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adrian-paul-botta · 6 years ago

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Uncle Vanya – 1973

Having been lucky enough to return to the stage from films in the thirties under the unique genius of Jed Harris in “Uncle Vanya”, a second blessing came when I was asked to play Marina, the Nurse, under the direction of the brilliant Mike Nichols.

Lillian Gish, adapting a delightful for the casion, is charming as a nurse prepared to set every thing right with tea, vodka, God, and a smile. (Walter Kerr – NY Times) Photographs by Ellen Mark

Conrad Bain – Ilya Ilyich Telegin Waffles Julie Christie – Yelena Andreyevna Lillian Gish – Maryina Nanny Barnard Hughes – Alexander Vladimirovich Serebryakov Cathleen Nesbitt – Maria Vasilyevna Voinitskaya George C. Scott – Mikhail lvovich Astrov Nicol Williamson – Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky Vanya Elizabeth Wilson – Sofya Alexandrovna Sonya Rod Loomis – Yefim R. Mack Miller – Worker Tom Tarpey – Worker

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Stage: Mike Nichols’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ The New York Times Archive – 1973

The difficulty with many all‐star productions of clas sics is simply that on occa sion the stars get in your eyes and you can scarcely see the classic. It is much to Mike Nichols’s credit that this does not happen in his staging of “Uncle Vanya,” which opened last night at the Circle in the Square Joseph E. Levine Theater. Al though at the preview I at tended there were plenty of histrionic sparks, the play it self was never lost sight of. “Uncle Vanya” at its sim plest level is a play about unfulfillment. No one gets what he wants, and every character, even the bluster ing professor, has to settle for second best. As a piece of playwriting, it is a model of economy, and the action passes Iike the wind through silver birches. • Although “Uncle Vanya” is perhaps less densely textured than either “The Cherry Or chard” or “The Three Sis ters,” it has always main tained a hold on actors and audiences alike, partly, no doubt, because of the aston ishing contrast between the two leading male roles, Van ya and Astrov. These two men, losers both, one a sen timental but rather endear ing fool and the other an ecology‐minded doctor, seem to represent the folly of in decision on the one hand and of circumstances on the other. It is nearly 30 years since Í first saw “Uncle Vanya” with Ralph Richardson as Vanya and Laurence Olivier as Astrov, and a little more than 10 years since I saw Olivier once again as Astrov, this time opposite Michael Redgrave. Those were duels aria duets of a rare magic. The present Broadway play ers, Nicol Williamson and George C. Scott, are fine enough—particularly perhaps the latter—and they do, un der Mr. Nichols’s direction provide a fascinating con trast in acting styles. Williamson is an internal actor, Scott is an external actor. With Mr. Williamson everything is withdrawn, hid den, turned in upon itself. He looks ratty and frantic, a man barely in control of himself. His arms flail the air, quixotically, his eyes have a manic gleam. His final climactic act of aggression when he tries, unsuccessfully of course, to shoot his tor mentor, is presented as an uncoordinated gush of pain. Mr. Scott goes, about his business with a difference. His gravelly, bullfrog voice and his shark’s‐grin charm are both used ver conscious ly. He moves with a calm deliberation, a certainty of purpose. The action of the play is reflected in his face almost as if it were a TV mointor, and the performance —in total variance with Mr. Williamson’s free‐style agony —is beautifully caculated. There are many splendid aspects of this production, which is probably the closest we have reached in years to a classic staging of national theater dimensions. Obvious ly the most important is this opportunity to compare, con trast and enjoy two major actors going about their busi ness with such successfully differing skills. But Mr. Nichols has also done a good job with a somewhat unequal cast. The translation, by Albert Todd and Mr. Nichols himself, is fresh and idiomatic. Some people may, in places, find it too idiomatic. I do not. To me it seems to be the privilege of the translator to update, subtly but seriously, a translation to make it more immediate to its audience. And Mr. Nichols’s staging has the same quality of slippered ease and well‐worn informal ity.

The Cast

For all the advantages of arena staging‐‐‐sand the close presence of actors such as Williamson and Scott has an actual physical force here—it is no particular help to the designer, and it is a great credit to Tony Walton (and the lighting designer, Jules Fisher) how admirable the play looks. With “Uncle Vanya” there is a terrible tendency for every other actor except Vanya and Astrov to fade into the woodwork, and this terrible tendency has not been avoided here. Julie Christie as Elena, the young wife of the old professor, looks dazzling but seems bland. Against the pyrotech nics thrown at her by Mssrs. Scott and Williamson she seems chaste and unde fended. Elizabeth Wilson, on the other hand, is a very ex perienced stage actress, and a very fine one, but she is miscast as the unhappy Son ya. She looks, for example, far older than her supposed stepmother, Miss Christie, and althotigh this is possible, it does not appear to help the play. Her performance has little of the special vulner ability called for. Barnard Hughes blustered effectively enough as the professor, Lillian Gish proved a soft‐toned delight as the old nurse, and Conrad Bain, down at heel but non chalant, was a very good Waffles. Cathleen Nesbitt looked very properly digni fied and yielding as the re luctant matriarch. This “Uncle Vanya” does have its faults, but at its best it represents precisely the kind of classic theater we desperately need in New York City. This is a very special brand of theatrical excitement.

Lillian Gish in the dressing room – 1973 (Uncle Vanya)

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A Too Tearful ‘Vanya’ By WALTER KERR JUNE 10, 1973

AT the beginning of the second half of Circle in the Square’s “Uncle Vanya,” Nicol Williamson starts to enter the drawing room of a Russian country estate, sees that Julie Christie and Elizabeth Wilson are still moping about in it, and promptly with draws without uttering a word. It is the most intelligible move of the eve ning and at the preview I attended the audience laughed its understanding approval. For Mike Nichols has done the im possible. He has taken a powerhouse of an acting company—George C. Scott, Julie Christie, Nicol Williamson, Cathleen Nesbitt, Elizabeth Wilson, Lil lian Gish—and in effect disassembled it, leaving individual performers to grope heir ways alone through garden fog and parlor fatigues, unmotivated, un related, characterless and crying. Indeed director and actors seem scarcely to realize that Chekhov has ever been parodied, placing most of their emphases—with great solemnity —on the very mannerisms that are most familiar and have most often been kidded. Here is the garden swing, in which a bored young lady can loll, away and say how bored she is. The omnipresent samovar, household god indoors and out, more actor’s refuge than tea‐time pause. The guitar, to be picked up and plucked by way of an nouncing that a scene may soon end, though not before some actor’s words have been drowned out in the twang ing. The scenes that end in a sigh, or begin in a sigh, or seem to be sighing between. The tears, the tears, the tears. What has happened to Mr. Nichols and friends? One can only guess. Though the last effective New York production of “Uncle Vanya” (with Franchot Tone and ‘Clarence Derwent, under David Ross’s direction) made the very most of Chekhov’s claim that he wrote comedy and not endless lamen tation, Mr. Nichols, known primarily as a director of comedy, may not have wanted to put his too‐ready trademark upon it. Plumping for earnestness in stead—and letting occasional unavoid able titters fall where they just do fall —he may have taken much too literally certain remarks made by the despair ing, though often foolish, figures of the piece. Mr. Scott, as the neighboring doctor forced to spend more time with a list less and hypochondriacal family than he thinks good for him, does point out, in a summarizing speech, that the group is rudderless, emotionally barren, incapable of “spontaneous, free rela tionships” with nature or with one another. And what Mr. Scott is saying is to a considerable degree true, though he himself may not be aware of how kinky his own passion for forestry is. But the fact that charac ters’ lives lack a pattern does not mean that a play can stand unpatterned. The very point itself must be made into a design that dis plays it if people’s lives lack cohesion we must be given a cohesive vision of that. Instead, we watch wan derers, fine actors roaming slippered through the night in search of a tone—some tone, any tone—they can all sound together. Their inability to find one is in part due to the ex tremely awkward shape of the new playing area at Circle in the Square. The long horseshoe curve—bor rowed from the Circle’s old quarters downtown but stretched out like taffy here —is simply too long: an ac, for stationed near the pine wood back wall trying to make contact with another stationed on the front curve near the samovar had better be trained in semaphore. It can be done: at one point Mr. Scott, whose burning bush eyes penetrate dis tances and brush away ob stacles better than most people’s, raps out a sudden “don’t you agree, Madame?” to Miss Christie miles away —he is speaking over the heads of three or four lan guorous comnanions —and, in the bristling silence he creates, the actor simply cleaves the space. But it takes a George C. Scott in tensity to do it, and even then we cannot keep both figures in visual focus at once: our own eyes are busy Thus the event is both physically and psychologi cally fragmented, with each performer left to fend for himself, hoping against hope that at some vanishing‐point out in the auditorium sep arate values may coalesce, contrive to make sense. It doesn’t happen, and in the circumstances one can only ‘clutch at straws, taking such pleasure in passing as is passing. The straws exist. Near the end of the first half Eliza Beth Wilson, forlornly in love with Mr. Scott but a prisoner of plainness since childhood, fixes her wasted smile and decides to become friends with her stepmother, Miss Christie. The decision made, a spring of giddy joy deep inside her is released: now she is a blushing school girl again, bubbling too much, suppressing laughter by clapping her hands to her mouth, darting in a dozen directions like a joyous ani mal caged so long it is be wildered by freedom. Her quieter gestures during this period of revelation are ex quisite, too. Putting her hand out to Mr. Scott and then snatching it back be fore he can notice, or strok ing Miss Christie’s golden hair with a motherly appro bation that is part envy, the actress is Even more striking is Nicol Williamson’s outburst once he hears that the estate he has lived on and helped to maintain is to be sold. Mr. Williamson is the Uncle Van ya of the piece, fifth wheel forever, stretching himself out of morning stupors only to take a little more vodka than is wise, winding up at Miss Christie’s feet drunken ly pawing her nightgown. But if he has accepted his status as eternal also‐ran, a core of resentment has been building up inside him, a re sentment that seems nearly to electrocute him the mo it is released. The quiver of his body now threatens to tear his frame apart as he spews words faster than his brain can form them, the gasp of disbelief in his throat nearly strangling him while he plunges on. As a rush of un welcome truths pours out in the uncontrollable hysteria, we feel much more than embarrassment for this inef fectual man who knows he is being ineffectual even as he fights. We feel consider able sympathy: when a fail ure finally lets loose his fury, and fails at that as well, we are unexpectedly moved. And the futile ferocity of the outburst proves to be the perfect springboard for what follows: Vanya’s firing a pis tol at the man who has be trayed him, and missing. The moment —inevitably farce, with the pompous professor ducking behind furniture while Vanya proves he can not so much as shoot straight—is the most ticklish in the play, particularly in a production that means to be as dolorous as this one. But Mr. Williamson has pitched his man to such shattering irrationality that the gesture can be absorbed easily. It remains funny without contradicting our serious concern for its real Otherwise we must wait long and listen hard for small comforts. Mr. Scott is always intelligent, perhaps too intelligent for the part he is playing; surveying the others with so much wisdom, he seems not only to tolerate them but the untidy play as well. His detachment is quite total, though he gets at least one brief opportunity to bare his teeth and invite the predatory Miss Christie to sink fangs into him. Miss Christie herself is bland in her often‐announced ennui, unable to cope with a sec ond‐half soliloquy and bur dened—late in the play—with a wig that makes her look as though she had walked through a meringue factory. Barnard Hughes and Conrad Bain do not define themselves firmly enough to let us see precisely where they fit into the mosaic of the play, but Cathleen Nes bitt is regally severe and arrestingly handsome as a leftover widow and Lillian Gish, adapting a delightful for the casion, is charming as a nurse prepared to set every thing right with tea, vodka, God, and a smile. On the whole, the produc tion is one in which every body seems ailing, not just the fatuous tyrant who rules the household from a wheel chair. The evening turns into a competition to see who is unhappiest, and can prove it; even Miss Wilson is finally asked to dab at her eyes once too often. In all of the moisture, the essential work does not get done. The peo ple, so drowsily severed from one another, never really succeed in compelling our deep interest in their respective isolations, never persuade us that their wasted lives are fascinating wastes well worth exploring. It so happens that I was on the point of scribbling a note to this effect at the precise moment Mr. Scott turned to Miss Christie and said, “I can see that this doesn’t in terest you,” startling me no end. But perhaps that is what I mean by Mr. Nichols taking certain lines too literally. His premise would seem to be that if a charac ter isn’t interested in what is being said, then what is said dare not be interesting. But this is fatal. With some of the most enlivening ac tors in the world at his com mand, a director has let the bored bore us.

Photo: Lillian Gish and Helen Hayes at the opening of Uncle Vanya 1973 June 4

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Uncle Vanya 1973 Uncle Vanya - 1973 Having been lucky enough to return to the stage from films in the thirties under the unique genius of Jed Harris in "Uncle Vanya", a second blessing came when I was asked to play Marina, the Nurse, under the direction of the brilliant Mike Nichols.

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gatesofember · 6 years ago

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The Privilla: Chapter 6

PJO Arranged Marriage/Royalty AU Part 2

Rating: G | Pairing: Solangelo

Prev | Next | AU directory | Read it on AO3 (Recommended) | Arranged Marriage AU Masterpage

Summary: Almost ten years after their first introduction, Will and Prince Nico meet again. But this time, they are no longer children. Will, the illegitimate third son of Duke Apollo, has had a few prospective suitors, but none of the offers have been as lucrative as his family has hoped. Prince Nico has had his fair share of suitors, as well; with the pressure of being heir to the throne of a kingdom in economic turmoil, Nico is expected to marry for profit and security. However, his icy personality has driven many impatient suitors away. The two young men may prove to be exactly what the other needs.

It was early the next morning after they had eaten when Nico took Will back to the Palatium de Divitae. Nico decided to ride there on horseback rather than take a carriage, in part because he liked being outside, but also because that way he could easily slow down and point out things to Will while they were riding, like the lake where he sometimes hunted waterfowl or a hill in the distance where Persephone kept a vineyard. Jules-Albert stayed nearby in case Nico required his service and Reyna accompanied them as a chaperone, but she said little. Asterion went with them, as well, having apparently invited himself along. Asterion tended to follow Nico wherever he went; Nico liked to think that he made Asterion feel safe, and he was glad for the dog’s company.

They took their time traveling to the Palatium de Divitae, so it was already past noon when they arrived. Nico requested a lunch be prepared for them while he took Will to the conservatory. Will offered his arm, which Nico accepted, and then Nico led Will through the lines of trees inside the glass building with Asterion following silently behind them. “My mother enjoys fruit quite a lot, particularly ones that only grow much farther south,” Nico said. “The conservatory was a wedding gift from my father so that she could have those fruits grown here.”

William nodded with interest. Queen Persephone was the daughter of the Duchess of Ceres, which bordered Diana in the Juvian Empire. Many of the fruits they grew came from Ceres.

“We grow oranges, of course,” Nico said. “We will try to grow pineapple next season, and we have tried bananas, but my father despised the taste. However, we are most known for our pomegranates.”

“I have heard of your conservatory, Your Highness,” Will said. “The Queen’s gardens are quite famous.”

“And she is very proud of that,” Nico answered. His mother took a great interest in the gardens, to the point of sometimes attending to them herself. Her hands were not soft like other court ladies. Nico liked that. Lady Maria, Nico’s birth mother and childhood governess, had also had rough hands.

“If you would permit me to make a confession, Your Highness,” Will added. Nico was apprehensive, but nodded. Will lowered his voice to a whisper, as though he was confiding a great secret, and said, “I have never eaten a pomegranate.”

Nico tried to suppress a smile before he laughed, his fingers tightening on Will’s arm. “Then we must remedy that,” he said. “Come, our lunch should be ready by now. I am sure that we will be served a bowl of seeds.”

Nico guided Will out of the conservatory and across the field of white asphodel towards a pavilion where their lunch would be served. Nico liked the asphodel. He went to the field to escape if the palace became too stuffy or he wanted to hide from the world; he felt a special connection to that place. The flowers had been planted in honor of Bianca. Nico had not been there when the field was planted, but when he finally returned to the palace after his long years in the countryside, it was the place that he ran to hide when his mind held too many dark thoughts to bear alone. He would pretend that Bianca was there with him.

In the pavilion, there was a table prepared for them with a platter of small sandwiches and, as Nico had predicted, a bowl of pomegranate seeds. Jules-Albert served their plates before stepping back, and Reyna was near enough to watch without being close enough to distract them. Asterion lay down beside Nico’s seat, quietly waiting for his master.

“I thought I would show you around the Palatium de Divitae after we finish,” Nico said before he picked up a sandwich.

“Yes, I would like that,” Will replied. Nico watched with interest as Will quickly spooned some of the red seeds into his mouth.

“Well?” Nico asked expectantly.

“Very good, Your Highness,” Will said. “Tart, but not unbearably so, and they have a touch of sweetness to balance it.”

“Excellent,” Nico said with a nod. “Pomegranates are among my favorite foods. I am glad you enjoy the fruit from our conservatory.” If Will was going to live with Nico in the Palatium de Divitae, Nico wanted him to be as comfortable as possible. But then, perhaps Will would spend a great deal of his time in Venadica when they married. Either way, Nico did not want Will to dread living near Nico too much.

When they finished the meal, Nico led Will inside the palace, Asterion following behind them, and gave him a brief tour: he showed Will the Hall of Gold (which Will had already seen), the opera house, the drawing rooms and studios of the King and Queen, and Nico’s collection of rooms (which attached to Hazel’s). He heard Hazel in her music room, so he brought Will to investigate. Hazel was playing on the piano with her tutor, and old woman with a sharp face named Alecto, standing close by, but she turned when Nico walked in.

“Brother!” she said happily. “I thought you would be in the Privilla?”

Nico thought Alecto looked a bit irritated by the interruption of her lesson, but she bowed to Nico and greeted him politely.

“I thought I might show Lord William around the palace,” Nico replied. “I brought him here to take him through the conservatory.”

“Good afternoon, Lord William,” Hazel greeted belatedly, rising from her bench and lowering her head respectfully. “I’m glad to see that my brother hasn’t sent you home yet.”

Nico’s face burned in embarrassment. He pursed his lips and glared, and then he saw Alecto raise her hand to her mouth as she gave a fake cough to conceal a short laugh. At least William had the decency to blush, as well.

“Your Highness,” Alecto said to the Princess, as if she sensed the tightly wound cords of Nico’s patience about to snap. “If you would return to the lesson, please. Would you like to play the Allegro we reviewed earlier for His Highness and Lord William?”

“Oh, of course,” Hazel said, sitting back on her bench. She straightened her skirts and shuffled her music sheets until she found the right page, and then she began to play a brisk, lively piece.

His embarrassment cooling, Nico turned to Will and whispered, “My sister is quite talented with the piano and with her paints. She is but eight years of age.”

“That is most impressive, Your Highness,” Will replied. “My tutor tried to teach me to play music at a young age, but I’m sorry to say I have no talent for it, although my brothers and sister are quite skilled. Do you play, Your Highness?”

“Yes,” Nico answered. “Although I suspect Hazel will become much more skilled than I am. I presume that you dance, Lord William?”

Will smiled and ducked his head the way he had so many times before, which Nico thought meant that he was embarrassed or shy. “You taught me to dance, Your Highness,” Will said, a smile playing at his lips. “At my aunt’s inauguration, you asked me to dance, and I fear my nerves caused me to forget everything I knew.”

“Oh?” Nico asked. He did not remember that happening. “What did we dance?”

“It was a country dance, Your Highness. Although, I’m afraid that you abandoned me afterwards in favor of your sister and I was left alone very suddenly.”

It took Nico a moment longer than it should have to realize that the sister Will had referred to was Bianca, not Hazel, and he had a sudden memory of dancing with her that night. Bianca had promised him a dance, but Thalia, Percy, and Jason had kept stealing her away from him, so Nico ended up having to grab her arm quickly after a dance to get her attention. He remembered a flash of messy blond hair, and then a boy approaching him after the dance with Bianca ended, and Nico recalled asking that boy to dance again....

“But then I asked you for another one, did I not?” Nico said.

Will looked delighted. He smiled at Nico widely and said, “You remember, Your Highness?”

“Yes,” Nico answered. “The memory is faint, but I recall that much.”

“You are correct. We danced one more time before I retired to bed. At the end of the night, you had me promise to learn minuets so that we could dance one the next time we met. I did not know when that would be, so I made sure to learn it as soon as I was back in Diana.”

“As you learned Acies?”

Will ducked his head with an embarrassed blush. “I like to believe that I am a bit more successful at the minuet than at Acies, Your Highness.”

“Well, now you must show me,” Nico said, offering Will his hand. “Hazel, would you play us a minuet?” he asked.

Will’s expression was blank when he took Nico’s hand, like he hadn’t expected the offer and didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“Unless you would rather not,” Nico added.

“No, Your Highness, I am honored,” Will said. He turned his eyes downward, once again adopting the bashful expression he made so often.

Nico looked over to see Hazel watching with a wide grin. “Hazel, the minuet,” he reminded. She turned back to the piano quickly, taking the sheets of music that Alecto offered her, and then she spread out the sheets to read before she started to play.

Nico brought Will to the center of the room and they bowed to each other before beginning to dance. Will still looked down shyly rather than into Nico’s eyes when they stepped forward to meet each other’s hands, but his footwork, Nico noted, was not terrible. In fact, it was quite good.

“You’ve gotten better,” Nico remarked.

“You remember that as well?” William asked, raising his eyes to meet Nico’s with an embarrassed smile.

“You were quite bad,” Nico answered. He tried not to laugh, but was unable to suppress a chuckle.

Will blushed as he and Nico stepped around each other, their hands meeting in between them. “But, as I said, I think I was more successful with learning to dance than I was at learning to play Acies, Your Highness.”

“That is true,” Nico answered. “You dance quite well.”

Will lowered his eyes again. “Thank you, Your Highness. For a long time, I practiced very hard in the hopes I might impress you if we ever danced again.”

Nico felt himself blush and he nearly missed a step. “You should not tease, Lord William.”

“I do not, Your Highness, nor do I speak to flatter.”

When William looked back up and met Nico’s eyes, Nico felt his heart flutter for a moment. Will meant it, he realized. He’d learned to dance for Nico. “But I am flattered,” he said honestly.

“Then I shall remind you as often as you like.”

The minuet came to a close before Nico could think of how to respond, and they ended the dance with a bow to each other. What would it be like to marry Will? Would he say things like that to Nico every day? Could Nico really be so fortunate as to have a husband who thought so highly of him?

He was shaken from his thoughts when he realized that Hazel was about to say something embarrassing again, judging by the glee on her face as she watched them. Even Alecto, whose face was always stern, looked surprised.

“Thank you, Hazel, that was lovely. We’ll be on our way now.” He urgently offered Will his arm and hurried him away from his younger sister, lest she say something to cause him further mortification.

“Supper,” he said suddenly, desperate to change the topic. “Supper will be held soon. Would you like to take our meal in the gardens again?” He was not eager to eat with Persephone and Hazel; perhaps Persephone was less likely to embarrass Nico, but not by much.

“Of course, Your Highness,” Will replied. “Whatever pleases you most.”

Nico notified Reyna, who took care of his request, and then Nico led Will outside again while they waited for supper. Will seemed to like being outside, so Nico thought it would be good to bring him there more. For a while, as the sky became orange, they sat side-by-side on a bench in the Queen’s Garden, and Nico listened as Will told him about Diana, about his family, and about Venadica. Asterion had followed them and Will petted and scratched the dog, occasionally speaking to him in a sweet, quiet voice, and Asterion rested his head on Will’s knee. Asterion approved of Will, it seemed.

Nico chuckled at the thought, and Will looked up at him questioningly. “Your Highness?” he asked.

“It is nothing,” Nico answered. “Only I am glad that you like him. He likes you, too.”

They ate in the pavilion again, this time dining by gaslight as the sky grew dark, overlooking the grounds lit only by the warm glow of lanterns in the distance. They looked like stars, Will told him—stars that were close enough to touch.

Nico knew that it was late and he ought to return to the Privilla with Will, but when the meal finished, he found himself saying, “There is another place I would like to take you, if you wouldn’t mind staying out with me a little while longer.”

“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Will answered. “I’d like that very much, Your Highness.”

“Come this way,” Nico said, rising to his feet. He whistled for Asterion to follow—although Asterion probably would have done so anyway. He led Will into the palace and up the grand staircase, and after another flight of stairs, Nico brought them to the Hall of Ouranos.

He heard Will gasp beside him when they entered and Nico felt himself swell with pride at the reaction. The Hall of Ouranos was, in Nico’s opinion, the grandest room in the Palatium de Divitae. Nico also thought it was most beautiful at night.

The hall itself held few pieces of furniture and very little decor. It had the same black marble floors and gold-trimmed walls as the rest of the palace. What made it so amazing was its domed, windowed ceiling that showed a clear view of the sky above them. The sky was dark, deep blue, with a sliver of purple and gold in the distance as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. Nyx had started to dot the sky with stars, filling it with specks of light in her daughter’s absence. Nico sometimes slipped into that hall with Asterion at night when he was unable to sleep, and he’d look at the sky with the dog lying beside him until his mind finally started to calm.

The hall was unlit, as it was hardly used anymore, and it tended to be cold because the glass ceiling and the large size made the room difficult to heat. Nico remembered the days when the room would be full of people in beautiful clothes dancing to music or chatting with a glass of Persephone’s wine in their hand. Such fêtes were uncommon after the disease, and although the room was regularly cleaned, there was a sad, forgotten element to it. Sometimes, Nico felt like he could hear the ghosts of laughter and the echoes of clinking wine glasses.

“It’s unbelievable,” Will said, his voice soft with awe.

“This is one of my favorite rooms,” Nico said. “My sister comes here some days to paint; she likes the lighting. Of course she has a drawing room in her chambers where she paints, as well, but on occasion, she escapes up here.”

“And you, Your Highness?” Will asked. “Why do you come here?”

Nico stared at the dark sky quietly while he thought of how to answer. It was, in part, because he thought the room was beautiful, especially at night, and he loved to look up and see the snow or rain falling from the sky during storms. He recalled sneaking up to the room with Bianca, and they would dance or play at having fights with wooden swords. More than once, Nico and Bianca had fallen asleep up there only to be awoken by the rising sun, then they would hurry back to their shared apartment and hide in their private bedchambers, hoping that no one had noticed their absence.

“I have fond memories here,” Nico finally said, reaching down to pat Asterion when the dog approached him. “And I think it is beautiful. Don’t you?”

“Yes, indeed, Your Highness,” Will replied. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

Why had Nico brought him there? Nico silently mulled over that question while watching Will circle the hall, looking at the glass ceiling in awe. Had he wanted to entertain Will? To impress him? Maybe he’d just wanted to share this room with him. Maybe he’d only wanted a friend.

“Lord William?” Nico said, and Will looked up from the dark marble floor where he’d been examining the starlight reflecting off its shining surface.

“Your Highness?”

“Am I still permitted to call you Will?”

Will’s expression brightened. “Yes, Your Highness. You are welcome to call me whatever pleases you most.”

“And tell me, Will, when do you plan to return to Pluto?”

“I travel to Venadica every summer for my schooling,” Will answered. “Over winter, I continue my studies on my own in Diana. If it pleases you, I am able to alter my plans.”

Nico nodded slowly. “When you are in Diana, may I write to you?”

“Nothing would bring me more joy, Your Highness,” Will said, and Nico could almost believe that he meant it.

Nico examined Will curiously. He could see nothing in his expression or posture to suggest that he was teasing or flattering Nico. Will looked genuinely happy. Nico did not quite understand why, but decided against questioning it. For the time being, Nico would gladly accept his good fortune.

“I would like to continue to meet you, Will,” Nico said, attempting to sound confident and composed. His voice did not waver when he spoke, for which he was glad; it seemed that his tiresome voice and speech lessons had paid off. “I believe that a marriage between us could work well.”

“I am honored,” Will said. “And I would like that very much.”

“My father will begin preparations to formalize the betrothal once we receive approval from you and your family. You will see to it that the Duke of Diana will be in contact?”

“Yes, Your Highness. I will speak to him immediately upon my return home.”

Nico tried for a smile. Will returned it with one of his own bashful smiles, as though he really was happy to receive Nico’s attention. And maybe it was true. It would be a couple years before they were old enough to marry, but Nico felt relieved to know that after all his family’s searching, they had finally found him a husband.

“We should return to the Privilla,” Nico said. “I fear Lady Reyna will have my head if we stay out longer.”

He led Will back down the stairs and found Reyna waiting for them. She did nothing more than raise an eyebrow, having enough tact to wait until later to lecture Nico. The ride back to the Privilla, Nico couldn’t help glancing at Will a few times. When Will glanced back, Nico found himself glad for the darkness because his face grew hot at Will’s smile.

The next morning, when Nico and his family saw Will and Artemis’ party off, Nico found himself at a loss for words. He wasn’t quite sure how to say goodbye, nor how to express his regret that Will had to leave.

“I...I will write to you,” he finally said. “I expect I’ll hear word from your family soon?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Will answered.

“And you will write to notify me of your safe return home?”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

Nico cleared his throat. “Then...I suppose I will wait to hear from you.”

“I will write to you every week, if that is what you desire.”

“It is,” Nico admitted before he could say differently. “Well, then, I...I wish you safe and fast travels.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

Nico wet his lips nervously. “Farewell, Lord William,” he said, adopting a more appropriate address for his suitor in front of so many people. “I hope it will not be long before we meet again.”

“I, as well,” Will answered. “Farewell, Your Highness.”

Nico held out his hand and Will bent to kiss it. When he straightened his posture, he offered Nico one final smile, and then he followed his aunt into the carriage.

Standing alone on the steps of the palace, Nico flexed his fingers while he watched them fade into the distance. He could still feel the heat of Will’s lips on the back of his hand.

#Will solace #solangelo #solangelo fanfiction #solangelo fanfic #Nico di Angelo #arranged marriage AU #solangelo arranged marriage au #pjo Arranged Marriage au #royalty au #pjo royalty au #solangelo royalty au #pjo fanfiction #my fic #trials of apollo #toa #Heroes of Olympus #hoo #pjo #Percy Jackson and the Olympians

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originaldetectivesheep · 4 years ago

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Hell Year In Review - Stuff I Mostly Read With The Page Down Key In 2020

Last year, I rejoiced about positive change that came from reading less churny Gutenbergs and more modern authors, more women, and more authors of color from the library. Then the library closed for most of 6 months starting on 11 March.

I read a monstrous 907 book-shaped things this year, in exceptionally great proportion out of the Gutenberg bucket. There was a LOT of churn there: I started the year with 2666 items after the reload alluded to in last year's post and finished with 1761 after processing 1290. There was a lot of pap. There was a lot of extremely bad pap. But it wasn't all pap, and it wasn't all bad.

By way of illustration: those 907 books broke out into 59 modern/physical books, 13 issues of Strange Horizons (no real need to dissect these), and 835 off the Gutenberg pile. Among moderns, women wrote/contributed to 32/59 (54%), authors of color wrote/contributed to 6/59 (10%), and authors in translation furnished 4/59 (7%). Favorites in this small sample looked like:

Catherine Chung - Forgotten Country Elizabeth J. Church - The Atomic Weight of Love Hal Clement - Iceworld Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell J. M. Coetzee - Waiting For the Barbarians Claire G. Coleman - Terra Nullius Pat Conroy - The Lords of Discipline Anne Corlett - The Space Between the Stars Jennine Capo Crucet - Make Your Home Among Strangers Ivan E. Coyote - One In Every Crowd N. K. Jemisin - The City We Became

This was not a bad batch of books to read this year. But, it's about a third the size of the similar haul from 2019, and the Gutenberg haul was so large and so comprehensive as to get a lot of quality material in with the junk. Of 823 limited-authorship titles from Gutenberg, women wrote or contributed to 111 (13%), a better rate than 2019 overall (despite 10 months of library there vs 0), and though authors of color only contributed 7 books (<1%), the 33 translations and non-English-language books represented 4% of the total, again an advance on last year despite 2019's numbers counting the library. The highlights of the Gutenberg side looked like:

Henri Barbusse - The Inferno Aphra Behn - Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave Lord Byron - Don Juan Willa Cather - The Professor's House Mary Cholmondeley - Red Pottage Kate Chopin - The Awakening Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim Stephen Crane - Wounds in the Rain Ford Madox Ford - No More Parades John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga [The Man of Property / In Chancery / To Let] Mary Gaunt - Kirkham's Find Maxim Gorky - Mother Thea Von Harbou - Metropolis Alexander Harris - Settlers and Convicts E. T. A. Hoffman - The Golden Flower Pot Sarah Orne Jewett - The Country of the Pointed Firs Rudyard Kipling - Kim Sinclair Lewis - Kingsblood Royal David Lindsay - The Haunted Woman Edward Lording - There And Back Kálmán Mikszáth - St. Peter's Umbrella L M Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables Frederick Niven - The Flying Years O. E. Rölvaag - Giants in the Earth May Sinclair - Mary Olivier: A Life Olaf Stapledon - Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Theodor Storm - The Rider on the White Horse H.G. Wells - In The Days Of The Comet H.G. Wells - Mr. Britling Sees It Through H.G. Wells - The War in the Air Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

There are three Nobel laureates (Kipling, Lewis, Galsworthy) in this list, and two more nominees (Wells, Gorky) who didn't make it to the top, versus only one (Coetzee) in the other. This is also not a bad batch of books to read this year; the rebuild last January to get more non-genre stuff made the highs a lot higher. Sturgeon's Law remains true at all scales and throughout history, but when you read 800 fucking Gutenbooks in a year, you’re going to get a bunch of good in with all of the bad.

This does turn kind of into "comfort in sadness", because many of the other 792 limited-authorship Gutenbooks I read in 2020 were utter trash. I read thirteen things from Albert Dorrington stitching like a hundred uncollected short stories into coherent wholes, and all of them were bad. I had ten books from Edward Dyson, and they were all full of bad dialect. I'm almost thirty volumes deep in various pulps from Emile C. Tepperman that are a lot more entertaining than good. Many of Miles Franklin's twelve books on the list were a pain, as were practically all of Stewart Edward White's twelve mixing spiritualism and old California. Virtually all of Warwick Deeping's thirteen very large gurn piles sucked, and the only use of most of the 30 volumes I had to grind up from William Le Queux was to laugh at them. And finally, I suffered through 80 books by Fergus Hume this year, and got so mad that I wrote a Twitter thread to call him out as the worst possible author in the history of the English language.

However, Hume is over. I'm never going to read/need to read him again. And even if I continue not getting over my feud with the library (I really ought to), the routine that I've established allows me to project good things for the next year. I've got eight more from L M Montgomery, Marjorie Bowen is up next in the "large major" slot after Tepperman, and later in the year I should get to Eugene O'Neill, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, and Zane Grey. I'm reading from a limited selection of Dostoevsky on my Kindle right now, and sooner or later should also get to Jonathan Swift, Jules Verne, Mary Shelley (I missed Frankenstein in 2016), Anne Bronte, Herman Melville, Havelock Ellis, George Gissing, and maybe Damon Runyon by this time next year. There are going to be other discoveries like Gaunt, Cholmondeley, and Rölvaag. And yes, I will need to grind through a lot of bad garbage to get to them: but there's still enough good, in all of this, to keep on going.

#meta #criticism #and its probably gonna be another 900 books next year too

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useyourrwords · 6 years ago

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Top Ten Tuesday // Screen Adaptations I LOVED, Ones I NEED & And Ones I NEED NOW – Page to Screen

I’m a lover of screen adaptations

Look we had a run of ones that weren’t…great. But the last few years have more than made up for it!

Honestly, it’s just made me more excited for screen adaptations to come!

The rise of limited series have made it even more possible for the industry to get our favourites right.

I must admit, lately I have become someone who usually even prefers the screen adaptation. But that being said, some of my favourites have been ones I hadn’t even read the book for first!

But I really do think that the watch first, read later thing works for me. If I see a screen adaptation coming out for a book I haven’t read yet, then I’m not someone who rushes out to read the book first.

In fact, I will purposely wait until after I’ve seen the adaptation because nine times out of ten it means I’ll be able to appreciate the adaptation for what it is instead of constantly holding it to the high standards of the book. If I go in relatively blind first than I don’t know what I’m missing. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

So in this post I’m going to be listing five adaptations I have seen and LOVED, Some of which I haven’t even read the books for yet! Shhh, I’ll get to them, five I NEED to happen and how I would want them handled.

And of course it wouldn’t be a Grey Top Ten without some honourable mentions at the end, this time of screen adaptations that are coming but that I’m impatient for and want NOW.

If you would like to buy any of the following books please consider using my Book Depository Affliate link!

Past Top Ten Tuesdays

Top Ten Tuesday // Fave Short Stories and Anthologies – Magical Doors, Radical Women, Villains and the Ultimate Heart Break

Top Ten Tuesday // My Back List Books – I’m Publicly Shaming Myself

Top Ten Tuesday // Audible and Overdrive Are My Lords & Saviors – My Audiobook TBR

Screen Adaptations I LOVED

│To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before│Jenny Han│Screen Adaptation│

Lara Jean: I wrote five letters, so don’t go feeling too special. Peter: You wrote five love letters? Lara Jean: Yeah. Peter: Damn, Covey, you’re a player.

This one is the most recent one I’ve seen and I adored it!

Lara Jean is sweet and adorable and Peter is everything a teen girl could dream of.

I recently read the book in December and I think the movie did it justice.

Also Lana Condor played Lara Jean perfectly. Like every little detail was just right. I loved discovering that after seeing the film because it made me appreciate it even more.

│Big Little Lies│Liane Moriarty│Screen Adaptation│

Madeline: They say it’s good to let your grudges go, but I don’t know, I’m quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet.

Big Little Lies captivated me from the first fucking episode.

This is another one where I saw the adaptation before the book and this is actually one of those times where I couldn’t tell you which one I prefer. Maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve consumed either?

I really loved how the story is told and I was obsessed with it, jamming it down everyone’s throats after I binge watched the show.

I need season 2 like, yesterday!

│Sharp Object│Gillian Flynn│Screen Adaptation│

Amma Crellin: Don’t tell Momma

This limited series made me want to die. But in the good way.

It just—I was not ready in the slightest.

Amy Adams fucking killed it as Camille and deserved all the awards. She’s become one of my favourite actresses because of it.

I’m even willing to possibly watch the Woman in the Window because she’s in it even though the author of book is absolutely a dumpster fire.

Everything about Sharp Objects was a knife to the throat.

I need to read the book SOON!

│Dumplin’│Julie Murphy│Screen Adaptation│

Willowdean: As far as I’m concerned, a swimsuit body is a body with a swimsuit on it.

I cried so much watching this film. Like sobbing, I couldn’t stop.

It was what Sierra Burgess should have been but could never be.

Also it features one of my fave actors Bex Taylor-Klaus and their v. fake teeth.

I haven’t read the book but i probably won’t read it because it doesn’t seem as good as the film.

│Love, Simon│Becky Albertalli│Screen Adaptation│

Emily: As soon as you came out, you said, “Mom, I’m still me.” I need you to hear this: You are still you, Simon. You are still the same son who I love to tease and who your father depends on for just about everything. And you’re the same brother who always complements his sister on her food, even when it sucks. You get to exhale now, Simon.

Hello and welcome to my favourite film, possibly of all time.

I would have sobbed while watching this the first time but I was in a packed theatre so I had to settle for subtly tears. But GOD DAMN IT if that wasn’t the most perfect film.

Okay so it wasn’t perfect, there were some things that weren’t the best BUT we finally got a LGBTQ+ film where nobody fucking dies. That’s a win for me.

I just loved it so much I bought like the collector’s edition of the DVD it’s ultraray or something, I have no idea but I sobbed through the whole re-watch.

It’s just the perfect movie for when you’re sad and need cheering up.

Screen Adaptations I NEED

│Sadie│Courtney Summers│Limited Series│

I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it’s there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight.

So everyone knows this book has become one of the best audiobooks of all time. I mean, I haven’t listened to is yet but I have zero doubts.

But I think Sadie would also make the perfect limited series, think Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects.

Perfection.

│The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo│Taylor Jenkins Reid│Limited Series│

“Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don’t do that.”

I cried when I finished the book and had to come to terms with the fact Evelyn Hugo isn’t a real fucking person because she should be and Reid made her feel realer than any person I actually know.

Also I changed my middle name to Evelyn to honour her.

This would make an amazing limited series! Can you tell I love limited series yet?

Honestly I just want to be one step closer to make Evelyn as real of a person as possible.

Also the actress MUST be queer and Cuban. I won’t have it any other way.

Basically I just want the adaptation Jamieson @ Jamishelves described.

│Dangerous Girls│Abigail Haas│Film│

Wouldn’t we all look guilty, if someone searched hard enough?

This book was so un-put-downable I could scream.

Honestly it was one of my favourite reads for 2018 and I read a lot of good books last year.

I would love it to be filmed documentary style. I think it would be really cool to do it that way as if it’s a real crime being covered.

I don’t know, I just want it.

│Genuine Fraud│E. Lockhart│Film│

For anyone who has been taught that good equals small and silent, here is my heart with all its ugly tangles and splendid fury.

Jule is honestly a fucking monster and I need to see her on my screen.

I don’t know how I want it, I just know I need it.

│All For The Game│Nora Sakavic│Netflix Series│

“Fight because you don’t know how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose.”

My co-worker and I have gone over what we want from this screen adaptation so many times and it includes a Netflix series, Troye Sivan and Alison and Renee need to be canon and NO WHITE WASHING!

But also I’m in love with Jamieson’s @ Jamishelves casting.

Honourable Mentions

Screen Adaptations I Need NOW

│The Rook│Daniel O’Malley│Stan Series│

“You look like Cinderella,” said Val in awe. “Yeah, if she’d been into bondage and had Christian Dior for a godmother.”

I was scrolling through the Stan (Australian streaming service) Facebook page, when I saw a trailer for a new series they have coming out called The Rook.

Boy, was I surprised to find out that one of the very first books I ever read because of Goodreads, specifically because of Emily May’s review, was being made into a screen adaptation.

I loved the plot and the world and our main character.

It was whip smart and magical and thrilling. It was such a great genre cross-over and I loved every second of it.

I can’t wait for the series and I am in physical pain because they haven’t actually announced a release date yet. I cry.

Writing this post made me want to reread it, so I read it in April for a readathon!

│Shades of Magic│V.E. Schwab│Film Rights Sold│

“I apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself.” “I apologize for shooting you in the leg.” said Lila. “I was myself entirely.”

My love for this series will never die, and neither will my mum’s.

After all, she took Lila’s name as her own middle name when she changed her name earlier this year.

We basically have matching literary middle names now because you can’t tell me that Lila and Evelyn aren’t the most Slytherin women you’ll ever read.

I feel like I’ve been waiting for this screen adaptation forever and I’ll probably still be waiting for it forever.

But I don’t care because there is hope and I need it.

Also I want Piera Forde as Lila Bard.

│Grishaverse│Shadow & Bone│Six of Crows│Leigh Bardugo│Netflix Series│

“When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing.”

I’m so excited I could scream!!!!

I mean I haven’t read the Shadow & Bone series yet but I have read Six of Crows like every other person and their dog.

Things I want;

No white-washing

No straight-washing

And give us FAT NINA, you cowards. Barbie Ferreira, preferably.

Dark

V. v. dark

Also check out Jamieson’s @ Jamishelves post on this.

│The Raven Cycle│Maggie Steifvater│Series Rights Sold│

“Way back before you were born, Calla and Persephone and I were messing around with things we probably shouldn’t have been messing around with—” “Drugs?” “Rituals. Are you messing around with drugs?” “No. But maybe rituals.” “Drugs might be better.” “I’m not interested in them. Their effects are proven— where’s the fun in that? Tell me more.”

I’m currently reading this series and it’s just so brilliant.

It has to be big on characters! yes, the world is magical and incredible but the characters should always be first.

Also I wanna see lots of the psychics because they’re fucking funny and wise and honestly I just need Persephone and her whimsy self.

The relationship dynamics between all the members of the Gansey Gang are important. Don’t fuck with it. Any of it.

Past Top 5 Tuesdays

Top 5 Tuesday // Books I Would Save In A Fire – Fuck Everything Else, Let Me Save My Books…And Cat

Top 5 Tuesday // Incredible Introductions – An Excuse to Share More Quotes

Top 5 Tuesday // Character Driven Books – The Books with My favourite Monsters

I have thought about these far too much

What screen adaptations have you loved? What ones have you hated? What ones do you want to see? Which books did you want to never be touched by Hollywood at all?

│Blog│Goodreads│Instagram│Twitter│Tumblr│

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#my blog #books #grey writes

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lesbianrewrites · 8 years ago

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Blood of Olympus - Chapter 45

*disclaimer* This is a project done for fun, and none of these characters/works belong to me. I do not claim to own any of the material on this page. This is a Lesbian edit of The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan. Chapters will be posted every day at 10am EST. Google doc version can be found here. The chapter can also be found under the cut. Enjoy!

ABOUT FIVE MILES EAST OF CAMP, a black SUV was parked on the beach.

They tied up the boat at a private dock. Nicola helped Dakota and Leila haul Michael Kahale ashore. The big guy was still only half-conscious, mumbling what Nicola assumed were football calls: ‘Red twelve. Right thirty-one. Hike.’ Then he giggled uncontrollably.

‘We’ll leave him here,’ Leila said. ‘Just don’t bind him. Poor guy …’

‘What about the car?’ Dakota asked. ‘The keys are in the glove compartment, but, uh, can you drive?’

Leila frowned. ‘I thought you could drive. Aren’t you seventeen?’

‘I never learned!’ Dakota said. ‘I was busy.’

‘I’ve got it covered,’ Nicola promised.

They both looked at her.

‘You’re, like, fourteen,’ Leila said.

Nicola enjoyed how nervous the Romans acted around her, even though they were older and bigger and more experienced fighters. ‘I didn’t say I would be behind the wheel.’

She knelt and placed her hand on the ground. She felt the nearest graves, the bones of forgotten humans buried and scattered. She searched deeper, extending her senses into the Underworld. ‘Jules-Albert. Let’s go.’

The ground split. A zombie in a ragged nineteenth-century motoring outfit clawed his way to the surface. Leila stepped back. Dakota screamed like a kindergartner.

‘What the hell is that?’ Dakota protested.

‘This is my driver,’ Nicola said. ‘Jules-Albert finished first in the Paris–Rouen motorcar race back in 1895, but he wasn’t awarded the prize because his steam car used a stoker.’

Leila stared at him. ‘What are you even talking about?’

‘He’s a restless soul, always looking for another chance to drive,’ Nicola said. ‘The last few years, he’s been my driver whenever I need one.’

‘You have a zombie chauffeur,’ Leila said.

‘I call shotgun.’ Nicola got in on the passenger’s side. Reluctantly, the Romans climbed in the back.

One thing about Jules-Albert: he never got emotional. He could sit in crosstown traffic all day without losing his patience. He was immune to road rage. He could even drive straight up to an encampment of wild centaurs and navigate through them without getting nervous.

The centaurs were like nothing Nicola had ever seen. They had back ends like palominos, tattoos all over their hairy arms and chests, and bullish horns protruding from their foreheads. Nicola doubted they could blend in with humans as easily as Chiron did.

At least two hundred were sparring restlessly with swords and spears, or roasting animal carcasses over open fires (carnivorous centaurs … the idea made Nicola shudder). Their camp spilled across the farm road that meandered around Camp Half-Blood’s southeast perimeter.

The SUV nudged its way through, honking when necessary. Occasionally a centaur glared through the driver’s side window, saw the zombie driver and backed away in shock.

‘Pluto’s pauldrons,’ Dakota muttered. ‘Even more centaurs arrived overnight.’

‘Don’t make eye contact,’ Leila warned. ‘They take that as a challenge for a duel to the death.’

Nicola stared straight ahead as the SUV pushed through. Her heart was pounding, but she wasn’t scared. She was angry. Octavian had surrounded Camp Half-Blood with monsters.

Sure, Nicola had mixed emotions about the camp. She’d felt rejected there, out of place, unwanted and unloved … but now that it was on the verge of destruction, she realized how much it meant to her. This was the last place Bianca and she had shared as a home – the only place they’d ever felt safe, even if only temporarily.

They rounded a bend in the road and Nicola’s fists clenched. More monsters … hundreds more. Dog-headed men prowled in packs, their poleaxes gleaming in the light of campfires. Beyond that milled a tribe of two-headed men dressed in rags and blankets like homeless guys, armed with a haphazard collection of slings, clubs and metal pipes.

‘Octavian is an idiot,’ Nicola hissed. ‘He thinks he can control these creatures?’

‘They just kept showing up,’ Leila said. ‘Before we knew it … well, look.’

The legion was arrayed at the base of Half-Blood Hill, its five cohorts in perfect order, its standards bright and proud. Giant eagles circled overhead. The siege weapons – six golden onagers the size of houses – were arrayed behind in a loose semicircle, three on each flank. But, for all its impressive discipline, the Twelfth Legion looked pitifully small, a splotch of demigod valour in a sea of ravenous monsters.

Nicola wished she still had the sceptre of Diocletian, but she doubted a legion of dead warriors would make a dent in this army. Even the Argo II couldn’t do much against this kind of strength.

‘I have to disable the onagers,’ Nicola said. ‘We don’t have much time.’

‘You’ll never get close to them,’ Leila warned. ‘Even if we get the entire Fourth and Fifth Cohorts to follow us, the other cohorts will try to stop us. And those siege weapons are manned by Octavian’s most loyal followers.’

‘We won’t get close by force,’ Nicola agreed. ‘But alone I can do it. Dakota, Leila – Jules-Albert will drive you to the legion lines. Get out, talk to your troops, convince them to follow your lead. I’ll need a distraction.’

Dakota frowned. ‘All right, but I’m not hurting any of my fellow legionnaires.’

‘No one’s asking you to,’ Nicola growled. ‘But if we don’t stop this war the entire legion will be wiped out. You said the monster tribes take insult easily?’

‘Yes,’ Dakota said. ‘I mean, for instance, you make any comment to those two-headed guys about the way they smell and … oh.’ He grinned. ‘If we started a brawl, by accident of course …’

‘I’ll be counting on you,’ Nicola said.

Leila frowned. ‘But how will you –’

‘I’m going dark,’ Nicola said. And she faded into the shadows.

She thought she was prepared.

She wasn’t.

Even after three days of rest and the wondrous healing properties of Coach Hedge’s gooey brown gunk, Nicola started to dissolve the moment she shadow-jumped.

Her limbs turned to vapour. Cold seeped into her chest. Voices of spirits whispered in her ears: Help us. Remember us. Join us.

She hadn’t realized how much she had relied on Reyna. Without her strength, she felt as weak as a newborn colt, wobbling dangerously, ready to fall at every step.

No, she told herself. I am Nicola di Angelo, daughter of Hades. I control the shadows. They do not control me.

She stumbled back into the mortal world at the crest of Half-Blood Hill.

She fell to her knees, hugging Thalia’s pine tree for support. The Golden Fleece was no longer in its branches. The guardian dragon was gone. Perhaps they’d been moved to a safer spot with the battle so close. Nicola wasn’t sure. But, looking down at the Roman forces arrayed outside the valley, her spirits wavered.

The nearest onager was a hundred yards downhill, encircled in spiked trenches and guarded by a dozen demigods. The machine was primed, ready to fire. Its huge sling cupped a projectile the size of a Honda Civic, glowing with flecks of gold.

With icy certainty, Nicola realized what Octavian was up to. The projectile was a mixture of incendiaries and Imperial gold. Even a small amount of Imperial gold could be incredibly volatile. Exposed to too much heat or pressure, the stuff would explode with devastating impact, and of course it was deadly to demigods as well as monsters. If that onager scored a hit on Camp Half-Blood, anything in the blast zone would be annihilated – vaporized by the heat, or disintegrated by the shrapnel. And the Romans had six onagers, all stocked with piles of ammunition.

‘Evil,’ Nicola said. ‘This is evil.’

She tried to think. Dawn was breaking. She couldn’t possibly take down all six weapons before the attack began, even if she found the strength to shadow-travel that many times. If she managed it once more, it would be a miracle.

She spotted the Roman command tent – behind and to the left of the legion. Octavian would probably be there, enjoying breakfast at a safe distance from the fighting. He wouldn’t lead his troops into battle. The little scumbag would hope to destroy the Greek camp from a distance, wait for the flames to die down, then march in unopposed.

Nicola’s throat constricted with hate. She concentrated on that tent, envisioning her next jump. If she could assassinate Octavian, that might solve the problem. The order to attack might never be given. Nicola was about to attempt it when a voice behind her said, ‘Nicola?’

She spun, her sword instantly in her hand, and almost decapitated Jill Solace.

‘Put that down!’ Jill hissed. ‘What are you doing here?’

Nicola was dumbstruck. Jill and two other campers were crouched in the grass, binoculars around their necks and daggers at their side. They wore black jeans and T-shirts, with black grease paint on their faces like commandos.

‘Me?’ Nicola asked. ‘What are you doing? Getting yourselves killed?’

Jill scowled. ‘Hey, we’re scouting the enemy. We took precautions.’

‘You dressed in black,’ Nicola noted, ‘with the sun coming up. You painted your face but didn’t cover that mop of blond hair. You might as well be waving a yellow flag.’

Jill’s ears reddened. ‘Lou Ellen wrapped some Mist around us, too.’

‘Hi.’ The girl next to her wriggled her fingers. She looked a little flustered. ‘You’re Nicola, right? I’ve heard a lot about you. And this is Cecil from Hermes cabin.’

Nicola knelt next to them. ‘Did Coach Hedge make it to camp?’

Lou Ellen giggled nervously. ‘Did he ever.’

Jill elbowed her. ‘Yeah. Hedge is fine. He made it just in time for the baby’s birth.’

‘The baby!’ Nicola grinned, which hurt her face muscles. She wasn’t used to making that expression. ‘Mellie and the kid are all right?’

‘Fine. A very cute little satyr boy.’ Jill shuddered. ‘But I delivered it. Have you ever delivered a baby?’

‘Um, no.’

‘I had to get some fresh air. That’s why I volunteered for this mission. Gods of Olympus, my hands are still shaking. See?’

She took Nicola’s hand, which sent an electric current down Nicola’s spine. She quickly withdrew. ‘Whatever,’ she snapped. ‘We don’t have time for chitchat. The Romans are attacking at dawn and I’ve got to –’

‘We know,’ Jill said. ‘But, if you’re planning to shadow-travel to that command tent, forget it.’

Nicola glared at her. ‘Excuse me?’

She expected Jill to flinch or look away. Most people did. But Jill’s blue eyes stayed fixed on hers – annoyingly determined. ‘Coach Hedge told me all about your shadow-travel. You can’t try that again.’

‘I just did try it again, Solace. I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not. I’m a healer. I could feel the darkness in your hand as soon as I touched it. Even if you made it to that tent, you’d be in no shape to fight. But you wouldn’t make it. One more slip, and you won’t come back. You are not shadow-travelling. Doctor’s orders.’

‘The camp is about to be destroyed –’

‘And we’ll stop the Romans,’ Jill said. ‘But we’ll do it our way. Lou Ellen will control the Mist. We’ll sneak around, do as much damage as we can to those onagers. But no shadow-travel.’

‘But –’

‘No.’

Lou Ellen’s and Cecil’s heads swivelled back and forth like they were watching a really intense tennis match.

Nicola sighed in exasperation. She hated working with other people. They were always cramping her style, making her uncomfortable. And Jill Solace … Nicola revised her impression of the daughter of Apollo. She’d always thought of Jill as easygoing and laid back. Apparently she could also be stubborn and aggravating.

Nicola gazed down at Camp Half-Blood, where the rest of the Greeks were preparing for war. Past the troops and ballistae, the canoe lake glittered pink in the first light of dawn. Nicola remembered the first time she’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood, crash-landing in Apollo’s sun car, which had been converted into a fiery school bus.

She remembered Apollo, smiling and tanned and completely cool in his shades.

Thalia had said, He’s hot.

He’s the sun god, Penny replied.

That’s not what I meant.

Why was Nicola thinking about that now? The random memory irritated her, made her feel jittery.

She had arrived at Camp Half-Blood thanks to Apollo. Now, on what would likely be her last day at camp, she was stuck with a daughter of Apollo.

‘Whatever,’ Nicola said. ‘But we have to hurry. And you’ll follow my lead.’

‘Fine,’ Jill said. ‘Just don’t ask me to deliver any more satyr babies and we’ll get along great.’

#heroes of olympus #hoo #lesbians of olymous #lesbian #lesbiansafe #gay #lgbt #lgbtq #sapphic #wlw #lesbian rewrites #lesbian rewrite project #the blood of olympus

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d-and-s-are-bord-blog · 5 years ago

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NIGHTMARE ALLEY [1947]

WATCH ONLINE >> Nightmare Alley [1947] www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F9A4C226B31C2373 ****

Nightmare Alley [1947] @ American Film Institute Production Date: 19 May–late Jul 1947; addl scenes early Oct 1947 Premiere Information: New York opening: 9 Oct 1947 >> DETAILED NOTES SECTION >> EXTENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=… *************************************************************************************

NIGHTMARE ALLEY By WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM New York: Rinehart, 1946 MOVIE Tie-In Edition: Triangle Books, 1947 N.Y.: Signet Books, 1949 #738 – Cover By James Avati N.Y.R.B.: 2110

*ALL* Editions – Including KINDLE www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Alley-William-Lindsay-Gresham/dp… AND www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Gresham&tn=… AND www.goodreads.com/book/show/548019.Nightmare_Alley *************

MOVIE Tie-In Edition: Triangle Books, 1947 www.amazon.com/Nightmare-alley-William-Lindsay-Gresham/dp… ****

NEW Edition (New York Review Books, 2110): Nightmare Alley By William Lindsay Gresham, introduction by Nick Tosches – *Links* to buy www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/nightmare-alley/ AND www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781590173480 ****

Cult classic ‘Nightmare Alley’ resurfaces more macabre than ever Baltimore-born writer William Lindsay Gresham could be seen as an heir to Edgar Allan Poe By Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun – [email protected] articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-04-16/services/bs-ae-night…

" It’s time for Baltimore to claim William Lindsay Gresham as one of the city’s literary native sons and a proper heir to Edgar Allan Poe — and not just because he was born here in 1909. He fits the funk-art aspect of this town as well as James M. Cain or John Waters…

…"Nightmare Alley" is about a geek — but the word means something vastly different in the carnival of this novel than it does in teen comedies, where it serves as a synonym for "nerd. " For the denizens of Gresham’s not-so-greatest show on earth, the geek is, in Tosches’ words, "a drunkard driven so low that he would bite the heads off chickens and snakes just to get the booze he needed."

Gresham first heard about this kind of geek when he was 29 years old, waiting to return to the U.S. after defending the Republic in the Spanish civil war. The story connected so deeply with Gresham’s internal agony that he said, "to get rid of it, I had to write it out."…

He later described the novel’s gestation as "years of analysis, editorial work, and the strain of children in small rooms." He alleviated anxieties with liquor — and became an alcoholic. In the middle of this chaos, he wrote a fictional chart of the lowest depths of drunkenness that also included, in Tosches’ estimation, "the most viciously evil psychologist in the history of literature." Along the way, Gresham managed to debunk feel-good spiritualism and pseudo-paranormal trickery. But the book isn’t an Upton Sinclair-like expose. It’s a lowdown American tragedy…

Tosches, who has been researching Gresham’s life on and off for ten years, says over the phone from New York that he’s clearer on the novel’s roots than he is on Gresham’s. He hasn’t located a marriage certificate for Gresham’s mother and father, "and the Maryland State Archives has stated categorically there isn’t one for them." He knows Gresham was born on McCulloh Street and that his family moved to Fall River, Mass., when he was 7, and then to New York City. "But even though he left Baltimore at an early age, he claimed that the strongest influence on his life was his mother’s mother, Amanda, whose family, the Lindsays, came from Snow Hill, and who embodied, at least to him, the spirit of the antebellum South," says Tosches. (The Greshams came from the Piney Neck area of Kent County.)..

Everything in the book emerges from observation and authentic obsession. "He had a wonderfully perverse mind," recalls his last agent, the legendary Carl Brandt. "I remember with great fondness and amusement that he took me out to lunch once with the Witch Doctor’s Club, a group of magicians who would meet, as I remember, monthly, in a hardly glamorous restaurant." Brandt’s father had been Gresham’s magazine agent, and Brandt thinks the drying-up of the once-lucrative magazine-fiction market partly contributed to Gresham’s growing despair.

In the end, Gresham shared Stan Carlisle’s nightmare vision of life as a dark alley, "the buildings vacant and menacing on either side," and a light he couldn’t reach at the end of it, with "something behind him, close behind him, getting closer until he woke up trembling." Tosches found "a bizarre letter" Gresham wrote a few years before his suicide. "In it he wrote: ‘Stan is the author.’ "… articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-04-16/services/bs-ae-night… ****

REVIEW By Michael Dirda @ washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/…

" While I’ve known for a long time that William Lindsay Gresham’s "Nightmare Alley" (1946) was an established classic of noir fiction, I was utterly unprepared for its raw, Dostoevskian power. Why isn’t this book on reading lists with Nathanael West’s "Miss Lonelyhearts" and Albert Camus’ "The Stranger"? It’s not often that a novel leaves a weathered and jaded reviewer like myself utterly flattened, but this one did…

In the opening pages, set in the dilapidated Ten-in-One "carny," handsome blond Stan Carlisle stares at a geek, a supposed wild man who bites the heads off live chickens and drinks their blood. Stan, we soon learn, has been working as a magician and sleight-of-hand artist, but he’s got dreams about the big time…

Throughout these early pages, the carny atmosphere is redolent of sweat, dust, alcohol and pent-up desire. While sex in "Nightmare Alley" is never graphically described, it is always strikingly perverse or distinctly sadomasochistic…

Like many good artists (and con artists), Gresham isn’t locked into a single style: He can swiftly modulate from the colorfully vulgar conversation of the carnies to their smooth, stage-show patter, from the professional lingo of sheriffs, psychologists and wealthy businessmen to a drunk’s hallucinatory stream of consciousness…

Gresham lived a colorful if troubled life. According to the biographical note to this edition, he "lost himself in a maze of what proved to be dead-ends for him, from Marxism to psychoanalysis to Christianity to Alcoholics Anonymous to Rinzai Zen Buddhism." All these contribute to the earthy richness of "Nightmare Alley." ..

Certainly, Gresham’s book chronicles a truly horrific descent into the abyss. Yet it’s more than just a steamy noir classic. As a portrait of the human condition, "Nightmare Alley" is a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece…" www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/…

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

The Book You Have to Read: “Nightmare Alley,” by William Lindsay Gresham The Rap Sheet

" If noir is the stuff of nightmares–you know what I mean, the kind in which (according to the popular conference definition of the genre) you’re fucked from page one–then a one-off, nearly forgotten classic called Nightmare Alley is surely the biggest freak show of them all…

…Gresham’s book is sumptuous, rich, redolent, and literary. Fused with a classically tragic structure, the plot and characters roil and roll in your head, guests who will never leave. In some ways, it’s a bitter, cynical take on the Horatio Alger myth, a commentary on the Americans America left behind…

…In 1947, Nightmare Alley was fortunate enough to be made into one of the greatest of all film noirs. Starring a terrific Tyrone Power (if you don’t think he could act, you’re in for a surprise) and a strong supporting cast which included the lovely ingénue Colleen Gray, Joan Blondell, and noir stalwarts Mike Mazurki and Helen Walker, the movie is available on DVD. Rent it soon and often, or better yet buy a copy. With a crackling good script by Jules Furthman (The Shanghai Gesture, The Big Sleep), and atmospherically directed by Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel, The Old Maid–we can only wish he’d been given more crime films), Nightmare Alley is a rare example of a movie almost as good as its source material…" therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/11/book-you-have-to-read-ni… *************************************************

Carnival of lost souls: Nightmare Alley REVIEW By JB @ thephantomcountry

Nightmare Alley covers a lot of territory, both psychologically and geographically, crossing the US by truck, train, car, and on foot until Stan’s world seems not larger but smaller, shrinking to a blackened point. His carnival experience comes full circle, like the embrace of a family whose door always remains forbiddingly open, and some of Gresham’s finest passages evoke for us this family on the move, seductive and grotesque and leaving only cavities in its wake: “It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns—lights and noise and a chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild-man who fondles those rep-tiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving the trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice-cream spoons to show where it had been.” thephantomcountry.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html

William Lindsay Gresham (August 20, 1909–September 14, 1962) @ Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lindsay_Gresham AND en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley *******************************

Fox Studio Classics – Film Noir – Nightmare Alley – Point Of View williamlindsaygresham.com/

The film Nightmare Alley laid in copyright limbo for over fifty years, a struggle between the estates of producer George Jessel, author W.L. Gresham and the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. In that time, its cult status continued to grow. Not just from the rarity of its screenings on television and at film festivals, but from the later suicides of the book’s author and the movie’s director, and its remarkably grim, bold, and disturbing look at hucksterism and its milieu.

It was 1946 and Tyrone Power, Fox’s leading male star, had returned from service in World War II. From an acting family and a stage background, he had grown tired of the empty “pretty boy” image that had made him a matinee idol. He wanted a different role. One that would showcase his range and depth and change the public’s (and industry’s) perception of him from a toothpaste ad to a serious actor. He had leaned toward that end with his first post-war duty role by playing Larry Darrell in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge.

Power leveraged his past success (and the considerable money he made for the studio) to make Nightmare Alley his prestige project. Studio Head Daryl F. Zanuck was against it from the start but he owed Power gratitude and a bit of artistic license so he green-lighted the film. Ultimately, Zanuck’s instincts would prove correct (as they so often did). The film failed miserably at the box office and Power ended up returning to the adventurous, swashbuckling roles that had made him famous. Interestingly, many of 20th Century Fox’s most unique and enduring pictures were made in this vein, by a proven film artist’s passionate plea and Zanuck’s begrudging nod.

War weary audiences of the late ’40s were not ready for it. Although film noir was seeping into the mainstream, an “A” picture starring the dashing and overwhelmingly handsome Tyrone Power as a greedy, manipulative charlatan was too much for them. Adding to this shock was the story, adapted from a novel immersed in the sleazy world of carny, portraying the darker realities of alcoholism, marital infidelity, religion, spiritualism and ambition by an author who was a known communist, drunkard and wife beater. williamlindsaygresham.com/ ******************************

BOOKS INTO FILM: Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham reviewed by Jim Hitt www.booksintofilms.straitjacketsmagazine.com/support-file…

" In the world of noir novels, Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham stands apart as a totally originally and innovative piece of literature. As in most noir works, the protagonist Stan Carlisle is a flawed individual, and the world in which he lives is a dark world where predator and prey become one. But Gresham’s world is not the world of Cornell Woolrich where the events rush relentlessly toward the climax. On the contrary, the events in Nightmare Alley unfold in at a slower, more deliberate pace, and the construction of the novel is closer to William Faulkner than Cornell Woolrich…

…William Lindsay Gresham wrote only one more novel, the equally bleak Limbo Tower (1949) about Asa Kimball and other men slowly dying of fear, depression, and tuberculosis in hospital. He then fought his own battles against alcohol. His second wife Joy divorced him and taking their two sons, moved to England where she later married C. S. Lewis. Their relationship became the basis for the stage play and film Shadowlands . When in 1962 Gresham discovered he had cancer, he checked into the run-down Dixie Hotel, registering as ‘Asa Kimball,’ and took his own life…

…Just before he died, Gresham, reflecting on his life, told a fellow veteran from Spain, "I sometimes think that if I have any real talent it is not literary but is a sheer talent for survival. I have survived three busted marriages, losing my boys, war, tuberculosis, Marxism, alcoholism, neurosis and years of freelance writing. Just too mean and ornery to kill, I guess."…

…Print quality : An absolutely gorgeous print. I doubt it looked this good in the theaters when it was first released.

Sound : Sharp and clear.

Extras : A theatrical trailer that appears spliced together from various scenes rather than a true trailer. Also a commentary by film historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. The commentary sounds more like a conversation between two knowledgeable experts rather than a straight commentary, and this casual approach works very well. Their comments are insightful if not exactly spirited…

Summary : A terrific film noir, one of the best. Off beat in the sense that it foregoes crimes and violence, which is at the center of most noir films. The characters are full of life and always interesting. Only the part of Molly rings a bit false, especially considering the ill-advised end, which does little to affect the gritty and honest movie. Time has vindicated Tyrone Power’s faith in this material.

Grade: A- www.booksintofilms.straitjacketsmagazine.com/support-file… *********************************************************************

Nightmare Alley: Faustian Carnival Noir: The rise and fall: From Divinity to Geek REVIEW By monstergirl @ The Last Drive In MANY Dozens of Screencaps monstergirl.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/nightmare-alleyfaust… *****************

Nightmare Alley (film and stage musical) Understanding Screenwriting #46 BY TOM STEMPEL @ slantmagazine.com

The best article on Nightmare Alley is by Clive T. Miller and appears in the 1975 book "Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System"… www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/05/understanding-screenw… ************************************************************

Mister, I was made for it A region 2 DVD review of NIGHTMARE ALLEY by Slarek www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/n/nightmare_alley.html

SUMMARY Let’s not sod about, Nightmare Alley is a terrific film noir, a joyously dark story of a destructive and ultimately self-destructive ambition in which just about everyone is attempting to manipulate others for their own ends. It’s cult status was built in part on its long term unavailability, but can now continue on the back of the film’s cinematic strengths, which are considerable.

Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label does the film proud, with a superb transfer and some very worthwhile extras. Noir fans should run to get their hands on it. " www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/n/nightmare_alley.html ******************************************************

William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley Tarot: Carnival Trumps Tarot Hermeneutics: Exploring How We Create Meaning with Tarot

William Lindsay Gresham, Joy Davidman Gresham (poetry pseudonym: "Joy Brown"), and C.S. Lewis

***UNUSUAL***, Detailed, Worthwhile tarothermeneutics.com/tarotliterature/nightmarealley.html *****************************************************

LISTEN >> Naxos Audiobooks "Nightmare Alley" Read by : Adam Sims ISBN: 1843794829 ISBN-13: 9781843794820 Format: CD – Search for other formats www.audiobooksdirect.com.au/William-Lindsay-Gresham/Night… ***********************************************

GRAPHIC NOVEL [= Comic Books for Literary types] Nightmare Alley: Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of the William Lindsay Gresham novel *Links* to Buy >> www.indiebound.org/book/9781560975113?aff=sfnybal

"…Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of Nightmare Alley is at least as successful as its predecessor versions. The artwork is black and white; sometimes cartoony, sometimes realistic. Close-up character studies alternate with splash pages and occasional landscape shots so well done that they resemble woodcuts. Hernandez’s story-line follows Gresham’s novel closely; I don’t recall any major scenes or sequences being left out. He does not stint on quoting Gresham’s dialogue; his word balloons are as packed as any I have ever seen. The story of Stan Carlyle’s rise and fall is as compelling in graphic novel form as it was in earlier versions.

Nightmare Alley is an important work of American crime fiction; it is perhaps unique in that memorable versions of the story are now available in three different media." www.crimeculture.com/21stC/fried.html **************************************

Gresham, William Lindsay (1909-1962) | Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections archon.wheaton.edu/index.php?p=creators/creator&id=77

Location: Archon Send Email | Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections archon.wheaton.edu/index.php?p=core/contact&f=email&a… ****************************************************

Posted by mhdantholz on 2011-02-20 12:09:24

Tagged: , NIGHTMARE , ALLEY , [1947]

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itsiotrecords-blog · 7 years ago

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Looking to get a little spooked? Has nothing given you eerie goosebumps or chills up the back of your spine in the recent past? Well buckle up, sports; we’ve got some creepy things to share with you that might just knock your socks off and keep you up tonight. The scariest things in this world aren’t always the weird and the unknown as many philosophers believe them to be. Actually, some of the scariest stuff we know of are the things that seem realistic, familiar, and believable. And what could be more familiar than Wikipedia? The supposed modern-day font of all human knowledge contains endless pages and stories of human documentation — there are bound to be some really iffy, freaky, and downright creepy things in there. We dug into the archives of Wikipedia to look for the creepiest stuff we could find. After discarding plenty of unverified, unbacked, unchecked, and uninteresting pages, we found for you some of the most intensely creepy pages that exist on the site. This stuff is real, it’s supported by evidence, and it’s been fact checked. Even the things you’ll read about that seem supernatural, that perhaps seem extraterrestrial or otherworldly, those things are still real. No fiction here, kids — get ready for the worst. Before we get started, we’d like to thank Wikipedia for their wealth of messed up material — we had plenty to work with. Here are fifteen of the creepiest Wikipedia pages you have to never come across.

#1 Dyatlov Pass Incident In the northern Ural Mountains located in western Russia, there have been numerous odd occurrences, but none as interesting as the incident in 1959 resulting in the deaths of nine hikers. No one survived the incident, so we can only speculate as to what happened in the middle of the night that caused the hikers to tear apart their tents in attempts to flee, meanwhile wearing insufficient clothing to survive the near Arctic landscape around them. One body was found buried in the snow, face down; another had a fractured skull; another had severe brain damage, though there was seemingly no strain inflicted on the skull; another was MISSING HER TONGUE AND EYEBALLS. What on Earth could have happened to have caused all of this? To this day, nobody knows. Nothing quite so terrifying has happened there since, though it’s considered a dangerous area reserved only for highly experienced and adventurous hikers.

#2 Genie, the Feral Baby This was, at least, the popularized label for this little girl. In reality, Genie was the name of a child born into an incredibly and horrifyingly abusive household. As a baby, her father decided that she must be severely mentally retarded. As time passed, he grew to hate her more and more, and at about a year and a half old, he isolated her to her room to keep from interacting with her. There, she was either tethered to a toilet or tied down in a crib to prevent her from escaping. For about a decade, this persisted — until the Los Angeles child welfare authorities caught word in 1970. At this point, the thirteen-year-old had no verbal skills, could not communicate personal needs, and had no concept of how to interact with other humans. Abnormal, personality, and behavioral psychologists spent the following decade studying Genie for her delayed development.

#3 Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter Plenty of people in the world claim to have seen unidentified flying objects. A few even believe they’ve seen aliens or extraterrestrial life forms. Whether you’re a believer or not, you likely cast at least a little scrutiny on each claim made. Well, the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter is an important case all of you have got to pay attention to. In the mid-1950s, five adults and seven children showed up at the Hopkinsville police department frantically screaming that they had been defending their small farm home from tiny alien creatures and their spaceship for four hours, shooting at them to keep them from getting inside. Several police officers went and investigated and, of course, found nothing. But here’s the thing — several adults and kids all corroborated the same story. And it’s not like they were looking for publicity. They packed up and abandoned the house that night when they claimed the aliens returned around 3:30 in the morning.

#4 The Hinterkaifeck Murders The story behind these gruesome murders raises a lot of questions and curiosities. Hinterkaifeck was a small farm situated between two small Bavarian villages back in the early 1920s. In 1921, the family’s maid quit because she thought the house was haunted and could hear footsteps in the attic. A year later, on the exact day that the new maid had arrived to begin work, mysterious murders struck. The father professed seeing footsteps leading towards the house in the snow coming from the woods but none returning to the woods. That night, it seems somehow each of the elder family members was, in turn, lured into the barn, where they were killed. Then the killer went inside the house and killed the two-year-old boy and the maid. The investigation went on for about 60 years, but no killer was ever found nor any suspects brought under keen suspicion.

#5 Albert Fish, The Boogey Man He was not only known as the Boogey Man. Oh no. This horrifying man was known by many names, including the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wisteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, and the Moon Maniac. Hamilton Howard “Albert” Fish was one of the most sickening American serial killers of all time. He was a known cannibal and rapist and professed that he’d “had children in every state” (whether he was referring to being their parent or to have raped them or to have eaten them was unclear). Albert confessed to five killings and was a top suspect in the investigations of five others. Though he could have been dubbed criminally insane, his jury declared him sane and guilty so that he would be executed rather than imprisoned. Apparently, his last statements were given to his lawyer who read them and said, “I will never show [these] to anyone… [they were] the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read.”

#6 Cotard Delusion This is actually a very rare mental illness that has affected a number of unfortunate patients. This rare mental illness makes it so that the afflicted people believe that they’re already dead, that they don’t exist at all, that they’re currently in the process of putrefying (aka, rotting as a corpse), or that they’ve lost significant amounts of blood or internal organs. Interestingly enough, about 70% of people afflicted with the delusion think that they’re already dead… but then, 55% of them also believe that they’re simultaneously immortal. So… they think they’re zombies? That’s our impression at least! Dead, but walking around and living forever? Yeah, that’s a zombie. They’re real, live(ish) zombies. Jules Cotard believed the delusion was rooted in feelings of depression and self-loathing, almost as if patients skipped committing suicide and went straight from wishing they were dead to being dead.

#7 Clinton Road Clinton Road is a ten-mile lane located in New Jersey that’s notorious for its propensity to be involved in supernatural claims. The road is surrounded by forestry and seclusion, and it has gained a certain level of notoriety for all of the spooky things that have happened there. There are honestly so many claims and stories that we can’t go through them all in the space allotted here, but there have been claims of ghost hauntings, strange creatures, witch gatherings, Satanists, and Ku Klux Klan members in the spooky parts of the road. A local police chief once tried to shrug it off saying, “It’s a long, desolate stretch and it makes the imagination go nuts.” Some of the spookiest ghost stories are those including the ghost boy at the bridge who tries to drown anyone looking over the railing, phantom trucks that disappear as they pass drivers, and strange creatures that may have emerged from a long-ago-closed Jungle Habitat attraction.

#8 Frederick Valentich’s Disappearance Let’s return to some of the extra-terrestrial supernatural spooks, shall we? Plenty of people have gone missing over the years; it’s almost to be expected. More specifically, plenty of pilots have disappeared on runs, whether training or on actual missions. Frederick Valentich is one of these many pilots that went missing and has since never been accounted for. Back in the late ’80s, Valentich was flying for the Royal Australian Airforce over the country when he suddenly started panicking. He radioed in that an aircraft was following him, but ground control replied there were no possible crafts at the level reported. Valentich said it was 1,000 feet overhead and moving fast, catching up to him. His last words were “it isn’t an aircraft” before noises of scrapping metal interrupted the transmission, and he was gone. Investigators believe he must have been flying upside down and saw reflections of his own lights in the water below him — but we’re pretty sure such an experienced pilot wouldn’t make such a mistake…

#9 Flatwoods Monster Also known as the Braxton County Monster and the Phantom of Flatwoods, this horrifying figure from West Virginia is the stuff of redneck nightmares. Believers in the story think that the boys in question made contact with an alien being, but who knows exactly what they saw? As the legend goes, two young West Virginian boys saw a bright object quickly crossing the sky and falling onto the land of a nearby farmer. They took their mother with them, as well as a local National Guardsman, to investigate the crash. The dog came also and ran ahead, the first to reach the crash site. It suddenly stopped barking and returned to the group, tail tucked between legs. There was a pungent mist that stung the eyes and nose (and, hours later, caused vomiting and convulsions). A fiery object in the near distance illuminated a dark figure, seven feet in height and cloaked in a black exoskeleton. It started to bound towards them, and the group fled in horror. They were later unable to relocate the vessel or creature, but when they reached the area, it appeared that someone had come and left only muddy tire tracks where the UFO and creature had once been.

#10 The Silent Twins Nothing is creepier than a couple of eerie twins. Remember those scary kids from The Shining?? ICK. The only thing creepier than those kids would be a real-life version… Well, they exist. June and Jennifer Gibbons were identical twins who grew up in Wales. The girls, who were raised by Caribbean immigrants, were very attached to each other — too attached. They spoke in a rapid speed patois that none of their classmates or teachers could understand, so they really could only speak to each other. Their parents made an effort for them to socialize better by putting them in different schools, but they became near-catatonic without their other halves. The girls had a long-standing agreement that if one of them died, the other must live a normal life (speaking to other people and not being a creep). After the two were hospitalized in a mental institution for fourteen years for their issues, the two believed it was necessary for one of them to die for the other to be happy. Jennifer agreed to be the sacrifice. Her death remains a mystery — she was not drugged and was in perfect medical health yet died of sudden inflammation of the heart.

#11 Scaphism Scaphism is not something that happens anymore (at least we hope so… dear God, please say we’re right), but it’s one of those things everyone should know about so that we know how civilized we’ve become as a human race and what we should never resort to again. Scaphism is an ancient Persian method of torture and execution, also commonly called “The Boats,” and it was used on their greatest enemies, the Greeks. Bear with us, and don’t toss your cookies as we explain the methodology. The victim was stripped naked and had milk and honey poured all over them, especially focusing on orifices like the mouth, anus, eyes, etc. They would then be fastened inside two rowing boats joined together by stacking one face down on top of the other. The head, hands, and feet would protrude. The victims would then be set afloat on a stagnant pond on a hot day, attracting insects to nibble on and burrow into their exposed flesh as they suffered starvation and dehydration. This would repeat every day until the victims died of starvation, thirst, or septic shock — though hopefully, delirium set in early on in the process.

#12 Sada Abe, A Geisha Not to Mess With Sada Abe was a Japanese woman raised to be a Geisha and a prostitute. Many of the women trained to live lives like Sada Abe’s did so quietly, seeing it as their place and role in society. Sada, however, was not so easily coerced. Sada was seduced by the manager of the establishment she worked at, a man who was married but womanized nonetheless. The two had quite a fling that went on pretty much nonstop for two weeks, but he went back to his wife afterward. Sada Abe was immensely jealous and wanted his entire devotion. So Sada, getting him back in her bed, erotically asphyxiated him until he died. Then, she cut off his penis and tucked it into her kimono. She even tried to masturbate with the severed fallis once! She was eventually caught shortly before intending to kill herself. She turned herself in and plainly displayed the severed penis as proof of her guilt.

#13 Hungry Hungry Armin Meiwes When some people get cravings, they really can’t ignore them. Most of us try to replace irrational cravings with something more healthy or responsible or reasonable, like eating a bowl of frozen yogurt instead of a pint of ice cream, or eating rotisserie chicken instead of six steaks. But Mr. Armin Meiwes was not able to ignore his cravings — though he really should have. Armin, a German computer technician, posted an online ad looking for a voluntary candidate that would be slaughtered and eaten alive. And he found a candidate. The two started by chopping off the victim’s penis, frying it up, and trying to eat it together. Then, Armin killed his victim and ate significantly more of his body. Armin was eventually arrested (after posting more ads looking for more voluntary victims) and charged for manslaughter. Since being imprisoned, he’s become a vegetarian and warns people looking to follow in his footsteps (oh yeah, he has a fan club) to seek help “so it doesn’t escalate the way it did with me.”

#14 Unit 731 Here’s a real horror story. Back in the second Sino-Japanese War, which (for those of you unversed in Asian history) took place around 1937-1945. A Japanese prison camp officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, Unit 731, was actually a covert biological and chemical warfare research plant. You know what that means. Some utterly horrific things happened in Unit 731. It has got to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Historians estimate that up to 250,000 men, women, and children (primarily Chinese) were subjected to harsh experimentation here, which ranged from intentional exposure to horrifying diseases like syphilis and cholera to live vivisections to rape and forced impregnation. They researched germ warfare and all of the implications it could have. Worst yet, the United States offered amnesty to these scientists in return for the data they accumulated. THESE TORTURE ARTISTS MURDERED TENS OF THOUSANDS AND THEY GOT AWAY WITH IT.

#15 Hoeryong Concentration Camp We’ve had a lot of creepy Wikipedia pages on here telling stories of horrifying people who used to be, or terrifying places that used to exist. But hang on — this place is just as (if not more) terrifying as all of the rest, and it’s likely still in existence. Of course, one of the most horrifying places in the world is in North Korea. Though officially dubbed a penal labor camp, this place is an actual concentration camp for people who have criticized the government, have been deemed unreliable (such as South Korean prisoners of war), or purged senior party members. Anyone who enters the camp never leaves. Life in the camp is like life in a concentration camp, fully fledged with routine torture, forced labor, and medical experimentation. The US Government believed the camp was shut down in 2012 due to satellite pictures indicating a lot of changes — but we have absolutely no guarantees that that is true.

Source: TheRichest

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