#first bori appearance on my blog ever i think

[https-furina]

2023 is coming to an end and while this blog has yet to hit one year old, it’s gathered its fair share of mutuals. it’s only fair to give you all some thanks and appreciation before the year closes. if you’re not here i apologise sincerely, i’ll make sure you are on next year’s list.

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ mika — @mikacynth

hi mika !! i’ll start with you. i know we haven’t interacted much since you went to university (i hope you’re doing super well !! please take care of yourself) but i wanted to thank you for being one of my first mutuals on this hell site. you were super friendly and you always randomly drop cursed genshin memes in the server <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ mae — @maehemthemisfit

mae, i don’t know where life has taken you but i miss you a lot. it was so fun trying to figure out dango anon and you made me laugh countless times, i just hope you’re doing well <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ bell — @blue-b3rries

ew it’s bell (i’m JOKING) hi sweetheart !! you literally never fail to make me laugh in the network server and you always come out with really random things. it’s okay, maybe next christmas we’ll get you a dictionary /lh i love you !! /p <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ inky — @lemeowade

inky !! my favourite artist ever !! we don’t actually interact too much on tumblr now (i do like a lot of the stuff you rb tho) because we talk a lot on discord now. it’s nice to have someone that checks in occasionally and i absolutely love when you show your art !! it’s clear you’re making progress with it and finding your style and i love it so much. you’re gonna do fab things sweetheart <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ amai — @amaiaqt

one of my favourite writers ever and a fellow cyno simp !! i miss you a lot and it shows because i always get excited to see you in my inbox. i hope life is treating you well and that we get to see you more in the new year <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ general — @watatsumiis

hi general !! i’m sorry we didn’t interact as much anymore but you’re so sweet and fun to talk to !! i love your writing and i have the best time reading your tags on people’s art because i’m like “damn. that’s so me” and also you always reblog the best art?? it’s wild you keep my dash alive <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ aly — @soleillunne

who are you? anyways hi wife !! i send you appreciation letters whenever things get tough so i’ll dull it down here a little. thank you for being probably my closest mutual, talking to me daily and always sending tiktoks to each other. if you dare think about leaving me, i’ll find you. in every lifetime <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ ari — @n3r0-1417

another person that i’m super sorry we don’t interact as much anymore ): you literally never failed to make me laugh and you 100% have permission to kill me at any time, just don’t tell aly. i hope we can interact more in the new year and i hope it treats you well too, you deserve it <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ yui — @ilyuu

yui !! wow i’m really failing on interacting with some of you but whenever you’re on my dash it’s pure chaos?? even with no context i can’t lie it’s funny. i picture it like when the scooby doo gang are running and you see all the different shots and stuff. anyways, 2024 better treat you good !! <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ kiri — @kirimoochi

the last time we interacted you wasn’t doing so hot on some fronts and i really hope things have improved for you, sweetheart. you deserve the world and whilst i love your alhaitham & kazuha works, i know a lot of them came from your heart and i hope you’re healing. i pray the new year is kind to you and that things are going better <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ bori — @bboricha

hi bori !! we’ve only interacted a few times because i find it sooo funny when you randomly appear on my dash talking about leon kennedy (because honestly, same) but i hope there’s chances we interact more in 2024 !! fun fact, i followed you for your 5swirl stuff and 1k special (i actually remember what content made me follow you hahahelpme) but i stayed because… relatable. here’s to more interactions !! <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ yume — @yaminohimeyume

oh boy.. hi yume !! you know i could sit here for hours appreciating you right? whenever i log into genshin i check to see if you’re online so i can say hi !! i love helping you with bosses, domains or even exploration but even when we just talk and i don’t join you, it’s nice to have a conversation with someone. you’ve provided me with plenty of distractions this year but in 2024 our goal is to build your characters HAHA i love you !! /p <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ aya — @miuzki

my neuvillette !! i miss you so much, i hope you’ve been doing well and not overworking at all. i know you haven’t really been in touch with genshin towards the end of this year but you’re always welcome in my messages, yknow? i love your writing so much (i still re-read that comfort piece you wrote for me all the time…) please take care of yourself and i hope you have an amazing new year <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ yukari — @ryuryuryuyurboat

is that.. is that my favourite child?! hi ryuu !! i don’t exactly remember how we met. you kinda just appeared in my life one day but it felt like i’d known you forever. you’re an absolute joy to know and you constantly bring a smile to my face !! i’ll c6r5 morrigan first though. have a fantastic new year (and you will not be getting rid of me) <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ lili — @lillonvia

oh my gosh !! my chihuahua !! every time we talk i have the best time ever i can’t even lie like that one time we randomly started reciting the lyrics to california girls and how you started playing on eu server for me. it’s a little crazy with the timezone difference but you’re the amber to my collei and you deal with me torturing you with my genshin va knowledge (did you know cyno is izumi from horimiya?) i love youuuu /p <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ dumbi — @dumbificat

well well well, if it isn't the cutest mf to ever exist >///< it's my co.. parent-in-law? i don't remember because i just remembering rizzing you (oops.) but hey dumbi !! i'll be fr i was always a little nervous/scared to interact with you but i really wanted to and then you joined the network and i minorly lost my mind.. thank you so much for all the smiles and laughter you've brought in these past few months and also for your writing that i am very happily married to. oh and all the fun i get to have helping you explore on eu <3 thank you for letting me join you sometimes. i really hope we get to interact more in 2024 and here's to hoping the new year treats you well!! i love youuuu /p <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ heia — @heiayen

heia. my child. my sweet, funky bean. i love you /p but also. fuck you for how much you make me absolutely lose my shit when it's late for us and i have to be quiet so instead i'm wheezing in bed until i'm crying. chaos hours are the best and you are genuinely such a sweetheart to be friends with. i hope we get to interact more in 2024 (you have no choice) and that it treats you well !! but also, 0.5 stars to the ayaka uber but 10 stars to the network's ooc reporter. mwah! i love you (again) /p (you still need to read to me in some blankets ehehe) <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ coco — @hwaitham

hi hi coco !! we haven't interacted that much (and i'm typing very formal for this post it feels out of character for me) but i've loved your works for sooooo long !! and you and haitham are so cute i just wanna. AAAA you deserve the world and i genuinely hope everything you ever want comes true in 2024 because you just deserve it. if it doesn't, i'll start barking up some trees ehehe. i love you!! /p i hope we get to interact more in 2024 <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ raine — @to-kazuha

oh, it's you /j hi sweetheart <3 2023 has been very all over the place for us but here we are, ending (and starting) another year together !! even if you don't think so, your writing is amazing and i can't wait to see you grow and get more comfortable with it (practise makes perfect!) and also how can i forget that you're my personal miko main.. life would have been a very sad experience if you hadn't came to me on anon in my old blog <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ clara — @umgatochamadopercyval

clara !! you're a very recent mutual so i can't say i have a lot to write (we'll be changing this in 2024 !!) but you are an absolute gem to know. your asks never fail to make me smile and now even your messages !! you're a sweetheart and you deserve a lot of good things. i hope 2024 brings more sagau isekai to my dms and a lot of joy to you. never stop being you !! <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ yza — @yzashaven

hi yza !! we've not been able to interact for a while ): but i'd like to appreciate you for all the times you've came to my inbox with angst, i love you so much for it /p and i still have an angst draft with your name on it because of an idea you came into my inbox with !! your writing is so good and i really hope we get to interact more next year. happy holidays sweetheart !! <3

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ honorary mentions — @jingyuansbird, @honeykaes, @nervocat & @bunicate

happy holidays & happy new year to the four of you !! i would love to appreciate you all but i can only go as far as praising the absolute hell out of all of your works !! you're all fantastic writers that i love to pieces and i hope that the new year treats you all well !! here's to more interactions so i can write you all paragraphs next year (cries) <3

signed with love, serafina.

[kkolg]

I NEED TO REMAKE THIS PIN🧍‍♀️

Basic Rundown of my BATIM au

Ok so I’ve only been here for a little so I thought I’d give my basics for my lil au I made. Please keep in mind I’m still sorta working on it so it might change- also I’m not the best writer so sorry if this sorta sucks lol. Also also- IK LIL BENDY ISNT HENRY BUT HERE HE IS, THIS WAS MADE BEFORE BATDR AND HIS APPEARANCE IS PRETTY IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT SO DONT COME FOR ME PLEASE IM SORRYYYY- 

Disclaimer: this blog contains constant depictions of gun violence, murder, alcoholic beverages and other things of this nature. I do not support ANY of these actions in real life nor encourage/endorse them. If any of these topic seem to trigger you please do not continue to look through this blog.

Tags: vigilante batim au - well-   you could guess it’s for the au

          vigilante au comic - important/lore comics that are decently drawn

          vigilante au comic # - that REALLY important stuff/in order of timeline/main story

          batim au lore - I think I’m the only person who uses this so this will be for usually written lore stuff about the au and sometimes drawn stuff, depending usually

Setting

So this au takes place in the early to mid 1920s somewhere around Brooklyn, New York I think, not sure when and where exactly yet- It’s been 6 years since some past events, (which I’ll write about later) and this is also when the Prohibition Era started, so speakeasy’s and small bootlegging joints are starting to pick up.

Characters and other stuff

In this au Bendy is one of the top bootleggers for “The Vigilante” speakeasy, a pretty successful and popular speakeasy at that, located on the edge of a forest and under the ownership of Mr. Allen. Bendy’s best friend and main partner is Alice (just because why not) and usually go together when doing pickups, robberies, etc… Their getaway driver, William Click, is also good buddies with the both of them and is the one who takes the booze back to “The Vigilante”. William is also the bartender at “The Vigilante”. There are other partners that Bendy and Alice work with but it’s usually for bigger jobs. Phill or Philip is the “Vigilante’s” personal nurse, he lives over in the forest in a decent sized house and that is where anyone seriously injured is sent over. He’s very reserved so he’s usually not in the speakeasy. Margret is Mr. Allen’s personal assistant and maid, she’s very kind and loves company and reading.

There’s a rival speakeasy called “The Chokeberry” whom’s run by Betty Francis. The two speakeasies are equally popular, but they don’t usually ever cross paths. 

Now to the good guys ig, Detective Stein (yes he’s a private detective here) with fake first name Martin, his two partners Tom “Boris”, and Allison usually are the accompany him to crime scenes and other things of the sort. He’s not usually supposed to be let in since he’s a private detective- but he’s been able to work his way around that a few times. Detective Stein is pretty well known in the area as a very kind man and extraordinary when it comes to solving cases. Tom is the brute force of the trio while Allison is usually the gunner.

Detective May is a detective in the local police department and usually rivals Stein when solving any case. She usually gets very upset whenever she see’s Stein at a crime scene. Linda Howell is her personal assistant (yep she’s here too), she usually files the paperwork that May doesn’t want to handle, although she does wish to be on the scene investigating instead of lying around in an office.

Det. Stein and Linda also work together in secret to get more information on the “Ink Demon” case specifically because the both of them take quite an interest to it. The reason it’s secret is because if May found out she would definitely not be happy-

That’s basically it, again expect changes and little edits here and there because i might change or add smth to the story later :)

Edit: If you wanna see the characters and character profiles just go to my account and some will be there! I’m still doing them so it might be a little while but thx anyway :D

Another thing to note is that Bendy doesn’t know Det. Stein is Henry since he’s a cartoon now and yk changed his name

——————————————————————————————————— I love dubs btw! Just credit and link me to it cause I’d love to hear it! This applies to all comics I make for any fandom :)

The newest comic look (NEW PAGE) here | For all the ask info pls look here | For character refs pls look here | Character Sexuality’s look here | Discord look here | Voice Claims here and here| The Vigilante speakeasy here

———————————————————

The New Dawn AU summary HERE

——————————————————— OTHER LINKS TO FIND ME: YouTube, BlueSky, Insta, Cara

[dweemeister]

The Daydreamer (1966)

By the 1960s, Christmas television specials were in vogue in the United States. Yet this recent phenomenon had yet to yield a true cultural touchstone. On December 6, 1964, the first Christmas special mainstay aired on NBC. Produced by a fledgling animation studio, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer put Rankin/Bass, named after co-founders Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass, into the public consciousness. Rankin/Bass’ brand of stop-motion animation (“Animagic”) was mostly outsourced to Japanese studio MOM Productions in Tokyo, under the direction of Tadahito Mochinaga. With the windfall of Rudolph, Rankin/Bass and MOM Productions delved into the realm of feature theatrical films. This review concerns their second feature film, The Daydreamer – a stop motion animation/live-action hybrid based on Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. The Daydreamer has starpower in its cast that no Rankin/Bass production had yet matched. But as one might expect from a Rankin/Bass film, there are narrative flaws abound. The Daydreamer, episodic in nature and alternating between live-action and animation scenes, suffers due to the inconsistent quality of the handful of Hans Christian Andersen adaptations it has and the kitschy live-action acting.

The young Hans Christian Andersen (“Chris”; Paul O’Keefe) is the son of a cobbler (Jack Gilford). Papa Andersen often has to face the verbal tirades of frequent customer Mrs. Klopplebobbler (Margaret Hamilton; it is difficult not to think of Hamilton’s portrayal of the Wicked Witch here). His struggling business often means he cannot pay the gangling Pie Man (Ray Bolger; yet another Wizard of Oz star). To take him away from these troubles, Chris will let his imagine run wild while napping. If he can only just find the mythical Garden of Paradise, all these troubles might vanish. One evening, the Sandman (voiced by Cyril Ritchard) promises him to guide him there. Along the way, Chris is subject to dreams that may seem familiar to the viewer. These dreams shift away from live-action into the signature Rankin/Bass animation – adapting “The Little Mermaid”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”*, “Thumbelina”, and “The Garden of Paradise”. Elements of “The Ugly Duckling” and “Little Claus and Big Claus” also appear.

Among the many voice actors during these animation sequences are Hayley Mills (The Little Mermaid); Burl Ives (Neptune – I have never heard Ives’ voice so devoid of jaunt before); Tallulah Bankhead (the sea witch); Terry-Thomas (the first tailor); Victor Borge (the second tailor); Ed Wynn (the Emperor); Patty Duke (Thumbelina); and Boris Karloff (the Rat).

The film’s adaptations of Andersen’s tales differ in that Andersen himself becomes a character in each of the stories. The Daydreamer approaches the stories as if the ideas are only just forming in the young Chris’ head, to be written and published when he is an adult. Within these dreams-someday-to-be-stories, Chris is largely a passive character. He takes instruction from the central figures of his future tales, never really asserting himself or asking basic questions about the misadventures he goes through. Chris acts as if lost in his own imagination – which fits the conceit of the film. So when he awakens into the real world, the film’s pacing slams the brakes. In the real world, everyone except Chris is a caricature, somehow less realistic than the individuals appearing in the daydreams. The transitions between animation and live-action will take the viewer out of the film because of the unceasing manic acting in the latter, as opposed to the charming puppetry of the former. As such, The Daydreamer’s weaknesses lie almost entirely with the live-action scenes – too consciously playing to the audience and over-the-top in their absurdity.

In an era of American animation defined by Disney on the screen and Hanna-Barbera on television, Rankin/Bass carves out its own niche in how it tells its stories. The meta humor and fourth wall breaking of Hanna-Barbera’s works (a legacy of the duo’s work at MGM) makes no appearances here. Disney’s clean-cut fairytale endings also do not apply. The Daydreamer’s adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” does not have the gruesome premise as Andersen’s original fairytale, but it retains the ending’s heartbreak. There appears to be no alterations to “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – which includes Chris, but he just feels superfluous to the plot and to the tale’s keen comedy. Each of the film’s segments bring Chris closer to the final animated sequence, “The Garden of Paradise”. The adaptation of that tale sanitizes its deathly overtures for a devil-like creature, but keeps the ambiguous, open-ended conclusion. By maintaining the original conclusion, “The Garden of Paradise” is a curious coda for The Daydreamer – a film that ends as abruptly as its several transitions, like a daydream.

The Daydreamer’s live-action sets benefit, however, due to the fact many of its scenes were shot at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The World’s Fair pavilions used in this film mimic a feel of small-town, nineteenth century Europe more realistically than a Hollywood soundstage might. The production design for the animated dream sequences, too, are mesmerizing. Perhaps this is best exemplified in “The Little Mermaid”. There, the special effects work make it appear as if the whole sequence was shot underwater, rather than a room that contained blue lights streaming into Neptune’s palace. Where are the strings and wires suspending the puppets in mid-air while they “swim”? To the animators’ credit, there are none to be found. Neptune’s palace is one of the grander sets constructed for a Rankin/Bass production; its imposing walls and generous empty spaces reflect a sense of regal grandeur. That royal otherworldliness does not extend to “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, but many of the same production design decisions carry over. Rankin/Bass and MOM Productions are obviously working with more money and manpower for these animated scenes than in the likes of Rudolph or their many holiday television specials. The sense of scale and grandiosity seen here in The Daydreamer and Mad Monster Party? (1967) would rarely, if ever, be replicated for television. And it is also obvious that the filmmakers put the money into the animation and for paying headline-worthy actors, rather than for any writers able to string the animated and live-action halves together.

Seven songs comprise The Daydreamer’s musical soundtrack. Composed by Maury Laws and Jules Bass, most of the songs are forgettable once your viewing is done (including Robert Goulet singing the title song over the opening credits, despite the fact I admire Goulet’s voice). But there are notable exceptions. Sung by Hayley Mills at the end of “The Little Mermaid”, “Wishes and Teardrops” brings the segment to a worthy close. Her loved ignored, the Little Mermaid sings this lament – backed with percussion straight from a ‘60s love ballad and timeless swelling strings – for herself:

Wishes and teardrops Won’t make him love me. He’s gone and he’ll never return. Does he know how teardrops can burn, When they fall for a wish That can never come true?

In the film’s final third, “Luck to Sell” injects a jolt of energy sorely missing from many of the other live-action scenes. The song itself is simple and the singing just avoids being flat, but when paired with the energetic choreography from Paul O’Keefe and company, it elevates itself from the rest of the soundtrack (save “Wishes and Teardrops”).

Not often will a viewer encounter a film with two sets of opening credits. I’m not writing about films that have an overture that transition to opening credits (an entirely different approach that modern filmmakers should utilize more), but two sets of opening credits that list the names of the actors involved. For the first set of credits, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (uncredited) was hired to draw caricatures of the various actors and actresses appearing in, or lending their voices to, The Daydreamer. The Daydreamer is the second of three films that Hirschfeld was involved in. The first, appearing as himself uncredited, was in Main Street to Broadway (1953); his third and final film was as an artistic consultant on the “Rhapsody in Blue” segment (which was influenced by his caricatures) in Fantasia 2000.

Rankin/Bass’ ventures into feature film animation peaked several months later with Mad Monster Party? After that and the unfortunate production of The Wacky World of Mother Goose (1967; a traditionally animated eyesore), Rankin/Bass almost completely dedicated itself to its animated television specials. The Daydreamer, distributed by the now-defunct Embassy Pictures and currently owned by Sony Pictures Television (the ownership of the rights to Rankin/Bass’ features are exasperatingly scattered), has not been widely seen when compared to Mad Monster Party?, let alone Rankin/Bass’ television specials. If one can find a serviceable print of The Daydreamer, the viewing experience will be a valuable glimpse into the studio’s collaboration with MOM Productions. A Rankin/Bass fan that has only known the studio through its television specials will see their work operating with higher production values; Rankin/Bass novices can experience a dimension of animated filmmaking too often considered an afterthought.

My rating: 6/10

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

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

* “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was adapted twice by Rankin/Bass. The second adaptation is the heart of the television special The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye (1972), starring Danny Kaye. That adaptation of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is distinct from the one that appears in The Daydreamer. The Danny Kaye special’s adaptation has a more developed storyline, completely different voice cast, and completely different soundtrack.

[gellavonhamster]

journeys end in lovers’ meeting

Dark || Aleksander Tiedemann/Regina Tiedemann Boris Niewald/Regina Doppler || post-canon

ao3 link eng || ao3 link rus

There hasn’t been such a heavy thunderstorm in a long time – even the power went out for a while. As they raise their glasses to the world without Winden, the rain outside is beating down in slant lashes, and the black silhouettes of trees are bending menacingly against the evening sky. Regina doesn’t have the heart to let the guests out into the storm; driving in such weather and with such state of local roads is a suicide, and Peter and Bernadette even came by feet. So she offers everyone to stay over. No one is really discontented with such turn of events – everyone’s cracking jokes as they share out the places available for sleeping. It feels like they’re all kids again, and this is an adventure.        

Peter and Bernadette get the couch in the living room, and some armchairs put together make a quite comfortable improvised bed for Katharina. Wishing for her pregnant friend to have the most comfort for the night, Regina gives her own bedroom to Hannah and Torben, takes all the necessary things, and moves to her mother’s room. Claudia has retired early, having told “the young” that she’s going to bed, but when Regina steps quietly into her room with a heap of bedclothes in her arms, the light there is on, and her mother is working on her laptop – no doubt writing another post for her blog on the history of Winden or taking part in a meeting of the members of Anonymous or whatever else the seniors who are more tech-savvy than most twenty-somethings might do on their computers.    

“There’s a raincoat on the chair in the living room. A yellow one,” Regina says, settling her pillow on her mother’s wide bed. “Where did it come from?”

“A yellow one, you say?” Claudia echoes, her eyes glued to the screen. “I found it in the attic. I put it aside to think which neighbourhood kid to give it to, and forgot about it.”

“How come we have it? I don’t recall myself or Peter wearing it.”

“My dear, how long have we been living in this house? Do you remember thoroughly all the junk we have? Because I don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if your father bought that raincoat forever ago to give it to you, then stuffed it somewhere and forgot.”    

“Maybe,” Regina muses. For some reason she’s dying to know where the raincoat came from. Or it might rather be the wine she has drunk that’s dying to know that.  

Later, when her mother is already asleep, when everyone in the house must already be asleep, Regina is standing by the window, listening to the cacophony of rain, staring at the pool of light that keeps dancing under the swinging lantern. It’s weird, about that raincoat, and she feels weird, too. Hannah’s words about the end of the world come to her mind, but that’s not it, not really – it is more like something is about to start, but there is no knowing what.    

When she’s already in bed, it suddenly dawns on her what this is reminding her of: she used to feel something of the kind in her youth when she sensed she was about to dream about that boy again.    

 ***

 The first time it happens, she’s fifteen, and the boy is not a boy at all – more like a young man, two or three years older than she in appearance. It’s her classmates that are boys, but this one looks almost an adult, almost a bad guy from a movie, wearing a leather jacket, dark hair falling on his face. That is what Regina thinks when she sees him in the woods that night. Not “What am I doing in the woods, actually?” of something like that, because you don’t ask yourself that kind of questions in a dream. If you are in the woods, then you are meant to be in the woods.  

“Hey,” Regina says gingerly. The young man, who was looking around, gives a start, turns around, and finally notices her.

“Hey,” he says. Anyone would expect such a guy to have a haughty smirk and a contemptuous look, but he just smiles at her when he sees her, calmly and friendly. “Where on earth am I?”      

“In Winden,” Regina approaches him. Again, it does not occur to her in a dream that talking to a stranger in the woods might be a bad idea. “Are you lost?”  

He shrugs. “I guess. I, uh, came here from the highway? Can’t remember clearly. I just left home and came here somehow.”    

“Sounds like you’ve hit your head,” Regina remarks, which is yet another proof that she’s dreaming: in waking life she would never get smart like that with a strange guy who looks older and stronger than she. It doesn’t look, however, like the strange guy in question has taken any offence, because he just grins in response.    

“Perhaps I have. And what are you doing here, robbing the lone travellers?”

“Perhaps I am,” Regina fires back, and smiles hastily to make it clear she actually isn’t. Heavens, she doesn’t know how to talk to boys at all. If Hannah and Katharina saw her now, they’d die on the spot – if not of shame, then of laughter. “If you don’t remember how you got here, then maybe you should go to the hospital? I can lead you there.”  

“What about taking a walk first, since I’m already here, and then hospital or whatever? It’s nice here. Back where I’m from they’ve chopped all the woods down.”

The latest in the series of proofs that this is a dream: in real life such words would only have persuaded Regina further that he has to go to the hospital.  

But all of this is not real, so she says, “Then let’s go, I’ll show you the caves.”

And they head for the caves, and Regina tells her new acquaintance about Winden – how dreary and dull it is, with mostly nothing to do and nowhere to go, but at least the air is fresh and the trees are tall and ancient. Then they talk about school and music and some other nonsense, until Regina finally realizes that she forgot to ask a very important question.

“Wait,” she stops at the very entrance to the cave and grabs the young man’s hand, and blushes at once, but doesn’t let go. “What is your name?”

He opens his mouth to reply – and she wakes up.

 ***

 The feeling is so similar that the next morning she is even a little disappointed that the night had passed without any dreams. That’s silly, of course – she hasn’t dreamed about him for what, thirty years? And there have been enough men of flesh and blood in her life for her not to worry about the one who never really existed.  

But the slight disappointment doesn’t disappear, and the feeling that something important is about to begin doesn’t go away either, and that Monday Regina brings them along to work.

Waldhotel Winden is facing hard times – frankly speaking, Regina cannot remember if there have ever been any other times. Father converted his estate into a hotel when his young new wife, Regina’s mother, refused to live there. Claudia has never elaborated why she rejected that elegant old building, but the older Regina gets, the more often it crosses her mind that deep down her mother didn’t want to live under the same roof with ghosts – not just Bernd Doppler’s late first wife, but also the memory of herself as a child coming there to tutor little Helge. Sweet shy Helge who, according to age, should have rather been Regina’s uncle not her half-brother; who also refused to live in that mansion that smelled of ancientness and dignity with his equally sweet shy wife. Memories had driven the former residents out of the house, leaving it fit only for the strangers who come and go without any trace other than the payment for the room. Unfortunately, there have always been few such strangers: the comparatively pristine nature and the caves steeped in legend are not enough to turn an otherwise ordinary underdeveloped small town like Winden into a popular tourist destination. Presently, for instance, the only guests at the hotel are an elderly couple who checked in three days ago.                                                                          

It makes no sense to keep a lot of personnel in such situation, so it is Regina herself who is at the reception, while looking through the depressing financial statement for the last half-year. The only guests have gone out, the maid is cleaning upstairs, and when the bell rings above the front door, Regina looks up in involuntary annoyance – she has grown so unaccustomed to visitors that she has almost forgotten their arrival is supposed to make her glad.  

“Hello,” she says, having quickly collected herself.

“Good afternoon,” says the newcomer, a man about her age, broad-shouldered and imposing, in an unbuttoned black coat. “I’d like a single room, please. Surely there are any available at the moment?”  

“Oh, more than enough,” Regina can’t help commenting, smiling unhappily. “Your name?”

“Boris Niewald.”

Regina cannot explain why, upon hearing this, she immediately thinks there must be some sort of mistake. It is a name like any other – why couldn’t he be called that? And it is not that she was expecting him to have some other particular name – yet still she cannot fight the feeling that he was supposed to be called differently. That would have been explainable if she had met this man before, but she is sure it is the first time she sees him.

…almost sure. Something in his features seems vaguely familiar. But that must be just déjà vu – nothing unusual for her and most of the people she knows. She remembers being extremely surprised back in the day that her friends from the university could not recall ever experiencing it. Maybe Winden has some special aura. Ley lines, geopathogenic zones, that sort of thing.  

Maybe it’s just some collective mental health issues.

“I can offer you several rooms to choose from,” she tells him. “You may leave your suitcase in the luggage room for now, so as not to carry it with you.”    

 ***

 “You know what I think?” Hannah begins in a sing-song voice. “I think,” she glances at Regina over the history notebook, while wearing her signature sly smile, “that our Regina has a crush.”  

“What?!” Regina frowns in confusion. That’s so unrelated to what they were just discussing, where did this even come from? “I think you’re thinking wrong.”

“And I think Hannah’s right,” Katharina declares. Great, now it’s two against one. It would have been an option to stand up pointedly and go to the kitchen to grab more cookies, but, firstly, then the girls would definitely decide they’re on the right track, and secondly, Katharina is currently painting Regina’s nails vibrant dark red – how would she leave with her nails not dried yet, and just with three of them to boot? “Spit it out, girl. Who is he?”  

Sometimes Regina cannot believe she’s really friends with these girls. They couldn’t be more different from her in their nature: the rebellious Katharina, quick-tempered and defiant, with bruises under the layers of face powder and sharp words for everyone who dares to look at her the wrong way; the elfin Hannah with her fox face, ambitious and perceptive, prone to imitating the older and more badass Katharina. And then there’s she – so… ordinary. The only remarkable thing about Regina is her good marks, but no one ever likes exemplary students, not even when in need of their help – especially when in need of their help. If it was not for her friends who are more adjusted for survival at school, it would have probably been tough for her, particularly in her childhood and early teenage years, when she used to wear thick-rimmed glasses.        

Regina loves her friends, but there are some things she prefers not to tell them.

“I don’t understand what makes you think I have a crush,” she tries to fight back weakly.  

“It’s just that every time I look at you at the lessons lately, you’re always up in the clouds with such cute zoned-out little face,” Katharina says, and tries to demonstrate at once just what kind of little face that is. Hannah giggles. “Come on, it’s not like it’s bad. On the contrary, we’re happy for you. Who is he? Does he know?”  

He must know, Regina thinks. We see each other once a month or two, go on walks, talk, hold hands, but all of this doesn’t matter because he disappears every time I try to ask him what his name is or tell him my own. Besides, there’s a tiny problem: I only dream about him, and he doesn’t actually exist.  

“There’s no one to know,” she tells them with an apologetic smile. Katharina and Hannah hang out with real guys after school, real guys who buy them ice cream and let them wear their jackets when it gets cold, so they don’t need to know that silly Regina (yes, it’s alright to be silly at sixteen, but not sillier than her peers, after all) is in love with someone who only exists in her head. “And I’m up in the clouds because… I keep thinking that school will be over soon, and I’ll be able to leave. We all will be able to leave. And there’ll be no more Winden for us.”    

“No more Winden for us,” Hannah repeats dreamily, and Katharina nods in agreement. It’s a perfect way to change the subject – the next instant they’re already sharing plans for the future, discussing where they’re going to enrol, where they want to go on holidays. Indeed, no crush looks as attractive as the prospect of leaving their native shithole for good.    

None of them will ever leave Winden for long, but at the time they do not know it yet.

 ***

 Boris Niewald has come to their town as a representative of the company that is building a new shopping centre in Winden. He stays in Waldhotel Winden for a week, and as he comes back every evening that week, he and Regina spend some time talking before the night porter arrives and she goes home. Regina is not in the habit of making close acquaintance with the guests, but when he returns on the evening of the first day, she cannot help asking what his first impressions of Winden are, and then it all happens as if by itself. On the third day, they switch from Sie to du. On the fourth day, she unlocks the liquor cabinet to take out a bottle of expensive brandy given a few years ago by her father’s friend, and offers him a glass on the house.    

On the seventh day, when he was supposed to check out, he asks her if it is possible to extend the reservation.  

“I still have some three days free,” he tells Regina. They’re sitting in the armchairs in the lobby; the elderly couple has already checked out, the maid has a day off, and it seems as if they’re not at the hotel at all, but at home. Her home or his; possibly theirs. “With all this construction I never got a chance to see the town.”  

“I’m afraid this town hardly has anything to offer you,” Regina laughs, toying with the glass in her hand. “We don’t even have a museum. Except the caves, perhaps.”

“The caves? I’ve heard something about them. The ones where someone is said to disappear every year?”

“Well, not every year, but there have been several cases. Usually these poor things get found after a day or two, however – dirty, hungry. Apparently there’s an entire labyrinth of natural origin, and the walls cave in sometimes. There are some weirdos who believe that there is the way to…”  

“The centre of the Earth?”

“More like the other dimensions. About ten years ago, some TV people even came to make a documentary, God. I don’t think it was ever released.”                

“That sounds appealing,” Boris chuckles. Regina likes his smile, his silver beard, his striking blue eyes. Perhaps she has a type, and her new acquaintance is the perfect match. Both of her husbands looked similarly – both the one who married her, as it quickly came to light, hoping to make a career at the publishing house of the only Winden newspaper, which was headed by her mother back then, and the one that cheated on her a year and a half after their wedding. In other words, both the one that she still never says hello to and the one she still exchanges birthday and Christmas greetings with. The latter and his wife had some kind of unprecedented abundance of currant in their garden last year, and they gave Regina two jars of currant jam; oh the small towns where everyone knows each other in many different senses.      

Perhaps her type was shaped by the fact that at the age of fifteen to approximately twenty she frequently dreamed about a handsome boy with precisely such beautiful blue eyes. What of it.                            

“You don’t hurry home lately, I see” Claudia observes in the morning while Regina is making breakfast. Her mother is reading a fresh newspaper – undoubtedly thinking that without her being editor-in-chief, that newspaper has gone to shit. “Is he trustworthy?”  

“He? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Regina replies flatly as she puts oatmeal and dried fruit into the bowls.

“What, a she? Didn’t think you’d take after your grandmother, but it’s never too late to get to know yourself, I guess.”

“There’s no one, Mama,” Regina says determinedly. In two days Boris returns to Marburg. There is no point in starting anything.  

There is no point in starting anything – yet when on her day off Boris asks her out for dinner, she says yes.

There is no point in starting anything – yet when he kisses her in the hotel corridor it takes her some time to make herself pull away.

“Forgive me,” Boris says when he sees her face. “I suppose I shouldn’t have done this.”

“That’s right,” Regina says and forces a smile. Tomorrow he’s leaving.

There is no point in starting anything – yet when he closes the door after himself and she takes a few steps down the corridor, she realizes suddenly that she doesn’t care. Then she turns around and goes back before letting herself change her mind and knocks on the door of his room. He opens at once.  

That night she feels madly young, young and loving and loved.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” Boris promises her when he puts the key to the room in her hand the next morning.

There is no point in starting anything, yet she thinks: come back to me.  

And, for some reason: come home.

 ***

 At the high school graduation party, the girls from Regina’s class dance with their boyfriends or with the boys they hope to make their boyfriends, lay their heads on their partners’ shoulders, bodies pressed together, hearts full of excitement. As to Regina, she gets asked to a dance by Peter, her nephew-who-looks-rather-like-her-cousin, which is very nice of him. They keep stepping on each other’s feet and laughing about it, and then Take My Breath Away gives way to lively disco, and Regina dances with Katharina and Hannah and then with Peter again and then with some kids who she hasn’t exchanged a word with throughout the entire school year. There are no more couples, just a single happy crowd, and they spin and throw their hands up in the air, like a record, baby, right round, round round.

Officially alcohol at the graduation party is banned. Unofficially, part of the parents and teachers who are chaperoning them all in the festively decorated gym does not care and another part is sneakily sipping something from thermos bottles and flasks themselves. Regina drinks a couple of glasses of the wine that Katharina brought with her in a juice carton. She doesn’t drink often enough to know much about such things, but two glasses mustn’t be too much. It mustn’t be enough to explain why, when she steps out to the porch to take the air and raises her eyes up to the sky, she sees what she sees and stumbles and almost falls down, taken by surprise.      

“You all right?” she hears a voice behind her back. Charlotte Tannhaus approaches her, looking rather curious than worried. “Are you going to be sick?”  

“N-no,” Regina tells her, with something that should ideally pass for a reassuring smile. “It just seemed like…”  

“Like?”

She and Charlotte Tannhaus have never been close, but now both of them are drunk, and besides, Regina is going to leave for the university soon, and whether anyone in Winden thinks her crazy shall lose all importance.

“Like there were two moons in the sky,” she says. ‘Then they merged into one.”

Charlotte nods pensively, as if Regina has just said something extraordinarily deep.  

“Maybe that was a vision,” she points out. “Like… we’re all at the crossroads now, right? School is over, life is beginning? Maybe the two moons are like two different paths.”

“That merge into one because they’re actually one and the same?”

“Possible. Or it might even be the third path, another one. Maybe.”  

Yeah, Regina thinks, they’re definitely drunk.

“I thought I’d be just leaning up against the wall for half the evening, but it turned out quite great. I wish you were there,” she tells her stranger in a dream that night.

“Yeah, I’d love to go with you,” he says, and then adds something strange:

“It’s a shame you’re not real.”

 ***

 A month later – a month of phone calls and Skype calls, a month when Regina keeps reminding herself not to hope too much and still hopes more and more with each day – Boris comes back.

“I have to tell you something which will make you think that I’m not quite right in the head,” he tells her on the first evening after his arrival. This time he isn’t staying in Waldhotel – he’s staying at her place. “Or that I am lying and being incredibly bad at it.”

“Try me,” she suggests merrily.

“When I was young, I would often see the same dream. Or rather, different dreams about the same girl,” Boris comes up to her writing desk, picks up a framed photo – Regina with her mother and grandfather – and looks at it thoughtfully. In the picture, Regina is sixteen, she has voluminous curls and bright eye shadow in the true spirit of the eighties, and, in the opinion of adult Regina, she’s very small, funny, and good. Better than she thought herself back then, probably. “I wouldn’t say I used to be lonely at that time – I had friends, I had everything, basically – but every time I woke up hoping I’d see her again. I believe I was a little bit in love with her – as if with a singer or a teacher, you know, without any hope that my feelings might be returned. What kind of return might be there if she didn’t really exist, after all?”          

He puts the photo back on the desk, and turns to Regina.

“At least I was sure she didn’t exist. And now we’ve come to the part that will make you think me either a liar or crazy,” he smiles at her, but eyes her earnestly, clearly preparing to say something important, clearly wishing for it to be taken seriously despite all the jokes. “You look like her. Judging by this photo, you’re spitting images of each other.”

“What was her name?” Regina asks with bated breath. Boris frowns; he must have been expecting anything but such question.  

“I don’t know. I woke up each time I tried to ask her.”

Regina gets up off the bed and comes up to him.

“I think I also have something to tell you,” she says, “that will make you think me either a liar or crazy.”

Now, as luck would have it, it would be the time for the dream to end – but they are really there, really together, and what has started will not end at the crack of dawn, will not end if they let it go on, will not ever end.

[ask-the-friendly-ink-demon]

hey prowler how did you and ben meet? :0

oh thank goodness. a question that wasn’t about his stress or drago or the past. well it kinda was but at leash he can answer this with some positivity as his massive goopy and long tail swayed slightly

“AH.... BEN.... YEAH I REMEMBER HIM ALL TOO WELL HEH.... WE HAD A LOT IN COMMON. SIMILAR BACKSTORY. BOTH OF US GOT NEGLECTED BY OUR JOEYS IN THE PAST. ONLY A FEW DIFFERENCES I GUESS. HE WAS MORE MAN-MADE FROM THOSE... LOOPS OR CYCLES I THINK THEY’RE CALLED. WHILE I WAS... GENTICALLY MADE FROM TWO HUMAN SOULS AND FOUR DEMON SOULS.... I TIHNK” he rubs his own forehead, rumbling softly “BUT! I DO KNOW THAT WE ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD FREINDS! KINDA SIMILAR TO MY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MY BOI BENNASHEE AND MY BRO SOUL, ME AND BEN JUST.... HAVE A CONNECTION” he crosses his arms thinking slightly “AS FOR HOW WE MET.....” he thinks. trying to remember “WE MET WHEN DURING WHEN THIS BLOG WAS ON A HIATUS. WHEN I WAS STILL. RECOVERING FROM MY FIRST ‘DEATH’ AFTER FADED MADE ME LOSE CONTROL. WHEN THAT... SHADOW ANIMATRONIC WAS AROUND. CHANGING DRAGO OR SOMETHING. BEFORE HE MADE THEM CHANGE. THEY AND HIM WERE A BIT OF AN... ASSHOLE WHEN FUSED INTO THAT... STAGEFRIGHT OR NIGHTSHOW OR WHAT THE FUCK EVER....” he grunts, slightly glowing purple but. quickly shaking it off “ANYWHO IM GETTING OFF TRACK. BEN ARRIVED AT THAT WEIRD STUDIOS WE ALL FIRST ARRIVED AT IN THAT MULTIVERSE PLACE. A CHANGING STUDIOS IF YOU WILL. ANYWHO IT WAS DURING A PRETTY BIG AND NASTY STORM. ME AND BEN MET UP WHEN I WAS MORE... NORMAL AND WE TALKED AND SUCH AND WE QUICKLY BECAME BESTIES HEH....” he crosses his arms, smiling softly as he grew a bit smaller. his horns shrinking as talking about ben seemed to make him more. perfect? (:0) or something as he keeps thinking slightly. eventually almost looking like his standard inked state.

“BUT... WELL THAT STORM TURNED OUT TO BE ONE OF THOSE WEIRD GIANT MONSTER THINGS YOU HUMAN CALL KAIJUS... I THINK IT’S NAME WAS GHIDORAH? OR SOMETHING I DUNNO. ME AND BEN CONNECTED FURTHER WHEN I SAVED HIS ASS FROM BEING FRIED TO A PUDDLE HEH” he snorted, chuckling softly as he smiled a bit more, his ink stopped oozing as his inky aura seemed to dissapear almost “WE KEPT ON TALKING. LEARNING ABOUT EACHOTHER’S PASTS. WE KEPT HELPING EACHOTHER WITH OUR.. PROBLEMS AND PAST... EVEN LETTING OUT SOME UNHEARD SECRETS ABOUT US HEH... FOR A TIME I THOUGHT HE HAD FRAGMENTS OR MEMORIES OF ALL THE WORKERS’S SOULS INSIDE OF HIM WHEN HE TOLD ME HIMSELF HE WAS SOULLESS. YET HE COULD STILL FEEL EMOTIONS.... THOUGH THAT SOON CHANGED WHEN EARLIER AFTER I KILLED AND MERGED FADED FOR GOOD INTO MY OWN SOUL....” he huffs softly, his ink rising back up but he quickly calmed down, taking in a deep breathe.

“THIS WAS WHEN I... WAS MORE BROKEN AND RECOVERING FROM EVERYTHING. I GREW VERY PARANOID. AND SCARED OF FUSING. OR BEING AROUND OTHER DEMONS BUT. BEING AROUND BEN. MADE ME FEEL. SAFE. MADE ME FEEL MORE... normal....” his size shrunk a bit, his unmoving grin shrinks slightly as his appearance started to look more. toony like as he kept on talking “ONE DAY WHEN I WAS ReLaXinG FrOM EveRythInG i GoT... sEnt TO HIs STUdiOS... WAsN’t THe FIRsT TIme i WaS sEnt THeRe bUT. ANywHo wHEn i fiRST ArRIveD Me And BeN wErE SUprISeD To saY The leAsT” he crosses his arms, leaning against the couch “he TrIEd oPEnINg uP a PortAL fOR me TO go bACK hOme But. IT diDinT wORK. i trIEd BEfoRe bUT it COUlDN’T WOrk... beForE We COuLD tRY ANythING We GOt JumPEd bY THosE ButchEr gANg clOneS. BotH STabLE ANd NoNStAbLE” he says, pulling out a strange looking pipe that seemed to be manmade- fixed with a shocker baton “GrAbBEd THiS fRom ONe OF thEM heH...” he says, snorting softly before huffing “ThOSe WheN i aBsoRbeD thOSE unsTABLE clOneS soMEthING... hAppEneD.... I... FeLT thINGs i wAsN’t SUpPOSeD TO fEeL OR rEmeMBEr... THan caME oNe OF thOSe dEMoNS.... aPPArENly Ben’S faMilY TrEe WaS biGgeR thAN he THoUGHt...”

He grunts, huffing softly as he was unawarely getting smaller, his voice more soft spoken but still distorted “but even then. ben’s studios was the first time in a while that i achieved a new form. the hunter demon. which was apparently a remake of that... strange forced fusion faded had with me....” he grunts, snorting a bit “after ben... merged that head secuirty demon into himself we decided to fix this whole mess. taking care of monster after monster. i made sure to make myself stay stable.. even if it meant uh... absorbing a few tainted souls... i wasn’t thinking straight... when we came across that doctor demon though something... happened... he used my own ability against me...” he rubbed his own back, rumbling softly “but even then... i converted that little advantage he had into a whole lot of energy... so much that i accidently blew us all up in that room heh.....” he rubbed his own forehead, melting but unawarely looking smaller than before. more. humanoid kinda “that was my first discovery of my purple states.... though it was mainly just. extremely powerful bursts of energy enough to blow up rooms or create earthquakes... after he merged that doctor into himself we kept on moving... even though i was having trouble... he became infected with my own corruption by accident. two times actually... or three when we came across the last demon. the one that apparently ordered those butcher gang to come at him. benny as he calls himself... i was still heavily pissed off with what that place was doing to me but. i didint let that fool me. even if he sented out a monstrous boris... “ he huffs, humming slightly “but even then. we still managed to stop this whole mess. ben kinda has a alter personality now of that benny since they...share the same body now i guess...? i dunno but when he was trying to fix me my... other corruption and excess ink from that went into him.. i felt back but i didint know what to do to get rid of it when i finally told ben but. he just gave me that classic smirk and said it’d be fine....”

“now of course he wasn’t fine. it took a few days for him to.. adjust to it. i dunno if he fully activated it or not but he has been showing more signs of the traits on him. with his eyes complete purple. his tail a more longer and sharper. even his body looked more defined. like a human’s... though when my corruption accidently infected imp, it made him more. perfect. since it kinda has a mental mind of it’s own. shifting and shaping the person into what the host exactly wants in life. ben wanted to be more ‘human’ and imp wanted to be more ‘perfect’ so it gave them exactly that but of course there’s always setbacks.... i had to calm ben down a bit with this but he had to calm me down even more when i was a messed up corrupted feral beast heh....“ he looked more smaller and more. perfect. his tail still long but not as long as before. he looked more. calm. more relaxed as he kept explaining the finishing details “wasn’t the first time either but” he closes his eyes. wait. eyes? he wasn’t aware of it but he looked more... normal? he opened his eyes. smiling brightly a bit as his tail wags hey he actually kinda looks....

“overall! ben and i are very good pals! even cousins if you want to go there! he and i are... kinda the same heh. we’re both outcasts but hey... outcasts need to stick together i suppose hehe...” he beamed, his tail wagging more. seemly unaware that he was back in his toon baby self “he’s actually one of the more better friends that i wish i could hang out with more. or see more! we haven’t seen eachother that much ever since that mess at his stuidos... heh god what he must think of me now like this from this whole mess... probably would say some corny joke or something about lanky’s not so tough or something” he says, chuckling softly as he still had that smile on his face. more tired though “i actually liked this question a lot. if only for a moment though i wish i could see him again.... or any of my friends heh....” he wiped something from his eye, still not unaware even as he noticed that he had too gloves again he just figured his ‘goopy form’ was stablizing itself.... --- Imp Belongs to @sammys-sanctuary Bennashe belongs to @ask-the-impractical-heroes Soul belongs to @ask-soul-bendy and Bendy ‘Ben’ B Stein belongs to my good friend Sheepy on discord! he doesn’t have a tumblr yet but he has thought about getting one in the future!

[uncle-henry-au]

Some stuff about this au!

Okay so this was originally an ask blog around 2017-2018ish, I think closer to 2018 but I have a poor memory. It had some characters and plot but like- I ended up deleting and re-creating this blog because I was pretty unhappy where I was going with it in terms of pacing, designs, etc... So I figured why not wipe the slate clean! So sorry if there's not much context or plot on this blog, I just like drawing them

The Plot: Henri Emily(FNaF Henry) and Henry Shaw(BatIM Henry- yes I know his canon last name is Stein but shhh I have a semi-plot reason for this) live together! Henri is spelled with an i just to make it easier to tell who's who. They just met by random chance, hit it off, and now they live together! Idk if their relationship is platonic, romantic, or something else... so I'll leave that up to interpretation. All that matters is their relationship is super close no matter what!

Scott Afton(Phone Guy) and Mallory Afton(Crying Child) are brothers and William Afton's kids. Mallory used to be named Michael but changed his name and prefers Mallory now. They had a sister named Elizabeth who died via Circus Baby. After the Bite of 1983, Henri filed to take custody of the kids and won, and they've been staying with him ever since... There was a time where Scott ran away and was on his own, but after FFPS he stayed with Henri and Mallory again.

The fact that Henry Shaw is an ink demon used to be a plot twist, but... Y'all know now soooo XD So in my interp of BatIM, Joey Drew went basically off the deep end with grief after Henry Stein, his childhood friend, died at a young age due to some illness. Joey somehow created an ink demon in the likeness of Henry, but wrote his memories so that Henry didn't even know he wasn't human. Things were fine until Henry left Joey, and 30 years later the events of BatIM happen

Allison Pendle is now our Alice, Thomas Conner is now our Boris, and Bendy is the only one without a human attached. They all basically have a sibling relationship with Scott and Mallory

Wally Franks was one of the last ones turned, so was a very successful case where he too appears human... But is still an ink demon. He's super close to the BatIM crew and visits a lot(calls it the Hen House) and I totally ship him and Scott

Anim is... Interesting. I originally had a totally different plot for them but cLEAN SLATE BABY!!! Their AI came from FNaF World(y'know how you fight Animdude and stuff) and I haven't came to a conclusion on how exactly I'm introducing him to the group yet but eventually they get Henri to build them an android body so he can be a snarky lil shit but in reality

My Michael Afton from @official-michael-afton shows up sometimes(kinda a reverse of what I did where like- I took Scott and shoved him on that blog so consider this payback XD) and would be Scott's twin whenever he's around. Idk if I'm gonna keep him in the main cast or just have him show up sometimes through the power of multiverse but... Heres here! Might give him a different name since Mallory also used to be named Michael...

Sammy Lawrence, Norman Polk, Jeremy Fitzgerald, and Mike Schmidt are all background characters who show up from time to time, and I might bring some more in in the future, who knooooows

... So yea thanks for listening to my infodump, hope this explains this AU to anyone who wasn't around for the first run of it XD

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 49.34 - Trinity, Cam vs Jesus, Ox

I’ve been furloughed, which you’d think would result in a more well-researched and tightly edited blog than usual given all of the extra time I find on my hands. But predictably you’d have been wrong (the fact that I’ve spent much of that time trying to wash it off of my hands for hygeine purposes notwisthstanding). 

I did watch the Godfather this morning though, so my time hasn’t been completely wasted. I was having bluetooth sync issues so went on YouTube for some tips and the guy in the video was also watching The Godfather (just an interesting little coincidence for you there).

Furlough is one of those words that makes you understand how infuriating it must be to learn English as a foriegn language. Its a fairly rare word, so many native speakers won’t have known which of the ‘ough’ sounds should follow the ‘furl’ (as in rough, cough, through, plough and though etc). Is it fur-loh, fur-low, fur-luff, fur-loff or fur-loo? For me it seemed right that furlough should be fur-low, to rhyme with cow, but then furloughed to rhyme with though. I was right on one count, but furlough is just one of a number of terms that have been added to the national lexicon at breakneck speed over the past few weeks. Social distancing, herd immunity, self-isolate, ‘Protect the NHS’ (actually, this one only counts when its Boris saying it. Plenty of us have been saying it for years)

And the word itself isn’t the only weird thing about furloughing (in this formI would have guessed it’d be fur-loffing). I’m fortunate that I’ll be okay with 80% of my pay, but for some people that won’t be enough, but they can’t do anything else to make up the rest. And then what do you do all day? I’ve seen a bunch of Self-Betterment gurus on the tweets saying that if you don’t master at least one language and martial art (each) then you’re a total failure who lacks the discipline to make anything of themselves in life, which is obviously bollocks. Everyone is in a different situation so for some people simply carrying on will be a great victory. 

But it still feels like we should be doing something, because the alternative is just to read the news and lose yourself in worry. But what do we do? Constant distraction can feel like a cop out too, like you’re not facing up and acknowledging everything thats going on, taking a holiday instead of action, although that doesn’t make much sense as a stance either. The best action most of us can take is inaction, and besides, there’ll be people who’ve never had more than three weeks off work in decades, so do they not deserve to treat this like a holiday, even if in these circumstances it can feel guilty to do so?

Anyway, tell you what, The Godfather is properly marvelous isn’t it? A stone cold classic, I say, and you can take that to the bank. Also, a little bonus on top of the earlier coincidence, this was both the first time I’d watched the Godfather and the first time I’d ever used Bluetooth headphones with my laptop. Make of that what you will.

Last week, which feels like a lot longer ago than a week (I’d place it at more than a fortnight at least, were I a betting man. I’d have lost that bet of course, which is why I’m not a betting man, but the point stands) Trinity College, Cambridge absolutely walloped Jesus College, Oxford in the final Quarter Final of University Challenge 2019-20 (that’s right, I’m flipping the switch (note the highly contemporary reference to Tik-Tok, a social media platform which continues to baffle me) and revealing the result at the start of the blog (or at least the middle) rather than the end). 

That paragraph had 29 words outside brackets, 48 words inside brackets, and 22 words inside brackets inside brackets, which I think might be a personal record. Anyway...

Trinity had certainly come into this match as favourites, with their loss to Corpus Christi somewhat of an aberration, with Durham the only other team to get within 60 points of them in three other appearances. Jesus by contrast, had a combined margin of only 80 from their three wins, in addition to the pair of losses they had to their name. But they tended to put up a fight even in defeat, so this shouldn’t have been a whitewash.

It was though (th-off).

Both sides missed the opening starter, but Hughes got Trinity going with the replacement. He would go on to have a jolly old time in this episode, racking up seven correct buzzes in total, along with a clear and large gain of confidence. Hourihan too, seemed far more comfortable on the buzzer towards the end of the match, when victory was more than assured. If they could take that same self-belief into then they’d have a cracking chance of making the final. 

They’ll need to hold their nerve though, and keep going for it even if things aren’t going their way, seeing as in the one match they lost, they were blown away from the start and struggled to recover. If they have learned from that defeat then they’ll keep buzzing without hesitation, but that’s easier said than done.

In this match they were under basically no pressure, as it took until -5 plays 90 for Jesus to get up and running, and only then at a very slow pace. The game was over by the halfway stage, with Trinity 155 points clear, and though they didn’t ease up, Jesus start buzzing again, knowing that it doesn’t really matter if they get penalties anymore. Jesus pass fifty, smashing the ignominity that would have brought them, and Trinity pass 250, meaning that at the gong, the Cambridge side had been involved in the three highest scoring quarter final matches.

Final Score: Trinity, Cam 285 - 75 Jesus, Ox

WIth this match over, we now had the semi-final lineup confirmed:

Corpus Christi, Cam vs Durham

Imperial vs Trinity, Cam

Jesus’ defeat meant that this was the first year since 2007 that no Oxford college had made the last four. That year there were no Cambridge teams in the semis either, remarkably, as Warwick beat Manchester in the final.

[merrysithmas]

hi! first of all I wanted to say I love your blog and especially your goldfinch posts, they are super interesting and informative! I’m curious do you think that Boris lied to Theo about having wife and kids? Because he’s a terrible liar and it wouldn’t be a huge surprise :D

He ABSOLUTELY 100% lied about his yogurt ad wife and kids. Theo even says he was practically laughing bc there was no way such fair-haired children could ever be Boris’ - which was a clear literary way to let us, the readers, know how funny and ridiculous the whole idea was.

Now just because his picture-perfect white-on-white blindingly blonde Stepford commercial magazine fam was a lie that doesn’t mean Boris hadn’t been less-ideally married or had a couple random accidental kids. I definitely imagine him to have had a one or a couple of fast burn spur-of-the-moment planecrash-from-the-start marriages and maybe a kid somewhere unsettling with an equally criminal woman he barely knows or likes. Maybe he IS still married meaninglessly to one of those distant people he hasn’t spoken to in years when he meets Theo, but it’s just on paper because he hasn’t got around to divorcing yet (and he doesn’t want to give her any money).

However the idea of Boris the domestic dad in Sweden married to an Olympic skiier (lmfao) was certainly a lie. And a very Boris one at that. Even if that would be a hilarious hijinx in itself if it were true. Boris takes things from reality and warps them to make his lies, so maybe he did randomly meet an already married rich Swedish skiier and fuck her in her husband’s house one time. Maybe he also really likes yogurt and one day at breakfast pleasantly thought, hey, this looks a lot like Elisa the woman who I fucked in Stockholm on that coke run. Funny that. I’m gonna jack off to this later. And then cut it out and stuffed it in his pocket.

Boris lies a lot - like I believe his “wild MGM Grand” party after Theo left was a lie - Boris was prob dangerously high as fuck crashing a popular girl’s party, scaring everyone, got kicked out for cursing and pulling a knife on someone, and sobbed all night, clutching his shoulders, missing Theo. Boris lies a lot and we know Theo knows when he’s doing it.

Boris told that Olympic Skiier Family lie to Theo so Theo wouldn’t A) freak out because Boris was obviously trying to win him back and whisk him away from his comphet marriage. And B) wanted to appear “civilized” and grown-up to Theo who was QUITE LITERALLY at the height of social society in the USA and may have looked down on Boris for not getting his life together — at that point Boris couldn’t have been sure who Theo had become, or lied to himself to become, and needed a cover story just in case.

Also, I have a hc that Boris and Theo got drunkenly married on the Strip in Vegas when they were teens, forging their parents’ signatures, with the high-as-fuck logic of getting Boris a greencard to stay in the US. They just don’t remember. Or they do. And they know all their marriages thereafter are rendered null and void anyway. And when Theo comes to Antwerp he’s like Lmao at all the women who occasionally show up on Boris’s doorstep to (variously) Throw Very Sharp Objects at Boris, cry (Loudly), demand back the time they gave to him, Threaten His Life with enormous Slovakian brothers at her side because a ceremony in the Orthodox church is for life and you abandoned me and shamed my family now how can I remarry you’re coming back to Bratislava with me whether you like it or not, or another who promises to murder Boris in his sleep by puncturing his throat with her nails (points for creativity at least, Theo thinks), or another who screams because these “weren’t even real diamonds what did you take me for a fucking whore!”

And Theo just looks at Boris thunderstruck everytime he has to use his shoulder to squeeze the doorshut over a woman who is threatening to gouge his eyeballs out (“I know he’s in there, I know you’re hiding him” in various languages Theo barely understands but the rage is universal). Theo just looks at Boris like: For fuck sake you’re gay how did all this happen. And Boris is like shrug, I was bored!! You abandoned me!! All your fault, really. Bad person, you. Truly shameful, even.

[darkestshadeofgrey]

1-15 😘

1. how many muses, do you think, have you had in total while on tumblr?

Easily over 30. Most of them I have as unused sideblogs still, but I know there are a few shorter lived ones that are no longer with us. 

2. are there any tropes that pull you in or that you realise are reoccuring in your muses?

I tend to write a lot of mentor type muses. I also have a thing for writing mercenaries and Russians that I didn’t realize until I’d had a whole bunch and a friend pointed it out to me.

3. do you often get ideas when watching new media? do you end up wanting a canon character, an oc in that world, or just things involving current muses in the world / with those characters?

Oh all the fucking time. Pretty much any media I consume at least gives me new concepts if not a whole ass muse. Plenty of them honestly end up just living in the discord dms of whoever I chose to scream at about them, but sometimes they actually make it on site. I rarely, and I mean rarely, get the urge to write canons in anything. It’s typically OCs, either wholly separate ones or ideas I can apply to some existing one.

4. what’s the weirdest muse you’ve ever had?

One that’s never made it to tumblr, for sure. Weirdest one that has? Probably my Fae OC, Rosson. He’s...off, let’s say, even among other Fae. 

5. who is / was your favourite muse of all time to play?

That is tough. Purely from a how fun they’ve been to write and not so much about the events I’ve written/who I’ve written them with: probably Gideon. Sparknotes- He’s a relatively young but immortal mage who just has like no freaking filter. He’s a wise-cracking, pop culture spitting, always says what he means and has no shame ball of fun. 

6. is there a muse you’d add or bring back if you didn’t have to worry about whether others are interested in them or not?

If I wasn’t so worried about them coming under scrutiny I would bring over several of my muses that are part of a world I came up with years ago. So any of one of them, really.

7. what age group, gender and ethnicity do you most often end up playing?

Often 30 years old or older cis white men. That’s not the goal, but a quick onceover of my multi (the highest concentration of muses I have on site) shows that as the consensus. I don’t so much set out to have it that way, but it’s how things have shaken out so far.

8. who is your latest muse? can be someone you’re only considering / not planning to play at all, but is tempting you.

Working on bringing one of my Dragon Age: Inquisition Inquisitors to tumblr. Just gonna replay the game first to refresh myself on the story and such.

9. have the types of characters you play changed over the years?

Oh yea. Since joining tumblr I tend to be marginally more grounded with characters. I used to deal pretty much exclusively with fantastical powers and such-and I certainly don’t shy away from them now-but I’m far more willing to write muses with more toned down abilities, or no powers at all even. 

10. if you play original muses with canon roots  ( like oc siblings, coworkers, etc. )  or someone who’s been either just a name or a few lines of dialogue in canon, how do you build that character? do you pick the muse first and build from there, or do you need have the muse ready in your head and only then pick the connection, or a combination of the two?

So it’s rare that I make OCs that are like super directly related to/are underutilized canons. I might have them tangentially related, but typically in a way that if you pluck that canon out, the story/muse still works so I’m not reliant on it by any stretch. There have been a few occasions where I did do something to this affect, but they’re typically special cases. The 3 that come to mind are Dmitri- My OC Harley Quinn child that was the product of a magic anon years ago, Sully- A Gotham City Rogue that I built up to be very much woven into the fabric of Gotham and familiar with/to its various players, and Boris Turgenov- the very first Crimson Dynamo from Marvel comics who died in the same issue he appeared in. I got the idea on a while to flesh him out because I was like ‘they bring back like every bit character at some point why not him’ because as I researched, he’s hardly even been brought up and never revived since that initial appearance/death. I pretty much just made up what I thought ‘made sense’ at the time to explain his survival/continued existence.

11. have you ever built or picked up a muse because you wanted to use a certain faceclaim? how did it go?

I rarely make a muse solely for the sake of an FC. Typically, in OC creation in general these days, I’ll have an idea sorta just floating around unattached and then I’ll see a face and go ‘that’s a good face’ and keep it in mind, then at some point the idea and the face will link up in my mind (maybe I’ll see something the FC is in and it exhibits characteristics and mannerisms that line up with the idea) and go from there. It’s going pretty well so far.

12. what’s the weirdest thing that has ever inspired you to make or pick up a muse?

The song Between The Bars by Elliot Smith. The muse has never been finished, but it did spark an idea.

13. have you ever not gone through with playing / adding / making a blog for a muse because you’ve feared no one would care about that specific muse?

I’ve never held off on it because I thought nobody would care, but there are a few I’ve held off on because I thought people wouldn’t like them.

14. if you see that a friend of yours has just made a blog for a muse you were planning to play, will you still make the blog?

Yea, probably. One person’s portrayal of a character doesn’t take away from another’s. Hell, depending on the muse/friend, I might even suggest we figure out a way to make our versions of the character interact and see what hilarity ensues.

15. which muses of yours have currently very dead fandoms?

None right now. As it stands, all my muses are either OCs in fandoms that are still thriving or unaffiliated with any fandom at all.

[multiipl]

A MULTI MUSE SURVEY.

tagged by: the lovely @goldvned​ ♡ tagging: @errantinfinity​ @galaxythixf​ @galactiicsouls​ @iactito​ and anyone else that wants to!

CANON MUSES.

name of your favorite currently vibing with muse: Jet. Look, idk what happened (probably Jetko lmao) but my Jet muse is VIBING so hard rn it’s almost as if the rest doesn’t exists. Also probably always Ko, Lucy and Jirou.

name of your very first muse: This blog is a hot mess™ that more or less started as a multi muse of all (most) of my past single muse blogs that I threw together. So technically my very first muse was Lin Beifong back when she was @ chiefbei-fuckyou. 

name of your meanest muse(s): There are too many. Probably Madam M? Yeah. Madam M, Sue Miley, Ming Hua. I got a lot of mean women...

name of your nicest muse(s): Papyrus, Kairi, Niffty, Aerith, Tsubaki, Jin, Sally, Pyrrha, Ann, Yukiko- OK the list goes on

name of your most troubled muse: I don’t really know what that means but I guess Angel, Polly, Hisoka, Machi, Eugene, The Red Lotus, Jet, Ty Lee- actually a whole bunch of BSD muses as well.... I have too many muses in general fam. OK I googled what it means ‘to be troubled’ so yeah, Eugene, Ty Lee, Jet, Eri, Pop Step, Higuchi and Lie Ren

character you have the most muse for atm: Honestly, I am not really feeling any muses rn except for Jet and the Final Fantasy muses, but I am too shy to approach my FF mutuals and I feel bad only replying to Jetko. I also usually have a lot of muse for Lucy and Jirou but atm idk.

two of your muses that would never get along: Machi and Hisoka. That’s canon. Also probably Polly with any other of my muses except for Angel. Maybe I should give her a Hazbin verse? Also, obviously, Lin and the Red Lotus. my ADA and my Port Mafia muses. My Heroes and my Villains. I have both sides of each spectrum and a few in the middles of most fandoms I got on my blog. 

two of your muses that could be best friends: Sally and Kairi? Also Polly and Angel. Judy and Lin. Maybe even Ty Lee and Rise? Pyrrha and Tsubaki tho! They would be great friends I think!

two of your muses that would make a cute couple: *thinking emoji* Uh- I guess Zaheer and P’Li and Ghazan and Ming Hua? Or is that cheating? ajsdha no but uhm I never really thought about that? Reko and Nao. Also maybe Jet and Ty Lee? or Jet and Jin? Also Denki and Jirou. I am a sucker for Kamijirou.

two of your muses that are most similar: I have too many. Polly & Angel. Merida & Judy & Lin & Maria & Toph. Lucy & Jirou. 

name of the muse you’d be best friends with irl: All of the good girls. So like, Sally, Kairi, Merida, Tsubaki, Yukiko, Nao, Reko, Jirou, Mina, Nejire,

name of the muse you’d probably hate irl: Hisoka, Ming Hua, Ghazan, Angel, Miley

a faceclaim you’ve been eager to use: hmmmmmm so like, a muse I wanted to pick up? Elizabeth from the Seven Deadly Sins. A few characters from Vinland Saga. Probably even some more but I (luckily) forgot about them over time or else they would be on here as well.

OC  MUSES.

name of your favorite vibin muse: Usually Ko and Ido (who is on a different blog)

name of your very first muse: the very first OC I ever wrote on utmblr was Lu-Shi, but the reception was rather bad, so I didn’t write OCs for a loooong while until I got into BNHA and made a blog for Ido.

name of your meanest muse(s): Boris, probably. Boris, Bello and Arma. Tho Arma and Bello aren’t really ‘mean’ they are just.... closeted cruel. LanMing is also kinda mean I guess.

name of your nicest muse(s): Out of the OCs that’s gotta be Ren, Hisao, Fumiko and Lu-Shi. Oh and McBuster.

name of your most troubled muse: Lu-Shi, Ko, Petra, Derek, Fumiko, 

character you have the most muse for atm: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  probably Ko but also no one at all atm

two of your muses that would never get along: Heinrich and Aldous, Derek and Jane & Aldous, Megumi and Ayumi & Hisao, Petra & McBuster, Boris and anyone

two of your muses that could be best friends: Hisao and Ayumi (well, they are), Ren and anyone, Arma and Bello

two of your muses that would make a cute couple: Jane and Derek (haha, funny joke...), Aldous & Friedrich, Lu-Shi and a happy ending

two of your muses that are most similar: oof... hm.... neither really are I guess. Maybe Markus and Alexander? Or Hisao and Fumiko.

name of the muse you’d be best friends with irl: Lu-Shi and Fumiko probably. And Hisao.

name of the muse you’d probably hate irl: Boris. He a bitch. Also Aldous

a faceclaim you’ve been eager to use: hmmmm well I don’t really go like, looking for a FC and make an OC out of it. I usually create an OC and have a face/appearance in mind and then go looking for a face claim.

[btsybrkr]

What A Time To Be At Home!: The Best And Worst Coronacontent The Internet Has To Offer

Remember that joke that’s been around for ages, but was being told literally everywhere back in 2019? The one that went something like, “I hate it when people ask me where I’ll be in a year’s time - I don’t have 2020 vision!”?

Well, I bloody wish someone did.

In fact, in early January, I wrote out my own predictions for the decade ahead right here on my blog. They were obviously entirely hypothetical and - I thought - ridiculous. They were just a series of daft ideas that I thought I could take the piss out of, in the hope that people might read it and take a second out of their day to do an amused little nose exhale for me. But now, even the post-apocalyptic TV show ideas I pitched in that piece seem less ‘far-off dystopian chaos’, and more like they could be pleasant additions to the BBC Summer schedule.

The world is in the throes of a global pandemic, the likes of which haven’t been seen since… I don’t know, The Black Plague, maybe? As a result of that, the instructions have been clear: stay home, save lives. 

At first, the thought of being given a period of Government-sanctioned laziness seemed like a dream to many. We could write our autobiographies! Learn Klingon! Build ourselves a whole new house! But six weeks in, it appears to have started messing with the collective consciousness of the human race. Brains are fried, your Weekly Screen Time is up 103%, stomachs are full to the brim with banana bread and dalgona coffee, and certain celebrities’ egos are in a fight to the death with their common sense. In a time when we’re all supposedly doing nothing, there’s still so much going on. 

With that in mind, I thought we could recognise some of the things we’ve seen online that have kept us talking in lockdown, not just because of Coronavirus, but in spite of it. 

Welcome to the first (but hopefully not annual) What A Time To Be At Home! awards. The WATTBAH!’s, if you like.

The ‘Why On Earth Did You Think This Was A Good Idea?’ Award

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a sizable handful of blunders by the rich and famous that have, at worst, knocked them down a fair few places in our estimations and, at best, have left us scratching our heads, wondering what response they were expecting in the first place. 

With that in mind, it’s only right that this title goes to the original celebrity lockdown mistake: Gal Gadot’s ill-advised acapella cover of Imagine, featuring a variety of different Hollywood stars - not one of whom had the foresight to ask “are you sure this doesn’t make us look like complete arseholes?”, which, unfortunately, it absolutely does. 

Between the bizarre and insincere ‘I have a dream’-style speech at the beginning, the boldness of some of those featured to be quite clearly just taking the piss, and the fact everyone appears to be singing ever-so-slightly below the note without ever actually hitting it for the entirety of the song, this was tone-deaf in more ways than one. It’s even worse when you realise that this was posted less than one week into the lockdown, but then what would I know? Maybe madness sets in faster in multi-million dollar mansions. Probably because it echoes louder and bounces off the walls of your massive living room.

The ‘I Had To Suffer Through This, So You Do, Too’ Award

This award recognises content we’ve been witness to over the last few weeks that was so awful, so completely uncomfortable to watch, that after you’d gotten over the initial disbelief at what you’d just seen, you immediately had to send it to somebody you know, so that you can suffer through it together.

Despite how many celebrity lockdown moments have left me with my head in my hands over the last few weeks, this award could only go to a very recent contender - one which isn’t simply an embarrassing piece of celebrity lockdown content, but will likely haunt the inner corners of my brain long after this virus is simply a topic taught about in GCSE History lessons of the future. 

I am, of course, talking about Olly Murs. I’m talking about Pringlegate. I’m talking about Olly Murs removing the bottom of a can of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles to trick his own girlfriend into touching his penis. On video, on TikTok.

Twitter: @buckyw1ng

There’s something inherently quite chilling about Pringlegate. It might be something to do with the 10,000 watt grin on Olly’s face as we watch him carefully maneuver a tin opener around the bottom of the can, or perhaps it’s just the question of how long he’d been sat there holding it around his naked penis as he and his girlfriend watched a film, patiently waiting for the moment to strike. Perhaps it’s the way the video freezes as she reaches over for a Pringle, allowing time for Olly Murs’ to add in an audio clip of himself, shouting “SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND”. 

Maybe it’s the uncontrollable show of amusement he launches into as she snatches her hand back in shock, laughing away, heartily, as if to say “Ha! You thought it was a normal can of Pringles, but it was actually my PENIS covered in Pringles crumbs! You just got PUNKED!”, like it was all simply a clever ruse. 

Above all else, I think the most uncomfortable thing about it is that I can’t help but feel like all bets are off in 2020, and that this is a fairly tame warm-up for things to come.

So, Olly Murs, you are inarguably the rightful winner of the ‘I Had To Suffer Through This, So You Do, Too’ award. Congratulations! Don’t do it again, yeah?

The ‘Are You Actually Aware Of These Words Coming Out Of Your Mouth?’ Award

I’ve said some stupid things since this lockdown started. Personally, I put it down to the lack of social interaction, which I think might be frying my brain a little bit, or at least that’s what the ornament of a turkey that sits on my kitchen windowsill told me the other day. However, I don’t think I or anybody I know has said anything even one fraction-of-an-iota as void of intelligent thought as Vanessa Hudgens’ terrible opinions on social distancing, shared in a now-infamous Instagram live last month. 

“It’s a virus,” she clarified, helpfully, before going on to explain, “I get it. I respect it.” 

I’m sure your respect means the world to it, Vanessa, but do you ‘get’ it?

“But even if everybody gets it, like… yeah… people are gonna die,” she explains, in a tone so chirpy that the word ‘die’ might as well be replaced by the phrase ‘have such a bloody lovely old time’, “which is terrible, but, like… inevitable?” 

In all fairness, death is inevitable, but I don’t know if suggesting speeding up that process for thousands of people because you were disappointed that Coachella was cancelled is an equally logical take.

After a brief - and probably quite profound - moment of self-reflection, she laughs “I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this right now”. Oh, you think? Which bit? Just holding these insane ideas, or actually broadcasting them to your 39.1 million Instagram followers? 

She did post a video the day after, clarifying that - despite what she said - she is staying at home, and is urging others to do the same. I guess she does respect the virus after all. Now, if everyone could hurry up, catch it and die from it, so that she can go to Coachella 2021, Vanessa Hudgens might respect you, too. 

I guess We’re All In This Together, after all.

The Show Of Support Award

I’ve already talked a lot about the rich and famous here, so maybe it’s time to take a break from that madness - although, I get it, I respect it - and have a look at how the rest of our lives look at the moment.

One weekly occurrence that seems to be set to stick around is the weekly round of applause for the NHS. Whilst it’s nothing short of blood-boilingly annoying seeing Boris Johnson absent-mindedly clapping in celebration of a service that he recently admitted he hadn’t even noticed the strain on until he, himself, nearly died of the virus, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the rest of us getting involved. If anything, it’s heart-warming to see the videos of NHS staff being applauded by neighbours as they leave for work, and to hear the cheers echoing through the streets at 8pm every Thursday. There’s a lot of people being quite cynical about it. We obviously know it’s not going to stop Coronavirus in its tracks, but sometimes it’s just nice to be nice, alright?

One thing I’ve noticed recently is how many people have adopted different noise-making strategies, possibly in an effort to effectively boost their support by a factor of 300%. Banging pots and pans together appears to be the most popular, but the winner of this award saw your pots and pans and said “how sweet”, before showing us how it’s really done.

I present to you, a genius. The ultimate hype-man.

Twitter: “a deeply disturbed national psyche” - @willuminare

There’s something so chaotic and angry about the energy in this video, just one man, a cricket bat, and a wheelie bin, banging away to show his gratitude. Just living in the moment. I wish the neighbour who’d captured it on camera had caught more of it, or at least just enough to edit the footage with Electric Youth’s soaring synth anthem  ‘A Real Hero’ from the soundtrack of the movie Drive against it.

I’ve been trying to learn to play the keytar in lockdown, to near enough no avail. Maybe at 8pm next Thursday, I’ll just take it outside and smash it against the pavement. You know, for the NHS.

Honourable Mentions: The Very Best In Coronacontent

It’s not all been so questionable - there’s been a lot of uplifting, funny, positive and thoughtful things shared online over the past few weeks. John Krasinski’s YouTube series Some Good News has provided a much-appreciated contrast from the bleakness of traditional current affairs programmes. There’s five weeks worth of episodes on his YouTube channel at the moment, so I would definitely recommend checking it out, especially if you feel like you need a lift! 

Over on Twitter, there’s been a lot to laugh about, as ‘front camera comedians’ are well and truly in their element (my personal favourite recently has been Alistair Green), as well as plenty of other users who are utilising their free time to create some brilliant stuff - this six-part opera based on a 2007 Facebook argument by Archie Henderson is genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve seen in weeks.

Twitter: “I made a six-act opera out of a conversation between some 14 year olds on my Facebook from 2007″ - @jazzemu_

All in all, these are obviously bizarre times that we’re living in. We don’t know how many more weeks of lockdown we’re going to have, when we’ll get back to normal, or even if ‘normal’ will mean something completely different from now on. 

What we do know is that the internet, and everyone on it - whoever they are or whatever they’re saying - will continue to surprise us, inform us, entertain us, provide a place for our quizzes and conversations, and keep us together in some sense, when we have no choice but to be apart. 

Thanks to anyone who’s read this far. I hope that you and your friends and families are keeping well, and that you took even a slight shred of lockdown enjoyment from even one thing I’ve said over the past couple thousand words! 

Finally, before I go, I thought we might share a little song. It goes like this:

Imagine there’s no heaven....

if you like, can follow me on twitter here or instagram here :-)

[archiveddvrpg]

Congratulations, BREE! You’ve been accepted for the role of BIANCA. Admin Rosey: I think the first thing that came to mind was how powerfully you captured Bunny's voice, Bree. You. Absolutely. Killed it. Your plot points built upon one after the other which shows how you plan to lay the foundation for her and force her to grow, no matter how much she kicks up her heels about it. It can be difficult trying to force a character like Bunny to grow without taking away from what makes her so intriguing and fun, but wow. Am I so very glad to have her added to the ranks, ready to bring us chaos and absolute ruin. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Bree.

Age | Twenty.

Preferred Pronouns | She/her.

Activity Level | I’m studying engineering and running collegiately, so the short answer is that I’m not entirely sure. The long answer is that my activity will ebb and flow depending on my schedule; some weeks are easier than others. But I’ll do my damnedest to be around, even if that means firing off ugly-formatted replies on mobile (or having Rosey or Kiersten format them for me… we’ve done it before).

Timezone | CST.

How did you find the rp?  | English class my senior year of high school, with the help of Rosey (no, seriously). I’ve been watching from afar, and I couldn’t stay away.

Current/Past RP Accounts | here, here, and here

In Character

Character | Bianca; Bernadette “Bunny” Dupont

What drew you to this character? | Well… originally, I wrote her. But since that sounds like a cop-out and I can never pass up the opportunity to wax poetic about one of my literary children, I’ll bite. ;)

She’s a piece of work. No, not that kind of work, not artwork—given her art forging expertise, that would be a cliché, and neither I nor Bunny are particularly fond of those. I mean that she’s single-handedly both the easiest and the most difficult character I’ve ever written and, I might argue, will ever write. Self-absorbed and yet oddly self-aware, vulgar in the delicate way only someone with a face like hers could be, and so tenderly cruel it’s endearing—she’s awful, but writing her has never been an inkling as heavy as writing equally diabolical characters has been in the past. She’s somehow able to be a light-hearted character in an environment where that sort of label tends to be reserved for characters like Maeve, all flower petals and naivete and ripe for the slaughter—without encompassing any of that. I don’t know, maybe it’s her youthful appearance, maybe it’s her love of candy and strawberries and her tendency to act so much like a child, or maybe it’s that careful balance between what she appears to be, what she’d like to be, and who she is, but she manages to check off some boxes that appear at first glance to be mutually exclusive. She lacks any concrete ambition outside of being revered, yet she possesses the potential to climb, to do some terrible things, because of that unfocused ambition. Her selfishness makes her a target for manipulation while being an avid manipulator herself. Her priorities are bottoms-up and she’s hardly got what most would call a good head on her shoulders, but damn if she isn’t a coquettish kind of cunning.

I thought I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but I’m having trouble finding where to end. The point is, I love this little brat.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? | Where do you see this character developing, and what kind of actions would you have them take to get there? 3 future plot ideas would be preferable.

Piss off, Picasso: It’s only fitting, I suppose, that a little girl so proficient at mocking her sister (and her friends) behind her doting parents’ backs should grow up and learn to put that art of imitation to good, more mature use in the mob. She’s got it all going for her, really; wealthy upbringing, an eye for detail, and a shameless disregard for plucking coins from the purses of others to feed her own greed—what could go wrong? Plenty. And while I’d definitely like to explore the aftermath of what might happen if she got sloppy and was found out, she’s got her fair share of trouble on her plate right now with her—er, bad publicity. So first, I’d like to see her do well. I’d like to see her get overconfident, make connections, be successful. Once she’s finished throwing her little tantrum about my next plot idea, she’ll probably be inclined to hone her skills, sell a few more paintings to get out of the hole she stumbled into. After all, respect isn’t earned in Bunny’s world; it’s bought.

Paparazzi: It’s not what it looks like. Come on, he isn’t even that cute. Bunny’s moment of weakness, if it can be called that, presents obvious potential for her to either pull herself up by the bootstraps (imagine) or dig herself even farther. This might be the first time she’s gotten into any real trouble, especially the kind that Daddy Dupont couldn’t fix, and she’s not going to handle it well. But her knee-jerk reaction should make for good comedy and some even better plots. How far will she go to prove that she’s still just as loyal to the Capulets as she’s always been (which is to say, not particularly?)? What other mistakes can she make? It’s time to get her pretty little hands dirty, I think. She’s too proud to ask her sister for help, but all bets are off when it comes to Cyrus. Hell, maybe even her connection to Boris can come into play here (counterproductive, probably).

This Is What Makes Us Girls: The relationship Bunny has with Maeve and Juliana is one of my favorite parts about her, because it’s one of the best means for me to flesh out and play with all of the different sides of Bunny. They’re a pretty integral part to the image she keeps up—both that of a dignified daughter and a girl still steeped in candy-lacquered youth, and it’s for that reason that her secret dislike/jealousy of them both is so… telling? Bunny’s conceited, sure, but she is—at her core—insecure. And insecure people—insecure teenage girls, although she’s aged out of that territory—do pretty terrible things. I want to explore the dynamic within this friend group. I want to see her sabotage something important to Juliana. I want to see her have Maeve do her bidding, see her put her friends in harm’s way. Betrayal doesn’t always call for bloodshed; sometimes cutting deep doesn’t call for a knife.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Eh… as much as I’d love to give the usual “yes, give me all the angst,” I’m not really sure that Bunny is the type of character whose death will serve a purpose/further the plot, to be honest. Only the good die young, and she’s anything but.

If at any point the plot calls for it, we can talk about it, but I don’t foresee her developing in such a way that I’d suggest it.

In Depth

What is your favorite place in Verona? |

That’s a stupid question, she thinks, smoothing out the hem of her skirt and settling contentedly into the plush armchair, half-business and half-play. It’s a copout, almost—the daytime equivalent of asking someone’s favorite color in truth or dare. It’s a wasted turn, a missed opportunity. If she wanted to write love letters to the streets of Verona, she’d pick up the noble art of journaling.

In any case, the answer was most certainly a harrowing tie between her clawfoot bathtub and the half of her king-sized bed farthest from the window—but that sounded so infantile even she might’ve quirked an eyebrow at such a response. This, she realizes, is what it’s like to grow older: to make terrible small talk over lukewarm tea and lie in more dignified ways than she had in her youth.

(She’s twenty-one years, two months, and three days old. This is middle age. This is melodrama.)

“There’s a little candy shop a few blocks from the foot of the Castelvecchio. Their chocolate-covered strawberries are to die for.”

What does your typical day look like?

She likes this one—likes the way it sounds like a question straight out of the magazines she reads in her near-infinite free time, all gloss and understated glamour. In fact, she’s spent a perhaps embarrassing amount of time crafting responses to such a question in the event that she were ever asked, and although this isn’t exactly the avenue she’d had in mind, it’ll do.

Let it never be said that Bunny Dupont cannot compromise.

“I like to wake before the sun,” she lies elegantly, matter-of-factly, knowing damn well that just this morning she’d slumbered until noon but eager to portray the image of a young woman with her shit thoroughly together. The corners of her pink lips turn up in a smile, as if the very thought of a sunrise sways her to cliché thoughts of new beginnings and second chances, of the kinds of phrases befitting the tacky dollar-store decorations Maeve collects like an old man does stamps. How very carpe diem of her.

“I wash my face, have a cup of tea, and try to get a bit of reading done.” When she puts it that way, it sounds quite a bit more like a sophisticated heiress devouring novels in the early morning light than the slightly-less-respectable-but-nonetheless-true alternative of a troublemaker surveying last night’s damage, pastries piled with whipped cream within arm’s reach.

“I like to meet my friends for brunch. Juliana and I are regulars at The Phoenix and the Turtle,” she says delicately, deliberate with her inclusion of the Capulet girl’s name and her exclusion of any others. “I’ll paint a bit in the afternoons…” The little blonde trails off, green eyes darting about as if calling the remainder of her routine to mind. The truth is that she’s already grown bored, and perhaps that’s her own fault; it can get exhausting, pretending to be responsible, truly exhausting—but playing pretend is too fun. “And home for dinner, always.”

What has been your biggest mistake thus far?

She twirls a strand of cotton-blonde hair around her finger, a coy display of sheepishness befitting a schoolgirl. What was her biggest mistake? The question demands a certain sort of humility, a level of introspection and honesty she’s never had the need to stoop to in all her years as the Dupont family darling, and if she were a tad less shameless it might even be a little—what’s the word?—unnerving. There was a reason she’d been dutiful enough to go to church on Sundays with her father but had avoided the confessional like her mother avoided carbs, and that reason had nothing to do—okay, fine, but only a little— to do with an aversion to being on her knees.

But she’s nothing if not an opportunist, a performer, and she treads the line between timid and cruel when she remarks, “I held a Montague boy’s hand once. Went home and went through two bars of soap.”

What has been the most difficult task asked of you?

“Firing a gun,” Bunny admits, leaning in as if to let the intern in on a secret, “It’s harder than I expected. “Pulling the trigger, I mean. Takes a bit more pressure than they show you in the movies.” Leave it to her to turn such a grim discussion to something a bit less uncomfortable, a bit more palatable. Leave it to her to dodge the—well, difficult—questions. When have you failed? When have you struggled? How have you grown?

In two words: she hasn’t. (In another two: not yet.)

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?

Lingering in the air like her favorite perfume was a rule oft-spoken and waiting to be broken: no politics, it’s simply not lady-like. Her father’s banks backed the Capulets, and where the money went, the Duponts surely followed. For all her selfishness and disdain for anything which drew the attention away from her and her needs, Bunny Dupont understood the necessity of these things—of petty grudges and not-so-petty crimes—for people like them. Wars, even wars like these, needed money: a lot of it.

“I don’t feel I know enough to say much about it,” she says carefully, the gleam in her green eyes looking more like a trick of the light and less like a clue. “I only wish there weren’t so much blood.”

Why? It left a nasty stain.

Extras: If you have anything else you’d like to include (further headcanons, an inspo tag, a mock blog, etc), feel free to share it here! This is OPTIONAL.

Headcanons:

When she was little, she wanted to be an actress or an only child: the former, she told her parents, and the latter, she told her sister.

Her hard liquor of choice is vodka, the flavored kind—the sweeter, the better. She’s mastered the art of taking shots of it with a straight face after many years of practice.

Strawberries are her favorite. Chocolate-covered, in champagne—you name it.

In high school, she got her kicks by scaring off boys who approached her to get a leg-up on wooing Juliana. So many potential suitors shot down, convinced that Cosimo would have them shipped off to some foreign land without their heads or their manhood.

Once, she promised Maeve she’d get her crush to ask her on a date. She was only half a virgin after that. He never called Maeve.

She’s a Gemini (May 30th).

[dweemeister]

2020 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (preliminary round)

Yup, it’s back (bullet indentations are not working, so this post will look very ugly on your dashboards)!

Tagging a few folks who have participated before in this annual tradition/folks who I would like to extend an open invitation to (please contact me if you’re interested so I can sort you in a group ASAP... you will also be tagged for the final unless you tell me you are not interested): @birdsongvelvet, @bitch-genius, @dog-of-ulthar, @idontknowmuchaboutmovies, @loveless422, @lvl9gay, @neverwasastoryofmorewhoa, @phendranaedge, @poncho-honcho, @sayaf, @shadesofhappy, @thethirdman8, @uncoolforelimb, and @wehadfacesthen.

Hello everybody. For my fellow Americans, I hope your Thanksgiving was a good one. For the non-Americans reading things, I hope you are doing well, as always! Many things have fallen to the wayside in this unforgettable year. So in hopes of providing some sense of continuity and normalcy, here - as you have agreed to - is the Preliminary Round for 2020's Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (MOABOS). This is the eighth time it has been contested and the seventh consecutive year it has been open to involvement from family, friends, and tumblr followers.

For those new to this, my classic movie blog traditionally ends the year by honoring some of the best achievements from movies that I saw for the first time this calendar year (the "Movie Odyssey") with an Oscar-like ceremony. I choose all the nominees and winners from each category, save one: Best Original Song. It is the only category I can think of that does not require you to watch several movies in their entirety. I consider MOABOS as a sort of cinematic-musical thank-you for your moral support in various ways.

An unspecified number of songs have already advanced to the final round. 24 songs will contest this prelim in two groups - Group A and Group B. In a year when COVID-19 has closed theaters (and which I refused to go to an indoor theater even when they reopened), a year that I did not feel compelled to watch the newest releases on streaming services, there is not a single 2020 entry for 2020's MOABOS. That is, obviously, a MOABOS first - no other MOABOS edition has lacked a shortlisted song from a film released that same calendar year. And as of writing this sentence, I have not seen a single film released in 2020. Despite the lack of 1930s songs, this year's shortlisted songs might be the oldest on average. In other news, this year's field is a modest improvement from the record monolingual field of last year's (which contained only English and two Vietnamese-language entries). 2019's preliminary was the most chaotic we had ever seen, with shocking last-day stumbles and surges from certain songs ("I Dug a Ditch" from Thousands Cheer) that riled up a lot of participants. It's 2020 - will there be a repeat or even more drama at this stage?

INSTRUCTIONS Please rank (#1-12) at least six of your group's songs. Please consider to the best of your ability: how musically interesting the song is (incl. and not limited to musical phrasing and orchestration); its lyrics; context within the film (contextual blurbs provided for every entry for those who haven't seen the films); choreography/dance direction (if applicable); and the song's cultural impact/life outside the film (if applicable, and, in my opinion, least important factor). Imperfections in audio and video quality may not be used against any song. I encourage you to send in comments and reactions with your rankings - it makes the process more enjoyable for you and myself! The top five songs in each group automatically advance to the final round. I reserve the right to pick 0-2 songs from one or both groups that finished outside the top five in their respective groups to contest the final round.

The deadline for submission is Saturday, December 12 at 11 PM Pacific Time. That is 9 PM Hawaii/Aleutian Time. That deadline is also Sunday, December 13 at 1 AM Central Time / 2 AM Eastern Time / 7 AM GMT / 8 AM CET / 9 AM EET. This deadline - as we have seen in the last few years - may be pushed back if there are a large number of people who have not submitted in time. However, I very much do not wish to extend the deadline because the final round is more intensive and usually involves more participants. Tabulation details are in the “read more” below.

Please participate in the group you have been sorted into, if you have not yet been sorted into a group and would like to participate, please contact me. You can access most, not all, of your group’s songs in these YouTube playlists: (Group A) / (Group B). Again, please note that not all of your group's songs are in the playlist for various reasons.

Happy listening. Feel free to listen as many times as you need, and I hope you discover music and movies that strike your interest. The following is formatted... ("Song title", composer and lyricist, film title):

GROUP A

“Blue Shadows on the Trail”, music and lyrics by Eliot Daniel and Johnny Lange, Melody Time (1948)

Performed by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers

This is the introductory song to the final segment of Melody Time. That segment is dedicated to the legend of Pecos Bill, and this atmospheric song leads into the telling of that story.

“Born Free”, music by John Barry, lyrics by Don Black, Born Free (1966)

Performed by Matt Munro

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Song

This version with lyrics appears in the end credits. The main theme in the song is introduced in the opening credits and is incorporated extensively in John Barry's score across the film. Born Free, based on the non-fiction book of the same name is about two white Kenyan conservationists who raise an orphaned lion cub and eventually release her into the wild.

“But the World Goes 'Round”, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, New York, New York (1977)

Performed by Liza Minnelli

In this musical, USO singer Francine Evans (Minnelli) has been performing in New York City nightclubs, hoping to someday become a major recording star. This song appears as she is recording that very hit that will propel her to stardom.

“Exsultate Justi”, music and lyrics by John Williams, Empire of the Sun (1987)

Performed by orchestra and chorus under the direction of Williams

Lyrics in Latin

In this historical epic, affluent British school boy Jamie Graham (a young Christian Bale) is living with his parents in Shanghai when the Japanese invade. Jamie is separated from his parents and placed in an internment camp. Soon before the end of WWII, the prisoners are moved elsewhere, but Jamie hides and stays put. This song plays as Jamie bikes around the empty camp and continues to play as he encounters liberating U.S. troops. Jamie is dirty and malnourished when found; one can argue that this song is used ironically. It plays once more over the end credits. "Exsultate Justi" is a variation on a theme John Williams develops over the course of the film and harkens back to Jamie's past, attending Anglican services with parents.

"Farewell to Storyville",  music by Louis Alter, lyrics by Edgar De Lange, New Orleans (1947)

Performed by Louis Armstrong and his band, Billie Holiday, and company

In New Orleans, the Storyville district was a den of drinking, gambling, jazz, and prostitution. The district was the home to a heavily black populace. The U.S. military, about to establish a Naval base nearby, forces the city to close the district for good. This song is a jazzy dirge to a center of jazz - a musical genre looked down upon by many of the city's upper-class whites due to its ties (real and imagined) to crime.

"Hawaiian Sunset", music and lyrics by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, Blue Hawaii (1961)

Performed by Elvis Presley

In a musical packed end-to-end with songs, Chadwick "Chad" Gates (Elvis) has taken a job with a tour guide agency - and this includes performing during a luau for tourists. "Hawaiian Sunset" appears as one of the dinner show's numbers.

"Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do?", music and lyrics by Yôjirô Noda, Weathering with You (2019, Japan)

Performed by RADWIMPS

Lyrics in Japanese (translation)

Weathering with You is a romantic fantasy anime about a high school boy who runs away from his rural home to Tokyo, where he meets a girl who can manipulate the weather. It has been inexplicably raining for weeks without interruption in Tokyo, so they form a business to help clear the inclement weather for special events. The melody of this song is heard throughout the film's score. It does not appear with lyrics until late in the film. The song is played under the boy's seemingly impossible attempt to save her from an unwilling human sacrifice.

There is so much plot in this damn film (it's all Makoto Shinkai's fault) - I can't explain the context of the song or this movie in a reasonable amount of space.

“Mad Monster Party”, music by Maury Laws, lyrics by Jules Bass, Mad Monster Party? (1967)

Performed by Ethel Ennis

(opening credits version) / (soundtrack version with no sound effects)

In this Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated film, Baron Boris von Frankenstein (Boris Karloff in his final Frankenstein-related role) has discovered a formula that can destroy matter. Dispatching his bats to send the news, he summons the various members of the Worldwide Organization of Monsters to inform them of his discovery. This song is performed over the film's opening credits and the various introductions for the monsters as they receive their summons.

“My Dream Is Yours”, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Ralph Blane, My Dream Is Yours (1949)

Initially performed by Doris Day; later reprised by Hal Derwin

Singer Martha Gibson (Day) has abruptly left New York City for Los Angeles to become a star on the radio. In a film where personal sacrifice is central, she stresses over how to bring her son out west with her, the direction of her career, and her tumultuous love life. "My Dream Is Yours" is the song that makes Martha a star, laying out the film's themes in its lyrics. I was unable to find Derwin's reprise, but no matter as the reprise is rather inconsequential.

“Ride the Wild Surf”, music and lyrics by Jan Berry, Brian Wilson, and Roger Christian, Ride the Wild Surf (1964)

Performed by Jan and Dean

Ride the Wild Surf is a surfing film that, unlike most surfing films of this time, is a drama. It follows three surfers (Fabian, Tab Hunter, Peter Brown) who have come to Oahu at the end of December to ride the large waves of Waimea Bay (made famous internationally by this song, this movie, and the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA"). This song appears in the film's closing credits. The video provided is a montage of surfing footage that appears in the film.

“That’ll Do”, music and lyrics by Randy Newman, Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

Performed by Peter Gabriel

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song

This song begins at the end (and through the end credits) of Babe: Pig in the City, the second and last film in this series about a sheep-herding pig who perseveres amidst other animals and humans with ulterior agendas. The title is derived from the famous quote said by Arthur Hoggett (James Cromwell) to reassure Babe: "That'll do, pig. That'll do."

“Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Hassen Sitam”, music and lyrics by S.D. Burman, Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959, India)

Performed by Geeta Dutt (dubbing Waheeda Rehman)

Lyrics in Hindi - roughly, "Time Has Inflicted Such Sweet Cruelty On Us"

Song begins at 1:03:31 and ends at 1:07:51

Make sure to turn on the video’s English captions

In this romantic tragedy told in flashback, Suresh Sinha (Guru Dutt) is a director looking back on his life. Suresh is unhappily married to a woman whose in-laws look down on him because, to them, working in films is contemptible to their social class. Suresh meets a woman, Shanti (Waheeda Rehman), on accident and she is soon cast as the lead for his next film. They fall in love, but it is never consummated for various reasons. This song is the most explicit statement of that love in this film. How much of the scene's set-up is observable by the characters is up to the viewer's interpretation.

Group A participants include: @addaellis, @introspectivemeltdown, @memetoilet, @myluckyerror, @plus-low-overthrow, @shootingstarvenator, @themusicmoviesportsguy, @theybecomestories, @umgeschrieben, @underblackwings, @yellanimal. Seven others - including myself and my sister - are currently slated to be voting in Group A.

GROUP B

“Angela”, music and lyrics by José Feliciano and Janna Merlyn Feliciano, Aaron Loves Angela (1975)

Performed by José Feliciano

(English-language version) / (Spanish single version)

Played over the opening credits to this teenage drama that is partly a blaxploitation film, partly an interracial coming-of-age romance. The movie wasn't a hit, but the Spanish-language version of this song was received well in Latin America.

“Aren’t You Kind of Glad We Did?”, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947)

Originally performed by Betty Grable and Dick Haymes

(soundtrack version with Judy Garland and Haymes) / (modern arrangement far more faithful to how song sounds in the film)

Cynthia Pilgrim (Grable) is the top typewriting student from a business college in this period piece where the typewriter is the newest invention to sweep the business world. This song appears as Pilgrim and her boss, John Pritchard (Haymes), are about to go out on a date for dinner after talking about how society looks down on women in public without a chaperone.

“The Blues are Brewin’”, music by Louis Alter, lyrics by Edgar De Lange, New Orleans (1947)

Performed by Louis Armstrong and his band and Billie Holiday

(in-film version) / (Billie Holiday single)

After being evicted by the U.S. military from the historic Storyville district of New Orleans (the Navy had just opened a base in the area, and would not tolerate places of gambling, jazz, and prostitution nearby), the characters played by Armstrong and Holiday tour the country with a jazz band in tow. This song appears within a montage showing the passage of time.

“Dekhi Zamaane Ki Yaari / Bichhde Sabhi Baari Baari”, music by S.D. Burman, lyrics by Kaifi Azmi, Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959, India)

Performed by Mohammad Rafi (dubbing Guru Dutt)

Lyrics in Hindi - roughly, "I Have Seen How Deeply Friendship Lies / I Have Seen People Abandon Me One by One"

Part 1 (3:44-8:27) / Part 2 (2:16:29-2:20:42)

Make sure to turn on the video’s English captions

In this romantic tragedy, Suresh Sinha (Dutt) is a washed-up director looking back on his life. In the first part, the song leads into the rest of the film - which is almost entirely a flashback. In brief, Suresh is unhappily married to a woman whose in-laws look down on him because, to them, working in films is contemptible to their social class. Suresh meets a woman, Shanti (Waheeda Rehman), on accident and she is soon cast as the lead for his next film. They fall in love, but it is never consummated for various reasons. Eventually, his career crashes after a box office bomb and her career is ascendant. Leading into the second part of the song, Suresh is penniless and working as an extra at the movie studio. Shanti recognizes him, wants to help, but he refuses to revive his career on the back of her success. Kaagaz Ke Phool has elements of autobiography, and Suresh's fate has parallels with what happened to Dutt after this film was released.

“End Theme from Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades”, music by Eiken Sakurai, lyrics by Kazuko Koike, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades (1972, Japan)

Performed by Tomisaburo Wakayama

Lyrics in Japanese (translation)

Video provided is not safe for work (NSFW) due to stylized violence

Ogami Ittô (Wakayama) is a former, disgraced executioner for the Tokugawa shogunate who wanders the land with his young son. He is intent on exacting revenge on the clan that murdered his wife. This song is played non-diegetically after Ittô has slain dozens of a corrupt governor's bodyguards and walks onward, pushing his son in a babycart, away from the dead left in his wake. This is the third of six films in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

"Happy Endings", music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, New York, New York (1977)

Performed by Liza Minnelli and company (that's Jack Haley - who played the Tin Man and was, at the time, Minnelli's father-in-law - roughly seven minutes in)

(use in film) / (soundtrack version)

It is highly recommended one sees how this song is used in the film. Bear with me: this song is part of a movie within a movie. Within that movie within a movie, there is another movie. "Happy Endings" is the title end song to a film called Happy Endings within New York, New York. Singer Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli) has made it big as a recording artist and caps off her hit film, Happy Endings, with this song. We see Francine's ex, played by Robert De Niro, in the audience as the film ends. "Happy Endings" is a homage/deconstruction to midcentury Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) musicals. It serves the film as "The Broadway Melody" does to Singin' in the Rain (1952) or the 17-minute ballet does to conclude An American in Paris (1951).

"Here They Come (From All Over the World)", music and lyrics by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)

Performed by Jan and Dean

The link above provides the entire film. You only need to watch from 0:00-4:11. If you like music from this era or want to hear more, this film is highly, highly recommended.

This is the opening credits song to a concert film recorded over two days in Santa Monica, California on October 28 and 29, 1964. The Teenage Awards Music International (T.A.M.I. - yes, I know it's an awkward name) Show included many of the most popular musical stars of that time - almost all of them name-dropped in this song. Jan and Dean, a surf music duo, served as hosts (and performed during) the show. You folks are lucky that this is the only original song from this film!

“Moonlight Swim”, music by Ben Weisman, lyrics by Sylvia Dee, Blue Hawaii (1961)

Performed by Elvis Presley

In a musical packed end-to-end with songs, Chadwick "Chad" Gates (Elvis) has taken a job with a tour guide agency. On his first day, he drives his first clients - a school teacher (who not so secretly is attracted to Chad) and four teenagers (one of whom becomes smitten) - to their destination.

“On the Boardwalk (in Atlantic City)”, music by Josef Myrow, lyrics by Mack Gordon, Three Little Girls in Blue (1946)

Performed by Carol Stewart (dubbing for Vera-Ellen), June Haver, and Vivian Blaine

(original soundtrack) / (Dick Haymes single)

In this rarely-seen musical (20th Century Fox wasn't very good at promoting its back catalogue compared to some other studios, and the situation is worse now that they are owned by Disney), three chicken farmer sisters (Vera-Ellen, Haver, and Blaine) decide to travel to Atlantic City in hopes of marrying a rich husband after learning their aunt's inheritance is not nearly as much as they want. They sing this song as they arrive and check into their hotel suite - which they apparently have not looked up the rate for.

Those who listened to the soundtrack version... FYI, $9.25 in 1902 is $280 in 2020.

“Personality”, music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Johnny Burke, Road to Utopia (1946)

Performed by Dorothy Lamour

(in-film performance) / (live radio performance)

In the fourth film of the Road to... comedy series, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's characters have just overpowered two Alaskan thugs with a history of murderous violence. As they enter a saloon dressed up as those two thugs, all of the patrons - in a town that only knows the thugs by reputation - shut up in terror. They are treated to a performance by Sal (Lamour), who is trying to find a map of a gold mine that the real outlaws supposedly have. A visual narrator (Robert Benchley) interrupts the scene before the song briefly.

“Please Don’t Stop Loving Me”, music and lyrics by Joy Byers, Frankie and Johnny (1966)

Performed by Elvis Presley

(in-film performance) / (single version)

Johnny (Elvis) and girlfriend Frankie (Donna Douglas) work on a Mississippi River riverboat as performers. Johnny is addicted to gambling and believes that another woman is spurring on his recent run of good luck. During a fit of jealousy-as-acting, Frankie accidentally shoots Johnny during a bit of musical theater (someone switched out the blanks for real bullets). This song occurs after Johnny has recovered from the accident.

"Wichita", music by Hans Salter, lyrics by Ned Washington, Wichita (1955)

Performed by Tex Ritter

This is the opening title song to this Western. It is one of many Wyatt Earp movies set before the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Earp (Joel McCrea) arrives in an otherwise lawless town of Wichita, Kansas where gunplay is rampant. In a radical move, Earp orders to seize the firearms of anyone living in or entering town - which doesn't sit well with some outlaws. This song is incorporated throughout the film's score.

Group B participants include: @cokwong, @emilylime5, @halfwaythruthedark, @maximiliani, @thewolfofelectricavenue, and @voicetalentbrendan. Twelve others - including me and my sister - are slated to be voting in Group B.

Contact me however you wish if you have questions or comments regarding MOABOS' processes or something specific about a song or a few. Please let me know as soon as possible if you are having difficulty accessing one of the songs (especially if it is region-locked) or if there is an error in the playlist.

I thank you all for your support for the Movie Odyssey, the blog, and for me personally - no matter how long I’ve known you or in what capacity. You will be contacted for the final round regardless of your participation here. If turnout in one group is lagging behind compared to another, I will ask some of the more senior participants to participate in the other group, too. No pressure if you cannot get to this, although I will be checking in as the deadlines get close. Stay safe and socially distanced, everyone.

TABULATION This preliminary round uses a points-based, ranked choice method which has been used since the first time I asked friends, tumblr followers, and family to help out. A respondent’s first choice receives 10 points, the second choice receives 9, the third choice receives 8, etc. The winner is the song that ends up with the most total points. The tabulation method used in this preliminary is used only as a tiebreaker in the final round (more on how the final is tabulated when we get there).

This tiebreaker will look slightly different this year.  

Tiebreakers for above: 1) total points earned; 2) total #1 votes; 3) average placement on my and my sister's ballots; 4) tie declared

[citizenscreen]

You’ve probably heard that the schedule for the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival (TCMFF) 2019  was published earlier this week. TCMFF is scheduled for April 11-14 and this year’s theme is Follow Your Heart: Love at the Movies. As you can imagine, such a broad theme allows for all sorts of relationships in movies and in that sense the offerings don’t disappoint. There’s something for everyone – from traditional romance to bromance to love in pure evil form. What’s important is that for the 10th consecutive year, classic movie fans will have a love affair with movies in Hollywood.

As has become tradition on this blog I’ve put together my planned schedule for discussion sake. I tried to go a bit beyond my comfort level this year choosing new-to-me fare in more slots than ever before with a dear coming home at the end the festival. This will be my seventh year in Hollywood for this event and the excitement has not waned. There’s simply a lot to look forward to.

Also exciting is the fact that I will be playing a dual role at TCMFF 2019. I’ve mentioned my media credentials to cover TCMFF in the past and that is true again this year. In addition, I will also be one of about 30 Brand Ambassadors. I don’t know many details of this post yet, but follow me on social media and we’ll learn together.

Now to my picks…I hope some of you will chime in with yours. If you’re a blogger and publish a pre-TCMFF post be sure to leave me the link in the comments so I can include it in this post. I enjoy comparing people’s picks and think others do as well. Here we go…

  Thursday, April 11

I’m betting the biggest crowd aside from Grauman’s for the official opening night feature, will be at the Egyptian for Howard Hawks’ enjoyable Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and its iconic images. Although I adore that movie, which features Marilyn Monroe in standout comedic form, I plan to attend the 35MM screening of Hobart Henley’s Night World (1932), which I’ve never seen. Sara Karloff, daughter of the legendary Boris Karloff, will do the introductory honors alongside writer Susan King. Spending some time at a Karloff speakeasy is simply too good to pass up and it’s a fantastic way to start the festival.

Next I’ll likely meet bunches of people I know at the Egyptian for the Nitrate screening of Irving Reis’ The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (1947) starring my love Cary Grant, the lovely Myrna Loy, and the popular Shirley Temple. This is the first of several movies featuring Cary Grant this weekend and I plan to stare at him every chance I get. Almost.

  Friday, April 12

Friday morning poses a bit of a dilemma for me. There’s the film noir staple The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) opposite pre-code Merrily We Go to Hell (1932) opposite Judy Garland’s only drama appearance in The Clock (1945) opposite the enjoyable High Society (1956). I decided on Dorothy Arzner’s pre-code featuring Sylvia Sydney, Fredric March and a pre-stardom Cary Grant. How can I go wrong with that combination?

Following that movie I’ll have a bit of time before the Club TCM presentation of The Descendants: Growing Up in Hollywood. This presentation may be as close as I’ll ever get to the idea of “Legacies” I’ve been hoping for, which calls for a panel of children of classic stars. In attendance at The Descendants presentation will be Cary Grant’s daughter, Jennifer. This means I’ll be one degree away from the greatest Hollywood has ever seen.

The next Friday block poses another slight problem. My choice of screening is Garson Kanin’s delightful, My Favorite Wife (1940) at the Egyptian, but skipping Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) is not easy. The reason I’m going to see Cary and Irene Dunne, besides the fact they’re wonderful, is due to the next screening, which will likely be a popular one.

For the 5:30 to 8:00 PM block on Friday I plan to watch the new-to-me Vanity Street (1932) directed by Nick Grinde followed by John Reinhardt’s Open Secret (1948). I think these two films will have long lines because the others screening in the slot are much newer movies. That means die-hard “old” movie lovers have my choices as their choices as well. Robert Wise’s beloved The Sound of Music (1965) is also screening in the slot and that eases my worries a bit.

Next I go to go see Jean Negulesco’s Road House (1948) starring Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark. The other movie I seriously considered in this slot is the premiere restoration of Anthony Mann’s Winchester ’73 (1950). Watching at least one important Western at the festival has become a tradition for me. If I skip Winchester the tradition will be broken, which is tough.

This year I am making it a point to attend at least one midnight screening and it looks like Joselito Rodríguez’s Santo Contra Cerebro Del Mal (1961) is the choice. It’s exciting to watch a movie in Spanish at TCMFF and, although I am familiar with the Santo superhero character, I’ve never seen one of his films. This should be a heck of a lot of fun.

  Saturday, April 13

What hit me immediately upon perusing the Saturday morning line-up is that I might not make it into Grauman’s at all the entire festival. Can you imagine? One of the two golden age films screening at the historic theatre, Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (1953) opens the day there, but I am going for science fiction and Rudolph Maté’s When Worlds Collide from 1951. The movie stars John Hoyt, Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, and Peter Hansen. Rush will be in attendance to introduce the film with Dennis Miller. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Barbara Rush on a couple of occasions and she couldn’t be more down to Earth, a truly lovely person who will no doubt offer interesting tidbits about the making of When Worlds Collide. 

From possible world annihilation I will venture into the jungles for the special presentation of the 85-year old Tarzan and His Mate (1984), the only directing outing by legendary art director, Cedric Gibbons. One of the first film courses I ever took was taught by a film historian and author obsessed with the nude swim scene and its artistry. I’ve seen it, of course, several times, but never on a big screen so this one is exciting.

Before you continue down my schedule, know that the rest of Saturday is a web of sacrifices for me. Foregoing a few screenings to ensure entrance in the ones I cannot miss is the order of this day. With that I continue…

Following Tarzan I’ll be visiting with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer in Leo McCarey’s Love Affair (1939) celebrating its 80th anniversary. This will be introduced by Dana Delaney who is a great classics fan in her own right. Although I have no reservation about enjoying this film, which I haven’t seen in quite some time, it would not be my choice if not for the rest of the day’s offerings. For instance, I think I’d enjoy the Tom Mix Double Feature immensely and would attend that if not for Rowland Brown’s Blood Money (1933) hailed as “the ultimate pre-Code film” on the TCMFF page and I’ve never seen it. Blood Money follows in the next slot and if I see Tom Mix I won’t have time to get to it. That’s the deciding factor for me. I’ll also be truly sorry to miss the Hollywood Home Movies presentation at Club TCM yet again.

The worst block of the entire 2019 TCMFF for me as far as decisions go is the Saturday evening offerings after Blood Money. My good friend Laura of Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings mentioned the rarity that will be the screening of George Marshall’s Life Begins at 40 (1935) and she should know as she takes full advantage of the numerous classic screenings available in the Los Angeles area. The problem, my dears, is that if I go to Life Begins at 40 I won’t make it to what I believe will be an unforgettable experience, Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed (1956) poolside with Patty McCormack in attendance. I’m super excited about this one as I consider McCormack’s portrayal of Rhoda one of the all-time great child performances and an impressionable evil. That said, this decision comes at a great cost because while I’ll be watching this terrific film, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, two stars that mean the world to me, will be Indiscreeting in a nearby theater. This actually hurts to think about, but this will be my first ever screening by the pool at the Roosevelt and I couldn’t look forward to it more.

  Sunday, April 14

Another tough choice opens Sunday with Peter Lorre’s fantastic performance in Karl Freund’s Mad Love (1935) screening opposite George Cukor’s Holiday (1938), but in the end Cary Grant wins as does Diane Baker’s introduction. Touch one though.

My choice for this next block may change depending on the TBA. I’m hoping it’ll be Indiscreet in which case that’s where I’ll be. Barring that happening I may well forego movies and attend two Club TCM presentations in a row, which would be a first: Hollywood Love Stories and The Complicated Legacy of Gone With the Wind are both enticing and likely to be entertaining and informative.

Finally, I arrive at the end of the weekend with the two final screenings. These are no-brainer choices for me. The first is Clarence Brown’s A Woman of Affairs (1928), the third picture to team Greta Garbo and John Gilbert and their final silent film together. Present for the introduction will be Kevin Brownlow and Leonard Maltin. This screening will also be accompanied by a live orchestra performing a score composed and conducted by Carl Davis and it should be spectacular.

Now talk about thrilling. This will be a nitrate presentation of Irving Cummings’ The Dolly Sisters (1945) starring one of my idols, superstar Betty Grable and June Haver as famous vaudeville entertainers, Jenny and Rosie Dolly. This movie strays far from the real story of The Dolly Sisters who were known more for their dark beauty than for their talent, so if you’re looking for biographical drama look elsewhere. However, if enchanting entertainment, the wonderful fluff I adore that’s important enough to get a Carol Burnett parody, if what you’re after then look no further. This one means a lot to me. Remember, Betty Grable was my idea of the biggest star in the world. Oh oh…I may cry during this screening. With John Payne as Grable’s love and character greats S. Z. Sakall and Sig Ruman, The Dolly Sisters screening cannot come soon enough even though it ends my TCMFF 2019.

◊

There you have my picks and ideas on this year’s festival. It all adds up to 16 movies – a decent number for me – three Club TCM presentations, and numerous new experiences. I hope to run into you in Hollywood, but if not follow me on social media for the latest from TCMFF 2019.

Facebook:  Citizen Screen

Twitter:  @CitizenScreen

Instagram: Citizen Screen

Tumblr: Citizen Screen

◊

It’s always fun to compare notes with friends so I’m including links to a few other bloggers’ TCMFF picks. I love reading how everyone makes his/her decisions on such things and hope you do too.  If your blog post is not included leave the link in the comments section and I’ll be happy to add it to this list.

Check out the choices of Pre-Code.Com

    My Picks for #TCMFF 2019 You've probably heard that the schedule for the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival (TCMFF) 2019  was published earlier this week.

[clarkesrifle]

Firewhisky Tears - Penny Haywood x Reader

Summary; Penny and the reader have been at odds for years now. However, after a bad encounter with Merula Snyde leaves you bloodied and defeated, you figure out that Penny Haywood isn’t as bad as you once thought.

Word Count; 2,561 words

Warnings; Some references to abuse in the household, underage drinking, some nudity however is completely SFW

A/N; Hi! This is my first time writing on this blog, and I am so excited to interact with everyone. Thank you so much for giving me a chance, and I hope that you enjoy my one-shot. This could eventually turn into a series if you guys like it. I take requests for any sort of story, and as of right now this story is unedited, so forgive any mistakes if there are any. I wrote this at four in the morning. This is my first Penny Haywood fic/imagine

Penny Haywood was absolutely, annoyingly, bloody perfect, and you hated her for it.

Everyone adored the blonde, even the fucking birds stopped to chirp at her. Her smile could earn more points than any immaculate potion you brewed or spell you performed, and it made your blood boil. Your family took your failures even harder.

Your father meant well, perhaps. But that didn’t change the fact that you flinch whenever a sudden noise reverberates in the air. Your family name had long since been disgraced with your family’s involvement with the Dark Lord - although your services had not come willingly, it had not stopped the ministry from stripping your father of his wand.

You had met him, once.

A handsome and charming face covered the horror that was Tom Riddle, who appraised you and said that someday, you would be a fierce witch and an asset to his side. Even then, as a tot, you hadn’t wanted anything to do with the man but the look in his eyes made it feel as though he could read every thought that crossed your mind.

And then He had fallen. Defeated by a babe and you sighed a breath of relief. Maybe there was nothing to fear after all — perhaps he was all bark but none of the bite. As soon as you thought your greatest nightmare was long gone, the trials began.

Your father had been lucky enough to stay out of Azkaban, the wizarding prison that was not above torturing it’s residents, but was completely emasculated by being forced to watch his trusty wand snapped to pieces. It was the worst thing a wizard could go through, it was almost akin to losing a limb.

He had quickly grown more and more angry. The patriarch often took his frustration out on your mother, but Gods forbid whenever his fury was pointed towards you. He grew obsessed with the idea of bringing back the glory to your family name, and the only person that ever stood in front of making him proud, was a certain blonde.

Merula Snyde had been particularly cruel this year. In the six years you’ve been at Hogwarts, yourself and Merula had a tempestuous relationship, with ups and downs more dramatic than a Quidditch match. You had to admit, she was a worthy adversary. You both forced each other to be better at dueling and constantly winded up in the hospital wing  because of the other, but even she was more tolerable than Penny Haywood.

Today you found yourself bloodied and broken, but you opted out of visiting Madam Pomfrey (as much as you enjoyed her company, you did fancy winning the cup this year, and Felix had already gotten onto you enough for losing points in Potions that morning).

Instead, you smuggled the bottle of Firewhisky gifted to you by Bill the previous year for your birthday into the Prefect bathroom. Your father had nodded his head towards you and gave the slightest smile — the first you’d seen in years — when he had seen the golden badge arrive with Hjordis, your owl. Ever since getting your first taste of affection, you craved more, and you couldn’t do that by constantly getting in trouble with your superiors.

“Again, Ma’am?” Boris the Bewildered looked to you with a small look of pity. The stone statue moved freely, looking down at the girl who looked so small now. You sneer, tears pricking your eyes as you look back up at the man.

You motion to Boris’ hands. “Judge once you figure out how to put on gloves, sir.” The stone gloves were backwards, on the wrong hand. You had hoped to wipe the look of sadness from his face, but it only made him feel worse for you.

“In dueling, such as in life, there is not always a need to be on the attack.” His voice was soft, so soft and kind that you forced yourself to look away from him in guilt. “It is perfectly okay to cast a defense, be it mental…” he paused, and gently poked next to the gash on your forehead. “or physical.”

A moment passed and you heard Boris shift back into his still state. You breathed again,  and quickly shuffled inside the bathroom and closed the door.

Click, went the lock and you pressed your back against the wooden door. The bathroom was ridiculously large with a bath that looked more like a swimming pool than a place to wash. One side was lined with multiple stalls, directly across from it was a long mirror that covered floor to roof. Finally, the wall opposite from the door could be charmed to look like any environment that the user wanted.

Unceremoniously you removed your shoes and threw them on the marble floor behind you as you walked towards the bath, flinching as your bare toes touched the cold. The taps (there had to be hundreds of them) confused you the first time you came into the Prefect bathroom, but now you found yourself at least somewhat comfortable with the jewel-top taps. You leaned down and turned the clear jewel and watched as water poured out. You could vaguely remember Rowan telling you that the water is charmed to always be the perfect temperature depending on the person.

And right now, that meant that the water was so hot the steam made your shirt stick to your body within minutes.

Loosening your green tie, you moved onto the purple gem, turning it and watching as a series of bubbles filled the water and floated upwards onto the ceiling before popping. With a flick of your wand, lit candles appeared around the room and the lights turned completely off, so that the only source of light were the candles that hovered in the air.

The shirt was next to go and you pulled your hair up into a bun to keep it from getting wet. The shirt, which had been white just hours before, had bright splotches of blood covering it. Pulling the Firewhisky out from your pant line, you placed it down onto the marble.

The green gem. The smell of vanilla and pine trees fill the room quickly and tears flow freely. Pain ebbed in more now as adrenaline left your system and it was getting harder to move. The rest of your uniform came off gently as you winced and groaned and slowly slipped yourself into the hot water, which filled the tub to its capacity and the taps shut off without so much as a squeak.

The soap burned your wounds but eventually it faded into a slight sting. Your muscles, which Merula had cleverly frozen with a body-bind jinx, were stiff and sore and relaxed in the water. You sat on the seat of the bath, which made it so that the tops of your shoulders were above the bubbles and exposed to the cold air.

It was too much. The pressure from your father, the desperation the please him…you almost couldn’t breathe. So instead, you uncap the liquor and take a large swig.

Were your tears from the burning of the whisky or the pressures of your life?

It didn’t matter.

You didn’t care.

You were so lost in your thoughts and drowning in the fiery taste of alcohol that at least made you feel something that you —

“It’s never good to drink on an empty stomach,” a delicate voice called. Quickly you turned around, subconsciously covering the parts of your body that weren’t even visible in the first place. Before you, watching you with curious blue eyes, was the girl that made your stresses even worse, Penny Haywood.

“I thought I had locked the door,” you say without any emotion, placing the bottle back on the floor. Penny nodded, pushing her back off of the wall and coming closer to you. She pulled off her shoes and dipped her toes into the bath.

“You had,” she confirmed, and looked towards the enchanted wall. You had made it look like a beautiful forest, the green on the leaves so vibrant that it calmed you. A deer slowly walked across the wall, bending down into a stream and sipping for a moment. “Interesting,” she said.

“What is?” You didn’t even look at her.

“I didn’t think someone that could be so volatile had a quiet side.” Penny teased, chuckling at you. You simply shrugged in response, picking up your bottle and taking a small sip this time. And then, after a moment of consideration, she held out the glass for Penny to take.

The blonde looked surprised at the gesture. You look at her, taking in her soft expression and laughed gently. Bitterly, you mumbled, “Even the daughters of former death eaters are raised to have manners.”

Penny scoffed. “It’s not that.” She attempted to reassure you. “It’s just…” she took a moment to consider her words. “you haven’t exactly extended a kindness to me in these past six years.” If you didn’t know any better, you might have thought that there was a small tinge of sadness in her voice.

Of course there isn’t, you scoffed.

“Then why spy on me whilst I bathe? Hardly took you for the peeping type.” You teased, a small crooked smile crossing your face as you nudged her knee with your shoulder. Penny snorted, and mumbled something under her breath that almost sounded like you wish. But she took the firewhisky nonetheless, and perhaps it was the alcohol running through your blood, but you found yourself especially aware of how her fingertips lightly grazed your knuckles as she grabbed the glass.

Definitely the alcohol.

Much to your astonishment, Penny took a hearty swig before placing the bottle down to the right of her.

“I followed you,” she started, leaning down onto the ground. “because you were hurt. How was I supposed to know you were coming in to take a bath? You hadn’t brought any spare clothes, just a bottle of liquor and a trail of blood behind you.”

You let out a hmm. “The door was locked, Haywood.” You looked at her again with a smirk on your face as it dawned on you. “You care.”

Penny kicked at the water and splashed you. “Hardly,” she crossed her arms. “I could still dock points for drinking on campus, you know.” She sat up and looked at you with slight humor in her eyes. An awkward silence enveloped the two girls and it almost felt like the conversation had reached an awkward end.

You almost expect to hear the door open and close when Penny stands up, but surprisingly, she returns with a conjured rag in hand. Whispering a barely audible Come here, Penny steps completely into the bath, sitting on the ledge with you.

“Your clothes…” you almost pitifully whisper, making a bright smile cross Penny’s face.

Fuck.

Even her smile is perfect.

Dipping the white rag into the bath, Penny carefully pressed the cloth to your forehead and you couldn’t help but wince. You pull your legs up to your chest gently, suddenly thankful for deciding to add bubbles tonight.

You couldn’t help but notice how focused she looked right now. Her tongue lightly pushed past her lips and stuck out. Bright blue orbs were staring intently at your forehead, and you couldn’t help but think, Were her eyes always so pretty?

“Why are you helping me?” The words barely pass your lips, but Penny hears them nonetheless and pauses.

A beat passes.

“I don’t know.” Penny dips the bloodied cloth back into the water and returned to cleaning your wounds. “But I do know that you don’t deserve the pain.”

You scoff. “I don’t have pain.”

“Then why do you cry when you think no one sees?” Suddenly you grow angry. She doesn’t know you, who does she think she is?

Why is she so right? Your anger quickly dissipates and now you’re left alone with a pretty girl sitting in a bath with you, a girl you’re supposed to hate. “I envy you.” You finally speak again after a silent moment. This surprises her.

“Everything comes so easy for you,” you say. But you don’t sound angry. You sound defeated. “Everyone loves you, you’re the top of every class.” Resting your chin on your knees, you can’t even look Penny in the face anymore. “My father…hates me because of you.” You hate to admit it, but it’s true. It hurts to say, because despite all of his failings, you love him. “All he wants is for me to make a name for myself, for our family…to get rid of our association with the Dark Lord. And then you come along and make it impossible. Being top of my class means nothing if I tie with someone else.”

You speak faster and faster to the point where it becomes hard to breathe, tears run down your face and everything hurts and you can feel your stomach clench because all you want is to be a good daughter but —

She kisses you.

And just as soon as her lips were on yours, she pulls away, and almost subconsciously you try to follow her before you pull back again. Your face turns completely red.

“Oh,” is all you can say.

“You were having a panic attack.” Penny looked just as confused as you do.

“Oh.”

“Was that your first kiss?” She asked you.

Bewildered and even more embarrassed, your face turns maroon. “Well, gee, was it that obvious?” You almost laugh at how awkward you feel and bury your face in your hands.

Penny laughs aloud, you can’t even stop yourself from thinking about just how beautiful it sounds. “No, it’s just…I’ve never seen you have a boyfriend…” a pause, a hesitation. “or a girlfriend?” Penny almost sounds hopeful here.

You look up and shrug. You hadn’t had the time, and although it did sometimes bother you that you had only a handful of friends, your busy schedule hadn’t allowed you to do anything about it. “Never had the time.”

“Well,” now Penny sounds awkward. “How would you like to be friends with me?”

Another beat. In the six years as classmates, this was the first time you had ever seen the most popular girl in your year be nervous. You smile. Genuinely smile. “I’d like that, Haywood.” She nods gently, and like she had when she first made herself known, she pushed herself up and, instead of coming towards you, she walks away this time.

Shoes in one hand, the bottom half of her dripping water onto the floor, she pauses at the door. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” you say. “And Penny? Don’t think that just because we’re friends now means that I’m gonna go easy on you in class now. I’ll still match you point for point.”

Throwing her head back with laughter, her face practically lights up the whole room. “I wouldn’t expect it any other way.”

And then the door closes and you’re alone again.

But instead of feeling so lonely, your lips are on fire and tingling. There is no sadness in the air, but the feeling of a new beginning. You touch your lips and laugh.

Penny Haywood is absolutely, annoyingly, bloody perfect.

And pretty soon, you would love her for it.

[warninggraphiccontent]

6 August 2021

The sun is shinin', come on get mappy

Ever found yourself floating aimlessly around the alphabet soup of UK government departments doing data, wondering who's responsible for what? Or lost track of all the interesting initiatives that you might be able to get involved with or learn from?

I'm delighted to be running a new project with the ODI that tries to help with that. We're mapping data responsibility and initiatives across the UK government here, so please do tell us what we've missed and comment on what we've already got. It'll be open for comments until Friday 10 September, so you have all summer to contribute.

There's a launch page explaining everything here, and we're also going to be publishing a blogpost a week focusing on a particular area of the ODI manifesto. This week is infrastructure week. Keep an eye on the ODI blog for future ones.

In other news:

A date for your diary - the 22nd Data Bites will be taking place on Wednesday 8 September at 6pm, thanks to ADR UK and the ESRC. Details will appear here in due course - which is also where you can catch up on the previous 21 events.

I'm also chairing an event for IfG at this year's Labour Party conference - more here.

I'm really sad to see this news about Understanding Patient Data (full disclosure - I'm doing some work for them at the moment). Natalie has done a terrific job, and I really hope their work is able to find a home elsewhere - it's more important than ever, given recent events.

Nick Timmins' new report on how the Department for Education handled the pandemic is well worth a read. Warning: contains mutant algorithms. Diginomica pull out some lessons on those here; my piece from last summer on that is here; and there are more links below.

If you enjoyed this account of what allegedly happened to that Spectator piece on Marcus Rashford (h/t Alice), pour yourself a cup of tea and enjoy this story of something similar from my time at the Media Standards Trust.  

I did it - my first half marathon since 2019. There's still time to sponsor me and donate to the excellent Tommy's, here.

Warning: Graphic Content will now be taking a break until September. I'll be posting some things on Medium as well as on Twitter in the meantime, so do follow me there. If you need some other data-related newsletters, podcasts or event series to tide you over, there's a list for that. And if you know anyone else who should subscribe, encourage them to start the new school/parliamentary term in September the right way by signing up.

Enjoy the summer, thanks for subscribing, and see you in September

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Tokyo shift

Olympic records are being broken at a record pace* (The Economist)

How the Olympics became bigger and more diverse* (The Economist)

What the Tokyo medal table tells us halfway through the Games (BBC Sport)

Russia and Kenya take the podium in the athletics doping contest* (The Economist)

Tokyo Olympics: Will Team GB beat its record-breaking performance in Rio? (Sky News)

20 Chinese gold medal contenders at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (South China Morning Post)

Olympians are probably older — and younger — than you think* (Washington Post)

The Fastest Men In The World Are Still Chasing Usain Bolt (FiveThirtyEight)

Here's how Sydney McLaughlin of the U.S. won the 400-meter hurdles at #Tokyo2020, breaking her own world record (New York Times - more here)

Katie Ledecky's historic week, day by day* (Washington Post)

The Climber: Adam Ondra | The Hurdler: Dalilah Muhammad | The Gymnast: Sunisa Lee | The Swimmer: Simone Manuel (New York Times)

Viral content

Why are Covid cases falling in the UK?* (FT)

Excess deaths in your neighbourhood during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (ONS)

COVID-19: Sewage surveillance reveals 'widespread increase' of coronavirus in England last month (Sky News)

Covid travel: which countries are on the green, amber and red lists? (The Guardian)

Tim Spector: the data explorer who uncovered vital clues to Covid* (FT)

Which Americans are against the jab?* (The Economist)

Chart: Less than 0.1% of vaccinated Americans tested positive for COVID-19 (Axios)

America is plummeting down the global vaccination league table* (The Economist)

Florida’s hospitals set a bleak pandemic record* (FT)

How Europe, After a Fumbling Start, Overtook the U.S. in Vaccination* (New York Times)

Side effects

Why the pandemic is not making your rent cheaper* (New Statesman)

New York City Homebuyers Are Back, and They’re Looking for Deals* (Bloomberg)

Net worth

How Google quietly funds Europe’s leading tech policy institutes* (New Statesman)

Explore different settlements on the balance of power and what they mean for the future of the Internet (Demos)

Ransomware attacks rise despite US call for clampdown on cybercriminals* (FT)

Environment

Planetary ‘vital signs’ show extent of climate stress — and some hope* (FT)

How heat dome has sparked worst wildfires in a decade across parts of Southern Europe (Sky News)

Beyond human endurance: How climate change is making parts of the world too hot and humid to survive* (Washington Post)

Race

The 'ethnic data gap' on voters - and why it matters to parties and pollsters (Sky News)

Hollywood reaps the rewards of becoming more diverse* (The Economist)

UK

The first ever machine generated map of the @UKParliament treaty procedure (UK Parliament)

Favourability towards Boris Johnson falls to lowest level since October (Ipsos MORI)

Productivity: firing on all cylinders (IfG)

Mathematician Hannah Fry: ‘I’m sure there’s lots of tutting — but not to my face* (FT)

Everywhere else

‘It’s Huge, It’s Historic, It’s Unheard-of’: Drug Overdose Deaths Spike* (The Upshot)

Elon Musk’s Outrageous Moonshot Award Catches on Across America* (Bloomberg)

Police shootings continue daily, despite a pandemic, protests and pushes for reform* (Washington Post)

People in the West are least worried about hurtful speech* (The Economist)

An Inca highway still benefits people living nearby* (The Economist)

German election 2021: The New Statesman’s poll tracker* (New Statesman)

Meta data

Information health

Statistics informing quarantine requirements for arrivals to England (Office for Statistics Regulation)

Review of NHS Test and Trace (England) and NHS COVID-19 app statistics (Office for Statistics Regulation)

What we mean by trustworthy use of patient data (Understanding Patient Data)

The future of Understanding Patient Data (Understanding Patient Data)

Lord Bethell’s new phone (Good Law Project)

UK government defends deleting all trace of job vacancies after appointing Matt Hancock's lover to health department board (Business Insider)

Education, education, education

Schools and coronavirus: The government’s handling of education during the pandemic (IfG)

The UK A-Level ‘COVID-19 algorithm fiasco’ and lessons for the enterprise (diginomica)

Four things government must learn from the A-level algorithm fiasco (me from last year for IfG)

More from last summer (W:GC)

Even more from last summer (W:GC)

Ensuring statistical models command public confidence: Learning lessons from the approach to developing models for awarding grades in the UK in 2020 (Office for Statistics Regulation, from March 2021)

AI got 'rithm

Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped.* (MIT Technology Review)

I’m sorry Dave I’m afraid I invented that: Australian court finds AI systems can be recognised under patent law (The Guardian)

Bias in Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Magazine)

The ethics of recommendation systems in public-service media (Ada Lovelace Institute)

Britain can set 'gold standard' in ethical artificial intelligence - industry report (BCS)

ICO baby

The Information Commissioner's Office is letting us down*  (Telegraph)

Response: ICO’s priorities and impact of our work (ICO)

New guidance on direct marketing and the public sector (ICO)

Thread (Tim Turner)

Information Rights Strategic Plan: Trust and Confidence - annual tracker (ICO)

UK government

Introduction to Data Quality course launched (Government Data Quality Hub)

A new model for modelling (Actuaries in government)

Six reasons why digital transformation is still a problem for government (NAO)

govcookiecutter: A template for data science projects (Data in government)

Radar – more than just wave detection (Defra digital)

Driving technology convergence and reuse in our Future Borders and Immigration System (Home Office Digital, Data and Technology)

The longlist (Civil Service Data Challenge)

Cabinet Office eyes ‘geographical capability map’ for civil servants (Civil Service World)

Next step in plans to govern use of digital identities revealed (DCMS)

Building a single sign-on for government: What we’ve learnt so far (Services in government)

ESRC launches opportunity to inform data infrastructure strategy (UKRI)

Keeping old computers going costs government £2.3bn a year, says report (BBC News - CSW had this last week)

2021 Deane-Stone Lecture: Ambitious, Radical, Inclusive and Sustainable: How a National Statistical Institute evolved through Covid-19 (Sir Ian Diamond for NIESR)

Taking the wiki

Left-leaning Wikipedia is no match for my shelf of dictionaries* (Telegraph)

There are 11,656 athletes at the Olympics. Guy Fraser wanted them all on Wikipedia (The Guardian)

A sense of place

‘X’ Marks the Spot: Officials Map a Route Out of the Pandemic* (New York Times)

What 3 Words is a Mess

Dis and that

Disinformation: It’s History (CIGI)

Why Generation Z falls for online misinformation (MIT Technology Review)

It's a jungle out there

Why Amazon’s £636m GDPR fine really matters* (Wired)

The slow collapse of Amazon’s drone delivery dream* (Wired)

Open for the best

Natalia Carfi to carry the torch of openness (Open Data Charter)

Tech spec experts seek allies to tear down ISO standards paywall (The Register)

The promise of open-source intelligence* (The Economist)

Private parts

Estonia says a hacker downloaded 286,000 ID photos from government database (The Record)

Here’s how police can get your data — even if you aren’t suspected of a crime (Recode)

Everything else

The social value of data (Bennett Institute)

BIG TECH’S DUTY OF CARE (New Economics Foundation)

Inequality just went stratospheric. Can we bring it down to earth?* (Prospect)

A New Tech ‘Cold War?’ Not for Europe. (AI Now Institute)

THE TIME TAX: Why is so much American bureaucracy left to average citizens?* (The Atlantic)

Can data cooperatives sustain themselves? (LSE Business Review)

medConfidential note on the PRUK green paper and DARE project (medConfidential)

Measuring internet poverty (Brookings)

Data don’t lie, but they can lead scientists to opposite conclusions* (The Economist)

Opportunities

JOB: Head of Digital Data & Digital Democracy (London Borough of Newham, via Martin)

JOB: Executive Director (Digital Freedom Fund)

JOB: Senior Data Analyst (Common Wealth)

JOB: Visuals Project Editor - Visuals (The Guardian)

JOBS: Data for Science & Health team (Wellcome Trust)

JOB: Data Journalist (Tech Monitor, New Statesman Media Group)

JOBS: Data and Digitalisation programme (Ofgem, via Owen Boswarva)

JOB: Head of Strategic Communications and Engagement, Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (DCMS)

JOBS: Economic Advisers - The Digital and Tech Analysis team (DCMS)

JOBS: Modelling Hub Analyst Roles, Data & Analytical Services Directorate (MoJ)

JOB: Director of Analysis (MoD)

RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP: Data, Visualisation and Storytelling (The National Archives)

JOB: Product Manager - Data (BBC, via Jukesie)

And finally...

Vennerable

In celebration of John Venn's 187th birthday today, here's a poem in the form of a Venn diagram. (Brian Bilston)

*whispers* that's not actually how they work, but fine, it's funny (@StandingHannah, via David)