#save splitting myself in twain

[n33dh4rm]

:(

[mytimeineden]

Day 2:

After a short respite atop that hill, gazing upon paradise, I descended toward a mighty river that split the land in twain. Along the way, I spotted many creatures of varying sizes and many of which I knew not the name nor origin, some donned fur and bore fangs and claws, some were fashioned with beaks and vibrant feathers of a thousand different colors, and others were equipped with hardened carapaces, tenuous limbs, and multiple sets of powerful jaws. All lived in harmony; none were predator nor prey, none lived in fear of finding nourishment nor becoming so, and all lived in accordance with God’s will.

Upon reaching the river’s bank, I stood in awe at its breadth and depth, its waters flowing steadily and peacefully, urging forward the lifeblood of all things and bringing with it eternal refection. Beneath the surface, hundreds of fish of all shapes and sizes swam in bliss, and among them, I could not name a single one; their place and pedigree are a mystery to a woeful mortal such as I, but I am blessed to have the chance to rid myself of ignorance… perhaps I shall give them names fitting of their forms in due time.

I knelt before the water’s surface and saw a faint reflection; withered and wrinkled skin resting upon ancient, tired bones adorned with graying hair, a faint smile, and eyes that still shone with the remnants of youth. I cupped my hands and took within them a meager helping of the river’s water. I drank deeply, imbibing all of God’s grace.

My heart enflamed, burning with the heat of the richest charcoal. My skin writhed like bugs had nested beneath it. Blood gushed and guttered from my eyes, flowed and fountained from my ears, and sprang in spatters from my mouth. The whole of my mind ached, and memories oozed to the forefront of my thoughts, some my own but long-forgotten, some completely unknown and utterly new, all appearing in a flash; My bible given to me by my father, my first sermon flooded with a cheer of  “Amen.”, and scythe in hand with brow drenched in sweat; a sword gripped by bloodied hands, a brilliant, red sun rising, and a forlorn prayer in an alien language; a vessel of ambrosia, a trident piercing the flesh of another, and hands outstretched toward a foreign shrine; Bow upon horseback, vast grasslands ever-stretching toward the horizon, and legs crossed before a fire with soul yearning for conquest.

After the last memory flickered, I was left in complete darkness, surrounded by an absolute nothingness, and entirely alone, save for a pair of eyes staring down from above in utter indifference. I awoke sometime later, lying next to the riverbank. I hurried to the water’s edge to glimpse my reflection. Skin hale and hearty, though face limned in blood, bones full of vim and vigor, and muscles robust and revitalized. Through a terrible and torturous miracle, my youth has been restored, yet another blessing that I am undeserving of, but I will continue to strive toward worthiness. Though this miracle has given me much, it has also left me with many questions, and most are related to those foreign memories. I don’t understand their meaning, but I’m sure all will be clear in due time. For now, I shall wash myself clean and enjoy my newfound youth.

[shiningsagittarius]

The Beginning of the End

(There are. So many spoilers in this episode. Also, these are all my thoughts and opinions. I’m splitting this review in twain to give myself more room for analysis, as well as maximizing the amount of memes I can use)

1 x 08 (Part 1)

The dirigible IMMEDIATELY fails. Good job y’all 👏👏👏👏

Vegan prime rib?? Is that… real… yet?

Big day!!

“And when the time comes, I want you to step into the spotlight” ah yes, how noble of you Dr. Curtain, definitely not trying to shift the blame if something goes wrong…

“If put to other uses, the technology could truly help” KINDA TOO LATE FOR THAT

“We have amplified our voice, haven’t we?” HIVEMIND

MARTINA

OH GOD THE KEYCHAIN

JUST LET HER CLIMB THE FREAKING TOWER

“FINALLY!”

Their plan is pretty faithful to the books, as the plan is:

1. Have Sticky hold off the Whisperer

2. Kate storms the tower

3. Reynie signals help

4. ????

5. Profit

HYDROCHLORIC A C I D?!

“WE POUR THE ACID ON HIS FEET” CONSTANCE IS JUST THE BEST HDKDGDKDG

Reynie……… defeating the Whisperer is not the ideal time to practice your stand up routine………

“This plan is-“ “Not a good plan.” “Going to fail”

“The plan was bold, ill-formed, and likely to fail…”

The perfect hiding place… a clipboard…

I STILL CAN’T GET OVER SCIENTIST MILLIGAN

Hey, does anyone think he might’ve been a biochemist?? Maybe that would explain his extensive knowledge of The Outdoors

HE’S SUCH A NERD I-

Who the hell is Isaac??

This kid just doesn’t question a damn thing, does he? My mans literally just heard “Martina needs help” and boom. No more critical thinking skills

Reynie’s little map gfkdhskvdk

Listen. The kids were sure Dr. Curtain is Mr. Benedict’s evil clone. I know in my heart this head of security guy is Jack Black’s evil clone.

“Because you know what they say about coincidences, don’t you?” “…It is one of the great shames in my life that I’m not as well read-“ “There’s no such thing as coincidences, oh my God” THIS SLAYED ME AHAHAHA

(Foreboding music) yeah

KATE LEANING DOWN TO TALK TO CONSTANCE, HOW CONDESCENDING HDKDGDKDH

“I will learn. But only for you.” 🥺

“But I want my own acid. For his feet.” G O D SHE’S KILLING ME

THE GIRLS ARE F R I E N D S

“Kate Wetherall?” “NYOPE!” THE PERFECT RESPONSE JXLDGDKDHDKD

OH GOD CONSTANCE EVAPORATED

KATE, DON’T BE SHY, BEAT THEIR ASSES

“SAYS WHO?” “LOTS OF PEOPLE, PEOPLE IN THE KNOW” Funny, but why are my girls fighting again?? 😔

“…and [we’re] more than likely concussed” OH GOD

Gorp??

“Big day today.” “That sounded cool.” “We should always say the same thing.” NO YOU SHOULDN’T KXLDGGLDJSLDH

MY DETERMINED BOY, LOOK AT HIM!!

Oh God, they’re both in the Waiting Room-

“Martina…” “Judas.” JUST. THE BLUNT DELIVERY SHKCGDKDHDL

MARTINA MY BELOVED, YOU’RE S T I L L THINKING ABOUT TETHERBALL AT A TIME LIKE THIS????

EXCUSE ME, WHY DOES THIS MAN HAVE LITTLE WOODEN FIGURINES OF HIS ENEMIES. WHO MADE THEM. WHAT IS THIS.

Perfect time to practice your sleight of hand tricks, my dude. Seriously, this interrogation scene is wild, and not really in a good way

Sand. It’s rough and course and gets everywhere-

Kate saving Martina 😭😭

LET HER SPEAK!! MY LORD!!!

[Martina will remember this]

OH NO

Eye- Dr. Curtain. Please. Stop. Whatever it is you’re doing, stop.

MILLIGAN!!!

This whole interaction between the two of them is pure gold jdlfgdldhgdjdk. If I quoted my favorite parts, it would be wayyy too long

DOES HE KNOW. DOES MILLIGAN KNOW WHO KATE IS TO HIM YET. OR IS THIS WHEN HE REALIZES.

MILLIGAN, THIS IS NO TIME FOR YOUR RAMBLING STORIES

That machine creeps me right the hell out 😰

Elephants???

“You’re trying to stall me.”

“A chemist with a conscience, yes?”

DON’T BE SHY MILLIGAN, CLOCK HIM

THE RETURN OF THE TOENAIL LOCKPICK

THERE’S GOTTA BE A WAY FOR HER TO ESCAPE

STOOOOOOP NO SHE’S GONNA MAKE ME SOB

CONNIE GIRL!!!!!!!!!

“The Mysterious Constance Society. With Kate.” AHSKVSDKDHGDKD YES

YES NUMBER TWO, GET HIS ASS!!

OH GOD THE FOREST

AAAAAA THEY’RE BOTH REACTING TO THE MESSAGE

YESSSS STICKY, STALL!!

I didn’t even realized how loud that humming noise was until it stopped

Man, nothing gets by this Curtain, does it? In the books, he was simply too vain to consider that mere children might mess up his plan, but here? He considers almost every variable. Almost.

STORM THE TOWER. STORM THE TOWER. YESSSSSSS.

GRAPPLING HOOK

Y E E T

REYNIE!!!!!!!! CONSTANCE!!!!!!

“Acid? Oh, you’re kidding me 🙄” HE’S SO DONE

DON’T DO IT STICKY!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

REYNIE IS TRYING SO HARD

OH MY G O D HDKDGSKDGDK

“This is what we’re reduced to?”

“BECAUSE YOU’RE KIDS!”

Dr. Curtain finally snapped y’all-

“The narcolepsy I conquered years ago through force of will” I don’t… think that’s how narcolepsy works, my guy-

THE ADULTS ARE ON THE MOVE!!!! I REPEAT, THE ADULTS ARE ON THE MOVE!!!!!!

RHONDA AND NUMBER TWO, THE DYNAMIC DUO!!!!

Very sweet, you two, but nOT REALLY THE TIME!

…Aaaand they just keep going XD

(Cutting things off here! Let’s see what part 2 has in store 👀)

[rottmntquotes]

Petition Episode (Joke Script Part 1)

(Screen opens up on Donnie; He is sitting in his lab, working on his Self-Cleaning Toothpick, and whistling the show’s theme song. A beat or two passes before Leo races into the lab, and the camera focuses on Leo as he scrambles around, constantly falling onto his face. In an attempt to get Leo to leave, Donnie turns in his swivel chair to face Leo.)

Donnie: Leon, what do you want?

Leo: DONNIE! You have to see this!

Donnie: See what, exactly?

(Leo shoves his phone in Donnie’s face, smiling with enough force to split his face in half. With surprise clear on his face, Donnie slowly takes the phone, raising a brow and turning his focus to the commercial playing on the screen.)

Announcer #1: Hello, hello, hello! Are you a bored soul? A lonely pony? A group or duo who has nothing better to do than sit around at home and work on meaningless inventions?

Donnie: Hold on, wha-

Leo: SHhhhHHHhhHHH!

(Donnie glares at Leo briefly, sighing heavily before looking back at the phone screen.)

Announcer #1: If you answered yes to one, two, or all of those questions, then you may be eligible to try out for a new show filmed down here in the Hidden City!

(Donnie’s eyes widen slightly; He looks at Leo, silently asking for an explanation.)

Leo: It’s a commercial Draxum showed me! He managed to pass through a mystic wall that allows me to get news and stuff from the Hidden City!

(Donnie hums, handing the phone to Leo and thinking intensely. Leo waits as patiently as possible, glancing around and reaching for Donnie’s Self-Cleaning Toothpick. Donnie slaps Leo’s hand away, coming to a conclusion.)

Donnie: I assume there is a reason behind you showing me this commercial?

Leo: Yeah there is! (He jumps up onto Donnie’s desktop to sit next to Donnie) I wanna do it!

Donnie: How does that affect me?

Leo: Because I wanna do it with you, doofus! We rarely do anything together anymore!

Donnie: We went to get ice cream together just two days ago.

Leo: Okay, but-

Donnie: And the day before that we played six rounds of cards.

Leo: Don-

Donnie: And two days before that we watched a marathon of your favorite Jupiter Jim movies.

(Leo scoffs, throwing one leg over the other and sighing dramatically.)

Leo: Fine! Be that way! I guess it is too much to ask!

(Donnie lifts a brow, smirking lightly.)

Leo: It’s not like I want to spend more time with my favorite big brother anyways! Oh, woe is me to have my brotherhood left in twain!

Donnie: Are you done?

Leo: Hold up, not yet. (He leaps up to stand on the desktop, leaning back and placing the back of his right hand on his forehead, and pouting) I cannot believe what my life has come to! Whatever shall I do without the love of my entire family?! I feel myself withering away! Oh! Ancestors, is that you?

(Donnie shakes his head, now smiling widely.)

Donnie: Nardo, if I agree to go, will you stop?

(Leo drops his act, nodding rapidly. Donnie sighs, reluctantly agreeing.)

Leo: Heck yeah! Let’s go participate in a Hidden City game!

(The screen switches to the Hidden City, where the boys are following a map given to them by Hueso to find the studio of the game. Leo is constantly making near contact with random Yokai, and Donnie tries his damndest to keep this from happening to his best ability.)

Leo: Okay, acording to the map, the studio should be right-

(A Fox Yokai interrupts Leo with a loud cheer. She is dressed in a red dress with purple highlights, and her tail and head tuft are purple as well. The twins are less than impressed by this look, and show it with their confused/slightly disgusted frowns.)

Donnie: Uhm, can we help you, ma’am?

Fox Yokai: Yes! I am one of the announcers of the game, and you are the last Yokai on the roster!

Donnie: Wait, the last-

(Leo pushes Donnie to the side, knocking Donnie onto the ground unintentionally. Leo then shakes the Yokai’s hand and introduces himself.)

Fox Yokai: Yes, I know who you are, and I also know who your brother is. We will go over the formalities later, for now we must get into the building.

(Leo helps Donnie up, shaking with excitement. Donnie rolls his eyes, placing his right hand on Leo’s head.)

Donnie: I don’t trust this Yokai. She knew too much about us before we even spoke.

Leo: You’re just being paranoid. (He removes Donnie’s hand) No need to be! We’re here together! And we’ve got each other’s backs! Our Twin Trust hasn’t failed us before, after all.

(Donnie grumbles, unable to deny Leo’s claim.)

Leo: C’mooooon, Don! Just this one thing! Then I’ll do whatever you want to do the next time we hang out! I promise!

Donnie: Ugh... fine. But on one condition.

(Leo tilts his head.)

Donnie: You have to assure me that this isn’t like that stupid Maze of Death.

Leo: Don, please. I would know if this was anything like that maze. And, it isn’t. You have my 100% Leo Guarantee!

(Almost instantly, the camera switches over to Raph, Mikey, and Splinter, who are sitting in the living room. All of a sudden, Draxum appears out of nowhere, startling everyone.)

Draxum: JITSU! WHERE IS THE BLUE ONE?!

Splinter: What are you talking about?!

Draxum: I showed your son a commercial of one of the most dangerous Hidden City games in an attempt to get him out of my apartment!

Raph: WHAT?!

Mikey: Barry! How many times have I told you that that’s not an efficient way to get rid of the twins?!

Draxum: I know, I know! But now isn’t the time to worry about that! (Turns To Face Splinter) Your son, depending on when he inevitably left, is about to sign himself up for a Hidden City game that ends in death nearly 97.55% of the time!

(Raph faints, his body thudding so hard that it makes everyone jump. Mikey chuckles nervously, tending to Raph and leaving Splinter and Draxum to talk things out.)

Splinter: What made you think that showing Leonardo such a commercial was a good idea?!

Draxum: He would not stop talking to me! It was the only thing I could show him that kept his interest! When he said he was going to show the purple one and ask if they could go together, I thought he was joking! That’s his thing! It’s was he does!

(Splinter groans, pinching the middle of his snout before sighing heavily and looking back at his sons. Mikey had managed to wake Raph up, and they were now looking straight at their father.)

Splinter: We must go and save your brothers. Goodness knows what they have gotten themselves into.

(The camera switches to the twins, who are standing in the middle of a group of large Yokai. Donnie is visibly worried, his legs are shaking, his hands clenching around his Tech Bō, and his eyes are shifting around to keep track of his surroundings. Leo is visibly excited, he is standing straight, smiling cheek to cheek, and biting his lip to keep from shouting his joy. The group is standing outside a large house, and they are looking at the Fox Yokai, and a brown and white Rabbit Yokai. The Fox Yokai is clearly happy, and the Rabbit Yokai is clearly disinterested in the situation.)

Leo: *Whispering* Are you ready Don?

Donnie: *Whispering Angrily* N-not r-r-really...

Leo: *Whispering* Hey, it’s gonna be okay. I’m here with you, remember? Twin Trust.

(Donnie calms down substantially, sighing ruefully and leaning against Leo.)

Donnie: Remind me never to do stuff like this with you again.

Leo: No.

Donnie: And why not?

Leo: Because you know you have fun bonding with me.

Donnie: Yeah, when I’m not being threatened with death.

(Leo chuckles, giving Donnie a sideways hug. The twins look forward, waiting for the Yokai to begin explaining what is expected of them. Beside the twins, the Yokai around them are getting slightly antsy. Donnie and Leo share a look of uncertainty. Leo seems more put together than Donnie, but neither objects to the idea anymore. Donnie then looks at the ground, thinking to himself.

“This is not going to end well...”)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*This was completely experimental, and I’ll keep going based on the feedback I get. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what I think would make a neat episode.

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 8 - Meat Page 41

==>

Okay, Dirk’s gonna monologue about, like... acknowledging his villainy without realizing it I guess?

And if I didn’t bother pursuing those goals, and thereby tacitly accepting the untold suffering that resulted from my inaction, wouldn’t that make me a bad person? If I try and succeed, I’m a hero, right? And if I try and fail, at least I made things interesting on my way to the grave. There would be a tragic nobility in that. And the way I see it, settling for anything less from my arc would be, frankly, pathetic.

So yeah, of course I know I “have to be stopped.” It’s part of the contract. What you sign up for when you assume the burdens of this sort of power. Where there is that which must be subdued and suborned for the greater good, there is that which will instinctively resist. That which intuits that whatever’s going on here is “wrong.” Otherwise, intervention wouldn’t even be necessary, would it?

Yeah, the Heroic and Just death parameters I outlined in the Ultimate Riddle post pretty clearly line up here that he’s fucking shit over in a way he refuses to truly believe is going to end up in his Just demise even if he knows it on some level.  Fucking over everyone’s wills like that?  Fuck you.

Only worthless people permit themselves the great luxury of a valorous sacrifice. 

JUST.  FUCKING.  DEATH.

Mhmm, he knows he’s going to get fucking owned.  Just a little sooner than he thought, I’d reckon.

...geez, I’m going to forget to fucking EAT again today if this epilogue goes on much longer.  Maybe I’ll have to blog the Candy part, like, tomorrow or something.  If I can convince myself to SLEEP instead of reading more, that is.

==>

Thank God all the manipulation is reversing itself.  Keep playing into it and letting it happen you pompous ass, Dirk, it was inevitable.

Couldn’t pay me to be in that room right now. Not for all the agency in the world.

Yeah, agency is the word.  Dirk is aiming for infinite agency at the expense of everyone else’s.  His God-Tier powers crush others’ individuality and let him puppeteer them instead, and it’s what he’s been using all along to manipulate the situation in this story.

they will know what to do, when they are ready.

On the one hand, thanks alt!Callie.  On the other, seriously fuck you alt!Callie for taking Jade out of the story AAAAGAAAAAIN.  D:<

neither she nor her friends will have to worry about him anymore, so long as they remain on this planet and under my protection.

Um, that was phrased ominously potentially.

huddled on the floor, she repeats this pledge to herself. theoretically, he could be stopped before he leaves, if they hurried. they would need to know what to do, where to go, and to have the motivation to do it, but time is short. i could push them to, with a certain degree of intervention, but i will not. my unwillingness to do so is what separates me from him. and what corporeal life needs now is someone presiding over them who is nothing like him at all.

FUCK YES, PRESERVE THE WILL OF THE CHARACTERS INSTEAD OF TURNING IT ALL INTO YOUR OWN FANFIC YOU BEAUTIFUL CHERUB

Also, thought that occurred to me at the end of this page... did Dirk potentially arrange John’s death here to keep his retcon powers from being able to stop him?

==>

Epilogue Eight

Okay I’m churning through this all pretty quickly now that there isn’t a bunch of hyperdense prose in the way.  Excellent conversation between characters, furthering the plot along while engaging in very understandable hilarity.

KARKAT: TELL HER TO REGISTER MY HEAVING BULGE AS A PRIORITY!!!!!

Wonk

I don’t THINK I’m reading this any faster than usual, but it FEELS like I am? Maybe because of the format, or maybe I really AM reading it faster to get to Dirk’s fucking comeuppance as fast as goddamn possible.

Pfff, cosplaying as Dave.

KARKAT: WOW! THE WOKEMASTER IS ON FUCKING FIRE FOLKS! HE’LL BE HERE ALL NIGHT!!!

I love this whole conversation

ROXY: awwwwwww ROXY: u boys cute :)

<3

Alright, Jane doesn’t kno-- wait, you’re not looping her in on this?  I thought she’d join in and get, like, a redemptive character arc.  Oh well, lesstimespentonthatthebetterhurryupandkickDirk’sass

Wait, so Roxy didn’t know John wasn’t coming back?  Calliope did though???

Is the only reason Dirk took Terezi along to keep her from giving them info, or... no, he said MORE of them would eventually come, what the fuck is he even planning?

they will believe they are on a quest to retrieve a wife and rescue a friend. but they will discover their true mission is of much greater cosmic significance than they imagined. the seer is firmly in the thrall of the prince and will not easily be pried away. and as regards the heir, though resuscitation remains a theoretical possibility for those still striving for it, the truth of his role is it has reached a greater sense of narrative finality than any of his allies will bring themselves to admit. his influence over canon has come to an end, as has this particular story. his ultimate sacrifice was made to put the missing keystone in place and avert the supreme dissipation of all that shall be considered to hold truth, relevance, and essentiality.

...Huh.

Okay, so they MIGHT have to accidentally create Paradox Space, and regardless by stopping Dirk they’ll be guaranteeing agency as a right to those who live both within and without the confines of... whatever existence even is anymore.

......This ship chase through Paradox Space of cosmic significance sounds disturbingly familiar to old pictures I used to verbally paint about the endgame, and I refuse to think about that idea further.

And we’re returning to black text, from the sound of what alt!Callie is saying.  Let’s do that.

==>

POSTSCRIPT?!?????

POSTSCRIPT?  P O S T S C R I P T?!??!?!??!?!??

IS THIS FUCKING OVER OR SOMETHING? IS THIS NOT GETTING RESOLVED WHAT THE FLYING FUCK AAA OKAY CALM DOWN CALM DOWN BOOTS AND READ

fuck my stomach’s clenching up again oh god

artillery what the fuck

aradia okay

WWWWHAT THE FUCK SIXTEEN YEAR OLD JADE WHAT

JADE FROM THE BLACK HOLE GOT SPIT OUT HERE OR

OKAY WHAT THE FUCK IS EVEN GOING ON HERE BLACK EYES AND SHE’S A MURDER MACHINE OKAY WHAT

WHAT IS ALL THIS BULLSHIT WHY IS AN ANGSTY DARKJADE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE ALTCALLIE CONTROLLED DOING FLASHY BULLSHIT

“no being has ever commanded before” WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEA-- OH SHIT IS IT LIKE BLACK HOLE ABILITIES

LIKE, FUCKING, BLACK HOLE INSTEAD OF THE GREEN SUN ABILITIES NOW TIED TO HER AND SHES BEEN CONTROLLED BY ALT!CALLIE LONG ENOUGH TO GET HERE OR WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO JADE YOU FUCKING STORY GET OUT OF HERE

davebot.  why a davebot?  davebot.

I’m feeling fucking sick.  Okay what’s about to happen.

Okay so this Dave is like from some other timeline split and got botsaved or something sure whatever

okay some of the others are going off into this... “OTHER UNIVERSE???” too???? or other paradox space or some fucking bullshit???

also scrolling up i missed “Jade was sixteen years old when she showed up, and she doesn’t look a day older now, though many hundreds of days have passed” o kay are these ghosts???

Oh FUCK I CAN BREATHE

i can breathe again

fuck, these are like

im guessing these are... other ghosts or former-ghosts or basically everyone that huddled into the black hole, and aradias there because of course or something, this isnt dirk having won and reached his place or whatever

this is the jade alt who fell into the black hole and must have died hence her perpetually-young look, and now that shes in the black hole she has access to black hole powers

REAL JADE is FUCKING FINE

breathe boots breathe god damnit

okay reading, uh

a-all the action that matters f fuck i dsee the end of the page what thej fuck s how oculd it enduhyere kanaya has an enddless chase for her ff-fucking wife or while she’s being mind-raped by dirk orasdf jklfdk adn dshes gonan be in a stupdi metal body or

im really

really gonna need that candy after this

reading that last few paragraphs SHIT

yeah aradias going to go where all the exciting shit is happening in this new... black... hole... adox space or whatever, or wherever this is or

Where the hole gaped just moments ago, there now exists an imaginary line.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

And... that’s the final line between Canon and Non-Canon.  Or whatever terms.

Andrew’s done.  The story’s done.  Everything else about their journey is for the imagination alone.  Did they save Rose from Dirk taking her through a portal or whatever to whichever Dirkverse he was conjuring up or whatever theory bullshit i REALLY DONT WANT TO THINK OF OR THEORIZE ABOUT EVEN EVER about what the fuck dirk was trying to pull with all this SHHHHITT!!!!!!!??//?

I... christ.  I need that Candy section.  And I need a drink.  Fuck this I was gonna break for dinner but I’m continuing once I get a beer.  I’m sweating and unhappy.  Like I should be after eating this many pages of raw meat, shouldn’t I?

Next post will be Candy 1 once I confirm that there’s nothing else I’m missing, no other part of this portion to save me from wanting to vomit in an entirely anxious and non-beer-related way.

Fuck.

[safestsephiroth]

FFXIVWrite #8: No Prompt/Extra Credit Day - Asagao Shiragiko

Part three in the series!

Part one link here.

Part two link here.

Part four link here.

Part five link here.

Part six link here.

Part seven link here.

Part Final link here.

She had begun his training in earnest, beneath the calm Hingashi sky, the very next day.

Etsuji was a quick learner. He asked questions constantly, and Asagao realized almost immediately that whatever tutors had been meant to teach him had, very plainly, failed the boy. Because to stifle a young mind's curiosity and wonder is to beat out what makes it more than that of a beast.

She sat back, leaned against a cherry blossom tree. He had been taught swordsmanship well. The fundamentals were far more important than what came later, and his were sharp. His movements were fluid and quick, though he had not yet perfected switching between them. So she had him practicing the same three swings. Again, and again, and again.

She had expected him to complain. She had expected him to be impatient to learn iaijutsu. She had been. Instead, he seemed overyjoyed.

A half bell, he repeated the exact same motions. She could see the improvement already. She stood. Walked over to him.

"Stop. That is enough."

He turned to face her. Sheathed his katana carefully. As if it were made of glass. Bowed to her.

"Thank you, sensei. But... may we continue?"

She smiled. Looked off to the distance. Kugane was not terribly far from here. It had been some time since she'd returned to the city. Not since she spoke with...

"Of course we may. But it will not do to have you repeat only the same three actions, hmm? Now, I would like you to face North." She pointed, and he immediately complied. "For this exercise, we will pretend you are under attack. You must defend and counter. I will yell to you a cardinal direction and an angle. You will turn that direction, defend from that angle and then swiftly attack."

"Yes, sensei!"

She looked off again. The blonde ijin. What was his goal? He had said he owed a debt to yakuza. And it was plain, there was either something else living within him, or he was deranged. But she had never known someone deranged to speak with such clarity.

At the same time, she had met very few she would think of as deranged. Perhaps he was simply an exception? But then, that wouldn't explain the bizarre magical powers he had. It was simpler if he had been telling the truth. That did make it more likely.

"Hmm."

"Sens-?"

"West, high!"

He pivoted right - winced - spun fully back around to face East. Swiped his sword up, then a quick turn and downward slash.

"Very good. It is good you recognized your mistake and moved to correct it immediately. It's important not to hesitate in a fight. An opponent who intends to kill you is not likely to do so."

"Yes, sensei!"

Was the ijin truly an assassin with good intentions? It seemed impossible. But then, a samurai defying the nobility must have at one point, as well.

"Etsuji?"

"Yes, sensei?"

"Why does rain fall from the sky?"

His face furrowed. "Um. Well, in Geomancy-"

"SOUTH, LEFT!"

He spun left, swung the sword to his left, then swept the blade right.

"Very good! I am impressed you did not let your guard down."

He blinked. Looked back to her. An odd expression.

"Uh... Yes. Thank you, sensei."

"Hmm? Is something wrong?"

"...No. I feel a bit unwell. May we take a break?"

Her head tilted. "Very well. We can continue this exercise later."

"Thank you." A flourish - a flash - and he had sheathed his katana. He didn't even seem to notice.

But she had.

"Here. The village nearby can sell us a meal. I will pay for both of us."

"Okay." He looked to the sky. To the trees. "This is an orchard, right?"

"It is. I helped the owner deal with attacks from wolves some time ago. We will be sleeping here for now. The wilderness is no place for a novice to be at night."

"Yeah." He nodded. "Thank you."

"Of course. Come on." She led him to the village nearby. But not long along the path, she heard a faint whispering. She glanced back behind her. He was trailing behind, head low. Muttering something. She slowed down. Pretended not to notice. But he slowed down, as well.

She thought back to the amulet.

Best not to bring it up. Best not to accuse him. The boy was trying his best, this much was plain. He was hopeful. Cheery. And learning quickly. It would be an inauspicious start to accuse him of keeping the strange thing after she had already told him to leave it behind.

While they walked to the village, she mulled this over. She thought on it as they ate, as he spoke enthusiastically about heroism. About helping others.

"Do you have any stories about times you've saved people?" He looked to her like a man looking at an emperor. Like a student looking at a legendary master. Like a son looking at-

"I do. I do not wish to flatter myself overmuch, but there are many. I think for today I should tell you only one. It would not do to fill your mind with the idea that these things are mundane or ordinary, hmm?"

He nodded. Leaned forward.

"Sit up straight. Your posture mustn't slack."

He leaned back up so quickly he almost fell over. "Yes, sensei!"

She smiled. Cleared her throat. "Some seasons past, I was visiting a village in Koshu. While I was there, the weather turned sour. The villagers explained that it was likely tied to the anger of the kami."

"Yes, that makes sense." He nodded. "The kami-"

"Please do not interrupt."

"Yes, sensei!"

She smiled again. So eager. Like when she was his age. Her face darkened but a moment.

"Sensei?"

"I had my suspicions about their story. They sent a small group of the villagers on a journey, to acquire a gemstone from Bukyo to offer the kami. The village did not have money in abundance, but they told me this was a vital practice that kept them safe from the rain. I decided to wait. And watch."

He nodded.

"The rain did not stop, did not let up or strengthen or lull. The drops fell at the exact same pace for five days and nights. I had sensed something was wrong. But I did not figure it out until I spoke with a young boy, there. Nobuyoshi. I realized from his questions what was happening."

Etsuji shifted in his seat. Impatient. She smiled. Yes, that was what she had expected from him.

"I asked him to lead me to the shrine. I talked with him about the kami. How people bring offerings to the shrine not out of love, but out of fear. They bring offerings when they desire something, or if they desire something to /stop."/

He took a bite of food.

"I folded up a piece of paper. Bid him toss it into the sky. I focused myself, and aimed a killing blow. The paper split in two well above his head - and the blades of wind I had created with my cut neatly cleaved the hidden yokai watching us from behind the trees in twain. The rain stopped seconds later."

"Wow!"

"I did not tell any of them what I had done. But I recognized that it was all an illusion. A powerful one, to be certain. But an illusion all the same. Now. What can you tell me you've learned from this story, and how is it I knew it was an illusion?"

He tilted his head. Scratched at his neck, looking skyward. "Let's see. We have to consider wisdom from any source it comes from, and not discount it. Like with the kid, right?"

"Correct. Very good. Go on."

"Um... Giving offerings to the kami, we must make sure we understand what we are doing?"

"That is one way you could see it."

"And... you could tell it was an illusion because the rain was the same, right? Rain gets heavier and lighter, and even when it rains for days at a time, it doesn't rain exactly the same."

"You are correct. Very well done. The other thing that tipped me off was that the village was still there, and that they were offering something so valuable. The fact it was always gemstones, and that they had to travel all the way to Bukyo and back to get them, meant they had tried other things. Things which had been spurned. Further, the fact the village did not floor in five days, that they were not overly afraid of their crops withering and dying, these both showed me the rain was illusory. A plant does not heed illusions. It has no mind to be deceived, and so the sun still shone on the crops. Water does not heed illusions, and so despite the imagined rain, the soil was never flooded."

He nodded. "You're really smart!"

"I am experienced. I am a little embarrassed telling this story, you know. It probably should not have taken me five days and nights to figure out what was going on."

He seemed to consider this.

"They had been living their their whole lives, right? If they didn't figure it out, doesn't it mean you're smarter than them because you managed to?"

She looked outside. Back to Etsuji.

"I suppose that's one way to see it." She smiled again. "Thank you. Are you ready to return to your training?"

"Yes!" He sprang up, and took off again for the orchard. She left the money behind and followed him.

But this time, she decided to make an effort to move quietly. And as he went, she could hear faint whispering.

Why was he talking to himself?

[archaeopter-ace]

the epigraphs in Metamorphosis

Picking up where this post left off, I’m gonna ramble about my choice of Kafka quotes.

Because apparently I love to make things difficult for myself, I wanted to find quotes that would be considered ‘bad advice’ in these circumstances, to tie it back to ‘don’t listen to kafka’ - but if you ever become a notable literary figure, the sorts of quotes you’re remembered for tend to be the ones with some underlying human truth, not ones that offer bad advice. So I had that working against me. But I figured if nothing else I’d certainly find pessimistic quotes tangentially related to something in the chapter. Those would fit my concept then, because the inverse message would be ‘you don’t have to pessimistic about this.’

Time to break ‘em down!

“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.” - Franz Kafka 

I put this one in the story summary because I think it expresses how overwhelmed Barbara and Jim are feeling about this whole mess. Also I find it very relatable on a personal level, aha, a missed deadline is resolved and there’s some relief to be found in that. It was originally going to go as a chapter epigraph later in the story, but I really liked it as a summary of the whole story because - spoiler alert for the most recent chapter - the solution to Jim’s problem, i.e. turning into a troll, is, in fact, to do nothing and let the change happen. Only once his human self is completely consumed by his troll self will he be able to regain his human body. So maybe, just this once, Jim actually could Listen To Kafka. (I thought putting an epigraph in the summary might mean I couldn’t also do a dictionary-style definition in stylistic parallel to Autoeponym, but then I just decided why not both? and rolled with it)

Chapter 1: "One advantage to keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of all the changes which you constantly suffer."

I picked this one for chapter one because it carries this notion of cataloguing changes, which the narrative does quite a bit at the start since there’s been a time skip since Autoeponym and we’ve got to set the stage. In fact, in the original draft Barbara was a lot more active in keeping a journal and writing everything down, but then I realized that that would be really uncomfortable for Jim, and thus the line about “dialing back Dr. Lake as much as possible, and pushing Mom to the foreground” was born. I kept the chosen epigraph, even if the diary aspect got nixed, because I think it still fits from an ‘ack, too many changes!’ angle. [Jim should not listen to Kafka because it’d be better for him to just focus on the changes he’s going through, and not frame it as something that he must suffer]

Chaper 2: "So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being." This quote is from his short story, Investigations of a Dog, told from a dog’s POV (not to be confused with Mark Twain’s A Dog’s Tale, also told from a dog’s POV). The chapter connection in this one is with food, because it is the dinner scene. [Jim is unlikely to listen to Kafka in this instance because boy does he ever have a lot of unresolved questions]

The other food-related quote I considered for this chapter was “Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore,” which could maybe have been commentary on Stickler’s potentially-shifting allegiances, but really just seemed to bring Aaarrrgghh’s past up completely out of the blue. (original quote context: Kafka went vegetarian)

Chapter 3:  "I am a cage, in search of a bird."

Oh man, there were so many quotes I considered for this chapter I couldn’t even remember which one I went with off the top of my head and had to look up the posted chapter. The themes I wanted to play with involved imprisonment (hence “a cage”) and the toxicity of Strickler’s manipulations. The ‘don’t listen to kafka’ aspect of this one is cautionary, warning Barbara away from Walter. 

Other quotes I toyed with: 

"You can choose to be free, but it's the last decision you'll ever make”

“I am in chains. Don’t touch my chains.”

“Kill me, or you are a murderer.”

“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.”

“My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”

"There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe... but not for us." 

“Association with human beings lures one into self-reflection.”

Something that helps to understand why some of these were considered is knowing that in the early drafts, Strickler was going to try to manipulate Jim into letting him go by arguing that Jim should just kill him, it would be much more merciful than the death Bular would give him for failing in his mission. I had some really nice dialogue mapped out, but then I rewatched Mudslinging and reconsidered in light of Strickler’s thirst for revenge on Jim. By his own admission, Strickler seems to have made out pretty well from the failure to open Killahead, so the idea of revenge for ruining a plan that maybe wouldn’t have been his first choice if he’d had free choice... it seems a little bit of a stretch. He does mention wanting to stop Jim from releasing all the familiars from the Darklands, and he believes the only way to stop Jim from ever doing that is to... murder him brutally. 

I think the revenge Strickler seeks is really for ruined pride, rather than any material damage incurred. So given that I’m dealing with season 1 Strickler and not season 3 or fanon Strickler, the scenes I had written no longer seemed as in-character. He wasn’t quite backed up against the ropes enough for him to be throwing himself on the Trollhunter’s mercy, even if it was a ploy. He’s got other approaches he can take first to talk his way out, ones that keep his dignity more intact.

Chapter 4: "People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'."

Jim finally has a label for what he is! And he’s having a pretty crummy day, so ‘nauseatingly miserable beyond repair’ also fits. This is one of the chapters I’d considered using the ‘devoured’ quote for. Another one I considered for this chapter was “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself,” which absolutely fits Jim’s mood, but therein lies the problem: there’s not really a way to see how ‘don’t listen to Kafka' fits. Also it’s not quite as pithy as the one I went with ;P [Jim shouldn’t listen to Kafka because if he labels himself as only miserable, it will be that much harder to feel something other than miserable].

Chapter 5: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us.”

In my original outline, chapters 5 and 6 were combined into one chapter, and then this quote fit very well because part of the chapter would take place in Blinky’s library (full of books). I think it still fits just 5 though, and in the absence of anything better I went with it. Here, the ‘books’ are symbolic of knowledge, and its capacity to inflict plain - in this chapter, Jim learns a lot of painful truths. [Jim shouldn’t listen to Kafka because of course Jim can read fluffy stories as well if he wants to, not all books have to rip your heart out. And more symbolically, not all knowledge has to be painful; though neither can you avoid all the knowledge that is.]

And finally, as a spoiler-free sneak-peak at the next chapter, I will give you the next epigraph!

Chapter 6: “How about I sleep a bit longer and forget all this nonsense.”

I almost used this one for chapter 4, but when I realized I’d probably have to split up chapter 5 I saved it for later. It is my favorite line from Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and it is Gregor Samsa’s first reaction to waking up and discovering that he now a giant cockroach (it actually does take him a while to figure it all out - he can’t move his head so he can’t see himself all that well, and he naturally thinks that he must be dreaming still at first). Jim would very much like to just go to sleep and forget all this nonsense, please

[alterstadt]

                                                                ‘ i couldn’t feel you. ’              the alchemist freezes. he is deep in his work, now, up to the fourth knuckle in viscous, milky fluid, three fingers holding the organ whilst the other nine coax more out of the flesh, his other hand still holding the still-live eiugs in its talon-tipped grasp. its blood is vibrant, verdant in the folds of looser flesh like veins of emerald though cave wall. it struggles, lets out a small whine.               the conduit moves silently, projecting loudly — soft whisper of tendrils on stone drowned out by the mental thudding, shrieking energy. it is loud by nature, crackling always in a way that he cannot always perceive in clarity: a deafening din surrounds it as a gracious gift, as a status, as a blessing from an unfeeling cosmos, and for this, beguiling creature which mystifies him still, he cannot feel its moving closer until its hands — dainty, three-jointed things with only half his fingers, soft and translucent and dimly radiant — close around his own, crushing them with aching force until the snaps echo throughout the tower chamber. he feels the essence of the creature leave his palm, hears the silence where its panicked, animal terror does not brush against his mind.              ‘ you’d yield more if you failed to give into your softness, love. to kill it would be mercy, yet you sustain it, incomplete. cruetly born from kindness. ’  the ire lies in thought, a signal each time the valve in the back of its throat clicks, allowing him to telegraph the follow-up: ‘ and yet—  you still have the unkind cruelty to mask yourself from me with a fruitless alefwn harvest that cannot possibly silence you. ’

              breath whistles through the space in his neck when he dips his head, the gash of what may have teeth revealed only by the conduit’s luminescence beneath where his skin hangs, loose, betraying the muscle and bone where it opens. that only works when distilled with nihil and tampter, he thinks, and there is something like laughter that bounces in his thoughts as response and something like breath at his neck’s uppermost nape as the conduit’s inner-mouth slips from concave jaw to nip at his external spine. clicks - it has lowered itself from its stretched tentacles onto its legs, all four talons sweeping against rock as it finds balance.                  would you hide from me? the thought remains teasing despite its undercurrent, but the hands on his are iron-hard, the tips of outer ribs extended and resting on the razor’s edge of flesh and robes.                   ‘ if i am soft, will you set me? ’  the conduit’s presence fades, and its warmth recedes.                                                             turn and gaze upon me, then.                    his beloved is a mockery of his kind, flayed and breathtaking, skin which hangs loose and leathery over his form cut away to reveal shimmering musculature — radiant and smooth and pellucid, faintly blue save for stark-white of bone though its lacking opacity — there are cosmos in the hollows of its eyes as it dips its hairless head in bastardization of his smile, for it has no skin to shift. each breath sends trembling movement through the curvature of its throat-ribs that he follows: down to the thorny, jutting angles of its emaciated chest; along each extended outer rib flexed from its back like six spider’s legs; stopped where its thorax tapers no bigger than the size of his one-handed grip and its legs - rough, chitinous things it does not deign to stand on much - flank the gathering of floor-reaching tentacles it winds around his talons, anchoring him where his shins split in twain. when its myriad eyes open, it is blinding — muscles shrieking as each previously nonexisting ocular rips holes in its flesh — each cavity dark and endless and shimmering with ten thousand pinpricks of once-existing stars, now snuffed, each hole wet and shimmering with leaking ephemera which he drinks greedily as it falls unbidden onto his skin, thirsty for the transience of the universe. the conduit takes his jaw into its hands, snakes its fingers through the holes in loosened flesh and sinks its claws in tightly, overwhelming, pushing his spines to the worktable and crushing their foreheads together, and it is weeping, now, wetting his face in essences of cosmic impermanence as it weaves through his mind to join them. 

                                               is it you, my love, i miss the most, or is it  perhaps myself?

                      the memory is a dull, faded thing he cannot access.                                                                                      the baron shows little softness, now.

[justsomeshitoffsomepaper]

8/13/2020

Couldn’t afford to go back where it began... So I returned, hungover & homesick      for a reality that never was, To the spot where I surrendered my mind      to a sleep-deprived psychosis to write, hallelujah,    picturesque,    imagine: Me, the tightly wound spiral,      leading a path so twined,      the distinction between lines      might not even exist. Sometimes, I think back to my old, gray couch,       that last pale winter my home was without heat       and how you stayed anyway,       and how our bodies,       inversed & pressed together,       like a short-lived Yin Yang,       resembled a Jack [& Jill] of Hearts.       Save face, and Shuffle.       in hindsight,       meeting you,       I might’ve drew a Queen of Spades;       ooohhh, how you dug me up out of my rut,       just to then shovel me into a grave... I know my drinking didn’t help our case.       and I’m sorry I called you that night when,       through blurred eyes, I got lost in the Oklahoma countryside       saying staying on the line was somehow helping me drive. But you were WITH me, when my heart split in twain,       when I hugged the Mowgli some had called my son goodbye,       and turned left out that hospital for the final time       on a cold, sunny day that replays in my mind       all too often, You where there, your presence: the promise of light       still lingers to this second, that promise not the first thing to break.       you were there, but for what? my rocky-bottom-broken low,       inflating my heart for the inevitable sake of letting go,       You said you might stay & I choked, on my hope..... So why would you fault me for drowning myself       when I was already in over my head [to begin with,] and-       you were there,    you were with me,    you knew this;       I was overboard, you were a siren, singing mercy,       who couldn’t help but hold my shortcomings against me. The stars have changed.. since we met.       we have circled the Sun,       together,       collectively,       and many a moon,       one, blood red, some, even blue,       have waxed, waned, eclipsed, put simply: passed,

        And goddamn if I don’t still miss you.

[bettydraperlookingpissed]

Matthew Weiner, The Art of Screenwriting No. 4

Born in 1965, Matthew Weiner is barely old enough to remember the period with which his television series Mad Men has now become almost synonymous. His office is exactly what one might hope for the creator of Don Draper: a stylish mixture of midcentury modern furniture, with a cabinet full of top-shelf liquor. But it turns out that the furniture came with the building, which was designed in 1955, and the liquor, mostly gifts, is wasted on Weiner, who hardly drinks at all.

(Copy and pasted cuz TPR charges and I got your back, man. Or maybe you’re made of money and can afford that kind of thing. It’s long in case ya wanna save it. Good Sunday night reading.)

Weiner’s sensibility reveals itself on closer inspection. A framed still from the set is shot from behind the actors’ heads, showing the crew. There’s a black-and-white photograph of Groucho Marx, Alice Cooper, and Marvin Hamlisch in conversation. There’s a homemade Father’s Day card by one of Weiner’s four sons, reading “Dad Men” in red and black crayon. There’s a picture of Stedman (Oprah’s boyfriend), because when Vanity Fair photographed Weiner’s desk soon after Oprah’s, he asked what she’d had on hers. His bookshelf overflows with fiction, essays, and poetry—from Diaries of Old Manhattan to Billy Collins to Moby-Dick.

A former Jeopardy! champion who once, rather than give notes, jumped up and danced to “Zou Bisou Bisou” for Jessica Paré (Megan Draper on the show), Weiner seems never to sleep. Our interview took place in four sessions that spanned almost eighteen months—real months, that is. More time than that passed on the show during the same period, but to say exactly how much would be, in Weiner’s universe, a spoiler. We spoke late into the night after he had spent full days in preproduction meetings, in editing, in sound-mixing sessions, on set, and in the writers’ room—and we could only sit down to talk on the rare nights when he didn’t have to write. Even with this schedule, he comes in every morning inspired by a movie he’s seen, an article he’s read, or a poem he’s remembered. (I’m lucky to be a writer on the show.) Weiner begins every season by rereading John Cheever’s preface to his Collected Stories: “A writer can be seen clumsily learning to walk, to tie his necktie, to make love, and to eat his peas off a fork. He appears much alone and determined to instruct himself.” The life of a showrunner leaves him almost no time to be alone, but Weiner seems always to be instructing himself.

WEINER

You know, I got a subscription to The Paris Review when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. I read those interviews all the time. They were really helpful.

INTERVIEWER

How did they help you?

WEINER

There were people talking about writing like it was a job, first of all. And then saying “I don’t know” a lot. It’s helpful, when you’re a kid, to hear someone saying “I don’t know.” Also, they were asking questions that I would’ve asked, only I’d have been embarrassed to ask them. Like, What time of day do you write?

INTERVIEWER

What time of day do you write?

WEINER

I write at night on this job because I have to, except Sundays when I write all day and all night. Left to my own devices I will always end up writing late at night, because I’m a procrastinator. But if there’s a deadline, I will write round the clock.

INTERVIEWER

Did you know when you were a kid that writing was the job you wanted?

WEINER

I wanted to be a writer, but the way my family thought of writers, that would have been like saying, I want to be quarterback of the football team or president of the United States. My parents had the books every Jewish family had—My Name Is Asher Lev, QB VII, O Jerusalem!—but they were also really into Joseph Heller, and my dad took Swann’s Way on every vacation. I always thought I would be a novelist, like the people whose books I saw lying around the house.

INTERVIEWER

Did you read those books?

WEINER

Not really. I read very slowly. I’m a good listener. If they’d had books on tape back then, I would be the best-read person in the world. When I had to do a report on Measure for Measure, I went and got the records, and I listened to John Gielgud do it. My dad read Mark Twain to us at night. I loved “The Stolen White Elephant” and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” And The Prince and the Pauper, oh my God, did I love that. I read Mad magazine and stuff, but my parents were always yelling at me, You need to read more! Crack a book already! I was not really a reader until I left college. My favorite form of writing is still the short story. Winesburg, Ohio was the first book that I read where I recognized the people in it. I knew the teacher who was sort of gay and couldn’t control his hands. I recognized everybody in there. And then, with John Cheever, I recognized myself in the voice of the narrator. His voice sounds like the voice in my head—or what I wish it sounded like.

INTERVIEWER

Who are your favorite writers?

WEINER

I don’t make lists or rank writers. I can only say which ones are relevant to me. Salinger holds my attention, Yates holds my attention. John O’Hara doesn’t, I don’t know why—it’s the same environment, but he doesn’t. Cheever holds my attention more than any other writer. He is in every aspect of Mad Men, starting with the fact that Don lives in Ossining on Bullet Park Road—the children are ignored, people have talents they can’t capitalize on, everyone is selfish to some degree or in some kind of delusion. I have to say, Cheever’s stories work like TV episodes, where you don’t get to repeat information about the characters. He grabs you from the beginning.

Poems have always held my attention, but they’re denser and smaller. It’s funny because poetry is considered harder to read. It wasn’t harder for me. Close reading, that is. Milton, Chaucer, Dante—I could handle those for some reason, but not fiction. From ninth grade on, I wrote poetry compulsively, and pushed myself to do iambic pentameter and rhymes because free verse was cheating—anybody could do that. But I was such a terrible student. I couldn’t sustain anything.

INTERVIEWER

What pointed you toward drama?

WEINER

Actually, I think it has something to do with my not being a great reader. When a play’s put up, it’s all there in front of you. When you’re a little kid who has trouble with long books, it’s a very literary experience to go see Eugene O’Neill. During high school, I wrote skits, I did improv, I was a performer. My senior year in high school I was elected by my class to give a speech at graduation. It was seven or eight minutes of stand-up comedy, including a salute to the bottom fifth of the class, of which I was part. The dad of a classmate of mine, a guy named Allan Burns, who created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, came up to me afterward. He said, Have you ever thought about writing for TV? You could do that.

INTERVIEWER

Had you thought about it?

WEINER

I had been raised more or less without TV. I loved it, my parents loved it—but we weren’t allowed to watch it. And yet what was on TV during those years? M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart. TV was very bad before that, and got very bad after that, but at the time it was really very good. The thing is, I took what Allan Burns said seriously just because it was the first time someone said I might be able to do anything. But my parents hated show business. It’s part of living in Los Angeles.

There was one other formative experience. One of our English teachers, Ms. Moser, had a poet come to visit our school—W.S. Merwin. The honor society got to have dinner with him. Even though I made bad grades, I edited the literary magazine, and the teacher made sure I was allowed to go, too. She had even told him about me, because when we met he said, Tell me your name again, I want to remember it. In my yearbook, Ms. Moser wrote to me, Keep doing what you’re doing, and stick to poetry and starve.

INTERVIEWER

Which you did not do.

WEINER

I tried. At Wesleyan I could not get into any writing classes. I applied to everything and got rejected. You’re laughing now, you should have heard my parents. Six hundred students, all that money, and you can’t get into class!? An older student, who was studying with the famous professor Frank Reeve, told me I should go and ask, personally, to take a tutorial with him. Franklin D’Olier Reeve. This Vermont Yankee, log-splitting son of a bitch. He had gone with Robert Frost to Russia. Incredibly handsome and charismatic—in fact, he was Christopher Reeve’s father. I imagined he was in the CIA. So I went to his office and brought my poems with me. He shredded them. I had some line that was like, “Where does it hide?”—this is sophomore poetry, right?—“Where does it hide to gently squeeze the pitch of morning into orange whispers of dusk, squeeze the pitch of dusk into orange whispers of morning,” and he said, Lose the split infinitive and juice squeezer. It was brutal. Then he said, When do we start?

I spent three semesters studying with Professor Reeve, writing poems and delivering one or two of them to him every week. I also took a lot of poetry classes. There were a couple years there where The Waste Land was the most interesting thing in the world to me. I loved that it was so personal and grimy and gross and epic at the same time. Two women talking about getting an abortion in a bar at closing time right next to a story about Greek gods and the Fisher King. The high and the low together. It is so important to my life as a writer, there’s so much dialogue, so much rhythm that I have tried to emulate. That’s still my idea of what a poetic sentence sounds like. My senior thesis was in creative writing, was poetry.

INTERVIEWER

What were your poems like?

WEINER

Pretty funny, a lot of them, in an ironic way. And very confessional. A lot like what I do on Mad Men, actually—I don’t think people always realize the show is super personal, even though it’s set in the past. It was as if the admission of uncomfortable thoughts had already become my business on some level. I love awkwardness. Reeve compared my poems to cartoons. He had me read “Mac Flecknoe,” Dryden’s satire on the poet Thomas Shadwell, because he knew I had a sense of humor and was interested in celebrities. He also told me that I had to be as interesting as my work, which terrified me. I was like, Forget it, dude. I’m a very conventional person. I’m middle-class. My father’s a physician. I had no personality to speak of. I kept wishing I had grown up interesting so I could be a great writer.

INTERVIEWER

Maybe Reeve turned you into a TV writer by giving you a weekly deadline.

WEINER

I’ve always said TV writing is for people who hate being alone more than they hate writing. Even then I needed to talk about what I was doing. Once I knew that my writing would be read right away, even if it was judged—and once I knew that it would be shot right away—that was all I cared about.

INTERVIEWER

Did you figure this out in film school?

WEINER

No. I didn’t go to film school for writing, but I realized that if you could write, you could have complete control. All these people I admired—Woody Allen, Jim Brooks, Preston Sturges—directed and wrote. When directors would come to the school and talk about their movies, eventually they’d have to talk about the fact that someone else had written it. To me that was like the dirty secret.

Then I graduated from film school and was stuck in a hole by myself for three years, writing. Linda, my wife, was supporting us, but that was awful. I was not made for that. I am not the writer who wants to live in the woods. Plus, half my time was spent trying to get into show business, which is demoralizing and somehow futile without finished work, but easier than writing.

INTERVIEWER

What were you writing during that time?

WEINER

Screenplays. I finished a screenplay that I’d started at USC. Then I wrote another screenplay about paparazzi. Then I started working on a Big Movie. After film school, I read everything that had been assigned to me in college. I mean, everything. I read Mein Kampf. I read all the time instead of writing. And I read a lot of biographies and became interested in this kind of American picaresque character. By picaresque I don’t mean like Candide. I don’t mean a guy who shit’s happening to. I mean a guy who is making his own future because he has no other options. I mean Tom Jones. So I was writing this movie following a guy’s life from 1930 to the millennium. And I got to page 80 of the thing, and I abandoned it.

Then I decided I was going to make a movie, an improvised movie that I was going to be in. Kind of a comedy Cassavetes movie—people improvising, but in a story. This was around the time of Clerks. I saw Clerks and felt the way many people did. It wasn’t like hearing the Beatles for the first time. It was a ten-thousand-dollar amateur black-and-white movie. It was inspiring in the way only something crude and peculiar can be inspiring.

And because I had gone to film school, I knew what commercial filmmaking was and knew I didn’t like it. In the nineties there was a stranglehold of formula on the movies. People would point to great movies like Chinatown as examples of how structure generates great works. But I always felt that these structures were derived from great works. The individual stories are organic, they come out of people’s heads. To say that the story of Jesus and the story of Moses are the same story is a horrible mistake. Are they both heroic? Yes. Do they both have inauspicious beginnings and unmarked graves? Yes. That does not make them the same story. But the studios were trying to consolidate films into a bulletproof system, they were trying to reverse engineer a hit—which, of course, is insane. In entertainment you’re a fool to try that.

One of the big things was, everybody hated “episodic structure,” as they used to call it.

INTERVIEWER

Meaning what?

WEINER

They were uncomfortable with a movie like The Godfather or a story like the Odyssey, where the only thing holding the events together is the characters. Now, there’s this monster, this obstacle, but there’s no real progression—the hero just keeps trying to get home. Sure, Michael Corleone starts off as a young war hero and ends up as the godfather, but the wedding takes up the first half hour of the movie. People liked to talk about “act breaks” and “rising action” leading to a climax, but what about Apocalypse Now? Someone’s on a journey, and sure, we’re heading toward a climax, but there are so many digressions. To me, those digressions are the story.

People would say to me, What’s holding this together? Or, How is this moment related to the opening scene, or the problem you set up on page 15? I don’t know. That’s where the character went. That’s the story. So many movies in the seventies are told this way, episodically, and they feel more like real life because you don’t see the story clicking. Movies like Days of Heaven—big movies that take time out to show the locusts. Do you need the crop duster in North by Northwest? No, but it is the most memorable part of the movie. It has no essential function in the story. Cary Grant has already been pursued. They’ve already tried to kill him. They’ve drugged him. They’ve poured booze down his throat. Remember how Cary Grant goes back to the house where the bad guys got him at the beginning of the movie and poured booze down his throat? He comes back the next day and says, This is where I was, they poured booze down my throat. Remember how he goes into the room where they poured the booze into him and they’ve changed the couch?

INTERVIEWER

Even now the hair on my neck is standing up.

WEINER

They’re so evil. They changed the couch! It’s preposterous, but delightful. Of course, anything that is epic is episodic in structure, whether it’s Lawrence of Arabia or The Godfather, which was already being treated like an art movie—the most successful commercial movie in the world treated like an art-house movie.

I liked episodic structure and I thought it worked. I still think it works. At the time I was especially interested in Billy Wilder and Fellini. I liked their grasp of tone, the way the movies are both funny and dark. You’re always scared and laughing and on the verge of tears somewhere in the middle of these movies. I could watch Sunset Boulevard and 8 1⁄2 over and over again. Everything you need to know about writing is in those two movies. How to tell a story, where to start the story, whose point of view it’s from, at what point you leave their point of view, when you should see a character in a scene by himself or herself—all this shit that drives you nuts when you’re trying to structure something. And then, the fact that there are no rules. That’s what both movies are saying—there are no rules, the audience is not as rigid as you think, and certainly not as rigid as the people paying for the movies to get made.

Anyway, once I got out of film school I said, They will not let me fly the plane. So I’m going to build my own airport. I shot my first movie, What Do You Do All Day?, in twelve days, in 1995. It cost twelve thousand dollars. Anybody can raise twelve thousand dollars—now it would probably be even cheaper, because there was no digital then.

Around that time, my friend Daisy von Scherler Mayer called me up and said, I sold this sitcom. Come in and sit at the table. We’re going to run through the script and you’ll just pitch jokes. The show was called Party Girl. And I drove onto the Warner Brothers lot and sat down at the table with all these professional writers and had no trouble talking and telling jokes. Not just because I’m an extrovert, but because I’d just made this movie and I knew it was funny. You’ve never heard of What Do You Do All Day? and it never went anywhere, but I still say it changed my life. Making that movie took me from being a frustrated, bitter person with no control over his life to a delusional, grandiose person with no control over his life. I was so high on the idea of having a job and writing jokes and going down to the stage and seeing the actors saying them and getting laughs. I couldn’t believe it.

INTERVIEWER

So none of the screenplays you’d been writing before that period were made?

WEINER

Well, remember the eighty-page picaresque thing I threw away? That turned out to be the basis for Mad Men.

INTERVIEWER

Really?

WEINER

Four years after I’d started working in TV, I wrote the pilot for Mad Men. Three years after that, AMC wanted to make it. They asked me, What’s the next episode about? So I went looking through my notes. Now, imagine this. At this point it’s 2004—I’m writing for The Sopranos—and I go back to look at my notes from 1999 ... but then I find this unfinished screenplay from 1995, and on the last page it says “Ossining, 1960.” Five years after I’d abandoned that other screenplay, I’d started writing it again without even knowing it. Don Draper was the adult version of the hero in the movie. And there were all of these things in the movie that became part of the show—Don’s past, his rural poverty, the story I was telling about the United States, about who these people were. And when I say “these people,” I mean people like Lee Iacocca and Sam Walton, even Bill Clinton to some degree. I realized that these people who ran the country were all from these very dark backgrounds, which they had hidden, and that the self-transforming American hero, the Jay Gatsby or the talented Mr. Ripley, still existed. I once worked at a job where there was a guy who said he went to Harvard. Someone finally said, You did not go to Harvard—that guy didn’t go to Harvard! And everyone was like, Who cares? That went into the show.

How could it not matter, when everyone was fighting so hard to get into Harvard and it was supposed to change your life? And you could just lie about it? Guess what—in America, we say, Good for him! Good for him, for figuring it out.

INTERVIEWER

I’m struck by the irony that Don Draper has become an icon of the 1960s Establishment when the character himself feels like such an outsider.

WEINER

Everyone loves the Horatio Alger version of life. What they don’t realize is that these transformations begin in shame, because poverty feels shameful. It shouldn’t, but everyone who’s experienced it confirms this. Sometimes people say, I didn’t know we were poor—Don Draper knows he’s poor, very much in the model of Iacocca or Walton, who came out of the Great Depression, out of really humble beginnings. Or like Conrad Hilton, on the show. These men don’t take no for an answer, they build these big businesses, these empires, but really it’s all based on failure, insecurity, and an identity modeled on some abstract ideal of white power. I’ve always said this is a show about becoming white. That’s the definition of success in America—becoming a WASP. A WASP male.

The driving question for the series is, Who are we? When we talk about “we,” who is that? In the pilot, Pete Campbell has this line, “Adding money and education doesn’t take the rude edge out of people.” Sophisticated anti-Semitism. I overheard that line when I was a schoolteacher. The person, of course, didn’t know they were in the presence of a Jew. I was a ghost. Certain male artists like to show that they’re feminists as a way to get girls. That’s always seemed pimpy to me. I sympathize with feminism the same way I identify with gay people and with people of color, because I know what it’s like to look over the side of the fence and then to climb over the fence and to feel like you don’t belong, or be reminded at the worst moment that you don’t belong.

Take Rachel Menken, the department-store heiress in the first season of Mad Men. She’s part of what I call the nose-job generation. She’s assimilated. She probably doesn’t observe the Sabbath or any of these other things that her parents did. That generation had a hard time because they were trying desperately to be buttoned-down and preppy and—this is my parent’s generation—white as could be. They were embarrassed by their parents. This is the story of America, this assimilation. Because guess what, this guy Don has the same problems. He’s hiding his identity, too. That’s why Rachel Menken understands Don, because they’re both trying desperately to be white American males.

Of all of them, Peggy is my favorite. I identify with her struggle. She is so earnest and self-righteous and talented and smart, but dumb about personal things. She thinks she’s living the life of “we.” But she’s not. And every time she turns a corner, someone says, “You’re not part of ‘we.’ ” “But you all said ‘we’ the other day.” “Yes, we meant, ‘we white men.’ ”

INTERVIEWER

It’s strange that you wrote the hour-long drama Mad Men just when you were succeeding as a half-hour sitcom writer.

WEINER

I didn’t see a future in situation comedy. There wasn’t room anymore for something like M*A*S*H*, where they would have sentimental moments and episodes that could sneak up on you and make you cry.

When I started out, there were few dramas on TV. They were out of style. There were four news magazines a week, and there was Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, or whatever, and the procedurals and the game shows. Reality TV hadn’t happened yet. Then, while I was doing it, situation comedy went from being the most lucrative and exciting place to be in television to disappearing. All the things that people hate about network TV were starting to fail economically, and still the networks were asking, How do we re-create Friends? By the time I wrote the Mad Menpilot, the syndication market had dried up. Survivor happened when I was writing on the sitcom Becker. Survivor, The Sopranos, and Lost all happened within a few years of each other. By then, drama had become really big. And then David Chase hired me for The Sopranos based on my script for Mad Men.

INTERVIEWER

You worked on three seasons of The Sopranos before you went back to your Mad Men pilot. Did that change your conception of your show?

WEINER

Mad Men would have been some sort of crisp, soapy version of The West Wing if not for The Sopranos. Peggy would have been a climber. All the things that people thought were going to happen would have happened. Even though the pilot itself has a dark, strange quality, I didn’t know that that was what was good about it. I just wanted an excuse to exorcise my demons, to write a story about somebody who’s thirty-five years old, who has everything, and who is miserable.

The important thing, for me, was hearing the way David Chase indulged the subconscious. I learned not to question its communicative power. When you see somebody walking down a dark hallway, you know that they’re scared. We don’t have to explain that it’s scary. Why is this person walking down a dark hallway when he’s on his way to his kids’ school? Because he’s scared about someone telling him something bad about his kids. He’s worried about hearing something that will reflect badly on the way he’s raised his kids, which goes back to his own childhood. All that explanatory stuff, we never even talked about it. And I try not to talk about it here. Why did that happen? Why do you think? You can’t cheat and tell people what’s going on, because then they won’t enjoy it, even if they say they want it that way.

You know how sometimes I give you a note that says, Why don’t you do X? and you say, That’s the thing I wanted to do? That’s what I learned at The Sopranos. That’s the note I try to give to everyone who writes here. Take the risk of doing the extreme thing, the embarrassing thing, the thing that’s in your subconscious. Before The Sopranos, when someone said, Make it deeper, I didn’t know what they meant. Or really, I knew in my gut—but I also knew that it was the one thing that crossed my mind that I wasn’t going to do. To have Peggy come into Don’s office after he’s had the baby and ask for a raise and be rejected, and look at the baby presents, so we know she’s thinking about her own baby that she gave away, and then to have her tell Don, “You have everything and so much of it.” There is something embarrassing about that. A scene that was really just about her getting turned down for a raise became a scene about her whole life. That was the sort of thing I learned from working with David Chase.

Another thing that happened when I began writing on The Sopranos was I noticed that people were always telling me anecdotes. They would throw out a line of dialogue they’d heard somebody say or that someone had said to them—and that was the story. I did not know how important that shit was. There’s an episode where Beansie and Paulie are reminiscing and Tony dismissively says, “‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation.” And it’s devastating. David Chase had witnessed that actual statement. Now I have a ton of stuff like that I’ve saved, things people have said to me that are concise and devastating and sum up some moment in their lives. When I’m talking to some woman on an airplane, and she says, I like being bad and going home and being good, that is very useful.

INTERVIEWER

Did you cultivate your memory for those moments?

WEINER

I always had that kind of memory, I just didn’t know there was any value in it. One time we were doing a research call at The Sopranos. It was a two-hour conference call with a guy talking about emergency medicine. At the end of it, the writer’s assistant, who was taking notes, had a bunch of medical facts, but all of us writers had written down the same two ideas. All of us. Just those same two ideas in two hours.

INTERVIEWER

What were they?

WEINER

He said that everyone with insurance is a VIP. And he used the expression “wallet biopsy.” I think they’re self-explanatory. But that’s what being a writer is. I don’t know what makes something a story, but I know one when I hear it. Mad Men was a show I wanted to see. I really wanted to tell a story about that period. I thought it was sexy. I wanted to live in it a little bit, and I wanted to remind people that they have a misconception about the past, any past.

INTERVIEWER

What sort of misconception?

WEINER

You know in Reds, when they’re interviewing the witnesses, and Henry Miller says, People today think they invented fucking? That kind of thing. The old people you’re looking at, they may have been more carnal than we are—drunker, less responsible, more violent. So many of those film noirs are about how soldiers reintegrate themselves into society. The private detective is haunted by the shadow of having killed people in the war. Don’t even get me started on The Best Years of Our Lives. The move to the suburbs, the privacy, the conservatism of the fifties—that’s all being driven by guys who, for two years, had not gone to the bathroom in privacy. I’m not the first TV person to be puzzled and fascinated by the fifties. The two biggest shows of the seventies are M*A*S*H* and Happy Days. Obviously that moment is some sort of touchstone for culture. Is Hawkeye not related to Don Draper? He’s an alcoholic Boy Scout who behaves badly all the time. I just wanted to go back and look again.

So I spent a lot of money buying videotapes to watch movies from the period. I hired somebody to do research for me. Then, because I was working all day, I stumbled on the idea of dictating. I found that I was constantly thinking of dialogue and couldn’t write it down fast enough. I heard that Billy Wilder did it, too. He walked around with a riding crop while his writing partners would type. Joseph Conrad did it. So did Henry James. I’ve since kept track because some of my writer friends think it’s cheating. And it’s hard to believe you can be as eloquent as your characters, but you can be if you have the topic and you’re channeling them. Then you get to fix it afterward. It’s way better than sitting there and procrastinating while you write a new piece of description and try to perfect the sentence.

INTERVIEWER

Will you describe how you write the show now?

WEINER

At the beginning of the season I dictate a lot of notes about the stories I’m interested in. Then for each episode, we start with a group-written story, an outline. When I read the outline, I rarely get a sense of what the story is. It has to be told to me. Then I go into a room with an assistant and I dictate the scenes, the entire script, page by page.

INTERVIEWER

I’ve seen you do whole scenes without pausing.

WEINER

I can see it in my head. And I don’t look at the dictation. I try and keep it in my head. That’s why the fatigue gets so bad. And why it’s crucial to have the right assistant. It requires the chemistry, it requires them reading my mind a little bit so they know when I’m moving back to an earlier person who’s talking or which person is saying it—because sometimes I stop identifying the speakers. After a while I’ll talk in different voices. I don’t even know what I’m doing when I walk around making up those scenes. But I wrote my play the same way, and my second movie, You Are Here. If you compose that way, it means the dialogue can all be said. John Slattery and I had an argument about something in the second episode, where there was a bit of a tongue twister. He was supposed to say, “Coop is going to want a carbon with your hand-picked team for Nixon on it. And I warn you right now, it includes Pete Campbell.” He said it was impossible to say, but I knew it could be said because I’d said it. I rattled it right off to him. Then he smiled and performed it and everything else I wrote for him. I started writing more tongue twisters for John. My favorite was, “He knows what that nut means to Utz and what Utz means to us.”

INTERVIEWER

What’s the main difference between writing for someone else’s show and writing for your own?

WEINER

It’s one thing to hear Tony Soprano say your dialogue. That is ridiculous. That’s a totally surreal experience. It’s another thing to create an entire environment and walk onto the set of this fake office from a different era and see Peggy in her ponytail and bangs and Joan looking like Joan. It was better than I could have imagined. I am a controlling person. I’m at odds with the world, and like most people I don’t have any control over what’s going to happen—I only have wishes and dreams. But to be in this environment where you actually control how things are going to work out, and who’s going to win, and what they’re going to learn, and who kisses who...

INTERVIEWER

And then you have the challenge of doing episode after episode, season after season. You once said to me, “I’ve written hundreds and hundreds of scenes with two people in them. You have to know what kind of scene it is.” What did you mean?

WEINER

When I was just starting out, a writer explained to me the meat and potatoes of situation comedy. For instance, a scene where one guy thinks he’s talking about one thing and the other guy thinks they’re talking about something else sounds like a big cliché. But guess what? That’s comedy. The question is, Can you do it well? I’ve personally written some of the most clichéd comedy scenes on Mad Men.

INTERVIEWER

Like what?

WEINER

Like the first season, when Pete goes to return that chip-and-dip at the store. He tries to hit on the officious clerk and she rejects him, then that other guy comes in and hits on her, and she loves it. That could be a scene on any situation comedy in the world, right down to waiting in line. To me, waiting in line is one of the funniest things in the world.

Or think of the premiere of season 3 of Mad Men, where Ken and Pete both get promoted to head of accounts. I put them in the elevator so that each of them can magnanimously congratulate the loser. I wanted to see how long we could sustain the dramatic irony. When I got to The Sopranos, I realized that I hated it when one character would just help another character through the scene. “I got something to tell you.” “Well, uh, what have you got to tell me?” “It’s kind of hard to say, Ron.” “Well, I’m listening.” I don’t know about everybody else, but I find that whenever I really want to say something, there’s a huge obstacle. Except in this interview.

INTERVIEWER

What about all the scenes you do with four or five or six people? Or more? You have all those status meetings, all those partners’ meetings.

WEINER

Those are tough, and the hardest part of my job is dealing with exposition. So populating those meetings with a lot of characters gives you a chance to bury it. But I find that giving each of the characters their own goal in the scene helps them talk in my head. And that’s usually the place for the most drama. Characters go in the story from having a private problem to having a public problem, even if they just lie about it. Which I guess is some convoluted definition of dramatic irony. Take the meeting in the episode “Hands and Knees.” Don has almost been caught by the government. Pete has to turn down North American Aviation and lie for Don or Don will go to jail. Pete also knows that Don is sleeping with Dr. Faye. Lane has been beaten by his father with a cane. Roger has lost their biggest account and sent Joan alone to get an abortion. Joan has not gotten an abortion. And Cooper is just there—he doesn’t know anything. So there are six secrets in the room, and when I was writing that scene, the hardest part was forcing the characters to talk about anything. Luckily we had the structure of another dumb meeting. The audience has so much information, and the characters don’t have any.

In addition to writing, I happen to go to a lot of meetings, and I find them hilarious—the rules of order, old business, new business, it’s not just from the Marx Brothers. But you know, every scene is comic to me.

INTERVIEWER

The first time I walked onto the set, I saw a stack of mail sitting on a secretary’s desk. Every single letter was addressed to a character on the show, from a client they have in the show, stamped and postmarked 1965. How do you make it so real, so detailed?

WEINER

Well, I have a bunch of people who delight in re-creating that physical reality. But as for the writing, I don’t make any special effort to write “period.” I try to be realistic, but the characters are smarter and more eloquent than regular people. It’s part of why I have them talk so slowly—or, really, listen so much—because I didn’t want the dialogue to be repetitive and snappy and sound phony. I wanted there to be real things like people saying, What? when they didn’t understand something, and coughing—things like that. The director of the pilot wanted it to look “1950s.” He actually wanted to do it in black and white. Then he wanted it to be spoken faster. But if you speak that fast, you’ll have to keep repeating the information. I did not want to do that. I didn’t even have the characters address each other by name because it felt phony. And after two seasons of the show, Roger Sterling was known as “the white-haired guy.”

One thing we did agree on was that we were looking for a commercial cinematographic style. We were very interested in the ceilings, in the low angles. The cinematographer, director, production designer, and I all shared a point of reference in North by Northwest, which is a story about an advertising man. Even though it’s very stylized and it’s a thriller and it’s Cary Grant, it was made in 1958, a couple years before the pilot took place, and we were influenced photographically by that.

A lot of these things were decided, like so many good decisions, by financial necessity. In the pilot, I wrote an overhead shot of men coming into the Sterling Cooper building, because I knew that was the cheapest angle to make period. Looking straight down, you have the side of the building—and the buildings hadn’t aged much—and you have the tops of people’s hats, which might not require full costumes, and some cars, and you get the sensation of period. When we did the flashbacks, our first glimpse of Dick Whitman’s childhood, I remembered how, in Death of a Salesman, they had staged the flashbacks in the regular sets, and I thought, Why don’t we just put this in Don’s dining room? We’ll stage it in a sort of theatrical limbo.

INTERVIEWER

Often you’ll say, That just doesn’t sound period. And someone will go research it and discover that you’re right. How are you so connected to a period that you experienced only as a small child?

WEINER

I cut out any slang that I didn’t know organically. Even as a kid, you hear certain expressions and then you stop hearing them. I had heard people say, “Make a hash of it.” They don’t say it anymore. Also, I intuitively cast actors who had a certain formality to them. It turned out they were almost all from the Midwest. They have old-fashioned manners.

But you know, these questions of verisimilitude have a lot to do with the framing and the editing. The original director, Alan Taylor, is a huge fan of Wong Kar-wai, and so am I. What Wong Kar-wai does is let scenes develop in front of your eyes. In a conversation, the point-of-view shots will include parts of people’s shoulders and heads. He has a shot design that appreciates the space, puts the people in the space, puts the audience in the space. Music and mise-en-sceÌ€ne are part of it, but the editorial style was most important of all. We don’t use overlapping dialogue. Usually, when you cut a scene between two people talking, you keep cutting to the person who’s listening. It allows you to use material from different performances. It’s also supposed to keep the audience in the scene. But I felt that, since these actors were so good and they pulled off these transitions in front of our eyes, why cut away? So I’d stay with their performance. They would do the entire speech, and then there would be a pause on one side or the other for the other character to respond. That, to me, magically creates a first-person experience, though none of this was intellectual. That’s kind of the way I experience the world. It feels normal to me.

INTERVIEWER

Once you had directed the show, did it change the way you wrote for it?

WEINER

I try now to write every script as if I would have to direct it. I do not leave vagaries of position or gesture. I do not have vagaries about the set. I try to specify who the characters are. It’s a blueprint. I will always give visual clues. I’m not talking about the props only, but a visual motif. People sitting or standing. I will write those things in. Where they are in the room, I write that in the script. You don’t have to do that, and I used to not write that. Betty has a seat in the kitchen. That’s one of my things. Your mom has a place where she sits, if she sits. Directing has made me not write impossible crap like somebody “plops into a chair” or “turns beet red” or “rolls their eyes.” That means that there’s no cheating in the stage directions—“He’s never felt this way before.” “He reminds her of her father.” You can’t write how someone feels, you have to show it in the scene.

The miracle of writing Jon Hamm sitting on the steps at the end of the first season and, as the camera pulled away, seeing his face physically change in a way that . . . It was exhilarating. So much emotion. I’m too embarrassed a person to ever do that job. I don’t know how actors do it.

INTERVIEWER

On the level of the scene, you’re always searching for a surprising way into a moment, or a way that a moment can turn into something you don’t expect.

WEINER

You know that scene in Rebecca when Joan Fontaine is exploring the room where everything is monogrammed “Rebecca,” and George Sanders just appears in the window? It’s a ground-floor room, and he’s sitting in the window. He just slides his leg over the sash and walks into the room. You’re like, That guy could’ve come in through the front door, but I know so much about him because he came in the window. We all love moments like that.

How many people say at the beginning of a story that the character is bored, and they start telling all these things about how he’s bored—he does this, and he goes to his mom’s house, and she’s talking, and he’s staring off, and then you go to his job and it’s the same every day. But actually, it only takes one shot to explain to the audience that the character is bored, and I mean bored with everything in their whole life. They did it on The Sopranos. When Tony was supposed to be laying low, they had a shot of him on the escalator in the mall.

The story is not, We built this great bridge, let’s watch people go across the bridge. The story is, The bridge is out, the bridge is broken, I’m going to try to build one. And then it gets blown up right before I finish it.

INTERVIEWER

Do you read any of the commentary on Mad Men?

WEINER

I stay off the Internet.

INTERVIEWER

Now you do.

WEINER

Yeah, I couldn’t take it. It’s like being on trial for a crime you didn’t commit and having to listen to the testimony with a gag in your mouth. I did learn, though, that what I intended something to mean is not always what it means. That’s okay. It’s actually kind of amazing.

INTERVIEWER

You directed a movie last year. You write plays and poetry. How do you feel about being labeled a “TV writer”?

WEINER

I don’t even understand what that is. That’s going to be a big joke to everyone in ten years because everyone’s going to watch things on the same screen. The movie industry is clinging to its perceived role as the dominant form in the culture, but you know, I was just reading an interview with Stanley Kubrick from the late fifties where he talks about how movies, if they want to have any impact, have to start being more like television, or better. He was talking about the artists in TV at that time—among them, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon, Rod Serling, Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose—and the directors who went with them—John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet, Delbert Mann. In the next ten years, they all went into the movies. The movies took that business away. But really, the fifties was the golden age of television.

INTERVIEWER

What made the fifties a golden age?

WEINER

Social consciousness and a respect for the audience. This was the same moment as the blacklist, so there was so much subversion. There’s poetry, there’s great speeches, there’s incredible eloquence in those early made-for-TV dramas, but they are derived from real life. There are actors in them who are unattractive. There are recognizable milieus, like automats. Before the 1950s, something like 12 Angry Men wouldn’t have seemed like a promising subject for a Hollywood movie. It had to be a ninety-minute TV show first. But that’s how it goes. Americans are subversive and they depend on their entertainment to express it. So thankfully, all subversive entertainment eventually succeeds.

INTERVIEWER

Do you ever worry about losing your touch?

WEINER

In show business, careers are always seen in terms of hot or cold. Hot and cold doesn’t interest me. That’s dependent on the world. Are you in style or are you not in style? My kids have no Faulkner on their reading list. Thomas Wolfe—completely gone. You never know what’s going to go and what will stay. But on the creative side, you’re either wet or dry. That’s what a writer asks himself. Am I going to dry up? The repetition is the hardest part. You know—you deal with it every day. You witness me trying not to get caught with my pants down doing something I’ve already done. Remember Allan Burns, from my high school graduation? Well, I had lunch with him after my freshman year of college. I asked him, How do you write? He said, My rule is quit when I’m hot. When I’m in the middle of something and it’s good and I know where it’s going to go, that’s where I stop, so when I get back tomorrow I can get back on it. Underneath this was obviously the fear that he could wake up tomorrow and not be able to write. That terrifies me, too.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have other superstitions about your work?

WEINER

I have a pen I use to check off numbers on the outline. I’ve been using that pen since Becker. I will borrow other people’s superstitions. But I’m most superstitious about hubris. I am terrified about having things taken away from me because I finally relax. When I wrote the pilot of Mad Men, I was saying, I’m already successful, why am I not happy? Now it’s become, You didn’t even know what success was. What if your dreams came true?

[top5internetsourcesuniversi-blog]

Sample College Application Essay

' specimen College Application strive 1\nYou Be the Judge\n look at the following natural covering essay. See if you chiffonier figure step up this essays strengths and weaknesses. Then nurse understanding to obtain our critique.\n\nThe Essay\n\nFrom the meter I was satisfactory to realize what a university was, either(prenominal) I heard from my mformer(a)s b overagedness of the family was intimately the University of pelf and the bigger inheritance it has. Many a Saturday afternoon my granddad would devote to me, by sitting me blue in search of the television and reminiscing about(predicate) the University of loot go half cartridge clip occurred during a bread Wolverines football game. Later, as I grew quondam(a) and universities took on greater meaning, my mother and uncle, both(prenominal) alumni of the University of dinero, took me to hang their old stamping grounds. From jump smokestack, the university looked terrorization because of its size, stil l with much(prenominal)(prenominal) a declamatory school comes salmagundi of large number and of faculty member and non- faculty member showcases.\n\nIn capital of Illinois High School, non-academic clubs such(prenominal) as the early Physicians and the Pylon, both of which I induct belonged to for both geezerhood, give me an chance to see both the business worldness and the medical world. These twain clubs require habituated me a greater sense of what these rushs whitethorn be like. In Future Physicians, I participated in handle trips to childrens hospitals and to a fault participated in two kindred banks.\n\nCurrently I hold a caper at Maas Brothers. This lets me interact with heap outside my aver immediate environment. I meet varied kinds of people, in diffrent moods, with incompatible attitudes, and with antithetic values. This job teaches me to be patient of with people, to have responsibility, and to hold people for what they are.\n\nIn the community I am busy in my church Youth Group. As a naughty school sopho much, I was our churchs representative to the diocesan Youth Fellowship. I dished organize jejuneness group rasets, the largest being The Bishops Ball, a state-wide event for 300 upstart people. I also contend graduate(prenominal) school petty(prenominal) varsity association football for two years. As a ripened I depart be compete varsity association football, conscionable now in the off-season. As a secondmentary I coached a girls soccer team for the t give. This gave me a great deal of responsibility because the care of 24 girls was put into my custody. It mat very gratifying to pass on the roll in the hayledge of soccer to a nonher generation. The girls played teams from other split of Florida. Though their move into was 3-8, the girls be intimateed their season. This is what I taught them was the great joy of soccer.\n\nThe ace-time(prenominal) iii years of my life have given me greater visions of my future. I see the University of Michigan as holding a large sustain with legion(predicate) unread chapters and myself as an earnest child who has al unmatchable learned to read. I intend to read and probe into all the chapters. The University of Michigan offers me to a greater extent than than the great composition of this fine school, save a large student eubstance with diverse likes and dislikes, and many activities, both academic and non-academic, to participate in. With the help of the University of Michigan, I impart be made after college and be able to top a get to and place for myself in our society.\n\nThe Critique\n\n doorway officials consider how you import your essay, non just what you write about. leaven to critique your own essays in the very(prenominal) way this type essay is critiqued below.\n\nThe insane asylum\nThe introduction seems to have a miss of focus: W presents the generator acquittance with this carve up? Wheres the aut hor going with this essay? Also, the generator needs to deoxidise the phrasing (e.g., epoch halftime occurred to at halftime or From first sight to Immediately).\n\nThe consistency\nThere is a very disconnected transition from the first dissever to the second: How did we get from Michigans renewal to the generators clubs? The second paragraph also includes familiar statements with little demo: How did these activities reveal career paths?\n\nCan the generator be more specific? What does participated in two line banks mean? Did he drive volunteers from across town, sign people in all day on three Saturdays either month only August or spend 15 minutes one Thursday afternoon in the nurses line giving melodic phrase?\n\nIn the trio paragraph, we have to adopt: What does the source do at Maas Brothers? interact needs definition. What here shows that the author has position about the time spent at Maas Brothers? Also in this paragraph, there is a misspelling of diffe rent (diffrent): The writer did not proofread thoroughly.\n\nThe reading in the tail paragraph (as rise up as the prior two paragraphs) appears elsewhere in the application. Essays that only run chain reactor your accomplishments dont add to your application. And does the ref need to know that the girls played teams from other parts of Florida?\n\nThe writer would be correct off focus on one of the things discussed in this essay, such as functional with the girls soccer team. What he did to make Jennifer and Gretchen and Courtney enjoy soccer even though they won only three of their games would be more vivid and focussed than a grant of talk about passing things on to future generations.\n\nThe windup\nThe conclusion returns to the earliest idea of vicissitude at Michigan, and this idea was not developed in the body of the essay. Its not necessary to citation the great disposition of this fine school. Instead, the writer should give specific, programmatic reasons Mi chigan offers the kind of nurture he needs.\n\nboilersuit\nThis essay seems ripe of information and demonstrates underlying essay organization, but it lacks focus and proof. The proofreader gets a slipstream list of activities instead than a adopt sense of who the writer is and what he cares and thinks about.\n\nThe writer also repeats approximately phrases. He mentions the University of Michigan six multiplication and repeats academic and non-academic twice.If you lack to get a full essay, ready it on our website: Looking for a place to buy a cheap paper online? Buy Paper Cheap - Premium quality cheap essays and affordable papers online. Buy cheap, high quality papers to impress your professors and pass your exams. Do it online right now! '