#1973 birthday men

[johnnydany]

50 Years Vintage Legend Since January 1973 50th Birthday T-Shirt

Get yours now: https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/38022147-50-years-vintage-legend-since-january-1973-50th-bi

Let's Share & Tag Someone Who Would Love This Shirt

[wallartdesignergift]

(via T-shirt classique « T-shirt Vintage 1973 rétro 50 ans cadeau 50e anniversaire » par Digital-for-you)

[goryhorroor]

What are some underrated horror films? I have watched all the popular ones and need more! Thanks!

mentally prepare yourself because im ready to give a gumbo list (this has been sitting in my inbox because i had to ask all my friends and this is the list we came up with):

curse of the demon (1957) the serpent and the rainbow (1988) paranoiac (1963) the old dark house (1932) countess dracula (1971) golem (1920) haxan (1968) island of lost souls (1932) mad love (1935) mill of the stone women (1960) the walking dead (1936) the ghoul (1933) tourist trap (1979) the seventh victim (1943) ganja & hess (1973) dead of night (1945) a bay of blood (1971) let's scare jessica to death (1971) alice sweet alice (1976) the deadly spawn (1983) the brain that wouldn't die (1962) all about evil (2010) black roses (1988) the baby (1973) parents (1989) a blade in the dark (1983) blood lake (1987) solo survivor (1984) lemora: a child's tale of supernatural (1973) eyes of fire (1983) epitaph (2007) nightmare city (1980) slugs (1988) death smiles on a murderer (1973) intruder (1989) short night of glass dolls (1971) the children (2008) alone in the dark (1982) end of the line (2007) the queen of spades (1949) the housemaid (1960) tormented (1960) captain clegg (1962) the long hair of death (1964) dark age (1987) the crawling eye (1958) the kindred (1987) the gorgon (1964) wicked city (1987) baba yaga (1973) 976-evil (1988) bliss (2019) decoder (1984) amer (2009) the visitor (1979) day of the animals (1977) leptirica (1973) planet of the vampires (1965) lips of blood (1975) berberian sound studio (2012) a wounded fawn (2022) matango (1963) the mansion of madness (1973) the killing kind (1973) symptoms (1974) morgiana (1972) whispering corridors (1998) dead end (2003) infested (2023) (this just came out but im adding it) triangle (2009) the premonition (1976) you'll like my mother (1972) the mafu cage (1978) white of the eye (1987) mister designer (1987) alison's birthday (1981) the suckling (1990) graveyard shift (1987) messiah of evil (1987) out of the dark (1988) seven footprints to satan (1929) burn witch burn (1962) the damned (1962) pin (1988) horrors of malformed men (1969) mr vampire (1985) the vampire doll (1970) contracted (2013) impetigore (2019) eyeball (1975) malatestas carnival of blood (1973) the witch who came from the sea (1976) i drink your blood (1970) nothing underneath (1985) sauna (2008) seance (2000) come true (2020) the last winter (2006) night tide (1961) the brain (1988) dementia (1955) don't go to sleep (1982) otogirisou (2001) reincarnation (2005) mutant (1984) spookies (1986) shock waves (1977) bloody hell (2020) the den (2013) wer (2013) olivia (1983) enigma (1987) graverobbers (1988) manhattan baby (1982) evil in the woods (1986) death bed: the bed that eats (1977) cathy's curse (1977) creatures from the abyss (1994) the dorm that dripped blood (1982) the witching (1993) madman (1981) vampire's embrace (1991) blood beat (1983) the alien factor (1978) savage weekend (1979) blood sisters (1987) deadly love (1987) playroom (1990) die screaming marianne (1971) pledge night (1990) night train to terror (1985) the devonsville terror (1983) ghostkeeper (1981) special effects (1984) blood feast (163) the child (1977) godmonster of indian flats (1973) blood rage (1980) the unborn (1991) screamtime (1983) the outing (1987) the being (1983) silent madness (1984) lurkers (1988) forver evil (1987) squirm (1976) death screams (1982) jack-o (1995) haunts (1976) a night to dismember (1983) creaturealm: demons wake (1998) the curse (1987) daddy's deadly darling (1973) nightwing (1979) the laughing dead (1989) the severed arm (1973) the orphan (1979) not like us (1995) prime evil (1988) the monstrosity (1987) dark ride (2006) antibirth (2016) iced (1988) the soultangler (1987) twisted nightmare (1987) puffball (2007) biohazard (1985) cameron's closet (1988) beast from haunted cave (1959) the she-creature (1956)

[determinate-negation]

Those looking for a hip-hop starting point have landed on one, turning this year into a 50th-birthday celebration. Aug. 11, 1973 was the date a young Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc around his Bronx stomping grounds, deejayed a back-to-school party for his younger sister in the community room of an apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue. Campbell, who was born and spent his early years in Jamaica before his family moved to the Bronx, was still a teen himself at that time, just 18, when he began extending the musical breaks of the records he was playing to create a different kind of dancing opportunity. He’d started speaking over the beat, reminiscent of the “toasting” style heard in Jamaica. It wasn’t long before the style could be heard all over the city — and began to spread around the New York City metro region. Among those who started to hear about it were some young men across the river in Englewood, New Jersey, who started making up rhymes to go along with the beats. In 1979, they auditioned as rappers for Sylvia Robinson, a singer turned music producer who co-founded Sugar Hill Records. As The Sugarhill Gang, they put out “ Rapper’s Delight ” and introduced the country to a record that would reach as high as 36 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart list, and even make it to No. 1 in some European countries.

50 years ago today!

[3rdeyeblaque]

On January 7th, we venerate Ancestor & Hoodoo Saint, Auntie Zora Neale Hurston on her 133rd birthday (updated 2024). 🎉

Novelist, Anthropologist, Folklorist, Scholar, Vodou initiate & Historian, Zora Neale Hurston's legacy is forever cemented in Hoodoo Culture (and beyond) as the masterful wordsmith who cast a shining light on black excellence in all everyday forms/spaces, our ATR roots, & the preservation of Black Voices during the prime of the Harlem Renaissance.

Auntie Zora was born in Notasulga, AL and raised on 5 acres of land in Eatonville, FL by her preacher-father and free-spirited mother ; in what would be the first all-Black township in the country. After the shattering loss of her mother, Zora turned up in Baltimore, MD where she presented herself as a 16 year old (10 years her junior) in order to access free public school education resources; thereby finishing school. From then on, Zora lived her life presenting herself as 10 years younger than she actually was. She'd go on to graduate from Barnard College in 1928. 

She published several novellas & articles, including "Mules & Men"; a collection of Hoodoo Folklore. She entered the zenith of her career in the late 30s/40s after publishing her masterworks: "Their Eyes Were Watching God", "Tell My Horse", "Moses, Man of the Mountain", & an anthropological study on Hatian Vodou .After publishing her autobiography, "Dust Tracks on a Road, "Auntie Zora finally received the public recognition & literary respect that was long overdue. Despite her successes, and unprecedented contributions in classic literature & anthropology, Zora never received the financial contributions that her work so deserved. 

Zora Neale Hurston passed away; penniless, alone, & drifting into obscurity. Friends and supporters from near and far raised $600 for her funeral service and burial. She was buried in an unmarked grave, in a segregated section, at the Garden Of Heavenly Peace Cemetery in Fort Pierce, FL. Over a decade later, in 1973 the Great Alice Walker found the unmarked grave and ordered a headstone to be placed on it; engraved with, "Genius Of The South" in Zora's honor. It remains in place today.  “Let no Negro celebrity, no matter what financial condition they might be in at death, lie in inconspicuous forgetfulness. We must assume the responsibility of their graves being known and honored.” - Zora Neale Hurston to W.E.B. Dubois Auntie Zora wanted to be remembered & demanded that the same honor and respect be given unto her peers & others. Never forget the infectious voice that defined & defied, inspired & struck fear in many hearts of her time & after. We pour libations & give 💐 today as we celebrate Auntie Zora for her enigmatic spirit, ancestral wisdom, labor of love for Hoodoo Folklore, & for the seeing the beauty in the dark, sometimes solemn, corners in Black Culture. Let her studies continue to inform our own. Let her spark a fire in us to reconnect to our roots & grow within our lineages.

Offering suggestions: money, music, read/share her work, libations of water, & flowers.

‼️Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.‼️

[secular-jew]

This was Iran, circa 1973. A woman cutting her birthday cake.

This is a snapshot of Iran when it was one of the most open and progressive countries in the region, if not the world.

Just 6 years later, Iran was given (yes given, by the Western powers such as France and the U.S.) to unelected pedophile mullahs.

These mullahs have not only repressed any and all dissent, but they are murdering thousands of people all over the world, having successfully positioned Jihadi armies in over 100 countries.

Today, the Iranian Mullahs (who overtly and openly advocate murdering large swaths of others in the service of their cult), are using the Palestinians as a cudgel to attack Israel and genocide the Jews. But tomorrow, all of you reading this (except Islamists who support them, of which there are many on Tumblr), are next. Not only Jews and Christians, but any Muslim who refuses to practice Islam as it existed in the medieval 7th century.

Iran or Islamists in general, could care less about the Palestinians let alone anyone but themselves and their nightmare of a Caliphate enveloping the globe.

What you are seeing play out in Israel is merely a microcosm of what is coming to England, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, the U.S.,Canada, South America, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the rest of Asia, for starters.

This picture is also pre-1979 Iran, where more women attended university and sought advanced degrees than men. Notice the difference between real clothing and repressive black tents.

[bracketsoffear]

Stranger Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Stranger Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Ames, Alison: It Looks Like Us

Benton, Jim: The Frandidate Berger, Terry: The Haunted Dollhouse Blish, James & Robert Lowndes: The Duplicated Man Bradbury, Ray: Marionettes, Inc. Brooks, Mike: Alpharius: Head of the Hydra

Calvino, Italo: If On A Winter's Night A Traveller Campbell, John W.: Who Goes There? Christie, Agatha: Dead Man's Folly Crowley, Nate: The Twice-Dead King

Dahl, Roald: The Witches Damico, Gina: Wax Dick, Philip K.: A Scanner Darkly Dick, Philip K.: Upon the Dull Earth Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Double

French, Tana: The Likeness

Gaiman, Neil: Coraline

Hendrix, Grady: How to Sell a Haunted House

Ito, Junji: The Enigma of Amigara Fault Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

Jensen, Ruby Jean: MaMa

King, Stephen: Battleground King, Stephen: The Outsider Krulik, Nancy E.: Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo (series)

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Outsider

Martin, Ann M. & Laura Godwin: The Meanest Doll in the World Miles, Lawrence: This Town Will Never Let Us Go

Nettel, Guadalupe: El huésped (The host) Nix, Garth: The Ragwitch

Peck, Richard: Secrets of the Shopping Mall Poe, Edgar Allen: William Wilson Pratchett, Terry: Maskerade

Rayner, Jacqueline: EarthWorld Robinson, Justin: Everyman Ross, Louise: Collective Imagination: Goncharov (1973) (2022) as a Model for Communal Filmmaking

Schwartz, Alvin: Harold Scroggs, Kirk: Tales of a Sixth-Grade Muppet Sleator, William: Among the Dolls Sleator, William: The Duplicate Spark, Muriel: The Only Problem Spatola, Mike: The Monstrous Makeup Manual Springer, Nancy: Possessing Jessie Starling, Caitlin: Last to Leave the Room Stevenson, Robert Louis: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Stine, R.L.: The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight Stine, R.L.: Night of the Living Dummy

Topping, Keith & Martin Day: The Hollow Men

Vida, Vendela: The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

Wells, H.G.: The Invisible Man

Ames, Alison: It Looks Like Us

Shy high school junior Riley Kowalski is spending her winter break on a research trip to Antarctica, sponsored by one of the world’s biggest tech companies. She joins five student volunteers, a company-approved chaperone, and an impartial scientist to prove that environmental plastic pollution has reached all the way to Antarctica, but what they find is something much worse… something that looks human.

Riley has anxiety--ostracized by the kids at school because of panic attacks--so when she starts to feel like something’s wrong with their expedition leader, Greta, she writes it off. But when Greta snaps and tries to kill Riley, she can’t chalk it up to an overactive imagination anymore. Worse, after watching Greta disintegrate, only to find another student with the same affliction, she realizes they haven’t been infected, they’ve been infiltrated--by something that can change its shape. And if the group isn’t careful, that something could quickly replace any of them.

Benton, Jim: The Frandidate

Franny K. Stein, Mad Scientist, has always had her eye on world domination, and she has to start somewhere...like her class elections! If people vote for her, they’ll be giving her all the control she wants.

But Franny’s platform doesn’t have the same appeal as her competitors who are offering new playground equipment, so she creates The Frandidate. Made of DNA samples from a dog, a chameleon and a parrot, along with a scrap of carpet (so she’ll know where people stand), Franny’s special suit helps her say and do exactly what people want! But when The Frandidate starts making promises she knows she can’t keep, Franny realizes she might have gone too far…

Berger, Terry: The Haunted Dollhouse

On her thirteenth birthday, Sarah wishes that she would wake up inside of her dollhouse -- and her wish comes true. The book follows her throughout her day, with pictures that show the increasingly disturbing nature of the world in which she now exists.

Blish, James and Robert Lowndes: The Duplicated Man

The central premise of this novel concerns a cloning device that requires six different people, one for each duplicate to be created, to be hooked into the machine. Turns out while the memories are copied the personalities and appearances are affected by the subjective views of the various individuals. E.g., one copy is actually a bit shorter and more cowardly than the original because that's how its creator perceived the original while another due to her hero worship was a physically and mentally perfected version of the original.

Bradbury, Ray: Marionettes, Inc.

A man acquires a robot to stand in for him at home while he goes away. (A very sophisticated robot that eventually develops sentience, but still one that, if you place your head to the chest, you can hear a clock ticking instead of a heart beating.) However, the robot decides that he likes the original man's life and doesn't want to be stored away in a box in the basement. The solution? He betrays his owner by locking HIM in the box forever while he (the robot) lives the life of the owner, his family completely unaware of the switch. Meanwhile, another man considers doing the same, only to discover that his wife has already replaced herself.

Brooks, Mike: Alpharius: Head of the Hydra

As this post--https://www.tumblr.com/bracketsoffear/718600953914327040/wasnt-here-in-time-for-the-stranger-poll-but--says, "Alpharius is the Primarch of the [...] Alpha Legion, and aside from the ones that have been fully expunged from all Imperial records, he's the primarch we know the least about. We're fairly confident he's actually two twin brothers pretending to be the same guy, Alpharius and Omegon, and that he specializes in infiltration. Beyond that, all bets are off. Literally every event in his life has at least two versions that have been printed in official books and directly contradict each other. The book that compiles his backstory in a neat and sensible manner that doesn't have any internal or external contradictions opens with the blatant admission that all of it is a complete fucking lie. Supposedly, he died at the battle for Pluto, but then he is reported to have been killed several centuries later somewhere else by a completely different guy. Only complicating matters is that pretty much every member of his legion undergoes extensive plastic surgery to look exactly like him. Most of them introduce themselves as Alpharius. It might very well be that both of the times he supposedly died, it was actually just a body double and he's still out there, pretending to be a normal legionary. Every single member of the Alpha Legion is Alpharius, and an alarming number of them actually believe themselves to be him." Anyway, this is the backstory book in question.

Calvino, Italo: If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

The book is a story about reading the first chapters of multiple books that appear to be If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, but are not.

Campbell, John W.: Who Goes There?

A group of American researchers, isolated in their scientific station in Antarctica towards the end of winter, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice, where it crashed twenty million years before. They recover an alien creature from the ancient ice. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the appearance, memories, and personality of a living thing it devours, while maintaining its body mass for further reproduction. Unknown to them, the alien immediately kills and then imitates the crew's physicist, a man named Connant; with some 90 pounds of its matter left over, it tries to become a sled dog.

The crew discovers the dog-Thing and kills it midway through the transformation process. Pathologist Blair, who had lobbied for thawing the Thing, goes insane with paranoia and guilt, vowing to kill everyone at the base to save mankind; he is isolated within a locked cabin at their outpost. Connant is also isolated as a precaution, and a "rule-of-four" is initiated in which all personnel must remain under the close scrutiny of three others. The crew realizes that they must isolate their base and therefore disable their airplanes and vehicles, yet they pretend that everything is normal during radio transmissions, to prevent any rescue attempts. The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien (simply referred to as the Thing), to destroy the imitations before they can escape and take over the world. The task is found to be almost impossibly difficult when they realize that the Thing is shapeshifting and telepathic, reading minds and projecting thoughts. A sled dog is conditioned by human blood injections (from Copper and Garry) to provide a human-immunity serum test, as in rabbits. The initial test of Connant is inconclusive, as they realize that the test animal received both human and alien blood, meaning that either Doctor Copper or expedition Commander Garry is an alien. Assistant commander McReady takes over and deduces that all the other animals at the station, save the test dog, have already become imitations; all are killed by electrocution and their corpses burned.

Everyone suspects each other by now but must stay together for safety, deciding who will take turns sleeping and standing watch. Tensions mount and some men begin to go mad, thinking that they are already the last human, or wondering if they could know if they were not human any longer. Ultimately, Kinner, the cook, is murdered and accidentally revealed to be a Thing. McReady realizes that even small pieces of the creature will behave as independent organisms. He then uses this fact to test which men have been "converted" by taking blood samples from everyone and dipping a heated wire in the vial of blood. Each man's blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire. Fourteen men, including Connant and Garry, are revealed to be Things. The remaining men go to test the isolated Blair, and on the way, see the first albatross of the Antarctic spring flying overhead; they shoot the bird to prevent a Thing from infecting it and flying to civilization.

When they reach Blair's cabin, they discover that he is a Thing. They realize that it has been left to its own devices for a week, coming and going as it pleased, as it is able to squeeze under doors by transforming itself. With the creatures inside the base destroyed, McReady and two others enter the cabin to kill the Thing that was once Blair. McReady forces it out into the snow and destroys it with a blowtorch. Afterwards, the trio discover that the Thing was dangerously close to finishing the construction of a nuclear-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape to the outside world.

Christie, Agatha: Dead Man's Folly

So, the entire propaganda section for this one will be a spoiler because to explain why this book works as a stranger Leitner is to reveal a major plot twist. So as a start here is the book's description from goodreads:

Whilst organising a mock murder hunt for the village fete hosted by Sir George and Lady Stubbs, a feeling of dread settles on the famous crime novelist Adriane Oliver. Call it instinct, but it's a feeling she just can't explain...or get away from. In desperation she summons her old friend, Hercule Poirot -- and her instincts are soon proved correct when the 'pretend' murder victim is discovered playing the scene for real, a rope wrapped tightly around her neck. But it's the great detective who first discovers that in murder hunts, whether mock or real, everyone is playing a part.

In this novel a young girl Marlene is killed during a village fete at Nasse House, a home owned by Sir George Stubbs and his wife Hattie. After the murder, Lady Stubbs goes missing just in time for a visit from her cousin, whom she hasn't seen in years. At the end of the novel, it transpired that both Sir George and Hattie were not who they seemed. Sir George being a fake identity of James Folliat, son of the family that owned the Nasse House for centuries, who was thought to be dead. His mother, Amy Folliat, introduced him to the original Hattie, a wealthy but naive girl. James stole Hattie's money and had her killed and replaced by his actual wife, who later spent years pretending to be Hattie with only Amy Folliat aware of the replacement. Due to the news that real Hattie's cousin, who could uncover the ruse, was going to visit. Fake Hattie again transformed to blend among the tourists that came to the fete. To me, this works great as a stranger Leitner due to the book antagonist both pretending to be somebody else and the strong element of kill and replace.

Crowley, Nate: The Twice-Dead King

Fundamentally about alienation from one's own sense of self and how in order to become yourself you have to become someone else; the main character goes through a major identity crisis and it involves flaying people and wearing their skin

Dahl, Roald: The Witches

A dark fantasy, the story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and features the experiences of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country.

Damico, Gina: Wax

Wax is a young adult mystery novel by Gina Damico (author of Croak). It was published in 2016.

It takes place in the fictional town of Paraffin, Vermont. Our hero is Poppy Palladino, a teenage girl who wants to be an actor, but is haunted by memories of being humiliated multiple times in the past, especially by a bully named Blake Bursaw. Paraffin is home to the Grosholtz Candle Factory, a popular tourist site. While taking a tour in the factory, Poppy wanders off into a secret workroom where she meets Madame Grosholtz, an eccentric maker of wax sculptures. Soon after, the factory mysteriously burns down, but not before Poppy is given a living wax sculpture, who she names Dud, and a candle engraved with a strange message.

Things just get stranger from there, and Poppy must save the entire town from a sinister conspiracy that stems from hundreds of years ago. She becomes unsure of who she can trust, but with the help of Dud, her best friend Jill, and her school theater club, she must make a plan.

***

Paraffin, Vermont, is known the world over as home to the Grosholtz Candle Factory. But behind the sunny retail space bursting with overwhelming scents and homemade fudge, seventeen-year-old Poppy Palladino discovers something dark and unsettling: a back room filled with dozens of startlingly life-like wax sculptures, crafted by one very strange old lady. Poppy hightails it home, only to be shocked when one of the figures—a teenage boy who doesn’t seem to know what he is—jumps naked and screaming out of the trunk of her car. She tries to return him to the candle factory, but before she can, a fire destroys the mysterious workshop—and the old woman is nowhere to be seen.

With the help of the wax boy, who answers to the name Dud, Poppy resolves to find out who was behind the fire. But in the course of her investigation, she discovers that things in Paraffin aren’t always as they seem, that the Grosholtz Candle Factory isn’t as pure as its reputation—and that some of the townspeople she’s known her entire life may not be as human as they once were. In fact, they’re starting to look a little . . . waxy. Can Poppy and Dud extinguish the evil that’s taking hold of their town before it’s too late?

Dick, Philip K.: A Scanner Darkly

"The main character, Bob Arctor, leads a double life as an undercover police agent infiltrating a drug dealing ring. As a part of his cover he starts taking the drug and becomes addicted, and the drug causes the hemispheres of his brain to function separately leading to the emergence of two separate personalities - 'Bob' when he is a drug dealer, and 'Fred' when he is a police agent. both of these personalities do not recognize each other, so for example when he is reviewing footage of him as Bob, he thinks he is spying on some other man. Also, in this world there are 'scramble suits' - special coats that make it impossible to distinguish anything about the wearer's appearance or their voice, and the protagonist is required to wear one of these when he is not undercover. That worsens his split personality, as he has no one who remembers his appearance as 'Fred', and he forgets he was undercover at all and just starts acting as a genuine drug dealer. The distortion of memories, erasure of appearance and the personality swap from Fred to Bob reminds me strongly of not!them. Fred not!themmed himself."

Dick, Philip K.: Upon the Dull Earth

Short story in which a woman dies, and her boyfriend makes a deal to bring her back. Trouble is, he brings her back... too much. It'd be a funny old world if we were all the same, wouldn't it? Link

Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Double

In Saint Petersburg, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin works as a titular councillor (rank 9 in the Table of Ranks established by Peter the Great[3]), a low-level bureaucrat struggling to succeed.

Golyadkin has a formative discussion with his physician, Doctor Rutenspitz, who fears for his sanity and tells him that his behaviour is dangerously antisocial. He prescribes "cheerful company" as the remedy. Golyadkin resolves to try this, and leaves the office. He proceeds to a birthday party for Klara Olsufyevna, the daughter of his office manager. He was uninvited, and a series of faux pas lead to his expulsion from the party. On his way home through a snowstorm, he encounters a man who looks exactly like him, his double. The following two thirds of the novel then deals with their evolving relationship.

At first, Golyadkin and his double are friends, but Golyadkin Jr. proceeds to attempt to take over Sr.'s life, and they become bitter enemies. Because Golyadkin Jr. has all the charm, unctuousness and social skills that Golyadkin Sr. lacks, he is very well-liked among the office colleagues. At the story's conclusion, Golyadkin Sr. begins to see many replicas of himself, has a psychotic break, and is dragged off to an asylum by Doctor Rutenspitz.

***

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially succesful version of himself, who abuses and victimizes the original. As he is increasingly persecuted, Golyadkin finds his social, romantic and professional life unravelling, in a spiral that leads to a catastrophic denouement.

French, Tana: The Likeness

A detective assumes a dead woman’s identity and moves into her shared house, believing one of the housemates to be her killer. She is accepted as the victim (!!!) and becomes obsessed with her doppelgänger, trying to stay in character and live the life that she would have lived. She ends up getting psychologically consumed by the part she’s playing, losing track of her own identity. Once she’s completely confused, only person knows for sure who she is—the killer.

Gaiman, Neil: Coraline

The presence of another world that resemble the one you know but different, the Other Mother whole deal and the fact that she spies on people using dolls and sews buttons in place of her victim's eyes.

***

A short novella that focuses on 9-year-old Coraline Jones as she fights to restore her family from the clutches of the evil Other Mother.

Hendrix, Grady: How to Sell a Haunted House

Synopsis: "When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…"

Ito, Junji: The Enigma of Amigara Fault

You see the hole which perfectly matched you. It haunts you. You can’t resist the urge to climb inside.

It’s your hole, it was made for you.

Once you enter, you keep going, and your limbs begin to lengthen and contort. At the other side of the mountain, you emerge. Miserable, in pain, and spaghetti’s to the point you barely look human.

It’s your hole, it was made for you. But you have to be changed to fit inside. And you will.

(People have been memeing this story but it’s actually excellent body horror. Highly recommend!)

Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

It’s about a town cursed by spirals that corrupt you and drive you mad, but can’t be ignored forever

Jensen, Ruby Jean: MaMa

Once upon a time there lived a sweet little dolly. Her porcelain like face was so smooth, just like a baby. Her mouth even had a tiny hole so she could eat and breathe. But her one beaded glass eye gleamed with mischief and evil. She had waited a long time in the attic for someone to set her free...

Once upon a time there lived a sweet little girl. The only place she was happy was in the attic with her dolly. If she could have seen her little doll's legs kick, she would have been frightened. If she could have felt her little doll's arms squeeze, she would have been shocked. But if she could have read her little doll's thoughts she would have run from the attic forever--for her sweet little dolly only had killing her on her mind...

King, Stephen: Battleground

A toymaker gets his revenge on his killer with a battalion of toy soldiers that invade his apartment.

King, Stephen: The Outsider

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

Krulik, Nancy E.: Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo (series)

Katie is an ordinary third-grader-except for one very extraordinary problem! She accidentally wished on a shooting star to be anyone but herself. But what Katie soon learns is that wishes really do come true-and in the strangest ways... When the magic wind blows, watch out! Katie switches bodies with someone or something else and hilarity and havoc ensues.

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Outsider

There's nothing I can say here that won't ruin the twist. Link: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/o.aspx

Martin, Ann M. and Laura Godwin: The Meanest Doll in the World

Annabelle Doll and Tiffany Funcraft are two dolls who have been best friends since they met in Kate Palmer's house at 26 Wetherby Lane. In this sequel to The Doll Peopl e, they hitch a ride in Kate's backpack and find themselves in the biggest adventure of their lives, a day at school! But when an attempt to return home lands them in the wrong house, they're in far deeper trouble than they imagined. Along with a host of new doll friends, they also encounter Mean Mimi, the wickedest doll of all. Mean Mimi is mean-really mean-and she's determined to rule all of Dollkind or else destroy it. Will the world ever be safe for dolls again?

The main horror aspect of this series is the threat of 'Permanent Doll State' -- a divine punishment that will transform violaters permanently into nonliving dolls, though possibly with their sentience still intact.

Miles, Lawrence: This Town Will Never Let Us Go

This is the source material of Tiffany Korta: ""Pop star. Her image was carefully maintained and groomed by her bosses, the skull-masked Executive/Faction Paradox. She became haunted by the concept of her uber-self, the variety of ways in which her image was used -- officially and otherwise -- and the impassible divide between her identity and the perceptions that other people had of her. She began to see her image on screens moving out of sync with her, or saying things that she could not remember saying, as the image she presented to the world evolved beyond her comprehension and control. Eventually, when she confronted the Executive about their plans for her, they destroyed her and replaced her with a different version of herself that went on to destroy her credibility, Not!Them-style. Meanwhile, other versions of her went on homicidal rampages around the world."

Nettel, Guadalupe: El huésped (The host)

A story about a girl who feels she has a "sister" that lives within her. She haunts her constantly and devastates her life. We never know whether that sister is real or not, but the mere thought of her drives the girl to paranoia and madness. Her main goal is to destroy her, and to do that, she must become just like her.

Nix, Garth: The Ragwitch

Ten-year-old Paul and his sister Julia are on vacation at the beach one day when they find a shell midden on the shore. When they climb it, they find a crow's nest with a creepy little ragdoll in it. Paul distrusts it immediately, but Julia is entranced, and brings it home, where their parents don't seem to be able to see it. The next morning, Paul hears someone moving around, and follows the sound out to find his sister, possessed by the doll, building a strange blue fire on top of the midden. She freezes him helplessly in place, then jumps into the fire and disappears. Paul rebuilds it and follows Her through, determined to rescue his sister.

So begins a quest to stop the Ragwitch and save his sister (and maybe the world he finds himself in on the side). Throughout, the narrative switches between Paul's journey and Julia Fighting from the Inside despite the Ragwitch's attempts to control her mind.

Peck, Richard: Secrets of the Shopping Mall

Trying to escape the vicious King Kobra gang and troubled life at home, eighth graders Barnie and Teresa flee the city. With only four dollars between them, they hop a bus, hoping to find a new life at the end of the line. Destination: Paradise Park. But Paradise Park turns out to be a cement-covered suburban shopping mall--not quite the paradise they had hoped for.

With no money and no home to retum to, they are forced to stay. And paradise park takes them in--in more ways than one. Barnie and Teresa spend their days and nights in the climate-controlled consumer paradise of a large department store. And just when they think they can live there unnoticed forever, Teresa and Barnie find that even Paradise Park has its secrets. Even in the dead of night, they are far from alone...."

(Spoilers: It's not actually living mannequins, but dispossessed and mildly insane teens who dress as mannequins and stand perfectly still all day to avoid detection! Which... I'm not sure is much better.)

Poe, Edgar Allen: William Williamson or William Wilson

The story of a doppelganger. A man with William Wilson's same name and face. A man who begins to act and sound more like him over the years. A man who becomes hostile. A man who haunts him.

***

William Wilson is about a man named William Wilson (or something similar to it) who meets a man with the exact name as him. Gradually, the double begins to resemble him more and more. The double keeps being a general nuisance to him until eventually he kills his double. Only to look in the mirror to see “ mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood”.

"In me didst thou exist—and in my death, see ... how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.”

To me, William Wilson is a perfect example of a Stranger Leitner because it conceptualizes the fear of the other through fear of the self. There is no stranger more unknowable than the stranger in the mirror, staring back at you.

***

The story follows a man "of noble descent" who goes by William Williamson because, although denouncing his profligate past, he does not accept full blame for his actions. William meets another boy in his school who has the same name and roughly the same appearance, and who was even born on the same date. William's name embarrasses him because it sounds "plebeian" or common, and he is irked that he must hear the name twice as much on account of the other William. The boy also dresses like William, walks like him, but can only speak in a whisper. He begins to give advice to William of an unspecified nature, which he refuses to obey, resenting the boy's "arrogance". One night he steals into the other William's bedroom and recoils in horror at the boy's face—which now resembles his own. William then immediately leaves the academy and, in the same week, the other boy follows suit. William eventually goes to university, gradually becoming more debauched and performing what he terms "mischief". For example, he steals from a man by cheating at cards. The other William appears, his face covered, and whispers a few words sufficient to alert others to William's behavior, and then leaves with no others seeing his face. William is haunted by his double in subsequent years, who thwarts plans described by William as driven by ambition, anger and lust. In his latest caper, he attempts to seduce a married noblewoman at Carnival in Rome, but the other William stops him. The enraged protagonist drags his "unresisting" double—who wears identical clothes— into an antechamber, and, after a brief sword fight in which the double participates only reluctantly, stabs him fatally. After William does this, a large mirror suddenly seems to appear. Reflected at him, he sees "mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood": apparently the dead double, "but he spoke no longer in a whisper". The narrator feels as if he is pronouncing the words: "In me didst thou exist—and in my death, see ... how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."

Pratchett, Terry: Maskerade

‘There’s a kind of magic in masks. Masks conceal one face, but they reveal another. The one that only comes out in darkness …’

The Opera House in Ankh-Morpork is home to music, theatrics and a harmless masked Ghost who lurks behind the scenes. But now a set of mysterious backstage murders may just stop the show.

Agnes Nitt has left her rural home of Lancre in the hopes of launching a successful singing career in the big city. The only problem is, she doesn’t quite look the part. And there are two witches who would much rather she return home to join their coven.

Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg have travelled to Ankh-Morpork to convince Agnes that life as a witch is much better than one on the stage. Only now they’re caught up in a murder mystery featuring masks and maniacal laughter.

And the show MUST go on . . .

Rayner, Jacqueline: EarthWorld

Synopsis: "Anji Kapoor has just had the worst week of her entire life, and things aren't getting any better. She should be back at her desk, not travelling through time and space in a police box with a couple of strange men.

The Doctor (Strange Man No. 1) is supposed to be returning her to Soho 2001 AD. So quite why there are dinosaurs outside, Anji isn't sure. Sad sixties refugee Fitz (Strange Man No. 2) seems to think they're either in prehistoric times or on a parallel Earth. And the Doctor is probably only pretending to know what's going on — because if he really knew, surely he would have mentioned the homicidal triplet princesses, the teen terrorists, the deadly android doubles (and triples) and the hosts of mad robots?

Anji's never going to complain about Monday mornings in the office again... "

Why it's Stranger: The setting alone is uncannily bizarre -- a theme park on one of Jupiter's moons devoted to Earth history, with research drawn from mistranslations, myths, and popular fiction. Sinister androids populate the place, and everyone is hiding the most terrible secrets. Meanwhile, Fitz Kreiner is having an identity crisis about being a clone, which is only made worse when he has to battle an Elvis impersonator to the death.

Robinson, Justin: Everyman

Ian Covey is a doppelganger. A mimic. A shapeshifter. He can replace anyone he wants by becoming a perfect copy; taking the victim’s face, his home, his family. His life. No longer a man, but a hungry void, Ian Covey is a monster.

David Tirado is a massive, hideous colony organism, a gestalt entity. The sum of Covey’s discarded parts. A roiling, chaotic patchwork of vast and varied personalities, memories, and physical forms that used to be a man − many men − David Tirado is a monster.

Sophie Tirado’s identity has been eroded by the tides of a long relationship, and now the man she gave herself up for has been stolen away and replaced by a mimic. Caught between the Doppelganger and the Gestalt Entity, she will try to save her husband, but there might be nothing left of him.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask, and evil a thousand faces.

Ross, Louise: Collective Imagination: Goncharov (1973) (2022) as a Model for Communal Filmmaking

Schwartz, Alvin: "Harold," Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill your Bones

Two cow farmers, Thomas and Alfred, were bored with their monotonous work one day, so they decided to make a scarecrow out of old sacs stuffed with straw. They based its appearance after another farmer they both hated, even giving it the name: Harold. They tied it to a pole and made fun of it, doing impressions of what his crazy voice might sound like or even just taking their cruelty out on him by kicking or punching him, or smearing food over the sac that was its face. One day they heard a grunt that could only have come from Harold. Thomas suggested throwing him in the fire, but Alfred insisted it was nothing to worry about. Then, Alfred noticed that Harold was growing bigger, but again told themselves it was just their imagination from being in the mountains too long.

Then one day, Harold stands up, walks out of the hut in front of Thomas and Alfred, then climbs up onto the roof and starts stomping around on it like a horse on its hind legs. Terrified and wanting to get away from Harold, they leave with their cows that same day, but halfway there they realize they forgot their milking stools and have to go back. The farmers convince each other that there really is nothing to be afraid of and draw straws to see who will go back. It is Thomas who drew the shorter straw, and now has to go back to to the hut, telling Alfred that he will catch up with him later. When Thomas does not return, Alfred returns to look for him, and sees Harold on the roof of the hut laying out Thomas' skinned corpse to dry in the sun.

Scroggs, Kirk: Tales of a Sixth-Grade Muppet

It's a series where a boy turns into a Muppet, and things only get wilder from there. It only really hits proper mind and body horror by book 4, as the entire world begins to undergo MUPPETMORPHOSIS!

Sleator, William: Among the Dolls

When her parents give her a gloomy old dollhouse for her birthday instead of the ten speed bike she's expecting, Vicky is disappointed. But she soon becomes fascinated by the small shadowy world and its inhabitants. The hours she spends playing with the dolls is a good way to escape from her parents's arguments. As Vicky's life becomes more troubled, she starts to take out her frustration on the dolls, making their lives as unhappy as hers. Then one day, Vicky wakes up inside the dollhouse, trapped among the monsters she's created. Bewildered, Vicky is sure she's dreaming. Can she find her way out of this nightmare world?

Sleator, William: The Duplicate

When David finds a mysterious machine that can copy living things, he thinks his problems are over. Now he can be in two places at once: at his grandmother's and out on a date. While the other David is in school, the real one can spend the day at the beach. The possibilities are endless. And they turn terrifying. David's duplicate has a mind, ideas, and desires of his own--and one of them is to see the real David dead.

Spark, Muriel: The Only Problem

So, in this novel, the main character, Harvey Gotham's estranged wife, Effie, apparently joins a terrorist organisation, which causes no end of problems for him. One of the problems being that Harvey refuses to believe that the person in the organisation really is Effie. When shown photographic evidence and even when shown her corpse he remains doubtful that it's her. Nobody else, with the sole exception of his semi-crazy aunt, has any doubts that Effie really is terrorizing Europe. This could be explained by Harvey lying to himself for various reasons or maybe... maybe Effie was replaced by the Stranger and only Harvey can tell. I propose that The Only Problem is really a Stranger's Leitner describing the torment Harvey suffered at the hand of the Stranger.

Spatola, Mike: The Monstrous Makeup Manual

Springer, Nancy: Possessing Jessie

Quiet, cautious Jessie had always lived in the shadow of her dynamic younger brother--her mother's clear favorite. His recent death leaves Jessie and her mother numb with grief. That is, until the morning Jessie cuts her hair and dresses in Jason's clothes, swaggering out of the house in an uncanny imitation of her brother. Her mother is visibly cheered, and for once Jessie is the center of attention at school. But each day Jason takes over Jessie more and more. Can she escape his power?

Starling, Caitlin: Last to Leave the Room

The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster. As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before - and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, to lose track of time, to grow terrified of the outside world. As her employer grows increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads…

Stevenson, Robert Louis: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece of the duality of good and evil in man's nature sprang from the darkest recesses of his own unconscious—during a nightmare from which his wife awakened him, alerted by his screams. More than a hundred years later, this tale of the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and the drug that unleashes his evil, inner persona—the loathsome, twisted Mr. Hyde—has lost none of its ability to shock. Its realistic police-style narrative chillingly relates Jekyll's desperation as Hyde gains control of his soul—and gives voice to our own fears of the violence and evil within us. Written before Freud's naming of the ego and the id, Stevenson's enduring classic demonstrates a remarkable understanding of the personality's inner conflicts—and remains the irresistibly terrifying stuff of our worst nightmares.

Stine, R.L.: The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight

Evil scarecrows terrorize a small farm.

Stine, R.L.: Night of the Living Dummy

Lindy Powell finds a mysterious ventriloquist's dummy and Lindy decides to call him Slappy. Lindy uses her dummy to gain popularity, and her sister Kris quickly becomes jealous. Lindy and Kris's parents ask the two girls to share the dummy. However, when Kris tries to take Slappy from Lindy, Slappy hits Kris in the face. The next morning, Mr. Powell reveals that he has bought a ventriloquist dummy for Kris from a pawn shop. She decides to call him Mr. Wood. Various strange incidents of Mr. Wood apparently doing horrible things happen, which are eventually revealed as a prank by Lindy. She was tired of Kris being a copycat, so she decided to pull this big prank on Kris. Kris finds a small card in Mr. Wood's pocket that reads, "KARRU MARRI ODONNA LOMA MOLONU KARRANO,". After reading the card out loud, Kris thinks she sees Mr. Wood blink. That night, the Powell's elderly neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, come to visit them. Lindy and Kris's parents ask that their daughters perform a ventriloquist act for their neighbors. Lindy decides to go first, and hers is a success. Before Kris can perform her act, Mr. Wood begins to insult the elderly couple, making fun of their appearances and their breath. Because of this, Kris is grounded but still allowed to attend the school's spring concert the following day. At the concert, while Mrs. Berman is adjusting a microphone for Kris, Mr. Wood begins to insult the teacher for being overweight. Mrs. Berman demands an apology, but Mr. Wood responds by spewing a green substance on the teacher and the audience. Mrs. Bergman tells Kris that she will be suspended from school for this, possibly for life. Mr. Powell announces he will return the dummy to the pawn shop on Monday. Kris locks Mr. Wood in a closet and goes to sleep. Kris is awakened by the sound of footsteps. When Kris decides to investigate, she discovers that Mr. Wood is alive. Mr. Wood tells her that she and Lindy are now his slaves and that the magic words brought him to life. Kris tries to fight the dummy, but Mr. Wood hits her fiercely in the stomach. Kris crawls away from Mr. Wood and screams for help. Lindy hears her sister and goes downstairs to find out what has happened. While Kris tells her sister that the dummy is alive, Mr. Wood surprises the girls. Lindy manages to pin the dummy to the ground and keep him from fleeing. When the girls' parents arrive, Mr. Wood stops moving. Lindy and Kris try to explain what has happened, but their parents refuse to believe the girls. Mr. and Mrs. Powell begin to question Kris's mental well-being, suggesting that they should take her to a doctor. As soon as the parents leave, Mr. Wood comes back to life, insisting that Lindy and Kris are his slaves. The girls try to decapitate the dummy, but they are unable to harm him. Next, the girls trap Mr. Wood in a suitcase and bury him in the backyard. Since they are exhausted, Lindy and Kris go to sleep. When the girls wake up the next morning, they discover that Mr. Wood has freed himself and is waiting for them. Lindy and Kris seek help, but their parents have gone out. To show how serious he is, Mr. Wood begins to choke Barky, the family dog. In an attempt to separate the two, the girls drag Mr. Wood and Barky outside. When Mr. Wood releases Barky, the girls chase the dummy into the path of a nearby steamroller being used for construction at the house next door. Mr. Wood dodges the first steamroller and tells them that both will be his slaves forever. He doesn't notice the second steamroller, however, and it crushes Mr. Wood. A mysterious green mist rises from the smashed dummy's body. The alarmed driver of the steamroller rushes out, thinking it was a kid he ran over, but the kids assure him it was nothing more than a dummy. Lindy, Kris, and Barky return home. When the girls get to their room, they find Slappy waiting for them. Slappy asks if the other dummy is gone.

Topping, Keith & Martin Day: The Hollow Men

Well to start with, doctor who aside, doesn't the title just sound like a stranger leitner? And getting into the plot, it heavily features animate scarecrows made from people. And the main reason I'm submitting this is because it fucked me up real bad. It's thematically way darker and more mature in content than I was expecting from a doctor who novel when I read it at the tender age of 14.

Vida, Vendela: The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

The whole plot is about a woman who goes on vacation, loses her documents and decides to roll with it, acquiring new identities through a series of questionable decisions. She gets someone else's passport and credit cards, moves into a different hotel, gets hired as a double of a famous actress, introduces herself with false names, and is very paranoid about being found out. We never learn her actual name, but we do learn that she has always disliked her face and has always tried to choose activities that would draw attention away from her face, so she can pretend it's not even there.

Wells, H.G.: The Invisible Man

The opening of "The Invisible Man" focuses on outside perspectives of the titular character, and the narrative itself refers to him simply as "the stranger". His looks are unusual: he wears large clothes and covers his eyes with tinted glasses, and underneath those, he's covered in bandages, as if he's had some sort of horrible accident. His behavior is strange, too. He's rude and reclusive, holed up in his at an inn and working with bizzare chemical concotions, causing accidents and damage constantly.

Throughout the story, the man, Griffin, becomes increasingly erratic. His attempts to reverse his condition all fail, but the things he can do when he goes unnoticed are increasingly violent and cruel.

When he finally becomes fed up with everything, he reveals himself to the proprietors and patrons of the inn, who are prepared to see anything under the bandages, any manner of injury or disfigurement, but instead, run screaming from the establishment, when he reveals nothing at all.

***

The way other characters interact with Griffin the Invisible Man really reminds me of The Stranger. Throughout the plot he's treated as some sort of impostor/invader/not human anymore. Doubly interesting since we see the uncanny-valley-assigned person's POV, meaning it could work even better as a Leitner that makes a statement giver experience something similar

[forever-fixating]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by the lovely @piratefalls and @onthewaytosomewhere

Happy birthday to our favorite chaos bisexual baby boi, Alex! I am almost at the finished line for this chapter. I'm determined to post today, so stay tuned, folks. Wordy little bastard Alex has a lot to say and a lot of FEELS. ENJOY!

As they exited the cemetery, Henry turned to him and asked, “Would you indulge me one more cemetery tour?” Alex nodded, something in Henry’s eyes telling him this was important. They walked down the street until they found an appropriate place to cross. Henry led them up to the open gate that read Holt Cemetery. Compared to the grandeur of the place they just left, Holt looked rundown and neglected. The gravestones were worn and crooked, some lined with PVC pipe or broken mini-picket fences, and decorated with mementos from loved ones. He took Henry’s hand and squeezed it as they walked along the gravel drive. “Somewhere in here,” Henry said softly, “may lie the remains of four men, victims of a gay bar fire in 1973 called the Upstairs Lounge.” “May?” Henry’s jaw tightened. “Many older records were destroyed after Katrina. Some say the victims, one, possibly two, who have been identified, were buried here or in the Charity Hospital Cemetery nearby. Their bodies were so damaged, they were never identified or claimed. One man’s family, Ferris LeBlanc, didn’t even know he’d died in the fire until 2015. In total, thirty-two men died that night, the deadliest attack on a queer space until Pulse in Orlando.” “Jesus fucking Christ,” Alex hissed. “Was anyone ever charged?” Henry shook his head. “There was a suspect, a man who had been ejected about twenty minutes before the fire started, but it ultimately went nowhere. It was just a bunch of queers who had it coming, right?” “How did you learn about this?” “A documentary,” Henry replied. They paused, and Henry held their joined hands against his chest. “I have a vested interest in the history of our community because the mainstream media and so-called educators still seek to bury it.” Alex swallowed thickly as he scanned the cemetery. As the son of a Mexican immigrant, he knew all too well how hard the system fought to suppress those they deemed as “other.” It occurred to him that so much of the real history of this country hadn’t been taught to him in the classroom but through books, documentaries, and people like Henry. People determined not to let their history fade into obscurity. “I don’t mean to preach-” Alex stopped him. “No, you’re not. And you’re right. These men deserve to be remembered. Thank you for sharing this with me. I’ve only been for about a year, and I’ve still got so much more I need to learn.” “That’s the first step,” Henry smiled. “The worst thing you can do as a young queer person is live in willful ignorance because the people in power are counting on it. Pride Month is about so much more than celebrating who we are. It’s about remembering those who we’ve lost, who didn’t get the chance to live openly as we do now.” Alex felt a lump growing in his throat. He wrapped his arms around Henry and squeezed tight. Henry huffed a laugh but returned his embrace, murmuring, “I’d kiss you right now, but that would be grossly inappropriate, given our current location.” “Good call.”

There are so many bonding moments between A&H in this chapter, but this is one I'm proud of. As a queer person myself, Henry was channeling me as I too think it is beyond vital that queer people learn their history, the bad and the good. Celebrate Pride but remember the people who are no longer here. CMQ brought up the story of the Upstairs Lounge in One Last Stop, so I wanted to include it here as I feel it would be something important that Henry would want to share with Alex. I promise, this chapter is almost done and you guys are NOT ready for it! All aboard the hype train, choo chooooooo! See ya soon!

[sama-not-sam]

SAMA ALI ( AIYSHA HART ) is a THIRTY-TWO year-old UN POLITICAL AFFAIRS OFFICER in GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only THIRTEEN years old. They are known as THE AMBITIOUS because they are STRATEGIC but also COMPETITIVE. Let’s see what choice they make regarding the fate of Woodrow House.

BASIC INFORMATION

Full Name: Sama Ali Nickname(s): n/a, call her Sam at your own risk Date of Birth: born 1972, exact date of birth unknown; birthday celebrated October 30 Age: 32 Occupation: Political Affairs Officer for the United Nations Current Residence: Sama has a small apartment in Geneva. She’s traded space for convenience, opting for a 290 square foot flat within easy walking distance of work. Her job does require her to travel frequently and occasionally for extended periods of time, but Geneva is her home base.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Hair: black; worn straight and more or less shoulder length, depending on how long it’s been since she got it cut Eyes: dark brown Height: 5’9” Notable Features: high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, sharp jaw

PERSONALITY & BEHAVIOR:

Strengths: strategic, assertive, determined, pragmatic, resilient Weaknesses: competitive, single-minded, reticent, show-off, insensitive (especially when it comes to other people’s feelings) Quirks: ⬧ Sama has a bad habit of checking her watch when she’s bored or frustrated, and she’s never without it, or her Blackberry. ⬧ She walks very quickly, for no reason other than to get to where she’s going that much faster. ⬧ She will also speak for others, especially people she knows well, if she feels like they’re not answering quickly enough, or if they pause and seem to be searching for words. ⬧ Her default stance when standing is her feet in third position and her hands resting on one hip, muscle memory left over from her years of ballet. ⬧ Sama hates going barefoot, and usually will wear a pair of ballet slippers instead of shoes when indoors. Vices: ⬧ Card games; not for gambling, she generally dislikes games of chance, but more for the thrill of winning. ⬧ Dance movies; they take her back, whether they feature ballet or not, and Dirty Dancing is actually the romantic ideal. ⬧ Suppressing emotions; Sama would probably cease to function if she was ever forced to actually look at all the feelings she ignores. ⬧ Whipped cream; not necessarily a vice, but it is Sama’s favorite treat.

INTEREST & HOBBIES:

Interests: Poetry, feminism, global politics, ballet, the wives of famous/powerful men(think Eleanor Roosevelt, Vera Nabokov, Catherine of Aragon), The West Wing (an American political drama that she still keeps up with). Hobbies: Sama doesn’t have much time for hobbies these days, she prefers to keep herself busy with work. One hobby, which is almost a habit, that she keeps up is journaling. As a child, she journaled religiously, making sure to keep a detailed account of her life so she could update her parents when they came back for her. While she’s long since let go of that childish dream, she still journals frequently. As a result, Sama is a pen snob. Special Skills/Talents: ⬧ Sama is a polyglot; fluent in English, Arabic, French, Persian, and (Swiss) German, as well as having some conversational Italian; she is also currently learning Mandarin. ⬧ She taught herself calligraphy in high school, one of many attempts to connect with her heritage, and still practices enough to keep her skills sharp. ⬧ She has an admirable talent for landing on her feet, for making the best of a bad situation or snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Some may call Sama lucky, but to do so would discount all the work she puts into getting what she wants.

BECOMING A WARD

Sama is one of Richard’s most famous ward, not that anyone outside of herself, Richard, and Mrs. Tristan ever knew that. In October of 1973, there was quite a stir over a baby found in Grand Central Station, initially assumed to be lost until it became clear she’d been abandoned on purpose. With no identifying information other than a name pinned to the back of her jacket, the authorities were unable to find her parents and Sama was ultimately shuffled into foster care. Think pieces and op eds will still occasionally surface about the Grand Central Girl, which Sama has a morbid fascination with.  What is common knowledge in Woodrow House is this; in 1986, an essay about the foster system was submitted to Kingsbury College’s annual writing contest, and it caught Richard’s attention to the extent that he just had to meet its author. He loved telling the story of his shock and delight on discovering that the essay had been written by a 13 year old girl, despite the fact that Sama insisted she never forgave him for the discovery that disqualified her from the contest. Over the course of a summer the two kept in touch, and letters turned into phone calls and eventually became face to face meetings. It didn’t take long for Richard to decide to take Sama on as his ward, but convincing Sama to accept his offer was another matter.   By the time she met Richard Woodrow, Sama had long since learned that things that seem too good to be true usually are. Like the foster mother who told Sama she was never going to adopt but that she’d keep her until she graduated from high school, only to adopt a different child 14 months later, dumping Sama in the process. The temptations of Woodrow House were almost too much for a girl to resist, Sama had never had her own room nor access to private tutors in whatever subject her heart desired, but this was exactly what made her skeptical. Ultimately she decided it was too great an opportunity to pass by and, with the condition of continued access to her social worker, Sama agreed.

LIFE AS A WARD

To say that Sama was prickly when she first arrived at Woodrow House would be an understatement. From the first day she was all sharp edges. She cursed too much, a habit that she eventually eliminated under Mrs. Tristan’s example, and she seemed to have a perpetual glare, an expression that only softened some rather than completely. It was her seventh foster home, so by the time she got there, she knew how to carve out a space for herself, and how to defend it. She decided at an early age that she was never going to be anyone’s whipping girl, and she came on a little strong initially. Even when she realized that Woodrow House was not a typical foster home, she was still assertive, and sometimes too assertive, about her right to be there and her authority over her own space. While she mellowed with time, she was never a warm and fuzzy person, and she never wanted to be a sister-figure. By the time Sama arrived at Woodrow House, she was already the ambitious one, already driven, already striving, already putting herself out there in order to prove… something. Even at thirteen she was the one with big, big plans to become a household name, although she never told anyone why. She was always busy, always doing something, never making time to really build meaningful relationships. Which is not to say she was anti-social, but she was selective. She would crash someone’s private tutoring, or try out another ward’s latest extra-curricular. She learned who had similar goals or preferences to her and who didn’t. She loved learning new things and honing her skills, and she appreciated people who could help her to those ends.  The roles Sama played in Woodrow House were simple. She firmly established herself as one of the older wards, usually holding herself above the younger ones. She was a favorite, of both  Richard and Mrs. Tristan. She wasn’t afraid to use that to get what she wanted when the occasion called for it, but she also maintained that the reason she was a favorite was because she never asked for too much. She remained generally a loner, seeming to occasionally grace certain wards with her presence more than seek out anyone’s company.

AESTHETIC

Sama’s style icon is CJ Cregg, from the American political drama The West Wing. She’s a big fan of power suits and loose blouses, and prioritizes high quality, classic styles over seasonal trends. She eschews many of the moment Y2K styles in favor of the designs from her twenties, maintaining a sleek and minimalist wardrobe. A businesswoman to her core, her version of dressing down is a sweater set and slacks. She favors neutrals and darker colors, and generally avoids prints. She likes headbands and still wears scrunchies when she’s having a rare casual moment. She has a modest collection of subtle stud earrings that she rotates in her single lobe piercings, and are the only jewelry she regularly wears.

EDUCATION

As soon as it was permitted, Sama chose to attend a prestigious, and private, all girls’ school that she knew about from having a former foster home nearby. It appealed to her because it was prestigious, because it was an all girls’ school—the pre-teen misandry stayed strong in her—and because none of the other wards already at Woodrow House attended it. Once there she made rather more enemies than friends, but at least she made them on her own and as herself, not part of a set. She was quickly identified as a teacher’s pet and know-it-all, because the purpose of school for Sama was to learn and climb to the top of her class. However, any classmates who tried to bully her quickly learned that she was more than capable of standing up for herself. When she graduated, her valedictorian speech brought many of the parents in the crowd to tears, but most of their daughters rolled their eyes.  For college, Sama set her sights on Columbia University from a young age, and not even Richard’s fondness for his own alma mater could dissuade her. Just like high school, she wanted to attend college on her own terms, and not as one of Richard Woodrow’s charity cases. At Columbia, she double majored in Human Rights and Women’s Studies, ultimately graduating Summa Cum Laude and at the top of her class. More importantly, she learned how to network with her peers instead of alienating them, and still has connections, some might even say friends, from undergrad to this day.  Sama welcomed Richard’s offer to pay for her undergraduate work, but when she was ready for grad school, she insisted on taking care of it herself, even though she didn’t have to. She covered her law school with a combination of grants, scholarships, some student loans, and the savings she built up with her allowance from Richard as a ward. Her last step in formal education was a degree in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown. She was accepted to other schools that were arguably more prestigious, like NYU and Yale, but decided that a school in the nation’s capital would align best with her long term goals.

EXTRACURRICULARS

Ballet, tennis, debate, school newspaper, volunteering. Sama dabbled in all sorts of extra-curriculars during her years at Woodrow House, but only a few were truly hers. Ballet was an interest that started before Richard came into Sama’s life, but her multiplicity of foster homes before Woodrow House made it difficult for her to truly commit to it, so Richard arranged for her to take private lessons in order to catch up with other dancers her age. The precision and structure of ballet appealed to Sama, as well as the fact that it was a challenge. Tennis was something she did because Alison did it, which is to say that she liked having an opponent who was as competitive as she was, and that she liked being around Alison. Debate and school newspaper were both things that looked good on her college resume, but she enjoyed them, as well, especially when she was made editor of the newspaper her senior year. Volunteering was something that Sama did ostensibly for the same reason she did debate and school newspaper, but the truth was she wanted to give back. She felt like she needed to use her privilege as a Woodrow ward not just to better herself, but others as well. 

THEIR LIFE NOW

After graduating from Georgetown, Sama didn’t pursue a legal career; that had never been the goal. Instead, she got a job at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where she began steadily working her way up through the ranks of the political affairs department. She quickly established a name for herself as a driven employee and a creative problem solver, but also someone who cared deeply about the work the organization was doing. She jumped at any chance to travel for work that was presented to her and never balked at the long hours her job required.  Through it all, she never went back to Woodrow House, despite it being relatively close. There was always some sort of excuse, and it always boiled down to she was just too busy. She refused to admit that there could be anything else keeping her away. She didn’t go out of her way to keep in touch with her fellow wards, but if any of them were willing to put in most of the work, she wouldn’t ice them out, with one obvious exception. It was always uncomfortable for Sama to know that Alison was out there, in the same city as her, knowing that they might just run into each other one day, but she didn’t want to be run out of town, not again.  Following 9/11, it became clear that her skin color would be a detriment to Sama’s plans, and in 2002, she transferred to Geneva, wanting some distance from the rising Islamophobia in the US. She likes to think she’s settled into Geneva admirably, even though it was a rough transition initially, and she prefers it to New York in some ways. She remains married to her work, pursuing her goals with the same single-minded fervor that prevented her from getting more attached to her fellow wards as a teenager. Work-life balance is not a concept that Sama has any interest in and, after one situationship with a coworker that ended very messily, the only thing Sama keeps separate from work is her romantic life. Not that there’s much romance in her life, Sama doesn’t really date so much as she has habitual hookups, always strictly feelings-free until someone, usually the other person, drops the ball. Whenever feelings start to get involved, Sama’s mandate is to leave before she gets left. You’d have to have her at gunpoint to get her to admit that she’s lonely, or that all of her achievements are starting to feel empty, but she’s been fighting for the approval of the parents who didn’t want her for so long, she doesn’t know how to do anything else.

TIMELINE

1972: Sama is born, probably sometime in the spring.

1973: Sama is found abandoned in Grand Central Station in New York City on October 30th. She is placed in her first foster home in early November.

1974: Sama is officially made a ward of the state when the case to find her parents is closed.

1986: Sama anonymously submits an essay about the foster system to the Kingsbury College writing contest, of which Richard is a faculty judge, in the spring. Sama and Richard meet and get to know each other over the summer. She moves into Woodrow House as Richard’s ward in late August.

1987: Sama begins her freshman year at a private girls’ school in the fall.

1991: Sama graduates from high school in the spring. She begins her first year at Columbia University in the fall, never returning to Woodrow House.

1995: Sama graduates from Columbia in the spring. She begins her first year at Georgetown Law in the fall.

1998: Sama graduates from Georgetown Law in the spring. She begins working at the UN headquarters in New York City over the summer.

2002: Sama takes a job at the Geneva branch of the UN.

2005: Sama receives the news of Richard’s passing and returns to Woodrow House.

[wheelscomedyandmore]

Happy Birthday to Ann-Margret who turns 83 today!

83-Year-Old Ann-Margret Refuses To Give Up Her Harley.

Ann-Margret has a long list of prestigious accolades, but she's just a biker at heart.

Photo: Ann-Margret cruising on a chopper in 1971

Ann-Margret Olsson (born April 28, 1941), credited as Ann-Margret, is a Swedish-American actress and singer. She has won five Golden Globe Awards and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and six Emmy Awards, winning in 2010 for a guest role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

She is known for her roles in Pocketful of Miracles (1961), State Fair (1962), Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Viva Las Vegas (1964), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Train Robbers (1973), Tommy (1975), Magic (1978), The Villain (1979), The Return of the Soldier (1982), Who Will Love My Children? (1983), 52 Pick-Up (1986), Newsies (1992), Grumpy Old Men (1993), Grumpier Old Men (1995), Any Given Sunday (1999), Taxi (2004), The Break-Up (2006) and Going in Style (2017).

Her singing and acting careers span seven decades, starting in 1961. Initially, she was billed as a female version of Elvis Presley. She has a sultry, vibrant contralto voice. She had a Top 20 hit song in 1961 and a charting album in 1964, and she scored a disco hit in 1979. She recorded a critically acclaimed gospel album in 2001 and an album of Christmas songs in 2004. In April 2023, she released her first rock album, Born to be Wild.

[marlodalton]

everything ends and that's the saddest thing i'll ever hear.

⸻ backstory. pinterest. musings. playlist.

quick stats

name: marlo dalton

gender: cis woman

pronouns: she/her

age: 34 ( thirty four )

dob: September 10th

pob: paxton, az

orientation: bisexual

affiliation: cowboy mafia

appearance

height: 5′ 6¼″ ( 1,68 m )

build: slim athletic

eye color: blue

hair color: copper-red

tattoos: horseshoe ( inner upper arm, left )

piercings: lobes ( both ), conch ( right ), helix (left)

personality

positive traits: driven, loyal, attentive, gregarious, quick-witted

negative traits: impulsive, relentless, restless, daring, explosive

summary: marlo is a wild girl who had to grow up in an instant. growing up at the rodeo with her father, she was used to an exciting and fast pace of life, seeking thrills from a young age. anything would do as long as it was exciting which often got her in trouble. in her teenage years, her relationships reflected that mindset. she had many friendships with different people from different backgrounds, always able to make them all work. however, her romantic relationships were rather short-lived, her focus remaining on the fun of it, never putting enough effort into her partners to make it work. her passion was always barrel racing and she gave it her all, thriving on the thrill and challenge it presented. things changed after her father's accident, forcing her to mature quickly. some people might consider marlo difficult, others challenging. she has a sharp tongue and quick mind, making her an entertaining friend or an adequate enemy. she values the people she cares about, her experiences and losses making her fiercely loyal and protective. even though she's become less hot-heated than her younger self, her emotions often still drive her to act impulsively, especially when she's backed into a corner or when she feels like she ran out of options.

career & education

current occupation: owner of horseshoe hospital

past occupation(s): barrel racer

education: doctor of veterinary medicine

significant relationships

vaughn dalton ( father / 1972 - alive but comatose ) : vaughn became a father at 18 and raised marlo in paxton with the help of his family. in his lifetime he became a accomplished bull rider. in 2011, at the age of 38 and towards the nearing end of his career, he had an accident during an event and suffered a brain bleed. he's been at an assisted living facility in phoenix ever since, with marlo visiting often. they were close and vaughn had a significant impact on marlo.

monica cooper ( mother / 1973 - alive ) : monica didn't want to be a mother and was willing to give marlo up after birth, moving to phoenix. their relationship was limited to birthdays and rare visitations. since vaughn's accident, monica has been visiting her ex and trying to upkeep a civil relationship with her daughter, although marlo is rather cold towards the woman.

rhett dalton (uncle / 1966 - 2023 ) : rhett was vaughn's older brother, the former owner of the horseshoe hospital and like a second father to marlo. he helped raise her and they were always close, although their bond became even tighter after vaughn's accident. rhett paid for her education and supported her growth at the clinic. his death broke marlo's heart and she's still grieving both men who raised her.

booker ( labrador / 2018 - alive ) : booker is an one-eyed rescue someone brought into the clinic. no owner ever showed up and marlo adopted him soon after.

skipper ( grey tabby cat / 2020 - alive ) : skipper was brought into the clinic by two tourists visiting from out of town. when marlo announced that the cat would have to get his front right leg amputated, the owners agreed but never picked him up after. marlo adopted him immediately, changing his name from ferdinant to skipper.

[disruptedlogic]

pedro pascal . 50. cismale. he/him. ┊┊ EMILIO GUTIERREZ, better known as agent CUPCAKE has been with cerberus corp as an eo since 2011 and is LEVEL III. A BAD BRAWL has gifted them DANGER DETECTION, though HE HAS TO BE NEARBY TO SENSE DANGER has also been noted. when they aren’t protecting the tri-state area, they are fond of RUNNING HIS FOOD TRUCK and are never seen without HIS GOLD CHAIN. civilians think they are FRIENDLY & OUTGOING, but some of the other agents see them as DISTRACTED & UNSERIOUS. cerberus corp should consider the fact that their last mission status was NOT COMPLETED BECAUSE HE DIDN'T SHOW UP when giving out the next one.

tw: death & violence .

001.  GENERAL .

name  emilio gutierrez nicknames  em, emil, milo age  48 date of birth  april 2nd, 1973 zodiac  aries place of birth  somewhere in new york current residence  somewhere in new york gender  cis male pronouns  he/him sexuality  unspecified occupation  security guard/food truck owner

faceclaim  pedro pascal height  5’11 tattoos  none piercings  none distinguishing features  being extra handsome

positive traits friendly, outgoing, loyal & straightforward negative traits  distracted, unorganized & unserious labels / tropes  tbd likes food, relaxing car drives, taking naps in his food truck, spending quality time with others dislikes going to missions fears  dying for real hobbies  running his food truck (that doesn't actually sell cupcakes) habits  misplacing his reading glasses, always rambling especially in stressful situations, constantly clearing his throat, clenching his jaw and scratching his face

002.  EXTRA ORDINARY .

near death experience…  emilio didn’t grow up in the greatest neighborhood. it was definitely a low income community and his parents had too many kids to keep track of. he quickly found himself running with the wrong crowd of people and started to find himself in more and more trouble as the days passed. after one particular outing with his friends not long after his fifteenth birthday, they ended up fighting a group of men much older than they were. none of them really stood a chance against these men and it was only over something as dumb as one of his friends took their son’s bike. the fight seemed to last forever and once emilio fell to the ground, the beating didn’t stop. next thing he knew, the world went black. emilio didn’t know how long he was out for but he woke up in the hospital a week later just to learn that his heart had stopped and he was dead for a few minutes.

a couple of months had passed before he was fully back on his feet and started to get back into his old ways. he was heading to the local park with his friends when he started to get a weird feeling that he was in danger. he tried to ignore it but as they got closer the more anxiety he felt. when they arrived they encountered a robbery that was happening. the group of friends quickly broke it up but emilio was still on edge the rest of the day. he knew that it felt much more than a simple gut reaction.

power…  his power is danger detection and it feels like a gut feeling but much more intense sensation. he can only use it when he’s nearby and the closer that he gets to the threat, the more intense the feeling gets. since it only happens when he’s near danger, he has no control over his ability and there’s not a technique he can perfect. (see above for how he found out about his power bc i combined the things). he started working a security job at eighteen and it helped him move up pretty fast in his position since he could always break up and prevent most things from getting too out of hand.

drawbacks / vulnerabilities… the biggest struggle that he deals with from his ability is the toll that it takes on his mental health. since there’s no way to really turn his ability off, he’s always in some state of high alert while things happen around him. as the years progressed his “gut feeling” triggered some sort of panic or anxiety as he waits to face whatever danger is lurking near him. he’s definitely been put on lots of different medications over the years but nothing has seemed to help him.

cerberus corp…  he was sought out in 2010 when cerberus was first formed but he denied the offer. he was very comfortable with his life. he was married with a child and he was head of security at his job. he was told that his ability that he found to be more of a burden would be useful for them. when his marriage started to fall apart the next year, he reached out to accept their offer. he’s been here twelve years now and he knows how useful his power is on important missions, he’s been finding himself trying to stay out of the field much as he can which is why he’s still a level iii after all of this time. when he does choose to go on missions he always has a partner because he’s only there to sense where the danger is coming from. he likes being an agent but he’s glad he can still do security and when he feels like it he can open his food truck for service.

codename…  he chose the name for himself. he thought it would be funny and didn’t think that much about it. he’ll answer to cupcake or emilio but his friends tend to call him cupcake.

003.  EXTRA .

an ex wife & possibly a son or daughter. he’s been divorced for about ten years

[ellies-rambles]

I do see how I misunderstood your original post, apologies. However, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re assigning motives and connections where there are none. Angus says very clearly what he’s packing and why, his motives are explicitly laid out and doesn’t offer any sort of clue that he might not be telling the truth. He doesn’t make any mention of the draft before, during, or after this scene— in the case of the restaurant scene, he says that he’ll be sent to Vietnam as a result of attending Fork Union, not because he was drafted.

If you want to talk about draft dodgers, that’s cool and a very good and worthy thing to discuss as far as American politics go, but this movie is not about a boy who is actively trying to dodge the draft. He’s 17, he’s not at risk of being drafted until at least his 18th birthday, so he wouldn’t be preemptively preparing for something like this— what good could wearing a swimsuit like that on vacation do in terms of being drafted? He’d have to wear it to his assessment; just owning that piece of clothing isn’t enough proof that he intended to use it for that purpose. Also, as far as draft dodging techniques go, there are ways that were much easier for someone like Angus to do; a big, popular choice was going to college, or faking a medical condition— hell, with the trauma history to his shoulder, he might not even be eligible for the draft in the first place, depending on how it healed and what functionality he’s capable of (which, to be fair, in the film, it seems like he makes a speedy recovery).

Anyway, my point is, claiming to be gay to avoid the draft, whether true or not, was a very extreme choice, and there were things he could have done that would be easier and less damaging. In 1970, when the bulk of this movie takes place, homosexuality was still classified as a psychiatric disorder. People were hospitalized and criminalized for being gay. In America, it was still classified as a mental illness up until 1973, began being decriminalized in 1961, and wasn’t until 2003 where all the laws left that were anti-gay began to be invalidated (of course, recently, we’ve seen discriminatory laws being put back into place, but I digress). There was a very big stigma around being gay back then, and, if Angus showed up to his drafting station and claimed to be gay, he wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam, but he also likely would not be going home to Boston either.

Again, it’s great to discuss the ethics of the draft and dodging it, but this movie doesn’t talk about it because that’s not what this movie is about. Angus dodging the draft is not brought up, because this movie is not the story of a troubled boy who is dodging the draft, along with other hardships in his life.

If you want to watch a movie about the draft/dodging the draft, I suggest The Boys Who Said NO! (2020, dir. judith ehrlich) which, while not fiction, does paint a very good picture of what the environment and conversation around draft dodging was at the time, and gives a tidy little retrospective of the implications of these actions.

First off, you sound like that person who sent that weird essay to maia crimew. Second off, please take a film studies or film analysis course. Just because the film isn't ACTIVELY about something doesn't mean it's not a theme. Third, Angus is a junior who repeated a grade. Fourth, (this list is out of order with your ask) gay men fully could not join the military. It wasn't just if they were drafted. It's also very silly to me that you're acting like you know a lot about Vietnam drafting but using dodging instead of resisting. I'm a queer woman who has studied prep schools during the Vietnam era very intensely. Just because something wasn't popular doesn't mean it didn't happen. I am a film student, the curtains are never just blue. The filmmaker's intention ultimately doesn't matter. There is an underlying theme of Vietnam War fears throughout that movie and I literally just identified one. Grow up <3

[therichantsim]

I don’t have albums and albums of photos of my dad because he was in and out of my life. He unfortunately struggled with addiction throughout most of his life. I never was angry with him about it though. I actually felt compassion and empathy for him. Maybe had my life been different I may have blamed him, but I had a great childhood. Yes, it could’ve been better had he been active, healthy and stable but I didn’t lack for good male role models. My uncles and grandfather to name a few. That being said I never once doubted that he didn’t love me. Whenever he was clean, he was present. He taught me how to drive a 5 speed, how to be the fastest at word search puzzles, how to cut mens hair and line up a beard, how to patch dry wall, the best way to cook eggs and many other things. He always knew just what to say when you needed encouragement. I used to take for granted the compliments he’d give me because of course your parents feel that way. Now I listen to his voicemails longing to hear those words of encouragement or compliments in real time. I never really fell apart or lost it when I got the call. As a matter of fact I knew the call was coming the week leading up to him passing. I knew I answered the phone the morning of his passing. I don’t know why I’ve always had this strange foresight about these things. Anyway, my grief comes is random moments of joyful sorrow. You see if nothing else this day reminds me to hope. My dad had a lot of that. Everyday regardless of his circumstances he had hope and he took that hope, got up and did the best he could with it. Hoping it was good enough. I can’t speak for anyone else that knew Tony but I think his best was good enough. HAPPY HEAVENLY BIRTHDAY DADDY! I MISS YOU!

Top right me and my daddy 1973. He was 17 and I was 4 weeks. Top left my daddy 25. Bottom right me and my daddy 2014.

Bottom left my dad and my daughter 2019.

[victusinveritas]

F. Murray Abraham, on shooting "Scarface" (1983) and "Amadeus" (1984): "While I was working on 'Scarface,' I was told that I got the role of Salieri. I had to fly back and forth from Prague to Hollywood to shoot the two films at the same time. It's not as hard as you think. They're so different - if they were close, it would have been difficult. One was kind of a vacation from the other. The material was very good in both films, so I could just study on the plane when I was going to Hollywood and then I'd study the other script on the way back to Prague. I think I travelled four times back and forth. It was funny. If you look carefully, you will see a couple of the same gestures from those two films, but you have to look carefully."

Primarily a stage actor, Abraham made his screen debut as an usher in the George C. Scott comedy "They Might Be Giants" (1971). By the mid-1970s, Murray had steady employment as an actor, doing commercials and voice-over work. He can be seen as one of the undercover police officers along with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet's "Serpico" (1973), and in television roles including the villain in one third-season episode of "Kojak". His film work of those years also included the roles of a cabdriver in "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" (1975), a mechanic in "The Sunshine Boys" (1975), and a police officer in "All the President's Men" (1976).

Beyond these small roles, Abraham continued to do commercials and voice-over work for income. But in 1978, he decided to give them up. Frustrated with the lack of substantial roles, Abraham said, "No one was taking my acting seriously. I figured if I didn't do it, then I'd have no right to the dreams I've always had." His wife went to work as an assistant and Abraham became a "house husband." He described, "I cooked and cleaned and took care of the kids. It was very rough on my macho idea of life. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me."

Born Murray Abraham, he added "F." to his stage name in honor of his father Fahrid. He has stated that "Murray Abraham just doesn't seem to say anything. It just is another name, so I thought I'd frame it."

Abraham accepting his Best Actor Oscar for "Amadeus": "It would be a lie if I told you I didn't know what to say, because I've been working on this speech for about twenty-five years. But you're not going to hear any of those speeches, because none of the speeches were less than forty-five seconds. You know, it's easy to gamble everything when you've got nothing to lose, and Milos Forman had a great deal to lose when he gave these brilliant roles to Tom Hulce and me, and his courage became my inspiration. There's only one thing that's missing for me tonight, and that's to have Tom Hulce standing by my side." (IMDb/Wikipedia)

Happy Belated Birthday, F. Murray Abraham!

[frameacloud]

Image description: A photo of a gravestone of a married couple. The simple gray stone bears this inscription below a small equal-armed cross: “Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889-1971. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973.” Description ends.

Photo source: Steven Gray, CC-BY-NC 2.0.

Today, January 3, is the birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These novels changed how the world thought of fantasy literature. He drew from his knowledge of folklore and language, as a professor of Anglo-Saxon and English language and literature and an inventor of constructed languages. We can see Tolkien’s influence throughout the fantasy genre today. For example, whenever fantasy authors spell the plural of the word “dwarf” as “dwarves,” instead of the traditional spelling “dwarfs,” paralleling the spelling of “elves.” Tolkien invented these and other changes to English because they made sense to him.

There have also been various groups of people who drew inspiration from Tolkien’s legendarium for their own worldviews and spiritual beliefs, though they vary in how seriously they take it. For example, in the 1970s, there were some groups affiliated with Paganism who called themselves elves, such as the Elf Queen’s Daughters, the Silver Elves, and more, and they referred to being influenced partly by Tolkien’s vision of elves. In the 2000s, elf otherkin debated whether it was right to seriously identify with Tolkien-inspired fictional elves rather than strictly ones from folklore, mythology, and personal gnosis. Fiction, after all, must be the least real of any of these.

How seriously did Tolkien himself take his own legendarium? It’s only fiction, right? It’s complicated. According to him, the world of Middle-Earth was neither an alien planet nor altogether imaginary (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 283 (#211).) He said, “Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. ... The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary” (Letters, 239 (#183).) Though he acknowledged that the differences between the geography of that ancient world and ours is not very practical to reconcile, he set the events of the The Lord of the Rings about 6,000 years ago, but he chose not to be specific about it so that he wouldn’t need to make their calendars line up with ours (Letters, 283 (#211).

As shown in the photo above, Tolkien also put the name of his self-insert character, Beren, on his gravestone, together with that of his wife, Lúthien. That seems about as serious as any identification with a fictional character that I’ve ever seen. Especially considering how he would have thought of gravestones as a historian and as a Catholic. Gravestones are very permanent and spiritually meaningful records of who people were and what was important to them. In Catholicism, the gravestone marks where the body was buried whole, which they believe is necessary in preparation for the end of the world, when the body will physically return to life and stand facing the sunrise.

In Tolkien’s legendarium, Beren was a human, and so bore the Gift of Men: a greater measure of free will than other beings, as well as mortality, so that upon death, the spirits of Men leave the world and do not return. The Gift was originally granted as a blessing, but evil influences turned it into a curse. In the story, Beren’s wife Lúthien was an elf who became a mortal so they would not be separated, among her many other deeds of loving self-sacrifice and heroism.

I am not a Tolkien scholar, so with humility I hope I have done all right with this post, and welcome any corrections from those who are more familiar.