#stella watches the interview on repeat when she feels sad

[redhairedgirl95]

Loved the last chapter! I'd love to know more content about the interview questions that weren't posted!

THANK U ANON! Here's what happened right after the interview <3

Words of love

sometime during season 3, after Radius is cursed

linked to Birthday surprise(s) - Chapter 8 of All that glitters is not gold

Two young people, walking hand-in-hand through luxurious gardens, with sunflowers blooming all around them. He stopped and moved to stand in front of her. He was tall, taller than her, especially with that heavy golden crown on his head.

She zoomed the video and saw a little smile on the girl’s lips. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her smile like that. Not at him.

The King took the Queen’s hands and kissed them reverently, then she said something. Something funny, because he started laughing.

His laugh was never subtle. The whole castle heard it whenever he roared in happiness, though she couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed like that in her presence.

The video continued with the interview. She knew every word by heart, she could recite them and never miss a word, or a pause, or a chuckle. She had seen it time and again. Especially in the last few years. Whenever she felt the need to revisit a feeling, to remind herself that once joy exceeded pain in her family, she turned to that specific video. Particularly to the parts that shouldn’t have aired. To the unauthorized footage. The scenes from before and after the interview, when the King and Queen were alone, and themselves.

Don’t go.

You know I have to.

You don’t have to.

A conversation she had heard hundreds of times: her asking him not to go, begging him to stay; him insisting he had to.

Luna … I’ll be back before you know it.

That’s a lie.

She couldn’t hear their words. Nobody could, yet she did hear them. In her heart. In the memory of countless other occasions like that one.

I’ll come back to you. To you both.

The King knelt. He wasn’t wearing his crown anymore. Nor was the Queen. He knelt in front of her, circled her waist with his strong arms, and kissed his wife’s small bump, before resting his head on her belly. Her pale hands stroked his hair. White on red. Like a solitary cloud in a summer sunset.

“We love you.”

“I love you, moonlight. Always.”

Those two sentences broke her, like they always did. She stopped the video and looked at them, at her parents: together, younger, happier, unaware of what the future would bring, of how unkind it would be to them, to their little family.

She cherished that video, everyday she thanked the snoopy camera crew for disobeying her father’s orders and recording that private moment, forever engraved in her aching heart.

Her parents loved each other once. Arranged marriage or not, they had come to love one another. She had come from an act of love. In nights like that, when depression struck and her own feelings threatened to tear her heart apart, when she couldn’t find comfort in loving arms, she looked for it in those images. And she always found it.

There was love between her mom and dad. There had been, at least. Though now they couldn’t so much as greet one another without it ending into a fight, Stella knew she would always have the memories: hers, flashes of her playing with them on the beach; theirs, from their own stories; old articles, photos, videos, and that interview especially. Because she never had to imagine how the conversation had ended, because that last exchange had been recorded as it was. Filled with words of love.

[kookiestiddies]

Welcome to the 70′s -Tom Holland

“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain” Benedict Cumberbatch repeats in the movie playing on TV. 

“He will outlive God trying to have the last word ” you mutter under your breath as you shove another spoonfull of cookie dough ice cream into your mouth. As an investigative journalist for one of the most controversial yet popular newspapers out there, you had expected your adult life to turn out a lot more interesting than it was. But alas, the sad truth was that the most cotroversial thing you would have ever come to write was an article on how apparently British people drink more Starbucks than the Americans ever will and that your Friday nights are never going to get any more interesting than a tub of ice cream and a MCU film.

Suddenly, the Avengers theme start playing from under the pile of interview notes on your coffee table indicating that someone was calling you. You hurriedly scramble around the thick blanket that’s covering you and over the sleeping dog at your feet to get it. Without glancing at the screen you answer the call to the schrill voice that belongs to your ever ecstatic friend, Stella. “Y/NNNNNN” she screams down the phone. “WOOOOOOT” you scream back at her. 

“I found a freaking disco, yeah that’s right, a DISCO, downtown and it’s freaking playing soNGS from the freaKING 70′s ARGGHHH can you please get your ass down here I think they’re gonna start playing Queen anytime soon” she whines to you. You don’t think at all, you just spring into action. “Send me the address. I’ll be there in 10 and when I’m there i’ll holla at you so you know I’m there. Don’t do anything remotely fun until I’m there or I swear to God-” 

“Okay I get your point, hurry” she says and hangs up.

You absolutely love 70′s and 80′s music. Songs these days are just an absolute tragedy with the whole autotune, EDM stuff. The best part about old songs is how when they come on, everyone feels like dancing and just want to have a good time. There’s no strange robotic dance routine to follow and no challenges to complete. There’s just fun. And there is no way you’re going to miss out on that kinda of fun. You know, Fun with classic Rock Band Sprinkles. 

*time skip*

 “dum dum dum dum anoTHER ONE BITES THE DUST *clap*, anD ANOTHER ONE DOES AND ANOTHER DOES ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST YEAH” the entire crowd sings the last few words. 

From across the disco somoene screams out “MR. STARK, I DONT WANT TO GO!” so you scream back at the person “TOO SOON BRO!”.  

You arrived at the disco about an hour ago and as promised you holla-d at Stella who found you very quickly. She was by your side the whole night but then around the time Bohemian Rhapsody started playing, she was nowhere in sight and a text from her said that she was busy with a hook up. It was always like this. Stella always called you out for what promised to be a wild night but halfway through she would mysteriously wander off with a man and you would be left on your own. 

Just as Boogie Winderland started playing, someone bumps into you causing you to almost spill your drink. Unfazed, you just sighed and started swaying to the rhythm of the classic song that the band was playing. However the person who bumped into you immediately turned around to apologize and with a shock, you realize who it is. Not at all tall compared to most men around his age, with slightly curling brown hair and big brown eyes stood a boy in front of you. It’s him! It’s freaking Spoilerman! He’s standing there apologizing for mistakenly bumping in to you and you’re too busy mentally fangirling to say anything in response. 

Instead of replying with something normal like “Oh, no worries” or “It’s okay, there are no mistakes there are only happy accidents”,  you start belting out the lyrics in time to the song that was playing in the background.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry, I almost made you spill your drink on your pretty dress. Forgive me for I have siNneD.” he rambled.

“Midnight creeps so slowly into hearts of men who need more than they get..” you sing your eyes wide, face ridden of any emotion.

“Sorry sorry sor- what?”

“Daylight deals a bad hand to a woman who has laid too many bets..” you keep singing, this time you motion for him to continue.

“The mirror stares you in the face and says"Baby, uh, uh, it don't work"..???” he starts singing with a questionig look at you. But you notice that he’s also started swaying to the music.

You smile and nod and this time you scream out the words and he joins in with you “You say your prayers though you don't care, You dance and shake the hurt, Dance, Boogie wonderland, Ha, ha, dance, Boogie wonderland!”

“Hi, I’m Y/N” you introduce yourself over the loud music. “Hello Y/N, i’m Tom” he replies with a strongly pronounced English accent. 

“Hi Tom” you say breathlessly with a grin. “Hi Y/N” he says back you with a grin of his own. 

“Y/N, do you mind me dancing here with you?” he asks. God bless that boy. “Of course not.” 

“Thanks, I had to ask for consent because drunk consent is not the right consent” he says. 

You let out a bark of laughter. 

“What even?!? Firstly, i’m not drunk...yet. And secondly, you don’t have to ask for anybody’s permission to dance if you feel like it.” you say. 

“Okay,but I feel the need to ask for YOUR permission to dance with YOU” he says with a lazy smile and have to look away to stop him from seeing the smile that’s growing on your face. 

“Huh”.

For the rest of the night, Tom stays by your side, singing and dancing without a care in the world. Song after song, band after band, you don’t stop having fun. At one point Mamma Mia starts playing and you scream for joy because that song is your shit. Tom gives you a weird look but starts singing the song with you despite your manic behaviour. 

“Mamma mia, here I go again, My my, how can I resist you?”

“Yes, however can I resist your constantly screaming state?” Tom mocks you.

“Say what you want, all the other boys want me. I’ve got the right milkshake for it” you say with a purposely added duck face that you make at the end.

“Wow, can I get some milkshake please?” he says and realizing his mistake, his eyes go wide and his face turns red. 

“Yikes Tom, don’t you think that was kinda fast” you say. It was your turn to make fun of him. 

“Oh God no, no, no, NOOOO. I beg of you, forget I ever said anything, oh my God why do I always do this.”

You start laughing uncontrollably. Tom looks at you pleadingly. “Stop laughing at me, it’s a tragedy that I was born so undeniably awkward. The Roman gods in togas are looking down at the entirety of humanity in dissapointment beacause of my innability to talk to girls” 

You roar with laughter even harder because of all the stupid things he’s saying. “What the hell!!! Tom, I promise you, the entirety of humanity and all the Roman gods in togas see you as a national treasure. Watch out cause Nicolas Cage is out to protect you.” you say and this causes Tom to start laughing. 

The rest of the crowd stops to stare at you and Tom clutching your stomachs, histeriacally laughing at who-knows-what. 

To be continued....

A/N

Hey guys, so this is my EVER fic and i’m honestly so nervous about this. At first I didn’t want to post any of my ideas, but then I thought, what’s the worst that could happen right? Right? Feedback is needed and appreciated ;3 Also, i’m going to post the second part to this depending on the feedback this receives so amen to that.

[peggyfromtheblockk]

Get to Know the Blogger

Hey! So, I’ve realized aside from a few comments here and there, I haven’t really talked on here at all! This sad thought made me realize it was time to share a lot of unnecessary stuff so maybe you can get a basic--detailed--idea of who I am. So here’s a bunch of word vomit and feel free to come talk to me, I promise I’m a lot nicer than a lot of my answers make me seem lol

Name: You can call me E.

Age: 20

Zodiac sign: Aries

Height: 5’7

Languages spoken: English but I do remember a few random words of Spanish

Nationality & Location: American and Michigan

Work: Currently working in the infant room at a daycare

Favorite fruit: Blueberries

Favorite scent: Lavender, vanilla, or apple

Favorite animal: I really love otters and llamas

Favorite fictional character: Dana Scully of course (though, I do have a soft spot for Stella Gibson)

Favorite candy: KitKat’s but currently I’ll devour almost any chocolate given to me

Favorite holiday: Christmas and Halloween. But probably Halloween more because I love the prep and the actual day, whereas I just really love the prep for Christmas

Favorite season: I really like autumn because my hometown and college towns are so beautiful but I love spring because I love everything coming back to life

Favorite Social Media? Twitter, but like, stan twitter

Favorite thing about where you live? I just love that I have some of my favorite people within literal minutes of me. It’s a really comforting feeling. And we have a fair every year which is gross but entertaining at the same time

Favorite swear word? Probably shit, but fuck and damn do escape quite often

What are you listening to:  As of right now When I Kissed The Teacher from MM2

What Books Are You Reading? I have three books I haven’t finished and haven’t touched in like two months. We, Beaches, and Yes Please

What Time Do You Usually Go To Bed? Around 1 in the morning usually

What Makes You Happy? A lot of things, though I don’t always realize that. I’m usually an “It’s the little things” person too. BUT to answer, Gillian and msr never fail to make me happy

What Are You Craving Right Now? I could smash a plate of spaghetti right now

What Is Your Gender? Female (she/her pronouns)

What Is Your Sexuality? Bisexual but I’m definitely like 85% women, 15% men

What’s The Next Movie You Want To See In Theaters? MAMMA MIA 2 IM SO EXCITED

What Eye Colour Do You Find Sexiest? I’m a sucker for blue eyes

What Do You Wear To Bed? A tee and shorts usually but if I’m in The Mood I’ll wear just a tee (Yes, That Mood)

What Sounds Are Your Favourite? I love the sound of a campfire and babies laughing or babbling literally melts my heart

What’s the first thing you notice about people? Usually, their eyes but I’m drawn to those with a bright genuine smile

What’s something that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Being With My People. They never fail to make me feel warm and fuzzy. Also when I get a cute little note from my favorite professor on an assignment because she is like the light of my life  

What are your hobbies? When I’m not in school I like to read and I’m able to write some. During school, you can find me watching x files, sleeping, or enjoying movies or music

What’s your favorite book? I love anything by Laurie Halse Anderson and really anything in the YA genre

What inspires you? Gillian is really inspiring to me because of all the work she does to help others. Bette Midler too

What’s your favorite place in the whole world? well, ok. So, I love Mackinac Island because it’s so beautiful and peaceful (even with thousands of tourists covering the tiny location) but I also just love when I’m with my people. When I’m with one of My People wherever we are, that’s my favorite place because I’m really happy. Also, I really love my work because nothing exists outside those four walls except the babies I take care of

What do you typically have for breakfast? A big cup of coffee and the occasional bagel or bowl of cereal

What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? The first semester of my sophomore year I had this 60-70 page case study due for the end of the term for an education class. For at least a week I would stay up until about 5 am working on it, go to sleep, get up at 7:30 am and do it all over again. That’s been my most stressful and sleep deprived time of my life so far and just looking bad makes me shudder. At least I got a 99% on it

What makes you angry? A lot of things. Let’s not get into that.

What makes you nervous? Uh, everything. But thinking about the real part of my future (bills, working, adulting) really gets me going

Do you wear glasses: Yes and these specific frames fucking suck and my eyes keep getting worse (my doctor told me I’d need surgery before I turned 30, wtf thanks dude)

Do You Have Freckles? Yes and it used to bother me how many I have but thanks to fics that mention Scully’s, I’ve become fond of them

Do You Sing In The Shower? When my family or suitemates aren’t home, then yes I usually belt it all out but usually, I stick to humming

Do You Collect Anything? Postcards and shot glasses. And llama things now too apparently

Do You Prefer To Swim In A Pool Or The Ocean? Pool because it’s clean and I can see the bottom

Do You Study Better With Or Without Music? It depends on the subject or the task but I almost always need some type of constant sound

Do You Save Money Or Spend It? Save it usually but I also tend to spend it all on a big impulse purchase

Do You Have Any Obsessions Right Now? That’s why I’m here lmao

Do You Have Strange Dreams? Alright so I just started taking Zoloft and before it, my dreams would be weird but like unrealistic-weird, like having-a-bad-trip-weird. But since starting the med, my dreams have become realistically-weird, like sometimes I wake up and question if that all really happened

Do You Make Your Bed In The Morning? When I’m at school, yes, but when I’m home I usually just say fuck it because I’ll be back in it at least 8 more times

Do You Like To Read / Write? I love to read (fics, duh) but I do try my hand at writing but I struggle to finish anything and I’m terrified to post any of my work on here

Do You Have Any Homework Right Now? If So, What Is It About? YES and it’s just barely halfway into summer break and I’ve got a huge assignment due the first day back

Do You Get Homesick? Sometimes but I really do love my college life and wouldn’t change it

Do You Wear Jeans Or Sweats More? A mix but because of work, jeans most days

Do you use sarcasm a lot? Sarcasm is my middle name

Do you believe in miracles? Yeah I think so

Do you have any special talents? I don’t think so but I’m good at taking care of kids. Sometimes my supervisor calls me the baby whisperer lol

Do you have any pets? Three cats and a dog and some succulents

Do you have any siblings? A little (half) brother and then technically I have four other half-siblings but they don’t know I exist

Do you believe in the paranormal? Absolutely. A big secret of mine….I actually could, and sometimes still can interact with spirits...Just call me Mrs. Spooky

Do you play any instruments? Nope but somehow I have managed to have a guitar and a keyboard in my possession. I do sing though and was in choir for 7 years

Do you have any crushes? Do celebrities or fictional characters count? If no, then no

Do you have any bad and/or anxious habits? I just have panic attacks a lot lmao and I tend to get really bitchy and mean when I’m anxious which I feel bad about but I can’t stop it

Do you believe in anything enough to fight for it? My right to marry whoever I want and have kids with whoever I want and be in control of my body. There’s probably more but those have been on my mind today

Do you keep a journal? Yeah a few actually but I lose motivation after a little bit and it takes so much to start it over

Do you like your age? Yes and no. I’m an adult which is cool and all but like….most of my friends are old enough to drink and it really pisses me off that I’m 9 months short of legally doing that. I’m super responsible and mature for my age like what will 9 months do to change that? It’s just stupid that I can join the military and go thousands of dollars into debt but I can’t have a glass of wine with my mom at a block party. UGH. American laws  S U C K

Do you like your own name? Yes, I love my name. When I was a kid I hated it, I didn’t get the sentiment of being named after someone. I finally got the sentiment around the time my grandma started getting sick. Now that she’s gone, I know just how blessed I am to carry on the legacy of my full name and try to make her proud.

Do you have any scars? Oh plenty, I’m really clumsy. My most notable is the one on my thumb from a freak childhood accident that nearly cut my entire thumb pad off. What a wild time

Do you have a strong accent? I’m from Michigan so apparently, I have a strong Midwestern accent but I don’t hear it. But anytime I’m on the phone/skyping with my friend from Missouri, she always points it out and laughs

Do you talk to yourself? Probably too much but also not in the way that I think is expected. I’m just constantly talking in my head like a constant tv interview about whatever the fuck I’m thinking about which 99% of the time is msr lol

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: All of the above

Beer or wine or neither: W I N E

When was your blog created: I knew this was the place to find the best gifs and fics and I wanted to be in the fandom more since I’m so new. Also, I wanted to try my hand at fic writing but I continue to lose the motivation or the courage to write/post

Last movie you’ve seen: Hotel Transylvania is pretty much on repeat in my house thanks to my little brother, so most likely it’s that

First job: My first job was customer service/field hand on a blueberry patch but my first legit legal job is/was at a daycare

Pet peeve: The first I can think of is slow walkers because I walk so fast because my legs are like a mile long

The color of your eyes: Green but they used to be giant sky-blue saucers

Night owl/day person: I don’t like getting up before 9 but past midnight I’m a grouch

Tattoos:  None yet, but I have two planned, it’s just a matter of money and timing

Like to cook: Not really but I can cook enough to survive which is typical for college

Grab The Book Nearest To You, Turn To Page 20 Give the last two lines: “Action: Today I will be kind to myself. Affirmation: This is who I am, and I feel glad to be me” - We

Last Person You Cried In Front Of? I cried while holding a baby at work because my shift is changing so things will be different and also my hormones are really out of whack right now

If You Were A Crayon What Colour Would You Be? Any shade of purple

Name One Movie That Made You Cry: Beaches is my go-to crying movie, same goes for Steel Magnolias (what a typical answer, I know)

If I Handed You A Concert Ticket Right Now, Who Would You Want The Performer To Be? Cher, Reba, DD, Bette Midler or Straight No Chaser. Reba especially though because she’s going to be near me soon but it's a 21+ event and I’m nine months short of that so I’m really pissed I can’t go

Would You Rather Carve Pumpkins Or Wrap Presents? Carve pumpkins but I do a damn good job wrapping too

Did You Like Swinging As A Child? Do You Still Get Excited When You See A Swing Set? I loved it even though it made me sick. There’s a park down the street from my campus so if I’m really upset, I’ll go down there and blast my headphones and swing until I forget what’s happening. It’s really therapeutic

Name Something That Relaxes You: I have some relaxing instrumental playlists and I’ll put one of them on, turn on my lavender oil diffuser, and hop in a nice hot shower (and the hot water at college doesn’t run out so I can pretty much be in there for like ever really) or I’ll watch a fav movie that tends to soothe me

Scary movie or happy endings? Happy endings give me life. The fluffier the better

When was the last time you cried? I’m sure I’ve cried today and just don’t remember. There’s literally not a day that goes by that I don’t shed tears but I literally cry so easy (This video or this video will make me cry almost instantly)

Where would you like to visit? I’ve wanted to visit Barcelona and California since I was a kid but in the past 4 years I’ve really wanted to visit New York and Greece

Describe your favorite people in the whole world? I’ll just sum all five of them up with they literally make me feel so warm, happy, and validated. I love them so much I could cry just thinking about them. And don’t get me started with Gillian because I do often cry when I think  about her I just really love her a lot ok

Who would be your ideal partner? Gillian Anderson, Dana Scully, or Fox Mulder of course. No, but I want someone who’s like me morals/humor wise

Most used phrase? Right now I’m really into saying “Yikes” but “god fucking dammit” leaves my mouth A LOT

Most used word? Probably “like” as much as I hate to admit it

Extrovert or Introvert? Introvert 100% except when I’m with My People of course because I feel comfortable with them

Who was your first real crush? I had plenty of crushes during early school years but I think my first real one was on a school employee. Wowza I was head over heels for her and the very obvious knew-it-was-coming heartbreak hurt a lot

How many piercings do you have? Just my first holes in my ears but I’ve been thinking about getting my Helix pierced (upper portion of the ear)

How do you deal with stress? Uhhhh I panic first lol. I tend to listen to music—very specific songs that I know will drown out the anxiety/stress, or sometimes I’ll write what I’m feeling, go for a walk, read an absolute favorite fic in my list, watch x files, or I’ll just scroll through my thousands of pictures of GA lol

How many pillows do you sleep with? Three, sometimes four and then I have four accent pillows when I make my bed. Too many, as I’ve been told by everyone

Have you ever been to the hospital? Been to? Yes, plenty of times. Been in/admitted? No, thankfully

Have you ever met any celebrities? In 2016 I went to a rally for Hillary that Cher was speaking at so like…I was in the same room as her. AND THEN my friend shoved me up to her path as she was leaving and she touched my hand and I literally nearly passed out

Have you ever been in a position of authority? I am always deemed the mom friend so I’ll let you figure out that answer...

Have you ever drank underage? Yeah but nothing crazy. I just really like my wine. The craziest I’ve ever gotten was after I turned in that case study, I chugged half a bottle of wine (on an empty stomach), got bad heartburn, and then went to bed for like 14 hours

Are You Easily Influenced By Other People? Depends on the person, but I’d have to say no unless it’s Gillian/Scully/Stella

Are You A Picky Eater? I say yes, but compared to my brother and my uncle, no

Are You A Heavy Sleeper? Usually yes

Are Both Of Your Blood Parents Still In Your Life? Just my momma, but I do see my *gag* father around my hometown every now and again

Are you religious? Not really. I used to go to church a few years back, and then went to another church which ruined a lot of stuff for me and then I went through some tough stuff that made me question, idk

Are you a good liar? I like to think so (I say that as if lying is something I should be proud of), at least to everyone but my mom because I swear I can pull off the best lie ever and she always sees right through me

Are you a clean or messy person? My home life is messy. My room is trashed but the things that are put away are organized. But life at college is completely opposite, my dorm is very clean and organized and I clean it top to bottom every weekend

If you made it this far, thank you for putting up with my crazy long first post, and I’m sorry that I practically vomited my thoughts into a jumbled mess but I wanted to share myself with you! 

[mrmichaelchadler]

Bright Wall/Dark Room March 2019: Love You for 10,000 Years by Kelsey Ford

We are pleased to offer an excerpt from the March issue of the online magazine, Bright Wall/Dark Room. Their latest issue is a look back at the films of 1994, as they celebrate 25th anniversary this year. In addition to Kelsey Ford's below piece on "Chungking Express," the issue also features new essays on "Pulp Fiction," "The Shawshank Redemption," "Reality Bites," "Speed," "Three Colors: Red," "Through the Olive Trees," "Amateur," "The Last Seduction," "Color of Night," "Dumb and Dumber," and "U.S. Go Home." The above art is by Tony Stella.  

You can read our previous excerpts from the magazine by clicking here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or look at their most recent essays, click here.

The Hong Kong of Chungking Express is electric, frenetic, dense. People crowd and push and elbow, a collective urge with neon-blurred edges. Their lives are casual chaos. And yet, the characters feel isolated and lonely, separate from each other with rare exception; their melodic interiors can’t quite sync with their daily tumult.

Cop 223 (Takeshi Kineshiro) runs when he’s sad because “the body loses water when you jog, so you have none left for tears.” The femme fatale (Brigitte Lin), an exhausted drug smuggler, wears a blonde wig and sunglasses as armor. Cop 663 (Tony Leung), recently broken up with by his stewardess girlfriend, lingers around the food stand where Faye (Faye Wong) blasts “California Dreamin’” too loudly. They’re all incidental, their lives clashing before glancing away.

In an opening voiceover, as Cop 223 races through the crowded streets, he says, “Every day we brush past so many other people. People we may never meet or people who may become close friends.”

This, more than anything, informs the ethos of Chungking Express: loneliness and the hope that, maybe, someday, it won’t be quite as potent as it is now.

*

When I was a junior in college, I’d been in a long distance relationship for the better part of the last three years. It was spring and something felt like it needed to change, I needed to stop hoping my boyfriend would call me back. So I bought a copy of Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. 

At first, the act of reading the book became an act of ending the relationship, and then it became an act of getting over the loss of that relationship. I stopped three-quarters of the way through, when I no longer needed it. That book stayed on my shelf for years, the bookmark in its place. Both are gone now; I can’t remember when that happened.

Built in fragments and arranged alphabetically, A Lover’s Discourse is like a deconstructed love story. Barthes believed the lover’s discourse was one “of an extreme solitude.” As he explores “absence” and “disreality” and “silence,” he separates the one doing the loving and the one being loved. The discourse becomes less about love than about the person performing the act of love: “The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.”

There are many ways to read A Lover’s Discourse. I choose to read it as a solitary monologue. A way of categorizing and explaining and dissecting, undoing a narrative and placing its articulated parts out like an undone body: these are the stories we tell ourselves about our place in the world, and these are the stories we tell ourselves about others.

*

Wong Kar-Wai’s lush and bright Chungking Express is built as a diptych: two stories featuring lovelorn cops wandering the streets of Hong Kong. The movie’s atmosphere and story are like one intense infatuation. The colors are bright and fast. Every object is happy or sad or filled with portent. The songs play over and over again, each time becoming more and more steeped in the emotional turmoil of the characters hitting repeat on the boombox. 

In the first story, Cop 223 fixates on cans of pineapple. After his girlfriend breaks up with him on April 1st, he treats it as an April Fools joke. For a month, he buys cans of pineapple that expire on May 1st. He stacks the cans in his kitchen, an accumulation of his affection. In the movie’s signature, pensive voiceover, he says: “I tell myself that if May hasn’t come back by the time I’ve bought 30 cans, then our love will expire too.”

His frustration is bound to these expiring pineapple cans. When the market stops stocking cans that expire on the 1st, because it’s the 30th, he yells at the clerk, “With you people it’s always, Out with the old, in the with the new!” He asks, “How do you think the pineapple feels?” May 1st comes and there’s still no reconciliation. To mark the ending, Cop 223 systematically opens each can, forking the fruit into his mouth, adding spice to the slices, offering some to his dog. 

On the other side of the break up and the heap of emptied cans, what’s there to do? He goes to a bar, drinks, throws up, and decides to fall in love with the next woman to walk through the front door. That the next woman is wearing a blonde wig, red sunglasses, and a raincoat doesn’t phase him. He can’t know she’s a drug smuggler. His approach is insipid and young. In three different languages, he asks her if she likes pineapple. She rebuffs him. When he says he wants to get to know her, she says, “You can’t get to know me.”

It’s easier this way, easier to turn her into an unknown, so her true edges can’t press up against the absence he’s trying to fill. The pair go back to a hotel and she falls asleep, crashed out over the bed, while he curls up on the windowsill and watches TV. He needs distraction and she needs a safe place to sleep. For one night, they’re perfect.

*

From Barthes’ entry for “The Unknowable”: “The other is not to be known; his opacity is not the screen around a secret, but instead, a kind of evidence in which the game of reality and appearance is done away with.”

A Lover’s Discourse is the negative of a love story, highlighting the moments before and after, when the narrator is alone and rolling over the story like a well-worn stone. One consistent truth he returns to: that the idea of someone is safer than actually getting to know them, that it’s always safer to leave that person in the environs of your mind, rather than allow them to violate the rules you’ve set in place for how they should behave or who they should be.

From that same entry: “I am then seized with that exaltation of loving someone unknown, someone who will remain so forever: a mystic impulse: I know what I do not know.”

*

Wong made Chungking Express during a break from another film, Ashes of Time, and the intimacy of Chungking can be sourced to its quick, two month shoot. Without permits, they had to rush any street shots; the apartment they used for Cop 663’s belonged to Wong’s longtime cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, at the time. 

Wong is known for writing and rewriting his scripts while he shoots, relying on serendipity within scenes to let him know where they need to go next: “If you are paying attention, you realize that every story can go in so many directions. And each of those directions can also go in many more directions.” 

In an interview with John Powers for WKW: The Cinema of Wong Kar Wai, Wong describes his style of filmmaking like the construction of a garden. “You plant a tree in the garden and you expect it will be a perfect tree. But then something happens, maybe a storm blows off a branch and you realize that it no longer looks the way you expected.” The metaphor is extended; he plants a bush, then two flowers, and then digs one up. On and on. “Then, at some point you stop, and if you’re lucky, what you have will be beautiful. It won’t be what you expected, but the garden will still be beautiful.”

Chungking. Our lives are hard, but sometimes, in the midst of all the furor and tension and exhaustion, sometimes there is a flicker of something nice, someone looking out for you. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can find a pocket of relief.

*

Chungking Express constantly doubles, even beyond its diptych structure. There are two women in blonde wigs, two stewardesses, two Mays. The characters often catch themselves in reflection, as if the image of them fragmenting along a wall feels more apt than the truth. The act of devotion is also doubled, both the end and the beginning of a romance, and the ways one can easily slip from one mode to the other. 

Chungking Express is an entire movie about having a crush.

In the second story, The Mama & Papa’s “California Dreamin’” is on constant repeat. It’s a song that Wong called “innocent and simple, like summertime in the 70s” and played for his cinematographer, Doyle, when he was first trying to describe what the movie would be about.  Faye blasts the song over and over again at the snack stand, so loudly she can’t hear customers or her own thoughts. This isn’t the only song threaded through Chungking; there’s also Faye Wong’s cover of The Cranberries’ “Dreams” and Dinah Washington’s potent “What a Difference a Day Makes,” which scores the flashback of Cop 663 and his stewardess girlfriend lolling around his apartment, drinking beer, flying toy airplanes, kissing against his closet. 

Faye first notices Cop 663 when he starts hanging around her snack stand during his shifts. At first, he’s there to pick up meals for his girlfriend. But then she leaves him and his order becomes a simple black coffee. In the ex-girlfriend’s absence, Cop 663 imagines that everything in his apartment misses her as much as he does. “Since she left, everything in the apartment is sad,” he says. “I have to comfort them all before I go to sleep.” His soap has lost an unhealthy amount of weight, it needs to have more confidence; he tells his towels to stop crying but they continue to drip; his stuffed white bear holds too many grudges. A layer of grime has grown in the stewardess’s absence. 

This is the grime that Faye scrapes away at in secret, after stashing the apartment key his ex left in an envelope for him at the snack stand. She waters his thirsty plants, buys him new towels and curtains, fills his aquarium with living fish, washes his sheets, changes the labels on his cans. His dim life livens, even if he doesn’t understand why or how.

One afternoon, he comes home while Faye is still there. In voiceover, words still heavy with loss, he says, “She used to jump out and scare me, but she hasn’t done it much recently.” He plays hide and seek, even though he knows the stewardess isn’t there hiding. It becomes a game of cat and mouse. Faye inhabits the space he wishes and expects the stewardess to be in. He checks the bathroom; Faye presses against a wall; he turns around; Faye’s ducked beneath a blanket. 

Cop 663’s attentions drift from the stewardess’s absence and toward the increasingly frequent presence of Faye. Maybe he senses what she’s been doing. Maybe her proto-Manic Pixie Dream Girl vibe has gotten to him. Either way, he asks her to grab a drink with him in the California Bar, the same bar where Cop 223 met his blonde woman in shades. Faye doesn’t show and Cop 663 is left alone, a mirror of the scene where Cop 223 asked the blonde woman if she liked pineapple. There are, after all, different types of being alone. 

*

“To try to write love is to confront the muck of language,” Barthes writes in his entry for “Inexpressible Love.’ “That region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little.” Which is the exact tightrope Chungking Express walks. Everything is important––every can of pineapple, every dripping towel, every loop of “California Dreamin’”––mimicking that all-encompassing feeling of infatuation. These small items hold an entire story. The heartbreak and the hope and the waiting. 

But infatuation can become a closed loop. It’s scary to step outside of it, to start talking to someone rather than something. It’s easier, perhaps, to fly across the world to California than it is to cross the street and enter the bar named California, where the guy you like is expecting you. Chungking Express understands this, and the moments when its characters take those small risks feel like rewards. It’s worth it to be careful.

It takes time, yes, but eventually Faye finds her way back to the snack stand. Now she’s the one in uniform, a stewardess on leave, and Cop 663 is the one behind the counter, having bought the stand from Faye’s former boss. Faye’s energy is like a spiral about to snap. At any second, she might leave. But then Cop 663 asks her to draw him up another boarding pass; the ink on the one she’d left him the year before had long faded. So, she doesn’t leave. 

This time, she stays.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2Hv02y2