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fly-pow-bye · 4 years

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DuckTales 2017 - “The Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Ben Siemon, Bob Snow, Tanner Johnson

Written by: Colleen Evanson & Tanner Johnson

Storyboard by: Vince Aparo, Kristen Gish, Victoria Harris, Ben Holm

Directed by: Tanner Johnson

Spin it!

Before doing research when Don Karnage first came to the series, my knowledge of TaleSpin began and ended with me having that awful Genesis game as a kid. I do know that the show took place long before the modern day, which is when DuckTales 2017 takes place, and it appears that the events of TaleSpin in this universe still goes with that. Why do I know this? Because this episode does not start with Baloo piloting the Sea Duck...

...but a grown-up version of his surrogate son, Kit Cloudkicker, who is now running Higher for Hire by himself. However, while things have definitely changed for Higher for Hire since Baloo's apparent retirement, mostly for the worse, some things remained the same. Namely, he is still being tormented by the nefarious Sky Pirate of the Skies, the corsair of the air, Don Karnage. Or Dan, as he calls him much to Karnage's annoyance. The good news is that Kit is now an ace pilot who can easily fight off sky pirates like he did back in the glory days. The bad news is that he can still do what he did as a kid with a giant cargo plane. He even says it, and with most of his dialogue in this cold opening suggests this is going to make him look foolish.

Even worse news for the business is that the fragile box addressed to F.O.W.L. is just sitting in the center of the cargo bay with no security whatsoever aside from a caged chicken and a goat. After rocking back and forth due to Kit fending off against Don Karnage, the box breaks to reveal a rock with a blue lion carved into it, and when that aforementioned chicken and goat touch it, they both turn into some sort of chicken-goat hybrid that Kit has to fight. How is able to fight this goat-chicken while piloting the plane? Simple: he puts a crowbar in the steering wheel, just like Baloo did in the original. Here, the idea is played as silly as it would be to someone who had never heard of TaleSpin. It is doubly sad when one considers Kit treats this crowbar like his only crewmate, because it is.

I do like that this first scene introduces this show's version of Kit very well. He's obviously an incompetent pilot, and not one that is lovably incompetent like Launchpad, and this incompetence is pretty well known among his customers judging by this line:

Kit Cloudkicker: Who's the terrible pilot now, everyone?

He's surprisingly cheerful about that, which, again, makes him look foolish. Despite all of this foolishness, he does appear to still be competent at coming up with plans to defeat his enemies, whether they be sky pirates or mutated goat-chickens, even if those plans end up putting the cargo he was supposed to deliver into the water. This includes that lion stone. He looks onto this and says "my bad" in a way that shows that his business is definitely going to be in the red in a few years.

A few years later, we see that Della is taking Huey, Dewey, and nobody else to Cape Suzette, and she's even allowing Dewey to fly the plane along with her. It is easy to see why Huey is extra prepared even if Dewey is doing surprisingly well, as Huey is not only using extra seatbelts, but having a Safety Boy helmet as well. Huey's also prepared with the knowledge of that Lion Stone we saw go into the ocean in the previous scene, which, you guessed it, is a Missing Mystery of Isabella Finch. Specifically, it's the Stone Of What Was, which was described with the mysterious phrase "what was once two becomes a-new." Huey does not seem to figure that one out. The good news is that it was found, but the bad news was that it was found by F.O.W.L, but the better news is that they lost it, but the worse news was that the stone was made of potassium benzoate. Okay, that last one was made up. There's a few throwaway lines to fill in how Huey even knows F.O.W.L. had the stone in other scenes, and those plot holes are really not that important.

After nearing their destination, which we learn was based on a clue from an intercepted F.O.W.L. transmission from a throwaway line from Huey slightly later in the episode, Della has the bright idea to let Dewey land the plane. Letting a little kid fly a plane? Not a good idea. Letting a little kid land a plane? Also not a good idea. Telling that little kid that there's nothing wrong with a basic landing? May be a good idea in the off chance it could even come up, but definitely not a good idea when it comes to Dewey. To Della's credit, at least it was Huey that did that last one.

After the crash landing, and not a Launchpad-type one, they arrive at Higher for Hire, which shows an advertisement showing its legacy playing on a television screen with plenty of TaleSpin references. This includes one shot of Baloo and another shot of a younger Kit and Molly Cunningham riding on an airfoil done in the style of the original show. This is great for people who were not aware of TaleSpin, which the target audience for this show may not have seen unless they have Disney Plus. Kit, still shown to be the sole employee years later, assumes anyone knocking at his door is the bank demanding payments, but he's delighted to see one of his former classmates at pilot school. He constantly has to tell Della that he is an ace pilot now. Most likely, he's telling that to himself too, as we'll see in the next scene. He at least has reason to believe he's a better pilot than his former classmate, as it doesn't look like her plane is in good shape. Della could have explained that this state was because she let one of her less competent sons fly the plane...and that would have probably made her case about a thousand times worse.

That television commercial also inspires a sort of B-plot that also ties into Kit's character arc, as seeing young Kit cloudkicking makes him want to do it, too. Despite his failure at even mimicking it, Kit is happy to see a fellow cloudkicker and would be glad to teach him the ropes. Della is not too excited by this prospect, but ends up allowing it, because she doesn't want to be the mother that does not support her kid. They aboard the plane, which ends up being a very bumpy ride, and Della goes to investigate, only to find that Kit was in the bathroom, letting his only other employee, the crowbar, be his substitute.

Kit tries to stop what he calls "mutiny" by saying that he's the only one who knows where the cargo could be, only for the crowbar to slip and reveal that he's been keeping a map in the glove compartment. The map actually has some Xs and a circle on it, which suggests that Kit may have been trying to correct his previous mistake, but either never getting the motivation to go through with it, or, more likely, he isn't competent enough to deal with whatever is on that island he circled. Maybe I am thinking about this too hard, but I would say it would be fitting.

Kit decides to distract everyone from him getting kicked out of the pilot's chair by giving Dewey his airfoil and the cloudkicking rope for him to hold onto, and a shot of Dewey's excitement instantly cuts to Dewey screaming for his life, holding on for dear life as he can't seem to. The parallel between a former cloudkicking guy who isn't really a good pilot, and a kid who can actually fly a plane who isn't really a good cloudkicker is easy to notice, and the episode plays around with this. For starters, similar to Kit and his not-so-ace piloting skills, Dewey also tries his hardest to hide how terrified he is at the cool new thing he wanted to do. Of course, it is very possible that Kit is acting the way he does because he's in a certain someone's shadow. Dewey just does it because that's how he is.

Despite that difference, this parallel is enhanced even more when they get attacked by the Sky Pirates, and Kit has to intervene and show that he, at the very least, can get Dewey out of the danger that Kit himself has caused. And yes, Don Karnage's Sky Pirates are now working for the very organization that they indirectly harmed years before by attacking that cargo plane and making them lose that precious stone. That does not come up at all, not even as a throwaway line. What does come up is that Don Karnage is delighted that one of the people after the Stone of What Was is his new arch-nemesis, Dewey. It's a long story that started all the way back in Don's debut in Season 1. It's neat to see these old references. After they all make a landing on the circled island, some more safe than others, they get to meet the wildlife of the island. Let's say there's a good reason why this island was circled, and why Kit could not handle it by himself.

It's a rhino and a gorilla crossed together, either a rhinosorilla or a gorillanoceros depending on whether one likes Dewey's word for it or Kit's. Clearly, this is the result of the Stone of What Was...what was...Wuz...Wuzzles! Admittedly, the Wuzzle was also not a show I grew up with, though that could be because it lasted only a season. In fact, I just now notice the lion carved into the Stone of What Was happens to have bumblebee wings. These animals are a little more realistic here, as they don't talk, and they're not cute or fuzzy like the original Wuzzles were. In fact, the character this gorillanoceros was based on was actually a monkey-rhino. There is a difference, even if they are very similar species genetically!

They eventually get to the stone, only to see that Don Karnage and his crewmates have found the stone first. Hiding, they see Don Karnage command Hardtack Hattie, his strongest crewmember, to lift it up. Unfortunately, she happened to lift it as a bunch of ants were crawling on it, turning her into an ant centaur to her and Don's horror. Despite that horror, and fitting for someone who just wants to finish his mission, he tries to get some of the other crew members to lift it...

...leading to these freaks of nature, which is what Don Karnage actually calls them. DuckTales 2017 isn't too afraid to show the horrifying nature of some of these fusions, continuing with the theme of how they portray the Wuzzles as these monstrous beasts. I would not call it nightmare fuel, but I would not be surprised if it already has an entry on TV Tropes. What makes these even worse is that there is no way for these guys to revert back to their normal forms. There's no "if the stone feels like it, it'll separate you" clause here, that snail-dog is permanently a snail-dog, and that pirate will have to live with a hand for his head for the rest of his days. These guys just end up getting forgotten.

Della tries to sneak by climbing around this horrific scene, only to be caught on some sort of sticky rock. Dewey decides to try to save her with his airfoil-riding skills, much to Huey's disagreement. Dewey's got to Dewey it! Oh yeah, I forgot, Dewey ends up doing "Dewey" puns for most of the episode. It's not funny, but I have a feeling it wasn't meant to be funny, and it's certainly not funny when he ends up falling down near the pirates. Face to face with someone who considers him his arch-nemesis, he tries to save face when he notices Kit stole Don Karnage's plane...which he immediately crashes into a rock.

As for the rock that Della was stuck on, it turns out it wasn't a rock. Nor was it a rock lobster, either!

It hatches into another classic Wuzzle character: the Butterbear, or the Bear-terfly as Don Karnage calls it. They never quite match the original Wuzzle names, and it is not like they would know them. There is one part of this where Kit and the Bear-terfly cross paths, and it almost seems like they're going to bond because they happen to be a similar race. Then, it instantly cuts to Kit running away from a rampaging Bear-terfly. How are they going to continue from this? Have the Bear-terfly get caught in some rope, and have it run in a way that ties up the stone, and have it fly away with Della still on its back. It is a bit convoluted, but it works in the end as it is a way for the stone to travel without it mutating even more people. Whether any of these fusions can use the stone to combine into other fusions is left unanswered, which is for the best.

One may notice I didn't talk a whole lot about what Huey did, and that's because he really didn't do much for most of the episode. He delivered the exposition, he tries to stop Dewey from "Deweying it", and that's about it. However, he does have a major part in the episode: he gets to take part in the scene where the two bumbling fools realize what they have been doing was foolish. Namely, they needed to realize that they should do what they were good at: Kit should cloudkick and Dewey should fly the plane. It is a good lesson that had some good buildup. Sure, they were pretty much failing throughout the episode, but there were scenes where they were surprisingly competent, like the scene where Kit rescued Dewey with his Cloudkicking skills, and Dewey managing to fly the plane in the beginning before he decided to "Dewey it" and crash it. It does not come out of nowhere. Speaking of which...

Dewey: Okay, let's do it.

What would be an unremarkable line actually works really well here, mainly because he decided not to make a pun on his own name, which he did way too much. It does show development, as if this fun-loving showboater is actually learning his lesson throughout the episode. I expect this from DuckTales 2017, and there are certainly cartoons where I don't.

Fittingly for a TaleSpin episode, this all ends with a flight chase scene. No, not the usual DuckTales 2017 fight scene, though there are some fights here and there, especially with Kit and Don Karnage, armed with that crow bar and sword, respectively. The scene actually manages to make Dewey keeping the plane steady an action packed scene, as he has to save his Mom while trying not to let the stone fall into the ocean and make an octopus-fish-squid hybrid that would rival the Eldritch horrors. Again, whether any of these fusions can use the stone to combine into other fusions is left unanswered, which is for the best.

It's not really a spoiler to say the good guys win, but I will say the TaleSpin part of the plot is very much all tied up in the end. If Kit only makes a minor appearance in the finale, and I'd actually be surprised if he didn't appear considering how packed the clips were, it would be completely understandable. Also, there's a cliffhanger and we finally get to hear Don Karnage sing another song, if a very short one. It seemed like he just couldn't do it in his other appearances.

How does it stack up?

With the genius way of using not just one Disney show's legacy, but another Disney show as well, there's a lot to love about this episode, though I wouldn't say it's among the absolute best. Four Scrooges.

Next, Scrooge gets indicted.

← Beaks In The Shell! 🦆 The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck! →

#fpb dt 2017 #ducktales 2017 #ducktales #disney #fpb reviews

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Toons For Our Times: The Loud House: Strife of The Party/ Kernel of Truth

Lana plans her and Lola’s party with copius amonts of dirt and garabage while Lola tries sabotaging it and I struggle to figure out which one we’re supposed to be rooting for exactly. Meanwhile Lincoln and Co find an abandoned news room and attempt to start their own news show with the immediate threat of cancelation hanging over their heads. You know like most shows on nick. Also Rusty gets hurt a lot which automatically makes this a winner. News Team Assemble, under the cut.

Well this week was a mixed bag.. which granted could apply to this week as a whole but I meant it specifically for this episodes. Like last week one of them is a true classic that uses the series new status quo to create something intresting, and the other... is the worst episode i’ve reviwed so far. Yes not even one week and the show managed to go from having a boring episode to having a truly odious one. Both metaphorcially and literally as there’s a lot of grossout gags this time around. And unfortuantely since i’ts first in the pairing and the airing, I have to talk about it first. Pitter Patter, let’s get this over with.

Strife of the Party I”m not exaggerating either. I admit I was hard on Schooled! and Family Bonding, but the former sitll had some good content and the latter was .. well it’s still a boring lazy retread with a bonkers ending, but I admitted to having seen worse. But “I’ve seen worse” is never the best defense. I’ll admit usually I avoided the worse episodes of the loud house. I haven’t seen some of the more infamous episodes of the show like “No Such Luck” or “Kings of the Con”.. because as just a viewer I could skip an episode if it sounded like toilet dinner. Sure i’ve still ran into them: “Study Muffin” was just eh when it aired but now both post me too and post chris savino being rightfully fired for being a harassing dickweasel thanks to said movement, it’s realy fucking creepy, has Lori at her worst (Actively trying to cheat on bobby), and .. I have no third thing. All we really got out of it was Lynn Sr’s obsession with the British. And “The Green House”’s reputation proceeds it and there’s a reason I couldn’t finish it. Point is i’ve been lucky to only step in a few cowpies in the field of this show, and now i’m watching it as it comes out i’m accepting the hard truth that with the show’s hit and miss quality, i’m going to have to go panning in shit creek some weeks if I want to find the nuggets of gold. Now I will grant this episode doesn’t sound NEARLY as bad as “No Such Luck”.. but as opus would say....

Exactly my Pengy pal. Again not being worse than the worst episode of the show, still dosen’t make you a good episode. It just makes you marginally less terrible. It’s like saying Creed isn’t as bad as Nickelback. While tha’ts true they both still sound terrible, it’s just playing Creed isn’t a warcrime in some countries. And yes I just compared two episodes of a children’s show to bands my audience thankfully likely weren’t aware ever existed, I don’t care. If you haven’t left my blog running and screaming your either new here or tolerate me being an obscure weirdo.

Before we get in proper, I haven’t covered the twins yet so let’s do that quick. I haven’t really watched a ton of Lola and Lana’s episodes, their not bad characters htey just don’t intrest me much as i’ve seen their gimmicks a lot, but I will say lola’s slightly better and I will say I like Lana more when she’s doing animal antics instead of grossout. Not terirble characters and their acted well, just not my cup of tea is all. Okay enough stalling , pitter patter!

We open with Lola planning the twins upcoming birthday and talking to her stuffed animals which is cute and all.. before a POSSUM CHESTBURSTS OUT OF LOLA’S UNICORN DOLL.

The.. the fuck. Look i’m all for scaring the crap out of kids in children’s entertainment. I loved Courage the Cowardly dog as a kid and as a grown ass man writing about children’s entertainment. I love the lich from adventure time, i’m okay with scaring kids. But this is just.. a bit too realistic. Yes really. While doll that size probably can’t fit a possum it could sure fit something else and i’ve seen stuffed animals big enough for a posssum, so yeah.. this could actually happen to one of my nieces and that thought terrifies me. It happening to me also terrifies me but I’m a grown man not a small child who’d be scarred for life. Christ. The episode does get better, for a second I didn’t bitch for a few paragraphs for nothing. Lana comes in, claims the demon possum, and tells Lola she’ll fix the doll. Uh Lana i’m not sure she wants it back.. you’d be better off burning it and setting the possum free in a republican center’s home where it belongs.

Anyways Lana has a good point, Lola’s been plannig their parties ‘since before they were born”.. literally as the image above shows which is just.. fucking amazing. I cannot belivie they got to go there and it’s glorious they did. I can’t think of many, if any, other chlidren’s cartoons that showed a fetus on screen so kudos.

But yeah that was the one good moment of the episode. Next our twins go to a party suply store where Lola, clearly knowing the host well because these kids have connections, has her stash all the poop colored stuff away... which backfires as lana instead goes to the garbage for party favors and decorations. It fails to get better: Next they go to a bakery where Lana makes her own literal garbage cake and then go to flips for entertainment i.e. a bull. NOw i’ll grant both stops have good bits: The cake store guy asks if Lana’s a cop when she asks for grime and Flip has them sign a waver for the bull. And the bull being lana’s idea of entertainment makes sense.. but overal it just comes off as gross and mean spirited. I mean yes Lola’s about to do some terrible stuff herself and yes Lola ouvershadowed lana.. but she dosen’t deserve this abuse and none of this is healthy or tolerbale for.. well anyone, and could get the Loud Parents in serious trouble, which also leaves the obvious plot hole of “why don’t they step in in either situation. “

The episode would’ve made more snese if Lana went to them to get them to let her host the party and their guilt over letting Lola always do it means they don't’ reign her in despite wanting to. Instead their just.. there at the end for a great bit we’ll get to. It’s always the bad episodes that paint the loud parents as terrible parents honestly. No Suck Luck had them cast their son out into the cold over nonsense, On Thin Ice had Lynn Sr decide forcing his children to embarass themselves was more important than teaching one of them that maybe sometimes you don’t always get to force your family to obey your whims for dumb reasons, and the april fools eps have Lynn Sr so terrified of pranking retribution instead of you know.. GROUNDING Luann for going full joker on their asses. IN most episodes their kind and reasonable but it’s always the bad ones where they instead make Homer Simpson look like a good parent.

But yeah my rant aside the episode COULD work if Lola, encouraged by one of her other siblings, Luann would be a good bet as she could easily slide into the party setting when appropriate without being too distracting, realizes she’s been selfish and tries to hold her tounge for lana’s sake. Maybe then she tries sabotage.. or better she DOSEN’T, but both of them realize something; Lola realizes she’s been doing this to lana their whole lives by forcing her into a party she doesn’t like so LOLA can be happy while Lana realizes she’s being no better. Hell even if Lola did complain, which is in character, this plot woudl still work. instead.. Lana is just as bad as Lola while Lola is still pretty terrible. See the big problem is that NEITHER girl is likeable. As I’ve made clear Lana pushes a gross, dangerous party on her sister she clearly doesn’t like, and Lola, instead of trying tot alk to her parents or get Lana to tone it down.. tries to guide her to what she wants, then when that fails sabotages the party, makes it so Lana has nothing and gets her party. Both sides are being really bad, but instead of them realizing this, lana is treated as the one we should be sympathetic to when she gets mad when she finds out about Lola even though NEITHER of them are sympathetic or likeable and deserve to win 100%. But Lana does, lana gets her way, Lola apologizes and hte paradigm just shifts from one sibling being unhappy to another. We do get that one gag I talked about where when lola goes to make things right she has Lynn Sr stall and he pulls out a cowbell “You thought I wasn’t going to need this”. No bud, Rita HOPE you wouldn’t need this. There’s a difference. Thank god it’s the end.

Final Thoughts for Strife of the Party: They should be obvious but to be clear this is hippo excrement. i’ts not funny, it makes both it’s leads look bad, the parents look worse by inaction and just isn’t pleasant ot watch. I do GET the show has a young audience, and they like grossout, I get i’m not the target demographic, so I probably would just be okay with a good version of this episode.. but even with that in mind both twins come off so unlikeable it’s just not fun to watch or to see Lana win as she didn’t feel like she earned it. It’s bad and it should feel bad, and i’ts the first truly odious episode i’ve had for weekly coverage. I’ve had okay or eh ones, but this one is truly bad and belongs in the pantheon of bad loud house episodes.. or at least in the honrable mentions. Good gravy this blew.

Kernel of Truth

Okay now we’ve panned the gold nugget out of the crap creek, we can get on with the GOOD episode this week. I was excited for this one.. I was excited for both actually, even not being a huge fan of the twins I liked the idea of a loud birthday but as we just saw,.. didn’t work out so good. But this one while I thought it would just be average, promised another lincrew shenanigan and I like most of those i’ve seen, and plus I knew it’d allow me to refrence anchorman a bunch so i was llike :Fuck it let’s go”.. and this one ended up being REALLY damn good and probably one of the best episodes with this group i’ve seen, right up there with “Be Stella My Heart.” I’ts good stuff. But before we get into it you probably noticed my ranting about girl jordan but turns out, while I haven’t watched that episode, she’s in the sand field trip episode from last season hanging out with stella so I have an answer to if they forgot abotu her, they didn’t they just need to use her more, and a new ship so i’m satisfied and I apologize for bitching about it. Next time i’ll just check the wiki and see before I bitch about something. ON with the review.

We open with our motely crew searching for a hidden Game Room rusty’s cousin claims exists, with Stellas as lookout and the guys.. er all in stacks that make it look like their doing a team up move from donkey kong country 2?

I mean I have been playing the game a lot since it came to switch online, seriously if you have the service go play it, but i’m not hte only one seeing this right? Right. So yeah the kid stack fails and Zach doubts Rusty’s story.. because when has rusty ever been right.. well apparently just this one time, but we’ll get to that. They even checked the boiler room.

And then promptly vowed never to go back to the boiler room while Principal RAmierz just sighed at having to deal with a freddy kruger infestation again. They loose more children that way and the school board JUST got him out of the high school. Liam also gets the line of the episodes when he calls the group “Fellas and Stellas” Which is just objectively amazing and needs to be used every time this group appares from now o. Luckily= Stella noticed another closed door, this one taped off instead of just with a keep out sign and the Fellas and Stellas make their way inside and find themselves in.. a news room! But it’s nto a fox news room so it actually had news in it once and not Tucker Carlson, the answer to what happens to an 80′s or 90′s yuppie scumbag villian after they fail to get the orphange paved over for condos

Anyway, our heroes alll ohhh and all while Zach thinks this is where children are harvested. Nah Zach they just call them up on the pa system.

So everyone does what’s natural to them: Zach and Liam inspect the cameras, Stella looks at the old mic because she’s a natural for being an on camera personality and Rusty.. oggles an old group shot of the news team. You know I may not hate him with the hatred of a hundred suns, but he’s still objectively the worst. Zach gets mad at him over it because “That’s my mom”. Rusty defends himself by calling her hot and while th. no please god no dont’ talk about women like that you creepy little weatherbeaten Chucky doll that somehow became a real boy, or had dustin diamond transfer his soul into it befrore he died. Either is possible. The point is Ewww. The other point is while Rusty’s being his usual living proof of while he’ll die alone Zach has no right to get upset , AT FIRST because how the hell would Rusty know that’s hsi mom. You two have the combined braincell of a dead feret. Stella is the only one out of all 6 of you evenmy boy liam who has more than one brain cell. This argument is stupid and I hate you both, just settle things in the most humane way possible.. or at least THIS is what I consider the most humane way possible.

So while those two are being as stupid as expected, Lincoln suggets fixing the place and becoming the new school news crew. I mean they’d need new equipment since even if the stuff there still works’ it’s all worn out 80′s tech none of you know how to use but given their seen with a modern camera later int he episode, I assume they just sold this off and got new cameras. Even if the show flopped, more on that in a minute, the principal could still use those for other projects so it’s a win win. Stella Zhau agrees.. and FINALLY has a last name. Like holy shit i’ve been waiting a full season for this and it feels like that bit was JUST to give her a last name. Now they just need to do Liam but still, I needed this one more. Plus it also means we can now firmly say she’s chinese. Neat!

So after that blockbuster reveal Stella wonders where Rusty is, because fuck if I know, and they all find him continuing to oggle zach’s mom at their age....

Zach snatches it away and crumples up understandably annoyed. Rusty’s response is about what you’d expect.

So once Liam’s done throwing that calender into the school furnace, and saying hi to freddy as he passes the boiler on the way, our team heads to the principal to plead their case. They run into Meryl, the identical in personality, plot function and apperance outside of wearing pink instead of yellow to Cheryl, the receptionest at the elementary school who I really liked and it’s a clever way to keep the character at both schools and pays off the runnig gag of Cheryl asking liincoln or clyde who looks better her or her sister by having said sister show up and ask the same. Good stuff.

Meryl ends up agreeing to let them go see the wizard, I mean Principal Rameriz, because her soap is on. Also clyde’s a fan to his friends blank stares. Come on guys he watches romance movies, of course he’s going to love drama shows, even the non teen ones. I now imagine he joins the loud sisters on their riverdale nights. Riverdale the clusterfuck that has something for all of them: Teen drama and shirtless hunks for Lori and Leni, Music and scantly clad “teens’ of both genders and neither gender for Luna, something to laugh at for Luann who probably loves mst3king stuff, and violence for Lucy.. dosen’t seem like it’d be Lynn’s thing honestly but I rest my case. Also the rest of the sisters are too young but the parents figure Lucy’s desentised enough to violence and blind enough to sex to make an exception.

Now that fun headcanons out of the way our heroes pitch the principal whose skeptical, as the 80′s news show ended because it was boring, much like why that 80′s show ended. That and it was a bunch of 80′s pop culture refrences strung together. I do have a minor nitpick that it seems odd a school room would be in disuse for this long, but given the Principal has apparently spent years looking for aformetioned game room as we find out in the end, the school blueprints are apparnelty lost to the ages or if they exist are some sort of ancient treasure map buried beneath the school drawn in blood by an old witch. I mean this universe has cherry hating peach loving spies now, i’ not ruling anything out.

But our heroes beg them: Clyde has journalism experince on the school paper, Stella has the dedication and heart and Rusty .. thinks people need to see his face on camera. Rusty as far as we know your face functions like the vdieo from the ring and everyone in school is going to die 7 days after seeing it on film. That’s my theroy and i’m sticking to it. Thankfully everyone else is just as annoyed with him as me for once, and we get the glorious shot above of everyone just looking.. done with his antics and wondering why they keep him around. Finally for once I agree iwth the characters on something rusty related. Let’s show that agian.

Poetry. You can just feel the levels of “So done with this crap” seeping from every poor.. except for Poor Lincoln who just wishes his best friends and rusty woudl stop using him as furniture, and Liam whose covered but probably very much on team “Rusty Stop Being Yourself your blowing this for us”. They even have an action news pose.. which is botha dorable and breaks the principal’s bust of herself, so she relucntantly agrees to get them out of there. Plus as I said there’s really no loss for her here. If their sucessful the school gets a new elective, something to put on the tv’s every morning, a way to do announcments so she dosen’t have to, and free good publicity for her next bonus. If not.. then she has somehwere to store her new cameras she can use for other stuff, and come up with something else to do with the media lab. Either way she wins. Plus iwth phones and stuff noawaydays they only need the one new camera. Okay before we move on confession time: I was on a school tv news show’s crew myself. Not in middle school, we werne’te that lucky but in high school we had video media, an elective where seniors edited news segments and what not for the school’s WhamTV program. I hope i’ts still around honestly. I started on a field crew doing stories but my awkardenss and a blow up at my partner where my awkward rage prone ass threatned him by accident, got me bumped to doing credits.. which I genuinely loved. I got to something fun, creative and unique, I was still part of hte intros every week, and I got plenty of time to goof off and watch videos. It’s how I found channel awesome and first got to watch atop the fourth wall since it wasn’t on youtube back then, back before you know, it turned out Doug was abusing all of them and younger me was just unaware of it. But it was still good times so this episode does feel a bit nostalgic for me. But enough teary eyed reminciings of ten years ago, back to the plot. Our heroes air their newscast. It’s the Middle School Action News with with your Anchors Lincoln Loud and Clyde McBride, Stella Zhao in the field, Rusty Spokes on Sports for.. some reason, Cameraman Liam Wedon’tknowhislastname and Zach Gurdle somewhere out of the way. Middle School Action News, always on, always free.. no wiat tha’ts pluto. Middle School Action News, Taste the rainbow. Middle School Action News.. The Good Guys Always Win, Even in The 80′s. Yeah that’ll do!

But yeah while our heroes try their best, and to their credit this does feel like a middle school news show. The writers not our heroes. Anyways Lincoln and Clyde banter and we get our first segment Stella trying to interview mr. Bohlmer about his birthday.. which goes about as well as doing anything for him on ron swansons’ birthday.

Next we have Rusty on sports.. which I questioned when I first say this but as obonxious as Rusty can be.. yeah this is the best place to have him. Stella has the drive and the talent to be their field reporter, Clyde and Lincoln have a lifelong report that does well for the desk, Liam is nice and patient enough for camera work, and Zach is a paranoid weirdo so he probably has experince editing since thats where I assume where he is since htey ddon’t do weather and even if they did Liam’s just not the right shade of oblivoiusly nuts.

I do however at least get why they keep him around as Rusty needs someone to get fed up with him.. but as the above moment showed Clyde and Stella can do that easily, as can Lincoln, so he really has no functional purpose other than as a B-Grade dale gribble. ANd I know kids don’t know who that is but they frankly deserve better. Seriously Zach...

Okay getting back to the segement. For starters Rusty does a breath spray first.. but suprisingly despite interviewing a lady, specifically Lynn, he DOSEN’T hit on her and is actually professional and manages to get a quote despite her disintrest. LIke I know it’s the bare minimum but you’ve met rusty right? the Bare Minimum is hard for him to grasp. Earlier this episode he was oggling old pictures of his friends mom and saying he should take it as a compliment which, Hard No. So the fact hours later he’s talking to a woman without radiating creep after that is an achivment. For him and him alone mind you, most kids should know better. But still I may be hard on the kid, because DAMN is it fun and damn if he dosen’t give me plenty of joke fodder, but I will give him credit even if it’s the bare minmum. Good job rust you passed the very basic plateau of human decency.

Stella wraps things up with a look at the cafteria that’s about what you’d expect from a kids cartoon, shoe int he beans etc. Unfortuantley bean shoes, sportz and angry assholes aren’t enough to float the show and the principal is ready to can it. On hte bright side they have their first lawsuit from Mr. Bohlmer. I mean John Olvier idnd’t start getting sued by dickheads with no real case till he was 30, nicely done kids. And it’s not even why, it’s just boring and the kids aren’t enjoying it. So Stella, being again the one with her own brain cells here, proposes to let them find a big story, and Ramirez reluctantly but graciously agrees. And that’s why I like her so far. Don’t get me wrong having Steven Tobolowsky as principal was great, but I like Rameriz better: she’s smart, weary of the crap she puts up with and tough but fair.. which is a cliche btu fits here: She’ll be honest with her kids but will give them an honest chance and sees our news team really doees want this bad and her giving htem one more day to find something actally intresting is more than fair. So our heroes spitball about what to do for news. LIam suggests alien because again he has about one character trait, so everyone tells him for hte last time no. I mean it isn’t much worse than his last suggestion.

So once agian it’s RUSTY who saves the day, bringing in beet snacks.. which he tries to get them not to stone him over over the fact the popcorn was all gone.. which okay 1) I get the show’s tring to be healthy so maybe ther’es not chips, but I have a hard time buying that there’s no Chez Its, snack packs or other goodies between “Popcorn’ and “something with beetz that only two men would eat” For the record those two men are Dwight Schrute, for obvious reasons, and this guy my boy Tony Chu.

I highly recommend this comic, Chew for the record, to anyone. Just.. anyone whose not a children it gets voilent, but it is sublime. We’re not here for that, but I thought i’d plug it. It also has a spinoff currently running, Chu, following his criminal sister. Also real good and dosen’t really spoil anything for hte main series thus far so you can hop in there instead. Either way your in for a ride. Back on topic, while Rusty failed with snacks he actually brings up a good point: The popcorn isn’t just gone because it’s late in the school day, but because as the kids notice, it’s just missing in general despite the trucks arriving. They have their story and head out to investigate. And suprisingly, unlike last week’s investigation they find something: A mysterious hooded figure bribing the driver for popcorn, and taking it off somewhere. They fail to catch her, as Rusty dives over her telling Liam to “Make sure you get this”.. he instead gets a shrub and video of him attacking a shrub. I’ts a good runner and shows the writers are leanring to use Rusty better. They take the footage to the principal, who is impresssed, but states they need to find out who dun it for the story to be complete which is fair enough. They stalk out the nexxt delivery time later that night, but find the drivers have been switched and the mystery person has fled to canada. Rusty once again tries catching her and fall sin the water. Liam once again responds with a cheerful “Don’t worry rusty I got it”.. okay this dynamic is honestly better than him and Zach: Cheerful oblivious Liam and scheming dumbass rusty. Why isn’t THIS the “Those Two Guys” dynamic in the group, honestly.

Anyways Lincoln is dispondent the next day as iwth no leads, they have no programa nd prepares to do a spider-man no more with his anchorsuit.. which okay 1) you can use that for other things man. Peter Parker can’t really use a spider-man suit for anything but spider-manning but you can use that suit for dates and dances and stuff. and 2).. whya re he and the clyde the only ones with outfits? I mean.. it’s clear from this episode there will be more school news stories nad it just looks weird that they get to play dressup in suits but the rest of the crew isn’t. Liam at leat is working the camera and Zach is Zach but rusty and Stella are field reporters. Field reporters, while not always, usually get nice suits too guys.

ANyways Lincoln finds something in the garbage. And not his sister this time, as Lana oscar the grouched it up lat episode in sadness. Which to be fair will be her future career mark my words. At least I think that’s a career. Anyways, our heros find a ferry ticket meaning whoever fled to Canada is in the building. They trail some popcorn from the ticket to the locked door from earlier, which Rusty, finishing the rule of three, tries knocking it down hwile Liam gets it. Stella, again proving to be the real hero of this tale, uses her hair as a lockpick. Is.. is there anythign this child can’t do? She and Marcy should swap notes sometime damn.

And the culprit is MERYL! She was using the popcorn for insulation to get a quite room to herself and begs the kids not to tell which. is the weaker part of the episode> We don’t have the investment in Meryl we do in Cheryl, and she did you know.. steal school property.. or at least buy it off under the table. But the kids being the sweet kids they are understandably, schemes or not don’t want her to loose her job, and agree to not tell on her even if they loose their show. And to their creid and what keeps this from sinking the episode Meryl is genuinely greatful for this gesture, and gives them the scoop. And as i’ve been mentioning turns out RUSTY WAS RIGHT. Yes Rusty. That Rusty. Was Right about something. The Game Room exists. They find it thorugh a hidden locker entrance and unlock it from the inside, with af lodo of viewers coming in. Granted at first I didn’t know why Meryl didn’t just use this room but then I thought “Oh yeah she’s a full grown adult and can’t fit in the entrance and i’m assuming it was locked from the other side to the rest of the school”. So the kids have a new hangout and as the principal joins them, they havea show! Turns out she’d been looking for this place for years.. and doesn’t turn it into something else. What a legend. She plays Air Hockey with Meryl, is there something going on there or are my shipping goggles acting up.. probably both. Anyways our heroes have genuine thanks, a fun new hangout at school, their own headquarters and their own news show. It’s a heck of a day but it’s no time to rest as Rusty tells them he has another tip and i’ts off... to pick up a broom to sweep up the gumball machine they knock over.. THEN they can go find the hot tub for the teachers lounge.

Final Thoughts: OH me mow, this was a great one. For one the main complaint I had I mentioned at Schooled! of it not feeling like Lincoln’s friends were given enough personality sometimes? Gone enitrely. Everyone except Clyde and Zach get a moment and Clyde is still fully present and has gotten several focus episodes at this point, while Zach again should just leave already. But the rest of them? All on form. Stella continues to prove her competence, energy and adorability, Rusty is not only actually useful for once but was actually really funny his episode. The gag with Zach’s mom was actually pretty hilarious, my jabs at him aside, and the runner of him trying to do some epic stunt, telling Liam to film it and then humiliating himself while his pal cheerfully tells him he got it is just great and Lincoln’s Spider-Man no more moment with his suit was both said and kinda funny and I love him and Clyde’s reporter outfits. It’s why I wanted everyone to have them, especially since this will be a recurring theme and looks to be a fun one. It was fun, creative, and took me back a decade. It was a REALLY damn good one and I’m glad I watched this one first, a true highlight of the series and a true good sign that the season can, even with some hiccups, will apparnetly have some REALLY great episodes on average even with the weaker ones. That’s it for this week... and somehow for loud house coverage as, for now, their doesn’t’t seem to be any new episodes in October, but that could change. Until then, follow this blog every Monday for regular ducktales coverage and come back in October for more loud house, more the Casagrandes and some spooky spooky fun Until then, Go team venture.

#The Loud House #Lincoln Loud #Lana Loud #Lola Loud #Clyde McBride #Stella Zhau #Liam #Zach Girdle #Rusty Spokes #Principal Rameriz #Meryl #Lynn Loud #Girl Jordan #Lynn Loud Sr #Rita Loud

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disasterdeacy · 5 years

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Forbidden Fruit Part Two

A/N: Here we go my dudes! I set myself a goal to get this out and posted by the 4th of July, so 2 days later isn’t too bad! Australia is amazing and I’m having a blast, but I’m still sorry this took a little long to get out to y’all! I might make a few more in this series, but as of right now this is the end of Forbidden Fruit! Thanks so much for reading and loving it, remember to reblog and comment, they genuinely make my whole day when I read them! Disclaimer: I do not own Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence Word Count: 7.2k Pairing: 1998!Brian May x Younger Reader Summary: The 4th of July has come to Windlesham, and Y/N is ready and fed up with Brian’s teasing. Willing to risk it all, the two mismatched lovers spend the day making their own fireworks while trying to avoid being caught. Warnings: Infidelity, Age Gap, 18+, Unsafe Use of Kitchen Furniture, Don’t Fuck Beside Food Plz, Definite FDA Violations

Brian had never seen as sight more beautiful that the one in front of him when he walked out of the patio door the next morning. Y/N was sat in the porch swing, a red sundress covering the body he’d spent the whole night dreaming of. Her hair was still a little damp from the shower he’d heard her take a few hours earlier. She was like him in that respect, last one to bed and first one to wake. The older man didn’t know if it was a normal occurrence, Y/N staying up until 4am, only to wake at 6:30, but he hoped that it wasn’t. Not because he was concerned for her health, which he was, but for much more selfish and indulgent reason. He hoped, desperately; almost pathetically, that Y/N had been kept awake with thoughts of him, just like he had been kept awake by thoughts of her. But not even in his wildest, most realistic dreams from the night before did the young woman look this beautiful. The sun hadn’t bene up for very long, only an hour tops, but the orange light was directly behind Y/N, casting her in an ethereal, seemingly heavenly light. Her arm was bent at the elbow, clenched fist supporting her head which was buried in a book. Her legs were also bent up beside her in the swing, tucked nicely under the fabric of her sundress. She just looked comfortable, relaxed.

Brian stood in the doorway, simply watching, no, admiring, the young woman in front of him. She looked so innocent, so much her age, no evidence of the actions from the night before present on her. If anyone outside of Brian had seen Y/N that morning, they’d just think that she was a beautiful, relaxed young woman...not the sexual temptress and goddess that Brian knew her to be. Y/N could feel Brian’s eyes on her, had been able to feel them since he had come out of the damn house and onto the patio. She didn’t want him to know that she knew he was watching her, she wanted to see how long it was going to take him to make a move. Brushing a damp strand of hair from her shoulder, Y/N sighs a little, adjusting herself so her legs are flat out in the swing, her dress riding up until it’s barely covering her thighs. She smiles a little into her hand when she hears Brian’s little intake of breath followed by the patio creaking a little under his feet as he makes his way to her. Only when he is standing directly in front of her does she tear her eyes away from her book, wide smile in her face as she takes in his appearance. He was dressed very similarly to how he’d looked the night before, black athletic shorts paired with a tank top of the same color.

“Good morning Mr. May, how did you sleep?” She knew exactly how he’d slept, she could hear him tossing and turning all night, much like she had. God, she just couldn’t get the image of him jerking off, his face buried in her panties, out of her head. Even if she couldn’t see it happening, she knew exactly what had happened when he’d come back down to the pool 20 minutes after she had left him, hair wet, dressed in pajama pants and a Bart Simpson t-shirt that looked vaguely familiar. The two hadn’t said another word to one another the rest of the night, Y/N electing to spend some time with Louisa and Emily, Brian locking himself in his studio, neither one wanting to risk a fumble in front of Anita or the kids. Brian laughs, moving her legs onto his lap as he takes the seat beside her, hazel eyes warm and gentle. “Morning love, would’ve slept better if you were beside me.” He leans over, pressing a kiss to her neck, his dark curls tickling the delicate skin.

Y/N almost drops her book at his actions, shock coursing through her body, mingling with excitement and arousal, creating a cocktail of moisture in between her legs. Sucking in a deep shuddering breath, just trying to steady herself, Y/N laughs gently, moving her head backwards to lay against the back of the swing, giving Brian permission to continue his ministrations. “Then why didn’t you come crawl into bed with me?” She knows its cheeky, a little bratty, and its just what Brian needed to hear based on the sigh he releases against her neck, arm moving to rest behind her, pulling her closer to him.

Picking up his head just a little, he brushes a bit of hair from her shoulder, smiling at the book in her hands.

“Read to me, if you don’t mind”

Brian’s words are as soft and gentle as his eyes, making Y/N blush harder than she had the night before. There was just something so intimate about the way he was sitting with her, arm loose around her shoulder, head nearly leaning against her’s. She couldn’t help but let out a little laugh at his eagerness, her heart fluttering like the hummingbird that had been keeping her company all morning.

“Are you sure? You might find this kind of book a little boring.” She’s teasing, knowing that the paragraph she was about to start reading was anything but boring.

His laugh mingles perfectly with the calls of a morning bird, making Y/N’s blush deepen as he places a delicate kiss to her shoulder blade, voice warm and teasing when he speaks. “If I’m not mistaken, this little book was banned for obscenity and indecency for 30 years darling…” His lips are suddenly less sweet, harder, needier… “So I sincerely doubt that this is going to be a boring read..”

He smirks into her neck, his own heart beating like a bat in a birdcage “Besides… if it means I get to hear your voice, I could listen to you read a phone book Y/N.” The way he says her name, barely a whisper, more of a plea to hear her voice than anything else. She blushes hard under his gaze and the feel of his lips on her skin, stammering a bit as she begins to read.

“His body was urgent against her, and she didn’t have the heart anymore to fight…” Her voice hitches in her throat, Brian’s teeth had decided to make an appearance as she started to read. “She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving. But her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs. She was giving way. She was giving up…” Brian’s hand inched its way from her knee upwards, grazing the delicate skin of her inner thigh.

“B-Brian, what are you…” Y/N trails off, voice breathless, eyes glassy with arousal. It’s not like she didn’t want this, god did she want it, but they were on his back porch, and his wife and kids, including her goddamn best friend, could just waltz out at any fucking moment… and she was pretty positive that seeing his father with his hands up his best friend’s skirt wouldn’t have the most positive impact on Jimmy. Brian chuckles into her neck, his calloused fingers dangerously close to her naked core… fuck, she really should’ve worn panties.

“I’m going to make you regret what you did last night baby girl… making me cum twice in less than 10 minutes.. giving me your soiled panties to sniff like a dirty fucking slut…” His voice is so calm, steady, and had it not been for the context of his words, Y/N would’ve thought that he was just asking what she wanted for breakfast.

“If you stop reading one more time, I’m not going to let you cum honey.. got it?” For a threat, it was whispered awfully soft and kind, but Y/N understood perfectly and just nodded her head, chest heaving, legs spreading involuntarily.

Her voice is shaky as she continues to read. “She had to lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal, while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches, watching her with haunted eyes…” Brian’s fingers are extremely close to her dripping core now, gently running along the crease of her inner thigh. It takes everything in her body, every single ounce of self-control and restraint in her body to keep her from ceasing her reading.

“He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her.” Brian moans at the words that Y/N was reading, how soft and weak her voice was. Fuck, she was the epitome of an angel, a creature sent to earth to bring good will to man, and based on the way his cock was training against his shorts, begging to be touched by the soft skin of Y/N’s hands.

“Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the last. But it was over too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her own conclusion with her own activity.” Y/N squeezes her eyes shut right when Brian’s fingers finally slip inside of her sopping wet cunt, the noise obscene and completely out of place against the soft morning glow that was cast against the two. She keeps reading though, the threat of Brian not letting her cum prevalent and weighing heavily in the back of her mind.

“This was different, different. She could do nothing. She could no longer harden and grip for her own satisfaction upon him. She could only wait, wait and moan in spirit and she felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and contracting, coming to the terrible moment when he would slip out of her and be gone.” Brian can’t help but let out a hard moan against Y/N’s neck, sucking the area behind her ear as hard as he possibly could, almost as hard as her cunt was clenching down on his fingers. She felt like heaven on a Saturday morning, tight, wet, insanely hot, and unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his 51 years of living. Her legs were completely spread wide, cunt on display for the whole world to see if they so pleased. Brian had to resist the insatiable urge to drop to his knees in front of the swing and suck the juices that were running down his hand straight from the source… but he knew he couldn’t do that, he couldn’t risk Anita or any of the kids running downstairs and seeing him eating Y/N’s young right pussy.. no, he had to be smart, disciplined..

“Whilst all her womb was open and soft, and softly clamouring, like a sea anenome under the tide, clamouring for him to come in again and make fulfillment for her.” Much like Lady Chatterly herself, Y/N was close, so desperately close to cumming around Brian’s fingers, her walls clenching him like a vice, desperate to be pushed over the precipice. Yet, she never stopped reading, even when Brian’s fingers sped up, free hand moving to grope her breast through her dress, and his teeth began to nip at her jugular, she persisted.

“She clung to him unconscious in passion, and he never quite slipped from her, and she felt the soft bud of him within her stirring, and strange rhythms flushing up into her with a strange rhythmic growing motion, swelling and swelling til it filled all her cleaving consciousness, and then began again the unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools of sensation swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and consciousness, til she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she lay there crying in unconscious inarticulate cri-” She clenched tight around his fingers, book falling to the ground as her arms reached over involuntarily, wrapping themselves tight around Brian’s shoulders, mouth wide no noise escaping her throat despite the obvious throws of pleasure she was experiencing. She knew it was cliche, to say that she saw stars, that she felt her entire body constrict into itself… but she did, his fingers were still inside of her, pressing hard into her g-spot, prolonging her pleasure. Brian’s lips halted their harsh assault on the young woman’s neck, instead opting to place gentle kisses to the area, not wanting to overstimulate her too much. He couldn’t remove his fingers from inside of her if he wanted to, her muscles still clenching him tight as her upper body went limp, her head dropping to his chest, mouth open and heaving heavy sighs against his exposed armpit.

“B-Brian.. I..” Before she could even get a word in, the sound of pots and pans clanging together in the kitchen caused the two lovers to spring apart, Brian’s fingers slipping from Y/N’s cunt so fast it made her head spin. By the grace of whatever deity was looking down on them, Y/N somehow managed to fix her skirt, grab the book, and look semi presentable by the time the door opened and Emily darted out, wide smile on her face.

“Dad! Y/N! Anita wants to know what you want for breakfast.” They both breathed a sigh of relief that it was only Emily, because had it been any other member of the May family, the flushed faces, heaving chests, and general disheveled appearance of Y/N and Brian would’ve given them away. Brian just smiles, hiding his glistening hand behind Y/N’s shoulders.

“Whatever she’s making would be lovely honey, just go tell her to make sure to cut Y/N up some of that cantaloupe we bought yesterday!” Emily giggles and nods, running back inside to yell her father’s words at his girlfriend. Y/N lets out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding in as soon as the door closes, dropping her book back against the patio as Brian lets out a loud rumbling laugh. She jolts at the sound before joining him, completely dumbfounded that what had just happened actually happened..

“Mr. May, I swear to god, we’re going to get caught if you’re not careful…” Her eyes are wide, full of mischief and excitement.. she loved this, the whole forbidden nature of their relationship, or whatever they could call it. The risk that they were taking was a big one, and the fear of getting caught was only making her want it more. Brian just laughs, leaning over to place a chaste kiss on her lips, hands moving to cup her cheeks. He winces a little when he realizes that his fingers are still wet with her cum, frantically pulling them away from her to try and wipe them on his shorts. “Shit, I’m sorry love, you probably don’t want that o-”

His words are cut short when Y/N reaches forward with lightning quick reflexes and grabs his wrist, pulling his soiled fingers into her mouth where she licks every single drop of herself from him, eyes never leaving his. Brian almost cums right there, watching this beautiful young woman do something that he hadn’t seen done in 30 years. He lets out a little whimper, making the young woman smile when she grazes her teeth over the long digits as she moves to stand, her free hand reaching into Brian’s shorts, squeezing his cock before turning her back and walking towards the patio door, pausing for a second to send him a teasing wink.

“Be a good boy today Mr. May…”

Breakfast passes relatively without incident, save for Y/N purposefully dropping a grape down her sundress, her eyes never leaving Brian’s as she pulled it from her bra, popping it into her mouth, allowing her fingers to run over her bottom lip as she pulled them from her mouth. Brian shifted uncomfortably in his seat, cock standing straight up in his shorts, the mesh fabric not exactly helping to keep his issue inconspicuous. It isn’t long after she takes the final bite of her cantalope that Y/N stands from her seat, smile on her face as she darts her eyes between every member of the family before landing firmly on Brian’s, mischief playing in them as she spots his crossed legs, a feeling of pride blossoming in her chest. “I’m going to go ahead and get the grill started if that’s okay Mr. May, wanna make sure that its nice and hot by the time we decide to lay everything down.” Her tone is light and polite, and to everyone else at the table might’ve seen like the innocent declaration of a young woman who just wanted to help out. However, Brian knew exactly what she wanted, could see the unspoken request in her eyes as she played with the delicate rings on her fingers. He was about to offer to come and help her, to make the excuse that he just didn’t want her to get burnt, until Emily shot out of her seat, latching herself to the older girl’s side, begging her to show her how to light the grill properly. Y//N tried to hide the disappointment on her face at the interruption, but she just slaps on a smile and wraps her arm around the younger girl’s shoulders. “Just promise you won’t stand too close to the fire okay? We don’t need you losing any eyebrows before school starts back.” Emily laughs and nods enthusiastically, pulling Y/N towards the door, not even giving her an opportunity to look back at Brian. The sight is one that makes him smile and laugh a little, Y/N was as kind and giving as she was h gorgeous, always giving his youngest daughter as much attention as she did his oldest. Jimmy laughed at the two, popping a strawberry in his mouth as he turned to his dad, eyebrows furrowing at the fond look on his face. He had noticed the way his best friend and dad interacted the afternoon before, the way his dad’s hands just couldn’t seem to leave Y’N’s waist after he pulled her from the pool, how they lingered on her back during dinner, how her eyes never left his during breakfast... hell, he would’ve been a complete dumbass if he hadn’t noticed the bright red flushed cheeks that adorned their faces when they returned from the patio that morning. The oldest May child knew that something wasn’t right, that something was going on between Brian and Y/N, but he trusted his best friend and his father, trusted them not to do something TOO scandalous. He wasn’t a naive idiot, he knew how his dad was, he knew about his proclivities, about his lifestyle. However, he also knew that Y/N wasn’t some lovestruck groupie. His best friend was smart, had a good head on her shoulders, and wouldn’t do anything that would potentially hurt herself or her friends and family. So, Jimmy keeps his mouth shut, munching on his breakfast as his dad clears his throat and pushes himself from the table. “I’m gonna go write up some emails before we start cooking.” Meanwhile, outside, Y/N and Emily were having the time of their lives lighting the grill. Anita, Louisa and Jimmy had joined them a few minutes after they’d first exited the house. Emily was currently brandishing the starter fluid, soaking the charcoal while Y/N laughed and held the matches tight to her chest. “Alright pyro, keep that up and we’re gonna blow the hot dogs into the stratosphere. The five of them stay outside for a bit longer, Y/N getting more and more restless with every second that passes. After a while, the young woman stands and announces that she’s going to head inside and start working on the ice cream, adamantly refusing any help, citing that it is a “secret family recipe”. The three May kids and Anita laugh at her antics, and wave her off, causing her to breathe a sigh of relief as she heads into the house. Making a bee line for the freezer, Y/N removes the bag of ice, cream, and milk before lying it all on the counter, dragging the machine she’d brought with her from York onto the counter beside the ingredients. Plugging in the machine, she pours all of the necessary items into the mixing cylinder, emptying the ice bag into the bucket before furrowing her brows, trying to find the rock salt that Jimmy had brought with them. Upstairs, Brian was actually genuinely trying to type up emails, however, his brain just wouldn’t allow him a moments peace, constantly showing him images of Y/N’s lust wracked body, writhing underneath him as he pounds into her tight young pussy, the noises obscene... He pushes his glasses off of his face, rubbing his hands over his eyes as he sighs. Just as he was about to say “fuck it” and pull out his already half hard cock, he hears a commotion in the kitchen and smiles. If lady luck was on his side, it would be Y/N standing in there, red sundress straps teasingly falling off of her shoulders. Pushing himself from his chair, he heads out of his office, which was conveniently located a few doors down from the kitchen, and rests his shoulder against the doorframe, cock hardening at the sight in front of him. Y/N was bent over looking in the cabinet beside oven, a noise of triumph falling from her lips as she spots the rock salt container, reaching forward to take it. Brian seizes his opportunity, moving forward before he can stop himself, arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her up into a standing position, his cock rubbing into her ass. The young woman lets out a small gasp of shock before it dissolves into one of pleasure when she realizes what was going on. “Mr. May, I-” She doesn’t even get to finish her sentence before his lips are on her neck, cock thrusting hard against her ass. “No love, no talking, not after that little show at breakfast this morning.” His voice is low, dangerous, and teasing. “Dropping grapes in your top, licking your spoon...made me get a fucking hard on right there at the table.” She lets out a breathy chuckle, proud of herself for having such an impact on him, but Brian didn’t find it funny at all. Moving his hand upwards, he grasps her throat tight, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to get her attention. “You think that’s funny do you love? Think its funny that you almost made me cum in my pants in front of Anita and the kids? God, you’re such a dirty little slut Y/N, and I’m gonna fuck you so hard today...gonna make you regret your little cheekiness..” Giving his hips one last thrust against her ass, Brian places a gentle kiss to her neck and unravels himself from her, just in time for Jimmy to come barreling through the door asking for the shrimp and veggie burgers. The grilling of the food took no time at all, with Anita, Louisa, Emily and Y/N staying inside the whole time fixing greek salad, potato salad, baked beans, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, green beans, and so much more. Before long, everyone is sat at the table, bellies full, plates empty, wide smiles on their faces. Y/N and Jimmy were joking around about one of the archaeology professors and trying to convince Louisa to go to York so they can get a better flat. This goes on for a good hour and a half before Brian gets tired of waiting and decides to move things along a little bit. Smirking, he slides off his flip flop and moves his foot under the table to rub against Y/N’s calf, causing her to choke a little on her Rekorderlig. Jimmy claps her on the back a few times, laughing out something about her having one too many. Y/N just laughs lightly, eyes meeting Brian’s in a kind of challenge which only causes his smirk to deepen and hands to grip the sides of his chair a little hard. Darting his eyes from Y/N’s to the kitchen window, he smiles widely when she nods and stands. “Ice cream should be done by now.” Her voice was light, not at all betraying the anxiety inside her as she stood up, hands brushing off the crumbs from her sundress. “Oh, I’ll give you a hand l-“ Anita didn’t even get the words out of her mouth before Brian had risen from his chair, a small smile on his face as he made his way over to Anita, pressing his hands into her shoulders gently, keeping her in her seat. “You’ve helped make every single thing on this table today, let me give Y/N a hand.” The younger woman had to physically stop herself from moaning out loud, bringing her thumb to her mouth and biting down just enough to cause her enough pain to keep her body from reacting outwardly to the way her internal organs were physically dissolving into a mushy mess. Instead, she smiles, an innocent wide eyed look overtaking her face as she gazed over at Brian, her hands clasped in front of her. “Oh, Mr. May, you don’t have to...” Brian just smiles at her, walking around the table, standing beside her before wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “You’re our guest, and you’ve lugged a 30 pound contraption from York to Surrey, just to make us ice cream Y/N. The least I can do is help you scoop it out into bowls.” He hopes it’s not obvious to the others, the way his eyes are burning with lust, the way his adam’s apple is bobbing up and down as he attempts to swallow back the moan threatening to escape at the bead of sweat running down the valley of her breasts. And while it might not be obvious to the rest of the May family, Y/N was all too familiar with the look that Brian was giving her. It was a look which caused heat to pool between her legs and wetness to coat her inner thighs, one that made her let out a shaky chuckle before heading towards the door, wanting to get away from Anita and the kids before she pushed him to the ground and rode him in front of them. Brian caught on to her not so subtle signal, and immediately followed after, holding the door open for the young woman, hand lingering on the lock for a split second before he decides not to go for it... he would just have to be careful. Y/N immediately goes over to the ice cream machine, her bottom lip pulled tightly into her mouth, teeth digging into the plump skin. She was trying desperately to not smile or moan out in anticipation, only wanting Brian to come over and fuck her like her life depended on it. She was trying to distract herself, not wanting to seem too overly eager, like he had been. Y/N wanted Brian to come to HER to show HER how badly he wanted her, and she didn’t have to wait long. As soon as she pulled out a bowl from the cabinet, Brian’s hands were on her hips, pulling her hard against his chest, his cock digging into her backside. It was so much like what had happened a few hours earlier, but now... now the two were going to fuck and be fucked, come hell or high water. Neither one of them had enough self restraint and care to even think about what would happen if someone walked in on them, the scandal that would ensue. They only cared about one thing, and one thing alone. Brian’s cock, sliding hard and fast into Y/N’s hot cunt. “M-Mr. May! P-please, I need your cock.. Please..” She didn’t usually beg, didn’t class herself as someone who would EVER beg, however, in this moment, the man she’d been lusting over for years standing behind her, cock hard and throbbing against her backside while his entire family sat a mere 10 feet away behind a door...she was willing to get on her goddamn hands and knees and kiss his feet if that’s what it took. Brian lets out a whimper in response to Y/N’s begging, and the way her ass was grinding into him. He’d wanted this since he’d pulled her out of the pool the day before, wanted to have her in his arms like this, completely at his mercy. Bending his head just slightly, Brian latches his lips to her neck, biting, kissing, sucking, doing absolutely anything he can to leave marks and claim her as his. Because that’s what he wanted, he wanted this young, gorgeous, intelligent, incredible young woman to be his and his alone. Consequences be damned, he’d never felt so much unbridled desire to be with someone before in his life, and he was going to do whatever it takes to make sure Y/N stayed with him. “We don’t have a lot of time, certainly not enough time for me to do all the things I want to you..” He trails off, his heart leaping a little when she leans back and rests her head on his shoulder, her own lips moving to the delicate skin of his neck. “B-but I need to fuck you Y/N. I need to feel your right cunt pulsing around my cock. Fuck honey, I need this like I need fucking air, and I want to make you f-feel so good.” His words go straight to Y/N’s cunt, causing her to let out a little moan against his neck. “Then fuck me Brian, fill me up with your cum baby, wanna feel it filling me up.” She had never allowed a man to cum inside of her before, but at this point she didn’t fucking care. “Fuck honey, you can’t tell me things like that...” Bringing his shaky hands to the hem of her dress, Brian pushes it up around her waist, groaning loudly when he sees her bare ass. “No panties? Did you plan this honey? Did you fantasize about me bending you over against this counter,” To drive in his words, he presses her against the countertop, pushing her face into the cool marble. “Pushing my cock inside your tight young cunt while my children and partner sit outside and eat the food that we made especially for you..” While talking, he’s pushing down his pants, just far enough so that he can get his cock out and fuck her properly. Y/N’s hands are tightly gripping the corner of the counter, her eyes trained on the window in front of her. She could see the entire patio, the way Anita was silently eating her salad while Jimmy and Louisa threw pieces of hot dog bun at Emily. “B-Brian, they’re gonna s-see us.” Her voice wasn’t scared or timid, but breathy and full of anticipation. She wanted them to see, or at least she wanted to be able to see THEM while Brian pounded into her relentlessly. The older man just chuckles, leaning over to place a kiss on her exposed shoulder blades. “Let them see love... let them see how fucking hard I am for you Y/N.” He grips the base of his cock, slapping it hard on her exposed entrance causing both of them to groan at the feeling. “I haven’t been able to get this hard, this many times, in 5 years darling... and it’s all because of you.” He pulls her ass hard against him, groaning almost pathetically when she grinds into him eagerly, a gentle moan falling from her red bitten lips. “Please Mr. May... need t-to feel you inside of me now..” She isn’t embarrassed at how needy and wanton she sounds, loving the way her words and moans cause his cock to twitch against her. “You’re so fucking needy for me honey, so desperate for my cock.” Through gritted teeth he speaks and slowly guides himself into her hot and wet center, causing her to gasp as she feels the delicious stretch of his cock inside of her for the first, and certainly not last, time. His calloused fingertips are hard as they dig into her hips, giving him the leverage he needs so that he can thrust into her as hard and fast as they both needed She grasps hold of the windowsill, having decided that the countertop just wasn’t giving her the necessary grounding that she needed to keep up with his hips. “M-Mr. M-May, you feel so fucking good inside of me! Goddamnit, stretching me so good..” His arms come up, wrapping around her waist as he pulls her upwards until her back is firmly pressed against his chest. He can barely think straight, his cock sliding in and out of her so fast that he’s glad the ice cream maker is still going, because the sounds from their skin slapping against one another hard and fast... it would draw attention. “God, you’re bloody perfect angel... s-such a tight, b-beautiful pussy!” He moans, his pace beginning to hasten, his breath hot on her ear, his teeth nibbling gently on the lobe. Loosening one of his hand’s hold on Y/N’s waist, he lets it fall toward her pussy, his fingertips finding her clit immediately. He doesn’t waste a single second of time, his orgasm is already approaching, and he refuses to cum first. Y/N whimpers as he plays with her with one hand, the other coming up to hold her by the throat, just keeping her pressed to his chest, not wanting her to fall against the counter. His hold is gentle but firm against her throat, and she tilts her chin enough for her to place her head into the crook of his neck, but it isn’t there for long. Brian moves his hand up a bit more, grasping her chin gently, forcing her to look out of the window at his family. “You like knowing that I’m fucking you in my kitchen while my family sits outside? Look at them Y/N.. look at how happy and excited they are out there, waiting for their ice cream...” She whimpers, head trying desperately to fall back against his shoulder, but Brian won’t let that happen. “But here we are, my cock buried deep in your weeping little cunt, completely ignoring them.. god Y/N I would leave my partner if 12 years for you, to have this cunt in my life for the rest of time..” His words shock him a little, but he means them. He and Anita had been having some issues for quite some time, and this, whatever it was with his son’s best friend, just solidified the fact that his romantic relationship with her was over. Y/N is also a little shocked at his words, but the pleasure building inside her belly knocks the words she was going to say right out of her head. Instead, she rather pathetically whimpers out, “I’m almost there! B-Brian.. Please!” Her hips are moving hard, rolling to meet his own impatient thrusts. His fingers moving faster against her clit as she jerks her head from his grasp, turning around quickly and wrapping a leg around his waist, propping the other on the counter top. She knows she’s going to be sore as all fuck in the morning, but the way the angle changes sends her into an earth shattering orgasm. Brian’s eyes widen at her movements, and the way her hips never leave his, how his cock unsheathes from inside her cunt. Whimpering himself, he tightens his grasp on her waist, pulling her as close as he can against him as he pounds into her. “Cum for me Y/N, p-please honey, I wanna feel you l-let go against me..” His teeth are gently nipping at her ear as she breathlessly moans out his name, mouth falling open when he latches his lips against hers, tongue slipping in uninvited but not unwelcome. “Go on love, let go... please!” His voice is desperate against her lips, weak and pathetic. He’s so close, so painfully close to painting her walls with his cum, his fingers moving against her clit at the same breakneck speed as his hips slamming into her. She doesn’t need any other encouragement, her breath hitching in her throat as she sobs out a moan that sounds vaguely like Brian’s name, shuttering against him as he whimpers into her mouth. Feeling her clenching down like a vice on his cock, feeling the tears of pleasure run down her face, it sends Brian over the edge into the most intense and blinding orgasm he’s had in decades. His cock throbs and spurts wave after wave of white hot cum into her waiting cunt. His thrusts start to slow just slightly as the both of them ride out the high that washes over them like a goddamn cold bucket of water, his hand moving from her clit to join his other one grasping her hips. He groans and she moans into his hair as she tries catch her breath, but with his cock still moving in and out of her sensitive cunt it’s almost impossible. “B-Bri.. c-can you s-“ Before she can even get the words out, he’s slid out of her quivering cunt, causing her to let out a gasp of shock at the sudden emptiness she feels, and the abruptness at which he’s just left her. “Wh-“ She furrows her brows, but upon hearing the patio door open, her eyes widen and she hastily throws her sundress over her lap, moving to stand beside the ice cream maker, bowl in her hand as she looks over into the mixer, back turned to whoever has just entered. “Now what’s taking the two of you so long? You’ve got three very sugar deprived children outside waiting!” Anita’s voice is light and full of amusement, and Y/N sucks in a shaky breath before letting out a little laugh, not daring to turn around as she speaks. “Oh! It just needed a few more minutes to get nice and thick. Should be ready any second now!” Brian has propped himself up on the counter beside Y/N and the ice cream maker, elbows propped up against his knees in an attempt to disguise the still half hard cock he had just managed to get back into his shorts when Anita had opened the door. God, he was eternally grateful for looking out the window when he did. “You go on back out and we’ll take care of the sweets doll.” His tone is light and not at all betraying the actions he’d just been involved in not even 30 seconds earlier. Anita smiles at them and nods her head, heading back out the door, telling Emily, Jimmy and Louisa that it would just be a couple more minutes. The sound of the door closing causes Y/N and Brian to both let out loud sighs of relief, the two lover’s eyes meeting for a second before they dissolve into a fit of laughter. Brian hops off the counter, wrapping his arms around the younger woman, his head resting against her shoulder as she threads her hands through his hair. Y/N couldn’t believe that she’d just done that... that she had fucked Brian May, her best friend’s father, against the counter in his goddamn kitchen while his partner and children ate basically in the next room. “Jesus fuck Brian, that was too close for comfort.” Her words are a bit shaky, the gravity of the situation crashing down on her. She didn’t want to ruin a family, and she certainly didn’t want to lose Jimmy, but... whatever she was feeling for Brian was more than just lust, and she knew that. Plus, what he had said to her about leaving Anita.. that was probably just heat of the moment words, but she couldn’t help but think otherwise.. Brian laughs lightly, sitting up just enough to look into her eyes. “We’ll just have to be more careful next time then won’t we..” He brushes his hand through her hair, eyes gentle, a small smile on his face when he sees the shock on her face. “N-next time?” Her brows furrow, butterflies erupting in her stomach at the possibility that he wanted the same thing she did... to keep this going for as long as possible. Leaning down, Brian places a deep and finalizing kiss to Y/N’s lips, his hands cupping her cheeks, her’s moving up to hold his gently. The kiss said more than he ever could, that he wanted this, wanted her, it confirmed to Y/N that she was getting into something bigger than herself, and that she was about to enter into a world of insanity and secrecy. She couldn’t wait. Brian pulls away from her just a little, smiling as he rakes his eyes over her figure, taking in a shuttering breath when he sees the white liquid that he’d squirted into her a few moments earlier, running down her leg. Dropping to his knees without a second thought while Y/N begins to scoop the ice cream into bowls, Brian licks a stripe from her calf up to her cunt, sucking up every single drop of his cum that had managed to escape her pussy. Y/N is completely unprepared for the sudden feeling of his mouth against her sensitive cunt, moaning lightly as he cleans her. Placing a delicate kiss to her clit, he pulls away after he was certain that she was as clean as she could possibly be, aka clean enough that she wouldn’t drip in front of the kids or Anita. Brian drops a kiss to her nose before turning to the ice cream bowls on the counter, taking a bite of the creamy frozen vanilla treat, moaning at the taste, his eyes never leaving Y/N’s lust blown ones. Smirking, he takes 4 of the bowls from the counter, leaning in to drop a kiss to her lips before moving to whisper in her ear.

“You’re sweeter.”

Tags: @meddows-taylors @doubledeaky @toomuchlove-willkillyou @rogerina-deacon @leah-halliwell92 @goodoldfashioned-rogerboy @brianmayoucease @rogertaylors-lipgloss @mariekuuuuuh @unofficialbillnye @stephydearestxo @danamaleksworld @dereones98 @glasgowkisschelseasmile @awkwardangelshezza @bellamy1998 @psychosupernatural @warren-lauren @womanwithahotdogstand @oujiacallme @simonedk @ellywritesfics @queen-see-ya-in-valhalla @sam-mercurry-sixx @toomuchtellyneck @asgardianvamp21 @crazylittlethingcalledobsession @amore-libre @marvelstuck @softboydeacon @a-queen-on-her-throne @horrorsinwonderland @roger-bang-the-drum @frannyxc @mrsmazzellotaylor @reedusteinrambles @drowseoftaylor

#brian may x reader #brian may #queen #bohemian rhapsody #1998 Brian May #my writing #brian may x you #brian may x oc #series #brian may fanfiction #queen x you #brian may imagine #queen x reader #queen imagine

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kob131 · 5 years

Note

[youtube(.)com/watch?v=y4DPZGlNP8I]

“If you’re just here to disagree with the title and shit on me or read the title and are coming here for confirmation bias, I’m sorry to say neither of those is happening.”

Well then, considering my goal here is to just have SOME kind of intellectual take: Then I shouldn’t have a problem. Especially since not only do I have a low opinion of certain cites for only having circlejerking around RWBY (looking at you Crunchyroll) and have attacked RWBY properties before (see my adamant refusal to buy Grimm Eclipse and my INTENSE dislike of the RWBY comics). So I can't be classified as a fanboy or a hater.

“*laughs at the Jaune haircut*”

MangaKamen, everyone has mocked the haircut. I’ve seen plenty of funny memes about it. This is just mildly annoying.

“*Calls the writing trash*”

Yeah I’d take that as any indication of quality except that you’ve missed the point about the show NUMEROUS times in the past, like shows with the same writing and follow FatManFalling (AKA a known liar about RWBY.) So that means nothing to me.

“I think it’s good to discuss my issues with the show.”

You already have. Numerous times. Why not just discuss it in general so people like me can get where you are coming from instead of just the issues?

‘Well people already praise the show a lot.’

And people bash the show a lot too. That’s why it’s good to discuss BOTH sides of your view on the show.

“I still don’t like RWBY as a whole”

No shit. Why would your opinion on the show as a whole change from this one Volume? I still love the Simpsons, doesn’t mean I don’t hate the newer seasons. This isn’t shocking, this is 100% logical.

Can we please talk about the new Volume?

“Something something copyright claim.”

Let me go ahead and borrow a meme from M.K.-

GET TO THE POINT!

Seriously, I’m just here to judge your analysis. This stuff is just annoying me and making me think you might have a vendetta against the company which would affect your opinion.

“Contrivince: Robyn is dumb for going out on missions which would allow the government to shoot her or her competitors to attack her.”

... MangaKamen, if the government shoots an anti-establishment candidate, they risk an uprising while making that persona martyr. Same thing with competitors.

It’d be the equivalent of assassinating someone by strapping dynamite to your chest. Yes it might work but you’re more fucked.

Also, you’re a fan of JoJo as indicated by the Pillar Man theme you used before right? Well, how many times should a protagonist have been killed by their enemies only to just conveniently pull out a new power or something to save themselves? Like with Kakayoin Vs. Death 13. That battle is built on the contrivance that Death 13′s Stand can lock out other people’s stands in their dreams because ‘their soul is unguarded’ but it can’t do that if said Stand was also summoned before sleeping (even though Stands have never been able to manifest if their owners are not conscious.) That’s about 3 contrivances in one battle, let alone some of the more major stuff like Jotaro and DIO having the EXACT SAME Stand ability (without foreshadowing and contradicting previously stablished Stand abilities.)

See this is why I want to hear your WHOLE story. If you explained that the strengths of the show don’t do it for you (like they do with JoJo): then I’d understand. Media is based on exchanging suspension of disbelief for appeal. But without that context, your arguments just look hypocritical.

“Robyn’s image should be ruined because she is stealing from the government.”

Except that Mantle sees Atlas as corrupt and uncaring, thus justifying Robyn’s actions in their eyes. Jesus Kamen, we can observe this in real life (90% of the Democrat candidate’s platforms are built on this.) Did you just forget that about Mantle and Atlas or what?

“Why are we just staring at each other? I dunno, just to look cool? *also shows Weiss’ head bobbing up and down and her mouth moving while she’s talking.*”

*sighs*

Before you say. ‘Well this is just a joke!’-

When someone makes a joke about hating a certain group of people or a similar target: we know the joke is predicated on you thinking that group or such is bad. For a less controversial example, I can make the joke: “Lol Tommy Wiseau’s basically an alien!” Yes it is a joke but you’ll still find it funny under the pretense of insulting him. And there’s really no other way to interpret the joke in the context that its suppose to be funny.

Why did you put that there MangaKamen? You ACKNOWLEDGE that you’ll have issues from the RWBY fandom so why are you making jokes that do not work unless interpreted in a way that hurts you?

“If you’ve been keeping up with the show then you know EXACTLY where I’m gonna go with this!”

*shows off a pile of beaten up bodies*

Yeah, wanna see how you fare?

“Penny is seen as the guardian of Atlas-”

Mantle.

That distinction is VERY important.

Why?

A.) Mantle is not the same as Atlas. The people of Mantle in fact HATE Atlas a lot. It’s kind of like the Forsworn Vs. The Nords in Skyrim: They technically live in the same area but are at odds with one another.

B.) Penny was given that job by Ironwood, a native to Atlas and is often shown to not understand Mantle’s issues as well as widely disliked by Mantle.

And C.) No one in Mantle is ever shown talking positively about Penny, unlike say Robyn. No one is shown to treat Penny as their guardian.

You’re about to imply that ‘Because Penny is established as the guardian of Atlas, no one would possibly believe that she killed people!’ but everything the show SHOWS us imply the opposite: they’d believe Ironwood used Penny to suppress them and try to kill their supposed leader.]

First step into this argument and you already made a fatal mistake.

“There’s security checking for these things!”

And your proof that Tyrian went through the security? That he didn’t simply slip into the crowd when it was filling up? Something he’s easily shown to do due to his stealth?

... None?

Good to see your MatPat impression is still as good as ever.

“Fanaus have night vision!”

[Pyrrha: "No, I have the answer! It's night vision. Many Faunus are known to have nearly-perfect sight in the dark." (Cardin growls at the correct response)]

-Jaunedice Pt.1

Many. Not All. Many.

It took me five seconds to look this up. rwby episodes-Episodes on the RWBY wiki-Jaunedice Pt.1

I expect you to be able to do the same.

Strike 2.

“Plenty of people have thought of this factor on YouTube-”

You mean the same platform with CinemaSins and Matpat?

Yeah, not helping your case.

“No one thought to pull out their scrolls when people started screaming?!”

A cellphone flashlight can barely illuminate a dark drawer, let alone a pitch black auditorium-sized warehouse. Even then, this all took place within a couple of minutes and people are screaming. Panic tends to shut down parts of people’s brains. Even then, who is shown to have scrolls in this scene? ... No one?

So not only would it not help with the darkness, not only would people not think about it in such a situation as they’d be more concerned with fight or flight but the poor as shit Mantle population might not even HAVE commonplace scrolls.

Strike 3. You’re done.

You’d get on the case of anyone else presenting points like these to a piece of media you like. You’ve done it numerous times with MatPat alone.

By your own standards, you’ve failed to make any sort of case.

I don’t care if it’s ‘just an opinion.’ You still need to base it off of objectivity in order to have a point. You did not. Therefore, you matter as much to me as a Game Theory fanboy does to you.

And before you get on my case and call me a RWBY fanboy: there’s a channel by the name of Th3Birdman who tackles CinemaSins videos and shows why they are wrong. As I have indicated before, I do not like CinemaSins. Therefore, I would like this channel correct?

No. This channel suffers from many of the same issues they call out in CinemaSins, Padding sin counts, sinning jokes, making annoying noises, ignoring evidence, political bias- They are just as guilty.

Same with you. My issue isn’t ‘you’re calling out something I like’- It’s ‘you’re breaking your own standards instead of abiding by them.’

Try again when you be consistent.

13 notes · View notes

eddycurrents · 5 years

Photo

For the week of 7 October 2019

Quick Bits:

Batman & The Outsiders #6 concludes “Lesser Gods” from Bryan Hill, Dexter Soy, Veronica Gandini, and Clayton Cowles. We get another “Batman’s doing something naughty” hint as Ishmael and co attempt to turn Cass and Duke to Ra’s al Ghul’s cause. This is less a hard end than a twist to lead into what might be coming next.

| Published by DC Comics

Black Hammer / Justice League: Hammer of Justice #4 gives us an explanation for what the Stranger did to zap the heroes across their respective realities, even as the more hot-headed Justice League members continue to cause problems on DC’s Earth. I’m still loving the eerie darkness that Michael Walsh is bringing to the art. It keeps it more consistent with the feel established by Dean Ormston and Dave Stewart, making it feel more like a Black Hammer story.

| Published by Dark Horse & DC Comics

Blade Runner 2019 #4 concludes the first arc. Michael Green, Mike Johnson, Andres Guinaldo, Marco Lesko, and Jim Campbell have done a great job capturing the overall feel of the Blade Runner franchise and it pays off here with one hell of a harrowing end, with a nice twist for what’s to come.

| Published by Titan

Buffy + Angel: Hellmouth #1 begins the event in earnest, even though you really do need to read the prelude issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to get the real first part of this story, from Jordie Bellaire, Jeremy Lambert, Eleonora Carlini, Cris Peter, and Ed Dukeshire. It’s good. As Spike and Dru’s first step in opening the Hellmouth causes havoc through Sunnydale, Buffy and Angel team up to try to stop what’s coming next.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Catwoman #16 has some truly stunning, beautiful artwork from Joëlle Jones and Laura Allred. It might also have a huge change on Selina’s status. Though, how exactly it fits in with “City of Bane” or anything else is anyone’s guess. Still, very nice artwork.

| Published by DC Comics

Coffin Bound #3 is even darker and more disturbing than what we’ve seen in the first two issues, going deep into some of Izzy and Cassandra’s past, while Cassandra’s sister learns how to be a peeler. Dan Watters, Dani, Brad Simpson, and Aditya Bidikar are doing something very different with this series.

| Published by Image

Collapser #4 feels like both a test and a turning point for Liam, one that almost seems like he failed. Liam’s new manager turns out to be a “Star Person”, and it feels like she’s leading him into temptation, as we seemingly can’t trust what we see. Mikey Way, Shaun Simon, Ilias Kyriazis, Cris Peter, and Simon Bowland are continuing to delivering one of the best, strangest trips out there.

| Published by DC Comics / Young Animal

Contagion #2 keeps this largely street-level, only reaching out to the Avengers as more or less support for the moment, as Iron Fist tries to deal with further eruptions of the contagion. Ed Brisson, Stephen Segovia, Veronica Gandini, and Cory Petit certainly make this feel grim as everything continues to go wrong.

| Published by Marvel

Detective Comics #1013 reveals more of what Mister Freeze has been up to, pushing some rather disturbing experiments as he continues to try to find a cure for his wife. Including a rather troubling cliffhanger that looks like it might upend a lot of what we think we know about Freeze’s situation. Very entertaining story here from Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Keith Champagne, Christian Alamy, David Baron, and Rob Leigh.

| Published by DC Comics

Doctor Doom #1 is an offbeat debut from Christopher Cantwell, Salvador Larroca, Guru e-FX, and Cory Petit. While it shows us some of the day to day runnings Doom does for Latveria, it sets up a mystery as his countries missiles and more launch an attack on a moon project designed to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Nice bits of humour in this one.

| Published by Marvel

Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Terror - Season Two #1 is a welcome return of this series, with a fun lead story playing through many of Poe’s luminary tales in “The Tell-Tale Black Cask of Usher” from Dean Motter, Alex Ogle, and Julie Barclay. Really great seeing new work from Motter. This issue is rounded out by the usual poetry, prose pieces, and the return of Hunt Emerson’s Black Cat.

| Published by Ahoy

Event Leviathan #5 works further at the identity of Leviathan, throwing a few more suspects on the fire, along with the possible death of an important character. Also, you’re probably never going to guess who this issue points at being Leviathan. Gorgeous artwork from Alex Maleev as always.

| Published by DC Comics

The Flash #80 continues to dismantle the new forces and characters built up recently as Zoom and the Black Flash separately try to eliminate the force users. Great art here from Scott Kolins and Luis Guerrero. Kolins is the perfect choice to usher in this next stage in Zolomon’s story.

| Published by DC Comics

Gotham City Monsters #2 is even better than the first issue, working through Melmoth’s resurrection and gathering the team with invested purpose to bring about his end. There’s also added depth in that Melmoth may very well be right about part of his plan, just not necessarily in his execution. It could add some modicum of moral quandary depending on which way this goes. Steve Orlando, Amancay Nahuelpan, Trish Mulvihill, and Tom Napolitano are doing some very nice work here.

| Published by DC Comics

Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy #2 continues the confrontation with Woodrue, building on elements from Justice League Dark, even as something is very, very wrong with Poison Ivy. There’s a more refined, controlled humour here than what we see in the Harley Quinn series itself and it seems to fit the more serious tone of the subject matter. I’m really liking the art from Adriano Melo, Mark Morales, and Hi-Fi.

| Published by DC Comics

Hawkman #17 brings Carter’s battle with the Shadow Thief to a close, but he takes a turn for the worse as the title runs deeper into the “Year of the Villain” event and the fallout from The Batman Who Laugh’s infected. It’s interesting how Robert Venditti, Pat Olliffe, Tom Palmer, Jeremiah Skipper, and Richard Starkings & Comicraft deal with these multiple spinning plates. Especially that very nice cliffhanger.

| Published by DC Comics

Ice Cream Man #15 is one of the stranger issues, which is really saying a bit considering that the series itself is regularly very strange. It’s dark, with a protagonist who seems to be suffering a psychotic break. W. Maxwell Prince, Martín Morazzo, Chris O’Halloran, and Good Old Neon continue to work magic with this horror series.

| Published by Image

Invaders #10 continues “Dead in the Water” from Chip Zdarsky, Carlos Magno, Butch Guice, Alex Guimarães, and Travis Lanham. Some interesting complications here as Roxxon is further added to the mix and Roman starts making more problems for Atlantis. A really nice set up for something new from Steve and Namor too.

| Published by Marvel

Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity #1, like Harleen #1 before it, surprised me. There’s a current saturation of Joker and Harley Quinn stories at the moment, spurred on by the movies, and it kind of tempers expectations. Thankfully, though, the start to this story from Kami Garcia, Mico Suayan, Mike Mayhew, and Richard Starkings is really rather good. It sets Harley as a criminal profiler, trying to figure out Joker’s murders, really getting inside this new take on her character and developing a more grounded crime thriller. The art from Mico Suayan is gorgeous, presented in greyscale, in contrast to the full-colour, photo reference of Mike Mayhew for flashbacks. I thought it was an interesting choice to present it that way, bucking convention for the flashbacks taking on a faded appearance. It gives the overall story a grittier feel for the present.

| Published by DC Comics - Black Label

Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Allegiance #1 is kind of a slow start to this intermediary step between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker from Ethan Sacks, Luke Ross, Lee Loughridge, and Clayton Cowles. There’s an interesting bit of showing just how evil the First Order really is, but a lot of what we get here is a regathering of the team. Gorgeous artwork from Ross and Loughridge.

| Published by Marvel

Justice League Odyssey #14 sees Dan Abnett, Chriscross, Cliff Richards, Le Beau Underwood, Danny Miki, Scott Hanna, Rain Beredo, Pete Pantazis, and AndWorld Design keep building this new team to confront Darkseid and his “new gods”. I really quite like the inversion of what we saw at the beginning, as Jessica Cruz is now working with villains attempting to do something heroic. We also get a reveal of Okkult, who is probably who everyone thought he was in the first place.

| Published by DC Comics

Livewire #11 gets at a point that was seemingly dropped in the wake of Harbinger Wars 2 in what the US government and their arms-length black ops group did in the Massacre, of how problematic rounding up and murdering a group of people are via American laws. I love that Vita Ayala, Tana Ford, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Saida Temofonte pick it up here and incorporate it into another angle for this political warfare.

| Published by Valiant

Loki #4 concludes “The God Who Fell to Earth” and Loki’s conflict with Nightmare in fairly inventive fashion. Daniel Kibblesmith has been delivering some fairly interesting ideas here while planting more seeds for different permutations.

| Published by Marvel

Oliver #4 was well worth the wait. Gary Whitta, Darick Robertson, Diego Rodriguez, and Simon Bowland pack this confrontation full of action, with some absolutely beautiful artwork from Robertson and Rodriguez. Some very harrowing character moments as the story takes its next turn.

| Published by Image

Outer Darkness #11 is insanely good as John Layman, Afu Chan, and Pat Brosseau give us the first part of the two-part “season finale” to the series. The crew take shore leave as Rigg goes about interviewing what we think are replacement crew and a meeting with his superior, and then...well, you’re really going to have to read this issue. Great stuff.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Pretty Deadly: The Rat #2 is magnificent, delving into more of the existing mythology from the previous volumes, while still continuing on the new narrative for this era that started last issue. The repeated incorporation of visual motifs inspired by the film industry is a very nice touch. Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles are giving us a very compelling mystery here.

| Published by Image

Ronin Island #7 pushes the bandits and the Shogun into confrontation and...none of it goes exactly to Kenichi’s plan. Greg Pak, Giannis Milonogiannis, Irma Kniivila, and Simon Bowland continue to unfold this story in interesting ways, while Hana and Kenichi’s childhood lessons come back to both haunt and empower them.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Shoplifters Will Be Liquidated #1 is an interesting debut from Patrick Kindlon, Stefano Simeone, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. Set within a rather expansive big box store, it presents an extreme look at consumer culture and the lengths that this store’s loss prevention staff goes to in order to get their man. It’s rather cutthroat, literally.

| Published by AfterShock

Sonata #5 unveils a bit more about the planet and the Lumani, revealing an interesting depth to their technology that’s seemingly been abandoned and their method of reproduction. Mixing that in with the action of trying to save members of the two colonizers in conflict keeps the pace moving along. Gorgeous artwork from Brian Haberlin and Geirrod Van Dyke.

| Published by Image / Shadowline

Spawn #301 continues the story and structure of #300, with Todd McFarlane, Greg Capullo, Jason Shawn Alexander, Clayton Crain, Jerome Opeña, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia, Peter Steigerwald, Matt Hollingsworth, John Rauch, Greg Menzie, Jay Fotos, and Tom Orzechowski breaking it down into numerous chapters, dealing with the various different elements. Some interesting new characters revealed again, even though we only get a bit about them.

| Published by Image

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order - Dark Temple #3 reveals a few more secrets in the past, even as the Inquisitor searches for them in the present. Gorgeous artwork from Paolo Villanelli and Arif Prianto. It definitely feels like something weird is going on here.

| Published by Marvel

Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader’s Castle #2 is another great entry into this series, with a central story illustrated this time by Kelley Jones and Michelle Madsen. It’s a wonderful monster story with one of Tarkin’s experiments, showing us what really makes up a monster.

| Published by IDW

Supergirl #35 sees Marc Andreyko, Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, FCO Plascencia, and Tom Napolitano juggling about as many plates as they are over in Hawkman. There’s “Year of the Villain” stuff and a rather deep tie-in to Event Leviathan as Leviathan makes a pitch for Kara to join him.

| Published by DC Comics

Superman #16 reunites Jon and Damian one last time before Jon heads off to join the Legion in the future, from Brian Michael Bendis, David Lafuente, Paul Mounts, and Dave Sharpe. It’s a fun, heartfelt send-off with some very funny moments, including a renaming of Leviathan that will hopefully stick.

| Published by DC Comics

These Savage Shores #5 brings an end to one of the most beautifully told stories in comics in the past few years. Ram V, Sumit Kumar, Vittorio Astone, and Aditya Bidikar have done an incredible thing with this story, giving new depth and nuance to tragic romance and the vampire story. This conclusion is heartrending as we see how far Bishan will go for love, in an epic confrontation between vampire and raakshas. Everyone owes it to themselves to read this series. Simply phenomenal.

| Published by Vault

Thumbs #5 is the conclusion to what has been a wonderful series from Sean Lewis and Hayden Sherman. There are some really interesting ideas, subverting the ideologies of both factions, showing realizations that maybe there might just be a better way.

| Published by Image

Triage #2 delves deeper into the three multiversal versions of Evie, contemplating how they came about while trying to figure out a way to stop whoever it is that’s hunting them. There’s some sweet and funny character moments with the main “normal” universe’s Evie and Tab. Phillip Sevy is doing a great job of juggling both the ordinary and extraordinary in this story.

| Published by Dark Horse

Vampirella/Red Sonja #2 is more fun from Jordie Bellaire, Drew Moss, Rebecca Nalty, and Becca Carey. The issues between Vampirella and Sonja become greater, even as they get a spell to understand one another. There’s a really nice mix of humour and action here.

| Published by Dynamite

Web of Black Widow #2 is another great issue. What Jody Houser, Stephen Mooney, Tríona Farrell, and Cory Petit are doing here feels perfect for Black Widow, giving us an action-packed story full of intrigue, even as it keeps us off-balance as to what exactly is going on.

| Published by Marvel

Wonder Twins #8 throws in a prison break and a high school reunion into the reasons why you should be reading this series. Mark Russell, Mike Norton, Cris Peter, and Dave Sharpe deliver another humorous chapter to this series, with some rather interesting heartbreak.

| Published by DC Comics / Wonder Comics

Other Highlights: Absolute Carnage: Miles Morales #3, Age of Conan: Valeria #3, Amazing Spider-Man #31, Animosity #24, Batman Universe #4, The Batman’s Grave #1, Battlepug #2, East of West #43, Future Fight Firsts: White Fox #1, Ghosted in LA #4, GI Joe: A Real American Hero #267, Go Go Power Rangers #24, Gwenpool Strikes Back #3, House of Whispers #14, Immortal Hulk: Director’s Cut #5, Joker: Year of the Villain #1, Jughead: The Hunger vs. Vampironica #5, Magnificent Ms. Marvel #8, Marvel Action: Spider-Man #9, Miles Morales: Spider-Man #11, Oblivion Song #20, Postal: Deliverance #4, Power Rangers: The Psycho Path, Powers of X #6, Reaver #4, Redneck #24, RWBY (print) #1, RWBY (digital) #4, Secrets of Sinister House #1, Star Wars: Target Vader #4, Thought Bubble Anthology 2019, TMNT: Urban Legends #17, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #49, Unearth #4, Usagi Yojimbo #5, Wonder Woman #80

Recommended Collections: A Walk Through Hell - Volume 2, Baltimore Omnibus - Volume 1, Battlestar Galactica Classic: Counterstrike, Battlestar Galactica: Twilight Command, Black Hammer ‘45 - Volume 1, Blossoms 666, Hack/Slash vs. Chaos, The Silencer - Volume 3: Up in Smoke, War of the Realms: Punisher, Wizard Beach

d. emerson eddy is ready for some shashlik.

#This Week in Comics

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How Stanley Kubrick Staged the Moon Landing By Rich Cohen July 18, 2019 Conspiracy In his new monthly column, Conspiracy, Rich Cohen gets to the bottom of it all. 2001: A Space Odyssey Have you ever met a person who’s been on the moon? There are only four of them left. Within a decade or so, the last will be dead and that astonishing feat will pass from living memory into history, which, sooner or later, is always questioned and turned into fable. It will not be exactly like the moment the last conquistador died, but will lean in that direction. The story of the moon landing will become a little harder to believe. I’ve met three of the twelve men who walked on the moon. They had one important thing in common when I looked into their eyes: they were all bonkers. Buzz Aldrin, who was the second off the ladder during the first landing on July 20, 1969, almost exactly fifty years ago—he must have stared with envy at Neil Armstrong’s crinkly space-suit ass all the way down—has run hot from the moment he returned to earth. When questioned about the reality of the landing—he was asked to swear to it on a Bible—he slugged the questioner. When I sat down with Edgar Mitchell, who made his landing in the winter of 1971, he had that same look in his eyes. I asked about the space program, but he talked only about UFOs. He said he’d been wrapped in a warm consciousness his entire time in space. Many astronauts came back with a belief in alien life. Maybe it was simply the truth: maybe they had been touched by something. Or maybe the experience of going to the moon—standing and walking and driving that buggy and hitting that weightless golf ball—would make anyone crazy. It’s a radical shift in perspective, to see the earth from the outside, fragile and small, a rock in a sea of nothing. It wasn’t just the astronauts: everyone who saw the images and watched the broadcast got a little dizzy. July 20 1969, 3:17 P.M. E.S.T. The moment is an unacknowledged hinge in human history, unacknowledged because it seemed to lead nowhere. Where are the moon hotels and moon amusement parks and moon shuttles we grew up expecting? But it did lead to something: a new kind of mind. It’s not the birth of the space age we should be acknowledging on this fiftieth anniversary, but the birth of the paranoia that defines us. Because a man on the moon was too fantastic to accept, some people just didn’t accept it, or deal with its implications—that sea of darkness. Instead, they tried to prove it never happened, convince themselves it had all been faked. Having learned the habit of conspiracy spotting, these same people came to question everything else, too. History itself began to read like a fraud, a book filled with lies. To understand America, you can start with Apollo 11 and all that is counterfactual that’s grown around it; that’s when the culture of conspiracy, which is the culture of Donald Trump and fake news, was born. * The stories of a hoax predate the landing itself. As soon as the first capsules were in orbit, some began to dismiss the images as phony and the testimony of the astronauts as bullshit. The motivation seemed obvious: John F. Kennedy had promised to send a man to the moon within the decade. And, though we might be years behind the Soviets in rocketry, we were years ahead in filmmaking. If we couldn’t beat them to moon, we could at least make it look like we had. Most of the theories originated in the cortex of a single man: William Kaysing, who’d worked as a technical writer for Rocketdyne, a company that made engines. Kaysing left Rocketdyne in 1963, but remained fixated on the space program and its goal, which was often expressed as an item on a Cold War to-do list—go to the moon: check—but was in fact profound, powerful, surreal. A man on the moon would mean the dawn of a new era. Kaysing believed it unattainable, beyond the reach of existing technology. He cited his experience at Rocketdyne, but, one could say he did not believe it simply because it was not believable. That’s the lens he brought to every NASA update. He was not watching for what had happened, but trying to figure out how it had been staged. There were six successful manned missions to the moon, all part of Apollo. A dozen men walked the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972, when Harrison H. Schmitt—he later served as a Republican U.S. Senator from New Mexico—piloted the last lander off the surface. When people dismiss the project as a failure—we never went back because there is nothing for us there—others point out the fact that twenty-seven years passed between Columbus’s first Atlantic crossing and Cortez’s conquest of Mexico, or that 127 years passed between the first European visit to the Mississippi River and the second—it’d been “discovered,” “forgotten,” and “discovered” again. From some point in the future, our time, with its celebrities, politicians, its happiness and pain, might look like little more than an interregnum, the moment between the first landing and the colonization of space. Kaysing put his theories in a book, self-published in 1976. His title is also his conclusion: We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle. He believed he was playing whistle-blower, calling attention to a cover-up. The human mind has evolved to see patterns. You see a face in the clouds, hear God in the wind. Some people spot a cabal where others see nothing but bureaucrats. It’s not because they are stupid; it’s because they are smart. The same skill that would have made them a success in one age makes them a kook in another. Kaysing catalogued inconsistencies that “proved” the landing had been faked. There have been hundreds of movies, books, and articles that question the Apollo missions; almost all of them have relied on Kaysing’s “discoveries.” Old Glory: The American flag the astronauts planted on the moon, which should have been flaccid, the moon existing in a vacuum, is taut in photos, even waving, reveling more than NASA intended. (Knowing the flag would be flaccid, and believing a flaccid flag was no way to declare victory, engineers fitted the pole with a cross beam on which to hang the flag; if it looks like its waving, that’s because Buzz Aldrin was twisting the pole, screwing it into the lunar soil). There’s only one source of light on the moon—the sun—yet the shadows of the astronauts fall every which way, suggesting multiple light sources, just the sort you might find in a movie studio. (There were indeed multiple sources of light during the landings—it came from the sun, it came from the earth, it came from the lander, and it came from the astronauts’ space suits.) Blast Circle: If NASA had actually landed a craft on the moon, it would have left an impression and markings where the jets fired during takeoff. Yet, as can be seen in NASA’s own photos, there are none. You know what would’ve left no impression? A movie prop. Conspiracy theorists point out what looks like a C written on one of the moon rocks, as if it came straight from the special effects department. (The moon has about one-fifth the gravity of earth; the landing was therefore soft; the lander drifted down like a leaf. Nor was much propulsion needed to send the lander back into orbit. It left no impression just as you leave no impression when you touch the bottom of a pool; what looks like a C is probably a shadow.) Here you are, supposedly in outer space, yet we see no stars in the pictures. You know where else you wouldn’t see stars? A movie set. (The moon walks were made during the lunar morning—Columbus went ashore in daylight, too. You don’t see stars when the sun is out, nor at night in a light-filled place, like a stadium or a landing zone). Giant Leap for Mankind: If Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, then who was filming him go down the ladder? (A camera had been mounted to the side of the lunar module). Kaysing’s alternate theory was elaborate. He believed the astronauts had been removed from the ship moments before takeoff, flown to Nevada, where, a few days later, they broadcast the moon walk from the desert. People claimed to have seen Armstrong walking through a hotel lobby, a show girl on each arm. Aldrin was playing the slots. They were then flown to Hawaii and put back inside the capsule after the splash down but before the cameras arrived. This scenario was turned into Capricorn One, probably the best acting work of O.J. Simpson’s career. In that movie, which did as much as Kaysing to spread doubt, the capsule burns up on reentry, leaving NASA with no choice: they must kill the astronauts. O.J. escapes, runs across the desert, and shows up at his own funeral. This twist was said to echo another aspect of the conspiracy, the most chilling. Some attributed the fire that tore through the rehearsal capsule during preparations for Apollo 1, killing three astronauts—Gus Grissom, Edward White II, Roger Chaffee—was really part of a cover-up, a way to silence men who were about to go public. At any other time, such theories would have been dismissed as a madman’s raving, but America was willing to doubt in the seventies. That’s when the dream faded, when everything we’d been told began to sound like a fairy tale. American history itself was questioned, rewritten. Were we in fact the good guys at Plymouth Rock? How was the West really won? It was all recast in the afterglow of the Vietnam War, which was escalated with lies, and Watergate, when the president operated in the way of Don Vito Corleone. In other words, the space program, which began in one era, the buzz-cut age of American exceptionalism, culminated in another. There was a new sensibility. We were all becoming conspiracy theorists, trained to see behind the screen, spot the hoax, suspect everything. That cynicism is the only thing many Americans still have in common. It used to be baseball; now it’s the certainty that we’re being tricked. * Of all the fables that have grown up around the moon landing, my favorite is the one about Stanley Kubrick, because it demonstrates the use of a good counternarrative. It seemingly came from nowhere, or gave birth to itself simply because it made sense. (Finding the source of such a story is like finding the source of a joke you’ve been hearing your entire life.) It started with a simple question: Who, in 1969, would have been capable of staging a believable moon landing? Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, had been released the year before. He’d plotted it with the science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke, who is probably more responsible for the look of our world, smooth as a screen, than any scientist. The manmade satellite, GPS, the smart phone, the space station: he predicted, they built. 2001 picked up an idea Clarke had explored in his earlier work, particularly his novel Childhood’s End—the fading of the human race, its transition from the swamp planet to the star-spangled depths of deep space. In 2001, change comes in the form of a monolith, a featureless black shard that an alien intelligence—you can call it God—parked on an antediluvian plain. Its presence remakes a tribe of apes, turning them into world-exploring, tool-building killers who will not stop until they find their creator, the monolith, buried on the dark side of the moon. But the plot is not what viewers, many of them stoned, took from 2001. It was the special effects that lingered, all that technology, which was no less than a vision, Ezekiel-like in its clarity, of the future. Orwell had seen the future as bleak and authoritarian; Huxley had seen it as a drug-induced dystopia. In the minds Kubrick and Clarke, it shimmered, luminous, mechanical, and cold. Most striking was the scene set on the moon, in which a group of astronauts, posthuman in their suits, descend into an excavation where, once again, the human race comes into contact with the monolith. Though shot in a studio, it looks more real than the actual landings. It’s the shadow and light, the space and enclosure, the way people move. Also: No CGI, no computer-created effects. Everything is actual—models maybe, but actual physical objects. There really was a space station and it really did turn; there really was a “lunar” surface, covered with rocks. It gave everything a weight you don’t feel in newer movies. To conspiracy theorists, it made perfect sense that NASA, realizing it could not actually land a man on the moon, turned to Kubrick. But why would he do it? It could have been an act of patriotism, a citizen heeding the call of a nation in need. It could have been for money, enough to cover every production from here to Eyes Wide Shut. Or maybe they had something on him. We all know about Hoover and the FBI. It would have been an easy gig in any case, cheaper and quicker than making 2001 itself. So, I ask: Where did Stanley Kubrick watch the moon landing? Was he in front of his TV at home, a viewer like everyone else? Or was he off camera but on set, five feet from Armstrong, imploring the astronaut, “Remember, you are not in a studio … you are on the ladder of a space ship, about to become the first man to ever step foot on another planet. You’re terrified but also awed … ACTION!” As the years went by (I’m going with the premise here) Kubrick’s pride in his accomplishment (the bastards bought it) turned into second thoughts, then guilt, then shame. My God, what have I done? He felt the need to confess. But who could he tell? If he went public, he’d vanish as surely as had the numerous people who knew the truth about the Kennedy assassination. He would instead confess with the only medium he really understood: film. It would be a coded confession, hidden but there for those with the right kind of eyes. It would bookmark the work he had done on the Apollo landing. That was fiction disguised as history. This would be history disguised as fiction. What genre would he work in? He’d already made a war movie (Paths of Glory), a comedy (Lolita), a sun-and-sandals epic (Spartacus), and a political thriller (Dr. Strangelove). That left horror, which was perfect for the story he had to tell, the story beneath the story, which was a kind of nightmare. Theorists note the ways in which Kubrick changed his source material, Steven King’s novel The Shining, the story of a haunted hotel and its winter caretaker and his family. One example: In the novel, the room to be avoided, the epicenter of bad mojo, is Room 217. Kubrick changed it to Room 237. Why would you make a change like that? Maybe because the moon, on average, is 237,000 miles from the earth. Most of the work that ties Kubrick and The Shining to the moon landing can be found on the internet, a prime example being the page on author and filmmaker Jay Weidner’s website called “Secrets of the Shining, Or How Faking the Moon Landing Nearly Cost Stanley Kubrick his Marriage and His Life.” To my mind, this is a work of literature and, as such, demonstrates the best thing about the conspiracy theories. It lets you experience The Shining, which was released in 1980, with a renewed sense of discovery—that is, all over again. It starts with the Overlook Hotel. We are told the hotel stands for America. It was once grand, but has been allowed to dilapidate. The role of the caretaker, a novelist named Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson)—an artist like Kubrick—is to maintain the fiction (we landed on the moon) while the foundation crumbles. The man who hires the caretaker sits behind a big desk with an American flag at his side and an American eagle behind him. He is the Establishment, and tells the caretaker an ugly truth: “The site is supposed to be located on an Indian burial ground, and I believe they actually had to repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it.” In other words, the hotel, like America, stands on the bones of its rightful owners. Later, the hotel is engulfed in a winter storm—that’s the Cold War which drove JFK to make that silly promise about putting a man on the moon. Meanwhile, Jack Torrance is writing, compiling a manuscript that turns out to be evidence of a collapsing mind. That’s what taking part in a lie does to the artist, and why he must confess. Jack’s pages (it’s a terrifying discovery in the movie) consist of nothing but a single sentence written again and again: “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” To the ordinary viewer, it’s evidence of madness. To a conspiracy theorist, it’s a message. “All Work …,” “A L L” or A 1 1, as in Apollo 11? At one point, the caretaker’s son, Danny, racing his Big Wheel though the enormous maze of halls, a maze duplicated by the hedge maze outside the hotel, a maze in which the family is lost, in the way the nation is lost in a wilderness of mirrors, comes upon two twin girls (not in the book!), creepy specters, the ghosts of children killed by a previous caretaker. Why twins? Because Apollo 11 came after another fake, the Gemini mission. On the Zodiac chart, the symbol for Gemini is a pair of twins. The clincher comes when the Danny gets up from his tricycle and walks down the corridor, following a mysterious call, the sort that a government might make to a filmmaker in a time of crisis. The caretaker’s son is wearing an Apollo 11 sweater—weird, huh? It shows a rocket over the words Apollo 11. When he stands, it seems as if the rocket is blasting off, whereas of course it isn’t because it isn’t real. Danny walks, thus the rocket flies, until he finds himself outside Room 237. Danny, who stands for the child in Kubrick, the artist, has traveled to 237, that is, all the way to the moon. Only he hasn’t. Is any of this real? Of course not. It’s a face in the clouds. But it can feel more real than reality, as if you are finally seeing what’s always been hidden. That’s the thrill of conspiracy theory, why it can become an obsession, a way of being. It gives you a more interesting way to consume reality. It is literary criticism directed not at a text but at the world, which is a kind of text. It lets the reader understand that world in a new way. You feel the thrill you felt when you stumbled across the teachers’ edition in fifth grade. So here are the answers, all of the answers. You can finally see the truth behind the facade. Rich Cohen is the author of The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation.

From The PARIS Review wwwtheparisreview.org

#How Stanley Kubrick Staged the Moon Landing #men never went to the moon

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

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BILLIE EILISH - BURY A FRIEND

[7.76]

Why you always play that song so loud? Oh.

Ian Mathers: Over a series of songs and videos, Eilish has practically offered a survey of fears and bad feelings: spiders, isolation, drowning, physical assault, mental illness, poison, other people as monsters, the self as a monster, etc. and here she leans harder than ever into the horror tropes, both sonically and visually. The sampled dentist drill, lyrics equally evoking the monster under the bed and sleep paralysis, the haunted house/nursery rhyme lilt of the verses, the bravado that at least partially stems from her narrative persona already feeling bad enough about herself that you sure as hell can't touch her, and of course the line that recurs over and over: "I wanna end me." It's the sort of thing you can imagine parents freaking out over, and even possibly the (yes, yes, very young) Eilish looking back years from now and thinking the better of. But, much as plenty of pop music conjures up outsized romantic sentiments that listeners gravitate towards despite not actually wanting to follow through with them in a literal sense, it also feels like the kind of darkness that I know many people who don't struggle with suicidal ideation still identify with in the context of a pop song. I'm not actually arguing for its total harmlessness so much as admitting that I don't think total harmlessness is necessary or even desirable in pop, maybe especially when it is from someone as young and who seems to be as tapped into a new vocabulary (sonic and gestural as much as linguistic) as Eilish is so far. The line and the song make me uneasy even as I love it and feel seen by it, as opposed to (say) Juice WRLD's bullshit which doesn't to me feel like it has any redeeming element at all. Eilish and "Bury a Friend," meanwhile, don't need a redeeming element unless you have a problem with the rich history of darkness in pop (as opposed to the rich history of misogyny in pop). Not for nothing does my friend Jess Burke describe her as "Fiona Apple for a Blumhouse future" and of all the paths to go down, that honestly feels like a pretty great one right now. [9]

Tobi Tella: Billie Eilish is one of the first true Gen Z pop stars, and as someone only a year or so older than her I'm impressed with how fresh her music feels on the pop landscape. The sense of dread that appears in most of her music is in full force here, and while I have found some of her music to be a little "2edgy4me," this works by fully leaning into it. It's unlike anything anyone else is making right now. [7]

Alfred Soto: If "Bury a Friend" is a gesture, an experiment -- as if Billie Eilish said, "Let me show how minimalist my music can be, and put in cool noises too" -- then its failure to be more than this is my failure. She's been tuneful before, which means she knows what she's doing. [6]

Jonathan Bradley: "Bury a Friend" sounds like the product of a musical landscape where anything can be heard on demand and none of it comes with context. Billie Eilish's artless murmur suggests that her roots lie in the DIY aesthetics of bedroom folk, but while her music can be wispy and personal in that mode, it wanders into other realms in which it seems not to realize it doesn't belong. This song is punctuated by producer Crooks intoning Eilish's name like a mixtape DJ's drop, while the shrieks that tear into the dark low-end pulse seem torn from Yeezus-era Kanye. There's even some Fiona Apple in the stops and starts punctuating her phrasing. Like Lorde before her, Eilish is adept at playing up the adolescent's attraction to darkness, and the haunted house atmosphere and lyrics about stapled tongues and glass-cut feet settle into a delicious murk. Perhaps most unsettling and most unexpectedly novel about it all is that Eilish doesn't sound like a paralysed gothic heroine. She sounds like one of the monsters. [8]

Katie Gill: Insert that Marge Simpson 'kids, could you lighten up a little?' reaction image here. It only makes sense that the hot new pop sensation is the musical distillation of nihilistic memes and the lolz I'm so depressed joke culture that's permeated the popular consciousness. To her credit, Eilish has her finger perfectly poised on the zeitgeist. Unfortunately, we've been dealing with the zeitgeist for at LEAST two years now. Such ironic detachment and 'I want to end me lmao' already feels out of date -- the fact that the song seems tailor-made to score an American Horror Story scene only dates it even more (those backing screams were a baaad choice). The main thing this does is make me wish that Eilish leaned in more towards her lighter fare. [5]

Vikram Joseph: I've been a Billie Eilish sceptic, but "Bury A Friend" is, if not quite Damascene, certainly revelatory. It feels deliciously, obscenely engrossing; that minimalist pulse, the mocking, nursery-rhyme motif ("What do you want from me? Why don't you run from me?"), those swift, decisive industrial gut-punches, the breathtaking turns of pace and time-signature tightrope-play. Most of all, it's fun, especially when her vocal affectations come off like a demonic sonic negative of Lorde. It feels like her entire aesthetic coming together, a camp horror-flick dark-pop queen finally wearing the crown she's been threatening to unveil for a while now. [8]

William John: At 28 I feel far too old to be pontificating about Billie Eilish, but what I will say is that if their new formula for chart success is to mine the aesthetic of Róisín Murphy circa Ruby Blue, then I'm ready to submit to our new zillennial overlords. [7]

Iris Xie: I've been hearing Billie Eilish everywhere I go, and her music always vibrates with a moody, dark warmth while I move through thrift stores, coffee shops, and sidewalks. Reclaiming whisper-singing from Selena Gomez is a fantastic move, especially when paired with that slight rhythmic drumming, sudden starts and stops, and that little omnipresent danger that I miss so much from f(x)'s Red Light. Our times are escalating faster to some kind of destruction, but in the air, there is exhaustion and energy of both a defiant joy and a quiet numbness. "Bury a Friend," and her album overall embodies that energy in spades. [7]

Will Rivitz: Jump scares in horror movies suck; they're cheap, calculated cash-ins on human predilection to react badly whenever something threatening pops out from the underbrush. Much more difficult to pull off, and much more impressive in its execution and creativity when it succeeds, is the slow-burn thrill. When a ghoulish, uncertain threat is buried ever so imperceptibly below the surface, it roils adrenaline in the most painfully pleasant of ways, as we fail to put our finger on anything about what's about to destroy us except that, make no mistake, it will indeed destroy us. "Bury a Friend" nails that most sublime skin-crawl. The lowing bass and teeth-scraping industrial synths roll around the aural triggers that make every hair on a back stand up with the cold impersonality of coins circling a hyperbolic funnel forever, the end always implied but never achieved. Appropriate, too, since Billie Eilish's main triumph is capturing the slow-burn existential dread of living as a young person in a world thoroughly ruined by those who won't live to see out the ramifications of their present actions. Obliquely, that's "Bury a Friend," a nightmarish Borges y yo resurrection, endlessly Genius-ready especially given the original story now has a Genius annotation itself. (The internet continues to be bizarre.) Instrumentally and lyrically, it's a warped and terrifying celebration of a muddling and destruction of identity supercharged by the less savory bits of our constant interconnectedness; it is, in other words, the best summary of Billie Eilish she could possibly present to us. Eilish affirms our base fears that things are fucked, we're all irrevocably in shambles, and there's absolutely jack shit we can do about it; we might as well learn to celebrate where we're at, since there's nothing else awaiting us. [9]

Alex Clifton: I can't remember the last time I felt this astonished by a song, nor can I remember hearing anything this sublime. I mean this in the gothic sense -- something beautiful and terrifying and subsiding where you've just got to stand and soak it all in. "Bury a Friend" is every nightmare and melodramatic thought I had as a teenager set to music, the suspicion that I was a monster who was better off dead and everyone knew. It felt so plainly written on my skin. But it's not just dark and monstrous. Billie feels scared and sad on the chorus: when we all fall asleep, where do we go? Something in her voice is so vulnerable that I feel cut open myself just hearing it. I fear some older people may hear "Bury a Friend" and write it off as emo teenage poetry, but it's so much more than that. It's the honesty of Lorde's first album mixed in with the sharp crunch of being a teen in 2019, living in a world constantly on fire with questionable prospects for a future. I would expect nothing less from a teenager to be honest, especially one as talented as Eilish. I just wish I had had the courage to be this dark and messy when I was her age. [9]

Will Adams: So much of the Billie Eilish discourse concerns her aesthetic and how it relates to Gen Z, but it often misses a key part of her appeal: how electrifying her music sounds. Tactile, confronting and claustrophobic, Billie and her producer brother Finneas create music that tightens its grip and refuses to let go, and "Bury a Friend" is as good an example as any. Alternately screeching, skittering and booming with sub bass (like "Black Skinhead" crawling with spiders), it conjures up a nightmare you can't look away from. [9]

Katherine St Asaph: A game that is both fun and great for making yourself acutely aware of how fast the grave is yanking you down is asking yourself, and being honest: if you were a teen today, who would you stan? Would you be an Ariana Grande Teen? A Blueface Teen? A Billie Eilish Teen? The depressing truth is that I probably would've been a Lana Del Rey Teen, but I could see myself reluctantly liking this for its weird drama, its dramatic weirdness. I'm convinced people confused about why Billie's dark music appeals to teens have never themselves been teens, the time of life where you endless-repeat Nirvana (ask Dave Grohl) or Sarah Brightman's cover of "Gloomy Sunday" or "Bury a Friend" and often make it out regardless. The flavor of darkness here is more than a little Tim Burton, in the twisted-nursery-rhyme melody, but there's also more than a little "Black Skinhead" and "Night of the Dancing Flame," and how many teen sensations can you conjure those references up for? [9]

Stephen Eisermann: Billie Eilish, especially here, is the exact representation of what would happen if Lorde pulled a Jack Skellington and entered the portal in the trees to find herself in Halloween Town. The same intriguing vocal tics, off-beat metaphors, and bold production choices -- just decorated with horror-tinged jack-o-lanterns and ghost sheets. In other words, I love Billie and I love this song. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: "Bury a Friend" is less a song and more an intentionally jarring collection of phrases -- even Eilish's individual lines sound cut off, as if they've been reassembled from a previously coherent whole. Not every piece works -- Crooks' vocal additions are unnecessary and some of Eilish's longer phrasings in the bridge are too stylized. Moreover, the picture that this collage is supposed to be forming never gets cleared up. And yet there's almost an illicit thrill to listening to a pop song that sounds like this, in all of its chaotic terror and joy. [6]

Edward Okulicz: In truth, this song feels like it runs out of gas, but its first 30 seconds are incredibly arresting. It's not that the rest of it is bad, I mean there's a bit where she sounds exactly like Róisín Murphy and that's never bad. Over the course of a bunch of singles, Eilish has used lots of existing musical tropes in an interesting way and built up a style that's unmistakeably her -- maybe I'm just disappointed she's taken it to complete fruition in half a minute and maybe there's nowhere else for her to go but to do a full-on macabre Glitterbeat thing. She's got fans that'll go with her to any place she chooses. [8]

Taylor Alatorre: I'm inclined to dislike most of the well-manicured teenage dramascapes that make up Billie Eilish's discography so far. Maybe it's the narcissism of generational differences -- sure, I was moody and disaffected as a 17-year-old, but I wasn't this kind of moody and disaffected. You're doing anhedonia all wrong, kids! Yet somehow, "Bury a Friend" is able to dislodge me from this self-consciousness by brandishing its own self-consciousness as a weapon and waging a merry war on itself. It's a staging ground for a bunch of one-off experiments and on-the-nose signifiers and 2spooky vocal tics and vintage 2013 alt-pop tropes, all of which seem to communicate: "This is a song that I wrote, and I can debase it however I want." It's squeamish about its own existence yet sure of its purpose, with a simple driving beat that yields to miscellany while warding off the specters of musical theater. Its high point is an archly written low point: the sneeringly drawn out "wowww." in response to a blunt confession of suicidality. If it turns out that reducing the stigma doesn't always lead to better outcomes, at least we got some good banter out of it. [8]

Joshua Copperman: Huh, I guess we are seeing the beauty at the end of culture. And it's suicidal, it's offensive, it's ugly. Then it's fake-deep, and it's edgy, because Heaven forbid we legitimize the concerns of teenagers. The common thing is supposed to be how, as a teenager, everything feels like it matters, but today's teens are growing up in a political moment when nothing feels like it does, if it ever will again. Okay, that's a bit much -- there's a chance that actual teens aren't like this, and this is what people whose brains have been poisoned by Twitter pundits think teenagers must be like. It can't be a huge coincidence, though, that "I wanna end me," "why do you care for me?" and "I'm too expensive!!!" all wound up in a Top 20 hit by a 17-year-old. Like any good writer, Eilish sublimates those fears into a horror movie song from the point of view of the monster under her bed, a pure Tumblr or r/writingprompts move. But with this many Spotify plays, with this much success, it's hard to shake the feeling that along with the stellar "idontwannnabeyouanymore," Eilish is actually onto something with The Youths. Finneas O'Connor's bonkers production, with dentist drills and the 12/8 "Black Skinhead" bounce, certainly helps this stand out. (Rob Kinelski, too, has crafted a mix more interesting than anything his more successful contemporaries like Serban Ghenea have done lately.) Underneath the grimdarkness, what really separates Eilish is the sense of humor; the nursery rhyme bridge seemed a bit obvious, but after hearing songs like "Bad Guy," Eilish sounds completely aware of the tropes she is using. I have no doubt this blurb will age badly if her music gets worse after this, but who cares when there's not much aging left to do? Lead us into the apocalypse, Billie and Finneas! [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Billie Eilish #pop #music #music review #writing

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jessekg · 6 years

Text

A firsthand account of the Beatles' final concert, 50 years ago today

It was 50 years ago today that the Beatles climbed the stairs of their Apple Corps headquarters at 3 Savile Row in London, plugged in their instruments and played together publicly for the very last time.

The short concert, which was scheduled for a particularly cold lunch hour break, was held so that the Beatles could record a live performance for their film, Let It Be. It lasted only 42 minutes before the police shut it down, but it's become one of the most iconic moments in pop history, and has been referenced in everything from The Simpsons to the video for U2's Where the Streets Have No Name.

It didn't take long for people to gather on the streets below, crane their necks out their windows or climb to their own rooftops to watch, but atop the five-story Apple building, the group was small. Joined by the Beatles was keyboardist Billy Preston, a camera crew, and a small crew of Apple staff. That included Ken Mansfield, then the group's U.S. manager, who was sat beside Yoko Ono, Ringo's then-wife Maureen Starkey, and Apple secretary Chris O'Dell on a bench. Mansfield was so close to the action that he lit four cigarettes, put them between his fingers and held them out so that George Harrison could warm up his hands between songs.

"I just happened to be working in the office that week, it was sheer good fortune," says Mansfield now, over the phone from his Florida home. "I didn't know it was going to happen and was told 15 minutes before going up."

At first, Mansfield says it was just like "another day at the office" at Apple Corps. "There was always something going on in that building. It was like walking into a movie studio with 10 movies happening at once. The Hells Angels might be there in one room, while the Hare Krishnas would be holding court somewhere else, a video shoot somewhere else. Things were changing every minute."

Mansfield has written about the moments leading up that historic concert in a book called, simply, The Roof, which is a firsthand account of what he saw between 1968 and 1970.

"There are so many books about the fact and details, like who played cowbell on the fourth take of whatever song, but I wanted to talk about what it was like personally," he says. "How it felt to walk down that street and walk into their world and see them in their everyday action."

Easing the tension

Those two years were a particularly volatile time for the Beatles, who managed to release two albums, Let It Be and Abbey Road, despite holding on by a thread. John Lennon officially told the group he was leaving in September 1969, just eight months after the rooftop concert.

"Even during the two days leading up to the concert — and they really kept it a secret in the building — there was a lot of dissension," he says. "George was having a lot of problems with the whole thing. I was with him in L.A. when they had finished The White Album, and he said that was too big a project. They simply took on too much. Then to walk into this other thing two months later, both a new album [which would become Let It Be], rehearse for another concert, and do a film. He was really having a problem."

In fact, the concert almost didn't happen at all, right up until the last minute. "When they were there at the door they still weren't sure about it until John said, 'Come on, let's go, let's get it over with.'"

To put Harrison at ease, and perhaps to help ease the tension among members, Billy Preston was brought in to play keyboard. Preston knew the band from their early days in Hamburg, and had gone on to play with the likes of Ray Charles. You can hear him quite clearly throughout the performances, but nowhere more than on his solo on Get Back.

"They loved Billy," says Mansfield, adding that the group played with the idea of officially making him the fifth Beatle. "I think it was Paul [McCartney] that said, why do we need a fifth Beatle when we can't even get along with four?"

Having Preston, a close friend of Harrison's, around was "like having calming odours in the room," says Mansfield. "No one would be arguing with him there."

As such, Preston is the only musician to ever get top billing on a Beatles song from outside the group. When Get Back was released as a single, it was credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston."

"They didn't do that with anyone, not Eric Clapton, not anyone," says Mansfield.

Location, location, location

What Mansfield says many don't realize is how truly last-minute the decision was to perform on the rooftop. In fact, just before, he had been sent to scope out the Sonoran desert, in the southwestern United States, as a possible location. "Think about trying to put that together," he says. "The plan was they would setup in the desert and put the word out and invite every kid in America to come watch for free. That's wonderful, but how would you like to underwrite that for insurance? Or be the one bringing in the Porta Potties. Half the kids wouldn't have come back alive."

When it was all said and done, everyone walked down from the rooftop in silence.

He mentions other location ideas in the book — everything from the Pyramids of Giza to the British House of Parliament — but in the end, the roof just made sense.

"I think they were comfortable there," he says. "That was home for them. It was like going up to another room in the house."

British rock group the Beatles performing their last live public concert on the rooftop of the Apple Organization. The concert lasted for TK minutes before police shut it down. (Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Blue Meanies

While the location was an example of how spontaneous things could be at Apple Corps, especially that day, some elements were more carefully orchestrated.

"We had locked the doors downstairs, but there was such chaos in the street below that the tailors and the bankers started complaining — soon enough the Bobbies are banging on the door," says Mansfield.

In the film, police officers can clearly be seen trying to make their way in, eventually forcing the band to pull the plug. As it turns out, they were a bit more complicit. In fact, everything was coordinated, and the police even called 10 minutes before the raid to give everyone a chance to dump any "stash" they had on them.

"I think it was more like, 'Look, you're going to get to see the Beatles up close and personal, but let us get what we need to get done first,'" says Mansfield. "Everything about that day was special."

When it was all said and done, Mansfield says everyone walked down from the rooftop in silence. There was no after-party or celebration, as you might expect, and everyone, including the Beatles, went their separate ways and carried on like it was a normal day.

That said, there was a real sense that it was a moment in history, even if they hadn't realized it yet. "I remember when I was sitting about four feet away, I saw John look at Paul and Paul at John, and the unspoken words were, 'It doesn't matter, what's done is done, we're a rock 'n' roll band, it doesn't matter, this is us.' At that moment they needed that. That escape back into who they were."

As Mansfield writes in his book, "The day began without a sound check and ended with a soul check."

#the beatles #rooftop concert #Let It Be #Get Back #Apple Corps #Music #history

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clairebeauchampfan · 6 years

Text

Meeeow! Why are we obsessed with cats?

Claws out! Why pop culture clings to the crazy cat lady

Lucy Jones, The Guardian newspaper

Mon 16 Apr 2018 16.48 BST

For years, women with cats have been portrayed as lonely, sexless and eccentric – but why does this stereotype endure? And can millennial ailurophiles reclaim the purr-jorative?

Did you hear the story about the old woman from Ohio who was arrested for training her 65 cats to steal her neighbour’s stuff? The Columbus police department found thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery in the 83-year-old lady’s house and discovered she taught the cats to bring back “anything that shined”.

The news story went viral at the end of last year. How do you picture her? Unkempt hair, dressing gown and slippers, living alone, rarely leaving the house? The “crazy cat lady”, in other words. In fact, the story was fiction on a satirical website, but people bought it and shared the story thinking it was real.

The crazy cat lady is a common, recognisable trope in contemporary culture: think of Eleanor Abernathy in The Simpsons. After a promising career in medicine and law, she experiences burnout, starts drinking and gets a cat. Next minute, she’s talking gibberish, looking dishevelled and throwing her army of felines around. Then there’s Robert De Niro’s predictably bonkers elderly Christmas cat lady in a 2004 Saturday Night Live skit: she “had dreams and then she was kicked by a horse and now she has cats. The end!”

The younger version of the stereotype is usually associated with being single, kooky and weird; after her relationship with Carol Burnett comes to a head, 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon acquires a cat. “I can fit Emily Dickinson’s whole head in my mouth,” she tells a concerned Jack Donaghy. You can even buy a Crazy Cat Lady action figure online, complete with deranged, staring eyes.

To understand why this trope exists – and why it may be on its last legs – let’s scoot back to the middle ages and the earliest perceptions of women and their cats. Even before witch-hunts, cats had a bad rep in the western world – with associations with heretical sects and the devil. Medieval types conflated feline sex lives with lustful, sinful, female sexuality: cats were seen as “lecherous animals that actively wheedled the males on to sexual congress”, according to the historian James Serpell. Although, in recent pop culture, cat lady has evolved into shorthand for a lonely, sad, sexless woman. Too sexy, not sexy enough: can’t please ’em.

The earliest cat ladies in the west were, of course, witches. In Malleus Maleficarum, the landmark medieval treatise on witchcraft, a 13th-century folk story is recounted, whereby three witches turned themselves into cats, attacked a man on the street and accused him of assault in court, showing the marks on their bodies. From then on, witches were believed to have cats as familiars, or to change into felines at night.

Why would cats get such a satanic rep? We can only guess. Cats are mysterious. They come and go. Unlike dogs, they refuse to obey and be domesticated. They’re nocturnal. The Ancient Egyptians worshipped Bastet, a woman with a head of a cat. Although the Bible does not specifically mention cats, early Christian pilgrims were highly suspicious of other religions, and they deemed the black cat to be so demonic that being seen with one could be punishable by death.

Although the 18th century saw people beginning to question superstitions – such as the belief that a woman’s wart was a teat suckled by Satan – negative connotations of the relationship between cats and women remained. The Victorians switched witches for old-maid stereotypes – for single women without children: “Old maids and cats have long been proverbially associated together, and, rightly or wrongly, these creatures have been looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion and aversion by a large proportion of the human race,” wrote a journalist in the Dundee Courier in 1880. The Old Maid card game was often illustrated with a dour woman and her cat, the “friend of the friendless”, as it was described at the time. In the 1900s, anti-suffragette propaganda used images of cats to portray women as silly, useless, catty and ridiculous in their attempt to enter political life.

The inception of the “crazy” moniker is harder to pin down, but its connotations of hysteria are an old gender stereotype. Added to this, the extreme end of the modern “crazy cat lady” stereotype has more than a few cats, which is unusual. Eleanor Abernathy, for example, has cats dripping off her: she is, essentially, portrayed as a mentally ill, alcoholic, compulsive hoarder.

There may be some truth in the idea that animal hoarding is more common in women. A study in Brazil found that, while generalised hoarding disorder affects men and women equally, nearly three-quarters of animal hoarders were women. Since 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies compulsive hoarding as a psychiatric disorder, with animal hoarding as a subtype.

Another recent theory is to do with a parasite called toxoplasma gondii. This tiny critter infects rats and mice and changes their behaviour by, scientists believe, creating an attraction to cat urine, so it can wind up in the stomach of a cat, where it reproduces. It also infects between 30% and 60% cent of people. Scientists are exploring evidence that toxoplasmosis could create behavioural changes in people, leading to lots of excited articles wondering if the parasite is a clue to explaining the phenomenon of “crazy cat lady”. The parasite contains an enzyme that creates dopamine, which is associated with risky and impulsive behaviour, among other things, but so far the data is inconclusive.

But, really, the concept of the crazy cat lady tells us more about societal perceptions of women than anything else. It has long been a pejorative term and a device for transferring shame and judgment on women who challenged traditional roles, or were hard to domesticate and keep in line. Here is the co-creator of Batman, Bob Kane, explaining his creation of Cat Woman: “I felt that women were feline creatures and men were more like dogs. While dogs are faithful and friendly, cats are cool, detached and unreliable … cats are as hard to understand as women are,” he said. “You always need to keep women at arm’s length. We don’t want anyone taking over our souls, and women have a habit of doing that.”

But millennial ailurophiles have had enough. Over the last few years, there have been multivalent efforts to debunk the crazy cat lady stereotype and project a positive view of women and their cats. Pussy is striking back.

From glossy fashion magazines celebrating the feline-human relationship – Cat People, Puss Puss – to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry’s unashamed adoration of their feline pets, the stereotype is being recalibrated. CatCon Worldwide, a new conference celebrating cat culture, has, as its core value, the desire to “change the negative perception of the crazy cat lady and prove that it is possible to be hip, stylish, and have a cat”.

The book Cat Lady Chic (2012) offered elegant images of cat-owners Audrey Hepburn, Georgia O’Keeffe, Diana Ross and Zelda Fitzgerald as an antidote to the Eleanor Abernathy archetype. And Girls & Their Cats, a sophisticated series of photographs of women and their feline companions, was created by Brooklyn-based fashion photographer BriAnne Wills to help dismantle the stereotype.“It just wasn’t representative of any of the cat ladies I personally knew, who are all independent, cool, career-driven women who really love their cats,” she said. “Also, there are more than a million cats euthanised each year so if women (and men) are afraid to adopt because of negative stereotypes it definitely hurts cats in the long run.”

In the memorable short story Cat Person (2017), Kristen Roupenian inverts the cat lady trope by giving her male protagonist, Robert, a couple of pet cats. She employs the presence of Robert’s felines as a symbol that Margot uses to construct her image of him. “We decide that it means something that a person likes cats instead of dogs,” said Roupenian in an interview. But there is something sinister going on. Margot never sees the cats, and wonders if Robert has lied about them. So what is it about pretending to have cats that might endear Margot to him in a sexual setting? Is he using his cats to lure her in?

But perhaps the moment the crazy cat lady motif truly jumped the shark was with the song Buttload of Cats on an episode of the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend earlier this year. Rebecca Bunch walks herself down to the Lonely Lady Cat Store. “The smell is overwhelming inside / This is the future smell of my house / It’s the smell of my dreams that have died,” she sings. “When you’re a permanent bachelorette / It’s mandatory that you go out and get / A buttload of cats / Oh, yeah!”

The song made a mockery of the hysteria projected on women who own cats. So is the notion of the crazy cat lady over? Wills believes there is still work to be done to change perceptions, but she hopes that her photography project will help. “It is 2018,” she says, “and women are tired of defending themselves.” And their love for their cats.

AND I LOVE CATS TOO. ESPECIALLY SIAMESE (but my dog hates them)

#outlander samcait sam and cait samxcait

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jeanandthedreamofhorses · 7 years

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It was already heavily implied that humanity wasn't extinct as soon as we knew the titan trio came from outside the walls. Ymir's story being moved in the anime made it hit a lot harder emotionally. In the manga its placement came years after we'd last seen her, and knowing she was probably dead by then made it feel flatter. And Marco's death coming up when Reiner was having an identity crisis made more sense of how the stuff going on in his works. And it's important for Annie, too.

Sorry for the late response; I’ll answer point by point.

1) Not necessarily, because remember, at around the same time we knew that they came from outside of the walls (Reiner and Bertholdt’s reveal) we also learnt that all titans were once humans. I don’t know what general fandom consensus was, but I at least assumed humanity was still extinct but there were a select number of titans who had managed to shift back into humans. Alternatively, there could have been a small human community that survived the apocalypse and existed rudimentarily beyond the walls. There was nothing to strongly suggest that the apocalypse never happened at all.

The early inclusion of Ymir’s flashback revealed explicitly that the cause of the titans was humans creating them, knowledge which skips a massive part of SNK’s thematic journey from monster to human - the whole purpose of the Uprising Arc is to introduce the idea that the Titan threat is really a human one. Revealing this now undoes a large part of what makes it so great and essential in SNK’s unwinding narrative. But, it shouldn’t be all that surprising given that this journey has been undermined before by the removal of Eren’s sympathy for Annie, which was its first major step. As is sadly so often the case with producers of adaptations, they clearly haven’t looked for anything below the surface.

Additionally, Ymir’s backstory is far more enjoyable to watch with the knowledge of who the real Ymir actually is, and the presentation of it as a series of images flashing besides the letter’s quiet melancholy to a loved one shortly before death was, to me, much more moving than the anime’s basic flashback technique, entirely within the mind of a character and at a random time for the sole purpose of filling up the episode quota of the season; which is also dumb, because since Clash is quite a short arc and Uprising was quite a long one, why oh why didn’t they just combine the two into a 25-episode run like last time and allow adequate time for both? I mourn for the inevitable compression of Season 3. No matter what anyone else says (even Yams himself!), I really liked how the manga paced it.

But most importantly, Ymir’s letter fits with thematic perfection at the end of an arc about the uncovering of mysteries and delusions and dealing with the emptiness that exists beyond them.

Return to Shiganshina was the arc of Pyrrhic victories, the arc that really tested whether the lives lost in this grand pursuit were really worth it after the human and morally ambiguous elements were emphasised in Uprising. Erwin never got to see the basement, and though Eren did he found that the thing meant to bring an end to the war only revealed it to be far larger than he thought. Grisha’s revolutionary dreams are destroyed after being betrayed by his own son and realising the monster he’s become. Mikasa finds out the person she’s been fighting to protect will inevitably die in a few years. Armin who had longed for acceptance finds the man he had looked up to has died because of him and now is the figure of widespread distrust. Levi has to make the choice to let the man he lives to serve die, and fails to avenge him. Hange loses both people closest to them as well as their eye. Jean is unable to completely conquer his humanity for the sake of the mission (his constant struggle from the start, now being tested again in the latest chapter - I think he’ll try and shoot anyway but Magath will jump on him and sacrifice himself to save them), Connie is unable to avenge his family, Sasha is flat-out knocked unconscious in an explicit deprivation of ability. Marlowe loses hold of his grand ideals at the end. Reiner’s attempt to be a hero fails in just about every way possible, Bertholdt’s attempt to take responsibility ends with his death and the loss of the Colossal Titan power, and Zeke’s arrogance is humiliated by his ignoble defeat by Levi.

The revelation of Ymir’s death fed into that greater theme as, to Historia, just as to the reader, her mystery and her absence kept us hoping - but now that hope is dashed against the wall as it is revealed that she was not a god like her name suggested, but a human, and one had already died long ago. And so Eren can take no pleasure in seeing the sea, because the dream associated with it is dead. It’s this nihilistic pit that allows the SC, and especially Eren, to commit the atrocities they are now - hopefully the final Arc will eventually help the, rediscover the passion, hope and soul they have lost after too much time spent with monsters.

So, if it’s disappointing to hear Ymir’s backstory knowing she’s likely dead…that’s the point.

2) I don’t see how it helps to have a flashback of Reiner’s split personality to explain his split personality. That’s not explanation, just…repetition. The reason Reiner’s role in the death scene is so effective in the manga is that Reiner’s reaction is the crown on top of the helplessness of the situation of the Warriors (and all sides) - Reiner had acted as the monster figure but it’s just part of his inability to process his grief, superbly perfecting the tragic pathos for the Warriors throughout the scene even while doing something so terrible. Three flashed images cannot compare to the drawn-out desperation of the situation that gradually generates the pathos culminating in Reiner’s reaction, nor does it explain (in the season itself) why they do it in the first place. And once again, thematic timing! Bertholdt’s death so clearly parallels Marco’s that if they don’t include this scene in Season 4 I’m gonna get mad - and just with Bertholdt’s death that gave no-one any satisfaction, so it was with Marco - another example of the Pyrrhic victory that belongs to the RTS Arc.

3) While I agree wholeheartedly that Annie deserves the best treatment, they had the good sense of including her training Eren to build sympathy for her (although still no “Maybe I could teach you” ARGH), and the Lost Girls light novel made Annie sympathetic before the Marco scene was even written. Including it before its time in both the season and the OVA was unnecessary and thematically harmful padding.

The SNK anime has been unsalvageable since Episode 25′s Rage-Monster Eren; even their attempts to fix their mistakes just disturb other careful formations. Its value lies solely in its music, voice acting, and function as a gateway to the manga.

TLDR, the SNK anime is to the manga what this cake is to The Simpsons:

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livehealthynewsusa · 3 years

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“Power Bald” Male Celebrities – How Shaved Heads Became Trendy in 2021

Shrek is an iconic power bald head. Likewise RuPaul, host of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars. But at the moment they are far from alone in their glittering splendor. Travis Barker is currently Kourtney Kardashian’s bald friend. Sean Evans is the powerful bald man from Hot Ones, while Stanley Tucci’s effortless Gravitas in Searching for Italy is just hot. And don’t forget the bald domination franchise, Fast & Furious, which features the glorious hairless heads of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson and Vin Diesel. This month Gibson and Diesel shine again with F9 in theaters.

Welcome to the world of power bald heads, a hectic but hairless community in upheaval. In fact, the summer of 2021 could just be a peak balding season, with Adam Levine hugging the hairless self-care style, four times the strongest man in the world, Brian Shaw looking slick lifting a Hyundai SUV in a car commercial. and the WWE Braun Strowman alias Adam Scherr, who posts particularly intoxicating workouts on Instagram.

For the uninitiated, power balding is an emerging movement by men who have shaved off their insecurities about being bald. While baldness has always been around, a new cultural shift, both on and off screen, has shown the power of focusing on simple, sleek appearance. One that allows value and beauty to be defined by principles other than the lush mane or the uniformity of its brush cuts.

Power bald Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel look stylish.

Buda mendesGetty Images

To be clear, power baldnesses aren’t Homer Simpsons. You will happily part with these two remaining hairs to hug their sleek heads. They’re not Voldemorts either. Your baldness is not the result of too much toxic masculinity. In fact, some of the most honorable power bald people are not men at all. Dora Milaje from Black Panther embodies the term, as does Sinéad O’Connor. As is Gossip Girl’s newest queen bee, Julien Calloway, played by Jordan Alexander. A bald head has power. They are proud of that. But above all, they try to handle it responsibly.

“Somebody who is power-bald is about the self-confidence in which you carry yourself,” says Roger Bennett, co-host of the TV show and podcast Men in Blazers, along with his “smooth guy” Michael Davies Men’s Health.

The two Britons who live in the US are the unofficial architects of the term power bald, if for no other reason than that there are few documents online that are said by anyone else. They have been using the term since around 2016, which still makes it an insider term. There are few Instagram hashtags or Reddit mentions. Urban Dictionary has no related entries.

Men-in-Blazers co-host and power-bald advocate Roger Bennett.

Courtesy of Gentlemen in Blazers

But for Men in Blazers and their nearly 231,000 Twitter followers, the term is canonical. Bennett says they have received hundreds of letters related to baldness since talking about it on their platforms. They often give their favorite smooth footballers like Pep Guardiola and Zinedine Zidane the title “Power Bald”. “It’s probably the only thing that really binds us apart from our love of football and America,” says Bennett.

As a “third generation bald guy” Bennett had no choice but to appreciate his thinning hairline. Balding had always felt inevitable to him, so he decided to accept that. By doing this and speaking openly about it, he has turned what might otherwise feel like a source of shame into something more empowering.

Soccer star Zinedine Zidane stays limber on and off the field.

GABRIEL BOUYSGetty Images

In fact, Bennett takes so much pride in being a power bald man that he questions the implications of certain sports characters battling the aftermath. In 2016, former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher appeared on billboards and in testimonials for Restore, a hair transplant company. If you’ve been driving the toll road to O’Hare Airport outside of Chicago in the past few years, you’ve likely seen an Urlacher billboard with new turf on its head. Baseball Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg and Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders also became speakers for Restore along with other famous retired athletes.

Overcoming one’s insecurities is a battle that neither muscle mass nor IQ can win, and men should be able to change their looks as they please. But there is a far cheaper and bolder move. “People, actually [go bald] with incredible bragging rights, these are the characters we’ve always hailed as Power Bald, ”says Bennett.

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At the same time, too much is being invested in treating baldness to completely normalize it, even if it is normal. Hair restoration remains a cornerstone of the male beauty industry. Toupees have gone viral and have been rebranded as trendy hair replacements. Hims, a digital health startup, recently valued at $ 1.6 billion and spokespersons for ex-married couple Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriquez, got involved selling prescriptions for hair loss (and erectile dysfunction) Names.

It may seem easier and cheaper to simply shave everything off than the headache of finding the most appropriate hair regrowth solution, but this is a huge commitment in its own right. “The easy solution to shaving your head is not an easy solution,” said Spencer Kobren, founder of the American Hair Loss Association, a private organization committed to raising public awareness of the emotional impact of hair loss on men .

Kobren told the New York Times in 2019 that he has been using finasteride, a drug used to treat hair loss, for 25 years. (It’s worth noting that finasteride, also known under the brand name Propecia, can have notable side effects.) “I wish everyone could be confident enough to shave their hair and not worry,” Kobren told Men’s Health. “That would be incredible, but there are just so many different components that the guys are uncomfortable with.”

For many, the act of baldness proudly appears to be one of the final refusals in the body positivity movement, a crusade that men are historically reluctant to accept. No wonder: men don’t know how to talk about their bodies. “How do we create security as men?” Psychiatrist Drew Ramsey, MD says. “Great chest. Big arms. Nice hair. Is that what it means to be a safe, mature man? “

The answer is a resounding no, but our culture would tell us otherwise. Take bald jokes like those recently raised on Prince William and LeBron James. They are still not considered taboo. The “joke” here is the Samson complex. A fear that, like biblical character, once you lose your hair, your strength, virality, and agency will all be lost.

LeBron James, still GOAT.

Robert LabergeGetty Images

Prince William remains royal.

Max Mama / IndigoGetty Images

But one look at some of Hollywood’s biggest action stars and iconoclastic athletes proves the Samson complex is a bust. LL Cool J made balding (and fedoras and bucket hats) cool. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Mike Tyson have proven that strength is not tied to hair. Gandhi showed that strength arises in the head, not what is shown externally. And Mr. Clean has proven it can be squeaky clean.

There is even a YouTube channel called BaldCafe that produces sincere videos of guys shaving everything off that have gone viral and have millions of views. However, apart from the Fast and Furious crew, the power shift in Hollywood is not moving fast enough.

According to data compiled by media analytics firm The Streaming Graduate, the bald portrayal in narrative films and on television falls into three main categories: villains (Thanos, Darth Maul), action stars (Bruce Willis, Briton Bruce Willis aka Jason Statham), and cowards (Tobias Fünke, George Costanza). Often these archetypes intersect like the mischievous but clumsy Frank in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or the weak and sinister Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

Jason Alexander in an episode of Seinfeld.

ABCGetty Images

Sarah-Mikal, director of analytics and strategy at Streaming Graduate, says you rarely see bald actors in romance or family films. The main exceptions are The Rock, Vin Diesel, and Dave Bautista, who have all starred in at least one kid-friendly action comedy. (Belated justice for the pacifier.)

Some pioneers of the power bald head are slowly penetrating the world of male modeling. Ben Whit is a London-based plus-size model who featured in a 2019 campaign for British men’s clothing retailer Jacamo. “I’m more of a niche market,” he says. “Since the plus-size industry is still so small at the moment, it is more difficult to find work.”

Although the market for whit has recently cooled (losing modeling due to the pandemic certainly didn’t help), it is focused on changing the perception of what baldness can look like, be it on Instagram, in interviews, or in fashion spreads. He hopes that “more men will realize, ‘I don’t really have to look like this …” [the standard model] be happy. He’s happy the way he looks and I look just like him. ‘”

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Like Whit, Bennett doesn’t view balding as a personal defect, even though it can often feel like we’re supposed to believe it. “Going bald can be a deep emotional trauma for a person,” says Bennett. But it doesn’t stay in that headspace. He refuses.

For him, it’s not his upcoming memoirs (Re) born in the USA or Men in Blazers that will be his legacy. It is co-coin and actively lives the term power bald. “Even if my own family has forgotten my name for several generations, I can look up or down… wherever I end up… and just know that if this is my contribution to the world, then it is worthwhile to approach one carve tombstone, ”he says. “I have to get myself a bigger tombstone than I imagined.” Well, this is a powerless move.

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t-oresama · 6 years

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"A Celebration in Animation: The 100 Greatest Cartoon Characters in Television History" by Marty Gitlin and Joe Wos

Synopsis: Few morose thoughts permeate the brain when Yosemite Sam calls Bugs Bunny a "long-eared galoot"or a frustrated Homer Simpson blurts out his famous catchphrase "D'oh!". A Celebration in Animation explores the best-of-the-best cartoon characters from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Casting a wide net, it includes characters both serious and humorous and ranging from silly to malevolent. But all the greats gracing this book are sure to trigger nostalgic memories of care-free Saturday mornings or after-school hours with family and friends in front of the TV set.

Published: 2018 (Lyons Press) Genre: Non-fiction, pop culture, ranked list Rating: 3.5 out of 5

WARNING: There are some spoilers in this review (they don't mention the ranking of the shows I'll mention, just the shows themselves). The cover of the book already spoils things in this regard, but just in case you want to read this yourselves, you may want to skip reading this review until then! :D

Reader Review: Okay, so at this point, I'm literally going to start making a new tag/sub-series of reviews called "judging a book by its cover", because yet again, that's what I did. Heck, I'll even go back to my old reviews and tag them as such I went back to my old reviews and tagged them as such. Working at a library is a blessing and a curse in this regard... Anyway, my allure to this book's cover came from Teen Titans' Beast Boy being smack-dab on it. And with my undying love for the original Teen Titans series, I was instantly curious as to what ranking he'd been awarded (THAT, I will spoil; it'll be in the tags). And I've always had a love of both cartoon history and countdown lists, so this book was right up my alley anyway.

Now, as much as the internet likes to make fun of WatchMojo on Youtube ("Top Ten Anime Betrayals" memes, anyone?), you have to admit that you yourself have watched at least one of their countdown lists, or a countdown list from someone else (ScreenRant, Looper, etc). There's something inherently interesting about putting things, specifically things we see in pop culture, in a ranked order, and the possibilities of the subjects of these lists are limitless so there's something for everyone. That being said, it drives me crazy when people get so mad or defensive about the entry order of a top 10/ top whatever number list, whether it's "How could THIS be #1???", "How could this NOT be #1???", "What about ___???", you get it. So going into reading this list of the top 100 cartoon characters in all of cartoon history, you really have to understand that these are the, albeit well-thought-out and industry-knowledgeable, OPINIONS of two people. This is not the Mayan calendar, the end-all be-all of lists. If anything, it prompts a dialogue, inviting you to hop on discussion train and talk about cartoons yourself.

Both Marty Gitlin, a pop culture author, and Joe Wos, a cartoon illustrator, have both the professional and personal insight of the vast history of cartoons. What is very apparent, though, is that these two have come together for more of their personal love of cartoons than anything else. This didn't bother me personally, because no matter how unbiased a ranking list claims to be, there's always a little bit of bias. The two authors try to base their rankings in fact more than personal preference, and for the most part they do stay unbiased, in both obvious and non-obvious ways (for example: there is one Disney character that ranks decently higher on the list than another Disney character, which was backed by reasonings both personal and professional by the authors, since the initial reaction from anyone would probably be "...Wait, really?"). Their choices do a great job in ranging from the dawn of cartoon history with "Crusader Rabbit" and "Astro Boy" to much more recent cartoons like Archer from "Archer", Tina from "Bob's Burgers" and Korra from "The Legend of Korra", all with the same logic applied to each for why they deserved to be recognized in this book, and not necessarily why they deserve spot number whatever (although they do emphasize the rankings DO matter, but it didn't really matter a whole lot outside of the top 20). I genuinely enjoyed learning about cartoons I wasn't too familiar with, getting little blurbs and fun facts out of it, and just generally getting into the heads of Gitlin and Wos. It's clear they did their research and really applied a lot of thought to this list. After all, it's hard with ALL the cartoons characters that have existed since the early 1900s to simply pick 100. Some liberties are taken for duos, like Sylvester and Tweety and Cosmo and Wanda, but it makes sense because some exist as foils of the other to play off of each other, and their partnership is what made them stand out individually in the first place. In that regard, it's more like a top 125-ish list, but again, the authors take care in making the reasonings make sense. Plus there's a foreword from SpongeBob voice and overall voice-acting marvel Tom Kenny, which is a nice treat that whets our appetite for what this book will unveil.

That being said, this book is very much a first draft that should have had some more time to be edited before release. It's enough sometimes to be overlooked; in the beginning of each new ranking, there's a bio for each character (Created by:____ Debuted in: ___ Voiced by: ____), but rather than a new blurb starting on a new line, there are sometimes two blurbs that exist on the same line. Again, not the worst thing ever. But then there are some that are just impossible to let go; there's literally a ranking (within the ranking) of Pinky and the Brain's most ridiculous "Take over the world" schemes, and there's randomly a line about Racer X of "Speed Racer" fame that is clearly not supposed to be in this ranking, let alone in this ranking's ranking. Consistency is also an issue. For a book about cartoons, there's a big lack of them in this book. Every ranked character, I assumed, would have its own picture to visually show the reader who the character is in a "show, don't tell" kind of way, but that was very much not the case for a large amount of characters. The most logical answer to this could've been that there were copyright issues where the authors couldn't obtain permission to use their images, but several Disney characters appear visually in the book, despite Disney being notoriously stingy about sharing their characters in mediums they don't helm themselves. And where we get a cartoon character visually for #1-45, we don't get any pictures at all for a straight 15 rankings afterwards. For a ranked list about a visual medium, I would've loved to have seen who they were talking about, instead of Google image searching who certain characters were (like I had no idea who Beany and Cecil were before this book, and had to provide my own visual representation). It's just an odd choice for a cartoon book to exclude... cartoons. Though what's more odd are some images they did include. There are a couple of weird choices of photos, like the French TV poster for "Pokemon" that says "Le Film" under a screenshot of Pikachu, and the tiniest picture ever of "Crusader Mouse" obscured by the title sequence. Again, Googling these characters myself showed me better results than the book did.

Finally and most importantly, character information is straight-up wrong. I know I said they do their research-- and they do-- and the authors are obviously not expected to know everything about every character offhand, but where they get tiny details and industry notes spot-on, they get the absolute simplest character information so unusually incorrect. There are two notable examples in my copy of the book. The first one is in Fat Albert's entry, where it states "Cosby Kid Tito is killed by a stray bullet intended for his older brother, who had joined a gang" (Uh... Fat Albert spoilers?). But it's actually Tito's younger brother Fernando who is shot and killed because the older brother who joins a gang is "Cosby Kid Tito". I know the piece is about Fat Albert the character and not Tito, but why bring this up if you don't even use the correct character to mention how progressive the show was to justify Fat Albert's place on the list? The second one is for the Powerpuff Girls regarding Blossom's physical description. It reads: "Blossom boasted light brown hair with a large blow and featured a short cape tied behind her pink dress and black belt." UMMMMMMM. I was so absolutely confused by this one line I had to look up various shots of her character model in case I somehow forgot that she had a cape, and to clarify, she absolutely does not have a cape (unless for specific episodes where's she dressing up outside of her normal attire). Did the authors think her hair was a cape? Did they mistake one episode where she wore a cape for the entirety of the series where she doesn't wear one? NO CAPES (CHECK OUT INCREDIBLES 2 IN THEATRES JUNE 15TH). Also... light brown hair? What adds insult to injury, besides the well-established fact that she has RED hair, is that this character description is written RIGHT NEXT TO A PICTURE OF THE POWERPUFF GIRLS TO PROVE THAT THAT IS NOT TRUE. Honestly, I'll give leniency where it's due for taking on the task of ranking and going in-depth on the origins and noteworthy points of a character, but no one prompted them to make this list. If you're going to talk in-depth about a character, fact-checking is your best friend. This is simple research, or simple picture-looking.

Overall, it's a fun book that helps you brush up on your cartoon history and send you into a state of nostalgia. I do wish there were more than the ten or so characters from Japan, Canada or the UK that appear on this list, but again, it's a book written in America that tends to look at the influence of said cartoons in American history, and asking someone to examine every cartoon character in the WORLD is a daunting, if not impossible task. I do also disagree with the fact that the list starts with #1 and descends from there. I find it more fun to build up to that #1 spot, because who really wants to read who #100 is when you know who #1 is already? I actually read this book backwards because of this, and found it much more satisfying to see the #1 spot by the "end". But I don't think there will be any dispute with who the top 30 or so cartoons are, but even if there are, that's the fun of ranked lists like this: if you disagree, just make your own list! It's all in good cartoon fun.

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rhetoricandlogic · 6 years

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LIMESTONE, LYE, AND THE BUZZING OF FLIES

KATE HEARTFIELD

ISSUE: 16 FEBRUARY 2015

4185 WORDS

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

The summer we were twelve, nobody asked my best friend Tom and me to wear bike helmets, because it was 1989. If they asked where we were going, we just said, “Bike ride.”

They would just nod and go back to whatever it was they were doing. My dad would go back to the bar; my mom would go back to staring at the TV. Tom’s mom would go back to screaming at Tom's older brother.

So we would ride fast in the sunshine. River Road had a few honest-to-goodness hills, a wonder in rural Manitoba. We used to kick our legs out wide and put our hands in the air and let our bikes rattle down, around the curves, knowing there might be cars coming but there never were.

We always went to the same place: our little kingdom. A green slope between the highway and the river, with a limestone fort squatting on it.

When we got to Lower Fort Garry, we’d park our bikes and walk in through the back gate. Nobody ever made us pay. Nobody swore or wailed at us. It was the one place we knew where we got to choose whether to talk to people. You walked up and talked to the pretend fur-trader or the pretend shopkeeper, or you didn’t. We would sit on the grass and listen to the crickets, or watch the lazy Red River until our eyes hurt from the sun glittering on it.

I think that’s why we heard what others did not hear, saw what others did not see. Something whispers in every silence and there is writing on every wall. One of my sisters said that to me, once, when we were chained together in a dungeon barely larger than a grave.

No—that is the wrong memory. That didn’t happen. Not to me.

I was a girl in 1989, in Manitoba, and my friend Tom and I would go to our fort. At times when there was hardly anyone else around, we would walk inside the square fort itself. We would sit on the barrels in the fur-storage room, stick our tongues out at the pelts that still had snarling faces attached, and try to make things out of trap wire. The pimply girls in their heavy nineteenth century dresses would give us ice cream sandwiches out of the staff freezer and one of them taught me how to smoke a Player’s cigarette.

The only one who never broke character was the blacksmith. If a visitor said something about TV or telephones he would pretend not to know what we were talking about. It was always 1850 for him. I never knew his name. The smithy was just outside the fort walls and I hated going in there because a fire was the last thing I wanted on a July afternoon. But Tom liked to go there to get nails for his collection. So I would lean against the shoeing apparatus just outside the door, and listen to the smith bang and hiss and twist.

“Now you be careful of this one, young sir,” the blacksmith said to him once when they were on their way out into the sunshine. I flipped my sunglasses up onto the top of my head so I could see them in the darkness. The smith had his thumb cocked at me.

Tom blushed and I rolled my eyes.

The blacksmith talked about the fire a lot: how hot it should be, what kind of wood, that sort of thing.

“This is no ordinary fire,” the blacksmith said, the last time we visited. “It began from a spark struck off the anvil of the first Scottish smith to work on this spot, in 1815, and has never gone out since.”

“Really,” I said, humouring him.

He nodded. “It’s a need-fire. It protects this place. So long as there is a smith to tend it.”

“Protects it from what?” Tom asked.

“The smith’s wife. She came here first, tried to claim this place and all the souls in it, but he followed her from across the ocean. As long as he has this fire and red iron in it, she’ll never have dominion here.”

“But she’s long dead,” I said. “She might even be dead in 1850. Do you mean her ghost or something?”

He shook his head. “As long as there’s a smith there’s a smith’s wife.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, what if the smith isn’t married?”

“It’s just a story, Daphne,” Tom said.

We had all the history plaques memorized and when it got too hot we would go into the museum and watch the twenty-minute heritage movie just so we could sit in the air conditioning. The fort was built in the 1830s by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which controlled the fur trade in those days and was pretty much the government of Canada back then too.

There was a lot of history they didn’t tell us: like the fact that Governor Simpson had eleven children by seven women and insisted on having a personal bagpiper with him when he circumnavigated the globe in a birchbark canoe. Or that Louis Riel’s secretary Honore Jaxon, a wannabe Metis who was born a white Methodist, was locked up in Lower Fort Garry’s isolation chambers in the 1880s after the Red River Rebellion, when the place became an asylum.

They showed us maps and dramatizations and pretended like all these sad, weird white people were so brave for snowshoeing or paddling out into a wilderness where they weren’t wanted. Like they weren’t all running with dogs at their heels.

The summer we were fourteen, Tom and I got jobs. We didn’t go to the fort anymore.

I worked at the hot dog diner near the locks. I sold slices of soggy cherry pie that we were supposed to say was homemade if anyone asked, and ice cream out of big plastic tubs, and bait worms. I came home at night with my uniform smelling of hot dogs and pine cleaner. My fingernails were brown from cleaning the grill and my wrists were sticky because the fishermen liked to put nickels in the bottoms of their Coke glasses and watch me fish them out.

The spring when we were sixteen, Tom and I didn’t hang out much anymore but his locker was close to mine.

“How do you like waitressing, Daphne?” he asked one day when the hall was empty because we were both late for class.

I shrugged. “How do you like the gas station?”

“I hear they’re hiring for the summer at Lower Fort Garry.”

“For what job?”

“You know, dressing up and talking to the tourists. Acting or whatever.”

I had never thought of that as an ordinary job, as a job that I could do. But Tom was right. They hired us and even paid a few cents over minimum wage. We could hardly believe our luck.

Tom got hired as the assistant to the very blacksmith who used to make him nails. I filled in wherever they needed a girl. The first week, I baked bannock and bread in the oven at the back of the governor’s mansion. I hated the heat and the flies there, the buzzing always in my ears, and the sun glaring off the limestone. If I listened for a few minutes, the buzzing seemed to fall into a pattern.

Joanne, a woman in her forties, played Anne Maxwell Colvile, the governor’s wife, mistress of the Big House. Joanne was always tired because her kids were brats. One day I was listening to the flies and kind of humming along to myself, and Joanne had to ask me three times if I’d seen her parasol.

Then one of the girls who worked in a settler house got mono and I asked if I could move there. The settler houses and teepee were outside the fort, just down the white-stone path from the smithy. It was quieter and cooler there. I could pour beef-fat candles into tin moulds, in the shade of the farmhouse doorway, while visitors watched. I memorized how the line of the shade would move from the doorstep to the carrot patch over the course of my shift: my own personal sundial. I could almost hear a ticking in it. I’d watch the line and say to myself: One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, four?

I made a little game of it. One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, four. Rattle the windows and knock on the door.

My clothes smelled of lard and lye and I learned the ways to make things.

My first day in the settler house, Tom wandered onto the path when there were no visitors around, and I wandered over to say hi. My skirt swished as I walked and I could see myself as he must see me: an image, a sunlit woman against a green and blue background. He smelled like fire.

We said things like “hello” and “how are you finding it here?” We talked differently to each other, in costume. Me in my leaf-green dress, with my hair all done up under a cap, and he in a loose white shirt and trousers that tied at his waist and a blue cloth tied around his dark hair. We were dressed up like a man and a woman and we talked that way, like we were in a play, even though I tried not to.

The blacksmith watched us from the doorway, with a poker in his hand.

The next day, he went away somewhere and they made Tom head blacksmith. Tom had been watching for years. He knew what to do.

The pretend-wife in the other farmhouse was an eighteen-year-old named Amberly. Her fake name was Mrs. Grant. She was nice but she couldn’t get the hang of things. I offered to show her about candles on a slow, grey afternoon.

“You have to pour it smoothly, like this,” I said, showing her. As I filled each tin tube, I said a little rhyme to keep my work in rhythm:

Mulleins and murrain Candles and kine Gone is the leman Who once was mine

“What’s that?” Amberly asked.

“I don’t know. I must have read it somewhere.”

My hand started to shake but I managed not to spill the tallow. I kept saying the rhyme to myself, to keep myself grounded, even though it scared me. I hadn’t read it anywhere. I didn’t know what half those words even meant. But I knew that each word came with a mark on the flagstones where my shadow-dial ebbed and flowed. That crack was mulleins and that weed was murrain. The shadow taught me the words.

Amberly asked me to teach her the words and I did.

After that, Amberly came to me for advice on just about everything. She pinned her cap with two hidden safety pins just like mine. She broke up with her boyfriend when I told her to.

Soon I had rhymes for many things. The butter churning had a fast rhyme that I learned from sunlight on limestone. The bread kneading had a slow one that I learned from the buzzing of flies. When I planted the late carrots, I knelt down looking at the river beyond, the quick ripples of the waves.

I taught the other girls. Nobody had ever listened to me before. But somehow I seemed to remember, like the memory of a dream, that girls had once listened to me, had once taken my advice, had begged for my secrets. Those were not real memories; those were not these girls.

Once they had learned the words to any of my rhymes, once they had repeated the words to me, they would listen to whatever I said. They would follow my advice. Even Joanne, the pretend governor’s wife. I told her to loosen up about her daughter’s curfew and she did.

I liked the patterns in my mind; I told myself I just liked to make up things while I sat and thought. There was plenty of time for sitting and thinking, there, after all.

Tom got an assistant blacksmith, older than both of us. Gareth was a quiet man with a big beard. He looked the part. He looked like he ought to be carrying an axe or a tree trunk all the time just in case it was ever needed.

One quiet morning when it was still cool, just before we opened, Tom and Gareth came by the little willow stand where we demonstrated things for the kids. It was close by the smithy. I was getting things ready, putting out the sticks for fire-starting. The willow trees were bending as if they were doing a little dance for me, teaching me.

“What’s the coffee can for?” Gareth asked.

“Making charcloth. When you light a fire with a stick and a board, you need something to take the spark. So you burn the cloth, see?”

I held out a bundle of squares of off-white linen.

“But you don’t want the cloth to actually catch fire. So you put it in the coffee can, and nestle the can in just the right spot, and leave it there for hours. You have to make sure that there isn’t much air in the can, too, so you can’t be checking it all the time. Kind of like making rice.”

I used my bright steel Zippo to get a fire started, flipping the Zippo’s top on and off a few times, idly, just like I had seen the smokers at school do. Then I put the square of ivory-coloured linen in the coffee can, setting it just in the right place, with a little singsong:

Here is the hill and here is the dell Here is heaven and here is hell.

“Here,” I said, holding out another coffee can. “You do one, Gareth. But you have to say the rhyme.”

He laughed a little, nervously.

“You don’t really have to say the rhyme,” Tom said. I liked the way his shoulders looked in that olden-days shirt but even thinking that made him seem like a stranger. I didn’t know what had happened to the skinny kid who used to park his police-auction bike out at the gate next to mine.

“You do so have to say it,” I argued. “Come on, Gareth. It won’t work otherwise.”

Gareth laughed again, because he was shy.

Mrs. Boggs the missionary, whose real name was Stacy, came by with my Coke from the machine.

“Is there anything else you’d like?” she asked.

I shook my head. Tom watched her. He put his hand to his forehead to keep the glare out of his eyes. We weren’t allowed to wear sunglasses and he didn’t get a straw hat because he was supposed to be in the smithy most of the time. He looked at Stacy in her lace yoke. He looked at me.

It just made sense that if I was doing the work to get the fire-kits ready that someone who didn’t have any set-up to do would bring me a Coke. It’s not like I was asking her to do all my homework for me or throw herself into the river or something. It wasn’t like that at all.

Amberly and I did a bannock tea for Canada Day in July. We set up the tables in one of the store rooms and put out china tea cups and little dishes of jam.

“Did you go on that date with the shopkeeper?” I asked. Sometimes we called each other by our pretend-jobs instead of our names, because we were so used to being in character.

She shook her head. “I got back together with Keith.”

“No,” I said. I put a butter dish down on the table. “I hate that guy. He’s no good for you. Dump him. Call him tonight and dump him.”

She shook her head, not looking up from the table. She kept putting little silver knives down, clink, clink, clink.

“Amberly,” I said. “Say you’ll do it.”

She shook her head. Clink, clink, clink.

I whispered, looking up at her, waiting for her to join in.

A hooded crow on a frosty night Sold me a child with an eyeball bright Husha, husha, sang I to him Dance while you can ere your eyes grow dim

She kept her pink-stained lips together. She pulled something out of her apron pocket and rolled it around in her fingers. A black iron nail.

Soon everybody had one. Joanne kept hers on a loop around her waist, which looked ridiculous. Gareth had one on a chain under his shirt. All I could see was the chain and the shape of the nail but I knew what it was. Stupid heavy things to carry around.

I walked into the smithy on a July day, passing right under the horseshoe because I wasn’t superstitious.

“Why are you turning everyone against me?”

He was alone, as if he was waiting for me. He had a bar of iron in the fire.

“Nobody is against you. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“They aren’t yours, Daphne.”

“So whose are they? Yours? This was always my place. I found it first.”

I had. I remembered. We were rivals before we were lovers. Smiths have always thought it their business to hunt my sisters and me. He had wielded his accursed craft in that Scottish hamlet long before I turned up there, singed and hoarse from the flames, the screams of my dead sisters in my ears. I only wanted a quiet life, a safe place. I feared the iron but I loved him, and he said he would not harm me. He said God would forgive me.

When our baby was born blue, I said a little rhyme over him. Just one little song, a bluebell song for my bluebell boy. My husband snatched him away and put me in iron, weeping over me as if he were driven to it. I had cheated death before. I freed myself and I sought a quiet place.

Tom shook his head as if he was trying to get the memories out. “Would you like me to make you something?”

He pulled the bar out of the fire; it was red at the end. I took a step back, into the sunshine.

He dropped the bar on the ground with a clang and he grabbed my wrist with his gloved hand.

“You will not shackle me!” I yelled. I remembered the cage of black iron, how it had burned and bitten. I hung from that gibbet for far too long, exposed to all foulness, before I found the words to burst those broad black bands gilded with weather. It was a wonder I had survived, after a fashion.

I ran from him before the blacksmith could cage me again.

On the August long weekend, the staff held a bonfire.

I got there late but they had still not set it alight. There was still enough light to see by. Tom was telling people where to put the wood, where to set up the coolers and mosquito coils.

Everyone obeyed him.

“Hi, Amberly,” I said.

She looked away as though I had said something awful. He had turned them all against me.

My fortress by the river still whispered to me but it no longer needed to lend me words. I could not make them repeat the old rhymes after me, not with his iron binding them. But I could get into their heads.

I sang the first tune that came to my lips: "Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order. Amberly giggled. The iron nails grew heavy; they twisted and bent; some of them went red.

Joanne was a woman of experience. She knew when to let go. She untied her nail from the bit of rope at her waist and threw the horrid thing into the wood pile.

The others threw theirs, then. They were free. I freed them.

Tom pleaded with them but I did not hear what he said. He moved his lips like an actor in a silent movie. One by one they came to stand at my side and stare at Tom, and sing. We all knew the words. In our dresses and trousers we sang, as if the song were an old song. I made it an old song. I pulled my Zippo out of my pocket and flicked it a few times. I walked toward the pile of wood.

Then Gareth approached, a silhouette against the last light of the sky. He was carrying a long poker before him, and on the far end of the poker was a flat piece of iron, like a paddle. And on that iron rested an ugly pile of coals. Coals from the need-fire.

I stopped singing. We all stopped.

I remembered the screams of my sisters, their hair curling crisp while their legs cooked, their coughing and weeping.

If they could not cage me they would burn me.

Open ground under a Manitoban sky at twilight has its own kind of silence, a silence loud like the hum of an airplane. I ran headlong in that silence, under that grey sky, feeling as though if I stopped running the world would keep moving anyway.

But I did stop, when I reached the back gate. No one came after me. No one made me pay. I disentangled my bike from the others. I had to hike my skirt up to my hips, because Daphne—I—did not ride a girls’ bike. I had no time to change. I had to get away, to safety. I had to get away from the fire.

I rode fast. When I came to the hills I did not lift my feet. I pushed until my pedals spun and whacked my bare shins.

This time, there was a car at the bottom.

Tom visited me in the hospital, in jeans and a T-shirt. It was one of those wild dark days that come to the prairies in August and the rain lashed wordlessly against the wide hospital window.

It seemed like nothing more than a campfire story. But Tom and I couldn’t look at each other. The silence between us was uncomfortable, filled with the gentle beeps of machines, the nattering of nurses in the hallway. A sterile silence with no memory in it. Nothing to listen to, except the unspoken words in our minds.

“Gareth is taking over,” he said. “I’m going back to the gas station.”

I nodded. “Will they get another girl to play Mrs. McTavish?”

He shrugged. It didn’t matter. I—she—would find someone: Amberly, Joanne, hell, maybe governor Colvile himself—Matthew—or Ben the shopkeeper. Maybe she didn’t even need to be a woman. Or maybe she’d find a way to get far from the need-fire, far from the smith.

I doubted it, somehow. I’d left her behind. When I got free she didn’t come with me. I wondered how the smith had found a way at last to cage her, to keep her there, with him.

My head ached. Tom frowned. He seemed to be thinking of the right words to say, and I was just hoping he wouldn’t say it. I was listening hard to the rain.

That’s how I remember us, when I remember us, now. I moved to Montreal and Tom moved to Vancouver. Opposite directions. As if to show each other we had no intention of ever seeing each other again.

#Kate Heartfield #Limestone Lye and the Buzzing of Flies #short story

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