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brf-rumortrackinganon · 3 months ago

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"Which is an uncomfortable notion because we’re used to a royalty that “has to be seen to be believed.”"

This is not an uncomfortable notion. It's been tested over centuries.

Every royal since the notion began has done the 'has to be seen to be believed' parades, and stats always come back that support is higher after the Monarch has made themselves visible especially to the ordinary public, but it works both ways because public investment gives the monarchy power against the establishment.

I could give you over 50 examples where the Monarch's visibility increased allegiance to the Crown, but we'd be here all day, so i'll narrow it down to just 3 examples in 3 reigns.

When Queen victoria was merely princess Alexandrine, heir to the throne, her mother ensured that the public would support her by taking her on tours of the country. This gave both her mother and the princess power at court and ensured a smooth transition to Queen when the time came.

However, after Albert died and Victoria refused to be seen in public for 40yrs, the monarch suffered to the point of constitutional crisis and is the highest point of republican movement where the public called for the end of it as they didn't see why they should support an invisible institution.

The funny thing is that Victoria was using the social media of her day - frequently releasing portraits and photos of her and her family, encouraging the govt to create endless monuments and dedications to her beloved Albert, and the govt encouraged industrialised to use the image of the Queen to advertise their goods throughout the Empire, but it didn't work to stem the tide of republicanism especially in an era that had so many social problems.

That's not to say that she wasn't working behind the scenes - she was, but her invisibility was a huge problem that nearly ended the monarchy.

Her son, as scandalous as he was, mingled with the public at large and when he became King, he reinstated the visibility to great success. Most, if not all, the public ceremonies that the royals do now are down to him. Everything from Trooping the colour to State opening of Parliament. Those ceremonies had been taking place in private already, but he added the royal family to them, and turned them into a public spectacle showcasing the monarchy. And he taught his children well on that point.

George 5 especially understood that lesson because he used it to cement public investment in the monarchy and that way fortify it against being toppled by the establishment or republicans. He did it by building on the public ceremonies of his father by making charity/ meet and greets with the public a feature of royal life. He also created the system of awarding ordinary citizens honours and making sure there is a public investiture which is still beloved to this day.

George 6 and The Queen added their own versions of meet and greets eg The Queen added the walkabout which proved extremely popular.

The issue for William more than KC3 might be of personality as William seems shy just like Kate which is why they are not entirely comfortable with the public showing of themselves, so they need to figure out a way to do it that allows them to maintain public investment in the royals.

They might want to scale back or figure out different ways of being visible, but remote media doesn't work, and it would be foolish to throw away a method tested and proven over 1000yrs.

Anecdotally, they might dislike local bread-and-butter, meet-and-great the public engagements because they don't understand the power of them, but let me tell you about The Queen visiting my village in 2012 as the first stop on her Jubilee tour on the country - we've grown little, but in reality, still a village.

She didn't do much. She met some school children and many villagers, looked at some assembled stalls in the village square, patted afew dogs, looked over our tiny Abbey and left. Entire thing probably lasted 2hrs or less.

She never returned, but you'll be hard pressed to find a republican in the village following that visit. Growing up there, I would never have thought people enjoyed the royals except for Charles - our village is in the Duchy of Cornwall so we have more contact with Charles and everyone has opinions about him - good and bad, but The Queen's visit was a shot in the arm that people still talk about today.

*****

Anon, you really missed the point I was making. You missed it so badly that you made it for me.

I didn’t say “royalty has to be seen to be believed” was uncomfortable. I said the idea of modern, scaled-back monarchy favoring quality over quantity where the royals may not be as often seen was uncomfortable.

Yes, physical access and “being seen” is a powerful tool in the monarchy but it’s no longer the *only* tool they have. What’s different about today than Queen Victoria’s time is the 24/7 news cycle, social media, the capability to do in-real-time virtual events, the ability to record both video and audio, television, internet, and phones. Today’s society is more connected than the Victorians may have ever thought possible. Royalty does not need to only be physically present to make an impact any more and that makes people uncomfortable because — as you proved — it upturns 120+ years of tradition. It’s a huge change, a paradigm shift.

Now, should royalty still be physically present and seen? Yes. How are William and Kate going to do that? No idea, but it’s probably going to be different than what everyone’s used to and there’s already grumbling about it because it’s a change from what they’re used to.

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justforbooks · 2 months ago

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Dame Maggie Smith

A distinguished, double Oscar-winning actor whose roles ranged from Shakespeare to Harry Potter

Not many actors have made their names in revue, given definitive performances in Shakespeare and Ibsen, won two Oscars and countless theatre awards, and remained a certified box-office star for more than 60 years. But then few have been as exceptionally talented as Maggie Smith, who has died aged 89.

She was a performer whose range encompassed the high style of Restoration comedy and the sadder, suburban creations of Alan Bennett. Whatever she played, she did so with an amusing, often corrosive, edge of humour. Her comedy was fuelled by anxiety, and her instinct for the correct gesture was infallible.

The first of her Oscars came for an iconic performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Miss Brodie’s pupils are the “crème de la crème”, and her dictatorial aphorisms – “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life” – disguise her intent of inculcating enthusiasm in her charges for the men she most admires, Mussolini and Franco.

But Smith’s pre-eminence became truly global with two projects towards the end of her career. She was Professor Minerva McGonagall in the eight films of the Harry Potter franchise (she referred to the role as Miss Brodie in a wizard’s hat) between 2001 and 2011. Between 2010 and 2015, in the six series of Downton Abbey on ITV television (sold to 250 territories around the world), she played the formidable and acid-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham, Lady Violet, a woman whose heart of seeming stone was mitigated by a moral humanity and an old-fashioned, if sometimes overzealous, sense of social propriety.

Early on, one critic described Smith as having witty elbows. Another, the US director and writer Harold Clurman, said that she “thinks funny”. When Robin Phillips directed her as Rosalind in As You Like It in 1977 in Stratford, Ontario, he said that “she can respond to something that perhaps only squirrels would sense in the air. And I think that comedy, travelling around in the atmosphere, finds her.” Like Edith Evans, her great predecessor as a stylist, Smith came late to Rosalind. Bernard Levin was convinced that it was a definitive performance, and was deeply affected by the last speech: “She spoke the epilogue like a chime of golden bells. But what she looked like as she did so, I cannot tell you; for I saw it through eyes curtained with tears of joy.”

She was more taut and tuned than any other actor of her day, and this reliance on her instinct to create a performance made her reluctant to talk about acting, although she had a forensic attitude to preparation. With no time for the celebrity game, she rarely went on television chat shows – her appearance on Graham Norton’s BBC TV show in 2015 was her first such in 42 years – or gave newspaper interviews.

Her life she summed up thus: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act and one’s still acting.” That was it. She first went “public”, according to her father, when, attired in pumps and tutu after a ballet lesson, she regaled a small crowd on an Oxford pavement with one of Arthur Askey’s ditties: “I’m a little fairy flower, growing wilder by the hour.”

Unlike her great friend and contemporary Judi Dench, Smith was a transatlantic star early in her career, making her Broadway debut in 1956 and joining Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre as one of the 12 original contract artists in 1963.

In 1969, after repeatedly stealing other people’s movies, with Miss Brodie she became a star in her own right. She was claiming her just place in the elite, for she had already worked with Olivier, Orson Welles and Noël Coward in the theatre, not to mention her great friend and fellow miserabilist Kenneth Williams, in West End revue. She had also created an international stir in two movies, Anthony Asquith’s The VIPs (1963) – she didn’t just steal her big scene with him, Richard Burton complained, “she committed grand larceny” – and Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater (1964), scripted by Harold Pinter from the novel by Penelope Mortimer.

Before Harry Potter, audiences associated Smith most readily with her lovelorn, heartbreaking parishioner Susan in Bed Among the Lentils, one of six television monologues in Bennett’s Talking Heads (1988). Susan was a character seething with sexual anger; the first line nearly said it all – “Geoffrey’s bad enough, but I’m glad I wasn’t married to Jesus.”

And the funniest moment in Robert Altman’s upstairs/downstairs movie Gosford Park (2001) – in some ways a template for Downton Abbey, and also written by Julian Fellowes — was a mere aside from a doleful Smith as Constance Trentham turning to a neighbour on the sofa, as Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello took a bow for the song he had just sung. “Don’t encourage him,” she warned, archly, “he’s got a very large repertoire.” Such a moment took us right back to the National in 1964 when, as the vamp Myra Arundel in Coward’s Hay Fever, she created an unprecedented (and un-equalled) gale of laughter on the single ejaculation at the breakfast table: “This haddock is disgusting.”

Born in Ilford, Essex, she was the daughter of Margaret (nee Hutton) and Nathaniel Smith, and educated at Oxford high school for girls (the family moved to Oxford at the start of the second world war because of her father’s work as a laboratory technician). Maggie decided to be an actor, joined the Oxford Playhouse school under the tutelage of Frank Shelley in 1951 and took roles in professional and student productions.

She acted as Margaret Smith until 1956, when Equity, the actors’ union, informed her that the name was double-booked. She played Viola with the Oxford University dramatic society in 1952 – John Wood was her undergraduate Malvolio – and appeared in revues directed by Ned Sherrin. “At that time in Oxford,” said Sherrin, “if you wanted a show to be a success, you had to try and get Margaret Smith in it.”

The Sunday Times critic of the day, Harold Hobson, spotted her in a play by Michael Meyer and she was soon working with the directors Peter Hall and Peter Wood. “I didn’t think she would develop the range that she subsequently has,” said Hall, “but I did think she had star quality.”

One of her many admirers at Oxford, the writer Beverley Cross, initiated a long-term campaign to marry Smith that was only fulfilled after the end of her tempestuous 10-year relationship with the actor Robert Stephens, with whom she fell in love at the National and whom she married in 1967. This was a golden decade, as Smith played a beautiful Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello; a clever and impetuous Hilde Wangel to first Michael Redgrave, then Olivier, in Ibsen’s The Master Builder; and an irrepressibly witty and playful Beatrice opposite Stephens as Benedick in Franco Zeffirelli’s Sicilian Much Ado About Nothing, spangled in coloured lights.

Her National “service” was book-ended by two particularly wonderful performances in Restoration comedies by George Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer (1963) and The Beaux’ Stratagem (1970), both directed by William Gaskill, whom she called “simply the best teacher”. In the first, in the travesty role of Sylvia, her bubbling, playful sexuality shone through a disguise of black cork moustache and thigh-high boots on a clear stage that acquired, said Bamber Gascoigne, an air of sharpened reality, “like life on a winter’s day with frost and sun”.

In the second, her Mrs Sullen, driven frantic by boredom and shrewish by a sodden, elderly husband, was a tight-laced beanpole, graceful, swaying and tender, drawing from Ronald Bryden a splendidly phrased comparison with some Henri Rousseau-style giraffe, peering nervously down her nose with huge, liquid eyes at the smaller creatures around, nibbling off her lines fastidiously in a surprisingly tiny nasal drawl.

With Stephens, she had two sons, Chris and Toby, who both became actors. When the marriage hit the rocks in 1975, after the couple had torn strips off each other to mixed reviews in John Gielgud’s 1973 revival of Coward’s Private Lives, Smith absconded to Canada with Cross – whom she quickly married – and relaunched her career there, far from the London hurly-burly, but with access to Hollywood.

She played not just Rosalind in Stratford, Ontario, but also Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra to critical acclaim, as well as Judith Bliss in Coward’s Hay Fever and Millamant in William Congreve’s The Way of the World (this latter role she repeated triumphantly in Chichester and London in 1984, again directed by Gaskill). But her films at this time especially reinforced her status as a comedian of flair and authority, none more than Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978), in which Smith was happily partnered by Michael Caine, and won her second Oscar in the role of Diana Barrie, an actor on her way to the Oscars (where she loses).

Smith’s comic genius was increasingly refracted through tales of sadness, retreat and isolation, notably in what is very possibly her greatest screen performance, in Clayton’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), based on Brian Moore’s first novel, which charts the disintegration of an alcoholic Catholic spinster at guilty odds with her own sensuality.

This tragic dimension to her comedy, was seen on stage, too, in Edna O’Brien’s Virginia (1980), a haunting portrait of Virginia Woolf; and in Bennett’s The Lady in the Van (1999), in which she was the eccentric tramp Miss Shepherd. Miss Shepherd was a former nun who had driven ambulances during blackouts in the second world war and ended up as a tolerated squatter in the playwright’s front garden. Smith brought something both demonic and celestial to this critical, ungrateful, dun-caked crone and it was impossible to imagine any other actor in the role, which she reprised, developed and explored further in Nicholas Hytner’s delightful 2015 movie based on the play.

She scored two big successes in Edward Albee’s work on the London stage in the 1990s, first in Three Tall Women (1994, the playwright’s return to form), and then in one of his best plays, A Delicate Balance (1997), in which she played alongside Eileen Atkins who, like Dench, could give Smith as good as she got.

The Dench partnership lay fallow after their early years at the Old Vic together, but these two great stars made up for lost time. They appeared together not only on stage, in David Hare’s The Breath of Life (2002), playing the wife and mistress of the same dead man, but also on film, in the Merchant-Ivory A Room With a View (1985), Zeffirelli’s Tea With Mussolini (1999) and as a pair of grey-haired sisters in Charles Dance’s debut film as a director, Ladies in Lavender (2004). Smith referred to this latter film as “The Lavender Bags”. She had a name for everyone. Vanessa Redgrave she dubbed “the Red Snapper”, while Michael Palin, with whom she made two films, was simply “the Saint”.

With Palin, she appeared in Bennett’s A Private Function (1984), directed by Malcolm Mowbray – “Moaner Mowbray” he became – in which an unlicensed pig is slaughtered in a Yorkshire village for the royal wedding celebrations of 1947. Smith was Joyce Chilvers, married to Palin, who carries on snobbishly like a Lady Macbeth of Ilkley, deciding to throw caution to the winds and have a sweet sherry, or informing her husband matter-of-factly that sexual intercourse is in order.

She had also acted with Palin in The Missionary (1982), directed by Richard Loncraine, who was responsible for the film of Ian McKellen’s Richard III (1995, in which she played a memorably rebarbative Duchess of York) and My House in Umbria (2003), a much-underrated film, adapted by Hugh Whitemore from a William Trevor novella. This last brought out the very best in her special line in glamorous whimsy and iron-clad star status under pressure. She played Emily Delahunty, a romantic novelist opening her glorious house in Umbria to her three fellow survivors in a bomb blast on a train to Milan. One of these was played by Ronnie Barker, who had been at architectural college with Smith’s two brothers and had left them to join her at the Oxford Playhouse. Delahunty finds her new metier as an adoptive parent to a little orphaned American girl.

She was Mother Superior in the very popular Sister Act (1992) and its sequel, and her recent films included a “funny turn” as a disruptive housekeeper in Keeping Mum (2005), a vintage portrait of old age revisited by the past in Stephen Poliakoff’s Capturing Mary (on television in 2007) and as a solicitous grandmother of a boy uncovering a ghost story in Fellowes’s From Time to Time (2009).

As this latter film was released she confirmed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had undergone an intensive course of chemotherapy, but had been given the all-clear – only to be struck down by a painful attack of shingles, a typical Maggie Smith example of good news never coming unadulterated with a bit of bad.

Her stage appearance as the title character in Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in 2007 was, ironically, about death from cancer. She returned to the stage for the last time in 2019, as Brunhilde Pomsel in Christopher Hampton’s one-woman play A German Life, at the Bridge theatre, London.

Cross, who was a real rock, and helped protect her from the outside world, died in 1998. But Smith picked herself up, and went on to perform as sensationally and beguilingly as she had done all her life, including memorable appearances in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films (2011 and 2015) and two Downton Abbey movie spin-offs (2019 and 2022). Her final film role was in The Miracle Club (2023), co-starring Kathy Bates and Laura Linney.

She had been made CBE in 1970 and a dame in 1990, and in 2014 she was made a Companion of Honour. Her pleasure would have been laced with mild incredulity. A world without Smith recoiling from it in mock horror, and real distaste, will never seem the same again.

She is survived by Chris and Toby, and by five grandchildren.

🔔 Maggie Smith (Margaret Natalie Smith), actor, born 28 December 1934; died 27 September 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Maggie Smith #in memoriam

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talas-first-lady · 8 months ago

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Post the ranking of the male legends. Let the world burn. Let chaos reign. It's on brand for the show (please read this in a funny tone)

The official, correct ranking of male Legends from best to worst along with foolproof evidence which you can trust because I am a lesbian and I am not swayed by men of dubious attractiveness.

1: Gwyn Davies

Pros: Invented time travel so he could save the poet he spent his entire adult life pining for. Has some of the absolute best throwaway lines of S7 (with flawless delivery). Has literally never done anything wrong ever.

Cons: Not around for long enough, which was in no way his fault.

2: Ray Palmer

Pros: Delightful. Hilarious. Has great chemistry with every other character. Loves showtunes and Star Wars.

Cons: Spending billions of dollars to create a suit so you can be a superhero in a city that frankly has too many superheroes already is not a good look. Also he's way too intense in relationships.

3: Nate Heywood

Pros: He somehow manages to be the perfect combination of himbo and really smart. It shouldn't be possible. Also, I too am an overeducated nerd who is really into Tala and Maisie, so I relate to him.

Cons: He really sucks whenever he's in a relationship.

4: Jefferson Jackson

Pros: He's such a good guy through and through. He has been put through some deeply unfair things but still manages to always be a positive force. Deserves all the hugs.

Cons: His accent is ridiculous and I can't take him seriously because of that.

5: Mick Rory

Pros: Has any character on the show evolved as much as him? Probably not. He's a sweetheart. He writes romance novels. His relationships with other characters are always amazing.

Cons: We all had to watch him birth alien eggs through his nose and that can never been unseen. Way too attached to his shitty ex boyfriend.

6: Wally West

Wally is right in the middle because he is true neutral. Does he make the show better? Not really. Does he make the show worse? Not really.

Pros: Good karaoke choices.

Cons: It's really dumb that Death Totem Sara appeared to him as his ex (who he really wasn't with that long and who was very much still alive) instead of his mom (who was his only family for his entire childhood and fairly recently died).

7: Gary Green

Pros: Sweet, funny, endlessly relatable. He adds so much character to every scene he's in.

Cons: Does not understand boundaries at all. He's also very inconsistently written because obviously they didn't plan for him to be an alien from the beginning.

8: Behrad Tarazi

Pros: I enjoy the way his relationship with Zari has developed. And he's a great singer.

Cons: Weed is not a personality. They didn't bother to give him an actual personality until season 7, at which point I was already over him. I also don't like his fixation with Astra which was entirely about finding her pretty on Highcastle Abbey and has nothing to do with who she actually is.

9: Carter Hall

Pros: Had the good sense to die quickly before he could really annoy me.

Cons: Manipulative towards Kendra. Actively detracted from the 100th episode.

10: Martin Stein

Pros: Victor Garber. A+ singing.

Cons: Drugged and kidnapped Jax in the pilot. Racist, sexist, deeply selfish. He started to improve slightly but it wasn't enough.

11: Rip Hunter

Pros: Saw the potential in Sara Lance.

Cons: Told Gideon he loved her and then TURNED HER INTO A TRAINING SIMULATOR FOR THREE YEARS. He also flew her into the sun and into an atomic bomb. Lied to all the original Legends. Lied to Ava.

12: Leonard Snart

Pros: Had the good sense to die quickly. Also, I do enjoy him on The Flash.

Cons: Cruel and abusive to Mick almost constantly. Talk about kicking someone while they're down. He's an asshole to everyone, but the way he speaks to Mick is unforgivable.

13: John Constantine

Pros: He's a useful foil for some of the more optimistic Legends. Decent bisexual representation. Never met a weird unidentified substance he didn't want to put in his mouth.

Cons: He forced Charlie to face thousands of years worth of trauma, got Behrad and Charlie's friends killed in the process, and put the entire world at risk. Why? To save Astra, who he immediately forgot about and left to struggle on her own (again). He sent Desmond to hell. He abandoned Nora when she was a kid. He altered Spooner's memories despite knowing that having her mind messed with is a major source of trauma for her. Put the entire world at risk again by teaming up with Bishop. Lied to and manipulated Zari and had the gall to call it love. Also, if both Ava and Mick don't like you, you are clearly highly suspicious.

#legends of tomorrow #that was exhausting #and now we wait for the fans of 12 and 13 to eat me alive

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jazz-bazz · 10 months ago

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@jesusbutbetterrr‘s Ghoulettes Weeks 2024! Week 4 : Trans ghoulettes & Elemental practice

another rambly one but i think this one is funny, basically the ghoulettes being absolute chaos and a hazard to the abbey... and here i hc Sunshine as a fire/air multi, and Aurora as water/air

also i keysmashed this out in 15 minutes after doing physics homework and with half shut eyes because am eepy and it is much too early so... no idea if this even makes any sense...

Maybe either Mist has just finished reading Heroes of Olympus series (i'm back in my percy jackson phase (not) sorry)... and there's a scene where Percy and Jason worked together to create a tornado

fyi, percy is a son of poseidon who can control water, and jason is a son of jupiter who can control air (usually he uses it to fly, etc, but ig here they found new ways to combine their powers)

And you know, they were bored, tour is still far away, it was a weekend so no chores or anything, some of the ghouls were out to have fun in the nearby town, something something... there's only Sunshine, Mist, and Cirrus, and maybe Dew and Rain cuddling in their room but it's not important (yet).

Mist just finished reading her book, and she excitedly ramble to Cirrus and Sunshine about this cool scene where they created a tornado together and was like, "You wanna try it with me, Cir?"

So like they went outside near the lake to try it out because nobody had anything better to do... And it worked! Like they weren't actively trying to destroy the surroundings or anything so they didn't make it too big, but big enough for it to look cool, because they asked Sunshine to take a video of them and send it to the ghroup chat.

And then Sunshine wondered if Aurora could do it alone? Because she's both water and air, and Aurora's like, "Hmmm... maybe? I need to try it out when I get back." Meanwhile we get Aether in the background shaking his head but that's beside the point.

And theeennn.... being the chaotic ghoulette that she is, dubbed one half of the chaos twins, Sunshine suddenly got a crazy idea... I'm sure you know where I'm getting with this but.... FIRE TORNADO!! Because she's fire and air! Of course Sunshine was really excited to try it out, and jumping in place with wide eyes and big hand gestures while talking 500 km/h to Mist and Cirrus, who were like, "What?"

But she was so excited, the two didn't have the heart to tell her no when she said she wanted to try, besides, they have a water ghoulette there, right? In case anything went wrong and someone needs to douse the fire. But just in case they called Rain over to help them, but of course, with Rain comes Dew, the other half of the chaos twin, who just grinned with a dangerous twinkle in his eyes, cheering his twin on, he was as pumped about this as Sunshine.

So, Sunshine stood on the edge of the lake readying her powers, Mist and Rain were on standby, some of the lake water already hovering nearby ready for anything, Cirrus was a bit further away because she was also kinda looking out for Sister Imperator or Papa or any officials that might thwart their plans, also taking a video, and lastly Dew, who sat criss cross apple sauce beside Sunshine.

She started by summoning her fire, making them twist and flow around her a bit, not big, just enough to surround her like a hulahoop. And then she brought it over her head and making it spin like a top with Dew cheering and yelling at her to "Make it bigger! Faster Sunny, faster! C'mon!"

So she called her air powers, combining it with the fire to make it spin faster and faster, also calling a bit more fire to make it bigger and more impressive. And she did it! A fire tornado! But now she had no idea how to stop it, because well.. the fire and air are working together and she had no idea how to separate them. It's basically one mixed element now, she could only control them together, not separately anymore, absorbing the magic back into her body would cause a bit of overload because of the amount she's put out, pushing it onto the lake would douse the fire, but then she still has the air to worry about, which by then would mix with the lake water and create a water tornado, and her control on air is weaker than fire, her main element.

Mist and Cirrus earlier managed to separate theirs because they're 2 separate ghouls, Cirrus pulled her air in one direction while Mist pulled her water in the other direction and just like that they could control theirs, besides, it's easier to release their elements back to their natural states than fire.

And she just looked to Mist with a bit of a panicked look, "Guys.... How to stop this?" So Mist looked at Rain, and they nodded at each other and Rain was like, "I'm kinda sorry about this guys, but not really." Then they just doused the tornado with their water and immediately pull it back so they didn't mix, and it just left the air, which Sunshine then took control of to slow it down and release.

And for good measure, or just being mischievous, Rain sprinkled some water on the chaos twins too (read : drench them in water) because the whole time Dew could've helped but nooo... he was having too much fun and was having ideas of his own, he just had to convince one of the airs to do it with him.

"Hey.... hear me out here, if water and air and fire work together... could we then make fire burn underwater? Can it be our next experiment?" Sunny suddenly said.

#ghoulette appreciation weeks #sunshine ghoulette #mist ghoulette #cirrus ghoulette #aurora ghoulette #with special appearance from #chaos twins T-T #dewdrop ghoul #rain ghoul #bex keysmash

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becauseallhellseeisme · 1 year ago

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Pink Floyd uncharacteristically displayed their sense of humour with "Seamus", a pseudo-blues novelty track featuring Steve Marriott's dog (whom Gilmour was dog-sitting) howling along to the music.

As the story goes, David Gilmour was caring for his friend’s German Shepherd at some point in 1971 while Pink Floyd was in the studio recording their sixth studio album Meddle. The dog, whose name was Seamus, belonged to Humble Pie and Small Faces frontman Steve Marriott, who at the time was on tour in the United States.

Seamus was a dog who responded well to music and as a result, had previously performed a small role barking in the background of Small Faces’ 1968 cut, The Universal. The members of Pink Floyd were quick to act upon the musical capabilities of their new canine friend when it was discovered during recording that Seamus could howl in tune with their instruments. Acting on the bizarre opportunity, the band quickly wrote a twelve-bar, slide guitar blues track for Seamus to “sing” over. Additional instrumentation and Gilmour’s lead vocals were later added. Meddle was released on Halloween of 1971, with “Seamus” closing out side A.

Critics have panned “Seamus” as one of Pink Floyd’s worst songs ever written, claiming the spoof to be dispensable to both the record and the band’s discography. In response to such objection, Gilmour defended the track, once stating that “It wasn’t really as funny to everyone else [as] it was to us.” Perhaps due to song’s unpopularity or the unavailability of its backing vocalist, the group and Gilmour have never played “Seamus” live in concert. That is, with the exception of in their monumental concert documentary, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.

Live at Pompeii was filmed over four days in October 1971. The primary focus of the film is Floyd’s psychedelic concert set in an ancient Roman amphitheater somewhere in Italy. Since the recording coincided with the release of Meddle, most of the songs included on the original version of the documentary were from the new record. The film was re-released in 1974 to include footage of Pink Floyd while recording The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road Studios.

The song “Seamus” made its way onto Live from Pompeii in the form of a segment titled “Mademoiselle Nobs.” The scene presents the song in altered form with David Gilmour playing harmonica and Roger Waters on blues guitar. Laying beside the two is a howling Russian Wolfhound, Nobs the dog. Nobs was a female Borzoi who belonged to Madonna Bouglione (daughter of circus director, Joseph Bouglione). At the request of the band, Madonna brought Nobs to the studio during shooting so they could re-create Seamus’ performance for the documentary. The scene was shot outside of Paris.

Sources:

Meddle Wiki page

Dangerous Minds

Yes, I may have googled the tour dates and it was all of February and March until early April. 🥰

I, too, would let David sit my pets.

#david gilmour #pink floyd

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buddyhollyscurls · 2 years ago

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I posted 6,294 times in 2022

That's 1,818 more posts than 2021!

528 posts created (8%)

5,766 posts reblogged (92%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@scary-ivy

@thatscarletflycatcher

@queenlovett

@lilaviolet

@first-kanaphan

I tagged 1,350 of my posts in 2022

#maria watches - 186 posts

#me - 182 posts

#personal - 173 posts

#ysblf - 97 posts

#yo soy betty la fea - 87 posts

#la fea mas bella - 46 posts

#lfmb - 44 posts

#jane austen - 37 posts

#beny - 32 posts

#betty en ny - 32 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#tbh i wish i watched more music vids i used to a lot when i was a teen but now i need captions of the lyrics so i can follow along to the so

My Top Posts in 2022:

honestly its very funny to see how similar Knightley and Emma are at times bc the scene where Frank Churchill bails on visiting Highbury again and Emma is like it’s a shame he didn’t come I bet u if he did he’d be the most charming, sensational, most wonderful guest and he’s like yea well I BET U HE’LL BE AN INSUFFERABLE C*NT is exactly like that scene where Jane’s gifted a pianoforte and Mrs. Weston is like OOHH I BET IT WAS MR. KNIGHTLEY WHAT IF HE’S SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH HER WHAT IF THEY MARRY and Emma is immediately like FIRST OFF KNIGHTLEY WILL NEVER MARRY BC IF HE DOES I’LL LITERALLY KILL EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM AND THEN MYSELF

272 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

What I love about Northanger Abbey is that all of her other heroines had Something: Elinor was sensible, she was a great counselor, Marianne is passionate with talent in music and in the arts, Elizabeth is witty, has great humor and is strong-willed, Fanny is sweet, almost too good and giving to a fault, Emma is pretty, rich, her most unique heroine in that she purposely made her difficult to like, Anne is keenly observant, prides herself on how she improves her mind, is reliant

Meanwhile Jane wrote Catherine and was like she is literally just some girl there is absolutely nothing special about her and i think that's lovely

386 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

Honestly I have to say I think the most attractive quality Darcy has is his loyalty. Like I know his friends say that's one of his best qualities as well and they always mention his loyalty to Bingley but you can clearly see his loyalty to Elizabeth early on too. Even when he's trying to repress how strongly he feels for her and he's simply "admiring her" like when she visits Jane at Bingley's. Caroline constantly puts her down and tries to make her look bad to Darcy. Liz arrives after walking 3 miles and Caroline is like ew Darcy do you see how sweaty and dirty and nasty she is? They see her taking her walks and she's sarcastically like do you think any painter could do her eyes justice lol. Does my man take the bait HELL NO ABSOLUTELY NOT he's like actually the exercise gives her a great complexion and makes her eyes look great, I actually think a painter could do an amazing job getting her eyelashes right and the way they look in the sun. Like eat SHIT Caroline Darcy has no time for your bullshit he's too busy considering his girl the epitome of perfection and none of ur tricks will work.

430 notes - Posted April 24, 2022

one last thing before I fuck off for a while again to write is when u think about it the whole "we're worse than exes, we're friends" thing REALLY misses the whole FUCKING POINT OF THE BOOK

HELLO ANNE IS AWARE SHE BROKE HIS HEART SHE IS AWARE OF WHY HE IS AVOIDANT AND AT TIMES CRUEL TO HER THEY WERE ENGAGED THEY WERE IN LOVE AND HER FAMILY AND FRIENDS CAME BETWEEN THEM SHE IS AWARE HE HARBORS ILL FEELINGS THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT SHE HOPES HE CAN FORGIVE HER THIS BOOK IS ABOUT THEM HAVING A SECOND CHANCE AND NOT ONLY THAT THIS QUOTE MISSES THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT IN THAT SHE MISSES HIS COMPANIONSHIP SHE LONGS FOR THE DAYS WHERE THEY HAD AN INTIMATE CONNECTION LITERALLY WHAT IN THE FUCK DID THEY DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

2,177 notes - Posted June 14, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

it's not needed but if they ever make another p+p adaption they really need to finally add in the part after darcy's second proposal where they discuss his letter it's so underrated and it's left out of every adaption especially since I think we all need to see that scene where it's like after they talk and clear the air Liz starts feeling like herself again and immediately starts teasing darcy and shes like so :D when did u start liking me huh huh :D what was it and Mr. Cool over here wants to be all smooth and go I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. and shes like *snorts* LAAAAAAAAMEEEEEE you liked me bc I'm the only girl that wouldn't take ur shit and he's like......... ok yes

3,136 notes - Posted June 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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tolerablebutnot-enoughtotempt · 10 months ago

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This is a meme that another tumblr user created about Northanger Abbey using the iconic Jane Lynch meme template originating from a scene in Glee which I thought was quite funny. The meme references Mr. Tilney's apparent status as a muslin connoisseur, as established in chapter 3 wherein he demonstrates his astute understanding of the fabric in a discussion with Mrs. Allen and Catherine. Mrs. Allen is particularly "struck by his genius," as Austen writes, since "Men commonly take so little notice of those things." I thought this detail about Mr. Tilney was an interesting and amusing one to include, which led me to think about why Austen included it in the first place. Muslin is a plain cotton fabric, so being knowledgeable about it, while very niche, doesn’t strike me as particularly impressive or warranting the title of genius, but since fabrics and clothing are thought to be more of a conventionally feminine interest, it is surprising that Mr. Tilney, a man, would be so interested and invested in muslin. This appears to add to Mr. Tilney’s appeal; I imagine that readers during this time would fawn over this detail about him. His investment in muslin suggests a sense of detail-oriented-ness or care concerning the women in his life. Perhaps with this minor detail, Austen is trying to sell Mr. Tilney as the main love interest by highlighting his particular sense of care toward women that is less common in men.

I think this detail speaks more about the ideas of what women “want” or are “impressed” by. Mr. Tilney’s savviness about muslins itself isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but the idea that he has taken notice of a “feminine” interest and has taken the time to learn so much about it is what’s impressive; a man living in a very patriarchal society cares about something of minimal concern to most men. In short, he’s just a man who cares. This act of care isn’t in essence particularly impressive or extravagant, which speaks to the “wants” of women; they don’t need grand gestures or bold offerings. Perhaps they just want to be noticed, seen, and understood by men.

Jane Austen writing Northanger Abbey

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hividsmarttv · 2 years ago

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Make Your Next Party Great!

Parties are a classic way to bond with friends and have a fun night in. One great way to keep the fun going all night long is by incorporating movies into your bash. Not only can you watch your favorite films, but you can also use movies as a basis for games and activities.

Watching Movies

Of course, the simplest way to incorporate movies into your party is to pick a few films that everyone can enjoy. Whether you prefer classic comedies, horror movies, or romantic comedies, there is a movie for everyone. Make sure to have plenty of snacks and drinks on hand, and create a cozy atmosphere by dimming the lights and adding some pillows and blankets.

A movie marathon keeps the party going all day or night. This involves choosing a particular genre, actor, or series and watching all of the films in succession. For example, you could have a Harry Potter marathon and watch all of the films back-to-back, or you could have a romantic comedy marathon and watch your favorite rom-coms all night long. Another idea is to offer an eclectic variety so there is something for everyone.

Using Movies for Games or Events

Movies can also be used as inspiration for games or events during your party. Throw a costume party where everyone needs to dress as their favourite character or find a costume that fits within a certain genre. Dress up doesn't only have to be for Halloween. You can break out the masks and fancy dress for any festive occasion. Invite everyone to find a creative way to express themselves through costumes, accessories, and makeup.

One fun idea is to play a movie-themed game of charades, where one person acts out a scene from a movie while the others guess the title. Choose funny scenes for a laugh, or awaken your inner drama kid with more serious roles. Write out a list of ideas ahead of time or just let everyone choose for themselves.

Another idea is to create a movie trivia game, where you ask questions about famous movie quotes, plot lines, or actors. Choose a specific genre or maybe a time range. You can use resources such as IMBD to help you find factual information. Provide small trinkets or coins as prizes to make the game fun for all, or go competitive with more expensive rewards for the winners.

You can also plan activities that are based on the movies you are watching. For example, if you are watching a horror movie, you can set up a haunted house in your living room or play a game of flashlight tag. Choose truth or dare to add some spice to a romantic film, or try out If you are watching a romantic comedy, you can set up a DIY photo booth and have everyone take pictures together. Craft or art projects are another great idea while watching artistic or creative movies. Host a mini film festival in the style of Cannes or South by Southwest complete with a red carpet VIP photoshoot. Got a lot of parking? What about a drive-in movie theatre at your place?

You can also create a fun atmosphere in a smaller location by setting up your living room like a movie theater. This can include creating a DIY movie screen with a projector or hanging up a white sheet, setting up rows of chairs or cushions, and creating a ticket booth or concession stand. Kids will love taking tickets and showing guests to their seats.

Food & Drink

Don't forget about the food. Create a concessions stand or prepare some snacks for your guests to enjoy. Set up a table with a variety of snacks and drinks that are inspired by the movies you are watching. For example, if you are watching a superhero movie, you could serve popcorn in superhero-themed containers or create a signature superhero cocktail. Sundae bars or make-your-own pizza setups provide a fun way for guests to make snacks their sure to love. You could also consider a classic dinner party for a more upscale event. Dine in style with Downton Abbey, or have a beer bash while watching hilarious classics like Animal House. Add colourful food-safe dyes for extra cheer.

#movie snacks #party ideas #slumber party #movie games

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idanit · 3 years ago

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possibly underappreciated Good Omens fics I enjoyed once upon a time

Indirectly inspired by a video series about fanfiction I watched, I decided to pull together a list of Good Omens fics I have bookmarked as stories I enjoyed, but which have less than 250-300 kudos at the time I’m writing this. No particular order. They’re accompanied by short excerpts from my private fic reading notes (not originally intended to be read by anyone but me, mind), sometimes slightly edited for clarity—and, sometimes, the comments I left on the fics.

This list sat in my drafts for a long time and the recent S2 announcement reminded me of it. I’d love it if it inspired you to do something similar! Spread the love.

And mind the tags, please.

△ = general and teen ▲ = mature and explicit

thermodynamic equilibrium ▲ 7K the author has such an ear for dialogue and is unapologetic about what they want to write the characters like. They think of the characters as a mix of TV and book canon, but they feel like a homemade blend to me. (...) It’s very funny.

such dear follies ▲ 6K I can really picture this Aziraphale—Crowley as well, but her especially. She’s rather distinct. (...) Nice writing.

The Words Were With - △ 1.2K post-Blitz vignette, Aziraphale realizes what he feels and wonders if they're human enough for this. I liked it, and I liked the tag "transhumanism, but in reverse?", too—what an interesting idea. I'd say it's a vignette in a dire need of a follow-up, but, well, there's the show. The show is the follow-up. It fits very nicely within the canon and I totally believe it could have happened, like a deleted scene.

Gossip and Good Counsel △ 19K/? I love their companionship and how they're set up to be opposites by the management even though they get on pretty well. It feels very in keeping with the canon, but I feel like the fact that it's an F/F set in this particular time period adds a meaningful layer to the situation. It's women supporting each other in the world of men, working with the personas that are created for them, but, privately, being normal, well-rounded people. (...) and of course your writing is always a pleasure to read. (...) SDHDGDHDHDG Maisie is truly an Aziraphale.

Crowley Went Down to Georgia (he was looking for a soul to steal) △ 6K This was nice. Based on a song I didn’t know. Crowley goes to a funeral in the USA, one of a fiddler he knew and lost a bet to once. (...) The fic has not one but two songs composed for it and embedded inside it and that makes it even better. I really enjoyed the experience.

The Thing With Feathers △ 18K WARLOCK you'rE HORRIBLE AND I LOVE IT I would read an entire novel-length fic just of Crowley fighting his battles with Warlock. Written like this? It would be a blast. (...) The OCs are believably characterized and well-loved by the story. (...) Everyone seems to need a friend in this house. (...) This was so fun, and at the same time, their mission has weight here (...) We wonder about what the future holds even though we know it.

Here Quiet Find △ 11K This fic aimed for my head and the aim was sure precise. It was a story of Crowley sensing Aziraphale's distress and finding him in a self-quarantined English village in the seventeenth century, tired and anxious. It's hurt/comfort, so there was washing and bedsharing and I had to love it, so I did.

outside of time △ 2K Post-Almostgeddon, (...) nicely-written, short, but strung with a soft kind of tension and unspoken words. There's no drama, just "can we really", and "do you really" of sudden freedom. They fall into being inseparable. Book canon, which I like for this story (sitting on a tarmac). I liked the footnotes. There's a mention of Eliot. All in all, very much yes.

She'asani Yisrael △ 2K It’s Crowley going through a two-hour service and drinking blessed wine. He also keeps an eye on a boy he was asked to. It’s 1946. It was pretty good, so far the best Jewish GO fic, I think, from the ones I’ve read.

To Guard The Eastern Gate △ 11K I loved it. You really made Sodom feel lived-in; the description of Keret, Hurriya and Yassib's house and relationship were great. I got attached to both them and the city (...) Aziraphale and Crawley’s interactions were generally very entertaining. I laughed (...) Your rendering of their voices just lands so well (...) But then oh, the entire ending (...) hurt, hurt a lot, and your descriptions are so vivid.

If you’ve been waiting (for falling in love) △ 14K AAAAA a good ending line. The whole paragraph, in fact. I love a good smattering of philosophy in my fics, and this was really nice. I can get behind Thomas Aequinus's and Crowley's view on eternity. It's (...) a pretty simple fic (...) - the courage to express yourself and take a risk is awarded with winning what was at stake by the virtue of reciprocity - but the way it was intertwined with a study of how they would experience a forever was done well.

Holy unnecessary ▲ 2.2K It's well-written. (...) this is my type of sexual humour if I have any. So subtle. Blink and you'll miss it. Lovely.

The Parting Glass △ 17K Through the ages, they're dancing around their relationship until after the Armageddoff. (...) Wow, this was really, really nice. Very simple in its concept and nothing I haven't read before, but very well-executed. (...) AAAAH I LOVED the first chapter. I always like abbeys as settings, that's a given, but the banter, the good writing, the moral ambiguity!

Name The Sky △ 33K This Crowley is different, but very intriguing. Without his sarcastic talk, and much more animalistic. (...) I love how expressive Crowley is. (...) This fic has a very nice balance of drama and levity. I don't love Crowley-before-the-Fall stories very much, but with this execution I can read about it. (...) Okay I've read Crowley offering fruits, and even Aziraphale biting fruits, but the two of them sharing the apple? Outstanding. Ingenious. What a take.

A Flame in Your Heart △ 5K post-Blitz (why are so many dance fics post-Blitz?), they go to the bookshop and have an actually believable conversation. Then they dance the gavotte. It was really nice! Believable writing, emotions, the dancing! (...) Of course it's too early for them, (...) but the author's note? yeah.

Put down the apple, Adam, and come away with me ▲ 32K At this point it's just reading original stories with characters with names and some personality traits that I recognize. (...) I really enjoy this, the careful dance, the opposition between their views. (...) This is well-written, wow. (...) it's not an easy read (...) this story feels very believably 50s, but also reaches out to the present time.

Liebestraum ▲ 10K/? It really is like music. I'm enjoying the writing a lot. (...) oh my actual god. This, this? Wow, uh. This came for my throat. (...) THE MUSICAL COMPOSITION, THE MOTIF RETURNING, THE AUTHOR KNOWS WHERE IT'S AT (...) Excellent. This hits the right beats so precisely, (...) and with feeling, too.

Down Comforter △ 2.4K and they lay down in angeldown, a soft rug ‘neath their heads– alright. Well, Crowley lies under Aziraphale's wing on a Persian rug after the Apocalypse, and they talk (...). It was sweet.

The Corsair of Carcosa △ 5K Crowley wakes up from a nap, visits Aziraphale for some drinking, and they read The King in Yellow that he happens to own. Good writing, so I'm bought. Aziraphale mentions Beardsley, so I'm bought twice over. My god, a discussion of etheral/occult madness? Caused by some wrong/true reading? Yes.

Very Good, Omens! △ 6K It's rather well-written, well-pastiched. People don't do that too often, nowadays - try to write in the style of a particular writer. (...) I love wordplay like this.

Reviving Robin Hood: The Complicated Process of Crème Brûlée △ 30K it's well-written (...), has a rhythm to it, and quiet humour. (...) Finally some nice, good, light writing. The attention to detail! (...) I'm still reading most of it aloud, the rhythm of it compels me to. (...) okay this does sound like Pratchett&Gaiman, the Good Omens itself (...) The fic is meandering, hilarious, sensitive in all the right places, and overall lovely.

my dear acquaintance △ 1K Oh. Oh. Yes, yes! Aziraphale in Russia, Russia I've never been in, but I can feel the snow and the evening of. Very real, and the bar, too. Attention to detail - vodka flavoured with dill, what on earth? Yes. He would totally have a distinct taste in operas and he would totally complain about a subpar one. I'm glad Tchaikovsky's there.

there is a crack in everything △ 1.8K This was good! Ah. Inspired by a comment (...), I went looking for Mr. Harrison and Mr. Cortese fics—really, what a big brain moment someone had and why have I never thought to look for them? This is Crowley getting suddenly anxious and Aziraphale going out of his way, through all his layers of not-thinking and denial, to console him. I also really liked how the Arrangement is a carefully unacknowledged partnership-marriage.

Scales And Gold And Wings And Scars △ 6K No conflict, no plot, one tiny arc like a ripple on the surface of water on a calm sunny day - of Aziraphale discovering Crowley’s scars. It's the South Downs and it's early summer. They bask and swim in a spring. Non-sexual nudity, love in the air like a scent. Nice.

Nineteen Footnotes In Search Of A Story △ 0.4K This is a Good Omens story told only through footnotes. Your mind can fill in the gaps. Fascinating (...). Also, it’s an experiment so apt for this particular fandom.

Hell on Earth △ 6.5K Oh, I loved it! How could I not love it: it's Beelzebub-centric, it's historical, it has classical painting, and even a hilarious scene with a cuneiform phrase, as if I didn't enjoy this story enough already. There are so few Beelzebub fics out there and I find searching for them very difficult (I accept recs if anyone has any), and it's such a shame, so this was really like a gift to the fandom. I absolutely adore the way you portrayed them, small, frightening, powerful, and confident. Also, it was super fun to see how different Crowley seems when we're not in his POV or in a story about him and Aziraphale. (...)

Go Up to Ramoth-Gilead and Triumph △ 24K Daegaer is... pure class. (...) hdhdhdh what pfttt why you so funny (...) I love this Crowley. (...) This got unexpectedly intense. (...) I love the little nods to the fact that Israelites, especially the poorer ones, still believe in other gods. I also really like that they sleep on roofs. It's just the kind of detail that grounds the story and shows that the author is, in fact, a historian.

#good omens #good omens fic rec #fanfiction #fic rec #idanit reads #i also have a multifannish F/F rec list in the works #all my bookmarks are private but i feel the need to share the love

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rose-tinted-juls · 3 years ago

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juliana's fav tv shows updated: 26.07.2021.

la casa de papel / money heist (2017-) nationality: spanish created by: álex pina main actors: úrsula corberó, álvaro morte, itziar ituño, pedro alonso, miguel herrán, jaime lorente, esther acebo, alba flores short summary (imdb): "an unusual group of robbers attempt to carry out the most perfect robbery in spanish history - stealing 2.4 billion euros from the royal mint of spain." seasons: 4 - (season 5 is coming in september + december 2021) why i love it (in a few words): it's thrilling, all the characters are perfectly written, i love listening to spanish speech, the actors are awesome, SO INCREDIBLE PLOT, uncountable twists, i got attached so fast, i binge watched it, it never feels forced

band of brothers (2001) nationality: american created by: tom hanks, steven spielberg main actors: damian lewis, ron livingston, ross mccall, rick gomez, james madio, kirk acevedo, neal mcdonough, scott grimes, dexter fletcher, donnie wahlberg short summary (imdb): "the story of easy company of the u.s. army 101st airborne division, and their mission in world war ii europe, from operation overlord, through v-j day." - based on the book band of brothers by stephen e. ambrose seasons: 1 why i love it (in a few words): it's ww2 and i'm a huge ww2 enthusiast, i love hbo war, it shows the good and the bad, we follow the whole journey of these soldiers and it's amazing, the actors are absolutely incredible, their friendships are 100/10, the cinematography is beautiful, it's based on a true story

downton abbey (2010-) nationality: english created by: julian fellowes main actors: hugh bonneville, maggie smith, michelle dockery, dan stevens, robert james-collier, allen leech, penelope wilton, matthew goode, lily james short summary (imdb): "a chronicle of the lives of the british aristocratic crawley family and their servants in the early twentieth century." seasons: 6 + 1 movie (the second movie comes in december 2021) why i love it (in a few words): it has phenomenal actors, the plot is exciting-thrilling, there are twists you don't expect, so many love stories and i love them, fantastic characters, it's often so funny i can't stop laughing, dame maggie smith and her performance as the dowager is just incredible and i love her, costumes on point, tom branson o.o

broadchurch (2013-2017) nationality: british created by: chris chibnall main actors: david tennant, olivia colman, jodie whittaker, arthur darvill short summary (imdb): "the murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart." seasons: 3 why i love it (in a few words): david tennant, his scottish accent i can't-, olivia colman, their duo oh my god these two together are something extraordinary, it's such a thrilling show wow, SO MANY PLOT TWISTS, cinematography is phenomenal and gorgeous, it's so funny at times oh lord (especially david), it's impossible to stop watching

the pacific (2010) nationality: american created by: tom hanks, steven spielberg main actors: joe mazzello, jon seda, james badge dale, rami malek, ashton holmes short summary (imdb): "the pacific theatre of world war ii, as seen through the eyes of several young marines." seasons: 1 why i love it (in a few words): hbo war, it's ww2 and i'm such an enthusiast of it, joe mazzello is incredible oh my, it's a bit graphic (for some people it's too graphic and i can see why) but i love it, it makes you feel you're there fighting and like wow, actually all the actors are amazing in it, we see three different story lines so we get to know different aspects of the whole thing

the crown (2016-) nationality: british created by: peter morgan main actors: claire foy, matt smith, olivia colman, tobias menzies, vanessa kirby, helena bonham carter, josh o'connor, emma corrin short summary (imdb): "follows the political rivalries and romance of queen elizabeth ii's reign and the events that shaped the second half of the twentieth century." seasons: 4 - (season 5 and 6 are in the making) why i love it (in a few words): i've always been interested in queen elizabeth's life, this is a look inside the royal family that you don't often have, the actors are SO AMAZING, honestly sometimes it's so funny and then the next minute it's heartbreaking, it teaches me more about them than anything else, i guess it gives you their point of view so you can understand them a lil bit better, as a child i loved the british royal family so baby me is happy inside when i watch it

the falcon and the winter soldier (2021) nationality: american created by: malcolm spellman - stan lee main actors: anthony mackie, sebastian stan, wyatt russell, daniel brühl short summary (imdb): "following the events of 'avengers: endgame', sam wilson / falcon and bucky barnes / winter soldier team up in a global adventure that tests their abilities - and their patience." seasons: 1 why i love it (in a few words): i'm a huge marvel fan, my fav characters are sam and bucky, SEBASTIAN STAN, it's funny (honestly which marvel movie/series isn't?), the cinematography is gorgeous, the plot is great, fight scenes on point

biohackers (2020-) nationality: german created by: christian ditter main actors: luna wedler, jessica schwarz, adrian julius tillmann short summary (imdb): "a fast-paced thriller following medical student mia akerlund who discovers the use of highly advanced biohacking technology in her university town." seasons: 2 why i love it (in a few words): exciting, plays in a city i know, plot twists, the cinematography is amazing, a beautiful show honestly, the plot is interesting and one of a kind imo, the actors are pretty great

the mandalorian (2019-) nationality: american created by: jon favreau main actors: pedro pascal short summary (imdb): "the travels of a lone bounty hunter in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the new republic." seasons: 2 - (season 3 is coming) why i love it (in a few words): i love star wars and the star wars universe, pedro pascal is amazing, honestly i fell in love with pedro just by his voice literally without even knowing his face, BABY YODA, the character development, exciting plot, pretty awesome fight scenes, great actors

the queen's gambit (2020) nationality: american created by: scott frank, allan scott main actors: anya taylor joy, thomas brodie-sangster, harry melling, jacob fortune-lloyd short summary (imdb): "orphaned at the tender age of nine, prodigious introvert beth harmon discovers and masters the game of chess in 1960s usa. but child stardom comes at a price." seasons: 1 why i love it (in a few words): cinematography is beautiful, anya taylor joy is gorgeous, and she's such a talent oh my, i love chess, the plot, TBS is in it, it's a show you can't not binge watch it just pulls you in

( +1 )

peaky blinders (2013-) nationality: british created by: steven knight main actors: cillian murphy, paul anderson, helen mccrory, joe cole, finn cole short summary (imdb): "a gangster family epic set in 1900s england, centering on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss tommy shelby." seasons: 5 - (season 6 is coming) why i love it (in a few words): i love mob stuff in general, so amazing actors oh my, cillian murphy, helen mccrory, it's so dark i love it, plot plot plot, the soundtrack is phenomenal (especially when it's arctic monkeys shhh), it's british (yay)

#juliana's fav series #juliana's movie rec #tv show recommendations #fav series: tfatws #fav series: the crown #fav series: broadchurch #fav series: hbo war #fav series: queen's gambit #fav series: biohackers #fav series: la casa de papel #fav series: peaky blinders #fav series: the mandalorian

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orangerosebush · 4 years ago

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Sitting on the branches of my family tree

[ao3 link]

Artemis was currently sitting alone in the kitchen at three in the morning. He didn’t quite know when he’d officially decided he wasn’t going up to bed, but one way or another he had found himself sitting in the gloom of the downstairs.

The room was dim, as Butler had turned off the hall lights before he’d retired for the evening sometime late the previous night. The only thing illuminating the kitchen was the faint, warm glow of the metal hot plate that was keeping the water in the kettle at a low boil.

Artemis frowned. He looked down at the cup of earl grey he’d been nursing for the past half hour. Probably too cold to enjoy properly at this point, he sighed.

Faint ripples formed in what tea remained at the bottom of the mug, and he furrowed his brow. That was odd. Straining his ears, he glanced at the entrance to the kitchen apprehensively.

Sure enough, coming slowly down the grand staircase was Juliet. Artemis blinked, eyes flickering back to the old clock on the wall.

Interesting.

“Either you’re up extraordinarily early,” he remarked as she tried to slink into the kitchen as quietly as she could. “Or you’ve stayed up rather late.”

Anyone else would’ve jumped at such a surprise, but Juliet merely tensed. Years of the Blue Diamond training program had left her with nerves of steel.

Turning to face him slowly, she gave him an appraising look.

“Hey,” she said carefully.

“Hello,” he responded, amused.

Silence settled over the room.

“I always suspected that you stalked around the house at night, Artemis,” she snorted after a moment. “Relaxing too much a waste of your time?”

“You make me out to be almost sinister, Juliet. I’m afraid this is just a rather mundane example of my insomnia flaring up,” he waved her off, getting up to move to the stove top. “Do you want any of the tea I was making?”

She took a seat on one of the barstools by the main table. “Tea? If you’re either constantly on a caffeine drip or are staring at a screen all the time, then I don’t think you have insomnia. You’re just a workaholic.”

“Clinically so,” Artemis murmured, flicking off the burner. “I take it you don’t want any, then?” he called out over his shoulder.

“Nah, I want some — I’ll take whatever you have that’s decaf and fruity,” she crossed her arms on the counter and rested her chin on them.

He wrinkled his nose, taking the kettle off the burner to pour the steaming water into his cup. Opening the cabinet above the stove, he reached for another cup, the cool china of the mug soothing against his skin. He placed a tea bag at the bottom of the new cup, watching a vibrant ruby diffuse through the water as the tea steeped. In contrast, his earl grey was a richer color, almost caramel.

Fingers curling around the warmth of the cups, he brought the two mugs over to the table. Juliet perked up, reaching for her cup. She let the steam waft up, coiling around her face, and she smiled warmly, closing her eyes.

“It smells like strawberries.”

Artemis took a sip of his earl grey. “It most likely has some strawberry in it. It’s the berry mix that Barry’s carries. The box is described as a refreshing blend of ‘red’ berries,” he made air-quotes.

“I can certainly taste the red, so I’d give it full marks,” she held it up approvingly, putting on what Artemis assumed was meant to be a parody of his affectation.

“On your way to being a tea sommelier, I see.”

“Mayhaps . Also, yours better be decaf,” she shot a pointed look at his cup.

“You’re hardly in the position to speak about maintaining good sleep habits — you were wandering about the halls as well,” he reminded her, deliberately taking another sip of his tea.

She flushed. “I was asleep. It’s not my fault I woke up and wanted to stretch my legs. Also, you’re not wandering if you’re walking about with purpose.”

“Did Ko tell you that?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Nope. I heard it from some pageant mum during the tryouts for the Miss Sugar Beet Fair.”

“In what context?”

“I caught her nicking stuff from the other ladies’ purses in the cubby area,” she remarked airily.

Surprised, he laughed. “I admire her panache. Very Fowl-esque of her.”

“You can’t trademark being a conman that puts on airs, Artemis,” she rolled her eyes. “Mulch does the same shit, and I’m pretty sure he’s been around for at least three generations of Fowls.”

“I would disagree,” he stirred his tea. “At the risk of sounding egotistical, Diggums falls more into the category of being a petty crook than he does into the category of being a criminal mastermind.”

“Oh, really? We can ask him which one of us he agrees with if you want, Artemis,” she leaned forward, smug. “He’s been squatting in the cellar for about a month now.”

Artemis sighed. “I’ve been trying to actually catch a glimpse of him down there so that I can tell him to leave,” he said glumly. “I know he’s down there siphoning wine out of the casks, but he’ll surely argue that I’m just going mad if I attempt to kick him out over a phone call.”

“I thought you said he was just a petty crook,” she widened her eyes. “Shouldn’t a ‘criminal mastermind’ be able to handle evicting some random—“

“You’ve made your point,” he huffed.

“Gotcha!” she grinned.

“Congratulations, Juliet, on successfully defending Mulch’s no doubt fragile self-esteem. I have no idea how he would manage to enjoy our vintages were he to know I referred to his escapades as ‘petty’.”

Juliet shrugged. “Eh, wine is wine at the end of the day. You don’t even drink , Artemis.”

“Not all wine is created equal,” he argued, steepling his fingers. Sensing he was gearing up to give a spiel, Juliet huffed.

“Take for example the ‘87 Merlot — a wine which I suspect he has already sampled in excess,” Artemis began. “To call it a work of art would be to sell it short. Mulch is free to skim off the top of some of the lesser vintages, but I would appreciate if he would stay away from the quality wines that make up our rather expensive collection in the cellar.” Artemis sniffed, lazily swirling the remains of his tea.

Juliet snorted, resting her chin on her palm. “Nice speech. I was very moved by the ‘work of art’ bit.”

At this, the sides of Artemis’ mouth quirked upwards. “I have to defend it on principle. It was produced in an odd year, after all. Those always produce the best grapes.”

The young Butler rolled her shoulders a bit, her weight shifting in the chair as she stretched. Reaching up, her right hand tucked back a loose strand of hair that had fallen out of the messy bun she’d put her hair up in before bed. “That sounds like rich bullshit. No way.”

Artemis snickered, bowing his head in concession. “You’re right. It is.”

Juliet grinned. “Knew it. Where’d you hear that bit about the odd versus even years?”

He leaned back in his chair, his grip tight on the fading warmth of his cup. “Oh, it would’ve been a while ago. I thought it was so funny when I first heard about that rule,” he smiled fondly. “The Abbey Theatre was running Six Degrees of Separation. I remember pleading with mother to take me to see one of the performances — the press had just run a piece calling it obscene — and eventually, she relented. I was probably the youngest person in the theatre that night,” he chuckled.

As if lost in the memory, Artemis closed his eyes, his expression pensive. “There was one scene where the character Paul, a conman, was leading a young man around New York City. They went to the Rainbow Room to dine, and Paul told his companion that there was a secret trick rich people use when ordering wine: universally, the wines produced in the odd years are considered to be better. I remember there were titters in the audience —wine tasting is often based more on evaluating a bottle through a formula of factors than it is about the taste, and even the couples with cellars filled with vintages worth thousands of euros could have a bit of a laugh at that.”

Artemis opened his eyes, the whites flashing in the dim light. “But you see, it’s not a commonly held belief that odd year vintages taste better than even years. He’d made the rule up.”

Juliet blinked. “So?” she furrowed her brow. “It sounds close enough to some of the stuff I’ve heard people say about wine at the parties your mum throws.”

“True, but it wasn’t even one of the myths about wine!” Artemis leaned forward earnestly. “That night, the actor playing Paul said this particular line so assuredly that you believed he’d heard this straight from the mouth of an old money wine aficionado — at that moment, his compatriot melted away, and we replaced him. Paul had turned his charm on the audience, stringing us all along,” his voice became quiet.

Tilting his head so that he was gazing at Juliet directly, Artemis opened his mouth as if to say something before he closed it, frowning slightly. Worrying the inside of his cheek, he tried to formulate his next sentence. He almost chuckled at that. It wasn’t often that he was at a loss for words.

“Sometimes… sometimes I hear someone at a restaurant jump a little too quickly to choose the odd-year wine,” he said finally. “Sometimes, I hear what sounds like a touch of smugness in a couple’s tone when they turn down an even-year vintage. It’s possible I’m imagining it, but I do wonder. I wonder now and then if they saw that play — maybe not on that night, maybe not in that theatre — and believed. ”

With that, Artemis sighed, finally placing his teacup gently on the table. By now, the smooth surface of the china was cool to the touch.

Juliet let one of her hands fall from her chin to the table, flexing her fingers in thought. “You know,” she began slowly. “I think I’ve seen a bit of Six Degrees.”

Artemis started, shoulders rising. “Oh?”

She nodded. “I’m pretty sure. I think they made it into a movie a while back. Will Smith was in it.”

Artemis stared at Juliet in silence, blinking owlishly. “Did… did you like it?”

Juliet puffed out her cheeks as she exhaled, thinking for a moment. “Actually,” she began after a moment, locking eyes with Artemis. “I can’t remember.”

That was all it took.

The floodgates were released, and the pair was wracked with laughter.

Artemis couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so hard that tears had welled in his eyes. He snorted, wiping the wetness on his cheeks away with the palm of his hand.

“You should really be getting to bed,” he said after they’d sobered, crossing his arms on top of the table. Juliet scrunched her face up, stretching in her seat.

“I’m not tired,” she protested.

Artemis cocked his head curiously. “We’ve both been up since sunrise yesterday,” he pointed out. “The skyline is already starting to light up along the water by the cliffs. I know Madame Ko trained you to work during the most extenuating of circumstances, but surely you do need to sleep every now and again.”

“God —you’re such a hypocrite sometimes, you know that?” she prodded his arm with a finger, and he almost winced. “And I wasn’t up since yesterday, okay?” she added, almost as an afterthought.

He rubbed his shoulder. “Apologies.”

“I wasn’t!”

“Of course. Surely you weren’t on the phone with your girlfriend from your old wrestling troupe who is around, oh, six hours or so behind our time zone.”

Juliet’s cheeks turned scarlet. “Shut up, Artemis,” she groaned, burying her face in her hands in embarrassment. “Who even told you about her? Was it Dom?”

Artemis shrugged good-naturedly, refusing to comment. She shot him a withering look, finally dragging her hands away from her face.

“… Practice got out late. Sam forgot that a late practice over there is… early over here.”

“And you picked up the phone when she called anyway? So romantic. What a prophetic name you have, Juliet,” he grinned, and she flushed deeper.

“I’m not letting someone who skulks around in the dark snark about my long-distance relationship,” Juliet crossed her arms, and it was Artemis’ turn to be defensive.

“I’ve explicitly told you already that I was not ‘skulking’.”

She laughed at that, and the light of the nascent sunrise made it seem as though parts of her blond hair were lit up by a fiery reddish-gold, Artemis thought. Some people were meant to be seen in sunlight, others in the moonlight — Juliet was well suited to the warm light of dawn, a light still full of reds, pinks, and oranges.

Juliet must have noticed he’d been staring, as she softened.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself if you’re always thinking so hard,” she said offhandedly. Artemis ignored the lump forming in his throat.

“I’m afraid ‘thinking hard’, as you put it, is what I’m built to do.”

She locked her gaze on him, frowning.

“You can think as much as you want during the day, Artemis,” she reminded him lightly, finally leaning back. “Holing yourself up until you finally have some big breakthrough can very easily turn into pushing people away, and you know it.”

“Ah,” he winced. “I assume that was a thinly-veiled reference to my sending your brother away to Cancún?”

Whether tired or just exasperated, Juliet ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah, genius. Sometimes you’ve gotta slow down a bit so that we can all catch up with you. Especially Dom. The Cancún stuff nearly killed him, you know?”

He winced. “I know. I shouldn’t have used you as a way to manipulate — I shouldn’t have resorted to manipulating your brother at all,” he amended. “I let my paranoid mind get the better of me, as you said.”

“It doesn’t make it okay, but it wasn’t totally your fault,” she shook her head. “That’s what made it hurt more for him, in the end. He left to go to me in Cancún even though he knew something was… off with you because he thought I was in danger. Domovoi came after me because he thought his baby sister was in trouble,” she snorted at that. “But it still took the ‘worst case scenario’ to get him to leave you in the first place.”

She fixed him in her gaze. “Even at your lowest point, you knew on some level that it would take an emergency to get him to abandon you when you were hurt, Artemis. Lurking around the house at night so that you can drive yourself up the wall without anyone telling you to knock it off won’t change that. It’ll just make you feel like shit.”

They sat there in silence.

Artemis looked back at her, properly trying to make eye contact this time. “I am trying to get better, you know,” he said after a moment, almost grimacing when he realized how snarky that sounded. Thankfully, Juliet took it in stride.

“I know.”

He looked away, reaching for his forgotten cup of tea. The china was cool again, he found, turning it around between his hands.

“I’ll… try not to lurk around the house, as you put it so bluntly,” he said, only a tad begrudgingly.

She raised an eyebrow. “You won’t do it again, or you won’t get caught again?”

Artemis paused. “I’ll try not to do it again,” he decided after a moment, surprised to find he was being completely honest. Juliet seemed satisfied at that.

“Cool,” she grinned, beginning to relax once more into her usual easy-going manner.

“I appreciate you talking to me,” he added, tightening his grip on his cup. “You’ve given me much to think about. In a good way,” he smiled.

She beamed at that. Reaching to undo her bun, Juliet shook her head as though she were shaking off rain after coming inside. She must’ve showered before putting it up, as her hair seemed wavier than it usually was, he noted.

“Thanky."

“I suppose I ought to thank Sam for forgetting the extent to which Ireland is ahead of Mexico,” he mused, and Juliet seemed to be lost in thought for a moment.

“Yeah, you should — I stole a lot of what she’s had to say when I was making my point about isolating yourself and stuff,” she explained slowly.

“Oh?” he furrowed his brow. She waited a moment, seemingly debating how she was going to continue.

“Please. We grew up in the same house, Artemis. I’ve got pretty similar childhood baggage to what you’re probably leafing through. Parent stuff, growing up too soon stuff, normal 20-something stuff, weird 20-something stuff,” she shrugged. “She doesn’t let me mope, but she also like, sees me, you know?”

He regarded her for a moment, considering what she’d said. “You deserve someone like her,” he remarked. She shook her head.

“Not to drop my slightly- older-adult ‘adult wisdom’ on you,” she leaned forward. “But you’re not with someone because you deserve them or because they deserve you. She makes me laugh, she listens…” she trailed off.

“And so you pick up the phone each time,” he finished, and she grinned, tapping her nose.

“You’re starting to get it. It’s both the connection and commitment. We meet each other where we are, and then we move forward together.”

“Connection and commitment,” he echoed her.

“Connection and commitment and a whole bunch of therapy,” Juliet ticked off a finger for each one. He nodded, resting his chin on his hand.

“And ,” she added, shooting him a look. “Getting to bed at a consistent time.”

He made a face. “Does recovery necessitate giving up all the things that make life worthwhile?”

“My brother has a bunch of WebMD mental health articles printed out all over his room,” she poked him. “And the bits about developing good sleeping habits are all over the pages on the standard treatment for mood disorders. You probably have read the sources the articles cite, though — you don’t get a pass to run yourself into the ground just because you’re smart enough to give a lecture on psychology. Go to bed. The world will still be here when you wake up.”

He was going to say something snide about how he didn’t actually have the luxury of assuming the world would still be there, but he stopped himself. It was too early in the morning to bring up the specters that loomed prominently in his thoughts. Chasing those fears was what had started his spiral in the end, after all.

“Very well. I’d wish you goodnight, but it’s more apt to say good morning at this point,” he ventured, standing up from his seat.

Juliet rose as well, following in suit.

“Thank god ,” she muttered. “Not that talking through feelings isn’t fantastic, but I was just about ready to toss you over my shoulder and haul you upstairs. I’m exhausted .”

Artemis tried not to look too stricken. He has no doubt she was completely serious.

“On a final note,” she sighed, patting down the wrinkles in her nightshirt. “I miss being lovingly suplexed by my wrestler girlfriend,” she complained.

He made a face.

“Come off it — I’m allowed to brag about my jock-centric relationship.”

He grimaced. “You’re a match made in heaven.”

She stuck her tongue out, and he rolled his eyes before starting to make his way over to the stairs. Artemis lingered in the doorway, resting his hand against the smooth frame. “Goodnight, Juliet.”

“Goodnight, Artemis.”

#artemis fowl #my writing #yes im crossposting what of itttt #(also yes the title is inspired by that Sparks song 'my family' or w/e)

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