#International Talk Like William Shatner Day

[rabbitcruiser]

Talk Like William Shatner Day

Talk Like William Shatner Day, celebrated on March 22, pays tribute to the famous Canadian actor — William Shatner. Shatner gained worldwide recognition due to his role in the cult sci-fi series, “Star Trek.” Shatner is appreciated for his unique dialogue delivery and performance and is often imitated by his fans. Hence, the day has become a perfect opportunity to pay a tribute to the memorable performances of the actor. Watch your favorite episodes starring the actor and enjoy the nostalgia on this day.

History of Talk Like William Shatner Day

Impressionists had been paying tribute to the actor William Shatner for years. Finally, however, an official day was observed in 2009. Maurice LaMarche, a famous Shatner impressionist, posted a video clip on YouTube and declared March 22 as International Talk like William Shatner Day. In the video, LaMarche gave the viewers a tutorial on how Shatner can be imitated and pronounced several words in the actor’s iconic style. The video went viral since LaMarche already has a large fan following from his roles in “Futurama,” “The Simpsons,” “Pinky and the Brain,” “Frozen,” and more.

Similarly, Doug VanHorn had the same idea, and he created a Facebook page idolizing William Shatner’s impressions. After a short feud, both LaMarche and VanHorn decided to join forces. They came up with International Talk Like William Shatner Day. From thereon, we celebrate the day every year!

Shatner is also an author, producer, director, screenwriter, commercial astronaut, and musician. The role that has gained him an eternal fan following is his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise. He also starred in the first seven Star Trek movies and co-wrote several novels set in the Star Trek universe. Apart from Star Trek, Shatner also played a police sergeant in “T. J. Hooker” and moved on to host the reality-based television series “Rescue 911.”

Talk Like William Shatner Day timeline

1951

Making an Impact

William Shatner makes his acting debut.

1954

The Small Screen

Shatner stars in his first major T.V. role as Ranger Bob.

1974

Celebrities and Sports

Shatner makes an appearance on “Celebrity Bowling.”

2017

Getting Animated

Shatner lends his voice to the animated film “Batman vs. Two-Face.”

Talk Like William Shatner Day FAQs

What Is William Shatner’s net worth?

The Canadian-born actor, producer, and director has a total net worth of $100 million.

What disease does William Shatner have?

The famous actor suffers from tinnitus.

Did Shatner smoke cigarettes?

Yes. Shatner started smoking at a young age since his father also smoked.

Talk Like William Shatner Day Activities

Watch “Star Trek: ”Want to figure out why so many people adore William Shatner? Binge-watch “Star Trek” and you will find out! Then, make sure you pick up the best episodes of the series where Shatner has outdone himself.

Imitate Shatner: To celebrate the day properly, try to imitate Shatner. Get together with some friends and make videos of imitations you can post on social media. Who knows, your act might go viral!

Read up about his career: Shatner has an extensive career with roles that are big and small. Read up on all his work to learn how he eventually gained such a mass following. His life is an inspiration, especially for aspiring actors.

5 Interesting Facts About William Shatner

Money earned: Shatner is the richest actor in the “Star Trek” franchise.

T.V. appearance: Shatner appeared in the series “The Twilight Zone.”

The first interracial kiss in 1968: Shatner was a part of one of the first interracial kisses on television in “Star Trek.”

Shatner starred with his daughters: In the 1966 “Star Trek” episode ‘Miri,’ the actor's daughters starred with him.

A gift from NASA: NASA engineers presented Shatner with a replica of the Enterprise.

Why We Love Talk Like William Shatner Day

It reminds us of Shatner’s body of work: The day reminds us of all the fantastic and groundbreaking projects Shatner was a part of. He has become unforgettable due to his unique roles in popular series.

It appreciates his talent: The special day appreciates the talent of Shatner by displaying him as an icon who gave performances that were unique and inspirational. In addition, such days spread positivity amongst the acting community.

It is a tribute to Shatner: Though there are hundreds of great actors in the country, few have a distinctive style. Shatner is one of them. The day is a tribute to all the great projects he was a part of and the roles he performed.

Source

[curatorsday]

Wednesday, March 22, 2023 - International Talk Like William Shatner Day

Years ago, I helped set the style guide at CCHS. I prefer the standard comma in my personal writing but others preferred the Oxford comma. I brought the Walken and Shatner commas into the mix and they were quickly shot down. We settled on the Oxford.

Happy International Talk Like William Shatner Day!

Image from David Crowder's Twitter page

[thessalian]

No, okay, this is too long to go into the tags. Because I don’t have ‘an’ accent, exactly. It’s like ... you know how the English language is likened unto a mugger beating up other languages and rifling their pockets for spare vocabulary? Well, that is my accent. Because it varies depending on who I’m talking to, what I’m talking about and in what context, how emotional I am and in what way, and a whole host of other bullshit.

So. Here we go.

The core foundation is Anglophone Montrealais, which is ... difficult to describe? I don’t even really have an example to point to, since I figure William Shatner had lost his by the time his acting career got started. (I apologise for William Shatner, by the way.)

After that, moved to New Jersey, so I got a hefty dollop of Paramus And Points Surrounding.

Then I moved to England, so we can add North Hertfordshire to the bits that got nailed onto my accent.

Also keep in mind that I was one of the few day pupils in an international boarding school, and so the accents I was exposed to included everything from South African to Japanese to Mid-America-Flavoured-With-Saudi (the dude’s dad was a landscape architect; it’s a long story).

Then I moved to Leicester. Whole different accent there. For such a small country, you get a lot of regional accents and linguistic variance.

Then I moved to London. First South, then North, then South again. But by then my accent was pretty well solidified, I figure. Probably.

Except possibly not because I’m fairly sure there was some significant tweaking somewhere in the middle there when I travelled the US for like eight months. Getting San Francisco out of an accent is like trying to get blood out of taffeta.

Basically my accent has best been described as “treading water somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic”. It’s the best I can do. (Also I should flag up that some asshole of a speech therapist at my US high school decided to say my accent was a speech impediment. Funny how the only three kids she said had speech impediments at my school were the kids who’d emigrated from a) Canada, b) Germany, and c) Hong Kong. Pretty sure my mother was nearly moved to murder over that one.)

ok i absolutely need to know what accents u all have pls reblog and tell me or comment or whatever I must know

[brookston]

Holidays 3.22

Holidays

Age Is Just A Number Day

Arab League Day

Army Day (Philippines)

As Young As You Feel Day

Baltic Sea Day

Banned in Boston Day

Bihar Day (India)

Captain James T. Kirk Day

Cinematograph Film Day

Cornstarch Day

Daffodil Day

Day of the Berlin Bear (Germany)

Day of the People’s Party (Laos)

Earth Day [Original Date]

Emancipation Day (a.k.a. Día de la Abolición de la Esclavitud; Puerto Rico)

Festival of Immortality

Gryffindor Pride Day

International Day of the Seal

International Goof-Off Day (a.k.a. National Goof-Off Day)

International Gurjar Day

International Taxi Driver Day (Russia)

John Magufuli Day (Tanzania)

Labour Day (Christmas Island)

Laser Day

Lynch Syndrome Awareness Day

National Badminton Day [also 3.30]

National

National Day of the Podenco (Spain)

National Day of Work-Integrated Learning Day (Canada)

National Donald Day

National Rehabilitation Counselors Appreciation Day

National Ride2School Day )Australia)

National Sing-Out Day

National Tree Day (Sent Maarten)

National West Virginia Day

Newlyweds Day (Serbia)

Plane Tree Day (French Republic)

Resident Evil Anniversary Day

Stamp Act Day

Stanley Cup Day

Sun-Earth Day

Talk Like William Shatner Day

Tuskegee Airmen Day

World Cloud Security Day

World Coma Day

World Day of Metta!

World Doula Day

World Mime Day

World Organic Research Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Bavarian Crepes Day

Brewing Water Day

Coq au Vin Day

We Love Broccoli Day

World Water Day (a.k.a. World Day for Water; UN)

4th Friday in March

Friday of Sorrows [4th Friday]

Fry Day (Pastafarian; Fritism) [Every Friday]

Pliny the Younger Day (Normally 1st Friday in February but moved in 2023)

Wear a Hat Day (Ireland) [4th Friday]

Independence & Related Days

Bihar (State founded; India; 1912)

Malus (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

New Year’s Days

Nowruz (New Year) [Day 3, Around Spring Equinox] (a.k.a. ... 

Dita e Nevruzit (Albania)

Nauryz Meyramy (Kazakhstan)

Navruz (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)

Nevruz (Albania)

Nooroz (Iran)

Novruz (Azerbaijan)

Festivals Beginning March 22, 2024

Barcelona Beer Festival (Barcelona, Spain) [thru 3.24]

Bluebonnet Brew-Off (Dallas, Texas) [thru 3.24]

California Artisan Cheese Festival (Santa Rosa, California) [thru 3.24]

Hammond Smokin’ BBQ Challenge (Hammond, Louisiana) [thru 3.23]

Hermann Wurstfest (Hermann, Missouri) [thru 3.24]

Kirkland Wine, Beer & Spirits Walk (Kirkland, Washington)

Lollapalooza (São Paulo, Brazil) [thru 3.24]

Litchfield Restaurant Week (Litchfield, Connecticut) [thru 3.29]

MN Brewers Conference (St. Paul, Minnesota)

Salzburg Easter Festival (Salzburg, Austria) [thru 4.1]

Sydney Royal Easter Show (Sydney, Australia) [thru 4.2]

Ultra Music Festival (Miami, Florida) [thru 3.24]

Vossa Jazz (Vossevangen, Norway) [thru 3.24]

Feast Days

Anthony Van Dyck (Artology)

Anton Raphael Mengs (Artology)

Attis Arbour Intrat (Procession of Pine Trees, dedicated to Cybele, Ops for Rhea; Ancient Rome)

Basil of Ancyra (Christian; Saint)

Benvenuto of Osimo (Christian; Saint)

Catharine of Sweden (Christian; Saint)

Clemens August Graf von Galen (Christian; Saint)

Darerca of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Deogratias, Bishop of Carthage (Christian; Saint)

Dies Violae (Laying of Flowers at Tombs; Ancient Rome)

Epaphroditus (Christian; Saint)

Festival of Cybele (Attis’ self-mutilation; Ancient Rome)

Festival of the Entry of the Tree (Ancient Rome)

Hola Mohalla (Sikh)

John Frederick Kensett (Artology)

Jonathan Edwards (Lutheranism)

Justin (Positivist; Saint)

Keep Richards Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Lea of Rome (Christian; Saint)

Nicholas Owen (Christian; Saint)

Nicholas von Flue (Christian; Saint)

Paul of Narbonne (Christian; Saint)

Pretend to Be Sober Day (Pastafarian)

Rite of Eostre (Everyday Wicca)

Quinquatria, Day 4: Poet’s Day (Pagan)

Rosh Chodesh Nisan (Judaism) [1 Nisan]

Slightly Silly Day (Pastafarian)

Toothbrush (Muppetism)

Hebrew Calendar Holidays [Begins at Sundown Day Before]

Shabbat Zachor (Remembrance) [13 Adair]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

All Shook Up, by Elvis Presley (Song; 1957)

Apostrophe (‘), by Frank Zappa (Album; 1974)

Behold the Man, by Michael Moorcock (Novel; 1969)

The Bible, printed by Johannes Gutenberg (Book; 1457)

Bosko the Speed King (WB LT Cartoon; 1933)

Bringing It All Back Home, by Bob Dylan (Album; 1965)

Bullwinkle Scores Again or Fool’s Goal (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 356; 1965)

The Clock (Film; 1945)

The Croods (Animated Film; 2013)

Defending Your Life (Film; 1991)

D-I-V-O-R-C-E, recorded by Tammy Wynette (Song; 1968)

East St. Louis Toddle-oo, recorded by Duke Ellington (Song; 1927)

The Egg Cracker Suite (Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Swing Symphony Cartoon; 1943)

The Explorer, featuring Farmer Al Falfa (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1931)

Far Beyond Driven, by Pantera (Album; 1994)

Fist of Fury (Film; 1972)

Flames in the Sky, by Pierre Clostermann (Novel; 1951)

The Golden Touch (Disney Silly Symphony Cartoon; 1935)

Gutenberg Bible (Religious Text; 1457)

How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, by Francis A. Schaeffer (Philosophy Book; 1975)

Luca (Pixar Animated Film; 2024)

Mr. Wonderful (Broadway Musical; 1956)

Much Ado About Nothing (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1940)

Olympus Has Fallen (Film; 2013)

On the Border, by The Eagles (Album; 1974)

Pleased to Meet Cha! (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1935)

Please Please Me by The Beatles (Album; 1963)

Power to the People, by John Lennon (Song; 1971)

The Rules: All You Need Is Cash (TV Rockumentary Special; 1978)

Sing Smokey, by The Temptation (Album; 1965)

Sleepy Time Chimes (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1971)

Spring Breakers (Film; 2013)

Standing Room Only or Bullwinkle Sells Out (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 355; 1965)

Station 19 (TV Series; 2018)

Stealin Aint Honest (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1940)

Symphony No. 1, the Poem of the Forest, by Albert Roussel (Symphony; 1908)

Us (Film; 2019)

Today’s Name Days

Clemens, Elmar, Klemens, Lea (Austria)

Rosen, Rositsa (Bulgaria)

Lea, Leonarda, Oktavijan (Croatia)

Leona (Czech Republic)

Paulus (Denmark)

Viktor, Viktoria (Estonia)

Vihtori, Viktor (Finland)

Léa (France)

Elmar, Lea, Reinhilde (Germany)

Drosos, Drosoula (Greece)

Beáta, Izolda (Hungary)

Benevenuto, Caterina, Lavinia, Lea, Muzio, Onofrio, Nilda, Nilde (Italy)

Dziedra, Giedra, Ralfs, Tamāra (Latvia)

Gedgaudas, Gedgaudė, Kotryna (Lithuania)

Paula, Pauline (Norway)

Bazylissa, Bogusław, Godzisław, Katarzyna, Kazimierz, Paweł (Poland)

Drosida, Vasile (Romania)

Beňadik (Slovakia)

Bienvenido, Lea (Spain)

Kennet, Kent, Viktor (Sweden)

Lea, Leah, Lee, Leigh, Leighton, Parker (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 82 of 2024; 284 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of week 12 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Fearn (Alder) [Day 6 of 28]

Chinese: Month 2 (Ding-Mao), Day 13 (Yi-You)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025)

Hebrew: 12 Adair II 5784

Islamic: 12 Ramadan 1445

J Cal: 22 Green; Oneday [21 of 30]

Julian: 9 March 2024

Moon: 94%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 26 Aristotle (3rd Month) [Clement of Alexandria]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 13 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 4 of 92)

Week: 3rd Week of March

Zodiac: Aries (Day 2 of 31)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 3.22

Holidays

Age Is Just A Number Day

Arab League Day

Army Day (Philippines)

As Young As You Feel Day

Baltic Sea Day

Banned in Boston Day

Bihar Day (India)

Captain James T. Kirk Day

Cinematograph Film Day

Cornstarch Day

Daffodil Day

Day of the Berlin Bear (Germany)

Day of the People’s Party (Laos)

Earth Day [Original Date]

Emancipation Day (a.k.a. Día de la Abolición de la Esclavitud; Puerto Rico)

Festival of Immortality

Gryffindor Pride Day

International Day of the Seal

International Goof-Off Day (a.k.a. National Goof-Off Day)

International Gurjar Day

International Taxi Driver Day (Russia)

John Magufuli Day (Tanzania)

Labour Day (Christmas Island)

Laser Day

Lynch Syndrome Awareness Day

National Badminton Day [also 3.30]

National

National Day of the Podenco (Spain)

National Day of Work-Integrated Learning Day (Canada)

National Donald Day

National Rehabilitation Counselors Appreciation Day

National Ride2School Day )Australia)

National Sing-Out Day

National Tree Day (Sent Maarten)

National West Virginia Day

Newlyweds Day (Serbia)

Plane Tree Day (French Republic)

Resident Evil Anniversary Day

Stamp Act Day

Stanley Cup Day

Sun-Earth Day

Talk Like William Shatner Day

Tuskegee Airmen Day

World Cloud Security Day

World Coma Day

World Day of Metta!

World Doula Day

World Mime Day

World Organic Research Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Bavarian Crepes Day

Brewing Water Day

Coq au Vin Day

We Love Broccoli Day

World Water Day (a.k.a. World Day for Water; UN)

4th Friday in March

Friday of Sorrows [4th Friday]

Fry Day (Pastafarian; Fritism) [Every Friday]

Pliny the Younger Day (Normally 1st Friday in February but moved in 2023)

Wear a Hat Day (Ireland) [4th Friday]

Independence & Related Days

Bihar (State founded; India; 1912)

Malus (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

New Year’s Days

Nowruz (New Year) [Day 3, Around Spring Equinox] (a.k.a. ... 

Dita e Nevruzit (Albania)

Nauryz Meyramy (Kazakhstan)

Navruz (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)

Nevruz (Albania)

Nooroz (Iran)

Novruz (Azerbaijan)

Festivals Beginning March 22, 2024

Barcelona Beer Festival (Barcelona, Spain) [thru 3.24]

Bluebonnet Brew-Off (Dallas, Texas) [thru 3.24]

California Artisan Cheese Festival (Santa Rosa, California) [thru 3.24]

Hammond Smokin’ BBQ Challenge (Hammond, Louisiana) [thru 3.23]

Hermann Wurstfest (Hermann, Missouri) [thru 3.24]

Kirkland Wine, Beer & Spirits Walk (Kirkland, Washington)

Lollapalooza (São Paulo, Brazil) [thru 3.24]

Litchfield Restaurant Week (Litchfield, Connecticut) [thru 3.29]

MN Brewers Conference (St. Paul, Minnesota)

Salzburg Easter Festival (Salzburg, Austria) [thru 4.1]

Sydney Royal Easter Show (Sydney, Australia) [thru 4.2]

Ultra Music Festival (Miami, Florida) [thru 3.24]

Vossa Jazz (Vossevangen, Norway) [thru 3.24]

Feast Days

Anthony Van Dyck (Artology)

Anton Raphael Mengs (Artology)

Attis Arbour Intrat (Procession of Pine Trees, dedicated to Cybele, Ops for Rhea; Ancient Rome)

Basil of Ancyra (Christian; Saint)

Benvenuto of Osimo (Christian; Saint)

Catharine of Sweden (Christian; Saint)

Clemens August Graf von Galen (Christian; Saint)

Darerca of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Deogratias, Bishop of Carthage (Christian; Saint)

Dies Violae (Laying of Flowers at Tombs; Ancient Rome)

Epaphroditus (Christian; Saint)

Festival of Cybele (Attis’ self-mutilation; Ancient Rome)

Festival of the Entry of the Tree (Ancient Rome)

Hola Mohalla (Sikh)

John Frederick Kensett (Artology)

Jonathan Edwards (Lutheranism)

Justin (Positivist; Saint)

Keep Richards Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Lea of Rome (Christian; Saint)

Nicholas Owen (Christian; Saint)

Nicholas von Flue (Christian; Saint)

Paul of Narbonne (Christian; Saint)

Pretend to Be Sober Day (Pastafarian)

Rite of Eostre (Everyday Wicca)

Quinquatria, Day 4: Poet’s Day (Pagan)

Rosh Chodesh Nisan (Judaism) [1 Nisan]

Slightly Silly Day (Pastafarian)

Toothbrush (Muppetism)

Hebrew Calendar Holidays [Begins at Sundown Day Before]

Shabbat Zachor (Remembrance) [13 Adair]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

All Shook Up, by Elvis Presley (Song; 1957)

Apostrophe (‘), by Frank Zappa (Album; 1974)

Behold the Man, by Michael Moorcock (Novel; 1969)

The Bible, printed by Johannes Gutenberg (Book; 1457)

Bosko the Speed King (WB LT Cartoon; 1933)

Bringing It All Back Home, by Bob Dylan (Album; 1965)

Bullwinkle Scores Again or Fool’s Goal (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 356; 1965)

The Clock (Film; 1945)

The Croods (Animated Film; 2013)

Defending Your Life (Film; 1991)

D-I-V-O-R-C-E, recorded by Tammy Wynette (Song; 1968)

East St. Louis Toddle-oo, recorded by Duke Ellington (Song; 1927)

The Egg Cracker Suite (Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Swing Symphony Cartoon; 1943)

The Explorer, featuring Farmer Al Falfa (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1931)

Far Beyond Driven, by Pantera (Album; 1994)

Fist of Fury (Film; 1972)

Flames in the Sky, by Pierre Clostermann (Novel; 1951)

The Golden Touch (Disney Silly Symphony Cartoon; 1935)

Gutenberg Bible (Religious Text; 1457)

How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, by Francis A. Schaeffer (Philosophy Book; 1975)

Luca (Pixar Animated Film; 2024)

Mr. Wonderful (Broadway Musical; 1956)

Much Ado About Nothing (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1940)

Olympus Has Fallen (Film; 2013)

On the Border, by The Eagles (Album; 1974)

Pleased to Meet Cha! (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1935)

Please Please Me by The Beatles (Album; 1963)

Power to the People, by John Lennon (Song; 1971)

The Rules: All You Need Is Cash (TV Rockumentary Special; 1978)

Sing Smokey, by The Temptation (Album; 1965)

Sleepy Time Chimes (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1971)

Spring Breakers (Film; 2013)

Standing Room Only or Bullwinkle Sells Out (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 355; 1965)

Station 19 (TV Series; 2018)

Stealin Aint Honest (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1940)

Symphony No. 1, the Poem of the Forest, by Albert Roussel (Symphony; 1908)

Us (Film; 2019)

Today’s Name Days

Clemens, Elmar, Klemens, Lea (Austria)

Rosen, Rositsa (Bulgaria)

Lea, Leonarda, Oktavijan (Croatia)

Leona (Czech Republic)

Paulus (Denmark)

Viktor, Viktoria (Estonia)

Vihtori, Viktor (Finland)

Léa (France)

Elmar, Lea, Reinhilde (Germany)

Drosos, Drosoula (Greece)

Beáta, Izolda (Hungary)

Benevenuto, Caterina, Lavinia, Lea, Muzio, Onofrio, Nilda, Nilde (Italy)

Dziedra, Giedra, Ralfs, Tamāra (Latvia)

Gedgaudas, Gedgaudė, Kotryna (Lithuania)

Paula, Pauline (Norway)

Bazylissa, Bogusław, Godzisław, Katarzyna, Kazimierz, Paweł (Poland)

Drosida, Vasile (Romania)

Beňadik (Slovakia)

Bienvenido, Lea (Spain)

Kennet, Kent, Viktor (Sweden)

Lea, Leah, Lee, Leigh, Leighton, Parker (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 82 of 2024; 284 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of week 12 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Fearn (Alder) [Day 6 of 28]

Chinese: Month 2 (Ding-Mao), Day 13 (Yi-You)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025)

Hebrew: 12 Adair II 5784

Islamic: 12 Ramadan 1445

J Cal: 22 Green; Oneday [21 of 30]

Julian: 9 March 2024

Moon: 94%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 26 Aristotle (3rd Month) [Clement of Alexandria]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 13 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 4 of 92)

Week: 3rd Week of March

Zodiac: Aries (Day 2 of 31)

[gar-trek]

Would you tell us the Shatner story?

this has been sitting in my inbox because I don't know what to say, the story in itself isn't all that interesting, I guess. I wish it was something like “Shatner hit my dog with a car” but its not really about what he did, its more about the vibe i got from him. 

Okay, lets set the scene here a little. Imagine your about 12 years old, which is already atrocious in it’s own right. Now imagine your 12 and you really really really like Star Trek the original series. Well, your probably going to feel a little alienated. Your probably gonna think to yourself all the time “God, no one feels the way I do, no one ever has or ever will.” You’ll probably have daily internal monologues that are similar to Jugheads iconic speech from the new Riverdale series (I.E “In case you haven’t noticed, I'm weird. I’m a weirdo. I don't fit in. And I don't want to fit in.”) You know, 12-year-old stuff. But, there is one thing that kinda makes it okay. Maybe you don’t have a lot of real-life living breathing friends that understand you, but you do have the fictional Crew of the fictional USS Enterprise on the fictional TV show Star Trek. Star Trek characters? they totally get you. Spock gets you. Bones understands, Sulu and Chekov are like your fun cousins, Uhura would totally listen to all your problems. And Kirk? He’s like the super charming cute boy who in real life would never ever look at you, but in your delusional adolescent mind maybe you could like, hold hands or something. So yeah, of course all these characters don’t actually exist, but in a way they all feel like good friends of yours....  Now, you understand the characters don’t exist, right? BUT (and this is one huge delusional but) they were played by living breathing real people. And if your just a kid and have never read a Wikipedia article in your life, it's really easy to pretend that these actors ARE just their characters. I didn’t know what the hell IMDb was back then. All i knew was that William Shatner played Captain Kirk, which pretty much meant William Shatner WAS Captain Kirk. I didn’t want there to be a difference. 

So, one day my dad is like, “Hey, you know William Shatner, the guy who played Captain Kirk? He’s doing a live show right near our house and we can go see him if you like!” and I was all like “See captain Kirk? See my beloved Captain Kirk? See James T Kirk himself, one of my favorite characters living and breathing on stage? LETS DO IT” So my whole family went, and I was beyond excited, kid me sitting in the dark auditorium waiting to see THE Captain Kirk. Unfortunately though, as you may have guessed, Captain Kik himself did not walk out on that stage. I think William Shatner would have very much liked us to have thought he was THE captain kirk (in fact, he made it very clear in his show). But he is not. I slowly realized, sitting there listening to William Shatner talk very loudly about how cool he is, that even though he played Captain Kirk, he very much was not Captain kirk. William Shatner is an old (and this was in the 2010′s, so very old) washed-up actor. The most washed-up actor I’ve ever had the displeasure of learning about. I don’t like to talk shit on the elderly (and he is, I can not stress this enough, very old) but I have never experienced anyone with a larger ego than Mr. Shatner. It’s very obvious that he thinks he's one of the most genius actors that has ever graced the TV screen. The show was awful. It was a narcissist complimenting himself for 2 hours straight. My heart sank down slowly into my gut the whole time. By the time it was over, i was very certain of one very disappointing fact: Captain Kirk does not exist. And obviously, I already knew that. Logically, he could not exist, he was a character made up for TV. But I think when you're a kid, you're slightly removed from reality. I was living in ignorance. I had yet to experience how cruel life could really be. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I was extremely let down by someone I (ignorantly) thought I knew. I think everyone has that moment, at some point, where they realize someone they idolized, someone they thought could do no wrong, someone they put above other people, was actually just as low as the rest of us. People are people, I guess. People are (sometimes) really awful people, too. Captain Kirk isn’t a person. He is a character. William Shatner is a person, and he is pretty awful. 

So yeah, there is my pretty boring story about how William Shatner did me wrong. TL:DR; 

I have seen William Shatner in person. I have heard him talk about his life. He is extremely egotistical and it was extremely disappointing. 

[mst3kproject]

Menace from Outer Space

 With that for a title, we can only be looking at one of two things: this is either a Star Man movie or an installment of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger!  I’d ask you to guess but I’m sure you all recognize the Orbit Jet up there, so without further ado, Menace from Outer Space.

Little Bobby thought he was gonna get a comet named after him, but a closer look at the approaching object reveals a missile of some sort, headed straight for Earth!  Vena determines that it could only have been launched from Fornax, an incredibly hot moon of Jupiter where it was thought nothing could live.  Rocky and the gang immediately set out for Fornax to ask them if they can please stop shooting at us, but when they arrive, they learn that they are not the first Earthlings to land here.  The wicked Professor Cardos crashed his own rocket here eight years ago, and he plans to use the power of Fornax’ unique crystals to conquer the galaxy!

The opening of Menace from Outer Space had me groaning.  I’ve seen enough movies about comets or asteroids about to strike the Earth to have a good idea what was coming, and I did not want to see 1956’s version of Armageddon.  Imagine my relief when the meteor turned out to be a missile, which came down and blew up and the whole thing was over and done with inside of five minutes!  I kind of want to apologize to the writers of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger!  I should have had more faith in you guys.

The rest of the movie has everything a MSTie could want from our old friend Rocky Jones.  The technobabble is completely meaningless when it’s not just dead wrong, the aliens are white guys in stupid costumes, the special effects are delightfully hokey, and the fight scenes are as clumsy and stilted as anything with William Shatner in it!  Even Cleolanta makes a cameo appearance, just when I was resigned to not seeing her again. The plot goes through a number of the twists typical of the series, with multiple bad guys making and breaking alliances against the heroes.  It’s pretty involving, and you honestly do want to keep watching and see what happens next.

Traditions are good, so I shall keep one up by talking about the science that appears in this storyline.  One of the most breathtakingly stupid lines comes very early in the movie, when Professor Newton announces that the object he’s spotted can’t be a comet, because it’s making a wooshing noise and “there’s no sound associated with a comet or meteor”.  Uh… professor?  There’s no sound in space, period, on account of the vacuum.  Tom Servo’s head would have exploded.

Then there’s the moon Fornax, which is presented as a bizarre and glittering landscape of crystal pyramids and weird, hourglass-shaped monuments.  There doesn’t seem to be any plant life, which leaves me wondering what the Fornacians eat.  Perhaps they don’t need food, since Professor Newton describes the life of the moon as being based on crystals.  Earth’s scientists had believed that nothing could live in such heat, but crystals, the professor says, can grow, and “growth is life!”  This leads to a bit of a disappointment, as I was hoping we’d get to see something weird and alien like the Horta from Star Trek or the crystal-based organisms of The Monolith Monsters.  But no, the Fornacians are merely people in vaguely Arabian costumes.  I probably should have known better.

Although the moon is described as far too hot for life, with a reference to thousands of degrees, when the Orbit Jet lands there the crew climbs out in their shirtsleeves and likens the weather to a nice day on Palm Beach.  So… what happened to the inhospitable heat?  When King Zorovac visits Earth with Rocky, he never comments on the cold – or on the fact that Earth’s gravity is said to be half that of Fornax’.  The high gravity makes landing and taking off on the moon difficult, but otherwise doesn’t seem to affect anything the humans try to do there. It’s like the writers couldn’t be bothered with their own plot point.

Well… there is that nasty little scene where the guys tease Vena about gaining weight, but that doesn’t count.

The other weird thing about the high gravity is that it implies some very odd things about Fornax itself.  Let’s say Fornax is the biggest moon in the solar system – that would make it the size of Ganymede, a real-life moon of Jupiter, which has a radius of 2600 km.  The surface gravity of Ganymede is about fourteen percent of Earth’s.  In order to make it twice Earth’s, the moon would need a mass about a third that of our home planet, which doesn’t sound like much until you consider that it’s thirteen times Ganymede’s real-life mass and would require a density of nearly ten grams per cubic centimetre.  Such a moon would have to be made almost out of pure lead! And that still wouldn’t have the weird gravitational effects further out in space…

The writers, of course, did not do that math (I can barely believe I did that math). It seems they were just assigning their fictional moon traits willy-nilly, without worrying about whether it was astrophysically possible or even internally consistent.  So it’s actually kind of interesting that Jupiter does, in fact, have a hot little moon!  That, of course, is Io, which has been squashed and stretched by Jupiter’s gravity until its insides spill out in the form of sulfurous volcanoes. The writers of Menace from Outer Space couldn’t have known that, since the volcanism of Io wasn’t discovered until 1979, when astronomer Linda Morabito noticed a volcanic plume in one of the Voyager I photos.  A neat coincidence, though.

As for the people of this curious world – the standard trope would have the inhabitants of a hot planet be belligerent and impulsive (fiery, if you will), so it’s kind of nice that the Fornacians are very much the opposite of this.  They’re presented as valuing reason and careful in their judgment.  Cardos has told the king of Fornax about Earth, but when given the opportunity Zorovac would rather see for himself.  His un-named queen clearly knows what kind of movie she’s in, because she actually listens to children who come to her with information relevant to the plot.  Princess Vollica is a quick study in English and quite resourceful, even though she’s no more than eight years old.  Their missile, we learn, was not actually an attack, but a misguided attempt at communication!

Despite the title being Menace from Outer Space, the real menace in the storyline is the very earthly Professor Cardos. He has told the Fornacians that Earthlings will come to them speaking sweet words about friendship and trade, only to conquer and enslave when Zorovac has his guard down.  I think we’re supposed to be angry that he would say such things, but considering human history, it’s not as if he’s lying. When Zorovac insists on making up his own mind about what Rocky and co have to say, Cardos turns instead to some more reliably evil allies.  This seems to imply that the greatest threat to humans in the entire universe is ourselves, which… again, history makes that seem reasonable.

Menace from Outer Space does do one thing neither of the MST3K installments of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! did, which is to give us a bit of an idea what some of the characters besides Rocky and Winky actually do.  We still don’t find out exactly how Bobby joined this team but it seems he is a child prodigy and an invaluable assistant to Professor Newton.  When they’re figuring out what they can and can’t take to Fornax with them, Newton argues that Bobby is ‘worth more than his weight in equipment’, and there are bits where he rattles off some rather intense technobabble that Winky is shown as unable to keep up with.  At the same time, the writers never forget that Bobby is only about twelve and while Rocky and Winky joke about his ‘romance’ with Princess Vollica, the friendship between the two children is clearly nothing of the sort.

Vena, too, does a little better in Menace. She’s shown to be a skilled mathematician, and capable of taking over as Rocky’s navigator if Winky is out of commission.  It’s clearly not that she isn’t intelligent, it’s just that her bubbly personality makes her come across as a ditz.  If this were used in the plot, by having the villains underestimate her, I would want to think that it was an intentional attempt to make the audience examine our prejudices about women, but sadly it never is.  Rather, I get the impression that the writers didn’t know what to do with Vena. She makes her one contribution early on when she determines the missile’s origin, and then spends much of the rest of the movie as a hostage.

When people describe Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! as a proto-Star Trek, they’re mostly speaking in terms of the plot, which involves exploring space and meeting very human-like aliens who all speak English.  This isn’t entirely fair.  While obviously not as progressive as Star Trek tried to be, Rocky Jones is smarter than I think it’s given credit for.  The politics of the no-win situation in Crash of Moons, or Cardos disguising his own imperial ambitions by projecting them onto his enemies, is actually pretty weighty for a half-hour tv show.  The acting may be bad, the science wrong, and the gender roles dated, but Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! does a good job of giving the audience food for thought.

[paulagnewart]

Song Sung Blue

🎶Funny thing, but you can sing it with a cry in your voice/And before you know, it get to feeling good/You simply got no choice/Song Sung Blue/Everybody Knows One/Song Sung Blue/Weeping like a Willow 🎶

Stormclouds swept low over the citizens of Knothole Village on this day 15 years ago, as the final story penned by prolific Sonic the Hedgehog writer Karl Bollers, was published.

From beginning his tenure colouring various one-shot issues and miniseries, to being among the four co-plotters of the infamous 'Endgame' saga, Bollers was swiftly elevated to head writer in 1996, starting issue 51.

Over the subsequent decade, he led the charge in the art of shaping Hedgehog history. From globe-spanning epics, resurrecting Sonic's numero-uno nemesis, to unveiling the lost origins of Mobius. He introduced forgotten elements from outlines past (Nate Morgan, the Super Emeralds), took other writers' characters and actually did interesting things with them (Geoffrey St. John, Elias Acorn, Fiona Fox, Robo-Robotnik) and created new heroes and villains so deeply engrained in the collective fandom conscience, that they remain as popular if not moreso today.

Even behind the scenes he brought changes, particularly with fan-turned-pro artist Jay Axer personally picked to join the book's roster. Mining talent from Sonic's fanbase had only been done once before, but now the floodgates were broken, and remains the industry standard today.

Under Karl's pen, the stories and characters were always evolving, perpetually moving forward as the battle escalated, simmered, and escalated once more. Some subtle and natural, others almost overnight. By the time One Year Later hit 80 issues later, the Acorn Kingdom had grown leaps and bounds, while the Freedom Fighters matured from children running guerilla warfare tactics against seemingly impossible odds, to specially trained young adults in the Knothole Special Forces Team. The future was bright, the sky was the limit, and even that was put to the test when our hero found himself literally Tossed in Space.

Until it all, sadly, came crashing down across 2004. By that point directions (and managements) underwent drastic changes. Egos reared their ugly heads, leading what should've been handled internally devolve into very public shouting matches, with fans caught in the crossfire. As the new year that was 2005 ultimately swept away the smoke, Bollers was gone, among what would be a growing list of casualties.

His sudden final contribution in issue 154 came not with an all-out bang, but a more personal tale. A surprisingly fitting inventory story, where Sonic goes full Kevin Costner to protect the now-superstar Mina, ensuring her song's sung blue from Robotnik's assassination attempts, be them on-stage snipers or bombs in the dressing room.

(As as aside, someone really should illustrate a parody of The Bodyguard, but with Sonic and Mina in Frank and Rachel's place. Hmm...)

Because it seems almost sacrilege not to mention this when talking about his tenure these days, no. I'm not even touching a certain panel from issue 134, except to say I find the whole thing bemusing. The book is gone. The characters aren't coming back. The scene was erased even before its cancellation. Yet fans still argue and commentate over it, even to this very day.

(As another aside, it would be interesting to see someone do a parody in the style of William Shatner's infamous "Get A Life!" skit from Saturday Night Live, but with Sonic fans demanding answers at a convention. Double-Hmm...)

For all maybe... six or so Sonic fans linked to this account who made it this far, I'm interested to hear your memories, if any, of Mr. Bollers. Are there any particular stories or characters you remember enjoying? Did some of his ideas help define your experience as a fan? Did they leave a sour taste? Or are any of his many, many unused storylines worth revisiting someday? As for the man himself, it feels only fitting to end with a quote from his Sonic HQ interview published way back in May 2003.

“Sonic carries a message of hope that many of todays comics have forgotten. It seems that in a lot of comics, the stories jst keep getting darker and darker from issue to issue, and the situations that the characters find themselves in just gets worse and worse. There’s never any light at the end of the tunnel to break up the gloom. Don’t get me wrong, Sonic isn’t all sunshine. Don’t let the blue spines and the red sneakers fool you. It has its fair share of tragedy, but we tend to balance that with humorous moments and a series of wins to equal the heroes losses.”

“I think younger readers, in particular, need to see both sides of the coin as they develop a view of the world around them without being talked down to. The world can be a pretty bad place, but amidst the badness there are happy moments that we can cherish with those we love. Even if they have two tails.”

[rabbitcruiser]

International Talk Like William Shatner Day

Today is International Talk Like William Shatner Day (ITLWSD). In 2009, Maurice LaMarche and Doug VanHorn bumped into each other on Facebook while each was attempting to have March 22nd–Shatner’s birthday—designated as ITLWSD. Though initially sworn enemies locked in a Lazarus-like battle over who’d thought of it first, the men eventually joined forces to promote the brash, percussive vocal stylings of Shatner.

If smooth jazz and slam poetry had a baby, then gave him up to be raised in a nunnery next door to the Playboy mansion, the conditions might be right to forge another Shatner-class individual. But in our opinion, it can’t be done. Shatner didn’t just break the mold: he smashed his way out and pulverized it with his pudgy newborn fists. Does any of this describe the man? Is the real Shatner somewhere in that bouquet of imagery? Who knows? That’s the mystery of Shatner. He runs too deep to plumb.

Maurice LaMarche is a voice actor known for his work on Futurama, The Simpsons, Pinky and the Brain, Team America: World Police and Frozen, among many others. If you play Six Degrees of Separation with him, you’ll be done after one. We’ve all heard his voice in something. (Take that, Kevin Bacon.) Mr. VanHorn’s personal Facebook page points out that Donald Trump looks alarmingly similar to an Oompa-Loompa. Look it up; the resemblance is astonishing.

Source

[gaycrouton]

Please I’m seriously begging you in the name of the smut loving fandom PLEASE continue the drunk sex toy story!! I swear we will all change scullys soaked sheets no biggie 😎 just continue 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼💜💜💜💜💜

Here I come a month late, lol. Sorry for the delay, I wrote something and then I hated it and almost gave up, but my lovely beta and support @admiralty-xfd recentered to me and thus this was birthed. I hope you like it!

Here’s a link to Part One

Here’s the AO3 Link

“Scully, you look like an icicle,” Mulder laughed as they rushed into her motel room. The seven blocks really didn’t take much time, but the wind burned her cheeks and the coat that served her so well in Maryland really wasn’t suited for the cruelty of an Ohio winter.

“I-I’m f-f-freezing,” she stuttered, making a beeline for the heater to set it on full blast while he slipped his coat off.

She turned around just in time to see him taking off his tie, a sight her eyes usually weren’t privy to, but one she always replicated in her mind after seeing. She saw him smirk at her and she realized her appreciation probably wasn’t as discreet as she thought. The cold had sobered her up a little, but not as much as it probably should have and she still felt clumsy from the alcohol, resulting in her stripping off her coat in a less-than-graceful manner.

“You should get on the bed,” he told her as she tossed her coat on a nearby chair and used it as leverage to slip off her shoes.

“What?” she squeaked, losing her balance and letting her foot hit the floor hard as she stabilized herself.

He laughed at her and clarified, “You’d get warmer if you got under the covers.”

“True,” she nodded. “I think I’m going to slip into my pyjamas first. I’ll only be a minute though, so if you wanna stay here and put on a movie or something, go ahead.”

“I’ll be back, I’m going to do the same,” he responded, slipping through the adjoining room into his own.

Now alone in her room, instead of going to the bathroom, she pulled her bag onto the mattress and shifted around for her pyjamas. She disrobed haphazardly before slipping her shorts up her legs and onto her hips. She shoved her fist in her bag, trying to reach around for her shirt, but only finding miscellaneous work attire.

“What do you want to-shit. I’m sorry,” Mulder apologized. She turned her head over her shoulder and saw Mulder had thrown a hand over his eyes and was comically stumbling back into his room.

His underestimation of how long it took her to get dressed resulted in him getting an eyeful of her bare back and she felt herself smiling at his juvenile reaction to her nakedness. She reached around some more and found her t-shirt, sliding it over her head before calling out, “I’m decent!”

A moment later, a red-faced Mulder came back into the room, adorned in a heather gray shirt and a pair of black boxers, with a sly smile on his face. “I don’t know, I thought you were more than decent earlier,” he joked, throwing himself onto the opposite side of the bed and grabbing the remote control.

“Oh I’m sure you did,” she laughed, untucking her hair from the neckline of her shirt.

“Is Star Trek okay with you?” he asked, pointing to the screen.

“Sure,” she replied. As she settled next to him on the bed, the white of the bedsheet in between them felt taunting. She wasn’t sure if he could tell, but she felt like she was in the midst of a whirlwind of emotion. She was still buzzed enough to want to continue their prior conversation, but she was sobering up enough to recognize that was probably a bad idea.

The propinquity made her want to scoot close enough to touch, and she knew he had to be feeling the lingering tension in the air.

If it were me…

She held back that urge to scoot closer though because she could only be so ballsy and she’d already decided she wasn’t going to let the conversation at the sex shop become an unspoken memory quite yet. She might need this space as a safety net.

She just had to know.

“I think McCoy’s underrated,” he commented, not paying attention to her internal battle.

“You didn’t finish your sentence,” she blurted, her eloquence still sitting at the bar stool where she decided a fourth shot was necessary.

“Yeah I did, I said I think McCoy’s underrated,” he repeated quizzically.

“No, no,” she smirked, waving her hand in front of her face to dismiss his confusion. “Um, before. When we got kicked out.”

“Ohhh,” he drew out, nodding before a grin tugged at his lips. “Remind me, what did I say?” His tone made it evident he didn’t need reminding as much as he wanted to hear her say it.

She rolled her eyes and felt her palms start to sweat, why couldn’t she be as bold as she’d been thirty minutes ago? She’d always been curious if he’d ever thought about them being intimate and she’d been so close to finding out the answer. She was technically still close now, he was in good spirits and she knew he’d answer, but she couldn’t find her nerve. “Never mind, I’m being ridiculous,” she laughed, diverting her attention to William Shatner.

“You’re never ridiculous, Scully,” he reassured. “Are you talking about when you were mentioning how men didn’t usually um…take care of you?”

She laughed at his word choice, making it sound more like a hitman situation than prior lovers’ lack of effort to make her come. “Yes,” she admitted, playing with the nail on her left middle finger. “You said it was a shame, and then you started saying-”

“If it were me,” they repeated in unison.

Mulder looked shy, like he too was thinking he’d spoken too much at the shop and now had to deal with it, and she just smiled and nodded shyly, “Um, yeah, but you didn’t ever finish your sentence.”

“I think I was being a little too direct in the heat of the moment,” he sighed, scratching his face. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he admitted with chagrin.

“Mulder,” she drew out with a sardonic chuckle, getting his attention. “I, in graphic detail, talked to you about how I masturbate. If either of us need to be apologizing it should be me,” she admitted, putting her hands over her face for a moment after to cover her slowly budding embarrassment.

“Don’t…you don’t need to apologize,” he replied before awkwardly adding “It was, um, enlightening.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure when I sober up in the morning I’ll feel the same,” she chuckled, smiling when he joined her.

“I uh, I was just going to say that isn’t fair to you and I wouldn’t let that happen,” he rushed in one long exhale, reaching over to the nightstand and stealing a drink from the water she’d left there the night before.

“Whaddya mean?” she asked, letting her head fall over to her shoulder so she could look at him. He sent her a heavy look and the implications hit her immediately. I’d make you come. “Oh,” she murmured.

“I didn’t mean to be crass or anything. That’s just shitty it’s not a guarantee for you every time you,” he elaborated, making gestures with his hands that she was assuming implied ‘have sex’.

She shrugged and watched the television screen with feigned interest. “It’s okay, I take care of myself.” A grin spread across her lips and she chuckled, “As you clearly now know.”

He made a clucking sound with his tongue that had her looking back at him. “You shouldn’t have to, though.”

The look of dissatisfaction he was giving her felt too intense to look directly at. “Well…” she started. “I mean-don’t you too?”

“Don’t I what?” he asked.

“Takecareofyourself,” she rushed in a quiet mumble. She cleared her throat and added, “I just assumed, with all the tapes and the subscriptions.”

“How did you know about the subscriptions?” he asked in surprise.

“When I went over to your house to feed your fish a few months ago, you got a phone call. I didn’t answer it, but I heard a woman named Red come over the answering machine. At first I thought maybe you were seeing someone, but then she started talking about renewing your membership,” she explained.

While she was talking, his hands went to his face as he let out a low groan. “Oh my god, that’s so embarrassing.”

“She sounded cute,” she teased, earning another groan from him. “Oh come on, Mulder. Don’t be embarrassed,” she laughed, grabbing his forearm and trying to pull his hands away.

“I can’t believe you heard that,” he whined as his hands slid down his face.

“Mulder, it’s not like I found a used condom or something. Some people like visual stimulation, some people like audible stimulation, some like mixtures of all sorts of stimulation. It’s perfectly normal,” she reassured.

He let his eyes flick over to her and he looked like he was trying to choose his words wisely. “What do you prefer?”

She let go of him, realizing she’d inadvertently learned into that dangerous space between them, and re-adjusted herself on the bed. “When I…?”

His eyes hadn’t left her and he looked so tempting sprawled on the bed like that. He looked like the statue of the River Tiber come to life, flesh and blood mimicking perfect marble. “Yeah,” he nodded, his eyes giving her a similar appraisal.

I prefer to think about your voice and whatever you looked like earlier in the day. I like replaying conversations we had in my head, but imagining how they could have turned out differently. How they could have ended with me bent over your desk screaming your name. "Well, it’s a proven fact that women are more likely to rely on their own im-imagined fantasies than, um- external factors. That’s not to say visual and audible stimulation aren’t nice, but they’re not as important,“ she explained.

"Is that what you utilize? Fantasies?” he murmured softly.

“More or less,” she answered vaguely.

She could hear him thinking. It was just a side effect of being his partner for this many years. She could hear all her hypothetical fantasies dancing around in his head as he tried to select the one that fit her best. If she had any doubts that was what was happening, her suspicions were confirmed when he had to readjust himself on the bed to hide the tent in his boxers. Attempt to hide.

“Can I ask you something?” he prompted, his eyes roaming her face for any sign of hesitance.

She paused, licking her lips and finding no remnants of her drink left, the only residue being the boldness of their words and their lethargy. “Shoot,” she replied with a confidence her nerves couldn’t match.

“How long has it been?” he asked straightforwardly.

The question took her by surprise and she wasn’t sure what he meant. “Since I fantasized?” she clarified.

“No, since, uh-" You’ve been fucked.

"Oh," she interrupted. He’d probably put it more eloquently than she’d mentally finished the sentiment, but the way he licked his lips was too influential for any other wording.

"You don’t have to answer that, if you don’t wanna,” he reassured, making sure she knew she had an escape from this conversation.

But if there was one thing they were good at, it was plunging headfirst into dangerous situations. “Just once in the past, seven or so years,” she murmured, looking nervously at her hands.

She knew he knew what that one time entailed, and she was glad when, instead of pressing her about what was a tense time in their partnership, he decided to avoid mentioning the name Ed Jerse directly. The only question he had directly related to the fling being, “Was it good?”

“It was…nice,” she mused, bending her legs so she could idly play with her knee caps while giving her something other than his intense gaze to focus on.

“Ouch,” he fake winced. It drew her attention and she saw he was wearing an amused smile. At her look he added, “I don’t think any guy would be thrilled to know a night with him was described as 'nice’,” he explained.

She smiled and rolled her eyes, “No, I mean- the sex was invigorating, but um-.”

She paused as she searched for her words, feeling the usual openness of her feelings that tended to accompany a night of drinking. She could already imagine future Scully burying her head in her hands at the thought of what she was going to admit.

“But…?” he prompted.

“But it was nice to feel wanted, you know,” she admitted.

“You’re wanted, Scully,” he murmured in a soft voice. She looked over to him again and saw his smug facade had been shed in favor of an earnestness that made him look years younger.

She lowered her legs and let her feet rock back and forth, the toes occasionally coming together to meet in the middle before inevitably dropping away. “I mean really wanted. Wanted as a woman,” she explained.

She could feel him building himself up to say something and she suddenly got nervous and didn’t know if she wanted to hear what he was about to say. Instead of letting him respond, she asked, “What about you?”

He looked taken aback at the diversion, but not altogether surprised by it. “What about me?”

“When was the last time you had sex?” she asked.

“Once in the last seven or so years,” he responded. She felt her feet’s movements freeze and she knew he caught that. Who?

She realized in this moment that she’d never really considered it. He’d always just been…Mulder. Her Mulder, with his porn videos and the nickname he bore like a scarlet letter. He was attractive, no doubt, but she just thought…

She didn’t know what she thought.

And because of that she didn’t know what to say.

“Oh,” was all that escaped her lips. It was all she could muster. She couldn’t ask who it was. If she asked who it was while he didn’t ask her, she’d seem defensive. She’d seem like a jealous girlfriend.

The only thing she really was, was his jealous partner. And jealous partners knew when to bite their tongue.

A tension permeated the air and she wished she knew what to say to clear it out. Sensing her unease, he offered, “It was when you were gone, um. When I couldn’t find you.”

“Oh,” repeated, a more curious inflection than its downtrodden predecessor. She’d been told by many people that it was a bad time for him, but she still didn’t know to what extent.

She couldn’t help but notice the similarities there. He indulged while they were physically distant, and her while they were emotionally. What did that say about them?

Repeating his earlier question, she asked, “Was it good?”

“I guess,” he shrugged.

She let out a breathy chuckle and, at his glance, declared, “Okay, 'it was nice’ is a hell of a lot better than 'I guess’.”

He laughed and nodded in acknowledgement, “You’re right, you’re right.”

“Why the lackluster review?” It wasn’t any of her business, but she was curious.

He made a hesitant sound and shrugged, looking uncharacteristically shy. “I don’t even know if I was doing it because I was h-because I really wanted to,” he explained, leaning his head against his hand as he looked at her. “I think I was just sad and wanted to feel some sort of connection.”

The thought made her sad. The Mulder was so lost while she was gone that he went out and had sex with a stranger just to feel something. In all honesty, she didn’t know anything about his sexual history, but she knew him as a person. And Mulder was not the type to give himself away easily. She knew that first hand.

With a sympathetic sigh, she let her head lay lethargically on the pillow as she murmured, “We’ve all been there.”

“You know you’re wanted, right?” he asked again. She was staring at the ceiling as he posed the question and she felt her eyes widen at his statement.

She rolled her head over to the shoulder facing him and saw he was looking at her with startling reverence. The combination of his boldness and his gaze had her at a loss for words. “I-um…”

“I don’t mean to overstep my bounds, but I wasn’t lying when I said it wouldn’t be hard for you,” he murmured.

“What?” she asked in a soft voice.

He licked his lips again, somehow avoiding looking lascivious while doing so, as he looked her dead in the eye. “Any man would be lucky to be with you.”

She maintained eye contact with him, looking for any sign of dishonesty yet finding none. The intensity of conviction in his statement made her breath catch in her throat. “I-I don’t know,” she laughed breathily, shaking her head.

“You’re brilliant and beautiful, Scully,” he admitted. Upon seeing her blush, he added, “I don’t say that to embarrass you. I just don’t like seeing you doubt yourself.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” she responded shyly, her gaze flitting to the screen that’d somewhere down the line started playing infomercials.

“Just being honest,” he replied.

Maybe it was his current boldness rubbing off on her, but she still had one curiosity that she couldn’t ignore. “Can I ask you something inappropriate?” she asked, realizing the redundancy before even asking.

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” he joked goodnaturedly. “But yes, please do,” he added.

Licking her lips with subconscious trepidation, she asked, “Earlier, um, in the shop and when we were talking about fantasizing just now, you were hard, weren’t you?” Thinking about it and thinking about asking him were one thing, but speaking the words aloud to him was a completely different ballgame. She felt her face blaze and she knew she looked as uncomfortable asking as she felt. But she just wanted to know.

He laughed lightly, not being subtle as he grabbed his still moderately present erection and tried to adjust himself. “I was trying to be discreet.”

“I think it’s impossible to be discreet at that size,” she pointed out, gesturing to his bulge.

He smiled at her words, clearly surprised she said it at all, and chuckled a sincere “thank you.”

“But seriously, is it just because we’re talking about sex? Or…” she prodded, unable to finish the rest of the question. The part that would require her to explicitly ask him if she turned him on. She knew full well that this line of questioning would undoubtedly embarrass her in the morning, but the gentle pulsing between her thighs that had been present all night didn’t care.

“Partly,” he answered vaguely.

“Partly?” she repeated.

He chuckled nervously and adjusted his weight on his elbow. “I-I don’t want to make yo-”

“You won’t make me uncomfortable,” she interrupted, eager to hear the answer he was obviously nervous to give. “I’m asking.”

He paused for a moment, making sure his honesty is really what she wanted. He licked his lips again and took a deep breath before admitting, “Partly because we were talking about sex, but partly because it was about you.”

About me. "Really?“ she asked softly.

He nodded before adding. "It’s been a long standing curiosity of mine.” He kept looking at her for a moment, watching for some sort of reaction before letting out a breathy chuckle and ducking his head shyly.

“What are you curious about?” she asked, almost gasping in surprise that she actually asked.

His gaze shot back to her. “Seriously?”

She nodded, as if transfixed by the possibility of arousing Mulder. “Yeah, I mean, I’ve been pretty candid all night. What’s the harm?”

Saying something that would be impossible to take back was the harm, but she was purposefully ignoring that fact.

“I want to know what turns you on,” he stated almost immediately, his eyes idly wandering to her chest as her breathing deepened. She felt her nipples harden under his gaze and, by the bob of his adam’s apple, so did he.

“I…I like dominance,” she admitted outloud for what, she was pretty certain, was the first time.

“Dominance? Like dominating-”

“No, no,” she shook her head. “Being dominated. Not in the intense BDSM way or anything but, you know, the casual way.”

“Casual way? Is there such a thing as casual dominance?” he teased with a lilt and a smirk.

She rolled her eyes at his teasing before explaining, “I think at the root of it, it’s the stereotypical 'woman has to prove herself constantly at work so when it comes to intimacy she finds pleasure in relinquishing that power’ idea. I don’t like any sort of shame component, I just like, um…” she trailed off, having a hard time finding the right words.

“Someone else taking control?” he offered.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Hair pulling?” he asked, randomly listing something off.

The question brought the image of Mulder, raking his fingers through the hair at the base of her skull before making a fist and tugging on it. The sensation making her entire body tingle. “I like it,” she admitted, hoping he didn’t see the goosebumps that spread over her body.

“Spanking?” he asked, his eyes almost imperceptibly flickering down to her ass and back up again.

She thought about Mulder bending her over his knees, his erection hot and hard as steel against her stomach as his hand came down and smacked her, causing her body to lurch against his. You like that don’t you? She felt a gush of arousal leak out and she tried lamely to clear her throat as she replied, “Yeah.”

“Restraints?”

Her eyes fluttered a little and she could feel her breath starting to become slightly shallow. “Absolutely,” before adding, “…with the right person.”

Scully chanced a look herself and saw his boxers were tented by a prominent erection. “Wh-what about you?” she asked in an unintentionally husky voice.

“What turns me on?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she nodded. She was trying to discreetly squeeze her thighs together to alleviate some pressure as she squirmed into the bed. She thought since they were making eye contact that he wouldn’t have noticed, but apparently he was even more perceptive than she’d given him credit for.

“When you do things like that,” he replied in a low, smooth baritone.

His words made her eyes widen at the same time her lips parted to gasp lightly. “Like what?”

“When you’re turned on and you try to hide it. The way you can’t sit still, the way your blush reaches your chest, the dilation of your eyes and the way your breathing changes,” he explained, giving attention to each trait with his appreciative gaze.

“Those are just the body’s natural responses to arousing stimuli. It causes-” she paused as he stretched his body, the movement pulling the hem of his shirt away from his boxers and revealing a tantalizing sliver of taut muscles. She withdrew her gaze and saw a cocky smile tugging on his lips. “It causes an increase in blood circulation that results in a flush, and the blood flow to the sex organs causes a feeling of pressure that needs to be relieved. The dilation of the eyes happens whenever anyone looks at someo-thing, something desirable.”

“And that,” he replied.

“What?” she all but whispered.

“It turns me on to hear you talk science,” he explained.

She let out a little laugh and rolled her eyes. She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. "That’s my job, Mulder.“

He smiled back at her and teased, "I know, it’s hard sometimes to deal with.” She smiled at the play on words, but couldn’t help but glance back down at his persistent erection. “You didn’t deny it,” he stated confidently.

“Deny what?” How many times did she have to ask for clarification? Was it the alcohol or was this territory so foreign to her she couldn’t find footing?

“That you’re aroused,” he reminded her, his voice so deep she swore she could feel it.

“You are too,” she countered, gesturing to his boner.

“You’re not being dominated, so what’s causing it right now? Is it really just because we’re talking about sex, or?" he asked, using her words from earlier.

She followed suit. "Partly,” she replied, playing with her nails while her hands rested on her abdomen.

“Partly?” he mimicked.

The words were in her throat, but she was starting to realize they were teetering on the point of no return. He saw her thoughts swirling and he leaned in a little closer and offered, “You could tell me it was partially because of this infomercial right now and I would never think less of you. You could tell me it was because you were fantasizing about the few strands of hair Melvin has on his head that he combs over-”

She started laughing and slapped him on the arm playfully, earning a toothy grin from him. It was that small act of kindness on his part, letting her know everything would be fine no matter what she said, that did her in. “No, no. It’s um-” her laughter died down a bit as they both paid close attention to her words. “It turns me on knowing I, at least to some capacity, turn you on,” she admitted.

“At least to some capacity?” he questioned. She felt his mouth only a few inches from her ear, the weight of him dipping the bed as his warmth radiated on her side. “Scully, everything you do turns me on.”

She let her head fall to the side facing him and resisted the instinct to jump away when she realized their faces were only a few inches away. “Can I ask you another personal question?” she asked softly.

His eyes were dilated to the point of being almost black and she felt a chill run down her spine as the pulse in her sex became near unbearable. “Of course.”

“Will you kiss me?” she whispered so quietly her voice broke.

The words hit his lips and they moved almost immediately in response. He eased himself at a different angle, so that he was leaning over her reclined form yet not bearing all his weight on her as he watched her from above. His eyes roamed her face as he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Are you sure?”

She swallowed and nodded in nervous excitement and it was all he needed to descend and close the gap between them. They’d been in close proximity to each other plenty of times before, but this was so different. She could feel him on a new, and oh so intimate, level. The way his lips, though pressed firmly against hers, were timid and languid in their movements. She could feel his breath puffing intermittently against her cheek as his nose pressed into the skin there.

He was clearly taking his time with her to enjoy this, kissing her like it may be the only time he’d ever be allowed. Wanting to encourage him, she raised her arms and snaked them around his neck, dragging him closer to her. At her touch, he parted his lips and let his tongue come out to lick her lip before pulling the bottom one in between his own so he could gently suck on it while rubbing his tongue back and forth. The sensation made her clit scream in jealousy and it fueled her to open her mouth and recapture his in a much deeper kiss.

As soon as their tongues slid against each other for the first time he groaned. Mulder actually groaned into her mouth. The sound stirred something in her and she arched her back desperate to touch more of him. She could taste the salt from the sunflower seeds he’d eaten at the bar and she wondered what he could taste lingering on her tongue. A strawberry margarita? Remnants of her chapstick? How badly she wanted him?

After kissing for long enough that her lips were swollen, she moved her leg and inadvertently rubbed against the length of him. He broke off the kiss to hiss an intake of breath in between clenched teeth. She was panting while watching him until he ducked his head and rested it the crook of her neck - his forehead resting against her warm skin. “God, you have no idea…” he panted, not finishing his statement while his breath on her neck making her eyes practically flutter shut.

She cradled the back of his head in her hand and kept it there while she turned her head to whisper into his ear. “I don’t want you to stop,” she admitted in a breathy whisper.

He pulled back so he could look at her and she was struck with how surreal the whole situation was. This was Mulder. Her partner. Her best friend. And she was actively trying to sleep with him. How long had they both been wanting this very same thing?

“I don’t want to, either,” he admitted.

She smiled at him and he returned it before leaning down and pressing his lips to hers again before moving to her neck and licking her pulse point. “Wait,” she murmured, and, as expected, Mulder pulled away immediately and look at her for any sign of hesitation.

She sat up on the bed and grabbed the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it over her head gracelessly. She hadn’t even gotten her head out of the neck hole before she felt Mulder’s arms wrap around her bare back and pull her to her knees and into his lap, latching his mouth onto her nipple. She gasped loudly as the shirt left her body and she was met with the sight of Mulder tonguing her breasts.

“Oh my god,” she moaned in a whisper, adjusting herself so one knee was on either side of his hips, effectively straddling him. He hummed in contentment against her breast and she brought her hands up, one at the nape of his neck and the other on his shoulder to keep her stabilized.

He was swirling each rosy bud with precision and she could feel each swirl getting her wetter and wetter. She was only wearing thin cotton shorts and she could smell her own arousal, so she had no doubt Mulder could too. Being oddly sweet, even in the middle of what she hoped was foreplay, he kissed his way across her chest until he came to the other nipple, giving it just as much attention as its counterpart.

Between the cool air hitting the wetness on the peak of her breast and the way his mouth was working against her, she couldn’t help but start to rock on his lap, squirming so her arousal would rub tortuously against his. It felt so good that once she started it was hard to stop, so she started picking up the pace quickly, moaning his name in a husky tone all but ripped from her throat in pleasure.

She felt one of his hands lower down so that he was cupping her ass and helping her momentum while encouraging her to keep going. Mulder let go of her tits and let his head fall against her stenum as he pumped up against her. “Fuck, Scully," he groaned.

Then, suddenly without warning, he eased himself up so that she fell backwards onto the bed while he loomed over her. She felt him tuck two fingers under each side of the waistband of her shorts before looking at her. "I want to see you.” It was a question as much as it was a statement and she raised her hips in silent agreement, all but begging him to take them off. He slid them down the expanse of her legs and she heard him swear when she was completely bared to him.

Much like she had earlier, he whipped off his shirt and tossed it to the ground. As he did this, she put a foot on either side of him, her knees bent, so that she was completely and utterly exposed. When he caught sight of it, he put one hand on her knee while the other grabbed himself overtop his boxers, emphasizing his swollen length.

She licked her lips as she watched him stroke himself lightly. “God you’re so beautiful, Scully,” he praised, making her attention snap back to his face which was a mask of pure, unadulterated desire. He kept saying her name during this and she couldn’t help but think that it was him making sure she knew this was real. That he wanted her. The sentiments falling from his lips all sounded like things he’d thought in his mind a thousand times over. There was no hesitance, only honesty.

“So are you, Mulder,” she replied, matching him. He truly was. His torso was sculpted with lean muscles. He looked like he was glistening from his exertions and she wanted to run her tongue from the base of him to his neck. She wanted to stake her claim with her tongue.

He must’ve had a similar idea because he eased himself off the bed and, hooking his hands under the crooks of her bent legs, pulled her to the edge of the bed so that her ass lined up with the end. He got down on his knees so that he was at face level with her pussy. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he admitted, almost to himself as he placed kisses on the insides of her thighs.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, her hips squirming in overwhelming anticipation of what was to come. That 'what’ inevitably being her.

“Can I put my mouth on you?” he asked in what she knew was an attempt to torture her as his mouth had to have only been an inch from her. She could feel the warmth of his words on her dripping wet arousal and it made her gasp.

“P-please,” she whimpered, grabbing onto the bedsheets on either side of her.

He made a low sound that sounded like a mix between a chuckle and a growl but she didn’t have time to dwell on it because, within a moment, he was lapping at her with his tongue and she could focus on nothing else. She gasped in a full breath of air and arched her back, immediately raising her legs to drape over his shoulders. “Muh-lder,” she whined in ecstasy as he explored her with his tongue.

He quickly stopped and looked up at her from in between her legs. “Oh, I’m sorry did you say something?” he teased with a cocky smile. The entire bottom half of his face was glistening wet and she would have been embarrassed at how absolutely aroused she was if she wasn’t more preoccupied with her own desperate need to come.

“Mulder, please,” she whined, raising her hips off the bed and scooting closer to him.

She saw a fiendish gleam in his eye as he curled his arms around her legs and buried his face in her crotch, this time latching his lips directly onto her clit. “Ah!” she cried as her whole body started humming with anticipation. She didn’t even care that she was gently rolling herself into Mulder’s face, all she could focus on was how fucking amazing it felt.

He was playing with her clit in between his lips and sucking with the same reverence you’d give to a piece of candy when trying to figure out the flavor. He was a man on a mission and she felt his tongue matching pace with her whimperings and moans. She was so distracted by it that she didn’t notice his other hand moving until she felt him curve two fingers into her.

Then, she was coming. Hard. His name was ripped from her lungs in a gasp as her whole body went rigid around him. “That’s it, Scully,” she heard him praise against her sex as he drew out her orgasm. She swore every single cell in her body was charged with the power of that orgasm, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an orgasm so powerful or for so long.

Eventually she was reduced to laying limbless, panting, as he withdrew away from her - her body twitching towards the stolen contact. She watched him stand up and saw he was somehow harder than he’d been before, the tip of his cock leaking against the material of his boxers.

Finding her strength again, she pulled herself upright and grabbed the sides of his hips to stabilize herself, his cock prominently standing out in front of her face, desperate for her attention. She glanced up and saw he was staring at her with parted lips, waiting anxiously for her next move. She’d seen it before, but never in this context. When she’d seen it he was hurt, in distress, in pain, and more importantly, flaccid - never hard and aching for her.

Swallowing thickly, she pulled his boxers down his legs, helping him step out of them, and sitting upright to see Mulder in all his naked glory. “Fuck," she muttered to herself, taking in just how big he was now that he was fully on display. She raised her hand and wrapped it around his girth, giving him an exploratory stroke and enjoying the way he pulsed in her hand.

"Scully,” he gasped, letting his head fall back, his face towards the ceiling as she played with him. She opened her lips and put just the tip in her mouth, closing around him as she swirled her tongue along the rim of his tip.

“Wait,” he gasped, concaving his hips away from her and putting his hands on her shoulders, causing her to let go and look up at him.

She was still enjoying the taste of him on her tongue when he bent down and kissed her quickly before stating, “I’m sorry, as much as I’d love for you to do that, I’m too close and-” He didn’t say what he was implying, but she knew.

Crawling backwards onto the middle of the bed, she met his eyes and, in a sensual voice she didn’t know she had, demanded, “Come 'ere.”

He quickly crawled onto the bed so that he was looming over her, letting the weight of his body fall onto her before kissing her sweetly, a three-sixty from the passionate kisses they’d shared earlier, but still just as intense. His body felt exquisite so intimately pressed against hers. His erection was prominent against her inner thigh and if she wasn’t so trapped between him and the bed, she’d shift until he was where she wanted him.

Releasing her lips, he kissed her cheeks, her nose, and her forehead, peppering her entire face with kisses. She smiled at the sweet gesture and he looked pleased with himself for eliciting the reaction. “This,” he stated simply, raising his hand to brush back the sweaty hair sticking to her face. “This is what I’ve fantasized about.”

The fact he hadn’t even entered her, nor really done anything other than contribute to her pleasure, made the sentiment all the more powerful. He chose to reveal that as they were taking a moment to simply bask in each other and enjoy the intimacy of closeness. She felt her smile grow wider at his neverending ability to make her love him and whispered, “Me too.”

A miniscule flicker of surprise flashed in his eyes at her admission and she couldn’t believe after all these years he could still not know how she felt. She raised a hand to the side of his head and raked her nails across his scalp comfortingly. “I don’t want to wait anymore,” she murmured sweetly.

Nodding, he eased up and reached between them to grab himself, positioning the tip of his cock at her entrance. She leaned her head up so she could watch as he tentatively rubbed his erection up and down her folds, coating himself in her arousal before attempting to enter her. Everytime his head rubbed against her clit, she twitched - her body recovering while still preparing for another orgasm.

From her position, she saw as he eased in slowly, going in inch by inch to let her stretch around him comfortably. She her eyes kept darting between the sight of their bodies joining and the way his face seemed to contort in ecstasy at the sensation, a face she knew was being reflected back at him.

Every toy she’d ever put in herself while imagining it was him couldn’t compare to how good he really felt. From the way he throbbed inside her to the way his hands were clutching her hips like a lifeline to the way his pubic mound felt rubbing against hers - she felt like she was immersed in the sensations of him. “Mulder,” she breathed, raising her legs to wrap around his back and therefore letting him sink in deeper.

“How’s this?” he asked in a strained voice, keeping himself buried inside of her without moving.

She knew he was making sure he wasn’t hurting her and it was endearingly sweet. But sweet was not what she needed in this very moment.

“More,” she commanded, rocking impatiently against him and eliciting a moan from him.

He moved so he had a hand on either side of her head as he started pumping in and out of her, tentatively setting a rhythm. “Fuck, Scully," he whispered in what sounded like relief and grattitude combined.

She knew he was close because he had been all night and she wanted to make it as good for him as he’d made it for her. She rolled her hips upwards in a constant, steady rhythm so that on every inward thrust, their arousals ground together.

Having sex with him, in an odd way, felt like having a debate at work; each of them were highly attuned to the other, but instead of fighting to prove their point, they were competing to bring the other one more pleasure. As she rocked into him, he seemed to pick up the pace, angling his hips in a way that caused the curve of his cock to rub against her inner muscles just where she needed him. She let out a little high pitched keening sound and bit her lip as her brows furrowed. "Do you like that?” he asked in between thrusts.

“Y-yeah,” she whimpered, grabbing her chest to give her hands something to do.

He started shifting his body slightly and she thought he was just readjusting until she felt his hands thread through her hair, pulling on it with careful force. She bit her lip and her eyes fluttered shut as a bolt of arousal shot straight to her core. Encouraged by her reaction, he picked up the pace so that he was slamming into her hard and fast - the sound of skin slapping against skin reverberating off the walls, accompanied by the sound of pure wetness.

The hand not entangled in her hair slid down her body, over her abdomen and past her iliac crest, and raked through her auburn curls until he could rub her clit. She gasped his name and her hands shot up to clutch his shoulders. “Oh god, please,” the words tumbled from her mouth blindly.

Following her instructions, he swirled the swollen bud vigorously as he pounded into her, beads of sweat trailing down his torso. She felt that familiar pressure building up and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to take much more. “Mulder, I’m gonna-”

And before she could even finish the sentence, her muscles were spasming against his length as he growled her name, giving a few final thrusts until he

was peaking with her, spurting deep inside.

They both had locked eyes during their orgasms and she felt every ounce of his affections laser focused on her. It was overwhelming in the best way possible. After he was spent, he collapsed next to her, holding her close as they caught their breaths.

“Did I do as good as your toys?” he asked jokingly, easing the tension with a joke - clearly worried that her pot-coital mood would be regret rather than bliss.

Absolving his worry, she turned in his arms so she could snuggle closer, placing a kiss on his lips gently before honestly murmuring, “You have no idea.”

It was weird, the room had only been filled with the sound of their bodies a few moments before, but now for some reason it felt significantly more intense. The sounds of sex replaced with the sounds of contentment.

Content.

That’s the only word she could think of to use right now. What she’d been wanting for so long had finally happened and it was as amazing as she’d hoped. She readjusted her head and reveled in how his chin felt on top of her head - how she seemed to perfectly fit in his arms.

“I’m not drunk,” he stated out of nowhere, sounding as if the words were ripped from his throat unconsciously.

She leaned back and looked at Mulder who was currently trying to analyze her again. In that moment, she realized he’d taken her silence and twisted it into something self-deprecating. Maybe that she’d been hoping she could blame it on intoxication, whatever his reasoning was - no matter how strange the circumstances leading up to this moment were, she’d never take it back. Her beautiful fool. Pushing herself up on the bed just a little, she pressed another meaningful kiss to his lips before easing away and reassuring, “Me either.”

He smiled at her and she fell back into his arms. She knew he knew her well enough to know not to press her. She loved him, but she’d already revealed so much of herself tonight. He was content knowing she wanted this to happen and wasn’t opposed to it happening again.

The other truths would come in due time.

[brookston]

Holidays 3.22

Holidays

Age Is Just A Number Day

Arab League Day

Army Day (Philippines)

As Young As You Feel Day

Banned in Boston Day

Bihar Day (India)

Cornstarch Day

Daffodil Day

Day of the People’s Party (Laos)

Earth Day [Original Date]

Emancipation Day (a.k.a. Día de la Abolición de la Esclavitud; Puerto Rico)

Festival of Immortality

Gryffindor Pride Day

International Day of the Seal

International Goof-Off Day (a.k.a. National Goof-Off Day)

International Gurjar Day

International Taxi Driver Day (Russia)

John Magufuli Day (Tanzania)

Labour Day (Christmas Island)

Laser Day

Lynch Syndrome Awareness Day

National Badminton Day [also 3.30]

National Day of the Podenco (Spain)

National Day of Work-Integrated Learning Day (Canada)

National Donald Day

National Rehabilitation Counselors Appreciation Day

National Sing-Out Day

National 3-D Day

National West Virginia Day

Nowruz (New Year) [Day 3, Around Spring Equinox] (a.k.a. ... 

Dita e Nevruzit (Albania)

Nary Meyramy (Kazakhstan)

Navruz (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)

Nooroz (Iran)

Novruz (Azerbaijan)

Resident Evil Anniversary Day

Stanley Cup Day

Sun-Earth Day

Talk Like William Shatner Day

Tuskegee Airmen Day

World Cloud Security Day

World Day of Metta!

World Doula Day

World Mime Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Bavarian Crepes Day

Coq au Vin Day

We Love Broccoli Day

World Water Day (a.k.a. World Day for Water; UN)

4th Wednesday in March

American Red Cross Giving Day [4th Wednesday]

International Data Center Day [4th Wednesday]

Independence Days

Bihar (State founded; India; 1912)

Malus (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Anthony Van Dyck (Artology; Saint)

Basil of Ancyra (Christian; Saint)

Catharine of Sweden (Christian; Saint)

Clemens August Graf von Galen (Christian; Saint)

Darerca of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Deogratias, Bishop of Carthage (Christian; Saint)

Epaphroditus (Christian; Saint)

Festival of Cybele (Attis’ self-mutilation; Ancient Rome)

Hola Mohalla (Sikh)

Jonathan Edwards (Lutheranism)

Justin (Positivist; Saint)

Keep Richards Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Lea of Rome (Christian; Saint)

Nicholas Owen (Christian; Saint)

Paul of Narbonne (Christian; Saint)

Pretend to Be Sober Day (Pastafarian)

Quinquatria, Day 4: Poet’s Day (Pagan)

Rosh Chodesh Nisan (Judaism) [1 Nisan]

Slightly Silly Day (Pastafarian)

Toothbrush (Muppetism)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

All Shook Up, by Elvis Presley (Song; 1957)

Apostrophe (‘), by Frank Zappa (Album; 1974)

The Bible, printed by Johannes Gutenberg (Book; 1457)

Bringing It All Back Home, by Bob Dylan (Album; 1965)

The Clock (Film; 1945)

The Croods (Animated Film; 2013)

D-I-V-O-R-C-E, recorded by Tammy Wynette (Song; 1968)

Far Beyond Driven, by Pantera (Album; 1994)

Fist of Fury (Film; 1972)

The Golden Touch (Disney Cartoon; 1935)

Mr. Wonderful (Broadway Musical; 1956)

Olympus Has Fallen (Film; 2013)

On the Border, by The Eagles (Album; 1974)

Please Please Me by The Beatles (Album; 1963)

Power to the People, by John Lennon (Song; 1971)

The Rules: All You Need Is Cash (TV Rockumentary Special; 1978)

Sing Smokey, by The Temptation (Album; 1965)

Spring Breakers (Film; 2013)

Station 19 (TV Series; 2018)

Us (Film; 2019)

Today’s Name Days

Clemens, Elmar, Klemens, Lea (Austria)

Rosen, Rositsa (Bulgaria)

Lea, Leonarda, Oktavijan (Croatia)

Leona (Czech Republic)

Paulus (Denmark)

Viktor, Viktoria (Estonia)

Vihtori, Viktor (Finland)

Léa (France)

Elmar, Lea, Reinhilde (Germany)

Drosos, Drosoula (Greece)

Beáta, Izolda (Hungary)

Benevenuto, Caterina, Lavinia, Lea, Muzio, Onofrio, Nilda, Nilde (Italy)

Dziedra, Giedra, Ralfs, Tamāra (Latvia)

Gedgaudas, Gedgaudė, Kotryna (Lithuania)

Paula, Pauline (Norway)

Bazylissa, Bogusław, Godzisław, Katarzyna, Kazimierz, Paweł (Poland)

Drosida, Vasile (Romania)

Beňadik (Slovakia)

Bienvenido, Lea (Spain)

Kennet, Kent, Viktor (Sweden)

Lea, Leah, Lee, Leigh, Leighton, Parker (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 81 of 2023; 284 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 12 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Fearn (Alder) [Day 4 of 28]

Chinese: Second Month 2 (Gui-Mao), Day 1 (Ji-Mao)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 29 Adar 5783

Islamic: 29 Sha’ban 1444

J Cal: 20 Ver; Sixday [20 of 30]

Julian: 9 March 2023

Moon: 1.5%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 25 Aristotle (3rd Month) [Justin]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 12 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 3 of 90)

Zodiac: Aries (Day 2 of 30)

Calendar Changes

��月 [Táoyuè] (Chinese Lunisolar Calendar) [Month 3 of 12] (Peach Month)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 3.22

Holidays

Age Is Just A Number Day

Arab League Day

Army Day (Philippines)

As Young As You Feel Day

Banned in Boston Day

Bihar Day (India)

Cornstarch Day

Daffodil Day

Day of the People’s Party (Laos)

Earth Day [Original Date]

Emancipation Day (a.k.a. Día de la Abolición de la Esclavitud; Puerto Rico)

Festival of Immortality

Gryffindor Pride Day

International Day of the Seal

International Goof-Off Day (a.k.a. National Goof-Off Day)

International Gurjar Day

International Taxi Driver Day (Russia)

John Magufuli Day (Tanzania)

Labour Day (Christmas Island)

Laser Day

Lynch Syndrome Awareness Day

National Badminton Day [also 3.30]

National Day of the Podenco (Spain)

National Day of Work-Integrated Learning Day (Canada)

National Donald Day

National Rehabilitation Counselors Appreciation Day

National Sing-Out Day

National 3-D Day

National West Virginia Day

Nowruz (New Year) [Day 3, Around Spring Equinox] (a.k.a. ... 

Dita e Nevruzit (Albania)

Nary Meyramy (Kazakhstan)

Navruz (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)

Nooroz (Iran)

Novruz (Azerbaijan)

Resident Evil Anniversary Day

Stanley Cup Day

Sun-Earth Day

Talk Like William Shatner Day

Tuskegee Airmen Day

World Cloud Security Day

World Day of Metta!

World Doula Day

World Mime Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Bavarian Crepes Day

Coq au Vin Day

We Love Broccoli Day

World Water Day (a.k.a. World Day for Water; UN)

4th Wednesday in March

American Red Cross Giving Day [4th Wednesday]

International Data Center Day [4th Wednesday]

Independence Days

Bihar (State founded; India; 1912)

Malus (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Anthony Van Dyck (Artology; Saint)

Basil of Ancyra (Christian; Saint)

Catharine of Sweden (Christian; Saint)

Clemens August Graf von Galen (Christian; Saint)

Darerca of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Deogratias, Bishop of Carthage (Christian; Saint)

Epaphroditus (Christian; Saint)

Festival of Cybele (Attis’ self-mutilation; Ancient Rome)

Hola Mohalla (Sikh)

Jonathan Edwards (Lutheranism)

Justin (Positivist; Saint)

Keep Richards Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Lea of Rome (Christian; Saint)

Nicholas Owen (Christian; Saint)

Paul of Narbonne (Christian; Saint)

Pretend to Be Sober Day (Pastafarian)

Quinquatria, Day 4: Poet’s Day (Pagan)

Rosh Chodesh Nisan (Judaism) [1 Nisan]

Slightly Silly Day (Pastafarian)

Toothbrush (Muppetism)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

All Shook Up, by Elvis Presley (Song; 1957)

Apostrophe (‘), by Frank Zappa (Album; 1974)

The Bible, printed by Johannes Gutenberg (Book; 1457)

Bringing It All Back Home, by Bob Dylan (Album; 1965)

The Clock (Film; 1945)

The Croods (Animated Film; 2013)

D-I-V-O-R-C-E, recorded by Tammy Wynette (Song; 1968)

Far Beyond Driven, by Pantera (Album; 1994)

Fist of Fury (Film; 1972)

The Golden Touch (Disney Cartoon; 1935)

Mr. Wonderful (Broadway Musical; 1956)

Olympus Has Fallen (Film; 2013)

On the Border, by The Eagles (Album; 1974)

Please Please Me by The Beatles (Album; 1963)

Power to the People, by John Lennon (Song; 1971)

The Rules: All You Need Is Cash (TV Rockumentary Special; 1978)

Sing Smokey, by The Temptation (Album; 1965)

Spring Breakers (Film; 2013)

Station 19 (TV Series; 2018)

Us (Film; 2019)

Today’s Name Days

Clemens, Elmar, Klemens, Lea (Austria)

Rosen, Rositsa (Bulgaria)

Lea, Leonarda, Oktavijan (Croatia)

Leona (Czech Republic)

Paulus (Denmark)

Viktor, Viktoria (Estonia)

Vihtori, Viktor (Finland)

Léa (France)

Elmar, Lea, Reinhilde (Germany)

Drosos, Drosoula (Greece)

Beáta, Izolda (Hungary)

Benevenuto, Caterina, Lavinia, Lea, Muzio, Onofrio, Nilda, Nilde (Italy)

Dziedra, Giedra, Ralfs, Tamāra (Latvia)

Gedgaudas, Gedgaudė, Kotryna (Lithuania)

Paula, Pauline (Norway)

Bazylissa, Bogusław, Godzisław, Katarzyna, Kazimierz, Paweł (Poland)

Drosida, Vasile (Romania)

Beňadik (Slovakia)

Bienvenido, Lea (Spain)

Kennet, Kent, Viktor (Sweden)

Lea, Leah, Lee, Leigh, Leighton, Parker (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 81 of 2023; 284 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 12 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Fearn (Alder) [Day 4 of 28]

Chinese: Second Month 2 (Gui-Mao), Day 1 (Ji-Mao)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 29 Adar 5783

Islamic: 29 Sha’ban 1444

J Cal: 20 Ver; Sixday [20 of 30]

Julian: 9 March 2023

Moon: 1.5%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 25 Aristotle (3rd Month) [Justin]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 12 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 3 of 90)

Zodiac: Aries (Day 2 of 30)

Calendar Changes

桃月 [Táoyuè] (Chinese Lunisolar Calendar) [Month 3 of 12] (Peach Month)

[lesamisandlesmiserables]

On seeing the 2018 Les Mis North American tour - Mod Fantine

First off, I am going to be talking about everything about the experience. So if you plan on seeing it or have never seen Les Mis in any form SKIP THIS POST! I do not want to spoil anything for you. But if you cannot see it or already know the plot, this is the post for you!

Before I go on I must say that I went to an Accessibility performance. I don’t know what they are called where you are but that’s what my theater called it. This show was for the deaf, HOH and blind. This means there was a small screen that had subtitles and there were ASL interpreters. Hats off to those interpreters, they were subtle but they also gave a performance all their own. They seemed deeply passionate about A) their work and B) the story. While I did not need those accommodations I am so happy to see theater being opened up to everyone. 

Now on with my review!

The set and general stage design: The show was a bit dark lighting-wise. Les Mis is a darker show, yes, but everything looked like it was happening either evening or midnight. When Valjean is released from prison, it looks like they are doing it in the middle of the night and when Marius runs into Cosette for the first time it looks as if Valjean and Cosette are giving alms at night. 

I know they got rid of the revolving stage but the barricade seemed much sparser and thin. Not a gripe just an observation. I thought they made great use of the space and the set design of the alleys was marvelous. The sewers were excellently staged. The projection made Valjean seem so small and really demonstrated how hard that task was.

I have no idea if this is in all productions but they got rid of the time cards. You know the ones that say ‘Toulon’ or ‘Paris’? I think those time cards explain the story. Imagine if you have never seen the show; it must be confusing to understand the time jumps and location changes. Granted, these time cards were in the program but who is going to remember to look in the program for this info?

Lastly, I love the return to our boi Victor Hugo! They used some of his original art for backdrops and the title is in his original handwriting. I love how this is reconnecting the musical to its origins. It is in less of the big 80s style and more subtle and nuanced. 

Nick Cartell as Valjean: 

10/10!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He played Valjean a bit more angry and human. It is so easy to write Valjean off as a saint or a Jesus figure but Cartell’s Valjean was a flawed human. Valjean is always known as super strong and invincible but Cartell gave Valjean a limp after he leaves Toulon. But going along with not being perfect physically this Valjean is also flawed internally.  He doesn’t magically forgive Javert. He still holds a lot of resentment but knows that lashing out is not the solution. When he lets Javert go at the barricade, he doesn’t look like he wants to, but he knows that it isn’t his job to decide who dies.

BUT BUT BUT.........the connection between his Valjean and Cosette was so sweet! He did this cute thing when he first saves Cosette where he touches his nose and then boops Cosette’s nose. This happens several key times in the show: when they first meet, when Javert almost catches them giving alms and when Valjean dies. My heart just melted!!!!! This really cements that this is a father and daughter.  

Continuing on the idea of this Valjean feeling like a real human... when he gets the letter from Marius meant for Cosette he is like WTF my daughter isn’t a little girl anymore. He pauses throughout the song as if he is processing what Marius is saying. He also regarded Marius as if, “I don’t like you but my daughter does and that is the only thing that matters!” Also during his confession to Marius, he looks at him like: “If Cosette is ever unhappy with you, you better bet I will come running back from wherever I am. NO ONE HURTS MY LITTLE GIRL!”

Vocal-wise this man is now my favorite Valjean. His rendition of Bring Him Home was hauntingly beautiful. Bring Him Home is either one of the most beautiful songs or the worst sounding. It is so easy to miss those high notes but Cartell executes this song perfectly. His voice, in general, leans more towards tenor than the traditional baritone. He never screeched his words and his singing sounded effortless and clean. But seriously, if you ever have the chance to hear him sing Bring Him Home you will not have wasted your time in doing so. 

Josh Davis as Javert:

I loved this harsher toned Javert. As the story goes on, his voice ages and he actually sounds tired when he catches Valjean for the last time. We forget that while we see Valjean’s plight, Javert is also being worn down by the cat-and-mouse chase. I heard criticism from the lady in front of me that this Javert was too robotic. Yes, I agree Davis had a slight William Shatner effect to his words, but I do not think this was a mistake. Javert is very much a man who thinks in order to survive in this world one must do X, Y and Z, never deviate from that and be stoic. His baritone vocals were everything to me, it was a clear contrast between and Valjean’s lighter almost tenor voice.

Javert’s suicide was done beautifully. I dare not spoil how that bit was done but it was well executed!

Joshua Grosso as Marius: 

YES YES YES! You know that part in Les Mis where Hugo writes that Valjean sees Marius as a noddle?

Well, Grosso totally hit that nail on the head. I love how he feels like a real guy in his twenties when he is at the meeting with the other members of Les Amis. He also throws rocks at Cosette’s window... which is so cute. When Cosette leaves her balcony to go down and see him, poor Marius think it means she rejected him and my heart just broke! Marius can be played real foppish and as if he owns the world but this Marius was simply a young man caught up in love.

But, his chemistry with Eponine is to die for! Every Marius I have seen brushes off Eponine and treats her like she isn’t even really a friend. But this Marius and Eponine felt like they had been friends for ages. MUCH LOVE!

Jillian Butler as Cosette: 

I adored this Cosette. If there is one gripe I have about Les Mis the musical as a whole is how little we see of adult Cosette. She is a trauma victim who still sees light and love in the word. Butler as Cosette made the character feel again like a real person. She is scared of Marius when he is throwing rocks at her window. She held on tightly to Valjean when they were giving food to the poor. During the reprise of Heart Full of Love, I have no words to properly explain but she looked and touched Marius in a knowing sort of way. She seemed to be expressing that she had darkness in her past as well and that the grief will pass. I don’t know, this felt like a real character growth moment.

Mary Kate Moore as Fantine: As Mod Fantine, y'all must be wondering what I thought of this Fantine. While this was not my favorite Fantine, I must commend her for playing her much more raw and angry than usual. When the other factory women are accusing her and tormenting her, she fights back. Her I Dreamed a Dream was so raw and angry, it made Fantine less of a tragic waif but more of a tragic fighter. She really tried to survive but in the end, the word is not fair.

Various other thoughts in no particular order:

The caller. You know that bit where the offstage caller goes YOU HAVE NO CHANCE, NO CHANCE AT ALL? This guy really emphasized the part YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS and I was like ‘same bro’.

Bishop Myriel’s overly long note in ‘I have bought your soul for God’. God was more like Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

Gavroche flipping Javert off after Javert says “EVERYONE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS, CLEAR THIS GARBAGE OFF THE STREETS!” 

Marius accidentally getting caught in the gate when he tries to see Cosette for the first time. Like he is up there singing and then he has to get down and his coat gets caught. Eponine comes over and saves him and Marius looks a little embarrassed but then goes on singing. A+ on that improv!

Valjean singing with Cosette after he helps her with her bucket. I know a lot of productions do this but this Valjean was sort of hesitant like he’s never sung before but then gets used to it and is enjoying it.

Valjean holding Cosette in the air and spinning. Snow falling in the background really made this once cold environment much warmer ironically.

Any and all slapstick from the Thenardiers. 

Valjean pushing Eponine away from his door when she is delivering Marius’s letter. Like, we know that it is Eponine but to him, it is just some rando at the door.

My dad leaning over and asking who the person in the chair dying was. Because Cartell sang the ending song much higher than is traditional and my dad low-key thinking Cosette was dying and panicking.

Marius accidentally coughing in the sewers. The poor guy is pretending to be dead and there is a crap-ton of fog everywhere. Not to mention that this is Denver, Mile High, notoriously high altitude, Colorado. The poor guy had a coughing fit but Thenardier was moving so much you couldn’t really see it. But heart goes out to you! My asthmatic lungs couldn’t do it.

Sidenote: Thenardier playing with Marius’s ‘dead’ body.

The guy who harasses Fantine in lovely ladies and then acts innocent around Javert.... well his actor was also playing a lawyer in the court when Valjean bursts in with his confession. Not a criticism but I just remember thinking Ah so this is your day job, eh?

Valjean hobbling to the table to light his candlesticks before sitting in his chair to die. This was perfect. It made it clear that Valjean was dying because of loss of hope and love, not from disease. Valjean is strong but what changes him throughout the show is kindness and love and when he has lost that, he withers. BUT MY EYES WERE FULL OF TEARS, I JUST WANTED TO HELP HIM!

Enjolras’s body being shown in a cart that pulls into the scene and Javert having Gavroche’s body thrown into the cart as well.

DID I MENTION THE ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GRANTAIRE AND GAVROCHE? MUST PROTECT BOTH AT ALL COSTS!!!!!!

Marius standing farther away from Cosette and Valjean at the end. He knows that this is not really his moment but is there supporting Cosette.

Random old guy who stops Fantine from being harassed at the factory. YES YES YES it shows that while times are rough, there is always kindness somewhere. It really elevates the hope in the show. Like dude, you deserve everything good.  You are the ally everyone needs. It shows that anyone can be a saint and Valjean isn’t the exception.

That bit in the book where Valjean steals the coin from Petit Gervais. I did not know that they added that into the show and I loved it.

Due to the lighting being so dark, one of the main methods of lighting the scene was torches. Now sometimes this felt nice like when the whole town seemingly finds Valjean and returns him to the bishop. It really set the tone of the whole world being against Valjean. But sometimes it set this weird tone of all this happening at midnight.

Top marks to the person waving the big red flag! You go! I aspire to that level of energy in everything I do.

This Grantaire was SUPER nihilistic and I am here for it! Like when he teases Marius for his new love, it almost seemed like ‘enjoy it now because in the end we are all doomed to the abyss from whence we came!’ and then would go back to make sexual jokes and stealing everyone’s drinks. (Some people will disagree but I saw an u/s so his interpretation was perhaps VERY different than what you saw)

This Enjolras was super obsessed with this revolution. People always ship Grantaire and him and here there were 0 shippable moments. When Enjolras says “Grantaire put that bottle down!” he sounded kinda angry. “BRO CUT IT OUT! MY ONLY LOVE IS FREEDOM, QUIT USING THAT BOTTLE AS A PHALLIC SYMBOL OR I WILL PERSONALLY COME OVER THERE AND TAKE IT FROM YOU!” (again I saw an u/s which may account for the difference in performance).

EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY FRICKIN TABLES!!!!!!!!!!!!! That scene got me so hard! When the women are singing Turning, they leave candles on the ground and Marius hobbles in. Then the ghosts of his friends pick the candles up and carrying them off. Enjolras is the last to leave and he shares a long look with Marius as if to say it’s all on you, buddy. Marius grabs his candles and holds it like a glass and raises it to the Heavens, then the spotlight goes out and all we see is the candle before he blows it out. POWERFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All in all, I would describe this tour and version to be the most realistic and human. If you read closely I used words like human and flawed. This version made it clear while there may not be any saints, there are saint-like people and we should all try out best to be our best selves. This has become my favorite production. This version felt fresh and as if this could be anyone’s story. This isn't just some 19th-century French story but a story for the modern person. It speaks to the idea that times can be hard but in the end, if we show kindness, we can all get through this life a little easier.  I first saw this show in 4th grade and now a uni student I can see why this show made such an impression upon my 9-year-old self. This is truly a story that transcends time and I am so honored to have seen it again. 

If you saw it what did you think? Do you agree or disagree with anything I said and if so why? 

[skriak]

The best language no country uses: my first month learning Esperanto

Saluton! Mi lernas Esperanton. But a few weeks ago I’d have barely been able to guess what Esperanto was, and mainly knew it from a joke in the beloved sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf. Then one day a random YouTube recommendation led me to start learning a new language for the first time since I left school.

Esperanto isn’t your typical language, coming about as a collective cultural phenomenon over many years. Instead it was the passion project of Dr Ludwik Zamenhof, a Jewish-Polish linguist who, noticing the strict language barriers between different groups in his home town, formed the dream of an international second language which might help alleviate humanity’s long-standing issue of killing each other. He eventually called it Esperanto, which appropriately translates as “one who hopes”. As if creating a whole new fully-functioning language wasn’t impressive enough, Zamenhof’s baby enjoyed a fair bit of success after its 1887 release, to the extent that the League of Nations almost adopted it as an administrative language. Sadly, his idea might have come along at just about the worst possible time; the global surge of nationalism surrounding the world wars proved antithetical to the tolerant philosophy behind Esperanto, and the language has remained little more than a curiosity in the public eye ever since.

So why did I literally decide overnight to start teaching myself a language with no official government support and a speaking population scattered in small pockets across the globe? Well, quite simply because it’s a fascinating piece of work. Common knowledge states that a person can pick up a working comprehension of Esperanto in a fraction of the time it would take them to learn a traditional language, especially if they have at least one European tongue in their repertoire already, and I can honestly say that within a month I’m already more confident with Esperanto than I ever was with French after two years of schooling.

Zamenhof’s creation is remarkably efficient. For starters, it’s essentially a splicing of prominent European languages, meaning it’s common to recognise words from Spanish, Italian, English etc. More than that, though, the grammar is flexible, the pronunciation and spelling is downright utilitarian, and as a whole almost every possible step has been taken to make Esperanto as approachable as possible. There’s only one word for “the”, compared to the six I had to remember for German. Every noun ends in O, every adjective ends in A, and every present verb ends in AS, with the whole language using a consistent system of suffixes and prefixes that make it so much easier to guess at a word’s meaning based on its easily identifiable type, or even invent a new one. All in all, what quirks you might find with Esperanto are nothing in comparison to the minefield of half-rules and archaic logic you’ll find in a natural language. Especially the Anglo-Saxon clusterfuck that is English!

So yeah. It’s kind of a big deal. Even though a new language invented by one dude was always going to have an uphill struggle getting international recognition, Esperanto might have been ahead of its time and to date remains arguably the most well-known constructed language, with at least one popular language app featuring a course (which I passionately recommend if you’re remotely curious, since it’s free and low-effort), and a devoted global following who tend to be delighted to bump into a new Esperantisto. And while English may have stolen the spotlight as the likely candidate for a lingua franca, Esperanto remains shockingly easy to pick up and play, to the extent that some experts have argued the case for teaching kids Esperanto as a stepping stone to traditional languages, because it’s so much less punishing.

And on a personal note, I’ve found that the tangible sense of steady progress these past weeks has had a notable effect on my mental health after a rough few months marred by illness and the return of the dreaded warmer months. I enjoyed learning German back in the day too, but Esperanto’s flexibility and consistency makes it a satisfying puzzle to solve because it’s mostly just a matter of remembering the rules and assimilating new words. I’m also inspired by the philosophy and surprisingly eventful history that some research uncovers. From the Nazis cracking down on Esperanto as a supposed Jewish conspiracy (since fascists generally hate when people try to empathise with each other), to a pre-Star Trek William Shatner mispronouncing his lines in an Esperanto film, and even bands who exclusively perform as Esperantists. And while the language is politically neutral, it’s hard not to see it as a bit of a rebellious underdog after all it’s been through.

Esperanto might never be a serious cultural phenomenon but it’s certainly a subculture, and has practical benefits for anyone looking to understand how languages are put together. And while it might not be as weird as Klingon (which is an actual, functional language), or Solresol (which uses musical notes so you can talk through music), I sincerely believe it’s a beautiful and inspiring triumph in itself. A great book is still a great book even if nobody ever reads it, and Esperanto deserves to be known as a linguistic milestone even if its devotees will forever be an underground movement of friendly nerds.

Tre dankon, adiaŭ!

[fall-out-boytoy]

Happy international talk like william shatner day!!

[aion-rsa]

Dementia 13: Director’s Cut Brings Clarity to Dark Doings

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Before The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola made cheap, quickie horror classics like every other young director. He learned his trade at the “Roger Corman Film Academy,” where fresh filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, and Ron Howard graduated by finishing films in a hurry with barely more than pocket change for funding. Dementia 13: Director’s Cut, is now available on Blu-ray HD and 4K digital. The 1963 cult classic has been beautifully restored to its dark and murky glory, but are audiences ready?

Can you endure the shocks of Dementia 13? On occasion our minds accept harmful suggestions, William J. Byrd, the foremost expert in hypnotherapy Roger Corman could afford, advises the audience in the “D13 Test” extra included on the remastered Blu-Ray. Certain persons, for their own good, should not watch horror motion pictures, the audience is told. The doctor then asks 13 questions to which a seemingly hypnotized young woman writes yes or no on a blackboard. Have you ever spoken aloud to yourself in the mirror? Do you always think carefully before you speak? Have you ever raised your arm in anger to a close relative?

This is one of scenes slashed from the director’s cut of Dementia 13. These are questions Francis Ford Coppola does not want his audience to ask.

The scene, with its echoes of William Castle film gimmickry, was directed by Monte Hellman, and added by Corman to fill in Coppola’s sparse slasher suspense mystery. The film was supposed to be a cheap reupholstering of Castle’s low-budget horror film, Homicidal, which itself was lifted from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  “Dementia 13 is a “a rip-off of a rip-off,” Coppola chuckles in the “Introduction by Coppola,” which comes as an extra.

Dementia 13 is more of a love letter than a rip-off of Psycho, with similar story beats, characters and motivations. Coppola’s cameras squeeze subjects into ever-tightening frames. In the new restoration, the close-ups are amazingly clear. The actors can’t hide bad skin days, and you can see every hair on every mole.

Hitchcock’s 1960 classic follows Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, an adulterous embezzler who runs off with the loot into the arms of a mama’s boy who then leads the story. Dementia 13 opens with Louise (Luana Anders), a young gold-digger desperately looking for heart pills for her husband, John (Peter Read), and rowing frantically, before practicing her newly-dead husband’s handwriting for a note to his mother.

Besides horror and cult film aficionados, fans of Star Trek: The Original Series, should watch Dementia 13. It stars William Campbell, who played two memorable roles against Captain Kirk (Williams Shatner). In “The Trouble with Tribbles, he was Klingon Commander Koloth, who probably put the fur-baby in the coffee which went with the skipper’s chicken sandwich. In “The Squire of Gothos,” he played the most dangerous game, hunting Kirk for sport as Trelane, the spoiled son of indulgent godparents. In Dementia 13, he plays the moody sculptor Richard Haloran, heir to his mother’s fortune, who is engaged to be married to Kane (Mary Mitchel), who thinks she is paying Lady Macbeth.

The Haloran family are a wealthy Irish clan and their matriarch is Lady Haloran (Eithne Dunne). She is a suspicious woman, tortured by the ghost of her favorite child, Kathleen, who drowned as a child. The Lady is now very ill, and calls the rest of the family to her, basically so she doesn’t have to travel far to attend another wedding.

Her son John’s (Peter Read) new wife Louise (Luana Anders) is already fantasizing about digging graves, while Billy Haloran (Bart Patton) prefers other means of cover. The family physician, Dr. Caleb, is played by veteran creepy actor Patrick Magee, who may be best known for driving Alex to jump out of a window in A Clockwork Orange. Here he drives young budding psychopaths to his favorite local pub. Every word from his mouth sounds like a sad warning from someone who has done it all, but looked the other way.

Dementia 13 was made with the money that was left over from The Young Racers, another Corman low-budget film which Coppola worked on as sound man. The production was so rushed, the script wasn’t done when Coppola got to Ireland for shooting, we learn in the extras. He finished writing it with the art director Al Locatelli in three days.

According to the synopsis, Dementia 13 is “quintessential gothic horror, wrapped in the twisted mysteries of a family’s deepest, darkest secrets. A widow deceives her late husband’s mother and brothers into thinking he’s still alive when she attends the yearly memorial to his drowned sister, hoping to secure his inheritance. But her cunning is no match for the demented, axe-wielding thing roaming the grounds of the family’s Irish estate.”

The gothic settings of the Irish castles, and the generational curse inherent in the old country, evoke the later Italian Giallo films even though Dementia 13 is shot in black and white by cinematographer Charles Hannawalt. The ghostly Kathleen, who drowned in the estate’s pond, is an ever encroaching presence, amidst creepy dolls and monkeys, shadows and long, dark hallways.

Oh, and there’s an ax-murderer. Wanna talk about burying the lead? Psycho dispensed with the central figure just as the audience began to really worry about her. When Louise goes off to play with dolls, the audience is similarly left emotionally rudderless. This is the character we’ve been focusing on since the beginning of the film. Who’s ready for a wedding?

Dementia 13 joins director’s cuts of Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Part III, The Cotton Club, and The Conversation, and continues his maxim of less is more. Coppola removes six minutes from the original release, in addition to the preamble. He also re-edits sequences and restores the original ending, which Corman cut.

Produced by American International Pictures, Dementia 13 came out as the bottom half of a double bill with Corman’s X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes. It is worthy of a second look, if only because of how clearly it can now be seen. The film still works as the psychological thriller obscured by the ax-wielding phantom. 

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Dementia 13: Director’s Cut is now available on Blu-ray HD and 4K digital.

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