#imagine becoming your own person but with their every interest and phase influencing your coming of age

[miraeism]

okay but that wuthering heights quote about souls is actually so true for siblings

[alfredosauce50]

whenever youre free, can you write yandere 2p china headcanons? im just thinking abt him 👉🏽👈🏽

Yandere 2p! China headcanons

Getting together with you was hard enough. But now that you’re his, he can’t go back to being a second choice he’s always been. He’s never letting you go.

Zao doesn’t have a single yandere characteristic by default, but when he does, ooh boy. It’ll take some time for him to deviate from his normal personality and mental stability, but given enough paranoia and infatuation, he will start losing his sanity, then, his ability to distinguish between right and wrong. And the terrifying thing is, he doesn’t even know it. By this logic, he is by far, the craziest yandere you’ll ever have the misfortune of encountering. 

(There isn’t a lot of fanart on 2p! China so have this fanart of Wei Wuxian for visual purposes)

Home life

He’s very into kissing, so much that he’ll sneak some in while doing the most mundane things. When he talks to you, he will hold your waist and fill the brief moments of silence with kisses. In his eyes, having his lips on yours while a conversation happens is being ‘productive’ as he makes the most out of being with you. Before anything escalates, which ends up happening more often than you’d prefer, you’ll pull away and clamp a hand over his mouth. He’ll lick your hand and laugh at your reaction. 

He bathes with you. He could’ve gone with the more economical option of showering, but he’s far from broke. And plus, he can do so much more while sitting down. You usually stay on the opposite end of the tub, but he’ll pull you onto his lap and whisper this in your ear, “Don’t be shy, kitten. This is your throne.” As you sink into his embrace, which ends up hotter than the water you’re submerged in, he will caress your back and make out with you. Once you’re pleading for air, he will pull away and trail a tongue up your neck instead. When you’re with him, he never actually lets you catch your breath, ever. 

Zao is very mindful of your comfort. Perhaps not when it comes to something sexual, per se, but he will always bring you a blanket if it gets a little chilly. If you forget to put socks on, he will put them on for you without asking. Whenever you go out, he will bring a bag with him and most of the things inside are either yours or for you. 

Spoiling you is a given. He can’t imagine a better way to put his hustle to good use--to give you things you want. Even if you don’t ask for anything, he never fails to get you something you end up loving. But there is one thing he won’t ever let you touch. Substances. Zao is so overprotective in all aspects of your life, he doesn’t even like you drinking. He’s a little more lenient on weed, and will let you have a few puffs of his joint. 

He always covers up at home, and will get a little flustered if you catch him indecent. Zao doesn’t wear a lot to bed, like tank tops and underwear, so he isn’t shirtless very often. The only time he doesn’t get embarrassed is when the mood is... You know. And he’s doing you-know-what with you. Otherwise, he will call you a pervert, but really, he’s teasing you more than expressing embarrassment. Because clearly, that’s rich coming from him.

Yeah. It’s not news how big of a pervert he is. Nor is he ashamed of it. Any dirty thought that crosses his mind, he will never fail to relay to you. It leaves you mortified when he tells you what he wants to do to you, in detail, especially when he isn’t being self-aware. Save that for when you get home, you idiot! But the private sphere only makes him even worse. 

He calms down at night, thankfully, and lays in bed with you on his chest. This is where his love language starts speaking to you. Connecting to you emotionally and mentally is how he shows he loves you. This takes place in long, deep, and random conversations, and if not, he will just captivate you in his dark eyes and stare at you endearingly. “What are you thinking about, kitten? I hope it’s something related to me~” Then, he’ll dig his hands through your hair and massage your head as he breathes you in until he gets intoxicated with you. 

When he gets jealous

He’s the type to get so jealous, it becomes suffocating for him--especially when he doesn’t outwardly show it. So whenever anyone remotely shows interest in you, he’ll keep his cool for the most part, but will get very irritable and clingy. It doesn’t matter how subtle they were, it could’ve been a single glance, even, but alarms will go off. He will pull you into a tight embrace and bury his face in your neck until they leave. You don’t really mind because he isn’t giving anybody trouble, but you do find it cute when he immediately returns to his soft side afterwards. 

Zao isn’t the biggest fan of conflict, even if he’s more than capable of it. Instead, he will gravitate towards his intelligence and cunning to outdo anybody he hates. Stalking is definitely on the table if he needs to get to know someone, then, when it comes down to it, sabotage. He will do anything to keep them busy so they wouldn’t have to see you. And he succeeds every time without you finding out.

Unlike most SO’s, it’s easier for him to get jealous over friends than love interests. He values the emotional aspect of your relationship with him the most, and gets very upset if you bond with people other than him, platonically or not. To make up for it, he demands your attention and ensures the time you spend with him is two times more fulfilling than whoever it was you were with. This is the fundamental reason why he’s more susceptible to getting jealous--literally anybody is a rival in his eyes. 

This is all the more reason to be so much more paranoid and restless than other typical yanderes. 

When you argue

He doesn’t agree with you on a lot of things, so it’s like talking to a brick wall. Objective subjects are easy to get through when it’s straight up facts, but if the topic is about what he can or cannot do in the relationship, save your breath. You will never get through to him. When he feels entitled to something, he takes his own side, regardless of what you feel about it.

Nevertheless, he will do the bare-minimum of leaving you alone in the meantime when you’re upset. That’s how he somehow respects this boundary he just crossed. But a few hours later, he will go back to normal, which means he will be affectionate even when you’re not in the mood. This cues the second phase of the fight. While you’re trying your damndest to push him away, he will corner you, physically and mentally. 

While he hugs you tight, he will force you to look at him while you cry. It’s invasive and suffocating, but the night always ends with you making up with him. Be it kissing or other means. It’s unfair, but no matter what he does, you can’t help giving in to him. And he knows this very well. That’s why he keeps doing it.  

Psychology + When he snaps

He is much more intelligent than he lets on. Even though he already knows you like the back of his hand, he studies you every day. If you asked him what you were thinking about, he could probably guess it. That’s what makes him such an intense lover. You can’t hide anything from him if you tried. Hence, he has a terrifying amount of control in the relationship, and he will use it to his advantage.

Zao is a good multitasker. He can juggle his ‘job’ and hobbies while keeping you in the palm of his hand. There is absolutely nothing you can do without him finding out, and this is precisely how he keeps himself miles ahead of you. 

As everything progresses, he will tolerate less and less. His love language is how much quality time he gets with you, along with emotional connection. Eventually, he will start ruling out the prospect of you having any of these things with anyone besides him. That includes friends, so he will start isolating you from them, all until the only soul you are truly close to is him. Soon, you will have to rely on him for everything, which he absolutely loves. He will make himself the only person in your life. 

As this continues, he will become obsessed with the idea of your co-dependency on him. Zao always loved looking after you, but he isn’t satisfied with that anymore. Being your own person? Hell no. Every single thing you do, he will be in the backdrop. If not, he will be next to you, and start influencing your own thoughts until you can’t even trust yourself. 

At this point, he is manipulating you to accept everything he does. And he succeeds a lot of the time, especially when he’s so unfazed. You start wondering if you should be this unfazed, even when what he’s doing is wrong. 

If one of your friends tries to intervene, he will make sure they won’t see the light of day ever again. He has a lot of connections, and combined with how cunning he is, he can get them to disappear with the snap of his fingers. He will keep doing this until every single person in your life is gone if he has to. 

Zao acts purely on his own desires. It’s his moral compass. Right and wrong will blur together so long as it’s for you, and there’s nothing he won’t do. Murder is as casual of a topic to discuss and do as having breakfast. 

A lot of psychopaths would at least get the thrill of doing something so heinous, but he won’t give a shit. He won’t bat an eye. He won’t feel the smallest shred of remorse and carry on like nothing happened. But what he will feel is satisfaction. 

If you find out what he did

You can cry all you like. He’ll only feel remotely guilty because you’re heartbroken, but it passes pretty quickly when he’s happy with what he’s done. You could try running away too. Try. But he always finds you. It doesn’t matter if you leave the country and go into hiding. He will follow you to the ends of Earth for the rest of his life. What can he say? He loves a good chase. It’s a fun game of cat and mouse he knows he’ll win. 

Every time he finds you, he’ll sneak up to you from behind and whisper, “Are you done, now? Let’s go home already.” If you try to run away again, he’ll just catch you and hold you tight, even while you’re thrashing in his arms. “I can do this forever, kitten. You have nobody else to go to, and nowhere else to be. So don’t waste your energy and come back with me.”

Response to ask: 

Of course :) I’m honored you submitted an ask to me after thinking about him 🤗 He’s definitely one of my favorites! Zao’s gotta be the most fleshed out 2p next to Allen. Since 2p’s aren’t canon, they rely solely on the fandom’s interpretation and ability to dish out content on them. I haven’t seen any proper yandere stuff on Zao, so I think this is a first. And boy, he’s a terrifying one for sure. I feel like he embodies the worst of the yandere trope because he’s into psychological manipulation. Worst isn’t the right word, actually. I believe ‘accurate’ is a better way of describing it. This is what a real yandere looks like. 

[because-of-a-friend]

Dad!Seventeen

Thanks for the compliments anon! I hope this is what you wanted! I ended up just doing it in reaction style and ran with the dad/uncle idea to show how they’d interact with their kids and the other boys’ kids! Feel free to request more! (Sorry it took so long, I had a bunch of extra long shifts at work)

MASTERLIST

CHOI SEUNGCHEOL

LOVES HIS KIDS!!!!!

OMG!!!!

To Cheol, his kids are his whole world

Obsessed with just gathering them up in his arms and hugging them tight

Definitely a cool dad

His kids trust him and feel comfortable around him 

He literally can’t say no to them

The other boys’ kids realize this as well

So everyone goes to Uncle Coups to ask for stuff

“Seungcheol, why would you let my kid eat three ice cream cones?”

“I don’t know, Jihoon, she just looked at me with those big eyes and I couldn’t say no”

But honestly Coups would do anything to see his kids smile and just cares about them so so much

Just the weakest sweetest dad/uncle ever

YOON JEONGHAN

Jeonghan thought he was clever and cunning

His kids are 10x more so

Like Cheol’s kids, they get whatever they want

But it’s not bc Jeonghan just lets them have it

It’s bc they’re really good at arguing or sneaking their way into getting the things they want

He adores them for it tbh

Like so proud

“Jeonghan, your son managed to sneak my kids out of our house to have a sleepover at yours”

“Wow! He really did that???”

“Jeonghan!”

“Right, right, I’ll get onto him for that”

Is really excited when his kids and everyone else’s are teens and older bc he’s really good at giving advice and enjoys having genuine conversations with them

But honestly just adores his kids and is always so proud of them and fascinated by every little thing they accomplish

JOSHUA HONG

Joshua’s kids have perfectly packed lunch boxes and cute little matching outfits and the best manners of the kids in their classes

He treats his kids with respect and teaches them patiently and his love for them is immense and obvious

The kind of dad who is always looking over at his kids during parties and get-togethers to just watch them and smile at how they’re interacting with others

He always pins all of their best grades up on the fridge and makes them feel so special anytime they accomplish anything

Really just a cookie-cutter perfect dad 

The other boys are jealous lol

“Can your kids hang out with mine more? They need a better influence than Jeonghan’s son”

“Hey!”

“Hannie, please, we all know your kids get all of ours into trouble”

“...yeah”

But seriously, perfect dad with perfect family

MOON JUNHUI 

More of a friend than a dad tbh lol

His kids get to do whatever they want as long as Jun gets to come along

“So you were with all of our kids when they snuck out?”

“Yeah, that’s why it’s fine, I was there”

“Jun, I think you might be missing the bigger picture”

He’s the chillest dad

His kids and all of the other boys’ kids like to hang out with him bc they know that means a day of playing video games, eating snacks, and taking naps

His kids adore him for it tho and never feel scared to tell him anything

He makes sure they solve everything together so they never feel like they have to handle anything alone

KWON SOONYOUNG

Excited to pass his talents onto his kids

Like from the moment they start to walk he tries to teach them dance moves 

And his Significant Other is like “Soonyoung pls”

And he’s like “They have to learn to dance”

Devastated when one of his kids mentions they want to learn songwriting from Uncle Jihoon

“Soonyoung, you’re overreacting”

“No I’m not, if she’d rather write songs with Jihoon then she can be his daughter, she is no longer mine”

But seriously, he loves his kids 

And he’s going to support them whether they want to be dancers or singers or doctors or artists or anything

And he’s gonna do whatever he can to help them get there

But he likes to get them involved in his every day life to show them how important it is to have them around and how much he enjoys including them 

JEON WONWOO

Just imagining Wonwoo and all the little baby Wonwoos with their matching glasses

Also has incredibly polite kids

Like Wonwoo, some of his kids are more introverted so they’ll spend their time entertaining themselves

He does, however, get stuck with some extroverted kids

And he like...

Does not know how to handle their endless social energy

He’ll spend so much time trying to entertain them and spend time with them

But then sometimes he’ll just be like 

“Ok, we’re going to take a trip to Uncle Joshua’s house so you can all play with your cousins!!!”

But he seriously adores his kids

Like Jeonghan, he’s fascinated just watching them grow up and make their way through the developing phases of life 

He’s just so immensely proud of them always

LEE JIHOON

Everyday Woozi is like “who tf let me have kids”

He just gets so confused by them and the things they do

“What- what even went through your mind that you thought this was a good idea?”

But at the end of the day, no matter what they do

His overall reaction is just like 

“Cheers, I’ll drink to that bro”

Really just kind of goes with the flow

I can def see him going to the studio with little ones on his lap

They kind of just become little extensions of him that follow him everywhere and do whatever he does

They all wanna be just like him

And he doesn’t understand bc he’s not sure he’s even a good dad so he doesn’t get why these little beings think he’s the greatest person on earth

But he’s happy to have them around and feels so grateful for his kids

LEE SEOKMIN

Guess who is raising his kids to have the exact same cheesy sense of humor he has

It’s Seokmin!!!

As a result he thinks his kids are the funniest people on earth

They make him laugh all the time

His family are always the loudest people at any party

But it’s cause he lets his kids be kids and never gets upset at them for things kids do

Like talking really loud lol

As a result his kids feel free to explore any endeavors that they’re interested in

Seokmin’s schedule fills up pretty quickly bc of this

One kid has art class at one and another has volleyball at two and then another has science camp at three

But he just wants his kids to explore all of their interests and he’s happy to do whatever we can to help them do that

KIM MINGYU

Sweetest, cutest, most precious kids in the whole world

Just a bunch of cuddly kids that are EXACTLY like Mingyu

And Mingyu is just so excited??? To just see them???? Every single day???

Definitely the overly clingy dad that just wants to be around his kids 24/7

And the super embarrassing one too

Always peaks his head in when his kids have friends over 

“You guys want any snacks?”

“Oh my god dad, get out!”

But he’s also a super fun dad and his kids are really grateful to have him

And the other boys’ kids love to come over bc he makes the best snacks

(Don’t tell Jun or DK that, they’ll get jealous)

But just such a cute sweet family

XU MINGHAO

Also more like a friend than a dad

Like seriously

Unless you explicitly knew Minghao was his kids’ dad, you’d assume he was their older brother or cousin

They just kind of always chill

Like Hoshi, there are interests of his that he is so so so excited to teach to his children 

Especially art!!!

He can’t wait to see how his kids express themselves in a creative aspect

They’re all in an art class with DK’s kids 

Which leads DK and Minghao to spend more time together as they wait outside the class for their kids to be done

And then give each other looks as their kids show off their art work

But Minghao is super proud of them bc he can tell that that’s all they really want: to make him proud

Sometimes he feels more like a spectator in his kids life but he doesn’t really mind

Because they’ve always been independent and he lets them decide what they want and is happy to give advice when they come to him

But really just wants them to succeed in whatever they want to succeed in and trusts them with making their own decisions

BOO SEUNGKWAN

You know he has the cutest kids in the world

Seungkwan only realizes how sassy he is when his kids take after him and make sassy remarks to him 

And then he makes that offended face lol

Like Joshua, his kids have really cute matching outfits

But the cuteness factor is multiplied by like ten-thousand lol

Bc Seungkwan has a habit of singing all the time

His kids gain that habit too

And they get really into certain songs

Another dad that feels betrayed bc when his kids learn that Uncle Jihoon writes songs, all they wanna do is spend time with him

Jihoon doesn’t understand how he just has this growing posse of little children that just watch fascinated as he’s sitting in the studio working on new music

Along with, of course, Hoshi walking in to ask if anyone wants to watch him dance, and Seungkwan and Mingyu coming in to offer everyone snacks

But Seungkwan’s kids are kind of fascinated with everything and Seungkwan just has fun exploring the world with them

HANSOL VERNON CHWE

Vernon’s kids see a side to him that no one else gets to see

They unlock a really deeply emotional part of him and he adores his kids

He really really loves the quiet moments with his kids

When they’re falling asleep watching cartoons

When they’re super concentrated on drawing in a coloring book

When they’re happily stuffing their faces full of food

He just lives for the moments where he can watch them enjoying life or figuring things out for the first time or really just existing 

He gets really really nervous about being a father bc he doesn’t want to mess anything up

But he knows that as long as he keeps his mind open to learning and keeps his kids’ best interests as his first priority, they should all be ok

Occasionally gets overwhelmed with how much he loves them and will just grab them and kiss all over the top of their heads 

Just a cute dad who really really loves his kids

LEE CHAN

Since he’s been babied by the other boys for so long, he loves being able to baby his kids

They are SPOILED beyond belief omg

He’ll buy them anything or do anything with them or cook anything for them just to see them smile and show them the love he has for them

Convinces his kids to take little dancing lessons from Uncle Hoshi, since Hoshi is jealous that everyone’s kids want to learn about song writing from Uncle Jihoon

Aside from Coups, Dino is probably the most excited that him and all the boys are still good friends even well into their fatherhood days bc it means his kids grow up with extra Uncles and tons of cousins

It’s also a relief to know that his kids have so many other people besides him they can trust to ask for help or advice

To him it’s just like SVT kept growing bigger and bigger

 They’re all one giant family and he wants to keep it that way bc he wants his kids to feel safe and supported their whole lives

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

ooh! I have thoughts on Eridan!

okay so, to me, Eridan ties into this thing that homestuck has going on with a lot of its more morally grey characters... the question of how responsible young people are for their negative qualities and actions, and where the age threshold for personal responsibility is.

the characters in homestuck all straddle this line between being young enough to consider them victims of the forces that influence them, while also old enough to understand what they're doing and how it affects others... especially because a lot of these kids come off as really smart for their age, and very precocious. we've all been through phases in our lives that make us cringe, not because we're ashamed of something harmless, but because we recognize that we had absorbed something harmful, and took longer than we wish we had to unlearn it. it could be as simple as being kind of a jerk in a misguided attempt to seem cool, or as dramatic as actually hurting someone in an attempt to remedy one's own insecurities by putting down others to seem better by comparison... but how far can you push that before people aren't willing to forgive? before people abandon the notion that better guidance and more appropriate role models could reform someone? and it's especially interesting when you consider how old homestuck's core audience might've been when they first encountered this story, and how it affected their perception of the characters if they saw them as peers, rather than as children from an adult's perspective.

so to talk about Eridan, I wanna frame this in terms of his classpect, because it actually goes a long way towards contextualizing his behavior. Eridan is a prince of hope, meaning that he destroys hope or uses hope to destroy... and this can be seen in practically every conversation he has. if Eridan is contacting someone, it is because he expects something of them. advice, or consolation, or a solution to a problem he's having... it's always something. when he contacts Kanaya, he wants her to auspistize between him and Vriska. when he contacts Feferi, he wants her to give him encouragement, and maybe date him when he asks. and in every case, the way he demands these things by being rude, whiny, or self pitying, makes people reluctant or unwilling to give him what he expects. he destroys what he hopes to obtain.

it goes deeper than that though. Eridan has absorbed this ideology of sea dweller superiority from living on Alternia... and he actually takes it way farther than it even makes sense to. the aristocracy on Alternia use the lower class for all sorts of menial work that they feel entitled not to have to do themselves. they might have the ability to freely cull individual low bloods for any reason, but eradicating all land dwelling trolls would leave a lot of unpleasant yet necessary tasks with no one to do them. I don't think Eridan actually wants to live in a reality where sea dwellers have to pick up the slack of doing things like sanitation work, or construction or something... but another concept that is heavily tied to the hope aspect is delusion. Eridan is exaggerating. he's trying to agree with Alternia's ruthless class structure so hard that it's actually kind of absurd. but Feferi calls him on that... she says she thinks that he self sabotages on purpose. because he knows, at least in some capacity, that the consequences of getting what he "wants" would actually be really uncomfortable to live with.

so not only is Eridan's goal to destroy... it is also a false goal that he constantly undermines. and all of his waffling between grandstanding and self pity destroys his romantic prospects, which are what he actually seems to want the most.

if you look at the way Eridan pursues relationships, he actually makes a lot of logical sense, but not a lot of emotional sense. he's idealized the act of perfectly filling the relationship requirements of each quadrant. he wants Feferi to be his matesprit, which is purely based on the fact that she's high enough on the hemospectrum to be an appropriate match in terms of status. he wants Vriska to be his kismesis, and Kanaya to be their auspistice, and there are hints that Karkat might've been someone he was considering for moiraillegience, though it wasn't emphasized as much. and there you go! his goal is specific, but it's based more on ideals than on the actual needs and feelings of the people involved, and it's totally self centered... he always wants them to cater to his own needs. the reason why he gets as nihilistic as he does on the meteor, is because all of his endeavors to achieve these relationships are falling through. he feels like he has no hope of mending his existing connections, because he still only sees them in terms of people either giving him, or not giving him, what he wants. but the rest of their race is dead. as the last twelve trolls in existence, they only have each other as romantic options. and as Eridan gets more and more desperate, he gets more and more demanding, which is the exact quality that drives everyone away from him to begin with, and it culminates in him having a "if I can't have what I want then nobody can have any of their hopes either" meltdown.

to backtrack a bit, I wanna reconsider questions such as, when is a kid old enough to be held responsible for their own negative qualities? like... when are you comfortable with ceasing to blame environmental factors? when are they just a bad person? is it after they've refused a certain number of chances to make better choices? when do they reach an age, or level of bad behavior, that makes you think they can't be helped to reform from these negative qualities? where does an adult lose their patience for the idea that a kid is just a victim of their upbringing?

obviously Feferi is Eridan's peer, but these are basically the questions she grapples with when she talks to Eridan. it's like growing up next door to a kid whose parents have some aggressively wrong-headed political stances. as you grow, that kid might mirror their parents' way of thinking... and by the time the two of you are in your teens, it's hard to ignore how much of a jerk that kid is becoming. but you've seen them at every step of their development. you know where it comes from. maybe theirs is the dominant political belief in the community, even if your own parents aren't like that. maybe you wonder if you would've agreed with them if you grew up under their circumstances. you've felt the pressure, but you haven't lived in it like they have, and maybe if they just had the chance to grow up under different conditions, they wouldn't be this way. and you are aware that you could be an influence on them... maybe they need you to help them see another perspective. you always got along so well as kids. when did things even change? and that's kind of where I imagine Feferi is at when we're introduced to her and Eridan. it's a crossroads between believing that you might still matter enough to them to change their outlook, and the persistence of their ingrained beliefs. it's tiring to do that kind of work, over a long period of time, to minimal results. when is the appropriate time to give up? in this way, Feferi's own hopes for Eridan fade over time. she says at one point that she was mainly acting as his moirail so he wouldn't try to underfeed her lusus and kill the land dwellers that way. she's not sure how serious he is, and she can't take that risk. deep down, I'm pretty sure Eridan knew he was never actually going to commit a genocide... but his need to grandstand, and legitimate belief in his caste superiority, had convinced Feferi enough that she still felt obligated to manage him as though he was a real threat.

these characters are thirteen years old. they're right at the edge of childhood and adolescence... right at the age where children aren't quite so innocent. they want to assert themselves. they aren't mature, so there's a lot of responsibility that they still shouldn't be trusted with yet, but they've become aware enough to feel like that's demeaning, and to want to be taken seriously. in an effort to make people acknowledge them without looking down on them, they'll try just about anything. they don't have the experience to know what they're doing yet, so it doesn't always work in their favor, and that's frustrating. you can see bits and pieces of this in homestuck's characters. like with the way they try to paint themselves as an authority on something, or shit talk each other in order to emphasize their own strengths. it's a really interesting theme, because homestuck pushes some of these young characters really far in terms of how bad the things they've done can be, or how much their lived experiences have taught them that what they're doing is acceptable. they can be really self aware in some ways, and come off as really childish in others. it's hard to know what you'd do about them in real life... and your answer changes depending on your own age and perspective. it's a really cool gray area to poke around in, and homestuck is excellent at it.

wtf I like Eridan now

[gayenerd]

This 2009 interview with Billie is from something called Urban Male Magazine (lol) which is apparently a defunct “men’s interest” magazine in Canada.

In this interview Billie Joe Armstrong talks about his new album ‘21st Century Breakdown’, about the band and his family; how his boys keep him young, and how he’s living his dream.

Here, in the middle of a dilapidated looking industrial zone, only separated from San Francisco by the Bay Bridge, singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool have established their headquarters, composed of countless rooms for living, working and playing, protected by an automatic gate and barbed wire.  As we enter the 37 year-old Billie Joe's room to talk to him about the new album '21st Century Breakdown', he is sitting at the piano, now black haired following a brief blonde phase, playing 'Last Night on Earth', one of the new songs.

Billie Joe, we have never heard you so romantic. In this piece you sing “You are the moonlight of my life”, and “I'm sending all my love to you”. How touched is your wife Adrienne in light of this declaration of love?

Billie Joe Armstrong: She should be moved by this song, which she is.

Who do you spend more time with? With your wife or the band?

BJA: With my wife. Without a doubt. I mean, I sleep with her. I don't sleep with Tré and Mike.

You have been together for over 15 years.

BJA: A hell of a long time, I know. Adrienne is my closest ally. She is also a very good barometer in respect of my songs. She has a different kind of distance, a different way of approaching our music. She is always pretty objective and honest about what she thinks of our songs.

Your sons Joseph and Jacob are 14 and 10. How do the two of them sharpen your understanding for youth culture?

BJA: At the moment I find it incredibly exciting how my oldest son is negotiating his way through puberty. I think that being a young person today is more stressful and complicated than it was in my day twenty years ago. The Internet has won so much control over the way kids live their lives, it's almost frightening.

You yourself were quite a tear away, a head through the wall type, am I right?

BJA: Right. But my boys are not like that, they are somehow…brighter and more hard-boiled than I was at their age. Their world is significantly larger than my world was back then.

You look 15 years younger than you are. How do you do that?

BJA: When we aren't touring I go to bed at the same time as my sons. Rarely later than midnight.

People, and presumably your children too, now prefer to download their music from the Youtubes and Itunes of this world. And now you come along and release '21st Century Breakdown', a monumental, approximately 70 minute long concept album consisting of 18 songs and encompassing every imaginable style of music. Have you lost your mind?

BJA: I write songs as if my life depended on it. The last album 'American Idiot' provided us with an opportunity, the opportunity to record another really powerful and ambitious album. We didn't want to miss the chance this time around. We had to overcome our uncertainties and really pull out all the stops to complete this album. But that was what motivated us. We weren't interested in shying away from success again, as we did with our albums at the end of the nineties. Now I can understand it when people say that we started pulling our punches after 'Dookie' (the 1994 breakthrough album with 'Basket Case'). We are proud of what we have made out of Green Day.

In 'Horseshoes and Handgrenades', you sing “I am gonna drink, fight, f**k and push my luck”. As one of the biggest rock stars on the planet, do you still have time to rip it up?

BJA: One should always make time for a bit of excess. However, I have become more cautious. A sense of responsibility towards myself and my family.

When was the last time you were drunk?

BJA: The day before yesterday (laughs).

It has taken you three years to write this album and record it with the help of the Nirvana and Garbage producer Butch Vig. Was completing the follow-up to 'American Idiot' something of a Herculean task?

BJA: Yes, it was. '21st Century Breakdown' demanded much more from us, was far harder to realise than 'American Idiot'. Originally we had the idea of shooting an animated film with us as the main figures, and then write the soundtrack to it.  In the end we didn't do this. Instead, we set off to climb new creative heights and to write the best fucking songs we could.

The songs have turned out very musical and melodic. Much of it is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, and even Meat Loaf.

BJA: We acknowledge all our influences and really enjoy painting with a broad palette of colours. John Lennon, Bob Marley, U2, The Clash and many more. Songs are the result of patience and concentration. You never know when a song will gently tap you on the shoulder or hit you on the back of the head with a lump of wood. I get my ideas for songs everywhere - when playing the guitar, in the shower, on the toilet or when going for a walk.

The central line in the title song '21st Century breakdown', says: “My generation is zero. I never made it as a working class hero”. Isn't that a damned pessimistic view on life?

BJA: You should view it a little more discriminatingly. The song is about the American Dream, which says that you can make it if you really want to, if you push yourself. Society is increasingly trivializing this dream of our forefathers. Today it is only about winning the next Lotto jackpot and becoming stinking rich. That is not enough for me. What I miss is people striving to be better, to perfect themselves, this sense of hunger.

Have you realised your dream then?

BJA: One hundred percent. I am the happiest boy in the world. I love my band and my work. If there wasn't Green Day, then I would be washing plates.

Is society, especially in light of the current economic downturn, too materialistic?

BJA: No, I don't think it is. I don't have anything against prosperity. This pursuit of money regularly lands our country in trouble. But it also helps us to pull ourselves out of trouble again. America is very inventive when it comes to generating wealth. However prosperity should only be one aspect, a society built exclusively on money will break down. But I'm not pessimistic. We now have our first Afro-American president, which is a tremendous thing. And in the long run this means that the voice and the desires of the people will not be ignored.

What will Obama achieve? Save the world?

BJA: He won't save the world, especially not on his own. But this is the best thing that has happened to America in a very long time. There is a new crisis every week, a new catastrophe. However at the end of the day the central statement of the album is: There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Is Billie Joe Armstrong in 2009, what Bruce Springsteen was in the 80's or Bob Dylan in the 60's?

BJA: I can't deal with that. I don't want to be the voice of a generation. I wouldn't feel comfortable with a label like that. I want to speak for myself. However, if people discover something in my songs for themselves, then I have succeeded in what I set out to do.

Are you secretly thankful to George W. Bush? Ultimately he inspired 'American Idiot' and played a considerable role in its success?

BJA: That may be true, but no! Not at all. Thank Bush? That would be really beneath me.

[andorlorian]

okay so I do have an anakin fix it au floating around in my brain in which revenge of the sith goes as well as it possibly could BUT that's not the important part of this post the IMPORTANT part is what happens to maul in this au. (disclaimer: all I know about maul's backstory is from watching the clone wars and reading his wookiepedia page so some of this might be inaccurate. bear with me)

okay so because order 66 didn't happen, maul is brought before the council. he was sith so the council would want to deal with him personally

I think with palpatine dead (fully and completely 100% dead no take backs) the influence of the dark side everywhere would be lessened. everyone would feel a lot clearer, happier, brighter, like a dark cloud had been lifted from their mind. this would include maul.

however, for maul, diving deep into the dark side has been something of a coping mechanism. amassing as much power as possible and giving yourself over to this dark higher power means you don't have the contemplate the fact that you were stolen from your family and home world and fed incredibly damaging rhetoric from the man who 1) let you die 2) immediately upon finding out you were still alive electrocuted the fuck out of you and killed the last part of your family and (imo) the only person you ever truly loved

so maul upon arriving to the jedi council, while slightly less affected by the dark side, is still full of pure rage, hate, and a clusterfuck of other emotions brought about by thinking about the jedi. he's a whole disaster

okay this is going to get very very long I'm going to put a read more here

I imagine some in the council would like to kill or exile him and be done with it, but after the inherent trauma of the clone wars and seeing how far separated from their ideals the jedi order has become, they'd show him mercy. this part may not necessarily make 100% sense but shut up this is the good things for maul au maul gets good things

therefore, the council would vote in favor of rehabilitation. what I imagine this would look like is maul would be heavily guarded and watched, and whenever possible he would be visited by jedi masters (and masters ONLY. they're not dumb)

maul gets his own quarters, which are big enough not to be stifling or tiny but small enough to still fit in a jedi temple where they value austerity and forsaking possessions. they would want to give maul as much freedom as possible while making sure he couldn't be a threat to anyone around him, which would mean he doesn't have much freedom at all. he's fed and watered and visited by at least one jedi master a day. these visits are usually someone meditating and trying to rehabilitate maul's mind while not being openly invading, rather guiding maul's broken mind into its natural state and removing palpatine's influence. these visits are also good old fashioned therapy (maul desperately needs to talk some shit out)

it would take a very very very long time but with guided meditation and constant consistent kindness and understanding shown to him by the jedi maul would start to heal. one of the major things that palpatine forcibly shoved into his brain is a distrust and particular hatred for the jedi, but after spending so many years in their care and with constant (almost annoying) understanding that belief system would start to break down.

it would start small. like one day maybe instead of feeling rage and anger around savage's death he feels sadness because for the first time he's in an environment where he has the space to breathe and remember his brother

I think once maul has actually started to improve a little bit and moved past his rage and murder phase that's when obi-wan would visit him. which would definitely bring back some rage and murder but also it would bring maul some closure. I'd imagine they'd both need some sort of closure, considering maul killed qui gon and obi-wan essentially killed him. but obi-wan saying something like "I forgive you. I'm not your enemy." that might throw a wrench into maul's thinking

so over time, maul is becoming less and less emotionally tumultuous. he's in a stable environment in which a set group of people visit him daily solely for the purpose of rehabilitating him, both through the force and just regular conversation as equals. eventually, after enough time in this environment, whoever maul is beneath the rage and pain and the dark side would emerge

this is the side of maul that I wrote this for. this is why he's one of my favorites.

maul is deeply intelligent, and rather calculating. while he usually forgoes rational thought to scream "kenOBIIIIIII" into the night he's very good at assessing a situation and how to get the best possible outcome. he feels things very deeply but he's incredibly bad at naming exactly what his feelings are and he's not very good at reading the emotions of others. I think a flaw of his is that he really forgets to take emotions into account, while for the jedi that's kind of their whole thing. (yeah the jedi are stereotyped as unfeeling warriors but that's not true at all, they acknowledge and release their feelings into the force. for them their feelings are the force.)

I think one day when maul is beyond resisting his existence at the jedi temple, when he slowly realizes "hey my life sucks a whole lot less than before" he manages to actually solve a problem for one of the masters who visits him regularly and has become the closest thing he can really have to a friend. said master (maybe kit fisto just because I like kit fisto) rants about a problem or a mission that they're having and maul just goes "well it's obvious, really." and manages to solve the problem like that by nature of his unique perspective.

and after a looong amount of time has passed, maul's role shifts from enemy, victim, and a patient to being a voice of rationality, a problem-solver, and someone to rant to when the whole jedi master thing gets to be A Lot™

seriously though I cannot stress how long it would take for maul to heal and get to this point. MINIMUM five years.

eventually maul and some people he's forged friendships with petition the council to allow him to have some more freedom. while extremely hesitant, without palps clouding their vision they could much more clearly see maul's mental state and what sort of danger he would pose to the jedi, and they would let him move freely about the temple

okay here's my favorite part of this whole thing. maul is a fucking nerd. he discovers the jedi library and goes insane. maul would read so many books about so many different things because he's interested in everything and he'd want to build his knowledge in a myriad of subjects. he would spend hours upon hours in the jedi library just reading every single thing in there. he'd beg one of the masters to let him access the "forbidden knowledge" just because it's knowledge and he wants it. and if that didn't work he'd find a way to break in (the forbidden knowledge did not disappoint).

I also think maul would love to spar with lightsabers and stuff. he'd know techniques the jedi wouldn't, and so in friendly spars with people he'd managed to befriend, he'd actually give them a fight and teach them something, while also learning new techniques from the jedi

I think maul would consider becoming a jedi for a brief second. he's happier here than he's probably ever been, finally free from palpatine's influence and in a healthy environment. but he knows it's not his path.

after spending a long time living at the jedi temple, having carved out something of a life for himself, made friends for the first time in his life, having finally achieved emotional stability, he approaches the order on his own. they expect, after having been long used to his presence, for him to ask to be a jedi. but he comes with an unexpected proposal.

maul asks to leave the jedi temple to go home to dathomir, to see what had become of his family and of the nightbrothers. he's much much more stable than he was, but he still has burning questions that palpatine would never have let him find the answers to. and he genuinely does want to get there, eventually. but he also wants to learn more about the force that the jedi wouldn't teach him, to learn more about the sith.

his departure is surprisingly more emotional than he was expecting. the jedi temple was the first place he'd ever actually felt safe, that he'd been allowed to just exist. he would miss it.

armed with all the knowledge in the jedi temple, he searches for knowledge the jedi wouldn't have access to. he finds the remains of mortis, and researches the mortis gods. he spends a period of time wandering around like batman crushing the people he doesn't particularly like (usually people objectively morally horrible. he spent years with the jedi he has ✨morals✨ now). he even made his way to ilum, and found two crystals to forge a new double-bladed lightsaber. (the blades are yellow.)

maul would also study ancient sith texts, and spend a lot of time investigating old sith temples (like the one on malachor). however, he doesn't have the same burning desire to seize the power for himself anymore. it's an odd feeling.

eventually he does return home to dathomir to find the genocide of the nightsisters (with only one nightsister, merrin, remaining) and the nightbrothers in disarray after the loss of the dictatorial government they'd lived under for generations. maul ends up taking over a la mandalore (but with a lot less murder and awfulness. ✨morals✨)

what I'd love to see is maul founding an opposite sort of order to the jedi. not necessarily the sith, since the sith treated him horribly and destroyed his entire life, but i think maul would believe that for the force to truly be in balance, you couldn't try to eradicate an entire half of it from the galaxy. I would love to see maul found an order of dark side force users that teaches about how to use the dark side, how to avoid total corruption, and the correct channels for the power you control.

maul would be a very effective teacher in the dark side because of how much experience he has with it. he experienced the absolute worst of the dark side, the total corruption and loss of self, but he also used the dark side to save the nightbrothers from destroying themselves after the loss of the nightsisters and used his power to keep them together and safe (not to mention the period of time with Batman Maul where he used the dark side to help people).

also I would love to see the new generation of jedi and the new generation of dark side users not to be in opposition for once. by nature of maul being rehabilitated by the jedi, he would teach about them and their teachings with a modicum of respect, and the two orders would be seen as two sides of the same coin. twins, almost.

maul would not be a child snatcher, he was child snatched. the dark side is different from the light in that its always there. it comes much more naturally to force users, and unlike the jedi, it wouldn't require you to join from a ridiculously young age. his order is always known and always open to any force user who wishes to learn about the force.

maul's life comes to an end peacefully, at his home on dathomir, having built a new society for the nightbrothers and a new order for users of the dark side.

[tothedarkdarkseas]

The way Vampire AU has taken off has really warmed my heart! So many great thoughts all round. I sent you some elaborations on my own personal headcanons for it as a submission, just for the fun of it. Enjoy!

Hi! I got your submission last night and read over it-- it's very elaborate, you've clearly put a lot of thought into fleshing this AU out and it sounds like a ton of fun. I know you mentioned at the end that you had no intentions of writing it because you're busy with other fandom projects, but I'm sure there are many who'd be interested in reading your ideas if you ever decided to make a sideblog for it. I'll post your submission for others to read below a cut here so that the post won't be too long on the dashboard, and I'll reply to some of the specifics underneath!

Yes! I have so many more thoughts on a vampire AU, I figured it would be easier to put them in a submission. Hope you don't mind.

The concept is just so fascinating to me, because so much of it lines up perfectly with the character dynamics we're given in the canon, and what doesn't has the potential to expand on and explore those dynamics in a really interesting way.

I agree 100 percent about the tone it would have to be written in. An actual brooding, dark prince Murdoc type of thing wouldn't work for me. (Murdoc would try to play up that persona, but in reality, he'd be far from it.) In my mind, the tone would be half What We Do In The Shadows and half Being Human UK. Four misfits living in a mouldering mansion somewhere, getting on each other's tits - but deep down they've got each other's backs. There's a bond, even if they can't quite explain what it is.

In my mind the bloodlust would function as an addiction. Murdoc is no Mother Theresa but he's not comfortable with indiscriminate murder either. (Guilt and self-loathing is not a good combination in Murdoc.) Knowing there is no in between for vampires - you can't have a sip here and there, it's abstinence or nightly slaughter - he stays teetotal from blood and tries to channel his desires into other addictions instead. Any and every addiction, really. Drugs, booze, sex, theft, you name it. Which is how he comes to be doing donuts in a stolen car in a Tesco car park, at the exact same time Stuart Pot is making a midnight run for condoms and Tango.

I picture Murdoc's turning of Stu would be this confusing moment that even he can't fully explain, so he's always switching his story about it. One day he'll say he didn't want to deal with the police, another day it'll be vampire enforcers he was afraid of - "total killjoys, they'll bung you in a blood-filled coffin for a hundred years over the TINIEST infraction". Other days he comes close to admitting he felt guilty, that he flipped out over the idea of killing someone after all, when he's dedicating all his energy to avoiding doing just that. Sometimes he just calls it a moment of madness.

But in every vampire movie, there's that moment. The moment where the newly-turned vamp rises from the grave as this beautiful unearthly creature of the night, and I mean . . . this absolutely would be Murdoc's experience of it. He's almost convinced himself there aren't real vampires like that, that it's all Hollywood bollocks, and then Stu rises up in front of him like some black-eyed, blue-haired god, and the part of Murdoc that isn't utterly gobsmacked by it can't help resenting the little sod for making it look so easy. Murdoc likes to take the piss out of him and claim he's like one of those Lost Boys California pretty boy vampires, but he's jealous really.

I imagine Murdoc would be similarly mercurial about how he was turned. There's always some hyperbolic story about it, designed to paint Murdoc in the best light. Sometimes he was the premier occultist of his day. Sometimes he sold his soul to the devil for immortality. Sometimes he was turned by a beautiful vampire seductress, who was bitter he broke her heart. It's all bollocks. The truth is definitely something less glamorous, and I would imagine actually much sadder as well? I'm not sure what, but I'm picturing something like Murdoc's father being some small-time occultist who sold his son to vampires, or maybe Murdoc was working some menial job and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he was turned by some vampire who would have drunk him dry, if Murdoc hadn't fought him off. Or maybe it's a bit of mystery, like the mystery of his mother in canon. Someone did this to Murdoc, someone made him what he is, but he has no memory of it. And all the different stories are actually partly a coping mechanism for that, as he tries on different explanations for size. (It would also explain why he would refuse to abandon Stu after turning him. Because navigating this new reality alone is something he wouldn't wish on anyone, even some dumb kid.)

I think the supernatural element would also be a great way to expand on and deepen Murdoc's relationships with Russell and Noodle. In supernatural fiction there are always two types of beings that hate each other. Usually vampires and werewolves, but often vampires and ghosts too. As, obviously, vamps can't drain ghosts, and they spend their lives running from the guilt of all the people they've killed. Ghosts are a constant reminder of that - and of the afterlife they both fear, and resent that they were denied. I can picture Russell maybe helping Murdoc exorcise the ghost of Hannibal or Jacob, and that's how they meet. (And why he has more patience with Murdoc than most. He's seen him at his most vulnerable.) Noodle would be great as a vampire hunter too. Her dynamic with Murdoc would be fraught as on the one hand, she respects Russell and venerates him for his connection to the spirit world, so to a certain extent anything he says she'll try to respect. And Murdoc is supposedly reformed, and she has moments where she even almost quite likes him. But her instinct is not to trust him. Her instinct is to put him down, and they both know it. As much as he battles his bloodlust around her, she battles her urge to put a stake through his heart, Van Helsing style.

Finding out he turned someone would be a MAJOR ruck in their relationship. But I think Murdoc would use 2-D to convince her and Russell to stick around - because he turned him, but it wasn't like he was chowing down on the lad, it was practically an act of charity, really. Practically an act of atonement. And if they both leave now, Stu is only left with Mr Bad Influence Murdoc Niccals, to teach him how to be a vampire, and restrain his urges and whatnot. And Murdoc has never been much good at all that AA, 12 step stuff, so unless they WANT poor sweet Stuart Pot to wind up spending eternity as some kind of crackhead . . . it would be a kindness to him, really, to stick around.

I could not agree more about how Murdoc turning Stu would mirror their Phase Two dynamic, with Stu literally having become "the thing Murdoc turned him into", and resenting that. But also, having moments of perverse gratitude for it? Stu is vain, and vampire Stu would be gorgeous, which I reckon he'd love. And though I think he'd hate that his normal life of footy with the boys and Sunday dinner at his mum's was over, I can also imagine him feeling this whole new world has opened up in front of him, something most people aren't special enough to gain entry to. And he likes that.

I can even see the fame thing and the band happening. Music would be a great, healthier way to channel the urges he can't act on. And I can see Murdoc agreeing. Admitting that he's been playing in bands for years, because it's actually a great cover for a vampire lifestyle. Being nocturnal is practically a prerequisite, when you're a rock star, and you can get away with looking all kinds of weird when you're in a band, because people just chalk it up to the aesthetic. Still, until he met 2-D, none of the bands he'd been in were actually any GOOD. 2-D reawakens his love of music, the same way he is the turning point for Murdoc's career in the canon.

Vampirism would also be a great way to explore Stuart's flaws. His vanity is an obvious one, but I can also see him avoiding his family and not letting them know why he'd disappeared for years. Just too self-absorbed to appreciate the harm it's caused. I can also see the pill problem happening as he imitates Murdoc's habit of abusing substances to try and blunt his bloodlust. I can imagine him saying stupid stuff like "you never even took me to the hospital!" and convincing himself he experiences phantom headaches, because he doesn't want to admit he's becoming just like Murdoc, actually. He tells himself the pills are medicine and he really needs them, and it's not the same at all.

And I can see him getting too carried away with his lusts, and having several near misses or disastrous incidents where he brings girls home and loses control of himself. Where Murdoc jumps in and saves it from getting too out of hand, but at the same time exposes how he's basically been stalking Stu "for your own protection", with a side of decidedly voyeuristic intentions. Stu has . . . strong (and somewhat confused) feelings about this.

I think Murdoc would be the same trouble magnet in the vampire underworld that he was in the criminal one. Feelings about Murdoc range from "this unwashed oik should NEVER have been allowed to become one of us" to "I WILL STAKE MURDOC FAUST NICCALS IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO". Murdoc would definitely continue his streak of petty crime any time he entered the hallowed halls of the vampire hoi poloi. He'd be pilfering left and right. And I can't imagine he'd ever kowtow to the aristocracy, which, in a subculture as obsessed with class as vampires . . .  yeah, he's insolent, to say the least. And they hate it. They just hate Murdoc, generally. I imagine 2-D might consider crossing over to the dark side to join them, to spite Murdoc, before eventually he realizes that - amazing as it sounds - even Murdoc has higher moral standards than these people. Maybe he's better off with the devil he knows.

I love what you said about Murdoc and Stuart being hung by the same rope, for all eternity. That's exactly the dynamic I think a vampire AU would bring about. I also think Murdoc being Stu's vampire sire would be interesting in the romantic sense, as part of them would always second guess if that was the reason for the bond they feel. Are they developing feelings, or is all of this just the blood bond? I can imagine Stuart hating his own inability to judge why he feels so drawn to Murdoc, and I can see Murdoc trying to convince himself any possessiveness or pride or protectiveness he feels over Stu is just what all vampires feel when they turn someone. (Even though it's not.) It would be a potent brew.

Anyway, this was long but I will never have the time to actually write this (I have five WIPs in other fandoms already) so I thought I'd let it out somehow. Thanks for giving me the space to talk this over!

(If anyone wants to run with this and make something of it, by the way, have at it! Just credit me somewhere for the idea. That'd be good.)

This was quite a ride! I love the idea of Stuart Pot's mortal life ending when he's mowed down in a Tesco car park buying condoms and Tango. It's cruel to say it's what he deserves and frankly the complete antithesis of the whole conflict I'm begging for, but... it's what he deserves. I'm also very intrigued by the angle of treating bloodlust as an addiction: it could theoretically be overcome, but practically speaking, rarely is. This makes it easy to see how Murdoc spins off into such a cartoonishly extreme life of debauchery. I love the bit about Murdoc changing his story of what happened, both the night he hit Stuart and his own origin-- the difference being that Stu does know what happened to him, whether he ever chooses to believe Murdoc's ever-shifting justifications for it or not, but no one can ever really know where Murdoc came from except himself. I definitely agree that the truth has to be less glamorous, less thrilling, less worthy of tales and legends. I like Stuart and Murdoc best when they are not men born into greatness nor men born for greatness, not inherently, and I love the private grappling with the belief that they are special and the fear that they probably aren't. Your explanation of the foil-like dynamic between vampires and spirits/ghosts is interesting, I don't know if that's an established piece of vampire lore or if that's your own invention, but I think it's a really solid one. I don't know if I've truly seen those two creatures explored in a world together with such a direct emphasis on that ghoulish ecosystem, so to speak.

And, well, I'm quite predictable but I'm ready to invest $5k in a full novel exploring Stu's estrangement from his family and friends following the transformation, the psychological toll it takes to choose-- though he may feel he has no other choice at all-- to abandon those relationships, how his own descent may mirror Murdoc's as he shelters himself in chalk-tablet excess and a vibrant, at times frightful carnal life to distract himself from the guilt. I'm dying to see how he could approach mending those fences again after years away. It isn't something one sweeps under the rug, isn't something that he can make amends for. This sort of thing shatters a family, and in my imagining of Rachel and David, it certainly shattered his. This kind of permanently-marred family drama really captivates me and is something I don't think we should shy away from in stories about addiction, and it would be fascinating to explore the human element of that against the metaphorical monstrous one.

I love what you mentioned about the "blood bond" and how it factors into the pull between them they're too unsettled to really name. This adds an extra layer of confusion, as you say, and better justifies why they find themselves orbiting each other, pretending there's a blood-coloured chain tethering them and ignoring the heavy weighted padlock in the middle that pulls them down, down, down. I've spoken a lot on this blog about why Stu is participatory in the relationship when he dislikes Murdoc in such a profound way, and while I absolutely never tire of the messy, bleak human weakness and ego of that, it would be quite special to explore that with something that almost feels like an excuse for Stu, a macabre justification entirely out of his hands; it gives him permission to be part of this broken spiral and absolves him of the responsibility of acknowledging his choice. I'd like to think he still lives with it, as Murdoc does too, but they may appreciate the safety of the smokescreen as much as they struggle to see through it.

Thanks for sending me your ideas, I hope other readers will enjoy seeing your elaborations, and if you're having fun thinking about these two goons I'd encourage you to consider making a blog. Sometimes you get lucky and draw in people who are incredibly kind!

(Lastly, unrelated fun fact about vampirism in my life: my first job was playing a vampire at a haunted amusement park. Our "Scare Zone" was designed as a junkyard taken over by a vampire gang, and I was the "queen" with a throne made of old tires. It was... a fun job and also not a fun job, haha.)

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/4/2020: SOCIETY

Without having a survey to back me up, I feel comfortable asserting that as a horror fan, you go through different phases with SOCIETY. It’s a basic fact of life, and yet it morphs and mutates underneath you, shocking you anew just when you think you’ve got a grip on it. You never forget your first time, because there is simply nothing like it. Then, after you get over the initial shock of its patented brand of body horror, you start to take it for granted; it's so broad and monolithic that it becomes something like the Grand Canyon--when it’s not right there in front of you, you begin to experience it more iconically, as part of the wallpaper of existence, rather than an in-your-face confrontation with the limits of experience. Then, you revisit it every few years (or months, depending on what sort of person you are), and the prophylactic layer that your brain has wrapped around your memories of it--the one that allows you to think of SOCIETY as a fun, wacky cheap thrill--begins to crumble, and you realize all over again how iconoclastically vile it is. Wherever you happen to be at, with this inimitable genre landmark, you'd be hard pressed to deny that it earns its royal status among horror movies, just for being so uniquely fucked up.

Filmmaker Brian Yuzna is best known as the co-creator of the indispensable RE-ANIMATOR (or as the co-writer of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS...depending on what sort of person you are, again), itself a milestone achievement in the blending of sex and gore that so characterized '80s horror production. That film clearly brought out the best in Yuzna and frequent collaborator Stuart Gordon (also of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS fame...among other things), but it's interesting to see how they operate apart, to understand the unique ingredients that each filmmaker brought to the more perfect union of their classic Lovecraft adaptation. Gordon skewed darker and more intellectual, as evidenced by the end of his career with the shattering mob thriller KING OF THE ANTS, the disturbing true crime drama STUCK, and the Mamet-penned EDMOND. Yuzna, for his part, is almost anti-intellectual, preferring to cook up blackly comic, semi-pornographic nightmares like his two increasingly horny RE-ANIMATOR sequels, the terminal S&M fantasy RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3, and the shamelessly hokey comic book adaptation FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED. Yuzna's lack of shame is really his defining feature as an artist, and nowhere is this more obvious than in his directorial debut and signature masterpiece, SOCIETY.

Salvador Dali's "The Great Masturbator," a chief visual inspiration for SOCIETY.

Yuzna was able to leverage the success of RE-ANIMATOR to lock in two directorial opportunities, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, and a bizarre body horror exercise about a Beverly Hills orphan who discovers that not only are his adoptive family from a different bloodline, but they're not even from the same species. That both pictures employed the writing team of Woody Keith and Rick Fry gives you a little taste of what to expect from SOCIETY, but to be frank, the latter threatens to make the former look like a very special episode of ER; "overkill" barely begins to describe SOCIETY’s ambitious assault on the human body. In a recent interview, the philipino-american director giggles perversely, "I think my friends were a little embarrassed for me (when they saw SOCIETY)," and this sound bite reminded me that the last, most important ingredient that Yuzna contributes to any project is unabashed joy. It's a little hard to imagine stomaching SOCIETY without it.

In this unusual scene from the class struggle in Beverly Hills, Billy Warlock (son of HALLOWEEN 2's Michael Myers, Dick Warlock) plays Bill Whitney, a rich, handsome, athletic high school student with a heavy duty anxiety disorder. Although he appears to have it all, he is plagued by nightmares and hallucinations, reflecting suspicions that the family that spoils him is also out to get him. Perhaps this is all understandable, though. Bill is under a lot of pressure these days, with his parents devoting all of their attention to his sister's coming out party, and his narcissistic girlfriend pushing him to ingratiate himself to the assholes higher up the social ladder; it's enough to make any teenager feel alienated and insecure. But, do these garden variety anxieties account for his visions of his sister's body deforming itself unnaturally, or the dubious evidence he finds that her debutante ball involves incestuous orgies and human sacrifice? Is Bill simply crumbling under the strain of societal expectations, or is the friction with his shrink, his parents, and his peers all symptomatic of an elaborate plot against him by elites who are truly less than human?

I can’t believe they use this cheapo blanket trick MORE THAN ONCE in a movie that is famous for its unforgettable special effects, and I guess I kind of love it.

In case I haven't made the answer abundantly obvious, I'll add that while SOCIETY is the purest expression of Yuzna-ness on the market, it has an important co-author in Screaming Mad George. The eccentric japanese FX master, whose name is apparently an amalgamation of Mad Magazine, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and...George, has produced some of horror's most outrageous makeup and visual effects, mostly for Yuzna, many of them in SOCIETY. If you've seen even a trailer for Alex Winter's 1993 oddity FREAKED--which is itself a grossout criticism of American social standards--then you are already familiar with SMG's trademark style. He specializes in twisted perversions of the human form that would make a cenobite blush, driven by a penchant for puns, and influenced equally by THE THING's Rob Botin, and Big Daddy Roth’s Rat Fink style. Screaming Mad George is instrumental in articulating Yuzna's premise: that behind the shimmering veneer of success and sophistication, the upper class are just a bunch of degenerates, who literally degenerate into something unimaginable behind closed doors. It's impossible to imagine SOCIETY without his sinuous, slithering monstrosities, or his indescribable realization of their most important social event, "the shunt".

One of many great images from a zine I wish I owned, on SMG’s Facebook page.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by SOCIETY's visual impact, but its message is just as potent now as it was at the end of the Reagan era: Rich people are not only different from the rest of us, but in fact, they aren't even human. Writers Keith and Fry make an interesting choice of hero to help put this across. A lazier writer would have selected any archetype from the Freaks and Geeks set to create an easy Us vs Them tension, but SOCIETY is led by a promising young man who, for reasons he himself does not yet understand, is just not "the right kind of people". Bill appears to have every advantage in life, including a level of popularity that wins him presidency of the debate team despite his nerdier rival’s superior prowess--and yet, he suffers from a stigmatizing psychiatric disorder that is the natural result of feeling indefinably different from one's peers, and intuiting that, as a consequence, they don't even really like you. The shallow jock with deep-seated emotional problems is a much more interesting protagonist for this kind of social allegory than the charismatic outcasts that you get in movies like THE FACULTY and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, for whom the idea that the elites could be aliens is just de rigueur.

It's worth noting that this complexity of character extends to Bill's love interest, sympathetic society girl Clarissa Carlyn (Playboy Playmate Devin DeVasquez). At first, she seems villainously eager to introduce Bill to the many splendors of "the shunting", but as the plot against him mounts to its horrifying conclusion, she defects. There appears to be a reason for this, although honestly, this is the most difficult part of SOCIETY for me to wrap my head around. Clarissa lives as an essentially independent adult, only burdened by her mother (Pamela Matheson), a possibly brain damaged hulk who lurks in and out of various scenes just to be disturbing, always announced by some toots on a tuba, before eventually siding with our heroes. I'm really not sure what's supposed to be going on in this part of the movie, except that this character contributes to a number of distasteful jokes. But, I hold on to the idea that by virtue of whatever disorder Mrs. Carlyn suffers from, she serves the purpose of priming Clarissa to rebel, since her very existence makes her daughter something of a societal outcast herself. That's the best I can do.

In any case, everyone working on SOCIETY commits completely, with Mrs. Carlyn being no exception. The movie's climactic orgy of the damned is an all hands on deck operation, just as reliant on Screaming Mad George's artistic abilities as it is on the actors' responsibility to make you believe that this fucked up shit is really happening. There's a visceral patina of sleaze spread over the entire film, dripping from the way that characters talk to and touch each other, flirting and flaunting their bodies in a distinctly unseemly fashion, even when it stays within the realm of mundane reality. This constant sinister, insinuating attitude on the part of the whole cast lays the foundation for what is to come, and while I appreciate everybody's hard work, my favorite performance is from an actor who only comes in at the very end: David Wiley as society king Judge Carter. Wiley's career consisted almost exclusively of the most ordinary sort of television work, which makes his outrageous turn in this alien porno flick all the more respectable. While other characters transition from suspicious pod people to full-on mutated perverts, Judge Carter has to show up just for the finale, establish his authority, rip off his clothes, and plunge straight into a sea of slime, happily fisting his way through the cast. Wiley meets this challenge with aplomb, making of himself a hybrid of Robert Englund and Gene Hackman, perfectly embodying the movie's joyful absurdity, and never betraying the slightest hint of embarrassment. 

SOCIETY is very much a don't-look-down type of endeavor, a fairy that could expire at the slightest lapse in faith. There's a visual pun in the last act that's so gross, so offensive, so frankly idiotic, that I don't have the courage to describe it; my whole body tenses up when I know this scene is coming, as if it were the meat hook scene in TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE or the brutal rape in the middle of SHOWGIRLS. I don't like it, but at the same time, I respect Yuzna's unhesitating commitment to show it to me, and I think that actor Charles Lucia should get some kind of award for shouldering the burden so valiantly. SOCIETY is a daring movie in the truest sense, a film with more balls than brains, and in this it exposes the limitation of intelligence and taste, and the real need for pure transgression, in producing art of any real value. You might argue with me about whether Yuzna's masturbatory magnum opus really qualifies as art, but to respond to that, I'll quote the great transgressor Alejandro Jodorowsky: "If you are great, EL TOPO is a great picture. If you are limited, EL TOPO is limited." So stick that in your shunt and smoke it.

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PS Here, have this stuck in your head for the rest of your life.

[goreprofonde]

Aaron Rodgers - Climax

“Life is a collective impossibility.”

There were so many languages. Aramaic, Phoenician, Etruscan, Tamil, Moabite, Umbrian. Too many languages. From where did they all come? It was a puzzlement, especially if you believed—and if you were authoring the Pentateuch you no doubt did—that all these speakers were branches of a single family tree. Why would Noah’s descendants, leaving the Ark to replenish the Earth, differ so greatly from one another? You needed an etiology, you did. If you were Greek, you might blame Hermes. If you were Bantu, you might blame a famine-induced madness. But if you were writing the Book of Genesis, you might blame, well, God.

The story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 is short—very short. You’ve probably heard it, or at least something like its broadest outlines. In only nine verses no longer than your average nursery rhyme, the postdiluvian people (speaking but one language) decide in their arrogance to build a tower to reach the heavens; the Lord sees it and is displeased; and so the Lord confuses their language and scatters them about the globe. Short, sweet, and to the point: Pride goeth before the globe-scattering fall.

Or at least that is the traditional interpretation. And it’s not an unreasonable one—what few dots there are seem to connect in a pretty straight line, and old-timey Yahweh was quite prone to smiting, having just exited his “drown them all” Great Flood phase. Like so many ancient stories, it easily calcifies into something abstract and removed from the specifics of the story itself. But actually reading the nine relevant verses is quite a time—especially when read from the perspective of an acolyte of God fashioning an explanation for the world’s diversity of languages. For the Lord did not just punish the people for their hubris; he did so out of fear that their unity of language and of purpose would make them his rivals (“and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do”). And the Lord did not choose just any punishment; he chose exactly the thing that the people most feared (“and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” / “and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth”). Taken together, it paints an astonishingly bleak picture—humanity, its highest goals easily scuttled by outside forces, overseen by a vengeful, jealous God more interested in chaos and the psychological scars of a self-fulfilling prophecy than in peace or understanding. (And all this from Moses, one of God’s chief troubadours! Imagine the story a naysayer might have told.)

It’s hard not to think of the Tower of Babel in the wake of Climax, Gaspar Noé’s latest boundary-pushing entry in his own foreboding corner of the cinéma du corps/New French Extremity. Noé is not shy about citing his idols and reference points generally, from Godard to Kubrick to Lynch, nor has he been subtle about the influences on Climax—in addition to referencing the Tower of Babel, Shivers, and The Towering Inferno (among others) in interviews, Noé has helpfully laid out a wealth of data points surrounding the monitor on which he displays his dance troupe’s introductory interviews. Among the citations: Argento’s Suspiria; Fassbinder’s Querelle; Żuławski’s Possession; Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom; and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, not to mention various books like Taxi Driver and How to Succeed at Suicide. The ways in which these influences play out are sometimes obvious (e.g., Selva’s (Sofia Boutella) agonized, writhing convulsion in the hallway explicitly recalls Isabelle Adjani’s subway paroxysm in Possession), sometimes less so (e.g., Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, which—according to Noé, the little stinker—appears because “I like the title and I like the book...because it’s so cruel”). There is no Holy Bible propped up against Noé’s mid-1990s tube TV, but the idea of a vengeful and jealous overseer disrupting an attempt at something greater is central to Climax. As he did in Irréversible, Noé realizes that hell, unbearable as it can be, is only made more hellish by the possibility of heaven.

Climax begins (like Irréversible) with the ending. Lou (Souheila Yacoub), covered in blood, is seen from overhead stumbling through the snow before collapsing. Something terrible has obviously happened to her (this is Noé, after all), but unlike Irréversible, which unfurls a fully backward chronology, this prologue is only a brief flash-forward. After the credits play, Climax introduces us to its large cast via the aforementioned interviews, quickly sketching its players’ backgrounds, interests, and fears as the dancers—applying to be part of some sort of international touring group—discuss sex and drugs and other points of interest to the bohemian twentysomething circa 1996. From there, Climax moves to an abandoned school on the outskirts of Paris where the group is rehearsing, and it is at this point that Noé provides his greatest shock of all: joy. As the dancers krump and vogue and contort in what can only be called harmonious dissonance, Noé’s unbroken take evokes the bygone MGM musical of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, celebrating the amazing things a body in motion can do not by simulating that motion through quick-hitting edits but through the camera’s unblinking gaze.

Of course, Climax’s version of the cinematic dance number has a decidedly modern bent not incidental to its overarching themes. The participants in manager Emmanuelle’s (Claude Gajan Maull) group are not performing in the classical Astaire-and-Rogers style, nor do they look like the cast of Singin’ in the Rain. Instead, they are diverse in almost every way—nationally, ethnically, sexually, socioeconomically. What they have in common—in addition to youth—is an affinity for creative movement and a desire/belief (perhaps born of naïveté) that through their collective efforts they can make the world a better place. Climax early on declares that it is a French film and proud of it and a large sequined French flag hangs behind the dancers, framing their efforts. For a time, it seems as though these young performers, accepting of all comers and overflowing with joie de vivre, might represent a new, aspirational future for France, free of the petty jealousies and insecurities and bigotries that define (and mar) life as we know it.

But Noé is not one for uplift, and as the prophetic prologue cautions, this jubilant beginning must come to an end. After their astonishing first dance—several of the most infectious minutes one is likely to see onscreen—the performers become revelers, celebrating their upcoming tour with food and merriment and sangria. That sangria happens to be laced with LSD—something neither the dancers nor we yet know, though some pointed shots of the punch bowl and the too-frequent mentions of its contents suggest trouble—and will soon cause this utopian mini-society to erupt into death and madness. But the eruption is that of a festering boil. Cleverly, Noé follows the initial dance with a series of conversations among the participants, mostly broken off in pairs. While further fleshing out their characters and deepening certain audience connections (and introducing Tito (Vince Galliot Cumant), Emmanuelle’s young son who, being a child in a Noé film, cannot possibly meet a good end), these interactions also reveal the lie behind the seeming idyll we have just witnessed. Sexual gamesmanship, misogyny, mutual distrust, power dynamics, a general unease—even before the drugged wine has taken hold, no amount of common bond or feel-good sentiments can fully inoculate against the crassness and misanthropy of the human condition. Vive la France—unless that French flag plays less than wholesomely to some of the carousers whose skin color may have left them disadvantaged under its auspices. God is with us—unless God, wary of his waning primacy and unwilling to go down without a fight, has been against us all along.

From there, Noé gifts us one additional extended dance sequence—this time shot from above, like a devilish cousin to Busby Berkeley’s showstoppers—but the additional knowledge we have gained makes the number play very differently than its predecessor. It is still exuberant, still exciting, still full of technical and physical marvels, but there is a sense of disquiet coursing through it, of tenuous allegiances and bids for attention. The playful back-and-forth of the first dance feels slightly more strained; the seemingly effortless flow of before is supplemented with an element of jockeying and competition. All these workers building a tower, but unsure about one another’s methods or their mutual destination.

Being a Noé film, it is no surprise that from there Climax descends into recriminations and mutilation, child endangerment and incest, and ultimately into a crimson-lit nightmare resulting in death. Noé’s superb camerawork—always a hallmark—not only complements the dancing beautifully (one truly wishes that he, along with Edgar Wright, would make an out-and-out musical, though for Noé that would almost certainly have to be Sweeney Todd), it also brings to life the increasingly fragile (and ultimately disintegrated) mental states of his crew of revelers. While Selva is probably the closest thing Climax has to a protagonist as the camera follows her back and forth from the common space to the dorm rooms the group has been occupying, no one seems fully safe/sane—not Selva, as she comes undone in front of some nature-backdrop wallpaper; not Lou or Omar (Adrien Sissoko), who abstain from the sangria for personal reasons that end up visiting upon them violence (whether Western culture dislikes a Muslim or a sexually active woman more is a question Climax does not definitively resolve); not even Daddy (Kiddy Smile), as he good-naturedly DJs the proceedings. That Climax employs so much improvisation is nothing short of miraculous, given how intricately some of Noé’s long takes appear to be choreographed. But beyond mere showmanship (of his own or his performers), these extended sequences give Climax the disorienting effect of feeling both dreamlike (or, perhaps more accurately, nightmarish) and realistic. Real life does not employ the careful and selective cutting of a movie, unfolding as its own long take, yet the memories thereof are fragmented in a subconscious act of self-editing, making Noé’s aesthetic appropriately both distancing and suffocating.

This visual evocation of an unyielding descent into hell is complemented perfectly by Noé and Ken Yasumoto’s sound design. The music that previously served as an enthusiastic soundscape turns menacing and relentless, with the percussive beats and throbbing bass driving the drug-addled action perpetually forward, stymieing any possible reflective moment. Yet that merciless music is preferable to the screams and groans it sometimes drowns out—cries that are themselves preferable, in the case of Tito, to a sudden silence that is deafening in its horrific implications. Even the comparatively hospitable environs of the sleeping quarters see Dom (Mounia Nassangar) attacking Lou and Taylor (Taylor Kastle) taking advantage of his sister, Gazelle (Giselle Palmer). As the sangria brings out the group’s (somewhat) latent paranoia and aggression and worst impulses, a downward spiral is inevitable; once gravity takes hold, escape velocity becomes nearly impossible to achieve.

Unlike Irréversible, Noé does not end Climax on a tragic but perversely bittersweet note; instead, he ends it with a possible explanation for the madness that disquietingly suggests that the madness was unavoidable. The perpetrator’s outsider status implies the doomed nature of group activity. The lies told in the instigator’s interview speak to the inefficacy of preparatory efforts. Most upsettingly, the culprit’s name, drawn from Greek mythology and literally meaning “breath of life,” points back to God and the Tower of Babel. The people banded together in an attempt to do something great, something just within reach. But God wouldn’t have it. So he scrambled the synapses a bit—a different language here, a chemically disrupted neuro-receptor there—and voilà, his supremacy was re-established. But to what end? “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” said a king of kings, until nothing beside remained. Pride goeth before the fall; when the proud one is divine, the fall leads all the way to hell.

[aspoonofsugar]

The Choice of Steins;Gate: It Has No Meaning, but It Is Meaningful

Hello anon!

Sorry for the wait!

First of all, I am sorry because when you asked the first time I had still to watch the series, but right now it has been a while since I watched it and it is not so fresh in my memory. In short, I loved it, but I am sure I will miss many details in this analysis and I am sorry because you even went out of your way to ask twice. Anyway, thank you for your very nice words! <3<3<3<3 I’ll do my best.

The prologue puts emphasis on two things.

a) First of all, the dychotomy “finite”/”infinite” is highlighted.

b) Secondly, the ideas of “beginning” and ”end” come up.

What is more, point a) and b) appear linked. As a matter of fact the universe is said to be infinite because it has no end, whereas the stars are said to be finite because they meet an end of their own making.

What is the meaning of this prologue?

At first glance, the answer seems clear. Time is infinite because it has a beginning, but no end, like the universe. Human individual lives are instead finite because they have an end, exactly like the stars.

About this, let’s highlight that within the series the stars are linked to the idea of humans and of death:

Mayuri’s Stardusk Handshake is a gesture she does to communicate with her dead grandmother and when they were little Okarin was scared she might disappear as well when he sees her do it. His fear was of her leaving and joining the stars.

In short, it seems as if the first lines of the series are comparing and contrasting the finitude of humans with the infinity and the possibilities of time. This fits with the concept explored by the series as a whole aka the possibility of manipulating time and the chances opened by it.

Is it possible to control time, so that every wish can be granted? Or even in that case there are limits? And if so, which limits? Is it necessary to accept that life is finite or could it be infinite? In which way?

These are the main questions explored by the story and the answers are not as straight-forward as they might initially seem.

At the same time, these answers are articulated also thanks to two secondary themes, which are present in the story.

1) How time influences relationships.

2) The dychotomy between chaos and order.

This analysis will try to explore all these topics the story touches.

D-MAILS TO REACH A BETTER PRESENT: MAYURI AND THE PAST

When the characters realize they can send information to their past selves, they immediately try to change the past to have a better present. In other words, their thoughts are about how they can use the new technology to fix past mistakes and tragedies.

This is made clear when it comes to Suzuha, Faris and Rukako’s stories. All three girls have their past changed, so that they can have happy experiences in the present. In particular, Rukako makes so that she can be born female, Faris saves her father and Suzuha is able to meet hers and to spend times with friends.

In short, it seems as if d-mails can be used to fix everything and to make people happy. However, that is not the case and soon it is made clear that the d-mails created a series of unseen consequences. For example, Suzuha ends up losing her memories and kills herself after she fails her mission in the past. Similarly, Rukako and Faris’s wishes make indirectly so that the IBM is lost and this makes avoiding a bad future for humanity and saving Mayuri’s life impossible.

It may not be by chance that Mayuri’s death comes as a consequence of all the other characters trying to fix their past. After all, even Okabe’s first d-mail, even if sent by chance, conveniently makes it unnecessary for him to deal with the shock of seeing another person (Kuriso) die. In short, the d-mails are used to avoid past painful experiences, but in the end they only lead to Mayuri’s death. What is interesting is that Mayuri herself is a character symbolic of the past when it comes to Okabe’s story:

After all, Mayuri is Okabe’s childhood friend and is herself very childish. She is also incredibly sweet and altruistic and it is easy to see her as a representation of everything good about childhood, like innocence and imagination. Because of this, it is ironic that everyone trying to change something about their past leads to the demise of Mayuri aka a symbol of what is good about the past. This is true not only for Okabe, but also for Rukako and Faris who are both very close to Mayuri and who risk to lose their friend in exchange of their dreams.

At the same time, Mayuri is also the reason why Okabe has adopted his chuunibyou persona:

Okabe’s chuunibyou’s demeanor was born both to help Mayuri out of her depressive phase and to protect himself from the fear of losing her. In short, it is a coping mechanism both for him and for her. By the time of the series, though, Okabe’s behaviour has become as much a limit as it is a resource. As a matter of fact Okabe, at the beginning of the story, is presented as a person who is genuinely generous, but also as a man-child who spends his time fooling around. In the end, it is also because of his recklessness and hybris (both traits of his chuunibyou’s persona) that the whole situation starts degenerating.

In other words, a part of Okabe’s story is about growing up, but interestingly this growth does not overlap with him leaving his mannerisms behind. It consists instead in him taking responsibilities for them and somehow channelling them in a positive direction. In particular, as the series progresses, the nonsensical words uttered by Okabe gain more and more meaning to the point that they perfectly describe what the story is about.

A specific example is this:

Since the beginning Okabe jokes that he is a mad scientist who wants to change the structure of the world thanks to his inventions. It is easy to see how this joke ends up foreshadowing what will really happen. What is more, Okabe’s words can be used to explore one of the secondary themes mentioned above aka the dychotomy between order and chaos.

ORDER AND CHAOS: TWO EXTREMES

In Okabe’s original scenario, he is a scientist who wants to win against an organization. This organization wants to control the world, while he wants to bring chaos. In short, Okabe presents his alter-ego as chaotic.

This scenario is eerely similar to what happens in the series itself. After all, SERN is an evil organization which wants to control the world through time travel, while he and his friends are trying to free the world. This is, of course, something that happens to deconstruct Okabe’s fantasies, so that he can grow. As a matter of fact having to face an evil organization for real is something which deeply traumatizes him. However, it is interesting that even when Okabe finally succeeds and manages to go back to his original time-line things do not go better.

As a matter of fact the original time-line’s future is still a bad future, but in a different way. If the future Okabe has left behind is a cruel dictatorship, then the future he meets in the new/old time-line is a future of war and chaos. It is interesting to me that the series goes out of its way to present two opposite futures which are equally bad. The first bad future is a future where order is extreme to the point that freedom is negated, while the second bad future is a reality where the established order of the world has been completely destroyed.

These two futures symbolize the necessity for Okabe to find a middle ground between these two extremes. In particular, what is the perfect future? What is freedom? Is there even any freedom if some people are meant to die no matter what in some time-lines?

To answer these questions, let’s go back to the first lines of the series:

The universe has a beginning, but no end. Infinite. Stars have beginnings too, but meet an end of their own making. Finite.

In other words, humans are like stars and have finite ends no matter if they live in a universe which is infinite and has infinite time-lines. They will still meet their ends in a specific moment. One might think that changing the structure of the world, so that humans are free, means to overcome this limit. However, not even time-travel is able to make this limit disappear and it makes it even more obvious and painful. So, no matter what, humans remain finite. A world of total freedom and of total chaos, as Okabe would call it, is impossible.

That said, not all “limits” and “restrictions” presented by time travel are bad. By this, I mean that “deaths” are not the only constants present in different time-lines. If anything, people’s relationships are just as constant and present and they seem even more unavoidable:

THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY: RELATIONSHIPS AND TIME

The way time affects relationships is another theme explored by the narrative, which has been mentioned above. Moreover, this quote by Kuriso perfectly conveys it. All in all, time can be both negative and beneficial for relationships.

On one hand time can make people feel distant, as it is metaphorically explored through the existence of different time-lines. As a matter of fact the moments a person shares with some people in a time-line may be lost in another one. This makes so that people who were previously close become distant. This is not so different from what happens in real life when time passes and people do not keep in touch with each other. No matter what, time changes relationships even the closest ones, like Mayuri notices in regards to her friendship with Okarin (even if of course they remain very close). The different time-lines are nothing more than a world-building element which makes this phenomenon more extreme.

On the other hand time, in the form of memories, can help feeling close to people who are physically distant:

Here, Kuriso is essentially talking about “grief” since she is trying to convince Okabe to sacrifice her for Mayuri and the world’s sake. She is telling him that she will always be there in his memories. Once again, due to the nature of the series, the idea of being close to someone through memories gains an ulterior meaning because Kuriso makes the hypothesis that she will indeed survive in other time-lines and will never truly die. However, this is not that different to the belief that dead people keep existing in another plane.

In conclusion, the series shows how time is both a wall and a bridge for relationships. At the same time, this makes clear something important:

Humans might be finite like stars which burn in the universe, but their feelings are able to overcome those same limits their existences can’t escape. As a matter of fact, as stated above, people’s relationships and feelings can travel through time-lines and they make so that relationships stay more or less the same throughout each jump. So, in most time-lines, Okabe and Kuriso fall in love, the members of the group are friends and Suzuha is born.

In conclusion, the structure of the world is both “infinite” with its infinite time-lines and “finite” with its constants in each time-line, like deaths and relationships. In particular, feelings have the property to travel through time-lines and are the key to overcome the limits of one’s individual existence. The question is now how to use this information to change the world and reach a happy future.

THE CHOICE OF STEINS;GATE: KURISO AND THE FUTURE

What’s the meaning behind Okabe’s words above? In the end, what is Steins;Gate? Steins;Gate is the world-line the protagonists struggle throughout the whole series to reach. It is a world-line where there is no dystopic future and so it is a reality where they are all free. This is why it is important that its name does not really mean anything. It is because in that reality they can build their own future. They do not have to live up to something pre-established, but they can simply experience their life as it comes. In short, the name Steins;Gate has no meaning, but this is precisely why it is meaningful. It is because its significance is something which is gained through living and experiencing things, just like the strange phrases Okabe uses throughout the story come to mean something by its end.

In short, Steins;Gate is a world-line linked to freedom, self-actualization and growth. However, how can one reach it?

All in all, what Okabe must do is to accept the past. It is interesting that when his future self explains to him how to save Kuriso he does not offer complicated explanations on how time-travel works, but simply makes him realize how much the struggle he has lived together with Kuriso in the alpha world-line is important. It is this past, even if painful, which has led him where he is.

In short, in order to achieve a positive future, people must first accept their past. This is also coherent with what happens in the alpha world-line where Suzuha, Faris and Rukako all had to give up on their perfect past for the sake of saving the future. Here, Okabe must somehow do the same:

He must let his past self go through the most terrifying weeks in his life if he wants to save Kuriso and the future.

Let’s also highlight that Okabe being able to save Kuriso, while he could not change Mayuri/Suzuha/Moeka’s destiny in the alpha world-line, has symbolically to do with Kuriso being a character linked to the future. As a matter of fact she is Okabe’s future lover and her death is one of the reasons why an apocalyptic future happens.

In short, the series suggests that it is possible to change the future only if one accepts and faces their past. In other words, both the universe and the stars have a beginning. However, the universe has no end, whereas humans (the stars) have an end. That said, this end is not definite (aka decided before-hand), but it is indefinite. This means that human lives are not infinite per-se, but they have infinite possibilities:

These are my main thoughts on the series! Thank you very much for asking and sorry for the wait!

[adminjolene]

Trial Claim Form

I won’t pretend like I haven’t been eagerly awaiting these documents Miss Fabray and Miss Berry. I can’t think of a better way to start off the new term than by approving a trial claim between the two of you. It’s clear that you two have a deep connection and love for one another and I can’t wait to see what the two of you will do together.  The trial claim has been approved, and the papers will be officially turned in on Friday.

JO FABRAY AND DJ BERRY WILL IMMEDIATELY MOVE INTO TRIAL CLAIM DORM 203.

Name and Age of Dominant: Jo Fabray,  24

Name and Age of Submissive: Dalia-Joy Angela Berry, 24

Education Completed: Jo has completed one year at another institute, half a semester at Devereux Academy, and has a degree in hospitality management. DJ has completed one year at another institute, half a semester at Devereux Academy, and has a degree in business.

Length of Relationship: A year and a half.

Why would you like to enter into a trial claim?

Jo

I would like to enter a trial claim because it’s the natural evolution of our relationship.  From the moment that I met DJ, when she helped me through one of the most awful nights of my life, I’ve known that this is where we were headed.  Maybe not consciously, not at first, but the certainty has always been there deep down.  She is the perfect submissive for me, the perfect girlfriend, and I can’t imagine my life without her.  I have no loftier goal in my life than to see her wear my collar, and the very thought of it fills me with such joy that I can’t adequately describe it.  I would like to enter this trial claim to begin the next phase of our lives together and to provide DJ with the stability and constant attention and care that a claim can bring.  I would like it so that I can make myself a better Dominant by having her as my own, and to be sure that she is always provided with the very utmost of my love and care.

DJ

The biggest reason that I want to enter into a trial claim is because one of the things that I have been moving towards and aiming for over the past year and a while is the goal of being Jo’s submissive.  I love her more than I think I could explain and building a life and a family with her is what I want. For us to have a future together, the future that we have discussed and have been looking towards, this is the next logical step; a step that I think makes sense and one that I’m really excited about. I feel as though Miss Jo and I make a really great pair in a romantic sense and in a dominant/submissive partnership. While there are times that I do submit to other people, there is no one other than Jo that I would want to submit to for the rest of my life. We have worked together very hard to become people inside and outside of our D/s relationship that work very well together.

Do you feel you know your partner well enough on a personal level?

Jo

I absolutely do feel that I know Dalia on a personal level.  I’ve never at any point in our relationship intended to simply be her Dominant.  I have from the beginning endeavoured to be her friend, her girlfriend, and someday I would like to be her wife.  I can’t be any of those things, particularly the latter, without doing my utmost to learn everything that there is to know about her.  From long conversations over mediocre take out to evenings curled up in bed and talking, or the trip we recently took to New York to see some of the spots that made my girl who she is, I have learned as much as humanly possible about her.  Not everything, because I believe that it’s impossible to know everything about a person, but I firmly believe that I know more about her than most anyone barring her family.  The good, the bad, and the ugly, I believe I have learned as much as I possibly could.

DJ

I do believe that I know Miss Jo well enough on a personal level to enter into a trial claim with her. I know her favorite breakfast, her favorite body wash and shampoo, her favorite color. And while those may seem like superficial things, in my opinion, you can never know too much about the person that you love. And those little things that I learned early on paved the way for the deeper and more personal pieces of information. I know things that she’s scared of, I know some of the best memories that she has and I know the very worst. All of the little things and all of the big things that have made her who she is today, I have been honored to learn as she became comfortable and open enough to share them with me. I know what her goals for her career are, I know why they’re her goals. I know that she loves with her whole heart and carries so much on her shoulders and I just want to be there, every day, to help lighten that load.

Do you feel as though you have learned enough about you and your partners limits and expectations of the relationship as a whole?

Jo

I do.  One of the biggest failures of my time as DJ’s Domme was in regards to not being clear about our expectations of our relationship.  It caused one of the roughest patches of our time together, and was a stark lesson for me in what it meant to be a good Dominant and what it also meant to be a good girlfriend…and a bad one.  I took that lesson very completely to heart, and it’s informed everything that I do ever since.  In terms of limits we had a similar incident with a punishment in Ohio that hit much, much harder than it was meant to and in the process we discovered one of DJ’s most important limits: isolation.  And since we discovered it, I’ve treated it with the utmost respect, as I do all with all of her limits.  I believe that between all of the scenes we’ve shared and the discussions of limits and expectations that I’m on top of both.  Should her limits change, by addition or subtraction, her new limits will be my first priority to learn and respect.

DJ

I do believe that I know enough about Miss Jo’s limits. There are things that are very personal to her that have occurred in her life that have influenced certain areas that she’s uncomfortable. Some of those limits have to do with our relationship like a lack of communication being a limit, bathroom play being a limit, and dishonesty being a limit. But other limits have to do with experiences in her life that we are both working together on. As for her expectations of the relationship, I also feel as though I have learned enough. Not only have I learned about her expectations through scenes, discussions, and experiencing life together; I’ve also learned what she expects through the list of rules that have been created, the rules that have been tested, and also classes that she and I have taken that we have expressed an interest or disinterest in. All of these things together have worked to paint a picture of what she wants our relationship to be and it fits very well with what I want too.

Do you feel you both are well versed in what a claim will be outside of the trial period?

Jo

I assumed that this question is asking whether we’re aware of what a real world claim looks like beyond the trial period.  And the answer is a definitive yes.  We both grew up in homes with parents who believed in the system, with claims that stood the test of time, and speaking for myself I left home with a deep understanding both of the system and what it meant to be claimed.  I have seen the worst that a claim can be, the way it can be used against a person, and I’ve seen the best it can be.  I’m very aware of what a claim looks like outside of the trial setting, and I’m confident that not only will our claim be strong, it will thrive beyond the claim period and for the rest of our lives.

DJ

I would say yes, I am well versed in what a claim can be outside of the trial period. As Miss Jo mentioned, we were both raised with parents that followed the system, albeit in completely different manners, and I saw the beauty and love that can be shown through a claim that’s based on honesty and respect. Beyond that, Miss Jo and I have had many discussions about what we want our claim to look like and have even tested out rules that would work for the both of us and would help us to grow apart and together. We also understand that a claim outside of the trial period is an extreme commitment and one that we’re willing to make. It is not a choice that we take lightly, resulting in many conversations over the course of the time that we have known one another.

Do you believe you are comfortable enough with each other and the fundamental levels of BDSM as a whole?

Jo

I believe so.  I’ve been educated in the fundamentals of BDSM from multiple sources including my own family, my first finishing school, and Devereux.  I believe that between those three I am well versed in the foundations of BDSM and how it applies to a trial claim.  In terms of comfort with each other, there’s no one in the world that I could be more comfortable with.  We eat together, we sleep (when possible) together, we own a cat together.  She is the girl I think about when I lie down, and she’s the first thing that I want to see every morning.  DJ has seen me at my absolute dirt-worst lowest point, and I’m comfortable that should I hit another low I would still want her around.  She’s my person.  And I’m never going to be uncomfortable with her.

DJ

I do feel comfortable with Miss Jo as a whole and with the aspects of BDSM as well. Recently, Miss Jo and I decided to touch upon a soft limit of my own and it went extremely well thanks to the communication and trust that we have built with one another. There is no one else that I would feel comfortable enough to touch on something like that with and it is thanks to the relationship that we have created and worked towards throughout our relationship that has made that possible. We have come to really recognize what kinks we both enjoy together, which kinks perhaps we do more to please the other person, and also which kinks we would both prefer to avoid. The understanding of where the kinks fall on the scale have come through conversations and have changed across time and I imagine that will keep happening!

Lastly please provide the list of rules under which your claim will operate, including examples of punishments and rewards that may be used to reinforce them.

1. DJ will be expected to use a title with her Dominant at all times, unless granted permission otherwise.

2. DJ’s collar will be worn at all times unless explicit permission is granted to remove it by Jo or another Dominant.  That permission must be granted in advance.

3. Once a week, DJ will sit down with Jo to discuss her schedule.  Any changes or alterations must be approved in advance, and Jo expects to know where she is at any given time.

4. A schedule of chores and tasks will be agreed upon by both DJ and Jo, and Jo will expect adherence unless permission is granted to alter it.

5. DJ’s health and safety are of paramount importance.  Should she feel overwhelmed or unable to perform her duties at any point, she is expected to raise the issue with Jo at the earliest opportunity.

6. Any issues that may arise within the claim are to be addressed privately and respectfully between DJ and Jo, not with others.

7. At all times, and in all matters, DJ’s honesty with her Dominant is a fundamental rule of the claim.  Dishonesty will not be tolerated.

8. DJ will respect both her fellow students and the school’s faculty and administration.  She will be expected to use titles with Dominants and Switches at all times unless permission is granted otherwise.

Punishments:

1. Any violation of rules that have been made explicitly clear to DJ will result in a commensurate punishment.  These punishments are not open to negotiation but are subject to a safeword as necessary (see below).  Deferral around club or school responsibilities will be permitted as appropriate.

2. Should the Deans find it necessary to punish DJ, that punishment will be reinforced with an additional punishment from Jo.

Safeword:

1. DJ’s safeword is sacrosanct.  Should it not be respected by any Dominant or Switch, Jo included, that fact should be reported immediately to Jo to be dealt with as necessary.  Abuse of the safeword to get out of punishments or duties, however, will not be tolerated.

Sexual:

1. DJ’s orgasms are at Jo’s permission.  Should she be scening with another partner, that permission is temporarily transferred to them unless explicitly stated otherwise before the scene begins.

Chores:

DJ is responsible for creating grocery lists each week.

DJ will be expected to cook dinner at least three times a week.

DJ is expected to do the laundry weekly.

DJ is responsible for any and all needs of Onyx.

DJ is expected to help maintain the cleanliness of the suite, including a bi weekly deep clean of the suite.

DJ is expected to ensure that dishes are cleaned each night, unless given permission otherwise

Rewards:

-orgasms

-new clothes

-a trip off campus to do something DJ would want to do

-watching her favorite movie together

Punishments:

-orgasm denial

-washing clothes by hand

-caning

-sleeping at the foot of the bed

[lightinhersmile]

PERSONALITY TYPE: ENFJ-A

[ For more detail, click READ MORE. ]

Introduction

Everything you do right now ripples outward and affects everyone. Your posture can shine your heart or transmit anxiety. Your breath can radiate love or muddy the room in depression. Your glance can awaken joy. Your words can inspire freedom. Your every act can open hearts and minds.

Protagonists are natural-born leaders, full of passion and charisma. Forming around two percent of the population, they are oftentimes our politicians, our coaches and our teachers, reaching out and inspiring others to achieve and to do good in the world. With a natural confidence that begets influence, Protagonists take a great deal of pride and joy in guiding others to work together to improve themselves and their community.

Firm Believers in the People

People are drawn to strong personalities, and Protagonists radiate authenticity, concern and altruism, unafraid to stand up and speak when they feel something needs to be said. They find it natural and easy to communicate with others, especially in person, and their Intuitive (N) trait helps people with the Protagonist personality type to reach every mind, be it through facts and logic or raw emotion. Protagonists easily see people’s motivations and seemingly disconnected events, and are able to bring these ideas together and communicate them as a common goal with an eloquence that is nothing short of mesmerizing.

The interest Protagonists have in others is genuine, almost to a fault – when they believe in someone, they can become too involved in the other person’s problems, place too much trust in them. Luckily, this trust tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Protagonists’ altruism and authenticity inspire those they care about to become better themselves. But if they aren’t careful, they can overextend their optimism, sometimes pushing others further than they’re ready or willing to go.

Protagonists are vulnerable to another snare as well: they have a tremendous capacity for reflecting on and analyzing their own feelings, but if they get too caught up in another person’s plight, they can develop a sort of emotional hypochondria, seeing other people’s problems in themselves, trying to fix something in themselves that isn’t wrong. If they get to a point where they are held back by limitations someone else is experiencing, it can hinder Protagonists’ ability to see past the dilemma and be of any help at all. When this happens, it’s important for Protagonists to pull back and use that self-reflection to distinguish between what they really feel, and what is a separate issue that needs to be looked at from another perspective.

...The Struggle Ought Not to Deter Us From the Support of a Cause We Believe to Be Just

Protagonists are genuine, caring people who talk the talk and walk the walk, and nothing makes them happier than leading the charge, uniting and motivating their team with infectious enthusiasm.

People with the Protagonist personality type are passionate altruists, sometimes even to a fault, and they are unlikely to be afraid to take the slings and arrows while standing up for the people and ideas they believe in. It is no wonder that many famous Protagonists are cultural or political icons – this personality type wants to lead the way to a brighter future, whether it’s by leading a nation to prosperity, or leading their little league softball team to a hard-fought victory.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Protagonist Strengths

Tolerant – Protagonists are true team players, and they recognize that that means listening to other peoples’ opinions, even when they contradict their own. They admit they don’t have all the answers, and are often receptive to dissent, so long as it remains constructive.

Reliable – The one thing that galls Protagonists the most is the idea of letting down a person or cause they believe in. If it’s possible, Protagonists can always be counted on to see it through.

Charismatic – Charm and popularity are qualities Protagonists have in spades. They instinctively know how to capture an audience, and pick up on mood and motivation in ways that allow them to communicate with reason, emotion, passion, restraint – whatever the situation calls for. Talented imitators, Protagonists are able to shift their tone and manner to reflect the needs of the audience, while still maintaining their own voice.

Altruistic – Uniting these qualities is Protagonists’ unyielding desire to do good in and for their communities, be it in their own home or the global stage. Warm and selfless, Protagonists genuinely believe that if they can just bring people together, they can do a world of good.

Natural Leaders – More than seeking authority themselves, Protagonists often end up in leadership roles at the request of others, cheered on by the many admirers of their strong personality and positive vision.

Protagonist Weaknesses

Overly Idealistic – People with the Protagonist personality type can be caught off guard as they find that, through circumstance or nature, or simple misunderstanding, people fight against them and defy the principles they’ve adopted, however well-intentioned they may be. They are more likely to feel pity for this opposition than anger, and can earn a reputation of naïveté.

Too Selfless – Protagonists can bury themselves in their hopeful promises, feeling others’ problems as their own and striving hard to meet their word. If they aren’t careful, they can spread themselves too thin, and be left unable to help anyone.

Too Sensitive – While receptive to criticism, seeing it as a tool for leading a better team, it’s easy for Protagonists to take it a little too much to heart. Their sensitivity to others means that Protagonists sometimes feel problems that aren’t their own and try to fix things they can’t fix, worrying if they are doing enough.

Fluctuating Self-Esteem – Protagonists define their self-esteem by whether they are able to live up to their ideals, and sometimes ask for criticism more out of insecurity than out of confidence, always wondering what they could do better. If they fail to meet a goal or to help someone they said they’d help, their self-confidence will undoubtedly plummet.

Struggle to Make Tough Decisions – If caught between a rock and a hard place, Protagonists can be stricken with paralysis, imagining all the consequences of their actions, especially if those consequences are humanitarian.

Romantic Relationships

People who share the Protagonist personality type feel most at home when they are in a relationship, and few types are more eager to establish a loving commitment with their chosen partners. Protagonists take dating and relationships seriously, selecting partners with an eye towards the long haul, rather than the more casual approach that might be expected from some types in the Explorer Role group. There’s really no greater joy for Protagonists than to help along the goals of someone they care about, and the interweaving of lives that a committed relationship represents is the perfect opportunity to do just that.

I’m a Slow Walker, but I Never Walk Back

Even in the dating phase, people with the Protagonist personality type are ready to show their commitment by taking the time and effort to establish themselves as dependable, trustworthy partners.

Their Intuitive (N) trait helps them to keep up with the rapidly shifting moods that are common early in relationships, but Protagonists will still rely on conversations about their mutual feelings, checking the pulse of the relationship by asking how things are, and if there’s anything else they can do. While this can help to keep conflict, which Protagonists abhor, to a minimum, they also risk being overbearing or needy – Protagonists should keep in mind that sometimes the only thing that’s wrong is being asked what’s wrong too often.

Protagonists don’t need much to be happy, just to know that their partner is happy, and for their partner to express that happiness through visible affection. Making others’ goals come to fruition is often the chiefest concern of Protagonists, and they will spare no effort in helping their partner to live the dream. If they aren’t careful though, Protagonists’ quest for their partners’ satisfaction can leave them neglecting their own needs, and it’s important for them to remember to express those needs on occasion, especially early on.

You Cannot Escape the Responsibility of Tomorrow by Evading It Today

Protagonists’ tendency to avoid any kind of conflict, sometimes even sacrificing their own principles to keep the peace, can lead to long-term problems if these efforts never fully resolve the underlying issues that they mask. On the other hand, people with the Protagonist personality type can sometimes be too preemptive in resolving their conflicts, asking for criticisms and suggestions in ways that convey neediness or insecurity. Protagonists invest their emotions wholly in their relationships, and are sometimes so eager to please that it actually undermines the relationship – this can lead to resentment, and even the failure of the relationship. When this happens, Protagonists experience strong senses of guilt and betrayal, as they see all their efforts slip away.

If potential partners appreciate these qualities though, and make an effort themselves to look after the needs of their Protagonist partners, they will enjoy long, happy, passionate relationships. Protagonists are known to be dependable lovers, perhaps more interested in routine and stability than spontaneity in their sex lives, but always dedicated to the selfless satisfaction of their partners. Ultimately, Protagonist personality types believe that the only true happiness is mutual happiness, and that’s the stuff successful relationships are made of.

Friendships

When it comes to friendships, Protagonists are anything but passive. While some personality types may accept the circumstantial highs and lows of friendship, their feelings waxing and waning with the times, Protagonists will put active effort into maintaining these connections, viewing them as substantial and important, not something to let slip away through laziness or inattention.

This philosophy of genuine connection is core to the Protagonist personality type, and while it is visible in the workplace and in romance, it is clearest in the breadth and depth of Protagonist friendships.

All My Life I Have Tried to Pluck a Thistle and Plant a Flower Wherever the Flower Would Grow...

People with the Protagonist personality type take genuine pleasure in getting to know other people, and have no trouble talking with people of all types and modes of thought. Even in disagreement, other perspectives are fascinating to Protagonists – though like most people, they connect best with individuals who share their principles and ideals, and types in Diplomat and Analyst Role groups are best able to explore Protagonists’ viewpoints with them, which are simply too idealistic for most. It is with these closest friends that Protagonists will truly open up, keeping their many other connections in a realm of lighthearted but genuine support and encouragement.

Others truly value their Protagonist friends, appreciating the warmth, kindness, and sincere optimism and cheer they bring to the table. Protagonists want to be the best friends possible, and it shows in how they work to find out not just the superficial interests of their friends, but their strengths, passions, hopes and dreams. Nothing makes Protagonists happier than to see the people they care about do well, and they are more than happy to take their own time and energy to help make it happen.

We Should Be Too Big to Take Offense, and Too Noble to Give It

While Protagonists enjoy lending this helping hand, other personality types may simply not have the energy or drive to keep up with it – creating further strain, people with the Protagonist personality type can become offended if their efforts aren’t reciprocated when the opportunity arises. Ultimately, Protagonists’ give and take can become stifling to types who are more interested in the moment than the future, or who simply have Identities that rest firmly on the Assertive side, making them content with who they are and uninterested in the sort of self-improvement and goal-setting that Protagonists hold so dear.

When this happens Protagonist personalities can be critical, if they believe it necessary. While usually tactful and often helpful, if their friend is already annoyed by Protagonists’ attempts to push them forward, it can simply cause them to dig in their heels further. Protagonists should try to avoid taking this personally when it happens, and relax their inflexibility into an occasional “live and let live” attitude.

Ultimately though, Protagonists will find that their excitement and unyielding optimism will yield them many satisfying relationships with people who appreciate and share their vision and authenticity. The joy Protagonists take in moving things forward means that there is always a sense of purpose behind their friendships, creating bonds that are not easily shaken.

Parenthood

As natural leaders, Protagonists make excellent parents, striving to strike a balance between being encouraging and supportive friends to their children, while also working to instill strong values and a sense of personal responsibility. If there’s one strong trend with the Protagonist personality type, it’s that they are a bedrock of empathetic support, not bullheadedly telling people what they ought to do, but helping them to explore their options and encouraging them to follow their hearts.

Protagonist parents will encourage their children to explore and grow, recognizing and appreciating the individuality of the people they bring into this world and help to raise.

Whatever You Are, Be a Good One

Protagonist parents take pride in nurturing and inspiring strong values, and they take care to ensure that the basis for these values comes from understanding, not blind obedience. Whatever their children need in order to learn and grow, Protagonist parents give the time and energy necessary to provide it. While in their weaker moments they may succumb to more manipulative behavior, Protagonists mostly rely on their charm and idealism to make sure their children take these lessons to heart.

Owing to their aversion to conflict, Protagonist parents strive to ensure that their homes provide a safe and conflict-free environment. While they can deliver criticism, it’s not Protagonists’ strong suit, and laying down the occasionally necessary discipline won’t come naturally. But, people with the Protagonist personality type have high standards for their children, encouraging them to be the best they can be, and when these confrontations do happen, they try to frame the lessons as archetypes, moral constants in life which they hope their children will embrace.

As their children enter adolescence, they begin to truly make their own decisions, sometimes contrary to what their parents want – while Protagonists will do their best to meet this with grace and humor, they can feel hurt, and even unloved, in the face of this rebellion. Protagonists are sensitive, and if their child goes so far as to launch into criticisms, they may become truly upset, digging in their heels and locking horns.

Luckily, these occasions will likely be rare. Protagonists’ intuition gives them a talent for understanding, and regardless of the heat of the moment, their children will move on, remembering the genuine warmth, care, love and encouragement they’ve always received from their Protagonist parents. They grow up feeling the lessons that have been woven into the fabric of their character, and recognize that they are the better for their parents’ efforts.

Career Paths

When it comes to finding a career, people with the Protagonist personality type cast their eyes towards anything that lets them do what they love most – helping other people! Lucky for them, people like being helped, and are even willing to pay for it, which means that Protagonists are rarely wanting for inspiration and opportunity in their search for meaningful work.

Don’t Worry When You Are Not Recognized, but Strive to Be Worthy of Recognition

Protagonists take a genuine interest in other people, approaching them with warm sociability and a helpful earnestness that rarely goes unnoticed. Altruistic careers like social and religious work, teaching, counseling, and advising of all sorts are popular avenues, giving people with the Protagonist personality type a chance to help others learn, grow, and become more independent. This attitude, alongside their social skills, emotional intelligence and tendency to be “that person who knows everybody”, can be adapted to quite a range of other careers as well, making Protagonists natural HR administrators, event coordinators, and politicians – anything that helps a community or organization to operate more smoothly.

To top it all off, Protagonists are able to express themselves both creatively and honestly, allowing them to approach positions as sales representatives and advertising consultants from a certain idealistic perspective, intuitively picking up on the needs and wants of their customers, and working to make them happier. However, Protagonists need to make sure they get to focus on people, not systems and spreadsheets, and they are unlikely to have the stomach for making the sort of decisions required in corporate governance positions – they will feel haunted, knowing that their decision cost someone their job, or that their product cost someone their life.

Having a preference for Intuitive (N) trait over its Observant (S) counterpart also means that careers demanding exceptional situational awareness, such as law enforcement, military service, and emergency response, will cause Protagonists to burn out quickly. While great at organizing willing parties and winning over skeptics, in dangerous situations Protagonists just won’t be able to maintain the sort of focus on their immediate physical surroundings that they inevitably demand of themselves hour after hour, day after day.

Always Bear in Mind That Your Own Resolution to Succeed Is More Important Than Any Other

It makes a great deal more sense for Protagonists to be the force keeping these vital services organized and running well, taking their long-term views, people skills and idealism, and using them to shape the situation on the ground, while more physical personality types manage the moment-to-moment crises. People with the Protagonist personality type are always up for a good challenge – and nothing thrills them quite like helping others. But while willing to train the necessary skills, Protagonists will always show an underlying preference for the sort of help that draws a positive long-term trend, that effects change that really sticks.

At the heart of it, Protagonists need to see how the story ends, to feel and experience the gratitude and appreciation of the people they’ve helped in order to be happy.

Careers operating behind enemy lines and arriving at the scene of the crime too late to help will simply weigh on Protagonists’ sensitive hearts and minds, especially if criticized despite their efforts. On the other hand, Protagonists are a driven, versatile group, and that same vision that pulls them towards administration and politics can help them focus through the stress of the moment, knowing that each second of effort contributes to something bigger than themselves.

Workplace Habits

People with the Protagonist personality type are intelligent, warm, idealistic, charismatic, creative, social... With this wind at their backs, Protagonists are able to thrive in many diverse roles, at any level of seniority. Moreover, they are simply likeable people, and this quality propels them to success wherever they have a chance to work with others.

Protagonist Subordinates

As subordinates, Protagonists will often underestimate themselves – nevertheless, they quickly make an impression on their managers. Quick learners and excellent multitaskers, people with the Protagonist personality type are able to take on multiple responsibilities with competence and good cheer. Protagonists are hardworking, reliable and eager to help – but this can all be a double-edged sword, as some managers will take advantage of Protagonists’ excellent quality of character by making too many requests and overburdening their Protagonist subordinates with extra work. Protagonists are conflict-averse and try to avoid unnecessary criticism, and in all likelihood will accept these extra tasks in an attempt to maintain a positive impression and frictionless environment.

Protagonist Colleagues

As colleagues, Protagonists’ desire to assist and cooperate is even more evident as they draw their coworkers into teams where everyone can feel comfortable expressing their opinions and suggestions, working together to develop win-win situations that get the job done. Protagonists’ tolerance, open-mindedness and easy sociability make it easy for them to relate to their colleagues, but also make it perhaps a little too easy for their colleagues to shift their problems onto Protagonists’ plates. People with the Protagonist personality type are sensitive to the needs of others, and their role as a social nexus means that problems inevitably find their way to Protagonists’ doorsteps, where colleagues will find a willing, if overburdened, associate.

Protagonist Managers

While perfectly capable as subordinates and colleagues, Protagonists’ true calling, where their capacity for insightful and inspiring communication and sensitivity to the needs of others really shows, is in managing teams. As managers, Protagonists combine their skill in recognizing individual motivations with their natural charisma to not only push their teams and projects forward, but to make their teams want to push forward. They may sometimes stoop to manipulation, the alternative often being a more direct confrontation, but Protagonists’ end goal is always to get done what they set out to do in a way that leaves everyone involved satisfied with their roles and the results they achieved together.

Conclusion

Few personality types are as inspiring and charismatic as Protagonists. Their idealism and vision allow Protagonists to overcome many challenging obstacles, more often than not brightening the lives of those around them. Protagonists’ imagination is invaluable in many areas, including their own personal growth.

Yet Protagonists can be easily tripped up in areas where idealism and altruism are more of a liability than an asset. Whether it is finding (or keeping) a partner, staying calm under pressure, reaching dazzling heights on the career ladder or making difficult decisions, Protagonists need to put in a conscious effort to develop their weaker traits and additional skills.

[shaonsim]

Thoughts on the writing of itv!!! What kinda show would you writeee

My friend. My hero. Thank you for sending this in. Thank you so much!! You gave me such a wonderful opportunity to blab about stuff.

THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️

The writing of ITV, you ask? Hang on my friend, this will be a WILD ride. A wild ride. This will be loong and wordy and a little incoherent, jumping from one point to another, but this will tell you a lot about how I feel about the writing of ITV.

And yes, this will read like a letter to the CVs because I am totally incapable of abiding the rules of grammar and I don't want to edit all this.

And I apologise for the out of context references that seeped in with time. Sorry, couldn't help it. I will gladly expand upon any of the references.

The main thing with writing (according to me, but I don't like repeating this disclaimer since by asking the question you already know that this will be my personal opinion, but still, for safety purposes)...The main thing with writing is that the core concept can be summed up in one single paragraph, and then you add words for emphasis.

You write in a thousand situations, in different styles, only for the message to hit home.

Look at our Epics.

Ramayana can be summed up as the Ram-Ravan conflict in a good Vs evil way. Lakshman is the devoted brother, Hanuman (ji) is an ardent devotee of Ram-Sita.

Mahabharata is basically another story of good Vs evil, where Duryodhan is the evil guy , Shakuni is an evil mastermind, 99 Kaurav brothers (+ Karna) the sidekicks, and the rest of the Kurus (+ Drona and Kripa ) as the silent voices of reason.

And almost every event emphasises these points. Because that's the story.

Look at Harry Potter. Three kids (young blood/new generation ) fighting against the big bad and pointing out and fixing the mistakes of the past along the way.

Look at Kalpurush (I read it during the quarantine and I am in love ❤ ) , where the main theme is that a mother worries whether the circumstances will lead to history repeating itself, whether a son will follow his father's footsteps, and whether she would be happy if he did turn out to be like that.

Technically, it is the same with shows.

Sasural Simar Ka began with the concept of the deep bond between the sisters, then moved on to supernatural forces interfering with the Bhardwaj family. The theme changed, but it didn't vanish.

Swaragini began as a show revolving around the sisters, and it stayed like that for forever, even when the plot went sideways and the sisters were pitted against each other.

Kumkum bhagya is a show where the leads battle kidnapping, murder attempts, misunderstandings etc and come out longing for each other and dreaming about happier times (the same was the theme of Pavitra Rishta too, if I remember correctly. But with less kidnapping.) And now the show has taken a leap with a love triangle between the kids (look, another similarity between kkb and pr. Go Ekta)!

KZK2 *cringe cringe* is all about AnuPre who love each other but don't end up with each other because of various reasons.

ITV has this thing down pat.

But it fails to come up with proper events to highlight their core concept and of course, they fail to choose an interesting theme for the show, but heyy, human mind and relationships is a gold mine for ideas. It is fascinating, and quite enjoyable, if it is done right. Am I biased because it is my favourite genre? Yes of course.

But the point stands.

Another important part of writing is that in order to come up with plot points that will reinforce your main idea, you need to come up with a cast of interesting characters, and develop their background to give you an ample opportunity to create the above mentioned plot points. The spectators, onlookers, the influencers need motivation - reasons for their actions.

Think about Karna. Think about Drupad-Drona. Think about Bhishma-Amba. Think about Jayadrath and his boon.

Sub-plots, side-plots. Parallel storylines.

For the most part, ITV fails in this department. The characters or stories they introduce are a) boring (either because we fail to understand their motivation or because they are diluted versions of the leads) or b) annoying because of their over enthusiastic and blind favouritism for the lead character they support.

^ Casting and acting also plays a major part in this (ugh Chandni ), but most of the time, it can be solved with focusing on the actor's strengths and weaknesses and changing the dialogues based on that. A writer can change things.

That's their job.

If your side characters are not interesting enough to deserve a story of their own, you aren't trying hard enough. That said, if you can't weave in their story in your main story, do not focus on the side plots. No one is interested in seeing your hodgepodge of TWO (or more) stories. It should all come together in the end, it should become one BIG story. Bring it all together!!

But do focus on the side plots, because there is only so much you can do with your leads, especially in the romance/family (whatever you call it) genre that occupies 90% of tellywood (and for good reason too!!)

A good plan is to create events with one of your main character and a group of characters (how small or big a group is for you to decide). If you force the audience to look at two/three supporting characters, no body will be happy.

Use your leads!!!!

Also, PLEASE use the show Vs tell method.

You want us to know that the male lead is adored by his sister? Show us. And by that, I meant scenes where we can see the bond they share, NOT dull monologues where the sister sings praises of her brother (a few monologues are fine though). You are an audio-visual medium.

ACT LIKE IT.

Monologues are for written things. Where we only have the words and our own imagination. Here, you have the tools to present us with the pictures, with the words they speak to each other.

Don't waste it.

In the same vein, do not repeat dialogues. Not word to word (don't repeat the same thing with different wording multiple times in a single episode or a week of episodes). Switch it up, and if you have to, have to repeat stuff, use an actor who has decent facial expressions and voice modulation. If the actor is stiff, robotic, then don't use that actor to parrot your lines. Seriously.

<< Not to hate on anyone in particular but Prerna's 'Anurag Anurag Anurag' is very annoying, for reasons that are better left unspoken >>

Hey, hey, you know what else is an integral part of writing? Research. Making a show on doctors? Police? Engineers? Lawyers? Chefs? Do your research. And if you want to take the short cut and go with the convenient business men/women trope, by all means, go for it. GO FOR IT. But show them working, and no, not because of tracks revolving around the business, but always. Running a business is a full time responsibility. Show that. I repeat, show that. Show that the character isn't home 24x7, show late night meetings, show files neatly stacked (or strewn about, your choice). Show the products or materials involved in the business. Show your characters being exhausted with the amount of work, show their involvement in their work. Or don't, if that suits the story and your character is neglectful, or if you have a proper reason to have them take some time off. Pay attention.

Time for a checklist.

Central theme? ✅

Side plots (+ characters)? ✅

Edit things because of the actors? ✅

Show Vs Tell? ✅

Research? ✅

How much DRAMA is too much drama? ❔❔

Now, this is a product of my curiosity (+ me posting the Fic Which Must Not Be Named), but I think this fits nicely with the rest of this answer. I wouldn't explain this in detail because the original post does a much better job (and I need validation, so go read that post) but to think, that ITV tells us stories of other people, and whether it is this very question, this doubt, that leads to the numerous kidnappings and accidents/fire/misunderstandings we see in 90% of the shows.

Okay, time to return to the checklist.

Oh. Oh! I forgot my favourite part.

The influences of the audience. Every writer has a story to tell. And while it is difficult to think that the ITV creatives know what they want to do with their story, I would give them the benefit of doubt. Besides, as a writer myself, I know that 80% of writing is having no clue as to where you want to take the story. ANYWAY, back to the topic at hand. I think, if everything was written and shot before telecast, we might get cohesive writing. As it is, the creatives put out some content, look at the reaction, and try to maintain the highs or fix the blunders, by hook or crook.

And the story suffers.

Complete revamping of tracks, characters behaving worse than pendulums, repeat of romantic scenes, bringing in new characters out of the blue - I believe, most of these things occur in a rush to fetch (or maintain) ratings.

Now, let's talk about copy-pasting tracks without bothering to look at the bigger picture. What works for one show, works only because it goes with the past and future events of the show. You can't grab xyz from show1 and throw it into show2, because S2 does not have the background of S1. It wouldn't work, because the characters are different, their motivation is different, their past is different, everything is different.

Also, can we talk about how two people of opposite genders can be friendly and helpful to each other without secretly pining for the other person? It doesn't always have to be romance, although it can be perceived as that, if you want a jealousy track. Character A and B both know there is no romantic feelings, but Character C is seeing green because heyy, DRAMA!!

((This is one thing that disastrous Bajlo tomar alor benu did right, in respect to Minu and Rudra))

Another important thing - people can (and should, if you want it to be realistic) be morally grey. There is a phase between liking someone or hating them or wishing them to be dead or actually killing them. Also, not everyone has access to criminals and goons. I REPEAT, not everyone has a criminal connection, or the mental capacity to actually execute the plan to the T.

Thinking of murder, planning murder and straight up plunging a knife in someone's chest are different things. Remember the difference.

USE THE DIFFERENCE.

And while you are on it, learn the difference between attraction, appreciation and love.

We might be attracted to a particular quality - a physical attribute, a skill, a specific philosophy etc. We might appreciate that quality in a fellow human being. And we might be attracted to and appreciate the person with those qualities, but that doesn't mean that we would love them.

In the ocean of unnecessary romance angles and third wheels, this core difference is often brushed away in a bid to gain trps. Please don't do that.

Another checklist.

Ratings changing the story? ✅

Copy pasting tracks ✅

The world is grey ✅

Less criminal activity ✅

Not everything is love ✅

Would you look at that! I covered so many things. Fear not, I still have a lot to say. Mwahaha.

Not going to go into detail about my opinions on in-laws on ITV, because that is already covered here, but let's talk about the actual family.

The parents, siblings, cousins, relatives. Again, I am going to repeat myself and tell them to use the show Vs tell method. And actually focus on the dynamics because although the equations will change after marriage (for the male lead, the female lead will be cut off from her family 80% of the time), these relationships set the foundation for your character. Their personality. Motivation.

If you are going with a character who is distant, then by all means, do so, but do NOT ignore the family. Show that the character doesn't care.

Show it. Don't gloss over it.

That said, limit your exploration of characters and back stories. There is no hard or fast rule, but if it feels like too much focus, then it is too much focus. Go follow your basic INSTINCTS.

Okay, now is the time to come to the business side of writing for ITV. Bringing in popular characters, giving them smart dialogues and promoting them to the High Heavens. Wonderful trick. But do it in a subtle way. We will gladly let you play us, but only until we realise that we have been played. Subtly manipulate things. Subtly.

And, talking about that, let's also talk about how consistency is really important. Dumping black (or white) paint on characters would not wash away past grievances. It wouldn't remove the impression we already have. So if you want to portray someone in a positive light, work up to that point. Same with negative portrayals. Ease us into the change in perspective.

((Bajaj track in KZK2 is the perfect example of how the writers totally FAILED to follow this rule))

Also, if you are writing comedy, please hire good actors. Comedy is incredibly difficult, and if the performance isn't up to the mark, then it falls flat. And bad comedy is very annoying.

Another thing. If you have a social message, as in if the central theme is a social issue, do NOT forget your theme. And do not shove it down our throats. Don't make it preachy. Strive for balance.

And here, let me remind you that you do need a central theme, that's a very important part of your story. So pick a theme. And stick to it.

Think of your story like a human body.

Skeleton is the theme. The concept.

Blood is the undercurrents, the 'vibe'.

Organs are the characters.

Veins and arteries are the relationships.

Flesh is your plot.

Skin is the sub plots and side plots.

AND TOGETHER, THEY MAKE A STORY.

TOGETHER, THEY MAKE A STORY.

See how I repeated myself for emphasis? That's what you have to do, in a more subdued and complex way. I know you have it in you.

And because I wrote so much about adding sub plots and side characters, let's talk about what you shouldn't do, with me quoting myself:

Even CID, a show I loved to watch because it was a crime drama but less gruesome than what you would expect, could not escape tellywood’s clutches and turned into a chaotic mess with too many new characters and a massive shift in focus - in its last days, it was more of a romantic drama with the crime sprinkled in, and because there were so many new characters (who were boring 70% of time and annoying for the other 30%), I had ZERO interest in the series. The crimes have always been similar, what kept me hooked was the way they dealt with it and their group dynamics, which was ruined by bringing in a hoard of characters who contributed nothing to the story. And the Shreya-Daya track was a bad one from its conception, there was no need to drag it until my mild indifference turned into a major annoyance. And they could have avoided all of this. There was no need to ruin a perfectly good show with lazy, uncreative writing.

^ Bolded are the parts I consider important.

Also, let me take this opportunity to talk about shows similar to CID, in which every episode deals with a mini-plot and it is only the characters that remain the same. Crime dramas, medical dramas (although one the most popular ones on ITV - DMG was less about medicine and more about Jerk!Armaan and his jerk-ness and got rid of this problem in an innovative way that deserves an essay of its own, but I digress).

If the only thing remaining constant is your characters and their group dynamics, then do NOT throw in twenty new characters at once. Introduce them one at a time and limit the number of characters you will use. Keep the same cast for a decent chunk of time. Please. And do not add in multiple sub plots. The storyline is already a little blurry, jumping from case to case, so too much drama between the characters can be either too much to handle or just very, very boring. The focus is on the cases. Keep it there.

A show that did it quite well, was Goyenda Ginni, what with the overarching plot of a homemaker balancing housework and her passion for solving crimes. And because it was always about a family, with limited characters (bringing in spouses for the unmarried characters), it wasn't crowded.

Before I forget, here are some of my common issues with ITV and their writing department ⬇️

EK and her love for the child!track

Portrayal of marriage and relationship

^ And I must add that the Fic Which Must Not Be Named came into being because I couldn't accept the marriage trope for the two characters from the show that has become my latest obsession, even if the trope is shown in a negative light and the people in it are called out and they realise how wrong they are. #shaonHatesDealMarriages

The year 2020 and tellywood marriages

For the most part the last two links say the same things, but the wording and examples and the object of focus is different (this is how you hammer it home, CVs, write long posts on the same thing until the world learns about your hatred for said things. You're welcome 😎)

Also, something I remembered while writing the little note about forced marriages - acknowledge the wrongdoings of your characters, EVEN if they are the leads and you want people to love them. Glossing over the misdeeds wouldn't help, but accepting the truth, pointing out the flaws and then adding the reasoning behind the actions, and later on, writing in the realisation and apology for the act, is a much, much better idea. It is easier to forgive someone if their misdemeanor isn't shoved under the rug. But don't go overboard with the accusations. Repeating the truth multiple times only serves to annoy us.

Have I covered everything? I don't know. Feel free to ask me specific things in case you think I didn't comment on something. It is easy for me to forget about things while writing an answer as long as this. Not to mention, that I framed the first two-three paragraphs in my head while I stood under the shower, so in the rush to jot down everything I had thought of, I might have missed some stuff. Happens to the best of us, eh?

Coming to the second part of your question, I must admit, I am not the best at coming up with original premises. I like to dwell on the thoughts of the individual, delve deeper into their minds and do stuff - as evident in my love for the romance/drama genre, and why I love that ITV has so many shows in this genre. Why my writing (the drabbles I wrote last week), is more about the people than the plot. That's just who I am.

That said, I think I would do good with a team. Together, we can write a lot of things. ((Someone agree to do a collaborative fun writing project right now, I love those. We can make full use of all this free time and write a story of our own)).

No, seriously.

I love writing as a team.

[fayewonglibrary]

iLOOK Interview (2000)

Reporter:  Among your various styles in the past, which one do you like best?

Faye Wong: In my opinion, the so-called styling refers to various makeup, clothing, and hairstyles. In general, whether I designed it myself or had a stylist do it, it actually shows my temperament and feelings, so I think I like them all.

Reporter:  What do you think of famous brands? What are your favorite brands?

Faye Wong: The reason why a brand becomes famous is because it must have some advantages of its own. Whether it is tailoring, the texture of the material, or patterns, it has its own characteristics. I think that as long as you can afford it, there is nothing wrong with wearing famous brands. The main thing is whether you can wear them while displaying your own taste. Of course, you don't have to wear famous brands in order to display your own taste. My favorite brands are not necessarily famous and they change frequently. Recently, I prefer some newer designer stuff, especially the works of some European designers.

Reporter:  Who are the most fashionable women and men in your eyes?

Faye Wong: I actually don’t study men, I don’t pay much attention to them. Fashionable women can be considered as some models, such as Kate Moss and Stella Tennant. Sometimes when reading magazines, I prefer to look at their outfits off the runway. I think it is more interesting.

Reporter:  What colors do you like?

Faye Wong: My favorite color is not fixed. Likes come in phases. No color is disliked. I like all colors, but it depends on my mood and phase.

Reporter:  Can you comment on the characteristics of women’s fashion in Beijing, Hong Kong and Paris?

Faye Wong: I find this difficult to compare. Girls in Beijing feel more mature and gorgeous in their clothes, and they look like dames. Hong Kong people are more able to keep up with trends and want to dress themselves as young as possible. They can't accept a little mature feeling. They like to be young. When I was in Paris, I saw women on the street and they were not dressed as flamboyant as you might imagine, or as flamboyant as you see on the runway. The clothes they wear are very low-key and they use some of their own unique accessories. It does not give a particularly trendy feeling, but they have their own style.

Reporter: There were some very sexy looks in your fashion shoot for Louis Vuitton's spring collection. What do you think of this? Do you think that a sexy woman is more like a woman?

Faye Wong: What is “more like a woman”? She is already a woman. I think sexy is a kind of temperament. Every woman is sexy, but sexy at different times. I think when a woman feels sexy, it means people want to get close to her, no matter if it is a man or a woman. Sexy in the eyes of a woman can be different than a man. Sexy is a kind of temperament and has nothing to do with the clothes.

Reporter: So when do you think women are the sexiest?

Faye Wong: I think women can be the sexiest when they are loved.

Reporter: Do you have your own idol? Who is the person who has the greatest influence on you in your life?

Faye Wong: My idol is Teresa Teng. I think her influence on me, of course, in music is the biggest. When I was very young and listened to her songs, I really wanted to know who she was. But it was hard to hear about her in Beijing at that time, and even for a long time I didn't even know what she looked like. But from her singing, I felt something very gentle. And I feel that she is a very upright person. Of course this is just the feeling I get from her voice, I don't know her very well.

Reporter:  Can you talk about your daughter? What do you think is your biggest change after becoming a mother?

Faye Wong: My daughter is very good, very smart, very sensitive, and very well-behaved. I don't think I have changed much. I mean my personality and outlook on life. 

Reporter: The latest album "Fable" has been well received. The interesting thing is that mainland critics seem to prefer songs "Made in Beijing" (that is, the production of Beijing musicians), while Hong Kong and Taiwan critics have praised the production of their musicians. Could you tell me if this was pre-planned?

Faye Wong: Actually, some albums before "Fable" already had this kind of production method. That is to say, there were mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan producers in my records. In fact, I think it can be said that it is not deliberate, because such an arrangement still has commercial considerations. In each of my albums, there will be some things that I like very much, and some things that I don't like very much, but we have to consider the market.

Reporter: Which album of yours do you like best? Will your music path change in the future?

Faye Wong: My favorite album so far is "Fuzao" from 1996. Because it is an album with a more cohesive overall feeling. The entire album was produced in Beijing, with a relatively uniform style. In my future music path, I think changes should be inevitable. Each stage will reflect the mood of that particular time, and I will have different requirements for myself, so there will definitely be changes. But what it will become, I don’t know. Because now it's all about going with the flow.

------------------------------------------------------------------  

SOURCE: ILOOK // TRANSLATED BY: FAYE WONG FUZAO

[acoolchickouthere13]

November 2019 Taylor hosts friendsgiving

November 24, 2019 Artists of the Decade AMAs

“In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. ‘This is a year where I have to be there for my family -- there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,’ says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis. ...New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise -- but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,’ she says, ‘but it’s because someone has to be.’...I’ve spent a lot of time recalibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do….I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue -- like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again….From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas.

The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else. ...I do think about [starting a label or signing other artists] every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous….Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it. [i dont know how long the recording process will take, but] it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.”(x)

Christmas Tree Farm Dec. 1, 2019(p: Jimmy Napes) here

“Icy and blue”

Dec. 4, 2019

Dec. 4, 2019 karlie sells her west village apt. here...meanwhile reports say Taylor “spends a lot of time in London with Joe and doesn’t go out much” and it’s hilarious

I don’t know when The Man was shot yet, but I just put it here

Dec. 13, 2019=30 years old, Billboard Woman of the Decade here

Dec. 16, 2019 jack tweets “hi from the studio”...Taylor goes to Cats premiere in London with Joe

Dec. 18, 2019

(Wears the same shirt March 4, 2019)

Reports say Taylor was in London with Joe the week of Christmas, and family flew in from Nashville BUT WHAT I FIND INTERESTING IS JACK’s TWEET THE NEXT DAY SEEMS CRYPTIC GIVEN THIS CONTEXT WETHER ITS TRUE OR NOT lol

December 27, 2019 jack tweets “ok. back to the studio now. goodmorning to my upstairs neighbors!”

January 1, 2020 Taylor goes to concert in Maldives with Joe

January 5, 2020

“Her experience with the trial was crucial, she says, in finding herself “needing to speak up about beliefs I’d always had, because it felt like an opportunity to shed light on what those trials are like. I experienced it as a person with extreme privilege, so I can only imagine what it’s like when you don’t have that. And I think one theme that ended up emerging in the film is what happens when you are not just a people pleaser but someone who’s always been respectful of authority figures, doing what you were supposed to do, being polite at all costs. I still think it’s important to be polite, but not at all costs,” she says. “Not when you’re being pushed beyond your limits, and not when people are walking all over you. I needed to get to a point where I was ready, able and willing to call out bulls— rather than just smiling my way through it.”...[Regarding the speech at the Woman of the Decade BBA]: “Well, I do sleep well at night knowing that I’m right,” she responds, “and knowing that in 10 years it will have been a good thing that I spoke about artists’ rights to their art, and that we bring up conversations like: Should record deals maybe be for a shorter term, or how are we really helping artists if we’re not giving them the first right of refusal to purchase their work if they want to?” “Obviously, anytime you’re standing up against or for anything, you’re never going to receive unanimous praise. But that’s what forces you to be brave. And that’s what’s different about the way I live my life now.” (Braun’s camp could not be reached for comment.)...Whereas typically she’d spend nine months in the year after an album release on the road, she plans to limit herself to four stadium dates in America this summer and a trip around the festival circuit in Europe. This may not be 100% for personal reasons: “I wanted to be able to perform in places that I hadn’t performed in as much, and to do things I hadn’t done before, like Glastonbury,” she says. “I feel like I haven’t done festivals, really, since early in my career — they’re fun and bring people together in a really cool way. But I also wanted to be able to work as much as I can handle right now, with everything that’s going on at home. And I wanted to figure out a way that I could do both those things.”

Is being able to be there for her mother the main concern? “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the reason,” she says. “I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know what treatment we’re going to choose. It just was the decision to make at the time, for right now, for what’s going on. Everyone loves their mom; everyone’s got an important mom,” she allows. “But for me, she’s really the guiding force. Almost every decision I make, I talk to her about it first. So obviously it was a really big deal to ever speak about her illness.” During filming, when Andrea’s cancer had returned for a second time, “she was going through chemo, and that’s a hard enough thing for a person to go through.” Then it got harder. Speaking about this latest development publicly for the first time, Swift quietly reveals: “While she was going through treatment, they found a brain tumor. And the symptoms of what a person goes through when they have a brain tumor is nothing like what we’ve ever been through with her cancer before. So it’s just been a really hard time for us as a family….I chose Netflix because it’s a very vast, accessible medium to people who are just like, ‘Hey, what’s this? I’m bored.’ I love that, because I do so many things that cater specifically to fans that like my music, I think it’s important to put yourself out there to people who don’t care at all about you.”...I don’t think I’ve ever written this much. That’s exhibited in ‘Lover’ having the most songs that I’ve ever had on an album” (18, to be exact). “But even after I made the album, I kept writing and going in the studio. That’s a new thing I’ve experienced this time around. That openness kind of feels like you finally got the lid off a jar you’ve been working at for years. ...you become a brand. That’s inevitable for me, but I do think that it’s really necessary to feel like I can still communicate with people. And as a songwriter, it’s really important to still feel human and process things in a human way. The through line of all that is humanity, and reaching out and talking to people and having them see things that aren’t cute. There’s a lot that’s not cute in this documentary.”(x)

January 5, 2020 Taylor goes to Golden Globes with Joe

January 27, 2020

February 6, 2020-LA

February 12, 2020 Taylor goes to NME awards in London with Joe

February 23, 2020 Joe’s birthday-double date in London at restaurant

February 24-28, 2020

March 3, 2020

[rosequartz-queen]

   Notes on Pink/Rose that we know of:

The youngest of the Diamonds. (White seems to be oldest, potential for Yellow-Blue to be same age (if not one slightly older than the other; I’d pick Yellow for oldest over Blue), then Pink.

It’s hinted at by Blue Diamond in Change Your Mind- while Steven has a dream-flashback of Pink in the tower- that Pink Diamonds antics were making White upset, threatening to take away her Pearl if they kept up.

(So “White” Pearl- aka Pink Pearl- was taken away for this reason? Replaced by this other Pearl- our Pearl- to keep her more in line, perhaps?)

Noteworthy that Pink has ALWAYS cared too much; she saved some animals/creatures from a planet either Blue or Yellow had as a colony. Saved them from death, but also set them loose during the Ball.

Edit: Just watched the flashback dream from Jungle Moon; I think those creatures were from the planet Yellow was conquering in that flashback?!? Geezums, Rebecca Sugar...

Also, Pink was locked away in a tower for her mischief on Homeworld, often subjected to Blue’s powers unintentionally as part of her “crimes.”

Spinel was gifted to her somewhere before Pink Pearl was taken away; Pink Diamond seems to have learned juggling from Spinel and shows off to her Pearl what she learned.

Also, Pink abandoned Spinel around the same time she was gifted her colony, Earth. (Apparently a crisp 6,000 years before the start of the show...if a little less, if we assume it’s a perfect six thousand by the time of the movie.)

Likely done as an attempt on Pink’s part to run away from her problems AND let go of “childish” things in one fell swoop. (Not accounting for how Spinel would feel about this, since it was likely PD assumed nothing of what could happen to her until far later, if at all. Also, we ALL know by now she’s horrible with figuring out emotions that other people deal with; other people’s emotional problems are a mystery to her on a deeper level.)

PD obtains Earth and Pearl, likely as help to get work done. (Could this mean Pink went without a Pearl for a few hundred/thousand years? It’s possible, since it’d be like taking a toy away from a troublesome, disobedient child... Except that “toy” is a living being all their own. The Diamonds are fucked up.)

However... Colonies are actually SUPER boring. Pink realizes this too late, as well as the fact she’s not allowed to make friends with her new, growing court. (Blue and Yellow are looking over her shoulder a LOT; where’s White??)

Cue Pearl helping Pink realize the freedom she could have by disguising herself as a Rose Quartz to hang with the Amethysts. Whoops Number 1.

Rose- in this way- learns about the beauty of Earth. Because her sympathetic butt doesn’t want to hurt the Earth anymore, this starts up a new phase: Pink doesn’t want to continue the colony nor the plans for it. However, Blue nor Yellow won’t have her backing out now.

It’s shown Blue COMPLETELY shuts her down. (Can’t Go Back) Yellow isn’t even looking at Pink... Very likely was yelling at her/getting into a screaming match over the colony. (Yellow very much has a temperament; we’ve seen this before.)

“...too many organics...cities too hard to dismantle...” Sounds like Pink’s been thinking of every excuse in the book to save this planet.

Blue even gave her the idea. If Pink isn’t there to rule...guess it’s nobody’s planet then, is it?

Bismuth likely came up with the Breaking Point around this time, wanting to shatter the Diamonds. Rose, who didn’t want internal fighting nor to be LITERALLY SHATTERED, could only find one solution: attack Bismuth when she argued her literal point, then bubble her, hiding her gem away in Lion’s mane.

(Lion existed around this time, too?!? Rose, what the he-)

Cue the eventual “shattering” of Pink Diamond. (A Single Pale Rose) This allows her to be Rose Quartz full time; no more Pink Diamond.

This registers with her gem as a new form, as well. (Can be seen in Change Your Mind.) However, doesn’t stop her gem from being a full Pink Diamond... Thus, the poofing problem. (And why Pearl got so sacrificial over Rose during this time.)

Cue the Corruption Song. This marks the “end” of the war, but no side wins. Rose and the remaining CGs are stuck on Earth with no way back. Their forces- Homeworld and CG alike- corrupted with no cure. The Diamonds mourning the “death” of Pink Diamond.

It’s unknown if Rose realized what she meant to the Diamonds after this. Either way, it didn’t matter; she couldn’t confess anything, anyways. She wouldn’t want to, either.

Rose gets a shitton of boyfriends and girlfriends and datemates. She seems to love Pearl- on occasion- but also doesn’t take anything seriously, leaving her pining Pearl on the sidelines while she has short-lived (literally) relationships left and right. For thousands of years.

Some time during (or before?) this, the Temple is founded. (Definitely wasn’t during the war, but also in time for Amethyst to have fused with everyone, creating Obsidian, who is the Temple Fusion. Also was before the first Dewey landed in Beach City.)

I also personally HC that Rose’s Fountain was the main hub of Crystal Gem activity during the war. It’d certainly make healing cracked gems easier, if Rose wasn’t around to personally do so.

Greg eventually shows up and turns everything on its head.

Originally treated like all the other humans- a toy-like or pet-like commodity to play with and not take seriously- it’s him pushing her to become...human. To realize what it means to REALLY love and care about someone...and that means equivalent exchange. Give back what you’re given.

This very likely blossoms into a relationship where Greg does a lot of teaching for Rose, helping her be more mindful and kind... However, considering her background at the hand of the Diamonds, it’s incredibly likely she still slipped up and said some insensitive things, on occasion.

Greg confirms to Steven that Rose tried to tell him everything at a later date. (Steven’s Dream) Greg potentially knew Rose had been Pink Diamond? Though it sounds like he either stopped her before she admitted it or heard as much as she wanted to say, stopped her from rambling, and then- more or less- forgot about it. (Judging by how he responds to Steven, however, I’d say she told him, he knows, but he still doesn’t care.)

Meeting baby Sourcream influences Rose to want a child of her own. Immature when meeting the little guy, but now determined and excited to make new life with someone she loves.

Rose is many, thoughtless things, but I still strongly believe in Lion 3: Straight to Video and Storm in the Room; Rose was far more invested in a child who was half her, half Greg....all new. There was no intentions to run from old problems with Steven/Nora, nor have her child have to DEAL with those problems.

She sincerely believed the problems were over with. The Diamonds would never come back to Earth. The war was over, Earth safe. The Crystal Gems weren’t needed, including her...and Spinel was likely forgotten due to everything that had happened.

Her last act of “cruelty” would be to leave the remaining Crystal Gems behind, but it’s also a little unfair to put the blame on Rose. In trying to set everyone free, she accidentally put herself BACK in the role of the idolized leader. Something she’d been trying to run from as PD. Pearl had never gotten past her programming, Garnet was inspired by Rose, and Amethyst...saw Greg as her best friend and Rose as a mom-figure. (So she lost someone that was her world, and blamed him for it due to some emotional immaturity on her part. Not that I can blame her, either...)

Garnet can’t stop this, but can’t ask questions due to an accidental Diamond Command Rose issued. Pearl can do nothing but panic and cry and lash out in blind anger. Amethyst...very likely did her best to face facts and be excited, but the realization she’d be losing Rose hit her just as hard as the rest.

That’s BEFORE mentioning Greg... Poor guy met the love of his life and he has to watch her belly grow, knowing in nine months, he’ll have lost his love, gained a child, and have forever three other gems hovering over and around him. Judging him for a decision Rose made.

(I love Rose/Pink so much, but considering how codependent so many of her friends/followers were, I have to admit... It’s true. She is better off “dead” as she is... Nobody would have reached their full growth if she was still alive. Nothing short of her running away again would’ve changed them and- without meaning to- she kinda did just that by having Steven. She NEEDED to leave for them to find themselves and Steven to show them what they really need.)

(...But also, FUCK, give my son a break?!? JFC, he’s NOT YOUR THERAPIST...!!! #Let Steven Take a Long Nap 2k19 and 2k20.)

On a sidenote from the timeline: Love Like You is from Rose’s POV. It’s been said before, but I need to say it again.

“I always thought I might be bad, now I’m sure that it’s true, cause I think you’re so good, and I’m nothing like you.” ( @ Greg)

“Look at you go; I just adore you, I wish that I knew... What makes you think I’m so special.” (I can see this still being aimed at Greg, but I also imagine Steven a lot with this line; Steven also very much idolized Rose and I feel like she wouldn’t understand why her son would feel like he couldn’t match up or was so great. I truly feel that- later in life- Rose realized her flaws and is rightfully ashamed of them.)

“If I could begin to do something that does right by you, I could do anything, I could even learn how to love like you.” (More things at Greg. He was her biggest motivation...)

Also, this would make an interesting contrast to how Greg viewed Rose in the early years. RE: Destiny and Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart.