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desdealgunlugardelsur · 4 years ago

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Harrison Ford: 2020 summary

A year like no other, as you must have heard countless times. The pandemic changed almost everybody´s life on this planet and Harrison wasn´t an exception. Our lil´ bean is strong and healthy but also has to be safe at home, so this year didn´t deliver many news about Harrison. Still, we had a new Harrison movie, The Call of the Wild, released in February, and a few other events before the lockdown. 2020 was also marked by the death of 3 former Harrison´s costars: Chadwick Boseman, Sean Connery and David Prowse. May all of them rest on peace on Heaven.

A new year begins, and we all wish Harrison (and everyone by the way) a productive, happy and healthy 2021. Stay safe!

JANUARY

Early January: Harrison Ford enjoying his holidays in the caribbean island of Bonaire

25th: Harrison Ford with singer Carole Bayer Sager in a dinner in support of US Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg

28th: The Call of the Wild “Adventure Companions” Featurette. Harrison Ford talks about dogs and companionship in The Call of the Wild’s “Adventure Companions” featurette.

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28th: not sure where these pics were taken. Probably in Wyoming? (pics from Rich Elali)

FEBRUARY

3rd: Verizon Super Bowl Ad Features Harrison Ford And New Pearl Jam Song

Kathleen Kennedy Says Harrison Ford Is Still On For ‘Indiana Jones 5’

Early-mid February: the national and international promotion of The Call of the Wild begins

5th: In Mexico City:

Harrison Ford: America Has Lost Its Moral Leadership And Credibility: The “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” star calls out U.S. policy on immigration and climate.

11th: On the Jimmy Kimmel Show:

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More here

13th: Harrison Ford, actor and watch designer. Newly adapted from Jack London’s literary classic, “The Call of the Wild” transports us to the snowy expanses of Alaska in the 1890s, with Harrison Ford as prospector John Thornton. The actor talks about climate activism, technology and why mechanical watches beat smartwatches every time.

14th: Indiana Jones 5 Starts Shooting In Two Months Says Harrison Ford : The long delayed fifth Indiana Jones film is finally about to get underway, as Harrison Ford reveals that he will begin shooting in two months. (that was what they were planning before COVID-19 hit the world...)

14th: Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones 5 Will “See Part of His History Resolved”

17th: “A Force ghost? I don’t know what a Force ghost is…I have no idea what a Force ghost is. And I don’t care!“. Legend.

21st: The Call of the Wild is released in cinemas

At the movie premiere in Los Angeles:

BRING ON THE PUPPIES:

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More videos:

Call of the Wild Survival Tips!

SNACK??? (Kudos to that girl)

Find epic stories at your library!

More news:

Of Course Harrison Ford Did His Own Call Of The Wild Stunts And 'Wore Out' The Stunt Team

Harrison Ford's shirtless chest is that buff (at 77) for his 'Call of the Wild' swim scene

26th: Steven Spielberg Won’t Direct ‘Indiana Jones 5,’ James Mangold in Talks to Replace

27th: Harrison Ford Breaks Down His Career, from 'Star Wars' to 'Indiana Jones' (Vanity Fair)

Late February: Harrison Ford visits Google´s offices in San Francisco to test the company´s self-driving car. [x] [x] [x] [x]

MARCH

14th: Harrison spotted in South Hadley, Massachusetts [x]. Apparently Harrison and Calista went to Massachusetts to pick up their son Liam after college shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

MARCH

...

APRIL

3rd: Disney delay multiple release dates including Jungle Cruise, The French Dispatch, and Indiana Jones 5

(…) Another big reveal is that Indiana Jones 5 – which will reportedly be directed by James Mangold – is being pushed back a year, from July 9, 2021 to July 29, 2022.

29th: Harrison Ford under FAA investigation after making a mistake while operating an airplane on the runway

According to the audio obtained by TMZ, Ford, 77, did not follow the direction of a tower operator to “keep short” on the runway because of “traffic”. It seems that the actor did not hear the direction. He nevertheless started to cross the runway, which prompted the operator to reprimand him for not following his instructions.

“Cross this trail now!” I told you to keep it short! You have to listen, “said the operator.

“Excuse me, sir, I thought exactly the opposite. I’m really sorry, ”said Ford immediately.

TMZ said there was no risk of an accident. The other aircraft was allegedly 3600 feet from Ford’s aircraft.

MAY

6th: Lucasfilm Reportedly Wants Harrison Ford To Return For Han And Chewie Star Wars Spinoff (Note: this hasn´t been officially confirmed by Lucasfilm)

15th: No news but I think this is cute:

From twitter.com/siikasele

21st: The Empire Strikes Back 40th anniversary. 40 years ago, TESB was released on theaters the 21st of May of 1980.

27th: James Mangold Confirmed To Direct Indiana Jones 5. Producer Frank Marshall confirms James Mangold is directing Indiana Jones 5 and says he's only just begun to work on his own script for the movie.

28th: James Mangold plans to take Indiana Jones franchise 'someplace new'.

Indiana Jones Writer on How Pandemic Will Affect Film's Script

JUNE

Nothing happens but look at this

You are welcome.

JULY

13th: Happy birthday king!

AUGUST

23rd: Harrison Ford dropping off his son Liam at College with wife Calista Flockhart via private plane (from tinyrebelstuff)

28th: Chadwick Boseman dies of cancer at the age of 43

Harrison Ford Calls Chadwick Boseman "As Much a Hero as Any He Played"

“Chadwick Boseman was as compelling, powerful and truthful as the characters he chose to play,” Ford said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “His intelligence, personal dignity and deep commitment inspired his colleagues and elevated the stories he told. He is as much a hero as any he played. He is loved and will be deeply missed.”

SEPTEMBER

24th: Harrison Ford Cleared by FAA in Runway Investigation. "The FAA has closed the case involving the pilot who crossed a Hawthorne Municipal Airport runway without authorization on April 24, 2020. The FAA required the pilot to take a remedial runway incursion training course. When the pilot successfully completed the course, the FAA closed the case with no additional action," the FAA said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

OCTOBER

19th: Harrison Ford & Ed Helms To Star In STX Seafaring Comedy ‘Adventures Of Burt Squire’

22nd: Actor and Pilot Harrison Ford Becomes Airlink Spokesperson. Video here

31st: Sean Connery dies at 90.

Sean Connery: Harrison Ford pays tribute to his Indiana Jones father and 'dear friend'

"He was my father... not in life... but in Indy 3," he said.

"You don't know pleasure until someone pays you to take Sean Connery for a ride in the sidecar of a Russian motorcycle bouncing along a bumpy, twisty mountain trail and getting to watch him squirm.

"God, we had fun - if he's in heaven, I hope they have golf courses.

"Rest in peace, dear friend."

NOVEMBER

2nd: Harrison Ford And Lincoln Project Back Anthony Fauci, Advocate Firing Donald Trump

In the waning hours of the 2020 presidential election, the Lincoln Project has enlisted Harrison Ford to narrate a new ad that plays up President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he will fire Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The spot features a scene from a Trump rally on Sunday in which supporters began chanting “Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!” and the president responded, “Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait til a little bit after the election.”

Ford then says, “Tomorrow, you can fire only one of them. The choice is yours.”

3rd: Harrison Ford and Bloomberg on Biden 2020

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7th: Destiel becomes canon. Harrison doesn´t give a single fuck.

Also Joe Biden wins the US elections. Trump is defeated. Harrison, we know you hate Donald Trump. Congratulations.

21st: Harrison Ford back in Boston, Massachusetts, to pick up his son Liam for Thanksgiving Day.

28th: David Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the original trilogy, dies at the age of 85. Sorry, I didn´t find any words from Harrison on his memory... it seems they weren´t so close. Also, Jeremy Bulloch, the original Boba Fett, dies at 75 the 17th of december.

DECEMBER

10th: Indiana Jones: James Mangold, Harrison Ford Team to Close Out the Character

Harrison Ford and James Mangold's Indiana Jones 5 will serve as the final chapter for the iconic character.

Disney changed the Indiana Jones logotype. I have a bad feeling about this.

15th: Rare, behind-the-scenes look at 'The Empire Strikes Back'

Including this jewel:

Gif from the @theorganasolo

31st: And just at the very last day of this weird and strange year...

Disney Reportedly Wants Harrison Ford For Indiana Jones Streaming Show

Thankfully, then, it seems that the fifth (Indiana Jones) outing may not be the last we see of the actor in the role, as insider Daniel Richtman claims that Disney wants Ford to appear in a series that’s being developed for their streaming service. Further details are unclear and the tipster doesn’t say if it’s an all-new show or a reboot of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but as one of the Mouse House’s most valuable assets, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they wanted to continue mining the property once Indiana Jones 5 wraps up the big screen stories for good.

Thanks everyone! Hopefully in 2021 the pandemic will fade and the world will return to normalcy. Luckily the production of Indiana Jones V will start this spring, as well as other Harrison projects such the tv show The Staircase and the movie starring with Ed Elms. Fingers crossed for a year full of (good) news about Harrison. Have a happy and safe 2021.

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little-red-toyota · 3 years ago

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Final good bye to the fandom

TW//Trauma, triggers, nsfw, sexual themes, rape, domestic abuse e.g.

This is gonna be a long ass post…

It has taken me a while to get emotionally strong enough to do this, as I will have to think back at some traumatic events from my past to address some of these things. That's why I waited until I got home from vacation with my family, as it will seriously affect my mood and mental health, and I want to be near my doctor and therapist, just in case.

And also, I know that the majority of those reading this will invalidate me and tell me I am making things up to clear my name. So, I literally have to torment myself to write a blog post people will just brush off as bogus anyway. But I will do it now that I am in safe surroundings. Then it will be off my chest, and I can finally move on. If people will continue stirring up the past, it will be their problem, not mine.

I think I should write one last blog post where I address everything. I have left the TTTE-fandom, but I will write that one as my final goodbye to the fandom. I just have to find out everything I've been accused of so I can properly address them all in order. I might leave out details of my life that is too hard for me to open up about. I know most of you will just invalidate me anyway.

1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.

2. My mafia-AU.

3. The Darin incident.

4. Being a pedophile. (Where do they get this from anyway??)

5. Running the NSFW-blog.

6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.

Is there more?

Ah... yes! Faking my own suicide, of course!

7. "Faking" being suicidal.

8. Having the audacity to survive and go on living.

9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it.

10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).

11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.

12. Being a danger to my daughter.

Anything else that needs to be addressed? What else am I being accused of? Send me a dm and I will add it to the post.

Okay, I will bump the Stepney fic down a bit as it is the most traumatic thing for me to address, I will save that one for last.

2 and 3. The dark au/mafia au where I gave some TTTE characters some rather dark and unpleasant character traits, and the whole incident with Darin and the pedo-Salty was addressed in this blog post written by my husband last year, so I am not opening that can of worms again: https://little-red-toyota.tumblr.com/post/623743183795470336/in-light-of-recent-events

Even the thing about Toby cheating on Henrietta is addressed there.

As for the au, I never fully explored it as I started losing interest in TTTE around the same time. I found other things to enjoy and TTTE faded into the background and the au was dropped before I even wrote any stories, apart from the one about Toby and Henrietta.

Some people claim, like this lovely individual, that most of the characters were rapists and pedos. No, not most. Only one of each. And I did not write more than one story about rape and suicide. Where does this person even get that from? Someone who told someone who had heard from someone who might have heard….?

Don't spread rumors unless you are sure that they are true.

Anyway, it's all addressed in that blog post in that link. I don't see how this mafia au is any worse than other dark post-apocalyptic or violent aus. It mostly was about the diesel mafia and their illegal businesses, not about sex, even if it did occur now and then. I find the substance abuse in it to be more problematic tbh…

4. Being a pedophile.

I don't even know how to defend myself against this one, as I don't even know why people think I am pedophile. They only throw the accusation out with no backing evidence, so I have no idea where it comes from or what it is that makes people think I am one.

Apart from one claim that I had faved "porn" alongside "strangers'" baby photos on DA. I addressed that earlier though. As DeviantArt doesn't sort what you click "like" on, it all ends up in the same folder unless you actively go through it and sort it into categories, which I don't bother most of the time. It also doesn't say WHEN it was added to your faves. So, I can have faved an artistic nude on Saturday, and then faved my friend's family photo on Thursday. It's not like I actively search for porn, get all steamed up and then look at pictures of children. WTF.

The few children I have faved are not from complete strangers, but long-term friends of mine. Yes, it is possible to have friends on the same website. I have actually met a lot of my RL friends through DeviantArt. I posted photos of my daughter when she was a baby, they would fave it and congratulate me. So, I did the same when they had a baby. As simple as that. Nothing weird or perverted about it. Due to people doxxing me last year however, I deleted the photos of me, my husband and my daughter from DeviantArt, so it's no longer there.

Porn isn't allowed on DeviantArt anyway. The nudes there are so-called artistic nudes, and for the most part I use them as pose-references when I draw as it is easier to draw a pose using a nude base and then dress them up once you got the pose right.

"The very naked" centaurs I have faved. Well, I like the mythological creature Centaur. And as far as I know… they do not wear clothes, so how are they NOT nude? Look it up, it's a horse body with a human torso instead of horse head. I don't see them as sexual, but what do I know? Maybe YOU do?

I have no sexual interest in children whatsoever.

5. Running the NSFW-blog on Tumblr and Twitter.

Yes. I was one of six people modding that blog. ONE of six, so I refuse to take the full blame here.

MerciResolution has openly admitted to being the founder, and she recruited me and some others to modify as the confession load became too heavy for one person to handle alone.

The original blog on Tumblr worked as follows: People would anonymously send a confession to our askbox, we would add a picture (sometimes photoshopped) to the text and post it on the blog. Always tagged as NSFW and with proper trigger warnings if necessary! The blog itself was also marked as explicit, so it didn't appear in searches and such.

For us, this blog was nothing but a joke. We did it for shits and giggles. If anyone took it seriously and thought we got off to the stuff that was posted, we apologize for that, but to us it was just for laughs. And we DID laugh a lot, you guys should have seen the weird shit people sent us sometimes!

We had fun and we never thought anyone would take it seriously, so we never thought of writing "joke" in the description or anything. It never occurred to us that it could be anything but a joke.

We also made a Twitter account for it, also locked for minors. But it was quickly hacked, and someone changed the password so we could no longer access it. We made another account and forgot about the old one…

After a while, the original mods started losing interest and the blog (both on Tumblr and Twitter) became less active. That's when a person I had known for years, and wrongfully trusted, came forward and wanted to take over ownership. So, the ownership was handed over to Russalita/Charlie.

That turned out to be huge mistake!

Me and the other mods had more or less forgotten that the blogs existed, when suddenly someone started bashing me and getting up in my arms over it. I got seriously confused as I hadn't been active on it in almost a year. But as it turned out, Russalita had removed the mature filters and made the accounts open for all the see. Even minors.

And as people knew I was one of the mods, they fired their guns at me. I can see why though, so I'm not pointing any fingers here.

I tried contacting her by phone, asking her to lock the accounts again, but she gave me a less than polite response, hung up and then blocked my number…

So, I decided to try to shut the blogs down on my own, trying the old passwords. It worked on the Tumblr-account, and I managed to password protect it, for some reason it couldn't be fully deleted. But the Twitter account had gotten its password changed by Russalita. I was however able to get a new password by logging into the e-mail we had used to create it. I deleted the Twitter blog fully. It can't be re-activated even if we wanted to. It's gone.

But it turns out the old, hacked one is still up and now open for everyone. And this one poses a huge problem as we have no way of getting into it to delete it. Only thing we have been able to do so far is reporting it and hope it will be removed by Twitter. So I only have one thing to say about it: report it.

I am no longer running any NSFW TTTE blog anywhere, nor do I have interest in doing so. So, if you come across one, claiming to be me or any of the other mods, it is false.

6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.

People seem to believe I have drawn genitals on trains. I have never done such. Any art on the NSFW-blog with genitalia on the trains were sent in by confessors and was not drawn by me. Most of them seems to have been drawn by someone who goes by the name "The Lance".

I HAVE drawn things for the NSFW blog, but there were no genitalia in those drawings. I drew Frank of Arlesdale looking grossed out by (I don't know what the part is named in English, but it is connected to the brakes of the engine) that stick-like thing on his bufferbeam being wet from whatever the confessor did to him. I drew an over-exaggerated comical pic of a horrified Peter Sam getting his face licked by his driver, who had an enormous tongue. I also did a couple of manips. Mostly maniping engine faces on humans, like the one where Gordon's face is on a less than fit guy flailing his shirt around, and the Arlesdale smallies' faces on a movie poster from Magic Mike. One with Mr.Conductor in a giant bun while Pinchy is applying ketchup on him, for a confession about eating him, I think? I've done some more, but I forgot what it was, I only know I loved making them comical rather than erotic, as I saw the blog as a joke overall.

I HAVE also drawn aheago faces on engines because it looks hilarious. Though I have only drawn them on my OCs and the NRS engines, not TTTE characters.

Point is I have never drawn genitalia on trains. Ever. And I likely never will. It's not THAT much fun drawing NSFW stuff.

I see from this screenshot that a certain MK-Instrumentalist claim that all my personal art is age-regression art and infantilism…

Whose art have you been looking at? Because it's definitely not mine. I have drawn a couple of baby/chibi diesels… But claiming that all of my 700 or so artworks are depicting infantilism and age-regression stuff? I suggest people go have a look for themselves. I haven't drawn that. That MK-guy has been desperately trying to cancel me for ages for reasons only himself know. I don't even know the guy, and he doesn't know me, yet he wants to see me beheaded. Go figure.

I was for a long time bothered by some age-regressor on Tumblr who just wouldn't leave me alone with their weird asks, who tried to force themselves on me and some other artists here. They claim age-regression isn't a fetish, but the shit they sent to my askbox certainly looked like a fetish to me.

I don't want anything to do with that stuff. It weirds me out.

And no. I have never drawn pedophilia or rape art either. This guy can't even make up his mind on which one to accuse me of.

7 and 8. Faking suicide and having the audacity to survive and go on living.

As many know, after the intense shitstorm against me last summer, thanks to Darin, I attempted suicide. I didn't succeed as my husband came home early. I was gone for a few days but returned when a young boy reached out to me for help as he was being groomed and didn't know who else to turn to.

Recently I saw a screenshot where someone claimed me to have faked suicide, and that I just came back after a few days when everything had died down.

Wow.

I am truly sorry I survived.

I don't remember much from those days to be honest, but as the load became too heavy and the bullying too intense, piling up on 30 years of old trauma… I decided to end it. I must warn you guys who might get triggered now; there are detailed descriptions of a suicide attempt. Proceed with caution. People told me I was a bad mother among other things, having had those same thoughts myself (according to my husband, I am a good mom) and people just confirming them, I thought that my daughter would be better off growing up without me. I could have chosen a more effective suicide method, but I was afraid my daughter would be the first to find me, so I wanted it to be clean and look like I was just sleeping. That way it could be explained as natural causes.

So, I decided to overdose on pills. I downed all pills I could find in the house that had a warning triangle on it (strong pain meds etc.) and then went to my computer to delete my online existence, especially the personal data.

As a former paramedic, I should have known better. Because after half an hour, my body started reacting. But not the way I had hoped and wanted. I started retching and almost vomiting. That's when my husband came home from work and found me. He immediately saw the empty packages and knowing my past suicidal tendencies, he reacted instinctively. He put his fingers down my throat and had me puke everything up, then he called an ambulance and had me admitted to the hospital.

I don't remember anything from the days I spent there. But I have been told they emptied my stomach and gave me lots of fluids. I was then assigned a psychiatrist which I am still seeing today.

I was gone for those days because I was in hospital, not because I was pulling some kind of trick and pretending to have ended myself.

So… I am sorry I "faked" my suicide.

I'm sorry my husband saved me. I am sorry the medics and doctors succeeded in saving my life.

I am sorry I survived and proceeded to live on. If I ever make another attempt, I promise to do better.

Why are you guys so persistent in trying to push people to suicide anyway? Do you get a kick out of it? Why do people have to be pushed to that point before you care?

What did we tell our daughter? Simply that I got sick and had to go to the hospital. She took that well.

I've seen a lot of people wonder why I am still around. Why shouldn't I? Does my daughter deserve to lose her mother over some online crap she doesn't even know about? I owe her to live and watch her grow up, to help her with her homework and whatever else a parent needs to do. I also owe my husband to stay by his side, like I promised him the day we got married. Even if I do not wish to live.

I'm sorry I survived, guys. Really, I am.

9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it. And 1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.

First… why would anyone make up trauma? It's not like it's a competition to have the worst life, is it?

Sadly, I don't have to make up anything. My life HAS been rocky up until the birth of my daughter. I have been through so much trauma I couldn't even fathom it myself before my therapist listed it all up to me. Until then, I had just been casually talking to her about it, like I would talk about the weather. I didn't cry or get in touch with my emotions even once while telling everything, because I was taught from an early age to never complain, to suck it up and go on. So, no matter what people did to me, I would just smile and go on, even if it killed me inside. I did not want to show any sign of weakness, because then they would attack me. A habit I developed through years of being bullied in school. Never show feelings, just pretend nothing could hurt you, then they would eventually grow tired of it and stop.

Except they never did. They kept going through all my years at school. To such an extent, my boyfriend didn't dare to show himself hanging out with me out of fear of being bullied himself… And as we grew older, he would start cheating on me too. And I kept smiling…

My next boyfriend was a bit older than me, and while that didn't bother me, as we were both well over legal age, it bothered him. We only lasted one year before he bailed out and ditched me out of the blue via an sms.

The next guy… was the one who scarred me for life. Both physically and mentally. A charmer at first of course, until I was trapped. He was unemployed, so he moved in with me, and I paid for everything from food to phone bills. All while he was dating several women behind my back, calling various pay-phone services and in general acted like a manwhore. As I worked as an electrician (also being subject to massive bullying and sexual harassment at work), he would be jealous of all my co-workers and if I ever came home late or worked overtime, he accused me of cheating and was extremely violent about it. He would also isolate me from my friends and family, making me think I couldn't get any other than him. If any of my male friends (almost all my friends are male…) came over, he would give me such hell afterwards, it was easier just to tell them it was a bad time to visit. And after a while, they stopped asking. This guy also demanded sex. Every single day. If I refused, he would punish me, mostly by flogging me with lampcords, belts or whatever else he had at hand. My back is a criss cross map of old, faded scars even now nearly 20 years later. I would have shown you a photo, but I am so self-concious about my body after all the bullying, I hardly even show my face in photos. Maybe one day… but I certainly need more therapy before being able to show naked skin to strangers, even if it's just my back. So I had non-consensual sex with him more often than consensual. It has taken me hours in therapy to even take the word in my mouth and call it by its proper name: rape. I was raped, almost every single day for little over a year, before I found the strength to break out of the relationship and finally throw him out of my house. It all ended when I found some revealing texts on his cellphone, which he was extremely protective of… Texts that revealed that he had engaged in a relationship with a 12 year old girl, and it had been going on for a while. Not only was he cheating on me, but he was a pedophile too. Needless to say, I didn't even let him pack his stuff before I fetched my shotgun and chased him out of the house. I don't know where I got the courage and strength from… but I was furious.

I thought I had gotten rid of him, but no. He started stalking me in public. Hiding behind shelves when I was shopping, his car following mine everywhere I went. I received weird letters in the mail with cut-out letters from newspapers, glued together. On top of all, his creepy, old uncle called me with some rather disgusting suggestions and tried to come on to me really hard. I had to change my phone number, and after coming home to my house and finding out someone had entered my home using a key, only to empty the drawer of my night table, I also had to change the locks of my doors as he had clearly copied the key.

He didn't stop until I got the police involved.

So, when I finally met the guy who would become my husband (or rather, we found out we were made for each other, we had known each other since we were 11 years old), I had major trust issues towards men especially and it took him endless patience and love to break me out of that shell.

But the trauma doesn't stop… or start there.

In the year 2000, on January 4th, I would experience something that made me unable to even look at a train for over 10 years. The Åsta accident (google it). I was a volunteer in the Norwegian Red Cross then, and a paramedic in training. Back then, you were allowed to start training the year you would turn 16. So, I was still 15 when I witnessed the most traumatic event of my life. The day started out calm, we were stocking up the ambulance after delivering a patient to the hospital when we got a call with the code "500", which means "catastrophe". Normally when we get that code it is a rehearsal… so we drove towards the coordinates with the thoughts that this was just an exercise, nothing real… we didn't prepare ourselves mentally… And we ended up in the closest thing to hell I have ever been… The sight of the burning trains, the smells, the sounds, the screaming… I still wake up by nightmares to this day. Though the moment that haunts me the most is when the screaming stopped… because we all knew why… I don't want to go into details, but 19 people died that day. But we also saved 67 people. I try to hold on to that thought. The age limit for starting paramedic training was raised after this, as I wasn't the only one who was too young for an accident of that scale. Today it is 18. A memorial stone has been placed on the site, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to visit it, even if we drive past the site every year on our way to visit family further north in the country. I needed hours of therapy to even be able to ride a train after this. To have gotten to the point where I now volunteer at a heritage railway and is in training to become a driver, is a HUGE step for me. My next goal is to visit the site of the accident.

On to next trauma… A previous employer, a rather large electric company in Norway, whom I worked for 8 years. The first five years were great, we were a close-knit bunch of electricians, and we had a great relationship with the bosses and higher-ups. Our labor union was strong.

It all started changing in 2009 when we got new leaders… and those decided to get rid of everyone who were a member of the union. One by one, they started harassing workers in various ways, trying to get them to quit. In Norway, they need a legal reason to fire you, it's not enough to not like someone. There has to be a good reason to fire someone e.g. theft, neglecting work… Since they didn't have any reasons to fire us, they started making our work lives gradually harder and harder until we would break and find another job. Sadly, one of my co-workers couldn't stand the pressure… He bid us all farewell as normal one Friday and hung himself the following day.. But as I was a girl in a male-dominated profession, I had been taught at an early stage to ignore anything that would hurt me emotionally, just arch my neck and plow through. I kept doing that, despite starting to feel more and more mental and physical pains… even my co-workers pointed out how I was being mistreated before I acknowledged it myself. I tried to tell my boss, but he reacted by treating me worse. So, I went to his boss… and that's when things went to hell. Instead of doing his job and listen, he started harassing me too. He deemed my over-weight a problem, and he started demanding I gave him detailed lists of what I ate and how much I worked out… Completely illegal of course, but by this point I was broken down to the point I thought I was useless and couldn't get another job… so I accepted. He started accusing me of lying about my exercise, so I started training at the gym in the basement at work instead. One day, while I was there, he locked the doors and turned the lights off. There were no windows, no cellphone reception and hardly anyone walking by in that part of the building… I sat there in the pitch dark for 3 hours before I was let back out. I still get badly triggered by narrow, dark rooms and rooms with no windows. To such an extent, I jumped out of a small window on the second floor of a gym when I was in boot camp. I was allowed to train downstairs in the bigger gym with windows on all walls after that incident…

The harassment at work went on for years until I finally snapped, ended up at the hospital and got into therapy for the first time. I don't want to go into depth about what more happened, I just can't… I can't bring myself to write it all. Luckily, I had gotten more education while working, so when I graduated, another company called and gave me an offer I just couldn't refuse. So, I quit my job and never looked back, even if the traumas I suffered there still haunts me to this day.

Sadly, even after switching jobs, now getting a safe job with sane leaders… I started to relax, and that's when all my past trauma came washing over me. And one day, on while driving to work, I had my first serious panic attack. It started as this feeling I used to have at the old company; getting sick to my stomach and having the sense of someone being out to get me… then it developed to breathing problems… and I had to pull the car over. I broke into tears, struggling to breathe, stumbling out of the car to read the logo on its side just to reassure my body and brain that I worked for a different company now and there was no reason for panic. I called my boss and let him know, because he also was a "refugee" from that other company, so he knew what me and several others had gone through. He managed to talk me down enough for me to come to the office to talk to him. That helped.

I got back into therapy. A better therapist this time. But sadly, it got apparent that I could no longer work as an electrician as there was too many triggers. I was diagnosed with PTSD, severe depression, and social anxiety. I'm still working on these and get better slowly.

I have been in therapy for a long time now, and it was my therapist that suggested I wrote fics to cope and "write it out". I tried to make up my own characters for this, but never felt any connection. I was by this time in the TTTE fandom and had met people with similar trauma and pasts like myself, and I started roleplaying with some of them. Me and a girl from UK then agreed to try to rp/co-write a fic to cope with our trauma. We both found it easier to write about pre-established characters we had a connection to, even if it was an au that made it barely recognizable from the original source material. Only the names and some minor things were similar.

That fic was Stepney's Virginity Gets Lost.

Do we regret writing it? No. It helped us write out our traumas and helped us overcome some mental obstacles in out therapy process. Our therapists cheering us on, because we finally managed to break through the hard shell surrounding us. We both cried for the first time in years while writing it, some of it through roleplay, because some parts were extremely graphic and brutal and very mentally exhausting. We had to take long breaks between each writing session, so the fic wasn't written in just a weekend. But we got a lot of darkness out of our minds by writing all this. And we were definitely NOT aroused by it, like this pervert here claims.

It's when you dare to touch and feel the difficult and dark emotions, you can finally move along in the grieving process.

Should it have been posted online?

In retrospect, no. But at the time, we thought it might help other trauma victims, as we also found reading about other people's experiences and fictions touching painful subjects helpful to ourselves. So, we posted it, never expecting it to cause such a controversy 3 years later. In fact, we had more or less forgotten about it until it came back to bit us in the ass. Or rather, bite ME in the ass, as I am getting the full blame alone.

Also, despite what people claim, it was not posted openly for children to read. It was tagged properly and hidden behind mature content walls. If a minor chooses to break that wall, that's not the author's fault. It's the same as watching a movie with an age restriction way above your age, not the filmmaker's fault.

I think MerciResolution puts it nicely here:

"If your problem lies with you KNOWINGLY entering adult spaces when you’re a minor, ignoring all mature warnings that are literally SCREAMING at you “hey, this is what you’re getting into. Are you sure you want to proceed?”

That’s ENTIRELY on you. YOU are the fucking problem.

We’re marking mature things as best as we properly can. If you decide to ignore them, that’s your own damn fault. We’re not your fucking babysitters."

Also, I never posted the story on Wattpad, so if anyone has done that, it's not me. I posted the story on Fanfiction.net, DeviantArt and AO3, that's all. If it's posted anywhere else, it's not done by me.

I had honestly moved on from it when people pulled me back into it.

Other people who have done questionable shit in that fandom are easily forgiven because "they have moved on" or "changed". Yet, nobody believes I can move on or change…?

I had moved on; my interests had changed. But people won't let me, so here I am… Having to defend some crap I did years ago. A fic I no longer have any interest in.

I'm not even interested in TTTE anymore. I have moved on with my own book project now and I would like to focus on that.

So, deleting my TTTE content, whether it was the SFW or NSFW stuff, didn't cost me a penny. It actually felt like a relief. The only downside with it is that people now can't read it and make up their own opinion about it, but will solely believe in what others say, and those things are often seriously bent out of shape and blown out of proportions to such an extent it's barely recognizable.

If people claim that Arry and Bert rape Stepney in the fic, they have never seen it or read it. That's not what happens. That's just an assumption made by looking at the title and knowing there is a rape/torture scene in it. But I'm not gonna tell who the victim is or who performed it, because this is the only way I am able to tell who has actually read the fic or not, who is just trying to spread bullshit and who is actually telling the truth. The person in that screenshot, has no idea what he's talking about.

Does SVGL romanticize rape and abuse?

No, not in the least. It's described as the horrible, heinous acts it is and is in no way meant to be cute or romantic and definitely NOT something anyone should get off to. If anyone finds it sexy, that's their problem, not the authors'. If anything, SVGL might romanticize suicide, because one of the characters isn't able to cope with his trauma and chooses to end their life. Which is something I considered doing myself when I was in the darkest pit of depression. So, I apologize for maybe romanticizing suicide. The following chapters describe how friends and family handle the loss and grief.

It also describes a toxic relationship, where one of the parts struggles to get out of it. They eventually manage to break free, but it is not easy. This can easily be translated to my previously mentioned relationship, as it was my way of writing out my experience about how hard it is to break out of a relation when your partner has broken you down to the point where you no longer believe in yourself and your self-worth.

The last chapters start to gradually become brighter, as both our lives started getting better too. But we never really wrote the end because we both lost interest in writing TTTE content by that time and just left it hanging.

I'm not the only one who has written NSFW TTTE fanfics out there. But it seems like violence and murder is more acceptable than sexual things? I do wonder how brutally mutilating children's show characters are more tolerable than sexually abusing them. Neither should be okay.

Some content creators hide behind "it was a joke". I have been told that such topics that SVGL touches upon shouldn't be joked about… so I didn't do that, and yet it was wrong? So how should such topics be treated? Be hidden like it's a shame, like in the old days when rape victims were told to suck things up and keep it to themselves? When those subject to abuse didn't dare to speak up because people would judge them?

I think it is important to talk about these subjects and why they are so problematic. Victims shouldn't have to hide their trauma; they should be allowed to talk openly about it without fearing judgement.

Some of you claim that writing isn't a good way to cope… You're trying to dictate how trauma victims deal with their trauma, and that's a dangerous path to walk down. Nobody handles trauma the same way. You might have your thoughts on how you would react, but you'll never know until trauma hits you… and you might not react the way you had expected or planned. Trauma messes with your head and you won't be able to think clearly. It makes you do thinks you normally wouldn't have done and can make you act out of character. So, do not judge people without having been in the same situation yourself. Ever.

Someone wrote that I have "more problems that just a rape".

Read that again.

Just a rape.

This person does not know how damaging a rape can be. And if you made it this far in this post, you know I didn't only go through one, but several. Not just by my ex, but also being ambushed while I was walking home from a party, and later; a co-worker forcing himself onto me at a building site. I can't go into depth about them all, I just can't.

Just a rape…

"Just" the feeling of not being in control of your own body and your own decisions. "Just" being robbed off your dignity and self-worth. "Just" having someone intrude into your private zone, tear your clothes off and claim your body against your will. "Just" feeling how your life force leave you as you realize that fighting against it won't help you, and you silently give up and just lay down waiting for it all to be over. "Just" spending hours in the shower, scrubbing your skin until you bleed because you can't wash the filth away and you keep feeling dirty no matter how much you clean yourself. "Just" waking up at night, after having relived the scene again in a nightmare. "Just" looking over your shoulder wherever you walk because you heard something or thought you saw something or simply because someone is walking behind you. "Just" the fact that you'll never feel comfortable walking alone at night again or have someone walk behind you. "Just" never being able to relax because your body constantly think you're in grave danger. "Just" a rape…

That's such a neck-beard thing to say. Someone who clearly think of other people's bodies as property or things. Not taking into consideration that we are living, breathing individuals with feelings. And that having another person violate us isn't something we like or that we'll easily get over. We want to choose who we give ourselves to, nobody should be forced. We didn't ask to be raped. We didn't want it. We didn't like it.

Rape is trauma.

Yes, we should have chosen other characters for the story, but we did what we did, and it cannot be undone now. So, if the only thing I will be remembered for in the fandom is that ONE fic, instead of all my other content, that's what it will be. That's what people chose to. I'm moving on.

10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).

*sigh*

This is something that could only happen in America, isn't it?

Some people don't bother educating themselves. The "nazi-letters" you guys are talking about is actually part of the Norwegian alphabet and has nothing to do with Nazism or white-supremacy to do at all. The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters, the three extra is æ,ø,å or in capital letters: Æ,Ø,Å.

We can't help it if some morons over in the US abuse these letters as symbol of their twisted mindset.

Yes, my name contains one of those letters. It is my name… and I didn't choose it. It is a common Norwegian name.

As for me being a Nazi?

Those who knows me knows that I am as far from a Nazi as one can get. I despise Nazism with all my heart.

But the reason some people choose to believe so… was that some guy who has no hobbies or life went through every single fave I've made on DeviantArt since I joined the site in 2006, which is well over 20000 faves. And he found a few Nazi-characters from a web series I was following about ten years ago. I am very interested in history and especially WW2-history, so I found that particular web-series interesting and faved some artwork related to it. What this guy failed to notice is that I also faved the Allied characters… That's ALL there is to that story.

I has also faved a pic someone made of Joseph Goebbels (I think it was?) as a Pixar Car. That's not because I have any nazi-sympathies, but I simply found the concept of turning historical persons, both good and bad, into Cars as an interesting project. I would have faved any other historical Carsified person as well.

As for me being a Norwegian and have a natural pale complexion, that's not something I can help. That's nothing I choose. And it doesn't make me racist or Nazi. Period.

11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.

Again. Get educated.

This flag… is the actual flag of my country. The Kingdom of Norway.

There is nothing Nazi about it. It is not a symbol of white-supremacy. IT IS THE FLAG OF NORWAY.

During WW2 it was even illegal, so people would paint it everywhere in a protest against the Nazi-occpation and the SS. We even decorated our Christmas trees with it, and that is a tradition that has followed us into the modern day.

Again, if some idiots in the US choose to use it as a symbol for their disgusting logic, it is not Norway or the Norwegians' fault.

12. Being a danger to my daughter.

I need people to elaborate here.

What exactly do you think I do to my daughter? What is the cause of your concern here?

The fact that I have made NSFW content? How is that harmful to her as long as I keep it away from her? You DO realize that even authors, pornstars and moviemakers have children and that they can be good parents, right?

Do you think I read pornographic content for her as bedtime stories? Or show her porn instead of kids TV? How sick are you guys, really…?

Some people even wanted CPS to take my child away from me… Have a look at these screenshots…

You want a happy, healthy, innocent child to be taken away from a stable, safe home with loving parents just because you don't like the content the mother made? You want her to be placed in foster care, where there is no guarantee that she will have a happy upbringing rather than have her stay with her parents who love her and care for her, for reasons she'll never understand and wasn't even aware of?

"Think of the children!" a lot of you say when it comes to my content. May I ask why this doesn't apply to my daughter?

Why do some of you go as far as to wishing her dead or wanting her to be removed from the home she feels safe and loved in? How is that thinking of the children?

As for the douchebag in that screenshot. You claim that if your mother did something like that you would want nothing to do with her… I have a question: Do you know EVERYTHING your mother do? Does she include you in each aspect of her life? Even her sexual life? No?

How do you know she doesn't do thing you don't approve of when you're not around? She could be a rabid pornmag reader for all you know. But stuff like that is something adults hide from their kids. So, you wouldn't know, unless you go snooping around in her business.

Everyone is entitled to privacy. What I and my husband do when our kid is not around is our business, not hers, and certainly not yours.

Porn and parenting are to be kept separate from each other. Period.

And we do.

There is absolutely no reason to be worried about my daughter. She is a happy, healthy child in a safe, stable home with family that loves her and cares for her. Not just me and my husband, but also grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

If you want to remove her from that over a stupid fanfic behind a mature content wall, you're the deranged person, not me.

This is all I have to say about all this and my time in the TTTE fandom. I have left by my own, free will. Yes, I am aware that many people don't want me there. That's fine. I don't want to be there.

I am a bit disappointed in those people who just blindly unfollowed me and unfriended me without any questions asked, just followed the leader. Big users tend to dictate who and what is worth following in that fandom. They will even protect real predators, but I'm not going to open that can of worms now. I'm done with the fandom.

Some of those people, I have been talking to regularly, even supported when they faced hardships in the fandom themselves. But when I got in trouble, they ditched me without a word…

If anything, this whole ordeal showed me who to trust and not, and who were true to their word when it came to how deep our friendship was. True friends at least give you the chance to explain before they drop you. I hold no ill feelings to those who did, at least they asked me before judging.

And those who still stayed with me, are the ones who truly know me and who I really am.

Some of the worst libels posted about me might be reported to the police, but I haven't made up my mind yet. I am not mentally strong at the moment, so I don't know if I have the strength to legally follow it all up. I will ask the cops at work for advice on the matter.

All I ask for now is some peace.

You don't have to like me. You don't have to follow me. You don't have to like my content. Feel free to invalidate me, I know a lot of you will.

But please, stop bullying me and my family.

Please stop sending me horrid messages and death threats.

Please stop doxxing me and calling me.

Please leave my family alone. If you don't care about me, at least care about them.

Please just ignore me. I have already left the fandom, there is no reason to keep hunting me.

I just want to move on and go on with my life and the content I am currently working on. After years in therapy, my life has gotten better, and I want to move on.

Please let me.

#good bye to ttte #tw//suicide #tw//rape #tw// bullying #tw//depression #tw//ptsd #tw//ttte #tw//sex #tw//abuse #tw//domestic abuse #I'm done

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wigwurq · 4 years ago

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WIG REVIEW: THE HAPPIEST SEASON

You guys! I finally watched the lesbian holiday movie!! Though when I texted my mom to tell her I was finally watching this, she thought I was talking about The Prom and I laughed for a real long time about it (mainly because it will take me an even longer time to get around to hate watching that!) It already took about a month to get to this one. There is a lot to discuss here - and also one wig!

So this is the first (big budget) holiday lesbian movie, which I am very here for. However, most of the movie feels like a combination between My Best Friend’s Wedding, Meet the Parents, and The Family Stone but with lesbians. Those movies were made between 1997 and 2005 and this movie feels like it should exist somewhere in that time as well. The whole plot of the movie is basically that Kristen Stewart (Abby) has to pretend NOT to be Mackenzie Davis’s (Harper’s) long-term girlfriend for the sake of Harper’s conservative family with local political aspirations while also spending 5 days with them during Christmas. It’s a conceit that exists solely in these brand of garbage holiday rom coms but definitely one that feels bizarrely antiquated as well.

Anyway! There is only one wig in this movie which belongs to Davis, who had a vastly superior lesbian wig in that one episode of Black Mirror that made us all cry. We first see this under this hat where it should have hidden for the rest of the film!

Sadly, the next scene involves the full emergence of this wig and truly: NO. This thing is dried out, bent, and disheveled in not a cool way (Stewart’s actual hair is disheveled in a cool way, though). The entire presence of this wig bothers me because: just have her have whatever hair she has? This is not a historical recreation (that I’m aware of?) and she is not playing a real person! This feels like when SNL cast members wear wigs in sketches for similarly non-existent reasons. However, SNL wigs are vastly superior to this mess!

So anyway, Harper invites Abby to have Christmas at her parents’ house in the heat of the moment during a very romantic (?) Pittsburgh Christmas lights tour which is apparently something that exists. Abby conveniently, and completely for the sake of this plot to work (?) does not like Christmas and also is an orphan, getting rid of any possible Christmas plan conflicts. And then literally on the way to visiting Harper’s family, she is all: by the way, they don’t know you’re my girlfriend or that I’m a lesbian and you have to go along with it for sake of this movie to exist even though this is absolutely a terrible thing to ask of anyone, periodt. But we are beginning to find out that Harper’s character is as full of garbage as her wig.

So we meet the parents, who are Victor Garber, Mary Steenbergen, and also Mary Steenbergen’s iPad which vulture correctly identifies as the star of this movie AND IT IS. Especially during the end credits where we get to see all the pics the iPad takes! But I’m getting ahead of myself. The parents live in one of those cavernous houses that is definitely a mansion but tries to feel homey even though it probably has about 12 bedrooms and usually only exists in a Nancy Meyers movie. Despite its amount of bedrooms, Abby has to sleep in a basement bunker which also doubles as a well organized rubbermaid storage unit. For the rest of the movie, Abby is treated like a subhuman trash person much in the way Ben Stiller is treated in Meet the Parents and Sarah Jessica Parker is treated in The Family Stone, except they don’t also have to pretend to not be in a relationship with the family member they arrived with. This conceit becomes so degrading that you honestly wonder why these people are still together!

Abby endures scene after scene of total nonsense and still looks better than the wig on her terrible girlfriend. Which starts actually looking better in a few of these scenes but still is very much a terrible and noticeable wig which is on par with Rachel McAdams’ wig in Mean Girls in that we are constantly told that these women are gorgeous and every single time I ask “YOU MEAN WITH THAT TERRIBLE WIG ON THEIR HEADS????” I suppose this wig was “necessary” because Harper’s two sisters also have long-ish brown hair so they were going for some sort of familial consistency except one daughter has a terrible wig and the other two have hair. Also one sister is Alison Brie, who plays a harpy so awful that she starts to make Harper look palatable and one sister is Mary Holland, who also cowrote the script, and definitely wrote herself the only character who I’d like to meet in real life.

Along the way, we also meet Aubrey Plaza, who I usually hate because she is just one-note sullen, but here is actually great as Harper’s high school ex-girlfriend who Harper outted and allowed to be bullied and wow Harper - you have been terrible for decades!! Also compared to Harper, Aubrey has beautiful (real) hair, doesn’t lie to her entire family, and has actual chemistry with Abby. I very much wanted Abby to end up with Aubrey and I am not alone! Harper somehow avoids Abby for most of the time they are both staying in the same (albeit huge) house and there is even a dumb subplot about Abby being framed for shoplifting while trying to buy a gift for the parents’ very important white elephant gift exchange during their very important Christmas Eve party and I wonder if any of these people really knows what a white elephant gift is or how to exist in society? Meanwhile, as Harper reverts to being more falsely heteronormative at her parents house, I started to wonder if her wig was trying to serve a larger purpose in showing how fake this character is but: no it’s just a bad wig. Also this movie really does the impossible: it makes me care about and feel bad for Kristen Stewart!

Although I did find it highly questionable that though they are the stars of a romantic comedy, neither Kristen Stewart or Mackenzie Davis is funny AT ALL. Like not even a little! Which makes the “comedic” plight of Stewart all the more upsetting! All comedy is left to the one good daughter (Mary Holland) and also all gay men in the movie. This is mainly Abby’s bff and national (Canadian) treasure, Dan Levy and also Drag Race faves Jinxx Monsoon and Ben De-La-Creme in this one gay bar scene which is honestly truly inconceivable and except for further cementing the fact that Abby and Aubrey really should get together.

In the end, Alison Brie finds out Harper’s TERRIBLE SECRET THAT NO ONE IN 2020 COULD POSSIBLY FATHOM (that she’s a lesbian) and they have a fight in the middle of the white elephant party which reveals that all the family has been competing for years for each other’s love which is really really messed up and now I kind of hate everyone in this family. And also Harper is outed to her entire terrible family and also Ana Gasteyer (and also a room full of other randos). And she denies her lesbian truth! I recently watched Uncle Frank which is essentially everything Hillbilly Elegy wanted to be but is Shakespeare compared to that mess, and a similar scene occurs but that character bravely faces the truth - and in 1970s SOUTH CAROLINA!! I don’t know what time or space this movie thinks it exists in but it is baffling. Still, Dan Levy gives an emotional monologue about how no one can decide when anyone else is ready to come out of the closet so: FAIR. And then Harper does come out and the entire family kind gives absolutely no reaction to this until Victor Garber says it’s ok?? ABSOLUTELY AND TRULY BIZARRELY PATRIARCHAL. And then Harper and Abby get back together in the parking lot of a Love’s convenience store which is as cheesy and clunky as any garbage holiday rom com so I guess this is definitely a new holiday “classic” which I’ll probably watch 100 more times and hate Harper and her terrible wig each time about as much as I hate Laura Linney’s terrible life choices in Love, Actually. AS CONFOUNDING AS HARPER’S WIG OR THE CHOICE TO GIVE HER ONE AT ALL!

VERDICT: DOESN’T WURQ

#wigwurq #happiestseason #holidaylesbians #kristenstewart #mackenziedavis #danlevy #marysteenbergen #victorgarber #whywigtho #nope

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birdlord · 4 years ago

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Everything I Watched in 2020

We’ll start with movies. The number in parentheses is the year of release, asterisks denote a re-watch, and titles in bold are my favourite watches of the year. Here’s 2019’s list.

01 Little Women (19)

02 The Post (17)

03 Molly’s Game (17)

04 * Doctor No (62)

05 Groundhog Day (93)

06 *Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (86)

07 Knives Out (19) My last theatre experience (sob)

08 Professor Marston and his Wonder Women (17)

09 Les Miserables (98)

10 Midsommar (19) I’m not sure how *good* it is, but it does stick in the ol’ brain

11 *Manhattan Murder Mystery (93)

12 Marriage Story (19)

13 Kramer vs Kramer (79)

14 Jojo Rabbit (19)

15 J’ai perdu mon corps (19) a cute animated film about a hand detached from its body!

16 1917 (19)

17 Married to the Mob (88)

18 Klaus (19)

19 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (19) If Little Women made me want to wear a scarf criss-crossed around my torso, this one made me want to wear a cloak

20 The Last Black Man in San Francisco (19)

21 *Lawrence of Arabia (62)

22 Gone With the Wind (39)

23 Kiss Me Deadly (55)

24 Dredd (12)

25 Heartburn (86) heard a bunch about this one in the Blank Check series on Nora Ephron, sadly after I’d watched it

26 The Long Shot (19)

27 Out of Africa (85)

28 King Kong (46)

29 *Johnny Mnemonic (95)

30 Knocked Up (07)

31 Collateral (04)

32 Bird on a Wire (90)

33 The Black Dahlia (05)

34 Long Time Running (17)

35 *Magic Mike (12)

36 Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (07)

37 Cold War (18)

38 *Kramer Vs Kramer (79) yes I watched this a few months before! This was a pandemic friend group co-watch.

39 *Burn After Reading (08)

40 Last Holiday (50)

41 Fly Away Home (96)

42 *Moneyball (11) I’m sure I watch this every two years, at most??

43 Last Holiday (06) the Queen Latifah version of the 1950 movie above, lacking, of course, the brutal “poor people don’t deserve anything good” ending

44 *Safe (95)

45 Gimme Shelter (70)

46 The Daytrippers (96)

47 Experiment in Terror (62)

48 Tucker: The Man and His Dream (88)

49 My Brilliant Career (79) one of the salvations of 2020 was watching movies “with” friends. Our usual method was to video chat before the movie, sync our streaming services, and text-chat while the movie was on.

50 Divorce Italian Style (61)

51 *Gosford Park (01) another classic comfort watch, fuck I love a G. Park

52 Hopscotch (80)

53 Brief Encounter (45)

54 Hud (63)

55 Ocean’s 8 (18)

56 *Beverly Hills Cop (84)

57 Blow the Man Down (19)

58 Constantine (05)

59 The Report (19) maddening!! How are people so consistently terrible to one another!

60 Everyday People (04)

61 Anatomy of a Murder (58)

62 Spiderman: Homecoming (17)

63 *To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (95) Of the 90s drag road movies, Priscilla is more visually striking, but this has its moments.

64 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (92)

65 *The Truman Show (98)

66 Mona Lisa (86)

67 The Blob (58)

68 The Guard (11)

69 *Waiting for Guffman (96) RIP Fred Willard

70 Rocketman (19)

71 Outside In (18)

72 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (08) how strange to see a movie that you have known the premise for, but no details of, for over a decade

73 *Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (91)

74 The Reader (08)

75 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (19) This was fine until it VERY MUCH WAS NOT FINE

76 The End of the Affair (99) you try to watch a fun little romp about infidelity during the Blitz, and Graham Greene can’t help but shoehorn in a friggin crisis of religious faith

77 Must Love Dogs (05) barely any dog content, where are the dogs at

78 The Rainmaker (97)

79 *Batman & Robin (97)

80 National Lampoon’s Vacation (83) Never seen any of the non-xmas Vacations, didn’t realize the children are totally different, not just actors but ages! Also, this one is blatantly racist!

81 *Mystic Pizza (88)

82 Funny Girl (68)

83 The Sons of Katie Elder (65)

84 *Knives Out (19) another re-watch within the same year!! How does this keep happening??

85 *Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (10) a real I-just-moved-away-from-Toronto nostalgia watch

86 Canadian Bacon (92) vividly recall this VHS at the video store, but I never saw it til 2020

87 *Blood Simple (85)

88 Brittany Runs a Marathon (19)

89 The Accidental Tourist (88)

90 August Osage County (13) MELO-DRAMA!!

91 Appaloosa (08)

92 The Firm (93) Feeling good about how many iconic 80s/90s video store stalwarts I watched in 2020

93 *Almost Famous (00)

94 Whisper of the Heart (95)

95 Da 5 Bloods (20)

96 Rain Man (88)

97 True Stories (86)

98 *Risky Business (83) It’s not about what you think it’s about! It never was!

99 *The Big Chill (83)

100 The Way We Were (73)

101 Safety Last (23) It’s getting so that I might have to add the first two digits to my dates...not that I watch THAT many movies from the 1920s...

102 Phantasm (79)

103 The Burrowers (08)

104 New Jack City (91)

105 The Vanishing (88)

106 Sisters (72)

107 Puberty Blues (81) Little Aussie cinema theme, here

108 Elevator to the Gallows (58)

109 Les Diaboliques (55)

110 House (77) haha WHAT no really W H A T

111 Death Line (72)

112 Cranes are Flying (57)

113 Holes (03)

114 *Lady Vengeance (05)

115 Long Weekend (78)

116 Body Double (84)

117 The Crazies (73) I love that Romero shows the utter confusion that would no doubt reign in the case of any kind of disaster. Things fall apart.

118 Waterlilies (07)

119 *You’re Next (11)

120 Event Horizon (97)

121 Venom (18) I liked it, guys, way more than most superhero fare. Has a real sense of place and the place ISN’T New York!

122 Under the Silver Lake (18) RIP Night Call

123 *Blade Runner (82)

124 *The Birds (62) interesting to see now that I’ve read the story it came from

125 *28 Days Later (02) hits REAL FUCKIN’ DIFFERENT in a pandemic

126 Life is Sweet (90)

127 *So I Married an Axe Murderer (93) find me a more 90s movie, I dare you (it’s not possible)

128 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (67)

129 The Pelican Brief (93) 90s thrillers continue!

130 Dick Johnston is Dead (20)

131 The Bridges of Madison County (95)

132 Earth Girls are Easy (88) Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum are so hot in this movie, no wonder they got married

133 Better Watch Out (16)

134 Drowning Mona (00) trying for something like the Coen bros and not getting there

135 Au Revoir Les Enfants (87)

136 *Chasing Amy (97) Affleck is the least alluring movie lead...ever? I also think I gave Joey Lauren Adams’ character short shrift in my memory of the movie. It’s not good, but she’s more complicated than I recalled.

137 Blackkklansman (18)

138 Being Frank (19)

139 Kiki’s Delivery Service (89)

140 Uncle Frank (20) why so many FRANKS

141 *National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (89) watching with pals (virtually) made it so much more fun than the usual yearly watch!

142 Half Baked (98) another, more secret Toronto nostalgia pic - RC Harris water filtration plant as a prison!

143 We’re the Millers (13)

144 All is Bright (13)

145 Defending Your Life (91)

146 Christmas Chronicles (18) I maintain that most new xmas movies are terrible, particularly now that Netflix churns them out like eggnog every year.

147 Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (18)

148 Reindeer Games (00) what did I say about Affleck??!? WHAT DID I SAY

149 Palm Springs (20)

150 Happiest Season (20)

151 *Metropolitan (90) it’s definitely a Christmas movie

152 Black Christmas (74)

THEATRE:HOME - 2:150 (thanks pandemic)

I usually separate out docs and fiction, but I watched almost no documentaries this year (with the exception of Dick Johnston). Reality is real enough.

TV Series

01 - BoJack Horseman (final season) - Pretty damned poignant finish to the show, replete with actual consequences for our reformed bad boy protagonist (which is more than you can say for most antiheroes of Peak TV).

02 - *Hello Ladies - I enjoy the pure awkwardness of seeing Stephen Merchant try to perform being a Regular Person, but ultimately this show tips him too far towards a nasty, Ricky Gervais-lite sort of persona. Perhaps he was always best as a cameo appearance, or lip synching with wild eyes while Chrissy Teigen giggles?

03 - Olive Kittredge - a rough watch by times. I read the book as well, later in the year. Frances Mcdormand was the best, possibly the only, casting option for the flinty lead. One episode tips into thriller territory, which is a shock.

04 - *The Wire S3, S4, S5 - lockdown culture! It was interesting to rewatch this, then a few months later go through an enormous, culture-level reappraisal of cop-centred narratives.

05 - Forever - a Maya Rudolph/Fred Armisen joint that coasts on the charm of its leads. The premise is OK, but I wasn’t left wanting any more at the end.

06 - *Catastrophe - a rewatch when my partner decided he wanted to see it, too!

07 - Red Oak - resolutely “OK” steaming dramedy, relied heavily on some pretty obvious cues to get across its 1980s setting.

08 - Little Fires Everywhere - gulped this one down while in 14-day isolation, delicious! Every 90s suburban mom had that SUV, but not all of them had the requisite **secrets**

09 - The Great - fun historical comedy/drama! Costumes: lush. Actors: amusing. Race-blind casting: refreshing!

10 - The Crown S4 - this is the season everyone lost their everloving shit for, since it’s finally recent enough history that a fair chunk of the viewing audience is liable to recall it happening.

11 - Ted Lasso - we resisted this one for a while (thought I did enjoy the ad campaign for NBC sports (!!) that it was based on). My view is that its best point was the comfort that the men on the show have (or develop, throughout the season) with the acknowledgement and sharing of their own feelings. Masculinity redux.

12 - Moonbase 8 - Goodnatured in a way that makes you certain they will be crushed.

13 - The Good Lord Bird - Ethan Hawke is really aging into the character actor we always hoped he would be!

14 - Hollywood - frothy wish-fulfillment alternate history. I think the show would have been improved immeasurably by skipping the final episode.

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lokiondisneyplus · 4 years ago

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As the film and TV industry attempts to restart after a COVID-19 shutdown, some states like Georgia hope to be trailblazers. Home to Tyler Perry's sprawling film studio, Pinewood's Atlanta outpost and other production facilities, the Peach State is establishing itself as a pioneer in the industry's quest to get back to work.

Perry was one of the first Hollywood players to lay out his plans to restart production. The producer — who said he'd fly actors on two of his TV shows, Sistas and The Oval, to Atlanta on his private jet and keep cast and crew quarantined on his 330-acre studio campus throughout the duration of filming in July — detailed on-set safety protocols May 20 in a 30-page document titled "Camp Quarantine." But he's far from the only producer who's been plotting a return to filming in the state.

While studios are wary of naming specific projects and target shoot dates due to the volatile nature of the pandemic (after all, Georgia set a new single-day record on July 1 with 3,000 new COVID cases in 24 hours), sources say that some of the major projects expected to start or restart production in the state in the coming months include Universal's feature adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen, MGM's Sylvester Stallone action pic Samaritan and a pair of Disney+ series: Loki and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. In addition, at least two major Netflix projects plan to return to Georgia: comedy thriller Red Notice, starring Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot, and Stranger Things. Sources say the cast of the latter was told season four production would tentatively start back up again on Sept. 17.

“Georgians want to get back to work and show that we can not only beat this virus but be leaders in this industry to hopefully encourage America to get back to work,” says John Rooker, founder and owner of Atlanta Metro Studios (AMS), where HBO’s Watchmen filmed.

Georgia, which has lured Hollywood productions in recent years with its uncapped film incentives program, says it plans to hire an estimated 40,000 production workers across roughly 75 upcoming productions. Together, those projects are expected to invest $2 billion into the state’s economy over the next 18 months. The industry first got the green light to get production back up and running when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp officially released the state’s protocols for film and TV production on May 22, two weeks before California released its filming guidelines.

"Thanks to the 'Best Practices' for set safety released by the state, in addition to the guidelines provided by the national guilds and unions, we look forward to helping thousands of crew members and support service personnel get back to work safely," says the state’s film commissioner, Lee Thomas. "It will help Georgia maintain its position as one of the busiest production locales worldwide."

A large part of that return to work will be led by Pinewood Atlanta Studios. President and CEO Frank Patterson has spent the past few months exploring how to make the facilities safer, investing $1 million in new safety protocols. The film studio has brought on BioIQ, a medical testing firm that will monitor the wellness of entrants, and Synexis, a biodefense company that uses tech to try to reduce viruses, bacteria and mold in the air.

"We've put a whole lot of thinking into how we should do this safely, and I think we're going to learn and iterate a lot in the next few months in terms of how these protocols work," says Patterson. Though he isn't at liberty to name any of the projects starting up soon, sources say Pinewood has two feature films and multiple streaming shows (including The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki) beginning preproduction this month, with the aim to start filming as early as August.

Some studios are testing out protocols with smaller productions first. Atlanta Metro Studios, for instance, recently hosted a commercial shoot. "It was a good dress rehearsal for when production comes back full speed," says Rooker, who notes that he has a large show (which he also can't name) returning in July that will be using their entire facility for the remainder of the year.

Over at Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, which saw HBO's Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams-produced series Lovecraft Country and Paramount's Chris Pratt thriller The Tomorrow War conveniently wrap production just before the shutdown, chairman and CEO Ryan Millsap has focused on the physical aspects of making the facility safer — that means looking at getting rid of door handles and swapping out all the bathroom fixtures for touchless ones — in an effort to get his facility ready for the rush of projects he's anticipating post-virus.

In fact, there are currently six productions vying for space at his studio, and he has room for about two. "Right now, we have people circling like sharks," says Millsap. "It's just a question of who can finally pull the trigger in a world where everybody wants to be working but nobody knows exactly how to work — and it's going to come down to whoever is ready to go tomorrow."

In an effort to remain competitive, others in the state are building out new production facilities that are pandemic-proof. Patrick Millsaps, a lawyer and political consultant turned film producer, is constructing a brand-new 1,500-acre studio complex in Albany, Georgia, named Kane Studios that will not only offer 650,000 square feet of purpose-built soundstages, 300,000 square feet of production offices and 1,000 acres of backlot — it will also be able to sequester an entire production the way that Perry’s studio can.

"We hopefully won't open until post-vaccine of this pandemic, but Bill Gates keeps calling this Pandemic One, so we're making sure the things that we've learned during this pandemic are a permanent part of what we're building," says Millsaps, adding that the studio is slated for a 2022 debut. “In this business, where people are always crammed in on top of each other, we just thought, why not make this the safest and healthiest studio on the planet?”

Surely, now more than ever, Georgia’s wide-open spaces are appealing to cast and crew coming from densely packed cities like New York and Los Angeles. And in another recent win for the state's film supporters, concerns about its controversial abortion legislation were attenuated this week when the Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Louisiana. Though a Georgia Senate discussion about the uncapped film incentive program may have briefly worried some, ultimately the Senate Finance Committee's approval of a bill that requires audits for all film and TV projects that claim the credit seemed to quell any concerns about potentially more significant changes to the program.

"There’s a really beautiful element to what's happening in Georgia and the support that we're getting at the political level to return to production," says Millsap, noting he gets regular calls from the governor's office and state senators asking him when he's getting production going again. “They know that entertainment is one of the few sectors that's going to come up out of COVID like a rocket ship, and everything I hear from all of my relationships with politicians in Georgia is that they are ready to rock and roll this thing.”

#Atlanta #film and tv production #Loki #Falcon and the Winter Soldier #Pinewood

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paralleljulieverse · 4 years ago

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Darling Lili in New York, or Where Were You the Night Julie Andrews Played Radio City Music Hall and Stole Manhattan’s Heart?

This is the second in a series of commemorative posts to mark the 50th anniversary of Darling Lili, the last of the 1960s Julie Andrews screen musicals. In the preceding post, we looked at the film’s fraught production history up to and including its World Premiere at Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome on 23 June 1970. Here, we turn attention to the film’s New York bow which took place a month later on 23 July at the city’s fabled Radio City Music Hall.

Nicknamed “the show place of the nation”, Radio City Music Hall was for much of the mid-twentieth century the venue of choice for big event film releases. The theatre’s monumental size, architectural opulence, state-of-the-art technology, and pre-show stage spectacles made it “the quintessential motion picture palace,” and Hollywood studios jockeyed to secure bookings at “the Hall” for their most prestigious pictures (Goldman, 97-98).

During the late-60s, Paramount, the studio behind Darling Lili, enjoyed a run of extremely successful summer bookings at Radio City Music Hall. Its 1967 release, Barefoot in the Park broke house records for the longest run at the Hall with a 12-week season, only to be bested the following year by another Paramount comedy, The Odd Couple which ran for 14-weeks (”Trouble”, 114). It was something of a PR coup, therefore, when, in January 1970, Paramount announced with much fanfare that Darling Lili would make its official premiere as the summer attraction at Radio City Music Hall later in the year (”Par Gets”, 3). The deal even made the front cover of Boxoffice magazine with a photo of Frank Yablans, Paramount general sales manager, proudly signing the booking contract with Music Hall president, James F. Gould (″Sign of Summer,”, cover).

Barely had the ink dried on the deal, however, when Paramount changed tack. Hit by the toughest industry recession in decades and spooked by a precipitous downturn in the market for big-budget roadshow films, Paramount execs implemented a wholesale revision of studio operations, including a brutal hard-prune of their production and release schedules (Dick, 120ff). By April, earlier plans to give Darling Lili a high profile release had been ditched and, in its stead, Paramount decided to offload the film cheaply as part of a bundle of eight titles slated for saturation release during the summer off-season. Dubbed the “Big Summer Playoff,” the aim was to issue the films widely and quickly so that they could “saturate every major and minor market with single-house firstruns and key city multiples” (“Paramount’s Summer Playoff”, 5). In an era when important films were typically given carefully staggered roll-outs, it was an unorthodox move that fuelled advance perceptions of Darling Lili as a bomb of such magnitude that even its own studio had lost hope. As one newspaper commentator put it, Paramount “seems to have dumped the expensive movie rather than spend any more on it” (Taylor, 21-E).

Radio City Music Hall, by contrast, stuck to its original plans to exhibit Darling Lili as a high-profile summer spectacular. With Paramount having started to issue the film haphazardly to theatres across the nation in June, the opening of Darling Lili at Radio City on July 23 would no longer be a world premiere -- that honour was hastily devolved to Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome -- but the Hall persisted in proudly billing its run as “the New York premiere”. As Variety wryly noted: “Music Hall has never played a pic which hasn’t been a New York first, although perhaps someone there thought the tourists may have thought Lili was otherwise in that the film opened nationally a month ago” (”New York”, 20).

While not strictly a roadshow presentation, Radio City Music Hall exhibited Darling Lili with all the trappings of a hardticket prestige release. Seats were available via a mix of both premium reserved and general admission with special complimentary programs issued to patrons at all sessions. The theatre screened the film in wide-gauge 70mm with 6-track stereophonic sound, one of only two US venues to do so. Projected on the Hall’s 70′x40′ motion picture screen -- the largest indoor screen in the world at the time -- the film would have looked and sounded amazing (Goldman, 99). As an added point of appeal, screenings were supported by one of the Hall‘s famous live stage entertainments: in this case, a Spanish-themed spectacular with symphony orchestra, flamenco dancers, guitarists and, of course, the legendary high-kicking Rockettes (Jose, 54). In addition, the Hall lavished Darling Lili with a solid promotional buildup, taking out full page ads in key newspapers, and using strategically-placed billboards and transit ads around town.

It was an old-school approach of event-style cinema showmanship that paid off handsomely. Even before Darling Lili opened at the Hall, there was “an unprecedented advance demand” for tickets, leading the theatre to double the number of reserved seats from 900 to 1,800 for all sessions. “We’ve added reserve seats on a few occasions previously,” observed a theatre rep, but “only during the heavily crowded Christmas and Easter holiday seasons” and never...during the summer,” adding that he had “no idea” what had generated the extraordinary advance demand (Weiler, 37).

The good news continued when the film opened on July 23 with a box-office rush that broke all house records, prompting the theatre to increase reserve bookings even further to 2500 seats in an effort to accommodate the clamour for tickets (“’Lili’ Hitting Peak,” E-2). As Variety commented:

“Radio City’s Darling Lili...is the summer blockbuster all the auspices hoped it would be, with $285,000 or close expected for kickoff session. Pic is curious in that its longtime postproduction shelving had spurred rumors of disastrous artistic results. But film has shown legs in crosscountry openings and both critical and word-of-mouth opinion in Manhattan has been mixed at worst. Some response is downright enthusiastic” (“’Lili’ and Revue,” 9).

Darling Lili continued its bullish box-office run in New York, long after any initial novelty buzz should have subsided. Weekly grosses inched higher for a few weeks before settling into a very healthy $200K+ per week plateau. Come mid-August, Variety noted with thinly-veiled surprise that:

“Radio City Music Hall is experiencing a slight phenomenon with its current Darling Lili attraction. It’s not unusual during the summer tourist season for popular Hall programs to maintain or build grosses...but few remain in such a narrow range as has Lili to date. First week tally of $280,000 was a non-holiday record. Second was upped to $288,000. Now third session is headed for $280,000....70mm projection and sound are plus-values in a package which Hall president James Gould predicts will run until late September” (“N.Y. Full,” 9).

In the end Darling Lili did run at Radio City Music Hall until late-September -- September 23, to be precise -- when it closed to make way for the pre-booked Sophia Loren-vehicle, Sunflower. Across its 9-week run, the film grossed in excess of $2million in ticket sales, making it one of the theatre’s biggest summer hits to date (“Picture Grosses,” 15).

The commercial success of Darling Lili at the Hall was music to the ears of the film’s star who, in a rare moment of unguarded hubris, admitted to a measure of self-satisfaction at news of the booming box office receipts:

“‘I’m not so interested for myself,’ she explained, ‘but I’m happy for Blake. He has been so maligned about this picture that I am delighted he is receiving some vindication...I think he managed to make a vastly enjoyable film...People are entertained by it; the Music Hall figures seem to prove that.’ [T]he actress had mild reproof for the releasing company, Paramount, over its handling of the film: ‘Three weeks before the opening, there was no advertising campaign. None whatsoever. Paramount didn’t seem to know how it was going to sell the picture--or if. I simply can’t understand an attitude like that’” (Thomas: 13).

Julie’s chiding of Paramount for its poor handling of Darling Lili was not mere sour grapes. Once the studio had decided to issue the film as part of a summer saturation bundle, it effectively abandoned any semblance of cogent or even halfway organised marketing. As outlined in our earlier post, there was little rationale to the film’s distribution. Lili appeared suddenly and briefly at second-run theatres and drive-ins across disparate suburban and provincial areas, while major metropolitan venues didn’t get the film till much later, if at all. In many markets, the film was booked for a fleeting season of a week or two – in some cases, just a few days -- and it was frequently paired as a double-bill with a host of poorly selected partner titles (Caen, 6-B).

The studio’s approach to promotion was no better. A generic pressbook and merchandising manual was issued, but it was very bare-bones and perfunctory. In the absence of a clear marketing plan, local exhibitors were left to promote the film more or less any way they liked. Advertisements were frequently altered to pitch Darling Lili in diverse, and often contradictory, ways. The main advertising art provided by Paramount -- with its central image of Julie in mid-song set within a sepia frame of art nouveau swirls -- positioned the film principally as a nostalgic star musical with touches of adult romance. Many local exhibitors took a very different approach. Some tried to reframe it as wholesome child-friendly fare: “This summer’s one and only total family entertainment;” “It’s Julie at her best! It’s for your family” (“This Summer,” 24). Other theatres pegged it as “a man’s movie,” stressing the action and warfare elements with taglines like “See the Best Dogfights of World War I” or “If you enjoyed Blue Max you’ll love Darling Lili” (“Man’s Movie”, 13; “Palms”, 64). Some exhibitors even openly recycled graphics from The Blue Max and other WW1 action films, with one Florida venue going so far as to revive the film’s original working title: Darling Lili, or Where Were You the Night You Said You Shot Down Baron Von Richtofen? (“Amusements,” 11A).

Elsewhere, exhibitors implemented a rash of dubious promotional incentives such as “twofers” or free entry to "one child under 12...with the purchase of one adult admission to Darling Lili” (“Capri”, 2D). A theatre in Fort Lauderdale offered “free admission to World War I veterans in uniform during matinees Monday through Friday” (“’Darling Lili’ Ducats,” 5D). Possibly well-intentioned gestures but it was bottom-barrel marketing that fostered an unfortunate aura of abject desperation around the film that likely turned off more patrons than it enticed.

Against this sorry backdrop of shambolic distribution and ham-fisted marketing, the meticulous handling of Darling Lili at Radio City Music Hall served as a strikingly singular counterpoint. The remarkable commercial success of the film at that venue -- which, if reported figures are to be believed, represented well over a third of the film’s entire US grosses (“US Films,” 184) -- can only be attributed in good part to the care and professionalism with which the Hall managed the film’s exhibition. One can’t help but wonder, therefore, how different the overall commercial fate of Darling Lili might have been had Paramount exercised a more discriminating distribution plan, affording the film the kind of special-event release it enjoyed in New York. It’s unlikely Lili would ever have been a major hit -- it was simply too narrow in appeal and out-of-step with the rapidly changing times -- but it certainly could have gone much further in recouping costs and might even have realised a modest profit. At a minimum, it would have helped redeem the film from its unjust reputation as the “Edsel that almost bankrupted Paramount Pictures” (Rosenfield, 5).

As a coda to this account of the exceptional history of Darling Lili at the Radio City Music Hall, it is interesting to note that the film fared well in New York not just commercially but also critically, Some of the film’s best US reviews came from New York critics -- a surprising turn-of-events given how notoriously hostile the East Coast critical establishment had been to Julie Andrews’ earlier screen musicals. Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News gave Darling Lili three-and-a-half stars out of four, writing:

“Radiantly beautiful, elegantly turned out, Julie Andrews graces Radio City Music Hall in a burst of song and dance, adventure and romance...[I]t’s Darling Lili everybody loves, so will you, you Music Hall patrons--you and the family” (Hale, 39).

Vincent Canby (1970) of the New York Times found Darling Lili “a pure if not perfect comedy” with “a lot of perverse charm and real cinematic beauty.” He continued:

“Although Julie Andrews (the film, not stage, star) has always struck me as a very mitigated delight, she may be the perfect centerpiece for this sort of fantasy. That is, her angular, aggressive profile, combined with her coolness and precision as a comedienne and a singer, give the immediate, comic lie to the adventures of a supposedly irresistible femme fatale. She thus is immensely funny...” (16).

In a rare honour, the New York Times afforded Darling Lili a second review from Roger Greenspan (1970) who argued for the film as a minor masterpiece of refined, borderline philosophical, sensibilities. “[O]ne very bright critic I know...has already compared the film, ecstatically, with Max Ophul’s great Lola Montes,” he remarked before launching into his own rhapsodic paean:

“To her characterisation, Miss Andrews brings a precision of gesture that matches Edwards’s directorial precision and that constitutes one of the most excitingly controlled expressions of theatrical presence I have ever seen in a movie. Not cold; elegant, finely drawn, perfect of its period--and yet inward, self-sustaining, as if already committed to that gorgeously contemplative state of transport that is the subject of the movie within the movie to look for in Darling Lili” (S2-10).

In a similar move, the inaugural issue of the New York-based cinephile journal, On Film devoted not one but two essay-tributes to Darling Lili from Stuart Byron and Mike Prokosch respectively. The former gushed:

“Darling Lili comes at the end of the big-budget musical cycle, and it [is] one of the only...good things to come out of the whole rotten effort to reduplicate The Sound of Music. But in any case, a masterpiece it is--Blake Edwards’ most beautiful film to date and surely his most meaningful. ... Edwards is the first director to utilise Julie Andrews’ full resources. Her rapid manner of speaking becomes the neutral fulcrum of her moods--it is sincerity hiding danger, or bitterness hiding love. Her singing, however tender on the surface, always gives the impression of concealing a quick intelligence ready to spring forth when needed” (Byron 1970, 31, 34).

Prokosch (1970) was equally smitten, calling Darling Lili “the only work of art Hollywood ha[s] released in 1970″:

“First. one must forget one’s preconceptions of Julie Andrews and look at the way Blake Edwards, the film’s director, casts his wife with remarkable shrewdness: Lili Smith is a young British singer caught in a situation she cannot master. What more natural part could Julie Andrews want? ... Darling Lili is really gutsy in its formal expression...Edwards’ control of the...formal means at his disposal--stylized lighting and colour, split-up background compositions, and especially cutting--displays a...complete knowledge of their emotional effect. What makes Darling Lili unique among recent releases, though, is its careful structuring. Almost every sequence...takes a clear place in the design of the film” (96).

If it sounds like these critics were a little woozy on the then new wine of auteur film theory, a measure of sobriety was served by none other than Andrew Sarris, chief architect of American auteurism, who filed a somewhat more reserved, but nevertheless appreciative, review of Darling Lili for the Village Voice:

“Darling Lili is cinema a la folie, a rhapsody of romantic madness amid the current cacophony of absurdist dissonances, a sentimental valentine from Blake Edwards to Julie Andrews complete with gypsy violins and a Snoopy sub-plot about the Red Baron and the Dawn Patrol...but I’m afraid it won’t work for most audiences on any level. Its ingredients -- romance, satire, musical comedy, deadpan farce -- mix without blending. The song numbers don’t soar high enough and the prats don’t fall hard enough. But Darling Lili is never less than likeable, and its graceful professionalism is especially refreshing in this long hot summer of assorted crudities” (Sarris 1970, 47).

Despite his reservations, Sarris still included Darling Lili in his end-of-year list of the best films of 1970 -- as did several other Village Voice critics: Stuart Byron, Richard Corliss, Stephen Gottlieb, and William Paul (Sarris 1971, 59).

Now, if only the critics and audiences west of the Hudson had shown Darling Lili half-as-much love as the crowds at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, who knows how different the course of Hollywood history -- or at least that of the Julie Andrews screen musical -- might have been...

Sources:

“Amusements Today.” Florida Today. 2 October 1970: 11A.

Byron, Stuart. “Darling Lili.” On Film. 1: 1, 1970: 30-34.

Caen, Herb. “It’s News to Me.” Hartford Sentinel. 5 August 1970: 6-B.

Canby, Vincent. “Screen: ‘Darling Lili’ Sets the Stage for Pure Comedy of Romantic gestures.” New York Times. 24 July 1970: 16.

“Capri: Florentines! Something Wonderful! Has Happened to the Movies!” Florence Morning News. 12 August 1970: 2-A.

“‘Darling Lili’ Ducats Pared for Retirees.” Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel. 27 June 1970: 5D.

Dick, Bernard F. Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood. Louisville, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001.

Francisco, Charles. The Radio City Music Hall: An Affectionate History of the World's Greatest Theater. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979.

Goldman, Harry. “Radio City Music Hall.” Journal of American Culture. 1 1, Spring 1978: 96-111.

Greenspan. Roger. “Oh! What a Lovely Spy.” New York Times. 9 August 1970: S2-1, 10.

Hale, Wanda. “Darling Julie Sparkles as Musical Spy.” Daily News. 24 July 1970: 57.

Jose, “House Review: Music Hall N.Y.” Variety. 29 July 1970: 54.

“’Lili’ and Revues, Tally Darling 285G.” Variety. 29 July 1970: 9.

“’Lili’ Hitting Peak.” Boxoffice. 10 August 1970: E-2.

“Man’s Movie.” Winona Daily News. 7 August 1970: 13.

“N.Y. Full of Tourists; Divided Between ‘Darling’ and ‘Denmark’.” Variety. 12 August 1970: 9.

“New York Sound Track.” Variety. 29 July 1970: 20.

“Palms Advertisement.” Arizona Republic. 31 July 1970: 64.

“Par Gets Hall’s Summer Spot for its ‘Darling Lili’.” Variety. 21 January 1970: 3.

“Paramount’s Summer Playoff Strategy: 5,000 Bookings for Eight Major Films.” Variety. 3 June 1970: 5.

“Picture Grosses: Broadway.” Variety. 23 September 1970: 15.

Prokosch, Mike. “On Film/Feature Film: Darling Lili.” On Film. 1: 1, 1970: 96-97.

“Radio City Music Hall’s All-Time Boxoffice Darling.” Variety. 5 August 1970: 12.

Rosenfield, Paul. “Reconcilable Differences.” Los Angeles Times-Calendar. 12 July 1987: 4-5.

Sarris, Andrew. “Films In Focus: ‘Darling Lili’.” The Village Voice. 13 August 1970: 47, 52.

________. “Films In Focus” The Village Voice. 21 January 1971: 59.

“Sign of Summer.” Boxoffice. 26 January 1970: cover.

Taylor, Robert. “‘Lili’ Can Be Charming.” Oakland Tribune. 27 June 1970: 21-E.

“This Summer’s One and Only Total Family Entertainment.” Tucson Daily Citizen. 5 August 1970: 24

Thomas, Bob. “Julie Andrews Praises ‘Lili’.” Courier-News. 15 September 1970: 13.

“Trouble in Paradise.” Newsweek. 25 October 1971: 113-115.

“U.S. Films’ Share-of-Market Profile.” Variety. 12 May 1971: 36-38, 122, 171-174, 178-179, 182-183, 186-187, 190-191, 205-206.

Weiler, A.H. “Big ‘Darling Lili’ Advance.” New York Times. 23 June 1970: 37.

#julie andrews #Darling Lili #blake edwards #radio city music hall #old hollywood #musicals #film premiere #new york #1970

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ewh111 · 5 years ago

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Annual List of Favorite Film Experiences of 2019

Happy New Year! All the best to you for a fabulous 2020 and new decade!

2019 was a busy year of traveling. Work took me back to China (three times), Japan, Korea, and first time visits to the Czech Republic and Australia.

I had the opportunity of a lifetime when I helped lead a group of Harvard-Westlake faculty members on a culture and food themed trip to China with James Beard Award-winning food writer/chef Fuchsia Dunlop. As a big fan of hers, I invited her to join us as our culinary tour guide and she accepted, leading us through three regions of China with distinct cuisines (Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Shanghai). Over ten days, she curated 19 meals with over 300 different courses! For more, go to my first annual food post: https://ewh111.tumblr.com/post/189972112494/2019-food-lists

And now, here are my favorite film experiences of the past year.

Cheers, Ed

The Best and The Favorite of the Year

Parasite

The less you know before viewing this metaphorical, fiercely dark, genre-bending comedy/horror/social satire of haves and have nots where everyone is arguably a parasite, the better. Korean filmmaker Boon Joon-ho creates a memorable, twisty, thought-provoking film experience with exquisite storytelling, stunning visuals, sudden tonal shifts, unexpected turns, and a terrific cast. Just take the journey and enjoy this masterful work that may be the best film of the year. Trailer: https://youtu.be/isOGD_7hNIY

Jojo Rabbit

Appealing to my affinity for the quirky, this one is my favorite film of 2019. Who knew that a story during the waning days of WWII about a 10 year old Hitler Youth, his imaginary friend Adolph Hitler, and his single mom who is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic would be so sweet and funny. While an absurdist witty satire on the surface, it’s really an anti-hate, coming-of-age story as we experience the world through the eyes of 10 year old Jojo as he confronts and reconciles “the other” he’s been taught to hate in the world around him. Delicately balancing whimsy and seriousness, Jojo Rabbit is a beautiful and soulful film thanks to a great cast, including a terrifically endearing Scarlett Johansson (while likely to garner more attention for Marriage Story, this is the more memorable character to me), the audacious Jewish-Polynesian director Taika Waititi as the sophomoric Hitler bestie, Sam Rockwell as an SS officer with a heart, and a wonderful Roman Griffin Davis in the title role. Trailer: https://youtu.be/tL4McUzXfFI

Racing Against Time

1917

Wow. Daring and bold filmmaking in one of the most realistic and visceral war film experiences since the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. In a role that may be overlooked during awards season, George MacKay is a standout as one of the two soldiers sent on an impossible mission through No Man’s Land to deliver a message to prevent British forces from entering a massive German ambush. Oh, and via pure movie magic, director Sam Mendes and master cinematographer Roger Deakins tell this story in what seems like one continuous shot. I was totally drawn in by the Gallipoli-esque race against time, the real-time pacing of 24, and the immersive POV of a video game. The result is breath-taking as the camera dances around the soldiers, trenches, bunkers, and towns in a beautifully choreographed dance without distracting from the gripping storytelling. Trailer: https://youtu.be/gZjQROMAh_s

Ford v Ferrari

An exhilarating, high octane, crackling thrill ride. The story of two obsessively passionate crazies, ex-racer and car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and British race car driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale), who join forces with American corporate titan Ford to defeat Ferrari at the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1966. It’s pure adrenaline that non-racing enthusiasts can enjoy because of the well-crafted story and performances. Trailer: https://youtu.be/I3h9Z89U9ZA

Unforgettably Creepy and Disturbing

Joker

Joaquin Phoenix disturbingly and completely transforms himself into the pathologically deranged, downtrodden, and delusional part-time clown/aspiring comic Arthur Fleck in this origin story of Batman’s arch nemesis. Joker is a deeply disturbing character study of how an emotionally fragile individual on the fringes of society gets pushed deeper and deeper into the downward spiral of insanity to the breaking point. Dark, edgy, and unsettling, Joker is not for everyone. But there’s no denying Phoenix’s brilliant, tour de force performance. (Unfortunately, my edginess was heightened in my screening by an audience member who was similarly laughing inappropriately like Phoenix’s character, which had me looking for the closest exit in the event of a disturbance). Trailer: https://youtu.be/zAGVQLHvwOY

In his sophomore directorial effort, Jordan Peele has gone beyond the horror and social commentary of Get Out, and into even deeper, more chilling existential territory. In Us, Peele has created an All-American family terrorized by a creepy scissor-wielding doppelgänger family and spirals into more terrifying and mysterious terrain with a fabulous dual performance by Lupita Nyong'o. Who is Us? Is Us them? I’ll leave the metaphorical debate for later. Trailer: https://youtu.be/hNCmb-4oXJA

**Midsommar deserves notable mention in the creepy category–a slow-burn, dark tale of a young American couple’s vacation in the remote Swedish hinterland at a once-in-lifetime summer festival that goes creepily and morbidly wrong. Trailer: https://youtu.be/1Vnghdsjmd0

Masterworks by Tarantino and Scorsese

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

Perhaps Quentin Tarantino’s most mature film, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood beautifully captures in painstaking detail a specific moment in time: Hollywood, 1969. A passionate homage and love letter to Los Angeles and the Hollywood scene, Tarantino blends a concoction of history and fantasy (a la Inglourious Basterds) in a buddy movie with Leonardo DiCaprio as declining TV hero/star and an endearing scene-stealing Brad Pitt as his stalwart stunt double/best friend whose lives fatefully intersect with Sharon Tate and the Manson family. While at times meandering (it’s less plot and more a series of vignettes), it is also at times spellbinding (an on set encounter between DiCaprio’s character and a fellow 8 year old child actor; Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate watching herself on screen inside Westwood’s Bruin Theater). As the title implies, this is a quintessential Tarantino fairy tale: funny, yet warm, and, of course, violent. Trailer: https://youtu.be/ELeMaP8EPAA

The Irishman

An epic, career-capping entry into Martin Scorsese’s mob-themed oeuve, The Irishman appropriately brings De Niro, Pacino and Pesci together in this elegaic saga, complete with de-aging technology to tell the story of mob hitman Frank Sheeran (De Niro) through multiple flashbacks. And for those of us old enough to remember, the story helps to answer the unsolved question, what happened to Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa. Trailer: https://youtu.be/RS3aHkkfuEI

Family Dramas

Marriage Story

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver are top-notch in this raw, yet poignant, and ultimately life-affirming journey through the disintegration of a marriage and the logistical mechanics of the divorce process and custody fight seen from both sides as each struggles to reestablish priorities in their lives and redefine family. Trailer: https://youtu.be/BHi-a1n8t7M

The Farewell

We are told the film is “based on an actual lie” in the film’s opening titles; director Lulu Wang’s heartfelt, deeply personal, and charming film stars Awkwafina as a young woman whose grandmother (in China) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer but the entire family has decided to keep it a secret. Under the guise of a hastily planned family wedding, the family gathers to say goodbye to grandma. Capturing the uneasy tension between Chinese and American culture, questioning where one belongs and the role of family in our lives, Awkwafina shines in her first dramatic role, as does the rest of the supporting cast. Trailer: https://youtu.be/RofpAjqwMa8

Little Women

Director Greta Gerwig follows up Lady Bird with another achievement, giving the classic 19th century Louisa May Alcott period piece a thoroughly modern feel with an effervescent cast and 21st century non-chronological storytelling. Saoirse Ronan leads a fantastic cast. Trailer: https://youtu.be/AST2-4db4ic

Two Funny Smart Girls, Two Religious Guys, and Only One Baby Per Family, Please

Booksmart

More than just a female version of Superbad, Booksmart is an impressive directorial debut for Olivia Wilde with the fantastic duo of Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein (HW ‘11) as the “study hard” academic besties on a mission to “play hard” on the last night before graduation. Also memorable is the scene-stealing Billie Lourd (HW ‘10). This very funny and delightful coming-of-age pic stands out in the pantheon of teenage comedies not only for its quirky and smart tone, but for its inclusive and diverse three-dimensional characters, including LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming teens whose sexuality don’t define who they are. Trailer: https://youtu.be/Uhd3lo_IWJc

The Two Popes

I didn’t expect a film that is essentially an extended conversation between two people would be so intriguing and gripping. The imagined conversation in 2012 involves two very different men, one the sitting pope who finds himself standing increasingly in the way of progress, and the other, his eventual successor looking to retire from an institution he is increasingly frustrated with. But with spot-on casting and terrific performances from Jonathan Pryce as the ABBA-humming future Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins as the stoic, humorless intellect Pope Benedict XVI, The Two Popes is a joy to watch. Trailer: https://youtu.be/T5OhkFY1PQE

One Child Nation

This one’s a doc. From 1979 to 2015, China instituted the “One Child Policy” as a means of population control to stave off mass starvation. Documentarian Nanfu Wang, herself an exception to the policy and now a first-time mother, explores the enduring ripple effects of the policy that included forced abortions, sterilizations, abandonment of baby girls, and child trafficking. This powerful and devastating documentary looks at the multi-layered trauma–how it was carried out and the heartbreaking human and societal toll it has taken. Trailer: https://youtu.be/gMcJVoLwyD0

**Other documentaries to check out: Cold Case Hammarskjold, Where’s My Roy Cohn, The Biggest Little Farm, Leaving Neverland.

All Out Pure Fun Movie Experiences

Knives Out

An enthusiastic bundle of joy, Knives Out is Rian Johnson’s stellar, intricately crafted, Agatha Christie-like whodunit with a stellar cast who seem to be having as much fun as the audience. Trailer: https://youtu.be/qOg3AoRc4nI

Rocketman

Can’t help but compare this to Bohemian Rhapsody, but Rocketman is the superior and more entertaining musical biopic (using the term loosely). It’s bold, magical, and fantastical, as befits Elton John. Trailer: https://youtu.be/S3vO8E2e6G0

Other notables: The King, Avengers: Endgame, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Honey Boy, Yesterday, Velvet Buzzsaw.

In the queue: Pain & Glory; Uncut Gems; Bombshell; Richard Jewell, The Last Black Man In San Francisco.

Favorite Binge-worthy TV Shows

Dark, Succession, When They See Us, Chernobyl, Mindhunter, Barry, Veep, Sex Education, Silicon Valley, Stranger Things 3, Don’t F**k with Cats

Special Shout Out to Dark

With elements of the mysterious strangeness of Twin Peaks and Stranger Things (minus the humor and camp) and the intricate intertwined storytelling and compelling characters of The Wire, Dark is the story of four families who live in a tiny German town situated next to a nuclear power plant (add a little of Chernobyl) who are inextricably connected through some strange cosmic phenomenon. Oh, and throw in a big dose of time travel. Dark is incredibly compelling and addictive. It is hands down the most complex and thoughtful (i.e., sophisticated and makes sense) time travel-themed story I’ve seen. Do yourself a favor and resist Googling anything about the show to avoid spoiling the experience. Just watch. There are two seasons worth at Netflix. And one more on the way. Trailer: https://youtu.be/S3vO8E2e6G0

#favoritemovies2019 #favoritefilms2019 #submission

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sidelineshooter · 5 years ago

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I Traveled to China to Document the FIBA World Cup

This World Cup—my second—was one of great learning opportunities, class, and respect for the game and its legends. 32 national teams competed for medals in eight cities throughout China in 2019. I documented the action from Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing.

I’ve been teaming up with FIBA since my friend Kevin Couliau introduced me to the 3X3 crew back in ~2011. Needless to say, I was excited when FIBA asked me to help them tell the story of their 2019 Basketball World Cup.

This being my first trip to Asia, I was especially excited to learn about Chinese culture and explore the cities I was assigned to as much as I could in between games.

It took me a few days to get over my jetlag and adjust to the 12-hour time difference after landing in Nanjing. My first task was to set up and shoot headshots for the four teams competing there for the first round games: Montenegro, New Zealand, Brazil, and Greece.

The most anticipated game of the first round in Nanjing was Greece vs Brazil. Brazil overcame a double-digit deficit to win in the end, but how they nearly lost in the final seconds presented one of those moments that transcends the game. One of Brazil’s bright young players, Didi Louzada committed an ill-advised foul about 60+ feet away from the basket with just a few seconds remaining in the game that gave Greece an opportunity to tie the game. Greece missed a freethrow and fell short.

What was beautiful about this wild conclusion to the game is that Louzada was devastated—understandably—and tried to run off the court immediately following the game, skipping the team celebration of the big win. Veterans Alex Garcia and Leandro Barbosa—who have competed in five World Cups for Brazil together—called him back on the court to console him. They then thrust him in the middle of the team huddle and cheered for him jubilantly. This moment was incredibly moving for me to witness and capture. It speaks volumes to the culture of the team and was a major learning opportunity for Louzada and the team.

With my day off in Nanjing I decided to tour the third largest city in China (fun fact: over 30 million people live in the greater metropolitan Nanjing area—That’s almost 4 times the size of my hometown of NYC). Naturally I landed at a park and before long I heard that all-too-familiar sound of pick-up games taking place. I snapped a few pics before I called for next through gestures. We played halfcourt games of 4-on-4 to five points. Although we could not communicate verbally, it was clear that basketball is a universal language. I picked up on the house rules pretty quickly and the guys were competitive yet welcoming. It was an experience I will never forget. The guys were very welcoming to me and my friend William who joined me for this adventure. In case you’re wondering, after a slow start we ended on a 3-game win streak before leaving the park.

It was especially great to see Frank Ntilikina, who I worked with at the Knicks last season, representing France as they came to Nanjing for the second round. The smile on his face when he received his first bronze medal was priceless. It feels great to see people I get work with and be around thriving.

Stephon Marbury, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant and Yao Ming all attended at least some games throughout the tournament. It was moving to witness the love they all received not only from the fans but also from the players and coaches, some of them former teammates or opponents.

One of the most amazing moments was following the semi-final matchup between France and Argentina. Immediately following his 28 points and 13 rebounds and securing the victory and, ultimately, the silver medal, 39-year-old Luis Scola ran over to the stands and awaited his family to come down to give them all hugs and kisses. Knowing your “why” is so important and family is as good as it gets. I had goosebumps as I clicked the shutter for this moment.

The tournament in general was very emotional. From Puerto Rico battling Iran to the final second on the opening night (I wasn’t there for that one, but I did see it live on tv) to Turkey coming within a few free throws of stealing one away from team USA (also saw this one on tv) to France defeating Lithuania in a thriller all the way to Argentina meeting Spain in the title game. Fans from different countries traveled across the globe to support their national teams. Lithuania had a particularly energetic crowd as did Argentina, Spain, Greece, Poland, and of course the host country, China. Security guards in Nanjing would huddle around the television near the entrance tot he arena and you could hear the echoes of their cheers for China throughout the halls. The passion for the game was palpable throughout.

Finally after Spain was crowned the world champions and the all tournament team was introduced, Ricky Rubio and Marc Gasol of Spain, both all-stars, put their hardware aside to applaud the legend Luis Scola whose overall performance in this World Cup was nothing short of extraordinary. It was a class act and a genuine display of mutual respect at the highest level.

I learned a ton in China. I pushed my memory cards, hard drives, cameras, and computer to their limits. I shared the sidelines with some of the greatest basketball photographers on earth and I did not take a single moment of it all for granted. It still amazes me that a basketball and a camera have provided me with opportunities of a lifetime to see the world and document its biggest stars.

I hope you enjoy these images. Thanks for reading to the end!

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jessamygriffin · 6 years ago

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The Legend

Dear @youcantdothatpod

Hello, Hockey Coven, it is I, one of the two responsible for the Pierre-Édouard Bellemare DreamBoat Manifesto of old, penning this under my normal Tumblr journal instead of the hockey one for no good reason, and I come to you, with respect, and with full knowledge of certain coven members love of Russian players (though this one is not a Siberian) to ask for either a history lesson or dream boat nomination for my guy - for having an interesting life, to say the least. He is my favorite Russian player. Yes, possibly even over Ovi.

And yet he never made the NHL.

Oh. My. GOD. some listeners must be thinking at this point. Why even BOTHER with this guy??? he’s not in the fucking NHL!

(And can I just say, in this case, we must never be the Bettmans of the hockey world, who was bloated with hubris thinking to bring hockey like a Messiah to the unenlightened Asian continent a few years back [ha ha fuck off, they’ve had hockey here as long as the NHL has existed? I live in Japan btw] and we must not think that the NHL is the end-all-be-all of hockey aspiration. It wasn’t. It isn’t. Times were different. There wasn’t even a KHL at the time our story begins.)

I bring him to your attention because he is THE BEST.

His story begins in the Siberian IHL, passing a pretty tough try-out as a kid to start playing for the Red Army team, CSKA Moscow.

I feel like I ought not throw in all his info here? Maybe just a few highlights? And some comments. Ok who am I kidding it will get long.

Here: Vladislav Tretiak.

Vladislav Aleksandrovich Tretiak, goalie, current president of the IIHFR.

He won a lot of shit. I’ll just link the Wiki here - it’s a list.

He looks kinda like Spock, but in the best red-blooded ways, not that I would ever judge anyone for wanting to get freaky with a green-blooded half-alien. His goalie training looks a lot like cossack dance.

(MUTE THIS VIDEO THO)

youtube

There’s some other worse quality vids of him doing similar and playing with his son, so. There’s that. Skip ahead to the tennis ball part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrfOsCVakvs

He started hockey kinda late, at age 11.

And Canadian hockeys LOVED him. *See below pic of jersey swap with Wayne Gretzky for proof.

Really, you gasp. Say it ain’t so! Impossible!!!

Truth.

How did the so-called hockey world (which of course was based in NA according to old boring hockey men) discover this Dumbo-eared wunderkind? The 1972 Summit Series.

(Yes, he grew his hair out and covered the mudflaps, and it was MUCH BETTER, sorry Vladdy.)

‘Ho hum,’ said the Canadians, ‘Russia thinks they are good at hockey, how ‘bout we have the Summit Series and quash their pretensions? That gold medal in Sapporo? a FLUKE. Ha ha, look at their goalie, this will be a cakewalk, he let in EIGHT GOALS in this game we just saw, oh well, let’s go have a beer and light up a dart, eh, boys? Eight games, pfft. We’ll sweep them.’

Joke was on them - Vladdy or Vladik was gettiing married the next day and weirdly? Couldn’t concentrate.

Summit Series ended up with one tie, 3 Russian wins and 4 Canadian, with the Canadians playing their dirty rough style, and the Russians their smooth, machine-cog style. That series was a gongshow of biased refereeing, Russian goal judges not turning on goals lights, and teams leaving the bench to have Canadian or Russian tantrums. Actual ankle-breaking occured.

Canadians had two goalies. Russian had one. He was 20. My boy. He KILLED it. And to say the Canadians were pretty horned about about this alien cheekboned man-child after expected a blow-out? MASSIVE understatement, HUGELY horny. As they should have been. Ken Dryden LOVED him. Jacques Plante himself, maybe feeling sorry for the kid, came and talked to him before the tournament started and let him know how different players would try to score. ‘A big help,’ Vladdy said. ‘I don’t know why he did that.’ LOTS of players were in awe. Canada was turned upside, Toronto became Tijuana and nothing was ever the same. The Interest in Russian Players was, officially, a Thing. (Kharlamov was a big part of the interest but that’s a whole ‘nother story.)

The horniness was, in fact, so uncontainable that several NHL teams expressed an interest, and one team was bold enough to draft him in 1983, when he was the ripe age of 31, which at the time was not TOTALLY hockey-old for goalies and players like it is now. Yes, the Habs. Consider that 3 years later rookie Patrick Roy backstopped the Canadiens to several Stanley Cups, and imagine what they could have been even earlier, with Tretiak. HOooooO. Serge Savard hit up Moscow four times during the winter of ‘84 to try and secure his release.

Russian wouldn’t let him go, of course. Tretiak was a only lieutenant-colonel in the Soviet army, and not playing the high level hockey he had previously, and thusly COULD be replaced in the system. Soviet officials ultimately vetoed a transfer. “Oooh his dad was a major, how can we let this son of a distinguished man go and play HOCKEY, it’s a disGRACE!” Or at least that’s what we were told. Okay, Jan.

He quit playing at age 32. Thirty fucking two!!! He’d done his 4th Olympics in a row by this point in 1984, and had the honour of carrying the flag for his nation, though he said it was probably because no one else had done 4 Olympics in a row. He wanted to spend more time with his family, and asked Tikhonov, coach of the national team and CSKA to let him have, ya know. Quality family time. (You’ll remember this douche from previous Russia Hockey Stories.) Tikhonov said, no, you live at the compound like everyone else for 11 months of the year. Ah ha ha.

Roll back a few years, for a grudge. Tretiak, if you’ll recall from the Miracle on Ice, was pulled from the game against the Americans by ol’ Tikky after letting in ONE (1) goal in the first period. All the Russians knew, but would never say until much much later, what a massive mistake that was - and you know the Miracle story anyway. Tretiak said himself it was a mistake, and he wouldn’t have lost the game.

So, all things considered, in spite of having loads of playing life left in those kicky legs, Tretiak noped out and retired, for the reason of being denied time with his family. And not getting to go abroad to play, which was probably a bitter pill and so quitting while he was still useful was a good Fuck You to the officials who used him up like a tissue playing hockey for his team and country. And of course, he was exhausted. At age 32. "I'd played fifteen years with the Army Club and the National Team without a break. Backup goalies came and went, as did three generations of forwards and defensemen, but through four Olympic Games, all the important ones with the professionals, all the World Championships, all the Izvestia tournaments, it was I who played in the net."

Frankly, he should have just defected like others did later. Sent his family to watch him in a tournament and done a Sound-of-Music-esque Von Tretiak escape out the Zamboni exit, over the mountains and far away.

He would have been the first if he had. One of the most famous players in Russia, leaving for a career in the corrupt West. I’m glad he at least thought about it a little, even if it never happened. God, that would have been great. I’m glad that the NHL were able to pull their xenophobic heads from their asses enough to know greatness, and to want that brilliance shining on their teams.

But really, in the end, the man done him dirty. “In spite of aggressive discussions with Soviet authorities, Canadiens' general manager Serge Savard was unable to secure Tretiak's release for Montreal. "I would have loved to play in the Forum," Tretiak admits. "I was hoping to one day play in the NHL. I would have liked to do it even for just one season. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. I regret not having the chance." “

Still, the NHL and hockey in NA didn’t forget him. There were laurels left to be given.

He was the first Russian to be inducted into the HHoF, and the first to be entered without ever having played in the NHL.

Was he done with hockey? Heck no. Remember when I said Canadians loved him? It may have been mentioned a time or five.

In 1988, hockey royalty got married - Wayne Gretzky and Janet Jones. Befitting royalty, her dress cost $40,000, and gifts filled three rooms of the hotel. Notably, amongst them was a gold swan from a certain Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak. Why??? Swans are good luck, said Vladdy. They mate for life. And lo, the couple is still together.

In 1990, Mike Keenan hired him to be a goalie coach for the Blackhawks, and was (again) so turned on by his mastery that he suggested the 38 year could still play in the NHL? Vladik laughed and said no, but coaching was the next best thing. He worked with the best - Belfour, Hasek, Thibault, and you’ll be shocked that loads of tendies wear his #20 in tribute. He runs - or ran? website not updated in a while - the most challenging goalie school in NA in Toronto in summers.

He worked with the ‘Hawks until 2007, and then went on to be a pillar in Russian hockey leadership. Coach. Etc.

He wrote a book, which was really what got me into Russian hockey - it was wild to me at the time when I read it in high school some (Cough cough) years ago, so alien. But it’s chock full of the stories you love. His first coach Tarasov, wanted him because he was ‘tall’ (6′ is tall in Russia???) and had ‘huge hands’ and reminded him of Jacques Plante. The book’s pretty frank about hockey history and the role ‘Miracle on Ice’ played into a kind of American propaganda, which is refreshing. He was politely horrified by seeing Canadian players smoking. His training was bonkers, and included tree-climbing at speed. The Russian team was always trying new stuff, and one time decided on sports psychology, which a teammate helpfully volunteered Vladik for, ‘He’s the most important player, he’s the last defence, work with him!’ (since no one else wanted to). The positive thinking mantras seemed to work as at the next practice they were amazed by his clean play and kicks. But lol, no, next game he got blown out, and was probably glad to send the sports shrink on the way.

And he was crushed when his teammate, Valeri Kharlamov, with whom he played so long, died at the young age of 33 in a car accident. But Kharlamov is a guy for another section of Hockey Histories.

So. This dream boat.

Ok. I know y’all prefer a defection story, and I think some listeners also? But. Here’s the thing. It’s sexy and romantic but also traumatic as fuck to ditch your country, your life in that political climate, to play the game. And dangerous, shit man. 1983. U.S.S.R.!!! People still got disappeared! It was fine to treat players like garbage and lock them up for months in a compound and not let them see family! And I sometimes get the feeling that people consider the NHL the pinnacle, like, what a fool is Tretiak? who wouldn’t throw away everything to play NHL hockey? But that’s like, Bettman thinking, that the NHL is the best and perfect when we all know it’s fucking garbage, I know the current KHL has issues, SO MANY it would be a three hour podcast to talk about! So there’s no high ground, really. And in the end, Vladislav Tretiak made a choice that did good by himself, going on to a successful post-hockey career and the upper echelons of Russian hockey, and did well by his family, and of course, being patriotic is sexy, as anyone screeching at their team during the current World Cup of hockey knows. It’s okay that he stayed there. It’s fucking sexy NOT to defect, sometimes. Dude was a champion either way, his life is not a tragedy or lesser for not having played in the NHL and I really want people to know that.

"For me, it was all, and all of it is with me forever."

Yes, there is life and hockey beyond the NHL.

And it’s beautiful.

#my post #youcantdothatpod #Vladislav Tretiak #Red Army hockey #CSKA #Russia #sorry for incoherent rambling it's late

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desdealgunlugardelsur · 6 years ago

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Harrison Ford: 2018 summary (II)

(PART I HERE)

JULY:

2nd: Harrison Ford at the restaurant Leña Brava, Chicago [x]

4th: at the airport in Los Angeles. Harrison has stubble and starts to grow a beard, stirring once again the Harrison fandom

Enjoy this fluffy man in all his almighty fluffiness

10th: Harrison Ford will be honored by Indianapolis Zoo with the Jane Alexander award for wildlife conservation

11th: more bad news for Indy 5: 'Indiana Jones 5' will be delayed a year until 2021

Walt Disney Studios announced that Ford's still-untitled return to his famed Indiana Jones character would be delayed from July 10, 2020, the movie's original release date, to July 9, 2021.

13th: HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRISON!

Mark Hamill congratulates Harrison for his birthday

16th: Harrison Ford eyes ‘Call of the Wild’

Harrison Ford is in negotiations to star in “Call of the Wild”. If a deal is reached, the “Star Wars” actor will play John Thornton, a prospector braving the Yukon on the hunt for gold. The big-budget film is being adapted by 20th Century Fox from the classic 1903 Jack London novel about the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s.

(non-related picture just for gratuitous lusty enjoyment)

The stubble is killing me

21st: at the opening event of The Boeing Blue Sky Aviation Gallery, Denver, Colorado [x] [x] [x]

Oh God he´s so beautiful... (also a brief spontaneous speech here)

24th: Dan Stevens Joins Harrison Ford in ‘Call of the Wild’. The film is supposed to start filming on August-September in Vancouver.

AUGUST:

6th: 25 years ago The Fugitive was released in cinemas

Early August: When grandpa tells stories about the good old days… (Pic from Eliel Ford)

16th: Play it again, Harrison [x]

21st: God, look at this caveman! [x]

30th: Harrison Ford’s ‘Call of the Wild’ Adds Colin Woodell

SEPTEMBER:

12th-13th: Celebrity-watching: A-listers in Hollywood, music and politics gather in SF for Climate Summit.

Thousands of business leaders, mayors, governors and activists from around the world are gathering in San Francisco this week for the Global Climate Action Summit, and some of the speakers are big names in Hollywood, music and politics. Actor Harrison Ford of “Star Wars” fame is the vice-chair of Conservation International and will be speaking Thursday in a session titled “Thriving Plant: A New Hope for the Next Generation.”

Harrison Ford begs voters to 'stop electing leaders who don't believe in science'

“Stop giving power to people who don’t believe in science. Or worse than that, pretend they don’t believe in science for their own self interest”

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Harrison Ford takes a break at the Climate Summit [x]

13th: Harrison Ford’s ‘Call of the Wild’ Casts Omar Sy

17th: Harrison Ford hanging out in San Francisco [x]

23rd: Harrison Ford to Address Top Donors at New Beginnings Counseling Center

Board of Directors of NBCC Celebrating 50 Years of Service with Harrison Ford

27th: Guardians of the Galaxy actor Karen Gillan joins Harrison Ford in Call of the Wild film adaptation

30th: Harrison Ford honored at Indianapolis Prize Gala

One of the most recognizable award recipients at this year's Indianapolis Prize gala was Harrison Ford. He's known to most of us as an accomplished actor, but Ford is also a vocal ambassador for conservation.

"Protecting nature is how we will continue to survive on this planet," Ford said. "Protecting nature is first and foremost for me a moral imperative. Yet saving nature is really about saving ourselves."

At the JW Marriott, Ford joined his close friend, 2018 Indianapolis Prize winner Russ Mittermeier. They reminded the gala crowd that nature doesn't need people, people need nature. Ford himself was honored as the Jane Alexander Global Wildlife Ambassador.

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Harrison Ford congrats Biologist and Conservationist Russell Mittermeier for winning the 2018 Indianapolis Prize award (video filmed in June 2018)

OCTOBER:

1st: Indiana Jones 5 Will Return to Global Scope, Says Frank Marshall

“This will be Harrison Ford’s last Indiana Jones movie, I am pretty sure, but it will certainly continue after that,” Spielberg previously said.

4th: sweaty Harrison take a rest after jogging in Santa Monica. Keeping in shape for Indy 5?

18th: Harrison on the set of Call of the Wild in Los Angeles (he´s wearing his character´s outfit) [x]

25th: No beard but goatee is back. Has he finished Call of the Wild?

28th: Harrison Ford To Present Award At The Carneys

Hollywood star Harrison Ford is making a rare public appearance on October 28 at Elvis Duran’s 4th Annual Carney Awards. The star of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars films will present the Chairman’s Lifetime Achievement Award to the legendary character actor M. Emmet Walsh. The two of them appeared together in the original Blade Runner movie in 1982.

Actor M. Emmet Walsh and Harrison Ford at the Carney Awards, Santa Monica

NOVEMBER:

9th: SAG-AFTRA Foundation Honors Spike Lee, Harrison Ford, Lady Gaga and Jeffrey Katzenberg

The SAG-AFTRA Foundation held their 3rd Annual Patron of the Artists Awards last night honoring industry leaders and artists who champion the arts and whose history of fostering creativity and creating opportunities has made a positive impact on the performing arts and the world.

Harrison Ford Rails Against ‘Nationalism and Isolationism’ at the SAG-AFTRA Awards

Harrison Ford didn’t mention any politicians by name during a speech about climate change, but there’s little doubt that he wasn’t referring to President Donald Trump.

Harrison Ford on whether Chris Pratt is joining Indiana Jones "I think it's him or me" [x]

Harrison shares an ‘Indiana Jones V’ update:

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Other highlights of the event:

Ryan Gosling presents Harrison Ford with the Artist Inspiration Award

Find someone who looks at you the way Lady Gaga looks at Harrison Ford

Harrison reunites again with his former co-star Henry Winkler (they worked together in the movie Heroes (1977)

10th: Like a boss on the streets of LA

12th: “I’ll tell you the dirty little secret—I love doing this” . Harrison talks to young actors about his experiences during his movie career [x] [x]

16th: Harrison Ford Supports Disaster Relief Fund for SAG-AFTRA Members

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19th: Harrison and Calista attend the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 10th annual Governors Awards

27th: That Time Harrison Ford Drank A Bottle Of Scotch While Trying To Film Empire Strikes Back

Harrison Ford recently revealed a horror story involved with filming the sequences set on Hoth. George Lucas took production to Finse, Norway for the snowy scenes, but Ford had a hard time getting to set. In fact, he was stuck on a snowplow for about hours trying to regret there, ultimately taking to a bottle to get him through the nightmare.

DECEMBER:

3rd: 'Working Girl' Turns 30: On-Set Romances and Secrets of the Staten Island Ferry Revealed in Juicy Oral History

30 years ago on this date Working Girl was released in cinemas

19th: Harrison Ford goes for a walk in Brentwood, Los Angeles. In all his magnificence. Now full shaved

27th: Harrison Ford Honors Billy Dee Williams at the American Black Film Festival with moving tribute video

Earlier this year, Billy Dee Williams was honored with the Hollywood Legacy Award at the American Black Film Festival Honors. While the awards ceremony was back in February, the iconic actor must be reflecting on his year, because he recently shared a video from the ceremony of his long time friend and co-star, Harrison Ford. (Video at Billy Dee Williams´ twitter)

31st: Remember to dress like this the day after

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fyrapartnersearch · 6 years ago

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SHAME SHAME SHAME

everybody's people watchin' everybody’s punch clockin’

hey how are ya my name is emmy and i’m here to search for a new rp partner. a bit about me, i’m 22, canadian, work two part time jobs and attend uni full time and i go by she/her pronouns. i reside in the mountain timezone and i am thrilled to hopefully start writing with you.

why should you write with me? because i promise that if i pick up an rp with you i’m gonna put 100 and 10 percent of my effort into our story. i’m looking for a long term gig, someone who i can really weave a plot with, someone who digs the cut of my jib. i want us to be able to sob over our characters together late into the night. i want us to exchange songs, playlists, posts found on the internet, aesthetic boards, whatever reminds us of our characters/our plot.

i will probably spam you with pictures of my character’s playby and i want to see mad pics of yours, too. i want us to go through our character’s struggles together as well as be able to cheer together when our characters get a hold on their situation and come up on top. i want us to inspire one another with our writing. it’s gonna be great. you & me honey.

right now I'm looking for 1-2 new rp partners who are interested in something long-term and fully fleshed out. think 'mains'.

gee, that sounds nice! i’m inclined to agree! but a few things you should know before you go any further: i write anywhere between full lit to lit + to novella style, so expect posts of at least 4 - 6 paragraphs baseline. sometimes i crank out 10. or just 5. depends entirely on what’s going on. i write according to situation, with a great amount of detail spent on what my character is thinking/feeling in response to yours. the replies you get will be fully fleshed out & enthralling. i am a stickler for grammar and spelling, though nobody’s perfect, i do occasionally have my slipups. all lowercase text is strictly kept to ooc communication. i can be sporadic with capitalization ooc but still keep good spelling. i will never pressure you into posting or writing ridiculous amounts just to match my post. i want you to have fun too! if i’ve had a bit too much to drink or am about to hit the hay, i’ll wait to post until i can give my post my full attention. usually i’ll be able to post at least once every week, sometimes multiple times a week depending on work & schoolwork. i'm available for ooc chat almost all the time. i also totally understand life happens and sometimes we just need a breather. ♥ i have bipolar depression, and sometimes my depression kicks my ass, but i’ll let you know when that happens.

oh goodness, what else? i write predominantly m/m pairings but i am open to m/f and f/f as well. i do not write high fantasy settings, sorry doll. my interests mostly align with modern day, slice of life kinda stuff, aside from the fandoms i do have. i don’t have many limits besides excessive gore, scat, mpreg, and writing smut for sake of smut. i love my romance just like anyone else does, but it’s got to have plot. our characters have to have chemistry or else i get bored. i haven’t doubled before but i think i’d be down for it with the right plot. usually i prefer that we play one character each, or we play multiple characters within a plot, but not usually more than one plot at the same time. but!!! i am totally willing to try new things!! just be patient with me as i learn m'kay? i have had several threads going at once with one partner which can be super fun. also most of my characters are pretty kinky but like, i prefer that we talk about kinks and limits one on one as opposed to airing out my character’s laundry. also- i wanna be your friend ooc. let’s chat. i find it’s so much easier to have muse and post if i enjoy the virtual company of the people i’m writing with.

ok but what do you write?

what *don’t* i write? kidding. here’s a bit of fandom for ya. if i’ve got plots listed, they’re the ideas i have, but i’m totally open to yours as well. stars denote how much i’m craving them. i’ll list the canon characters i write after i list the fandom:

mafia 2: vito scaletta ***plot for mafia 2 a: we explore the dynamics of a relationship between vito and your oc. your oc could be in a position of great risk- think outside of the mafia, possibly a police officer, prostitute. some position where power dynamics could be played with. if the pairing is m/m we also deal with the themes of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with one’s identity.

*bioshock 1, 2 & infinite: brigid tenbenbaum, andrew ryan, frank frontaine & eleanor lamb, sofia lamb & booker dewitt

**marvel cinematic universe: tony stark, steve rogers

***greater marvel universe: logan howlett, carol danvers ****random plot: we do a crossover and we ship sharon carter/carol danvers. i just. uuugh i have a lot of feelings about them and i have hella muse for these babes. lemme know if you’re down to give this a shot i will love you forever no word of a lie.

but honestly where my heart lies is within oc rp. here are a few plots i have of mine, stars denote how much i’m craving them:

****(m/m) power & politics: my oc is a prestigious state senator, who lives a double life. he is currently in the closet with no intent on leaving it anytime soon. however, a certain someone falls into his life, making him question what he thought he knew for certain. your oc breaks down the walls my oc has put up and changes him into a softer, better man. however, with an upcoming presidential campaign on the horizon for my oc, the limits of the secret relationship will be pushed and pulled beyond what both parties have ‘signed up for.‘

****(m/m) the guardian: your oc is a newcomer to the nhl but is quickly making waves- think connor mcdavid style. he’s young and impressive, but mostly, impressionable. he starts to get battered around by both his teammates and opposing teams. after a few hard hits and fowl play within the game that have cost your oc bench and recovery time, the team’s coach calls in reinforcements to boost the team’s morale and serve as a protector to your oc. my oc is a player who hasn’t got the talent part but has got a huge heart. not to mention… huge hands. good for makin’ fists. good for fightin’. my oc protects your oc during the games, coming to your oc’s aid, picking fights for your oc and protecting him on the ice. as such, the two players grow attached to one another.. perhaps too attached for the captain to be comfortable with. possibilities for a love triangle and other complications, for sure

***(m/m) too good to be true: our ocs start out in the whl, both as promising wingers. their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. however, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an nhl draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. the two excel in their nhl careers without one another, and end up on nhl teams with a history of deep rivalry. occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. the two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them.

***(m/m) big money: these two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. there’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. if the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over.

**** (m/m) sugar daddy: my oc is a law student studying in your oc's country in order to get their degree abroad. they're from eastern europe and uh. broke af. they settle into an arrangement with your oc where your oc agrees to ~pay him for his company after they meet while my oc does camming online to make ends meet. we could take it anywhere- your oc could whisk mine off his feet and 'save' him or. be toxic & trashy and make my oc's life hell.

okay and, here are just some general prompts that could be intertwined with the plots above, or could be something we use to springboard into our own rp:

my oc has serious commitment issues. they often go around ‘ghosting’ individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits.

your oc and my oc were best friends, but they lost touch over a stupid fight they had when they were preteens. they can’t believe that they’re seeing one another in a bar, halfway across the world from where they met.

your oc and my oc were flames. my oc proposed to yours, but yours turned them down. they never spoke again… until they were sharing a crammed elevator, with my oc being completely intoxicated, and still confessing their feelings for your oc.

your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s nhl career/political career. your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. while my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc.

my oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. they develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship.

i recognize that a lot of these focus on the nhl/the lives of professional hockey players- please don’t be worried about hockey knowledge/nhl jargon/whatever else goes through your head! i’m more interested in sport as a realm for drama than i am for following the rulebook and being 100% accurate to life when it comes to hockey. there’s a lot i don’t know and am still needing to learn, myself! if you know a lot, great!! if you don’t, let’s figure things out together! as for general oc ideas, here’s a list:

professor x student

veteran x civillian

cop x criminal

psychiatrist x patient

** OC superheroes (I have a lot of muse for this one!)

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

rival gangs

** nhl/hockey based (lol obviously)

small town canadiana or americana

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

darker themes such as addiction, abuse, etc - i find it cathartic sometimes to write about violent material buuuut this has to be really fleshed out between us

historical setting- preferably, the second world war/1940s-1960s

light worldbuilding - new to this but wanting to learn

honestly whatever you can pitch to me that isn’t high fantasy :)

i can expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just like, topics. whatever i do with you, i promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama.

hell yeah let’s do this pal

if any, and i mean any, of this piqued your fancy, pleaaaase shoot me an email at

↳ [email protected] !

i will respond! but please send me something thoughtful! i’d like to hear what part of my ad that you’re interested in/why you chose to contact me. i am most wanting to rp over email and talk over google hangouts but i can be open to skype, too. i sure look forward to hearing from you! ♥

emmy

#indie rp #indie roleplay #independent roleplay #oc rp #multiple paragraph #long term #email #marvel rp #avengers rp #smut rp #submission

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grgop · 6 years ago

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Geneva, the French and the Međimurci

After months of residing in the darkness of inactivity here comes a fresh review of the recent trip to Switzerland. Those 3 days were without expectations and with plenty of spontaneous decisions that turned out...awesome. I even managed get my Master thesis done and sent to print hours before the trip thus not having to bring my laptop there and work at the airport. I would also use this chance to thank again our hosts for the wonderful time we spent there as well as for helping us with the stay in Geneve. Merci beaucoup...or whatever you write it. Now what was all this about, when, why and how...please start scrolling. The whole trip was planned a few months ago as one our best and closest Uni colleagues was going to get married. Since we were sitting next to each other since the day 1 of the University life (and were breaking the Erasmus Intership Exchange ice together writing the letters and creating our portfolios in the bars between the Uni lectures...) there was no way for me not to come there. Wait a bit more to see the wedding pics. The interesting story is that she had met her future husband during Erasmus internship in Paris while I was in Vienna (maybe I should apply again for the exchange?). One of the last things in life I imagined was ending up on a wedding in Switzerland and be surrounded with the French and the Međimurci. On the trip there and back again I was with a few colleagues whom we will refer to as “the Noone”. Let’s start with...

DAY 1: Travelling from Zagreb to Venice Marco Polo Airport. Getting lost in Venice. Evening arrival to Geneve

Just before our trip there were several problems that were kept in secret in order not to spread panic. Our return flight with EasyJet was cancelled due to French Airline’s strike and luckily I was online to check us in on the next one an hour later. Had we not had the second flight the same evening things would gotten nasty with the bus schedule and arriving home on Monday morning to hand in our binded Master’s thesises.

The second crisis emerged early in the morning around 3am when I realized:

a) I left the sunglasses at my barber’s desk the day earlier

b) I forgot the headphones on my desk!!

We travelled with Flixbus, direct line from Zagreb to Marco Polo Airport, at 7.30am and arrived a bit later than scheduled due to traffic problems on the Italian highway and a traffic mess at the bus station in Trieste (sorry Italians, it was another prejudice come true...).

We came to our destination around 2.30pm and had almost 5 hours free before the flight. And what should we do?

Go to Venice of course! For the price of 15 Euros you get the bus return ticket from the airport to Venice. My colleague was there for the first time and for me it was the 3rd. I honestly didn’t expect going there but ... was worth it. The plan was to drink coffee somewhere but we didn’t have time as...umm... I wanted to make a tour around and we got lost on our way back...just a bit. : -) In the end we managed to get in time back.

The overall impression of Venice?

Crowded, hot, stinky...few buildings and streets that impress you in the beginning and then you get bored and start counting nationalities and bricks in the walls. As well as the shades to hide in.

Just before the security check in I realized that I totally messed up with clothes and items in the travel bag...bringing unecessary stuff that took plenty of space. Never again listen to the others and just keep it simple. So I was forced to put my pants, part of ceremonial clothes etc. into the bags of my colleagues. :-D Just like Voldemort with the horcruxes.

Speaking of food and water supplies on your trips and specifically at the airports...there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who buy the bottled water in duty free shops... and those who drink and fill them in the restrooms (toilets). During my 3 days I only drank water from the restroom. Save money, save the nature.

Our flight was around 8pm and I spent most of it (one hour) sleeping dead tired. For those of you who’ve been following me from before you might remember I’ve already been to Switzerland but never in Geneve. (scroll down the blog for those posts).

Geneva airport? While going towards the exit you pass by numerous billboards of the Swiss watches...Rolex, Rolex, Rolex...and Rolex..and so on for the next 5 minutes. The good thing is that all the arriving guests have 80 minutes free public transport ticket so we went to the next stop (Geneve Cornavin). Our hostel (Geneve Hostel) was about 5-7 minutes by foot and close to the Geneva lake. Boys in one room, girls in another to avoid the potential problems. And unplanned weddings.

At the hostel we were also given free public transport ticket that was valid for the whole Saturday and Sunday which helped a lot. It included the train, the boats, the buses and the tram within Geneve. Since France was super close (cca 4 km) there was even a tram line leading there (about 30 minutes)...we heard you can have a cheaper lunch there and planned “to visit France” on Sunday but plans changed.

Before the sleep we searched around the hostel area for some cheap place to grab some food. Now, the word “cheap” in Switzerland is not as same as “cheap” here and the best for your psychological health is not to convert the currency. We found the Ali Kebab place right next to the hostel and ate Chicken Kebab with some salad and French fries for 17,5 Franks, a meal we split for two. This was relatively similar to some prices here so it was not that bad at all. I could have eaten though the whole plate again but my wallet couldn’t. No complaints anyway!

DAY 2: Morning tour around Geneve. Going to the ceremony. The wedding and the afterparty.

I’m a morning person and Saturday morning was no exception. Woke up early, took a shower, breakfast when there aren’t many people and already ready to go at 7.30am. I got the public transport and city landmarks map at the hostel staff and went to the lake with another early bird. Here are some impressions of the streets, people and cityscape.

Plenty of runners with bluetooth headphones, people walking with dogs, the cylists, expensive cars you see in James Bond movies, the specific architecture, plenty of hotels and banks, mostly clean sterile streets, the promenade and the boats. Pretty much international population and French language everywhere. And I don’t speak French except for few words but was interesting to be in an “alien” surroundings. The lake that is as huge as the sea yet fresh water. Ducks everywhere. What I loved was seeing the bike roads across the promenade and the streets of Geneve. More about it on Day 3. Speaking of traffic behaviour they all more or less stop when you approach the pedestrian zebra crossing and stop even 0,5 m before it if the red light turns on. On contrary, here you’d get run over even if you were sitting on your balcony.

We went back to pick up the third early bird and started our little tour around. There were several bridges in the center and you had a boat connection with other side of the lake. There is the huge wheel with cafes around the big bridge. One of the Geneve’s landmarks is the huge fountain which we reached later and had a free shower. One of the things that pleasantly surprised me was (as I had found out later) the artistic project “Happy City” where there were ca. 20 painted pianos placed around the city’s squares, parks, streets and bridges...where you do as it says “Play, I’m here for you”. So I did what they required you to do. Playing piano on Lake Geneva was another thing I never thought about ... but now I can say “new achievement unlocked”.

We walked a bit more to the inside of the other side up and down the streets, seen some churches and lots of interenational bars and restaurants. Expensive exotic cars again..and then decided it’s time to go back to hostel.

On our way back we checked out Lidl and took some emergency food to have just in case of unexpected hunger. This saved us on the next day. I also almost forgot that right now I can buy and drink Rivella.

Travelling to Gland and the Wedding.

We jumped into our suits and wedding clothes and went to the train station around 2pm. We had to arrive to Gland which is ca 20 minutes away from Geneve and there our fiancée’s family was going to pick us up and transport to the ceremony’s place. While there we got to know our French roommates and colleagues offiancé.

What I liked (and probably others) there weren’t many people as it usually is the case here. I won’t go into details here and throw emotions but here are some things. Close friends and family from both sides, that’s it. The ceremony took place at the fairy location called Le Moulin du Creux. Beautiful house with garden, creek and forest around located 100 meters from the road. Check the nice photos of it and you’ll get the idea.

We had two-three pastors, the French ones and the Croatian one. Since most of us didn’t speak nor understood French we had a translator. And it was funny because she was a Slovene translating into Serbian mostly. :)) Nevertheless, an interesting ceremony and a special moment for our now married couple!

What was also new was that after taking pictures and rushing to the tables with food and drinks we also had a game organized - seek and answer game. They hid around 30 photos around the area and we got the papers with questions in French and Croatian. For my team it was kind of a fail in the end. We were trying to learn a few useful French phrases such as J'ai soif which means “I’m thirsty” when sneaking around the table with served drinks.

The other games included a catapult and a cubic football. There was also a gigantic version of the Jenga Tower which was fun to play. We took and received as a memory the polaroid photo with our couple and later moved inside for the dinner and the rest of the show. We watched short movie clips that fiance’s family created about him and our friend. The only problem we had was that we didn’t understand anything as there were no subtitles. :-)

After few more games and meals it was time to go out on the field and light the lanterns. This was a cool thing and my first time to show up and do the thing actually, I think we all enjoyed it. I have no photos of it though but you can imagined what it looked liked having many of them flying up. Let’s hope non of them fell on the forest below. :-D

Soon followed afterparty with some dance music. Some people already had to part and leave. Finally, around 2am we also decided to leave as we didn’t want to miss our train back to Geneve. And of course we missed the first one by being 5 minutes late.

We came to the hostel around 4am and straight to bed.

DAY 3: Tour around Geneve one more time. Coffee & city bikes. Departure.

The final day is here. So far everything great! We made a deal to meet with friends from Nyon around 10.30h at the giant wheel in the center. Shower, breakfast and baggage packed and locked in the hostel. Ready to go.

We took the boat to the other side and soon met with our friends. We then wasted around an hour going to the “old center” only to find nothing interesting there. However, we saw more of the public pianos and parks. For the next half an hour we were on a quest to find a solid cafe to sit and talk about life.

We ended up below the giant wheel and had a tiny cup of coffee for 4 Franks. Naturally, we stayed for 2 hours sitting & chatting there to compensate the loss. I ran out of cash and asked the waiter where to go. After all, Geneva is the city of banks and I hadn’t seen a single ATM machine there. Before running for some cash we decided to visit the giant fountain. On our way there I stopped by the public piano which was now free of ambitious moms and their kids who just pressed random keys but had a cool photo. Actually, I was doing the same. It was funny to have the unusual audience around you.

Soon by the fountain. Time for a group photo!

Time flew by quickly and our friends had to find the bus station as they were leaving sooner than us. We went to the center in search of places to eat and after parting with them three of the original squad left. We had a few hours left before rushing to the train station and the airport. Having lunch in France? Visiting France by trams? Visiting France on bikes? Using city bikes to go around? We rushed to the nearst bike station and...all the bikes were gone. Second chance at the one across the bridge. We somehow were lazy to walk and wasted time on the boat. What happened there? Only two bikes left. I agreed to run to the other station as the rest follows me. But the guy working there couldn’t find the keys of the bike so we waster 10 minutes there filling the papers and waiting for him to come to common sense. The third and the last luck before giving up was using the tram to the Station No. 5 ... and...three bikes left, keys in the hands and off we go!

There is no better feeling than going around the new place by bike. Pure freedom and flexbility. We gave 20 Franks deposit and decided towards the north along the lake. Bike routes almost everywhere. Going between the streets was fun. No fear of the vehicles around us.

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We did cca 10 km in total in about more than hour stopping to take the pictues (the evidences). The idea was to go to France but by democracy 2:1 we gave up from that idea fearing something could go wrong and we get stuck in the middle of nowhere and miss the plane. So we returned the bikes close to our hostel, took the baggage and went to the train station. There we found a nice souvenir and chocolate shop....you can’t leave without one kitschy fridge magnet and a few Toblerones. We met the other Croats who were going back by plane to Venice and I again reorganized my bagge stuff into 2-3 bags of other people. The food from Lidl helped a bit. As well as the good old fresh water from the restroom. I slept again in the plane this time successfully hiding my cabin baggage under my seat as the plane was crowded and full of passangers because of the cancelled flight. New achievement unlocked. We had almost 3 hours to wait for the 2.15am Flixbus for Zagreb. Being dead hungry we checked the available offers at the backery there and found some snacks to survive till home. This time Flixbus didn’t have the second floor (on Friday we found the first row spots on the 2nd floor, the best view and the best way to get killed in an accident). But who cares, soon home! The route was shorter as we stopped only in Ljubljana...I woke up two times in total and the second on just at the Croatian border. The bus arrived precisely at 7.30am to Zagreb, to the most beautiful of the ugliest bus stations in the area. Finally, seeing “Mamiću cigane” grafitti around the station I can say “Welcome back home!”.

#geneva #switzerland #suisa #genf #geneve #venice #veneto #venezia #wedding #međimurje #međimurci

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