#packing and moving companies st lukes

[anytimemovers1]

Furniture Movers South Grey Lynn

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[undead-merman]

Is it OK to do Pegasus Luke(platonic ofc) and Pegasus Simeon? If Luke isn't OK, then maybe a Tengu Solomon?

Editor will be back after this weekend, enjoy my late edits.

Pegasus Simeon and Tengu Solomon GN- Reader SFW

Simeon

Appearance

Simeon’s long legs are equine-like. His fur is a nice, warm black color, the same as his hair. His fur is short yet soft, but the hooves of his legs have feathered fur around them.

Simeon has a long tail, which curls lightly at the end. The hair is smooth and voluminous.

On his back are a pair of enormous black wings. Each one reaches ten feet long and, at the right light and angle, catches the sun and shimmers. Every feather is large, big enough to be larger than an average forearm, some even being longer than a single arm.

His face is clearly human, but the one difference is his scalp, where two horse ears sit atop it. They have a white inner ear and move around quite a lot. His hair is long, just as long as his tail, and is braided with white lotus and lily throughout.

Peaceful Daily Life

Simeon prefers to travel around from place to place, never setting down in one spot for too long. He likes the freedom and finds every move exciting and he’s hoping to bring more peace with every place he finds.

He walks around purifying water, and bringing forth beautiful springs to places that have been wrecked by bad or no water. With a simple stroll in the middle of the lake, his wings gently beating to keep him just on the surface, and the wind barely disturbing the water, he can turn dirty and polluted water into a crystal blue.

He enjoys visiting human settlements and taking care of the sick and wearied. Often, humans who he takes care of end up healing quickly and feeling better within a few weeks.

He enjoys listening to humans who come to him for advice or comfort. It makes him happy when he offers them wise words or encouragement and blossoms even more. He finds humans so sweet, but he knows that there are bad apples, which is why he tries to keep a bit of distance. He wants to be helpful, not the cause of greed.

Spending time with you

During his travels, he found you wounded and alone. He approached you without a second thought. Depending on how badly you're injured, his face grows more frightened. He’ll offer you comfort and even though he'll have his hands on you, you'll feel the pain die down. He’ll stroke your head and apply ground herds to a bandage and wrap up any cut and and clean every scrape and bump.

He’s good company when you're bedridden. Either keeping you in a beautiful clearing surrounded by a warm makeshift nest of soft leaves, moss and flowers. You sat just under a tree with Simeon’s jacket placed as a blanket. It's softer than it looks and even offers you his wing to rest your head on. Or Simeon's brought you home and is apologizing for intruding but he’s tucking you in and gently rubbing cream and medicine on you. He’ll sit on the side of your bed and brush his fingers over your forehead, trying to ease the pain in your body. Every stroke of his hand rids you of your pain, and even when he stops, a warm feeling is left in your gut.

During your time together, you watch as he explores his area, examining things he’s never seen before, running his fingers through low-hanging tree leaves, or slowly picking up some of the oddities in your house and looking over them. He’s smiling the whole time and asking you what you know of them.

After you’re completely healed, he’s so excited about you. He’s smiling and checking over you one last time before telling you he’s going to take his leave and it was a pleasure to get to know you. Even if you ask, he sadly tells you he can’t stay. He has more he wants to do for the world and gets anxious about staying in one place for too long. But then he smiles and offers to let you come with him. He’d love the company, and he’d be sure to keep you safe.

He adores flying around with you. He can carry you however you’d like. Do you want to be held pack strap style, around his neck, with his wings flapping on both sides, or do you want him to hold a small cloth hammock so you can sit in it? Anything is fine with him, and he loves racing through the clouds with you. You're covered in a fine mist of water, and your skin is stinging a little from how quickly it hit you. He’s laughing as he gets covered too.

When he comes to a new place, he’s always quick to find a place that's safe for both of you. And instead of just helping others and flying off, he takes longer in these places to find fun things to do with you. He confesses that with you he’s had the most fun he’s ever had in his life.

Soon he’ll be sleeping right next to you. He was comfortable and close enough to nestle right next to you and rest his wings over you and him. Under his wing, no matter how hot or cold it is outside, the temperature is absolutely perfect. Even when he hugs you with them, if you're under them for too long, you start to fall asleep.

Misc stuff

Simeon can fall asleep while standing if there’s not enough room to lay. He stands perfectly straight, making him look completely awake besides his closed eyes.

Sometimes he gets random bursts of energy and while he calms himself in the more populated areas, when it’s just you and him, he runs around wildly, flapping his wings and kicking the ground. After he finishes, he apologizes, his hair disheveled and sweating slightly, but with a huge grin on his face.

He enjoys the mint flavor a lot; he seeks it out and uses it to help him calm down.

Solomon

Appearance

Despite his snow white hair, all of his feathers are a deep black and smooth having a light irradiance of purple and blue to them.

His legs are thin, rail thin, and he has anisodactyl feet, each tipped with curved nails made for gripping. His hands are the same but much smaller and not as wide. The black skin reaches to his knees and elbows.

He had tail feathers, but he tried to keep them mostly hidden since they could get in the way, much more so than wings do. His tail is fan-shaped and reaches as far down as his knees.

He has large elliptical-shaped wings that are smooth and silky looking as well as feeling. He has a wingspan of 9 feet. He beats his wings quite fast to keep himself up.

His head has a pair of pointed ears that look much like elf ears, and his lower eyelid is bright red.

Trickster life

As powerful as he is, he can’t help but have a bit of fun with others. He frequently dupes them into looking like jerks, stealing valuable items from them, or making terrible promises they must keep in the future. With how long he’s lived, he feels like he's done everything.

He likes to trick the rich and cocky. He's no bully. He'll play them till they're sobbing on the ground or ready to attack him. to which he smiles and flies off without a word.

He simply doesn't really care about any riches he might get; he's only interested in magical items or any kind of documents or books. The riches he pilfers are often secretly given to families or people who desperately need them. Better for them to have it before they waste away in their home.

Spending time with you

You met him either from him skillfully ‘robbing’ a caravan you had been a part of or received money from him and caught him as he was trying to fly off.

He doesn’t really care what you catch him doing; he just smiles and introduces himself, but seems to mull over you for a bit. It feels like he’s examining you. He just stares before giving you a polite goodbye and he flies off.

He returns not much later and asks you to accompany him. He’s not forceful, never tries to drag you off, but the more you say no, the more he pesters and comes every single day asking you. He does this until you give in and he tells you he just wants to test your magical powers. It’s a simple meditation with him and both of you feel a sudden burst of energy knocking you both back. He rises up with a wicked smile and comments on how fascinating you are.

Then he tries to take you under his wing, seeing how far you can spread your magic and exactly what you can do with it. He’s surprised by how much you can do, even if you just discovered it. He’s thrilled to see how quickly you pick things up.

Eventually, he starts asking you about your private life, asking about your hobbies and passions. And he tries them with you. It seems at first that he’s only trying to study you more, but he seems to just look at you, not your magical power. He doesn’t ask you about it outside of when he specifically states that he is. He starts making you drinks for the sessions and offering you food and gifts, and he starts telling you more about himself. Telling you stories about the different eras of his life.

On stormy or very dark nights, he lets you stay at his home and sleeps beside you rather than in another room. He just curled up so innocently, with a small smirk on his face, snoring.

Misc stuff

He does have an instinct to collect the more reflective and shinier things he finds, but he’s able to combat that instinct fairly well. But when he’s tired, he tends to just hold onto them.

He has a habit of preening his own feathers when he’s not using his hands, he does this a lot with you.

[allsassnoclass]

I’ll be sad without you (I want you to have it all)

Pairing: Michael Clifford/Ashton Irwin

Rating: Teen and Up (for one instance of swearing lol)

Key Tags: college AU, graduation, bittersweet

Word Count: 3,373

part of the mashton college au

Read on AO3

Ashton graduates college.  Michael tries to be happy for him.

The night before he graduates, Michael gets Ashton all to himself.

The week leading up to commencement has been filled with the end of finals, Michael working or sitting around twiddling his thumbs, and everyone that Ashton has ever met at college scrambling to see him one last time before he graduates and is off to bigger and better things.  Everyone has suddenly realized what Michael has been trying to forget for the entire semester: Ashton is about to leave and they might never see him again.

Michael knows that he’s being a bit dramatic.  They’re dating, so of course Michael will see Ashton again.  He only lives two and a half hours away from campus, so he can come down and visit next year while Michael is still taking classes or Michael can take a break and swing by to see him, although staying overnight would mean that he has to stay with all of the Irwins since Ashton is going to live at home until Michael graduates and can move in with him.  He has a job as a grant writer for a nonprofit in the next town over and figured he’d save up rather than live by himself, and with how much he missed his family this semester Michael thinks that’s a good idea.

Michael has spent a lot of nights this week in Ashton’s dorm or dragging Ashton back to his apartment to get as much time with him as possible.  It’s even lonelier now that Calum has gone back home to visit before heading off to an internship in St. Louis for the summer, the space far too quiet when he’s the only one home.  Michael is staying on campus this time.  He’s one of the main employees at the campus recording studio now and he got a job at the one of the town grocery stores restocking overnight, and since he’s paying for the apartment through next year he might as well make use of it.  It means he’s a little further away from Ashton than he would be if he was home, but that’s fine.  They can make it work.  He keeps telling himself that things could be so much worse, but it doesn’t make him feel better.

“Hey,” Ashton says, breaking him out of his thoughts with a gentle knuckle against Michael’s cheek.  They turned the lights off a while ago since Ashton needs to be up early, but neither of them are that tired.  They’ve simply been laying together, Michael’s head tucked into the crook of Ashton’s elbow, hands resting between them.

“What are you thinking about?” Ashton asks.  Michael sighs.  He knows that this is supposed to be a happy occasion, especially since Ashton fought so hard to make it to college and is managing to graduate with so many accolades, but the truth is that he’s really fucking sad.

“Next year,” he says.  “I’ve never known college without you.  I don’t know how to do it by myself.”

“Hey, you won’t be by yourself,” Ashton says gently.  “You’ve got Calum and Luke still.”

“You know what I mean.”

Ashton hums.  There isn’t anything for him to say here and they both know it.  Michael has spent the entire week pretending to be excited for Ashton, something that he’ll have to do again tomorrow morning, but the facade is breaking and trying to fix it now is only going to make things worse later.  He smiled while Ashton was seeing all of his other friends for the last time, he smiled when Ashton finished his last final ever and returned his books for the last time, and he smiled while he was helping Ashton pack up his dorm room for the last time, working quietly because Ashton needed a moment to process that this was actually happening.  He’s usually the problem-solver of them, always beginning whatever tasks need to be done while Michael gets overwhelmed and freezes, but packing had been a stumbling-block.  It was the only instance this week that has made Michael think that Ashton could feel bittersweet about graduating, too.

“I’ll be happier tomorrow, I promise,” Michael says.  “I’m just going to miss you.”

Ashton pulls him closer, pressing a tender kiss to his cheek and then rearranging them so they’re tangled together fully.  Michael wishes he could sink into Ashton and stay with him after tomorrow, continuing their life without any distance between them.  Ashton takes a deep breath, chest rising and falling under Michael.

“I’m not going to propose to you tomorrow, because I think graduation proposals are overdone and cliche and we are not confined to any timeline, but it’s me and you forever, yeah?  It’s always going to be me and you.  A year is nothing compared to the rest of our lives.”

Michael nods.  He takes a deep breath, too, because he promised himself not to cry in front of Ashton.  He doesn’t speak until the tears stop prickling the corners of his eyes.

“I know.  I’m still going to miss you, though.”

Ashton doesn’t say anything else, just pulls him impossibly closer and presses another kiss to the side of his head.  Michael tries to push everything inside him down, tries not to ruin the last night he and Ashton will have together for a while, but he’s not sure how successful he is.

-/-

Ashton’s alarm goes off at 6:45, which Michael thinks should be illegal.

“Why are you graduating so early,” he groans as Ashton reaches over him to turn the alarm off.  Ashton huffs a laugh, making Michael crack an eye open to catch a glimpse of him in the morning light.  He’s breathtaking even though he has pillow creases on his face and half of his hair is flattened against the side of his head.  Michael is going to miss him so much it hurts.

“Stay in bed a bit,” he says, wrapping his arms around him again and pressing his face into his chest.  “You can afford a few minutes.”

“Oh yeah?” Ashton asks.  “What’s in it for me?”  Michael cracks an eye open at him again, then kisses the teasing look off his face.  Ashton laughs into it, but soon he’s kissing back just as thoroughly, like he’s trying to memorize Michael in the same way Michael is trying to memorize him.  He should have been paying more attention every other time they kissed.  He’s had the feel of Ashton’s skin under his hands and the smell of him ingrained into his memory for a long time, but he’s still scared that as soon as Ashton accepts his diploma Michael will suddenly forget everything.

Ashton pushes Michael onto his back and swings a leg over his hips.  Michael wants to memorize this, too.  He wants to freeze this moment, capture Ashton’s weight on top of him and the way he grips Michael’s hands and pins them against the covers, fingers interlocked, holding on just as tightly as Michael is.  When Ashton eventually leans back Michael feels a piece of his heart break.

“I have to get ready,” he says, a small smile gracing his features.  Michael tries to mirror some of his joy.  He can be sad after Ashton has left with his family.

“Five more minutes?” he asks, but they both know that he’s already lost the battle.  Ashton leans down and kisses Michael once more, sweet and chaste, then gets up and heads to the bathroom to shower.  Michael lays in bed for a few more minutes staring at the ceiling, then makes himself get up and start preparing toast.

Ashton eventually exits the bathroom in dress pants and a dress shirt with the top few buttons undone.  For a split second Michael can see a future like this, Ashton prepared to go to his dream job at a publishing company and Michael running late for whatever he ends up doing with his music business degree.  He can see a  million mornings of burning Ashton’s toast but getting his coffee perfect and Ashton smiling at him and kissing his cheek and saying thanks in that sweetly sincere way he always does when Michael does something completely ordinary for him, as if he’s still surprised that people are willing to do small favors even though the only thing Michael wants to do with his life is take care of him.

“I love you,” Michael says.  Ashton pauses with his toast halfway to his mouth.  He beams and Michael feels a little bit better about everything.

“I love you, too.  Come eat breakfast with me.”

Breakfast goes by in a blur.  Before Michael can blink they’re piling into Ashton’s car and driving to the soccer field where graduation will take place.  Each college at the university has an outdoor, in person commencement  to allow for proper social distancing, and Ashton drew the short straw by being in the college of Libral Arts and Sciences and having to line up at 8:00.  He got four tickets for family and friends, so Michael gets to wait for Anne Marie, Lauren, and Harry to show up and then join them to watch.  Then they’re going to officially move Ashton out of his dorm room, go to lunch together, and Michael will have to say goodbye to the love of his life.

They follow directions for parking and join other groups of grads and loved ones waiting outside the field.  Ashton grabs his robe, cap, and cords from the back seat and Michael holds things for him while he puts them all on.

He has a gold Summa Cum Laude stole, a medal from the honors program, a cord from reslife, and a cord for being a first generation student.  Michael helps adjust everything so it’s laying flat and even, although the ceremony isn’t for another hour and there’s more than enough opportunity for it to get messed up again.  Ashton lets him fret anyway, then puts his cap on and straightens the tassel to complete the look.  Michael feels emotion well up in him again, but it’s not sadness this time.  Looking at Ashton fully decked out and glowing with happiness, he thinks the feeling might be pride.

“Okay, I need to go get lined up,” Ashton says.  He puts on a mask and pats his pockets for his phone and wallet.  Michael hugs him before he goes.

“I’m proud of you,” he murmurs.  “Have fun. We’ll find you after.”  Ashton squeezes him, then sets off towards the tent where the graduates are gathering with a wave behind him.  Michael watches him leave until he steps under the tent and gets lost in the crowd of other black-robed students.

He’s going to miss him.

Michael heads towards the entrance of the field and finds a corner to mess around on his phone and try not to think about it.  Scrolling through social media posts of his other friends graduating or commenting on the end of the school year doesn’t exactly help, but Candy Crush is engaging enough that he can turn his mind off.

“Michael!”

Michael jumps about five feet in the air at the loud voice right next to him.

“Holy fu-- don’t do that Harry!” he says while the kid laughs.  Anne Marie and Lauren reach them at that time, both of them smiling in amusement.  Michael blushes and gives Harry a noogie in retaliation, then gives Lauren a fist bump and hugs Anne Marie.

“It’s so good to see you, Michael,” Anne Marie says.  She hugs the same way that Ashton does, arms wrapped securely around him and holding him tight.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

Anne Marie has the tickets on her phone and presents them to get them in the field.  An unfamiliar professor leads them to their section, and the Irwins keep a constant stream of conversation with him, catching him up on their lives this semester and asking about his.  He doesn’t have time to get stuck in his head about Ashton leaving before a recording of “Pomp and Circumstance” starts playing and the graduates begin filing onto the field to take their seats in the middle.  Michael sees Ashton the moment he enters.  He taps Harry’s arm and points him out and they all watch him walk down the aisle and take his seat on the field.  He’s on the opposite side from them, but when he walks across the stage he’ll be facing them.  At least Michael won’t have to watch him walk away.

The president of the university says a few words, they sing the anthem, then more stuffy old men say more words.  Everyone keeps it brief and it goes by quickly, but Michael still zones out for most of it.  The student speaker is fine, but Harry shoots him a look for jiggling his leg partway through even though he’s been sneakily playing games on his phone instead of listening.

When they start reading the names Michael waits with bated breath.  He recognizes a few names of Ashton’s friends or classmates that he’s talked about before, but the vast majority of the students are complete strangers until the reader announces Ashton Fletcher Irwin!

All of them cheer obnoxiously.  Ashton has his mask on, so they can’t see his smile, but Michael knows that it’s wide and bright.  He waves at them between nodding graciously at the dean and president.  Michael blows him a kiss.  He stops paying attention to people’s names after that, watching Ashton instead.  He keeps adjusting his mask or fiddling with his cords in between clapping for his classmates, restless now that he’s walked across the stage.  He doesn’t have a diploma to keep his hands occupied since they’re getting mailed out later, but since their ceremony is only one college instead of the entire university he’s not restless for long.  Michael thinks he can hear his cheer at the end of the ceremony even from halfway across the field.  They have to wait for the ushers to dismiss them before they can find him outside, and it’s the longest wait of Michael’s life.

“Mom, are you crying?” Lauren asks.  Michael looks over and sees Anne Marie gently catching tears under her eyes.

“I’m so happy,” she sniffs.  “Don’t worry, baby.  I’ll cry at your graduation, too.”  Lauren makes a face but grabs her mom’s purse and gets a tissue out for her.  Michael feels like he shouldn’t be seeing his boyfriend’s mother cry, so he looks at his hands.  Ashton painted his nails black earlier in the week while quizzing him on music theory and the paint is chipping now.  He doesn’t want to pick at it.  He wants to keep as many physical reminders of Ashton with him for as long as possible.

Harry sighs and turns to him.

“At least you’re not crying.”

Michael doesn’t want to tell him that he probably will as soon as he has to go back to an empty apartment.  He shrugs.

“Crying at graduation is a mom thing,” he says.  Harry accepts the answer and goes back to his phone.  Michael checks his own and finds a text from Calum asking how he’s holding up.  He’s a good friend, and he partially understands what Michael is going through since Roy graduated with his masters this semester, but the difference is that Roy is staying in the area.  Michael has to do long distance for a year.  There will be no more late-night ice cream runs or eating lunch together or sitting Ashton’s security shifts with him.  Michael is going to be sleeping alone for a long time.

He tells Calum that he’s doing fine.  It’s a placeholder answer until Ashton officially leaves and he has time to sort through the tangle of emotions knotting themselves in his gut, and Calum will understand that.

The usher tells them they can go now, so Michael follows the family out of the field and to the concrete area before the parking lot where all of the graduates have gathered.  A lot of them have taken off their masks for pictures, and Michael feels his anxiety spike despite him, Ashton, and Anne Marie being fully vaccinated.  It gets worse the longer he looks for Ashton without finding him.  He wishes that Ashton had decorated his cap to make him easier to spot, but he hadn’t thought of it until the last second and didn’t know what to put.

“There he is!  Ashton!”  Anne Marie leads them over to him, immediately wrapping Ashton in a hug as soon as he turns around and sees her.  Michael hangs back and watches him laugh and smile with his family, then darts in for his own hug as soon as Ashton motions him forward.

“Hi,” he says.  “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Ashton replies, turning to kiss his cheek before he remembers that they’re both wearing masks.  It makes him giggle, which makes Michael giggle.

He’s really, really going to miss him.

“Say cheese!” Anne Marie says, snapping a picture of them on her phone.  Michael swaps out and takes the camera then, getting pictures of Ashton with his family and other graduating friends that they find.  Ashton is beaming in all of the pictures, happiness oozing out of him with every hug gifted to his classmates and every word exchanged.  His laugh sounds lighter, like walking across that stage lifted a weight from his shoulders.

Michael is going to miss him, but it’s harder to remember that when Ashton is glowing.  And that’s what love is, right?  Wanting what’s best for another person even if it doesn’t make you happy in the moment?  Michael may be terrified and out of his depth when he thinks about his own graduation next year, but Ashton clearly isn’t.  Ashton has been waiting for this for a long time, and Michael can be happy for him.

When they split up to go back to campus for pictures Ashton stops him before they get into his car.

“This isn’t a proposal,” he says, digging around in his pockets.

“Yeah.  Those are cliche and we’re not confined to a timeline,” Michael repeats, frowning.  Ashton finally finds what he’s looking for with a little noise of triumph.  When he opens his hand a stainless steel ring is in his palm.

“It’s a promise ring,” Ashton says at Michael’s sharp inhale.  “I know you’ve been upset about graduation.”

“No, Ash--”

“It’s okay,” Ashton interrupts.  “You don’t have to pretend.  I’m really going to miss you, too.”

Michael looks down at the ring.  It’s simple and understated, but it’s beautiful.  He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I was thinking that having this might help you miss me a little less,” Ashton says.  “We’re a sure thing, and now you have a little piece from me to remind you of that.”

“Oh,” Michael says quietly.  He looks down at his hands again, then up at Ashton.  “I don’t know what finger a promise ring goes on.”  Ashton laughs.

“I don’t really know, either.  You can do ring finger, or one of your middle fingers, or the fourth finger on the other side.  There’s not a rule for it.”

“You choose,” Michael says, spreading his fingers so Ashton can slip the ring on any of them.  Ashton considers for a moment, turning the ring over in his hand, then puts it on Michael’s ring finger.  Michael’s heart leaps into his throat at the new weight.  He runs his thumb against it, metal warm from being in Ashton’s pocket.

“I love it,” he says.  “I love you.”  He takes off his mask and gently unhooks Ashton’s from behind his ears, revealing his smile.  He cups Ashton’s jaw and leans forward, Ashton meeting him in the middle sweetly.  When they pull away, Ashton’s eyes are watery.

“Hey, what are you crying for?” Michael asks gently.  Ashton laughs at himself, looking up and blinking a few times until he’s forced the tears back.

“I’m happy.  I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before.”

For the first time all day, Michael can mirror his smile fully.  He’s going to miss him like crazy, but Ashton is wildly, sincerely happy, and that’s all that Michael needs.

“I’m happy, too.”

[sparklywaistcoat]

I find the online version of the 1967 TV Times interview with Diana Rigg unreadable online, so I’m reproducing it here for anyone else who has difficulty with accessibility due to the web page’s design.

The Girl Behind Emma Peel, TV Times, 12/10/1967 (reprinted here from http://deadline.theavengers.tv/tvt1067a.htm)

...the two worlds of actress Rigg... above, as Emma Peel of THE AVENGERS; a series seen in 40 countries; men feast their eyes on her while muttering endearments in 22 languages.  Right, Diana as she is to herself...

Diana Rigg has returned to Shakespearean acting - she is the female lead in a film version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

As far as she was concerned, it was the most wonderful thing that had happened to her in years.

She had been Emma Peel's alter ego so long she had to get away - - or else.

"I had become paranoid," she assured me, "with an underlying urge to pack and run.  It is a curious thing.   People who have never been subjected to it can never really understand what it means.

"I can only describe it as a sense of panic that seizes you when you are Diana to yourself and you are walking down the street.   An instant later, you are somebody else to a lot of people who behave as if you belong to them.

"If you are quite a private person, which I am, this seems an intrusion on my privacy.  I just have to run.

"Mind you," she adds, with an apologetic smile, "I am not ungrateful.  I will be the last to minimise what television has done for me.  It is a phenomenon, a miracle medium, that can accomplish in six months what takes years on the stage.  Suddenly, you are famous.  Suddenly, everybody knows you.

"The point is, though, that you are not yourself.  Only the other person you portray in the series.  That person is, of necessity, imposed by television, one-dimensional.  You ask yourself - - is it worth it?

It should be.  In the three years that Diana Rigg has spent in THE AVENGERS she has been catapulted into a position of bargaining power.

Hollywood producers have offered £100,000 to work in one film.  It seem they would go higher, if that is what she wants.  But she has turned them down.

"So far I have not been offered anything I want," she says.  "I don't want a long-term contract.  As an actress I will work where and for whom I want, if the script is exciting enough.

"If a script is good and they have a director I can trust, then I will do it."

Really it is a matter of time.  The big, international film-makers are confident they will have lassoed this high-spirited long-legged English girl long before Emma Peel loses her hold on the masses - if she ever does.

THE AVENGERS is eagerly watched each week in 40 countries, and Emma Peel (Mrs.) is the series' irrepressible whimsical Amazon of the jet set.  Men feast their eyes on her while muttering endearments in 22 languages, and their women try to emulate her - - but they never will, of course.

Consumption of champagne the world over has been increasing ever since John Steed and Emma Peel began toasting each other in bubbly stuff, from the television tube.

"Avengerwear" - - Emma's fancy "cat" suits and things - - is reaching the shelves and racks of department stores all over the world.

"Emma Peel's" international fan mail, still growing by leaps and bounds, promises to assume astronomical figures before the winter is out.

Diana never touches this mail and has enlisted mother, in Leeds, to head the Emma Peel fan mail operation.

Says Diana: "We have this room at home, measuring 20ft. by 15ft., and it is full of letters.  More are delivered each day - all addressed to me.

"I am supposed to answer them.  But I can't, and that worries me deeply.  I get persecuted by the mere thought that there's an obligation which I am not willing to fulfil.

"That is where mother comes in.  She reads, and she answers.  And I feel ashamed.  But I can't help it.

"People have made up their minds to identify me with a fantasy of theirs on television.  In their minds they want to have a relationship with me based on fantasy which can take any form.

"I have heard from my mother that there have been letters from children saying: "You look like my dead mother and so I write to you."  I think that is terrifying."

The story of Diana Rigg is, in a way, the story of two women - the real one and the imaginary one.  They are identical twins.

The conflict within this beautiful and intelligent young woman, who is just a little older than 29, reminds me of the case of Sean Connery, alias James Bond.

In Connery's case, though, there was resentment.  Connery, the man, gradually developing such a passionate hatred for the image he had created that he refused to continue as Bond even at a million dollars a throw.

He made his last two Bond films under protest.  Bond made him a multi-millionaire, but you cannot escape the feeling that he would settle for half this amount if his identity remained - that of himself and not that of the slick, women-loving, superb and deadly Secret Agent 007.

Emma Peel has some of the same qualities as 007, well-screened and suppressed, to fit into a family-watching hour on television.

The innuendo, contained in the name has been a source of Rigg's unconcealed unhappiness.

Asked what innuendo, she blushes and confides in a conspiratorial whisper: "Believe it or not, Emma Peel is a phonetical transposition of "M Appeal", the M in this case standing for Men.  In other words, "Men Appeal."  Isn't it a scream?  Sorry that I blush."

She adds wistfully: "I wanted to be Lady Peel, not for any grandiose reasons, but simply because it seemed to get some rather good comments over on the English aristocracy.  Of course they wouldn't do it."

"They" being the producers who have been running the show like a tightly-run ship.

Not unlike Sean Connery after "Goldfinger", Diana Rigg said goodbye to THE AVENGERS on the last day of a contractual stay at an ITV studio in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, last August 31st.

"They" were highly hopeful that she would be back, if not immediately, then later.

The production schedule could be stretched to accommodate her, she was reminded.  A new regime was taking command of the series, and this, it was felt, would offer Diana an incentive.

She was not sure.  But on the last day of the last batch at the close of shooting at 5.20pm she produced a bottle of champagne to toast her co-star and co-workers.

They had become a closely-knit family, and she would miss them if she were not to come back.

"I am devoted to Patrick," she says, referring to co-star Patrick Macnee, who plays John Steed.  "I'm frightened of minimising him by talking about him, because it always sounds so glib, but he's an extremely generous and gentle and marvellous man."

They are comrades-in-arms on television.   Off screen they are the best of friends, but that is all.  Macnee married a second time during the series.  Again to quote her, she is "totally committed" to another man.

Diana is simply devoted to a number of other people on the series, including her stand-in, Diana Enright, and her double, stunt-woman, Cyd Child, who resembles her so much that all three directors of the series have dared to have Cyd perform her stunts in full-face and semi-close-up.

Viewers have yet to write to complain that the girl hurling herself through the air at an adversary is not Diana Rigg.

And then, there's Diana's studio chauffeur, John Taylor, who is also her "Man Friday".

"I wouldn't know what to do without him," she says.  A confidante, he also does her shopping while she is working, and has the ability to always be there when needed.

Diana didn't join the series under duress.   She was tested for the role, as were others after John Steed's leading lady Cathy Gale (actress Honor Blackman) left the series - - ironically for a Bond flick, "Goldfinger".

Why did a promising young Shakespearean actress offer her services to a television series Shakespearean actors have looked down on with patronising dismay?  To quote the lovely Diana: "I did it because I had left the Royal Shakespeare Company knowing that if I renewed my contract and stayed on for three or four years, I would have progressed and played good parts, but I was yearning for additional scope.

"To accomplish this I would have to plunge into the deep end, and nothing seemed deeper than this.  I was right.  Nothing is deeper."

Before dawn in a delightfully feminine bedroom the phone jangles.  The young woman sleepily answers.  Then struggles out of bed, just like a scene from THE AVENGERS.

But the call was from the telephone service Diana Rigg instructed to wake her.  It is still only 6.30 a.m.  She gropes through the house, takes her luke-warm bath, drinks a glass of lemon juice.  Into the street by 6.50 a.m. - without a touch of make-up.  "I've got no vanity at that time of the morning."

North London's suburb of St. John's Wood is still fast asleep and there's no one to catch sight of Diana Rigg below her perfectly-groomed best.  Except John Taylor, her chauffeur.  He arrives a few minutes earlier, but his instructions are to wait .... about two lines are incoherent here...

"I'm never late," she shudders, "comatose that I still am, and I hate that sound of the bell - at this ghastly hour."

Off to the studios in Borehamwood, Herts.   She reads the morning paper on the way.

"It isn't my paper," she says, "It's John'.  I don't like it but it's the only paper there, so I read it.  Every morning."  Apparently it had never occurred to her to ask John to bring her a paper.  And so... another day in the life of Emma Peel.

This has been her routine since she became a television star.  Diana moved to this house, a lot more compatible with her status, from an old mews cottage she has lived in for five years.  Not that she was so concerned with status symbols.  Diana Rigg couldn't care less about such things.

She simply fell in love with the old house in St. John's Wood.  And her accountant approved of the move.

At her new address previously lived the artist Augustus John; and once Dame Laura Knight.

There, Diana Rigg now lives in the style and comfort of her private world revolving around a specially designed kitchen and window boxes sprouting home-grown herbs.

The house is out of bounds.  Except close friends.  Not that she is a recluse.  She feels that her life is her "own ruddy business".  But when in the mood, she will readily explain that she is every jealous of preserving her own privacy.

She insists on leading a life she considers right for her; not concerned with what she defines as "other people's social consciousness.  I like to do because I wish to, not because I ought to."

Diana was born in Doncaster, in Yorkshire, on July 20th, 1938.  She had spent the early part of her life at Jodhpur in Rajputna.  Her family was in the Indian Government Service.  Later, she was sent home to school at Great Missenden in Bucks.  Eventually, her parents returned to Yorkshire to settle in Leeds, where they now live.

There, Diana finished her education at Fulneck Girls' School, enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (The RADA) and two years later graduated to an acting career.  Was she withdrawn as a child?  "No, I don't think so.  I had the ability to withdraw and I still have it.  But above all I always has a strong sense of personal identity.

"One thing that I never did was dream.  I was always very practical.  I grew interested in the theatre when I was small but not because it offered me an entrance to a world of fantasy, but because it gave me a chance to assert myself.  And I loved its freedom.  I thought of it as a challenge."

Diana reflects: "I can still remember the first time I met an audience on these terms.  I was an understudy at Stratford-on-Avon, when I was called on to replace the principal in 'Alls Well That Ends Well'.  Her name was Priscilla Morgan.

"They gave me maybe an hour's rehearsal.  By a coincidence my parents were out front that night.  I didn't tell them that I was going on, so that when I came out and started shaking, they thought I was just walking on.  Then they realised, and sort of clutched each other in absolute fear.

"My fear was of a different kind.  I was simply not sufficiently prepared and so I was annoyed with myself.  Still, the audience was very kind as it always is when an understudy takes over and doesn't want to make a complete mess of the play, and I was led forward and allowed to take a solo bow.

"I played it for about a week, I guess.  And it was about the end of the week only that I began to enjoy it."

Then Diana was 20 years old and earning £7 10 shillings a week.  "To make ends meet, I was living on faggots, scraps of meat put inside intestines you still get at the butchers in the provinces.  Poor people's food.  They cost fourpence each.

"Four times a week, my dinner would consist of two faggots and maybe some potatoes and another vegetable, and fruit.  And you know what?  I was very healthy.  And very happy."

Diana had an old second-hand bicycle for transport around Stratford.  "And not only did I make the £7 10s stretch, but I could never do without perfume.  I guess I was so very young and this particular perfume was very heavy and musky and made me feel extremely sensual ... I never changed my perfume in all these years!"

Her faggot-eating period came to an end when she moved to London to appear in the London productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The bicycle went.  Now she drives a green Mini.  She lived in the mews cottage, all this still modestly.  No more faggots, but all the perfume that she felt was required, by a young actress, not too bad-looking.

She took a small bottle when she travelled to the United States, appearing in 'King Lear' and 'The Comedy of Errors' on alternate nights.

The company also toured the Continent, as far as Moscow.  From her experience on this tour comes Diana's boundless admiration for actor Paul Scofield.

"He's been my ideal since I first saw him on the stage.  I was working with him in 'King Lear' when I became aware of his sense of identity, a strong totally compromising identity."

She says: "The beauty of it is that here is a man who has just won an Oscar in an Oscar-winning film and Hollywood is after him.  What does he do?  He's gone back to Stratford.  Obviously, he doesn't care for the money.  And he's right.  Of course, it's your beliefs that matter.

"In a way I followed his example when I agreed to film "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  Peter Brook was doing it and I believe in him and I grew up with him, so I had to answer his call.  Professionally speaking, I am part of his troupe.

"Even though I think I'm too bad for the part.  The pay?  Obviously a pittance by comparison with what I'm making, but then, money is so transitory ...  I will not forget that I could, when forced to, live on £7 and 10 Shillings.

Tourists at Athens airport could swear that the young woman killing time in the long drab waiting room  by stopping at souvenir counters to inspect, for the umpteenth time, the pseudo-Grecian vases for sale was... Emma Peel.

She wore her auburn hair loose, letting it flow to her shoulders in the manner of the star of THE AVENGERS.  And her mini-skirt revealed a pair of very feminine, familiar and beautiful legs.

"It was not easy to say I was not Mrs. Peel," Diana Rigg recalls, "because I dislike lies.  But I would have had to explain why and what I was doing there, and it was a long story."

Actually, she was changing planes, going from London to a little-known place in Western Greece.

Eventually a shaky little plane which flies up into the mountains over some breathtakingly lovely countryside delivered her there, to make the trip worth her while.

Two days later, she took the same route back to London and Borehamwood, Herts., to resume where Emma Peel had left off.

It was an unconventional way to spend two days off the series.  "I go to the craziest places for the weekend," she said, dismissing all attempts to explain herself.

In the case of the Greek place, a British film unit was there shooting "Oedipus, The King", and lots of friends were there.

One weekend last winter she flew to Zurich, rented a car at the airport and set out, a map in her lap, for Klosters, the Swiss ski resort.

"I drove through the night, with the craziest Swiss drivers whizzing past me over the ice-covered road," she said.   "It twisted its way through the mountains, and I just hung on the wheel and prayed.  I could have turned back, but I didn't.  Too proud."

Until this experience, she had never motored on the Continent before, much less had snow-covered mountains by herself.

All of which seems to indicate that, not unlike Emma Peel, Diana Rigg is a rather unusual person.

It was she - and not Emma Peel - who helped to launch the mini-skirt, in an attempt to be different.

"The designer and the other men were horrified," she said, chuckling at memories of production executives looking aghast at the abbreviated skirt she was wearing and which she wanted Emma to wear.

"They pulled their hair ... said you can't do that, it's impossible ... I argued that one must look forward and not back and by wearing these brief skirts, one was looking forward.

"In fact, one was creating fashion very avant-garde, rather than remaining at the tail end of last year's styles.  And it turned out that I couldn't have been more right."

Not that she has profited financially from the so-called "Avenger-wear" that mirrors her ideas.  After all, she's an actress!

Nor does she care to identify with an image.  "I never wear the clothes in the series outside," she said.

"But there's a style there that I think is common to both of us, and I have no intention of changing my appearance after Emma Peel is no more.  After all, it was I who affected her."

She has no intention either of abandoning the mini-skirt, which, as far as she is concerned, was from the beginning Diana Rigg expressing herself.

Where the tastes of Emma Peel and Diana Rigg meet is champagne.  Emma loves it, Diana loves it.  And, for the record, she loved it before she became Emma Peel.

"I'm always very well stocked," she said, "but I never drink it at the studio.

"The stuff Patrick Macnee and I drink on camera is bubbly lemonade, very harmless.  I don't touch the stuff then.  You mustn't when you work.  At home, well, that's another story ..."

Diana's secret passion is to cook, and to have friends come to her house in London's St. John's Wood to enjoy her meals, without much ceremony, exquisitely prepared with the help of her home-grown herbs.

"I'm not joking," she proudly expounded on the subject of her herbs.  "They are all mine, and they all grow in window boxes outside my kitchen.  Every window has its own herbs.

"Left to right, I have sage, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, which is very beautiful, chervil, and two kinds of mint, sorrel and my bay trees.

"Bay tree leaves are marvellous for fish ... true mine are more like baby trees.  And basil, and fennel, and chives.  And that's it.  Except that they all live and prosper, outside my kitchen windows in London."  The secret passion of Diana Rigg ...

"I had always wanted to grow my own herbs," she said.  "This was my obsession.  So I got the address of a herb farm 95 miles out of town, and one morning I went there.

"A little old lady took me around and she muttered under her breath and said they would never grow in the London smoke.  I said I'd like to try anyway.  So, she shook her head and gave me what I wanted.

"They came in little pots, as I brought them back to London they were all looking sad and sick.

"So I put them in larger pots and stuck them in my window boxes and every day I watered them out of a jug.  And the miracle came to pass."

Diana Rigg has become enriched as an actress in the years at Stratford-on-Avon; on tours and the three years that she has played Emma Peel in THE AVENGERS.

She tells about the director she met at a party who told her he had a marvellous script for her.  She had it sent over.

"Well, if I wasn't the girl who comes tearing through the door with a gun in one hand and a flame-thrower in the other," she reported in mock despair, "I was the sexy siren sneaking through the door in Veronica Lake style.  I lost my temper, for the first time.

"I sent them a message saying that I couldn't do it."

[canaryrecords]

Eleven songs that Mary Steele recorded between October 1919 and ca. May 1921 were released on discs. This collection includes seven of those along with two sides by her sometimes accompanists, the Antoniou Brothers. She was one of only only four women to have recorded in the Turkish language (the only one who wasn’t Greek, it turns out), the second woman to have recorded in Arabic, and the only Woman and in Albanian in the U.S during the 1910s and 20s. Phrases in both Armenian and Kurdish turn up in her recordings. Because of her broad linguistic capabilities and her Anglicized name, she baffled me for years - who was she? where was she from? - and I would not have known anything substantial about her had I not been contacted by her great-grandnephew Rob Steel. He has done a lot of research on her, providing a basis from which I could do some more investigation. What follows is an amalgamation of what we have learned. Mary Steele was born in Mersin, Turkey February 21, 1887, the sixth of eight children. Steele’s father was Hanna Luke Boulad, born July 15, 1856 in Aintab (now Gaziantep) in southern Turkey who came from a Melkite Catholic family. While attending a Presbyterian missionary college in Mersin he met Mary’s mother Freda, a fellow student, who had been born in Aleppo, Syria August 31, 1860. They were married and had their first child Phoebe in 1875 in Gaziantep. Over the next 25 years, Hanna took various teaching jobs back and forth from one city to the next, spending a few years in Mersin, a few in Gaziantep, then Tarsus, then back to Gaziantep, then Mersin, back to Gazientep, back to Mersin, then finally, by 1900, to Beirut by which time they had eight children, all boys except Phoebe, the oldest, and Mary, who was then 13. At the urging of a missionary neighbor in Beirut, an American Consul named Dr. Metheny, they sent their two eldest sons, Saul and Alex, to the U.S. In 1901, they sent two more sons William and John. By 1902, Freda Boulad was disconsolate at the breakup of her family, so, with sponsorship from the Presbyterian church, Hanna sold his possessions and packed up the family of including his wife, two small boys,15-year-old Mary, her older sister Phoebe, and Phoebe’s husband and two children, and they sailed from Beirut to Marseille to Philadelphia, arriving August 13, 1902. The family settled in south Philadelphia. By 1910 56 year old Hanna had left behind the life of a scholar and was working as an upholsterer, living on Glenmore Ave. with his wife, a 27 year old son Joseph (also in upholstering), his wife Christine and their two children, and an 11 year old son Benjamin (working in a soap factory). The family name Boulad (meaning, roughly, “strong” in Arabic) had been changed at the port to Steele, and Hanna was called John. His gifts for language were utilized periodically, including, according to family lore, consultation with Egyptologist Dr. Howard Carter (best known at the discoverer of Tutankhamen’s grave), but he resigned himself, unhappily it seems, to American life. While most of the family stayed settled in the working-class south Philly suburbs of Glenolden and Collingdale for decades, Mary Steele traveled. Family documents refer to her having been married at 14, but the first marriage we’re fairly sure of is to one William Gladstone Richardson in January 1912 in either Iowa City or Chicago, depending on which document can believed. Richardson was Mary’s age, 25 at the time, and a native of Farina IL. They apparently had a child and were still married and living together in St. Louis, Missouri in 1920. Richardson he died in 1958, now buried in Ronan, Montana. Steele seems to have spent the better part of 30 years living the life of a performer on the road. She turned up in in New York City at the age of 32 for six recording sessions for the Victor company from October 2 through December 24, 1919. Accompanied by a portly pair of cymbalom- and clarinet-playing Greek brothers from Samos (an island that remained a semi-independent Ottoman territory until it was repatriated to Greece in 1913 during the First Balkan War), she initially recorded four songs in Arabic. The first disc was given a write-up blurb in Victor’s Arabic catalog of the time: “The first selection ‘My Rose’ tells of a youth’s ardent admiration for his sweetheart whose beauty he compares to the rose. In the song on the reverse of the record, ‘Father I Want to Get Married,” a girl confesses to her father her love for a blind man and she tells him that even his misfortune will not detain her from marrying him. The composer, Mme S. Mary, a new Victor artist, sings these Syrian melodies to the accompaniment of cymbal and clarinet.” A few days later, the Antoniou Brothers made four instrumental sides which were released as part of Victor’s Greek series, two of which include Steele playing percussion (and on one of which she can be heard shouting encouragement to the players in the background). The trio returned to the studio every couple weeks over the next two months, cutting four songs in Greek and Albanian over and over again. Victor’s recordists must have thought they had something special in Steele as a performer to let her cut the song “Cuchawaki (The Gamblers)” a total of fifteen times, “Ismenyes” twelve times, and “Ardhi Koha A Bekuar” eleven times during a period when most immigrant musicians got only one or two takes to complete a performance for release. Only the latter of those three songs, translated from Albanian as “Hurrah for the Nation” was ever issued with “Flamuri (The Flag)” (completed in three takes) as its flip, likely as an attempt to salvage something salable from the sessions. The disc sold poorly, which is unsurprising given that the Albanian-speaking population of the U.S. numbered only a few thousand at the time. (Notably, Victor only ever issued four other discs in Albanian, all recorded in 1917-18 by Giuseppe Mauro with accompaniment by the house orchestra before trying one last time in 1924 when they issued five songs by Adreas Pappas-Athanas Mone.) Around March of 1921, she recorded again, this time with a new band for Columbia at their Woolworth Building studios. In two sessions, she knocked out five songs in a combination of Turkish and Arabic in one or two takes. One of the songs was issued as the flip side of a song by Marika Papagika (one of the rare instances of Papagika singing in Turkish). After her session in May 1921, she never recorded again. The 1930 census found Steele living with a Greek man named Stelianos Grigorlides at the New Jackson Hotel in Chicago’s Greektown, giving her occupation as “dancer” and her language spoken other than English as “Armenian.” May 1931, she married an Athenian named George Zamanos in New York City, but it didn’t last. By 1935, at the age of 48, she heeded the family call and moved to Jacksonville, Florida to take care of her then-widowed mother Freda. Her brother John (b. 1886) died that year; Alex (b. 1882) had died in 1915. While she was there, she filed her Declaration of Intent to naturalize as a U.S. citizen, having lived as an alien in this country for 35 years. She gave her race and nationality as “Armenian.” We can only speculate that as a Christian from Turkey, having lived among Greeks and Armenians in nightclubs, theaters, and coffeehouses for decades, her identification with those groups was stronger, or potentially easier for mainstream America to comprehend, than with her Arab family. Or perhaps her mother was Armenian? By 1940, Mary Steele had resettled closer to her remaining family in south Philadelphia at 2535 67th St. living with an Armenian rug cleaner named Harry Hachrian, who was listed as a lodger in a house she owned. She gave her marital status as “widow,” but in March 1944 she filed a summons for divorce against George Zamanos in Nevada, apparently the last place she knew that he’d lived. She apparently died in 1948, about age 60. Her younger brother Joseph, born Sept. 6, 1895 in Gaziantep, also wound up working in show-biz as Ingrid Bergman’s business manager. In 1959, he published a memoir titled Ingrid Bergman: An Intimate Portrait. He died in 1980.

[nicolewoo]

First night on the road

Pairing: Finn Balor x Reader

Scenario: It’s the reader’s first night backstage at RAW and meeting the good brothers.

Warnings: A little cursing

I'd only been in the arena for a few minutes before I heard a delighted scream. “YYYY/NNNNNNN” Ettore was running straight for me. He wrapped me in a huge hug, picking me up off my feet and spinning me around. “I heard you were coming to work with us!!!” Kofi and Austin followed close behind wrapping me in a giant group hug.

“Who's here?” Kofi asked jokingly, and all three members of The New Day began chanting “Who?” “Who?” “Who?”

“Y/N! That's who!” Ettore said.

I couldn't help the laughter that escaped me. I felt a pair of hands wrap around my waist and pull me back from the pack of jokers. “Easy now fellas. T'is one's mine.” Fergal joked as he pulled me against his chest.

“So the rumors are all true?” Austin asked.

All three of them looked to Fergal and I. I paused for effect but smiled big and said “Yes.”

“You're really working for RAW?” Kofi asked.

“No.” I corrected. “I'm working for the WWE, but for NXT.” I informed them.

“But you're on the road with us?” Ettore questioned.

“Yep.” I grinned at them all.

At that, Fergal and I were wrapped in a giant group hug again.

“Seriously though,” Austin said after a second. “We are so glad everything worked out for you.” He paused before adding “Both of you.” He wiggled an eyebrow at Fergal. “But why are you traveling with RAW if you're working for NXT?”

“I can work anywhere, and they wanted to keep Fergal and I together, so here I am.” I explained hoping that they wouldn't ask more questions about what I do for the company.

Kofi asked, “So what are you doing for the WWE?” Figures.

I pondered a second before answering, “It's all technical social media stuff.” I tried to appease them, but they were having none of it. They stared at me expecting a little more information.

Austin was the one who spoke, “Go on. We're smart men. What type of technical social media stuff?”

Fergal stepped in now, “Guys, she's not allowed to talk about it. She has an NDA.”

That brought a couple of raised eyebrows. “So, you're like the WWE CIA or something?” Ettore joked.

“Something like that. A little more like MI6 actually.” I laughed, grateful for both Ferg and Ettore for allowing me an easy way to end the questions.

“Now young lady,” Kofi wrapped an arm over my shoulders. “You're gonna have dinner with us, right?”

“Guys, it's her first night....” Fergal was going to say something else, but Ettore cut her off.

“Then she's lucky to have friends to eat dinner with. You can't hide her away from us Ferg. You can come to dinner too.” Kofi said.

I knew Fergal didn't like to eat at catering. He preferred to grab his food and go eat alone or with the good brothers, so I knew a compromise was in order. “Gentlemen,” I butted in. “How about we all eat together tomorrow? I promise. I just want to get familiar with everything today.” I smiled warmly, and they smiled back.

“Tomorrow then.” Austin ceded.

“I'm gonna get her settled in, guys. We'll have dinner tomorrow.” Fergal promised. I got hugs from each of them before we left.

Walking through the halls I got a LOT of odd looks. Some seemed confused, some seemed unhappy. No matter how they looked, everyone noticed Fergal and I walking in together. I heard whispers behind us after we passed. Fergal squeezed my hand to reassure me. “Give t'em time. T'ey'll love you once t'ey get ta know ya.” He gave me a warm smile and ran his thumb over my knuckles. “Here we are.” Ferg knocked on the door that had a piece of paper taped to it reading BALOR CLUB. He ducked his head in checking to make sure everyone was decent.

“I haven't been this nervous since I first met you.” I admitted.

Fergal grabbed my hand, “No reason to be nervous. T'ey're gonna luv ya.” Ferg looked down at me, “No reason to be nervous. Trust me, luv.” He placed a quick kiss on my forehead then opened the door.

Chad (Carl Anderson) and Andy (Luke Gallows) were both dressed in their ring gear. Both were taller than I thought; which only intimidated me more.

“There she is!” said Chad and he walked full speed to wrap me in a giant hug. I'm usually a hugger, but not before I've even met someone. A split second later, Andy joined the hug and pulled Fergal in too.

“Group hug!” he practically yelled.

“All right. All right.” Ferg said pushing the boys back. “Give her some room to breath.” He wrapped his arm around my waist. “You ok, luv?”

The combination of my anxiety and the crazy greeting had me laughing. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Enough mushy, Ferg.” Chad said. “She's gonna have to get used to us hugging her,” he smiled at me.

“Y/N these are t'e good brothers, Chad and Andy,” he introduced the duo properly. I noticed the smiles on their faces as they shook my hand.

“Good to meet the woman who put a permanent smile on Ferg here.” Andy said as he patted Ferg on the shoulder a bit too hard.

Chad and Andy had the first match of the night and Fergal had the second to last match, which meant I'd have someone with me at all times. It was a comforting thought. I knew the boys would be kind when in charge of me.

After Fergal got into his ring gear, we headed to a nearby room to watch the show with other talent. By the time we headed back to the dressing room, the boys were showered and dressed in street clothes.

“Do you want to watch Fergy's match?” Andy asked.

I nodded yes, “If you don't mind.” The three of us settled headed back into the common area to watch the match.

Watching Ferg wrestle before I met him was one thing. Now that we were together, I cringed at every hit he took. Andy took notice and patted my shoulder reassuringly. “You'll get used to it, Y/N.”

“He's the best, well, besides me. Nothing to worry about.” Chad said.

“You say that like he hasn't just returned from 7 months of recovery.” I said quietly.

“I know it's all a bit scary,” Andy said, “But once you get to know more about wrestling, you'll learn what can hurt a wrestler and what just looks dangerous.” His assurance didn't help, because I knew that any move could hurt someone if done wrong. Needless to say, I was happy when the match was over.

After the match, we went back to the locker room and talked while Fergal got showered and dressed.

“Ok, I'm starved. Let's get some food.” Chad said bluntly as Fergal finished dressing.

We all followed behind and climbed into the SUV the good brothers had rented for this leg of the journey. The boys started immediately asking about me. “How do you like it in the WWE?” “Tell us your hobbies.” “Favorite music.” Thankfully, it was a quick drive, because I was starting to feel like I was being interrogated.

Ferg squeezed my hand before we got out. I was finally getting used to the idea that I couldn't touch him in public. Andy opened my door, and helped me onto the sidewalk. Ferg came around the car and placed his hand on the small of my back. Andy then placed his hand higher on my back. I cocked my head a bit and looked to Fergal for an explanation. “Ah, t'e brothers.... actually t'e whole roster will help cover any PDAs. If I touch you, and someone else touches you, t'e press and fans won't assume you're dating anyone.... jus' t'at we're all friends. It's how everyone keeps their relationships secret.”

“That's genius.” I declared.

The restaurant was beautiful and posh. Low lights, candles, classical music, white tablecloths. We followed the maitre d to a side room just off the main dining room. We were still within view of the other patrons, but partially blocked. I could see the guys appreciated a bit of privacy. Just a bit.

We were joined by Benjamin Satterley (Neville) and Rami Sebei (Sami Zayn). Once we settled in, the conversation became all about wrestling. First, the wrestling here at the WWE. Story lines, who's the best heel, etc. Then came the old “embarrassing” stories from NJPW. Chad was dead set on telling me every crazy thing Fergal did while in Japan. Ferg was turning brighter shades of red with each story. Ben must have noticed, because he stopped Chad by turning the conversation to me.

We discussed my work history and what it was like to live just across the river from St. Louis. The guys were all excited for their next show in St. Louis because I agreed to show them the city. When the conversation turned to what my role was in the WWE, I panicked. The Non-disclosure-agreement loomed in my mind. “I'm working with creative.”

“Thank the heavens!” Ben said. “Maybe you can get the writers' heads out of their arses,” He started, but Fergal stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Guys, she's just started. She's not even working on the main roster. She's working with NXT.” He interjected.

“And actually,” I continued, “I'm working with the social media side of things,” I said shyly. I didn't want to disappoint them, but it was true. Of course, I didn't offer up that much of what I was doing.

Rami jumped in to calm the boys, “As long as you're happy and you're sticking around. I haven't seen this guy” He patted Ferg on the shoulder, “so happy in ages.” That made Ferg smile shyly.

“Wait.” Ben started, “You're working on NXT, and you're on the road with RAW? That makes no sense.” He looked to me for answers, but I didn't have any that I could say aloud. My eyes shot to Fergal who promptly changed the subject. “Guys, it's boring.... trust me.” Well THAT wasn't the response I wanted. I elbowed Ferg in the ribs. “I just mean, that none of us would want to do it. Sitting at a computer all day isn't our idea of fun.”

“You're not out of the dog-house yet,” I teased.

Fergal snaked an arm around my waist, and to cover the PDA, Rami wrapped his arm around my shoulder. Both of them leaned in to kiss my cheek. “The other patrons are going to think I'm a slut.” I joked nodding my head to the other dining room.

Just then, the food arrived breaking up the whole thing. Chad and Andy insisted I sit between them; Ferg across from me. I almost protested, but it really was the smartest move to keep our relationship a secret from the public. At least this way, I got to enjoy the salacious looks Ferg shot at me and the warm smile as he talked to his friends. He really was too beautiful. I said a thankful prayer in my head.

Dinner was eaten, jokes were told, stories were re-lived, laughter and joy all around.

When the plates were cleared, the conversation turned to Fergal's injury and the time off. I could see a hint of pity on all of the guys faces when talking about the 7 months off, but Ferg smiled the whole time.

“I neva woulda met t'is wonderful lass if it wasn't for t'e injury.” He beamed at me, and my heart swelled with joy. I hoped he meant it.

“Here's to bad circumstances that bring us joy,” Rami raised a glass to toast, and we did.

We were then interrupted once by a young boy about 8 years old. He'd spotted the superstars from the main dining room. He knocked on the door jamb with father in tow and asked for autographs. His dad apologized for interrupting our night, but the boys were happy to put a smile on the kid's face. The father explained that his son was obsessed with wrestling and wanted to become a wrestler. Ben made sure to tell the boy, “Find me when you graduate from school. I might need a tag team partner then.” It was really sweet.

By the time we climbed back into the SUV to go back to the hotel, I was exhausted. I snuggled up close to Fergal and rested my head on his shoulder. Chad and Andy were shockingly quiet, and I was nearly asleep by the time we arrived.

“Let's get ya inside.” Ferg whispered as he helped me out of the car and up to our hotel room. “Did ya have a good first day on t'e road?” He asked as we got ready for sleep.

I nodded yes. “Good but tiring.” I admitted as I crawled under the covers and Ferg crawled in behind me pulling me against his chest and wrapping his arm around me.

[tornbetween2loves]

Lifelong Love

This series takes place in an A/U for Desire and Decorum. In this series, the Earl of Edgewater stays married to Mary and they raise the MC together. My MC is Lady Elizabeth Ann of Edgewater. With no one to question her inheritance of Edgewater, Elizabeth is free to choose who she wishes to marry. She and Ernest Sinclaire grew up together and are childhood friends. Briar is still her maid, having travelled to Edgewater for work. Harry never existed and although Mr. Marlcaster is present for the social season, he is not associated with Edgewater. This series won’t really follow canon, but there will be some events based on it. Oh and in this series, Lady Elizabeth does not lose her parents. At least not right away. Who knows what may happen in the future?

Read previous parts on my masterlist here.

Taglist: @darley1101 @blackcatkita @walkerduchess @indiacater @stopforamoment @hunt-sinclaire-raines @hellospunkiebrewster @kennaxval @drakenazario @annieleigha @alesana45 @bella-ca @littleredroseonthevalley @boneandfur

I just updated my taglists so if I missed you please let me know.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Pixelberry. I am simply borrowing them.

Word count: 1,926

Part 2: There’s Nothing Fun About Being Proper

I rolled my eyes as my mother and grandmother bickered back and forth about the events of the social season. I tried to suppress a yawn, but I was growing weary of their arguments. “I am certain, if we play our cards right, that we can secure an invitation to Opera St. John from Duke Richards,” lady grandmother said. My mother’s face turned red as she threw up her arms in exasperation. “Do you really think I would not be able to get us in there? I was once one of their most famous singers.” Grandmother sighed heavily. “That’s not the point Mary. The social season is about finding a suitable match for Elizabeth. In order to do that, she must be in the company of suitors. Attending Opera St. John with the general public is not an option.” Just when I was about to open my mouth to stop this madness, our carriage jostled, sending me flying across the way, landing at my grandmother’s feet.

“Oh my, Elizabeth! Are you all right?” My mother stood up to help me up off the floor as my grandmother opened the door of the carriage. “What happened,” she demanded of the driver. “You jostled us so badly Elizabeth was thrown from her seat. This is unacceptable.”

“My apologies, madam. I tried to swerve to miss a rather sizable hole in the road, but there wasn’t enough time. Please come outside and get some air while I inspect the wheel and axle for any damage.” I was back on my feet standing in front of Lady Grandmother and I suppressed a giggle as I thought back to Annabelle’s description of her when she was angry. Mr. Harper was driving us to London to begin the social season. I shot him an amused look which made my mother giggle. Grandmother rolled her eyes and groaned. “You two are impossible,” she said as she stood. Mr. Harper held out his hand and met my eyes as he helped me down from the carriage. I smiled at him sweetly. Luke Harper and I were quite close, we shared a love of horses. We shared many hours together in the stables, chatting as we tended the horses together. It was he who taught me how to ride, and we were frequent riding partners. “It’s quite all right Mr. Harper,” I said as I stepped down from the carriage. “I think I was quite ready to stretch my legs.” He bowed his head at me and winked. “Thank you miss.” He helped my mother and grandmother down and led us over to a shaded spot under a massive oak tree.

“Please, rest. I won’t be but a few minutes,” he said with a slight bow. I stood beneath the tree taking in my surroundings. The day had grown quite hot during our travels. We had left in the coolness of early morning but that had all burned off. Everything was slightly wet, as if it had just been raining. My brow furrowed as I shot my mother a questioning look. “Has it been raining?” She shrugged in answer as lady grandmother nodded. “I believe its been drizzling lightly all morning,” she said and looked at me pointedly. “You should get used to it. It rains a lot in London this time of year.” I nodded and smiled at her. “You know I love the rain grandmother,” I said with a gleam in my eye.

She eyed me sternly and said, “Yes my dear. I know all too well about your antics in the rain. But you must remember you are officially a lady of the court. Dancing in the rain is not appropriate or becoming of a lady of your stature.” I sighed. “Don’t ladies of the court ever get to have any fun?” My mother stifled a laugh, causing grandmother to shoot her a sideways glance and clear her throat. “Of course, dear. You can have all the fun you want as long as it’s proper.”

Proper? There was nothing fun about being proper.

“My ladies, the carriage is fixed, but perhaps you would like me to lay out the picnic lunch we have packed? It is almost time and we are about halfway to London.” We all nodded in agreement. “That sounds lovely Mr. Harper,” I said with a smile. He moved to retrieve a blanket from the back of the carriage and I followed. “May I offer you my assistance, Mr. Harper,” I asked, keeping my proper demeanor until I was out of earshot of lady grandmother. I sighed deeply once I rounded the back of the carriage. “I really don’t know how I’m going to stand this, Luke,” I said. “I just feel so stuffy and pretentious. Not to mention this all seems so unnecessary.” He smiled at me as he unstrapped the picnic basket from the back of the carriage. “I know how you feel. It feels absolutely ridiculous to refer to you so formally, Beth Ann.” He reached up to brush a stray strand of hair out of my eyes. My stomach fluttered as his hand brushed my cheek ever so slightly. We stood there, gazing into each other’s eyes, for a moment that seemed much longer. I couldn’t help but feel a connection to Luke. We had so much in common. All the afternoons spent riding and bonding over the care of the horses. Edgewater was famous for their horses and Luke took a lot of pride in their care. This was not the first time I noticed a longing in his gaze, and also not the first time I ignored it. I couldn’t deny that he was handsome, and maybe if our stations in life were different.....

“Lady Elizabeth, what are you doing over there?” My grandmother’s words broke the spell of our gaze as I grabbed the blanket from him and made my way back to the tree. “Nothing lady grandmother. I was simply getting a blanket to spread so we could sit.” I unfolded the blanket, shaking it out and spreading it on the ground under the tree. We all sat down as Luke approached with lunch. He kneeled on the blanket and spread the contents of the basket in front of us. Then he stood and bowed, retreating to the carriage as we ate.

I tried to focus on the conversation my mother and grandmother were having about the upcoming events of the social season. But I found it all so dreadfully dull that my mind kept wandering. I gazed off into the distance, imagining myself on the journey back to Edgewater with my engagement ring from Ernest sparkling on my finger. How I longed to see him again! It ached being apart from him so long. I was so used to seeing him almost daily. I remembered last year, when he attended London’s social season and I did not. It was then that I grew close to Luke. I found myself being overtly flirty and affectionate toward Luke because I was missing Ernest. I knew it was unfair, but I couldn’t help it. And now I was filled with regret as I observed Luke sitting in the driver’s seat of the carriage eating his own lunch. I know he has feelings for me. And I will admit to having a fondness for him too. But it is nothing compared to what I feel for Ernest. The mere mention of his name sends my heart aflutter.

“So what is our strategy for Mr. Sinclaire’s dinner party tomorrow evening?” My head snapped back toward my mother’s question. I couldn’t help the excited grin that spread across my face. “Wait. The first event of the social season is a dinner party hosted by Ernest?” I giggled at the thought, then my smile faded as I realized my mistake. Lady grandmother looked at me sternly. “Elizabeth Ann, you simply must stop referring to gentlemen by their first names. Especially once we reach London. It isn’t proper. I know you have a history with Mr. Sinclaire and hold a special fondness for him, but propriety is of the utmost importance.”

I nodded my head and cast my eyes downward. “Yes grandmother, I’m sorry. I lost my head for a moment. It won’t happen again.” I looked up to meet my mother’s eyes and saw laughter behind them. I know it’s her influence that rubbed off on me to make me feel like propriety was a waste of time. She always said she never understood it either. And she’s told me countless times about how she thinks the entire social season is a comical farce.

“I’m so sorry you have to go through all this Elizabeth,” mother had said one morning after a particularly stern scolding from my grandmother about propriety. I looked at her and sighed deeply. “I just don’t get it. Why is it so important?” She stood up and approached me, sitting down next to me and grasping my hands in hers. “My beautiful daughter, I am not the one to explain the nuances of this lifestyle. To be honest, you and I are in agreement. I think it’s all ridiculous.” She glanced about the room, making sure we were totally alone, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “But I can teach you how to fake it my dear. I’ve been faking it for years. Just find someone you love and get him to propose. Once you’re married it’s all just a public image.”

“The Sinclaire family has hosted the premier dinner party of the season for generations. It’s tradition.” Lady grandmother said. I nodded, remembering her mentioning that at some point. At least I wouldn’t have to wait too long to see Ernest. And what torture it must be for him to host a dinner party! I know how much he despises being social. He really becomes quite surly in crowds. He needs a wife to host for him, to focus on all the details so he can just retreat to his study when he feels overwhelmed. I imagined myself answering the door of the Sinclaire townhouse at next year’s premier dinner, with Ernest by my side. Greeting our guests and chatting with all of them happily, then looking up to meet his gaze across the room. I could imagine his eyes darkening as he looked at me with longing, and wondering if we would be able to wait for the party to be over or if we could sneak off before.....

“My ladies, I believe we should be going if we are to reach London before dark,” Luke said, snapping me out of my reverie. I stood up and headed back to the carriage, excited to get to London.

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

Thankfully, the remainder of the trip to London passed quietly as my mother and grandmother napped most of the way. I could not rest, however, my mind was filled with thoughts of London. It is hard to describe my emotions. I am excited to finally be a part of society, ready to attend parties and meet new people. But that excitement grows from the knowledge that if I play this game correctly, I will be rewarded with a grand prize. A husband better suited to me than any man in this world. I’ve spent most of my childhood learning the rules of propriety and good manners. This felt like my final test. If I can pull this off, just get through this social season, the rest of my life would fall into place.

[peckhampeculiar]

A Stella performance

Peckham resident Stella Barnes has just taken over as artistic director of Longfield Hall in Camberwell. We met her to find out more about the role at the local institution

Words: Luke G Williams; Photo: Alexander McBride Wilson  

As she approaches the debut season of her tenure as artistic director of Longfield Hall, Stella Barnes is positively bubbling with enthusiasm and artistic energy.

When I ask her to pick out the most exciting highlights of the upcoming offerings at the arts and community venue on Knatchbull Road, near Myatt’s Field park in Camberwell, the long-time Peckham resident laughs and declares: “It’s all exciting!”

Longfield Hall is, she admits, “a well-kept secret which has to stop being a secret now”.

And if anyone has the professional experience to ensure the institution scales new heights then it is Stella, whose track record in the arts industry is stellar, as evidenced by her recent award of a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

The journey that has led Stella to Longfield Hall is a fascinating one, which begins with the amazing story of her mother, Beatrix Barnes.

“My mum arrived as an unaccompanied refugee in London in 1938,” Stella tells me. “She’s Jewish and was born in what’s now the Czech Republic but was living in Vienna with her family. My grandmother put her and her brother on a train in Vienna not knowing if she would ever see them again.

“My mum was six and her brother was seven-and-a-half. Initially, she was sent away to a boarding school in Gloucestershire. Eventually her mum also came over and they all lived in London together in one room on the Finchley Road in absolute poverty.

“Because my family had come from Austria, when Britain joined the war in 1939 they were classified as enemy aliens and were interned on the Isle of Man. So they lived most of the rest of the war, basically, as prisoners. My granny kept trying to get the family released by trying to prove she wasn’t a threat. Eventually she succeeded.”

After I express my astonishment that Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis were treated in such a way by the British authorities, Stella points out: “It’s not part of the traditional narrative of World War II. There’s not very much written about these internment camps.”

I put it to Stella that the experiences of her refugee mother seem to have left an indelible imprint on her – an imprint that accounts for the emphasis on social justice which characterises her career, which has largely been spent working with refugees and other marginalised groups.

“Yes,” she agrees. “My mum’s work was all in the area of social justice too – she’s 86 now and still teaches English to refugees. Her family have always had a strong motivation to do something that mattered.

“Growing up I always knew about my mum’s story. We grew up in a very conventional and traditional village in Tyneside, and my mum was the most exotic person in the village! Nobody had a mum who had a story like my mum!”

Stella herself was born in Ethiopia in 1962 (“very random, I know! After my parents got married they went to Ethiopia to teach - I think they wanted to have an adventure!”) and gained a degree in Drama from Bretton Hall, Yorkshire (“a very experimental and radical college”) before moving to London in 1985.

“My sister was living in Camberwell in a council flat so I came down to London and my first home was literally within spitting distance of Longfield Hall on the Wyndham Estate.

“In the late 1980s, when I was pregnant with my first child, I moved to Peckham. That was 30 years ago and I’ve been living in the same flat ever since – while my mum lives in the flat downstairs!

“I love Peckham and I’ve loved it from the beginning. I love the diversity. The one thing that bothers me now is that Peckham is still very diverse, but it’s becoming less so. The whole gentrification thing I find quite difficult and a real loss in terms of cultural diversity.”

During those early years in Camberwell and Peckham, Stella threw herself into the youth theatre scene.

“I did all sorts of jobs in youth theatre and then in the 1990s I worked for an organisation called Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre for over ten years. I also trained to be a teacher and worked as a drama teacher in Tower Hamlets for a couple of years.”

However, it was a nine-year spell as director of participation at the Ovalhouse theatre in Kennington that made Stella’s name in the local community, as well as establishing her reputation for working alongside refugee groups.

“I’d started my work with refugees in Greenwich and Lewisham in about 1999,” she explains. “There was hardly any sustained work in the arts for refugees at that point. No one had really developed a philosophy or methodology around that work. At that time there were a lot of unaccompanied young people arriving from Kosovo and Afghanistan especially and people didn’t really have as sense of how to deal with this.

“The Arts Council set up something called The Refugee and Arts Initiative and we started meeting up and developing this work with each other. It was particularly important that we worked with artists from refugee backgrounds and that it was a real collaboration.

“It was a really exciting time – the work felt new and innovative and my work at Ovalhouse built on that with our programme for young people and refugees. As my work has developed, I’ve been interested in working more cross-culturally, for example, working with refugees in groups which also include people from more established communities.”

As well as her work at Ovalhouse, Stella also jointly established Platforma, a national network for refugee related arts and founded Flight Paths, a London-wide programme for exiled artists which provided training in arts education practice.

Now she is relishing her next challenge as artistic director of Longfield Hall.

“Longfield Hall is really at the heart of the community and is very well loved by locals,” she enthuses. “One woman who attends our community singing group said Longfield Hall had changed her life making her much, much happier!

“This is what attracted me to the place. The organisation is really committed to being a resource for local people and is incredibly welcoming.  We need more spaces like Longfield Hall, places that invite people in.”

What, then, will characterise the ethos of her tenure?

“A lot of the arts is subsidised by public money, by the Arts Council, the local authority, the National Lottery and so on,” she says. “Yet there’s a significant proportion of the population who don’t get the benefit of that money. They’re kind of excluded from the arts.

“You can put labels on those people and there are all sorts of factors that exclude people from the arts. But now I’m in the position of programming theatre I’m really interested in working with artists who are trying to make that change and are think about how theatre can be accessible to everybody so there aren’t those kind of barriers.

“One of our priorities is that the work at Longfield Hall has to be outward facing and that we can identify an audience for it. It can’t be someone’s pet ego project! It must be work that is relevant to 21st century Londoners and also considers diversity in its broadest sense. It can’t all be from the same voice. The season has to reflect that.”

Stella also hopes to gradually move away from the model of having a traditional artistic director calling the shots.

“My ambition is to ultimately have a community programming team including people recruited form the local community that really reflects the local community. People who are paid and trained who would have a pot of money to commission work from artists.”

Stella’s first season certainly seems to possess the variety, ambition and diversity one would expect.

One of the most eagerly awaited performances will be a play called ‘Borderline: Welcome to the UK’, a satire on the UK asylum system mounted by PsycheDelight, a theatre group consisting of an ensemble of refugees and European performers. [Performances 9, 10 and 11 November].

“I’m really excited about PsycheDelight,” Stella admits. “Their first show was brilliant and now they’ve created this second show, which is set in a fairground. It’s going to be riotous and there’s something for everyone in it.

“We’ve also got an event called ‘Youth Jam’ [30 November], which is an opportunity for local young people to come and perform anything they’ve created themselves – from singer-songwriters to spoken word artists to dancers.”

Time constraints prohibit the Peckham Peculiar from asking Stella about every event on the packed Longfield Hall calendar, although she does have time to add: “Our season ends with a lovely company we’re building a long-term relationship with called String Theatre, led by an Argentinean artist called Soledad Zarate, who hand carves long-stringed marionettes.

“It’s a show called ‘The Red Balloon’, which is an absolutely beautiful and enchanting story about a child’s friendship with his balloon. Children and adults will both love it.”

As our conversation draws to a close, I remind Stella that she is now the third member of her family to have featured in the Peckham Peculiar, with her sons Elliot Barnes-Worrall and Conrad Kira – an actor and musical artist respectively - having preceded her in these pages.

“You just have to do an article about my mum and you’ve got the full set,” she laughs. “I think Peckham Peculiar is brilliant at profiling inspirational young people who are doing brilliant and incredible things. “I’m really glad these young people are getting the profile they deserve and most of all I’m glad you featured my sons before me! That’s the right way around, I’m very proud of them!”

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Full Line-up Announced for 2018 Overlook Film Festival – April 19-22, New Orleans

The Overlook Film Festival has just dropped an incredible line-up of horror and genre films, interactive exhibits and panels for the 2018 event.  Happening April 19th-22nd, genre audiences will descend upon the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, for premiere screenings of Hereditary, Unfriended: Dark Web, St. Agatha, Ghost Stories, among many others.

We attended to the 2017 Overlook Film Fest atop Mount Hood at the infamous Timberline Lodge (exterior setting of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining) and it was our favorite festival experience of the year. From the second you enter the fest, you step into a world of film, interactive horror, and sensory experiences. We had such a good time, we’ve already booked ourselves in for 2018’s events. And now that they’ve announced the line-up, I can hardly wait..

  From the Press Release

(NEW ORLEANS, LA) – The Overlook Film Festival is proud to announce its second year programming lineup. In addition to the 40 films (23 features and 17 short films from 12 countries) on offer, the festival will feature exciting parties, virtual reality, interactive events, and live performances – all taking place in America’s most haunted city: New Orleans, Louisiana.

On opening night of the festival, audience members will enjoy the chiller Unfriended: Dark Web (United States, 2018), from Blumhouse Productions and Bazelevs Productions, directed by Stephen Susco, and starring Colin Woodell, Betty Gabriel, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Andrew Lees, Connor del Rio, Stephanie Nogueras, and Savira Windyani.

The Overlook Film Festival will screen A24’s highly anticipated Hereditary (United States, 2018) as its closing feature presentation, directed by Ari Aster, and starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne.

The Centerpiece of the 2018 edition of The Overlook Film Festival is St. Agatha, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, which will hold its world premiere in New Orleans at the festival.

The festival’s Visionary Award will be presented to modern genre favorite Leigh Whannell, best known for writing the first three films in the Saw franchise, as well as Insidious, and Insidious: Chapter 2, and directing Insidious: Chapter 3. Whannell is an Australian screenwriter, producer, director, and actor who will celebrate his latest directorial effort at the festival, Upgrade. The Visionary Award was established to honor a contemporary horror figure or company elevating the genre, while fostering the community by providing opportunities for new talent to thrive.

  Hereditary

  In addition to the films and special guests, the Overlook Film Festival will be generously packed with live presentations. The festival’s virtual reality program will feature the world premiere of noted experience creator Jon Braver’s Delusion: Lies Within, a fully immersive, 360 degree episodic narrative from Skybound Entertainment.

Other experiences will run the gamut from live podcasts and storytelling shows, to immersive attractions for an audience of one – including the world premiere of a new show from immersive theater troupe BLACKOUT – and The Overlook Immersive Game, a new alternate reality game that will span the entirety of the festival created by this year’s experience designers Scott Gillies and Nick Tierce, whose credits include a range of interactive projects for companies that include Electronic Arts, Disney, Microsoft, Niantic Labs and Google.

The Overlook Film Festival is programmed by festival co-directors Michael Lerman and Landon Zakheim, and programmer Lili Rodriguez. The schedule, sponsors, and additional surprises will be announced in the coming days.

“We’re so excited to unleash this program onto our devoted audience and new fans in this haunted city” said festival co-director Michael Lerman.

  “It’s such a great year for horror and the varied nature of this program is really a testament to innovative ways filmmakers are finding to frighten, challenge and celebrate the genre.”

  Added co-director Landon Zakheim: “We’ve assembled a wonderfully sordid array of some of our favorite storytellers, performers, and immersive artists to create the signature events and shows that round out our weekend-long summer camp. We can’t wait to share the secrets, surprises, and ghosts of New Orleans with all of you.”

  Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing Night Presentations

Unfriended: Dark Web

Opening Night Film:

Unfriended: Dark Web Director: Stephen Susco Cast: Colin Woodell, Betty Gabriel, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Andrew Lees, Connor del Rio, Stephanie Nogueras, Savira Windyani United States, 2018 Preparing for his weekly Skype game night with his friends, a cyber café attendant borrows a laptop from the lost and found, only to find that the previous owner will stop at nothing to retrieve it. A sequel in name only, UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB borrows key cinematic elements from the original UNFRIENDED while telling its own edge-of-your-seat sadistic tale full of shocks and surprises that will make you think twice about who’s watching when you log on.

Centerpiece Film:

St. Agatha WORLD PREMIERE Director: Darren Lynn Bousman Cast: Sabrina Kern, Carolyn Hennesy, Courtney Halverson United States, 2018 Horror film impresario Darren Lynn Bousman, director of SAW II, III and IV, modern experiments REPO! A GENETIC OPERA and THE DEVIL’S CARNIVAL, not to mention the groundbreaking ongoing immersive property The Tension Experience, brings to life his latest vision, a period piece concerning a troubled woman running from her past who finds herself kept hostage by a coven of vicious nuns.

Closing Night Film:

Hereditary Director: Ari Aster Cast: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne United States, 2018 When their reclusive grandmother passes away, the Graham family is slowly taken hold by a cursed terror, one that won’t let go. A cavalcade of gifted performers led by Toni Collete star in filmmaker Ari Aster’s astounding debut feature, which has deservedly become one of the most anticipated horror films of the year since it’s electrifying debut at the Sundance Film Festival.

  St. Agatha

  Feature Film Presentations

Arizona Director: Jonathan Watson Cast: Danny McBride, Rosemarie DeWitt, Luke Wilson, Lolli Sorenson, Elizabeth Gillies, Kaitlin Olson United States, 2017 This wickedly inventive comedic thriller that sharply utilizes the true life economic turmoil of the housing crisis as its backdrop, casts Danny Mcbride as an unhinged homeowner who attempts to take out his frustrations on a scrupulous relator (Rosemarie Dewitt) with a rampage that grows increasingly murderous.

Beast Director: Michael Pearce Cast: Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn, Trystan Gravelle,Geraldine James United Kingdom, 2017 In this brutal, sexy, critically acclaimed debut thriller from UK director Michael Pearce, a disturbed woman finds herself caught between her oppressive family’s demands and her animalistic attraction to an alluring stranger who’s arrival in her life is suspiciously timed with a series of vicious murders in their isolated community.

Blood Fest Director: Owen Egerton Cast: Robbie Kay, Jacob Batalon, Seychelle Gabriel, Tate Donovan, Barbara Dunkelman, Nick Rutherford, Zachary Levi United States, 2018 When the most exciting horror festival in the country turns the tables on its zealous fan base by trapping them on the grounds and murdering them en masse, a group of teens armed with the knowledge of a thousand horror movies must fight their way through the bloodbath in this hilarious send-up of horror culture.

Blue My Mind Director: Lisa Brühlmann Cast: Luna Wedler, Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen Switzerland, 2017 During the process of moving cities with her parents and trying to start over with a new group of friends, 15-year-old Mia begins to discover unexpected changes to her body that she dare not speak about to anyone. In spite of her radical attempts to halt the process, Mia is forced to face the horrifying reality of who she truly is. Equal parts tender, surreal, and grotesque, actor-turned-director Lisa Brühlmann’s first feature is a worth addition to the adolescent body horror canon.

Caniba Director: Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor Cast: Issei Sagawa, Jun Sagawa France, 2017 Sensory ethnography documentarians Lucien Castaign-Taylor and Véréna Paravel turn their cameras on notorious Japanese cannibal cum manga author, pornography director, and sushi critic, Issei Sagawa. In an unprecedented and shocking interview, Sagawa reveals gruesome details about his life and crimes, as well as a peak into his fraught relationship with his mysterious brother.

Don’t Leave Home Director: Michael Tully Cast: Anna Margaret Hollyman, Lalor Roddy, Helena Bereen, David McSavage, Karrie Cox Ireland, 2018 An American artist accepts a strange invitation to a secluded Irish manor to construct an original sculpture for a priestly painter whose work has been shrouded in a sinister urban legend involving the disappearance of an 8-year-old girl in this creepy, offbeat cinematic discovery from indie stalwart Michael Tully (SEPTIEN).

Downrange Director: Ryuhei Kitamura Cast: Kelly Connaire, Stephanie Pearson, Alexa Yeames, Jason Tobias United States, 2017 Macabre mastermind Ryuhei Kitamura (VERSUS, MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN) comes crashing back with a frenetic new film of murder and mayhem. Stranded by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere from a tire blowout, a group of carpoolers become suddenly besieged by flying bullets from an unseen shooter with incredible precision and a savage will.

The Farm WORLD PREMIERE Director: Hans Stjernswärd Cast: Nora Yessayan, Alec Gaylord, Ken Volok, Rob Tisdale United States, 2018 The classic horror tale of a young couple who takes a wrong turn and stumbles into a small town full of people with nefarious intentions is turned on its head in this disturbing manifesto about food production. Seeping with eerie atmosphere, this unnerving first feature from newcomer Hans Stjernswärd finds as much fear in its silences as it does in its sickening, insidious images.

  Ghost Stories

  Ghost Stories Director: Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman Cast: Martin Freeman, Alex Lawther, Andy Nyman, Paul Whitehouse United Kingdom, 2017 After stumbling across a long-lost folder of material from his childhood hero, Goodman, a TV investigator known for debumking psychic hoaxes, digs deep into three cases of ghoulish hauntings. Determined to find rational explanations, Goodman quickly realizes he’s in over his head. Featuring Martin Freeman, this spine-tingling anthology, adapted from the hit stage play, tells enough tales to keep you up for nights to come.

Good Manners Director: Juliana Rojas & Marco Dutra Cast: Isabél Zuaa, Marjorie Estiano, Miguel Lobo Brazil/France, 2017 A surprising, imaginative and engaging twist on classic genre stories told with a sophisticated cinematic technique, GOOD MANNERS begins unassumingly with a near destitute nurse becoming the caretaker for a wealthy, isolated pregnant woman exhibiting strange behavior. But soon her habits turn into a sleeping hunger that changes both of their lives forever.

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich WORLD PREMIERE Director: Sonny Laguna & Tommy Wiklund Cast: Thomas Lennon, Michael Paré, Barbara Crampton, Udo Kier United Kingdom / United States, 2018 During a roadtrip to a convention for the 30th Anniversary of the infamous Toulon Murders, a comic book nerd, his new girlfriend and his best friend come face to face with a set of sadistic nazi puppets out for blood. A reimagining of the Charles Band classic, this uproarious horror comedy starring Thomas Lennon, Udo Kier, Barbara Crampton, Nelson Franklin, and Charlene Yi pays homage to the Full Moon features of the late 80s, early 90s.

The Ranger Director: Jenn Wexler Cast: Chloë Levine, Granit Lahu, Jeremy Pope, Bubba Weiler, Amanda Grace Benitez, Jeremy Holm, Larry Fessenden United States, 2018 A band of punks on the run from trouble with the local law hide out in the woods, only to stumble onto the radar of a deranged park ranger with a malicious approach to justice and a mysterious connection to a member of their group. Longtime indie horror producer Jenn Wexler makes her directorial debut with this manic, punk-rock take on the traditional slasher flick.

Revenge Director: Coralie Fargeat Cast: Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchede, Jean-Louis Tribes France, 2017 First time filmmaker Coralie Fargeat subverts expectations of the exploitative rape-revenge film tropes from the grind house age for this explosively shocking assault on misogynistic culture that stunned unsuspecting audiences at both the Toronto and Sundance film festivals. Don’t miss one of the most intense debuts of the year.

Satan’s Slaves (Also our featured image) Director: Joko Anwar Cast: Tara Basro, Bront Palarae, Dimas Aditya, Endy Arfian, Nasar Annuz, Ayu Laksmi, Egy Fedly Indonesia, 2017 When Mawarni, a famous Indonesian singer, dies of a mysterious illness, her husband and four children are left behind to pick up the pieces, only to discover that they are being haunted by a pack of rabid spirits headed by Mawarni herself. Technically billed as a remake of the 1982 Indonesian remake of Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM, celebrated director Joko Anwar’s SATAN’S SLAVES is its own chilling throwback to 70s supernatural thrillers, packed to the brim with jump scares and iconic imagery.

Sex Madness Revealed WORLD PREMIERE Director: Tim Kirk Cast: Patton Oswalt, Rob Zabrecky United States, 2018 Notorious comedian Patton Oswalt and renowned magician Rob Zabrecky star in Tim Kirk’s (DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY) latest experiment in how to tell tales of terror. Taking the form of an audio commentary that plays out over the little known 1938 STD propaganda film SEX MADNESS, the voice of a persnickety film blogger interviews the descendant of the original motion picture’s director who harbors a nefarious secret.

Tigers Are Not Afraid Director: Issa López Cast: Paola Lara, Juan Ramón López, Ianis Guerrero, Rodrigo Cortés, Hanssel Casillas Mexico, 2017 In one of the most imaginative (and award winning!) features traveling the genre festival circuit in recent months, a young girl with a missing mother joins a band of street misfits in effort to survive amidst rampant cartel violence in modern-day Mexico City. Populated with fairy tale imagery, TIGERS is at turns harshly real and terrifyingly surreal, reminiscent of films like THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE and CITY OF GOD as it details a tragic and engulfing nightmare.

  Upgrade

  Upgrade Director: Leigh Whannell Cast: Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson, Benedict Hardie Australia, 2017 Fan favorite Leigh Whannell, whose work on the SAW and INSIDIOUS franchises have made him a modern genre icon, thrills and delights with this gory and action-packed foray into a science-fiction dystopia. An experimental procedure infuses a sentient computer chip into the body and mind of paralyzed Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), fueling a spiraling mission for vengeance that leads to a terrifying endgame.

Vampire Clay Director: Soichi Umezawa Cast: Kyoka Takeda, Momoka Sugimoto, Ena Fujita, Yuyu Makihara, Asuka Kurosawa Japan, 2017 A group of unwitting art school students find themselves in a brutal showdown against a pack of evil of modeling clay in this campy, inventive, practical effects extravaganza from Japanese FX artist turned filmmaker Soichi Umezawa.

What Keeps You Alive Director: Colin Minihan Cast: Hannah Emily Anderson, Brittany Allen, Martha Macisaac, Joey Klein, Charlotte Lindsay Marron Canada, 2018 For their first wedding anniversary, Jackie and Jules retreat to a cozy cabin near a beautiful lake. The sudden appearance of Jackie’s childhood best friend sets off a chain of unlikely events that turn a quiet vacation into the deadliest game of cat and mouse in Overlook Alum Colin Minihan’s (writer of STILL/BORN) claustrophobic survivalist thriller.

Wolfman’s Got Nards: A Documentary Director: André Gower Cast: Fred Dekker, Shane Black, Seth Green, Adam F. Goldberg, Ryan Lambert, Ashley Bank, Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Chuck Russell, Heather Langenkamp United States, 2018 August 14, 1987 saw the release of what has become one of the strangest, scariest and most iconic kids film to ever grace the silver screen – THE MONSTER SQUAD. In this endearing documentary, director Andre Gower takes us not only behind the scenes on the production, but also into the heart of the fandom surrounding the movie and the magic that made it such a defining cinematic experience for so many in the genre community.

Virtual Reality Presentations

Campfire Creepers

  Campfire Creepers: The Skull of Sam Director: Alexandre Aja From master of horror Alexandre Aja, the director of films such as The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha, and Horns, comes an original anthology series that brings classic campfire stories to life in stunning Virtual Reality. Produced by Oculus and Future Lighthouse and distributed by Dark Corner, Campfire Creepers invites viewers to join the fire circle at a summer camp called Camp Coyote as a group of kids take turns telling spooky tales. Inspired by cult classics like Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt, every episode of Campfire Creepers is a wild ride that will have you laughing and screaming in equal measure.

Delusion: Lies Within WORLD PREMIERE Director: Jon Braver Set in the 1940’s American South, beloved author Elena Fitzgerald goes missing before releasing the final novel in her epic dark fantasy that has captivated fans Daniel and Virginia. As many believe her to be dead, Daniel and Virginia must leave their grim reality behind to save Fitzgerald from her own literary nightmare. The VR series from Skybound Entertainment is a fully immersive, 360 degrees episodic story. Delusion is based off Jon Braver’s 2014 immersive theatrical performance in Los Angeles.

Masters Of The Sun Director: will.i.am This interactive comic book series from Oculus Studios, born from the mind of will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas), is a retro futuristic B-boy zombie thriller about a hip-hop group from East LA that must battle an ancient god who is turning black drug dealers and gangsters into zombies. This epic journey, spanning 13 episodes, explores gang culture, hip-hop origins, and cloaked conspiracy theories—from ancient Egypt to the streets of LA. Starring Queen Latifah, Rakim, Jamie Foxx, Ice-T, and KRS-One.

Night Night Director: Guy Shelmerdine It’s time to drift off to dreamland…but first your mom is going to read you a short bedtime story. Take a journey into your childhood nightmares with Dark Corner’s sense-stunning immersive experience. Produced by Dark Corner and MPC VR.

Wolves In The Walls (Chapter 1) Director: Pete Billington Eight-year-old Lucy suspects that wolves live in the walls of her family’s home. She has no one to believe her … but you. Forging a groundbreaking blend of film, theatre, audience agency, and sleight of hand, this exquisitely crafted animated experience, adapted from material by Neil Gaiman and choreographed by immersive theater company Third Rail Projects, casts you as an active performer in a narrative where you interact, have a relationship with, and go on a quest with the central character in ways that leave your mark on the experience.

  Live Event Presentations

BLACKOUT WORLD PREMIERE Creators: Kristjan Thor and Josh Randall In 2009, an underground immersive horror experience swept through the NYC art scene and began a path that would transform the international theater community. BLACKOUT, the X-rated fear experience designed for adults over 18 to walk through completely alone. Created by directors Kristjan Thor and Josh Randall, BLACKOUT has had productions in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Now at the Overlook Film Festival, BLACKOUT presents the world premiere of a rare and unique opportunity for the adventurous to make their way through what the NEW YORK TIMES has called the “most extreme theater event of the year.” WARNING: This is considered an extreme experience and is exclusively for pass holders. Participants are required to sign a waiver. Slots will be made available exclusively for all-access pass holders.

The Canon Podcast Live Host: Amy Nicholson What films should be included in the list of all-time greats? Film critic Amy Nicholson and a guest debate, discuss and sometimes harmoniously agree about whether a film should be Canon-ized. Ultimately, the decision is yours. Cast your vote, and decide the legacy of each movie forevermore. No pressure.

In Another Room Directors: Austin and Aaron Keeling Last summer, E3W Productions’ surprise hit ‘In Another Room’ invited guests to explore the richly storied rooms of a notoriously haunted house in Los Angeles, introducing audience members to the inhabitants who lived and died within its walls. Now, E3W Productions is pleased to offer exclusive access to one of the rooms from their debut show, transported to the Bourbon Orleans Hotel for the duration of the Overlook Film Festival. Audiences of three will be invited to step inside this room, where they will meet a previous inhabitant and learn of the tragedies that befell them. ‘In Another Room’ sold out in just three days upon its initial run, and this excerpt promises a haunting, moving, and extremely intimate experience. We invite those of you most attuned to the psychic and supernatural to join us for a once in a lifetime opportunity to come face to face with the unknown. Slots will be made available exclusively for all-access pass holders.

Infinitely Dinner Society: Midnight Snacks Creator, Director: Annie Lesser Infinitely Dinner Society’s Midnight Snacks presents Bananas Foster. IDS Midnight Snacks are late night pairings of food and art with the math and science behind infinity. Previous snacks have included donuts paired with the infinite points of a circle, cheese cubes paired with hypercubes and oyster shooters paired with the intangible nature of infinity. Each snack features food sourced from local bakers, shop owners and farmers markets. For the Overlook Film Festival, creator Annie Lesser has designed a piece based on the cosmic horror of the multiverse featuring Bananas Foster made from Louisiana cane sugar and rum. News about Infinitely Dinner Society and the IDS Midnight Snacks can be found Instagram @infinitelydinnersociety. Slots will be made available exclusively for all-access pass holders.

The Overlook Immersive Game Producer: Mali Elfman For the signature event of the Overlook Film Festival, 2018 introduces a new alternate reality game and welcomes this year’s experience designers Scott Gillies and Nick Tierce, whose credits include a range of projects with companies such as Electronic Arts, Disney, Microsoft, Niantic Labs, and Google. Throughout the entire weekend, uncover an interactive horror mystery that permeates the festival, featuring live actors inhabiting unique locations, hidden clues, tactile puzzles, and surprising twists that each player can engage with at their own level of comfort and curiosity. Follow the clues to become the protagonist of an engaging and thrilling narrative that no two players will experience in exactly the same way. Details of the game’s story will remain locked away until the festival begins, but you may wish to seek out the celestial raven, instantly. The game is available exclusively to festival pass holders, with active player registration limited to 100 available spots. All registered players must attend a game orientation upon festival check-in. Over the course of the game, curious players may receive invitations to engage further for additional immersive depth, which they may opt-in for when the opportunity is presented.

Paperbacks From Hell Creator, Writer, Performer: Grady Hendrix In the early Seventies, three books changed horror forever: ROSEMARY’S BABY, THE EXORCIST, and THE OTHER. The first horror novels to hit bestseller lists since 1940, they opened the floodgates for an avalanche of horror paperbacks to pour onto supermarket shelves throughout the Seventies and Eighties until SILENCE OF THE LAMBS slit the genre’s throat in the early Nineties. Writer Grady Hendrix delivers a mind-melting oral history of this now forgotten world of Nazi leprechauns, skeleton doctors, killer crabs, killer jellyfish, killer babies, pretty much killer everything. Prepare yourself for a tour of this long-lost universe of terror that lurked behind the lurid, foil-embossed, die-cut covers of…the Paperbacks from Hell!!!!

The Pumpkin Pie Show: Best of Show Creator, Writer, Performer: Clay McLeod Chapman Come join us for an encore presentation of the best Pumpkin Pie Show stories from over the last 20 years. Author Clay McLeod Chapman will lead the audience through the back-catalogue of his personal favorite tales, offering a view into the sordid lives of Southern Gothic monstrosities that explore the domestic horrors of the everyday, finding terror within our own households. This is Edgar Allan Poe for the modern age, people.

The Pumpkin Pie Show: New Skulduggery Creator, Writer, Performer: Clay McLeod Chapman Author Clay McLeod Chapman is bringing BRAND NEW STORIES to the Overlook! The Pumpkin Pie Show has remained a staple of the fest – and this year they’re offering an even sweeter treat: original tales that have never been inflicted upon an audience anywhere. Flesh-eating bacteria, killer baby carrots and haunted comic books are all on the menu. These new campfire stories will be sure send a shiver up your spine. Hear them first before they’re unleashed upon the rest of the world!

The Pumpkin Pie Show: One-On-Ones Creator, Writer, Performer: Clay McLeod Chapman A returning favorite from last year’s fest, please join author Clay McLeod Chapman as he takes one audience member at a time on a dark ride through this depraved, intimate storytelling experience. Think of it as a heart-to-bleeding-heart with madmen, murderers and monsters telling their own story. No fourth wall, no escape. First come, first serve. Sessions will last 20 minutes. Slots will be made available exclusively for all-access pass holders.

Shock Waves Presents Host: Ryan Turek Overlook welcomes Ryan Turek, co-host of Blumhouse’s hit horror podcast Shock Waves for an insightful discussion with one of the festival’s guests.

Summerland Lost Creator, Writer, Performer: Grady Hendrix The Wall Street Journal calls him “a national treasure.” His mother calls him “Sunshine.” Now author Grady Hendrix brings his one-man show about psychic teenagers and shaved cats to New Orleans with Summerland Lost: A Ghost Story. Telling the all-shocking, all-true tale of drunk Victorian teenagers who spoke to the dead, this is the real life story of how biomechanical sex cults, the ghost of Ben Franklin, suffragettes, abolitionists, anarchists, and Arctic explorers all teamed up to answer the ultimate question: is there life after death?

  Short Film Presentations

The Beaning

  Amy Director: L. Gustavo Cooper Cast: Danielle Kennedy, Rebekah Kennedy, Tom Fitzpatrick, Samantha Ann United States, 2017 Set against the backdrop of the deadliest heat wave in recorded history and inspired by America’s most prolific female serial killer, L. Gustavo Cooper’s AMY provides a surreal and distorted glimpse into a killing spree that captivated a nation in the early 1900s.

The Beaning Director: Sean McCoy United States, 2017 An experimental sports film combining documentary techniques with horror aesthetics, THE BEANING explores a sinister theory surrounding the death of Cleveland baseball player Ray Chapman in 1920 and the subsequent rise of the Yankee dynasty.

Beastly Things Director: Zev Chevat United States, 2017 A young street artist encounters a group of local schoolchildren, and learns what really makes monsters.

Blood Runs Down WORLD PREMIERE Director: Zandashé Brown Cast: Farrah Martin, Idella Johnson United States, 2018 When a woman undergoes a frightening transition, her vigilant young daughter must decide between saving her or protecting herself in this haunting tale of inheritance, daughterhood, and demons.

Cerulia Director: Sofía Carrillo Cast: Diana Bracho Mexico, 2017 Cerulia returns to her childhood home to bid farewell to her past, but the memories of her youth and a presence in the home will not let her go.

Coyote Director: Lorenz Wunderle Switzerland, 2018 A coyote loses his family to a vicious attack by wolves. Tormented by fear, anger and grief, he sees a chance to avenge their deaths…

Good Morning Director: Elaine Mongeon Cast: Maya Kazan, Jamie McShane United States, 2017 A young woman and her father adapt to terrifying changes they never expected.

Hair Wolf Director: Mariama Diallo Cast: Kara Young, Taliah Webster, Madeline Weinstein, Trae Harris, Jermaine Crawford United States, 2017 In a black hair salon in gentrifying Brooklyn, the local residents fend off a strange new monster: white women intent on sucking the lifeblood from black culture.

Latched Director: Justin Harding & Rob Brunner Cast: Alana Elmer, Peter Higginson, Jarrett Siddall, Bowen Harding Canada, 2017 A choreographer pursues creative inspiration at a cottage retreat while attempting to wean her demanding toddler — and unknowingly awakens a vile fairy corpse in the process. When she discovers the creature’s terrifying intentions, she will have to put her creativity to good use to lure the repugnant beast.

  We Summoned a Demon

  Milk Director: Santiago Menghini Cast: Cameron Brodeur, Anana Rydvald Canada, 2018 On a late night, a young teen goes into the kitchen for a glass of milk. Upon encountering his sleepless mother, he quickly realizes things are not as they seem.

Möbius Director: Sam Kuhn Cast: Caley Jones, Daiva Z, Britt Grayson, Elissa Mielke, Austin Will Canada/United States, 2017 A moth eaten tale of magic and mutation half remembered by a teen poet whose beloved lies lifeless in a stream.

Pan Director: Anna Roller Cast: Anna Platen, Jeff Wilbusch, Luisa-Céline Gaffron, Sue Simmy Lemke, Emil Borgeest Germany, 2017 Juno, a twenty-year-old girl becomes obsessed with Pan. Her obsession turns her into an animal.

The Plague Director: Guillermo Carbonell Cast: Gabriela Freire, Walter Rey, Rafael Soliwoda Uruguay, 2017 Rosa’s father escapes from a nursing home and comes back to his former house. He hides a secret, and he’s not coming alone.

The Sermon Director: Dean Puckett Cast: Molly Casey, Grant Gillespie, Denise Stephenson, Oliver Monaghan, Emma White United Kingdom, 2018 In an isolated church community in the English countryside, a powerful hate preacher prepares to deliver a sermon to his flock, but his daughter has a secret that could destroy them all.

Tammy’s Tiny Tea Time (Episode 1: Strangers) Created by Peter Gulsvig Cast: Rachel Butera, Nate Corddry, Peter Gulsvig United States, 2018 Tammy’s Tiny Tea Time exists in the fractured psyche of a middle aged woman whose refusal to grow up has resulted in a life spent talking to inanimate objects (and a dying box turtle) in her parents’ house.

Thursday Night Director: Gonçalo Almeida Cast: Bimbo the Dog Portugal, 2017 An elusive stranger pays Bimbo a visit in the middle of the night to deliver a vital message.

We Summoned a Demon Director: Chris McInroy Cast: Kirk C. Johnson, Carlos Larotta, John Orr United States, 2017 They just wanted to be cool. Instead, they got a demon.

  Well, what are you waiting for? Head to the Overlook film Fest website and pick up your festival passes. Tweet at us @NOFSPODCAST if you’re attending the fest- and we’ll meet up for a bourbon-something! And, if you can’t make it, keep your eye on The Nightmare on Film Street website, Instagram, and Facebook Pages for all of our highlights from the fest!

    The post Full Line-up Announced for 2018 Overlook Film Festival – April 19-22, New Orleans appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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IR #4

“The Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood: “Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now” (Goodreads)

“The Outlander” by Gil Adamson: “In 1903 Mary Boulton flees alone across the West, one heart-pounding step ahead of the law. At nineteen, she has just become a widow;and her husband's killer. As bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger brother's death. Responding to little more than the primitive instinct for survival at any cost, she retreats ever deeper into the wilderness;and into the wilds of her own mind.” (Amazon)

“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel: “Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.” (Goodreads)

“The Marrow Thieves” by Cherie Dimaline: “Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden—but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.” (Amazon)

“The Heart Goes Last” by Margaret Atwood: “Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around - and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in... for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes. At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled.” (Goodreads)

“Fifteen Dogs” by André Alexis: “And so it begins: a bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto vet­erinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.” (Goodreads)

“No Great Mischief” by Alistair MacLeod : “Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto's skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories-wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic-we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.” (Amazon)

“Days” by André Alexis: “Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents’ friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. Alfred and the Professor encounter towns where Black residents speak only in sign language and towns that hold Indigenous Parades; it is a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches.” (Amazon)

“The Saturday Night Ghost Club” by Craig Davidson: “Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls--a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place--Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club." But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly lighthearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined.” (Goodreads)

“The Killing Circle” by Andrew Pyper: “Patrick Rush is a single father, unhappy with his career, devoted to his young son but haunted by the loss of his wife, when he joins a local writing group. In the candlelit studio where the circle meets, he finds one writer's work far more powerful than the others--a young woman named Angela, who writes about a girl stalked by a killer named the Sandman. But Angela's stories may be more autobiography than tall tale: soon the members of the group are being hunted by a shadowy figure resembling the Sandman, and the line between fiction and real life beings to dissolve. When his own son is taken, Patrick is forced to chase down the Sandman for himself and to discover the ending to his own terrifying story.” (Amazon)

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[buddyrabrahams]

Early favorite to win every major conference in college basketball

The turn of the calendars to a new year can mean only one thing for college basketball: Conference play is here!

The first two months of non-conference play can feel like the first quarter of a thoroughbred race. Jockeys move, shake, and jostle for positioning, but no mistake can truly cost a potential champion of their chance to win down the stretch. Teams from across the country play games that matter on their resumes but feature teams that will look and play differently than those we’ll be watching in March. True freshmen can look lost or unpolished. Veterans can dominate. Sleepy arenas in ignored holiday tournaments can lead to puzzling results.

Conference play, however, is here to save the day. Now we get to see packed student-sections (once all students return from winter break) and the rivalries we know and love. This is when college basketball hits its stride and we can really begin to assess every team on a familiar playing field.

Here, then, is the early front-runner for each power conference championship:

ACC – Duke

The Blue Devils are unquestionably the most talented team in the conference, but Duke’s schedule isn’t without its fair share of challenges. Coach K’s squad will play five road games against the KenPom Top 50, including three games against teams in the KenPom Top 10.

Virginia, though still undefeated this season, arguably has a tougher slate through conference play. The Cavaliers have six road games against top 50 competition still to come. Virginia and Duke are scheduled for a home-and-home that could provide the inside track to the regular season conference championship. Those two games will feature a radical clash in styles, with the Hoos forcing Duke to play at a slower pace. If Duke’s athletes are still able to force the issue in the halfcourt and use their speed and size to maximize their scoring chances, the Blue Devils can be successful against Virginia. If the Cavaliers can force RJ Barrett and Zion Williamson to settle for jump shots, they’ll have a tougher time in Charlottesville.

North Carolina will remain part of the race to the top of the conference as well if Coby White continues to play like an All-American. Of the three teams, Carolina has looked the most like a work in progress, but also sports the best win of any ACC club, as they handled Gonzaga fairly easily.

In the end, Duke’s top-level talent likely comes out on top. Even if they drop a game to UNC or UVA, the Blue Devils stars make them less susceptible to losing any other unexpected games in conference.

Big East – Marquette

For the first time in recent memory, the Big East is wide open. Even when Xavier has challenged Villanova in the last few seasons (and won the regular season crown last year), the Wildcats had distanced themselves from the middle of the pack. The third-place team in Big East play hasn’t finished within four games of the league leader since the conference realigned in 2013.

This season, there are no fewer than six teams capable of finishing the year atop the standings. Villanova has clearly taken a step back, but still is plenty capable of finding its way in time to win the conference. St. John’s is 13-1, having looked strong against a questionable non-conference schedule. Creighton, Butler, Xavier, and even DePaul will be competitive this season. Top to bottom, the league will feature great games all season long.

Marquette gets the nod as the early favorite thanks to the balance through its roster. The Hauser brothers make for a sturdy frontcourt, capable of controlling the glass. Theo John is a dominant rim protector off the bench for the Golden Eagles, while Joseph Chartouny adds a shooting touch on the outside.

Everything Marquette looks to accomplish, however, is driven by Markus Howard. The 5-foot-11 junior guard might be the best shooter in college basketball. He’s made 45 percent of the 500-plus long-range attempts in his college career, while missing just 22 of the 266 free throws he’s attempted. No player in the Big East can get hot as quickly as Howard, which he proved by scoring 40 points against Buffalo in the second half!

Even though Marquette lost its Big East opener at St. John’s, the Golden Eagles are best positioned to be the top seed at Madison Square Garden this March.

Big Ten – Michigan

It’s never easy to pick against Michigan State in the Big Ten, especially when this year’s Spartans have lost just twice, to Louisville in overtime and Kansas. It would take an elite team to not only challenge Sparty, but to have a leg up on Tom Izzo and company.

Down the road in Ann Arbor, Michigan is that kind of special elite team. Defensively, Michigan has been among the country’s best teams. The Wolverines are forcing opponents to score the 4th-highest percentage of points on 2-point baskets, while also allowing the 6th-worst shooting percentage inside the arc. Michigan funnels teams away from efficient scoring chances and right into difficult shots. It has worked like a charm, thanks in part to the teaching of de-facto defensive coordinator Luke Yaklich. Since his addition to the coaching staff last season, Michigan has leaped into the top tier of defensive scheming programs in college basketball.

Offensively, John Beilein once again has his players running a pitch perfect motion system. While playing a slow pace, the Wolverines have committed the fourth-fewest turnovers in the nation. No team but Michigan in college basketball has had the ball stolen on fewer than five percent of their possessions.

Without extraordinary star power or overwhelming athleticism, Michigan is outsmarting and outworking every opponent they meet on the court. They look like a contender for both the Big Ten crown and the national championship.

Big XII – Kansas

If you want to pick anyone but Kansas, go ahead. I’ve considered it in past years or gotten my hopes about other contenders. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me fourteen years in a row, well, welcome to Kansas’ dominance of the Big XII. The Jayhawks have at least shared the league title each of the last fourteen years, a stat you can’t avoid when watching any Kansas game. You hear less often that the Jayhawks haven’t even shared the title since 2013. This year would make six straight outright conference championships.

There’s certainly no reason to doubt that this is the Kansas team to let the streak die. Dedric Lawson has been a steady double-double machine. Devon Dotson is a joy to watch streak up and down the court. Udoka Azubuike is a monster in the paint. Lagerald Vick would like to have a word with me about me calling someone else the best shooter in college basketball a few paragraphs ago.

Even when five-star recruit Quentin Grimes got off to a slow start, Kansas was the clear favorite in the conference. Grimes was scoring just 7.4 points per game and shooting under 40 percent from the floor before Christmas. In Kansas’ last two games, the freshman has averaged 15 points per game and hasn’t missed a 2-point attempt.

Even though Texas Tech looks like an elite defensive team, if Grimes can get his game rolling, Kansas not only will win the conference, but will do so easily.

SEC – Tennessee

A team like the Vols loses a lot of cache when they fall from the ranks of the unbeaten. If Tennessee were still undefeated, they’d have a chance at the top spot in the polls and be atop the minds of everyone discussing the nation’s best. Even with one loss, they’ve become somewhat of an afterthought among teams ranked in the AP Top Ten. Their only loss to date came to Kansas, in overtime, in a game played in Kansas City.

Grant Williams has a real chance to repeat as SEC Player of the Year, and the rest of the Vols perfectly complement his game. Best of all, Tennessee is a hard-working team that will make any team fight for 40 minutes. Defending and battling the likes of Williams and Admiral Schofield wears teams down like a smashmouth running game in football. By late in the second half, the Vols punish tired teams around the rim.

Pac-12 – Arizona State

Earlier this week, this pick may have been debatable. Then we learned that Bol Bol would miss the rest of the season with an injury, severely damaging Oregon’s chances to challenge the Sun Devils.

Now the rest of the Pac-12 will chase Bobby Hurley’s squad like a roving pack of zombies after the conference had a dismal collective non-conference performance. UCLA grabbed the headlines with a four-game losing streak and by firing its coach, but the rest of the middle and back of the conference has been just as ugly. Arizona has four losses and narrowly avoided disaster in its last game before the holidays, beating UC Davis by just two at home.

Colorado lost back-to-back games to Indiana State and Hawaii. Oregon State lost to Kent State. Washington State has losses to Seattle, Montana State, New Mexico State (twice!), and Santa Clara. USC also lost to Santa Clara, Utah also lost to Hawaii, and Cal also lost to Seattle. For a power conference to have not just one-off losses to lowly programs, but multiple teams losing games to the same mediocre mid-majors, is embarrassing.

Collectively, the entire conference is just 5-26 versus the KenPom Top 50, and three of those wins are Arizona State’s. The other 11 schools have combined for a .074 winning percentage versus top 50 competition.

Touting Arizona State as the early favorite should have been more about the Sun Devils’ positive qualities, yet winning the Pac-12 this year looks like a low bar. If the Sun Devils can’t surge to a decisive lead in the standings, there will be no team in the league that will look capable of a run in March. That surge got a bit harder after Arizona State stumbled and lost to Utah at home to open conference play. If the Sun Devils can’t bounce back, the Pac-12 may be in serious danger of being a one-bid conference on Selection Sunday, for the first time since 1978 when the conference had just eight schools.

Shane McNichol covers college basketball and the NBA for Larry Brown Sports. He also blogs about basketball at Palestra Back and has contributed to Rush The Court, ESPN.com, and USA Today Sports Weekly. Follow him on Twitter @OnTheShaneTrain.

from Larry Brown Sports http://bit.ly/2Qn5T8H

[pete-and-pete]

21 Best LEGO Star Wars Sets: The Ultimate List (2018)

Looking for the best LEGO Star Wars sets available in 2018? We’ve got you covered with the list below.

The LEGO brand has always had a unique way of handling others’ properties. The company has done great things with some key franchises like Batman, Harry Potter, and Minecraft. But one of their biggest successes — at least, as far as other franchises are concerned — is undeniably LEGO Star Wars.

There have been numerous Star Wars LEGO iterations on TV, including The Yoda Chronicles, Droid Tales, and Freemaker Adventures. On top of that, there are so many INCREDIBLE LEGO Star Wars video games dating back to 2005 and as recent as last year’s LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Of course, all of these great iterations and the main line of Star Wars movies lend themselves well to some awesome LEGO Star Wars sets that make the perfect gift for kids and collectors alike.

Here are the top 20 best Star Wars LEGO sets available on Amazon right now in 2018 (most of which are cheaper than if you were to buy them on the official LEGO store):

1. LEGO Star Wars The Arrowhead Building Set

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The Arrowhead Building Kit is #75186, and it allows you to build a replica of The Arrowhead ship first seen in The Freemaker Adventures. It’s one of the coolest looking Star Wars ships we’ve seen yet, and it features a lift-off cockpit canopy that can fit up to 3 minifigures and the included R0-GR. It also has a cool transparent opening dome, complete with a removable crystal power source element and 2 shooters. It comes with a few accessories, including two handguns and two blaster pistols. It also comes with a service cart.

Price: $83.98 (7 percent off MSRP)

Buy the LEGO Star Wars Arrowhead Building Kit here.

2. Yoda’s Jedi Starfighter LEGO Building Kit

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While we unfortunately don’t get to see Yoda’s incredible Jedi Starfighter in any of the main movies, it does play a role in the Clone Wars TV series. The Yoda Jedi Starfighter LEGO Building Kit (#75168) includes Yoda and R2-D2 minifigures, and they fit right in the cockpit. The ship itself features folding wings and two laser cannons, each with spring-loaded shooters. The ship measures 2″ high, 5″ long, and 7″ wide. It’s intended for ages 8-12.

Price: $19.99 (20 percent off MSRP)

Buy Yoda’s Jedi Starfighter LEGO Kit here.

3. Star Wars Republic Fighter Tank

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If you’re looking for a cool-looking tank to add to your collection of Star Wars Lego kits, check out the Republic Fighter Tank Building Kit (#75182). It features the TX-130 Saber-Class fighter tank that was first seen in the original Star Wars: Battlefront game, and it has appeared in many games and some TV series since.

The set comes with two minifigures, Aayla Secura and a Clone Trooper Gunner, as well as two Battle Droids. It has an opening top hatch with a cockpit for a minifigure, two elevating guns with shooters, and hidden wheels that give it a sort of hovering look. It measures 2″ x 6″ x 4″.

Price: $24.86

Buy the Republic Fighter Tank here.

4. LEGO Star Wars AT-ST Walker

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Of course, your LEGO Star Wars collection would be incomplete without the AT-ST Walker (#75153). It’s one of the highest rated LEGO toys on Amazon, holding 4.7 out of 5.0 stars on Amazon from over 240 reviewers. It’s intended for ages 8-14, and comes with 449 pieces.

It’ll allow you to build your very own LEGO AT-ST Walker with posable legs, and opening cockpit, and two spring-loaded shooters. It comes with Baze Malbus, a Rebel Trooper, and an AT-ST Driver.

Price: $31.97 (20 percent off MSRP)

Buy the LEGO Star Wars AT-ST Walker here.

5. Duel on Naboo Set

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Jedi vs. Sith duels are always exciting, and whether you were rooting for Darth Maul or Obi-Wan, this Duel on Naboo Set (#75169) will allow you to re-enact one of the most iconic moments from the Star Wars prequel trilogy. It comes with a push-activated door and even an opening purification chamber that has a removable element intended to look like plasma. It comes with Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Darth Maul figures, and it includes Maul’s iconic dual-sided lightsaber. It’s recommended for ages 7 years and up.

Price: $19.99 (20 percent off MSRP)

Buy the Duel on Naboo Set here.

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101 Cool Toys for Boys: Birthday & Christmas Gifts (2018)

6. LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon Kit

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The most iconic Star Wars ship in the galaxy belongs to Han Solo, and it can now be yours thanks to THE highest rated LEGO kit on Amazon, the LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon Kit (#75105).

It comes with a whopping 1,320 pieces and it’s intended for ages 9-14, so it’s a bit more advanced than many of the others on this list. It comes with 6 minifigures, including Han Solo, Chewbacca, Finn, Rey, and an itty bitty BB-8.

Price: $115.99

Buy the LEGO Millennium Falcon here.

7. Clone Turbo Tank

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This Clone Turbo Tank Lego kit (#75151) is modeled after the HAVw A6 Juggernaut assault vehicle first seen in the Jedi Trial and frequently seen in The Clone Wars. The set features 10 rolling wheels with a flexible suspension, and it also has rotating weapon turrets complete with spring-loaded shooters.

It has an extending observation post, and it comes with 903 pieces. It’s intended for ages 9-14 years old. It comes with six figures from The Clone Wars, including Luminara Unduli, Quinlan Vos, and a couple of Battle Droids.

Price: $76.99

Buy the Clone Turbo Tank here.

8. LEGO Star Wars Resistance X-Wing Fighter

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The LEGO Star Wars Resistance X-Wing Fighter (#75149) is modeled from The Force Awakens, which is why it includes minifigures of Poe Dameron and BB-8. It also has Lor San and a First Order Flametrooper. The ship, itself, features opening/closing wings and a cockpit for Poe to sit in. It has four spring-loaded shooters and retractable landing gear, a removable hyperdrive, and a detachable BB-8.

It has 740 pieces and is recommended for ages 8-14.

Price: $56.99

Buy the X-Wing Fighter LEGO Star Wars Set here.

9. Poe’s X-Wing Fighter Building Kit

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You can get a bit more specific with Poe’s X-Wing Fighter Star Wars LEGO kit (#75102). It’s black and orange, and it also has retractable landing gear. It measures 4″ x 14″ x 12″. It has 717 pieces and is recommended for 8-14 year olds.

Price: $63.99 (20 percent off MSRP)

Buy Poe’s X-Wing Fighter here.

10. LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Transformation Building Set

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The LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Transformation Kit (#75183) is one of those scene-specific kits that are done so well. It features a double-sided, raising table that’s complete with a helmet applicator, a lightsaber rack, and force explode function. It comes with three minifigures: Palpatine, Anakin, and Darth Vader. It only has 282 pieces, and it’s intended for 7-12 year olds.

When completely assembled, it measures 3″ x 6″ x 8″.

Price: $24.99

Buy the Darth Vader Transformation Set here.

11. Krennic’s Imperial Shuttle

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Despite Krennic being a total tool, Krennic’s Imperial Shuttle (#75156) is incredibly cool. The LEGO version features folding wings, an opening front and side armored panels, and it has seating for four of your minifigures. This all-black Star Wars ship is undeniably one of the coolest-looking we’ve seen yet. The kit has 863 pieces and is recommended for ages 9-14. It comes with six minifigures, including K-2SO, Pao, and Drennic.

Price: $71.99 (20 Percent off MSRP)

Buy the Krennic’s Imperial Shuttle here.

12. LEGO Bounty Hunter Speeder Bike Battle Pack

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Want to add a speeder bike to your collection? Of course you do, because speeder bikes are a ridiculously cool concept. This Bounty Hunter Speeder Bike Battle Pack (#75167) has two stud shooters, and it comes with three minifigures: Dengar, Bossk, and a 4-loom. It comes with four stud blasters, as well as ig-88’s blaster rifle. It’s one of the easier pieces to assemble, and it comes with 125 pieces. Recommended for ages 6-12.

Price: $14.92

Buy LEGO Bounty Hunter Speeder Bike Battle Pack here.

13. LEGO Star Wars TIE Striker

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The Star Wars TIE Striker (#75154) also features adjustable wings, and it has an opening rear storage. It also has two spring-loaded shooters and comes with four minifigures, including a TIE Pilot, a Rebel Trooper, an Imperial Shoretrooper, and an Imperial Ground Crew. It’s recommended for ages 8-145 and comes with 543 pieces, making it a solid choice for intermediate Lego builders.

Price: $48.99 (30 percent off MSRP)

Buy the Star Wars TIE Striker LEGO Kit here.

14. LEGO Star Wars Death Star

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The Death Star (#75159) surely isn’t for the feint of heart, as it not only has a daunting number of pieces (4016) but also a steep price tag of $500. It’s pretty much all inclusive, coming with everything you’d want for a Death Star, including 23 minifigures (Vader, Palpatine, Luke, Han, C-3PO, and so many more) as well as a superlaser control room, hangar bay complete with a moving launch rack and detachable TIE Fighter, and the Imperial conference chamber. It also has Palpatine’s throne room, a droid maintenance room, trash compactor, tractor beam, and more.

This massive Lego set measures 16″ x 16″ when fully assembled. It’s recommended for ages 14 and up.

Price: $499.95

Buy the LEGO Star Wars Death Star here.

15. Rey’s Speeder Building Kit

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One of the most unique-looking new vehicles from the new Star Wars trilogy is Rey’s Speeder, an oddly shaped and surprisingly large ground ship. Of course, LEGO had to create a kit based on it, the Rey’s Speeder Building Kit (#75099). It measures 3″ high, 5″ long and 1″ wide, and it comes with a Rey minifigure and one of Unkar’s Thugs.

Price: $14.99 (25 percent off MSRP)

Buy Rey’s Speeder Building Kit here.

16. Battle on Scarif Building Kit

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Rogue One brought us one of the greatest battle sequences in Star Wars history, and LEGO is celebrating it with their Battle on Scarif Building Kit (#75171). It comes with 419 pieces and is recommended for ages 8-14.

It comes with four minifigures: Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, and two Scarif Stormtroopers. It measures 3″ high, 9″ wide and 8″ deep. It comes with a hidden weapons stash and exploding floor panels.

Price: $39.99 (20 percent off MSRP)

Buy the Battle on Scarif LEGO Set here.

17. LEGO Star Wars Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle Kit

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Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle is also incredibly cool, and it makes a great addition to any LEGO Star Wars collection. It comes with 1,005 pieces, and it’s recommended for ages 9-14.

It’s an impressively sizable replica of Kylo Ren’s ship, measuring 11″ high, 8″ long and 7″ wide. It also comes with six minfigures including Kylo, himself, General Hux, a First Order Officer, and two first order crew members.

Price: $83.99 (30 percent off MSRP)

Buy the Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle Kit here.

18. Luke’s Landspeeder LEGO Kit

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The Luke’s Landspeeder LEGO Kit (#75173) comes with four minifigures: Luke, Ben Kenobi, C-3PO, and a Tusken Raider. It’s relatively simple to put together, and it’s recommended for ages 7-12.

Price: $28.36

Buy Luke’s Landspeeder here.

19. LEGO Assault on Hoth Kit

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The Assault on Hoth is one of the most memorable Star Wars battles, and this impressive Assault on Hoth Kit (#75098) comes with 14 minifigures, including Luke, Han, Toryn Farr, K-3PO, two Snowtroopers, and more. It’s impressively large, measuring in at 20″ wide.

It comes with 2,144 pieces and is recommended for ages 12+.

Price: $249.95

Buy the LEGO Star Wars Assault on Hoth kit.

20. LEGO Star Wars Death Star Final Duel Building Kit

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Another one of the more-specific scene-focused LEGO Star Wars kits is the Death Star Final Duel (#75093), and it’s easily one of the best of the bunch. It’s made to allow you to re-enact the final battle between Luke and his dear old dad.

It’s 724 pieces and is recommended for 8-14 year olds. It comes with five minis, including Luke, Vader, Palpatine, and two royal guards. Vader’s helmet is, of course, removable (it would have to be to allow you to properly enact this final scene).

Price: $133.67

Buy the LEGO Star Wars Death Star Final Duel Building Kit here.

21. Han Solo Landspeeder

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Regardless of what you might think about 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, one cool thing that did stem from the movie was the Han Solo Landspeeder. Now, there’s a Han Solo Landspeeder LEGO kit (#75209) that you can use to build yourself one.

It comes with a Han Solo figure, Qi’ra, and a Corellian Hound, and it’s recommended for ages 7-12 years old.

Price: $29.84

Buy the Han Solo Landspeeder here.

See more of the best Star Wars Lego kits on Amazon.

See Also

Best LEGO Technic Sets

100 Cool Toys for Boys

Heavy, Inc. is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon. Our product recommendations are guided solely by our editors. We have no relationship with manufacturers.

source https://heavy.com/toys/2018/10/best-lego-star-wars-sets/

[vulturehound]

Returning to Donington Park for the 16th year, Download Festival returns bigger and better with headline performances from acclaimed rock stars, Avenged Sevenfold, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Ozzy Osborne.

As campers scatter from venue to venue, it’s clear a certain dress code is only accepted here… black, with a dash of black, and perhaps more black? “This is the first year since 2013 that it hasn’t pissed down with rain.” Says a fan passing by. Held in the South side of Derbyshire, Download Festival is an acclaimed British, rock Festival held for the masses.

Running from Friday 8th and ending on Sunday 11th, the Festival gave a warm welcome to fans as they opened up the campsite Wednesday afternoon, enabling fans to settle in days before the Festival.

Here’s a log of the 15 acts we caught at Download Festival this year.

Jonathan Davis: Often referred to as JD, the American singer-songwriter was the first act we got a glimpse of at Download this year. Playing a hectic show at the Zippo stage, Davis’s audience filled every speck of open space and roared with excitement alongside each of his songs. Throughout his set he merged nonchalant, psychedelic, trance sounds underneath his screamed lyrics. Thrashing out a ton of tricks from under his sleeve, Davis rocked out a grunge-inspired, dark show when playing his 2007 hit, ‘Forsaken.’ Nicely accompanied by thousands of devil horns enthusiastically thrown from the members of his audience. Ending with his Gothic, metal track, ‘What it Is,’ taken from his debut album Black Labyrinth, the audience all sing with great passion and rage alongside him. “Download, it is what is it ya’ll.” Adds Davis.

Bullet for My Valentine: With just five minutes left until Bullet hit main stage for a dominant set, a fan scatters through the audience and asks a stranger, “do you guys know where the mosh area is?” An encore of, “Bullet,” is bellowed from the audience as they all cheer for the band to come on stage. With theatrical music coursing through the background and a beam of daunting lights, Bullet rock on stage, alongside the gusts of fire that shoot out only inches away from their feet. ‘Your Betrayal,’ kicked up a storm as fans threw their arms around with rage and excitement, “Holy fucking shit Download 2018.” Says front man Matt Tuck before bursting into their next hit, ‘4 words.’ Fans crowd surf, cups of beer are being flung around in numerous directions, and a nude flash from a crazed teen appears on the main screen. “It’s been five long years… fists in the air!” Instructs Tuck, before introducing their next track, ‘The Lost Flight.’ Bullet played an intense set, with inflamed guitar riffs, powerful thuds from Michael Thomas on drums. Playing some of their best acclaimed tracks such as, ‘Tears don’t Fall,’ the band also played their newest single, ‘Letting you Go,’ taken from their latest album Gravity.

Hell is for Heroes: We caught a glimpse of Hell is for Heroes playing at Zippo Friday evening. “This one’s called 5 kids,” Justin Schlosberg frontman says as introducing their next track.  Schlosberg brought a great sack of energy to each track, skipping on stage, bouncing with enthusiasm and engaging with his audience. Walking off the stage and into the photography pit, the singer says, “How’s everyone feeling, we alright?” Returning to stage with a wheel of cartwheels, and head bangs, Hell is for Heroes thrash their instruments into their penultimate track, ‘I can Climb Mountains,’ taken from their 2003 album, The Neon Handshake.

You Me @ Six: Playing a disappointing show at the same stage, the praised, alternative rock band set their show off with a river of poorly performed songs. A stream of fans descend from the main stage and head towards Zippo, it’s clear You Me @ Six have a large audience to please.  As the band get on stage they start with a steady, adrenaline-driven introduction, applauding the attention of all fans. With a clear, engaging introduction, the track is shortly ruined by the company of poorly out of tuned lyrics screamed by frontman Josh Franceschi. The band set the  show off with, ‘Room to Breathe,’ followed by, ‘Fresh Start Fever,’ and ‘Lived a Lie,’ all taken from their forth studio album Cavalier Youth. Unable to give their most acclaimed rock tracks any justice, it’s clear their full potential of putting on a good show just wasn’t executed this weekend.

Avenged Sevenfold: Setting a far better influence were headliners Avenged Sevenfold closing off the Friday evening at main stage. Opening with their militant, hard-core track, ‘Hail to the King,’ with a encore of  hails screamed by their audience, the heavy metal band threw some shade the moment they stepped on stage. With a roaring audience packed from the front of stage and almost stopping at the Dog Tooth venue, it’s fair to say Avenged Sevenfold had a meaty crowd amongst them. “How many of ya’ll are seeing Avenged Sevenfold for the first time? Welcome to our fucked up family.” Shouts frontman Matthew Sanders, otherwise referred to as M. Shadows. Playing at neck-break speed with beast-like guitar patterns, memorable lyrics and bursts of flame, the band illuminated the stage with a staggering performance ten minutes short from two hours long. Playing alongside a mix of great stage backdrops, the metal-band threw a militant show from start to finish with reels of energy.

WSTR: The pop-punk quartet kicked up a fuss at Download’s Avalanche venue, hosted by Kerrang! Magazine. Originally formed in Liverpool, the band consists of frontman Sammy Clifford, guitarist Tom Hawkins, bassist Alex Tobijanski and drummer Andy Makin. “Download up,” screams Clifford. The band show great similarities to that of, Sum 41 and Blink 182. Their stage presence is manic, and wildly energetic. With melodic guitar riffs and fun, parody lyrics, they’re great fun to watch live. It’s been a while since a good pop-punk band took a stance in the music industry, but I can assure you, if you haven’t already seen them live before, they’re worth watching. “I wanna see a fucking circle pit, I’ve always wanted to make a circle pit at Download.” Roars Clifford. As demanded, the front of the venue divides from those not willing to partake, and a small mosh pit is formed ladies and gentlemen. Their crowd was wild, bright hair colours bobbed their way through the venue in t-shirts with WSTR written on them. ‘Punchline,’ went down a treat, their was one crowd surfer who was taken down, not once but twice during this number. WSTR, you must be doing something right.

The Struts: Consisting of half a standing and seated crowd, The Struts played an awesome set. Entering In a dazzling gold suit, and black eyeliner smudge across his eyes, frontman Luke Spiller thrusted and skipped himself onto stage, with a wave of frantic hand gestures. I present to you Luke Spiller, the wonderful epitome of 21st century glam rock. Opening with,’ ‘Put your Hands Up,’ the band put on a flamboyant, fun and energetic show. “How you doing Download?” Says Spiller. As the crowd roar a response, the  group move onto introducing their next track. Having mentioned working on a new album, for the third song, the band throw out an unexpected new single, ‘body talks.’ A sizzling, pop-rock track with melodically fetching chord patterns. The crowd took this single well. Ending the show on, ‘Where did She Go,’ it’s fair to say The Struts played a buyout show at Zippo stage that day.

Asking Alexandria: Playing the same stage, and opening with waves of glitchy electronics, are  metal band Asking Alexandria. Walking alongside a burst of flames shooting out from the stage (this happens a lot at Download,) the band make a powerful entrance before bursting into their first track, ‘Into the Fire.’ In the far distance of the audience, a set of banana costumed teens have all set up a small circle and mosh alongside the bands next track, ‘Run Free.’ Drummer James Cassells threw militant thuds, whilst thunderous guitar riffs bellowed. With lyrics roared with rage and passion from frontman Danny Worsnop, the England born group played an epic show.

Parkway Drive: Trailing from down under, the Australian hardcore band walk on stage to a militant, enthusiastic and rage infused set of fans. Setting a long introduction, the audience all head bang with encouragement, as the band open their first track, ’12 Years.’ There’s only three words that can describe a band like Parkway Drive; Boisterous, hardcore and aggressive. The heavy roars of screamed vocals performed by vocalist and frontman Winston McCall were beautifully spoken. It isn’t often you see a hard-core metal band in this day and age who don’t show hints of punk, pop-punk or rock. Parkway Drive have stapled a strong and consistent heavy metal to their sound and they portray it so well. Screaming every inch he can give McCall is bright red with passion, fury and commitment. Playing acclaimed tracks such as,’ Prey,’ ‘Karma,’ and ‘The Void,’ it’s fair to say their set wasn’t short from a riot… A rock riot of course.

Guns ‘N’ Roses: Closing the show with a headlining set of two hours and 50 minutes were acclaimed heavy metal band Guns ‘n’ Roses. Having recently reunited last year for the first time since 1993, Guns ‘n’ Roses returned to Download still fresh as ever. Having played over 100 shows in the past, Saturday nights performance was the reunion a lot of fans had been waiting their entire lives for. Opening with their first ever single,  ‘It’s so Easy,’ taken from their studio album Appetite for Destruction; it’s fair to say their fans had an appetite for a hectic show of classic, Guns ‘n’ Roses anthems. Acclaimed tracks ‘Live and Let Die,’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ and ‘Black Hole Sun,’ were also thrown into the mix, accompanied by vibrant, 3D production on stage.

Neck Deep:  With inflatable balls flying around, blistering stage lights beaming across the venue and a tent full of thousands of people- Neck Deep managed to catch themselves a giddish crowd. “Make some noise if you’ve had a really fucking good day,” crowd cheers, “that’s what I like to hear- we’re about to make it a whole lot better.” Says frontman Ben Barlow before thrashing into their next track, ‘Citizens of Earth.’ Throwing a  burst of pop-punk energy onto stage, the bands backdrop graphics are bold, eccentric and fun. With bursts of confetti littering the venue and screams from crazed fans, it’s fair to say the north Wales, quintuple boy-band have a strong support system of fans around them.

Black Veil Brides: Strutting unapologetically onto stage eleven minutes late are Ohioan formed, glam-metal group, Black Veil Brides. “How you fucking doing Download?” Says Andy Biersack after playing their first track, ‘Faithless.’ Skipping up and down main stage as he tries to engage with all corners of his audience, Biersack screams into their next song, ‘Coffin.’ Throwing a 60 minute show of Gothic metal realness, the US band threw in some of their most acclaimed tracks, ‘Fallen Angels,’ and ‘Rebel Love Song.’ In January this year they dropped their latest album Vale, on Sunday night they played us one of their newest singles, ‘Wake Up,’ taken from the album. Ending on, ‘In the End,’ Black Veil Brides successfully tug the hearts of many emo teens.

Shinedown: Shinedown are a pretty mediocre, yet acclaimed rock band, with cheesy punchlines and basic riffs. “England have you brought your singing voices with you today?” Asks frontman Brent Smith, I hadn’t realised I was going to feel like I was at a school assembly at this performance, but perhaps I was wrong? Needless to say, Shinedown still tore up a good show, playing lauded tracks , ‘Killed your Consciousness,’ ‘Enemies,’ and closing the show with, ‘Devil,’ taken from their latest album, Attention Attention.

Marilyn Manson: The king of controversy, Marilyn Manson took on Download Festival main stage Sunday evening. Heaven Upside Down and Remix and Repent were his two album backdrops on stage, until his encore, where the graphics reflected a distorted and delayed live stream of him on stage. Playing a set of his best Manson hits and some from his latest 2018 album, it’s fair to say a lot of us were sad he wasn’t the headlining act of the evening. Opening, ‘Beautiful People,’ by tapping a set of drum sticks amongst the strings of Tyler Bates guitar, the track was unclear for the first few taps, until drummer Gil Sharone stepped in. A roar of cheers and fists pumps- as people threw themselves into the air with excitement. Tracks, ‘BeOBSCENE,’ ‘Kill4Me,’ and ‘This is the New Shit’ kicked up a storm as fans screamed the lyrics back and forth. Setting a far better performance than his 2012 live show at Download Festival, this year Manson took back his crown and took ownership of main-stage.

Ozzy Osborne: This is it, the end of an era… or perhaps just a three day rock Festival that I’m yet to come to terms with is officially over. Concluding a weekend of rock, metal and punk music is heavy metal, Prince of the Darkness, Ozzy Osborne. For many his show was astounding, the perfect end to a perfect weekend, however, for someone who knows hardly any of his music, it was pretty hard to get into the swing of his performance. The trouble with these, ‘rock Gods,’ is that they have a specific audience demographic, hardly any millennial’s were there for his show. Nonetheless, that doesn’t suggest for a bad performance, Osborne still wears his underlying talent on his sleeve. Having previously played Download’s main stage fronting as the lyricist of Black Sabbath, this year Osborne treated us with their 70s hit, ‘War Pigs,’ taken from the bands second studio album, Paranoid.

Here’s to Download Festival 2018, until next time.

All images taken from the official site of Download Festival Instagram account.

15 ACTS WE SAW AT DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL 2018 (LIVE REVIEW) Returning to Donington Park for the 16th year, Download Festival returns bigger and better with headline performances from acclaimed rock stars, Avenged Sevenfold, Guns 'n' Roses and Ozzy Osborne.