#ben york jones

[pimosworld]

My name is Priscilla but you can call me P,Pimo,Miss Priss or any variation of your fav nickname for me. My blog is 18+, and I mostly write fluff and smut. I’ve made a lot of friends here and I’m open to write for anyone. This community has helped me heal in ways I can’t describe so I hope you enjoy my writing. 🤍

Please turn on notifications if you would like to stay up to date on my posts.

Link to my kofi if you’re feeling so inclined to donate to my writing efforts

My ask box is always open

AO3

700 Follower Celebration

Read it again

Masterlist by pimo

I started out writing for Moon knight and that quickly evolved into other characters so I will say that I’m open to write for anyone.

I don’t have a lot of rules but I generally won’t describe my reader to stay inclusive as a poc and this is a safe space for the lgbtqi community so no ignorance will be tolerated.

Im open to requests (angst,fluff,smut…any character) but I work a full time job so please be patient with them as well as my wips.

Triple Frontier

Frankie Morales

Joel Miller

Santiago Garcia

Dave York

Moonknight

Javier Peña

Blue Jones

Miguel O’Hara

[aybaybader]

THIS IS WHY YOU PLAY THE KIDS

[wanderingwithstars]

After 6 years I return to my only internet safe space to share my personal creations.

This song is for the whimsical lovers. I’m creating music that is “whimsical alternative”. For the thinkers and lovers of strings, daydreams, and jazzy themes.

[macrolit]

The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

NYT Article.

*************

Q: How many of the 100 have you read? Q: Which ones did you love/hate? Q: What's missing?

Here's the full list.

100. Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson 99. How to Be Both, Ali Smith 98. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett 97. Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward 96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman 95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel 94. On Beauty, Zadie Smith 93. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel 92. The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante 91. The Human Stain, Philip Roth 90. The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen 89. The Return, Hisham Matar 88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis 87. Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters 86. Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight 85. Pastoralia, George Saunders 84. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee 83. When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labutat 82. Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor 81. Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan 80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante 79. A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin 78. Septology, Jon Fosse 77. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones 76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin 75. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid 74. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout 73. The Passage of Power, Robert Caro 72. Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich 71. The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen 70. All Aunt Hagar's Children, Edward P. Jones 69. The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander 68. The Friend, Sigrid Nunez 67. Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon 66. We the Animals, Justin Torres 65. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth 64. The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai 63. Veronica, Mary Gaitskill 62. 10:04, Ben Lerner 61. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver 60. Heavy, Kiese Laymon 59. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides 58. Stay True, Hua Hsu 57. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich 56. The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner 55. The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright 54. Tenth of December, George Saunders 53. Runaway, Alice Munro 52. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson 51. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson 50. Trust, Hernan Diaz 49. The Vegetarian, Han Kang 48. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi 47. A Mercy, Toni Morrison 46. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt 45. The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson 44. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin 43. Postwar, Tony Judt 42. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James 41. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan 40. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald 39. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan 38. The Savage Detectives, Roberto Balano 37. The Years, Annie Ernaux 36. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 35. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel 34. Citizen, Claudia Rankine 33. Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward 32. The Lines of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst 31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith 30. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward 29. The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt 28. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell 27. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 26. Atonement, Ian McEwan 25. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc 24. The Overstory, Richard Powers 23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro 22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo 21. Evicted, Matthew Desmond 20. Erasure, Percival Everett 19. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe 18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders 17. The Sellout, Paul Beatty 16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon 15. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee 14. Outline, Rachel Cusk 13. The Road, Cormac McCarthy 12. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion 11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz 10. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson 9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro 8. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald 7. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead 6. 2666, Roberto Bolano 5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen 4. The Known World, Edward P. Jones 3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel 2. The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson 1. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

[queerism1969]

Notable transgender people from history

Here's the list I put together for when people on non-trans subreddits claim we didn't exist until recently:

Ashurbanipal (669-631BCE) - King of the Neo-Assryian empire, who according to Diodorus Siculus is reported to have dressed, behaved, and socialized as a woman.

Elagabalus (204-222) - Roman Emperor who preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, presented as a woman, called herself her lover's queen and wife, and offered vast sums of money to any doctor able to make her anatomically female.

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (1286-1328) - French Jewish philosopher who wrote poetry about longing to be a woman.

Eleanor Rykener (14th century) - trans woman in London who was questioned under charges of sex work

[Thomas(ine) Hall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas(ine)_Hall) - (1603-unknown) - English servant in colonial Virginia who alternated between presenting as a woman and presenting as a man, before a court ruled that they were both a man and a woman simultaneously, and were required to wear both men's and women's clothing simultaneously.

Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810) - French diplomat, spy, freemason, and soldier who fought in the Seven Years' War, who transitioned at the age of 49 and lived the remaining 33 years of her life as a woman.

Public Universal Friend (1752-1819) - Quaker religious leader in revolutionary era America who identified and lived as androgynous and genderless.

Surgeon James Barry (1789-1865) - Trans man and military surgeon in the British army.

Berel - a Jewish trans man who transitioned in a shtetel in Ukraine in the 1800's, and whose story was shared with the Jewish Daily Forward in a 1930 letter to the editor by Yeshaye Kotofsky, a Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn who knew Berel

Mary Jones (1803-unknown) - trans woman in New York whose 1836 trial for stealing a man's wallet received much public attention

Albert Cashier (1843-1915) - Trans man who served in the US Civil War.

Harry Allen (1882-1922) - Trans man who was the subject of sensationalistic newspaper coverage for his string of petty crimes.

Lucy Hicks Anderson (1886–1954) - socialite, chef and hostess in Oxnard California, whose family and doctors supported her transition at a young age.

Lili Elbe (1882-1931) - Trans woman who underwent surgery in 1930 with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who ran one of the first dedicated medical facilities for trans patients.

Karl M. Baer (1885-1956) - Trans man who underwent reconstructive surgery (the details of which are not known) in 1906, and was legally recognized as male in Germany in 1907.

Dr. Alan Hart (1890-1962) - Groundbreaking radiologist who pioneered the use of x-ray photography in tuberculosis detection, and in 1917 he became one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy and gonadectomy in the US.

[Louise Lawrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Lawrence_(activist)) (1912–1976) - trans activist, artist, writer and lecturer, who transitioned in the early 1940's. She struck up a correspondence with the groundbreaking sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey as he worked to understand sex and gender in a more expansive way. She wrote up life histories of her acquaintances for Kinsey, encouraged peers to do interviews with him, and sent him a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, personal correspondences, etc.

Dr. Michael Dillon (1915-1962) - British physician who updated his birth certificate to Male in the early 1940's, and in 1946 became the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty.

Reed Erickson (1917-1992) - trans man whose philanthropic work contributed millions of dollars to the early LGBTQ rights movement

Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax (1916-1992) - early 20th century gospel quartet singer.

Peter Alexander (unknown, interview 1937) - trans man from New Zealand, discusses his transition in this interview from 1937

Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989) - The first widely known trans woman in the US in 1952, after her surgery attracted media attention.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (1940-present) - Feminist, trans rights and gay rights activist who came out and started transition in the late 1950's. She was at Stonewall, was injured and taken into custody, and had her jaw broken by police while in custody. She was the first Executive Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which works to end human rights abuses against trans/intersex/GNC people in the prison system.

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer and community worker in NYC; co-founded STAR, a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women

Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer; co-founded STAR with Sylvia Rivera

[book--brackets]

The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas (2008-2014)

In a city that runs on a dwindling supply of magic, a young boy is drawn into a life of wizardry and adventure. Conn should have dropped dead the day he picked Nevery's pocket and touched the wizard's locus magicalicus, a stone used to focus magic and work spells. But for some reason he did not. Nevery finds that interesting, and he takes Conn as his apprentice on the provision that the boy find a locus stone of his own. But Conn has little time to search for his stone between wizard lessons and helping Nevery discover who--or what--is stealing the city of Wellmet's magic.

100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson (2007-2010)

Twelve-year-old Henry York is going to sleep one night when he hears a bump on the attic wall above his head. It's an unfamiliar house—Henry is staying with his aunt, uncle, and three cousins—so he tries to ignore it. But the next night he wakes up with bits of plaster in his hair. Two knobs have broken through the wall, and one of them is slowly turning...

 Henry scrapes the plaster off the wall and discovers doors—ninety-nine cupboards of all different sizes and shapes. Through one he can hear the sound of falling rain. Through another he sees a glowing room—with a man strolling back and forth! Henry and his cousin Henrietta soon understand that these are not just cupboards. They are, in fact, portals to other worlds.

Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (2008)

A girl is transformed, through instruction in life at court, determination, and magic, from sullen, pudgy, graceless Ben into Crown Princess Benevolence, a fit ruler of the kindgom of Montagne as it faces war with neighboring Drachensbett.

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen (2021-present)

Vanja Schmidt knows no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love. Abandoned to Death and Fortune as a child, she has scraped by as a lowly maidservant with her quick wits and the ability to see her god-mothers’ hands at work in the world. But when they demand her lifelong servitude in exchange, Vanja decides that gifts not given freely…can always be stolen.

When an opportunity rises to steal a string of enchanted pearls, Vanja seizes it, transforming herself into Gisele, the princess she’s served for years. As the glamorous princess, Vanja leads a double life, charming the nobility while ransacking their coffers as a jewel thief. Then, one heist away from funding an escape from her god-mothers, Vanja crosses the wrong god, and is cursed to turn into jewels herself. The only way to save herself is to make up for what she’s taken—starting with her first victim, Princess Gisele.

Valdemar: Mage Wings by Mercedes Lackey (1992-1993)

High magic had been lost to Valdemar when he gave his life to save his kingdom from destruction by the dark sorceries. Now it falls to Elspeth Herald, heir to the throne, to take up the challenge and seek a mentor who will awaken her mage abilities.

The Numair Chronicles by Tamora Pierce (2018-present)

Arram Draper is on the path to becoming one of the realm’s most powerful mages. The youngest student in his class at the Imperial University of Carthak, he has a Gift with unlimited potential for greatness–and for attracting danger. At his side are his two best friends: Varice, a clever girl with an often-overlooked talent, and Ozorne, the “leftover prince” with secret ambitions. Together, these three friends forge a bond that will one day shape kingdoms. And as Ozorne gets closer to the throne and Varice gets closer to Arram’s heart, Arram realizes that one day–soon–he will have to decide where his loyalties truly lie.

Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones (1998-2000)

Everyone - wizards, soldiers, farmers, elves, dragons, kings and queens alike - is fed up with Mr Chesney's Pilgrim Parties: groups of tourists from the world next door who descend en masse every year to take the Grand Tour. What they expect are all the trappings of a grand fantasy adventure, including the Evil Enchantress, Wizard Guides, the Dark Lord, Winged Minions, and all. And every year different people are chosen to play these parts. But now they've had enough: Mr Chesney may be backed by a very powerful demon, but the Oracles have spoken. Now it's up to the Wizard Derk and his son Blade, this year's Dark Lord and Wizard Guide, not to mention Blade's griffin brothers and sisters, to save the world from Mr Chesney's depredations.

Traveler's Gate by Will Wight (2013-2014)

Simon can only watch, helpless, as his family is killed and his friends captured by enemy Travelers-men and women who can summon mystical powers from otherworldly Territories. To top it off, another young man from Simon's village discovers that he's a savior prophesied to destroy evil and save the realm.Prophecy has nothing to say about Simon. He has no special powers, no magical weapons, and no guarantee that he'll survive. But he sets off anyway, alone, to gain the power he needs to oppose the Travelers and topple their ruthless Overlord. It may not be his destiny, but Simon's determined to rescue his fellow villagers from certain death.Because who cares about prophecy, really?

Deltora Quest by Emily Rodda (2000)

The evil Shadow Lord is plotting to invade Deltora and enslave its people. All that stands against him is the magic Belt of Deltora with its seven gems of great and mysterious power. When the gems are stolen and hidden in dark terrible places throughout the kingdom, the Shadow Lord triumphs, and Deltora is lost.

In secrecy, with only a hand-drawn map to guide them, two unlikely companions set out on a perilous quest. Determined to find the lost gems and rid their land of the tyrant, they struggle towards their first goal - the sinister Forests of Silence.

Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi (2016-2017)

There are only three things that matter to twelve-year-old Alice Alexis Queensmeadow: Mother, who wouldn't miss her; magic and color, which seem to elude her; and Father, who always loved her. The day Father disappears from Ferenwood he takes nothing but a ruler with him. But it's been almost three years since then, and Alice is determined to find him. She loves her father even more than she loves adventure, and she's about to embark on one to find the other.

But bringing Father home is no small matter. In order to find him she'll have to travel through the mythical, dangerous land of Furthermore, where down can be up, paper is alive, and left can be both right and very, very wrong. It will take all of Alice's wits (and every limb she's got) to find Father and return home to Ferenwood in one piece. On her quest to find Father, Alice must first find herself--and hold fast to the magic of love in the face of loss.

[retiredkat]

New York Times Interview with Ben Daniels. Farewell Santiago, you marvelous bastard!

‘Interview With the Vampire’: Ben Daniels on That Bloody Season 2 Finale

“He has an energy that’s fun to hate,” the British actor said of his swaggering vampire character in AMC’s series-length Anne Rice adaptation.

June 30, 2024

A man in a gray shirt and striped trousers stands posed as another man comes up behind him

Ben Daniels, left, and Jacob Anderson in the season finale of “Interview With the Vampire.”Larry Horricks/AMC

This interview contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Interview With the Vampire.”

Until his time in AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire” was cut short — along with his head — in the Season 2 finale, Santiago was the toast of the vampiric theater scene.

Played by the British actor Ben Daniels, himself an Olivier Award-winning veteran of the stage, Santiago was a dashing and devilish performer at the Théâtre des Vampires, in postwar Paris. Formerly known as Francis, a failed English actor, Santiago transformed himself into an underworld dandy after becoming a bloodsucker — and took a cooler-sounding name — rarely seen without a vampiress on each arm and a theatrically hateful twinkle in his eye.

“He’s so awful and delicious at the same time!” Daniels said in a video interview last week. “And it’s his relish of it as well, his glee. He just loves being a vampire.”

Daniels added: “He has an energy that’s fun to hate.”

Unfortunately for Santiago, the show’s title vampire was his hater-in-chief. Over the course of Season 2, which concluded on Sunday, Santiago seized control of the theater troupe, which turned out to be a coven of vampires in disguise. At the season’s climax, Santiago staged a mock trial that ended with the real execution-by-sunlight of Claudia (Delainey Hayles) and her companion, Madeleine (Roxane Duran). It was for this crime that Santiago lost his head to their father figure, the vampire Louis (Jacob Anderson), in the finale.

Based on the novels of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, the AMC show, created and overseen by Rolin Jones, has already been renewed for a third season. But Daniels doesn’t feel too bad that his character won’t live to see Season 3. Santiago had it coming given his bad behavior — particularly by the end.

“If you didn’t want him dead before,” Daniels said, “you certainly do then.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

If you’re an ex-high school drama club goth who loved “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Santiago is a very magnetic figure. In the show, he even has fans who attend every performance and dress up in character.

“Rocky Horror” was a big influence, “Rocky Horror” and “Cabaret.” I’m so glad Tim Curry’s performance in “The Rocky Horror Show” exists onscreen because it’s one of the best performances ever. I would’ve loved to have seen that in the theater.

I was curious if there was a David Bowie influence, too.

Yes! Santiago gets more and more nihilistic as it goes on, and I thought, it’s so Thin White Duke — that awful cocaine coldness. I just sent Carol Cutshall, the costume designer, endless pictures of Bowie as the Thin White Duke. If you compare, she completely replicated it. Then she added a see-through shirt, which is genius.

As a screen presence, Santiago needs that kind of ammo. He has to hold his own with the “big four” members of the show’s emotional quadrangle, Louis, Lestat [Sam Reid], Claudia and Armand [Assad Zaman], even though he’s not romantically or emotionally involved with any of them.

[Smiling] Is he not?

Well, well, well!

This was one of the first jobs I’ve ever done sight unseen, just because it meant working with Rolin. From the outset, Rolin called up and said, “Listen, are you OK if we don’t make Santiago queer?” I was like, “Yeah, I can sort of see it.”

But as the script started to come in, I thought the only way this level of vitriol that he has works is if he’s in love with Armand. There is this extraordinary psychological term called reaction formation, which is what Iago has for Othello. It’s a defense mechanism whereby your impulses are so unacceptable to your ego that they’re replaced by this opposite, exaggerated behavior.

Santiago finds Louis incredibly attractive. Because Armand killed Santiago’s maker — who I think he was in love with too — and also finds Louis attractive, the whole thing must be destroyed. It gave such a drive to his hatred. It was just something ruminating in myself that drove him forward in a very aggressive, mad, extreme way.

You’re not just a human playing a vampire playing a human playing a vampire. You’re also a stage actor playing a stage actor.

When we shot the majority of the theater stuff in Episode 2, I’d been doing “Madea” for three months on the West End. I finished on a Sunday, and on Wednesday or Thursday I was shooting that whole sequence. So I was already primed when Levan [the director of Episode 2, Levan Akin] said: “Do it like a theatrical performance. We’ll take care of everything.” They filmed everything wide with four cameras, so we didn’t know when we were on and when we weren’t. You just had to keep at it. It was relentless, and he shot it brilliantly.

In Episode 7, just before Claudia dies, being on that stage was like doing a play. We shot that courtroom sequence in 15-minute chunks. They were insane. A lot of the time there were no cameras onstage with us. They were either on cranes, so they were sweeping in and out, or it would only be Emma [the director of Episode 7, Emma Freeman] shooting, doing all the close coverage first so you get these fresh performances immediately, not at the end of three days or whatever. Then all the cameras went away, so you never saw them again. It became like a play.

Is it tricky, as an actor, to play an actor with a … different level of talent?

Poor old Francis. Yes, he’s never achieved the giddy heights that he would like to have. He’s a big old show pony, isn’t he? Basically, I was like a magpie, looking at everything from Vincent Price in “Theater of Blood” — well, Vincent Price in lots of things, actually — to my cat. I would watch how my cat plays with mice, and I was like: You know what? I’m going to steal a bit of that.

Had you ever wanted to play a vampire?

Yes, absolutely. I love horror. It’s what I live for. I grew up watching Christopher Lee as Dracula, and William Marshall as Prince Mamuwalde in “Blacula.” Very debonair, theatrical, that rich voice. I’ve watched those vampires as long as I can remember.

I’ve always adored horror. Kids that are outsiders often do. Growing up as a queer kid, those villains, like the vampires, are often how people treat gay people. It’s always there, that queer coding. In those old James Whale movies, it’s there. It’s written into them.

More than any other writer, Anne Rice identified the tragedy within the monstrousness of the vampire. They are immortal, but the people they love can still die, and that experience stays with them literally forever.

Part of the reason I can’t watch “Vampire” at the moment is my partner just died. The resonances are huge at the moment. Grief is a [expletive] beast. It’s like being mugged in broad daylight, and you never know when it’s going to hit you. She explores all that brilliantly.

I think in any kind of creative job, you are like a sponge. You soak up what is happening to you, or in the world, and sometimes it bleeds out, and it’s useful. We were shooting “Vampire” when Ian [his partner, the actor Ian Gelder] was first diagnosed [with lung cancer; Gelder was later diagnosed with bile duct cancer, from which he died last month]. When I started watching Episode 2, I know what was going on in my life fed into it — of course it would, when you’re telling a story about death and dying and killing people and living forever. I watched it; I knew the conversations I was having between takes … It is too much at the moment. It’s too close to home.

But [eventually], I will be able to see what I was going through with Ian, even in the anger I have with other characters. I know it will have informed it in some way, but I hope in a good way.

What I am enjoying is people’s reactions to it, without actually watching it. Rolin called me up and said: “Just Google yourself. Search ‘Ben Daniels Santiago’ on Twitter. Look at people’s reactions if you’re not going to watch it.” So I’ve been living through people reacting to it, which has been great.

[justforbooks]

James Earl Jones

American actor hailed for his many classical roles whose voice became known to millions as that of Darth Vader in Star Wars

During the run of the 2011 revival of Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy in London, with Vanessa Redgrave, the actor James Earl Jones, who has died aged 93, was presented with an honorary Oscar by Ben Kingsley, with a link from the Wyndham’s theatre to the awards ceremony in Hollywood.

Glenn Close in Los Angeles said that Jones represented the “essence of truly great acting” and Kingsley spoke of his imposing physical presence, his 1,000-kilowatt smile, his basso profundo voice and his great stillness. Jones’s voice was known to millions as that of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars film trilogy and Mufasa in the 1994 Disney animation The Lion King, as well as being the signature sound of US TV news (“This is CNN”) for many years.

His status as the leading black actor of his generation was established with the Tony award he won in 1969 for his performance as the boxer Jack Jefferson (a fictional version of Jack Johnson) in Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope on Broadway, a role he repeated in Martin Ritt’s 1970 film, and which earned him an Oscar nomination.

On screen, Jones – as the fictional Douglass Dilman – played the first African-American president, in Joseph Sargent’s 1972 movie The Man, based on an Irving Wallace novel. His stage career was notable for encompassing great roles in the classical repertoire, such as King Lear, Othello, Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

He was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, the son of Robert Earl Jones, a minor actor, boxer, butler and chauffeur, and his wife Ruth (nee Connolly), a teacher, and was proud of claiming African and Irish ancestry. His father left home soon after he was born, and he was raised on a farm in Jackson, Michigan, by his maternal grandparents, John and Maggie Connolly. He spoke with a stutter, a problem he dealt with at Brown’s school in Brethren, Michigan, by reading poetry aloud.

On graduating from the University of Michigan, he served as a US Army Ranger in the Korean war. He began working as an actor and stage manager at the Ramsdell theatre in Manistee, Michigan, where he played his first Othello in 1955, an indication perhaps of his early power and presence.

The family had moved from the deep south to Michigan to find work, and now Jones went to New York to join his father in the theatre and to study at the American Theatre Wing with Lee Strasberg. He made his Broadway debut at the Cort theatre in 1958 in Dory Schary’s Sunrise at Campobello, a play about Franklin D Roosevelt.

He was soon a cornerstone of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare festival in Central Park, playing Caliban in The Tempest, Macduff in Macbeth and another Othello in the 1964 season. He also established a foothold in films, as Lt Lothar Zogg in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1963), a cold war satire in which Peter Sellers shone with brilliance in three separate roles.

The Great White Hope came to the Alvin theatre in New York from the Arena Stage in Washington, where Jones first unleashed his shattering, shaven-headed performance – he was described as chuckling like thunder, beating his chest and rolling his eyes – in a production by Edwin Sherin that exposed racism in the fight game at the very time of Muhammad Ali’s suspension from the ring on the grounds of his refusal to sign up for military service in the Vietnam war.

Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs (1970) was a response to Jean Genet’s The Blacks, in which Jones, who remained much more of an off-Broadway fixture than a Broadway star in this period, despite his eminence, played a westernised urban African man returning to his village for his father’s funeral. With Papp’s Public theatre, he featured in an all-black version of The Cherry Orchard in 1972, following with John Steinbeck’s Lennie in Of Mice and Men on Broadway and returning to Central Park as a stately King Lear in 1974.

When he played Paul Robeson on Broadway in the 1977-78 season, there was a kerfuffle over alleged misrepresentations in Robeson’s life, but Jones was supported in a letter to the newspapers signed by Edward Albee, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman and Richard Rodgers. He played his final Othello on Broadway in 1982, partnered by Christopher Plummer as Iago, and appeared in the same year in Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard, a white South African playwright he often championed in New York.

In August Wilson’s Fences (1987), part of that writer’s cycle of the century “black experience” plays, he was described as an erupting volcano as a Pittsburgh garbage collector who had lost his dreams of a football career and was too old to play once the major leagues admitted black players. His character, Troy Maxson, is a classic of the modern repertoire, confined in a world of 1950s racism, and has since been played by Denzel Washington and Lenny Henry.

Jones’s film career was solid if not spectacular. Playing Sheikh Abdul, he joined a roll call of British comedy stars – Terry-Thomas, Irene Handl, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan and Peter Ustinov – in Marty Feldman’s The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977), in stark contrast to his (at first uncredited) Malcolm X in Ali’s own biopic, The Greatest (1977), with a screenplay by Ring Lardner. He also appeared in Peter Masterson’s Convicts (1991), a civil war drama; Jon Amiel’s Sommersby (1993), with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster; and Darrell Roodt’s Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), scripted by Ronald Harwood, in which he played a black South African pastor in conflict with his white landowning neighbour in the 40s.

In all these performances, Jones quietly carried his nation’s history on his shoulders. On stage, this sense could irradiate a performance such as that in his partnership with Leslie Uggams in the 2005 Broadway revival at the Cort of Ernest Thompson’s elegiac On Golden Pond; he and Uggams reinvented the film performances of Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn as an old couple in a Maine summer house.

He brought his Broadway Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to London in 2009, playing an electrifying scene with Adrian Lester as his broken sports star son, Brick, at the Novello theatre. The coarse, cancer-ridden big plantation owner was transformed into a rumbling, bear-like figure with a totally unexpected streak of benignity perhaps not entirely suited to the character. But that old voice still rolled through the stalls like a mellow mist, rich as molasses.

That benign streak paid off handsomely, though, in the London reprise of a deeply sentimental Broadway comedy (and Hollywood movie), Driving Miss Daisy, in which his partnership as a chauffeur to Redgrave (unlikely casting as a wealthy southern US Jewish widow, though she got the scantiness down to a tee) was a delightful two-step around the evolving issues of racial tension between 1948 and 1973.

So deep was this bond with Redgrave that he returned to London for a third time in 2013 to play Benedick to her Beatrice in Mark Rylance’s controversial Old Vic production of Much Ado About Nothing, the middle-aged banter of the romantically at-odds couple transformed into wistful, nostalgia for seniors.

His last appearance on Broadway was in a 2015 revival of DL Coburn’s The Gin Game, opposite Cicely Tyson. He was given a lifetime achievement Tony award in 2017, and the Cort theatre was renamed the James Earl Jones theatre in 2022.

Jones’s first marriage, to Julienne Marie (1968-72), ended in divorce. In 1982 he married Cecilia Hart with whom he had a son, Flynn. She died in 2016. He is survived by Flynn, also an actor, and a brother, Matthew.

🔔 James Earl Jones, actor, born 17 January 1931; died 9 September 2024

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

[dweemeister]

Whenever you feel alone, just remember that those kings will always be there to guide you. And so will I.

Born to a turbulent family on a Mississippi farm, James Earl Jones passed away today. He was ninety-three years old. Abandoned by his parents as a child and raised by a racist grandmother (although he later reconciled with his actor father and performed alongside him as an adult), the trauma of his childhood developed into a stutter that followed him through his primary school years – sometimes, his stutter was so debilitating, he could not speak at all. In high school, Jones found in an English teacher someone who found in him a talent for written expression, and encouraged him to write and recite poetry in class. He overcame his stutter by graduation, although the effects of it carried over for the remainder of his life.

Jones' most accomplished roles may have been on the Broadway stage, where he won three Tonys (twice winning Best Actor in a Play for originating the lead roles in 1969's The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler and 1987's Fences by August Wilson) and was considered one of the best Shakespearean actors of his time.

But his contributions to cinema left an impact on audiences, too. Jones received an Honorary Academy Award alongside makeup artist Dick Smith (1972's The Godfather, 1984's Amadeus) in 2011. From the end of Hollywood's Golden Age to the dawn of the summer Hollywood blockbuster in the 1970s to the present, Jones' presence – and his basso profundo voice – could scarcely be ignored. Though he could not sing like Paul Robeson nor had the looks of Sidney Poitier, his presence and command put him in league of both of his acting predecessors.

Ten of the films James Earl Jones appeared in, whether in-person or voice acting, follow (left-right, descending):

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) – directed by Stanley Kubrick; also starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, and Slim Pickens

The Great White Hope (1970) – directed by Martin Ritt; also starring Jane Alexander, Chester Morris, Hal Holbrook Beah Richards, and Moses Gunn

Star Wars saga (1977-2019; A New Hope pictured) – multiple directors, as the voice of Darth Vader, also starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, and Frank Oz

Claudine (1974) – directed by John Berry; also starring Diahann Carroll, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and Tamu Blackwell

Conan the Barbarian (1982) – directed by John Milius; also starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson, Cassandra Gaviola, Gerry Lopez, Mako, Valerie Quennessen, William Smith, and Max von Sydow

Coming to America series (1988 and 2021; original pictured) – multiple directors; also starring Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, John Amos, Madge Sinclair, Shari Headley, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, and KiKi Layne

The Hunt for Red October (1990) – directed by John McTiernan; also starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, and Sam Neill

The Sandlot (1993) – directed by David Mickey Evans; also staring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna, Chauncey Leopardi, Marty York, Brandon Adams, Grant Gelt, Shane Obedzinski, Victor DiMattia, Denis Leary, and Karen Allen

The Lion King (1994) – directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, as the voice of Mufasa; also starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, Moira Kelly, Niketa Calame, Ernie Sabella, Nathan Lane, and Robert Guillaume, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings, and Madge Sinclair

Field of Dreams (1989) – directed by Phil Alden Robinson; also starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta, and Burt Lancaster

[garadinervi]

Fluxus 1, (book with offset, metal bolts and stamped ink, containing objects in various media, in wood box), Designed by George Maciunas, Fluxux, New York, NY, 1964 [Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. MoMA, New York, NY. © ARS, NY]

Collaborating artists: George Brecht, Brion Gysin, Sohei Hashimoto, Dick Higgins, Joe Jones, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi, Shigeko Kubota, György Ligeti, Jackson Mac Low, George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, Takako Saito, Tomas Schmit, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, La Monte Young

[aurorawest]

Reading update

Light Up the Lamp by Kit Oliver - 5/5 stars

Kit Oliver can do no wrong, I guess. I figured I'd like this one a lot given that I loved her other two novels, but hockey books usually aren't five star reads for me. Along comes this book! Unrelentingly lovely, and even though I knew it was going to have an HEA, I still found myself worried that Gil wasn't going to figure shit out.

The Faerie Hounds of York by Arden Powell - 5/5 stars

Gorgeous book that read like a dreamy, dark fairy tale. The first book by Arden Powell I read was really funny, and this was like the complete opposite. Powell has range! This one is sad, but still has a happy ending. If you like Emily Tesh's Greenhollow Duology, I highly recommend this one. They're definitely in the same vein.

Deosil by Jordan L Hawk - 4.75/5 stars

I was SO SAD to get to the end of this series. Whyborne, Griffin, Christine, Iskander, Persephone, Maggie, Niles...I could go on, I love them all. It's hard to say good-bye but they all got a wonderful ending.

The Inside Edge by Ashlyn Kane - 3/5 stars

The Taste of Desert Green by Kim Fielding - 4.25/5 stars

Your Lonely Nights Are Over by Adam Sass - 1/5 stars

Crushed Ice by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James - 4/5 stars

Roustabout by Morgan Brice - 3/5 stars

Prince in Disguise by Tavia Lark - 5/5 stars

Loved this one just as much as the first in the series. I expected the Draskorans to be...idk, like stereotype fantasy barbarians, so it was extremely refreshing that they weren't.

Old Time Religion by EH Lupton - 5/5 stars

Ahhhhhhhh I love this series!! I really really enjoyed the first book, and I loved this one even more. Really good, really original. I can't recommend this one and Dionysus in Wisconsin enough!

A Thief and a Gentleman by Arden Powell - 3.5/5 stars

The Devil to Pay by Katie Daysh - 4.75/5 stars

If you like Patrick O'Brian but find yourself thinking, surely this could be more gay? Then Katie Daysh's books are for you. This is the second in the series and I was delighted to learn yesterday from her newsletter that she's working on the third, because I definitely am not ready for the series to end! The first book was from Nightingale's POV (there might have been some bits from Courtney's POV? But not many), and this one is entirely from Courtney's. Courtney and Nightingale didn't actually get to spend much time together in this one so I hope they catch more of a break in book 3.

Lord of Eternal Night by Ben Alderson - DNF at pg 6

The Engineer by CS Poe - 4/5 stars

The Larks Still Bravely Singing by Aster Glenn Gray - 5/5 stars

If you're not reading Aster Glenn Gray yet, why not? Why not??? Seriously, if you like Cat Sebastian, PLEASE give Aster Glenn Gray a try. I have yet to read a book by the woman that isn't gorgeous. This book is set right at the tail end of WWI and into the interwar period and is about two young English men who were injured and invalided out of the army. They're both disabled (Robert, the POV character, is missing a leg, and David is missing a hand) and have PTSD.

Also recommended if you like KJ Charles's Will Darling Adventures trilogy. The Larks Still Bravely Singing is just straight historical romance, not romantic suspense, but it deals with similar themes.

Guardians of Dawn: Zhara by S Jae-Jones - DNF at pg 24

Mr Warren's Profession by Sebastian Nothwell - 4.75/5 stars

LOVED this book. I think it's the only historical romance I've read that uses the Industrial Revolution so heavily in the plot, which I really enjoyed. Plus, gorgeous cover.

Honey Mead Murder by Dahlia Donovan - DNF at pg 5

A Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Galey - 3.25/5 stars

String Theory by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James - 3.75/5 stars

One Night in Hartswood by Emma Denny - 5/5 stars

I honestly don't know why, when I received this book in like, November, I didn't immediately put it on the top of my TBR pile. I knew I was going to love it; I was super excited to get my copy. Every time I've shuffled my TBR (like, my actual physical TBR...it's a whole thing...it's actually been mistaken for my full book collection but haha no that's just 200 books I haven't read yet sitting on my stairs...), I've lamented that it's not closer to the top. And then I realized, this is literally my TBR and my own weird fake rules that I've made up about it, so I can actually just pull it from the stack and read it now. So I did!

And yeah, I loved it. So much. Raff and Penn will probably live rent free in my mind forever, not to mention Ash and Lily. I loved the medieval setting (another setting you don't see much in queer historical romance!) and how it really felt like a different world than ours. Plus I'm a sucker for road trip romances. And daddy issues. And horrific scars.

And ugh, the training scenes. The sexual tension. The PINING. Masterfully done. Chef's kiss.

Also we're going to find out who Oliver was, right? RIGHT??? And what happened to Penn's brother?

Out of Touch by Michael Sarais - DNF at pg 7

The Long Call by Ann Cleeves - 4.25/5 stars

Always enjoy a mystery that's well-paced and well-written. I've never actually read anything by Ann Cleeves but I'm going to pick up the rest of this series.

The Death I Gave Him by Em X Liu - DNF at pg 284

[walkingthroughthisworld]

James Earl Jones - US Army

by Blake Stilwell

Jones was an exceptional cadet, a member of the Pershing Rifles Drill Team and the National Society of Scabbard and Blade. The same performance ability that let him excel with the Pershing Rifles led him to the Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He knew he wanted to be an actor, but he once referred to his fellow cadets as "the only semblance of a social life."

He initially left the university without completing his degree. With the Korean War raging at the time, he thought he would be sent overseas. But it ended in an armistice later that year, and although he returned to graduate in 1955, Jones' life took a different course.

After graduating from college, he was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, for the Officers Basic Course and to attend Ranger School. Jones was assigned to the 38th Regimental Combat Team, where he led the setup of a cold weather training command at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado.

"Our regiment was established as a training unit, to train in the bitter cold weather and the rugged terrain of the Rocky Mountains," Jones told the Army in an interview. "I took to the physical challenge, so much so that I wanted to stay there, testing myself in that awesome environment, mastering the skills of survival.

"I loved the austere beauty of the mountains and the exhilaration of the weather and the altitude. I didn't mind the rigors of the work or the pioneer-like existence. I thought it was a good life."

Jones was a good officer and soon was promoted to first lieutenant. When the time came to decide whether the Army should be his career, his commanding officer asked him a poignant question: "Is there anything you feel like doing on the outside?"

His father, Robert Earl Jones, had been an actor performing in plays on stage while James was a young man. Jones told his commanding officer he had always thought about following his father's path. His commander told him he could always come back to the Army, but he should pursue his dreams.

After his discharge, Jones moved to New York City, where he studied acting at the American Theatre Wing using his GI Bill benefits while working as a janitor to support himself.

His first acting jobs came in Michigan at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, where he had once worked as a carpenter and stagehand. Just two years later, he was a lead actor. By 1957, he was on Broadway. In 1964, he made his film debut as Lt. Lothar Zogg, a B-52 Stratofortress bombardier in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

James Earl Jones' first leading role was in the 1970 film "The Great White Hope," a part he'd previously played on stage. His performance led to his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him the second Black man to receive the nod.

After a career spanning more than 60 years, Jones has been called "one of the greatest actors in American history" and "the best known voice in show business." He received the National Medal of the Arts from President George H.W. Bush, Kennedy Center Honors from President George W. Bush and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. He also has achieved the "EGOT" -- winning at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award.

But after a lifetime of success, he still remembered his time in the Pershing Rifles as some of the best years of his life. Jones died at his home in Dutchess County, New York on Sept. 9, 2024. He was 93 years old.

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌈 Good morning and happy Wednesday, my bookish bats! You didn't think that tiny "queer books coming out this fall" guide was ALL there was, did you? Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR this month. Happy reading!

❤️ A Vision of Air by Nicole Silver 🧡 Eli Over Easy by Phil Stamper 💛 How to Get Over the End of the World by Hal Schrieve 💚 Kween by Vichet Chum 💙 The Forest Demands its Due by Kosoko Jackson 💜 The B-Side of Daniel Garneau by David Kingston Yeh ❤️ Midnight Companion by Kit Barrie 🧡 Let the Waters Roars by Geonn Cannon 💛 Into the Glittering Dark by Kelley York 💙 When the Rain Begins to Burn by A.L. Davidson 💜 Been Outside by Amber Wendler & Shaz Zamore 🌈 The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson

❤️ A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert 🧡 The Spells We Cast by Jason June 💛 Pluralities by Avi Silver 💚 Salt the Water by Candice Iloh 💙 Beholder by Ryan La Sala 💜 This Pact is Not Ours by Zachary Sergi ❤️ Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell 🧡 Menewood by Nicola Griffith 💛 Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout 💚 The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw & Richard Kadrey 💙 Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson 💜 Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil and George Williams

🌈 In the Form of a Question: the Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life by Amy Schneider ❤️ Songs of Irie by Asha Ashanti Bromfield 🧡 A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand 💛 Being Ace by Madeline Dyer 💚 Charming Young Man by Eliot Schrefer 💙 The Glass Scientists by S.H. Cotugno 💜 The Fall of Whit Rivera by Crystal Maldonado ❤️ By Any Other Name by Erin Cotter 🧡 Brooms by Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall 💛 Stars in Your Eyes by Kacen Callender 💚 Shoot the Moon by Isa Arsen 💙 The Bell in the Fog by Lev A.C. Rosen

🌈 Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt ❤️ Family Meal by Bryan Washington 🧡 A Murder of Crows by Dharma Kelleher 💛 A Light Most Hateful by Hailey Piper 💚 Love at 350° by Lisa Peers 💙 Greasepaint by Hannah Levene 💜 The Christmas Swap by Talia Samuels ❤️ Mate of Her Own by Elena Abbott 🧡 Mistletoe and Mishigas by M.A. Wardell 💛 Elle Campbell Wins Their Weekend by Ben Kahn 💚 All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters 💙 If You’ll Have Me by Eunnie

❤️ Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Lillah Lawson and Lauren Emily Whalen 🧡 10 Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall 💛 It’s a Fabulous Life by Kelly Farmer 💚 Let the Dead Bury the Dead by Allison Epstein 💙 These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs 💜 The Goth House Experiment by SJ Sindu ❤️ Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin 🧡 Mudflowers by Aley Waterman 💛 Here Lies Olive by Kate Anderson 💚 Fire From the Sky by Moa Backe Åstot, trans. by Eva Apelqvist 💙 Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake 💜 On the Same Page by Haley Cass

❤️ A Dish Best Served Hot by Natalie Caña 🧡 Art of the Chase by Jennifer Giacalone 💛 The Haunting of Adrian Yates by Markus Harwood-Jones 💚 The Sword: Xcian by Elle Arroyo 💙 The Complete Carlisle Series by Roslyn Sinclair 💜 300,000 Kisses by Sean Hewitt and Luke Edward Hall ❤️ Just a Pinch of Magic by Alechia Dow 🧡 Blackouts by Justin Torres 💛 Wrath Becomes Her by Aden Polydoros 💚 Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies by E.M. Roy 💙 Everything Under the Moon: Fairy Tales in a Queerer Light edited by Michael Earp ❤️ Frost Bite by Angela Sylvaine

🧡 We Met in a Bar by Claire Forsythe 💛 Sweat Equity Aurora Rey 💚 Pumpkin Spice by Tagan Shepard 💙 The Misfit Mage & His Dashing Devil by M.N. Bennet 💜 Love and Other Risky Business by Sarah Brenton ❤️ Enough by Kimia Eslah 🧡 A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard 💛 Twelve Bones by Rosie Talbot 💚 Wild Wishes and Windswept Kisses by Maya Prasad 💙 Dragged to the Wedding by Andrew Grey 💜 Fox Snare by Yoon Ha Lee ❤️ Murder and Manon by Mia P. Manansala

[equalv]

Australian tv shows with lgbt* characters

A-Z

Deadloch (2023) (wlw, mlm) | Prime Video | trailer

Dulcie Collins (Kate Box)

Cath York (Alicia Gardener)

Sven Alderman (Tom Ballard)

Skye O'Dwyer (Holly Austin)

Nadiyah Zammit (Mia Morrissey)

Heartbreak High (2022) (wlw, mlm/nblm, ace, trans/nb) | Netflix | trailer

Darren Rivers (James Majoos)

Quinn "Quinni" Gallagher-Jones (Chloé Hayden)

Malakai Mitchell (Thomas Weatherall)

Douglas "Ca$h" Pigott (Will McDonald)

Dustin "Dusty" Reid (Joshua Heuston)

Sasha So (Gemma Chua-Tran)

Missy Beckett (Sherry-Lee Watson)

Anthony "Ant" Vaughn (Brodie Townsend)

Rowan Callaghan (Sam Rechner)

A Place To Call Home (2013-2018) (mlm) | (?) | trailer

James Bligh (David Berry)

Harry Polson (Dominic Allburn)

William Brackley (Michael Yore)

Please Like Me (2013-2016) (mlm, wlw) | Netflix | trailer

Josh (Josh Thomas)

Geoffrey (Wade Briggs)

Patrick (Charles Cottier)

Arnold (Keegan Joyce)

Hannah (Hannah Gadsby)

Ben (David Quirk)

Kyah (Freya Stafford)

The Heights (2019) (mlm) | (?) | trailer

Sully Tran (Koa Nuen)

Ash Jafari (Phoenix Raei)

[nevenkebla]

Recuerda siempre

Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #502

Guionista: Mark Waid Dibujante: Casey Jones

— Ben Grimm: Verás, Franklin. Me cabrea un poco que acuses a tu viejo tío Ben de rendirse por ti. ¿Cuántas veces me has visto doblado? ¿Una? Chaval, el mundo sabe que soy tan tonto que no sé tirar la toalla. Si alguno de nosotros estuviera atrapado en el infierno contigo, sabes que lucharíamos hasta el fin. ¿No lo hemos probado ya cien veces? ¿Por qué te parece que nos rendiríamos sin salvarte? — Susan Storm: Nunca has tenido que luchar solo, Franklin. No como tu tío Ben. ¿Recuerdas dónde creció? La calle Yancy. El peor barrio, el más brutal de Nueva York. Y hoy aprendes lo que Ben tuvo que aprender. No hay garantías en esta vida, pero no por eso debes vivirla con tristeza. De crío, Ben no tuvo mucha familia, por eso sabe muy bien que eso marca la diferencia, ¿a qué sí? — Ben Grimm: Sí. Hazme caso. El verdadero infierno es pudrirse uno solo sin tener quien te vigile la espalda. No es para nada tu caso.

— Ben Grimm: Uff. Vale. Es la hora de las tortas. ¿Quieres hablar de atrapados en el infierno? Mírame. Mucho antes de nacer tú, yo era un tío normal. Piloto. Me encantaba, me encantaba hasta la muerte pilotar aviones. Y, de la noche a la mañana, mis zarpas no pudieron sostener un tenedor, mucho menos los mandos de un "piper seneca". ¿Qué más merecía la pena? El fútbol. Fui campeón universitario. Pero ahora no puedo saltar al campo sin mandar a alguien al hospital. ¿Mujeres? Aunque una sola dejara de gritar para fijarse en mi belleza rocosa, apenas sentiría la caricia de su mano. No sabía caminar ni comer… me dijeron que debía volver a aprender todo eso. Como un niño. No quería vivir en este mundo. Por eso, cada noche rezaba para no volver a despertarme. Pero tu madre y tu padre, incluso tu tío Johnny, me hicieron entender que, aunque mis cartas eran malas, no tenía que entregar mis fichas. Porque hay cartas buenas que te dejan seguir jugando. Sí, el destino me la jugó, pero solo fue un día. Viví otro más, y otro. Lo más seguro era no salir de mi cuarto. Pero a veces encontré el valor para vivir como quería. Las veces que vi otros planetas, piratas antiguos, ciudades submarinas… y, por mucho que me queje, no cambiaría mi vida por toda la seguridad del mundo. — Susan Storm: No te había oído hablar así. — Ben Grimm: Y si se lo cascas a tu marido, te mato. Recuerdo el día en que naciste, Franklin. La radiación de la sangre de tu madre iba a acabar con los dos. Luchamos en la Zona Negativa contra un tío con alas dragones come-metales y sierras gigantes voladoras buscando cura. Fue aterrador, fue peligroso y, como fue por ti, es buen recuerdo. Porque lo que quiero decir es: la seguridad no es para tanto si tu vida merece correr los riesgos. Sí. Pude pararme ante cualquier atolladero en vez de enfrentarme al mundo. Y algunos días aún me quedo estancado. También te pasará. Es difícil que no te pase. Te perderás en momentos malos, pero, mientras tengas quien te quiera, recuerda siempre que mañana puede ser mejor. — Susan Storm: ¿Lo entiendes? — Franklin Richards: Sí.

[thenationaltreasuregazette]

Holiday Hijinx, Fluff Edition

Merry Christmas!

@thesere1418, let me try to answer your actual question: how does Team Treasure spend Christmas?

Last time, I posited some theories on what the gang’s pre-treasure hunt Christmases looked like. The short version: lonely and isolated to varying degrees. Sometimes of the “sitting home alone” variety, and sometimes more “alone in a crowd.”

This time, we’ll look at how Team Treasure might spend Christmas after the events of National Treasure bring them all together. Fluff will ensue! But since I’m a hopeless pedant, I’m going to make you work for it.

Let’s begin with the timeline. Way back in the very first issues of this blog (insert nostalgic awww), we took a deep dive into the timeline of National Treasure, both how long the events of the movie take place and when they take place. If we’re looking at the first Christmas after the movie, the timeline piece will become very important.

As I wrote there:

The 70th Anniversary of the National Archives really was in 2004. The organization was founded on June 19th, 1934. June 19th 2004 was a Saturday, so it’s conceivable that the Gala was meant to be that weekend. However, based on all the characters’ clothing, I’ve always felt like National Treasure was a fall movie. … It’s already dark when Ben arrives. Sunset on June 18th, 2004 was at 8:36pm in Washington DC, so that gets us to potentially 9-11. However, that seems like a late start, especially considering this gala’s attendees are probably mainly older, wealthy donors. In September, sunset would have been closer to 7pm. I still think it’s fall. All we know for certain is that the story had to take place before October 31, as that was the last day of daylight savings time in 2004.

Based on the National Archives fact, the movie should theoretically take place in June. However, this is not how you dress in Washington D.C, Philadelphia, or New York in the summer.

[Outfit snips]

This could be explained by the fact the the movie actually filmed in September 2003 - February 2004. And they’re dressed like it. It’s impossible (for me anyway) to watch the movie and believe it’s anything but fall.

In my heart, National Treasure is a November movie. However, we know that doesn’t fit canonically either since the story had to take place before the end of Daylight Savings Time, October 31, 2004.

So let’s say it’s mid-October.

That means the first post-treasure hunt Christmas is only two months and change later.

As I posit in…an article I haven’t published yet, oops, I don’t think Ben and Abigail got together immediately after the treasure hunt. I think Abigail is too pragmatic to make a major decision like that on the heels of having her whole life turned upside down by the treasure hunt, and I think Ben has been burned before by women who found his whole Indiana Jones schtick charming, until it wasn’t.

Also, what season is the “Three months later” epilogue supposed to be? September? For our purposes a unseasonably mild January day, I guess.

Team Treasure’s First Christmas

The reason I am dwelling on this, other than because it delays the creative work of imagining things that didn’t happen on screen, which I am inevitably procrastinating, is because deciding when the treasure hunt took place really colors how Team Treasure spends their first Christmas together.

If the treasure hunt happened in June, then things have had time to settle down by December. Ben and Abigail are new but reasonably well established couple, Ben is settled into his massive new house, and the logistics of dealing with the treasure are well enough under control that everyone can take a breather.

If the treasure hunt happens in October, none of these things are the case. Sorting out who is working on the treasure, what pieces are going where, security, research, transportation, sale donation, etc. etc. is still a full-time nightmare headache. Ben and Abigail are toying with the idea of actually dating but haven’t taken the plunge. Ben bought his big stupid house but it’s 80% empty rooms and 20% cardboard boxes.

So.

Riley and Abigail still go home for the holidays, but although the basic sequence of events is the same as it always has been, the feel is very different. Abigail is no longer just the reserved, quiet, nerdy aunt. Riley is no longer the burnout computer geek uncle. They’re treasure hunters. They’re famous, at least for this moment in time. Everyone is either tiptoeing around them or running up to ask a bunch of questions.

For Riley: “Were you scared?” “How many crimes did you commit?” “Did you really fool the FBI?” “How did you break into the National Archives?” “What does the Declaration of Independence feel like?” “Does this mean you’ll get a better job now?” “Will IBM take an almost-felon back?” “What are your plans moving forward?” “You know, that Gates fellow isn’t going to need you any more.” “Have you thought about a history degree?”

For Abigail: “That treasure hunter’s pretty handsome. Hint hint, googly eyes.” “How did you meet?” “Is he as charming as he looks on TV?” (Oh my god mom.) “You’re sure you’re not in trouble at work?” “You worked so hard to get where you are. I’d hate to see you throw it away on some crackpot. Even if he’s rich now.” “Does the Archives give medals? You should get one.”

It’s a lot, but they get through it. They both know that this is a one-time thing. The Templar Treasure won’t be the hot news story next year.

As for the Gates boys, Ben is finally the center of attention at his mother’s Christmas party in a good way. For the first time he can arrive with his head held high. The academics spend all night asking him detailed questions about the treasure and the search, how he knew where to look for Charlotte, what he’s learned about the contents of the cavern so far. The attention and interest feels good, but nothing feels better than his mother’s proud smile saying, That’s my boy.

And on Christmas day, Ben and Patrick have dinner together. It’s stilted and awkward at first, especially since it’s just the two of them. There’s no one else to serve as a buffer, and their years of estrangement hang over the afternoon like inescapable clouds. ��Oh, you play poker?” “Been in the same Thursday night poker group for fifteen years.” Silence.

But then the topic switches to John, and early Christmases the three of them spent together. “Grandpa and I spent a day driving all over D.C. looking for the perfect ship in a bottle. I think we visited twelve different antique dealers that day. That was my first treasure hunt, I guess.” “I still have it. It’s right here.” “I always thought you hated it. I know you and he didn’t see eye to eye about the treasure.” “We didn’t. But it was from you, so it was always special to me.”

It’s ends up being a pleasant evening of reminiscing, and an important step as Ben and Patrick start to rebuild their relationship.

Subsequent Christmases

And finally, your actual question!

By the next year, everything is much more settled. Ben, and now possibly Abigail as well, actually live in the giant house. It’s filled with books and antique furniture and maps to possible future treasures. It’s lived-in and it’s theirs. They’re an established couple at this point, and the treasure situation is much more under control. And it would be insane of them not to throw a Christmas party in that massive, massive house.

The house is decked out with vintage Christmas decorations and a fifteen foot tree. In the style of the 18th century, the main fireplace is decorated with fruit and greens. There’s catering and a hundred guests and a band (perhaps that same string quartet from the gala?). This first year especially, they really go all out.

But their actual Christmas Eve and Christmas day celebrations are much more intimate. Abigail makes a selection of German Christmas cookies and she and Ben and Riley decorate a second, smaller tree on Christmas Eve. Riley brings kugel and rugelach from his favorite deli and tells them about some of his favorite family traditions. Patrick stops by for a while and they sip nice wine or nicer scotch around the fire while reminiscing about the insane last year that brought them together. The treasure hunt but also the excavation of the treasure and their travels around the world to all the exhibit openings.

Ben and Abigail dance to slow jazz in the firelight. Patrick beats Riley at chess, repeatedly.

They exchange gifts, but what do you get new multi-millionaires who just found a history-redefining treasure?

Gifts

Ben gives Riley an early prototype of Hedy Lamarr’s frequency hopping radio that would become the basis for wifi and GPS technology. He gives Abigail letter written by George Washington that he once found in an old house in Virginia. And he gives Patrick a framed photo of himself, Patrick, and John. In all the hubbub about the treasure someone had tracked down old family photos of theirs.

Riley gives Ben a framed blueprint of the National Archives overlaid with the exact route he took to steal the Declaration. There’s a small note at the bottom that says “Security has since been upgraded.” He gives Abigail a computer program that can sort her email much more accurately that any built-in program in 2004 could. (He’s been working with the National Archives to bolster their digital security.) For Patrick, he’s not really sure what to get, but when Ben suggests a nice bottle of scotch, Riley takes it a step farther and gets a custom blend made and labeled “Trinity Church Staircase (contains no actual 200 year old wood).”

Abigail gives Riley a book of American history written in an fun, narrative style—picture Drunk History in book form—and a state of the art remote control drone. She gives Patrick an set of antique letters from a period she knows is of interest to him. And for Ben, she puts together a scrapbook off newspaper coverage of the treasure from all over the world. She puts out a call to the archivists community, in addition to the papers and magazines she’s been collecting as they travel.

Patrick gives Riley a computer programing manual from the 1940s, one of the earliest in the world, and a two books on conspiracy theories, one from the 1870s and one from the 1970s. He gives Abigail antique records of her favorite composer, and brings an album of baby pictures of Ben to show her. And for Ben, he gives him the Gates family scrapbook, which Patrick has taken and updated with pictures of Ben and the treasure.

The Gang’s Christmas Superpowers

As for special holiday skills,

Ben is a master gift finder. He doesn’t give gifts too often (he’s pretty oblivious to the whole thing) but when he does, he finds the perfect item. It’s never something off the shelves, it’s the same antique china pattern your grandparents had when you were a kid, or a vintage book on your favorite topic.

Abigail is the perfect gift wrapper. Her fastidious nature, steady hands, and decade of training to handle delicate paper items make her excellent at it, no matter the shape or size. Perfect corners every time, paired with the perfect ribbon and bow.

Riley doesn’t love Christmas music, but if he has to hear it, he wants to hear what he tolerates, so he’s created a database of all the best Christmas music ranked by decade, vibe, and his personal taste. He can whip up the perfect playlist for any occasion in seconds.

Patrick can tell you a historical Christmas event from any year between 1717 and 1990. Choose any year and he’ll have an anecdote about the news of the time, anything from small town goings on to world-changing battles and decisions.

Conclusion

There you go! A Team Treasure Christmas!

Whohoo! I did it! I got the article out on time!

Hope you’re all having a nice holiday out there if you celebrate.