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Liz Callaway - Once Upon a December 1997

"Once Upon a December" is a song from the 1997 Don Bluth/20th Century Fox animated film Anastasia. Liz Callaway provided the singing voice for the main character. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

A pop version with vocals by country singer Deana Carter was featured in the film's end credits (thus the only version of the song I knew in English at the time :) ) and was released as a music video to promote the film. This was the original version posted on this poll, but many dismissed as a cover. :(

"Once Upon a December" received a total of 82,3% yes votes!

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the author's barely disguised longing for a kinder world

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this thread on twitter is fucking killing me

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Lemme tell you a gay little story about an eagle.

Our town (~9,000 people) has a couple garages, but there's a big one on the main drag. My family has been going there for decades. I drive past it every day.

There used to be a huge pine tree on the corner of their lot, but last year it became a hazard and had to be taken down.

Shortly thereafter I drive by and see they've hired a guy to chainsaw sculpt the stump into a bald eagle.

Birds own my heart, but nationalism makes me twitchy. I withhold outright condemnation of the eagle, but I'm skeptical. (The original owner—an objectively Good Dude—sold the business to a younger couple a few years ago, and I don't have any knowledge of their whole deal.)

Then it turns out someone on staff is really into making costumes for the eagle. Every holiday. Every month. Stuffed turkey, witch costume, menorah headpiece, bunny ears. These people love to dress their bird.

The changing of the eagle suit becomes a source of joy every time I drive through town.

Until June, when the eagle is bare.

Now look, maybe I'm expecting too much asking my garage to celebrate Pride. But this is a small town. Every time I drive by that stupid eagle—this thing that has previously brought me so much joy—I feel hurt. I feel reminded that there are plenty of people in my liberal bubble who don't consider my community worthy of celebration. I drive to work, I feel bad. I drive home, I feel bad. The eagle is mocking me.

Then my A/C quits working.

So I book an appointent to bring my car in—and realize what I have to do.

I pick all this up at a thrift store for under ten bucks. I print the shirt with some weird heat-transfer fabric crayons I find in a cupboard. I loop gold elastic around the sunglasses and pray they'll fit on the eagle's head. (It is also important to draw your attention to the price of the feather boa.)

(Nice.)

My reasoning is thus: if I show up with a complete costume ready to go, someone will have to look me in the eye and say "We don't believe in that," at which point I'll be finding a new garage. But if they let me dress the eagle, then people in town get to have the joy I've been missing since the start of the month.

I listen to a lot of hype-up jams on my way over. I hate confrontation. I also don't wanna have to find another garage. I want to believe that this decision isn't actively antagonistic, but I'm not particularly hopeful.

I talk through the A/C issue with the guy at the desk, hand over my keys, then take a deep breath.

"Who's in charge of the eagle?"

"Oh, that's all Dylan. Second bay from the end."

I walk down the row of hydraulic lifts and find a disarmingly smiley middle-aged man pouring fluid through a funnel. I introduce myself and explain that, since the Pride parade is this Sunday and the eagle seems to be missing a costume, I have taken the liberty of making one myself, and can I get his blessing to go put it on?

Dylan grins this absolutely giant grin and goes

"Oh hell yeah."

So that's what's up now.

Happy Pride.

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it should be illegal to take a nap and still have a headache when you wake up. like no i shut it off and back on again why are you still here

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Back when we first started watching Bake Off I told my betrothed that I didn’t think pavlova looked that interesting. I couldn’t understand why people would lose their shit over meringue and fruit.

Determined to prove me very wrong, they made one. And I. Was so wrong. They make it with fresh cream, lemon curd, berries, and meringue. It was blissful. I adored it.

That was several years ago and now it’s one of my favorite treats.

Today, while finishing off the one they made for a dinner party they paused and said, “I think you saying you didn’t think pavlovas were interesting is the truest example of eating your words.”

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Have you ever thought of something in your own worldbuilding that you didn't intentionally plan, but just connect the dots afterwards like "wait, that actually checks out"?

Like in the story of the Book I Am Not Working On, there's the fisher folk. They don't fish, actually, they live in diaspora and nobody really knows why they're called that, anymore. They're more known for their numerous, strict and often seemingly random and nonsensical ritual purity rules, and stereotypically having absurdly large numbers of children. The twist is, they don't actually have more children than any other peoples of the Empire, their purity rules just ensure that they maintain higher levels of physical hygiene in everything to do with childbirth and handling infants - and therefore have a lower infant mortality than other peoples.

The "why do these people have huge families" thing also had another side: Fetishisation. The fisher folk's purity rules also involve no sex outside of marriage, and there's a myth on top of the stereotype that the reason why they seem to have a massive amount of kids is because their husbands are so good in bed that their wives cannot turn them down even if they're 100% done having kids. And since fisher folk do not have sexual relations outside of marriage, no outsider has had enough fisher dick to verify this.

But while they are loyal to partners, they are also polygamous, both ways around. A perfectly normal fisher marriage arrangement may feature a man and his two wives, and his second wife's first husband. One household may cover seven married partners, and all their mutual children. It's considered taboo to pry into which kids are "really" whose, paternity is unknowable and unless you were close enough to the family to know which one of the wives gave birth, the biological mother is none of your business either. Every partner in the marriage is equally a parent to each child born within it.

And this is where my own "wait hold on" comes in. Besides the lower mortality, the illusion of fishers having insane amounts of kids may also partially come from the way their families are structured. If you've just met a group of five people you don't know anything about, and they all claim that they have nine children each, it wouldn't cross your mind that they might all be claiming the same nine children.

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Coming into a fandom late

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i feel like if you stabbed an angel the blood trail would look like this

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you used to call me on the bong phone

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the ocd/autistic experience of "you have made a social blunder. no one is upset about it. you will need a minimum of two days to recover."

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5-25% off is a discount, 30-50% off is a deal, and 60-90% off is clearance. I'm TRUELY SICK of being lured to a clearance section for a measly 20% like please be serious

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finally, someone for tumblr

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I just thought this thread on character creation in RPGs was neat.

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THE HOBBIT (1977)