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strange-anni · 13 days ago

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So let's talk about Nancys room shall we?

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In this scene in S1E3 Eleven explores the Wheelers house and then walks into Nancys room. So let us look at some of the things we find there and draw some tentative conclusions.

The first thing we see is a poster with what appears to be a big animal printed on it on Nancys door. At first glance it is not entirely clear what it is exactly but looking closer it seems to be a cat. It's rather abstract though. Like it's a not fully formed cat. Just the image of it. Plus they seem to have three colors. Red, orange and white (and possibly black). This makes it likely that this is a female cat. Male calicos do exist but are extremely rare (1 in 3000).

Next we see a small pin board on Nancys desk with with what reads like “Nemo”? Can this be right? Surely it's “Memo” isn't it?

More cat symbolism here. There is porcelain figure of a kitten directly next to the bed.

Plus there are two pillows. A pink one and blue one with the latter being slightly more in the front. This can have several meanings. First it could represent heterosexuality or heteronormativity if we go with traditional gender color coding. A pink one and a blue one belong together in bed. As far as we can tell this seems to be true for Nancy as she seems to be straight. It could also represent her having s*x with Steve. It was the first time for her. I will come back to this later.

Even more kitten symbolism here. This time it's two kittens on the side a of a musical box.

The song that is played is called “Wiegenlied” (“Cradle song”) and is also known as “Guten Abend, gut' Nacht” (“Good evening, good night”) It's very popular song to be used in music boxes.

Listen to it here

Johannes Brahms wrote the composition in 1868 but it is based on a poem first published in 1808 which itself was based on an old german poem from the Middle Ages. Nowadays it is one of the if not the most well known lullabys in Germany. When Brahms wrote the song he dedicated it to his friend Bertha Faber to celebrate the birth of her second son.

However the poem the first verse is based on was originally not meant to be a children's lullaby although that is what it's now known for. It's a general love poem not specifically meant for children. (It only got that association with children songs because of it's title and because it was placed into a collection with other children songs in “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (“The boy's magical horn”) in 1808)

A quote by Brahms himself supports this as he wrote in a letter to the Fabers.

“Mrs. Bertha will understand that I wrote the song only for her little one; however she will also agree with me that as she sings Hans to sleep, her husband will sing to her, mumbling a love song.”

The first verse reads as follows:

In this case the roses are meant to be a protective cover. The cloves (And I want you to know that the word “Näglein” although in this case meant as cloves also holds kind of a double meaning as Näglein is also a diminutive of the word “Nagel” which translates to “nail”) are meant to be second protective layer as their essential oils are supposed to keep vermin and germs away. The last two lines are also often misunderstood especially by children as they would think that it is god will alone whether they wake up the next morning or not. That's not what it means though as it's supposed to be a more broadly believe that the future is in gods hands.

Later on Brahms also wrote a composition for the second verse which was published in 1849 by Georg Scherer. I don't have much to say about this other than the fact that his verse gives the whole song a much more Christmassy feel to it. The lines are pretty self-explanatory

Sources: German and English Wiki pages

That is the whole pinboard above her desk and there is much to discover. First we get a confirmation that that the “Nemo” we saw in the beginning is indeed “Memo” instead although it still looks like Nemo due to the “e” covering part of the “M”.

Next the pin board is covered with lots of photos and other things but there are also white and pink ribbons. They are placed in such a manner that it almost looks like a grid or possibly bars? Like prison bars? I will also go a step further and assume that the white/pink color combination could represent femininity like I assume the two pillows on her bed could stand for masculinity and femininity (or a man and a woman). However in the way that these ribbons are placed (like bars) it almost makes it look like they are caging something inside. Something that's desperate to come out as I don't think it's a coincidence that the photos which catch your eye the most and which are placed above the white/pink ribbons are the ones in which Nancy's wearing blue. In one of them she even almost looks like a boy.

I also want to give some attention to the photo in to left corner. It's showing us young Barb dressed as a clown and young Nancy dressed like a bunny. There are many characters in the series associated with bunnies. Holly for example, little Janes room in Terrys house has lots of bunny imagery or later on Henry Creel. Jonathan too but for him this is a bad memory as he was forced to kill a rabbit by his father on his 10th birthday. Nancy in this case is not just associated with bunnies. She literally is one although that seems to be a thing from the past. In S4 when her mother shows her Mr. Rabbit one of her old plushies she decides against keeping it as he will be loved more in another home.

Oh and of cause, she does seem to think the blue and yellow should get together. I know what ya'll are thinking but I don't think this is about byler only. More likely is that it is meant in a broader manner such as both ends of the spectrum should come together.

I've already marked this in the picture above but I do find the saying interesting. From what we can see here it reads “You are part of the problem” but that's not what it says in it's entirety. It is really hard to see but I think in it's entirety it reads “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem” That of cause raises the question, what solution for what problem exactly?

This one is eerie. As my screenshot is not the best please look at this post from bobokhan. What we see here is a cake which reads “Happy birthday Virgina We love you” at least as far as I can tell. This of cause is reminiscent of another person called Virgina who we've only seen much later in the fourth season. If and what these two have in common I do not know.

Tentative Conclusions

It is interesting to see that Nancy seems to surrounded by cat imagery. None of these seem to be a fully grown though, if you don't count the more abstract one which I won't since this is also in instance of a cat that is not a full image of one. What I think this means is that there is a potential there for Nancy to either become one or acquire some cat characteristics. This however has not yet come to pass (from a standpoint of season 1) although it may come to pass later. At this point in time she is a “Nemo” (Nobody.) A bit of a blank slate in this regard.

Furthermore there is the imagery of the blue and pink pillows on the bed as well as the white and pink ribbons on the pin board. I think these images refer mostly to sexuality and gender. Like the pink and white ribbons are reminiscent of (prison) bars trying to hold back a more masculine version or attitude behind them. Although this prison of femininity (white and pink) is not fully capable of holding it back. In regards to the pillows I still think it may depict Nancy being straight but as she is more associated with blue she is the one that blue pillow represents which in turn means she does have more dominant tendencies as the blue pillow is slightly in the front.

Last but not least there is the lullaby in the music box which in reference to Nancy alone does not make a whole lot of sense. This imagery does not reflect her at all. However it is still important as we see El listening to it for bit while seeming to get a bit distressed as if the song were about to trigger a memory but then doesn't. It's almost like it still means something to her which she is not comfortable with.

Interestingly enough at the end of season 4 we see El in the exact colors which are seemingly holding Nancy back here. El's wearing a white shirt with a pink border on the sleeves. Apparently these colors are not a prison to El. Instead she seems to embrace them.

#stranger things #stranger things theory #Nancy Wheeler #my meta #it's most likely not new to you #but i still wanted to make this post #if you only care about nancy you can stop reading here #however some of these things in here make much more sense #when seen in relation to another character #you can read my follow up post for this #Youtube

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charlesandmartine · 27 days ago

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Tuesday 5th November 2024

The Stuart Highway is the major route from north to south, from Darwin in the Northern Territories right down to Port Augusta in Southern Australia. To compare it to the M25 would be far from accurate. For such an important road, 2720kms of it, there's little traffic on it by UK standards. By far the heaviest use comes from the mighty road trains that thunder back and forth top to bottom of this vast country. These things take no prisoners; they will not stop for animals on the highway or pretty much anything else come to think of it. They can be over 50 meters long with 3 or 4 sections, sometimes 60m. Big vehicles. And so it was as we ventured back up the Stuart Highway again this morning we ploughed up an empty road passing the occasional road train. We were off to Edith Falls, a mere 150km round trip. Edith Falls, now known as Leliyn, was originally named after the daughter of a Police Commissioner in the 1900s. And I don't believe Edith Falls in the water, off the bridge or over the cliff. We were equally careful not to emulate this either as we set off from the car park on a 'loop walk' of 2.7kms. Not far, I hear you protest, but as we embarked, it was 38 degrees, and the walk is described as medium to difficult; rocks to climb on an uphill trajectory. Plenty in the rucksack to drink and big hats, we set off. The expedition worthy of a Duke of Edinburgh award winds clockwise around three pools: a lower pool, a middle pool, and an upper pool. This is a major attraction yet we met virtually no-one on route. Beautiful pools hidden from view and fed by waterfalls from above which despite technically still in the dry season, the Falls were running still. At a couple of vantage points, our efforts were rewarded by fantastic views that went on and on. This was indeed a gorgeous location; so peaceful and tranquil. The lowest pool was for bathers, but there were none there, and the clear waters showcased an entire spectrum of pond life. Miraculously, not only did the Nitmiluk National Park provide a cafe where it was needed, but it was actually open! As we supped a coffee, tranquility was entirely shattered by 2 coach loads of German tourists as they disgorged and noisily elbowed their way down to the plunge pool brandishing their national emblem aloft, the beach towel.

A really good day out, and we'll worth the distance travelled. We envied the couple running the cafe. They were standing in for the usual team, and had travelled up from Bunbury in WA to live and work there for a couple of weeks. We could do that!

Back to Katherine and the bottle shop. Usual scrutiny of ID to make sure we weren't on the naughty boys list and away we came with the SB for the customary sunset ceremony. This ban of sale of alcohol to those on the list is state wide across the Northern Territories.

ps. Despite the heat, vindaloo with left over rubbery chicken. Jacobs Creek SB. Tim Tams later on as we watched George Gently.

Predictable or what?

pps. Tomorrow no intention to view anymore pools or waterfalls.

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thewritingsandwich · 10 months ago

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The Chiming Lady - Part 4

A Lockwood & Co. Fan Fiction

Other Parts: 1 2 3 4 5

Summary: The agents of Lockwood & Co. are invited to the Halloween-Party of a former client.

A/N: I originally wrote this for @ savelockwoodnco on instagram's filler episode theme. But I'm a month too late... anyways this takes place after 'The Empty Grave' but there are no major spoilers for it. Originally I wrote it in german, but I translated it for the internet with the help of DeepL.

Tag List: @ahead-fullofdreams

Warnings: Mentions of injuries, brief mentions of su***de and mu**er

"Would it be terribly inappropriate to think that this is a perfect situation to show the guests our talents?" Lockwood whispered to Holly, George and me. All the guests had gathered in the ballroom. We stood in the front row in front of a man dressed as a sad clown.

"Please, explain to us what happened," Holly replied, suddenly holding a pen and paper in her hand. The clown took a deep breath.

"I went outside for a smoke. I saw a person by the lake. He was one of the caterers and he was moving towards the lake. I tried to speak to him and stop him, but he was in a trance. I couldn't stop him and then he was in the lake. He sank like a stone. I wanted to go back to the house, but I suddenly had the feeling that I urgently needed to get into the lake too. I only came out of my trance because the ash from my cigarette got on my hand." His shoes and trousers were definitely wet.

"Do you really want to fight a possible stray and who knows what else when we only have our rapiers with us?" George whispered to Lockwood. But he was already grinning. It was unavoidable. Anthony Lockwood had made up his mind that we would solve this ghost problem, so we would. However, I had to agree with George. This situation was not ideal.

Unfortunately, the sad clown couldn't give us any more information either, so we made our way outside while the rest of the guests took flight.

A light mist shrouded the small lake on the grounds. A few reeds grew here and there and some water lilies floated on the surface of the water. A single, sad willow stretched across the lake and a lonely little boat could be found under its branches.

Without any equipment, our approach was slightly different. Without stepping too close to the lake, I listened into the darkness. The bell rang again. But there was also a female voice.

"You wretched brat," she whispered and a child's cry rang out. Sounds of fighting followed, as well as the wild splashing in the water. At first it was loud and uncontrolled, but it became less and less until the water finally stopped.

"Oh no, what have I done?" the female voice murmured and I felt her remorse. It hit me like a big wave and I was in danger of drowning in the feeling. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have done that. Why did I do that? He was only supposed to be quiet for a moment. Now I'm losing everything - absolutely everything.

The bell rang again and I opened my eyes. I had just been a few metres away from the lake and now I was ankle-deep in water. I quickly scurried back ashore and looked around. Where were the others?

I turned round searching. It was almost impossible to recognise anything in the fog and darkness. I could only vaguely recognise the lights of the building. Then a child's laughter. The boy was playing with us.

There was a hiss, followed by a bright, reddish flash from the north-east. I ran to the light and caught sight of Lockwood, rapier drawn and flare fending off the shrivelled manifestation of a small boy. Neither Lockwood nor the ghost had recognised me. So I took the opportunity to run my rapier through the ghost from top to bottom.

"Where are the others?" he asked me. But I just shook my head.

"But I know what happened - or at least I think I do." He nodded at me and prompted me to continue. "I think the nanny drowned Mr Pearson's twin brother in the lake. I heard everything." The bell rang again, this time even louder and almost deafening for me. I covered my ears, but the ringing didn't stop, it just got louder.

Lockwood looked at me and said, "What do you hear?"

"Bells," I got out, probably shouting, whereupon Lockwood turned to the tower in the grounds. The ringing stopped abruptly.

"There's another ghost in the tower."

"Are you sure?" He turned back to me.

"Yes... 90% and I've already made decisions I was more unsure about."

"But what are we going to do about the stray? I'm pretty sure its source is at the bottom of the lake, and let me remind you that the lake doesn't count as running water."

He glanced at the lake and paused for a moment. The harsh light from the torch made his sharp face look even more sharp. The red colour of the light made him look almost normal again.

Before he could reply, Holly and George arrived - both panting mightily. George's make-up was all runny from his sweat.

"What's the plan, boss?" he asked Lockwood immediately. It would certainly have been smarter to find out more about the estate and come back later with more equipment. But you can imagine that if that were the case, I wouldn't be telling you this.

I saw Lockwood start to speak, but once again the bells rang - this time so loudly that they completely drowned out Lockwood's plan. The dull thuds grew louder and louder, so I desperately covered my ears, but the ringing continued. I fell to my knees and screamed because the pain was unbearable. A draft of air made me feel someone walk past me.

Then someone grabbed my hands and I slowly opened my eyes again. The ringing continued. Holly was crouching in front of me, saying something, but I couldn't understand a word she was saying. She looked at someone else and out of nowhere a silver net fell over my head. The ringing ended abruptly. Through the fine mesh I could still make out Holly helping me up, as well as Lockwood and George.

"What's wrong, Lucy?" George and Holly asked in confusion.

"I keep hearing the bell ringing." I pointed to the bell tower, where another person could be seen. The others followed the direction of my finger.

"Then it's settled. We'll deal with the ghost of the bell tower first. I think this is the one tormenting Lucy. Whatever it is, it's cunning and clever," Lockwood said. Something warm ran down my neck and I carefully touched the strange liquid. The fading light from the torch made the little part on my finger look jet black. What the hell was that?

We returned to the estate and Mrs Pearson was waiting anxiously in the entrance hall. When we asked her why she was still here, she replied that she didn't want to leave us alone. Even if that was meant kindly, it was extremely stupid. We would see a ghost coming - she wouldn't. But we definitely didn't have the time or the energy to argue with her. She was a grown woman who knew the Problem, so she had to know the dangers.

In the foyer, I put the silver mesh back down and looked at my finger again. It was blood. I briefly bled from my ears.

"Where did you get the net anyway?", I asked before the others noticed the blood.

"I took a small selection of our equipment. The likelihood of us dealing with a ghost was pretty high and I wanted to have equipment with us to showcase our talents properly," Lockwood replied. That's probably the reason for the rucksack.

Mrs Pearson explained to us the way to the bell tower. We walked through the house, past lots of furniture covered in white lacquer and many old paintings. I kept hearing the sounds of children playing or a nanny scolding. Lockwood handed out a few bombs along the way. I ran behind, trying to contain my panic at the blood in my ears.

"Don't act like I haven't already seen the blood coming out of your ears," Lockwood replied, dropping back and now walking beside me.

"I'm fine." He raised an eyebrow and I didn't believe myself.

"One word, Luce. One word from you and then we're out of here." I probably should have said something, but at that moment my curiosity about what kind of ghost was hanging around up there on the tower got the better of me.

"I'm all right. Let's keep going."

#original work #lockwood and co #l&co #l&co. netflix #locknation #locknationfillerepisode #anthony lockwood #george karim #holly munro #jonathan stroud #locklyle #lucy carlyle #lockwood & co. fan fiction #lockwood x lucy

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r0yalgrimmartz · 1 year ago

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💎Cytherea Megami Headcanons💎

I've did headcanons for Kore, imma do one for Cytherea. Just love how my best ideas usually come from me sitting on the toilet for the next half hour. Also, MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING for mentions of child neglect/bullying/miscarriage/form of child abuse.

((Also as a disclaimer, I feel the need to say that while yes, Cytherea doesn't exactly have the greatest support system to some extend and with how she's grew up, I am in no way in any shape or form justifying her actions for how she treated everyone else. As someone who was horribly bullied when I was in my early teens, yeah it massively fucking sucked. I've gotten over it and have tried to deal with the aftermath of it in a healthy manner. I feel the need to say this as a victim of being bullied myself, because I'm not trying to justify her actions nor wanting people to sympathise with her. Yes, you can sympathise with her to some extent with how she's been raised, but Cytherea is purely meant to be someone who's supposed to be working towards redeeming herself and not having it handed to her. She needs to learn from her past behaviour and mistakes and feel regrets.))

Anyway:

- An only child, just her and her parents plus her own personal maid. She comes from a well known, famous and wealthy family line generation known as 'The Megami Group'.

- The absolute embodiment of Regina George. Like, it ain't even funny. Plus if you mix early season one Chazz and season two Zane it's even worse.

[CUT TO BREAK UP TEXT]

- Normally tends to care about popularity at the beginning of the season, but after meeting Kore, her only goal and drive is to beat Kore and anyone at a Duel, no matter what or how savagely. Kore had ignited some sort of "crazed" obsession for winning and beating anyone and crushing them. Specifically Kore.

- Her clothes, acrylic nails, make up, skin care and shoes probably cost more than your mortgage.

- Is Norwegian. Has been taught to learn English and other languages as well, from French, Spanish, German, Greek, Italian...Especially Japanese.

- Lives purely out of spite. She absolutely thrives off pissing off others.

- Despite earlier on having loads of "friends", she can't help but always feel alone. That there isn't anyone really there for her. To be honest she thinks she prefers being alone, yet subconsciously kind of seeks out wanting someone.

- Dates Ilya Hadesu in first season, kinda dies out in the end of season 1 and beginning of season 2.

- Due to the constant neglect from her parents, she has always tried proving to them that she is worth something. To gain their love and affection that she used to crave. Seeing other kids have loving parents kind of infuriated her to the point she lashed out or tried to physically hit said person.

- Cytherea was basically a product of...literally not exactly a wanted child by both of her parents. Her parents basically never planned to have kids, but once Cytherea's mother fell pregnant accidentally, her father had only hoped it would be a boy. Of course, Cytherea ended up being a girl, thus both parents really had zero interest in her.

- Cytherea has her own personal maid, which was hired originally as a midwife by Cytherea's mother to aid her throughout the pregnancy. Her midwife was also pregnant at the time, but unfortunately miscarried in the later stages of pregnancy. However, once Cytherea was born literally a week after, seeing how both Cytherea's parents had little to no interest, the midwife ended up wanting to stay and become a maid for them, personally for Cytherea and to take care of her. Thus forth, she had become more of a parental guardian and more so a paternal figure towards Cytherea. Cytherea seeks her out for parental guidance most of the time. Even going so far as to teach Cytherea little things, such as sewing and even getting Cytherea into knitting. Proper manners, table manners and elegance, plus playing the piano is what Cytherea learned from her maid.

- Just an add on from the last point, but whatever achievements Cytherea gets that are usually brushed off by her parents, her maid will always be there to support her and even praise her massively for her achievements. Even if Cytherea still seeks out her parents validation.

- Cytherea has....so many achievements. From ice skating, to horse riding, skiing, acrobatics, swimming...She is first place. Always first place. She will never settle for less no matter what. Mocks anyone that's in second place, calling them "first place in being the biggest loser".

- Definitely has bullied students at Duel Academy. Equally. Doesn't matter who it is or what they look like, at the end of the day, everyone will suffer her wrath.

- She is either loved by the school, massively hated, or is greatly feared amongst the lower dorms. Has created many...many enemies. Such as Alexis, Chazz, Aster, Bastion, Zane, Adrian...probably more but Syrus massively fears her. Hassleberry dislikes her attitude, even saying to her face one time. Cytherea threatened Hassleberry with something just so he could shut up. Hanae absolutely hates her guts. Massively.

- Kore is oblivious to Cytherea's threats and their rivalry after Kore stood up to her. Kore for some reason tries to befriend Cytherea (despite Chazz literally warning Kore several times to not to), even going so far as to get her a little silly gift for Cytherea for her birthday. Cytherea had screamed at Kore that she is worthless and will be nothing but a pathetic rival. Yet, Cytherea still had the gift Kore made for her to this day.

- Does not cross Miyu in the slightest. Her and Miyu are on...civil terms shall we put it. Something happened during season one where Miyu somehow managed to strike fear into Cytherea during a duel. Cytherea has not dared to even face Miyu since. But she will never admit it.

- Loves scented candles. Has several in her dorm room. Plus has a hobby in knitting and sewing (callback to previous points ago). She finds peace in it.

- Definitely tried to provoke Sartorius at one point. Literally insults and berates the entire white dorm in season two. Might have hired someone at one point to blow up the white dorm because...why not. How Cytherea has now be expelled or you know- CHARGED is beyond anyone's mind.

- Somehow became friends with Jaden in season two. Much to his friend's hatred. Starts to slightly mellow out with her behaviour at the end of season two and during season three.

- Has some...deep admiration for Axel. Probably at some point was stuck with him during their time in the other dimension. When Axel felt fear, Cytherea probably stood up and took over the reins and was probably like "move your ass we got a Supreme King to fucking kick the fuck out of". But yeah, throughout season three her admiration for Axel builds up. Could be a crush? Hell no she doesn't get crushes...she thinks. Either way, she keeps her mouth shut about it till like season four when she then is like "...okay you're cool I'll only admit".

- Throughout season four, Cytherea isn't exactly the extreme mean girl she was compared to season one. Sure she still acts mean at times and a bitch during season four, but Cytherea is more...self aware about the people around her. Granted, the gang don't let her off the hook, she has to earn their trust and respect. Especially when Kore isolates herself after what happened, Cytherea tries to help her. Even being firm, blunt, yet understanding towards Jaden as well. Considering the horrors that they all went through.

- Is disowned by her parents at some point during the series. I don't know how yet, but probably during season two where Sartorius probably pulls some shit, alerting her parents and gets to the point they disown her. Thus making Cytherea realise that this whole time she didn't need them, considering her maid only ever acted as her guardian and ever helped her. Thus, once she graduates from Duel Academy, she tries to take a portion of her family's company, building up whatever she has and actually becomes more successful than her parents with the family name. She eventually asks her maid to adopt her to be her legal daughter, and the maid ofc agrees.

- Does actually briefly date Kore for like a year and a half after they graduate but then break up once they decide to just keep it as friends since they realised they were better as friends. Did Chazz find out? Yes. Was he happy about it? Haha- He was fucking furious.

- She always wears diamonds. No matter what outfit. Diamonds are essential.

- Hates the smell of flowers. Thinks they look pretty but she thinks they have a pissy smell to them.

- Religiously follows a morning and night time skin care routine. Will never miss out any steps, nor miss out doing the entire routine. If she does, there will be hell to pay.

- A big morning person. Likes to wake up bright and early to get a head start of the day. Will always wake up at 6AM. The latest she'll lie in will be 7:30AM, no later.

- Enjoys a lot of teas. Very much a tea enjoyer, any variety of tea flavours.

- Always dressed up. Will never be caught dead in lounge wear or in lazy clothing. She is always dressed to impress and outshine everyone.

- Upon first glance she doesn't look athletic, but thanks to her years of ice skating and other activities she participated in, she is quite flexible and strong, mainly strong in the legs.

- Is quite a mean duelist. Sometimes plays dirty but tries to play fair. Shows no mercy and never holds back. She goes all out on destroying her opponents. Does not like showing weakness.

I think that's all, unless there's more I might edit later or mention in the later future.

#yugioh gx #ygo gx #my post #yugioh #ygo #yugioh oc #oc #my oc #ocs #oc stuff #my art

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sosleepylars · 1 year ago

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I recently reflected about all the differences and arguments inside the Star-Wars fandom as well as my own thoughts about them. This was initially supposed to be a little rant, but got way out of hand quickly. So buckle up, this is a long one. A long time ago (it must be roughly 15 years by now), in a little town far, far away in europe, there was a boy. The boy sat in front of the TV and watched with growing awe Episode 2 of a thing called Star Wars. He didn't new that this feeling never would truly vanish and that the awe would grow into love. Love for a universe, that seemed endlessly rich with stories and wonders to dwell in, a welcome distraction from all the problems the boy had in school. When he grew older, he started to read books. "Order 66" by Karen Traviss, "Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader" and "Labyrinth of Evil" (both by James Luceno) to name a few. These grounded him even more inside this fantastic universe, widened his view upon it, bridged all those years that saw no new content and, at least in Karin Traviss'es case, shaped his world view and ehtics to a certain degree. Star Wars was not only a passion or a hobby. It was something the boy identified with, something that gave him the feeling that he, for the first time in his life, was part of something. And that people who loved Star Wars too understood him. That was, until he talked to people who were older than he. He asked them about the films and told them how much he liked them, especially episode 2 and 3. And he would never forget, how they made fun of that. How they said he wasn't a "true" fan. That the "prequels" were trash, and the original films far far superior. This angered him. He WAS a true fan. Those people just couldn't see what made the films good. They just were too old and dug in inside their beliefs of what Star Wars should be like to see it. But the boy, HE could understand the grandeur of the music in the finale of episode one, as he watched Qui-Gon fight for his life and ultimately fail. HE could thrive in the breathtaking pace of episode 2, that started out so small-scale only to end with a view over thousands of soldiers marching gloriously in the sunset. And, lastly, HE knew how hard it was to hold back the tears he felt coming up, as he watched two brothers turning on each other while everything they (and also the boy) had once believed in, crumbled in episode 3. Sure, Jar Jar was annoying. And the romance dialogues, even tho synchronized in German, were still awkward and felt misplaced. But those flaws got outshone greatly by the magic, George Lucas created. And the fights! Nothing like the akward stick-fighting in the hallway in episode 4, or the to lengthy, drawn-out Dagobah-scene in episode 5. Not to speak of the fact that Episode six felt at times like a déjà vu. Those films had their moments, and they where not bad. But they paled in comparioson to the films he had grown up with. Truly, the boy just loved the prequel films. This little boy was me.

Fast Forward to the year 2015. I 19 years old now. But the love for Star Wars only had grown. I had always thought there wouldn't be another Film in the universe, tho of course I always had hoped for it. And so, Books like "Labyrinth of evil" and "Dark Lord - The rise of Darth Vader" by James Luceno and "Order 66" by Karen Traviss helped to quench the thirst for more adventures in the Galaxy far, far away. Especially Traviss, with her unique ability to fill the Clones with life and personality, not only shaped a great portion of my world view and ethical beliefs, that lasts to this day. She also provided the cement my perception of the films rested upon. Her stories of the Mandalorians, the idea of 151 emergency orders, of whom Order 66 was just one, this was the fluff that had filled those years for me. On a rainy, cold day in late december, I went to the cinema to watch Episode 7: The Awakening of the Force. And oh boy. That I was excited would be more than an understatement. Back when the Clone Wars-Movie released in 2008, I had a short hope of a comeback for my beloved Universe. And even tho the Movie broke with as many of my ideas and head canons as it expanded on them (I had mixed feelings about Ashoka back then, to say the least) I still was glad to have it. Until it was announced that there would be a TV-Show building up on it. You see, in Germany it was (and sometimes still is) notoriously hard to get your hands on american shows. Many TV broadcaster here battle for the rights to air them, and when it finally did come to Germany, I couldn't watch it since I was in school whenever it aired. YouTube provided some of the Episodes in German dub, but the quality was bad. Nonetheless, I sucked up every bit I could. Then, I learned, the show got canceled. So back to no content, I thought. Then, 2012, Disney bought Star Wars and announced there would be a new triology. And I E X P L O D E D. I would have a chance to watch a complete new trilogy right from the start and finally experience how it must've been back then, when the movies released that brought me into the fandom initially. Whe nEpisode 1-3 already looked so good, I couldn't even start to imagine what they would do with all the new technology they had now at their disposal! And so, on this afternoon in December, I went out of the cinema, back into the pouring rain, and was trying to comprehend what I had seen. It was a disaster. Sure, it was a Star Wars movie. It was all there. A hero rising up from the ground to save the galaxy. Space fights. Exotic locations. A gripping introduction scene to the new threat to the galaxy. Seeing old faces. The occasional comedic relief. And of course the hero saves the day in the end. But it felt so soulless. Where Episode one somewhat hinted at Episode 4 with its build-up and story (Droid-Controlship and Death Star analogy), this was just a bland copy. It felt to me as if the movie had been made according to a formula. As if all the writer had tried to distill the essence of what made episode 4 great and just...do it again. Which isn't bad in itself, if you present new and refreshing taskes on it. But this movie was far from it. As if it was designed to scratch the itching nostalgia spot. On my way back how, I pulled myself together. It was the first film. Episode one hadn't been too great either overall. Surely, they would do better in the next entry. I only got worse. In the end, when I left the cinema after watching "The Rise of Skywalker" (ironically enough again a rainy December day) all that was left inside me was anger. They had not destroyed the fandom I held so dear to my heart. They had dug up its peacefully resting carcass, robbed it, spat on it and duped it onto a disposal site to rot, after it was quenched for money.

This grudge should last for the years to come, while I watched the several new shows unravel on Disney+. And while some were better than others (to put it lightly), the anger and hatred for the new movies faded. To be absolutely clear, I never understood why people blame the actors when something is wrong with the movie they're in. I didn't partake in this. But I spilled several "Hottakes" during that time I'm not really proud of. And looking back at those I wonder... Did I do the same to a new generation of Fans, that was done to me

Have I, in my disappointment and anger that Disney "ruined" the franchise I so loved, been blind to what my words may cause to someone whose first entry into Star Wars those films were? A young girl, who first experienced the magic of the Galaxy far, far away in Episode 7? Who identified with the troubles Ray had, only to be laughed at and hear how terrible the films are, that Rey is a Marry Sue and basically worthless as a character? How would I have felt? And I remembered it. Angry. Misunderstood. That those hut’uun just couldn't appreciate the magic of those movies. And so, in the end, my point is as follows: I don't want to lecture anyone by this. But I for myself want to deeply apologize to anyone I might've hurt. Be it because you read a comment on YouTube were I flame about the movies and their fans, or a tweet, that states how much I dispise people who support these because I didn't wanted Disney to profit from something that hurt me so deeply. But this is the thing: it only hurt me. To you, it might have given comfort in a time of need. Spent that deeply desired distraction from a life that maybe was short of being too much. Provided a welcome escape from the pressure of daily life. Or was just a fun thing that came up the right time to enjoy with friends. Whatever your reason is to enjoy the sequels: Have fun! Love them! Cosplay its characters! Draw fanart, write fictions, replay the scenes in the woods with sticks together with your friends and laugh at how cringy you all are, as long as it makes you happy YOU ARE VALID. Nobody has the right to take it away from you. Not the critiques. Not the fans on Twitter or YouTube. And certainly not me. Now, in the end, I just want to humbly ask to forgive me for what I have said.

May the force be with you. Always. - Lars

#star wars #star wars fandom #star wars sequel trilogy #star wars sequals #apology #sorry it's so long

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tilbageidanmark · 1 year ago

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Movies I watched this Week #130 (Year 3/Week 26):

Nobody goes to bed on Sunday night in order to wake up early the next morning and read my weekly film reviews... :(

🍿

My first by Pan Nalin from Gujarat, Last Film Show. Definitely, an Indian love letter to the magic of movie-making, a-la 'Cinema Paradiso'. Semi-autobiographical memories of a boy helping the poor projectionist at a remote, primitive village. Sweet, beautiful and sentimental.

It ends with a surprising recitation of names, a list of directors who inspired this homage: Kubrick, Chaplin, Lean, Maya Deren, Godard, Coppola, King Hu, Zhang Yimou, Ozu, Keaton, Spike Lee, Jane Campion, George Méliès, Bigelow.... 7/10.

🍿

2 Road Movies:

🍿 First watch: Zabriskie Point, my 9th by Michelangelo Antonioi, with a screenplay co-written by Sam Shepard. A symbolic counter-cultural cult experiment, about a young student who steals a small Cessna, flies to Death Valley, where he meets a young woman, participate in a dust-covered orgy with her, and flies back, to be shot by the 'pigs'. (Photo Above).

With music by both Pink Floyd AND The Grateful Dead, as well as Roy Orbison AND The Rolling Stones. Also, with G. D. Spradlin! 6/10.

🍿 There were news that Salvation Mountain and the outcast community at Slab City by the Salton Sea had been sold to some kooky religious cult. So this was a good excuse to see Sean Penn's Road movie Into the wild. The true story of a young individual who rejects the material world, and while searching for meaning and self, is escaping to the edge of the world, to the wildness of Alaska. A long, romanticized homage to alternative lifestyles.

🍿

75 years ago this week, the New Yorker published Shirley Jackson's harrowing story 'The Lottery'. A small New England town observes an annual tradition, in which a member of the community is selected by chance and stoned to death to ensure a good harvest and purge the town of bad omens.

A terrifying tale about mob mentality and blind tradition, the story was adapted to educational television (by Encyclopædia Britannica!) in 1969. At 19 minutes long, The Lottery is just as upsetting and intense as the original story. (With Ed Begley Jr. as a little child.) 9/10.

🍿

My first 2 by Lars von Trier:

🍿 I studied film at the University of Copenhagen at the same time Lars von Trier attended the attached film school there, even though our paths never crossed. When he screened his experimental first feature The element of crime, I thought it was one of the most unusual and mysterious films I had ever seen.

So why did I always resisted seeing any of his other movies? On re-watch, 40 years later, 'Element of Crime' holds up. Multilayered, surrealist, literary and incredibly original. It begs the comparison to heavyweights like Orson Wells in 'The third man', and Fritz Lang's M. Fragmentary, visually masterful, drenched in yellow and red filtering, it's full of dystopian despair, water everywhere, nocturnal rituals and a continent falling apart. Dark and nightmarish, one of the greatest debut films of all time. 7/10.

🍿 Von Trier actually directed another film before that: The 1982, 57-minutes Images of Liberation (Befrielsesbilleder) was his film school graduation film, and it created such a stir, that it was given a regular theatrical distribution, a first in Denmark.

A German officer in 1945 visits his Danish mistress days after the end of the Nazi Occupation. Like the more accomplished 'Element', it's a visually-original manifesto, impressionistic and nearly abstract art, filmed all in sepia and red filters, and again played in a foreign language (German). It's obvious he was a film prodigy even then.

Available on low-res YouTube. 2/10.

🍿

..."Osbourne Cox? I thought you might be worried… about the security… of your shit"...

You stumble across a short clip called What did we learn, Palmer? and immediately you must stop everything you do and re-watch Burn after reading for the umpteen time. Another one of the Coen Brother's infectious, addictive fun rides, where every line of dialogue is memorable, and every single character is unforgettable (Linda Litzke, Manolo, the Tuchman Marsh Man, divorce lawyer, plastic surgeon, David Rasche's CIA guy ...).

Funniest Coen Brothers script + the fantastic dildo machine! 10/10.

🍿

Le Brio ("Brilliance") is a French Comedy about extraordinary law professor Daniel Auteuil who is also a politically-incorrect anti-hero, an old-fashioned racist, misanthropic prick. After he publicly insult a young Arab student, he is being forced to mentor her for a prestigious national debate competition, or lose his tenure. What do you know? In the course of the year of them working together, they learn to respect each other and find humanity in their opposite backgrounds! Lovely with a schmaltzy happy end. 4/10.

🍿

More misogyny! Woman Haters is a short musical 'novelty' by the Three Stooges from 1934. At one point it was acceptable to tailor a casual slapstick routine around "WH", The Woman Haters Club, without betting an eye. Crude, violent and unfunny. 1/10.

🍿

The devil all the time, my first unpleasant film with boring, bland actor Tom Holland. It's an Appalachian Hillbilly Gothic, full of dark incidents and over-powering ugliness. Nearly two and a half hours of badly-played tragedies, suicides, White Trash religiosity, serial killings and despair, with too many confusing bad characters, and none worth caring about.

🍿

..."I’m nothing… I’m naval lint"…

Re-watch: True Lies is one of the few action movies I ever loved. From James Cameron, the undisputed champion of Hollywood box office. 90's action And comedy. Another movie that was structured with a stopwatch, so that exactly every 10 minutes, a 'pinch point' took place (The Swiss prologue 0-15, The DC hotel fight 30-40, The Helen interrogation exactly at 1 hour, 10 min. mid-point, Arriving in Florida, exactly at 1:30. Etc.). 7/10.

🍿

The In-laws, the 1979 "classic" sitcom-style comedy with 'Lieutenant Columbo' and "Sheldon the dentist". Also with David Paymer, James Hong and Ed Begley, Jr. But not as funny as it possibly was 40 years ago.

Also, Kevin Pollak Torments Alan Arkin. RIP, Alan Arkin.

🍿

5 More Don Hertzfeld shorts, again:

🍿 "...That's the thing about the present, Emily Prime. You only appreciate it when it is the past..."

Another constant re-watch, his World of tomorrow. the only science fiction movie I love, and one of my most favorite films - ever. The magic lies in the contrast between the scientific explanations of time-travel, neural networks and end-of-the-world vs. the spontaneous voice of the 4-year-old girl who doesn't care about any of it, and just hums "What a beautiful day it is". 10/10.

[I didn't have the heart yet to watch the following 3 episodes of it, even though they are similarly applauded.]

🍿 "For the love of God and all that is holy, my anus is bleeding!"

Rejected, his first Oscar nominated short from 2000. A simple, surrealist collection of anti-consumerist diversions. 9/10.

🍿 Wisdom tooth, a 5-minutes nightmare in mock-Swedish, about a guy trying to help another guy who has a toothache. 9/10.

🍿 His 2014 Simpson Couch Gag, an out-of-this-world dadaist riff on the Simpson opening routine. Mind-bending. I wonder what people thought of it when they sat down to watch the show.

🍿 Watching grass grow, a short time-lapse short of him as he animates his short 'The meaning of life'. Crude homemade animation, low-low-low-tech.

🍿

Wrestling X 2:

🍿 Twenty-five years ago, The Undertaker damn near killed Mankind in one of the greatest 'Hell In a Cell' matches in the history of professional wrestling. Mark Calaway and Mick Foley sat down to re-watch the infamous match that came to redefined each of their careers. [I know it's hard to believe it, but in the mid-90's, I loved watching WWE!]

Calling u/shittymorph!

🍿 Man on the moon, directed by Miloš Forman (so it features his colleague Vincent Schiavelli, but without the subtlety of his early films). A standard biopic about a weird comic with the 'different' sense of humor. Misunderstood genius or an obnoxious prankster? Jim Carrey's Andy Kaufman came across as unlikable, self-centered and uninteresting. With Norm Macdonald. 3/10.

🍿

3 X "So-Bad-I-Couldn't-Finish-Them-Films”:

🍿 Giva't Halfon Eina Ona / "גבעת חלפון אינה עונה" is a classic Israeli "Bourekas-film", which later became a cult film. Bourekas films (Like Spaghetti Westerns) were low-brow, broad comedies based on ethnic stereotypes, and often dealt with conflicts between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews. This one starred the iconic trio 'Hagashashim'. Maybe if somebody saw it first time in 1976, it would be funny, but it aged badly. I lasted 13 minutes.

🍿 While you were sleeping, the apex of 90's romantic comedies and my first by Jon Turteltaub. Most of the chick flicks from that era did not age well, using cliched TV sitcom tropes throughout, from newspaper boys to cute voice mail messages to Christmas gifts. Cringy, saccharine, formulaic.

🍿 A Million Ways to Die in the West, a Seth MacFarlane western comedy, a riff on Blazing Saddles, with bad writing and terrible acting. I lasted for about 45 minutes.

🍿

Throw-back to the "Art project”:

Adora at Salvation Mountain and at Salton Sea (from 'Into the wild').

🍿

(My complete movie list is here).

#movies

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nityarawal · 2 years ago

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2/7/2023

A Eunuchs Fettish

Sitting In The Woods

Looking At Tahquitz

My Friend Told Me

He Discovered He Has A Baby

With A Cleft In Her Chin

Like Him

Carbon Copy

DNA

Don't Have A Doubt

About Her

Little LA

Has Your Dimple

In Her Chin

We Noticed

In The Picture

In The Woods

Looking For Another

Camp

Construction

Stalkers

In The Woods

Trying To Find

A House

Mending Heartstrings

Tuning Guitar

Only Sounds Right

When It Hits

A Nerve

In My Chest

I Feel The Harmony

In My Heart

I Tune Each String

To A Frequency

In My Solar Plexus

Camping In The Snow

Better Than Renting

From Nazis

Ex-cons

Hot Flash

Change

Probably Not Pregnant

No Doubts

About Me

4 Years Celibate

Would've Been

An Immaculate Conception

Or A Prince's Son

No Doubt About Me

Everyone Who Knows

No Doubt About Me

Why So Few Good

Trustworthy

Judges

Heard They Bullied

Mary Kay Letourneau

On A Pedophile

Plea Bargain

Raped By A Brother

Or 3

Raped By Pappa

Called "Cake" Indeed

Raped

Gangbanged

Saw A Penis

Forced To Comply

Didn't Want To Complain

Hurt Elder Brothers

Or A Little Child

Who'd Already

Been Castrated

Please

Daddy

Always Obeyed

Scared her Fault

Taking Responsibility

Teacherly

Devout Mary

Prayed

Break A Little 11-Year-Old

Girls Heart

Murder

Drowning

Schmitz Why'd You

Let Your Daughter

A Little Sister Mary Kay

Take The Blame

Was Your Family

Jealous

Of Your Tear Stained

Eunuch

Sex Toy At 3

Did Phillip James

Have Your Heart

President Elect

Why'd You Sever His Penis

Reconstruction Surgery

Why'd Mary Kay

Take The Heat

Hide Your

Boys Sins

How Was Jerome

John And Joseph

Adults

Not Implicated

How Old Was Jerry

And Did He Rape Mary Kay

Always Had To Say

Yes

Mamma Mary

Ate Shit

Served Her Ass

For Supper

What Happened

To The German Mistress

A Student

Died Of Cancer

Starved Of Insulin

Harassed By Courts

Worked Non Stop

2 Jobs

To Pay For Schmitz Sins

Why'd Her Son

John Bolstrom

Suffer Life

In Prison

With

No John George

Schmitz Protection

Defense

Why Did Mary Kay

Blanche

When She Heard The News

About Her Illegitimate

Half Brother

Eunuched

Again

Why Did Nancy Reagan

Give Schmitz's

Bastards

To Her Astrologer

Jeannie Dixon

Clairvoyant

To The Stars

Why Did Jeannie

Have $9 Million

Dollars

But Kids

Orphaned

Trafficked

Made Wards Of State

Why Is Mary Schmitz's

Namesake And Niece

Chasing Me For Courts

Doxing My Location

Sending Her Sex Sting

For The Bush Administration

And Her Daddy Harems

Who Ruined Our Country

With 9/11 Domestic

In-House Terrorism

Why Is Mary Schmitz

Like Mary Queen Of

Scots

Sold By Nazis

Trying To Take Down

The Huntleys'

With HP Campbell's

Stewart's

And Clark's

Why Are The Feds

Secret Service Men

M6s

Stealing My Kids

And Trying To

Take Us Down

With Germ Warfare

Rapes

And Raids

Of 40% Houseless

Camping

Slummed By DMV

2 or 3 Die

Every Week

In Idyllwild Crier

Fentanyl Usually

The Culprit

In- House Nazis

Sheriff Chad Bianco

And DA Michael Hestrin

Can't Get Enough Victims

Call It Covid

With Their Mafia

Trafficking The Girls

Sending Moles

Drug Militia

Shaking Hands

Politicians

Waxing

Empty Interviews

Smear Slurs

No Investigations

Fine- Fire A Judge

The Old Must Go

Says Elon

The Corrupt

Not My Neighbors

Fire The Judges

The Attys

The Feds

The IRS

Secret Service

FBI

Clean Up Government

Like Twitter

Rewind My Family

To Original Custody

Orders

And All Estranged

For Singers War

Persian

Sufi Poets

A Grammy

For Baraye

Dr. Biden Thanked

Iran For Her Woman's

Anthem

Dr. Biden Says

Women Love Freedom

Baraye

Peace

Bring Justice

To America

For Our Loved Ones

Tortured

By Domestic Terrorism

Like Iran

Prisoners

Here

Salman Rushdie

A Survivor Of World War 3

Racism

Blind In One Eye.a Pirate For Peace

J.D. Sallinger

"Catcher in The Rye"

Forever Best Book

For My Godsons

And I

Read As A

Teen

Opened My Eyes

Coming Of Age

15 in New York

A Elder Monk Almost

Kissed Me

Held Hands

Snuggled

All Over

Manhattan

With 5 Peeps

In An Old Bug

Drove From Iowa

A Cushion On His

Lap

Hands Touching

Massaging Me

Violent Femmes

Didn't Hit The Spot

With Hate Told NYC to "F" Off

"Franky And Zoe"

A Gift From Teddy

Opened My Eyes

To Love Of Maharishi

A Kids Love Story

Love Exists

Choose Love

Not War

John Lennon

Sang

Insisted

Love Not War

Lay- In

Meditation

Service

To Woman

Beloved

Soulmates

Not War

Not Racism

New Love

New Respect

Ethnic Euro Asian Babies

Eurasia

Blessed

Why'd John Schmitz

Drown His Baby

Why Did Mary Kay

Have To Cover

For Jerry

Why Did John

Schmitz

Castrate John George

In His Namesake

A Jewish Genocide

For A German

Mistress

Married For The 3rd

Time

Bostrom Stuckle

Why Did You

Steal The President

Elect

For German Nazis

For 9 Years

Hidden

Silenced

You Thought Mary Schmitz Knew What

You Did

Groomed By Courts

To Invade

Rock And Roll

Back To DC

Marilyn A Song

For The President

Rock And Roll To DC

Don't Make Magdalena

And Her Little Villi

Boytoy

Pay For Anymore

Schmitz Schtick

Sins

We Saw Phillip James

In The Paper

Crying

A Whipping Boy

For The Bush's

Was He Castrated

Like His Half Brother

John George Schmitz

Bostrom Struckel

Near Dismembered

After Him

Why Was There No

DV Support

For Mary Kay

When She Was Raped

And Exploited

At 7

Gaslighted For A Baby's

Drowning

By Adults

Hating

Why Didn't Jerome

Come Forth

And Take The Blame

As The Big Kid

Why Didn't Daddy

John George Schmitz

And Sons

Go To Prison

Why Was Mary

Made To Be Boys Club Victim

Why Did His Daughter

Pay

Forced Into Pedophilia

By Courts

Gag Orders

On A Plea Bargain

With Villi's Nazi Gangs

For A Samoan Mom

A Hooker

For Court

A Good Samaritan

They Call Themselves

Cleaning Up The Streets

Wanting A Kickback

From The Bush Administration

How Did It Work Out

Villi Now Raped

At DUI Courts

Granted A 3rd Daughter

Sophia

Witchhunted

Like Rest Of Dames

Villi Got The Golden

Goose

#FreeBritney

When He Inherited

Mary Kay Died Of Cancer

Heart Broken

Deserted Cougar

Villi

Moved On

Had A Baby

Gigolo Groomed

By Mamma With Long

Dark Hair - Controlling

Getting Silenced Now

Doing Time

Why'd Mary Kay

Pay For Parents

Sins

An Open Relationship

Forced on All Mary Schmitz's

Plus Steve Letourneau

Beatings & Cheatings

Why Did Mary Kay Pay

Greenwashing Pedophilia

Only Way To Get

Protection From Her

Daddy

Bros

Nazis

Court Rapists

Why Did Mary Kay

Pay For Schmitz

Karma

For She's A Daughter

Divine

And Her Niece

Said She Was

Tortured

Why Did Mary Kay

Pay

For Her Daddies

Murdered Babies

Why Does

Mary Schmitz

Spread Her Legs

For Moose

Her Dessert Husband

Why Does Mary Schmitz

Greenwash Pedophilia

Date boys 12+ Years Younger

Is It A Bush Administration

Plea

Bargain

To Hook

Judge Dana Sawbraw

Trafficking Mexican

Kids

At The Border

His Wife's Hands

Tied

DA Summer Stephan

Like VP Kanala Harris

Atty Bribes

Family Constructs

Trafficking Divorcees

Detention

Borders

Atty Lies

Officer Abuse

Plea Bargains

How Many Castrated

In Iran

For 9/11 Scams

Ponzi Schemes

For #PrinceOfPegging

How Many Secrets

600 Thousand American

Eunuchs

How Many Schmitz's

Lost Their Dicks

In A Box Knot

Infertile Dick's War

By Their Father's

Congressmen

Senators

Perverted Our Nation

Turned Magdalena

Into A Circus

Freak Show

Mother Mary Smeared

Mary Said We'd Understand

One Day

Yeah We Do

Mary Blanched

When John George Junior

Was Found

With A Nearly

Severed Penis

For She Was Doomed

To Hide Her Father's

Shame

And Fettish

Until

Infant

Castration

Discovery

A Eunuch Fettish

For Bush's

Gender Confusion

9/11 Lies Spread

About The Middle East

Cartelling Babies

A Eunuch Fettish

Bush's Force Mary

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fantomette22 · 2 years ago

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Bloodborne characters names meaning & signification

A few weeks ago, I looked at the meanings/origins of some of the characters names. Some were quite interesting! So, I’ve wanted to do a big post with ALL the names we know to share with everyone.

There are already some great posts about the translations of the original Japanese names and winch countries these names originated from (so I won’t go in details on that).

I won’t detailed either how the dev might have chosen this or this name because it’s also the name of an important history/religious figure either. And I won’t be talking about the great ones names, the locations names or the item/weapon names (except a few). But this post on reddit explained it well.

A lot of names have European roots. Latin (central& west), but also Slavic (north & east) and there’s a lot of old French names too. I hope this post could provide some insight or just be a reference if someone is looking for something. If you know something else let me know !

Let’s begin then! (I classified them by alphabetical order):

Adeline: Meaning noble, nobility, noble one.

Adella: Meaning noble too, kind…

Alfred: “elf/magical counsel”, wise counsellor, wise, sage…

Amelia: work, hard work / (Emilia (it might be the original intended name: rival, laborious, eager).

Annalise: Grace of/by God & similar sentences, or even graceful light.

Antal: break of day, inestimable worth/priceless one/beyond price.

Archibald: genuine, bold, brave.

Arianna: most holy, silver.

Brador is not a name that exist so the closet thing that exist is “Bardot/Bardeau”, it seems to be a location name to a family coming from Perigord (west France, actual department/county of Dordogne).

Caryll means “man” and seems to come from the name Carroll (man) or Charles (free man).

Damian: to tame, subdue. In Greek Damianos means master, overcome, conquer; Saint Damien was the patron of the physicians (another Christian martyr).

Djura is not a name that exist. It would be a variant of Georges/Jorge apparently (farmer).

Dores: Came from “doré”, golden in French. It was given to people with blonde hair apparently. But it seems to mean pain, suffering, (lady of) sorrows. Came from Dolores meaning “pain”. That same latin word give “douleur” (pain) in French as well.

Edgar (/Edgard): means rich/ prosperous and spear.

Eileen: (little) bird, strength, desired, bright one, shining light in Greek, (derived from Evelyn it seems it could come from Irene/Helen… too)

Evelyn: desired, whished for (fit with the description of weapon?), beauty, water, island (fit with Cainhurst) and “whished for child” too… (it’s not the only one like you will see a bit later…it’s a bit weird that it’s another person of Cainhurst who share this meaning too).

Gascoigne: Like the origin of “Brador” it’s a French surname, meaning someone who came from Gascony/pays de Gascogne, actual department/county of “des Landes” & “Hauts Pyrénées”, southwest of France.

Gehrman:

Russian/Slavic origin and means spear, spear bearer/user or something related to it. And he indeed does have a scythe so… It’s also the alternative name of a Caloian/Bulgarian ritual. In it, a “clay doll/effigy” is broken or buried (funeral?) to fertilize the earth (circle of life & death too etc…) So, it’s really interesting and intriguing. And “German” means Warrior.

Gilbert: bright promise, pledge, hostage, bright/famous (the feels T_T)

Gratia: favor, blessing, grace

Gremia: doesn’t exist too; the closet is Geremia who means “god is high/the lord exalts (Jeremiah, Jeremy…)

Henriett/(Henriette): home leader/ruler, keeper of the hearth

Henryk: home leader too

Iosefka: “god will provide”? it’s not really a real name. Jozefka/Jozefina see Jozef

Izzy: god’s promise, (gift of Isis/god). Could be another variant of Georges/ Isidore/ Isabel-Isaac…even Elizabeth perhaps…

Jozef: “Jehovah (he should)increases” (Joseph)

Laurence: boy & girl name meaning “from Laurentum” (city in Italy). That came from Laurel (Laurier) too (the crown wear by the Roman emperor).

Saint Laurence is also a christian martyr figure during the end of the roman empire who was burned alive. When asked where he hid the treasures of the church, he says the true treasures where the people, the poors.

Leo (cut Vileblood hunter): in latin it means lion, so “lion hearted, brave” as well

Logarius: it doesn’t’ exist. This one is really complicated but from what I found the first half could be “reason, judgment…”+ Christians figure. From a retranslation we can find something close to “Roger” meaning “famous spearman”.

Ludwig: it means “famous fighter/warrior/in battle” it fit well indeed.

Madaras: Is a surname, it seems to mean “impure, bald, humid, wet, spots…” it depends on the language too.

Maria:

I saw a lot of different meaning for this one. I tried to put everything I could here but there’s a lot. What’s sure is that I personally think that all this meaning perfectly describes our dear lady of the Astral Clocktower! It’s actually crazy how some of these seems to characterize her so well. (Well done fromsoftware)

So, we got: star/drop/lady of the sea, (sea of) bitter, “” sorrow (sometimes these meanings are mixed), rebellious, beloved/loved and “wished for child”.

A common 18-19th century name. (A lot of important figures had that name. The more known is Saint Maria/Mary the mother of Jesus.

Micolash: monkey/primate it seems but “Nicholas” means “victory of the people/people of victory”. St Nicholas is the patron of children, scholars, sailors…

Norbert (cut content, originally the name of the cleric beast: “northern brightness”. It was the name of a saint too.

Olek: “defender of men/humankind/people, protector of – “

Paarl: not really a name (or an African one at least) and means pearl & perhaps the Japanese name is closer to “Paul” that means small or humble. Name of a saint too.

Patches: Well, our dear spider… comes from “Peter” means rock/stone, fight, patch (Patch seems to signify “noble” too?). under this form it’s more a female name as well?

Rom (Roma in Japanese): Our other dear spider. Reference Roma/Rome the city and Roman (empire). It’s also another name of the goddess Lakshmi (Hindu)…

Simon: to (be) hear/listen, reputation

Valtr: easily upset, unstable, unsteady but also to rule, army, warrior

Viola: purple; violet (the flower)

Vitus: “lively, life giving, life”; came from the latin “vitae” who give “vie” in French, who means life. Could come from Vitu/widu which signifies woods, forest.

Wallar: wallfahrer, pilmgrim (family name) it’s in the theme or the chalice dungeon enemies. And Waller means “wall maker, powerful one”

Willem: means “resolute/determined protector”, defender, guardian, helmet

(The Defender of knowledge/ eldritch truth? The protector of humans from it? It’s quite interesting as well).

Yamamura: “mountain village” a Japanese name of course

Yurie (Julie): grace of the lily (Japanese) Depends of the 3 kanji used but could signified: reason, logic, blessing, friend, lily, branch… Julie would be a more appropriate translation, it means “youthful”

Bonus:

Mergo: related to water and hide, “flood, swallow, hide, conceal, bury »; the latin name gives submerged & immerged…

Flora: What a surprise, flowers

Lucen: it’s the name I give to my hunter; I wanted to named him “Lucien” but I needed something unique too, so I come up with this. It means “light”.

Byrgenwerth or the college of the grave, surround by water

Byrgen: burial place, grave, tomb,

Werth : surrounded by water

Cainhurst -> Cain. Son of Adam & Eve, killed his brother Able, sins etc… but I saw something relating it to some woods too?

Rakuyo: fallen leaf

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)

Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, remains best-known for his children’s books. The Cat in the Hat; Green Eggs and Ham; and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! are household names in English-language literature. Seuss’ bibliography overshadows his work in films, beginning with the adapted screenplay of his own book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1943) – directed by George Pal as part of the Puppetoons series. During WWII, Seuss was heavily involved in propaganda films and the Private Snafu (1943-1946) military training films. After the war’s end, Seuss returned to writing children’s books, but also continued to write for movies. The Academy Award-winning animated short film Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950) benefitted from Seuss’ story work, and Seuss’ success there inspired him to write a screenplay for a live-action fantasy film. That screenplay – the unwieldy rough draft coming in at over 1,200 pages – was The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. The eventual movie, produced by Stanley Kramer (1960’s Inherit the Wind, 1961’s Judgment at Nuremberg) and directed by Roy Rowland (1945’s Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, 1956’s Meet Me in Las Vegas) for Columbia Pictures, would be Seuss’ only involvement in a non-documentary feature film.

Like many who speak English as their first language, Dr. Seuss’ books graced my early childhood. So integral to numerous children’s youth is Seuss that his whimsy, wordplay, and authorial stamps are easily recognizable. In that spirit, the cinematic record of live-action Seuss adaptations consists of the scatological Jim Carrey in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) and the visual nightmare that is Mike Myers as The Cat in the Hat (2003). Compared to the original works, both films are ungainly, casually cruel, and overcomplicated. Not promising company for Dr. T. But even taking into account the three animated feature adaptations of Seuss – Horton Hears a Who! (2008), The Lorax (2012), and The Grinch (2018) – and the fact that Columbia forced wholesale deletions from the rough draft script of Dr. T to achieve a feasible runtime, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is arguably the most faithful feature adaptation to Dr. Seuss’ authorial intent and signature aesthetic.

In other words, this is one of the strangest films you may ever encounter. No synopsis I could write in one paragraph will ever capture the film’s bizarreries.

Little Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) is asleep during piano practice and his teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried), is furious. His overworked, widowed mother Heloise (Mary Healey) intuits Terwilliker’s unrealistic expectations (Terwilliker wants to teach the next Paderewski) towards Bart’s piano skills and inability to concentrate. Heloise also appears to be quietly eyeing the plumber August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes) and his wrench. With the lesson done for the day, Bart falls asleep again. This time, he dreams that Terwilliker is now the leader of the Terwilliker Institute, a pianist supremacy mini-state which is built upon five hundred young pianist slave boys (hence, 5,000 fingers) forcibly playing Terwilliker’s latest compositions. His mother is Terwilliker’s unwilling, hypnotized assistant and plumber August Zabladowski (Hayes is essentially playing the same character, but in a different world) is Bart’s only ally around. Together, Bart and Mr. Zabladowski must evade the Institute’s guards as they attempt to undermine Terwilliker’s plans for his next concert.

In its final form, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is a muddled mess of a story. The analogues between Bart’s reality and his dreams are inconsistent, several would-be subplots never resolve (or at the very least develop beyond a basic idea), and the film’s initial lightness is subject to rapid mood swings that make this picture feel disjointed. Indeed, Seuss’ sprawling social commentary in his first draft – including allegories and themes of post-WWII totalitarianism, anti-communism, and atomic annihilation – is in tatters in this final product. The viewer will witness brief fragments of those ideas, remaining in this movie as the barest of hints of the contents of the original screenplay’s rough draft. Even now, Dr. T inspires psychiatric analyses and accusations that Bart’s relationship with his mother reveals signs of an Oedipal complex (to yours truly, the latter is too much of a reach). The grim nature of Terwilliker Institute renders Dr. T unsuitable for the youngest children. For older children and adults, try going into this movie without expectations of narrative logic and embrace the grotesque aspects that only Seuss could imagine.

If my attempts to describe this movie’s preposterousness through its narrative and screenwriting approach have failed, perhaps I can capture that for you by writing on its technical features.

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For its sheer narrative inventiveness – inconsistencies, abrupt tonal shifts, nonsense, and Rowland’s uninspired direction aside – The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is nevertheless an ambitious film, and Columbia bequeathed a hefty budget to match that ambition. Much of that budget went to the film’s visuals. This is an extravagantly-staged motion picture, as nothing could do Dr. Seuss’ illustrations justice without fully committing to his geometric impossibilities: skyward ladders and improbable connections between rooms, an eschewal of right angles and straight lines, and architecture bound to raise the ire of physics teachers. One could compare this to German Expressionism, but Dr. T’s sets tend not to dictate the film’s mood nor are they subject to high-contrast lighting. Seuss went uncredited as the concept artist on Dr. T, and it was up to Clem Beauchamp (1935’s The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, 1952’s High Noon) and the uncredited matte artists to commit those visuals to the real world. Outside of animated film, Beauchamp and the matte artists succeed in creating twisted sets that seem to leap off the pages of Seuss’ most artistically interesting books. Some of the sets appear too stagebound, but the production design accomplishes its need to resemble a world borne from a fever dream (or, at least, a young pianist’s nightmare).

This movie’s outrageous costume design (other than Jean Louis’ gowns for Mary Healey, the costume designer/s for this film are uncredited) comprises absurd uniforms and two of the most ludicrous hats – the “happy fingers” cap (see photo at the top of this write-up) and whatever the hell Terwilliker dons in the film’s climax – one might ever see in a film. Most of the costumes are laughably impractical and ridiculous to even those without fashion sense. In what might be the tamest example, while working under Terwilliker, Bart’s mother wears a suit that is all business formal on the left-hand side and bare-shouldered, sleeveless, and nightclub-y on the right. The delineation of real life – which barely features in the film’s eighty-nine minutes – and this world of Bart’s dreams could not be any more unambiguous thanks to the combination of the production and costume design work.

The disappointing musical score by Fredrich Hollaender (1930’s The Blue Angel, 1948’s A Foreign Affair) and song lyrics by Seuss rarely connects to the larger narrative unfolding. Seven songs make the final print, with nine (yikes!) Hollaender-Seuss songs ending up on the cutting room floor. Seuss’ wordplay is evident, as are Hollaender’s melodic flourishes. Columbia, a studio not known for its musicals, assembled a 98-piece orchestra – the largest musical ensemble to work on a Columbia film at the time – for The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T alone. That lush sound is apparent throughout for the numerous nonsense songs that color the score in addition to the incidental score. It is unusual to listen to a collection of novelty songs orchestrated so fully. Listen to “Dressing Song: Do-Mi-Do Duds” and its complicated, seeming unsingable lines:

Come on and dress me, dress me, dress me In my peek-a-boo blouse With the lovely inner lining made of Chesapeake mouse! I want my polka-dotted dickie with the crinoline fringe For I'm going doe-me-doe-ing on a doe-me-doe binge!

The rich orchestration seems to hail from a more lavish film. But too many of these songs are scene-specific, and rarely does Hollaender utilize musical quotations from these songs into his score. “Get Together Weather” is delightful, but it seems so isolated from the rest of the film; elsewhere, “The Dungeon Song” exemplifies a macabre side to Seuss seldom appearing in his books. Nevertheless, Hollaender is able to demonstrate his playfulness across the entire film, none moreso during any scene with the bearded, roller-skating twins and the “Dungeon Ballet”, in which the music complements stunning choreography and fascinating props that recall the jingtinglers, floofloovers, tartookas, whohoopers, slooslunkas, and whowonkas from the Christmas television special How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). Yet, Hollaender’s film score and the soundtrack with Seuss seems to demand something – anything – to tie the entire compositional effort together. Perhaps a song or some cue like that was cut from the film, which is ultimately to its detriment.

Hans Conried (who starred as Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan several months prior to Dr. T’s release) stands out from a decidedly average Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healey – Hayes and Healey, in a sort of in-joke, were married. Conried’s performance as the sadistic, torture- and imprisonment-happy music teacher can be considered camp, but this is anything but “bad” camp. He throws himself completely into this cartoonish role, sans shame, complete with mid-Atlantic accent, and topped off with exaggerated facial and physical acting that fits this fantasy. As Bart, child actor Tommy Rettig (best known as Jeff Miller on the CBS television series Lassie) seems more assured in his performance than most child performers his age during the 1950s. His fourth wall-breaking asides seem more appropriate in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but Rettig makes it work, and inhabits Bart’s flaws wonderfully.

Columbia demanded numerous reworkings of Seuss’ script, leading to several reshoots – most notably the opening scene (Seuss opposed the conceit of Bart’s dream framing the film) – and a ballooning budget. Upon its release in the summer of 1953, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T bombed at the box office and was assailed by critics. A crestfallen Seuss, who could not stand the production difficulties that beset the film from the start of shooting, would never work in feature films again. He would dedicate himself almost entirely to writing and illustrating children’s books, with many of his most popular titles (including The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and Green Eggs and Ham) published within a decade of Dr. T’s critical and commercial failure. His hesitance to participate in filmmaking informed his reluctance to allow Chuck Jones to adapt How the Grinch Stole Christmas! thirteen years later. Animation suited his books, Seuss thought, and he would never again pay any consideration to live-action filmmaking.

The reevaluation of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T has seen a rehabilitation of the film’s image in recent decades. Home media releases and television showings have introduced the film to viewers not influenced by the hyperbolic negativity of the film critics working in 1953. This is not a sterling example of Old Hollywood fantasy filmmaking, due to a heavily gutted screenplay, scattershot thematic development, and incongruent musical score. Yet, the movie’s surrealistic charms and Seussian chaos know no peers, even in the present day.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T #The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.#Dr. Seuss #Roy Rowland #Peter Lind Hayes #Mary Healy #Hans Conried #Tommy Rettig #Allan Scott #Stanley Kramer #Frederick Hollander #Rudolph Sternad #Cary Odell #William Kiernan #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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transparenttriumphzombie · 4 years ago

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Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989) was an American transgender woman who was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery. Jorgensen grew up in the Bronx, New York City. Shortly after graduating from high school in 1945, she was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. After her military service, she attended several schools and worked; it is during this time she learned about sex reassignment surgery. Jorgensen traveled to Europe, and in Copenhagen, Denmark, obtained special permission to undergo a series of operations beginning in 1952.

She returned to the United States in the early 1950s and her transition was the subject of a New York Daily News front-page story. She became an instant celebrity, known for her directness and polished wit, and used the platform to advocate for transgender people. She also worked as an actress and nightclub entertainer and recorded several songs. Jorgensen often lectured on the experience of being transgender and published an autobiography in 1967.

Jorgensen was the second child of carpenter and contractor George William Jorgensen, Sr., and his wife Florence Davis Hansen, and given a male name at birth. She was raised in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City. She later described herself as having been a "frail, blond, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games".

Jorgensen graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in 1945 and was soon drafted into the U.S. Army at the age of 19. After being discharged from the Army, she attended Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, New York,[5] the Progressive School of Photography in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School in New York City. She also worked briefly for Pathé News.

Returning to New York after military service, and increasingly concerned over, as one obituary later called it, a "lack of male physical development", Christine Jorgensen heard about sex reassignment surgery. She began taking estrogen in the form of ethinylestradiol and started researching the surgery with the help of Joseph Angelo, the husband of a classmate at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School. Jorgensen intended to go to Sweden, where the only doctors in the world who then performed the surgery were located. During a stopover in Copenhagen to visit relatives, she met Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormonal therapy. Jorgensen stayed in Denmark and underwent hormone replacement therapy under Hamburger's direction. She chose the name Christine in honor of Hamburger.

She obtained special permission from the Danish Minister of Justice to undergo a series of operations in that country. On September 24, 1951, surgeons at Gentofte Hospital in Copenhagen performed an orchiectomy on Jorgensen. In a letter to friends on October 8, 1951, she referred to how the surgery affected her:

As you can see by the enclosed photos, taken just before the operation, I have changed a great deal. But it is the other changes that are so much more important. Remember the shy, miserable person who left America? Well, that person is no more and, as you can see, I'm in marvelous spirits.

In November 1952, doctors at Copenhagen University Hospital performed a penectomy. In Jorgensen's words, "My second operation, as the previous one, was not such a major work of surgery as it may imply."

She returned to the United States and eventually obtained a vaginoplasty when the procedure became available there. The vaginoplasty was performed under the direction of Angelo, with Harry Benjamin as a medical adviser. Later, in the preface of Jorgensen's autobiography, Harry Benjamin gave her credit for the advancement of his studies. He wrote, "Indeed Christine, without you, probably none of this would have happened; the grant, my publications, lectures, etc."

The New York Daily News ran a front-page story on December 1, 1952, under the headline "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty", announcing (incorrectly) that Jorgensen had become the recipient of the first "sex change". This type of surgery had previously been performed by German doctors in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Dorchen Richter and Danish artist Lili Elbe, both patients of Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin, were known recipients of such operations in 1930–31.

After her surgeries, Jorgensen originally stated that she wanted a quiet life of her own design, but once returning to the United States, the only way she could manage to earn a living was by making public appearances. Jorgensen was an instant celebrity when she returned to New York in February 1953. A large crowd of journalists met her as she came off her flight, and despite the Danish royal family being on the same flight, they were largely ignored in favor of her. Soon after her arrival, she launched a successful nightclub act and appeared on TV, radio, and theatrical productions. The first of a five-part authorized account of her story was written by Jorgensen herself in a February 1953 issue of The American Weekly, titled "The Story of My Life" and in 1967, she published her autobiography, Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, which sold almost 450 thousand copies.

The publicity following her transition and gender reassignment surgery became "a model for other transsexuals for decades. She was a tireless lecturer on the subject of transsexuality, pleading for understanding from a public that all too often wanted to see transsexuals as freaks or perverts ... Ms Jorgensen's poise, charm, and wit won the hearts of millions." However, over time the press was much less fascinated by her and started to scrutinize her much more harshly. She was often asked by print medias if she would pose nude in their publications.

Knox and Jorgensen after being denied a marriage license, April 1959. After her vaginoplasty, Jorgensen planned to marry labor union statistician John Traub, but the engagement was called off. In 1959 she announced her engagement to typist Howard J. Knox in Massapequa Park, New York, where her father had built her a house after her reassignment surgery. However, the couple was unable to obtain a marriage license because Jorgensen's birth certificate listed her as male. In a report about the broken engagement, The New York Times reported that Knox had lost his job in Washington, D.C., when his engagement to Jorgensen became known.

After her parents died, Jorgensen moved to California in 1967. She left behind the ranch home built by her father in Massapequa and settled at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, California, for a period of time. It was also during this same year that Jorgensen published her autobiography, Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, which chronicled her life experiences as a transsexual and included her own personal perspectives on major events in her life.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Jorgensen toured university campuses and other venues to speak about her experiences. She was known for her directness and polished wit. She once demanded an apology from Vice President Spiro T. Agnew when he called Charles Goodell "the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party". (Agnew refused her request.)

Jorgensen also worked as an actress and nightclub entertainer and recorded several songs. In summer stock, she played Madame Rosepettle in the play Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. In her nightclub act, she sang several songs, including "I Enjoy Being a Girl", in which, at the end, she made a quick change into a Wonder Woman costume. She later recalled that Warner Communications, owners of the Wonder Woman character's copyright, demanded that she stop using the character; she did so, and instead used a new character of her own invention, Superwoman, who was marked by the inclusion of a large letter S on her cape. Jorgensen continued her act, performing at Freddy's Supper Club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan until at least 1982, when she performed twice in the Hollywood area: once at the Backlot Theatre, adjacent to the discothèque Studio One, and later at The Frog Pond restaurant. This performance was recorded and has been made available as an album on iTunes. In 1984, Jorgensen returned to Copenhagen to perform her show and was featured in Teit Ritzau's Danish transsexual documentary film Paradiset er ikke til salg (Paradise Is Not for Sale). Jorgensen was the first and only known trans woman to perform at Oscar's Delmonico Restaurant in downtown New York, for which owners Oscar and Mario Tucci received criticism.

She died of bladder and lung cancer in 1989, four weeks short of her 63rd birthday. Her ashes were scattered off Dana Point, California.

Jorgensen's highly publicized transition helped bring to light gender identity and shaped a new culture of more inclusive ideas about the subject. As a transgender spokesperson and public figure, Jorgensen influenced other transgender people to change their sex on birth certificates and to change their names. Jorgensen saw herself as a founding member in what became known as the "sexual revolution". Jorgensen stated in a Los Angeles Times interview, "I am very proud now, looking back, that I was on that street corner 36 years ago when a movement started. It was the sexual revolution that was going to start with or without me. We may not have started it, but we gave it a good swift kick in the pants."

In 2012 Jorgensen was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.

In 2014, Jorgensen was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".

In June 2019, Jorgensen was one of the inaugural 50 American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" included on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City's Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, during his earlier career as a calypso singer under the name The Charmer, recorded a song about Jorgensen, "Is She Is or Is She Ain't" (The title is a play on the 1940s Louis Jordan song, "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby".)

Chuck Renslow and Dom Orejudos founded Kris Studios, a male physique photography studio that took photos for gay magazines they published, which was named in part to honor Jorgensen.

Posters for the Ed Wood film Glen or Glenda (1953), also known as I Changed My Sex and I Led Two Lives, publicize the movie as being based on Jorgensen's life. Originally producer George Weiss made her some offers to appear in the film, but these were turned down. Jorgenson is mentioned in connection with Glen in Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood (1994), but Jorgenson is not depicted as a character.

The Christine Jorgensen Story, a fictionalized biopic based on Jorgensen's memoir, premiered in 1970. John Hansen played Jorgensen as an adult, while Trent Lehman played her at age seven.

In Christine Jorgensen Reveals, a stage performance at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Jorgensen was portrayed by Bradford Louryk. To critical acclaim, Louryk dressed as Jorgensen and performed to a recorded interview with her during the 1950s while video of Rob Grace as comically inept interviewer Nipsey Russell played on a nearby black-and-white television set. The show went on to win Best Aspect of Production at the 2006 Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and it ran Off-Broadway at New World Stages in January 2006. The LP was reissued on CD by Repeat The Beat Records in 2005.

Transgender historian and critical theorist Susan Stryker directed and produced an experimental documentary film about Jorgensen, titled Christine in the Cutting Room. In 2010 she also presented a lecture at Yale University titled "Christine in the Cutting Room: Christine Jorgensen's Transsexual Celebrity and Cinematic Embodiment". Both works examine embodiment vis-à-vis cinema.

The 2016 book Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History's Great Personalities, by journalist Claudia Kalb, devotes a chapter to Jorgensen's story, using her as an example of gender dysphoria and the process of gender transition in its earliest days.

Jorgensen, Christine (1967). Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography. New York, New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-1-57344-100-1.

#trans history #transgender woman #transgender #trans pride #postop transwomen #1950s #transisbeautiful #transwoman

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lecarreverse · 4 years ago

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The great author recalls Smiley’s origins in one of his last pieces of writing, a new introduction to Call for the Dead.

I wrote Call for the Dead, my first novel, because I had been boiling to write for 20 years but had never quite had the prompt. I had done book illustrations, I had written bad poetry and one or two stories, and produced a couple of amateur plays, and become a reasonable hand at caricatures. In a bookless household, I had managed to acquire some sort of taste for books, largely because of a master at one of my early schools who read aloud to us beautifully from Conan Doyle and GK Chesterton. At 16, having fled my English public school, I took a huge sidestep into German language and literature and ended up teaching them at Eton, with the result that English letters always played second fiddle. It took a lurch from Eton into the intelligence community to get me writing Call for the Dead, and the prompt came from John Bingham, novelist, spy and colleague.

In MI5 the standard of report writing was very high indeed. Registry and senior officers were all pedants and descended on you like eagles if they spotted a sloppy sentence or an unsubstantiated claim: “Too fluffy. Can you actually demonstrate this? If this is hearsay, kindly say so clearly,” ran the marginal comments in different handwritings as your report came whistling back to you from the top floor. It was my first experience of having to battle for every sentence I wrote as if it had to stand up in court.

The agent-running section to which I was eventually attached was dominated by two figures, both men: Maxwell Knight, naturalist, broadcaster and the subject of at least two published biographies, and Bingham. Knight, allegedly of the far right, though I never heard him on politics, was by the time I knew him tolerated only on account of the agents he had recruited long ago and that were still beholden to him. He was a big, unwashed, silvery, boy scout of a man, of great charm and idiosyncratic habits that included bringing ailing small animals such as gerbils into the office in his jacket pocket. Bingham could scarcely have been more different.

Everything about Knight suggested that he be enjoyed with caution, but John was approachable, unassuming, quietly spoken and a kindly shepherd and confessor to his agents, mostly women. He was also a needle-sharp intelligence officer of great experience, as I had good reason to learn when one of my agents was blown and I needed his urgent advice on how to limit the damage. And John of necessity did much of his work in the evenings, when his agents returned home from their high-wire acts needing his consolation and wisdom and a large gin.

So by day, when he wasn’t writing a report, John was writing a novel. He had written quite a few by then, thrillers, all published by Gollancz and well received. I don’t remember that we ever talked about the process of writing. John, once a journalist, didn’t see himself as a literary man, just a thorough writer doing a job. The one piece of advice I remember him giving me was to stick a postcard with £100 written on it above my desk and look at it every time I thought of giving up. But far more inspiring than anything he could have said was the simple act of him sitting five yards from me day after day at his desk with his head down and a hangover, writing himself a novel on lined paper. And I suppose, at the most primitive level, I decided that if he could do that, I could.

I lived in Great Missenden in those days and commuted to Marylebone station, then walked or took the bus to Curzon Street. The train journey was an hour plus, so I wrote in small notebooks supplied, I am ashamed to say, by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. I just wrote. And the first person who came to mind was the man who got me going: John Bingham, one of the meek who do not inherit the earth.

But no real character in my experience is drawn directly from life, and for George Smiley I needed a lot of things that John simply hadn’t got and didn’t wish to have: an obsession with German literature (although he spoke decent German), a miserable private life, a sense of being strapped to the secret treadmill and not knowing how to get off it, and most importantly serious moral questions about the work I was doing. John was, to say the least, a nationalist, and doubts of that sort were simply not his thing, particularly when his every evening was spent buoying up women agents who were, in their estimation and his, sacrificing their private lives for England. So where to turn?

Well, my own life had been pretty well supplied with moral doubt, not least by my father, a conman on the run from the law. But I needed more stately concerns for George Smiley, bred in me in part by the unsparing plays of Schiller, Lessing and Büchner and the anguished cries of 17th-century Germany.

But Smiley is not at heart an academic. In the beginning was not the word but the deed, Goethe tells us through the agency of his Faust, and Smiley refuses to shirk from action where he believes in the rightness of his cause. And so it seems to me now, with the luxury of hindsight, that for Smiley’s conflicted inner life I resorted to my beloved mentor, Dr Vivian Green, by then rector of Lincoln College, Oxford: scholar, administrator, closet iconoclast and Anglican priest whose institutional faith over time gave way to a universal humanism. I don’t know any more whether you will find the seeds of all this theorising in my first stab at George Smiley, but I do. We have grown up together, changed and matured together, and seen his likeness exquisitely portrayed by two great actors, Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman. But for me he’s still the same soul-searching secret sharer that I wrote about in little notebooks on the rattly commuter train from Great Missenden to Marylebone.

Extracted from Call for the Dead by John le Carré; the 60th anniversary edition is published by Penguin Classics on Thursday.

#John le Carré #George Smiley #call for the dead #60th anniversary edition #introduction to 60th anniversary edition #books #long post #John le Carre #introduction

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thewritingsandwich · 10 months ago

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The Chiming Lady - Part 5

A Lockwood & Co. Fan Fiction

Other Parts: 1 2 3 4

Summary: The agents of Lockwood & Co. are invited to the Halloween-Party of a former client.

Tag List: @ahead-fullofdreams

Warnings: Mentions of injuries, brief mentions of su***de and mu**er

The ascent of the tower was a steep spiral staircase, the steps of which were completely uneven. The bells started ringing again, but at a tolerable volume. In addition, I heard someone sobbing. This someone was running up the stairs, as it sounded to me as if they were running past me over and over again.

We reached the room directly under the bell. We would only get to the top floor of the tower, where the bell hung, by climbing another creaky wooden staircase. But for now we stayed here. Thick wooden beams ran along the ceiling and the pale moonlight shone through the thin slits in the floor above us.

George lit the room with a small petroleum lamp. A few spiders had taken up residence here - an unfavourable sign in this day and age.

"Before we go outside," Lockwood pointed to the wooden staircase, "Lucy, please listen and see if you can hear anything other than the bells."

The bells were becoming a constant background noise by now. I tried anyway. I closed my eyes and listened into the darkness.

First a heartbeat. A heart pounding wildly against the chest where it lay. I was overcome with fear. The panicked heartbeat was joined by matching rapid breathing and muffled sobs.

"Oh God, what have I done?" It was the same voice I heard from the lake. The nanny who killed Mr Pearson's brother. She paced wildly up and down the room before stopping abruptly. After a moment of silence - her sobs stopped, but her heartbeat remained wild - I heard a pen scratching across a piece of paper. Judging by the scratching, it was a felt-tip pen. She walked across the room again and lifted a plank. Then I no longer heard anything.

Before I even gave the others a chance to ask me about what I had heard, I went to the corner where the nanny had gone. I searched for loose floorboards and quickly found what I was looking for. There was a little note hidden in the floor.

But just as I was about to grab the note, the ghost of the nanny materialised in front of me and I fell back. She looked really awful. She was still wearing her uniform and her arms and legs were sticking out in unnatural directions. The white accents of her uniform were covered in blood.

Immediately Holly and Lockwood were at my side, fending her off with their rapiers as I tried to get to my feet. But with the loud ringing of the bells, the numbing pain in my ears returned.

Nevertheless, I crawled across the floor away from the ghost. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Holly and Lockwood give the ghost a cut that made it disappear and the bells disappeared with it. I stayed on the floor for a moment before George appeared above me and offered me his hand. I refused and stood up on my own. My goal remained the same - the note.

This time the ghost didn't appear and I was able to read the note, which the others only noticed when it was in my hand. But it wasn't just a note. It was the nanny's suicide note that she had signed with Felicity Williams. But it was more than that. It was also a confession. She had killed the boy. Thrown him in the lake without realising he couldn't swim. She was ashamed of what she had done and harboured such deep remorse that she could find no other way out than death itself. The Pearson family had made her life hell, she wrote, and yet she had written down what she had done. But how much was the confession worth if the note would never have been discovered without us? The remorse and shame were strong enough to make her take her own life, but not to actually admit what she had done.

I explained to the others what I had found and they listened intently.

"If her confession can be found here, I can guess how she took her own life," George finally replied. The tower was high enough for that. "But is this the source?"

"There's one way to find out," Lockwood replied, opening a lighter in his hand. Immediately, I extended my arm in his direction to stop him.

"No." He stopped and tilted his head slightly to the side. "She didn't write that confession for us to burn." His expression darkened.

"Luce... This is not the time to be communicating with ghosts." But he didn't sense what I was feeling. Her remorse and her shame. Her despair that drove her to do this in the first place. Her story needed to be told, but I needed proof.

"Give me the silver net. I'll put the letter in there and we can assess whether it's actually the source." His shoulders relaxed and he put the lighter back in while he dug out the net. It was far too big for the small piece of paper. Reluctantly, I finally handed him the parcel so that he could put it in his rucksack.

We looked around tensely. The bell didn't ring and the ghost didn't turn up either. But could it really be that simple?

The answer came quickly when George turned to the door, but even after shaking it, it remained locked. It didn't even have a keyhole.

"Question answered. The note is not the source," he said. It made me angry that he only saw the letter as a simple piece of paper; this ghost as just one of many orders. But where this anger came from, I didn't know.

"Holly and George, you search more floorboards to see if they're loose and if there's anything hidden under them. Luce, you and I will go to the bell."

* * *

The creaking sound accompanied us as we climbed the old staircase with drawn rapiers. The room we entered was spacious and square, with round-arched openings on each side. Above us swung an imposing bell, so low that I could pass under it effortlessly, while Lockwood had to duck slightly.

I approached one of the openings and took a look outside. The bottom edge of the opening started at the level of my stomach. My first thought was that it was quite easy to climb onto the ledge and make the long descent in a short time. I shuddered at the thought, which was not my own. Nevertheless, the fear of heights remained.

"Everything looks so beautiful from up here," Lockwood said as he stepped up beside me, and he was right. The tower was high enough to overlook the forest and see the beginning of London, which was just a sea of lights.

But we weren't here to enjoy the view. I turned back into the room and for a split second I thought Lockwood was looking at me instead of the beautiful view.

"Okay, you know what to do," he finally replied. I didn't like the look on his face. He looked pained. I nodded and listened into the darkness.

First there was thunder. Behind my closed eyes, I saw flashes of light that I wasn't sure were really there. Pouring rain could be heard and between the thunderstorms I heard a person sobbing. She put her sturdy shoes on the edge of the opening and looked down.

Her fear gripped me and I couldn't move. It was as if I was her. Like I had to make this difficult decision. I don't want to. It can't end like this.

Another person climbed the bell tower. I heard the creaky stairs and just as Felicity was about to step back down from the ledge, the stranger stepped behind her.

"No, what are you doing? It was an accident. I've changed my mind. Please," she shouted and I joined in. The stranger pushed her and Felicity screamed as she fell. I was snapped out of my trance by her impact. I felt miserable. But more importantly, it wasn't suicide. She had changed her mind. Maybe it wasn't her who had hidden the letter, but her murderer.

But before I could share my discovery with Lockwood, Felicity's ghost appeared behind him. Fortunately, he noticed it by himself and we fended it off with our rapiers. We couldn't do this all night though - we had to find her source.

We, or at least I, needed a quiet place to think about where the source might be. It had to be up here. Or could it be down there? Had her body just been left there? No, the distance was too great, I thought.

"We need to find the source, Lockwood," I said as we swung our rapiers through the air.

"Any ideas?"

"No, I just know it wasn't suicide. She was pushed."

Felicity pushed us further and further back. When I tried to take one of the many steps backwards, I stepped into the void and tumbled down the stairs. But I picked myself up again.

In the meantime, George and Holly had pulled some wooden planks off the floor, but they hadn't found anything yet. 'Where are you Felicity?' I asked myself.

My gaze flitted around the room. Has that rusty metal ladder always been in this corner?

Lockwood came down the stairs. The colour in his face was also running through his sweat.

"We need a plan. Where could the source be?" He was out of breath and his otherwise perfect hairstyle was completely dishevelled. He had lost the headband with the horns somewhere. I kind of liked him a little more that way. I quickly told the others about my vision after they said that the door was still locked and there was nothing under the floorboards.

"Wait... The source must be up here somewhere. Otherwise the ghost wouldn't put so much emphasis on the tower. We've already taken everything apart down here. Where else could you hide a body?" George explained, looking at us expectantly. My eyes lingered on the ladder once more, but it was George who put the pieces of the puzzle together.

"Whoever killed the nanny could also have hidden the letter. This letter would have exposed the Pearsons as inhumane employers who were indirectly responsible for the death of their own child and four other employees because of the way they treated their employees. Killing the nanny and dismissing it as suicide was perfect. At the same time, the Pearsons made the death of their son look like an accident. However, hardly a dying word is said about the nanny, as if she had simply resigned and disappeared. No death certificate, nothing. So I'm assuming that her killer hid her death. The suicide was just another cover in case she was found. And where in this huge tower could you hide a body?" George pointed his finger upwards. "I'm sure there's plenty of room in the beams of the bell." A mischievous grin spread across his face.

"George Karim, you're a genius," Lockwood replied at the same time as I asked: "How do you know all this?"

"Thanks, I know and do you really think Lockwood is the only one who came prepared for this? I found my costume quickly and spent most of my shopping trip in the archives. I took a closer look at the house and the Pearsons," he grinned proudly.

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unsettlingshortstories · 3 years ago

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The Laughing Man

J.D. Salinger (1949)

IN 1928, when I was nine, I belonged, with maximum esprit de corps, to an organization known as the Comanche Club. Every school day afternoon at three o’clock, twenty-five of us Comanches were picked up by our Chief outside the boys’ exit of P. S. 165, on 109th Street near Amsterdam Avenue. We then pushed and punched our way into the Chief’s reconverted commercial bus, and he drove us (according to his financial arrangement with our parents) over to Central Park. The rest of the afternoon, weather permitting, we played football or soccer or baseball, depending (very loosely) on the season. Rainy afternoons, the Chief invariably took us either to the Museum of Natural History or to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Saturdays and most national holidays, the Chief picked us up early in the morning at our various apartment houses and, in his condemned-looking bus, drove us out of Manhattan into the comparatively wide open spaces of Van Cortlandt Park or the Palisades. If we had straight athletics on our minds, we went to Van Cortlandt, where the playing fields were regulation size and where the opposing team didn’t include a baby carriage or an irate old lady with a cane. If our Comanche hearts were set on camping, we went over to the Palisades and roughed it. (I remember getting lost one Saturday somewhere on that tricky stretch of terrain between the Linit sign and the site of the western end of the George Washington Bridge. I kept my head, though. I just sat down in the majestic shadow of a giant billboard and, however tearfully, opened my lunchbox for business, semi-confident that the Chief would find me. The Chief always found us.)

In his hours of liberation from the Comanches, the Chief was John Gedsudski, of Staten Island. He was an extremely shy, gentle young man of twenty-two or -three, a law student at N.Y.U., and altogether a very memorable person. I won’t attempt to assemble his many achievements and virtues here. Just in passing, he was an Eagle Scout, an almost-All-America tackle of 1926, and it was known that he had been most cordially invited to try out for the New York Giants’ baseball team. He was an impartial and unexcitable umpire at all our bedlam sporting events, a master fire builder and extinguisher, and an expert, uncontemptuous first-aid man. Every one of us, from the smallest hoodlum to the biggest, loved and respected him.

The Chief’s physical appearance in 1928 is still clear in my mind. If wishes were inches, all of us Comanches would have had him a giant in no time. The way things go, though, he was a stocky five three or four–no more than that. His hair was blue-black, his hair-line extremely low, his nose was large and fleshy, and his torso was just about as long as his legs were. In his leather windbreaker, his shoulders were powerful, but narrow and sloping. At the time, however, it seemed to me that in the Chief all the most photogenic features of Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, and Tom Mix had been smoothly amalgamated.

Every afternoon, when it got dark enough for a losing team to have an excuse for missing a number of infield popups or end-zone passes, we Comanches relied heavily and selfishly on the Chief’s talent for storytelling. By that hour, we were usually an overheated, irritable bunch, and we fought each other–either with our fists or our shrill voices–for the seats in the bus nearest the Chief. (The bus had two parallel rows of straw seats. The left row had three extra seats–the best in the bus–that extended as far forward as the driver’s profile.) The Chief climbed into the bus only after we had settled down. Then he straddled his driver’s seat backward and, in his reedy but modulated tenor voice, gave us the new installment of “The Laughing Man.” Once he started narrating, our interest never flagged. “The Laughing Man” was just the right story for a Comanche. It may even have had classic dimensions. It was a story that tended to sprawl all over the place, and yet it remained essentially portable. You could always take it home with you and reflect on it while sitting, say, in the outgoing water in the bathtub.

The only son of a wealthy missionary couple, the Laughing Man was kidnapped in infancy by Chinese bandits. When the wealthy missionary couple refused (from a religious conviction) to pay the ransom for their son, the bandits, signally piqued, placed the little fellow’s head in a carpenter’s vise and gave the appropriate lever several turns to the right. The subject of this unique experience grew into manhood with a hairless, pecan-shaped head and a face that featured, instead of a mouth, an enormous oval cavity below the nose. The nose itself consisted of two flesh-sealed nostrils. In consequence, when the Laughing Man breathed, the hideous, mirthless gap below his nose dilated and contracted like (as I see it) some sort of monstrous vacuole. (The Chief demonstrated, rather than explained, the Laughing Man’s respiration method.) Strangers fainted dead away at the sight of the Laughing Man’s horrible face. Acquaintances shunned him. Curiously enough, though, the bandits let him hang around their headquarters–as long as he kept his face covered with a pale-red gossamer mask made out of poppy petals. The mask not only spared the bandits the sight of their foster son’s face, it also kept them sensible of his whereabouts; under the circumstances, he reeked of opium.

Every morning, in his extreme loneliness, the Laughing Man stole off (he was as graceful on his feet as a cat) to the dense forest surrounding the bandits’ hideout. There he befriended any number and species of animals: dogs, white mice, eagles, lions, boa constrictors, wolves. Moreover, he removed his mask and spoke to them, softly, melodiously, in their own tongues. They did not think him ugly.

(It took the Chief a couple of months to get that far into the story. From there on in, he got more and more high-handed with his installments, entirely to the satisfaction of the Comanches.)

The Laughing Man was one for keeping an ear to the ground, and in no time at all he had picked up the bandits’ most valuable trade secrets. He didn’t think much of them, though, and briskly set up his own, more effective system. On a rather small scale at first, he began to free-lance around the Chinese countryside, robbing, highjacking, murdering when absolutely necessary. Soon his ingenious criminal methods, coupled with his singular love of fair play, found him a warm place in the nation’s heart. Strangely enough, his foster parents (the bandits who had originally turned his head toward crime) were about the last to get wind of his achievements. When they did, they were insanely jealous. They all single-filed past the Laughing Man’s bed one night, thinking they had successfully doped him into a deep sleep, and stabbed at the figure under the covers with their machetes. The victim turned out to be the bandit chief’s mother–an unpleasant, haggling sort of person. The event only whetted the bandits’ taste for the Laughing Man’s blood, and finally he was obliged to lock up the whole bunch of them in a deep but pleasantly decorated mausoleum. They escaped from time to time and gave him a certain amount of annoyance, but he refused to kill them. (There was a compassionate side to the Laughing Man’s character that just about drove me crazy.)

Soon the Laughing Man was regularly crossing the Chinese border into Paris, France, where he enjoyed flaunting his high but modest genius in the face of Marcel Dufarge, the internationally famous detective and witty consumptive. Dufarge and his daughter (an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite) became the Laughing Man’s bitterest enemies. Time and again, they tried leading the Laughing Man up the garden path. For sheer sport, the Laughing Man usually went halfway with them, then vanished, often leaving no even faintly credible indication of his escape method. Just now and then he posted an incisive little farewell note in the Paris sewerage system, and it was delivered promptly to Dufarge’s boot. The Dufarges spent an enormous amount of time sloshing around in the Paris sewers.

Soon the Laughing Man had amassed the largest personal fortune in the world. Most of it he contributed anonymously to the monks of a local monastery–humble ascetics who had dedicated their lives to raising German police dogs. What was left of his fortune, the Laughing Man converted into diamonds, which he lowered casually, in emerald vaults, into the Black Sea. His personal wants were few. He subsisted exclusively on rice and eagles’ blood, in a tiny cottage with an underground gymnasium and shooting range, on the stormy coast of Tibet. Four blindly loyal confederates lived with him: a glib timber wolf named Black Wing, a lovable dwarf named Omba, a giant Mongolian named Hong, whose tongue had been burned out by white men, and a gorgeous Eurasian girl, who, out of unrequited love for the Laughing Man and deep concern for his personal safety, sometimes had a pretty sticky attitude toward crime. The Laughing Man issued his orders to the crew through a black silk screen. Not even Omba, the lovable dwarf, was permitted to see his face.

I’m not saying I will, but I could go on for hours escorting the reader–forcibly, if necessary–back and forth across the Paris-Chinese border. I happen to regard the Laughing Man as some kind of super-distinguished ancestor of mine–a sort of Robert E. Lee, say, with the ascribed virtues held under water or blood. And this illusion is only a moderate one compared to the one I had in 1928, when I regarded myself not only as the Laughing Man’s direct descendant but as his only legitimate living one. I was not even my parents’ son in 1928 but a devilishly smooth impostor, awaiting their slightest blunder as an excuse to move in–preferably without violence, but not necessarily–to assert my true identity. As a precaution against breaking my bogus mother’s heart, I planned to take her into my underworld employ in some undefined but appropriately regal capacity. But the main thing I had to do in 1928 was watch my step. Play along with the farce. Brush my teeth. Comb my hair. At all costs, stifle my natural hideous laughter.

Actually, I was not the only legitimate living descendant of the Laughing Man. There were twenty-five Comanches in the Club, or twenty-five legitimate living descendants of the Laughing Man–all of us circulating ominously, and incognito, throughout the city, sizing up elevator operators as potential archenemies, whispering side-of-the-mouth but fluent orders into the ears of cocker spaniels, drawing beads, with index fingers, on the foreheads of arithmetic teachers. And always waiting, waiting for a decent chance to strike terror and admiration in the nearest mediocre heart.

One afternoon in February, just after Comanche baseball season had opened, I observed a new fixture in the Chief’s bus. Above the rear-view mirror over the windshield, there was a small, framed photograph of a girl dressed in academic cap and gown. It seemed to me that a girl’s picture clashed with the general men-only decor of the bus, and I bluntly asked the Chief who she was. He hedged at first, but finally admitted that she was a girl. I asked him what her name was. He answered unforthrightly, “Mary Hudson.” I asked him if she was in the movies or something. He said no, that she used to go to Wellesley College. He added, on some slow-processed afterthought, that Wellesley College was a very high class college. I asked him what he had her picture in the bus for, though. He shrugged slightly, as much as to imply, it seemed to me, that the picture had more or less been planted on him.

During the next couple of weeks, the picture–however forcibly or accidentally it had been planted on the Chief–was not removed from the bus. It didn’t go out with the Baby Ruth wrappers and the fallen licorice whips. However, we Comanches got used to it. It gradually took on the unarresting personality of a speedometer.

But one day as we were on our way to the Park, the Chief pulled the bus over to a curb on Fifth Avenue in the Sixties, a good half mile past our baseball field. Some twenty back-seat drivers at once demanded an explanation, but the Chief gave none. Instead, he simply got into his story-telling position and swung prematurely into a fresh installment of “The Laughing Man.” He had scarcely begun, however, when someone tapped on the bus door. The Chief’s reflexes were geared high that day. He literally flung himself around in his seat, yanked the operating handle of the door, and a girl in a beaver coat climbed into the bus.

Offhand, I can remember seeing just three girls in my life who struck me as having unclassifiably great beauty at first sight. One was a thin girl in a black bathing suit who was having a lot of trouble putting up an orange umbrella at Jones Beach, circa 1936. The second was a girl aboard a Caribbean cruise ship in 1939, who threw her cigarette lighter at a porpoise. And the third was the Chief’s girl, Mary Hudson.

“Am I very late?” she asked the Chief, smiling at him.

She might just as well have asked if she was ugly.

“No!” the Chief said. A trifle wildly, he looked at the Comanches near his seat and signalled the row to give way. Mary Hudson sat down between me and a boy named Edgar something, whose uncle’s best friend was a bootlegger. We gave her all the room in the world. Then the bus started off with a peculiar, amateur-like lurch. The Comanches, to the last man, were silent.

On the way back to our regular parking place, Mary Hudson leaned forward in her seat and gave the Chief an enthusiastic account of the trains she had missed and the train she hadn’t missed; she lived in Douglaston, Long Island. The Chief was very nervous. He didn’t just fail to contribute any talk of his own; he could hardly listen to hers. The gearshift knob came off in his hand, I remember.

When we got out of the bus, Mary Hudson stuck right with us. I’m sure that by the time we reached the baseball field there was on every Comanche’s face a some-girls-just-don’t-know-when-to-go-home look. And to really top things off, when another Comanche and I were flipping a coin to decide which team would take the field first, Mary Hudson wistfully expressed a desire to join the game. The response to this couldn’t have been more clean-cut. Where before we Comanches had simply stared at her femaleness, we now glared at it. She smiled back at us. It was a shade disconcerting. Then the Chief took over, revealing what had formerly been a well-concealed flair for incompetence. He took Mary Hudson aside, just out of earshot of the Comanches, and seemed to address her solemnly, rationally. At length, Mary Hudson interrupted him, and her voice was perfectly audible to the Comanches. “But I do,” she said. “I do, too, want to play!” The Chief nodded and tried again. He pointed in the direction of the infield, which was soggy and pitted. He picked up a regulation bat and demonstrated its weight. “I don’t care,” Mary Hudson said distinctly, “I came all the way to New York–to the dentist and everything–and I’m gonna play.” The Chief nodded again but gave up. He walked cautiously over to home plate, where the Braves and the Warriors, the two Comanche teams, were waiting, and looked at me. I was captain of the Warriors. He mentioned the name of my regular center fielder, who was home sick, and suggested that Mary Hudson take his place. I said I didn’t need a center fielder. The Chief asked me what the hell did I mean I didn’t need a center fielder. I was shocked. It was the first time I had heard the Chief swear. What’s more, I could feel Mary Hudson smiling at me. For poise, I picked up a stone and threw it at a tree.

We took the field first. No business went out to center field the first inning. From my position on first base, I glanced behind me now and then. Each time I did, Mary Hudson waved gaily to me. She was wearing a catcher’s mitt, her own adamant choice. It was a horrible sight.

Mary Hudson batted ninth on the Warriors’ lineup. When I informed her of this arrangement, she made a little face and said, “Well, hurry up, then.” And as a matter of fact we did seem to hurry up. She got to bat in the first inning. She took off her beaver coat–and her catcher’s mitt–for the occasion and advanced to the plate in a dark-brown dress. When I gave her a bat, she asked me why it was so heavy. The Chief left his umpire’s position behind the pitcher and came forward anxiously. He told Mary Hudson to rest the end of her bat on her right shouder. “I am,” she said. He told her not to choke the bat too tightly. “I’m not,” she said. He told her to keep her eye right on the ball. “I will,” she said. “Get outa the way.” She swung mightily at the first ball pitched to her and hit it over the left fielder’s head. It was good for an ordinary double, but Mary Hudson got to third on it–standing up.

When my astonishment had worn off, and then my awe, and then my delight, I looked over at the Chief. He didn’t so much seem to be standing behind the pitcher as floating over him. He was a completely happy man. Over on third base, Mary Hudson waved to me. I waved back. I couldn’t have stopped myself, even if I’d wanted to. Her stickwork aside, she happened to be a girl who knew how to wave to somebody from third base.

The rest of the game, she got on base every time she came to bat. For some reason, she seemed to hate first base; there was no holding her there. At least three times, she stole second.

Her fielding couldn’t have been worse, but we were piling up too many runs to take serious notice of it. I think it would have improved if she’d gone after flies with almost anything except a catcher’s mitt. She wouldn’t take it off, though. She said it was cute.

The next month or so, she played baseball with the Comanches a couple of times a week (whenever she had an appointment with her dentist, apparently). Some afternoons she met the bus on time, some afternoons she was late. Sometimes she talked a blue streak in the bus, sometimes she just sat and smoked her Herbert Tareyton cigarettes (cork-tipped). When you sat next to her in the bus, she smelled of a wonderful perfume.

One wintry day in April, after making his usual three o’clock pickup at 109th and Amsterdam, the Chief turned the loaded bus east at 110th Street and cruised routinely down Fifth Avenue. But his hair was combed wet, he had on his overcoat instead of his leather windbreaker, and I reasonably surmised that Mary Hudson was scheduled to join us. When we zipped past our usual entrance to the Park, I was sure of it. The Chief parked the bus on the comer in the Sixties appropriate to the occasion. Then, to kill time painlessly for the Comanches, he straddled his seat backward and released a new installment of “The Laughing Man.” I remember the installment to the last detail, and I must outline it briefly.

A flux of circumstances delivered the Laughing Man’s best friend, his timber wolf, Black Wing, into a physical and intellectual trap set by the Dufarges. The Dufarges, aware of the Laughing Man’s high sense of loyalty, offered him Black Wing’s freedom in exchange for his own. In the best faith in the world, the Laughing Man agreed to these terms. (Some of the minor mechanics of his genius were often subject to mysterious little breakdowns.) It was arranged for the Laughing Man to meet the Dufarges at midnight in a designated section of the dense forest surrounding Paris, and there, by moonlight, Black Wing would be set free. However, the Dufarges had no intention of liberating Black Wing, whom they feared and loathed. On the night of the transaction, they leashed a stand-in timber wolf for Black Wing, first dyeing its left hind foot snow white, to look like Black Wing’s.

But there were two things the Dufarges hadn’t counted on: the Laughing Man’s sentimentality and his command of the timber-wolf language. As soon as he had allowed Dufarge’s daughter to tie him with barbed wire to a tree, the Laughing Man felt called upon to raise his beautiful, melodious voice in a few words of farewell to his supposed old friend. The stand-in, a few moonlit yards away, was impressed by the stranger’s command of the language and listened politely for a moment to the last-minute advice, personal and professional, that the Laughing Man was giving out. At length, though, the stand-in grew impatient and began shifting his weight from paw to paw. Abruptly, and rather unpleasantly, he interrupted the Laughing Man with the information that, in the first place, his name wasn’t Dark Wing or Black Wing or Gray Legs or any of that business, it was Armand, and, in the second place, he’d never been to China in his life and hadn’t the slightest intention of going there.

Properly infuriated, the Laughing Man pushed off his mask with his tongue and confronted the Dufarges with his naked face by moonlight. Mlle. Dufarge responded by passing out cold. Her father was luckier. By chance, he was having one of his coughing spells at the moment and thereby missed the lethal unveiling. When his coughing spell was over and he saw his daughter stretched out supine on the moonlit ground, Dufarge put two and two together. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he fired the full clip in his automatic toward the sound of the Laughing Man’s heavy, sibilant breathing.

The installment ended there.

The Chief took his dollar Ingersoll out of his watch pocket, looked at it, then swung around in his seat and started up the motor. I checked my own watch. It was almost four-thirty. As the bus moved forward, I asked the Chief if he wasn’t going to wait for Mary Hudson. He didn’t answer me, and before I could repeat my question, he tilted back his head and addressed all of us: “Let’s have a little quiet in this damn bus.” Whatever else it may have been, the order was basically unsensible. The bus had been, and was, very quiet. Almost everybody was thinking about the spot the Laughing Man had been left in. We were long past worrying about him–we had too much confidence in him for that–but we were never past accepting his most perilous moments quietly.

In the third or fourth inning of our ball game that afternoon, I spotted Mary Hudson from first base. She was sitting on a bench about a hundred yards to my left, sandwiched between two nursemaids with baby carriages. She had on her beaver coat, she was smoking a cigarette, and she seemed to be looking in the direction of our game. I got excited about my discovery and yelled the information over to the Chief, behind the pitcher. He hurried over to me, not quite running. “Where?” he asked me. I pointed again. He stared for a moment in the right direction, then said he’d be back in a minute and left the field. He left it slowly, opening his overcoat and putting his hands in the hip pockets of his trousers. I sat down on first base and watched. By the time the Chief reached Mary Hudson, his overcoat was buttoned again and his hands were down at his sides.

He stood over her for about five minutes, apparently talking to her. Then Mary Hudson stood up, and the two of them walked toward the baseball field. They didn’t talk as they walked, or look at each other. When they reached the field, the Chief took his position behind the pitcher. I yelled over to him. “Isn’t she gonna play?” He told me to cover my sack. I covered my sack and watched Mary Hudson. She walked slowly behind the plate, with her hands in the pockets of her beaver coat, and finally sat down on a misplaced players’ bench just beyond third base. She lit another cigarette and crossed her legs.

When the Warriors were at bat, I went over to her bench and asked her if she felt like playing left field. She shook her head. I asked her if she had a cold. She shook her head again. I told her I didn’t have anybody in left field. I told her I had a guy playing center field and left field. There was no response at all to this information. I tossed my first-baseman’s mitt up in the air and tried to have it land on my head, but it fell in a mud puddle. I wiped it off on my trousers and asked Mary Hudson if she wanted to come up to my house for dinner sometime. I told her the Chief came up a lot. “Leave me alone,” she said. “Just please leave me alone.” I stared at her, then walked off in the direction of the Warriors’ bench, taking a tangerine out of my pocket and tossing it up in the air. About midway along the third-base foul line, I turned around and started to walk backwards, looking at Mary Hudson and holding on to my tangerine. I had no idea what was going on between the Chief and Mary Hudson (and still haven’t, in any but a fairly low, intuitive sense), but nonetheless, I couldn’t have been more certain that Mary Hudson had permanently dropped out of the Comanche lineup. It was the kind of whole certainty, however independent of the sum of its facts, that can make walking backwards more than normally hazardous, and I bumped smack into a baby carriage.

After another inning, the light got bad for fielding. The game was called, and we started picking up all the equipment. The last good look I had at Mary Hudson, she was over near third base crying. The Chief had hold of the sleeve of her beaver coat, but she got away from him. She ran off the field onto the cement path and kept running till I couldn’t see her any more.

The Chief didn’t go after her. He just stood watching her disappear. Then he turned around and walked down to home plate and picked up our two bats; we always left the bats for him to carry. I went over to him and asked if he and Mary Hudson had had a fight. He told me to tuck my shirt in.

Just as always, we Comanches ran the last few hundred feet to the place where the bus was parked, yelling, shoving, trying out strangleholds on each other, but all of us alive to the fact that it was again time for “The Laughing Man.” Racing across Fifth Avenue, somebody dropped his extra or discarded sweater, and I tripped over it and went sprawling. I finished the charge to the bus; but the best seats were taken by that time and I had to sit down in the middle of the bus. Annoyed at the arrangement, I gave the boy sitting on my right a poke in the ribs with my elbow, then faced around and watched the Chief cross over Fifth. It was not yet dark out, but a five-fifteen dimness had set in. The Chief crossed the street with his coat collar up, the bats under his left arm, and his concentration on the street. His black hair, which had been combed wet earlier in the day, was dry now and blowing. I remember wishing the Chief had gloves.

The bus, as usual, was quiet when he climbed in–as proportionately quiet, at any rate, as a theatre with dimming house lights. Conversations were finished in a hurried whisper or shut off completely. Nonetheless, the first thing the Chief said to us was “All right, let’s cut out the noise, or no story.” In an instant, an unconditional silence filled the bus, cutting off from the Chief any alternative but to take up his narrating position. When he had done so, he took out a handkerchief and methodically blew his nose, one nostril at a time. We watched him with patience and even a certain amount of spectator’s interest. When he had finished with his handkerchief, he folded it neatly in quarters and replaced it in his pocket. He then gave us the new installment of “The Laughing Man.” From start to finish, it lasted no longer than five minutes.

Four of Dufarge’s bullets struck the Laughing Man, two of them through the heart. When Dufarge, who was still shielding his eyes against the sight of the Laughing Man’s face, heard a queer exhalation of agony from the direction of the target, he was overjoyed. His black heart beating wildly, he rushed over to his unconscious daughter and brought her to. The pair of them, beside themselves with delight and coward’s courage, now dared to look up at the Laughing Man. His head was bowed as in death, his chin resting on his bloody chest. Slowly, greedily, father and daughter came forward to inspect their spoils. Quite a surprise was in store for them. The Laughing Man, far from dead, was busy contracting his stomach muscles in a secret manner. As the Dufarges came into range, he suddenly raised his face, gave a terrible laugh, and neatly, even fastidiously, regurgitated all four bullets. The impact of this feat on the Dufarges was so acute that their hearts literally burst, and they dropped dead at the Laughing Man’s feet. (If the installment was going to be a short one anyway, it could have ended there; the Comanches could have managed to rationalize the sudden death of the Dufarges. But it didn’t end there.) Day after day, the Laughing Man continued to stand lashed to the tree with barbed wire, the Dufarges decomposing at his feet. Bleeding profusely and cut off from his supply of eagles’ blood, he had never been closer to death. One day, however, in a hoarse but eloquent voice, he appealed for help to the animals of the forest. He summoned them to fetch Omba, the lovable dwarf. And they did. But it was a long trip back and forth across the Paris-Chinese border, and by the time Omba arrived on the scene with a medical kit and a fresh supply of eagles’ blood, the Laughing Man was in a coma. Omba’s very first act of mercy was to retrieve his master’s mask, which had blown up against Mlle. Dufarge’s vermin-infested torso. He placed it respectfully over the hideous features, then proceeded to dress the wounds.

When the Laughing Man’s small eyes finally opened, Omba eagerly raised the vial of eagles’ blood up to the mask. But the Laughing Man didn’t drink from it. Instead, he weakly pronounced his beloved Black Wing’s name. Omba bowed his own slightly distorted head and revealed to his master that the Dufarges had killed Black Wing. A peculiar and heart-rending gasp of final sorrow came from the Laughing Man. He reached out wanly for the vial of eagles’ blood and crushed it in his hand. What little blood he had left trickled thinly down his wrist. He ordered Omba to look away, and, sobbing, Omba obeyed him. The Laughing Man’s last act, before turning his face to the bloodstained ground, was to pull off his mask.

The story ended there, of course. (Never to be revived.) The Chief started up the bus. Across the aisle from me, Billy Walsh, who was the youngest of all the Comanches, burst into tears. None of us told him to shut up. As for me, I remember my knees were shaking.

A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief’s bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone’s poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go right straight to bed.

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