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HALLOWEEN ID PACK
NAMES︰ abraham. abraxas. adam. adrian. adrienne. alaric. alfred. alistair. amity. ann. annabelle. apple. arawn. ash. avaric. azazel. azrael. azriel. barnabas. belladonna. berry. blair. blaize. blake. blanche. boq. brain. bram. bridgette. bronwen. burton. candi. candy. caradoc. carmilla. carrie. casper. cassia. castor. choco. claire. clarice. claudia. cole. coraline. corbin. crimson. cuthbert. damien. damon. daphne. dark. debra. dexter. draco. dracula. drake. duncan. ebony. edgar. elena. eli. elphaba. elvira. ember. estelle. eve. eye. fable. fang. fergus. finn. fiyero. frankenstein. freddie. freddy. frederick. george. ghost. ghoul. giles. glinda. griffin. grimm. gummy. hades. hallorann. hallow. hawthorne. heath. heathcliff. hecate. hekate. hela. hemlock. henry. ichabod. igor. ike. ivan. jack. jason. jasper. josette. knox. layla. lazarus. lenore. lester. licorice. lilith. lolly. lucinda. luella. luna. lunette. mab. malcolm. marnie. mary. matilda. mike. mikey. mina. morgan. morgana. mortimer. nancy. neoma. nessarose. nimue. norman. obsidian. onyx. orenda. orion. osiris. othello. pandora. payne. peach. perdita. poe. poison. pumpkin. radcliff. raven. reese. remus. renwick. requiem. rhiannon. romero. rosalie. rosemary. ross. ruby. rune. ruth. saber. sabrina. sage. salem. sally. sam. samhain. scarlett. sebastian. semyazza. seth. sibyl. sid. sirius. stella. stephen. sylvia. tabitha. thackery. trick. twila. twilight. udolpho. vamp. vampire. vanellope. vespera. victor. victoria. viktor. vincent. vlad. voltaire. wanda. wednesday. wendy. werewolf. wes. wesley. wilhelmina. willow. winifred. winter. wolf. wren. xander. zelda.
PRONOUNS︰ attic/attic. bat/bat. bell/bell. black/black. blood/blood. bone/bone. boo/boo. cabre/macabre. candle/candle. candy/bar. candy/candy. candybar/candybar. carve/carve. cavity/cavity. cem/cemetery. chaos/chaos. choco/chocola. claw/claw. co/coffin. costume/costume. crim/crimson. cry/crypt. dark/dark. darkroom/darkroom. demon/demon. devil/devil. dread/dreadful. end/ender. eve/eve. fair/fair. fang/fang. fest/festival. flick/flick. ghost/ghost. ghoul/ghoul. grem/gremlin. grim/grim. grue/gruesome. hallo/ween. hallow/hallow. hallow/halloween. halloween/halloween. haunt/haunt. haunted/haunted. hay/hayride. hex/hex. hide/hide. howl/howl. imp/imp. mis/mischeif. mon/monster. monster/monster. myst/mystery. para/normal. poi/poison. poison/poison. polter/geist. prank/prank. pum/pumpkin. pump/kin. pump/pumpkin. pumpkin/pumpkin. scare/crow. scream/scream. shriek/shriek. skel/skeleton. skeleton/skeleton. skull/skull. so/soul. spider/spider. spirit/spirit. spook/spook. spooky/spooky. static/static. sweet/sweet. tale/tale. thrill/thriller. tomb/tomb. treat/treat. tri/trick. trick/treat. trick/trick. trickster/trickster. vamp/vamp. vamp/vampire. vampire/vampire. venom/venom. voi/void. web/web. werewolf/werewolf. witch/witch. wolf/wolf. zomb/zomb. zombie/zombie. ⚰️. 🍁. 🍂. 🍫. 🍬. 🍭. 🎃. 👻. 💀. 💚. 💜. 🕯. 🕷. 🕷️. 🕸. 🖤. 🦇. 🦴. 🧡.
#pupsmail︰id packs#id pack#npt#nput#name suggestions#name ideas#name list#pronoun suggestions#pronoun ideas#neopronouns#emojiself#nounself
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You need to make another one of those "metas written by comparing characters with another show you liked" post about Getou now that you experienced FGO Morgan/Aesc.
Time to compare two characters from two different shows I liked (in this case Jujutsu Kaisen and Fate Grand Order: Cosmos of the Lostbelt 6 Faerie Britian) to illustrate what makes a good corruption / fallen hero arc. Two of the best examples I can think of in recent memory are Geto Suguru, and Morgan le Fay of Faerie Britian. They both have tragic arcs which follow similar beats which I think will illustrate exactly why audiences find these characters so compelling.
Both of these characters have their stories told out of order, appearing as villains first before their backstory is revealed but for the sake of simplicity I'm going in chronological order, the heroes they started as all the way to the villains they ended up being.
Before beginning though, a brief lesson on tragedy. Aristotle's poetics argued tragedy runs on the principal of catharsis. The audience feels for the characters on stage, no matter how terrible their acts may be. He argued in favor of moral ambiguity in its heroes. The tragic hero must neither be a villan or virtuous man, but a "character between these two extremes, ... a man who is not eminently goo and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice of depravity, but by some error or frailty [Aristotle's Poetics.]
The protagonists of tragedies are still heroes, but their good qualities are twisted against them. A tumblr post I see going around from time to time makes the argument that if Othello (the protagonist of Othello) were in Hamlet the story would not be a tragedy because Otello would just stab his uncle and avenge his father. If Hamlet (the protagonist of Hamlet) were in Othello, the story would not be a tragedy because Hamlet who is a characteristic overthinker would probably not fall victim to Iago's manipulations and jump to conclusions the way Othello did. Both of these characters are heroic, Hamlet is a clever and scheming prince, Othello is a talented general a moor who's managed to rise up the ranks in a racist society. However, they are both put into stories where those heroic values are twisted against them by the narrative framework itself. So to make the protagonists of tragedies into villains who were evil all along, ruins the moral ambiguity and therefore the catharsis of a tragedy.
Geto Suguru and Morgan Le Fay are heroes, placed in a narrative framework that twists their own heroic traits against them in ways they can't endure. They fall because of frailty, not because they were inherently evil to begin with. They are antagonists who have the qualities of protagonists, and once were arguably protagonists of the story, which is probably why they have so many fans in the audience despite the fact that they are both of them mass murderers and tyrants.
Now with the long preamble let's look at the stories.
Both characters start as essentially protagonists, and they foil the protagonists they are fighting against during their villain phase. Geto Suguru is a heavy foil for Yuji (we'll talk about this later) and Morgan so heavily foils Castoria because they are both the chosen one.
I'm going to start with Morgan because Fate/Nasuverse lore is a pain to explain. To simplify her story, Morgan Le Fay is from an alternate universe version of Britian. In that Britian everything is ruled by faeries. These are trickster faeries who are total jerks and extremely murderous at times. They were supposed to forge excalibur, but they just didn't do it because they were lazy. This was very bad, so the universe sent a big huge guy to tell them to forge the sword. They were lazy though so instead of listening to him they murdered him in his sleep and he died a horrible death.
The faeries could no longer be forgiven for failing to craft excalibur which is a really important sword that needed to exist, so god or heaven or fate or whoever decided to punish them and sent Aesc who will later be known as Morgan le Fay.
There's some time travel shenanigans but I'm going to skip it because it's confusing. Basically Aesc's job is to wipe out all fairy life and bring an end to their alternate universe, but she decides to defy her destiny instead. The heavens or whoever keep conjuring calamities to wipe out the fairites to punish them for their sins, but instead Aesc fights against them and saves the fairies.
I had a duty to paradise, but I knew that duty would result in Britiain's destruction. This other me, though... She loved Britiain dearly, even the lostbelt version of it. I thought about it, and I realized I wanted the same thing she did. From then on I chose to live as her. (Witch! Witch! Witch! You were the only one to survive the calamity) Countless times, I stopped the calamities. Countless times, I mended clan disputes to end wars. I did not mind. It was not the fairies I loved. I only loved britain itself and the home I would make here. It would be my very own Britian - something that was forever beyond my reach in Proper Human History. I did everything I could to make it a reality. Eventually though, I realized the best way to do that was to keep the faeries safe.
However, because Aesc is not one of them the fairies are generally ungrateful for her saving them again and again. Aesc gathers comrades around her to help ward off these calamities and save people, but she's often attacked by the same fairies she's just saved.
She continues fighting the system of her world again and again, until she's betrayed for the last time in her attempt to save Britan. The final straw is when after years of hard work she's finally brokered a piece and made a king who rules over all the allied fairy tribes, only for his coronation to be ruined, the king to be assassinated along with the entire round table. The king was also her lover, Uther.
Aaah! Aaaah! Why? Why? Why? This was supposed to be the greatest day in fairy history... Everything was supposed to change for the better! BUt they killed Uther! They slaughtered my entire round table like they were trash! They asked the world of us! They thought the world of Uther! BUt now, they've poisoned him...THey were too afraid to even face him cowards. Uther talk to me, please say something! I never let failure stop me! I've kept trying all these thousands of years! Am I doomed to failure here, too! Is it still not enough? Am I not enough? Is it not... Can I not save Britain? Is there no Britain that can be mine! Peace, equality, I never should have tried for either! How dare they! I can never forgive them ever!
You see much like Geto Suguru which I'll later illustrate, Aesc is caught in a cycle where she must continually fight disasters for the faeries to save them only to be met with their continued disdain. Her own higher minded intentions to save the people are what damns her to this painful cycle. If she'd been less heroic, if she didn't care she wouldn't have suffered. She's sacrificing herself over and over again, but sacrificing yourself is in a way just suffering. No one actually wants to walk the thorny path of the martyr, you'll get your feet hurt from all the thorns.
The people who are now accustomed to being saved despite doing none of the work themselves, are by and by completely ungrateful for Aesc's sacrifice. Aesc is a hero, but she's not in a hero's story so she doesn't get any of the benefits of a hero really. She's working with higher minded and more idealistic goals in a deeply cynical world and punished for it. I remind you, she was just there to kill all the faeries and end the world but she tried to save them instead.
It's important to emphasize their good intentions, because a shallower character reading would suggest that they just came out of the womb wanting to murder people. However, they're driven to it because they tried to be good, because they tried to be a hero. They are like Hamlet, and like Othello in the wrong story. They're also sacrificing themselves going against the system of their world and trying to be better than it, only to get dragged down. Their resentment grows against the people they are trying to save, the selfish and weak people who don't seem all that grateful for their heroism. The ones who aren't making sacrifices, the ones who are just content being saved.
I finally understood. My enemy wasn't just the calamities, it was the faeries of Britain as well. They were pure and innocent in the truest sense, they enjoyed both good and evil things alike without losing either that purity or innocence. They are at their core, no different from the loathsome humans who drove me from britain. So I crushed every possible source of malice. Vested interests. Discrimmination. Oppression. Envy. Mockery. All of it. But it wasn't enough. A few fairies took a look at the foundation of peace so many had worked so hard to build ... and tore it apart, because they didn't like it, because they could.
This is what finally leads to Morgan's breaking point, to decide that actually... fairies don't deserve rights. Morgan decides that the fairies are unworthy of salvation and rather than being the hero the only way to accomplish her goals is to become the oppressor and tyrant.
I give up, if everything has failed if it has all come to nothing, then I can never believe in people's so called goodness or understand it. Even if I did, what would be the point? Everything I did, everything I worked for... was just a waste of time. After all the times they betrayed me I should ahve known better... but I still clung foolishly to a sliver of hope. ANd now, because I wasted my time caring about something so utterly absurd, I've failed yet again. If my intent was to keep britain alive, then I was a fool to think being its savior was the way to accomplish it. No more. I will find another way. A better way. ...That's it. I won't deliver the fairies to absolution; I won't deliver salvation. Enough of this faerie of paradise, enough of being Avalon le Fae, I should have ruled this land from the start.
However, as I said it's only Morgan's repeated attempts to be the hero and save the fairies that drove her to this conclusion. However, I'd be amiss to say that Morgan didn't have flaws or selfish qualities from the start. Morgan le Fay is created from the Morgan le Fay we created with from proper legend. I'm not going to explain the lore, but basically she's an alternate universe version, who received memories from the Morgan le Fay of our universe. She knows the story of Morgan le Fay who tried to steal King Arthur's kingdom out from under him.
Alternate Universe Morgan le Fay still had the same chip on her shoulder, and entitlement that our Morgan did. She wanted the kingdom, and wanted Britain for herself. Her desire to play savior might have come from that very same entitlement that she deserves britain. Similiarly, she was most likely hurt so badly from the lack of praise because she also deserves praise for her actions. She has a bit of a superiority complex that places her above the fairies and makes her believe she has the right to rule.
However, as I said Morgan didn't start out as a tyrant she did earnestly try to save the faeries despite harboring those more negative qualities and selfish intentions. She may have had a more self-serving variety of selflessness but it's more the fragility of her that causes her fall. She didn't fall because she was rotten to begin with, she was just not strong enough to withstand years and years of ungratefulness from the faeries and betrayal. She has all the makings of a proper hero, she decides to defy destiny to save the people of faerie britain when she was supposed to be their destroyer. However, because she's in a tragedy she falls due to her insecurities and flaws overwhelming her rather than rising to the occasion.
Her manga chapter and the FGO Lostbelt game prose itself uses the light in the distance as a metaphor for this. Morgan continues going forward on the faint light of hope that things will work out for her and that even as a tyrant she can save Britain. However, it's that same light that damns her. In tragedies heroic qualities become flipped into flaws. Morgan's most heroic quality is her determination, the willpower to endeavor for thousands of years to try to save Faerie Britain, but that determination makes her unchanging, causes her to make the same mistakes over and over again, and just makes her continually suffer like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill.
But that light is just an insect trap - or at least that's how it is for the protagonist of the tragedy. Road to hell, and all that.
After reaching her breaking point Morgan decides she'll no longer try to save the fairies but rather only care about saving the kingdom itself. She goes from the kingdom's hero to its oppressive tyrant after seizing the throne for herself.
That's where we meet the villain we know today.
Now shifting gears to Geto Suguru, he is someone who starts out his story trying to be a hero. A little bit of context on the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, it takes place in an urban fantasy version of Japan where the jungian collective unconscious and the negative emotions of humanity create curses that kill and eat people. These curses need to be exorcised by a few special humans who are given superpowers known as jujutsu sorcerers.
There is an institution of sorcerers known as Jujutsu High, which raises sorcerers from a young age gifted with these powers to exorcise sorcerers. THese teenagers are often sent out on msisions. This is different from most stories of teenage heroes with superpower, because fighting curses is brutal and dangerous and most of these kids are going to die young. There's also no end in sight to the fight against curses, because no matter how many curses are exorcised humans will just keep making more.
Not only do they live in a cynical, and brutal world but most sorcerers are insanely selfish. Just to give an example of how immoral sorcerers are, one of the allies of the main characters is implied to molest her brother, and if she's not she still uses her like 12 year old brother as a child soldier. Nobody ever bothers to question this because the institution of sorcerers are inherently corrupt, it's an instituion that continually sends children off to their deaths and uses people as nothing more than cogs.
Caught within this unfair system and trapped in a cycle of exorcising curses that are just going to come back anyway is Geto Suguru, who is not only a model sorcerer he's presented as much more selfless than your average sorcerer. He's directly contrasted against Gojo Satoru who is kind of just a petty kid with a god complex.
Gojo uses his powers selfishly, he only fights because he's really powerful and killing curses is a way to test and use his abilities. (This is literally stated as canon by Nanami don't fight me on this I'm simplifying his motivations because this is not a Gojo meta look at the entire fight with Sukuna saving Megumi was a secondary concern he wanted to fight a strong opponent). Whether people are saved by his actions are a secondary concern.
Geto on the other hand goes against the grain for most of Jujutsu Society, and believes that they as stronger people have a duty to use their strength to protect the weak. This idea of noblesse oblige is way way different from the attitudes of most sorcerers, who as I said usually turn into petty little people with god complexes.
Not to say Geto doesn't have a god complex, but we'll get to that later. Geto is explicitly contrasted against Gojo who's the only other powerful sorcerer and his best friend, but doesn't think they have an obligation to use their powers to help anyone.
Right away we have two things in common with Morgan le Fay, number one they hold themselves to a higher minded ideal that of using their powers to act as a hero and protect the people underneath them. Number two, this is a choice they make to be better than the people around them. Morgan's destiny is to destroy the faeries and she tries to save them. Sorcerers usually just keep their heads down and do their jobs, they're not heroes, they don't save people they kill curses. In fact, the sorcerers who are selfish assholes (Mei Mei) are wildly succesful, the ones who try to help other people like Nanami die young.
They sacrifice themselves for others. Geto pursuing his higher minded ideal is faced with the same kind of tragedy that Morgan is, where his attempts to save a teenage girl named Riko not only blatantly fail, they fail because of Toji a person who cannot use cursed energy. Everyone they tried to protect died, and they're shown first hand not only does the world not really care about their idealism, but they're not really powerful enough to change this world in any way.
Morgan's lover Uther and all of her allies is ruthlessly slaughtered, by the same faeries she was trying to save after she brokered peace. Geto tries to save a little girl, and he not only watches her die, but he sees an entire crowd of normal people, the people he is fighting to save applause for her death. They all applaud her death because they're a part of a cult that believes that the girl was an affront to their god, but she was mostly just a normal teenager. He witnesses first hand that normal people do not care for the fate of Jujutsu Sorcerers whatsoever.
If Geto were more selfish he would be rewarded. If he didn't attempt to save people, if he just only cared about exorcising curses like Gojo did he'd probably become more powerful and he wouldn't succumb to despair the way he had. Geto exists in a narrative where selfishness is rewarded, and his selfless, heroic traits are continually punished.
This traumatic event makes him aware similarly to the brutal cycle he is caught up in. Morgan le Fay can't save the faeries, because faeries are jerks who can't change. Geto will just continually exorcise curses over and over again. Not only is humanity just going to keep producing more curses, but humans are vastly indifferent to the sacrifices that sorcerers (who are mostly children) keep making to try and save them.
Geto's choice to protect people is the cause of his suffering, because sacrifice is inherently taking on suffering for the sake of someone else - therefore sacrifice is suffering.
This too, leads to Geto's eventual breaking point where he lets his resentment for the same people he's trying to save corrupt him. An incident where just after seeing his dear friend die because of a curse, he's brought to a village of people. The whole village put two little girls in a cage, who were capable of seeing curses and blamed them as the scapegoat for a curse reflecting his village. Geto sees a flash of what happened to Riko again, a crowd full of normal people who don't have to fight curses applauding for the sacrifice of a little girl who was innocent. It's the macrocosm, all of society forcing a few sorcerers to die exorcising curses for them, shown on the microcosm, one village scapegoating two little girls who did nothing wrong.
That's what leads Geto to snap and massacre the whole village. He's now turned against the masses he wants to protect. He then decides that instead of protecting the masses, he's going to kill them and build a world of only sorcerers. He's no longer trying to save them, like Morgan le Fay he's turned to the hero and the Tyrant.
They both even utter similiar words.
I will never save the faeries! I will never forgive the faeries! I don't like monkeys. That's the truth I chose.
Monkeys is by the way, the word Geto uses to refer to normal people who cannot fight curses or even see them. People who don't have superpowers.
One more time I want to emphasize Geto did not come out of the womb wanting genocide. Hamlet didn't start out the play stabbing people. He does have his flaws, just like Morgan by assuming the role of the hero he sees himself in a separate, superior category to the people he wants to protect. There's a line I like in a youtube analysis for for Yuji that applies to Geto as well.
(Other people exist to be saved, which gives Yuji a role in the world) In a way Yuji thinks other people exist to validate his own existence.
Geto begins the story not seeing other people as people. They exist in a category separate from himself. Part of the reason that his failures hit him so hard, is because they disprove this idea of superiority he has for himself. He's shown his god complex is just a complex and he's as flawed and capable of failure as any mortal.
It's an inability to recognize that failure, learn from it, and reconcile it with themselves that causes both Morgan le Fay and Geto to spiral. They are the hero, they are trying to be just, they should reap the just rewards for being a hero. Geto even says as such in a moment of rare jealousy for Gojo, that Gojo is someone who also has godlike power and if Geto had that same power he could change the world the way he wants. He could create his more just world.
Morgan and Geto are characters who begin their narratives with superior complexes and senses of entitlement, selfishly selfess heroes and those negative qualities eventually lead them to fail. Geto thought being a sorcerer made him superior, he just also thought that with that superiority came a responsibility to protect others. Morgan le Fay thought she was the rightful king of Britain, she also thought that divine right to be king also came with an obligation to protect Britain. However, they're not meant to be seen as people who all along wanted to oppress and hurt others.
The key word with tragedy is catharsis, we are supposed to feel for the protagonists of tragedies. We're supposed to see our own traits reflected in them. It's their human qualities to drive them to tragedy.
After all, you reader on tumblr would probably not be able to be a perfectly selfless hero. If you saved someone and then they immediately tried to kill you, you would probably just be a little bitter about it. If you were like Geto and you were working tirelessly to exorcise curses, and all you got was your friends dying, I don't think you'd be like "This is okay :D". If anything, going mad in their extreme circumstances seems like a reasonable response, because could we as the audience do any better in their situations?
Of course the last similarity between Geto and Morgan (besides the fact they both adopt daughters they raise up to be little psychos but this post is getting too long already) is the fact that they both heavily foil the heroes of the story they occupy. They see themselves as villain, they play the role of villain, but they're really just heroes of another story.
Paradise or god or fate or whatever in Faerie britain eventually conjures up another chosen one. This chosen one Altria or as the fandom calls her Castoria is far less heroic. IN fact unlike Morgan who embraces the role of savior she would rather do anything she could to avoid Britain.
This is because for similiar reasons as Morgan, the faeries have basically abused her and tormented her all her life. Yet they still expect her to selflessly step up as their chosen one and save the day from the evil oppressive tyrant Morgan.
You have one protagonist who embraces their heroic quest, and even goes above and beyond by ignoring her destiny to wipe out the faeries and saving them instead. You have another who continually runs away from the heroic quest, and honestly doesn't seem to care that much about saving faeries.
Morgan is actually openly sympathetic to Castoria, and even offers to ally with her a couple of times because she bears the same burden as chosen one. This is another example of how Morgan doesn't quite fit the role of either hero or villain, the ambiguity who makes tragedy.
However, while Morgan does everything to defy fate, Castoria just kind of keeps marching along every step of Joseph Campbell's the heroes journey until she ends up defeating Morgan. Well she doesn't truly defeat her, but Morgan meets her tragic end and gets stabbed a whole bunch of times.
There's a similiar foiling between Geto, and the series protagonist Yuji who both start out the story believing that as sorcerers they have a duty to save others. There are several in story comparisons and direct parallels between the two.
Yuji attempts to save others with his power as a sorcerer over and over again, and is met with the same continual failure that Geto has. Yuji is the only real sorcerer in his generation that cares about saving strangers with his powers. Nobara wants money to live in Tokyo, Megumi only cares about protecting Yuji and his sister, Yuta only cares about his friends, Maki only wants revenge against her clan. Like Maki blatantly says whether people get saved or not by her actions is none of her business.
His own attempts to save people not only fail badly, but he watches people die. He watches a lot of people die in a situation where he is powerless to stop them.
He's met with the same tragedy of Geto but he doesn't succumb to it. The same for Castoria she doesn't decide to be a Tyrant the way that Morgan le Fay did. I would argue this isn't because of any inherent goodness that Castoria or Yuji have but rather because both of them are able to let go of their egoes. Yuji kind of believes the same thing Geto does, that other people exist to be saved by him. He's broken when he realizes that he's not a savior after all...but he's able to continue in a way that Geto isn't.
Yuji lets go of his ego entirely and believes that he's just a cog in the machine and he doesn't need to be some big hero or be rewarded at the end of his hero's journey.
Geto and Morgan le Fay both long for a role in the grand scheme of things. They are still employing narrative thinking, they need to play a story role to validate their existences. It's just that they flipped their role, they tried being the heroes but it didn't work so they're the villains now.
Geto is similiarly rebuffed by Yuta who is his eventual killer by saying that he doesn't actually care about saving the world or if Geto is right that sorcerers are superior to humans, he's only fighting for his friends.
I would say for both castoria and yuji it's not a matter of being inherently good people, but rather of being better at enduring than their counterparts are. Morgan le Fay and Geto try to take the world's suffering on their shoulders, and it breaks them because they're not heroes they're just normal people. Yuji, Castoria and to the same extent Yuta kind of learn to let go of their great heroic aspirations but because of that they're able to take on suffering better. They're trying to live in reality not a grand heroic fantasy.
To bring the example back to FGO, for Castoria and for Morgan the light of hope that led them down their heroic journeys mean two different things. For Morgan that light is an insect trap. Her flying towards that light just causes her to keep suffering through her sisyphian task. Castoria has a much more realistic point of view, she's not trying to get a happy ending or even save people, that light is the hope that at the end of her journey her actions will have meant something. It's more about the journey itself and the people she met along the way, then some big grand reward at the end.
Morgan le Fay and Geto both fail because they are fragile, because they are human. That's the most important takeaway of this long rambling post. They may be selfish, they may be entitled but they're flawed in human ways. After all, who doesn't want a happy ending?
#jjk meta#fgo meta#morgan le fay#fgo morgan#camelot#fgo lostbelt#geto suguru#suguru geto#idk what else to tag this#for the three people who are going to read this post#i hope you like this comun#the things i do for love
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Yapping About Twst Oc's Warning
Bug "boogie" - Oogie Boogie (Nightmare before christmas)
Diasomnia
Class 2-B
5'4" / 165 cm
Homeland|Town: Valley of Thorns / all Hallows Eve Village
Best Subject: Ancient Incantations
Club: Science
Hobby: Embroidery
Talent: Winning at Gambling, card games, dice games, honestly most luck based game
Likes: Bugs, Milkshakes, Star-Gazing
Dislikes: Gambling, Casinos, Bright Places
Unique Magic: Snake Eyes: Causes the worst possible outcome to play out on the target
Punka Goodfairy - not based off of anyone in particular but is raised/created by the three fairys from sleeping beauty
Diasomnia
Class 1-C
Homeland : Valley of thorns (somewhere)
Best Subject: Astrology
Club: Mountain Lovers
Hobby: PaintBall
Talent: Sword Fighting
Likes: fireflies, foggy mornings, Plants/gardening
Dislikes: “Bravery”, Lilia’s cooking, Essay writing, Sebek (grows to enjoy his company)
Unique Magic: Clay of Life: Bringing inanimate objects to ‘life’ .
Trivia: Missing half of an arm, Lost it in a magical accident as a young boy
Nathaniel "Nathan" Mad Hatter - Mad Hatter (Alice in wonderland)
HeartsLaByul
Class 2-E
Birthday: June 17th
Age: 17
Height: 5’6”
Hometown: Rose Kingdom -> HayBale Hamlet
Best Subject: Art
Club: Gaming
Hobby: Photography
Talent: Flower Arranging
Likes: Tea cups, unbirthdays, dancing in the rain
Dislikes: Broken Glass, Riddle Yelling, thunderStorms
Unique Magic: Hatter’s Illness: Constantly In effect, Allows Nathan to numerous nonsensical things. Pull cakes out from his hat. Eat tea cups. Cut tea cups in half for a half cup. Among other oddities.
Bruce "Brucie" Martin - Brucie (Finding Nemo) {great white shark}
Octavinelle
Class 3-A
Birthday: April 24th
Age: 18
Height: 8’ / 243 cm
Hometown: The Restless Sea
Best Subject: Defense Magic
Club: Literature club
Hobby: knitting, song writing
Talent: singing (will not tell a soul)
Likes: soup, the library, strawberries
Dislikes: fighting, early mornings,
popcorn
Unique Magic:
Red Rage: able to great damage, With minimal effort. Going into a blinding rage that causes major damages. Needless to say there is high risks.
Anchor Fisher - Anchor (Finding Nemo) {hammerhead Shark}
Octavinelle
Class 3-B
Birthday: August 7th
Age: 18
Height:7’6” / 231 cm
Hometown: The Restless Sea
Best Subject: Magical History
Club: Hockey
Hobby: kickboxing
Talent: Playing Piano
Likes: Cake decorating, jelly doughnuts, magic 8 balls
Dislikes: Pranks, smoking, rodents
Unique Magic:
You Can’t Hide/I Found You: Once his unique magic is set off Anchor is able to locate anyone with a # radius of him.
Chum Graham - Chum (Finding Nemo) {Maco shark}
Octavinelle
Class 3-C
Birthday: March 16th
Age: 18
Height: 7’3 / 222 cm
Hometown: The Restless Sea
Best Subject: PE
Club: Music club
Hobby: Dance Choreography, Painting
Talent: Curses
Likes: shark gummies, music, C A F F I N E
Dislikes: winter, zoo’s, staying indoors
Unique Magic:
Counter Strike: doubling the users speed,
Allowing for them to get in several hits on the Target with an increased damage output.
Morgan Ashengrotto - Morgana (little mermaid 2) {ursula's little sister} *Azul's baby cousin
Octanville
Class 1-C
Birthday: February 24
Age: 16
Height: 5’4”
Hometown: Coral Sea
Best Subject: potions
Club: Light music
Hobby: playing video games, colouring books
Talent: can do almost any math in his head quickly
Likes: Muffins, Rain, mint, black roses, indie music
Dislikes: Azul. blueberries, raisins, peanuts
Unique Magic: I’m Gonna Get My Wish: (N/A | To be determined)
Othello Kumar - Iago (aladdin)
Scarabia
Class 2-D
Birthday: January 27th
Age: 17
Height: 5’6” / 170 cm
Hometown: Scalding Sands
Best Subject: Flying
Club: Horse-Riding
Hobby: crossword puzzles, wood cutting, Dancing
Talent: lyre
Likes: Romance, ghosts, Pranks
Dislikes: Pigeons, big dogs/cats, crowds Unique Magic: UM Name: (N/A | To Be Determined)
Yazzy Vega - yzma (Emperor's new groove)
Scarabia
Class 1-A
Birthday: march 28th
Age: 16
Height: 5’3”
Hometown: Gulf of El Dorado
Best Subject: Potions
Club: Science
Hobby: Darts, potion making
Talent: Potions and curses
Likes: Roses, Literature, Power
Dislikes: being wrong, Bees, wilderness
Unique Magic: UM Name: (N/A | To Be Determined)
Richard Trien - Drizella Tremaine (Cinderella movies)
Pomefiore
Class 3-E
Birthday: september 8th
Age: 18
Height: 5’9” / 179 cm
Hometown: (unnamed) - Land of Pryoxene
Best Subject: Potions/Magical History
Club: Film Studies
Hobby: Jewellery Making, Vintage clothing collecting
Talent: Acting and Calligraphy
Likes: Dressing up, Musicals, Organizing
Dislikes: Math, death metal, mice
Unique Magic:
UM Name: reversal of time ? (To Be Determined)
RSA specific ocs ahead
Cinder Trien - Cinderella (Cinderella movies)
Unnamed Dorm (snowwhite themed)
Class 1-A
Birthday: June 1st
Age: 17
Height: 5’10
Hometown: (unnamed) - Land of pyroxexe
Best Subject: Animal Languages
Club:
Hobby: Sewing
Talent: Negotiations
Likes: Repairing things, mythology, romance novels, dreams/dreaming
Dislikes: doing all the chores, old traditions that are harmful or make people unhappy,
Unique Magic: No Task Too big!: with the swift wish, one is able to multitask on a whole new level. Making no task too big for one individual. It takes practical magic too a whole new level because it requires less concentration and more determination
(that's Not even all of them, just the ones i have the most written down about)
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Having played parts from Prospero to Stalin, Hamlet and now the poet AE Housman, Simon Russell Beale is convinced he has one of the best jobs in the world. Why? Every new role offers a new area for intellectual investigation, not least when he gets to take on the logical arguments and ‘linguistic fireworks’ of one of his friend Tom Stoppard’s plays, he tells Fergus Morgan
You cannot complete acting – but if you could, Simon Russell Beale would be coming close. Over a three-decade career, he has taken on dozens of classic roles in canonical plays: Konstantin in The Seagull, Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi, Oswald in Ghosts, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the title characters of Edward II, John Gabriel Borkman and Uncle Vanya, and loads more.
And, when it comes to Shakespeare, there are few parts the 63-year-old has not played. Hamlet? Tick. King Lear? Tick. Macbeth? Tick. Richard II and Richard III? Tick, tick. Benedick, Iago, Malvolio, Leontes? Tick, tick, tick, tick. Falstaff and Prospero? Tick, tick.
With a theatrical résumé as comprehensive as that, where does Russell Beale go next? In a recent interview with the Telegraph to mark the release of A Piece of Work, the memoir he “slightly sheepishly” wrote, the actor said he would be keen on playing Cleopatra. Why not? It would not be his first foray into gender-swapped Shakespeare: he played both Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Desdemona in Othello as a schoolboy.
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t being serious,” Russell Beale says. “I was being facetious, although I did see Mark Rylance do it 20 years ago and it was sensational. It is one of the great parts, but I don’t think that would work. It would probably be too scary for the audience.
“I would love to do Falstaff on stage as I’ve only done that on film,” he continues. “I would like to do another King Lear. I wasn’t particularly happy with my Macbeth, so I’d quite like to do that again one day. I’m getting a bit old now, though, so it has become slightly difficult. Perhaps one day I should try my hand at directing. I don’t know, really.”
Before he has a go at directing, or revisits Lear, or has a stab at Cleopatra, Russell Beale will be playing poet AE Housman in Blanche McIntyre’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love at Hampstead Theatre in north London. Our interview is taking place via Zoom, with Russell Beale – black jumper, big beard – sat in an office somewhere inside the Swiss Cottage venue.
“There’s a very good novel here about Booth, the man who assassinated Lincoln,” Russell Beale remarks, browsing the bookshelves in front of him. “Anyway, nice to meet you.”
Russell Beale’s pre-interview bookshelf inspection confirms what he subsequently says about his character, about his approach to playing parts and about his professional motivations. He is, first and foremost, driven by an insatiable intellectual curiosity. He once described acting as “three-dimensional literary criticism”.
“I have one of the best jobs in the world, really,” he says. “Every single project potentially offers a new area of study. I know that sounds sort of dry, but if someone says: ‘I’d like you to do a play about a poet in the late 19th century who also happened to be the greatest classical scholar of his time,’ I think: ‘Wow.’ And, for a very short period of time, I get to become a bit of an expert on AE Housman.
“Or take Samuel Foote,” he continues, referencing the 18th-century actor and title character of Ian Kelly’s play Mr Foote’s Other Leg, which he played at Hampstead in 2015. “Doctor Johnson called Foote the most famous man in England, but I’d never heard of him. Now I could tell you all about him – where he lived, how he was arrested for sodomy and the legal case that followed. That sort of intellectual buzz is, I think, the most interesting thing of all about acting.”
Different jobs have different intellectual appeals, says Russell Beale. Some plays are stimulating for their historical subject matter. Shakespearean work is all about “digging around in this incredibly complicated, malleable script to find the emotional life of a character”. Other projects are attractive on a conceptual level, he says, like Joe Hill-Gibbins’ drastically cut, fast-forwarded staging of Richard II at London’s Almeida Theatre in 2018.
“I was far too old to play Richard II,” Russell Beale says. “I’d sort of assumed that was one part I would never do. Then along came this director who wanted to do it in a completely different way. It was incredibly cut down. It was staged straight-through with all the other characters milling around on stage. That was the challenge there.”
From screen to Stoppard
Where, then, does Russell Beale’s work in film and television fit in, beyond boosting his bank balance? His screen CV is not as formidable as his theatrical résumé, but it still encompasses Armando Iannucci’s comedy The Death of Stalin, the latest series of HBO’s blockbuster House of the Dragon, and the forthcoming Downton Abbey film.
“I suppose I just do that for fun, although I do have an interest in how those projects work,” Russell Beale says. “Take House of the Dragon. I remember wondering how they physically achieve a show like that. That was intriguing to me. I thought: ‘How the hell do you do a great big castle in a thunderstorm?’ It was this huge set with water literally cascading down the walls. The sheer skill was extraordinary. That was fascinating.”
If any writer could satisfy Russell Beale’s voracious intellectual appetite, it is Stoppard, whose plays frequently dazzle with their virtuosic use of history and intertextuality. Think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his existential 1966 riff on Hamlet that echoes Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Or 1972’s metaphysical murder-mystery Jumpers, perhaps the most philosophically and athletically gymnastic play ever written.
Those Stoppard plays are the only two that Russell Beale has performed in until now. He played Guildenstern at the National Theatre in 1995, having previously performed in the play as a teenager, then took on the lead role in Jumpers – the philosopher George Moore – at the same venue in 2003. That production transferred to New York, and provided Russell Beale’s Broadway debut. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley hailed a “dazzling” performance of “sharp inventiveness and peerless emotional depth”.
“I’ve only done two Stoppard plays, but I’ve always been quite fierce in defending him against accusations of being over-intellectualised,” Russell Beale says. “Stoppard is intellectual, of course. He plays intellectual games. But what Stoppard always comes down to is people feeling passionate about something, usually another person. That, I think, is fundamentally the most important thing about his writing.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is about two men who are lost in a world they don’t understand,” he continues. “Jumpers is about trying to cling on to a broken marriage. I saw The Real Thing recently at the Old Vic, which I saw with the great Stephen Dillane a couple of decades ago. That play is more directly about love than anything else.”
Playing with words
The Invention of Love, which premiered at the National in 1997, begins in the afterlife. Housman, dead at 77 in 1936, stands on the bank of the mythical river Styx, preparing to board a ferry. The play then unfolds through Housman’s memories of his time studying classics at the University of Oxford, with the older Housman – played by Russell Beale – interacting with his younger self, played by Matthew Tennyson. At the heart of its fizzing academic ideas is Housman’s unrequited love for fellow scholar Moses Jackson.
“The play is very complicated,” says Russell Beale. “This morning, we were rehearsing this very elaborate scene with all these 19th-century academics playing croquet. Stoppard ties in so many references to Victorian cultural icons like Jerome K Jerome and Henry Liddell and Lewis Carroll, too. Everyone has these great arias about philosophy and art.
“Underneath that, though, it is about an old man remembering his love for another man,” Russell Beale continues. “It is about a particular event in their lives, a rowing trip on the river when they were both at Oxford. It is about memory. It is about what you do with a love like that. It is about what a love like that means at the end of your life.”
The “incredible enjoyable” challenge of performing the play, says Russell Beale, is really getting to grips with its intellectual complexities and “linguistic fireworks” – as is the case with most Stoppard plays. If you can master the tongue-twisting dialogue and head-scratching arguments, he says, then the profoundly emotional core of the drama will come.
“Years ago, I remember the actor John Wood, who was one of the great language magicians, talking about Bernard Shaw,” Russell Beale says. “Now, I don’t particularly like Bernard Shaw, but Wood said that if you observe all the punctuations that Bernard Shaw set down as indications of when to breathe and so on, he does the work for you. “It is sort of like that with Stoppard,” Russell Beale continues.
“It is like a technical exercise. You have to end the sentence when it ends and make sure you give yourself gaps to breathe. And then it is about the clarity of the argument. The play does explore emotion. The word ‘love’ is in the title, after all. But performing it is not an emotional thing. It is more about a series of arguments. If you can get the grammatical, syntactical construction of the sentences, and then the actual logic of the argument, then you are on your way.”
It helps, says Russell Beale, that director McIntyre read classics at Oxford herself.
“My God, she does know what she is talking about,” he says. “I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to Latin or Greek, but she does have that string to her bow.”
The admiration is mutual. Via email, McIntyre says that she finds Russell Beale “extraordinary”.
“I think he is our greatest living Stoppardian actor,” she writes. “The wit and depth of feeling he brings to the character are breathtaking. It’s a privilege to watch him work.”
It helps, too, that Russell Beale is friends with Stoppard, who turned 87 this year. In fact, he adds, he received a first-hand insight into the playwright’s process of putting The Invention of Love together nearly 30 years ago when performing at the National. “I met Tom, I think, when we did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” Russell Beale says. “My memory is that he was writing, or thinking about writing, The Invention of Love at the time, because I remember he gave me a lift home once because he was driving in the same direction, and he started talking about Oscar Wilde and Housman on the way.
“I’ve known Tom for years now,” Russell Beale adds. “He was in last week, actually. He was on great form. He likes revisiting his plays, I think. He reads the script very intently, as if he is rediscovering it. It is rather lovely to see him do that. It’s quite moving, actually.”
Russell Beale was born in Penang in what was then Malaya – now Malaysia – in January 1961, one of six children of military physician Peter Beale, who would later become the British Army’s surgeon general, and his wife Julia, who was also a doctor. He was sent to boarding school, first at St Paul’s Cathedral School, where he was a chorister, then at Bristol’s Clifton College.
It was there that Russell Beale first discovered his love for performance, both theatrical and musical – he is an accomplished pianist, oboist and singer, and frequently presents radio and television shows about classical music. He has often credited a stern English teacher called Brian Worthington with instilling in him that respect for intellectual rigour and academic curiosity.
He went on to study English at the University of Cambridge, where he threw himself into student drama and made friends with Tilda Swinton, then trained at Guildhall, initially as a singer before switching to acting, graduating in 1983.
He started his professional career at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, but his big break came two years later with a role in Women Beware Women at London’s Royal Court, alongside a young Gary Oldman. It was not until 1991, however, five years into his long relationship with the Royal Shakespeare Company, that Russell Beale felt like he could fully express himself on stage, when he was cast as Konstantin in a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull staged by the company’s director Terry Hands.
“Until then, I’d done a lot of comic parts,” Russell Beale says. “That was the first time somebody said: ‘No, you can do something serious. You can play someone with an emotional life that is serious.’ Terry did it deliberately, I think. He thought: ‘Here’s this guy who is being typecast and I’m going to cast him against type.’ And that changed my life. It led to people suggesting I do Hamlet and other stuff. I am enormously grateful to him.”
It was Hands, too, who forged one of the great collaborations of Russell Beale’s career, with director Sam Mendes. The pair first worked together at the RSC in the 1990s on productions of Troilus and Cressida, Richard III and The Tempest, then at the National Theatre on Othello in 1997 and, at the Donmar Warehouse, King Lear in 2014 and Twelfth Night in 2002, as well as on the globe-trotting production of The Lehman Trilogy in 2019.
“Sam and I have been doing stuff together for 30 years and it was Terry that put us together,” Russell Beale says. “Sam actually called me when Terry died in 2020. I was in the dressing room for The Lehman Trilogy in New York. He was very emotional. He told me Terry had died and that he was the one who had originally put us together. Terry was the one who said to Sam: ‘I think you’d like that actor over there.’”
There is an alternate reality in which Hands never cast Russell Beale as Konstantin in The Seagull and Russell Beale continued working as a comic actor. He would no doubt have been successful – witness his hilarious turn as spymaster Lavrenti Beria in The Death of Stalin – but he would not have plumbed the remarkable depths he has in this world.
What makes him stand out as an actor – and what has earned him countless accolades, including three Olivier awards, two BAFTAs, a Tony and a knighthood – is his ability to incarnate familiar characters in unexpected ways. He has played the majority of the most famous roles in the classical canon, but his interpretations are always invested with a distinct air of isolation or awkwardness. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he has frequently approached those roles at an unconventional age.
“In retrospect, my career sort of looks like this marvellous plan, but it wasn’t,” he says. “It was all an accident. I’ve done all the parts at the wrong age. I was a very old Hamlet and a very old Benedick, and a very young Richard III and a very old Richard III.”
Empathy with outsiders
Nicholas Hytner, another director with whom Russell Beale has a long relationship, having starred in his stagings of The Alchemist, Much Ado About Nothing and Collaborators at the National Theatre in 2006, 2007 and 2011 respectively, and, more recently his versions of A Christmas Carol and John Gabriel Borkman at the Bridge Theatre in 2020 and 2022, has said of Russell Beale: “He has extraordinary empathy with outsiders, the wounded, the foolish, the warped and the lonely. He hears their music and can sing it.”
“What did he say?” asks Russell Beale. “I’ve not heard that before. That is the most beautiful, lovely thing to say. And yes, I’m always excited by those characters. The most interesting parts are those that are looking in from the outside or confused about their position. I don’t know what that says about me. I’ve never interrogated it. I refuse to.”
If Russell Beale does not interrogate his own interest in playing isolated, uncomfortable characters on stage, does he ever interrogate theatre’s wider role in society? “That’s a very interesting question,” he says. “I suppose it is always in the back of your mind. Perhaps theatre is a bit of a sideshow now, although Wicked has just been turned into a film, for God’s sake. The biggest movie of the year started as a theatre show. Perhaps theatre only has a relevance when it is adapted into a medium now.
“No, I don’t think that, actually,” he adds. “That implies it is all about numbers, that something is only important if a lot of people see it. I don’t believe that. I still believe theatre has weight and relevance. I suppose I would fall back on the Tom Stoppard argument in The Invention of Love: ‘There is no little too little to be worth having.’”
#simon russell beale#interview#a really really big interview#the stage#stage#the invention of love#tom stoppard#also stephen dillane mention#stephen dillane#nicholas hytner#blanche mcintyre#2024
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Character Name Ideas (Male)
So I've been browsing through BehindTheName (great resource!) recently and have compiled several name lists. Here are some names, A-Z, that I like. NOTE: If you want to use any of these please verify sources, meanings etc, I just used BehindTheName to browse and find all of these. Under the cut:
A: Austin, Aiden, Adam, Alex, Angus, Anthony, Archie, Argo, Ari, Aric, Arno, Atlas, August, Aurelius, Alexei, Archer, Angelo, Adric, Acarius, Achilou, Alphard, Amelian, Archander B: Bodhi, Bastian, Baz, Beau, Beck, Buck, Basil, Benny, Bentley, Blake, Bowie, Brad, Brady, Brody, Brennan, Brent, Brett, Brycen C: Cab, Cal, Caden, Cáel, Caelan, Caleb, Cameron, Chase, Carlos, Cooper, Carter, Cas, Cash, Cassian, Castiel, Cedric, Cenric, Chance, Chandler, Chaz, Chad, Chester, Chet, Chip, Christian, Cillian, Claude, Cicero, Clint, Cody, Cory, Coy, Cole, Colt, Colton, Colin, Colorado, Colum, Conan, Conrad, Conway, Connor, Cornelius, Creed, Cyneric, Cynric, Cyrano, Cyril, Cyrus, Crestian, Ceric D: Dallas, Damien, Daniel, Darach, Dash, Dax, Dayton, Denver, Derek, Des, Desmond, Devin, Dewey, Dexter, Dietrich, Dion, Dmitri, Dominic, Dorian, Douglas, Draco, Drake, Drew, Dudley, Dustin, Dusty, Dylan, Danièu E: Eadric, Evan, Ethan, Easton, Eddie, Eddy, Einar, Eli, Eilas, Eiljah, Elliott, Elton, Emanuel, Emile, Emmett, Enzo, Erik, Evander, Everett, Ezio F: Faolán, Faron, Ferlin, Felix, Fenrir, Fergus, Finley, Finlay, Finn, Finnian, Finnegan, Flint, Flip, Flynn, Florian, Forrest, Fritz G: Gage, Gabe, Grady, Grant, Gray, Grayson, Gunnar, Gunther, Galahad H: Hale, Harley, Harper, Harvey, Harry, Huey, Hugh, Hunter, Huxley I: Ian, Ianto, Ike, Inigo, Isaac, Isaias, Ivan, Ísak J: Jack, Jacob, Jake, Jason, Jasper, Jax, Jay, Jensen, Jed, Jeremy, Jeremiah, Jesse, Jett, Jimmie, Jonas, Jonas, Jonathan, Jordan, Josh, Julien, Jovian, Jun, Justin, Joseph, Joni, K: Kaden, Kai, Kale, Kane, Kaz, Keane, Keaton, Keith, Kenji, Kenneth, Kent, Kevin, Kieran, Kip, Knox, Kris, Kristian, Kyle, Kay, Kristján, Kristófer L: Lamont, Lance, Landon, Lane, Lars, László, Laurent, Layton, Leander, Leif, Leo, Leonidas, Leopold, Levi, Lewis, Louie, Liam, Liberty, Lincoln, Linc, Linus, Lionel, Logan, Loki, Lucas, Lucian, Lucio, Lucky, Luke, Luther, Lyall, Lycus, Lykos, Lyle, Lyndon, Llewellyn, Landri, Laurian, Lionç M: Major, Manny, Manuel, Marcus, Mason, Matt, Matthew, Matthias, Maverick, Maxim, Memphis, Midas, Mikko, Miles, Mitch, Mordecai, Mordred, Morgan, Macari, Maïus, Maxenci, Micolau, Miro N: Nate, Nathan, Nathaniel, Niall, Nico, Niels, Nik, Noah, Nolan, Niilo, Nikander, Novak, O: Oakley, Octavian, Odin, Orlando, Orrick, Ǫrvar, Othello, Otis, Otto, Ovid, Owain, Owen, Øyvind, Ozzie, Ollie, Oliver, Onni P: Paisley, Palmer, Percival, Percy, Perry, Peyton, Phelan, Phineas, Phoenix, Piers, Pierce, Porter, Presley, Preston, Pacian Q: Quinn, Quincy, Quintin R: Ragnar, Raiden, Ren, Rain, Rainier, Ramos, Ramsey, Ransom, Raul, Ray, Roy, Reagan, Redd, Reese, Rhys, Rhett, Reginald, Remiel, Remy, Ridge, Ridley, Ripley, Rigby, Riggs, Riley, River, Robert, Rocky, Rokas, Roman, Ronan, Ronin, Romeo, Rory, Ross, Ruairí, Rufus, Rusty, Ryder, Ryker, Rylan, Riku, Roni S: Sammie, Sammy, Samuel, Samson, Sanford, Sawyer, Scout, Seán, Seth, Sebastian, Seymour, Shane, Shaun, Shawn, Sheldon, Shiloh, Shun, Sid, Sidney, Silas, Skip, Skipper, Skyler, Slade, Spencer, Spike, Stan, Stanford, Sterling, Stevie, Stijn, Suni, Sylvan, Sylvester T: Tab, Tad, Tanner, Tate, Tennessee, Tero, Terrance, Tevin, Thatcher, Tierno, Tino, Titus, Tobias, Tony, Torin, Trace, Trent, Trenton, Trev, Trevor, Trey, Troy, Tripp, Tristan, Tucker, Turner, Tyler, Ty, Teemu U: Ulric V: Valerius, Valor, Van, Vernon, Vespasian, Vic, Victor, Vico, Vince, Vinny, Vincent W: Wade, Walker, Wallis, Wally, Walt, Wardell, Warwick, Watson, Waylon, Wayne, Wes, Wesley, Weston, Whitley, Wilder, Wiley, William, Wolfe, Wolfgang, Woody, Wulfric, Wyatt, Wynn X: Xander, Xavier Z: Zachary, Zach, Zane, Zeb, Zebediah, Zed, Zeke, Zeph, Zaccai
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Masterlist of Previous Polls
And Then There Were None - Philip Lombard
Anne of Green Gables series Anne Shirley Anne & Diana
Arthurian Legend Lancelot du Lac Arthur & Lancelot Morgan le Fay Guinevere & Morgan Gawain The Green Knight
As You Like It - Rosalind & Celia
Beowulf - Beowulf
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Holly Golightly
Brideshead Revisited - Charles & Sebastian
Carmilla - Carmilla & Laura
The Catcher in the Rye - Holden Caulfield
The Chronicles of Narnia - Edmund Pevensie
The Count of Monte Cristo - Eugenie & Louise
Crime and Punishment - Raskolnikov & Razumikhin
Dracula Count Dracula Jonathan Harker Mina & Lucy
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Jekyll/Hyde
The Divine Comedy - Dante & Virgil
Emma Emma Woodhouse Emma & Harriet
The Enchanted Island of Yew - Prince Marvel
The Epic of Gilgamesh - Gilgamesh & Enkidu
Eugene Onegin - Onegin & Lensky
Fahrenheit 451 - Guy Montag
The Famous Five series - George Kirrin
The Fate of the Crown - Valcour & Francisco de Paola
Frankenstein Victor Frankenstein Victor & Henry Captain Walton
The Great Gatsby Nick Carraway Nick & Gatsby Jordan Baker Daisy & Jordan
Hamlet Hamlet & Horatio Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
The Haunting of Hill House - Eleanor & Theodora
Herbert West–Reanimator - Herbert West
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Huckleberry Finn
The Idiot Myshkin Rogozhin
The Iliad - Achilles & Patroclus
The Invisible Man - Jack Griffin
In Memoriam A. H. H. - Alfred Tennyson & Arthur Hallam
Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre
Jasper Jones - Charlie & Jasper
Jeeves and Wooster series - Jeeves & Wooster
Jude the Obscure - Sue Bridehead
Julius Caesar - Brutus & Cassius
Les Misérables Enjolras Enjolras & Grantaire Javert
Little Women Jo March Laurie Lawrence
Lord of the Flies - Piggy
The Lord of the Rings series Frodo & Sam Galadriel Boromir Fingon & Maedhros (The Silmarillion)
Macbeth - Lady Macbeth
Mansfield Park - Fanny & Mary
The Merchant of Venice - Antonio
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Puck
Moby Dick - Ishmael
The Most Dangerous Game - General Zaroff
Mrs Dalloway - Clarissa
Much Ado About Nothing Benedict Beatrice
Oliver Twist - Oliver Twist
Orlando - Orlando
Othello - Iago
The Outsiders Ponyboy Curtis Johnny & Dally
Peter Pan - Peter Pan
The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian Gray Dorian & Basil Henry Wotton
Pride and Prejudice - Charlotte Lucas
Richard II - Richard II
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Romeo and Juliet - Mercutio
The Secret History - Richard Papen
A Separate Peace - Gene & Finneas
Sherlock Holmes Series Sherlock Holmes Sherlock & John James Moriarty which adaptation is the most queer?
The Talented Mr Ripley Tom Ripley Tom & Dickie
The Tempest - Ariel
To Kill a Mockingbird - Scout Finch
Twelfth Night Viola Corsino Olivia
Ulster Cycle (Celtic Mythology) - Cú Chulainn
Waiting for Godot - Vladimir & Estragon
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Dorothy Gale
#I'm going to keep this updated and link it on my pinned post#(if any of the links don't work pls let me know)
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LOULIYYA, DAUGHTER OF MORGAN
@hamlet-macbeth-othello
@softlytowardthesun @adarkrainbow @natache @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @professorlehnsherr-almashy @themousefromfantasyland @the-blue-fairie @tamisdava2 @faintingheroine @princesssarisa @angelixgutz @amalthea9 @allthegoodbobdylanlyricsaretaken @thealmightyemprex
(A folktale from Egypt)
ONCE THERE WAS a king and his wife who did not have any children. One day the queen prayed to God, “Oh God, my God, who hears my prayers, be kind to me and grant me a child. I will name him Yousif.” She made a nadr:
“If I have a child, I will make three wells and fill them, one with honey, one with butter, and one with rosewater.”
Time passed. One day went and one day came, and she became pregnant. She had a boy whom she called Yousif.
The king and his wife almost flew with joy. One year after another, Yousif grew up, and he was going to school.
With time, while the king was asleep he heard a hatif saying, “King, fulfill your pledge. Fulfill the pledge that you owe.”
This happened three times. Every time the king forgot. Yousif became ill.
They got him all the kingdom’s doctors and the sheiks. No one could cure him. Finally they said, “Maybe there is an unfulfilled pledge. Think! Have you made a pledge, king?”
The king and the queen remembered their promise. Immediately the king ordered that three large wells be dug and lined with china tile and filled to the top - one with honey, the second with butter, and the third with rosewater.
And he dispatched a crier to announce in town, “Oh God’s people, people of this town, he who wants honey, butter, and rosewater should come tomorrow to the king’s palace.”
That was it. With the appearance of the morning star, everyone in town was rushing to the king’s palace. This one carrying a saucepan, that one carrying a wash tub, and this one and that one! They clustered around on the three wells, and almost immediately they were empty. After a short while there was nothing at all. A while later, an old woman came leaning on a cane. She had three cans on a tray which she carried on top of her head. When she found that the wells were empty, she took out a little piece of sponge and began sponging the drops off the walls of the wells. After a very long time, she had hardly filled her three small cans, and she turned back to go home. Now the king’s son, Yousif, was playing with his ball. He threw his ball like this-and it hit the old woman. She fell on the ground, and everything was spilled.
Yousif ran to her and said, “Never mind, old mother. I am wrong.”
The woman answered, “With what can I curse you? With what can I curse you, son? You are too young. I am going to curse you with Louliyya, daughter of Morgan,” and she left.
He went to his father and mother and asked them, “Who is Louliyya, daughter of Morgan?”
They answered him, “Son, you are too young. You should have nothing to do with these things.”
Everytime he asked someone, the answer was, “You have nothing to do with these things.”
Finally an old servant said to him, “She is a beautiful girl that you have to find yourself.”
That was it. He went to his mother and father and said, “Prepare rations for me. I’m going out into the world. I have to find Louliyya, daughter of Morgan.”
When they heard this, their hearts sank to their toes. They kept on crying and imploring him, “Don’t do this, son. Stay away from her. No one has gone to find her and come back. We have no one else but you.”
He answered them, “It is no use.”
He finally took a horse, food and water, and some money and left.
He kept on moving from God’s countries to God’s peoples. One town carried him, and another town put him down, until the inhabited part of the world ended. He kept on traveling in the desert.
After a while, he saw dust coming from a distance. It came closer and closer. He looked to find a ghoul coming toward him. The moment the ghoul was by his side, he greeted him, “Peace be upon you, father ghoul.”
The ghoul answered, “Had your greeting not preceded your speech, I would have devoured your flesh before gnawing on your bones. What do you want?”
He answered, “I’m looking for Louliyya, daughter of Morgan.”
The ogre said, “Son, keep on going. You will meet my brother. He is one day older than I am and a year more knowledgeable.”
Yousif kept on going until he saw another cloud of dust, larger than the one before it. It came closer and closer, and finally when the ghoul was next to him, he said, “Peace be upon you, father ghoul.”
The ghoul replied, “Had your greeting not preceded your speech, I would have devoured your flesh before gnawing on your bones. What do you want?”
He replied, “I want to know how to reach Louliyya, daughter of Morgan.”
The ogre said to him, “Keep on going. Ahead you will meet my brother. He is one day older than myself and a year more knowledgeable.”
He kept on going until he met the third brother. He was much larger and much more fearsome than the first two. Yousif said to him, “Peace be upon you, father ghoul.”
The ghoul replied, “Had your greeting not preceded your speech, I would have devoured your flesh before gnawing on your bones. What do you want?”
He replied, “I want to know how to reach Louliyya, daughter of Morgan.”
The ghoul said, “Ahead of you you’ll find my sister, and she is the only one who can tell you how to reach her. When you get there, if you find her with her red chicks around her and her hair combed and groomed, don’t you dare say a word or make her feel your presence; but if you find her with her hair messed up and her green chicks around her and her breasts thrown over her shoulder you can talk to her, for she is going to be in a good mood.”
Yousif left and kept on going and going.
When he reached the ghoula’s house, he hid and peeped. He saw that her hair was well groomed and her red chicks were hopping up and down around her. He did not say a word and remained in his place.
After a while, about sunset, she messed up her hair and started catching her red chicks and eating them.
She let out her green chicks from the pen and threw her breasts behind her back and started singing. Yousif tiptoed behind her. The chicks saw him and shouted, “Somebody’s coming!” but she was singing so loudly that she did not hear them.
Of course she was in a good mood. When Yousif reached her, he suckled each of her breasts once. She shouted, “Ahhh, now you are my ‘milkson.’ You suckled my right breast, you became like my son Isma‘Aeen; you suckled my left breast, you became like my son ‘Aabdel-‘Aal! What do you want?”
He said, “Louliyya, daughter of Morgan.”
She said to him, “Why, son? You are too young to die.”
Even if his head was against a thousand swords, he insisted and said, “Never! I have to find Louliyya, daughter of Morgan.”
She said, “Well, take this ball and this racket. Hit the ball with the racket, and wherever the ball goes, you follow it. They will take you to the place you want to go.”
That was it. Yousif got back on his horse and struck the ball with the racket.
The ball flew into the air, landed on the ground, and kept on rolling. Mounted on his horse, Yousif followed it.
He kept on hitting the ball and running after it, hitting the ball and running after it, hitting the ball and running after it.
Hit and run, hit and run, hit and run, until finally he found himself in front of a huge palace in the middle of the desert.
This palace was high, high, high; it had neither windows nor gates. He went around it, and finally he saw one small window at the top of the palace.
As he stood wondering about this palace and thinking who it might be who owned it, he saw a huge dust cloud coming from far, far away.
He heard a dog barking and a big commotion. He hid himself behind a big boulder and peeped out. He saw an ghoul much larger than all the ghouls he had met.
The ghoul came to the palace and shouted, “Oh Louliyya, daughter of Morgan, let down your long hair and take your father the ghoul away from the heat of the hills.”
Yousif saw the little window open, and out of it appeared a young woman whose beauty was indescribable. Glory be to the creator for his creation!
She swung her hair out of the window, and it came down until it reached the ground. Her father the ghoul climbed up on her hair.
Pull, pull, pull, he was up there. He got in, and the window was closed. When he got inside, he asked her, “What have you cooked for us today?”
She said, “Such-and-such,’’ and served him what she had cooked.
He ate, and after that he rested his head and went to sleep. Now to whom do we return?
To Yousif outside! He kept himself hidden until the morning of the following day.
The window opened, and the hair was let down from it, and the ghoul climbed down on Louliyya’s hair. Yousif waited until the dust disappeared. He came out of his hiding place and shouted, “Oh Louliyya, daughter of Morgan, let your long hair down and take Yousif, for whom you have been predestined, away from the heat of the hills.”
The window was opened, and he looked up and saw her looking down. When she saw him, her heart softened for him; she fell in love with him. She said to him, “What brought you here? Get away with your skin still on your body! For if my father sees you, he will kill you and drink from your blood”’
He said to her, “Before I go, lift me up, and I will tell you my story.”
She swung her hair out, and he climbed up. He told her his story from hello to good-bye and said to her, “You are predestined for me, and we must get back to the house of my father and mother. We must escape from here.”
She said to him, “Escape to where? The distance we could cover in a day my father the ghoul will cover in one step.”
As they were talking, they heard a big commotion and heard her father shouting, “Oh Louliyya, daughter of Morgan, let your long hair down and take your father away from the heat of the hills.”
She was frightened and said, “What a catastrophe! My father the ghoul is back. Where shall I hide you/! Where shall I hide you/!”
She transformed him into a pin and pinned it on her chest.
When her father came up, he asked her, “What took you so long?”
She said, “Nothing; I was just in the bath.”
The ghoul started sniffing around, saying, “I smell the trace of a human not of our race.”
She said to him, “There is nothing.”
He looked all over the place and did not find anything. He asked for his food, and after he had eaten, he went to sleep. The following day the ghoul left as usual.
As soon as he was gone, she pulled the pin out of her collar; it became Yousif.
She said to him, “We must go now!”
She got some henna and tinted everything in the house with rose coloring. She overlooked only one thing, the tambourine. It hid from her underneath the sofa. She took her comb, her sewing needle, and her mirror, and she went out with Yousif.
When her father the ghoul returned, he started calling “Oh Louliyya!”
Nobody answered.
“Oh Louliyya!”
Nobody answered. Finally, when he became impatient, he started calling on everything in the house. “Oh chair!”
The chair said, “She is sitting on me!”
“Oh bed!”
The bed answered, “She is sleeping in me!”
“Oh bathtub!”
The bathtub answered, “She is bathing in me!”
Finally the tambourine started dancing and singing.
“Tumm ti dum, tshshsht, tshshsht, Tumm ti dum, tuu, tuu, Yousif took her and flew! Tuu, tuu, Yousif took her and flew.”
That was it. The ghoul heard this, and he went mad. He got his dogs to sniff around, and they flew after them.
Now we return to whom? To Yousif and Louliyya. They kept on going until they finally saw the cloud of dust coming from afar.
It kept on getting bigger and bigger until it blocked the sun; it was just like nighttime. Louliyya took out her needle and threw it back over her shoulder. Immediately it became a field of thorns.
The ghoul and his dog went right through it; the thorns pierced their feet. The ghoul kept saying to his dog, “Pluck out, my dog, and I’ll pluck out with you. Pluck out, my dog, and I’ll pluck out with you.”
Meanwhile Yousif and Louliyya were far away.
After a little while the ghoul drew very near to them again. Louliyya threw her comb back over her shoulder. Immediately the comb became a thick hedge of bamboo.
They got lost in it. The ghoul kept saying to his dog , “Chop down, my dog, and I’ll chop down with you. Chop down, my dog, and I’ll chop down with you.”
Yousif and Louliyya got a little bit farther away from them. Again the ghoul drew very close to them. Louliyya threw her mirror back over her shoulder. Immediately it became a lake.
When the ghoul got to it, he and his dog started drinking it. The ghoul would say, “Drink, my dog, and I will drink with you. Drink, my dog, and I will drink with you.”
They kept on drinking and drinking and drinking until they exploded. Before the ogre died, he threw some pins at them. As soon as the pins struck them, Louliyya became a she-dog, and Yousif became a lark.
He flew away. Louliyya kept on going until she reached Yousif‘s parents. She lay down in front of the doorstep and kept on barking.
No one paid any attention to her.
Yousif kept on coming back and hovering over the house and singing, “How are you, how are you, Louliyya, in the house of my father and mother?”
Louliyya would answer back, “Over me is dust, underneath me is dust, just like a dog’s place of rest, Yousif!”
One day Yousif's mother heard her saying, “Yousif.”
She and Yousif‘s father had become blind from crying over their son. She asked the dog, “What did you say?”
It repeated what it had said. Yousif‘s mother took her inside and made a bed of straw for her in the stable.
The following day Yousif hovered over the house singing, “How are you, how are you, Louliyya, in the house of my father and mother?”
She answered back, “Over me is straw, and underneath me is straw, just like a mare’s place of rest, Yousif.”
Yousif‘s mother heard this, and she said to herself, “Something must be the matter with this dog.”
She took her upstairs and put her in a room with a bed with silk sheets and covers. The following day, when Yousif hovered over the house singing, “How are you, how are you, Louliyya, in the house of my father and mother?” she replied, “Over me is silk, and silk is underneath me, just like a prince’s place of rest, Yousif.”
Yousif‘s mother was listening this time. She heard the whole thing. She entered the room and called the dog to her. It went to her. She kept on feeling its body and caressing it with her hand.
As she was passing her hand over its head, she found three pins pierced deep in it. She pulled them out, and immediately, with the omnipotence of the Omnipotent, she became a beautiful young lady again.
She told Yousif‘s mother and father about all that happened, how her father imprisoned her, how Yousif came to her-everything that happened. She said to them, “Get me some sugar, and I will get Yousif back.”
“How?” they asked her.
She answered, “Just wait and see.”
The following morning Yousif came back hovering over the house and said, “How are you, Louliyya, in the house of my father and mother?”
She said, “I have some sugar for you,” and she put her hand with granulated sugar in it out the window.
The lark perched on the palm of her hand to have some sugar. Ooops! She caught it! She found three pins stuck in its head. As soon as she plucked them out, the lark-with God’s omnipotence-became Yousif again.
He went and embraced his father and mother; their sight was restored by God’s will.
Yousif and Louliyya got married! The celebration lasted for forty days and forty nights.
They lived in stability and prosperity and begat boys and girls.
Now toota, toota, the tale is over. Was it sweet or dragging? If sweet, you owe a song, if dragging, you owe a story.
#arabic#egypt#fairy tales#folktales#folklore#fantasy#literature#maiden in the tower#magic flight#rapunzel
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A Year in Reading: 2024
Bolded titles are favorites of mine.
January 1. The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson 2. Every Last Breath by Jennifer L. Armentrout 3. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu 4. Arcanum Unbounded by Brandon Sanderson 5. Starter Villain by John Scalzi 6. Pulling the Wings Off Angels by K. J. Parker 7. The Rise of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee 8. The Shadow of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee
February 1. Richard III by William Shakespeare 2. Morgan Is My Name by Sophie Keetch 3. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal 4. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan 5. The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan 6. The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan 7. The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare 8. The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan 9. The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan 10. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare 11. The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan 12. Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare 13. The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan 14. The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
March 1. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 2. Habibi by Craig Thompson 3. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare 4. The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien 5. The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare 6. The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan 7. King John by William Shakespeare 8. Richard II by William Shakespeare
April 1. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan 2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare 3. Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare 4. The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare 5. The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan 6. The Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan 7. Othello by William Shakespeare 8. The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan 9. The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan 10. Life By Pumpkin: A Cat's Tale by Leslie Popp
May 1. Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare 2. The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan 3. Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare 4. The Tyrant's Tomb by Rick Riordan 5. Pericles by William Shakespeare 6. The Tower of Nero by Rick Riordan 7. Sonnets 1-154 by William Shakespeare 8. The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien 9. System Collapse by Martha Wells 10. The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal 11. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
June 1. King Lear by William Shakespeare 2. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare 3. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson 4. The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson 5. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare 6. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
July 1. The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson 2. House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas 3. As You Like It by William Shakespeare 4. Macbeth by William Shakespeare 5. House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas
August 1. Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare 2. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 3. Coriolanus by William Shakespeare 4. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare 5. Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare 6. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas 7. The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien 8. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
September 1. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien 2. A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas 3. A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas 4. King Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare 5. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 6. King Henry IV, Part II by William Shakespeare 7. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien 8. Henry V by William Shakespeare
October 1. A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas 2. Henry VIII by William Shakespeare 3. Edward III by William Shakespeare 4. The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien 5. Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare 6. The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
November 1. The Tempest by William Shakespeare 2. The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien 3. Dracula by Bram Stoker 4. The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare 5. House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas 6. The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare 7. A Funeral Elegy by William Shakespeare 8. Enemy of the Empire by Marshall J. Moore 9. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare 10. Henry VI, Part I by William Shakespeare 11. The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
December 1. Henry VI, Part II by William Shakespeare 2. Henry VI, Part III by William Shakespeare 3. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon 4. A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare 5. The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare 6. Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music by William Shakespeare 7. Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
Books Read: 102 Favorite Books: 58 Currently Reading: Firefight by Brandon Sanderson Notable Achievements:
Completed The Lord of the Rings twice.
Read Dracula through Dracula Daily for the third time.
Finished The Lord of the Rings through the LOTR newsletter for the second time.
Participating in the LOTR newsletter for the third time.
Read all of Tolkien's work for the second time.
Read all of Shakespeare's work.
Read from 8 new authors.
Finished Moby-Dick through Whale Weekly.
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James Earl Jones, Whose Powerful Acting Resonated Onstage and Onscreen, Dies at 93
He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.
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James Earl Jones in 1980. He climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords.Credit...M. Reichenthal/Associated Press
Published Sept. 9, 2024 Updated Sept. 10, 2024, 1:30 a.m. ET
James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.
The office of his agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed the death in a statement.
From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will. All had much to do with his success.
So did plays by Howard Sackler and August Wilson that let a young actor explore racial hatred in the national experience; television soap operas that boldly cast a Black man as a doctor in the 1960s; and a decision by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” to put an anonymous, rumbling African American voice behind the grotesque mask of the galactic villain Vader.
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Mr. Jones in 1979 as the author Alex Haley on “Roots: The Next Generation.” Credit...Warner Brothers Television, via Everett Collection
The rest was accomplished by Mr. Jones himself: a prodigious body of work that encompassed scores of plays, nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series, and some 120 movies. They included his voice work, much of it uncredited, in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, in the credited voice-over of Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Disney’s 1994 animated musical film, and in his reprise of the role in Jon Favreau’s computer-animated remake in 2019.
Mr. Jones was no matinee idol, like Cary Grant or Denzel Washington. But his bulky Everyman suited many characters, and his range of forcefulness and subtlety was often compared to Morgan Freeman’s. Nor was he a singer; yet his voice, though not nearly as powerful, was sometimes likened to that of the great Paul Robeson. Mr. Jones collected Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.
Under the artistic and competitive demands of daily stage work and heavy commitments to television and Hollywood — pressures that burn out many actors — Mr. Jones was a rock. He once appeared in 18 plays in 30 months. He often made a half-dozen films a year, in addition to his television work. And he did it for a half-century, giving thousands of performances that captivated audiences, moviegoers and critics.
They were dazzled by his presence. A bear of a man — 6 feet 2 inches and 200 pounds — he dominated a stage with his barrel chest, large head and emotional fires, tromping across the boards and spitting his lines into the front rows. And audiences were mesmerized by the voice. It was Lear’s roaring crash into madness, Othello’s sweet balm for Desdemona, Oberon’s last rapture for Titania, the queen of the fairies on a midsummer night.
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Mr. Jones as Othello in the Broadway revival of the play in New York in 1981. Credit...Martha Swope/The New York Public Library
He liked to portray kings and generals, garbage men and bricklayers; perform Shakespeare in Central Park and the works of August Wilson and Athol Fugard on Broadway. He could strut and court lecherously, erupt with rage or melt tenderly; play the blustering Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (2008) or an aging Norman Thayer Jr. in Ernest Thompson’s confrontation with mortality, “On Golden Pond” (2005).
Some theatergoers, aware of Mr. Jones’s childhood affliction, discerned occasional subtle hesitations in his delivery of lines. The pauses were deliberate, he said, a technique of self-restraint learned by stutterers to control involuntary repetitions. Far from detracting from his lucidity, the pauses usually added force to an emotional moment.
Mr. Jones profited from a deep analysis of meaning in his lines. “Because of my muteness,” he said in “Voices and Silences,” a 1993 memoir written with Penelope Niven, “I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.”
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Mr. Jones playing the fictional former U.S. President Arthur Hockstader in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” on Broadway in 2012. Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Another of his theatrical techniques was to stand alone for a few minutes in a darkened wing before the curtain went up, settling himself and silently evoking the emotion he needed for the first scene. It became a nightly ritual during performances of Mr. Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Fences” (1987), in which Mr. Jones portrayed a sanitation worker brooding over broken dreams, his once promising baseball career cut short by big league racial barriers. It ran for 15 months on Broadway, and Mr. Jones won a Tony for best actor.
Voice of Vader
Mr. Jones’s technique in the first “Star Wars” trilogy — “A New Hope” (1977), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Return of the Jedi” (1983) — was another trademark. To sustain Vader’s menace — a voice to go with his black cape and a helmet that filtered his hissing breath and evil tidings — Mr. Jones spoke in a narrowly inflected range, almost a monotone, to make nearly every phrase sound threatening. (He was credited for voice work in the third film, but, at his request, he was not credited in the first two until a special edition rerelease in 1997.)
Mr. Jones was one of the first Black actors to appear regularly on the daytime soaps, playing a doctor in “The Guiding Light” and in “As the World Turns” in the 1960s. Television became a staple of his career. He appeared in the dramatic series “The Defenders,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and in mini-series, including “Roots: The Next Generation” (1979), playing the author Alex Haley.
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Mr. Jones and Diana Sands in the 1960s in the dramatic television series “East Side, West Side.” His prodigious body of work included nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series. Credit...Everett Collection
Mr. Jones’s first Hollywood role was small but memorable, as the B-52 bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire on nuclear war, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
While drama critics recorded his steady progress as an actor, Mr. Jones did not win film stardom until 1970, when he played Jack Jefferson, a character based on Jack Johnson, the first Black boxing champion, in “The Great White Hope,” reprising a role he performed on Broadway in 1968. He won a Tony for the stage work and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie.
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Mr. Jones as Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope.” He won a Tony for his stage work in the role and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie version. Credit...George Tames/The New York Times
Although he was never active in the civil rights movement, Mr. Jones said early in his career that he admired Malcolm X and that he, too, might have been a revolutionary had he not become an actor.
He said his contributions to civil rights lay in roles that dealt with racial issues — and there were many. Notable among these was his almost overlooked casting in the 1961 play “The Blacks,” Jean Genet’s violent drama on race relations. It featured a cast that included Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Louis Gossett Jr. and Billy Dee Williams, some wearing gruesome white masks, who night after night enacted in a kangaroo court the rape and murder of a white woman. Mr. Jones, the brutal and beguiling protagonist, found the role so emotionally draining that he left and then rejoined the cast several times in its three-and-a-half-year run Off Broadway.
But the experience helped clarify his feelings about race. “Through that role,” he told The Washington Post in 1967, “I came to realize that the Black man in America is the tragic hero, the Oedipus, the Hamlet, the Macbeth, even the working-class Willy Loman, the Uncle Tom and Uncle Vanya of contemporary American life.”
James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Miss., on Jan. 17, 1931, to Robert Earl and Ruth (Connolly) Jones. About the time of his birth, his father left the family to chase prizefighting and acting dreams. His mother eventually obtained a divorce. But when James was 5 or 6, his frequently absent mother remarried, moved away and left him to be raised by her parents, John and Maggie Connolly, on a farm near Dublin, Mich.
Abandonment by his parents left the boy with raw wounds and psychic scars. He referred to his mother as Ruth — he said he thought of her as an aunt — and he called his grandparents Papa and Mama, although even the refuge of his surrogate home with them was a troubled place to grow up.
“I was raised by a very racist grandmother, who was part Cherokee, part Choctaw and Black,” Mr. Jones told the BBC in a 2011 interview. “She was the most racist person, bigoted person I have ever known.” She blamed all white people for slavery, and Native American and Black people “for allowing it to happen,” he said, and her ranting compounded his emotional turmoil.
Years of Silence
Traumatized, James began to stammer. By age 8 he was stuttering so badly, and was so mortified by his affliction, that he stopped talking altogether, terrified that only gibberish would come out. In the one-room rural school he attended in Manistee County, Mich., he communicated by writing notes. Friendless, lonely, self-conscious and depressed, he endured years of silence and isolation.
“No matter how old the character I play,” Mr. Jones told Newsweek in 1968, “even if I’m playing Lear, those deep childhood memories, those furies, will come out. I understand this.”
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Mr. Jones playing a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995). Credit...Miramax, via Alamy
In high school in nearby Brethren, an English teacher, Donald Crouch, began to help him. He found that James had a talent for poetry and encouraged him to write, and tentatively to stand before the class and read his lines. Gaining confidence, James recited a poem a day in class. The speech impediment subsided. He joined a debating team and entered oratorical contests. By graduation, in 1949, he had largely overcome his disability, although the effects lingered and never quite went away.
Years later, Mr. Jones came to believe that learning to control his stutter had led to his career as an actor.
“Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn’t speak.”
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Mr. Jones as Big Daddy in a 2008 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” With him was Terrence Howard. Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Mr. Jones enrolled at the University of Michigan on a scholarship, taking pre-med courses, and joined a drama group. With a growing interest in acting, he switched majors and focused on drama in the university’s School of Music, Theater and Dance. In a memoir, he said he left college in 1953 without a degree but resumed studies later to finish his required course work. He received a degree in drama in 1955.
In college, he had also joined the Army under an R.O.T.C. commitment, then washed out of infantry Ranger School. But he did so well in cold-weather training in the Rockies that he considered a military career. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in mid-1953, after the end of the Korean War, and was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant.
In 1955, however, he resigned his commission and moved to New York, determined to be an actor. He lived briefly with his father, whom he had met a few years earlier. Robert Jones had a modest acting career and offered encouragement. James found cheap rooms on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, took odd jobs and studied at the American Theater Wing and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.
A Run of Shakespeare
After minor roles in small productions, including three plays in which he performed with his father, he joined Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival in 1960; over several years he appeared in “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Richard III” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” During a long run as Othello in 1964, he fell in love with Julienne Marie, his Desdemona.
They were married in 1968, but they divorced in 1972. In 1982, he married the actress Cecilia Hart, who had also played Desdemona to one of his Othellos. She died in 2016. They had a son, Flynn Earl Jones, who survives him, along with a brother, Matthew.
In the 1970s and most of the ’80s, Mr. Jones was in constant demand for stage work in New York, films in Hollywood and television roles on both coasts. He took occasional breaks at a desert retreat near Los Angeles and at his home in Pawling, N.Y., in Dutchess County.
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Mr. Jones in 2017 when he accepted a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement. Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
But his long run with “Fences” in 1987 and 1988, including a national tour, proved too taxing. He did not return to Broadway for many years, and made movies almost exclusively. His notable film roles included an oppressed coal miner in John Sayles’s “Matewan” (1987); the king of a fictional African nation in the John Landis comedy “Coming to America” (1988), a role he reprised at 90 in 2021 in “Coming 2 America”; an embittered but resilient writer in the baseball movie “Field of Dreams” (1989); and a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995).
Mr. Jones received the National Medal of the Arts from President George Bush at the White House in 1992, Kennedy Center honors in 2002, an honorary Oscar in 2011 for lifetime achievement, and in 2017 a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement, as well as an honorary doctor of arts degree from Harvard University.
In 2015, Mr. Jones and Cicely Tyson appeared in a Broadway revival of D.L. Coburn’s 1976 play, “The Gin Game,” portraying residents of a retirement home making nice, and sometimes not so nice, over a card table. For the 84-year-old Mr. Jones, it was, as The Times noted, his sixth Broadway role in the past decade.
In 2022, Broadway’s 110-year-old Cort Theater was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater.
#James Earl Jones#The New York Times#Maya Angelou#Cicely Tyson#Louis Gossett Jr.#Billy Dee Williams#Tonys#Golden Globes#Emmys#Oscar#Jon Favreau#Broadway#George Lucas#Star Wars#Kennedy Center Honors#Honorary Academy Award#Harvard University
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sebastian’s 2023 reading list
hi i just love making lists, and my ratings are so unserious
⭐️⭐️ books:
- the midnight library by matt haig
- a touch of darkness by scarlett st. clair
- love & luck by jenna evans welch
- the unexpected everything by morgan matson
- tender is the night by f. scott fitzgerald
⭐️⭐️⭐️ books:
- alone with you in the ether by olivie blake (could be 3.75 stars though)
- everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin
- shadow and bone by leigh bardugo
- jane eyre by charlotte brontë
- murder in mesopotamia by agatha christie
- dead poets society by n. h. kleinbaum
- the turn of the screw by henry james
- the wife of martin guerre by janet lewis
- the sea of monsters by rick riordan
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ books:
- unbroken by angela sterritt
- instructions for dancing by nicola yoon
- all that’s left in the world by erik j. brown
- the sun and the star by rick riordan
- jack by marilynne robinson (4.5 stars)
- dune: the graphic novel
- the blythes are quoted by l. m. montgomery
- one for my enemy by olivie blake (4.75 stars)
- the wonder of us by kim culbertson
- six of crows by leigh bardugo
- siege and storm by leigh bardugo
- ruin and rising by leigh bardugo
- the woman who would be king by kara cooney
- legend by marie lu
- prodigy by marie lu
- the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman
- the song of achilles by madeline miller
- the lottery by shirley jackson
- the night circus by erin morgenstern
- the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde
- the titan’s curse by rick riordan
- the battle of the labyrinth by rick riordan
- the last olympian by rick riordan
- gilead by marilynne robinson
- the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson
- queenie by alice munro
- othello by shakespeare
- the secret history by donna tartt
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- spells for forgetting by adrienne young
- chasing painted horses by drew hayden taylor
- the highway of tears by jessica mcdiarmid
- call us what we carry by amanda gorman
- radicalized by cory doctorow
- last night at the telegraph club by malinda lo
- the grace year by kim liggett
- aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe by benjamin alire sáenz
- aristotle and dante dive into the waters of the world by benjamin alire sáenz
- crooked kingdom by leigh bardugo
- a doll’s house by henrik ibsen
- the lightning thief by rick riordan
my favourite books i read that i would give six stars to if possible:
- the starless sea by erin morgenstern
- if we were villains by m. l. rio
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Abbie Mitchell (September 25, 1884 – March 16, 1960) was a teacher, actress, and soprano born in New York City. Her father was German-Jewish and her mother was an African American.
She auditioned for a role in Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk, a musical comedy. She married Will Marion Cook (1898). They had two children.
She became a featured performer at private gatherings for New York socialites such as the Astors, Goulds, Morgans, and Vanderbilts. Will Marion Cook wrote the musical comedy, Jes Lake White Folks. She played one of the main characters.
In Dahomey was the most successful theatrical production mounted by African Americans and the first play with an all-Black cast, to be performed on Times Square. She sang “Brownskin Baby Mine.” In Dahomey was performed in England. To celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Wales, the production was staged before the Royal Family in Buckingham Palace. She spent time with the Nashville Students, a theatrical troupe that made its debut in New York City and performed in Paris, London, and Berlin. She starred as the lead soprano in Red Moon, which toured Europe. She gave a command performance for Czar Nicholas II of Russia.
She could be found performing at Harlem’s Lafayette Theater. She performed at other leading Black theaters including the Pekin Theater in Chicago and the Howard Theater in DC.
She performed in over two dozen plays including The Count of Monte Cristo, Othello, The Chocolate Soldier, The Emperor Jones, and The Little Foxes. She was known as Madame X in the play by that name. She performed in the Chicago production of Coquette. She showed her vocal artistry by performing French songs by Debussy, Duparc, and Foudrain, German songs by Pahlen, the poems of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, and spirituals written by her husband, Will Marion Cook. She became the head of the vocal department at Tuskegee Institute, she continued to perform before audiences around the world including a concert in the Soviet Union.
She gave her last performance in Westport Connecticut in the summer of 1947 when she appeared in The Skull Boat. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence
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The Contenders... Continued
The following is a list of contenders entered ticking us over the 200 submissions mark...
Shah Ala ad Daula [Olivier Martinez], The Physician (2013)
Allan-A-Dale [Joe Armstrong], BBC’s Robin Hood (2006-2009)
Amarendra Baahubali [Prabhas], Baahubali Series (2015-2017)
Amleth [Alexander Skarsgård], The Northman (2022)
Ancelyn ap Gwalchmai [Marcus Gilbert], Doctor Who (1989)
Arman [Matevy Lykov], I Am Dragon (2015)
Arthur Pendragon [Oliver Tobias], Arthur of the Britons (1972, 1973)
King Arthur [Graham Chapman], Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
King Arthur [Nigel Terry], Excalibur (1981)
King Arthur [Sean Connery], First Knight (1995)
King Arthur [Charlie Hunnam], King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Azeem [Morgan Freeman], Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Balian de Ibelin [Orlando Bloom], Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Bard the Bowman [Luke Evans], The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014)
Bilbo Baggins [Martin Freeman], The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014)
Bofur [James Nesbitt],The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014)
Boromir, Son of Denethor [Sean Bean], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Sir Bowen [Dennis Quaid], Dragonheart (1996)
Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert [Sam Neill], Ivanhoe (1982)
Prince Charmont [Hugh Dancy], Ella Enchanted (2004)
“Cinderella’s Prince” [Chris Pine], Into the Woods (2014)
Lord of Darkness [Tim Curry], Legend (1985)
Prince Dastan [Jake Gyllenhaal], Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
King Edmund the Just [Skandar Keynes, Mark Wells], The Chronicles of Narnia (2005-2010)
Edward, the Black Prince [James Purefoy], A Knight’s Tale (2001)
Sir Elyan [Adetomiwa Edun], BBC’s Merlin (2008-2012)
Fili [Dean O’Gorman], The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014)
Forge Fitzwilliam [Hugh Grant], Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
Francois Villon [Ronald Colman], If I Were King (1938)
Frodo Baggins [Elijah Wood], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Galessin, Duke of Orkney [Alexis Hénon], Kaamelott (2004-2009)
Gandalf [Ian McKellan], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Geoffrey Chaucer [Paul Bettany], A Knight’s Tale (2001)
Gest [Jakob Þór Einarsson], Hrafninn flýgur (1984)
Gimli, Son of Gloin [John Rhys-Davies], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Prince Graydon Hastur [Tony Revolori], Willow (2022)
Sir Guy of Gisbourne [Robert Addie], Robin of Sherwood (1984)
Sir Gwaine [Eoin Macken], BBC’s Robin Hood (2008-2012)
King Henry II Plantagenet [Peter O’Toole], Becket (1964)
King Henry V Plantagenet [Kenneth Branagh], Henry V (1989)
King Henry V Plantagenet [Tom Hiddleston], The Hollow Crown (2012-2016)
Ivanhoe [Anthony Andrews], Ivanhoe (1982)
Ivar the Boneless [Alex Høgh Andersen], Vikings (2013-2020)
Ser Jaime Lannister [Nikolaj Coster-Waldau], Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Prince Jingim [Remy Hii], Marco Polo (2014)
Kai [Michael Gothard], Arthur of the Britons (1972, 1973)
Kili [Aiden Turner], The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014)
al’Lan Mandragoran [Daniel Henney], The Wheel of Time (2022)
Sir Lancelot [Luc Simon], Lancelot du Lac (1974)
Sir Lancelot [Nicholas Clay], Excalibur (1981)
Sir Lancelot [Richard Gere], First Knight (1995)
Le Maître d'Armes (~the fencing master) [Christian Bujeau], Kaamelott (2005-2009)
“Man With Snake” [Barry John Clarke], Edward II (1991)
Merlin [Nicol Williamson], Excalibur (1981)
Merlin [Sam Niell], Merlin (1998)
Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck [Dominic Monaghan], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Michael Kohlhaas [Mads Mikkelsen], Age of Uprising: the Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (2013)
Miles Hendon, The Prince and the Pauper (1937)
Murtagh Morzansson [Garrett Hedlund], Eragon (2002)
Nicodemus Ravens [Jakob Oftebro], Skammerens Datter (2015)
“One-Eye” [Mads Mikkelsen], Valhalla Rising (2009)
Othello [Laurence Fishburne], Othello (1995)
High King Peter the Magnificent [William Moseley, Noah Huntley], The Chronicles of Narnia (2005-2010)
Philip II [Timothy Dalton], The Lion in Winter (1968)
Richard II Plantagenet [Ben Whishaw], The Hollow Crown (2012-2016)
Rilk [Jesse Lee Keeter] JourneyQuest (2010)
Robert of Artois [Jean Piat], The Accursed Kings (1972)
Robert of Huntingdon [Jason Connery], Robin of Sherwood (1984)
Robin Hood [Kevin Costner], Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Robin Hood [Jonas Armstrong], BBC’s Robin Hood (2006-2009)
Robin Longstride [Russell Crowe], Robin Hood (2010)
Saburo Naotora Ichimonji [Ryu Daisuke], Ran (1985)
Saruman [Christopher Lee], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
“The Sherriff of Nottingham” [Alan Rickman], Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (1991)
Simon Aumar [Justice Smith], Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
“Taunting French Guard” [John Cleese], Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Theoden, Son of Thengel [Bernard Hill], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Thierry of Janville [Jean-Claude Drouot], Thierry la Fronde (1963-1966)
Sir Thomas Cromwell [Mark Rylance], Wolf Hall (2015-2024)
Sir Thomas Gray [Nigel Terry], Covington Cross (1992)
Thranduil, The Elvenking [Lee Pace], The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014)
Thraxus Boorman [Amar Chadha-Patel], Willow (2022)
Tormund Giantsbane [Kristofer Hivju], Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Trumpkin [Peter Dinklage], The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
Tyrion Lannister [Peter Dinklage], Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
“Unnamed Elf Escort” (Alias: "Figwit") [Bret McKenzie], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003
Uther Pendragon [Gabriel Byrne], Excalibur (1981)
Wat [Alan Tudyk], A Knight’s Tale (2001)
Wen Kexing [Gong Jun], Word of Honor (2021)
Wil Ohmsford [Austin Butler], Shannara Chronicles (2016)
William Wallace [Mel Gibson], Braveheart (1995)
Willow Ufgood [Warwick Davis), Willow (1988, 2022)
Wolf [Seth Cohen], The 10th Kingdom (2000)
Xenk Yendar [Regé-Jean Page], Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
Two days in, and we have had 100+ submissions for the Hot Medieval and Fantasy Men tournament!!
Submissions are open until June 27th, so if you have a hot medieval/medieval fantasy guy (or multiple of them) you'd like to see compete, send them in!
Here is a list of our Noble and Worthy Contenders so far.
If your man isn't here, that means he has not been submitted.
The Contenders
So Far…
Adhemar, Count of Anjou [Rufus Sewell], A Knight's Tale (2001)
Prince Aemond Targaryen [Ewan Mitchell], House of the Dragon (2022-)
Alessandro Farnese [Diarmuid Noyes], Borgia: Faith and Fear (2011-2014)
King Alfred the Great [David Dawson], The Last Kingdom (2015-2022)
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan [Antonio Banderas], The 13th Warrior (1999)
Antonius Block [Max von Sydow], The Seventh Seal (1957)
Aragorn, Son of Arathorn [Viggo Mortensen], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
King Arthur Pendragon [Alexandre Astier], Kaamelott (2004-2009)
King Arthur Pendragon [Bradley James], BBC’s Merlin (2008-2012)
Athelstan [George Blagden], Vikings (2013-2020)
Ash Williams [Bruce Campbell], Army of Darkness (1992)
Brian de Bois-Guilbert [Ciaran Hinds], Ivanhoe (1997)
Brother Cadfael [Derek Jacobi], Cadfael (1994-1998)
Carlos I [Álvaro Cervantes], Carlos Rey Emperador (2015-2016)
Prince Caspian [Ben Barnes], The Chronicles of Narnia (2010)
Cesare Borgia [Mark Ryder], Borgia: Faith and Fear (2011-2014)
Cesare Borgia [Francois Arnaud], The Borgias (2011-2013)
Prince Chauncley [Daniel Radcliffe], Miracle Workers: The Dark Ages (2020)
Prince Daemon Targaryen [Matt Smith], House of the Dragon (2022-)
Khal Drogo [Jason Momoa], Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Lord Eddard Stark [Sean Bean], Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Edgin [Chris Pine], Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (2023)
Éomer, Son of Éomund [Karl Urban], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Étienne de Navarre [Rutger Hauer], Ladyhawke (1985)
Faramir, Son of Denethor [David Wenham], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Finan [Mark Rowley], The Last Kingdom (2015-2022)
Sir Galahad [Michael Palin], Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Galavant [Joshua Sasse], Galavant (2015-2016)
Gawain [Dev Patel], The Green Knight (2021)
Geralt z Rivii [Michał Żebrowski], The Witcher (2002)
Geralt of Rivia [Henry Cavill], The Witcher (2019-)
Sir Guy of Gisborne [Basil Rathbone], The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Sir Guy of Gisborne [Richard Armitage], BBC’s Robin Hood (2006-2009)
Prince Hamlet [Laurence Olivier], Hamlet (1948)
Hubert Hawkins [Danny Kaye], The Court Jester (1955)
King Henry II Plantagenet [Peter O’Toole], The Lion in Winter (1968)
King Henry V Plantagenet [Tom Hiddleston], The Hollow Crown (2012-2016)
Prince Henry [Dougray Scott], Ever After (1998)
Hugh Beringar [Sean Pertwee], Cadfael (1994-1998)
Inigo Montoya [Mandy Patinkin], The Princess Bride (1987)
Jareth [David Bowie], the Goblin King, Labyrinth (1986)
Jaskier [Joey Batey], The Witcher (2019-)
Prince John Plantagenet [Claude Rains], The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Lancelot [Santiago Cabrera], BBC’s Merlin (2008-2012)
Legolas Greenleaf [Orlando Bloom], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Madmartigan [Val Kilmer], Willow (1988)
King Mark of Cornwall [Rufus Sewell], Tristan and Isolde (2006)
Mikoláš Kozlík [František Velecký], Marketa Lazarová (1967)
Merlin [Colin Morgan], BBC’s Merlin (2008-2012)
Niccolo Machiavelli [Thibaut Evrard], Borgia: Faith and Fear (2011-2014)
Prince Oberyn Martell [Pedro Pascal], Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Peregrin “Pippin” Took [Billy Boyd], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Pero Tovar [Pedro Pascal], The Great Wall (2016)
Ragnar Lothbrook [Travis Fimmel], Vikings (2013-2020)
Ravenhurst [Basil Rathbone], The Court Jester (1955)
Richard Cypher [Craig Horner], Legend of the Seeker (2008-2010)
King Richard [Timothy Omundson], Galavant (2015-2016)
Richard III Plantagenet [Aneurin Barnard], The White Queen (2013)
Robin Hood [Errol Flynn], The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Robin Hood [Michael Praed], Robin of Sherwood (1984)
Robin Hood [Cary Elwes], Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)
Robin Hood [Tom Riley], Doctor Who: “The Robot of Sherwood” (2014)
Rodrigo Borgia [Jeremy Irons], The Borgias (2011-2013)
Rollo [Clive Standen], Vikings (2013-2020)
Samwise Gamgee [Sean Astin], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Sandor Clegane [Rory McCann], Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Sid [Luke Youngblood], Galavant (2015-2016)
Sihtric Kjartansson [Arnas Fedaravicius], The Last Kingdom (2015-2022)
Thorin Oakenshield [Richard Armitage], The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014)
Tom Builder [Rufus Sewell], The Pillars of the Earth (2010)
Mr. Tumnus [James McAvoy], The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Vlad III Dracula [Luke Evans], Dracula Untold (2014)
Westley [Cary Elwes], The Princess Bride (1987)
William Thatcher [Heath Ledger], A Knight’s Tale (2001)
Will Scarlet O’Hara [Matthew Porretta], Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)
Will Scarlett [Patrick Knowles], The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Will Scarlett [Christian Slater], Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
#submissions#pre tournament#housekeeping#lord of the rings#the princess bride#the last kingdom#vikings#a knight's tale#braveheart#excalibur#game of thrones#wolf hall#robin hood: prince of thieves#the hollow crown#the hobbit trilogy
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reading challenge #11 (wrap-up)
Just finished: The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan
Currently reading: The House of Hades by Rick Riordan
Next on schedule: The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan
I just wanted to add for myself a little conclusion to the reading challenge I did last year! I went back to university, so I had a lot less time and motivation to read for the past six months. Because of that, I didn't achieve my goals in the end, but that's alright, I'm still very proud of all the dusting-off I did! My TBR pile is much more manageable now, so I will not be keeping up with this challenge in 2024 (I barely read anything not Percy Jackson-related since January, anyway).
So, if anyone is interested in random lists of books, in 2023 I checked off my program:
(FR) Le Prieuré de l'Oranger (The Priory of the Orange Tree) by Samantha Shannon
(FR) La voleuse de livres (The Book Thief) by Markus Zusak
(FR) L'École des femmes + Le Misanthrope by Molière
(EN) Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang
(EN) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
(EN) Daughter of Smoke and Bone + Days of Blood and Starlight + Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor
(FR) Le Chien des Baskerville (The Hound of the Baskervilles) by Arthur Conan Doyle
(FR) Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola
(FR) Le symbole perdu (The Lost Symbol) by Dan Brown
(FR) Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
(FR) Il était une fois dans le Nord (Once Upon A Time In The North) by Philip Pullman
(FR) Le Roi Lear (King Lear) by William Shakespeare
(EN) The Conqueror’s Saga (And I Darken + Now I Rise + Bright We Burn) by Kiersten White
(FR) Le Flambeau + Témoin à charge by Agatha Christie
(FR) Boudicca by Jean-Laurent Del Socorro
(FR) Fantômes et kimonos by Kidō Okamoto
(FR) Dans l'ombre de Paris by Morgan of Glencoe
For a total of 23 books out of my goal of 30 that I had owned for years and never read!
Which means that my TBR pile now amounts to these 12 books (I acquired the last 4 last year so they were not included in my program):
(FR) L'Ultime Expérience by Bruce Benamran
(FR) Cinna by Corneille
(FR) Othello by Shakespeare
(EN) Three Dark Crowns (re-read) + One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake
(EN) Iskari, the Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli
(EN) The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen
(FR) Le complot des corbeaux by Ariel Holzl
(FR) La mythologie viking (North Mythology) by Neil Gaiman
(FR) La métamorphose by Franz Kafka
(EN) A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
(EN) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
In addition to all that, although disregarding anything fanfictitious, last year...
(and because I barely have any self-control when it comes to books)
...I also read these, which were not initially included in my program:
(EN) And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
(EN) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
(FR) Le château de Hurle (Howl’s moving castle) by Diana Wynne Jones
(EN) The Princess Diaries vol. 1 by Meg Cabot
(EN) Strange the dreamer + Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor
(EN) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
(EN) Divergent vol. 1 by Veronica Roth
(EN) Legendborn + Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
(FR) Comme un vol d'étourneaux by Giorgio Parisi
(FR) Le meilleur des mondes (Brave New World) by Aldous Huxley
(EN) I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
(EN) Crooked House by Agatha Christie
(EN) Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
(FR) La guerre des clans (Warriors) - cycle I vol. 1-6 by Erin Hunter
(EN) Tallstar’s Revenge by Erin Hunter
(FR) Le mystère de Listerdale by Agatha Christie
After all these gruesome lists, I can finally put to rest my 2023 reading challenge. Maybe one day I'll renew it, but I probably won't have the time nor the energy to schedule my readings so seriously for the next two years. It's been very fun though, also it had been the first year in quite some time that I read that much in French, and I think it did me good.
(prev)
#the end#i should have done this in January it feels so out-of-place now#welp it is what it is#reading challenge#books#my post#ramble#text
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The Lyric Theatre: Lyceum of Dreams
Nick Finney - On the occasion of the reopening of the Lyric Theatre, 1940s Black dream house, Lexington, Kentucky
On the East End, we shine our own shoes, dress our own legs,
smooth down willful hair, let all new trouble float. Done-up.
We promenade and pass, Deweese (DoAsYouPlease) & 3rd, where
Winkfield & Murphy once hoofed & flew backwards, black-winged,
on horseback. Under the blazing marquee we hand our shiny quarter
over, glide toward, then across, our eight-point star, rose-tile light
of regeneration. In the dark theatre, the salt-cod sweat of work, now left
behind, names hurled our way all day, now set aside, pay cheques that never
match our labour folded away now. House lights dim: Paul Robeson is
Othello. Miss Ella strikes & swings. The Duke & Count jazz-juice the night,
royalty speaks to royalty. The Ink Spots spill all with Sarah Vaughan, Miss Mahalia
orchestrates & moans and moonbeams, Candy Johnson & his Peppermint Sticks
fill every inch of stage. Marian Anderson poses her hands in alto-soprano.
Woody Strode, our Black cowboy, wild-rides the open oat fields & range.
Our dusty eyes drink in Beah Richards, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne.
Intermission at the Lyric: Lights up! Freda Jones tries on a brand-new
hat and no one is arrested. Bernard Lewis licks his ice cream cone on every
melting side, no one is booked for licking or loitering. Morgan and
Marvin Smith, the famous picture- taking twins, take our picture too.
At the Lyric we pose, bright futures we portray. At the Lyric we fall in love
with our lips: Lucinda kisses Big Tank clear through the opening act. Julia
can’t see the show for looking at the ocean of their mouths; open, close.
We cry at the Lyric, laugh out loud at the Lyric. Whisper Quiet! Here comes
the principal! Miss Lucy Harth Smith proudly takes her seat. At the Lyric,
William Wells Brown pulls out his indelible pen to write us down. Isaac
Scott Hathaway shapes our faces in a mustard-amber clay on new money.
We come to the Lyric to rise, rejuvenate, see ourselves win, watch ourselves lifted
up in lights, hit the home run, be hero champion of the world. Only to file
back out live & alive, stroll back across the rays of the eight-point star, rose-tile
light of return, sink back into the race- track of the East End with everything
we have now become. Sweet Lyric, lyceum of dreams, where once we came
to rise into who Mama, not dime-store magazines, promised us we were.
#theatre#poetry#nick finney#lyric#kentucky#performance#arts#black#power#selfhood#african american#segregation#pride#identity
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The Seven Princes of the Thousand-Year Labyrinth character sorter
ive been wanting to make this sorter for a while. finally i am not lazy and made it. hope you enjoy it. this might be for a niche group of people ;w;
here is the link: https://hiotaru.tumblr.com/thesevenprinces
#the seven princes of the thousand year labyrinth#千年迷宮の���王子#Sennen Meikyuu no Nana Ouji#manga#character sorter#sorter#manga characters#the seven princes#ewan juno#laurence ackroyd#messiah reed#titus ram#zan audubon#gideon redfield#august morgan#amadeus frockhert#othello blackmore
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After studying Othello... Ding ding! We have a winner 😂 @richiesnotaloserguyscmon @miss-morgans-lover
shakespeare bingo, for tradegy lovers and english lit students (for his comedies just replace everybody dies at the end with everybody gets married at the end)
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