#it’s not like a cop murder mystery or anything it is very much just Francis figuring shit out and then taking matters into his own hands

[avvidstarion]

@kirnet tagged me to make some stuff in this picrew, so I made all of my major ttrpg characters!! We got Re (dnd), Francis McKay (call of Cthulhu), Atalanta Phoebus Firehawk (dnd), and Ursula Arctos (dnd)! Thank you Mina!

[mindthump]

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino: 'We’re not doing this ever again' https://ift.tt/33hEQTi

‘Hi guys and girls,” says Al Pacino brightly, making his entrance. He is sporting a veteran-boho look: what seems like about six black cardigans on top of each other, lots of chunky finger jewellery and messy bird’s-nest hair. There may even be one of those two-inch ponytails that were popular in the late 80s in there somewhere – it is hard to see in the general tonsorial disorder.

Next to stroll in is Robert De Niro, who – in dramatic contrast – looks like he has come in from a round of golf: shirt and sports jacket, grey-white hair slicked back. Welcome, then, to the Al and Bob show.

Observing them here, in an intimate room full of selected journalists, you see how their personalities contrast as much as their dress sense. Pacino speaks in a barely audible bass rumble and is not short of waffle; De Niro, while not exactly monosyllabic, spends as much time nodding with his distinctive pursed-mouth underbite and says as little as he can get away with. That is, until we got on to the matter of a certain US president, of which more later.

The pair – the film industry’s equivalent of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – are bona fide living legends, the greatest US actors of their generation, able to wipe the floor with modern lightweights such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Daniel Day-Lewis. Or that is what we would like to believe, anyway. Today, they have rolled into London as the main attraction on the press roadshow for The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s monumental new gangster picture – and there is a lot to get through. “Wow,” says Pacino at one point, casting his mind back across the pair’s career-long relationship. “We’ve known each other for a really long time.”

For years, The Irishman was little more than a rumour; plagued by delays, distractions and drop-outs, it looked odds-on never to make it out of the starting gate. But, like a wiseguy fitted with a cement overcoat, it has landed thunderously in the middle of the autumn season, blowing away the rest of the awards-bait dross.

The Irishman is the fourth in Scorsese’s series of epic mafia pictures, following Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Casino; it is the latest variant of Scorsese’s reinvention of mob life as an agonised stations of the cross. It is also the wintriest of character studies, contemplating (like Scorsese’s last film, Silence) the approach of death with equanimity. The CGI that Scorsese added to “de-age” his actors, and the deal that the director made with Netflix to fund it, has unexpectedly put his film in the same camp as cutting-edge industry disrupters. Scorsese himself has acquired new cultural currency in recent months: the naked homage/appropriation by the makers of Joker has driven attention to his string of 70s masterworks, while his dismissive comments about superhero movies (“not cinema”) – the first shots in the publicity campaign for The Irishman, as it happens – ignited a social media firestorm that is yet to die down.

Yet, more fundamental than any of this is the sense that The Irishman is a landmark reunion of the old neighbourhood: a last gathering of the clans, a final get-together before age and time overtakes them. Harvey Keitel and Joe Pesci play ageing mob bosses, Pacino is a notorious union boss, Jimmy Hoffa, and De Niro is the Irishman, ice-cold real-life hitman Frank Sheeran. The Irishman turns on the relationship between Hoffa, whose disappearance and presumed murder in 1975 remains unsolved, and Sheeran, a hitherto little-known mob figure who confessed to killing Hoffa, his longtime friend, to the lawyer Charles Brandt, who included it in his 2004 biography of Sheeran, I Heard You Paint Houses. Hoffa and Sheeran provide suitably substantial figures for Pacino and De Niro to renew their on-screen confrontation, most vividly portrayed in the 1995 Michael Man thriller Heat (the 2008 cop comedy Righteous Kill was slightly less memorable).

Pacino says they met in 1968; at the time, Pacino was a firebrand stage actor yet to feature in films, while De Niro was doing wacky avant-garde movies such as Brian De Palma’s Greetings. “Early on in our careers, we connected from time to time and we found we had similar things happening to us,” says Pacino. “Our lives took on a whole different kind of thing.” It was camaraderie, he says, that “got us together”.

Looking back, their acting careers did seem to blossom with a mysterious symbiosis. Both acquired a reputation in their teens as a troublemaker: De Niro spent much of his youth in Little Italy, Manhattan; Pacino, three years older, grew up in the Bronx. Both scored major breakthroughs in the early 70s courtesy of the Italian-American presence in the Hollywood new wave: Pacino as the flint-hearted capo-in-waiting in Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster epic The Godfather in 1972, De Niro as a knockaround guy in Scorsese’s Mean Streets a year later. The two appeared in the same film for the first time, although not together, in Coppola’s Godfather sequel in 1974: De Niro played the young version of Pacino’s father.

Sometimes I feel I know nothing about acting. Until you start. That's what's exciting for me

Al Pacino

Pacino gets a little dewy eyed; he looks a bit like a panda with a secret sorrow. “We’re really close. We don’t see each other very much, but when we do, we found we shared certain things. In a way, I think we’ve helped each other throughout life.” The thought of Tony Montana chewing things over with Jake LaMotta is not an image to trifle with. De Niro nods away, bottom lip almost wobbling, but there is no stopping Pacino. Their off-screen friendship, he says, has fed into their acting; in Heat, he says, “we were at opposite ends”, whereas “we were close” on Righteous Kill. They “had a chance to explore that again” on The Irishman: the relationship between Hoffa and Sheeran, who were friends for years before Sheeran’s betrayal, is the nub of the film. “I don’t think we talked about it consciously. It came relatively easy, as those things go.”

When it is his turn to talk, De Niro is all business. The Irishman, it would appear, is as much his show as Scorsese’s. He explains how he nagged Pesci on to the film, despite him having all but retired: “I said: ‘Come on, we’re not going to do this ever again.’” Sentiment is not his thing. “It was tough enough to get it done, to get the money to do it and everything. I don’t see us putting on a movie like this. I hope we do other films together, but like this? Not likely. This is it.”

Much ink has been spilled over the years on the De Niro-Scorsese axis, as well as the De Niro-Pacino one. But, bizarrely enough, Pacino and Scorsese had never worked together before. For two such high-profile princes of the Italian-American sensibility, that feels like a mistake. “I know,” rumbles Pacino, leaning in and turning worldly-wise. “Like everything in this business, if you’ve been in it for a while, you realise that things get started, but then they go in different places and they don’t always culminate in a film. A couple of times, Marty and I were going to do something together, then they slip away.” He mentions a Modigliani biopic he and Scorsese worked on in the 80s, which they tried and failed to get financed. “Happens all the time.”

De Niro was the key in finally getting The Irishman off the ground. He and Scorsese had been mulling another project about a retired hitman for years, The Winter of Frankie Machine, adapted from the 2006 novel of the same name by Don Winslow. As it was gearing up, De Niro was directing his second film, The Good Shepherd, about the early days of the CIA; that film’s writer, Eric Roth, gave him a copy of Brandt’s Sheeran book as research. After reading it, De Niro took it straight to Scorsese. Just as Frankie Machine was about to get the green light from Paramount, Scorsese did the unthinkable: he walked away and started over again.

More Scorsese films intervened – Shutter Island, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence – before schedules and money aligned and The Irishman could start shooting. For half a decade, De Niro says, the only relic of the film was a now-legendary table read in 2012, “just to have it documented so it could be shown to anybody who was interested”. Every now and then, De Niro says, Pacino “would call me and ask: ‘Is it happening?’ I’d say: ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s happening.’ But it took a long time.”

So long, in fact, that they started to get too old to play their roles as originally conceived. Both actors are well into their eighth decade: Pacino is 79, De Niro 76. Scorsese had been clear that he did not want to use different actors for their middle-aged selves, who dominate the film’s scenes. Enter the “de-ageing” CGI technology. “Netflix came in and paid for the process,” De Niro says. “It helped us all along.”

Did they get the willies confronting their younger versions? Sheepish guffaws ensue. “What do you think?” asks De Niro. “Don’t we all?” replies Pacino. Do they still enjoy the job? De Niro is pithy: “It’s different, but I like it just as much.” Pacino goes long: “It sort of depends on what you’re doing,” he says. “I hate to say it, but you can go 20 years between inspirations.” He stops for a moment, baffled by his own eloquence. “Bear with me – I’m going through the bushes here and I’ll come out with something.” He says he is always on the lookout “to find something that you really connect to, you really want to do”. A lot of the acting he does is “work-rest”, he says, so he can “get back to looking around and seeing what’s out there”.

We have a gangster president who thinks he can do anything he wants

Robert De Niro

De Niro nods along furiously. Pacino is in the groove. “Sometimes I feel I know nothing about acting. Until you start. That’s what’s exciting for me. A new character. I often say: ‘Desire is more motivating than talent.’ I’ve seen people with great desire take it through. The truth is, it’s the same thing that is always was: you are feeling this new character, this new person, this new story.” As he grinds to a halt, Pacino looks pleased: he has come out with something all right. It is a great manifesto for a living legend.

As the encounter starts to wind down, one big question – arguably the biggest – remains unasked. If it is about anything, The Irishman is about the gangsterisation of US politics, how the Cosa Nostra exploited opportunities to corrupt the electoral process and organised labour. Two big killings – those of John F Kennedy and Hoffa – are characterised as the outcome of mafia intervention in the political sphere. Some might say the US is still living with the legacy; as De Niro’s version of Sheeran likes to say: “It is what it is.” De Niro has a record on this: we know he hates Trump and has called him out time after time. But the way he suddenly takes over the room is amazing to behold: eyes like gun-sights, he gives Trump both barrels. “We have a real, immediate problem in that we have a gangster president who thinks he can do anything he wants.” De Niro is livid; Pacino knows to keep quiet. “If he actually gets away with it, then we all have a problem. The gall of the people around him who actually defend him, these Republicans, is appalling.” He does not call Trump a “mook”, but he may as well have.

Instead, he has a message for the press: “It’s a resentment of people like you guys, writing about what you see is obvious gangsterism. They don’t like that, so they say: ‘Fuck you, we’re going to teach you people.’ And they have to know they’re going to be taught.” This is De Niro unfiltered, and it is thrilling to experience it at close quarters. Does he think Trump will go to jail? “Oh, I can’t wait to see him in jail. I don’t want him to die. I want him to go to jail.”

And with that the Al and Bob show closes. De Niro abruptly resumes his affable persona and says goodbye; he and Pacino are swiftly escorted out. Trump – we can but hope – is quaking in his boots. But The Irishman roadshow rolls on. It is what it is.

The Irishman is released in UK cinemas on 8 November and is on Netflix from 27 November

[bbclesmis]

‘Valjean is like Spider-Man’

DOMINIC WEST FIGURES he's played his share of awful people. The serial killer Fred West in Appropriate Adult? Jimmy McNulty, the Baltimore cop in The Wire? A lovable rogue, but a rogue nonetheless. Noah Solloway, the lead in The Affair? "He's deeply silly," West contends. "Just a silly man!" In the film Colette (out this Friday), he plays a sadistic husband who locks his gifted wife (Keira Knightley) away and makes her write books for which he claims credit.

"As an actor, you do live with these people and experience what they're feeling," sighs the actor, 49. "If they're a******s, it's exhausting and ultimately degrading. So it was such a relief to play someone who's great." And he smiles that irascible smile, the one that makes you root for West even when he's playing murderers and pretentious, adulterous novelists.

Jean Valjean, West's character in the BBC's adaptation of Les Miserables, is not only "great" in the actor's eyes. He is nothing less than the "greatest hero in all literature": a superhero ex-convict who has spent 19 years in prison being tortured by Inspector Javert (David Oyelowo) for stealing a loaf of bread, but who determines on his release to be the best possible man he can be... with heartbreaking results.

West considers Victor Hugo's French revolutionary epic to be the "greatest novel ever written", too - "much better than War and Peace!" - and certainly much better than the famous musical (he's not a fan).

"Valjean is not just a good guy, he's an amazing guy. Like Spider-Man!" he beams. "He climbs up the sides of buildings to rescue kids. And he has the legitimacy of intense suffering; he's done 19 years of hard labour. That knocks Iron Man into a cocked hat! Then you get into the humanity of Valjean, his demons, his desperate need to redeem himself... He's trying not to be the brute that the prison has turned him into. You become a better person by spending time with someone like that."

He has asked me to his home, a converted brewery in Wiltshire that he shares with his wife, Catherine FitzGerald, and four children - Dora, 11, Senan, ten, Francis, nine, and Christabel, five - "I'm trying to cut down," he jokes. (He has another daughter, Martha, from his first marriage, who is studying English at Oxford and wants to act.) "I think all households should have a five-year-old girl running round," he says. "I just think it's better for children. Stops them from becoming little princesses. It's much harder to be a spoilt brat as one of four."

HE OPENS THE door unshaven and unkempt with a general air of bohemian bonhomie. He puts on a succession of silly voices as he leads me through to his kitchen. "Teas? Light refreshments? Do we want hot milk in our coffees? Yes?" He's such a chameleon as an actor that even his own accent sounds as if it's put on. He was educated at Eton, but his family isn't proper posh. His Irish father owned a plastics factory in Sheffield, his mother was an actor and he's the sixth of seven children.

The Wests have been doing up the house for about three years, but only moved in last summer - there are paintings waiting to be hung, pieces of Lego, mugs, antiques scattered around... The house used to be a "very manageable cottage next to a derelict brewery, but having decided to connect them all together they're only now getting used to the layout. "There are about five different doors to choose from. I didn't realise how spread out it would be. It's enormous!" They moved from west London to give the kids more space to range around when they're teenagers: "I want my kids to be around trees and animals more."

We take refuge in his office, up in the rafters of the old brewery, where he sinks into an armchair and resumes recounting his love affair with Les Miserables.

THE BBC VERSION is written by Andrew Davies and picks up more or less where his adaptation of War and Peace left off. It opens on the field of Waterloo in 1815 in the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat. Back in Paris, the royalists are resurgent - but can't quell the forces unleashed by the Revolution.

In the first episode, we follow Valjean's ill-starred attempts at redemption after his nemesis, Javert, releases him; meanwhile, the grisette Fantine (Lily Collins) falls for a cad (Johnny Flynn) and becomes pregnant with little Cosette - whose path will cross with Valjean's in the future. Six episodes, much heartache and many improbable coincidences will take us all the way up to the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris.

West hadn't read the epic novel, but now that he has, he's a convert. He even loves Hugo's digressions into the design of the Paris sewers. "Actually, I'd have loved it if we could have made six seasons out of it," he says. 'There's more than enough material and it's all important and relevant. As with any great classic, it's big enough to handle any amount of interpretations."

Javert's antipathy to Valjean is one of the engines of the plot - but it's also something of a mystery. Why does Javert hate him so much? "I always like to trace motivations to sex," West says. "I said to David, 'Javert obviously fancies him!' But he thought that was crass."

Did the rivalry extend off-set? "You're never quite sure where the character ends and the actor starts," he laughs. "But the key to David is that he's actually royal. He's a prince in Nigeria. And he doesn't drink. He's very religious. He's been married to his wife since he was 19 and they have four beautiful children. I hadn't realised people like that existed in the acting world! He's a very inspiring guy."

The co-stars decided it was the shared trauma of being institutionalised that set their characters against one another. "Valjean doesn't think he deserves anything other than brutality. Javert is constantly reminding him he's just a common criminal who breaks rocks and murders people."

Oyelowo is one of a number of non-white actors in the cast, marking a departure from traditional costume-drama casting. West jokes that he really wanted to do it all with 'A1lo'Allo accents, but: "Like any classic, it's not a museum piece. It has relevance to modern life. Eponine and the girls all talk like modern London girls. And therefore it looks like modern Britain, too."

THE PRODUCTION LOOKS likely to make Collins, as Fantine, a star. "She's incredible," says West. "It's an exhausting part. So harrowing. Any actress who goes for it deserves all the accolades she gets..." The first scene they shot together was Fantine's death, filmed in a freezing manor house outside Brussels at 5am. "She really went for it. I was like, 'Oh my God! How did you do those spasm things?' She said, 'I just made it up'." I imagine it's reassuring to have West on set: he is very experienced, but doesn't take himself too seriously. Do the younger actors come to him for advice? "Pfah! No. I'm jaded and lazy."

The Wire was the show that brought him fame, as well as a credibility not usually open to Old Etonians. But originally he didn't want to be in it. "And it turns out to have been the one thing that everyone knows me for and it was one of the best shows ever made! I think [creator] David Simon is almost the Victor Hugo of our time... certainly the Charles Dickens."

The Affair offers more escapist pleasure, its marital rows interspersed with good-looking people having sex (even if he doesn't think much of Noah). The Wests are about to decamp to LA for the filming of the final season, but it will be without Ruth Wilson this time. Last February, she disclosed in a Radio Times interview that she was "sure" she earned less than West. "I don't want more money, I just want equal money," she added. Not long after that her character Alison Bailey was killed off. What was all that about? "Oh, not related!" West yelps.

He remains good friends with Wilson. The main point of contention on set was whose behind would be visible in the sex scenes. "We used to fight about it. 'You're on top this time', 'No! I was on top the last three times!'"

He'd never given much thought to who was paid what, he says. "I never asked what the money is on a show. It was more a question of if I wanted to do it. So it woke me up to the issue. I never realised the disparity and the injustice."

It's one of a number of changes he has noticed since the #MeToo movement gained ground. "One thing that's happened is a positive discrimination in favour of female directors. But the main thing is that unacceptable behaviour from male directors or actors is now either not possible, or you can call them out on it. There was one guy in particular whose behaviour was disgusting. Particularly to young females in minor roles. I tried to counter it on several occasions. But now it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of them."

'Treatment of women has taken a big step back in television'

He twists his face in derision at those who feel the feminists have gone "too far". "Treatment of women has taken a big step back in the past 20 years," he says, his voice rising. "Particularly in television, which has become more pornographic and the burden of that falls squarely on young women. Things like Game of Thrones, where you get a pair of bare breasts every five minutes... I mustn't say this, but..." Say it!

"I'm fairly sure that 20 years ago young actresses would not have had pressure put on them to take their clothes off. The parts young actresses get, particularly pretty ones, involve violent rape. When I think about my daughter going into the profession... I'm just really glad that #MeToo has started to counteract what has happened in the past 20 years."

He puts it down to internet porn - "It's made boys feel that women are sex objects who are easily available" - as well as social media. "If you can swipe someone's face because you don't think they're pretty and it costs you that little... I haven't done it myself, but it cheapens it."

HE's CONCERNED AT the turn the world is taking: he mentions Trump, climate change, teenage boys becoming addicted to the online game Fortnite. A wariness of modernity seems to have inspired the move to the countryside; he and his wife are "luddites", he confesses. "I'm not one of those people who say, 'How can you bring children into this world?' But I do want to spend a lot more time hanging out with my kids and running around in forests."

Once he has finished filming the last season of The Affair, he plans to hire an enormous camper van, bundle the entire family into it and spend a few months driving around the States.

"It's the last chance we have," he explains. "They're nearly teenagers, so they're not going to want to spend that much time with their old man for much longer. I've spent a long time away from them. So we're taking six months, four months of it travelling. I've taken them out of school - there are no big exams. We'll home school them. They'll read. No screens. You're not going to get a better education than that. If you travel with as little as possible, you get much more interesting experiences."

Radio Times 5-11 January 2019

[blazehedgehog]

What do you think of Boogie2988?

I think he’s an idiot.

Now, that’s harsh, I realize. But I’m also not sitting over here fuming with rage over the guy, screaming and stomping my feet. I just don’t think he’s very smart, and he’s using his platform to make others less smart. That’s more depressing than anything else.

I think, like a lot of popular Youtubers, a lot of people like the character he plays. And I both mean Francis, and I mean Boogie2988. Boogie is the guy you see on camera. It’s a Youtube personality.

And that personality wants to be kind, friendly, and funny. But it’s not who he is. He is an idiot. And people who are willing to defend Boogie need to really stop and think about who, exactly, they’re actually defending: is it the personality, or the person?

For those of you who don’t know, Boogie has been getting political a lot lately. And every time he does, he steps in some crap. He claims to be one of those “Why can’t we all get along and be nice to each other?” types. And, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong with wanting peace. I also do think that, at the very least, Boogie thinks he’s saying the right things, and thinks he’s trying to push a peaceful agenda.

But he’s clumsy about his arguments. Most recently, and this is the thing causing the loudest stir right now, he went on the H3 Podcast and the host grilled him on everything he’s said in the last few months – about the oppression he’s faced, about dealing with Anita Sarkeesian, about LGBT rights…

And if you look at it on the most basic, simplistic surface level, you can see where he’s coming from. But it’s from a perspective of someone who maybe doesn’t even rationalize how his own popularity weighs on his point of view. For example, I’m sure that Boogie really does face thousands of trolls and those that are misguided about how to interact with people, but he thinks that means he represents an entire demographic of “oppressed white males.”

Strictly in terms of demographic, I’m probably not too dissimilar to Boogie. We’re around the same age, have somewhat similar body types (post Boogie’s weight loss), we’re both white and we’re both men. And I’ve had punk teenagers pull up next to me on the street and scream bizarre slurs at me, so I think I kind of get where he’s coming from.

But also, that doesn’t count. If I wasn’t there, those teens would have screamed something equally as offensive and random at another dude at the next stop light. They were just punk teenagers. Whatever you want to call that, it’s DEFINITELY not oppression of any type, even though Boogie2988 seems to think it is. Oppression is when these people don’t get paid as much as I would for doing the same job, or wouldn’t even get the job at all because of their gender or the color of their skin. I’ve never had the cops called on me just for asking a store clerk a question, but some people have. That’s oppression!

The simple fact that Boogie can live in a bubble where he does not internalize or even acknowledge this kind of profiling tells you exactly how privileged he is. He is more ignorant than he personally realizes, but he’s famous, and being famous is a golden ticket to never being wrong.

The ignorance Boogie is displaying about this issue is also the direct cause of the so-called “oppression” he is complaining about. He obviously isn’t acknowledging or internalizing being his own victim, either.

And then there are his views on LGBT people. His solution is to take things slowly, to “prevent extreme reactions” from “the crazies” that lead to violence and murder. He says to “give it five years.”

And again, there’s that ignorance. The other day I was watching a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode called “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.” Surprisingly, that film features a lesbian. It was made in the 1950′s. It’s far from the earliest depiction of homosexuality in media. In “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” the lesbian becomes a target for a murderer who wants to kill her and steal her body so he can graft his wife’s severed head on to the stump.

How slow do things gotta go that LGBT people have been facing problems for 60, 70, 80, even more than a hundred years? The entire reason things are coming to a head now is because these people are tired of going slow. They’ve been in the slow lane their entire lives and now they’re taking charge and getting things done, otherwise it’s never going to happen. Entire generations of people have lived and died in the time it’s taken.

But Boogie is in his bubble. He’s famous, so he’s never wrong. He says something that sounds right, that sounds kind, friendly, and funny. He says he wants to meet in the middle, to be passive, not aggressive. But where he says he stands is not where he’s actually located.

So, either Boogie is being deliberately malicious, misleading his audience to make things worse for the groups he’s speaking out for, or he’s just an idiot with a bad sense of perspective.

I think it’s the latter.

Unfortunately, that also tends to fuel the former.

[mst3kproject]

514: Teenage Strangler

Oh, boy, I get to talk about serial killers!

That isn't even sarcasm.  Remember I mentioned my addiction to terrible television?  That includes not only MonsterQuest and Ghost Adventures, but also a number of things on ID (investigate!). I'm going to enjoy this very much.

Twenty-something 'teenager' Betty sneaks out of the house to see her boyfriend Jimmy with help from their mutual friend Anne.  On the way home, the two girls get separated and Anne is murdered by a figure in a leather jacket suspiciously like the ones Jimmy and his friends wear!  This isn't the first such murder, and it won't be the last.  Over the next few weeks more and more bodies are discovered... is it one of the kids? No, of course it's not.  It's obvious from the very first scene that it's Mr. Wilson the fucking creepy school janitor, and he has a totally rubbish explanation for why strangling women fills the void where his soul should be.

The movie was made in a small town by a bunch of people who had never made a movie before, and as a result the whole thing has a weird, histrionic vibe to it.  Every performance is either overdone or underdone.  Jo Canterbury as Betty sounds breathless and hysterical even before she witnesses a murder.    Bill Bloom as Jimmy is furious about everything.  Betty's mother is unaccountably delighted by the police in her house.  Jimmy's father intones every line as if he's doing Shakespeare.  The sheriff looks like he's reading his lines with a gun pointed at his head.  And then there's Mikey... I'm not sure English has the vocabulary to describe Mikey.  Imagine a kid so withdrawn and socially dysfunctional that not even Napoleon Dynamite would hang out with him.  Then make him more so.

The movie tries its best to present us with suspects.  Jimmy's anger and supposed criminal past makes him the obvious one, and when it turns out Mikey was the bike theif we're supposed to wonder if he is our pubescent DeSalvo.  When neither of them prove to be the suspect, we're next offered Curly, leader of the Fastbacks drag racing team.  All of these, however, are obvious red herrings.  The janitor is the only adult with a significant role in the story besides the cops – we know it's not any of them, therefore it has to be the janitor.  We would be sure of this even if his first appearance wasn't popping out of the darkness to scare Anne and Betty half to death and then creepily insisting on walking them home.  If you lined up everybody in this movie and asked people to pick which one is a serial killer, nobody would hesitate.  It's the janitor.

Meanwhile, there's very little evidence that the town at large cares about the series of horrific murders going on.  Kids are having a party with live entertainment in the malt shop the day after Anne's death hits the headlines (the malt shop extras probably look back at this movie and feel personally responsible for stereotypes about white people and dancing).  People don't even bother to start locking their doors.  There's no sense of the pervasive 'who will be next?' terror you might expect in a community being stalked by a serial killer.  Betty's parents tell her to stay home, but only because they don't want her hanging out with Jimmy, not because they're afraid the killer will find her.

The girl who gets up to sing Yipes Stripes actually looks a bit like Betty, so if you're not paying attention it's possible to confuse the two.  This may leave the casual viewer wondering why the hell this girl is literally dancing on tables mere hours after watching her friend get brutalized in an alley.  It feels downright surreal and it was a relief to know I'd merely confused the two characters... but then I realized that we were never going to see the singer again and there was no point to the song!  In I Accuse my Parents the songs were part of the story.  In The Giant Gila Monster Chase was a character as well as providing the soundtrack.  Yipes Stripes, much like California Lady, just kind of happens and then it's over.

Sampo on Satellite of Love News noted that Yipes Stripes is a hell of an earworm.  I concur: I was singing it to myself all week after watching the movie for this review (and now you will be too).  I have to say, though, that despite all Tom Servo's complaining I do like how the same tune in a minor key is used as the ominous stalking theme.  It unifies the soundtrack and represents a note of professionalism this movie otherwise would not have.

There's certainly not much professionalism in the sets.  The high school stuff seems to have been filmed mostly in and around a real school, and various people's houses make appearances, but check out the 'holding cell' the gang is kept in, with its cardboard walls painted in a 'brick' pattern.  Or the 'malt shop', which looks like somebody's basement bar – I especially like the sad little pennants pinned to the walls in the effort to distract from the lack of windows.  The Sheriff (played by the town of Huntington's actual sheriff, which is possibly why the guy looks like a deer in the headlights) makes his TV broadcast in front of a set of curtains standing in for a TV studio.

Between the amateurish sets and acting, the flat and uninteresting lighting and the lack of any suspense, the overall effect we get is that we're watching a school play.  It just happens to be a play about a serial killer for some reason. ��So with that convenient segue, let's talk about our culprit, Mr. Wilson the janitor, and why his excuse that he kills for revenge against the girl who ruined his life is almost certainly bullshit!

Mr. Wilson is a very good fit to the standard profile of a serial killer: he's a middle-aged white male in a job that he feels is beneath his talents, and he murders vulnerable members of the gender he is attracted to – in this case, women and girls walking alone at night.  He is what the FBI calls an organized killer: his job at the school gives him ample time to observe and stalk the students and female teachers who are his victims, and he puts some thought into how he will avoid capture and see that the blame falls on somebody else, as illustrated by his theft of the Fastback jacket.  And he leaves the bodies in places that ensure swift discovery, so he can enjoy the shock and horror of the community and feel like he has power over all these people.

Also like many real-life serial killers, he has a rationalization for why he does what he does.  Sutcliffe claimed he murdered prostitutes because god had told him to.  Ramirez and Berkowitz blamed Satan. Bundy at least implied that it was revenge on a woman who had spurned him, while Gacy insisted that he killed over thirty teenage boys in self-defense.  In Mr. Wilson's case, it's about the lack of respect the students have for him, and particularly about a girl who ruined his life by accusing him of sexual harrassment.

This rings false, for starters, because the students never seem to be particularly disrespectful of Mr. Wilson.  He is not presented as the butt of jokes or pranks.  In the opening scene, Betty and Anne are startled by his appearance but they are not rude to him.  When he corners Betty at the climax he taunts her for calling him 'Mr. Wilson' as if this is something new, but throughout the movie we have never heard the students address him as anything else!  Mr. Wilson's persecution by the student body seems to exist mostly in his own imagination.

Then there's his claim of the false accusation that cost him his teaching job.  Of course we only hear his side of this, which is probably coloured by his victim complex.  We never meet the girl it happened to, so we can't get her version, but Mr. Wilson's choice of phrase when telling the story is interesting. I wasn't even near her, he says.  There are plenty of ways to sexually harrass somebody without actually touching them, and a teacher would be in an excellent position to take advantage of these.  Perhaps Mr. Wilson made embarrassing remarks to her in front of the class, or wrote inappropriate things on her test papers.  Maybe she accused him of attempted rape because her parents and the principal kept downplaying or ignoring complaints about his actual behaviour.  Whatever happened, I'm willing to bet this mysterious student would tell a very different story than he does!

The movie ends with Mr. Wilson being shot by the police, who had only just arrived and couldn't possibly have any idea what was going on in his office.  It's an ending that fails to be worthy of Colman Francis only because the shooter isn't in an airplane.  You'd think they could throw the audience a bone by having a line about how they'd suspected him all along or something.

I've probably made it sound like I don't like Teenage Strangler, but that's not the case.  The movie is something like Teenagers from Outer Space in that its ambition far outstrips the budget and talent attached to the project, but everybody gave it their best and you can't say their hearts weren't in it.  It sucks, but it sucks with sincerity, and that's my favourite kind of bad movie.

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

This is How I Lied by Heather Gudenkauf

 Smash bang killed her in the first chapter BUT who killed her? Then, 25 years later her BFF is called in and told that new evidence has popped up after a boot, boot of the deceased cold case, has popped up. So, Maggie, laden and ready, nearly, to pop out her first born takes on the cold case of, “Who killed Eve?”

 At this point I have to admit I promised to do a Book Review and Blog Post so…am taking a break from the riveting reading to post the review (not finished) and tell you why you should read this book.

 What I like (so far):

* Maggie, she seems to be on the job, in the marriage, willing to do what it takes to solve the mystery of who killed Eve 25 years before

* Shaun: I think…haven’t seen enough of him yet BUT as a farmer and someone that Maggie is with…he probably is a good guy

* The writing – well done and can’t get back to the story

* That this is a cold case that might be solved with the use of DNA trace evidence on items saved from a previous crime scene

* Plenty of red herrings

* Wanting to get back to the story even though I should probably go to bed

 What I did not like

* That Eve had to die to make this book happen, and that she suffered so much

* That the bad guy got away with the murder for almost three decades

* That I have not finished the book yet so have to return so I can find out what happened.

 Did/Do I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I read more by this author? Yes

Will I finish the book? Yes…at least I hope to!

 Thank you to NetGalley and HQN-Park Row Books for the ARC – This is my honest review.

 4 Stars

BLURB

With the eccentricity of Fargo and the intensity of Sadie, THIS IS HOW I LIED by Heather Gudenkauf (Park Row Books; May 12, 2020; $17.99) is a timely and gripping thriller about careless violence we can inflict on those we love, and the lengths we will go to make it right, even 25 years later.

Tough as nails and seven months pregnant, Detective Maggie Kennedy-O’Keefe of Grotto PD, is dreading going on desk duty before having the baby her and her husband so badly want. But when new evidence is found in the 25-year-old cold case of her best friend’s murder that requires the work of a desk jockey, Maggie jumps at the opportunity to be the one who finally puts Eve Knox’s case to rest.

Maggie has her work cut out for her. Everyone close to Eve is a suspect. There’s Nola, Eve’s little sister who’s always been a little... off; Nick, Eve’s ex-boyfriend with a vicious temper; a Schwinn riding drifter who blew in and out of Grotto; even Maggie’s husband Sean, who may have known more about Eve’s last day than he’s letting on. As Maggie continues to investigate, the case comes closer and closer to home, forcing her to confront her own demons before she can find justice for Eve.

Buy Links:

Harlequin

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Books-A-Million

Powell’s

EXCERPT

Maggie Kennedy-O'Keefe

Monday, June 15, 2020

As I slide out of my unmarked police car my swollen belly briefly gets wedged against the steering wheel. Sucking in my gut does little good but I manage to move the seat back and squeeze past the wheel. I swing my legs out the open door and glance furtively around the parking lot behind the Grotto Police Department to see if anyone is watching.

Almost eight months pregnant with a girl and not at my most graceful. I'm not crazy about the idea of one of my fellow officers seeing me try to pry myself out of this tin can. The coast appears to be clear so I begin the little ritual of rocking back and forth trying to build up enough momentum to launch myself out of the driver's seat.

Once upright, I pause to catch my breath. The morning dew is already sending up steam from the weeds growing out of the cracked concrete. Sweating, I slowly make my way to the rear entrance of the Old Gray Lady, the nickname for the building we're housed in. Built in the early 1900s, the first floor consists of the lobby, the finger printing and intake center, a community room, interview rooms and the jail. The second floor, which once held the old jail is home to the squad room and offices. The dank, dark basement holds a temperamental boiler and the department archives.

The Grotto Police Department has sixteen sworn officers that includes the chief, two lieutenants, a K-9 patrol officer, nine patrol officers, a school resource officer and two detectives. I'm detective number two.

I grew up in Grotto, a small river town of about ten thousand that sits among a circuitous cave system known as Grotto Caves State Park, the most extensive in Iowa. Besides being a favorite destination spot for families, hikers and spelunkers, Grotto is known for its high number of family owned farms – a dying breed. My husband Shaun and I are part of that breed – we own an apple orchard and tree farm.

"Pretty soon we're going to have to roll you in," an irritatingly familiar voice calls out from behind me.

I don't bother turning around. "Francis, that wasn't funny the first fifty times you said it and it still isn't," I say as I scan my key card to let us in.

Behind me, Pete Francis, rookie officer and all-around caveman grabs the door handle and in a rare show of chivalry opens it so I can step through. "You know I'm just joking," Francis says giving me the grin that all the young ladies in Grotto seem to find irresistible but just gives me another reason to roll my eyes.

"With the wrong person, those kinds of jokes will land you in sensitivity training," I remind him.

"Yeah, but you're not the wrong person, right?" he says seriously, "You're cool with it?"

I wave to Peg behind the reception desk and stop at the elevator and punch the number two button. The police department only has two levels but I'm in no mood to climb up even one flight of stairs today. "Do I look like I'm okay with it?" I ask him.

Francis scans me up and down. He takes in my brown hair pulled back in a low bun, wayward curls springing out from all directions, my eyes red from lack of sleep, my untucked shirt, the fabric stretched tight against my round stomach, my sturdy shoes that I think are tied, but I can't know for sure because I can't see over my boulder-sized belly.

"Sorry," he says appropriately contrite and wisely decides to take the stairs rather than ride the elevator with me.

"You’re forgiven," I call after him.  As I step on the elevator to head up to my desk, I check my watch. My appointment with the chief is at eight and though he didn't tell me what the exact reason is for this meeting I think I can make a pretty good guess.

It can't be dictated as to when I have to go on light duty, seven months into my pregnancy, but it's probably time. I'm guessing that Chief Digby wants to talk with me about when I want to begin desk duty or take my maternity leave. I get it.

It's time I start to take it easy. I’ve either been the daughter of a cop or a cop my entire life but I’m more than ready to set it aside for a while and give my attention, twenty-four-seven to the little being inhabiting my uterus.

Shaun and I have been trying for a baby for a long, long time. And thousands of dollars and dozens of procedures later, when we finally found out we were pregnant, Shaun started calling her peanut because the only thing I could eat for the first nine weeks without throwing up was peanut butter sandwiches. The name stuck.

This baby is what we want more than anything in the world but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I'm a little bit scared. I’m used to toting around a sidearm not an infant.

The elevator door opens to a dark paneled hallway lined with ten by sixteen framed photos of all the men who served as police chief of Grotto over the years. I pass by eleven photos before I reach the portrait of my father. Henry William Kennedy, 1995 - 2019, the plaque reads.

While the other chiefs stare out from behind the glass with serious expressions, my dad smiles showing his straight, white teeth. He was so proud when he was named chief of police. We were all proud, except maybe my older brother, Colin. God knows what Colin thought of it. As a teenager he was pretty self-absorbed, but I guess I was too, especially after my best friend died. I went off the rails for a while but here I am now. A Grotto PD detective, following in my dad’s footsteps. I think he’s proud of me too. At least when he remembers.

Last time I brought my dad back here to visit, we walked down this long corridor and paused at his photo. For a minute I thought he might make a joke, say something like, Hey, who's that good looking guy? But he didn't say anything. Finding the right words is hard for him now. Occasionally, his frustration bubbles over and he yells and sometimes even throws things which is hard to watch. My father has always been a very gentle man.

The next portrait in line is our current police chief, Les Digby. No smile on his tough guy mug. He was hired a month ago, taking over for Dexter Stroope who acted as the interim chief after my dad retired. Les is about ten years older than I am, recently widowed with two teenage sons. He previously worked for the Ransom Sheriff’s Office and I'm trying to decide if I like him. Jury's still out.

  Excerpted from This is How I Lied by Heather Gudenkauf, Copyright © 2020 by Heather Gudenkauf

Published by Park Row Books

AUTHOR BIO

Heather Gudenkauf is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of many books, including The Weight of Silence and These Things Hidden. Heather graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education, has spent her career working with students of all ages. She lives in Iowa with her husband, three children, and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Lolo. In her free time, Heather enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking, and running.

Q&A

1.         What is your writing process like?

I approach each of my novels with the goal of being a plotter – someone who explicitly organizes and outlines her books – but it never quite works out that way for me. I make notes and outline the plot but ultimately the characters take over and do what they want to anyway. My process is messy and meandering. Thankfully, I have a brilliant editor who is able to see through the weeds and pull out the best parts of my plots and keep me on the right path. This is How I Lied completely evolved from my initial intentions. The characters changed, the plot shifted and the final ending poked its head up near the end of revisions and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

   2.         Which came first: the characters or plot line?

For me, the two go hand in hand. The basic plot line comes first, and close behind comes the characters. It doesn’t matter how suspenseful of a plot I develop, if the right characters aren’t there to mold the story and carry it forward, it won’t work. Before I begin writing, I attempt to give my characters rich backstories. Often many of these details don’t make into the novel, but by fully developing their personalities and biographies, it helps keep me in tune with them as I write. Knowing the characters’ likes and dislikes, their foibles and strengths helps me to honestly and accurately determine their motivations and the decisions they make as they move through the novel.

   3.         How do you come up with your plots?

I’m a news junkie! I’ll scan newspapers and websites and a story will catch my eye. It can be the smallest detail or a broader theme but if the idea sticks with me and keeps harassing me to write about it, I know I’m on the right track. For my novel Little Mercies, it was an article about a social worker who ended up on the other side of the justice system because of alleged negligence with her caseload. From this I created an entirely new story about a social worker who was fighting for her own child. In This is How I Lied, I was intrigued by news stories that dealt with the use of familial DNA to solve cold cases and it became a key detail in the novel’s resolution.

 4.         Do you use music to help set a mood/tone for your books?

I do listen to music as I write. It varies based on the story and what I think the characters might listen to. By curating these playsets, it helps me get into their mindset. As I worked on Maggie’s sections in This is How I Lied I listened to a lot of Avett Brothers and Lumineers. For Nola, I listened to classical music and hard rock – she’s an interesting mix. As for Eve, since she was sixteen years old and living in the 90s, I listened to plenty of Nirvana and Beck.

 5.         Where did the idea for this story come from?

 Before I started writing This is How I Lied, I read I’ll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, about the author’s investigation of The Golden State Killer who, for decades, terrorized northern California. This book both terrified and fascinated me and I became intrigued by how modern technology was being used to close old cold cases. For my project, I thought it would be interesting to explore how this might play out in a small town where the perpetrator thought the truth behind the crime would never be discovered.

 As I was writing the novel, I learned about the developments in a 40-year-old cold case not far from where I live where familial DNA was used to ultimately convict the killer. Amazing!

  6.         Do you find inspiration for your novels in your personal life?

I often get asked what my childhood must have been like because of the twisty thrillers I write. Thankfully, I can say that I had a blissfully uneventful childhood with parents and siblings that loved and supported me. For me, the inspiration from my own life comes in the settings of my novels – the Mississippi River, farmland, the woods and bluffs – all found in Iowa. In This is How I Lied, the town of Grotto is loosely based on a nearby town until I moved to this part of Iowa, I never realized that we had cave systems.  Visitors to the state park, can literally step back thousands of years. The limestone caves and bluffs are beautiful, haunting and have something for everyone. You can take a casual stroll through some of the caves and have to army crawl through some of the others. Old clothes and a flashlight are a must! The caves made the perfect backdrop for a thriller and I was excited to include them in This is How I Lied.

 7.         What is the one personality trait that you like your main characters to have and why?

In looking back at all my main characters, though they are all different ages and come from different walks of life, I think the trait that they all seem to have in common is perseverance. I’ve had characters battle human evil and demons of their own creation but it doesn’t matter what traumatic events they have been through or the challenges they will face, they manage to make it through. Changed for sure, but intact and hopeful for the future.

 8.         Why do you love Maggie and why should readers root for her?

I do love Maggie! As a police detective, Maggie has dedicated her adult life to helping others and is a loving daughter, sister and wife and is expecting her first child. This doesn’t mean that Maggie is perfect. Like all of my protagonists, Maggie is complicated and flawed and has made some big mistakes, but ultimately she is doing the best that she can.

 9.         What is one thing about publishing you wish someone would have told you?

As a former elementary school teacher, I had absolutely no insights into the publishing world beyond what I saw on television and in movies – which portrayed it as a dog-eat-dog world. I have to admit, as a new author, I was very intimidated. But to my delight -  and relief - the people I’ve encountered along the way– my agent, editors, publishing teams, fellow authors, booksellers and readers – all have been nothing but supportive, encouraging and kind.

 10.       What is coming up next for you?

I just finished the first draft of my next novel, a locked-room mystery about a reclusive writer working on a true crime book when a snow storm leaves her trapped inside her remote home, setting off a series of events that lead to a stunning revelation. It was so much fun to write!

 11.       Has quarantine been better or worse for your writing?

It’s been such a scary, unsettling time but I’ve found writing a nice distraction and a great comfort during this extended time at home. I’ve been able to turn off the news and get lost in my manuscript or other writing projects. It’s a lot like reading – a much needed escape from the real world.

 12.       What was your last 5 star read?

Julia Heaberlin has a new book coming out this August called We Are All the Same in the Dark and it has surged to the top as one of my favorite reads of the year. It has everything I love in a great thriller: a beautifully written small town mystery, with multilayered, unforgettable characters and a twisty plot. It was absolutely mesmerizing.

Social Links:

Author Website

Twitter: @hgudenkauf

Instagram: @heathergudenkauf

Facebook: @HeatherGudenkaufAuthor

Goodreads

THIS IS HOW I LIED

Author: Heather Gudenkauf

ISBN: 9780778309703

Publication Date: May 12, 2020

Publisher: Park Row

[ellawritesficssometimes]

Ouija Board Mishaps (Day 6 Week of Hetalia, One-shot

A/N: I wrote this when I was sick and took too much NyQuil xD 

Stay tuned for tomorrow. I’ll have a more romantic fic planned.

@weekofhetalia 

Arthur’s POV:

It was a late Friday night, and against my will, my friends had invited themselves over, as per usual. Correction, I invited my younger neighbors Matthew and Alfred over, otherwise known as the twins, while the frog (Francis) came on his own free will, but certainly not mine. Francis was a senior in high school like myself, whereas the twins were both juniors.

Since October was the peak of anything paranormal, I decided to put an end to the mystery surrounding the hauntings occurring in my home. My family has a history of having the Sight, which means we’re able to communicate with spirits. However, the spirit haunting my family refused to show itself, – or should I say herself? – so we were forced to put up with its shenanigans. I grew up with these hauntings, whether it being misplaced socks, random knocks on the walls, or footsteps in rooms where no one alive was in.

But not anymore. I wouldn’t put up with it for any longer.

Impulsive, young, and stubborn as I’ve always been, I bought a Ouija board from Toys’ R US the other day, thinking I would finally be able to make contact with this spirit and get rid of it. Alistair, my older brother and guardian, was gone for the weekend, so this would have been the perfect opportunity for me to prove my worth as a spiritual communicator.

My god, words cannot explain how badly I fucked up.

Regardless, I didn’t know that at the time. My pride often got in the way of me thinking rationally.

Anyway, the four of us were sitting in the basement’s lounge, decked in comfortable sweatshirts and sweatpants.

Even Francis was wearing a white hoodie that obnoxiously read “I love Paris” on the front of it. He was wearing silk pajama pants though, so I suppose his fashion sense still carried with him wherever he went. Unfortunately, fashion sense didn’t necessarily equate to class.

Francis, seemingly out of nowhere, had procured an entire bottle of wine, taking swigs of it as he draped his hairy arms over the loveseat like he owned it. Alfred and Matthew were sharing the two-person couch, each fiddling with a 3DS in their hands.

Meanwhile, I was sitting cross-legged on the ground, setting up the Ouija board and lighting several candles.

“You still plan to go through with this?” Francis asked me, slurring slightly.

I reached out to confiscate the bottle of wine from him. “All right, you’ve had enough of that,” I grunted, ignoring Francis’s protests. “It’s my house, you cold-blooded tart. I can’t have the cops coming over to arrest you.”

“Ah, oui,” Francis mumbled and then proceeded to lower his voice to snidely insult me in French.

I padded over to the mini-kitchen in my basement, placing the half-empty wine bottle in the fridge.

Alfred looked up from his 3DS, his face paling despite the determined expression he held. “M-man, I thought you were just kidding about using that thing!” he exclaimed.

“No, you ninny,” I rolled my eyes. “Have I ever joked about something like this? I’m tired of this spirit messing with me. It’s not exactly a friendly one either,” I trailed off ominously.

Matthew closed his 3DS, only to yelp when Alfred clutched his right arm for dear life. The latter had always been unreasonably terrified of the supernatural. “What do you mean by, ‘not friendly’”? he asked softly, violet eyes blinking not in fear but rather, curiosity.

I patted the ground, inviting my friends +1 to sit in a circle in front of the Ouija board resting on the carpet. I needed them close so that I could explain everything properly.

Once the lights were dimmed slightly and I had my mobile’s flash pressed under my chin, I began my performance. I spoke slowly, knowing that Alfred was slow to pick up on things, but also in the spookiest voice I could muster. Francis and Matthew were both unfazed, taking more amusement in how much Alfred was trembling.

I chuckled lowly, allowing a satisfied smirk to creep onto my face. “Rumour has it that 70 years ago, three siblings moved into this house after migrating here from Russia. There was a brother and two sisters. The youngest sister was mentally ill, but refused to get help. Her siblings agreed with this, probably because they knew she would be institutionalized for the rest of her life if she was turned in to the authorities. The mentally ill sibling’s name was Natalia. Weirdly enough, the records only show her name if you google the murders.”

“MURDERS?!” Alfred spluttered.

“Muahahaha! Yes, murders! Your ignorant two-celled brain heard me right!” I snickered. Perhaps I was getting a bit too immersed in the story. I had always been quite the shit-disturber.

���Natalia was obsessed with her older brother; you could even say it was a fixation. When she heard that her brother had found a spouse, she completely lost her marbles. Things took a turn for the worse when the brother admitted to Natalia that he was engaged, and that she wasn’t invited to the wedding…”

Matthew elbowed Francis. “This sounds like a soap opera you would watch,” he commented.

Francis absently nodded his head, waiting for me to continue with wide sapphire eyes.

Alfred was full-out whimpering at this point.

“Now, you see, for you guys to understand why things happened the way they did, you need to know that Natalia suffered from religious delusions. She saw her brother as some sort of God, an icon if you will. And for him to be marrying someone unworthy was utterly preposterous to her. Enraged, Natalia began to break things in a fit of uncontrollable anger – there’s a dent over there by that wall where she supposedly threw a knife!”

I paused, pointing towards the dent I had actually made myself when I was younger. I had thrown an overcooked scone at my brother’s head, angry at him for insulting my culinary skills – not that he was any better mind you.

“When her sister tried to stop her, Natalia stabbed her to death. Soon, Natalia had lost all sense of reality. Her brother couldn’t hold her back, as she didn’t realize what she was doing – she was just that furious. She ended up killing her brother too before slitting her own throat, horrified when she realized what she had done.

“And that my friends, is the haunting tale of Natalia A. To this day, she still resides in this house. If you listen closely at night, you can even hear the sounds of her scraping a knife against the walls, taunting those brave enough to confront her.”

“Really?” Matthew whispered to me.

“Of course not,” I mouthed back, smirking. I was enjoying Alfred’s reaction far too much to back out now.

Francis cooed at Alfred, rubbing circles into his back before looking up to glare at me. “Nice going, you imbecile. You scared le poor diabetic fils. If his blood pressure spikes, his death will be on your hands!”

“He’ll be fine,” I shrugged, indifferent.

Alfred had already cupped both hands over his ears. “Nope, nope to the infinity. I’m not doing this right now. I betcha anything it was Communism that killed them, stupid Ruskies. This is just a made-up folktale,” he rambled to himself.

“It’s real, Alfred,” I countered, reaching for my phone. “I’ll pull up the records if I have to.”

“Screw this, I’m hungry. Not today, Satan. Not today.” Shrugging off Francis, Alfred stood up and walked into the mini-kitchen. He began pawing his way through the freezer, pulling out leftover cheesecake.

The remaining three of us sighed, going back to the story.

“So…” Francis drawled, looking uneasy for once. “You want to make contact with this Natalia…why?”

“Yeah,” Matthew chimed in, which was unusual for him. He only spoke when it was absolutely necessary; often enough it was to stop us from doing something reckless and stupid. Wait…

“Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, you said so yourself, she murdered people… her siblings no less…” Matthew mumbled.

“Relax,” I reassured them. “I’m a spiritual communicator. I’ve got complete control over this situation. All we’ll be doing is speaking to her. If things get weird, I can always just end the conversation.”

Francis and Matthew didn’t look very assured, but they didn’t offer any further protest either. They were more intrigued than anything else.

Before I could get to explaining the rules of the board, the microwave beeped.

“What the hell?!” I spluttered, turning. “Alfred, did you just microwave a cheesecake?”

“Y-yeah! It makes it soft! I’m nervous, okay? I need something in my stomach if we’re going through with this!”

“It’s cream cheese! It’s already soft, are you daft?! That’s it, I’m cutting you off from drinking any more Mountain Dew. That sugar is eroding at any remaining common sense you have!” I stormed into the kitchen.

Alfred wailed as I poured an entire two litres of Mountain Dew down the sink. It fizzled as I did so; what in the bloody hell did they put in these soft drinks? Poison? Carcinogens? Radioactive material?

“Angleterre, you have no right to criticize him on what food he eats,” Francis chided, unwelcomed to interrupt. “Just yesterday you made scones that were hard enough to be used as a murder weapon.”

“I still have those you know,” I huffed, dragging Alfred back into the lounge like a mother hen. The American sobbed, placing a lumpy spoonful of cheesecake into his mouth. “Don’t make me use them,” I warned.

Francis raised his hands in surrender, knowing full-well that my threat bore some reality to it.

“All right,” I sighed, grabbing a remote from a nearby coffee table. I dimmed the lights further so that the ring of candles around us were the only light sources in the room. “Let’s go over the instructions, shall we?”

Alfred grabbed the remote, flicking on the lights again. “Dude, no. First, I can’t see my cheesecake, and secondly, no again! You’re giving the ghost chick an advantage if we can’t see her sneak up on us.”

“Fine,” I sighed. I compromised by turning off half the lights. “Happy?”

“No, but this cheesecake is hella satisfying.”

“Can I have a bite?” Francis asked.

“Dude, no. Get your own.”

“HELLO! If you morons are done with your squabbling, I’d like to get on with this.”

Silence.

I cleared my throat. “All right, how this works is simple. We all place our fingers on the planchette and let the spirit guide our hands to spell out letters or to answer yes or no questions on the board. If any of you fools even dare to move your hands as a prank, so help me god. The most important rule to stand by is to NEVER take your hand off the planchette unless or until we break off communication. If you do that, you are susceptible to getting possessed. I’ll repeat myself again: keep your hand on the planchette at all times if you do decide to participate. Don’t ever pull away your hand unless communication is officially broken off with the spirit.”

Silence, again. For once, my friends weren’t arguing.

“If at any time things get unsafe, we must move the planchette to the end of the board where it spells out goodbye; that will break off communication and prevent us from being possessed if the spirit is malicious. Are we all clear?”

Everyone nodded their heads.

“Right, then let’s get started.”

“Wait,” Alfred reached out to pull down my hood. “Stop trying to look like a thug.”

“I’m not trying to look like a thug! I come from a line of druids, damn you! I’m just trying to honour my heritage!” I blurted out.

“You look like a pasty snowflake at best…”

“SCREW YOU AND YOUR HIGH CHOLESTEROL!”

Francis laughed, snapchatting this entire fiasco.

Alfred furrowed his brows. “What does that even mean?”

“GUYS! FOCUS!” Matthew raised his voice, a very odd occurrence. “Just apologize, and get over with it. If we’re going to be doing this, we need to be on each other’s side in the event that something goes wrong.”

Matthew was right.

Alfred sighed, speaking through puckered lips. “I’m sorry you’re so sensitive, Artie. It must be because I’m two inches taller than you and you’re trying to overcompensate for somethin’…”

“What kind of bloody apology is that?!”

WHACK!

Francis whacked the back of my head while Matthew whacked Alfred’s. I hadn’t even done anything wrong!

After ushering out real apologies, we all moved our hands onto the planchette. Unfortunately, my hand was stuck between the frog’s and Alfred’s.

Alfred grabbed my free hand with his. “No homo,” he muttered to me. “I just want to protect ya.”

Bullshit. The yank was scared.

“We’re both bi-sexual,” I hissed with a whisper. “And what did I say about using derogatory sayings like that!? Tsk, idiot.”

Cue another pointless argument.

Eventually, we all settled down and began with the ritual.

I instructed everyone to move the planchette in a few circles around the board before asking the first question.

“Is anyone there?” I inquired. “I assure you we mean no harm.”

The planchette began to move towards the top right of the board, where Yes was spelled out in bold black letters.

“I swear if one of you twats are faking this!” I growled in warning.

“Dude, I’m not doing anything!” Alfred panicked.

“Mon dieu, did it just get colder in here?”

Matthew’s shoulders slumped. “Well, it was a nice life while it lasted. A bit more boring than I would have liked it to be, but I can’t complain.”

The planchette stopped, hovering over the Yes section of the board.

I cleared my throat. “Hello, nice to meet you. Can you spell out your name?”

The planchette began to move.

N

A

T

I stopped the spirit right there. “Natalia, is this Natalia A.?”

The planchette moved to Yes again.

“Oh man! Oh man! Oh man!” Alfred rambled. “We’re all going to die! I’m never going to be able to lose my virginity! I’m going to die a loser, like, like Artie!”

“It’s still not too late,” Francis purred.

“SHUT UP!” I exploded. “Do not break the ritual.”

“Natalia, is it? Tell me. Why do you steal my socks… or trip people when they’re least expecting it? Is that fun for you?”

The planchette moved into the space between Yes and No. I took that as a maybe.

“Do you not like my family living here? Is that it?”

Yes.

“What do you want from us?”

The planchette began to spell out something.

D

I

“DUDE IT BETTER NOT BE SPELLING WHAT I THINK IT IS!”

E

Well fuck.

“Hey, chick-ghost-dudette?” Alfred piped in. “Putting aside you murdering us for a quick second, can you tell me what Artie hides under his bed? It’s really weird how embarrassed he gets when I poke around there.”

Y

A

O

I

“It’s lying!” I cried out, blushing profusely.

I didn’t even bother to acknowledge Francis’s smug all-knowing expression.

“Do ya really want to murder us, though? Like, I get it. You’ve been dead for a while, probs haven’t seen any action,” Alfred continued.

“Are you insane?!” I snapped. “You’re only provoking it, don’t you realize-!”

BANG!

The ceiling above us thudded, prompting everyone to scream and jump a little.

Everyone but Alfred knew not to take their hands off the planchette.

I realized this when it was already too late. “Alfred, don’t!”

Alfred yelped, only to fall onto his back, twitching.

“What do we do?!” Francis screeched.

“Don’t let go, we still have to say goodbye!” I instructed.

Matthew grabbed the remote with his free hand, turning the lights back on. I really wish he hadn’t. Alfred was frothing at the mouth, a single tear of blood streaking down his right cheek as he continued to convulse uncontrollably.

“Big…brother…” Alfred gasped in a voice several higher octaves than his own.

“Where…are…youuuuuuuu…?”

How could things go this wrong, this fast?

“It was a pleasure, Natalia. But I really ought to let you go now,” I pressed, struggling along with Francis and Matthew to move the planchette towards the bottom of the board, where the word Goodbye was spelt out.

But, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t move the planchette. It was like something was pushing against us – much stronger in strength no less.

“It’s not working!” I screamed.

Francis and Matthew joined my screaming when the Ouija board was thrust into the air. We all let go, paralyzed in fear as we watched it slam into the wall opposite of us.

Matthew was the first to crouch by Alfred. “Alfred, Alfred! Wake up! Fight back, damn it!” he sobbed, slapping at Alfred’s cheeks.

“This is your fault!” Francis accused, jabbing an index finger at me. “You should have tutored him better in English. Maybe then he’d actually know how to follow instructions!”

“As if arguing is going to help with anything! Crap! I think I have a Bible upstairs! We’ll have to perform an exorcism!” I shouted.

Matthew leapt back when Alfred began to laugh hysterically, sitting up abruptly. A cryptic smirk was on his face as he licked his lips, tasting his own blood.

I reluctantly present to you, Natfred.

“A-Alfred,” I asked. “You in there, lad?”

“Alfred is gone,” Natfred laughed in a cold, feminine voice. The lights flickered.

“And soon you will all be too. I must find a suitable body for my brother. Then we can live happily ever after! But first, I’m going to need to spill a lot of blood. My, my, you’re all so young. It’ll make killing you a lot harder. Especially that one,” (she? He? It?) pointed to Francis. “I don’t usually like killing one of my own.”

“What do you mean by that?” Francis quivered as we all began to back away from Natfred, intending to run up the staircase at a moment’s opportunity.

“Are you not a woman?” Natfred asked.

“Oui, oui I am!” Francis pleaded. “Si vous plait, have mercy!”

“He’s lying,” Matthew and I both retorted.

“Some friends you are!”

“You had no problem throwing us under the bus!”

“What is this then, a gathering of homosexuals?” Natfred remarked. “It would make a lot of sense. This one– Natfred pointed at me -  really likes shipping his fictional characters. It’s insufferable. For years, I’ve had to watch him lament about this ‘doctor’. And here I thought I was crazy.”

“DOCTOR WHO IS GREAT, YOU DEMONIC SHE-HEATHEN!” I raged.

“Arthur, not the best time,” Matthew snapped, being the closest one to the staircase.

Francis, however, gave us both a look, communicating the universal sign for ‘I’ll act as a distraction and then we run for our fucking lives’.

Matthew and I nodded our heads in assent.  

“Tell me, ah, Natalia, who is it do you think is the gayest of us all?” Francis asked.

Natfred narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

“Since you’ve passed, it’s been medically proven that gays are amongs the strongest of humans. You want a strong body for your brother, oui?” Francis lied through his teeth. I was beginning to question just how drunk he was. What was he on about now?

“Oh, how interesting. If that’s the case, it’s definitely him,” Natfred pointed at me, again.

“WHAT, WHY ME?” I whined.

Natfred glared, as if what she had just concluded was obvious. “I just do.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“Enough, this is such a bore,” Natfred drawled. “You’ll all be far more interesting once I hang the losing bodies as trophies. I’ve been wanting to re-decorate this place.”

Natfred then held out its (I decided on the pronoun, don’t get cheeky with me) right hand, snapping its fingers. A ghostly butcher knife, one that had seen better days and still had blood on it, popped into view.

“Who wants to die first?” Natfred waggled the butcher knife.

“RETREAT!” Francis bellowed, prompting all three of us to turn on our heels and run up the basement’s staircase – the literal devil was on our heels.

Natfred hissed, sprinting forward only to have the basement’s door slammed in its face. Francis and I held the door shut while Matthew grabbed several chairs for us to block the entrance with. Unfortunately, Natfred possessed Alfred’s near inhuman strength as well.

“Why run if you’re just going to die anyway? Face death like a man, you scoundrels!” It hissed, throwing an immense amount of weight against the other side of the door.

“NOW!” Matthew barked as Francis and I leapt out of the way and began piling chairs and tables against the basement door.

Not a second later, Natfred headbutted the door, splinters and dust flying everywhere as it poked its head into view. Its eyes were no longer cerulean under the spectacles it wore, but rather a strange gray-blue. We were losing Alfred more and more by the minute.

“Hide!” I shrieked.

“We can’t just leave him there!” Matthew begged. “How do we get this demon out of him? You said you have a Bible, where the heck is it?!”

“Can’t we just sacrifice Arthur? Let’s do a group vote, non?”

“Ugh! We don’t have time for this!”

I grabbed Matthew by the arm and began tugging him along with Francis towards our storage room. Meanwhile, Natfred was continuing to break through the door. We needed to find a good hiding spot where I could think and come up with a proper plan of attack.

“Over here!” I whispered, opening the door of the cupboard that lay underneath the staircase leading to the third floor. Yes, it was a real life Harry Potter room, moving on.

I closed the door and slid down on the floor. Matthew was the only one not out of breath to pull out his phone, illuminating the small space.

“Well, Monsieur spiritual communicator,” Francis spoke using air quotes, nervously pacing back and forth. His sanity was clearly not all there. “What now? How are we going to escape this alive after this massive fuck-up of yours? Mon dieu, never mind. I’ve already given up. Maybe if I surrender, she’ll let me drink some wine first.”

“NO!” Matthew and I cried out, grabbing both of Francis’s wrists before he could leave the room and give our location away.

“Get your priorities straight, will you?” I snapped. “And stop thinking so negatively. I’ll get us out of this.”

“How?!”

“I don’t know, just give me a minute to think!”

“We may not have a minute!” Matthew warned, wincing at the sound of a chair being thrown against a wall.

Natfred was free.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Natfred taunted.

“Okay!!” I clasped my forehead with one hand. “I think I got it…”

I had to pause again as the sound of knives scraping against each other echoed across the house.

Natfred had found Alistair’s knife collection.

“I’ll be the one to distract Natalia this time. While I do that, Matthew, I need you grab the Ouija board and planchette. Francis, you grab the Bible on the table by the front door; if I somehow fail at distracting Natalia, it’s your job to make sure she doesn’t notice what Matthew’s doing.”

“What exactly am I doing?” Matthew asked, lips quivering.

“Move the planchette towards goodbye. You’ll be cutting off our communication with her,” I explained. “We’re still in session, and will be until that happens. Does everyone understand the plan?”

I received two “oui’s” in response.

“All right,” I straightened my posture. “Let’s save that moronic tosser. On my lead, 1…2…3… Go!”

I thrust open the cupboard’s door, sprinting ahead to give Francis and Matthew some space and time to sneak by while I acted as a distraction.

I found Natfred sharpening two knives in the kitchen. When it spotted me walking into view from the hallway, it grinned widely, murderous in its intent. It wasn’t the aloof, goofy grin I was used to seeing on Alfred – this image would likely haunt me for the rest of my life, which could very well only be the next ten minutes if my plan wasn’t successful.

“Succumbed to your fate, have you?” Natfred mused. “Although, I was kinda hoping for the other two. You might not be strong enough for my brother to possess.”

“Oh,” I quirked a brow, my strong tone contradicting how much my knees were trembling. “And what makes you think your brother would want to come back and live with you? You murdered him, remember?”

Natfred faltered. “I-It was an accident! He knows that! I’m sure he’ll forgive me! He always does!”

“Hmmm yeah, I don’t think so,” I responded, stepping to the side to block Natfred’s view of Matthew and Francis sneaking into the living room. “I think he’d be pretty pissed off. I mean, he had his whole life set right out for him. He was going to get married, and you just had to ruin that, didn’t you? Why? Because you were selfish. You wanted your brother for yourself, and when you couldn’t have him, you threw a tantrum like a rotten five-year-old child. If you really cared about your brother, you would let him rest in peace, wherever he ended up.”

I needed to make Natalia furious; to confuse her just as much.

Natfred’s eyes glowed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” it shrieked. “My brother deserved better than that… than that bitch! Now I have the chance to give him a better life. I’ll do anything to make that happen! He was a King! He deserved more!”

Natfred’s eyes briefly flickered to its original cerulean hue.

Behind me, Matthew stepped out of the basement, planchette and Ouija board in hand. He ducked, hiding from sight by using the living room couch to his advantage. Francis sat next to him, holding a Bible for likely the first time in his life as he prayed.

Both were successful in their part of the plan; it was time for me to follow through as well. It was my fault we had ended up in a situation like this. It was time to take some damn responsibility.

“You’re overcompensating,” I hummed without missing a beat. Alfred was still in there, I just knew it.

“No, you’re a brat. A petty brat who’s trying to rationalize the impossible. You’re a stone-cold murderer. You don’t deserve even the body you’re occupying now. You know why? Because Alfred is stronger than you’ll ever be. He knows what compassion is, what it is to truly love someone. But you’ll never feel that because you’re a psychopath without any capacity for emotions. You never loved your brother. You tainted his life with your filthy greed!”

“SHUT UP!” Natfred screeched. “I should have killed you when I had the chance!”

I yelped when Natfred threw a knife at me. Luckily, I ducked to the side. The knife had crashed into the living room window, sending glass flying everywhere.

Natfred continued to throw knives at me, but somehow, I was able to dodge them all. It then proceeded to throw a blender and toaster at me.

“Jesus Christ!” I swore in the heat of the moment. “Are you trying to kill me?! Oh…”

Tragically, all good luck must come to an end.

Natfred pinned me against the counter. “It’s time for you to die,” it hissed, grabbing me by the collar of the shirt.

I hovered over the ground by two feet. “Alfred,” I wheezed. “I know you’re in there. It’s me, Arthur. Fight back, damn you! I know you’re stronger than this! Y-you can’t die! You were right. There’s so many things we never got to do together! I miss you, you dumbass. I want to do stupid things and grow old together, arguing and whatnot. You’re my best friend, so you better fucking come back already!”

“Alfred is gone, I told you that!”

“LET HIM GO!”

CRASH!

Natfred let go of me, falling forward as a Bible smacked into its back. “YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!”

Well, that was one way to repel a demon with a Bible.

“Francis, you tart. What in the bloody hell are you doing!” I gasped, backing away as Natfred whipped around to glare at Francis.

“Protecting you!” Francis answered, wavering slightly. “Only I can bully you and get away with it!”

Francis everyone.

“You were supposed to use the Bible to repel her figuratively, not literally!”

“It wasn’t working!” Francis shrugged as I joined him by his side. “I had no choice. She was about to kill you.”

I shrugged. “Can’t argue with that logic.”

“GUYS! IT’S READY!” Matthew shrieked.

Francis and I both exchanged wide-eyed looks before sprinting into the living room, crouching next to Matthew in front of the Ouija board.

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING NOW!?” Natfred bellowed, but it was already too late.

We circled the planchette on the board before finally placing it on Goodbye.

“GOODBYE!” Francis, Matthew and I all shrieked.

Natfred collapsed to the ground, twitching once more.

“Aha!” I cried out in triumph. “I hope you rot in hell, right where you belong. You will no longer haunt this house. I revoke any invitation for you to come back. Let this board seal you for eternity!”

Natfred looked up at the ceiling with blank eyes. “Brother, I am sorry,” it wheezed. “Perhaps another day we will be reunited. I will find you, mark my words…”

Natfred made a cliché ‘bleh’ sound before falling still.

I didn’t have time to let out a breath of relief as I had received smacks to both cheeks.

“YOU’RE AN IDIOT!” Matthew and Francis shrieked before crouching over the remains of Natfred, ahem, Alfred.

“Yes, yes, I know,” I bowed my head. “Let’s see if he’s okay. You can lecture me later.”

Matthew pressed his ear to Alfred’s chest. “He’s breathing.”

“Unnngh, burgers,” Alfred muttered to himself.

“Oui, he’s definitely alive,” Francis sighed.

I looked around the living room, petrified by what I saw. The fridge was hanging on a hinge alone with several cabinets, not to mention the many broken plates, dents in the walls, and ruined kitchen appliances.

“Bollocks, Alistair is going to kill me.”

I received another two smacks to the head. “At least Alfred’s okay, though,” I pouted.

Speaking of the previous devil.

Alfred sat up with a groan, eyes widening at the trashed room before him. “Dudes, did we have a killer party or something? What the heck happened in here?”

Matthew and Francis facepalmed while I burst out into tears, bringing Alfred into a hug. “Yeah! Sure! Whatever! We did that! Oh, how I missed you and your idiocy!”

“Yo, are you drunk? Why are you crying? Man, I’m hungry.”

“Screw it, I’m taking a nap,” Matthew declared, slumping against the couch.

“I’ll join you,” Francis offered.

Next thing I knew, Alfred shoved me off him and stood up. He ignored the unhinged fridge door and reached straight up for the freezer, pulling out an ice-cream sandwich.

“I’m going home to microwave this, peace suckas.”

I deadpanned.

Perhaps we should have left him possessed, after all.

-The end

[foxcroft-rpg-blog]

Congratulations, Niki! I’m so glad to find a player that understands how intricate of a character Amelia is. I think that you really get all the different layers to her, and can’t wait to see where you take her.

Thanks again for applying! Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the masterlist as soon as you can. Welcome to Foxcroft!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: Niki / Nix

Age: 20

Preferred pronouns: She/her/hers!

Time zone: GMT (I’m studying in the UK at the moment, but for the better part of the year I live in EST.)

Activity: In the past I haven’t been able to RP during the school year, BUT this semester my class and workload is incredibly light, which gives me the opportunity to be on as much as I like. Out of ten, I would probably put myself on a sliding scale from 7 to 9, depending on who’s around to role-play with and what I’ve got going on plotwise.

Anything else?: The only thing I’d like to say is that I felt very passionately connected to what this RP is attempting to do. You wrote in the rules that “Foxcroft is a place for you to freak out about your characters, and have other writers to freak out with you.” and it made my heart jump to see that. I’ve been looking for a tight knit group RP since the last two groups I was in (which lasted three years) fell apart. RPing, to me, is all about finding great writers you can geek out about plotlines and character development with. So, thank you, is I guess what I’m trying to say!

IN CHARACTER

Full name: Amelia Goddard Foxcroft

Date of birth: September 9th, 1990, 27 years old

How long have they been in Foxcroft: She was born and lived there until she was eighteen, then left for college out east and didn’t come back. Not until Adam’s death; at the beginning of October she packed a suitcase and came back home, and has been alone at Foxcroft Manor to this day.

Sexuality: Demiromantic bisexual (leaning more towards women than men), though she’s quite tight-lipped about her queer identity. Amelia uses sex as a method of releasing tension; she’s never seen it as something that brings two people closer together, perhaps because she’s never become close enough to someone to form a romantic attachment with them.

FC change: None needed! I adore Deborah Ann Woll for Amelia.

MORE

How do you interpret this character’s personality? How will you portray them? Include two weaknesses and two strengths.

When I read Amelia’s biography, I had an instinctual reaction. Which sounds weird, but when I get a really good sense of a character I can feel their way of movement, and that helps me write their mind. With Amelia I felt tension, control, and calculation – my shoulders felt tight, poise rigid, and a desire to smooth my hair and pull it back behind my ears almost like a religiously calming act. So, that being said, onto how I’d play Amelia: I believe she is so absolutely smart, but her intelligence, her practicality and her ambition can and have become the two greatest stressors within her life. She has a tendency to overdo everything; overthink, over-plan, overcompensate, over-worry, even overreact. This, in combination with how tightly wound she is, under normal circumstances make it hard for anyone to live a happy, stress free life.

Add in her worry about her brothers and Adam’s death, and you’ve got a maelstrom coming. I want to play Amelia on the cliffside of control; I want her to look down at the abyss of chaos and wonder what it’s like to jump into the deep. But I want the essence of her character to reject that notion, to almost crave being tense, being on edge, cautious, protected. I want her to be suspicious of everyone and lonely to point of paranoia – and then I want to find a way to reel her in and help her cope with the loss of her brother and her continuing lack of family structure.

How did this character react to the death of Hazel Abrams? Adam Foxcroft?

With Hazel, I feel as if she felt poor but not sad, unhappy but not awful. She’d only known her through the stories her brother told her on the phone, and those were far and few in between. But a death is a death, and Amelia would feel bad for anyone who drowned in the swamps. Adam…is a whole other story. He was the last brother she had a tether to, wobbly as it was. She feels a bit insane about the whole thing because it’s as if she almost knew him staying in Foxcroft would get him hurt. And that’s what she’d told him over and over on the telephone, but he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t listen, and then he was murdered. And now Amelia’s alone, surrounded by the stale ghosts of her adolescence and the haunting feeling that she could have done more to save him. Adam – his death, his past, his case – have become the axis upon which she swings. What life she had back east feels so far away now. She’s sinking into the mud of Adam’s mystery, and it’s a slow, unbearable asphyxiation.

How do they see the town and its people? Think about the different groups of people and prejudices the town holds about them.

Amelia the teenager couldn’t wait to be rid of Foxcroft, of its sleepy supernaturalism and the enveloping feeling of always being watched. She worked hard to dig herself out of her family’s legacy. For a while, it worked, and she was free. But like a curse she’s been drawn back into it, and this sleepy town has shed its skin and bared its teeth. Teeth she’s always known have been there, but only now does she see the creatures in the open. Amelia stays only to find her brother’s killer. There is no one here she would stay for. As for the social hierarchy of her position in the founding families – she wishes she could slip by unnoticed but because she isn’t, she wears her name like a tattoo across her chest. The people of this town can think and say whatever they like about her; only Amelia knows her truth, and that’s satisfying enough. For now.

Please include 1-2 possible plots your see for this character.

I’d really like to have Amelia start to confront supernatural of this town, to begin to take the threat seriously and even find a way to protect herself from it. I want her to start commotion without putting her in harm’s way – maybe she’d start delving in to the history of the town, going to Shae’s shop and testing out her wares, starting her own investigation into the people of this town and who they really are. Whatever happened to Adam, she knows isn’t going to go away. She’s doing this for herself more than for the people of the town, because when she leaves she wants to be done with Foxcroft. She doesn’t want its stain following her, nor does she want the threat of an attack haunting the rest of her already suffered life.

For my second plot: I’m very interested in seeing what happens when Amelia loses control – literally and figuratively. I’d love to see one of the Hungry put their paws on her and figure out her reaction to it, or for someone to take a dig into her emotionally and have her explode in a rage of emotion unlike anyone’s ever seen from her. Amelia’s teetering on a dangerous edge, and I think she needs to release what’s been chalked up inside her for the past twenty-seven years before she can have any clarity or piece of mind.

In relation to specific characters:

NEIL MONROE: I really want to see what happens when the two of them meet, and how they either get over (or perhaps never get over) what happened to Adam. Amelia’s going to be warring with her prejudices against him and the apparent fact of his guilt, but I do think it would be a compelling plot to have the two of them come to an understanding and gather together to find out who killed Adam. I think, in her heart of hearts, she wants to get to know Neil because he was closer to Adam than she ever was, and now will ever be. He and Willa are the only connections she has to her dead brother; they hold remnants of his memory she’ll never hold, moments with him she’ll never be able to truly understand. And that puts a knot in her spine and a lump in her throat.

MARCUS MURPHY: I’m super invested in having some sort of plot perhaps where Amelia becomes a little too dependent on Marcus – not necessarily in a romantic sense, but more in a ‘you’re the only person I trust and therefore the only person I can truly be somewhat myself with’ kind of way. And then I want it to shatter when (and if) she understands Marcus isn’t the good, clean cop she thought and convinced herself he was. That he’s just like every other person in this town, corroded and rotted by Foxcroft’s swampy mess. I’d like to see how Amelia reacts to her only foundation of trust being shattered, if she picks up the pieces and finds someone else to lay herself upon or if she retreats further into herself, further and further until she implodes and damage is done.

LOGAN LOCKWOOD: Ugh, I just want them to become friends! I think it would be nice for Amelia to have a friend in her lonely, lonely world. She was definitely wrong in dating Logan in high school – and a tryst between them is not going to happen again – but I think she had the right instincts in choosing him as a friend and partner. I don’t think she wants him to listen to her as she bemoans her existence, as his bartending job often does, but I do think she needs someone to lift the anvil off her shoulders and shove a beer in her hands and tell her to lighten up, Francis. Otherwise Amelia would go absolutely insane in mere days, I think, rotating around in her mind in the loneliness of that godforsaken house.

I’m also super interested in having someone curious enough to peel back the layers and layers (and layers, man this girl is an onion) to get to the core of Amelia’s being and see if there really…is a core? As in, who is Amelia when she isn’t controlling herself? Who is she when she’s not planning, worrying, holding herself back, trying to get out, get away, do something, go somewhere. Is that all she is, motives and motivation? To be honest, I’m not so sure yet. I don’t think Amelia is sure of it herself, which is why she keeps building walls, constructing mazes around the essence of her being because who she is, unfettered and vulnerable, needs to remain a mystery. Because when that mystery is uncovered it might be revealed to be…absolutely nothing. Or something so frightening that it shouldn’t have been let out in the first place. Like Pandora’s box.

WRITING SAMPLE

Option #1:

Link one: A couple of friends of mine from a Marauders verse RP a long, long time ago still plot and occasionally write together as the characters we played together. We decided to mix things up a bit and try out an array of different verses to put our characters in. This one we called ‘indie band au’ – so Marlene, Dorcas, Mary, and Lily are all in a band together. It’s one of my favorite short pieces of writing I’ve done, and oddly enough I wrote it on my iPhone on a plane?  

Link two: This is a drabble I did of a sort of college roommate situation, still going with the Marlene McKinnon theme. I always find myself writing in the head of my characters, and usually my writing style – the format, the sentence length, the language – changes depending on whose head I’m occupying.

EXTRA

How would you feel about this character dying?: I would find that fascinating, and am totally up for it! I always think character deaths in role-plays, when done to serve the purpose of moving the plot forward, are incredibly smart.

Why did you choose this character?: I chose her because I had a deep gut reaction to her biography, and because I’ve always wanted to play someone so tightly wound, someone with so much awareness that it almost paralyzes her from living an easy life. I’m so intrigued by her relationship with her brothers (I’d love for one of them to traipse back into town and disrupt everything, though I also love the aspect of her loneliness and her lack of communication with her family) and by the fact that she’s not giving up on what happened to her brother. I love that she’s so gray, that she’s a family person but not someone who says ‘I love you’ very often, that she is slowly slipping into lack of control.

Extras: Here’s a link to a pinterest board I made of her – it’s less of an assembled ‘aesthetic’ and more a retrospective of her emotional state, her relationships with her brothers, her view on Foxcroft Manor, and how she escaped Foxcroft after high school.

How did you find us?: I’ve been following Janelle (and silently admiring everything – especially your ideas on queer badass Marlene McKinnon – oh boy do I have feelings about that woman) on my personal blog for a while, actually! I remember seeing ads for Port Montrose and wanting to apply but didn’t have time to send in an app.

[chiseler]

YOU MUST BECOME CALIGARI!

So at its heart, is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari an anti-authoritarian call for rebellion, an object lesson in conformity, or an allegory about how we are all mere pawns lost in a culture gone completely mad? That’s up to you to decide. What’s interesting is that nearly a century after it was first released, the film’s back story remains such a swirl of misinformation, conflicting memories, urban legends, shaky record keeping and contradictory ego trips it’s impossible to pin down any solid truth. How the script originated, how the production went, who decided to tack on the framing story at the last minute, what the framing story means, who decided to go with the Expressionist design, and what sort of critical and box office reception the film received in 1920 are still the subject of fierce debate today.  In a way, and aptly so, Caligari’s history is as much an insane jangle of crooked angles and unbalanced teetering images as the film itself, a history as unreliable as the film’s narrative. What we can say for sure is that it was the first German Expressionist film ever made (if accidentally), the first straight horror film ever made (ditto), and remains one of the most influential pictures ever released, leaving an indelible mark across a surprising spectrum of genres. Given the events of the past few months, Caligari is also more relevant now than ever.

Co-writer Carl Mayer claimed the idea of a mad despot and a hypnotized subject slavishly and unconsciously trained to carry out his delusional and murderous orders arose from Mayer’s military experiences during WWI. Co-writer Hans Janowitz claims the idea of a string of murders centered around a carnival came from something he witnessed at a Berlin fair in 1913. Both men, neither of whom had written a screenplay before, agree that the initial inspiration came after seeing a sideshow hypnotist at a carnival they visited together in 1918. Others have pointed out the story bore more than a passing resemblance to Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The System of  Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather,” while others have noted the clear influence of the then-popular Grand Guignol scene in Paris.  

Until you get to the twist(s) that close the film (giving credence to the Grand Guignol theory), the story is a fairly straightforward murder mystery.

Two young friends, Francis and Alan (Friedrich Feher and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), while jockeying for the affections of Jane (Lil Dagover), visit a local traveling carnival. There they take in the act of the mysterious, top-hatted and wild-haired Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss). As they watch, Caligari awakens his somnambulist subject, Cesare (the great Conrad Veidt) who, under hypnosis, answers questions from the audience. When Alan jokingly asks when he will die, Cesare responds “Before dawn.” And wouldn’t you know it? He was right!

After Alan and a couple other people are foundd stabbed to death, Francis decides to do a little detective work of his own, which brings him back to Caligari. In case you’re some kind of plebe who hasn’t seen it yet (what’s wrong with you?), I’ll stop there.

All this is wrapped in a framing device (later borrowed for Forrest Gump) in which Francis tells his story after the fact to a stranger on a park bench. The less said about that the better, too. None of it really matters all that much, anyway, given the film isn’t remembered for its storyline. What matters are the visuals.

When producers Rudolf Meinert and Erich Pommer bought the script from the fledgling screenwriters, they weren’t thinking of making an Expressionist art house film. Despite later claims by Janowitz, there was nothing about the set design or look of the film in the original script. Meinert and Pommer simply saw it as an entertaining melodrama with a twist ending that could me made on the cheap. Germany was still rebuilding after the war, and so money and resources were tight. Given there was no budget for sets, electricity was being rationed, and the film would be shot entirely on a cramped soundstage, the only real option was to have the actors play out their roles in front of painted backdrops.

Although Fritz Lang was originally slated to direct, he was too tied up with other projects. Instead the producers went with the fairly unremarkable Robert Wiene (a man who is generally given very little credit for anything in all the Caligari debates). Although nearly everyone involved took credit after the fact, it’s unknown who finally decided to go with the three set painters they hired, or who gave them the go-ahead to get a little nuts.

Ironically, the German Expressionist movement had played a major role in painting and theater long before Caligari came along. So long, in fact, that a number of art critics had already declared it a dead and cliched style before the film went into production. Although a very popular theater style in Weimar era Germany, the fact it had never been adapted for the cinema can likely be attributed to the perception film, still in its infancy, was a gutter art form aimed at the unwashed masses, who found simple banal realism far easier to understand.

Caligari was unlike anything movie audiences had seen in a commercial film before. Apart from the framing scenes and a couple isolated shots of Francis and Jane in a normal house, the body of the film deliberately plays like a madman’s fever dream. The painted townscape is filled with curved and pointed biuildings teetering at dangerous angles, almost as if they were alive and shrieking. Roads twist and spiral to nowhere. The perspectives are deliberately mismatched and inconsistent, with the props and sets sometimes being too large for the characters, at others too small.  The trees and grass look like knife blades. Doors and windows are not square. Out of simple economic necessity given the lighting limitations, clearly artificial rays of light and distorted shadows were painted onto the backdrops. A carousel in the carnival sequence spins at an unlikely angle. Thanks to the tiny soundstage, in order to get a few shots the cameraman was forced to tilt the camera, only multiplying the effect of the already unbalanced sets. Even Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt, both of whom had appeared in Expressionist plays, adopted exaggerated gestures and designed their own extreme makeup (heavy whiteface and blackened, deeply sunken eyes) to more fully fit into the operating aesthetic. Atop it all and only deepening the sense of disjointedness and paranoia, the film’s original sscore consisted of discordant passages from early 20th century avant garde composers like Arnold Schoenberg.  

The overall goal of the film was to draw audiences into the mind of a lunatic, though who the real lunatic is remains the subject of even more debate. As roundly denounced as the frame story was, both by critics and those involved in the production, the producers argued it was necessary so as to not scare audiences away completely. In the end I do think it works as a way of pointing up the schizoid reality of most of the film, though whether it ultimately undercuts the effect is again up to you.

Funny thing is, as influential as Caligari would become, the radical and transgressive style really was the simple result of economics, or lack thereof, much like having no budget would become such a defining stylistic element in the films of Roger Corman, Ed Wood, Ray Dennis Steckler, W. Lee Wilder and countless other indie filmmakers.

While just how well Caligari did both at home and abroad is still being argued, its impact on German cinema was almost immediate. Although there were only a tiny handful of strictly Expressionist films that tried to push things as far as Caligari had, elements of the Expressionist style—the deep, elongated shadows, the distorted sets, off-kilter camera angles and the later addition of dolly shots—were adopted for a number of significant films, most with much larger budgets. Caligari’s influence was inescapable two years later in Murnau’s Nosferatu. Would-be Caligari director Fritz Lang would cop a move or two for not only 1927’s Metropolis, but 1931’s M and his Mabuse films as well. Carl Dreyer’s 1933 wierdie Vampyr owed as much if not more to Caligari than Murnau. And Germans aside, even from the few stills that remain, Tod Browning was clearly channeling Caligari in 1927’s lost masterpiece London After Midnight, from the storyline down to Lon Chaney’s makeup, which was unashamedly borrowed from Krauss’. Browning would again offer a few nods to Caligari (via Murnau) in 1931’s Dracula, a movie whose style would then go on to inform much of what followed in the horror films coming out of not only Universal, but RKO, Columbia and Warner Brothers as well.

Then something else happened that would only further solidify Caligari’s mark on American genre movies.

It’s long been argued, and convincingly so, that Caligari was a reflection of the German people’s need to blindly follow a dictator, no matter how utterly insane he might be. In that, it’s said the film presaged the rise of Hitler.

Well, needless to say, Hitler, himself a cinephile with a deep love for lavish American musicals, was not a fan of Caligari, or German Expressionism as a whole. The darkness, the exaggerated angles, the anti-rationality of it all had no place in the Reich, and Expressionist works were declared “Degenerate Art” along with jazz and the avant garde. Seeing what was happening, a number of filmmakers who’d been connected with the Expressionist movement, most notably Lang and Edgar G; Ulmer, decided life might be a bit easier in Hollywood, so packed their bags and fled, bringing their distorted deep shadows, oblique camera angles, and monsters of the psyche along with them.

Even before Lang arrived, his M was already beginning to influence American proto-noir films like Stranger on the Third Floor, which had all of the requisite paranoia, shadows and weird camera angles, as well as Caligari’s unreliable narrator and twist ending (though thanks to the censors the twist had to remain unstated. Ulmer, meanwhile, would go on to make the most visually striking and psychologically harrowing of the Universal horror films, 1934’s The Black Cat. Other Expressionist refugees began working with Val Lewton at RKO, and still others landed at Paramount.

After WWII, as ennui and paranoia settled over the country, it only makes sense that Caligari, an overstylized crime film with an emphasis on a twisted mental state would become such a heavy touchstone for the emerging noir format. It’s no shocker then that both Ulmer and Lang would end up making classic noir films like Detour and Clash by Night. Other directors would attempt to drag audiences deep into the distorted perceptions of an unbalanced mind, and Hitchcock himself would venture into Caligari territory with Spellbound and Stage Fright.

After getting his talons into horror and noir, Dr. Caligari’s sinister influence quickly spread to other genres. You could see it in Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (down to the last minute framing device that comforted audiences but undercut the impact of the central story). It was there in The Residents’ fabled but unfinished epic, Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? It’s there in the exaggerated set designs of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, in a number of Werner Herzog films and in Chuck Jones and Tex Avery’s zanier Looney Tunes outings.

While there had been talk of a remake or sequel back in the ’30s, the closest anyone came were the cartoonish softcore antics of Stephen Sayadian’s 1989 Dr. Caligari (written by Jerry Stahl and starring the great Fox Harris), and a 2005 remake in which contemporary actors recreated the original film, playing out their scenes in front of green screens of the 1920 painted bacdrops. Was it really necessary? I don’t think so. Not anymore, anyway. Because you take a look around today, in Times Square, on TV, on the Internet or just walking to the post office, and it’s clear that almost a hundred years later, we’re all just living in Caligari’s Cabinet.

by Jim Knipfel