#richard sprang

[warrenhmuck]

This is gold.

[tavolgisvist]

With A Little Help From My Friends

Monday, Sept. 14, 1964: Ringo was first off the plane. He emerged from the darkened doorway of the chartered Lockheed Electra around 4:40 p.m. and stepped into the bright sun, which highlighted his sad eyes, rakish sideburns and, of course, that glorious nose. Even from a distance, he was instantly recognizable. The world’s most famous drummer. The shrieking, which had begun long before the plane stopped, reached new heights. Thousands of teenage girls held back by the Greater Pittsburgh Airport’s snow fences squealed, screamed, shoved closed fists into their mouths, grabbed handfuls of their own hair, wept, and generally fell into fits of hysteria. Behind the crowd, a blond boy of about 12 shimmied up a light pole to see the spectacle: The four young men known throughout the civilized world as the Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - were invading his hometown. Ringo started down the stairway to the tarmac. Behind him stepped John, cool in sunglasses and a flashy blue-and-white polka-dot shirt. Then George and finally Paul, who paused at the top of the stairs to point at something. Ringo kept moving, five steps down, the other Beatles following close behind. Then something came flying through the air. Something red and the size of a fist. Ringo moved instinctively. He ducked, covered his head with his left arm and, less than a second later, sprang back upright as if nothing had happened.

He never paused in his descent, or changed his expression. He simply continued down and then calmly waded into a crowd of reporters, photographers, police officers and guys in work shirts and hard hats. A reporter named Al McDowell from KDKA-TV approached Ringo. “What’s that stuff they were throwing?” McDowell asked. “Looked like a tomato, to me,” Ringo responded, pronouncing it toe-mah-toe in his thick Liverpool accent. “It’s always the same, you got a couple of lunatics in a couple of thousand … .”

(The Beatles in the 'Burgh, 1964, Steve Mellon for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

The song 'With A Little Help From My Friends' was written specifically for me, but they had one line that I wouldn't sing. It was: 'What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?' I said, 'There's not a chance in hell am I going to sing rhis line,' because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage; and I thought that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes.

(Ringo Starr, The Beatles Anthology, 2000)

Poking a little fun at Ringo was actually a lof of fun. ‘What would you do if I sang out of tune?’

(Paul McCartney, The Lyric, 2021)

Actually, John and I wrote this song within a vocal range that would cause no problems for Ringo, who had a style of singing different to ours. We tailored it especially for him…

(Paul McCartney, The Lyric, 2021)

…There was an unusually late start for that night’s session because the Beatles had spent the afternoon and early evening overseeing preparations for the upcoming album cover photo shoot. <…> Despite the late hour, all four Beatles were wide awake, excited by the events of the day; I remember them animatedly discussing the set that Peter Blake had built for them and talking about how much they loved their satin Pepper costumes. After hurriedly consumed cups of tea, we finally got to work. The backing track for the new song—initially called “Bad Finger Boogie” for some reason—had a real spark to it, and an inspired Ringo was really smacking his tom-toms… Ten takes were required to get a “keeper”; it was nearly dawn by that time. Richard and I watched an exhausted Ringo begin to trudge up the stairs. That was our signal, as usual, that the session was over, and we began to relax. He was at the halfway point when we heard Paul’s voice call out. “Where are you going, Ring?” he said. Ringo looked surprised. “Home, to bed.” “Nah, let’s do the vocal now.” Ringo looked to the others for support. “But I’m knackered,” he protested. To his dismay, both John and George Harrison were taking Paul’s side. “No, come on back here and do some singing for us,” John said with a grin. <…> Fortunately for all of us, Ringo got his lead vocal done relatively quickly: perhaps the shock tactic of having him sing when he was least expecting it took the nervousness away, or perhaps it was just how supportive everyone was being. All three of his compatriots gathered around him, inches behind the microphone, silently conducting and cheering him on as he gamely tackled his vocal duties. It was a touching show of unity among the four Beatles. The only problem was the song’s last high note, which Ringo had a bit of trouble hitting spot-on. For a while he lobbied to have the tape slowed down just for that one drop-in, and we tried it, but even though it allowed him to sing on pitch, it didn’t match tonally to the rest of the vocal—he sounded a bit silly, almost like one of the Goons. “No, Ring, you’ve got to do it properly,” Paul finally concluded. “It’s okay; just put your mind to it. You can do it,” George Harrison said encouragingly. Even John added some helpful—if decidedly nontechnical—advice: “Just throw yer head back and let ’er rip!” It took a few tries, but Ringo finally hit the note—and held it—without too much wavering. Amid the cheers of his bandmates and a Scotch-and Coke toast, the session finally ended.

(Geoff Emerick, Here There and Everywhere, 2007)

[ilovedagain]

A short story about Damian Wayne and what colors mean to him.

"Maybe we should speak in a simpler way," the therapist said to the artist. After thirty minutes of stony silence, she was still trying to get the artist to say a word. "Talk to me about colors. What does blue mean to you?"

The artist's first thought was Richard. A man in black and blue who flew through the navy night sky, untethered by gravity. Skin mottled the same black and blue underneath his clothes. He tried to hide from everyone, burying his hurt deep. As if, perhaps, if he couldn't see it, others wouldn't see it too. He would guard his emotions, guard others—the fool—but he wouldn't guard himself.

"Guardian," the artist finally said about blue. He could talk about colors. He re-crossed his arms for the third time, aware of how obvious his discomfort was but unable to help it.

He knew how to face judgment, harden his heart and list his failings to superiors. But the therapist was nonjudgmental, asking him about colors, and he never learned how to guard against someone without ulterior motives.

"What about yellow?"

The artist swallowed. Yellow was the color of the cape he tried to steal from a boy who needed it as much as him. It was a flash of brightness in an unforgiving world where he had to fight dirty and vicious to earn his place. At least, that was the world before everything changed. Before the world softened around the edges and suddenly he was the dark, unforgiving one.

"Regret."

The therapist hummed. A soft, melodic sound beneath the crashing waves in his ears. Maybe she could hear how loud his heartbeat was because she didn't push him to elaborate. "Pink?"

The artist almost smiled. Pink was the tongue of his cat, stuck out in her sleep.

"Cute."

Unlike him, the therapist didn't hold back her smile.

"Black?"

That was an easy one. The color of mystery. The color of the void in his life; the empty space beside his mother. That void captured his younger self's mind, always wondering what the void was like. What it would make of him. The hard part was saying aloud, to the therapist, what it meant to him.

"Father," he said, and immediately regretted his honesty.

She nodded, not making a big deal of it.

"Red?"

The artist exhaled deeply. He thought of many things. The red of his eye-veins when he was stressed. The red blotches of blood blooming like roses on a white bandage wrapped and wrapped around a head wound, vaguely bouquet-like. The red-chested robins he found in his father's gardens and fed seeds as he sketched their innocence.

The red helmet of a man, who was really a boy, desperate and different from his family. Living despite all the odds saying he should be long dead by now.

"Life," the artist said. He let his arms drop, suddenly drained like a nurse had drawn a liter of his blood.

"Green?"

The artist froze. He stared at the therapist, wondering about her angle. Did she know where he came from—his hometown and its lifeblood? Was this the goal of her little game of colors, how she would finally glean his thoughts about his childhood home?

When he was a young boy, in a kingdom of sand and gold, green was everywhere. The green fields in a greenhouse of extinct plants. In the green eyes of his mother and grandfather, the very same eyes as his own. And in the green pools that restored life, a miracle he beheld almost daily.

He would stand before those miracle waters, anxiously waiting for his loved ones to emerge, contemplating mirages and how it must be a lie to restore life after death. And yet, his pets had survived a plague, his mother had survived a stab wound, and his grandfather had survived cancer. He was a child who believed he was lucky.

"We're finished here." He stood and left, fifteen minutes before the end of the session, disregarding the therapist's soft-spoken plea to wait.

Richard greeted him in the waiting room with a smile that vanished when he saw his face. He sprang to his feet, abandoning the magazine unceremoniously on the chair, and matched Damian's brisk pace out of the building.

"What happened?" Richard took a shaky breath when Damian ignored him in favor of speed-walking to the parking lot. Richard placed a hand on his shoulder as they reached the car. He bent his head to meet his eyes, but Damian stubbornly turned his head away. His eyes were so, so blue. "Dami, what happened?"

Damian knew, and he knew Dr. Dinah knew, that refusing to discuss that color spoke volumes, more than anything he had said during the session.

"Home," Damian whispered, feeling like a child crying on his first day of kindergarten. "Please, I just want to go home."

They didn't converse during the car ride home, though Richard stole glances at him, his unspoken words palpable in the silence. Damian fled to his room and spent dinner there. He was too restless to sleep and too exhausted to study. Tugged between the urge to fight and to freeze.

Like how all roads lead to Rome, he ended up painting. He set up an easel taller than himself and began mixing colors until he had every shade of green. He thought about home. His old home, the one in an unforgiving world where death was both constant and impossible, where pain was as abundant as gold, but at least the world made sense. The strong survived, and the strongest conquered. They even conquered death.

The scene he painted was a view inside a tower. Stone walls stretched up into infinite flights of stairs, with assassins lined up in rows on each level. The pool at the bottom cast a thick, green hue over the darkness. But the pool was an afterthought; the focus was on the walls of the tower.

He knew those walls well. They were made of bulging rocks that lay unevenly. When they were bathed in a green haze, Damian couldn't help but think they resembled cancer cells under a microscope. And that was precisely how he painted them: a tower with walls like tumor cells, splotches of assassins in the darkness, and the gaping green pool at the bottom.

Poison. Green is poison.

[goldenherc9]

On a crisp Thanksgiving morning, a group of soccer lads, known as The Golden Army, gathered on the local pitch. Dressed in their gleaming golden ac milan jerseys, they looked like sunbeams ready to light up the field. The team's captain, Richard, a charismatic leader with a knack for inspiring his mates, called them into a huddle.

“Today isn’t just about the game,” Tom said, his eyes shining with pride. “It’s about gratitude—being thankful for this team, our friendship, and the game we love.”

The whistle blew, and the lads sprang into action. Scott, the swift striker, weaved through defenders with ease, while Riley, the reliable goalie, guarded the net with unwavering focus. The synergy among them was palpable, each pass and play executed with precision and passion.

As the match progressed, the community gathered around, cheering and clapping, their voices echoing through the chilly air. The lads played their hearts out, fueled by the spirit of the holiday and their bond as a team.

When the final whistle sounded, The Golden Army emerged victorious. They celebrated with laughter, hugs, and a heartfelt speech from Richard, who reminded everyone of the true meaning of Thanksgiving: unity, gratitude, and the joy of being together. 🌟⚽

HAPPY THANKSGIVING BROS

[deathlessathanasia]

Some references to divine blood/ichor that might give a clue on what colour(s) it is supposed to be. I'm simply collecting the English translations of a few excerpts and I have yet to check the Greek text for any of these:

"The immortal blood flowed from the divinity [Aphrodite]--ichor, which alone flows in the blessed gods. For they do not eat grain nor drink shining wine; and for this reason they are bloodless and are called immortals. … And Iris, with feet like the wind, taking her up, led her out of the throng weighed down with pain, her beautiful skin blood-dark" - Homer, Iliad, trans. Caroline Alexander;

"It sprang up new-formed when the flesh-tearing eagle caused bloody ichor from the suffering Prometheus to drip to the ground on the Caucasian crags. Its flower rises on twin stalks a cubit high; in colour it resembles the Korykian crocus, and the root in the earth is like newly-cut flesh. Like the dark moisture from an oak on the mountains, she had gathered its sap in a Caspian shell to work her magic …" - Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautica, Trans. Richard Hunter;

"As he was heaving up great boulders to prevent the Argonauts from reaching anchorage, he knocked his ankle on the sharp point of a rock, and from it flowed ichor like melting lead." - Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautica;

[whencyclopedia]

Desert Rats

The Desert Rats was the nickname of the 7th Armoured Division of the British Eighth Army, which first fought in North Africa during the Second World War (1939-45). Fighting in the Western Desert Campaigns and the North Africa Campaign, the Desert Rats, so called because of their jerboa shoulder flash, participated in such famous victories as the battles of El Alamein.

Origins & Name

The 7th Armoured Division sprang from the Mobile Division (Egypt), formed in 1938. The division was given excellent training by its commander Major-General Percy Hobart (1885-1957). Hobart had fought in Mesopotamia in the First World War (1914-18), gaining an impressive row of medals for bravery. In the inter-war years, he gained long experience as a tank commander. Hobart also served as a Director of Military Training. A quirky individual who struggled to get on with his peers, Hobart certainly knew what was required for the desert, and it is thanks to his vision that Britain had at least one fighting force that could match the elite of the Axis powers. Hobart's eccentricity and reputation as a flawed genius is revealed by his demise after falling out with the powers that be when the war started, his time spent in the military wilderness as a mere lance corporal in the Home Guard, and then his dramatic rise back to the forefront of generalship when he was given command of whole divisions again, including one of specialised vehicles he himself had developed, used with great success to clear the beaches in the D-Day Normandy landings of 1944.

In a still relatively new concept of mixed arms, Hobart ensured the Mobile Division combined infantry, artillery, and tanks, and it did what its name suggested, emphasising the necessity of movement in modern mechanised warfare. One of Britain's best commanders, Major-General Richard O'Connor (1889-1981), noted in 1939 that the Mobile Division was "the best-trained division I have ever seen" (Liddell Hart, 93).

The Mobile Division earned its 'Desert Rats' nickname from the badge (shoulder flash) its members wore, which showed a jerboa, a small rodent with a long tail, native to the North African desert. Due to the fact that all British and British Empire troops were fighting the same enemy in the same way in the same environment, the name 'Desert Rats' is often applied to any British/British Empire soldier involved in the Desert War in WWII. The extension of the term 'rats' is also evidenced in the nickname 'the Rats of Tobruk' for those Allied soldiers who held out during the siege of Tobruk from April to December 1941.

Desert Rats Shoulder Flash

Unknown Artist (Public Domain)

Continue reading...

[notbecauseofvictories]

I realize this is a weird question for a Sunday morning, but does anybody have particularly incisive articles about the tension between architectural preservation and the need (because I do think it's a need!) for new buildings, new spaces, and revising the landscape of a city?

I'm watching a piece on Richard Nickel, who is almost single-handedly responsible for photographing the work of Louis Sullivan and other architects of the Chicago Prairie School, prior to their demolition in the 60s. It's a great piece, and I love Nickel's photographs, but as someone who knows only the Chicago that sprang up in the wake of Nickel's, I can't help but wonder if there's more than simple aesthetics at play here.

[voraciousvore]

Giganterra (Chapter 58)

Prologue/TOC | Previous (57) | Next (59)

Content Warning: NSFW/ 18+! Non-con sexual touching, abortion, vulgar language, implied nonfatal vore, implied violence

Word Count: 2.1k

------ Chapter 58: Resolve ------

Bianca ascended from Hunter’s gloomy subterranean lair in tears. She felt awful, like a crucial piece of her was permanently lost in that dark, dank pit. The experience had been far worse than she’d imagined. Not only did the greedy soul-sucking stone slurp out the life force of her fetus, but her womb physically expelled the dead tissue in a graphic, bloody mess. Bianca believed the gaping emptiness inside her would never heal. 

She was not ready for the inevitable emotional blow that followed when she returned to her boudoir. Her chest clenched when she walked in only to see an empty nightstand: no dollhouse, no human men, no sign of any life. Fearing the worst, she called in her maid. “Where are my humans?” 

The maid turned ashen. “Oh, Princess… it was horrible! King Richard… what he did to those little creatures…” 

Bianca’s legs failed and she sat shakily on her bed. “No…” Her heart stopped. She felt like vomiting as spasms erupted through her body. Her brain recoiled as her imagination conjured the most phantasmagorical images of her innocent men broken and bloodied from ghastly cruelty. 

“He killed them. Violently. All the screams… and the gore…” The maid covered her mouth with her hand. “Truly terrible!” 

Bianca collapsed on her bed. “Leave me.” The maid obeyed, thoughtfully closing the door behind her. Bianca stared at the ceiling in shock as the full magnitude of horror and grief sank in. Cesar, Graham, Gio: They were gone. Dead. They lost their lives in an unthinkable display of gruesome carnage, all because of her irresponsible actions. Because of her father’s savagery. 

Deep down, she knew that she was to blame. She hadn’t killed them herself, but their blood stained her hands. In her selfishness, she had requested the men be harvested from their homes in Minimaterra, taken from their lives to be enslaved to her whims. She took advantage of them in the worst ways, eating them and pleasuring herself with them. She sowed the seeds for their destruction. Her flimsy attempts to improve herself paled in comparison to all the hideous wrongs she had committed. She reaped the disaster and damage of her own design, and they were the ones to pay the price, with their own blood. 

Tears flowed down her face in a cascade of sadness and guilt. She felt so alone, even more than when she believed that everyone hated her. The new life within her had been sapped away, and the people she had grown attached to were butchered. The idyllic fantasy she had clung to, of a perfect future with a loving family, was extinguished in an instant. Fiery anger flared up in her heart. They didn’t deserve such a tragic fate. 

She sprang out of bed and stormed out of her bedroom. She couldn’t stand the pain any longer. Her only chance at happiness had gone up in flames. Her life was a prison, all because of her beast of a father, killing the people she loved: her diminutive companions, her eldest brother, her romantic partners, her possible children. She couldn’t let him continue to hurt people and lay a path of destruction. Even if she couldn’t have a happy ending, she had to do something to stop him. 

Whatever action she needed to take, she couldn’t do it alone. Ignoring the waterfalls running down her face, she stomped out to the courtyard and located Ronny, still conversing with Joey. She marched up to him like a tempest. 

“Ronny! I need you!” she shouted. Without waiting for a reply, she grabbed his sleeve, hoisted him off the bench, and pulled him away. 

“Hey! What the heck?” Ronny protested, but she didn’t answer her brother as she dragged him across the courtyard. “Bianca?” He noted how upset she was and went quiet, allowing her to take him. The state she was in didn’t reflect one of her usual tantrums: Something was very wrong. 

Joey and Eren stared after the royal siblings, baffled. “I wonder what that was about?” Eren questioned. “Bianca has been so strange lately. I just don’t get her.” 

The giant squire, however, wasn’t concerned with Bianca or Ronny. With the prince gone, he could help Eren escape, just like Martin did with Candy. “Now’s our chance, Eren!” he whispered with urgency. “I can get you out of here!” 

Energized, he stood up in a hurry, causing Eren to lose her balance in his palm. “Hey! Hang on a second!” she cried out as she fell on her hands and knees. 

“Oh. Sorry. I got too excited,” Joey admitted sheepishly. 

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Eren clarified, settling on her knees. “I’m not ready to leave. My work here isn’t done yet.” 

“What?! Aren’t you sick of this place? I need to help you before it’s too late!” Joey argued. He held her closer to his face. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. If you got hurt, I don’t know what I’d do…” 

Joey looked so sad, with those big, soulful, chocolate eyes of his glistening behind his glasses, that Eren almost relented just to placate him. However, she was firm in her mission. “I admit, it really is awful here. I hate getting eaten all the time, I hate Bucky, and I hate the king. But Joey—I’m so close. If I could just find a way to get past Chester, I could poison or kill the king. If I killed one giant, I can kill another. I’m not ready to give up yet.” 

Joey curled his other hand around Eren, as if to shield her from danger. “Are you sure about this?” 

“Absolutely,” she confirmed, shining with intensity. 

Joey sighed. She was too stubborn for him to sway her to a safer path. “What can I do to help you? Do you have any ideas? Do you want another weapon?” 

Eren frowned. “I… I don’t know yet. I don’t think that stratagem will work. But… maybe we can brainstorm some ideas, and meet up again another day, with the prince’s help?” 

“Well… I guess…” Joey acquiesced reluctantly. He wasn’t happy with the whole situation, but he did appreciate that he would have another opportunity to see Eren and maybe help her escape if she changed her mind. “Alright. Just, please... don’t put yourself in danger...” He gingerly stroked her hair with his finger. Eren flushed pink again. She’d never had a man touch her like that, with such ardor. His concern for her tamed her fierce spirit within. She was sorely tempted to snuggle up in his hands, rest and forget all her worries, let him hold her and tell her everything would be alright. She was filled with longing for a beautiful fantasy that she could make real, within the comfort of Joey’s loving embrace. 

However, she couldn’t let herself give in. Not yet, anyway. “Take me back to the kitchen,” she insisted. 

Joey sighed again in a great gust. “Alright.” 

Meanwhile, Bianca showed Ronny to her room. “They’re gone,” she blubbered, gesturing to her nightstand. 

Ronny stared blankly. “Who?” 

Bianca was crying already, but Ronny’s inquiry really opened the floodgates. “My humans!” she sobbed, rivers gushing down her cheeks. “That motherfucker slaughtered them!” 

In an instant, a black cloud of dread descended over Ronny. Bianca had no need to elaborate whom she was referring to when she uttered “that motherfucker.” He knew. And he abruptly sensed that he needed to check on Tanya. She might be in danger. 

“I’m gonna kill him!” Bianca yelled, slamming down her fists on the nightstand. “This is the last straw! I hate him! I fucking hate him!” 

“I’ll be right back,” Ronny stammered. He backed out of the room and hurried to his quarters to find Tanya. He just needed to reassure himself that she was okay. She was fine, right? She’d be there, clueless as to why he was so sweaty and flustered. She’d give him a little smirk and tease him for being a baby, but she’d be flattered that he was so worried about her. He’d cup her in his hands and give her a kiss and everything would be right with the world. 

“Tanya?” he called as he entered his bedroom. His nerves tingled with apprehension at the silence that greeted him. He rushed over to the house and opened the lid. “Tanya?” He didn’t see her. His anxiety spiked. He rummaged through the furniture, even though he knew in his gut the harrowing truth: She wasn’t there. She wouldn’t hide from him. She was gone. 

“Tanya!” Ronny cried in alarm. He dashed out without a second to spare, racing around corners so fast that he nearly tripped over his own feet in clumsy haste, particularly as he ascended the spiraling stairs to his father’s wing of the castle. He shouldered his way through the door past Ajax and burst into the king’s private inner sanctum. 

The sight that greeted him made him want to claw his eyes out. King Richard was propped up in bed, shirtless, clasping Tanya to his naked hairy flesh. He’d stripped her dress off and was fondling her bare breasts and thighs, investigating her body with filthy lust. Ronny belted out a feral yowl and surged towards him, but Ajax seized his arms and held him back. 

“Ronny! Help m-” Tanya squeaked before Hardon clamped his finger over her mouth to muffle her cries. 

“Let go of her, you monster!” Ronny roared. He bit Ajax’s knuckles hard, but the guard didn’t budge. The blood was bitter, tainting his entire mouth with the rotten taste of death. 

“Ah, Ronny! How nice of you to join us,” King Richard jeered. His lips curved into a wicked grin as he petted Tanya on the head like she was nothing more than a pet hamster. Ronny fought against Ajax’s grip with the ferocity of a wild animal. Tanya trembled; she didn’t make a sound even after the king removed his fingertip from her face. 

“You did such a good job training her. She’s very docile and obedient. I think she’ll make a fine pet for me,” Hardon drawled on with a nasty sneer. 

“She doesn’t belong to you!” Ronny snapped. “Don’t you dare touch her!”  

The king chuckled, humming to himself as he raised Tanya to his lips. “Look at that lovely figure. Nice fertile hips, buxom breasts, toned waist, cute little bottom... mmmmm...” He curled his finger around her waist lasciviously. His tongue slid out from his lips and sensually licked her thigh, up her side all the way to her ear. Tanya whined and tried to pull away, to no avail. 

“STOP IT!!” Ronny bellowed, straining against Ajax’s bulging muscles. The guard grunted and jerked him back. 

“Take him away so we can have some privacy,” Hardon ordered with a dismissive wave. His lips parted, closing over Tanya’s head and shoulders. Ronny could just make out a muted scream from within the giant’s maw. 

“NOOOO!” he howled. Ajax dragged the prince out of the king’s suite and threw him into the stairwell like a vagabond, slamming the door and locking him out. Ronny cursed and screamed and banged on the door with frantic energy, but failed to gain reentry. From within, he could hear the squelching gulp of that repulsive beast of a man swallowing his beloved. Ronny hurled himself against the door until he gradually slid down in defeat, sobbing. There was nothing he could do. Tanya was in the hands of the worst giant imaginable, and Ronny was helpless to save her. 

After a while, Ronny heaved himself to his feet. He wiped his eyes and trudged down the stairs, then though the halls to his sister’s room. He found her lying in bed with dull, bloodshot eyes. She looked up at him, searching his face. Despite her listlessness and despair, there was rage boiling inside her, threatening to explode. 

The qualms that Ronny had earlier, regarding the assassination of his father, had washed away. His resolve was firm as steel, hardened in the forge of his passion. A flame ignited in his belly as he met the gaze of his sister, and an understanding passed between them. “I’m ready,” he stated, jaw rigid. “Let’s kill him.” 

Chapter 59

Tag List: @tinycoded360 @yummynomms @maybeiamdownbad

[andrew-minyard-my-love]

Chapter 4

When they got off the plane they were greeted by Kevin and Wymack “hello new foxes I’m going to do a head count jst say “here” if your here” Wymack said “Okay ,Richard?” “Here but you can call me Ricky” “Okay, Mable?” “Here” “James?” “Here” “Penelope?” “Here but you can call me Penny”

As Wymack went on he reached the twins and he stopped and took in a deep breath and said “Don’t tell me your parents are who I think they are” Liliana looked at Levi who was scrolling on his phone then she looked at Wymack then Wymack said “Are your parents Neil Jonsten and Andrew Minyard?” He said while Kevin had a little bit of a smirk on his face “Yes” Liliana said as she elbowed Levi to get his attention “Dude-“ Levi started but he stopped when he saw all eyes on them “What’s with the stares?” Levi said “Levi be nice, and what about our dads?” Liliana said “I used to coach them-“ Wymack said but he got cut off by Kevin “And they were something” “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Liliana said “Umm… moving on with attendance” Wymack said Liliana wanted to say something but didn’t want to make a bad impression so she kept silent “Jenet?” “Here” she heard an annoyed voice say behind her she was so distracted she didn’t realize there were other people here besides her own group “Aberham?” “Here” “beatrixx” “Here but you can call me Trixxy” “and Luise” “Here”

“I think that’s every one coach” Kevin said “Okay then everyone hop in the bus we’re going to campus”

Chapter 5

by the time Liliana got on the bus there was no seats open except for one by Jenet at the end of the bus it gave Liliana chills up her spine sitting by random strangers but she new she had to meet to her eventually so she went and sat in the seat right next to Jenet, Jenet looked at Liliana confused for a second before her face went back to it usual stone cold unamusement “Hey I’m Liliana” Liliana said trying to do something that will help the awkwardness of the moment but Jenet didn’t respond she just stared blankly out the window Liliana shrugged it off and texted the gc

Liliana : hey you guys know what all that abt our dads is abt???

Sofie : beats me

James : I heard some things about your dads

Liliana : what?

James : that your dad Neil had a major attitude problem and your dad Andrew was a “Monster” but prolly jst lies

Liliana : ya bc that doesn’t sound like my dad’s at ALL

But then after that Liliana made the mistake of dowsing off and she woke up to Jenet lightly shaking her when Liliana woke up she realized she had been laying on Jenet’s shoulder this whole time so she sprang up and quickly apologized “Oh I’m sry for failing asleep on you!” Jenet still seemed like she didn’t care cause she just shrugged and got up then Liliana realized everyone else had gotten off the bus so she sped walked up to catch up with the crew she walked up next to Levi, then Levi whispered “What took you so long?” “I feel asleep okay “ just then the whole group stopped moving then Wymack said “Okay since we have a bit of a lot of u and some rooms are being renovated you will have to share dorms, So all of the doors will have 4 of your last names on it. Now go find your rooms then later tonight when you’re done we will guide you to the court ,Got it?” no one really answered but the all got moving Liliana saw that Levi already found his room at the beginning of the hall so she went to look for her’s when she found her dorm at the end of the hall she saw the names on it they and they stated

“Liliana.M-J”

“Jenet.L”

“Aberham.E”

“Beatrixx.H”

She didn’t know these people but she knew there was a first time for every thing she walked in and she saw that Jenet had already found her bunk on the top of one of thebuck beds and Aberham was on the bottom of the other one while Beatixx was on the top witch meant her only option was the bunk with Jenet witch she wasn’t mad about but still wasn’t pleased with but she went and sat her bags down then sat down then at an attempt to start a conversation Trixxy said “Hey new roomies looks like we’re all stuck with each other for a while” “ya I guess so” Jenet said back as she went to grab something out of her bag but then it fell out and a pill bottle fell off the top bunk and hit the floor when Liliana went to pick it up she glanced at the words and it said in fine print “ANTI DEPRESSANTS”

It reminded Liliana about that time when Levi and her still lived with their biological parents and her mom made her and Levi take them bc they were “too gloomy” their mother always said and when they don’t want to take them their dad pored water in their mouths and popped in a pill and covered their mouth and made them take it but just as soon as that memory came it went away and Liliana quickly lifted her hand up to give it to Jenet and Jenet took it back “Okay so what’s everyone’s name” Aberham said “Liliana” “Trixxy” “Aberham , and you?” Aberham pointed his finger at Jenet “Jenet” Jenet said as she climbed down from her bunk to the kitchen where she grabbed a cup and filled it with water and opened her pill bottle and took a pill out and took the pill with water then came and sat next to Liliana on her bunk

Chapter 6

There was still a lot of time left until they had to go see Wymack and Kevin so Liliana was bored but then Aberham spoke up “How about our lore?” “”Lore”?” Jenet said “Ya lore like our past and stuff” Aberham said “it’s better than nothing” Trixxy said “who wants to go first?” “I’ll go!” Aberham said “my parents disowned me because I’m gay” “Oh I’m so sorry to here that” Trixxy said “but I guess I’ll go know my mom killed her self and I don’t know who my father is” “your turn!” Trixxy said while pointing at Liliana “Umm… well mines not that good” Liliana said “Oh come on it can’t be that bad” Trixxy said “it’s a REALLY long story” Liliana said “we got time to kill” Aberham said “Umm… I mean if you really want to know then here it goes… So I grew up with my EXTREMELY abusive bio parents and they forced us to take pills bc my mom said we were “Too gloomy” and eventually they went to jail for things I will not disclose when we were 10 then we had to grow up in foster care and then when we were 14 we got adopted by our now parents. Any questions or concerns, No? Now your turn” Liliana said while pointing at Jenet “No” “what do you mean “No” yes your going bc we all went” Trixxy said with a pouty face “No” Jenet said with a rumbling In her voice that Liliana was surprised to bed didn’t shake “Dude thats n-“ Aberham tried to get out but got cut off by Jenet holding a pocket knife up to his neck. How smoothly she moved to Aberhams bunk Liliana found it intimidating in a way “Okay no need for violence” Trixxy said trying to help the situation “I said no.And that means no got it?” Jenet said while she still held the knife in place “Got it!” Aberham said with a shaky voice “Okay just need to get that cleared up” Jenet said while putting her knife away and going back to sit with Liliana “Okay well me and Aberham are going to the new dinners across the street you guys want to come?” Trixxy said while springing up “Nah I’m good” Jenet said “Me too” Liliana said “Okay then, come on Aberham” Aberham and Trixxy went out the door and when the door swung shut it there was really awkward silence so Liliana decided to speak “What was that all about?” Liliana wasn’t expecting an answer but for some reason Jenet responded “He needed to understand what “No.” means” “ya I know but that was a b-“ Liliana got cut off by Jenets hand in her hair “See now did you say yes or no to me touching your hair?” Liliana didn’t know how to answer so she just said “you didn’t give me the chance to but I don’t really mind” “hmm” Jenet said while she still had her hand in Liliana’s hair “What does that mean?” Liliana said confused “Do I have permission?” Jenet asked with a smile “to touch my hair y-“ but she got cut off by Jenet saying “To kiss you?” Liliana froze in shock then she finally got out a quiet “ye-“ but before she could finish getting out the word they were kissing for what felt like an eternity and when they stopped Jenet took her hand out of her hair and just went up to her bunk so Liliana just layed down and stared at the bottom of the top bunk in wonder wondering why they just kissed let alone why she just kissed a girl she just met in the first place and a GIRL this was new for her but she eventually dowse off

Chapter 7 coming soon!!!!!!

Bye-bye my FOXIES 🧡🦊

[wordsoftheheartandsoul]

No matter what has happened, how far we've drifted apart, or what led us to detach... If I wanted the best for you then, I want the best for you now. No matter what words were exchanged, how much we disappointed each other, or how much pain sprang forth... If I prayed for you then, I pray for you now. Because no matter if our bond expired, how deeply our feelings were hurt, or if your chapter in my book of life has ended... If I loved you then, I love you now.

Morgan Richard Olivier - the freedom of forward

[joiedecombat]

Does the character have other characters connected to them? Do you have a family tree and "offscreen" connections made up for them or do they exist in a vacuum purely for the purpose of the story?

For MEIYI, since I know about Raine. Unless! You would rather talk about Raine!

Honestly, talk about whomever you please, I'm not your mom. <3

Meiyi doesn't have a whole lot of offscreen family/connections built - YET, it could change!

The main connection I've established for her is her adoptive father, which is itself a bit of a tale: Smiling Mountain, a Hellsguard Roegadyn Warrior, blundered his way onto the Azim Steppe and into the arms of the Dotharl, with whom he got along so splendidly that they basically adopted him as a Dotharl who'd been reborn as a Roe.

Smiling Mountain was the one who found infant Meiyi after she was orphaned in one of the many intertribal scuffles that are part of life on the steppe. He showed her to the Dotharl khatun at the time, who identified her as the reincarnation of a mighty Dotharl warrior (mostly because she immediately bit him).

Smiling Mountain had no experience with raising kids whatsoever but he took responsibility for caring for Meiyi alongside the clan, and pretty much spoiled her rotten. Later on he had a Roegadyn daughter, Dawn Star - I haven't yet figured out if she's also adopted or is his biological kid, but she and Meiyi were raised as sisters and they're close. Dawn Star has a much milder and more down to earth personality compared to Meiyi, who was always the ringleader of any shenanigans. Dawn Star eventually set out to find her own way in life and became an Arcanist, she lives in Reunion these days but also spends some time in Limsa Lominsa.

(If these names are sounding familiar, it's because Meiyi began life as the Spirit Monk in my Let's Play of Jade Empire. I quickly determined that there was no need for a Master Li equivalent, so Smiling Mountain became her parental figure, and that's such an obvious Hellsguard name that the rest of the adaptation for him and for Dawn Star sprang from those roots.)

X'khal's mother X'rahne died in Bozja when he was a baby. His father Lagun'a, a Keeper of the Moon, is still alive out there somewhere, probably bumbling his way into some kind of Garlean public office. Neither of them knows anything about each other and they're probably better off that way, to be honest. I've yet to nail down anything about the Garlean training program that fucked up his early years or the Ala Mhigan resistance group that took him in after, beyond that he was a child soldier and that did as much of a number as you'd expect from Catboy Squall Leonhart FFVIII.

As for Raine, I've talked about her family before but it's turned out that she has family all over the Far East - some quite surprising to her when she traveled through Stormblood. Her parents (Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth D'arcy), her younger twin brothers (Richard and Fitzwilliam aka Fitz and Will), and her aunt Georgiana live in Radz-at-Han; her older brother (Bennet aka Ben) followed her to Eorzea and had his own reluctant adventures there I may flesh out one day. Aunt Jane and Uncle Charles have a successful trade business out of Kugane, and Aunt Kitty settled there with them. Aunt Mary is a traveling scholar who's been around Doma and hangs with the Qestir in Reunion. There's a Fitzwilliam cousin in Gyr Abania whose name and details I don't know yet. Aunt Lydia is living her best life with the Confederacy out on the Ruby Sea.

(As always, Raine's family is an extended Pride And Prejudice homage.)

[mariacallous]

If you were asked to guess which prestigious film-making duo had spent their career scratching around desperately for cash, trying to wriggle out of paying their cast and crew, ping-ponging between lovers, and having such blood-curdling bust-ups that their neighbours called the police, it might be some time before “Merchant Ivory” sprang to mind. But a new warts-and-all documentary about the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the US director James Ivory makes it clear that the simmering passions in their films, such as the EM Forster trilogy of A Room With a View, Maurice and Howards End, were nothing compared to the scalding, volatile ones behind the camera.

From their initial meeting in New York in 1961 to Merchant’s death during surgery in 2005, the pair were as inseparable as their brand name, with its absence of any hyphen or ampersand, might suggest. Their output was always more eclectic than they got credit for. They began with a clutch of insightful Indian-set dramas including Shakespeare-Wallah, their 1965 study of a troupe of travelling actors, featuring a young, pixieish Felicity Kendal. From there, they moved on to Savages, a satire on civilisation and primitivism, and The Wild Party, a skewering of 1920s Hollywood excess that pipped Damien Chazelle’s Babylon to the post by nearly half a century.

It was in the 1980s and early 1990s, though, that Merchant Ivory became box-office titans, cornering the market in plush dramas about repressed Brits in period dress. Those literary adaptations launched the careers of Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves and Julian Sands, and helped make stars of Emma Thompson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Most were scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who had been with them, on and off, since their 1963 debut The Householder; she even lived in the same apartment building in midtown New York. Many were scored by Richard Robbins, who was romantically involved with Merchant while also holding a candle for Bonham Carter. These films restored the costume drama to the position it had occupied during David Lean’s heyday. The roaring trade in Jane Austen adaptations might never have happened without them. You could even blame Merchant Ivory for Bridgerton.

Though the pictures were uniformly pretty, making them was often ugly. Money was always scarce. Asked where he would find the cash for the next movie, Merchant replied: “Wherever it is now.” After Jenny Beavan and John Bright won an Academy Award for the costumes in A Room With a View, he said:“I got you your Oscar. Why do I need to pay you?” As Ivory was painstakingly composing each shot, Merchant’s familiar, booming battle cry would ring out: “Shoot, Jim, shoot!”

Heat and Dust, starring Julie Christie, was especially fraught. Only 30 or 40% of the budget was in place by the time the cameras started rolling in India in 1982; Merchant would rise at dawn to steal the telegrams from the actors’ hotels so they didn’t know their agents were urging them to down tools. Interviewees in the documentary concede that the producer was a “conman” with a “bazaar mentality”. But he was also an incorrigible charmer who dispensed flattery by the bucketload, threw lavish picnics, and wangled entrées to magnificent temples and palaces. “You never went to bed without dreaming of ways to kill him,” says one friend, the journalist Anna Kythreotis. “But you couldn’t not love him.”

Stephen Soucy, who directed the documentary, doesn’t soft-pedal how wretched those sets could be. “Every film was a struggle,” he tells me. “People were not having a good time. Thompson had a huge fight with Ismail on Howards End because she’d been working for 13 days in a row, and he tried to cancel her weekend off. Gwyneth Paltrow hated every minute of making Jefferson in Paris. Hated it! Laura Linney was miserable on The City of Your Final Destination because the whole thing was a shitshow. But you watch the films and you see no sense of that.”

Soucy’s movie features archive TV clips of the duo bickering even in the midst of promoting a film. “Oh, they were authentic all right,” he says. “They clashed a lot.”The authenticity extended to their sexuality. The subject was not discussed publicly until after Ivory won an Oscar for writing Call Me By Your Name: “You have to remember that Ismail was an Indian citizen living in Bombay, with a deeply conservative Muslim family,” Ivory told me in 2018. But the pair were open to those who knew them. “I never had a sense of guilt,” Ivory says, pointing out that the crew on The Householder referred to him and Merchant as “Jack and Jill”.

Soucy had already begun filming his documentary when Ivory published a frank, fragmentary memoir, Solid Ivory, which dwells in phallocentric detail on his lovers before and during his relationship with Merchant, including the novelist Bruce Chatwin. It was that book which emboldened Soucy to ask questions on screen – including about “the crazy, complicated triangle of Jim, Ismail and Dick [Robbins]” – that he might not otherwise have broached.

The documentary is most valuable, though, in making a case for Ivory as an underrated advocate for gay representation. The Remains of the Day, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-winning novel about a repressed butler, may be the duo’s masterpiece, but it was their gay love story Maurice that was their riskiest undertaking. Set in the early 20th century, its release in 1987 could scarcely have been timelier: it was the height of the Aids crisis, and only a few months before the Conservative government’s homophobic Section 28 became law.

“Ismail wasn’t as driven as Jim to make Maurice,” explains Soucy. “And Ruth was too busy to write it. But Jim’s dogged determination won the day. They’d had this global blockbuster with A Room With a View, and he knew it could be now or never. People would pull aside Paul Bradley, the associate producer, and say: ‘Why are they doing Maurice when they could be making anything?’ I give Jim so much credit for having the vision and tenacity to make sure the film got made.”

Merchant Ivory don’t usually figure in surveys of queer cinema, though they are part of its ecosystem, and not only because of Maurice. Ron Peck, who made the gay classic Nighthawks, was a crew member on The Bostonians. Andrew Haigh, director of All of Us Strangers, landed his first industry job as a poorly paid assistant in Merchant’s Soho office in the late 1990s; in Haigh’s 2011 breakthrough film Weekend, one character admits to freeze-framing the naked swimming scene in A Room With a View to enjoy “Rupert Graves’s juddering cock”. Merchant even offered a role in Savages to Holly Woodlawn, the transgender star of Andy Warhol’s Trash, only for her to decline because the fee was so low.

The position of Merchant Ivory at the pinnacle of British cinema couldn’t last for ever. Following the success of The Remains of the Day, which was nominated for eight Oscars, the brand faltered and fizzled. Their films had already been dismissed by the director Alan Parker as representing “the Laura Ashley school” of cinema. Gary Sinyor spoofed their oeuvre in the splendid pastiche Stiff Upper Lips (originally titled Period!), while Eric Idle was plotting his own send-up called The Remains of the Piano. The culture had moved on.

There was still an appetite for upper-middle-class British repression, but only if it was funny: Richard Curtis drew on some of Merchant Ivory’s repertory company of actors (Grant, Thompson, Simon Callow) for a run of hits beginning with Four Weddings and a Funeral, which took the poshos out of period dress and plonked them into romcoms.

The team itself was splintering. Merchant had begun directing his own projects. When he and Ivory did collaborate, the results were often unwieldy, lacking the stabilising literary foundation of their best work. “Films like Jefferson in Paris and Surviving Picasso didn’t come from these character-driven novels like Forster, James or Ishiguro,” notes Soucy. “Jefferson and Picasso were not figures that audiences warmed to.” Four years after Merchant’s death, Ivory’s solo project The City of Your Final Destination became mired in lawsuits, including one from Anthony Hopkins for unpaid earnings.

Soucy’s film, though, is a reminder of their glory days. It may also stoke interest in the movies among young queer audiences whose only connection to Ivory, now 95, is through Call Me By Your Name. “People walk up to Jim in the street to shake his hand and thank him for Maurice,” says Soucy. “But I also wanted to include the more dysfunctional side of how they were made. Hopefully it will be inspiring to young film-makers to see that great work can come out of chaos.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photograph of Cather’s grave by Richard Schlecht.

* * * *

“The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

—Willa Cather in “My Ántonia."

The truth and beauty of this vignette never left the soul from which it sprang. Cather requested that her grave site, which she shared with her partner, bear the inscription: “…that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

Another beautiful sharing from The Marginalian

[Follies Of God]

[freelafan4life545]

Day 7 of freela fluffmas

Another fic!

Inspired by @emdeejaydraws post

A Thousand Years of Warmth

It wasn’t every day that it snowed in New New York. Sure, it was the 31st century, and the weather control satellites kept things fairly predictable, but every once in a while, Mother Nature overrode the tech. Today was one of those rare, magical occasions. Snow blanketed the city in a glistening, frosty layer, softening its usual chaos.

Fry and Leela walked side by side through the quiet streets, their breaths visible in the crisp winter air. Fry, always a big kid at heart, was reveling in the snow like a five-year-old, scooping up handfuls and flinging them skyward.

“Fry, be careful!” Leela laughed, brushing some stray snowflakes off her parka. “You’re going to hit someone.”

“Come on, Leela, it’s snow! Nobody cares about getting hit with snow,” Fry said, already working on the world’s worst snowball. He tossed it at a nearby statue of Richard Nixon’s head, missing entirely. “Besides, when’s the last time you just played in the snow?”

Leela gave him a sideways glance, her single eye twinkling. “I’m not sure I’ve ever ‘just played’ in it. Between orphanarium chores and missions with Planet Express, snow was never exactly a priority.”

“Well, that’s just wrong,” Fry declared, puffing out his chest. “Today’s your day, Leela! Let’s build a snowman, have a snowball fight—oh, oh! Let’s make snow angels!”

Before she could object, Fry flopped backward into a pile of snow, his arms and legs flailing to carve out the shape of an angel. His bright red jacket contrasted sharply against the white snow.

Leela rolled her eye, but her smirk betrayed her amusement. “You’re ridiculous, Fry.”

“Ridiculously fun!” Fry grinned up at her. “Come on, try it. I’ll help!”

Leela hesitated, then slowly lowered herself onto a clean patch of snow. She mimicked Fry’s movements, her parka crunching as she waved her arms and legs. She couldn’t help but giggle—it was oddly freeing.

“See? Snow angels are the best!” Fry said, sitting up. A gust of icy wind swept by, and he shivered visibly. “Brr! Cold, though.”

Leela noticed and frowned. “You’re not even wearing a scarf. Or gloves. You’ll freeze out here.”

“Nah,” Fry said with a shrug, trying to play it cool—literally. “I spent a thousand years in a cryofreezer. I’m practically immune to the cold.”

“Fry, that’s not how it works,” Leela said, but her concern softened into affection. Fry’s goofy grin had a way of disarming her.

Before she could press him further, a second gust of wind blew through, and she involuntarily wrapped her arms around herself. Fry noticed instantly.

“Leela, here!” Fry said, already shrugging off his jacket. He draped it over her shoulders without a second thought. “You take this.”

“Fry, no! You’re already freezing. I can handle a little cold.”

“And I can handle a lot of it!” he insisted. “You’re way tougher than me in every way except warmth.”

Leela sighed, shaking her head at his stubbornness. Still, the jacket was warm, and it smelled faintly of Fry—a mix of cologne, soda, and something uniquely him. She pulled it tighter around herself.

“Fine. But if you turn into a popsicle, don’t blame me.”

By the time they made it back to their building, Fry wasn’t looking so great. His nose and cheeks were bright red, and he was moving slower than usual, his teeth chattering.

“Fry, are you okay?” Leela asked, stopping on the stoop.

“Y-yeah! Just a little chilly. I’m f-f-fine!” Fry stammered.

Leela’s eye narrowed. “You’re not fine. Come on, we’re going inside. Now.”

Fry didn’t have the energy to argue. He followed her up to their shared apartment, his movements sluggish.

Once inside, Leela sprang into action. She sat Fry down on the couch and peeled off his soaked sneakers and socks, her heart sinking at the sight of his pale, frostbitten toes.

“Fry, you idiot,” she muttered, her voice tinged with worry. “You didn’t have to give me your jacket.”

“You needed it more,” Fry said weakly, managing a small smile. “See? T-t-tougher than me…”

Leela ignored his attempt at humor. She grabbed a thick blanket from the closet and wrapped it tightly around him, then knelt by his side to rub his hands and feet. The contact made Fry wince at first, but he didn’t pull away.

“You’re lucky this isn’t worse,” Leela said, her tone softening as she worked. “I don’t want to lose you to frostbite, Fry. You’re…important to me.”

Fry blinked at her, his chattering teeth slowing. “You mean that?”

Leela paused, meeting his eyes. “Of course I do, you moron. You drive me crazy, but I—” She stopped herself, then sighed. “I care about you. A lot.”

Fry’s face lit up despite his frozen state. “I c-c-care about you too, Leela. Like, a l-lot a lot.”

Leela shook her head, smiling despite herself. “You’re hopeless.”

“Hopelessly in love with you,” Fry said, his grin widening.

Leela groaned, but her cheeks turned pink—not from the cold this time. “Just shut up and drink this,” she said, thrusting a steaming mug of hot cocoa into his hands.

Fry sipped gratefully, the warmth spreading through him. Leela sat beside him, keeping a close eye on his recovery.

For a while, they sat in comfortable silence, the only sound the faint hum of the heater and the occasional whistle of wind outside. Then, without thinking, Leela leaned her head against Fry’s shoulder.

“Thanks for the jacket,” she murmured.

Fry looked down at her, his heart feeling warmer than his body ever had. “Anytime, Leela. Anytime.”

💜🧡

[mercurygray]

hiiiiii you know i have to ask about the bitb/rowing idea!! dick taking up rowing is something i never knew i needed until now haha

She never thought she'd see another regatta.

College felt impossibly far away from where Joan was sitting in the grandstands of the Potomac Rowing Club - the sweaters, the flags, the weight of Ben's fraternity pin on her jacket. The world had looked different, in 1939 - and while she remembered that she liked a great many things about Bennett Hilliard, she also remembered being quite sure that becoming Mrs. Hilliard while he want to law school wasn't in her cards. Still, he'd come from the right sort of family and danced well and she'd liked the way she felt in his arms. Everyone at Poughkeepsie had been talking about Helsinki, and how it was a shame no one would be able to follow up the miraculous success of the UW team at Berlin.

The river in front of her today, however, was not the Hudson, and ten years was a long time in between races - a lot of water under many, many oars. Bennett Hilliard had gone on to marry some other Goucher graduate and she had gone to war.

Someone cleared his throat - a well-dressed man in glasses and a Syracuse scarf. "Captain Warren, it's so good of you to come out today. Your husband said we'd be seeing you. Usually we have to save Go Army for the football season. I like Dickie's chances - he's got to be one of the most natural rowers I've ever seen. It's Mort Greenstan," he said, holding out a hand for her to shake.

Joan finally placed the name, and abbreviated the smile that sprang to her lips hearing him called Dickie, a name he never owned to if he could help it. "The club chairman, yes, Dick mentioned you might stop by."

"Do you mind if I join you? I brought binoculars, in case you forgot."

"Thanks, I have my own," Joan said, patting the well-worn pair that had seen her through most of Europe.(She'd noticed the woman down the row a little had a lovely pair of pearl-handles on hers, but now wasn't the time for getting self-conscious. Joan Warren didn't follow things like fashion and if she wanted to bring her army binoculars to a regatta, she was damn well going to bring her army binoculars.)

"My, those have really been through the war, haven't they?" Mort said, trying to make a joke as he made himself comfortable on the seat next to her. Joan nodded serenely.

"Three campaigns in Europe and two combat jumps," she said, and smiled even wider when Mort went silent.

Down at the dock, the competitors were just getting into their sculls, each man wearing the colors of his own home club. A few colleges, here and there, Georgetown and Harvard and even Greenstan's Syracuse colors, and the other out of towners, Hudson and Annapolis and Newport. And there was Dick in his racing singlet and shorts, arms and legs all whipcord and muscle, and she allowed herself a good long look at the man she married. He caught sight of her in the stands and smiled, waving. She touched her hand to her lips, a small personal symbol of a kiss, and watched his smile widen.

The announcer was blazing through the names of the competitors, and she caught, almost missing it as it blew by, "-Colonel Richard Winters, rowing today for Potomac in the single men's sculls."

She had been just as surprised as anyone else when she'd came home from an assignment and realized there were muscles under his suitcoat that she'd hardly noticed when she left. "I joined the rowing club," he'd explained. "They were talking about it at lunch and Ken's a member, so I started going on Saturdays. It's a lot like running - the way you can lose your mind in it."

She'd nodded and agreed and made a joke about other things he could lose his mind in that required stroking, and that had been the last they'd talked about it for several hours, at least. But he'd kept at it until it was silly calling it a hobby, and now they were here, at a regatta, in the starting heats of a crowded and talented field.

The sculls were at the starting line, the rowers crouching into position at their oars, eyes ready for the flag. Joan tightened her grip on her binoculars and waited for the starter, her feet yearning for starting blocks and racing spikes, and a sudden surge of energy filled her as the flag dropped down and the race was on, and she was right there with him in his boat, shouting for the pace.

[twistedtummies2]

Year of the Bat - Number 15

Welcome to Year of the Bat! In honor of Kevin Conroy, Arleen Sorkin, and Richard Moll, I’m counting down my Top 31 Favorite Episodes of “Batman: The Animated Series” throughout this January. We’ve officially entered the Top 15! TODAY’S EPISODE QUOTE: “Kids these days. No respect.” Number 15 is…Legends of the Dark Knight.

One of the great things about many famous comic book characters is their adaptability. Some of these characters were created nearly a century ago; Batman, for example, first appeared in the late 1930s. (He actually turns 85 Years Old this very year!) Some characters that old who were popular then have, for one reason or another, not stood the test of time. Batman has, and part of this is because his creators found him easy to adapt and reconfigure as times changed. Bruce Wayne and his universe have been portrayed more seriously or more goofily over the decades, and have been made to appeal to adults and children alike time and time again. “Batman: The Animated Series” is widely considered the most definitive take on the Caped Crusader and his world specifically because the writers who worked on this show understood this, and had a deep love for ALL sides of Batman’s world. The show, therefore, hits a near-perfect balance, overall, between silly superhero shenanigans, and dark, complex, sometimes downright brutal storytelling.

“Legends of the Dark Knight” is an episode that exemplifies not only the skillful balance of tone the Animated Series managed for the majority of its run, but acts as a tribute to the long and storied history of Batman, and the adaptability of the character. The plot focuses on a group of random children, living in Gotham, all of whom are gossiping about the mysterious Dark Knight. Through their banter, they start to share stories and theories about what Batman is really like, all of which pay homage to different past incarnations of Batman. Some of these references are relatively brief; for example, a passing friend of theirs named “Joel,” and his bizarre, strangely effeminate fixations on Batman, are meant to be a joking reference to Joel Schumacher’s much maligned film versions of the character. Another case is one young man who makes insinuations of Batman being some monstrous vampire, a reference to the Elseworlds “Batman & Dracula Trilogy” written by Doug Moench.

The most notable of these homages, however, are two long sequences of the show, acting essentially as stories within a story. The first is a tribute the late Golden Age and the Silver Age of comics, as well as to the Adam West 1960s TV series. It features an original adventure, with Batman and Robin battling the Joker, when the Clown Prince of Crime tries to steal the original score of the opera “Pagliacci.” The second sequence is taken directly from the pages of Frank Miller’s somewhat controversial (but highly influential) masterwork, “The Dark Knight Returns.” This one adapts and combines two scenes from the graphic novel, where Batman faces the despicable Mutant Leader. I love both these sequences; it’s neat to see the way the animation style changes for each to match the decade and story style (I especially love how the first sequence so accurately captures the look of Dick Sprang’s famous aesthetics). Interestingly, they also bring in new voice actors to play the characters in each one; instead of Mark Hamill, for example, Michael McKean plays the 60s-era Joker. Meanwhile, Michael Ironside – who would later play the devilish Darkseid for the DCAU – voices Frank Miller’s Batman. Both are perfect casting.

The episode ends with the kids bearing witness to the real Batman – Conroy’s vocals and all – duking it out with the villainous Firefly. I used to love this episode a lot more, but upon revisiting it, I felt I had lost some love for it, and I think part of it is this final sequence. While I love the idea of the kids encountering the real Batman after all that, and I suppose such a thing was inevitable with a plot like this…something about it feels underwhelming after the spectacular sequences we saw earlier in the episode. It’s hard for me to say what the issue is, but I don’t think that was the intention, based on the way things are set up and described in-story. Still, it’s not necessarily a bad ending, for various and probably obvious reasons. It’s a great episode that showcases a different perspective (several different perspectives, in fact) on Batman and the City as a whole, and if you’re as much of a fan of the history of this character – and the duality of the Animated Series itself – as I am, you owe it to yourself to give this one a quick peek. That is, of course, presuming you haven’t already.

Tomorrow we move on to Number 14! Hint: “This used to be a beautiful street. Good people lived here once.”