#Richard James Bright

[perfettamentechic]

18 febbraio … ricordiamo …

18 febbraio … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

2023: Barbara Bosson, attrice statunitense. È ricordata principalmente per la serie televisiva Hill Street Blues (1981-1987), per la quale ha ricevuto la nomina ai Primetime Emmy Awards per cinque anni consecutivi, dal 1981 al 1985. Successivamente, dal 1995 al 1997, ha interpretato la procuratrice Miriam Grasso in Murder One ruolo che le è valso un’altra nomination all’Emmy Award nel 1996.…

[mariocki]

Girls Nite Out (The Scaremaker, 1982)

"I'm, uh, Teddy Ratliff. I'm captain of the basketball team."

"Hi, I'm Dawn Sorenson, and I couldn't care less."

[kquil]

JAMES POTTER | 04:01 ⏤ALWAYS SAFE

SUM. : you bring james his lunch that you cooked yourself and almost get injured

G. : fluff ; modern au ; muggle au ; ice hockey player james ; girlfriend reader ; very angry james ; protective james ; team training ; drill accidents ; reader being caring and sweet ; reader is wifey material ; james is husband material

LENGTH : 0.8k

NOT PROOFREAD OR EDITED

“James!” you shout across the rink, standing by one of your boyfriend’s coaches, Richard, who’s become like an uncle to you. The hockey captain doesn’t stop, however, unable to hear past the whistling wind by his ears atop his thick and sturdy headgear.

“Gonna have to shout louder than that, little lady ,” the older man chuckles, adjusting the cap on his head of silvering hair. 

You ponder to yourself for a moment before smirking, which makes Richard arch a curious brow at you, “Darling!” The instant you call across the ice rink, you see James’ head whip towards you before he grins widely behind the front guard of his head gear. Behind him, the rest of his team come to a skidding halt and also look over to your waving and cheering figure. You’ve become quite familiar with all of his teammates and they love to tease their captain for being so head over heels for you so the team begin snickering to themselves, some even cheekily whistling and nudging at James who pays them no mind, his sole focus fixed onto you.

“Baby!” he cheers, delight and excitement evident in his voice before he speeds his way over to you. Richard whistles for the rest of the team to run short drills while the ‘lovely couple’ have their lunch. 

“I’m sorry for being late,” you gnaw at your bottom lip regretfully, a guilty look taking over your expression as James hurriedly takes off his headgear and gloves, revealing his sweat-soaked locks matted down and clinging onto his forehead, “Richard told me you didn’t eat anything-” because you wanted to wait for me…

“Don’t worry about it,” James says gently, his smile just as bright but much softer as he takes in your sweet expression. There’s so much love in his gaze, you feel your own heart bursting at the seams to attempt at reciprocating his adoration. James brings a finger under your chin and lifts your gaze to meet his kind stare; even though he appears sweaty, dishevelled and rugged from training, he’s just as handsome as ever, “you sounded really excited over the phone about cooking my lunch for me,” a heat crawls up your neck and explodes across your cheeks as James grins, his eyes staring lovingly at you, “and I was just as excited to eat what you so graciously cooked instead of the canteen food here,” James giggles to himself, dopey and carefree, “you cooked it just for me~ I’m so lucky~” 

You returned his wide grin and felt yourself losing your will to hide his surprise. He didn’t know it but you were only late because you went and bought his favourite treacle tart from his favourite bakery across town.  

“Actually~” you begin to reach down so that you can present the bakery take out box when you suddenly see James pull back, his spine fully erect as his eyes and ears become fully alert. The words were on your tongue, ready to question his odd behaviour when he suddenly shoots his arm up to the side; just as you were beginning to register a faint whistle in your ear, it was followed by a resounding WHHHIIIIP!

In James’s stretched out hand was a hockey puck. And it was on a one way course of high velocity towards you. Seeing this, anger flares up like the fuse of an explosive ready to violently detonate in James’s eyes.

“SHE’S! MY! FUCKING! GIRLFRIEND! WATCH IT! YOU FAT FUCK!” James’s booming voice cuts through the air and silences all activity on the rink, not only that but he was easily able to narrow down the perpetrator of the hazardous stray puck, “...WELL?!! SAY SOMETHING YOU DICK!” you look past James’s figure and lock eyes with guilty brown pools, likely the offender of your potential accident.

“S-sorry,” you hear his teammate stutter, which you accept with a small nod and place a gentle hand on James’s arm, attempting to calm him down and bring his attention back to you. As he slowly turns to you again, James slams the puck to the ground and kicks it away with his ice skate. 

“Are you okay, angel?” James asks, his voice soft and kind, a complete contrast to the booming, angry shout he just projected. 

“I’m perfectly fine,” your warm voice visibly soothes the hockey team captain and he rests his forehead against yours with a sigh of relief, “...accidents happen James, please don’t lash out on the poor g-”

“Accident or not, hurting you— almost hurting you is deserving of a beat down from hell,”

Looking into his hostile but worried hazel eyes, you silently express your objection alongside some appreciation too. You’re thankful for his worry, his aggression over your safety even makes your heart flutter but he’s better than any violence. It takes a moment but James finally sighs and nods, a silent promise to watch himself and stay civil. 

Smiling softly, you lean up to kiss his lips, “thank you for saving me,” his lips smile against yours. 

“You’re always safe with me, princess,”

NAVI.

A/N : im a bit rusty on writing since i haven’t been able to write for a while from stressful home stuff but here’s me trying to get back into it with another ice hockey james au (inspired by another tiktok). hopefully, this will get me in the headspace to write good requests from my milestone event.

TAGLIST : @melinajenkins @aastonishment @until-i-found-you @corp0real @celestcies @lovelydoveval @inlovewithremusjohnlupin @calums-betch @futurecorps3 @hihihi1112 @simpingforthe80s @yrluvjane @neeezza101 @chaosofmanyfandoms @storyofaromance @loving-and-dreaming @somewereinthegalaxi @chullu-bhar-paani @ghostgardn @rosalyn-s @seungtelevision

[my-own-walker]

hii can you do a james smut where he and the reader are a couple and during the devil's night the reader talks a lot with one of the guests and james gets jealous?

If You Were A Blood-Letter

note: yes indeedy anon, i can give it a stab for ya

warnings: sm*t duh, fem!reader, murder mentions and stuff, violence mentions, dom JPM, low-key degradation maybe??, choking, James being rough, etc

+++

It was the night we had been looking forward to for the whole year.

Before James, it was just Halloween to me. A night of children knocking on doors in cheap costumes begging for candy from strangers. It was drinking too much at some party in a slutty costume to impress some guy. It was carving pumpkins and corny movies and the doorbell ringing all night.

But with James, it wasn’t ‘Halloween.’ It was Devil’s Night. It was our special day. All of our heroes came to celebrate in a night of utterly disturbing splendor. We reveled in the chaos and the indecent.

We were an infamous duo known around the Cortez. Our murder sprees were revered by many. James didn't expect me to be so ruthless when we met. I truly appreciated regular nights of the old 'ultra-violence.' It made James crazy for me.

The first time I killed someone was under the careful supervision of my dear James. It was exhilarating. An immediate addiction. As he drank in the flash of sinful delight that flashed across my eyes when I plunged the knife into the repairman's chest, he knew he had found a soulmate in me.

We, as partners in crime, took great pride in our Devil's Night celebration. I adopted James' tradition. Took to it like a duck to water. I was awe-struck meeting the likes of Richard Ramirez and Aileen Wuornos.

This particular year, we were more than excited to welcome the Zodiac Killer for the first time. The actual Zodiac, maskless. He had attended the soiree some years prior, but James implored him not to return unless he would shed his cowardice. Hiding behind a mask was a sign of weakness in James' eyes.

The Zodiac's RSVP to the event was a welcome arrival at our door. And when he showed up the night of, we were more than elated to see the man behind the murder. We, arm-in-arm, greeted him at the door with bright smiles. We fashioned ourselves to be a bit like Morticia and Gomez Addams, in a way. In short, I'll admit, we were slightly corny. A caricature of murderers in love.

I was entranced by our new guest, though. As the night roared on, I couldn't help but gravitate toward The Zodiac Killer. His tales of murder and woe were of much interest to me. Gacy droned on about the same clown costume story he did every year. I had heard Ramirez's cool-guy act before. I wanted to know all about the new guest. What made him tick.

James shot me a glance across the room as I took up a seat right next to our guest of honor for the fifth time that night. I couldn't quite make out his expression. I assumed it was one of pride and admiration. After minutes of listening to another one of The Zodiac's stories, James approached the table.

'My, you two are fast friends, now, aren't you?' he cooed, a slight edge to his voice. His eyes screwed shut ever so slightly at the word 'fast.'

'He is quite an interesting man, James,' I replied.

'Interesting, you say. Interesting....' he weighed the word aloud as if he didn't quite understand what I meant by it.

'I- I wouldn't say interesting, just new,' The Zodiac clamored shyly. He was being all too modest.

'Y/N, my dear, may I speak with you in the bedroom? At once?' James gritted, extending a hand to help me up. I took it and followed him through the suite, weaving around the sick and twisted activities of the night.

'Ohhhhh! They're gonna fuck!' Ramirez shouted childishly after us. Wuornos cackled obnoxiously.

James held the bedroom door opened and gestured for me to enter. He slammed the door behind him and rounded on me.

'Whatever do you think you're doing?' he whispered harshly, standing so close to me I could hardly breathe. I looked up at him with pleading eyes.

'What do you mean?' I asked, baffled.

'Dallying and toying with our guest of honor,' he spat. 'Like some sort of floozy. Are you trying to embarrass me?'

'No, James, it wasn't like that. At all,' I declared, keeping as level a head as I could. 'I admire him, is all.'

'Admire, you say?' James challenged.

'Oh, stop being a pest!' I cried. 'You're taking everything I'm saying the wrong way on purpose, like a petulant child.'

'I am not being petulant. I am simply protecting what is mine,' he asserted lowly.

'I can handle myself perfectly well, James.'

'You do know you're mine, yes?' he breathed. 'All mine.'

'James-'

I was cut off by him hungrily putting his lips on mine. He grabbed the neckline of my off-the-shoulder gown and tore it brutishly, forgoing the readily available zipper. The fabric fell heavily, pooling at my ankles. He whisked me off my feet and threw me down onto the bed. I sank into the top of the plush duvet, which felt extra soft against my naked skin. Goosebumps covered my whole body.

James stood at the edge of the bed, drinking me in as he briskly took his own clothing off. I panted, awaiting my fate. He joined me, poised just atop me, supporting his weight on his hands. I grabbed his bare shoulders and pulled him in, resuming our kissing.

He lined himself up with my entrance and thrust into me impatiently. I gasped sharply at the sudden contact. His massive cock penetrated me powerfully. He ran his finger over my lips, then dragged it down my body, continuing to drive into me. The other found its place rigidly around my throat. I choked quietly, reveling in the moment. My eyes rolled back in my head as I felt myself start to lose consciousness.

But that wasn't enough.

He pulled out of me and flipped me over harshly, positioning me on my hands and knees.

'Who owns you? Say my name, dearest,' he purred.

'James,' I breathed. He tutted disapprovingly.

'Now now, I won't give you what you want until you say it how I like you to say it,' he scolded. He ran his hand through my hair and tugged tightly, pulling my head back just enough that I could cast my gaze up at him. It was a grip so tight I couldn't help but whimper.

'James,' I pleaded, whining slightly.

'Nuh-uh,' he taunted, 'not quite.' His other hand gripped my ass. His fingers dug into me greedily.

'James!' I cried loudly. It was exactly what he wanted. His hard dick re-entered me from behind, sending shockwaves throughout my middle. He ravaged me, making me squeal and squirm with every pump. The waves of orgasm overtook me, making my vision go blurry and my limbs feel weak, but James wasn't quite finished.

I whimpered loudly as he continued to plunge into me. With a few final thrusts, he came with a stifled groan. He, as a man of class, never came too loudly. After all, we did have guests.

I collapsed onto my stomach much like a ragdoll as James pulled out of me. I felt the pressure on the bed change as James got up to retrieve his undergarments. the man of class also never lounged in the nude. He returned to me and gently coaxed me to turn over. I looked at him through the strands of hair that had fallen into my face.

'My angel,' he sighed. 'All mine.' He grabbed me by my chin and kissed me, softer this time.

I hummed in contentment.

'Are we clear? You are mine,' he asked, pulling away.

'You're my one and only, and I am yours,' I assured with a soft smile.

'Now, shall we return and show them what a united front we are?' he suggested.

'Fuck 'em,' I growled, having regained enough strength to mount him and go for a second round.

+++

I really had a tough time writing this week. Hope I can get back into the swing VERY soon!!

[pupsmailbox]

MEDICAL︰GORE ID PACK

NAMES ⌇　aceso. addison. aden. aero. airmed. aliza. alora. althea. ambrose. ambulette. ame. amelie. amor. amore. angel. angelique. angelo. anna. anthony. apollo. arabella. arzt. asa. avian. babe. baby. bambi. bandage. bandagette. blanche. blanchette. blood. bloodette. bright. brigid. cal. carla. carmelita. catherine. cathie. cathy. cecil. chamomile. charge. charles. charlotte. clara. clemence. clement. connie. cora. corina. corry. cosmas. cross. crosse. crossette. daisy. daniel. david. delilah. desdemona. dorothea. dropsy. edema. edith. eira. elias. eliza. elizabeth. ellison. emil. emily. emma. evangeline. feronia. fleur. florence. fragilette. frailette. galen. ginger. gram. grimm. hansen. harmonie. harmony. hazel. healer. hira. hospette. ida. incisionette. incisionne. ivie. ivy. jace. jackie. james. jason. jayla. jayr. jen. jennifer. joasias. john. josiah. joy. jules. kaison. lace. lain. laryn. leah. lee. leigh. leuk. lucie. luciel. lucile. lucy. lue. lues. lyra. lyrica. mae. maebell. maggie. maiya. malachi. mark. mary. marybelle. may. maya. meddette. medette. medicel. medicette. medicinalle. medilita. mercia. michael. michelle. milo. milu. mitzi. moraxella. morgan. natasha. needlette. nile. norrie. norry. nursesse. nursette. nursie. nwurse. nyura. palsy. penny. phoebe. phoebus. pille. pillette. pott. potter. quinn. raphael. ray. red. redde. reseda. reye. richard. robert. rose. salmon. savior. scalpelle. scarlet. scrivener. scrubbe. scrubette. scrubs. serra. shiga. solitude. steven. stitch. stitches. stitchette. susan. sylvie. syrinelle. syringe. syringette. thomas. triage. vasc. viper. vitas. vitus. wiel. winnie. yves. zika. zoster.

PRONOUNS ⌇　ache/ache. ai/aid. aid/aid. aid/aide. amb/ambulance. ambulance/ambulance. bacteria/bacteria. band/age. band/aid. band/bandaid. bandage/bandage. bandaid/bandaid. bile/bile. bl0/bl00d. blood/blood. bu/bubonic. bump/bump. ca/care. care/care. chick/chicken. chronic/chronic. chu/chu. clean/clean. cold/cold. cough/cough. crab/crab. cross/cross. cross/crosse. cure/cure. cyu/cyu. die/dying. doc/doc. doc/doctor. doctor/doctor. dra/draw. drug/drug. fe/fever. fever/fever. flu/flu. fluff/fluffie. fragi/fragile. fragile/fragile. fragile/fragility. frail/frail. frail/frailty. gauze/gauze. germ/germ. gown/gown. gross/gross. he/heal. he/heart. he/help. he/hem. heal/heal. heal/healer. healer/healer. heart/heart. help/help. herb/herb. herb/herbal. hos/hospital. hospital/hospital. ill/ill. in/inject. incision/incision. infect/infection. injure/injury. IV/IV. iv/iv. ivy/ivie. ivy/ivy. lace/lace. li/live. love/love. lung/lung. luv/luv. mas/mask. mask/mask. med/med. med/medic. med/medical. med/medicine. medi/medic. medi/medicine. medic/medic. medical/medical. medicine/medicine. nee/needle. need/needle. needle/needle. nu/nurse. nur/nurse. nur/se. nurse/nurse. out/outbreak. pain/pain. pat/patient. patient/patient. pi/pill. pil/pill. pill/pill. pla/plague. plus/plushe. poke/poke. red/red. sa/save. savior/savior. sca/scan. scissor/scissor. scissor/scissors‎. scrub/scrub. shi/hir. si/sick. sic/sick. sick/sick. sick/sickly. skin/skin. sle/sleep. sneeze/sneeze. so/soft. soap/soap. sore/sore. stab/stab. stem/cell. stitch/stitch. stu/study. su/surgeon. sun/sun. sweet/sweet. symptom/symptom. syn/syndrome. syr/syr. syr/syringe. syri/syri. syrin/syringe. syringe/syringe. tape/tape. te/test. virus/viruse. ward/ward. we/well. wrap/wrap. ☎ . ☣️ . ⚰ . ❤️‍🩹 . 🌀 . 🌡️ . 🎀 . 🏥 . 🏨 . 👨🏻‍⚕️ . 👩🏻‍⚕️ . 💉 . 💊 . 💐 . 💤 . 📞 . 🔬 . 😷 . 🚑 . 🤒 . 🤢 . 🤧 . 🥀 . 🥼 . 🦠 . 🧊 . 🧑‍⚕️ . 🧠 . 🧪 . 🧫 . 🧬 . 🩸 . 🩹 . 🩺 .

[pommedepersephone]

007 Fest 2024 Master Post

NAME: Rin Rigg

PRIMARY DUTIES (Fics)

crimson touched by blue

Am I the ghost at the end of the song?

never did run smooth

A Quartermaster Bi Any Other Name

ON THE COMMS (Immersive)

Glass Animals ILYSFM Illustrated Lyrics series:

Lost in the Ocean

On the Run

Tear in Space (Airlock)

How I Learned to Love the Bomb

White Roses

Scavenger Hunt items featured in crimson touched by blue:

Report to the Quartermaster on MI6 employee social media accounts

Scavenger Hunt items featured in Am I the ghost at the end of the song?:

Double-0 Old Fashioned cocktail recipe

A garden for Madeleine

Black out poem from The Once and Future King

Bond for Children (sort of) in the style of Goodnight Moon

INTERDEPARTMENTAL COOPERATION (Social)

Joined the watch parties for The Fourth Protocol and Richard II

ADDITIONAL DUTIES (Making it a Family Affair)

Family Watch Party List:

Paddington, Paddington 2, Logan Lucky, Passages, Knives Out, Glass Onion, Bright Star, Bond movies from Dr. No to The World is Not Enough

Book List (with links):

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming

For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond by Ben Macintyre

Quantum of Solace by Ian Fleming

Superspy Science: Science, Death and Tech in the World of James Bond by Kathryn Harkup

Bond Movies: A Retrospective by Ho Lin

This was my first Fest, and it was so awesome to stretch myself a bit, and spent time working with colleagues - thanks especially to @anyawen for all your support, and to @l219tj and @emiliasilverova for your contributions towards the Care and Feeding of Alec. A big thanks to my ETERNAL cheerleader @murphysscribe who I have forced to put up with my Bond obsession.

(and for those who shared, commented, etc thaaaank you @foxsoulcourt , @ato-the-bean , @luminiferocity @amongthejumbledheap @aching-arc-reactor @celandinebergerac @spiritofcamelot @tales-of-whales @boffin1710 @castillon02 @thestalwartheart @dude-watchin-with-the-brontes @crewman-penelope @bludelivers @tsubame17 @myndelling @kmk1701d @emerald-truth @cicerfics @tiny-tardis @phinniastuff @kitten-kin )

[longitudinalwaveme]

Flash Character Descriptions

Jason Peter "Jay" Garrick (Flash #1): Jay Garrick was a brilliant chemistry student at Midwestern University when he gained his super speed. During a laboratory experiment with hard water (later retconned to heavy water), he worked long into the night and then decided to take a smoke break. In the process of lighting up his cigarette, he knocked over the beakers of heavy water he had been experimenting on, and was overcome by the fumes. The next morning, his professor took him to the hospital, where he woke up several weeks later. Not only had he suffered no ill effects from the inhalation of the gas, he now also had super speed!

After using his speed to win a football game and impress his crush, Joan Williams, Jay went on to graduate from college and become a scientist and professor, while fellow-graduate Joan (also a science major) went to help her father, Major Arthur Williams, develop an "atomic bombardier".

After reading about the crime that was plaguing Keystone City, Jay decided to do something about it. He donned an outlandish outfit (complete with his father's old World War I helmet), and started using his super speed to fight crime. Not too long after, Joan, who had known about Jay's speed basically from the beginning, went to him to ask him for his help in rescuing her father from some evil scientists who had kidnapped him in the hopes of getting ahold of his atomic bombardier. Jay succeeded in rescuing him, and from that point on, Jay and Joan would work together to help the Flash protect Keystone City.

Jay Garrick was a very intelligent young man, and a competent scientist, but he was also very light-hearted and was a bit of a prankster (something which came through in his fights with various criminals). He used his speed very creatively, and he was also well-versed enough in science to know how to best apply his speed to a given situation. In this sense, he was something of a mix of the two Flashes who would succeed him. Jay was very close to his girlfriend Joan, and he kept no secrets from her. The two of them worked together in tandem as a crimefighting team, and, as noted above, Joan was in on Jay's identity as the Flash from the start. (Jay disguised his maskless face by vibrating his face so fast that his features couldn't be properly recognized.) Jay was good-natured and kind, as superheroes tend to be, and it wasn't long before he started teaming up with other superheroic types to achieve even more good than he could have on his own.

Jay was one of the founding members of the Justice Society of America, and he helped them defeat such menaces as Vandal Savage and the Injustice Society of the World. More importantly, however, he and the JSA also fought against the Axis forces throughout WWII, both in the field and on the home front. Jay was, and is, very devoted to the defense of freedom.

When he wasn't fighting Nazis with the JSA, Jay was gathering his own collection of costumed criminals. The most prominent of them all was the Thinker (Clifford DeVoe), a former district attorney who turned to a life of crime after he failed too many cases, and who used his incredible mental powers to mastermind crimes and fight the Flash, but Jay also fought the Fiddler (Isaac Bowin), a man whose Stradivarius violin could weaponize sound, the Ragdoll, a thief who was also an expert contortionist, the Thorn (Rose Canton), a supervillainess with a case of Hollywood Dissociative Identity Disorder and the ability to control plants, and the Shade (Richard Swift), whose single appearance in the Golden Age gave very few hints of the immortal, shadow-controlling gentleman adventurer he would become under the pen of James Robison.

Jay also became friends with a trio of Three Stooges rip-offs named Winky, Blinky, and Noddy. While they weren't terribly bright, they were devoted and loyal friend to Jay and Joan, and they did their best to help the Flash in his efforts to stop crime.

After the end of the war, the JSA went into semi-voluntary retirement after totally-not-HUAC-we-promise tried to force them to reveal their secret identities to the government, and Jay Garrick married his long-time girlfriend, Joan. Unfortunately for him, the Thinker, the Fiddler, and the Shade had one last plot in mind...one which trapped the entirety of Keystone City, including Jay and Joan, in frozen stasis for decades. (At least, that's the Post-Crisis explanation. Pre-Crisis, Jay Garrick lived on an alternate Earth from Barry Allen, and was spurred back into action on hearing that Shade, Fiddler, and Thinker had escaped from prison and gone on a crime spree.)

Jay came out of retirement on the day he met his successor, Barry Allen. Barry, who was a huge fan of Jay Garrick and collected the comics that had been written about Jay's adventures, either accidentally vibrated his way to Earth-Two or found Keystone City and freed Jay, and it, from the stasis in which they had been locked for so long. The two Flashes then teamed up to defeat the trio of villains who were causing trouble, and from that point on, Jay Garrick and Barry Allen were close friends and allies, with Jay serving as something of a mentor to the younger Flash. He helped to reform the Justice Society of America, and he threw himself back into superheroics (something his wife, Joan, supported completely).

Jay Garrick is now one of the elder statesmen of the DC Universe. He's humble, approachable, and very wise, but he still has a twinkle in his eyes and a spring in his step. Everyone in the superhero community likes and respects Jay, and even his villains have come to have a grudging admiration for their long-time foe. Jay is also the most polite man in the DC Universe, and he is well-known amongst the younger heroes for his insistence that everyone keep their language G-rated.

Jay is very protective of younger heroes, and has served as a mentor for dozens of them, including Barry, Wally, and Bart. Jay is close friends with the Green Lantern Alan Scott, and has been for decades upon decades. While Alan is rather more ambitious and driven than Jay, the two of them nevertheless work very well together.

Jay and Joan are still married, and they are as in love as they were on the day they were married. Their marriage is rock-solid, and they almost never keep secrets from one another. In fact, I think they have the healthiest relationship in all of comics, and other superheroes in-universe often cite them as the model they hope to follow for their own marriages. Both Jay and Joan currently teach science at local universities, and neither of them seems particularly interested in retiring. Which is impressive, since they both have to be like 110 years old by this point (a perennial problem for characters who have important backstory ties to WWII).

Jay is very, very competent in the use of his powers, and he is still very fast, but his advanced age has cut his speed to some degree, and it severely affects his stamina. He can't run for nearly as long as the younger Flashes can---but he can mostly make up for these delays through his extensive experience.

Joan Williamson-Garrick: Joan Williamson, like Jay Garrick, studied chemistry at Midwestern University. She was the daughter of Major Arthur Williams, whom she would work for as a scientist after her graduation. Although Joan was initially dismissive of Jay due to his lack of football skills, she quickly warmed up to him, and was in on the secret of his super speed, and his identity as the Flash, from the beginning. She was a very intelligent, competent, and resourceful ally in his fight against crime, and the two of them were devoted partners and friends for the entirety of his Golden Age career.

The two of them were married in Las Vegas, and, after Jay's retirement, lived a peaceful life together for many years (possibly being frozen in time for awhile at some point, depending on which origin you go by). Joan worked a science professor at a local university, much like Jay, and the two of them were mostly very happy together (in spite of the tragic death of their adopted son). When Barry Allen arrived on the scene, Jay came out of retirement with Joan's complete support. She and Jay would quickly befriend Barry and Iris, and they often helped to advise the younger couple.

Joan Garrick is a sweet, loving woman, and she is something of a grandmother the superhero community (and particularly the Flash family). She is an excellent cook and is especially good at making cookies, and she is great at giving advice to anyone who will ask her. She also has a good sense of humor, much like her husband, and seemingly endless patience (vital for anyone who frequently deals with young super-speedsters).

Joan is also very clever and brave in her own right. Much like her husband, she is a science professor, and in her younger years, she faced down numerous criminals alongside Jay. She is not by any means weak or a pushover, even if she has slowed down a bit because of her age. Joan is Jay's equal in every since of the word, and the two of them have a happy and healthy marriage.

Bartholomew (formerly Barrence) Henry "Barry" Allen (Flash #2): Barry Allen was born to Dr. Henry and Nora Allen in the small Midwestern town of Fallville (he also had a secret twin named Malcolm who was taken from his parents at birth and who would grow up to found the lineage that would eventually produce Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, because comics). He grew up reading comic books about his hero, the Flash (Jay Garrick), and playacting as the Flash with his next-door neighbor and childhood sweetheart, Daphne Dean (who would grow up to become a famous movie star). After he graduated from Fallville High School, Barry went on to attend Sun City University, where he would earn a degree in forensic science.

Barry was hired as a police scientist by the Central City Police Department, and thus moved to Central City, where he met reporter Iris West (she worked for Picture News). Their first date was on the fourth of July, and Barry would eventually propose to her when both of them were riding a Ferris Wheel at a local fair.

Barry got his super speed when lighting crashed through the laboratory window at police headquarters, struck him and a nearby shelf of chemicals, and gave him a bath in some random chemical compounds. Showing some truly horrible lab safety skills, Barry brushed off both the lightning strike and the chemical bath and decided to just go home. After his attempt at hailing a taxi failed, he tried to chase after it---and discovered that he, like his idol, Jay Garrick, now possessed super speed.

After creating a costume, which he would store in a special compartment in his ring, Barry became the second Flash and started fighting crime, and it wasn't long before he started collecting a whole group of costumed criminals, from Captain Cold and Weather Wizard to Gorilla Grodd and Abra Kadabra. He also gained a sidekick in Iris' nephew Wally West when the same accident that had given him super speed repeated itself to give super speed to Wally.

Unfortunately, Barry had a bad habit of keeping secrets from people he cared about. He waited several months to tell Wally his true identity, and he didn't tell Iris that he was the Flash until a year after they married (consciously, anyway....Iris learned the truth on their wedding night when Barry talked in his sleep). He had no malicious intent in doing so, but it is something of a habit of his to keep his problems close to his chest and not talk about them to his loved ones, and sometimes this habit comes back to bite him.

Barry Allen is a very talented and effective police scientist. He's slow, careful, methodical, and patient, both as a scientist and as the Flash. His extensive knowledge of science allows him to use his speed in a variety of useful ways, and he is, of course, very fast. However, due to his scientific mindset, he struggles to use the Speed Force as freely as Jay and Wally, and he cannot access all of the abilities that they possess (such as the ability to create costumes out of the speed force or to lend and steal speed).

In his personal life, Barry is a loyal and devoted friend, but he has a small and rather eccentric social circle. Besides his vivacious wife Iris, to whom he is devoted, this social circle includes his parents, Daphne Dean, and Wally West, but it also includes the Elongated Man (Ralph Dibney) and his wife Sue Dibney, Iris' absent-minded adoptive father, Professor Ira West (a brilliant physicist), his twelve-year-old neighbor and fellow comic enthusiast Barney Sands, college student Stacy Conwell, Dexter Myles, the retired Shakespearean actor who runs the Flash Museum, Detective Frank Curtis, scientist Mack Nathan and his son Troy, Eric and Fran Russel, Iris' biological parents, who live in the 30th century (because comic books), and, perhaps most bizarrely of all, Dr. Albert Desmond, one of his supervillains who reformed and became his close friend, and Albert's wife Rita.

Barry is of course also a founding member of the Justice League of America, and he is friendly with most of his colleagues, but Hal Jordan (the Silver Age Green Lantern) is the only one of them who really seems to be his friend outside of work, and he does not get along at all with the Green Arrow (Oliver Queen).

Barry is a total dork. He has a crew cut and wears bow ties. He loves comic books (his collection is truly astounding to behold) and attends comic conventions regularly, and he is incredibly knowledgeable about the JSA. Furthermore, science, in addition to being his job, also seems to be one of his hobbies, and he really loves being able to teach science to kids ("Flash Fact!"). Barry is generally very good with children, and he was an excellent mentor and loving father figure to Wally West, who really needed a father figure growing up.

Barry is apparently a restless sleeper, as he both sleepwalks and talks in his sleep. (Weirdly, this is a trait he shares with his enemy The Top. Roscoe also talks in his sleep.) He is also afraid of roller coasters and likes to go to masquerade parties dressed as himself (that is, the Flash). He is a hard worker, but he is always, always, always late, something that occasionally draws ire from his superiors---particularly the punctuality-obsessed Darryl Frye---and sometimes draws ire from Iris as well.

Due to a long, convoluted series of events that I don't really feel like explaining right now, Barry and Iris have children in the 30th century---a pair of twins named Dawn and Don Allen. Dawn and Don are the superheroes called the Tornado Twins, and both of them end up being killed due to the machinations of the evil President Thawne (who is not the Reverse-Flash, or Barry's evil twin, but rather a descendant of them both). However, before they died, both of the twins married and produced children of their own. Dawn married a man named Jeven Ognats and had a daughter named Jenni, who would ultimately become the superhero XS and a member of the Legion of Superheroes. Don, meanwhile, married Meloni Thawne, the daughter of President Thawne (who was not evil, unlike most of the rest of her family), and had a son named Bart Allen, who would eventually be sent back to the present and become the superhero Impulse. I hate the Flash family tree so much (even though I like most of the characters involved)....

Barry Allen died saving the Multiverse during Crisis on Infinite Earths, and was dead for over 20 years of real-world time, but he was brought back to life in 2008 during the Final Crisis Event, now with stupid retcons to his history that I like to pretend never happened. (His now famous origin wherein the Reverse Flash killed his mother and framed his father for the crime wasn't introduced until 2009. For comparison, Barry Allen debuted in 1956!) I'm not upset he's alive again, since I like Barry a lot, but him being back does kind of confuse a lot of the stuff regarding the future stuff with his kids and grandkids (since initially, Iris lived out several decades in the future after Barry died, raised her kids, saw her grandchildren be born, and then went back to the present with Bart to save him from his accelerated aging). And that was confusing enough as it was!

Iris West-Allen: Iris West was born in the 30th century to Eric and Fran Russel. Unfortunately, the Earth of the 30th century was on the brink of a nuclear war, so Eric and Fran, desperate to save their baby, sent her back in time to the 20th century, whereupon she was adopted by Professor Ira West and his wife, Nadine West.

Iris has three siblings: an older brother named Rudy (Wally's father), an older sister named Charlotte (who mothered Iris' niece Inez), and a younger brother named Daniel (who fathered Wallace West). Unfortunately, both of Iris' brothers would prove to be less than upstanding men, and so Iris had to provide a lot of support and love to her nephews, who weren't getting it from other sources.

Iris earned a degree in journalism from Columbia University, and, after touring the world with the money her father had earned from his many patents, she settled down in Central City and became a reporter for Picture News. Iris is a determined, clever journalist and is one of the most respected reported in Central City.

Her journalism job also introduced her to Barry Allen (they met at a crime scene), with whom she hit it off. The two quickly began dating and soon fell in love with one another (even if Iris was often frustrated by Barry's constant tardiness). When the Flash arrived on the scene, Iris dutifully reported on his activities, not knowing that her slow and lazy fiancé was also the Fastest Man Alive. W

When Rudy sent a ten-year-old Wally to live with Iris for the summer, Iris introduced him to Barry, who in turn "introduced" Wally to the Flash. Wally would become Kid Flash on that same vacation, but, sworn to secrecy by Barry, he didn't tell Iris.

Iris learned that Barry was the Flash on their wedding night (since Barry talked in his sleep), and she took the news surprisingly well, all things considered. Once she was in the know, she became a very capable confidant, and aided Barry in his career as the Flash.

Iris is fiery, passionate, and full of energy. She is driven and determined to achieve her goals, and she's almost totally fearless, but she can also be very loving, supportive, and caring to the people she's close with. Iris is very good with children, and she is a wonderful and supportive aunt to Wally, Wallace, and Inez (who's only had one appearance but is included for completion's sake). Iris is also much more of an extrovert than Barry is, and she spends a considerable amount of time dragging him out of his own head.

In addition to being an excellent journalist, Iris is also a talented cook and personally sponsors a number of charities throughout Central City (which benefit greatly from her Flash-y husband's fundraising abilities).

In spite of not having any superpowers, Iris is nevertheless surprisingly competent and daring in a fight, and has helped her husband take down criminals more than once in the past.

Unfortunately for Iris, she also has an obsessive stalker in the form of Eobard Thawne (Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash), who attempted to force her into marriage with him multiple times, and ultimately killed her by vibrating his hand into her brain after she rejected his latest proposal of marriage. Her life was ultimately saved thanks to her 30th-century adoptive parents, who managed to transfer her soul into a cloned body right before she died, but it would be years before she and Barry were reunited...only for Barry to die again not long afterwards.

Iris spent a few decades in the future, raising her children, Don and Dawn Allen, but ultimately returned to the present with her grandson Bart Allen to save him from the hyper-accelerated aging his super-speed had induced. In the present, she reunited with Wally, met his wife Linda, and eventually reunited with a resurrected Barry.

Aaaaand then Flashpoint happened and erased their marriage, and they basically had to go through their entire relationship again in the New 52 and Rebirth era. Boo! Boo I say! (Note that Daniel and Wallace West did not exist before Flashpoint. However, it's not too hard to fit them into the pre-Flashpoint timeline if you squint, and that's basically what I do in my headcanon.)

Wallace Rudolph "Wally" West (Flash #3): Wally West was born to Rudolph and Mary West in the very small town of Blue Valley, Nebraska. Unfortunately, neither of his parents were loving or supportive of him, and his father was outright physically abusive to young Wally (although he was unfortunately just clever enough to not leave any obvious bruises). Wally was therefore a rather lonely child, with his Aunt Iris and his Grandpa Ira serving as his main sources of love and support. He also befriended a young girl named Frances Kane, who also lived in Blue Valley and whose mother was about as much fun to be around as Wally's father.

When the Flash (Barry Allen) came onto the scene, Wally became the Flash's biggest fan. He was the president (and only member) of the Blue Valley Flash Fan Club, and, as such, he was ecstatic when, during his tenth summer, his parents sent him to live with his Aunt Iris for awhile in Central City. He loved his Aunt Iris, and he loved the idea of getting to meet the Flash almost as much.

Iris promptly introduced her nephew to her boyfriend Barry Allen. Wally was not impressed by the dorky police scientist at first...but then Barry Allen told him he knew the Flash, and that he could introduce Wally to him, which he promptly did.

Wally inundated the Flash with questions, but before the Flash could answer any of them, lightning crashed through the window, striking both Wally and a shelf full of chemicals that Barry Allen kept in his apartment and spilling some of the chemicals onto Wally. (It was the Silver Age. Don't ask.) Wally immediately gained the same super-speed as the Flash, and the Flash promptly offered to make Wally his sidekick, Kid Flash. Wally eagerly agreed.

Wally worked alongside the Flash on big cases, but he also worked on his own as Kid Flash in Blue Valley quite often, keeping in touch with his mentor via mail. Barry, now confident that he had chosen the right sidekick, revealed his secret identity to Wally, and from that moment on, Barry became the father figure Wally had always wanted but never really had. Wally loved and idolized Barry, and the two of them became very close--especially after Barry married Iris and became Wally's uncle (and his parents went through a messy divorce).

As Kid Flash, Wally would eventually join up with Aqualad, Robin (Dick Grayson), Wonder Girl (Donna Troy), and Speedy (Roy Harper) to form the Teen Titans, a group of young heroes whose roster would expand considerably over time and eventually come to include Frances Kane, who started demonstrating innate magnetic-controlling abilities in her teens. As part of the Teen Titans, Wally would gain many close friends and a considerable amount of superhero experience. He and Dick Grayson became especially close to one another, and Dick would ultimately be the best man at Wally's wedding.

When Wally turned 18, he enrolled in college, and planned to eventually retire from the superhero life altogether (due in part to the fact that his powers had started to go into flux and were threatening his health). However, events soon conspired to prevent him from graduating college or starting a "normal" life. When his Uncle Barry died saving the universe (and Wally's speed problems were conveniently cured), Wally felt that he had to step up to become the Flash in order to honor his uncle's legacy.

Unfortunately, Barry's death had left some huge shoes to fill, and with Iris off in the far future, Wally had no one to support him as he tried to live up to Barry's legacy. Suffering from depression and impostor syndrome, Wally psychosomatically limited his own speed to the speed of sound to ensure that he would never surpass Barry, dropped out of college, and, after breaking up with Frances Kane (who he had been dating), started a series of disastrous romantic relationships. Wally felt that he was unworthy to be the Flash, and in his desperation to prove himself, he came across as cocky and brash, even arrogant---and his low self-image was not helped by the fact that almost everyone around him kept reminding him of how he was disgracing his uncle's legacy. Nor was it helped by the fact that, when he won the lottery (just go with it), his mother moved in to mooch off of him, recklessly burn through all of his money, and criticize all of his choices. (Also, it turned out that his father was secretly part of an intergalactic cult, and that he had only had Wally because the cult had told him he was going to have a super-powerful son. Don't you just love comics?)

Things got even worse when an alien invasion (a different one from the one started by the cult Wally's dad was a part of) stole all of Wally's remaining finances and he briefly became homeless...but luckily, he ran into the Pied Piper, who helped him out and began what would become a very deep and long-lasting friendship. Wally's relationships with old and experienced jack-of-all-trades Mason Tollbridge, the human black hole named Chunk (whom Wally had saved from a life of crime), scientists Tina and Jerry McGee, Joan Garrick, the Elongated Man, and even Captain Cold, Heat Wave, and the Golden Glider eventually helped pull him out of the hole he had fallen into after his uncle's death, and he gradually became a more competent hero and a happier, more well-adjusted man.

Of course, no one was more important in facilitating Wally's growth from a cocky skirt-chaser with impostor syndrome to a truly confident, loyal husband was Linda Park. When Wally met her, she was a TV reporter in Keystone City, and the two of them butted heads at first, but, over time, they came to enjoy one another's company, started dating, fell in love, saved each other from countless disasters, and then got married. Linda helped Wally to grow up and overcome his insecurities, and Wally helped Linda to relax and have fun. The two of them work together very well and are utterly devoted to one another.

The two of them also have three children: twins Irey and Jai (who are somewhere between 8 and 10 years old due to some initial advanced speedster aging), and the newly-arrived infant Wade West. Wally is a devoted father and delights in being an embarrassingly goofy dad. He's also very close to his younger cousin Wallace West.

Wally is passionate, brave, loyal, and devoted to his friends and loved ones. He is generally friendly and good-natured, and is just as devoted to helping people as the other Flashes are. He's the best user of the Speed Force and is the Fastest Man Alive. He has an intuitive understanding of his speed and uses it to greater effect than basically any other speedster. However, he cannot vibrate through walls like Barry and Jay can (because the excess energy that he produces when he does so causes them to explode!)

Wally has a snarky, dry sense of humor and is very witty (being particularly prone to making sarcastic comments about supervillains). He's very impatient and can be prone to reckless actions, particularly when he gets angry. Wally also has a notable temper, though it seems to have gotten better as he's gotten older.

Although the comics have never outright said it, Wally seems to have ADHD, and is in fact a surprisingly accurate portrayal of the condition (in much the same way as his cousin Bart). That being said, I'm not sure Wally himself realizes he has ADHD, as he seems to blame most of the behavioral manifestations of ADHD on his super speed (and it's also a fair bet that his parents never had him tested for it as a child.)

In spite of his super speed, Wally is not a sports fan, and he especially hates watching baseball on TV. Conversely, he loves to eat. While he doesn't really need to eat to maintain his super speed in the way that he once did, he still has a super-speedy metabolism, and he uses it to eat lots and lots of hot dogs (apparently, they're weenie-licious), hamburgers, and sugared cereals.

Wally has had a number of jobs, including working as a car mechanic for the CCPD, but he is currently employed by Terrifitech as an engineer/mechanic, working for fellow superhero Mr. Terrific.

Linda Park-West: Linda Park is the daughter of John and Lisa Park. She is of Korean descent, and both she and Wally are very fond of Korean barbeque. Linda began her career as a TV reporter before switching to the press, and she has also published a few novels. She has also expressed an interest in pediatric medicine and has taken a few college courses for it.

At the start of her career, Linda was a serious, no-nonsense reporter. She was very good at her job, but she had few friends outside of her work, and she could be a bit uptight. When she first met Wally, they had a mutually adversarial relationship, but over time, they softened towards one another and developed a friendship that then became a romance. She helped Wally mature and grow up a bit, and he helped her loosen up and have fun. The two of them are great for one another, and, in spite of some rough patches, have a very healthy relationship.

Linda is a very intelligent woman and has no shortage of bravery; she's helped Wally face down many criminal threats and is a formidable opponent in her own right. Her skills as an investigative journalist also frequently aid Wally in his battle against crime.

Linda is a loving and devoted mother to her three children, and she will do anything to keep them safe. Woe betide anyone who is foolish enough to mess with her children. While she is the more serious and responsible parent, she is obviously very fond of her children and enjoys spending time with them and her goof of a husband. She's also handles most of the family's finances (since Wally lacks the patience for that sort of thing). She's also very close to her parents, who visit the family regularly. Much like Wally, she is friends with the Pied Piper.

Linda is also a huge sports fan. She loves baseball and is just as big a fan of Keystone City's hockey team, the Combines, as Captain Cold.

Iris "Irey" and Jai West: Wally's twins, both of whom have super speed. Jai can use his super speed to temporarily give himself super strength, while Irey is particularly adept at phasing through walls. Both of them are sweet kids who love their parents and each other, but still they bicker and fight with one another. They are siblings, after all. Jai is more introverted than his sister and seems to prefer playing video games and writing in his journal to socializing. Irey is more outgoing and mischievous, and she has become close friends with Maxine Baker, the daughter of Animal Man (Buddy Baker), who goes to her school. Both children are eager to help their father fight bad guys, but for the most part, Wally and Linda try to keep their kids away from too much combat. The twins are also very fond of their Uncle Piper, their Grandpa Jay, their Grandma Joan, and their Uncle Barry.

Pied Piper (Hartley Rathaway): Hartley Rathaway was born to multi-millionaire publishing magnates Osgood and Rachel Rathaway. He was born deaf, and it took his neglectful parents nearly two years before they realized something was wrong. Once they finally caught on to their son's deafness, and determined to "fix" their heir, they spent millions of dollars to get Dr. William Magnus to implant Hartley with super-advanced hearing aids. The operation was a success, and Hartley was left with not only the ability to hear, but super-human hearing. Upon being able to hear, Hartley quickly became enamored with music, which became something of a solace for the lonely child.

Hartley's parents, though extremely wealthy and able to give him the best of everything money could buy, were also cold, controlling, and neglectful, and Hartley never felt accepted by them or their high-society friends. He seemed to have no friends, and every aspect of his life was controlled by his parents...except his hobby of tinkering with musical instruments.

When Hartley turned 18, his parents selected a prestigious university for him, enrolled him in courses, and, when Hartley, uninterested in the courses they had chosen for him, didn't perform to their expectations, bribed the college to give him high grades. Hartley, for his part, had invented a flute that could hypnotize anyone who listened to it, and began using it to try to take some control of his life.

After several months (maybe even a few years) of conflict with his parents, everything came to a head when Hartley told his parents that he was gay. This kicked off an enormous argument that ended up with Hartley being all but disowned by his family. No longer welcome at home, and having dropped out of college, Hartley decided to use his magical flute to become the Pied Piper. By becoming a costumed criminal and openly stealing from the rich, he would have his revenge on the parents he had never been good enough for...and he would finally have control over his own life.

Hartley's parents were, predictably enough, infuriated by his activity as the Pied Piper, and promptly bribed everyone from the Chief of the CCPD to the FBI to keep Hartley's identity a secret. He was even given a new name, Henry Darrow, to make sure nobody connected the polka-dot-wearing thief with the Rathaways.

The Pied Piper was one of the youngest of the costumed criminals to battle the Flash (Barry Allen), and perhaps it was because he needed a substitute family that he joined up with the Rogues (after briefly dating a wannabe supervillain named Earl Povich/Fury, who would, years later, come after a reformed Hartley). With his upper-class accent and education, he stood out from the rest of the group, and many of them weren't quite sure where to have him---especially once he told them he was gay. However, he did become close friends with another of the younger Rogues, the Trickster (James Jesse), and he always got along well with Heat Wave (Mick Rory), who was gentle and easy-going.

During his career as a criminal, Hartley kept very little of the money he stole. He gave some of the money to his parents, to pay them back for the money they had spent trying to mold him into something he could never be (and to remind them that he still existed and remembered them), and donated much of the rest to various charities (he fancied himself as a bit of a Robin Hood figure, and viewed it as a way to help make reparations for the wealth horded by his family)...but he could still be a very dangerous opponent for the Flash, especially when angered or cornered.

Shortly before Barry Allen's death, Hartley had a nervous breakdown. This, combined with his old foe's sacrifice to save the universe, prompted Hartley to realize that he was wasting his life as a criminal. He reformed and became an advocate for a variety of social causes, including providing aid to the homeless. He became friends with the new Flash, Wally West, and he even reconciled with his parents. Since then, he has helped the Flash save the Twin Cities many times, and also helps to keep the Flash informed as to what's going on the criminal underworld. He's also stayed friends with James Jesse, the Trickster, who himself decided to join the side of the angels (mostly) and who never fails to keep Hartley's life interesting.

Hartley Rathaway is the sort of person people reflexively underestimate. Slight of build and rather quiet of voice (you would be too if whispers sounded like shouting sometimes), he doesn't seem threatening---but if you threaten him or the people he cares about, he can be every bit as dangerous as the Flash (or the Rogues). His weaponized musical instruments allow him to not only hypnotize people but to weaponize sound in a variety of ways, and he is very skilled in using them in combat. He's also a very skilled inventor and is constantly updating his arsenal of pipes, and he knows a lot about sound. (He also sometimes serves as Wally's tech support.)

In addition to being very intelligent, Hartley is a loyal friend and a devoted champion of the poor and underprivileged. He is extremely passionate about his causes and works tirelessly to help others, sometimes to the point where he exhausts himself or forgets to eat. He wants to create a better world for everyone, and he is very compassionate, especially to children, such as his little sister, Geraldine Rathaway. He is also a beloved "uncle" to Jai and Irey West.

Hartley feels a fair deal of guilt about his criminal past, and for that reason works hard to make amends by aiding Wally in his role as the Flash. He spends a good deal of time and effort in helping other ex-convicts reintegrate into society, and also passionately helps Linda expose corruption in high places.

Hartley loves all kinds of music, more or less indiscriminately and equally. He sometimes plays in the Central City orchestra, and he is rarely found without his headphones on and his flute in hand. In addition to his love of music, Hartley is also a baseball fan, and enjoys watching games with fellow fan Linda.

Hartley loves rats and has several pet rats, including one named Moon.

Hartley has had a number of partners over the years. Aside from the aforementioned Earl Povich, he has dated Mike, a chef (probably) and James, who worked as an architect (not to be confused with James Jesse, the Trickster, whose real name is actually Giovanni Giuseppi). His most recent partner is, as you noted, David Singh, who works as a police officer. I don't really know a lot about David other than his occupation, since his relationship with Hartley was introduced in the New 52, and Hartley has had shockingly little panel time since then. Nor do I know how they met (I don't think the comics have ever really explained this, and inquiring minds would like to know, given one of them is a police officer and the other one used to be a supervillain). That being said, Singh does seem to serve as a moral compass for Hartley when he's tempted to revert back to his criminal ways.

Paul Gambi: Paul Gambi is a tailor of Italian descent, and he makes costumes for the Rogues as a sideline to his main business (since the Rogues pay very well for their costumes). He seems to be somewhere between 40 and 60 years old in most of his appearances, and I assume he's older than all of the Rogues.

Gambi has at least two brothers. One of them, whose name we don't know, is in prison, and he left behind a son, Tony, who Paul took in and raised. The other brother, Peter Gambi, is also a tailor, but he makes costumes for superheroes (notably, he made Black Lightning's costume).

Gambi is an expert tailor, and he designed all of the Rogues' outfits so that they would withstand the forces of the Rogues' weapons (e.g., Heat Wave's costume can resist ridiculous amounts of heat, Weather Wizard's costume can withstand high winds and rain, etc.) Although he has gone to prison for brief periods, for the most part he manages to stay under the radar and continue making costumes (it helps that he has a legitimate business as well).

Gambi is very fond of the Rogues, and they are equally fond of him, viewing him as a friend and an ally. Messing with Gambi is a great way to get all the Rogues to come after you. Gambi also seems to be a good uncle to his nephew Tony (whom the Rogues are also extremely fond of), and both uncle and nephew are as good as part of the group.

Fun Fact: Paul Gambi was named after a real-life Flash fan named Paul Gambaccini.

It's late now and I'm tired, so I will finish up the rest of the characters tomorrow.

[europeanmusicals]

Based on Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel, by Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay, two of the most successful German-language musical theatre creators, ‘Rebecca’ has already captivated more than two million people worldwide in hugely successful productions in 12 countries and 10 languages. ‘Rebecca’ had its world premiere at VBW’s Raimund Theater in Vienna, Austria, in September 2006, where it went on to play to sold-out houses in three seasons, and where it is currently enjoying a hugely successful revival. Richard Carson (Maxim de Winter) has appeared in several major West End musicals including‘Les Miserable’s, ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’, ‘Mamma Mia!’ and ‘Miss Saigon’. Lauren Jones (Second Mrs de Winter) recently appeared in the West End production of ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ as Trish and alternate Bonnie. Kara Lane (Mrs Danvers) was Alice in ‘The Addams Family - the Musical Comedy’, Winifred Banks in ‘Mary Poppins’, Reno Sweeney in ’Anything Goes’ at Kilworth House, ‘Mary Magdalene’ in Jesus Christ Superstar’ and Magenta in ‘The Rocky Horror Show’. The rest of the cast are: Alex James-Ward, Piers Bate, Sarah Harlington, David Breeds, Amanda Minihan, Neil Moors, Nicholas Lumley, Nigel-Joseph Francis, Elliot Swann, Scott McClure, Emily Apps, Melanie Bright, Gail MacKinnon, Tarisha Rommick, James Mateo-Salt, Rosie Glossop. Rebecca will play a strictly limited engagement from 4 September – 18 November 2023. 

[Source: Charring Cross Theatre Newsletter]

[filmnoirsbian]

Hi !! I was wondering if you had any book recs/favorite books? Things that you think of as inspiration or just plain like? Genuinely curious. <3 im in love with your work btw i spent the other day binging your patreon

Some favorites that deeply impacted me from a young age up into teenagedom: the Animorphs series by K. A. Applegate, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, Oddly Enough by Bruce Coville, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Little Sister by Kara Dalkey, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage, Piratica by Tanith Lee, the Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, Holes by Louis Sachar, The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg, Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori, The Sea-Wolf by Jack London, Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins, Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath, Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan, The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, The Iliad and Odyssey (allegedly) by Homer, The Táin by many people, Harlem by Walter Dean Myers, Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan, The Wall and the Wing by Laura Ruby, The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein, The Hainish Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin, Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, The Ethical Vampire series by Susan Hubbard, The Howl Series by Diana Wynne Jones, the Curseworkers series by Holly Black, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters, An Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, Beloved by Toni Morrison, A Stir of Bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, World War Z by Max Brooks, This is Not A Drill by K. A. Holt, Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Crush by Richard Siken, Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo, Devotions by Mary Oliver, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Some favorites read more recently: The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, Engine Summer by John Crowley, Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, The Princess Bride by William Goldman, Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, Reprieve by James Han Mattson, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, Station Eleven by Emily St. John-Mandel, The Crown Ain't Worth Much by Hanif Abdurraqib, The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica, The Girl with All the Gifts by Mike Carey, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, She had some horses by Joy Harjo, Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón, The King Must Die by Mary Renault, Books of Blood by Clive Barker, Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, Cassandra by Christa Wolfe

Plays: The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Electra by Sophocles, Los Reyes by Julio Cortázar, Angels in America by Tony Kushner, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco, The Trojan Women by Euripides, Salome by Oscar Wilde, Girl on an Altar by Marina Carr, Fences by August Wilson, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, Our Town by Thornton Wilder, Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond

Graphic novels: The Crow by James O'Barr, DMZ by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli, Eternals (2021) by Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribić, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and John Higgins, My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris, Maus by Art Spiegelman, Tank Girl by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

[oldbutchdaniel]

Someone wheeled me to the curb. A different friend helped me into a car. We got to the condo and managed to get me down the stairs, into the living room, where I fell asleep on a mattress we put on the floor. I slept, I peed myself, I fell off the mattress, I fell out of chairs talking wildly. I scared them, whoever they were, the people I was supposed to know. I knew who James was, he was on the phone. He was in California. You can’t stay there. You have to go to the hospital. You can go to a different hospital. I changed my clothes. It was like dressing a mannequin. Getting into the car, I fell on the emergency brake and broke my glasses. In the emergency room, at the second hospital, the woman at the desk said Oh no, you’ve had a stroke, and they wheeled me in. The doctor was handsome and it embarrassed me. For a while, I was talking to a brightness in the corner of the room. When they tried to give me a Heparin shot I threw a bedpan. I kept asking for someone, over and over—the friend who took me to the first hospital. I said black tree when I meant night. I said The branches blow and we sleep in dirt. I said Telephone. Safe harbor. Perhaps you are, perhaps you are diamonds.

— Metonymy, Richard Siken

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Hubble finds more black holes than expected in the early universe

With the help of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help scientists understand how supermassive black holes were created.

Currently, scientists do not have a complete picture of how the first black holes formed not long after the big bang. It is known that supermassive black holes, that can weigh more than a billion suns, exist at the center of several galaxies less than a billion years after the big bang.

"Many of these objects seem to be more massive than we originally thought they could be at such early times — either they formed very massive or they grew extremely quickly," said Alice Young, a PhD student from Stockholm University and co-author of the study  published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Black holes play an important role in the lifecycle of all galaxies, but there are major uncertainties in our understanding of how galaxies evolve. In order to gain a complete picture of the link between galaxy and black hole evolution, the researchers used Hubble to survey how many black holes exist among a population of faint galaxies when the universe was just a few percent of its current age.

Initial observations of the survey region were re-photographed by Hubble after several years. This allowed the team to measure variations in the brightness of galaxies. These variations are a telltale sign of black holes. The team identified more black holes than previously found by other methods.

The new observational results suggest that some black holes likely formed by the collapse of massive, pristine stars during the first billion years of cosmic time. These types of stars can only exist at very early times in the universe, because later-generation stars are polluted by the remnants of stars that have already lived and died. Other alternatives for black hole formation include collapsing gas clouds, mergers of stars in massive clusters, and "primordial" black holes that formed (by physically speculative mechanisms) in the first few seconds after the big bang. With this new information about black hole formation, more accurate models of galaxy formation can be constructed.

"The formation mechanism of early black holes is an important part of the puzzle of galaxy evolution," said Matthew Hayes from the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University and lead author of the study. "Together with models for how black holes grow, galaxy evolution calculations can now be placed on a more physically motivated footing, with an accurate scheme for how black holes came into existence from collapsing massive stars."

Astronomers are also making observations with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to search for galactic black holes that formed soon after the big bang, to understand how massive they were and where they were located.

IMAGE: This is a new image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The first deep imaging of the field was done with Hubble in 2004. The same survey field was observed again by Hubble several years later, and was then reimaged in 2023. By comparing Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 near-infrared exposures taken in 2009, 2012, and 2023, astronomers found evidence for flickering supermassive black holes in the hearts of early galaxies. One example is seen as a bright object in the inset. Some supermassive black holes do not swallow surrounding material constantly, but in fits and bursts, making their brightness flicker. This can be detected by comparing Hubble Ultra Deep Field frames taken at different epochs. The survey found more black holes than predicted. NASA, ESA, Matthew Hayes (Stockholm University); Acknowledgment: Steven V.W. Beckwith (UC Berkeley), Garth Illingworth (UC Santa Cruz), Richard Ellis (UCL); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

[aliesafenlock]

Found a programme for the London production of Rebecca das Musical on ebay, so I got it scanned in case someone would like to see. All 30 pages are attached below. It doesn't have a lot of photos, but it has full cast and song lists which I haven't seen anywhere else. Feel free to inbox me for a PDF copy that's easier to read. Enjoy!

Ich/I - Lauren Jones

Maxim de Winter - Richard Carson

Mrs. Danvers - Kara Lane

Mrs. van Hopper - Shirley Jameson

Beatrice - Sarah Harlington

Giles - Neil Moors

Frank Crawley - Piers Bate

Clarice - Emily Apps

Frith - Nigel-Joseph Francis

Jack Favell - Alex James-Ward

Ben - David Breeds

Colonel Julyan - Nicholas Lumley

Ensemble: Melanie Bright (u/s Mrs. Danvers), Rosie Glossop, Gail Mackinnon, James Mateo-Salt, Scott McClure, Tarisha Rommick, Elliot Swann

Directed by Alejandro Bonatto

Conducted by Robert Scott

Choreography by Ron Howell

[gaykarstaagforever]

FREE ON YOUTUBE

Murder by Death (1976)

A weird little guy invites five world-famous detectives to his spooky mansion for the weekend, to see if he can outwit them once and for all. Silliness and charmingly lame jokes ensue. And if you're at least a casual fan of 20th century English-language detective fiction / movies up to 1976, you'll appreciate the characters and genre tropes being parodied / taken down here.

While not as raucously funny as other comedy movies from this era (like Airplane! and Blazing Saddles, assuming that era's comedy works for you at all), the Neil Simon script is consistently chuckle-worthy, with some genuine lol moments. There is one joke involving Peter Falk firing a gun and having to go to the bathroom that is one of the stupidest, funniest things I have ever seen, almost entirely because of how he delivers it. Seriously, the whole movie is worth watching just for that.

Speaking of Peter Falk, the cast is Hollywood royalty, many of them reprising crime-solving characters in parody that they were at this point famous for. Special note to James Coco as the Hercule Peroit parody Milo Perrier, one of the few actors who seems to get the tone the screenplay is trying for, so he is perpetually funny. And of course Peter Falk as Sam Diamond, being absolutely perfect as Columbo doing Humphrey Bogart doing Sam Spade. Falk was never not 110%, and that's also true here. Truman Capote, playing the principal antagonist, is...well. He was never a great actor. But he's certainly being Truman Capote and that kind of makes up for it.

Also special shout-out to Estelle Winwood, who at 93 is bright-eyed and sharp enough to make an extended fart joke funny.

(That woman died eight years after this, two years after I was born. She was born in 1883 and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Amazing.)

The big black mark on this is Peter Sellers as Sidney Wang, doing his awful stupid Charlie Chan Tojo "me so solly" yellowface garbage. Obviously his history of doing this character like this, to pop culture acclaim, was enough to get him into this movie doing it, WELL PAST the point where it was in any way acceptable. The movie knows that, sort of, and tries to Tropic Thunder it by making his behavior an object of (too) light scorn, while also pairing him with an "adopted Japanese son," played by Japanese-American actor Richard Narita. It is still utterly awkward and gross, redeemed only slightly by the fact that Sellers is a good actor so he gives Wang genuine depth of character, despite the rest of this. That is in no way a defense, and it is still terrible. Just slightly less terrible, maybe? Relatively?

With all of the magical realism and trope tear-downs in this plot, I kept expecting by the end that someone would reveal Sellers as a character perpetuating a racist fraud. But they aren't brave enough to do that. Real shame.

Also there are no Holmes and Watson parodies here, which seems like a glaring omission. Wikipedia says they cut scenes from the original screenplay which would have had them either show up right at the end, after the crime has already been solved, or near the end, and then solve it. These were apparently cut because it was decided they would distract from and overshadow the plot at that point.

Fair enough. But as the plot by the end is purposeful convoluted goofiness mixed with a meta-commentary on the whodunnit genre in general...would it have made THAT much of a difference? I don't think so.

It is a breezy 90 minutes. And while the first half drags purposefully bad jokes out a little too long and has trouble settling on a consistent comedic tone, it ramps up and is really solid by the end.

There are also some surprising jokes about sexuality and gender identity here. I don't want to oversell that, because it is all played as just more wackiness. But I didn't expect anything quite like this in a Hollywood movie from 1976. A welcome surprise.

Oh and the paper caricatures of the cast at the beginning and end were drawn by Charles Addams. Yes, THAT Charles Addams.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 67%. I'd go higher than that, at least the high seventies. That Peter Falk bathroom joke at like an hour and seventeen minutes is really goddamn funny.

[scotianostra]

The Scottish actor Archibald Duncan was born in Glasgow on 26th May 1914.

His father was a regimental sergeant major and his mother a postmistress. He was educated at Govan High School and afterwards and worked as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards.

It was at the Citizens Theatre Company that Duncan joined the training ground of many Scottish actors including, Molly Urquart, Duncan Macrae, Gordon Jackson and Eileen Herlie. He then made his Scottish acting debut in Juno and the Paycock, playing all three gunmen, at Glasgow's Alhambra in May 1944.

Duncan went on to star in London's West End with the likes of the great Scottish character actor Alistair Sim and the late George Cole. Film roles started to follow with , Floodtide , The Gorballs Story, The Elusive Pimpernel, Green Grow the Rushes, Henry V, The Lavender Hill Mob, You're Only Young Twice and Walt Disney's The Story Of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men as 'Red Gill' amongst many others. Duncan also teamed up with Richard Todd and James Robertson Justice in Disney’s Rob Roy the Highland Rogue as Dugal Mac Gregor.

One of Duncan's first big TV roles was as Inspector Lestrade in the 1954 series Sherlock Holmes, but perhaps Archibald Duncan is best remembered for his second Robin Hood role, where 6'2" Duncan played Little John alongside Richard Greene in The Adventures of Robin Hood which ran for 143 episodes on ITV here and CBS in the states from 1955 to 1959. I just had a wee look and many of the episodes are on Youtube.

Duncan's portrayal of Little John would be fondly remembered decades later for his combination of strength, skill and humour. It was during the filming this unforgettable series that this Scottish gentle giant proved to be a true hero and managed to prevent a runaway horse from hurtling towards a group of spectators, consisting of mainly children, watching close by. For this brave feat, he was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery and £1,360 in "damages". But it also resulted in him missing the recording of eleven episodes of Robin Hood. So between times, a replacement was found in fellow Scotsman, Rufus Cruickshank.

Another great Scottish film he appeared in was Ring of Bright Water. Archie Duncan's career in television production carried on with parts in programmes like Z Cars, Hereward the Wake, Orlando, Black Beauty and Bootsie and Snudge.

Sadly in 1978 he suffered a massive stroke which caused paralysis down his right side. Sadly he passed away at Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, London aged 65 on 24th July 1979.

[mariacallous]

If you were asked to guess which prestigious film-making duo had spent their career scratching around desperately for cash, trying to wriggle out of paying their cast and crew, ping-ponging between lovers, and having such blood-curdling bust-ups that their neighbours called the police, it might be some time before “Merchant Ivory” sprang to mind. But a new warts-and-all documentary about the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the US director James Ivory makes it clear that the simmering passions in their films, such as the EM Forster trilogy of A Room With a View, Maurice and Howards End, were nothing compared to the scalding, volatile ones behind the camera.

From their initial meeting in New York in 1961 to Merchant’s death during surgery in 2005, the pair were as inseparable as their brand name, with its absence of any hyphen or ampersand, might suggest. Their output was always more eclectic than they got credit for. They began with a clutch of insightful Indian-set dramas including Shakespeare-Wallah, their 1965 study of a troupe of travelling actors, featuring a young, pixieish Felicity Kendal. From there, they moved on to Savages, a satire on civilisation and primitivism, and The Wild Party, a skewering of 1920s Hollywood excess that pipped Damien Chazelle’s Babylon to the post by nearly half a century.

It was in the 1980s and early 1990s, though, that Merchant Ivory became box-office titans, cornering the market in plush dramas about repressed Brits in period dress. Those literary adaptations launched the careers of Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves and Julian Sands, and helped make stars of Emma Thompson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Most were scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who had been with them, on and off, since their 1963 debut The Householder; she even lived in the same apartment building in midtown New York. Many were scored by Richard Robbins, who was romantically involved with Merchant while also holding a candle for Bonham Carter. These films restored the costume drama to the position it had occupied during David Lean’s heyday. The roaring trade in Jane Austen adaptations might never have happened without them. You could even blame Merchant Ivory for Bridgerton.

Though the pictures were uniformly pretty, making them was often ugly. Money was always scarce. Asked where he would find the cash for the next movie, Merchant replied: “Wherever it is now.” After Jenny Beavan and John Bright won an Academy Award for the costumes in A Room With a View, he said:“I got you your Oscar. Why do I need to pay you?” As Ivory was painstakingly composing each shot, Merchant’s familiar, booming battle cry would ring out: “Shoot, Jim, shoot!”

Heat and Dust, starring Julie Christie, was especially fraught. Only 30 or 40% of the budget was in place by the time the cameras started rolling in India in 1982; Merchant would rise at dawn to steal the telegrams from the actors’ hotels so they didn’t know their agents were urging them to down tools. Interviewees in the documentary concede that the producer was a “conman” with a “bazaar mentality”. But he was also an incorrigible charmer who dispensed flattery by the bucketload, threw lavish picnics, and wangled entrées to magnificent temples and palaces. “You never went to bed without dreaming of ways to kill him,” says one friend, the journalist Anna Kythreotis. “But you couldn’t not love him.”

Stephen Soucy, who directed the documentary, doesn’t soft-pedal how wretched those sets could be. “Every film was a struggle,” he tells me. “People were not having a good time. Thompson had a huge fight with Ismail on Howards End because she’d been working for 13 days in a row, and he tried to cancel her weekend off. Gwyneth Paltrow hated every minute of making Jefferson in Paris. Hated it! Laura Linney was miserable on The City of Your Final Destination because the whole thing was a shitshow. But you watch the films and you see no sense of that.”

Soucy’s movie features archive TV clips of the duo bickering even in the midst of promoting a film. “Oh, they were authentic all right,” he says. “They clashed a lot.”The authenticity extended to their sexuality. The subject was not discussed publicly until after Ivory won an Oscar for writing Call Me By Your Name: “You have to remember that Ismail was an Indian citizen living in Bombay, with a deeply conservative Muslim family,” Ivory told me in 2018. But the pair were open to those who knew them. “I never had a sense of guilt,” Ivory says, pointing out that the crew on The Householder referred to him and Merchant as “Jack and Jill”.

Soucy had already begun filming his documentary when Ivory published a frank, fragmentary memoir, Solid Ivory, which dwells in phallocentric detail on his lovers before and during his relationship with Merchant, including the novelist Bruce Chatwin. It was that book which emboldened Soucy to ask questions on screen – including about “the crazy, complicated triangle of Jim, Ismail and Dick [Robbins]” – that he might not otherwise have broached.

The documentary is most valuable, though, in making a case for Ivory as an underrated advocate for gay representation. The Remains of the Day, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-winning novel about a repressed butler, may be the duo’s masterpiece, but it was their gay love story Maurice that was their riskiest undertaking. Set in the early 20th century, its release in 1987 could scarcely have been timelier: it was the height of the Aids crisis, and only a few months before the Conservative government’s homophobic Section 28 became law.

“Ismail wasn’t as driven as Jim to make Maurice,” explains Soucy. “And Ruth was too busy to write it. But Jim’s dogged determination won the day. They’d had this global blockbuster with A Room With a View, and he knew it could be now or never. People would pull aside Paul Bradley, the associate producer, and say: ‘Why are they doing Maurice when they could be making anything?’ I give Jim so much credit for having the vision and tenacity to make sure the film got made.”

Merchant Ivory don’t usually figure in surveys of queer cinema, though they are part of its ecosystem, and not only because of Maurice. Ron Peck, who made the gay classic Nighthawks, was a crew member on The Bostonians. Andrew Haigh, director of All of Us Strangers, landed his first industry job as a poorly paid assistant in Merchant’s Soho office in the late 1990s; in Haigh’s 2011 breakthrough film Weekend, one character admits to freeze-framing the naked swimming scene in A Room With a View to enjoy “Rupert Graves’s juddering cock”. Merchant even offered a role in Savages to Holly Woodlawn, the transgender star of Andy Warhol’s Trash, only for her to decline because the fee was so low.

The position of Merchant Ivory at the pinnacle of British cinema couldn’t last for ever. Following the success of The Remains of the Day, which was nominated for eight Oscars, the brand faltered and fizzled. Their films had already been dismissed by the director Alan Parker as representing “the Laura Ashley school” of cinema. Gary Sinyor spoofed their oeuvre in the splendid pastiche Stiff Upper Lips (originally titled Period!), while Eric Idle was plotting his own send-up called The Remains of the Piano. The culture had moved on.

There was still an appetite for upper-middle-class British repression, but only if it was funny: Richard Curtis drew on some of Merchant Ivory’s repertory company of actors (Grant, Thompson, Simon Callow) for a run of hits beginning with Four Weddings and a Funeral, which took the poshos out of period dress and plonked them into romcoms.

The team itself was splintering. Merchant had begun directing his own projects. When he and Ivory did collaborate, the results were often unwieldy, lacking the stabilising literary foundation of their best work. “Films like Jefferson in Paris and Surviving Picasso didn’t come from these character-driven novels like Forster, James or Ishiguro,” notes Soucy. “Jefferson and Picasso were not figures that audiences warmed to.” Four years after Merchant’s death, Ivory’s solo project The City of Your Final Destination became mired in lawsuits, including one from Anthony Hopkins for unpaid earnings.

Soucy’s film, though, is a reminder of their glory days. It may also stoke interest in the movies among young queer audiences whose only connection to Ivory, now 95, is through Call Me By Your Name. “People walk up to Jim in the street to shake his hand and thank him for Maurice,” says Soucy. “But I also wanted to include the more dysfunctional side of how they were made. Hopefully it will be inspiring to young film-makers to see that great work can come out of chaos.”

[messinwitheddie]

If you ever watch the movie *A bugs life* I can’t help but headcanon Lich’s voice as Hopper cuz he’s a bully and a boss man.😅 especially the last scene where the ants finally are fed up with him and face him for being a tyrant that he is.

That's awesome you have a voice you can hear for Lich. I haven't watched a Bugs Life in a long time, but I liked the movie as a little kid. I can see the parallels with the characters.

Originally, when I first came up with the concept of Lich's character (Can’t even remember what I originally named him. Maybe it was the same name. Can’t remember. Wow…

Either way, Lich's original backstory/ role in a fanfic [I won't name because I wrote it in middle school and it was AWFUL], was very different from what it is now. The plot of the fuc was a ripoff of the movie ,“Heavy Metal” so Ronnie James Dio or Alice Cooper were the two voices I usually associated him with. "The Mob Rules" and "The Black Widdow" are Lich's theme songs.

BUT Kevin Spacey's voice fits Lich very well, now that you pointed it out.

He is oozing with Hopper vibes.

If I had an obscene amount of money to spend, I would hire these voice actors/actresses/ singers (resurrect them from the grave if necessary) to play my ocs and/or Characters from Invader Zim that never officially were assigned hired voice actors.

At least most of my Irken ocs have voices picked out.

Pepperoncini: Sir Christopher Lee (?) Earle Hyman (?) Even those two would have to pitch their voices lower and more gravely. Cini's voice, especially in his later years, is very, VERY deep and ravaged by centuries of smoking pipe amber. I guess the contrast in his bright, lighthearted, bubbly personality amuses me.

I can’t think of a voice that perfectly matches the voice Cini has in my head. Any suggestions would be welcome.

I loosely based his personality on Phyllis Diller and Vincent Price, to give an idea of his mannerisms.

Spinch: Martha Kelly (so shy)

Hoola: Eric Bauza (His personality is based on Daffy Duck, though lacking in WB toon antics and the lisp.)

Mem: Bette Midler (first choice), possibly Kathy Bates or Meryl Streep

Some of Mem's swarm I have casted

Handoverfist aka Hof: Eugene Mirman

Ferocity: Betsy Sodaro

Skathe: Jenny Slate

Starboard: John Fiedler

Zee: Jillian Bell

Rook/ the Sage: Originally I imagined John Cleese playing Rook, at least in Rook's older years (because he was based on the Monty Python’s Holy Grail Tim the Enchanter) or Suzy Izzard.

But again, now that you pointed out the parallels, David Foley fits pretty well too.

Miyuki: I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with me, but I think Cher (or at least a younger Cher), Lynne Lipton (again, younger), or Cree Summer would make great choices for Miyuki.

Kii: Can't get Melissa Fahn's voice out of my head for her, but any suggestions are welcome. Maybe Doro Pesch.

Soxx: Percy Rodriguez (would have to bring him back from the dead)

Hitz: Richard Romanus

Spork: Lorenzo Music (I just do)

Commander Poki: Brooke Dillman (I love that woman's voice. Boss as shit.)

Frylady Soo-Garr: Kristin Chenoweth or Grey DeLisle. Either. Either or would pull off her vindictive personality perfectly.

Pielord Emis-Gee: Ron Funches

Brewmaster Shakkin: Christopher McCulloch

Yeet: Hong Chau (so spunky!)

Vroog: Billie Mae Richards or Maria Bamford for a living person to play her.

Irken Gir would be played by Rosearik Rikki Simons, just no synthesizers or anything.

This is not a complete list by far. If you’re curious about any of ocs that I didn’t list, you can ask about or make suggestions.

Hearing the voices helps develop the character for me