❝ the sky is bright with stars, and I'm tearing through this veil that keeps me blind... ❞
TAKEN FROM EVERYWHERE.
THE RULES.
001. Leave me a comment saying, "THREAD."
002. I will respond by asking you ANY five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal [possibly].
003. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
004. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
005a. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
005b. Because it's gone around so much, if you want to also comment and ask Ariadne 5 questions, THAT IS SUPER FINE too~
Questions from penrosing :
01. What is one architectural structure that Ariadne will always wish she had designed?
There isn't one. Call it vanity, but Ariadne calls it a sense of self. While she'll admire architecture both imagined and realized at great length, she has never been the sort to wish someone else's work was hers, because to Ariadne that defeats the very idea of creation, of what it means to build and know irrefutably that it is yours. She knows that architecture is different for everyone the way any craft is different for each individual, but she also knows that often it's described first as a business. It being one of the more technically inclined and employed trades, she understands why, but she has always and will always take the perspective first not as an entrepreneur nor as an artist, but simply someone who wants to make something that lasts. Ariadne has her own set of requirements for something defined as lasting. It should serve some kind of purpose - things like hospitals or churches, immovable labyrinths (stone), so on and so forth. It does not have to be one of those things specifically, but asked to cite an example those are the ones that first come to mind. Suffice to say Ariadne would like to construct something that serves people more than she requires the creation of something that moves them, but if it does that too then she would be well and glad about it. In her opinion, any good building, any decent piece of architecture will have enough earnestness to it that even if the mass population fails to catch the nuances, some individuals will still manage to pick up on them and for her that's enough. She would liken it to having a book published in a way. Say you only sell ten copies. On the face of things it's nothing, a failure even, but think again and that's ten people who, maybe, are taking a piece of you with them, reading the story you've put down and making it their own because that's what happens when you experience something that belongs to someone else. You rewrite, and you integrate, and the universe is a little bigger, a little brighter for it. This, she believes; she always will.
02. Now that Cobb has returned stateside, what are Ariadne's thoughts on what transpired between them? About Cobb, specifically, and his life after the job? She does get she was kind of obsessed with him, right?
Cobb is as much a compelling creature as he is a complete irritation. Despite the way their second trial dream ended - aggravated by Ariadne's own actions, she's aware - and despite her outburst quickly followed by her exit, the truth is she has never had her attention held as completely by another person before. She knows that some of that must have to do with how he all but introduced himself to her as a challenge - something Ariadne can never refuse - and another part of it must be linked to how at ease he was in the dream before it went awry, how at home he seemed. That holds darker connotations now but even at that she has to admit to a certain degree of empathy for it, as a person who understands that steep difference between what it is to know one can raise cities instead of laboring over a single wall. She knows a lot of it had become that way because of Mal, because of how he wanted to keep her or at the very least ( the most ) how he couldn't let go of her, but this too she sections off from still other things.
Thinking back on how she pushed at him, how he would always refuse her entry and then once she was in anyway he would let her stay, let her see, she supposes he must have wanted someone to, because no one who is truly intent on keeping people out will ever just allow them there for the sake of it. People are stubborn and they get strong with it; she would know. It's too self-important for her to posit that he wanted to be helped, or that when she kept shoving her way in that he believed she could. In fact, she thinks now that it's key, or that it was, that he didn't know her capacity for holding his hand and walking him through it - or, if you will, leading out the red thread for him to follow and holding on tight to her end so that he actually came out proper on the other side. She knows that Cobb was guilt ridden because he believed it was all his fault, but having seen what she had of the limbo he and Mal had inhabited, she thinks that's not possible, that Mal must have been beautiful the way a storm is beautiful and just as destructive without perhaps initially meaning to be; maybe it was just the intensity of her, channeled in the wrong direction. Ariadne won't ever know the specifics of that. What she does know however is this: that Cobb was a liability because he believed it was completely his fault and that that was what was so dangerous, why Mal kept getting in. Ariadne feels badly for him because she knows that he loved Mal more than anything, but she feels badly especially for him because she suspects that Mal returned those feelings a little too much; why else would she choose to forget?
Ariadne can't extricate her suppositions about Mal from her thoughts on Cobb. She thinks that Mal must have been afraid after a while, to wake up; what if the world they knew had changed? No one having been to limbo before that they knew of, Ariadne imagines it must have been terrifying - all the possibilities, all the potential for loss. So she forgot. It strikes her as unfortunate and admittedly selfish that Mal could do this even knowing her children were up there, wakeful, but condemning a ghost isn't really Ariadne's style and she has thought on it long enough to at least conclude that - like Cobb - Mal had her reasons. Everyone had their reasons.
That Cobb wanted to wake up, however, to return to his children, that he has been on that long and roundabout path for years, sticks with her like a thorn or a sharper catch of the light. She thinks he must have had beautiful dreams once and she feels a ridiculous sense of loss for something she never had the opportunity to know and it's wholly bizarre for her. She has never been very romantic, not given over to flights of fancy, more rooted in the earth the way trees do, the way something anchors and rests and works from that one stay point. To sympathize with his plight was one thing, to be first outraged and then accommodating of his inability to tell anyone about it, all this was more or less in the scope of Something She Expected. What Ariadne didn't expect was the genuine fondness for him, something she would have thought entirely impossible considering their rocky start, considering everything. In a way it's part of what intrigues her about Arthur as well but that's a whole other book's worth of diatribes so, moving on, Ariadne found that in spite of everything, she liked him, wanted for him to get home to his kids not just for his kids but for himself as well. In the afterward of it, she finds this even truer, and she wonders how he's doing, if he has trouble sleeping, if he remembers how to stop or how to be a friend - how to have a friend. Sometimes, and here's Arthur cropping up again, when she looks at Arthur, it's striking how though Cobb shutting him out must have bred some of Arthur's closed-off state, it did the same to Cobb himself in the end too.
Except that Cobb isn't at an 'end' anymore. He's at a beginning and it's almost a concern, if she lets herself dwell too much so she tries not to. That Cobb lasted as long as he did she figures has something to do with Arthur but also enough to do with Cobb that he's not to be thought of as weak but he's damaged. She thinks, in a way, Arthur and Cobb are both deeply damaged even if they don't know how to approach it or what to do about it, if they'd rather shut it all away and hope it never comes up again. With Arthur, being invited as she has been into the Copenhagen residence, she thinks she has more of a say on his well being than she would have before, and she'll take every advantage, rest assured. But with Cobb it's worlds different. He's countries away and she goes as far as to think he may never have another thought for her again sometimes, before she realizes he's broken and selfish and warped but not stupid; Cobb isn't the sort of man who would forget who helped get him home. Yet is that enough to ask for his number, to write him a letter, to say how are you doing? and to work her way up to what was the best dream you ever built? - things she would dearly like to ask another architect of the dreamscape, things rather that she would have liked to ask Cobb given other circumstances, another opportunity.
She's not sure how she registered on his radar, as a necessity certainly but what else? It's the one area her imagination fails her because for all his transparencies Cobb still has his secrets, his innocuous manner that she's sure helped him foot-over-hand his way to the top as an extractor. Ariadne got to the root of his deepest, darkest problem but in the end she walked away, she realizes now more than ever, still not knowing nearly enough. She thinks it's a shame that growing older, that tragedy creating interpersonal plate tectonics means you lose something of who you were. But she hopes he can at least move forward, as he is now, whatever that means to him, and maybe along the way his children can give him back a little more of what he lost - and Arthur too, if he lets himself.
It's a real shame.
03. How exactly does Ariadne's moral compass operate? And how does she view a possible future in criminality?
Before the Fischer job she figured her morals were average, which is to say she thought that yes, shooting innocent people was probably not a good idea and neither was cannibalism, robbing children, or yelling at old people. That said, having been propositioned for the Fischer job and allowing herself to come back to it knowing what it entailed, she understands now far better that what she had was not an average of morals but a complete absence of it - not moral, not immoral, but amoral. In a handful of ways she realizes this must make her not the nicest of people but that doesn't bother her so much as it would bother her to be gray on what she wants out of a situation.
Ariadne's moral compass is, like much of what steers her in any given way, case-specific. Though she took the Fischer job it's certain little things that need to be picked up on - things such as being concerned suddenly for the deaths of projections in Fischer's head, like he was losing even more of himself that way. Morally gray isn't accurate because that suggests a general grayness, whereas Ariadne feels much more definitive than what gray would allow for - pitch black one second and moon white the next on any given subject, surrounding factors and impending ones relevant.
04. What are Ariadne's thoughts on physical intimacy/sex (especially in contexts to finding herself in Copenhagen)?
For the most part Ariadne hasn't done much of anything sexually with anyone. She's kissed boys and girls and found she was more attracted to boys but that's about as far as it went before Paris took her by both hands and until now it really hadn't ever let her go, not for a breath, not for anything. Kissing Arthur however is an....interesting experience and if she's completely honest, not in the sexual way she would assume it to be considering that he is very attractive; only a fool would miss that. She doesn't know that she could explain this in words very well, but she knows that when she kisses Arthur or he kisses her it's not unlike holding hands; she's well aware how strange a likeness that appears but it's what she thinks of and not in a disparaging way. It's warm and a little searching and not at all awkward, but there's certainly something uncertain still vested in the motion - not for not knowing what a kiss is but perhaps for still figuring out how they work in this way, if at all. She's fine with that.
For obvious reasons perhaps, Eames is not on that radar, period. She knows he's attractive but again this is more or less the same as Ariadne being able to say the sky looks really beautiful during a particular sunset - true for almost anyone to see and less a personal form of want. That she has it for Arthur at all is in truth partially an unexpected result of having it expressed to her first. She didn't know she was interested that way in the least until he supposed he might, and she knows it's a tenuous thing, that what they're doing is unorthodox and that a goldfish has been bought as a kind of peace offering though she's not sure for who or if for all of them together. If Eames were to ever express such a thing she would be damn surprised and because she's not had it happen it's impossible to say her thoughts on it other than that at present she finds it highly unlikely, that Arthur has a kind of curious magnetism about him to the eye and she thinks sometimes she can see a tangible line from Eames' gray eyes to the way Arthur breathes or stands or thinks and then she wonders if it's all in her head and decides she's not that whimsical so it must be.
Intimacy isn't a big threshold for her that she knows of, but much like falling into this whole thing in the first place, she knows some of that may just be the unexplored nature of the territory. She's not in any hurry if that was part of the inquiry, compelled first by Arthur and who he was before Mallorie Cobb died as much as who he is now and all of that before anything that comes patented with a kiss. The kissing is nice, don't get her wrong, but it's not a thing she yet considers paramount, which is maybe why a niggling part of her subconscious suspects this won't work out, not this way, because she does think it to be necessary as a component for people who want to be together in such a fashion. That you can't just have one and not the other, as ideal as that might be, and even when that part bubbles up to her consciousness, she finds she's not unsettled by it. What happens, happens.
She's willing to let things play out as they will.
05. What is something that Ariadne regrets?
I feel bad for half of these answers since they're largely unrevealing, but the truth is she doesn't have any regrets yet. She is certainly aware of other people's regrets but as to having any of her own, she simply hasn't yet. Due to her age, she's relatively sure though she knows some young people start in on it early with regret as much as love and the other good things. But Ariadne isn't one of them. Every decision she's made that had the potential to be a mistake or become a regret, never has, and she knows that it's a majority knowing what she wanted at the time and the rest of the percentage only amounted to how to achieve it and keep it; she finds that if she sets her mind to a goal it's very hard to get in her own way and she tries to make this true for other people as well. If it matters, she's of the mind that literally nothing ought to stop you. Practice > preach.
BONUS: WHO'S MORE PHYSICALLY ATTRACTIVE, ARTHUR OR EAMES?
Ariadne says it's split right down the middle. CONGRATULATIONS?! No seriously, in terms of pure physicality, when she gauges them on her barometer of attractiveness, it comes out basically even Stevens. This is mind, her rating of it not for her own want but just aesthetically, which is just a roundabout way of saying she treated them like buildings and decided on it that way. SOB.
SORRY FOR THE INSANE TL;DR AT THE BEGINNING FOREVER /SCREAMS.
EDIT; oh my fucking god the section on Cobb....I'M SORRY SCREAM HOW IS IT THAT LONG.....
;__________; aso9itujelfds09uopijlrewfds