#and janusz interprets him

[not-poignant]

I'm currently reading FFS while waiting for UtR updates, and the difference between Nate in both series is such whiplash 😭😭

Yeah it's pretty intense.

I mean the main thing is... we just never see Nate properly at all in FFS. Not once. We only see him around someone he doesn't like, at a point in his life when he's already healed from most of his issues, and we never really learn anything much about him. And that was intentional, in a way, Nate and Efnisien butt heads so much because they remind each other of the things they like least in themselves.

But we never see Nate's PTSD, we never see Christian's abuse of him, we never see Nate being insecure with Janusz like he is in Underline the Blue. In that way, we kind of never get to violate Nate's privacy in FFS. He gets to maintain his own walls, his own autonomy, his own sense of self.

They're actually, to me, basically the same. Like some characters I write across AUs are very very different "people" to me (FFS Efnisien vs. canon Efnisien being the main one).

But Nate in both UtBlue and FFS for me is the same. You've just never seen Nate in UtBlue healed, with autonomy, believing he has a right to his own privacy, talking with someone he doesn't like very much. Just like we never see Nate in FFS broken, post-abuse, without autonomy, believing he has no right to his own privacy.

But we see a lot of the glimmers of it. From Nate's scathing self-talk, his constant judgement of Janusz which reads very similarly to how Nate judges Efnisien out loud, to his disdain for a lot of broken systems in the world, and his ability to switch off from things he often doesn't care for. All those things are there, they're all happening in his inner thoughts in Underline the Blue, and if/when - one day - we blow away the worst of his self-hatred, what will be left is the Nate from FFS, just you know, from his perspective, instead of the perspective of someone who doesn't like him.

[milk-is-stable]

Response to @nickythehickey ‘s tags (not gonna paste them cuz then this will take too much space on ppls dashes but you can go back in the chain to read) :

(also no need to apologize for a long comment! I love it actually, it means you’re engaging with the work, and that means the world to me <3)

I do totally get where you’re coming from, it’s A) unfair for all the kids in the games, cuz you know, it’s the *hunger games*, and B) specifically unfair how much Alexa suffered at the hands of the simulator (what did she do to the universe I stg), but this is how I intended/interpreted her final words:

It’s a bit of a mirror to what Peeta says to Katniss before the games begin, that he wants to prove to the Capitol that they don’t own him, and that if he dies, he wants to still be himself, not whatever they force him to be. He still knows he’ll fight back to save himself (and Katniss), because that’s who he is, but that’s not who *Alexa* is. She canonically in her backstory has had people try to use her as a weapon, and she refused them. When she’s hesitating over the assassination in BotB (which I rewatched yesterday), Luke/Janusz tried to suggest killing Dimitri instead of the Kizer, but Alexa doesn’t kill him either, insisting she doesn’t want to hurt ANYone. So for her, staying true to herself and not playing the Capitol’s games means not hurting anybody in the arena, even if that ends up getting her killed. While technically simply *existing* in the arena means you’re being used by the Capitol, what’s important to her (and to me) is that she didn’t let herself be used the way that a gamemaker would have *wanted* to use her.

From a meta perspective, I also kept ending up putting her in emotional/thematic situations because simulator wise, she doesn’t actually do that much? She *watches* several characters die, but never takes any big story actions herself. I was trying to compensate for that with emotional action (same for characters like Julian and Johnny) but I do think I overcompensated a bit and ended up with less emphasis on the emotions of characters like Robin, Caesar, and Inga, meaning the story ended up focusing on characters who ultimately were doomed to not affect things as much. Things to think about for next time! (because as I said in another post, I would like there to be a next time…there are a lot of other sfth characters we could Put in a Situation, after all)

And all that being said, I’m actually planning a little oneshot tie-in scene for Alexa that’s from an internal perspective, not the Capitol TV perspective, and I’m hoping that will be much more cathartic than this ended up being, so you can at least look forward to that!

The Shoot From the Hip Hunger Games: Day/Night 5

Masterpost (<-START HERE! the posts are best read in order)

Content Warning: descriptions of violence, blood/injury, major character death

The sun rises on the fifth day of the Hunger Games, and the first pale tendrils of dawn have barely appeared in the sky as the camera zooms in on Julian, Inga, and Michael's campsite. Johnny's face is creased in a frown and he tosses and turns in his sleep, muttering to himself. Suddenly he cries out and his eyes fly open. He reaches out with his right hand, but stops when it finds only dirt and leaves.

"Wha–" Michael sits up, his face stretching with a long yawn. "What's happening?"

"Sorry," Johnny says, sitting up and wrapping his arms around himself. "I was just dreaming."

"Really?" Inga asks blearily, cracking one eyelid open. "Was it a future dream?"

"I do have normal dreams sometimes, you know," Johnny says.

"What'd you dream about?" asks Michael. "Whatever it was, it sounded bad."

"I...it was the kid from District 10," Johnny finally admits. "He was raiding our camp, and he was about to shoot Inga when I woke up."

"Sounds like our next target then," Inga says with a yawn. "But I need at least another hour of sleep before I can think of any plans."

"That's fine," Michael says. "I think I'll get up and check some of the rabbit traps I set around the woods. Johnny, you good?"

"I'm fine. I'll go back to sleep," Johnny says.

Michael nods, picks up one of their tree branch spears, and inches his way back across the bridge over their trench. The camera lingers on Johnny, who watches Michael as he disappears into the trees...then when the other boy is gone, his gaze drifts and lands on Inga's sleeping form.

The camera zooms in closer to her, then cuts to a similar extreme close-up of Alexa, who's asleep with her head leaning on Benjamin's shoulder. Peter is awake, watching the sunrise through the trees, so he spots the sponsor parachute as soon as it descends into view. He reaches and shakes the other two awake, pointing as the mystery gift drops to the forest floor below them. The three of them clamber down the tree, and Peter opens the package to reveal a light compound bow and a quiver of wickedly sharp arrows.

"Well, at least now we have something to use against that mutt," Benjamin says. "Do you know how to fire that?"

Peter shrugs.

"It can't be that hard, can it? Just pull back the string, point, and let go?"

"It's better than nothing, I suppose," Benjamin says.

Alexa opens her mouth, but before she can speak, her stomach growls audibly and she winces.

"It would probably be good to try and get some food today," Benjamin says. "We didn't eat much yesterday."

Peter looks between the two of them for a moment, then nods.

"I know a place we can go to get enough food for all three of us," he says, strapping the quiver to his back. "Follow me."

He heads off into the woods, and after a moment, Benjamin and Alexa follow him.

The camera cuts to show Chip walking on his own, eating a handful of berries as he goes. A rustling noise in the woods catches his attention and he stops, looking around cautiously as his hand drifts towards the knife sheathed on his belt.

Suddenly, there's a snarling sound, followed by the high pitched keen of a small animal dying. Chip's face goes pale, and he turns and hurries away in the other direction, glancing behind him every so often to make sure there's nothing following him.

The camera cuts to a close up shot of Michael, who is walking back towards his campsite and carrying two dead rabbits by their hind legs. The shot zooms out and swings around to the back of his head, so that the viewer sees what he sees at the same moment he does: Johnny standing at the campsite, one of the sharpened branches held in both hands. He's looking down at something on the ground, then he squeezes his eyes shut and lifts the branch up over his head and drives the point straight down.

The camera cuts to Inga's face as her eyes fly open in shock, a gasp of pain on her lips. Johnny staggers away from her, and she stares at him in disbelief.

"Y-you..." she coughs, and her breath comes in a strangled wheeze. "But...the future..."

"Can be changed, "Johnny says quietly.

He turns and begins gathering up as much of the supplies from their camp as he can carry, pointedly not looking at Inga as the last of the life bleeds out of her. Finally, the cannon fires, and Johnny carefully makes his way over the makeshift bridge and takes off into the forest...passing the bush that Michael is hidden behind by mere feet.

The camera cuts back to Alexa, Peter, and Benjamin, who have reached the part of the arena where the forest gives way to the rocky terrain surrounding the ravine.

"We've got to find the stream, then follow it down to a cave," Peter is explaining. "Hopefully whatever the gamemakers did to the water hasn't affected the food that's growing there."

"Are you okay, Alexa?" Benjamin asks suddenly. "You've been awfully quiet today, and I know I haven't known you super long, but that doesn't seem like you."

"Ah...I suppose that's true," Alexa says, looking down and picking at her fingernails. "I do usually like to talk, to tell jokes...I guess I was just thinking."

"What about?" Peter asks, and Alexa shrugs.

"Back before the reaping...I had this little apartment in the city, just me and Janusz. It was small, and drafty, and we only had one thin blanket to sleep on and one little candle to burn and some nights all we had for dinner was a thin cabbage soup that the lady downstairs would share with us."

"That sounds awful, I'm sorry," Benjamin says, but Alexa shakes her head.

"No...no, living in that little apartment was the happiest that I have ever been. It was the first time that nobody wanted me to be something that I was not. I was just thinking...I miss that."

"I miss home too," Peter says. "I miss my room and my toys and the back garden. I even miss my dumb old PS5." He sighs, and kicks a rock ahead of them as they walk. "Mostly though, I miss my parents."

"Me too," Benjamin adds. "And Clarissa, and all the other kids my mum and dad took in after the accident.

"Maybe you'll see them again," Alexa says, and Benjamin huffs.

"But the only way for me to do that is if both of you die," he says. "And the only way that Peter gets to see his family again is if we both die."

Peter looks away at that, a troubled expression on his face.

"The fucked up thing about this game," Benjamin continues, "is that even if you refuse to play, you still lose."

Alexa shakes her head.

"No...no, I don't believe that's true. I told you that I do not care about winning, but that's not quite it. I don't care about winning the Hunger Games...I have to win the fight I am having with the people who want us to do bad things. And at least for now, I am still winning that fight."

Peter opens his mouth to speak, then he freezes, staring off into the distance.

"What?" Benjamin asks, and Peter points wordlessly.

The mutt has returned, and is slowly stalking towards them from the treeline.

"Not again," Benjamin groans.

"Nowhere to run this time," Alexa says, looking around frantically. "Could it follow us if we climbed up those rocks there?" she asks, pointing at a small formation of boulders near the edge of the ravine

"Maybe?" Peter says, though he doesn't sound very sure. "You may as well try, I'll see if I can shoot it down before it gets here."

Alexa and Benjamin hurry forward, and Alexa begins climbing up the side of the rocks as Peter fiddles with the bow and arrow for a moment. He manages to knock an arrow on the string, but it's clear that he is unsure of what he's doing. He pulls the string back as far as he can, aiming his shot towards the mutt as it approaches, but the arrow flies wide and instead of hitting the creature, it strikes Benjamin in the back of the calf just as he begins to climb.

"Aaagh!" Benjamin screams in pain, stumbling forward. "Fuck!"

"Benjamin!" Alexa screams as Benjamin slides back to the ground.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Peter exclaims, flinching violently. "Oh my god, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to–"

"Shoot it!" Benjamin shouts.

The mutt's attention is trained entirely on Benjamin now, its nostrils flaring wide as it prowls closer.

"Blood..." Peter says, his eyes widening. "It's drawn to the scent of blood!"

Benjamin looks down at his bleeding leg, then back to the beast as it draws nearer, and he takes a deep breath. Turning, he limps his way towards the edge of the ravine.

"Benjamin?" Alexa asks, and he looks up at her, his eyes wide with fear. "Benjamin, what are you doing?"

"You were right," he says, and he forces himself to smile. "What you said about winning. So I'm going to win, in the only way they'll let me."

He turns to face the mutt as it begins to run at him, and he takes a step back so that he's standing right on the cliff's edge. He looks up towards the sky, his breath coming in quick, shaky bursts.

"Mum...Dad...if you're watching...I'm sorry."

He closes his eyes, and as the mutt leaps forward to tackle him, he leans back. The creature slams into his body, then the two of them go flying down the ravine together. Benjamin's scream is drowned out by the monster's panicked howl, and once again, a cannon fires as a body lands at the bottom of the ravine.

Peter rushes to the edge and peers over, then looks back at Alexa.

"The mutt isn't moving," he says quietly. "I don't think it made it either."

Alexa doesn't speak; her face is white as a sheet and her hands are trembling at her sides.

"Listen, I'm so sorry," Peter says, taking a step towards her. "About everything. I'm sorry about Benjamin, and about your other friend, about scaring you on that first night when all I wanted was to ask if you would team up with me..." he trails off as Alexa slides down the boulder onto the ground, wincing as she lands on her weaker ankle.

She wordlessly walks right past him, heading back towards the forest. When she reaches the treeline, she pauses and looks back.

"It wasn't your fault, you know," she says quietly. "If you do win...try to remember that."

She turns and disappears into the trees, and the camera fades out on the shot of Peter standing alone at the edge of the ravine.

The screen fades in on a shot of Johnny trudging through the forest. He moves slowly due to his wound, and he is so focused on walking steadily on the ground in front of him that he almost doesn't notice Chip watching him from a berry patch until he's right on top of him.

"Shhhhh!" Chip hisses when Johnny flinches, and he puts a finger to his lips. "Listen, I'm going to be straight with you," he says in a low voice. "I think there's something in the woods. Some kind of wild animal, maybe a mutt. I've been hearing traces of it all day."

"Really?" Johnny asks, and Chip nods.

"You heard the cannons, we're on the final five now. I know alliances are probably all moot at this point. But I'd rather die on my feet fighting than be torn apart by whatever...thing is out there stalking us. I say we agree not to kill each other for one night, so that we can watch each other's backs and try and both get some sleep. Agreed?"

Johnny looks at Chip for a long moment, then slowly he nods and holds out a hand. Chip takes it, and they shake.

"Agreed."

The camera cuts to Michael, who has gathered as much food as he can from the forest surrounding his ransacked campsite. With his flint taken by Johnny, the rabbits he killed that morning are useless to him, and he's back on a diet of foraged berries and roots.

"Four more to go," he mutters to himself as he walks back towards his camp. "You just have to make it through four more. You can do that, can't you?"

He lets out a groan, and rubs a hand over his face before continuing through the woods.

For a time, the woods are silent, then a soft, eerie sound drifts towards him through the trees, and he freezes.

It's a small voice, singing softly in a different language than what's been spoken in the arena thus far.

"Bayu-bayushki-bayu, Ne lozhisya na krayu! Pridet seren'kiy volchok,I ukhvatit za bochok."

Michael quickens his pace, and finds Alexa walking a few yards ahead of him, in the same general direction as his campsite. Her arms are wrapped around herself and she's hunched over slightly as she walks, and all the while she sings.

"On ukhvatit za bochok, I potashchit vo lesok. I potashchit vo lesok Pod rakitovyy kustok."

She gets closer and closer to the campsite as she sings, and Michael is listening so intently that he almost doesn't realize where she's walking.

"Wait!" he calls out, and Alexa spins around, her song cutting off in a gasp of surprise. "Don't move," Michael says, holding out a hand in warning.

"What do you want?" she demands, her voice quivering, and Michael takes a deep breath.

"Nothing," he says carefully. "I don't want to hurt you."

Alexa laughs, and the sound is bitter and hollow.

"I don't think it matters what you want anymore, does it? It doesn't matter what either of us want."

"Look, just listen to me," Michael says, and he takes a step towards her.

She takes a step back on instinct, then her eyes widen in shock as the ground beneath her feet vanishes. She falls backwards, her arms flying out in a vain attempt to catch herself, and one of the dozens of branches that fill the pit surrounding the campsite pierces her through the back and sticks out through her chest. She makes a pained, choking noise, and Michael rushes forward.

"I'm sorry!" he cries out, raising his hands to his mouth in shock.

"I...I did it," Alexa says, her voice impossibly small. "Did you see?"

"Did I see what?" Michael asks, but she doesn't even look at him; her gaze is fixed upwards, and the reflection of the stars shines bright in her eyes

"Did you see, Janusz?" she asks. "I didn't let them use me...I won after all." She smiles, and a tear rolls down her cheek. "I'm coming after you, Janusz. Now we can finally be free..."

She lets out a shaky breath, and does not breathe in again. 

— — — 

The day ends and the Capitol anthem plays. The sky lights up with the fifth nightly ceremony honoring the fallen. The face of each tribute that died, in District order, appears in the sky. Your TV shows a brief clip of how each death occurred, though the projection in the arena doesn’t show this to the tributes.

You see Alexa fall and a spike pierce her chest, Benjamin go over the cliff with the mutt, and Johnny drive his spear into Inga's stomach.

The anthem ends, and the projection in the arena goes dim.

This concludes our broadcast for the day! Please tune in again tomorrow to see what will become of YOUR favorite tribute!

Game Summary

Deaths:

Inga was killed by Johnny

Benjamin was killed by an animal

Alexa was killed by Michael

Kill Counts:

Pinocchio: 2 (Maria, Jimmy)

Inga: 2 (Jim L, Scottish Robin)

Caesar: 2 (Juliet, Pinocchio)

Chip: 3 (Clarissa, Marty, Hugh)

Jasper: 1 (Pinocchio)

Robin: 1 (Janae)

Peter: 2 (Priscilla, Caesar)

Michael: 2 (Scottish Robin, Alexa)

Johnny: 1 (Inga)

Game Meta

MY DISAPPOINTMENT IS IMMEASURABLE AND MY DAY IS RUINED

Look. I was low(read, high)key rooting for Alexa. The whole seed, she was my favorite, the one I wanted most to win. There were other tributes I would have loved to see take it and who I was sad to see die, but I was rooting for Alexa the whole time and I almost threw the seed out when she died. But that felt like cheating, and I'm not a cheater /silly.

Shout out to everyone being like "Inga is gonna betray them isn't she" because YEAH she probably would have, had Johnny not beaten her to it. Which he only DID because he was certain that she would. That whole storyline was born of getting the incredible back to back punch of "Johnny begs Inga to kill him and she doesn't" and "Johnny stabs Inga with a tree branch" and asking the question "How would their relationship have to progress for that to make any kind of sense?" I think I like what I ended up with!

Housekeeping: Chip getting the picture as a sponsorship I put yesterday, to make it so that each tribute group got something after the interviews, and Peter's nightmares will be mentioned in tomorrow's post since I couldn't really figure out how to pace a mention of that with the last death scene.

Final four tributes now....which means why not, have another poll.

[tordenvejr]

You should watch 'blown away' on netflix!!! Its a glas blowing competition!!! And they are all so talented and creative and the way they interprete the theme is always so unique!!!! Like a lamp with a baby footprint in it or some potatoes that someone left so long in the fridge they grew roots or the pattern of the pajama of janusz's son and two of his fingers that dance on his arm to wake him up!!! And all out of glass!!! Its amazing

🤧💖💓💓💕💕💞💞 THIS IS SO SWEET and what a concept!!! YES!!! thank you!!!

[queerasfact]

Sources - Moche Sex Pots

Here is a list of sources that I used for our episode on the erotic ceramics of the Moche people of 2nd to 8th century Peru, as well as links to images of the pots we discussed. You can listen to the episode here.

It’s worth noting that if you speak Spanish, you’ll no doubt be able to find a lot more sources - I did quote from many more sources than these in the episode, but those quotes were limited to the translations which can be found in these texts. This list should at least provide a start for English speakers, and the bibliographies of these articles will include further Spanish and other language sources

Janusz Z. Wołoszyn and Katarzyna Piwowar’s “Sodomites, Siamese Twins, and Scholars: Same‐Sex Relationships in Moche Art“, in American Anthropologist, Vol. 117, No. 2 (2015), p.285-301

This is a good introduction to scholarship on the Moche sex pots over the past 100 or so years. It also has better and clearer images of the pots we discussed than I was able to find anywhere else. You can also find these on our blog under the Moche tag.

Somebody did comment on one of our posts that they were offended by the word “sodomite” in the title, so I’ll just note that Wołoszyn and Piwowar are using this word as a reference to how these pots have been interpreted by homophobic scholars, and not because they consider it appropriate in a modern context.

Michael J. Horswell’s "Toward an Andean Theory of Ritual Same‐Sex Sexuality and Third‐Gender Subjectivity” in Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America (2003), p.25–69.

This includes a very useful summary of Manuel Arboleda’s work on queer Moche pots, for those of us who don’t speak Spanish. Horswell also explores the possibilities of what the role of third-gender people in their pottery may have symbolised to the Moche people.

Mary Weismantel's “Moche Sex Pots: Reproduction and Temporality in Ancient South America” in American Anthropologist, Vol. 106, No. 3 (2004), p.495–505.

This article talks about the Moche erotic pots generally. Weismantel doesn’t focus in particular on queer themes, but does provide some interesting thoughts on why the Moche chose to depict the types of sex that they did.

Edit (2022): since we posted this, Weismantel has now written a whole book on the sex pots: Playing with this: Engaging the Moche Sex Pots. Well worth a read - check out our review if you want to know more.

Richard C. Trexler’s Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (1995).

Richard Trexler is probably my least favourite scholar when it comes to discussions of Indigenous American gender, but I include him here for the sake of completeness - for a full explanation of why I disagree with so many of Trexler’s ideas, you’ll have to listen to our podcast. If you do want to read his own words, most of his writing about the Moche can be found in his chapter “The Religious Berdache”.

Peter Mason's "Sex and Conquest: A Redundant Copula?” in Anthropos Vol. 92, No.4–6 (1997), p.577–582.

This review of Trexler’s work started a feud of several years between the two scholars. I didn’t get much new information from it, but if you want to read Trexler get dragged then here is a good place to do it.

Ramón A. Gutiérrez’s “Warfare, Homosexuality, and Gender Status among American Indian Men in the Southwest” in Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same‐Sex Sexuality in Early America (2007), p.19–31.

Gutiérrez doesn’t write specifically about the Moche in any detail, and where he does his opinions are obviously very informed by the work of Trexler. I’m including this source only for the sake of completeness.

[lindsay36ho]

The 17th ”Chopin and his Europe Festival”

The 17th Chopin and his Europe festival opens in Warsaw this Saturday and traditionally, accomplished musicians from all the world will arrive in the Polish capital: top pianists, virtuosos of all instruments, grand conductors and legendary ensembles. Following the same tradition, we will see and hear performances by winners of the Chopin Competition: both those who have enjoyed their theme for years and those whose great career is only starting.

In accordance with its title, the Festival showcases Fryderyk Chopin’s œuvre in the context of ‘his’ Europe, understood in four perspectives: Europe contemporary to him, pre-Chopin Europe, Europe after the great master’s death and, finally, the Europe of our time. For this reason, aside from works by Chopin himself, the repertoire played at the Festival also includes the music that inspired him, works by composers younger than him, and the reception of Chopin’s œuvre in music contemporary to us. Among the pianistic highlights is a night with Chopin’s both piano concertos interpreted by Nelson Goerner and Orchestre des Champs-Elysees under Philippe Herreweghe, very special chamber concerts by the winner of the Wieniawski Competition, Alena Baeva with Vadym Kholodenko, while winner of the Chopin Competition, Rafał Blechacz, will perform with violinist Bomsori Kim. Moreover, other artists invited to this year’s festival include Benjamin Gosvenor, Alexandre Tharaud, Jos van Immerseel and Isabelle Faust and such ensembles as the Belcea Quartet and Sinfonia Varsovia.

Of course, the program includes winners and laureates of past Chopin Competitions: Yulianna Avdeeva (the 2010 winner), Rafał Blechacz (the 2005 winner), Janusz Olejniczak (6th Prize, 1970), Kate Liu (3rd Prize, 2015) and Eric Lu (4th Prize, 2015).

The great musical festivity in Warsaw lasts from 14 to 31 August. Hear and see the festival here:

YouTube livestreams: Chopin and his Europe

Program:

https://festiwal.nifc.pl/en/2021/kalendarium/

from Piano Street’s Classical Piano News https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/piano-news/the-17th-chopin-and-his-europe-festival-11197/

[grandmaster-chopin]

Frédéric Chopin's four Ballades are one-movement pieces for solo piano, composed between 1835 and 1842 in various parts of France and Spain. They are some of the most challenging pieces in the standard piano repertoire.

The term "ballade" was associated with French poetry until the mid-19th century, when Chopin was among the first to pioneer the ballade as a musical form. The influence for these four Ballades is claimed to be the poet Adam Mickiewicz. The exact inspiration for each individual Ballade, however, is unclear and disputed. It is clear, however, that they are a novel innovation of Chopin's, and that the Ballades cannot be placed into another (e.g. the sonata) form. The Ballades have also directly influenced composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms who, after Chopin, wrote Ballades of their own. Besides the sharing of the title, the four ballades are distinct entities from each other. According to composer and music critic Louis Ehlert, "Each [Ballade] differs entirely from the others, and they have but one thing in common -- their romantic working out and the nobility of their motives." The four ballades are among the most enduring of Chopin's compositions, and are frequently heard in concerts today. The Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23 is the first of Frédéric Chopin's four ballades. It was composed in 1835-36 during the composer's early days in Paris and was dedicated to Monsieur le Baron de Stockhausen, Hanoverian ambassador to France, and reportedly inspired by Adam Mickiewicz's poem Konrad Wallenrod. Chopin seemed to have been fond of the piece; in a letter to Heinrich Dorn, Robert Schumann commented that, "I received a new Ballade from Chopin. It seems to be a work closest to his genius (although not the most ingenious) and I told him that I like it best of all his compositions. After quite a lengthy silence he replied with emphasis, 'I am happy to hear this since I too like it most and hold it dearest.'" The piece begins with a brief introduction which is thematically unrelated to the rest of the piece. It ends with a dissonant left hand chord D, G, and E-flat. Though Chopin's original manuscript clearly marks an E-flat as the top note, the chord has caused some degree of controversy, and thus, some versions of the work - such as the Klindworth edition - include D, G, D as an ossia. The main section of the ballade is built from two main themes. The brief introduction fades into the first theme, introduced at measure 7. After some elaboration, the second theme is introduced softly at measure 69. This theme is also elaborated on. Both themes then return in different keys, and the first theme finally returns again in the same key, albeit with an altered left hand accompaniment. A thundering chord introduces the coda, marked Presto con fuoco, which ends the piece. As a whole, the piece is structurally complex and not strictly confined to any particular form, but incorporates ideas from mainly the sonata and variation forms. Technically, many passages of the ballade require rapid scales, very fast and large chords, octaves, and difficult fingerings. A distinguishing feature of the Ballade No. 1 is its time signature. While all the other ballades are written in strict compound duple time, with a 6/8 time signature, this ballade bears deviations from this. The introduction is written in 4/4 time, and the more extensive Presto con fuoco coda is written in 2/2. The rest of the piece is written in 6/4, rather than the 6/8 which characterizes the other ballades.

This ballade is one of the more popular Chopin pieces. It is prominently featured in the 2002 Roman Polanski film The Pianist, where an approximately four-minute cut is played by Janusz Olejniczak. It is also played in the 1944 film Gaslight and heard in the 2006 satire Thank You for Smoking. Many noteworthy pianists have performed and recorded the piece, including Vladimir Horowitz, Alfred Cortot, Arthur Rubinstein, Maurizio Pollini, Krystian Zimmerman & Emil Gilels.

Main Theme of Ballade No.1

Pianist:Krystian Zimerman

One of the most interesting interpretations I've ever heard. Every note was literally singing. Bravo.

[bongoludo]

Stealing From Private Ryan

I've been thinking about 3 consecutive scenes in Saving Private Ryan. 

The first time I saw the film, I was still dazed from the beach sequence, so these scenes rather washed over me. Now I appreciate just how much set-up work they do, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. There’s a lot to learn from here. By which I mean, there’s a lot to steal.

As game writers, we have all the disadvantages of animation and live action. Our verbs are often limited, our characters often impassive or uncanny or, frankly, props and scenery. Even if we get to use mocap or full performance capture, facial animation is the most expensive and toughest thing to get right. So let’s see what we can steal in terms of the things we can control: dialogue, staging, action, composition and editing.

The scenes come early in the film, after the nightmarish opening beach assault, and The Secretary In Headquarters Makes The Connection And Tells The Powers That Be ("That boy is alive. We are going to send somebody to find him. And we are going to get him the hell out of there.")

In synopsis, they go like this:

Captain Miller reports to Colonel Anderson, and is given a new mission

Miller discusses the new mission with Company Sergeant Horvath

Miller needs an interpreter, so collects Upham from the intelligence unit

Look online for the early drafts of Robert Rodat’s screenplay and they have a lot more business. The beach is still under fire, Miller talks to more officers, Miller disputes the need for the mission, there’s lots more Talk, they steal General Gavin’s jeep. By the time they get to the shooting script, it’s all be stripped down to a clear through-line of need, action and consequence. 

Here are the scenes on YouTube; the late, great Dennis Farina as Colonel Anderson; Tom F. Hanks as Captain Miller; Tom Sizemore as Sergeant Horvath; Jeremy Davies as Corporal Upham. Watch the whole clip, then we’ll break them down.

1: Miller Reports, Gets A New Mission

Can you think of a better scene that's basically just a list?

"These 2 minefields are actually one big one. We tried to make our way up through the middle of it, but it turned into a mixed, high-density field, a little bit of everything: Sprengmine 44s, Schumine 42s, pot mines, A-200s, the little wooden bastards that the mine detectors don't pick up. This road here...they placed big mushrooms, Teller mine 43s, I guess for our tanks, from here right up to the edge of the village..."

Shop talk, professional to professional. Even if you don't know what everything means, you know what it means to the characters. 

It’s not so much the sheer scale of the production (the hundreds of extras, the trucks and half-tracks, the soldiers lounging in the sun, the German prisoners being marched off), as the attention to specific detail: the dirt on Hanks' face, the line on his forehead where his helmet was, the hot shaving water, the coffee, the sandwiches, the clean white map. Miller’s impassive face looking at the sandwiches. We fill his face with meaning.

And look at the use of rhythm and editing to make impassive faces and props eloquent. These are nearly all we have in games, we need to know how to make them do work for us. We pull into Miller at 0:25, five full seconds of him looking at...what? Hot Shaving Water. Back to Miller. Hot coffee. Sandwiches. Back to Miller, then an extraordinary line-crossing edit, almost a jump cut, to behind Miller at 0:30, a completely unbalanced, incomplete composition that pans to Anderson looming unexpectedly close over Miller, and talking unexpectedly soft after being so vinegary on the phone.

The Understatement "They just...didn't want to give up those 88s."

Miller lost in that thought, back in that minefield. Despite Miller's hands shaking back in the landing craft, he's strong, competent, expert, and at this point only slightly haunted.

”It was a tough assignment, that’s why you got it.”

 Miller gets the toughest jobs. He deserves a rest. He’s not getting one.

There's a wonderful choice (I don't know whose): 1:15 the way Farina keeps looking at Hanks' face, doesn't return to the map, already ahead of him, appraising, preparing, apologising in advance for what he's about to give him. 

One character ahead of another, studying them while they’re busy with a prop. What do they know that we don’t? One character just not looking where the other one is.

A hard thing to do with non-human actors, but I love Farina's softness when he asks about casualties. The way he blinks on "I got another one for you". And then no reply from Miller, just straight into...

2: Miller briefs Horvath, Horvath doesn’t like it

This is a great example of using exposition as argument. Nolan’s Inception is a masterclass in this, where the premise and rules of the heists-within-heists are constantly being stated, changed, and argued over. Here Spielberg does it all in one shot. So much good stuff here, all on the hoof. They’re practical, resourceful, problem-solving, hard-bitten veteran soldiers. 

Miller and Horvath aren’t just arguing about the mission, they’re building the world for us. Their debate gives us a sense of how the army normally works and the anomalous nature of the mission, the usual order of things upturned. A Captain commanding a mere squad? 

HORVATH: “Jesus Christ. They took away your company?”

MILLER: (sips from canteen while walking) “It wasn’t my company. It was the army’s. Or so they told me anyway.”

“Looking for a needle in a stack of needles” is a great line, setting up the problems in the acts ahead.

The calm organisation of the roster, after heavy casualties, it’s so rich. It’s an essay in all they’ve been through, and how little they can let it affect them.

MILLER: “We got anybody speaks French?”

HORVATH: “Not that I know of.”

(beat)

MILLER: “What about Talbot?”

HORVATH: “This morning.”

MILLER: (something between “Oh”, “Aw”, and “Ah”

All the while Miller and Horvath are walking, avoiding shellholes and extras, taking swigs from a canteen, passing it back and forth. They trust one another utterly. They’re very good at their jobs. This is not a normal mission.

 As writers, it’s tempting to do everything with words, with language. What we need to do is find emotional specificity. It’s rhythmically varied, and wonderfully natural. The pause before Miller asks about Talbot, the noise he makes hearing of his demise. I’m a sucker for vocalisations that aren’t complete sentences or even proper words, as long as they’re vivid, specific responses.

3: Miller Collects Upham

“Ah, Sir? Sir, there are Germans in Neuville.”

At first, I didn’t like how outright comically inept this scene makes Upham. OK, we get it, Upham can’t fight, but Miller needs him anyway for his language skills. Also, the first mention of the enemy units they’ll be meeting later.

We could have met Upham when the rest of the squad do, in the next scene. He has plenty to mark him out as an innocent (quoting Tennyson, not knowing what FUBAR means).

But there’s a reason this scene goes so big on establishing Upham as a noob, a walking weak point. The clowning with the helmets, the typewriter, his lack of ease and stillness, his unfamiliarity with the kit. This get paid off with horror. In this scene it’s funny that he’s out of his depth. By the assault on the town in the final reel, it’s horrific. If we don’t feel smugly smarter than him early on, we won’t identify as fiercely with his collapse and steely rebirth later.

While Miller is questioning Upham he’s also noting down unit positions on his map, easy and unhurried as a grocer measuring out a pound of potatoes by touch alone. Miller barely moves all scene. Upham isn’t still for a moment.

How can we make our characters’ stillness and lack of reaction eloquent? By giving them chaos to respond to. Even if we can’t animate anything as precise as Upham’s prop drops, it could be frantic Voice Over.

Hanks is a wonderfully generous actor. Look how much space and time he gives Jeremy Davies. Obviously, Miller wins the scene with ace after ace, but none are played in triumph.

UPHAM: “Can I bring my typewriter, Sir?”

Miller looks him in the eye, silently raises the pencil. There’s a compassion to it, a patience and regret.

Conclusions

There’s a screenwriting motto that if the power relationship between the characters at the end of a scene is the same as at the start then nothing's happened, it’s just Talk. These scenes...I’m not sure the power relationships change at all. In the space of 5 pages you see Miller interact with superiors, near-equals, and hopeless innocents and Miller is as Miller does in all of them. But they’re not just exposition, they’re foundational. Characters have to be established before they can be transformed. 

The first time I watched Saving Private Ryan, I missed the plot cause and effect: Miller did a mission, has a new mission, which needs an interpreter, which he no longer has, so he goes to get one. But even if the details washed over me, I got the big picture: Miller is expert but exhausted, Horvath trusts him, this is a weird mission, and Upham’s an accident waiting to happen. I got a vivid sense of the Army actually working, more or less, of the relationships functioning, of Miller's easygoing professionalism, authority, personability...and that it might not be enough. 

Obviously, it helps to have a Hanks and a Spielberg, a Janusz Kaminsky as DoP and a Michael Khan as Editor. But bloody hell, look how much work the script does structurally. What it gives the actors to Say, and Do, and just stand and Be. How it makes props and impassivity eloquent. 

I’m going to steal those.

[not-poignant]

Daily excerpt from yesterday's writing, chapter 30 of Underline the Blue:

‘I’m sorry,’ Nate forced himself to say. This was so stupid, really. So dumb. Things had been getting better, hadn’t they? Even Bennett said… ‘Okay,’ Janusz said, his voice soft. ‘It’s okay, Nate.’ ‘I’m sorry, though,’ Nate said, his voice shaking. ‘I thought we had more time. I wanted to be better.’ Janusz stepped into the bathroom properly, right up close, and Nate felt weak and stupid as he stretched up on his tiptoes just so he could hide his face in Janusz’ neck and breathe in his scent. It was fortifying in its own way. It was sharp and cleared the air. Christian’s scent had always been saccharine and cloying, though Nate told himself he only felt that way because he was bad at interpreting scents. Everyone else loved it and said it reminded them of vanilla cookies. ‘I keep thinking about Christian,’ Nate said. Janusz tensed subtly, but Nate still noticed. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to wrap his hands around Janusz and cling to him, beg him to stay, but a good omega wouldn’t talk about a past alpha like this. ‘Feeling a bit out of it, yeah? Do you think you’re going to be sick?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘What do you need, Nate?’ Ah, even that was better. There was the fogginess of the past, and it was cold, and reminded him of Christian, and made him think he was constantly doing things wrong. Then there was Janusz’ alpha persuasion, and feeling like he could see things more clearly, even if he couldn’t control his own responses anymore. ‘I don’t know,’ Nate said again, voice rougher, more earnest. ‘This reminds me of last time. The car ride down with Christian, not knowing what was going to happen to me.’

[not-poignant]

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

For Nate Prince, my favorite darling boy

I initially interpreted this as like 'what do you do to get in the zone of writing this character' and now I think it means 'what do you like to do writing-wise when writing this character.' I hope!

That's how I'm going to interpret it anyway.

With Nate, I like to pay attention to how lyrically he's describing his feelings, his environment, and his setting. It can indicate that he's relaxed and sometimes pretty dissociated. Nate's narration veers between being quite simplistically self-blaming, and then becoming more complex and layered and deep the more he feels like 'himself.'

And there's not much I don't like! I'd say the only thing that's really challenging with him (and I don't dislike a challenge, but this is the closest I can think of to match this part of the question) is that he doesn't show much of a window expositionally into the greater world socially re: omegas that Flitmouse does, which is one of the reasons I actually have brought Janusz' POV into some of the later chapters to help balance that out! Nate's super insular, and that shows sometimes in his narrative!

~

From the character meme :D