#because chien has developed to a point where it CAN start loving people

[swordofruln]

[mun] yall ever worry u dont fulfill expectations

[adrienscroissantx]

Music au

We know of the people who can play musical instruments. Luka plays guitar, ivan plays the drums, juleka plays bass, rose can sing, adrien can play the piano, etc. BUT WHAT IF. STAY WITH ME. WHAT IF. THERE WAS MORE.

Alya can ACTUALLY play the flute, she’s been in orchestra for 2/3s of her life. Nino’s been learning violin since he was 7 years old. Alix, shortest girl in class? Plays the fucking cello and is not afraid to hit a bitch with it.

 Kagami can play the drums like a beast (little side plot about how her mother sent her to like... piano lessons or something as a kid but she went to the wrong teacher on purpose bc piano was boring and now she can do epic drum solos and Ms Tsurugi just has to come to terms with it. Even funnier bc shes blind, Kagami would play recordings of piano in her room for her mom to hear and then she’d set up her electronic drum kit and play it w headphones on. Big Sneaky.)

Max plays the trumpet and Mylene plays the saxophone. Sabrina plays the tuba or the trombone or smthn. (look, max/mylene/sabrina being brass buddies ok) Meanwhile the biggest jock in school, Kim Le Chien, is an opera singer. 

Lila you may ask? Plays the oboe, aka one of the instruments that requires you to make faces like this:

(either that or maybe she’s like into ballet, also an interesting turn)

Bonus if they all go to one of those gifted kid schools with a killer arts program where everyone has to have like major talent to be there. Chloe got in because her dad is a generous donor to the school, doesn’t really have any talent w anything and plays it up all mean because she’s insecure.

And Marinette, you might ask? She doesn’t have a single damn musical bone in her body. She’s surrounded by musical skill, but she cant play anything. She’s there because she’s an extremely talented designer, and normally the school wouldn’t consider it, but she has references and recommendations tied to the Gabriel brand of all places, so she’s a special case. The only other person like her who she can relate to is Nathaniel, he got in because he’s really great at painting (classically trained n all that) so he looks good in exhibitions for the school n stuff. Basically, everyone is super fucking fancy and Classically trained at Everything they do and it makes Marinette feel insecure and left out.

And maybe at the end of the year the class has to put on a performance for the end of school (maybe for grades or they win a thing or whatever) and everyones like “ok we’ll do an orchestra piece or smthn” but everyones personalities clash together and nobody can agree on anything, they cant find a spot for marinette or chloe or Nath and its all going downhill. Lila likes it because she gets a spot in the limelight, but it ultimately falls apart and she doesnt like that. Until its one of those “well lets celebrate the individuality of the class instead of being boring as shit!” 

Kagami gets to do her epic drum solos that make your heart beat go 50000 bpm (and makes her mom proud of her in the process), Kitty Section in particular makes an appearance, whacko costumes and all (made and designed by marinette might i add) and they sing a rock/metal piece. Alix and Nino get to express they’re love for hip hop with their stringed instruments. Kim gets to play the opera role he’s always wanted to in some kind of epic mash up, the brass kids get to play a cool part maybe w jazz or something vibey (w set design made by Nath and Mari probably). And then Alya comes up with this light show/flute thing (AHEM reminscent of rena rouges mirage power, also all the visuals are put together and made by Nathaniel to show how he likes modern versions of art too, not just classic painting). Marinette designs all the costumes, and Chloe does what she does best. Bossing people around. 

She becomes the director of the whole show (she has some personal motivation, like wanting to make her parents proud or proving something to someone who said she couldn’t do anything). Lila is jealous and insecure and tries to sabotage the whole thing and make her classic orchestral piece (or do her ballet thing where she gets to be the star) the only good thing in the show. But CHLOE manages to save the day with her quick thinking skills, great improvisation, and fearlessness in the face of pressure and fixes everything! (See she works really hard... like a worker bee.... woah haha)

And then they win and its all great!! and Lila realizes she needs therapy!!! And she says sorry in the end and not everyone forgives her but its a start and then theyre on to their second year of Being A Gifted Kid school! MAYBE some romance subplot and tension, idk. 

The basic thing is the school is very obsessed with being a pretentious twat environment, even if the learners aren’t all interested in classic stuff (some are, like lila, but like. Nino’s into hiphop and Nathaniel wants to make comic books, not landscapes). Marinette is in an awkward position because they’re trying to put her in a Classical Box but,,,, its fashion design. The point is that it develops with the times. And shes the one who inspires everyone to do what they’re interested in rather than what the school expects them to do. And when the teachers pick up on this, they dont like it, and lila (who has some beef w marinette bc shes jealous n low self esteem or smthn) thinks that if she gets marinette in trouble for it she cld be expelled!! And she can be the star again!! And its like!! Classic private school drama!!! Ill shut up now!!!

[gaawachan]

So... Mulan... I’m Not Happy :(

I'll be the first to admit that there were some problems with Disney's Mulan.  Mushu is a very important secondary character, but he should not have been a dragon.  The emperor never should have bowed her her and she should not have touched him; the Emperor was poorly done all-around.  There were some artistic errors that were culturally insensitive as I recall.  Chi Fu was not so great and his character really needs to be updated (not to be more likeable, but to be less of a caricature).  There's a gag involving a panda that should be written out.  The ancestors thing ought to be completely cut.  There is an over-reliance on some stereotypical tropes that ought to be at least downplayed in a new film if they aren’t servicing the story with their over-emphasis.  Easily the worst thing about the film is the dehumanizing depiction of the Huns.  These are all problems that can be easily fixed without outright scrapping 9/10ths of the cast. . I was planning to talk about Mushu first, but I think it's impossible to talk about Mushu without talking about Mulan, so that's where we're going to start.

In the Disney film, Mulan is NOT trained in combat, but she is smart and a quick problem-solver, agile, and dedicated.  Mulan's angst is not so much that society doesn't value her for what she has to offer, but that what she has to offer is not enough for her to feel of worth to society.  In other words, the expectations placed upon women in this setting are something that Mulan internalized and she finds herself wanting in them, because she cannot perform the ideal female standard in her society and if she can't do that, then she has no worth.  The important take from all of this is that isn't raging against society.  She's raging against her own inability to be an ideal female archetype in her society.

Mulan ends up joining the military for two reasons.  The first is her father's physical state.  The second is a desperate desire not to prove her worth to society, but to prove her worth to herself.  Once in the military, she particularly struggles with training; unlike in the folklore, she is not used to this particular form of labor, and she nearly gives up until she comes to the realization that her training isn't something that she is supposed to brute force her way through.  It is ultimately in the military that Mulan finds her intellect to be of value, something of hers that she can see is contributing meaningfully.

However, just like throughout most of history, Mulan's worth and behavior is judged on the merit of her gender first and foremost, which is why her gender reveal after the battle at the pass take her to such a low... and this is also why Mushu is an important character.  Mushu, more than anyone else in the narrative, is the one who bolsters Mulan's self-worth. . I already said that Mushu should not be a dragon.  But he also should STILL BE IN THE MOVIE.  Mushu is the most important animal side-kick in Disney history within the associated movie.  Within Disney's Mulan, there is an admonishment directed to society about placing people in positions where they feel they need to be something they are not in order to retain or acquire social standing, something that doesn't do much for a person's self-worth.  Mushu has, throughout the narrative, lied about his own identity and role... to MULAN, and unlike her, he's done it purely for his own self-interest.  That is not to say he is unhelpful; his presence and actions actually save a lot of people, Mulan included, but just like Mulan, that fails to address the underlying issue of self-worth.  It is in this moment of Mulan's weakness that Mushu confesses this.

"Mushu: The truth is, we're both frauds. Your ancestors didn't send me; they don't even like me. I mean, you risked your life to help people you love. I risked your life to help myself. At least you had good intentions. Mulan: ...... Let's go home. Mushu: Yeah. This ain't gonna be pretty. But don't you worry, okay? Things will work out. We started this thing together and that's how we'll finish it. I promise."

Mushu's ability to come clean just so he can be as supportive as possible to Mulan is what makes him such an important character, because immediately after this, Mulan rushes to the capital to help regardless of the consequences.  This isn't coming out of nowhere.  Mulan's ability to accept Mushu's flaws and benefit from his support is ultimately what kick-starts the change in her own self-image.  Mulan needs there to be someone on her side who knows she's a woman and still sees value in what she can contribute because she can't overcome her own internalized misogyny and self-loathing without support.  Which is, btw, the whole freaking point. . Shang next.  I don't know where people got the idea that Shang was some sort of comic relief character.  Other than herself, Shang becomes the person Mulan is most driven to prove her worth to, first as a soldier, and then as a human, and this is why his judgment at the pass cuts so deeply. Shang following in his father's footsteps serves as a twisted mirror to Mulan's own journey, and the death of his father carries heavier emotional wait as a result.  While it's never stated in the movie, the general's death also reminds the viewer of one of the big reasons why Mulan is in the military in the first place.  Mulan's push back against his bigoted dismissal of her in the capital is a big signifier that her self-image has changed.  Shang's recognition that his failure to trust Mulan when she warned him that Shan-Yu was in the capital put the emperor in danger coupled with his seeing that Mulan's tactical mind is no different than when she was Ping is ultimately what seals his own approval of Mulan as a whole person.  Whereas Mushu is vital for starting the change in Mulan seeing herself of value, it is Shang's opinion of her that carries the most weight, because Shang has no familial association with her but he is still a fundamental part of her sphere that she wants approval from. . Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po are the three soldiers who become Mulan's friends in the military, and while they are mostly comic relief, they are still worth mentioning.  They are casually misogynistic, and when Chi Fu insists that Mulan face punishment, they ultimately fall in line and reject her; though they aren't happy about it, none of them are willing to step out of line that much.  I've seen people say that they do that because of extreme sexism but I disagree. Imo it has less to do with their misogyny and more to do with kowtowing to authority+bystander effect; you'll notice that they are outright eager to fall back in with Mulan as soon as the Emperor is attacked.

Mulan's friendship with these three is important not just because all three of them are wonky, flawed people who she is incredibly awkward and weird around but who still ultimately accept her, but because it's also supposed to demonstrate the camaraderie developed between soldiers at war.  I don't want to go into this at length so suffice it to say that I'm going to be very disappointed if that aspect of the story is cut out of the live-action version. . ... Okay, now we get to talk about the most problematic part of Disney Mulan.  The Huns.  Uh... it's really bad.  It's inaccurate on so many levels that I don't want to get into atm.  I was actually excited at the prospect of the live action film heavily re-writing this such that the enemy forces would not be so de-humanized and maybe the story on the international scale would be made to be more nuanced/gray, but instead, they decided to scrap them altogether in favor of a... witch.  A witch.  In Mulan.  A story about a woman finding her self-worth in an oppressive society and you made the villain A WITCH.  You know, that negative female stereotype about evil magic women that's resulted in thousands upon thousands of women being murdered over the centuries?

Why?  In part it's obviously to avoid any sort of controversy that might have come about from keeping a foreign invasion as part of the story, though it also significantly hamstrings any chance of the narrative saying anything meaningful on that topic in typical, cowardly modern Disney fashion.  However, Disney has shot themselves in the foot on this one.  I can already see where they're trying to go with this change and I do not like it.  Problematic depiction aside, the primary antagonist of the original movie, Shan-Yu, was interesting because he is the only human in the story who did not seem to give a single fuck about Mulan's gender.  When Shan-Yu looks at Mulan, he sees a competent threat who killed most of his men and he goes after her with that perspective.  However, he slips up when he thinks he has Mulan backed into a corner and she pulls out a feminine symbol, a fan.  He fails to see how something like that could stand up before him, and that is why  he is outmaneuvered and defeated.  Mulan defeats the hyper-masculine Shan-Yu openly as a woman in women's clothing using a feminine tool.  That?  That won't work in a story with a female protagonist vs a female villain. . When Mulan returns home, her father helps her complete the healing of her self-image; she didn't need to do a damn thing to be or prove of value to him.  The final thing I want to point out about Mulan is that while it certainly critiques society for what it does to people by enforcing ridiculous and oppressive roles and expectations on them, the story is not about changing society.  It's about one person's self-image and the way the people immediately around her shape that self-image.  Because of that, Mulan can be read as a low-key call for acceptance and support of non-conforming people in general. . . I want to talk just a bit about some of the music of Mulan.

“Honor To Us All” is intentionally stereotypically over the top because the audience needs to know what Mulan's own ridiculous standards that she's set herself up to fail to meet are.  It's not just that the standard is absurd; it's that she wants to meet them.  The song, while tonally light-hearted, is meant to capture the immense social anxiety of oppressive artificial social roles.  Incidentally, Chi Fu more or less serves the role of being the external expression of said oppressive artificial social roles, and he does it a bit too well to the point where everyone hates his character both in the movie and out, lol. "'Tis a woman! She’ll never be worth anything!"

"I'll Make A Man Out Of You" is meant to be cheekily over-the-top and ironic.  I shouldn't have to explain this.  Shang is using his over the top, silly similes about masculinity to try and pump up his incompetent recruits, but it's ultimately Mulan's intellect that propels her to become his best soldier.  I also want to point out that while Mulan is particularly incompetent at the start, ALL of the recruits are, and Disney Mulan has had NO experience with that sort of labor so it makes sense that she struggled particularly at first.  There's been a lot of great writing on the topic of this song already so I'm gonna stop here.

There really is no excuse for cutting “Reflection” and “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You.”  The other two songs are not so important but these two are.

.

Also, she doesn’t cut her hair.  What the fuck, Disney?  God damn it.

.

God, why did I write this?  This is just a massive badly constructed rambling rant, I’m sorry.

[justforbooks]

I.M. Pei, world-renowned architect who revived the Louvre, has died at age 102

I.M. Pei, the versatile, globe-trotting architect who revived the Louvre with a giant glass pyramid and captured the spirit of rebellion at the multi-shaped Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has died at age 102. Pei's death was confirmed Thursday to The Associated Press by Marc Diamond, a spokesman for the architect's New York firm, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. One of Pei's sons, Li Chung Pei, announced that his father had died early Thursday in his Manhattan home.

Pei's works ranged from the trapezoidal addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to the chiseled towers of the National Center of Atmospheric Research that blend in with the reddish mountains in Boulder, Colorado.

His buildings added elegance to landscapes worldwide with their powerful geometric shapes and grand spaces. Among them are the striking steel and glass Bank of China skyscraper in Hong Kong and the Fragrant Hill Hotel near Beijing.

His work spanned decades, starting in the late 1940s and continuing through the new millennium. Two of his last major projects, the Museum of Islamic Art, located on an artificial island just off the waterfront in Doha, Qatar, and the Macau Science Center, in China, opened in 2008 and 2009.

Pei painstakingly researched each project, studying its use and relating it to the environment. But he also was interested in architecture as art —  and the effect he could create.

"At one level my goal is simply to give people pleasure in being in a space and walking around it," he said. "But I also think architecture can reach a level where it influences people to want to do something more with their lives. That is the challenge that I find most interesting."

Deborah Berke, the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, told CBS News in a phone interview Thursday night "there was no doubt Pei was a genius."

Berke, who met Pei some time ago, described him as "elegant and a gracious gentleman" and pointed out the importance of his earlier work, including his legacy at the New College of Florida in Sarasota where he designed the original three clusters of dormitories in the 1960s.

"They were beautiful, regionally appropriate modern buildings," Berke said, "that illustrated early college life."

Pei, who as a schoolboy in Shanghai was inspired by its building boom in the 1930s, immigrated to the United States and studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He advanced from his early work of designing office buildings, low-income housing and mixed-use complexes to a worldwide collection of museums, municipal buildings and hotels.

He fell into a modernist style blending elegance and technology, creating crisp, precise buildings.

His big break was in 1964, when he was chosen over many prestigious architects, such as Louis Kahn and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, to design the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston.

At the time, Jacqueline Kennedy said all the candidates were excellent, "But Pei! He loves things to be beautiful." The two became friends.

A slight, unpretentious man, Pei developed a reputation as a skilled diplomat, persuading clients to spend the money for his grand-scale projects and working with a cast of engineers and developers.

Some of his designs were met with much controversy, such as the 71-foot faceted glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris. French President Francois Mitterrand, who personally selected Pei to oversee the decaying, overcrowded museum's renovation, endured a barrage of criticism when he unveiled the plan in 1984.

Many of the French vehemently opposed such a change to their symbol of their culture, once a medieval fortress and then a national palace. Some resented that Pei, a foreigner, was in charge.

But Mitterrand and his supporters prevailed and the pyramid was finished in 1989. It serves as the Louvre's entrance, and a staircase leads visitors down to a vast, light-drenched lobby featuring ticket windows, shops, restaurants, an auditorium and escalators to other parts of the vast museum.

"All through the centuries, the Louvre has undergone violent change," Pei said. "The time had to be right. I was confident because this was the right time."

Another building designed by Pei's firm — the John Hancock Tower in Boston —  had a questionable future in the early 1970s when dozens of windows cracked and popped out, sending glass crashing to the sidewalks, during the time the building was under construction.

A flurry of lawsuits followed among the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., the glass manufacturer, and Pei's firm. A settlement was reached in 1981.

Berke called the Hancock Tower a "handsome building" that "surprisingly stood the test of time."

No challenge seemed to be too great for Pei, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which sits on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Pei, who admitted he was just catching up with the Beatles, researched the roots of rock 'n' roll and came up with an array of contrasting shapes for the museum. He topped it off with a transparent tent-like structure, which was "open —  like the music," he said.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan honored him with a National Medal of Arts. He also won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1983, and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, 1979. President George H.W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992.

Pei officially retired in 1990 but continued to work on projects. Two of his sons, Li Chung Pei and Chien Chung Pei, former members of their father's firm, formed Pei Partnership Architects in 1992. Their father's firm, previously I.M. Pei and Partners, was renamed Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

The museum in Qatar that opened in 2008 was inspired by Islamic architectural history, especially the 9th century mosque of Ahmed ibn Tulun in the Egyptian capital of Cairo. It was established by the tiny, oil-rich nation to compete with rival Persian Gulf countries for international attention and investment.

Ieoh Ming Pei was born April 26, 1917, in Canton, China, the son of a banker. He later said, "I did not know what architecture really was in China. At that time, there was no difference between an architect, a construction man, or an engineer."

Pei came to the United States in 1935 with plans to study architecture, then return to practice in China. However, World War II and the revolution in China prevented him from coming back.

During the war, Pei worked for the National Defense Research Committee. As an "expert" in Japanese construction, his job was to determine the best way to burn down Japanese towns. "It was awful," he later said.

In 1948, New York City real estate developer William Zeckendorf hired Pei as his director of architecture. During this period, Pei worked on many large urban projects and gained experience in areas of building development, economics and construction.

Some of his early successes included the Mile High Center office building in Denver, the Kips Bay Plaza Apartments in Manhattan, and the Society Hill apartment complex in Philadelphia.

Pei established his own architectural firm in 1955, a year after he became a U.S. citizen. He remained based in New York City. Among the firm's accomplishments are the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Pei's wife, Eileen, who he married in 1942, died in 2014. A son, T'ing Chung, died in 2003. Besides sons Chien Chung Pei and Li Chung Pei, he is survived by a daughter, Liane.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[softtofustew]

or maybe that’s how it has to be // notes & ending ment

pairing: kang younghyun / park jaehyung

genre: angst ; fluff 

summary: death calls childhood friends jae and brian on christmas eve. willing to make the most of their next twelve hours, they find their ways with each other — and perhaps learn how to really, truly live life on the day they’re going to die.

NOTES & ENDING MENT (2018)

hello, this is chien // on writing this christmas x death soulmates!au work, this is one of the biggest challenges i think i’ve faced in terms of writing. whilst i’m still young and brooding (i believe i am much younger than the average age of fanfiction writers… or at least the majority that i am familiar with), writing has always been here for me. i started writing fanfiction back in february of 2018, and thinking back to it, i never thought i would put out thirty (30!) works out in a span of a couple of months.

this work is particularly special to me, mostly because i’m pouring a lot of time into this baby, and because it’s posted on brian’s birthday, or as an early merry christmas.

i would just like to share some thoughts and words on ‘or maybe that’s how it has to be’, and some insight on its ideas and perimeters. if you haven’t read it, it’s here.

one; setting & perimeters

dealing with this has always been a bit of a wonder. where am i placing them? where are they going? if you notice, i’ve left this city ambiguous, though the names of the characters (minjoon, byungho, jaejoon etc) mentioned imply that it is, in fact, korea. 

as for the perimeters of the story, they are not mine to boast. they are, in fact, a work of adam silvera’s. if you follow me on twitter, i have mentioned him countless times as i wrote this work. his work is called they both die at the end (review). i shall talk a bit more on the book, and how i adapted its ideas.

the story is of two boys, two strangers, who receive individual calls about their imminent deaths in twenty-four (24) hours, the caller being ‘Death-Cast’. they meet through an app called ‘Last Friend’ (think tinder but for people about to die and try to make friends). they meet, and they spend their last day together.

once i’ve laid out these perimeters, you can see how i integrated them into my work, but tweaked a lot of the details. firstly, they die in twelve hours. why? because i don’t think i would’ve written out a whole twenty-four hours. for silvera’s work it was possible because he intertwined plenty of different points of views of different people. 

also, jae and brian are childhood best friends. i feel like them as strangers would’ve taken a lot for them to develop in such a short span of time. seeing someone from your past and reuniting with them (especially if you’ve loved the other before) i feel is more of a sentimental kind of bond over strangers!jaebri. this, of course, does away with the ‘Last Friend’ app entirely.

i never expanded on Death-Cast, but that’s because the book itself never expanded on it. also, i wanted to focus mainly on the events of the whole work. if i had had more time, i think i would’ve expanded on the background of the work, but all’s well that ends well.

two; characters

of course, it’s jae and brian! throughout this year, i’ve loved writing jaehyungparkian. there are certainly lots of reasons behind this, of course. the main one is because these two truly have a lot of chemistry irl - their backstories, their conversations, their meaningless banters on vlive etc. writing fanfiction of them never gets boring, honestly.

though it’s not obvious, i depict jae as the introvert (which is, anyway, his personality, INTP) and brian as the extrovert (who is also extroverted irl). as in the second-last scene, wherein brian asks jae what they would’ve done on their last day if they hadn’t met each other, it’s true: jae would’ve holed up by himself, brian would’ve hung out with wonpil but would never really give that true goodbye, because goodbyes are always the hardest. 

although i know there was that one christmas brian spent alone, i can’t imagine jae willingly putting up a physical fight with someone haha. 

meeting each other and catching up and everything in between works for the both of them. i love them in this work, and i hope you love them, too.

three; events

it goes without saying, doesn’t it? two childhood friends meet, spend half a day together, kiss and fall in love. cliche, i know. 

i’ve always been fond of soulmates! AUs. when i reread adam silvera’s work, i felt compelled to write a soulmates trope, but with a twist - death soulmates. clearly, it’s not a real term inculcated into my work - it’s just what jae and brian label it as. there are countless reflections in the work, wherein either or both of them think about what a miracle it is to coincidentally see each other on the day they die.

for such events to occur, you hafta make it realistic: brian gets into a fight with minjoon, in a city far from his own home, so it’s not considered ‘unrealistic’ of the both of them meeting in the same city where they both live in. it gives the sense of a coincidink to the audience, without making it too… faked? yeah.

minjoon and his gang (all made-up characters) are the cherry on the top. in adam silvera’s work, the two boys faced one of their ex’s current boyfriend and his gang. there were guns involved, but i like to keep things simple and legal (considering that this is, in fact, set in south korea.) so, on top of going to places they want to go before they die, they’ve got to square off minjoon and the gang.

as for the events, as for where they went, there’s nothing coherently ‘special’ about them, other than the sentiment behind visiting these places. i feel the plot was more of a long, drawn out build-up to the ending scenes, wherein they both knew that they loved each other and such. 

four; process

so how did i write this? this is the first time i skipped out a portion of the work to write the last few scenes first, then returning to the middle portion, and also the first time i had an alternative work.

starting it off, my first draft was a sketchy 7K-word baby before i took the first few paragraphs and rewrote it. i felt it was waayyy too forced (and way too much to handle and so i rewrote it. this baby is my second draft, and x1000 wayyyy angstier than the first child. to know more about her, scroll down to five)

as for the second (and final draft, the version that i posted) i’d finished until the coffeehouse scene when i went ice-skating with my family. of course, i’ve never gone ice-skating, and so i shuffled along the railing for three hours. during the only time i fell down, this dude helped me up (read: semi-cute dude with skating skills to die for). being me, i struggled to my feet - and slammed into the railing, skates sliding apart from each other. thus, i pulled off a nothing-less-of-gorgeous crashing stance while holding onto the railing for dear life. (which is why i never engaged in small talk with semi-cute dude. read: he skated off.)

i incorporated that into my work (except, brian doesn’t skate off after jae crashes into the railing), and i started off there, all the way until the last scene. 

and then i went back to the middle of the work and started writing. again. lol.

five; the alternate version

the first draft was… complicated. there were many different elements used in my first baby before i scrapped it. the first two scenes are exactly the same, word-for-word, but beyond that was completely and utterly different.

alternate version: jae and brian didn’t meet at the convenience store. they met at a bus stop, prior to brian’s fight with minjoon. they only went to the convenience store after a few more scenes, where they bumped into sungjin. in this version, brian and sungjin made up - they buried the hatchet between them.

also, jae’s parents did die too, in this first draft - but he wasn’t legally an adult in this version. instead, he had foster parents living on the outskirts of seoul. after meeting at the bus stop, him and brian took the bus to visit them so jae could leave their gift in the mailbox. 

also, if i had continued with the first draft, you’d be reading about sungjin realising that brian had cheated on him when they were still together! and then that’s the reason why minjoon hunts him down for a second fight. yeah. that was… unexpected. thank goodness i didn’t bulldoze through that; that would’ve been one hell of a world for me to handle, phew.

from this, you can see that my… ideas weren’t planned. i was literally going with the flow. this alternate version is even weirder than 5sos’ alternate version of she’s kinda hot, which is kinda saying something, isn’t it?

six; did they die, or did they die?

most of you would believe that they died. the last line clearly states “the last thing jae sees before his eyes is brian, brian, brian, before his world is consumed.”

but the thing is, i never said ‘and they died in the end.’ before his world is consumed. consumed by darkness? or purely just him shutting his eyes? maybe his heart stops, but beats again? maybe brian gets him out of there? truly, i’ve left the ending  ambiguous. in other words: whether they died or not on christmas day is unknown, and i’ve left it up for you to decide. 

this was one of the things i thought over the most. logically, they can’t escape from the fire, but then again, who knows? with something like Death-Cast in their alternate universe, perhaps there’s some otherworldly force? ;)

seven; quotes & inspiration

i couldn’t resist adding several quotes from they both die at the end! jae’s ment to brian, several lines in the works, some of which can be found here. if you recognise which i quoted, that means you reeaaally read thoroughly heh.

as for writing itself, there were times when i was stuck on words, which is alarming because i hardly ever get writer’s block (weeps aggressively). so i would like to thank errie, my fav internet moot, for always being there halfway across the globe to listen (read?) to my rants about the work, and for always encouraging me with her eagerness to read the work itself. and also, teenie has been a great inspiration, indirectly inspiring me every time i reread one of her works (senpai, if you ever see this, i love you). 

last note

i would like to end this by thanking everyone who has made me writing fanfiction (regularly!) an actual hobby i enjoy this year. when i first started off, i never expected to even get a handful of kudos on my first fic. admittedly, there are some works i’m not particularly satisfied of, and sometimes i wonder whether i thought of quantity over quality of the works.

everyone has their own writing style, as i do too. my kind of writing style is descriptive, long sentences. i think sometimes my long sentences are a tad too long and break away the impact of the words, which is something i feel i should work on. but writing fanfiction, truly, has improved my writing so, so much, and i’m immensely thankful for all of your comments and feedback on my writing. 

i have a couple of goals in 2019: to write a couple more jaehyungparkian ideas that i have out (pretty sure i needa start on this that i’ve been hinting since god knows when), to finish the parkbros au and to improve the impact of my writing style, and to broaden my genres of writing. throughout this year i’ve mainly been writing fluff, angst, humour. i plan on writing wayyy more action and thriller, because those genres need looooots of brushing up on (this one, i feel, was very amateur but a lot of y’all liked it hahaha so i don’t know). OH! and to plan out my works before i write them kekekeke.

in conclusion, thank you, thank you, thank you. i love you all so, so much. i will be back in 2019 with new and improved ideas to write

[spankedbyspike]

Name 3 Classic Book you'd want your friends to discuss with you?

Thank you so much for stopping by and asking, what a pleasurable surprise!

For me, there are two types of reads I use to enjoy; those that made me feel for all the people that were lost, abused, taken advantage of and those that explore Art and it’s finest points to make us fully appreciate what being human is about. I can confess that I cried with each of these stories when I discovered them, and even now, knowing how they develop, I still have a tear or two falling but no regrets!

I travelled a lot all my life so the books I cared about may not be Classics every where but a few of the books I still love to this day are the following (in no particular orders):

* Chiens perdus sans colliers is a 1954 book about how the judicial system treated young children and teenagers until a particular judge with a heart started taking a special interest in them and hoped to improve the way minors are treated both by the courts and by this one foster home… It became a movie called The Little Rebels in 1955 with the famed French actor Jean Gabin as the judge but I never watched the movie. In that vein, I was so upset with the world after having read the short story Boule de Suif … I couldn’t believe how intolerant and pissy we could be as human beings and that changed most of my outlook on life for awhile).But there is another book I would like to add for all the fans of Les Miserables , that is fantastic in it’s own right but becomes incredible in the last pages as the conclusion is written. It’s called Germinal and has a knack to put the human condition and heroism in perspective in a way I had not read at the time.

* Perfume, the story of a murderer (Le Parfum, histoire d’un meurtrier) is the story of an 18th century perfumer who becomes obsessed with the idea of bottling the scent of young womanhood. I had never realized how to look and describe things/scents/colors around me until I read that book. Suddenly I lived for the moment, to appreciate all the incredible things that made our universe the fabulous place it is; that we all -too often- took for granted and with the introduction of The Portrait of Dorian Gray that story certainly had me thinking about perception and depth in a completely different way that impacts me still to this day. I’ve never seen the movie with Alan Rickman but the book is an amazing and thrilling read. As a third contribution I’d love to add a small book which too few people know about called Letters to a Young Poet which is a quick read of compilations of letters between a seasoned, appreciated and lauded author and a young fan in dire need of a mentor. It’s beautiful in terms of the elder not taking himself seriously but understanding and valuing the need of the 19 year old to get some guidance in this new, exciting and frightening path that is writing. I know that in the business world mentoring is essential and I wish it would be as valued in the authoring universe because I’ve learned so much about myself, about creativity, and about the appreciation of art through this little book, I can say it made me a better, more confident and stronger person thanks to it.

At the end of the day these are books I read that I believe would be great to discuss with friends for sure. If you follow this blog, I invite you all to share your list as well, I’d love to discover some more fascinating reads and thank you again anonymous for this question, it was great to get back in time and finding books that mattered in my formative years.

[personal-intertitles]

Un Chien Andalou: Surrealist film and the relationship between art and the viewer

What I love most about this movie is how wild it is (as a result of Dalí and Buñuel) and what that meant for movies. Because of what was going on in the world of visual arts at the time, with various radical forms of modern art well underway, the creation of cinema yielded a unique opportunity. It could either be relegated someplace else and taken up by traditionalists and given a more formalized start, but the modern artists at the time quickly snatched up the medium for all of the possibilities it held. From the beginning, as 1929 is still very early for cinema, it was used as a method to push art and shock people, very clearly standing on the shoulders of modern art movements. Un chien andalou’s entire intention is to defy logic, and Dalí and Buñuel showed how cinema can be used to do this. They felt no need to discover Academy-like principles to govern art, although the Hayes Code will later search to restrict it in other ways. Sergei Eisenstein, at the start of his essay “Through Theater to Cinema”, mentions this radical liberty: “In the early 1920s we all came to the Soviet cinema as something not yet existent. We came upon no ready-built city; there were no squares, no streets laid out; not even little crooked lanes and blind alleys, such as we may find in the cinemetropolis of our day. We came like bedouins or goldseekers to a place with unimaginably great possibilities, only a small section of which has even now been developed.” And in this unmapped territory, films like Un chien andalou are made and go on to have an extensive impact instead of being an oddity quickly and destructively dismissed. There is something to be said about how they could have taken cinema in any direction, there was nothing stipulating that they do this or that, no established expectations or codes, and they really ran with it, they did not hesitate.

Love letter aside, I’ve also always struggled with surrealist pieces. In a movie that defies logic, how can such beautiful and complex analyses be written? I read an excerpt of a PhD thesis by Sabina Stent posted to Silent London (link down below for those interested), and the thesis is titled “Women Surrealists: sexuality, fetish, femininity and female surrealism”. In it this excerpt, she makes a very compelling argument that analyzes certain symbols like hands in the movie, but also referencing other movies and backing it up with a Freudian logic. And although I fully believe any analysis is a good analysis backed by evidence, and there is no “right” or “wrong” when trying to find the meaning in art, only the “unsupported”, how is this possible? I know Dalí and Buñuel have a history of stretching the truth into something a bit more fantastic, but how could such a nuanced and thoughtful argument be so well woven into a twenty-one minute short that was supposedly made to make zero sense, no matter how hard anyone tried? In reality, scholars like Stent have made very good sense of the movie. It’s a frustrating tension that can never be truly resolved, as it deals with artistic intent which is never truly discoverable.

But perhaps this very tension is a surrealist point. I still have an impulse to find a meaning, to make sense of it, to read essays like Stents, and try and piece together an understanding. As human beings, we see the world and want to categorize and analyze to better equip ourselves for how to act in it and what we might have to respond to. But we seem to have succeeded, at least in part, where I would expect to just find a bunch of frustrated scholars pulling out their hair. Is the message here then that there is meaning to be extrapolated everywhere? Then what significance can we assign to that meaning, if anything? It seems to be, that even a work of art meant to leave us dumbfounded and disturbed with no benefit, we can interact with it and benefit. The emphasis then appears on the relationship and interaction itself, the one between the piece and the viewer. What a radical statement, then, that they very act of actively engaging the piece is maybe more responsible for any new understanding and benefit than we originally gave it credit for, differing credit more to the piece itself.

*The post was a guest post made by Sabina Stent to the website Silent London, using an excerpt from her PhD thesis for the University of Birmingham, and titled the post: “SURREALISM, SYMBOLS AND SEXUALITY IN UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) AND L’AGE D’OR (1930)”, with a link to her full thesis at the start of the article. You can find it here: https://silentlondon.co.uk/2014/03/14/surrealism-hands-and-sexuality-in-un-chien-andalou-1929-and-lage-dor-1930/