#for context it says ''how high your streak is!'' but it crops at just the right point in the text and i misread it every time 💀

[aleatoryw]

getting blazed as fuck in public, thinking "boy I sure hope no one knows how high I am right now", and then having the jumpscare of your life when duolingo gives you this notification

[warsmith-38]

How I would do RWBY Pt. 0

Disclaimer: It is easier to improve what already exist than it is to create something new. Boy howdy do I know that. That being said, I believe that RWBY has more than its fair share of flaws and this is how I would do it differently if I was behind the reigns. This is just a collection of my opinions and ideas which in the end will probably amount to nothing. I felt the need to do this because my brain just decided ‘nah motherfucker, you ain’t thinking of anything else from now on’ and this is the end result for nothing else would satisfy my rage.

I wouldn’t quite call this a complete re-haul, but more rather a rework with some of my own brand of polish. It’s not a compete rebuild from the ground up in a different world with different concepts and themes, but how I would go about a second go around with the series from the base that is already there. If a detail is missing from my musings then assume it is either unchanged or removed, depending on context.

If some of my complaints were addressed after I stopped watching, I honestly don’t much care. If it takes longer than 4 seasons to fix what I view as fundamental problems, then it’s far too little too late for me. I paid scant attention to the series post my stopping point and liked little to none of what I saw.

Please do not take this as a specific attack on anything other than the writing of the show itself. This is not directed or targeted against anyone, regardless of position or feelings on the topic at hand. If you ignore what I just said and decide to take this as an insult, then I say that you need to be more self-secure in your tastes and interests.

Things I would remove + reason why

Silver eyed warriors as a concept- it’s more or less the same concept as dojutsu from Naruto. It’s the fucking sharingan (rubygan). It’s not quite chosen one level, but crap like this is the blight of good protagonists. It’s fucking eugenics that makes you awesome not your own skills or training but on your bloodline. No need for personal development or life-changing hardship when you have a built in power that can be cultivated like a fucking bumper crop.

Maidens- Wasn’t intended originally and only made the overall story more cluttered with power creep and plot device. It’s a similar problem as above. No need for training or anything if people can just kill the person who has the power currently and take if from them. Which, at that point, why do you want that power if you’re already strong enough to kill and take it from the person who has it to begin with? It’s something someone just shouted out and they rolled with it because it sounded cool in the moment.

The Relics- McGuffin dragonballs that serve as plot device and little else. A story can be told without needing to monotonously race for Excalibur or the holy grail. Considering the Maidens, I doubt that the relics were intended in the first place and as such if you can’t tell a story without throwing something in after a few seasons because you realized that you didn’t have a plot, then you’re not that good at telling stories.

Oscar- The show didn’t need more main protagonists when what was already there wasn’t being given enough characterization to begin with. For that matter-

Quite a few characters- The cast is cluttered and convoluted enough as is with seemingly important characters getting the shaft in favor of yet another new character that would barely do anything. Time and effort seems to be put into one-off schmucks that would be better served making the story not need poochie the dog, let alone several. Character integration is not ‘create a character to do one thing and then pretend they don’t exist’. There’s already plenty of characters than can be used wherever.

The overt shipping bait, especially if it’s just going to be taken up or abandoned on a whim- I don’t mean relationship building, I mean the obvious baiting of a relationship that, in the end, might not even happen. All it does is dumb down characters and character arcs, draw out pointless scenes, and make the fans have conniptions one way or another. People are pissed off whenever things don’t go their way with shipping so the only winning move with these people is not to play their game. Looking at you Klance and Zutara. Either don’t do anything or have a fucking plan and stick to it and not make complete swerves when fans get uppity. If it genuinely matters to you, then pretend whatever ship happens at whatever point, I don’t care.

Changes to the world that I think would go over better-

Everyone has a level of aura with a naturally high level generally meaning that they might be able to unlock a semblance. A semblance is unlocked through some sort of specific event, typically a stressful one IE: Yang and Ruby are caught in the woods by grimm and Yang gets frustrated and scared at not being able to defend her sister before getting angry and her rage mode semblance unlocking. Not everyone who unlocks a semblance goes into combat schools but it is a requirement for acceptance into most of them. Having the potential to unlock a semblance seems entirely random but has a higher chance with genetics.

There are two types of semblances: 1 is hereditary like the Schnee glyphs, changing only slightly, if at all, through the generations. 2 is a random personal power like Yang having her rage mode as compared to Raven’s portals. Whichever you get tends to be random with the occasional exception depending on genetics and the specific semblance.

Every 1 in assumedly 10 people who have semblances have the potential to have two semblances, often times, but not necessarily, being one hereditary and one random. The process of unlocking the second semblance involves immense emotional distress and in some cases might not even happen for the individual who has the potential, period, thus skewing data. This gives an enhanced type power but isn’t protagonist exclusive. It shows a higher than average power capacity, but isn’t a gamebreaker to the same level as a fucking kekkei genkai or getting the powers of a fucking demigod. A good amount of characters would only have one semblance and be considerable badasses despite it and even be able to beat a couple of the few that have two.

Establish Menagerie as the official Fifth Kingdom, the newest of the great kingdoms. Maybe not the singularly strongest or most influential, but make it so Menagerie and its people, the faunus, have a considerable role in the world’s affairs, if even from an isolationist standpoint. Don’t have them as even a semi thriving entity that isn’t a kingdom because that only begs the question as to why the kingdoms are so important to begin with then.

Make the White Fang a faunus supremacist group that has very little support, if any, from the faunus people as a whole. Faunus right issues are history for the vast majority of the world and the White Fang as a whole is only using the problems in Atlas with the SDC as a means of trying to gain power. There are actual faunus rights groups trying to make things better for their race in Atlas and other marginalized areas but the White Fang dislikes them on the grounds that they go against their goal and it makes them look even worse.

Fucking pronounce names correctly, I mean, Christ. Weiss, the word, is pronounced like ‘Vice’. It’s an actual fucking word. It’s the German word for white. It’s like saying tor-till-uh not tor-tee-ah. Blake is Bella-doe-nah not Bella-dawn-uh. Shit like that. No you don’t need to put on a heavy accent to say these words but pronouncing things so inaccurately just makes you look like an ignorant rube (no, that was not a pun). I don’t fucking care what your reasons are. Why use these words in the first place if you’re not even going to try to say them right?

Ozpin is order to Salem’s chaos. Ancient demigods of both archetypes vying for power across the ages and the innocent peoples of the world be damned in the crossfire. Neither are entirely good nor evil but both are not exactly helpful to the free peoples on the world and the continued livelihood thereof. Their progenitor god created them to try and guide humanity in a balanced way. That seemed to work at first, but then failed like a bad marriage and they waged war ever since like a bad divorce. The grimm are a creation of Salem’s to test humanity and make then stronger through conflict. Ozpin ranges from the lawman to the fascist fairly duplicitously. The two can only be permanently killed by each other but neither wants to get too close to the other because of that exact same reason. If killed by other means, they will resurrect after a fashion no worse for wear.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Ruby Rose- It is a crime that the titular character has so little actual character beyond just being ‘Hyperactive Anime Protagonist #235’. Most of her (few) character traits are tell not show, and of course she’s got the fucking rubygan bloodline ability crap. She has next to nothing that isn’t allotted by default to most anime protags on the grounds of the stereotype. For the main character to have less character than any of the members of the fucking B-team is a travesty.

1. Give her a clear rebellious streak, a distinct problem with authority, and a headstrong attitude. Daddy doesn’t want her to be in danger, so she decides to become a huntress. She’s told to stay put, so she hunts down Roman. She’s told that she needs to stay home and recover, so she sets out on her own not thinking about the exact consequences. Make her the impetus for the team’s involvement with the problems of the world in the early seasons. Make her a driving part of the plot, not just being along for the ride or because someone else said so.

2. Give her blood knight tendencies. Make her VERY willing to get into a fight with the bad guys, not just fights in general, but fights against bad guys. Nothing over the top, but enough that she has a scene or three where she says “Shut up bad guy, skip to the part where we get to kick the crap out of you,” or something of that nature. Hyper combative characters are fun and ethical.

3. Give her more traits as a mechanic and weapon nerd. Include scenes of her fixing everyone’s weapons for fun or being able to analyze an opponent’s fighting style based on the type, design, and/or wear & tear of their weapon, make her a polyglot of weapons that can be at least proficient in using just about any weapon. Come to think of it…

4. Anything that could give her actual character traits. They don’t even have to be all that major traits, just give her enough so that we actually have a character with more definition than printer paper. She’s the main character, the titular character at that. This isn’t a video game with a blank-slate protagonist. If the main character isn’t even really a character, like, at all, then what’s the fucking point?

5. Convert silver eyes power into a second semblance for white fire vision that kills grimm like nothing else. Gotten as a hereditary semblance from Summer. Which is also why Summer was specifically targeted by Salem on the grounds that it makes her just a little too dangerous for her long-term plans. This makes it so she isn’t just the fucking chosen one, but still has a clear definitive reason to be involved against the big bad because, y’know, dead mom. Yes, this kinda goes into the whole ‘bloodline is what determines importance’ thing I wanted to be rid of, but it’s only a chance two generations instead of a massive lineage of nonsense and keeps more of the onus of involvement on Ruby herself.

6. Give her a very clear motivation that’s deeper than surface level. ‘Oh, I want to do the right thing’ is a flimsy as balls motivation especially compared to the rest of her team that has that AND an actual reason for thinking that way. Why does she want to be the good guy? What happened in her life that makes her this motivated to doing the right thing? Yang has her desire to find her mother (which, come to think of it, doesn’t necessitate being a good guy), Blake has wanting to make up for being a terrorist, Weiss has her desire to step out from under the shadow of her family’s reputation, even fucking Jaune, the b-team protagonist, who wants to live up to his family reputation, has a proper motivation to be involved in the story. WHY is Ruby involved beyond ‘I’m the main character’ level reasoning? As much as admitting it makes me wish to commit Sudoku, even SAO has better main character motivations. Good god, I need hooch after typing that.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Yang Xiao-Long- Her arc was mostly fine, barring some of the pacing. Raven being a maiden undercut the message of ‘screw that deadbeat bitch, go to your real family’ by making her important to the overall world state and confirming a measure of later relevance but that’s more a flaw with Raven than Yang.

1. Keep her motivation about getting strong enough to find her mother but add in the clear desire to kick her ass for leaving her and Tai. Of course it’s more about just getting the answers to her questions, but the ass-kicking should also be a major component.

2. Amp up the rivalry between her and Mercury. Mercury was designed as an opposite to Yang, I mean for fuck’s sake, look at him. Consider their respective backstories too; both raised in a single father home yet one was supported and loved (if a little neglected) while the other was horrifyingly maimed and abused. Punch vs kick. It works.

3. Make her more protective of her little sister, explicitly going along with her personal crusade to keep her safe (safer, rather). If she’s supposed to be the good older sister, maybe just maybe, something more than lip-service to that idea should be done. Hell, maybe she can be overprotective like their father, or even the exact opposite, not really giving a shit and then learning to give one. That might lead to a little tension and growth between the two of them.

4. Make her semblance consistent. Is she supposed to have super saiyan rage mode or is it energy buildup and dispersal? Is it supposed to be both? Just make it rage mode, for the sake of fuck, and don’t flip-flop. Speaking of…

5. Give her anger issues. Flesh out her being the kind of gal that would start a fight in a nightclub when she doesn’t get what she needed with little justification. This would stem from abandonment issues from Raven, Summer (inadvertently), and Tai and her general thrill seeking personality. This could lead to tensions and dramas until she overcomes it and learns to use her aggressive feelings and not let them use her.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Blake Belladonna- Shitty-kitty is shitty, here’s why.

1. Do something with the hypocrisy of being, more or less, princess of Menagerie, a world power albeit a minor one, and joining a band of terrorists that do more harm than good for the people they claim to represent. It’s like a trust-fund baby joining some charity organization in Africa for a few weeks, doing jack-shit to help, joining some jihadists, and then acting like she’s Mahatma Gandhi.

2. Make her arc less about running away and fighting Adam, more about realizing that running is for assholes and try to find her team to at least apologize for cutting and running like she did. Doing that and stopping Adam are not mutually exclusive. The friend thing should be the priority. As it stands she is almost rewarded for abandoning her team just to focus on her own problems.

3. Make her arc involve going from ‘There’s no such thing as pure evil’ to ‘Okay maybe some people are just too evil to work with’. Some people are too far gone and, despite still having good traits, will only ever continue to do evil things and don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone has some sort of good motive beneath the surface and, even then, does that matter when the only action they do is objectively evil? Still, y’know, save who you can, like Ilia.

4. Have Belladonna not actually be her last name. If she’s the daughter of a the chief of Menagerie, the closest thing the faunus have to a unified racial leader, then how the unholy shit does nobody recognize her name? She is, again, princess of Menagerie, yet nobody recognizes the name in a grander context. Have ‘Belladonna’ be a cover name so she can hide her identity better so that she’s using what should be a very recognizable real name in a tournament that is broadcasted worldwide. Her real family name could be “Nightshade” or some shit like that.

5. If she’s supposed to be ‘The quiet one’ maybe actually have her be quiet and not make big speeches every season or have loud arguments with her team. Just a fucking thought. If she’s still supposed to do that, then make her ‘the opinionated one’ or ‘the kind of mean one’ or even ‘the one who doesn’t shut up’. Blake, as seen, or rather heard, is not the quiet one.

6. Have her actually fucking interact with Ruby. Maybe they have a two-person book club. Maybe Blake teaches Ruby to meditate or something. Anything, anything at all would be fine, anything more than nothing at all. Blake’s whole interaction with the team shouldn’t just be through Yang and cursory scenes with Weiss.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Weiss Schnee- You can’t solve racism with like two scenes.

1. Make the racism thing a much more gradual decay rather than more or less disappearing after a single conversation. Hell, make jokes about it, ‘oh, no, one of my best friends is a faunus,’ stuff. It’s hard to unlearn an upbringing of hate, but she’s trying type stuff.

2. Involve her at least a little with the White Fang plot. It only makes sense that the heiress of the company that still more or less has slave labor is at least semi-involved with the plotline involving terrorists that want that company destroyed. Make her subject to assassination attempts at a young age, or even have her been kidnaped at a young age and held hostage, getting her scar in the process.

3. As evident by some of the intros, her rival was supposed to be Emerald. This could be serviceable, at the very least. The street rat pickpocket that had to learn life lessons the hard way and was taken in by the baddies VS. the rich heiress born with a silver spoon but raised by a dickhead. There’s potential there and it is a crime that it is not explored in the slightest. Even Yang and Mercury had a minor fight.

4. Like Yang, make her semblance consistent. Is it supposed to be summoning or physics altering magic symbols? These are two completely different powers, it’s not like super speed also giving super reflexes or whatever. Just make it one or the other, don’t bullshit us on these things. Or, hell, make it a second semblance she gets during the course of story.

5. Emphasize her loneliness. Make the main onus of her personal arc be about how she goes from this prickly, spoiled, opinionated, brat to a warm and caring friend who only wants the best for everyone. Yes, this might be the main intention in canon, but I feel it could have used a little more refining.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Cinder Fall- If she’s supposed to be Ruby’s chief rival and foil then she needs a lot of work to even be close. She shouldn’t be nothing but the rival, but at that same time she should have that be a considerable part of her characterization and role in the series. I feel the best way to do it is to have their similarities highlight their differences in both character and design. Basically, make her the Vergil to Ruby’s Dante.

1. Make her Ruby’s age. Being the same age as Ruby while initially outclassing her, and even veteran hunters, provides risk and contrast between the two. Throw in an evil sadistic streak compared to Ruby’s happy-go-lucky personality to further the contrast and you’ve got a good little yin-yang thing for them. It also shows just how bad someone can turn out if raised to be a killing machine.

2. Keep her using the bow/twin swords as a comparably simple weapon in contrast to Ruby’s, even in universe, overcomplicated Scythe/Sniper rifle. Both weapons are long range marksmen’s weapons as well as vicious close combat weapons but are still very different in essence. Also make sure she keeps the red with black and gold color scheme is contrast with Ruby’s Black with red and silver. Even minor visual cues can work to the rival schema.

3. Make her one of the people who have two semblances. Pyromancy (pyrokinesis? Fire bending, she has fire bending) and dilated perception (bullet time) so that Ruby’s super speed and the dilated perception cancel each other out, adding a little extra tension to the fights now that both parties’ signature abilities are moot points against each other.

4. Make her competent. She kills Ozpin and Pyrrha and then she either fails or draws every fucking fight she has afterwards baring nameless jobbers here and there. Even before that, she needed help to take down Amber and even manages to fuck that up. The more failures she has and the less intimidating she is. Too much of that and she’s just a jobber that makes you wonder why she was ever seen as intimidating in the first place. When that happens then Ruby beating her is just the status quo and not a triumph of any sort.

5. Make her Ruby’s long lost fraternal twin sister. Incredibly cliché, I admit, but siblings make the best rivals, especially twins. Once again, it’s all about adding the similarities and the contrasts. In this case it creates the ‘there but for the grace of god go I’ idea with the two of them. Ruby seeing it as how evil she could have turned out and Cinder seeing it as how weak she could have been (Eventually becoming how good she could have had it because I’m a sucker for redemption arcs) Who said that?

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Team JNPR- JNPR was fine-ish but the over focus on Jaune and the underutilization of Ren + Nora early on are both issues. B-team should not get jack shit before the A-team gets the lions share.

1. Downplay Jaune’s screen time. I doubt this is a particularly controversial statement. Jaune is not the titular character. This is (technically) a shoujo not a shounen. It’s supposed to be about the girls more than the guys. It kind of undercuts that idea when the guy (the side guy at that) gets the lion’s share of characterization, attention, and growth before the girl (the main girl) does.

2. Make Ren and Nora actual characters earlier on. Comic relief is all well and good, but either extend that to the whole team or make these two characters more than just comic relief in the early parts of the story. Make them, y’know, actual characters. They ain’t gotta be all that important, but they do have to be actual characters.

3. Make Pyrrha’s deathflags less blindingly obvious. We all knew Pyrrha was going to get clipped. The self-sacrificing type, all the musical and visual cues throughout, being based on Achilles, and ‘oh she just confessed to the boy she likes’. Homegirl was waving deathflags like an insecure redneck with the confederate flag. When you foreshadow obvious things that much it’s not a surprise to the audience when it happens and the reaction of the in universe characters seems overdone. If it’s not supposed to be a surprise then, whatever, but that’s clearly not the case if you’re going for just shock value. It’s fine for a character to die, but for the love of Jaysus you got to do something with it more than ‘this character’s sole purpose is to die for the angst and to up the stakes’. Pyrrha was just a plot jobber.

4. Make them a little more independent in the overall plot. Give them their own full sub-plots, have them go on their own little adventures, have them do things completely separate from RWBY that has plot relevance but not overtaking the main story in grandeur or importance. B-team gets B-plots and are cool in it of themselves.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Qrow Branwen- Take or leave this, I just felt the need to include this because reasons.

1. Just make him Dante from Devil May Cry. Just make his personality the same as Dante from Devil May Cry. Make him stylish and cool but low-key a massive dork. He’s too cool to drink or smoke or anything harsher than PG-13. This series could use a guy like that, says I.

2. Make his semblance something that makes sense and isn’t just an angst generator. How do you even quantify ‘bad luck aura’ as a power? Make it short range teleportation as a connection to Raven’s portals. Make it so that he can direct the bad luck at will. Do SOMETHING with it that isn’t just an excuse for mostly pointless character angst.

3. This technically also counts as a Raven change but whatever. Make the Branwen family old nobility and not a loser bandit tribe from nowhere. Or at least make it so they used to rich or something. They come from a family that had a good amount of cash and even a chateau in Mistral. After the money dried up and the chateau ransacked by grimm, the Branwen twins had differing opinions on how to proceed. Qrow fully integrated into the hunter thing while Raven ran away and became a bandit, using it as further excuse to skedaddle on Tai and a recently born Yang.

[nookishposts]

Professing

I was chatting with a friend today about all manner of things including long term plans. He remarked that in the last couple of years, any psychic or reader that he has gone to has been unable to tell him much about what lies ahead. I asked him if he knew what it was he wanted exactly from his future and he replied that he really didn’t, and perhaps that is the problem.

It’s fair to say that we are all at least a little curious about what lies ahead. It would help with budgets and planning for a start. Maybe having advance knowledge of the winning lottery numbers in next week’s draw wouldn’t hurt, but then if that were possible, why aren’t all psychics wealthy and retired? And  why do so many lottery winners end up miserable?

To be healthy and safe and cared for is likely enough of a future goal for most folks, and yet a surprising number feel that they are none of those things. They long in fact to feel that they matter in the world, that they have value, that there will simply be someone there should they find themselves in trouble or in need. Perhaps a goal we might consider is one that allows us to check in and make sure that no one we know feels that way. It’s fairly easy to let someone know that they matter and are supported; you tell them. If not in words than in small gestures: a hug for no reason, an actual phone call out of the blue, a small pot of posies left on a doorstep. Allowing the light of your genuine smile to warm a wordless conversation. All of these are so do-able. We know how we feel when we are in receipt of any of them. Your own future will undoubtedly be comprised of many such tiny moments that matter.

The future big picture is often the stuff of dreams. A second honeymoon paid for not just in hard-earned savings, but in runny noses and dubious report cards, teaching teenagers to drive and the holding of breath as they launch themselves into the world. That little getaway cabin or condo that you might run to when life is just annoying. The sports car you’ve been dreaming of since before you could drive. Those incredible grandchildren born finally, sometimes against all odds. The later-in-life love affair.

Think back over the last year of your life. The highs and the lows. The sideswipes and the unexpected thrills. What if anything might have changed if you had been given a program of events at the top of that year, before it all actually happened? It could have been great to have avoided the fender-bender downtown by knowing to take a different route to work on a given Monday, no hassle with insurance and repairs and chiropractor appointments for that pesky whiplash. But it could also take the fun right out of your birthday presents. How much would it have been worth to you to have a head’s-up? And if you knew what was coming and avoided the challenges, what might it have given you as a person? Might it have made you a bit smug, or just more fearful? 

The Ancients employed all manner of divination; runes, bones, shooting stars, failing crops, special cards, herbal concoctions, tea leaves, and clues from the animal kingdom. As I was growing up, I remember being told that if a bird flew into the window, someone would soon die. That if the palm of my hand itched, it would likely be graced with money. That if I spilled the salt at supper, a pinch of it thrown over my shoulder would keep the devil from my door. Omens. Portents. Clues to what secrets lay in my future. Admit it, you still do the thing with the salt, right? I have been known to make wishes on stars too.

What about those unsettling feelings we all experience from time to time? That “gut feeling”, or sixth sense or hunch. There are moments we find ourselves just knowing, whether it’s a sense of deja vu or hearing the phone ring and being 100% certain of who is calling even if you haven’t heard from them in ages. Some of it may be explained away as leftovers of a time when we were wild things and our lives depended on our senses being keen. A prickling of the hairs on the back of the neck, a tiny sound altering what we are used to hearing in the symphony of living. That weird little whoosh of adrenaline that says a hungry lion is hunting and we’d best skedaddle, now! 

We’ve all met people who just seem to somehow know stuff we don’t. Usually they don’t call themselves psychic at all, their knowing-ness is just as much a part of them as the colour of their eyes. Sometimes they even hide their talents for fear of being either laughed at or pestered unduly. Do we all have that ability? Can it be taught? How would it affect my choices and the way I move in the world if I could predict beyond the horizon of what my five basic senses tell me is currently true? And what if I turned out to be wrong?

I have certainly had my share of tarot readings. I follow my horoscope, and I’ve sat in a few booths at psychic fairs.They have resulted in both wonderful coincidences and spectacular misses. I remain intrigued either way. I just like the idea that there are people in the world who seem to be able to operate on a separate plane of consciousness at will. It makes me wonder about parallel universes and time travel and an afterlife. About collective energies and higher beings. Even flipping a coin to make a decision is kind of a way of asking for Universal input under the guise of chance. Maybe it’s just  tantalising mystery  crossed with tempting Fate. I like the hints of wisdom, even if they come disguised as magic.

What do we want from the future? How much effort would we be willing to put forth towards actively cultivating a flourishing reality  from  just the seed of a hint? What obstacles might we more bravely face head-on if we were guaranteed a payoff? What would we run from? Would it make us single-minded and less conscious of those around us? Would it be worth it, having life all mapped out and not really being able to change the trajectory of those certainties?

I have long accepted that I have a catastrophising streak in me, and with age I have also learned to quickly talk myself off the ledge, thank heavens. I suspect too much knowledge about what lies ahead would make me even more nuts and ready to hide in the bushes. I love to have fun with prediction and divination, especially when it comes from someone who has actually studied the culture and context of whatever form they are practising. The “good” prognosticators that I have come across have rarely made hard-fact bets on anything, instead they have offered fresh perspective and asked me to consider soul-searching questions, or suggested exercises and readings to help to tune in and focus. I do find those things very helpful, and they don’t leave me feeling I am at the mercy of a predetermined road map.

From the future, I would like the following: to meet people who inspire me to be the best of myself; to leave my worn-out baggage behind, to be challenged enough to actually learn new things, and to be able to spot small miracles in everyday living. I want to be surprised. I want to giggle and guffaw over foolish absurdities, my own and everyone else’s. I want to be shaken up once in a while, even if it means being sad or scared or wrong. I want to alternate between restful observance and meeting the future head-on, eyes open, engines revving. I want some awareness of my own progress as a tiny humble cog in a massive human Wheel of Fortune. I want to look over my shoulder and remember where I have come from and feel good about the journey, hoping that it’s still a long way from over, but even if it’s not, that the ride has been worth every minute. I want to be able to talk about it with anybody else who finds themselves wondering and wandering. I want to put one foot in front of the other, in hope and trust. I find it helps if we remember to just hold hands now and then, as we go.

[bookishbutterflies]

“We’ve made a wrong turn,” says my aunt for the fifth time in five minutes. Sprawled in the backseat, I stay quiet, but cannot help but agree. We’re four hours out from Bangalore and have spun along the highway to Tamil Nadu for hundreds of kilometres before turning off onto what is, undeniably, a plain dirt road. There seems to be nothing but dryland scrub here: dense and dusty trees thick with thorns. Occasionally a field emerges, largely devoid of any crops. The landscape seems to wither on sight. On the horizon the only landmark is the shadowy silhouette of Arunachalam Hill, a popular pilgrimage site. But it’s hazy in the distance. By now, the car has begun to rattle ominously as pebbles ricochet off the bottom.

There’s no sign that people live here, let alone that somewhere nearby is an NGO where local women work to fulfil thousands of orders for chemical-free products every year. My mother’s organization, Bridgeable, a consultancy connects donors and NGOs, has been working with them for a year now. With a free weekend, we have come to visit. If we can find it.

My mother shrugs. “Google says this is where it is.” Right on cue the phone dings. Your destination is on the left. We squint out the side of the car window at a haphazard gate, planks lashed together. In the corner, WILD IDEAS TRUST is written on a tiny placard. “Well,” I say. “I guess it is here.”

Inside we park the car on a wide field. My aunt and mother wince as we get out of the air-conditioning. It’s late morning and hot, Indian-dry-summer-heat, the kind of sun that soaks your bones dry and lethargic. We follow a path to a wide, low structure, where several women sit in the welcome shade of a thatched roof. They’re weaving, I realize, deft fingers stitching back and forth. We went inside a room where more women work over a low buzz of Tamil conversation, sorting something into piles. “Is Maitreyi here?” my mother asks.

One woman beams and says, “Yes, yes.” She gets up to lead us further in: out into a courtyard where, on white cloths papadums are drying, past a field where the buds of something green are just poking out, through another room where something steams of a fire, towards a house at the back ringed with water lilies, and we have to hop over stones to reach the door. Maitreyi appears at the entrance as we arrived—a short woman with a wide smile. “Welcome to Wild Ideas!”

We gasp as we step inside the house. It’s wide and airy, circling a small, bright courtyard where a tree blooms upwards, and several degrees cooler than the outside, even though—we squint in the rafters, large, gorgeous wood planks—there is no air-conditioning in sight. “My husband, Ajay, is an architect,” Maitreyi explains as she leads us around. “And this entire house is totally off-grid. We get our energy from solar panels—as you can see, there’s more than enough sun—and our ventilation from good design. All our wastewater gets treated here.” She points to what I’d assumed was the ornamental water feature surrounding the place. “There’s a community of bacteria in there that processes all the waste, and then it’s recycled back. We’re pretty much self-sustaining.”

There’s a rattling from above and my aunt looks up in shock.

“Squirrel?” I ask.

Maitreyi laughs. “No, that’s just my kids—they’re playing on the roof.”

My aunt’s shocked expression grows. “Without any supervision?”

“Yeah, just with their friends from the area. They just go outside and play for hours together. They don’t really like going online.”

A few minutes later, as we sit in the living room and are served a raagi-based drink, her son materializes, running through the house for a glass of water. He stops when he sees us and greets us politely.

“What are you playing?” my mother asks.

“Hide and seek!” he says. “It’s just a little bit hot outside right now.” We look at each other in astonishment. It must be more than 40 degrees Celsius: Singaporean children would be sacrificing each other for air conditioning at this point, or at the very least a portable fan.

Maitreyi and Ajay could very well have given her children an air-conditioned upbringing, too. Perched on a porch swing, she tells us how she graduated Mount Holyoke and MIT. She ended up working for Microsoft in Seattle, rising to a senior position as the company began its meteoric rose. When, after several years, she decided to keep a long-held promise to herself and move back to India, Microsoft offered her a position their new office there. Much to their surprise, she quit almost immediately after arriving. That life, she decided, wasn’t for her: she wanted to do something different. When her friends started an alternative school in rural Tamil Nadu, she and Ajay decided that’s where they would raise their kids—far away from cities and consumerism.

After moving there, Maitreyi started working in her free time with local women to learn their indigenous recipes for cleaning materials and medicines. She quickly recognized an opportunity in what was initially a quest to lead a more chemical-free life. Using the land surrounding their newly constructed house, she recruited a few local women to start making soaps using organic ingredients sourced from nearby farms. As more women expressed interest in joining, they expanded their inventories, and now ship to cities across India, enabled by the expansion of online delivery options like Big Basket.

We listen in fascination while sipping on the surprisingly cooling drink. Bangalore feels very remote from here. I think of our housing compound and its high walls, the world regimented outside, the barrier of cleaning agents, chemicals, processed goods that demarcate the development of our surroundings and feel a sudden sense of revulsion rise up.

When Ramya, my mother’s co-founder in Bridgeable, and her family and friends arrive, Maitreyi shows us around the Wild Ideas campus. Wild Ideas works on a cooperative model, and Maitreyi’s role, as founder, is primarily in promotion and overall management. Day to day organization is rotated between the women working here. Each in turn takes leadership positions, whether coordinating shifts, managing packaging, or working in manufacturing, and all women are trained in how to make each of their products. Because the company is largely order-driven, demand can shift quickly: one day there might be only soaps required, the next day baskets. There’s constant innovation going on to improve on existing processes. In the sewing room—a thatched room streaked with light and cloth, where machines tick-tack industriously; new machines are bought from Wild Ideas profits on the collective decision of all the women—Maitreyi shows us a type of basket they’ve just started making.

The pattern, she explains, is reinforced in an entirely new way and was in fact reverse-engineered from an example one of the women had found. It had taken days to puzzle out, but they can now move this strengthened weave into regular production. Every year, Maitreyi takes the women on two field trips—one to somewhere else in India to expand their cultural horizons, and another to a different NGO, to let them see the different kind of products out there and provide a context—and community—for their work.

In another room, we see the soap-making—one of Wild Idea’s most in-demand products—going on. The only man we will see on the entire campus stands in the corner, pouring liquid into rectangular moulds. On the other side of the room women sit in a circle packaging the dried final products with the Wild Ideas logo for shipment. Maitreyi introduces us to the current director of shipments, who smiles and says hello to us without missing a beat on her seamless folding of another wrapper.

Ramya is most excited to see where the palm-weaving takes place, which today is outside on the porch of one of the buildings in an effort to beat the heat. “They’re making roti boxes!” she exclaims as we approach. This is the Wild Ideas product we’re all most familiar with. Last year this unit was on the verge of closing down as their high-quality handmade processes struggled to compete in a market flooded with machine-made, low-quality products. In response, Ramya spearheaded a social media-based effort to sell their roti boxes to people in Singapore. She ended up distributing around 500 across the island in a few short weeks and keeps getting requests for more.

I crouch next to them and try to figure out how the boxes are coming together—colourful bases and tall sides—but all I can make out are flying colours, a magically materializing matrix, and I give up. It’s painstaking work, but they’re moving through it with seeming effortlessness. From beginning to end, each box takes up to two days. As we walk away back to the house, all we can do is shake our heads in wonder. “What work,” Ramya says.

Over lunch—a vast spread almost all grown locally where transcendent things have been done to organic vegetables—Maitreyi tells Ramya that the weaving unit especially wants to meet her later. “They want to talk with you,” she says. “I remember the production team was looking over the orders sheet last year—and it was just Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.”

Talking turns out to be an incomplete description. When we hoist ourselves upwards and waddle out after lunch, all the 150 women have gathered at the door with a large pink cake wishing Ramya a happy birthday. “They all clubbed together to buy it,” Maitreyi tells us: it was Ramya’s birthday the day before. Everyone is beaming with unadulterated joy at this celebration for this woman they’ve never met, who they might never again, who lives thousands of kilometres and countries away in a life far from rural Tamil Nadu. But we loudly sing together in disconnected harmony and cut the cake. Ramya embraces an eighty-year-old woman who is Wild Ideas’ oldest worker. For a moment there’s no barrier, only the sweetness of the icing sugar.

Most of the women disperse quickly afterwards: they have work to organize and orders to complete, and everyone directs their own schedules to facilitate picking up their children from school, taking care of sick parents, and all the other countless thankless labours of being a woman in India. But a few stay behind and beckon Ramya, my mother, and Lavanya, the friend who introduced Ramya to Wild Ideas, to a few chairs facing them. One woman stands up and introduces herself as the head of the unit.

“We started the palm-weaving unit on and a half years ago,” she says. “Initially, there were were only five of us; we didn’t know how we were going to survive. With the Singapore orders, we’ve grown to 25 palm weavers.” One by one the woman talk about the impact Wild Ideas has had. They’re disadvantaged, I realize looking at the translations of their soft Tamil later, divorced from privilege in every sense of the world—separated from healthcare, familial support, transportation, all the things we take for granted.

“Wild Ideas is like my mother’s home,” another woman tells us. Here, she forgets her problems. At Wild Ideas, she and other women have found support in healthcare, their children’s education, financial assistance, but even bigger than that: a shoulder to lean on, a hand to reach out to. Small but revelatory acts of recognition. You exist. You make worth.

These women are used to husbands who beat them, or drink all the money away, or are too sick to bring any home. They had resigned themselves to a lifetime spent sitting at home wishing they could give their children more than one meal a day.

“Here, people ask me how I’m doing,” she says. Her eyes are bright and wet.

We leave soon after—a little humbled, a little awed. Walking back through the rooms towards the car, we look around with a fresh understanding of what these spaces mean: not just an area for manufacturing, but also a place of self-creation and actualization. As we drive away to check into our hotel for the night, lost in contemplation, my aunt breaks the silence. “It’s just—so different.” We all nod in agreement.

The city feels so far away, almost a dream, and yet when we drive back tomorrow, I know it’ll be hard to imagine anywhere else, that life does exist without the conveniences or systems we assume necessities. And yet here—this off-grid home, this chemical-free production, the children running wild, these women provided a path away from their oppression—there’s something independent of everything we take for granted and growing nevertheless. Despite the slick sweat that has made everything we wear now stickily uncomfortable, the utopic vision driving the place feels crystallized, hard—powerful. A rock you can build empires on.

In the evening we follow more dirt roads past more scrub landscapes and fields, but no one’s asking where we’re going this time. At the literal end of the road, we see Maitreyi, Ajay, and her son waving to us from the roof of a building. It’s the new Wild Ideas factory, almost ready for move-in. Ajay shows us around: the expanded floor area that will let them manufacture their soaps in-house, the rainwater harvesting system, the architectural innovations to maximize cooling in the summer. Outside by the piles of construction materials—granite, tiles, sand—he points out where they’ve come from: none from further than a couple hundred kilometres away.

Maitreyi shows us the land around. They bought some of it, courtesy of donations to Wild Ideas, and hope to buy the rest soon. They already have the commitments from the owners to sell and just need the money for the purchase and construction later. The list of women who want to join Wild Ideas is long, but their original campus is running out of space now—nearly every corner has been utilized for something and they just can’t take any more. If this new space comes through, they can hire tens of more people. “They all have similar stories to the ones you heard,” Maitreyi says. “The need is there.”

More women mean more families, mean more children who can go to school knowing they’re supported, mean more girls who grow up with models of responsibility and independence, mean bit by bit, this place changing, perhaps. Mean systems dissolving, mean alternatives arising, mean this campus, these hopes, this small revolution, spreading, slowly, perhaps, but inevitably, inescapably. Maybe there isn’t an alternative to wastefulness, pollution, unsustainable energy, social constriction, oppression—or maybe you just need a little more imagination, a few more wild ideas.

Bangalore feels very remote from here. I think of our housing compound and its high walls, the world regimented outside, and feel a sudden sense of revulsion rise up. “We’ve made a wrong turn,” says my aunt for the fifth time in five minutes. Sprawled in the backseat, I stay quiet, but cannot help but agree.

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Humans could survive underground, but it would take a lot more than shovels

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/humans-could-survive-underground-but-it-would-take-a-lot-more-than-shovels/

Humans could survive underground, but it would take a lot more than shovels

At the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, you can stand under a boxy old TV, mounted on the wall just above eyesight, and watch the pixelated clouds from Mario Kart slowly blow across the screen. Stripped of their context in the larger Nintendo game world, Super Mario Clouds, 2002, by multimedia artist Cory Arcangel, the artificial sky feels uncanny: just familiar enough the difference threatens to drive you insane.

While tracking the slow creep of Arcangel’s creation, I wondered: If rising sea levels, air pollution, and temperatures one day push humanity underground, is this all we’ll have to remember the sky?

Humans have lived underground for millions of years, but only in fits and starts. Our cave-painting ancestors left behind handprints and hunting scenes. In Tunisia, many people still live in what the The Atlantic calls “crater-like homes,” with rooms built into the Earth, and a central circular patio open to the sky. And in the “dugout” village of Coober Pedy, Australia, locals pray in a subterranean cathedral and visitors sleep in sediment-streaked hotel rooms.

Underground development continues to this day. Many northern cities maintain underground tunnels, some so elaborate as to be christened “shadow cities,”, in order to cope with severe winters. In Beijing, a million people live in nuclear fallout shelters beneath the city’s clogged urban arteries. Other dense urban spaces, like London and Mexico City, are also seeking to grow down, now that the limits of sprawl and high-rises become clear.

Still, even “cavemen” ventured outdoors. Living entirely underground would be unprecedented, to the point of being nearly unfathomable. But experts say with good design and a lot of psychological support, humans could make convincing—and surprisingly healthy—mole people.

Good thing, too, because the above world is looking increasingly inhospitable.

Eternal sunshine

The biggest difference between living on Earth and living in Earth is sunlight. UVA and UVB rays are essential for growing plants for food and stimulating the production of vitamin B in the human body. These golden rays also appear to have immune-regulating affects, aid in the treatment of psoriasis, and keep us happy. But “sunlight” doesn’t necessarily have to come from the actual sun. LED lamps that offer UV wavelengths can crank out the rays our bodies—and our crops—crave.

Instead of sprawling, sun-drenched fields, underground farms will be more like metal boxes bathed in high-intensity lights and fed by nutrient-rich recycled water. Such systems already exist: Square Roots, an indoor farming company, grows vertical rows of leafy greens in compact shipping containers packed tight with red and blue LED bulbs. Using a method called hydroponics, farmers can circulate water infused with mineral nutrients through the network of life-sustaining shelves. While it operates out of a parking lot in Brooklyn, these systems are, for all intents and purposes, already underground, so long as there’s electricity.

Securing a food supply isn’t enough, however. Humans also need vitamin D to maintain bone health. The best-known source of vitamin D may be sunlight exposure (which encourages our bodies to produce vitamin D on its own), there are plenty of other ways to get your hands on the good stuff. In 2012, Slate reported on how a Russian cult survived underground, thanks in part to vitamin D-rich foods. So long as we can continue to farm animals in our earthen abodes, egg yolks, fish, milk, and cheese will keep us in the clear. If that doesn’t work, vitamin D supplements and fortified foods like cereals and juice could do the trick.

Sunny dispositions might also be at risk. Seasonal Affective Disorder, better known by the apt acronym SADs, is already a wintertime scourge. As daylight becomes increasingly sparse each season, many already turn to “happy lamps,” which provide artificial sunlight. Though some SADs sufferers may need antidepressants, therapy, or other forms of support, carefully-planned light therapy can reduce many of the most severe symptoms.

But things are liable to get a lot worse sub-surface. When isolated in caves without light, humans have been documented to sleep for as much as 48 hours at a stretch. Using artificial lights to regulate Circadian rhythms will be another essential component of any subsurface world.

A spotless mind

Going underground may be physically possible, but it’s sure to be psychologically taxing. Lawrence Palinkas is a professor at the University of Southern California and an expert in extreme environments. Typically, he says, people are screened for traits that would allow them to thrive in a stint aboard the International Space Station, or a sabbatical at a remote research outpost in the Antarctic. Characteristics like openness to new experiences, for example, are often deemed essential.

But a motley crew could do alright, too, if they work together. Dedicated “change agents” with astronaut-like qualities might help to establish new cultural customs. Educators could disseminate the information and tools people need to thrive underground. “Over time, one could imagine that people would become adjusted to living underground and adopting new patterns of behavior that would enable them to live comfortably with no adverse effects on health and well-being,” Palinkas says.

Design could play a role in our adaptation, too. Researchers in Antarctica, where greenery is sparse, quickly recognized the mood-boosting benefits provided by laboratory greenhouses. Similar spaces could pay dividends in our crusty new home. Other positive sights, sounds, and smells could migrate with us—and not just in digitized Super Mario form. A plan for an underground city in Singapore has expansive shafts pulling daylight down into the layered depths. Mock-ups for a Lowline park in New York show will “provide breathing space,” according to the BBC, through “well-lit oases with palm trees and illusions of the sky.”

Ultimately if technology and culture can support us in space, they can probably support us inside our own planet, too. Whether we need to do it, or can do it at scale, remains to be seen. Whatever happens, Palinkas says, “it’s certainly not just a matter of digging a big hole in the ground.”

Written By Eleanor Cummins

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Difficult Men Meet Their Match In “Fifty Shades” And “Phantom Thread”

https://styleveryday.com/2018/02/15/difficult-men-meet-their-match-in-fifty-shades-and-phantom-thread/

Difficult Men Meet Their Match In “Fifty Shades” And “Phantom Thread”

Fifty Shades Freed and Phantom Thread

Doane Gregory/Universal, Laurie Sparham/Focus Features

Comparisons between the Fifty Shades films and Phantom Thread started cropping up online as soon as the first trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest arrived, with people joking about a broad resemblance between the Oscar nominee and the mommy porn hit. But once you start actually considering the similarities between Phantom Thread and the E.L. James–based trilogy, they become impossible to unsee. Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) is a brooding businessman and Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a fashion designer, but they’re both demanding men with a thing for lips and a fixation on their mothers. More importantly, they’re men who’ve shored themselves up, emotionally and professionally, in their respective fortresses, allowing a carefully selected series of lovers into their spaces and having them shooed out when they’re no longer wanted.

One of the assumptions that goes along with our culture’s continued, if souring, mythologizing of powerful men is that to be uncompromising is a show of strength which inevitably requires others to conform to their will. The other, of course, is that it’s up to the people who want to be with those men to comply to the romantic terms they set out, or be replaced, because he has earned the right to do as he wants. Reynolds and Christian are revered as singular, essential figures, but their lovers get treated as anything but. Replaceability haunts both stories in the suggestion of the (mostly unseen) women who’ve come and gone before. The women we do see are hurt and unhappy because they want more — the distraught former submissive who turns up with a gun in Fifty Shades Darker, the soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend at the start of Phantom Thread who asks Reynolds “There’s nothing I can say to get your attention aimed back at me, is there?”

The women who do break this pattern, virginal undergrad Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and winsome server Alma (Vicky Krieps), both enter the lives of their future paramours as artless supplicants — the first thing they’re seen doing by the men is tripping over their own feet. But they both end up triumphant, not so much because they’ve secured matrimony, but because they’ve managed, by whatever means necessary, to carve out a place for themselves in the lives of the powerful men they love.

It’s understood to be funny, that one of these films is a prickly Best Picture nominee while the others are considered, generously, trashterpieces, although a lot of the people who have strong opinions on the Fifty Shades series have never actually watched any of it. The Fifty Shades movies are wildly out of step with current conversations about female empowerment and independence, widely (and snidely) scoffed at as softcore porn for suburban housewives, and inarguably silly — sometimes intentionally so. They already seem consigned to being a pop cultural footnote, even though the trilogy’s final installment has only just opened in theaters.

Fifty Shades Darker

Doane Gregory / Universal Pictures

When Fifty Shades of Grey premiered in 2015, it was to a barrage of anticipatory criticism based on the novels’ disturbing tendencies with regard to consent. They were tendencies the adaptations wisely ditched — the films are basically PSAs for sexual communication — not that it mattered. What really smarted for some women, and what continues to smart, is the way these films have so lucratively peddled an updated, R-rated version of romantic fables we’re supposed to have left in the dust.

It’s hard to convey to anyone who hasn’t seen the Fifty Shades series just how unlike typical movies they are. The love story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey is, for long stretches, barely a story at all, unconcerned with essentials like conflict or action. After all, that’s not what the audience has come to see. When the unavoidable relationship problems or bouts of kidnapping are introduced, it’s with great reluctance, as if the movies themselves hate to jolt Anastasia and Christian out of their thousand-thread-count idyll. The third and final installment, Fifty Shades Freed, for instance, doesn’t culminate with its heralded wedding — it begins with it, before whisking the main characters off to a honeymoon where they swan around Paris and then sunbathe in the south of France.

The series is famous for the semi-adventurous sex the two lovers have — sex that is effortlessly orgasmic, and, in this latest film, accessorized with restraints, safe words, blindfolds, vibrators, a butt plug, and a pint of ice cream. But these languorous interludes are just as much about footage of the characters enjoying the bounties of Christian’s incredible wealth, presented via montages set to pop songs. In the first film, Christian takes Anastasia out over Seattle at night in his helicopter, to the ecstatic strains of Ellie Goulding; in the second, he lets her steer his yacht across the Puget Sound while that Taylor Swift–Zayn Malik duet swells. When the third film closes by running through highlights of the pair’s romance, it amounts to a montage of montages, which is exactly the kind of ridiculous but earnest choice that’s defined the entire franchise — the luxury photographed with equal if not greater lust than the lovemaking.

The Fifty Shades films unapologetically indulge in high-gloss dreams of being swept up and showered with gifts by someone possessed of an immense fortune and talented penis.

The Fifty Shades films are outlandish fantasies about dating someone who is as dominant in his professional life as he is in the confines of his custom sex dungeon. They unapologetically indulge in high-gloss dreams of being swept up and showered with gifts by someone possessed of an immense fortune and talented penis — part ravishment and part fairy tale — that are all the more embarrassing for still being able to compel audiences, to the tune of over a billion dollars at the global box office for the entire series. There’s a guilelessness to their avarice, in the fact that Anastasia doesn’t fall for Christian because of his success, but doesn’t fall for him in spite of it, either. That he’s a big deal (in an amusingly undefined way — it’s never very clear what his company, Grey Enterprises Holdings, does beyond make questionable investments in independent publishing houses) is an essential part of his identity and his appeal.

But the films are also, in a way that’s almost unbearably wistful, daydreams about extracting an equitable relationship from a situation in which there’s a huge power imbalance. The sex gets top billing in the franchise, but the arc of the trilogy is one of a woman demanding emotional intimacy from a man so determined to withhold it that he puts his rules in writing: This romance begins with a nondisclosure agreement and ends on an image of blissful familial domesticity.

Christian may be a fanciful billionaire boyfriend, but he is, by any reasonable assessment, a terrible one for most of the trilogy — distant, controlling, secretive, possessive, and jealous, qualities that the series views through hopelessly rose-colored lenses, and qualities Anastasia is (mostly) able to make him relinquish. Once you get past the overheated branding, there’s a plaintive streak to the Fifty Shades films, because they’re not just about the fantasy of getting swept off your feet (and into a kinky relationship) by a powerful man, but about being treated respectfully by one, as an equal rather than a dismissible underling — a fantasy only because we’ve internalized how unlikely that is.

Alma takes Reynolds’ order in Phantom Thread.

Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

While Fifty Shades started as Twilight fanfiction, Phantom Thread is, essentially, fanfiction about Anderson’s relationship with Maya Rudolph, who he’s been with since 2001. “I was very, very sick in bed one night,” he told a post-screening crowd in November, sharing what inspired the film. “And my wife looked at me with a love and affection that I hadn’t seen in a long time. So I called Daniel the next day and said, ‘I think I have a good idea for a movie’.”

It’s an origin story that sounds sweet out of context and downright outrageous once you’ve seen the film, given that (spoilers!) it depicts how Alma eventually poisons her lover into emotional vulnerability, leveling the ground between the two of them. If Anderson sees himself in Reynolds, it’s a slyly self-deprecating portrait. The character’s testiness and onerous insistence on having things just the right way comes across as increasingly ridiculous as the film goes along. It’s not, actually, the behavior of a man who’s too consumed with his work to have a relationship, but that of a man who’s afraid of any situation that’s out of his control.

Alma doesn’t just defeat Reynolds; she saves him from himself, from his ascetic bubble.

Phantom Thread takes pains to make it clear that Reynolds Woodcock is not revolutionary. He’s respected, and gifted, and at the height of his game — the toast of 1950s London, dressing royalty and the city’s crème de la crème in his airy atelier. But his gowns, while lovely, are not the cutting edge of fashion (“Fucking chic,” he mutters. “They should be hung, drawn, and quartered for that word.”) It is not posterity that demands his single-minded focus on his creative output, it is his faith in his calling — and his ego, the same ego that leaves him acting like a scorned lover when a client deserts him to go with another designer. He wields the importance of his work as a shield against anyone who’d ask him to do something he’d rather not, and deploys his ferocious sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) as a weapon.

While the adventures of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele involve dabblings in consensual BDSM, Phantom Thread is about two people engaged in a more expansive, unspoken game of dominance and submission, with Alma revealing herself to be far more formidable an opponent than Reynolds could have ever imagined when flirting with her over his breakfast order. She enjoys being Reynolds’ latest muse, likes giving a twirl during a fashion show, aware that he’s gazing at her through a peephole. It’s an electric moment in a film that otherwise uses sex for suspense — it keeps you wondering how much sexual interest Reynolds has in Alma, or in anyone.

But Alma doesn’t want to be treated as a resource he’ll use up and throw out. She wants to be his partner, to be acknowledged as a key part of his life, which is why she introduces herself to an important client in order to simply be seen, announcing “I live here.” She arouses the most ardor Reynolds ever shows when she comes to the defense of his work, stripping it off the unconscious customer she feels is unworthy of wearing it.

If it’s difficult to explain how strange the Fifty Shades films can be, it’s just as difficult to characterize the surprising contortions of Phantom Thread, which appears from the outside to be a film about fashion, but turns out to be a perverse romantic comedy about two people who battle it out to achieve a wayward but perfect equilibrium. Theirs is combat fought in skirmishes over breakfast noises and buttered asparagus, the prize being an intimate universe that Alma and Reynolds get to share, rather than one she’s only allowed to be a guest in. Alma doesn’t just defeat Reynolds; she saves him from himself, from his ascetic bubble.

Christian Grey, above it all in Fifty Shades of Grey

Universal Pictures

The chasm between centuries of romantic fiction concerned with wedding a powerful man, a tradition both of these stories could be a part of, and our expectations of what that might be like in reality, has maybe never yawned wider than at our current moment. We might still coo over Meghan Markle getting engaged to a literal prince, but who among us has gotten starry-eyed about the Trump marriage? The relationship between Donald and Melania Trump exists like a funhouse mirror reflection of the dynamic Fifty Shades swoons over — Christian’s aggressive persistence is replaced with “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Anastasia’s place ensconced in his penthouse turned into a point of view onto which people project imprisonment. And while Jamie Dornan and Donald Trump don’t resemble one another in the slightest, they’ve both played cartoonish conceptions of successful businessmen on screen.

To consider a figure closer to a real world equivalent of Christian, there’s actual swashbuckling entrepreneur Elon Musk, who’s equally strapping and brilliant and apparently as demanding in his relationships in a way that, at least in his case, hasn’t lead to a storybook ending. His first wife, Justine Wilson, recounted in writing about their marriage in Marie Claire that he told her at their wedding reception: “I’m the alpha in this relationship.” That line, and what he reportedly said to her repeatedly during their relationship (“If you were my employee, I would fire you.”) were precursors to an unsurprising divorce in 2008. The ultimatum Musk delivered, in which Wilson could accept their marriage as it was or be done with it, is reminiscent of both Fifty Shades of Grey and Reynolds’ outburst over the surprise dinner Alma cooks for him. Unlike in the films, Musk’s declaration was apparently the end of any discussion, not the start of it. He announced his engagement to eventual second (and then third) wife Talulah Riley six weeks later, which ended in divorce not once but twice, in 2012 and again in 2016.

We’re still beholden to the idea of the difficult genius, the demanding executive, the aloof artist, the person who deserves to act this way.

That threat of replaceability, and the internalization of it — the idea that it’s therefore on women to know better — haunts both Fifty Shades and Phantom Thread, as well as some of the conversations that we’ve had in this #MeToo moment. Look at how Caitlin Flanagan at the Atlantic wrote about Aziz Ansari in the wake of the messy Babe.net article last month, writing that the Ansari’s accuser “wanted affection, kindness, attention” from him when she agreed to see him that evening, that “Perhaps she hoped to maybe even become the famous man’s girlfriend.” Flanagan had no way of knowing if the latter was true, and the former desires really are less aspirations than hopes for basic date courtesy. But that doesn’t stop her from implying that it was foolish to expect even that much, to want kindness from someone who is, after all, famous.

It’s terribly convenient to think of yourself as too important, or too powerful, to have to concern yourself with the feelings of others, to make compromises, to accommodate others. But it’s an excuse that we continue to accept, because we’re still beholden to the idea of the difficult genius, the demanding executive, the aloof artist, the person who deserves to act this way because of their work, and the understanding of masculinity that accompanies it. That’s a theme these films have in common, despite their vast differences in approach, with Phantom Thread working to dismantle and poke fun at the self-importance of its prominent man, while Fifty Shades opts for a wish fulfillment reworking of its restrictive romance into something functional. They don’t banish the fairy tale, but they do hold it up to a new light.

These aren’t treatises on how no one should get to behave this way; they’re stories about how even the men who are indulged in this behavior end up the worse for it. They are sealed off and solitary, without any obligations toward empathy — the worst people to rule the world, though they often do. And they’re also stories about women who insist on even ground, who fight for it and win it, even if it takes a few mild poisonings to get there. They may be about love, but they’re also very much about war. ●

Phantom Thread

Laurie Sparham / Focus Features