natalie portman couldn’t do the “queen padme” voice in real life. they had to digitally lower it. if it was that difficult for a professional actress to change her voice suddenly i have to imagine it was infinitely more difficult for 14yo padme, being put in front of the entire senate for the first time, trying in vain to get people to care that her people were dying, to keep her voice that low, keep it steady and not quiver or stutter..
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there's so many things in tsc that just come at you all at once, so it's hard to focus on just one thing to break down, but the most glaring thing that stood out to me is how hard it is to really put someone back together. especially someone so shattered that it's nigh impossible to glue them back and pray they don't crumble under your ministrations.
if jean is neil's foil, then jeremy is andrew's direct antithesis. whereas andrew is a steady bedrock because he's been broken too many times to know how to weather the storm, jeremy is too soft hands and an even softer soul. he cares and cares and cares. so empathetic and so gentle it almost breaks your heart. you pray for the impossibility that jeremy can survive knowing the truth because if he doesn't, then what hope does jean have? so you pray he can be steady too. that he can weather the storm as well. that he will not break when knowing that just under the surface lies shark-infested waters.
but then you remember the beginning. "even knowing everything could go completely sideways, you'd make that choice every time"
in every other universe, jean has not survived. but in every other universe, he did not have the trojans.
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Ya'll want to know the funniest shit?
I'm researching the era when Alastor was alive right now to get a better idea of both his character, the life he lived before Hell, and to hash out a backstory for him.
And so, apparently, Alastor lived through the Prohibition (which was basically the United States government illegalizing the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol because they thought it was the cause of a lot of domestic violence and child abandonment).
Alastor canonically died in 1933.
Do you know how long the Prohibition lasted?
From 1920-1933.
ALASTOR LITERALLY DIED THE SAME YEAR ALCOHOL BECAME LEGAL AGAIN. CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW BITTER HE MUST'VE BEEN?
The Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933, and now my headcanon is that Alastor died December 6, 1933. Literally the day after he could legally drink all the booze he wanted.
I am learning a LOT about New Orleans and the era Alastor lived through (including the gay community in the city at the time) which has been a lot of fun, and I just wanted to share that tidbit because it is so fucking funny to me.
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the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.
three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.
two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.
their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.
one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.
i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.
i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.
and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?
you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.
a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.
someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.
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Why is the show acting like the smallfolk don't have a single brain cell among them? Aemond even brings up in the episode that the reason everyone is starving is because of Rhaenyra's blockade. While yes, I can obviously see the smallfolk becoming upset with the castle for not taking care of them, they should be feeling just as much if not more resentment for Rhaenyra. Her sending across food should have been an insult, especially because the way she distributed it caused a riot and forced people to literally fight each other for scraps. The implication is that she has more than enough food for her to be able to send it to King's Landing in mass quantities like that. And why is that? Bc she CONTROLS the BLOCKADE. SHE is the one starving them. Which I completely understand the people's frustrations growing with the Greens especially with Aemond locking them in and being a harsher ruler than Aegon, but they should also be just as angry towards Rhaenyra. Just because they're not nobility doesn't make them stupid.
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Idk if this is just me, but does it seem like the Hunger Games movies left out most of the stuff about food in general?
Maybe I just noticed this because in my first read I was worried that all of them were cannibals, but like… in the movies it seems like they were never actually that hungry. Like, we know that Katniss and Gale have to hunt, and that Peeta gave Katniss the bread, but a lot of the details about just how hungry they were to get to those choices were just… gone. And when they’re in the Capitol on the Victory Tour, they mention the vomit-inducer but it was more of an offhand thing. What got me especially though is that in Mockingjay Pt. 2, their time with Tigris appears to be much shorter, but also… she doesn’t feed them! And from what I remember that was fairly significant in the books, especially considering the position they were in.
In the books, hunger was the driving force of the vast majority of decisions they made. Katniss literally spent a good chunk of her first games desperately searching for water—Haymitch rewarded their performances with food—Katniss described every single thing she eats and primarily characterizes new places based on their food (the Capitol and District 13 especially). TBOSAS supports this even further when you see how even people in the Capitol were starving in the aftermath of the war—that’s why sponsors were added to the game!
I just—the whole series is literally about starvation and what it means to be human, but the movies just focused on love and war.
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