#kaye reads i am a cat

[crowfeathers]

every new iteration soseki writes of "waverhouse finally shut up... but then he didn't" gets funnier and funnier

[centrally-unplanned]

I think the Indonesia example is very illustrative here (you've activated my trap card ^_^). For one, we agree that even if it is bad now, it is not bad because of the Rules of Kaye, right? The flags don't need to be simplified, any design can run into this problem. That was my primary point.

But second, what does Indonesia's flag mean? Like so many things it isn't one thing, but almost everyone traces the White and Red way back into Indonesian history, with banners around that theme being used by various empires and rulers in the area. The most direct descendent of this specific banner though is the independence struggle against the Dutch known as the Java War which began in 1825, as the flag of Javanese leader Prince Diponegoro. The specific shape is disputed; but what is clear is that in the 1920's that is what the Indonesia independence movement against Dutch Colonial Rule drew from. One of the initial designs had a bull head on it:

But as you can imagine, making that as an underground independence movement in the 1920's was a bit complicated? So they went with a simple Red-and-White banner, and first hoisted it in Jakarta in 1928...where it was promptly banned by the government of the Dutch East Indies. Once banned, forever immortalized, after that it was locked in as the symbol of the resistance, particularly used by the left-nationalist group the KMM, a leader in the independence movement.

It was the flag of the resistance all through the 1930's and World War Two, but as you may note it is kind of similar to the Dutch Flag? That wasn't lost on the rebel forces - in 1945, during one of the first big moments of the Indonesian War of Independence, protestors seized the Yamato Hotel, grabbed the Dutch Flag sailing above it, and tore off the blue stripe - re-hoisting it as the flag of Indonesia. Once you do something that poetic, you really can't go back right? It had already been used during the proclamation of independence in August 1945, and when they won the struggle it was confirmed as their flag in 1949.

At which point Monaco actually filed a complaint against Indonesia, saying, well, we got this flag first, so it's confusing. They actually did that! And I don't know - can we think of a reason why Monaco was able to "get the flag first"? Monaco adopted its flag in 1881 - why didn't Indonesia adopt their flag in the 19th century? What were they doing then? Being lazy?

Or maybe:

This goes back to the historical symbolism point - who cares if you confuse Monaco with Indonesia? That isn't actually the point of flags! Name a time that actually hurts you. You fuck up at the UN getting instagram photos? If you are watching the Olympics you have to look for 0.5 seconds longer to the read country name displayed right next to the flag the one time Monaco and Indonesia play each other? This is not the use the case of flags! It is meant to be a symbol of the nation to the people of that nation.

I am sympathetic, truly, like if I could travel back in time to 1928 and just idk convince to put a little seal on it, if it cost nothing I would do it. It aesthetically a little annoying. But the cat is out the bag on this one - you can't reinvent the historical symbolism of tearing off the blue bar of the Dutch for your own flag, of evoking the ~200 years of struggle for independence and nation forming. Obviously if the Indonesian people want to change it, go ahead, do whatever! But as an outsider, a Flag Evaluation Scheme of "look at the colors and see if they are distinct" is actually pretty bad, right? It is playing the wrong game. But a simple banner is aesthetically a solid design in the right context (it wouldn't be bad if it weren't for Monaco, it is different if the design is just really shitty), its history is tbh totally badass, and Monaco and Indonesia are on opposite sides of the world. Just like "distinct at a distance", there really isn't any reason to privilege "unique compared to every other flag" as the sole marker. I give it -1 point, totally fair for it to count for something, but it is still a 9/10 flag.

(And tbc, I was 50% tongue in cheek on the Dutch-Luxembourg thing. My point was that Tricolors run into the same problem, I was focused on the Kayes principles. While I do think a crest would be nice, I do in fact understand the history of the tricolor in relation to the republican revolution against the forces of monarchism and all that)

(Also btw this is a totally fun discussion, internet tone check here - I just enjoy flippant rhetoric sometimes^^)

Academic History YouTuber Premodernist released video recently on "State Flag" discourse, and flag discourse more wildly, that I thought was pretty good! I agreed with 50% of it. For those who don't know, there is a longstanding movement in the vexillology community to push for more simplified flag designs, and they hate the state flags of the US as their antithesis; a movement that catapulted into the internet mainstream when YouTuber CGPGrey released a video riffing on that debate and grading all the state flag designs.

That video is great by the way (it's hilarious, CGP Grey is just very talented as a performer), and the biggest thing Premodernist is wrong about is that the state flags do suck. But what he gets right is that the so-called "principles" briefly referred to in the video are themselves pretty weak; some are fine but others do not hold up to much scrutiny. The state flags largely suck for the boring reason that they just suck; they are shitty designs and often repeat each other in a domain where "standing out" is the point. Like what the fuck Montana:

This is something a 5th grader whips up in PowerPoint for a class presentation. Helvetica Bold?? "Mandated by law in 1985" yeah I didn't need Wikipedia tell me this decision dates to the 80's.

But that is boring and subjective, right? You can't just say they suck. So you had to make a theory about it - and I won't go into too much detail but it generally boils down to:

Make it simple, "something a child could draw"

Make it "distinct at a distance", since it is a flag you are supposed to see it at a distance

Three colors or fewer

No words on flags

Which I think you can get the philosophy for. These principles, which CGP Grey outlines, actually come from the work of Ted Kaye, who is a big figure in the aforementioned flag reform movement and the focus of most of the video. As part of the original CGP Grey video I just rolled with that, but I did remember him showing Utah's newly designed flag at the end which embodied these principles, and uh:

This is kind of mid? Like it doesn't suck, but it looks like a corporate redesign of a hockey team logo or something. A bit of a red flag (hah) if your front-and-center case is weak.

Anyway this is what Premodernist digs into in the video. The stuff I agreed with the most are the parts where he just ???? at some of these rules. "No finicky bits", a "child must draw it", "distinct at a distance"? None of these actually track for say this one:

A child drawing the US flag does not draw 50 stars and 13 stripes unless they are a budding librarian; you absolutely cannot tell if this flag has 50 stars on it from a distance, and that level of detail is clearly some kind of finicky. Of course your response is "okay sure but still, I can tell what the flag is from a distance, I can't count the 50 stars but I get the gist". But that is true for almost all flags!

It's a fern and a peace pipe and a brown thing and the word "Oklahoma" below it, you absolutely, 100%, will be able to tell what this flag is at a distance. You don't need to count the leaves to get the general shape, and when you think about it, it is actually kind of silly anyone would claim otherwise. There just isn't any need to appreciate the tiny details on a flag to understand whose flag it is. (the only valid critique here is that everything should be bigger - too much dead space)

Not to mention the "see from a distance" thing even being a metric. That isn't how you encounter flags most often today? Maybe in the 19th century on a battlefield that was (and even then you had battle standards), but it isn't now. You see it in textbooks, on your computer screen, as an icon for a football game team, right next to you in a government office. Why privilege distance? You just made that up as a value. 99% of "flag consumption" is not seeing it at a distance.

The "only use ~3 colors thing is the funniest", you can just argue this with...no? No you don't. You don't. What? No. You can...you can just use more colors? Here is an example from the "manual" Ted Kaye wrote on the subject:

And the 5 bands on the chinese flag are fine! They are not "hard to look at" or whatever. Also, I am screenshotting a tiny corner of a youtube video, this image is like 240p, and I can tell its a dragon - and that isn't even the color point it is trying to make, dude just deviates off into another critique. Meanwhile the Amsterdam flag looks like a traffic warning sign. Chinese flag needs to not have the white stripe connect into the white seal background, that is an error, but otherwise I prefer it.

It is annoying how many of the state flags are a blue banners with a round seal in the middle. That does make them hard to distinguish from each other. But that isn't a problem with seal-on-blue, that is just a collective action problem! Flag-reform-favourite the tricolor can run into this too - here are the flags of the Netherlands and Luxembourg:

Like one of your needs to go home and change, that is ridiculous. Though if you had a complex seal in the middle that might avoid this problem! Funny that.

Even the "no words on a flag" argument, which I am more sympathetic to, doesn't hold up too well because too often you find yourself going "unless it is good" which just isn't a rule. The Iranian flag is the stand-out he mentions:

The middle crest is a stylized rendition of the name Allah, and the cursive lining on the tricolor bands are text as well - God Is Great, 22 times, marking the anniversary date of the Islamic Revolution. Stylistically beautiful, also words on a flag. The state flags just didn't try to do anything artistic.

I think the best point Premodernism mentions is a sort of stylistic unity Kaye & Co are pursuing above all else - everything sacrificed for corporate minimalism. Kaye's book will say it respects history and symbols should be meaningful, but then hates any symbols that require complexity. He singles out Turkmenistan as an ugly flag for example:

And as I said I only 50% disagree sometimes, I do think there is a complexity limit, and this flag goes over it, that is too detailed. Though the main reason this flag is bad is the weird choice to not put the banner at the edge, and have the crescent just...float off center? If it was this:

Two seconds in paint, already better, you can play with it. But anyway, you can say the symbols are too complex, but if you also say you care about historical meaning? Turkmenistan is a nation of traditional semi-nomadic tribes, who populated the Silk Road and made textiles as their ultimate expression of art. These carpet guls are traditional symbols used in those carpets that represent the five major tribes that compose the country. You can't just invent new symbols that have equal meaning to these, right? Like you can try if you want, sure, new symbols become meaningful all the time. But a rule that says "all art from before 1950 is tossed in the dumpster because it wouldn't pass muster as a Pepsi logo" is a weird rule to adopt if you say you value historical meaning. Turkmenistan does not have to look like France, and it is weird to want every national symbol to be aesthetically coherent to each other. Let 100 flags bloom! It is certainly "distinct at a distance" lol.

Anyway that is enough summarizing of a YouTube video - as I mentioned, he actually likes the state flags, I don't, I do think you have to balance a lot of this with just "general design principles". Never have your name on a flag in Helvetica Bold, amazing I had to write that one down for you. But a lot of these flag-specific rules derived from Kaye's work I often see bandied about are silly, and I was glad to see someone point that out.

[vestiariusium]

Get to know the blogger: do you have short hair or long hair? Do you wear glasses? What’s your favourite colour / food / drink / ice cream flavour animal / season / book / movie / tv show / song? What are you currently reading / watching / listening to? Do you like board games? Do you have pets? Do you have a favourite piece of jewelry? Do you have piercings / tattoos?

Hello Anon, thank you for asking all this questions! I try to answer all of them truthfully:

short hair since two weeks | i wear glasses, but only for working on the computer, watching tv, driving... | my favourite color is green. my favourite food is a family recipe from my grandma called "nockerln" with egg and salad (I think it's autrian kitchen), we only eat it in spring/ early summer when a salad sort named "may king / german Maikönig) has season. my favourite drink is afri cola. my favourite ice cream flavour is citrus and choco and woodruff. my favourite animal is our black cat. my favourite season: actually I love all seasons.

My favourite book is hard to answer, but I have some all time favourites, some books that mean a lot:

Marvin Kaye/Parke Godwin: Masters of Solitude

Kiana Davenport: Shark Dialogues

Jerry Pournelle/ Larry Niven: The Mote in God's Eye

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake /Madd Addam Trilogie

John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar

and quite some more that are worth an extra post...

my favourite movie is Lord of the Rings and Mr. Nobody. my favourite tv-show, I don't know, as teenager/very young adult it was Supernatural and How I met your mother, but now I don't have any favourite tv-show at the moment. I don't have a favourite song at the moment either.

Currently I am reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I am watching currently Peaky Blinders.

I like board games, but only with the right people. My family has a black cat that lives inside and outside and two cats which only live outside.

Yes I have a favourite piece of jewelry. It's a gold pendant that was in the family that I got from my parents for my "high school graduation".

No, I don't have any kind of piercing/tattoo. But I have a temporarily tattoo at the moment, that should last about two weeks, it has the shape of a citrus fruit...

[missdawnandherdusk]

an americano

Remus X Reader (coffee shop AU) 

Summary: He always asked for the same coffee order, but one day, he finally asks for your name. 

A/n: So, I put up a post and the lovely @trappedgoose-in-a-writblr-room​ responded first with a request for a Remus drabble so here it is! Our soft nervous precious Remus. I limited myself to about 1k words, so it is truly a drabble, but I’m willing to do a part two if y’all are into it. It’s super cute, and yes, I may or may not be a barista at a coffee shop, but that’s beside the point. and I am seriously judging you if you like americanos

“So, you come here often?”

He had been coming here for weeks. Maybe a few months. And every time he followed the same routine. He’d walk from the small bookshop across the way and into my café just as my shift was coming to its midway point. Always in a jumper. Always with a beat-up satchel. He’d order an americano and sit in the corner booth and tap on his laptop and work through a book, frowning and typing again, until his coffee was gone, and he seemed satisfied with his progress.

Remus. The name he’d put for the order. The first time I wrote it on his cup was customary. By his third visit, I didn’t bother. I knew who he was. By his fifth, he just waved, and I smiled, already pulling the shot of espresso for his americano. After a while I’d write stupid things on his cup. The slower days when we were the only two in the café. The color of his jumper, a silly variation of his name, whatever the main character of his book was. 

“Seeing as I work here,” I baited with a smile. “Yes,”

“Right,” He stammered. “Um...”

“Do you want another coffee?” I prompted, as he looked down, blushing a bright pink. 

“I... uh.” He finally glanced up. “I don’t know your name,” He rushed out.

I looked at him a moment, taken by surprise. 

“And I would ask you to join me for coffee, when you’re off your shift of course... or maybe on your day off if you even want to not that you have to, but I realize that I can’t exactly do that if I don’t know your name, so...” His nervousness left me scrambling to keep up with his rushed words. 

“Y/n,” I gave a reassuring smile. “And I’ll join you for coffee as long as I don’t have to drink an americano,” 

Now it was his turn to look shocked. As if my acceptance of his offer wasn’t expected. 

“I’m sorry, what?” He stumbled. 

“Americanos,” I clarified. “I don’t know how you manage them, because they’re just awful,” 

Whatever he had been thinking was abandoned to defend his drink of choice. 

“They’re not that bad,” He refuted. “And I’m lactose intolerant, so I don’t really have much of a choice,” 

I pursed my lips and chuckled. “Go sit, I’ll be there in a minute,” I sat across from him, setting a cup of coffee in front of him that held a warm amber color. He studied me and the cup. 

“This has milk in it,” He accused. 

“Oat milk, completely lactose free,” I rose my own mug of coffee. “It’s the only way I take my coffee anymore. I haven’t put any sugar in it, I don’t know how sweet you like it and I didn’t want to overdose you,” 

“Oat milk,” Remus pondered, picking up a fair share of sugar packets. “I never would have thought of that,” 

“Here’s to good coffee, not watered-down espresso,” I raised my mug and we both took a sip together and I watched his eyes widen at the coffee in his cup. 

“This is brilliant,” His eyes lit up. 

“You’d think that after the few months you’ve been here constantly, you’d figure out we had non-dairy options,” I teased lightly, and he blushed slightly. 

“I... I was distracted. So, I ordered what I knew,” He stammered, staring at his coffee. 

“Distracted?” I pressed. “Lost in too many books then?” 

“Well, yes. But no,” He chuckled. “There’s this pretty barista who works here that keeps me off balance.” I hid behind my mug my cheeks warming. 

“That so?” I tried to play off, but he caught my flush and grinned. “Then why the hell did it take you three months to ask for my name?” I accused, chuckling. 

“Well, I don’t know!?” He laughed. “You just so... you!” 

“What is that even supposed to mean!?” I giggled. 

“I don’t know,” His face was red from the laughter and the unanswered questions. 

“I’m glad you did finally ask,” I admitted, fidgeting with a spare napkin. “Are you a student? You’re always here with a book,” 

“Grad student,” He clarified. “Working on my dissertation. I have an internship at the shop across the way,” 

“You’re there most days that I work,” I noted. “You always come for coffee,” 

“Yeah, well,” He ducked his head. “I may or may not have accidentally memorized your schedule, so that our hours are close to the same,” We both blushed again. 

“Little creepy,” I raised an eyebrow, “And kinda a shame. I’d love to come and bug you while you’re working,” 

“Oh... I—you like to read?” I raised an eyebrow at him, and he backtracked. “Not to say that you don’t! But it’s a shop filled with—” 

“Vintage books, classics, literature, mythology. I know,” I smiled. “I frequent there. Even before you came around,” 

“Really?” 

I nodded and nursed my coffee. “I might not seem like it, but I’m also a student. I work here for the extra cash,” 

“Right,” He fumbled. “I—read anything interesting lately?” He redirected the conversation, and I could tell that he was more comfortable with the topic. It wasn’t hard to pick up that he wasn’t one for small talk, but his eyes lit up at the mere mention of a book. 

“Some work by De Pizan, my professor is doing a seminar on her,” I gave. “It’s really interesting, I’m enjoying it a lot,” 

“De Pizan,” He mused. “Middle Ages? Rhetorist, right?” I nodded and smiled. “It’s been a while since I’ve read anything of hers for class, or fun or that matter. I remember liking her work though, she was a proto-feminist,” 

“Yes...” I was surprised by his base of knowledge.

“Sorry, I know I ramble,” He ducked his head.

“I think it’s cute,”

“Oh... well,” Remus was becoming a permanent shade of pink. 

“You don’t do this sort of thing often do you?” I prompted. 

“What gave it away?” 

“Well, I mean there is the whole name ordeal. Then of course, you’re a shy book nerd, that’s obvious, but honestly, you’re nervous for all the wrong reasons,” I supplied. 

He gaped at me as if he didn’t know what to address about what I said first. While he was deciding, I reached out and placed my hand over his. 

“As someone else with anxiety, let me tell you, you’re doing just fine.” 

“Yeah?” His eyes were hopeful. 

I nodded and glanced at the clock. “Well, my break is over, but you’re welcome to hang out.” I stood, gathering both of our empty mugs. “And thanks... for finally asking,”

.

masterlist

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more like this: 

hufflepuff dating headcannons

stars above

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@coffee-addicti @msmcsmutt @ravn-87 @artemismohr18@whygz@crazywritingbug @bitemebro522 @zombiesnips-blog@savingdraco  @akari180 @slytherin-emerald @queenfeatherwings @fanficflaneuse​ @go-whovian-universe @spicyshenanigans @darling-im-not-okay-i-promise @katsukink​ @takemetothekingdom @strangerr-things​ @tmnt-queen@hxneybgb @belcvayelena @moviesbooksandfandoms​   @cocochanelthepupper @ninacotte @braelynn-johnston     @jiggllyy @darcypotter-blog  @thiccheerioss@lottie289 @beautiful-pegasus@tceedlmao @anonymous034 @bi-andready-tocry @dragonsandbread @the-queen-of-hell-things @alienmotel  @oh-itsnothing @sunflowerxsadnessw @fattycooter @fanficsigottaread​ @gweaslvy @strawberriesonsummer @gaysludge @ray-of-sunrise @artist-bby @shadowsingeraxolotl @quillsareforwriting @wollymalfoy @lilpieceoftoast @paper-cats @floweryjh @hufflautia @livize75 @annie-mcl @riathearora @live-like-luna @justathoughtfulangel @coconutdawn @skteaiy @naughtygranger @dragonsandbread @abundantxadorations​ @moony-artnstuff @and-then-a-girl-with-luv @1-800-luvsick @pandas-rice-field @in-slytherin-we-trust @emmaa-t​ @introvertedrae @infinity1o1 @echpr@dekulover @marshmallowtraver @cereuselle @lonely-skywalker @sleepysnapesnake​ @hoeforthefictional @coldlilheart @helen-paris @rosie-starlit-sky​ @vulture-withafile @hogstupefy @eveft @iraniq @groovyfluxie​ @cool-weirdo-wannabee-author @rosegold-thorns @criminaly-supernatural @ghostofdolans @mxl-foyrecs @ginger-haired-queen @bex4whovian @kellyrose193 @unlikelygalaxygiver @marvel-trash-was-taken @one-edgy-bitch@supersouthy @garbagejay@rejectedlonelyasianchild  @lucymxwell @coldlilheart @elia-the-bibliophile @biggalaxydreamland @fuckbuckyyy @hopem1218​ @youareinllve @tyrusparker @3rdofkingdomtrees​ @i-mmunity @zero-nightshade @graym01​ @fandomtrash88 @snakey-drakey @ceeellewrites​ @thatguppienamedbae @pinkleopardss @angel-blogging @xhoney-bee-x @jovialthings @samanthahaigwood @minigigglybabi @clumsy-writing-rdb @lahoete @yourenotafailureoverall @m-winchester-67 @shiningstar-byulxx@clumsy-writing-rdb @dracosathenaeum @dracofeltonmalfoy   @harryslouis​ @iilovemusic12us​ @itsbebeyyy @dumspirospero-1​ @kaye-lantern @anerroroccurrrrred @franbow29​ @big-galaxy-chaos @itsbebeyyy @gryffindors-weasley @ornella0910​ @ultrabuzzlightyear​ @phantomface1983 @emmalee12 @kuyrukludenizkizi @aubreylovesthegames @deafeninglandpersonempath @ackermanbitch @oingo233​ @drismultiverse-blog​ @majicbamana​ @harrypotter289​ @marinettepotterandplagg​ @cupidpoison​ @brownwheatrice @introvertedrae @gryffindors-weasley​ @frecklesandfirecrackers​ @bitchinbadgers​ @mkstover​ @dracomalfoyreader​ @mortallythoughtfulgurl @sakumorubywy​ @smileycount​ @ceeellewrites​ @is-it-really-a-secret​ @blogforharrypotter​ @spencerreidisbootiful​ @lam-ila​ @justawilddreamerchild​ @heavenlyrainyparis​ @trappedgoose-in-a-writblr-room​ @dracomalfoyreader​ @spellbinding10​ @justawilddreamerchild​

[purplesurveys]

1125

survey by nadine07

[..Introductions..]

First Name: Robyn.

Middle Name: I don’t think I’ve shared it on here and I doubt I will.

Last Name: Not providing it either but it starts with a C.

Birthdate: April 21st.

[..First Things First..]

What was the first thing you did after you got up? I rushed to the rooftop so that I could see the sunrise. I also got in the random mood to do a time-lapse of it, but the sun took forrrrrrrr-freaking-ever to come up entirely. I was holding up my phone for like 15 minutes and nothing was happening, so I quit halfway through lol.

What was the name of your first pet? Goldie, because it was a goldfish.

Who was your first big crush? Gabie, I would say.

Where was the first place you drove after you got your license? Chelsea’s 18th birthday dinner was scheduled right after I happened to get my license, and the event took place in a small, quaint little restaurant in Marikina. 

There’s a bit of a funny story here, too �� Aaron needed a ride to get there and so I offered to drive him. I picked him up and we were having small talk in the car, and he asked me how long I’ve been driving. I told him that moment was my literal first time driving out and that I just got my license the day before, and he is my first-ever passenger (at that point I’ve never even tried driving solo yet). The horror and immediate distrust on his face was something I will never forget HAHAHA. We got to the place unharmed, but it’s still one of my favorite stories to tell.

Who was your very first friend? It was a kind girl named Kaye back in kindergarten. We were always next to each other in our class lists, so it was inevitable for us to befriend one another. She transferred schools in first grade and I have not seen nor heard from her since.

What was the first thing you ate today? I had another bag of salted egg chips. I’m extremely hooked, lmao.

What was your first job? I work as an associate at a PR agency.

[..Colors..]

Name something red in the room you are in: We have an unopened bottle of wine here on the dining table and there’s still a red ribbon wrapped around it.

Is orange one of your school's team colors? No, neither of my schools had orange as one of its colors.

How many yellow shirts do you own? I can think of 5 tops hanging out in my wardrobe at the moment. Two of them are class shirts from high school; the others were tops I bought when I started getting into mustard yellow.

Name someone you know who drives a green car: I believe Angel, a classmate from high school who also studies in UP, also drives a Mitsubishi Mirage, albeit a lime green one.

Is it a blue sky outside right now? Yes for the most part, but the sun is setting soon so the sky is bound to change into many pretty colors as it usually does at this time of the day.

What is the first thing that pops into your head when I say 'purple'? Barney the dinosaur, and ube.

Are the walls in the room you're in white? Yes, all our walls indoors are white.

Does black make you think of depressing things? Not always, but if used specifically in that context, it definitely helps boosts the mood.

Jewelry: gold or silver? Silverrr, always.

[..Phone Stuff..]

Who is your provider? Nothing you would be familiar with, but I use Globe.

How long have you had your current phone? It’ll be three years this year. It would be nice to upgrade, but I’m also still happy with my current phone so it doesn’t really matter to me.

What did your last text say? The last one that came through that didn’t come from my mobile services provider was from someone in the media. It was his birthday last Friday and I messaged him if he’d like to receive a gift from us, on behalf of one of our clients; he just replied with his confirmation and details.

If you woke up naked next to the last person to call, would it be awkward? Yep and I’d feel like throwing up almost immediately.

Was your last missed call male or female? It was from my mom.

Who is your 10th phone contact? It’s from Jum, who I realize is still listed as Ate Jum on my phone. That’s cute hahaha; I must have gotten her number when we weren’t super close yet. Anyway, she’s been super MIA for like the last two years...basically, ever since she graduated. I believe she has also since moved back to Bicol, so it’s become virtually impossible to see her again. Bums me out and I look forward to the day we somehow end up in the same room once again.

How did you meet them? I met her in my very first journalism major class. I had mixed feelings towards her at first since I found her to be super loud in class, and I initially thought she would only be a one-time classmate and nothing more; but I got to know her more and we even ended up as orgmates, and it turns out she is literally the most hilarious person I know.

Are you related to your 17th phone contact? I have absolutely no clue who it is. I no longer remember what led to it, but Gabie and I swapped the SIM cards in our phones at one point, and for some reason it made me have access to her contacts; the 17th contact on my phone is someone from her list. And since I never hang out in my Contacts app, I’ve never gotten around to deleting those extra numbers I received.

How long have you known your 1st phone contact? Around 6th or 7th grade. I can’t remember the exact grade level she transferred to my school as a new student.

When was the last time you saw them? It’s been at least a year. I remember seeing her on campus very briefly when I was on my way to a certain building for class, while she was walking out of it.

Who is your 4th phone contact? LMAO, again, it’s from her contact list. Said person is one of her older cousins, I believe.

Have you ever kissed that person? No, and that is very weird and uncomfortable to think about.

When was the last time someone drunk dialed/texted/left a voicemail? Andi drunk messaged me a few months ago. November, I think.

[..Friends..]

Who is your #1? No Myspace but I’d say my top best friend is Angela.

How long have you known them? It will be 16 years this year.

Have you ever kissed? Oh my gosh, hell no. It would be like kissing a sister haha. She’s super affectionate and will sometimes kiss my shoulder or cheek, though.

Are you dating this person? No, never did and never desired to.

Do you have nicknames for each other? Not really exclusive to each other, but I call her Anj (and only a few people call her so) and she will occasionally call me Reben or Rolayn, both from past inside jokes.

What is your #2's full name? I am not sharing that, but I refer to them as Andi (you may remember them as Andrew from the past times I’ve mentioned them).

Do they live within 20 minutes of you? If there is zero traffic, I can probably make it to their place within that timeframe, yeah. But realistically, no they don��t.

How did you meet? We initially met in an anti-Marcos protest/rally – I approached they first because they had a wrestling shirt on, heheh – and that’s when I learned we were from the same college. But they rubbed me off the wrong way from our first meeting as they were too extroverted for my liking, and I spent a good chunk of time ignoring him whenever we crossed paths, lmfao. Eventually we were put in the same class at some point, and they even joined my org, and an intensely close friendship started from there.

Could you live with this person? Sure. I think they would never be a boring roommate.

Who is your #3? I’m gonna go with Kate for this one.

Where are they right now? I have no idea. We don’t really catch up with each other’s lives on a regular basis; we have a very chill, low-maintenance friendship.

When is this person's birthday? January 1st.

Has this person ever seen you naked? I don’t think so.

What is your #4's full name? I don’t think I have a 4th-tier best friend haha, but I’m gonna pick Tina.

When did you last see them? Last year, on the last normal day I was able to be on campus. She was set to present one of her projects at a journalism conference that was taking place in campus that day, but I was able to hang out with her for a short time before the event.

Have they ever dated one of your other friends? No. I knew she had a crush on someone from the college, though.

Do you know their favorite movie? I’m not sure about her favorite movie but I do know she loves Adam Sandler. I was never able to figure out if her interest was ironic or genuine but yeah, she enjoys a good number of his works.

[..Randomosity..]

What time is it? 6:20 PM.

Are you supposed to be doing something other than this? I wouldn’t say so. I do have deliverables for work but since it’s the weekend, I’m not thinking about them nor do I have the desire to touch those tasks until Monday.

Do you live on your own or with your parents? I live with my family. Considering my monthly income, it’d be close to impossible to sustain myself in my own place this early in my adult life.

Are you more of a cat or a dog person? Dog, for sure.

Are you allergic to anything? I don’t believe so.

Does your shirt have anything written on it? Yeah, it says “UP Fighting Maroons” styled in a varsity font since that’s the term for our sports team.

Have you ever tie-dyed something? I have, but only back in like Grade 6 when we had to do it for a home ec class. I remember wanting to buy a tie-dye set recently so I could revisit the activity, but I never got around to it.

Who can you always count on to cheer you up? Angela for the most part; but I also don’t want to be too reliant on my friends in this way. Sometimes I simply allow myself to be sad or upset, and sometimes I count on myself to cheer up.

How many places have you been today? I have been nowhere but at home today lol. I’ll be going to BGC tomorrow to have lunch with my godfather and my cousins, though.

Are you a forgiving person? No.

When was the last time you felt let down? Last night when I read the news that the government will be making All Souls’ Day, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve working days this year. I already know I’ll be half-assing my way through those days lmao because whyyyyyyy the fuck would you make people work on family-centric holidays such as those

What is the title of the nearest book to you? There are no books here at the rooftop.

Are you wearing anything that belongs to someone else? Nope.

Can you whistle? Only through my lips. I can’t do the kind of whistle where you put your fingers in your mouth as well.

Do you look more like your mother or your father? My mom.

Are you still in high school? I’m well past that chapter.

Are you the oldest, middle, youngest, or an only child? I’m the eldest.

Has anyone ever told you that you talk in your sleep? No, because I don’t.

How many people have you kissed this year? None.

Is there anyone of the opposite sex you trust fully? Hmm, no one comes to mind.

Are you a night owl or an early bird? More of a night owl.

If you could have an exotic pet, what would it be? No thanks. I’ve never had the desire to have one.

Would you rather go to Brazil for the weekend or Finland for a month? I’d have to go with Finland. I feel like the cultural differences would be a lot more marked, plus the vacation is longer so that is an instant win for me.

[..And Finally..]

Where did you go the last time you drove somewhere? I was driving to the local coffee shop to spend some time with myself, and do a liiiiiiiittle bit of work as well.

Where did you last go out to eat at? Ramen Nagi. I was initially hesitant to show up there and ask for a table for one on a Sunday evening...but it turned out to feel incredibly empowering and freeing. It was definitely awkward at first, but it got a lot easier once I realized literally no one gives a fuck. Or if they did, they didn’t do anything about it and let me mind my own business. That evening was a crucial step in reclaiming my happiness, so I’m glad I made the choice to suck it up and enter the restaurant.

When was the last time you let someone borrow something from you? Last week, when Angela needed our abaca mat as an aesthetic for her grad shoot.

Was your last breakup a bad one? Yes.

What was the last song you listened to? Just checked my Spotify and the current song I have on pause is Descansos by Hayley Williams. 

What was the last movie you watched? Midsommar.

Did your last kiss happen in a public place? Not technically, but it did take place outside of my house so we were outdoors for some neighbors to see.

How did you meet the last person to leave you a comment? It was Andi, and I already explained how we met earlier in this survey.

[enjolraspermettendo]

First and last lines of my favorite books because I'm in online class and I'm bored. If it's a series the last line will be from the last book/ladt book of the series I have read. Also, most of the books are in Italian so the translation is mine, don't come at me.

Half bad by Sally Green:

"There are these two children, males, sat very close, squeezed between the arms of an old armchair."

"It's not very old, nor too tall, but it's full of scars"

Legend by Marie Lu:

"My mum thinks me dead"

"Hello" I answer. "I am June"

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard:

"I hate the First Friday"

"We will let them kill each other"

Graceling by Kristin Cashore:

"It was pitch dark in the dungeons, and Katje was forced to grope her way (? Is that an actual verb?)

"Bitterblue took a blank paper and wrote down the memory to fix it: it was part of her hi(story?)

Fairies of Darkness (?) by Holly Black

"Kaye took another hit from her cigarette and then she let it fall in her mother's beer bottle"

"And this, see? I Lie/chin" (listen, this whole thing is basically a pun and I have no idea how it is in English)

Beauty by Scott Westerfeld

"It was the beginning of summer, and the sky was the same color as cat's puke"

"Take care of the world, or the next time we will meet could be very unpleasant."

An ember in the ashes by Sabaa Tahir:

"My older brother comes back home in the darkest hours before the dawn, when even ghosts rest"

"These are the first, precious steps into the darkness. Into the unknown. Into liberty"

Muses by Francesco Falconi:

"Dark. Silence."

"the being in the picture screams. It has a hole in the centre of the head and seems to tremble while it watches the walls covered in blood".

The song of Achilles by Madeline Miller:

"My father was a king and the son of kings"

"Their hands meet and light spills in a flood, like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun"

I haven't included Les Mis cause I haven't finished the book.

[aliteraryprincess]

Macbeth Witches’ Speech Tag Game

I was tagged by @reynoldsreads. Thank you!

1. “Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.” Recommend a book with a cat in it

Okay, this took me way too long to think of. I’ve been sitting here scrolling through Goodreads thinking, “What book I have a read with a cat in it?” and it took me forever to think Pet Sematary by Stephen King even though it’s one of my favorites by him. And it’s spooky season, which means it’s the perfect time for this book!

2. “Harpier cries ‘Tis time, 'tis time.” What is the next book you plan to read?

I’m planning for several: Sunshine by Robin McKinley, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and Nunavik by Michel Hellman.

3. “Round about the cauldron go” Recommend a book it took you a long time to read

The Brontës by Juliet Barker. I started it on December 8 2017 and finished it on January 26 2018. It’s quite long, but it’s incredibly thorough and definitely worth the read if you’re interested in the Brontës (which I obviously am haha).   

4. “Eye of newt and toe of frog” Recommend a book from your childhood OR recommend a gross book

The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye. I loved this book as a kid and still adore it. It’s a sweet little fairy tale that’s so much fun.

5. “Make the gruel thick and slab” Recommend a book over 400 pages

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It’s a historical fantasy with an amazing amount of world building, seriously creepy magic (again, perfect for spooky season), and excellent characters. Sure, it’s over 800 pages. But it’s totally worth it. And make sure to read the footnotes! Half the fun comes from them!  

6. “Double, double toil and trouble/Fire burn and caludron bubble” Recommend any book you like

I feel like I’ve been saying this over and over again, but everyone should check out The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib. It’s a beautiful, realistic, and heartbreaking novel about a woman’s struggle with anorexia and it’s based on the author’s own experiences. Just keep in mind: heavy trigger warnings for eating disorders, self harm, and suicide.

Not sure who has done this, but I’ll tag @the-forest-library, @lizziethereader, @thereadingchallengechallenge (no pressure, of course), and anyone who wants to do this!

[chiseler]

Eve Arden: She Knew All the Answers

“When men get around me, they get allergic to wedding rings,” says Eve Arden’s Ida in Mildred Pierce (1945), a film that won Arden her only Academy Award nomination. Ida is a good egg, a steady, loyal friend to Joan Crawford’s Mildred. “You know, big sister type,” she says, in that inimitably sardonic, wised-up, swooping voice of hers, as she pours herself a stiff drink. “Good old Ida, you can talk it over with her man to man,” she says, of those men who treat her as if she isn’t a woman. Ida says that men are “stinkers” and “heels,” but she doesn’t sound all that mad about it. There isn’t a trace of self-pity in her tone, either. Arden never asks for sympathy. In fact, she never asks for anything. Some things seem to confuse, or bemuse, her on screen, but she was usually just playing that for laughs.

Born Eunice Quedens in 1908 in Mill Valley, California, she was a child of divorce raised mainly by her mother, who encouraged her to drop out of high school and go on the stage. She toured with a stock company and made her film debut in Song of Love (1929), a creaky musical where she played a romantic rival to the heroine. She went back to the stage, only making a brief, uncredited appearance in the Joan Crawford vehicle Dancing Lady (1933) as a blond actress who gets fired when she objects to her treatment in rehearsal. She speaks in a thick Southern accent but then drops it: “I told you that Southern accent would sound phony!” she tells her agent in her own voice. There could be no such artifice for her. Even when she later did Russian and French accents on screen, they were burlesque routines and not meant to be taken seriously.

Statuesque at 5 foot 8 inches, she joined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1934 and was encouraged to change her name. Spotting a perfume bottle in her dressing room with the name Evening in Paris and a cosmetics bottle labeled Elizabeth Arden, she came up with her new name: Eve Arden.  There were a few more years on stage before she returned to the movies in 1937 to play a girl called Eve in Gregory La Cava’s Stage Door. If that movie makes a religion of wisecracking, then Arden is its high priestess, lounging around the Footlights Club for out-of-work actresses with a white cat named Henry draped around her shoulders like a stole.

Eve has lines under her eyes and looks a little tired; she always seems to be reclining. She’s mainly an audience for the other girls, waiting out their carbonated and inventive complaining until the moment when she can add her own topper and make the whole place explode with laughter. “There’s no such thing as a fifty dollar bill,” she insists, and of all the girls she gives Katharine Hepburn’s society dilettante the hardest time. “Is it against the rules of the house to discuss the classics?” asks Hepburn, to which Arden replies, “No-o-o, go right ahead…I won’t take my sleeping pill tonight.”

I’ve seen Stage Door countless times, and so I know what Arden will say and when she will say it and how, but when I try to re-create some of her line readings by saying them out loud, I am unable to get them right. I think it’s because she weights every single word heavily as her reading goes playfully up and down the vocal scale but her overall delivery is still somehow airy, both throbbing with thick sarcasm and strangely light. “Olga wants peace, peace at any price!” cries one of the girls, to which Arden sharply cracks, “Well, you can’t have peace without a war.” That “war” comes out as “wa-a-er,” as if she likes to pick one word to spread her thickest sarcasm over.

When Hepburn asks her what she’s done in the theater, Arden says, “Everything but burst out of a pie at a Rotarian banquet,” a weird line, but one that Arden plays against with her facial expression. She seems to be signaling that Eve has done things like that, but she’s too tired now for chorus girl hanky-panky with jerky businessmen. “Never heard of him,” she says, when Hamlet gets mentioned. “Oh certainly you must have heard of Hamlet,” says a dim Southern girl, to which Arden replies, “Well, I meet so many people,” in a “nice,” polite, nearly ghostly fashion. It’s a profound kind of wisecrack in the very original way that Arden delivers it. She was capable of hitting a pure note of comic exhaustion, like a faded memory of a past life that does not touch her anymore.

Arden never signed to one studio for long, and she made a surprising number of poverty row and independent productions in the 1940s and early ‘50s. She wrestled with Groucho Marx in At the Circus (1939), meeting his aggression with her own, but she often found herself dead last in the cast list. In a bit in Raoul Walsh’s Manpower (1941), the 33-year-old Arden says to pal Marlene Dietrich, “I’m 25, look 35 and feel 50,” and this pitiless line got at something essential about Arden, because there isn’t much difference between her at age 30 or 50 or 70. Her type stays the same no matter what her age, a woman who is past it all and unimpressed and just making the best of things.

Weary of typecasting as sarcastic secretaries and good sports, Arden returned to the stage for a bit but soon went back to support glamour girls like Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944) and Ava Gardner in One Touch of Venus (1948), which is really a film about Arden and her deepening existential dilemma as she looks at gorgeous Ava and looks at herself and wonders, “Why am I me, and why is she that?” Arden flirted with prettiness whenever she opened her blue eyes wide, but she usually did this only for parody purposes. She seems uncomfortable as a promiscuous actress in The Voice of the Turtle(1947), as if she knew that her natural role on screen was to patiently listen to the Joan Crawford’s of this world and gently mock their emotional grandiloquence from the sidelines.

After years of playing support, Arden finally won a star vehicle of her own, first on radio and then on television, as schoolteacher Connie Brooks in Our Miss Brooks, which ran through most of the 1950s. Arden was consistently, tirelessly inventive in that long-running series, mastering the art and timing of situation comedy and providing a template for later players. In the twenty or so minutes of each Our Miss Brooks episode, Arden generally manages to get at least three to four laughs. The writing for that show was usually good or at least serviceable, and if it was ever a little less than that, Arden would still find her laughs in between the lines with little looks and reactions of distaste, disgust or dismayed confusion. She could get a laugh just by smoothing down her skirt, or wincing slightly.

She returned to the screen in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959), wearing some grey in her hair as James Stewart’s loyal, kindly and largely unpaid secretary, a woman who will pour some more coffee for you in the middle of the night. It might do to say that Arden’s film characters are stoic or resigned, but that’s not quite it. There’s something else about them, something unclear but suggestive. There’s something even a little mysterious and unplaceable about Eve Arden on screen, as if she isn’t giving too much of herself away for us. She does her job, like her characters do, and we get to enjoy the sound of her helplessly skeptical voice, which enlivened many movies less classic than Stage Door, Mildred Pierce and Anatomy of a Murder, but we don’t ever really get the real her and how she actually feels. She and her characters have retreated somewhere private where they cannot be reached. Maybe that’s why she had such a long career, because audiences always wanted more of her.

She appeared on television a lot as an older woman, dryly reacting to the wacky Kaye Ballard in another series, The Mothers-In-Law, and matching her sour comic timing with Bea Arthur in an episode of Maude. She was still at school as the principal in Grease ( 1978), as if Connie Brooks had climbed up the ladder but still had to put up with inane students and low-level jokes. One of her last credits was as the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella for Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre series in 1985. Rather satisfyingly, the 77-year-old Arden is asked to gloat over treating the pretty young Jennifer Beals “like dirt” because she and her daughters have not been as well-favored by dissembling nature.

Arden married twice, the second time happily to actor Brooks West, and she raised four children, three of whom were adopted. After her death in 1990, her long-time publicist and manager Glenn Rose said, “She kept being cast as this sarcastic, acid-tongued lady with the quick retort and put-down. In real life, Eve would have never put anyone down. She wasn’t that kind of person.“

by Dan Callahan

[kristasclassicfilmereview]

Cat Ballou-1965

TCM’s 31 days of Oscar is a wonderful thing. I’ve been lucky enough to have TCM and ways to watch for years. With all this being I am still in a young Jane Fonda mood. 

When Jane was starting out as an actress, sometimes she was compared to her father, and oftentimes felt like she wasn’t enough. But her comic timing had always been on point. 

Cat Ballou from 1965 shows again Jane Fonda’s comic timing. This film is about a young school teacher who turns into an outlaw to avenge her father’s murder. Cat Ballou stars Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin (The Dirty Dozen & other westerns), John Marley (Jenny’s father in the film Love Story). Nat King Cole in his last starring role and Stubby Kaye perform songs throughout the film. Nat King Cole died shortly before the film was released. 

Cat Ballou almost had different stars in the lead roles and If they had not turned the roles down, I think this film would feel totally different, which kind of blows my mind when I stop and think about it. 

I’m sure I am not the only one who at first thought it was quite odd for Lee Marvin to star in a western comedy when we are so used to him starring in plain old westerns and war films. However, he was not the first person to be offered the role of Shellen. The role was first offered to Kirk Douglas who turned it down.  Lee Marvin took the role and made it his own which earned him his only Oscar nomination and win for 1966.  

The title role was first offered to Ann Margret, producers really wanted her in the role, but as we know now she turned it down. Jane Fonda read the script and didn’t really know what to think about it. But since she was under contract with the production company that had the rights to the film but she had no choice but to sign on for the title role. 

There are a lot of reasons why I enjoyed this film, way too many to list so I will go over just a few. Before I researched this film, I knew very little, I just knew the film was a comedy western in the genre of Mclintock! Some people may say that no other film could compare to my all-time favorite western comedy Mclintock! This is true, however Cat Ballou may have slight similarities given both films came out in the 60s. There is a good old cowboy fight sequence, which is still the fight sequence in Mclintock! is my all-time favorite but now this is a close second. Jane Fonda is Cat Ballou who is more or less playing the straight man to a bunch of men. Will I watch this film again if it is on and I have a chance to? The answer is obviously yes!

[sophiarose1816]

It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading? #50

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week.  It’s a great post to organise yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment, and er… add to that ever growing TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started with J Kaye’s Blog   and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date. And here we are!

What Did I Read This Last Week?

When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton

Historical Fiction

A companion novel that brought on all the feels and the satisfaction of a greatly anticipated story being wonderful.  Cuban history and Cuban Americans in the late 60′s.

In A Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston, Narrated by Charlotte Kane

#2 Honey Badger Chronicles

Paranormal Romance

A Giant Panda shifter and a Honey Badger-tiger shifter on a mission.  Hijinks ensue. 

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley, Narrated by Jayne Entwistle

#9 Flavia de Luce

Historical Mystery

A good murder helps relieve sorrow for Flavia and her sisters.

North to the Rails by Louis L’amour, Narrated by Michael Crouch

#6 Talon and Chantry

Western Fiction

A coward or a peace-loving clever man?  A bet and a cattle drive, Kiowa on the warpath, and most dangerous of all, a greed-ridden woman with a cold heart.

Mr. Darcy’s Bad Day by Christie Capps

Historical Romance, Austenesque

Sweet quick romance when a bad day gives Darcy a different view of life and love.

Darcy, Lizzy, and Lady Susan by Barbara Silkston

Historical Romance, Austenesque

Let me stop laughing long enough to say I had a grand time with this madcap mashup of P&P and Lady Susan.

Seasons in Time by Cat Gardiner

Time Travel Romance

The 1940′s come alive when a skeptical woman learns that love can find her, too, in a most unlikely place- and time.

Ghosts Gone Wild by Danielle Garrett, Narrated by Amanda Ronconi

#2 Beechwood Harbor Ghost Mystery

Paranormal Cozy Mystery

Ghostly antics, murder, and a romantic pickle keep Scarlett on her toes.

WHAT AM I READING NOW?

Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence

#3 Book of the Ancestor

Fantasy

WHAT WILL I READ NEXT?

Smoke and Key by Kelsey Sutton

YA Fantasy Romance

[unlikely-allies]

Because this is the second time that I have read Tithe by Holly Black, I decided to do something a little different. Instead of writing a review, I have decided to write my thoughts that I had while reading the book, similar to what is done when someone live tweets a television show. This obviously means that this post CONTAINS SPOILERS.

By the way I highly recommend this entire series.

Here we go,

• Just how many times has Kaye’s mom sipped a beer with a cigarette butt in it and not noticed? • I’m thinking this venue is not exactly a high-class establishment. • At least she noticed the cigarette butt in her beer. • It’s bad when adults are asking a teenager for money when she delivers Chinese food for a living. • I’m glad she mentioned they were on Philly because I would’ve assumed they were in NYC with the “before someone smashed the window and stole the equipment” statement. • The mention of cat-yellow eyes immediately made me think of Magnus Bane. • Disappointed it is not Magnus Bane. • Asking your daughter for a cigarette. Wow mom of the year. • A possession and an almost stabbing and it isn’t even Chapter 1 yet. • The Jersey Shore is better than Philly, but not by much. • “Guys don’t like weird.” Oh honey, you’d be surprised. • “Don’t you want a boyfriend?” “Why bother with that? Let’s find incubi.” Yes Kaye and I would get along just fine. • Kaye’s brand of morbid grunge is definitely something I can appreciate. • Janet doesn’t seem like a great friend. • Glad I’m not the only one who can’t wear stockings without destroying them. • Who hasn’t been dragged along by their friend so that they can go hangout with a boy they want to impress, while you get stuck with the guy’s friends? Good times. • So the broken carousel horse actually came to life or no? • Ok, so Kenny’s an asshole and Janet has terrible taste in guys. • At least Janet actually blamed Kenny and not Kaye. • I have to say, the fashion choices so far are really something. • Corny, there is no such think as too-sweet coffee. • I feel like following a cry that is coming from the woods never ends well. • So a man holding a sword in the woods is thankfully not something that I ever encountered while I was in New Jersey. • So Kaye’s imaginary friends exist and faeries are real and Kaye can see them. Glad we are all caught up. • Pretty sure you aren’t suppose to pull arrows out, but what do I know I’ve never been shot with an arrow before. • Roiben of the Unseelie Court <3 • Aren’t Kelpies supposed to eat people? • So does Kaye not get to ask her 3 questions or? • If Kaye’s grandma doesn’t like the way Kaye’s mom turned out, maybe forcing Kaye to abide by the same rules her mother did growing up isn’t the best idea. • Issac and Armageddon are the best rat names ever. • Lutie’s dirty doll song is amazing. • Are any real life guys actually named Robin? Asking for a friend. • I’m beginning to think Kaye’s mom Ellen may have a drinking problem. • “His hair was a longish brown mop, cut too short in the front and too long in the back.” So basically Corny has a mullet. • Kenny is definitely an asshole. Still not sure how I feel about Janet, but she deserves better. • “Everything is danger.” Well then. • Note to self: listen to White Rabbit by Grace Slick. • Nothing could be more boring than working the graveyard shift at a gas station. Poor Corny, no wonder you’re so angsty. • QUICK CHECK!!! • Corny coming out to his mom using a Star Trek reference is the best thing that I’ve ever heard. • Kenny, it’s not being an insecure girlfriend if she walked in on you kissing another girl. • A hot faerie knight appearing in a diner definitely never happened to me in NJ. • Rath Roiben Rye is one hell of a name. • That was an aggressive way to literally kiss someone’s ass. • Back to not liking Janet. Kaye just got thrown to the ground by essentially a stranger and Janet’s biggest concern is telling Kaye she won’t get Kenny. • Afternoon tea with the Unseelie Court could be quite the event. • If the Unseelie Court is known for its cruelty, maybe stealing from them wasn’t the best idea. • Nothing like telling Kaye she’s a faerie and following it up with telling her she needs to be taken as the tithe sacrifice. • Not only are you a faerie, but you’re actually green. Surprise! • Corny handled Kaye’s molting about as well as anyone could. Definitely better than I would have. • Nothing like discovering that you have wings in a gas station bathroom. • I’m not sure how trustworthy Google’s knowledge of changelings is going to be. • Corny is a much better friend than Janet. • Would the Kelpie be able to read Equestrian Digest? • Its common knowledge that eating or drinking in faerie is dangerous. Kaye does both immediately upon arrival. • Oh Corny, you snuck into faerie and drank the wine and now you’re gambling with Unseelie faeries… • Naphamael is definitely the guy that made me think of Magnus. • Poor Roiben can’t take a visible liking towards anything or it will be used against him. • “If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought him back.” • There are a lot of cat references in this book. • Corny would find a booty-call in faerie. • Possibly a scary botty-call. • Kaye’s grandmother is a real pain in the ass. • No one should refuse a job based on a fear that boys won’t date them because of it. • “I get sacrificed, I guess.” “Great. When is that?” Corny is precious. • There’s no way Kenny knows what besotted means. • Not-Magnus is the one who hooked up with Corny. • The Palace of Termites couldn’t sound more unappealing. • Roiben’s door is shaped like a unicorn. How whimsical. • Roiben can come braid my hair whenever he wants. • How dare not-Magnus embarrass may poor baby Corny. • The Unseelie Queen is a real bitch for “gifting Kaye to Roiben and then ordering him to offer her up to be sacrificed. • Roiben is a badass. He gets struck by an axe and still manages to kill the Unseelie Queen. • He told her to use his name and now he’s mad at her for using it? • Ah, it’s because she’s a pixie and not a human. He thinks she’ll sell his name for her own gain. • Roiben must be one intimidating guy to still look dangerous while wrapped in a pink comforter. • So did we just leave Corny at the Unseelie Court? • I can’t picture scary Roiben eating honey on bread like a little kid. • Now we remember Corny. • Ooooo, flirty witty banter from Roiben. • Why are we going to the rave and not immediately to save Corny? • Not all that upset about Janet dying to be honest. • Kaye just broke into a car whiel wearing a green frock coat in broad daylight. • Sarcastic, sassy Roiben is my favorite Roiben. • “I would not.” Go Roiben. • “I love her still, more’s the pity.” No Roiben, no. • At least `King Not-Magnus hasn’t killed Corny yet. • No! King Not-Magnus knows Roiben’s full name! • I’d pay good money to see Roiben dance, as cruel as forced dancing may be. • “The Seelie Court arrived.” Oh damn. • Not-Magnus was acting on the Seelie Queen’s orders. Even bigger damn. • Poor sweet baby Corny is going to have some serious PTSD. • Roiben, self-declared King of the Unseelie Court! • My boy Roiben has game for days. He can come trade kisses with me any day. • We have clarified nothing about what Kaye and Roiben plan to do about their relationship and I am not ok with that even though I know what happens.

[crowfeathers]

THEYRE PLAYING GO.... such a good intro. and waverhouse is already trying to cheat

he's so funny this chapter help

[redgoldsparks]

September Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

Crushed Vol 1 by Trinidad Escobar

Trinidad Escobar's gorgeous and moving graphic memoir weaves together memories and myths. She grew up knowing that her American family had adopted her as an infant from the Philippians. She was not the first baby her second parents had tried to adopt- an earlier baby had passed away and Trinidad was given that girl's birthday and name, Nicole, to speed the adoption process. Nicole was contacted by her first family as a teenager, which lead to her first visit to the Philippians at 18. This book takes place primarily during a second visit in which she is finally able to visit her first family's home, to learn stories from and cook meals with her brothers and sisters. There is exquisite beauty and deep trauma in this emotionally charged reunion. The second half of the story will be coming in book 2, forthcoming in fall 2018.

The Catcher Was A Spy by Nicholas Dawidoff

This is a somewhat odd book about a very unusual man- Moe Berg, a Princeton and Columbia Law School graduate who played major league baseball for 15 years and served as a spy during WWII. Berg was very smart, deeply secretive, and motivated by vastly different things than most men of his time. He accomplished more than many people could in three life times, but also in some senses wasted the last third of his own life doing very little. I'm glad to know more about him (and interested to see the Sundance film of the same title based on this book-) but not sure, in the end, how I feel about Moe Berg himself.

Super Late Bloomer by Julie Kaye

A wonderful collection of Julia Kay's webcomic Up and Out Comic, which can be read on tumblr and instagram. These strips span the first year of Julia's transition including a cross-country move and many other new starts. I had previously read most of this material online but it was great to be able to hold the book in my hands.

How the Best Hunter in the Village Met Her Death by Molly Ostertag

A beautiful, Ignatz-award-winning short story from the author of The Witch Boy. The hunter of the title was left outside a small village as a baby. She was raised by a villager and takes pride in her ability to provide for her adopted community. But an encounter with a beast from the woods shakes her life to it's very core- her identity as a villager, a hunter, a wife and even as a human being are all called into question.

Gumballs by Erin Nations

This book collects short stories by Erin Nations, some auto-bio, some fictional. He writes about experiences growing up as a triplet, his transition, working at a grocery store, biking around Portland and road trips. Also included are personal ads of stereotypical Pacific Northwesterners and stories about Tobias, a sweet gay teen plagued by constant unrequited crushes. The different types of material are interspersed a bit randomly, but I enjoyed it all.

Look Back and Laugh: Journal Comics by Liz Prince

Liz Prince started drawing one comic every day at the beginning of 2016. This book collects 356 little strips and builds, piece by piece, a picture of her life. It was a tumultuous year- she got married, moved to a new state, bought a house, witnessed the election. It was also a mundane year- she took naps, petted her cats, drew comics, ate lunch with friends, watched TV. This mix of macro and micro events, plus the changing of the seasons, the ongoing attempts at better self-care and better work habits, create a story much greater than the sum of its parts. I love reading daily comics. I think they are one of the most interesting types of creative challenge that a cartoonist can take on. I've never kept up dailies longer than about six weeks, but every time I read someone else's I am inspired to try it again! 

Open Earth by Sarah Mirk, Eva Cabrera and Claudia Aguirre

Rigo lives on the space station California, a self-sufficient community that has lost all contact with the planet still visible below. The older generation is nostalgic for life on Earth, but Rigo is fully immersed in the norms of the station. Her generation freely explore queer, polyamorous relationships in which the biggest challenges are fitting in quality time with multiple partners around everyone's busy work schedules. Short and sweet, this book presents a hopeful view of a new civilization born after the end of the world.

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls Redux edited by Hope Nicholson

This book was released after The Secret Loves of Geek Girls but before The Secret Loves of Geeks to whet the appetite of fans anxious for more intimate tales of love and relationships from fannish women. It delivers. 

[missdawnandherdusk]

Hi there!!! I’ve been reading your fics for a while, and I admire your writing style so much! I want to get into writing more, and was wondering if you had any advice whether that’d be on the more technical side of writing or even the more personal side regarding growth and such. Thank you 🥺 you’re amazing 🥺💖

Awe, my heart~

Anyway, sorry it took me so long to answer this, ya girl has been through a lot the past month, but here we go. 

More technical stuff? Well...

Find what is aesthetically pleasing in your writing document. What font? Line spacing? Paragraph spacing? Do you like to indent your new paragraphs? Currently, I have mine in Times New Roman, 12pt font, 1.5 line spacing, and 2.0 paragraph spacing, and it works well for me. I don’t indent my new paragraphs because it gives me a better idea of what it will look like on Tumblr as I write. It sounds silly, but honestly, just like you work better in a clean room, you’ll work better in a clean document

Never try to write an entire one-shot/chapter in one sitting. You’ll burn yourself out, Give yourself time to think about different ways that your writing can go, rewrite scenes, or different paths that a scene can take.

That being said, keep notes. I have notes on my phone (the iPhone note app) that sync to my laptop, so anytime that I don’t have easy access to my laptop or would rather type on my phone, I always have it accessible. It can be blurbs, some conversations, beginnings of stories I may or may not write. 

When you’re inspired, write. When I watch Sherlock or Supernatural or reread Harry Potter, and I think something can be changed or done better, I stop and write how I would want it to go, or what I would do if I was there. It’s a good way to get into the habit of writing also learning to find your voice and learning that as a writer you have the power to change whatever you want. 

For aesthetic reasons, I have found that when creating a post, people enjoy a title, what paring, a summary, an a/n, and a gif before the story. It’s a preview/trailer to what you’ve written. Make it mean something, try and grab your reader. Marketing is half the battle and the most important part of the post. 

Make your summaries vaguer, even if you got a request I don’t want to read an explanatory summary of everything that happens, then I won’t read the work because I already have. Make it a question that you answer in the story that the reader also wants to know the answer to. Set the stage a bit so that the reader wants to know this new story you’ve created. It’s a trailer, not a movie review. 

For personal growth...

don't be afraid to change fandoms and grow. I started in supernatural, hopped to tmnt, and now here I am at HP. I write but don’t publish Sherlock fics more because it's my own challenge (I’ll talk about that next). But your interests are going to change, don’t be afraid to pick up one fandom and leave another for the sake of growth. Sure your readers might miss you, but writing is for you, not them. And there are always more people out there willing to read better writing than the same writing. 

Challenge yourself in character types. Most time I skim over Draco fics because though I love y’all, you’ve made him a simp, or the reader a simp, and it’s unrealistic. Don’t write established characters as you want them to be, but write them as they are and explore situations that might get them to change. It’s not wrong to want better for a character, but don’t get too lost in how you want things. It makes the foundation of your writing crumble. My biggest writing challenge is Sherlock because he’s so anti-emotive and all I do is emotions. It’s fun to play with different scenarios and even to see what Sherlock would do if someone like me walked into his life.

Which goes to say, have fun. Just because Draco or Sherlock might be a stick in the mud, doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun with it. What would push their buttons the most? What could they not tolerate? What would your character do that would push them over the edge? Would it end well? Or poorly? No one wants a “yes” man all the time. Create conflict and push what it means for your characters to grow

Don't be afraid to take writings from one fandom and use them in another. Draco and Sherlock are very similar and archetypes, and it goes unnoticed when I change my Sherlock fics into scenes for my Draco ones. 

READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN. You’ll pick up on writing styles you like, on how certain authors express emotions and scenes. Maybe you like how one author portrays betrayal, or forgiveness, or breakups, or fluff. It’s all about learning from others and creating your own style. Pick up things here and there, leave things that you don’t quite want. Don’t be afraid to use dialogue you like (I ‘steal’ from books and movies all the time).

Let some things die. If you started writing something and you’ve grown from that time and it’s still not finished, let it be unfinished, or start it again with your new knowledge. But it’s okay to not finish things. It’s okay to move on and never get an answer to an ending. You’re not writing a book (yet) just enjoy not having a deadline and a script and go with it

tags: 

(i just cleaned it up, if you were kicked off, tumblr wasn’t letting me tag you anymore, just send me an ask and i can try to add you again :))

@coffee-addicti @msmcsmutt @ravn-87 @artemismohr18 @whygz @crazywritingbug @bitemebro522 @zombiesnips-blog @savingdraco  @akari180 @slytherin-emerald @queenfeatherwings @fanficflaneuse @go-whovian-universe @spicyshenanigans @darling-im-not-okay-i-promise@katsukink @takemetothekingdom @strangerr-things @tmnt-queen @hxneybgb @belcvayelena @moviesbooksandfandoms @cocochanelthepupper @ninacotte @braelynn-johnston @jiggllyy @darcypotter-blog @thiccheerioss @lottie289 @beautiful-pegasus @tceedlmao @anonymous034 @bi-andready-tocry  @dragonsandbread @the-queen-of-hell-things @alienmotel @oh-itsnothing @sunflowerxsadnessw @fattycooter @fanficsigottaread @gweaslvy @strawberriesonsummer @gaysludge @ray-of-sunrise @artist-bby @shadowsingeraxolotl @quillsareforwriting @wollymalfoy @lilpieceoftoast @paper-cats @floweryjh @hufflautia @livize75 @annie-mcl @riathearora @live-like-luna @justathoughtfulangel @coconutdawn @skteaiy @naughtygranger @dragonsandbread @abundantxadorations @moony-artnstuff  @and-then-a-girl-with-luv @1-800-luvsick @pandas-rice-field @in-slytherin-we-trust @emmaa-t @introvertedrae @infinity1o1 @echpr @dekulover @marshmallowtraver @cereuselle @lonely-skywalker @sleepysnapesnake @hoeforthefictional @coldlilheart @helen-paris @rosie-starlit-sky @vulture-withafile @hogstupefy @eveft @iraniq @groovyfluxie @cool-weirdo-wannabee-author @rosegold-thorns @criminaly-supernatural @ghostofdolans @mxl-foyrecs @ginger-haired-queen @bex4whovian @kellyrose193 @unlikelygalaxygiver @marvel-trash-was-taken @one-edgy-bitch @supersouthy @garbagejay @rejectedlonelyasianchild @lucymxwell @coldlilheart  @elia-the-bibliophile @biggalaxydreamland @fuckbuckyyy @hopem1218 @youareinllve @tyrusparker @3rdofkingdomtrees @whamitsqueen @i-mmunity @zero-nightshade @graym01 @fandomtrash88 @snakey-drakey @ceeellewrites @thatguppienamedbae @pinkleopardss @angel-blogging @xhoney-bee-x @jovialthings @samanthahaigwood @minigigglybabi @clumsy-writing-rdb @lahoete @yourenotafailureoverall @m-winchester-67 @shiningstar-byulxx @clumsy-writing-rdb @dracosathenaeum @dracofeltonmalfoy @harryslouis @iilovemusic12us @itsbebeyyy @dumspirospero-1 @kaye-lantern @stardewsnail @anerroroccurrrrred @franbow29 @big-galaxy-chaos @itsbebeyyy @gryffindors-weasley @ornella0910 @ultrabuzzlightyear @phantomface1983

[purplesurveys]

1056

survey by katesmarie13 

(Merry Christmas! Or Happy Holidays! Or Happy Friday! <3)

Okay, just a few basics first...THEN the new stuff.

Your full name? I only feel like sharing the name Robyn today.

Your hometown? Manila, kinda. I won’t give away the city I currently reside in.

Age? 22, and a waste of a year it was. I’m so tempted to just turn 22 again in 2021.

Now for something different and completely random...

When you're having a bad day, what comfort food do you reach for? It differs per bad day and it also depends if I can afford to get whatever it is I’m craving. Though for the most part, I’ve found myself pining for samgyupsal the most often. It’s just the ultimate problem-fixer and makes-the-sad-go-away-er.

Do you have an item that is your good luck charm? I don’t really believe in those, so no. The farthest I’ve gone with a certain item and luck is how I insisted to use the same paddle that was available in our gym whenever I trained for table tennis back in high school. The reason I don’t think it has anything to do with luck is because I simply thought I had the best grip with that paddle, not because I was convinced I can win any game with it.

If so, what is it? See paddle situation aboe.

Your favorite thing about your job (or school)? It’s in the media/public relations field so there are lots of freebies and treats that come with the job that make what I do worth it, and a lot more fun. The entire team also consists of Gen Z-ers and younger Millennials, so there are practices we follow that bigger corporations might not have, like longer office shutdowns during Christmas (we don’t get back to work until Jan 4th), reminders to take mental health breaks, and a no-video-meetings rule every Friday afternoon.

Least favorite thing about your job (or school)? It’s very, very hectic so I have the tendency to get overwhelmed as early as 10 AM. There’s never any dead air and I don’t get rest for nine hours straight (my shift is technically eight hours, but I work through the allotted 1-hour lunch break as well). OT is also common, but at least I get paid for it. Demanding clients who micromanage and/or ask for too much work to be done from our end also make the job stressful.

Does global warming and the hole in the ozone truly bother you? Of course. My heart sinks every time I come across a new article saying glaciers are melting, that animals living in polar regions are suffering, that sea ice continues to drastically decrease, etc.

Do you have a "funny" toenail? I don’t think so? All my toenails look...the way they’re supposed to look like, lol.

How many times have you moved in your lifetime? The times I can remember, just twice. But my parents moved around a bit when I was still an infant.

Do you watch professional wrestling and is it real? I do watch and keep up with it, just not as much as I used to. I don’t recognize most of the new faces anymore, and I wouldn’t be able to give you a decent breakdown of the current storylines in any promotion, not even in WWE. The angles, results, belts, and characters all aren’t real, but the movesets (especially the submission holds) risks, and injuries very much are. Are we going to debate this in 2020 still? Lmao.

What's your favorite thing to microwave? Don’t microwaves just heat stuff up? I dunno if it heats a certain food better than others lol.

Could Pop-Tarts survive a nuclear attack? I doubt it.

Does anyone know where the UP (Upper Peninsula) is? Can I give you a different UP? That’s where I went to in college, heh heh.

What's the regular unleaded gas price where you are? I have no idea. I never paid attention. I usually just give the gas attendant anywhere between P300 to P700 and see how far up it would fill my tank.

Do you know someone who's been injured in Iraq? I don’t know. Probably not. None of my relatives who migrated ever signed up for the US military.

Do you remember what a Puff-A-Lump is? I’m pretty positive I’ve never heard of it before.

Least favorite TV show? Game of Thrones.

Favorite canned soup? I don’t consume that.

How far does your belly button stick out or sink in? How can I even measure this?

Do you have a particular coffee mug you drink from? Yes, but I’ve described it so many times in surveys from just this month alone.

What does that mug say/have on it? The first line reads “Seattle, WA” then “Starbucks” in big bold letters, then “Coffee Company” below it, and the last line reads. “Est. 1971.”

Your take on declawing cats? I don’t like cats a lot but this does not sound like a responsible thing to do, and it also sounds like a painful procedure for a poor cat.

Do have smoke detectors in your home? No. That’s not really a requirement or standard practice here.

Would it be easy to erase YOUR identity? I suppose it’s technically easy to hire someone who can do that (a la Breaking Bad), I just would not be willing to do it and give up who I am for anything in the world.

Do you know anyone named Sam? Lots. My cousin is named Sam; I also went to school with multiple Sams.

How many drawers do you have in your room/office? Five.

What was your favorite snuggle toy when you were a child? I was happy with a pillow. I was never into stuffed toys all that much.

Great! A few firsts then...

What was your first pet and their name? I had a goldfish that I simply named Goldy. I vividly remember this because Angela’s first pet was also a goldfish; and there was a time we did show-and-tell in first grade and she bought her pet. We had been bickering that day, as 7 year olds do, and I remember being an absolute asshole and snickering when she introduced her fish as Fishy because I thought it was a cheesy name and that Goldy was far superior. Sorry Fishy. You had a great name.

When your mind wanders, where does it go first? My biggest stressor for the day, usually.

Your first knick-knack (item you placed in your room/house)? I have no clue. I was 10 when we first moved in here, and a completely different person.

First "real" piece of jewlery? (This goes for the guys too) I’m going to forgive this survey for being a little sexist because it’s nearly 15 years old; but anyway, I’ve never had any expensive jewelry of my own. All the pricey ones I’ve ever worn are owned by mom.

What did you do on your first date? We went to a museum and had early dinner at an Italian-American restaurant. We also had coffee after, and then she slept over at my place where I let her play GTA V on our PS3 because she wasn’t allowed to play it in her house.

Who was your first best friend? Kaye. I can’t trace her down now because she has such a common name, but I hope she’s been doing well.

When did you first realize that life isn't easy and fun? I was 12, going through puberty and a generally not-nice time of my life, with everyone in the house hating and isolating me.

And lastly...

The last thing you thought about before you fell asleep last night? I briefly thought about how many hours I need to sleep to get a decent rest, but I passed out in like 10 seconds.

Your last argument? Last night my mom and I had an argument about where I last placed my phone because I had already misplaced it two times prior during the day.

Your last words to someone...? “You’re wearing black; it’s not too obvious” when my mom was complaining that she looked a bit big in her outfit for today.

The last place you'd go? I’m not very sure about the wording here. Do you mean the last place I went to (outside the house to pay for a delivery)? Or the last place I’d want to go to before I die (no clue)? Hahahaha.

The last thing you'd find yourself wearing? Again, not so sure about the grammar here.

What will be the last thing that you do today? Trying to doze off.

[chiseler]

Eve Arden: She Knew All the Answers

“When men get around me, they get allergic to wedding rings,” says Eve Arden’s Ida in Mildred Pierce (1945), a film that won Arden her only Academy Award nomination. Ida is a good egg, a steady, loyal friend to Joan Crawford’s Mildred. “You know, big sister type,” she says, in that inimitably sardonic, wised-up, swooping voice of hers, as she pours herself a stiff drink. “Good old Ida, you can talk it over with her man to man,” she says, of those men who treat her as if she isn’t a woman. Ida says that men are “stinkers” and “heels,” but she doesn’t sound all that mad about it. There isn’t a trace of self-pity in her tone, either. Arden never asks for sympathy. In fact, she never asks for anything. Some things seem to confuse, or bemuse, her on screen, but she was usually just playing that for laughs.

Born Eunice Quedens in 1908 in Mill Valley, California, she was a child of divorce raised mainly by her mother, who encouraged her to drop out of high school and go on the stage. She toured with a stock company and made her film debut in Song of Love (1929), a creaky musical where she played a romantic rival to the heroine. She went back to the stage, only making a brief, uncredited appearance in the Joan Crawford vehicle Dancing Lady (1933) as a blond actress who gets fired when she objects to her treatment in rehearsal. She speaks in a thick Southern accent but then drops it: “I told you that Southern accent would sound phony!” she tells her agent in her own voice. There could be no such artifice for her. Even when she later did Russian and French accents on screen, they were burlesque routines and not meant to be taken seriously.

Statuesque at 5 foot 8 inches, she joined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1934 and was encouraged to change her name. Spotting a perfume bottle in her dressing room with the name Evening in Paris and a cosmetics bottle labeled Elizabeth Arden, she came up with her new name: Eve Arden.  There were a few more years on stage before she returned to the movies in 1937 to play a girl called Eve in Gregory La Cava’s Stage Door. If that movie makes a religion of wisecracking, then Arden is its high priestess, lounging around the Footlights Club for out-of-work actresses with a white cat named Henry draped around her shoulders like a stole.

Eve has lines under her eyes and looks a little tired; she always seems to be reclining. She’s mainly an audience for the other girls, waiting out their carbonated and inventive complaining until the moment when she can add her own topper and make the whole place explode with laughter. “There’s no such thing as a fifty dollar bill,” she insists, and of all the girls she gives Katharine Hepburn’s society dilettante the hardest time. “Is it against the rules of the house to discuss the classics?” asks Hepburn, to which Arden replies, “No-o-o, go right ahead…I won’t take my sleeping pill tonight.”

I’ve seen Stage Door countless times, and so I know what Arden will say and when she will say it and how, but when I try to re-create some of her line readings by saying them out loud, I am unable to get them right. I think it’s because she weights every single word heavily as her reading goes playfully up and down the vocal scale but her overall delivery is still somehow airy, both throbbing with thick sarcasm and strangely light. “Olga wants peace, peace at any price!” cries one of the girls, to which Arden sharply cracks, “Well, you can’t have peace without a war.” That “war” comes out as “wa-a-er,” as if she likes to pick one word to spread her thickest sarcasm over.

When Hepburn asks her what she’s done in the theater, Arden says, “Everything but burst out of a pie at a Rotarian banquet,” a weird line, but one that Arden plays against with her facial expression. She seems to be signaling that Eve has done things like that, but she’s too tired now for chorus girl hanky-panky with jerky businessmen. “Never heard of him,” she says, when Hamlet gets mentioned. “Oh certainly you must have heard of Hamlet,” says a dim Southern girl, to which Arden replies, “Well, I meet so many people,” in a “nice,” polite, nearly ghostly fashion. It’s a profound kind of wisecrack in the very original way that Arden delivers it. She was capable of hitting a pure note of comic exhaustion, like a faded memory of a past life that does not touch her anymore.

Arden never signed to one studio for long, and she made a surprising number of poverty row and independent productions in the 1940s and early ‘50s. She wrestled with Groucho Marx in At the Circus (1939), meeting his aggression with her own, but she often found herself dead last in the cast list. In a bit in Raoul Walsh’s Manpower (1941), the 33-year-old Arden says to pal Marlene Dietrich, “I’m 25, look 35 and feel 50,” and this pitiless line got at something essential about Arden, because there isn’t much difference between her at age 30 or 50 or 70. Her type stays the same no matter what her age, a woman who is past it all and unimpressed and just making the best of things.

Weary of typecasting as sarcastic secretaries and good sports, Arden returned to the stage for a bit but soon went back to support glamour girls like Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944) and Ava Gardner in One Touch of Venus (1948), which is really a film about Arden and her deepening existential dilemma as she looks at gorgeous Ava and looks at herself and wonders, “Why am I me, and why is she that?” Arden flirted with prettiness whenever she opened her blue eyes wide, but she usually did this only for parody purposes. She seems uncomfortable as a promiscuous actress in The Voice of the Turtle (1947), as if she knew that her natural role on screen was to patiently listen to the Joan Crawford’s of this world and gently mock their emotional grandiloquence from the sidelines.

After years of playing support, Arden finally won a star vehicle of her own, first on radio and then on television, as schoolteacher Connie Brooks in Our Miss Brooks, which ran through most of the 1950s. Arden was consistently, tirelessly inventive in that long-running series, mastering the art and timing of situation comedy and providing a template for later players. In the twenty or so minutes of each Our Miss Brooks episode, Arden generally manages to get at least three to four laughs. The writing for that show was usually good or at least serviceable, and if it was ever a little less than that, Arden would still find her laughs in between the lines with little looks and reactions of distaste, disgust or dismayed confusion. She could get a laugh just by smoothing down her skirt, or wincing slightly.

She returned to the screen in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959), wearing some grey in her hair as James Stewart’s loyal, kindly and largely unpaid secretary, a woman who will pour some more coffee for you in the middle of the night. It might do to say that Arden’s film characters are stoic or resigned, but that’s not quite it. There’s something else about them, something unclear but suggestive. There’s something even a little mysterious and unplaceable about Eve Arden on screen, as if she isn’t giving too much of herself away for us. She does her job, like her characters do, and we get to enjoy the sound of her helplessly skeptical voice, which enlivened many movies less classic than Stage Door, Mildred Pierce and Anatomy of a Murder, but we don’t ever really get the real her and how she actually feels. She and her characters have retreated somewhere private where they cannot be reached. Maybe that’s why she had such a long career, because audiences always wanted more of her.

She appeared on television a lot as an older woman, dryly reacting to the wacky Kaye Ballard in another series, The Mothers-In-Law, and matching her sour comic timing with Bea Arthur in an episode of Maude. She was still at school as the principal in Grease (1978), as if Connie Brooks had climbed up the ladder but still had to put up with inane students and low-level jokes. One of her last credits was as the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella for Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre series in 1985. Rather satisfyingly, the 77-year-old Arden is asked to gloat over treating the pretty young Jennifer Beals “like dirt” because she and her daughters have not been as well-favored by dissembling nature.

Arden married twice, the second time happily to actor Brooks West, and she raised four children, three of whom were adopted. After her death in 1990, her long-time publicist and manager Glenn Rose said, “She kept being cast as this sarcastic, acid-tongued lady with the quick retort and put-down. In real life, Eve would have never put anyone down. She wasn't that kind of person."

by Dan Callahan