*SPOILERS FOR THE HBO SHOW GIRLS*
This is really dark. I'm sorry.
So, there is this show called Girls that comes on HBO. I've never watched it, never wanted to. Looked kind of stupid.
Adam Driver, who plays Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars trilogy, apparently also plays on the show. I just found this out a few days ago. I had never seen Adam in anything other than Star Wars. I really liked him in The Force Awakens. He was....mysterious and dark and intense. Powerful. He had a temper like no other. In fact, it was his anger that caught my attention. The raw, volatile nature of his personality. Characters like that, like Kylo Ren, always call to me because I have a hard time being angry at people. I don't let it happen, I push it down. Ignore it. Turn it in towards myself, reshape it into blame or self-hate. I did something wrong. It's my fault. Years of taking whatever was thrown at me and being satisfied with the scraps of the human ability to love. That's just how I've always been.
But sometimes it catches up to me. Horrible days where I hate everyone and everything. I spend hours writhing in my own skin, feeling like I want to cry and vomit and scream until my throat explodes. Feeling like I would set the whole world on fire if I could. Like I would dance in the flames and play in the ashes; cry so hard and feel so happy that everything was finally quiet and that I was finally alone. I love seeing characters like Kylo Ren because deep down I know exactly what that kind of raw rage is like and I anxiously wait in fear, and excitement, for the day I finally explode and let it go like he does. It's horrible but it has to happen eventually, or I will die with this pain inside me.
I'm sure you're wondering what any of that has to do with the show Girls. Well, technically, nothing. But it did make me think about this, and here's why:
Like I said, I'd never seen Adam in anything other than Star Wars. He was amazing in The Force Awakens, but it was The Last Jedi that really made me love both Kylo, as a character, and Adam, as an actor. Adam is so amazing. Kylo's anger was just as powerful as before, but it was the unexpected and, I think, unintentionally vulnerability of his interactions with Daisy Ridley's (who is also extremely talented) Rey that gave me a glimpse into his range as an actor. I wanted to see more of his work. And it was like the universe knew that I was beginning to take an interest in Adam Driver, the same way I took an interest in Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (Stars of BBC's Sherlock.)
As a brief side note: My best friend's mother said to me "When you take an interest in someone, you have to know as much as you can about them as soon as you can. You want to know whether or not your interest is well founded. That they deserve it." This may not seem like a big thing, but none of you really know me. So, you aren't aware of the fact that my interest in other human beings does not go very far from my immediate family. It's awful, but true. I tend not to actually care about people in more than a very general human decency type of way.
I included this because it was like the universe was also aware of that about me. Suddenly Adam was everywhere. Posts about him on Pinterest would pop up. More Kylo Ren/Reylo centric posts were appearing on my dash. Clips of interviews would be suggested to me on YouTube. All of this was extremely odd because, while I am a huge Star Wars nerd, it's not something I actively look into. It's not a constant present obsession. Or it wasn't, until recently. So....beyond a few general posts about Star Wars here or there, there was nothing to warrant the onslaught that I've been getting and certainly nothing to warrant the Adam specific posts.
Enter- Girls.
I found out he was on the show and said, "Well if he's in it, I'll give it a shot." I know it's probably horrible to watch something just because an actor you like plays in it but honestly, who hasn't done that before? Anyway, I haven't watched it yet, but one of the clips suggested to me on YouTube was of this scene from Season 5 where his character (whose name is also Adam, I think) and this other character named Jessa got into this huge argument. I clicked it because A) I wanted to see him act in something other than Star Wars, B) the fact that the first non-interview clip of him suggested to me was an argument scene kind of sounded like divine intervention and C) it also gave me chance to see if Girls was really something I would want to watch, whether or not Adam was in it.
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Big F**king Mood: A New Narrative
Non-FictionA series of thoughts, questions, lists, rants, daydreams, and confessions. TRIGGER WARNINGS: mentions of depression, anxiety, bullying, and sexual harassment.