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swearwolf-writes · 4 years ago

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Teen Wolf 2020

it’s 2020 and corona is a bitch :) the wolves might not be able to get sick but they still wear their masks bcs they could still be carriers so *clears throat* WEAR YOUR MASKS Y’ALL!! this is very much a no one dies/everybody lives au :)

[CROSSPOSTED ON: AO3]

Scott McCall - age 26

this cute nerd. he studied veterinary medicine which takes about 4 years so he graduated in 2017 and works as Deaton’s partner at the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic. he’s dating Isaac (bcs he came back from France with Argent, remember) and Kira (she came back from the Skinwalkers in 2019 and has a proper grasp on her powers). sorry scalia shippers but it’s not really my thing-

Stiles Stilinski - age 26

NERD. anywho- FBI dork became an agent in 2019 whoo and lives in DC with Lydia, Derek and Braeden. he’s dating Lydia and Derek and things are pretty chill - he yells at arseholes who refuse to wear their masks bcs ‘it’s uncomfortable :(’ like bite me karen no one cares

Derek Hale - age 32

grumpy sourwolf actually knows how to smile!! who knew- he lives in DC with Stiles, Lydia and Braeden most of the time but he and Braeden travel often to fight butthead hunters who need to mind their own business. he’s dating Stiles and he and Braeden are engaged - it’s cute and they’re being dorks about it. he likes to complain that they’d be married by now if it wasn’t for freakin covid

Lydia Martin - age 26

your local genius banshee~ 🥰 still awesome, still a harbinger of death - so yk, the usual. bcs she had extra credits she started as a junior studying maths and graduates in 2016!! 🎉🎉 she moved to DC after she got some money together while working as a tutor - the quartet splits rent (but usually it’s just Stiles and Lydia splitting it bcs the other two don’t technically have jobs and yk Derek is an unsub and Stiles is in the FBI which Lydia finds hilarious). she teaches adults in the local community college and helps supernatural folk on the dl - she runs a grief counselling service at the same place for people who’ve lost someone. she’s also trying to get a degree to become a high school maths teacher and it’s a lot but she’s got it handled.

Allison Argent - 24

accidentally brought back from the dead by the Dread Doctors. everyone could not stop crying bcs she’s back baby!! she died in 2011 age 17 and came back in 2012 so she wasn’t dead long thankfully - wanted to kill Theo bcs he messed with her pack even he did bring her back. she’s a chimera now lads- she needed a kidney transplant when she was young which was why she was kept away from the family business. she was a werewolf-werejaguar chimera like Hayden but stayed a chimera. Chris and Isaac stayed home and bcs she and Isaac never actually broke up, they kept dating - she found it funny that Isaac and Scott were dating at this point,, meanwhile they were panicking wildly :) she went back to school and said she wasn’t dead, just in the hospital for a really long time. she joined Liam’s year and again, wanted to very badly throw hands when she found out about Monroe- she’s the coolest, like she has claws and bow and arrows

Malia Tate - 26

our girl went to France as promised and hooked up with plenty of hot French people *le eyebrow wiggle* she found her beau there in France and it was not a love at first sight sort of thing - she wanted to punch them in the face,, in their very pretty face- she was basically doing her own thing when she smells them, another bloody werewolf and like don’t get me wrong, she’s fond of werewolves, but bloody hell do they cause trouble. and they smell her too and it’s like ‘eh-?’ bcs werecoyotes aren’t so common as werewolves. and they’re just there in a club in Bordeaux and they’re sniffed each other out and they kinda just pause like huh- bcs they were were not expecting to see someone that pretty- but that’s not the point of course- they pretend to leave together and as soon as they’re out of sight from humans, they start fighting in an alley, as you do. it ends up with the wolf tasting the wall bcs who the hell are you- once they figure out they’re both just there to party, things chill and they see more of each other, naturally, it’s all just a big coincidence and doesn’t mean anything. and then they’re dancing and it doesn’t mean anything. and then they’re sleeping together and it doesn’t mean anything. except it does. and they don’t know when it became normal to cuddle or wake up together or have breakfast together but it just was. and when the cute werewolf (who I still don’t have a name for-) plans on moving to the next place, she comes with. the pack are happy for her and they usually road trip from place to place so when the pack comes to visit in Prague? it’s fun to say the least

Kira Yukimura - age 25

she came back from the Skinwalkers in 2019 and she and Allison became good friends. she kept going with school from home and is dating Scott. her powers are strong and when she sneezes bcs yk pollen or wtv, there’s sparks and it’s hilarious and Scott finds it adorable. she doesn’t really know what she wants to do yet and that’s cool of her

Erica Reyes - age 25

they thought she was dead- think again bitch, she slowed her heart rate down so they couldn’t hear and everyone thought she was dead - when the alpha pack got rid of her body and Allison found it, she told her to tell the others to pretend she was dead bcs of the Alpha pack - they beat the Alpha pack but she and Boyd hid with Satomi’s pack while that went down and helped generally after. she kept going with school and bcs she dipped for a while, ended in Liam’s year and eventually became a nurse in 2017. she works with Melissa McCall and joins for family dinner a lot.

Isaac Lahey - age 25

went to France with Chris Argent but kept going with his studies at Chris’ insistence. was dating dating Scott before he had to leave with Chris but they didn’t actually break up,, it was more ‘i’ll miss you :(’. came back to Beacon Hills when Chris came to help with the deadpool business and stayed bcs of Allison and Scott 💞 his studies were mostly uninterrupted and he studied law, becoming a lawyer in 2020!! so at least one good thing came of this infernal year- he wants to specialise in family law.

Vernon Boyd III - age 26

yea no, Derek didn’t mercy kill him bcs he was fine :) de nile ain’t just a river lads he went into hiding with Satomi’s pack and came back when the Alpha pack was dealt with. went back to school and ended up in Liam’s year. he joined the air force when he was 18 and finished his rotc training stuff in 2018 and it’s pretty alright - he’s a pilot but was discharged in 2019 bcs someone started with him and bcs they were a superior, he couldn’t say shit. so now he likes to wear ‘fuck the army’ and ‘fuck the air force’ shirt. he has mad respect for the people out there but the people in charge? fuck em

Aiden Steiner - age 27

he lives bitches 😎 Ethan had a silver chain on so he plugged the wound with it - it counteracted the oni poison and the chain started melting into the would (he had mild silver poisoning but he was fine). school was normal and now he’s an engineer, living in Beacon Hills. he and Ethan left for London for a while bcs that town was crazy af. while Ethan was very happy there, he missed home so went back. he got an online ordination and learnt Japanese bcs why not

Ethan Steiner-Whittemore - age 27

got married!! whoo 🎉🎉 Aiden officiated (this is 2018 btw) and it was cute. the whole pack was there and the wedding was in London bcs as quaint as Beacon Hills is

‘i’m only planning on getting married once so this is gonna be awesome’ - Jackson Whittemore, 2017

he’s dramatic but yk Ethan was a blushing mess bcs ~life partners~ he’s soft y’all. he’s a primary school teacher in London and they’re part of the South London pack.

Jackson Steiner-Whittemore - age 25

also got married!! whoo 🎉🎉 ngl he’s lowkey a trophey husband/sugar hubby bcs he’s rich af - he does business with his dad but it’s not a big workload. he and Aiden want to adopt and yk being rich will hopefully help

Theo Raeken - age 25

ah yes, the absolute nightmare bi enby returns. (i hc him with he/they pronouns ✌🏽 as you do) so he successfully gained Scott’s trust and is part of the pack - yay! he and Allison have a sort of ‘you’re a bitch’ ‘no u’ *saves each others lives* relationship at this point - it took a while for Allison to warm up to him but he did save Liam’s butt several times so,, anywho, he’s still a werewolf-werecoyote chimera and he’s cool with it. he went to an online school and got his high school diploma - Liam then snuck him into the school and he signed the bookshelf bcs yea he didn’t graduate there but he did go there and now he’s graduated so yay. speaking of, he and Liam are dating, yea ik we been knew. they started dating in 2014 and Theo now works waiting tables at a local restaurants bcs he lives with Liam and his parents (you best bet that when they found out he was living in his car, they made him move in so he pays rent, not at their request but his). that was till 2017 and they moved out into an apartment together. Theo chips in on rent but it usually ends up being split 60:40 (Liam: Theo) so he cooks and cleans a lot,,, mainly bcs Liam can’t cook and does laundry like a maniac-

Liam Dunbar - age 24

this werepup is just as chaotic as always - he cannot be trusted with laundry bcs he doesn’t split colours from whites :) honestly it makes me wanna cry a lil bcs he can’t even fry eggs either- he has Theo to cook for him tho so that’s all good. he’s a history tutor for the high school students bcs he likes history and he knows the pain of high school- *shudder* he got an online Spanish and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) degree and is now teaching at Beacon Hills High but yk his first year teaching is all online bcs 2020-

Mason Hewitt - age 23

he’s Emissary to the pack when they don’t have Deaton *wipes tear* he’s all grown up- he went to UCLA and majored in biophysics and minored in LGBTQ studies (graduated 2017). he lived on campus (kept the bat next to his bed lmao) and videochatted with Liam almost everyday - he would visit almost every weekend even tho it’s a 6 and half drive but hey. he got an apartment near the uni where he and Corey lived after he graduated. they’ve been engaged since 2018 (it was actually the day after the Steiner-Whittemore wedding). he’s helping work on a new drug delivery system and they moved closer to Beacon Hills (Sacramento)

Corey Bryant - age 24

he also went UCLA, studying comparative literature and LGBTQ studies, and lived on campus (for 3 years before moving in with Mason in 2017) before graduating in 2018. they’re engaged and moved to Sacramento. he’s writing a novel that will thankfully have nothing to do with their confusing ass lives

Cora Hale - age 28

lesbian queen *bows* still part of her pack in Ecuador, South America - she’s got a lady lover who I call Rosa (affectionately nicknamed Rosalita). they met when she first got there age 12 (Rosa being 13 at the time). Rosa taught her Spanish and made her feel like part of the pack - after all the Alpha pack stuff, when she went back with Derek and Peter, she didn’t realise how much she’d missed them- how much she’d missed her. Derek asks if that’s her girlfriend and she’s like ‘wha- o.o’ and Rosa just goes ‘yup - nice to finally meet you guys’. she still visits DC to see Derek and Beacon Hills to see Erica and Isaac. even tho she lives in a different continent, Peter still looks out for her, sending anonymous donations in Talia’s name to the areas surrounding her pack’s territory

Brett Talbot - 24

*singsongs* ~he did not die~ the car swerved out of the way and the pack took him to Deaton who burnt the poison out of him (it was a long and painful process but he’s fine y’all). he’s the new lacrosse coach at Devenford Prep and he and Liam have a (mostly) friendly rivalry :) he’s a single pringle not bcs of lack of dates but just bcs he hasn’t found the one yet

Lorilee Rohr - age 22

also did not die :) she finished high school (2015) and went on to studying at UC Berkeley (art practice and theatre and performance studies, major and minor), graduating in 2018. she and Brett moved once he reached age 18. she makes and sells art from home

Nolan Holloway - age 25

after proving himself, same as Theo, he was eventually accepted into the pack. he and Gabe were dating and that’s that so he did mourn him for a long while. he works with hunters on the dl, trying to stop them hunting the supernaturals - he’s flipped 23 away from the dark side by 2020. he and Liam are friends which took a while but Nolan has his back (like there was that one time someone from the lacrosse team said they weren’t gonna ‘follow some mongrel’ so he reminded them that Liam was co-captain and if they didn’t wanna follow him, they could kindly fuck off :)) he’s a simp and has a raging crush on Brett like me too bruh

~the end~ for now

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sophielovesbooks · 4 years ago

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Why I’m Currently Not Writing

I want to write this post as a sort of personal reflection. But I am posting it on here because first of all, I like to share bits of my life on here and second of all (and more importantly) I’d like to get advice from some other writers on Tumblr! I know some of my followers are writers, but even if you aren’t following me (or maybe even if you aren’t a writer) I’d like to hear your thoughts.

So. Why am I not currently writing?

First of all, let me give you a bit of background really quickly: I knew that I wanted to write from when I was very little. As soon as I could write a few words, I started making these hand-drawn comics with speech bubbles. As soon as I could write properly, I hand-wrote my first novel, at age 8. From then on, I was almost constantly writing. I finished my first typed novel at age 12. Then the sequel at age 13. Then another novel at age 14. Then, I got kind of busy, especially with school. But after school, at age 18, I finished another novel.

Now that’s when the problems started. Yes, I got busy again, first on my gap year, then with uni. But essentially, from that last finished novel in 2014 on, I haven’t been able to finish anything. Wait, no, that’s not quite true, I haven’t been able to finish a novel. I went through an incredibly prolific phase in 2015/2016/2017, where I wrote lots of fanfiction and short stories with original, recurring characters. But from 2014 until now, I also started and abandoned 4 large writing projects (that were meant to be novels). I last worked on the last of these projects in October 2020. Then… I just got really busy with uni, lost interest… I’m not sure. I never officially abandoned it, but let’s just say… I’m not feeling particularly optimistic about this project getting finished at the moment.

Now as somebody who never had any issue finishing novels – as somebody who actually decided in her teens to never start a novel she couldn’t finish! – this is driving me wild. Throughout my teens, if I wanted to write a novel, I just… wrote it. I normally spent about half a year planning it. Then half a year getting it written. (I don’t have much practice editing my novels, but that’s an issue for another time.)

So. Why am I not currently writing? I’ve thought about it and I’ve come up with a few reasons.

1. Other things feel more important at the moment. I have other priorities. A really big personal goal of mine that is taking up a lot of time and even more mental energy is getting into a PhD programme/securing a PhD position, preferably at my local (prestigious! So hard to get into!) research institute. Writing a novel just seems… a lot less important compared to this goal at the moment. Getting good grades in another priority that seems more important than writing. As does working out. As does spending time with my boyfriend.

For a long time, I thought it was mostly this. The fact that I had different priorities. But upon reflection, I think there is even more to it than that:

2. I have progressed enough as a writer to now be hypercritical of my work, much more than I was before. I kept asking myself: “How was I able to simply finish things as a teenager? Why was I a better writer then than I am now??” Then I realised. I very likely wasn’t. I very likely was a much worse writer and therefore much happier to accept sloppy writing, bad plots and so on. Things that I no longer tolerate. Things that now make me abandon projects, because they just don’t seem good enough for me. I thought some more about the novels I finished writing as a teenager and realised… if I was writing them now, I would probably abandon them to! Those books had major flaws that weren’t as obvious to me then as they are now OR that I noticed, but was willing to ignore.

3. Related to the second point… my current writing goal is an extremely high one. I want to write a novel and get it traditionally published. This is no small feat. On the contrary, it’s kind of the holy grail of writing. If I feel like a project does not have what it takes to get traditionally published… I am very likely to abandon it. As a teenager, I think my major goal was to finish things. Primarily, writing was fun. Now, I am always writing with this very intimidating goal in mind and it’s making me have much higher standards for my own work.

4. I feel like as a writer I am currently in a phase of learning, processing, taking things in… I am reading more than ever, reading about writing more than ever, watching Masterclasses on writing… It feels like a time to soak things in, like a sponge, rather than a time for output (apart from academic output, which I am required to produce).

5. Related to that last point… I am not sure I have anything important to say. I kind of feel like I need to spend more time living, actually experiencing interesting things, forming opinions, finding messages that are important to me… It was something I became more aware of over the past few years: that it was just very hard for me to write adult characters in regular jobs, because I was a student and had never really worked a regular job like “nurse”, for example. The first project I abandoned was about a middle-aged mother of three and I just really quickly realised that I was in over my head. I’m sure that once I become a mother, I will have a lot of things to say about motherhood and will be able to write about it very realistically! But right now, I just can’t do that.

6. Building on the last point again… writing a novel and getting it traditionally published is starting to feel more and more like a life-time project. When I was younger, the goal was always to get published young. I wanted to get published during my teens, then during my early twenties. Now, I’m glad that that didn’t happen! Because what I could have written and published then is something that most likely I wouldn’t be proud of today. And more and more I want to wait until finally, at one point in my life, maybe really late, I write one thing that I am actually really proud of and that I want to be published under my name. (And yes, maybe your old work will always be cringey to you, but I strongly believe that there are degrees of cringe ranging from “I am a horrible person for putting this out into the world and I wish I could travel back in time” to “Okay, this sentence is kind of awkward and this plot point maybe wasn’t the best, but hey, it is what it is, I’m still proud of it overall”.)

So yeah, these are the reasons why I am not currently writing. My question now is… what should I do? Focus on short stories and/or fanfiction again? Try to force myself to finish one of my WIPs? Continue to just… take a break from writing? Try really hard to come up with something better and make a commitment to this new project…? Try to make it a priority, likely the expense of something else...?

Would be happy to hear any thoughts any of you had on this! Thank you so much in advance! <3

#writers on tumblr #writing #personal #long post #wip #my wips #personal reflection

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years ago

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Quarantine Movie-Watching Journal, Continued

Throughout all this quarantine time I’ve been chronicling my watching movies, I’ve also been reading books, but have had assorted troubles on a level that seems close to basic comprehension, or just getting on their wavelength. Part of this is having a certain tendency towards the difficult or avant-garde in terms of what I think is “good,” but also wanting things to make sense or have a certain level of clarity: It’s maybe a difficult balance to strike but I don’t know, plenty of books pull it off, I have plenty of favorites. Nothing I’ve read recently has really been hitting, the only thing I’ve found compulsively readable is Virginie Despentes’ Vernon Subutex series, which I would hesitate to recommend as I also think they’re kind of bad. I want clarity on a certain level, and mystery on a deeper one; a lot of things essentially get the formula backwards, and feel incredibly obvious and free of ideas while employing obfuscatory language. (This isn’t to say I like “straightforward” prose, the “mystery” I’m referring to is basically created as an act of alchemy when language is functioning on its highest level, and insight, mood, imagery, and motion are all generated simultaneously. This isn’t “plain speech” I’m describing, but it doesn’t short-circuit the brain’s ability to make sense of it.)

In watching a lot of older movies I find that one of the things that help them maintain a level of interest is I possess a certain confusion about their cultural context. Even if something is a perfectly straightforward mainstream entertainment, there is still a sense of confusion or mystery about it, where you can follow it perfectly, but don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from, so it’s unclear where it’s going. In contrast, watching modern movies, especially more mainstream things but also, generally speaking, everything, I feel like not only do I know exactly where it’s coming from it’s also aggressively spelling everything out, as if to avoid moral confusion. This is also combined with a certain aggressiveness to the editing, so even as everything too fast-paced on certain level, it also ends up being too long, because it needs to fit in a certain level of redundancy. Older things tend to have a greater degree of storytelling clarity that’s also premised on a higher level of trust in the viewer’s ability to intuit things. Maybe there’s also a greater level of reliance on a set of semiotic devices that we’ve become more critical of over time, but what’s emerged in their absence feels more self-consciously insistent.

Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig

After watching this I looked up on IMDB to see what Gerwig is up to now and she’s slated to direct a Barbie movie? I hate this era, where success doesn’t lead to any actual clout to make important or interesting work, but instead forces artists into these traps of economic contract where they service a trademark. Also this movie is kind of weird because all these actresses are in their twenties but I think are meant to be playing teenagers for most of it? Or even younger? This movie basically feels like it is meant to be for children but is given this gloss over it to maybe seem appealing to young adult modern feminists but it doesn’t really seem like it would be except to the extent they’re indulging a youthful nostalgia.

Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

I’ve been wanting to watch Decker’s last movie Madeline’s Madeline because a lady I met and thought was cute has a small role in it. I guess all her movies are about artists and performers? I like that this one seems capable of depicting a fiction writer without just presenting their work as autobiographical but I guess that’s because it’s, you know, a real person whose story is being told. Elisabeth Moss is pretty good as Shirley Jackson. Jackson acts real weird and petulant and destructive and I sort of went in feeling like she would be depicted as a manipulative monster, but watching it I felt like it was probably well-researched and accurate to how she was but not in a way that makes me dislike Shirley Jackson — but also I do like destructive difficult personalities and I think that’s basically a fine and acceptable way for artists, or anyone, to behave. I still don’t think this is really a good movie, Shirley Jackson is not really the lead but more like the only interesting character: She’s got an obnoxious and self-satisfied husband, but the movie is more about this couple that moves in — a woman who’s pretty dull is the focal point, and her husband is boring, and manipulative too, albeit in a very commonplace way. Pretty average.

The Predator (2018) dir. Shane Black

A movie about how people with Asperger’s are the next step in human evolution that nonetheless uses the r-word slur to describe them, filled with some of the most generic actors imaginable. I like Shane Black movies as much as the next guy, but am indifferent to the Predator franchise. Maybe because, despite the R rating, they really do feel like they’re made to sell toys, like so many cartoons of the eighties? I hope the sequel the ending transparently sets up never gets made.

The Lighthouse (2019) dir. Robert Eggers

Wasn’t able to finish The Witch and I stopped and started this one a few times. Tries to avoid accusations that “all these modern horror movies are dumb as shit” by not being a horror movie but it also isn’t really anything else — Not funny enough to be a comedy nor evocative enough to be an art movie. Sort of like High Life in the sense that Robert Pattinson isn’t actually good in it but maybe it’s surprising that a mainstream actor would be in a “weird movie,” but he doesn’t really have to do anything in either, at least as far as building a character goes. It’s underwritten enough he might not even know how to read. Willem Dafoe is ok as a guy doing the sea captain voice from The Simpsons.

The Whistlers (2020) dir. Corneliu Poromboiu

Contemporary crime thing that vaguely reminded me of all the other post-Tarantino crime movies made in the past 25 years that I don’t really remember, particularly the ones in other languages. This one’s got characters learning a whistling language to communicate in a way cops will just thing is birds. Also a semi-complicated plot, told non-linearly. The female lead also pretends to be a prostitute and has sex with a criminal dude so the police watching him with hidden cameras don’t figure out what she’s up to, although, if I understand the plot, I’m pretty sure they work it out anyway.

Pain And Glory (2019) dir. Pedro Almodovar

This one stars Antonio Banderas, is pretty plainly autobiographical, being about a filmmaker approaching the end of his life -- Penelope Cruz plays the mother in flashbacks that are then shown to be a filmed recreation as an autobiographical work is begun, which is the sort of twist that could seem corny but isn’t. The film has a weird/interesting structure, the slow revelation of details from the character’s past forming a narrative a film can be made of eventually but before that there’s this totally separate story involving an actor, heroin use, and an ex-lover. That stuff’s good but also it sort of wraps up halfway through. Like, a bundle of narrative threads culminate, and then the film keeps going, to eventually tie up other bits that seem incidental. Maybe this would be fine in a theater but streamed at home I got a bit anxious. Penelope Cruz made me think “I could watch Vanilla Sky” but it turned out I can’t, it’s unwatchable.

High Heels (1991) dir. Pedro Almodovar

I love Almodovar, my stance has been that there’s a degree of diminishing returns the more of his work you see but it’s been years since I’ve seen one of his movies, and at this point I remember very little of any of them. This one’s on Criterion as part of a collection of films with scores by Ryuichi Sakamoto — Sakamoto’s not my favorite member of Yellow Magic Orchestra but he’s certainly an adept talent, and this one operates differently than I’d expect from him, most of the music feels saxophone-led, sort of in a jazz vein. Obviously you can compose for this instrumentation but yeah, not what I’d expect. The movie itself is pretty solid: bright colors, some melodrama, a ridiculous twist, a sense of humor which feels both over the top and somewhat deadpan. A woman’s mother returns to Spain after close to a lifetime away, she ends up sleeping with the daughter’s husband, he turns up dead, the daughter reveals he killed her stepfather as a child. The movie is primarily about the daughter’s yearning for the approval for an emotionally distant mother, at one point she summarizes the Bergman movie Autumn Sonata for her, but Almodovar is gayer and more sexually perverse than Bergman. so it’s less dour than I’m maybe making it sound. At one point the daughter is wearing a sweater with the pattern of the Maryland flag on it? But the credits reveal all her outfits are by Chanel.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) dir. Volker Schlondorff

The score is closer to what I would expect from Sakamoto here, in a martial/industrial vein, though not exclusively. Stars Natasha Richardson, and her performance feels related to what she did in Patty Hearst — a depiction of a woman shutting down parts of herself for the sake of her own survival, displaying inner reserves of strength through the appearance of submission. This seems a lot better than the current Hulu show, although I think it’s largely dismissed? It’s been a while since I read the book so I can’t remember how many liberties it takes. Obviously there remain traces of an exploitation bent in a weird way, through depiction of women in dehumanized sexual contexts but I feel like this movie is good at depicting competition between women in the context of a rigged patriarchal system.

Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence (1983) dir. Nagisa Oshima

Never seen any of Oshima’s films, despite the allure of explicit sex in an artsy context. This has Sakamoto in it opposite David Bowie. There’s a lot of English language being spoken in a thick Japanese accent. David Bowie plays a prisoner of war Sakamoto, as a military officer, falls in love with and tries to keep from harm, his score does the heavy lifting of highlighting these emotions. Was not super-into this movie but it’s always interesting to think about how popular YMO were, and if these are the type of faces you enjoy looking at you can do that. Sakamoto’s got a weird hairline. The movie is fine considered in the context of like, 1980s movies (not my fave decade) that are period military dramas (not my favorite genre) and exist in this Japanese film context that is neither super-insane and exuberant in its style nor is it super-austere and minimal.

A Farewell To Arms (1932) dir. Frank Borzage

Very well-shot piece of romance, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, in an adaptation of a Ernest Hemingway novel I don’t remember whether or not I read in high school. Hemingway didn’t like it, maybe because there were a lot of changes, which confuses the issue of whether or not I know the source material further. I don’t like this movie as much as I liked History Is Made At Night but it makes a lot more sense as a narrative, easily reduced to a bare-bones plot: He’s in the army, she’s a nurse, people don’t want them to be together during World War I, he ends up deserting to be with her. Feels lush, romantic, dreamy and swooning, but I feel like the strengths are more in the cinematography than the characters — the leads are fine enough, though not super deep, beyond the depths of their love, but the supporting cast is a bit dull.

War Of The Worlds (2005) dir. Steven Spielberg

Feel like I had heard this one was good? I appreciate Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible movies, and Spielberg some of the time I guess. This is a blockbuster that feels post-9/11 in a way where I wonder what a post-Corona thing would feel like — feel like it would shy away from away from a lot of spectacle or something but probably I’m wrong about that. So this one focuses on a parent and his children making their way across an increasingly demolished landscape to make it to the other parent, alien monsters are in the way, kinda just seems logistically weird or like the premise of the quest is unsound given the stakes should probably just be survival? But maybe this is post-covid thinking of how such a thing would operate — the disaster picture with a “human element” to focus the narrative on is a decades-old form and one I don’t really get down with nor do I think is generally considered to age well - i.e. I don’t remember growing up with The Towering Inferno being on TV.

My Twentieth Century (1989) dir. Ildiko Enyedi

Weird Hungarian movie where like… angels/stars observe? As two twins are born in the late eighteen-hundreds and go on to have separate lives? One as an anarchist, the other as like a party girl type who seduces rich men. The latter gets more attention than the former. Sort of a fairy tale atmosphere, which makes the explicit sex scenes awkward. There’s also a scene where a guy gives a sexist lecture about how women should be allowed to vote even though they have no sense of logic and are obsessed with sex. He draws a dick on the chalkboard and talks about how women can’t understand beauty since they are obsessed with erections which are disgusting. Not really sure what it adds to the movie as a whole since I’m not sure which one of the two characters played by the same actress is meant to be watching it, but it’s funny. A lot of things are confusing about this movie, but it’s still sort of interesting and therefore worthwhile I guess. Apparently the director has a new movie on Netflix — I don’t have Netflix at the moment but might get it for a month or two in the future to catch up on assorted things like Sion Sono’s The Forest Of Love and the David Lynch content.

His Girl Friday (1940) dir. Howard Hawks

not into this one. Rosalind Russell wears a cool suit at first though. Features the thing where a male romantic lead (Cary Grant) is openly manipulative but it’s sort of viewed as fine and funny because the woman in question is confident and modern, which kinda feels like a fascinating view into the gender dynamics of the time, although I don’t think it works as a comedy as far as me being able to figure out what the jokes are. The journalists getting caught up in crime intrigue plot is cool though, that kind of feels like something that always works.

Lured (1947) dir. Douglas Sirk

Kind of have no idea why I watched all the older Douglas Sirk movies on the Criterion Channel at this point, even the ones I liked I don’t think I liked that much? This one stars Lucille Ball, who I don’t love. Other movies I watched recently that were partly comedies and partly suspense things worked better than this. This one’s about attractive young women disappearing and Lucille Ball getting hired by the police to be an undercover detective. She ends up finding love, but then the man she gets engaged to is framed for murder by the actual killer. Features scenes where the police (led by Charles Coburn, who’s fine in this) talk about how crazy Baudelaire was. Wouldn’t recommend.

Far From Heaven (2002) dir. Todd Haynes

Not sure I have any strong feelings towards Todd Haynes, but it seems likely I might end up watching a bunch of his movies eventually. This came out in high school, and I had no interest in it, but I’m more charitable towards the whole fifties melodrama thing it’s paying homage to now. Julianne Moore stars as a woman whose husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay and repressing himself via alcoholism, who strikes up a friendship with her black gardener, (Dennis Haysbert) which scandalizes her neighbors. The moments Moore and Haysbert spend together are maybe the most interesting - particularly them going to an all-black restaurant - but the aspect of them being watched and judged feels more cliched. Similarly, the stuff about Dennis Quaid’s homosexuality is most interesting as a lived-in thing, and his drinking, hitting his wife, etc., is less so. The veins of sensuality running through the movie are richer than the plot structure that unites them. This might be one of the things that makes Carol a superior movie.

The Violent Men (1955) dir. Rudolph Mate

This stars a bunch of people I don’t like — Glenn Ford, Edward G Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck is fine in other stuff but boring here. Dianne Foster plays her daughter, and that’s the meatiest role basically- she gets to denounce violent men. This is a western about a guy being pressured to sell his land for cheap. Criterion Channel programmed this as part of a series called “western noir” and I don’t know about this stuff. Foster’s character is definitely the most interesting part — her parents are essentially these gangsters running the town, her teen angst feels like it stems from an inherent morality and disgust with them. Stanwyck is cheating on Foster’s father (Robinson) with a guy I think is his brother who also enforces the violence. The mom tries to kill the father, and then is herself killed by a woman in love with the person she’s sleeping with, so the daughter, you would think, would go through a gamut of emotions. But she’s a totally secondary to Glenn Ford’s male lead, who she ends up riding off into the sunset with — he initially was involved in a relationship with a woman who didn’t care about his inherent morality in favor of a materialism, but she just sort of gets dropped from the narrative at a certain point. The movie really tries to play it both ways with regards to the violence, but I feel like that’s pretty common actually: While I feel like today the title might primarily be intended as an indictment, it also feels like at the time it was very much the sales pitch to the audience.

Shane (1953) dir. George Stevens

Classic western, about homesteaders just trying to live who end up needing to get in gunfights with people who want their land. Jean Arthur plays the wife and mother, which is why I sought it out (especially sicne she had established rapport with Stevens) but she’s barely in it. The titular Shane is a good dude who wanders through and ends up helping them out. The kid’s infatuation of Shane is really annoying to me personally. I love how this has two big fist-fights though, the second of which is a They Live style thing, a conflict between friends that becomes incredibly drawn out. The first fight is also just incredibly brutal and well-choreographed, probably the high point of the movie.

Cast A Deadly Spell (1991) dir. Martin Campbell

TV movie made for HBO with very Vertigo Comics energy, I started off thinking “this is dumb” but very quickly got on its side. It’s a riff on HP Lovecraft mythology set in a 1940s Los Angeles where everyone uses magic except for one private detective, whose name is Harry Lovecraft. Pretty PG-rated, some practical effects (not the best kind, more like gargoyle demon creature costumes I assume are made of foam), and a pretty easily foreseeable “twist” ending where the apocalypse is averted because the virgin sacrifice just lost her virginity to a cop. Not actually that clever but clever enough to work and be consistently enjoyable. Julianne Moore plays a nightclub singer. My interest in this is brought about because there’s a sequel (where I guess the deal is the detective does use magic, and no one else does) called Witch Hunt starring Dennis Hopper and directed by Paul Schrader.

Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama

The climax of Cast A Deadly Spell shares a plot point with this, which I think is being reevaluated as a “cult classic” to what I assume is the same audience that valued the Scott Pilgrim movie: People ten years younger than me who think it’s charming when things are completely obnoxious. A lot of musical cues, all mixed at too loud relative to the rest of the audio, bad jokes. This tone does help power the whole nihilistic, I-enjoy-seeing-these-superfluous-characters-die aspect of the plot but the sort of emotional core of the horror is less present. This movie is basically fine, by lowered modern movies standards, but it’s perfectly disposable and not really worth valuing in any way. I watched Kusama’s movie Destroyer starring Nicole Kidman a year ago and don’t remember anything about it now.

Dead Ringers (1988) dir. David Cronenberg

Rewatch. I think for a while I would’ve considered this my favorite Cronenberg but nowadays I might favor eXistenZ? Jeremy Irons in dual roles as twin brothers, with different personalities, but who routinely impersonate each other, and whose lives begin to deteriorate as a relationship with a woman leads to them individuate themselves from each other. They’re gynecologists, and the whole thing is suffused with an air of creepiness. There’s this sense of airlessness to the movie, a sense of panic, which is present incredibly early on and just sort of keeps going, getting weirder and more uncomfortable as you become accustomed to it, that feels like a sure sign of mastery. I’m fascinated to think about how watching it in a crowd, or on a date, would feel. Most movies don’t operate like this.

Imagine The Sound (1981) dir. Ron Mann

Mann is the director of Comic Book Confidential, which I saw as a middle schooler. This is a documentary about free jazz, featuring interviews and performance footage. Paul Bley and Cecil Taylor are both shown playing solo piano, which isn’t my favorite context to hear them in. Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp say some cool stuff, there is some nice trio footage of Shepp with a rhythm section.

Born In Flames (1983) dir. Lizzie Borden

Easily the best movie I watched for the first time in the time period I’m covering in this post. I heard about this years ago but only seeing it now, when it feels super-relevant. It is shot in New York in the eighties, features plenty of documentation of the city as it was, but in the context of the movie, there has been a socialist revolution ten years earlier, and this film then documents the struggle of the women, particularly black women, who are slipping through the cracks, and fighting for the ongoing quest to make a utopia, but exist in opposition to the party in power. While focusing on black women, there’s also plenty of white women, also opposed to and more progre.ssive than the people in power, but that are having their own conversations which are very different. There’s also montage sequences of women performing labor that cut between women wrapping up chicken to close-ups of a condom being rolled onto a erect penis. The title song is by the Red Krayola, circa the Kangaroo? era where Lora Logic provided vocals. So yeah, this movie rules! It would be a good double-feature with The Spook Who Sat By The Door, though in a film school context, or a sociology context, you would need to do a great deal of groundwork first. Could also work as a double-feature with The Falls for how what you are seeing is the aftermath of a great sociological reshaping realized on a low-budget. I think I put off this movie I think because I was skeptical of the director’s self-conscious “artist’s name” but it turns out they got it legally named as a young child.

State Of Siege (1972) dir. Costa-Gavras

Also really good! Better than Born In Flames when considered in terms of its level of craft. Would make for a fine double feature with my beloved Patty Hearst. Tightly structured over the course of a week, leftist terrorists kidnap an American and interrogate him about what exactly he’s doing in their Latin American country that’s being run by death squads. He denies wrong-doing, but basically everything he’s done is already known to them. This exists in parallel to police interrogations of leftists. Pretty large scale, tons of characters, some basically incidental. Screenplay’s written by the guy who wrote Battle Of Algiers.

Olivia (1951) dir. Jacqueline Audry

French movie sort of about lesbian love at an all-girl’s boarding school that’s weird because everyone seems like they’re feeling homosexual love, but just for one instructor who eggs everyone on. Everyone acts weird in this one, basically. There’s a lot of doting. The atmosphere is pretty unfathomable to me. Chaste-seeming in some ways, but also like everyone is being psychologically tortured by being subject to the whims of each other, but also just rolling with it in this deferential way. Seems like it could feel “emotionally true” to a lesbian experience but only in highly, highly specific circumstances?

Lucia (1968) dir. Humberto Solas

Good score in this one, which is not that much like I Am Cuba but I feel obligated to compare them anyway - both are from Cuba and use this three-story anthology structure. All the stories in this movie revolve around different women named Lucia, in three different, historically important, time periods. The first is about a woman who falls in love with a man from Spain, during the time of Cuba’s war of independence, he says he doesn’t think about politics, but this is one lie among several. This ends with brutal sequences of war. The second takes place under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. The third takes place post-revolution, and is about a literacy coach teaching a woman to read and write under the eye of a domineering chauvinistic husband. As with I Am Cuba, it is the very act of considering these three stories together that brings out their propagandistic aspect, and makes them feel less like individual stories. They’re all beautifully shot, although it’s less in less of a show-offy way than I Am Cuba.

Mr. Klein (1976) dir. Joseph Losey

This one’s got a cool premise- About an art dealer, played by Alain Delon, who is buying art from Jews at low prices as they leave occupied France quickly, but who then starts getting confused for another person with the same name as him, who is Jewish. Gets sort of Kakfa-esque but also remains grounded in this world where there are rational explanations for things. (at least as far as the holocaust is rational) So the line gets walked between bits that feel vaguely verging on nightmare but also sort of maintain the plausible deniability of belonging to the waking world, of a paranoia for something the exact scope of which remains unnamed. Ends with Klein as one of many in a trainyard full of people being sent off to concentration camps, which to me felt sort of tasteless, as a large-scale recreation, but that feels deliberate, as a way of offsetting the scope of the film being primarily focused on one person, whose relationship to the larger horror, before it affected him, was parasitic.

Husbands (1970) dir. John Cassavetes

Not into this one. The semi-improvisatory nature of the dialogue never coalesces into characters that seem to have a real core to them, there’s always just this sort of drunken aggression mode. What even is there to these characters, besides the aggression they treat women with? What separates them from one another, makes them distinct entities, beyond the sense they egg each other on?

Casino (1995) dir. Martin Scorsese

Rewatch. Joe Pesci plays the violent Italian guy, Robert De Niro plays the level-headed Jew, Sharon Stone plays the blonde who gets strung out on drugs. Three hours long to contain everyone’s arcs, but also sort of feels like it neatly has act breaks at pretty close to the hour marks, while also telling this pretty big historical sweeping piece about how corporate control comes to Las Vegas, the notion that “the house always wins” but even the individual whose job it is to run the house is himself situated inside a larger house. Both here and in Raging Bull, De Niro plays a character whose third act involves trying to be an entertainer for reasons of ego, and it’s so weird. Yeah, a great movie, one of the few that the reductive view of Scorsese as “someone who just makes mob movies” applies to, I have no opinion on whether it’s better than Goodfella or not.

Blue Collar (1978) dir. Paul Schrader

Not great. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto co-star. Sometimes feels like maybe it’s meant to function partly as a comedy but doesn’t. It’s also mostly a crime movie, about people working at an auto plant who decide to rob their union’s vault. They end up not making any money from that robbery, but the union can claim insurance funds, so they get to benefit while the working men continue to be shafted, worried about the consequences of what they’ve done. Kotto dies, and Pryor and Keitel are turned against each other by circumstance, which the film tries to play off as being about the divisions among people that keep the working class weak. I definitely feel like the Schrader oeuvre begins with Hardcore.

Mona Lisa (1986) dir. Neil Jordan

This ends up kind of feeling like a lesser version of Hardcore, with British accents. Bob Hoskins, out of jail, starts driving for a prostitute, they dislike each other at first, but become friendly. She asks him to track down a younger girl she was friends with, who a pimp has gotten strung out on drugs. (Hoskins is also a father to a daughter, though his relationship with the mother is strained from having gone to prison.) Hoskins’ character isn’t that interesting and the film revolves around him, the female lead is more interesting but deliberately removed from the larger narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Neil Jordan movie.

The Untouchables (1987) dir. Brian De Palma

Rewatch. Great Ennio Morricone score in this one, a real reminder of a different era in terms of what constituted a blockbuster or a prestige picture. David Mamet provides the screenplay. De Palma is pretty reined-in, while Mission: Impossible is an insane procession of sequences of top-notch visual storytelling, the most De Palma trademark thing here is a first-person perspective of a home invasion scene, watching Sean Connery, that ends up being a deliberate choice of a limited perspective to surprise as he gets lured to his death. I feel like there’s a straight line between this movie and Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990), but obviously what that line runs through is the reality-rewriting effect of Tim Burton’s Batman.

Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino

Rewatch. Can scarcely comprehend how it would’ve felt to see this in a theater when it came out. I watched it the first time in college on a laptop and headphones and it blew me away, even after years of a bunch of it being referenced on The Simpsons and everywhere else. I haven’t seen it since. Rewatching is this exercise in seeing what you don’t remember when everything’s been processed a million times. Feels like Tarantino’s best screenplay due to its construction, more so than any dialogue, which is obviously a little in love with itself. Samuel Jackson wears a Krazy Kat t-shirt after his suit gets covered in blood. Quentin Tarantino casts himself as the white guy who gets to say the n-word a bunch.

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parniarazi · 4 years ago

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realignment + growth

I haven’t wrote here or in general much lately, as school and worked have picked up and kept me busy, even with doing it all from home! Pandemic aside, the world is moving quickly and it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Especially when big moments happen (like RBG passing), it can feel overwhelming and like nothing we can do matters. What helps me when I feel in over my head is just purging it all with a deep self-reflection that helps anchor me down to what I’m doing towards on a daily basis and how that’s working for me in the big picture. Going back through this blog, I briefly looked over what I wrote at the turn of the year, as 2020 was beginning. Even though things have felt very different and stagnant this year, I realized I’ve actually grown so much and come so far even in this short time!

A year ago right now, I was going through one of the most difficult times of my life, as major shifts were happening in all areas of my life. I had breezed through most of my undergrad, always feeling like school came rather easily to me and academia was an area I wanted to pursue because of this. I didn’t know what to do after graduation, reconciling between wanting to find a “good paying” job with my degree/interests, and wanting to do something that aligns with what I’m passionate about and can bring me a deeper sense of fulfillment. Since I was doing well in school and professors encouraged me when I told them I wanted to go to grad school‚ I figured pursing my PhD and becoming a professor was the way to go. I idolized my professors and loved my campus, so it wasn’t hard to envision myself doing this...at least until I actually started my grad program in political science. Last fall, I was failing and withdrew from a class for the first time, was concerned about having to pay back my scholarship for the semester, and had no idea what I would do if I left my program. I was desperately searching for a way out because I knew I could not thrive (or even survive) in the environment of my grad department— it was revealing some ugly realities and turned out be the opposite of everything I wanted in a career!

Fortunately, being on campus, I was able to talk to other people and departments and eventually found my home in the Communications grad program. I had a cross-listed class, and the Comm students were friendly and inviting, so I began talking to them and found out more about their program. They still seemed to have a soul unlike my own peers— so that was already a good sign! I definitely wanted to keep my soul and work in a field that would respect and pay me for my work. Keep in mind, while all this school/career crisis of wondering what I should do with my life was happening, it was also my first few months being moved out my parents house and living with my boyfriend for the first time. I was missing my family constantly, and adjusting to my new home/life while struggling with horrible anxiety that weighed me down like bricks on my chest.

It got to be too much sometimes— especially because on top of that, my income was tied to my school because I had just started as a graduate assistant in an office on campus. This was also my first real “job,” outside of what I considered to be my “fun college job” teaching swim lessons. Not only did school suck at this time for me, but I also hated this job and the people in my office. It worsened my anxiety, and I ended up going to the school clinic and getting a formal diagnosis (and medication) for anxiety for the first time in my life, even though I’ve dealt with it for as long as I can remember. This was a big step and turning point, because I refused to compromise my mental health and wellbeing for anything. A career that comes at such a cost is not for me— having balance and self-care are far too important to me.

While all of this was happening, I kept pushing my political science advisors to help me and connected with the Communications department about getting into their program instead. I had to advocate for myself harder than ever and push other people to help me, but in the end it was worth it! I finished the semester with the 2 courses I kept, managed to keep getting paid even though my position required full-time enrollment, and I ended up getting accepted into the Comm program by transferring instead of having to wait until the next fall to reapply. With my anxiety, and just being a more a shy/introverted person who was so scared I’d hardly ever speak up in class, I had to find my voice, create my own boundaries, and talk to adults I felt really uncomfortable talking to at first. Big lesson: you have to advocate and speak up for yourself until people see and hear you! It is always worth it, regardless of if you get what you want or not.

I started off the spring in my new program and settled in so much better from the start! I also kept my campus job I hated, but was searching desperately for internships and opportunities to get some actual Comm experience under my belt, as I was entering a new field I had zero experience in. I applied for everything I could and I got a little side gig working as a part-time student organizer for an intersectional feminist non-profit based out of Austin. I was super stoked to just get to do something I’m passionate about and get paid for it, even it was small. Little did I know, this would lead me to big things! Even with the pandemic hitting in the spring, I managed to finish my courses with A’s, work from home with my campus job (no more depressing office vibes!), and apply for dozens of internships. I ended up getting two remote internships over the summer that paid me— one with the same non-profit I was working with as a Digital Intern and another similar position with a different non-profit. I was finally gaining some of the experience and skills I really needed to start a career in this field. Even though the non-profit route was not what I had in mind, I loved my internships and the teams I worked with, and it was so rewarding.

It wasn’t easy working long hours from my laptop on my dining table, but it did have its own perks. No bras or dress pants or waking up early to get ready and drive in traffic— it’s a hell yes from your fave introvert! Another pandemic-inspired moment was finally getting a dog! Even through this seems irrelevant it actually was really in perfect alignment with what I wanted and timing. I’ve wanted a dog for as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved animals and with my anxiety it was something I hoped would help at least a little bit. My parents never wanted us to have a dog and I grew up with them telling me it was a huge responsibility so even after I moved out I hesitated and wanted to give myself time to adjust and make money before taking on that responsibility. This summer, I started pushing my boyfriend to look into fostering programs to help me adjust to having a dog at home, and we did but had no luck. One day, I saw a friend posting about a lost dog they found who needed a home. She was cute and I wanted to go see her just to scope it out, and of course the universe brought the most perfect little dog into my life at the most perfect time!

I was just finishing up my internship and had a few weeks of down time before the semester started, so it was the perfect time to adjust to having my new dog, Sage, around. Since then, we’ve bonded so much and I love just having another little creature around the house! She really does bring warmth and light into my life. She pushes me to get outside more even when I feel shitty, she makes me have a more consistent routine, and just helps alleviate my stress while connecting me with my inner child and inner caretaker at the same time. During the latter half of this quarantine, my boyfriend and I also had our share of struggles and fights we had to work through. Like anything worth having, it took effort to work through some rough patches, but at the end of the day I believe in the power of love and its ability to persevere and heal, even in the most difficult times. Not to mention, having our little Sage around even helped us through it! This taught me to trust that the right things will happen in the right timing, and the right people will make an effort to stick it out with you.

I was incredible lucky and blessed that several things I was manifesting and working hard towards happened in perfect alignment. First, I got a scholarship from my grad school that allowed me go back full-time and only have to pay half of my tuition (big plus since I was paying this myself). Secondly, one of the ladies I had worked with during my Digital internship found another position and was leaving the non-profit I had worked with, and she recommended me for a part-time version of her position. They extended me this offer shortly before my semester started for school. I planned to keep my campus job, since it was staying remote too, and I wanted to stack up some savings after the COVID-life lessons I’d been learning. I knew it was going to be a challenge to maintain the personal/self-care balance I need in life with my now full-time class load and 2 part-time jobs. However, I felt so fortunate to have these opportunities while so many people across the country are struggling to keep normalcy going or even stay afloat during this time. Especially not being able to travel, go out much, or do other things, I figured what better time than now to just buckle down to work hard and make major moves towards what I want.

The universe is blessing me with this alignment and opportunity right now— it’s giving me everything I worked for in this past year. Especially with my new job at the non-profit, the team is incredibly kind but also puts serious support behind their staff. They’re paying me pretty well, but also want to transition me to a full-time staff member at their Austin office after I graduate! They’re mentoring me and teaching me so much, plus I’m getting to know a network of professionals who work in organizing, advocacy, and other important work that directly helps people! Like I literally could not have asked for anything better and more me! Life lesson: It’s worth struggling for a bit and diving into the unknown as long as you feel like it’s the right thing to do for you.

My parents had wanted me to stay in the PhD program. I knew in my gut and heart that it wasn’t going to work for me though, so I split the second I could. I trusted myself, advocated for myself, and worked through the scary uncertainties about if I would ever find a job I liked and that paid me well. I knew changing career paths would give me a chance to open myself up to new things that align better with who I am and what I desire in life and work. Here I am a year later, and I wouldn’t have gotten any of these amazing opportunities if I hadn’t trusted myself and worked hard to forge my path. Although this year turned out to be nothing like what any of us had planned, I’m so privileged and lucky that it turned out to be a year of incredible milestones and growth for me nonetheless!

Today, with this new moon energy and the powerful seasonal shift of fall on the verge of unfolding, I felt the need to make these reflections as a reminder to myself that hard work pays off. Doing what’s right pays off. Doing work that matters really fucking pays off. Fall is a special season that allows us to harvest the seeds we’ve sown all year. It’s cheesy, but I’m a sucker for being in tune with nature and the seasons, trusting each season will bring its own negatives and positives that foster growth or death in the right places, restoring a greater balance in the ways that we need.

With each season, I am growing into a stronger, wiser, more beautiful version of myself. I am deeply grateful for everything, both the good and bad in my life, because every detail is a puzzle piece that allows for the big picture of my path and place in the world to unfold. I’ve also been fostering patience and maturity, as I navigate this pandemic world and knowing (unlike many other people my age) that as much as I miss the “normal world” too, it’s not worth risking my own health or the health of anyone else to have “fun.” I can reinvent the ways in which I bring joy and fun into my life, while staying safe and trusting that those moments and activities will make their way back in my life eventually as things get better. It’s all temporary.

I am unshakable in my roots and focused on what is important. My vibe is so strong and beautiful, it’s no surprise that I’m not for everyone! Of course, there are areas like friendships and my social life that I’ve put on the back burner for now, but I know as I’m working on myself and just being authentic in putting myself out there, the right people will make their way into my life at the right time! Growing up is strange anytime but especially in this moment, and in some ways I’ve grown apart from who I thought I was, but I also feel more connected to myself than ever. I am healing each day with the light and love in my life— I don’t need anyone’s approval and have nothing to prove to anyone but myself!

My value and my place in the world doesn’t require anyone’s approval and is not tied to down to any single thing. It comes through in the love I give and receive, it comes through in the way my soul feels when I wake up, it comes through in the literal beauty I get to experience in the world. I went through a negative slump in the late summer and my anxiety was majorly triggered these past several weeks as I re-adjusted to full-time school and my work. This new moon has brought great clarity, a sense of deeper renewal, and turning a new leaf as I return home to myself. To my positive outlook and perseverance that has brought me to this point. Life is nothing without the little moments of joy and love— again, just let me corny and say that aligning back to being present and enjoying those little things is really all that matters.

My past self would be so proud of me and where I am today. I worked for and earned every beautiful moment that comes my way, and I intend on giving that back to others. Every ray of light that enters me, every penny of abundance I receive, I intend on reflecting right back, because nothing is meant to just be absorbed. It’s nothing unless it’s reflected back into the world in meaningful ways, whether those are tangible or not. I trust that I am making my mark by simply being me and being that reflection. This is how history changes course, and patterns are broken with new ones created. I’ll end with a few manifestations and mantras for this fall-winter season we’re entering!

M A N I F E S T A T I O N S

☽ The people will win, because our power truly is greater than that of those in power. We all deserve better, and so many people are putting in tireless work to make that better world a reality. Thing may not be perfect, now or ever, but making progress and supporting those who need it the most is always a win and it is coming our way because there is a shift happening that the world will have to keep up with.

☽ I will reconnect with my more creative side, allowing my potential to shine through even more. Whether it’s for work or for my own hobbies, I will continue finding outlets for myself to create things that feel authentic and important to who I am, but to also fill in gaps where I feel like others need it.

☽ I will stay rooted and grounded in my spiritual practices, even when they’re the easiest things to give up when life gets busy, that just means they’re even more necessary to stay connected with! I will make time for journaling, playing, meditating, yoga, cooking, and other activities that bring me in tune with my natural state as a human.

☽ I will connect and find community. Through being my most authentic self and working through my scars, my negative patterns, and my own blocks, I will find a sense of community with others and find people on my same wavelength who I can connect with. No expectations in mind or idealized version of friendship in mind, just pure desire to connect with others and mutually contribute to each others’ lives in positive ways

☽ Love will persevere and heal as its meant to, in both my relationship and family. Everything will be okay and work out just fine, if not better, than I expect. Pavel and I will be okay and keep growing together, and my family will be okay in staying healthy and strong through this time as something better arises for my dad’s work situation.

M A N T R A S

☽ I am focused on what matters right now.

☽ I am strong, powerful, and capable of doing what I set my mind to.

☽ I have a kind and beautiful energy that anyone would be lucky to have.

☽ I can find presence and joy in the little moments.

☽ I can find patience and trust that everything will happen as its meant to.

#reflection #2020 life #words #personal #new moon

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harry-leroy · 5 years ago

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Jan. 18th, 2020 // Opera, and Huxley, and new semesters, oh my!

Going to be trying a thing on Fridays where I give a little academic update for the week. Kinda studyblr-esque but not exactly since I don’t really consider this blog to be a studyblr in a strict sense. Also a lot of my mutuals on here are also academics (or maybe some of y’all out there are looking forward to studying at university and want something to look into for some insight?), so I figured that this might be fun (or at the very least perhaps something for my own records).

This isn’t meant to be rantish, but I’m gonna give an honest viewpoint into university life from my perspective (with all of its ups and downs and in-betweens), so buckle up and as I like to say on my blog, on y va!

This week was the first week back at university for the spring semester of my second year, and it was a weird week for sure. I feel like most people have felt this way about this week, (and about this year tbh). I’m beginning to realize that I’ve got an academic niche, and perhaps that’s a good thing, but it might be too early to tell. Currently, I’m taking a class on Modern Britain and I feel so out of my depth. The class is terribly small (twelve of us in that class!) so the professor is able to keep track of participation pretty well, and my brain just isn’t grasping onto this subject as well as I thought it would. It’s frustrating to say the least. I’m also taking the second half of my two-semester honors class after taking a break last semester to take some theatre classes, and we’re hitting it right off with some Spinoza. Class discussion has been slow, but I’m hoping that more people will participate so I don’t feel like the only one talking! The first week always has me feeling incredibly scattered, and it always gets better fairly quick into the semester, but I’m hoping that feeling of security in my abilities and focus comes soon!

English classes have started off pretty well and I’m trying to wrap my head around some honors projects that I want to undertake this semester. For my premodern lit class I’m thinking about something involving a study of how the law functions in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. I’ve noticed that while the law sounds strict in its original detail, it doesn’t actually become that strict in practice, which might be something to look into. I’m also going to be reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Black Arrow and doing a project on it for my Victorian Young-Adult lit class. That project will become more detailed once I read it. My professor for my Victorian lit class (who was the same professor I worked on #ProjectAriel with) realizes that Victorian lit isn’t really my area, and I was like ‘yeah, you’re right’. It isn’t my area.

I decided over break that I want to pursue grad school (after some several semesters of debating it), but I want to get into a good grad school. I’ll be totally honest: I don’t love the university that I’m at now. So far, I have not been challenged much academically and nearly everything has been an easy A+ (and I’ve taken several classes in the 400 level for my major - and if I got an A it was only because that professor didn’t give any A+s to anyone) *knocks on wood though, just in case*. At the same time, my university is notoriously easy to get into, so I have no idea how I’d rank against other students who are in perhaps more difficult programs than I am. I’ve had professors who have offered to write me rec letters for grad school, which is encouraging (like, I didn’t have to ask them for it!). My Shakespeare professor from last year offered to do this for me, and he studied for his undergrad and graduate degrees at Cambridge, so I guess that’s good? Again, I have no idea where that puts me, because of the notoriously easy school that I’m at. It also probably doesn’t help that the amount of professors in the English department who specialize in Early Modern lit is a rather small number. (But we’ve got Ayanna Thompson and that’s all that matters :’) ) - she said that she was interested in my thesis work for when the time came around (again, I’ve got about another year before that will start up). If any of y’all are in English grad programs, any advice or direction would be wonderful. And just to make it clear, this isn’t to show off my accomplishments in any way. I feel incredibly unstable in this process because I don’t really have any other students my age at my university to compare myself to. This whole thing has my brain in like 9,000 different pieces. I’m in sore need to guidance and direction.

On that note, I was debating doing a history minor, but based on how this Modern Britain class is going right now and the fact that the minor itself is quite broad, I decided against it. So I’m just going to be a lit major, which has me feeling like I’m not doing enough, but then again, I think I’ve found my niche. I’ve found what I like to study, and the broadness of this history minor doesn’t really fit into that. I’m hoping it’s the right choice!

Currently wrapping up Huxley’s Crome Yellow (which I’m tempted to turn into a little script adaptation for its 100th anniversary coming up next year). The book is incredibly humorous, but also incredibly long-winded, even in the shorter length of the novel itself. It would require a bit of moving things around to make it more dramatically interesting, but I’m up to the challenge. I also just finished Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. I would love to possibly do a study into Madama Butterfly herself, along with Nora from A Doll’s House, Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne from Lady Windermere’s Fan, and Rachel from A Woman of No Importance and examine the agency they took against their somewhat similar situations in their stories. They all come from works of the 1870s-1910s, so that’s where my brain went. Next Friday, I should have watched Billy Budd (which I am incredibly excited to watch after listening to Ian Bostridge and Sir Simon Keenlyside talk about it). Speaking of Ian Bostridge, he’s having a concert next week in my state like two hours south of me that’s free so that’s fun. I won’t be able to go, but I’m hoping that there will be another opportunity to hear him live!

Anyway, this probably became somewhat rantish, but these are most of the things moving around in my academic world right now!

#studyblr #okay to reblog #(in case you're interested in what i'm up to)#maybe these'll be shorter in the future #but as the cool kids say #i like to write like i'm running out of time #friday updates #life update #also peep my laptop case stickers #:')

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writerrose83 · 4 years ago

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Operation ‘Get my life together’ 2020!

Over the weekend I came across an old journal entry I’d written in 2016. I wrote it in the week between Christmas and new year and explained that, for some reason, this time of year always seemed to make me sad. The prospect of a new year fast approaching forces us to look back on our achievements over the past twelve months and what we have accomplished. I was feeling a little fed up with how my life was at the time and had made goals to avoid the reoccurring feelings of failure at the end of the following year. I was more than a little downhearted to see that it has been 4 years since this post and I STILL seem to be procrastinating. I wrote about how I was fed up in my job. I was working full time for minimum wage, in a job I didn’t enjoy and getting nothing from. My husband and I were scraping by each month, barely covering our bills and in the first few months of an IVA program to repay our debts. I was missing my 3 children as I was working so much and wanted to be there for them more. I also talked of my aspirations to become a full time writer and how it was time for me to finally get my shit together, sit down and actually write my book.

So, it’s now nearly the end of 2020. An already notable year for weirdness, uncertainty and a general feeling of ‘What the hell is going on right now?’ I really don’t want to end this year with added feelings of sadness and regret over the things I haven’t achieved so I’ve started ‘Operation Get my life together’. The simple task of giving it a name means that it’s now an actual thing, and I’ve decided to approach it with positivity rather than regret. So, that being said I’ll start with what I HAVE done. I have written 7 out of 10 chapters in my book. It needs finishing, editing, proof reading etc etc, but it’s an achievement and I’m pleased with it so far. I am also due to begin the last module of my 2nd year in a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing with the Open University. I have already learned so much from this course and looking forward to using my brain again when the module begins in a few weeks.

I like September, it’s like ‘fresh start’ month. My youngest daughter Annabelle (12) has just returned to school and started year 8. My son Charlie (16) has started college this week and my oldest daughter Lily Rose (20) has recently moved out with her partner and had a baby. (So, I am a young grandparent at 37 and am referred to as Nanna Rose). I haven’t been to work since the end of March. I work in a hospital and, as Charlie is in the vulnerable category due to a medical condition. my husband Gav (41, if we’re doing ages) and I both decided not to risk me bringing the disease home from work. I also wanted to be able to be there for Lily Rose when she had the baby in June. My job is on a bank contract, so luckily I am able to book shifts as and when I want so there was no risk of me getting the sack! Gav is a home shopping delivery driver for Asda and has worked non-stop throughout lockdown. I’m extremely grateful for him supporting us all while I have been at home with the children.

So now everyone seems to have somewhere to be and a purpose in life... apart from me. My return to work is looming if we want to carry on paying our bills. The trouble is, I really, really, REALLY don’t want to go back. I have searched for jobs most days and applied for a couple but as yet had no luck. I would love to do something in publishing, or to gain a full time income from writing. I have also been looking at various publishing options for when my book is ready. In the meantime, our tiny village in the Lincolnshire countryside doesn’t hold the greatest job opportunities. BUT I will continue to search and continue to write.

I have also been getting my life together in other areas and really beginning to feel like a functioning adult at times! Last week, at the age of 37, I had my very first swimming lesson. We used to go with the school when I was in year 5 but I never really grasped it. I think this was partly due to the fact that I was too scared to actually get in the pool or pretending to be poorly in the changing room. I have always wanted to learn how to swim. Many a time I have felt ridiculous while on a family holiday. The kids all doing their ‘canon ball’ dives in to the water while I am trying to rock the ‘holding the bar at the side’ look. So enough was enough, it’s finally time. I have a really lovely instructor and we are starting with the basics until I have mastered it. I am secretly hoping I’ll get a certificate at the end, seeing as I never got one at school. I have asked Gav if he can do me an assembly and present it to me when I get my 25 metres. I’m sure he thinks I’m joking. I’m not.

I have also changed my hair colour. I’m not sure why this makes me feel like I’m getting my shit together, but new start, new hair. It has been red for as long as I can remember so it was time for a change. It is now brown with a slight blonde twinge. I feel more mature for some reason. If anything, I’m old before my time so I’d probably be more suited to a purple rinse. They are quite fashionable these days it seems. I’m much happier drinking a breakfast tea than having a night out these days, but I suppose I am a grandmother now.

So, all in all it’s been a positive first week of getting my shit together. I shall head off and drink my breakfast tea while I wait for my dream job to appear on my screen. All while practising my breast stroke techniques!

#operationgetmylifetogether #writer #writing #newstart #newhair #am i doing this right?#positivity #goals #ambition #nanna #swimming

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letterboxd · 5 years ago

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Sundance 2020.

“Dude, I hope this gets over 3.5!” Letterboxd rates this year’s Sundance.

Our West Coast editor Dominic Corry returns to Sundance to engage in such essential festival experiences as: judging other people’s cellphone etiquette, pretending not to notice A-listers, coming to rely upon coffee to a dangerous extent, and hastily downing a hot sandwich while standing over the garbage can outside the Park City Fresh Market.

He also watched a whole load of cool films, and spoke with the writing and directing talent behind some of the 2020 festival’s most talked-about premieres: Janicza Bravo (Zola), Eugene Kotlyarenko (Spree), Miranda July (Kajillionaire), Brandon Cronenberg (Possessor) and Jim Cummings (actor and executive producer of Danny Madden's debut Beast Beast).

Zola

“There are more ways to access great storytelling than the ones we’ve been used to.”

Generating much of the buzz ahead of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival was Janicza Bravo’s Zola, a film based on the Twitter thread by A'Ziah King that went famously viral in 2015. It concerns two exotic dancers: King herself—who goes by Zola—(played by Taylour Paige) and her new friend Stefani (Riley Keough), who head down to Tampa one weekend accompanied by Stefani’s boyfriend Derrek (played by Cousin Greg himself, Nicholas Braun) and Stefani’s “roommate” (read: pimp, played by Colman Domingo). To say shit gets cray doesn’t quite cover it.

It’s been simplistically, if understandably, described ahead of time as “Pulp Fiction meets Spring Breakers”, but Bravo herself cited a much more eclectic selection of cinematic inspirations when we spoke to her ahead of the film’s world premiere.

“My inspirations were The Wiz, Coffy, Paris Is Burning, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Special Victims Unit. And Natural Born Killers!”

Bravo (pictured above) took to King’s Twitter thread immediately when it went viral. “I think I found it within a day, or days, of it coming out,” says Bravo. “It was sent to me by a group of girlfriends and before finishing it I knew that I wanted it, and I worked at getting [the rights] for about two years.”

Bravo wasn’t the only one who wanted to tell this story on the big screen—James Franco was initially linked to an adaptation.

“It’s not that it was difficult to get the rights, it’s that there were many other people who wanted it and the people who got it before me were just fancier. But here we are.”

Bravo is credited with Zola's script alongside playwright Jeremy O. Harris, who recently blew up Broadway with his incendiary show Slave Play. She concedes there were unique challenges in translating something so specific to the big screen.

“The thing that everyone was attracted to about this story was the voice, and I would say the hardest thing was to make sure the voice was still present in the film. What you’re reading, that it would translate into the visual.”

Bravo says she’s not sure if this is going to lead to a rash of social network-based films (Letterboxd: The Movie excepted of course), “but I would say that what the story tells you is that there are more ways to access great storytelling than the ones we’ve been used to.”

Spree

“Put it on lists and do those Letterboxd battles!”

It can be all too easy to over-perceive mini-trends at film festivals, but it was hard to overlook the large role that social media played in multiple films at Sundance this year.

In Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree, floppy-haired Stranger Things star Joe Keery (pictured above) plays wannabe influencer Kurt Kunkle, a driver for a Los Angeles-based ride-sharing service (called… Spree) who plots to up his subscriber numbers by murdering his more obnoxious passengers on a live stream. Or he might just be staging it all for the LOLs. The entire film plays out as a series of live-streaming videos, mostly from the dashboard cameras in Kurt’s car.

Kotlyarenko’s film questions the overly prominent role of social media in modern life. “We've all kind of signed on to this thing, to use the literal expression,” he told us. “It’s part of the way we understand ourselves and our relationship with the rest of the world. It’s basically: a like or repost or a good rating on something, gives us part of our validation or sense of self and that is a kind of twisted place to be. [Spree] is a provocation, it’s a challenge, it’s a way of saying: look, we have a problem.”

Kotlyarenko had a number of inspirations in mind while he was writing and directing Spree. “A lot! A lot of movies! I actually put ten movies in a Dropbox for the cast and crew. One movie that I thought was really inspiring was Jafar Panafi’s Taxi, also known as Taxi Tehran. You want Man Bites Dog in there, because the whole thing is that the movie’s a live stream, right? So how do you do that pseudo-doc thing but now? So you’re following a psychotic character and you’re getting very close to them. Uncomfortably close. What else? Network and To Die For, just hardcore media satires. There’s a bunch of other films, like Coming Apart, do you know this film? It’s a late ’60s movie starring Rip Torn, where he’s a psychiatrist and he sets up these hidden cameras and exploits all his patients and stuff but they don’t know that they’re on camera.”

It turns out Kotlyarenko is a keen Letterboxd member, and he’s looking forward to other members generating an average rating for his film. “Dude, I hope this gets over 3.5!”

We can safely assume Kotlyarenko won’t employ measures as drastic as those adopted by the main character in his movie in order to get his desired rating.

“I want people on Letterboxd to watch the film and rate it whatever the fuck you think it is [worth]. And, you know, put it on lists and do those Letterboxd battles. Put it up against, you know, some Gasper Noé movie. And let it win!”

Kajillionaire

“Instead of sort of half-arseing two jobs, you’re doing one job really well.”

Filmmaker, actor and performance artist Miranda July is a central figure in the American independent cinema scene, even though she’s only directed two films: Me and You and Everyone We Know and The Future. Her third full-length feature Kajillionaire had its world premiere at Sundance this year, just as her previous works did, but the big difference this time around is that she stuck to writing and directing, having also played the lead role in her two previous films.

“It’s just better,” she told Letterboxd of staying behind the camera for Kajillionaire. “Instead of sort of half-arseing two jobs, you’re doing one job really well, you know? You get a lot of energy when you’re performing—that’s nice. Especially initially to kind of set the tone, that was super helpful, starting out. But now it’s like: these people all knew my work. So I didn’t have to actually be in it for them to like, get it. Which is, you know, what a dream right?”

Kajillionaire is a typically (for July) offbeat tale of a Los Angeles family who attempt low-level scams to raise money to pay the rent on the disused office space with oozing walls in which they live. The family (comprised of mom Debra Winger, dad Richard Jenkins and daughter Evan Rachel Wood) find their equilibrium challenged when an optimistic young woman (Gina Rodriguez) eagerly joins them for their latest “heist”.

Miranda July. / Photo courtesy of the Sundance Institute

Letterboxd asked July if she thinks there’s a common narrative thread running through all three of her films.

“I mean, I see the thread, but it’s really just me living my life. Not that it’s autobiographical at all. But now I was ready to face issues and tell a story that only could be told by someone who had been a child, grown into an adult, and then been a parent of a child and had this 360-degree perspective. And also I think there’s a joyfulness that only comes in once you’re like: I know a little bit how to do this, you know? Like, maybe there’s some fun that I had, as well as breaking my heart 100 times.”

Although Kajillionaire would seem to speak to general economic anxiety, July said that wasn’t necessarily the point of the film.

“All I’ll say about that right now is: I wrote it in this time and the whole thing comes from my unconscious. But I am the child of boomers and, you know, living in the same world you’re living in. The sense that something criminal might have happened is in the air, but I wasn’t consciously [thinking]: ‘I’m going to hit them hard with this political satire’. It’s not that movie. But I don’t think anyone would be wrong to find that in it.”

Beast Beast

“It allows you to circumvent all of the bullshit that is Hollywood.”

We met up with one of our favorite filmmakers (and Letterboxd member), Jim Cummings, who wrote, directed and starred in the 2018 low-key masterpiece Thunder Road, an expansion of a 13-minute short that won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2016.

Cummings was at the 2020 festival as both an executive producer and supporting cast member in a film in the NEXT program (which highlights emerging filmmakers) called Beast Beast. It’s the first feature from writer/director Danny Madden.

“Danny was my co-producer and creative director on many of my short films, the Thunder Road feature, and my new upcoming werewolf movie. So it’s great to be here for his first Sundance feature.”

Cummings, who also runs The Short to Feature Lab in Malibu, understands more than most how shorts can be a pathway to feature filmmaking.

“It’s just so much more fulfilling to make something as a proven concept. You kind of become your own studio in a way that’s incredibly fulfilling. I think it’s the future. You can afford to make something over a weekend with your friends in the backyard that’s a short film and then you can use that and use Kickstarter or a crowd-equity plan campaign to raise the rest of the money for a feature. It’s absolutely the future and it allows you to circumvent all of the bullshit that is Hollywood.”

Jim Cummings and Danny Madden. / Photo by Jovelle Tamayo, courtesy of the Sundance Institute

Hang on, did you say new upcoming werewolf film? Thunder Road fans can look forward to beholding Cumming’ follow-up feature soon.

“I shot a werewolf movie in Coalville, Utah last March. I spent four months out here. I wrote it, I directed in and I star in it, and it’s a proper monster movie. It’s like a proper werewolf comedy. It’s like Thunder Road with a werewolf. Or Zodiac as a comedy. That’s coming out in theaters in September.”

And because this is Jim Cummings we’re talking to, there’s more: “I ran a crowd-equity campaign for a movie that we made about talent agents that I can’t really talk too much about, but it’s very good and it’s a horror movie that we shot in November. That should be coming out around the same time.”

Possessor

“It has a lot to do with character psychology, without giving too much away.”

Following the world premiere of his new film Possessor, Letterboxd sat down with second-generation filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg, the son of legendary director David. The younger Cronenberg’s second feature (following 2012’s Antiviral) had Sundance audiences audibly wincing at the extreme body horror on display in the sci-fi thriller, which stars Andrea Riseborough as an assassin who forcibly inhabits the minds of others to perform her incredibly violent executions.

We asked Cronenberg how he feels about the term “body horror” (a sub-genre often associated with his father’s work) being applied to his film.

“I guess it depends how you define body horror,” says Cronenberg. “There are violent scenes in the film and I guess that fits into a certain aspect of body horror, but it isn’t really what I would necessarily describe as body horror. There’s a small amount of story stuff that I feel is legitimately a part of that genre, but it’s not [the] prime aspect of the story.”

Cronenberg confirmed that on-screen viscerality appeals to him in general as a filmmaker: “I think especially in genre, although it can be incredibly conceptual. It’s partly defined by deep visceral emotions, not always because of graphic violence or gore. Sometimes it can be a film primarily about dread or anxiety that I would still consider to be a horror film, and a lot of classic ghost films for instance are not graphic but are visceral and in that emotional sense.”

Actors Christopher Abbott and Andrea Riseborough with director Brandon Cronenberg. / Photo courtesy of the Sundance Institute

The violence in Possessor may have had audience members covering their eyes in Park City, but Cronenberg told us there was a point to all the grue.

“It wasn’t just there to be intense or to provoke people. It has a lot to do with character psychology, without giving too much away. The way it’s depicted and the various approaches that are taken in different scenes, very much relate to the main character, her relationship with violence, her own internal space and also where the audience is situated from a kind of more objective or more subjective position.”

#sundance #sundance fim festival #sundance 2020 #jim cummings #miranda july #letterboxd #red carpet #film festival #preview #festival

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storiesofwildfire · 5 years ago

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UPDATED: 02/07/2020

This is an independent roleplay blog for Loki Laufeyson based primarily off of a mixture of Norse Mythology, Marvel, and God of War 2018. I am not in association with Marvel or Sony and claim no profits from this blog. This is also not a fandom blog, meaning most of the posts will be in-character responses to threads and asks. All reblogs will be in relation to Loki or any of the characters or ideas that make up their world. IMPORTANT INFO ON LOKI: It's extremely important to keep in mind that Loki is a gender fluid shape-shifter and may appear in any number of forms and genders at any given time. Loki has very few limits on what they can do with their body and they will not always appear to other muses as MCU's Tom Hiddleston version of Loki. This can and will include variations to Tom Hiddleston's Loki, Lady Loki, Jotun Loki, and many other forms. Loki may be male, female, both, or neither at any given point in time. It is up to me and my discretion of when to implement Loki's shape-shifting abilities. Bottom line, don't expect Loki to be a cis-male who is always in a completely male form. It's out of character and simply won't happen and even if Loki presents male or female, that does not mean that Loki's body beneath the clothing matches that presentation. Assume nothing.

ACTIVITY

This blog is selective and private, meaning I will be selective with who I interact with and/or follow and I will only roleplay with mutuals. My ask box and my IMs are open to non-mutuals, however. If I’m not following you, but you’d like to interact, don’t be afraid to shoot me a message. If we talk and I like you, chances are, I’ll follow you back. If you want to send a random ask, feel free. You don’t have to my mutual to use my ask box. I can be an extremely slow roleplayer at times. Please understand that this is a hobby and while I love what I do, I cannot be here all the time. Sometimes IC replies and OOC replies will come slowly. I am also a writer outside of Tumblr, so sometimes my personal and professional projects have to come first and often suck up a lot of my creative energy. That said, I am not on Tumblr at all during the weekends. Starting Friday night and usually extending to Sunday night/Monday morning, I log out of Tumblr completely. This is because I am typically very busy on the weekends, but also because I need to take a step back from Tumblr once in a while just to keep my sanity. I'm more motivated to write on the days I promise to be here if I can look forward to a few days off at the end of the week. It's just to give me some peace of mind and a bit of breathing room. On days I am not on Tumblr, I am likely still on discord--which is available for mutuals upon request! Sometimes my blog will update through a queue so it is still active even when I am not physically on. I do this regularly but not consistently. If you're curious as to whether or not something is a queued post, you can check my tags. All queued posts have a queue tag on them!

SIDE MUSES

I actually roleplay as more than just Loki on this blog. It also includes four of Loki’s children ( the children I have chosen to incorporate from mythology ); Hel, Fenrir, Jörmungandr, and Sleipnir. There are also a mixture of secondary muses that help make up Loki’s world. Most of these characters are the mun’s original characters, but canon characters like Fandral ( I loooooove writing Fandral! ) may show up on occasion. It’s important to remember that this blog is a Loki-oriented blog, though. While I do roleplay as numerous secondary characters, this is not meant to be interpreted as a multi-muse blog. If you would like to interact with any of my secondary characters, chances are, you’ll need to interact with Loki first. I do, however, love getting to use my secondary characters, so if you're interested in them, please let me know! It's also important to remember that while some of these characters are canon to either mythology or Marvel, they are my own interpretation of them and may not 100% be accurate to canon. While canon characters do exist in the side muses, most of them are original characters and are not available for public use. These are my characters, my ideas, and my world-building. Please do not use them without permission or claim any information as yours.

PREFERENCES & HATE

I do not roleplay with anyone under the age of 18. It's nothing personal to the younglings of Tumblr, but for my own personal comfort, I'd rather keep my interactions to 18+ only. I prefer plotting over jumping into an interaction that has no basis. Memes are great and I love them, but I have very little interest in maintaining threads that have no substance. I prefer novella threads, but I am willing to do shorter para threads as well. i am not willing to do one-liners. A thread has to have some meat to it in order to hold my interest. I do not tolerate hate at all. Anonymous or not, I will not deal with hate directed at me or any other person. NSFW (meaning sex, violence, torture, gore, and other adult themes) will be present. I roleplay a large range of topics, including very dark and sensitive subjects. I do not personally have many triggers when it comes to what I am willing to explore on this blog. Dark themes will be very present. I will not censor my muse but I will tag triggering content accordingly. I tag by a 'tw; triggering content title' system. Self harm, for example, would look like this: tw; self harm

SHIPPING

Simply put, I love shipping, but it's not the sole reason I'm here. If I ship, I prefer to ship in a setting that's well thought out and plot-driven. The ship is great, but there needs to be more than just the ship. I don't ship for the sake of shipping and I only ship based on chemistry. If you want to ship with me but don't know how to approach the subject, just send me a message and we can discuss it!

WHAT KEEPS ME FROM FOLLOWING?

Blogs who have no about page. This is the essence of a character. Without it, I have no idea if I would be interested in your muse or not. This is staple for canons and OCs. Anyone who makes me feel like a number. I do not expect anyone to make me an exclusive partner. You are more than welcome to roleplay with dupes, but I do not want to be added to a collection. I am an individual, not a collector’s item. Valuing unique portrayals is so important Non-roleplay-blogs/self inserts. People who I have witnessed abusing or attacking other role-players. If you have an issue with another role-player, handle it in private. Do not attack them publicly. I have been a victim of “call-out culture” and I will not deal with it. I understand that some call-out posts are necessary to warn people of harmful people and toxic environments, however, more often than not, I see call-out posts that throw around false accusations and complain about personal problems rather than actual, problematic behavior. Unless undeniable proof is provided, I will never be part of the culture of publicly slandering someone. To follow up on that last point, if I see a lot of ooc drama and constant negativity on a blog, I won't follow. People who godmod. If you do godmod me, I will message you about it. If you are unwilling to discuss the issue, the thread will be dropped. Anyone who thinks they have the right to tell me or anyone else what they can and cannot do with their blogs. Roleplaying is about writing and exploring a wide variety of topics. Fiction is not reality. A muse’s actions are not the mun condoning said actions. If you cannot understand that fiction is a way for writers to explore things outside of everyday life, dark or otherwise, this is not the blog for you.

EXCLUSIVES

Being exclusive is something that I am willing to do, but on very rare occasion. It takes a lot of personal love and interaction with a mun to be willing to make them exclusive with my muse. This isn't just about IC interactions being amazing, but also an OOC connection with the other mun as well. An exclusive status will only be offered if it is returned. If you are my exclusive, I am yours. EXCLUSIVES LIST: THISFORGOTTENLORE - Bigby Wolf, Brienne of Tarth, Bruce Banner & Hulk, Geralt, Heimdall, Illya Kuryakin, Jaskier, Khal Drogo, Kratos, Robert Jekyll & Hyde, The Iron Bull, Yennefer OFCHARREDBONES - Johnny Blaze FANDRALXTHEXSTABULOUS - Fandral If you would like to talk about being an exclusive and we already interact, please feel free to shoot me a message!

ABOUT THE MUN

Hi there! My name is Amber and I'm in my mid-twenties. I've just finished up a master's degree in creative writing for entertainment, meaning I take great pride and joy in writing stories in just about any sort of medium. I primarily focus on prose (as demonstrated by this blog) and film/television scripts, but I also dive into comics and other mediums from time to time. I've been roleplaying Loki for over six years now. They have truly become my life-long muse and they even inspires my off-Tumblr projects quite a lot. Aside from Loki, I do have a long history of both writing and roleplaying including a number of canon characters and original characters. I'm not going to go on and on about myself because I don't want to bore you! Just know that I'm very friendly, kind of shy, and if you want to write with me and you come at me wanting to plot, I will probably be over the moon about it. I thrive on plotting and world-building and if you have an interest in doing those things with me, we'll get along great. If you would, by chance, like to know more about me and why I roleplay as Loki, you can click HERE and HERE. I do run a couple of blogs ( though Loki is my main! ). You can find all of them here: LOKI LAUFEYSON ( and supplement characters ) - STORIESOFWILDFIRE. MULTI-MUSE - GRIMOIREWEAVERS

CREDITS

Background, popup background, and mobile header graphics made by the incredible and lovely Smudge ( aka thisforgottenlore ), tweaked by myself. Background art by the extremely talented SCEITH-A. Popup background and mobile header art by the equally as talented ROSSDRAWS. Personal graphics, unless stated otherwise, were made by myself. Icons are a mixture of free-to-use icons (and gifcons) found and reblogged on Tumblr and my own personal icons which were editted from raw screen caps and created by me.

#outofmagic #rules #rules text post #index; blog #filed under; about the blog #filed under; blog updates #index; mun #filed under; about the blogger #filed under; mun things #{ was updating my rules on my multi and decided... I probably needed to update them here too #and I did #because my old ones were way too long and some stuff just wasn't too concise #basically #don't be a dick #don't tell people what they can and cannot do as long as they aren't hurting anyone #miss me with drama #and don't force loki into a cishet box cause that ain't gonna fly #otherwise let's just have fun! }

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depressedramblingsbyme · 4 years ago

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So it begins

This is a journal, diary, a void just somewhere i can put my thoughts without feeling like i’m just screaming into a void.

5/28/2020

I’m living in the u.s. my dad is German and my mum is American, while we live in the u.s. they’re laid back parents and have let me drink in the house on weekends since i was 15 or 16.(note: i got held back in first grade after moving from england so despite being born in 02 i graduate in 21) Being 17 i wanted to experiment, I've vaped but personally i don’t see the attraction so i tried weed as it’s starting to become legal. I figured i’m nearly an adult so what’s the big deal. Like an afternoon drink i enjoyed smoking. It helped me relax and be more open about myself and put on this picture perfect filter even if i was just talking to friends. And unlike nicotine i never craved it or felt like i needed it which is why i don’t fuck with nicotine. So life moves on like normal until October. they found some trash from a cart i opened, unfortunately my siblings have ruined weed for my parents as all my siblings who smoke decided to make some dumb life decisions (which i don’t want to type out) and are in my parents eyes not in the best position. Rightfully from their experience they’re against it, it’s not unreasonable to see the cause and effect relationship. lots of yelling and arguing ensue i don’t remember it too well but i didn’t get punished somehow. Fast forward to December My parents are worried for my grades, this year i was spending half my time at a technical school and my other half at my main high school. Perfect grades in technical school but my main school wasn’t the best. I had flat C’s with a b+ in English. In my eyes i had bitten off more than i could chew this year as i decided to take college algebra/trigonometry a class covering two years of college math in one, i suck at linguistics so Spanish class was rough, Chemistry is known for being tough, English always came easily to me but that class takes up a lot of time. So in my eyes my grades could be improved but to an extent it was justified and for the past two years i was on the high honor roll maintaining a 3.5+ gpa so it’s not the end of the world. To them they think that weed is what’s making my grades the way they are that i’m a stoner who just smokes pot all day and that’s all i want to do with my life. This makes me horribly angry for two reasons. The first being i - hate - potheads, ironic but if all you want to do is smoke with your life frankly i think you’re a boring person with no aspirations in life which isn’t what i want for myself i feel unbalanced and shitty if i’m not sober for a few days i would maybe smoke 2-3 times a week at night after i was done with my day or on the weekend with friends. So that’s the first thing that upsets me they think i’m a pothead who just wants to smoke weed all day. the second reason this makes me angry is that they’re completely fine with getting drunk, now i’m not calling my parents alcoholics (my dad doesn’t even drink that much it’s mainly my mum ) but shit at least once or twice a week my mum will be pretty fuckin drunk. which again is an okay thing to do they’re adults it’s their right my problem is that if the world is starting to put weed on the level of alcohol why is it so horrible if i get high occasionally to put off some stress like she does occasionally. Now i didn’t get to ask her this specific question but i did say “so it’s okay for you to get drunk but i can’t get high” to which she responded “i’m an adult, you’re not” if you trusted me to be adult enough to handle alcohol what makes me smoking any different. second semester we have 2 more “big” arguments about my grades, they keep relating it to pot. So at this point i had to 3rd person myself if you will. on one hand i didn’t believe pot to be affecting me as i thought i had control over it and never abused it, i knew what abuse looked like because of my siblings but never felt that way for myself. On the other maybe it is effecting me but i don’t realize it. So to humor the idea i go sober for a month, nah school is just hard it’s not weed. Idk if i typed this already but i understand if you don’t want to smell weed, or have it in your home but i don’t see the harm if i’m not bringing it anywhere near home. At around this point we entered quarantine, i didn’t mind online school however now my mum was hounding me constantly about school, if even one assignment was missing it would lead to more arguing. Now i know to a certain degree i didn’t give a fuck about the online work because at this point my grades weren’t going to be able to go down however i did 80% of my work. If i can’t understand trig in school what makes you think i can teach myself so for the most part i did school. At a certain point i felt this switch was flipped and it happened right around when quarantine started and since then i haven’t felt comfortable in my own home. it constantly feels tense between me and my mum i couldn't tell you what we argue over but i can’t even go hang out with friends without feeling like i’m doing something wrong, which makes me want to stay in my room all day which then makes them upset because they dont see me throughout the day which then leads to an argument and me storming back up to my room. so now that i’m in this cycle of shit frankly i just want to cry and enjoy my last summer but now i’m being threatened with being kicked out despite not even finishing highschool. i turn 18 in 9 days i don’t think i’ve ever been scared for a birthday. when i’m not crying and feel more level headed i do think about actually moving out though.

I mean if i broke it down what’s so horrible about only making 25k a year you can easily live in your own apartment with insurance and enough to save for the future and emergency, I've done the math and it just keeps cycling in my head because all my life I've been taught i need to go to college or make more than 60k a year but after doing the math, why. why put myself in debt if i can live comfortably, i mean shit any job paying something like $15 an hour (in the midwest) isn’t going to be anything to be proud of but if i can sustain myself and grow a retirement fund why not if i meet my partner they most likely have the means to sustain themselves so it would be easy to live together and currently i’d rather be sterilized then have a kid so that’s not an expense i want to think about as it’s something i do not want.

I want to finish highschool but living in my parents house makes me feel constantly on edge. In retrospect after writing this and reliving the past school year if i didn’t or if they didn’t know i smoked pot most of this would have never happened.

also i need a fucking job again at least it will get me out of the house

i’m posting this for my own sanity if you think i’m a dumbass tell me off in the comments if you have similar experiences, advice, encouragment etc feel free to put it in comments i appreciate feedback but frankly couldn’t care if you think i wasted my time in posting this

#tumblr diary #journal #story

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archtroop · 5 years ago

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So for you. What other fandoms are you in? When, how and why wincest?😁😍😎

Oh my, gird your loins, this is gonna be a long confession.

LIFE:

I little background (This is all very relevant, because it had direct affect on whatever choices I would make, stuff I might like and my own personal evolution as a human, leading me to where I am today - including my on-the-side fandom life, which are a huge part of me).

Female, only child - I was born in 1990 in Soviet Russia/Russia (it’s a murky year for definitions) in the farthest eastern piece of land on the globe that still constitutes as Asia, a place where they learn Japanese as a second language instead of English. I’m Jewish on my mother’s side, my father is not. Our small family migrated to Israel in 1996. I was enrolled in a religious school, for the first two years of my education. Religious orthodox little girls are bitches. I suffered. I was 6, and a 100% language barrier. Then I was enrolled in a state-religious school for 4 years. Made my first 2-3 friends. One of them is my forever best like-a-sister-to-me friend since then. Still, it screwed with my head just enough - having a secular background and family and religious preaching at school fucks you up real good. By this time I had an actual artificially ensued phobia of males. Boy, man, horse. If it had a dick I was opting out in the opposite direction. It was also a very violent time, hits and punches, teeth and nails. Got suspended once, this other girl in my class broke a guy’s teeth, ended in a juvenile institute for girls.

The next 6 years (12-18 years old) I spent in a secular boarding school, which, in Israel, are inherently patriotic in nature. These years were my most definitive and had the greatest influence on my preferences. Had my real-life heterosexual-life partner thing going for me, and the plan wast to graduate and move together. Never panned out. 18-20 - served my two mandatory 2 years (as a phlebotomist, of all things). This was when I eventually snapped and began actually maturing. By that time I still had zero interest i the opposite sex (or the same sex for the matter). At 19.6 y/o met my future husband and the future father of our now 2.6 y/o girl, began my B.Arch (took me almost a decade to finish because of pregnancy and financials). As of now, I am an Architect in practice, I work in a small but a very affluent in work firm/office. Waiting for my diploma to be issued.

So, I am trilingual (Russian. Hebrew, English), married+1, architect, artist on a hiatus, I have zero fear of needles and blood, love to read, love to interpret, love to translate. I also failed the Kinsey Scale Test twice. Until very recently in my life I couldn’t pick up on sexual innuendo at all, couldn’t identify if I was hit on, too. Today I like sex just fine, but it’s not a prime need of mine, which lead to me and my (very sexual in nature) significant other to agree on an open relationship. 100/100 would recommend.

FANDOM:

TV was a friend. I was 7-8 y/o when Pokemon hit the little screen in Israel. For technical reasons, I couldn’t watch the first episode. So I refused to watch the next ones too, until I’ll catch the first one on the saturday reruns. This marks my first exhibit of obsessiveness towards a franchise/media. But Pokemon was for cool kids, and for boys, so I can’t enjoy it (unfortunately this is going to be a recurring theme). I absorbed Hebrew quickly, and found myself spending time in the library. TV, library, pencils and paper were all I cared for. I was about 10 when girls at school, who had access (early 2000′) were giggling about something called Sailor Moon. But they were the very cool kids. Can’t have that at all. I read Interview With a Vampire when I was 11-12. I then flipped the book and realized there was apparently a movie, too. It will be years until I’ll have the chance to watch it. I switched from teen books to adults fantasy and horror at that time. I remembering giggling through R.L. Stein’s stuff. It was like candy to me. I would read whatever I could find. I didn’t listen to music. Music is for the cool kids, and I am not allowed. There was no music at home, too.

About that time, I found Flowers In The Attic and drank it up. The things that lurk in school libraries. I was engrossed in the darkness, the horror. The pain and angst and the, well, horror. It was beautiful. Then came Dragon Lance, and I fell for the Caramon & Raistlin story. Fantasy, dragons, and two brothers against ll odds, the warrior and the mage, who are forever bound, and when they die, they join each other in the river of souls. I loved it to bits. I couldn’t survive through Tolkien. loved The Hobbit, but 30 pages into the third book and he was still describing a forest - so I ditched it. Harry Potter was huge to me, I drank it up. But Harry Potter was for cool kids, so I couldn’t really talk about it. And then when I was 13-14 y/o a friend introduced me to manga. It was 2003-04, the Internet was becoming prominent feature of life. My first manga was Gravitation. Of all things. But manga and anime is for really cool girls, I can’t have that. But now I had Internet access.

That’s when I encountered Angel Sanctuary, and Kaori Yuki’s work. Gothic Lolita, Visual Kei. I’v found my niche. No one of the cool kids had any idea about those pretty things, I could hold them and have them for myself. It became one of my greatest inspirations. I read tons of manga online, combing the web for scanlation groups. Anime, too. I became very good at finding stuff. Like, real good. I even have two Angel Sanctuary fanart pieces.

Did you notice a theme already? I haven’t until very recently.

In 2005-6 (I can’t recall for sure) Israeli AXN release a promo of Supernatural. I recognized that “very good actor whose character(s) I really liked from Dark Angel”. It as all true but also I was THAT aloof about physical human beauty and attraction. But I was interrupted watching the Pilot and begrudgingly decided to follow upon it on a saturday rerun, Guess what, I got interrupted again. And it was ON, TV be damned. I hit the Google, and piracy was it. I watched Supernatural with reverence. It was entirely MINE. I opened an account on fan-wikia Supernatural site, which I lost and forgot about that was my first ever fandom-related interaction. By that time I also had a DeviantART page, which I kinda left as a storage unit as life took its course. Basically, in August 2020 I will hit 30, which would mean Supernatural officially was by my side half of my life.

I had no idea what shipping was, though. Until Teen Wolf, funny enough. Teen Wolf was my first ship experience. I didn’t read fanfic until then. Sterek somehow managed to pull me in that world. It’s that palpable on screen. So I joined tumblr. It took me time to get accustomed to all this, because even fandom is for cool kids but OH I AM ANONYMOUS.

And I gradually became more aware. Of pretty much everything. With Supernatural keeping me alive through my degree studies, prompting my sexuality to emerge (it is still a fucked up sexuality. But it’s a start.). Worked through issues with Supernatural on my back-burner all the time.

Then Supernatural hit 10 seasons. And I had to celebrate, and it was my first and only (so far) Supernatural fanart. I began reading fanfic. But so much of it wasn’t what I was looking for. So after some contemplation, I decided to try and write my own (EasyRush). And that was it for me, I essentially drowned in it, the wincest. Now that is had a name. As of today, it has become this thing that I can dig into to find me some solace after a hard day.

I can’t even say that there was a specific scene. Or a why. It’s just IS. Like the John-finds-out fics: A gradual dawning realization. Looking back, it’s all the elements of whatever I consumed merged and acted out by very talented and compelling actors.

It has the setting of Flowers In The Attic, the mythology of Angel Sanctuary and the charm of Dragon Lance, turned up to eleven. It’s Gothic Urban Fantasy, gritty and beautiful (I miss classic Supernatural aesthetic BADLY) and is a survivor.

On retrospect I begin to pinpoint moments that have subconsciously lead me to it. There was never any other option.

Wincest is never for the cool kids. It’s for people like me.

P.S.: I think there might be a part two. I need to go. This was a great walk down memory lane, it’s not even half of it.

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cromulentbookreview · 6 years ago

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Every Heart Among Bones Beneath Sugar In An Absent Dream

Have I mentioned how much I love Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series? I think I might have but still: I really fucking love this series.

In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire!

BE SURE.

Rule One: Ask for Nothing

Rule Two: Names Have Power

Rule Three: Always Give Fair Value

Rule Four: Take what is offered and be grateful.

Rule Five: Remember the Curfew.

In An Absent Dream is the story of Katherine (never Katie, Kitty or Kathy, but Katherine, goddamn it!) Lundy, a bookish, serious and very logical young girl. In 1964, Katherine, on her sixth birthday, comes to the realization that, if other people don’t like her, she’s not going to bother changing herself to become likable to others. If they don’t like her the way she is, then they’re not worth her time. (If only I’d had that realization at six and actually stuck to it - instead, it hit me when I was 14 and rather than going it alone I spent the next decade desperately trying to mold myself into someone people would like. Being a girl with autism sure is fun!). As a serious logical bookworm and the daughter of the school principal, Katherine isn’t exactly miss popular, but when none of the other kids come to her birthday party, she decides “fuck it.”

And so Katherine grows up being the dedicated rule-follower, like a miniature Amy Santiago. Occasionally she looks for loopholes to exploit, like all good rule-following children who know that sometimes you have to stretch things a bit to your advantage, but for the most part, Katherine is the perfect mid-1960s definition of a “good girl” - minus any friends. When Katherine is eight years old, she doesn’t want to leave her classroom at the end of the last day of school - she wants to finish her book, damn it. Her teacher just wants to clean up and go home. Unable to find a suitable excuse to stick around longer, Katherine heads home, dreading being pressed into babysitting her younger sister. As she walks the all-too-familiar route home, she does something curious: at one point, rather than turning right, she turns left instead. If Doctor Who taught me anything, it’s that turning left never ends well.

How are you so pretty, David Tennant?

Ahem.

Anyway. Turning left! Katherine’s left turn doesn’t end in nuclear Armageddon, though. Instead, she ends up at a tree. A really strange tree that seems to be the product of extensive chip grafting, like one of them Tree of Many Fruits, but moving on: this tree has a door. And on this door it says: BE SURE.

Katherine isn’t sure what this is referring to - she is sure that she is Katherine Lundy, though, so she goes through the door, through a hallway with the cross-stitched rules hanging on the walls, and out into the Goblin Market.

Unlike the whimsical tastes-like-diabetes world in Beneath the Sugar Sky or the Hammer Horror world of Down Among the Sticks and Bones, the world of the Goblin Market is one of extreme logic. The Goblin Market is only about 10% whimsy, 90% following-the-rules. Everything is acquired via the barter system of fair value. You want something? You’ve got to give “fair value” for it, and fair value varies wildly depending on your age, strength, skills, etc. It’s not as much fun to read about as Candyland, Hammer-Horror-land or the Underworld, but it represents the logical end of the World Compass. But still, if you’re not into economics and would rather your fantasy stories avoid the debate over what constitutes “fair value”, you might be turned off a bit by the Goblin Market. I hated having to parcel out what was “fair value” when studying economics in college (nothing says “torture” like reading Karl Marx in the original German), and would much rather use the “shut up and take my money” approach to exchanges in the open market.

As a fantasy world, though, I found the Goblin Market to be a bit terrifying – the Market gives off this impression that everything is fair and good and wonderful, but at the same time, when people don’t give fair value and go into “debt”, the Market causes some hard-core body-horror-type stuff to happen to you. McGuire does an awesome job making sure that we never forget this underlying sinister side to that world.

That sinister feeling that we get goes over Katherine’s head at first - to be fair, she is eight. At first, Katherine, who goes by Lundy in the Goblin Market, is delighted to find a world where everyone must follow the rules and where everyone gets fair value. She considers the Goblin Market to be her true home. But as Lundy gets older, she comes up against Rule Five: the curfew. At 18, she must choose between the Goblin Market or her home world. One or the other. She can’t have both. At first, the choice seems obvious: Goblin Market, FTW. But when Lundy goes home to her own world and sees her family again, things get muddy. How can Lundy have both her family and the Goblin Market, while still following the rules? Can it be done?

It goes without saying that McGuire has knocked the ball straight out of the park again with the fourth installment of the Wayward Children series. It’s possible to finish In An Absent Dream in an hour or a single sitting, the same way it’s perfectly possible to eat an entire box of chocolates, but once you’re done...well, now you’re out of chocolate, and you won’t be getting any more until 2020. I took my time with In An Absent Dream because I am a slow reader and because I wanted to savor it. Some of the scenes from Katherine’s childhood hit me so hard for a moment I wondered if Seanan McGuire followed me around when I was a kid and took notes. No kids at the birthday party? Got along better with adults than peers? Loved books more than people? Yes. 1000% yes. Katherine’s dream of becoming a librarian because “she couldn’t imagine knowing there was a job that was all about books and not wanting to do it”?

That’s precisely why I got my Masters in Library and Information Science. That, and all the best jobs required it. But now that I have the degree, though, all of those jobs have disappeared. Because of course.

Again, the worst thing about this series is just how long we have to wait between each installment. These books are oh so good, but so, so short. I do not recommend binging it all in a day - take it in slowly, preferably with the first three books on hand so you can see how all the stories are woven together. Make it last because I swear to God 2018 has felt like it’s lasted for twenty years and it’s still not over. The wait for 2020 is going to feel like an eternity. If the world is even still around by then. Fingers crossed!

RECOMMENDED FOR: Everyone. Just. Everyone needs to read the Wayward Children books.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: People who don’t read fantasy, people who are the worst, people who definitely bullied other people in middle school...

RELEASE DATE: January 8, 2019

RATING: 5/5

TOTALLY UNBIASED FANGIRL RATING: 5,000,000,000,000/5

TREE RATING: Sequoia sempervirens

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES: Olympus Mons

#wayward children #in an absent dream #seanan mcguire #portal fantasy #every heart a doorway #down among the sticks and bones #beneath the sugar sky #book review #fantasy #feminist fantasy #tor #best books #is it 2019 yet

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thewillowbends · 6 years ago

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1, 4, 19, 20

1. How many jobs have you had, and which was your favorite? Oh man, let me see…6-7? A lot of retail in the background, and I was a pharmacy tech for almost ten years before I moved into the business side of healthcare with my current job as an instructional trainer for medical software. I’m getting to the end of the contract with this job, so I’ll be moving on soon - likely into insurance, or I’ll be pushing for a Masters degree before I apply for medical school in the fall. For favorite job…for actual work, I liked my current one the best because it involved travel. For favorite staff, I liked working at Victoria Secret. I still pick up seasonal hours at the one in my area because I’m good friends with most of the women there.

4. If you went to college, does your major match your career/current job? Yes and no. I have an AS in Pharmacy Technician schooling, which I used for ten years. I have a BS in Pre-Medical Studies, which certainly helped me get the job I’m in now, but it’s more a precursor to my eventual plans to go to medical school. (I’m considering the PhD route with a dual specialty of OBGYN and Immunology, if you’re curious.) In December, I’ll be finishing up a BA in English Nonfiction. Next summer, I’ll be completing a Certificate of Womens Studies with the local community college. I use my writing skills all the time, whether it’s fan fiction, article writing, or instructional design, but it’s not my full time profession, so I guess it’s technically not field related? Same with the Womens Studies. I got that as a way of enhancing my understanding the medical field I’m going into. Additionally, I’m considering whether to complete an accelerated Masters or a nursing degree (I literally only need about 8 classes + the exam to be an RN at this point) since I’ll have almost two years before starting medical school in 2020.

19. Are the privileges of adulthood worth the responsibilities?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: To me, it’s not really about privileges so much as the development of the self. As a child, you are limited in the space you have to actualize your person and explore your opportunities as a human being. Some of that is circumstantial - you are small, the world is big, you are at the mercy of your guardians - but some of that is also individual. Our minds can only be fostered with time and experience. You can reject growth, violently even, but you can’t suppress time. Life will move forward inevitably with or without us. Staying a child is pointless, impossible even, though many try. Death, however terrifying, is a reality we all most eventually confront and with which we must reconcile ourselves. How can we gird ourselves for non-existence if we waste what time we have to actually exist?

What’s happening in the United States is a great example of a failure to thrive on a macroscopic level. These people who support Trump? The ones who are apathetically complicit? Are children. They refuse to grow, to accept that the world will grow beyond them. They accept a farce of power - superficial validation through abstracts like nationalism or race - versus the only one that provides any meaning: the acceptance of our responsibility to ourselves, the world, and each other. And look how much damage they’re doing because of it.

20. Do you feel like an adult?

I think the mistake is assuming maturity is a static concept. All stages of life require evolution. At eighteen, you become a legal adult with an understanding of legal consequences. In your twenties, you finish developing cognitively, grow an awareness of the world beyond yourself and your responsibility to it. In your thirties, you began to recognize the limitations of your life, the first signs of aging. And so on and so forth. We are children many times over in our lives.

In my late twenties, I felt like an adult. I was content, I was focused, I had a path. In my early thirties, I’m suddenly feeling like a child again. Sometimes, it’s an incredible thing because now I know thirty isn’t THAT old and I still have plenty of years to do amazing things. But sometimes it’s also because the world is so frighteningly big and beyond my control. My part in it can be so small. I am becoming more uncomfortably aware of my own mortality. I see the occasional grey hair. I get shoulder pain if I sit too long in a hunched position. I look at the country around me, see the increasing instability and violence in it, and I wonder honestly if I’ll ever be asked to die for what I believe in. Whether I’ll be brave enough to do it.

That’s the hard part of being an adult - having to answer those questions. You may not always like the answers.

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thyrideneverends · 4 years ago

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(2017)

Escritos que encontre del año 2017 . Y conversaciones conmigo desde el año 2020 ([]).

____________________________ AAAHGH IM SO FUCKING SAD. I cant help but feel that im rotting. I dont want pity; people helping; people empathizing. FUCK YOU. I can do better than you. I DO. In fact. I havent been blinded, and hate everything around me as an excuse for giving my life away for what it was supposed to be. [this could be missunderstod since i was clearly angry 4 something i dont recall, I was refering to people in general, how they put themselves above the others, how they always wanna get "there" first, how they talk trash about their relationships, the anger, the hate that breeds out of them when they are wronged(even if there`s no purpose or whatsoever to cause them, specifically, any troubles), the screaming, the violence, that kind of hate..]

I dont want to just 'be happy' because I have to; so I reject happiness. But I want to feel it like something real and not made up.. does that makes sense? Thats a paradox i cant escape lately. [thats deep man, fortunately we figured that out. Have we figured that out? Happiness now is closed for manteinance ^-^ ]

I cant find pleasure in anything.. I destroyed everything..[you had to start somewhere, right?] I cant find meaning in anything.

I just need someone, i just need not to be alone. But I am; Even surrounded by everyone. I know I am. I know you are too.. I hope you are strong enough to endure it.

[hablabas de otro tipo de soledad, lo se, pero vos todavia no lo sabias, o si?]

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Sometimes I feel like I forgot an important part of being alive. I remember a different version of myself from a few years back. I feel like I'm just existing; nothing pushes my happy button. And when I'm not strong enough to think that it's fine; that I don't need that.. I will just panic questioning myself why, the reason for me not belonging. I know it's fine; I know I can just spend the rest of my..50years left? just doing this; living this eternal circling hell. You might say it's a choice.. That I don't put that much effort into it. That I'm just playing this part. Complaining my ass off. And to that.. I can only say I'm sorry.. I'm doing the best I can. [I know you were.. truly; and u did a great job never letting me down] _________________________________________

Why are we even here right.. What powers you? You wake up, work or study, ingest food, sleep. Repeat. To finish your career and become something.. To earn enough money to become someone.. Be better in what you're doing or you'll be out. You'll be useless. You'll be garbage. We[the system] won't need you.. And then we have to be happy about it.. We have to function collectively happy and there's no room for the outcasts.. And IM to blame for it.. I could be happy like all of them.. But I'm just sitting my ass here thinking what else I can sabotage, in order to understand why it's unnecessary and wish to be also capable of that... Just capable maybe of.. not be weird; not be me.. And sometimes thats all that matters. That Im me.. And I love not being a part of them. I just can never get a hold of that moment and make it last.. I will feel alone just a moment after. [Im so glad we worked our loneliness, I mean, we have such fine moments in silence..]

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Aah... I was just given advice by a hot girl on tinder about how should I type, express and resume myself so the person on the other side of the screen won't stop replying thinking I'm an idiot.. She basically said :- "hey, you're an idiot but maybe a cute one. Here's human help. Just stop being you and people will like you" Y'know what? that's bullshit... It makes me so anxious that it happens all the time. There's always someone judgin. Not only online; real life is the worst. I just don't fit in here I guess. I'll keep talking with the tinder girl, maybe and get emptynessly laid, why not? But I think I hate this.. I hate that everything craves for a definition and people just won't LOOK; Im hidden among them... God how I wish to know who's there ravaging their brains with questions while walking in that empty crowd. I wish I could find you and ask just what you were thinking there. At that unique moment. You are not alone... But if you feel like I do; I wonder if you also wonder. I wonder if we're just very far away from each other.. I wonder if it`s true that there can only be one of us by this cosmic rule that goes: only one 'you/me' for every thousand people. Or.. maybe it's just me. Too old to be an idiot... Too idiot to fully be himself around smart well adjusted people. I guess it's a matter of perspective. isn't it pretty much all? Have a good night stranger.. [Not so stranger.. my dude.. U didn't get laid btw, you couldn't pull through with that. And then you promised you wouldn't lie about who you are.. You wouldn't ever play another role other than the one you are. Well, it was more like a statement than a promise, to yourself. I was there.. Best decision you ever made. You mutated loneliness into a condition, a simple symptom of your choice of living; instead of a disease on itself.. Very clever.]

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You don't have to read but if you wanna unload please write it down. Everything u hate.. or love; This I wrote on my personal account but it makes me anxious to open myself to judgy people, so I erased it.. We live to judge because we love fixing things that didn't go right with us. Never understanding each perspective is unique. Well Im gonna paste it here because I don't want to lose it.. I don't want something I really meant to be just a deleted thing..(even if it is)

Have u ever felt like you're unique or different? But then just analyzing, we all just walk towards and objective. We don't do things just because. You don't get up every day to just go to work.. to just have breakfast or go shopping, idk; people set goals. We follow patterns. We repeat the same exact thing to strangers of the streets. The same exact things other strangers reply to us.. We are the same NPCs to others. And then realizing this I just wanna scream PLEASE GET ME OUT OF THIS. Please look at me! I don't want this. I don't want to be aware of this.. I don't want to feel I'm just to you what you guess I am. What's the point of everything? How do I get to know who I am if I'm always this self-centered stupid attempt of somebody? Nobody wants that. Sometimes I am glad to be "awake". To be different from the other people in their bubbles... But most of the time I'd give EVERYTHING to be exactly like that. Because I feel lonely. Because I have so many friends, but we can't communicate. Because I've lost the ideal of love because at a certain point I was scared of being a problem and it hurts so fucking much. I don't think I am special.. or more intelligent or cultural, I just feel I have a different degree of "profoundness" than most other people. It's not something I talk about or show, most of the time i pretend to fit in, but I don't. I can fool myself for periods, I've fooled myself for so many years now, but in the end it always comes back, I can't hide it forever. it hurts so much. I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse and I feel like a fucking show-off that just wants attention..

[I felt that.. dude. You write beautifully..]

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Hi person reading this. Be nice, life is full of shitty people. Make a tiny difference; someday we're all gonna die so its cool. Dont hold grudges ^^ . [^^]

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We are all just internet jesters shitposting to fill the void Even if you're just taking selfies and being beautiful while loving life, smiling to nothing and eating healthy shit while showing off the new place you just visited to a bunch of strangers that doesn't give a fuck about you .. (actually those are the worsts) yeah.. (Don't get me wrong I'm not saying it's bad. I do that too ! we like showing ourselves to others..) Screaming... I exist. Notice me sempai. We just are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

________________________________________________ *draw of myself* [couldnt find it anywhere, where did u put it D: . i remember the sad expression] I know It has a lot of imperfections but so do I. I guess this is how I see myself.. Maybe I just wanted it to be like that. To express something to myself. I still feel like a little kid sometimes even tho I'm 25; "I just can't play with the other kids because I feel different and they make me feel different." Now I can't play with the adults, they're too adults. They make me feel too adult; i need to act up every move to become like them. And then alone, I can be at peace being who I wanna be; But it gets lonely from time to time; Not being able to understand who are you really; where are you really above the necessity of impersonating this other dude to get laid, get the job, get the money. And for what?.. Just to keep doing it because there is really no other choice.. How sad. But anyway. Ever tried to draw yourself? To see what's the image of you that you hold in your head.. if u truly do it; it doesn't matter if you know or not how to proyect yourself.. Every trace you make on that paper is a creation this world has never seen.. your chance to make a difference; it doesn't have to be trendy or impact in mankind. I suppose that's what I call art. And that's why art is everywhere.. Everything that can never be repeated.. Anything that comes from you; or life itself. A random amount of dirt.. Sunlight getting through the leaves of a tree.. Pieces of a broken cup and the stain of coffee in the carpet.. I'm not an artist myself tho; never considered myself even close to one.. I haven't drawn in years.. This is my first one in a long time; I just felt like it.

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scpie · 4 years ago

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How to Close the 7 ‘Power Gaps’ That Impede Your Career

August 4, 2020 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

I was introduced to Kathy Caprino as a fellow columnist in 2014, and have since valued every opportunity to connect at regular intervals.

Caprino advises leaders, and female executives in particular, on how to rise and claim their strongest successes. In the introduction in her newest book, “The Most Powerful You: 7 Bravery-Boosting Paths to Career Bliss,” (HarperCollins Leadership, July 28, 2020, and Murdoch Books, August 4, 2020), she describes her own major inflection moment.

“Back in October 2001, I heard these words from my therapist, and they were enough to change my life forever. He said: ‘I know this looks like the worst crisis you’ve ever faced, but from where I sit, it’s the first moment in your adult life you can choose who you want to be in the world. Now who do you want to be?’”

The discussion was weeks after the tragedies of 9/11, after which she’d been laid off from a role in a Connecticut-based marketing agency firm where she’d been desperately trying to succeed. To any outsider looking in, Caprino had built a successful 18-year corporate career, while also parenting her two children.

But in that moment, she was seeing her career — and especially the marketing agency position she’d been in the two years prior — through a different lens. In her late thirties, she’d been chronically ill with tracheal infections. As she worked through the illness, she faced all of the professional hardships we often hear about women having, including sexual harassment, gender and age discrimination, no hope of a work-life balance, controlling bosses, punishment for being assertive and being marginalized for not “playing the game.”

But the therapist’s question painted an entirely different picture for her. While all she could see at the time was loss of career standing and the salary and benefits her family needed, she was actually gaining the ability to look into a new future of her own creation.

Three months later, she began a master’s program in marriage and family therapy. Four years into practice, she transitioned into the specialization of career, executive, and leadership coaching that has been her life’s work ever since. Today, interestingly in the wake of the pandemic, she is compiling that work and accompanying research into her newest book, dedicated to helping women executives and leaders achieve the two things she has found them chronically lacking: bravery and power.

Specifically, Caprino paints a road map for the seven most damaging gaps in power she sees, as follows:

Not recognizing your special talents, abilities, and accomplishments

Communicating from fear, not strength

Reluctance to ask for what you deserve

Isolating from influential support

Acquiescing instead of saying “stop!” to mistreatment

Losing sight of your thrilling dream

Allowing past trauma to shape and define you

They are prevalent, as 98 percent of the respondents she’s queried acknowledge they are experiencing at least one of these gaps and more than 75 percent acknowledge experiencing three or more of these gaps simultaneously. Her book defines each of the seven in detail, but we spoke most specifically about the two I personally see occurring most: 2) communicating from fear, and 7) allowing past trauma to shape and define you. Here’s what Caprino had to say about each.

Related: Who’s The Top Female Founder in Your State? (Infographic)

Communicating from fear, not strength

It is interesting (and even tragic) to observe how frequently women, in particular, are communicating from a vantage point of fear instead of strength. Some of the reasons include conditioning that goes back as far as childhood, where a raised male voice instilled fear. Very typically the fear will also extend to women who raise their voice or who have a reputation for meanness and vindictive behavior.

Other sources of fear include the voices in your head that say you are helpless, you may be ridiculed, or that the risks or costs of speaking up may be too heavy to bear.

To combat this, Caprino recommends exercises such as preparation of key facts and details in advance of a hard conversation. In advance, become very clear about what you need to say, and practice saying it. In a similar way to preparing for high stakes or crisis communication, which is my own specialty, you can practice firm and confident pacing and tone in your voice. You can put up a hand and say, “I’d like to be sure to cover this point,” if a person is haranguing you with interruptions. Rehearse standing tall and looking directly into the eyes of the recipient. Rehearse your skills by choosing one tough conversation you need to have in every week and follow through with it.

Related: 5 Fears All Entrepreneurs Face (and How to Conquer Them)

Allowing past trauma to shape and define you

In our current world, the majority of executives were traumatized in one or potentially multiple ways as adolescents and as professional adults. For many, it is difficult to move beyond traumatic situations without being triggered. Many individuals may even be subconsciously holding onto the trauma as a reason to avoid stepping up and leaning forward into fully accountable positions or senior leadership roles, i.e. “I was in an abusive marriage, and now it is impossible for me to step forward without re-opening my fear.” In these cases, the trauma is being allowed to serve as a comforting alibi to protect you from the challenge of putting yourself forward at work.

It may be helpful to speak with an expert counselor about the ways to move beyond trauma. You can examine the ways you have actually grown stronger from some aspects of the challenge you have survived. Interestingly, research has shown that in the case of women who have been widowed, those who were required to step up and take over businesses or assume the role of breadwinner out of necessity have been found ultimately to have fared much better than those who had ample financial support that allowed them to sit and dwell on their loss. The same can hold true for career and work situations.

For some, Caprino suggests it may be helpful to openly vocalize the “dirty little secrets” you believe may be holding you back from your highest success, such as:

I didn’t finish my degree.

I was fired for incompetence.

A prior business partner pushed me out of my role.

I lied on my resume and I don’t have the experience and training I said I did.

I don’t have the experience or training I need to do the new job I’ve been placed in.

I’m older than I ever let on.

I never feel good enough, in any job I hold.

Wherever I go, it seems others do better than I do.

I don’t have the skills I need to do this job well.

People think I know more than I do.

Voicing the issue may be a step toward making it a non-issue by putting it out in there. That discussion may also help to identify the ways it is typical and normal for every one of us to feel inadequate at times. It can also show us that while we may have made some bad choices and bad things may have occurred in the past, it does not mean we deserved for those things to happen.

We should also learn and exercise the practice of “the positive reframe.” While being passed over for a promotion may have been painful, what was the benefit in the situation for you? Perhaps more time to prepare for an even better role in the future or a wake-up call that this isn’t the right organization for you?

In my own case, the experience of being publicly pushed aside and diminished by a former co-founder was so shockingly painful it instilled in me a deep commitment to handling any difficult conversation or transition in private. Allowing the recipient of a message like this to hear it directly, in words instead of actions, and away from the audience of peers and clients is a grace that is perhaps beyond measure. I have purposely hung on to that pain as a reminder of how much impact my words and actions could have on somebody else.

As we move into a world of business marked by changes that are perhaps far greater than any prior moment in history, Caprino’s messages are especially timely.

Related: The Courage to Raise an Entrepreneur

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source http://www.scpie.org/how-to-close-the-7-power-gaps-that-impede-your-career/

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