#laura is old now

[watmalik]

THIS MAN DIDN’T EVEN WANT DOGPOOL NOW LOOK AT HIM.

[saturnvs]

two headed calf and his mother

[prongcollar]

[sheryllee]

"Be safe," you say Whatever the mess you are, you're mine, okay If that is the custom I'm down ♫

[oldguardleatherdog]

We Don't Have Nixon To Kick Around Anymore

50 years on from The Resignation, a glancing elegy

On the night of August 8, 1974, as I sat on the big couch in our livingroom with one eye on the TV and the other on the cast on my left arm (another fractured wrist, this time from being last kid standing in a game of Bombardment at 6th grade recess - dodgeball with three balls - I made a heroic dive, felt the sproinggg! as I landed hard, and I knew another trip to Dr. MacFarland was in my near future), I saw the familiar jowls of President Nixon fill the screen on the Zenith, knowing that what Gerald Ford would soon call "our long national nightmare" was about to come to its once unlikely, suddenly imminent end.

For most of 1973 and all of 1974, the Watergate scandal had consumed the nation, crowding out the summer daytime programming (what? no Jeopardy or Concentration or that wild guy from Canada with the 'fro and the stache on a lame game called The Wizard of Odds named Alex Trebek? We had to go outside and play?), making unlikely household names of obscurocrats like John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy and Jeb Stuart Magruder, spawning what we would call memes today featuring Tricky Dick caricatures with endless snorts on Hollywood Squares and Laugh-In, and getting 12-year-old factory town kids engaged with politics in surprising ways (for two years, our Social Studies classes were a hotbed of partisan debate, and I lost ten cents betting on McGovern over Nixon in '72).

We all knew the end was close - the local headlines in giant type screaming "Nixon Resignation is Near" were belaboring the obvious by then - and as the President droned on, I listened for the cue to look at the screen...

"Therefore," - my family and I swiveled our heads in unison - "I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."

And just like that, it was over.

The next day, I watched as the Nixons took their final walk across the White House lawn towards the helicopter that would carry them away from Washington and into history, Julie and Tricia and their husbands bearing them up, then the long-suffering Pat who God only knows how she held it together at that scorching, searing moment -

and last, the old crook himself, turning to face the Fords and the gathered staff and America and the world one last time, extending both arms out and up "stiff as a board" as the NBC News anchor remarked, his hands making the peace sign (peace! Jesus Christ, I learned in that instant where irony ended and satire began) in the posture we knew so well, and then just like that, they were gone.

And here we are, half a century hence, my wrist long since healed, wondering how the hell I got old, casting my baleful eye across our miserable mise-en-scène, trying to figure out just where we lost the thread and took the turn that got us back into the same damn jam squared - hell, cubed - and yearning for such a clear-cut, uncomplicated, and decisive ending to our long national nightmare once again.

[Excerpt from the "Checkers Speech", UVA's Miller Center via Vimeo]

[catelyngrant]

let your faith die, bring your wonder (bsg, laura roslin)

She knows, with increasing tangibility, that the path she’s on will end soon. She’ll leave nothing but a legacy, and that’s only if the human race is very, very lucky. Or, five conversations Laura Roslin had and one she didn't. Written for @galactica-bigbang

Me, writing BSG fic? In the year 2023? Yeah, it wasn't on my bingo card either. But that's been a theme this year, and this weekend marks the 20th anniversary of BSG's premiere, and...here we are. I have some feelings about this, which will go under the cut.

I joined Tumblr after the heyday of the BSG fandom, so many of you didn't know me during that time (others haven't gotten rid of me since). It was a long time ago! The last time I wrote Laura Roslin fic was in 2011. BSG was my last major fandom during the LiveJournal era, and after it came Doctor Who and the start of my Tumblr era, which has lasted much longer and been (mostly) a joy...

But nothing's ever been like BSG. The glory days of my time in that fandom are untouchable. No fandom, and very few other external factors, have impacted my life the way BSG did. If I hadn't begrudgingly watched this show that I was deeply skeptical about (I had never watched sci-fi and had no real interest, but a friend insisted) and loved it so much that I spent most of my free time talking about it with people on the internet...

I'd be a fundamentally different person. The trajectory of my life was altered with that first episode. And now, twenty years after it first aired and coming up on seventeen since I first watched it, there is virtually no part of my daily existence that isn't impacted by/the direct or indirect result of my decision to watch this show all those years ago.

This is because of the people, of course. The incredible cast that brought this show to life, and Mary McDonnell above all, who remains very dear to me in ways I never could have imagined way back when. Laura Roslin was and is one of the greatest characters ever created, and to this day remains my favorite of all time.

Much more, though, it's because of my friends.

Most of us haven't talked about BSG in years. It's not something that I even think about particularly often, not explicitly. It's foundational, not front and center. But BSG directly gave me so many of the people that matter most, and indirectly has led to so much more joy and chaos, and so many more people, through the ripples that are still making their way into my future.

I signed up for this challenge on a whim, thinking it would be fun to revisit BSG and Laura after all this time. Then life happened, aggressively, and finishing this ended up being much more challenging than I expected. I'm glad I did, though.

It's been a ride. I'm excited to see where it will take me next.

[kashilascorner]

According to the Sinbad chapter the story's now set in 1838, about nine years since Dantes' escape from prison, so Albert would actually be closer to 19-21 than to 15. 🤓

Anon, I love you. I think I missed the year of reference at some point I was so genuinely confused because from context he&Franz are obviously young adults but the math was not mathing at all 😭

[fictionadventurer]

After very little research into the other writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, my hypothesis about the Little House authorship question is that the writing is mostly Rose's, but the heart is Laura's.

In Laura's newspaper columns, the parts that sound most like Little House mostly come from the extracts she shares from Rose's letters (incidentally, it's kind of adorable how proud she is of Rose: "My daughter's in France!", "My daughter's in Albania!", etc.) The prose of Old Home Town, Rose's inspired-by-my-childhood-home novel, has some of the same concise descriptive prose that I've come to associate with the Little House style (I could hear passages in the voice of the Little House audiobook narrator).

Yet the Little House soul is all over Laura's columns. She's fascinated by the simple tasks of life, believes in home and family and hard work, believes in holding onto the goodness of childhood and looking forward with hope toward the future. There's an optimism, almost a romanticism, about life. The children's series that bears her name clearly comes from the same woman.

Rose, by contrast, is much more pessimistic. When writing about childhood, she's almost cynical about the life of a small town. She highlights the dark stories underlying the wholesome exterior, is extremely sensitive to the pitfalls of the social scene around her. Part of the difference is that Rose is writing for adults, but there does seem to be an essential difference in the personality behind the pen, despite the stylistic similarities to Little House.

(At the risk of pop psychoanalyzing people long dead, Rose seems much more neurotic and introverted and sensitive than her mother. In her writings and in the books about her childhood in Missouri, she comes across as child of a fairly comfortable modern life, with all the modern anxieties, in contrast to a woman who grew up starving on the prairie and knows that there are much worse things to endure than small-town gossip).

It's not much of a thesis, but I'm just fascinated by the fact that the Little House series can share so many stylistic similarities with Rose's writings, yet feel so much more like Laura.

[fuckyeahagainstme]

Sometimes you just can't turn back no matter how much you would like to. Days come where change is necessary for survival. I've spent the past two years denying the fact. Trying to find myself in a person that I struggled to be, but just wasn't. There are many ways to achieve dreams, this just isn't the way. I can still remember every last look, as I acknowledged that while this may only be good bye for the moment, nothing will ever be the same. I've tried to rebuild relationships countless times to no avail. The bags I've accumulated from pushing everything down inside time and time again always proves itself too heavy to cope with. Screened thoughts are passed out, not on purpose, victim of habit. Celebrated tradition of denying release.

- Vivida-Vis! track listing page in the lyrics and other associated writings booklet Image source: Discogs

[nthflower]

I don't like the new heir chapter it was everything I didn't want this book to be ☺️

[thewildmother]

decided to take up the challenge i've seen youtubers do of watching twin peaks blind and seeing if i can solve the mystery before it's all revealed. unfortunately i solved it immediately so this will be no challenge at all—it's aliens. thank you

[steamclouds]

Fighting my way through the Legend of Drizzt books at a terrifying pace, just started The Silent Blade... I love everything about them it's unreal

[laurasimonsdaughter]

He had not regretted turning down her proposal, not even while he was still a frog, but he should not have spoken to her so scornfully. He ought to have known better than to be impolite to a witch.

But he had too quick a temper, and her advances had surprised him most unpleasantly. He had had no thought of marrying at that time, why should he have? His life was perfectly comfortable.

The witch's temper was as quick as his own, however, and she had not taken kindly to his refusal.

The young king glanced at his looking glass. They still called him the Frog King, and part of him still expected to see an inhuman face looking back at him…

Seven more days to the wedding. Seven days and eight nights until he could call his beloved princess his wife. There was nothing left of his disdain for marriage now. He was well aware what a joke that was on him. He deserved to be ridiculed for it. But he had never met such a woman before! The way she spoke to him- No one at the entire court, no one in the entire kingdom spoke to him like that. It was as if she saw right through him. She hadn’t put up with any of his amphibian rudeness and she wouldn't put up with any royal misbehaviour either.

And yet she loved him.

That was the one, most wondrous thing about her. That she would come to know him like a demanding, bartering frog, that she would see through him like she did, and that despite all this, she could still love him. Love him enough to liken his faults to her own, to make light of them, and to consent to become not just his Queen, but his wife.

No one else would even have entertained the thought.

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price - Laura

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

because im less breakable than you

[nyan-bynary]

Ppl really sleep on jjk0 suguru like if you think gojo's a weird child man at age 27 here's his ex who is the same age, jojo posing on random children and batting his lashes and putting on so much boyish charm to get everyone's guard down. He can't control his random mean and menacing facial expressions to the point where someone points it out. He watches yuuta make out with a curse and his first comment about it is calling him a womaniser gjfjfjf they have become the same person it is so sad and so funny