Discover Top Posts Tagged with #a giver

In A Giver, directors commentary on the part where they're in the kitchen finally communicating and she kisses his forehead. Please and thank you!

Commentary is bolded.

I made this post about how I think that Tina and Newt both have amazing things to give, and yet there are very few people in their lives who see it. Almost as though they’ve gotten used to the idea that nobody is all that interested in them as individuals, their passions, their thoughts and feelings. And that got me thinking about how that sets up Tina’s character, and how it relates to the idea of her as ‘a giver’, or someone who, like Newt, gets a lot of self-worth and enjoyment from being caring and protective of and useful to others. And yet who often isn’t appreciated for it and maybe doesn’t have a place to put that energy other than work because people have decided she’s prickly or cold or doesn’t fit in to stereotypes or whatever.

I wanted to write a story to show what I think it means to say that Tina is ‘a giver’.

This story just sort of...sprang out of me in one evening, and once I started, more and more pieces just fell into place.

They sit together at Newt's kitchen table in silence, both holding mugs of tea that they've barely touched.

I wanted this to start with something that they’re doing for the first time, and yet will do thousands of times again, even though they don’t know it. But I wanted that energy that they suspect they may end up doing this many more times.

After a while, Newt finally speaks, looking at the chair beside hers. "Tina, do you need to write to that auror? Let him know that—"

Part of this is Newt being a bit insecure and uncertain about someone really being interested in him. And part of it is that Newt pretty much thinks that Tina’s not interested in someone else, but this is his awkward way of saying...so we’re a thing, right?

Her brow furrows. "Who?"

"Queenie—" He glances at her eyes as though to ensure that the name's alright, but it hasn't sunk in yet. That name and the woman she watched cross the flames last night are two separate people in her mind. "She said you were seeing someone else. An auror." He looks cautiously hopeful despite the recollection, and it makes her smile.

"Oh, him." Queenie had tried to make him jealous, Tina realizes. It makes her smile to imagine. And ache with missing her sister. "We had coffee once before I left for Europe. I've never really liked him."

I have an extremely hard time imagining that Tina did more than go have a drink with someone once or something on that level. But I loved the idea that Queenie made it sound like a bigger deal because she was sort of trying to say to Newt, well fine, my beloved sister doesn’t need you anyways, even though actually she’s kind of devastated, but you don’t need to know that.

"Oh." He smiles at the ground, then glances back at her. "Only you stopped writing, and after what I'd said about aurors I thought—"

This is a frequent mannerism that Newt has and that I am certain Tina finds adorable and endearing. Smiling and happy but a little shy about it.

She stares at him, surprised. "I stopped writing because I thought you and Leta..."

All these months thinking he'd forgotten all about her, and here he'd been, thinking the same.

I go back and forth on whether they ever need to say this bit out loud, but it seemed right for this story. I’ve written this first encounter post-COG a lot of different ways in a lot of different one-shots.

Tina's teeth dig into her lower lip as she reaches out a nearly steady hand and cups his face. He lets out a shaky breath and reaches to cover her hand with his own, pressing into her touch. His skin is rough and calloused and covered in scars exactly as she remembers from when they ran with the Swooping Evil.

And back to the main point of this story. This is the fundamental gesture of this character study of Tina. Her, reaching out her hand to someone else. You’ll see it in the scene with her parents, and with her aunt, and the other girls at school, and at the end with Queenie. Tina, offering what she has to give. The idea was to make this one a little different, somehow. That her life has made her uncertain of whether people want what she has to give, but he reaches back and welcomes it, and it is more of a touch, not just fingers on a shoulder but her hands on his face, and his hands holding her back.

No one but Queenie, she realizes, has ever really let her—not since Mama and Papa died.

He smiles at her and she smiles back, melting forward. He must guess her thoughts just before she pulls away because he squeezes her fingers and whispers, "Don't let go. Please."

To the point where he’s literally telling her not to let go.

And so she raises her other hand, holding his face between her palms, and leans forward to press her lips above his brow. His hands curve into hers with the touch, his breath warm across her neck.

He's smiling when she pulls away, flushed and a little unbalanced. Her hands are in his now, tangled between them. He swipes a thumb over her palm and she shivers. Inexplicably, she thinks of her very first memory, of touching baby Queenie's little head for the first time. She thinks of the way her heart had opened to admit her sister. The memory has always been sweet, though bitter with the thought of her parents. Now it is doubly so.

Tears gather in her eyes, and he squeezes her hands as they fall.

#my writing #director's commentary #a giver #i will happily do more of these!#mythrielofsolitude

The next entry to A Giver just went up. Please leave comments! Gave myself a migraine typing this apparently.

#a Giver #fantastic beasts and where to find them