#;every morning he went just a little more mad. (character study - william) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

theaviskullguy · 4 years ago

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like the lazy ass i am, instead of writing it normally have a post about my danganronpa au

Characters

Goggles Montoya- Ultimate Lucky student

Rider Clark- Ultimate Fighter

Army Vallaha-Williams- Ultimate Actor

Forge Vallaha-Williams- Ultimate Solider

Aloha Palliah- Ultimate Dancer

Diver Vauge- Ultimate Swimmer

Mask Kane- Ultimate Hacker

Skull Beryl- Ultimate Archer

Aviators Jones- Ultimate Baker

Gloves Elaris- Ultimate Gymnast

Emperor Castilo- Ultimate King

Prince Castilo- Ultimate Mage

Niki Pacer (N-Pacer)-Ultimate nurse

Eging Jr- Ultimate speedster

Vintage Auclare- Ultimate Detective

one short of a full dangan cast but shut

I’ll be doing two chapters per post, so here’s part 1!

Executions will be represented by chunks of bold text. Most of these are incredibly gruesome, so I’d advise you skip them if you’re sensitive to that stuff!!!

Also, obviously trigger warnings for blood/ink, death,

Prologue: Rainy day mystery

It’s nothing too big, honestly. Really, there’s a gala inviting some of Inkopolis’ greatest fighters to this really swanky hotel. A rain storm comes and basically locks them in, causing the gang to have to stay the night in suites that seem to have been tailored to them specifically. The next day the rain has stopped, but everything is still locked. There’s no way in or out of the Hotel. At noon, they’re called to the ballroom and BOOM. There’s Monokuma.

Our favorite half and half bear explains that, the reason this gang in specific was invited was because all of them were prodigies in their fields other than Turf Wars/Ranked (i.e, Army is a god-tier actor, and Vintage's record for fastest case solved was 30 seconds), and from now on that would be their “Ultimate”. Monokuma also revealed that, the only way to escape the Hotel is to get away with murder. (and also the other rules)

And y’know how SDR2 had Monomi/Usami, and DR3 had the Monokubs? This edition has the Monosquids! Basically, every time someone dies, a Monosquid would be created with that person’s personality and some brief memories. In a sense, they ARE the deceased group members, in a mechanical/plush form. Also, Monokuma explains them as the souls of the dead reanimated. They appear the day after a trial, and all seem to hate Monokuma. And with the exception of the two murders that were accidents, almost all the victims hate their killer.

They also still have Ultimate labs kinda-each of their rooms, as stated before, are tailored to double as their lab. For instance, Mask’s room has a lot of tech gear, N-Pacer has a place she can study, Emperor’s just has a fucking throne...yeah.

Chapter 1- The line of Light and Darkness is thin (daily life)

As we check in on our gang in the morning, we learn multiple things. One, most-to-all contact to the outside world has been cut off; Mask can access the internet and all of that, but he can’t post on any forums or play any online games, even with his hacking. Prince can’t tap into his mental link with Regent or...really anyone. Two, that there’s plenty of weapons and other things for murder in multiple labs, and around the Hotel in general.

And three, Monokuma has a motive.

The first motive is simple; If you are to get away with murder, you can take one person with you, but they cannot be the one who the class votes in the class trial. Enticing, since multiple couples are present (Emperor and Gloves, for example), but the gang has made a collective decision to try to ignore it. Well, mostly.

This motive ate at someone, driving them absolutely mad. They COULD NOT stand being trapped in the hotel, they needed out!

So, a few mornings after the motive was introduced, Rider takes notice at the breakfast meeting that...well, someone’s missing.

The group splits up, searching the hotel top to bottom. Until, at last, a high shriek pierces the area, and a dreary announcement is played.

Ding dong, dong ding!

“A body has been discovered!”

Chapter 1- The line of Light and Darkness is thin (Deadly life)

The gang rushes to the scream. It would seem Army found the body.

Curled up in a fetal position, arm still clutched around his wound, Prince lays motionless on the floor of his room. Yellow ink stains the area, and a knife stained with the same liquid sits on the floor next to him.

Emperor is near hysterics. He doesn’t even try to hide his tears. Gloves takes him away from the scene, resolving to comfort their lover in their room during the investigation.

Speaking of investigation, Vintage steps up to the plate. Being the Ultimate Detective, he takes to the scene like a fish in water. He questions everyone, and searches through Prince’s room top to bottom.

By the time of the trial, there wasn’t a stone unturned in the hotel. It was almost...scary, how well Vintage seemed to be handling this.

During the trial, Vintage revealed three main suspects.

First, there was Aloha. The dancer had indeed got up in the middle of the night-he had been sharing a room with Army, and the actor confirmed it-to use the bathroom and get himself a drink of water. He passed by the kitchen, and thought he saw a knife on the rack missing. He got up at 11:25 P.M and returned to bed at 11:30. Once again, Army confirmed his alibi for this.

Second, was Aviators. Avi couldn’t sleep as well, so he spent most of the night walking through the hotel, exploring it. He did take a knife, but only in the case if he needed to defend himself. He had gotten out of bed at 10:50, took the knife somewhere at around 11, and returned it when he was heading back to his bed, at 5:00 AM.

And the third was Rider. Sure, the fighter was close friends with Prince, but it was still suspicious; Rider was reportedly awake at 2:00 AM, and got himself a quick snack before simply training in his room. He did hear someone return to their room at around 5:00, but didn’t go check. Looking back, he suspects it was just Avi.

So this was a game of alibis, and luck. Multiple suggestions were made; maybe Aloha took the knife and murdered Prince, washed his hands in the mage’s bathroom, and returned to bed. That was shot down, since the rooms don’t have running water at night (10:00 PM to 7:00 AM. Normal DR stuff), only the bathrooms in the hotel itself, and the kitchen.

Another was that Rider had taken the knife, but that was also shut down seeing as the period he was awake at wouldn’t line up with Aloha seeing the knife missing.

The third and final one was that Aviators had taken the knife, murdered Prince, and wait for a time when Rider wouldn’t hear him to return to his own room. This one... the only argument against it was that Rider would probably had still heard it. That counterclaim was shut down when Rider said he was taking a short rest when he heard the noise, and then went back to training-practicing hits on a punching bag.

So, after a final vote, Aviators was voted as the blackened. Luckily correctly, but it was much to Skull’s horror. Aviators was seen as a father figure to the S5 (It made sense, with Skull being the mother figure), and he had killed Prince in cold blood. and it didn’t help that Avi said he was planning on using the motive to escape with Skull.

And so, Aviators was dragged off to his execution. RIP big man

Ultimate delight-Ultimate Baker Aviator Jones’ execution executed.

Avi is dragged by a chain around his neck towards his death, located in...a giant oven? He’s strapped down to a cake pan, and the heat turns up.

And up...and up...and up.

Aviators is sweating bullets in the oven, strapped down to this hot pan and in a satin jacket, there’s nothing he can do except grit his teeth and bare it.

Except he can’t.

His head is pounding and he feels incredibly dizzy. He manages to sit up a little in his restraints as he vomits.

And, it would seem, Heatstroke got him. For after a few more minutes of struggling to escape...Aviators fell still.

The first execution of the killing game was a gruesome one.

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Chapter 2-The butterfly effect (Daily life)

The gang gathered in the dining hall again. Though, both Skull and Emperor were in grief, and everyone was still shaken up from that execution.

This is when Monokuma introduced the Monosquids.

Two robot like things-one purple and one yellow-shaped like baby inklings-appeared. The yellow one ran and hid behind Emperor, shaking, and the purple one only hugged Skull’s leg.

Monokuma explained their deal; They can’t talk, but they are essentially the spirits of the deceased in a more robotic form. So, naturally, Emperor just hugged Prince tightly, still in grief

Monokuma also explained the next motive. This one being taken straight from DR1; Secrets!

Everyone had a slip of paper with a secret of theirs on it. If no one died in the next day, these secrets will be revealed to the world.

So yeah some people didn’t want those secrets to be revealed, but that doesn’t mean they’d kill for it!

But, well, someone did. Not on purpose, mind you.

At around noon, Vintage was exploring the hotel, he heard a gunshot. He knew the only firearms in the hotel were the ones in his room (as Vintage had a license to carry from his detective job). So, basically, he knew someone was screwed.

He rushed to his room, seen by a few people who took no notice.

It was only at dinner they noticed Vintage hadn’t left his room.

Cautiously, Emperor, Army, and Skull went to investigate. When they opened the door and their eyes rested on the sight...

Ding dong, dong ding!

A body has been discovered!!!

Chapter 2- The Butterfly effect (Deadly life)

It wasn’t AS gruesome as Prince’s death. It didn’t mean it was still scarring. There was a hole in Vintage’s forehead, cyan ink flowed out of it. In his hands, he held his gun.

Obviously, it looked like a suicide. He was holding his gun. But, Skull knew better. Despite not getting along well with Vintage, Skull knew that Vintage would never kill himself, even for something like this. Plus, there’s the lack of a note, all of that.

Upon closer examination, the group also finds freckles of some sort of white on the handle of the gun-before you say anything, it’s not drugs.

This lead to two possibilities; 1, Gloves. The gymnast has a thing of chalk dust for extra grip (not like they need it)

Or 2, Skull. He had been baking and using flour earlier that day. Some of that flour could have stuck on his hands and rubbed off after using the gun.

But, the alibis didn’t seem to help at all; Skull was alone while baking, and Gloves was just. Alone all day.

During the trial, it was back and fourth between people saying that Skull killed Vintage, or Gloves, or that it was a suicide at the dust was from something different.

The only reason the trial was solved was guilt.

Throughout the trial, one of the two suspects was looking more and more anxious, more and more guilty.

A few minutes before the end, they yelled, “I’M THE BLACKENED!”

It was Gloves.

They explained what happened-They had found Vintage’s gun lying around somewhere and decided to return it. The thing is, they have no idea how guns work. So they accidentally triggered it. And when Vintage walked in, the same thing happened. Gloves panicked and put it in his hand.

Needless to say, Emperor broke down again. The two closest people in his life, dead or sentenced to it!

Emperor insisted it was Skull. He knew Gloves couldn’t hurt a fly and yet....!

Gloves was the blackened. But they weren’t about to go down without a fight.

They pressed a kiss on Emperor’s lips. It was a promise. It meant “I’ll see you soon”

And they raced down the hall in an attempt to get free.

Racing death- Ultimate Gymnast Gloves Elaris Execution: Executed

Gloves ran down the hallway, not stopping for anything.

Monokuma pressed a button, and pits opened up, showing falls onto spikes down below. So, Gloves got creative.

They leaped up and took hold of support beams, swinging their way across the hall.

But the last one.. The last one was weak, and broke under Gloves’ weight, sending them falling to their death

They collapsed onto the spikes, one impaling them through their stomach, sending neon green ink everywhere.

The second victim, Gloves Elaris, had fallen dead.

#Galax writes #coroika #splatoon #tw death #tw blood #tw gore #danganronpa

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beardcore-blog · 5 years ago

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A Princess Diary

"What’s Wrong With Cinderella?"

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with ”Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her ”princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, ”I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, ”Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

”Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. ”Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

”Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. ”It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. ”Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. ”What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a ”trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ”Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own ”world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Shortly before that, Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire’s and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for ”Princess Phones” covered in faux fur and attend ”Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53 percent jump from the previous year. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.

Even Dora the Explorer, the intrepid, dirty-kneed adventurer, has ascended to the throne: in 2004, after a two-part episode in which she turns into a ”true princess,” the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products division released a satin-gowned ”Magic Hair Fairytale Dora,” with hair that grows or shortens when her crown is touched. Among other phrases the bilingual doll utters: ”Vámonos! Let’s go to fairy-tale land!” and ”Will you brush my hair?”

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ”So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can ”have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like ”A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first ”Disney on Ice” show. ”Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. ”They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual ”mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of ”Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. ”We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. ”She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ”We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, ”although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

”Look,” he said, ”I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be ”perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be ”kind and caring,” ”please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. ”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.

”Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.

”Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. ”Then don’t you like her face?”

”Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) ”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”

Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

Anyway, you have to give girls some credit. It’s true that, according to Mattel, one of the most popular games young girls play is ”bride,” but Disney found that a groom or prince is incidental to that fantasy, a regrettable necessity at best. Although they keep him around for the climactic kiss, he is otherwise relegated to the bottom of the toy box, which is why you don’t see him prominently displayed in stores.

What’s more, just because they wear the tulle doesn’t mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub. Princesses can even be a boon to exasperated parents: in our house, for instance, royalty never whines and uses the potty every single time.

”Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of ”Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” ”The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. ”When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? A year ago, when we shopped for ”big girl” bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the ”girls” side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the ”boys” territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles. Meanwhile, Baby GAP’s boys’ onesies were emblazoned with ”Big Man on Campus” and the girls’ with ”Social Butterfly”; guess whose matching shoes were decorated on the soles with hearts and whose sported a ”No. 1” logo? And at Toys ”R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the ”Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children’s marketing (recall the emergence of ” ‘tween”), that pink became seemingly innate to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few years. That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism — ah, hither Marlo! — became parents. ”The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids,” Paoletti told me. ”I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything — you couldn’t be this, you couldn’t be that, you had to be a neutral nothing.”

The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through ”Ally McBeal,” ”Bridget Jones’s Diary,” ”Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

I mulled that over while flipping through ”The Paper Bag Princess,” a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ”dressed like a real princess.” She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ”Thelma and Louise” all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle. And I get that: the fact is, though I want my daughter to do and be whatever she wants as an adult, I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care.

There had to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags. I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. ”If you can stand up to really mean people,” an announcer intoned, ”maybe you have what it takes to be a princess.”

Now here were some girls who had grit as well as grace. I loved Princess Peach even as I recognized that there was no way she could run in those heels, that her peachiness did nothing to upset the apple cart of expectation: she may have been athletic, smart and strong, but she was also adorable. Maybe she’s what those once-unisex, postfeminist parents are shooting for: the melding of old and new standards. And perhaps that’s a good thing, the ideal solution. But what to make, then, of the young women in the Girls Inc. survey? It doesn’t seem to be ”having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time. No wonder the report was titled ”The Supergirl Dilemma.”

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. ”Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change,” observes Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s original”Little Princess” was published at a time of rapid urbanization, immigration and poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. ”The original folk tales themselves,” Forman-Brunell says, ”spring from medieval and early modern European culture that faced all kinds of economic and demographic and social upheaval — famine, war, disease, terror of wolves. Girls play savior during times of economic crisis and instability.” That’s a heavy burden for little shoulders. Perhaps that’s why the magic wand has become an essential part of the princess get-up. In the original stories — even the Disney versions of them — it’s not the girl herself who’s magic; it’s the fairy godmother. Now if Forman-Brunell is right, we adults have become the cursed creatures whom girls have the thaumaturgic power to transform.

In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, ”reclaiming” sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said ”Porn Star” or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like ”bitch” and ”slut” as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ ”passion for fashion,” fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

”But what does that mean?” asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College. ”There are other ways to express ‘innocence’ — girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you’re really talking about is sexual purity. And there’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink — exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

Lamb suggested that to see for myself how ”Someday My Prince Will Come” morphs into ”Oops! I Did It Again,” I visit Club Libby Lu, the mall shop dedicated to the ”Very Important Princess.”

Walking into one of the newest links in the store’s chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu’s design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms — ”I Love Your Hair,” ”Hip Chick,” ”Spoiled” — were written in ”girlfriend language.” The young sales clerks at this ”special secret club for superfabulous girls” are called ”club counselors” and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or ”Girl Power Index,” which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: ”Girl Power” has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to ”I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop.”

Inside, the store was divided into several glittery ”shopping zones” called ”experiences”: Libby’s Laboratory, now called Sparkle Spa, where girls concoct their own cosmetics and bath products; Libby’s Room; Ear Piercing; Pooch Parlor (where divas in training can pamper stuffed poodles, pugs and Chihuahuas); and the Style Studio, offering ”Libby Du” makeover choices, including ‘Tween Idol, Rock Star, Pop Star and, of course, Priceless Princess. Each look includes hairstyle, makeup, nail polish and sparkly tattoos.

As I browsed, I noticed a mother standing in the center of the store holding a price list for makeover birthday parties — $22.50 to $35 per child. Her name was Anne McAuliffe; her daughters — Stephanie, 4, and 7-year-old twins Rory and Sarah — were dashing giddily up and down the aisles.

”They’ve been begging to come to this store for three weeks,” McAuliffe said. ”I’d never heard of it. So I said they could, but they’d have to spend their own money if they bought anything.” She looked around. ”Some of this stuff is innocuous,” she observed, then leaned toward me, eyes wide and stage-whispered: ”But … a lot of it is horrible. It makes them look like little prostitutes. It’s crazy. They’re babies!”

As we debated the line between frivolous fun and JonBenét, McAuliffe’s daughter Rory came dashing up, pigtails haphazard, glasses askew. ”They have the best pocketbooks here,” she said breathlessly, brandishing a clutch with the words ”Girlie Girl” stamped on it. ”Please, can I have one? It has sequins!”

”You see that?” McAuliffe asked, gesturing at the bag. ”What am I supposed to say?”

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the ” ‘tween” mecca Hot Topic, where a display of Tinker Bell items caught my eye. Tinker Bell, whose image racks up an annual $400 million in retail sales with no particular effort on Disney’s part, is poised to wreak vengeance on the Princess line that once expelled her. Last winter, the first chapter book designed to introduce girls to Tink and her Pixie Hollow pals spent 18 weeks on The New York Times children’s best-seller list. In a direct-to-DVD now under production, she will speak for the first time, voiced by the actress Brittany Murphy. Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest. Aimed at 6- to 9-year-old girls, the line will catch them just as they outgrow Princess. Their colors will be lavender, green, turquoise — anything but the Princess’s soon-to-be-babyish pink.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more ”attitude” and ”sass” than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I’d seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, ”Spoiled to Perfection,” ”Mood Subject to Change Without Notice” and ”Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess.” At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured ”Dark Tink,” described as ”the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

Girl power, indeed.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. ”Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed. referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. ”Mommy, do you like Ariel?”

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. ”But, Mommy?” she added. ”When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

– by Peggy Orenstein, for the New York Times Magazine (December 2006)

Posted by lukewho on 2007-01-01 19:50:52

Tagged: , fremont , christmas , 2006 , jacinto , princess , disney

The post A Princess Diary appeared first on Good Info.

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topbeautifulwomens · 6 years ago

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#David #Walliams #brunettemodel #clothes #comedy #highlighter #inspire #makeuplove #malemodel #muas #outfit #toptags

David Walliams (born David Williams, August 20, 1971) is an English comedian and actor, best known for his partnership with Matt Lucas in the sketch show Little Britain and the spoof interview series Rock Profile.

Born in Surrey to father Peter Williams– a London Transport engineer — and mother Kathleen Williams — a lab technician, Walliams was raised in Banstead.

Both his parents searched on The Friworking day Night Project when their son David was the guest star on the refreshing show. Walliams was educated at Collingwood Primary School and Reigate Grammar School (at the latter he was a contemporary of Robert Shearman). He was a member of the National Youth Theatre, which is where he met Lucas. Walliams studied Drama at the University of Bristol, where he was in the 1989-92 cohort – one year below Simon Pegg.

Walliams changed his name when he joined the actor’s trade union, Equity, because there was already a member named David Williams. This was spoofed in a mock interview in Rock Profile, when Robbie Williams is always referred to as ‘Robbie Walliams’.

His first known TV appearance was as Lesley Luncheonmeat on Sky One’s show Games World in 1993. He appeared alongside Alex Verrey, who played Big Boy Barry, each and every Tuesday evening. After that he went on to be “The Lift” on the first series of the CBBC gameshow Incredible Games in 1994.

Walliams starred in the video for Charlotte Hatherley single Bastardo along with Pegg, Lucy Davis and Lauren Laverne, along with Matt Lucas in the video of the Fat Les song Vindaloo (the unofficial anthem for the England national football team at the 1998 FIFA World Cup).

Together with The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss, he wrote and appeared in Doctor Who parodies The Pitch of Fear, The Web of Caves and The Kidnappers for BBC2’s “Doctor Who Night” in 1999. He later performed in the Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio play Phantasmagoria, written by Gatiss.

In 2000 he played Jake Plaskow in the BBC’s Attachments, set in an internet start-up company. He also appeared as Rats in the surreal comedy by Rob Grant The Strangerers, shown on Sky One.

His guest starring credits include: an episode of Black Books in which he complained about getting second-hand smoke from the main character, who waved him off saying, “Forget about it, you can buy me a drink sometime”; an episode of EastEnders in 2003; the second episode of Marple;and in a 1999 episode of Simon Pegg’s Spaced (1×3 “Art”) as Vulva an artist/collaborator from Brian’s past and now a self-proclaimed artist of impressionism.

Walliams and Rob Brydon collaborated on a sitcom called Home which has been in development since 2003 as a vehicle for them to star in with Ronnie Corbett.

In 2006, Walliams made an appearance in the movie A Cock and Bull Story. Later in the year he presented a documentary on James Bond, entitled David Walliams: My Life with James Bond.

In 2007 he returned to non-comedic television, garnering excellent reviews for his portrayal of a suave and dangerous manipulator in Stephen Poliakoff’s Capturing Mary as well as appearing in the film Virgin Territory.

Walliams played comedian Frankie Howerd in the BBC4 TV film Rather You Than Me. He will make his stage debut in a West End production of No Man’s Land in 2008.

He has signed a contract with HarperCollins to publish two children’s books, the first of which will be released in autumn 2008.

Walliams and Lucas played grotesque caricatures of various rock musicians in the series Rock Profile and in the spoof documentary series Sir Bernard’s Stately Homes. They were also stars of the Paramount Comedy Channel show Mash and Peas, and it was in this guise that they appeared in the Fat Les video (see previously mentioned). They both had brief speaking roles in the movie Plunkett And Maclaine as prisoners.

David Walliams as Mr. Mann, one of his Little Britain characters

They have appeared together in a music video for the Pet Shop Boys single “I’m with Stupid”, in which the two are apparently auditioning their version of the song’s video for Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, who are tied up and appear to be hostages. Among the characters played by Walliams in Little Britain are Emily Howard, the “rubbish transvestite”, the mad Scottish hotel owner, Ray McCooney, and Sebastian Love, a camp aide (or aide de camp) to the Prime Minister, on whom he has a enormous crush.

In 2006, as the pair toured Britain with a stage show, Little Britain Live, Walliams managed to fit in two hours of swimming training every morning in preparation for his cross-channel swim. On 3 April 2005, the swimming pool scene featuring Lou & Andy was hailed as the greatest comedy sketch of all time in a Channel 4 poll, on the show The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches. (Vicky Pollard’s swimming pool sketch came fourth.)

On 4 July 2006 Walliams swam the English Channel for the charity Sport Relief (part of Comic Relief).

He successfully totald the swim in 10 hours and 34 minutes to cover the 35 km (22 miles) stretch of sea, the equivalent of 700 lengths of an Olympic standard swimming pool. This was wrongly reported as one of the top 50 recorded times for an unaided Channel crossing;. In reality Walliams actually placed 167th at the time of crossing in only the CSA listings, excluding the CSPF listings. However, he did raise over ÂŁ1,000,000 in donations. It took nine months of training to prepare for the swim. The training had to coincide with Walliams and Lucas’s Little Britain Live tour, so every morning before performing he had to complete several hours of training before performing on stage in the evening. Walliams first swam from Lee-on-the-Solent near to the City of Portsmouth Hampshire to the Isle Of Wight in around 2 hours and he also completed an eight hour swim off the coast of Croatia before embarking on the cross-channel attempt. Walliams has insisted that prior to his challenge he had never seriously taken part in any sport.

The Bluetones, whose lead singer Mark Morriss is a friend of Walliams, wrote a song in honour of his achievement. Entitled “Fade In/Fade Out”, it can be identified on their self-titled album which was released on 9 October 2006. Walliams was awarded a special award in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in recognition. Matt Lucas made a documentary of this, entitled Little Britain’s Big Swim, which can be found on the Little Britain Live DVD.

On 6 November 2006, he won The Mirror’s “Pride of Britain” Award for the Most Influential Public Figure as he raised a lot more than ÂŁ1 million swimming the channel for the charity Sport Relief. Although initially tipped as a contender for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year poll for 2006, he failed to make the final shortlist of 10 contenders. Instead, Walliams was given a special award during the ceremony for his achievement. In July 2006, Walliams also became a Patron of the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY).

On 7 March 2008, Walliams along with James Cracknell swam the 12 mile Strait of Gibraltar, from Spain to Morocco, again for Sport Relief. He successfully completed the swim in just over 4 and a half hours.

Walliams was sick in the drinking water and the pair saw dolphins and whales in the shark infested waters.

The swim was the last leg of Cracknell’s 10-day trip from the UK to Africa in which he rowed the Channel and cycled through France and Spain.

The media have made allegations that Walliams is gay or bisexual and humorous references to this are made on the DVD commentary of Little Britain. On 8 out of 10 Cats on 20 July 2007, Walliams humorously said: “You’ve got me all wrong. I’m gay.” However, in an interview with “Queerday”, Walliams asserted that his life would be easier if he were attracted to men. Previous rumours (mostly perpetuated by the red top press) that Walliams and Lucas were in a relationship were proved unfounded when Lucas registered his civil partnership with his male partner in 2006.

Walliams was harassed from 2005 to date by Sarah Bartholomew, 29, who has sent him erotic poems, gifts such as underwear and secretly photographed him in his house. The woman has been banned by the BBC from their London studios. A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed the force was aware of the harassment allegation. On 28 July 2008 she was ordered by a District Judge to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Walliams is now rumoured to be dating new love interest and Britain’s Next Top Model contestant Stefanie Wilson.

Name David Walliams Height 6'3 Naionality American Date of Birth 20-Aug-1971 Place of Birth America Famous for

The post David Walliams Biography Photographs Wallpapers appeared first on Beautiful Women.

source http://topbeautifulwomen.com/david-walliams-biography-photographs-wallpapers/

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redsoapbox · 6 years ago

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IN CONVERSATION WITH SANDRA’S WEDDING

Jonny, Joe, Luke and Tom

At the beginning of February, I embarked on an ambitious new music guide for this blog entitled 28 Bands in 28 Days. The idea was to scour the world (well, as best as you can from the couch potato position!) for new and exciting music. With two days of the project to run, all was going well - I had reviewed and recommended bands / singers from Canada, America, France, Sweden as well as the U.K. Having set aside the last two days of the month for New Zealand’s Marlon Williams and Finland’s Those Forgotten Tapes, I was feeling quite pleased with myself when my best laid plans were thrown into turmoil - I had chanced upon the stellar music of Sandra’s Wedding! I knew had to include them in the project, yet I wasn’t prepared to elbow out Marlon or TFT at the last minute. The solution that I came up with was simply to pretend that 2018 was a leap year (believe me, I’ve kidded myself about a lot worse that that down the years) and that there was, therefore, a 29th day and a 29th band. Sandra’s Wedding were in!

If you still haven’t heard the band’s remarkable debut album Northern Powerhouse and the brand new E.P. Good Morning, Bad Blood, then you’re in for one hell of a treat. Described, accurately, as a meeting of The Smiths and The Beautiful South (I know, I know, it can’t possibly be true, but it is, folks, it is!) and here is the evidence -

youtube

“Death by Hanging” - Sandra’s Wedding

It was a tremendous thrill, then, to interview the band. My thanks for their cooperation.

Northern Powerhouse, your stand-out debut album, arrived like a bolt out of the blue in February of 2017. How long, though, has the band been together?

Luke: Since sometime in the early months of 2016. Joe and myself had done a couple of little gigs together previously, as had he and Jonny, but the band became official around then.

Joe: I’d stopped playing guitar for a while before then whilst I was living in Leeds. I’d gotten really into poetry and wanted to be the next Simon Armitage or Thom Gunn for a while. I wrote a lot and posted little bits and pieces online but was always frustrated with how ‘slow’ the poetry process is in the sense that you’d get people saying, “I enjoyed your poem” but you hadn’t been able to see their reaction as they read it, or you felt like they could just be fobbing you off a bit. That period was good because I really got into crafting lyrics and working on atmosphere through language – more so than if I’d just been writing songs as a whole. I did stand-up as well and went to Edinburgh Fringe… I had enough and left early, decided music was what I was probably best at and bought a new acoustic. That’s when I started putting the songs that would become the album together. I started writing like crazy and felt like a light had been switched on after having spent so long in a different headspace. If I weren’t shit at poetry or stand-up there wouldn’t be a band is the crux of this answer.

There is a real sense of time and place running through each of the songs that make up Northern Powerhouse. Where did you all grow up and which local musicians would you count amongst your earliest and most important influences?

Luke: We all grew up within a thirty-mile radius of each other in and around Goole, except Jonny who is from Castleford.

Joe: A lot of people have influenced me, but not necessarily ‘music’ people. I’m not someone who idolises artists, I feel like it’s more a grudging respect in a way. I listen to albums, songs, certain lyrics and get a bit mad wishing I’d written that. That’s not to say I don’t find inspiration from others, I do just like anyone else. Growing up, my parents always had Magic-FM or Neil Diamond cassettes on in the car so I suppose I was exposed to a lot of easy listening. I wish I had a cool answer; that my parents were into 20s Jazz records and Finnish folk music but my mum loves Elvis and my dad doesn’t own a single CD.

I once asked Peter Hook what he thought his music would have sounded like if he'd grown up in Skegness or Shrewsbury, rather than Salford, to which he succinctly replied 'shit'! Are northern bands any different to southern bands?

Luke: Of course, but only in the same way that American bands are different from German bands for example. You can’t help but be shaped by your upbringings, and that comes out in the music that we (as in northerners) make.

Joe: I’m always wary of tribalism. I don’t ever want to swing my dick around and make out I’m better than someone else just because they were born in a different postcode. It’s going to colour your outlook and how you express yourself, obviously, but that’s just human nature. I’m proud of being from a small place hardly anyone has heard of, I sometimes look at it as being a non-league club trying to gain a few promotions and have a taste of some success; a good cup run.

Northern Powerhouse is a snapshot of life in post-Brexit Britain. To what extent, if any, does the social commentary, expressed through songs such as "Death by Hanging" and "The Spark", reflect your own views, or is the record a character study of the great British public?

Joe: Everyone’s terrified. People are terrified of change, people are terrified of everything staying the same. I think most of the fuel for the songs comes from how everything gets served up to us. The press in this country are honestly pathetic. Not in a Trumpian “Fake-News” sense, but in a “Let’s tap into people’s anxiety about this topic” sense. The whole Brexit Referendum debate was embarrassing. Grown adults standing on national television arguing about the colour of passports and what Winston Churchill would say if he were still around. Remember when the Panama Papers came out and everyone just did an Alan Partridge shrug and carried on arguing about how we can dig our own vegetables after Brexit? You couldn’t make it up. Billions of pounds being withheld from public services and we’re all arguing about the most inane stuff. The songs are vignettes where all these feelings are present, I can understand why people feel the way they do for the most part. I suppose when I look back on that album I’ll remember that year where everyone went fucking apeshit.

Even though you're tackling some heavy themes on the album, from unemployment to spousal abuse to capital punishment, there is a humorous touch in evidence right throughout the record. You're following in the footsteps of Ray Davies, Chris Difford, Paul Heaton and just about every other leading British songwriter in that respect. What is it that makes you all take such a tragicomic approach to your craft?

Luke: If you didn’t laugh you’d cry! I think there’s a long tradition of finding humour in tragedy in this country, and it brings us all together in trying times. Jonny: Absolutely. I think finding beauty in the dark moments of life is a real art form - I like to think of Joe’s lyrics being in the same vein as Edward Hopper’s paintings – just capturing those little moments of sadness in life and creating a little vignette around it. Imagine the painting Nighthawks but set in a Working Men’s Club in a small mining town and you’re on the right lines.

Joe: Nobody cares about happiness. Imagine having a happy friend. Hell.

How do you approach the discipline of lyric writing? Do you spend a lot of time in cafes and pubs observing people, notebook at the ready?

Joe: I have done that in the past. I like to remember little scenes and turns of phrase. I think Alan Bennett is a bit of an influence in that respect. Bennett can take the most mundane exchange and turn it into something beautiful. I take a lot of artistic license, create little worlds and characters. The Day Before You Came by Abba is a song I think about a lot – it’s so dull it’s genius.

There's a definite air of nostalgia that hangs over the album, with Old Spice aftershave, The Yorkshire Ripper, Bernard Manning, Northern Soul and the Chelsea v Leeds 70's football rivalry all namechecked. It permeates the new EP, too, with "Saturday Night Television" guaranteed to remind us of a bygone era. Lou Reed said that "I don't like nostalgia, unless it's mine", but I get the sense that you're more interested in a form of communal nostalgia? Luke: I think the fact that we’re all just about the same age means we find it remarkably easy to fire off each other’s nostalgia glands. One mention of a shiny Charizard or finding a Tazo in your crisps sends all of us into a nice, warm, fuzzy place, and the fact that a lot of our fans and listeners are in the same sort of age bracket means that they all wear the same rose tinted, 90s flavoured goggles. I think Joe writes from an age older than his years though from time-to-time, and has a natural ability to relate to people of just about any generation.

Joe: That comes from being taken to the pub a lot as a kid. My dad played pub football and the pub was where people held events so pub-coke was something I spent a lot of time nursing. I often wonder about what pubs will look like in 20/30 years - young people don’t seem to go out anymore. I digress slightly but read “Church Going” by Philip Larkin and imagine it being about pubs instead. Depressing.

Which songwriters have had the biggest impact on your own work?

Joe: As I said earlier, I don’t have any HUGE idols. But in terms of wishing I could have produced anything as good as they have; Adam & The Ants, Beautiful South, Chumbawamba, Deacon Blue, Eels, Five, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Housemartins, Iris Dement, John Prine, Kool & The Gang, Lisa Stansfield, Mike & The Mechanics, Nick Lowe, Orbison (Roy), Paul Young, Queen, Richard Hawley, Super Furry Animals, Talking Heads, Uzbekistan National Choir, Val Doonican, Wham, X?, Yann Tiersen, Zombies.

Joe's lyrics rightly attract a lot of attention - they'd be on the National curriculum if it was up to me - but your tunes are incredibly infectious too. Do you all have a hand in writing the music?

Luke: It’s a very communal process.

Jonny: Yeah, Joe generally brings the song in as a chord structure and we work on and around it. I’m a strong believer in the idea that the song is all that matters, so if it needs a wall of guitars layering up to make it work then so be it, but I’m equally as happy playing something sparse or even nothing at all if the song needs space to breathe. We’re not averse to picking up other instruments like a mandolin or a keyboard if it fits the feel of what we’re looking for. Who inspired you to take up your particular instruments? Was it another musician, a parent, or a teacher, for instance? Luke: My dad plays drums, and so they’ve just been a part of my life since birth. I’ll never forget playing my first ‘1-2-3-4’ in a back room in the now sadly closed Electro Music in Doncaster, getting the bug and never turning back.

Jonny: I initially found it hard to connect to the guitar – or at least what I thought the guitar was - because I thought it had to be shredding and metal which was what everyone I knew was into playing – and that’s fine, but just not my cup of tea. For me to discover the playing of Johnny Marr, Peter Buck, Tom Verlaine, John Frusciante and Roger McGuinn was a game changer because suddenly I found people using a vocabulary on the instrument that I’d never heard before – a little like hearing French for the first time if you’d grown up only thinking the entire world spoke English I guess!

Tom: When I was fifteen all my friends where picking up an instrument and forming bands and naturally I wanted to be part of that. My parents bought me my own bass and after spending a somewhat wasted year at Goole Sixth form in which I mostly skipped lessons to jam in my parents garage, but I eventually started studying music at a college in Hull.

Who is Sandra? Does she exist, or is she a composite character?

Luke: Sandra is a wife, a mother, a daughter, a lover, a timid wallflower, a destroyer of worlds, a maneater, a vegan, a shoulder to cry on, a dinnerlady, a career-woman, a homemaker, a manager, a band-leader, a figurehead, a feather, a sledgehammer, a Friday night out, a Saturday night in, she’s whatever you want her to be, and she’s the best at it.

Joe: She gets on my wick.

It was Jericho Keys, of BBC Introducing North Yorks, who first piqued my interest in the band with his tantalising description of the group as 'a cross between The Smiths and The Beautiful South'. However, I've subsequently seen that quote amended to The Coral and The Housemartins. Which is the correct quote and which bands would you happily compare yourselves to?

Jonny: I think The Coral comparison was one he said when he played our first single, and then the other comparison was after we subsequently did a BBC Introducing session on his show. He’s a great guy and we’ve had fun on the show when we did a session with him. Luke: The Smiths and The Housemartins are the two that we tend to hear most often. Comparisons to The Housemartins aren’t too much of a surprise, being from the same (sort of) area their influence is bound to rub off, and I think it’s clear the influence Paul Heaton has had on Joe in particular. The Smiths isn’t a bad shout either, our Jonny is influenced in a big way by their Johnny and his mesmerising arpeggiated playing.

I have to put my cards on the table and say that Northern Powerhouse is one of the best debut albums of the past decade. As you look back on the studio experience, are there things that you would have done differently, other songs that you might have included for example? Tom: It was an unusual experience when it came to recording as at that time the four of us had never been in the same room before and had only ever rehearsed as a three piece band with Jonny writing the lead guitar parts to homemade demos and then dubbing them over in the studio. I don’t think any of us are really happy with the overall sound of Powerhouse but I think that’s because we’re by far our own worst critics. The positive response it has had since though has been beyond our expectations and helped us to be less self critical of it. Luke: I guess the first album is always a learning curve, so it’s hard to say if there’s anything we’d have done differently. I think the track list is solid, and although there are demos of other songs kicking around from the time I think the strongest ended up on there.

It's an album choc full of brilliant pop songs, but the bittersweet ballad "Hollywood" has taken on the form of an all-time classic. Do you know straight away when a song sounds like the real deal?

Luke: Personally, no. I can’t speak for the others but, although I always enjoy it when a song comes together, there’s no way of knowing if it’s going to be ‘the real deal’ without putting it out there and seeing what other people think of it. Hollywood is a case in point. We all, obviously, love the song as any parent loves their own child, but the reaction it got since we released it has been phenomenal and has surprised all of us. You know you’ve done something right when strangers stop you in town to tell you they ‘love that one about Goole!’

Jonny: When Joe sent me the acoustic demo for that track I was a little blown away by it. I sat with a twelve string guitar trying to encapsulate exactly what the lyrics made me feel, which is why I tried to find some weird chords that are heartbreakingly sad and also weirdly optimistic. It does seem to have connected with people from the area – someone made a fan made video to it with a bunch of nostalgic images of Goole in it, and it ended up with something like 30,000 views in a week on social media which was weird.

Does it give you pause for thought that even though a song of the stature of "Hollywood" or the album opener "This Heart" can mean an immense amount to a fan of the band, that around 99% of the British population are unlikely to ever hear the song? Is that discouraging for you as artists?

Luke: Not at all. Like any band, the main reason you do it is for the sheer love of it. I’d rather put out a song that means the world to one person than pump out generic pop that means nothing, but just makes for pleasant background noise in offices, hairdressers and building sites.

Tom: I’d agree with Luke, especially considering how people listen to and discover music now. There is an almost overwhelming amount of music that would be physically impossible to listen to in a human lifetime. We have a small but ever growing fan base that seem to love what we’re doing and as long as someone still enjoys it, well keep doing it. That said a few more monthly listeners on Spotify wouldn’t go a miss.

In a different era, punk, post-punk, and Britpop, perhaps, you would have been able to reach a far larger audience. Do you feel like a band out of step with the times?

Jonny: I don’t think many bands out there sound like us at this moment in time – for better or worse! I love lots of new music and there are great bands doing great things at the moment – but my initial influences were all older bands and I guess I gravitate to playing my instrument a certain way. We’re not trying to create a sound that is fashionable or trendy – you’ve only to look at our band photos to realise we are neither of those things – but we make music that is a genuine reflection of us and what we’re about. We’re fully aware that we’re not reinventing the wheel or coming up with a pioneering new sound, but hopefully people enjoy what we do. Luke: Although the music sometimes feels a bit of a throwback, I don’t think we feel out of step. It’s true that audiences are more disparate now, but that just means that people who seek you out are doing it because they REALLY want to listen to you. In times gone by we may have signed a little deal and got into some shops around the country, but now we’re available on the top of Mt. Everest via a device that everyone carries with them every day. The fact that we can be heard all over the world as a result of uploading some files from my front room is fascinating to me.

You have an excellent new EP, "Good Morning, Bad Blood", out now. There's some interesting additional instrumentation on tracks like "Titanic" and "Run, Rabbit Run", does that signpost something of a new direction for the band?

Luke: We’ve always wanted strings and brass, and if we could’ve afforded it I’m sure they’d have been there on Powerhouse too. It’s just nice to be in a place where we can bring in other excellent musicians to help us flesh out our sound.

Jonny: Yeah, we’re really lucky to know some talented people – David and Anthony who played are great. Anthony’s CV is amazing, he played for the Pope and on the last Gorillaz album, so it was a thrill that he agreed to play for us. But we’re all big fans of The Beatles and the whole “using the studio as an instrument” thing they did. So that could be a trumpet or cello part, but sometimes it’s just those little subtle additions on records that you really connect with and we try to do that. There is a really small dulcimer part I stuck on ‘Good Morning, Bad Blood’ to add that sort of 90s version of the 60s psychedelia that seemed prevalent back then, and hopefully it just adds something to the track even though we’ll never do it live. We see the recordings as being a separate entity to gigging.

What are your plans for the remainder of 2018? Is there any chance of an impromptu gig in my hometown of Pontypridd. After all, Mercury Prize winners Wolf Alice rocked up here for a gig in the local Municipal Hall last year!

Luke: I’m a quarter Welsh and embarrassingly I’ve never been! We have spoken before about a tour of the nations, four gigs in four days, one in each country. I’d be well up for nipping to Pontypridd if I can convince the rest.

Following on from the release of the excellent "Spite Christmas" last year, can we expect another tilt at the highly prestigious Christmas No. 1 spot this year?

Luke: Watch this space…

youtube

“Hollywood” - simply one of the best pop songs ever written!

https://www.facebook.com/sandraswedding/photos/p.1930575567000031/1930575567000031/?type=1&theater

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