in front while she's holding another one of her documents for her cases
sitting: back pressed against couch while reading or watching a good movie or book and eating something good
~ cuddling with her husband late in the evenings, these are the moments she values the most because only then are they truly alone and no one disturbs them
volume of speech, if they're verbal
~ as the southern girl, she speaks feverishly and melodiously with slight accent (french is her mother language)
~ raises her voice only when she is hurt and agitated, speaks really fast, breathing quicken and very often slipping into her southern new orleans accent
~ soflty whisper only in the morning when she finds herself day after day in the arms of her husband who does not want to let her go. "No, it's too early, sweetpie, stay or I'll make you and you know I'll. Choice is yours."
nervous tics
~ turning off and turning on pen against desk, tapping with her nails against any surface
~ pacing back and forth
~ running her nails through her hair
~ spinning her wedding ring
how much eye contact do they make
~ always makes eye contact, the only time she breaks it is when she's lying or flirts or tease
in group conversation, how close do they stand to others? Are they off to the side just listening and occasionally speaking or are they right next to people?
~ Hayley does not cross the personal space, but the time with her husband taught her a thing or two
~ she gently place her hand on their shoulder and lean closer (depending on the relationship)
when standing, what do they do with their hands? talk with their hands, cross their arms, put hands in pockets, prop up against the wall, etc
~ in morning, it's most common cup of black coffee
~ gestures with her hands while talking
~ see postures
the sound of their footsteps
~ if she's in her converse she is pretty silent, long and steady strides
~ if she's in her heels, her arrival is perceptible, she moves with elegance and ease
nonverbal greetings: do they wave, nod, hug, glare, punch, high five, something else?
~ most often address verbally
~ her husband with gentle kiss on cheek or the lips, which John almost always will go after her to show her his own affections
~ Jacob’s like her older brother she never had, and she likes to joke with him. The have very close relationship (brother and sister relationship)
how do they get other's attention? raise hand, clear throat, etc
~ she doesn't need to get other's attention because she always gets it with her charm
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Hope Lansdowne
how the smile
~ soflty with the dimples in her cheeks, she smiles when she relaxed for a bit and doesn't have to deal with the problems that await her every day
~ loud and infections laughter with head tilted back and holding her abdomen (most often due to Sharky or Hurk)
what their "tells" is for lying
~ she is very good at fooling people, even the best who try to release even the slightest secret from her will fail. Hope can look in the eye of the person she's talking to and lie, tell him the exact opposite
~ however, her closest friends know her very well and know how her body language. They know when she is trying to hide something from them. Her brother is the one who can read her the most, and vice versa.
posture
~ general: physically in the best condition. Even though she is not tall, she can easily deal with a man a head taller than herself and put him on the ground. Training and the military taught her how to survive in the worst situations. Hair usually wears in ponytail or bun and she only wears pants and t-shirts because she despises to dressing up like a lady in a dress
standing: shoulders pushed back, head titled aside or held high, hands most often hovering over her knife or loosely folded behind her back
sitting: leaning against the couch or loveseat and sitting on her feet and enjoying the good company of her friends and family
~ legs crossed in Indian style and bent over the work that usually takes all her attention.
volume of speech, if they're verbal
~ gentle voice, light with a bit of an accent
~ raises her voice when she is angry and lets herself be carried away by her temperament and heat. Her eyes are sharply pierced in the eyes of the person she's arguing with, breathing hard and says everything she was bottling inside all this time, the things she'd rather not say
nervous tics
~ stomping her with her feet impatiently
~ biting her lips or the inside of her cheeks
~ unable to sit still, she has to do something to occupy herself
how much eye contact do they make
~ always makes eye contact. It depends mainly in what situation she finds herself, whether she threatenes and plays with fire while standing close to her enemy or when she flirts and then comes the moment when she breaks her eye contact
in group conversation, how close do they stand to others? Are they off to the side just listening and occasionally speaking or are they right next to people?
~ she has her own style
~ Hope most often breaks the rules and crosses the boundaries of personal space to show intimacy (lover) or intimidation - laying a hand on shoulder or arm, face - draw the line of jaw this is the time when she breaks eye contact to follow her finger with her eyes
~ but when she starts a very interesting conversation, she prefers to stay in the background and listen to everything they talk about and consider what she could use to her advantage
when standing, what do they do with their hands? talk with their hands, cross their arms, put hands in pockets, prop up against the wall, etc
~ arms crossed her chest while leaning on against wall or tree or playing with a knife while making small gestures
the sound of their footsteps
~ as a soldier, she was taught to walk silently and easily so no one would notice her. She doesn't like to wear heel because a) she doesn't know how to walk in that things, and b) she prefers to wear converse or her combat boots in which she feels most comfortable
~ her steps are long and brisk when she wants them to be and moves with ease
nonverbal greetings: do they wave, nod, hug, glare, punch, high five, something else?
~ it depends on who the person is and what bond she has with them. She most often welcomes friends with open arms, enemies with a knife at their necks and lovers in her own way
how do they get other's attention? raise hand, clear throat, etc
~ she doesn't like to be centrum of attention, but when she needs to, she speaks out loud and almost every time with a sarcastic undertone, such as when she came to Jacob’s office when Alexis ( one of his judge trainer) was occupying his office and Hope came in.
"I saw the door open and, oh, and I though I would see a half naked judge trainer, seems I gambled and lost."
"Few minutes ago I was fully naked."
"Ou, then you've served your purpose! Don't let me hold you up!"
They don't like each other very much
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ruiraiox · 3 years
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during my long career in music, I never met Robert Craft, who died last November at age 92—yet he played no small role in shaping my musical consciousness. As a conductor, Craft recorded the craggiest works of the 20th century, including almost the entire oeuvres of Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Edgard Varèse. As a writer and public intellectual, he weighed in trenchantly not just on musical issues, but on literature, film, and painting as well.
To this résumé must be added the vocation of alter ego, because from 1948 to 1971, Craft was inseparable from the music and household of Igor Stravinsky. The exact workings of their partnership, however, remain a matter of controversy. Not exactly an amanuensis, Craft was a constant companion, artistic consultant, coauthor, coconductor, ghostwriter (for both the composer and his wife), and, after Stravinsky’s death, keeper of the flame. To some extent, he was also a cocomposer, or so he claimed. As early as 1952, he persuaded Stravinsky to rescore a movement of his Cantata—no small matter, considering that Stravinsky is generally considered one of the greatest masters of orchestration. The Cantata also marked Stravinsky’s first move in the direction of serial composition, a change for which Craft took full credit.
Perhaps because we have fetishized the idea of genius, it is hard to picture the exact workings of conjoined creativity, even though the Craft-Stravinsky partnership was not unique. When an interviewer asked Billy Strayhorn to describe his similarly contested collaboration with Duke Ellington, Strayhorn pondered the question, repeated it, then replied, half-ironically, with another: “What would you say I do?” By contrast, Craft responded to questions about his connection to Stravinsky with a mountain of books that extended their collaboration semi-posthumously for another 44 years, and are replete with variously restated accounts of their working and personal relationships that will require an army of musicologists to sort out, parse, and verify.
Here’s a small sample of the challenge. In Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship, published in 1994, Craft rejected the usual notion that he was Stravinsky’s Boswell, arguing instead for a much grander partnership in the spirit of the journal-keeping Goncourt brothers: “I would lean over his shoulder as he wrote, each of us acting as the other’s intercessory.” Craft similarly claimed in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life (1992) that the series of conversations between him and the composer, which began to appear in book form in 1958, were “the only published writings attributed to Stravinsky that were largely by him.” Yet Craft also stated in Glimpses that Stravinsky’s English wasn’t fluent enough for a sustained dialogue—an astounding admission, because the Conversation volumes present the composer as a contemporary Dr. Johnson with a masterful command of English, an Oxbridge don’s breadth of cultural reference, and a curmudgeon’s zero tolerance for fools, critics, and most other conductors. In short, “largely by him” was a fiction; the actual words were Craft’s. If you read the articles, letters to the editor, and testy rejoinders that Craft wrote for The New York Review of Books long after Stravinsky died, you’ll find that their style is indistinguishable from the distinctive, combative one that Craft says was entirely Stravinsky’s own.
Craft made similar claims about the Goncourt effect in Stravinsky’s work as a composer, especially when Craft nudged him toward the 12-tone technique of his erstwhile nemesis, Arnold Schoenberg. This unexpected, late-life stylistic conversion puzzled and alienated many of Stravinsky’s old friends and acolytes; but it brought triumph with the score for the ballet Agon, completed in 1957 when Stravinsky was 75 (and Craft, 34). The youthfully inventive score sprang from a performance, conducted by Craft and attended by Stravinsky, of Schoenberg’s Serenade, Op. 24, in 1952. The confrontation with music that Stravinsky had assumed, in ignorance, to be inimical to his own was one lesson in a larger re-education program that the young conductor systematically laid out for his apparent mentor. Stravinsky, who often based his compositions on other people’s music, now seemed eager to absorb all the music, from Gesualdo and Schütz to Varèse and Stockhausen, that Craft placed in his path.
For me, Craft’s relationship with Stravinsky is reminiscent less of the collaboration between the Goncourt brothers than the relationship between Charles Kinbote and the imaginary poet John Shade in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. In his annotations of Shade’s poem “Pale Fire,” Kinbote is a collaborator and fabricator every bit as detail-obsessed and boundary-resistant as Craft. Kinbote’s annotations devour Shade’s poem, making it impossible to decide which of the two imaginary authors is, fictionally speaking, real. The analogy with Kinbote turns sinister when applied to Craft’s role in Stravinsky’s actual life. “Cher père, Chère Véra,” the central chapter of Glimpses of a Life, documents the long legal battle with Stravinsky’s children over the composer’s estate, a dispute in which Craft, allied with Stravinsky’s childless second wife Vera, was (to say the least) an interested party. The reader plowing through this heap of dirty laundry with guilty pleasure can only wonder whether the letters, testimonies, and documents presented, summarized, paraphrased, and in many cases translated by Craft were as fictitious as Kinbote’s distant northern land of Zembla. Craft’s most extensive literary dispute was with Stephen Walsh, the British author of a mammoth Stravinsky biography, the second volume of which is largely devoted to questioning Craft’s accounts of his work with Stravinsky and his motives.
In retrospect, I count myself somewhat fortunate in having never met Craft or tangled with him in print, though I’ll admit that at times I’ve envied not just his life with Stravinsky but also the grand-hotel accommodations and high-table conversations that apparently went with it. Rather than attempting to answer the many questions raised in Craft’s books, I come, instead, to praise what may be his more important legacy: his recordings—particularly the early ones. As with the prose, the recordings will require careful accounting by future scholars. Many of those made after Stravinsky’s death were reissued and repackaged by several labels, making it hard to determine what was new and what recycled. Even more obscure is Craft’s role in the monumental Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky series, recorded for Columbia Records in the 1950s and ’60s, a period when the composer—never a great conductor—was increasingly frail, and when it was well-known that Craft would prepare rehearsals before Stravinsky mounted the podium. Because the aim of the project was to preserve the composer’s definitive intentions toward his work, and because these recordings have such a distinctive sound, the question of who was leading the band still looms large. In later years, Craft rerecorded most of Stravinsky’s music, often with tempos quite different from those heard on the earlier series. But whose mistakes was he correcting?
The recordings that had the greatest impact on me were the ones Craft made in the 1950s, in particular the complete music of Anton Webern; major works of Berg, Schoenberg, and Varèse; and hot-off-the-presses music from the European avant-garde: Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître, Stockhausen’s Zeitmasse. These recordings, most of them unprecedented, altered the dimensions of my early-adolescent musical universe. A 12-year-old’s mind (reconstructed at a great distance) is hardly an accurate reflection of grand cultural forces, but for what it’s worth, hearing these recordings was as important in dismantling the certainties of my childhood as would be, a few years later, my reading of Paul Goodman’s Compulsory Miseducation or watching Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
I had developed a precocious, nerdy passion for 20th-century music that began with a recording of Debussy’s La Mer that I heard when I was 5, and was affirmed a few years later when I encountered Copland’s Billy the Kid; but much of the “new” music that came my way (via high-school band or WQXR) in the period sounded old, even to me. A lot of it was stodgy Americana written in a narrow stylistic range from Howard Hanson on the right to Paul Hindemith on the left. In retrospect, I see that I grew up at a time when the Popular Front idiom of the 1930s had become the official music of the Eisenhower years. Some of the most successful—and even most politically potent—examples of the style arrived a decade or two after the Great Depression. Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, and Broadway musicals like The Pajama Game, The Most Happy Fella, and even West Side Story were all, in their way, belated flowerings of an older leftist sensibility, transplanted to and repurposed in an alien environment. I can now also see how, perhaps under the pressures of McCarthyism, many of these works repackaged political issues as psychological ones. But at the time, they just seemed like the music of my parents’ generation, comfortable (if you were growing up in a New York liberal household) and somehow stale.
While most of my generation would find its own musical vitality in rock and roll or the folk revival, I got my kicks, thanks to Robert Craft, from atonal expressionism. Even though the recording seems to have vanished without a trace, I still recall the jolts of the opening bars from his recording of Schoenberg’s Septet, Op. 29, which Craft conducted with a combination of Viennese Schmäh and un-Viennese honky-tonk aggression. Suddenly, I felt that I’d left the sodden orthodoxies of my Rodgers and Hammerstein childhood far behind. I found a similar electrical charge in Craft’s recordings of Schoenberg’s Serenade, Op. 24, and his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31. These two pieces reminded me of Stravinsky’s Agon, which had become my favorite piece of music as soon as the recording appeared in 1957; I didn’t know at the time that Stravinsky had studied both scores when he composed his ballets, or that the recordings of the Schoenberg pieces were made at the same studio sessions that had produced Agon. All of these LPs shared a dry acoustic and a punchy, unpolished aggressiveness that made the music sound new—even though the Schoenberg pieces were over 30 years old. Some of the most exciting music that Craft recorded, however, was even older: Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra from 1909, or Berg’s Altenberg Lieder from 1912, or just about any piece on the pathbreaking account of the complete Webern.
When I began college a few years later, I learned that Craft’s revelatory recordings of the Second Viennese School were part of a larger reassessment of 20th-century music that had begun in Paris in the late 1940s. Both in Europe and America, educated opinion now believed that Schoenberg, not Stravinsky, was the central figure of modern music; the academic consensus, moreover, was that Schoenberg’s discoveries were just the dawn of a new era, the beginning of an international idiom that would replace the older harmonic language. To his credit, I don’t think Craft, despite all the hyperbole he mustered to promote this repertory, ever fostered these simplistic notions, which reduced a half-century of music to a narrow one-way street; for example, unlike many of the Europeans, Craft didn’t disconnect the “progressive” works of his favorite composers from their “regressive” neoclassical works. For him, these works not only foreshadowed a golden age to come; they created their own golden age, imperishable gems somehow embedded in the rubble of dark times.
How do these recordings—many of them easy to find on YouTube—hold up? Does it matter? Most of the works Craft recorded in the 1950s had almost no prior performance history; Craft, moreover, usually worked with pickup groups (often the top musicians of Hollywood or New York) instead of established orchestras. Knowing all this now, I’ve gone back to the old recordings expecting the worst, and in general have been pleasantly surprised to find that the thrill is still there, even when I find another recording that I prefer. Despite years as a conductor, Craft was notoriously primitive in his technique; I’ve seen some of New York’s finest instrumentalists (all of whom told me how much they liked working with him) mimic his caveman-like downbeats; and yet the recordings convey a love for the music that rises far above accuracy. Craft rarely talked about the emotional content of the music: You would hardly glean from his liner notes that Webern was a devout Catholic, for example. And yet his performances—more, I would say, than those of Boulez—often reveal the expressive essence of the music, whether it is the unaccountably joyful sound of Webern’s Concerto, Op. 24 (composed in Austria in 1934), or the more understandable horror of Schoenberg’s 1909 Premonitions.
As an explorer of unplayed or underplayed repertory, Craft set a high bar for future performers. He was one of the first champions of Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene, Op. 34—orchestral music for an imaginary film that premiered in Berlin in 1930, on the brink of a disaster palpably foretold in the music. It is one of Schoenberg’s greatest works, and like other great works of music, its full impact only appears as the fruit of multiple interpretations. On Craft’s first recording, from 1960, you feel like you’re trapped in a dark movie palace with Dr. Caligari. A more recent recording of the piece by Hans Zender and the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra suggests that the imaginary horror movie was the 20th century itself, as well as the beginning of the 21st). Without Craft’s exploratory and explanatory work, much of the most important music of the last 100 years would have been dismissed as difficult and inaccessible when, in fact, it was beautiful and true. For this we owe Craft, as irascible as he seems to have been, much thanks.
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