#how many letters in thompson? ATE.

[freethrows]

Mar 26, 2024

[bigteefsmallbrain]

General Soul Eater HCs please

Soul Eater: General headcanons

Death the Kid:

He’s an art critic

Hear me out

He is obsessed with symmetry, and loves the beauty in it

So when he sees something non-symmetrical, especially in art, he can’t help but to critique it

May go as far as to send a personal letter to the artist (If they’re alive) about how offensive it is that they created something so asymmetrical

If he can’t send a letter to the artist, he’ll send one to the owner/museum and request it be taken down, while listing reasons why it’s horrible.

Anything he writes has an even amount of letters and words

Be that his test answers

Essays

Letters

Diary entry

Speaking of diary entries, he definitely has one

But it’s actually just a catalogue of symmetrical things he’s seen

He puts photos into it and writes about how beautiful it was to see

He doesn’t care what it is much, just that it was beautiful

Meaning he takes photos of people too

Which can be unnerving at times

He’s probably taken a photography class before, or at the very least is self taught

Literally has a photo album of things he views are beautiful, but non symmetrical and he would die if anyone found it

Like a particular sunset with uneven hills

Or a flower with one too many petals

Definitely has an 8 ball, not a magic one, just an 8 ball, it’s placed on a velvet pillow in his room and he frequently polishes it

Elizabeth Thompson:

Makes several backup plans as a way to cope

Especially after dealing with an experience with a ghost

She has notebooks full of them, labeled and detailed

At one point she started putting them in alphabetical order but stopped immediately when she realized Kid’s perfectionist habits were rubbing off on her

She practices acting in the mirror

Usually so she can charm a man into dating her

But also to con people

She used to be a “Street rat” and that thought of ending up on the streets again constantly plagues her mind

She takes full advantage of the “Rich life”

Shopping sprees

Quality makeup

Salons and spa days

The works

She lets Patty’s thought that she knows everything get to her head

The fact alone that her sister believes in her that much is enough to make her a bit egotistical

And Patty’s admiration for the girl makes it ten times worse

She literally doesn’t care if she ends up being wrong because she’ll just be right next time anyways

So stubborn in that aspect

Patricia Thompson:

She likes dark humor

You can’t convince me otherwise, you actually can’t, I have evidence

She made an origami Giraffe, and broke its neck

Laughed when Kid said he “wants to die”

She literally pokes him with a stick when he’s depressed

She likes dark humor, and probably looks up jokes to tell others just for kicks

She’s secretly sadistic, and likes scaring her sister and others

She may act naïve and innocent, but she is anything but

She definitely has, more than once, banged on Liz’s door at 3AM just to hear her sister squeal like a little girl

Honestly, she probably purposefully gets their pose wrong, just to see her sisters annoyance and laugh when Kid gets smacked

She likes origami

Probably first got into it because of the paper ninja stars

Then just found it relaxing

She most likely makes the ninja stars mostly, and keeps a box of her origami creations somewhere

Has in the past, and will not hesitate to do so again, beat someone up for kicks or just to destress

Patty has two faces, the childlike innocent one, and the insane anger one

So it’s not too far fetched to say that she’ll hide her anger till she can corner someone alone and beat them up

Or that she gets bored and decides to do so

I wouldn’t be too surprised if her sister occasionally joined as well

Maka Albarn:

She’s a Harry Potter nerd and you can’t convince me otherwise

She loves the concept of magic

Loves the dynamic between Ron and Hermione, though feels a bit of Deja vu thinking about it

Probably used to write fanfiction, but in a way that made it seem like it was actually part of the story

She will hit you if you mention it

Definitely the type to compare books to their movie counterparts

Not in like, a critic way, but she will definitely rant about the differences, or how a character looks exactly like she imagined, or if they didn’t put in a particular scene she liked in the book

Forces Soul into movie nights, but it’s only the movie counterparts to her books

I can see her forcing everyone into a group study session

Be super organized about it, and setting it up in a way so that no one can refuse

She probably has specific ways for everyone to study

Like having Black☆Star work out while studying so he retains the knowledge better

Or setting up the session in a symmetrical way so Kid doesn’t freak out about it

She writes letters to her mom, as a coping mechanism for when her emotions get to be a little too much

Like when she’s having a bad day

Or if she’s particularly peeved at something Soul did

She writes a lot more letters when it comes around the time of her mom's birthday or death anniversary

She likes the thought of an old timey romance, and often listens to songs that give off that kind of feel

She really likes “It’s Been a Long, Long Time”, it’s one of her favorites

She also likes the old Disney songs, like “Once Upon a Dream” and “So This Is Love”

She would be so embarrassed if anyone found out though, especially if it was her dad or Soul

She isn’t quite sure why she’s so worried about Soul finding out though

Speaking of, she half realizes, half doesn’t with anyone's romantic feelings, including her own

She’ll fantasize about getting a love letter or having someone present her with a bouquet of roses

But if it actually happens she’s like “Oh, thanks friend!”

She knows the behaviors, she just can’t put two and two together

They would have to be extremely blunt, no over dramatic confession, just “I’m in love with you and want to be romantically involved with you”

She reads dictionaries for fun

She really likes to read out of date dictionaries, just to see what words and slang existed back then

She also highlights words she likes and uses them frequently on accident

She has most definitely yelled “I have cupid’s kettlebells*! I’m not flat!” at Soul before

Soul Evans:

Bottles. Up. His. Emotions.

He’s influenced by “toxic masculinity” and fully believes that being vulnerable in a serious way “isn’t cool”

He will bottle everything up so deep down inside that it seems impossible for it to surface

Feelings of inferiority to others? Bottled

Want to cry or break down? Nope, gotta be cool

Started crying in front of someone and can’t stop? He’s not crying, you’re clearly blind

Speaking of crying, once he starts, and I mean genuinely starts, it’s so hard to get him to calm down, and even then the tears don’t stop

Sometimes he’ll start to freak out and send himself into a panic attack because the tears just won’t stop

He’s that influenced by the thought of being vulnerable

On a lighter note, he does adore playing the piano, but the only person he’ll play for is Maka

He swears it’s not favoritism, and it’s partially true, but favoritism does play a large role in it

He frequently drags Maka to his room to show her a new piece he put together

And if he notices her feeling a little down that day, he’ll start playing a song that he knows she likes

He definitely knows about her love for old timey romance songs and is very embarrassed to admit a lot of the pieces he constructs are based off of that

The walls are p a p e r t h i n , he can hear her music through the walls

He secretly finds it adorable when he catches her listening to it because she’ll be dancing around to it

He also frequently finds himself thinking about those moments

He’s the stereotype that parents tell little girls about, with how boys will bully their crush

He’s a lot more playful and easy going, but still teases Maka, so much

Unlike Maka, he’s fully aware of his feelings, and acknowledges them, but bottles it up, only letting himself entertain the thought every once in a while

He jabs at Maka’s lack of “Cupids Kettlebells” as a way to try and ensure she won’t fall for him, because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if she does

He reads the same dictionaries that Maka does, not for fun, but so he can know just what the actual h e l l she’s saying

More than once he’s had to look up a particular word or phrase online because he can’t find it in the dictionary

“What the hell? It’s an old Victorian saying!? Where does she keep finding this stuff!?”

Subconsciously, as time goes on, he starts using old phrases as well, he was so embarrassed the first time he got caught saying “Keep your idle daddles* off of her!” when defending someone from a perv.

Black☆Star:

Is so unbelievably selfish with food

It’s not even funny

He will stab someone if they reach for his food

He surprisingly eats healthy most of the time though?

Says something like “I have to otherwise I’ll never surpass the gods!”

The only person who could ever p o s s i b l y steal his food is Tsubaki, but even that’s pushing it

He has the weirdest dreams, and I mean weird

Dreams like being turned into a potato and being cooked, mashed, and devoured by Tsubaki herself

He didn’t talk to her for a week after that dream, and refused to eat potatoes for a full year because “You never know if it could be a person turned into a potato!”

He was also very offended when Tsubaki ate potatoes during that time period

He takes things very literally

Like up above, if someone does something in a dream, he acts like it was real

Or if someone makes a joke about fighting, he will drag them outside to fight

He’s secretly scared of Tsubaki

But it’s for literally the stupidest reason

And he fully believes that because of it she could fight god and win

She used to have a pet cockroach

One of the flying ones

And he is so unbelievably scared of them, because for some reason they just don’t die, and they have w i n g s

So the fact she owned one as a pet scares him so bad even though it was literally for only a week

He has a soft spot for children

He doesn’t really know why

He just does

Is secretly really good with kids

Literally the definition of dad material

He has his flaws but still

Little kids are the only people who could steal his food and get away with it

Every. Time. and it makes the others so mad

Tsubaki Nakatsukasa:

What can I say, she’s perfect

She probably receives love letters

Reads them over when she’s feeling sad

Likes to keep them in a shoebox she painted

She definitely paints to unwind and relax

Likes to go outside and paint the sunrise/sunset

Takes note of beautiful scenery so she can come back in her free time and paint it

She probably draws/sketches too

Carries a sketchbook with her

More than likely has drawn Black☆Star doing something

Like napping or training

She’d never show him though, too scared of inflating his ego or giving him the wrong idea

Stress bakes/cooks

We know she cooks

Liz took advantage of it and pretended Tsubaki’s cooking was her own

So we know she does

Sometimes painting/drawing doesn’t cut it

So she heads to the kitchen and bakes away her worries and unwinds

The main reason Tsubaki would possibly be spared from Black☆Star’s stabbing habit with food is because she cooks all the meals

She makes sure everyone is comfortable around her

She’ll go as far as to learn someone's customs and practice cooking their unique cuisine just to make sure that they feel comfortable and safe in her presence

She radiates mom friend energy

She’s perfect mom material, perfect wife material, perfect in general honestly

*Cupid's Kettlebells is a old term for a woman's bust

*Idle daddles is a old term for hands

I Hope you like these general headcanons for the main seven! You didn’t say which characters you’d like to see, so I played it safe by putting the main characters! Thank you for the ask!

[wolfpawn]

When Ghosts Come For Us

Chapter 9

NOTE This is based on the movie Crimson Peak, so if any of the subject matter in that was uncomfortable for you, you will find this similar. I will *NOT* be describing incest in this, it will only be implied, same as the movie. 

Also, I do not own any image or gif used in this story.

There is references to past abuse in this chapter. 

Rating: Mature.

When Thomas returned, he was somewhat concerned by the grin on Lucille’s face, but going by the smile on Charlotte’s, he thought little of it. They ate, once more, with little talking, and went about their own pursuits for the evening. Thomas went organising some idea for the safety feature he had developed, Lucille played her piano and for a while, Charlotte baked happily, but soon enough after dinner, she felt poorly.

It started with what felt like indigestion, then cramping, and before long, she was sweating profusely, feeling incredibly ill and then she vomited multiple times. When the wretched sound came to Lucille’s attention, she smirked and continued playing, acting oblivious. When it came to Thomas’ he clenched his jaw.

He deplored the smell of sweat and vomit, but seeing that Charlotte was lying face down on the cold flagstone floor, weak and as though she was barely conscious, gripping her stomach in agony, he carried her to their room, her whimpering all the way.

‘What did you give her?’ He asked Lucille when he went back downstairs to fetch some water to assist her.

‘I have no idea what you are referencing.’ Lucille shrugged with a smile.

‘Lucille, she is like death.’

‘She clearly has just caught something. She has not the hardy constitution for this world.’

‘Lucille, it is cruel to make her suffer like this. What is the purpose of it?’

‘Thomas, focus on what this is for.’ Lucille growled.

‘She demands nothing, she asks for nothing, Lucille please cease your games.’

‘Does that not concern you, she never asked for keys, she does not wander around?’

‘Lucille, she is from similar to us, she has suffered many of the sufferings we have, I have little doubt she has learned to survive by not doing anything untoward.’

‘They never suffered as I suffered.’ Lucille hissed.

Thomas eyed her. ‘You read the letters?’

‘“Dearest Charlotte”.’ Lucille spat. ‘So loved and adored by her sister, so sweet and kind amongst everything they endured, it proves how simple-minded she is.’

‘So you are doing this why, to toy with her? Because you are angry that she does not lament?’

Lucille turned to face Thomas. ‘I do it because I must. In the morning, we call the doctor.’

Thomas looked at her and realised the point of her actions. ‘Why not now?’

‘Goodness Thomas, who would go at this hour to get one?’ Lucille chuckled.

Feeling guilty, Thomas went back to getting something to assist Charlotte.

*

‘You should try to drink.’ Lucille held the liquid close to Charlotte’s mouth, Charlotte moved away from it. ‘Come now, don’t be foolish.’

Thomas watched as Charlotte gripped her stomach in agony, tears in her eyes that she refused to shed as she tried to breathe. When the guilt consumed him more than he could bear, he left the room.

Thinking of the pain she was in, he could not rest. It was a peculiar sensation to him, usually he never paid heed to anything around him, he used to push away the feelings of guilt with anyone else, even Edith, who was interesting and different, never instilled the feelings he had for Charlotte, but he suspected that was because none of the previous women knew the suffering they endured as a result of their parents, Charlotte, on the other hand, knew well, she was like them.

Unable to remain still, yet not able to focus on his own projects, Thomas went to the room he had specifically been thinking of earlier in the day when he spoke to Charlotte regarding her art. Looking around, he knew it would take a few hours, but as Lucille’s words of encouragement to drink something and Charlotte’s fresh gasps in pain came into focus once more, he decided to drown them out with something else.

The next morning, with dust sticking to him, Thomas looked around the room. He had gotten sidetracked during the night and even engineered a crude easel for Charlotte and had brought a chair in for her. Her trunk was in next to the window and its contents were still inside, not knowing how she would feel about them being opened, even though he had done such already. With some form of pride, he looked around the room, satisfied.

‘What is this?’ He turned to see Lucille looking around.

‘A room, for Charlotte to use, for art.’

‘Why?’ Thomas looked towards the door. ‘She fell asleep, finally. She is so dramatic.’

Thomas recalled the sheer determination on Charlotte’s face not to cry, her gritted teeth as she bore the pain, he did not think her dramatic. ‘Because she does nothing wrong, she cooks, sews and cleans without argument and she goes nowhere she should not. She is no bother and this will keep her satisfied.’

‘Because that is our main objective in all of this.’ Lucille stated dryly.

‘I have the doctor called.’ He answered without looking at his sister.

Lucille, though irked as to Thomas’s concern for Charlotte and her childish pursuits, needed the doctor to come, so said nothing more.

*

It was a while later when a carriage pulled up to the house and a young doctor disembarked. Thomas, who had been ensuring everything was working with his machine was the first to meet him. ‘Sir Sharpe, I assume?’ The man smiled.

‘Yes...forgive me, you are…?’

‘Dr Thompson, I am new to the area. Dr Percival is retiring so I am taking the reins somewhat and getting used to the area and its people.’ He explained, shaking Thomas’s hand.

‘Very good.’

‘So, the patient is…’

‘My wife, Charlotte, she is in bed at the moment, resting, she fell ill yesterday evening, my sister was here with her all day, I was in the town for the most of it, she can give you more details.’ Thomas explained as they entered the house. The doctor looked around curiously. ‘Forgive the appearance, we are currently having the house redone.’

‘It’s a fascinating structure.’ The doctor noted. ‘Eighteenth Century, am I right?’

‘Corrent, the 1780’s.’

‘Yes, the stairwells were the big thing then.’ The doctor stated.

Thomas wondered as to why a doctor would take such interest in architecture but said nothing on it. ‘Yes, I fear that is not my forte. Lucille?’ A moment later, Lucille came into view at the top of the stairs. ‘Could you please fill in Dr Thompson on Charlotte’s condition?’

‘Of course, please, follow me.’ Lucille stated politely, her smile not reaching her eyes.

‘Thank you.’ The doctor did as requested. ‘Was the illness sudden?’

‘Yes, and quite violent, she is in terrible pain, the poor thing.’

‘I see, and how long are she and Sir Sharpe wed?’

‘A little over a month.’

‘I see.’

‘May I ask as to why such a question?’

‘I have to ascertain all the possible causes for her Ladyship's current state. If she is with child and other such potentials.’

‘Of course, how silly of me to not think of such.’ Lucille walked into Thomas and Charlotte’s room, to see Charlotte grimacing in pain. ‘She was awake most of the night and has only slept on and off this morning.’

‘Thank you.’ The doctor smiled before walking over to her. ‘Lady Sharpe, I am Dr Thompson, I hope to help find out what has you poorly.’ She nodded. ‘How severe would you call the pain?’

‘During the night, sheer agony, now, moderately painful.’

‘Okay, so whatever this is, is on the decline.’ He nodded. ‘How do you feel overall?’

‘Like my innards are after exploding.’

The doctor chuckled. ‘I can well imagine. Have you experienced anything like this before?’

‘Yes, as a child, I cannot recall the cause, only the pain.’

‘Alright, well that is something. I am going to have to check your abdomen, so I will ask your lovely sister-in-law to raise your dress to reveal your abdomen but keep the blankets over everything below your hips, we cannot be allowing you to be exposed unnecessarily.’

Lucille did as requested, her attention on the doctor’s medical bag and the contents of it. To her annoyance, she could not seem to see any form of paper within it. After she did as he requested, she stood back. He touched Charlotte’s abdomen in several places and watched her reaction.

‘Okay, your kidneys are fine, as is your appendix, that is a terrible little blighter for erupting, causes terrible agony, not sure what the damn thing even does. I fear your stomach and associated organs are tender and swollen, not that I need tell you, you know that better than I, and thankfully, there seems nothing wrong with anything to do with your female organs, so overall, I think it to be a terrible bug or a reaction. Have you any allergies?’

‘Rhubarb, I think.’

‘You think?’

‘I remember being told it since I was a child, I cannot recall how it came to be known, apparently, I do not react well to such at all.’ She grimaced again.

‘And what did you eat for dinner?’

‘Stew.’

‘Nothing with rhubarb in it?’

‘No.’

‘Alright.’ The doctor stood straight again. ‘Could you sit up for me please, I know it probably is sore.’

Charlotte did as requested. ‘Lady Lucille, could you untie the back of her dress please?’

‘No!’ Charlotte looked around fearful.

‘Lady Sharpe, I have to check your breathing.’

‘I…’

‘Do not worry, no one will see anything you do not want them to.’

Charlotte said nothing and leant forward, as Lucille undid the back of the dress, she stared at the base of the bed. When the air went over her back, she knew her skin was revealed. Lucille stood back and when Charlotte looked at her, she was not looking at Charlotte’s face, but at her back.

‘I see,’ the doctor’s voice was strained. ‘I…’ He cleared his throat. ‘I will need you to breathe in and out deeply, alright?’ Charlotte did as requested several times. When he leant back, he looked at her skin for another moment. ‘Have you had pneumonia in the past, Lady Sharpe?’

‘Yes.’

‘More than once?’

‘Yes.’ Charlotte looked ahead the whole time.

‘I see.’ The doctor stood back. ‘Lady Lucille, if you would tie her dress again please.’ Lucille did as he asked, looking at the heavily scarred skin that had clearly endured more than simple lashings of a belt as she did so. ‘I think it to be just a temporary illness, it will pass in the next few hours and you will be well again. Until then, try and eat simple foods, plain porridge, some tea, and other such things, you need to keep the body fueled against the illness.’ He grabbed his bag and made for the door. ‘Yes, that will do it.’ He stated, shaken by the brutality blatant to see had been taken out on the woman’s back. ‘Good day.’

Charlotte curled up and faced the other direction, away from the door and Lucille, who said and did nothing for a moment before rising to her feet. ‘I will get the porridge.’ She declared, Charlotte did not respond.

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@sigridlaufeyson @wolfsmom1 @ilovekingt @whovianwookie86-captainxev  @texmexdarling @lokiloveheart

[victimofthemusic]

Five Times Tony Stark Was a Good Dad (And One Time He Wasn’t)

So, I’m obsessed with the whole idea that Peter is Tony’s unofficial son and it’s only supported by Tony’s appearance in Spider-Man Homecoming, so I came up with this series, which is in the works and also posted on my AO3 account. If you like it or have any suggestions as to where I should take this, please don’t hesitate to let me know! Also, forgive any spelling errors or mistakes, I finished this at three in the morning one night and I was too lazy to go back and fix them. Enjoy!

Read Part 2 here

~~~~~~

Tony swore when he was twelve years old that he would never be a father. He remembered that moment clearly, like it had just happened a day ago, not well over thirty years ago. He was in his room, his father still screaming in a drunken rage at his mother over something Tony did, his anger and disappointment following Tony down the hallway of their New York penthouse apartment. He remembered sitting on the cold tile floor of his room, head rest against the heavy wooden door that was doing nothing to muffle his father’s harsh words.

His father was angry, Tony had gotten kicked out of his third private school on the East Coast, the letter expulsion still clutched in his father’s harsh grasp. He wasn't sure if he had ever seen his father this furious before and Tony knew that the only thing that saved him from taking a glass full of scotch to the face was his mother’s presence in the room. Maria Stark might’ve been docile about a lot of things, but Howard taking his rage out on Tony physically, that would never fly in this house hold.

Tears of anger and embarrassment welled in Tony’s eyes and he wiped them away furiously, refusing to waste anymore energy on that man that he was forced to acknowledge as his father. No matter what Tony did, it was never enough to please Howard Stark. He made his first prototype of an arch reactor at the age of six, Howard wanted it by age five. Tony skipped three grades, Howard wanted him to skip four. Tony, despite his age, was offered a spot at MIT and if Howard had it his way? He would've been there a year ago. No matter how much Tony achieved, how many goals he surpassed, he always came up short in Howard’s eyes. Being the constant source of Howard’s disappointment and ire made Tony wonder if he would ever succeed in his father’s eyes, if his dad would ever clap him on the back and say “I’m proud of you, son.”

He wondered, some nights, when he’d lie awake in his too big bed in his too big room in his too big house, if his father had ever wanted children, had wanted Tony.

The thought crossed his mid countless of times, until it latched onto his cerebral cortex and sat there, like the worst form of cancer that had no possible cure.

And while Tony sat there, head resting tiredly against the warm wood, Howard’s voice still echoing down the long hallway, that cancer spread until it proved fatal.

He never wanted his children to feel like this.

Unwanted

Worthless

A complete and utter failure.

Tony was self-aware enough to know that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, that human nature was a pattern and patterns were destined to repeat themselves, without fail. Anger and rage and disappointment were the only form of affection Tony was used to getting to his father. His father was a cold man, always keeping Tony at a distance that no matter how hard he tried, Tony could never quite breach.

And Tony knew, no matter how hard he tried, he would always end up like his father.

~~~~~~~

Peter Parker came into his life unexpectedly and despite popular opinion, unplanned. He’d been keep tabs on the Spider-Kid since the kid popped up on his radar a few months ago, clad in that god awful homemade leotard/hoodie contraption and flying around Queens on his webs with all the grace of a child learning to walk for the first time. Tony never planned to actually meet the kid behind the mask or reaching out to the flying kid in his homemade costume, but when the Avengers disbanded and the only family Tony had ever known was decreasing in numbers, he needed back up.

Looking back, his intentions were purely selfish and it shamed him to admit, when he dropped the kid back off in his sketchy neighborhood in Queens with the new suit he’d made him, he never had any intention of keeping in contact with the kid.

To absolve himself from the guilt, he appointed Happy as his chaperone and threw himself into creating new legs for Rhodey, another way to attempting to soothe ache of guilt that had settled along with the shrapnel, in his battered heart.

He underestimated Peter, who was pushy and persistent and finally, after three months, Happy threw his phone at Tony and told him to call the kid. That night, Tony, with a glass of scotch in hand, filtered through the hundreds of voicemails Peter had left Happy—anecdotes of his daily patrols, everything from helping old ladies cross the street, stopping bike thieves to getting cats out of trees. Each story was told with excruciating detail, in that excited ramble the kid got whenever he was particularly enthused about something and warmth settled around Tony’s heart, fond amusement making his lips curl into his first genuine smile in months.

It took Tony another week to reach out to the kid, but he did and that’s how he found himself, in one of his more flashier cars, sitting outside of Peter’s school. He ignored the gawking, the stunned stares and the whispers of the students filtering out of the school, his eyes scanning the crowd before they landed on a familiar head of messy hair.

Peter was talking excitedly to the chubby, dark haired Asian kid by his side, who was nodding along to everything Peter said with a look of pure wonder on his face and Tony wondered briefly if his little friend knew that his BFF moonlighted as a super-hero in spandex at night.

Another kid appeared by Peter’s side and Tony watched as Peter visibly tensed and tried to skirt around the kid, but the kid threw a hand out and stopped Peter in his tracks.

The cocky grin that appeared on the kid’s face was all too familiar to Tony and before he could even second guess himself, he was out of his car and walking towards the three boys, ignoring the murmurs coming from the crowd.

“—when are you gonna stop lying about your internship with Tony Stark, Penis Parker? There’s no way someone like Tony Stark would ever take on a charity case like you—“

Peter looked up when he heard the murmuring crowd fall to a hush and his gaze landed on Tony. The amount of surprise in the kid’s features made Tony’s gut clench that in no way had to do with the greasy cheeseburger he ate on the way over here.

“M-Mr. Stark, what, uh, what are you doing here?” Peter stammered, flicking his gaze back to would be bully in front of him.

“Yeah, Parker, like I’m gonna fall for that—“

“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” Tony interrupted, smirking in satisfaction when the kid that was giving Peter a hard time, froze, turning his disbelieving eyes on to Tony.

“Y-You-You’re Tony Stark.” He said faintly, his voice shaking.

Tony smirked, “Astute observation and you are?”

The kid gulped, his adams apple bobbing harshly, “F-Flash Thompson.”

“Makes sense,” Tony said with a nod of his head, looking the kid up and down, “I’d bully someone too, if my parents named me after the lamest superhero to ever grace the pages of a comic book, overcompensation and all that,” Tony said thoughtfully, “especially with your perceived fixation on the male genitalia. Tell me, did it take you a while to come up with something that juvenile or did you have someone equally as childish think it up for you? Because I would think someone with—and I’m assuming here, so correct me if my deductive reasoning skills are off—a high level of intelligence would come up with something a little bit more creative than ‘Penis Parker’.”

By the time Tony was done, the crowd around him was snickering and the kid in front of him looked like he wanted nothing more than the ground to open up and swallow him whole, if such things were possible.

Tony smiled, but there was nothing nice about, “Now, if I ever catch wind of you so much as looking in Peter’s direction again and trust me, kid, I’ve got my ways, I have no issue siccing my AI on all your school records and wreaking havoc on your future plans for any Ivy League schools, you reading me kid?”

Flash nodded so vigorously he resembled a bobble head, “Y-Yes, Sir.”

Tony smiled, this one much more kind than the last, “Good, I’m glad we could reach an understanding, now running along so I can talk to my intern here without your sorry excuse for cologne clouding my senses, seriously kid less is more.”

Flash tucked his proverbial tail between his legs and pushed through the crowd of people that were now openly laughing, losing interest in Tony in favor of chasing after Flash to mock him.

Tony shouldn't feel as proud as he did, but he knew what it was like to be bullied and he’d be damned if his kid—ahem, someone like Peter had to deal with someone as childish as Flash Thompson every day and it was within his power to do something about it. Like kid didn’t already have enough to deal with as it was.

He turned back to see a dumbfounded Peter and his equally as flabbergasted friend.

“That was—” Peter began, but seemed to be at a loss for words, shaking his head in disbelief.

His friend, however, didn’t seem to have that particular problem.

“—AWESOME!” His friend said excitedly, “oh man did you see Flash’s face? Dude, this is greatest thing to ever happen to me. Tony Stark just verbally assaulted Flash, Jesus dude, how is this your life? If you ever want to trade, even if it’s just for a day, I’m totally down—“

“Ned.” Peter muttered, elbowing him roughly, giving a rough jerk of his head in Tony’s direction. He flicked his apologetic gaze over to Tony, who simply rolled his eyes, but he couldn't deny the amused smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

Ned followed his gaze and flushed, “Right, sorry.”

Peter closed his eyes for a moment and Tony could see the kid physically trying to fight off his embarrassment and couldn't help but chuckle.

Peter’s eyes snapped open at the sound and the surprise and confusion from earlier was back, “Mr. Stark, what are you doing here? At my school? Is everything okay? Is there a—“ Peter glanced around in a sad attempt at nonchalance and lowered his voice to an equally as sad attempt at a whisper, “—mission?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows in a manner that was making Tony wonder if the kid had a weird twitch he’d never noticed before.

Tony glanced over at Ned quickly, going back to his original curiosity of how much the kid actually knew about his arachnid friend here, but Ned seemed to catch on to Tony’s unasked question.

“Don’t worry Mr. Stark, sir, I’m Peter’s Guy In The Chair.” Ned answered helpfully, giving him a bright smile.

Tony glanced back over at Peter with a raised eyebrow, who simply muttered “dude” in an exasperated tone, shaking his head before returning his attention to Tony, “Ned knows.”

“Oh, well, in that case, no, there is no…mission,” Tony said in a mock whisper, making Peter flush, “I’m working on a new Iron Man suit and I need to pick your brain for some ideas on upgrades, figured I’d swing by and pick you up from school today.”

Peter’s eyes widened and Ned seemed torn between fainting or peeing himself from excitement.

“You get to touch the Iron Man suit?!” He squeaked, turning his wide-eyed gaze over to Peter, who only gave Ned a look, who bit his lip sheepishly, but looked like he was ready to explode from the level of his enthusiasm.

Peter ignored him, “I was supposed to help Ned finish the lego Death Star today, we were supposed to do it yesterday, but I uh, kinda got caught up on patrol.” Peter gave Tony a guilty shrug of his shoulders.

“So let me get this straight,” Tony said slowly, “you’re turning down quality time in my personal lab to build a lego Death Star with Ned over here?”

Peter’s eyes had lit up at the mentions of Tony’s lab, but with quick glance at a wide eyed Ned, who seemed to be stuck on the fact that Tony Stark said his name, his excitement dimmed. But Peter was loyal, almost to a fault, and nodded resolutely.

Tony, seemingly at a loss for words, just stood there, shellshocked at being told no, by a fifteen year old kid at that. A small part of Tony, the one that was actually looking forward to hanging out with the kid, was slightly hurt at the rejection.

Ned, who’d been watching the entire scene with wide eyes, was more observant than he looked and seemed to sense Peter’s indecision and Tony’s disappointment, because he gave his friend a bright smile, “Dude, we can finish the Death Star anytime and besides, my mom wanted me home tonight to help her with something, so I’m booked, raincheck?” He offered.

Peter glanced at Ned then at Tony and then back to Ned, “Um, sure Ned, no problem.”

Ned gave him a smile and then turning his attention back to Tony, his friendly smiled turned a bit more to the manic grin that most people wore in Tony’s presence, “It was really nice to meet you Mr. Stark.”

He offered Peter a fist bump, who returned it, before he started walking down the side walk, towards, what Tony assumed, was home.

Turning his attention back to the kid, he gave him a smile, “Good good, now we should probably be on our way if we want to avoid traffic. Now, as far as suit upgrades go, I was thinking of up-ing the suit’s repulsers a bit—hey, kid, you coming?” Tony asked from his position on the driver’s side, raising an eyebrow at Peter, who was still standing on the side walk. Tony followed his gaze and saw Ned still making his way down the sidewalk and chancing a glance back at Peter, who was still watching him with big, guilty eyes, he sighed.

The things I do for you, kid, Tony thought to himself.

“Hey, Ned,” Tony shouted, making the kid pause and turn around, looking to Peter, who was watching Tony with the beginnings of a smile, then back to Tony curiously, “would you like to join us? There’s plenty of room in the lab for three people.”

Even from a few yards away, Tony could see the kid’s eyes widen in surprise before he hustled his way back to an equally excited Peter, who shot him a grateful look.

“Thank you, Mr. Stark.” He said quietly, giving him a bright smile.

And Tony couldn’t help but smile back, “You’re welcome, kiddo,” eyeing a panting Ned warily, “make sure he doesn't do anything…weird, okay? I don’t mind opening my lab to him but there was something in his eyes when I was talking about the Iron Man suit that made me decidedly uncomfortable.”

Peter gave a breathy laugh, “Don’t worry, Mr. Stark, Ned’s cool.”

Ned, who had come to a slightly sweaty stop in from them, looked up at Tony with wide eyes, “Can I try on the Iron Man helmet?”

“Dude.”

~~~~~~~~~

Tony spent the majority of their time in lab just watching Peter and Ned run around like kids in a candy store���picking things up, playing with the robots—DUM-E taking a special liking to Peter, who, Tony was pleased to see, treated him like a human, thanking him when he brought them water from the stocked fridge and smiling when DUM-E beeped happily in return—and played with all the gadgets laying around.

Tony, albeit wearily, let them try on one of the Iron Man helmets from one of his earlier models and explained to them how the suit worked, both of them hanging on to his every word. He showed them the blue prints for his newest model, listening to their suggestions and even writing a few them down to look into later.

Ned, Tony found out, was rather intelligent with computers. He gave him one of his old security systems and watched with genuine interest as the kid hacked into the the files with ease and recoded the entire system in a matter of minutes.

When Tony looked it over, he let out a grunt of an approval, “Nice work, kid.”

Ned all but fainted at Tony’s praise.

The hours slipped by and F.R.I.D.A.Y. being the helpful AI that she is, had ordered pizzas without Tony even having to ask and had them sent to the kitchen, alerting them when they had arrived. Tony led them up to the kitchen, watching with thinly veiled amusement as they both took in every new surrounding with the same amount of interest they had shown in the lab.

Tony continued to observe them as they tore into the pizza like they hadn't eaten in days and taking a quick glance at the clock, he realized with a flash of guilt, that they had been down in the lab for over four hours and the last time they had probably eaten something would've been well over seven or eight hours ago.

It was nice, Tony deiced, listening to their mindless chatter and what was especially nice, was seeing how at ease Peter was with his friend, looking like a true fifteen year old with his friend over to his house on a school night, like he didn’t have super powers, like he didn’t dress up in tight spandex and web his way through Queens and fight crime at night while trying to balance a normal life.

The thought nagged at Tony for the rest of dinner and as he rode silently with them in the backseat while Happy drove them all to Ned’s apartment first, who still looked like he couldn't believe today was real, thanking Tony breathlessly for the best day of his life and telling Peter he’d see him tomorrow at school.

Peter watched his friend with a small, amused smile and when they got to Peter’s apartment building, Tony glanced over at the kid, the smile still had yet to leave his face.

“Alright kid, this is your stop,” Tony said, making a move to undo his seatbelt, but the kid’s hesitant voice made him pause.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter said softly, clearing his throat, “I uh, just wanted to thank you, you know for well, everything,” the kid breathed, smiling up at him so sincerely that it made Tony’s chest ache in the best sort of way, “today was amazing and I really appreciate you inviting Ned along with us, he really looks up to you, you know? And I haven't really been able to spend much time with him since, y’know, the whole Spider-Man thing.”

The kid paused before continuing on in a softer voice, “And about Flash, I really, really don’t know how to thank you for that,” he rubbed the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed, “it’s kind of funny, in a way, I’m a sort of super-hero and I can’t even stand up to a bully—“

Tony’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest at the kid’s self-deprecation, “Look, kid, I’m no stranger to bullies,” he began, sighing heavily, “I had my fair share of them when I was in school and even in college. I learned that while you may no be able to physically fight someone, you can always fight them with words and sometimes, words can hurt more than your fists. All I did was give that Flash kid a taste of his own medicine and hopefully, got him off your case.”

Peter was silent for a moment, considering Tony’s words before giving him another appreciative smile, “I don’t think Flash will be messing with me anytime soon, but still, thank you,” Peter’s smile turned shy, “you’re the first adult, other than May, to stand up for me and I really appreciate it, so thank you, Mr. Stark.”

“Call me Tony,” Tony offered after a beat of silence, unsure of how to respond to such a statement.

Whatever he was trying to say, the kid got, because he smiled brightly and Tony, suddenly feeling awkward at the unusual sentimental moment, busied himself with unbuckling his seatbelt, ignoring the warmth in his chest.

He reached around the kid to open the door for him and Peter, rather than getting out, just like last time, he reached up and wrapped his arms around Tony, thinking he was hugging him

“This um, wasn't a hug,” Tony began awkwardly, “I’m just getting the door for you.”

However, before the kid could pull away, Tony wrapped his arms around him and gave him a quick, but firm squeeze.

Peter gave him another smile before wishing Tony and Happy a goodnight,  getting out of the car and making his way up towards his apartment. Tony debated on his next move, mulling it over quickly and before the kid could get too far, he found himself making a snap decision and rolling down he window.

“Hey, Underoos,” Tony started, slightly unsure when the kid turned around and looked at Tony with hopeful eyes.

“Same time, same place tomorrow?” He said after a moment of silence, the kid’s answering grin melting away any self doubt before it could begin.

“Sure Mr.Stark—Tony,” Peter stuttered excitedly, “sounds great!”

Tony watched the kid go with a satisfied smiled, so caught up in his happy little pseudo-family moment that he almost didn’t hear his phone ring.

Not even bothering to glance at the caller I.D., he answered it with a smooth, “Stark.”

“Tony?! What the hell we’re you thinking going to a school and threatening a minor, A MINOR—“

Shit.

~~~~~

Should I continue? Please let me know :)

[ireflectaut]

Post One

I read several children's books over the last few weeks and picked my two favourites to deep dive into in order to learn as much as I can about why I liked them, what made them effective and what I can take from them to start creating my book.  

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak is an iconic children's book for ages 3+. Sendak introduces us to a little boy, Max, and takes us through his journey to ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. Max has a fight with him mum for being unruly and wild and is sent to bed without dinner. He is angry and upset and escapes across an ocean to the world of wild things, where he can exert energy and play and be wild freely. Once he has worked through his energy, he realises he wants the comfort of home again and so he returns, across the ocean once more, and finds a peace offering from his mother; hot supper in his bedroom.  

I loved this book as a whole; it has such a beautiful child-like simplicity that is nostalgic and magical to read as an adult. The themes felt thought out, fully realised and relatable, which included Love, forgiveness, childhood anger, independence, and imagination.  

Love: Max leaves out of anger and forgets his home for a while; a home with a loving mother and a dog and a comfy bed, and he gets swept up in another world. Even when you are unconditionally loved, sometimes you need a break and to have space to miss it and realise how beautiful, safe, and important the people that love you are. He realises how necessary that is in being happy; he can survive on his own and have fun, go wild, do what he wants with no rules and regulations, but overall- Max chooses home.

His mother also offers a symbol of love to him, without even exchanging words; she leaves her son a hot homemade supper. This is such a great universally understood motif, that hits home for everyone – excuse the pun. In unconditional love, sometimes you don't have to verbally say you're sorry; the other person knows, because they know who you are and love you no matter what.

Overall, in the arch of the story, Max chooses his mum, and her love over everything else.  

Independence: Max left home because he wanted to, he created a whole world by himself, he became king of the wild things, he tamed them; and then he realised that he didn't want that, he wanted what he had all along. The fact that Max figured all of this out himself is so important to creating such a vivid character; he makes decisions and has character growth because of his exploration of independence.

Childhood anger: Sendak doesn't ignore it, he portrays it in a natural and non-judgemental way. We don't see max apologise for shouting at his mum, and instead he works through his anger by himself on his own terms. Sendak breaks the taboo of anger – it is a normal emotion for both kids and adults, and we need to learn to accept it in order to deal with it. Max literally tames his wild things.

Imagination: Sendak writes about Max’s imaginary world as if it is the obvious truth; he doesn’t say “and then Max imagined...” he says “That very night in Max’s room a forest grew” (Sendak, 1963, p.10)

“And grew -” (Sendak, 1963, p.12)

“And grew until his ceiling hung with vines

And the walls became the world all around” (Sendak, 1963, p.14) Sendak respects the concept of imagination as reality and in doing that creates a vivid and truthful world. Max’s imagination plays a crucial part in working out his anger; he is in a world with no boundaries, no rules, no parental guidance; he can do anything he want, and only with this power could he express his independence and feelings in order to work towards a healthy mental state in which he can happily return home.

Sendak uses a plethora of language techniques to make the book dynamic and beautiful. There is a real rhythm in the way the story is written; it starts off softy in the first two sentences, leads you in, and then amps up the drama suddenly on the third page, like the chorus of a song. Maurice uses similar amounts of words and structure in the sentences on the third page to make a lyrical and fast paced flow.

Language techniques

There is a real rhythm in the way the story is written; it starts off softy in the first two sentences, leads you in, and then amps up the drama suddenly on the third page, like the chorus of a song. Maurice uses similar amounts of words and structure in the sentences on the third page to make a lyrical and fast paced flow; when you lay it out on one page it looks and reads similar to poetry, great poetry; this is where the lyricality comes from. The similar sentence structure carry's you through easily, and the repetition of “And” makes it sing-songy.

A few techniques that Sendak uses that I liked:

“His mother called him “WILD THING!”

And Max said “ILL EAT YOU UP!”” (Thompson, 1957, p.1)

I like that Maurice uses all capitals for the dialogue here, it puts such emphasis and excitement, and makes it more dynamic to look at. It also emphasises Max’s intense energy that obviously can be hard for his mum to deal with. It shadows a reality of angry fights between parents and children- something that almost everyone has experienced and can be extremely hard to work through; we can't blame our parents for being stressed and affected by the intensity of raising children with so many other stresses in their life, and we can’t blame children for being unaware of the strain they are placing, or for expressing themselves.  

“That very night in Max’s room a forest grew” (Thompson, 1957, p.10)

I really like the lack of punctuation; no full stop, no comma after room, it makes it feel very childlike and sure of itself. Maurice has written the story as fact; there's no need for more context either.

Sendak uses alliteration with A sounds consistently, and uses other alliteration throughout, for example  

G:  

“... a forest grew” (Thompson, 1957, p.10)

“and grew” (Thompson, 1957, p.12)

“And grew until his ceiling hung with vines” (Thompson, 1957, p.14)

W:

“...a forest grew

And grew -  

And grew until his ceiling hung with vines

And the walls became the world all around” (Thompson, 1957, p.14) 

And then later:  

“And in and out of weeks

And almost over a year

To where the wild things are” (Thompson, 1957, p.18) 

There are many more examples through the book. He is a beautiful poet; a great skill for writing children's books.

“They roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth” (Thompson, 1957, p.20)

“And rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws” (Thompson, 1957, p.21)

The repetition of terrible makes it fun and easy to read; children or tired parents aren't getting lost in a sea of describing words (although there are plenty in the book, just not an overuse), we don't need four words for terrible, its unnecessary; we get the picture through the other describing words of claws and teeth and eyes and roars. It's not convoluted and still provokes an image, and when paired with the illustration, it's a perfect team.

Then, Max smells dinner for far across the world and wants to go home.

“But the wild things cried, “Oh, please don't go -

We'll eat you up – we love you so!”

And Max said “No!”” (Thompson, 1957, p.34)

The rhyming of go, so, and no is so simple but so effective. It drives the cadence of the page.  

“we’ll eat you up – we love you so!” (Thompson, 1957, p.34) is such a beautiful idea and comes from a letter Maurice got from a child's mother saying that their child ate Maurices letter back to them because they loved it so much. It's such a childlike notion, it's incredibly charming and odd. I like that Sendak isn't afraid to be weird.

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, 'Dear Jim: I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.” (Sendak, 2012)

“and it was still hot” (Thompson, 1957, p.40) Is the last sentence of the book, a sweet detail about Max’s dinner that his mother left him. This small but beautiful image; a hot meal, provokes many childhood images of my own, and is something that is a universal signal of home and love.  

The things I want to take away from Where the Wild Things Are to incorporate into my book are Sendak’s confidence in writing about themes that aren’t common or are thought of as taboo; themes such as anger in children's books, and the complexities of parent and child relationships, I also love the slightly abstract nature of Sendak’s writing and how he really explores imagination. I am very impressed with how active and assertive Max’s character is; I find that when I write, I can easily fall into having a passive protagonist, so this is something I will definitely work on and learn from.

I want to write my story as poetically as Sendak writes, I think it's a great way to create a rhythm and enjoyable reading experience that doesn’t rely on an abundance of unnecessary words; I think this is an important difference in writing an adult or YA novel and children's books; you need to get your point across concisely and vividly in a lot less words. In making my book poetic I will also use alliteration and make my sentences similar sizes. I also want to have a dynamic visual effect of the words in my book; Sendak uses capitals, and I will investigate other ways to do this too.

BOOK TWO:

Eloise in Paris by Kay Thompson

Eloise in Paris is a longer form book than where the wild things are and is for a slightly older market (aged 7 and up). This is clear from the more varied vocabulary and clear indication that the writer trusted the audience more with figuring out the context of what Eloise was saying and understanding the humour; “I always travel incognito” (Thompson, 1957, p.11) Eloise says with big celebrity sunglasses on. 

Eloise in Paris is about a 6-year-old upper class girl who travels with her mother, nanny and dog to Paris. The book is an exploration of Eloise as a character; written in the 1950’s, Eloise is an unconventional female protagonist for the time; she is boisterous, confident, eccentric and unforgivingly herself.  

I love this book for its incredible depth of character and playful writing techniques. It still feels contemporary and relevant 70 years from its creation, knocking down boundaries of how girls should behave and the idea of the four unit family (mother, father, and two kids) with its unconventional mother / daughter / nanny relationship.

Thompson initially wrote the first book in the franchise for an adult audience, which can explain its uncommon point of reference; the books don't have an obvious lesson or message as most kids books do, we just watch in awe as Eloise moves through the world moulding it to her own wants and needs, having a hell of a time doing it.  

Themes:

Growing up/wanting to be grown up:

Eloise has a strikingly individual point of view; and she seems to know a lot about everything, or at least is so confident that we believe that she can do anything. She mimics the grown-ups in her life, from language to behaviour, saying “And oh my lord” (Thompson, 1957, p.12) and pronouncing rather as “rawther” (Thompson, 1957, p.4). She says things like “well by all means send it up right away”; (Thompson, 1957, p.1) an unusually mature tone with a sense of adult urgency that is rare in children unless mimicking the dialect of adults. 

Unconventional family dynamics:

We don’t hear from Eloises mother almost at all in the whole book, we see her in the illustrations; but Eloise is never actually with her mum, but instead at a different table with her nanny, or watching her with others from afar.

Independence:

Eloise does what she wants, when she wants. If she wants to cross the road at the Arc De Triomphe without a care in the world, she will, and if she wants to loudly explore the hotel by herself in the middle of the night, she will. She is perfectly autonomous, something that many kids don't have and can only fantasise about. The book serves as a fantastic break from the rule abiding reality that many kids exist in.  

Womens liberation:

Eloise was born in the 50’s; a time where women were expected to be pretty and quiet, cook clean and pop out babies. Eloise rebels from the notion of the silent woman; she is funny, clever (she learns french!), charming and self-assured, and she isn't afraid of anything. She is a fantastic role model for children, especially young girls who are still being told to this day that their value is in being passive. I also like that that wasn’t even necessarily a thought over ‘lesson’ or point in the book, or it wasn’t spelled out; Thompson just let Eloise be whoever she wanted to be.

“Life magazine said Eloise was "the most controversial literary heroine of the year. She charms and terrifies like a snake." (Goodman, 2017)  

Language techniques:

Thompson has so much fun playing with the language in this book, and there is an incredibly strong sense of character that we can hear from her careful techniques.  

Onomatopoeia:  

“zibbity zap clink clank”  (Thompson, 1957, p.1)

“zambo sting sting stinger”  (Thompson, 1957, p.7)  

“clink clank pick up that phone” (Thompson, 1957, p.8)

“ne quittez pas and zuk zuk zuk zwhocky zuk zuk swgock zuk zucky zuk zuk zwock nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn” (Thompson, 1957, p.22) 

These are just some examples of the onomatopoeia that Thompson uses in Eloise in Paris. This technique makes reading it so amusing and strange and puts you right into the silly and unembarrassed mind of a child.

Phonetic spelling:

“Nanny is rawther long-sighted” (Thompson, 1957, p. 4), and  “I am rawther photogenic” (Thompson, 1957, p. 80) the use of phonetic spelling to signal accent; this book has a high chance of being read out as well, so this forces the reader to say rather the way Thompson imagines Eloise would say it, making for a more interesting and silly listening experience, also enriching the upper class character of Eloise.

Once Eloise is in Paris she starts saying “Nahnee”(Thompson, 1957, p.19) instead of nanny, which again conjures such a great image in the reader’s head of the slightly snobby and extremely flamboyant Eloise.

Listing:

Listing is a great technique to break up the structure of a text; and in Thompsons case it’s always funny: 

“Here’s what you have to pack if you’re going to Paris France

Mary Jane button hook

Pliers

Consomme container

Hotel kit

Here’s what else you have to take

Everything” (Thompson, 1957, p. 9) 

and a lovely little insight into the details of her world; Mary Jane button hook shoes matched with pliers and a soup container? It's clear that Eloise has big plans, and a million thoughts running through her mind. The lists Eloise writes are though it was written by an eccentric rushing around causing chaos.

Repetition:

“Get out get out get out” (Thompson, 1957, p.11) 

“Regardes which means look look look” (Thompson, 1957, p.14)

The repetition creates a fast paced reading experience, it rushes you through the sentence and throws you onto the next.

What I want to take from Eloise in Paris is the remarkable sense of character that we feel through the language that Thompson used, the silliness and the boundlessness of the capabilities of the character. I love the idea that a child can do anything they want without any real consequences; they should leave the reading journey feeling like they can be whoever they want to be, and achieve whatever they want to achieve.

I loved the engaging elements that make the book fun to read; from listing to onomatopoeia, these techniques are exciting for children to read and make sure that the book isn't boring or one dimensional.

I also want to take inspiration from the craziness of the world around Eloise; yes she is a little girl, but she is not normal in any way. She is unique; just like everybody else. I love the flamboyance of the crazy hotel she lives in, and that she creates mayhem wherever she goes. 

[talons-mcbeak]

More fun anecdotes from my mom’s notes about baby/toddler me:

6 months old: Laura trembles with excitement when she sees a pen move while someone is writing.

7 months old: She really laughs when we shout out a word with several syllables, like “banana.”

10 months old: If you say “where is _______” she will touch or point to: my hair, nose, eyes, ears, glasses...the telephone...Cheerios...toast...

11 months old: She understands almost everything we say. [Uh...I feel like mom might’ve overestimated my comprehension here.]

12 months old: an inventory of my vocabulary, consisting of...holy shit, 65 words? Some of them are onomatopoeic sounds.

15 months old: Laura’s favorite playthings are books. She especially likes alphabet books, and she can identify at least 20 letters. She notices and names letters everywhere: on store signs, grocery carts, cereal boxes, etc.

18 months old: Laura talks all day now, in nearly complete sentences. She’ll repeat everything we say, and she surprises us with her pronunciations (“California raisins,” “hippopotamus,” “refrigerator,” etc.) She recites whole poems and nursery rhymes. [There is video evidence of this, actually.]

18 months old: Laura is still shy around other people. We haven’t had much luck with babysitters. She does warm up to friends and family after a short while. [Mom is understating this. I was inconsolable if my parents left me with a babysitter. Super clingy. Apparently that’s just a personality trait of mine.]

19 months old: Tonight Laura said a long sentence: “Jesus on the cross upstairs on the wall at Nona and Gramps’s house and also at the church. Crucifix is inside the church and outside the church - look up to see the crucifix!” [YIKES first of all - and it should be noted that my paternal grandparents were Catholic but I wasn’t really raised to be religious other than exposure to cultural Christianity. But apparently I was really into that whole crucifixion thing.]

21 months old: She wants to do everything “all by herself” now, including trying to dress herself. She often stays awake until late and sleeps late in the morning. [I am indeed still very occupationally independent AND very nocturnal]

21 months old: She screams and cries when someone else enters our house, especially a babysitter. She becomes frantic when I leave the house. She even worries when I leave the room she’s in, and she usually follows me from room to room. [Again: I’m bad at secure attachment]

3 years old: She asks “why” about everything. Why do we have evening? Why are there numbers on the calendar? Why does glass break? Why do people die in the cemetery? How do people grow inside the body? How do people get a year older? Were people around before the Earth?

4 years old: She has a pretend friend, Thompson, who died (“he ate too many calories”). She sent out handmade newspapers stating his death, then made a get-well card for him.

I may have had an incomplete understanding of the concept of death.

Other notable things that aren’t in this collection of notes but that I remember:

My favorite book at age 5 was a non-fiction book all about great horned owls. I checked it out from the library about a million times.

Age 5 was also when I really enjoyed reading Parents magazine and Reader’s Digest. There was an article in Parents magazine in the early ‘90s about common household toxins (lead, carbon monoxide, radon, asbestos, and formaldehyde, in that order) and I read that article so many times and got really obsessed with carbon monoxide in particular. The children’s librarian wasn’t sure how to respond to my request for a book about carbon monoxide, shockingly.

Age 8: I had Puppy and Kitty Surprise toys - a stuffed animal mama dog or cat with a Velcro pouch stomach that contained 3 tiny stuffed babies! I named the mama cat Fall. Her kittens were Down, The, and Stairs. Mama dog was named And. Her puppies were Kill, Your, and Self. And somehow nobody really told me that maybe naming your stuffed animals “fall down the stairs and kill yourself” might not be exactly appropriate?

Age 9: my favorite game (which I played by myself because I didn’t quite get the concept of friendship yet) was an imaginary role play in which I pretended that I was being held captive by an evil Scandinavian man named Lonkinor, who forced me to knit scarves for his gnomes. His wife, Helga, was nice to me and had conversations with me while I knitted. My other in-universe companion was a one-inch-tall doll named Joan who wore a gymnast uniform. Basically the game consisted of me sitting on the back porch by myself, knitting scarves in the middle of summer and muttering to myself.

Age 11: New fun game: repeatedly hitting myself in the knee with a heavy plastic toy during indoor recess. When my teacher asked me what I was doing, I cheerfully replied “I’m giving myself a bruise!” I genuinely had no idea that that was a bad idea for several reasons; it was more like a little science experiment. That teacher and I are facebook friends now. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This has been a detailed yet incomplete cataloging of Weird Shit I Did As A Kid.

[spoopyblr]

Explore http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html and elaborate why the project has significant impact on the society? 

The photographs of the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection from a pictorial record of American life between the years of 1935 and 1944. This project was originally used to document cash loans made to farmers by the Resettlement Administration and the construction of planned suburban communities. As the years went on, this project began to focus on sharecroppers in the South and migratory agricultural workers in the midwestern and western states. The focal point of the project began to expand and it later turned into photographers documenting both rural and urban conditions throughout the United States and mobilization efforts for World War II. There are more than 107,000 photographic prints a part of the collection and about 175,000 black and white negatives. This project has a significant impact on society because photographers used their photographs to document the people, cultures and landscapes of rural America during the years 1935 to 1944. By doing so, this provides a window into their lives during this time, which would not be possible without these photographs. One of the most important things about documentary photography is how it encourages conversations about societal change. The saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” is especially true when it comes to documentary photographs. Many of the photos taken for this project document the raw emotions of the people and their hardships. Therefore, the Farm Security Administration project has an impact on society because it's a way to bring stories to life and allow society to learn from the past and change their ways to make a better future. 

What was the role of "Migrant Mother" photographs in the period of great depression and what is it nowadays?  

The photo of the “Migrant Mother” was taken in 1936 during the Depression Era. During this time Florence Owens Thompson agreed to let Dorothea Lange take pictures of her. Florence was a mother of 7 children who looked “hungry and desperate” as Lange described. Lange had learned that Thompson and the children had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that were killed by the children. Lange also claimed that Thompson had just sold the tired of her car to buy food, which was later claimed to be false by one of the children. Lange sent in the photos of Thompson and the children to her employer, the Resettlement Administration and this prompted a quick decision and response to send 20,000 pounds of food supplies over to the location where Thompson and her family were. During the period of the great depression, these photographs were able to elicit a response from a higher power and they were able to get food supplies to the people in Nipomo, California. Unfortunately, Thompson and her family were not a part of that group, but her photographs were able to help the others that were struggling there as well. These pictures were able to tell the story of this struggling mother who was only trying to provide for her children, and because of these photos, there was able to be change. That is why documentary photography is so important because it encourages change and allows others to see what is happening. 

In the modern-day, these photos can be seen as a lesson to everyone. Let the story of Thompson and her family and many others who were starving during this time, let that make a difference for today. These photos can provide insight into the rough times these workers had to endure. By looking at the mother in the photos, you can see defeat and resignation. She seems worried yet only wants the best for her children and continues to want to provide for them. By documenting the depression period through photographs, it can help people nowadays see the struggle and would inspire them to not let history repeat itself. They can look at these photos and want to change. The CNN article claims that the US is sinking into hard economic times and it is the worst since the Great Depression. If people continue living paycheck to paycheck and overextending themselves then that could potentially result in another Great Depression. This could be avoided if people learn from the past and continue to make changes that will better the future of the country and the people. 

Did Dorothea Lange present the truth with the "Migrant Mother" photo? Is this photo factual? Does it capture reality? 

Dorothea Lange did present the truth with the “Migrant Mother” photo. She was able to encapsulate the struggle and suffering of the entire population of people in the Nipomo area through a few photos of Thompson and her family. These photos are factual and capture reality because as a viewer, you can see the cry for help displayed on the face of Thomson. The body language of the mother as well as the background of the photo displays defeat and helplessness. The tent is being held up by a large stick and in one of the photos, Thompson is sitting on a box breastfeeding her child. The photos captured reality so much that it had touched many people years later. When Thompson was sick with cancer in 1983 several strangers reached out to the family to donate money and relay words of encouragement and consolation. One person wrote “The famous picture of your mother for years gave me strength, price and dignity…”, another wrote, “enclosed is a check for $10 to assist the woman whose face gave and still gives eloquent expression to the need our country still has not met”. Nearly 2,000 letters were delivered and over $35,000 was raised into a special Migrant Mother Fund that was administered by the Hospice Caring Project of Santa Cruz County. 

Did the migrant mother like the photographs? Was she happy about them and the message they send to the world? Was her family happy with the photographs and how they were presented to the world? 

Florence Thompson stated her dismay about the photographs that were published. She felt as if she were exploited and was also hurt that Lange had never asked for her name. It took about forty years to pass before the public knew the name of the “Migrant Mother”. Thompson stated, “I wish she hadn’t taken my picture… I can't get a penny out of it. [Lange] didn’t ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she’d send me a copy. She never did.” She had felt betrayed by Lange and used because although they had sent food to the Nipomo area, Thompson and her family had not received anything because they left already. The mother was also told that the negatives would not be published and that Lange was only going to use photos that help out the people in the camp. Thompsons children also felt ashamed by the photos and didn't want anyone to know who they were. But now, looking back at the photos, they have a sense of pride. They can reflect on what a strong woman their mother was and although they didn't have a lot growing up, their mother made sure that they always had something. Sometimes Thompson wouldn't eat unless her children ate first. Overall, the photos are very important historically and a lot of good lessons came out of these photos.

 References:

http://www.openphotographyforums.com/art_MICHAEL_STONES_001.php 

https://imagespublicdomain.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/who-was-dorothea-langes-migrant-mother/

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/02/dustbowl.photo/index.html

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html 

[katiewattsart]

21/01/20 : TELLING STORIES

AIMS OF THE LECTURE

- To introduce and discuss theories around narratives and stories

- To practise the ability to critique images and artefacts

- To develop the ability to make links between culture and arts practice

- To develop the ability to communicate a response to material shown

We are surrounded by stories in day to day life

Linking towards social media - says something about you and how you communicate

If today you post a Facebook or Instagram update, you are telling a story. The story you want the world to know.  Instagram and Facebook both have a    platform called Stories, where snippets of our day represent the narrative action we want to share with our followers and friends. 

Storytelling is the thing of today. Brands tell stories. Politicians want us to know their stories. Artists live their stories in their art

‘Texts’ that could hold a narrative?

…novels, comics, films, tv series, plays, films, children’s books, animation, games, photographs, news stories, magazine covers, folktales and myths, book covers, paintings, editorial illustrations, window displays, packaging, logos…

poetry 

Songs - music videos 

Social media

Visual image can be ready as text

Each and every individual could be a narrative constructing our own narrative 

Plato mentions old women going down to the harbour to comfort the victims bound for the Minotaur’s table by telling them stories… This is partly a point about social history: people told stories before mass literacy; but it is also about desire: what is loved in stories is often an imagined link to a long, living lineage.

Marina Warner, Once upon a Time

Athenian Girls Drawing Lots to Determine which among them Shall Be Sent to Crete for Sacrifice to the Minotaur

Jean-François-Pierre Peyron (1744–1814)

- Every individual can view a different narrative/story

- blue was the most expensive colour to be worn 

- semiotic understanding 

- immediate emotional response 

- each generation can hold and change the narrative to fit them 

A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens – second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.

Edward Reynolds Price

Questions that we were asked within the lecture:

What’s the first story you remember being told? 

My grandmother used to tell me the myth that if I ate apple seeds that an apple tree would begin to grow in my belly.

What’s your favourite story?

I believe the my favourite stories stemmed from my childhood as I trust that is when stories are most impactful on yourself as an individual

Stories that we wish to tell over and over again

- an element of nostalgia 

- possibly about morals and values

- passing down messages using universal metaphors 

- being re told though many different dynamics 

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1595)

Warm Bodies 2013

West side story 1961

Gnomeo and Juliet (2011)

Private Romeo (2012)

Same Old Story��

The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

10 Things I hate about you (1999

CULTURAL STORIES 

Cultural narratives are stories that help a community structure and assign meaning to its history and existence. Cultural narratives include creation stories, which tell a story about the community's origins, and fables, which help teach moral values and ethical behavior. Cultural narratives help a community reinforce societal norms, preserve its history and strengthen its identity through shared knowledge and experience. 

Juha and his Donkey

Juha first appeared in an Arabic book of the ninth century, though this was likely adapted from an older oral tradition. From there, Juha quickly splintered to the far ends of the Mediterranean world. He followed the Arabs to Sicily, where he became known as Giufà. In Turkey, his legend merged with a Sufi mystic called Nasruddin, while the Ottomans exported him to the Balkans. Some even claim that Juha inspired Cervantes’s “Don Quixote”

STORIES AND NARRATIVES

- What is the difference between ‘story’ and ‘narrative’?

- Story = a sequence of events (plot)

- Narrative = the way those events are put together to be presented to an audience.

narrative

/ˈnarətɪv/

noun

a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.

"a gripping narrative"

story

/ˈstɔːri/

noun

noun: story; plural noun: stories

an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment.

"an adventure story"

NEWS STORY 

- all telling the same story

- however, the narrative changes within each one 

- narrative changes depending on values and political values 

Narrative Theory

“Narrative theory starts from the assumption that narrative is a basic human strategy for coming to terms with fundamental elements of our experience, such as time, process, and change, and it proceeds from this assumption to study the distinctive nature of narrative and its various structures, elements, uses, and effects….More specifically, narrative theorists study what is distinctive about narrative (how it is different from other kinds of discourse, such as lyric poems, arguments, lists, descriptions, statistical analyses, and so on), and how accounts of what happened to particular people in particular circumstances with particular consequences can be at once so common and so powerful... ....Narrative theorists, in short, study how stories help people make sense of the world, while also studying how people make sense of stories”.

The Ohio State University

If you re-shuffled a story’s events you would essentially have the same story, with a new narrative – a new way of representing the storyTherefore, Narrative Theory explores the construction of the story ie. the way it has been put together, not the story itself.

Matt Madden,  

99 ways to tell a story

(the basic/ template story) 

Matt Madden,  

99 ways to tell a story

(fixed moment in time) 

Matt Madden,  

99 ways to tell a story

(single image) 

Matt Madden,  

99 ways to tell a story

(style and genre) 

Nathan Pyle

Narrative of the Image

Dorothea Lange

1936, California, US Lange’s most famous photograph was taken in a pea-picker camp in Nipomo, California. The woman’s name was Florence Thompson. She is the mythical mother, the unshakable fortress-refuge of our childhood fantasies, the one to whom we can turn when there is no one else.

Photograph: Dorothea Lange/Hulton Archive/Getty

The picture of revellers in Manchester, captured by Joel Goodman in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2016, became a viral sensation, retweeted 29,000 times, after the BBC’s Roland Hughes noted on Twitter that it resembled a beautiful painting.

The Fibonacci sequence

Renaissance artists would use the ratio with the visual aid of the Fibonacci spiral, which is created by drawing circular arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in the Golden Rectangle. It was devised by mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in the year 1202.

Pictures like this are often described as "accidental Renaissance", indicating that they inadvertently conform to traditional Renaissance ideas of beauty and symmetry. They often seem to fit the principle of the Golden Rectangle – a rectangle (shown below in pink) used by Renaissance artists where the longer side (a) plus the shorter side (b) divided by the longer side (a) is equal to the longer side (a) divided by the shorter side (b).

Narrative in a Digital Age

“The computer and the screen have revolutionised book production, but the prophet in me sees another more radical revolution, and it has to do with the nature of language itself. With the predominance of textual language we forget that language was first meant to be spoken not written and read. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was spoken. Stories were told. Instructions were given. Then the stories and instructions were memorised and passed down not in scrolls and scriptures, but by word of mouth. Stories were dramatised and then became dramas that were acted out. The actors memorised and passed the text on to the next generations through the formal traditions of drama, storytelling, teaching and memorisation.”

Longenecker (2018)

Accidental storytelling… Never, ever read the comments!

“There are multiple belief patterns in our society and many different types of narratives; however, the majority of these are repressed. The dominant classes have created a norm, a standard that is passed off as “natural” instead of as a social construction. This standard is reinforced by institutions, such as the church, schools, and government. However, this dominant ideology excludes many peoples, their culture, and their ideas. Outsider art and subjugated narratives have been continually produced as a response to the dominant ideology. What are some of these subjugated narratives and what forms do they take?”

Outsider Art

ART  THERAPY PROCESS

The Palestinian Trail of Fish: Artist's Graffiti Dives Into Heart of Refugee Struggle.

Albaba leaves behind familiar Palestinian symbols, opting instead for his 'trail of fish,' a metaphor for refugees as fish out of water. “Keep in a dry and cool place far from the sun’s rays,” and below it is a comment in smaller letters: “Date of manufacture – 1948.” Alaa, The work is part of a series called the “Route of the Fish,” which depicts the tragedy of the Palestinian people in this country not through the traditional association with the land, but rather via the experience of being cut off from the sea. The Palestinian refugees who long to return are represented as fish out of water, hung up to dry, or squeezed into a can of sardines like those that were distributed by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees after 1948. It deals directly with the Palestinian Nakba (or “catastrophe,” when more than 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1947-49 Israeli War of Independence) and the refugee experience.

Alaa Albaba (image taken 2015)

Prison Tattoos

Graffiti

Narrative - Jason S Polley

“My tattoos, or, rather, my single narrative tattoo, essentially charts the Eastward migration of Buddhism from its Hindu sources in India through its multiple manifestations / incarnations / influences in Tibet, Myanmar, Thailand, Indochina, China, and, finally Japan. Not unlike Shakespeare’s Parolles, from the ironically (at least from Parolles’ point of view) titled All’s Well that Ends Well, before I put my once-discrete tattoos into dialogue, into the development of classical narrative arcing, I was a “man of shreds and patches.” A tattoo here, a tattoo there. I found my nine scattered tattoos aesthetically unsightly. So over an 18-year period I worked (with the help of tattooists from Canada, Thailand, Colombia, India, Israel, Vietnam, and Hong Kong) on establishing an interconnected narrative. A story. But a postmodern story: one that includes, among other things, fragmentation, flashback, back story, interruption, and openendedness. There’s no single reading of my story of Buddhist passage.”

The nesting place of the storyteller, Walter Benjamin pointed out, are in the loom shed and at the spinning wheel, in the fulling barn and the kitchen when doing tedious tasks - shelling peas in readiness for storing, sorting pulses for bagging, bottling and preserving. Stories were told to alleviate harsh labour and endless drudgery - and they were passed between generations - by the voice of experience, filled with the laughter of defiance, and the hope of just deserts.

Marina Warner, Once upon a Time

Narrative Fashion

- The art of creating the blouse passed from generation to generation. Women kept the tradition of sewing from mother to daughter. 

- Embroidery designs can identify a region of the country or contain a special meaning - while decorative, they are also symbols of cultural beliefs and heritage.

- Narrative in Clothing

- Traditional Romanian Peasant Blouse

“EVERYONE tells stories. Narratives powerful like ancient Greek myths and the Bible have taught us how to relate to certain values and how the impact of stories shape our lives. When fashion designers and brands use these very same narratives, they become the storyteller, the expert of storytelling and apparel comes alive.”

Crafting Narrative

Exploring how makers and designers are using objects and making ,to tell stories.

CRAFTING NARRATIVE AT PITZHAN

MANOR GALLERY (2014)

Swedish graduate Hilda Hellström contacted the last person still living inside the evacuation zone, Naoto Matsumura, and collected soil from his rice fields that can't be farmed due to contamination.

Hellström hopes the vessels - as unsuitable for food storage as the fields are for growing - will act as symbolic objects to help people understand the enormity of the disaster.

Craftsmen usually imitate antique vases in a batch and highly standardized way. I was anxious to criticize the current situation of imitation and even plagiarize and compare it with the situation in Chinese feudal period and the situation in other countries. However, a graduate work from Hao zhen-han (2013) called ‘Imitation, imitation’ made me have a critical thinking about Chinese imitation culture. It is a video documented different people work on ceramic industry and view it in a historical context. This work uncovers the social, political and economic implications of Chinese imitation culture. Hao's unique idea that has a positive attitude toward imitation made me reflect on the ceramic industry in Jingdezhen from an object and historical view.

IMITATION IMITATION, ZHENHAN HAO, 2013. PART OF CRAFTING NARRATIVE AT LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2014

Task

Based on today's lecture, find examples of relevant work in your discipline and apply this to your reflection; consider how you would explore some of these themes in your own work.

References:

http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/mement_mori_6/imgs/1/e/1ebc1252-s.jpg 

http://dujye7n3e5wjl.cloudfront.net/photographs/1080-tall/time-100-influential-photos-dorothea-lange-migrant-mother-23.jpg 

https://www.shwrm.com/themagazine/five-beautiful-fashion-narratives/ 

https://blouseroumaine-shop.com/en 

[thingsireflecaut]

Post One

I read several children’s books over the last few weeks and picked my two favourites to deep dive into in order to learn as much as I can about why I liked them, what made them effective and what I can take from them to start creating my book.  

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak is an iconic children’s book for ages 3+. Sendak introduces us to a little boy, Max, and takes us through his journey to ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. Max has a fight with him mum for being unruly and wild and is sent to bed without dinner. He is angry and upset and escapes across an ocean to the world of wild things, where he can exert energy and play and be wild freely. Once he has worked through his energy, he realises he wants the comfort of home again and so he returns, across the ocean once more, and finds a peace offering from his mother; hot supper in his bedroom.  

I loved this book as a whole; it has such a beautiful child-like simplicity that is nostalgic and magical to read as an adult. The themes felt thought out, fully realised and relatable, which included Love, forgiveness, childhood anger, independence, and imagination.  

Love: Max leaves out of anger and forgets his home for a while; a home with a loving mother and a dog and a comfy bed, and he gets swept up in another world. Even when you are unconditionally loved, sometimes you need a break and to have space to miss it and realise how beautiful, safe, and important the people that love you are. He realises how necessary that is in being happy; he can survive on his own and have fun, go wild, do what he wants with no rules and regulations, but overall- Max chooses home.

His mother also offers a symbol of love to him, without even exchanging words; she leaves her son a hot homemade supper. This is such a great universally understood motif, that hits home for everyone – excuse the pun. In unconditional love, sometimes you don’t have to verbally say you’re sorry; the other person knows, because they know who you are and love you no matter what.

Overall, in the arch of the story, Max chooses his mum, and her love over everything else.  

Independence: Max left home because he wanted to, he created a whole world by himself, he became king of the wild things, he tamed them; and then he realised that he didn’t want that, he wanted what he had all along. The fact that Max figured all of this out himself is so important to creating such a vivid character; he makes decisions and has character growth because of his exploration of independence.

Childhood anger: Sendak doesn’t ignore it, he portrays it in a natural and non-judgemental way. We don’t see max apologise for shouting at his mum, and instead he works through his anger by himself on his own terms. Sendak breaks the taboo of anger – it is a normal emotion for both kids and adults, and we need to learn to accept it in order to deal with it. Max literally tames his wild things.

Imagination: Sendak writes about Max’s imaginary world as if it is the obvious truth; he doesn’t say “and then Max imagined…” he says “That very night in Max’s room a forest grew” (Sendak, 1963, p.10)

“And grew -” (Sendak, 1963, p.12)

“And grew until his ceiling hung with vines

And the walls became the world all around” (Sendak, 1963, p.14) Sendak respects the concept of imagination as reality and in doing that creates a vivid and truthful world. Max’s imagination plays a crucial part in working out his anger; he is in a world with no boundaries, no rules, no parental guidance; he can do anything he want, and only with this power could he express his independence and feelings in order to work towards a healthy mental state in which he can happily return home.

Sendak uses a plethora of language techniques to make the book dynamic and beautiful. There is a real rhythm in the way the story is written; it starts off softy in the first two sentences, leads you in, and then amps up the drama suddenly on the third page, like the chorus of a song. Maurice uses similar amounts of words and structure in the sentences on the third page to make a lyrical and fast paced flow.

Language techniques

There is a real rhythm in the way the story is written; it starts off softy in the first two sentences, leads you in, and then amps up the drama suddenly on the third page, like the chorus of a song. Maurice uses similar amounts of words and structure in the sentences on the third page to make a lyrical and fast paced flow; when you lay it out on one page it looks and reads similar to poetry, great poetry; this is where the lyricality comes from. The similar sentence structure carry’s you through easily, and the repetition of “And” makes it sing-songy.

A few techniques that Sendak uses that I liked:

“His mother called him “WILD THING!”

And Max said “ILL EAT YOU UP!”” (Thompson, 1957, p.1)

I like that Maurice uses all capitals for the dialogue here, it puts such emphasis and excitement, and makes it more dynamic to look at. It also emphasises Max’s intense energy that obviously can be hard for his mum to deal with. It shadows a reality of angry fights between parents and children- something that almost everyone has experienced and can be extremely hard to work through; we can’t blame our parents for being stressed and affected by the intensity of raising children with so many other stresses in their life, and we can’t blame children for being unaware of the strain they are placing, or for expressing themselves.  

“That very night in Max’s room a forest grew” (Thompson, 1957, p.10)

I really like the lack of punctuation; no full stop, no comma after room, it makes it feel very childlike and sure of itself. Maurice has written the story as fact; there’s no need for more context either.

Sendak uses alliteration with A sounds consistently, and uses other alliteration throughout, for example  

G:  

“… a forest grew” (Thompson, 1957, p.10)

“and grew” (Thompson, 1957, p.12)

“And grew until his ceiling hung with vines” (Thompson, 1957, p.14)

W:

“…a forest grew

And grew -  

And grew until his ceiling hung with vines

And the walls became the world all around” (Thompson, 1957, p.14)

And then later:  

“And in and out of weeks

And almost over a year

To where the wild things are” (Thompson, 1957, p.18)

There are many more examples through the book. He is a beautiful poet; a great skill for writing children’s books.

“They roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth” (Thompson, 1957, p.20)

“And rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws” (Thompson, 1957, p.21)

The repetition of terrible makes it fun and easy to read; children or tired parents aren’t getting lost in a sea of describing words (although there are plenty in the book, just not an overuse), we don’t need four words for terrible, its unnecessary; we get the picture through the other describing words of claws and teeth and eyes and roars. It’s not convoluted and still provokes an image, and when paired with the illustration, it’s a perfect team.

Then, Max smells dinner for far across the world and wants to go home.

“But the wild things cried, “Oh, please don’t go -

We’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

And Max said “No!”” (Thompson, 1957, p.34)

The rhyming of go, so, and no is so simple but so effective. It drives the cadence of the page.  

“we’ll eat you up – we love you so!” (Thompson, 1957, p.34) is such a beautiful idea and comes from a letter Maurice got from a child’s mother saying that their child ate Maurices letter back to them because they loved it so much. It’s such a childlike notion, it’s incredibly charming and odd. I like that Sendak isn’t afraid to be weird.

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim: I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.” (Sendak, 2012)

“and it was still hot” (Thompson, 1957, p.40) Is the last sentence of the book, a sweet detail about Max’s dinner that his mother left him. This small but beautiful image; a hot meal, provokes many childhood images of my own, and is something that is a universal signal of home and love.  

The things I want to take away from Where the Wild Things Are to incorporate into my book are Sendak’s confidence in writing about themes that aren’t common or are thought of as taboo; themes such as anger in children’s books, and the complexities of parent and child relationships, I also love the slightly abstract nature of Sendak’s writing and how he really explores imagination. I am very impressed with how active and assertive Max’s character is; I find that when I write, I can easily fall into having a passive protagonist, so this is something I will definitely work on and learn from.

I want to write my story as poetically as Sendak writes, I think it’s a great way to create a rhythm and enjoyable reading experience that doesn’t rely on an abundance of unnecessary words; I think this is an important difference in writing an adult or YA novel and children’s books; you need to get your point across concisely and vividly in a lot less words. In making my book poetic I will also use alliteration and make my sentences similar sizes. I also want to have a dynamic visual effect of the words in my book; Sendak uses capitals, and I will investigate other ways to do this too.

BOOK TWO:

Eloise in Paris by Kay Thompson

Eloise in Paris is a longer form book than where the wild things are and is for a slightly older market (aged 7 and up). This is clear from the more varied vocabulary and clear indication that the writer trusted the audience more with figuring out the context of what Eloise was saying and understanding the humour; “I always travel incognito” (Thompson, 1957, p.11) Eloise says with big celebrity sunglasses on.

Eloise in Paris is about a 6-year-old upper class girl who travels with her mother, nanny and dog to Paris. The book is an exploration of Eloise as a character; written in the 1950’s, Eloise is an unconventional female protagonist for the time; she is boisterous, confident, eccentric and unforgivingly herself.  

I love this book for its incredible depth of character and playful writing techniques. It still feels contemporary and relevant 70 years from its creation, knocking down boundaries of how girls should behave and the idea of the four unit family (mother, father, and two kids) with its unconventional mother / daughter / nanny relationship.

Thompson initially wrote the first book in the franchise for an adult audience, which can explain its uncommon point of reference; the books don’t have an obvious lesson or message as most kids books do, we just watch in awe as Eloise moves through the world moulding it to her own wants and needs, having a hell of a time doing it.  

Themes:

Growing up/wanting to be grown up:

Eloise has a strikingly individual point of view; and she seems to know a lot about everything, or at least is so confident that we believe that she can do anything. She mimics the grown-ups in her life, from language to behaviour, saying “And oh my lord” (Thompson, 1957, p.12) and pronouncing rather as “rawther” (Thompson, 1957, p.4). She says things like “well by all means send it up right away”; (Thompson, 1957, p.1) an unusually mature tone with a sense of adult urgency that is rare in children unless mimicking the dialect of adults.

Unconventional family dynamics:

We don’t hear from Eloises mother almost at all in the whole book, we see her in the illustrations; but Eloise is never actually with her mum, but instead at a different table with her nanny, or watching her with others from afar.

Independence:

Eloise does what she wants, when she wants. If she wants to cross the road at the Arc De Triomphe without a care in the world, she will, and if she wants to loudly explore the hotel by herself in the middle of the night, she will. She is perfectly autonomous, something that many kids don’t have and can only fantasise about. The book serves as a fantastic break from the rule abiding reality that many kids exist in.  

Womens liberation:

Eloise was born in the 50’s; a time where women were expected to be pretty and quiet, cook clean and pop out babies. Eloise rebels from the notion of the silent woman; she is funny, clever (she learns french!), charming and self-assured, and she isn’t afraid of anything. She is a fantastic role model for children, especially young girls who are still being told to this day that their value is in being passive. I also like that that wasn’t even necessarily a thought over ‘lesson’ or point in the book, or it wasn’t spelled out; Thompson just let Eloise be whoever she wanted to be.

“Life magazine said Eloise was “the most controversial literary heroine of the year. She charms and terrifies like a snake." (Goodman, 2017)

Language techniques:

Thompson has so much fun playing with the language in this book, and there is an incredibly strong sense of character that we can hear from her careful techniques.  

Onomatopoeia:  

“zibbity zap clink clank”  (Thompson, 1957, p.1)

“zambo sting sting stinger”  (Thompson, 1957, p.7)  

“clink clank pick up that phone” (Thompson, 1957, p.8)

“ne quittez pas and zuk zuk zuk zwhocky zuk zuk swgock zuk zucky zuk zuk zwock nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn” (Thompson, 1957, p.22)

These are just some examples of the onomatopoeia that Thompson uses in Eloise in Paris. This technique makes reading it so amusing and strange and puts you right into the silly and unembarrassed mind of a child.

Phonetic spelling:

“Nanny is rawther long-sighted” (Thompson, 1957, p. 4), and  “I am rawther photogenic” (Thompson, 1957, p. 80) the use of phonetic spelling to signal accent; this book has a high chance of being read out as well, so this forces the reader to say rather the way Thompson imagines Eloise would say it, making for a more interesting and silly listening experience, also enriching the upper class character of Eloise.

Once Eloise is in Paris she starts saying “Nahnee”(Thompson, 1957, p.19) instead of nanny, which again conjures such a great image in the reader’s head of the slightly snobby and extremely flamboyant Eloise.

Listing:

Listing is a great technique to break up the structure of a text; and in Thompsons case it’s always funny:

“Here’s what you have to pack if you’re going to Paris France

Mary Jane button hook

Pliers

Consomme container

Hotel kit

Here’s what else you have to take

Everything” (Thompson, 1957, p. 9)

and a lovely little insight into the details of her world; Mary Jane button hook shoes matched with pliers and a soup container? It’s clear that Eloise has big plans, and a million thoughts running through her mind. The lists Eloise writes are though it was written by an eccentric rushing around causing chaos.

Repetition:

“Get out get out get out” (Thompson, 1957, p.11)

“Regardes which means look look look” (Thompson, 1957, p.14)

The repetition creates a fast paced reading experience, it rushes you through the sentence and throws you onto the next.

What I want to take from Eloise in Paris is the remarkable sense of character that we feel through the language that Thompson used, the silliness and the boundlessness of the capabilities of the character. I love the idea that a child can do anything they want without any real consequences; they should leave the reading journey feeling like they can be whoever they want to be, and achieve whatever they want to achieve.

I loved the engaging elements that make the book fun to read; from listing to onomatopoeia, these techniques are exciting for children to read and make sure that the book isn’t boring or one dimensional.

I also want to take inspiration from the craziness of the world around Eloise; yes she is a little girl, but she is not normal in any way. She is unique; just like everybody else. I love the flamboyance of the crazy hotel she lives in, and that she creates mayhem wherever she goes.

Bibliography

Sendak, M. (1963). Where The Wild Things Are,

Thompson, K. (1957). Eloise In Paris.

[hudsonespie]

How 80 Coastguardsmen Saved Unalaska From the Spanish Flu Pandemic

[By BM1 William A. Bleyer, United States Coast Guard]

"Occasion sometimes arise . . . in which the officers and crews are called upon to face situations of desperate human need which put their resourcefulness and energy, and even their courage, to the severest test." - "The Influenza at Unalaska and Dutch Harbor,” U.S. Coast Guard Annual Report, 1920

Pandemic, quarantines, social distancing and facemasks – too familiar today. These terms resonated with equal disquiet for Americans 100 years ago as the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 affected nearly every corner of the globe. It caused the deaths of between 25 and 50 million people, more than all who died in World War I. Even in regions with the most advanced medical care, Spanish Influenza killed approximately three percent of all victims.

Crew members of Unalga burying the dead at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. (NOAA)

Medical care in the remote territory of Alaska was far from advanced. When the pandemic arrived in the spring of 1919, it wiped out entire villages. At the time, Alaska was “an American colony [which] occupied a political status somewhere between a government protectorate and an industrial resource” and the presence of federal government assets in this immense territory was minimal.

In late May 1919, USS Unalga was patrolling in Seredka Bay off Akun Island, in Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain. World War I had ended just six months prior, so – like all Coast Guard-manned cutters – Unalga and its crew still served as part of the U.S. Navy. At 190 feet, the Unalga’s white hull was only somewhat longer than modern Fast Response Cutters patrolling Alaska’s waters today. And while Unalga’s daily operations were fundamentally similar to today’s FRCs, they were much broader. An Alaskan patrol in 1919 could consist of law enforcement boardings of fishing and sealing vessels; inspecting canneries; transporting mail, supplies, passengers, and prisoners; rescuing shipwrecked or stranded victims; rendering medical care; acting as a floating court; and resolving labor disputes.

On May 26, Unalga was resting at anchor following a routine day of seamanship and signals training. At around 1600 an urgent radio message arrived. The settlement of Unalaska on nearby Unalaska Island was suffering from a severe outbreak of Spanish Influenza. The cutter’s commanding officer, Capt. Frederick Dodge, prepared to get the Unalga underway at dawn.

That night, Unalga received another radiogram–the region around Bristol Bay, on Alaska’s southwestern mainland, needed urgent help to cope with its own outbreak. Dodge faced a dilemma: the Unalga could not be in two places at once. He radioed his command that he was setting a course for the closer Unalaska to assess the situation.

Remote even today, in 1919 Unalaska and adjacent Dutch Harbor were tiny villages with a combined population of about 360 people, mostly of Aleut or mixed Russian-native ancestry. There was only one doctor on the entire island.

After arriving, Unalga’s crew disembarked to a horrific scene. Nearly the entire settlement was infected, including the only doctor and all but one operator at Dutch Harbor’s Navy radio station. The situation was critical as historian Alfred Crosby noted in America’s Forgotten Pandemic:

. . . very large proportions of isolated populations tended to contract Spanish Influenza all at once. The sick outnumbered those doing the nursing. The sick, therefore, lacked fluids, food, and proper care, which caused very high death rates… effective leadership was vital to keeping death rates down. If complacency, incompetence, sickness, or bad luck crippled the ability of the leaders to react efficiently to the pandemic, then Spanish Influenza could be as deadly as the Black Death.

Members of Unalga’s crew shepherding orphan children to safety. (NOAA)

It now fell to the men of the Unalga to provide lifesaving leadership and medical care. Out of the Unalga’s crew of approximately 80 men, only three had medical training: Ship’s Surgeon Lt. j.g. Dr. F.H. Johnson (U.S. Public Health Service), Lt. E.W. Scott (U.S. Navy Dental Corps), and Pharmacist’s Mate 1/class E.S. Chase. These men began coordinating the town’s medical care. Together, they assembled a group of volunteers from the crew that kept growing until it included personnel drawn from every department on board the cutter.

Unalga’s crew wearing “Flu” masks. All the cutter’s crew members involved in the humanitarian effort volunteered to help. (NOAA)

From May 26 to June 4, Unalga proved the difference between life and death for the inhabitants of Unalaska. Captain Dodge initiated feeding the town using Unalga’s food stores. Crewmembers delivered 350 prepared meals on the first day and, by the height of the pandemic, they were delivering more than 1,000 meals per day. Villagers ranked the ship’s emergency rations somewhere between awful and lousy, but they ate them.

Orphans and a caretaker at the Unalga Orphan Home. (NOAA)

Every crewmember engaged in some aspect of relief work. Nicknamed “gobs,” those not caring for the sick provided logistical support, such as keeping fires for incapacitated villagers or helping prepare or deliver food. Other crewmen took over operation of the Navy radio station in Dutch Harbor. The men even built a temporary hospital outfitted with plumbing and electrified by the cutter’s generator.

Caring for the sick and burying the dead was an exhausting and emotionally challenging job. Death by “The Spanish Lady” (the disease’s elegantly macabre nickname) was often horrific. Victims frequently suffered from double pneumonia and drowned when their lungs filled with fluid, some of it oozing out of their noses and mouths when they died. The crewmembers nursed the sick with no protective equipment except cloth facemasks, exposing themselves to infection. Several men became ill, including Dodge. He determined he was well enough to remain in command and later recovered. While Unalga’s crew did their best to save lives, they ultimately had to inter 45 victims beneath white Russian Orthodox crosses in Unalaska’s cemetery.

Orphans and a caretaker at the Unalga Orphan Home. (NOAA)

Unalga’s crew also cared for the children of the deceased or incapacitated. Unlike seasonal flu, Spanish Influenza acutely affected young adults, probably because it provoked an overreaction in the victims’ immune system. This had the tragic effect of creating a number of orphans. Even if not infected, these children were vulnerable to starvation, freezing, or attack by feral dogs, described by Unalga’s men as similar to ravenous wolves. Unalaska had its own orphanage, the Jesse Lee Home, but when that filled up, a vacant house was requisitioned and named the “USS UNALGA Orphan Home.” When that also filled, Dodge started housing children in the town jail under the care of the town marshal. Among these orphans was Benny Benson, who later designed the state flag of Alaska.

Unalga’s Master-at-Arms, Peter “Big Pete” Bugaras volunteered to care for the orphans. An enlisted man responsible for enforcing ship’s discipline and handling prisoners, Bugaras had a reputation as “the strongest man in the Coast Guard Service,” and was described as “Greek by birth, a born fighter of men, and protector of all things helpless and small.” Burly and big-hearted, Bugaras took responsibility for running the UNALGA Orphan Home. He had his men fashion clothes for the children by tracing outlines of their bodies on bolts of cloth and cutting them out. Several women in the village were appalled to see Bugaras enthusiastically scrubbing children clean with the same vigor he used on dogs, but by all accounts the little ones loved him.

Outside help finally arrived on June 3, when Coast Guard Cutter Bear dropped anchor. Under the combined effort of the two cutter crews, many of the surviving victims began to recover and the pandemic subsided. Navy vessels also arrived. In the words of Unalga officer Eugene Coffin: “Navy ships and nurses were sent to Unalaska after we yelled for them.” With the arrival of warships USS Vicksburg and USS Marblehead in mid-June, Dodge resupplied the Unalga to set sail for Bristol Bay. Unalaska’s last death occurred June 13 and with its departure on June 17, the Unalga’s relief of Unalaska officially ended.

Unalga men burying the dead at the Russian Orthodox Cemetery in Unalaska. (NOAA)

The Unalga’s care of Unalaska’s inhabitants had been somewhat rough-hewn but effective. During the cutter’s relief effort, the local mortality rate had hovered around 12 percent, while other areas in Alaska experienced up to 90 percent.

The Coast Guardsmen of the Unalga were far from saints, but for years later the inhabitants of Unalaska remembered them as saviors. In July 1919, Unalaska’s Russian Orthodox priest, Dimitri Hotovitzky, and Aleut Chief, Alexei Yatchmeneff, co-wrote a letter to Dodge stating “We feel had it not been for the prompt and efficient work of the Unalga, when everyone willingly and readily exposed himself to succor the sick, Unalaska’s population might have been reduced to a very small number if not entirely wiped out.”

While Unalga’s performance at Unalaska drew universal acclaim, the cutter and USS Marblehead were criticized for arriving in the Bristol Bay region too late to make a difference. As the disease had largely run its course, Unalga’s crew worked with the Marblehead’s Navy personnel to provide for the remaining medical care and relief work in the community. When the pandemic finally released Alaska from its grip, nearly 3,000 inhabitants had died. Nearly all of the dead were Native Alaskans, an irreparable loss to the indigenous community and its culture.

Unalga’s officers, including: Standing: Lieutenant Junior Grade Willie B. Huebner USNRF; Captain Eugene Auguste Coffin USCG; Captain Warner Keith Thompson USCG; Captain Theodore Graham Lewton USCG; Lieutenant E. W. Scott USNRF (Dental Corps); Lieutenant Junior Grade Dr. F. H. Johnson USPHS. Sitting: Lieutenant Carl E. Anderson USNRF; Senior Captain Frederick Gilbert Dodge USCG; Lieutenant Gordon Whiting MacLane USCG.

Every pandemic and its tragedies are unique, but in the Coast Guard’s response today we can hear echoes of 1919, when the crew of Coast Guard Cutter Unalga quarantined and rendered pandemic relief to the remote Alaskan settlement of Unalaska. Cutter Unalga and the men who sailed aboard it made history as part of the lore of Alaska and the long blue line.

This article appears courtesy of Coast Guard Compass and may be found in its original form here.

from Storage Containers https://maritime-executive.com/article/how-80-coastguardsmen-saved-unalaska-from-the-spanish-flu-pandemic via http://www.rssmix.com/

[samuelcarveraccidentman]

BEIJING — For three decades, Jiang Lin kept quiet about the carnage she had seen on the night when the Chinese Army rolled through Beijing to crush student protests in Tiananmen Square. But the memories tormented her — of soldiers firing into crowds in the dark, bodies slumped in pools of blood and the thud of clubs when troops bludgeoned her to the ground near the square.

Ms. Jiang was a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army back then, with a firsthand view of both the massacre and a failed attempt by senior commanders to dissuade China’s leaders from using military force to crush the pro-democracy protests. Afterward, as the authorities sent protesters to prison and wiped out memories of the killing, she said nothing, but her conscience ate at her.

Now, in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown, Ms. Jiang, 66, has decided for the first time to tell her story. She said she felt compelled to call for a public reckoning because generations of Chinese Communist Party leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have expressed no remorse for the violence. Ms. Jiang left China this week.

“The pain has eaten at me for 30 years,” she said in an interview in Beijing. “Everyone who took part must speak up about what they know happened. That’s our duty to the dead, the survivors and the children of the future.”

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Ms. Jiang’s account has a wider significance: She sheds new light on how military commanders tried to resist orders to use armed force to clear protesters from the square they had taken over for seven weeks, captivating the world.

The students’ impassioned idealism, hunger strikes, rebukes of officials and grandiose gestures like building a “Goddess of Democracy” on the square drew an outpouring of public sympathy and left leaders divided on how to respond.

Jiang Lin at home in Beijing.CreditThe New York Times

She described her role in spreading word of a letter from senior generals opposing martial law, and gave details of other letters from commanders who warned the leadership not to use troops in Beijing. And she saw on the streets how soldiers who carried out the party’s orders shot indiscriminately as they rushed to retake Tiananmen Square.

Even after 30 years, the massacre remains one of the most delicate topics in Chinese politics, subjected to a sustained and largely successful effort by the authorities to erase it from history. The party has ignored repeated calls to acknowledge that it was wrong to open fire on the students and residents, and resisted demands for a full accounting of how many died.

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The authorities regularly detain former protest leaders and the parents of students and residents killed in the crackdown. A court convicted four men in southwestern China this year for selling bottles of liquor that referred to the Tiananmen crackdown.

Over the years, a small group of Chinese historians, writers, photographers and artists have tried to chronicle the chapters in Chinese history that the party wants forgotten.

But Ms. Jiang’s decision to challenge the silence carries an extra political charge because she is not only an army veteran but also the daughter of the military elite. Her father was a general, and she was born and raised in military compounds. She proudly enlisted in the People’s Liberation Army about 50 years ago, and in photos from her time as a military journalist, she stands beaming in her green army uniform, a notebook in hand and camera hanging from her neck.

She never imagined that the army would turn its guns against unarmed people in Beijing, Ms. Jiang said.

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Tiananmen Square on June 2, 1989.CreditCatherine Henriette/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“How could fate suddenly turn so that you could use tanks and machine guns against ordinary people?” she said. “To me, it was madness.”

Qian Gang, her former supervisor at the Liberation Army Daily, who now lives abroad, corroborated details of Ms. Jiang’s account. Ms. Jiang shared hundreds of yellowing pages of a memoir and diaries that she wrote while trying to make sense of the slaughter.

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“More than once I’ve daydreamed of visiting Tiananmen wearing mourning clothes and leaving a bunch of pure white lilies,” she wrote in 1990.

‘The People’s Military’

Ms. Jiang felt a stab of fear in May 1989 when radio and television news crackled with an announcement that China’s government would impose martial law on much of Beijing in an effort to clear student protesters from Tiananmen Square.

The protests had broken out in April, when students marched to mourn the sudden death of Hu Yaobang, a popular reformist leader, and demand cleaner, more open government.

By declaring martial law across urban Beijing, Deng Xiaoping, the party’s leader, signaled that armed force was an option.

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SIGN UPJiang Lin during a military training exercise in the Ningxia region of China in October 1988.

Researchers have previously shown that several senior commanders resisted using military force against the protesters, but Ms. Jiang gave new details on the extent of the resistance inside the military and how officers tried to push back against the orders.

Gen. Xu Qinxian, the leader of the formidable 38th Group Army, refused to lead his troops into Beijing without clear written orders, and checked himself into a hospital. Seven commanders signed a letter opposing martial law that they submitted to the Central Military Commission that oversaw the military.

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“It was a very simple message,” she said, describing the letter. “The People’s Liberation Army is the people’s military and it should not enter the city or fire on civilians.”

Ms. Jiang, eager to spread the word of the generals’ letter, read it over the telephone to an editor at People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper, where the staff were disobeying orders to censor news about the protests. But the paper did not print the letter because one of the generals who signed it objected, saying it was not meant to be made public, she said.

Ms. Jiang still hoped that the rumblings inside the military would deter Deng from sending in soldiers to clear the protesters. But on June 3, she heard that the troops were advancing from the west of the city and shooting at people.

The army had orders to clear the square by early on June 4, using any means. Announcements went out warning residents to stay inside.

Family members trying to comfort a woman who had just learned of the death of her son, a student protester killed by soldiers in the Tiananmen massacre.CreditDavid Turnley/Corbis, via Getty Images

‘Any Lie is Possible’

But Ms. Jiang did not stay inside.

She remembered the people she had seen on the square earlier in the day. “Would they be killed?” she thought.

She headed into the city on bicycle to watch the troops come in, knowing that the confrontation represented a watershed in Chinese history. She knew she risked being mistaken for a protester because she was dressed in civilian clothes. But that night, she said, she did not want to be identified with the military.

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“This was my responsibility,” she said. “My job was to report major breaking news.”

Ms. Jiang followed soldiers and tanks as they advanced into the heart of Beijing, bursting through makeshift blockades formed with buses and firing wildly at crowds of residents furious that their government was using armed force.

Ms. Jiang stayed close to the ground, her heart pounding as bullets flew overhead. Bursts of gunfire and blasts from exploding gasoline tanks shook the air, and heat from burning buses stung her face.

Near midnight, Ms. Jiang approached Tiananmen Square, where soldiers stood silhouetted against the glow of fires. An elderly gatekeeper begged her not to go on, but Ms. Jiang said she wanted to see what would happen. Suddenly, over a dozen armed police officers bore down on her, and some beat her with electric prods. Blood gushed from her head, and Ms. Jiang fell.

Still, she did not pull out the card that identified her as a military journalist.

“I’m not a member of the Liberation Army today,” she thought to herself. “I’m one of the ordinary civilians.”

Chang’an Avenue beside Tiananmen Square the day after the carnage. Scattered throughout the street are burned remnants of military vehicles destroyed by angry civilians.CreditDavid Turnley/Corbis, via Getty Images

A young man propped her on his bicycle to carry her away, and some foreign journalists rushed her to a nearby hospital, Ms. Jiang said. A doctor stitched up her head wound. She watched, dazed, as the dead and wounded arrived by dozens.

The brutality of that night left her shellshocked.

“It felt like watching my own mother being raped,” she said. “It was unbearable.”

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Ms. Jiang has long hesitated to tell her story. The head injury she suffered in 1989 left her with a scar and recurring headaches.

She was interrogated in the months after the 1989 crackdown, and detained and investigated twice in following years over the private memoir that she wrote. She formally left the military in 1996 and has since lived a quiet life, largely ignored by the authorities.

In recalling the events over several interviews in recent weeks, Ms. Jiang’s voice often slowed and her sunny personality seemed to retreat under the shadow of her memories.

Over the years, she said, she waited for a Chinese leader to come forward to tell the country that the armed crackdown was a calamitous error.

But that day never came.

Ms. Jiang said she believed that China’s stability and prosperity would be fragile as long as the party did not atone for the bloodshed.

“All this is built on sand. There’s no solid foundation,” she said. “If you can deny that people were killed, any lie is possible.”

[itsworn]

An Interview with John Staluppi, Owner of the Cars of Dreams Collection to be Sold at Barrett Jackson in April, 2018.

For nearly fifteen years, TV viewers of the popular Barrett-Jackson collector car auction have come to know John Staluppi for his solid taste in post-WWII American collector cars and his fierce ability to knock out virtually any opponent with a seven-figure bid. Though Barrett-Jackson bidders come in all shapes, sizes, and tax brackets, Staluppi made his mark thanks to a pint-sized lap dog named Dillinger.

A Maltese breed of canine, Dillinger was trained to bark on command. So before long the dog was placing the bids while poised in the arms of John, his wife Jeanette, or one of the Staluppi’s grandkids. Naturally, TV audiences ate it up and little Dillinger became “a thing” at Barrett-Jackson for many years.

With each winning “bark”, Staluppi accumulated another addition to his Cars of Dreams collection of more than 125 top-tier vehicles. Located in North Palm Beach, Florida, the Cars of Dreams collection is stored inside a former department store with more than 70,000 square-feet that’s been decorated with props and street scenes depicting New York City.

Only open four times a year, Staluppi’s private Cars of Dreams collection isn’t available for weddings or birthday parties. Rather, John works with charity organizations to help raise funding for law enforcement, children’s health programs, and heart disease and cancer-prevention research.

We recently visited with John Staluppi to learn more about his background, his plan to “shuffle the deck” by selling 125 cars at the upcoming Barrett-Jackson collector car event in West Palm Beach, Florida, and the plan to replace the sold cars with a whole new stash of classics.

Sadly, little Dillinger has gone to TV dog heaven to frolic with Rin Tin Tin and Scooby-Doo. But fear not, another Maltese pup, this one named Buddy, will take his place. Whether Buddy shares Dillinger’s passion for collector cars and being in the limelight remains to be seen. But either way, with Mr. Staluppi on the hunt for 125-plus new classic cars to replenish his Cars of Dreams collection during the next year, the story is far from over!

HRM) Where are you from?

JS) I was born in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. After a family move to Long Island, I then moved to Florida around 1977.

HRM) What was your first car memory?

JS) My father had a 1950 Nash four-door, one of those upside-down bathtub looking cars. It was a standard-shift car with the usual column-mounted gear lever, and Dad took the family to upstate New York for a vacation one time. Somehow I ended up alone in the car and was playing with the shift lever. When I got out of the car, I left it in Neutral. The next minute, the car comes rolling through the woods and my Dad was saying, “Whose driving through the woods?” Then he realized it was his car. I got in big trouble for that one. That Nash was one of the big ones with the fold-down seats you could camp in and a body that looked like a big beetle. The dash had this one central pod for the speedometer and gauges, they called it the “Uniscope.” It was a neat car.

HRM) At present I don’t see a Nash Ambassador in the Cars of Dreams collection, rather I see lots and lots of convertibles. What is your favorite car?

JS) I’d say my favorite car is the first Corvette I ever bought, a 1962 in Tuxedo Black. We didn’t have a lot of money, but my family helped me buy it by taking out a second mortgage on our home. It cost $3,100 back then and was a demonstrator model the dealership had for a discount ($4,038 was the base sticker price). I lived right around the corner from the Brooklyn-based Chevrolet dealer that had the car. But that was my first car that was mine. So to answer the question about what’s my favorite type of car, that’d be Corvettes at the core but followed closely by Chrysler 300 letter cars.

HRM) Wow, that’s the other end of the spectrum. Or is it?

JS) Those early 300’s could be very sporty cars. With their stiff suspensions, standard dual-quad induction, big tires, and upsized brakes, they handled better than you might expect. In a sense, a 300 convertible was like a four-seat Corvette. I had many jobs as a kid- I was a mechanic at the Chevy dealer I just mentioned, and a little later I worked as a lifeguard in upstate New York at a resort called Villa Maria. One of the head managers at the resort had a 1960 Chrysler 300F hardtop. It was blue and with the 413, and we used to go out and tear up the highway. It was an unbelievable car and started my love for 300 “letter cars.” It had the swiveling seats, the clear “Astra-Dome” bubble covering the instrument cluster, the massive Exner-era tail fins and being a 1960, was the first year for the ram induction setup (1955-1959 300’s had dual quads arranged inline atop a non-ram manifold). I remember everything about that car. It was a true bad boy and made the 1960 Chrysler 300F my absolute favorite car.

HRM) Your Cars of Dreams collection is known for being one of the few collections with such a wide variety of letter-series Chrysler 300’s. Tell us more.

JS) I have almost one of every letter-series Chrysler 300 here except for the 1959 300E. A total of only 690 1959 E’s were built, of them only 140 were convertibles. Finding a good survivor or even a solid restoration candidate is next to impossible. But that’s the fun of it. At present, I’m selling just about everything you see here in the Cars of Dreams collection. My plan is to fill this building one more time. This go-round, I’m aiming to have a truly complete collection of Chrysler 300 letter cars – including the elusive 1959 “E” – in both body types: hardtop and convertible. I’m a little bit on the fence with the 1962-1965 300s. First off, Chrysler abandoned the tail fins for 1962 but more seriously, Chrysler added a non-performance, non-letter 300 model that could be had with four doors. So to me, the 1962s aren’t as hard-core as the 1955-1961s. So I’m not sure I’ll expend as much effort acquiring 1962-up letter cars for this final go-round.

HRM) You’ve had some race cars, what was the first?

JS) That would be a 1955 Chevy. It was green, and I’m superstitious. Too many times to count, any green race car I’ve owned would blow up on me. It’d break a rear axle, transmission, or something else. We gave that ’55 the name “Mister Jinx.” Eventually we got all the bugs worked out of the car, and I ran it in C / Modified Production (C/MP). That was around the mid-1970s, and the track we used was Englishtown in New Jersey. Vinny Napp was the track manager, and we ran it often enough to hold the C/MP national championship title for a while. We also raced at Westhampton Dragstrip on Long Island and even as far away as Bristol, Tennessee’s so-called “Thunder Valley,” a great strip that’s still very active today. We had a lot of fun back then with Mister Jinx.

HRM) Did you do the driving?

JS) Oh yes! Modified Production allowed a fair amount of changes, so the original 265 V8 was replaced by a 327 with a Mickey Thompson cross-ram intake manifold. We had to remain naturally aspirated but worked in the usual modifications like high compression, a wild solid cam, hotter ignition, and, of course, a four-speed manual transmission. I ran a set of 5.38:1 rear axle gears and used to leave the line at over 6,000 rpm. It’d come out of the hole like a rocket ship.

HRM) Are you a stick man or do you prefer automatic transmissions?

JS) In the earlier days, I was a four-speed maniac. Three-speed on the tree is kind of sloppy- really antiquated. I do like the automatics of today, especially the types you can shift like a stick if you want to. They’re pretty much bullet proof. When you hit traffic, when you have to start shifting, that was fun when I was a kid. But now, at this point in life, I like to enjoy some comfort while I drive. Plus, most cars today only come with an automatic transmission, but again, the manual-shift mode does a pretty good job of simulating the old days – minus the left leg work.

HRM) You managed to locate – and buy – your first Corvette (the black 1962), so have you had any luck finding Mister Jinx, that 1955 Chevy drag car?

JS) Naah, that car is long gone. We sold it to a bunch of guys who continued racing it until it blew a tire and went off the track. I’m pretty sure the car was stripped to a shell then junked.

HRM) Beyond the Cars of Dreams collection, you’ve built and owned a series of 100-to-200-plus foot aluminum-hulled yachts and have a private jet. Success is obviously part of your life, how did it happen?

JS) I started as a mechanic in Brooklyn, then I opened up a gas station. Then a Honda motorcycle dealership franchise became available to me in Queens, on Queens Blvd. I was also a big motorcycle rider and we sold a lot of Honda ‘cycles in the mid-to-late 1960s. By the early 1970s, I was also selling the Honda 600 minicar in fair numbers. But it was the arrival of the larger Civic in 1973 that was really the beginning of true success. Sales were strong enough to allow the addition of more Honda dealerships, in Long Island and other locations. Those little Civics sold very well and I started making the real money. That allowed me to repay my debts to my parents, who funded my early efforts.

HRM) How many Honda dealerships did you grow to, and did you add other brands as well?

JS) In the 1970s, I had five Honda car dealerships and three Honda motorcycle dealerships, and then my first domestic brand was an Oldsmobile store. It was located in Brooklyn, and the success of that led to me getting some Chevrolet outlets. By the late 1980s, I had 42 car dealerships and was the largest privately-held car dealer in the world. Then interest went to 21 percent, and boy the debt load was heavy. I ended up selling off some of the good stores, and kept the bad stores, not that any were really that bad, but we turned them around and kept growing. Today, we’re the third largest privately held car sales company in the country. We do about 70,000 new cars per year, and about 30,000 used cars per year.

HRM) Who runs it all?

JS) It takes a great team, and my partner who helps keep the Long Island dealerships running is Michael Brown. My son John Jr. has stores in Las Vegas, and my son-in-law Scott has car dealerships in Queens, Great Neck, and Long Island. In fact, John Jr. is also a vintage car collector. He’s got about 35 or 40 classics out there in Las Vegas.

HRM) Are these many dealerships recognizable with names like “Staluppi Motors” or some name HOT ROD readers could seek out?

JS) They all carry the name “Atlantic”, “Advantage”, or “Millennium.” The Atlantic name stems from my first Oldsmobile (then later, Chevrolet) dealership, which was called Atlantic Oldsmobile.

HRM) Switching gears back to vintage and collectible cars, when you’re buying, what do you look for?

JS) I’m all about the hunt. I always buy cars I used to work on or knew about when I was a kid. Cars of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were things I worked on, bought, sold, raced, and modified, when they were brand new. Not so much with the cars of the 1980s. By then, I had outgrown much of the hands-on, greasy fingers part of it. When I buy, I seek the finest looking examples and typically avoid unfinished projects. I prefer finished cars because it is all too easy to fall into the trap where you invest more than you’ll ever get back. Sure, if you can do the work on your own, and have the necessary skills to do good work, you can turn out a fine example. But when you add up the hours charged by any professional restoration business, a sure return on investment is rare. This is a labor of love. People who restore these cars spend thousands of hours on them, and finding missing parts is another side of it that can get costly, so I’m attracted to finished cars.

HRM) Are there any cars that you refuse to buy?

JS) I’m not a big fan of some of the more obscure vintage foreign cars. It’s about impossible to get restoration parts [for them]. I’m also not a huge Ferrari guy. Except for the pinnacle cars like the 250 GTO and such, I don’t really see the value.

HRM) No doubt it’s a lot of work to find, buy, and store so many cars. To some people, what you have here on display would be an acceptable life-long accomplishment. But you are about to sell 125 cars at the 2018 Barrett-Jackson West Palm Beach, FL collector car auction and start again. Why?

JS) I get bored. Again, with me it’s about the chase. My main business office is also contained within this structure (a former department store). When I need a break from the daily “brain damage” of keeping track of business, I’ll come out and restore my equilibrium with these wonderful vintage machines. It’s a lot of fun. I’m also a big fan of Lionel trains and have a large, running diorama in its own special room.

HRM) Anyone who has watched the televised Barrett-Jackson collector car auctions knows that you are known for buying the best examples available. Consignors also understand it’s a very good thing when you are bidding on their offerings because price is not an obstacle. Once these cars become part of your Cars of Dreams collection, are they treated differently versus other car collections?

JS) One thing that sets my collection apart from many, is the fact you can jump into any one of the cars on display, drive it out the door and go for a cruise. On the four-speed cars you don’t have to worry about it jumping out of gear because of bad synchros, the lights all work, they are all ready to go. I keep a staff of full-time mechanics led by Dave Crews, and there’s a multi-bay garage at the back of my display room to assure each car is road ready. If I buy a car and issues present themselves, we correct them. That way, when someone buys a car from my collection, they can buy it with good confidence. We exercise our cars, and that’s crucial in this day of reformulated gas that goes bad and gums up carburetors. By exercising the cars, the seals don’t get dried out and it makes a huge difference compared to cars that might sit idle for years at a time in other collections.

HRM) What’s more important to you, matching numbers, or a quality presentation?

JS) I like numbers-matching, but to me what’s more important than that would be the quality of the car, the quality of the restoration. Most of my high-end cars are numbers matching, but the plus to me is the way the car is restored- the quality of the chrome, the quality underneath the chassis, the nooks and crannies. Were the body mounts replaced? Are they detailed to the same degree as the grille? That’s where the value is. When you pull up to a car show, 90 percent of spectators don’t know what numbers matching means. But they do see a quality build, and that’s what I go after. The truth of the matter is, when I worked at Chevrolet, and we would get muscle cars with damaged engines, we simply changed short blocks and tossed the original “numbers matching” parts in the trash. Truth be told, after the repair, the engine was like new. The tiny stamped numbers on the block didn’t play into the equation whatsoever. On most pre-1968 cars, and the vast majority of 1950s cars, numbers-matching status isn’t as important because many cars simply lacked the numbers in the first place. So that’s where we turn our focus to the quality of the paint, chrome, interior, glass, and overall restoration.

HRM) How about resto-mods?

JS) That’s an area that I appreciate. Numbers-matching status has no bearing here, and that’s liberating. I have a number of resto-mods in this collection, and I bought them for the quality of execution. But again, in every case, you could take it out of my building and drive it to California. The air conditioning works, they handle well, the transmissions have overdrive, and they’re usually much faster than any original model. I think resto-mods and resto-rods are where the value is. I think resto-mods are worth a lot more money than a stock restoration. I understand the allure of original equipment, but in today’s world, a top tier resto-mod with good ingredients and craftsmanship is a better buy than a relic restored with original-type bias ply tires, a three-speed manual transmission, drum brakes, and king pin front suspension.

HRM) What are some cars that are under-valued in today’s marketplace?

JS) Big Cadillacs from the 1950s and 1960s. Cadillac is like a symbol, especially with the Eldorado and Eldorado Biarritz, those are real cars. You look at the bumpers, the stainless steel roof material, the interiors with golden threads, I think these cars are very much undervalued. I feel they will climb much higher as more people understand what they represented. Taking it further, I think all of the finned cars from the 1950’s are poised to appreciate. I’m also big on Chrysler finned cars of the Virgil Exner era. Not just the letter-series 300s we talked about already, but the Dodge D500s, Plymouth Furys and DeSoto Adventurers are really important cars that are blue chip investments.

HRM) Modern cars have to pass so many government crash, pedestrian safety and efficiency standards, their designers’ hands are tied. Its’ rumored that Dodge Challenger stylists intentionally gave up something like 1/2 of a mpg in 2008 to allow for the distinctive tunneled grille and “frowning brow” headlamps that give them so much identity. Do you think new cars will ever be distinctive again?

JS) I have a hard time looking at a Lexus or a Mercedes or a BMW, and I’m in the business as a dealer. Its’ hard to say make and model is which. Back then, you knew- that’s an Oldsmobile, that’s a Buick, that’s a Pontiac, that’s a Dodge, etc. You don’t see that now. I feel the carmakers need to add more visual variety and identity to their offerings.

HRM) Can you hint at what direction the next Cars of Dreams collection will take?

JS) This is something that’s a passion to me. Doing this one more time in my lifetime, my next collection of cars will be more of a variety. At present, Cars of Dreams celebrates the convertible body type. But for the next go around, I want more variety. Yes, there will be convertibles, but I also want to go after hardtops and even some wagons. Then I can take it in a different direction. At present, if you look around Cars of Dreams, the only reason you don’t see a convertible on display is when the factory didn’t offer it that way. An example would be the 1956-1957 Lincoln Continental MKII. Except for two factory prototype convertibles in 1957, the MKII is strictly a hardtop. If ever there was a car that deserved to be offered as a drop-top, the MKII is it. And know this, if one of those factory prototype convertibles surfaced, I’d pay the money for it! Another thing I want to point out is that there are two vintage fire trucks in the collection right now. They actually run, and I use them for parades. I had my shop install air conditioning inside one of them because it was so popular, we decided to make it more enjoyable here in the Florida heat. Commercial and emergency vehicles are interesting to me as well; I even have a Ford neighborhood ice cream truck I’ll be selling.

HRM) When you say the word “collection,” how many cars do you have?

JS) I keep about 130 cars here plus another 8 cars I keep at my home. Again, every one of them is ready for the road. Sometimes for fun, I’ll invite four or five buddies to come by then I’ll ask them which cars they want to drive, and we’ll gas them up and then attend a car show or cruise night.

HRM) Besides vintage cars and Lionel trains, you also enjoy ship building. Tell us about it.

JS) I’m building a new yacht now, which will be the ultimate, ultimate boat. I sold Diamonds Are Forever and Skyfall (Google them, dear reader, you’ll be amazed). This new one is a 230-foot boat that is going to be the ultimate yacht that’s ever been built by a person. We are hoping that for next year to have a party on it.

HRM) Back to the next collection, how does that get started?

JS) It isn’t about buying 130 cars, it’s about buying 130 great cars. In addition to having one of every 1955-1962 Chrysler 300 letter-series body type, I hope to focus on Oldsmobiles from 1950 through 1960. I want one of each model in each body configuration. More Corvettes will be added from each era, and I’m not against resto-mods representing specific years.

HRM) What does the future hold for the Cars of Dreams collection?

JS) After the next round of acquiring cars to replace the ones I’m selling at the April 2018 Barret-Jackson sale, I want to eventually pass it down to my son, John Jr. and my grandchildren. John Jr. lives in Las Vegas. He is mostly into Mopars and has about 35 cars there. As for the next round of purchases, I’ll open the door to a wider variety of cars. I’ll be at the auctions, buying and buying and buying. I’m excited to do this again.

HRM) What is it like when you are bidding on a car and suddenly there’s a TV camera pointed at your face?

JS) I gotta be honest- it’s fun. Sometimes when I’m bidding, it becomes like a war with me. Sometimes my wife Jeanette will be there with me while I’m bidding, and she’ll be asking, “are you crazy?” Then my cell phone will go off with calls from friends who see me on TV bidding who want to chime in on the action or they’re texting me “don’t lose that car, it’s a good one.” Meanwhile I’m thinking to the auctioneer “drop the hammer, drop the hammer!” The best is when my grandkids are there and they’re saying, “Poppie we’re not going to let that guy beat us? I say, ‘no way, no way’.” Sometimes it’ll cost me because the ego gets in front of the brain. One thing that used to happen to me at auction that I don’t let happen anymore is when a car shows up under the lights and I haven’t really checked into the underlying quality. When there’s a car on the docket list that catches my eye, now I make sure to get a close inspection in the days before it hits the block. That’s one of the reasons I like Barrett-Jackson, they stage the cars under the tents and in the lines for several days before they sell. This gives ample opportunity for close inspection. Once the car is on the block, there’s really no time to inspect it very closely, it becomes like a big race. But overall, I look forward to every Barrett-Jackson auction. I love it. It’s fun.

The post An Interview with John Staluppi, Owner of the Cars of Dreams Collection to be Sold at Barrett Jackson in April, 2018. appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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Bio Comic Shows the Inventor of the Zombie Did a Lot More Than That

The cartoonist of seven books, including “Mid-Life,” “Happy Stories About Well-Adjusted People,” and “This Will All End in Tears,” Joe Ollmann has not only received a Doug Wright Award, CBC Radio called him “a master of the short story” and compared him to Alice Munro. His new book, “The Abominable Mr. Seabrook,” looks to continue the accolades for the accomplished creator.

The book details the life of William Seabrook, a writer best remembered for introducing the term “zombie” into the English language, though as Ollmann makes clear, Seabrook wrote about and did far, far more than most might think. Seabrook wrote about Haiti, Arabia and Africa, early plane travel, alcoholism and bondage; he was friends with Gertrude Stein, Aleister Crowley, Sinclair Lewis and Man Ray. He was the forerunner of the model of adventurer and writer that has been carried on by the likes of Hunter S. Thompson.

CBR: William Seabrook was a real character — I don’t know how else to describe him! How did you first encounter him?

Joe Ollmann: I discovered him in a zombie anthology called “Zombie.” There was a short piece by Seabrook in there, which was very good. It’s a true story of zombies in Haiti from his book “The Magic Island.” It was a good story, and I really liked his writing, but what interested me more was the short biographical blurb before the story. The people that he’d known, the places that he traveled, and other salacious facts, like his bondage fetish, and cannibalism, and alcoholism. I’d never heard of the guy, and I felt like I should have because he had a pretty interesting, storied life. That sent me searching for more info. I was a little surprised that there wasn’t more info on him. None of his eleven books were in print at the time; Dover has started to bring some of them back into print, but he was a bestselling author in his day. It seemed like people should have known about him because he had a pretty interesting life.

One person you quote in the book makes the observation that what Seabrook would have liked was to be misunderstood. He wasn’t, however, and instead was a huge success.

That was Alexander King, the illustrator, who was an editor at “Life Magazine.” He said that Seabrook wanted to be a misunderstood author who was deep and artistic and inscrutable, but he was this populist writer who wrote about lurid subjects, mostly. But he wrote about them very intelligently and very well. Seabrook was always torn; he wanted to be a Gertrude Stein or a James Joyce or someone like that, but he came from a trashy Randolph Hearst newspaper background, writing stories like ‘Caught in the Death Grip of a Giant Clam.’ He wanted to do art, and he did very good populist stuff.

At the same time — and I couldn’t help but think of this in terms of his alcoholism and self-loathing — he sought out the company of people like Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, people who were in that Left Bank or Greenwich Village crowds.

He was very well connected. They sought him out, too, it seems, because they remembered him well enough to write about him in their autobiographies. Gertrude Stein, Sinclair Lewis, Man Ray, Aleister Crowley wrote about him. He obviously made an impression on these people. I would imagine he was quite a character, a guy who was fun to go to parties with, but not so fun to live with.

So when did you go from being curious about this writer to making a book about him?

At the beginning, I was just interested and I started to read. There was a little bit on the Internet. There were Seabrook fans on LiveJournal that had a lot of information, and that steered me towards certain books, which was quite helpful. I started buying his books and reading them. As I was reading them, I started keeping notes. I first started taking notes around 2006, so it’s been more than ten years now that I’ve been unofficially researching. I traveled to North Carolina with my wife — she was at an academic conference and I went with her because a collector there had a trunk of Seabrook stuff. I went to the University of Oregon for almost a week, and went through the archives of Marjorie Worthington, who was Seabrook’s second wife. She was an author, and her archives were there. I was going through boxes of her stuff — journals, letters, photos.

At that point, I’m wearing white gloves at a university archive and taking notes and I was like, “I guess you’re making a book of this guy, because what else are you going do?” [Laughs] I had already invested a lot of time and travel and money, so it became apparent that I had to do something with it. It was more than just a hobby. I talked about it a lot for years with people and everybody was very intrigued by the elevator pitch of this guy’s life and they never heard of him so they said, you should make a book about him. I could have just written a proper biography – a “book book” as we call real books in the comics world – but I’m a cartoonist, so I did it as a comic book biography.

I can imagine you spent part of that decade digging up visual reference and focusing on depicting those details.

I don’t usually use a lot of visual reference, but I really tried to get the details as correct as possible with this book. I felt it deserved the extra time. It’s set in many different time periods on different continents with many different cultures and with historical characters. I did a lot of research — I have folders of reference material for each section. I’ve never really done that much research visually before, so hopefully it improved the book.

I’ve read other books of yours, and it’s clearly your style, but it also felt very different than anything you’ve done before.

I think so. In a way, it’s not proper nonfiction. I see any biography with dialogue in it is out of the realm of nonfiction and into “speculative nonfiction,” where it’s well researched but I extrapolated and made up dialogue to fill in the story. It is different, but I feel like readers of my normal depressing comics that I do which are slice of life kitchen sink dramas of normal people who are troubled and they’re sad but they have humor in them, I think the Seabrook book probably has a similar feel because you know we put our stamp on everything as an artist or a writer so even though it’s his story it definitely has my fingerprints all over it I would think.

Drawing things like bondage — I’ve never done anything like that. I talked to cartoonist Pascal Girard years ago when I was living in Montreal, and his advice was draw the bondage stuff really frankly. Don’t not show it, but don’t make it sexy. I drew it very openly, not trying to make it salacious or sexed up. Hopefully that worked.

What made Seabrook fascinating wasn’t that he practiced bondage, but he wrote about it and he collaborated with Man Ray on series of photographs depicting bondage.

He and Man Ray were friends for a long time. Man Ray took a lot of photos of Seabrook, like when he was arriving back from Africa on a plane. Then he did the photos of Seabrook and Lee Miller where she’s wearing a collar and he’s holding the collar. There’s a whole other series of photos that they did, The Fantasies of Mr. Seabrook, which are pretty hardcore bondage. I think that was Seabrook trying to legitimize his kinky side by turning it into art. It could be perceived as legitimate because Man Ray was this established, respected artist at the time and collaborating with him would bring a legitimacy to it.

Seabrook is also fascinating because for his time, he was very progressive when writing about Haiti and Arabia and the people he meets.

For his time he was very progressive in writing about race and his interaction with other cultures. That what I find fascinating. He is very respectful of the cultures. He’s not a detached observer like an anthropologist would be. He’s living as equals with them and I think he’s accepted by the Bedouins when he’s living in the Middle East and again in Haiti by the Haitian people there. In Africa as well, although in Africa he’s acting more like a “great white hunter” in that book. I think he was more famous, and his alcoholism had progressed to the point where he wasn’t making good decisions about anything. But I agree, for his time, he was very progressive on matters of race, and very respectful of the Arab and Muslim culture.

One reason I don’t think that Seabrook isn’t one of the great travel writers like Thesiger or Stark is because, as you point out, Seabrook had a tendency to embellish and make things up.

He did a bit of that. Maybe I make too much of a deal about it. The famous thing he lied about — that in Africa he ate human flesh — which he doesn’t but he does eat human flesh when he returns to Paris to make it “true.” There was also people that criticized his details of the facts of the voodoo religion in “The Magic Island.” Seabrook cited Zora Neale Hurston, who in her book “Tell My Horse” writes about very similar things. Hurston is a respected anthropologist and she’s a black woman who has less to gain from maligning the people of Haiti, and she supported his facts, basically, in her book. As a guy that was a reporter, I think he took the facts seriously. I think he exaggerated. I think he’s a typical raconteur who will exaggerate and be hyperbolic to make a better story. I hesitate to say that he was constantly lying about things in his books, although he may have — it’s hard to know.

You make an interesting observation at the end, which is that it might be best to think of him as a precursor to gonzo journalism.

I think so. The act of throwing yourself into the middle of the story and making the story about you. I couldn’t find out in Hunter S. Thompson or any of that school read Seabrook, but I suspect that Thompson probably would have. They shared a lot — the wild man, hard-drinking lifestyle, but also being a very serious writer. For all of his drinking, Seabrook was a real work horse. Even at the height of his alcoholism, he would get up in the morning at five, make coffee, work ’til noon and waste the rest of the day. I think he was a hard working reporter at heart.

Having spent all these years working on this book, what do you hope people take away from it?

My intent, really, was to serve as an introduction to the guy’s life. I don’t mean it to be a cautionary tale at all. If people read it, they’ll come away and say, obviously, it’s not a good thing to drink excessively your whole life because it will catch up with you. I just think it’s an interesting story. I wanted to introduce people to his work and maybe they’ll seek it out and read it. I think a lot of his stuff is still worth reading.

You mentioned that when you started, all of his books were out of print but now “Asylum” and “The Magic Island” are back in print.

Dover did those two, and I did the covers and introductions in comic form for them. “The Magic Island” is great, because they have an intro by George Romero. Seabrook is credited with bringing the word “zombie” into the English language, and “Magic Island” was the basis for the Bela Lugosi film “White Zombie,” so Romero writes about how he owes a debt of gratitude to Seabrook for starting the whole genre of the zombie. Then there’s an afterword by the ethnobotanist Wade Davis who wrote “The Serprent and The Rainbow.” Davis confirmed a lot of the aspects of the zombie being a genuinely chemical phenomenon instead of supernatural that Seabrook posited. It’s a travelogue, and it’s very detailed. He’s writing about the cultural history and the geopolitical history of the island and about the situation at the time in the 1920s where they were under occupation by the US. It’s just good, meandering travel writing. Those first three books of Seabrook’s are excellent.

Having spent a decade on this book, does it make you want to make another book along similar lines, or go back to making a slice of life story like you’ve done in the past?

I’m of two minds. I have a bunch of longish short story pieces that I’m ready to start on. I also have a nonfiction project about Canadian history that I’m working on. That would take a little more time. When I finished this, I was like, I don’t want to do nonfiction anymore. The research is too hard. I just want to do fiction, where you can make your characters do what you want and you’re not limited by what actually happened. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Hopefully I’ll live long enough to do both of them. As you get older, you start to think, how many books do I have left? Comics take so long that you want to be sure what you’re doing before you commit two or three — or five or ten — years to a book.

The post Bio Comic Shows the Inventor of the Zombie Did a Lot More Than That appeared first on CBR.

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